------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Hands of 'Doomsday Clock' Reset Toward Danger
Doomsday Clock Moved Ahead
Hidden Wrecks: Nuclear Ship Below
Tokyo, Seoul Play Down Bush Rebuke of N. Korea
Tenex agrees to uranium pricing
Harry Polachek, 88; Math, Computer Authority
Northrop: Bond Rating Is Priority
China Says Next Move in Arms Talks Is Up to U.S.
Beijing to negotiate on weapons control
Henry Kissinger's Secret Trip to China
Pentagon Sees Sample Rocket by '04
Russian court strikes down decision to allow nuclear waste imports
Report Faults Security of Russian Arsenal
More Nuclear Security Steps
Transmission problem triggers San Diego blackouts
What Isn't in a Name? 'Nuclear'
Piketon plant has leaked radiation for decades, study says
Time to end embargo against Cuba

MILITARY
Afghan Witnesses Say G.I.'s Were Duped in Raid on Allies
Protesters clash as tension mounts in Madagascar
Belgium Seeks Arms Dealer With Suspected Qaeda Ties
Cuba accuses US of dozens of "biological attacks"
Britain irritated by Rumsfeld's prisoner comment
Bogota ends plan to swap captives
Rebels Go on Killing Rampage
Colombia Claims Coca Crop Decline
Ex-Afghan warlord disappears from Tehran
U.S. meets groups opposing Saddam
U.S. Action Against Iraq in Next Six Months Unlikely
Bush Welcomes Saudi Proposal on Mideast Peace
NATO's overtures to Moscow
Musharraf cites radicals for Pakistan mosque attack
Security tightened as Pakistan mosque victims buried
Russia slams U.S. plan to send troops to Georgia
Lebanon arrests three suspected of spying for Israel
Bush to Nominate Helgerson CIA Inspector General
U.S. Seeks to Extend Ban on Cloning
Rumsfeld shuts down OSI
Rumsfeld Kills Pentagon Propaganda Unit
Pentagon abandons public sentiment idea
Rumsfeld takes dim view of U.S. peacekeeping role
U.S. May Send G.I.'s to Ex-Soviet Area in Training Mission
Marines, Special Operations Command Increase Ties

POLICE / PRISONERS
Hack a PC, Get Life in Jail
FEMA's anti-terrorism role hearing
Ashcroft: Terror top budget factor
Arabs want Guantanamo prisoners back
Salt Lake blast caused by bomb?
Police Gunfire In D.C. Worsens
Man faces charges in alien smuggling
Congressman Wants FBI Records
Pakistan to seek death for Pearl's killers
Ga. Won't Seek Ex - Sheriff Execution
Investigators Show That U.S. Embassy Is Vulnerable

ENERGY AND OTHER
Court Tells Energy Dept to Produce Documents
U.S. reliance on Iraqi oil grows despite "evil" tag
Oil Executives Lobbied on Drilling
Lead Levels High Near Mo. Smelter
Looking Again at Mammograms
With AIDS Therapy, Timing Can Be Vital
Elderly Christians threatened with ouster
Community Leaders Call .. Not to Buy World Bank Bonds
Journalists On Radio In Russia To Resign
A 'Damaged' Information Office Is Declared Closed by Rumsfeld


ACTIVISTS
The Great Deception: Elusive Enemy, Endless War

-------- NUCLEAR

Hands of 'Doomsday Clock' Reset Toward Danger

By REUTERS
February 27, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-nuclear-clock.html

CHICAGO - The keepers of the ``Doomsday Clock'' on Wednesday advanced its hands nearer to the midnight hour symbolizing nuclear weapons conflict, its closest since the Cold War's end, citing worries over lagging disarmament efforts, the security of existing stockpiles and terrorism.

The directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a magazine that has campaigned for nuclear disarmament since 1947, pushed the hands forward by two minutes, to seven minutes to midnight.

It is the closest to midnight that the clock has been positioned since the end of the Cold War, but not as close as the record danger position -- two minutes to midnight -- in 1953 when the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb.

``Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces,'' said George Lopez, chairman of the Bulletin's Board of Directors.

``Meanwhile, domestic weapons laboratories continue working to refine existing warheads and design new weapons, with an emphasis on the ability to destroy deeply buried targets,'' he said.

Lopez said the directors also were ``deeply concerned that the international community appears to have ignored the wake-up call of Sept. 11. Terrorist efforts to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons present a grave danger. But the U.S. preference for the use of preemptive force rather than diplomacy could be equally dangerous.''

The announcement cited what it said was a continuing U.S. preference for unilateral rather than cooperative action, and its efforts to impede international agreements designed to limit the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

It criticized U.S. plans to walk away from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in June, and its refusal to participate in talks regarding implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

It also cited a general lack of progress on nuclear disarmament, growing concern about the security of nuclear weapons materials worldwide, and the crisis between nuclear-capable neighbors India and Pakistan. It said more than 31,000 nuclear weapons still are maintained by the eight known nuclear powers, a decrease of only 3,000 since 1998.

The new seven-minute mark is the same position at which the clock was set when it began appearing on the cover of the magazine in 1947. In addition to the magazine cover, the publication keeps an actual clock at its offices, and it repositioned those hands on Wednesday.

The hands last were moved in June 1998, from 14 minutes to nine minutes to midnight. The clock has been reset 16 times previously. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the minute hand was pushed back to 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, completely out of the final 15-minute danger zone.

---

Doomsday Clock Moved Ahead

Wed Feb 27
By F.N. D'ALESSIO
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020227/ap_on_re_us/doomsday_clock_5

CHICAGO (AP) - The hands of the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic gauge of the threat of nuclear annihilation, were moved for the first time in nearly four years Wednesday because of the Sept. 11 attacks, increasing tension between India and Pakistan and other threats.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which keeps the clock, set the hands at 11:53, two minutes ahead of the time it has had since 1998.

Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin, said the board originally defined "midnight" as nuclear war. In recent years, however, it has been redefined as the use of nuclear weapons anywhere on earth, he said.

It was the 17th time the clock has been reset since it debuted in 1947 at the same position it was set to Wednesday.

George A. Lopez, the publication's chairman of the board, said it has never been moved in response to a single event.

The Sept. 11 attacks combined with evidence that terrorists were attempting to obtain the materials for a crude nuclear weapon should have served as a wake-up call to the world. He said the world has focused on short-term security rather than solving long-term problems.

"The international community simply hit the snooze button rather than raising the general alarm," Lopez said.

He said such factors as the concern about the security of nuclear weapons materials stockpiled around the world and the crisis between nuclear powers India and Pakistan also figured into the decision.

The board started meeting in November, Bulletin spokesman Steve Koppes said, but did not reach a decision until recently "because of the uncertain nature of what is going on in the world."

The clock is a 11/2-foot-square wooden mock-up in the magazine's office at the University of Chicago. It was started two years after the bulletin began as a newsletter among scientists of the Manhattan Project - the top-secret U.S. effort during World War II to develop an atomic bomb.

It came closest to midnight - just two minutes away - in 1953, after the United States successfully tested the hydrogen bomb. It has been as far away as 17 minutes, set there in 1991 in a wave of post- Cold-War optimism.

Doomsday Clock: http://www.thebulletin.org/clock.html

-------- accidents

Hidden Wrecks: Nuclear Ship Below

By KPIX - Ken Bastida
Wednesday February 27
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/kpix/20020227/lo/2579_1.html

For the past few weeks, efforts have been made to stop oil leaks from a sunken ship just off the Golden Gate.

But there other dangerous wrecks off our coast, including one where the problem isn't oil, but radiation.

Nuclear tests on a remote island in the South Pacific helped establish America's military might after World War II.

But the experiments also contaminated dozens of ships with highly radioactive fallout, including one that ended its life here in the Bay Area: The USS Independence.

Kart Herman of the USGS (news - web sites): "It was one of small carriers used in the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test, When it was brought here it was too hot to decontaminate."

Despite that contamination the Navy decided to scuttle the Independence, in waters near the Farallon Islands.

Sailors were still allowed on board the radioactive carrier, just before it was sent to the bottom in 1951.

And the Independence wasn't the only radioactive dumping the government engaged in. Over the next several decades they also sunk thousands of barrels of low-level nuclear waste in the same area.

Several years ago, the USGS was able to photograph some of them with an underwater camera. They also used sonar to map the area. And turned up another tantalizing clue.

A ship that Herman Karl believes could be the Independence.

"We saw features we knew weren't geological, we saw one big object with one could interpret is the Independence.... What you'd have to do is go down with camera system that's submersible."

And now, there may be renewed interest in taking a closer look at the Independence, and those barrels of nuclear waste, because we've recently gotten a first hand lesson in what decades of rust and rough seas can do.

This month, a mysterious oil leak was traced to another rusting wreck, just a few miles away.

And if oil can cause this kind of environmental damage, how concerned should we be about radiation?

Ed Ueber is director of the Gulf of the Farallons Sanctuary: "Should we be zeroing in? Yes. We should have a much better feel because of the episodic nature. What radioactive levels could be if something decays."

Herman Karl adds, "We don't know anything about radioactivity of the vessel. Nobody since it's been scuttled has measured radiation around the vessel."

And the technology is here.

Companies like Deep Ocean Engineering -- which is being contracted to work on the leaking oil tanker -- routinely reach wrecks in water as deep as the Independence. Waters that are also home to some of the most diverse marine life on the West Coast.

But is the risk enough to warrant the expense of a new dive?

Karl: "We can certainly locate and identify these vessels, that's easy enough to do.... It really depends on how much interest there is from the public.

And that interest could build, if the potential danger off our coast becomes even more apparent.

For more Bay Area news and information, visit the PIX Page at kpix.com.

-------- asia

Tokyo, Seoul Play Down Bush Rebuke of N. Korea

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7877-2002Feb26?language=printer

TOKYO, Feb. 26 -- Japan and South Korea are trying to minimize the rift that they see left behind by President Bush's harsh rhetoric toward North Korea during his trip to Asia last week.

Analysts here say Bush's comments, in which he castigated the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and repeated his judgment that the government is "evil," have further impaired prospects of renewed cooperation by Pyongyang.

North Korea has reacted angrily to Bush's statements, calling the U.S. president the "kingpin of terrorism" and describing his trip a "war junket."

But officials in Tokyo and Seoul have seized upon the invitation repeated by Bush to hold talks with Pyongyang as evidence the U.S. administration is less antagonistic toward North Korea than the president's words suggest.

A spokesman for the presidential Blue House in Seoul said Bush's assurance that the United States does not intend to invade North Korea is "a big help in dispelling our worries."

A spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry said today that Tokyo has "a sincere hope dialogue will be resumed" between the United States and North Korea.

But President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea acknowledged Monday that Bush's stance had increased tensions to a "critical" point. After the president's State of the Union address on Jan. 29 labeling North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil," Kim said, "We had faced a critical moment. North Korea must have felt a great threat after President Bush's axis of evil remarks."

"A war can break out if two parties reject each other," Kim told a group of government and civic leaders in Seoul.

Seoul, whose residents make up nearly half the population of South Korea, is 34 miles from the border with North Korea and a vulnerable missile target if war were to break out. Bush's tough tone toward North Korea produced anti-American demonstrations in Seoul by protesters who support Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" of seeking reconciliation with the North.

Howard H. Baker Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Japan, met with Japanese and American reporters this week to promote a positive view of the president's Asian trip.

"I think clearly he got their attention," Baker said today of Bush's remarks on North Korea. "I think they're thinking about it. They don't like it, but I think they're thinking about it. They may be on the brink of deciding well, you know, we're about to mess up again and we're about to lose what we thought we had advanced. I think he'll make them focus on the importance of addressing these issues. I think the president realized his objective."

The North Korean reaction came not only from the usual voice, the Korean Central News Agency, but also in a weightier statement from the Foreign Ministry. The statement, issued as Bush ended his trip, complained that the president's comments were "an insult to the national feelings of the Korean people" and "outrageously slandered" the country.

Bush, in remarks before and during his visit to Seoul last Wednesday, called the North Korean government "despotic," repeated his demands that Pyongyang pull back its weapons from the border, criticized Kim Jong Il as a man without "a good heart," and -- after peering through bulletproof glass toward the North, where a museum holds axes used to kill two U.S. servicemen 25 years ago -- mused, "No wonder I think they're evil."

Despite Bush's insistence that he is open to talks with Pyongyang and supports Kim Dae Jung's conciliatory efforts, his remarks were an embarrassing setback to the policies that won the South Korean president a Nobel Peace Prize.

Critics of Bush say he has ensured there will be little progress by personally criticizing Kim Jong Il, an affront to a country that has little except its swollen pride.

Former president Jimmy Carter called Bush's approach "overly simplistic and counterproductive." In Atlanta last week, Carter said, "I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement."

Commentaries in the press here have generally agreed. "The Bush administration is trying to play the role of 'bad cop,' " foreign affairs columnist Yoichi Funabashi wrote in the daily Asahi Shimbun. "But America's allies will not follow a United States which takes the law into its own hands as the guardian of virtue in controlling evil."

Bush "says he is willing to talk to the North, but he is not willing to make it a priority," said Ji Yeon Yuh, an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., writing in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper. "When Bush labeled North Korea part of an axis of evil, he heightened the potential for military conflict. The losers in any such conflict would be the Korean people."

"If the North turns a deaf ear to dialogue proposals, it would be all but impossible to predict what actions President Bush will take," said Sah Dong Seok, political editor of the Korea Times in Seoul.

Baker, while playing down the threat posed by the Bush administration, acknowledged that he worried about miscalculation.

"Usually great conflicts start by accident, and I fear that there is some sort of enormous military strength in North Korea," Baker said today while meeting reporters. "You've got an unstable domestic situation there. You've got uncertain leadership there. That is the most dangerous part of the relationship."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

-------- business

Tenex agrees to uranium pricing

ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20020227-15032512.htm

Russian and U.S. officials reached a breakthrough in a pricing dispute over uranium shipments to the United States that had threatened to disrupt both fuel supplies to nuclear power plants and a program to scrap Soviet missiles, the State Department said.

The accord with USEC Inc. of Bethesda, the largest supplier of enriched uranium to nuclear plants, needs the approval of the U.S. and Russian governments, State Department spokeswoman Brenda Greenberg said. It allows for a continuation of the Russian uranium shipments, which faced suspension.

The state-owned Russian company Tekhsnabexport, or Tenex, felt pressure to accept lower prices demanded by USEC because the U.S. government said it would allow no other buyers of the uranium, said Thomas Neff, a researcher who proposed the method for reusing old Soviet nuclear bombs in 1991.

"This story is far from over," said Mr. Neff, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist. "The big hurdle is the Russian government," which previously rejected the prices that Tenex has now agreed to accept from USEC.

The pricing dispute disrupted a 1993 agreement under which Russia promised to sell weapons-grade uranium from dismantled nuclear warheads to USEC. It also endangered the supply of fuel to U.S. commercial nuclear power plants, which provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.

USEC has been seeking discounts from Russia to help it remain profitable. Spun off as a private company in 1998, it last month lowered its 2002 earnings forecast after reporting that profits last year dropped 60 percent to $41 million.

USEC supplies about 32 percent of the global market for enriched uranium used in commercial nuclear power plants. It obtains most of that uranium from old U.S. and Russian weapons. It has only one remaining generation plant, in Paducah, Ky., for producing new uranium fuel.

The proposed new pricing agreement would cover the remaining years, through 2013, of a U.S.-Russia agreement for destroying Soviet nuclear missiles.

The State Department is not releasing details of the pricing agreement while the United States and Russia study whether to approve it, Ms. Greenberg said.

An industry newsletter published by the Ux Consulting Co. LLC, an affiliate of the Uranium Exchange Co., described USEC as winning prices more than 20 percent below market levels.

The agreed price is based on a formula that averages seven U.S. and foreign price indicators for three years preceding the delivery year, with an additional discount of about 12 percent, according to the newsletter, Ux Weekly.

Under the proposed agreement, Ux Weekly said, the price this year would remain around last year's price of $90 per "separative work unit," or SWU, which is used to measure enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. The price in 2003 would then drop to about $77, $30 below the current U.S. market price of $107.

A typical 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor consumes about 100,000 to 120,000 SWU a year. USEC's annual sales are about 11 million SWU.

The agreement would provide USEC an annual profit margin of $120 million to $220 million a year, Mr. Neff said.

"Tenex gave in because they had no choice," he said.

USEC spokesman Charles Yulish said he could not comment.

----

Harry Polachek, 88; Math, Computer Authority

Washington Post
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7994-2002Feb26?language=printer

Harry Polachek, 88, who had been a civilian mathematician and computer expert with the Navy and later with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1941 to 1972, died of a heart attack Feb. 23 at his home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

In the 1950s, he helped establish the Navy's Applied Mathematics Laboratory using some of the first commercially available computers. His career touched on everything from nuclear reactor design to the computerization of shipping lines.

Dr. Polachek was born in Poland and moved to New York in the 1920s.

He received bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from Yeshiva University. He received a doctorate degree in mathematics from Columbia University. He also was ordained a rabbi from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

He taught math in New York before moving to the Washington area in 1941.

During World War II, he was a mathematician at the Navy's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and later at the Bureau of Ordnance. He was chief of numerical analysis at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and, later, technical director of the Applied Mathematics Lab. He was a computer consultant for the Atomic Energy Commission from 1965 until retiring in 1972.

He received the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1961 for his work at the laboratory. The citation read, "Dr. Polachek's skill and ingenuity have made possible the rapid solution of extraordinarily complex problems through the unique exploitation of computer capability."

--------

Northrop: Bond Rating Is Priority

February 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Northrop-Grumman-TRW.html

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Northrop Grumman Corp. (news/quote) Chairman Kent Kresa said he would work to maintain the company's investment grade bond rating after a proposed merger with TRW Inc. (news/quote), even if it means selling other parts of the company to reduce debt.

Kresa, speaking to an industry conference in New York on Wednesday, also said the combined companies would save at least $80 million by consolidating the headquarters.

TRW has headquarters in Cleveland, while Northrop Grumman is based in Los Angeles.

Moody's (news/quote) Investor Service last week warned it might cut Northrop Grumman's bond rating to ``junk'' status as a result of the TRW acquisition. Northrop has offered to buy TRW for $5.9 billion. It also would acquire about $5.5 billion of TRW debt.

Kresa said much of the debt would be shifted to the automotive part of TRW's business, which would either be spun off into a separate company or sold outright after a merger.

About 60 percent of TRW's business is in automotive products. The remaining is in high-tech defense products, including missile and satellite systems.

Kresa said that after the merger and the sale of the automotive business, Northrop's debt-to-equity ratio would be under 40 percent.

``We will remain investment grade,'' Kresa said. ``We have other ways of doing that, other properties we can sell off.''

Northrop is still waiting for a response to its unsolicited bid for TRW. The company had given TRW until the end of business Wednesday to respond, but TRW has asked for more time to consider the offer.

-------- china

China Says Next Move in Arms Talks Is Up to U.S.

New York Times
February 27, 2002
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/international/asia/27CHIN.html

BEIJING, Feb. 26 - The United States should take the next step to resolve the dispute over Chinese exports of missile technology, a senior Chinese foreign policy official said today in remarks that suggested a continuing impasse over one of the most sensitive issues in Chinese- American relations.

"We think the ball is in your court," the official said of the festering discord over Chinese transfers of missile parts and know-how to countries that include Pakistan and Iran.

The senior official, who was involved in last week's meetings here with President Bush, called in several American reporters today for a briefing with the condition that he not be identified.

His remarks helped explain why a long-sought final accord on curbing missile proliferation remained elusive last week.

The official declined to specify what China expected the United States to do before China followed through with promises it made in November 2000 to issue detailed regulations on sensitive exports.

But in the inconclusive negotiations over the last year, China has insisted that the United States first proceed with its own pledge to authorize Chinese commercial launching of American satellites. Officials here also demand that the United States end punitive measures against a Chinese arms company that China says were unfairly applied.

The United States says it will not relax the ban on commercial satellite launching, a potentially lucrative and prestigious business for China, until China fulfills the November 2000 agreement.

Chinese launching of American satellites was suspended during the Clinton administration because of concerns about the transfer of technological secrets. Mr. Bush would find it politically difficult to allow resumption of that business without strong new anti-proliferation measures from China.

In the accord in November 2000 China pledged to end exports of ballistic missiles and technologies. It agreed to issue export-control rules and a list of sensitive "dual-use" items that could help the government rein in its increasingly free- wheeling arms companies. To American chagrin, the rules and list have still not been issued.

In an effort to end the deadlock, China's top arms control negotiator will travel to Washington in March for talks, the official said today.

The official said that despite disagreement over missiles, Taiwan and human rights, Mr. Bush's two- day visit was "constructive, positive and fruitful." He said China was pleased that Vice President Hu Jintao, who is expected to take over as Communist Party leader and president, would visit the United States for the first time in late April and that President Jiang Zemin would visit in October.

But the official also cautioned that tensions over Taiwan would rise if the United States did not temper its arms sales to the island, which China considers a renegade part of the motherland.

Today, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, warned in a news conference that Taiwan authorities would "eat their own bitter fruit" if they continued with what he called a push toward "incremental independence."

China has been angered by proposals in Taipei to start using the word "Taiwan" in the official name of its de facto embassies overseas, and by the reported intention of Taiwan's defense minister to attend a private military conference in Florida next month. China says such a visit would breach the American commitment to shun official contacts with Taiwan; the Bush administration has not announced whether it will grant a visa.

The senior Chinese official, elaborating on the stalled missile accord, insisted that China is not placing conditions on its pledge to fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

"We will honor our part, and you should honor your part," he said of the 2000 accord.

The official said China shared the American interest in curbing proliferation of weapons, and would act against any company found engaging in questionable sales.

One sticking point is the sanctions applied last year by Washington against a Chinese arms company that reportedly sold sensitive missile parts to Pakistan, China's longtime ally. China says the sales were not dangerous and were arranged before November, 2000 and not covered by the accord.

American officials say they had a verbal understanding that China's new prohibitions would apply to pre- existing technology sales.

The Chinese official today denied making any commitment to "grandfathering" the accord. "That agreement was for the future, and now the United States is saying it was for the past," he said. But this does not imply that any prior deals posed a risk of weapons proliferation, he added.

----

Beijing to negotiate on weapons control

By Joe McDonald
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020227-17866826.htm

BEIJING - China is sending a negotiator to Washington next month for arms-control talks, but it expects the United States to drop its complaints that Beijing has exported weapons technology, a Chinese official said yesterday.

The comments, coming days after President Bush visited Beijing, suggested Washington faces more protracted negotiating in its effort to win a formal Chinese commitment to curb the spread of weapons technology.

China promised in November 2000 to tighten export controls, but Washington accused it of supplying missile and nuclear arms technology to Pakistan and imposed sanctions. Beijing wants an end to penalties that include a ban on launches of U.S. commercial satellites on Chinese rockets.

The trip to Washington next month by China's chief arms-control negotiator, Liu Jieyi, comes after two visits by senior officials to argue China's case, said the official, who works in China's Foreign Ministry. He said Beijing wants a response before taking any more steps.

"The ball is in their court," said the official, who spoke to a group of foreign reporters on the condition that he not be identified further.

He wouldn't specify what steps China wants the United States to take to move the talks ahead. But he pointed to one area of conflict: China's contention that it can supply arms technology under deals signed before the November 2000 agreement. U.S. officials reject that.

"The agreement is for the future, not the past," the Foreign Ministry official said. "But we did nothing wrong in the past, so you should not be worried about that."

He said China is committed to curbing the spread of weapons technology, though he acknowledged that it hasn't published a long-promised list of banned exports.

The official also said the two sides should "respect each other's concerns." He said that includes Chinese opposition to U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory.

"You can't just accuse us of ... violating our commitments and at the same time you are selling large amounts of arms to Taiwan," he said. Such sales, he said, are "also a kind of proliferation."

On other issues in Chinese-U.S. relations, the official said:

•Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao's first visit to the United States, announced last week, will take place in late April. Mr. Hu's itinerary is under discussion, though he is expected to visit other cities in addition to Washington. Mr. Hu is widely seen as the expected successor to President Jiang Zemin.

China has agreed to allow the FBI to station an agent in Beijing. Washington made that request more than a year ago, but it took on new urgency when the two sides agreed to cooperate in anti-terrorism after the September 11 attacks. China is deciding whether to station a law-enforcement official in Washington.

Despite disagreement over the arms talks, the official said China regards relations with Washington as improving.

Over the next several months, meetings are planned to discuss cooperation in a wide range of fields, including anti-terrorism, global warming and fighting money laundering, he said.

Nevertheless, on the sensitive issue of relations with Taiwan, the official complained that the Bush administration was obstructing "unification of the motherland" by selling weapons and expanding contacts with Taiwanese officials.

Taiwan's defense minister has been invited to a conference next month in Florida, and the Chinese official said Beijing wants Washington to bar him from attending.

U.S. officials haven't said whether Defense Minister Tang Yiau-ming will be allowed to attend the privately organized conference. It would be the first time a Taiwanese defense minister has visited the United States since 1979, when Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

----

Update: Henry Kissinger's Secret Trip to China

National Security Archive Update,
February 27, 2002
From: NSARCHIVE <mevans@GWU.EDU>
http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/

The Beijing-Washington Back-Channel and Henry Kissinger's Secret Trip to China

Washington, D.C. - Today the National Security Archive publishes for the first time the verbatim transcripts of Henry Kissinger's secret trip to China in July 1971, as part of an electronic briefing book of 41 recently declassified U.S. documents on Sino-American communications that led to Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in February 1972, 30 years ago.

The transcripts of meetings between Kissinger and premier Zhou Enlai contradict Kissinger's memoirs and show Kissinger readily acknowledging Beijing's position that Taiwan was part of China. Kissinger declared that "we are not advocating a `two Chinas' solution' or a `one China, one Taiwan' solution." Only after Kissinger had taken this position would Zhou declare that he was "hopeful" about prospects for U.S.-China diplomatic relations. In other words, without conceding to Beijing's position on Taiwan's status, it would have been most difficult for substantive discussions to continue and a presidential visit would have been most unlikely. Kissinger made other commitments on Taiwan, e.g., to withdraw two-thirds of U.S. forces from the island once the Vietnam War had ended, but nowhere in his memoirs does he discuss these dramatic concessions. Instead, Kissinger wrote on p. 749 of White House Years (1979) that "Taiwan was mentioned only briefly during the first session."

Besides the transcripts of the Kissinger-Zhou meetings (which covered a range of issues, including Vietnam, South Asia, and Japan), the briefing book includes the first publication of U.S. records of the secret channel that the Pakistani government to provided to expedite Sino-American communications during 1970-1971. The briefing book also documents some of Kissinger's efforts to find other channels of communication with Beijing, such as the Romanian government and French contacts with the Chinese embassy in Paris. A record of a conversation between Nixon and Kissinger on 1 July 1971, before the secret trip, shows the president urging Kissinger to press the Chinese to keep U.S. "political visitors"--Democratic senators--away from China until Nixon had made his trip (giving an ironic twist to the notion that "only Nixon could go to China"). Nixon is also shown urging Kissinger to manipulate Chinese fears of a "resurgent Japan" and the "Soviet threat on their flank."

The documents in this briefing book were compiled by William Burr, editor, The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow (New Press, 1999), for a conference on the Sino-American rapprochement that was sponsored by the George Washington University Cold War Group of the Elliott School of International Affairs, on 8-9 February 2002. Among the participants in the conference were three veterans of the Nixon National Security Council Staff, Winston Lord, William R. Smyser, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt. Both Lord and Smyser accompanied Kissinger during the July 1971 secret trip. Today's posting includes an audio recording of their public discussion of their experience.

The documents, audio and photographs are available at the following URL: http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/

-------- missile defense

Pentagon Sees Sample Rocket by '04

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14123-2002Feb27?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States probably will have prototype rockets capable of destroying an enemy's long-range missile available in about two years, Pentagon officials told Congress Wednesday.

The military plans to build silos for the interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said. He told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that four prototype interceptors capable of shooting down an enemy missile should be in place there by September 2004.

The Defense Department is working to develop several ways to block long-range missiles fired at the United States. President Bush last year announced he was withdrawing the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that bans such anti-missile systems.

Russia and other countries oppose the decision.

The Pentagon has tested prototypes of missile interceptors fired from silos on land and Navy ships at sea in recent months. Although all of the most recent tests have destroyed dummy warheads, officials say the tests were designed to evaluate system components and were virtually guaranteed to knock down the dummy warheads anyway.

Designing, testing and building a system of land- and sea-based missile defenses would cost between $23 billion and $64 billion by 2015, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this year.

Critics of the missile defense program say it's too expensive and question whether the defenses would really work. Expecting to have prototype rockets capable of shooting down missiles ready by 2004 is unrealistic, critics said.

``It's wishful thinking,'' Chris Madison of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation said Wednesday.

The land-based program aimed at destroying long-range missiles in space is the furthest along -- and is the program that Wolfowitz said should have prototypes capable of shooting down a missile by 2004.

Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency, told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday about plans to have operational prototypes ready in two years.

-------- russia

Russian court strikes down decision to allow nuclear waste imports from Hungary

Wednesday, February 27, 2002
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/02/02272002/ap_46526.asp

MOSCOW - The Russian Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a victory to environmentalists, striking down a government decision that allowed the import of nuclear waste from the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary for storage in Russia.

Under a 1992 law, Russia imports spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Hungary for reprocessing, but it is required to return the waste to the countries of origin for permanent storage.

Greenpeace, the For Nuclear Safety environmental movement, and citizens of the Chelyabinsk region in the Urals Mountains filed suit against the government last year when they learned of a 1998 decision to allow nuclear waste from the Paks plant to be sent to Chelyabinsk for storage, said Yevgeny Usov, a spokesman for Greenpeace. "The Atomic Energy Ministry is selling Russia's territory for nuclear waste storage," Usov said.

Environmentalists have been up in arms about a law signed last summer that allows the import of spent nuclear fuel from other countries for reprocessing and storage.

According to the plan, spent fuel will be sent by armored train to a facility near Chelyabinsk for reprocessing. The recycling process extracts usable nuclear material from the spent rods while reducing their potential to be used in weapons, the Atomic Energy Ministry has said.

The plan's advocates say Russia could earn US$20 billion over the next decade, importing some 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. They say part of the money could be used to clean up existing nuclear pollution.

Yet environmentalists warn that with Russia's crumbling infrastructure and weak government, importing radioactive materials would be dangerous.

----

Report Faults Security of Russian Arsenal
Insider Nuclear Thefts A Risk, U.S. Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7786-2002Feb26?language=printer

Although Russia has been slowly improving its physical security systems at nuclear facilities, today's major threat comes from insiders stealing weapons-grade or weapons-usable nuclear materials, according to a recent U.S. intelligence report.

While a handful of nuclear-material thefts have been detected and foiled, primarily from Russian production facilities and laboratories, "undetected smuggling has occurred," according to the report produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the senior analytic body made up of representatives of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.

The old Russian security structure, which focused primarily on threats from outside the country, "may not be sufficient to meet today's challenge of a knowledgeable insider collaborating with a criminal or terrorist group," the NIC found.

Concern over insider security breaches arose after September 1998, when a Russian navy conscript shot a sentry guarding a nuclear submarine and killed five other sailors inside the sub. The armed conscript had walked unimpeded through an open shed near the submarine that contained nuclear weapons, according to Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, who has worked with Russia on nuclear security issues. The incident ended when the conscript shot himself.

The Russians realized one person going berserk could be handled, "but if two or more insiders collude [to steal something] all safeguards are non-effective," Blair said. Senior Russian military officials subsequently asked the United States for assistance in meeting the threat.

"Major assistance began after the Russian officials realized they had an insider problem," Blair said. Since that time, Russians have instituted psychological, lie detector, and drug and alcohol testing for all nuclear warhead personnel, the NIC report said. The polygraph equipment and drug and alcohol tests were provided by the United States under the Pentagon's threat reduction program.

Last October, Gen. Col. Igor Valynkin, chief of the organization responsible for protecting nuclear weapons, said heightened security in early 2001 "had twice thwarted terrorist efforts to reconnoiter nuclear weapons storage sites," the report said.

Blair noted that another weak point in the Russian security program that is being reformed is in Moscow's transportation system for nuclear warheads, primarily because new and old nuclear weapons are constantly being shipped from one site to another. "Enlisted guards, who had low morale, little training and alcohol problems are being replaced by officers," Blair said.

While concern over insiders has grown, the report said that the threat most feared by the United States in the past, an unauthorized launch or accidental use of a nuclear weapon, "is highly unlikely" as long as the highly centralized system built by the Soviet Union years ago remains in place.

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

More Nuclear Security Steps

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Washington Post
Wednesday, February 27, 2002; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8099-2002Feb26?language=printer

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered stricter security measures at all 104 U.S. nuclear power plants to guard against terrorist attacks. Citing a "high-level threat environment," the NRC ordered more security posts and personnel, additional physical barriers and tighter restrictions on employee access.

The plants already had taken many of the steps voluntarily in response to roughly 30 security advisories issued by the NRC since the Sept. 11 attacks, federal and industry officials said. Federal authorities have warned repeatedly that nuclear power plants could be terrorist targets.

Although the order takes effect immediately, the NRC is giving companies that are unable to comply as long as 20 days to seek an extension of up to six months. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) accused the NRC of "operating in a pre-September 11 world."

-------- california

Transmission problem triggers San Diego blackouts

Wednesday February 27
Reuters
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020227/n27267555_2.html

LOS ANGELES. - San Diego Gas & Electric said on Wednesday that it was forced to cut service to 210,000 customers due to a transmission problem which also triggered an outage at the San Onofre nuclear plant in southern California.

The utility, a unit of Sempra Energy (NYSE:SRE - news), said it was ordered by the California Independent System Operator (ISO) to drop 300 megawatts of power immediately following the problem which occurred around 10.42 a.m. Pacific time (1.42 p.m. EST).

The 1,080 MW Unit 3 at the San Onofre plant was shut down. Service to all customers had been restored by 11.35 a.m. Pacific, the SDG&E spokesman said.

The San Onofre plant is operated by another utility, Edison International unit Southern California Edison. There were no outages in SCE's service territory as the problem occurred on lines which feed power from the plant to SDG&E.

A plant spokesman said they were still investigating the exact cause of the outage and it had not yet been determined when the unit would return to service.

``By this time tomorrow (Thursday) we should be able to have a return to service scheduled,'' he noted.

The 1,080-MW Unit 2 at the plant was not impacted. Unit 1 at the plant was retired from service in 1992.

San Onofre, in San Clemente, Calif. has two nuclear units, each with a capacity of about 1,080 MW. SCE has a 75 percent stake in the plant and SDG&E owns 20 percent. The cities of Anaheim and Riverside own the balance.

The ISO, which controls most of the state's power grid, said it quickly lined up replacement generation to minimize the impact on customers.

-------- connecticut

OUR TOWNS
What Isn't in a Name? 'Nuclear'

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
New York Times
February 27, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/nyregion/27TOWN.html

WATERFORD, Conn. -- The Virginia company that took over the nuclear power plant here last year wants you to know that security is tight. Very tight.

Armed guards and a slalom run of concrete barriers have made it impossible to drive all the way up the half-mile access road to the plant. Aerial photographs have been pulled off the Web. And in case any terrorists happen by en route to the submarine base a few miles up the road, or perhaps while day-tripping to Mystic, the word "nuclear" has been removed from the sign out front.

Millstone Power Station, it says. That'll fool 'em.

Over the drawbridge in tiny Niantic, the name change, like most of what emanates from the power plant across the bay, was greeted by rolling eyes and biting cynicism. "Maybe no one'll notice now when it blows up," said Glenn Shea, the otherwise amiable guy behind the counter at the Book Barn.

Sure, the new plant operator, Richmond-based Dominion, says the name was shortened strictly to be consistent, since neither of its two other nuclear plants, in North Anna and Surry, Va., have the N-word in their names. (There is a Dominion Hydro Station, but then people don't worry about getting wet as much as they do about glowing in the dark.)

Dominion officials even went so far as to assure the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that shortening the plant's name would not "affect the likelihood, the consequences, or introduce a new or different kind of accident" - which may be as unsettling to some as it is comforting to others.

Not surprisingly, both the weather- beaten locals and nuclear opponents are having a bit of fun. "It's a good safety move," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's a little-known fact that the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island wouldn't have happened if `nuclear' wasn't in their titles."

Mr. Shea, who lives in Uncasville, home of the Mohegan Sun casino, was reminded of another local bit of newspeak: how the gambling industry calls itself the gaming industry, so "it doesn't sound like you're gambling your children's inheritance away."

Mr. Lochbaum, too, dared to suggest that public relations had played a role in the trim, although the plant's public relations man, Peter Hyde, held fast to his denials.

Millstone was regarded as probably the worst-run nuclear plant in the country in the 1980's, and its image is still recovering from the shutdown in 1996 that lasted two years, Mr. Lochbaum said.

All of which raises another question: why cut loose the "nuclear" when you've got "Millstone" around your neck?

"We had a fleeting thought of dropping the Millstone name," said David Christian, the plant's chief nuclear officer. "But people here take a tremendous amount of pride, and we've turned around our performance significantly. Millstone's now a name the industry can be proud of."

Indeed, Millstone's Unit 2 reactor just shut down for maintenance after 283 straight days in which both it and Unit 3 operated without a hitch - a plant record, the company said. (Unit 1, which opened in 1970, shut down for good in 1995 and is now being decommissioned.) And Mr. Lochbaum said he expected Millstone's performance to improve, judging from Dominion's record elsewhere: in a 1997 review of 10 nuclear plants by the Union of Concerned Scientists, its Surry station ranked best, he said.

Not everything about Millstone is in tiptop shape just yet. Its Discovery Center, a storefront in Niantic that is part of the "Family Fun Trail" promoted by state tourism officials (their motto: "Connecticut - We're Full of Surprises"), is a bit worn. Its centerpiece, a scale model of Millstone, has been shoved behind a display case, for security reasons. Only pint-sized saboteurs will be foiled, however; anyone five feet or taller can lean over to get a nice long look.

The interactive games for kids could use some updating, too. Maybe something along the lines of "Where's Waldo." Say, Find the Missing Fuel Rod.

Old failings, after all, keep haunting Millstone's new owners. Like the spent uranium rods that were missing around 1980.

"An exhaustive root-cause investigation," Mr. Christian said, concluded recently that the two 12-foot-long, lethal-for-a-millennium-or-so rods had been mislaid by crews cleaning up a spent-fuel pool because of faulty "fuel accounting procedures" - i.e., someone lost count.

Mr. Christian said his best guess was that the rods wound up in nuclear dumps in South Carolina, Washington or California - unless they're still in the 40-foot-deep pool. Nobody has volunteered to don a wet suit to find out for sure.

-------- ohio

Piketon plant has leaked radiation for decades, study says

Wednesday, February 27, 2002
Columbus Dispatch Staff Reporter
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/news/news02/feb02/1113238.html

A study released yesterday reports that since at least 1975, radiation has been leaking from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, where workers once processed nuclear-power-plant fuel. Marvin Resnikoff, nuclear physicist at Radioactive Waste Management Associates, says his group's study of federal Energy Department documents supports local residents' belief that radioactive compounds have escaped from the Pike County plant for decades.

The Energy Department, which oversees operations at the plant at Piketon, about 65 miles south of Columbus, has denied that any radioactive compounds have leaked from the facility, despite state reports in the 1990s about radioactive chemicals found in fish and at least one water well in the area.

The Energy Department said the report by Radioactive Waste Management Associates, a New York public-interest firm that advises nuclear-opposition groups, offers no new information.

"It is our general understanding that the report focuses on issues the department has been working on with the state and EPA regulators to clean up Portsmouth in accordance with the law,'' spokeswoman Dolline Hatchett said.

Resnikoff said that although cleanup efforts are working to control solvents and other harmful chemicals in groundwater, more needs to be done. He recommended creating a special fund to pay for the cleanup so the effort is not at the mercy of the federal government's annual budgeting process. The study, conducted for two Piketon-area watchdog groups, indicates that high levels of radioactive technetium, a byproduct formed when uranium fuel is split apart in a nuclear reactor, was measured in a stream flowing out of the plant in 1975.

Technetium was found in a groundwater plume extending from a holding pond on the east side of the plant to Little Beaver Creek on the plant property. The creek flows from the plant into the Scioto River.

"Much of the material was released a long time ago,'' Resnikoff said. "They didn't monitor technetium until 1975, and they were releasing far before then. ''

Ken Dewey, manager of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's Division of Emergency and Remedial Response, said the agency was aware that technetium was in the creek.

"There's not a lot of data to support technetium causing a major problem,'' he said.

The Ohio EPA found radioactivity in fish and stream sediments in Little Beaver and Big Beaver creeks and the Scioto River in 1995.

The study also indicates that trace amounts of mercury and radioactive compounds are in the soil in a 340-acre area in the plant's buffer zone. There are plans to turn the area over to local officials for use as an industrial park.

Graham Mitchell of the Ohio EPA said the Energy Department thinks that the tiny amounts of plutonium, neptunium and mercury recorded might be the result of laboratory error.

"We want more information to support that argument,'' he said.

Vina Colley of the Portsmouth- Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety Security said Resnikoff's study confirms what she and other critics of the facility have been saying for years.

"I cleaned down uranium-contaminated equipment with TCE (a carcinogenic industrial cleaning solvent), and when we were done, we dumped it down the drain,'' said Colley, who worked as an electrician at the plant from 1980 to '85. "So I knew that was getting away. ''

Colley, who blames the plant for her health problems, said she eventually realized that the hazardous chemicals being flushed down the drain might be escaping off the plant site.

"We did it for six months before I complained about it to (plant officials),'' she said.

Uranium is no longer processed at the plant, which opened in 1955. The facility now packages fuel processed at an Energy Department plant in Paducah, Ky.

The department began a multibillion-dollar cleanup at the Piketon site in the 1980s. Not satisfied with the speed of the cleanup, the Ohio EPA began monitoring plant operations in 1989.

Mike Lafferty -- mailto:mlafferty@dispatch.com

-------- us politics

Time to end embargo against Cuba

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
February 27, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020227-1619343.htm#2

Paul Greenberg's Feb. 20 Commentary column "Trading with the enemy," which criticized Sen. Blanche Lincoln for supporting opening trade relations between the United States and Cuba, might leave the impression that she stands alone in the Arkansas congressional delegation in advocating a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba. In fact, all of Arkansas' congressional delegation, Republican and Democrat, support ending the trade embargo.

We are joined in our support by our governor, Mike Huckabee, a Republican. In a letter to President Bush, Mr. Huckabee wrote, "U.S. policy on Cuba has not accomplished its stated goal of toppling the Castro regime and instead has provided Castro with a convenient excuse for his own failed system of government."

The time to end our failed embargo against Cuba is now.

VIC SNYDER
U.S. Representative
@Text.noindent:Arkansas


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Afghan Witnesses Say G.I.'s Were Duped in Raid on Allies

New York Times
February 27, 2002
By CARLOTTA GALL with CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/international/asia/27RAID.html?pagewanted=all

TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan - Up in these mountains in southern Afghanistan, a culture of blood revenge runs strong. Local officials and relatives of Afghans killed by United States Special Forces angrily reject the Pentagon's inquiry into the raid, on Jan. 24, insisting that men were shot without a chance to surrender and that in many cases the Americans, not the Afghans, fired first.

"The men who were killed were not animals," Jan Muhammad, the governor of Oruzgan Province, said in dismissing the results of the Pentagon's investigation. "The Americans know that, and if they have any love for human beings, they will help us find the truth."

The Pentagon says 16 people were killed in the raid on two compounds in an area it calls Hazar Qadam; local Afghans insist 21 people died in Oruzgan town, once the capital of the province.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Americans generated the intelligence that led to the flawed raid; Afghans insist the Americans were manipulated by bad information from locals caught in a complex feud. The Pentagon, which has said the raid had some unfortunate consequences but was not in any way a failure, said Americans were fired upon; witnesses to the raid, on a school and a government compound, say the opposite.

"The Americans fired first," said Muhammad Kadir Agha, 30, who was awakened by helicopters and watched the raid at the school from the roof of his house, 200 yards away. He said that although weapons were fired by both sides, it was easy to distinguish between the fire of the American weapons and the shots from Afghan guns.

In addition, an Afghan who found bodies hours after the raid said at least eight had their hands tied behind their backs with the white disposable plastic binding that Special Forces use as handcuffs.

In the case of a man named Tor Jan, his cousin said he saw Mr. Jan fall as he tried to escape during the raid. The next morning, the cousin said, he found Mr. Jan where he fell, his body still bound. He had been shot in the neck, shoulder and stomach, said the cousin, who uses only one name, Amanullah.

Small entry wounds on Mr. Jan's back and large exit wounds on his front suggested that he had been shot in the back while running away, Mr. Amanullah said.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said standard procedure during a raid requires troops to handcuff the wounded to ensure that even they do not grab a weapon.

Subsequently, some of the wounded may have died, he said, "but they certainly weren't shot in their handcuffs."

Afghan officials, including Governor Muhammad, are most adamant about the origin of the information that led to the raid.

Secretary Rumsfeld said the United States, which had the compounds under direct surveillance from the air and the ground in the days beforehand, had decided on the raid because the information gathered was not solid enough to justify an airstrike against what was suspected to be a Taliban or Al Qaeda base.

But the Afghans insist the Americans were fed false information from a local warlord hoping to help his side in a power struggle.

"We want the man who informed the Americans," said Abdul Qadoos Irfani, the newly appointed district chief of Oruzgan. "The Americans know who it is and they should show him to us."

The School Strangers Arrive, Guns Blazing

One of the few men to escape alive from the school compound, Amanullah, who is 25, remembers first an explosion.

He looked through the open door and saw American soldiers running and shooting in the courtyard outside. None of the survivors interviewed during two visits to the town recalled the Americans identifying themselves by loudspeaker or any other means.

"They were shooting and they were coming toward the room," Amanullah said. As the Americans opened fire into the classroom where they had been asleep, he said, he and several other Afghan soldiers scrambled out the windows on the far side.

As they dropped down the side of the building, they were caught in the glare of a powerful light and a hail of more bullets. Mr. Amanullah ran for cover, but saw his cousin fall behind him. American soldiers were quickly upon the man, he said, tying his hands behind his back.

The precise reason for the American raid remains unclear. But what is clear is that the school was used by the Taliban during their final weeks in power. It was taken over in late December by government soldiers who were collecting weapons as part of a general effort at disarmament, residents said.

Some weapons and vehicles seized were from men loyal to a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Muhammad Abbas. Formerly the Taliban's minister of public health, Mr. Abbas has a home in Oruzgan and had been in the town weeks before the raid, residents said.

He is said to have fled six or seven weeks ago - before the American raids - and to be hiding now in still higher mountains, perhaps with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar.

American military officials said stolen vehicles, supplies of ordnance and bustling nighttime activity were part of the information gathered by American sources that led them to believe there was a Taliban or Al Qaeda base in Oruzgan.

For several nights before the Americans attacked, townspeople said, they heard helicopters overhead in the dead of night.

On Jan. 24, at about 3 a.m., helicopters landed in two places, a short distance south of the stone school and just south of the hill on which the district government compound sits.

The helicopters dropped at least one armored vehicle on the open ground behind the school, witnesses said. A spotlight from the vehicle bathed the school in light as American soldiers in black masks and desert camouflage fanned out around the compound.

An executive summary of the Pentagon inquiry said an armed Afghan came out of the school as the American forces were approaching and then quickly disappeared inside. Gunfire erupted from the school moments later, the summary said.

Survivors from the school said that some of their comrades fired on the Americans, but that the Americans had fired first. At least three survivors said the shooting began with an explosion near the room in which the school's two commanders were sleeping.

Those two commanders, Abdul Qadoos and his deputy, Sana Gul, died in the room, which was gutted from fire and contained the twisted remains of a rocket-propelled grenade several days after the raid. There was also a large mass of congealed blood on the wall outside the room.

Mr. Amanullah said that at least three men were found dead in classrooms where they had been sleeping, and apparently had no chance to surrender before being shot; neighbors who removed the bodies and two other survivors interviewed suggested that more than three men had died this way.

Six large blood stains mark the floor of one of the classrooms, dried to a dark greasy brown.

Sayeed Muhammad, 25, was sleeping in a classroom with 12 people, including his cousin Shah Muhammad, when he was awakened by shooting through the windows and near the commanders' room.

He said that Shah Muhammad picked up the only weapon in the room and started shooting from the door but that there were only four rounds in the gun.

Sayeed Muhammad said he jumped through the back window along with other men and a bullet or shrapnel hit him in the foot. Both he and Mr. Amanullah fled barefoot across the open ground and through the compound's gate, and took refuge in a nearby mosque.

Abdul Ali, 39, whose house is to the southwest of the school, said he was awakened by one of his two wives, who said there was shooting outside. He ran to the roof and saw that helicopters had landed nearby.

Soon an explosion blew the heavy metal gate of his compound off its hinges, and a dozen or more American soldiers ran into his yard throwing down plastic tubes that emitted bright light, he said.

The Americans tied his hands with the white plastic band that the Special Forces use as handcuffs.

"They were asking me things in Arabic but I don't understand Arabic," Mr. Ali said several days afterward. The soldiers did not appear to understand Pashto or Dari, Afghanistan's main languages, he said.

The Americans eventually cut his hands free and then locked him, his wives and 17 children in their kitchen, where they heard the subsequent bombardment of the school. His father-in-law found them at about 6:30 a.m.

Other neighbors said they saw bright bursts of gunfire at the school but could see little else on the moonless night. The Pentagon said one man was taken into custody at the school. Mr. Amanullah said he saw one of the guards having his hands tied by the Americans. All of the other people who failed to escape from the school were killed.

The District Office `Don't Worry, They Are Friends'

Almost simultaneously with the school raid, American commandos were swarming over the district government office, police station and jail, less than a mile away.

Survivors there, mostly newly recruited guards, said they were awakened by helicopters, gunfire and shouting in English and saw figures wearing camouflage, black masks and goggles and carrying flashlights.

Allah Nur, 40, got up from his mattress on the floor and went outside to see soldiers tying the hands of his comrades. He went back inside and told the police chief, "There are people outside whose language I do not understand."

"He said, `Don't worry, they are our friends,' " Mr. Nur said, recalling the chief's response. " `They will do nothing. Stay in here.' "

The chief, Abdul Rauf, 60, said he stepped outside and tried to tell the Americans that the Afghans were friendly forces.

"I was shouting, `Dost! Dost!' [`We are friends!'], but they were not listening," Chief Rauf said. "And I was telling my men that they are friends, but American soldiers came over and started to beat me."

He said none of his men fired.

The Americans fired a stun grenade into the room where Mr. Nur had been sleeping and all the men there surrendered immediately, Mr. Nur said. "We put up our hands and said `Don't shoot - we are friends,' " he added.

Ziauddin, 50, said that as they filed out he saw his friend, Abdul Nafi, 20, dead outside the room.

"He was here and went out when he heard the aircraft," Mr. Ziauddin said. He was not sure whether Mr. Nafi had been carrying a gun.

"He just got engaged," Mr. Ziauddin said. "He's dead now."

The executive summary of the Pentagon inquiry said 26 of the Afghans detained in the two raids were detained at one compound where the American forces had achieved an element of surprise.

"Most of the Afghans present dropped their weapons when confronted," the summary said, making no mention of Afghans just then wakened. "Others fled. Only those that shot at or clearly threatened U.S. forces were engaged, resulting in only two Afghans killed."

The Afghans say the Americans punched, kicked and beat them nevertheless, tied their hands and feet with white plastic bands and hung light sticks around their necks before blindfolding and hooding them and leading them away to helicopters.

Mr. Rumsfeld rejected claims that some captured Afghans were mistreated or beaten.

Other soldiers, meanwhile, swept down the hill to another group of buildings where the former district government chief, Muhammad Yunas, had been sleeping with dozens more men. He, too, called for his men to hold their fire, having recognized the soldiers as Americans.

Instead, he said shortly after the raid, the Americans opened fire.

Mr. Yunas and most of the other men in the building escaped. A guard who was killed, Muhammad Karem, was only 16, according to Mr. Irfani, the new district chief in Oruzgan.

The Americans moved through the remaining buildings, scattering light sticks and searching for people. They found six ethnic Hazaras locked in a windowless dungeon. The Americans bound the prisoners' hands and took them into the helicopters as well.

When the detained Afghans were released on Feb. 7, the Pentagon said some had been held in jail, and suggested at least some captives were "criminals."

The Follow-Up U.S. Airstrikes Against Munitions

Mr. Rauf, 60, the police chief, who was among the captives taken to helicopters, said someone there did inquire in Dari: "Where are your children? Because we are going to bomb." Mr. Rauf told the questioner there were no children.

Shortly after the helicopters left, an AC-130 gunship showered both compounds with rockets and heavy fire, apparently an attempt to destroy munitions stored at both sites. The airstrikes destroyed one ammunition dump at the district government compound but missed other weapons caches there and left the weapons storerooms at the school untouched.

After an anxious night in the mosque, Mr. Amanullah was the first to return to the school. He found Tor Jan where he had fallen on a pile of rocks. "I laid my shawl over him," he said.

Mr. Amanullah said he counted eight dead with their hands tied behind them. He and a few friends cut the white plastic bands off and carried the bodies away for burial.

"They had bullet wounds but I did not look more," he said. "I was very sad and confused, and took my cousin and went."

Most of the dead were found in the rooms and the central courtyard of the school, many burned from fires in the rooms. Shah Muhammad had nearly reached the gate and had half his foot blown away and a fractured femur protruding from his thigh. He, too, was found with his hands bound behind his back.

Local officials in Oruzgan, loyal followers of Hamid Karzai, the interim Afghan leader, believe the Americans were fed false information in a complex maneuver by the former governor, Mr. Yunas, to regain control of the town. Mr. Yunas has not been seen in Oruzgan since mid-February, when he was ordered to disarm, Mr. Irfani said.

Since the raid, the Americans have told Mr. Karzai that they would check with him before mounting any similar ground operation, an Afghan source said. Mr. Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, an official in Kandahar, said such an incident "will never happen again."

[Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American troops in the Afghan war zone, said on Monday that while American forces would strive to inform local authorities of military operations, it would not always be possible. "It is important to share information amongst all the people on the ground, to include the local Afghans when it's possible to do that," he said. But, he noted, "we will retain the ability to act unilaterally when we believe it's best of us to do so."]

Neamatullah, a government official from Tirin Kot charged by the governor of Oruzgan to find out who supplied information to the Americans, has named Mr. Yunas and two others as suspects. He has arrested a man named Dadiullah, who he said was the messenger between Mr. Yunas and government officials in Kandahar in contact with the Americans.

Local leaders appear determined to find culprits, in part because they are worried that relatives of the dead will take matters into their own hands.

"Everyone knows who did this, they are just not saying," said Bari Gul, 45, brother of Sana Gul, the deputy commander who was killed. "If the Americans are not going to prove themselves friends with us, the families of the victims will not sit by, they will fight and have their revenge."

-------- africa

Protesters clash as tension mounts in Madagascar

By Fiona O'Brien
Wednesday February 27, 11:14 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-91929.html

ANTANANARIVO - Thousands of rival protesters clashed in Madagascar's capital on Wednesday, leaving at least 10 people injured and the city in chaos as the struggle over who should rule the island-state erupted into violence.

Pro-government Radio Madagascar said two government supporters were killed in confrontations between backers of opposition candidate Marc Ravalomanana, who declared himself president on Friday, and veteran incumbent Didier Ratsiraka. There was no independent confirmation.

Chaos reigned in the centre of Antananarivo, where witnesses said protesters using sticks or their bare hands traded blows and hurled stones at rivals while others screamed in panic or from the pain of their injuries.

The running battles followed a sharp increase in tension in the capital, where mayor Ravalomanana has orchestrated seven weeks of largely peaceful protests following December elections he says were rigged by the government to keep him out of power.

"We are very worried," said a Ravalomanana supporter, carrying stones in his fists as hundreds of demonstrators ran past. "People should be allowed to protest in peace."

Unidentified demonstrators torched the privately owned pro-Ratsiraka Radio Tsiokavao, run from a house on a hill overlooking the capital, after soldiers guarding the installation shot at them, witnesses said.

NEGOTIATIONS REJECTED

Ravalomanana, a self-made dairy millionaire, rejected calls by the international community for negotiations to resolve his power struggle with one of Africa's longest-serving rulers.

In his imposing mayoral offices in the city centre, Ravalomanana, wearing a bulletproof vest under a suit, said his self-staged inauguration ceremony had ended almost two months of uncertainty since he accused Ratsiraka of voter fraud.

"Negotiations about the elections are finished," the slim opposition leader said from behind a huge leather-topped desk.

The international community has condemned Ravalomanana's attempt to seize power, saying it is unconstitutional and therefore illegitimate, and urged him to talk to Ratsiraka about cooperating in a second round of voting.

Witnesses said the clashes started after thousands of Ratsiraka supporters staged their biggest demonstration in favour of the president since the crisis began in January.

"Ravalomanana's supporters came down from where they were protesting. They met at the edge of the lake. Ratsiraka's people threw baskets of stones," said Emile Razafintsalama, a pro-Ravalomanana journalist who witnessed the clash near a lake in the centre of the city of four million.

The violence fuelled growing uncertainty as to who holds power on the island of 15 million, where hundreds of thousands of Ravalomanana supporters consider him the rightful president of the Indian Ocean state.

Ratsiraka, who has ruled for 23 of the past 26 years, declared a state of emergency after Ravalomanana declared himself president on Friday. Demonstrators have defied a ban on rallies for five days running.

CASUALTIES UNCERTAIN

There was no immediate word from the authorities or medical services on the number of people wounded. Reuters reporters said they counted at least 10 injured, some in bloodied T-shirts.

"Two Ratsiraka supporters were killed. We still don't know how, but there are rumours they were killed with sticks," said a journalist at the pro-Ratsiraka state radio station when contacted for details. There was no immediate confirmation of the report from police or hospital sources.

Police and local officials had said on Monday that a Ravalomanana supporter was shot dead in a town on the east of the island on Monday, apparently by Ratsiraka supporters.

At Radio Tsiokavao, residents said the protesters had climbed the hill to stage a demonstration outside the station and were confronted by soldiers.

"The radio is protected by the military," resident Jean Jacques Rahamefy said. "They fired into the crowd, some of whom escaped. Then people came and there was a riot, they started ransacking the radio, they broke everything and then they set fire to it."

Government sources said the opposition torched the radio. But Ravalomanana supporters said Ratsiraka's camp did it to stir tensions. Witnesses said they did not know who was responsible.

Government results from the December 16 presidential polls give neither Ravalomanana nor Ratsiraka an outright majority. The government has announced a second round run-off on March 24, but Ravalomanana says he will not participate.

-------- arms sales

THE MONEY
Belgium Seeks Arms Dealer With Suspected Qaeda Ties

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times
February 27, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/international/europe/27BOUT.html

PARIS, Feb. 26 - Belgian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for one of the world's most notorious arms traffickers, who is suspected of supplying weapons to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of pouring huge arms shipments into Africa's civil wars.

The arms trafficker, known as Victor Bout, 35, a former Soviet air force officer, was charged only with money laundering in the warrant, issued 10 days ago. But United Nations reports and other investigations have concluded that he may run the world's largest arms-smuggling network. Peter Hain, the British minister for Europe, who investigated the arms-for-diamonds trade, has called him "Africa's chief merchant of death."

Jos Colpin, a spokesman for the Belgian judge-prosecutors office, said that Mr. Bout was believed to have used a small airport on the North Sea near Ostend, Belgium, as his western air-smuggling hub, flying planes from there to central Europe to load up with arms, and then to Africa or Afghanistan.

Many of the arms he supplied came from Bulgaria and Romania, and were loaded aboard with false end-user certificates to keep the United Nations from discovering that they were bound for arms-embargoed countries.

Belgium has an interest in the guns-for-diamonds trade because many gems end up with cutters in Antwerp who have been accused of turning blind eyes to the sources.

Asked if the arrest involved Al Qaeda, even though Mr. Bout is charged only with money laundering, Mr. Colpin said, "Well, where there was a war, he sold arms, and there was war in Afghanistan."

The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in an investigation, described links between Mr. Bout and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in an article published on its Web site, www.public-i.org, on Jan. 31. Three of Mr. Bout's associates are in a Belgian prison and at least one is believed to be giving evidence against him.

Mr. Bout, who was born in Tajikistan and educated at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, is said to speak six languages and to have started in the arms trade when his air force unit was disbanded with the breakup of the Soviet Union. At the time, many cargo plane crews left with their aircraft and hired themselves out.

He has homes in Russia, Rwanda and in the United Arab Emirates, as well as one in Johannesburg that is for sale but in the meantime being managed as a brothel, a South African journalist said. Mr. Bout was most recently seen in Ukraine, said Phillip van Niekerk of the investigative journalists consortium.

Mr. Colpin seemed to hold out little hope that Russia would extradite Mr. Bout, who is a Russian citizen. The government of Ukraine may be even less likely to cooperate.

The United Nations has accused Mr. Bout of violating arms embargoes by shipping weapons to rebel movements in Angola and Sierra Leone and to the president of Liberia, Charles Taylor.

The journalists consortium and the Belgian paper Le Soir said they had learned from Belgian intelligence sources that Mr. Bout earned $50 million between 1995 and 1997 supplying the Taliban with arms. He is also suspected of supplying arms to the Abu Sayyaf rebel movement in the Philippines, to Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya and to some South American groups.

"He got around," Mr. van Niekerk said.

The consortium said he had 40 to 60 aircraft and 300 employees.

Belgium's military intelligence service has been watching Mr. Bout for years, and three weeks ago, 18 premises in Belgium were searched and four Bulgarians linked to his network were arrested, Le Soir said.

Some details of the smuggling network emerged when a telex message sent to the wrong address fell into the hands of the intelligence services. It detailed the history of a Boeing 707 with a Swiss crew that belonged to an airline of Mr. Bout's called Trans Aviation Network.

The plane was registered in Congo and partly financed by Afghan generals so arms could be flown to Afghanistan. According to Le Soir, the telex message says that payments of $10,000 a flight were made to pilots delivering arms.

-------- biological weapons

Cuba accuses US of dozens of "biological attacks"

By Andrew Cawthorne
Tuesday February 26
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-91623.html

HAVANA - Immersed in a nationwide battle against an outbreak of dengue fever, President Fidel Castro revived on Monday an old accusation against the United States of carrying out biological attacks against Cuba.

"I say to our people, I say it here, we have suffered dozens of biological attacks," Castro said in a television address on Cuba's massive campaign to eradicate a recent outbreak of the potentially fatal dengue fever.

Castro did not blame Washington for the current dengue problem, which has killed two and stricken hundreds but is now receding. He said, however, that U.S. authorities were responsible for past attacks against Cuban tobacco, sugar and pigs.

Last year, Havana also blamed the United States for a disease that has destroyed 16,000 beehives, causing an estimated $2 million in lost honey output since 1996.

In Monday's sometimes-rambling comments on state television, Castro particularly lashed out at the U.S. government's aid agency USAID, which he said was dedicated to spreading subversion in Cuba and backing corrupt elites elsewhere in Latin America.

"This is the famous agency, well-known in our country, very charitable, very humanitarian," he said sarcastically, after reading a media report of USAID's work in El Salvador, which is also fighting a dengue outbreak.

"We know 10 times more than them" about combating dengue, Castro said after a lengthy explanation of how Cuban authorities had managed to control the disease thanks to a massive public health campaign since early January.

"The most they (USAID) know about, really, is how to transport and develop viruses -- they did it for years -- and how to attack a country with viruses," he added.

USAID sets aside millions of dollars each year for anti-Castro groups in the United States, some of whom support local dissidents. But Washington denies illegal actions against Cuba.

U.S. RIDICULES CUBA FOR PARANOIA

For decades, Havana has been alleging chemical attacks by U.S. agents, sometimes speaking of planes spraying chemicals, or of individual travellers carrying germs. American officials generally ridicule those claims as fantasy and paranoia.

Further signalling a possible change in tone from recent conciliatory comments by Cuba's communist leaders toward its decades-old political foe, Castro promised a response soon to hostile comments in past days from a senior U.S. diplomat.

"There are some other little things to discuss here on the round-table, some public comments, some stupid things," he said in a more than two-hour speech on a nightly TV round-table programme dedicated to promoting the Castro government's views.

"They waste their time completely every time they stupidly talk about waiting for change in Cuba ... and the hope, I don't know what, for the post-Castro era," he added.

The Cuban leader clearly was referring to a slew of recent public comments from Washington's chief envoy to Havana, Vicki Huddleston, who heads the U.S. diplomatic mission.

Huddleston has been countering speculation of a possible U.S.-Cuban rapprochement following cooperation over the use of the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, on Cuba's southeastern coast, for Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners from Afghanistan.

She has said the Bush administration plans no changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba, including a four-decade-old economic embargo, unless the Castro government undertakes reforms including releasing political prisoners and allowing free speech.

On Cuba's dengue problem, which has been centred mainly on Havana, Castro said "the battle is being won" after a vast fumigation and clean-up drive since the start of the year, mobilising thousands of workers, students and activists.

He noted Cuba's apparent greater success than other Latin American countries also fighting dengue, including Brazil, where 14 people have died this year. Cuba's previous worst dengue epidemic was in 1981 when 158 people died.

-------- britain

Britain irritated by Rumsfeld's prisoner comment

Wednesday February 27
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-91662.html

LONDON - Britain bristled on Tuesday at suggestions from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that it might "simply turn loose" British nationals captured in Afghanistan and being held in Cuba if they were sent home.

But Home Secretary David Blunkett also insisted that the detainees were entitled to due judicial process.

"It is not appropriate to make a judgment about what we do with someone before they have been charged, never mind afterwards," Blunkett told BBC radio.

He had not spoken to Rumsfeld about the comments, but said he had no doubt that "my other colleagues in the cabinet who deal with him will be seeking clarification, as I will from the (U.S.) Attorney General John Ashcroft."

Rumsfeld said at the weekend that Britain must prosecute any Britons returned home from detention at the U.S. base in Cuba "rather than simply turning them loose, putting them back out on the streets and having them go get more aeroplanes and flying into the Pentagon and World Trade Center again".

Blunkett said it appeared Rumsfeld was "not aware" that Britain has a Crown Prosecution Service, under which evidence had to be examined before anyone could be detained or charged.

"The Crown Prosecution Service has to examine the evidence that is being presented against them, and that is what we will do," he said.

"If anyone is transferred to this country it will be on the evidence -- in this case the evidence that the United States has deduced from picking up them up in Afghanistan."

The United States is holding about 300 foreigners captured during the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan at a high-security military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Five of the detainees are reported to be Britons.

Washington says they are suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network or of Afghanistan's Taliban.

Images of detainees shackled and on their knees at the Camp X-Ray base have sparked concern around the world, but Britain, Washington's staunchest ally in the global coalition against terror, has declined to criticise Washington's actions.

The United States has not classified the captives as prisoners of war, a label which carries specific rights under the Geneva Conventions. It has said some could be tried before a military tribunal.

-------- colombia

Bogota ends plan to swap captives

By Juan Pablo Toro
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020227-75817152.htm

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia - Colombia's government yesterday ruled out swapping captured rebels for a kidnapped presidential candidate, and the rebels responded to an army offensive by killing three soldiers and destroying power lines, roads and bridges.

Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, at a roadblock in a war zone Saturday. The rebels had reportedly offered to free her and other kidnapped politicians in exchange for the release of imprisoned guerrillas. The FARC is holding five members of Congress, in addition to Mrs. Betancourt.

"The government does not see the possibility of carrying on swap negotiations," Interior Minister Armando Estrada said yesterday. "Prisoner exchanges are done between equals, between combatants. She was not a combatant, nor are the lawmakers."

Meanwhile, military operations to search for Mrs. Betancourt, who is a candidate for the small Oxygen-Green party, have been suspended on the family's request for fear they could put her life in danger, said Betancourt campaign spokeswoman Diana Rodriguez.

On Monday, an army soldier was killed after troops fired at rebels tampering with power lines, and the rebels responded. Two other soldiers died trying to defuse a bomb on a bus blocking a highway.

In the capital, Bogota, 190 miles north of the war zone, guerrillas detonated a bomb at a reservoir serving the capital city. The attack didn't affect water supplies, Mayor Antanas Mockus said.

In 1998, the government gave the FARC a Switzerland-sized parcel of land to lure the nation's largest rebel group into peace talks. But when the FARC hijacked a civilian airliner last week and kidnapped a senator, President Andres Pastrana canceled talks, ordered the rebels out of the zone and sent his troops in.

Since then, rebels have toppled utility pylons both inside and outside the zone in southern Colombia, blacking out or forcing electricity rationing in at least 56 towns, the Energy Ministry said.

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that "the good will of the Pastrana government and the Colombian people has not been reciprocated by the FARC." Rebel "terrorist actions are a real affront to people who seek peace in Colombia," he said.

U.S. intelligence sharing is being increased, and deliveries of spare parts for U.S. helicopters are being accelerated. Officials also were addressing an existing ban on U.S. military assistance for anything other than counternarcotics activities.

San Vicente del Caguan - the former rebel capital that was the first town occupied by the army on Saturday - has been among those hit the hardest. A downed bridge and rebel roadblocks have virtually isolated the sweltering town. Food stocks are dwindling, and drinking water is scarce.

Mayor Nestor Ramirez declared a local state of emergency and asked troops to supply his town of 22,000 by using military helicopters.

The FARC has blown up 11 bridges since Thursday, disrupting transportation in southern Colombia.

Colombian news media reported Monday that the FARC executed five persons in La Macarena, which the army had yet to reach. The reasons for the killings were not known.

Mr. Pastrana was reviewing the volatile situation with his Cabinet and "looking for other ways to stop the terrorism and abductions," Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said.

Mrs. Betancourt's kidnapping aroused international concern for the security of candidates in the March legislative elections and May 26 presidential vote.

----

COLOMBIA
Rebels Go on Killing Rampage

New York Times
February 27, 2002
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/international/americas/27COLO.html

LA MACARENA, Colombia, Feb. 25 - The final slaying happened this afternoon, when Cecilia Gallego was dragged from her home in front of her children, led to the backyard and shot at point-blank range.

Moments later her 11-year-old son, Felipe Grajales, ran shirtless and shoeless from the house, screaming: "They shot my mommy! They shot my mommy!"

On Sunday the leftist guerrillas had begun the killings by summoning Paco Ardila to a meeting, then riddling him with bullets. The local pharmacist, Vianey Murcia, was killed at the door of his shop, as was another man, Porfirio Roa. Two other men, their bodies bearing multiple gunshot wounds, were found dead on the road just outside the town.

The killers, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC, its Spanish acronym), even held a gathering to tell residents they were responsible, villagers and relatives of the victims said.

Last week President Andrés Pastrana, responding to a kidnapping and other violence by rebel forces, canceled a three-year-old peace process. In a visit on Saturday to a town nearby, he assured the local population that army troops would quickly reoccupy a vast demilitarized enclave here that the guerrillas controlled during the talks.

But government forces failed to secure the zone swiftly to make it safe for civilian residents. The rebels swept through this village in a bloody operation to settle scores with unarmed villagers.

Across this region the rebel presence remains strong. With peace talks dead, the guerrillas have also been carrying out attacks across the country. They toppled electrical and communications towers and blew up bridges. On Saturday, in another kidnapping, they seized a presidential candidate from a small party, Ingrid Betancourt.

"This is supposed to be part of the state," Luis Ernesto Villar, 43, a former government official here, said with a hint of sarcasm. "This is the most irresponsible thing the president could have done, lifting the demilitarized zone and doing nothing to make a presence."

Although military brass has spoken about rapid gains, the fact is that soldiers have a solid hold on only three of the five towns in an enclave that is twice the size of New Jersey.

They have not arrived here, or in another village, Uribe. It was evident today to a group of foreign journalists who took a 13-hour tour through the region that the guerrillas still move freely in the jungles and fields of the zone. Rebel units patrol dusty country lanes, staff roadblocks and guard those camps that were not hit by an intensive government bombing campaign.

"Look at us, we are still here," said Arbey Ramírez, 26, a midlevel commander, at what was once the region's largest rebel base, which the guerrillas were dismantling and burning.

Another rebel, who goes by the nom de guerre Edwin, said the rebels planned to retaliate soon against government forces.

"This is our home, so we will stay here and wait for the government," he said. "We are prepared to hit the enemy, here or there."

Long before the government ceded this region to the rebels for the peace negotiations, the guerrilla group had de facto control here, as it does in much of the isolated south of the country. They had time to learn every wrinkle in the topography and prepare for any eventual army incursion. They have tunnels and hidden jungle camps, trenches and informers, said a foreign diplomat familiar with the guerrilla group.

Once the demilitarized zone was created, they became further established. The abandoned camp had a slaughterhouse, an auto repair shop, buildings where military strategists could study maps and intelligence information, sturdy barracks for 5,000 fighters and bathrooms with showers and running water.

"This is all history now, just quiet; what is coming now is war," Mr. Ramírez said.

The war has already come to La Macarena - unexpectedly, several residents said. Villagers and rebels quietly coexisted during the three years the zone was under rebel control, most people here said. At most, guerrilla commanders would summon everyone to the town plaza every two weeks and speak about the peace negotiations, accusing the government of failing to keep promises.

But spats between rebels and residents spilled out into the open when the guerrillas came this weekend and began killing.

"I never imagined we would have this problem - never," said Adel Horacio Murcia, as he sat with grieving family members next to the coffin of his brother, Vianey, who was shot in the head at his pharmacy.

Rubén Matallana, a town official, said three of the victims had argued with the rebels over land. At least one had been attacked after he apparently paid money, under pressure, to right-wing paramilitaries, the rebels' archenemy. Ms. Gallego was a community leader.

Mr. Matallana said he believed that the rebels felt they could not kill civilians here while the town remained in a legally established safe haven that was supposed to be a laboratory for peace. "They felt they had a responsibility with people, as long as dialogue was going on" with the government, he said. "Once that was over, they felt they did not owe people here anything."

No one has fled from here, because the roads are too dangerous. But businesses were shuttered today, with people hiding behind their doors.

"Right now, there is no order. Right now, we are despondent," said Ulises Mira, 37. "They are coming with ire, with rage, to do what they did, and the government has done nothing, absolutely nothing."

-------- drug war

Colombia Claims Coca Crop Decline

February 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Coca-Crop.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Colombia's illegal coca crop, the plant used to make cocaine, has dropped off significantly for the first time on record, the government announced Wednesday.

Justice Minister Romulo Gonzalez said the reduction shows that coca eradication efforts, supported with hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid, are succeeding.

But separate estimates expected soon by the U.S. government will likely show a large increase in coca cultivation in Colombia, U.S. and U.N. counterdrug officials say.

Gonzalez said 336,000 acres of coca were being cultivated in Colombia at the end of December. He said this was 16.8 percent fewer acres than in August 2000. That would work out to roughly 392,000 acres under cultivation 16 months ago, though Gonzalez didn't provide such a figure.

Gonzalez said the Colombian government's figures are ``a clear demonstration'' that the eradication program is working. In the offensive, which began in December 2000, crop dusters protected by U.S.-donated helicopters and U.S.-trained Colombian army troops spray the drug crops.

Although officials here were claiming success, a war of statistics is apparently brewing.

U.S. and U.N. officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity they expected CIA figures due out Friday to show Colombia's coca crop increased dramatically -- possibly by as much as a third.

That would suggest coca eradication efforts are failing, even as fumigation efforts have intensified. Police say they fumigated a record 210,000 acres of coca last year.

Colombia is the world's main cocaine producer and the most important supplier of heroin to the United States.

-------- iran

Ex-Afghan warlord disappears from Tehran

By Afshin Valinejad
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020227-81903748.htm

TEHRAN - A former Afghan warlord who opposes the interim government in Kabul and its American ties has disappeared from his home in Iran's capital after being told to leave the country, Iran's official news agency said yesterday.

Reports of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's disappearance came a day after an Afghan official said he would be treated as a war criminal if he returns to his homeland and as Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai ended a three-day visit to Iran.

Earlier this month, Iranian authorities closed Mr. Hekmatyar's offices in the country, apparently as part of diplomatic efforts to ease growing tension with the United States. Washington has accused Iran of working to destabilize Mr. Karzai's government by harboring its enemies and sending commandos across the border into Afghanistan.

Mr. Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister, has called Afghanistan's interim government a U.S.-imposed administration.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted an unidentified official as saying that Mr. Hekmatyar "has left his place of residence in Tehran" and that his whereabouts are unknown.

IRNA said Mr. Hekmatyar had been told to leave Iran a few days ago. He had lived in Iran for the past five years.

Mr. Hekmatyar "will be treated as a war criminal if he decides to return" to Afghanistan, Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad told the Associated Press in Tehran on Monday.

In recent months, many Iranian legislators had called for the "expulsion" of Mr. Hekmatyar, saying his presence was "detrimental to Iran's national interests."

Mr. Hekmatyar was a strong ally of the United States and Pakistan during the war against Soviet invaders in the 1980s. However, he was blamed for the chaos that engulfed Kabul after the fall of the pro-Moscow government in 1992. He fled to Iran after the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996.

Mr. Karzai's first visit to Iran since becoming prime minister in December came after President Bush branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" and his administration repeatedly accused its government of trying to undermine Mr. Karzai's government.

Mr. Karzai, who left Tehran for India yesterday, said he would not let the U.S. accusations influence efforts to improve relations between the nations, IRNA reported.

"Remarks by U.S. officials will have no impact on the resolve of the Afghan government and people in [improving] ties with Iran. Iran's help will allow us to regain our position in the world," the radio quoted him as saying.

Iranian President Mohammed Khatami and Mr. Karzai signed a memorandum of understanding on fighting terrorism and drug trafficking and promoting trade, which will see Iran help Afghanistan reorganize its police and army, IRNA reported.

On Monday, Mr. Karzai addressed Iran's parliament, where he said Iran and Afghanistan shared "a common culture and language and these bonds have made our friendship eternal."

Also on Monday, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cautioned Mr. Karzai about foreign interference in a reference to the United States.

He said Mr. Karzai's government "should be careful that the issue of reconstruction is not exploited by others to infiltrate Afghanistan politically and economically."

Iran has pledged more than $500 million over five years for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

-------- iraq

U.S. meets groups opposing Saddam

By Barry Schweid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020227-73785539.htm

Small groups of American diplomats and intelligence analysts infiltrate northern Iraq periodically to confer with Kurds and other opponents of the Baghdad government in an attempt to unsettle President Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials confirmed yesterday.

With the area protected by U.S. and British overflights and beyond the reach of Saddam's air force, the American forays are part of an unabashed, mostly psychological campaign to rattle him.

At this stage, the main Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, has not produced any plan that holds promise of success, a senior U.S. official said. As a result, the United States has not approved any military move inside the country and is not attempting one of its own.

The Defense Department yesterday denied rumors that any U.S. ground troops were inside Iraq. Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the rumors had apparently originated with a Fox News Channel report of U.S. covert activity inside Iraq.

President Bush is considering military as well as diplomatic and political tactics to try to end the rule of a leader he denounced last month as part of an "axis of evil."

U.S. air patrols of Iraq's no-fly zones have remained constant since September 11, when terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and touched off a worldwide campaign against terror groups and countries that support them.

Saddam's refusal to admit U.N. weapons inspectors for more than three years has heightened concern over his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Combined with Iraq's designation by the State Department as a country that supports terror - one of seven countries so branded - the threat is considered unequaled by administration analysts.

Still, U.S. warplanes have launched fewer retaliatory strikes against Iraqi targets since September 11 because the Iraqis are firing at the U.S. planes less frequently, Col. Lapan said.

In December, a State Department group headed by American diplomat Ryan Crocker went to northern Iraq to help pull together Kurdish and other anti-Saddam forces.

It was the last such trip by U.S. officials, but there were several earlier and they are likely to happen again, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday that "very small numbers" of Americans from various departments were involved.

Late last year, a bipartisan group of nine members of Congress asked Mr. Bush to support Iraqi opposition forces with humanitarian assistance, information gathering and military training.

The lawmakers said in a letter to the president that U.S. efforts to replace Saddam would not succeed without the help of allies on the ground inside Iraq. They suggested the support should be directed to the London-based Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella organization for all major groups opposed to Saddam.

Previous administrations have denied U.S. assistance for the Iraqi National Congress to carry out operations inside Iraq.

The Bush administration, however, has funded an information-collection program and humanitarian-aid offices in New York and Washington, but the opposition group has not provided a plan for distributing the assistance.

Under a congressional grant, some non-lethal training has been provided. In all, the Iraqi National Congress has received $12.4 million since 1998.

--------

U.S. Action Against Iraq in Next Six Months Unlikely

February 27, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-scenario.html

WASHINGTON - Depleted stocks of precision weapons, reluctant allies and a will to do the job properly in Iraq all work against America launching military action against Baghdad any time soon, defense and political analysts say.

Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that the United States is preparing a massive military campaign against Iraq, particularly after the president branded Iraq as part of an ''axis of evil'' with Iran and North Korea.

But several analysts said U.S. action -- if it took place at all -- was unlikely in the next six months for both military and political reasons.

They pointing to depleted laser-guided weapons stocks after the war in Afghanistan and opposition from key nations such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as some NATO allies.

Retired Adm. Steve Baker, who commanded the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier during the Gulf War, said the United States would only attack Iraq when it was certain it had ``overwhelming force'' to be successful and not before.

``For that reason, I don't see it happening at the very earliest until fall this year or spring next year. Any kind of failure or less than 100 percent success in Iraq is totally unacceptable, particularly to the Bush administration.''

``I don't think we would ever contemplate a limited response. The risk is too high,'' he said.

Baker said laser-guided weapons were now at ``war-time reserve levels'' and that weapons manufacturers were working around the clock to boost supplies.

Raising jitters over military action, President Bush has repeatedly warned Baghdad in recent weeks that Washington would not stand by while Iraq developed weapons of mass destruction and refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.

However, Arab leaders and some Europeans caution any military action against Iraq would smash global cooperation against terrorism and further destabilize the region.

Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said if the Pentagon were planning a low-risk campaign against Iraq, it would take several months before any bombing began.

``I think the military would be more than happy to say 'look we are still not done with Afghanistan and we don't want to be fighting a war on two fronts,''' he said.

U.S. WILL HAVE TOUGH FIGHT AHEAD

Another factor pointing against imminent action was the windy spring weather in Iraq, which brought with it dangerous sand storms that played havoc with military equipment.

``A September to March time frame would be a more attractive window (for military action), I would think,'' said Krepinevich.

Echoing other views, Krepinevich predicted the United States would push heavily for U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and then use Baghdad's anticipated refusal to muster international support for strong military action.

While massive military action was unlikely soon, Baker suggested the United States might send in covert forces to suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites in Iraq to prove to the world that it was dangerous.

``If we had credible evidence ... of chemical and biological facilities that are there in Iraq, that helps out our effort quite a lot.''

One of the biggest hurdles for Washington is on the diplomatic front, with Saudi Arabia reluctant to allow U.S. forces to use its land as a base for attacks against Iraq, said Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

``The constraints (for launching a big attack) at the moment are not so much American assets and readiness but the support of allies in the region,'' Cordesman said.

``The problem is not which allies are reluctant, it's which allies are not reluctant,'' he added.

Vice President Dick Cheney is set to make a trip to the Middle East in mid-March, when he is expected to try to boost support for possible military action against Iraq.

While it was becoming more and more difficult for Iraq to get weapons, military analysts said Baghdad was still a force to be reckoned with.

In a report last month, Cordesman said despite the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was the most effective military power in the Gulf, with an army of around 375,000 men, about 2,200 main battle tanks, 3,700 other armored vehicles, 2,400 major artillery weapons and over 300 fixed-wing combat aircraft.

But he said Iraq lacked the training, funds, spare parts and production capabilities to sustain the quality of its forces.

Suggestions for U.S. troop commitments needed to defeat Iraq range as high as 200,000 but Baker predicted about half that amount would be enough to do the job.

-------- israel / palestine

Bush Welcomes Saudi Proposal on Mideast Peace

New York Times
February 27, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER with SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - President Bush thrust himself into the Mideast peace effort today, calling Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and publicly praising his proposal for Israel to withdraw completely from the West Bank and Gaza in return for full normalization of relations with all Arab countries.

The administration also said it was growing more enthusiastic about the prospects of a major Saudi role in the peace effort. Though President Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, characterized the proposal as short of a "breakthrough," he said, "The president praised the crown prince's ideas regarding the full Arab-Israeli normalization once a comprehensive peace agreement has been reached."

Some administration officials said they were less impressed by the content of the Saudi proposal - "It's not a plan, it's a vision," said one - than by the symbolism of having a leading Arab state, the caretaker of Islam's most treasured sites, put forward a plan that would lead to full normalization of relations with Israel.

They cautioned, however, that for decades, successive Israeli governments have rejected calls for a withdrawal to Israel's pre-1967 borders, and they were unsure how Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would view a long-term plan at a time of such rapidly intensifying violence.

Palestinian officials have reacted favorably to the Saudi proposal, which has not been spelled out in detail yet, but Mr. Sharon has made no public comment. After a meeting with the Israeli leader today, Javier Solana, head of foreign and security policy for the European Union, said Mr. Sharon considers the Saudi plan "an interesting idea."

The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, after his meeting today with Mr. Solana on the Saudi concept, announced, "I cannot say no to Solana's suggestion," and dispatched his team to Tel Aviv to discuss ways of lowering the level of violence.

Mr. Solana said he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to meet with Prince Abdullah, who first put forward his proposal last week. On Friday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell initially called the Saudi statement a "minor development," but on Monday he upgraded it to an "important step."

After his return from Asia, Mr. Bush decided there were numerous advantages in embracing the Saudi vision, if not its still-vague specifics.

"This is the first time we've heard any nation in the region talk about full normalization between Arab nations and Israel at the end of the peace process," one senior administration official said. "The president decided that he had to embrace the moment." Other officials and outsiders noted possible benefits for Mr. Bush.

Embracing the Saudi proposal helps the president counter critics who say the administration's hands- off approach to the Middle East for much of its first year only worsened the cycle of violence.

It also helps to change the subject with the Saudis: Mr. Fleischer said today that Mr. Bush and Prince Abdullah never discussed what Saudi Arabia was doing to root out extremists, and never mentioned the investigation of the Sept. 11 hijackers, 15 of whom were raised in Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, with Vice President Dick Cheney scheduled to leave for the Middle East in two weeks to describe the president's reasons for wanting to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq, an embrace of the Saudi plan could give Mr. Bush some diplomatic leverage by softening Saudi objections to bringing pressure on Mr. Hussein.

American support could also change the tone of the next Arab League summit meeting, scheduled for March 27 in Beirut, Lebanon, when the Saudi proposal is likely to be actively debated. That debate may now drown out criticism of Prime Minister Sharon.

"By legitimating the Saudi initiative, which they had to do, they have changed the context of this coming month," the Mideast scholar Stephen P. Cohen said today.

"It is significant because for all these years, the Arabs have always been clear in spelling out the territory side of `land for peace,' but studiously silent on the peace side of `land for peace.' "

Still, the White House made clear today that it would take a long while for the Saudi proposals to play out.

"It's important to have a vision for what peace should look like at the end of the day," Mr. Fleischer said, "but it's a long time until the end of the day in the Middle East."

He added that the president still believed that it was important for both sides to follow the "Mitchell process" to bring about peace, followed by political and territorial talks. The process is named for its author, the former senator George Mitchell, but it never got beyond its first stages before street violence cut it short. Mr. Mitchell's intention was to halt violence on both sides to build enough mutual confidence to support diplomatic talks between Isarael and the Palestinian Authority.

Mr. Bush's entry onto the state came as American-brokered security talks resumed between Israeli and Palestinian officials in Tel Aviv, with hopes swelling after Saudi Arabia's surprise proposal. The concept, which threw the weight of the Saudi kingdom behind Mr. Arafat at a time when Israel has grounded and humiliated him, heartened the Palestinians, but Palestinian officials are still waiting to hear from Mr. Sharon.

"His reaction was very positive," said a senior lieutenant of Mr. Arafat, Nabil Abu Rdeineh. "We support and welcome the Saudi initiative, and hope it will lead to a breakthrough in the Middle East. The problem is that we hear nothing from Sharon. We need to hear from the Israeli government."

Another senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat, said, "We believe that this is the most significant and strategic idea that came from the Arab world since the convening of the Middle East conference in 1991, and I really hope that the American administration will concentrate on the strategic concept of the ideas and not go into the details of any agreement."

But Prime Minister Sharon remained wary, and made no public comment on a plan that revived demands for an Israeli withdrawal far greater than the Israeli right could agree to, and so threatened to put him on the defensive.

After meeting with Mr. Sharon, Mr. Solana said the prime minister "considers it an interesting idea and he would like to know more about the content, and he would like to meet anybody from Saudi Arabia, formally, informally, publicly, discreetly, whatever, to get better information about this initiative."

Despite Mr. Sharon's reserve, centrist members of his cabinet seemed heartened by what commentators described as the first concrete peace signal in 17 months of unmitigated violence.

The defense minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, said the plan "should be looked at positively," according to his spokesman. "It has new elements, and it should therefore be encouraged and must not be rejected."

On Monday the Israeli president, Moshe Katzav, said he was prepared to go to Riyadh to discuss the plan, or to welcome Prince Abdullah in Jerusalem. The plan was also being discussed in Paris between the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who has welcomed it, and President Jacques Chirac.

From Lebanon came cautious but significant support for the Saudi's proposal. The foreign minister, Mahmud Hammud, said the ideas "grow out of concern for long-held Arab positions and the demand for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab lands."

The importance of Mr. Hammud's statement lay in the fact that Syria holds effective authority over Lebanon.

Syria has made no direct comment on the proposals but the Lebanese response suggested that Damascus could fall in line behind the plan if one of the conditions was the return of the Golan, which Israel occupied in 1967.

-------- nato

NATO's overtures to Moscow

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
EDITORIAL
February 27, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020227-15032359.htm

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance that has long existed to ward off a Soviet threat, has invited Russia into its fold. After three months of wrangling over the safeguards the United States would want implemented before making Russia a virtual member of the world's largest military alliance, NATO has offered Russian President Vladimir Putin a list of proposals that would allow NATO's 19 members and Russia to make decisions in a new NATO-Russia council. Mr. Putin is considering the offer. Before the deal is finalized, however, the American people deserve to know what safeguards are in place to ensure U.S. security is not being compromised and the mission of NATO is not undermined. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee should hold a hearing as soon as possible so the Bush administration and NATO officials can clearly answer those and other questions.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow said the new council "will be a fundamental and historic change in NATO's dealings with Russia - a move toward a more substantial partnership and genuine collaboration that might be called an 'alliance within the alliance'." In his Feb. 22 speech at St. Petersburg University, Mr. Vershbow said that areas for joint action with Russia could include military and political projects, counter-terrorism efforts, non-proliferation, and response to regional conflicts. "It will be a qualitative step beyond today's 19-plus-one format, in which NATO formulates its position before engaging with its Russian partners," he said, referring to the Permanent Joint Council, which has been the forum for making joint decisions with Russia to this point, but has not given Russia joint decision-making power. "Through concrete joint projects, joint discussions, and eventually even joint decisions, NATO and Russia will be able to take responsibility together for dealing with some of the new challenges to security that threaten peace and stability in Europe," he said.

If this is the case, as Mr. Vershbow implies, then the extent to which Russia will have veto power over NATO member states must be clearly defined. If, as Mr. Vershbow says, Russia could respond militarily with NATO members, NATO must make clear what safeguards are in place to ensure that Russia will not try to divide Europe and the United States.

NATO's U.S. envoy, Nicholas Burns, said yesterday in Vilnius that Russia would not have a veto right over NATO operations, and he reassured NATO aspirants that Russia would not be able to block their chances for membership. NATO officials and diplomats said Monday that any issues in which Russia and NATO cannot reach consensus could be pulled off the table by any member.

So, Washington, which is it? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee should ask that and other pertinent questions as soon as possible.

-------- pakistan

Musharraf cites radicals for Pakistan mosque attack

By Nasir Malick
Wednesday February 27, 6:42 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-91752.html

ISLAMABAD - President Pervez Musharraf blamed opponents of his war on terrorism for an attack on a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Rawalpindi on Tuesday that killed 10 people and wounded 15.

Musharraf was swift to condemn the attack in the mainly Sunni Muslim country and blamed extremist groups for the second killing of Shi'ites in less than a week.

Doctors at Rawalpindi's Holy Family Hospital, just outside the Pakistan capital of Islamabad, said they were overwhelmed by the number of dead and wounded from the Shah-i-Najf mosque.

"We have 10 dead and at least 15 wounded," a police spokesman said. At least eight of the wound