------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
The Silent Saga of the Nuclear Navy
Inquiry into uranium weapons
Are thermobaric bombs really new or just DU?
Pyongyang threatens pact check
North Korea Denounces U.S. Nuclear Plan
U.S. to Conduct 6th Missile Shield Test on Friday
Bush Appears Eager Now to Sign a Nuclear Pact With Russia
Critics Blast Russian Reactor Plan
Pakistan seeks Japan aid and patience on nuclear treaty
Bush Focuses on Cutting Nuclear Arms
Nuts About Nukes
Bush Backs An Accord On Nuclear Arms Cuts
US keeps all nuclear options open: Bush
Pentagon: US Needs New Nuclear Arms
NUCLEAR LIABILITY LIMIT
GOP donors' reward -- a war briefing
The Real Problems With Our Nuclear Posture

MILITARY
U.S. helicopters blast cave entrances
Americans hunt in vain for men of al-Qaeda
Taliban and Qaeda Death Toll in Mountain Battle Is a Mystery
Sudan endorses incursion by Uganda
Igen Lands Defense Contract to detect dangerous biological agents
NIH Plans Bioterrorism Research
TRW rejects buyout bid
U.S. Will Take Action Against Iraq, Bush Says
Sharon and his defence chief clash over raids
Israeli Offensive Is 'Not Helpful,' President Warns Sharon
Ramallah Pullback Is Ordered but Washington Says It Expects More
Biblical Bethlehem Besieged
100,000 People Perished, but Who Remembers?
The NATO challenge
Musharraf at Odds With U.S. on War
Security Council endorses two-state vision
General says U.S. troops 'are getting tired'

POLICE / PRISONERS
American Taliban fighter wants access to detainees
U.S. to change bin Laden bounties
Russia's Ivanov Discusses Terrorism with CIA

ENERGY AND OTHER
Seeking Asylum, N. Koreans Storm Embassy in Beijing

ACTIVISTS
Seminar on Disarmament in Paris
People's Summit on Nuclear Waste, Connecticut, April 12-14




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- accidents

WHEN INCIDENTS ARE ACCIDENTS
The Silent Saga of the Nuclear Navy

By David B. Kaplan
Oceans Magazine,
August 1983
From: "vcolley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002

[This is a new discovery that came via email from an old friend Bill Clymer about the May 1978 Nuclear spill from the USS Puffer in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.]

http://oc.itgo.com/kitsap/nuclear/clymer.htm
http://www.princeton.edu/~jhandler/CV/Neptune_Paper_No_3_Naval_Accidents2.PDF

At three in the morning, I was awakened by a violent shock. I sat up in my bed and listened in the darkness, when I was thrown into the middle of the room. The Nautilus, after having struck, had rebounded violently. ." An incident, Captain?" "No, sir; an accident this time."

Pierre Aronnax to Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

It was sometime during the dayshift of 22 May 1978 that the accident occurred. Alarms rang out over the base, and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard jolted alive with the sounds of men and machines. The commotion centered on the 15,000 horsepower Westinghouse reactor of the USS Puffer. Coolant flooded out of the submarine's nuclear plant, pouring out of a mistakenly opened valve onto the concrete bed of Drydock 2. Before workers cut off the flow, as much as 500 gallons of "hot" radioactive water had escaped from the Puffer's primary coolant system into the shipyard. Only gutters of sand blocked the spill from falling into the inlet waters fifteen miles from downtown Seattle.

A lengthy clean up soon began, but not before word of the accident leaked to the local press. There were reports of 100 gallons, then of 150 gallons, another of more than 500 gallons. One shipyard source told the Bremerton Sun that the coolant did in fact spill into Puget Sound; others were not so sure. What was clear was that the shipyard had experienced a radiological emergency, and the navy would have to make a statement.

"Last Tuesday there was a very minor incident involving the USS Puffer announced a navy spokesman. " About five gallons of slightly radioactive water leaked onto the dry-dock floor. The radioactivity of the water was low-level, the highest radiation levels from the spill being comparable to radiation levels near the surface of a radium dial wristwatch. No personnel were contaminated. None of the water entered the Sound."

Bill Clymer, the six-foot, three-inch union steward of the shipyard's crack radiological control team, stood atop Drydock 2 and watched the clean up begin. He was handed a radiological survey of the area - the coolant had permeated the concrete with cobalt 60, a radioisotope which would not significantly decay for more than five years. Radiation monitors gave readings far more hazardous than those of a "radium [or luminous] dial wristwatch", and judging by the area affected, he was sure some 500 gallons or more must have spilled.

Clymer knew about coolant spills. He had been through over twenty-five accidental discharges since he started nuclear work at the shipyard eight years before. He had even won two commendations, including a 1977 Award of Merit for work "accomplished in highly radioactive contaminated environments under the most demanding conditions".

It took a month for decontamination crews to clean up after this "minor incident". Workers with jackhammers blasted away a fifteen-by-twenty foot section of the drydock, packed the concrete into steel drums, and shipped it to a government nuclear waste dump at Hanford, Washington. The clean up had its problems too. At one point, a work stoppage was called because the radiological control technician on duty demanded better safeguards to stop the spread of radioactivity.

Clymer and his buddies could stop a work crew that way. He liked to call his co-workers "nuclear traffic cops". They were the civilian watchdogs of the shipyards, responsible for monitoring and safeguarding much of the navy's nuclear overhaul work. However, it was getting more and more risky to confront the navy at the Puget Sound shipyard. Wedged into the classified work of overhauling nuclear submarines was an increasingly tense, two-year battle between management and labor.

Bill Clymer was the point man in this growing dispute. Only months before a valve was to blow out of a civilian reactor at Three Mile Island, the navy had begun teaching Clymer and his co-workers how to cope with the worst accidents imaginable at a nuclear plant. And now those men were asking for a raise. "We were being trained to handle nuclear meltdowns," states a defiant Clymer, "and they were paying us janitorial wages. All we wanted was a dollar or two more an hour."

Frustrated by the navy's inaction, Clymer began to blow the whistle on problems at the shipyard. His actions might have been those of just another disgruntled employee, were it not for a long career of top-secret government clearances dating back to his code-breaking days with the army. Federal agents had repeatedly investigated Clymer's background for these jobs and found only a hard working, patriotic American.

Starting in 1978, Clymer began leaking a series of official nuclear safety reports to the local press, exposing a part of life at the base rarely seen by Seattle residents. One document revealed there were thirteen radiological "incidents" at the shipyard during the first four months of1977. Another warned of a "deteriorating" safety performance and cited four more "incidents" of contamination during a two-week period, including the overexposure of three shipyard workers to "airborne" radioactivity. Asked for a comment by the press, Robert Kelley, the Shipyard's Director of Radiological Control, replied, "I can't confirm or deny this. This is not the type of thing we discuss outside the shipyard."

There was more controversy. After two unusual transfers away from the shipyard's nuclear work, Clymer went public with his discovery of plans to build a seven-story 400,000-gallon nuclear waste pit at the Shipyard, prompting two environmental groups to file an unsuccessful suit. The water pit is scheduled for completion in 1984.

In January 1979, Clymer was accused of the unauthorized use of shipyard documents (fuel oil report roust), taken into custody by armed guards, and escorted off the base. After eight years of nuclear safety work for the U.S. Navy, Bill Clymer was out of a job.

If they were isolated events, the problems Bill Clymer exposed at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard would be disturbing enough. There is evidence, however, that they are part of a global pattern of nuclear navy accidents, spills, and environmental and health problems. As a result of a yearlong investigation, the Center for Investigative Reporting has compiled the first comprehensive look at the environmental impact of the nuclear navy worldwide, including accounts of serious accidents in the U.S. and Soviet navies. The record we have amassed stands in sharp contrast to the U.S. Navy's thirty-year-old claim that it has never had an accident caused by one of its reactors, and raises even more serious questions about the safety of Soviet nuclear vessels. While some of these hazards have received brief mention in the press, information about others has been quietly suppressed by the U.S. Navy and its counterparts abroad. Consider the following:

Today, there are an estimated 352 nuclear-powered vessels worldwide, driven by some 376 marine reactors, and the number is growing rapidly. Yet, despite the many safety problems of civilian reactors, the world's nuclear navies release almost no information on the operation and accident records of these ships. Marine reactors are developed and controlled almost entirely by the world's militaries, with virtually no independent oversight or international control.

Nuclear accidents aboard these vessels are known to have occurred resulting in the release of radiation. Accidents involving Soviet nuclear-powered ships have recently been called "catastrophic" by the U.S. Navy. Serious problems have befallen U.S. naval reactors as well including at least thirteen accidental discharges of radioactive material in coastal areas. Nuclear vessels frequently encounter difficulties, which could lead to nuclear accidents including floods, fires, and mechanical breakdowns. Although most of these incidents go unreported, a 1983 survey by the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed 126 since 1954 or about once every three months. Over one-quarter of the events involved problems related to the nuclear power plant.

The nuclear fuel cycles that support these navies are plagued by accidents at every step of the way, from uranium mining to waste disposal. These fuel cycles, in turn, are serviced by a massive, little-known complex of shipyards, training centers, refueling plants and public and private industries that constitute a large part of the international arms race.

Not long after Bill Clymer lost his job, another career civil servant was being forcibly retired in Washington, D.C., though for unrelated reasons. Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the controversial barracuda behind this nation's nuclear navy, was finally relieved of duty after a record fifty-nine years of public service. Rickover's departure signaled a rite of passage for the U.S. Navy. This small, cantankerous man, the son of a Polish tailor, had grabbed hold of the reactor engineering project for the world's first nuclear powered ship, the USS Nautilus, and did not stop to rest until the submarine was launched, on schedule, in January 1954. Rickover then donned a civilian hat, and with that same technology helped pioneer President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. By the end of 1957, his team had completed the nation's first commercial nuclear reactor, the Shipping port power plant in Pennsylvania.

During the next twenty-five years, Rickover was instrumental in creating what is today an almost underground nuclear industry. It is a huge virtually self-regulated naval bureaucracy that operates 154 floating reactors, plus another nine at land-based training centers, more than twice as many as those operated by America's utility companies. The Soviets, meanwhile, quickly followed Rickover's early lead, and now wield an enormous nuclear fleet of their own encompassing 135 ships and submarines. They in turn were followed by the British, French and. most recently the Chinese.

Illustration by Kirk Caldwell

There were also unsuccessful attempts to commercialize the technology for civilian ship propulsion. The United States made the first effort with the maiden voyage in 1962 of the NS (Nuclear Ship) Savannah, a cargo and passenger ship. She went around the world - a flagship for a new industry. But the ship was plagued by labor and financial problems. After eight years of service, and a $100 million subsidy from taxpayers, Congress cut off further funding.

The Savannah was followed in 1968 by West Germany's 17,000-ton nuclear-driven ore carrier, the Otto Hahn, which operated for several years but also on a subsidized basis. Then in 1974, the Japanese launched their ill-fated Mutsu, a nuclear-powered research ship, which developed a leak in its reactor system during sea trials. Japanese fishermen, concerned over the possible contamination of seafood, refused to let the ship dock, and it drifted in the waters of the North Pacific for five weeks.

All three civilian ships are now in mothballs.

Like the foreign nuclear fleets, the U.S. Navy, citing a broad range of national security concerns, is quite secretive about its Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. In Congressional testimony and a handful of unclassified reports, however, Admiral Rickover and his successors have sought to assuage any public fears. Every year for the past thirty years they have testified before Congress with statements typical of this one last year: "there has never been an accident involving a naval reactor, or any release of radioactivity which has had a significant effect on individuals or the environment." The navy tells us, furthermore, that they have accomplished this perfect record while amassing 2400 years of reactor operation and 50 million miles of steaming at sea.

Despite the Admiral's assurance, it is an open secret that the navy does in fact maintain records of what appear to be nuclear accidents, at least as you and I would use the word "accident". These events, however, are not called "accidents" by the navy. They are "incidents" and "discrepancies". And they are, in the words of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, "born classified". While accident reports are frequently released by the nuclear navy's civilian counterpart, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the navy routinely denies public access to similar reports because "there has never been an accident." The nuclear navy's principal oversight committee in Congress - the House Committee on Armed Services - has shown little inclination to question the navy's claims to such a perfect record.

Critics wary of these public pronouncements of safety point to the existence of the navy's "incident" records as evidence that the Pentagon is not being entirely forthcoming. They also stress that such an immaculate record is highly unlikely, given the long accident record of the nation's commercial nuclear plants, and the fact that most of these plants are modeled after the smaller reactors used in the navy. Both types of reactors are also largely built by the same corporations, General Electric and Westinghouse. Both nuclear establishments even use the same personnel. Admiral Rickover's elite training program has produced 50,000 men who today make up the bulk of the commercial nuclear industry's workforce. During the accident at Three Mile Island, for example, most of the reactor operators in the plant's control room were graduates of the navy's program.

Through the years, Admiral Rickover has echoed the claims of America's utility executives in championing the safety of nuclear energy. Despite these public displays, however, privately he has worried that a major accident could occur in one of his reactors, and that with the loss of a ship could go the public's acceptance of nuclear power. As a precaution, since the early days of his program Rickover tried to enforce a little known, partial ban on visits by nuclear ships to densely populated ports like New York and Boston. Before a 1960 hearing of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, he even complained that his orders to avoid these areas were being ignored. "What if something happens and you irradiate a city," he argued, "and you are called upon to prove there really was a military necessity [to go there]? What are you going to say?"

Nevertheless, the U.S. Navy has fostered what does appear to be a safety record superior to that of the commercial nuclear industry. Critics and advocates a like point to Rickover's navy as the finely tuned example of how nuclear energy can be safely managed, the model of technical efficiency for the civilian sector. Even Bill Clymer agrees that the navy is far safer. "The utilities don't know how to handle nuclear power plants," he once said. "The navy's different. They have to live with their reactors."

The navy, however, is deeply concerned about the possibility of a serious nuclear accident caused by one of its reactors and has trained shipyard workers like Bill Clymer to cope with that possibility. It has issued detailed classified manuals on the subject, and has even created a code name for such an event - "Faded Giant".

According to copies of these manuals we (see third paragraph below)

Just as the United States is happy to list the shortcomings of the Soviet Navy, the Soviets are not slow to reciprocate. Opposite: The LISS Nautilus, the navy's first nuclear-powered submarine, on sea trials near Groton. Connecticut. According to Soviet claims, "defects" in the reactor shielding ex posed the crew to high levels of radiation in 1954. The sub was supposedly docked for refitting and the crew partially replaced. (all photos courtesy U.S. Navy) have obtained, the impact of a Faded Giant would be much like a major accident at a commercial reactor, with evacuations, contamination of food and water supplies, and the spread of fallout to areas downwind. The size of the affected region could be substantial. California state officials, after meeting with the navy in 1980, planned a 31.5-square mile evacuation zone around the Mare Island Naval Shipyard near San Francisco - an area that encompasses 186,000 people.

The temperature inside a nuclear submarine on patrol is a constant seventy-two degrees. The lighting is always fluorescent. There is no sun, no wind, no rain. At this moment there are some eighty-five nuclear submarines prowling the world's oceans. They slide through cold, unfriendly waters on special intelligence missions and routine patrols. Although only about one twentieth the size of a large commercial nuclear plant, the single reactor aboard U.S. submarines enables them to travel on a single fueling for as long as thirteen years. Like Jules Verne's Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the navy has created the first true submersible, able to stay continuously under water for months at a time. Unlike Captain Nemo's sub, however, which ran on an unknown sodium "Bunsen" apparatus, today's submarine employs a pressurized water reactor.

The modem submarine ranks among the most technically sophisticated machines ever devised. A nuclear sub, as one observer put it, is a 4,000-ton Swiss watch. Cast within a tear-shaped, steel hull of some 400 feet is a maze of piping, circuitry and instrumentation that curves and bends throughout the ship. Over 7.000 pipe joints make up the saltwater system alone, all of it exposed to the enormous pressure of the sea. The navigational equipment looks like something out of Star Wars, with a complex array of gyroscopes, "accelerometers", and computers.

This precise technology reaches its highest point in the new Soviet Typhoon and American Trident submarine classes. Each sub can travel virtually undetected with a nuclear arsenal of twenty to twenty-four intercontinental ballistic missiles, each missile armed with independently targeted warheads. A single Trident or Typhoon sub is capable of incinerating nearly 200 cities. At all times these deadly vessels, along with other ballistic missile subs, are on a silent, lonely patrol in the strategic straits and seas of the world. Within ten minutes of a presidential order, the Trident can climb to a depth of about 100 feet, unleash its missiles and virtually devastate a nation 4,500 miles away. The policy of deterrence depends in large measure on the near invulnerability of these ships.

Like all creations of high technology, however, the nuclear submarine is not a foolproof machine. The United States has lost two nuclear subs at sea with their full crews; the Soviets have lost at least one. The exact causes in all three cases are unknown. It is known, though, that there have been many close calls as well. "I'm really surprised we only lost two subs," says Robert Pollard, a former senior reactor operator from the USS Sargo. "There were times when we weren't sure we were coming back."

Indeed, sometimes the nature of the job heightens the possibility that something may go awry. Nuclear submarines play a dangerous undersea game of cat and mouse, constantly testing and retesting the defenses and strategies of their opponents. A 1976 Congressional intelligence report, portions of which were leaked to the press, revealed that U.S. subs had collided with nine "hostile vessels" during the preceding decade. The submarines, which often operated "within unfriendly waters", were part of a top-secret naval intelligence operation. Five of the collisions were believed to have been with Soviet nuclear subs. The report noted that there was no lasting damage to the American subs, and that "presumably" no Soviet submarines were sunk.

How many of these events were serious is not known, but a significant number of incidents involving nuclear ships has occurred. Nuclear subs have run aground, crashed into other vessels, had fires, floods and mechanical breakdowns. They have collided with warships, tankers, and at least one whale. Forty-two of these incidents were reported in a 1977 study of nuclear weapons accidents by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. A 1983 survey of press reports and related sources by the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed eighty four more, including thirty-seven that involved the nuclear power plant. Because of the limited data available to the general public, and because of the relative openness of American society, most of the events cited involve U.S. ships. One must assume, however, that the nuclear fleets of the Soviet Union, England. France and China have had their share as well.

An interesting loophole has developed which does provide the public with an unusual look at the lesser-known aspects of the U.S. and Soviet nuclear navies. While the superpowers are unwilling to talk about the actual nuclear accidents of their own ships, they are, as it turns out, willing to release information about their opponent's fleets.

Rumors of serious nuclear accidents and of widespread radiation overexposure in the Soviet Navy have persisted for years, but only during the last year have U.S. officials finally begun releasing information about them. U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman told reporters in March 1982 that Soviet "standards of safety - and crew safety - are far lower than ours in nuclear power plants. We know there have been some catastrophic health-impairment incidents. We know there are hairless sailors in old soldiers' homes." Loss of hair is a common symptom of radiation sickness.

Lehman went on to say that disabled Soviet subs have been seen being hauled back to port at the end of a three-mile tow Line, ostensibly because of radiation dangers. The Soviets, he claimed, had sacrificed safety for high-speed performance.

In June 1982, Defense Electronics reported that Danish intelligence sources confirmed widespread deaths of Soviet sailors due to radiation exposure. "Although the Kremlin has done its best to suppress the news," noted the journal", the increasing illness and resulting deaths of the sailors, and the inactivity of Soviet nuclear subs in Baltic ports, are becoming too widespread to hide".

Lehman's remarks were again reinforced by two brief official reports released later last year by the U.S. Navy detailing five Soviet reactor accidents. One report to Congress noted that crewmen from Soviet nuclear ships reportedly receive what is called "childless pay" and special treatment for radiation-related diseases. Injuries and deaths caused by overexposure occurred "particularly in earlier units", according to the report.

Together with a second document released to the author, entitled "Summary of Soviet Nuclear Incidents" (there is that word again), the report paints an ominous picture of the Soviet Navy's nuclear history. They refer to "strong evidence" that the icebreaker Lenin, the Soviets' first atomic powered ship, "suffered a reactor casualty" shortly after its refueling in 1966. Radiation from the accident apparently forced "the ship to be abandoned for over a year before work was begun to ultimately replace (its] three reactors with two."

Just what happened to the Lenin is unclear. According to naval analysts Norman Polmar and Thomas Alien, writing in their recent book Rickover, the Lenin "suffered a major radiation leak. Rumors persist that many crewmen had severe radiation exposure. She lay idle, 'too hot' to board for several years." A renovated Lenin was returned to service in 1970.

Four other accidents from 1970 to 1980, all involving submarines, are cited in the U.S. Navy reports, indicating that the Soviet Navy has not yet licked its reactor problems. One accident in 1970 involved the sinking of an attack submarine near Spain due "to a casualty in the nuclear propulsion system". The other accidents all apparently involved various power failures due to problems in the reactor systems. More than nine sailors were known to be dead and an unknown number of others seriously injured.

In its report to Congress, U.S. Naval Intelligence officials stressed the difficulty of verifying releases of radiation by Soviet ships because of tight security around ports used by the Soviet nuclear fleet. "The Soviet Union has never made public any information on its nuclear ship operations in port, occupational radiation exposures or the handling of radioactivity associated with their ships."

U.S. intelligence officials, however, have access to far more data on these and possibly other accidents. Members of Congress have received detailed briefings during closeddoor hearings on the Soviet Navy's nuclear woes. And the CIA, in a response to a Freedom of Information request by the author, recently admitted to the existence of a highly classified document issued in 1981, entitled, "Submarine Accidents: A Continuing Problem for the Soviet Navy".

Just As THE United States is happy to list the shortcomings of the Soviet Navy, the Soviets are not slow to reciprocate. 1n1968, a Leningrad press released a book that must have raised a few eyebrows among naval intelligence officers in the West. The book, entitled Proyektirovanive Atomnykh Podvodnykh Lodok ("Design of Nuclear Sub-marines"), contained a discussion and a series of tables detailing U.S. nuclear submarine accidents. Among the accidents cited were ten involving the nuclear power plant, accidents that the U.S. Navy says do not happen. The tables, judging from the references that can be checked by newspaper accounts at the time, are quite accurate. Except for a few requisite references in the text about "the adventurous policy of the Pentagon", the book's other claims do not appear to be fabricated or outlandish. Two of the accidents cited involved the release of radiation in levels that "significantly exceeded permissible limits".

The first accident occurred early in the U.S. nuclear propulsion program aboard the USS Nautilus. The Soviet authors claim that, in 1954, the year the sub was commissioned, "defects" in the shielding around the reactor exposed the crew to high levels of radiation. The submarine was docked for refitting and the crew partly replaced.

The second accident occurred in 1961 aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, one of the earliest ballistic missile subs. The vessel received "increased radioactivity due to incorrect disposal of radioactive waste". This operation involved "the primary circuit demineralization system". a unit that extracts radiation out of the reactor coolant and stores it in resins which themselves become highly radioactive. The submarine had to be decontaminated.

A third accident, which can be confirmed by brief press reports at the time, involved the October 1959 explosion and fire in the prototype reactor of the USS Triton at the navy's training center in West Milton, New York. One man was killed and three others seriously burned when a high-pressure air flask exploded. The navy, in response to a recent inquiry, stated, "The explosion was completely unrelated to the reactor or any of its principal auxiliary systems." However, according to sources familiar with the operation of naval reactors, the flask supplied air to operate a critical back-up system in the event of a reactor emergency.

The U.S. Navy has had other serious reactor accidents as well. During the course of its investigation into naval nuclear safety records, researchers at the Center for Investigative Reporting came across a number of striking "incidents" or "discrepancies", to use the navy's terms:

The USS Thresher, History's worst submarine disaster was apparently due to an accident directly involving the ship's nuclear reactor. The USS Thresher, the lead ship of a new class of attack submarines, was on sea trials off the New England coast when. on April 10, 1963, it sank and imploded, plunging 129 men to their death. The remains of the Thresher now lie in 8,400 feet of water.

Admiral Rickover repeatedly asserted that the accident had nothing to do with the reactor plant. But some leading naval authorities believe otherwise including Adm. Ralph K. James, then chief of the navy's Bureau of Ships. James believes that failure of a seawater pipe on board caused a violent stream of pressurized water to hit the nuclear control board initiating a "scram" (emergency shutdown) of the reactor. Because of "inadequate design of the nuclear controls for the plant" power was lost and the Thresher, already on a deep dive, continued down to "collapse depth". Among others who concur with this account is Norman Polmar, author of Death of the Thresher and for ten years U.S. editor of Janes Fighting Ships, the standard reference book on the world's navies.

The navy claims that no radiological problems resulted from the Thresher sinking. Samples taken from around the ship's debris show only minor amounts of cobalt 60. However, it is impossible to tell whether the reactor was part of the debris. According to the official account, the Thresher's reactor and its fuel somehow survived intact both the immediate implosion of the ship and the later corrosive action of seawater.

The USS Seawolf. The navy experienced a little-known set of problems with an experimental sodium-cooled reactor it developed for the second nuclear submarine, the Seawolf. The reactor was plagued by persistent leaks in its steam system. caused by the corrosive nature of liquid sodium. Also apparently a problem was the explosive property of sodium when it came into contact with water. Four years after the Seawolf was launched its reactor was replaced with a pressurized water system like those used by the Nautilus and all later U.S. ships.

Despite interest in the use of sodium as a coolant, the reactor was deemed too problematic and in 1954, it was scuttled in 9.000 feet of water off the Maryland-Delaware line. The reactor is estimated to have contained 33,000 curies of radioactivity, and is believed to be the largest single radioactive object deliberately dumped into the sea. Repeated attempts to locate it have failed.

The SL-1 Reactor. The navy's statement that it has never had a reactor accident is carefully limited to the naval propulsion program. Were it not, the navy would have to take into account its direct involvement in one of America's worst reactor accidents, the SL- 1 disaster.

SL- 1, a prototype boiling water reactor at a government facility in the Idaho desert, was being explored for use by the army and navy as a mobile energy unit for remote locations. On 3 January 1961, the reactor exploded, killing a navy electrician and two army technicians then on duty. The men were so contaminated they had to be buried in lead caskets. About 20 percent of the reactor's core melted, accompanied by a large release of radiation. Clean-up of the area took thirteen months. An NRC official later suggested in a recent interview that the accident was caused deliberately by one of the technicians in a bizarre suicide-murder plot stemming from a love triangle at the plant.

The U.S. navy's most frequent type of accident appears to be the mistaken release of primary coolant, the pressurized water used to carry heat away from the reactor core. Like the USS Puffer in Puget Sound, a host of similar reports have surfaced in other nuclear navy harbors. "All it really takes is a single valve that shouldn't have been opened," says one navy vet, "and you've mistakenly dumped hot coolant into a harbor".

The local paper of any nuclear shipyard town is likely to have a number of short stories over the years on these releases. In every reported case the navy has denied either that the accident occurred, or claimed that radiation levels released were far too low to cause injury. Some examples: The USS Proteus, a disabled submarine tender, discharged highly radioactive amounts of primary coolant water into Guam's Apra Harbor during October and November 1975, according to two former crewmen from the ship. One of the men, a retired navy technician, charged in a sworn affidavit that as a result, a geiger counter check of the harbor water near two public beaches measured 100 millirems per hour, fifty times the present allowable dose. The men also claimed that the Proteus had failed its nuclear safety inspection six months earlier.

In May 1968, Japanese scientists monitoring radiation adjacent to the submarine USS Swordfish discovered levels up to twenty times higher than normal background. The Japanese believed the radiation may have been linked to the discharge of coolant from the sub into Sasebo Harbor. The findings caused an international incident, prompting political demonstrations in the region, and causing then Premier Eisaku Sate to warn that U.S. nuclear ships could no longer call at Japanese ports unless their safety was guaranteed.

Reporters from The Day, a local newspaper near the New London, Connecticut, submarine base, discovered that on 12 December 1971, 500 gallons of reactor coolant spilled into the Thames River while being transferred from the submarine Dace to the sub tender Fulton. According to an account published in the book Rickover, the admiral himself later described the accident as " a hose broke, spilling a few gallons of pure water into one of our most polluted rivers." The navy claims that its primary coolant is safe enough to drink after being passed through the reactor's filtering system. Bill Clymer agrees, in part: "If you paid me enough," he says, "I'd drink primary coolant out of a clean plant. It depends from where in the plant, and how long it's had a chance to settle and decay.

The actual water in the primary coolant system stays radioactive only for a few seconds but the coolant system picks up bits of cobalt, chromium, and other elements that rust or break off the pipes and the reactor. When these pieces of metal become irradiated, some do not significantly decay for years.

Until the 1970s, U.S. nuclear ships and shipyards annually discharged millions of gallons of excess primary coolant and other low-level liquid wastes into harbors and coastal areas. Despite Admiral Rickover's insistence that the practice was safe, the navy has drastically cut back on the amount released in near-shore waters. Today, the navy reports that since 1973 it has discharged annually less than 25,000 gallons within twelve miles from shore. The total radioactivity present is said to be one curie, an insignificant amount.

The navy points to a series of seven radiological surveys of various nuclear ports in the United States by the EPA and the Public Health Service as proof that their releases of radiation really are minuscule. These studies, however, have been done Inconsistently. Ports such as Norfolk, Virginia, and several in California have not been surveyed by independent agencies for fifteen years. Several others appear not to have been checked at all, including the U.S. Naval Submarine Support Facility in Kings Bay, Georgia, and the U.S. Naval Shipyard and Weapons Station in Charleston, South Carolina.

The navy issues no figures on the amount of its nuclear wastes released while far out at Sea. The navy's annual reports do note, though, that this amount of radioactivity is "less than the naturally occurring radioactivity in a cube of sea water approximately 100 yards on a side". This figure excludes tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Tritium releases from the entire nuclear navy are below 200 curies per year, or "less than single electrical generating nuclear Power stations typically release each year".

According to informed sources, the navy Is now attempting to halt all releases of radiation while at sea. The motivation is not environmental, however, as much as strategic. Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are apparently at work on techniques to track enemy subs by following the radioactivity emitted by their reactors. According to Military Electronics magazine, a Soviet ship in 1974 successfully tracked one of its own submerged subs this way. Official navy policy states that solid nuclear wastes are no longer disposed of at sea. However, according to Interviews the author has had with former submarine and Shipyard personnel, the navy routinely dumps overboard highly radioactive resins, which act as filters for the reactor coolant. These filters - which have the consistency of caviar - are called ion exchange resins, and are the source of accidental contaminations.

Bill Clymer remembers submarines coming to port covered with the resin beads. "Somebody would screw-up," he says, "and the wind would blow them back on the ship. They were the equivalent of a black, gunky oil filter from your car, but just loaded with radioactive crud." This is what apparently happened in 1961, when, according to the Soviet book, Design of Nuclear Submarines, the USS Theodore Roosevelt was contaminated by poorly disposed waste from the "demineralization system". The accident occurred again on the USS Guardfish fourteen years later, according to Kirk Peterson, a former navy reactor instructor then stationed on the sub. "While we were in dry-dock at Pearl Harbor during the winter of 74/75," says Peterson, "we covered one side of the hull with canvas and scraped off algae and barnacles, and carted it all away (for radioactive waste disposal). It was contaminated with resin that had flown back from a disposal at sea."

The resins and other radioactive waste retained by nuclear vessels end up at a handful of specially equipped shipyards. There are nine U.S. shipyards--three private, six government-owned-which perform the navy's nuclear work. And there are five Soviet shipyards, which according to the Pentagon, are building new nuclear subs at a rate three times faster than the United States.

How safe are the workers at these facilities? During the last five years, a highly politicized scientific debate has arisen over the effects of radiation on the health of nuclear shipyard workers. One independent study directed by Dr. Thomas Najarian, a Boston blood specialist, recently found that shipyard workers with higher exposure rates at the nearby Portsmouth Naval shipyard have a three times greater chance of contracting leukemia and other cancers. The navy has called Najarian's work "sensational" and says his findings have been refuted by a study from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). To further complicate matters, there is a third, slightly different type of study done by British researchers at a shipyard in Scotland which showed a definite link between exposure to low-level radiation and "chromosomal aberrations", suggesting possible genetic problems for the workers.

Called before a congressional committee to address the questions raised by these studies, Admiral Rickover issued his longstanding defense of the U.S. Navy's high safety standards, and repeated his claim, "No one has been injured from an accident involving radiation exposure." But for the first time he added, "I do not include the area which is of concern to this committee-the long-term effects of low-level radiation."

Despite the controversy, Rickover could still point to his well-known record of proteeting workers in the U.S. nuclear navy. According to official reports, the total amount of radiation exposure at the nation's shipyards has dramatically dropped, from a peak in 1966 to less than one-eighth that figure, despite a more than doubling of the number of ships overhauled. In the history of the navy's nuclear propulsion program. there have been only thirty-five overexposures, all before 1968.

It was an impressive record, especially when compared to the large number of over exposures at NRC-licensed civilian reactors. (There were seventy-three in 1980 alone.) But how accurate were the navy's figures?

In January 1979, (NOTE: The day Bill Clymer was arrested at PSNS; see exhibit 15) Dr. John Cobb of the University of Colorado Medical School, a member of the advisory panel for the NIOSH study, journeyed to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to evaluate the situation for NIOSH director Dr. Anthony Bobbins. Cobb, an EPA consultant and long-time professor of community health, was shocked at what he called "destructively antagonistic, even explosive relations between the union officials at the [shipyard] and the navy". Union officials believed, Cobb later wrote, "that evidentally the navy did have something serious to hide from us, that the navy would lie, cheat and do anything to cover-up their deficiencies in management."

Cobb arranged private meetings with the shipyard workers and garnered nineteen letters from them detailing conditions at Portsmouth. In those letters--which appear in Cobb's NIOSH report--and in his meetings with the workers, he was told of how conditions there encouraged high exposure rates, particularly during the early years of the shipyard. Badges that measured radiation doses were often "lost". Cobb concluded that the navy's data on early exposure rates were simply not reliable, especially during radiological "incidents" at the base. "In one case," said Cobb, "they threw away the victims' clothes, including their radiation badges. There have been plenty of accidents at Portsmouth, some with enormous exposure."

Cobb discovered that there were incentives for workers to keep their radiation exposure artificially low. To earn overtime pay they would not wear their radiation badges in "hot" areas. He was told, "that workers were led to believe that radiation exposure would not harm them," and that the navy had often issued "waivers" to keep workers in high radiation areas even after they had exceeded exposure limits.

Beyond the impact of the nation's 163 naval reactors, there are the environmental effects of a huge complex of industries that supports the U.S. nuclear fleet. As in the commercial industry, naval nuclear fuel goes through a long, complicated, and often-hazardous cycle that begins with uranium mining and ends with radioactive waste disposal. Included in the safety record of the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, then. should be the following:

- Naval reactors. because of their high, 93 percent enriched uranium, consume over thirty times more fuel for each pound used than the commercial nuclear industry, which enriches only to 3 percent. This gives the navy an enormous stake in the nation's uranium mining industry, which has long been plagued by high rates of lung cancer and the poor disposal of over 150 million tons of toxic radioactive mill tailings.

- Since 1968, the navy's top-secret fuel processing plant in Irwin. Tennessee, has lost 234 pounds of the highly enriched uranium - which is pure enough to make a bomb out of - forcing the plant to shut down six times. Also, in 1979, an accident at the facility contaminated about 1,000 people with dust like uranium, giving them doses five times higher than they would have received normally in a year.

- The government's reprocessing plant in Idaho, which helps recycle the navy's spent fuel into nuclear weapons, is also the dump site for the navy's solid, high-level nuclear wastes. The plant has had a long history of nuclear accidents, and has raised fears among local residents that its injection of billions of gallons of radioactive wastes and raw sewage into the ground since 1952 will seriously contaminate Idaho's Snake River Plain Aquifer. The tail end of the navy's nuclear fuel cycle has not been completed, for like every other nuclear operation, the U.S. Navy has no solution to its mounting problem of nuclear waste disposal. The remains of the navy's most dangerous by-products--spent fuel--are being stored in steel holding tanks in Idaho until some means of permanent disposal are found. But that is not the only radioactive waste left by the nuclear navy.

There is the USS Nautilus, the navy's first nuclear submarine, for example. This historic ship is to be towed to its birthplace at the Electric Boat Shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, and turned into a museum, open at last for the public to see.

The Nautilus, though, is reportedly too "hot" to use as a museum. For three years, the decommissioned sub has sat idle at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard near San Francisco. Navy officials have confirmed that portions of the sub will remain so radioactive that the public will be forever barred from them.

It is not known what the Soviets plan to do with their old nuclear ships. Their decommissioned subs are reportedly still tied up at various shipyards. The U.S. Navy, however, has proposed several ways to solve its dilemma, including the eventual sinking of more than 100 of its nuclear subs, with their reactors intact, off the California and North Carolina coasts. Under this plan, the de-fueled subs would be towed out to sea at a rate of three or four per year over the next thirty years, and dumped in waters of 14,000 feet or more at locations approved by the EPA.

The navy has thrown other radioactive refuse into the oceans over the years. From 1946 to 1970, more than 89,000 barrels of radioactive waste, much of it from navy shipyards and radiation labs, were dumped in at least fifty locations off the nation's coastlines. Neither the exact number of barrels nor sites is known because record keeping at the time was notoriously poor. A check by the EPA found that one-quarter of the barrels at the heavily fished Farallon Islands dump thirty miles west of San Francisco were ruptured and leaking. The report, a 1955 survey of nuclear waste disposal practices, was finally released in 1981 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Despite government claims that only low-level waste was dumped, evidence in a recently unearthed report from the Atomic Energy Commission indicates the disposal of more than 1,000 barrels of high level waste, most of it from the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, a navy nuclear propulsion center near Pittsburgh.

The U.S. Navy's constant claims of absolute safety would be more believable if it would declassify its "incident" records and open them to public scrutiny. But the navy does not appear willing to take that risk. After all, even Admiral Rickover admitted that his nuclear plants are not foolproof. The "whole reactor game hangs on a much more slender thread than most people are aware," he once said. "All we have to have is one good accident in the United States and it might set the game back for a generation."

Certain regulatory changes would go a long way toward assuring a safer navy. As the U.S. nuclear navy stands today, we have basically one organization that researches, designs, operates, maintains and monitors Its nuclear activities. Such a condition would never be tolerated in the civilian nuclear industry, nor in any large industrial activity in the United States.

One obvious need is for more frequent checks of nuclear-ship harbors by agencies independent of the navy, such as the EPA. Another important change would be for more careful scrutiny by the relevant congressional oversight committees, rather than the almost blind acceptance with which they now view the navy's reports on nuclear safety. Another move would be for a strict directive to be issued for nuclear vessels to avoid heavily populated ports whenever possible. And certainly the navy's practice of dumping highly radioactive filter resins at sea--in direct violation of its own policy-should be stopped.

The problem, however, will not be solved by merely imposing better regulations upon the U.S. military. The increasing chances of catastrophic nuclear accidents on the high seas and in busy ports is ultimately an international one, and depends not only on the United States, but on the five major nuclear powers which are all increasing the size of their nuclear fleets. It raises questions of safety and security which can be answered only by serious arms control treaties. The ships that are being built and the ships now at sea, form an integral part of the international arms race.

Admiral Robert B. Carney recognized this thirty-five years ago, when, as a deputy chief of naval operations, he argued that a worldwide ban on nuclear powered warships should be attempted before building such a fleet. Carney believed that if the United States developed this awesome capacity, its enemies would surely follow, and history has proved him right. It is not too late, however, to limit the damage that has been done. When the diplomats sit down at those long negotiating tables, they should start counting naval reactors alongside the nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

David E. Kaplan is a staff writer at the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, and is editor of the Center's recent book, Nuclear California (CiRl Greenpeace, 1982). His articles on energy and defense have appeared in newspapers and magazines nationwide. This story was prepared with the research assistance of Ida Landauer, and was funded by grants from the Fund for Constitutional Government and the New World Foundation.


-------- depleted uranium

Inquiry into uranium weapons

Thursday, 14 March, 2002
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_1873000/1873534.stm

Tests have been carried out at a Scottish firing range The Ministry of Defence has announced an inquiry into the possible health effects of shells containing depleted uranium.

The announcement follows concerns about suspected side effects from depleted uranium (DU) shells fired into the Irish Sea from the Kirkudbright firing range in Galloway.

The tests involved firing hundreds of tonnes of the shells into cloth targets.

Depleted Uranium has been used in combat because of its improved abilities to penetrate armour over traditional ammunition.

The Ministry of Defence has rejected any conclusive link between cancer and the use of ammunition.

However, after recommendations by the Royal Society, it has now decided to conduct a study "to identify any links between exposure to DU and ill health", including a review of the "effects of DU inhalation on the pulmonary lymph nodes".

The MoD inquiry will cover the effects of used DU shells in soil and marine environments.

The inquiry will also investigate safer alternatives to the use of depleted uranium.

Water supplies

A recent report by the Royal Society said a small number of soldiers and civilians might suffer kidney damage from depleted uranium if substantial amounts are breathed in, or swallowed in contaminated soil and water.

The report recommended that soldiers who may have been exposed to depleted uranium should be tested for the presence of uranium in their kidneys and in their urine.

It also suggested that depleted uranium may contaminate water supplies - putting civilians at risk.

-------

Are thermobaric bombs really new or just DU?

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002
From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>

The editor's introduction to Robert James Parsons Le Monde article (http://www.mondediplo.com/2002/03/03uranium) refers to the effects of "new" thermobaric bombs. These were reported after the article was written but Robert's comments still apply.

Military press releases that these "new" warheads were developed in a few weeks are highly improbable. The same claim was made for the original bunker busters in 1991. Careful analysis of military and manufacturers' websites since 1997 indicates that most new weapon systems have a development lead time of many months, usually 2-3 years. The Tactical Tomahawk penetrator version upgrade was approved 1999 but officially is still not due to be operational until later this year. In practice it was almost certainly used in the Afghan bombing, if only in pre-production prototype form.

I conclude that Military and manufacturers press releases are frequently and deliberately misleading about the operational dates of new weapons by months or years, allowing combat testing at least a year before they are declared to be in production. (see pages 117-119 of DU weapons 2001-2002 at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm ).

If DU is used in upgraded hard target warheads its powerful incendiary effects would be "thermobaric". The "new" BLU-118/B Thermobaric bomb is reported to be an upgrade of the BLU-109 2000 lb bomb casing with new explosive. The BLU-109 is used in the GBU-15, GBU-24 and GBU-31 guided bombs and the AGM-130C missile.

The upgraded BLU-109/B bomb (also known as AUP-116 advanced unitary penetrator) uses unspecified "heavy metals" in the warhead to double its penetration effect. It has incendiary capabilities to neutralise chemical and biological targets. These combined features are strong indications that the heavy metal upgrade is achieved by using Depleted Uranium. While incendiary effects are mentioned in detail in the two Thermobaric bomb reports below* no mention is made of the incendiary effects of DU. However several other suspected DU guided weapons are mentioned as well. Compare these with weapons in Part 3 of the DU report.

The guided versions (different codes represent different guidance system kits fitted onto the basic warhead) of the upgraded BLU-109/B are mainly intended for underground targets - caves and command bunkers. They were first combat tested in the Balkans war according to an arms dealer filmed in the French documentary "La Geurre Radioactive Secrete".

The DU component in the warhead casing would need to be at least 50% of the weight (i.e. 1000 lb) to double the density of the old version, enabling its cross section area to be reduced by 50%. These thinner warheads have twice the penetration effect of old versions for the same weight.

The fragmented DU casing would burn at very high temperature (estimated 2000 degrees) creating powerful heat / blast effects while consuming all available oxygen in confined spaces - exactly the function of the thermobaric bomb. Recent news video of a thermobaric impact showed a dense black cloud of smoke emerging from the cave - characteristic of the black DU oxide dust seen in news videos the known DU anti-tank penetrators in the Gulf War.

It seems very likely that this kind of "new" bunker busting thermobaric bombs are not new at all - that they are simply a new description for the effects of DU incendiary hard target warheads. However they may use a modified explosive designed to maximise flame as well as blast effects with some form of hydrocarbon vapours to extend the range of the DU inferno into underground cave systems.

Targets in Afghanistan hit by these "thermobaric" bombs should be tested at the first opportunity for suspected DU contamination and should be avoided by troops or civilians without full NBC protective clothing. Perhaps staff from the manufacturers should be used to inspect targets, rather than troops or Afghans.

Since latest targets are in mountain locations with winter snow cover any DU is likely to permanently contaminate surface and underground water systems. All watersheds affected by the recent bombing may need long term DU pollution monitoring.

These "new" weapons should not be confused with Daisy Cutters (which use aluminium powder to create a fireball and blast above ground level). They will require quite different warhead technology from the fuel-air thermobaric weapons designed by several countries also for use above ground level if the same effects are desired under ground. The new advanced penetrators already use specially insensitive explosives that survive initial impact until delayed action fuzes are ignited.

Similar "thermobaric" effects would be created by all suspected DU hard target warheads in guided bombs and cruise missiles, whether exploding on the surface or underground. Their very high temperatures are likely to create greater fire damage in the immediate target area than conventional explosives, to leave distinctive black dust in the immediate area and to cause more severe burns for casualties than conventional blast-fragmentation warheads. These features may be important for troops, civilians and de-mining technicians to identify suspected DU bomb or missile targets until alpha-radiation detection equipment is available.

For descriptions of the upgraded BLU-109 and other suspected DU hard target warheads see pages 77 and 84 of "DU weapons 2001-2002" available at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm or go direct to the Smart weapons index of the FAS website http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/index.html

Two descriptions of these "new" weapons are available at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/01/020104-AFw1s 4.htm (compare delivery dates for several hard target weapons systems with other reports in DU weapons 2001-2002) and http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/blu-118.htm

US websites contain a lot of factual detail about weapon systems. Specific guidance systems, fuzes and explosives are identified in detail. But the dense metals used in warheads are rarely identified. Press releases from the Pentagon and manufacturers may appear detailed but are often not what they seem and inconsistent with other reports.

For the health and safety of troops and civilians I repeat my appeal that the mystery metals involved in all hard target guided weapons are disclosed by the governments that have purchased them or the manufacturers that make them. The BLU-118/B should be added to the list of 21 suspected DU weapon systems in Table 4, page 131 of my DU weapons report.

Until full and verifiable discosure is done troops, civilians and civilian employers (e.g. aid and media organisations) would be wise to take DU precautions in any bombing target zones in Afghanistan until a truly independent and trusted source can conduct environmental tests for DU contamination of air, water and soil..

Dai Williams eosuk@btinternet.com

-------- korea

Pyongyang threatens pact check

From combined dispatches
March 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020314-91300045.htm

SEOUL - North Korea threatened late yesterday to review all agreements with the United States over a reported U.S. nuclear strategy which targets seven countries - including the communist state - for possible attacks.

Shortly thereafter, a group of 20 North Korean asylum seekers in Beijing pushed their way past Chinese guards and rushed onto the grounds of the Spanish Embassy there.

The incident touched off at least one scuffle with a Chinese guard and frenetic discussions between Spanish Embassy personnel and the uniformed Chinese guards.

In delivering the threat to review all pacts, the North's foreign ministry warned in a statement that the country would have "no option but to take a substantial countermeasure" against the United States.

"We are compelled to examine all the agreements with the United States in case the U.S. plan for a nuclear attack on the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] turns out to be true," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

According to leaks to the U.S. media, the Defense Department's nuclear policy review calls for a shift away from the Cold War posture of using the U.S. nuclear arsenal to deter a nuclear strike from the former Soviet Union.

It sees China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and Syria as potential targets for U.S. nuclear strikes, according to the Los Angeles Times report.

U.S. officials have tried to allay international fears, saying the report merely listed options at the disposal of U.S. authorities.

The North slammed the reported U.S. strategy as "a daydream of the reckless persons who do not hesitate to stifle" the country by using nuclear weapons.

In a separate statement aired by state radio stations, the North's foreign ministry insisted that Pyongyang had "faithfully" implemented agreements signed with Washington in 1993 and 1994.

The Cold War enemies issued a joint statement in 1993 to defuse a nuclear crisis triggered by the North's withdrawal from an international nuclear-safeguard accord.

In 1994, they signed a landmark agreement under which the North froze its suspected nuclear weapons program. In return, the United States pledged to build two peaceful nuclear reactors and offer diplomatic and economic incentives.

The 1994 Agreed Framework set the stage for a string of rapprochement talks between North Korea and the United States.

But the North has threatened on several occasions to end the 1994 agreement, charging that the United States was not living up to its pledges. Its latest threats, including yesterday's warning on scrapping all accords, stem from what it calls a "hostile" policy by President Bush. It has also rejected Mr. Bush's demand for talks on a pullback of North Korean forces from the Demiltarized Zone.

The North has repeatedly denounced the United States for delaying a $4.6 billion project to build two nuclear energy reactors that produce less weapons-grade plutonium. U.S. officials have warned that the construction might suffer further delays if the North refuses to allow checks on nuclear activities.

The asylum-seeking North Koreans, including men, women and youngsters, ran through the front gate of the embassy on a tree-lined street in the Chinese capital, reporters on the scene said. One of the North Koreans struggled with a Chinese guard on the gate, but broke free and rushed in with the others.

Within minutes, dozens of armed green-uniformed Chinese guards converged on the compound. A group of Spanish diplomats came out of the embassy building, talked to some of the guards, and then went back into the building.

People who helped the North Koreans distributed written statements from the asylum seekers. The statement described them as six families and three individuals. It said they totaled 25 persons, but reporters only saw about 20.

"We are now at the point of such desperation and live in such fear of persecution within North Korea that we have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom," the group statement said.

"Some of us carry poison on our person to commit suicide if the Chinese authorities should choose once again to send us back to North Korea," said the printed-out statement, written in English.

--------

North Korea Denounces U.S. Nuclear Plan, Promises 'Response'

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/asia/14KORE.html

SEOUL, South Korea, March 13 - Responding for the first time to a nuclear policy report by the Pentagon, North Korea today denounced proposed revisions of United States military strategy as "an inhuman plan to spark a global nuclear arms race" and warned of "strong countermeasures" against the plan.

In one of its toughest attacks on the United States, North Korea said it could "not remain a passive onlooker" after its inclusion among the countries cited by the Pentagon as potential targets.

The commentary, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, was in reaction to American press reports last weekend that the Pentagon had recommended developing new nuclear weapons tailored to strike at targets in North Korea as well as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Accusing the United States of "working in real earnest to prepare a dangerous nuclear war to bring nuclear disasters to our planet and humankind," the commentary carried an implicit threat of a retaliatory strike by North Korea.

"A nuclear war to be imposed by U.S. nuclear fanatics," it warned, "would mean their ruin in nuclear disaster."

The commentary did not specify how North Korea would respond, but it seemed to have been intended to play upon fears that North Korea does have the ability to fire missiles carrying nuclear warheads or biological and chemical weapons.

It was largely because North Korea is suspected of developing such weapons that President Bush, in his state of the union address in January, named the country as part of an "axis of evil" that also included Iraq and Iran.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency and South Korean defense analysts have long believed that North Korea has enough plutonium for one or two nuclear warheads. But North Korea signed an agreement in Geneva in 1994 under which it promised to stop trying to build nuclear weapons.

North Korea threatened earlier this month to withdraw from the agreement if the Bush administration persisted with what North Korea called a "hard-line" policy that differed from the Clinton administration's approach. North Korea also renewed its complaints against delays in construction of two nuclear reactors promised in the 1994 agreement to fulfill its energy needs.

In denouncing the Pentagon's nuclear proposals, the North Korean commentary made a rare mention of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the United States in August 1945 that preceded the Japanese surrender in World War II. North Korea generally ignores the role of the United States in ending World War II, preferring to credit Communist guerrillas with having ended Japanese rule over the Korean peninsula.

"If the U.S. intends to mount a nuclear attack on any part of the D.P.R.K. just as it did on Hiroshima, it is grossly mistaken," said the commentary, referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Besides warning the United States, the analysis also seemed directed at South Koreans who have criticized what they see as an increased threat by the Bush administration against North Korea.

Although South Korean officials have said the revisions in American nuclear strategy present nothing new, the opposition Grand National Party, a conservative group, has called on the government to protest strongly. The party of President Kim Dae Jung has demanded fuller explanations from Washington.

-------- missile defense

U.S. to Conduct 6th Missile Shield Test on Friday

March 14, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-missile.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday will make a sixth attempt to intercept and shoot down a mock warhead over the Pacific Ocean in a controversial missile defense test program opposed by Moscow, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

The test is part of President Bush's goal of building a limited shield to protect against ballistic missiles from ''rogue'' national such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

Russia, China and other countries oppose U.S. efforts to develop a missile shield, saying it would violate arms control agreements and could led to a renewed arms race.

In the test, a ``kill vehicle'' projectile fired from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific will attempt to intercept and destroy a mock warhead launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, about 4,800 miles away, the Pentagon said in a statement.

It said the warhead will be launched from a modified Minuteman-booster rocket along with three balloon decoys that will open up in space. The kill vehicle must distinguish between the mock warhead and the balloons. If all goes as planned, it would destroy the warhead about 140 miles above the ocean. Previous tests have involved only a single decoy.

The test was scheduled to begin between 9 p.m. EST on Friday and 1 a.m. Saturday, the Pentagon statement said.

The United States has had three successes in five intercept attempts, including back-to-back successes in tests conducted in December and July.

U.S. officials contend the missile defense tests do not violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the former Soviet Union. That treaty forbids either party from developing a national missile defense.

Bush in December gave Russia formal six-month notification that the United States was abandoning the treaty in order to press ahead with the missile defense system.

-------- russia

Bush Appears Eager Now to Sign a Nuclear Pact With Russia

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/europe/14NUKE.html

WASHINGTON, March 13 - President Bush expressed optimism today that a deal on nuclear arms reduction would be ready for his meeting in May with President Vladimir V. Putin, and clearly moved from reluctance to enthusiasm about signing a formal agreement.

At a White House news conference, Mr. Bush also defended a Pentagon review of the nation's nuclear posture that included consideration of how these weapons might be used to destroy biological or chemical arms of an adversary like Iraq, Iran, Libya or Syria.

"We've got all options on the table, because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies or friends," he said.

He expanded on comments earlier in the day by Sergei B. Ivanov, the Russian defense minister, who said "some specific results have been achieved" in two days of talks here on nuclear arms reductions with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"I share the minister's optimism that we can get something done by May," Mr. Bush said. "I'd like to sign a document in Russia when I'm there. And it could be a good thing."

Although the president has said repeatedly that he is open on how a deal could be sealed with Russia, he has said just as often that a formal agreement is unnecessary, indicating that a handshake between allies would be sufficient given their warming relations.

Today, however, he seemed to embrace the Russian view wholeheartedly. "In other words, we've got to work hard to establish a new relationship," Mr. Bush said. "I also agree with President Putin that there needs to be a document that outlives both of us. And what form that comes in we will discuss."

At a Pentagon news briefing with Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Ivanov said that United States and Russian negotiators had exchanged drafts of a possible nuclear arms agreement and that he was particularly encouraged by progress in the area of "transparency" - or how the actions of each side would be clear to the other as they reduce nuclear stockpiles over the next decade.

A senior Defense Department official said that during the talks, which will continue between Russian and American technical experts in Geneva next week, Pentagon officials explained how they planned to account for warheads that are not atop operational missiles, but are in storage, a continuing point of contention.

"There was some misunderstanding before," the official said. "They now understand some of the distinctions we're making. I'm not suggesting that everything has been worked out, that there are no differences between the U.S. and Russian sides. There continue to be."

Before arriving in Washington, Mr. Ivanov had warned that American proposals to keep warheads in storage instead of destroying them would encourage proliferation and, perhaps, set off a new arms race.

American officials have said that even after the United States cuts its 6,000-warhead nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, it would store hundreds of warheads in order to respond to future threats and unexpected contingencies.

Asked to describe the Russian reaction, Mr. Ivanov seemed to indicate that Russia might store some warheads as its arsenal dropped to as few as 1,500, although only until they could be properly destroyed.

"It is true that for some period of time, those warheads could be stored or shelved, but anyway, the time will inevitably come when those will have to be destroyed," Mr. Ivanov said.

--------

Critics Blast Russian Reactor Plan

March 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Floating-Reactor.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's plan to build a floating nuclear power plant in the White Sea is dangerous and too risky, leading Russian environmentalists said Thursday, urging neighboring countries to object.

The Atomic Energy Ministry has said the first-of-a-kind plant would be set afloat in the White Sea and used to provide energy to the Arkhangelsk region, some 600 miles north of Moscow. Previous plans also called for a floating nuclear plant in the Chukotka region and off the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia's Far East.

``It would be unforgivable to proceed with these plans,'' said Alexei Yablokov, an environmental scientist who heads the Russian Center for Ecological Politics. Yablokov spoke at a press briefing about the release of a new study on floating nuclear plants that calls them ``a menace to the world's oceans.''

Russia has long been interested in using such plants to supply electricity to remote northern and eastern regions where severe weather makes construction on land difficult and expensive. But despite often-announced plans that the project had the green light, environmentalists said the floating plants have still not received backing from the highest levels of the Russian government or a proper license.

``It is still not too late to stop this,'' said Vladimir Kuznetsov, director of nuclear and radiation security programs for the Russian Green Cross, an environmental advocacy program.

The environmentalists said the government must have an open and public discussion about the proposed project, including its benefits and dangers. The experts questioned whether the plant could be adequately secured, particularly against terrorist attacks.

Kuznetsov noted that the proposed plants would have two nuclear reactors containing enough material to build 10 atomic bombs. Critics have also expressed concern about Russia's ability to safely build and manage a floating nuclear power plant.

Russia's nuclear reactors were designed in the Soviet era and many are in need of repair, prompting frequent minor malfunctions. The Soviet Union was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986 at Chernobyl in Ukraine.

``It is better that we don't even head down this path,'' Yablokov said.

The environmentalists said nations that share international waters with Russia, such as the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, should take the lead in condemning the proposed plants.

-------- treaties

Pakistan seeks Japan aid and patience on nuclear treaty

By Masayuki Kitano
Thursday March 14, 4:24 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-94720.html

TOKYO - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appealed on Wednesday for Japanese aid and investment but asked for patience on his country's position on the nuclear test ban treaty.

Musharraf said Pakistan faced difficulties after the September 11 attacks on the United States and in its efforts to become a peaceful, economically vibrant and moderate Islamic country.

"I seek Japan's assistance in converting challenges into opportunities," he told a news conference in Tokyo.

In an earlier meeting with executives of Japan's three ruling parties, Musharraf said he was determined to quell Islamic extremism and build democracy and he asked for aid to support those goals, Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Taku Yamasaki said.

The Japanese politicians told Musharraf that Tokyo would not hesitate to cooperate if that would lead to Pakistan's stable development, Yamasaki said. He did not go into specifics.

Musharraf arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday evening for a four-day visit during which he will meet Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as well as talk to political and business leaders.

"Our policy direction has consistently been market-led and business friendly. We want to encourage investment in Pakistan," Musharraf told a group of Japanese business executives.

Pakistan's international profile has improved since its decision to align with the United States after the September 11 attacks but the war in neigbouring Afghanistan has hit its trade and investment.

Pakistan's ability to draw fresh overseas investment depends on how committed Musharraf is to his stated objectives of democracy and reform, analysts say.

DEBT BURDEN

Japan was Pakistan's top bilateral donor until 1998, when it imposed economic sanctions after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests to match atomic blasts by rival India.

The sanctions were lifted after Pakistan joined the U.S.-led coalition and Japan approved a total of $340 million in grants to Pakistan late last year and also agreed to reschedule Pakistan's debt. But Tokyo has not resumed the annual yen loan packages it had offered for years.

Musharraf said Pakistan was grateful for Japan's aid but said he wanted to discuss the possibility of a further reduction in Pakistan's debt burden with Koizumi.

"I would request the prime minister to consider the issue of interest rates on this debt," he told a news conference.

As of the end of March 2001, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, a semi-government institution that handles overseas loans and official development assistance, had outstanding debt exposure of 570 billion yen ($4.41 billion) to Pakistan.

TEST BAN

Musharraf was urged by Japanese politicians to sign the international nuclear test ban treaty but said he needed more time to win public support for the pact.

"We are aware of your concerns, but please give us some more time," he told the news conference.

The 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or CTBT, banning all nuclear blasts in the atmosphere, in space and underground, has been signed by 165 states of which 89 have ratified it.

But to take effect, the pact must be ratified by 44 states specifically deemed nuclear-arms capable, including the United States, China, Iran, India and Pakistan. Of those, only 31 have ratified the treaty.

In separate talks on another thorny issue, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar denied his country's alleged military cooperation with North Korea in a meeting with his Japanese counterpart Yoriko Kawaguchi, Jiji news agency reported.

Defence analysts have said Pakistan is among buyers of ballistic missiles and missile technology from North Korea, which strained relations with Japan when it test-fired a ballistic missile in August 1998, part of which flew over Japan.

Sattar told Kawaguchi that Pakistan's missile development was "self-sustaining", Jiji quoted a Japanese government official as saying.

Besides Sattar, Musharraf is accompanied by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz and Commerce Minister Abdul Razzak Dawood.

--------

Bush Focuses on Cutting Nuclear Arms

March 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush is offering to turn his verbal agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on large cuts in nuclear arsenals into ``a document that outlives both of us.''

Bush's choice of words seemed to indicate a new willingness to engage in detailed negotiations -- although he steered clear of that term -- on aspects of nuclear arms reductions important to the Russians.

Administration officials previously have expressed reluctance to get into drawn-out negotiations, arguing that in the post-Cold War world there is no need for such formal arms constraints.

Bush said he discussed the matter this week with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who also met Wednesday with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Ivanov was scheduled to see Secretary of State Colin Powell and meet with CIA officials Thursday.

At a White House news conference, Bush said Wednesday his administration also is willing to discuss with the Russians their concern about his administration's plans to store, rather than destroy, thousands of the nuclear warheads Bush intends to remove from the active force over the next decade.

Bush said he hopes an arms agreement will be ready to sign when he visits Putin in Russia in May.

Bush and his senior national security aides have said in the past that because Russia is no longer an adversary, there is no need to codify arms reductions. Putin, however, has pushed for a formal agreement.

In response to reporters' questions, Bush said his chief concern in putting together a nuclear accord was ensuring that agreed reductions could be verified by both governments.

``The most important thing, though, is verification -- to make sure that whatever decision is made, that there is open verification so as to develop a level of trust,'' he said.

On the issue of requiring the destruction, rather than long-term storage, of nuclear warheads removed from the active force, Bush said this would require ``a lot of work,'' presumably by negotiators.

``That in itself is going to take time, and that's got to be a part of the equation as well,'' he said.

Bush said he was wary of ``those who are interested in making sure that the Cold War relationship continues on.'' He did not elaborate, but said the U.S.-Russia relationship is important.

``I also agree with President Putin that there needs to be a document that outlives both of us,'' Bush said. ``What form that comes in, we will discuss.'' He added: ``I'm confident that President Putin is interested in making a deal, coming up with a good arrangement that will codify a new relationship.''

Earlier Wednesday, Rumsfeld and Ivanov held a joint news conference at the Pentagon.

Ivanov said Russia will not ignore ``international terrorists'' who have infiltrated neighboring Georgia. He said they are linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network and are ``full of new plans for terrorist operations.''

Ivanov said these terrorists had trained in Afghanistan, ``committed terrible crimes'' in the Russian breakaway province of Chechnya, and are now in Georgia's remote Pankisi Gorge, only a dozen or so miles from Russia's border.

``We cannot just sit and watch those activities indifferently,'' he said, adding that Moscow had provided the U.S. government a list of hundreds of names of such people with links to al-Qaida.

At the Georgian government's invitation, the Pentagon is preparing to send perhaps 150 troops to the former Soviet republic to train its armed forces in counterterrorist operations. Some in the Russian parliament have sharply criticized the plan, but Ivanov gave no indication Wednesday that he opposed it.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Nuts About Nukes

By Mary McGrory
Washington Post
Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A27

It's one of two things. The nuclear posture review is either a harmless piece of paper serving up warmed-over Clinton doctrine, "a working document" leaked by some subversive showoff; or else it is a farewell to arms control and nonproliferation, the work of doomsday planners who have at last succeeded in selling their idea that nuclear weapons are no different from the conventional kind and equally useful in combat.

The Bush administration, led by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, is busy spinning its insignificance. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked Powell at a hearing if the new, smaller nukes envisioned by the review would require testing that would violate the moratorium on testing. Powell gave a sweeping assurance: He had called the Pentagon and was told it had no intention of abandoning the test ban.

Secretary Rumsfeld was having the novel experience of playing host to an official whose country found its name on the target list that is a feature of the review. Both he and Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defense minister, got around it by saying what great friends and partners the United States and the Kremlin have become since the end of the Cold War.

The Pentagon reviewers may seem to be activating the nuclear trigger by asserting that we will use nuclear weapons against any nation threatening biological or chemical warfare. Hitherto, nonnuclear states were exempt from U.S. nuclear attack, but the president says he has to have every possible option.

For some, the review offered a trip down memory lane. The advocacy of small nuclear weapons brought back memories of 1964, when Republican presidential contender Barry Goldwater traversed the country peddling tactical battlefield nukes no bigger than a fountain pen -- so small they could be clipped to a GI's shoulder tabs.

The public did not buy. It wasn't the size of the weapons, it was their radioactivity that concerned people. Goldwater was vaporized by Lyndon Johnson.

"It was bizarre then," says the Carnegie Endowment's nuclear sage, Joseph Cirincione, of Goldwater's crusade. "It's bizarre now."

"We are saying that nuclear weapons are no longer the weapon of last resort but weapons of first choice," he says. This is from an administration that has pledged a two-thirds reduction in strategic nuclear weapons but denies that development of small weapons will have any effect on nonnuclear countries that had refrained from going nuclear.

Cirincione's succinct summary of the meaning of the review: "It means that the nuclear nuts have seized control of the policy apparatus."

Most military men agree that battlefield nukes are not an option. Among them has been Colin Powell, who, in his autobiography, "My American Journey," wrote disparagingly of their utility. In 1958 he was assigned to guard a nuclear cannon. "We are not talking about dropping a few artillery shells at a crossing. No matter how small they were . . . we would be crossing a threshold. . . . Using nukes at this point would mean one of the most significant policy and military decisions since Hiroshima."

Powell has been assiduous in defending the administration against charges of extremism and unilateralism. Some think he swallows hard before fashioning his rationalizations, but a united front is more essential than ever, with the vice president making a tour to convince 11 nations that this is a prudent, painstaking country that could be trusted to run a tidy and effective effort in evicting Saddam Hussein from Iraq.

"Our heads are spinning," said Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a moderate Republican who succeeded his father in the Senate. John Chafee was a champion of arms control. "This is a time when we should be befriending people, not threatening them. We need all the allies we can get."

Chafee said that the leaked news of another enterprise, the shadow government, was still confounding members. The Bush plan to collect bureaucrats from all over the government and send them underground for 90 days to ensure the continuity of government -- leaving Congress entirely out of the picture -- caused both hilarity and hurt feelings on the Hill. Members are familiar with White House efforts to make the legislative branch feel irrelevant, but to insinuate nonexistence breaks new ground. The short-lived Office of Strategic Influence caused consternation. Although for some it represented progress of a sort -- the Pentagon never admitted it was lying all through the Vietnam War -- it caused fresh waves of derision in Europe.

The alacrity with which administration officials, beginning with the president, are insisting that the nuclear posture review represents no change is enough to convince you that the Office of Strategic Influence is alive and all too well.

----

Bush Backs An Accord On Nuclear Arms Cuts
President Eyes Pact For Moscow Summit

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23699-2002Mar13?language=printer

President Bush said yesterday he agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the two leaders should seek an accord spelling out major cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, hopefully during their summit in Moscow in May.

"There needs to be a document that outlives both of us," Bush said. "I'd like to sign a document in Russia when I'm there."

But Bush told reporters at a White House news conference that the form of agreement that would be signed remains to be settled. In the past, the president has talked of avoiding a formal treaty codifying the proposed reductions.

After meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon yesterday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said experts from the two countries had already exchanged what he called "a future agreement." He said such "a legally binding document" would allow the arrangement to be understandable "for the whole world and . . . reflect the transparency which we need to achieve between the two countries."

At the heart of any document would be the agreement by Bush and Putin announced during their Crawford, Tex., summit last year that each country would reduce by two-thirds over the next 10 years its number of operational warheads on missiles and bombs.

For both it means roughly going down from today's 6,000 warheads to about 2,000 warheads by 2012.

One issue that remains to be settled is what happens to the warheads that are taken out of operation. The Pentagon has said an undetermined number would be kept in reserve, where some could be redeployed within days or months. The Russians have argued that they should be destroyed.

Bush said the United States is "glad to talk to the Russians" about the "storage versus destruction" question, but "the destruction of nuclear warheads requires a lot of . . . detailed work and that in itself is going to take time."

Ivanov appeared to indicate that the issue may have been set aside. Asked whether Putin's demands for destruction of reduced warheads had been met, the Russian defense minister said, "For some period of time, those warheads could be stored or shelved." But, he added, "the time will inevitably come when those will have to be destroyed."

Both Bush and Ivanov said that verification of any reductions was also still an issue.

Bush called it "the most important thing." He described verification as something "we need to develop and fully explore . . . how best to verify what's taking place to make sure that there's confidence in both countries."

Along with negotiations with the Russians on nuclear warheads, Bush was also asked about the Pentagon's nuclear posture review, which was completed earlier this year.

The review has been described as directing development of a new low-yield nuclear weapon to attack hardened targets such as bunkers and targeting nuclear weapons on countries accused of developing weapons of mass destruction such as Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Syria.

Bush said the recent posture review was "not new" and pointed out that similar reviews of underlying policies surrounding deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons had "gone on for previous administrations." The last one, done in 1994 by the Clinton Pentagon, contained many of the same suggestions about the need for contingency nuclear planning directed at nations such as Iran and Iraq.

Rumsfeld yesterday described the review as providing "requirements for deterrence in the 21st century." He insisted it was "not an operational planning document" and "says nothing about targeting any country with nuclear weapons."

Bush refused twice to respond to questions about whether he favored development of a new, low-yield nuclear weapon.

Instead he said he hoped the U.S. nuclear arsenal "is modern, upgraded and can work . . . to deter any attack on America. The reason one has a nuclear arsenal is to serve as a deterrence," he said.

----

US keeps all nuclear options open: Bush

Thursday March 14, 6:49 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020313/1/2kv9t.html

President George W. Bush said that all options were open for the use of the US nuclear arsenal to deter hostile nations from threatening the United States or its allies.

"First of all we have got all options on the table," Bush told a White House news conference, "because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies or friends."

Bush was responding to a question about reports that the US administration had ordered the Pentagon to draw up contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against a wide range of countries.

According to media reports, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria were named as potential targets for US nuclear strikes.

The reports sparked concern abroad that Washington was adopting a more aggressive nuclear policy. Bush, however, insisted that US nuclear weapons were for deterrence only.

He said "the reason we have a nuclear arsenal that I hope is modern, upgraded and can work is to deter attacks on America."

Specifically addressing the Nuclear Policy Review, a top secret document presented to Congress in January, and leaked to some newspapers recently, Bush insisted that it contained nothing new.

"Well, first of all the nuclear review is not new," he said. "It's gone on from previous administrations."

According to media reports, the Nuclear Policy Review calls for a shift away from the Cold-War posture of using the US nuclear arsenal to deter a nuclear strike from the former Soviet Union.

According to press reports, the review identifies new contingencies in which US nuclear weapons might be used, specifically "an Iraqi attack on Israel or its neighbors, or a North Korean attack on South Korea, or a military confrontation over the Taiwan Strait."

Top US officials including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell have all denied that the review recommends new targetting of nuclear weapons and have referred to it as no more than prudent and routine forward planning.

Bush declined to comment on reports that the review discusses the development of a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons that could destroy bunkers containing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction hidden underground by hostile powers.

Anti-nuclear activists say the devices would make use of nuclear weapons more likely.

Instead Bush stressed that his administration was committed to reducing the number of nuclear warheads and he had discussed the matter in talks Tuesday with Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defense minister who is currently visiting Washington.

"And we're in consultations now with the Russians on such a -- on this matter. We both agreed to reduce our warheads down to 22 -- 1,700 to 2,200," he said.

"I think it's the right policy for America, and I know we can continue to do so and still keep a deterrence."

--------

Pentagon: US Needs New Nuclear Arms

March 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Policy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As part of its plan for strengthening American nuclear forces, the Bush administration intends to develop nuclear bombs that could destroy deeply buried and fortified underground targets, according to excerpts from a classified Pentagon report that were posted Thursday on an Internet site.

The report, called the Nuclear Posture Review and completed in January, said there are more than 10,000 underground military facilities in more than 70 countries.

``At present the United States lacks adequate means to deal with these strategic facilities,'' it said, referring to an estimated 1,400 underground facilities deemed of special importance because they house weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles or top-level military command stations.

The U.S. military's only earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, known as the B61-Mod 11 gravity bomb, cannot penetrate many types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities are located, it said.

``Given these limitations, the targeting of a number of hardened, underground facilities is limited to an attack against surface features, which does not provide a high probability of defeat of these important targets,'' it said.

The extensive excerpts posted Thursday by GlobalSecurity.org, an Internet site that specializes in military and intelligence topics, include portions that were reported last weekend by the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld lamented the disclosures and said the person who leaked the information had violated federal criminal law.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said in an interview Thursday that he saw no reason to believe that publication of the information would harm U.S. national security. He declined to say how he obtained the excerpts.

``The point is to let the voters and taxpayers read it for themselves,'' he said.

Last weekend's news reports about the review emphasized its naming of seven countries -- Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria -- against which the United States might use nuclear weapons.

The report said the United States needs to develop nuclear weapons better suited for striking targets in countries that could be involved in ``immediate, potential or unexpected contingencies.'' It said these are North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.

``All have longstanding hostility toward the United States and its security partners; North Korea and Iraq in particular have been chronic military concerns,'' it said. ``All sponsor or harbor terrorists, and all have active WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and missile programs.''

Some or all of those five also have extensive underground military facilities.

The report mentions China as a potential target in light of its ``developing strategic objectives'' and its growing emphasis on modernizing its nuclear and conventional military forces.

It said Russia is no longer considered an adversary but its large nuclear forces ``remain a concern.''

``In the event that U.S. relations with Russia significantly worsen in the future, the U.S. may need to revise its nuclear force levels and posture,'' the report said.

A key theme in the report is that the United States needs to modernize its nuclear force and develop a more flexible array of weapons that can be used to deter attack by unpredictable countries such as North Korea.

As part of that approach, the report stresses the need to develop nuclear weapons that are more effective against deeply buried targets. U.S. military officials have said for years they are greatly concerned about the vast number of tunnels and underground military facilities in North Korea. There also have been concerns about a suspected chemical weapons underground facility in Libya.

The report proposed developing an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon with a much lower yield than would be required with a nuclear weapon designed to explode at the surface. ``This lower yield would achieve the same damage while producing less fallout -- by a factor of 10 to 20 -- than would the much larger-yield surface burst,'' it said.

``For defeat of very deep or larger underground facilities, penetrating weapons with large yields would be needed to collapse the facility''

The report set a goal of fielding ``a new level of capability'' against these targets by 2012. It said the Defense and Energy departments will begin a joint effort in April to decode whether an existing 5,000-pound warhead would provide significantly more penetrating power than the current B61-Mod 11 nuclear warhead.

On the Net: The report excerpts at http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm

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

-------- maryland / virginia

NUCLEAR LIABILITY LIMIT
For: 78 / Against: 21

For the Record
Thursday, March 14, 2002
Washington Post

The Senate voted to renew the Price-Anderson Act, which caps the liability faced by nuclear power plants and insurance firms in the event of radioactive disaster. The amendment caps damages at $9.3 billion for each accident, shifting liability above that amount to taxpayers unless the government obtains additional industry funds. It was added to a proposed national energy policy (S 517) that employs an array of tax breaks and policy changes to increase energy efficiency and production at home while reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil and natural gas. The bill remained in debate.

A yes vote was to renew Price-Anderson.

MARYLAND
Mikulski (D) YES
Sarbanes (D) YES

VIRGINIA
Allen (R) YES
Warner (R) YES

-------- us politics

GOP donors' reward -- a war briefing

By Gwyneth K. Shaw
Sentinel Staff Writer
March 13, 2002
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/orl-asecgoss13031302mar13.story

WASHINGTON -- If you're ready to give $250 to the Republican Party, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is ready to offer you an up-close and personal briefing on America's war on terrorism.

U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, will give the hourlong "national defense briefing" to an assembly of GOP donors Thursday -- an event, critics complain, akin to selling information about the Sept. 11 attacks and subsequent events to the highest bidder.

As the House intelligence chief, the congressman from southwest Florida has achieved a new level of cachet. That makes him an ideal candidate to attract donors for the event, which will raise money for GOP congressional candidates across the country.

Also on the bill are House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, who will give a speech to donors, and House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, who will offer tips to small-business owners.

Tickets for the workshop alone are $250, Republican Party officials said. However, the pitch for the event was targeted at bigger donors -- those who would be willing to pay $1,000 to join the "exclusive" Speaker's Circle.

Although it's common for the Democratic and Republican parties to lure donors by promising access to prominent lawmakers, Goss' speech is drawing criticism from Democrats and advocacy groups who accuse the GOP of cashing in on the war on terrorism.

A spokeswoman for Goss referred all inquiries to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is sponsoring the event. Thursday's speech will be open to the press.

Steve Weiss of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions, said the whole point of these kinds of fund-raisers is to make donors feel special by giving them more information than they could get from the press or other source. But it's unusual to see those methods used when the topic is terrorism, he said.

The bottom line, Weiss said, is that events such as the one Thursday imply that money buys access.

But Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the NRCC, said Goss would not be revealing anything he hasn't already said to media or constituents. The kind of information that's traded when the intelligence panel meets behind closed doors, Schmidt said, will not be divulged.

"His speech will not be fundamentally different to anything he would say to a Rotary Club back home," Schmidt said. "There certainly will be no classified or sensitive information discussed."

Schmidt said Goss was invited to speak because of his expertise in an area that has become important and fascinating to nearly everyone over the past six months. He called the idea that political appointees and politicians would not be talking to party supporters in an election year "just silly."

"It's just a political cheap shot to suggest there's anything wrong with this," Schmidt said. "In the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively small fund-raising event. . . . This is an important opportunity to build the grass roots of the party."

Some Republicans have accused one of Goss' colleagues on the intelligence committee, California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, of trading on her position last fall. Harman held a conference call for members of the New Democrat Network, a dues-supported political-action group, to discuss "challenges facing U.S. intelligence."

Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Harman, said Tuesday that the call was an outreach effort Harman made to her constituents in the aftermath of Sept. 11, and that fund-raising was neither the purpose of the call nor a result.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there are no plans for him to follow Goss' lead. The longtime friends are preparing to merge their committees for hearings this spring on how the nation's intelligence agencies failed to foresee the Sept. 11 attacks.

Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said there is a clear distinction between having elected officials discuss matters such as energy policy and what Goss will be talking about.

"It is standard procedure to have elected officials come in and brief on their area of expertise. But it's absolutely not standard procedure to include national security policy in that," she said. "They should not be charging money for a domestic-security briefing, period." Bill Allison of the nonpartisan ethical watchdog group the Center for Public Integrity called the Goss briefing "really terrible." But he noted that when parties cater to donors, they tend to pick the hottest topic.

In fact, there are several Bush administration appointees either speaking or leading "economic recovery workshops" Thursday -- although a recent disclaimer on an NRCC news release pointed out that they are attending in their personal capacity and not as government representatives.

Schmidt said they were invited to discuss general issues, not government policy. But Allison chuckled at that assertion.

"I don't think they're going to be talking about the upcoming baseball season," he said.

Gwyneth K. Shaw can be reached at gshaw@orlandosentinel.com or 202-824-8229.

--------

The Real Problems With Our Nuclear Posture

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/opinion/14KREP.html

WASHINGTON - A mini-firestorm has erupted over the recommendations of a classified Pentagon review of the United States' nuclear forces. Critics charge that the Bush administration is bent on pursuing initiatives that will undermine the 57-year-old taboo on the use of the ultimate weapons of terror. But they misread this document, which was leaked last weekend.

In fact, what the administration has proposed in its Nuclear Posture Review is nothing less than the transformation of United States strategic forces to decrease the number of nuclear weapons in the American arsenal as well as to reduce the reliance placed on nuclear weapons in the event of crisis or conflict.

With the cold war over, the threat from Russia has declined dramatically, enabling the United States to cut its nuclear forces unilaterally. The administration would cut the number of operationally deployed warheads over the next decade by two-thirds - to between 1,700 and 2,200. Recent advances in precision-guided weapons, or "smart bombs," will also make it possible to substitute conventional weapons, in a limited way, for nuclear weapons, which may permit additional nuclear force reductions.

The review's other main recommendation places greater reliance on non-nuclear precision weapons and missile defenses to strengthen deterrence against attacks by weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological and nuclear weapons) and for use against acts of aggression if deterrence fails. Ideally, American missile defenses would intercept enemy missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction. Any residual weapons of mass destruction would then be destroyed by non-nuclear precision attacks launched by the United States. The use of nuclear weapons - and the prospect of breaking that taboo - would be unnecessary. Under this scenario, nuclear weapons would remain weapons of last resort, as they are now.

Yet criticisms have been launched against the way these recommendations have been couched. Some find the review's discussion of potential military conflicts involving China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and Syria - and the possibility of using a nuclear deterrent against these nations - to be provocative. But it has long been the Pentagon's task to prepare war plans for a range of plausible contingencies. Russia and China have sizable nuclear arsenals. The other five states are hostile toward America and its allies, have links to terrorist organizations, and are actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction. The United States needs to develop methods of deterrence against the use of chemical and biological weapons - weapons which we have forsworn.

Critics are also quick to suggest that the language of the review, because it raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons against nations wielding biological or chemical weapons, would violate the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's "negative" security pledge. The United States has pledged not to use nuclear weapons against a state that neither possesses nuclear weapons nor is allied to a state possessing them.

The Clinton administration reaffirmed this promise. But the Clinton administration, like both Bush administrations, also maintained a position of calculated ambiguity as to whether it would actually use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack, even if the aggressor did not possess nuclear weapons. Before the Persian Gulf war, the first Bush administration left Saddam Hussein to wonder how the United States would respond to an Iraqi chemical or biological attack on American forces even though Iraq did not have nuclear capabilities.

Also drawing fire is the review's proposal to develop low-yield nuclear weapons, or "mini-nukes," for possible use in destroying hard or deeply buried targets, like underground bunkers used by rogue states in developing and storing weapons of mass destruction. Critics fear that since these smaller nuclear weapons would cause less damage, they would be more likely to be used.

But the Defense Department already has a nuclear weapon designed to penetrate bunkers. The review proposes to continue efforts to develop more effective penetrating weapons, since the deeper the penetration, the lower the yield required to destroy the target. But, more important, it recommends pursuing non-nuclear options for dealing with such targets, including "bunker-buster" precision weapons that would reduce reliance on mini-nukes altogether.

There is also concern about the Pentagon's plans to store, rather than destroy, a substantial number of the nuclear warheads removed from the active forces. But storage makes sense for two reasons. First, the Pentagon currently has no ability to produce new nuclear weapons, and the process for restarting production would take years. Second, dramatic cuts in the level of United States nuclear weapons would make it more likely that other states will aim to achieve parity with us. Even as we reduce our weapons, the ability to reconstitute much of our current force could be important in dissuading countries that aspire to nuclear superpower status from increasing their arsenals.

The administration's critics, however, are right on one central point. The review places far too much faith in missile defenses. Despite the efforts of nearly half a century, effective ballistic missile defenses remain a long-term goal, not a reality. While the administration should not abandon efforts to pursue promising missile defense technologies, it should be realistic about the role missile defenses can play.

Finally, despite the review's call to create a strategic, non-nuclear, precision-strike force, the administration's budget contains few major initiatives to enhance these capabilities. Instead, the budget invests heavily in highly problematic missile defenses, while precision-strike force weaponry, like stealth bombers, extended-range unmanned strike aircraft and long-range precision munitions, remain underfunded. The end result could be a strategic force that while deploying far fewer nuclear weapons, fails to provide strong non-nuclear alternatives against rogue nations.

Andrew F. Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

[What is the truth? On March 12th, in "Pentagon Rejects Possibility of Al Qaeda Negotiation," AP reported, "U.S. commanders in the biggest ground operation of the war in Afghanistan have rejected an Afghan ally's proposal to halt bombing and allow al Qaeda and Taliban to surrender or escape".

Today, in "U.S. helicopters blast cave entrances," AP reports, "Pentagon officials had repeatedly said the only choice facing the enemy troops was to 'surrender or die'".

So which is it? Were they given the option to surrender, and the first story was wrong? Or are the Al Qaeda being exterminated? et]

--

U.S. helicopters blast cave entrances

March 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020314-21772972.htm

SHAH-E-KOT, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. Marine helicopter gunships blasted cave entrances yesterday in the rugged mountains, seeking to stop al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from escaping after U.S. and Afghan troops seized control of this valley.

Afghan commanders said many al Qaeda and Taliban fighters - including their commander, Saif Rahman Mansour - got away before Afghan troops overran three villages and a commanding ridgeline early yesterday.

U.S. officials said they were holding about 20 prisoners who were being interrogated, and that Operation Anaconda, the biggest U.S.-led offensive of the five-month Afghan war, yielded valuable information about al Qaeda.

Pentagon officials had repeatedly said the only choice facing the enemy troops was to "surrender or die," although Afghan commanders had been prepared to allow them to leave.

Col. Frank Wiercinski, a brigade commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said cave searches had turned up al Qaeda training manuals, bomb-making equipment and other intelligence on the terrorist network.

"I think we got a lot of them but we're not really sure," said one U.S. special forces officer, who refused to give his name. He said operations would continue in the area for 30 to 35 days, but on a smaller scale.

Lt. Col. David Gray, an operations officer of the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, said about 500 enemy fighters were killed, mostly non-Afghans from Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, in the 12-day offensive in eastern Afghanistan.

"What we have done is denied al Qaeda of its most important, well-trained fighters," he said.

But Afghan troops said they found only 25 bodies in the initial sweep of the area. Others may be buried in caves that collapsed during the bombing.

Leading the final assault were Afghan commanders Zia Lodin and Gul Haider, who had floated the idea of a negotiated exit.

"They're trying to slip away," one Afghan commander, Mohammed Qasim, said of the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. "They're going in different directions in the mountains" toward Pakistan.

Fighting died down during the past five days, enabling the United States to withdraw most of the estimated 1,400 troops from the 101st Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division who fought in the battle.

The coalition casualty toll since the offensive began March 2 stood at eight U.S. special forces troops and three Afghan allied fighters.

U.S. officials had hoped to prevent a repeat of Tora Bora, the cave complex U.S. troops hammered for weeks in December on suspicion that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was inside.

Afghan militias from the area conducted most of the ground fighting at Tora Bora, and U.S. authorities said they apparently let many al Qaeda fighters escape to Pakistan. When Tora Bora was finally overrun, there was no sign of bin Laden.

----

Americans hunt in vain for men of al-Qaeda

From Catherine Philp in Shah-e-kot
War on Terror
March 14, 2002
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,13-235471,00.html

AMERICAN and Afghan forces claimed a decisive victory yesterday as they swept into the last known mountain stronghold of al-Qaeda.

The absence, however, of any significant resistance or sign of the enemy, dead or alive, raised suspicions that many fighters had escaped before the offensive had begun.

Afghan commanders had been gearing up for a final push against hundreds of diehard fighters in the mountains. In the end, troops walked unhindered into the empty valley. Along with several hundred other fighters thought to have been left in the mountains, the Americans seem to have let slip one key quarry, the enemy commander Saif Rahman.

In Shahi-Kot village, where 200 fighters had been based when the fighting began, only two dozen bodies were found, buried under the rubble of several bombed-out buildings. A spokesman said later that US forces were holding 20 prisoners in the village.

It was unclear whether other surviving fighters had fled the area and been killed elsewhere or were in any of the dozens of caves that line the valley. "I think we got a lot of them, but we're not really sure," a special forces soldier said.

Scores of American troops and special forces were flown into the area by helicopter after the Afghan forces to search for remaining fighters and prevent any more from fleeing.

Few of the mountain caves have been checked because of the booby traps and landmines left behind by fleeing al-Qaeda fighters. Fakir Shah, an Afghan soldier, said that he narrowly missed injury when he cut a tripwire in front of a cave that he was checking for fighters.

US commanders said that most of the dead were Arab and Chechen fighters who formed the backbone of al-Qaeda. "They had been building this place and this defence for years," Colonel Frank Wiercinski, brigade commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said. "We definitely put a spike through their heart."

Operation Anaconda was the first battle in the five-month war in which conventional US troops have played a big role. Yet Afghan fighters led the final push into the mountains, to be joined by their US colleagues after they had swept the area. With most Afghan troops withdrawing, it falls to the Americans to hunt down militants still in the area.

President Bush said last night that he still did not know whether Osama bin Laden was alive or dead. "I know the man's on the run, if he's alive at all. And who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not. We haven't heard from him in a long time," he said. "Terror is bigger than one person. I don't know where he is. I just don't spend that much time on it, really, to be honest with you."

He added: "I believe this war is more akin to World War Two than it is to Vietnam. This is a war in which we fight for the liberties and freedom of our country."

--------

BODY COUNT
Taliban and Qaeda Death Toll in Mountain Battle Is a Mystery

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/asia/14MILI.html

WASHINGTON, March 13 - The Pentagon says it is not counting the bodies of opposing fighters in the latest battle in Afghanistan.

But nearly every day since the American-led offensive began, the military has produced a classified estimate for senior officials of Al Qaeda and Taliban dead.

At the start of the week, the Pentagon estimate listed the confirmed number of dead Arab, Chechen and other fighters for Al Qaeda at 517. Another 250 were believed to have been killed, but the deaths were listed as unconfirmed. By today, the total estimate had risen above 800, according to one official.

"Those numbers are all extremely fuzzy," said one senior military officer.

The body-count estimates are just that. They are based on reports from Apache helicopter pilots who often spot fighters before firing missiles, on gun-camera film taken by combat aircraft, on video images from unmanned Predator drones and on reports by Special Forces troops on the ground, among others.

Even though helicopters and high- technology surveillance systems can blow away some of the fog of war, military officials acknowledge that these sources have limitations. Cameras and pilots cannot peer into caves, for instance, or assess the number of dead in the two villages that were laid waste by bombs.

Nor is an American pilot's count of opposing fighters in a mountain redoubt before he fires always completely certain. Even if it is, there may be little in the way of remains.

To list a Qaeda fighter as "confirmed dead" does not necessarily mean that the military has a body. Journalists who toured the Shah-i- Kot Valley, where the recent fighting has taken place, saw only three bodies today.

Still, the estimates exist, despite the assertions of Pentagon officials that they are not in the body-count business.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has made it clear to his senior advisers and military commanders that he is against releasing the numbers, fearing any echoes from Vietnam of "body counts" - often inflated - that haunted his predecessors.

"I don't do body counts," Mr. Rumsfeld said last week in a CBS News interview. "This country tried that in Vietnam, and it didn't work. And you've not heard me speculate on that at all, and you won't."

The morning briefing given to Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the war in Afghanistan, does not contain precise enemy casualties, said a spokesman at the Central Command, Maj. Brad Lowell. "The Cinc" - General Franks - "relies on his commanders on the ground to make those assessments," Major Lowell said.

Some senior Pentagon officials expressed irritation that the commander of operation in Shah-i-Kot, Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, spoke so explicitly about Al Qaeda deaths in the campaign's opening days. But other senior officers said his candor shed welcome light on a complicated operation and in no way compromised the mission.

"Our estimation is that in the last 24-48 hours, the number of enemy that we fought over time is somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 to 700 enemies," General Hagenbeck, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, said on March 6. "Conservatively speaking right now, I'm convinced from the evidence that I have seen that we have killed at least half of those enemy forces."

Military commanders say that unlike in Vietnam, they are not using the closely held figures to measure their battlefield achievements. Instead, the estimates of enemy dead are used to help plan operations.

"This is less about the numbers than about assessing the enemy's strength," said one senior officer.

Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired Army general and highly decorated Vietnam veteran, said gauging enemy deaths is just one component that field commanders consider when weighing an opponent's effectiveness.

"What you do is estimate enemy casualties," General McCaffrey said. "You also ask: `Did we bust them up? Did they leave the area with or without their weapons?' "

In the latest campaign, the fierce fighting and rugged terrain have for the most part kept reporters at a distance. But in any case it is impossible to count the dead in a cave that has been sealed by bombs, or those in two Qaeda-controlled villages, Sirkankel and Marzak, that were leveled by bombs.

In fact, Pentagon officials said, most of deaths of opposing fighters were from high-powered ordnance - satellite-guided 2,000-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles - as opposed to firefights at close range. In this 12- day operation alone, American warplanes have dropped more than 2,500 bombs.

Such munitions often leave little behind.

In cases where there was a body, a Pentagon official said, Al Qaeda fighters may have placed many of their fallen comrades in makeshift graves, following the Muslim custom of burying the dead within 24 hours.

Further complicating the count is the confusion over the number of fighters who joined the battle.

The Pentagon now acknowledges that it badly underestimated the size of Al Qaeda forces entering the battle. After initially putting the count at 150 to 200 fighters, American intelligence officials now believe as many as 1,000 were holed up in the battle zone. Some poured in from nearby redoubts after the operation started, officials said.

Of the 1,000 or so original fighters, Pentagon officials estimate that about 100 remain in ever smaller pockets of resistance. Another 100 have probably fled over mountain trails, military officials said.

Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa, deputy director of current operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that small numbers of fighters may have slipped out, but he said unlike at Tora Bora in December, the American-led coalition had largely sealed off the area.

"We've got troops in position in the high ground guarding the escape routes, and I think we're doing a pretty good job," he said.

-------- africa

Sudan endorses incursion by Uganda

Briefly
March 14, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020314-859142.htm

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Ugandan army operations against rebels in southern Sudan have Khartoum's "full coordination and agreement," said Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail.

"What is happening along the Sudanese-Ugandan border is taking place ... in line with a specific agreement in the interests of Sudan and Uganda," he told reporters Tuesday.

The Ugandan army campaign against rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), who have bases in southern Sudan, was agreed by the two countries during Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's January visit to Sudan, Mr. Ismail said.

Kampala announced this week it was deploying two fresh battalions, each with 600 to 800 soldiers, inside Sudan. The ethnically based LRA has fought Mr. Museveni's secular government since 1988.

-------- business

Igen Lands Defense Contract to detect dangerous biological agents
Md. Biotech Firm to Supply Army With Tests for Toxins

By Terence Chea
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23814-2002Mar13?language=printer

Igen International Inc. has signed a contract with the Department of Defense to supply equipment used to detect dangerous biological agents, the Gaithersburg company said yesterday.

Igen will sell instruments and biological research materials called reagents to the Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Under the contract, Igen will provide 20 biological-analysis machines to some Army laboratories to identify toxins such as anthrax in environmental samples, said Lynn Selfridge, the command's contracting officer.

The company will make deliveries over the next year and expects to generate at least $2 million in sales, Igen officials said. The contract could be renewed in early 2003.

Igen is one of several Washington area biotechnology companies that have secured defense contracts since the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax mailings. Others include BioReliance Corp. of Rockville, which is producing smallpox vaccine, and Meridian Medical Technologies Inc. of Columbia, which is providing medicine to protect soldiers from nerve gas.

Igen's contract grew out of a research collaboration started in May by Igen and the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Igen and Army scientists developed tests, based on Igen's Origen technology, to detect pathogens in food, water and air. Their research was accelerated last fall after anthrax spores were mailed to government offices and media organizations, resulting in five deaths.

The company is also working with the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to develop tests for a variety of pathogens including anthrax, staphylococcus enterotoxin B and botulinum toxin.

Igen shares rose 92 cents, or 2 percent, to close at $39.77 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

More stories on BIOTECH/MEDICAL online at Washtech.com.

--------

NIH Plans Bioterrorism Research

Thu Mar 14
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020314/ap_on_he_me/nih_bioterrorism_1&cid=534

WASHINGTON (AP) - Testing of potential new vaccines against anthrax and the Ebola virus and basic research on how the immune system fends off invaders top the government's plans for how to spend some $1.2 billion in bioterrorism research funding.

Congress has not yet voted on the Bush administration's proposal to award the National Institutes of Health that amount for bioterrorism work.

But the NIH on Thursday unveiled its plans to explain the mesh of basic laboratory research and clinical studies necessary for battling the most worrisome bioterrorism agents: anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, viral hemorrhagic fevers and botulism.

Such research, particularly studies focusing on the immune system, brings an added bonus, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH's bioterrorism chief. What scientists learn about how the immune system deals with, or is stumped by, a bioterrorist-caused disease should shed light on naturally occurring killers, too, he said.

The NIH's anti-bioterrorism agenda describes six major research categories:

_Microbial biology, including unraveling the genetic structure of each bioterrorism agent, to understand how the bugs cause disease.

_Better understanding of human immunology, important as a basis to create new vaccines, diagnostic tests and broadly acting drugs.

_Developing new vaccines. Experimental candidates against the Ebola virus and better anthrax vaccines should soon enter clinical trials, the NIH said.

_Hunting new treatments. Already NIH research has uncovered that an anti-AIDS drug called cidofovir may help treat smallpox.

_Hunting more rapid tests to diagnose if someone is infected with a bioterrorism agent.

_Developing the very tools needed to do such research, including more high-containment laboratories and animal models of the diseases.

----

TRW rejects buyout bid

March 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20020314-2130008.htm

CLEVELAND (AP) - The TRW Inc. board yesterday rejected Northrop Grumman Corp.'s unsolicited $5.9 billion buyout offer for a second time and said it plans to spin off its automotive-parts business within nine months.

TRW, which is also a major defense manufacturer, said it has also begun preliminary talks with others who have expressed interest in buying all or part of the automotive business and its aeronautical-systems business.

The Northrop offer of $47 per share in Northrop stock is "grossly inadequate" and not in the best interests of TRW's shareholders, the TRW board said in a statement.

The board urged shareholders to reject Northrop's tender offer.

TRW directors rejected North-rop's initial offer 10 days ago and said Northop's subsequent tender offer contains conditions that could result in a price of less than $47 for each share of TRW stock.

The company said it has been exploring other transactions to create more value for its shareholders and reduce its heavy debt load.

TRW's automotive business accounts for 64 percents of the company's sales and 58 percent of profit.

"Since this offer is subject to a collar, which could result in a price of less than $47 per share, this offer is less favorable than Northrop Grumman's earlier proposal," Mr. Odeen said.

TRW also said that on March 6 it received notice that TRC Capital Corp., based in Toronto, began its own unsolicited offer to purchase up to 4.25 million TRW common shares, or approximately 3.4 percent of TRW total common shares outstanding, at a price of $50 per share in cash.

The TRW board yesterday recommended that its shareholders reject the TRC Capital offer.

Northrop Grumman, a Los Angeles-based defense contractor that owns the shipyard in Newport News, Va., notified federal regulators Monday of its plans to move ahead with a $5.9 billion hostile takeover of TRW.

Mr. Odeen described Northrop Grumman's takeover attempt as "an opportunistic attempt to acquire TRW's premier franchise."

"In particular, the current planned increases in government defense spending are expected to benefit many technologies and arenas where TRW's space, electronics and systems businesses are a leader," he said.

-------- iraq

U.S. Will Take Action Against Iraq, Bush Says
'All Options Are on the Table' Against States That Pose Threat

By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22091-2002Mar13?language=printer

President Bush declared yesterday that "all options are on the table" -- including nuclear weapons -- to confront states that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction, as he issued his strongest warning to date that his administration plans to take on Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

"He is a problem, and we're going to deal with him," Bush said of the Iraqi leader.

The president used his first full-scale news conference in five months to make clear that America's deterrence strategy would extend to states such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea to discourage them from using chemical or biological weapons against the United States or its allies.

Referring to the U.S. nuclear capability, Bush said it is "a way to say to people who would harm America: 'Don't do it.' . . . that there is a consequence."

Bush played down the remaining threat represented by Osama bin Laden, saying he does not know where the al Qaeda leader is and dismissing the man he once wanted "dead or alive" as "a person who has now been marginalized." He called bin Laden "the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run."

He said U.S. troops are "performing brilliantly" in the most recent battle in Afghanistan's Shahikot Valley and cautioned that "there'll be other battles in Afghanistan."

But his emphasis was plainly elsewhere. Bush coupled the war on terrorism with long-standing American grievances against Iraq and other hostile powers pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

"We've got all options on the table, because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies or friends," Bush said, repeating the "all options on the table" phrase later in his news conference.

Handling questions for 45 minutes in the White House briefing room, a high-spirited and confident Bush said his administration was committed to consulting with allies. But he suggested he might have to lead reluctant friends into military action.

"It's going to require a resolve and firmness from the United States of America," he said. "One of the things I've learned in my discussions and at least listening to the echo chamber out there in the world is that if the United States were to waver, some in the world would take a nap when it comes to the war on terror. And we're just not going to let them do that."

Bush opened with a statement of support for judicial nominee Charles W. Pickering, whose confirmation in the Senate appears doomed, and he sprinkled throughout his remarks challenges to Congress to yield to his wishes on a variety of policies. But the roiling events in the Middle East and Central Asia repeatedly turned Bush's focus back to the war effort.

Bush reassured Russia that he remains committed to sharp reductions in nuclear stockpiles, and offered to seek to sign a written agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin at their summit in Moscow in May.

He chastised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for incursions into the West Bank, saying, "It's not helpful what the Israelis have recently done." But he did not call on Israel to withdraw.

There was no such equivocation on the topic of his anti-terrorism efforts, which he likened to the Second World War.

"I believe this war is more akin to World War II than it is to Vietnam -- this is a war in which we fight for the liberties and freedom of our country," he said.

Bush, a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam who did not see combat, said he had learned the lessons of that war: having a "clear mission" and keeping politics out. He described his current effort in the noblest of terms.

"History has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom," he said.

The president made clear that action against Hussein would come. While reassuring jittery partners that "the first stage is to consult with our allies and friends," he added: "I am deeply concerned about Iraq, and so should the American people be concerned about Iraq. And so should people who love freedom be concerned about Iraq."

At one point while discussing Hussein, Bush closed his eyes and shook his head in exasperation. "One thing I will not allow is a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Bush has worked steadily to reassert prerogatives he feels the White House has lost to Capitol Hill since Watergate, and he used the occasion to lecture Congress. He began with a last-minute appeal to save Pickering from becoming the first judicial nominee in 11 years to be defeated by a Senate committee vote.

"While tomorrow's vote is about one man, a much larger principle is also at stake," Bush said. "Under our Constitution, the president has the right and responsibility to nominate qualified judges and the legislative branch has the responsibility to vote on them in a fair and timely manner."

Bush said he has "a duty to protect the executive branch from legislative encroachment" and said he wants to be sure "the legislative branch doesn't end up running the executive branch."

He gave little explanation for the White House's decision to refuse lawmakers' request for any appearance by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. "He doesn't have to testify," Bush said, noting that Ridge is a member of his staff.

Brushing off lawmakers' complaints that they have not received enough information to perform oversight on subjects ranging from the war to Bush's energy policy, he said he consults with Congress often enough and will let legal historians decide whether he has recalibrated the branches' relative power.

"I break bread with both Republicans and Democrats right back here in the Oval Office and have a good, honest discussion," he said.

Bush stuck to his demand that Congress raise the federal debt limit this month, which has drawn objections from House Republicans. "We don't need to be playing, you know, politics with the debt ceiling, particularly now that we're at war," he said.

Asked whether a military draft should include women, Bush said people "shouldn't worry about a draft," then threw in a tangential call for Congress to pass his budget.

Bush offered words support for Cardinal Bernard F. Law of the Roman Catholic Church's Boston archdiocese, which has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits charging molestation by priests.

"I'm confident the church will clean up its business and do the right thing," Bush said. Asked if Law should resign, he said, "That's up to the church. I know Cardinal Law to be a man of integrity. I respect him a lot."

The president, wearing a green tie after a pre-St. Patrick's Day reception, occasionally leaned over the podium to prod reporters jocularly.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," he scolded one who asked about two unrelated topics. "That's all over the lot." He gave answers to both, and even offered a third.

In keeping with the administration's practice of calling news conferences on short notice, officials announced the session three hours before the 4 p.m. start. Bush met the press in the cramped White House briefing room, minus the trappings of prime time and the East Room.

-------- israel / palestine

Sharon and his defence chief clash over raids

From Stephen Farrell in Jerusalem,
March 14, 2002
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,251-235427,00.html

ISRAEL pressed ahead with raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps yesterday, but there were reports of sharp disagreements between Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister,and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, his Defence Minister.

The pair are said to have clashed over the scale of the crackdown on the eve of the arrival in the region of Anthony Zinni, the US Middle East envoy, to broker a ceasefire and a return to negotiations.

Mr Sharon wanted a more thorough prosecution of the siege on Ramallah, which is part of Israel's largest ground offensive in 20 years, carried out by 20,000 soldiers across the West Bank and Gaza.

But although tanks moved further into the centre of Ramallah overnight - with shelling and gunfire echoing through the near-deserted streets - Mr Ben-Eliezer is said to have called off F16 strikes and a possible takeover of the compound of Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, in Ramallah, with an eye to the expected arrival today of General Zinni.

Israel Army Radio said that during a tense meeting yesterday an angry Mr Sharon accused Mr Ben-Eliezer, who heads the centre-left Labour Party, of undermining the security Cabinet's decision last week to maintain "continuous" military pressure on the Palestinians.

Mr Ben-Eliezer was reported to have threatened to resign, provoking Mr Sharon to warn him: "Don't threaten me. If you want to leave the Government, leave. Let's take a vote, we'll see who's right, who's responsible for taking the decisions, you or me."

Yesterday Mr Sharon's office confirmed only that the pair had held a private meeting after the main Cabinet session. "Both the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister decided that Israeli military activity would continue in accordance with the security Cabinet decision," a statement said. "There were," it insisted, "no differences of opinion on continuing the operation."

The raids were launched two weeks ago after Israel claimed that refugee camps were "safe havens" for terrorists who have carried out a series of suicide-bomb attacks on Israeli civilians.

Palestinians accuse Mr Sharon of exacerbating Palestinian resentment over the daily humiliation of living under checkpoints and roadblocks and claim that the policy is an attempt to wreck General Zinni's mission before it begins.

"A ceasefire is impossible as long as they are occupying Ramallah and as long as they are putting snipers on the roofs of buildings in the city to kill and target civilians who are moving in the street," Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian Information Minister, said yesterday.

The prolonged offensive has caused deep concern in Washington, which fears that it will overshadow the Middle East tour of Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, during which he is trying to mobilise support for a potential strike against Iraq.

After the death of one journalist from Israeli tank fire and renewed Palestinian claims that Israeli forces have blocked ambulances from reaching wounded people in Ramallah, the White House again voiced its concern.

Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, said: "We remain very concerned about repeated Israeli Defence Forces actions that result in high numbers of Palestinian casualties, including casualties, whether it's deliberate or not, of civilians and humanitarian workers."

He urged the Palestinian Authority "to do everything it can" to stop attacks on Israel.

Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations special envoy in the West Bank and Gaza, disclosed yesterday that Kofi Annan, the UN SecretaryGeneral, "has taken the unusual step of sending a letter to . . . (Mr) Sharon expressing distress and concern at these developments".

Labour activists are deeply unhappy that their party is serving in a coalition under Mr Sharon, a former general held responsible by many for the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Beirut's Sabra and Chatila camps in 1982, when he was Defence Minister.

Senior Labour sources say that Mr Ben-Eliezer is waiting to choose his moment before leaving the Government, which will become increasingly reliant on Labour's 24 seats if right-wing coalition members quit because they believe that it has not been tough enough.

--------

Israeli Offensive Is 'Not Helpful,' President Warns Sharon

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/14PREX.html

WASHINGTON, March 13 - President Bush delivered a harsh rebuke to Israel today for its deadly military operations against Palestinians in the West Bank, saying that the actions of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government were "not helpful" and suggesting that they went well beyond self-defense.

Mr. Bush's comments at a White House news conference today were not accompanied by the usual urgings that Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, crack down on suicide bombings and other acts of violence. Mr. Bush never mentioned Mr. Arafat and seemed to direct all of his warnings to Mr. Sharon's government.

"Frankly, it's not helpful what the Israelis have recently done in order to create conditions for peace," Mr. Bush said. "I understand someone trying to defend themselves and to fight terror. But the recent actions aren't helpful."

In another sign that the administration might be deepening its involvement in the Middle East, Mr. Bush said "we helped engineer" a United Nations Security Council resolution that passed late Tuesday that explicitly called for the creation of a Palestinian state, even as it reaffirmed Israel's right to existence and security.

Administration officials said the United States pressed for the resolution on the eve of the departure of Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, Mr. Bush's special envoy for the Middle East, to resume his efforts to mediate an end to the violence.

Vice President Dick Cheney is also traveling in the region, and he has been reminded at every stop that it will be virtually impossible to mobilize support for action against Saddam Hussein of Iraq without a visible push by the administration to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, complete with a Palestinian state.

The United Nations resolution may be the leading edge of that effort. It explicitly backs Saudi Arabia's call for a peace that includes full normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel.

Mr. Bush's declaration today that "we were part of the process" was the first indication that the White House is now talking about peace plans that go beyond a mere cessation of the shooting that has cost hundreds of lives in recent weeks.

"We made a decision, a conscious decision to try to send a statement that - it was a hopeful statement," Mr. Bush said of the American endorsement of the resolution, noting it was embraced "by all the parties except for one," a reference to Syria.

White House aides were divided this evening on the question of why Mr. Bush had deliberately directed his harshest remarks toward Israel today. Some said it was carefully planned, others said it was an instinctual, tactical effort on Mr. Bush's part to calm the violence and persuade Arab nations to ease up on Mr. Cheney.

"He recognizes," one administration official said, "that as soon as the veep lands in a new country, someone else is taking a swipe at him over images out of Ramallah."

Whatever Mr. Bush's motives, his language and tone were noticeably different from his balanced statements six days ago, when he announced that General Zinni, a retired marine, would return to the region. His remarks then contained a carefully calibrated call on both sides in the conflict to cease their bloodletting.

Mr. Bush spoke as dissension broke out in Mr. Sharon's coalition government, with Israel's defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, angrily threatening to resign over the army's continuing invasion of the unofficial Palestinian capital, Ramallah, a senior Israeli official said.

Some White House officials expressed fear that Israel had exploited the weeklong gap between the announcement of General Zinni's mission and his arrival, making as much military progress in the West Bank as they could before his arrival.

One official suggested today that the Israelis were "racing to get in their licks," and they said they expected Palestinian reprisals after General Zinni arrives.

In his 45-minute session with reporters in the White House briefing room this afternoon, President Bush demonstrated a growing comfort with a wide range of foreign policy issues, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. He flattered and joked with reporters, and he showed the kind of humor that he had held in check since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Bush said he now hoped and expected to sign an agreement on nuclear reductions with Russia when he visits Moscow and St. Petersburg in late May. He defended the classified "Nuclear Posture Review" disclosed last weekend, suggesting that many elements were not new, including the idea that the United States reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to deter attacks on the United States or in defense of South Korea, Taiwan or Israel.

"We've got all options on the table," he said, "because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies or our friends."

Asked why he so rarely talked these days about Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, he suggested that even if Mr. bin Laden is alive, he had been "marginalized." The president called Mr. bin Laden "the ultimate parasite."

"We haven't heard from him in a long time," he said. "I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure." Though Mr. Bush is reported by aides to have been highly focused on the search for all of Al Qaeda's leaders - few of whom have been caught or killed - he argued today that the days when he called for Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive" were a different era.

"I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country," he said. "I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan, and calling the shots for the Taliban." Now, he said, "we've shoved him out more and more on the margins."

But several times in the lengthy news conference, reporters circled back to the Middle East, looking for any sign that a president who spent much of his first year in office avoiding putting himself in the middle of the conflict might now be forced - by the violence and his own hopes to topple Saddam Hussein - to play much the same role his predecessors had.

In recent weeks, Mr. Bush has seized on the Saudi "vision" of Israel returning to its pre-1967 borders in return for full normalization of relations with its Arab neighbors. But asked about the Arab states - and the Saudi foreign minister - who have seemed to back away from the use of the words "full normalization" in recent days, Mr. Bush avoided using the term.

"In order for there to be a plan that is acceptable to all parities, it must recognize the right of Israel to exist," he said. "And I - that's what I thought was very encouraging from the Saudi declaration."

Turning to the next stages of the war against terrorism, Mr. Bush acknowledged that some countries believed to harbor Qaeda terrorists had not joined the effort to wipe them out, but he evaded the question of whether he was willing to send forces beyond Afghanistan, to countries where the United States was clearly not invited.

"Let me just put it to you this way," he said. "We will take actions necessary to protect American people, and I'm going to leave it at that."

He also mused, for brief moments, on how history might regard the first phase of the war. Noting the American attack on Al Qaeda in the mountainous region of Shah-i-Kot, he said, "We are showing the world that we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means."

He returned to the theme of getting past the lessons of Vietnam later, when he said, for the first time: "I believe this war is more akin to World War II than it is to Vietnam. This is a war in which we fight for the liberties and freedom of our country."

"I learned some good lessons from Vietnam," said Mr. Bush, who trained as a pilot but never served in Southeast Asia. "First, there must be a clear mission. Secondly, the politics ought to stay out of fighting a war. There was too much politics during the Vietnam War. There was too much concern in the White House about political standing."

--------

Ramallah Pullback Is Ordered but Washington Says It Expects More

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/middleeast/14CND-MIDE.html

The Bush administration's peace envoy arrived in Israel today against a background of continuing violence and pessimism by both sides about the chances of achieving a cease-fire.

Before his arrival, the Israeli defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, ordered a gradual pullback of troops from the West Bank city of Ramallah, but he gave no details on the timing or extent of the withdrawal.

In Washington later, the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the United States expected Israel to withdraw its forces from all Palestinian territory, including Ramallah. He said such a pullout "would greatly facilitate" the work of the Washington envoy, Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine general.

He said the Israelis "have talked about a full withdrawal and that's what we want to see," adding, "That's the kind of step that we have been urging them to take."

Israeli tanks invaded Ramallah on Tuesday as part of the largest-scale military operation since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Four armed Palestinians were killed in the city today.

"It will be a full withdrawal," a senior diplomatic official told Reuters, "but a cordon will remain around Ramallah and the withdrawal will be gradual according to operational needs."

General Zinni, who has previously made two unsuccessful attempts to convince both sides to end the fighting, was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel later today and to hold talks with the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, on Friday. The general is expected to press for implementation of a cease-fire plan negotiated last May by the Central Intelligence Agency director, George Tenet. The plan was never put into effect.

Each side said today that it would continue fighting if the other did not end the violence, although Mr. Arafat said he was "completely committed" to peace. The Palestinians demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Palestinian towns, while Israel said Palestinian militants must stop attacks on Israelis.

The founder of the militant group Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, told Reuters in an interview that his group would not halt attacks during General Zinni's stay. "Our resistance will continue and we will defend ourselves with all possible means," he was quoted as saying.

In new violence today, three Israeli soldiers were killed and two were wounded in the Gaza Strip when Palestinians set off a bomb under their Merkava-3 tank, considered one of the most heavily armored in the world. One soldier was killed outright and two were burned alive in the tank, Israeli radio said.

Dozens of armored vehicles surrounded the Al Amari refugee camp next to Ramallah, and witnesses said tanks blocked the access roads to several hospitals in the city, allowing only ambulances to get through.

Bands of Palestinian gunmen exchanged sporadic fire with Israeli soldiers in Ramallah today and four members of the Palestinian security forces were killed.

Israeli tanks were still stationed about 100 yards from Mr. Arafat's Ramallah compound today, even though Mr. Sharon has eased a travel ban on the Palestinian leader after confining him to the compound for three months.

Israeli tanks also drove into Bethlehem early today and took control of a southern residential section of the city.

In one gun battle, an Israeli tank shell hit the Holy Family Church, which is part of a compound that also houses a hospital and an orphanage, according to Sister Sophie, a nun in charge of the complex. The shell hit a church roof and sliced off the hands and nose of a statue of the Virgin Mary, she told news agencies.

In another incident in Bethlehem, Palestinian militiamen shot dead two suspected informers, tied one of the bodies to a pickup truck, dragged it through the streets and tried to hang it from a building on Manger Square, overlooking the Church of the Nativity, Jesus's traditional birthplace. The Palestinian police arrived and prevented the hanging.

In another attack today, missiles fired by an Israeli helicopter gunship killed a leader of a militant Palestinian group and a civilian bystander near the town of Tulkarm, on the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said. The Israeli Army later confirmed the attack.

Mutasen Hammad, a leader in Tulkarm of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, died when his car was hit by three missiles at a poultry farm in the village of Anabta, near Tulkarm. The bystander, a chicken farmer, was standing near the car when it was hit and was also killed, the officials said.

-------

Biblical Bethlehem Besieged

By Ibrahim Hazboun
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, March 14, 2002; 6:23 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29050-2002Mar14?language=printer

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- Biblical Bethlehem was besieged by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Thursday.

In a spree of pre-dawn violence, Israeli troops moving into the city of Jesus' birth fired into a church complex, and two Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel were shot to death in front of horrified onlookers.

The violence began in the early morning hours, when Israeli troops and tanks moved into the city from all directions, taking control of a residential district.

Residents said soldiers searched houses and took up positions in buildings. Tanks were parked 300 yards from the Church of the Nativity, revered by Christians as marking the birthplace of Jesus.

During a barrage of bullets and artillery, a tank shell blasted an indentation the size of a bowling ball in the thick stone facade of the two-centuries-old Holy Family Church, in a complex with an orphanage, hospital and hostel.

The blast sprayed shrapnel onto a statue of the Virgin Mary, slicing off the hands and nose. About 15 patients at the hospital - seven of them mothers who had just given birth - were rushed to a safer room during the fighting.

The army said it regretted hitting the church and damaging the statue, and pledged disciplinary action. The church is on a map of holy places and other sites that soldiers are forbidden to shoot at, the army said, but noted that shots had been fired at Israeli forces in recent days from buildings near the compound.

Then, just before dawn, Palestinian militiamen fatally shot two alleged informers for Israel. They dragged one of the bodies through town on the back of a pickup truck before trying to dangle it from a building overlooking Manger Square, the traditional birthplace of Christ.

Palestinian police, arriving after the men were killed, prevented the body from being strung up.

Onlookers condemned the gruesome scene as vigilante justice.

"It is very dangerous that people take the law into their hands because innocent people will be the victims of such incidents in the future," said Issa Qumsisieh, 38, standing near one of the bodies.

The killings were a sign of the growing anarchy in Palestinian areas as fighting with Israel intensified. The lawlessness may hamper the Palestinian Authority's ability to bring various militias in line with a cease-fire should U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni, who arrived Thursday, succeed in brokering a truce.

The militiamen snatched the two suspected informers from an apartment used to house detainees moved from the main prison after Israeli air strikes last week. They were taken to a spot and shot to death where one of Bethlehem's militia leaders, Hussein Abayat, was killed in an Israeli missile attack in November 2000.

One of the slain men, Mohammed Deifallah, had been sentenced to death last year by a Palestinian court for helping Israel kill Abayat. The other dead man, Mahmoud Sabatin, had been in Palestinian custody on suspicion of helping Israel kill another militia leader, but he was never tried.

A legislator from Arafat's Fatah group blamed the Palestinian Authority for the weakness of the judicial system.

"We are not against executing collaborators but ... executions should be done in accordance with the law and by the responsible authorities," said the lawmaker, Hatem Abdel Qadr.

About two dozen collaborators have been killed by Palestinian militiamen during the past 18 months of fighting, most gunned down in nighttime raids. Others were arrested by Palestinian security forces and sentenced after trials lasting just a few hours.

During the first Palestinian uprising from 1987-93, more than 800 suspected collaborators were killed by fellow Palestinians.

-------- japan

TOKYO JOURNAL
100,000 People Perished, but Who Remembers?

New York Times
March 14, 2002
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/international/asia/14JAPA.html

TOKYO, March 13 - From the housewives who cart home their groceries by bicycle, to the tiny shops and simple homes, Sumida Ward's irregular grid of narrow, gently bending streets appears at first glance to have gone unchanged for many decades.

But because 57 years ago this week a fleet of American B-29 bombers dropped 1,665 tons of napalm-filled bombs on Tokyo, leaving almost nothing standing over 16 square miles, there are few places in Japan where appearances like these could be more deceptive.

In one horrific night, the firebombing of Tokyo - then a city largely of wooden buildings - killed an estimated 100,000 people. In the spring and summer of 1945, similarly devastating raids on over 60 Japanese cities occurred before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought World War II to an end.

Despite the huge toll, the firebombing of Tokyo left surprisingly few traces in the popular memory of Japanese, or Americans.

"When I go to speak to schools about what happened, the students just stare at me blankly," said Hiroshi Hoshino, a hale, silver-haired survivor of the destruction who still lives in the Sumida Ward neighborhood where his family lost everything. "Of course, everyone knows about the atomic bombings, but many people are not aware of the napalm attacks at all."

Only recently has Mr. Hoshino, now 71, banded together with other survivors to devote what he says will be the rest of his life to preserving the memory of the people killed in the March 10, 1945, bombings.

Incinerated, trampled and suffocated, people died on the very first day of the incendiary campaign in considerably greater numbers than were killed in Nagasaki. Yet in contrast to the annual memorials to the nuclear victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the anniversary of the Tokyo attack passes almost unnoticed.

This year, $800,000 in private donations enabled the victims to open a small museum last weekend.

There are many reasons why the American firebombing campaign has received so little attention. Japan's cities were incinerated after similar Allied firebombing of German cities, whereas the atomic attacks even now remain unique in history. Moreover, for Japanese, the atomic explosions subtly reinforced feelings of wartime victimhood and righteousness, making the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims important symbols to mourn.

Almost yearly, leading Japanese politicians risk diplomatic incidents with neighboring countries by publicly honoring the country's fallen soldiers.

Yet apart from the atomic bomb victims, almost nothing has been done to honor Japan's civilian dead, partly because this might raise awkward questions about Japanese leaders during the war and partly because of the avid pursuit of friendship with America after 1945.

"Until the San Francisco Treaty in 1952, Japan was under control of the occupation forces, and when they arrived, they applied media restrictions, saying that one should not report things which reflected negatively on the United States," said Shinichi Arai, a historian who has written a comparison of European and Japanese civilian bombing. Later, as the country formed a close alliance with the United States, he said, "we were too busy trying to rebuild our country, and trying to forget the past."

For Japanese leaders, remembering the firebombing victims could mean explaining things like the deliberate placement of war industries in dense residential areas, or the prolongation of the war for many months after its outcome was clear - topics that even now have rarely been discussed here.

For Americans, it would raise questions about the prosecution of the war according to standards that Washington had long denounced as inhuman. "With the firebombings, we crossed the line that we had said was clearly beyond the pale of civilization," said John Dower, a leading American historian of Japan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The American reaction at the time was that they deserved it. There was almost a genocidal attitude on the part of the American military, and it extended to the American public."

Like many other survivors, Mr. Hoshino has little time for historical debate. He focuses on still vivid recollections of his terror at age 14, hearing the shrill air-raid sirens, then, minutes later, seeing a horrible red glow light the sky.

His father was dead and his older brother away at war. Mr. Hoshino tried to lead his mother and sisters to safety, first to a shelter he had dug himself in their yard, and then, as his neighborhood began to go up in flames, through teeming streets.

"My family survived because we ran and ran, until my mother couldn't run anymore," he said. "The place we stopped to rest was an open lot near the river, and somehow the fire never reached us there."

The next day, when his eyes had recovered enough from the heat and smoke to allow him to see, Mr. Hoshino's strongest memory is of the Sumida River thick with bodies.

Ikuyo Misu, 77, a member of Mr. Hoshino's recently founded neighborhood bereavement association, began to cry as she recalled how she had fled the spreading blaze, but was separated from her younger brother, whom she never saw again.

"Ever since then, there have been parts of Tokyo I can't bear to visit," she said. "The next day, the bodies were splayed on the ground everywhere you looked, just like mannequins, but blackened. You couldn't tell male from female."

-------- nato

[To reply, mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]

The NATO challenge

Franklin D. Kramer
March 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020314-67412137.htm

There is much grumbling and concern these days over the relevance of NATO and the general state of U.S.-European defense relations. Actions that could have been seen as triumphs, such as NATO's first invocation of its Article V self-defense clause in response to September 11, are dismissed as hollow gestures. Yet the most successful institutions are those that are able to respond to challenges by adapting and expanding in light of changing circumstances. With the right leadership on both sides of the Atlantic, NATO can create at its upcoming fall summit in Prague a critical security framework for the 21st century.

Doing so requires some honest assessment. First, there is a real and growing capabilities gap. The point can be demonstrated by comparing the U.S. special forces in Afghanistan with the British SAS. Man for man, the British are every bit the equal of their American counterpart. But the SAS simply cannot operate as a force-multiplier the way American special forces can. They cannot call in Predator unmanned aircraft because the British have none. They cannot add their on-the-ground knowledge to information provided by satellite and tactical signals intelligence because the British lack these. They cannot create targeting solutions with airborne-targeting systems because those too are absent from the British inventory. And the British are the very best of the allies in terms of modern capabilities.

Second, Europe simply is not spending substantially on defense. In current prices, the defense budgets of the European NATO nations have declined from an aggregate of $184 billion in 1995 to approximately $159 billion in 2001. So, at best, NATO is now a two-tier alliance. The United States has the advanced technology and, therefore, the ability to fight 21st-century wars. The Europeans have a fundamentally lesser capability.

Third, this fundamental difference in capabilities - and the absolute unwillingness of European countries in recent years to fix it - has raised an enormous conundrum for NATO. On the one hand, NATO is a brilliant institution, providing a common defense for the European continent. Military rivalries are submerged; stability is enhanced. If an effective working relationship can be developed with Russia - certainly an achievable goal - the continent will have a common security system for the first time in history. But, on the other hand, with so much well within reach, NATO's old habits and structures will not allow for an institution significant to the problems of today - and tomorrow.

NATO, therefore, has to change to make itself relevant to the challenges faced by its members while preserving its core benefit of European stability.

Three steps will be key:

First, NATO should recognize it needs a military expeditionary capability. Now, only the United States has the long reach to get up and go to the problems that affect NATO's security. For example, even in Kosovo, which is obviously part of Europe, U.S. forces did virtually all the early targeting because we alone had stealth aircraft, mobile jamming capabilities, secure communications and a full array of precision munitions. The early targeting that was not done by us was done by the British because they alone of the allies had cruise missiles. To overcome this disparity, NATO should build on existing institutions, such as the multinational Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, and establish both the command structure and the force capabilities for an Allied Expeditionary Force. Such forces, with a focus on communications and lift, could ably complement U.S. capabilities.

Second, NATO should formally undertake efforts to bring Russia into a military command structure and have a common effective military capability. While there have been some bumps, generally Russia has participated quite well in peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO should create a joint NATO-Russia brigade that could be part of the NATO Allied Expeditionary Force.

Third, none of this will work unless the European NATO countries have capabilities to work closely with and take advantage of U.S. strengths. To establish such interoperability, the United States should set aside in its defense budget a fund - say $4 billion to start - that would be equally matched by NATO countries for the development and procurement in the shortest possible time of systems that would enhance communications and precision targeting.

NATO has had an effective, even storied, past. Its continued success, however, will require adapting to meet new challenges. An expeditionary NATO, able to work militarily with Russia and take advantage of cutting-edge 21st century technology, can achieve that success.

Franklin D. Kramer is the executive vice president of Changing World Technologies and was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1996 to 2001.

-------- pakistan

Musharraf at Odds With U.S. on War
Declaring Battle for Afghanistan 'Over,' Pakistani President Calls for Rebuilding Aid

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26575-2002Mar14?language=printer

TOKYO, March 14 - The war in Afghanistan is "absolutely over," Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said here today, and "whatever remains to be done, I would call it mopping up."

Musharraf, on a four-day visit to Japan, nonetheless appealed to the United States and international peacekeeping forces to remain in Afghanistan and increase their authority until the political situation there is stabilized.

He said the war in neighboring Afghanistan "was over when the legitimate government" returned to Kabul. "The war in its initial sense, when it started with the Taliban, is absolutely over."

Musharraf's comments are out of sync with those of the United States, which has been loath to declare an end to the conflict. American troops saw combat and suffered casualties as recently as last week, and President Bush has vowed to wage an open-ended "war on terrorism."

Musharraf made his comments at a press conference in Tokyo, where he is seeking financial support and increased business for Pakistan and for rebuilding Afghanistan. After meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the leaders reported no firm agreements but said they agreed on the need for help to Afghanistan.

"Instability in a country does not remain in the borders of that country. Look at Afghanistan," Koizumi said.

Musharraf said the international peacekeeping forces that are now assigned only to patrol Kabul for six months should be extended throughout the country, without a fixed deadline. And he said American forces, which have refrained from getting involved in policing within the country, should also cooperate.

"My suggestion is, instead of giving time limits, one should give 'effect' limits'" so that the internal political situation is stabilized before the peacekeepers leave, he said.

"I think the United States forces and the International Security Assistance Force should respond to the requests and requirements from the government of Afghanistan to reinforce their hand and extend their writ all over Afghanistan," Musharraf said. "It's a different operation that we're involved in now. It involves the demands of the frustrated people of Afghanistan and the government of Afghanistan."

Musharraf also flatly rejected an assertion from a Japanese reporter that Pakistan had purchased missiles from North Korea.

"No. We don't have any contact" with North Korea, he said. "We are not doing that. We have our own indigenous capabilities we are using to the fullest," he said.

Japan was Pakistan's largest donor until Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998, after which Japan cut much of its aid. Musharraf said "we have consideration for Japan's sensitivities on nuclear issues" and insisted Pakistan maintains arms only for defense. Japan had earlier ended its economic sanctions against Pakistan, but has yet to resume aid at the levels before the nuclear test.

-------- un

Security Council endorses two-state vision

From James Bone in New York and Ross Dunn in Jerusalem
March 14, 2002
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,251-235429,00.html

THE United Nations Secretary-General called on Israel to pursue a "two-state" solution to the Middle East conflict yesterday after the Security Council endorsed for the first time a "vision" of Israel and a Palestinian state living together in peace.

Kofi Annan, the Nobel prize-winning UN chief, hailed the American-drafted resolution, adopted on Tuesday night, in which the Security Council formally endorsed the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. "I am convinced that this vision is shared by the great majority of people on both sides, and indeed by the whole world," he said.

He added, however, that he could offer no guarantees that Israel would accept the creation of a Palestinian state.

"I can just hope that they will do it," he said. "They will do it because in the long run I believe it is in their interests and in the interests of their people. The international community will do everything to help the two leaders and the parties come to a settlement."

The landmark Resolution 1397 was adopted 14-0, with only Syria abstaining. The key paragraph affirmed "a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognised borders".

US diplomats said that the language had been plucked from speeches by President Bush at the UN in November, which was later expanded by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State.

Other council members said that the US State Department had been considering such a declaration for more than a year, but had been unable to win the backing of the National Security Council.

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador, said that the resolution was intended to bolster the new peace effort by the US envoy to the region, Anthony Zinni.

"Our intent in doing this was to give an impulse to peace efforts and to decry violence and terror," he said.

-------- us

General says U.S. troops 'are getting tired'

Associated Press
03/14/2002
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/03/14/tired-troops.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. troops - active duty, reserves and National Guard - are becoming exhausted from the pace of work fighting in Afghanistan, protecting the homeland and other efforts, a top general told Congress as he endorsed proposals to increase the forces.

"They're tired, sir," Army Gen. William F. Kernan, commander in chief of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday. "We are busy. We are busier than we have ever been."

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., noted that leaders of the four military services have indicated they need a total of 51,400 more people: The Army, 40,000; Air Force, 6,000; Marines, 2,400, and Navy, 3,000. The current cap on Army personnel is 480,000; Air Force 358,800; Marines 172,600, and Navy, 376,000.

"I support wholeheartedly what the service chiefs have asked for in the way of additional capability," Kernan said after some prodding by Skelton, the committee's top Democrat.

Committee Chairman Bob Stump, R-Ariz., opened the hearing on the U.S. Space Command and the Joint Forces Command by praising the military's continuing flights over America to protect the homeland while expressing his own concerns about the amount of work being done by the armed forces.

"The question of how long we can sustain this pace of operations and what impact it is having on the combat edge of the Air Force is very much on the mind of the committee," Stump said, expressing concern as well for the continued call-ups of National Guardsmen.

Kernan said the armed forces were significantly downsized over the last decade, and he praised Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for deciding against additional cuts.

Despite great progress in the military's operational capabilities, leading to far more effective and precise deployment of forces, Kernan said, "There's still a limitation as to how broadly we can spread the forces we have today."

"We are stretched," he said. "It is manageable right now, but we are stretched."

Army Secretary Tom White told the same panel last month that the Army has more than 183,000 soldiers and 38,000 civilians deployed at stations in 120 countries, while more than 36,000 Army National Guard and reserve soldiers were on homeland defense duty.

"Our soldiers and their families and their employers are responding magnificently," White said. "But these are not long-term solutions. The additional wartime manning requirements with no adjustment in our global posture ... will further strain our forces."

Kernan, asked Thursday by Skelton if the troops were worn out, said they were tired and added: "I think the commanders are doing a magnificent job of rotating those forces through the various things that we've got to do in the Balkans, in Afghanistan and in the rest of the Middle East. ...

"We've got to be able to do that to keep them fresh and to keep them trained. But they are getting tired, yes sir,' Kernan


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

American Taliban fighter wants access to detainees

Reuters
By James Vicini
Saturday March 16, 12:51 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-95211.html

WASHINGTON - Lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban fighter charged with conspiring to kill Americans abroad, said on Friday a fair trial requires their access to prisoners captured in Afghanistan and held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

In court papers filed in Alexandria, Virginia, the defense lawyers also said there were two differing versions about what Lindh told U.S. military interrogators in December.

In one, they said, "Lindh was obviously disillusioned when he learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center and wanted to leave his Taliban unit, but could not do so for fear of death."

But the other later version omitted any reference to those statements, his lawyers said in arguing that they were entitled to the complete military reports summarizing Lindh's statements. They currently only have reports with deletions.

The 21-year-old Californian's lawyers also asked that the U.S. government reveal the identities of those in U.S. custody in Cuba and elsewhere who have provided information about the allegations against him.

Seeking information that helps Lindh, the lawyers said, "Mr. Lindh cannot get a fair trial without information about and access to those witnesses."

About 300 al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, who were captured in Afghanistan, are being held at the base in Cuba.

The lawyers also sought "any and all written records or documents" with information about Lindh obtained during the interrogation and interview of detainees in Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.

Captured in November during the fall of Kunduz in Afghanistan, Lindh was shot in the leg during a bloody prison uprising outside the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed.

The lawyers specifically wanted any information from the military detainees corroborating that Lindh was not involved in the planning or in the uprising itself.

Lindh is facing a 10-count indictment that includes charges of conspiring to kill U.S. civilians and military personnel abroad, engaging in prohibited transactions with the deposed Taliban government, and conspiring with and aiding the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Lindh, who was flown to the United States to stand trial in January, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

As part of their request, Lindh's lawyers also asked for all written records or documents about his alleged association with the al Qaeda network, which the United States has blamed for the September 11 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The lawyers also asked for information about a confidential government informant in Afghanistan, identified only as "CS-1" and a U.S. government employee, including any information about the prison uprising.

The lawyers also sought information about U.S. military activities in the area where Lindh fought in Afghanistan. They said the government must show there were U.S. forces in the same area as Lindh.

Government prosecutors will respond to Lindh's requests on March 29, and the judge in the case will then hold a hearing on April 1.

----

U.S. urged to determine detainees' status

Associated Press
03/14/2002
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/03/14/guantanamo-status.htm

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - A human rights panel urged the United States to determine the legal status of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, where the military on Wednesday said two holdouts had broken their two-week hunger strike.

The Organization of American States panel said in a letter to U.S. rights groups that it has asked the United States to take "the urgent measures necessary to have the legal status of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay determined by a competent tribunal."

"It's a major victory," said Michael Ratner, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of three New York-based human rights groups that challenged the detentions last month in a petition to the commission of the Organization of American States.

The military says the 300 captives at Guantanamo Bay include fighters of the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the fallen Afghan Taliban regime.

U.S. officials are determining whether and how to prosecute the men, and say those not tried by a military tribunal empowered to order the death penalty could be prosecuted in U.S. courts, returned to their home countries for prosecution, held indefinitely or released outright.

Officials of the OAS Commission on Human Rights, based in Washington, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment. U.S. military officials didn't immediately offer any reaction.

While human rights advocates have insisted the captives are prisoners of war, the U.S. government has resisted that term, saying they are illegal combatants.

Nevertheless, the military says it is complying with the spirit of the Geneva Convention.

Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, the commander of the detention mission, said Wednesday that while the captives' treatment "might not satisfy everyone in the international community," they are treated "in a fair fashion."

The two men broke a fast that began March 1 and ate twice in the last 24 hours but were still refusing to accept some meals in a protest over their detention, said spokesman Marine Maj. Stephen Cox. A third man began eating again on Monday but like the other two was still refusing some meals.

The hunger strike began on Feb. 27 after guards stripped an inmate of his turban, but military officials say participants have said their primary concern is their uncertain future. At one point early in the protest, there were 194 refusing food.

Between 10 and 20 captives usually refuse at least one of their daily meals in recent days. Cox said he didn't have a figure for the number who skipped meals Wednesday.

-------- terrorism

U.S. to change bin Laden bounties

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 14, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020314-72704200.htm

The Pentagon is planning a new system of rewards in Afghanistan that would offer smaller bounties to learn the whereabouts of al Qaeda terrorists, after locals failed to respond to the multimillion-dollar bounties dangled by Washington.

A $5 million discretionary fund is being eyed to pay for basic inducements, such as cash, livestock or help drilling a well, say administration officials. The hope is that average Afghans, many of whom are poor and illiterate, can relate to owning a flock of sheep more than becoming a millionaire, the officials said.

"The big rewards are beyond the comprehension of the Afghan people," said a senior administration official. "The smaller rewards are for anything the Americans think the Afghans would like to have."

A military official said Gen. Tommy Franks, who is running the war in Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command, tells this story to illustrate how million-dollar awards do not register with Afghan peasants. The general asked an Afghan what he could do with $25 million if he helped the United States find Osama bin Laden. The local replied that the money might be enough to feed his nine children for a year.

Washington has offered large sums of money for years for information leading to the capture of bin Laden, who is accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks and other terrorist strikes. The Justice Department offered $7 million after the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa. After September 11, the United States increased the bounty to $25 million and expanded it to include al Qaeda lieutenants as well as bin Laden. U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden is alive and on the move in a large stretch of territory in eastern Afghanistan, or just across the border in Pakistan.

"Our hope is that the incentive ... will incentivize a large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves, looking for the bad folks," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference in mid-November. "There's no question there are people out looking."

Afghan commanders indeed have searched for the al Qaeda leader, as well as his aides. But an administration official said yesterday they seem more interested in presiding over their own tribes and territories than searching Afghanistan's thousands of limestone caves and irrigation tunnels.

John Hillen, an Army officer in the Gulf war who now runs a stock exchange, said the huge reward can work only if it influences someone close to the terrorist mastermind.

"Twenty-five million dollars may entice some who have come into somewhat random contact with bin Laden," Mr. Hillen said. "But the reward should be focused on fundamentally changing the basic loyalty calculus of those closest to bin Laden. It appears that this amount has not yet had an impact on them."

William J. Taylor Jr., a retired Army colonel and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said that whoever provides information on top al Qaeda leaders is risking a death sentence.

"Whoever turns any information on bin Laden, they may get the money, but the word on who gave the information is going to be out and they're going to be dead people," Col. Taylor said. "They know that. ... Are you going to take 25 million bucks if you're dead, your wife is dead, your children are dead? Sometimes supply and demand doesn't work."

When told that any such informant would enjoy confidentiality, Col. Taylor responds by saying, "We can't even keep our nuclear policy review secret." This was a reference to a leak to the press last week of the administration's classified nuclear posture review.

The FBI has published a list of its 22 most-wanted global terrorists, headed by bin Laden and his top adviser, Egyptian physician Ayman al Zawahiri. Of the 22, one, al Qaeda operations chief Muhammad Atef, was killed by a U.S. air strike in the war in Afghanistan.

An FBI official said he does not believe any of the $25 million fund authorized by Congress in November has been paid to any informants.

But previous terrorist reward funds have had some success.

The FBI arrested Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Pakistan in 1995. He later was convicted of leading the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Washington reportedly handed out $2 million for information on Yousef.

Another $2 million reward led to the arrest of Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani who gunned down two CIA employees at a traffic light near agency headquarters in Langley, Va. A student recognized Kasi's picture on a matchbook cover circulated like a wanted poster. Agents caught him in a hotel in Pakistan.

The terrorist fund is administered by the State Department's Rewards for Justice program. A White House document states that the department has paid out more than $8 million in reward money since 1995 and that "thousands of innocent lives around the world have been saved through the prevention of terrorist attacks."

--------

Russia's Ivanov Discusses Terrorism with CIA

March 14, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-russia.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov met with CIA officials on Thursday to discuss anti-terrorism efforts and the talks were certain to include Chechnya, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

Ivanov met CIA officials amid some U.S. concerns that Chechnya might play host to al Qaeda members escaping from Afghanistan.

The United States blamed bin Laden and al Qaeda for the Sept. 11 attacks on America that killed about 3,000 people and is waging a war on terrorism seeking to destroy them and prevent any country from offering them safe haven.

Russia has shared intelligence about links between Chechens and al Qaeda with the United States, Ivanov said.

Ivanov at a Pentagon media briefing on Wednesday said there were direct ties between Chechen rebels and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

``Those links are unquestionable. They are very obvious,'' he said, adding that many Chechen fighters were trained in Afghanistan and some were still there.

Russian forces launched a campaign against Chechen separatists in 1999 after the Kremlin blamed them for bombings that killed more than 300 people. The Chechen rebel leadership is calling for an international war crimes tribunal on alleged atrocities by Russian forces.

Bush this week expressed optimism the United States and Russia would reach formal agreement on joint nuclear arms cuts in time for a May 23-26 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Bush and Putin agreed to cut their current nuclear arsenals of between 6,000 and 7,000 nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 2,000 warheads over the next decade. But Russia objected to Pentagon plans to store instead of destroy some of those warheads.

Ivanov has met top officials in Washington this week, including President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He was scheduled to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell later on Thursday.


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- human rights

Seeking Asylum, N. Koreans Storm Embassy in Beijing
Six Families Break Into Spanish Embassy

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26734-2002Mar14?language=printer

BEIJING, March 14 - A group of 25 North Koreans, threatening suicide and claiming they faced starvation and oppression at home, burst into the grounds of the Spanish Embassy today and demanded political asylum.

A German doctor who helped organize the break-in vowed that it was the beginning of an underground railroad from North Korea to the outside world.

Masquerading as a tour group, the band, all sporting black hats, walked down a side street in one of Beijing's embassy districts, and then rushed through open embassy gates just behind a van, witnesses said. A Chinese policeman tackled one refugee at the gate but the man broke through, leaving the guard with only his hat. Once inside the embassy, the group erupted in a raucous cheer.

Dozens of China's People's Armed Police sealed off the embassy and streets around it following the bold move - the second time in less than a year that a group of North Korean refugees has taken shelter in a diplomatic compound in Beijing. Diplomatic sources said the group of 25, including six families plus two orphaned girls, then descended on the kitchen of the Spanish ambassador's residence, also on the grounds, and ate all of the food that was to be served tonight at a banquet for a Chinese minister.

China's foreign ministry reacted swiftly to the incident announcing that it did not regard the North Koreans as refugees, and thereby liable to protection under international covenants. However, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said China was "in contact with the relevant parties so as to find a proper solution to the issues" - a remark that led some diplomats to conclude that, like last time, China was willing to let the North Koreans leave China.

The South Korean foreign ministry said it had asked China and Spain to resolve the issue "in accordance with humanitarian concerns," meaning that it hoped that the North Koreans would not be forcibly returned home. Last June, a family of seven North Koreans was escorted into the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees by a free-lance Japanese journalist and claimed asylum. China allowed them to leave for South Korea via Singapore a few days later. At the time, the U.N. refugee agency called those seven North Koreans the "tip of the iceberg."

The issue of North Korean refugees in China is a nettlesome problem for Beijing because of geopolitics and human rights. China has relations with both North and South Korea and attempts to walk a fine line between Seoul and Pyongyang.

China is bound by treaty with North Korea to repatriate fleeing North Koreans but it has been criticized by human rights groups, South Koreans and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for doing so. In January 2000, Russia and China cooperated to forcibly repatriate seven North Koreans in what the U.N. refugee agency called a direct violation of international law. Last year, 11.8 million South Koreans signed a petition asking that so-called "defectors" from North Korea be allowed to come to South Korea if they wished.

South Korean aid groups estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 North Koreans have fled their homeland to China since a famine, due to bad economic policies and drought, began in North Korea in the mid-1990s.

The break-in also comes at a sensitive time for the Korean Peninsula. Relations between the United States and North Korea have been frozen since President Bush took office. China has recently said it hopes to facilitate a resumption of talks between Washington and Pyongyang. Beijing is currently hosting Pyongyang's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-Il and has dispatched Wang Jiarui, deputy head of the Communist Party's international liaison department, to South Korea.

President Bush recently named the Stalinist regime of North Korea as one of three nations in his "axis of evil." The U.S. government remains concerned about Pyongyang's missile and nuclear weapons programs.

In a statement, a Tokyo-based North Korean organization said the 25 had already escaped North Korea before and had been repatriated by Chinese officials where "we endured months of detention . . . that can only be described as atrocious."

"We are now at the point of such desperation and live in such fear of persecution within North Korea that we have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom," said the statement by the Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. "Some of us carry poison on our person to commit suicide if the Chinese authorities should choose once again to send us back to North Korea."

The statement also identified the refugees, but said that some of the information was wrong to protect family members back home. An Asian diplomat said that the group included 11 children between the ages of 10 and 19, 12 females and 13 males. One group member was sick with high blood pressure, he said, and the Spanish were treating him.

Choi Byong-sop said he was giving his real name and identified himself as a former coal miner and one-time member of the North Korean Workers Party, the ruling party. Choi wrote that he had fled to China in 1997 with his wife and three children but was caught and returned to North Korea, where guards beat and tortured him.

"I am willing to risk my life for freedom in South Korea, " he wrote. "My first son wants to become a Christian missionary. My daughter wants to be trained to be a pianist. My last son wants to be a soccer player in South Korea."

Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who worked in North Korea and helped organize the entry, said the group had considered the German embassy on Wednesday but found the security too tight.

Vollertsen, who was expelled from North Korea in Dec. 2000, promised more such actions in the future, with a growing number of North Koreans each time. Vollertsen likened the movement to the flood of Eastern Europeans who sought asylum in Western embassies before the Iron Curtain collapsed.

"They can't stop 25 people and they will not stop for sure 150 people," he said.

Vollertsen said he was part of an informal network - including people from the United States, South Korea, France, Italy and Spain - which helped North Korean refugees. He said his group also masterminded the UNHCR incident last June.

Most of the North Koreans were carrying rat poison and all "told me they would be executed if they are sent back," Vollertsen said.

The issue of North Korean refugees is also troublesome for the West. Vollertsen and other Western aid workers say that a major reason that refugees flee North Korea is because Pyongyang's food distribution system is skewed toward people the regime considers either useful such as miners and soldiers or loyal, such as members of the Korean Workers Party. Several Western aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, have pulled out of North Korea because, they say, the government does not allow them to help the neediest in society.

Western aid, including thousands of tons of American aid, feeds about one-third of North Korea's population of 22 million. Nonetheless, conservative estimates of the famine's death toll are well into the hundreds of thousands.

Current prospects for North Korea's economy are not good. Another drought is expected this year and North Korea's government exhibits little sign of opening up its economy.

In its most recent report, the U.N. mission in North Korea said that outlook for most North Koreans remained "difficult." It said a shortfall in aid meant that 1.5 million children were currently not receiving a minimum caloric intake.

"This has serious consequences for a child's health," the report said. Endit


-------- ACTIVISTS

Seminar on Disarmament in Paris

25-26 March, 2002
From: "Stefan Bostina INT-CEEA" <INT-CEEA@osce.org>

To whom it may concern.

On behalf of Mr. Marc Baltes, Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities a.i., please find attached information on "The socio-economic impact of disarmament" seminar to be hold in Paris, France on 25-26 March 2002.

Sincerely,

Stefan Bostina Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities OSCE Secretariat Kärntnerring 5-7 A-1010 Vienna Austria

Tel: +43 1 51436-776
Fax: +43 1 5143696
E-mail: INT-CEEA@osce.org

Seminar on " The socio-economic impact of disarmament " Paris,
25 - 26 March 2002

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In Europe, the 1990s were unquestionably marked by an extensive process of disarmament. This accompanied, and often translated into strategic realities, the major political changes that took place in the Euro-Atlantic space. The process was characterized by a two?fold dynamic: on the one hand, multilateral disarmament, with the signature of a series of international agreements placing limitations on or even calling for the complete destruction of certain categories of armaments; on the other hand, unilateral initiatives, with the announcement by the majority of countries of the adoption of major plans for reducing their forces and also their military spending.

At the same time, there began a public debate on "peace dividends" - i.e., on the question of the macroeconomic spin?off from reductions in military expenditures, and the resulting benefit for our societies. To what extent would these reductions in military spending lead to additional outlays in the areas of education, health or infrastructure?

To allow a discussion of these questions, France, in co?ordination with the Chairman?in?Office of the OSCE and in co?operation with the Office of the Co?ordinator of Economic and Environmental Activities, has decided to organize a conference on the "socio?economic impact of disarmament". The deliberations will be centred on three panels aimed at highlighting the different facets of this vast question, based on numerous testimonies both by recognized analysts and by practitioners directly involved:

- Measurement of the macroeconomic impact of disarmament, first of all, and the related question of evaluation of peace dividends.

The disarmament process means an investment at the economic level. This involves an immediate expenditure made for the purpose of obtaining a reward in the medium or long term. But the actual achievement of "peace dividends" implies that reductions in military expenditures should be sufficient so that they can generate savings and so that at the same time reinvestment in the economic cycle will lead to more efficient production. Such a reassignment of resources is not automatic and depends on a complex process on which recent studies by specialized economists have thrown light.

- The question of conversion to peaceful purposes in its different aspects (sectoral and regional impacts, retraining of demobilized military personnel, etc.).

The aim will be to consider the problems of conversion that disarmament poses for the armaments industry, for military personnel and specialists and for the regions or areas particularly affected, and to illustrate them with specific examples. A discussion may also be opened on new activities generated by disarmament for certain specialized enterprises.

- Management of the process

This panel will permit consideration both of the risks that disarmament may present (for the environment or in terms of security) if it is badly managed and of the support available from international organizations and non?governmental organizations in financing and assisting these operations, a reflection of the diversity of the international players.

----

People's Summit on Nuclear Waste, Connecticut, April 12-14

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002
From: Michael Mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>

Nuclear Information & Resource Service is proud to co-sponsor
The People's Summit on High-Level Nuclear Waste: Rethinking the Waste Crisis

April 12-14, 2002
Wesleyan University Middlebury, CT
sponsored by Citizens Awareness Network (CAN)

The People's Summit on High-Level Nuclear Waste is a gathering of people from impacted communities to discuss our country's high-level waste crisis; to confront conflicts among us and develop consensus to unify ourselves and solidify our commitment to a waste policy inclusive of ordinary people's needs.

If groups can act in solidarity rather than self-interest, we can create a sane, safe, and far-sighted national high-level nuclear waste policy.

The Summit will bring together affected people from reactor, transport and dump communities, radioactive waste and other experts, as well as local, regional and national environmental organizations to engage and address issues that vitally affect our communities - irradiated fuel, onsite storage, fuel pool expansion, transport, burial and terrorism. Our goal is to initiate a discussion that can develop into a HLW policy that is both inclusive and addresses the reality of Environmental Racism - that poor, rural, and people of color communities are disproportionately chosen for nuclear sacrifice.

With the assistance of professional facilitators, the group will identify the critical issues, broaden and deepen participant's knowledge base and promote consensus building in order to strategize effectively and move forward in solidarity and with clear direction.

The People's Summit will be held at Wesleyan University April 12-14, 2002. The Summit will open with a reception and keynote speaker on Friday night. Saturday will include alternating whole group discussions and smaller working groups focused on reactor, transport and dump issues including the themes of Environmental Racism and terrorism. Sunday will focus on building consensus and strategizing around next steps. An important aspect of the Summit is breaking the issues down to levels that everyone can understand.

For questions about registration or The Peoples Summit : www.nukebusters.org Phone : (860) 345-2157 email : ctcan@snet.net www.nukesbusters.org


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