------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Russian defense chief softens on nuclear arms
Irish nuclear protesters plan postcard blitz on UK
Norway to halt oil leaks, urges UK nuke closure
French PM Unveils Platform Early
US Offers $1.2 Billion in Aegis Defenses to S.Korea
Missile defense research portal created
Top Lawmaker Urges Russia on Weapons
Terror convicts told of nuclear threats
Makings of a 'Dirty Bomb'
Despite New Tools, Detecting Nuclear Material Is Doubtful
FBI Alerts Allies on Al Qaeda's Nuclear Plans
Nuclear Chief Explains New Weapon
Revamping the U.S. artillery
Re: "Revamping the U.S. artillery"
Nuclear Chief Explains New Weapon
Nuclear arsenal upgrade planned
NRC releases nuclear plant status report on Web site
Colorado Red Lights Radioactive Shipments from New Jersey
Bush Finds That Ambiguity Is Part of Nuclear Deterrence
Daschle says subpoena 'option' to compel Ridge's testimony
Laipson Takes Over Stimson Center
MILITARY
Pipeline politics taint U.S. war
US puzzled as battle zone yields few bodies
Afghan offensive to end 'in next 12 hours'
Afghan Camps Turn Out Holy War Guerrillas and Terrorists
Nasty rumors circulate over Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma
Pentagon Proposes Sale of F - 16s
Britain to Send 1, 700 Troops to Fight in Afghanistan
Britain Should Pull Back From EU, Says Thatcher
Alliant to Buy Assets of Boeing Co.
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
Colombia's 'peace bishop' is gunned down
U.S. charges Colombian rebels
Wa drug cartel in US sights
French navy intercepts hundreds of immigrants
Views Mixed in Iran on U.S. Senator's Olive Branch
Girding for war with Iraq
U.S. to host group opposed to Saddam Hussein
Arab states united in rejecting attack on Saddam
Report: Iraq, Al Qaeda Run Extremist Group In Kurdish Territory
PA refuses to meet Cheney without Arafat
Hopes Rise for a Mideast Truce, Despite Attacks
Israeli Troops Begin to Withdraw, Witnesses Say
NATO hopefuls petition in blocs
Diplomat murdered as Solomon Islands slips further into anarchy
UPI hears ... Pakistan arms database
Explosives Missing in Philippines
CIA survey of Iraq airfields heralds attack
UN's Annan urges rich countries to listen to poor
Military Works on Soldiers' Mentality
Smaller, bloodier battles foreseen for U.S. troops
US forces staying put in the Gulf
SAS troops prepare for raids on Yemen
UPI hears ... New Zealand and Bush
POLICE / PRISONERS
Officers in FBI Probe Cleared by Department
Report Questions Handling of Miami Police Complaints
Airport terminal reopens after bomb scare
Hit by inmate, X-ray guards reassigned
Tom Ridge's Rainbow
FBI Says al - Qaida Operating in Asia
Pakistan Bombing Prompts Wide Warning
ENERGY AND OTHER
Letter to President Bush
Biodiesel to Fuel Buffalo Buses
Dept. of Energy Awards Biomass and Methane Contracts
Big players to spark wind power consolidation
Vestas to build US wind turbine plant
Researchers Explore Capture, Storage of Carbon Dioxide
EPA Will Ease Coal Plant Rules
Train derails in Georgia, releasing toxic chemical
Iceberg Breaks Free From Antarctica
U.N. rights chief Robinson will not seek new term
UN's top human rights forum opens marked by US' historic absence
No U.S. delegate at UNHRC
ACTIVISTS
YOUR ACTION STILL NEEDED: SENATE ENERGY BILL S 517
Comment Sought on Irradiation of Imported Fruits, Vegetables
Today In Congress
Harbury argues own case before high court
U.N. Conference Facing Less Threat of Protests
Thousands of Workers Protest in NE China, Locals Say
The "War on Terrorism" Breeds More Terror
Gorbachev Honors Global Green Award Winners
Mine Workers Chief Nabbed at Site of Coal Slurry Spill
Court Agrees to Hear Challenge to EPA Rule for Yucca Mountain
-------- NUCLEAR
Russian defense chief softens on nuclear arms
World Scene
March 18, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020318-26591445.htm
NEW YORK - Russia could agree to a new nuclear arms pact that would allow the United States to store some decommissioned weapons for potential future use instead of destroying them, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview broadcast yesterday.
Mr. Ivanov's comments on NBC's "Meet the Press" suggested a softening of the Kremlin position on what Russian officials have called the main sticking point in progress toward a deal on nuclear arms cuts. Both sides hoped to secure the deal in time for President Bush's visit to Russia in May.
The two countries announced in December plans to sharply reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear warheads. Russian officials, however, objected to U.S. plans to store but not destroy decommissioned weapons.
-------- britain
Irish nuclear protesters plan postcard blitz on UK
Story by Alex Richardson
REUTERS REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:
March 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15062/story.htm
DUBLIN - Irish campaigners said they were planning to bombard British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles with postcards to protest against the Sellafield nuclear plant.
Sellafield's presence across the Irish Sea on England's northwest coast has been a long-running source of friction between the two countries, with repeated calls from Ireland for the plant to be shut down on safety grounds.
The campaign group hopes to send nearly 1.5 million postcards to homes in the Irish Republic, urging people to forward them to Blair's Downing Street residence, Charles' London home at St James's Palace and Sellafield itself.
The campaign is spearheaded by Ali Hewson, wife of Irish rock star Bono from the band U2, and has the support of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.
"We are working round-the-clock trying to put this together, but it is dependent on us being able to raise the money to do it," said a spokesman for the campaign.
"This is not a government initiative, but an official from the Taoiseach's (prime minister's) office met Ali Hewson to discuss it and the Taoiseach is supportive of the campaign," a spokesman for Ahern told Reuters.
Under the group's draft plans the postcard sent to Blair would show a close up of a human eye with a message urging the British PM to "look me in the eye and say Sellafield is safe".
The prince would be sent a postcard depicting Ireland ravaged by fallout from a nuclear accident with the message: "Wish you were here".
A third postcard addressed to Norman Askew, chief executive of Sellafield's owners British Nuclear Fuels, would show a pair of lips and the slogan: "Tell us the truth".
The spokesman for the campaigners, who are seeking financial support from Irish businesses, said they hoped to launch the postcard blitz in April.
Last week Ireland's public enterprise minister Mary O'Rourke held talks in Oslo with Norway's Environment Minister Borge Brende to discuss their opposition to Sellafield, which O'Rourke said "threatens every man, woman and child in Ireland".
Last year, Ireland unsuccessfully applied to the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for an injunction to block the start up of a 472-million pound ($673.2m) nuclear fuel manufacturing plant at Sellafield.
-------- europe
Norway to halt oil leaks, urges UK nuke closure
Story by Alister Doyle
REUTERS NORWAY:
March 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15041/story.htm
OSLO - Norway said it wanted to stop leaks from its oil and gas platforms by 2005 and urged Britain to shut a nuclear plant that Oslo says dumps radioactive pollution into the sea.
In a drive to safeguard fisheries by cleaning up the seas, the centre-right government said it also wanted a moratorium on new oil and gas projects in the Arctic Barents Sea and would consider extending Norway's territorial waters.
"We want a policy that will ensure that future generations can also harvest the wealth of the seas," Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said a week before Norway hosts a meeting of environmental ministers from states around the North Sea.
But environmental group Greenpeace handed Bondevik a dead cod just before he held a news conference aboard a ship in Oslo harbour, saying the proposals failed to address over-fishing by Norwegian trawlers.
Norway, which is not a member of the European Union, denies that it hands fishermen over-generous quotas that are undermining stocks.
The government plan calls for oil and gas platforms to cut pollution into the sea to zero from 2005. Currently some spill oil and chemicals or traces of heavy metals like mercury, along with water from drilling.
The government said a main measure could be to re-inject the polluted water into subsea reservoirs. It did not outline any possible penalties for non-compliance in the documents, which will go to parliament for debate and approval in coming months.
"Our main goal is that one multi-billion industry should not kill off another," Environment Minister Boerge Brende said, referring to the threat to fisheries from oil and gas.
BIG FISHERIES EXPORTS
Norway earned 30 billion crowns ($3.40 billion) from seafood exports in 2001, its second largest earner behind oil and gas which brought in 300 billion crowns.
Norway pumps 3.0 million barrels of oil per day and is the third largest exporter behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The government said it would put "considerable pressure" on London to halt emissions of radioactive technetium from its Sellafield nuclear power plant, saying Sellafield was the main source of new atomic pollution off Norway.
Brende said Britain opposed storing technetium on land, due to safety fears, while assuring other states it was safe to dump it in the sea. "The British reasoning is full of holes," he said.
He added that levels of technetium off Norway were low and "no direct danger for health or the environment" but that the long-term impact was unknown.
The proposal also urged creation of an independent panel to assess the environmental impact of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Barents Sea, one of the world's richest fishing grounds, before giving the go-ahead to any new projects.
The moratorium, however, would not apply to the 46 billion crowns development of the Snoehvit or Snow White field in the Barents Sea, which got a green light from parliament last week despite howls of protest from environmentalists.
The government said it would consider extending its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles from four, matching limits in place in other European coastal states except Greece.
It would also crack down on ships flushing ballast water into the sea. Norway blamed ballast water for spreading algae that suffocated thousands of salmon at fish farms last year.
-------- france
French PM Unveils Platform Early
By Emmanuel Georges-Picot
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47611-2002Mar18?language=printer
PARIS -- With elections just over a month away, Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin on Monday unveiled an ambitious program to reduce unemployment and homelessness and forgive poor nations' debts....
Not to be outdone, Chirac on Monday outlined his environmental program, repeating a call for classes on ecology in French schools and a "reasoned and reasonable debate" about nuclear power - France's leading source of energy.
Chirac also proposed an amendment to the French Constitution that would ensure greater environmental protection.
Chirac has made fighting rising crime and cutting taxes the center of his campaign. Jospin has proposed creating a Ministry for Public Safety and special centers for repeat offenders.
-------- korea
US Offers $1.2 Billion in Aegis Defenses to S.Korea
March 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-korea-usa.html
WASHINGTON - The United States has offered to sell South Korea three sophisticated Aegis warship defense systems built by Lockheed Martin Corp. for an estimated $1.2 billion, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The Defense Department told Congress Seoul had expressed interest in the systems -- which can track and shoot down a number of aircraft at the same time -- for use on destroyers in the South Korean Navy.
South Korea is also looking at a ship defense system built in the Netherlands, one Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
A major Aegis sale to Seoul would likely draw protests from North Korea, but U.S. defense officials said the system would help a major Asian ally protect itself from a growing missile threat being developed by Pyongyang.
In a notification to Congress of the proposed sale, the Pentagon said the move would ``contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by significantly improving the defense capabilities and security of a key defense treaty ally.''
Relations between Washington and the hard-line Communist regime in North Korea have been touchy at best since the 1951-53 Korean War, and President Bush in January described Pyongyang as part of an ``axis of evil'' in the world, along with Iran and Iraq.
The U.S. special envoy on North Korea met a North Korean official in New York last week for the first time since Bush's ''axis of evil'' speech.
Envoy Charles Pritchard met North Korea's permanent representative to the United Nations, Pak Gil-yon, on Wednesday and the two sides agreed to have more meetings, the State Department said on Friday.
The two men last met on Jan. 10, before Bush's State of the Union speech on Jan. 29 in which the U.S. president warned Iran, Iraq and North Korea that the United States might not stand idle if they tried to develop weapons of mass destruction.
But U.S. officials have said since that an earlier offer of dialogue with North Korea still stands.
North Korea has not responded to the offer of talks at a higher level, apparently annoyed that Washington wants to expand the agenda to include North Korea's conventional forces, not just its missiles and nuclear programs.
-------- missile defense
Missile defense research portal created
March 18, 2002
Alorie Gilbert,
CNET News.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0-1007-200-9392457.html
The Missile Defense Agency, a unit of the Pentagon, said Monday that it is building an intranet to streamline and accelerate missile defense development, research and testing.
The customized portal, created with Plumtree Software applications, gives hundreds of government and military researchers access to vast amounts of classified data on missile shield testing collected over more than the last decade.
Previously, scientists and military personnel involved in missile defense projects had to travel to three different libraries in Alabama, Colorado and Tennessee to obtain information critical to their research, such as electronic data gathered by radars that track the path of missiles during tests, according to Steve Waugh, deputy chief information officer at MDA.
The portal, which the MDA began setting up in December, makes data from each library accessible from the researchers' desktops for the first time through a Web browser.
"Before the portal, it took weeks and weeks to get access to information," said Waugh. "Now you can get it in the same day. That's a big change in the way people work."
To ensure the security of classified data, the intranet is not connected to the public Internet, said Waugh. It is run over a private network run by the Department of Defense that requires highly guarded encryption, user authorization and security procedures.
In addition, the Plumtree applications can be set up to grant different levels of access to internal users. Every section of the intranet, for instance, has an access control list to ensure people only see what they're allowed to see, said Bob Carter, public sector director at Plumtree.
Many large private sector businesses, including Ford, Procter & Gamble and American Airlines, use Plumtree to make corporate information and applications easier to use and more accessible to their employees and business partners. Government agencies are becoming increasingly interested in the software, said Carter. The State Department, Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, Navy and Army National Guard are all using the product.
-------- russia
Top Lawmaker Urges Russia on Weapons
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46080-2002Mar18?language=printer
MOSCOW (AP) -- A senior lawmaker called Monday for Russia to upgrade its nuclear weapons capability in response to the U.S. missile defense program, despite a recent improvement in ties.
``If you build up the shield, we will build up the sword,'' Ret. Gen. Andrei Nikolayev, the head of the parliament's defense affairs committee, said, according to the Interfax-Military News Agency.
After years of protests against U.S. missile defense plans, Russian President Vladimir Putin reacted calmly to the U.S. decision late last year to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, saying it was a mistake but not a threat to Russia. The treaty barred the kind of missile defense Washington wants to build.
But top Russian military officials and diplomats have continued to express concern that the U.S. missile shield, conceived to fend off threats from such nations as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, might erode the deterrence value of Russian nuclear forces.
Nikolayev said Russia must respond to the U.S. missile ``umbrella'' by ``increasing the threat'' and developing weapons ``capable of penetrating their missile defense.''
Unlike Nikolayev and other lawmakers, Russian government officials have sought to play down differences and negotiate an arms reduction deal with the United States by the time President Bush visits Russia in May.
Bush has promised to slash the U.S. arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, while Putin has said Russia could go even lower to 1,500 warheads from the current 6,000 that the countries are each permitted under the START I treaty.
The pledge reflected the general warming of U.S.-Russian ties, strengthened by Putin's support for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
But negotiations have been rocky because of Moscow's strong objection to the Pentagon's decision to stockpile decommisioned nuclear weapons rather than destroy them.
Signs of a breakthrough emerged Sunday, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov wrapped up talks in Washington by saying that Moscow wouldn't mind if the United States stores some of the decommissioned weapons. He added that the details were ``negotiable.''
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow voiced hope Monday that any remaining differences would be ironed out before May's summit, Interfax reported.
-------- terrorism
Terror convicts told of nuclear threats
By Jim Gomez and Dafna Linzer,
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020318-333240.htm
U.S. officials received a warning as early as 1995 that Islamic militants were plotting to attack an American nuclear site, but they did not pass along the information to the agency that oversees nuclear facilities or to the plants themselves, the Associated Press has learned.
The warning came in police interrogations of convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and from a computer seized in the Philippines from Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Both men were linked to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, and both are serving life in prison in the United States for plotting to blow up 12 U.S.-bound airliners.
The AP learned of the 1995 warning through secret intelligence documents and interviews with officials in the United States and the Philippines.
According to a secret Philippine report, a letter obtained from Yousef's computer indicated he was "planning to attack any nuclear facilities in the U.S. and unspecified targets in France and Great Britain."
Yousef, who ran the al Qaeda cell that targeted the World Trade Center in 1993, discussed the plan with Murad when the two met in October 1994 in Quetta, Pakistan, according to statements Murad made to interrogators.
But Murad, who was arrested in Manila in January 1995, said he was unaware of the specifics of the plan to attack nuclear facilities.
Rodolfo Mendoza, a former police official in Manila who was among those who supervised Murad's interrogations, said the details on the nuclear threat were immediately shared with U.S. authorities.
"During a debriefing session, Murad told us about this planned attack on an unspecified nuclear facility. We passed on that information from Murad to [U.S. officials]," Mr. Mendoza said.
Murad also told investigators that he and other Middle Eastern students took pilot training at U.S. flight schools in the early 1990s, and that he had proposed a suicide mission in which he would fly a jetliner into a federal building.
That information, provided six years before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was also shared with FBI agents in Manila. An FBI agent who accompanied Murad back to the United States for trial testified in 1996 that Murad spoke about plans for a nuclear attack.
Victor Dricks, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the government agency charged with overseeing the country's 104 nuclear facilities had not heard of such a warning during 1995.
"We did not know of any credible threat against any specific facility that we would take seriously enough to take some action on," he said.
Carl Crawford, manager of nuclear communications at Energy Nuclear, which operates nine reactors in the South and the Northeast, said that in 1995 the company "never received any formal communications from the NRC or any other federal law enforcement agency regarding such threats. We never received any request to go on high alert."
In January, the NRC alerted nuclear power plants that the government had received a tip from an al Qaeda operative that terrorists might be planning a suicide attack on a power reactor.
An FBI official speaking on the condition of anonymity said at the time that the NRC had acted on old information that had been deemed not credible. But the NRC communication said the agency decided to issue the alert after an FBI agent in Washington state contacted a nuclear power plant about the threat.
The NRC ordered the nation's nuclear plants operating in 31 states to their highest alert level after September 11, and at least seven states are using National Guard troops to help secure reactors.
----
Makings of a 'Dirty Bomb'
Radioactive Devices Left by Soviets Could Attract Terrorists
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42294-2002Mar17?language=printer
Six months ago, they were mere Cold War trash: hundreds of small radioactive power generators scattered across the Soviet Union decades ago and largely forgotten, except when the odd lumberjack turned up with severe radiation burns.
But in the aftermath of Sept. 11, these aging but potentially lethal devices are being viewed in a troubling new light: as possible components in a weapon to be used in a terrorist strike. Even more troubling, some of them have vanished.
In Georgia, on the Black Sea, a search is underway for at least two of the devices, called radiothermal generators, or RTGs, believed to have been abandoned and then stolen after the closing of a Soviet military base. Just before Christmas, three woodcutters in northwestern Georgia suffered massive injuries after stumbling upon a similar device in the middle of a forest.
In the far-eastern Russian region of Chukotka, investigators discovered a complete breakdown in controls over 85 radiothermal generators placed along the arctic coast by the Soviets in the 1960s and '70s. Some of the machines had been vandalized for scrap metal, others were literally falling into the surf and at least one could not be found, according to Russian government documents obtained by The Washington Post.
"The generators are placed on open land, are clearly visible from the sea and are visited by staff no more than once a year (in recent years, staff has not visited the sites at all)," said a report by a Russian commission that inspected the generators in 1997. "They would be easy targets for a terrorist attack, the consequences of which could be extremely serious."
Vladimir Yetylin, a legislator from Chukotka, located on the Bering Sea, said in an interview Friday that he suspected some generators were still missing and planned to press for an investigation.
"At the time, there was not enough money to gather up these [power] sources," said Yetylin, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, blaming the chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The RTGs, used by the Soviets to power navigational beacons and communications equipment in remote areas, each contain up to 40,000 curies of highly radioactive strontium or cesium. Even a tiny fraction of a single curie of strontium has a high probability of causing a fatal cancer, according to a calculation by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nuclear watchdog group. While cesium and strontium cannot be used to make nuclear weapons, the two heavy metals could contaminate large areas if combined with conventional explosives in a radiological weapon or "dirty bomb."
"This stuff can be just ghastly to clean up," said Federation of American Scientists President Henry Kelly, a physicist who testified this month at a Senate hearing on dirty bombs. Such a bomb detonated in a large city could render several blocks uninhabitable, he added.
There are literally hundreds of places where terrorists could obtain material for such a bomb, including former dumping grounds for medical waste in this country. But the recent discoveries in the former Soviet Union have further heightened international concerns about the possibility of nuclear theft. The RTGs in particular offer high concentrations of radioactivity with minimal controls -- and sometimes no controls, according to officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations.
"After the Soviet Union broke up so abruptly, the newly formed nations had no use for these things and no infrastructure," said Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman in Vienna. "They didn't have the means or even the information to locate, recover and dispose of them."
The IAEA classifies the Soviet RTGs as "orphaned" nuclear sources and has called for a major international effort to find them and lock them up. "They are a problem, from the point of view of terrorism," Fleming said. But she added: "Since we can't find them, presumably it would be hard for terrorists to find them as well."
RTGs are self-contained power sources that convert radioactive energy into electricity. Compact and relatively small -- Soviet models are between two and four feet in length and weigh between 1,000 and 3,000 pounds -- they are ideal for remote areas with little access to traditional fuels. The Soviets are known to have built more than 300 of the devices, most of them to power navigational beacons along arctic shipping lanes.
The U.S. government also built RTGs; some were used to power spacecraft, but at least 10 of the devices were installed at remote military listening posts in Alaska in the 1960s and '70s. After a brush fire threatened one of the devices in 1992, the Air Force began replacing them with diesel-powered generators.
In Soviet-made RTGs, the device's core typically is a flashlight-size capsule of strontium 90, surrounded by thick lead to absorb the radiation. When the lead cladding is intact, the generator is essentially harmless. But if the shielding were missing or cracked, someone standing nearby would receive a fatal dose of radiation within hours, IAEA officials said.
It was the strontium core that the Georgian woodcutters discovered in December while working in a remote forest in the northwestern region of Abkhazia. According to IAEA officials, the metal cylinder caught the men's attention because its heat had melted the surrounding snow. Oblivious to the risk, the men took the device back to their campsite.
Within hours the men suffered severe skin burns and internal organ damage. Nearly three months later, two of them are still critically ill in hospitals in Moscow and Paris, while the third has recovered.
Last month, an international team led by the IAEA recovered the strontium core and a sister device that had been abandoned in the same area. Even though special one-ton lead shields were constructed for the recovery effort, the workers were allowed to approach the cores for only 40 seconds at a time. The cores were trucked to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where they are being temporarily stored along with four others that have been recovered since 1998.
Still far from clear, the IAEA says, is how the cores ended up in the woods -- or how the Georgian government eventually will dispose of them. According to the IAEA, Georgian officials are convinced that more remain unaccounted for.
"Based on inventories, we think there are two more," Fleming said. "And there is some information that suggests still other sources in Georgia."
In other corners of the former Soviet Union, the fact that officials know the location of the devices has done little to ease local safety concerns.
The Russian government commission that visited Chukotka in 1997 set out in ships to inspect 85 radiothermal generators believed to be scattered along the region's northern coast. The officials were unable to reach about a third of the devices because of harsh terrain and bad weather. But of the 52 RTGs inspected, nearly half no longer functioned, and only three had any sort of fencing or protection.
The commission's report describes six of the devices as heavily damaged and leaking potentially lethal amounts of radiation. One of the generators was nearly buried in frozen mud, it said, a second was lying in water and at least one could not be located.
"This lack of control means that it is entirely within the realm of possibility that . . . one or several RTGs might have been lost," said the report, signed by the province's chief health inspector, G.B. Lebedev, and chief inspector, Yuri Skobelev.
The generators had long sparked concern among local health officials and international wildlife groups worried about the potential for radiation leaks. But even before the Sept. 11 attacks, environmentalists who visited the region expressed concern about the apparent lack of security for the devices.
"It was just sitting in a wooden hutch -- I could have walked right up to it," said David Kleine, director of the World Wildlife Fund's Alaska field office, who passed within a few yards of one of the generators during a 1991 Bering Sea trip.
Still, there is an enormous difference between finding an abandoned generator and successfully carting it away to create a weapon, nuclear experts say. IEER President Arjun Makhijani said an amateur tampering with such a device would put his own life in peril. But for someone with proper training and a bent for terror, the generators could be a means for inflicting significant harm.
"If you don't know what you are doing, it will kill you first," Makhijani said. "But if you know what you're doing, it will do an extreme amount of damage."
Staff writer Alan Cooperman contributed to this report.
--------
TECHNOLOGY
Despite New Tools, Detecting Nuclear Material Is Doubtful
New York Times
March 18, 2002
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/national/18DETE.html
Since Sept. 11, the federal government has sharply increased support for research into advanced sensors that could detect nuclear weapons or so-called dirty bombs if they fall into the hands of terrorists in the United States.
Last week, several national laboratories unveiled an ultrasensitive hand-held radiation detector weighing 10 pounds that could join bomb- sniffing dogs as an essential tool for emergency response teams. But nuclear terrorism experts say that even the latest detection technologies - and others that are the focus of research - face forbidding odds. Ultimately, the experts said, all detectors are likely to meet a brick wall imposed by the laws of physics.
Without intelligence information to narrow the search, "needle in a haystack" is far too mild a phrase, said Dr. Steven Fetter, a physicist and security expert who is a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. "If you tell me there's a warhead in New York, it's just hopeless," Dr. Fetter said. "You just hope you never get to the point where you have to track down one of these in a city."
The question that the post-Sept. 11 world has put to security officials is in a sense simple: If terrorists with nuclear material were loose in the United States, how would anyone know, and how could such weapons be hunted down if the nation knew they were out there, somewhere?
The question is not hypothetical. Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda have made recent efforts to obtain nuclear materials, and a senior administration official said in an interview that the government had been forced to deploy its Nuclear Emergency Search Team in the months since the World Trade Center attacks. The official would not elaborate, saying only that the NEST deployments had taken place in the United States.
To anyone without a background in nuclear physics, the answers may be unexpected and more than a little disconcerting. The question boils down to whether the radiation emitted from an illicit weapon would announce its presence to state-of-the- art detectors, allowing the material to be found and a horrific act stopped. Several facts of physics make such a search overwhelming at best.
The first problem may be obvious. A sophisticated terrorist could shield a bomb in a radiation-blocking material like lead. On the positive side, the shield might have to be so bulky that a terrorist could not move quickly without being noticed.
But some of the most dangerous nuclear materials, those that could be used in an atomic bomb, are not very radioactive, giving searchers little to go on. Moreover, earth's natural radiation can easily mask a distant radiation source's signal.
Scientists seem to agree that arrays of permanent nuclear detectors should be deployed in heavily populated areas and politically and symbolically important buildings. But they add that the nation also has to promote tight controls on nuclear materials, some of which have common industrial and medicinal uses.
"We plainly need to take a new look at the procedures by which people obtain these high levels of radioactive material," said Dr. Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, who spoke at a Senate hearing this month. "The risks are quite high."
The threats from radioactive materials come in two forms. One, the dirty bomb, would use a conventional explosive to disperse a radioactive material to sow terror and cause health problems, including cancer. Dirty bombs would rely on substances like radioactive cesium, cobalt, iridium and strontium that are used to kill pathogens in food processing plants, as probes to test welds and pipelines and in many medical treatments.
All those materials are intense emitters of gamma rays, a kind of high-energy version of X-rays. While gamma rays are what make the materials useful for medicine and industry, extremely high doses can also increase the cancer risk in people.
The hand-held Cryo3 detector, based on the radiation-sensitive element germanium, was developed to find gamma ray "fingerprints" of such materials in a collaboration between three Energy Department national laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Germanium is not only highly sensitive to gamma rays; it also determines their precise energies. Since each type of radioactive material emits different gamma ray energies, "you can make a much more informed decision about what your next step might be," said Michael O'Connell, a program leader in the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Germanium detectors are generally bulky, laboratory-scale devices, Mr. O'Connell said. Because of several technical advances, including a miniaturized cooling engine for the germanium, the new system could be used by urban bomb squads as well as NEST groups, he said.
Since Sept. 11, the security administration's annual budget for nuclear sensor development has been doubled, to $20 million. A spokeswoman estimated that federal laboratories are spending another $14 million to $18 million on the problem.
Much deadlier, and harder to obtain, would be nuclear bombs based on uranium or plutonium. Experts' worst nightmare is that a small nuclear weapon from the former Soviet arsenal would be smuggled into the United States.
These elements are relatively feeble emitters of gamma rays, as Dr. Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, points out. The trick in detecting them is to look for neutrons, subatomic particles with no electrical charge. Neutrons are difficult to detect.
The government is working on improved and more mobile neutron detectors, Mr. O'Connell said.
Even before the new advances, the nation was not without a capacity to respond quickly to potential nuclear threats. The NEST squads are outfitted with equipment like belt-clip detectors the size of pagers and more powerful sensors in vehicles.
How likely is it that a team could detect a dirty bomb or small nuclear weapon in a van taking Interstate 95 to Washington? Dr. Frank N. von Hippel, a physicist who teaches science policy at Princeton University, said Russia and the United States ran a joint exercise in 1989 that found that under ideal conditions warheads could be detected from more than 200 feet away. "They showed that U.S. and Soviet warheads were quite detectable," Dr. von Hippel said. "That might not necessarily be true for a terrorist warhead."
But given the uncertainty surrounding the unthinkable prospect of a chase for loose nuclear weapons or dirty bombs, most authorities agree that the sole airtight solution is to control the materials at their source.
"The moral of the story is you lock up nuclear materials as well as you can lock them up," said Dr. Fetter, of the University of Maryland. "Once you let them get out, the problem is a thousand times harder."
--------
FBI Alerts Allies on Al Qaeda's Nuclear Plans
March 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-philippines-fbi.html
MANILA - The United States has alerted its allies to watch out for attempts by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to produce weapons of mass destruction, FBI chief Robert Mueller said Monday.
Mueller, in Manila, raised the concern in talks with Philippine officials before flying back to the United States at the end of a tour of Southeast Asia.
He has said the region is a potential sanctuary for members of al Qaeda, prime suspects in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Mueller said evidence gathered in Afghanistan showed without doubt that the Saudi-born bin Laden and al Qaeda were trying to obtain biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
``We have not seen any definitive evidence that he was successful but there is enough there to cause us substantial concern and ... to say to countries around the world to be on the alert for any efforts or attempts by terrorist groups to obtain weapons of mass destruction,'' Mueller told a news conference.
He said it was clear al Qaeda had established a presence in Southeast Asia and that the United States and its allies in the region were on the alert against possible new attacks by the group.
Mueller singled out the militant Jemaah Islamiah group as linked to bin Laden's network and said it also had ties in several countries, including Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
``We are working together to put all the pieces in the puzzle ... so that we can have a fuller portrait of al Qaeda's presence in the region.''
Security forces in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have detained dozens of Islamic militants in recent weeks on suspicion they might be linked to JI.
U.S. special forces are currently training Filipino troops in counter-terrorism to help defeat the Abu Sayyaf group in the southern Philippines, which Washington has also linked to al Qaeda. The Abu Sayyaf has been holding a U.S. missionary couple hostage for nearly 10 months on southern Basilan island.
Mueller warned in Singapore last week that al Qaeda members fleeing from Afghanistan might seek new sanctuaries in other areas, including Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Mueller voiced the same concern in talks with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo before he left Manila.
``He emphasized that there is no evidence of any al Qaeda cell in the Philippines but we have to take all the necessary precautions to make sure that this continues this way,'' presidential national security adviser Roilo Golez said.
Golez said Mueller offered the FBI's technical assistance in tracking down funds of terror groups as well as information obtained from members of al Qaeda and the Taliban regime captured in the Afghanistan conflict.
Philipine police have detained at least four Indonesians in recent weeks for questioning on their possible links to al Qaeda.
``What has emerged from our investigation is that the Indonesians, while they may have no direct link to al Qaeda, appear to have a connection with Jemaah Islamiah,'' national police chief Leandro Mendoza said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuclear Chief Explains New Weapon
By Carolyn Skorneck
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46460-2002Mar18?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The government's proposal for a nuclear bomb that can destroy deeply buried targets simply would alter the design of an existing weapon to make it penetrate farther, not require development of a new weapon, a U.S. official said Monday.
National nuclear security chief John A. Gordon, a retired Air Force general, also told a Senate panel Monday that current U.S. nuclear weapons work fine and need no testing.
He assured lawmakers that U.S. warheads, nuclear materiel and weapons complexes have become the most securely guarded places in the country since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Half a world away, U.S. efforts to secure or dismantle former Soviet weapons of mass destruction have sped up, thanks to the new U.S.-Russian friendship, another official said.
The Defense Department, in its Nuclear Posture Review, requested permission to develop of a bomb that could demolish a fortified, underground military facility. Excerpts were posted on an Internet site.
More than 10,000 such underground facilities exist in more than 70 countries, and about 1,400 are considered particularly important as armories for weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles or sites of top-level military command stations, the review said.
A "so-called robust earth penetrator" has been proposed to the National Nuclear Security Administration, said Gordon, NNSA administrator and undersecretary of energy for nuclear security.
The proposal recommends "simply taking an existing design and packaging it in a way that gives you the opportunity to penetrate to depths greater than existing systems," Gordon told Appropriations' energy subcommittee Chairman Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the panel's top Republican.
"There is no defined requirement for a new weapon at this time," Gordon said. "I don't see anything happening in the immediate future."
Atomic pioneer Hans Bethe and fellow Nobel laureates Dudley Herschbach and John Polanyi condemned the Nuclear Posture Review, which they said ends the taboo against using nuclear weapons and broadens their role "beyond their Cold War function of deterring a Soviet attack."
Undersecretary of State John Bolton defended the review in Arms Control Today, the magazine of the private Arms Control Association, contending it ensures the United States can resume nuclear weapons testing in 18 months "if there is a need to do so."
New testing is unlikely, Gordon said Monday: "No identified problems ... suggest the need to return to nuclear testing any time soon."
"Our nation's nuclear weapons remain safe, secure and reliable," he said. "When we find aging problems, we know what to do about them. We know how to fix them, and we go out and do that."
Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, and Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the panel's top Republican, wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday saying any agreement that would legally bind the United States on deployment of long-range nuclear warheads would be in effect a treaty and must be submitted to the Senate for ratification.
Powell told The Associated Press on Friday that arms reduction would take the form either of a treaty, which would require approval by two-thirds of the Senate, or an executive order needing approval of a majority of the Senate and the House. Security of the nation's nuclear facilities, laboratories, weapons and materiel, ratcheted up after the Sept. 11 attacks, remains tight, Gordon said: "We have about the best-protected sites in the country today, and I intend to keep it that way."
Efforts to secure Soviet weapons of mass destruction and the nuclear, chemical and biological materiel that makes them dangerous continue apace, thanks to unprecedented access brought by the new U.S.-Russian relationship, said Dr. Linton Brooks, NNSA's deputy administration for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.
NNSA's budget request for the year beginning Oct. 1 totals $8 billion, a 5.7 percent increase over this year. Nonproliferation alone would get $1.1 billion, up 8.5 percent over this year and 36 percent over last year, Brooks said.
"Only a small amount of plutonium or highly enriched uranium is enough for a weapon," Brooks said. "We continue to be concerned ... that this material is simply too tempting an opportunity; that we must not allow it to fall into the hands of rogue states."
On the Net:
National Nuclear Security Administration:
http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/
----
Revamping the U.S. artillery
Rich Lowry
Washington Times,
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020318-2966565.htm
A nuclear cloud has descended over the world. Is it:
(1) The recent revelation that North Korea might not just have attained fissile materials in the 1990s but actually developed one or two nuclear weapons?
(2) The continuing uncertainty about Iraq's nuclear program in the absence of inspectors?
(3) The persistent fears of al Qaeda managing to detonate a nuke in the United States?
No, it's the Bush administration, which in the words of the New York Times is making America a "nuclear rogue," potentially "menacing to the security of future American generations."
Welcome to the latest hyperbolic liberal complaint about the Bush administration and nuclear- and arms-control policy supposedly threatening world security.
Not too long ago, the charge was that by withdrawing from the ABM treaty, the administration was risking a new Cold War, an arms race with China, the upset of the nuclear "balance of terror" and other consequences too awful (and vague) to spell out in any detail.
Well, that was six months ago, and the world has moved on. No one even seems to remember the poor Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty anymore (it's so "August 2001").
The new threat is the so-called Nuclear Posture Review, which contemplates a drastically scaled-down U.S. nuclear force, but one more focused - perhaps with new warheads designed specifically for the task - on confronting rogue states like Iraq and North Korea.
This is prompting outrage: How dare the United States move beyond the Cold War and even consider developing weapons better suited to the new era.
The Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction relied on the "balance of terror," on the willingness of the United States and the Soviet Union to hold their populations hostage.
Any highly accurate or earth-penetrating weapon that instead would have been effective against specific military targets was considered "destabilizing" - a "war-fighting" weapon rather than a weapon of generalized terror.
Now the age of the huge several-hundred-kiloton hydrogen bomb should be behind us. Instead, there is a new threat requiring a new weapon.
North Korea, Russia, China, Iraq and other countries all have a new appreciation for the bunker mentality - burying weapons and command sites deep underground.
Some are so deep they are invulnerable to conventional weapons. "From the public record, I don't know of any non-nuclear way of dealing with this underground threat promptly and conclusively," says nuclear expert Keith Payne.
Which leaves nuclear weapons - specifically, a highly accurate, low-yield nuke designed to burrow deep underground and reduce fallout. In contrast to Cold War nukes, this one would be designed to minimize civilian casualties and destroy a very narrow target.
What's not to like?
Oddly enough, in their famous 1983 letter on nuclear weapons, the U.S. Catholic bishops opposed making nukes more accurate. This would seem to be in direct contradiction to the Just War Theory, which emphasizes "discrimination" in order to minimize civilian casualties.
The bishops' spirits live on in 1994 congressional language prohibiting the United States from "research and development which could lead to the production by the United States of a new low-yield nuclear weapon, including a precision low-yield warhead."
And it lives on, too, in the howling over the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review.
During last year's debate over the now-forgotten ABM Treaty, arms-controllers made nice sounds about deterrence (who needs missile defense when you have deterrence?).
But deterrence depends on credibility.
So long as the U.S. arsenal is chock-full of outdated weapons that can only cause indiscriminate damage - and mass civilian casualties - it doesn't seem credible we will use them, and so their deterrent value is lost.
Which is exactly the way arms-controllers like it - the U.S. arsenal becomes, in effect, irrelevant.
The liberal complaint about a low-yield nuke is exactly that, in the words of Congress in 1994, it would "blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war." Or, as a Federation of American Scientists report puts it, "adding low-yield warheads to the world's nuclear inventory simply makes their eventual use more likely."
Actually, that's not true: It makes their use seem more plausible, which in turn makes their use less likely.
So long as the United States doesn't possess a low-yield penetrator, rogue-state leaders are able to have, in effect, a safe haven for themselves and their weapons of mass destruction.
If they knew they didn't have any such protection, it might deter them from threatening or attacking the United States in the first place. This is how deterrence works.
But deterrence also fails, in which case a low-yield penetrator might be necessary to pre-empt an imminent attack or to retaliate against one by, say, hitting all of Saddam Hussein's command bunkers.
After all, no matter what the New York Times says, he's the rogue, not the United States. We should have every possible tool at our disposal to deter and defeat him.
Rich Lowry is a nationally syndicated columnist.
---
Re: "Revamping the U.S. artillery"
Washington Times
Letters to Editor
March 18, 2002
mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com
Nuclear bunker-busters are radioactive. Once the war is over and the military dispersed, who will be wading through the radioactive debris?
Ellen Thomas - mailto:prop1@prop1.org
--------
Nuclear Chief Explains New Weapon
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government's proposal for a nuclear bomb that can destroy deeply buried targets simply would alter the design of an existing weapon to make it penetrate farther, not require development of a new weapon, a U.S. official said Monday.
National nuclear security chief John A. Gordon, a retired Air Force general, also told a Senate panel Monday that current U.S. nuclear weapons work fine and need no testing.
He assured lawmakers that U.S. warheads, nuclear materiel and weapons complexes have become the most securely guarded places in the country since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Half a world away, U.S. efforts to secure or dismantle former Soviet weapons of mass destruction have sped up, thanks to the new U.S.-Russian friendship, another official said.
The Defense Department, in its Nuclear Posture Review, requested permission to develop of a bomb that could demolish a fortified, underground military facility. Excerpts were posted on an Internet site.
More than 10,000 such underground facilities exist in more than 70 countries, and about 1,400 are considered particularly important as armories for weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles or sites of top-level military command stations, the review said.
A ``so-called robust earth penetrator'' has been proposed to the National Nuclear Security Administration, said Gordon, NNSA administrator and undersecretary of energy for nuclear security.
The proposal recommends ``simply taking an existing design and packaging it in a way that gives you the opportunity to penetrate to depths greater than existing systems,'' Gordon told Appropriations' energy subcommittee Chairman Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the panel's top Republican.
``There is no defined requirement for a new weapon at this time,'' Gordon said. ``I don't see anything happening in the immediate future.''
Atomic pioneer Hans Bethe and fellow Nobel laureates Dudley Herschbach and John Polanyi condemned the Nuclear Posture Review, which they said ends the taboo against using nuclear weapons and broadens their role ``beyond their Cold War function of deterring a Soviet attack.''
Undersecretary of State John Bolton defended the review in Arms Control Today, the magazine of the private Arms Control Association, contending it ensures the United States can resume nuclear weapons testing in 18 months ``if there is a need to do so.''
New testing is unlikely, Gordon said Monday: ``No identified problems ... suggest the need to return to nuclear testing any time soon.''
``Our nation's nuclear weapons remain safe, secure and reliable,'' he said. ``When we find aging problems, we know what to do about them. We know how to fix them, and we go out and do that.''
Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, and Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the panel's top Republican, wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday saying any agreement that would legally bind the United States on deployment of long-range nuclear warheads would be in effect a treaty and must be submitted to the Senate for ratification.
Powell told The Associated Press on Friday that arms reduction would take the form either of a treaty, which would require approval by two-thirds of the Senate, or an executive order needing approval of a majority of the Senate and the House.
Security of the nation's nuclear facilities, laboratories, weapons and materiel, ratcheted up after the Sept. 11 attacks, remains tight, Gordon said: ``We have about the best-protected sites in the country today, and I intend to keep it that way.''
Efforts to secure Soviet weapons of mass destruction and the nuclear, chemical and biological materiel that makes them dangerous continue apace, thanks to unprecedented access brought by the new U.S.-Russian relationship, said Dr. Linton Brooks, NNSA's deputy administration for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.
NNSA's budget request for the year beginning Oct. 1 totals $8 billion, a 5.7 percent increase over this year. Nonproliferation alone would get $1.1 billion, up 8.5 percent over this year and 36 percent over last year, Brooks said.
``Only a small amount of plutonium or highly enriched uranium is enough for a weapon,'' Brooks said. ``We continue to be concerned ... that this material is simply too tempting an opportunity; that we must not allow it to fall into the hands of rogue states.''
-------
Nuclear arsenal upgrade planned
03/18/2002
By Jonathan Weisman,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/03/18/usat-arsenal.htm
WASHINGTON - Energy Department scientists will begin work next month on a new bunker-busting nuclear weapon that could mark the most significant advance in the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a decade.
Research into a weapon that could penetrate deeply buried structures, such as those designed to make nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, is a key part of President Bush's push to rejuvenate the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
The research project marks a shift from designing weapons of mass annihilation to smaller arms that the administration says would better deter "rogue" states but critics say could make nuclear war more plausible.
Documents from the Energy Department, which oversees nuclear weapons, say Bush also plans to:
Reassemble design teams at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, which disbanded the teams in 1992 after the first President Bush had agreed to a nuclear test moratorium.
Shorten from years to months the lead time it would take to resume nuclear testing.
Ramp up spending on manufacturing sites to build nuclear weapons and components.
"The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex," the Pentagon's new review of nuclear strategy says. News organizations have obtained portions of the classified Nuclear Posture Review. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will determine whether an advanced earth-penetrating nuclear weapon can be built. It would be assembled from existing warheads and components and placed in a 5,000-pound shell.
Everet Beckner, the National Nuclear Security Administration's deputy administrator for defense programs, says the program starts small: There likely will be fewer than a dozen designers at each lab, the "bunker-buster" study will cost $40 million to $50 million over two to three years, and Energy officials will seek congressional approval before designing a weapon.
Bush's father canceled the last major weapons research program, a short-range attack missile warhead, in 1991. He halted all new weapons research in 1992.
President Clinton shifted the nuclear weapons program from research, testing and production to dismantling warheads and ensuring the safety and reliability of older weapons without testing.
The U.S. arsenal has had one type of nuclear "bunker buster" since 1997. Scientists took an existing bomb and refitted it with a hardened nose cone and new tail fins. The aim of the new weapon is to go deeper into the ground to cause less surface damage.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NRC releases nuclear plant status report on Web site
Story by Scott DiSavino
REUTERS USA:
March 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15043/story.htm
NEW YORK - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released its long-awaited nuclear power reactor status report last week.
The report, which lists the operating status of the nation's 103 nuclear power plants, was pulled from the NRC's Web site about a month after the Sept 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon to limit public access to information on the plants.
The report can be found on the NRC's Web site at www.nrc.gov under the "What's New" section.
The data are dated March 13.
Electricity traders were unsure how much weight they would give to this report since it was dated as of two days ago.
The report was scheduled to be released on March 31. An official with the NRC said he did not immediately know why the report was released two weeks ahead of time and why it was dated March 13.
The following units were listed as shut or seriously reduced as of March 13:
- Calvert Cliffs 1 of Maryland (0 percent)
- Limerick 1 of Pennsylvania (0 percent)
- Millstone 2 of Connecticut (0 percent)
- Salem 1 of New Jersey (18 percent)
- Susquehanna 1 of Pennsylvania (0 percent)
- Brunswick 1 of North Carolina (0 percent)
- McGuire 2 of North Carolina (0 percent)
- Vogtle 1 of Georgia (0 percent)
- Watts Bar of Tennessee (0 percent)
- Byron 1 of Illinois (0 percent)
- Davis Besse of Ohio (0 percent)
-------- colorado
Colorado Red Lights Radioactive Shipments from New Jersey
DENVER, Colorado,
March 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-18-09.html
Colorado Governor Bill Owens has urged the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to suspend for further investigation planned shipments of 470,000 tons of radioactive mill tailings from New Jersey to the Cotter Corporation Uranium Mill site near Canon City.
Owens said, "The health department should thoroughly review whether the proposed shipments from New Jersey are covered by Cotter Corporation's current permit. The department also should ensure that the company has provided necessary documentation on how it will meet the safety requirements contained in the company's permit. Our first consideration must be to protect the health and safety of the surrounding communities."
As the result of the governor's concerns and a concurrent review of the Cotter proposal by the department's Radiation Services Program, the program Thursday notified Cotter that its proposal for accepting the New Jersey materials has been placed on hold.
The radioactive materials would come from New Jersey's Maywood Chemical Superfund site which is contaminated with radium, thorium, and uranium. Contamination at the commercial and residential properties resulted from rare earth and thorium processing activities from the early 1900s through 1959.
Radiation Services Program manager Jake Jacobi said in the Thursday letter to Cotter that the state wants to know how the materials would be unloaded from the railroad cars that would be used to ship the waste from the Superfund site to the Cotter facility. The state wants to know how the materials would be placed in the impoundment at the Canon City site and how the materials would be kept from blowing during the unloading, moving and placement process. And Jacobi wants to see sampling data on the materials prior to shipment.
An organization of government employees said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency today that the agency must prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and allow for public comment on the shipments.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) warned that the waste will total roughly five full rail cars per day for up to five years traveling from New Jersey to Canon City for storage.
"The New Jersey waste shipments are the first of many that the Cotter Corporation could compete for in the lucrative waste disposal market," says Rocky Mountain PEER Director, Chandra Rosenthal. "This will open the floodgates for accepting other states' waste in Colorado. Coloradoans should have a say in whether the state will become another waste dump for the nation."
PEER requested that Governor Bill Owens intervene to call for statewide public hearings on the matter. "The public needs to be involved," said Rosenthal. "An EIS would benefit the public by including a comprehensive analysis of alternatives including other places to send the waste, as well as include the public in the decision making process."
The Cotter Corporation Canon City Uranium Mill, located just outside Canon City, Colorado, is one of the only remaining conventional uranium mills in the country. Until now, Cotter has disposed mostly its own wastes at the site, along with some recent cleanups of Colorado sites contaminated with natural radioactivity, and some WWII era material from a site in St. Louis.
Last year, two federal courts filed judgments against Cotter, ordering Cotter to pay a total of $59.3 million to 55 people exposed to radiation poisoning by the site.
-------- us politics
NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush Finds That Ambiguity Is Part of Nuclear Deterrence
By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times
March 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/international/18NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, March 17 - President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rarely missed an opportunity in recent weeks to warn that they will do whatever it takes to keep Saddam Hussein, or any other hostile power, from obtaining nuclear or biological weapons.
But the White House suddenly grew nervous after the leak of a Pentagon report suggesting one possible strategy for stopping them - a quick strike with a low-yield nuclear weapon designed to burrow deep into the earth and wipe out underground sites where such weapons are produced or stored.
Allies and nuclear strategists began asking a question not heard in Washington for decades: would the president ever consider a pre-emptive nuclear strike?
The answers have ranged from "not likely" to "no comment."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell insisted several times that there had been no change in nuclear policy. The White House spokesman took the unusual step of quoting statements by two of former President Bill Clinton's defense secretaries warning potential rivals that they would face an overwhelming and devastating response if they threatened nuclear or biological attack.
In interviews, President Bush's top aides noted that despite the president's aggressive language about Iraq and the "axis of evil," he had never said that he would consider using specially designed nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike.
"We do not have a declared policy of pre-emption," a senior administration official said on Friday. "We have a strategy of deterrence."
At the same time, this official added, it is important to develop deep- burrowing nuclear weapons in order to "hold at risk" any nation's hardened, underground nuclear or biological weapons and laboratories. The new American weapons are needed, the official said, to make sure there is no safe place to develop nuclear and biological weapons, and to discourage countries from even trying.
Yet ambiguity is everything in nuclear deterrence.
Taken together, Mr. Bush's language, his advisers' statements and the Nuclear Posture Review suggest that Mr. Bush sees some advantage in keeping the world guessing about how the United States would respond to evidence that a country or a terrorist group was hiding weapons of mass destruction deep underground.
So the administration reached for phrases that left some strategic wiggle room, to sow reassurance at home and doubt in Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Mr. Bush will not discuss it, naturally, and he said last week that "the nuclear review is not new," suggesting that the Clinton administration was headed in the same direction. Then, muddying the waters, he added, "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."
China and North Korea, among other nations, say they believe the policy is both new and aggressive with Beijing accusing Washington this weekend of trying to commit "nuclear blackmail."
No doubt Chinese leaders, among others, are trying to figure out how this president thinks about the unthinkable.
Harry S. Truman unleashed atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and never looked back, but he also refused Gen. Douglas MacArthur's request to use them in Korea. John F. Kennedy had to face the prospect in the Cuban missile crisis, and newly revealed tapes indicate that Richard M. Nixon urged his secretary of state to think about the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, though it seemed more like a passing rant than a serious discussion.
But the strategic calculations that went on in the past are different from those under way in the Bush White House because deterring superpowers is very different from deterring a Saddam Hussein.
It is widely accepted that nuclear weapons are virtually useless in a war on terrorism or on rogue states, and in the case of America's nuclear arsenal that is particularly true. As the Nuclear Posture Review notes, the American arsenal is overwhelmingly based on cold-war thinking, when deterrence meant convincing rivals that the United States possessed the ability to wipe out their cities and missile silos. Mr. Bush has said that approach is outdated and has embraced deep cuts in America's traditional nuclear arsenal.
But terrorists do not have cities, and Iraq and Iran do not have silos.
So the discussion under way in Washington focuses on what amounts to a specialty use of a nuclear weapon: harnessing a nuclear blast to dig deep underground and cause a seismic wave that would collapse an underground nuclear site. The idea would be to keep nuclear fallout to a minimum.
So far the United States has only one earth-penetrating nuclear weapon that might get at underground sites, the B61 Mod 11 gravity bomb. The nuclear study, on which Mr. Bush was "extensively briefed," his aides say, warned that this weapon "cannot survive penetration into many types of terrain in which hardened underground facilities are located."
A study is under way to figure out how that weapon could be modified to get the job done, with more blast and less radiation, though that might take a decade. Still, the discussion has prompted questions that the White House wants to quash, while leaving Mr. Hussein wondering.
"The danger of this way of thinking," said one former Clinton administration nuclear strategist, "is that it treats a nuclear weapon as just one instrument you have available."
"Of course, no president would use it if he could get the job done with a conventional weapon," the former official said. "But what if the C.I.A. director walks into the Oval Office one day and says, `Mr. President, we know where there are nuclear and biological weapons deep down in Tora Bora, but the only way to get at them is with a nuclear weapon'?"
Secretary Powell, eager to calm the diplomatic waters, made a point of restating American policy, saying that the United States would not use a nuclear weapon pre-emptively against a state that had promised not to build nuclear weapons of its own. That policy was meant to encourage countries to join the nonproliferation treaty.
Administration officials say Secretary Powell was absolutely right. But then, preserving ambiguity, they note that the policy might not apply to a country that signed the treaty but then built nuclear weapons anyway - Iraq, for example.
----
Daschle says subpoena 'option' to compel Ridge's testimony
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020318-82878528.htm
The Senate is considering subpoenaing Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to compel his testimony about President Bush's domestic security spending request, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said yesterday.
Mr. Daschle said he would like the White House to drop its opposition to Mr. Ridge's appearance. A Bush spokesman expressed hope for a "satisfactory resolution" that would get lawmakers the necessary information.
"We've got to find a way to break the impasse. He's got to work with us. There is just too much at stake," said Mr. Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. "Coercion is not ever my first choice."
A subpoena "is an option, clearly," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "We want to look at all of the options at this point. But we're hoping it is not a necessary one. We are still hoping that they will have a change of heart."
The Bush administration has said Mr. Ridge has privately briefed lawmakers and that members of a president's immediate staff historically do not testify to Congress.
The administration wants spending on domestic security to double next year to $38 billion.
"Hopefully, we will come to a satisfactory resolution of this issue that allows Congress to receive information they need while allowing the president to receive confidential advice," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
Asked whether that left the door open for Mr. Ridge to testify before Congress, he declined to comment.
"It is highly unusual to demand that a person who has no formal office other than as an adviser to the president has to come up and testify to Congress," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican.
"Once that starts, he will be up there spending all his time on Capitol Hill rather than doing his job," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
But Mr. Daschle said Mr. Ridge acts with all the rights and privileges of a Cabinet officer and he should come before Congress.
Sen. Don Nickles, the No. 2 Republican leader, accused Democrats of trying to pick a fight over having Mr. Ridge testify.
"He's already indicated he's willing to meet with senators," Mr. Nickles, Oklahoma Republican, said on "Fox News Sunday." "But to have him go before each individual appropriation committee and so on, I think is ridiculous."
The two top senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote a letter to President Bush on Friday asking to meet to discuss Mr. Ridge's refusal to testify. They said Mr. Ridge has more power than the ordinary presidential adviser, coordinating spending by more than 80 federal agencies.
----
Laipson Takes Over Stimson Center
Washington Post
March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42627-2002Mar17?language=printer
Moving on . . . Ellen B. Laipson, vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council and a former National Security Council and State Department policy planning aide, has been named president and chief executive of the Henry L. Stimson Center. The center is a nonprofit organization focusing on foreign policy matters.
-------- MILITARY
Pipeline politics taint U.S. war
Salim Muwakkil.
Salim Muwakkil senior editor
In These Times
Published March 18, 2002, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0203180046mar18.story
An ongoing source of frustration and anger for many Americans is the lack of support the war on terrorism has received abroad. Other nations are considerably less enthusiastic about our use of "daisy cutter" and "thermobaric" bombs than we think they should be. Why is that?
One reason is their media. Stories alleging imperial and commercial motives for the war on terrorism are rife.
Outside this country, there is a widespread belief that U.S. military deployments in Central Asia mostly are about oil.
An article in the Guardian of London headlined, "A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the U.S. an Afghan route for Caspian oil," foreshadowed the kind of skeptical coverage the U.S. war now receives in many countries.
"The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism," wrote author George Monbiot in the Oct. 22, 2001, piece, "but it may also be a late colonial adventure."
He wrote that the U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. had been negotiating with the Taliban since 1995 to build "oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea." He cited Ahmed Rashid's authoritative book "Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" as a source for this information.
Rashid, who has reported on Afghan wars for more than 20 years as a correspondent for the Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph, carefully documents in his book how the U.S. and Pakistan helped install the Taliban in hopes of bringing stability to the war-ravaged region and making it safer for the pipeline project. Unocal pulled out of the deal after the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were linked to terrorists based in Afghanistan.
"The war against terrorism is a fraud," exclaimed John Pilger in an Oct. 29 commentary in the British-based Mirror. Pilger, the publication's former chief foreign correspondent, wrote, "Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin, the greatest source of untapped fossil fuel on earth."
These harsh assessments are not just those of embittered ideologues. They are common fare. "Just as the Gulf War in 1991 was about oil, the new conflict in South and Central Asia is no less about access to the region's abundant petroleum resources," writes Ranjit Devraj in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, a business-oriented publication.
A popular French book titled "Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth," which alleges that the Bush administration blocked investigations of Osama bin Laden while it bargained for him with the Taliban in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, is guiding much of the recent European coverage.
Written by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, the book adds another plank to the argument that America's major objective was to gain access to the region's oil and gas reserves.
According to the book, the Bush administration began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power. The parties talked for many months before reaching an impasse in August 2001.
The terrorist acts of Sept. 11, though tragic, provided the Bush administration a legitimate reason to invade Afghanistan, oust the recalcitrant Taliban and, coincidentally, smooth the way for the pipeline.
To make things even smoother, the U.S. engineered the rise to power of two former Unocal employees: Hamid Karzai, the new interim president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalizad, the Bush administration's Afghanistan envoy.
"Osama bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve American interests," writes Uri Averny, in a Feb. 14 column in the daily Ma'ariv in Israel. Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset and a noted peace activist, added, "If I were a believer in conspiracy theory, I would think that bin Laden is an American agent. Not being one I can only wonder at the coincidence."
Averny argues that the war on terrorism provides a perfect pretext for America's imperial interests. "If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean."
The Asia Times reported in January that the U.S. is developing "a network of multiple Caspian pipelines," and that people close to the Bush administration stand to benefit.
For example, the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, linking Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, is represented by the law firm Baker & Botts. The principal attorney is James Baker, former secretary of state and chief spokesman for the Bush campaign in the Florida vote controversy.
In 1997, the now disgraced Enron Corp. conducted the feasibility study for the $2.5 billion Trans-Caspian pipeline being built under a joint venture between Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric, the article noted.
There are many other connections, too numerous to recount here. No wonder the rest of the world is a bit skeptical about our war on evildoers.
E-mail: salim4x@aol.com
-------- afghanistan
US puzzled as battle zone yields few bodies
By John Burns,
Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
The New York Times
March 18, 2002,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0203/18/world/world2.html
As a force of 700 United States and Canadian troops continued to search the battle zone, the American officer heading the operation said on Saturday that fewer than 20 bodies had been found on the ridge above the Shah-e-Kot Valley, where many al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had made a final stand.
The aftermath of the 11-day battle continued to pose questions for US commanders. After claims that more than 500 enemy fighters had been killed, one issue has been the small number of bodies found in the days since the main battle ended, even after troops scoured the valley floor and surrounding ridges.
Another mystery has been the whereabouts of fighters who may have survived the 3250 bombs dropped on the battle zone by American and French warplanes. American soldiers returning from the battlefield 175 kilometres away said that only about 10 fighters had been seen since the fighting ended.
American officers denied that they had overestimated their opponents' strength in the early stages of the battle, when they said that 150 to 200 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the valley had been joined by about 800 others moving in as reinforcements.
On the number of enemy fighters killed, they seemed less certain. Some officers said that body counts were not considered reliable at Shah-e-Kot because the US's 750-kilogram satellite-guided bombs may have pulverised the fighters or buried them in caves or bunkers. Another reason is that the fighters may have tried to bury their dead promptly, in accordance with Islamic custom.
In recent days, senior Pentagon officials have moved away from initial estimates of war dead, saying that a lesson of Vietnam was that such figures were rarely an accurate measure of battlefield success.
The officer in charge of the mopping-up operation, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Wilkerson of the Mountain Division, said the number of enemy dead was not a primary concern. "We don't get into body counts."
----
Afghan offensive to end 'in next 12 hours'
Monday 18th March 2002,
Ananova
http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_546962.html
Operation Anaconda - the biggest American-led offensive in the Afghan war - is set to be over in the next 12 hours.
General Tommy Franks, head of the US military's Central Command, made the announcement at Bagram air base.
He was awarding the Bronze Star to four US servicemen who served in the operation.
General Franks said: "This is about you, this is about Operation Anaconda, which within 12 hours will be completed because you did it, you did it on time, you did it with a good plan, you did it with violent execution, you did it taking care of one another."
The most intense combat in Operation Anaconda ended more than a week ago.
About 500 Canadian and US infantrymen, together with US-allied Afghan fighters, have been searching the cave complexes for the past several days.
The coalition forces had searched through 30 caves in the valley, finding ammunition, clothing, supplies and sensitive documents.
Captain Steven O'Connor, a spokesman for the 10th Mountain Division, said there had been no contact with enemy fighters in the past 24 hours.
He said there had been no new casualties and he was not aware of any more enemy dead found in the area.
Captain O'Connor added: "It's not about body count. Bombs can blow bodies apart and they can remain unidentified."
--------
THE JIHAD FILES
Afghan Camps Turn Out Holy War Guerrillas and Terrorists
New York Times
March 18, 2002
By C. J. CHIVERS and DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/international/asia/18DOCU.html?pagewanted=all&position=bottom
When helicopters touched down in the mountains in early March at the start of the deadliest battle for Americans in Afghanistan, the infantrymen who rushed out immediately came under surprisingly intense fire. Bursts from rifles and machine guns were joined by explosions from well-placed mortar rounds, a coordinated mix of firepower that is one mark of a capable military force.
Specialist Wayne Stanton, a 10th Mountain Division soldier who was wounded in the skirmish, later paid his foes a soldier's grudging compliment. "They knew what they were doing," he said.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda resistance near Gardez was a bracing display for fighters who, despite their appearance as a ragged band of fanatics, had achieved a level of competence that American military officials say was on par with the world's best guerrilla forces. It also demonstrated the degree to which Osama bin Laden and other jihad leaders had turned Afghanistan's network of training bases and guest houses, typically described as terror schools, into a sort of two- tiered university for waging Islamic war.
Details of the training emerge in hundreds of documents and thousands of pages collected from those schools by reporters from The New York Times, and from interviews with American government and military officials.
The documents - including student notebooks, instructor lesson plans, course curriculums, training manuals, reference books and memorandums - show that one tier, by far the busiest, prepared most of the men who enlisted in the jihad to be irregular ground combatants, like those who repulsed the 10th Mountain Division's helicopter-borne assault. The other provided a small fraction of the volunteers with advanced regimens that prepared them for terrorist assignments abroad.
American military instructors who reviewed the documents said the first tier of instruction was sophisticated in a conventional military sense, teaching, one said, "a deep skill set over a narrow range" that would reliably produce "a competent grunt." The second tier was similarly well organized, albeit with more sinister curriculum.
Implicit in the split levels of training was the Islamic groups' understanding of the need for different sets of skills to fight on several, simultaneous fronts: along trench lines against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan; against armor or helicopter assaults from conventional foes in Chechnya; as bands of foot-mobile insurgents in Kashmir, Central Asia or the Philippines; and as classic terrorists quietly embedded in cities in the Middle East, Africa, the former Soviet Union and the West.
To instill these diverse lessons, the schools applied ancient forms of instruction - teachers pushing students to copy and memorize detailed tables and concepts - to modern methods of killing. Michael R. Hickok, a professor at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said they used "Islamic pedagogy to teach Western military tactics."
Evident as well in the documents, which were translated for The Times, were signs that in developing martial curriculums, the groups were cannily resourceful in amassing knowledge. Some lessons were drawn from manuals from the former Soviet Union. Others, the use of Stinger missiles or Claymore mines, were derived from instruction underwritten by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980's, when Washington backed the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation.
In the years after the Soviets withdrew and American money evaporated, the groups aggressively cribbed publicly available information from the United States military and the paramilitary press. Ultimately, American tactics and training became integral parts of the schools.
One camp, used by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, gave instruction in movements by four-man fire teams that was modeled after formations used by the United States Marine Corps, according to military instructors who reviewed it. The Uzbeks also used reconnaissance techniques long taught at the Army's Ranger School in Fort Benning, Ga. Other documents show that jihadi explosives training covered devices and formulas lifted from a Special Forces manual published in 1969.
While these materials are available through open sources, from on-line booksellers to rural gun shows, military officials said it was a feat to digest far-flung sources, translate them into Arab and Asian languages and assemble them in an orderly way. Bomb-making instruction, for instance, combined the electrical engineering necessary to make detonation systems with Vietnam-era Army formulas for home- brewed explosives, then was translated into Arabic, Uzbek and Tajik. "It indicates a tremendous amount of filtering and organization to get to that," an American military instructor said.
Moreover, notebooks from several camps demonstrate that even in courses taught in different languages and hundreds of miles apart, many lessons were identical, sharing prose passages, diagrams and charts. This was an important achievement, military officials said, as it created compatibility between members of what essentially became an Islamic foreign legion.
It also marked a significant advance beyond training that the United States sponsored for Afghans in the 1980's.
"One of the problems we had against the Soviets was getting the mujahedeen to be uniform," said an American official familiar with that movement. "We couldn't get them on the same page. When you went to one valley, they fought one way. When you went to the next, they fought another. To the extent these guys were able to level the training and make it consistent, they were on the right track."
Core Curriculum
Afghanistan's dozen or so jihad schools were hard, spartan places, compounds with dusty classrooms in arid mountains or on the sun-baked steppe where men hunched over note pads and applied an ageless form of learning to guerrilla war. Outside were obstacle courses and mazes of barbed wire and trenches for infantry drills. Inside, men slept on mats in buildings made of mud.
Jihad groups had the means to reproduce lesson plans in bulk, and distribute them in neat folders, as most modern militaries do. But they chose not to, opting instead to have students copy material by longhand, meticulously following instructors who stood before the class. Dr. Charles P. Neimeyer, a dean at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., said camps treated each student "like a monk in a monastery in the Middle Ages."
From these carefully scribed records, dropped or discarded last fall by recruits and the veterans who trained them, a pattern emerges.
The core curriculum began simply. It opened with classes in Kalashnikov rifles, the hardy series of automatic weapons designed in the Soviet Union after World War II and since then exported worldwide. The weapons were the predominant arms in Taliban and Qaeda formations, and the jihadis, like American recruits learning to master M-16's, studied their history, design and operation. Then they turned to PK machine guns, 82-millimeter mortars and the RPG-7, a shoulder-fired rocket effective against armored vehicles and trucks.
Each class began with a modicum of history then plunged into important facts: names of components, steps to dismantle and clean them, characteristics of different munitions, steps to clear misfires and jams.
Together, the classes served as infantry weaponry 201, a course mastered by rote.
Students copied sections on how to fine- tune a rifle sight at short range to ensure accuracy at longer distances, a procedure known as zeroing. They recorded sections on directing rockets or controlled bursts of bullets and tracers at moving targets, on the ground or in the air. They reviewed several different shooting scenarios, scribbling down technical solutions for each.
The training, Professor Hickok said, was "a lot more sophisticated than a bare-bones, simple, `Here is your weapon, go forth.' "
American tactics instructors who reviewed the notebooks were similarly impressed. "They have standardized targets throughout their program of instruction," one said. "That's good stuff. That's professional. It shows you have standards, you have some level of shooting that's acceptable and not."
Most students also trained on the tripod- mounted heavy machine guns and antiaircraft pieces, which Afghan soldiers use to spray flak at planes but also to control roads, valleys and mountain passes. Some received classes covering the Dragunov, a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight.
Others studied portable antiaircraft missiles, including the American Stinger, the British Blowpipe and the Russian Grail. American officials have said concerns about these weapons in certain regions of Afghanistan kept coalition airplanes at high elevations, - out of the missiles' range, during sorties. (One American military official said a Stinger or Blowpipe was fired at a pair of United States Navy aircraft last fall. The pilots took evasive actions. The missile passed narrowly between them.)
Veterans also led their charges through demolition instruction covering mines and grenades, as well as TNT and plastic explosives. This training - seen in notebooks from Mazar-i-Sharif and Al Farouk, where the Talib from California, John Walker Lindh, trained - was geared for combat rather than terrorism, said American instructors who reviewed it. It surveyed the equipment and skills needed to mine roads, create obstacles or destroy infrastructure on the battlefield.
"It's not like, `How can you sneak an explosive onto a plane?' " a senior instructor with extensive demolition experience said. "It shows how you could blow up a bridge before it's crossed by the infidel regiment."
Similarly, lessons on booby traps - rigging explosives for surprise detonation, as when a pedestrian steps on a pad and closes an electric circuit, or crosses a trip wire and releases a time fuse's pin - resembled classes for American marines and soldiers, who are taught to create makeshift weapons for ambushes and defensive positions.
"That's the poor man's B-52, the booby traps," the instructor said. "They're effective; they're cheap and fairly easy to rig. The instructions in these notebooks would work."
But other subjects, which appear menacing in student notes - briefcase bombs, truck bombs or bombs that would detonate when a spring is depressed in a couch or bed - lacked enough detail to be effective, the instructors said. Their inclusion most likely served a clever purpose: giving students a sense of esprit with terrorists who had struck American embassies in Africa and military barracks in the Middle East.
"Most of that stuff with demolitions is motivational," the senior instructor said. "They've had huge successes with truck bombs against us, so they are going to use the truck bomb in the curriculum to reinforce the success, even if they do not realistically expect each of these guys to use a truck bomb. It reinforces their way of doing business. It reinforces their heritage."
Diverse Recruits
As the jihad camps grew during the 1990's, recruits arrived from at least 15 nations and speaking more than a half- dozen languages, conditions that posed a challenge for a force hoping to be cohesive. The documents show that the Islamic groups developed a uniform training program that assimilated recruits with different cultures and skills.
Reviews of notebooks from in or near Kunduz, Kabul, Rishkhor, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar turn up the same hand-drawn diagrams for classes in weaponry, map reading, celestial navigation, trench digging, mortar employment and demolition.
The similarities bridge social differences and speak of the jihad's effective network. "The classes have the same prearranged instructor scripts, because you see the exact same classes being given in different years, different regions, different languages," said an American tactics instructor.
Another added: "This is why you can take so many different ethnic groups - foreigners, Afghans, people from either side of the Hindu Kush - and you can put them together, and they can fight together. They all have the same basic skills."
Moreover, the lessons were what curriculum experts call "modular," meaning self- contained. A student need not complete Lesson A to be ready for Lesson B. "That's a pretty sophisticated way to do this curriculum," said Professor Hickok, who reviewed several notebooks. "It makes the curriculum pretty adaptable."
It also allowed instructors to mix and match lessons for each jihad group's particular needs.
Recruits of the Pakistani group Harkat- ul-Mujahedeen received instruction in M- 16's, American-made rifles they could encounter while fighting in Kashmir, the disputed territory divided between Pakistan and India. Students trained to fight in Central Asia or Afghanistan, where M-16's are all but nonexistent, skipped these weapons.
In the end, the camps avoided almost entirely the painstaking rituals of state-run militaries: the weeks spent on proper wearing of uniforms, or marching, or procedures of garrison life and administration. They remained focused on jihad indoctrination and fighting skill.
"They are leaving the bureaucracy out, and teaching them a couple of basic things very, very well," one instructor said. "It is a classic saying: Master the basics; become brilliant at the basics. If you take care of those, when the time comes for combat, you'll do better than okay."
American officials estimate that 20,000 men received this training since Mr. bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Today they are scattered. Many died in airstrikes. Others were taken prisoner. Some were executed by the Northern Alliance. How many remain, and how organized they are, is unknown.
Advanced Courses
Although standard jihad training prepared recruits for ground combat, the line between guerrilla and terrorist could often grow fuzzy. Basic courses provided a martial foundation, and government officials said that with initiative and further study, the graduates could develop specialized terrorist skills, much as Timothy McVeigh, once a conventional American infantryman, later built the truck bomb that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City.
Al Qaeda and other groups did not leave this evolution entirely to chance. They were trying to do more than use guerrilla insurgents to topple Muslim governments they saw as secular or corrupt. They had declared war against infidels and were eager to carry the battle to where the infidels lived. To further this end, students with special abilities were identified in basic camps and sent to courses that prepared them for more difficult missions. "We look at it as sort of being a winnowing process," an American official said. "There is sort of a scouting process going on."
Only a very small fraction of the jihadis are thought to have received the higher level of training, government officials say, but it was enough to improve the guerrilla forces and to turn loose a resourceful breed of killer on the larger world.
"Afghanistan," said Michael A. Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator during the last years of the Clinton administration, "was the swamp these mosquitoes kept coming out of."
There were two tracks: one for advanced infantry techniques, another for terror.
Infantry classes refined battlefield skills. One course, detailed in a notebook from Kunduz, was intermediate-level instruction in 82-millimeter mortars. Another, described in a syllabus found in Kabul, taught advanced land navigation. A third described using global positioning satellites and a scientific calculator to plot artillery firing data.
Records showed that as guerrillas advanced, their roles sometimes blurred. A series of courses, taught by Harkat and repeatedly described as a curriculum for "commandos," included instruction in sniping, interrogation, first aid, escape, evasion and hand-to-hand combat - all infantry tasks. But as the course progressed, its objectives grew darker, including "how to kill a policeman" and "traps, murder and terrorist moves."
Other courses also had military or terrorist applications, including one in espionage and another in secure communications, which has been effectively used by terrorist cells abroad.
Some lessons were wholly dedicated to terror.
Bomb-making instruction included recipes for brewing explosives and crude poisons from readily obtainable substances, including making an explosive booster beginning with a paste of ground aspirin and water.
The class further covered the manufacture, handling and storage of nitroglycerin, HMDT, C-4 and C-3. One document began with an explanation of the instructor's goals.
"God Almighty has ordered us to terrorize his enemies," it reads. "In compliance with God's order and his Prophet's order, in an attempt to get out of the humiliation in which we have found ourselves, we shall propose to those who are keen on justice, fighting against those who oppose them and those who diminish them until they receive fresh orders from God. To those alone, we present: `Rudimentary Methods in the Manufacturing of Explosive Materials Effective for Demolition Purposes.' "
Instructors included enough electrical engineering - uses of diodes, resistors, switches and more - to help students plan the wiring, power sourcing and fuses required to spark an explosive charge. Notebooks also included tips for putting familiar objects to nefarious use, like converting a hand set for a radio-controlled toy boat into a remote detonator. Government officials said those methods would work, in the right person's hands.
"This isn't for everybody," a senior American military instructor said. "This is for somebody who is smart."
Dr. Kamal Beyoghlow, a professor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Va., and a former counterterrorism officer at the State Department, said the curriculum reflected care and deliberation.
"The lesson is very well organized, extremely organized," he said. "It is the work of a methodical hand."
The jihad groups clearly were proud of it, and eager to pass its lessons around. One notebook ended with an Arabic passage: "We ask you, dear brother, to spread around this document on all the mujahedeen. Do not keep what you know a secret, if you please."
Graduates from courses like those - resourceful, smart men who have used simple materials to produce bombs that destroyed two American embassies and crippled a Navy warship - are the jihadis the government most fears, particularly if they were to expand their capabilities to include nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The American-led coalition says it has turned up no evidence that the men had reached this point, although they were actively educating themselves in the subject. But current and former officials warned that even if they lacked the technology or skill to make such weapons themselves, they still might deliver a terrifying blast. "What worries me," Mr. Sheehan said, "is their ability to get their hands on a weapon someone else has put together."
Experts also said they feared that bomb- making skills taught in advanced classes would be sufficient for making a "dirty bomb," in which spent radioactive material could be lashed to high explosives for a mildly radioactive blast.
Officials said papers from Kabul explaining uses of radioactive isotopes in agriculture and medicine, found in the same rooms as the explosive notebooks, indicate research into precisely that sort of weapon.
Military Models
All successful military organizations study one another, sizing up threats, identifying weaknesses, copying weapons and tactics. The jihad groups were no exception.
Law enforcement officials have described a multivolume set of terrorist instructions, dubbed the Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, as a sort of master guide for the camps. Parts of the encyclopedia were found by The Times at four training sites, and officials said parts of its explosives section were incorporated into classes at the camps.
But records from students and teachers also show that most jihad courses lasted several weeks to a few months and that rather than covering the encyclopedia's breadth, stayed intensely focused on small sets of skills. To create those classes, the groups relied heavily on an array of sources obtained from the West: military training manuals, American hunting magazines, anarchist manuals, popular action movies, chemistry and engineering textbooks, and Web sites hawking James Bond-like tricks.
Signs of this collection effort are sprinkled throughout their documents. American military trainers who reviewed the jihadi students' notes quickly identified lessons from their own playbooks, including Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan reconnaissance techniques also used by Army Rangers, or four-man weapon deployments and formations - wedges, columns, echelons, lines - that are the Marine Corps standard.
One senior military instructor noticed a familiar streak of professionalism in class schedules, a carefully selected mix of lectures, demonstrations and practice. "Wherever they got this, it was modeled after somebody's program," he said. "It was not made by some guys on some goat farm outside of Kabul."
He was right. It had been cribbed from an appendix in a Marine Corps manual seeking to standardize sniper training, a copy of which was found with terrorist course schedules in a Harkat house in Kabul.
American influence also appears in jihadi explosives courses. For instance, chapters from the "Improvised Munitions Handbook," a United States Army manual published in 1969, were found by a Times reporter in the same Kabul guest house. Ink tracing on its pages show that it had been translated into Arabic. The manual, according to its introduction, was intended "to increase the potential of Special Forces and guerrilla troops by describing in detail the manufacture of munitions from seemingly innocuous locally available material."
It seems to be fulfilling its mission. The manual's diagram for using a laundry pin as part of a trip-release firing circuit was used in the basic demolition instruction at the Farouk camp. Other lessons, including how to make an antipersonnel bomb from a light bulb, were found in an advanced demolition notebook. (The light bulb device is similar to a weapon shown in a scene in the Burt Reynolds movie "The Longest Yard." The jihadis translated the manual to learn an additional step, as well as a way to use bulbs as detonators in larger bombs.)
This sort of resourcefulness is reminiscent of another Afghan war, current and former officials said. In the 1970's the Soviet Union trained a cadre of Afghan Army officers in its military academies, teaching them leadership and tactics. When the Soviet Army came in, many switched sides.
"These officers knew the Soviet Union's armor doctrine, and when the Russians tried to go up the valleys, some of them were right there, directing ambushes," said Dr. Joshua Spero, a professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts and former Central Asia military planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But officials also noted that the breadth of the camps' curriculum search resulted in uneven quality. Some material was well- chosen, some not. Harkat had obtained a copy of "The Poisoner's Handbook," a book commonly sold by survivalist stores in the United States. Its information is insufficient for making mass-casualty weapons. "It's nonsense," one official said.
(The effort resembled some attempts to gather nuclear materials. Officials said, for instance, that Al Qaeda members have been duped by swindlers and sold bogus goods.)
Officials also said even useful references could be problematic. One said that while cautious handlers could use some Special Forces bomb recipes, others would endanger themselves. "People have had to be scraped off of their ceilings after trying these things," he said.
The jihadis seemed to know this. One notebook warned: "Make sure that first aid kits are available at all times in order to deal with any mishaps that might result from the performance of this experiment."
Whatever the shortfalls, the two tiers of training worked.
The small number of graduates of the top tier have struck American targets in Africa, the Middle East, Washington and New York. In 1999 customs officers caught another alumnus, Ahmed Ressam, with a functional bomb and plans to explode it at Los Angeles International Airport.
The battle near Gardez demonstrated that when American soldiers come down from the sky and fight within machine-gun range, the guerrillas have the training to turn them back. Two days after Specialist Stanton's unit withdrew, American soldiers again came under fire from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, this time as they tried to recover the body of Petty Officer Neil Roberts, a Navy Seal.
By the end of that day, seven Americans were dead.
-------- arms sales
UPI hears ... Nasty rumors circulate over Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma
3/18/2002
Insider notes from United Press International for March 18 ...
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=18032002-123408-9305r
Nasty rumors circulate over Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma at the best of times. With parliamentary elations due March 31, the smears or revelations are spewing out. Many still stem from that trove of 300 hours of tapes recorded from under Kuchma's sofa by former bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko, now in asylum in the United States. Member of Parliament Aleksandr Zhyr, who runs the parliament's commission examining the tapes, says they record Kuchma plotting illegal arms sales to countries under U.N. embargo -- including $100 millions of anti-aircraft missile systems to Iraq. The co-plotter was Valery Malev, head of Ukrspetsexport, the state-owned arms sales company. Malev turned up dead in a car crash last week, just after the Zhyr commission reported on the illegal sales. Kuchma probably does not have to worry since this Parliament is about to expire. And its latest vote for a legal inquiry into Kuchma's supposed role in helping former premier Pavlo Lazarenko liquidate two troublesome parliamentarians was turned down by the state Prosecutor-General Mikola Potabenko, saying there was no convincing evidence.
--------
Pentagon Proposes Sale of F - 16s
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Arms-Deals.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In separate billion-dollar deals, the Pentagon is proposing to sell 30 retrofitted F-16 fighter jets to Austria and three Aegis anti-air warfare systems to South Korea's navy.
The deal with Austria is valued at $1 billion, the Pentagon said in publishing a required notification to Congress on Monday.
The Pentagon had offered to sell new F-16 models to Austria last fall, but Austria chose the alternative of planes that had been used and then upgraded.
The other deal, with South Korea, is for three Aegis shipboard combat systems, which are a high-tech system of radars and air defense weapons for naval vessels. That deal is is worth $1.2 billion.
-------- britain
Britain to Send 1, 700 Troops to Fight in Afghanistan
By REUTERS
March 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-afghan-britain-hoon.html
LONDON - Britain said Monday it would send up to 1,700 troops to Afghanistan to help the United States take on al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, in the biggest UK deployment of operational forces since the 1991 Gulf War.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told parliament the troops would be risking their lives in ``unforgiving and hostile terrain, against a dangerous enemy.'' ``The United States has formally requested that the UK provide forces to join in future military operations,'' Hoon said. ``I have therefore authorized the deployment ... of a full UK infantry battle group built around 45 Commando Royal Marines.''
He said the Marines would join a U.S.-led brigade. The first elements would be on the ground in days and ready to undertake operations by mid-April.
The United States, leading coalition troops in Afghanistan, said Monday ``Operation Anaconda,'' the biggest ground battle of the Afghan war, was ending but the fighting was not yet over.
The last of the major battles ended Wednesday when U.S., Canadian and Afghan troops stormed rebel caves and trenches near Gardez, about 150 km (95 miles) south of Kabul.
NO QUICK FIX
The focus has shifted to guerrilla-style war as small bands of fighters from Afghanistan's hard-line Islamic Taliban movement and the al Qaeda network -- blamed by Washington for the September 11 attacks on the United States -- try to escape.
``It was always accepted that this was not going to be a quick fix,'' a senior British defense official told a news briefing. ``There are pockets bubbling up over Afghanistan. Elements of the Taliban and al Qaeda are regrouping...and they do melt away when they come under significant pressure.''
He called the enemy ``well-disciplined and committed,'' operating in groups from 20 to 30 to 200 to 300.
He said British Marines were likely to be in Afghanistan for three months and engaging the enemy for a month.
Defense analysts said the U.S. request reflected a realization that stamping out small groups of fighters in tough, mountainous terrain would take time.
``It is the avowed statement of the Bush administration that they will track, corner and eliminate all pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda,'' said Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defense Weekly.
``If you want to do that you will have to intensify the operation and really go in for the long haul.''
Britain already leads the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) -- a peacekeeping deployment in the Afghan capital Kabul and its surrounding areas -- but is keen to hand over command of that force as soon as possible.
Turkey, named as Britain's most likely successor as the head of the 5,000-strong ISAF, has so far appeared reluctant to take on the role.
Hoon told parliament it was now unlikely that ISAF command would be handed over by April as planned, saying it would probably be delayed by some months.
----
Britain Should Pull Back From EU, Says Thatcher
By REUTERS
March 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-britain-thatcher.html
LONDON - Britain should start to pull back from the European Union, according to former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who on Monday branded the 15-nation bloc ``fundamentally unreformable.''
In a new book 'Statecraft', serialized in the Times newspaper, the 'Iron Lady' stopped short of calling for a total exit from the EU, but advocated policies for a future Conservative government that would withdraw Britain from some of the EU's key activities.
``It is frequently said to be unthinkable that Britain should leave the European Union. But avoidance of thought about this is a poor substitute for judgement,'' Thatcher wrote.
Rather than outright withdrawal, Thatcher said she would prefer to retain some existing arrangements with Brussels, while opting out of ``present and future mechanisms which harm our interests or restrict our freedom of action.''
``The objectives would be a withdrawal from the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), an end to our adherence to the common fisheries policy, withdrawal from the all the entanglements of a common foreign and security policy and a reassertion of our trade policy.''
Twelve years after being ousted as British premier, Thatcher showed her legendary distrust of Europe has not waned -- nor her belief that an unstoppable drive toward a ``United States of Europe,'' as she terms it, will end in tears.
``During my lifetime, most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or another, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.
``That generalization is clearly true of the Second World War. Nazism was, after all, a European ideology, the Third Reich an attempt at European domination.
``It remains for the non-European world, above all America, to try to reduce the harm the new Europe is set to do -- and then when the folly falls, as through lack of common interests it finally will, to help pick up the bits,'' she said.
Although increasingly on the periphery of British politics, Thatcher's remarks will stir up an already simmering debate in Britain over the vexed political issue of Britain's relationship with Europe, and in particular over whether to join the euro.
In a BBC 'Panorama' current affairs program on Sunday evening, audience members from across the country narrowly voted against joining the single currency.
-------- business
[Apache helicopters carried depleted uranium artillery in Bosnia. Do they still? et - mailto:prop1@prop1.org]
Alliant to Buy Assets of Boeing Co.
The Associated Press
Monday, March 18, 2002
EDINA, Minn. -- Alliant Techsystems on Monday announced an agreement to buy the assets of Boeing Co.'s ordnance business for an undisclosed amount of cash.
The Edina-based company expects to complete the acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, by the end of June.
Headquartered in Mesa, Ariz., the Boeing ordnance business generates annual sales of approximately $40 million. The business will remain in Mesa, and will be integrated into Alliant's recently announced Precision Systems Group.
Alliant said it would offer the unit's 50 employees the opportunity to transfer to Alliant once the sale is final.
The ordnance business, part of Boeing Military Aircraft and Missile Systems, is a leading producer of medium-caliber automatic cannons and machine guns. Its products include the M242 automatic cannon for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and other applications, and the M230 automatic cannon used on all AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.
"The gun systems produced by the Boeing operations use our existing medium-caliber ammunition products, and are also compatible with new advanced munitions we are developing," said Paul Miller, Alliant chairman and chief executive.
The acquisition will put Alliant at the high end of its earnings per share guidance of $4.17 to $4.21 for fiscal year 2003, Miller said.
Boeing announced in May that it was looking for a buyer for the business because it wanted to focus on its core aerospace businesses.
Shares of Boeing were down 35 cents to close at $47.63 on the New York Stock Exchange Monday, but gained 13 cents in extended trading. Shares of Alliant were up 50 cents to close at $98.26.
----
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
By States News Service
Monday, March 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42592-2002Mar17?language=printer
Tessada & Associates of Newington won a $117 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for consulting and information-technology services.
Westat Inc. of Rockville won a contract worth up to $90.77 million from the Health & Human Services Department for the drug-abuse warning network.
Management Aerospace Technology Center of Fairfax won an $82.38 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for environmental test and integration support services.
Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River, Md., won a $63.46 million contract from the Navy for a MV-22 block upgrade program.
DynCorp of Reston won a $35 million contract from the Defense Department for integrating logistics and transportation legacy systems.
Centex Construction Co. of Fairfax won a $32.95 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for building F-22 facilities.
VSE of Alexandria won a contract worth up to $30 million from the Navy for engineering and technical services for fleet modernization.
General Dynamics Government Systems Corp. of Chantilly won a $28.25 million contract from the Agency for International Development for science and technology services for overseas missions.
Bell-Boeing Program Office of Patuxent River won a $19 million contract from the Navy for modifying four V-22 aircraft.
I.Q. Solutions Inc. of Rockville won a $13.5 million contract from the National Cancer Institute for research services.
PEPCO Energy Services of Washington won a 32-month, $21.35 million contract from the General Services Administration for electric power services.
AT&T Corp. of Washington won a $10.57 million contract from the General Services Administration for search services.
Chemonics International Inc. of Washington won a contract worth up to $10 million from the Agency for International Development for a credit and assistance program.
Resource Consultants Inc. of Vienna won a $9.54 million contract from the Space & Naval Warfare Systems Center for information-technology services.
Futures Group International of Washington won a $5.3 million contract from the Agency for International Development for technical assistance in an AIDs program.
C&S Antennas Inc. of Sterling won a $4.96 million contract from the Army for antennas.
The contracts listed were awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in Virginia, Maryland and the District. For more information, contact states2001@aol.com, or 202-628-3100, ext. 266.
-------- colombia
Colombia's 'peace bishop' is gunned down
March 18, 2002
By David Adams, Latin America Correspondent,
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-239936,00.html
ONLY days after denouncing the influence of drug money on Colombia's national elections, the Archbishop of Cali was shot dead on the steps of a church as he was leaving a mass wedding.
Mgr Isaías Duarte Cancino, 69, known to parishioners as "the peace bishop" for his courageous stand against political violence and drug-money corruption, was one of the country's most respected champions of peace and social justice. The Pope condemned the killing and said that Mgr Duarte Cancino had paid a high price for his opposition to violence.
The archbishop's death stunned Colombian church leaders, politicians and laypeople, who paid homage to his long career spent in some of the country's poorest and most violent communities.
"This is disgusting, the dirtiest ignominy. This country has no future," John Maro Rodríguez, the Mayor of Cali, said.
Mgr Alberto Giraldo, a spokesman for the Colombian Roman Catholic Church, said: "One is left speechless, knowing what his commitment to the country was and the fondness and appreciation we had for him."
Shortly after 8.30pm on Saturday, Mgr Duarte Cancino was leaving the Church of the Good Shepherd in the Aguablanca suburb of Cali, Colombia's second-largest city, where he had blessed the marriages of 104 couples.
Witnesses said that he was about to get into his car when he was approached by two men who opened fire before escaping on a motorbike. The archbishop was hit by at least five bullets in the head, neck and chest. A priest was wounded in the arm.
An amateur cameraman who was filming the church ceremony told the Cali newspaper El País: "The gunfire was tremendous. Everyone threw themselves on the ground. We did not know what was going on."
The Rev Gersain Paz, the archbishop's press secretary, blamed the archbishop's death in part on a lack of police security, despite an appeal for added protection made several hours before the ceremony. "The Church of the Good Shepherd saw several suspicious people at four o'clock in the afternoon. They called the police and asked for extra security," he said, adding that none arrived.
No one claimed has responsibility for the killing. Colombian analysts said that it could have been the work of a number of different groups, including left-wing guerrillas or right-wing paramilitaries involved in the country's conflict over drugs.
Cali was notorious in the 1990s as the headquarters of one of the country's most powerful drug cartels. After the arrest of one of its leaders, the cocaine trade fell into the hands of a number of gangs, which have fought a series of bloody turf wars.
The region around Cali has also been a stronghold of the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN), which is engaged in peace talks with the Government. But the area has also come under the influence of the largest left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which recently began an offensive after the Government called off peace talks with it last month.
Mgr Duarte Cancino excommunicated the ELN leadership after guerrillas kidnapped more than 100 members of a Cali church congregation in the middle of a service and held them for months in a mountain hideout. Last month he denounced the influence of money from drug-trafficking in national elections. His accusations prompted a government investigation.
Ordained a priest in 1963, Mgr Duarte Cancino gained national prominence in the 1980s when, as Bishop of Uraba, in the north, he spoke out against a series of massacres by guerrillas and paramilitaries. He became Archbishop of Cali in 1995. His murder will draw further attention to recent statements by the US that it will increase military aid to Colombia.
The Bush Administration plans to ask Congress to loosen restrictions on military aid, which until now has been limited to counter-narcotics operations. The change would allow US military trainers, weapons and equipment to be used directly against left-wing guerrillas. Despite spending more that £900 million on a joint effort with Bogotá to intensify the eradication of coca crops, the plant used to process cocaine, the US admits that its policy has failed. Coca production there rose last year by 25 per cent.
----
U.S. charges Colombian rebels
By Michael Kirkland
UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
3/18/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=18032002-020655-7775r
WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- A U.S. grand jury has charged a Colombian rebel commander and six of his associates with running a massive smuggling operation that funneled cocaine into the United States, according to an indictment unsealed Monday.
The indictment said the cocaine operation was used to obtain money, weapons and equipment for the rebel group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the charges illustrate the connection between terrorist groups and the drug trade.
The State Department has called FARC "the most dangerous international terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere," Ashcroft said. "The lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also fertile ground for the drug trade that supports terrorism."
The group has killed at least 13 U.S. citizens and kidnapped more than 100 others, the attorney general said.
The indictment charges rebel commander Tomas Molina Caracas, Carlos Bolas, Nelson Barrera, Luis Fernando da Costa, Leonardo Dias Mendonca and two John Does with conspiracy to manufacture and import cocaine into the United States.
Ashcroft said all but one of the suspects is believed to be at large in Colombia. The exception is da Costa, a Brazilian national now in custody in Brazil.
The attorney general said the United States is asking Colombia to capture and extradite all the remaining suspects to the United States, as well as forfeit to the United States their illicit proceeds.
Ashcroft brushed off reporters' skeptical questions -- the Colombians have been trying to capture FARC members for decades -- and said the United States would cooperate in any manhunt.
The indictment says Caracas commanded FARC forces known as the "16th Front, which operated in and effectively controlled large areas of eastern Colombia."
At the same time, the indictment alleges, Caracas was the leader of the cocaine trafficking operation. Other FARC "fronts" sent cocaine to the Caracas operation, and FARC-produced cocaine allegedly was smuggled from eastern Colombia to the United States, Mexico and Spain, among other countries, according to the indictment.
The conspirators allegedly operated from at least 1994 in the tiny Colombian town of Barranco Minas on the Guaviare River, about 100 miles from the border with Venezuela and Brazil, until at least February 2001.
A Colombian air force plane bombed the local airstrip and the operation was moved elsewhere in eastern Colombia, the indictment said.
To give an idea of how massive the operation was the indictment says that in one trip in September, one pilot flew 200 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Suriname for Caracas.
Ashcroft announced the unsealing of the indictment Monday, along with Asa Hutchinson, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Michael Chertoff, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division.
Hutchinson said, "This is the first time members and certain leaders of FARC have been named on drug charges."
The indictment was returned by a grand jury in Washington on March 7. Hutchinson said the delay in unsealing the indictment was to allow time to safely secure witnesses in the case.
-------- drug war
Wa drug cartel in US sights
Burma must act or risk intervention
Alan Dawson,
March 18, 2002
Bangkok Post
http://www.bangkokpost.com/180302_News/18Mar2002_news03.html
The United States has declared the Wa drug dealers are important targets in the war on terrorism, a significant policy change that could put the Burma-based narcotics cartel in the US bullseye.
Diplomatic sources in Bangkok said it was clear US policy in the region is quickly evolving, and will put pressure on Burma to strike fast and hard against drug kingpin Wei Hsueh-kang or risk intervention from outside.
In a separate development, the American military commander in the Pacific, Adm Dennis Blair, stressed the importance of close US-Thai relations.
``Thailand is critical to our efforts'' in combatting drug trafficking and in international peace-keeping, he told US senators.
The key change in US policy came last week, in a separate testimony by two senior diplomats to a US senate committee.
Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for drug and law enforcement, and Francis Taylor, ambassador at large for counter- terrorism, said terrorism and drugs are increasingly linked. Often, drug gangs raise money for terrorists, as well as try to weaken target nations by flooding them with drugs.
The most significant part of their announcement designated the United Wa State Army _ for the first time _ as ``a terrorist group with known links to drug trafficking around the world''. Before last week, Washington considered the UWSA only as a drug gang.
``The UWSA controlled major drug producing areas in Burma and used the proceeds to carry out an insurgency against the Burmese government,'' Mr Beers told the senate judiciary committee's sub-committee on technology, terrorism and government information.
``A ceasefire agreement granted the UWSA enough autonomy to continue drug trafficking for profit,'' he said.
The testimony was not the first time US officials have linked the war on terrorism to drugs, as well as weapons proliferation.
But it marks the first time that a drug-trafficking cartel has been re-designated as a terrorist organisation.
So far, the US has not officially put the UWSA on its list of known terrorist groups. Last week's testimony was a strong indication such a move is in the works.
Diplomatic sources in Bangkok said they were not surprised.
``For a couple of months, it has been clear the war on terrorism has a much wider scope than just overthrowing the Taliban'' in Afghanistan, said one official.
``So far as we are concerned, Burma will put the Wa out of the drug business, or the Americans will get directly involved.''
Adm Blair was reporting to the key senate armed services committee, a chief overseer of the US military. ``Thailand will continue to be our key ally in Southeast Asia,'' he told the senators.
He drew a strong link between Operation Cobra Gold and the bilateral US-Philippine operation called Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder), which has put US soldiers in an advisory role against the Abu Sayyaf. The two operations are known jointly as Team Challenge 2002 by the US military.
Cobra Gold will still have three participants this year _ Thailand, the US and Singapore _ but dozens of observers from 13 countries _ 14 if Vietnam picks up its invitation.
-------- europe
French navy intercepts hundreds of immigrants
World Scene
March 18, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020318-26591445.htm
PARIS - France said yesterday its navy had intercepted, in an operation coordinated with Italy, a merchant ship in the eastern Mediterranean carrying hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's office said sailors from a French frigate boarded the vessel, the Monica, in the southern Ionian sea between Italy and Greece yesterday after it falsely claimed to be registered under the Sao Tome and Principe flag. Sao Tome and Principe are islands to the west of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea.
It remained unclear where the ship was going or where its passengers came from, but the French government said the ship's crew had indicated it was heading toward an unspecified location on the southern Mediterranean coast.
-------- iran
Views Mixed in Iran on U.S. Senator's Olive Branch
By REUTERS
March 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iran-usa.html
TEHRAN - Iranian reformists gave a cautious welcome Monday to a U.S. senator's unexpected overture for talks, while conservatives condemned the move.
Hatred for the ``Great Satan'' is an article of faith for Iran's conservatives. More pragmatic reformists allied to President Mohammad Khatami have sought to edge toward repairing ties with the United States.
``From the government's point of view, there is no special obstacle to dialogue between Iranian and American thinkers and representatives,'' government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh was quoted as saying by newspapers Monday.
``It's up to the parliamentarians,'' he said.
But the hard-line Jumhuri-ye Eslami paper said in an editorial. ``These remarks show American leaders are using the policy of a carrot and a stick.''
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Joseph Biden, offered last week to meet Iranian parliamentarians in Washington or elsewhere and urged reconciliation between the traditional adversaries.
Aiming to help ``those who seek change in Iran,'' the Democrat senator said he was ``prepared to receive members of the Iranian Majlis (parliament) whenever its members would like to visit (and) if...that's too sensitive, I'm prepared to meet them elsewhere.''
Biden's dramatic offer contrasted to Bush's branding of Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as part of an ``axis of evil'' for allegedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction, thereby marking them out as potential targets in the U.S. war on terrorism.
SOME NOT IMPRESSED
``The Americans are using any possible measure to reach their aims, this is to create dispute among internal groups,'' said Commerce Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari.
``The United States is trying to attack our national unity,'' said Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani. ``The key to confronting U.S. strategy is to disappoint them through national unity.''
Ramazanzadeh, however, said Iran's policy was ``to have dialogue with everyone seeking peace.''
``But no one can on one hand accuse our country and at the same time offer dialogue...The mistrust between us can only be solved by practical U.S. steps,'' he said.
Biden's call for talks and support for civil society, human rights and democracy-building activities in Iran appeared to be an appeal for a policy on Iran similar to that of European countries.
European Union states have pursued a policy of engagement in Iran, backing Khatami in his attempts to turn the 23-year-old Islamic Republic into a more open state while censuring alleged human rights abuses and repeated judicial crackdowns.
Iranian revolutionaries toppled the U.S.-backed shah in 1979 and Islamic radicals then consolidated their grip on power by storming the U.S. embassy in Tehran and holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds all the keys to power in Iran and has the final say on matters of foreign policy, has repeatedly rejected any steps toward restoring ties with Washington.
``Any decision related to this matter should be taken by the leader and the supreme national security council,'' said Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, an influential figure in Iran.
-------- iraq
Girding for war with Iraq
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020318-40256852.htm
Some military combat units are taking the first steps to prepare for war against Iraq by updating contingency plans, checking readiness levels and inventorying munition stocks.
Defense officials in interviews last week said no unit has received warning orders or deployment orders, the official authorizations that would send Air Force fighter wings and Army divisions to the Persian Gulf.
But war scenarios are being discussed at briefings and in private meetings among commanders, the sources said.
The impetus, they said, comes from the clear signals sent by President Bush, who says that war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is clearly an option. Just last week, in his latest threat, Mr. Bush declared that "I will not allow a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction. ... He is a problem, and we're going to deal with him."
Secondly, commanders know the Bush administration is in the throes of an intense internal debate on how to oust Saddam as part of the president's war on terrorism. The United States for years has designated Iraq as a sponsor of international terrorism. It is also a regime that is seeking nuclear weapons.
Key Cabinet figures, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have reached a consensus that Saddam must go. Now being debated is the how and when. Mr. Powell said recently that no war plan has been presented to the president.
"Iraq contingencies are being discussed," a senior defense official said.
The official likened the planning to the kind of contingency planning and replanning that went on during the Cold War, when the Army in Europe played "what ifs" on Soviet forces invading through the Fulda Gap.
But the source said there is one key difference. The commander in chief wants Saddam out, and administration sources say he would like the mission accomplished in his first term.
"What you have is typical Army leaning forward for this mission," said another senior administration official, who attended a meeting where a number of "what ifs" were discussed about Iraq. "No one knows for sure what's next. Everybody is leaning forward to be prepared for contingencies. The military as a whole is on a heightened state of alert and they are developing plans for scenarios that might unfold. They have to."
Another official said, "Bush's words are trickling through the Army." One contingency being studied, this source said, is what would happen if the United States went to war against Iraq and North Korea took advantage of the situation to invade the South.
"There are a variety of updates going on," said an official.
The U.S. military operates under a guiding mission that it must be able to block the advances of two major foes in overlapping times. It must be able to decisively defeat one of those adversaries and occupy its territory.
Senior officials say combat in the Persian Gulf is not imminent. Analysts believe it would take up to 200,000 troops to topple the Baghdad regime. Some Pentagon civilians are suggesting a smaller troop level could do the job.
Shifting that many personnel requires months of planning for such issues as port space and staging areas. Saudi Arabia has refused to let its bases be used as a lauching pad to attack Iraq except to enforce a southern no-fly zone. If Riyadh sticks to that prohibition, the Pentagon would have to find new bases.
The Army's V Corps headquartered in Germany would be in the front lines against Iraq. Its two active divisions, the 1st Infantry and 1st Armored, are assigned to Persian Gulf war contingencies.
A military source said V Corps planners have traveled to U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., to review Iraqi war plans.
Lt. Col. Joe Richard, a V Corps spokesman, said: "It's [Department of Defense] policy not to confirm or comment on future operations or contingency plans. ... Let me emphasize that if V U.S. Army Corps' commander, Lt. Gen. William Wallace, is called upon by the president or secretary of defense, he can provide an effective and lethal combat option to execute any contingency operation or plan. ... V Corps as a matter of operational readiness, as do other corps, updates its contingency plans as world events and national policy may require. Additionally, V Corps routinely conducts monthly readiness assessments."
The corps is conducting its yearly "war-fighting exercise" this month involving 9,000 troops. The scenario: war in the Persian Gulf.
One military source said, "If inspectors are not permitted in by a certain date, or if they're allowed in but then denied the opportunity to do their job, it's a done response."
The administration is debating options for ousting Saddam that range from a full-blown invasion and march to Baghdad, to a CIA-sponsored coup.
Officials say hard-line Pentagon civilian policy-makers, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, favor using some of the lessons of Afghanistan. That would mean a big role for Army Green Berets, who would organize and train Iraqi guerrillas, and a big role for an air campaign. The approach is also said to be favored by retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, a special operations solider who is now the top anti-terrorism official on the White House National Security Council.
In the coming weeks, Washington may host a conference of 200 former Iraqi military officers who support the London-based Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of groups opposed to Saddam.
Bureaucrats opposed to a new war against Iraq primarily reside at the State Department, where officials favor plans by the CIA to try to destabilize Saddam.
A senior intelligence official said CIA Director George J. Tenet believes he can develop agents who can penetrate the Baghdad regime.
----
U.S. to host group opposed to Saddam Hussein
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020318-2186236.htm
The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of opposition forces fighting Saddam Hussein, says the Bush administration has agreed to host a major gathering of former Iraqi military officers in Washington in the coming weeks.
The INC says the gathering will be the largest of its kind, bringing together both INC and non-INC military leaders who will devise an operational plan to topple Saddam.
The London-based group announced the conference last month, but the State Department said at the time that visa problems for many of the expected 200-plus participants had complicated plans to hold the meeting in Washington.
The INC, headed by former banker Ahmed Chalabi, has received a mixed reception from the Bush administration.
Many of those in the U.S. government who favor military action against Saddam, especially officials in the Pentagon, see the group as a valuable ally along the lines of the opposition Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
But the State Department has been skeptical about the INC's organizational skills and military prowess, and briefly froze U.S. aid to the group over an accounting dispute.
Vice President Richard B. Cheney, meanwhile, neared the end yesterday of a Middle East tour, in which one Arab leader after another has counseled him against opening a campaign against Iraq in the war on terrorism.
Reflecting the views of his fellow leaders, Bahraini Crown Prince Sheik Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa told Mr. Cheney that Arabs are more concerned about what they see as "Israeli violence" against Palestinians than they are about Iraq.
----
Arab states united in rejecting attack on Saddam
By Robert Fisk in Beirut
18 March 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=275697
Rarely can an American vice-president have met such a rebuff from America's Arab allies. Not a single Arab king, prince or president has been prepared to endorse a US attack on Iraq.
Even in Kuwait - where Dick Cheney arrives today before going on to Israel - an opinion poll suggests that more than 40 per cent of its citizens are hostile to Washington's policies.
In every Arab capital, Mr Cheney has been politely but firmly told to turn his attention to the Palestinian-Israeli war, and forget the "axis of evil'' until the US brings its Israeli allies into line. All Mr Cheney's efforts to pretend that the conflict in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel is separate from Iraq - or "two tracks" as the American cliché would have it - have failed.
Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's First Deputy Prime Minister, met Mr Cheney at the end of a long red carpet at Jeddah airport, but the Saudi press were not so polite. One newspaper carried a front-page article condemning US policy in the region - almost unheard of in the kingdom - while editorials in other Gulf papers uniformly condemned any assault on Iraq. Prince Abdullah has gone out of his way to explain to US television audiences why he opposes military action against the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, while Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Foreign Minister, has told the Americans that they cannot use the Prince Sultan air base for any war against Baghdad.
Repeatedly, Arab leaders have turned Mr Cheney's arguments about America's "war on terrorism'' around. For them, the terror is being inflicted upon Palestinians by Israelis. If President Saddam is overthrown, Iraq could break apart, the US Vice-President was told several times, with incalculable effects on Iraq's Muslim neighbours.
Even the small United Arab Emirates had no time for the Cheney argument. The Vice-President's spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise, said that Mr Cheney "made the point that al-Qa'ida can't be allowed to reconstitute'' in the Middle East. The government of the UAE President, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, retorted briskly that he was opposed to military action in Iraq.
The Arabs might be forgiven their confusion over Mr Cheney's objectives. If America wishes to pursue its "war on terror'', what has Iraq got to do with it? Where is the evidence that Saddam was involved in 11 September? None exists, so Mr Cheney has invented a new dogma for Arabs: "The United States will not permit the forces of terror to gain the tools of genocide'' he said. President Saddam has "weapons of mass destruction'' and they could fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden.
Since Mr bin Laden hates President Saddam and has gone on record to say as much, just how the Iraqi weapons, if they exist, would reach America's nemesis is unclear. And the Arabs have been asking who is threatening genocide in the Middle East? Who is being attacked?
The one Middle East nation that supports a strike at Iraq is Israel, where Mr Cheney is expected to arrive later today. The Vice-President will therefore hear what he wants to hear from the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, whose reoccupation of Palestinian territory has done so much to destroy his mission.
----
Report: Iraq, Al Qaeda Run Extremist Group In Kurdish Territory
Guerrillas Linked to Bin Laden Camps
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42471-2002Mar17?language=printer
A new report in the New Yorker magazine suggests that Iraqi intelligence has been in close touch with top officials in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group for years, and that the two organizations jointly run a terrorist organization that operates in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.
The thrust of the article could be news to some U.S. officials, because the CIA has largely discounted the proposition that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has maintained links with al Qaeda.
A hawkish faction within the Bush administration that favors military action against Iraq, centered mostly in the top ranks of the Defense Department, has scoured the world for such Hussein-al Qaeda connections. Yesterday some people in this camp hailed the New Yorker article as significant new evidence for their viewpoint.
The article focuses in part on a Muslim extremist guerrilla group in the Kurdish zone of Iraq. The group, Ansar al-Islam, is made up of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs trained in bin Laden's camps, according to the article.
The article's author, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he interviewed several operatives of the group who had been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a pro-American Kurdish group that controls one province in northern Iraq. The captives said that Hussein and al Qaeda run Ansar, that a number of al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan have escaped to Iraqi Kurdish territory controlled by Ansar, and that Iraq hosted a top Egyptian leader of al Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.
U.S. officials said the PUK has an interest in making this case because it could help justify an American incursion to topple its enemy, Hussein.
The article also asserted that U.S. intelligence agencies apparently had not adequately looked into what the Ansar captives have to say and haven't completely debriefed PUK leaders who have assembled a dossier on the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda ties in Kurdistan.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment, citing complications in responding to such complex assertions over a weekend.
James Woolsey, a former CIA director who favors military action against Iraq and is critical of the CIA's performance on Middle Eastern terrorism, called the article "a blockbuster."
"The CIA has, over recent years, not been real enthusiastic about the Iraqi resistance, and I think that's a shame," Woolsey said on CNN's "Late Edition." "If they got beat on this story by the New Yorker and Jeff Goldberg, three cheers for the fourth estate."
"This is clearly a very important story," said a former senior U.S. official with extensive experience in U.S. policy toward Iraq. "It's likely that Saddam Hussein would try to destabilize the Kurdish areas" by using Ansar al-Islam, and it's possible al Qaeda also could have ties to the group, he said.
But he was skeptical about the idea that U.S. intelligence agencies don't know what these Ansar captives are saying, given the high priority the Bush administration has placed on finding any Hussein-bin Laden connections. "I'd be surprised if our intelligence people haven't picked up on this, if in fact these guys have been held by the PUK for months."
Under an 11-year-old arrangement after the Persian Gulf War, the PUK and a rival Kurdish faction control three semi-autonomous provinces in northern Iraq. The Kurds are protected from Iraqi attack by U.S. and British jets.
A senior administration official disposed toward U.S. military confrontation with Iraq said the thrust of the New Yorker report "doesn't strike me as incredible, and may fill in gaps in our knowledge."
"I'll be interested in what our intelligence people say," the official said.
Richard Perle, another hard-liner on Iraq who is chairman of the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board, said the CIA has shown "no desire to inquire into this area [of alliances between Iraq and al Qaeda] because to admit now that there are links, after saying there weren't, would be embarrassing."
Advocates of the supposed Hussein-bin Laden axis cite a supposed meeting between Mohamed Atta, a leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and an Iraqi agent in the Czech Republic in 2000 or 2001. Some U.S. and European officials say that even if the meeting occurred, Iraq may not have played a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The New Yorker quoted a PUK captive, a veteran Iraqi intelligence officer named Qassem Hussein Muhammad, as saying that Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who is bin Laden's top aide, visited Saddam Hussein and other top Iraqi officials during a lengthy stay in Baghdad in 1992.
PUK officials assert the top leaders of Ansar are operatives of Hussein's intelligence service and that some received training in bin Laden camps in Afghanistan, the magazine said.
-------- israel / palestine
PA refuses to meet Cheney without Arafat
By SAUD ABU RAMADAN
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/18032002-072356-8972r.htm
GAZA, March 18 (UPI) -- Palestinian Authority officials said there would be no meeting with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who is expected to arrive in Israel Monday, if Cheney refuses to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
PA Cabinet Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio that Palestinian officials would only meet with Cheney if he meets with Arafat first.
Senior negotiator Saeb Erekat said PA officials refused to meet with Cheney first because Arafat is the president of the Palestinian people.
"Arafat is the title of the Palestinian people, and any one wants to meet the Palestinian people, has to refer to this title," Erekat said.
Cheney is scheduled to arrive in Israel Monday afternoon to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other Israeli government's officials.
PA Cabinet Secretary-General Ahmed Abdel Rahman told United Press International there are no arrangements for a meeting between Cheney and Arafat or between the vice president and any other Palestinian official.
"Until now we have not received any U.S. official request to arrange a meeting between Cheney and Arafat," Abdel Rahman said.
Cheney had left his schedule open for a possible meeting with Palestinians, but no firm plans had been made, said Palestinian radio quoting a U.S. diplomat.
The diplomat declined to say whether a Palestinian delegation could include Arafat, whom President George W. Bush so far has refused to meet.
----
THE TALKS
Hopes Rise for a Mideast Truce, Despite Attacks
New York Times
March 18, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, March 17 - Two terror attacks in Israel and heavy gunfire in Bethlehem today marked the fourth day of Gen. Anthony C. Zinni's shuttle diplomacy, but the American envoy appeared to make substantive headway toward brokering a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians.
As night fell, Israeli and Palestinian officials held separate meetings in Gaza and the West Bank to work out security arrangements for an Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian-controlled areas, according to officials of both sides.
Israeli forces pulled back from most of the Palestinian areas they had invaded in a large-scale military operation over the past two weeks, but remained in and around Bethlehem and on the fringes of other areas. The Palestinians have set a full withdrawal as a condition for any cease-fire negotiations, while the Israelis have demanded that the Palestinians take measures to prevent attacks from those areas.
Ahmed Qurei, a senior Palestinian negotiator known as Abu Ala, also said after General Zinni met with Yasir Arafat in Ramallah that on Monday the American envoy would preside over a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian officials to set a timetable for implementing the American disengagement proposals known as the Tenet plan.
The plan, proposed by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, calls on both sides to resume the positions they held when the current fighting broke out on Sept. 28, 2000, and undertake extensive cooperation over security.
It was not immediately clear whether a cease-fire would be announced at the Monday meeting, but that was seen as a strong possibility.
If a cease-fire was announced, the breakthrough would coincide with the arrival of Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been touring Arab capitals in search of support for action against Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Mr. Cheney is to meet with Israeli leaders but it remains unclear whether he will meet with Palestinians.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel told his cabinet: "The aim at this stage is to arrive as soon as possible at a cease- fire and the implementation of Tenet. If there is fire during talks on a cease-fire, we will act accordingly."
On Saturday Mr. Sharon indicated he was prepared to take part in a three-way meeting, so long as the Palestinian present was not Mr. Arafat, whom the Israeli leader dismissed as a negotiating partner three months ago. Mr. Sharon also created some confusion when he said the meeting would be held today, a statement he retracted after it was denied by the Americans. The reason for the confusion was not known.
General Zinni's schedule today included attendance at church services, a meeting with the Israeli president, Moshe Katzav, and a meeting with Mr. Arafat this evening at his headquarters in Ramallah.
The relative lull that General Zinni, a retired marine, brought to the region when he arrived Thursday was challenged today by the two attacks.
In the first, a lone Palestinian gunman opened fire in Kfar Saba, in central Israel, killing an 18-year-old Israeli high school student and wounding several other people before he was shot dead. The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility.
Less than two hours later, a suicide bomber detonated his charge near a bus stop in northern Jerusalem that had been the target of at least two previous attacks. The bomb spattered a bus with blood but wounded only one woman. The Islamic Jihad organization, a militant Muslim group, claimed responsibility in a statement received by the Reuters news agency in Beirut.
General Zinni was at a meeting with Mr. Katzav when the gunman struck in Kfar Saba. The general issued a statement condemning both terror attacks, saying it was "critical" for the Palestinian Authority to act against terror.
"These attacks will not deter my efforts to continue to work with both sides to bring the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation to an end," he said.
In Bethlehem, Israeli tanks rumbled back toward the city center today, provoking heavy exchanges of fire. Palestinian medics said one Palestinian was killed.
The Israeli Army also said two Palestinians were shot dead in Gaza while trying to plant a bomb.
Israel warned that more attacks were imminent. A high alert was issued for Nahariya, in the north, prompting the mayor to close down all schools and cancel school trips.
General Zinni's chances for success were the subject of considerable speculation, with most commentators giving him 50-50 odds at best.
Though all indications were that he would achieve his immediate goal of a cease-fire, the larger challenge was to make it stick through the extraordinary mutual distrust and hostility generated over the past 18 months, and the byzantine politics on both side.
The Palestinians and Israelis project very different ideas of what they expect next.
The Palestinians have insisted that any negotiations on security measures must be accompanied by political negotiations.
Mr. Sharon has made it equally clear that he intends to forestall political talks as long as possible, because any such negotiations would immediately put pressure on him for territorial concessions he is not prepared to make.
Though he has announced a negotiating team, led by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, officials in Mr. Sharon's office were quoted in Yediot Ahronot as saying that the team would be authorized to discuss only cease-fire-related issues. Israel Radio also reported that Mr. Sharon told his cabinet that the goal was to get a cease-fire and implementation of the American programs for disengagement, and that only then would diplomatic negotiations begin.
"In my eyes the plan that we can discuss after the implementation" of the American plans "is a long-term one, in stages, with no timetable," Mr. Sharon was quoted by Israel Radio as telling his cabinet. "We haven't discussed this, but this is my view."
But Mr. Arafat is not likely to accept any such delay, especially because he reportedly felt he had already scored a major symbolic victory over Mr. Sharon just by publicly meeting with General Zinni. Three months ago, Mr. Sharon had restricted his longtime nemesis to Ramallah and proclaimed him irrelevant, even acknowledging that he wished he had killed Mr. Arafat years ago. Then, two weeks ago, Mr. Sharon declared that the way to bring Palestinians to the negotiating table was to batter them.
But now Mr. Arafat seems to be back in charge, and it is Mr. Sharon who is in political trouble with his volatile coalition government, where right-wing ministers sharply criticized the prime minister's decision to negotiate with the Palestinians at all. Public opinion polls also trace a steady decline in Mr. Sharon's standing.
On the Palestinian side, by contrast, a survey conducted by An Najah university in Nablus found that 87 percent of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of continuing terror attacks, 87.5 percent were in favor of "liberating all of Palestine" and 64.5 percent opposed General Zinni's mission.
That suggested that Mr. Arafat would not easily abandon his demand for substantive political negotiations.
Mr. Peres, the foreign minister, acknowledged in a radio interview that Israel's position was damaged by the intense military incursion into Palestinian areas over the past two weeks.
"Our entrance into the refugee camps created very difficult images, and it cannot be denied that they damaged Israel's position severely," Mr. Peres said. "It is our duty, just as the army learns lessons in the area of security, that the political echelons learn lessons in the diplomatic area."
--------
Israeli Troops Begin to Withdraw, Witnesses Say
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli troops pulled out of biblical Bethlehem and a neighboring village early Tuesday, witnesses said, edging Israel and the Palestinians closer to a cease-fire in the 18-month-old Mideast conflict.
The pullback came during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, winding up a tour of the region that concentrated on the U.S.-led campaign against world terrorism. Concerned that Palestinian-Israeli violence would disrupt the effort, Cheney called on both sides to end their conflict.
Cheney joined the efforts of U.S. mediator Anthony Zinni, and the two Americans held talks Monday afternoon with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Cheney called on both sides to end their conflict.
The effort follows one of the bloodiest periods in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis are increasingly impatient for an end to the carnage, while the Palestinians have been suffering very heavy casualties and economic losses.
Leaving Bethlehem, soldiers dismantled rooftop positions, made of sandbags. Armored personnel carriers and tanks then rumbled along the main roads of Bethlehem and Beit Jalla into Israeli-controlled territory.
However, Israeli troops remained in the village of El-Khader, next to Bethlehem, and enforced a curfew in the Aida refugee camp adjacent to the West Bank town, traditional birthplace of Jesus.
In violence Monday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an armed Palestinian near a crossing point between Gaza and Israel, the military said. Also, Palestinians fired two Qassam rockets into Israel from northern Gaza, the military said. Palestinians said Israel sent armored vehicles to search farms afterward.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers tracked down and arrested two Palestinians who had infiltrated into northern Israel, planning to carry out a terror attack, the military said.
In the most promising sign since Zinni arrived last week, Israeli and Palestinian security officials met three times in less than 24 hours.
``The meeting today was tough and serious, but positive,'' said Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank. ``The Israelis are committed to withdrawing from all (Palestinian-run) areas in the West Bank.''
Israeli forces have entered more than a half-dozen Palestinian towns and cities this month in a search for Palestinian militants. They have withdrawn from all the Palestinian population centers except Bethlehem and Beit Jalla, two adjacent West Bank towns just south of Jerusalem.
It was not clear whether Israeli troops would remain in a few Palestinian-run areas of the Gaza Strip -- a key road and some farmland -- which they also seized in recent months, and this was apparently not part of Monday's emerging deal.
An Israeli pullout would meet the most immediate Palestinian demand for reaching a cease-fire. However, any breakthrough could be swiftly undone by Palestinian attacks on Israelis, which could prompt Israeli retaliation.
Zinni, who has been shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, is trying to get the two sides to implement a cease-fire deal brokered last year by CIA chief George Tenet.
Both sides previously endorsed the plan, which calls on the Israelis to pull back troops to where they were before the fighting began in September 2000. The Palestinians must prevent attacks against Israel and -- in what may prove to be a huge undertaking -- collect weapons from militants.
Several previous cease-fire efforts have failed, and even if the two sides strike a deal there's no guarantee it will hold.
Many Palestinian militants say the only way they can win concessions from Israel is by fighting. And many Israelis believe Sharon should take an even tougher line and step up military operations against the Palestinians.
Both sides see Cheney's presence as an incentive to reach a truce deal.
Upon arriving, Cheney met Sharon and said he was seeking to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks with an aim to reaching a full-blown peace treaty based on U.N. resolutions. The vice president said both sides would have to take steps to end violence and improve the atmosphere for peace talks.
``We continue to call upon Chairman (Yasser) Arafat to live up to his commitment to renounce once and for all the use of violence as a political weapon and to observe a 100 percent effort to stamp out terrorists,'' Cheney said.
``In that same spirit, I will be talking to Prime Minister Sharon about the steps that Israel can take to alleviate the devastating economic hardships being experienced by innocent Palestinian men, women and children,'' he added.
Sharon compared the U.S. campaign against international terrorism to Israel's battle against Palestinian attackers.
The Palestinians reject this analogy, saying they are resisting 35 years of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the aim of establishing an independent Palestinian state.
Cheney has set aside time to meet with the Palestinian side, aides said, although no specific meetings have been scheduled. A meeting with Arafat was a possibility, a senior U.S. official said.
Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia said that unless Cheney meets with Arafat he would not be received by any other Palestinian official.
Also Monday, supporters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization vowed to keep up attacks.
At a rally in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, demonstrators chanted ``Death to Israel. Death to America,'' and ``No to surrender, yes to holy war.''
``Our fighters will terrorize our enemy everywhere by all means,'' one masked activist told the crowd of about 600. Since fighting erupted in September 2000, 1208 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 352 on the Israeli side.
-------- nato
NATO hopefuls petition in blocs
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020318-18980922.htm
Three Baltic and two Balkan nations have formed separate coalitions in hopes of improving their chances of winning invitations to join NATO at the alliance's Prague summit in November.
The Bush administration already has said that expanding NATO's "zone of stability and security through the Baltics and the Balkans" would be good for the alliance. But it says the applicants' individual merits will determine who gets in the exclusive club.
The three Baltic states - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - have been waging a joint effort to join NATO for more than a year. Now, following their example, Bulgaria and Romania have joined forces in a common bid.
They say the coalition, while informal, is "practical" and has received "vocal" support from Greece and Turkey - original NATO members that for the first time would have a land link to their NATO partners if the two were admitted.
"Bulgaria and Romania had a synchronized response to the attacks on September 11, and for the second time after the 1999 Kosovo crisis acted as de facto NATO members," Romania's ambassador to the United States, Sorin Ducaru, said in an interview.
"NATO's southern flank is very important as the front line in the war on terrorism, and the solidarity among Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece has generated a positive response," he said.
To demonstrate the significance of that solidarity, Mr. Ducaru welcomed the Greek and Turkish ambassadors in Washington to his residence 10 days ago for a dinner in honor of the new Bulgarian ambassador, Elena Poptodorova.
The foreign ministers of the four countries also meet regularly to discuss stability in the Balkans and better ways to cooperate on NATO and other regional matters.
While the Bush administration has encouraged cooperation among NATO applicants, a senior State Department official said in an interview that the final decision on the second wave of enlargement will be based on the individual countries' qualifications and not on the blocs' strategic locations.
"If you offered me alternatives, I'd choose the individual achievements of the candidates," the official said. "The judgment this time will be more factual" than during the first round in 1997, when the motives were more political.
Mr. Ducaru said Romania and Bulgaria "aren't neglecting the self-performance factor" and will use the remaining eight months before the Prague meeting to improve their economic and military performance.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic received invitations at the alliance's Madrid summit five years ago. The formerly communist states officially became members in 1999.
A former State Department official, who was deeply involved with the first wave of expansion, said the cooperation among the NATO candidates shows that they will be "good allies in a part of the world where they have been pitted against each other."
"If they can't get along, they will undercut their candidacy," Ron Asmus, deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the Clinton administration, said in an interview.
He noted that the joint efforts of the Baltic and Balkan applicants are also a sign that they have learned a lesson from the "beauty contest" in 1997, when the approach of many candidates was, "Let me tell you what's wrong with my neighbors."
A senior staff member of the House International Relations Committee said it made sense for the Baltics to apply together because of their similar levels of development since they gained independence from the Soviet Union more than a decade ago.
-------- pacific
Diplomat murdered as Solomon Islands slips further into anarchy
Monday March 18
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2lq0e.html
No one took much notice when two special constables were murdered in the Solomon Islands a week ago. Now a senior diplomat is dead and the South Pacific has a new crisis on its hands.
New Zealand's deputy high commissioner, Bridget Nichols, was stabbed to death Sunday by unidentified assailants and for reasons as yet unknown, Prime Minister Helen Clark confirmed.
'The Happy Isles', as they were once known, have endured a three-year civil war which officially ended last year. But there are alarming signs that the anarchy of the war years is back.
"The worsening state of lawlessness here is terrifying," a European expert told AFP last week.
"This place is being run by politicians for the benefit of criminals... It's going in the direction of Sierra Leone."
The Solomons is a patchwork nation of just 446,000 Melanesian people living on seven major and hundreds of minor islands with a combined land area of 28,530 square kilometres. Dozens of dissimilar languages and cultural differences have long been a source of often deadly tensions.
The situation is a tragedy for an otherwise beautiful country, rich in fish, gold, forestry and palm oil.
The people from Malaita are seen as the dominant group and the most warlike.
During World War II the Allies' battle for Guadalcanal's Japanese-built airstrip became the savage turning point of the conflict in the Pacific. The site grew into the town of Honiara, attracting Malaitans from across Iron Bottom Sound.
The Solomons won independence from Britain in 1978 but were to suffer from the spill-over of the Bougainville civil war in neighbouring Papua New Guinea. The end of that war in 1998 should have offered new hope for the Solomons, but coincided with the appearance of a rebel group which aimed to drive the Malaitans out of Guadalcanal.
At least 100 people were killed and 20,000 turned into refugees in the strife that followed. Hundreds more have died from disease, particularly malaria, as a result of the breakdown of services.
In 2000 a new militant group, the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF), seized the democratic government and turned Honiara into a Malaitan enclave. Last December democracy was restored with the election of Sir Allan Kemakeza, but he included key members of the MEF in cabinet.
Killings have recently increased. In the last month former Bougainvillean rebels, who appear to be mounting a take-over in the north of the country, killed two Malaitan special constables. A New Zealand worker was stabbed to death in Honiara and while his Malaitan killer is widely known, no arrests have been made. A leading provincial premier was last week robbed, and a Japanese ship was raided by pirates. A cabinet minister who disagreed with an article in a local newspaper sent armed thugs to demand 5,000 Solomon dollars (1,000 US) compensation from the editor -- a sum which he subsequently received.
Peace monitors from around the Pacific have lately pulled out of Guadalcanal villages while the island's southern or 'Weather Coast' is now a no-go zone controlled by a warlord, Harold Keke.
-------- pakistan
UPI hears ... Pakistan arms database
3/18/2002
Insider notes from United Press International for March 18 ...
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=18032002-123408-9305r
Charlton Heston, take note. Pakistan's government has decided to return licensed firearms, which were voluntarily turned in during an arms control campaign. The government also decided to compile a database of arms dealers and licensed weapons, to be operational by April 30. The campaign began in June 2001 and cost tens of millions of dollars. It netted 141,180 weapons and 848,000 rounds of ammunition gathered from four provinces and Islamabad Capital Territory. Among the haul were two missiles, three anti-aircraft guns, 18 anti-tank mines, 43 rocket launchers, 120 sticks of dynamite and 407 rocket launcher rounds. The government acknowledged that many people holding legal weapons turned them in because of fears of confiscation. The Inspector General of Police of the Northwest Frontier Provinces strongly backed the return of the weapons.
-------- philippines
Explosives Missing in Philippines
Search Linked to Indonesian Accused of Supplying Terrorists
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 18, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42652-2002Mar17?language=printer
MANILA -- Philippine authorities are searching for more than four tons of explosives -- twice the amount used in the Oklahoma City bombing -- that might have been bought by an Indonesian man identified as the key supplier of explosives for a multinational terrorist plot.
The search has raised concerns among investigators that the Philippines has become a major source of bomb material for use throughout Southeast Asia and that large quantities might have been moved to other countries.
"We are worried about it. We don't know where the missing explosives are," said a Philippine prosecutor who helped interrogate Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, the Indonesian, who was arrested here Jan. 15.
Al-Ghozi, 31, allegedly has admitted a role in a string of bombings that killed 22 people in Manila in December 2000. He led Philippine investigators to a cache of weapons and 2,200 pounds of explosives buried behind a mosque in the southern Philippine city of General Santos.
He told investigators he learned to handle explosives in a camp on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and prosecutors say he has admitted being part of a group stretching from the Philippines to Malaysia and Singapore that was acquiring explosives with plans to bomb U.S., British and Israeli embassies in Singapore.
Police intelligence agents suspect that al-Ghozi was part of other plans within the Philippines to bomb U.S. and possibly Israeli targets here, as well as a mall on the central Philippine island of Cebu, using trucks packed with explosives.
Prosecutor Geronimo L. Sy said the explosives were discovered to be missing when commercial suppliers were ordered to carry out inventories after al-Ghozi was arrested.
A company with Cebu offices that is licensed to supply contractors, mining companies and other commercial users with explosives cannot account for nearly 8,000 more pounds of its product, Sy said. Cebu is where al-Ghozi allegedly bought the explosives to which he led authorities.
It is unclear how much of that shortfall may have ended up in al-Ghozi's hands, said the source, who asked not to be named.
Al-Ghozi has acknowledged being part of Jemaah Islamiah, a Muslim group in Malaysia and Singapore. Authorities here say he has said he was sent by Jemaah Islamiah to the Philippines repeatedly over the last five years to develop local contacts and begin to procure explosives.
The cache seized in General Santos city was to be shipped through the Philippines' porous southern border and eventually to Singapore to carry out the attack there, according to authorities here.
"It's clear that al-Ghozi's role in the Philippines was the large-scale export, transportation and delivery of explosives to end users," said a second investigator. "In this case it was Singapore, and the plans were already hatched to bomb U.S. embassies there. But we don't know who all the end users are."
Al-Ghozi's relative willingness to tell investigators about the buried cache has led some to suspect that he is diverting attention from larger shipments he might already have made.
"He is certainly credible, because he has already led us to 1,000 kilograms [2,200 pounds] of explosives," said Sy, the prosecutor. "But it was surprising he told us so much. Is he trying to protect the location of other explosives, trying to throw us off the path?"
-------- spy agencies
CIA survey of Iraq airfields heralds attack
By Patrick Cockburn
18 March 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=275699
In the first concrete sign that the US is planning military action against Iraq despite objections from its allies, CIA officers have surveyed three key airfields in northern Iraq.
The airfields, situated in northern Iraq near the cities of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah in Kurdistan - the only part of Iraq not held by Saddam Hussein - could be used to receive arms and troops in the event of a conflict between the US and Iraq, an Iraqi source has told The Independent.
The US is pursuing its military strategy and, at the same time, trying to persuade Iraq to accept UN weapons inspectors back into the country, which could theoretically avert the need for a military campaign.
But America has made it clear that it is prepared to act alone, if necessary, against Saddam Hussein, even though the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has heard strong objections to its plans for a military campaign aimed at overthrowing President Saddam during the tour of Arab states that he is currently finishing.
The CIA visit, at the end of last month, will deeply worry Baghdad and has infuriated Iran and Syria. Both countries are concerned that an American attack on Iraq will endanger their own security.
President Saddam has shown in the last few weeks that he takes American threats to attack him very seriously by telling householders in Baghdad to stockpile food. Militia and paramilitary groups as well as the army have been put on high alert.
In addition, the regular Iraqi army has been issued with plentiful supplies of ammunition. Regular units, in contrast with the élite Republican Guard, are usually only given small supplies to ensure that they do not take part in a coup d'état against the government.
The largest of the airfields examined by the CIA is near Arbil, the biggest Kurdish city, about 20 miles from the Iraqi front line. "It has good modern runway about 1.6 miles [2.5 km] long, built for the Iraqi airforce in the 1980s," said a member of the Iraqi opposition, who did not want his name published.
The other airfields are at Bamarnii outside Dohuk in western Kurdistan, which was used by Gulf War allies in Operation Provide Comfort, launched to help the Kurds after they had been routed by President Saddam's army in 1991. A third airfield is in Sulaimaniyah province in eastern Kurdistan, not far from the Iranian border.
The Kurds, who have repeatedly risen against Iraqi governments in the past, have enjoyed de facto independence since the 1991 Gulf War. Protected by US and British aircraft, which maintain a no-fly zone over Kurdistan, they have tried in recent years to steer a neutral course between President Saddam and his enemies.
One scenario being pushed in Washington is for the US to try to repeat its success in Afghanistan by using its air power to support opposition forces. But the Kurdish forces number about 15,000 fighters and are no match for the 400,000 soldiers in the Iraqi army.
Late last year a high-level delegation from the US State Department visited Kurdistan. They were told by the two most important Kurdish leaders - Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Jalal al-Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - that the Kurds would not act against Saddam Hussein unless they were certain that the US was determined to overthrow him and had a plan to do so.
The CIA visit has seriously embarrassed the two leaders. "The news of the CIA visit has created a furore among the Kurds," said an Iraqi source yesterday. Mr al-Talabani has made a rushed visit to Damascus to reassure the Syrians that his party is not joining an attempt to topple President Saddam. Mr Barzani sent two senior members of the KDP politburo, Azad Barawi and Favel Mirani, to make the same point to Syria.
-------- un
UN's Annan urges rich countries to listen to poor
Story by Ivan Castro
REUTERS NICARAGUA:
March 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15055/story.htm
MANAGUA - Speaking in one of the western hemisphere's poorest nations last week, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed an upcoming global conference in Mexico as a chance to give poor countries a voice among world economic players.
"Poor countries must go prepared to fully participate," he said of the March 18-22 United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Mexico's northern industrial hub of Monterrey.
Some 50 heads of state, including U.S. President George W. Bush and representatives from 100 other countries, will gather in Monterrey to find ways to boost rich nations' funding of programs to help the poor.
Annan began a tour of Central America ahead of the conference, stopping first in Nicaragua, the second-poorest country in the Americas after Haiti. He spoke to a news conference after meeting privately with President Enrique Bolanos.
"The voices of the South should be heard," he said of the Mexico conference, where donor countries will be urged to double aid to poor nations in the next few years. The draft resolution for the Monterrey conference urges developed countries that have not done so to make "concrete efforts" toward sending 0.7 percent of Gross National Product (GNP) to developing countries.
But Annan said developing countries also must strengthen institutions to combat corruption.
The Bush administration has said it does not favor boosting aid until it can be verified it is being used more effectively. However, last week Bush announced he would offer an extra $5 billion in aid to poor nations that embrace economic and political reforms.
Annan and Bolanos discussed aid to Nicaragua, a nation ravaged by natural disaster and civil war where some 70 percent of 4.7 million citizens live in poverty. Annan is scheduled to travel to Costa Rica last week and then Honduras before arriving in Mexico on Tuesday.
-------- us
Military Works on Soldiers' Mentality
By Deb Riechmann
Associated Press Writer
Monday, March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43021-2002Mar18?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The USS Cole was operating under "Threatcon Bravo," one of the lowest terrorist threat conditions, when two suicide bombers in a small dingy rammed the destroyer in Yemen and blasted a hole in its side, killing 17 sailors.
The 40-by-40-foot gash left in the ship was an unsettling reminder that despite greater protection efforts, U.S. troops across the globe are at risk to terrorist attack.
Worries about the safety of soldiers are heightened by President Bush's decision to expand the war on terrorism. Sending military advisers and troops to the Philippines, Yemen and the former Soviet republic of Georgia means more time and money spent on protecting the military as it helps protect the world.
"We're sending people into harm's way, not quite in the same way as Afghanistan, but in harm's way, and that can make them targets for terrorists," said Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.
As the threat against U.S. interests has risen during the past two decades, the military has steadily stepped up safeguards. Force protection ranges from Kevlar helmets to missile defense, strategic intelligence and CIA penetration of terrorist groups.
Shatterproof glass is installed, concrete barriers encircle buildings. The Pentagon is trying out high-tech devices like ultraviolet radiation for neutralizing germ or chemical warfare agents in building ventilation systems and infrared devices that can detect and track people lurking in darkness outside military bases.
"The target doesn't always have to be the bases themselves," Goure said in an interview. "It's the guys coming into the airport, then traveling the 20 miles down the road to the base, who might get shot up."
When 19 American servicemen were killed by a truck bomb that exploded at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996, the military worked to better protect bases and other fixed installations. Local combat commanders, for instance, were given more authority for force protection. Troops in Saudi Arabia were relocated from the city to more desolate quarters in the desert dunes.
After the Cole attack in October 2000, the focus shifted to better protecting moving targets such as ships.
The commission investigating the attack called for more specific intelligence conveyed directly to ships. The active-duty military now must complete anti-terrorism training every year, not just within six months of being deployed overseas.
The Pentagon also changed the name of the Threatcon levels to force-protection conditions: Normal, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta - each with a list of progressive measures to be taken for protection. The change was made late last year to avoid confusion with the threat levels used to categorize terrorism threats for entire countries, not just specific troop locations.
For obvious reasons, soldiers in the field clam up when asked what they're doing to protect themselves against a terrorist attack.
Sgt. 1st Class Tim, who would not give his last name, helps set up equipment to detect a possible chemical, biological or radiation attack at a base in Uzbekistan where 1,000 soldiers have been stationed throughout the Afghan war. "Our job is to detect so we can warn," he told an Associated Press reporter who was visiting the base, which is surrounded by concrete barriers and barbed wire.
Sometimes staying home is the best way to minimize risk, said Charles Pena, senior defense analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. He opposes dispatching troops to the Philippines to help wipe out the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group, which has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.
"Abu Sayyaf guerrillas number fewer than 100," he said. "They were a separatist Islamic organization, but have really just become a kidnapping-for-money organization."
Last week, a team of U.S. military officers went to Yemen to lay plans for training a few thousand local troops on how to fight al-Qaida members who may be hiding there. The Pentagon also plans to send as many as 200 Americans to help train the military in the Georgia republic. Terrorists are believed to have taken refuge in the Pankisi Gorge near Georgia's border with Chechnya.
"Georgia could be dangerous," analyst Goure said. "If there are elements of the Russian intelligence service who don't particularly want us in Georgia, it would be a relatively easy thing to organize a terrorist attack against us."
Sometimes protecting the troops involves multiple threats with competing solutions.
While concentrating troops and equipment at a base might thwart some terrorist attacks, dispersing personnel might make them less vulnerable to a missile attacks or biological or chemical agents.
Local conditions also can hamper efforts to safeguard troops. Aviano, Italy, a major base for forces operating in Kosovo, is a good example, Goure said.
"You fly in right over parts of the city," he said. "If somebody wanted to put a Stinger (anti-aircraft missile) out a window, there's really nothing you can do about it. You can't clear the city."
There's also a danger of spending more time trying to keep troops safe than executing the mission, said Marcus Corbin, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information.
"The Americans in Kosovo really had a bunker mentality - not going outside the camp or not being allowed to go out without full combat gear on," Corbin said. "That sort of puts a barrier between them and the local civilians."
----
Smaller, bloodier battles foreseen for U.S. troops
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020318-9814170.htm
The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said U.S. troops face "even bloodier" conflicts than Operation Anaconda and likely will be engaged in "urban warfare" as they continue their pursuit of al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan.
"As the campaign is beginning to narrow down, we are fighting against pockets of terrorists. They are able to hide either in a cave or in an urban environment," said Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat. "And they are much more dangerous to our troops because they are largely anonymous until they strike."
Appearing yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," Mr. Graham said, "We are likely to be in a period in which we will have a number of situations like we have just gone through in Shah-e-Kot. They probably will be smaller in scale but could be even bloodier in terms of casualties."
The Shah-e-Kot valley in frigid eastern Afghanistan was the site of Operation Anaconda, a mission aimed at squeezing off and eliminating terrorists massed in the mountain area of Paktia province.
Eight Americans were killed in the operation, which involved the fiercest fighting since the United States began its war on terrorism in Afghanistan in early October.
Both Mr. Graham and Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said the U.S. military believes many terrorists are hiding out in Kabul and other major cities in Afghanistan, not in the kind of rugged terrain where Operation Anaconda was fought this month.
In cities, the chairman said, terrorists "can lose themselves anonymously in a crowd of civilians, and then, when U.S. personnel are nearby, take action, try to kill them, as they did kill a couple of our people about a month ago in such an urban setting," Mr. Graham said.
Asked about the prospects for urban guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan, Mr. Shelby, who also appeared on "Late Edition," said U.S. forces are "on top of this ... they know this war is not over with over there, although we're doing very well."
Mr. Graham said pitched battles are unlikely, saying Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror group and Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban militia might only have the capability to fight in "small settings."
These would be situations, he said, "where there might be 50 people in a marketplace," of which "three or four could be Taliban or al Qaeda people who are looking for Americans" and "would assault" them in the "hustle-bustle of the marketplace."
Both Mr. Shelby and Mr. Graham said they foresee more Operation Anaconda military operations in Afghanistan, echoing an opinion Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz offered in an interview Saturday on CNN's "Novak, Hunt & Shields."
Mr. Wolfowitz said it's "reasonable to expect that there will be more actions like Anaconda," although he said he cannot predict whether the operations will be as big.
"There are still significant numbers of terrorists. It's a huge country," he said.
But Operation Anaconda, Mr. Shelby said, is in the mop-up phase.
"We're hearing ... that there has been success there, but [American soldiers] haven't gotten everybody that they wanted," he said, adding that U.S. forces fear that al Qaeda terrorists will regroup from hiding.
The senators said they have confidence in U.S. Army figures confirming deaths of slightly more than 500 al Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas as well as estimates of 200-plus unconfirmed deaths.
However, the Associated Press reported yesterday that disagreement exists between U.S. Army officials and some Afghan commanders about how many al Qaeda and Taliban fighters escaped the battle area. The Americans think the number was small, but the Afghans believe otherwise.
The latter say only a few dozen bodies have been found more than two weeks after the start of Operation Anaconda, AP said.
In the CNN interview, the senators repeated that doubts persist about the whereabouts of bin Laden, the mastermind in the deadly September 11 attacks.
"There continues to be evidence that he is alive ... and the best evidence is that he's still in Afghanistan. But frankly no one will give you a house address as to where they think he might be," Mr. Graham said.
But Mr. Shelby yesterday disputed President Bush's statement last week that bin Laden has been "marginalized" as a result of the U.S. military success in Afghanistan, saying the Saudi-born fugitive has been "marginalized militarily ... but not politically."
"I don't believe Osama bin Laden has been marginalized politically ... because he is still ... a political force, someone that's looked up to by a lot of people in the Islamic world."
In another development yesterday, a spokesman for Afghanistan's defense minister accused Pakistan of harboring wanted Taliban leaders and al Qaeda terrorists in its border regions.
"When the Taliban fell, 95 percent of the movement went from Afghanistan to Pakistan," Saranwal Mir Jan told the Associated Press.
He said the interim Afghan government is "urgently" creating border patrols to stop what he described as back-and-forth movement of terrorists between the two countries.
"We know that Pakistan is helping the Taliban. That is why we need to protect our borders to stop their interference," he said.
----
US forces staying put in the Gulf
Monday March 18, 1:34 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020317/1/2lkxo.html
US Vice President Dick Cheney has found little or no support for extending the global fight against terror to Iraq, but he insisted that American forces were staying put in the Gulf Arab states.
"We have not made any plans to make any change in our military positions with respect to Saudi Arabia," Cheney told a press conference in Manama before flying on to Doha.
Qatar was cited by The New York Times on March 11 as a prime candidate to host US troops, especially since it is already the biggest depot of US pre-positioned armaments in the Gulf.
Riyadh's refusal to allow US warplanes to fly from the kingdom to bomb Afghanistan reportedly strained ties with Washington, prompting US media and congressmen to raise the possibility of a redeployment of the 5,000 troops stationed in the kingdom to other Gulf Arab states.
However, Cheney said there was no such plan in a region where US forces began to deploy in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and have remained to protect the Gulf's oil-rich monarchies and to contain Baghdad.
"I am not aware of any adjustments that we are planning nor did I discuss with the Saudis last night (Saturday) any modification of our overall force," he stressed.
The New York Times said that heightened security concerns since the September 11 attacks and restrictions imposed by the Saudi government had led US commanders to re-examine their presence in the kingdom and prepare "a sweeping contingency plan" to move out of Saudi Arabia.
Cheney arrived Sunday in Qatar, the eighth leg of a Middle East tour to rally support for the campaign against terror.
He flew in from neighbouring Manama where he held talks with King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa and Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa.
Cheney was due to meet Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
"Doha will express to Mr. Cheney its strong opposition to an American military strike against Iraq," said Qatari newspaper Al-Raya.
That is a message Cheney has also heard in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates as part of his swing through nine Arab states.
Saudi Arabia has dissociated itself from any US plan to overthrow the Baghdad regime, reportedly telling Cheney there is no question of using an air base in the kingdom to attack Iraq.
King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz made clear to Cheney during talks in Jeddah Saturday that the kingdom would not allow use of its soil to launch military strikes on Iraq "or any other Arab or Muslim state," the Saudi daily Al-Watan reported Sunday, citing "reliable Saudi sources."
But Cheney played down reports of a Saudi snub, saying there had been "a lot of uninformed speculation" about his talks in the region and describing his meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah as "one of the warmest sessions I've ever had in Saudi Arabia."
"It was a very good, very productive wide-ranging discussion," he told reporters in Manama.
"I think some people want to believe there is only one issue that I am concerned about or that somehow I am out here to organize a military venture with respect to Iraq. That's not true. The fact is that we are concerned about Iraq (but) that's one of many issues we are concerned about."
But while refusing to "speculate about prospective future operations," Cheney said a way had to be found to deal with the "threat" from Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
"The president has made it clear that we are concerned about nations such as Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said.
"We know the Iraqis have ... biological and chemical weapons. We also have reason to believe they are pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. That's of concern to the United States, we think it's of concern to the people all over the region, and we think it is important that we find a way to deal with this emerging threat," he said.
During his brief stay in Manama, the vice president inspected the US Fifth Fleet at the Bahraini naval base of Jufair, east of the capital, the US embassy said.
Cheney, who has already visited Jordan, Egypt and Oman, is due to go on to Kuwait, Israel and Turkey.
-------- yemen
SAS troops prepare for raids on Yemen
IAN BRUCE
March 18th, 2002
UK Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/18-3-19102-0-38-25.html
BRITAIN'S SAS is on standby to mount a series of surgical raids inside Yemen to wipe out al Qaeda terrorists believed to have found sanctuary among the mountain clans in the country's remote and lawless north.
Troopers from two of the unit's four operational "sabre squadrons" have been training for the mission in Afghanistan by carrying out dress rehearsals in terrain identical to that of the target area. The late deployment of SAS troopers to the 12-day battle around Shah-e-Kot in Afghanistan last week was due to the demands of that training schedule.
Despite the fact that between 200 and 400 US special forces commandos have been quietly flown into Yemen over the last few days, senior American commanders want to use the UK elite regiment's unrivalled expertise to eliminate the terrorists.
They also hope to defuse growing anti-American feeling among the fiercely independent sheikhs who control much of Yemen's northern Ma'arib highlands by minimising direct US involvement in the mission.
The Ma'arib tribal leaders have thousands of well-armed clan militiamen under their command, and have already repelled one attempt by Yemeni government troops to arrest two al Qaeda agents accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden harbour in October, 2000.
The military column was ambushed by tribal fighters, killing 18 soldiers and wounding dozens more. The suspects, Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal and Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, escaped during the gun battle and are still at liberty.
Yemen, the poorest country in Arabia, is a traditional hotbed of Islamic militancy. It is also Osama bin Laden's ancestral family home.
US warships have been monitoring traffic in the sea lanes off its coast since last October to prevent the entry of terrorists fleeing Afghanistan, and unmanned spy drones keep the country under constant surveillance.
The SAS fought an undeclared war against insurgents there during the 1960s, and gained more experience of the area through its subsequent involvement in repelling Yemeni guerrilla fighters who tried to destabilise neighbouring Oman in the seventies.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president, has warned the northern sheikhs not to oppose moves against Islamic terrorists, but lacks the military muscle to impose his will on them by force.
Dick Cheney, the US vice- president, paid a whistlestop visit to the country last week to pave the way for American-led anti-terrorist operations in the hinterland, and to push for effective co-operation with FBI agents investigating the USS Cole bombing.
President Bush has spoken of Yemen as "the next Afghanistan" and US intelligence agencies suspect it is fast becoming the region's number one hideout for al Qaeda fugitives.
-------- propaganda wars
UPI hears ... New Zealand and Bush
3/18/2002
Insider notes from United Press International for March 18 ...
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=18032002-123408-9305r
While the Bush administration is obsessed with keeping American secrets, it seems to have a more cavalier attitude toward those of its allies. New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark has acknowledged that members of the country's SAS forces are in Afghanistan after the information was posted on the White House Web site commemorating the 6-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Clark had previously said only that New Zealand had proffered aid to the United States in its war against terrorism. The Green Party and ACT Party have criticized Clark for keeping Kiwis in the dark. The White House hailed New Zealand's assistance and detailed its contributions, including posting officials at U.S. CENTCOM headquarters, providing C-130s for air lifts, fifteen officers to help peacekeeping forces, and SAS forces, who "recovered valuable equipment and forwarded it for exploitation." Clark can protest when she visits Washington next week, but if she makes too much fuss, the White House might recall her leading role in New Zealand's anti-nuclear policies in the 1980s, which got her predecessors barred from the Oval Office.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Officers in FBI Probe Cleared by Department
NATION IN BRIEF
Monday, March 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42626-2002Mar17?language=printer
MIAMI -- Fourteen police officers facing federal corruption charges were investigated by their department for at least 293 allegations of misconduct, the Miami Herald reported.
The police department's internal investigations cleared the officers of all the accusations, which included witness reports or physical evidence of pistol whippings, broken noses and, in one case, rape, the newspaper said.
Critics say the department ignored the allegations to protect officers who have been with the force for the past 20 years. But Police Chief Raul Martinez defended his department and said that although it may have done a "lousy job disciplining these cases," there was no evidence of protection.
Lawyers for the officers say the allegations by police suspects are false.
"They are aggressive," said Richard Sharpstein, who represents officers Arturo Beguiristain and Jorge Castello. "That doesn't upset the citizenry, but it upsets the criminals, and they make bogus allegations."
In September, 14 members of special Miami police squads were charged in an FBI investigation into guns planted at crime scenes and lies to cover up wrongful police actions in four questionable shootings.
At least three people died in the shootings in the late 1990s. In one, a SWAT team fired 123 bullets into an apartment, then lied about finding a gun in a dead man's hand, the FBI said. Two unarmed robbers were shot in the back while fleeing, and a homeless man was shot in the leg.
Two officers pleaded guilty in the charges and will testify against their colleagues.
----
Report Questions Handling of Miami Police Complaints
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/national/18MIAM.html
MIAMI - Fourteen Miami police officers facing federal corruption charges were investigated and cleared of at least 293 accusations of misconduct by their own department, a newspaper investigation has found.
The Miami Police Department's internal investigations cleared the officers of accusations that included witness reports or physical evidence of pistol whippings, broken noses, and in one case, rape, The Miami Herald reported today.
Critics say the department ignored the accusations to protect officers who have been with the force for the past 20 years.
"A small clique of police officers came into the department in the early 1980's, a small criminal element sneaked through, and some of them have risen high enough so they can protect each other," said H. T. Smith, a lawyer who has sued the department in other cases.
Chief Raúl Martinez defended his department and said that while it might have done a "lousy job disciplining these cases," there was no evidence of protection.
Lawyers for the officers say the accusations, made by suspects, are false.
"They are aggressive," said Richard Sharpstein, who represents officers Arturo Beguiristain and Jorge Castello. "That doesn't upset the citizenry, but it upsets the criminals, and they make bogus allegations."
In September 2001, the 14 officers were charged after an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into misdeeds that, the authorities said, included guns being planted at crime scenes and lies to cover up wrongful police actions in four questionable shootings.
At least three people died in the shootings, in the 1990's. In one, a SWAT team fired 123 bullets into an apartment, then lied about finding a gun in a dead man's hand, the F.B.I. said. In another, two unarmed robbers were shot in the back while fleeing, and a homeless man was shot in the leg.
Two officers have pleaded guilty in the charges and will testify against their colleagues.
-------
Airport terminal reopens after bomb scare
Around the Nation
March 18, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020318-91332741.htm
LOS ANGELES - A terminal at Los Angeles International Airport was reopened yesterday about two hours after authorities discovered an abandoned piece of luggage and cleared passengers from the surrounding area, police said.
Some flights departing from Terminal 1, which primarily serves Southwest Airlines, were delayed as a police bomb squad inspected the bag, which proved to be harmless, officials said.
The evacuation occurred just after 1 p.m. PST, the airport's police department said.
----
Hit by inmate, X-ray guards reassigned
March 18, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020318-12325594.htm
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Two guards at Camp X-ray, the detention center holding 300 al Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas, were transferred after an inmate struck one of them, military officials said yesterday.
Two male soldiers at the field hospital were reassigned after a detainee hit one of them while being escorted to the bathroom, said Pat Alford, commander for the fleet hospital. The guards usually travel in pairs.
The detainee, who was being treated for bone loss in his forearm, was sedated for one night after the disruption.
Earlier yesterday, Capt. Al Shimkus, commanding officer of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, said the soldiers were reassigned after "breaking the rules." But "the initial report provided by a military official was incorrect," spokeswoman Maj. Rumi Nielson-Green said.
The two men were reassigned to Camp X-ray and could eventually return to the fleet hospital.
Since the first captives arrived at this remote outpost in January, some have spat on or yelled at the guards. One inmate bit a soldier.
A hunger strike that began on Feb. 27 but has since fizzled apparently was prompted by a guard who stripped an inmate of a towel he put on his head for morning Islamic prayers.
Detainees later said the strike was also to protest their indefinite detention.
On Saturday, five detainees skipped dinner, 12 skipped lunch and seven skipped breakfast.
Military officials also said yesterday that two other male soldiers at the hospital were reassigned after requesting a transfer.
The two men were moved to administrative duties shortly after the first batch of inmates arrived in January, said Marine Maj. Stephen Cox, a spokesman for the detention mission.
The two men "simply were uncomfortable in that environment," Maj. Cox said.
The captives, accused of having links to either the fallen Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, are expected to be moved from the hastily built Camp X-ray to Delta Camp by next month.
Delta Camp will be equipped with toilets, beds and ventilation and eventually could be expanded to hold more than 2,000 detainees.
----
Tom Ridge's Rainbow
EDITORIAL
March 18, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020318-12861689.htm
Security alerts have come a long way since Paul Revere's ride. Or have they? When Homeland Security Director "Rainbow Tom" Ridge explained his new color coding system, he only added to the considerable confusion surrounding the on-again, off-again alerts we have been advised of since last September. And he raised more questions than he answered.
Many times since last September, President Bush has told us that homeland security is a huge concern, and appointing Mr. Ridge showed his commitment. But for all the good intentions, very little progress is evident. It's time to ask a few questions about how things are being done. Take airport security. When Congress acted last fall, it promised improved baggage and passenger screening, at the price of federalizing the workforce. We were assured that federalization was needed to ensure that better-trained people were on the job. Now that the workforce is being converted to the federal dollar, the same people are doing the same work, but are getting paid more. Are these people being properly trained, and to what standards? Mr. Ridge should find out, and tell us what's going on. The same concerns apply to port security. Millions of tons of cargo come into the United States every year, and much of it is containerized - sealed in the huge boxes that go directly from a ship onto an 18-wheeler - and driven off to Anywhere, USA. What are the Coast Guard and the Customs Service really doing to deal with this enormous hole in our security blanket?
The saddest fact is that Ridge's Rainbow won't improve the lot of the police, fire and emergency service personnel who are supposed to respond to any terrorist attack. Right now, those people are being given exactly zero information about what threats they have to deal with. Alerts are fine, but they're meaningless without information explaining what is going on. Mr. Ridge should forget about colors and concentrate on information.
The foundation for any homeland security plan must be a secure, reliable pipeline of information. There's no use in telling a police chief that there's a terrorist threat to his city without telling him what kind of threat. How can an emergency services director do anything in response to an alert when he doesn't know if he may have to deal with an explosion at a power plant or an anthrax attack at an office building? Mr. Ridge should be making the alerts more useful, not more colorful. The only way he can do that is to break the logjam among the FBI, CIA, FEMA and the rest of the federal alphabet soup, and get essential information distributed in time to those who will risk their lives for us. When any alert is issued, state and local authorities should get specific and timely tactical threat information. Mr. Ridge should also connect the states to the communications net, and help coordinate the federal, state and local plans and resources that will be devoted to each problem.
-------- terrorism
FBI Says al - Qaida Operating in Asia
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Asia-FBI.html
MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- Al-Qaida activists are operating in Asia, FBI director Robert Mueller said Monday, and Washington has evidence that members of Osama bin Laden's organization have tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
Wrapping up a six-nation Southeast Asian tour, Mueller said he received firm regional support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism amid concerns that al-Qaida operatives fleeing Afghanistan may try to gain a foothold in the area.
``Without question or doubt, we believe al-Qaida operatives are in this area,'' said Mueller. ``We're working to put together all the pieces of the puzzle so we can have a fuller portrait of al-Qaida in the region.''
Mueller also said the United States has ample evidence that al-Qaida has tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the past. He did not elaborate, but asked nations around the world to be ``on alert'' for any future al-Qaida attempts to acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Also Monday, Mueller held talks with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Over 600 U.S. troops are in the southern Philippines training local soldiers to better fight Abu Sayyaf -- a Muslim militant group that has been linked to al-Qaida.
The Philippines, a predominantly Roman Catholic nation with a large Muslim minority, is waging a war on a remote southern island against Abu Sayyaf, which is holding hostage American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham and Filipina nurse Ediborah Yap.
Officials in the Philippines also believe that a second militant group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, has received support from bin Laden and his associates since the early 1990s.
Mueller arrived in the Philippines on Sunday after visiting New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in a weeklong tour.
Police in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines have arrested dozens of suspects in a crackdown on suspected Muslim extremists since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. Officials say some of the men belong to a radical Muslim group called Jemaah Islamiyah, which Singapore says planned to blow up the U.S. Embassy there. Others knew at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Mueller said his trip was also meant to get to know personally senior law enforcement officers in the area.
``It is the personal relationships that enable you to work closely together in law enforcement,'' he told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Manila. ``In the wake of Sept. 11, we all understand there is no agency and no country that can address terrorism alone.''
Last week, U.S. officials said Washington would post a justice official in Asia to help prosecutors dealing with international criminals, especially those linked to terrorist groups.
Most of the Asian countries Mueller visited have significant Muslim populations, including Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation in the world.
In a brief speech before departing for the United States, Mueller said U.S. efforts are aimed at terrorists and not Islam.
``Since Sept. 11, we have had more than 325 investigations against those who would assault or harass our Muslim Americans,'' he said. ``The war on terror is a war against individuals and not against communities or religions.''
----
Pakistan Bombing Prompts Wide Warning
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Terrorist-Warning.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department has warned that additional terrorist attacks against U.S. interests may be imminent.
And in a parallel warning to Americans not to travel in Yemen, the department said it has ``credible evidence'' that terrorists associated with the al-Qaida network have planned attacks there.
Sunday's deadly attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad, Pakistan, ``underlines the growing possibility that as security is increased at official U.S. facilities, terrorists and their sympathizers will seek softer targets,'' according to a department release.
Such targets may include restaurants, schools, clubs and other places where Americans congregate, said the department, which recommended people avoid those areas outside the United States or be more careful when visiting them.
The department cited credible reports of possible attacks, but said it had no information on targets, timing or how the attacks may be carried out. It warned that terrorist activities may include suicide attacks and kidnapping.
``We remind American citizens to remain vigilant with regard to their personal security and to exercise caution,'' the release said.
Five people were killed, including a U.S. Embassy employee and her teen-age daughter, and 45 people injured in the church attack in Islamabad. President Bush condemned the attack and pledged to bring those responsible to justice.
On Yemen, the State Department said it anticipates threats against Americans in the country alongside the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea will continue.
Last week, a hand grenade was lobbed into the grounds of the U.S. embassy in San'a without causing serious damage or injuring anyone.
The travel warning issued on Monday said the embassy's security has been improved and that U.S. employees whose jobs are not essential and adult dependents no longer were being advised to depart.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Letter to President Bush
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002
From: Molly Johnson <mollypj@yahoo.com>
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20015
Dear Mr. President:
We are deeply disappointed in your response to Energy Secretary Abraham's Yucca Mountain recommendation -- less than 20 hours to review twenty years of research, complex treaty issues, and the impacts of HLW transportation on tens of millions of Americans. Furthermore, implementing a nuclear weapons test at the Nevada Test Site and recommending Yucca Mt. both on Valentine's Day was a stunning insult to residents of that region, who are already suffering the tragic effects of fifty years of radiation exposure. Apparently they are still, as described by the AEC in 1951, "a low-use segment of society." Over the last three days, February 16-18, 2002, twenty-four members of tribal and community organizations on both ends of the nuclear fuel chain met to discuss a public policy on HLW. The following outlines our preliminary conclusions.
Take Back America's Future- Stop All Production of HLW. After fifty years of the best scientific research in the world, there is no solution to HLW in sight. Moving some HLW to contaminate a new site will not eliminate the problem. Nuclear reactors and their pools are just as dangerous as the waste they generate, both as daily threats to public health and as terrorist targets. Humans have recorded their history for only 600 generations. Each reactor produces electricity for a couple of generations, and HLW that threatens the next 1200 generations. Surely American ingenuity can do better than that. The health and safety of our families and generations to come is our right- it supersedes state and tribal borders, politics, and corporate profits--and it is not negotiable.
Accidents & Security: 74% of Incidents at Nuclear Reactors Have Involved Human Error. Reactors are the only form of energy production that requires an evacuation plan. The events of September 11th and more recent threats make it clear that we need new Risk Assessments for all nuclear facilities in the United States. Revised evaluations must include human error and earthquakes as well as terrorism, and plan for on-site MRS storage and conversion to renewable forms of energy production.
Federal HLW Storage Proposals Based on Racism Are Illegal Both sites being studied for HLW storage, Yucca Mountain and the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, are on indigenous lands. This obvious violation of environmental justice continues the culture of genocide on which the United States was founded. For the next 10,000 years, let's set policies that foster respect for all Americans an transcend the nation's racist beginnings.
Reduce Dangers To The Public By Eliminating Transportation For 100-150 Years. There is no recognized safe way to store or transport HLW materials anywhere in the world. Obviously, HLW going zero miles per hour is less dangerous than waste going 60-90 mph. We all concur, including those living in reactor communities, that in most instances, transportation of HLW poses a much greater danger to the public than responsible on-site storage. By leaving irradiated fuel as close to point of generation as possible for at least 100-150 years, the nature of the hazard decreases exponentially. Much of the danger to public health through repetitive doses along transportation routes or severe doses due to traffic accidents would be avoided.
Criteria for Responsible HLW On-Site Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) The Nuclear Waste Fund can easily pay for MRS, and is projected to have approximately $35 billion in the future. As reactors are shut down, the containment vessels can be modified to hold MRS casks, safely isolating them from the environment. Currently there is only minimal external cask monitoring. Casks must be monitored internally for radiation levels, pressure, and temperature. Only by knowing the condition and deterioration of the fuel rods, will technicians know how to safely re-open the casks in the future. Assured storage, including above or in-ground monitored leachate collection systems, should be used. Other protective measures could include earthen berms around outdoor casks, and underground storage or bunkers, similar to nuclear weapons storage facilities.
Public Oversight of HLW is Mandatory at Every Level It is clear after twenty years of industry-biased research by the Dept. of Energy that a new credible approach is needed. European models of HLW storage and public involvement in the decision-making process are available for your administration to review. Local Oversight and Safety Committees should be in place for each facility and include community members. We recommend that your administration create a public non-profit corporation to study the problem of high level waste disposal. It would include members of the industry, the public, and independent scientists. This approach would get away from the culture of fear and nuclear denial, and would foster new ideas.
Renewable Energy Production: A Windmill On Every High Tension Tower Could Supply America The twenty percent of our nation's electricity provided by nuclear reactors could be readily replaced by conservation, efficiency, and renewable sources of electricity such as wind and solar power. Rebates and financial incentives for efficiency and conservation should be encouraged. Additional jobs should be created through the implementation of efficiency standards and conservation programs, further reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and deadly nuclear fuel.
For example, the electricity generated by Diablo Canyon nuclear facility on the seismically active coast of Southern California could be readily replaced by 500 large wind turbines located on the 1200 acre site and/or off shore. What's the worst thing that could happen at a wind farm? This shift would provide for a just transition of workers from the nuclear field to the healthier field of renewable energy production, utilizing comparable job skills and minimizing retraining. The "Solar Mortgage" plan of California's Green Party can be implemented everywhere. By including costs in mortgage payments for solar systems in new family housing developments, renewable energy can be mainstreamed and made practical and affordable for all.
We hope that you will seriously consider our concerns and recommendations.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Viereck, HOME
Molly Johnson, SLO CO Grandmothers for Peace
MargeneBullcreek, Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness
Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Information & Resource Service
John Hadder, Citizen Alert
Philip M. Klasky, Ward Young, Rachel Johnson, Claire Feder, Ernie
Goitein, and Catherine Powell, BAN Waste Coalition
Coila Ash, New Mexico Toxics Coalition
Susi Snyder, Shundahai Network
Russell and Sharon Hoffman
Bradley Angel, GreenAction
Klaus Schumann, SLO Green Party
John Stevens, San Bernardino Green Party
Bob Brister, Green Party of Utah
----
Biodiesel to Fuel Buffalo Buses
ALBANY, New York,
March 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-18-09.html
The Buffalo Niagara region of western New York state is about to be fueled with biodisel to supplement the conventional diesel fuel for bus transport and home heating. The state of New York is awarding nearly $400,000 to a company and a transportation agency to introduce biodiesel fuel in the region.
Speaking at the Renewable Diesel Workshop 2002 today in Albany, William Flynn, president of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced a $320,000 award to the NOCO Energy Corporation in Tonawanda, New York for two projects to develop and use biodiesel fuel in the transportation sector.
A separate award of $62,000 to the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) will help offset added costs for NOCO biodiesel fuel as compared to conventional diesel fuel for 140 of the 330 NFTA buses for at least a year.
Biodiesel is a renewable, biodegradable fuel that can substitute for petroleum diesel or be blended with it. Biodiesel is made by chemically combining any of several natural oil or fat feedstocks with an alcohol such as ethanol or methanol. Vegetable oils that can be used include soybean oil, corn oil, peanut oil, cottonseed oil, and canola oil, as well as animal fat byproducts such as lard, tallow and used restaurant cooking oil.
With $150,000 from NYSERDA, NOCO will make infrastructure improvements to blend, market and sell biodiesel in the Buffalo Niagara area. NOCO will use the fuel in its fleet of trucks and also provide biodiesel to the Town of Tonawanda for its truck fleet.
"Governor Pataki has placed a great emphasis on improving our energy security by reducing New York State's dependence on imported petroleum as well as using cleaner energy technologies to improve air quality," Flynn said. "Biodiesel blends can help us achieve those goals by stretching existing petroleum supplies while reducing harmful emissions."
"If they gain commercial acceptance," Flynn said, "biodiesel products may also help to stabilize prices for petroleum products, which have spiked in recent years causing economic hardships on residential and commercial petroleum customers alike."
NYSERDA will provide $170,000 to NOCO through its research and development program to evaluate the use of bio-heating fuels in boilers and furnaces. The goal is to identify affordable domestic fuels that can be derived from cooking oils, soaps, or other consumer items that can be blended with Number 2 and Number 6 oils, which are used in home and commercial heating systems. The expectation is that the bio-blended heating fuels will reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions.
NOCO president James Newman said, "As a New York State based, family owned energy company, the biodiesel project creates a unique opportunity for us to diversify our energy products and services while enhancing our commitment to protecting our environment and dependence on oil.
Funding for this effort comes from federal grants provided through the New York State Clean Cities Challenge, which attempts to reduce transportation related emissions by encouraging the use of alternative fuels and vehicles.
-----
Dept. of Energy Awards Biomass and Methane Contracts
WASHINGTON, DC,
March 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-18-09.html
Five energy service companies have been selected to use biomass and alternative methane energy sources to reduce energy use, manage utility costs and promote renewable energy at federal facilities, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced Friday.
Biomass includes dedicated energy crops and trees, agricultural crop residues, aquatic plants, wood and wood residues, animal wastes and other organic waste materials. Alternative methane is generated in landfills, wastewater treatment plants and coalbeds.
"In his National Energy Plan President [George W.] Bush directed the federal government, the nation's largest energy consumer, to lead by example," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said. "The contracts the Department of Energy is awarding today encourage innovative, biobased energy technologies to reduce federal energy consumption, without cost to the American taxpayers.
"Our goal is to make bioenergy cost competitive with traditional energy sources," he said.
The energy service companies selected for the Energy Savings Performance Contract program for biomass and alternative methane include two companies from Baltimore, Maryland - Trigen Development Corporation, and Constellation Energy Source. The other three companies are DTE Biomass Energy Inc. of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Energy Systems Group of Evansville, Indiana; and Systems Engineering and Management Corporation, Knoxville, Tennessee.
Working with DOE's Federal Energy Management Program, these companies will develop, finance and implement projects that guarantee energy related cost savings at federal facilities using biomass and alternative methane fuels. In return, the companies receive fixed payments derived from the energy cost savings achieved.
Since the capital investment comes from the private sector, the projects do not require government funding. The projects performed under these contracts can be situated at any U.S. federal site throughout the world.
The total value of these contracts is estimated to be up to $200 million, with energy related cost savings in excess of that amount.
FEMP has issued three other Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC) intended to help federal facilities adopt specific emerging technologies that are market ready but not yet widely used.
The other ESPCs focus on solar thermal concentrating systems, high temperature solar devices that generate electricity or provide heat used in boilers and laundries, photovoltaic solar arrays, and geothermal heat pumps.
For more information on the four types of ESPC, log on to: http://www.eren.doe.gov/femp/financing/espc/biomass.html
----
Big players to spark wind power consolidation
Story by Birgitte Dyrekilde
REUTERS DENMARK:
March 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15044/story.htm
COPENHAGEN - Major industrial groups are likely to diversify into the wind power industry, prompting a consolidation in the fledgling sector, analysts said.
The arrival of the industrial giants will add lobbying power and political support for the wind market, forecast by the European Wind Energy Association to be worth 80 billion euros ($71 billion) by 2020, up from seven billion today.
While wind energy accounts for less than one percent of global energy production, it is becoming increasingly popular, as governments aim to curb greenhouse gas emissions to comply with targets in the Kyoto climate protocol.
Demand for larger turbines and large-scale wind farms which are more efficient and comparable in cost to larger-size power generation alternatives, are leading to consolidation of the turbine manufacturing industry as the new demands require strong balance sheets.
In February, GE Power Systems said it would buy U.S. wind turbine business of Enron Wind, a unit of bankrupt energy trader Enron, for reportedly $250 million.
"There remains a high likelihood of other industrial conglomerates entering the market for wind turbine makers, following GE," said Analyst Axel Funhoff at Bear Stearns & Co. "They don't want to miss the bus."
The only profitable way to enter the wind turbine manufacturing market was through acquisitions, Funhoff said.
Also, energy companies and utilities interest in wind energy adds to increased political awareness.
Several large utilities and oil groups, including BP, ChevronTexaco, FPL Energy, Shell, American Electric Power, Entergy and Powergen, have bought wind farms or announced plans for them this year.
"The string of announcements by major energy corporations is rapidly changing the face of wind energy business," the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said in a statement.
"Coming on the heels of of the industry's most succesful year, in the U.S. and worldwide, it signals that wind energy is moving into the big leagues," AWEA executive director Randall Swisher said.
The wind power industry, most visible in Germany, Spain, Denmark and the United States, saw wind turbine installations of 6,500 megawatts last year, 45 percent more than in 2000, bringing total global capacity to 24,000 megawatts.
CONSOLIDATION LOOMS
"The smaller wind turbine makers will disappear from the market," said Dieter Kestner, CEO of turbine maker Nordex, who sees only three or four major players left in five years.
With a global market share of 24 percent, Vestas is the biggest turbine maker in the world, followed by Spain's Gamesa Eolica, German privately-owned Enercon, Danish NEG Micon, Denmark's Bonus, and Germany's Nordex.
Vestas has so far said it sees no need to grow by acquisition in a market expanding 25-30 percent a year.
Bonus CEO Palle Noergaard says GE's entry will make waves.
"GE has been strolling through the industry for a long time looking for a partner, and I believe they'll buy more companies," he said.
Energy companies and utility groups are likely to go for wind power development while manufacturers like Swiss-Swedish ABB and German Siemens are likely to join the lucrative business of making wind turbines.
Analysts say privately owned Bonus and Enercon are the most obvious acquisition targets, as either a takeover or a listing could be the way to obtain additional capital for expansion.
Spain's Gamesa announced plans to spin off its aerospace interests to focus on wind power activities, which includes wind farm development and wind turbine manufacturing.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Engelsmann).
----
Vestas to build US wind turbine plant
REUTERS
March 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15046/story.htmDENMARK
COPENHAGEN - Denmark's Vestas said it would soon build a wind turbine manufacturing plant in the United States as substantial orders from that market were expected.
"With our sales expectations for the U.S. market this year and the next, we plan to establish production capacity over there within a short period of time," Chief Executive Johannes Poulsen told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference last week.
He said final approval of concrete plans were pending.
Vestas said it had earmarked 1.8 billion-1.9 billion crowns ($220 million) for investments in 2002. "A significant part will be spent in the U.S."
Poulsen said he expected to get the first significant orders from the U.S. soon, after the U.S. Senate on March 9 approved a two-year extension of a production tax credit (PTC), which is an important factor in financing new wind power installations.
Vestas upgraded its sales forecasts for 2002 and 2003, notably due to a favourable outlook for wind power installations in the U.S., to 14 billion and 16 billion crowns, respectively, from 10.5 and 14 billion crowns.
-------- environment
Researchers Explore Capture, Storage of Carbon Dioxide
March 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-18-09.html
WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced research grants to three universities that will study different techniques for reducing the threat of global warming by collecting and storing the most abundant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). The technique is called carbon sequestration.
Carbon sequestration is already one of the fastest growing research areas in the Energy Department.
Under these grants, the University of Texas will evaluate a solvent that captures more carbon dioxide while using less energy than other chemical treatments. Researchers is the University's Department of Chemical Engineering will develop an alternative solvent that captures more carbon dioxide while using 25 to 50 percent less energy than conventional methods. Using less energy allows coal plants to produce more electricity while capturing and storing CO2.
The University of Massachusetts will test a method for deep ocean carbon dioxide sequestration by blending liquid carbon dioxide, water, and finely ground limestone into an emulsion that could be pumped into the ocean for long term storage.
Because this emulsion would weigh more than seawater, it would sink to the deep ocean. This would make it possible to sequester CO2 at shallower depths than current directed injection techniques.
The University of Kentucky proposes to displace natural gas from underground shales, which serve as both a source and a trap for natural gas, and use these rocks to store carbon dioxide. This project will analyze CO2 adsorption along with natural gas production, and determine which shales offer the best sequestration potential. At the end of the project, data will be available through publications and on the Internet.
----
[To reply, mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
EPA Will Ease Coal Plant Rules
Incentives to Replace Pollution Lawsuits
By Eric Pianin and Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42310-2002Mar17?language=printer
The Environmental Protection Agency will begin announcing in the next several weeks rule changes aimed at discouraging new government lawsuits against operators of aging coal-fired power plants in favor of incentives for voluntary reductions in toxic emissions, according to EPA officials.
After nearly a year of intense internal debate, the Bush administration has decided to formally alter a clean-air enforcement initiative begun under President Bill Clinton in 1999 that spawned dozens of lawsuits against some of the nation's worst polluting power plants, agency and White House officials said.
Currently, older power plants that expand or significantly modify their operations can be sued for violating the Clean Air Act unless they agree to install costly anti-pollution equipment.
The new rules would seek reduced emissions without threatening legal action in most cases. Instead, the administration wants to encourage the plants to take voluntary steps to reduce emissions, and is seeking legislation to force cuts in pollution at plants that don't voluntarily cooperate, said sources familiar with the administration's plans.
The changes could go a long way to resolving the concerns of major energy companies, which argued that the Clinton approach was overly litigious and economically burdensome. Some of the country's biggest energy companies, including Atlanta-based Southern Co., have poured millions of dollars into Republican political campaigns and launched a major lobbying effort to stop the costly lawsuits.
But the policy shift will almost certainly anger environmentalists and officials of several northeastern states concerned about airborne pollution from the aging plants. The shift would also leave in limbo dozens of lawsuits brought by the Clinton Justice Department under the Clean Air Act. White House and Justice Department officials say they will continue to pursue the lawsuits filed in 1999 but clearly indicated a lack of enthusiasm.
"The [earlier] enforcement actions have created a realm of ambiguity that makes it difficult for these folks in the utility industry to make decisions on long-term capital investments," a senior White House official said.
Environmental activists said the Bush administration posture is discouraging settlements that could result in stepped-up efforts to limit toxic emissions. Already, they noted, two major utilities were on the verge of agreements to pay fines and install costly anti-pollution equipment before the regulatory ground began to shift in the Bush administration.
"We need some serious muscle out of EPA to settle these cases," said Jane Kochersperger, field coordinator for Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group. "We're looking at roughly 30,000 premature deaths per year related to old coal-fired power plants."
On environmental and energy matters, the public has focused largely on Enron Corp.'s collapse, proposed arctic oil drilling and Vice President Cheney's energy task force. But the stakes, in many respects, are higher on the question of how the Bush administration interprets the Clean Air Act.
A strict interpretation could cost utilities tens of billions of dollars to repair aging plants. Utility executives say that could ruin their companies. But health and environmental groups say pollution from the plants, if unchecked, could raise asthma and lung cancer death rates across the country.
The issue also has enormous political implications. Bush campaigned on a pledge to boost coal production as one way to address long-term energy needs, and took office indebted to the electoral votes of three major coal-producing swing states -- Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia -- that could suffer economically from tough emission rules.
Instead of litigation, Bush is promoting a clean air initiative, dubbed "Clear Skies," that mandates public and private efforts to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by more than two-thirds of current levels, according to the administration. However, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) said the plan doesn't go far enough and is promoting a more aggressive proposal that includes reductions in carbon emissions.
Administration officials say they are trying to balance the need to protect both the environment and the economy. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor who once backed the lawsuits against power plants, recently told a congressional committee: "We are not making the kinds of advances we need to make" by suing utilities.
Energy giants, including Southern Co., have poured millions of dollars into Republican political campaigns and a massive lobbying effort to stop the costly lawsuits filed during Clinton's term. The chief lobbyist for a group of utilities is former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour. Southern Co., a principal member of this group, contributed $540,000 to GOP organizations during the 2000 election.
Thomas R. Kuhn, president of Edison Electric Institute, the utilities' trade association, was a college classmate of Bush's and helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the president's 2000 election. Kuhn attended three of the eight meetings that Deputy Energy Secretary Francis S. Blake held with outside groups to discuss how the administration would proceed on enforcement, according to a department document.
Meanwhile, environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Sierra Club and National Environmental Trust have waged a media campaign to discredit the administration's planned policy shift.
The controversy dates to the enactment of the 1977 Clean Air Act. The bill exempted dozens of coal-fired plants and refineries from tough new pollution controls, but made clear they could not perform major modifications to extend their lives or hours of operation. Because such changes could increase harmful emissions, they would trigger "New Source Review" -- a federal inspection that could require appropriate pollution controls as a condition for continued operation.
But when federal officials searched state regulators' records in the 1990s, they found hundreds of instances of plants performing what seemed major reconstruction without obtaining necessary permits.
The Clinton administration's lawsuits cited a major health risk from 7 million tons of sulfur and nitrogen emissions. Reducing the pollution has become a top priority of eastern mayors and governors, who face their own federal deadlines for reducing ozone and smog caused in part by particles from the midwestern plants.
Of the 51 power plants cited by EPA, 29 were owned by three companies: American Electric Power, a multistate utility based in Columbus, Ohio; Southern Co., which serves a region from Georgia to Mississippi; and the Tennessee Valley Authority, the government's own sprawling seven-state utility set up during the New Deal.
In the waning weeks of the Clinton administration, Virginia Electric & Power Co. and Cinergy Corp. of Cincinnati agreed in principle to pay fines and spend $1.9 billion installing pollution-control equipment at aging coal plants.
Cinergy and its affiliates agreed in principle to lower sulfur dioxide emissions by 35 percent by 2013, install new scrubbers and replace some coal burners with cleaner, gas-fired ones. In return, it could modify its plants as long as it stuck to the new emissions caps.
But the negotiations ground to a halt when Bush became president and ordered a review of the lawsuits. Last May, Cheney's energy task force ordered a 90-day interagency review of New Source Review to see whether the policy should be altered to reduce future litigation -- and whether some existing cases should be dropped. The Justice Department announced in January that it would continue the lawsuits filed during the Clinton administration. But today, negotiations with Cinergy and VEPCO, once expected to take as little as three months to complete, drag on.
Eric V. Schaeffer, who resigned this month as head of EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement, said Cinergy officials were simply making the best of a bad situation. He said, "They put their tons of pollution on the table, they shook hands with us," and then the regulatory landscape changed.
----
Train derails in Georgia, releasing toxic chemical
REUTERS USA:
arch 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15060/story.htm
ATLANTA - A CSX Corp . freight train derailed on the weekend near an Atlanta water reservoir, and at least one of its cars was leaking a hazardous chemical, a company spokesman said.
About seven cars of a 79-car train veered off the tracks in Northwest Atlanta in mid-afternoon, said Bob Sullivan, the CSX spokesman.
"There are some cars that are on their side, and one car carried a material, hexamethylene diamine," Sullivan said. The material can cause severe burns to mucous membranes, respiratory tract, eyes, and skin.
A vapor cloud was visible in the area of the derailment, and Atlanta police and fire department officials evacuated residents and businesses within a half-mile of the area as hazardous materials teams worked to contain the chemicals.
Sullivan said up to 100 people were evacuated, and said the cause of the derailment was not immediately known.
Craig Camuso, a CSX spokesman at the scene of the derailment, told the local Fox TV station that at least four people, one adult and three children, were taken to a hospital to be treated for possible chemical exposure.
"The adult broke out in a rash," Camuso said. "The three children were taken as precautionary measures. All, as soon as they were exposed, were immediately washed out by our crew."
The train was traveling from New Orleans to Hamlet, North Carolina, when it derailed, said Sullivan.
----
Iceberg Breaks Free From Antarctica
March 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-New-Iceberg.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An iceberg larger than Delaware has broken off Antarctica.
The National Ice Center reported Monday that the berg, named B-22, broke free from an ice tongue in the Amundsen Sea, an area of Antarctica south of the Pacific Ocean.
The new iceberg is located at 74.56 south latitude and 107.55 west longitude.
It is 40 miles wide and 53 miles long, covering 2,130 square miles, slightly more than the 1,982 square mile area of Delaware.
The iceberg was discovered through photographs taken by Defense Meteorological Satellites.
Icebergs are named for the section of Antarctica where they are first sighted. The B designation covers the Amundsen and eastern Ross seas and the 22 indicates it is the 22nd iceberg sighted there by the Ice Center.
The center is a joint operation of the Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Coast Guard.
-------- human rights
U.N. rights chief Robinson will not seek new term
By Richard Waddington
Monday March 18, 10:42 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-95523.html
GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, long a thorn in the side of the major powers for her outspoken views, said on Monday she would not seek a fresh term when her appointment ends in September.
She declined to comment on suggestions by some rights groups that she had been pushed into the decision by Washington's suspected opposition to her continuing in the job.
"I am aware that there is strong support (for me) in the human rights community. I am not going to comment on individual countries. They can be asked themselves," she said in answer to a question at a news conference.
The former Irish president, who had already extended her initial four-year term for an extra 12 months in 2001, announced her departure in an address to the annual session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
"This will be the last year I will address the Commission as High Commissioner," she told the 53-nation body as it prepared to review human rights hotspots ranging from the Israeli- Palestinian conflict to Chechnya and Zimbabwe.
Robinson, 57, who surprised U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last year by saying she was leaving, agreed then to stay for 12 more months at Annan's insistence.
In recent months there had been speculation that Robinson, who has criticised Russia's military campaign against Muslim separatists in Chechnya and aspects of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, was interested in staying at her post.
She hinted as much at the news conference.
"If it had been felt that it was in any way necessary for me to stay, then perhaps. But I prefer not to speculate," she said, adding she had not lobbied for support for a further extension.
Washington, for one, was thought to oppose any extension of her mandate after she expressed concern over the high number of civilian casualties in U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan and criticised the treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners.
Robinson acknowledged her views were unwelcome to some countries, but said she had been guided by advice she received from Annan on her appointment in 1997. "Stay an outsider within the United Nations," she quoted him as telling her.
PAYING THE PRICE
"She has been excellent. If she decides to leave, it should be seen as a personal decision," a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Human rights groups were disappointed but not surprised.
"She will be a hard act to follow," said a spokeswoman for Amnesty International.
Reed Brody, advocacy director of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said the lawyer and mother-of-three was paying the price for willingness to stand up to Washington, Moscow and Beijing.
"We will be sad to see her go. She set a standard of candour and energy for future Human Rights Commissioners," he said.
Her predecessor was from Latin America and some diplomats said Asia could pitch Annan a candidate to succeed her.
In her valedictory speech to the Commission, Robinson again raised concerns about Chechnya, the struggle to impose the rule of law in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
She reiterated her call for international observers to be sent to the occupied territories to act as "a deterrent to the violations of human rights." Robinson also urged the international community to extend its peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan beyond the capital, Kabul.
But the single most dramatic event since she last reported to the Commission in March 2001 had been the September 11 suicide plane hijacking, Robinson said.
She described the attacks as a "crime against humanity" but said the reaction to them also threatened to undermine international standards of human rights.
----
UN's top human rights forum opens marked by US' historic absence
Monday March 18
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2lpxc.html
The United States will be missing from the members' list for the first time when the UN's top human rights forum opens here but Washington is nevertheless likely to play an active role.
Relegated to observer status, the US has been voted off the 53-member UN Human Rights Commission whose annual session will examine human rights violations around the world -- China, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Africa, Colombia and Chechnya will be under the spotlight.
Zimbabwe, fresh in controversy after the re-election of long time president Robert Mugabe, could also join the dozens of other countries to feature on the commission's agenda this year.
The post-September 11 fight against terrorism and the challenges it poses for human rights is also expected to dominate discussions, and the US and its allies could find themselves under scrutiny.
Amnesty International (AI) says that about 1,200 foreigners rounded up after the terror attacks last year on Washington and New York are still detained in the US, some arbitrarily.
The rights watchdog is also worried that resolutions against countries at the commission could be weaker this year because of the need to "pacify" states involved in the international coalition against terrorism.
Hundreds of non governmental organisations will be particularly guarded with regard to China and Russia.
"There may be some bargaining going on, we hope that is not the case, we will be lobbying very much against that," AI's representative to the UN here, Catherine Turner said.
The degree of US participation this year had been uncertain but at the last moment Washington acknowledged it would be active after gaining assurances that its seat would be restored in 2003, diplomatic sources said.
As an observer, the US will be unable to vote but can introduce resolutions. Last year, Washington again tried to see China condemned over its human rights record and was behind a resolution on Cuba, formally sponsored by the Czech Republic.
So far no other country has this year shown willing to take on the "burden" and sponsor a resolution on China, a diplomatic source said.
Every year since 1989, with one exception in 1995, Beijing has successfully blocked a hostile resolution from even being introduced at the commission using a procedural loophole.
"The commission must show that human rights norms apply to big states as well as small states," Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch told reporters.
"It cannot ignore the dismal human rights situation in China, or the brazen refusal of the United States to apply the rules of the Geneva Convention to the prisoners at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba," he added.
----
No U.S. delegate at UNHRC
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020318-91316304.htm
NEW YORK - The U.N. Human Rights Commission opens its six-week session today, meeting for the first time in 58 years without a U.S. representative on board.
However, the United States will return to the Geneva-based commission next year, after the withdrawal last week of two European competitors for the available seats.
Washington was voted off the 53-member commission last year, a humiliating defeat that corroded an already damaged U.S.-U.N. relationship.
American lawmakers - infuriated that Libya, China and Sudan were voted onto the prestigious body while the United States was left off - had tried to attach an amendment to a U.N. dues package that would withhold payment of some outstanding funds until the United States returned.
But after Italy and Spain withdrew from consideration last week, the United States formally put forward its candidacy for an election, unchallenged from any other quarter.
The election, at the end of April, still won't put an American on the commission for the upcoming session - which promises a spirited debate on numerous issues.
Many diplomats expect close scrutiny of U.S. actions in the war on terrorism, from the high-altitude war that killed non-combatants in Afghanistan to the treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Other criticisms could include the detention of immigrants, predominantly Asian and Arab, on unspecified charges related to the September 11 attacks.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has criticized these policies, and has earned broad support from Arab, European and many Asian nations.
The United States may also have to defend its application of the death penalty, which human rights advocates charge is meted out excessively to the poor and the minorities.
Perennial complaints of human rights abuses in Chechnya, the Balkans and the Palestinian territories are back on the agenda.
With Israel usually coming in for extended criticism, the agenda this year already includes items on the occupied territories, the Golan Heights and the government's treatment of Lebanese detainees.
Although the United States will not have a vote in Geneva, its representatives will make speeches and will lobby and observe, diplomats said. They can also help draft resolutions that member states can sponsor.
American lawmakers last week urged the Bush administration to keep up pressure on China. A letter signed by 18 congressmen and senators from both parties said such resolutions had an impact on human rights.
-------- ACTIVISTS
YOUR ACTION STILL NEEDED: SENATE ENERGY BILL S 517
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002
From: Michael Mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>
SENATE ENERGY BILL S 517 PACKED WITH MORE TAXPAYER HANDOUTS TO NUCLEAR INDUSTRY!
We need your continued action on this issue. This is a remarkably BAD energy bill and passage of amendments like the ones below are unacceptable for anyone who cares about real energy independence. For those of you who have already contacted your Senators about S 517, Thank You. If you haven't done so yet, please do. The Senate could vote on S 517 as early as this week.
Senate recess begins March 25, 2002 so if S 517 does not pass this week, it will be brought up after the Senate reconvenes on April 8, 2002. Please also consider meeting with your Senator(s) if S 517 fails to pass before recess. If your Senators don't hear from you they will vote for the industry.
The following is a list of amendments which have been added to the Senate Energy Bill (S 517), (list and summary courtesy of Public Interest Research Group).
PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS. TELL THEM TO VOTE AGAINST S 517.
Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121.
Find your Senators' email and fax numbers at www.senate.gov.
NUCLEAR AMENDMENTS TO S. 517 (as of March 13)
SA 2987 - Craig Extends authorization for "Fusion Energy Sciences Program" three additional years beyond the period stipulated in the original bill. Now authorizes $1.4 billion for years 2003 to 2006.
SA 2995 - Craig DOE to carry out "Nuclear Power 2010 Program": an aggressive program to facilitate the construction and start-up of new nuclear plants by 2010. Includes cooperation between DOE, private sector and international collaborators - as well as "demonstrate new regulatory processes for next generation nuclear power plants".
SA 2983 - Voinovich Reauthorizes Price-Anderson nuclear subsidy for commercial reactors to 2012. Treats group of modular reactors totaling under 1,300 KW as one reactor.
SA 3009 - Domenici Establishes the Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research within the Office of Nuclear Science and technology of the DOE. Will carry out integrated research, development and demonstration programs on technologies for treatment, recycling and disposal of high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel.
SA 3011 - Landrieu Directs the Secretary of Energy to study designs for a high temperature nuclear reactor capable of producing large-scale quantities of hydrogen using thermo-chemical processes.
----
Comment Sought on Irradiation of Imported Fruits, Vegetables
March 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-18-09.html
WASHINGTON, DC, The federal government has proposed regulations that would allow the use of irradiation on fruits and vegetables imported into the United States to control fruit flies and the mango seed weevil. Irradiation would provide an alternative to current control methods, such as fumigation and cold and heat treatments.
In an amendment to the proposal issued Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) would now require the use of radiation indicators on cartons of irradiated items and require additional inspection and monitoring of foreign irradiation facilities.
One technology for irradiation indication produces an invisible fluorescence that can be detected by an inexpensive handheld light-pen reader. Indicators could also be incorporated into a white-on-white bar code that would show a darkened background after irradiation. Bar code information could record lot number or other marketing information that could prove useful in tracing a carton back to its source. As a safeguard against repeated use of the same indicator, they could be applied with one-time-only adhesive.
But the Minnesota based Organic Consumers Association (OCA) objects that attempts to irradiate food abroad and export it to the United States are accelerating.
"Irradiation damages food by breaking up molecules and creating free radicals. The free radicals kill some bacteria, but they also bounce around in the food, damage vitamins and enzymes, and combine with existing chemicals, like pesticides, in the food to form new chemicals, called unique radiolytic products," the OCA says.
Science has not proved that a long term diet of irradiated foods is safe for human health. The longest human feeding study was 15 weeks, the group warns.
In addition to meats, fruits, vegetables, wheat, wheat flour, eggs in the shell, herbs, spices, dried vegetable seasonings and seeds that will be used for sprouting are approved for irradiation in the United States.
Irradiation critics such as Dr. Samuel Epstein of the Chicago University School of Public Health warn that, "Irrespective of whether radiated by radioactive cobalt pellets or rods, X-ray machines or electron beams, the current permissible radiation dosage is about 200 million times greater than a chest X-ray."
"Irradiation results in major losses of vitamins, particularly A, C, E and the B complex," Dr. Epstein says.
Most irradiated foods do not have to be labeled to the consumer, according to government policy.
APHIS documents published in the Federal Register and related information, including the names of organizations and individuals who have commented, are available online at: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppd/rad/webrepor.html.
Public comments are welcome by April 15. Please send an original and three copies of postal or commercial delivery comments to Docket No. 98-030-3, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3C71, 4700 River Road, Unit 118, Riverdale, Md. 20737-1238. Email to: regulations@aphis.usda.gov. Your comments must be contained in the body of the message; do not send attached files. Include your name and address in the message and use the Docket No. 98-030-3 on the subject line.
----
Today In Congress
Monday, March 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42677-2002Mar17?language=printer
SENATE
Meets at 3 p.m.
Committees:
Appropriations -- 10 a.m. Energy and water development subc. FY 2003 budget estimates for the National Security Administration, nuclear reactors and nuclear proliferation. 124 Dirksen Office Building.
[To write Congress, contact information and proposed letter at http://prop1.org/prop1/letter.htm. et]
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Harbury argues own case before high court
By Michael Kirkland
UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
3/18/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=18032002-122324-1746r
WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Jennifer Harbury, American widow of a Guatemalan rebel leader, told the Supreme Court Monday that Clinton administration officials lied to her and kept her from going to a U.S. court to save her husband's life.
Harbury's husband, Guatemalan rebel commander Efrain Bamaca-Velasquez, allegedly was tortured and eventually killed by a Guatemalan official on the CIA payroll in 1993.
Before he was killed, Harbury said, U.S. officials lied to her, saying either than Bamaca was dead or that they did not know anything about him.
"When I was speaking with them, he was still alive, and could have been saved," she told the justices.
She contends that if the officials had told the truth, or even gave her no comment, she could have gone to a U.S. court for an injunction against the CIA, forcing the agency to help her husband.
"My day in court, when I could have saved my husband's life, was extinguished," she argued.
At issue in the case before the justices is whether the former and current officials targeted by Harbury's suit, including former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, violated Harbury's constitutional right to go to federal court by not telling her the truth.
The case also has profound implications for the CIA and the U.S. foreign policy establishment. When is it permissible for the government to lie, and when must government officials tell the truth, even when they think it will harm national security interests?
Harbury, a U.S. citizen and attorney, married Bamaca in Texas in 1991. Several months later, Bamaca returned to Guatemala.
He disappeared around March 12, 1992.
The Guatemalan army declared that Bamaca had committed suicide during an armed skirmish, and soldiers had buried his body.
However, Harbury later learned that her husband had been captured by the army, "among whom were paid CIA informants."
According to court papers filed by Harbury, "over the next 12 to 18 months, Bamaca's captors psychologically abused and physically tortured him. They chained and bound him naked to a bed, beat and threatened him, and encased him in a full-body cast to prevent escape. Eventually, probably sometime around September of 1993, they executed him."
As soon as she knew he had been captured, Harbury contacted several State Department officials, asking for information about her husband's status.
But repeated attempts to gain information were stymied, until CBS's "60 Minutes" did a story about Bamaca's plight.
The State Department then conceded Bamaca had been captured, not killed, but said it had no further information and could not say whether he was still alive.
Then-national security adviser Anthony Lake told her the United States had "scraped the bottom of the barrel" but had no more information, according to a federal appeals court.
Harbury began a hunger strike in front of the White House on March 12, 1995, the third anniversary of her husband's disappearance.
Twelve days into her strike, Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., announced publicly that he had learned Bamaca was killed years earlier on the order of Guatemalan official on the CIA payroll.
Harbury then filed suit against a number of officials, including Christopher and Lake.
A federal judge in Washington ruled for the officials, but a federal appeals court reinstated the case.
The appeals court said Harbury "has stated a valid claim for deprivation of her right of access to courts, and because the (National Security Council) and State Department officials are not entitled to qualified immunity on this claim," the case was sent back down for more hearings.
The officials then asked the Supreme Court to intervene before the case went back to the trial court.
The officials asked the justices to decide whether allegations that officials "withheld information and intentionally misled a private citizen about a foreign rebel leader" constitute a "violation of the constitutional right of access to the courts, when the only claim is that the defendants' speech was intentionally misleading and there are no allegations that (Harbury) ever tried to file a lawsuit and was actually hindered in that effort."
The case is highly unusual in a number of respects.
Parties to a dispute -- in this case, Harbury -- rarely argue their own cases before the Supreme Court.
The courts are allowing the current and former officials to be sued in their private capacities, not as U.S. officials. If Harbury prevails in her ongoing suit, regardless of whether the Supreme Court rules her constitutional rights were violated, she could win money damages.
And when the case was argued Monday the justices were unusually deferential to Harbury, taking pains not to interrupt her or grill her as they would an ordinary attorney with no emotional stake in the case.
Speaking for Christopher and the other defendants, Grove City, Ohio, attorney Richard Cordray told the justices, "The right of access is not violated unless an individual is in fact barred from filing in the courts."
If Harbury wins her case, Cordray said, it "would constitutionalize the channels of communication between government and private citizens," opening up a whole new area for constitutional lawsuits.
"It remained open to her to file a (Freedom of Information Act) claim" in spite of the government denials, Cordray said. "It remained open to her to file in the courts."
The Bush administration supported the current and former officials during argument. U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the justices that their own precedent is strongly against "creating new (constitutional) rights."
At one point, Harbury was told, "We can't get back to you," Olson said. He added, "That could be a lie as well" that would make officials liable in a lawsuit. "It demonstrates the slipperiness of the slope."
The Supreme Court should rule in the case within the next several months.
(No. 01-394, Christopher et al vs. Harbury)
----
U.N. Conference Facing Less Threat of Protests
By REUTERS
March 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-development.html
MONTERREY, Mexico - Organizers of a U.N. conference on financing for development opening on Monday were breathing easier about the potential for violent protests after a demonstration against possible local restrictions on miniskirts fizzled.
The authorities, warned about the hooded anarchist mobs that have plagued other recent international gatherings, had prepared for a crowd of as many as 20,000. Only several dozen women, however, dressed in miniskirts and calling for ''democracy in the street and in bed,'' marched for equality on Sunday in this Mexican industrial hub.
The vague threat of limits on skimpy clothing, in the form of proposed regulations that surfaced several years ago but were never put into effect, was apparently not serious enough to overcome a hot midday sun, U.N. officials said.
To further dampen the potential for angry mobs, organizers sponsored a five-day forum on development for activists, encouraging them to explore the issues ahead of time.
Only about 500 people showed up for the forum although more than 30,000 had been expected.
The conference, expected to draw more than 50 world leaders, some 300 cabinet members and thousands of government officials, business leaders and activists, aims to come up with innovative strategies for the world's poorest countries to finance their development needs.
The cause has taken on added urgency following the Sept. 11 suicide airliner attacks on the United States, which sent the world economy reeling as developing nations were already complaining of being left behind in the rush toward a global economy.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed the meeting as a way of pressuring businesses, banks and investment firms as well as rich nations to do more to help poor countries share in the benefits of globalization.
He aims to line up the financial resources needed to pay for ambitious goals for fighting poverty and disease set at the U.N. millennium summit, including a pledge to halve the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015.
President Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and South African President Thabo Mbeki are among the world leaders expected on Thursday and on Friday.
Delegates from most of the United Nations' 189 members are expected to adopt a declaration at the end of the weeklong meeting.
While critics say a draft declaration offers only vague generalities rather than a detailed financial road map, they say the conference is only a first step toward meeting development needs.
----
Thousands of Workers Protest in NE China, Locals Say
By REUTERS
March 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-protest.html
BEIJING - Thousands of workers surrounded the Liaoyang city government and police headquarters in northeast China Monday to demand payment of wage arrears and the release of a protest organizer, a rights group and a witness said.
The crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 workers from bankrupt state firms poured through the city streets waving banners after police detained Yao Fuxin, a laid-off worker, for organizing protests over corruption and unpaid wages last week, they said.
``Their demands were firstly to release Yao Fuxin, secondly to pay salaries and fight corruption,'' one source who witnessed the protests told Reuters. ``The streets were filled with people. I estimate there were 30,000 to 40,000.''
The demonstrations followed similar protests at China's top oilfield, Daqing, where thousands of angry laid-off workers laid siege to a building owned by a unit of China's largest oil firm PetroChina last week.
Liaoyang was the site of another protest in May 2000 when factory workers blocked a highway, clashed with police and besieged the city government demanding two years of unpaid wages and welfare.
The protests at the heart of China's industrial ``rustbelt'' highlight growing unrest among workers as Beijing presses ahead with mass lay-offs from state firms and struggles to foot a crippling cradle-to-grave social security bill.
Worker unrest represents one of the most serious threats to Communist Party rule as China braces for millions more lay-offs after an influx of foreign competition following its entry to the World Trade Organization in December.
Plainclothes and uniformed police monitored the Liaoyang protest but made no attempt to stop it, the witness said.
The protesters dispersed peacefully after five hours but pledged to continue their demonstration Tuesday, the witness added.
LABOR ACTIVIST DETAINED
Liaoyang police detained Yao, 53, after two days of peaceful protests last week when about 5,000 workers waved banners at the city government building demanding the local legislature head be sacked for not protecting their rights, local sources said.
Yao, a laid-off worker from the city's bankrupt Ferroalloy Factory, was hauled into a police van by plainclothes officers Sunday morning and had not been heard of since, fellow workers told Reuters.
``He's a representative chosen by workers to speak with the government about our unpaid wages. Some of us have not been paid for 24 months,'' said a worker from the factory.
Yao and other Liaoyang labor activists had been planning another protest at the city government compound involving some 30,000 workers, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.
The workers also planned to block a railroad connecting the northeastern city of Dalian and Beijing as they accused state enterprise officials of corruption and demanded better welfare, the statement said.
They were venting their anger at Gong Shangwu, head of the city's People's Congress and a delegate of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament as he was returning Monday from NPC's annual two-week session in Beijing, it said.
Some 60 percent of all workers in Liaoyang were unemployed or semi-employed, it said.
POLICE DENY DETENTION
A Liaoyang police official denied detaining Yao but said police might take action against protest organizers if the demonstrations continued.
``Our people did not do that,'' he said, referring to the detention. ``But the workers' demonstration last week were illegal since they were not approved by relevant departments. We have warned organizers not to do it again.
``As for what to do with them, we will take orders from city leaders.''
City government officials were not available for comment.
The witness said city government and police officials had told the crowd they had not detained Yao.
``But this man is still missing,'' she said. ``The protests will continue tomorrow.''
----
The "War on Terrorism" Breeds More Terror
March on Washington, D.C. April 20th, 2002
http://unitedwemarch.org/
The White House promises a war without end*. Under the pretext of strengthening security, our democratic rights are being further eroded, hundreds of people have been "disappeared" into jails and prisons, and corporate interests are shamelessly trying to use this crisis to their advantage. It is clear: unless we, the people of this country, rise up and come together now, the future for us and for people around the world is very bleak. But united, as we have done in the past, WE CAN MAKE CHANGE! There is an alternative!
April 20th Schedule Information
April 19, 2002 Lobbying Teach-in & Skills Workshops/Trainings Kickoff Plenary Panel Evening Solidarity Concert
April 20, 2002 10:30a Gather at Sylvan Theatre (SW side of Washington Monument) 11:00a Stop the War Rally 1:00p March to the Capitol 3:00p Rally on the Mall (3rd street facing Capitol Bldg)
Our D.C. logistics committee is currently negotiating a drop-off point for buses. More information will be posted once it is pinned down.
Nonviolence Guidelines
In an attempt to create a "safer space" for all people who want to march for Peace and Justice, we have applied for and received a permit. We ask people who plan on joining us to adhere to the following Nonviolence Guidelines for the March.
We will not initiate violence against any living thing.
We will not bring "illegal drugs" or alcohol.
We will carry no weapons.
We recognize that people of color, queers, and transgender people are at a much greater risk of police harassment, abuse, and violence. Because we also recognize that property destruction increases this risk, we strongly discourage the use of such tactics at our event/march.
The April 20th Mobilization supports the actions and events that will also be occurring throughout the weekend, including those organized by the Mobilization for Global Justice and the National Mobilization on Colombia. We encourage people coming for the April 20th March to support these efforts as well.
Endorse the Mobilization
Over 200 organizations have endorsed the April 20th Mobilization to stop the war. Join them by filling out our on-line endorsement form
Outreach Materials Now Available
Outreach flyers are now available for download and distribution
National Mobilization on Colombia
US government officials have declared Colombia as target of their "War on Terrorism". A National Mobilization on Colombia will take place April 19-22, 2002 in Washington DC
The Colombia Mobilization is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to transform U.S. policy toward Colombia and the Andean region.
For More Information Visit www.colombiamobilization.org
----
Gorbachev Honors Global Green Award Winners
March 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-18-09.html
LOS ANGELES, California, Actor Woody Harrelson was among environmental luminaries recognized Friday night at the 6th Annual Green Cross Millennium Awards sponsored by Global Green USA. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, founder and president of Green Cross International, was on hand to salute the environmental leaders.
One of Hollywood's most outspoken advocates for environmental causes, Harrelson received the Entertainment Industry Environmental Leadership Award. In 1997, he climbed the Golden Gate Bridge with seven other activists and hung a banner to bring attention to the clearcutting practices of the logging industry in Headwaters Forests, America's last stand of unprotected old growth redwoods. He works on animal rights issues, sustainability, and promoting healthy alternatives to the current cycle of consumer led environmental degradation. "We need to support the companies that support the earth," said Harrelson.
Homero Aridjis and Betty Ferber, cofounders of the Grupo de los Cien, The Group of 100, based in Mexico City received the International Environmental Leadership Award. It was the Group of 100 that first sounded the alarm about the dangers involved in building the world's largest saltworks at Laguna San Ignacio, the last pristine birthing ground of the gray whale, a project that has since been halted.
They have addressed the problems of air pollution in the Valley of Mexico, water, waste, deforestation, protection of endangered species, and the defense of freedom of speech for the discussion of environmental issues. Ferber says, "Defending the environment is work for Sisyphus."
California State Treasurer Philip Angelides received the Local Environmental Leadership Award. His nationally acclaimed Smart Investments initiative has directed over $7 billion in state infrastructure and community development funding to support environmentally responsible growth patterns.
Jonathan Lash, president of the Washington, DC based environmental think tank World Resources Institute, was honored with the Individual Environmental Achievement Award for his work to reverse the degradation of ecosystems, halt human-caused climate change, and catalyze changes that expand prosperity while reducing the use of materials and the generation of wastes. "The problems of the 21st Century are slower and bigger and less reversible. What we fail to do today is what our children will have no choice about," said Lash. "We may be the last generation in history to have the opportunity to save our future."
Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina received the Corporate Environmental Leadership Award for her commitment to social and environmental responsibility. She has piloted the computer company through initiatives such as World e-Inclusion, a project to close the digital divide, product recycling programs, and the reduction of energy use in HP's products and operations. "We're deeply honored to be receiving this recognition," Fiorina said. "It's a further demonstration of our enduring company values and our long-term commitment to these important programs."
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Mine Workers Chief Nabbed at Site of Coal Slurry Spill
March 15, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-15-03.html
INEZ, Kentucky, United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts was one of 11 people arrested Thursday at the site of a huge coal sludge spill as they demonstrated against the environmental performance of Massey Energy.
United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts (Photo courtesy UMW)
Nearly 200 union members paced outside the gates of Martin County Coal, the Massey subsidiary whose impoundment failure 18 months ago sent an estimated 306 million gallons of water and black coal slurry into the Big Sandy River and its tributaries.
The people arrested sat down and refused to leave the road outside Inez that leads to the mountaintop impoundment. Roberts and the 10 others arrested were freed after a brief period in custody.
"We are targeting Massey because of its corporate greed and callous disregard toward the environment, worker safety and the well-being of Appalachian coalfield communities," said Roberts, a sixth generation coal miner.
The spill on October 11, 2000, created what West Virginia environmental enforcement coordinator Mike Zeto called "the worst environmental mess I have seen in 22 years."
Slurry from the impoundment broke into an adjacent underground mine, discharged to the surface, and impacted over 75 miles of streams in Kentucky and West Virginia, reaching as far as the Ohio River. Governor Paul Patton declared a state of emergency in 10 counties in northeast Kentucky.
Coal slurry backs up into a garden in Kentucky. (Two photos courtesy U. Kentucky Green Thumb)
The spill killed fish and contaminated drinking water. Lawns were buried over six feet deep in the gooey black sludge. This was the second breakthrough at the impoundment; the first occurred in 1994.
An investigation showed that the protective barrier between an underground mine and the Martin County coal waste impoundment was far thinner than regulators thought.
In its report on the spill issued March 4, the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) concludes that the breakthrough "was caused by seepage and piping through the outcrop barrier at the corner of a 50 foot long entry in the underground mine beneath the impoundment."
In its separate report on the incident, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said, "The failure of the Big Branch Refuse Impoundment and subsequent inundation of the 1-C Mine occurred because Martin County Coal Corporation failed to follow its approved Impoundment Sealing Plan, dated August 8, 1994, and subsequent modification, dated September 7, 1995.
The plan specified a seepage barrier to be constructed along the perimeter of the impoundment where mining had occurred near the outcrop of the Coalburg seam.
Martin County Coal Corporation's failure to follow the approved plan resulted in internal erosion ("piping") occurring at the location of the breakthrough, the OSM said.
In a court document, a Martin County coal official had claimed the spill was "an act of God."
"The audacity of Massey to initially blame the slurry spill on 'an act of God' was a prime example of the company's callous attitude," said Roberts. "The safety of that impoundment was questioned back in 1999, and Massey should have responded to those concerns. But it didn't respond, and thousands of citizens throughout Appalachia are still paying the price."
More coal sludge
Since the Martin County sludge spill, Massey and its subsidiaries have been cited for such environmental breaches as blackwater spills, improper maintenance of sediment control ponds, illegal structures and other violations.
On June 19, 2001, the company spilled 30,000 gallons of polluted water from its Liberty Preparation Plant into the Pond Fork stream in Boone County, West Virginia.
At West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) hearings in December 2001, state regulators testified that Massey's Independence Coal operations on Robinson Creek exhibited "the worst environmental performance they had ever seen."
In January, the agency suspended a permit for Massey subsidiary Marfork Coal for 14 days because of repeated water pollution violations. In February, the DEP cited Massey subsidiary Green Valley Coal for "a substantial history of violations" at its coal waste disposal site in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, suspending its permit for 30 days.
"Sadly," Roberts said, "Massey's environmental record is beginning to mirror its horrendous health and safety record at its nearly 70 active mines and surface facilities in Kentucky and West Virginia. Since May 1997," he noted, "there have been 12 fatalities at Massey mines."
The Office of Surface Mining report contains seven recommendations on technical considerations and improved processing to prevent future breakthroughs at other impoundments.
Massey officials did not respond to requests for comment.
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Court Agrees to Hear Challenge to EPA Rule for Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump
Environmental, Public Interest Groups Contend Standard Is Too Lenient
For Immediate Release:
March 18, 2002
From: "Noel Petrie" <npetrie@citizen.org>
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) controversial standards for a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada has survived a critical hurdle.
In a March 12 order, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to hear the merits of three lawsuits challenging the standards. Last June, a coalition of national and Nevada-based environmental and public interest organizations filed a lawsuit charging that EPA's rule was too lenient because it allows the U.S. Department of Energy to permit radioactive waste to leak from the dump rather than ensure it is contained. The case was later consolidated with lawsuits from the state of Nevada and the Nuclear Energy Institute.
In November, the EPA asked that the case be dismissed on the grounds that approval had not yet been granted to construct the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain. The petitioners countered that the EPA rule sets the standard by which the project's suitability is assessed and that officials were already relying on the rule to make decisions.
In last week's order, the court decided not to dismiss the case. Instead, it ruled that the question of dismissal should be taken up when the court considers the merits of the case.
"This is a victory, although it's only the first step," said Geoff Fettus, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We will ask the court to overturn the weakest aspects of EPA's Yucca Mountain radiation protection standards in order to protect the environment and public health."
Added said Lisa Gue, policy analyst with Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, "The EPA's inadequate standards provided a basis for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation in favor of the proposed repository. This clear example of undercutting environmental regulations to allow a fundamentally flawed project to move forward sets an unacceptable precedent."
It is unlikely that the case will be resolved before Congress votes on the Yucca Mountain proposal later this year.
To learn more about this and other issues Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program works on, visit our website at www.citizen.org .
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