------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
NRC says nuke plant's missing fuel rods no threat
Nuke Test Fallout Caused
Despite clamor, fallout study still unreleased
Swedish nuke R1 at reduced output due human error
Brit Energy, BNFL look at replacing nuke reactors
Exelon co-CEO, chairman to retire
China pledges to 'step up' weapons proliferation controls
China, U.S. to Have Nonproliferation Talks
IAEA Support to International Efforts
Belgium delays nuclear phase-out decision
France hushed up Chernobyl risks - research centre
Saudi ambassador lashes out at Israel in U.N. speech
The Threat of Nuclear Terror
Electric Power System Is Called Vulnerable
China and Russia Swap Fair - weather Friendship Pact
Tapes: Nixon Considered Nuclear Bomb
US orders more security at nuclear power plants
Compensation plan scores low with sick workers
Calif. San Onofre 3 nuke seen back later Thursday
NRC says nuke plant's missing fuel rods no threat
NB Power seeks OK for Pt Lepreau nuke refurbishment
Rumsfeld adviser says widen the war to include Saddam
Democrats Criticize Pentagon Budget, Anti-Terror War
Seeking security urgency
MILITARY
Food for Zimbabwe
Nepal's terrorists
Kosovo Albanian Parties Agree to Share Power
Northrop CEO: TRW 'Easy' to Mesh With
Deadline Set for Hostages
Colombia Aid Proposals Shelved
Moment of truth for Colombia
DEA helps Mexico to probe shooting of cartel kingpin
Tunnel Found Under Border With Mexico
Study: Afghans Growing Opium Poppy
38 Muslims burned alive in India
Hindu Riots in India Kill 58 Muslims
U.S. building war crimes case against Saddam
'The Last Thing We Want Is a Confrontation'
U.S. conference to form plan to oust Saddam from power
Britain Says Iraq Poses Threat, Must Be Tackled
U.S. Warplanes Bomb Targets in Northern Iraq
Suicide bomber strikes Israel
Israeli Troops Assault Refugee Camps
Arafat Says Saudi Plan Needs U.S. Backing
Israelis attack West Bank refugee camps
Funds needed to rid Central America of landmines
NATO Fails to Nab Accused War Criminal in Bosnia Raid
Pakistan downplays Indian arms spending
Philippines Says End Near for Abu Sayyaf
U.S. Military in Georgia Rankles Russia
U.S. takes war on terrorism to guerrillas
U.S. Troops Fulfil Georgian Leader's Long Plans
Georgia says Russia "hysterical" over U.S. troops
U.N. Official Kidnapped in Somalia - Official
Annan Hopes for Positive Talks with Iraq
Navy almost ran out of bombs in war
Byrd questions duration of Afghan mission
White House May Support Peacekeeping Force Growth
U.S. Eyes Military Assistance For Yemen
Panel on military women in peril
Journalist admits lying to viewers
POLICE / PRISONERS
Ridge: No plans to militarize borders
Two Senators Call for Changes in FBI
United Pilots to Get Stun Guns
20 at Logan Airport Charged With Deceit
County Gets Funding for Emergency Operations
Guantanamo Detainees Refuse to Eat
Blast Kills 2 Near Jordan's Anti - Terror Chief House
Greenspan Backs Federal Backup for Terrorism Insurance
Extent of Terror War Questioned
ENERGY AND OTHER
Dutch govt pushes green energy, early market opening
Energy Compromise Would Boost Ethanol
Energy papers' release ordered
DOE told to release task force records
Central America faces starvation this year - UN
Asia keen on Bush-backed emissions credits trade
U.N. finds child abuse in West African camps
Thailand seizes passports of U.S., British reporters
ACTIVISTS
More Help Sought for Those Who Blow Whistle
Kucinich: Peace Through Nuclear Disarmament, speech to Abolition2000
Rival marches mark Venezuela anniversary
Group Cites Rising Nuclear Policy Fears in Resetting 'Doomsday Clock'
Cubans Invade Embassy
About Peace Corps
Adventures in Peace
Lebanese Protesters Blast Govt's Economic Reforms
FCNL LEGISLATIVE ACTION MESSAGE
-------- NUCLEAR
NRC says nuke plant's missing fuel rods no threat
Thursday February 28
Reuters
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020228/n28252615_1.html
WASHINGTON - U.S. regulators said Thursday that two spent fuel rods missing from the Millstone nuclear power plant in Connecticut were most likely sent to a licensed waste site and posed no danger to the public.
For years, the U.S. government has been worried that terror groups would try to obtain spent nuclear fuel to build so- called ``dirty'' bombs that would spread radioactive material.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said there was no evidence the rods were stolen from Millstone's Unit 1 reactor and has accepted the conclusion of the plant's operators that the missing fuel rods were likely located in a licensed low- level radioactive waste facility.
Inspectors from the NRC have been looking into the fuel rods since Millstone's operators told the agency in December 2000 that the rods were missing.
Northeast Utilities (NYSE:NU - news) operated the plant at the time, but the facility is now owned by Dominion Resources Inc.(NYSE:D - news).
The 660-megawatt Millstone Unit 1 reactor, located in Waterford, Connecticut, went online in 1970, but is now shut down.
NRC inspectors also concluded it was highly unlikely that the rods remained in the pool that stores Millstone's spent fuel. Company records indicate the rods were last verified to be in the pool in 1980.
``Because of the radiological controls in place at any of the possible locations of the missing rods, the NRC believes there is no threat to public health,'' the agency said in a statement.
Still, NRC said it will announce an enforcement action at a later date in connection with the missing fuel rods, because several agency regulations were violated.
----
Nuke Test Fallout Caused
15,000 U.S. Deaths
Thu Feb 28
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020228/hl_nm/fallout_2
WASHINGTON - At least 15,000 cancer deaths in the United States were probably caused by radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons tests worldwide, according to portions of a government study made public on Thursday by USA Today.
The Health and Human Services Department study, which has not been published yet, also suggested that 20,000 nonfatal cancers among US residents born after 1951 could be linked to fallout from aboveground weapons tests, the paper said.
USA Today said the study showed that far more fallout than previously known reached the United States from nuclear tests done in the former Soviet Union and on several Pacific Islands by the United States and Britain.
Fallout from US tests in Nevada also spread substantial amounts of radioactivity across a broad band of the country, the paper said.
When fallout from all domestic and foreign tests was combined, no US resident born after 1951 escaped exposure, according to the study.
The estimates on radiation dispersal were based on complex computer analysis of weather patterns, population trends and other data that can gauge public exposure to fallout from aboveground nuclear tests, the paper said.
USA Today said data in the study showed global fallout blanketed much of the United States, with heavy pockets in Iowa, Tennessee, California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
Fallout from Nevada tests settled more in states such as Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.
The Department of Health and Human Services could not immediately be reached for comment.
----
Despite clamor, fallout study still unreleased
Thu Feb 28
Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020228/ts_usatoday/3901279
WASHINGTON -- A government study estimating that about 15,000 Americans died from cancer as a result of Cold War nuclear fallout has been withheld from the public for nearly a year.
The $1.85 million study, which occupied several top-notch scientists for two years, has been sitting in administrative limbo since early last summer while a host of local health officials, citizens groups and researchers have been clamoring to see it.
''The process seems aimed at slowing down information release and minimizing the consequences,'' says Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a coalition of local and national citizens groups. ''This study can help identify people at risk, and that could save lives if those people can get screening or early treatment for some of these cancers.''
Portions of the still-unreleased study were obtained by USA TODAY. It was prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) and the National Cancer Institute (news - web sites). Its release has been delayed for ''internal reviews'' at the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites), which controls the two research institutions. Officials say the scramble to deal with terrorism-related duties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks also has held up the study's release.
That has done little to assuage those waiting to see it, including members of Congress.
''Some federal government bureaucrat has been holding onto this information for the past months and years,'' says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who was instrumental in launching the study in 1998. ''No more stalling. . . . We need to fully assess the threats posed by the radioactive (fallout).''
The study's delay is straining the already tense relationship between the agencies responsible for producing the study and the groups and public officials waiting to see it. The resulting distrust could have a significant bearing on the debate over what the government should do in response to the study's findings.
The roots of the conflict stretch back to 1997, when the government first acknowledged that fallout from nuclear weapons trials at its Nevada Test Site had spread across much of the country. The admission came in the form of an initial study that focused on the spread of iodine-131, one of many radioactive elements in the fallout. That study estimated that the iodine had caused tens of thousands of thyroid cancers among people born after 1951, when the Nevada tests began. Because of the low fatality rate of thyroid cancer, it is estimated that about 2,500 of those cases were fatal.
But that study, which began in 1983, sat unreleased for years before it was issued in 1997. The delay sparked a congressional probe and a barrage of charges that federal officials had suppressed the iodine data.
The study also raised more questions than it answered: What about all the other radioactive elements in the fallout, many of which are longer-lived and more dangerous than the iodine? What about fallout from the many tests not done in Nevada, such as those in the former Soviet Union or the Pacific? What was the human toll?
Congress ordered a sweeping follow-up study that would lay the groundwork for answering those questions and others. The first phase of that investigation yielded the study now at issue.
New findings
Portions obtained by USA TODAY contain some startling findings. Among them:
- A wide range of highly radioactive elements, some of which remain dangerous for centuries, fell over large swaths of the country. ''Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to radioactive fallout,'' the study says, ''and all organs and tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure.''
- In the most-affected counties, the fallout exposure for an average person would be roughly equivalent to receiving one chest X-ray for every year of residency since 1951, with exposure gradually dropping off after 1963, when aboveground nuclear tests were banned. Just one such X-ray is more radiation than doctors typically recommend for infants and pregnant women.
- Many areas that weren't thought to have suffered much fallout from the Nevada Test Site, including parts of California and the Pacific Northwest, now appear to have suffered significant fallout from nuclear tests in the Pacific and the former Soviet Union. Moreover, some areas that suffered substantial amounts of fallout from the Nevada tests, such as parts of north and central Idaho, were hit with additional fallout from tests in other parts of the world.
Seth Tuler, a member of the federal Advisory Committee on Energy-Related Epidemiological Research, says the panel was supposed to be given a chance to review the new study. However, the committee has yet to receive a copy or be invited to meet with researchers on the project.
Tuler says risks are ongoing because many of the isotopes remain radioactive for so many years.
''From a public-health perspective, it's important to identify where these contaminants fell,'' says Tuler, a researcher at the Social and Environmental Research Institute in Worcester, Mass. ''It allows people to take steps to limit their risks. If they think they might have a problem or if they're worried, they can ask their doctors.''
The question is whether the government should be advising people to do just that -- or whether federal money should be spent to actually go out and screen people proactively.
Cancer and public policy
The problem is that it is essentially impossible to identify specific individuals who may have gotten cancer from the fallout. There are too many confounding factors -- genetic predisposition, behavioral risks such as smoking, exposure to chemicals or any number of other unpredictable risks -- to pinpoint the cause of any particular cancer.
Therein lies the problem for government officials.
The uncertainties surrounding the cancer figures in the new study are substantial. The cancer estimates are generalized, averaged across the entire country. The study's conclusions about where fallout was heaviest are not necessarily a good predictor of which people are most likely to have developed cancer.
''Hard numbers don't exist in this kind of world,'' says David Rush, a Tufts University professor of community health and board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group pushing for a federally sponsored public education campaign to alert at-risk populations to the danger from fallout.
''The disease estimates (in the study) have a rapid possibility of change,'' Rush adds. ''The implications of those (radiation) doses may be very different five years from now. We don't know a lot about the relationship between low-dose exposure and cancer.''
Even so, Rush, like many pushing for a fuller global accounting of the health risks tied to nuclear testing, says a debate on what the government should do is healthy. And that seems likely: The new fallout study is essentially a feasibility study to determine what other research is possible to better define the health threats of fallout.
There's an urgent need for follow-up, scientists say, particularly when it comes to honing researchers' ability to more accurately predict risks from fallout exposure.
''It's important,'' Rush says. ''God didn't make this problem. We did.''
-------- accidents
Swedish nuke R1 at reduced output due human error
REUTERS NORWAY:
February 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14758/story.htm
OSLO - A 835-megawatt unit at Swedish nuclear power station Ringhals shut down both its generators this week evening after a human error forced it to come off line, operator Vattenfall said in a statement yesterday.
Vattenfall said one of the two generators had been restarted immediately after the incident, with the second expected to restart yesterday evening.
The unit will regain full output by Thursday morning, Vattenfall said.
-------- britain
Brit Energy, BNFL look at replacing nuke reactors
REUTERS UK:
February 28, 2002
Story by Matthew Jones
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14763/story.htm
LONDON - Britain's two main nuclear power companies agreed to study a new generation of reactors but said building new nuclear plants would be too expensive at current wholesale power prices.
Announcing a joint working group to consider replacing British Energy's ageing stock of reactors with a new British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) design, the two firms said public acceptance and government backing was needed if the nuclear industry was to prosper in the UK.
Earlier this month a government energy review pushed the responsibility of building new nuclear power stations firmly back into the private sector.
But British Energy's executive chairman Robin Jeffrey said a deregulated electricity market which has pushed down wholesale power prices makes such a move uneconomic.
"With current electricity (wholesale) prices at about 18-20 pounds per megawatt hour there is a gap with the 25-30 pounds per megawatt hour that replacement reactors would cost," he said.
Nuclear provides about a quarter of the country's electricity needs, but this figure is set to fall below five percent in 2020 as current reactors come to the end of their working lives.
State-owned BNFL's chief executive Norman Askew said moves to build new nuclear plants "must not get ahead of public opinion".
"We have to be realistic. There is a long way to go in policy terms and in pricing economics," he said.
Jeffrey said Tuesday's agreement with BNFL was similar to one signed last year with state-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL), to assess using the latter's CANDU reactor design.
IMPROVED RELATIONS
The working group venture between British Energy and BNFL also signalled a thawing in relations between the two companies which have been soured by a dispute over reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
Jeffrey said British Energy was now putting on hold a move to refer a reprocessing contract with BNFL, which British Energy claimed was unfair, to the Office of Fair Trading.
He also said it would probably take two to four years for his company to decide whether to opt for the Canadian design or for BNFL-owned Westinghouse's AP1000 model.
Speaking to Reuters at the sidelines of the briefing, he said he was looking the to bring down the estimated $1,000 per kilowatt cost of both the CANDU and the AP1000 designs which would put the price of replacing 9,000 megawatts of nuclear power due to be decommissioned at $9 billion.
"We want them to get it (the cost) nearer to $800 per kilowatt," he said.
Askew, keen to promote the AP1000, said up 5,000 manufacturing jobs could be created in the UK if British Energy opted to use the Westinghouse design in favour of CANDU.
-------- business
Exelon co-CEO, chairman to retire
Tuesday February 26
Reuters
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020226/n262315_1.html
CHICAGO - Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. nuclear generator, on Tuesday said that Corbin McNeill, Jr. resigned as chairman and co-chief executive, and will replaced by John Rowe.
McNeill, who helped see the company through the merger of PECO Energy Company and Unicom Corporation, will retire on April 23, the company said. He had been scheduled to step down as chairman this spring, and said in a statement he had decided to resign as co-CEO at the same time.
Rowe has served as the company's co-CEO and president. He will now become the sole chief executive and chairman of Exelon.
-------- china
China pledges to 'step up' weapons proliferation controls
Thursday February 28
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020228/1/2jy9i.html
China said it wanted to "step up" controls on the export of weapons technology, seemingly hinting it might be flexible over an issue which has persistently threatened to sour ties with Washington.
Foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan also confirmed that Beijing planned to dispatch arms control negotiators to Washington in early March for a bilateral seminar on the contentious subject.
Washington has in recent months complained that China exported weapons technology to Pakistan and Iraq, and has imposed sanctions on Chinese companies accused of doing so, much to Beijing's annoyance.
US President George W. Bush had been keen to seal an agreement on Chinese weapons export controls during his visit to Beijing last week, but nothing was agreed, taking some of the gloss off the visit.
China "has conducted a prudent and responsible attitude on weapons proliferation. We have very strict controls," Kong insisted.
But he added: "On the export of related technologies, we also are in favor of effective efforts to step up the control regime."
Kong said the talks in Washington would "touch upon all issues in this field between the two countries".
He defended China's overall commitment to controlling weapons technology exports, saying Beijing fulfilled agreements it had made on non-proliferation.
US officials had hoped Bush's talks with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Beijing last week would yield agreement to curb Chinese weapons technology exports to so-called "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, countries Bush has lumped together as the so-called "axis of evil".
Weapons proliferation is a "make or break issue" in Sino-US ties, US Ambassador to Beijing Clark Randt warned last month.
--------
China, U.S. to Have Nonproliferation Talks
February 28, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-china-usa.html
WASHINGTON - China and the United States will have talks on China's missile technology exports next week when a senior Chinese official comes to Washington for an arms control conference, the State Department said on Thursday.
Liu Jieyi, a director-general in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, will meet U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf during the conference at the Brookings Institution, spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
``They'll have a chance then to discuss the nonproliferation issues. We look forward to that meeting,'' he added.
The United States wants China to guarantee it will not export weapons technology to nations hostile to Washington. China wants the United States to lift sanctions imposed for violating a November 2000 agreement and resume issuing licenses to U.S. companies to launch satellites on Chinese rockets.
President Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin failed to agree when they met in Beijing last week.
``These are issues we've discussed in the past, and we look forward to discussing with them again in the hopes of reaching a conclusion,'' Boucher said.
The Brookings event -- the fourth U.S.-China Conference on Arms Control, Disarmament and Nonproliferation -- will take place on Monday and Tuesday.
-------- depleted uranium
IAEA Support to International Efforts
February 28, 2002
IAEA
http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Press/Focus/DU/du_main.shtml
The IAEA is responding to international concerns about possible health effects of depleted uranium ammunition arising in post-conflict situations. The Agency's focus is radiological safety, both with respect to assessing environmental conditions and the health impact on individuals that may have been exposed to depleted uranium. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has pledged the Agency's support of international efforts and has emphasized the importance of a comprehensive assessment of depleted uranium's possible effects. The Agency has conducted a number of radiological assessments in recent years at the request of its Member States.
In late January, the IAEA and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced they are exploring the feasibility of sending fact-finding missions to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Iraq. Since then, the IAEA Laboratory in Seibersdorf, Austria, has forwarded the results of its analysis of soil samples from sites in Kosovo where depleted uranium was detected. IAEA scientists took part in a UNEP-led fact-finding mission in November 2000, which took 340 samples of water, soil, vegetation, milk and dust from vehicles and fragments of armaments after visiting 11 locations in Kosovo. Samples from the Kosovo mission also were analyzed by laboratories in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The UNEP report () was issued in March.
To broaden scientific understanding of DU and its analysis, the IAEA is developing a training course for specialists from concerned countries. The main focus will be on the measurement methods and the assessment of risks from depleted uranium and other sources of radioactivity. In its basic form, DU is only slightly radioactive, being about 60% as radioactive as natural uranium. Chemically and physically, DU behaves in the same way as uranium that is found naturally in the Earth.
--
From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>
This appears to have been posted today (28 Feb).
The IAEA comes in for some criticism for its restraint on radiation monitoring projects by the WHO in Robert James Parsons report to be published in tomorrow's (1st March) edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. WHO requires IAEA approval for health studies involving radiation exposure.
Useful site to learn about other IAEA activities. Well indexed.
Dai Williams eosuk@btinternet.com
--
From: "mitzi" <upthesun@cshore.com>
I presume that everyone even marginally informed knows by now that the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) is a promotional agency for the nuclear industry with a mandate to oversee nuclear safety issues. This is the way the original U.S. Atomic Energy Agency was structured during the Manhattan Project era (WWII). Because of the obvious conflict of interest it was divided into two agencies in 1974, Energy Research and Development Agency(ERDA) and the NRC. (Unfortunately it resulted in two agencies supporting and promoting the nuclear industry!) In 1977 ERDA was incorporated into the DOE.
The decision to put the World Health Organization under restraint by the IAEA is criminal. The IAEA should be disbanded entirely. There should be no national nor international agency that supports and promotes this disastrous technology. I look forward to reading Robert J. Parson's report.
Mitzi Bowman
-------- europe
Belgium delays nuclear phase-out decision
REUTERS BELGIUM:
February 28, 2002
Story by Gilles Castonguay
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14760/story.htm
BRUSSELS - Belgium's cabinet put off making a final decision on a bill to phase out nuclear energy over the next 20 years after disagreement over details of the proposal and how it would be interpreted by parliament.
A government spokesman said the cabinet would now make the decision on whether to introduce the bill to parliament at its weekly meeting on Friday.
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt abandoned late-night talks with his core cabinet after members failed to reach agreement on the bill to phase out the country's seven reactors after 40 years of use, following in the footsteps of Germany and Sweden.
The spokesman said of the meeting: "Tensions were high," without elaborating.
The bill, drafted by Energy Minister Olivier Deleuze, is the result of a pledge that Verhofstadt made when he took office three years ago.
Utility Electrabel runs the nuclear reactors and opposes the bill.
An Electrabel spokeswoman said Belgium had not found an alternative power source to replace the reactors, which would likely force it to use fossil fuels that cost and pollute more.
"We see no reason from a scientific or technical point of view to close down these reactors," she said.
Jack Ashton, spokesman for the European Atomic Forum, an industry association, said nuclear power gave countries independence from unstable prices for fossil fuels like oil produced in countries that are sometimes politically unstable.
"It is an energy source that gives you control," he said.
Verhofstadt has said his government was studying alternatives to nuclear energy.
POWER DILEMMA
Belgium's dilemma is the same as that faced elsewhere in the European Union, where nuclear energy meets about a third of power needs.
European Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio has acknowledged the reluctance among some countries to phase out all their reactors before finding a suitable alternative.
Sweden has delayed the closure of a reactor because it had not figured out how to make up for the loss in power generation. It aims to phase out nuclear power as long as electricity prices do not rise and renewable energy takes its place, whether it be solar, wind, or biomass.
A recent British commission report on ways to reduce carbon emissions while meeting growing energy needs recommended keeping as an option the construction of nuclear plants.
Meanwhile, Finland's government has proposed the construction of a fifth reactor to meet future energy demand.
Belgium's cabinet, which includes members of the Ecolo and Agalev environmentalist parties, first discussed the bill at a February 20 meeting.
If it approves the bill, the cabinet will present it to parliament for debate.
Nuclear reactors are responsible for 58 percent of the electricity produced in Belgium, making the country the world's second most dependent on nuclear power after France.
In 2001, they produced a total of 44 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity. One Twh is equal to a billion kilowatt hours.
Natural gas and coal meet the rest of the country's power needs.
ING Barings analyst Jean-Marie Caucheteux said the bill was not an immediate threat to Electrabel, which is 41.6 percent owned by French utility giant Suez .
"There will be a new government in the years to come and they can always change their minds," he said.
Belgium put its first three reactors in operation in 1974-75 and the other four a decade later.
In 2000, Germany forced the industry to agree gradually to phase out the country's 19 operational reactors over the next 25 years.
-------- france
France hushed up Chernobyl risks - research centre
REUTERS FRANCE:
February 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14761/story.htm
VALENCE - An independent research centre accused the French government this week of hushing up risks to public health after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. France's Independent Commission on Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD), which is filing a civil complaint against President Jacques Chirac's government for involuntary physical injury, said there had been a government cover-up.
It said the government was aware that radioactive fallout from the world's worst nuclear disaster could harm the public but deliberately failed to warn them.
"Why these blatant lies? These obvious errors? This silence from official and even scientific bodies?" CRIIRAD director Corinne Castanier told a news conference.
The Paris public prosecutor's office ordered an official investigation, one step short of charges under French law, into whether French citizens fell sick because of Chernobyl after 51 plaintiffs filed suits against the state.
CRIIRAD said the allegations were based on documents seized by an investigating magistrate probing the effects in France after a radioactive cloud drifted west from Chernobyl in Ukraine when a reactor exploded in April 1986.
The centre said these documents proved high-level civil servants ordered a cover-up.
More than 100 more people with thyroid ailments have since filed lawsuits similar against the state, accusing it of failing to warn them of the risks.
West Germany, Austria and Italy took various precautions, including restrictions on the consumption of milk and dairy products. But French authorities said there was no need for special measures to protect against health risks.
Radioactivity from the explosion drifted across France between April 27 and May 5, 1996.
In November 2000, a 31-year-old Frenchman suffering from thyroid cancer, Yohann van Wayenberghe, lost an attempt to have criminal proceedings launched against French officials for alleged bodily harm in connection with Chernobyl.
The case was thrown out on grounds he could not demonstrate a scientific link between his illness and the accident.
-------- israel
Saudi ambassador lashes out at Israel in U.N. speech
By Evelyn Leopold
Thursday February 28
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-92030.html
UNITED NATIONS - Barely mentioning a Middle East peace proposal his crown prince floated, Saudi Arabia's U.N. ambassador on Wednesday launched one of the toughest attacks against Israel at the United Nations this week.
In the first formal Saudi address since the proposal emerged, Ambassador Fawzi bin Abdul Majeed Shobokshi said Israeli actions against Palestinians were "one of the worst forms of pressure and persecution and racism and occupation and systematic terrorism in the history of mankind."
"Israel despises and flaunts all international regulations and resolutions and also defies the most fundamental humanitarian rights," he said.
Shobokshi noted at the start of his speech to the U.N. Security Council, debating the Middle East crisis, the praise heaped on an initiative by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who suggested the entire Arab world should recognize Israel if it withdrew from Palestinian territory captured in the 1967 war.
"Now the world is certain that the Arabs are calling for peace, for good neighborly relations," he said, according to Palestinian delegate Marwan Jilani who translated from the Arabic text after complaints about the U.N. translation.
"They have chosen the strategic choice of peace before. That is why we find the initiative of his royal highness, Crown Prince Abdullah, which has met with overwhelming international support, strengthens this strategic approach," Shobokshi said.
Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, made his comments to a New York Times columnist last week. It has since been welcomed by the United States, the European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and is expected to be discussed at an Arab summit in Beirut next month.
Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador, Aaron Jacob, said he was disappointed in what he called a confrontational speech.
"We came here expecting him to elaborate about what was reported to be a peace initiative from the crown prince," Jacob said. "And rather than that he leveled a series of allegations against the State of Israel."
"It was not a language of peace. It was a confrontational language," he said.
Jilani, however, said the speech was significant as it was the first time a Saudi official referred to Abdullah's initiative in a formal setting. "This was important," Jilani told Reuters.
Nevertheless, diplomats listening to the address said the Saudi speech indicated again that the path toward fleshing out the proposal would be a difficult one.
Israel also has for decades interpreted the 1967 U.N. "land for peace" resolution 242 as meaning it did not have to give up all territory captured. Shobokshi said his government meant giving up all territory and creating a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in order to "achieve peace and good neighborly relations."
The ambassador said the Palestinian uprising that has continued since September 2000 was the result of Israeli violence and is recognized "as resistance to occupation."
Arab nations had called for the special council meeting in an effort to devise a resolution that the United States would not veto. But U.S. officials said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had instructed his U.N. delegates to put off introducing a measure. Diplomats said he did not want a clash with the United States at this time.
The meeting, which began on Tuesday and ended on Wednesday, also included a speech from Iraq. Its ambassador Mohamed Aldouri was the only speaker to omit the word Israel and refer to the Jewish state as a "Zionist entity".
-------- terrorism
The Threat of Nuclear Terror
Washington Post
Thursday, February 28, 2002
Rep Edward Markey
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14305-2002Feb27?language=printer
In his Feb. 16 letter, John Gordon, administrator of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, dismissed concerns about security at U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.
In the past five years, more than 50 reports by congressional investigators, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the DOE inspector general and outside experts have detailed the inadequate safeguards, the security failures and the dysfunctional DOE culture that punishes rather than rewards whistleblowers who raise security concerns. I have interviewed numerous security officials who work at DOE nuclear weapons facilities who believe these problems to be extremely serious.
Mr. Gordon said elite military units are used to simulate hostile attacks. But other DOE security officials told me that the last time an elite military unit was used to test security was in 1998; Navy Seals actually refused to ever participate in such exercises again because the DOE forced them to be so artificial.
Mr. Gordon said security forces are tested to "failure," implying that failing to adequately protect the nuclear weapons material more than 50 percent of the time is a good thing. In fact, DOE uses a set of regulations called the Design Basis Threat to define security at its nuclear weapons facilities. Those regulations do not require the facilities to be protected against a sophisticated terrorist attack. The security exercises at the nuclear weapons facilities never exceed the security levels mandated by these regulations, and so are never truly tested to failure.
If "spin" were an effective deterrent to terrorism at our nuclear weapons facilities, Mr. Gordon's confidence might be well placed. But spin is no substitute for addressing the weaknesses, raised repeatedly by people involved in trying to protect the public from the horror of a terrorist attack. Mr. Gordon seems determined to learn this the hard way.
EDWARD J. MARKEY
U.S. Representative (D-Mass.)
Washington
--------
THE ELECTRIC SYSTEM
Electric Power System Is Called Vulnerable, and Vigilance Is Sought
New York Times
February 28, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/national/28SECU.html
LENOX, Mass. - The computers that control the electric power system around the nation have been probed from the Middle East, and terrorists may have inspected the physical equipment, said experts at a conference on the security of the electric system.
Government experts identified nuclear power plants as perhaps the most attractive targets but said dams, gas pipelines and oil refineries were not far behind. Federal officials urged companies that generate, transmit and distribute electricity to take steps to increase security.
"In a single-superpower world, there's a single best target," said Lt. Col. Bill Flynt, director of the Threats to Critical Infrastructures program at the Foreign Military Studies office of the Army.
"You're the best face of that best target," Colonel Flynt told the power officials. "Your corporations are the best target set."
But the extent of the threat, and of the vulnerability, was not clear from the unclassified two-day conference, where a panel of government and industry experts refused to provide details about what they knew or how they knew it.
The electric system is set up to perform reliably even with significant component failures and to recover quickly from those failures. But it might not stand up to multiple coordinated attacks, and the Sept. 11 attacks demonstrated that such an event was possible. Some parts of the system, like transformers, are large, require months to build and are not held in inventory in an increasingly competitive industry that shuns expensive spares, experts said.
The conference brought together about 60 plant managers, power system administrators, state regulators and other experts from New York and New England to hear from officials of the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and state governments. The industry officials showed some frustrations about the murkiness of federal advice.
For example, James D. Castle, manager of operations at the New York Independent System Operator, or ISO, said the system was usually operated by running the cleanest and least expensive generating stations. But the system could be less vulnerable if plants close to the high demand cities were started up, to minimize the importance of transmission lines.
Mr. Castle, who is also the chairman of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council, which covers New York, New England, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, said there was no consensus on when to do so. Members of the council have a once-a- week conference call on terrorist threats, he said, and have developed code words to discuss what actions to take to protect the power system from terrorist threat. The problem, he said, was that threats thus far have been vague.
"Is it really enough for me to change the way I run the power system, in other words, to pollute the air, and cost people money? Probably not," Mr. Castle said.
James Fortune, a program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility research consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif., said that computers used by a variety of critical industries had been probed by unknown intruders.
"We do know that surveillance has increased, from the Middle East," Mr. Fortune told the industry executives. "Where do you think the majority of those probes have gone? To us, the overall energy system," he said. In an interview, he said this had been verified by a computer security firm, but he would not give further details.
"Are they surveilling now? That's what you do before you launch an attack," Mr. Fortune said, and he urged the participants to re-examine their computers.
Another speaker, Harvey Blumenthal, a C.I.A. official who is on loan to the National Infrastructure Protection Center, a federal agency created by President Bill Clinton, said a review of reports received by the federal government since Sept. 11 showed that electric installations "are under active physical surveillance."
"The bulk of these reports have been discounted as being not credible," Mr. Blumenthal said. "However, there are a few that really may represent an attempt to collect useful intelligence, operational information that could presage future attacks."
Charles E. Noble, the director of Information Technology Security at the ISO New England, the independent system operator for the six-state region, pleaded with the people who run power plants and transmission and distribution systems to report anything they saw so the reports could be analyzed and integrated, with help from the North American Electric Reliability Council, known as NERC.
"If you see suspicious people around, report it," Mr. Noble said. "The nuclear sites and some of the others, if you see airplanes flying around, report it. There's no way at the ISO level, NERC or the federal level we can respond if we don't know what's going on out there."
The conference was sponsored by the New York and New England independent system operators. It was held in the Cranwell Resort and Golf Club here, a complex of stately old buildings that have been recently restored and remodeled; as if to emphasize the centrality of electricity to American life, even the soap and paper towel dispensers in the restrooms at the conference center ran on electricity.
The electricity executives got a pep talk from James K. Kallstrom, the New York State director of public security, who said that a loss of electric service would have "a dramatic major impact to every facet of our economy." But speaking of the power plants and transmission lines, he added, "we have not built these things with the condition we have today in mind."
-------- treaties
China and Russia Swap Fair - weather Friendship Pact
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-russia.html
BEIJING - When China and Russia signed a friendship treaty in July last year, hawks in Washington worried the giant neighbors were resurrecting a strategic alliance from early Soviet days against the United States.
But when Russian officials formally exchanged the document with their Chinese counterparts on Thursday, following ratification by the duma, Moscow's parliament, those fears were all but forgotten, analysts said.
Russia's firm and hasty support for the United States in the war on terrorism following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington had taken the wind out of a treaty originally designed to offset U.S. dominance of world affairs, they said.
The treaty prohibits Moscow and Beijing from launching nuclear strikes against each other or targeting each other with nuclear weapons, Russian officials have said.
It also recognizes China's sovereignty over Taiwan and Russian rule over its separatist north Caucasus republic of Chechnya, in a show of solidarity against mainly U.S. critics of both countries' policies in those areas.
``This treaty shows that relations are now on a high level and will also create conditions for Russo-Sino relations to jump another step forward,'' said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.
Losyukov signed the treaty with China's Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Guchang before exchanging the document and then toasted the occasion with champagne in a low key ceremony in Beijing.
``The document lays the foundation for relations between the two countries, built on mutual political trust and growing interaction in economics and trade,'' Liu said.
RELATIONSHIP OF CONVENIENCE
But political trust and common economic interests are precisely what are lacking from the relationship, analysts said.
The former rivals for supremacy in the Communist world still eye each other with suspicion over a 2,500-mile land border that was long the subject of bitter disputes.
Bilateral trade is negligible -- apart from Chinese purchases of Russian weapons.
``Everyone understands that the relationship between China and Russia can not go very far,'' said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Beijing's Tsinghua University. ``They can not become major allies.''
``There is no identity between them,'' he added. ``The only thing is based on temporary interest and that temporary shared interest is mainly created by the U.S.''
``At this moment, both China and Russia are trying to improve their relations with the U.S. rather than confront the U.S.''
China and Russia had been forging a new strategic relationship based largely on mutual opposition to Washington's plans for missile defense systems and to international intervention in other countries' affairs.
The friendship treaty signed in Moscow by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Vladimir Putin in July was supposed to cement that relationship.
But after September 11, Putin swiftly smoothed the way for the deployment of hundreds of U.S. troops to the former Soviet Central Asian republics -- Moscow and Beijing's backyard.
Beijing was also disappointed by Putin's relatively subdued reaction when the United States said it would abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in order to build a missile shield.
China fears such a shield would neuter its own small nuclear arsenal and be used to protect Taiwan, the island it sees as a rebel province.
``Russia made it quite clear on which side its bread was buttered after September 11,'' said one Western diplomat. ``The friendship with Beijing was only ever a relationship of convenience and now it's not convenient.''
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Tapes: Nixon Considered Nuclear Bomb
By Deb Riechmann
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17125-2002Feb28?language=printer
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A few weeks before ordering an escalation of the Vietnam War, President Nixon matter-of-factly raised the idea of using a nuclear bomb. The notion was quickly shot down by national security adviser Henry Kissinger.
Nixon's abrupt suggestion, buried in 500 hours of tapes released Thursday at the National Archives, came after Kissinger laid out a variety of options for stepping up the war effort, such as attacking power plants and docks, in an April 25, 1972, conversation in the Executive Office Building.
"I'd rather use the nuclear bomb," Nixon responded.
"That, I think, would just be too much," Kissinger replied.
"The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?" Nixon asked. "I just want you to think big."
The following month, Nixon ordered the biggest escalation of the war since 1968.
In a 1985 interview, Nixon acknowledged that he had considered "the nuclear option." He told Time magazine then: "I rejected the bombing of the dikes, which would have drowned 1 million people, for the same reason that I rejected the nuclear option. Because the targets presented were not military targets."
Nixon showed less regard for the North Vietnamese in his 1972 taped conversations.
In a conversation from June, he told domestic adviser Charles Colson, "We want to decimate that goddamned place."
He added: "North Vietnam is going to get reordered. ... It's about time, it's what should have been done long ago."
The conversations were in the archives' largest-ever release of Nixon tapes. The material covers mostly the first six months of 1972, including everything from Nixon's groundbreaking trip to China to the early days after the Watergate break-in.
With this release, historians and researchers for the first time are being allowed to use their own recording equipment to copy the Nixon tapes.
"The sheer volume and contents of the tapes will give historians and others plenty of research opportunities," said Karl Weissenbach, director of the Nixon Presidential Materials staff at the archives.
The archives now has made public roughly 1,700 of the 3,700 hours of conversations Nixon taped. Most of the segments related to Watergate had been previously released, but the new tapes contain a few additional conversations, and include full conversations where previously only excerpts had been available.
The public now can hear what was said before and after the infamous 181/2-minute gap in the Watergate tapes three days after the break-in, and hear the full context of the "smoking gun" snippet, which revealed that the president was interested in using the CIA to derail the FBI's investigation of the break-in.
"This time, you're getting the total historical perspective and complete context surrounding the Watergate break-in," Weissenbach said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US orders more security at nuclear power plants
REUTERS USA:
February 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14759/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week it had ordered stepped-up security at all 104 U.S. commercial nuclear power plants to deal with a continuing post-Sept. 11 "high-level threat environment."
Among the formal requirements are increased patrols, more security posts, installation of extra physical barriers, vehicle checks at greater stand-off distances and greater coordination with law enforcement and military authorities, the five-member commission said in a statement.
It said the orders, effective immediately and lasting for an indefinite duration, also required plant operators to use "more restrictive site-access controls" for all personnel.
Some of the requirements formalize steps taken by plant operators in response to previous commission advisories after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the regulators said.
"The commission views these compensatory measures as prudent, interim measures to address the generalized high-level threat environment in a consistent manner throughout the nuclear reactor community," the statement said.
---
Compensation plan scores low with sick workers
by Paul Parson
Oak Ridger staff
February 28, 2002
http://www.oakridger.com
A compensation program implemented to assist people with illnesses related to their work at Department of Energy sites isn't accomplishing its mission, critics say.
In fact, a group of those sick workers have given the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program a "D-minus" on a report card they will be presenting to the Department of Labor, which runs the program.
Vina Colley, a former electrician from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, said the only thing that kept the program from getting an "F" was the fact that it was instituted. Colley says she has experienced a number of medical problems, including numerous tumors, thyroid problems, chronic bronchitis, memory loss and depression, among other medical problems.
The bulk of the illnesses affecting workers is not covered by the bill, according to Glenn Bell, who suffers from chronic beryllium disease. He added that health effects from workplace exposures to fluorides, depleted uranium hexafluoride, heavy metals and other "toxic soups" should receive equal status in the program.
"We are not happy about this," said Bell, who works at the Y-12 National Security Complex. "There's too many people falling through the cracks."
The compensation program, which officially began July 31, provides medical care and a payment of $150,000 to sick workers or their families, if the workers were exposed to cancer-causing radiation or silica or beryllium, which are linked to lung diseases.
However, the report card states the $150,000 payment is inadequate.
Another complaint against the compensation program is how it's being run. Bell said compensation for claimants who are obviously qualified is being delayed or denied due to the actions of the Labor Department's Final Adjudication Board for the program.
"Through some very positive communication and receptiveness by local and regional offices, progress has been made in both the claimants' and the examiners' understanding of the sometimes confusing details of these unusual illnesses," Bell said. "However, in some cases, once the recommendation of decision reaches the [Final Adjudication Board], the claim is either denied or enters a revolving door process."
In a letter to U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., Bell says the Final Adjudication Board has denied the claim of a friend of his who has a "definite diagnosis of chronic beryllium disease.
"His denial is a travesty, and should he expire before resolution, his family would have to start from square one, again, in filing for survivors' benefits," Bell wrote. "I believe the unwillingness of the DOL Final Adjudication Board rises to the level of contempt of Congress."
As of Jan. 31, close to 19,000 claims had been filed nationwide, with around 1,228 payments made.
Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com.
-------- california
Calif. San Onofre 3 nuke seen back later Thursday
Thursday February 28
Reuters
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020228/n28234556_1.html
LOS ANGELES - The 1,080-megawatt Unit 3 at the San Onofre nuclear plant in southern California is expected to return to service either late this afternoon or early this evening, a plant spokesman said on Thursday.
The unit automatically shut down Wednesday morning due a transmission problem in the electrical switchyard.
The spokesman said the problem was caused by some testing work in the part of the switchyard that feeds energy to San Diego Gas & Electric, a unit of Sempra Energy.
The outage forced the San Diego utility to cut service to 210,000 customers for almost an hour on Wednesday.
``There was no damage to the equipment,'' the spokesman said, noting that once the unit is back on line it will probably take 24 to 48 hours to reach full power.
The San Onofre plant is operated by another utility, Edison International unit Southern California Edison.
The 1,080-MW Unit 2 at the plant, in San Clemente, Calif., was not affected by Wednesday's outage. Unit 1 at the plant was retired from service in 1992.
SCE has a 75 percent stake in the plant and SDG&E owns 20 percent. The cities of Anaheim and Riverside own the balance.
-------- connecticut
NRC says nuke plant's missing fuel rods no threat
Thursday February 28
Reuters
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020228/n28252615_1.html
WASHINGTON - U.S. regulators said Thursday that two spent fuel rods missing from the Millstone nuclear power plant in Connecticut were most likely sent to a licensed waste site and posed no danger to the public.
For years, the U.S. government has been worried that terror groups would try to obtain spent nuclear fuel to build so- called ``dirty'' bombs that would spread radioactive material.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said there was no evidence the rods were stolen from Millstone's Unit 1 reactor and has accepted the conclusion of the plant's operators that the missing fuel rods were likely located in a licensed low- level radioactive waste facility.
Inspectors from the NRC have been looking into the fuel rods since Millstone's operators told the agency in December 2000 that the rods were missing.
Northeast Utilities (NYSE:NU - news) operated the plant at the time, but the facility is now owned by Dominion Resources Inc.(NYSE:D - news).
The 660-megawatt Millstone Unit 1 reactor, located in Waterford, Connecticut, went online in 1970, but is now shut down.
NRC inspectors also concluded it was highly unlikely that the rods remained in the pool that stores Millstone's spent fuel. Company records indicate the rods were last verified to be in the pool in 1980.
``Because of the radiological controls in place at any of the possible locations of the missing rods, the NRC believes there is no threat to public health,'' the agency said in a statement.
Still, NRC said it will announce an enforcement action at a later date in connection with the missing fuel rods, because several agency regulations were violated.
-------- new york
NB Power seeks OK for Pt Lepreau nuke refurbishment
REUTERS USA:
February 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14773/story.htm
NEW YORK - NB Power asked New Brunswick to approve of the proposed C$845 million plan to refurbish the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant, the provincially owned energy company said in a statement.
"Point Lepreau is our main base load generator with fuel costs that are a fraction of any thermal power plants," said Ken Little, NB Power vice president of regulatory affairs.
The company expects the proposed project, which will extend the life of the reactor to 2032, will take more than a year to complete from April 2006 to September 2007.
In 1996, NB Power conducted an economic and technical assessment that determined the plant required a major refurbishment around 2008.
The 635-megawatt plant generates enough power to supply electricity for about 635,000 homes.
Since it began operation in 1983, Point Lepreau has provided 30 percent of the electricity used in New Brunswick.
PT LEPREAU KEY TO KYOTO ACCORD
Point Lepreau is "a source of electricity free of greenhouse gases and other air emissions that are local and global issues," NB Power's Little said.
The company said the refurbishment is a key element of its carbon dioxide emission mitigation strategy, enabling the province to meet emissions targets in the Kyoto Accord.
Many environmental scientists have determined that carbon dioxide is one of the causes of global warming.
Carbon dioxide is one of the gases produced by burning fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - to generate power.
Although other options are available to meet the Kyoto targets, NB Power said the proposed Point Lepreau refurbishment is the lowest cost option that will still allow the company to meet New Brunswick's growing electricity needs.
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld adviser says widen the war to include Saddam
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020228-5900750.htm
The United States should expand the war against terrorism to Iraq by using air power and local opposition forces to oust Saddam Hussein from control before he builds nuclear weapons, a senior Pentagon policy adviser said yesterday.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, said in a speech that Saddam's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and his aggressive program to build nuclear arms pose major threats to the United States. The board advises Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on policy issues.
Mr. Perle said yesterday that "a failure to go after Iraq would be viewed around the world as having drawn a threshold in the war against terrorism well below the level of Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
Terrorists and their supporters would calculate that the United States lacked the will to confront a "real challenge" like Iraq, preferring instead to focus on weaker threats like the Taliban and Somalia, he said in a speech sponsored by the Hoover Institution, a California-based think tank.
An Iraqi defector revealed that Saddam had spread his nuclear weapons development program to more than 400 covert locations around the country, Mr. Perle said.
He said Iraq is determined to build nuclear weapons. "It could be tomorrow, it could be a year from now," he said.
"The question is can we afford to wait, hoping that Saddam will not take actions for which he is perfectly capable, as we waited prior to September 11 until we came to grips with Osama bin Laden?" Mr. Perle asked.
Mr. Perle said the United States should "act pre-emptively" to remove Saddam from power and replace his regime with a government that will permit the dismantling of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
The strategy in Iraq should follow the Pentagon's recent successful model for Afghanistan, but would require more U.S. ground forces working with opposition groups in northern and southern Iraq, combined with precision bombing strikes, he said.
One option would be to set up an opposition government in northern Iraq that would force Saddam to mass his armored forces. Once the tanks are grouped, U.S. bombers could attack them and the loss would weaken Saddam's grip on power, Mr. Perle said.
"This is a case where an ounce of prevention seems to be called for," Mr. Perle said. "Apart from that, even before he crosses the nuclear threshhold ... he has the potential today to distribute anthrax, which he has in quantities, to al Qaeda terrorists."
U.S. troops in the region right now might be enough for operations against Iraq, including a brigade of ground forces based in Kuwait and other U.S. troops on ships in the region, he said.
Frequent changes of Iraqi military leaders and arrests and executions of officers "suggests Saddam fears his own military establishment," Mr. Perle said.
"I don't believe we have to defeat Saddam's army," he said. "I think Saddam's army will defeat Saddam."
Mr. Perle also challenged a statement by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright that the Bush administration's anti-terrorist policy is an extension of the approach taken by the Clinton administration.
"That's rubbish," he said. "And it's not just that the preceding administration acted so weakly and ineffectively, it never adopted the view that we would go after the states supporting terrorists and harboring terrorists. And without that policy, there is little chance that an open society like this can diminish the threat to the point where we can cope with it effectively."
The September 11 attacks were "inevitable" because the Clinton administration failed to take effective action against numerous terrorist assaults, including the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia and the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.
"We need to fight terrorists over there because it is so difficult to fight them over here," he said.
----
Democrats Criticize Pentagon Budget, Anti-Terror War
By Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14019-2002Feb27?language=printer
Leading congressional Democrats took aim yesterday at the Pentagon's $379 billion budget request and its open-ended war on terrorism, voicing their strongest criticism of military operations and a proposed $48 billion increase in defense spending since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, grilled top defense officials at a budget hearing about the lack of an "exit strategy" in Afghanistan, their failure to capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and a widening global campaign against terrorists that seems to have "no end in sight."
Such sharp criticism, voiced in both the Senate and in the House during a hearing on missile defense, showed Democrats probing for ways to question the war and defense buildup without seeming unpatriotic in an election year.
Since Sept. 11, Democrats have been loath to criticize either the conduct of the war or the largest proposed increase in defense spending since the Reagan administration, with polls showing that more than 80 percent of Americans approve of the job President Bush is doing, particularly when it comes to the anti-terrorism campaign. The Democrats hope to wrest control of the House from Republicans in fall elections while holding their one-vote margin in the Senate.
Democratic leaders have gone out of their way to avoid criticizing the administration's anti-terrorism efforts, even as they set out their differences with the White House on taxes, spending and other domestic issues. But some lawmakers said that questions about the costs and long-term strategies for the war are being raised with increasing frequency in private, along with grumbles about whether the administration is taking congressional support for granted.
"There is a very strong commitment to provide the funds needed to conduct the war," said a senior Democratic aide, "but this does not preclude the need for information so that Congress can conduct its oversight responsibilities under the Constitution."
Byrd and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) -- pro-defense mavericks who are staunch defenders of congressional prerogatives in foreign and military affairs -- focused on the open-ended nature of the war and its growing cost.
"If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday," Byrd said. "How long can we afford this? We went [to Afghanistan] to hunt down the terrorists. We don't know where Osama bin Laden is or whether he is alive or not. We don't know where Mullah [Mohammad] Omar is hiding. . . . When will we know we have achieved victory?"
Byrd said the Pentagon has sent him documents estimating that the war would cost $30 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, meaning Congress will be asked to provide an extra $12.6 billion in addition to $17.4 billion in supplemental spending approved last fall.
"We've got a deficit and we know it will exceed $350 billion," Hollings said. The administration, he said, seems to be arguing, "Since we've got a war, we've got to have deficits -- and the war is never going to end."
Sooner or later, Hollings said, "this town is going to sober up."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz assured both Democratic senators that steps are being taken at the Pentagon to save money to simultaneously prosecute the war and modernize the armed forces.
"You're absolutely right that we have to be concerned about over-committing ourselves," Wolfowitz said. "I can't tell you when we have won. That's something we will only know when the terrorists have stopped. We do know they are out there in large numbers."
In the House, Democrats took advantage of a hearing with the head of the Pentagon's missile defense program to mount fresh attacks not only on its $7.8 billion price tag but also on a recent administration move to exempt the program from traditional Defense Department oversight controls.
"It would be a mistake to interpret the silence in the wake of September 11th as a sign of approval by all in the Congress of these unprecedented actions," said Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), ranking minority member of the Armed Services subcommittee on research and development. "The administration's proposals raise very serious questions in the minds of many members on our side."
The administration's $7.8 billion request for missile defense in fiscal 2003 is about the same that Congress approved last year but $2.5 billion more than the Clinton administration received for anti-missile systems in its final year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last month that the ultimate cost of a national missile defense could range from $23 billion for the simplest system of ground-based interceptors to $68 billion for a network of space-based lasers, and much more if, as Pentagon planners envision, it encompasses various anti-missile weapons.
Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), ranking minority member of the Armed Services subcommittee on procurement, said the money spent on missile defense would come at the expense of other defense needs, notably ships and aircraft to replace aging fleets, a sacrifice that, he suggested, the United States could ill afford. "That's the real debate," Taylor said.
Defending the administration's plans to test a wide range of missile defense technologies, Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, pointed to several successful intercept attempts over the past year and the scheduled deployment soon of an advanced Patriot system for shooting down short-range missiles.
Pressed on when the United States would finally be able to intercept a long-range missile with any confidence, Kadish said 2004. That is when the Pentagon plans to complete a test facility in Alaska with five silos, plus one spare, that officials hope will also provide rudimentary coverage against a North Korean missile attack.
Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), another missile defense critic, said after the hearing that the Democratic barrage had not been coordinated beforehand. But he said it was likely that the Democrats would mount challenges to the spending plan in committee and on the House floor and possibly attempt to legislate specific requirements for the program.
Staff writer Helen Dewar contributed to this report.
----
[To respond, mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
Seeking security urgency
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Donald Lambro
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020228-49963000.htm
The nation's cash-strapped governors were in Washington this week, hat in hand, looking for money to pay for skyrocketing Medicaid bills, welfare reform costs and more road building. But many said they were worried about a far bigger, life and death issue: homeland defense.
What these governors wanted to know was this: After four terrorist attack alerts and a new, ominous warning from the Central Intelligence Agency chief that future attacks are more than likely, why isn't Congress moving more quickly on President Bush's $38 billion request for homeland security funding?
When Tom Ridge, head of the White House Homeland Security Office, finished briefing the governors Monday on his four-point plan to build a nationwide homeland defense apparatus, Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, put one question to him:
"Where is the sense of urgency in Congress" to get this money to the states that need to implement plans now for an eventuality that could come anywhere and at any time?
Mr. Ridge sidestepped any criticism of congressional appropriators, insisting "Congress is taking this very seriously." But there are no signals from Capitol Hill that it is. The House earlier this month took up campaign financing, a policy issue that does not even make the top 50 issues in voter surveys. The Senate, virtually paralyzed by Democratic gridlock, has been spinning its wheels with a business-as-usual attitude.
Incredibly, the president's fiscal 2003 request - nearly $4 billion of which will go to the states - is being treated like all other spending bills in a snails' pace appropriation process that can take months.
A day of interviews with nearly a dozen governors found them especially disturbed by all this, revealing that the tragic lessons of September 11 were not far from their minds.
All said their treasuries were depleted as a result of the economic slump. All said preparations to safeguard their citizens from terrorist attacks were going to cost a lot of money. All of them said the country could not afford to wait until the money is processed through the usual legislative and executive branch pipelines, which could take a year. Then the money must be run through the state legislative pipelines to get down to what Mr. Ridge calls "the first responders" at the local level.
"The terrorists aren't going to wait until the appropriations process is completed before attacking us again," one governor told me.
Many governors said homeland defense funding should be accelerated on an emergency, fast-track schedule ahead of all other pending legislation.
"It should be an emergency appropriations or an emergency supplemental process. Congress should run with it. We've already had four alerts. We can't afford to sit around waiting for the appropriations committees to act. We don't have time," Mr. Rowland said.
"Ask Americans what is more important to them right now, the campaign finance reform bill or homeland defense? It should be first things first," he said.
Michigan Gov. John Engler, chairman of the National Governors Association, said: "The states would welcome prompt action on this. There's nothing that says that the Congress has to wait until the president's entire budget is passed.
"Given the past practices on the budget, the governors may not get their money for more than a year if all goes according to normal schedule. That's a long time to wait," Mr. Engler said. He wants homeland defense to be put on "a faster track."
The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said, "Washington should make it a higher priority."
Virginia's new Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, noting that his was "one of the states attacked on 9-11," said Congress should "speed the process up."
Many governors in both parties said they had plans on the drawing board to beef up communications systems and other security programs to better respond to terrorist attacks or to prevent them from happening. "We need to take the precautionary steps now so that there is never another 9-11," said Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho. "The sooner the better" said Gov Tony Knowles of Alaska, a Democrat.
The chilling briefing the governors heard from Donald Henderson, the new chief of the Office of Public Health Preparedness, only served to heighten their concerns and their impatience. "It is the biological weapons that worry us the most," Mt. Henderson said. "We have people out there with the ability to make large quantities of [weapons grade] anthrax. We have been very complacent" about this, he added.
What worries these governors is that Congress seems to have grown complacent about what needs to be done next. The spectacle of acting first on Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's campaign finance reform bill - which will double the amount of money these guys can rake in for their campaigns - is sickening.
Homeland defense funding needs to be put on a legislative fast track and sent to the president as quickly as possible. What are they waiting for? Another attack?
Donald Lambro, chief political correspondent for The Washington Times, is a nationally syndicated columnist.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Food for Zimbabwe
February 28, 2002
Embassy Row,
by James Morrison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-90696361.htm
The U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, declaring support for the country's hungry, yesterday announced the donation of $11.8 million in American food aid.
"While we may have differences with the government of Zimbabwe, we will never abandon the Zimbabwean people who are going hungry at this time," Ambassador Joseph Sullivan told reporters in the capital, Harare.
Mr. Sullivan said the United States reached an agreement with the government that the food be distributed outside of political organizations to prevent supporters of authoritarian President Robert Mugabe from using food as a weapon against political opponents. Mr. Mugabe has faced international criticism for efforts to suppress opposition in next month's presidential election.
"We expect and trust that this distribution is done in a nonpartisan manner and that the neediest of the needy get the food," Mr. Sullivan said.
Agence France-Presse said the U.S. aid amounts to about one-fifth of the food requested by the U.N. World Food Program to prevent a famine in Zimbabwe.
-------- asia
Nepal's terrorists
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
Embassy Row, by James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-90696361.htm
Nepal's so-called Maoist rebels are nothing more than terrorists like the followers of Osama bin Laden, says the U.S. ambassador to the Himalayan kingdom.
"The Maoists, under the guise of Maoism and their so-called people's war, are fundamentally the same as the globally recognized terrorists," Ambassador Michael Malinowski told a seminar in the capital, Katmandu.
"They are radicals who seek to impose their narrrow views and beliefs on others, despite the popular will of those they seek to influence and convert."
Mr. Malinowski compared rebels, linked to Nepal's Communist Party, to bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network and to the Abu Sayyaf terrorists of the Philippines.
"There is no peace in Nepal presently, but there are lessons to learn from the present scenario for those within and outside Nepal," he said in his remarks to the opening of a seminar on South Asia peace operations.
The rebels began their uprising in 1996, a year after an elected communist government fell in a vote of no confidence in the Nepalese parliament.
To contact James Morrison, call 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com
-------- balkans
Kosovo Albanian Parties Agree to Share Power
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-yugoslavia-kosovo-deal.html
PRISTINA, Kosovo - Kosovo's main ethnic Albanian parties overcame differences and pledged on Thursday to share power, breaking a stalemate that had delayed self-rule for the Yugoslav province since a general election in November.
They agreed Ibrahim Rugova, veteran leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, would be elected president of Kosovo by its new assembly while the prime minister would be from a party with its roots in the guerrilla group that fought Serb rule.
``We have taken an important step,'' said Rugova, who led the passive resistance of Kosovo Albanians to harsh Serb control for a decade.
Under the deal signed by main party leaders, the new premier will be Bajram Rexhepi, a senior member of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, which grew out of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought Serb forces in 1998 and 1999.
Rexhepi is a 47-year-old surgeon who worked as a field doctor for the KLA and later became mayor of the Albanian part of the ethnically divided northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica.
The deal is a minor triumph for the province's new United Nations governor, Michael Steiner, a top German diplomat who has been in Kosovo for less than a month. He arrived saying that reaching a deal to kickstart self-rule was his priority.
``What is now important is that this agreement is implemented and is made a reality by Kosovo's assembly,'' he said after the signing ceremony. ``My wish is that, if everything goes in accordance with the plan, this will happen Monday.''
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had called to welcome the deal, he said.
BUSINESS OF GOVERNING
``It is absolutely important they stick to the agreement, form the government and get about the business of governing and focus on the affairs of the people,'' Annan told a joint news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
In New York, U.N. Security Council members hailed the move ''as a very important step forward'' in establishing provisional self-governing institutions. In a statement, they said they looked forward to working with Kosovo's new leaders.
If the 120-seat assembly approves the appointments it will clear the way for Kosovo's majority Albanians to take control of day-to-day administration of their province for the first time in more than a decade, although the United Nations retains overall control.
Infighting between Albanian parties held up a deal on forming a government for Kosovo, with several fruitless voting sessions in the assembly.
The stalemate disappointed Western powers, which urged leaders elected in a historic poll four months ago to show they were ready to face the challenge of governing Kosovo.
Despite substantial foreign aid since NATO bombing forced out the Serb military in 1999, Kosovo remains impoverished and battle-scarred. Westerners argue real stability will only return once local people take some responsibility for their affairs.
The terms of the Steiner-brokered deal give the LDK four ministers, while the PDL and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, led by former guerrilla commander Ramush Hardinaj, get two cabinet posts each.
Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo came first in the November 17 election but the Sorbonne-educated intellectual needed the support of other parties to be elected president.
Most Kosovo Albanians are seeking independence for their province, still formally part of Yugoslavia, and resent the international determination to retain Belgrade's sovereignty.
Most Kosovo Serbs, about 180,000, have fled in fear of revenge attacks by majority Albanians angry at years of repression directed from Belgrade.
Some seats in parliament were reserved for the Serbs.
Some 40,000 NATO-led troops remain in the province to help keep the peace.
-------- business
Northrop CEO: TRW 'Easy' to Mesh With
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13768-2002Feb27?language=printer
Giant defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. defended its bid for TRW Inc. yesterday before Wall Street analysts, many of whom have been skeptical of Northrop's ability to swallow another large acquisition.
"We view this as quite an easy integration job, compared with ones that we've already demonstrated we can do," said chairman and chief executive Kent Kresa.
Los Angeles-based Northrop has been on a buying spree, acquiring 14 companies during the last seven years, more than doubling the company's size. Last Friday, Kresa made a surprise bid for Cleveland-based TRW Inc. for $47 a share in stock and the assumption of $5.5 billion in debt.
But on the heels of three large acquisitions last year{cedil} analysts have questioned whether Northrop could handle another purchase.
Speaking at the Salomon Smith Barney Global Industrial Manufacturing Conference in New York, Kresa said the integration of those companies is on schedule, and Northrop still expects to achieve $250 million in cost reductions from last year's acquisition of Litton Industries by 2004. Integrating the internal management of the companies will take another two to three years, but is also on schedule, he said.
"In virtually each case the market was very skeptical and concerned on whether or not we could pull it off, on whether or not we would create a problem," Kresa said. "We have not done that."
TRW's spacecraft systems would help Northrop further align itself with President Bush's defense priorities, he said. It also would give it the ability to compete in that area with Boeing Co. of Chicago and Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., he said.
"Space is going to continuously be a more important activity for defense going forward," Kresa said. "We would like to have a better footprint in space than we have today and this is a dramatic way to get there."
With the acquisition, Northrop would reach $26 billion to $27 billion in revenue next year, he said.
Kresa said the $10 billion auto parts division, which provides 60 percent of TRW's revenue, would be separated almost simultaneously with the closing of the deal. "We have people who are very interested in this property," he said.
TRW is still considering Northrop's buyout offer but has not yet responded to it.
-------- colombia
Deadline Set for Hostages
Washington Post
WORLD In Brief
Thursday, February 28, 2002
Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14343-2002Feb27?language=printer
BOGOTA, Colombia -- The country's largest rebel force has given the government one year to agree to swap guerrilla prisoners for rebel hostages, including presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a senior commander said.
"There is a term of one year, which we have already begun to count down to, and if the government does not make a move on this matter, then the FARC will take the appropriate actions," senior rebel commander Fabian Ramirez told CNN.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, seized Betancourt on Saturday when she entered a former rebel enclave. She has been added to a list of political hostages that includes five members of Congress and senators, Ramirez said.
Interior Minister Armando Estrada said the government would not release guerrillas from state jails in return for Betancourt or other hostages.
----
Colombia Aid Proposals Shelved
Pentagon Officials Urged Expanded U.S. Role Against Rebels
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14117-2002Feb27?language=printer
The Bush administration has shelved ambitious Pentagon-backed plans to expand U.S. participation in Colombia's civil conflict, including a proposal to elevate the fast-escalating Colombian crisis from a regional counternarcotics problem to formal inclusion in the war on terrorism, according to administration officials.
Pentagon officials had also recommended that President Bush issue a new secret directive to replace Clinton-era guidelines that limit U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing to the Colombian military's anti-narcotics efforts and prohibit direct assistance to its war against leftist guerrillas.
Both proposals were rejected, for the moment at least, during a meeting on Colombia Tuesday attended by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Officials said the decision reflected a belief by Rice and Powell that a fundamental shift in U.S. policy was not advisable at the moment because of uncertainty about congressional reaction and upcoming Colombian presidential elections in May. Instead, sources said, the officials approved a "reaffirmation" of the current restrictive policy and stepped-up consultations with Congress on possible future changes.
Officials emphasized that the new proposals called only for allowing Colombia to obtain U.S. equipment and training in its counterinsurgency war and did not include any recommendations for the deployment of U.S. troops. The number of U.S. military personnel in Colombia is capped by law at 400, and has rarely, if ever, reached that level.
The decision was one of the few in recent months to go against a gradual expansion in the number of countries to which military aid and training are being extended under the banner of the war on terrorism. Colombia presents a more complicated dilemma because of domestic concerns in both countries, and because the main guerrilla group fighting the government has not attacked targets outside Colombia and has no known links to al Qaeda.
Asked about his policy on Colombia yesterday during a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce in Charlotte, Bush made no reference to the Tuesday meeting, which he did not attend. But he said the United States has been "providing advice to the Colombia government as to drug eradication, and we need to keep it that way."
In addition to the executive guidelines held over from the Clinton administration, Congress has prohibited the use of U.S.-provided military equipment or training in the war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and imposed strict human rights standards on the Colombian military.
The restrictions are driven by concerns that U.S. involvement in Colombia's counterinsurgency war could become a Vietnam-like "slippery slope," and by criticism of the Colombian military's cooperation with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a rapidly growing right-wing paramilitary organization accused of extensive human rights abuses.
The involvement of both the FARC and the AUC in the drug trade, however, has blurred the line between permissible counternarcotics aid and prohibited counterinsurgency assistance. Most White House and State Department officials have been leery of crossing that line, and have maintained that ending the export of Colombian-produced cocaine and heroin "remains the core of the national security interest of the United States," as one official put it. But Pentagon civilians, along with some allies in other departments, have argued in recent months that the anti-narcotics program has been foundering, and that the primary U.S. interest should be the preservation of Colombian democracy.
That argument has gained currency in recent weeks as the FARC has stepped up its attacks, including the hijacking of a domestic commercial airliner and the kidnapping of a presidential candidate and several Colombian legislators, leading Pastrana to call off three years of sporadic peace talks and to request stepped-up U.S. assistance.
The administration has already taken some steps in response. In addition to nearly $600 million in new counternarcotics training, equipment and other assistance, its fiscal 2003 budget includes a non-narcotics request for $98 million in training and helicopters to protect an oft-attacked oil pipeline. Skating the edge of aid restrictions, the administration last week authorized an increase in some intelligence sharing with the Colombian military, and moved it to the head of the line, "right behind Afghanistan," for priority receipt of military spare parts, an official said.
----
Moment of truth for Colombia
Stephen Johnson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020228-4194409.htm
Patience has its limits. On Feb. 20, after Colombia's largest rebel group had hijacked an airliner and kidnapped the chairman of the Senate peace commission, President Andres Pastrana finally called it quits on his generous land-for-peace gambit with the guerrillas. It's a decision he should have made long ago.
Mr. Pastrana launched Colombia's so-called peace process in November 1998, when he allowed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, to occupy a New Jersey-sized sanctuary in the heart of the country. The idea was to provide an unpressured, unstructured environment that would encourage the guerrillas to agree to a cease-fire, which would then facilitate peace negotiations.
Instead, the rebels used the haven to train more combatants (doubling their number from about 10,000 to 17,000), make gas cylinder bombs, cultivate their own drug crops, attack villages, kidnap civilians, and supply more than 60 rebel fronts throughout Colombia.
Meanwhile, their continuing brutality and the deferential way they were treated by the government, spawned a backlash from paramilitary self-defense groups who oppose them. Since the peace dialogue began, their numbers have doubled as well.
Last month, after three years of on-again-off-again talks that led nowhere, President Pastrana signaled his intentions to pull the plug on negotiations and order the rebels out of the sanctuary. On Jan. 14, European diplomats and U.N. emissary James LeMoyne coaxed them back to the bargaining table.
Hailed by some as a breakthrough, their return merely delayed the day of reckoning. Hours after the talks resumed, FARC cadres showed their good faith by bombing a police station, engineering a jailbreak, and felling power lines south of Bogota.
Mr. Pastrana seems to understand now that the FARC never meant to make peace to begin with; his Feb. 20 decision to end the dialogue was immediate and unequivocal. As Colombian security forces act to retake the haven, the problem becomes how to proceed from here.
First, what not to do: No one should try to revive the president's unguided dialogue. Peace talks with no clear goals, sticks or carrots can never work.
If future negotiations are contemplated, they should be conducted once the rebels are at the point of defeat - and then conducted for the purpose of demobilizing them and reintegrating less dangerous cadres back into society, perhaps under some sort of international supervision.
Narrowly focused U.S. counternarcotics assistance might have made sense back in the early 1990s when the guerrillas were less involved in drug trafficking and had smaller numbers. But today, Washington's Colombia policy misses the root ill: that the country's expanse of poorly governed territory has become home to a fusion of criminal, insurgent and terrorist activities.
To eventually end the bloodshed and help establish conditions in which drug trafficking can be effectively prosecuted, the Colombian government must commit itself to dismantling the guerrillas. This means cutting their supply lines, drug-trafficking routes and tactical communications, as well as grounding their air force and rounding up their various fronts. As this occurs, paramilitary groups that have filled the vacuum of public security may be encouraged to disarm on their own (although they may need to be forced to do so).
For its part, the U.S. government must do more than simply continue its policy of supplying aid to curb the drug trade. A more comprehensive approach, one that includes training and equipment for countering terrorism, is needed.
The Bush administration took a good first step with its proposal to fund a Colombian military effort dedicated to protecting oil pipelines, highways, and power transmission lines. But more needs to be done. Congress should ease restrictions on the use of U.S. equipment already donated, so it can by employed against all lawbreakers, not just drug traffickers. And European allies who once helped revive the moribund peace dialogue should cooperate by seizing rebel assets in their own countries.
The FARC, with some 17,000 troops, represents a tiny fraction of Colombia's 40 million people. Yet it is a potent force that has helped displace 1.5 million citizens internally and threatens Colombia's close neighbors. The only way to give peace a chance is to end its rein of terror over the majority of Colombia's law-abiding citizens.
Stephen Johnson is a policy analyst for Latin America in the Davis Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
-------- drug war
DEA helps Mexico to probe shooting of cartel kingpin
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020228-3386200.htm
The Drug Enforcement Administration said it is working with Mexican law enforcement authorities to determine whether Ramon Eduardo Arrellano-Felix, reputed leader of one of the world's most dangerous drug cartels, is dead.
Published reports in Mexico said the suspected drug kingpin was killed Feb. 10 in a gun battle in the Mexican resort town of Mazatlan, although the death has not been corroborated.
An inquiry into the shooting began after a fake identity document was found on a bullet-ridden corpse at the scene. But before Mexican federal officials could retrieve the body, it was whisked away by men claiming to be relatives and has now vanished.
"It is not in our possession," Mexican Prosecutor General Rafael Macedo told reporters Monday. "We are investigating, looking for evidence."
The Mexican shootout occurred after police spotted gunmen in a car. Two of the suspects and a policeman were killed, but three men - including another Mexican police officer - were arrested.
"The DEA has long considered Ramon Arrellano-Felix, along with his brothers Benjamin, Eduardo and Javier, a top priority," said DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson. "The Arrellano-Felix organization makes up one of the most powerful, violent and aggressive drug-trafficking organizations in the world."
Based in Tijuana, Mexico, the Arrellano-Felix cartel is responsible for the transportation, importation and distribution of multiton quantities of cocaine and marijuana, as well as large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine.
Ramon Arrellano-Felix, according to Mr. Hutchinson, is believed to be the most violent member of the drug ring, having assumed the role of organizing and coordinating security for the drug network. The network is suspected in the death of hundreds of drug rivals, police officials, prosecutors and judges during the past decade.
DEA's commitment to dismantling the organization was re-emphasized during a recent visit by Mr. Hutchinson to Mexico City, where he said the drug cartel would remain a top priority of the DEA until the Arrellano-Felix brothers and their associates have been brought to justice.
The Arrellano-Felix cartel has maintained its position as Mexico's leading drug-smuggling organization through sheer force, and has survived for nearly 20 years because of its access to weapons and its willingness to use them.
Mexico is the largest transshipping point of South American cocaine bound for the United States. DEA officials believe 65 percent of the cocaine produced in South America reaches U.S. cities via the U.S.-Mexico border and that Colombian cartels rely on Mexican groups in Guadalajara, Juarez, Matamoros, Sinaloa and Tijuana to smuggle cocaine into this country.
The DEA has said that Mexican drug lords have established themselves as "transportation specialists" for the shipment of cocaine across the border. Many of them also are involved in smuggling massive amounts of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines.
The Arrellano-Felix organization controls drug trafficking into the United States along the westernmost part of the U.S.-Mexico border. The organization smuggles marijuana and cocaine into the United States and distributes an estimated $1 million weekly in bribes to Mexican authorities.
Since 1998, Ramon Arrellano-Felix, 37, has been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list with a $2 million reward for his capture.
He is wanted in connection with the importation of tons of cocaine and marijuana into the United States.
----
Tunnel Found Under Border With Mexico
Long, 'Sophisticated' Passage Was Used for Drug Smuggling
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14187-2002Feb27?language=printer
MEXICO CITY, Feb. 27 -- U.S. authorities said today they have discovered an elaborate tunnel built to smuggle drugs that runs more than 1,000 feet from Mexico under the border to a pig farm in California.
Although they emphasized that precise information was still coming in -- and although such smuggling tunnels under the 2,000-mile border have been found in the past -- Mexican investigators suggested the passage uncovered today may turn out to be the longest ever found. In one measure of its size, a U.S. official said it contained rails to allow bulk shipment of clandestine cargo.
"It's the biggest one we've ever found," said Miguel Angel de la Torre Ruelas, a commander for the Mexican Federal Preventative Police who was reached by cell phone at the tunnel site.
"It's pretty sophisticated," said Josie Shumake, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
Shumake said the tunnel has lights, a ventilation system and rail tracks. Don Thornhill, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego, added tonight that the tunnel is about 20 feet underground and that the tracks were used for carts.
U.S. officials said several hundred pounds of marijuana was seized and one person was arrested in connection with the discovery. A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said its officials were at the scene tonight, along with agents from the DEA.
The U.S. entrance to the tunnel was discovered this morning at a place known as Johnson's pig farm near Tecate, Calif., a rural area about 30 miles southeast of San Diego that sits across the border from a Mexican city of the same name. The discovery was made by DEA, INS and U.S. Customs Service agents acting on a search warrant, officials said.
De la Torre, the Mexican police official, said his officers, acting on a tip, had been trying to find a large drug crossing point in the area for nearly six weeks. He said they had been checking the criminal records of Mexican landowners in the area. Mexican officials passed the tip to the DEA, he said, and that agency discovered that a U.S. landowner in the area had a criminal record, leading to today's successful search, he said.
The landowner was not identified and it could not be learned whether charges were brought against him.
The discovery comes five days before Tom Ridge, the U.S. director of homeland security, is to arrive in Mexico to discuss border security issues. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, security has been substantially heightened along the border and there has been a huge jump in drug seizures there.
In a nine-day period earlier this month in Laredo, Tex., four tons of marijuana was seized by border agents. At 10 border crossings in Texas, officials seized 46,000 pounds of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs in the last three months of 2001, more than twice the amount seized in the same period the year before.
Authorities have said they do not know whether more drugs are coming through, or whether greater quantities are being caught by increased law enforcement activity. Officials also worry that smugglers are looking for new routes, perhaps taking advantage of sea lanes left unpatrolled by U.S. Coast Guard vessels redeployed to U.S. ports to guard against terrorism.
It was unclear when the tunnel discovered today was dug.
Tunnels have long been a weapon in the drug traffickers' arsenal. In 1990, a 270-foot tunnel was discovered running between Douglas, Ariz., and a private luxury home in Agua Prieta, Mexico. The five-foot-high tunnel had electric lighting, concrete reinforcement and a hydraulic system to raise a game-room floor that concealed the tunnel entrance in the Mexican home.
----
Study: Afghans Growing Opium Poppy
February 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Afghan-Drugs.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The opium poppy harvest in Afghanistan this year is likely to return to levels seen before the ousted Taliban banned the crop, the United Nations reported Thursday.
The Taliban, driven from power by the U.S.-led war against terrorism, banned poppy production in July 2000. Officials said that last year, farmers in Taliban-controlled territory reaped only 200 tons of poppy, from which both opium and heroin are derived. That was down from 3,300 tons the year before.
The crop was sown in November in formerly Taliban-controlled regions in the south and west of the country. The Taliban grip on power was nearly non-existent then under the pressure of U.S. bombing. Farmers went back to their traditional ways and the U.N. report forecasts a harvest of 1,900 and 2,700 tons this year.
By early February, observers from the U.N. International Drug Control Program saw small green poppy plants breaking through the soil in areas that accounted for 84 percent of the total cultivation in 2000.
Northern Afghanistan was excluded from the survey because the colder climate there usually delays planting.
Many poor Afghan farmers cannot resist planting poppy because of the profit to be had, said Sumru Noyan of the UNDCP.
In Helmand province in the southwest, some farmers plowed under germinating wheat in January to replant with poppy, the U.N. report said. It claimed fields associated with some villages were 70 percent under poppy cultivation.
Steinar Bjornsson, interim head of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, said curtailing poppy production in Afghanistan was crucial to the recovery of the impoverished, war-ravaged country. After malnutrition, he said, drugs pose the most serious challenge to future stability because they fund terrorism.
``The U.N. is trying to rebuild the country in perhaps its most complex undertaking ever,'' he said.
The UNDCP is helping the interim Afghan government of Prime Minister Hamid Karzai set up legal structures and law enforcement agencies that will help authorities fight the production of drugs.
Karzai's U.N.-brokered government announced a ban on poppy production last month, after many fields had already been sown.
The bulk of the heroin and opium derived from Afghan poppy is transported by smugglers to Western Europe through Iran, Turkey and the Balkans, Noyan said.
-------- india
38 Muslims burned alive in India
By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
2/28/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28022002-041523-9852r
NEW DELHI -- At least 38 Muslims were killed Thursday by a Hindu mob that set fire to a housing complex in Ahmedabad in western India.
An irate Hindu mob rampaged through the Ahmedabad city and torched a housing complex where a large Muslim community lived, Star News TV reported.
Most Muslims were at home since authorities had urged them to stay indoors to avoid the fury of angry Hindu mobs that set on fire a several vehicles across the city, looted and burnt shops owned by Muslims.
The victims included a former lawmaker of Congress Party, Ehsan Jaffery and 19 of his family members who were charred beyond recognition.
Police opened fire at protesters, killing at least six rioters.
At least 24 more people died Thursday in separate incidents of mob violence directed against Muslim community.
Army troops have been called out to quell mob violence in western India in which at least 62 people have died.
Hindus were retaliating for an attack on a train in which 58 Hindu nationalists were burned to death by a suspected Muslim mob on Wednesday.
The attack allegedly was carried out by Muslims angry because the Hindus were building a temple on the site of a destroyed mosque.
At least nine Muslims were stabbed to death Thursday and eight others were burned while three Hindus were killed when police opened fire to contain the mob.
Chief Minister of Gujarat state, Narender Modi, said the army has been called out in Ahmedabad. Troops also may be deployed in 26 other towns in western India where a curfew was ordered following violent clashes, arson and looting.
Shoot-at-sight has been ordered across Gujarat state.
"I believe that the reaction of the people is that of restraint compared to what the terrorists did in Godhra, which was clearly a terrorist attack on innocent train passengers," The Times of India quoted Modi as saying.
"Even though trouble has taken place in nearly 26 places in Gujarat, by and large the 50 million people of Gujarat have shown a lot of restraint."
There also was an attack on a mosque in Ahmedabad while government buildings and restaurants owned by Muslims were set on fire. Mobs rampaged across the city, P.C. Pandey, city police commissioner, said.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, has called for a general strike across India on Friday to protest the attack on Hindu activists.
Unidentified men stopped the Sabarmati Express train near Godhra Wednesday and set four train cars on fire. At least 58 Hindus were killed and 44 others injured. Train passengers were returning from Ayodhya, where a new temple is to be built on the ruins of the destroyed Babri Mosque. Police have arrested at least 70 people in connection with the train attack.
More than 600 Hindu rioters have also been detained.
Thousands of Hindus razed the 16th-century Babri Mosque in December 1992 saying the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram. They have vowed to build a temple on the mosque ruins.
India is predominantly Hindu -- 82 percent of more than 1 billion people practice the religion. But its Muslim population is the world's second largest.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee canceled a visit to Australia and asked the World Hindu Council to shelve its plan to start constructing the temple at Ayodhya on March 15.
--------
Hindu Riots in India Kill 58 Muslims
February 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Religious-Strife.html
AHMADABAD, India (AP) -- Angry Hindus set fire to homes in a Muslim neighborhood Thursday and then kept firefighters away for hours, dragging out one former lawmaker and burning him alive. At least 58 people died in revenge attacks triggered by a Muslim assault on a train.
Police in western Gujarat state appeared outnumbered or unwilling to act to quell what appeared to be the worst rioting to hit the country in nearly a decade.
The officers stood in bunches, watching as groups of Hindus, wielding iron rods and cans of gasoline or kerosene, roamed Ahmadabad attacking Muslims in their homes, shops and vehicles.
The government promised to send the army to Ahmadabad, the region's main city, to end the rampage. But there were fears the violence would spread Friday, when Hindu nationalists called for a nationwide strike.
In Thursday's worst attack, 38 people -- including 12 children -- died when some 2,000 Hindus set fire to six homes in an affluent Muslim neighborhood.
Some trapped residents made frantic telephone calls to police and firefighters. But police said they arrived two hours later and firefighters were delayed by more than six hours because of blockades by rioters.
A former lawmaker, Ehsan Jefri, fired at the rioters when they tried to enter his house, but he was dragged out and burned alive.
Elsewhere in Ahmadabad, rioters pulled a Muslim truck driver out of his vehicle and killed him at a roadblock, police said. Other Hindus made bonfires with goods looted from shops, and 20 men tore down a small mosque.
J.S. Bandukwala, a Muslim and human rights activist, said his house was attacked by Hindus who ``lobbed burning rags and pelted stones,'' before his Hindu neighbors took him to safety.
In a few instances, police opened fire on rioters, killing two and wounding six in Ahmadabad and two other towns, police said.
The violence was in retaliation for an attack Wednesday in Godhra, a town south of Ahmadabad, where Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing 58 people, including 14 children.
Tensions have been growing between Muslims and Hindu nationalists who have been using the train to go back and forth to Ayodhya, in northern India, where the World Hindu Council plans to start building a temple next month on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque.
The 1992 destruction of the mosque by Hindus sparked nationwide riots that killed 2,000 people -- and the government has called for calm, fearing bloodshed could spread quickly in this nation of more than 1 billion, where Hindu-Muslim fighting killed nearly a million people after independence in 1947.
This week's violence is believed to be the worst Hindu-Muslim fighting since 1993 riots in Bombay -- also related to the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya -- killed at least 800 people.
Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat state and a member of the ruling Hindu nationalist party, called the assault on the train earlier this week an ``organized terrorist attack.''
Indian officials often blame longtime rival Pakistan for internal strife. Some police and state officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that Pakistan's spy agency, or the Islamic militant groups with which it is linked, may have incited Muslims to attack the train.
They provided no evidence, and no official has drawn any link between the violence in India and the al-Qaida terror network of Osama bin Laden.
Wednesday's attack came after Hindus on the train refused to pay for food taken from Muslim vendors at the station and shouted slogans -- a common occurrence in recent days that has fueled Muslims' resentment, police said.
Officials said 58 people died in Thursday's violence, and at least 150 people were admitted to Ahmadabad hospitals, mostly with stab wounds. Police gave no estimate of how many people were arrested.
On highways in the state, Hindus set up roadblocks, stopping cars to look for Muslims. Smoke billowed across Ahmadabad's skyline from 70 burning buildings.
In many areas, rioters prevented firefighters from putting out fires, said Mayor Himmatsinh Patel. ``There was a complete breakdown of law and order. I have been calling for the army but no action has been taken,'' he said.
Modi said soldiers would deploy in Ahmadabad on Friday and may also move into 26 other towns that saw violence and were placed under curfew.
The chief minister denied police had been derelict in dealing with the riots, saying the region's Hindu majority had ``shown restraint'' in their response to the train attack. His state government supported a strike called by Hindu nationalists on Thursday.
Hindu activists called for that strike to be extended across the country on Friday to protest the train attack, and they said they would set up barricades in the capital, New Delhi.
Rajendra Singh, the police superintendent in northern Uttar Pradesh, said 10,000 paramilitary troops had surrounded Ayodhya to prevent violence. Some 20,000 Hindu activists have gathered to pray for the temple construction.
-------- iraq
U.S. building war crimes case against Saddam
Bush administration launches new move to target Iraqi leader
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES,
Feb. 28, 2002
http://www.msnbc.com/news/716935.asp
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Thursday that it was amassing war crimes evidence against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, another sign that the White House was determined to move against Iraq. The campaign follows a parallel move by President Bush's closest ally in the war on terrorism, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said the threat posed by Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction "has to be dealt with."
"WE DO BELIEVE that Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants need to be held answerable for their actions," Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes, told the House International Relations Committee.
"We have taken steps to collect information regarding abuses that have occurred. ... It is an effort that my office is involved in on a daily basis," Prosper said. Prosper said he had assigned two assistants to investigate Iraq who were working on a "daily basis" to develop data on alleged atrocities blamed on Saddam and top aides.
Prosper said he did not know what jurisdiction might ultimately prosecute Saddam. If the Iraqi leader is ousted from power, as Washington wants, an Iraqi judicial institution might be able to do the job, but in any event, "we do believe there needs to be a forum created to address this issue," Prosper said.
"What I'm saying is that we will definitely be looking for some sort of mechanism to create this, and I think it is difficult at this time to state precisely what that mechanism might be," he said. Although the administration vehemently opposes a permanent international criminal court and has called for the end of two ad hoc tribunals dealing with war crimes and genocide in Rwanda and Yugoslavia by 2008, it has not ruled out future ad hoc tribunals.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., raised the issue of a possible international war crimes tribunal for Iraq, citing Saddam's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and charges that he gassed Iraqi Kurds in the village of Halabja in 1988.
BLAIR: THREAT 'HAS TO BE DEALT WITH'
Britain also blasted Iraq on Thursday, saying Saddam's government continued to produce weapons of mass destruction, posing a serious threat that must be addressed. A spokesman for Blair stressed that no decision had been made by the United States or Britain on how or when to act against Iraq but said dealing with the weapons threat was the "logical" next step in the war on terrorism.
"The central issue is that weapons of mass destruction continue to be produced [in Iraq] and that we believe there is a serious threat. That threat has to be dealt with," he said.
Blair backed Bush's leadership Wednesday in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and said it was important to tackle states that spread weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Asked in an interview by Australian Broadcasting Corp. whether he agreed with Bush that there was an "axis of evil" countries that included Iraq, Blair said: "I certainly agree with him very strongly that weapons of mass destruction represent a real threat to world stability. I think it's important that we act against them."
Asked to elaborate on Blair's remarks, the spokesman said Blair saw tackling Iraq as "part of the logical process which has unfolded since September 11."
Iraq has refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country to check its weapons capabilities since 1998.
Blair is due to visit Washington for talks with Bush in April. A British newspaper quoted a senior government official Sunday as saying the two leaders would use the talks to finalize "Phase Two" of the war on terror, with Iraq at the top of the agenda.
The newspaper, The Observer, also said the government was planning to publish evidence detailing Iraq's nuclear capabilities as a pre-emptive strike against critics of any action.
U.S. PUSHES REGIME CHANGE
The U.S. administration has increasingly focused on effecting "regime change" in Iraq as part of its anti-terrorism strategy.
In his State of the Union speech in January, Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil" because of their alleged support for "terrorism" and attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
'This will be the largest conference of officers in opposition to Saddam's dictatorship ever held.' - SHARIF ALI BIN ALHUSSEIN Iraqi National Congress spokesman
U.S. officials have since singled out Iraq as the particular object of their displeasure. The United States fought to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991. The CIA tried but failed to overthrow Saddam in 1996. Vice President Dick Cheney will visit the Middle East next month on a trip. He is expected to explain U.S. intentions and sound out regional opinions on a campaign against Saddam.
Britain aside, European leaders have been unsettled by Bush's apparent willingness to widen his campaign. Defense and political analysts say that reluctant allies and depleted stocks of precision weapons all work against military action against Baghdad any time soon.
MESSAGE TO SADDAM
Meanwhile, in Washington, 200 former Iraqi officers said that they would meet under Pentagon auspices at a U.S. military facility in March to plan Saddam's overthrow, U.S. and Iraqi opposition officials said Wednesday.
The conference is expected to take place in the third week of March at a U.S. military installation. Organizers said it should send Iraq a message that the United States was serious about its threats of forcing a "regime change" in Baghdad.
'We are on board with them in planning this, and we expect it to be at a Pentagon forum.' - U.S. OFFICIAL
"This will be the largest conference of officers in opposition to Saddam's dictatorship ever held," Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein, spokesman for the opposition Iraqi National Congress, said in a statement.
"It will have several aims - to mobilize Iraqi officers and unite them with the democratic Iraqi opposition, to develop a plan of action to confront Saddam's regime and to reinforce the important principle of the control of the military by a democratically elected government in Iraq's future."
The officers expected to attend include former Brig. Gen. Najib al-Salihi, a former chief of staff in the elite Republican Guard, a U.S. official said.
The conference, which will be the culmination of U.S. contacts with smaller gatherings of Iraqi officers in Washington, appears to indicate some convergence between the civilian and military approaches to the task of overthrowing Saddam.
The London-based Iraqi National Congress has offered itself as an alternative civilian leadership for Iraq, but some in the U.S. administration have questioned the group's competence.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
----
'The Last Thing We Want Is a Confrontation'
Iraq's Neighbors Fear Instability, Loss of Trade if U.S. Pursues an Ouster of Hussein
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13917-2002Feb27?language=printer
KARAMEH, Jordan -- It is easy from this Jordanian border post to witness Iraq's isolation.
The neighboring countries were once friendly trading partners. But now trucks passing from Iraq into Jordan are inspected down to the last pack of smuggled cigarettes. Agents on the Jordanian side of the border pound with metal bars in search of hollow hiding places. They disassemble portions of the frame and check spare tires with a pressure gauge to ensure there is only air inside.
But signs abound of Iraq's influence as well. In another inspection lane, tanks full of crude oil headed for a Jordanian refinery move through with only a cursory look and a quick trip across the scales. Since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraq has provided Jordan with all the oil it needs, almost free.
That dependence provides one explanation why, despite widespread distrust of Iraq among fellow Arab nations, the Gulf War coalition that reversed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade ago appears unlikely to reassemble as part of President Bush's confrontation with the "axis of evil."
"If they hit Iraq, it's like they are hitting us," said a Jordanian truck driver, Nasser Tarifi, who survives on the three to five tankers of oil he drives from Iraq into Jordan each month through this crossing 200 miles northeast of Amman.
Throughout the Middle East, and even within Iraq, misgivings about a possible U.S. offensive have multiplied steadily since Bush's State of the Union address last month, in which he labeled Iraq part of an axis of evil, along with Iran and North Korea. Worries also have risen as some administration officials have insisted that they will soon move to oust President Saddam Hussein's government.
There is little official support in the Middle East for the Iraqi leader, a target of Bush administration concerns because of his alleged attempts to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Yet neither is there a willingness to openly move against him. Officials throughout the region note that much has changed since Egypt, Syria, Turkey and the Persian Gulf states allied with the United States and other NATO countries to evict Iraq from Kuwait.
If the proposal is for a major U.S.-Iraq war, bringing with it uncertainty about what will happen in the country and around it, then the preferred course here seems to be to watch Hussein closely and wait for the rule of the 64-year-old Iraqi president to atrophy on its own.
"Are we happy with the status quo? No," said Jordanian Minister of State Shahir Bak. "But the last thing we want is a confrontation."
A U.S. attack on Iraq "should not be contemplated at all," Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah said recently, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. His remarks cast doubt on whether the United States would be able to use its Saudi-based warplanes and modern regional command center for any strike on Baghdad.
Like Jordan, Saudi Arabia has economic interests at stake -- about $300 million per year in trade with Iraq. Syria, Egypt and Turkey are also selling more goods than ever to Iraq. In addition, economic ties have deepened in recent years between Iraq and European countries such as France and Russia that want to take the lead in rebuilding the country's oil industry once international sanctions are lifted.
But, as with many of Iraq's neighbors, there are deeper worries about a U.S. attack and the instability that may result.
Ten years ago, the outlines of the Gulf War were clear and the risks of not confronting Hussein seemed greater than those of joining the U.S.-led coalition. Iraq had invaded a neighboring Arab country, and that fact alone helped push others in the region to support the alliance. Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization were notable holdouts.
Those who joined had incentives beyond helping Kuwait. Egypt, for example, got tens of billions of dollars in debt relief that rescued the country from an economic bind. Syria, which was always an ideological foe of Iraq, hoped to gain political weight in its struggle to regain the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. And Saudi Arabia secured U.S. commitments to its own defense. All three used the opportunity to push the United States toward brokering an Arab-Israeli peace, pressure that resulted in the Madrid conference and the first concrete steps toward a Palestinian state.
None of these incentives exists this time. The post-Madrid peace process is a shambles. Instead, 17 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence have improved Hussein's image and may have limited the ability of Arab governments to side with the United States in opposing him.
In addition, U.S. concern about Iraq's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is not shared in a region that is equally worried about Israel's possession of the same sorts of devices and views Iraq as a potential Arab deterrent.
There is no clear sense, either, of what would happen in Iraq if Hussein's rule collapses. The prospect of a civil war, or widespread instability, is regarded by Iraq's Arab neighbors as more threatening than the existing government.
Memories on this point are clear in Jordan. Iraq was once governed by members of the same Hashemite tribe that rules Jordan, but when that British-engineered monarchy fell in 1958, King Faisal II was murdered and dragged through the streets of Baghdad.
Nor is there trust of the alternatives suggested in the United States. The opposition Iraqi National Congress and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, are not seen as credible national authorities. Attitudes here toward Chalabi focus less on his role as a political leader and more on his conviction in absentia and 20-year-plus sentence on embezzlement charges. He was caught funneling tens of millions of dollars in the 1980s from Jordan into Swiss accounts -- so much currency that his activities were blamed for a devaluation of the Jordanian dinar.
Although Jordan would be a convenient spot for the Iraqi National Congress to be based ahead of any move on Iraq, Jordanians say that Chalabi, whose group is based in London, will be imprisoned if he returns.
With no clear substitute, there is also concern about how regional powers such as Iran might try to exploit a collapse of Hussein's authority in Baghdad. A majority of Iraqis are Shiite Muslims, residing mainly in the south, and could be influenced by the Shiite government in Tehran.
In the north, meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds are enjoying some of their most prosperous times ever, using international donations and their share of Iraqi oil revenue to build a semi-autonomous local government that is independent of Baghdad's demands and under the protection of U.S. air power. The Kurds' increasing independence in northern Iraq is a concern to Turkey, which has fought a Kurdish separatist movement in its southern region. Iraqi Kurdish leaders, meanwhile, have been clear in recent interviews that they do not want to disrupt their current situation unless there is a clear and beneficial alternative.
The two main Kurdish groups in northern Iraq have been touted as a possible force against Baghdad, akin to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
"First of all, we have to know who the alternative is, if there is one. Of course, so far there is no alternative . . . and we don't see one," Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, was quoted as saying in Beirut's Al-Mustaqbal newspaper.
The leader of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani, concurred, saying on Turkish television that if the United States attacks Iraq, "We do not know what will happen . . . we will not enter adventures whose end is unclear."
----
U.S. conference to form plan to oust Saddam from power
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020228-67420280.htm
The U.S. government will finance and host the largest-ever gathering of former Iraqi military and security officers at a conference to plan the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, U.S. and Iraqi opposition officials said yesterday.
Leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the London-based umbrella group dedicated to Saddam's ouster, said the conference was a sign of the Bush administration's determination to drive the Iraqi dictator from power.
The conference, expected to be held by the end of next month at a military site in or near Washington, would include some 200 military and security officials from the various opposition groups united under the INC, according to a posting on the group's Web site yesterday.
Sharif Ali Bin Hussein, a member of the INC Leadership Council, said the conference would discuss both ousting Saddam and the future of Iraq after Saddam. The conference is also designed to boost links between the civilian and military factions among the Iraqi opposition.
The meeting will "mobilize Iraqi officers and unite them with the democratic Iraqi opposition, develop a plan of action to confront Saddam's regime and reinforce the important principle of the control of the military by a democratically elected government in Iraq's future," the INC's Mr. Hussein said.
Zaab Sethna, a spokesman for the INC's Washington office, said the idea for the conference had been discussed with Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman last month.
Mr. Sethna said the ability of the fractious civilian leadership of the INC to unite the military officials from the various opposition groups was critical to the success of the effort.
"That is what will make the gathering different from past conferences on Iraq," he said. "We have been hard at work inviting non-INC representatives and the response has been excellent."
He said the final dates for the conference were still uncertain because of the difficulty in securing visas for many of those invited to come to the United States.
The Reuters news agency, quoting unnamed U.S. officials, said among those expected to attend is former Brig. Gen. Najib Salihi, one-time chief of staff for Iraq's select Republican Guard.
The U.S. backing for the conference also appears to signal an increase of support to the INC, which has feuded with the Clinton and Bush administrations over its financial management and its ability to take on Saddam.
The State Department temporarily froze funding for the INC's operations late last year, citing accounting irregularities, only releasing the money Jan. 31. The Bush administration still refuses to finance INC operations inside Iraq itself, despite the London group's urging.
President Bush's inclusion of Iraq in his "axis of evil" has increased momentum within the administration for a policy of "regime change" in Baghdad. The administration has been internally divided over whether to make Saddam the next military front in Mr. Bush's post-September 11 war on terrorism.
INC Chairman Ahmed Chalabi told the French newspaper La Croix in an interview published yesterday that the Washington conference was designed in part to encourage Saddam's soldiers to join the opposition or at least not resist an effort to topple him.
He said his group was prepared to carry the fight to Baghdad if the United States supplied the arms and intelligence backing as it did in Afghanistan.
"The United States has to give us the necessary training and equipment and conduct an aggressive bombing campaign," Mr. Chalabi said. He said INC forces would need "around 11 weeks of training" for an invasion if the United States backed the effort.
"The most important thing is to get rid of Saddam Hussein," Mr. Chalabi said. "Whatever choice is made, we will back it. If the United States decides to do the job itself, that's not a problem."
---
Britain Says Iraq Poses Threat, Must Be Tackled
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-britain-us-iraq.html
LONDON - Britain ratcheted up the pressure on Iraq on Thursday, saying Saddam Hussein's government continued to produce weapons of mass destruction which was a serious threat that must be tackled. A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed no decision had been taken by the United States or Britain on how or when to act against Iraq, but said dealing with the weapons threat was the ``logical'' next step in the war on terrorism.
``The central issue is that weapons of mass destruction continue to be produced (in Iraq) and that we believe there is a serious threat. That threat has to be dealt with,'' he said.
Blair on Wednesday backed President Bush's leadership in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and said it was important to tackle states which spread weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Asked in an interview by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) whether he agreed with Bush that there was an ''axis of evil'' countries which included Iraq, Blair said:
``I certainly agree with him very strongly that weapons of mass destruction represent a real threat to world stability. I think it's important that we act against them.''
Asked to elaborate on the prime minister's remarks, the spokesman said Blair saw tackling Iraq as ``part of the logical process which has unfolded since September 11.''
Iraq has refused to allow United Nations weapons inspectors in to check its weapons capabilities since 1998.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he was hopeful his talks next week with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri could help bring about the return of the inspectors after Baghdad offered to have a dialogue ``without preconditions'' with the world body.
Blair is due to visit Washington for talks with Bush in April.
One British newspaper quoted a senior government official on Sunday as saying the two leaders would use the talks to finalize ``Phase Two'' of the war on terror, with Iraq at the top of the agenda.
The Observer also said the government was planning to publish evidence detailing Iraq's nuclear capabilities as a pre-emptive strike against critics of any action.
Several European leaders have been unsettled by Bush's apparent willingness to widen his campaign but Britain, the United States' staunchest ally since the September attacks, has been careful to voice no criticism.
---
U.S. Warplanes Bomb Targets in Northern Iraq
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-usa.html
WASHINGTON - U.S. warplanes on Thursday attacked Iraqi air-defense sites in a ``no-fly'' zone in northern Iraq, after western aircraft paroling the zone were targeted by radar and anti-aircraft guns, the U.S. military said.
The U.S. European command based in Germany said all warplanes departed the area safely. There was no immediate report of damage on the ground.
U.S. and British jets have been policing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq for more than a decade. The zones were set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims from attack by President Saddam Hussein's military.
The exchange, latest in a long series, came amid recent media reports of growing debate within Washington over what to do about U.S. determination to remove Saddam from power.
Although President Bush recently labeled Iraq part of an ''axis of evil'' along with North Korea and Iran, there has been no indication that the United States might attack Baghdad.
U.S. officials say that Iraq continues to work on development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Iraq admits that it once sought to develop biological agents but says it no longer has any such weapons program.
Baghdad was forced to accept U.N. inspectors following its defeat by a U.S.-led international force in the Gulf War, but inspectors had to abandon the country in 1998.
Despite Iraq's denial, U.S. officials say Baghdad has used the last three years to press ahead with weapons development.
-------- israel / palestine
Suicide bomber strikes Israel
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
World Scene
February 28, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-16875528.htm
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian woman set off explosives at an Israeli roadblock in the West Bank yesterday, killing herself and wounding two companions and two Israeli police officers, police said.
The bombing came after Israeli troops killed four armed Arabs in gunbattles, and a Palestinian employee shot dead an Israeli factory manager in an attack that was apparently politically motivated.
The incidents came after a heated meeting between Palestinian and Israeli security commanders convened to find ways to ease 17 months of conflict.
----
Israeli Troops Assault Refugee Camps
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16633-2002Feb28?language=printer
NABLUS, West Bank -- Backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, Israeli troops launched a major assault on two West Bank refugee camps Thursday, a first in 17 months of fighting. Nine Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in heavy gun battles, and more than 90 Palestinians were wounded, doctors said.
The military said the Balata and Jenin camps were strongholds of Palestinian militants, and that Thursday's operation was intended to show that "there is no refuge for terror." A militia leader said his men would die rather than surrender.
The fighting came just hours after Saudi Arabia presented its new peace initiative in a world forum for the first time. Under the proposal, the Arab world would make peace with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
Also late Wednesday, a Palestinian woman with an explosives belt blew herself up near an Israeli checkpoint. Dareen Abu Aisheh, a 21-year-old English literature student at An Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus, was the second woman to do that since the fighting began in September 2000. Three Israeli policemen as well as two Palestinians who were in a car with Abu Aisheh were hurt in the incident.
Thursday's clashes brought to 1,006 the number of deaths on the Palestinian side in the past 17 months. On the Israeli side, 288 people have been killed.
Israeli troops have repeatedly entered Palestinian towns and villages, but have largely stayed out of the 27 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many of them strongholds of militants.
Tanks cannot enter the narrow alleys of the crowded camps, and the military has not sent in large ground forces, apparently to avoid Israeli casualties. Referring to the gunmen's boasting that Israeli soldiers would not dare enter the camps, the army said in a statement that until Thursday's operation, "the terror organizations saw these refugee camps as a safe haven from the Israeli security forces."
Last week, after six Israeli soldiers were killed by gunmen from the Al Aqsa Brigades militia, the army took up positions around Balata, commandeering four apartment buildings overlooking the camp. A leader of the militia, Nasser Awais, and hundreds of his followers are holed up in Balata, home to 20,000 Palestinians.
Early Thursday, dozens of Israeli tanks surrounded the camp, and helicopter gunships flew overhead. Gunmen patrolling the outskirts of Balata alerted each other by mobile phones and began firing at the Israeli forces.
Speaking by phone as the Israeli assault got under way, Awais, the militia leader, said that "Israeli troops will not enter the camp except over our dead bodies."
Israeli troops fired heavy machine guns from the tanks and helicopters, and at least two Israeli missiles hit Balata, plunging it into darkness.
Gunman Mohannad Sharaya, 23, said that at one point, he and six militiamen were seeking cover in an alley when Israeli troops from a hilltop post overlooking the camp aimed a laser beam at the group to guide their fire. Militiamen set off dozens of homemade bombs during the fighting.
Israeli troops also took up positions in an elementary school on the edges of the camp. The military denied claims that Palestinian gunmen had trapped soldiers inside the school. An Associated Press Television News cameraman in Balata said he saw several dozen stone throwers outside the school, but no gunmen.
Fighting in Balata continued throughout the morning. Three Palestinians - two gunmen and a civilian - and an Israeli soldier were killed. Palestinian doctors said more than 85 people were wounded in Balata, a majority of them gunmen.
Israeli tanks also entered the West Bank town of Jenin from three directions, Palestinians said, surrounding the refugee camp at the western edge of the town.
Palestinians said six Palestinian policemen were killed in exchanges of fire, and eight people were wounded, including several civilians. In one incident, fighting erupted outside the home of the Jenin police chief. Two of the chief's guards and his 24-year-old son were killed, witnesses said.
Ahmed Abdel Rahman, an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, accused Israel of trying to destroy hopes for peace. Asked about Israel's charge that the camps are strongholds of militants, Abdel Rahman said: "We cannot prevent the Palestinians from defending themselves and their land as long as there is occupation."
The violence persisted despite local efforts to calm the tensions and a Saudi proposal to end the decades-old Israel-Arab conflict.
Israeli and Palestinian security commander met Thursday to consider the situation in the Gaza Strip, said Gaza police chief Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaidie.
On Tuesday, the security chiefs had a stormy meeting, trading demands and charges. The Palestinians asked the Israelis for a timetable for lifting the many roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza, imposed shortly after the violence began. Israel told the Palestinians that they must dismantle the Fatah militias.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia raised its Middle East peace initiative for the first time in a world forum Wednesday night, while accusing Israel of "systematic terrorism" and trying to expel the Palestinians.
Israel expressed disappointment, saying it had hoped for peaceful words - not confrontational language.
Saudi Arabia's U.N. Ambassador Fawzi Shobokshi was a late addition to speakers at a two-day open meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the Mideast, and his address was eagerly awaited because of the attention focused on Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal, floated in Saudi and American media this month.
----
Arafat Says Saudi Plan Needs U.S. Backing
New York Times
February 28, 2002
By JAMES BENNET and SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/international/middleeast/28ARAF.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Thursday, Feb. 28 - Calling a recent Saudi Arabian proposal a "very strong platform" for a comprehensive Mideast peace, Yasir Arafat said today that its chances for success depended on immediate American support.
"There must be a very important, and very strong, and very quick push from outside," Mr. Arafat said in an interview just after midnight in his battered, darkened compound here, where Israeli forces have confined him for almost three months.
Over the past half century, Israel has viewed Mr. Arafat alternately as an enemy, a partner for peace and now, it insists, an irrelevancy. But Mr. Arafat did not dismiss the possibility that Israel would join him in embracing the Saudi plan, noting that several senior Israeli officials have spoken favorably of it.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview Wednesday that the administration was prepared to pursue aggressively several new openings for peace in the Middle East, but he insisted that the onus for curtailing violence remained on Mr. Arafat.
Under the Saudi plan, which was outlined last week by Crown Prince Abdullah and has gathered considerable international interest, Saudi Arabia would lead other Arab states in normalizing relations with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it occupied in 1967.
Mr. Arafat's strongest hope seemed to be that the United States would use the Saudi proposals to end 17 months of unrelenting violence here, which he suggested now threatens the region's stability. "The most important thing is that it is accepted by the Europeans, the Russians and the Americans," he said.
The critical role, he made clear, was that of the president he called "Bush the son." After recalling the efforts by the first President Bush to convene a Middle East peace conference in Madrid in 1991, he said he hoped the current President Bush would complete "this very important historical initiative." But he did not specify how he thought the Americans might help.
How quickly the goals of the Saudi plan can be attained "depends no doubt on the Americans," he said. He added that he expected the proposal would receive full approval at a summit meeting of the members of the Arab League on March 27 in Beirut.
On Tuesday President Bush called Prince Abdullah to express cautious praise for his proposal, saying the United States would welcome a full normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world after a comprehensive peace agreement was reached.
Mr. Arafat, who is 72, was alert and lively, by turns humorous and defiant as he reflected on his decades-long rivalry with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his current predicament. Though at times he bitterly criticized Israel's actions, at other moments he insisted that his confinement here did not bother him.
"I am an old general," he said with an indulgent smile, when asked about three recent Israeli missile strikes within yards of his office. Israel has repeatedly said it has no intention of hurting Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat noted with satisfaction recent signs of Israeli dissent, pointing in particular to a letter signed by more than 250 reserve members of the armed forces refusing to serve in the occupied territories. But when asked if he thought Mr. Sharon's coalition government would be split by the Saudi proposal, he said: "We hope not. We hope all of them will accept it."
Mr. Arafat pointed out that Mr. Sharon, in his long military and political career, had supported some difficult Israeli concessions for peace, including the withdrawal from Sinai to achieve peace with Egypt. "He demolished by himself all the settlements" in Sinai, he said. "If there's a will, there's a way."
Holding his usual predawn office hours, Mr. Arafat wore his trademark black and white keffiyeh and olive-drab uniform, his collar decorated with pins showing the Palestinian and American flags and the emblem of the European Union. Two trays of cookies were to his right, and two four-inch stacks of paper lay in front of him. His desk was littered with office supplies and with five Lucite bulbs holding models of the Kaaba, the holiest Muslim shrine in Mecca. Enormous photographs of the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine in Jerusalem, decorated the walls before and behind him.
Mr. Arafat repeatedly parried questions with his characteristic expression, "Not to forget."
"Not to forget," Mr. Arafat said, when it was suggested that the Americans thought he had not done enough to fight violence, "I didn't send my helicopters and my F-15's and my F-16's and my tanks to any Israeli city. But in spite of that, we are completely committed to the peace of the brave, which we have signed. Not only for us, the peace. The peace is for us, the Palestinians; for them, the Israelis; for the whole Middle East."
Outside his starkly lit, third-floor office, Mr. Arafat's compound was cast in shadows. A half dozen guards with Kalashnikov rifles stood sentry at the inner and outer gates, two of them warming themselves by a blazing fire set in a steel drum.
The Israeli tanks are gone from the positions they occupied for weeks within a hundred yards of the compound. Israel pulled them back on Sunday, after Palestinian security forces arrested three men accused of taking part in the killing of Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli tourism minister, on Oct. 17.
But Israel has said Mr. Arafat remains confined to Ramallah, where he has been since early December. "This is a big mistake by them," Mr. Arafat said, arguing that he had taken the steps Israel demanded as a condition for his release.
Questioned about Mr. Sharon's recent statement that he regretted Israel's failure to kill Mr. Arafat when it had the chance in Lebanon, Mr. Arafat smiled and said Israel had in fact tried to kill him. "I have to ask him, Does this help?" he said of the comment about his death. "Does it help the peace process?"
"It seems that he doesn't want to forget 1982," Mr. Arafat said. That year, Mr. Sharon, as defense minister, led an invasion of Lebanon to drive the Palestine Liberation Organization away from Israel's northern border. Israeli forces wound up besieging Mr. Arafat in Beirut, much as they are now doing in Ramallah.
Asked about his confinement, Mr. Arafat said, "For me, it's not the first time." More important, he said, were the Israeli restrictions faced by average Palestinians, which he described as "the siege, the reoccupation of liberated Palestinian areas, these checkpoints that you see for yourself."
"It's creating a state of explosion," he said.
He warned that new "buffer zones" planned by Mr. Sharon to separate Israelis and Palestinians would turn Palestinian areas into a patchwork of "Bantustans." He said Mr. Sharon was planning a "Berlin Wall" around Jerusalem.
Many leaders of Mr. Arafat's own faction, Fatah, say Palestinian militants should focus their violence on Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Asked his reaction to a recent attack west of Ramallah that killed six Israeli soldiers, Mr. Arafat said: "I condemned it completely, and I declared a state of emergency. I took very difficult steps."
He appeared to be referring to measures he took before that, in December, when he called for a halt to all attacks on Israelis.
Among such steps, Mr. Arafat noted that he had detained the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which he called the second biggest faction in the P.L.O., and he said that he had arrested some members of Fatah.
He accused Israel of provoking Palestinian violence through its policy of tracking down and killing militants, including from Fatah.
One issue Mr. Arafat declined to discuss was a ship smuggling munitions under Palestinian command that Israel intercepted in the Red Sea in January. The Palestinian leader simply waved a hand over one shoulder, as if to say the matter was behind him.
When he returned triumphantly to Ramallah seven years ago, Mr. Arafat appeared to be on the cusp of his dream, a state of Palestine. But these days, at least one Israeli official has taken to comparing Mr. Arafat wryly to Moses, saying it is not his destiny to reach his goal.
Asked if he believed he would live to see a Palestinian state, Mr. Arafat said, "No doubt, no doubt."
--------
Israelis attack West Bank refugee camps
Associated Press
02/28/2002
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/02/28/israel-attacks.htm
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - Backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, Israeli troops launched a major assault on two West Bank refugee camps Thursday, a first in 17 months of fighting. Nine Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in heavy gun battles, and more than 90 Palestinians were wounded, doctors said.
The military said the Balata and Jenin camps were strongholds of Palestinian militants, and that Thursday's operation was intended to show that "there is no refuge for terror." A militia leader said his men would die rather than surrender.
The fighting came just hours after Saudi Arabia presented its new peace initiative in a world forum for the first time. Under the proposal, the Arab world would make peace with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
Also late Wednesday, a Palestinian woman with an explosives belt blew herself up near an Israeli checkpoint. Dareen Abu Aisheh, a 21-year-old English literature student at An Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus, was the second woman to do that since the fighting began in September 2000. Three Israeli policemen as well as two Palestinians who were in a car with Abu Aisheh were hurt in the incident.
Thursday's clashes brought to 1,006 the number of deaths on the Palestinian side in the past 17 months. On the Israeli side, 288 people have been killed.
Israeli troops have repeatedly entered Palestinian towns and villages, but have largely stayed out of the 27 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many of them strongholds of militants.
Tanks cannot enter the narrow alleys of the crowded camps, and the military has not sent in large ground forces, apparently to avoid Israeli casualties. Referring to the gunmen's boasting that Israeli soldiers would not dare enter the camps, the army said in a statement that until Thursday's operation, "the terror organizations saw these refugee camps as a safe haven from the Israeli security forces."
After a day of fighting at Balata, Israeli troops stormed Palestinian homes on the outskirts of the camp at nightfall Thursday, searching for wanted men and weapons, witnesses said.
In several cases, troops blew holes into walls to get from one building to the next and to avoid being exposed to fire from Palestinian militiamen lurking in nearby alleys. The ground forces were backed up by tanks and helicopters firing machine guns.
The Israeli army began taking up positions around Balata last week, after six Israeli soldiers were killed in the West Bank by gunmen from the Al Aqsa Brigades militia. A leader of the militia, Nasser Awais, and hundreds of his followers are holed up in Balata, home to 20,000 Palestinians.
Speaking by phone as Thursday's assault got under way, Awais said that "Israeli troops will not enter the camp except over our dead bodies."
Early Thursday, dozens of Israeli tanks surrounded the camp, and helicopter gunships flew overhead. Gunmen patrolling the outskirts of Balata alerted each other by mobile phones and began firing at the Israeli forces.
Israeli troops fired heavy machine guns from the tanks and helicopters, and at least two Israeli missiles hit Balata, plunging it into darkness. Militiamen set off dozens of homemade bombs.
Gunman Mohannad Sharaya, 23, said that at one point, he and six militiamen were seeking cover in an alley when Israeli troops from a hilltop post overlooking the camp aimed a laserbeam at the group to guide their fire.
Israeli troops also took up positions in an elementary school in the camp. Gunmen fired sporadically at the school, but the military denied claims that soldiers were trapped inside the school.
At one point, a reporter saw soldiers in a helicopter briefly firing a machine gun toward about 200 Palestinian civilians gathered near the entrance of the camp.
Two Palestinians - a gunman and a civilian - and an Israeli soldier were killed. Palestinian doctors said more than 85 people were wounded in Balata, most of them gunmen.
Residents said they heard on Israel Radio's Arabic language service that civilians were being offered to leave the camp until 3 p.m., though such announcement was never made over camp loudspeakers.
Several young women and children rushed out of the camp. "I want my children to survive, but our men will never leave the camp," said Fatma Said, who was leaving with her three children, including a 7-month-old baby in her arms.
Israeli tanks also entered the West Bank town of Jenin from three directions, Palestinians said, surrounding the refugee camp at the western edge of the town.
Palestinians said seven Palestinian policemen were killed in exchanges of fire, and eight people were wounded, including several civilians. In one incident, fighting erupted outside the home of the Jenin police chief. Two of the chief's guards and his 24-year-old son were killed, witnesses said.
Ahmed Abdel Rahman, an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, accused Israel of trying to destroy hopes for peace. Asked about Israel's charge that the camps are strongholds of militants, Abdel Rahman said: "We cannot prevent the Palestinians from defending themselves and their land as long as there is occupation."
The violence persisted despite local efforts to calm the tensions and a Saudi proposal to end the decades-old Israel-Arab conflict.
Israeli and Palestinian security commander met Thursday to consider the situation in the Gaza Strip, said Gaza police chief Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaidie.
On Tuesday, the security chiefs had a stormy meeting, trading demands and charges. The Palestinians asked the Israelis for a timetable for lifting the many roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza, imposed shortly after the violence began. Israel told the Palestinians that they must dismantle the Fatah militias.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia raised its Middle East peace initiative for the first time in a world forum Wednesday night, while accusing Israel of "systematic terrorism" and trying to expel the Palestinians.
Israel expressed disappointment, saying it had hoped for peaceful words - not confrontational language.
Saudi Arabia's U.N. Ambassador Fawzi Shobokshi was a late addition to speakers at a two-day open meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the Mideast, and his address was eagerly awaited because of the attention focused on Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal, floated in Saudi and American media this month.
-------- landmines
Funds needed to rid Central America of landmines
REUTERS SWITZERLAND:
February 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14764/story.htm
GENEVA - A shortage of funds is threatening Central America's chances of becoming the first recent conflict zone to become landmine-free, as world attention focuses on Afghanistan, an expert said.
William McDonough, coordinator of the Organisation of American States' (OAS) Assistance Programme for Demining in Central America, said Honduras and Costa Rica could be clear of anti-personnel landmines by the end of the year.
Nicaragua - the greatest challenge with fewer than half of its 130,000 buried landmines destroyed after eight years of effort - could eradicate them by the end of 2004, he added.
But some $5 million is needed, mainly this year, to ensure completion of OAS programmes to eradicate the deadly legacy of the region's civil wars, the former U.S. army colonel said.
"In light of the events of September 11 and the response of the donor community to help Afghanistan respond to its landmine crisis, we are sensing a shortage of sufficient resources...," McDonough told a news briefing.
"We have expressed our concern that donor fatigue not create a situation where we would need to slow down or suspend operations while waiting for additional resources," added the OAS official, who was in Geneva to attend four-day demining talks.
Guatemala, still strewn with unexploded ordinance - grenades, small-caliber mortar shells and huge aerial bombs - is due to complete its programme in 2005.
But it is too soon to say when Colombia, where the government and rebel Marxists have stepped up fighting in recent weeks, might be ripe for demining, according to McDonough.
"Unless and until we have a peace settlement in place in Colombia, it would be impossible for us to set up this kind of programme," he said.
-------- nato
NATO Fails to Nab Accused War Criminal in Bosnia Raid
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nato-bosnia-operation.html
SARAJEVO - NATO troops swooped into a remote Bosnian village on Thursday, blasting their way into buildings and seizing a weapons cache in what proved a fruitless search for accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic.
The alliance said the operation showed its determination to capture the former Bosnian Serb leader and other suspects wanted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
A large contingent of soldiers from the NATO-led SFOR peacekeeping force sealed off the village of Celebici in mountainous southeastern Bosnia.
SFOR said it had received intelligence that Karadzic was hiding in a nearby compound.
``Karadzic was not found at this location,'' SFOR said in a statement. ``However, this operation demonstrates SFOR's capabilities and resolve to act in apprehending, by force if necessary, persons indicted for war crimes.''
SFOR said it had found three weapons caches at the compound containing ``significant quantities'' of anti-tank rockets, grenades, mortar rounds, automatic machine guns, anti-personnel mines and large-caliber ammunition.
Western officials have said in recent months they are stepping up efforts to ensure wartime political leader Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic are brought to justice.
The two men have been indicted on genocide charges both for the 1995 mass killing of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and for the three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo, which killed around 12,000 people.
With their erstwhile patron, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, now on trial at The Hague tribunal, Karadzic and Mladic are top of the tribunal's wanted list.
SERB PROTEST
The peacekeepers cut off all routes leading to Celebici. A police officer from the nearby town of Foca said no one was allowed to leave home during the operation and several helicopters had landed in the area.
The village is 10 km (six miles) from the border with Yugoslavia in the mountainous area where Karadzic is widely believed to be hiding, though he is also thought to venture sometimes across the border to his native Montenegro.
Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic protested against the operation, complaining his authorities had not been informed or consulted in advance.
``It is impermissible that such an operation take place without the knowledge of any institution of the Serb Republic,'' Ivanic told the Bosnian Serb parliament in Banja Luka.
Ivanic said SFOR's commander, U.S. General John Sylvester, had told him soldiers searched around 40 buildings in Celebici, and entered 18 with the use of explosives. He said that nobody was injured in the raid but added: ``People suffered stress.''
A NATO official confirmed explosives were used and said an SFOR soldier had been slightly injured by one blast.
Bosnian Serb media reported gunfire was heard in the area. But the NATO official said the soldiers did not appear to have encountered resistance.
The area is normally under control of German SFOR troops but the force declined to reveal which soldiers were involved in the raid. ``Troops from more than one nation took part in this operation,'' SFOR spokesman Daryl Morrell said.
According to both Western and Serbian sources, former military commander Mladic spends time in Belgrade and is protected by elements of the Yugoslav Army.
Both Karadzic and Mladic are believed to be heavily guarded and fear of casualties among Western troops is a major reason they have not been arrested so far.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan downplays Indian arms spending
By Mark Kukis
2/28/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28022002-033655-2204r
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 28 -- Pakistani officials on Thursday downplayed concerns about hikes in neighboring India's defense spending, saying it was "no reason" to "follow suit."
"Pakistan is not in any arms race with India," said chief military government spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, who spoke to reporters in Islamabad.
"Pakistan continues to asses its requirements and we'll do what's appropriate," Qureshi said.
Qureshi said "just because a neighboring country or India" increases arms acquisitions "is no reason for Pakistan to react or follow suit."
India on Thursday announced a 4.8 percent hike in its defense spending, raising defense funding to $13.8 billion.
Presenting the national budget before the Indian lawmakers, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said the defense budget has been increased by $616 million to reach a total of $13.8 billion. The increase is nearly one third of last year's 15 percent hike.
Sinha ruled out compromise on defense spending. "If need be, I will provide more funds," the finance minister said.
The proposed hike in India's national defense spending is aimed at meeting the large costs involved in the military buildup on the country's shared border with Pakistan. India reportedly has positioned more than 1 million troops along its border with Pakistan following the Dec. 13 attack on its Parliament.
At least one-third of the $13.8 billion budget was pegged for defense purchases. India recently signed deals to purchase defense equipment from Russia, the United States and Israel.
Pakistani officials have denounced the recent agreement between the United States and India to arm New Delhi with sophisticated U.S. radar, saying the deal risked escalating already high tensions in the region. Last week in New Delhi, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers announced U.S. plans to sell India radars, which are to be used by Indian forces in Kashmir.
The deal marks the first major arms agreement between the United States and India, Pakistan's long-time rival and neighbor.
The agreement also represents the most significant U.S. involvement in Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region that has sparked two wars between Pakistan and India.
Normally high tensions along India and Pakistan's shared border intensified in December, when suicide gunmen stormed the Parliament building in New Delhi. India blamed Pakistan for the attack, pointing to Islamabad's history of backing Islamic militants in Kashmir.
Pakistan denied any involvement and has insisted it is only offering moral and political support to Kashmiri separatists, who have waged a bloody insurgency against India's largely Hindu government.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly voiced calls for negations to ease tensions along the border, where both sides have massed armies in the largest-ever military buildup in the region. India has so far refused to take up Pakistan's offer for high-level talks aimed at diffusing the crisis.
And recently New Delhi ruled out scaling down the presence of Indian forces along the border with Pakistan, effectively leaving the situation deadlocked.
The U.S.-India radar agreement is particularly irksome to Pakistan, which has long sought sophisticated military hardware from the United States and aided the recent U.S. military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan. But Washington largely broke military dealings with both India and Pakistan after the two nations conducted twin nuclear weapons tests in 1998.
In particular, Pakistan wants to acquire U.S. F-16 warplanes. But the Pentagon has been unwilling to follow through with any deals, which had begun to take shape before 1998.
India, meanwhile, has continued to rely largely on Russia for its arms. But recent comments by U.S. military officials signaled a willingness from the Pentagon to work more closely with India in the U.S. military effort against terrorism.
-------- philippines
Philippines Says End Near for Abu Sayyaf
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-philippines.html
MANILA - The Philippines said on Thursday the end was near for the Abu Sayyaf Muslim rebel group linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network but added it faced a tough job flushing out the insurgents.
``We have killed about 190 Abu Sayyaf members and captured quite a lot of them and many surrendered also because of the intense pressure of the military. So we are now seeing the end game, the end is near so far as the Abu Sayyaf is concerned,'' Philippine National Security Adviser Rolio Golez told a business forum, Golez said.
He said the group started in May, 2001 with a little over 1,000 in the regions of Basilan and Sulu and is now down to 180 members due to a very intense military campaign.
But Golez said it was still a tough job for Filipino troops as the rebels were now believed to be hiding in a rugged terrain area on Basilan island.
The Abu Sayyaf, which operates in the south of the country, is included in Washington's list of foreign terrorists organizations, and is also the target of joint military exercise between the United States and the Philippines
The group claims to be fighting for an independent Muslim state in the south, but in reality pursues kidnap for ransom.
Since May, Abu Sayyaf has been holding an American couple hostage for nine months on Basilan island since their abduction from an upscale beach resort in central Philippines.
Military officials said government troops clashed with the combined forces of the Abu Sayyaf bandits and guerrillas of a separate Muslim group in Basilan earlier on Thursday, wounding eight rebels. There were no reports of casualties on the government side.
Golez also said there were some groups trying to obstruct the government's fight against terrorism, namely the New People's Army (NPA) -- the militant arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) which threatened to hurt American soldiers should they wander into their territory.
Communist rebels raided at dawn on Thursday a remote police station in western Samar in central Philippines, killing two policemen and carting away at least 15 high-powered firearms, army officials said.
Separate fighting also broke out between government troops and Muslim gunmen belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Magiundanao, southern Philippines, on Wednesday.
Three MILF rebels were killed while a civilian volunteer fighter and a nine-year-old girl were wounded in the clash, Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier General Edilberto Adan said.
The MILF is engaged in peace talks with the government, although there are intermittent clashes with troops.
The Abu Sayyaf, included in Washington's list of foreign terrorist organizations, have been holding an American couple hostage for nine months on Basilan island since their abduction from an upscale beach resort in central Philippines in May 2001.
-------- russia / georgia
U.S. Military in Georgia Rankles Russia
Anti-Terror Plan for Ex-Soviet Republic Could Aggravate 'Complex Situation'
By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14157-2002Feb27?language=printer
MOSCOW -- A U.S. plan to train and equip the Georgian military to fight what officials of both countries consider a growing terrorist threat in Georgia's remote Pankisi Gorge set off a wave of consternation here today as the Kremlin confronted the prospect of a fresh American military presence at Russia's back door.
The plan was clearly distasteful to the Russians, although a senior U.S. diplomat said they were told about it months ago, and the plan does not envision the use of U.S. troops in combat. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said U.S. soldiers in Georgia "could aggravate even further the already complex situation" in the former Soviet republic, which is struggling with a weak government, extreme poverty and a strong separatist movement in its western quarter.
The Pentagon has begun providing combat helicopters to the Georgian military and will soon begin training several Georgian battalions to combat rebels from the Russian republic of Chechnya in the virtually lawless region bordering the Caucasus mountains along Georgia's northern border.
Russia has complained about the rebels in the Pankisi Gorge for several years, arguing that they are fighters regrouping from a protracted war against Russian troops in Chechnya. Russia has alternately threatened Georgian officials and negotiated with them to solve the rebel occupation of the gorge, which also is home to an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Chechen refugees.
That effort has failed to deliver any noticeable results, but the idea of U.S. involvement there has rankled Moscow. Ivanov, in an apparent attempt to head off U.S. intervention, proposed again today that Russia and Georgia try together to stamp out the rebels -- a suggestion Georgia has already rejected.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ducked the issue, saying only that Russian authorities had talked to Georgian officials but had not obtained information about the plan.
In describing U.S. support for the Georgian forces, President Bush said today that it would be limited mostly to training and equipment. A senior U.S. diplomat here said Washington does not want to mount its own combat operation, but instead would like to increase the chance for Georgian troops to repel a terrorist threat.
Russia and the United States say rebels seeking refuge in the gorge from the conflict in Chechnya include Arab fighters who have contacts with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and have trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Russian officials say one of the rebels is a Jordanian named Khattab, a shadowy fighter they accuse of being the main link between Chechen militants and al Qaeda.
The U.S. official said that although the Russians may not embrace the plan, it is not likely to disrupt relations. Putin, more than many Russian officials, "is able to take the long view and see the benefit to Russia of some of the things we are doing," he said.
Putin was quick to support the Bush administration's war on terrorism after Sept. 11 and has sought to portray Russia's military campaign in Chechnya as part of the global anti-terrorist effort.
Georgian officials tried to play down the U.S. involvement. Zurab Abashidze, the Georgian ambassador to Russia, said the five U.S. military advisers now in the capital, Tbilisi, would leave by Thursday. The group was scheduled to meet with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze tonight.
The ambassador said any military operation would be carried out solely by Georgian troops. Although the United States is clamoring for action, he said, the Georgian government intends to consider its moves very carefully before sending troops to the thickly forested gorge, 250 miles from Tbilisi. "We see how things are developing in Chechnya," he said. "We wouldn't like to create a hotbed of military activities next to our capital."
Although Georgia has considered itself a U.S. ally since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has its own presence there: It maintains 7,000 servicemen and two military bases on Georgian territory.
Russia holds considerable sway in the western region of Abkhazia, which declared independence from Georgia in 1993. Russia has tacitly supported the territory ever since, although its peacekeeping force there is supposed to be neutral.
Even some of Russia's most liberal legislators were irritated by the notion of a U.S. initiative on Russia's border.
"Georgia's neighbors are not the Americans, but Russia, where hundreds of thousands of Georgian citizens work," said Boris Nemtsov, one of the Duma's best-known liberal lawmakers. He said Shevardnadze is pursuing "an absolutely crazy policy by orienting the country only towards the U.S."
The U.S. involvement in Georgia follows the placement of several hundred troops in Central Asia to support the war in Afghanistan. Although the United States has insisted to Russia that it does not want to establish permanent bases there, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said this month that Washington will have a continuing presence in the region on Russia's southern rim.
---
U.S. takes war on terrorism to guerrillas
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-432054.htm
The United States brushed aside Russian skepticism yesterday and dispatched U.S. military advisers to help the former Soviet republic of Georgia fight guerrillas linked to al Qaeda.
Senior U.S. officials and Army officers met with Georgian leaders in the capital, Tbilisi, as Washington formally announced plans to open a new front in the war on terrorism. Up to 200 military advisers will be sent to train and equip anti-terrorist forces in the troubled Caucasus nation.
"As long as there is al Qaeda influence anywhere, we will help the host countries rout them out and bring them to justice," President Bush told reporters on a visit to Charlotte, N.C.
Asked whether he thought guerrillas in the rugged Pankisi Gorge region of Georgia were influenced by al Qaeda, Mr. Bush said, "I do."
At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher would not confirm the presence of al Qaeda operatives in Georgia, although he acknowledged potential links between the terrorist network and "foreign fighters" operating in the volatile country.
Russia had maintained that guerrillas from the breakaway republic of Chechnya were hiding in Georgia long before September 11, but the government of President Eduard Shevardnadze repeatedly dismissed the claim.
Yesterday, Mr. Boucher said that "some of the Chechen terrorists have links to al Qaeda, particularly in the form of training," and officials have "seen the presence of foreign fighters crossing in and out of Georgia."
"But I can't say that the people who have received training from al Qaeda have gone in and out of Georgia," he said.
Mr. Shevardnadze has been trying to diminish Russian influence in Georgia. Moscow yesterday said the presence of U.S. soldiers in Georgia could destabilize the region further.
"Regarding the possible deployment of U.S. military ... this could further aggravate the situation in the region, which is already difficult," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told ORT public television in Moscow.
But Mr. Boucher rejected those charges, arguing that Washington's military assistance to Georgia would help stabilize the Caucasus region and make it more secure.
"We believe that Georgia's ability to handle these types of problems on its own is also in Russia's interest," he said.
He also noted that Moscow had been kept informed of the contacts between Washington and Tbilisi, including "our intentions and our plans for the train-and-equip program in Georgia."
Another senior State Department official said later that Russia never objected to the U.S. plans.
Lynn Pascoe, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, met yesterday in Tbilisi with Mr. Shevardnadze, a day after several U.S. military advisers arrived in Georgia to discuss the training plans.
Georgia would be Washington's third front in the anti-terrorism war, which started in Afghanistan in October and so far has expanded only to the Philippines, where U.S. forces are training the military and participating in exercises in Manila's battle against Muslim Abu Sayyaf guerrillas.
At the Pentagon yesterday, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a U.S. military assessment team from Europe had visited Georgia.
"The fact of the matter is that as we help our friends increase their own security capabilities, we are helping in the global war on terrorism and against other terrorist threats that they may have," he said.
---
U.S. Troops Fulfil Georgian Leader's Long Plans
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-georgia.html
TBILISI - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said on Thursday his former Soviet state's decision to accept U.S. military training and hardware was part of a longstanding plan to strengthen its independence.
The comments were his first since Washington promised elite troops to train and equip Georgia's army. Russia has denounced the U.S. move as liable to aggravate an already volatile situation in the sensitive Transcaucasus region, which straddles export routes for oil from big new fields in the Caspian Sea.
The plan amounts to a diplomatic coup for Shevardnadze, who was Soviet foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s and has tried in the post-communist period to orient his country toward the West despite civil wars and ethnic conflict.
The 74-year-old Georgian leader, who has survived several attempts on his life in the chaotic past decade, indicated there was more at stake for his strategic Black Sea state than an operation to deal with Islamist militants said to be entrenched in a remote gorge close to the mountain border with Russia.
``We have been working toward this for eight years. Step by step we have been trying, against the background of great American assistance, to establish factors of time and trust,'' he told reporters. ``We also tried to establish good neighborly relations with Russia. But nothing much came of it.''
Washington says it is sending the instructors and equipment to help Georgia fight Islamists in the remote Pankisi Gorge near Russia's breakaway Chechnya region as part of its response to the September 11 attacks on the United States. U.S. officials say its forces will not be involved in combat.
AMERICAN PRESENCE IRKS RUSSIA
But Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov issued a fresh broadside against the proposal in a telephone conversation on Wednesday with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
``Moscow has well-founded concerns that the direct involvement of U.S. military in the fight against terrorism in Georgia could further complicate the situation in the region,'' the Foreign Ministry said he told Powell.
``Washington must take this into account.''
A decade after the Soviet Union broke up, Russia maintains military bases in Georgia, plus peacekeepers monitoring ethnic conflicts that the Georgian army lacks the capacity to resolve.
Shevardnadze said three or four U.S. military specialists had arrived in Georgia so far.
``Their goal is to strengthen the sovereignty and military readiness of Georgia,'' he said.
``With the assistance of the American specialists, military units will be trained, one or two, which will be the elite. This will be the basis to create an up-to-date army.''
GEORGIAN GRIPES WITH MOSCOW
Georgians have gone without heat and suffered power cuts since Moscow cut off the gas when Soviet rule ended. Two Georgian provinces -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- declared independence in the 1990s, driving out Georgian troops and hundreds of thousands of residents.
Georgia has long hinted that it believes Moscow fostered the secessionist uprisings to keep a foothold in a land where Moscow's troops have guarded their southern frontier for centuries.
``I am especially disappointed that it is the Americans who come and say, 'How can we strengthen Georgia?' Why doesn't Russia think about this?'' Shevardnadze said, adding that Moscow had left Georgia defenseless after the Soviet Union broke up.
``Russia took everything they could take from us. There were 1,000 tanks. Two aviation divisions, with the highest class of aircraft. They left nothing but rusty guns.''
Moscow has been angling for permission for its own troops to deal with suspected Chechen rebel bases in the Pankisi Gorge. Shevardnadze has resisted any Russian role there and his acceptance of U.S. help seems to put an end to the issue.
Ivlian Khaindrava, an independent political analyst in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, told Reuters the Pankisi Gorge was ''not just about the fight against terrorism but about the interests of Russia and the United States in the region.''
Ex-Soviet Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia are surrounded by the big regional powers of Russia, Iran and Turkey.
The Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Russia was losing clout throughout the former Soviet Union: ``Western influence is tightening its grip on her borders,'' it said.
But Shevardnadze called the Russian media response ``genuine hysteria,'' adding: ``Anyone with self-respect should be ashamed of such behavior.''
He should have a chance to hear the reaction of Russian President Vladimir Putin at first hand as he was about to fly to Kazakhstan for a summit of former Soviet states.
---
Georgia says Russia "hysterical" over U.S. troops
By Niko Mchedlishvili
Thursday February 28, 8:04 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-92096.html
TBILISI - Georgia on Thursday dismissed "hysterical" Russian criticism of U.S. plans to send elite forces to help the former Soviet republic fight guerrillas linked to al Qaeda.
Foreign Minister Irakly Menagarishvili told parliament Georgia would tolerate no meddling in its affairs and was determined to restore order to the Pankisi Gorge, where Islamic rebels and Chechen separatists are said to be entrenched.
"What took place yesterday in the Russian mass media was an explosion of hysterical propaganda, including from Russia's political elite, which Georgia considers unacceptable," he said.
Washington's plans dominated Russian airwaves on Wednesday and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the arrival of U.S. military advisers could increase tensions in the region.
Ivanov returned to the attack on Thursday, having raised his concerns with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during a telephone call late on Wednesday.
"Moscow has well-founded concerns that the direct involvement of U.S. military in the fight against terrorism in Georgia could further complicate the situation in the region. Washington must take this into account," Ivanov told Powell, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
U.S. PLEDGE
Ivanov has not said why the U.S. presence could aggravate the situation. Moscow has been pressing for a role for its own troops in ridding the zone of militants.
However, it appears Russia is not ready to grant its former Cold War foe the same latitude in Georgia as that accorded to Washington in Central Asia during the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan. Georgia has a long border with Russia.
U.S. President George W. Bush has defended U.S. plans to send up to 200 special forces troops to train Georgian soldiers, saying he thought Pankisi-based guerrillas were linked to fugitive Osama bin Laden's militant al Qaeda network.
Washington considers bin Laden and al Qaeda responsible for the September 11 hijacked airliner attacks on the United States.
After September 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin smoothed the way for the deployment of hundreds of U.S. troops to the former Soviet Central Asia republics, long considered in Moscow's backyard.
BIG GAME
Ivlian Khaindrava, an independent political analyst, said the Pankisi Gorge was part of a "big political game".
"This is not just about the fight against terrorism but about the interests of Russia and the United States in the region," he told Reuters.
Russia, under pressure to remove thousands of troops still stationed in Georgia, wanted to maintain a foothold in the country. A long-term U.S. anti-terror role in the country could, however, provide the fractious state with much-needed stability.
Rama Sakvarelidze, another independent political scientist, said Georgia's response to Russia's criticism was crucial.
"I think that what is going on in the Pankisi Gorge is the strongest political challenge to Georgia since the country gained independence 10 years ago," he said.
Georgia's Resonance daily newspaper said the arrival of U.S. military advisers was a milestone in the country's history: "The West clearly does not intend to let Georgia remain in Russia's sphere of influence."
Russia's daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Russia was losing influence across the former Soviet Union. "Western influence is tightening its grip on her borders", it said and it was only a matter of time before Ukraine and Belarus followed.
-------- un
U.N. Official Kidnapped in Somalia - Official
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-somalia-kidnap.html
MOGADISHU - Gunmen seized a United Nations official in Mogadishu on Thursday in the first kidnapping of a U.N. staff member in war-torn Somalia for a year, officials from the world body said.
The kidnapping of a Somali worker with the U.N. children's agency UNICEF occurred a day after U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan presented a report saying Somalia remained too dangerous to open a U.N. office in the capital.
``A group of gunmen consisting of six militiamen with a Land Cruiser car kidnapped him early this morning,'' said an official working with UNICEF in Mogadishu who declined to be named.
The official said his colleague was taken hostage by a man demanding that UNICEF reinstate a canceled car rental contract he had held with them or pay a ransom.
The kidnap followed the Friday killing of a 70-year-old Swiss woman who had worked for a humanitarian agency in southern Somalia and several days of clashes in Mogadishu that killed at least 27 people.
Somali gunmen kidnapped nine Westerners and a Somali aid worker in March 2001 after an attack by militiamen loyal to warlord Muse Sudi Yalahow on the Mogadishu compound of the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Somalia has been in the grip of rival warlords since it descended into chaos after the ousting of former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
For most of the past eight years no expatriate U.N. staff have been based in the capital Mogadishu, generally considered to be the most dangerous part of the country, although they have occasionally visited the city for short periods.
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Annan Hopes for Positive Talks with Iraq
February 28, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-iraq-annan.html
BERLIN - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday he was hopeful his talks next week with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri could help bring about the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq.
``They will come, I hope, in a constructive and open mood to discuss frankly with me how we get the inspectors back and how they cooperate with the U.N.,'' Annan told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
``All their friends within the region and beyond the region are telling them to cooperate with the Security Council and I hope they will,'' Annan said.
Confronted with growing threats from Washington, Iraq earlier this month offered to have a dialogue ``without preconditions'' with the United Nations.
Annan last held such discussions a year ago. The new talks are now scheduled for March 7 in New York.
The arms inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign and have not been allowed to return. They sought to verify Iraq has no more nuclear, biological, chemical or long-range missile programs.
The issue of inspections has taken on a new urgency after President Bush said last month that Iraq was part of an ``axis of evil'' with North Korea and Iran, raising expectations that President Saddam Hussein would be Washington's next target in its ``war on terrorism.''
-------- us
Navy almost ran out of bombs in war
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon correspondent
2/28/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28022002-115026-1059r
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 -- The U.S. Navy nearly ran out of satellite-guided weapons in the opening month of the war in Afghanistan and had to borrow weapons from the Air Force to continue the bombing campaign, a top Navy official said Thursday.
"We damn near ran out in Afghanistan," said Adm. Robert Natter, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet based in Norfolk, Va.
The Navy knew it would be short when the war began, Natter said: after debuting the precise, low-cost Joint Direct Attack Munition in the 1999 Kosovo war, the Pentagon only provided enough money to keep the production line for that missile and the Joint Standoff Weapon (AGM-154) going.
"We knew we were under-funding and under-resourced for (precision-guided munitions) because of limited resources," he said. Now "we are buying those like hot cakes."
"Whoever decided to assume this amount of risk (in the Afghan campaign) ... was pretty good, and pretty lucky. I don't want to be that lucky again," he said.
The production line has been pushed to maximum capacity and a second line opened. Natter said the stores of JDAMs and JSOWs on Navy ships would be replenished over the next five years -- provided the weapons are not pressed into service again in a new front on the war on terrorism.
According to Air Force Secretary James Roche, about 1,500 JDAMs are rolling off production lines a month, a number that will reach 2,000 a month next year. As many as 80 JDAMs were used each day in the peak of the war in Afghanistan.
Navy pilots have flown 9,000 battle sorties thus far and were responsible for the lion's share of precision weapons, according to Natter. Of the roughly 18,000 munitions dropped in Afghanistan, 60 percent of them were precision-guided.
Long-range Air Force bombers, with their massive weapons bays, were more useful in attacking widespread targets with traditional dumb or gravity bombs. Navy fighters, instead, delivered one or two PGMs per mission usually against targets that demanded a high degree of accuracy.
Natter said the need for precision munitions will increase. The traditional war plan of opening with PGMs to take out enemy air defenses, followed by dumb bombs for the remainder of the war, is a model that no longer applies, he said.
"It was a fine assumption for 10 years ago," Natter said.
The war on terrorism, however, is likely to put the U.S. military into urban areas where precision munitions of smaller and smaller yields will be required throughout the entire battle, not just in the opening days to minimize civilian casualties.
----
Byrd questions duration of Afghan mission
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020228-70835176.htm
The senior Democrat in the Senate pressed Pentagon officials yesterday for details on how long U.S. troops might stay in Afghanistan, complaining "there's no end in sight in our mission."
The remarks from Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, were among the harshest in Congress yet about the anti-terrorism campaign, which the Pentagon estimates will cost $30 billion this year.
Mr. Byrd, whose committee controls spending legislation, took the opportunity during a subcommittee hearing to grill the No. 2 Defense Department official about the war's costs.
"Instead of concentrating on completing our operations in Afghanistan, the Pentagon seems to be looking for opportunities to stay longer and expand our presence in the region," Mr. Byrd told Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "We seem to be good at developing entrance strategies but not on developing exit strategies. ... There's no end in sight in our mission in Afghanistan."
Mr. Wolfowitz said the Pentagon has no clear view of how long U.S. troops should remain in Afghanistan or how much the operation might eventually cost. That's because "things change and they change rapidly," he said.
"Everything has gone in ways that are unpredictable," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
The U.S. military spent $7.4 billion from September 11 through the end of January on the war in Afghanistan and domestic security operations such as air patrols over American cities, Mr. Wolfowitz told Mr. Byrd. "Roughly $6 billion" of that was for the war in Afghanistan.
The $30 billion estimate for anti-terror war spending this year is just a guess, based on the assumption that operations will continue at their present rate, Mr. Wolfowitz said.
Under questioning from Mr. Byrd, Mr. Wolfowitz said the Pentagon had no estimate of how much it would cost to help train and equip an Afghan army. President Bush has pledged to do so, but Mr. Wolfowitz said Defense Department officials have not decided on the details.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S.-led coalition forces in the Afghan war, yesterday said he planned to make a recommendation on the Afghan army issue within a week to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Mr. Byrd said he didn't want to give Afghanistan or the Pentagon a blank check for unlimited funding, nor did he want the United States to be stuck with troops there for years.
"When will we know when we've achieved victory and it's time to leave Afghanistan?" he asked.
"I can't tell you when we have won," Mr. Wolfowitz replied. "That's something, unfortunately, we only know when the terrorists have stopped."
Mr. Wolfowitz said training an Afghan army will serve to keep Afghanistan from returning to the kind of internal chaos that helped it become a base for al Qaeda, the terrorist network.
"We do not want to see Afghanistan become a haven in three to five years for the same kind of terrorists," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "We have no desire to stay one day longer than we have to."
In his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, Gen. Franks said some Afghan forces currently backed by Iran could be brought into the Afghan army.
The head of the U.S. Central Command said Afghanistan's interim defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, believes that the Iran-backed groups "should be integrated into the force being built." Interim leader Hamid Karzai agrees, Gen. Franks said.
In other testimony yesterday, Mr. Wolfowitz said the United States probably will have prototype rockets capable of destroying an enemy's long-range missile available in about two years.
The military plans by September 2004 to have built four prototype interceptors capable of shooting down an enemy missile at Fort Greeley, Alaska, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
---
White House May Support Peacekeeping Force Growth
Troops May Be Sent To More Afghan Cities
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13997-2002Feb27?language=printer
The Bush administration is nearing a decision to endorse a modest increase in the number of international peacekeepers in Afghanistan that would entail the deployment of forces to one or more cities outside the capital, Kabul.
Administration officials said it is increasingly likely that the United States will support dispatching international troops to Mazar-e Sharif, a key northern city where rival factions are looking for a neutral presence to help overcome mutual distrust, and extending the force's six-month mandate.
While U.S. troops will not participate in any expanded mission, the administration would have to assure other countries that the United States will continue to provide air cover for the peacekeepers and remain available to extract them if they become endangered by hostile forces, officials said.
Discussions among President Bush's senior foreign policy advisers about the international force, which numbers 4,500 troops and is restricted to Kabul, have reached a climax this week and officials said the decision could be revealed to U.S. allies today.
The deliberations have taken on heightened urgency as skirmishes among rival Afghan commanders have threatened to undermine the fledgling interim government led by Hamid Karzai. The security situation and uncertainty about the ultimate mandate of the International Security and Assistance Force have prompted Turkey to warn it might not take over command of the mission from Britain in April as initially envisioned.
Across the U.S. government, officials continue to see the training and outfitting of a central Afghan army as ultimately the best guarantor of stability and national unity. But these officials also increasingly recognize that it will take time before such a force can be deployed in large enough numbers to prevent Afghanistan from disintegrating again into chaos.
Maj. Gen. Charles Campbell of the U.S. Central Command returned Tuesday from Afghanistan after leading a team to evaluate the security situation and the prospects for a national army. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the Central Command chief, said he plans to provide a recommendation to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by next week.
In the meantime, administration officials said they plan to move ahead with a decision over expanding the international force's mission. "Are there places or intermediate measures as we try to stand up a national army and police where a neutral presence would be useful?" asked an administration official, summing up the issue now facing Bush's national security team.
The debate within the administration has already gone a long way toward closing the gap between the Pentagon, which has argued against expanding the international force, and State Department officials who have suggested that as many as 25,000 troops would be needed.
Administration officials said the discussions focus less on the number of peacekeepers and more on a region-by-region appraisal of where an international presence would be productive, U.S. officials said.
The administration is likely to oppose the deployment of peacekeepers to areas, such as the northern city of Kunduz and southern city of Kandahar, where the U.S. military is still tracking remnants of the al Qaeda network and the ousted Taliban regime, officials said. Franks and other U.S.
Nor is the administration looking to endorse the large-scale deployment of peacekeepers to areas, such as the western city of Herat, where local authorities seem to have matters under control.
Bush's senior advisers are most likely to back the expansion of peacekeepers into cities, such as Mazar-e Sharif and possibly Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border, where local commanders are trying to resolve their differences, U.S. officials said.
While some congressional leaders and foreign diplomats have urged that tens of thousands of troops be added to the international force, the administration thinking centers on a more modest increase in the thousands, perhaps doubling the size of the current contingent.
One major constraint on the size of the international force is funding. As the force expands, an increasing proportion of the troops will come from such developing countries as Turkey and Bangladesh that are hard-pressed to cover their costs.
A decision to expand its mandate could require the United States and other wealthier nations to contribute to a U.N. Security Council fund established to pay for the force. The account is empty.
----
U.S. Eyes Military Assistance For Yemen
Counterterrorism Aid to Philippines Cited as a Model
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14168-2002Feb27?language=printer
The Bush administration is considering providing military aid and other counterterrorism assistance to the government of Yemen, the commander of the war in Afghanistan said yesterday as he outlined the emerging U.S. strategy for broadening the war on terrorism.
Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief of the U.S. Central Command, told a congressional committee that the United States is looking at providing assistance to several countries where it believes international terrorist groups are active. He said discussions are underway with Yemen, among others.
Franks warned against assuming that the United States will soon be launching combat operations outside Afghanistan. "We will not use the Afghanistan model" of first bombing and then sending in conventional ground forces, Franks testified.
Rather, he said, diplomatic and military tools will be used mainly to help friendly governments squelch terrorist organizations on their soil. That is the pattern of U.S. counterterrorism assistance that emerged first in the Philippines and more recently in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
"That is the answer of where we go next," Franks said.
Franks indicated that discussions with Yemen are well underway. Yemen's ambassador to the United States went even further, saying in an interview that Yemen has already asked for military assistance, ranging from training for Yemeni troops to helicopters, communications equipment and other military gear. "We're asking for everything," said the envoy, Abdulwahab Alhajjri. "You name it, we want it."
The testimony of Franks and comments from other officials underscore that in the post-Afghanistan stage of the U.S. war on terrorism, the model for U.S. military operations could be the one first seen in recent weeks in the Philippines, where the government is combating Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamic group.
The United States is giving the Philippine military better equipment, such as more secure radios, and has deployed 600 troops to provide training in counterterrorism tactics, such as hostage rescue. It is also providing intelligence gathered by Navy and Air Force aircraft that specialize in imagery and signals interception. But the United States plans, for the most part, to rely on local forces for any ground action.
Likewise, the United States has also begun training forces in the republic of Georgia and providing the Georgian military with attack helicopters to help the government in its battle against what it says are al Qaeda members and other militants.
During a visit to North Carolina yesterday, President Bush offered his view of the expanded U.S. mission. "Obviously, we've got a presence in the Philippines because there's an al Qaeda-affiliated group of people there. And we've had some successes in Yemen, where we're working. We're working around the world."
Pentagon officials had expected to escalate the U.S. military efforts in Colombia, but the expansion of the counterterrorism war there was rejected, at least temporarily, in a White House meeting on Tuesday night, administration officials said.
In recent months, the international environment for such counterterrorism efforts has improved dramatically, said Peter Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international affairs, who testified alongside Franks. "Our leverage with other countries in pushing for this kind of cooperation is way up," he said.
Yemen is perhaps the most extreme example of countries to which the United States is considering providing assistance. It is not as friendly with the United States as the Philippines and the republic of Georgia are, and its government remains uneasy about any U.S. troop presence. The Yemeni ambassador, however, said his government might welcome the temporary deployment of small numbers of American military trainers.
There is also a lingering nervousness about Yemen on the U.S. side. Indeed, Franks listed Yemen with Sudan, Somalia, Iran and Iraq as states in his area of operations -- which stretches from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia -- that continue to concern him. Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks, was born in Yemen, and his terrorist network has long been active there. Scores of the prisoners being held by the United States from the war in Afghanistan are natives of Yemen.
The USS Cole was bombed in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000, and the lack of Yemeni government cooperation in the investigation led to widespread grumbling by U.S. officials.
But Yemen has been far more helpful since September, officials said yesterday. "This is a country that has taken a lot of visible steps against terrorists in their midst," Rodman said in a brief interview. "They've been cooperating since September 11th. They would like to put themselves in the category of friend."
The question that remains, Rodman said, is whether "they have the will to do things."
Over the past month, a parade of top U.S. officials has visited Yemen. CIA Director George J. Tenet, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Franks went there, and Bush telephoned Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih on Feb. 11.
Franks said in his written testimony that the United States believes that in recent months al Qaeda and groups associated with it have targeted "western interests" in Djibouti, which lies just across the Red Sea from Yemen. He also said that suspected al Qaeda members in Somalia, just to the south, have moved "in and out of the country" in response to rumors that the United States was preparing to attack them.
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Panel on military women in peril
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020228-18939939.htm
The Pentagon is debating whether to extend the life of its long-running women's advisory committee as pro-military groups urge Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to let it die.
The charter for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) expires today. Throughout its 50-year history, the group received rubber-stamp, two-year extensions.
But Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is being pressed by conservatives to abolish the panel. He has been holding meetings at the Pentagon on whether to extend the group's charter or perhaps redefine it. Conservatives believed they were on their way to winning the battle. But yesterday, Mr. Wolfowitz met with a Republican congresswoman who warned him of a stiff fight if he does not renew the charter.
"To the best of my knowledge, no decision has been made yet," Jim Turner, a Pentagon spokesman, said late yesterday afternoon. A number of pro-military groups have criticized DACOWITS as a tool of the feminist left, instead of an advocate for the well-being of the troops.
"If the Bush administration does the wrong thing and continues the Bill Clinton military agenda, that would be a huge disappointment of those military voters who made all the difference in the election," said Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness and is a former committee member.
Adopting the committee's agenda, she said, "would hurt the war effort by taking political correctness to extremes. With a serious war going on, Secretary Rumsfeld should not retain an extreme feminist committee pushing a radical agenda that has nowhere to go but over the edge. If the committee's charter is allowed to lapse a sigh of relief will be heard at all military bases and on all the ships at sea."
But liberal women's groups, and many females in uniform, back DACOWITS as a channel through which to convey their needs up the chain of command all the way to the secretary of defense.
Rep. Heather A. Wilson, New Mexico Republican and a former Air Force officer, met yesterday with Mr. Wolfowitz to make that case.
"I told him that I believe the charter for DACOWITS should be renewed," Mrs. Wilson said, adding, "if this is discontinued, I will oppose him strenuously. Women are still a minority in the service. They need to have a voice that is outside the chain of command." She said she will also protest if the charter is in any way scaled back.
Now in its 50th year, DACOWITS' 33 members are mostly women, a large share of them academics. Members typically serve three-year terms. All current members were appointed by the Clinton administration. Mr. Rumsfeld has not made new appointments during the ongoing review. The Pentagon is also studying the necessity of other advisory committees.
During the Clinton era, the committee persistently pushed the Pentagon to open up more combat jobs to women, even though the services repeatedly said no. Women won the right in 1994 to serve on combat ships and pilot combat aircraft. But the Clinton administration kept them out of ground combat, largely due to the issue of upper-body strength.
Since then, DACOWITS has pressed the Navy to open submarines to female sailors and urged the Army to let female soldiers serve in some artillery units. The Navy and Army oppose the moves.
These positions have spurred pro-military groups to charge that the committee is more concerned with careerism than with what is best for combat readiness.
Some of the groups staged a press conference last month to urge nonrenewal of the charter.
"Radical feminist groups push for full integration of women into combat roles, for gender integration basic training, for quotas that establish equal outcomes, not equal opportunity," said Nancy M. Pfotenhauer, president of the Independent Women's Forum.
Mrs. Wilson said she made the point to Mr. Wolfowitz that the makeup of DACOWITS will change under the leadership of President Bush.
"The character of the committee over the last eight years reflected the previous administration but that does not mean this advisory committee should be disbanded. Far from it," said the congresswoman, Air Force academy graduate and "pro-defense Republican" who served on DACOWITS during the first Bush presidency.
She gave two examples of how the committee has helped. It made sure women's hygiene products were available at base stores, after young women service members were too embarrassed to raise the issue and instead had articles mailed from home. Mrs. Wilson also said DACOWITS helped correct a problem in which female pilots who gave birth took longer to gain access back into the cockpit than women who took other types of medical leave.
She said Mr. Wolfowitz "did give me some reassurance he understands the importance of women in the military. He has to listen to a lot of opinions."
Mr. Wolfowitz addressed current and former DACOWITS members at a 50th anniversary party in April.
"I look forward to the advice that will come from your conference here this week," he told the celebrants.
He called the committee's work "practical and sensible advice that cuts to the heart of issues as it considers the overall good of the armed forces."
["Women, wake up, your security is a terminal illusion!" - This was the second most-photographed sign outside the White House in 1984. The first most photographed was a huge mushroom cloud. - et (http://prop1.org/ellen.htm)]
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Ridge: No plans to militarize borders
By Kathy A. Gambrell
UPI White House Reporter
2/28/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28022002-061536-9759r
WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said Thursday that the 1,400 National Guard personnel planned for deployment along the Canadian and Mexican borders were not an effort to militarize U.S. entry points.
"Because of the relationship we have and continue to develop and enhance every day with our friends in Mexico, the last thing we want to do is militarize the borders between friends. We want them open, we want them mutually beneficial, and that is simply a temporary measure," Ridge said during a roundtable discussion.
U.S. officials announced earlier this week that National Guard troops would be deployed to the northern and southern borders to assist other agencies with border protection. The announcement came as Ridge prepared to travel to Mexico for talks with officials on border security, immigration and trade issues. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has moved to secure the nation's borders, cracking down on both the entry of immigrants into the country as well as the movement of cargo into ports and on U.S. roads.
At President George W. Bush's request, Ridge is expected to meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Secretary of Government Santiago Creel in advance of Bush's planned visit there March 21 and March 22. Ridge hopes to put in place an agreement on security with Mexico similar to that reached with Canada. But he stressed that Mexico may have additional problems with flow of drug traffic into the United States and illegal immigration.
"I think the Canadian accord is a good starting point," Ridge said. "We've framed the issues around security and commerce. They've been working on immigration and drug interdiction before. So it's a good place to start."
The United States has 301 ports of entry where goods and people may enter through 3,700 terminals -- border checkpoints. In 2000, 489 million people and 138.5 million trucks and vehicles passed through the U.S. border inspection program, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The United States, Mexico and Canada trade at the rate of $2 billion per day, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Ridge said few significant bottleneck areas exist that slowed down entry and exit along the borders. He pointed to San Ysidro south of San Diego, which has 20 million vehicles passing through annually. He said smart card technology could be an answer to the backlog of people and cargo moving across the border.
Ridge hopes legislation to allow Mexican commercial trucks on U.S. roads would be complete by the time Bush arrives in the region for a visit. Congressional lawmakers have resisted opening U.S. highways to the cargo trucks citing safety concerns.
Also on the agenda for discussion with Mexican officials are immigration issues. In his efforts to reform immigration laws, Bush has, in the past, considered providing guest visas that would allow people from foreign countries, particularly Mexico, to come to the United States and work for a year. Administration officials believe it would cut down on the number of illegal immigrants who cross U.S. borders illegally to find jobs.
"There has been a very high-level working group, with the Attorney General and his office, and the U.S. Department of State, to try to address some of these issues, again, with an eye toward working in collaboration with their counterparts in Mexico, to see if between now and when the two Presidents get together they can address that," Ridge said. He said the issue has picked up momentum within the administration over the past several weeks.
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Two Senators Call for Changes in FBI
Thu Feb 28
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020228/ap_on_go_co/senate_fbi_5
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two senators called for sweeping changes in the FBI (news - web sites) Thursday, including mandated lie detector tests of people working with sensitive information, letting Justice Department (news - web sites) investigators independently look at the agency and protecting whistle-blowers.
"We hope to have a better FBI as a result," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (news), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites).
A bill by Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Charles Grassley (news), R-Iowa, includes proposals to make clear that the Justice Department's inspector general has jurisdiction over the FBI, inclusion of FBI employees under the Federal Whistleblower Act, creation of an FBI internal security division and additional reporting requirements to Congress.
"This bill and continued oversight work are about restoring law and order inside the FBI so that public confidence and public safety and security can be restored on the outside," Grassley said.
Under the senators' proposals, FBI employees working with sensitive information would be required to take periodic polygraph tests. Leahy said lie detector tests aren't perfect, but one might have caught FBI spy Robert Hanssen (news - web sites).
"When you don't have them at all, that's a major mistake," he said.
Leahy and Grassley also want to increase FBI security by starting career internal security officers, providing statutory authorization for the FBI's police force and authorizing the Justice Department's inspector general to independently investigate the FBI.
In the past, the inspector general could investigate the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration only when ordered to do so by the attorney general or his deputy. Ashcroft gave the inspector general authority in July to investigate problems at the FBI without his permission.
"With this bill, we say the Justice Department IG's authority to watch over the FBI should be permanent," Grassley said.
The FBI has been under fire for what critics have called a cover-up-the-mistakes mentality and a series of missteps going back over the years. Among more recent problems are the loss of weapons and computers; failure to provide thousands of documents to lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (news - web sites); discovery (news - web sites) of a spy, Hanssen, at the heart of the bureau; the Branch Davidian and Ruby Ridge standoffs; and the botched investigation of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee (news - web sites).
Leahy's committee plans additional FBI oversight hearings this year, some to include questions about why America's intelligence agencies were not more prepared for the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
The bill also will increase the protection of FBI whistle-blowers, Grassley said Wednesday.
FBI "agents who blow the whistle about problems or wrongdoing didn't have the same protection as others in government," Grassley said in a speech at the National Whistleblower Center.
----
United Pilots to Get Stun Guns
Washington Post
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14327-2002Feb27?language=printer
United Airlines plans to start training its pilots to use stun guns to defend their cockpits even though the devices haven't been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. The nation's second-biggest airline will hold one-day training session for its pilots in Denver and hub cities such as Chicago and San Francisco starting in April, a company spokesman said. Flight attendants will also be trained in self-defense and helping passengers in the event of a terrorist attack but will not be trained to use the advanced Taser stun guns, which will be kept in locked boxes in the cockpit, he said.
----
20 at Logan Airport Charged With Deceit
Washington Post
NATION IN BRIEF
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14401-2002Feb27?language=printer
BOSTON -- Twenty entry-level workers were charged yesterday with falsifying personal information to obtain jobs and badge access to secure areas at Logan International Airport, the origin of two of the planes hijacked Sept. 11. Arrests started this morning, and at least 15 people were in custody by midafternoon.
None of the defendants is suspected of or charged with having any terrorist connections, according to U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan. But the group, made up mostly of illegal immigrants, should not have been allowed to work for businesses operating at the airport or gain access to some of its most sensitive areas, he said.
The arrests are part of an ongoing effort, dubbed "Operation Safe Travel," to enhance airport security nationwide. In December, 271 workers at Salt Lake City International Airport were fired after investigators found they lied on application forms.
The workers arrested today represent less than 1 percent of the 3,500 employees with clearance to enter secure locations ranging from baggage areas to airfields. Six were employed by Argenbright Security Inc., a private security firm ousted after Sept. 11 because of concerns about its performance. All 20 were expected to appear today in federal court. State police have conducted criminal background checks of employees of businesses that operate at Logan for more than a decade, but did not verify data with the Social Security Administration or the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
----
County Gets Funding for Emergency Operations
New Center Would Control Traffic, Crisis Management
By Phuong Ly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11864-2002Feb27?language=printer
Beginning as early as 2003, Montgomery County officials hope to direct emergencies more efficiently from a central command center in Gaithersburg that will house all of its emergency operations, from 911 dispatchers to traffic managers.
The county has received about $9.5 million in federal funds that would help pay for a proposed new traffic management center, a stockpile of medication and vaccinations for front-line emergency workers and a "mini war room."
A new emergency communications center for 911 fire and police dispatchers was planned before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But now, with the help of money from Congress, equipment for traffic operations and emergency planning would be added to the two-story building in the Quince Orchard Road area, officials said.
"We can use each other's information and effectively manage the situation," said fire administrator Gordon Aoyagi. "We want to bring together all the technology and management, pull it all together and make it seamless.
The county is also putting its own money into emergency preparedness. Last fall, the Montgomery County Council approved about $3.5 million, which will come from reserves, to pay for additional emergency workers, training for responders to hazardous material incidents and the design costs for the emergency planning room.
The money was part of a seven-year, $47 million package proposed by County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) after the Sept. 11 attacks. That package has not yet been approved. Council members had given Duncan significantly less than the $6 million he had requested, saying they hoped federal money would fill some of the gap.
Washington area governments are receiving about $320 million in federal anti-terrorism funds to help coordinate the regional response to major catastrophes. Of that, Congress is spending $20 million to create a regional wireless, integrated network for federal, state and local police, fire, emergency and transportation agencies.
Regional leaders have lobbied Congress, saying they want to avoid the chaos that occurred Sept. 11. The District's downtown streets were congested for several hours after the federal government shut down offices and authorities closed some key routes out of the city. And in one dangerous episode, firefighters from different jurisdictions reportedly failed to hear evacuation orders at the Pentagon because their radio systems were incompatible.
Aoyagi said there were no major snags within Montgomery on Sept. 11 because the terrorist attacks were focused on the District and Arlington. And because the county has long been the only jurisdiction in Maryland with the ability to control its traffic signals and most of its secondary roads, transportation managers said the area avoided much of the traffic turmoil that stalled the District.
But now, officials want the traffic operations linked to the 911 system, which would cost an estimated $6.3 million in equipment, software integration and furnishings. About $1 million will come from the recent federal grants, and the rest has to be cobbled together from state, federal and county funds in future years.
The new 911 center -- along with 11 powerful communications radio towers -- is expected to be completed in 2003, and Aoyagi said that county officials want to have as much equipment as possible for the traffic management center installed by then.
The changes will mean that bus routes and traffic signals will be able to change more quickly when a crisis develops. Using laptops in their squad cars, police and rescue workers will be able to assess information from the county's traffic cameras.
Aoyagi said responses to a routine incident could be improved and delays avoided. For example, when a tanker spilled fuel during evening rush hour in Silver Spring last year, a fire commander had trouble getting in touch with transportation officials, Aoyagi said. Those managers have the authority and the data available to send dump trucks with soil to stem the flow of the fuel, to change traffic signals and to send up a traffic plane to assess the situation.
"For people who get stuck in traffic, the level of anxiety just goes up," Aoyagi said. "By improving the information, that'll allow us to tell citizens what to do to deal with their own situations."
Of the remaining $8.5 million in federal funds, county officials are proposing that half of that amount be used to construct an emergency operations center, or a mini war room where command officials could convene during a crisis.
An additional $1.5 million might be used to buy pharmaceuticals and vaccinations for front-line workers such as police, firefighters and other first-responders. Aoyagi said the county would stockpile vaccinations needed for anthrax, smallpox, radiation contamination and other biochemical threats. About $1.3 million has been proposed to buy computer equipment and software to help improve the county's response to public health concerns, such as the anthrax scare that swept the Washington area last fall.
The remaining $1.5 million will be used to buy command buses for police and fire and rescue. Police have said that the department previously had requested replacement of their old command bus, which is used to house equipment and give officials a meeting room at an incident scene. The use of the funds is subject to approval by federal officials as well as the County Council.
--------
Guantanamo Detainees Refuse to Eat
February 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Guantanamo-Prison.html
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- Incensed that two guards stripped a detainee of his turban during prayer, nearly two-thirds of the prisoners captured in the Afghan war refused lunch Thursday and chanted ``God is great'' in Arabic in their first mass protest since arriving at the base.
In addition, some detainees pushed sheets, blankets, sleeping mats and other items through the small openings in the chain-link walls of their cells in protest, Marine Maj. Stephen Cox, the detention mission spokesman, told reporters.
Thursday night, Brig. Gen. Mike Lehnert, the Marine general running the detention mission, used the camp loudspeaker to tell inmates they would be allowed to wear turbans. Cox said, ``We will reserve the right to inspect (turbans) at any time.''
Cox reported that Lehnert promised the military would respect detainees' religion and the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
Afterward, reporters could see several detainees wearing turbans fashioned from white bed sheets. Eighty-eight detainees refused their evening meal Thursday night even after Lehnert's address, Cox said.
Tension has been building among the 300 inmates who have been held at Camp X-ray, the remote U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, since January.
In recent days, some have been ignoring a taped call to prayer and instead have picked individual detainees to announce and lead prayer, which Muslims do five times a day.
Cox said Lehnert spoke with the captives to address some of their concerns.
``He told them at this point he could not to tell them how long they will be here or what will happen to them in the future,'' Cox said. But ``Gen. Lehnert also told the detainees that they will be judged fairly'' when the time comes.
The detainees told a duty officer their protest was in response to an incident that took place Tuesday, Cox said. A detainee had fashioned a turban out of a sheet and was wearing it on his head during prayer. Two military guards ordered the inmate to remove the turban, but the inmate ignored the order, he said. Even after a translator repeated the same order, the inmate refused to acknowledge it.
The guards shackled the inmate and then stripped off the turban, Cox said.
``We don't allow fashioning of a headdress that would allow them to shroud any type of item or weapon,'' he said. The detainees have been issue prayer caps or can drape towels over their heads, Cox said.
He said 159 detainees skipped lunch and 109 skipped dinner on Wednesday. On Thursday, 107 skipped breakfast and 194 refused lunch.
Medical personnel have been monitoring the detainees and are prepared to feed them intravenously if needed, Cox said.
Cox said the protest appeared to be about more than just the turban, but inmates have made no demands.
Amnesty International said the protest ``highlights the dangers of the legal limbo into which the prisoners have been thrown.
``This latest development underscores the urgent need for the United States to acknowledge that all of the prisoners are covered by the Geneva Conventions, and to ensure that they are granted due process rights, including the right to challenge their continued detention,'' Amnesty spokesman Alistair Hodgett said in Washington.
The military says the prisoners are fighters of the international al-Qaida terrorist network and the deposed Afghan Taliban regime that harbored it.
U.S. officials say they are determining whether and how to prosecute the men, and that those not tried by a military tribunal would either be prosecuted in a U.S. court, returned to their home countries for prosecution, released outright or held indefinitely.
Officials say the men pose a danger not only to the troops but also to themselves. Some Islamic groups preach that dying in a holy war guarantees a place in heaven -- the mantra of suicide bombers in Israel and that of the hijackers who flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
-------- terrorism
Blast Kills 2 Near Jordan's Anti - Terror Chief House
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-jordan-bomb.html
AMMAN (Reuters) - A bomb exploded near the house of Jordan's anti-terror squad chief in Amman on Thursday, killing two passers-by and wrecking his wife's car, witnesses and security sources said.
A politician and former minister, Saleh al-Qallab, linked the blast to the kingdom's crackdown against Muslim militants that has picked up pace after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The witnesses and security sources said there was a small explosion across the road from the home of Major Ali Bourjaq in the densely populated area of Jabal Amman neighborhood at 7:30 a.m. local time (12:30 a.m. EST).
Bourjaq is the head of the anti-terror unit of the intelligence service. The unit has been involved in a crackdown against radical Muslim fundamentalists since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Scores of militants and suspected followers of Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the U.S. attacks, have been arrested in Jordan in recent months.
The explosive charge was placed next to the parked car of Bourjaq's wife.
The blast killed two men passing by, a 17-year-old Iraqi and a 24-year-old Egyptian. Both worked at a nearby sandwich shop.
There were no reports of injuries at Bourjaq's home, though several windows at his villa were shattered in the blast.
Police cordoned off the area as security men combed the street, looking for other explosive charges and clues to the blast as well as questioning residents and passers-by.
``This is a terrorist attack by parties hurt by Jordan's campaign against terrorism, that started before and continued after September 11, and the roundup of suspects,'' Qallab told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from the authorities.
----
Greenspan Backs Federal Backup for Terrorism Insurance
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14358-2002Feb27?language=printer
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday endorsed a federal backup for terrorism insurance, even though he said the economic consequences were the government to remain uninvolved were unclear.
"It may be necessary . . . for the Congress to stipulate that in the event of a terrorist attack, clearly defined as a terrorist attack, that the federal government, with some deductible, would cover the cost of that," Greenspan said during an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee. "This is an issue which I think there is considerable dispute on it, because we don't know what the nature of what it is we are facing," he said.
Greenspan's remarks preceded a separate hearing on terrorism insurance by a Financial Services subcommittee.
Policymakers are trying to decide how to respond to a shortage of terrorism insurance after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Most reinsurers, which provide backup coverage for insurance companies, stopped covering terrorism after Jan. 1, when most reinsurance contracts expired. As commercial insurance policies have rolled over, primary insurers also have stopped providing terrorism coverage to large commercial policyholders. Where coverage is available, it is often limited and very expensive.
Congress adjourned last year without enacting legislation that would have created a federal system for helping pay terrorism claims. It has not revisited the issue.
A report by the General Accounting Office, which was presented yesterday to the Financial Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations, found that the shortage of coverage is starting to affect businesses including real estate and commercial lending.
In several cases cited in the report, construction projects have been put on hold and new financing suspended.
"It is clear the current lack of terrorism coverage acts as a chill factor restraining our economy," said Rep. Sue W. Kelly (R-N.Y.), chairman of the subcommittee.
J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, said problems have been exaggerated.
He said the biggest concern confronting policyholders is higher rates, which started to increase before Sept. 11. "Are there problems in the market? Sure," he said. "But they are being resolved."
That view was disputed by others who testified before the subcommittee, including the head of New York state's insurance department, Gregory V. Serio.
"To those who were expecting a sudden and precipitous market displacement, I would like to caution that because of market dynamics, the effects of a lack of a backstop for terrorism losses may be gradual and subtle but just as detrimental," Serio said.
Kieran Quinn, president and chief executive of Column Financial Inc., a subsidiary of Credit Suisse First Boston, testified that commercial lending capacityhas dramatically decreased because of a lack of terrorism insurance.
Quinn said the problem for lenders is similar to the one faced by insurers: It's difficult to assess the financial risk of another terrorist attack.
"I can assess and price the risk of a Kmart bankruptcy, or I can buy insurance against the risk of a building burning down," Quinn said. "But if I cannot assess the risk, and borrowers are unable to obtain insurance, I will not do the deal, particularly when various government officials continue to state that the chance of another terrorist attack is 100 percent."
Lisa Kramer, president and chief executive of FOJP Service Corp., a nonprofit risk manager for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, said the group has been unable to find complete coverage for its beneficiaries, which include six major academic medical centers, long-term care facilities, social service agencies and community centers.
The buildings, worth a total of $8.5 billion, are only insured for up to $1 billion, and terrorism is not included. Kramer said her group was able to find just one insurer that would cover terrorism. That insurer policy would charge $4.2 million for just $50 million in coverage.
"Premiums of this size are simply not affordable," she said.
In presenting the findings of the GAO report, Richard J. Hillman, the agency's director of financial markets and community investments, said the extent of the problem is still unknown.
"But they could become potentially significant in an economy recovering from a recession," he said. "Deciding whether Congress should act to help businesses obtain insurance against losses caused by terrorism is properly a matter of public policy. The consequences of continued inaction, however, may be real and are potentially large."
--------
Extent of Terror War Questioned
February 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-War.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- American forces are hunting terrorists in Afghanistan, dispensing advice in the Philippines and pondering counterterror programs in Yemen, Indonesia, Georgia and beyond.
What country is next? And where will it end?
``So long as there's al-Qaida anywhere, we will help the host countries root them out,'' President Bush said Wednesday.
There probably will not be one place tackled next, but rather a number of them, said Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the war in Afghanistan.
Franks said he expects to recommend that the U.S. military help train Yemeni forces to pursue al-Qaida and other terrorists. Simultaneous battles against terrorists are likely at various places around the globe, with different approaches tailored to different nations, he told a House committee.
``We will not use the Afghanistan model'' everywhere, he said.
Cells of Osama bin Laden's terror network are believed operating in 50 to 60 countries, officials have said, and the prospect of widespread post-Afghanistan military expansion drew a warning on Capitol Hill.
``If we expect to kill every terrorist in the world, that's going to keep us going beyond doomsday,'' said Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Byrd was speaking of Pentagon discussions about sending as many as 200 Americans to help train the military in Georgia, a former republic of the defunct Soviet Union, amid sketchy reports terrorists have taken refuge in the Pankisi Gorge near Georgia's border with Russia's breakaway region of Chechnya.
It would follow deployment already this month of 160 special forces to the Philippines to train local forces fighting terrorists.
The Pentagon's intentions in Georgia are not strictly a counterterror campaign, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference.
Rather, he said, the goal is to help the Republic of Georgia gain sufficient military strength to defend itself, which would make it more secure and less in danger of attracting terrorist groups in the future.
Still, Georgia is just one example of the cooperation Bush wants with dozens of countries where al-Qaida or other terrorist networks have toeholds. The United States blames al-Qaida and its leader, bin Laden, for the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
In some regions, the U.S. military might provide training and other support to governments strong enough to handle anti-terrorism operations themselves. Elsewhere, U.S. troops may have to do some of the fighting themselves, as they have in Afghanistan.
In still other countries, U.S. military involvement in anti-terror efforts won't be explicitly related to al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations whose global reach directly threatens the United States. The administration has provided machine guns, helicopters and military advisers to Colombia, for example, in its fight against anti-government terrorists, but there is no known al-Qaida presence there.
In another approach, the Bush administration has authorized the construction of a radio transmitter to carry broadcasts from the Iraqi opposition to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, The New York Times reported in its Thursday editions.
The report quoted an unidentified State Department official as saying the administration had given tentative approval to the idea of building the transmitter in Kurdish Northern Iraq, which is protected by U.S. and British military overflights, or in neighboring Iran, if the Kurds or Iranians agree.
The Bush administration has not provided an exhaustive list of countries it believes have links to al-Qaida or other terror networks, or have terrorists operating within their borders, but they are known to include Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran and Iraq.
The timing, degree and manner of U.S. involvement around the world to root out terrorism in some cases will depend on regional sensitivities.
Georgia, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has Russia to worry about; Russia considers the Caucasus region to be its sphere of influence and resents U.S. intrusion.
Yemen may be a similar case. The government there has pledged itself to help fight global terror but has not requested U.S. combat troops. It is interested, however, in military training and aid to create a maritime force to guard its 1,500-mile Arabian Peninsula coastline.
At least two al-Qaida suspects wanted by the United States are believed hiding in Yemen. In October 2000, terrorists attacked a U.S. Navy ship in the Yemeni port of Aden and killed 17 American sailors.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Thursday that Bush told Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a November meeting that the United States would help Yemen with security. ``President Saleh has been strong in his determination to fight terrorism, and the president welcomes President Saleh's efforts,'' Fleischer said.
Indonesia is another complicated case. U.S. officials say al-Qaida cells may be operating in Indonesia, and Washington has offered financial aid to train Indonesian police. The administration wants to resume military aid to Indonesia but is inhibited by a congressional ban imposed after the Indonesian army devastated East Timor in 1999.
-------- propaganda wars
Journalist admits lying to viewers
28feb02
The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,3861615^1702,00.html
VETERAN 60 Minutes reporter Richard Carleton has admitted he had misled and lied to viewers by showing footage from another massacre site to illustrate a story about the massacre of Srebrenica.
Mr Carleton, 60 Minutes executive producer John Westacott and producer Howard Sacre are suing the ABC and its Media Watch team over two Media Watch segments in July 2000 accusing 60 Minutes of lifting footage from an earlier BBC documentary.
Mr Carleton told the ACT supreme court yesterday that being accused of plagiarism was the journalistic equivalent of paedophilia.
But under cross-examination by counsel for the ABC, Media Watch presenter Paul Barry and former executive producer Peter McEvoy, Mr Carleton conceded he had knowingly used footage of a morgue and a mass grave site far away from Srebrenica to illustrate the Channel Nine report.
Asked by barrister Terence Tobin if he had misled viewers, Mr Carleton said: "In the technical meaning of the word misleading, yes."
Asked had he lied, he said: "In so far as the meaning of the word lie is taken (to mean) misleading, yes."
But Mr Carleton denied he had behaved unethically as a journalist and said the footage had enhanced viewers' understanding of the 1995 massacre of Muslim residents by Bosnian Serbs.
The hearing before Justice Terence Higgins is continuing.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Dutch govt pushes green energy, early market opening
REUTERS NETHERLANDS:
February 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14762/story.htm
AMSTERDAM - The Dutch government said this week it would try to speed development of green energy and repeated it hoped to open the small consumer energy market to competition in 2003.
The measures, part of a report from Economics Minister Annemarie Jorritsma to the Dutch parliament, calls for a massive buildup of wind energy in the country, boosting capacity from land-based wind power to 1,500 megawatts by 2010 and sea-based wind farms to 6,000 MW by 2020.
"The development of sustainable energy management must become a combined effort of the government, the business community and other parties," the ministry said in a statement.
Currently, the Netherlands has about 500 MW of land-based wind-power capacity, and none on the water, although two planned offshore parks would bring the mark to about 220 megawatts.
Jorritsma's report also focused on building up biomass as an alternative fuel for coal-fired power stations.
The government pledged 35 million euros ($30.51 million) to help offset investment risks associated with four projects currently in development with the private sector.
Those projects include efforts to boost efficiency in the power sector, raise biomass utilisation volumes, develop new natural gas sources and boost renewables use around the industrialised Rhine region.
Another 20 million euros will go toward marketing and promotion of renewable energy, the ministry said.
Jorritsma also reiterated her hope that the liberalisation in the electricity and gas sectors which began in 1999 would be finalised at the start of 2003 with the full opening of the household and small business segment.
The market opening, part of the Netherlands' move to comply with EU directives, started by allowing large consumers to choose their power suppliers in 1999 and was expanded to about 65,000 mid-sized companies from January 1, 2002. About 500 large natural gas consumers are also allowed to switch suppliers.
Under the current law, small end-users will only be free to choose their own supplier in 2004, although a government-industry body is expected to recommend in the coming months on whether to move that date forward.
Households which opt for renewable energy were permitted to choose their own suppliers as of July 1, 2001.
Energy industry body EnergieNed said it opposed the move to speed up the market opening, which would put enormous burden on suppliers to develop an information and switching system for the seven million power customers and 6.5 million gas customers that would be affected.
"With such a huge number of customers, the energy sector does not want to run the risk the freedom of choice unexpectedly ends in massive chaos because the system is not ready and is untested," EnergieNed said.
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Energy Compromise Would Boost Ethanol
February 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ethanol-in-Cars.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Gasoline would have much more corn-based ethanol under an unusual compromise among environmentalists, oil companies and farmers. The proposal, which needs congressional approval, also could be a breakthrough in the long struggle to ban an additive polluting lakes and streams.
While some details remained to be worked out, Senate negotiators have reached general agreement on a plan that would triple ethanol use in cars and ban MTBE, a clean-air gasoline additive that has fouled waterways in scores of states, according to participants in the talks.
The compromise, which would dramatically change the nation's gasoline, is to be part of a sweeping energy bill expected to come up before the Senate next week. But a proposal that once was viewed as highly contentious is now likely to get broad bipartisan support, according to congressional sources.
The role of ethanol in gasoline and the future of MTBE, the fossil-fuel base additive that has been shown to foul drinking water, has been the subject of intense political jockeying in Congress for years. When the government in 1995 required a minimum level of oxygen in gas to help clean the air, most refiners turned to MTBE, although some -- largely in the Midwest -- used ethanol as an oxygenate.
Farm-state lawmakers' attempts to increase the requirements for ethanol, mostly made from corn, repeatedly failed because of opposition from oil interests and the methanol industry.
Attempts to ban MTBE, because of growing concern in some states about water pollution, also has stalled, although the Environmental Protection Agency urged phasing out the additive nearly three years ago. Oil companies, fearing the growth of ethanol use, said they would not accept a ban unless the overall oxygenate requirement also was scrapped.
But many environmentalists feared that an across-the-board lifting of the oxygen requirement would increase pollution.
The stalemate continued right up to last summer when attempts to include an MTBE ban and a provision for more ethanol use as part of a House energy bill never gained traction.
Not so in the Senate, where Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a state with ethanol plants, demanded a provision boosting ethanol use from the current 1.7 billion gallons to 5 billion gallons over the next decade.
But that wouldn't fly unless the oil companies and environmentalists also got something.
So, the compromise also would ban MTBE in four years and scrap the requirement that gasoline contain at least 2 percent oxygenate in areas with heavy air pollution -- about a third of all gasoline sold.
``Nobody's 100 percent happy,'' said one of the participants in the negotiations, but all at once the feuding sides appear to be coming together.
While Daschle's strong interest is ethanol, it is the MTBE ban that harnessed the support of two other influential senators: James Jeffords of Vermont and Bob Smith of New Hampshire, the chairman and ranking Republican on the Environment Committee, whose states are clamoring for an end to the additive because it is polluting their water.
The Bush administration also has been eager to work out an agreement. ``The White House doesn't want to choose between the oil and ethanol industries,'' said one Republican source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Still, some problems remain to be worked out, said several of the participants in the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity.
For one, the oil industry wants to make sure the ethanol requirement does not cause supply problems. One proposal is to give refiners, who don't want to use ethanol, the ability to buy credits from other refiners who use more ethanol than they would be required to use.
And MTBE makers are trying to get the government help then shift into another field -- perhaps making another clean-air gasoline additive. After all, they argue, it is the government's oxygen requirement seven years ago that triggered their investments in MTBE.
Bill Becker, who represents state air quality control officials, said he is worried that wider use of ethanol will increase air pollution in some states were governors will find it hard to participate in a federal clean-fuel program.
He said he's raised those concerns in the negotiations, but doesn't believe the issue will thwart an agreement. ``There will definitely be increased pollution,'' he said.
But in a congressional game of horse trading, Becker has not been able to convince other environmentalists that this concern outweighs getting rid of MTBE and its pollution problems.
-------- energy
Energy papers' release ordered
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020228-35818552.htm
A federal judge has ordered the Energy Department to release thousands of records on Vice President Richard B. Cheney's energy task force to a liberal environmental group, criticizing the government for moving at "a glacial pace."
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the Energy Department, starting March 25 and ending April 10, to turn over its documents to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The department had asked to release the material in stages, beginning March 15 and ending May 15.
NRDC first asked for the documents last April 26 and sued the government in December. The Energy Department says 7,500 pages on Mr. Cheney's task force are responsive to the NRDC's request.
"There can be little question that the Department of Energy has been woefully tardy" in processing the request, Judge Kessler wrote in her ruling, which was dated Feb. 21 and was provided to the NRDC yesterday.
"After making a virtually meaningless release of some form letters back in May of 2001, the department has done little of substance - apart from collecting and organizing responsive documents," Judge Kessler added. "What is even more distressing is that" there were at least 11 other requests for the same documents. The government has no legal justification "for working at a glacial pace," she concluded.
Energy Department spokeswoman Jill Schroeder said, "We've always said we would comply with their request and have worked diligently to do so."
The lawsuit will continue because the department maintains it has legal grounds to keep some documents secret.
The General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, and Judicial Watch, a conservative public-interest law firm, have filed separate lawsuits trying to force the White House to turn over material on the energy task force.
The Bush administration cited confidentiality in its efforts against the GAO lawsuit, which sought the names of industry executives and lobbyists who met with White House officials as they formulated its energy plan last spring.
The Energy Department and other federal agencies are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, while the White House is not.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was on Mr. Cheney's task force and the government must release information about which industry representatives met with energy officials, said NRDC attorney Sharon Buccino.
"The significance of this information for us is that it is going to expose the Bush energy plan's purpose as a payback to polluters," she said. "The plan benefited Enron and other big energy companies while doing nothing for public health and the environment."
---
DOE told to release task force records
By Nicholas M. Horrock
UPI Chief White House Correspondent
2/27/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=27022002-092652-3043r
WASHINGTON -- A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Energy to hand over thousands of documents related to meetings between energy industry officials and Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force to an environmental group.
The department is "woefully tardy" in complying with a Freedom of Information Act request by the Natural Resources Defense Council looking to examine the documents, District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a memo accompanying her order.
"The subject of energy policy, especially since the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, is of enormous concern to consumers, to environmentalists, to Congress, and to the industry," the judge said.
Kessler gave the Energy Department until March 25 to comply.
Among the energy industry companies Cheney's task force met with was Enron Corp., which last fall collapsed and fell into bankruptcy. Kenneth Lay, then chairman of Enron and now under public scrutiny, was the only executive to have a private meeting with Cheney, according to material the vice president has released over the past year.
At the time Enron officials were meeting with the Cheney task force, they were lobbying hard to keep the federal government from placing a cap on energy prices in California.
Gov. Gray Davis, D-Calif., and several Democratic members of Congress have accused Enron of manipulating energy prices that contributed to California's energy crisis last spring.
After one meeting with an Enron official, Cheney announced that he would oppose caps. Several Democrats accused Cheney of succumbing to Enron's influence at an April meeting. But the vice president's office said Cheney and President Bush had consistently opposed price caps and his position last spring was not influenced by Enron.
The vice president has refused to issue a detailed list of participants in oil industry meetings and what policy positions they pushed for in Bush's energy plan.
Cheney has denied anything improper took place at meetings. He has said that he and his aides were seeking policy suggestions from across the country.
The judge's ruling appears to make it harder for the Bush administration to shield White House records on the task force from Congress and private groups.
Wednesday's court ruling was on an information request filed on April 26, 2001, by the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, an environmental group. The Energy Department estimated that 7,500 pages of documents are responsive to the request, but by Dec. 11, 2001, only 33 documents were provided to the group.
"Unfortunately, it took a court order to force open a door this administration fought hard to keep closed," said Sharon Buccino, a senior attorney with NRDC. "After being shut out of the process for nearly a year, the public will finally get to see if the administration acted on behalf of the public interest in formulating its energy plan."
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has led an effort by Democratic members of the House Government Committee to get Cheney to write up public minutes and other details of how the national energy policy was created. Cheney has refused for nearly a year.
In an extraordinary action earlier this month, the General Accounting Office filed suit against the White House on behalf of Congress to obtain the records of the president and the vice president covering meetings the task force had in preparation for Bush to offer his national energy policy on May 1, 2001.
Karen Lightfoot, a committee attorney, said Wednesday that Waxman saw the Kessler decision as "significant."
Buccino said she didn't know what the documents will reveal, "but the NRDC expects to make public -- for the first time since the task force was formed more than a year ago -- the names of participants, dates of meetings, and the topics discussed.
"That information will expose which energy companies or industry lobbyists influenced the work DOE staff did on the Bush-Cheney energy plan."
A separate federal judge, Paul L. Friedman, has ordered a hearing on the GAO lawsuit and an information request lawsuit by Judicial Watch for Feb. 28.
-------- environment
Central America faces starvation this year - UN
REUTERS NICARAGUA:
February 28, 2002
Story by Ivan Castro
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14776/story.htm
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Drought resulting from the "el Nino" weather phenomenon, compounded by policy shortcomings, could put some 700,000 people in Central America at risk of starvation this year, a top U.N. official said.
"From 2002 we see the situation in Central America presenting a picture of starvation," Francisco Roque Castro, WFP director for Latin America and the Caribbean, told Reuters in an interview.
The U.N. World Food Program plans an emergency program in Guatemala, the worst affected country in the area, to help some 169,000 people at risk of starving, including 60,000 malnourished children.
Roque said measures taken so far to deal with natural phenomena in the region have "prevented a (greater) degree of suffering or hunger."
But the measures had failed to address the problem of the vulnerability of impoverished and marginalized, mainly farming communities, he said.
Last year's drought in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador threatened 1.5 million people with famine and caused up to $189 million in economic damage, largely through the loss of crops and industrial production, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America.
Regional governments and international organizations are drawing up contingency plans to face the likely effects of el Nino - the abnormal warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean that develops every two to seven years and can alter weather conditions around the globe.
In the past 50 years, the Central American isthmus has experienced el Nino, literally "little boy" in Spanish, nine times. The effects last between 12 and 36 months each time.
MEAGER SOCIAL SPENDING
Roque said that given the "discouraging" regional economic outlook in 2001 and with food production hampered by drought, "the risk of starvation is fairly high."
The WFP is pushing governments in the region to raise social spending and plans to put in place medium-term programs to enable poor growers to be self sufficient and less vulnerable to climate swings, he said.
"One reason (for the chronic hunger) is the lack of equality in terms of access to welfare, to produce and to wealth in this continent," he noted.
Central American nations on the whole fall far below the Latin American average in terms of social spending, which is $540 per person annually.
U.N. data shows Guatemala spends $107 on health and education per capita each year, El Salvador spends $82, while social spending in Honduras and Nicaragua is just $57 a year per person.
More than half the 35 million inhabitants of Central America live in poverty.
----
Asia keen on Bush-backed emissions credits trade
REUTERS SINGAPORE:
February 28, 2002
Story by Jonathan Landreth
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14757/story.htm
In Feb 15 SINGAPORE item headlined "Asia keen on Bush-backed emissions credits trade," please read in the fifth paragraph...$8 million over seven years...instead of...$24 million over 13 years (corrects figure and time frame). A corrected version follows.
SINGAPORE: CORRECTED - Asia keen on Bush-backed emissions credits trade.
SINGAPORE - Power companies in Asia are hoping a new anti-global warming plan due from U.S. President George Bush will include support for emissions credit trading that could help fund cleaner energy across the region.
Small regional power companies now are counting on Bush to support emissions credit trade so they can secure financing for clean power plants in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Without the United States as a customer, earning money from what amounts to selling clean air may remain a dream.
"Right now, the notion of emissions credit trading is barely alive because of the non-participation of the U.S.," said Thawat Watanatada, president of AT Biopower in Bangkok.
Watanatada is eyeing potential earnings of $8 million over seven years from emissions credits produced by five biomass power plants AT Biopower is planning to build in Thailand this year.
So far, AT Biopower's main funding is from Rolls Royce Power Ventures, a London-based leader in small power plant development, and Al Tayyar Energy, a Moroccan renewable energy firm.
Without the emission credits to help secure additional funds for cleaner energy, Thailand will continue to produce the kind of dirty power found in the West, Watanatada said.
"With U.S. participation, emissions credit trade imagined in Kyoto will have real teeth. Without it, we are more likely to repeat their mistakes." he said.
BUSH REJECTED KYOTO
Under the emissions credit trading proposed at the 1997 Kyoto climate talks, big energy companies will receive credits for the amount of carbon dioxide - the main gas capped at Kyoto - which they would otherwise emit via dirtier energy sources in return for investing in renewable power projects in developing countries.
The Kyoto treaty binds industrial countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about five percent of 1990 levels by 2012. Bush said emissions cuts would be too costly, and too many developing nations like China and India were exempt.
His rejection stirred global anger at the U.S., the world's No. 1 polluter, for not doing more to slow global warming.
Sceptics fear early entrants into emissions credit trading might sacrifice long-term power efficiency for short-term profit.
"Carbon trades will accelerate the transfer of efficient technologies," said Rob Watson of the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), an environmental watchdog group in New York.
"But the plants which earn a lot of carbon emissions credits in year one might forego the costly boiler replacement crucial to the longer-term efficiency and savings," said Watson, who advises Chinese companies developing clean power.
Advocates of emissions credits trading look to European state mandates that are driving moves away from dirtier fossil fuels. Biofuel produced in Europe is expected to reach 2.4 billion barrels by 2007, up from 500 million in 2000, according to data from New York-based market consultancy Frost & Sullivan.
By capturing a projected 4.8 million tonnes of emissions from burning rice husks over the next 13 years, AT Biopower could could earn credits worth between $3 and $5 per tonne, according to Marc Stuart of Eco Securities, whose California business has already brokered carbon credit trades in Brazil.
But just how emissions are measured in emerging markets is key, said NRDC's Watson, pointing to discrepancies in Asian infrastructures, levels of amenity and technical capability.
As countries such as India and China industrialise and build appetites for more energy and modern conveniences, rules setting who can and cannot pollute must be well protected, said Watson.
"Is the emissions baseline Germany, where they've squeezed all the efficiency out of every plant? Or is it India, where there is a lot of room for improvement?" he asked.
-------- human rights
U.N. finds child abuse in West African camps
Briefly
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 28, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-430679.htm
MONROVIA, Liberia - The U.N. refugee agency will send a high-powered team of investigators to West Africa after a study uncovered widespread child sex abuse by aid workers, U.N. officials said yesterday.
The study of refugees in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone found almost 70 aid workers from 40 agencies had been pushing refugee children into sex in exchange for food, medicine and other life-saving supplies.
In Geneva, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it has sent investigators to West Africa to look into charges of widespread sexual exploitation of refugee children, mostly by locally hired aid workers.
"Obviously, this is something that deeply disturbs us," spokesman Ron Redmond said after reports of girls as young as 13 being sexually exploited in the three countries.
The scandal raised a new problem for the UNHCR agency in Africa. Last month, U.N. investigators reported that its workers in Nairobi, Kenya, illegally collected millions of dollars from refugees to help them leave Africa in the early 1990s.
-------- propaganda wars
Thailand seizes passports of U.S., British reporters
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
World Scene
February 28, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-16875528.htm
BANGKOK - Thai authorities fingerprinted an American and a British journalist and seized their passports, accusing them of being threats to national security, and the prime minister warned the United States not to meddle in the case.
Thailand's government ordered the expulsions of American Shawn Crispin, the bureau chief of the Asian Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review, and Briton Rodney Tasker, a correspondent for the two publications, for a Jan. 10 article claiming tensions existed between Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
-------- ACTIVISTS
More Help Sought for Those Who Blow Whistle
Stronger Safeguards Against Retaliation Urged
By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15262-2002Feb28?language=printer
Joined by government insiders who had gone public with concerns about lapses in security at airports, nuclear facilities and borders, three watchdog groups yesterday called for stronger federal laws to protect whistle-blowers from workplace retaliation.
"We can do a lot more to defend national security by listening to the messengers," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project. "These people are the pros on the front lines, and they've been beating their heads against bureaucratic walls for years and warning that we're not prepared."
But, Devine said, those who come forward run the risk of being harassed, demoted or put out of work because of loopholes in the federal laws meant to protect them.
The 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act was supposed to protect federal employees who wanted to expose misconduct, waste or abuse. But it has been narrowly interpreted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to exclude employees who first take their allegations to supervisors or co-workers, Devine said. Judges also have demanded that employees present "irrefragable," or indisputable, proof of the credibility of their disclosures, a nearly impossible standard, Devine said.
Devine spoke at an event billed as the "Paul Revere Forum," in honor of the Revolutionary War hero who rode through Massachusetts in 1775 to warn that British troops were coming. Two other groups -- the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and the National Whistleblower Center -- joined the call for tougher legislation.
"Rather than admit their failings, large institutions always seek to destroy the messenger, no matter how high the stakes," said Danielle Brian, POGO's executive director.
The organizations presented first-person accounts from former New York City police detective Frank Serpico, who exposed police corruption in the 1970s, as well as from five people who have warned that the United States remains vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
They included Randy Robage, a former nuclear power plant supervisor, who said those facilities remain at risk; former security officer Mathew Zipoli and government consultant Ronald E. Timm, who alleged that security is lax at nuclear weapons research facilities; Darlene Catalan, a former U.S. Customs agent who said railroad tanker cars aren't being adequately checked for explosives at the borders; and Bogdan J. Dzakovic, the leader of a Federal Aviation Administration security team who went public this week with allegations that government officials ignored problems for years.
Dzakovic said he led a security team that was able to get weapons or explosives past airport checkpoints in 1998 but that the FAA failed to follow up.
The Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower cases, asked the Transportation Department to review Dzakovic's complaints on Feb. 5; his allegations were first reported on Monday by USA Today. Yesterday, Dzakovic said he has continued to work for the new federal Transportation Security Administration. FAA officials have declined to discuss the matter but maintained that security problems have been addressed.
Advocates said that two measures pending in Congress would protect other whistle-blowers so they could raise similar concerns without fear of reprisals.
The first is a proposed amendment to the 1989 law, backed by Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.), that would change the standards to make it easier to win cases. The other is a bill that would make it illegal for public or private employers to retaliate against whistle-blowers and would permit them to take their cases before federal juries. Its backers include Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
The timing is urgent, Israel said, adding: "I think it's vital that Americans are fully aware of their level of security at our airports and that people working in the federal government aren't afraid of alerting the public to these conditions."
----
Kucinich: Peace Through Nuclear Disarmament , speech to Abolition2000
From: "David Crockett Williams" - gear2000@lightspeed.net
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002
US Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) Speech before the Abolition 2000 Conference "April 24, 2010: Our Nuclear Future" (Parallel to the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty Review) The UN Plaza Hotel Monday, April 24, 2000 New York City
I remember the "duck and cover" drills. I remember as a school child in the '50's, being alerted that the missiles were on their way. In my youthful mind's eye I could see the slow motion arc as the missile came towards my neighborhood, my home, my school. We were to told to crouch down, under our desks, to put our heads deep in our laps, and, whatever happened, "Children, keep your eyes closed, don't look up! Or you'll be blinded by the flash."
The drills were always quite orderly and they gave us reason to hope, no, believe, that once the flash occurred, that somehow everything would be okay; and that we could have recess and lunch that same day and keep our plans to play after school
Today we are again confronted with fantasies of surviving a nuclear war. We are as children told to crouch underneath a shield of a national missile defense system, and not to open our eyes and somehow, with enough counter missiles, with enough shovels, with warm clothes for a nuclear winter, we will find a way to survive, to go out and play after our lessons. Of course, we know better. We have learned that we are not victims of the world we see. But we can become victims of the way we see the world.
After more than three decades of pain-staking work towards nuclear non-proliferation, we can still envision a world where total nuclear disarmament is a possibility. But in order to push back the nuclear sword of Damocles which still hangs over the world, we have much work to do. We need to convince the nuclear nations to disarm. We need to discourage non-nuclear nations from arming. Indeed, that is the basis of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under review at the United Nations this week.
We understand that arms agreements exist in a fragile ecology, within an architecture of mutual trust which recognizes that all nations of this world are interdependent and rely on a common global habitat. It is mutual trust which has replaced mutual assured destruction and which has made nuclear non-proliferation the ultimate human rights cause, because we recognize that the world must do away with nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons do away with the world.
In this season of hope, when hundreds of millions of people celebrate physical survival and spiritual redemption we have seen signs of wonder from Russia: A serious effort to limit strategic nuclear arms. And a serious effort to ban the testing of nuclear devices. If we can, for a moment, view the world as an undivided whole, we can and should celebrate anytime a major nuclear power takes steps back from the abyss of a nuclear arms build-up, of testing, of nuclear saber-rattling. If we view the world as an undivided whole we can sense that there exists a moment in time for the United States to seize the initiative for accelerated arms reductions, so that the people of all nations may take comfort.
Yet as the Atlas of global human consciousness holds up the world peacefully, there are those who pretend Atlas can take away attention from global peace for a moment to indulge in a bit of nuclear chess:
So the U.S. Senate makes a move to block a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty So the Administration moves to advance the notion of a national missile defense And the Administration moves to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, to permit a National Missile Defense (NMD) system. So the Administration communicates to the Russians, even as the Russians have agreed to arms reductions and test bans, that it is prepared to move to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, if necessary, to achieve a national missile defense system.
These moves, as in chess, have in the past been viewed as part of the gamesmanship of treaty-making, but with a significant note of caution. One author, commented on such gamesmanship in connection with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks:
Only up to a point, however, does SALT lend itself to comparisons to chess or poker or any other game. The defect of any such analogy is that in these games, the object is victory. A chess player is trying to checkmate his opponent, a poker player to win the whole pot -- a warrior to defeat his enemy. In SALT, however, the object has not been for one player to beat the other. While taking some pawns along the way perhaps limiting the freedom of movement of the other's queen, neither side has sought to check the other's king -- that is to imperil its self-perceived vital national interest. To play to win would be to seek 'unilateral advantage' or 'strategic superiority.' It would be to violate the rules of parity and stability. In SALT the object of the game is a draw. (Endgame, pages 17-18)
The author, then a diplomatic correspondent for Time magazine, wrote this observation 21 years ago, in a book entitled Endgame. He is now United States Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, and is currently involved in delivering to the Russians the message that they must agree to changes in the ABM Treaty to permit a US national missile defense system (or the United States will unilaterally pull out of the ABM Treaty so it is able to build a national missile defense system anyway!)
Will the NMD system violate the rules of parity and stability? A careful reading of the ABM Treaty would suggest that is the case. The NMD violates the central principle of the ABM Treaty, which is a ban on the deployment of strategic missile defenses.
Deployment of the NMD will decouple all arms agreements. It will undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It will negate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It will frustrate SALT II and SALT III. It will lead directly to proliferation by the nuclear nations. It will lead to transitions toward nuclear arms by the non-nuclear nations. It will make the world less safe. It will lead to the impoverishment of the people of many nations as budgets are re-fashioned for nuclear arms expenditures. That the United States would be willing to risk a showdown with Russia or China and the rest of the world over the unlikely possibility that North Korea may one day have a missile which can touch the continental United States -- argues for talks with North Korea, not the beginning of a new world-wide arms race.
The ABM Treaty has been an essential element of nuclear deterrence. By providing for a ban on nationwide defenses, by keeping treaty signatories from rapidly deploying such technology and by preventing circumvention of the treaty, the ABM Treaty has worked. It has made the world safer. No change to the ABM Treaty is minor, if it changes any provision which discourages defensive missile systems -- which could invite counter-measures around the globe. [For an excellent discussion on these points see Gronlund and Lewis' analysis in the November 1999 issue of Arms Control Today: How a Limited National Missile Defense Would Impact the ABM Treaty.]
The debate becomes tragicomic when one understands that the technology, however undesirable, doesn't even work! The 'Star Wars' missile defense proposal (known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI) in the 1980's was well understood by its most ardent advocates to be a welfare program for nuclear research labs and defense contractors. This was illustrated by author Robert Scheer in his 1988 book Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death, when he quotes a physicist, who, as deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, expressed doubts about whether a program could be stopped once it was started:
"Once a certain amount of money is committed, even if the weapons makes no sense, it's not going to be easy to change course. What's happening now is that all of the industries and many scientists are being brought into this, and that creates a constituency of support that, up the road, becomes impossible to turn off." (Chapter: The Shambles of Star Wars, page 350)
The case has been made that the NMD cannot work. It is a fantastic technological boondoggle dream. And it can easily be defeated with countermeasures, such as decoys or underflying the radar. Yet the case must be made again and again why the talk about NMD program is destructive of nuclear non-proliferation and all treaties which support non-proliferation.
These principles support the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT):
Stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Facilitate international cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear technology. Encourage arms control talks.
All are essential to peace in the world. International cooperation leads to peace. Heading off regional arms races leads to peace. De-emphasizing nuclear arms as an emblem of national honor permits peace to evolve. Thus, the NPT is a corner stone of international security.
Keep in mind that human history is not something which "just happens." We created and used the atomic bomb. We crafted non-proliferation treaties. We are co-creators of our own destiny. We can choose to cower in fear, protected in our imaginations by the instrumentalities of violence, both offensive and defensive -- or we can take this nation which we have inherited and make it into something which we will be proud to turn over to our children, as part of a secure global environment for all children.
The United States, as one of the foremost signatories to the NPT on July 1, 1968, has a singular responsibility here. It is our nation which must again lead the way towards strengthening the framework for global peace and global survival. We can do it through affirming our commitment to NPT, to the ABM Treaty, to arms reductions and to the eventual elimination of nuclear arms from the face of the planet. It is our nation which must keep the moral authority to lead the way towards total nuclear disarmament around the globe.
It may require that we change the way we look at matters of war and peace. This is what is envisioned in the creation of a Department of Peace in which non-violent resolution of conflict would serve as an organizing principle of a new, executive-level department for the purposes of domestic as well as international policy. (See www.house.gov/kucinich)
We must believe that peace, not war, is inevitable. We should not expect our children to forfeit their tender years in futile "duck and cover" drills done in fear of the Bomb. Nor should we expect our children to learn to love the Bomb. Or to respect a government which harbors the Bomb. We must teach our children by example that we have the vision and the courage to love each other, past our differences in ideologies, past our differences in race, color, creed or economic status. We must teach them to love themselves and to love the world. For the world needs love, compassion, common sense and peace.
----
Rival marches mark Venezuela anniversary
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
World Scene
February 28, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020228-16875528.htm
CARACAS, Venezuela - Tens of thousands of Venezuelans staged rival marches yesterday to commemorate deadly 1989 riots, underscoring a widening rift over President Hugo Chavez, who faced growing military dissent and falling popularity.
Thousands of Chavez supporters marched through central Caracas, wearing red berets favored by the leftist president and shouting, "Tell the truth," as they passed the offices of El Universal, a leading newspaper that has criticized the president.
----
Group Cites Rising Nuclear Policy Fears in Resetting 'Doomsday Clock'
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13818-2002Feb27?language=printer
CHICAGO, Feb. 27 -- The so-called Doomsday Clock moved two ticks closer to midnight today, a sign that, at least according to a group of scientists, the world is more dangerous than it was yesterday.
The reasons? A growing concern about the security of stockpiled nuclear weapons, the rising disparity between rich and poor nations and the Bush administration's rejection of various arms control treaties.
"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 A. Lopez, the University of Notre Dame professor who chairs Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which first published the clock in 1947.
The world has changed considerably since then. But as of today -- at least on the nuclear clock -- it's right back where it started: seven minutes before midnight.
Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, symbolically moved the big hand of the "clock" forward at a news conference this morning at the University of Chicago.
It was the 17th time the Doomsday Clock has been reset in its 55-year history. The previous time was in June 1998, when it moved from 14 minutes to nine minutes before midnight. After moving the clock today, Lederman lamented that the United States and the former Soviet Union had built nuclear weapons to such "absurd" levels.
And his colleagues said that's one of the chief reasons to keep notifying the public about nuclear dangers, even if it means using an imprecise measuring stick. The clock was created by Chicago artist Martyl Langsdorf, who chose the original position of the hands merely as a visual way to symbolize urgency.
"This is not a scientific or precision instrument," said Stephen I. Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin.
The scientists at today's news conference said that the resetting of the clock was prompted only in part by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. Rather, a major factor was the lack of movement on nuclear disarmament, given that more than 31,000 nuclear weapons are still maintained by the eight known nuclear powers.
While the threat of the Soviet Union intentionally attacking the United States has decreased, Lopez said the massive stockpile as well as the recent crisis between India and Pakistan are scary.
The clock might have moved even closer to midnight, Lopez said, if not for the 187 governments that have signed onto the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- though the United States was not among them -- and France's decision to dismantle its Pacific nuclear test site.
Rooting out poverty, he said, is key to making the world safer.
"Poverty and repression breed anger and desperation," Lopez said. "Success depends on eradicating the conditions that feed such terror."
----
Cubans Invade Embassy
Washington Post
WORLD In Brief
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14343-2002Feb27?language=printer
HAVANA -- At least a dozen asylum-seekers stole a bus and crashed it through the gates of the Mexican Embassy here after rumors swept the capital that Mexico was offering to take in Cubans wanting to leave the island.
Early today, more than a dozen people stood on the roof of the embassy shouting anti-Castro slogans and vowing to throw themselves to the ground if police came in to get them.
"We can stay here four years, 10 years, but we are not going to leave!" a man shouted from the roof. "Down with Fidel!" several others shouted in unison, referring to President Fidel Castro.
Soon after midnight, Castro arrived on the scene and entered the embassy after briefly talking to members of the crowd.
Cuban officials speaking privately said all they could say was that at least one of the gate crashers had been injured and was taken away for medical treatment.
News Services
----
About Peace Corps
Washington Post
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14294-2002Feb27?language=printer
• President John F. Kennedy launched the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961.
• Volunteers must be at least 18 years old to serve, and some are in their seventies. In the last 41 years, more than 165,000 volunteers have served in 135 countries.
• Today, there are 7,300 volunteers working in 70 countries in the following fields: health, business, the environment, education, agriculture and information technology. President Bush's plan calls for 15,000 volunteers over the next five years. The number of Americans requesting information on joining Peace Corps has increased by 39 percent since Bush called for volunteers in his State of the Union address.
• Volunteers serve for two years, and when they return home, they are expected to educate Americans about people in other countries.
• Among presidential Peace Corps promoters, Jimmy Carter put his family where his mouth was: Both Carter's mother and grandson served as volunteers.
• To learn more about the Peace Corps, visit: www.peacecorps.gov.
---
Adventures in Peace
Volunteer Army Helps All Over the World
Washington Post
Thursday, February 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14295-2002Feb27?language=printer
Imagine that the president of the West African nation of Mali is on a state visit to Washington, and of all the fancy people he can visit, he asks to meet you.
Why you? Maybe it's because you can greet him in his local language of Bambara, ask about his family, even share a proverb that makes him laugh out loud. Maybe it's because you've spent two years in his country, living modestly, helping construct wells, but most of all sowing seeds of friendship.
Maybe it's because you're a Peace Corps volunteer.
C.D. Glin calls his Peace Corps service "the adventure of a lifetime." A Howard University graduate from Washington, Glin says the Peace Corps gave him the opportunity to make history. In 1997, Glin was chosen to serve in the first group of volunteers assigned to South Africa, which had just freed itself from years of apartheid.
During his two-year assignment, Glin worked with five schools in the northern part of South Africa, a region neglected during the long years of segregated schooling.
"When I first arrived in my community," said Glin, who is African American, "they asked, 'Where's the American?' "
"Within five minutes," he said, "I had made a difference just by letting people know that all Americans aren't white."
When Peace Corps volunteers work in a country, Glin says, they don't do anything to the people or for the people -- everything is with the people. That is why Glin made sure that someone from the community worked alongside him as a co-champion.
Often described as "the toughest job you'll ever love," Peace Corps service doesn't end when a person's two years are up and he returns home. So tomorrow, on Peace Corps' 41st birthday, C.D. Glin will join thousands of other returned volunteers in spreading the gospel of global understanding in schools around the country. President George W. Bush, meanwhile, has given the Peace Corps a great birthday present: He's promised to double the number of volunteers over the next five years.
Like presidents before him, including Peace Corps founder John F. Kennedy, Bush believes that one-on-one international friendships, forged in a rice paddy in the Philippines, or at an AIDS clinic in India, can help reduce misunderstandings that can lead to war.
For most volunteers, settling back into American life means bringing a bit of the world back home with them. Some do that literally.
Shawn Davis worked in a farming community in Mali, home of the legendary town of Timbuktu. After his service, Davis, who felt like he'd been adopted by the people of the village he lived in, invited his Malian "father," Mamadou Dougnon, to spend a month with him in his home town of Richford, Vermont. It gave Davis great pleasure to welcome Dougnon into his American community and return some of the warm hospitality he had received in Mali.
One of the highlights included bundling Dougnon up in winter clothing and taking him to the opening of "Star Wars." And just like Dougnon had patiently translated ancient Malian songs for Davis, it was now Davis's turn to translate "Star Wars" into Dougnon's Dogon language. (For the record, "Star Wars" in Dogon is "Toli Kombo.")
Most Peace Corps volunteers agree that what they receive from living overseas -- the richness of lifelong friendships and the discovery that underneath exotic clothing, strange food and different customs we're all the same -- is much more than what they give.
As C.D. Glin says, when South Africans would ask him, "What did you bring us from America?" he would smile and say, "The U.S. government gave you -- me!"
"And two years later," he says, "my community and I agreed that no dollar amount could be put on what we accomplished together."
-- Kitty Thuermer
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Lebanese Protesters Blast Govt's Economic Reforms
By REUTERS
February 28, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-lebanon-protests.html
BEIRUT - Thousands of Lebanese marched through the streets of the capital on Thursday to denounce the cash-strapped government's economic reforms, which protesters said threatened to starve them.
``We are starving. We want to eat,'' demonstrators chanted, beating on pots and pans. ``The political class are traders and thieves,'' said the marchers, who included teachers, unionized workers and left-wing students.
The march ended at the Grand Serail, Lebanon's seat of government, where the protesters denounced billionaire Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri as a ``thief'' as hundreds of riot police looked on.
The government introduced a 10 percent value added tax on February 1 which has raised the cost of living for Lebanese consumers already struggling to cope with growing unemployment and low economic growth.
Lebanon also plans to privatize loss-making state assets such as electricity and auction off two cell phone licenses to help rein in a public debt of almost $27 billion -- one of the world's highest at over 165 percent of gross domestic product.
The protesters, some bearing the red banners of the Lebanese Communist Party and other left-wing groups, called on the government to repeal the new tax and scrap plans for privatization, which they fear will lead to massive job cuts.
They also asked for wage increases and new jobs to offset the effects of the tax.
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FCNL LEGISLATIVE ACTION MESSAGE
02/28/02
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>
The following action items from the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) focus on federal policy issues currently before Congress or the Administration.
TOPICS: U.S. WAR ON TERROR IN COLOMBIA, U.S. LANDMINE POLICY
STOP THE U.S. WAR ON TERROR IN COLOMBIA: The Bush Administration is expected to urge Congress to involve the U.S. more directly in the Colombia's 38-year-old civil war under the guise of fighting a global war on terrorism. Pres. Pastrana of Colombia has requested that Colombia be allowed to use the U.S. trained counter-narcotics battalions and attack helicopters to attack the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
Current U.S. law forbids this and so far the Bush Administration has said that it intends to adhere to the law. However, the Washington Post has reported that, while the Administration has reaffirmed its commitment to the current policy, it plans to step-up consultations with Congress on possible future changes.
In its FY2003 budget request, the Administration has asked for $98 million to train and equip a Colombian army battalion to protect the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline in northeastern Colombia. The pipeline was attacked by Colombian guerrillas 166 times in 2001. Much of the oil in this pipeline belongs to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.
In addition, the Administration is seeking funds to continue the war on drugs in the Andes. Colombia and its neighbors would receive an additional $731 million in counter-drug assistance (for military, police, and alternative development programs). Colombia would receive about $275 million in military and police aid, including funding for a second counter-narcotics brigade. Currently one U.S.-trained counter-narcotics brigade operates in the southern department of Putumayo. Military and security assistance to Colombia has not reduced the production of illegal drugs, but it has contributed significantly to a sharp increase in violence.
ACTION: Please contact your representative and senators. Urge them to end U.S. military aid and training to Colombia and to support a negotiated, political solution to the conflict. Urge them to maintain the restrictions in current law which forbid U.S. counter-narcotics aid to be used for the counter-insurgency war. Ask your members to oppose all military aid for Colombia or for the war on drugs throughout the region. U.S. military aid and training only fans the flames of violence in this complex conflict.
USE FCNL'S WEB SITE TO MAKE LETTER-WRITING EASIER: Start with the sample letter posted in our Legislative Action Center, personalize the language, then send your message as an email or fax directly from our site. You can also print it out and mail it. To view a sample letter to your members of Congress, click on the link below, then enter your zip code and click <Go> in the <Take Action Now> box. Here is the link: <http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=104144&type=CO>
BACKGROUND: The three-year-old peace negotiations between the left-wing FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government to end the 38-year-old civil war have broken down. Colombia's Pres. Pastrana has ordered the Colombian military to take back a 16,000-square-mile zone in southern Colombia given to the FARC three years ago as a gesture of goodwill to advance the peace process. Since Thursday, February 21, the Colombian Armed Forces have been attacking this zone by air and with ground troops.
Pres. Pastrana has requested that Colombia be allowed to use the U.S. trained counter-narcotics battalions and attack helicopters in its war against the FARC. Current U.S. law forbids this, and, so far, the Bush Administration has said that it intends to adhere to the law. The U.S. will, however, continue providing intelligence to the Colombian military for counter-narcotics purposes, including pinpointing coca crops within the rebel-held areas. Orders for spare parts for U.S.-made, Colombian-owned attack helicopters will be expedited.
The 100,000 civilians who live within this zone are now caught in the middle of fighting between the Colombia military, the FARC, and the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), a right-wing paramilitary force. Human rights workers, indigenous community leaders, religious leaders, mayors and candidates for political office, journalists, academics, trade unionists, and others who would speak out against violence, are threatened with forced disappearance or death at the hands of either the FARC or AUC. About 40,000 Colombians - most of them unarmed civilians - have been killed in the last decade.
Human rights observers have documented strong links between Colombia's military and security forces and the AUC. Both have been engaged in the long war against the 17,000 strong left-wing FARC guerrillas. Trained Colombian military personnel are actively recruited by the paramilitaries (which offer high salaries, with revenues generated in large part by drug trafficking). Both the FARC and the AUC profit from Colombia's booming drug trade. Both are guilty of atrocities against civilians as, often, Colombian government military and security forces look the other way. The 8,000 to 10,000 members of the AUC are responsible for more than 80% of the human rights abuses perpetrated in Colombia in 2001. The FARC commit the overwhelming number of kidnapings in Colombia.
Since 2000, the U.S. government has approved more than $1 billion in military aid to Colombia to fight illegal drugs, making Colombia the third largest recipient of military aid after Israel and Egypt. Rather than stopping the flow of cocaine from Colombia, the increasing flow of military and security assistance to the region has caused an escalation in violence committed by all sides. The U.S.-sponsored cocaine fumigation campaign has left people ill, food and alternative cash crops wilted, drinking water supplies contaminated, and aquatic life destroyed. Millions have been driven from their homes by the violence, fumigation campaign, and resulting poverty.
CONTACT THE PRESIDENT ABOUT LANDMINES: Urge Pres. Bush not to reverse the current U.S. policy on landmines and to work to eliminate this weapon from the U.S. arsenal. The Department of Defense has been conducting an official review of U.S. landmine policy. The DOD reportedly will recommend that the President abandon a U.S. commitment to join the global mine ban treaty by 2006. Concerned citizens from around the U.S. are joining together to urge the President reject this advice and, instead, to unite with U.S. allies in banning landmines. Please send a fax to the President. Urge him to continue with current U.S. landmine policy and to work to eliminate this weapon from the U.S. arsenal.
Additional information about the Landmine Ban Treaty may be found on FCNL's web site at http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/landmines_indx.htm
USE FCNL'S WEB SITE TO MAKE LETTER-WRITING EASIER: Start with the sample letter posted in our Legislative Action Center, personalize the language, then send your message as an email or fax directly from our site. You can also print it out and mail it. To view a sample letter to the President, click on the link below, then click <Go> in the <Take Action Now> box. Here is the link: <http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=104128&type=PR>
CONTACTING LEGISLATORS
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121
Sen. ________ U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510
Rep. ________ U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515
Information on your members is available on FCNL's web site: http://capwiz.com/fconl/dbq/officials/directory/directory.dbq?command=congdi r
CONTACTING THE ADMINISTRATION
White House Comment Desk: 202-456-1111
FAX: 202-456-2461
E-MAIL: president@whitehouse.gov
WEB PAGE: http://www.whitehouse.gov
President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
This message supplements other FCNL materials and does not reflect FCNL's complete policy position on any issue. For further information, please contact FCNL,
245 Second Street, NE,
Washington, DC 20002-5795
Email: fcnl@fcnl.org
Phone: (202) 547-6000
Toll Free: (800) 630-1330
Fax: (202) 547-6019
Web: http://www.fcnl.org
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