------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Rejecting the new thinking on using nuclear weapons
Think anew about US nukes
U.S.-China Relations Appear Headed for Shaky Ground
Annan's letter criticizes Israel
Bush Breaks With Policy on N. Korea
Pacific Island Leaders Urged to Protest U.S. Missile Tests
Pentagon Agrees to New Missile Test Impact Studies
Terror and temptation
Would U.S. make a first strike?
Hole in Nuclear Reactor Vessel Prompts Inspections
Radioactive Equipment Stolen in Columbia
2nd Hole Found in Cap at Nuke Plant
Byrd to delay Senate vote

MILITARY
A Revealing Trove in Afghanistan
Operation Anaconda is over, Pentagon says
Afghan Battle Declared Over and Successful
Britain Sends 1,700 Troops to Afghan Fight
U.S. offers defense systems to S. Korea
Japanese Warships to Visit China
UPI hears ... biological weapons or indigenous disease?
Britain Set To Bulk Up Its Afghan Deployment
Russian Co. Develops New Boosters
Senate Discusses Chemical Weapons
Cuba seeks deals with US to fight terror, migrant smuggling, drugs
Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Student Drug Tests
Afghan Opium Farmers Cultivate on
EU Boasts of Bigger Aid Boost Than Washington
CIA pecks at the hawks' theory
CIA director highlights Iraq threat
Iraq weakens its resistance to UN arms inspections
Cheney Is Ready to Meet Arafat If Mideast Truce Goes Into Effect
34 New West Bank Settlements Spotted
U.N. Chief Says Israel Has Been Waging Full-Scale War
Israel pulls troops out of Bethlehem
Israeli army embarrassed by video broadcast
The inconvenient Mideast ally
UPI hears ... Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Cloud Over Pakistan: Is Musharraf's Life Safe?
Pakistan Expels Two Indian Embassy Officials
Russia to double military's pay
Russia to stand by pledge to Japan over disputed Kuril islands
Russia Underlines Opposition to U.S. Strikes on Iraq
Kostunica regrets US diplomat identified in spy case
CIA Removes Web Tracking Software
UN's Robinson says rights under threat since September 11
'Reality' TV Is Marching to the Military's Tune

POLICE / PRISONERS
Chinese police curb protests as demos enter third straight day
Prosecutors Seek a Death Sentence in Terrorism Case
Justice review errors in McVeigh case
Al Qaeda Is Still a Threat, C.I.A. Chief Says
CIA Does Not Rule Out Iraq, Iran Role in Sept. 11

ENVIRONMENT
River pollution threatens English fertility
The Cancer In the Air We Breathe Local Risks From Pollution Probed
Antarctic ice shelf collapses: global warming blamed

ACTIVISTS
UPI hears ... mass demonstrations
France's Bove warns Spain on strict police control
Flag flap spurs South Carolina suit
Four Die in Kyrgyzstan Protest
Rock Band REM Seeks Protection of America's Forests



-------- NUCLEAR

Rejecting the new thinking on using nuclear weapons

By Jonathan Power,
March 19, 2002
Jordan Times
http://www.jordantimes.com/Wed/opinion/opinion3.htm

IN HIS autobiography `A Soldier's Way', General Colin Powell recounts the build up to the 1991 Gulf War when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Dick Cheney was secretary of defence. "Cheney kept assigning me last-minute tasks.... He had a third question and I jotted it down in my notebook simply as "prefix 5", my nuclear qualification code. "Let's not even think about nukes", I said, "You know we're not going to let that genie loose". "Of course not", Cheney said. "But take a look to be thorough and just out of curiosity."

Powell played the same role in the administration of Bush father as he does in that of Bush son, the voice of reason, not the token black but the token liberal who is allowed to speak, in some areas even to lead, but on the crucial decisions of prime policy is simply ignored. His advice to rely on sanctions rather than warfare for containing Saddam Hussein was brushed aside in 1991 and his qualms on nuclear weapons did not stop secretary of state James Baker from delivering what in effect was a nuclear threat if Saddam should use chemical or biological weapons. Neither did it stop, under questioning, senior officials in both the US and British governments from refusing to rule out the right to go nuclear. Only French President Francois Mitterrand replied unambiguously: "I say no to that."

So now compromising with the devil of nuclear weapons is back on the table. The leaked Pentagon review of nuclear policy reveals that not only are the "axis of evil" states on the target lists, but also Syria, that has recently backed the Saudi peace plan for Palestine and Israel, and Libya, which is generally regarded as a success for hard edged diplomacy in converting a would-be terrorist state into one that can be done business with.

Powell, now secretary of state, has bravely tried to put a gloss on the report, but he knows better than anyone else the formidable political pressures that would be brought to bear to use nuclear missiles in a war with Iraq, if Saddam Hussein, with his back to the wall, tried to use his chemical weapons or biological weapons on near neighbour Israel in a last attempt to upturn the Middle East apple cart and get Muslim opinion on his side. President George Bush may give the order to fire a low yield nuclear missile at Saddam's command bunker or the concentrated formations of the Republican Guard, if only to preempt a larger Israeli nuclear attack and to remove Israel from the likelihood of a future revenge attack.

America will then have crossed a threshold that over fifty-seven years, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has become in effect sacrosanct. In historian E.P. Thompson's telling remark, Bush will have allowed "the unthinkable to become thinkable, without thinking".

Robert McNamara, secretary of defence under two presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, recounts in his new book how, at the height of the cold war, he and the president used to discuss whether nuclear weapons could be used in the event of a Soviet attack. McNamara made it plain, he said, that if deterrence had failed and an attack was under way, nuclear weapons had already lost their use. "Although I believe Kennedy and Johnson agreed with my conclusion, it was impossible for any one of us to state such views publicly because they were totally contrary to established US and NATO policy." Even such tough practitioners of realpolitik as General Charles de Gaulle and Henry Kissinger admitted in their biographies that nuclear weapons were never a truly credible deterrent. If used, they argued, they would have destroyed user as well as used-against.

Even if America used only a tiny part of its arsenal on a carefully targeted attack on an underground, otherwise impenetrable bunker, it would be totally disastrous and counterproductive. World opinion would heap untold censure on the perpetuator of such an attack. Stalin saw the issue clearly in the age before the Soviet Union developed its own bomb. Knowing that the US would never use the nuclear monopoly it had then to stop him, bit by bit he seized hold of Eastern Europe. Likewise, Beijing and Hanoi went to war with American armies in Korea and Vietnam without fear of being halted by American nuclear weapons. (According to a recently revealed White House tape of a conversation between President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, when Nixon raised the possibility of nuking North Vietnam, Kissinger slapped him down as Powell did Cheney.)

Perhaps some will conclude that history suggests: "Watch what people do not what they say." Therefore, we should all relax about the latest Pentagon statement, just as Powell tells us to. But words do count. They are heard. They do produce reactions. A hostile adversary does not know if you are bluffing or not and takes precautions and prepares retaliatory options. Popular opinion, unaware of the subtleties of nuclear brinkmanship, is deeply affected too. Given what we know from both reporting and opinion polls of the degree of bitter anti-Americanism among Muslims far and wide, this revelation in Washington is sure to backfire. The tolerance for Al Qaeda type of terrorism will be ratcheted up more than a few notches.

This is the time for all Western leaders to write a joint letter to their colleague in the White House, telling him: "We say no to that."

The writer is a syndicated columnist and author. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

-------
Think anew about US nukes

By J. Peter Scoblic,
Christian Science Monitor
March 19, 2002 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0319/p09s02-coop.html

WASHINGTON - Details of the Pentagon's classified Nuclear Posture Review, leaked out last week, provoked a swift reaction from some analysts, who said the Bush administration had lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and an equally swift reply from the White House, which said that it had in fact reduced US dependence on nuclear weapons.

Both claims are wrong. The administration's review contains almost nothing new - it merely reaffirms the centrality of nuclear weapons in US security policy - and that is the problem.

The review lists seven countries - China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria - against which the United States must be prepared to use nuclear weapons. It calls for the US to monitor relevant targets in those countries, and it even specifies several scenarios in which the use of nuclear weapons might be necessary, such as a North Korean invasion of the South.

Critics leaped on these portions of the report as evidence that the Bush administration is broadening the circumstances under which the US would use nuclear weapons. But, in truth, the US has long prepared for a wide variety of scenarios in which nuclear weapons might play a role, so as not to be caught without options in the middle of a crisis. The threat from "rogue states" was addressed in the last Nuclear Posture Review, conducted in 1994, and it is not surprising or upsetting that it is addressed in this one.

Nor is it surprising that certain nonnuclear states, such as Libya and Syria, were included in the review. Although the US has pledged not to use nuclear weapons against states that don't have them, it has qualified that promise by saying that it might not apply to states that attack the US with chemical or biological weapons. All the nonnuclear states listed in the review are believed to be pursuing such weapons.

In short, contrary to fierce criticism from analysts, the Bush administration does not appear to have lowered the bar for the use of nuclear weapons.

But the administration's claim that it has reduced nuclear dangers by exorcising the "balance of terror" that characterized cold-war relations with Russia is equally inaccurate. The proof is the numbers contained in the review, which calls for keeping 1,700-2,200 of the 6,000 strategic warheads currently deployed.

While that reduction may seem dramatic, Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin agreed to pursue similar cuts in 1997, and the Bush reductions will actually take place more slowly than if the START II treaty were allowed to take effect. Worse, instead of dismantling the weapons removed from service, Bush plans to keep several thousand in a reserve that would allow the US to redeploy 2,400 warheads in less than three years.

More important is what those numbers say about US nuclear-use policy. Because nuclear weapons are so destructive, the US needs only a few hundred to deter a nuclear attack; the 192 warheads on a single, fully loaded US Trident submarine, for example, could kill 50 million people if aimed at Russian cities. The United States needs 1,700-2,200 warheads only if it is planning to wage a nuclear war with Russia and destroy its nuclear weapons on the ground - a posture it maintained during the cold war to defend against a Soviet invasion of Europe or a surprise nuclear attack.

Today, that posture is inappropriate because Russia is no longer an enemy. But oddly, the only targets that could necessitate the 1,700-2,200 warheads called for in the Nuclear Posture Review are the 1,500 nuclear weapons that Russia is expected to keep. No other military contingency - even a nuclear conflict with China - requires more than a few hundred warheads. In other words, the "new" US nuclear posture is still based on the ability to fight a nuclear war with Russia.

THAT is the real problem with the Nuclear Posture Review: It reaffirms the cold-war nuclear status quo. By calling for a large nuclear reserve force, "ground-penetrating" nuclear warheads, and a revitalization of the US nuclear weapons infrastructure, the Bush administration is institutionalizing a strong reliance on nuclear weapons for the indefinite future.

Some analysts are concerned that the review is a step toward a policy that sanctions the use of nuclear weapons as legitimate weapons of war. That would be a horrific mistake that would encourage proliferation and irreparably harm US security.

The US would be far better served by adopting a genuinely new nuclear posture, one that maintains nuclear weapons only to deter a nuclear attack. Given the awesome power of US conventional forces, we do not need nuclear weapons for any other purpose, even to deter a chemical or biological attack.

The diplomatic advantage of that stance would be dramatic and could be leveraged to secure the international cooperation needed to prevent terrorists and rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction - a true post-cold war, post-Sept. 11 priority.

• J. Peter Scoblic is editor of Arms Control Today.

-------- china

U.S.-China Relations Appear Headed for Shaky Ground

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49955-2002Mar19?language=printer

BEIJING, March 19 - China today expressed alarm at what it called a "series of erroneous acts" by the United States in the latest indication that relations between the two countries are heading for rocky times again.

An official Chinese newspaper reported, meanwhile, that Beijing is considering calling off a planned visit of its navy to the United States following recent dust-ups over Taiwan and U.S. nuclear policy.

President Bush came to China last month and relations seemed to be improving. But, said Zhang Qiyue, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, "in as short as one month," China has seen "a series of erroneous acts by the U.S. side." The official New China News Agency added that recent U.S. actions had "blown a gust of strange, chilly winds into Sino-U.S. relations."

China is upset by two recent developments: the decision by the United States to allow Taiwan's defense minister, Tang Yiau-ming, to visit the United States and a Pentagon nuclear policy review that contains contingency planning for a nuclear confrontation with China, among other countries.

Chinese officials have said Tang's visit to the United States, the first non-transit visa given to a Taiwanese defense minister since 1979, marked a warming in relations between the United States and Taiwan - something China opposes. Beijing claims that Taiwan is part of China and has accused the United States of meddling in its affairs. China has also criticized the Pentagon report - accusing the United States of "nuclear blackmail."

The Global Times, an influential weekly published by the People's Daily, reported this week that China's navy had planned to exchange port calls with the U.S. navy in the last half of this year. Citing unidentified "reliable sources," the weekly said China was considered canceling its plans to send its warships to an American port.

"Naturally this action will influence American plans to send their naval formation to China," the report said, "making this next visit by the U.S. navy unlikely."

If the threat is carried out, it would mark the first practical fall-out of the recent rapid deterioration in the tone of U.S. ties.

An official Chinese source confirmed that China was considering canceling the trip as a way to express its opposition to U.S. policies. He said China was still planning to dispatch its vice president, Hu Jintao, for his first trip to the United States in late April, followed by President Jiang Zemin in the fall.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, there was optimism among some circles in China that U.S.-China ties would change fundamentally for the better. China backed the U.S. war against terrorism and the two sides resumed intelligence sharing at a level not seen since the 1980s when Beijing and Washington cooperated in a de facto alliance against the Soviet Union.

But ties between the United States and China have taken a sudden nosedive following Tang's visit to a defense conference in Florida earlier this month and the Pentagon report that mentioned China as a possible target for U.S. nuclear weapons.

In Florida, Tang, on the first non-transit visit of a Taiwanese defense minister since 1979, met with two senior Bush administration officials, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.

On Saturday, Vice Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing used the toughest words a Chinese official has in month to criticize the United States. Li told Ambassador Clark T. Randt Jr. that China "will never yield to foreign threats, including nuclear blackmail," state-run television reported. "The days when China could be bullied are gone forever."

Li also accused Washington of encouraging independence activists in Taiwan by allowing Tang to travel to the United States.

Chinese analysts said it was natural that if China would put one part of the relationship on hold it would be its ties to the U.S. military. They are currently deemed the most expendable part of the relationship by Beijing - which is more interested in U.S. trade and investment than in engaging with Washington on security issues. The United States and China also have yet to strike a deal that would limit China's exports of weapons of mass destruction, such as missiles and missile-related technology.

Ties between the militaries of the United States and China have been rocky since a U.S. warplane bombed China's embassy in Yugoslavia in May 1999. They further deteriorated when a U.S. reconnaissance plane crashed with a Chinese fighter jet in international airspace off China's coast on April 1 last year.

The navies of the United States and China have conducted several exchange visits since 1997. U.S. warships routinely visit Hong Kong's port as well.

-------- israel

Annan's letter criticizes Israel

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020319-5428756.htm

NEW YORK - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has delivered an uncharacteristically blunt rebuke to Israel, accusing its military of using tactics that have killed and injured hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

"Judging from the means and methods employed by the [Israel Defense Forces] - F-16 fighter bombers, helicopter and naval gunships, missiles and bombs of heavy tonnage - the fighting has come to resemble all-out conventional warfare," Mr. Annan wrote in a March 12 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Annan also said he was dismayed by the Israeli military's "failure to protect and respect ambulances and medical workers, by detaining them or even firing upon clearly marked vehicles."

The letter was apparently written on the same day Mr. Annan spoke to the U.N. Security Council, denouncing Israel's "illegal occupations," an apparent reference to Israeli military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent weeks.

The Israeli Mission to the United Nations declined yesterday to comment on the letter, saying that because it was sent to Mr. Sharon, he should be the one to respond in detail.

But one Israeli official rejected criticism of the Israeli military's policy of stopping ambulances to search for weapons.

"There are many incidents on record of terrorists in that part of the world positioning themselves around civilian areas and humanitarian targets with the thinking that would provide protection," said an official at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations.

"We've seen gunmen hiding behind children, [risking] collateral damage that would reflect badly on Israel. We've seen Hezbollah firing on Israel from behind [U.N. peacekeeping troop] positions."

Mr. Annan's letter comes at a time of disintegrating relations between the United Nations and Israel.

But the Israelis were careful to say yesterday that they have respect for the secretary-general and that his actions should not be viewed in the same context as Arab-dominated U.N. conferences and General Assembly debates.

In the last year and a half, anti-Israeli sentiment - expressed in speeches, conference language and votes in the General Assembly - has been growing at an alarming rate, the Israeli official said.

"As the situation on the ground deteriorates, [the Palestinians] are turning toward the U.N. to achieve what they cannot through other means," the official said.

For example, in the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission, censures of Israel usually pass easily in the 53-member commission, and the language of debate is often undiplomatic.

In addition, Israelis and other diplomats note, the plight of the Palestinians has found its way into all sorts of discussions that have nothing to do with the Middle East.

Israel has been singled out for harsh criticism at international conferences convened to examine the broad subjects of racism and hatred, sustainable development, aging, children's health and the control of illicit firearms.

"Now it's the plight of old people under occupation, women or children under occupation, arms under occupation," said the Israeli envoy. "Over the past 18 months or so, these are efforts we're talking about."

The recent conference against racism held in Durban, South Africa, was so hate-filled that the Israeli and U.S. delegations withdrew in the middle.

Indeed, the General Assembly has discussed the Middle East twice since the Palestinian uprising began nearly 18 months ago, even though threats to international peace and security are under the purview of the Security Council.

One Arab envoy said that Mr. Annan's letter was forceful and appropriate, but that he wished it had been sent "much earlier in this bloody conflict."

-------- korea

Bush Breaks With Policy on N. Korea

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-North-Korea.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, in a break with previous U.S. policy, has decided to refuse to certify that North Korea is not hiding nuclear-bomb making materials, an administration official said Tuesday.

The official, asking not to be identified, said the decision will have no practical effect on U.S. nuclear cooperation with North Korea, but is a clear signal of U.S. unhappiness with Pyongyang.

It comes less than two months after Bush moved closer to a confrontation with North Korea by listing that country as part of an ``axis of evil,'' along with Iran and Iraq.

Bush's decision not to certify relates to a 1994 agreement under which North Korea pledged to freeze a nuclear weapons program in exchange for two light water nuclear reactors, funded mostly by South Korea and Japan.

North Korea has been allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to monitor the site where the nuclear program was frozen. At issue is whether North Korea had secretly carried out a nuclear bomb project elsewhere.

The key U.S. contribution to the 1994 agreement is to provide 500,000 tons of fuel to North Korea each year to help the country cover its energy needs during the period before the new reactors become operational.

But as a condition for the fuel deliveries to go ahead, Congress insisted that the president examine North Korean compliance with all provisions of the 1994 agreement.

The president can certify North Korean compliance, waive the requirement or not certify.

Until now, North Korea has been certified every year, but Bush this year will exercise his waiver authority to show unhappiness with North Korea's refusal to fully expose its nuclear history by permitting inspections by the IAEA, the official said.

The issue has been attracting increasing administration attention because these inspections must be completed before key components of the two new reactors are installed.

Construction for the new reactors, which replace plutonium-producing models, is expected to begin in August, and managers of the project estimate that a significant portion will be completed by May 2005.

Henry Sokolsky and Victor Galinsky, nonproliferation experts who are highly critical of North Korea, wrote last month that the three-year time lag may seem like a long time but insist that it's not.

It will take the agency at least three to four years after Pyongyang grants full access to all nuclear sites ``to determine if it is making or hiding nuclear weapons materials,'' Sokolsky and Galinsky in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

They said even with the low end inspection estimate of three years, Pyongyang must open up to inspections by May for the process to be completed by the May 2005 target date.

The U.S. official said the administration has clear evidence that North Korea has no intention of allowing the IAEA inspections to take place.

-------- missile defense

Pacific Island Leaders Urged to Protest U.S. Missile Tests

March 19, 2002
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-19-01.html

SUVA, Fiji, Pacific island countries must speak out against the United States for using the Pacific Ocean as a testing ground for their missile defense system, the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) said Monday.

Patrina Dumaru, a spokesperson for the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre in Suva, said the U.S. and other world powers have abused the Pacific region for military experiments, which have never helped the Pacific Islands but put them at more risk of being caught in a military conflict, or be at the center of a catastrophic accident.

"Another $100 million was wasted over the weekend with the U.S. missile defense test over the central Pacific Ocean," PCRC said. The Pacific islanders view the test as a "fundamentally flawed experiment, conducted at the expense of international relations and justice in the Pacific."

Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California March 15. (Photo by Dan Tkach courtesy U.S. Air Force)

At 9:15 pm EST March 15, which is early Saturday morning Fiji Standard Time, a prototype interceptor was launched from the Ronald Reagan Missile Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, and intercepted a modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile target vehicle launched 20 minutes earlier from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The U.S. Air Force termed the interception at more than 140 miles above the Earth a success. "This is a major step in the aggressive developmental test program, and is the fourth successful intercept in six attempts, test officials said.

Test officials said they will continue to pursue this testing regime "to achieve a layered approach to missile defense, using different architectures to deter the growing threat of ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction."

PCRC said although the latest test was deemed a success by the United States, "it failed to address the full range of countermeasures or decoys that an enemy would use to try to outwit an antimissile weapon. Crews firing the interceptor missiles from Kwajalein Atoll had knowledge of the launch, origin and power of the target missile - none of which would be available during a real attack."

Diving off one of Fiji's 300 plus islands and atolls (Photo courtesy Fiji Visitors Bureau in Auckland)

Despite the controversy and failures, missile defense has recently received a US$2.5 billion increase - bringing the total up to $7.8 billion this financial year - money that the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre says would be better spent on health, education and alleviating poverty.

The Fiji group said, "If Pacific Island countries do not speak out or protest against this testing now, we will continue to be subjected to more dangerous tests such as those that irradiated Bikini Islanders in 1954. To the U.S., the Pacific Ocean is just a vast playground, not something to be treated sustainably or with respect."

Pacific leaders should discuss the continuing tests at the next Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Suva in August, PCRC urged, because the issue is relevant to the security and sustainable growth of the region, as well as to global security as a whole.

--------

Pentagon Agrees to New Missile Test Impact Studies

March 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-missile-usa.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday it had agreed in principle to carry out new environmental impact studies of controversial U.S. missile defense test plans involving an area stretching from California to Alaska to Hawaii.

But it said it remained on target for a functioning ``test bed'' in Alaska as early as Sept. 30, 2004, a key element in President Bush's drive to build a multibillion-dollar, multilayered shield against a limited number of incoming warheads.

At issue is everything from test-rocket launches that emit large quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals to facilities that store and use hazardous solvents and other explosive chemical compounds, said plaintiffs in a lawsuit that led to the proposed settlement.

The Pentagon said it would begin a full study next month on the impact of launching either interceptor or target missiles from Kodiak Island, off the coast of Anchorage, Alaska.

``If there are any (environmental) impacts, we are confident we can mitigate those impacts in time to meet our 2004 schedule,'' said Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

Many critics reject the idea of missile defense, the Pentagon's largest single weapons program, as a pie in the sky that stands scant chance of working in the foreseeable future. In addition, China and Russia remain strongly opposed on grounds it would undercut the deterrent value of their nuclear arsenals and spark a new arms race to swamp new defenses.

The agreement in principle aims to settle a suit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council -- a national group of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists -- plus seven other environmental and peace groups, under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Filed on Friday, the settlement hinges on the approval of U.S. District Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, said Geoffrey Fettus, the attorney who negotiated it with the Pentagon on behalf of the co-plaintiffs.

Under the deal, the Pentagon would update studies on the five or six silos for interceptor missiles due to be installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, as part of an extended test range aimed at making mock-warhead shootdowns more realistic.

The Army is reviewing bids for up to $250 million in construction to be started this summer at Fort Greely, southeast of Fairbanks. Current plans call for interceptors to be stored there but launched from Kodiak.

Also undertaken would be analysis of impacts outside Alaska ''involving environmentally significant modifications to physical plant, facility operations or flight tests'' in the planned northern Pacific test range, the agreement said.

This would include possible modifications to California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, in case the Pentagon chose to launch interceptors there in addition to its current target missiles, Lehner said.

The settlement also calls for analysis of facilities, operations and test trajectories at the Kauai Test Facility in the Hawaiian islands to the extent that, as at Vandenberg, ''these modifications have not been analyzed in a currently valid'' study under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Christopher Paine, a senior analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the purpose of the lawsuit, brought in August, had been to enforce compliance with U.S. environmental laws.

``It was not to obstruct the missile defense program,'' he said. But he added: ``Our view is that even a legally adequate environmental review can't rescue this premature emergency deployment of so-called research assets from the category of wasteful political pork.''

The Bush administration, which has requested $7.8 billion for research and development of missile defense in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, says the Alaska system could form the basis for a rudimentary, emergency shield once the test bed is operational.

On Friday, a prototype interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific chased a dummy warhead aboard a modified Minuteman II missile fired from Vandenberg and hit it 140 miles above the Pacific, destroying both. The target missile deployed three balloons to try to fool the interceptor, up from one previously, the most complex developmental test so far.

Boeing Co. is the lead system integrator for the ground-based system that would use interceptors initially based in Alaska. TRW Inc. builds the system's battle command, control and communications system. Raytheon Co. builds the ''Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle'' designed to smash the target. Lockheed Martin Corp. is prime contractor on the current booster system.

-------- terrorism

Terror and temptation
Since Sept. 11, worry abounds about fate of ex-Soviet researchers

Katya Cengel,
San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 19, 2002, Page A - 6
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/03/19/MN37489.DTL

Kiev, Ukraine -- In the early 1990s, the research that Vladislav Pasichny was conducting on ballistic rockets suddenly became superfluous. As the Soviet Union collapsed, so did funding for his work. His salary at the Institute for Problems of Material Science in Kiev, in what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine, fell by 90 percent, and the bureau he headed was closed.

In 1992, representatives of the Chinese government approached Pasichny, who had taken a second job watering flowers to help pay his bills. They wanted what his country could not afford -- his knowledge of rockets that carry weapons of mass destruction.

Pasichny didn't go to work for the Chinese, but the grandfatherly scientist admits he may have taken the bait if negotiations had gone differently.

It is scientists like 64-year-old Pasichny that the world, especially the United States, has come to fear since Sept. 11.

The United States has already poured more than $2 billion into Ukraine in the past decade. Since the terrorist attacks in September, it has stepped up its efforts to contain the deadly knowledge of Ukraine's weapons scientists.

In December, the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CDRF) announced a scientific competition devoted to combating terrorism while employing former Soviet weapons scientists. Winners will receive funds to pursue their project with the help of Western colleagues.

In the same month, representatives of the U.S. Threat Reduction Program paid a visit to Leo Owsiacki, director of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU), to scout projects to support. The center, which is funded by the United States, Canada and the European Union, has been helping former Soviet weapons scientists convert their knowledge to civilian applications since 1995. In 2000, the latest year for which figures are available, the U.S. gave $35 million to the center.

During Soviet times, almost half of the scientific research budget for the state was devoted to the military-industrial complex. And STCU Director Owsiacki says about a third of the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex was based in Ukraine. As long as their research related to weapons, Soviet scientists received all the money they desired.

"In Soviet times, all who worked in the nuclear industry received higher wages," said 46-year-old Nicolay Kirjukhin, who used to make protective coating for nuclear bombs. "We were also allowed to shop in special stores that carried a larger variety of goods and were given a greater choice of apartments and automobiles."

In the early 1970s, he took a job with Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute in Ukraine, which was conducting some of the top physics research in the Soviet Union. Fellow scientist Victor Zhirnov moved from pediatrics to researching mustard gas because he was offered a higher title and given better equipment.

Both scientists were among approximately 15,000 scientists who worked with weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

Before 1991, Ukraine was home to the world's largest nuclear missile factory, one of the Soviet Union's largest nuclear weapons factories and numerous research institutes and factories devoted to developing weapons of mass destruction. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did they.

"Suddenly, everything we had accomplished was no longer needed," said Alexander Klochko, a laser technology expert who worked with rocket guiding systems before 1991.

In the early 1990s the enterprise where Klochko worked, Arsenal, began to destroy the rocket systems it had worked so hard to create. No longer needed, the scientists who worked at Arsenal and thousands of other factories across the country were forced to seek other employment. But a small number, like Klochko, who is now deputy chief of the laser department at Arsenal, stayed on.

With a much reduced staff, Klochko struggled to save what he calls the company's "scientific potential" and convert it to civilian use.

The Ukrainian government had little money to devote to the project. The salaries of those who stayed plummeted, and though currently on the rise, they have yet to reach $100 a month. Lacking funds, Klochko and his team were unable to advance their research until 1998, when they won a competition at STCU and were given a budget to research the use of lasers in measuring the meteorological standard.

In the past five years, STCU has supported 11,000 projects in Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Georgia, most of them former weapons scientists. By providing travel grants, patent support, partner programs and competitions, the center claims to be reducing the global threat of biological, chemical, nuclear and missile proliferation.

Through work with the center, the eastern Ukrainian factory Yuzhmash, once the world's largest nuclear missile factory, was able to retain several hundred employees and repackage itself as a producer of sea and space rockets. With STCU's help, Kirjukhin converted his knowledge of protective nuclear weapons coating to medical use. He now directs a company that produces coated scalpels.

Natalia Artiukhovskaya, director of CDRF's Kiev office, said that during the five years the center has been in operation, she had had no indication that Ukrainian scientists had emigrated to work on weapons programs for other countries.

"We always get questions from our donors asking how we know we are successful," said Owsiacki. "We aren't spies. But we do know that the 11,000 scientists that have worked on our projects are here in Ukraine."

Pasichny is one of them. The man who once created heat-protective coating for rockets still works with high temperatures. His research, which he conducts in an isolated building at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Institute for Problems of Material Science, involves the study of solar energy.

But the center has been able to reach only a third of the scientists who used to work with weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. Another third have either emigrated to Western countries or died.

And the last third?

"They live desperately, like everyone else in Ukraine," said Owsiacki. "They survive somehow, but not off the salaries they make."

At CDRF, Artiukhovskaya usually receives 10 times more applications for scientific projects than she has the ability to fund. Whether any of the rejected would be tempted to pass their knowledge on to terrorists is a question no one, not even Owsiacki, can answer.

"You can't stop anybody from doing what they are going to do," Owsiacki said. "All you can do is provide an environment so they don't have a reason to do it."

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

Would U.S. make a first strike?

David E. Sanger
The New York Times
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
http://www.iht.com/articles/51688.htm

White House is deliberately vague on its nuclear policy

WASHINGTON President George W. 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 President 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 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 preemptive nuclear strike?

The answers have ranged from "not likely" to "no comment." Secretary of State Colin 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, top aides to Bush noted that despite his aggressive language about Iraq and the "axis of evil," the president had never said that he would consider using specially designed nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike.

"We do not have a declared policy of preemption," a senior administration official said 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 county's hardened, underground nuclear or biological weapons and laboratories. The new American weapons are needed, the official said, to make sure that there is no safe place to develop nuclear and biological weapons, and to discourage countries from trying.

Yet ambiguity is everything in nuclear deterrence.

Taken together, Bush's language, his advisers' statements and the Pentagon Nuclear Posture Review, which was leaked last week, suggest that 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.

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 countries, say they believe that the policy is both new and aggressive. Beijing accused Washington over the 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. President Harry Truman unleashed atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and never looked back, but he also refused General Douglas MacArthur's request to use them in Korea. President John F. Kennedy had to face the prospect in the Cuban missile crisis. 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. Bush has said that approach is outdated and has embraced deep cuts in America's traditional nuclear arsenal. 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 Pentagon report 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 Saddam wondering.

"The danger of this way of thinking," said a 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. But what if the CIA 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.'?" 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 preemptively 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 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.

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

Hole in Nuclear Reactor Vessel Prompts Inspections

March 19, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-19-09.html#anchor2

WASHINGTON, DC, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has ordered inspections at all operating pressurized water nuclear reactors to confirm that their reactor heads are intact.

The NRC has sent a bulletin to companies that hold licenses for operating pressurized water reactors (PWRs) requiring information on the structural integrity of the reactor vessel head, and data indicating that the vessel head will continue to perform its function as a coolant pressure boundary.

The bulletin was sent to the 69 PWRs because of a problem that discovered last month at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station at Oak Harbor, Ohio. During routine maintenance, workers at Davis-Besse found a cavity in the top of the reactor vessel about six inches deep and four inches wide.

The reactor vessel head, fabricated of carbon steel with a stainless steel liner, is about 6.5 inches thick. The remaining thickness of the vessel head beneath the cavity was reported as 3/8 inches of stainless steel.

First Energy Corporation, the operator of the Davis Besse plant, also found three cracked and leaking tubes among the 69 tubes that allow the reactor control rods to penetrate the reactor vessel. The NRC issued a bulletin last August requiring the detailed inspections at Davis-Besse and other sites after cracking problems were found in control rod tubes at several other nuclear plants.

The cavity in the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head is next to one of the cracked tubes. Repair teams believe the steel vessel may have been corroded by boric acid, an ingredient of the water in the reactor cooling system.

The NRC is asking all facilities to check their reactor heads to determine whether current inspection and maintenance practices at reactor facilities provide "reasonable assurance that reactor coolant pressure boundary integrity is being maintained."

More information is available at this NRC website: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head-degradation/ml020770497.pdf.

-------- maryland

Radioactive Equipment Stolen in Columbia

METRO In Brief
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47488-2002Mar18?language=printer

A piece of construction equipment that contains small amounts of radioactive material was stolen from a Columbia building site between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, the Maryland Department of the Environment said yesterday.

The device, which is used to gauge the density of soil, was locked when it was stolen from a trailer and poses little danger to the public, said Richard McIntire, a department spokesman.

"If somehow the case became cracked and the radioactive material got out, there would be no immediate impact," he said. "It would take extended hours for it to give off enough radiation to do any harm."

He said the department responds to one or two such cases a year and has never come across a gauge that had been opened. The model that is missing is a Troxler Model 3430 surface moisture density gauge. It was taken from the site at 6100 Dobbin Road.

-------- ohio

2nd Hole Found in Cap at Nuke Plant

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Hole.html

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- A second hole has been found in a steel cap that covers a nuclear power plant's reactor vessel, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday.

The hole is smaller than one found two weeks ago that federal inspectors said was the largest ever discovered on top of a U.S. nuclear plant reactor. The holes at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant do not pose a safety threat, agency spokesman Jan Strasma said.

``This may provide more information about the cause and how the other cavity developed,'' Strasma said.

Two weeks ago, inspectors at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant found that leaking boric acid caused a 6-inch hole in a steel cap near a cracked control rod nozzle. The hole was stopped by a layer of steel impervious to the acid.

Even if the acid had penetrated the massive cap and allowed steam to escape, safety systems would have immediately cooled the reactor, Strasma said. The steam would contain some radioactive material, but would have been confined by the reactor containment building.

The second cavity is about 1 3/4 inch deep, Strasma said. Workers will need to take out the nozzle to determine its exact size.

It wasn't known how long the two nozzles have been leaking.

After the first hole was found, the regulatory commission alerted the nation's 102 other commercial nuclear plants to watch for similar problems. Strasma said Tuesday no other plant had found problems.

-------- us politics

Byrd to delay Senate vote

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020319-300183.htm

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, yesterday said he will delay passage of border-security legislation because it now contains a provision of amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

"It is lunacy - sheer lunacy - that the president would request, and the House would pass, such an amnesty at this time. That point seems obvious to the American people, if not to the administration," Mr. Byrd said on the Senate floor.

His objections could delay consideration of the legislation for some time, since the Senate's calendar is full and the bill's best chance would have been to move through the chamber by unanimous consent - something a lone senator can stop.

President Bush had sought the amnesty provision as part of his outreach to Hispanics and had urged the House to pass it before his meeting this week with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

The House last week approved the amnesty 275-137 - a single vote more than the two-thirds required by the procedural rules under which the bill was considered. Amnesty would allow those in the United States illegally to remain here while their paperwork for residency is processed, rather than return home and have to restart the process.

Backers defended the measure as a pro-family policy. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican, said it meant spouses and parents applying for residency wouldn't have to go back home and be separated from their families while waiting for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to process their applications.

Mr. Byrd held up action in December on the legislation to increase border security, a measure taken in response to the September 11 attacks. The administration and House leaders had hoped attaching the amnesty provision would push the Democrat-controlled Senate to act, but instead it just fed Mr. Byrd's demand for a full debate on the bill.

The border-security provisions would reduce the number of visas issued to visitors from countries that sponsor terrorism, tighten the requirements on those entering on student visas and require federal agencies to share information through a common computer system so they can better track immigrants' movements. Three of the 19 air pirates in the attacks had overstayed their visas.

House members have voted twice to pass the border-security provisions, and Greg Crist, a spokesman for Mr. Armey, said it is time for the Senate to act.

"We're not sure why the senator would oppose something that builds on the existing network of security since [September 11]," Mr. Crist said. "It boggles our minds in the House, and we'll keep trying."

The bill provides a temporary extension to a program - known as Section 245(i) - that allows some illegal aliens to stay in the United States while their residency applications are processed. The program, requiring each foreigner to pay a $1,000 penalty to remain in the country, expired in April.

The House approved an extension in May by a vote of 336-43. The Senate approved its own version on Sept. 6 and sent it back to the House. The House vote was closer this time around because of a strong effort from immigration reform groups who said amnesty would reward lawbreakers and encourage more illegal immigration by holding out the promise of future amnesties.

Mr. Byrd said last week's revelation that student visas were approved and sent to two of the suspected September 11 terrorist hijackers showed how poorly equipped the INS was to handle its current caseload, much less new cases under the amnesty provision.

"If the American people went to bed last Tuesday night in dismay over this latest INS debacle, they must have been absolutely dumbfounded when they awoke Wednesday morning to learn that the House of Representatives had passed, at the request of the president, what amounts to an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom have not undergone any background or security check," he said.

"This senator from West Virginia will not be pressured into passing legislation," he said. "Senators have a responsibility to consider and to thoroughly debate legislation that comes before it, especially legislation that raises as many concerns as Section 245(i). And I intend to raise those concerns that the administration chose not to address last week when the House acted on the 245(i) provision."


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

A Revealing Trove in Afghanistan

March 19, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/opinion/_19TUE3.html

Reporters from The New York Times have discovered thousands of pages of documents in the remains of the Afghan camps and buildings of the Taliban and Al Qaeda that provide a surprising portrait of an army and how it was trained.

The documentary trove punctures two myths. One was that the camps were turning out tens of thousands of suicide bombers. In fact, they were training soldiers for a war. The second was that the forces were disorganized and ragtag. They were, in reality, quite well disciplined.

What is revealed is a fighting force of unexpected scale and sophistication. The documents also show the degree to which the army mustered by the Taliban and Al Qaeda was driven by religious fervor. Even the basic elements of discipline - as well as the urge to sacrifice life itself - were ultimately reinforced by the Koran's vision of a martyr's death. The volunteers who made up this army came from many countries and spoke many languages. But they shared a single motivation - martyrdom for Islam - and a training program that was far more coherent and disciplined than previously thought. Dangerous as this army was, it had the potential to become far more dangerous if not stopped.

In the training notebooks kept by recruits, translators have found a virtual anthology of military cultures, adapted to the needs of a zealous but untrained volunteer army. Military experts have expressed surprise at the breadth of information- gathering these documents represent, stitching together, as they do, tactical elements as diverse as the weaponry in the soldiers' hands. The fact that they have been gathered together and shaped into a coherent curriculum reveals a long-term strategic view, as well as an understanding of the minds of the soldiers that curriculum addresses.

Many of these soldiers were little more than brainwashed boys. All of them vowed to fight by the book, that is, the Koran. Shrewdly, their instructors asked them to compile their own training manuals, written in their own languages and in their own hands, but to a common pattern. The instructors who set them this task knew how well the act of writing serves the memory. They also knew that however little these men and boys shared, they had been brought to Afghanistan by an education that consisted almost entirely of the Koran itself. How they got from the peaceful message of the Koran to the warlike practicality of these notebooks is one of the tragedies of our times.

----

Operation Anaconda is over, Pentagon says

Tuesday March 19
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2ltk0.html

The 17-day-old US offensive in eastern Afghanistan, Operation Anaconda, is complete, a Pentagon spokesman said.

"Operation Anaconda is complete," but the US military campaign in Afghanistan continues, Brigadier General John Rosa said.

Nevertheless, some 500 soldiers from the international coalition continue to search the Shahi Kot valley in eastern Afghanistan, after having already combed some 30 caves.

Operation Anaconda turned out to be the largest US ground combat operation of the war, involving more than 2,000 US, Afghan and allied troops.

US troops ran into unexpectedly stiff resistance from al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the opening days of the offensive in the mountains south of Gardez.

Eight US troops were killed and nearly 50 were wounded in the fighting, the highest US toll of the war.

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke earlier said the offensive was "very successful" in rooting out a relatively large pockets of resistance.

"It doesn't mean things in Afghanistan are over, doesn't mean we don't think there won't be additional pockets, that there won't be small firefights in different places. We think there will be," Clarke said.

---

Afghan Battle Declared Over and Successful

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By DEXTER FILKINS with JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/asia/19AFGH.html

AGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 18 - The commander of American forces in the region said today that military operations in Afghanistan's Shah-i-Kot valley would probably cease by the end of the day. But in a sign that the United States expected continued ground operations elsewhere in the country, Britain announced that it would send 1,700 troops to help flush out remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the operation in Afghanistan, declared the battle, the largest ground fight of the five-month-old war, an "unqualified and absolute success."

General Franks came to this former Soviet air base and promised more assaults against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters until they were wiped from the country. He declined to say when and where the strikes would take place but left little doubt that plans were in the works.

"These operations are going to continue," said General Franks, adding that future operations could be as large as this one was.

At the Pentagon, senior military officials said today that American forces had already begun attacking Taliban and Al Qaeda troops scattered by the Shah-i-Kot battle.

On Sunday morning, Special Forces troops destroyed a convoy carrying suspected Al Qaeda fighters south of the valley, killing 16 and wounding one. There were no American casualties in the firefight, Pentagon officials said.

In unrelated action on Sunday afternoon, American and other coalition forces raided a compound west of Kandahar, capturing more than 30 people and confiscating a large cache of weapons, Pentagon officials said. The prisoners, who were taken to a detention center at Kandahar airport, included many foreign Al Qaeda fighters, the officials said.

In Britain, the government announced that it was sending the troops, centered around royal marines trained in arctic and mountain warfare, in response to an American request. The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, said that the battle group would operate under overall United States command as part of an American brigade.

"Al Qaeda and its supporters continue to pose a direct threat to states outside Afghanistan, including the United Kingdom," he said in making the announcement.

British officials said the troops were being sent to relieve Americans who have been fighting for weeks under difficult conditions at high altitudes so that they could keep up the pressure of operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. The United States has more than 4,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

The appearance of General Franks here today stood as a kind of capstone for the Shah-i-Kot operation, the most protracted ground battle for American forces since the Vietnam War. The operation began March 2 to clear Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who had gathered in the valley, in eastern Afghanistan province of Paktia.

Eight American troops were killed and nearly 50 were wounded in the fighting, the highest toll of the war. About 2,000 American and allied Afghan troops took part in the battle, much of it at altitudes of close to 10,000 feet. American warplanes dropped more than 2,500 bombs.

General Franks praised the soldiers and airmen who took part in the operation and used the occasion to pin Bronze Stars on two soldiers for bravery in battle as well as giving other honors.

"The evidence that I would provide you is having talked to all these great young people standing around here," General Franks told reporters in response to a question about proof of the battle's outcome. "I think they've all been there, I think they've seen what they've seen, and my inclination is take them at their word."

For all the congratulations he heaped on soldiers here, central questions about the nature and outcome of the operation stood unanswered. General Franks refused to give details about the number of Al Qaeda fighters thought to be present in the valley at the battle's outset, how many may have been killed and how many may have escaped.

Initial Pentagon estimates placed the number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in the valley at about 200. After the assault began, and the Americans were met with a ferocious response, the estimates of enemy fighters climbed to 800 or 1,000. Privately, Pentagon officials have estimated the number of enemy fighters killed there at more than 800, but reporters visiting the scene have found only a few dozen bodies. Afghan commanders who took part in the battle have said that many, perhaps hundreds, of Al Qaeda fighters slipped out of the valley, but American officials have denied that.

"I don't believe you have heard me or anyone else in our leadership talk about the presence of 1,000 bodies out there, or in fact how many have been recovered," General Franks said. "You know we don't do body counts."

The general said the measure of the operation's success lies in the fact that Shah-i-Kot, once full of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighers, is a "completely different" place than what it was before the Americans attacked. He said he did not believe many enemy fighters had gotten away.

"What we do is look for the enemy, we find the enemy and, I think it's been said, we either bring the enemy to justice or bring justice to the enemy," he said. "I think what you've seen in this operation is a little bit of both."

Senior Pentagon officials also declined today to estimate the number of enemy fighters killed. But they said surveillance images indicate that few enemy fighters have fled the region, suggesting that many, if not most, had died in the fierce fighting.

The officials praised the operation as having severely disrupted Al Qaeda's operations and prevented Taliban forces from regrouping. But they said the battle had sent another, just as important message: that American forces were willing to fight and die in a ground battle.

"It has showed the Taliban and the Al Qaeda that the American folks were serious, our troops are up to the task," Brig. Gen. John Rosa Jr., deputy director of current operations of the Joint Staff, said at the Pentagon. "We engaged them; we know we accomplished quite a bit."

General Rosa acknowledged that Al Qaeda commanders in Afghanistan are probably still able to communicate with terrorist cells around the world. "Do I think we've shut down their entire communications?" he said. "No. They'll still communicate, but it makes it much more difficult to do that."

The raid south of the Shah-i-Kot valley occurred at about 1 a.m. EST on Sunday when American helicopters attempted to stop a three-car convoy that was speeding away from the battle area. When the helicopter fired warning shots, Pentagon officials said, the passengers in the convoy fired back. Special Forces troops on the ground and in helicopters then attacked and destroyed the vehicles.

Pentagon officials said the vehicles had been under surveillance before the attack, although they could not say where the convoy had originated. American commanders had identified it as a military convoy because of the way the vehicles periodically leapfrogged ahead of one another in a defense maneuver common to military drivers.

General Rosa said that although the Shah-i-Kot operation was over, more than 500 American and coalition troops were continuing to search caves in the region for enemy holdouts and weapons caches.

American military leaders said they captured fewer than 20 fighters at Shah-i-Kot, many of them non- Afghans. The officials said they do not believe any senior Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters were in the valley, but they contend that they killed midlevel leaders of the groups. They have declined to provide details.

General Franks said today that he did not know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the presumed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, whose capture or death has been one of the principal objectives of the war.

"I do not know where bin Laden is today," he said. "I do not know the number of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

Any number of signs pointed to the likelihood of imminent military operations. Fresh Special Forces troops flew into the base this week from Kandahar. General Franks, when asked whether he had specific areas in mind where Al Qaeda units may be gathering, answered "Yes."

--------

THE ALLIES
Britain Sends 1,700 Troops to Afghan Fight

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/asia/19BRIT.html

LONDON, Mar. 18 - Britain announced today that in response to a request from the United States it was sending 1,700 troops trained in arctic and mountain warfare to Afghanistan to help the Americans flush out remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons that the battle group, Britain's largest combat deployment since the Persian Gulf war in 1991, would be built around Royal Marine commandos and operate under overall United States command as part of an American brigade.

In a somber warning about the risks involved, Mr. Hoon said: "These troops are being deployed to take part in war-fighting operations. We will be asking them to risk their lives.

"Their missions will be conducted in unforgiving and hostile terrain against a dangerous enemy. They may suffer casualties."

Mr. Hoon said that recent American-led operations proved that heavily armed and well-organized Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters remained in Afghanistan in large numbers. "Left alone, these groups would threaten all that the Afghan people and their supporters in the international community have achieved so far and would strive to retain Afghanistan as a base for training and organizing terrorism," he said. "Al Qaeda and its supporters continue to pose a direct threat to states outside Afghanistan, including the United Kingdom."

Lead elements of the force are already in the area aboard the helicopter carrier Ocean and will be flying in the coming days to Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, where they will be joined by other soldiers who have been in what Mr. Hoon called a high state of readiness at bases in Plymouth on the Channel coast and in Arbroath in Scotland. He said the force would be ready to fight in Afghanistan by mid-April.

Defense officials said that the sending of British combat troops was designed to relieve troops who have been fighting for weeks at high altitude in low temperatures and to maintain an intense tempo of operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

"They are determined to keep the squeeze on," a British officer said of American commanders. "That means you keep going at them. You don't allow the opposition to regroup and reconstitute."

He predicted continued military activity in Paktia province and around the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. "It was always expected this was not going to be a quick fix," he told a background briefing. "There are pockets which are bubbling up over Afghanistan where there are elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouping."

Defense officials said the original request for the mountain commandos came from American battlefield commanders at the beginning of last week and was formally conveyed to the Foreign Office by the State Department at the end of the week.

The largest single British deployment until now has been the 1,800 troops assigned to the International Security and Assistance Force in Kabul, but they have been restricted to the capital and used for training a new National Guard and police force in addition to maintaining order.

Britain was originally to have turned the leadership of the 5,000- strong peacekeeping force over to Turkey in April, but Mr. Hoon said he expected some delay in the original schedule. A British official said that the Turks were reluctant because of domestic political difficulties.

Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative Party's defense spokesman, offered his party's "unequivocal support" for the government's decision today and said it was right to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States in the fight against terror.

Although today's announcement was a surprise, it was not expected to cause difficulty for the government, because the public has been generally supportive of Prime Minister Tony Blair's backing for the war in Afghanistan.

Mr. Blair has run into more problems over his support for the United States' hard-line approach to Iraq. One member of parliament from the Labor Party, Chris Mullin, asked Mr. Hoon if the new obligations in Afghanistan meant there would be no other resources for "adventures in other parts of the Middle East such as Iraq." The defense secretary replied that he would confine his remarks to Afghanistan.

-------- arms sales

U.S. offers defense systems to S. Korea

Around the Nation
March 19, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020319-28696760.htm

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 yesterday.

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, said one Pentagon official who asked not to be identified.

-------- asia

Japanese Warships to Visit China

The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 19, 2002; 1:28 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47889-2002Mar19?language=printer

TOKYO -- For the first time since World War II, warships from Japan and China will visit each other's ports in a sign of growing military cooperation between the former enemies, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

A flotilla of Chinese naval vessels will likely visit Japan sometime this spring, while the Japanese contingent will likely embark next year, said Keiji Iwamoto of the ministry's China division. Details of the visits have yet to be determined.

The breakthrough came after military talks Monday evening, in which the two countries strengthened bonds but also discussed differences over nuclear weapons and growing military budgets, which reached record highs this year of $20 billion in China and $38.4 billion in Japan.

Both countries established diplomatic relations in 1972. They have signed peace and friendship treaties, but have no formal military allegiances to each other.

-------- biological weapons

UPI hears ... biological weapons or indigenous disease?

Insider notes from United Press International for March 19, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/19032002-113010-1530r.htm

More than 40 people have died from an illness that the locals call "sia lengi" -- "black leg" -- in Afghanistan's Ghor province, prompting the World Health Organization to send a medical team to the province to identify the disease. The disease acquired its name in reference to the intensive bleeding under the skin that seems to turn the skin black. Shortly after the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban opened last autumn, Iran and Pakistan reported a sudden outbreak of cases of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever in their provinces bordering Afghanistan.

WHO officials downplayed the understandable concerns that al Qaida operatives might have obtained and unleashed a biological agent known to have been weaponized by the former Soviet Union. But WHO sources confirm that among the emergency medical supplies they are taking to Ghor is Ribavirin, an anti-viral drug used to treat Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever. While the disease is indigenous to the region, virologists have been puzzled by the outbreaks; mainly transmitted by ticks, it is a spring-summer illness rather than one that flourishes at the colder time of the year when the parasites die off.

-------- britain

Britain Set To Bulk Up Its Afghan Deployment

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 19, 2002; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47296-2002Mar18?language=printer

LONDON, March 18 -- Responding to a call for help from the Pentagon, the British government said today that it will dispatch about 1,700 more troops to Afghanistan to join U.S. soldiers in front-line fighting against Taliban and al Qaeda forces.

"This is a powerful force," Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon told a largely supportive Parliament today. The dispatch of Royal Marine commandos and support units will represent the largest British military deployment since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, he said.

The troops "will join a U.S.-led brigade" by mid-April, Hoon said.

He added that the United States had asked for British assistance after the tough fighting this month in the assault in eastern Afghanistan. "The lesson learned from Operation Anaconda is that there continue to be Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan that have to be dealt with," Hoon said. The British troops' main mission, he said, will be "search-and-strike operations to eliminate the enemy."

In recent years, Britain has been the United States' closest military ally in Europe and has maintained that role in the war on terror. Prime Minister Tony Blair told the American people shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks: "We were with you at the first. We will stay with you to the last."

Britain is currently the lead force in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the peacekeeping unit based in Kabul, providing about a third of the 4,500 ISAF soldiers. In addition, Britain has kept a few hundred special forces soldiers on battlefront duty in Afghanistan and helped in the air campaign.

So far, the British electorate has strongly supported its country's involvement in the Afghan war, despite considerable criticism in the press of U.S. tactics and goals.

Initial reaction to the new deployment appeared to be positive. The chief opposition, the Conservative Party, immediately supported the decision to dispatch the new force.

Hoon told Britain's Channel 4 that he would "not speculate" as to how long the British combat troops would remain in the country, but he said the commitment would not be "open-ended."

The British Marines, along with a battery of light guns and several helicopters, will initially be sent to Bagram, the fortified air base about 35 miles north of Kabul. They will be supported by helicopter units from the British warship HMS Ocean.

In addition to support for the allied force in Afghanistan, Blair has indicated that Britain will cooperate with the United States in case of military action against Iraq.

But tonight questions were raised, in Parliament and the media here, as to whether Britain has enough military personnel to support a new deployment to Afghanistan and a possible role in Iraq. Hoon ducked the queries, saying that "absolutely no decisions have been made about Iraq."

-------- business

Russian Co. Develops New Boosters

By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50736-2002Mar19?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Russia's premier aerospace company has developed a range of new booster rockets for foreign satellites in a bid to hold onto its share of the market for commercial launches, its director said Tuesday.

A Rokot booster developed by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Center put twin U.S.-German satellites into orbit on Sunday. The rocket was converted from a Soviet-designed SS-19 ballistic missile.

The unmanned German spacecraft, nicknamed Tom and Jerry, will fly in tandem to create what scientists hope will be the most accurate map ever of the Earth's gravitational field.

Khrunichev's director, Alexander Medvedev, said his company earned about $10 million for the launch, which was barely above production cost.

"We have to charge bottom price" to remain competitive, he said at a news conference.

Medvedev said that the launch price could be increased later as Rokot wins a market niche. He said another three Rokot launches are set for this year.

Thanks to its heavy-lift Proton, Khrunichev has become the top cash cow for the beleaguered Russian space industry, putting commercial satellites - mostly foreign - into high, geostationary orbits throughout the 1990s.

Russia receives tens of millions of dollars for each launch, a coveted revenue source for an industry struggling to survive on a fraction of generous Soviet-era state funding.

Medvedev blamed a sluggish global market for commercial space launches for last year's drop in the number of Proton launches. Khrunichev launched only two Western satellites into orbit atop Protons last year. Another two commercial launches set for 2001 were postponed until this year because of problems with satellites, Medvedev said.

He said his company had invested part of the earnings from commercial launches into research and development works for Rokot, Proton-M and the next-generation Angara rocket.

Khrunichev has also paid for upgrading the crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure of the Baikonur cosmodrome, which Russia leases from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, and Russia's own Plesetsk cosmodrome used for Sunday's launch.

Medvedev said Khrunichev paid for a backup power system at the Baikonur after the Kazakh authorities once cut power to the launch pad minutes before a scheduled commercial liftoff.

"Such incidents can land you in the madhouse," he said.

-------- chemical weapons

Senate Discusses Chemical Weapons

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bio-Chem-Weapons.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A terrorist contracts smallpox and wanders into an airport. He coughs, he sneezes, he simply breathes. Ten innocent travelers spread the disease across America, potentially killing thousands, even millions.

That's what a weapon of mass destruction can look like, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., the Senate's only physician, told a hearing Tuesday on the threat posed by biological and chemical weapons.

It doesn't have to come in via missile, it doesn't have to call attention to itself like anthrax spores. Those who die from the disease, and those trying to combat such weapons, may never know where it came from.

That's part of what makes biological and chemical weapons so dangerous, experts told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

``The best biological weapons delivery system may be humans, knowingly or not,'' said Amy Sands of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. ``In an era where people can literally move anywhere around the world within 36 hours -- far less than the incubation period of many diseases of concern -- all nations could be affected.''

America's flailing attempts to cope with last fall's anthrax letters, which killed five, may have emboldened its enemies, said Carl W. Ford, Jr., assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.

``Advanced chemical and biological warfare capabilities and the widespread public understanding of U.S. vulnerabilities since the anthrax attacks ... makes their use all the more likely,'' Ford said. If the aim is simply to scare people, it doesn't take many deaths to ``have a huge impact on Americans' perception of their safety.''

Compared with nuclear weapons, these weapons are easier to get and they are easier to assemble because many of the goods and technologies needed to make them are readily available, he said.

Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said chemical and biological weapons are ``an incredibly urgent problem that we have to attend to.''

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the panel's top Republican, said a missile defense system is still needed to stop missiles carrying all kinds of weapons.

``We must not surrender to the notion that some of these threats are more likely than others,'' Helms said.

Alan P. Zelicoff, senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., offered one way to combat bioterrorism, a system already being tested:

Doctors quickly enter a patient's symptoms -- perhaps cough, fever and lethargy -- into an Internet-linked computer that posts all cases on a city map. Local health officials can spot odd clusters and investigate immediately, leading to a fast diagnosis of anthrax followed by targeted antibiotic therapy that could save thousands.

``Should would-be perpetrators of bioterror know that the effects of their attacks would be blunted if not eliminated, they might well rethink their strategy,'' Zelicoff said.

More than a dozen nations -- including China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and Syria -- can produce chemical and biological agents, the experts said.

Russia has the world's largest known chemical weapons stockpile, estimated at 40,000 metric tons, 80 percent of which are nerve agents, ``only a few drops of which can kill on contact,'' said Biden.

Despite $50 million in additional U.S. money this year to help destroy that stockpile, Russia is expected to miss an extended 2012 deadline to do so, Biden said, urging Russia and European allies to boost their contributions.

The United States isn't always the intended target.

Iran developed such weapons because of its long tension with Iraq, and Syria did so to deter ``Israel's superior conventional forces and nuclear weapons,'' Ford said, adding, ``Unlike Iran, Iraq and Libya, Syria has never employed chemical agents in a conflict.''

``If I were Iran,'' said Biden, ``I might very well be doing what Iran is doing because of what Iraq did to me.''

Meanwhile, Sands said cyanide has been wrongly overlooked as a potential chemical weapon, overshadowed by sarin gas and the toxic nerve agent VX. Widely available for industrial use, there have been 52 terrorist possessions, plots or uses involving cyanide that caused 13 deaths and 124 injuries, she said.

-------- cuba

Cuba seeks deals with US to fight terror, migrant smuggling, drugs

Tuesday March 19
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2lt8f.html

Cuba rolled out a pair of rare goodwill gestures toward the United States and underscored its desire to hammer out bilateral accords on fighting terrorism, migrant smuggling and drug trafficking.

Amid speculation that President Fidel Castro might speak this week at a UN-sponsored conference in Mexico on fighting poverty, which US President George W. Bush is also due to attend, the foreign ministry announced that Cuba has handed over a fugitive from the United States to the US government.

The neighboring nations do not maintain full diplomatic relations and do not have an extradition treaty.

But the Cuban government said Jesse James Bell, who stands accused of 15 drug charges and had been detained in Cuba since October 10, 2001, was handed over on January 12 "as a goodwill gesture that shows clearly the commitment of our government to cooperate with all nations in fighting drug trafficking," the foreign ministry text said.

The United States requested Bell's extradition October 19, 2001 and "Cuba decided to respond positively to this request after establishing clearly that he was not involved in illegal activity in this country," the statement added.

With a four decade-old US economic embargo clamped on Havana, the only communist government in the Americas, cooperation in fighting drug trafficking has appeared to be one of the few areas in which bilateral contacts and cooperation with the United States might have a chance for improvement.

Yet Cuba's efforts to step up cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking so far have met little enthusiasm from Bush's government.

"The handover of this individual to the DEA (US Drug Enforcement Administration) was done exceptionally, since despite the expressed desire and proposals from the Cuban side, there is no cooperation agreement between the governments of Cuba and the United States of America on fighting drug trafficking, and as such our government had no obligation to hand over the aforementioned delinquent," the Cuban statement said.

In a separate drugs-related development, the foreign ministry also announced Monday that Cuba had detained in Havana Colombian national Rafael Miguel Bustamante Bolanos, who is wanted by authorities in his country and in the United States.

Bustamante has fled from prisons in Santa Marta, Colombia and a federal facility in the US state of Alabama, the ministry statement added.

In November 2001 Havana presented to the United States proposals for an accord to combat illegal emigration and emigrant smuggling, an anti-drugs cooperation agreement and an anti-terrorism cooperation arrangement.

The lack of an extradition treaty with the United States has attracted a number of US fugitives to the Caribbean nation including Joanne Chesimard, who lives in Cuba under the name Assata Shakur. A former Black Panther, she was convicted by a New Jersey jury in 1977 of murdering a state trooper. She denied the charges.

-------- drug war

Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Student Drug Tests

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Drug-Tests.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A rural Oklahoma school district took a sensible approach to stemming what it saw as the general problem of drug use among students when it required drug testing before students could participate in after-school activities, the school lawyer argued to the Supreme Court Tuesday.

Several justices seemed ready to agree with the school that the random drug tests are constitutional even though the school had reported no widespread drug problem in the past and there was no reason to suspect the students in band or 4-H of using drugs.

``You think life and death is not at issue in the fight against drugs?'' Justice Antonin Scalia barked at an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer challenging the tests.

Justice Stephen Breyer suggested the policy was a reasonable response to dangerous drug use among young people nationwide, and in keeping with the court's landmark 1995 ruling that schools could test athletes for drugs.

The Tecumseh, Okla., school ``did what I would have done,'' Breyer said. ``I would have asked my kids what's really going on in the school.''

The court's ruling, expected by summer, should fill in a major question left from the 1995 ruling: whether the factors that made drug testing acceptable for athletes apply to other after-school activities, or even students at large.

Wider drug testing remains relatively rare among the nation's 15,500 public school districts. Lower courts have reached differing conclusions about the practice.

Former student Lindsey Earls and others backed by the ACLU claim that such ``suspicionless'' drug tests violate the Constitution's guarantee against unreasonable searches or seizures.

The National Education Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws are among the other organizations supporting the students. The libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative Rutherford Institute are also on board.

Tecumseh school administrators claim the random tests were a deterrent. If students wanted to represent the school in extracurricular activities, they might think twice about using drugs, the school argued.

The Bush administration and a long list of organizations, including the Drug-Free Schools Coalition and the National School Boards Association, are backing the school system.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, pointed to a 2000 government survey in which 54 percent of high school seniors reported some illegal drug use in their lifetime. Nearly 25 percent said they had used drugs within the last month.

``School children are not only more vulnerable to drug use than adults, but such abuse is much more likely to devastate their lives,'' Olson wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

A federal court initially rejected Earls' suit, but a federal appeals court ruled the other way last year.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the school argued that the lower court drew the wrong conclusions from the 1995 athlete case, and that its ruling conflicts with other appeals courts around the country.

The Tecumseh testing program ran for part of two school years. It was suspended after Earls sued.

Only children involved in competitive extracurricular activities were tested on the theory that by voluntarily representing the school, they had opened themselves to greater scrutiny than other students.

The policy covered a range of voluntary clubs and sports, including the Future Farmers of America club, cheerleading and football. Students were tested at the beginning of the school year. Thereafter, tests were random.

Overall, 505 high school students were tested for drug use. Three students, all of them athletes, tested positive, Earls' lawyer said. Two of the athletes also participated in other extracurricular activities.

The school offered drug counseling after a positive test, and those who complied could remain on their teams. Those who refused were barred from competition.

The case is Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 01-332.

On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov
Appeals court ruling: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 10th Circuit.

--------

Afghan Opium Farmers Cultivate on

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Poppies-Untouched.html

SHAH AGHA DORAHI, Afghanistan (AP) -- By the middle of March, the Afghan governor had vowed, tractors would fan out across the countryside, tearing up fields of opium poppy.

But on this sunny mid-March Tuesday, 10 miles from the governor's office and mere weeks from harvest, Abdul Wadood calmly tended his opium crop. ``I haven't heard anything,'' the farmer said.

A local official explained why. ``This is not a stable government,'' said Haji Naik Nazar, the district chief. ``We don't want to disturb the security situation. If we create this new problem, this would be a very big one for us.''

Opium is a very big problem, indeed, for the new Afghan regime, and for its U.N. and American sponsors.

In the 1990s, the narcotic -- raw material for heroin -- became the chief source of income for Afghanistan; it grew more than 70 percent of the world's supply. In 2000, the ruling Taliban banned poppy and production fell to almost nothing. During last fall's U.S.-led war against the Taliban, however, farmers quickly replanted the opium-bearing flowers. A preliminary U.N. survey finds 84 percent of the previous area is in poppy cultivation again.

Eradicating the crop now would cause immediate hardship for tens of thousands of Afghan farmers and harvest laborers.

``We have a lot of expenses -- seed, water, renting the tractor,'' said Abdul Wadood, 30, standing beside his 48-by-48-yard plot, or jirib, of poppy. ``The poppy covers our expenses. The wheat'' -- grown on his four other plots -- ``pays for our food.''

Every farmer in this area of flatlands irrigated by deep wells, against the rock-ridged background of the Kandahar mountains grows poppy on at least one-quarter of his land, locals said.

``Here's the way it works out,'' said farmer Mohammad Gul, 25, a small scythe in hand. ``When I grow one jirib of wheat, I can make 7,000 rupees'' -- about $120. ``When I grow one jirib of poppy, it brings 100,000 rupees'' -- $1,700.

The new interim Afghan government, encouraged by the U.N. Drug Control Program, announced a ban on poppy cultivation in January, long after the seeds had been planted. In late February, the spokesman for Kandahar province Gov. Gul Agha told reporters that tractors would plow up the province's poppy fields in mid-March.

At the Arghandab District office, responsible for this and dozens of other Kandahar province villages, district chief Nazar said Tuesday he had received a letter from the provincial government in late February saying poppy had been banned. But there is no plan to destroy the crop, he said.

``The government has the power to eradicate it by force, without compensation,'' he said. ``But this isn't good. It's a new government, people are poor, with no other source of income, other than poppy, and so this would be a big law-and-order issue if we used force.''

An Associated Press reporter heard a similar warning from the top aide to the governor of neighboring Helmand, Afghanistan's biggest opium-growing province.

The plants in Abdul Wadood's field stood five inches high on this mid-March day. He said he expected the red poppy flowers to blossom in mid-April. A week or two after that, village children will slit the bulging poppy pods, letting opium ooze out, to be followed by expert harvesters who scrape the drying lumps into sacks. They'll sell the sacks to middlemen, who will take them to town and into the heroin-production chain.

The Kandahar governor's spokesman, Yusuf Pashtun, said last Sunday the eradication timetable had now been moved back. ``It looks like after April 7-8,'' he said. He also said instructions had been sent to all 15 districts in the province to survey their poppy fields.

But Nazar, the district chief, said he had received no such instructions. If ordered to, he'll begin ripping up poppy plants, he said, though he thinks it a mistake. But no plan exists.

The U.S. and other governments and the U.N. drug agency have largely remained publicly silent while difficult options are quietly debated: tear up the crop without compensation, buy it up with international money, let it be harvested and work toward preventing later crops.

The farmers of Shah Agha Dorahi know what they need from aid donors to wean them from the opium industry. One tractor for every two farmers, seed and fertilizer could get them started on spices and other profitable crops, they said.

But in perhaps 30 years of poppy growing in this area, ``nobody has ever come to us to talk about these things,'' 45-year-old farmer Ibrahim Jan said.

-------- europe

EU Boasts of Bigger Aid Boost Than Washington

By REUTERS
March 19, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-development.html

MONTERREY, Mexico - A European Union official boasted on Tuesday that an EU pledge to boost development aid by 2006 would channel more money to poor nations than a rival plan by President Bush.

The EU initiative is also structured to fit in with a U.N.-led campaign to help poor countries gain a better foothold in the global economy while the Bush proposal stands on its own, said Poul Nielson, European commissioner for development and humanitarian aid.

The 15 EU member nations decided last week to increase development aid spending to an average of 0.39 percent of gross national product by 2006. That compares to the 0.33 percent of GNP -- or $25.4 billion -- they contributed in 2000.

Nielson told Reuters the change would mean an extra $7 billion a year in EU aid by 2006, and would add a cumulative $20 billion to the development kitty between now and 2006. His estimate marked the first time the EU had put a dollar value on its pledge.

The Bush plan would allot an extra $5 billion over three years -- some $1.7 billion more a year -- to poor nations that respect human rights, root out corruption and open their markets. It would be in the form of grants rather than loans but would not be available until late 2003.

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Alan Larson said Washington welcomed the EU commitment.

``And now the point is to make sure that we can provide this assistance in an effective way and that produces the results that we want to see, in terms of lives lifted up out of poverty,'' Larson told Reuters.

``That's what the president calls for, and we're prepared to work with others to achieve that,'' he said.

Nielson and Larson spoke on the sidelines of the U.N. Conference on Financing for Development that is drawing some 50 world leaders to the industrial city of Monterrey in northeastern Mexico.

SOROS SEES 'DECEPTIVE PACKAGING'

The meeting's goal is to line up the financial resources poor nations need to halve, by 2015, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day.

Some 1.2 billion people now do so.

The strategy, laid out in advance in a draft declaration to be voted on by U.N. member nations on Friday, looks to freer trade, greater foreign investment, more government development aid, debt relief, and cleaner and more efficient government.

Billionaire speculator turned philanthropist George Soros, while praising the Bush plan as a novel approach that merited testing, said Washington had engaged in ``deceptive packaging.''

This was because, under the plan, U.S. aid would not actually kick in until late 2003, he said, calling on Bush to reconsider and launch the U.S. plan immediately.

If Bush did so, ``I think it would really be a big step forward,'' Soros told reporters. ``It is a novel approach. I approve of the approach, but it needs to be tested.''

Mark Malloch Brown, who heads the U.N. Development Program, praised both the EU and U.S. commitments but stressed their plans fell far short of what was needed.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed a doubling of the current $50 billion a year in government-to-government development aid, and the EU and U.S. plans combined would make up less than a fifth of the extra funding needed to meet that goal, Malloch-Brown said.

Malloch Brown acknowledged as the weeklong conference opened on Monday that it would not achieve all its goals but critics should recognize the outcome would nonetheless be a glass half full rather than half empty.

While rich donor nations had made few concrete commitments of future aid, ``what they have said is, 'Show me results and more resources will be forthcoming,' and we take them at face value on that,'' Malloch Brown said.

``The key point is that the political debate has changed. It is now about getting results for the resources rather than 'cut, cut, cut.'''

EU Commissioner Nielson agreed, saying it was ``remarkable and positive'' that the conference was focusing so intently on how to line up more money for aid after years of declining funding.

-------- iraq

CIA pecks at the hawks' theory

The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0203/19/world/world7.html

Washington: A report in the New Yorker magazine suggests that Iraqi intelligence has been in close touch with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network for years, and that the two organisations jointly run a terrorist group that operates in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.

The CIA has largely discounted the proposition that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein has maintained links with al-Qaeda.

A hawkish faction within the Bush Administration that favours military action against Iraq has scoured the world for such connections.

The New Yorker article focuses on a Muslim guerilla group of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs.

The group, operating under the name Ansar al-Islam, is said to have been trained in bin Laden's camps.

The author of the article, Jeffrey Goldberg, said he interviewed several operatives of the group who had been captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a pro-US group that controls one province in northern Iraq.

The captives said that Saddam and al-Qaeda ran Ansar, that a number of al-Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan had escaped to Kurdish territory in Iraq controlled by Ansar, and that Iraq hosted an Egyptian leader of al-Qaeda in Baghdad in 1992.

US officials warned that the PUK had an interest in making this case because it could help to justify a US invasion to topple Saddam. A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment,

but James Woolsey, a former CIA director who favours military action against Iraq and is critical of the agency's performance on Middle Eastern terrorism, said he thought the New Yorker article was "a blockbuster".

"The CIA has over recent years not been real enthusiastic about the Iraqi resistance, and I think that's a shame," he said.

A former senior US official with deep experience in US policy toward Iraq said: "This is clearly a very important story."

It was "likely that Saddam Hussein would try to destabilise the Kurdish areas" by using Ansar al-Islam, and possible that al-Qaeda had ties to the group.

----

CIA director highlights Iraq threat

By Pamela Hess Pentagon correspondent
3/19/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=19032002-015924-8411r

WASHINGTON -- The director of the CIA laid out a "rap sheet" on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for a Senate committee Tuesday, painting in stark terms a case for dealing a final military blow on Baghdad as Vice President Dick Cheney completes his Middle East trip meant to both gauge and shore up support for military action against Iraq.

"I want to be clear about this: Saddam remains a threat. He is determined to thwart U.N. sanctions, press ahead with weapons of mass destruction, and resurrect the military force he had before the Gulf War," CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"We believe that Saddam never abandoned his nuclear weapons program. Iraq maintains a significant number of nuclear scientists, program documentation and probably some dual-use manufacturing infrastructure that could support a reinvigorated nuclear program. Baghdad's access to foreign expertise could support a rejuvenated program. But our major near-term concern is the possibility that Saddam might gain access to fissile material."

Radioactive fissile material could be loaded into a conventional bomb and detonated in an American city as a "dirty bomb," spreading radioactive materials over a large area, rendering it uninhabitable for decades or longer. Tenet told Congress in February he feared the al Qaida terrorist organization has been seeking fissile material to make such an explosive. It is a nightmare scenario for the CIA and FBI, which would be hard pressed to detect it and prevent its use, Tenet admitted.

Tenet asserted Saddam has a history of sponsoring terrorism. Al Qaida is a broad-based Sunni network, and Saddam Hussein -- who has a track record of sponsoring terrorism -- is himself a Sunni Muslim.

Al Qaida, however, has kept some distance from Baghdad because Saddam runs a secular government, a U.S. official told United Press International. That distance seems to be breaking down, the official said.

"Their ties may be limited by divergent ideologies, but the two sides' mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family suggests that tactical cooperation between them is possible, even though Saddam is well aware that such activity would carry serious consequences," Tenet said.

"You can't rule out that from time to time they will put aside their deep differences to work against a common enemy," the official said. "Their enemy (the United States) is more active and successful these days and that urges them to think outside the box."

No direct link has yet been found between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks, except for a meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, between suicide bomber Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official.

Despite the list of concerns with Iraq, Tenet indicated there are no immediate plans to go to war.

"Nobody's made any decisions to do anything," he said. "It's really interesting that we're attacking Iraq in the next 24 hours. I'm not aware of anybody making those kinds of decisions."

Cheney is delivering that message overseas.

Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit told reporters after a meeting with Cheney, "He (Cheney) told us clearly that there will not be an operation against Iraq in the foreseeable future."

A major new war against Iraq could face significant opposition not just overseas but on Capitol Hill as well.

Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, asked Tenet whether the administration was considering the possibility that a military attack on Iraq could serve to energize terrorist groups against the United States.

"Will not that invasion of a sovereign nation, the transformation of that government by force, spawn an increase in the number of individuals, not necessarily from Iraq, but from around the world, who will come and be inspired to inflict greater damage on this nation?" Warner asked.

"I must tell you that I think it's important that we begin to spend a lot of time on this subject and try as best we can to inform the American people and others of the consequences of a significant military action to take out Saddam Hussein," said Warner.

Tenet demurred, saying he wanted to wait for Cheney's report before speculating on such an attack.

"You often get a public face and a private face on these discussions and sometimes," Tenet said, before being cut off by a frustrated Warner.

"Well, you and I know that," Warner said. "We've all traveled and talked to those folks. I guess I'm not going to make much progress this morning. But I'm spending a lot of my time on this issue, and I feel an obligation, and I hope our president consults with the Congress," Warner said.

President Bush, whose father oversaw the Persian Gulf War, opened the possibility for military action against Iraq by labeling it one of three members of a new "axis of evil" threatening the United States in his January State of the Union address.

The United States, leading a coalition of 36 countries, attacked Iraq in 1991 after it invaded neighboring Kuwait. The hot war lasted less than two months, but the United States, Britain and Turkey have maintained an air presence over the southern and northern parts of the country since 1992. Saddam has held his position in Iraq since 1979.

It is popularly assumed that any new attack on Iraq would require a similar coalition to provide basing and over flight rights to U.S. aircraft -- a dim prospect now as the fresh Palestinian-Israeli conflict has enraged much of the Muslim world.

Saddam has also been successful in splintering the old coalition, Tenet said.

"Saddam has craftily responded to our progress in Afghanistan with a political and diplomatic charm offensive. He's carefully cultivating neighboring states, drawing them into economically dependent relationships, in the hopes of further undermining their support for sanctions," Tenet said.

Nevertheless, Tenet expressed confidence that if the United States does decide to take action against Iraq, it will find other governments far more willing to throw their support behind Bush.

"There are lots of different strains in the region and governments have different views at this moment in time," he said. "And when the United States approaches them and says this is what we want to do or don't want to do, and you get into the game on game day, you find that everybody's attitude changes when you're talking to them about something that's specific and real."

He added: "My experience is that everybody changes their views depending on what you're putting on the table. And I'm not aware that anybody's put anything on the table."

The U.S. experience in Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance, however, suggests to some with President Bush's ear -- most publicly Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board -- that a different strategy could work instead: training and equipping Iraqi opposition groups and backing them up with American long-range air power and precision weapons.

"The opposition to Saddam Hussein is potentially a strong opposition. It isn't strong today because it was getting no external support," Perle told reporters in November.

"The combination of a modest number of American forces, opposition forces and defections together with precision bombing and careful strategy encourage me to think he can be brought down more quickly than we think," Perle said.

"The need for a coalition has been vastly overstated," he said. "At the end of the day we don't need much support ... We will get better performance out of our coalition partners when we don't need them."

----

Iraq weakens its resistance to UN arms inspections

By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
19/03/2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/19/wirq19.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/03/19/ixworld.html

IRAQI opposition to international weapons inspectors softened yesterday as it mounted a major counter-offensive to America's campaign to convince the Arab world to help Washington remove President Saddam Hussein.

As Iraqi envoys fanned out through the Arab world, criss-crossing paths with US Vice-President Dick Cheney on his 11-nation journey through the region, Baghdad suggested it might be ready to re-admit UN weapons inspectors if they provide precise details of sites they want to visit and how long they will stay.

Iraq's conditional offer falls far short of the "any time, anywhere" arms inspections demanded by the US and was seen in the West as reminiscent of Baghdad's delaying diplomacy in the countdown to the Gulf War.

Nevertheless, it will allow Saddam to present himself as conciliatory as he sends out three of his most senior lieutenants - vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, Ezzat Ibrahim, deputy chairman of Iraq's ruling Revolution Command Council, and the deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz - to win over Arab governments.

"Iraq refuses the return of inspectors for as long as the sites for inspection and a precise timetable are not drawn up," Iraq's vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was reported as saying.

He told the London-based Arabic daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat, that Iraq "is totally free from weapons of mass destruction" and suggested that an Arab inspection team could visit any site.

In Morocco, Iraq's parliamentary speaker, Saadoun Hammadi, reinforced the message, saying: "Many Arab and non-Arab friends have called on Iraq to remove all pretexts for a US invasion of Iraq, so we are happy to co-operate with all countries . . . including the United Nations, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to avoid new US attacks."

Britain rejected the overture out of hand. "Our position is that we want full and unfettered access. We're not prepared to accept any watering down of the UN requirements," said a Foreign Office spokesman.

"Many of the so-called Iraqi offers have been ruses to make Iraq appear reasonable when it has been unreasonable in refusing to co-operate with the UN for many years."

UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, shortly before the US and Britain launched a sustained bombing campaign against Iraq.

-------- israel / palestine

Cheney Is Ready to Meet Arafat If Mideast Truce Goes Into Effect

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/middleeast/19CND-MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, March 19 - Vice President Dick Cheney said today that he was ready to meet soon with Yasir Arafat if the Palestinian leader takes steps to curb attacks by Palestinian militants and encourage a cease-fire.

Mr. Cheney said the meeting could take place as early as next week and would occur in the Middle East. The vice president would be the highest level official in the Bush Administration to meet with Mr. Arafat.

He said he told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel "that I would be ready to meet with Chairman Arafat in the period ahead at a site in the region to be determined."

In a week of meetings in the Middle East, Mr. Cheney sought to build political support for a tough American policy against Iraq only to run into Arab insistence that the United States take a more active role in ending the fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

After Mr. Cheney's meetings in Saudi Arabia, the Arab news media reported that Mr. Cheney had been urged by Crown Prince Abdullah to become more involved in the Middle Ease Peace process and to meet with Mr. Arafat.

During a stop in Kuwait, the first deputy prime minister, Sheik Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, urged Mr. Cheney to press the Israelis to allow Mr. Arafat to leave the occupied territories so he could attend a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, later this month of the Arab League. Mr. Sharon indicated today that this would happen if Mr. Arafat took steps to end the violence.

The Bush Administration has also taken the position that it would not reward Mr. Arafat with a high-level meeting until he did more to stop terrorist attacks against Israel. While Mr. Arafat does not have complete control over terrorist activities American officials believe he has substantial influence and has failed to use it.

The aim of Mr. Cheney's proposal is to address Arab concerns without abandoning the Bush administration's basic strategy for dealing with Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Mr. Cheney sought to address Arab concerns by announcing that he was prepared to meet with Mr. Arafat and to so do quickly. But Mr. Cheney put the onus squarely on Mr. Arafat.

Mr. Cheney said that Anthony C. Zinni, a retired marine general and the Bush Administration's special envoy to the Middle East, would be the judge of whether Mr. Arafat has done enough to merit a meeting with the vice president.

The question will be whether Mr. Arafat has done enough to implement the security plan overseen by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

Because the demands on Mr. Arafat were not spelled out in more detail it has left the Bush administration with some flexibility in determining whether Mr. Arafat was complying with the American demands.

The Tenet plans sees to establish a truce in the 18-month-long battle between Israel and the Palestinians over Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians would be obliged to arrest militants and seize illegal arms. The Israelis would be required to withdraw to the positions they had before the uprising.

After that, the next step would be to begin peace talks under a plan drawn up by a committee led by former Senator George S. Mitchell.

In a joint news conference today with Mr. Cheney, Mr. Sharon announced that Israel would allow Mr. Arafat to attend the Beirut summit meeting if the Palestinian leader cracked down on terrorism and did his best to support a cease-fire.

Mr. Sharon said Mr. Arafat would be allowed to leave in a matter of days if he complied with the American and Israeli demands. But Mr. Sharon suggested that Mr. Arafat would not be allowed to return to the occupied territories if he incited an upsurge of terrorist attacks while he was at the Arab League meeting.

"I told the vice president that the implementation of the Tenet agreement will enable Mr. Arafat to go outside the borders of the territories and this has been decided by the cabinet," Mr. Sharon said.

"Incitement" to violence at the Beirut meeting, Mr. Sharon suggested, could lead the Cabinet to block Mr. Arafat's return.

Israelis critics of Mr. Sharon assailed this statement as an effort by the Israeli government to shape the content of Mr. Arafat's speech.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process was not the only subject in Mr. Cheney's several meetings with Mr. Sharon. Iraq was another subject. Mr. Cheney, who is scheduled to fly to Turkey today, returning to Washington on Wednesday, declined to discuss those discussions, insisting that talk of an American military campaign against Iraq was press speculation.

Mr. Sharon was more direct. He acknowledged that Iraq had been discussed and suggested that the two officials had sought to coordinate their policies if an American strike is carried out.

Early today Israeli ground forces began withdrawing from Palestinian-controlled territory, the Israeli Army said.

The Israeli government decided to pull back after a rare joint session of Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs, drawn together by General Zinni, who is pushing hard for a truce after two previous attempts failed.

As hulking tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled out of Bethlehem toward Israeli territory after midnight, Israel appeared to be signaling a halt, at least for as long as a cease-fire appears within reach, to its most sweeping military assault since the invasion of Lebanon 20 years ago.

Israel began storming Palestinian towns and refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip late last month, in what it described as a hunt for terrorists and munitions factories after devastating suicide attacks.

The army said its forces were moving out of the neighboring towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala, just south of here, and also drawing back from positions on the outskirts of Jenin, in the northern West Bank. The army said forces were also pulling out Beit Hanoun, in the Gaza Strip.

After months of pressing only Mr. Arafat to end violence, the administration pushed Mr. Sharon last week to stop the offensive into Palestinian territory, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of Palestinians, including civilians.

The administration's change is one of nuance. American officials have continued to demand in the first place a cease-fire, to be achieved through talks focused on security. But they have also begun putting weight on a so-called political horizon for the Palestinians, in an effort to assure them that a halt to the violence will advance their nationalist goals.

On Monday Mr. Cheney spoke of resuming "a political process that will end the half-century of conflict."

Palestinian officials have been heartened by the American shift, and by a United Nations resolution envisioning a Palestinian state that cleared the General Assembly last week with American sponsorship. But they said they were still waiting to see whether the new language would be accompanied by a substantive change in negotiations.

--------

34 New West Bank Settlements Spotted

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/middleeast/19SETT.html

JERUSALEM, March 18 - A survey published today by the Peace Now movement said that 34 new Israeli settlement sites had been built in the West Bank since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was elected more than a year ago.

The survey, based on aerial photographs, said the new sites were spotted at distances ranging from a few hundred yards to nearly two miles from existing settlements.

Many of the sites are officially described as extensions of the existing communities or new neighborhoods of those communities.

Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr. Sharon, said that the Peace Now list included many sites whose construction had been approved by the previous government, and that any unauthorized building would be removed.

"This government has given no approvals for new settlements," Mr. Gissin said.

He added that government policy allowed for construction in built-up areas of existing settlements or within the limits of their town plan. Such plans can extend hundreds of yards or more from the settlement core.

The list of the sites compiled by Peace Now, which opposes settlement construction, shows that new structures have appeared since February last year at points across the West Bank. They range from single structures to 22 at one site. Most of the new dwellings are mobile homes.

A plan for a return to peace talks drawn up by former Senator George J.Mitchell calls for confidence-building steps that include a freeze of Israeli settlement activity.

The Peace Now group said it had found no new settlements between May 1999 and February 2001, when Ehud Barak was prime minister.

--------

U.N. Chief Says Israel Has Been Waging Full-Scale War

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/middleeast/19LETT.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 18 - Secretary General Kofi Annan, employing his bluntest criticism of Israel in the latest Middle East violence, has told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israeli forces have been waging what looks like an all-out conventional war on Palestinian civilians.

In a forceful letter to Mr. Sharon last Tuesday, Mr. Annan said he wanted to call Mr. Sharon's attention to "disturbing patterns" in the treatment of civilians, including aid workers, by the military, known officially as the Israeli Defense Forces.

The secretary general said he was "especially dismayed" by the "failure to protect and respect ambulances and medical personnel."

"Judging by the means and methods employed by the I.D.F. - F-16 fighter bombers, helicopter and naval gunships, missiles and bombs of heavy tonnage - the fighting has come to resemble all-out conventional warfare," Mr. Annan wrote Mr. Sharon. "In the process, hundreds of innocent noncombatant civilians - men, women and children - have been injured or killed, and many buildings and homes have been damaged or destroyed."

A copy of the letter, dated March 12, was obtained from an official here today. An official said Mr. Sharon had not replied to Mr. Annan's letter, which included a request for an investigation of reports of shootings last week by Israeli soldiers at ambulances and medical workers.

Israeli officials appeared taken aback by the letter's abrupt appearance. An official in Israel's mission to the United Nations said that because the letter had been sent to Mr. Sharon, any comment should come from his office in Tel Aviv.

Mr. Annan is not known as a critic of Israel, and he drew the ire of some Arab countries several years ago for working to improve Israel's position in the United Nations.

Mr. Annan's letter to Mr. Sharon sounded even harsher because it contained no similar judgment of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and only alluded to the Palestinian suicide bombings.

"Israel is fully entitled to defend itself against terror," Mr. Annan wrote. "But this right does not discharge it of its obligation to respect the fundamental principles and rules of international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict with respect to the treatment and protection of civilians in occupied territories."

In a speech to the Security Council last Tuesday, the same day as his letter to Mr. Sharon, the secretary general accused both sides of violence that was "disproportionate in scale and indiscriminate in effect."

He described Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians as "morally repugnant" and said that "the Palestinians have played their full part in the escalating cycle of violence, counterviolence and revenge."

At the same time, Mr. Annan described aspects of Israel's presence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as "illegal" and accused the Israeli Army of showing "growing disregard" for the safety of medical and ambulance workers trying to treat and evacuate casualties.

Mr. Annan has stayed in touch with his special representative in the region, Terje Roed-Larsen, and the chief of the United Nations' Palestinian relief agency, Peter Hansen.

They have briefed Mr. Annan about the human and material cost of Israeli retaliation against the latest Palestinian uprising. Fresh reports of further damage over the weekend, and silence from Mr. Sharon, influenced the release of Mr. Annan's letter today.

Mr. Annan was said to be especially upset by the death 11 days ago of Kamal Hamdan, a 40-year-old guard for the United Nations relief agency assisting Palestinian refugees. He was killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire on the ambulance in which he had been riding. Israel expressed regret over the shooting.

Israeli officials have charged that Palestinian fighters use ambulances and medical workers as cover.

The secretary general was in Costa Rica today, en route to the world development conference in Monterrey, Mexico. He said he and the United Nations were working closely with the United States, Russia and the European Union to try to end the current Arab-Israeli violence.

----

Israel pulls troops out of Bethlehem

By Dan Ephron
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020319-67308262.htm

JERUSALEM - In another sign that the Israelis and Palestinians were edging closer to a cease-fire, Israeli troops pulled out of Bethlehem in the West Bank overnight, hours after Vice President Richard B. Cheney arrived in the Jewish state.

The withdrawal followed a meeting of security officials from both sides brokered by U.S. Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni, who has been shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah since last week trying to mediate an end to 18 months of violence.

Israeli officials said Palestinian security chiefs had agreed to take control of areas that troops evacuate and make sure militants are not using them as staging grounds for attacks on the Jewish state.

Israeli and Palestinian officials said the withdrawal from Bethlehem and other areas would pave the way for high-level political talks today and possibly a cease-fire announcement.

"If things go well, I expect there will be a good possibility that a cease-fire will be declared," Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told reporters.

Witnesses said they saw Israeli tanks leave Bethlehem just after midnight along the main road to Jerusalem. Soldiers who had taken up positions in homes and schools also pulled out.

Mr. Cheney, fresh from a tour of Arab capitals, where he sought support for measures against Iraq, joined the diplomatic flurry almost as soon as his plane touched down. He rode from the airport to Jerusalem with Gen. Zinni and then held talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

It wasn't immediately clear if Mr. Cheney, who is due to leave for Turkey today, would also be meeting Palestinian officials. He had not intended to hold talks with leader Yasser Arafat, a decision that Palestinians saw as a snub. But at least one U.S. official in Jerusalem said a Cheney-Arafat meeting still might be arranged.

"I wonder how Cheney can say he's pursuing peace between the Palestinians and Israelis by meeting the leader of one side and not the other," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Though Mr. Cheney had hoped to focus on Iraq during his Middle East tour, Arab leaders repeatedly raised the matter of violence in the West Bank and Gaza, pressuring Washington to rein in Mr. Sharon.

Also, in an angry letter to Mr. Sharon, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan accused Israel of failing to protect civilians in an escalating military campaign that he said had come to resemble conventional war.

In the March 12 letter, obtained yesterday by the Associated Press, Mr. Annan said, "hundreds of innocent non-combatant civilians - men, women and children - have been injured or killed, and many buildings and homes have been damaged or destroyed," adding that the fighting "has come to resemble all-out conventional warfare."

He also urged Palestinians to halt "morally repugnant" acts of terror and suicide bombings.

A steady pulse of low-level violence since September 2000 exploded in recent weeks, making March the bloodiest month Israelis and Palestinians have known in decades.

Israel, responding to a spate of Palestinian bombings and shootings, reinvaded large parts of the West Bank and Gaza handed over to Palestinians during peacemaking years in the past decade.

The level of violence has dropped in recent days, as mediation took center stage.

Troops fatally shot one Palestinian near the settlement Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians fired two rockets at Israel, but no one was wounded.

After the withdrawal from Bethlehem, Palestinians said Israeli troops still surround some West Bank cities and hold about 20 percent of the Gaza Strip that should be under Palestinian control.

Palestinians had pressed in yesterday's security meeting for a full Israeli withdrawal to positions it held before the outbreak of violence 18 months ago.

Israelis agreed to evacuate only those areas seized in the recent offensive.

An American official involved in the talks said Gen. Zinni sided with Israel on the issue and Palestinians agreed that a cease-fire would follow a limited Israeli pullback.

That position and Mr. Cheney's reluctance to meet Mr. Arafat reinforced among Palestinians what they have long perceived to be a U.S. bias toward Israel.

But Mr. Cheney, in remarks made at a welcoming ceremony in Israel, said both Israelis and Palestinians needed to amend their policies.

"The Israeli people must have confidence that their existence as a Jewish state living within secure borders is accepted by all, first and foremost by Israel's neighbors in the region," Mr. Cheney said.

"For that reason, we continue to call upon Chairman Arafat to live up to his commitment, to renounce once and for all the use of violence as a political weapon and to exert a 100 percent effort to stamp out terrorism.

"In that same spirit, I will be talking to Prime Minister Sharon about the steps that Israel can take to alleviate the devastating economic hardship being experienced by innocent Palestinian men, women and children," he said.

The fighting here and Israeli blockades imposed on the West Bank and Gaza have devastated the Palestinian economy and made nearly 40 percent of the work force unemployed.

Gen. Zinni, who failed twice in the past four months to bring about a cessation of violence, issued a statement saying yesterday's talks were "professional, serious and constructive."

He said they focused on ways to implement a cease-fire agenda hammered out by CIA Director George J. Tenet in meetings here in June.

The plan begins with a simple truce but is followed by wider measures, including a broad Israeli pullback to positions held before the start of fighting and a Palestinian crackdown on militant groups.

The Tenet plan is supposed give way to full peace negotiations and a freeze of Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza.

At least 1,074 Palestinians and 345 Israelis have been killed since the outset of the Palestinian uprising.

-------

Israeli army embarrassed by video broadcast

Tue, 19 Mar 2002
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/03/19/mideast_censor020319

JERUSALEM - The Israeli army has expressed a note of contrition after a television station aired a videotape showing an army assault on a Palestinian home in which a mother of five children died.

INDEPTH: Mideast Showdown

When CBC News spoke with Ismail Hawarjeh at Bethlehem's hospital earlier this month, there was no way to verify the story he told about how his wife had died, until Israel's Channel 2 broacast the tape last weekend.

The Palestinian school administrator said his wife Huda had been killed in their home by an Israeli tank shell during the army's March 8 assault on the Aida refugee camp. The army wouldn't comment and foreign journalists weren't allowed inside the camp.

But Israeli media were allowed to ride along with the soldiers, and they went right into the Hawarjeh home. An Israeli camera recorded the army blowing off the door, and found Huda Hawarjeh bleeding on the floor.

The pictures conformed to Ismail Hawarjeh's story about his wife being hit by shrapnel in the front hallway of the house, and about the Israeli soldiers doing little to help her for an hour while she bled to death in front of her five children.

Finally, the soldiers allowed an ambulance to come to a nearby street, and soldiers helped Hawarjeh carry his wife to it. Doctors tried to revive her at the hospital but couldn't.

Huda Hawarjeh was one of seven people to die in the Bethlehem area that day.

The Israeli army allows the media such close access on the understanding it can embargo anything it doesn't want broadcast.

The tapes of the assault on the Hawarjeh home fell into that category. But Channel 2 broke the embargo anyway.

The army, government and many Israeli citizens didn't like what they saw.

Channel 2 showed Hawarjeh begging soldiers to allow an ambulance through. The camera captured the terror of the woman's daughter, and her brother's attempt to stop her from showing the soldiers her fear.

After the woman was finally taken out, one of the soldiers looked into the camera and said: "I don't know what we're doing here. Purification, maybe. It's dirty here. I don't know why a good Hebrew boy should be here, so far from his home."

The soldiers tore the home apart, evidently looking for weapons.

Another daughter begged them not to demolish the home's wall. Soldiers commonly smash walls to move into adjacent houses.

Israeli spokesman Ranaan Gissin said the government was disappointed by the decision to air the tapes. "I would have expected a little bit more self-censorship on the part of the Israeli media," he said.

Ma'ariv, Israel's second-biggest newspaper, ran the story on its front page on Monday, under a banner headline that read "Gaffe!"

The army, after trying to suppress distribution of the pictures, admitted the soldiers' actions pushed the boundaries of public acceptance.

"Our action is so difficult to be done that it is to the extremities of acceptance," said Olivier Rafowicz, an Israeli Defence Force spokesman.

He called what happened in the Hawarjeh home "a mistake."

----

The inconvenient Mideast ally

Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
March 19, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020319-69214272.htm

Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon precipitated a firestorm of criticism from the Bush administration by suggesting the United States was doing to Israel what Czechoslovakia's great power allies, Great Britain and France, had done to the Czechs before World War II.

At the time, President Bush and his national security team were outraged at such an invidious comparison and Mr. Sharon retreated, claiming he had been misquoted. Unfortunately, with each passing day, Washington appears to view its principal Middle Eastern ally's conduct as increasingly inconvenient - in much the same way London and Paris came to see Czechoslovakian resistance to Adolf Hitler's offers of peace in exchange for Czech lands.

This parallel was brilliantly addressed by Peter Hutchins in an essay published on March 10 in the British newspaper, the Mail on Sunday:

"The phrase 'land for peace' is interesting in itself. It is actually another way of describing the appeasement forced on Czechoslovakia by her supposed friends in 1938. This was also supposed to promise peace, but made the country impossible to defend and opened the gates for invasion a few months later. Those responsible for this cowardly stupidity are still reviled 60 years on. Those who urge it on Israel in the present day are praised."

Today, as in 1938, there appear to be more important things to worry about than the security concerns of a small ally that finds itself on the fault-lines of a larger conflict. Then, British and French governments wanted to prevent a war with Germany; today, the U.S. government is, correctly, determined to start one with Iraq.

In the service of the former objective, the Great Powers felt within their rights to take risks with Czech security. In the latter case, the World's Only Superpower hopes the Arabs will be less hostile to its determination to topple Saddam Hussein if only Israel renders itself indefensible.

Toward that end, the United States has lately resumed its strident criticism of Israeli efforts to prevent terrorists from inflicting further damage on the Jewish State at a rate that is, calculated on a per capita basis, far in excess of the losses we suffered on September 11. American diplomats are demanding the withdrawal of all Israel Defense Forces from areas foolishly relinquished to Palestinian control back when some people still thought the surrender of such land would mean that Yasser Arafat would prevent it from being used to wage war against the Israelis.

Peter Hutchins flays this paternalistic tripe: "In normal life, it is a sign of being unhinged if you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. But in the business of Middle East diplomacy such behavior could earn you a Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1978, Israel has been urged to give up a little more land in return for the promise of peace which always seems to evaporate. The land however is gone for good."

Now there is even talk of putting CIA "monitors" on the ground to observe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict firsthand and, presumably, to render findings as to who is at fault when the shooting occurs. This step would obviously be exceedingly dangerous for the monitors, especially if they are targeted for assassination by Palestinians who could reasonably expect that such casualties would further strain U.S. relations with Israel.

This prospect might well prompt American military personnel to be dispatched, as well, for the purpose of protecting the monitors. Suddenly, the United States would have an armed presence in the middle of a conflict where it would be obliged to view with moral equivalence Israel's efforts to defend itself in the war on terrorism and a terrorist proto-state's efforts to destroy our democratic ally.

The logic of such a proposed intervention has already given rise to an even more ominous suggestion: Some who should know better (including Gen. George Joulwan who, before his retirement from the Army was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) are calling for the United States to "impose" a peace agreement on the Israelis and Palestinians. This would, presumably, go beyond Britain and France's sell-out of an ally at Munich in 1938. The "impose-a-peace" school is apparently prepared to have us play the role of Hitler's Wehrmacht as well, seizing and turning over to Mr. Arafat the contemporary Sudetenland: the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and perhaps part of Jerusalem, as well.

Or, more likely, the advocates of our dictating terms to the Israelis expect the latter to bend to our will, obviating the need for us to force them to do so. After all, like the Czechs of a few generations ago, the Israelis have succumbed in the past to such sirens' songs as: "We know what is best for you." "Do as we say, not as we would do in your circumstances." "Our interests trump yours." "Trust us, we'll make up to you later any concessions you have to undertake now."

In fact, it is precisely experiences like that of Czechoslovakia - and the war and Holocaust its piecemeal surrender set in train - that gave rise to the widely perceived need for a Jewish State, one strong and self-reliant enough to defend its people even if no one else would do so.

It is for these sorts of reasons that successive Israeli governments have sensibly refused to rely upon American guarantees or forces for their national security.

Tragically, efforts aimed at appeasing the Arab states by compelling Israel once again to make herself vulnerable to attack will catalyze the Arabs' appetite for war, all right, but not against Saddam Hussein. Like appeasement at Czech expense more than 60 years ago, it will more likely encourage them to engage in aggression against - and even perhaps precipitate the destruction of - a freedom-loving nation that made the mistake of becoming an inconvenient ally.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.

-------- nato

UPI hears ... Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Insider notes from United Press International for
March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/19032002-113010-1530r.htm

Visegrad divisions

Historic grievances can't be allowed to undermine the political cohesion of Central Europe, according to the man shepherding Slovakia's bid to join the European Union and NATO.

Jan Figel, state secretary of the Slovak Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporter David R. Sands during a Washington visit last week that the resurfacing of disputes dating back to before World War II had weakened the diplomatic effectiveness of the so-called "Visegrad Group" - Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - all of whom want to join the EU in 2004.

The Czech Republic has been engaged in a dispute with its neighbors over the treatment of ethnic German and Hungarian residents expelled after World War II. Hungary has been feuding with its neighbors about a new law to extend special privileges to ethnic Hungarian citizens in those countries.

"The well-functioning cooperation we've had in the Visegrad Group can be destroyed if we all pursue our own historical agendas," Mr. Figel warned. "A common future is the best answer we have to dealing with a divisive past."

Mr. Figel said he remained optimistic that Slovakia can join its Visegrad partners in NATO this year and that the group will be able to regain its effectiveness following Hungary's parliamentary elections next month.

-------- pakistan

NEWS ANALYSIS
Cloud Over Pakistan: Is Musharraf's Life Safe?

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By RAYMOND BONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/asia/19STAN.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 18 - While most of the people killed or wounded in the attack on a church here on Sunday were foreigners, there is little question that a principal target was the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has become one of the point men in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

In firmly enlisting with the United States, the Pakistani leader took great risks. This is a nation where there is a residual resentment toward Washington, arising out of earlier American policies, and where there was considerable support for the Taliban among the people - and from the government before Sept. 11.

Now the question is whether he can survive. Not just politically, but even physically. When assessing General Musharraf's predicament, many Pakistanis and foreign diplomats solemnly mention Anwar el-Sadat, the Egyptian leader who was cut down by opponents of his policy of making peace with Israel.

"There are people out there who would like to see him dead," said a veteran diplomat here, referring to Pakistan's Islamic militants. Though few in number, they are "bitter, nasty and organized," he said.

A more immediate question is how the attack on Sunday - in which two of the five people killed were Americans - will affect General Musharraf's decision whether to transfer Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the main suspect in the killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, to United States custody.

It is a microcosm of his larger dilemma. To surrender Mr. Sheikh, who was indicted in the United States last week, will surely set off more terrorist acts here, diplomats and Pakistani political leaders said. Not to surrender him will create the impression that the general is giving in to threats of terrorism.

The government may have other reasons not to give up Mr. Sheikh, including reports that he has links to Pakistan's main intelligece agency.

After Sunday's attack, the Bush administration issued a caution message to Americans around the world. "The U.S. government continues to receive credible reports that extremist individuals are planning additional terrorist actions against U.S. interests," the State Department said. "Such actions may be imminent and include suicide operations."

There are conflicting reports from the police here on what happened Sunday. One of the dead had has not been identified, in part because his body was charred and shredded by the explosion. The blast, which left more than 50 people killed or wounded, was so powerful that it sent the man's body parts to the ceiling of the church, 40 feet above the floor, leaving huge blood spots.

That has led to reports in local newspapers that what occurred was a suicide attack, but a senior police investigator said in an interview today that it was not clear if it was a suicide mission or - if it turns out that the unidentified man was the attacker - whether something had gone awry.

The F.B.I. has sent a team to help with the investigation, and the police emphasized that the investigation was only beginning.

President Bush has said repeatedly that the war on terrorism is going to be a long one. Noplace, perhaps, is that more evident than here. In the short term, few doubt that there will be more terrorist acts and that the police, poorly paid and inadequately trained, are simply not able to prevent them.

But in the long run, the question posed often here is whether the United States is prepared to give Pakistan the help it needs, which is more economic than military.

The biggest and most immediate boost would be a suspension of import duties on Pakistani textiles, which are about 85 percent of Pakistan's exports. Congress has refused to go along with such a suspension.

At the same time, is General Musharraf willing to undertake some of the changes needed to win the war, such as forcing the elite to pay taxes, reducing the military budget and increasing spending on education?

Poverty and illiteracy are the terrorist organizations' incubators. Half of this country's population is illiterate, and a third gets by on less than $1 a day. The government spends 40 percent of its budget making payments on the national debt, which was run up by American- backed governments, and 30 percent is spent on defense.

General Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, appears determined to stay the course. He signed on, in part, because he had no real choice: the Bush administration left no room for neutrality.

"It was pure, unadulterated self- interest - national interest," said a Western diplomat who admires the general.

His support for the American war against the Taliban was an abrupt and dramatic reversal of the previous policy of support for the Taliban. Then he went after extremist groups at home, which existed and flourished because of support from elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus.

He banned several, rounded up hundreds of suspected terrorists and has begun to rein in the main intelligence agency, though that will be a long, slow process.

Now the Islamic extremists are striking back.

"There are religious elements who are not happy with General Musharraf and his support to the Americans, and they would like to create a wedge between the Pakistani government and the United States," said Kamal Matinuddin, a retired three-star general and former diplomat.

Mr. Matinuddin, the director of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, said he did not think the general was in danger of being toppled. The Islamic extremists have very little popular support, he said, a view that is supported by the fact that they have been able to muster only paltry demonstrations against General Musharraf's policies since Sept. 11.

Many here have been surprised by how little support the Islamic militants enjoy in this country, which is 95 percent Muslim. A wide range of political and religious leaders have condemned the Sunday attack.

But it does not take great numbers, of course, to carry out acts of terrorism.

On Wednesday, General Musharraf is meeting with his top military, police and intelligence officials as well as provincial governors. He is expected to ban more militant organizations, seal their offices and freeze their bank accounts.

The actions will have the support of the largest political party, the People's Party of Pakistan, which is headed by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was forced out of office under a cloud of corruption allegations and now lives in exile.

"We think the government must crack down harder on these groups," said Farhatullah Babar, the party's spokesman. "Any letup will encourage these groups to strike again."

"This is a clear warning shot to the government" of the consequences should it hand over Mr. Sheikh, he said of Sunday's attack. "If he does not extradite him," Mr. Babar said, "it will also give a signal to these people who will think it is because of their threats. It might even embolden them."

--------

Pakistan Expels Two Indian Embassy Officials

March 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-pakistan-india-diplomats.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan said Tuesday it ordered the expulsion of two Indian Embassy officials in Islamabad, accusing them of spying in a tit-for-tat spat between the nuclear rivals.

A Foreign Ministry statement, quoted by the official APP news agency, said the Indian High Commission had been told the two men -- Pramod Kumar Saxena and Makhan Singh -- must leave Pakistan by March 26.

It said the government declared them ``personae non grata on account of their involvement in activities incompatible with their official status as defined in the Vienna Convention of 1961 on diplomatic relations.''

Such wording is diplomatic jargon for spying.

``The India High Commission has accordingly been informed that these officials should leave Pakistan by March 26,'' the statement said.

An Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in New Delhi called the Pakistani allegations ``totally baseless.''

New Delhi and Islamabad often expel each other's diplomatic staff on spying charges.

They recently halved the size of their missions in a dispute over India's demands that Pakistan shut down Islamic militant groups after a deadly raid on the Indian parliament in December.

India expelled two Pakistan High Commission officials in New Delhi early this month on spying charges, which Islamabad rejected as a ``fabrication.''

India blamed Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants for the Dec. 13 parliament attack, which triggered the massing of nearly one million troops along their border. The standoff shows no sign of easing.

Pakistan has banned the two groups blamed for the parliament attack but says it will continue to give moral and political support to what it calls freedom fighters in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

-------- russia

Russia to double military's pay

Tuesday March 19, 4:27 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2ltyi.html

Troops in Russia's battered military will see their salaries double by 2003, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said.

Troop conditions and pay "are going to get better by the end of the year," Kasyanov said, cited by Russia's Prime-Tass financial news agency.

Under the new plan, lieutenants will receive 170 euros (150 dollars) a month, up from the current 77 euros (68 dollars).

But troops will see some of their benefits decline significantly to make room for more pay, Kasyanov said.

The plan targets young officers most of all, in an attempt to keep newcomers in the army, by raising their salaries between 1.3 and 1.9 percent.

The plan will cost Russia four billion rubles (146 million euros, 129 million dollars), Prime-Tass reported, citing Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin.

On Friday, parliament's lower house passed a bill that raises military salaries according to post, beginning in July, and rank, beginning in 2003.

President Vladimir Putin has gone after a series of measures aimed at improving the status of the country's military, approving in November a plan to end conscription and make the army fully voluntary by 2010.

----

Russia to stand by pledge to Japan over disputed Kuril islands

Tuesday March 19, 12:43 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2lsgc.html

Russia pledged to stand by a Soviet-era agreement with Tokyo over four disputed islands off northern Japan despite a resolution by deputies urging President Vladimir Putin to reaffirm Russian sovereignty over them.

Foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said that as the successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia would "fulfil all the international legal obligations" assumed by Moscow in 1956 when it signed with Tokyo a statement ending World War II hostilities.

The statement included a clause in which Moscow pledged to hand over two of four southern Kuril islands seized by Soviet troops at the end of the war, Shikotan and Habomai, once a formal peace treaty was concluded.

The fate of the other two islands, Kunashiri and Etorofu, was to be determined later.

With Japan refusing to formalise a peace treaty until the dispute over the Kurils is settled, no progress towards achieving such an agreement has been made since then.

The Kurils issue has continued to bedevil Russo-Japanese relations, acting as a brake on badly needed Japanese investment in the Russian economy, notably in the Far Eastern region.

There has been growing speculation in Russia that the government is engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations to return two of the islands while continuing talks about the other two in line with a proposal by Tokyo last month that the sides should adopt a "two-plus-two" approach.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov sought to dampen the rumours last week, denying that Moscow was negotiating a handover in exchange for having its foreign debts cleared, but Tokyo was adamant that Russia had not turned down its two-track proposal.

With new opinion polls showing Russian public broadly opposed to handing the islands back, the State Duma lower house approved a proposal Monday recommending Putin to abandon efforts to secure a peace treaty with Japan so as to sidestep Tokyo's demands.

The deputies urged Putin to seek instead a "cooperation and good neighbours treaty, bearing in mind that Russia and Japan made peace in 1956 and there is no need for an additional peace treaty," the Interfax news agency reported.

"Territorial concessions by Russia are unacceptable and the treaty should only confirm the existing border between Russia and Japan which has gained international recognition," according to the text drafted by the chairmen of the Duma foreign affairs and security committees Dmitry Rogozin and Alexander Gurov.

Rogozin told deputies the islands were important "in protecting Russia's security interests" and said the 1956 pledge had been an "obvious mistake."

Gurov said the Russian authorities should be tougher in "strengthening Russia's sovereignty over the south Kuril islands."

Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Muhamed Tsikanov told deputies that a bill setting up a Kuril islands free economic zone was to be approved later this year.

--------

Russia Underlines Opposition to U.S. Strikes on Iraq

March 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-russia-iraq-usa.html

LONDON - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Tuesday he backed Washington's declared war on terrorism but opposed unilateral action against Iraq.

Ivanov insisted there was no evidence Baghdad was developing weapons of mass destruction, but urged Iraq to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to return to the country, possibly opening the way for decade-old U.N. sanctions to be lifted.

``Russia is against any attack on any country bypassing the United Nations Security Council,'' Ivanov told reporters after meeting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in London.

``This is our position of principle and has no direct relationship to our battle against international terrorism.

``We have no factual evidence supporting the statement that Iraq has or may have weapons of mass destruction or nuclear weapons. Nobody has ever presented this to us.''

Vice President Dick Cheney is on a tour of Europe and the Middle East seeking to gauge support for possible U.S. strikes against Iraq.

But he said in Israel that Washington had made no decision on any military action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom it suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction.

The idea of military action against Baghdad has split the international community, with Russia balking at the prospect.

Iraq is signaling that it might readmit U.N. arms inspectors to avert a U.S. onslaught, which Russia Monday warned could inflame tensions in the Middle East.

OTHER DISAGREEMENTS WITH U.S.

While Russia has readily joined the international coalition against terrorism, Ivanov said it still had areas of disagreement with the United States, not only over Iraq.

He did not voice outright opposition to U.S. military advisers going to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia, but added:

``At the same time it would be more logical if Georgia was expanding its cooperation with Russia, its direct neighbor, to combat this threat (of terrorism).''

He said Washington had ignored not only Russia, but much of the international community by withdrawing from the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty.

Ivanov did not touch on other recent irritants in U.S.-Russian relations -- rows over U.S. steel import tariffs, a Russian ban on U.S. poultry and concerns over U.S. contingency plans to use nuclear arms against Moscow.

He explained that Russia was not forming foreign policy to make other countries happy: ``Russia's foreign policy serves Russian interests, and that is all it serves.''

He added that Russia wanted to strengthen its relationship with NATO through a proposed new joint council in which it wanted to be an equal partner with the 19 member states.

-------- spies

Kostunica regrets US diplomat identified in spy case

Tuesday March 19, 2:47 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2ltc3.html

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said he regretted that a US diplomat, detained along with Serbia's deputy prime minister under suspicion of espionage last week, was identified.

"I would have liked the detention of the US diplomat to have been shorter, and I would have preferred that his identity or his home country were not revealed," Kostunica told reporters.

Serbia's deputy prime minister Momcilo Perisic was detained last Thursday along with a US diplomat identified by a military court as John David Neighbor, on suspicion of spying and revealing military secrets.

The diplomat was released 15 hours after being detained, during which time he "was arbitrarily arrested, physically assaulted and held incommunicado," the US State Department said.

Describing the case as a "spying affair on an unimagined scale," Kostunica said he expected Perisic to resign from the deputy prime ministership pending an investigation.

Kostunica, however, said the procedure surrounding the arrest, described by other Serbian officials as a "first-class scandal," was "mostly correct," but said it could have been dealt with quicker.

He added that "unfortunately, the name of the US diplomat was unnecessarily and irresponsibly involved in the case."

"This was wrong," Kostunica said, adding that Belgrade "wants to have good and solid relations with the state the diplomat comes from."

He said that contacts between Belgrade and Washington had been established.

"We will do everything to avoid this affair harming bilateral relations between the United States and Yugoslavia in any way," Kostunica said.

"I wish this did not happen at all," he added.

On Saturday, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic personally apologized to the US ambassador to Belgrade over the treatment of the diplomat, while his ministry also sent a formal note regretting the incident.

Earlier Monday, Dragan Marsicanin, a high-ranking official from Kostunica's Democratic party of Serbia (DSS), called on Djindjic to resign, as "he coordinates the work of the government and he is the most responsible for its work."

The DSS is a member of Serbia's ruling coalition DOS, which overthrew former leader Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000. However, it walked out of the Serbian government in protest at alleged corruption.

Perisic was one of the key figures dealing with the Yugoslav army during the popular uprising in 2000, and was in charge of security.

He enjoys immunity, both as deputy prime minister and a deputy in the federal parliament, but under constitutional rules his immunity does not apply if found guilty of a crime carrying a prison sentence of at least five years.

Meanwhile, Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said he had filed charges against the Yugoslav army intelligence chief -- blamed for being behind the arrests -- for "illegal detention" of a member of his ministry, the Beta news agency reported.

Darko Milanovic, the ministry official in charge of Perisic's security, was detained by the military without reason and held for six hours, Zivkovic said.

"Milanovic was supposed to sign a statement prepared in advance, and he refused to do so," Zivkovic said.

--------

CIA Removes Web Tracking Software

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Web-Privacy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA got caught with a hand in the Internet cookie jar.

The agency removed tracking software known as a ``cookie'' from one of its Web sites this week after a private group discovered the banned practice, said Mike Stepp, who manages the CIA's public Web site.

``It was a mistake on our part. It was not intentional,'' Stepp said Tuesday. ``The public does not need to be concerned that the CIA is tracking them. We're a bit busy to be doing that.''

Cookies are small software files often placed on computers without a person's knowledge. The files can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites distinguish user preferences, but they have been criticized for violating privacy because they can track Web surfing.

The government issued strict rules for how federal agencies may use cookies in 2000 after it was discovered that the White House drug policy office had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. The rules ban the use of ``persistent'' cookies, which track Web habits over years.

One of those long-lasting cookies was found Thursday on a CIA site by Daniel Brandt, president of Public Information Research, a private San Antonio-based group that preserves publications related to intelligence and business.

Brandt said he discovered the cookie, which keeps working until 2010, when he was looking at the Web site for the CIA's Electronic Reading Room, which provides access to previously released agency documents.

``They're not supposed to be doing this,'' Brandt said. He said he was particularly concerned because the reading room site allows users seeking documents to search for particular words.

``The keywords you put in reveal an incredible amount about what you're looking for and what your interests are,'' Brandt said. ``It would be very, very tempting to track that kind of information.''

A notice on the CIA Web site states: ``The Central Intelligence Agency Web site does NOT use the 'cookies' that some Web sites use to gather and store information about your visits to their sites.''

Brandt sent e-mail to the CIA with his concerns and the agency responded on Monday, removing the cookie and some other temporary cookies that were discovered.

Stepp said an outside company had redesigned the reading room Web site, which was posted to the Internet on Jan. 29.

``Unbeknownst to us, it was loaded with some software, commercial off-the-shelf software used for Web analysis,'' Stepp said. The software included a cookie that tracked repeat visitors to the site.

To make sure no improper information about site visitors had been recorded, Stepp said two sets of log files would be destroyed.

Congress issued a study last summer that found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies despite the government ban.

On the Net:
CIA Electronic Reading Room: http://www.foia.ucia.gov/
Public Information Research site on CIA cookie: http://www.pir.org/ciascan.html

-------- un

UN's Robinson says rights under threat since September 11

Tuesday March 19
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020318/1/2ltn0.html

The UN's top human rights official Mary Robinson said international human rights standards were under threat in the wake of September 11 and urged countries to uphold them.

Robinson made the plea in her opening address to the UN Human Rights Commission during which she also announced she would not seek a further term in the post.

"The buildings that were destroyed on 11 September can be replaced. But if the pillars of the international system are damaged or demolished, they will not be so easy to restore," she said.

The 57-year-old had announced last March that she would not seek a renewal of her four-year mandate when it expired last September but then agreed to extend it by one year on the request of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Robinson's departure followed pressure from the United States and others for her to leave because she had spoken out on issues such as the death penalty.

"She has paid a price for her willingness to confront publicly big governments like the United States when they violate human rights," HRW's Reed Brody said.

"Mary Robinson has set a standard of candour and energy for future high commissioners. We will be sad to lose her as an ally," he said.

Asked to comment at a press conference, Robinson said she did not want to comment on the positions of individual countries but said she was aware many supporters wanted her to stay on.

She was focussed on an "intensive and very constructive" coming six months, she said, adding she had no plans except to stay in the area of international human rights.

Robinson said the acts of September 11 had also been an attack on the "very system of international relations on which this commission and the entire work of the United Nations is based."

"I have a sense that respect for the international human rights norms and standards is at some risk," she told reporters.

"It's an important opportunity for the commission, as the lead body in human rights, to reassert very vigorously and firmly the importance of adhering to international human rights standards, while combating terrorism particularly in the aftermath of the 11th of September," she said.

The high commissioner has already warned that the war on the terrorism is taking a heavy toll on civil liberties and urged countries to redouble efforts to safeguard citizens basic rights.

For the first time in the commission's 56-year history, it opened without the US on its members' list after it was voted off last year under a system to ensure a rotation of members.

Washington will however have observer status at the talks due to examine violations around the world, including Israel and the Palestinian territories, China, Chechnya, African countries and Colombia.

-------- propaganda wars

'Reality' TV Is Marching to the Military's Tune

By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47502-2002Mar18?language=printer

If "reality" television programming is, as some TV execs have suggested, crack cocaine, their biggest dealer these days is the Pentagon.

Faced with declining audiences for much of their pre-Sept. 11 reality fare, the networks have seized on a new genre of reality series that has been dubbed "militainment." At least three such feel-good series about men and women in the armed forces fighting terrorism overseas are in the works, at CBS, ABC and VH1.

Already some network news execs, who have been laboring under what some believe to be the strictest rules the Pentagon has ever imposed on news coverage, have expressed displeasure over the access the military is giving to these entertainment producers.

But in return for that access, the military gets final approval over the product.

Aiding the entertainment forces in gaining access is the fact that the producers are Jerry Bruckheimer, Tony and Ridley Scott, Bertram van Munster and R.J. Cutler, whose credits include the pro-military flicks "Pearl Harbor," "Top Gun" and "Black Hawk Down," the pro-police reality series "Cops" and the flattering Clinton campaign documentary "The War Room." CBS's "American Fighter Pilots," debuting March 29, profiles three F-15 fighter pilots during 110 days of training. In the works before Sept. 11, it was updated with additional footage to look at the men since the terrorist attacks.

Summer starts are scheduled for VH1's "Military Diaries," in which digital video cameras have been given to 60 soldiers, and ABC's "Profiles From the Front Line."

Yesterday, CBS held a phone news conference with "AFP" producers Tony Scott ("Top Gun," "Spy Game") and Jesse Negron, who shot the footage used in the series.

Negron is a would-be fighter pilot -- poor eyesight disqualified him.

"All I ever wanted to do since I was a kid is fly jets," said Negron, who refers to the subjects of his show as "warriors" and says the series is about how an "everyday" guy becomes a "trained killer."

While insisting that the Air Force had no editorial control over his series, he acknowledged that the military screened the footage "to make sure there was nothing there that was classified, or compromising to pilots."

However, if the Air Force does not like the final product, it can nix a second edition by cutting off access, which would be a network TV catastrophe if the first were a hit.

Negron said he isn't worried about that. After seeing the first couple of episodes, he said, Air Force officials pronounced that "they love it."

There are "a lot of reasons" the military has a "problem with the press," Negron said, when asked about his access. "You have to see them in context."

Scott has said the Air Force gave them carte blanche; Negron said that's because the Air Force trusted that "I was going to tell the whole story." The Air Force, he said, "did not want this to be seen as propaganda."

The "whole story" opens each episode, with clips of one of the hijacked planes tearing into the World Trade Center, President Bush delivering an address to the nation after the terrorist attacks and the American flag waving.

Scott insisted the repeated reference to Sept. 11 is "not gratuitous" and is "integral to the story."

The three pilots chosen to be profiled by the producers did not want to participate, Negron said. But it was "difficult for them" to refuse to be involved in the project.

"It was their duty to tell this story," he said. Fans of militainment series say the public won't mistake them for historical documentaries. Yesterday, when asked what his biggest surprise was while filming, Negron replied that it was learning how "normal" the men were, because he had seen "Top Gun" -- "a huge icon in my brain as to what a fighter pilot was."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Chinese police curb protests as demos enter third straight day

Tuesday March 19, 9:51 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020319/1/2m1gt.html

Thousands of angry workers in China's northeastern city of Liaoyang protested in front of government offices for the third straight day, despite a heavy police presence.

"We are calling on the government to release those arrested," a labor leader named Pang from the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory in Liaoning province told AFP.

"We also asked for talks with the (Communist) party secretary and the mayor, but they both refused to meet us."

Pang said more than 20,000 workers had prepared to descend on city hall for Tuesday's protests, but many were blocked by police and paramilitary forces from leaving the area around their factory premises.

The demonstrators are demanding the release of jailed labor leaders as well as negotiations with the city government.

By early afternoon as the protest wound down, a group of around 250 workers from the ferro-alloy factory were leaving the offices of the central government on Democracy Road, the main thoroughfare of the city, carrying banners that demanded back-pay and job guarantees.

"We have a government of hooligans," one worker was heard shouting, while others maintained that their actions were "not illegal" or "organized".

The protests which began on March 11 and 12 with demands for the removal of local government leaders and pension guarantees, had subsided but were given new vigour with Sunday's arrest of labor leaders.

The local government has appeared especially nervous over the protests as they involve up to 10 Liaoyang factories that have been organized by an independent labor group, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Chinese law does not allow for independent labor unions, with workers only allowed to address labor issues through government-run bodies.

Nearly 20 years of market economic reforms have left millions unemployed or under-employed in China's rusting industrial belt in northeast China as thousands of ailing state-run enterprises are closed or merged.

Although worker protests in China have become increasingly common over recent years, rarely does the unrest spill beyond the gates of individual factories.

Liaoyang protesters and local taxi drivers said that up to 10,000 workers had showed up at Tuesday's protests, down from the reported 30,000 protestors that took to the streets on Monday.

The wife of labor leader Yao Fuxin told AFP that her husband had disappeared Sunday, with other workers claiming two plainclothes men had bundled him into a police car. Police have denied his arrest to the family, who say he has not been seen since.

"It's been 48 hours. I don't even know if he's dead or alive," said Yao's wife Tuesday morning.

Police contacted by AFP refused to comment on the alleged arrest.

The Information Center in Hong Kong said police were on the look out for up to a dozen more labor leaders.

-------- death penalty

Prosecutors Seek a Death Sentence in Terrorism Case

New York Times
March 19, 2002
By PHILIP SHENON with BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/national/19TERR.html

WASHINGTON, March 18 - Federal prosecutors in Virginia and New York are seeking the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been identified by law enforcement officials as the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks, government officials said today.

The move, which is expected to be approved in Washington and announced in court next week, comes as prosecutors offered some of the first details of the trial preparations, including their plans to seek testimony from many relatives of the Sept. 11 victims in urging a jury to put Mr. Moussaoui to death.

Officials would not say if the prosecutors had received the final approval from the Justice Department needed to pursue the death penalty. But they said the approval was all but certain given Attorney General John Ashcroft's strong support of capital punishment and his statement last year that Mr. Moussaoui "engaged in the same preparation for murder" as the 19 hijackers.

The case is scheduled for trial this fall in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington. Government officials said the written request to the Justice Department to seek the death penalty was signed by both Paul J. McNulty, the United States attorney in Alexandria, and James B. Comey, the United States attorney in Manhattan. Prosecutors and investigators from the two offices have worked closely together on the case.

Mr. Moussaoui, a 33-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent, is charged with conspiring in the attacks last year, although no detailed evidence linking him to the hijackers has ever been made public.

Mr. Moussaoui was in a prison cell on the day of the attacks; he had been arrested in Minnesota in August on visa violations after raising the suspicions of a flight school where he was training.

Four of the six counts brought against Mr. Moussaoui carry a maximum sentence of death, and the Justice Department faces a court-imposed March 29 deadline to announce whether prosecutors will seek his execution.

A decision to seek the death penalty was previewed in a letter sent last week to relatives of many of the Sept. 11 victims asking for their help.

The letter, signed by David J. Novak, a lead prosecutor in the case, said that if the Justice Department gave final approval, "the Moussaoui case will become a capital prosecution, meaning that the United States will be asking the jury to find that defendant Moussaoui should be executed should he be found guilty."

"During any death penalty prosecution, the government has the right to present evidence during the sentencing hearing - known as the penalty phase - involving the impact of the crime upon the victims," the letter said. "We intend to offer such evidence and, therefore, solicit your help in our prosecution."

It continued, "We want you to understand that this victim-impact evidence will be presented in support of our request that Mr. Moussaoui should be executed."

Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers either had no comment or did not return phone calls from a reporter.

Government officials said the defense lawyers were so certain that the death penalty would be sought that they had declined to attend a Justice Department hearing at which they could have argued that the death penalty was an inappropriate punishment in the case. Such a hearing is routine when federal prosecutors are weighing whether to seek the death penalty.

"Apparently the defense didn't want to show its hand to us yet," one official said.

Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers are widely expected to focus on a lack of evidence tying Mr. Moussaoui directly to the Sept. 11 hijackers or the planning of the terrorist attacks.

The government's case appears to rely largely on actions by Mr. Moussaoui that resembled those of the hijackers, like receiving flight training in the United States.

He is also accused of training at camps in Afghanistan run by the Qaeda terrorism network and of receiving money from the same sources in Germany and the Middle East as the hijackers.

Government officials said the Justice Department had stepped up its investigation overseas of Mr. Moussaoui in an effort to bolster the case. Spokesmen for Mr. Moussaoui's family in France have said that his mother and brother have been summoned for interviews there with an investigator from the United States attorney's office in Alexandria.

American officials said negotiations were continuing with the Malaysian government over the possible extradition to the United States of a Malaysian businessman who has confessed that he played host at different times to Mr. Moussaoui and to a pair of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In the letter to family members of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks and to injured victims, Mr. Novak said prosecutors would argue for the death penalty for Mr. Moussaoui by citing "the individual stories of approximately 30 victims who will serve as a microcosm of all."

The letter invited the recipients to meetings in New York, Washington or Boston to be interviewed. "The crimes committed on Sept. 11 resulted in the death of more than 3,000 people and serious injuries to thousands more," it said. "Obviously, we cannot tell the story of every victim; otherwise, the trial would last forever."

--------

Justice review errors in McVeigh case

The Associated Press
03/19/2002
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Justice Department investigation concludes the FBI did not intentionally withhold evidence from Timothy McVeigh's lawyers but that four supervisors should be disciplined for a "significant neglect of their duties."

"Human error, compounded by antiquated and cumbersome information technology systems and procedures," contributed to the documents not being turned up until years after McVeigh's trial, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday, citing the findings of a report by the department inspector general.

"The American people have a right to have confidence in our justice system," Ashcroft said in a statement. "The Department of Justice is committed to implementing necessary reforms at the FBI."

The late turnover of documents resulted in a one-month delay in McVeigh's execution. But the report said that "the direct and circumstantial evidence supports the conclusion that the government did not willfully withhold material known to be discoverable."

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said Tuesday the agency has been making major changes to implement the inspector general's recommendations, to retrain employees on document handling and to make records management a priority.

"There can be no doubt about the accuracy, completeness and proper disclosure of the records we compile during our investigations and used by prosecutors in support of prosecutions," Mueller said in a statement.

Assistant Director John Collingwood said Monday: "We have brought in new records management experts, consolidated our records functions in one office and retrained our employees - all intended to enhance operations and increase accountability.

"More importantly, with funding from Congress we are rebuilding our computerized information infrastructure in ways that will not permit many of the things that happened here while increasing security at the same time," he said.

Collingwood said a key phase will occur next spring with the unveiling of a new computer system that will not allow FBI agents to create documents unless they are attached to the master case file so that the lead investigative office knows about every piece of evidence in a case.

He added that another key is the "creation of a culture within the agency that understands records management is critical - although quite mundane compared to the spectacular other things we often do - and is just as important in protecting rights and supporting strong investigations and prosecutions."

The inspector general concluded that four FBI supervisors should be disciplined for what he described as a "significant neglect of their duties." They include Danny Defenbaugh, the inspector in charge of the bombing investigation and currently the special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas office; and Mark White, who was coordinating information exchanged between the FBI's offices in Dallas and Oklahoma City.

The inspector general also recommended discipline, to a lesser degree, for William Teater, a squad supervisor for the FBI unit responsible for parts of the investigation, and for Richard Marquise, who became head of the Oklahoma City office in 1999. The report said Teater "in many ways ... acted appropriately" but that he "should have done more to ensure that someone was making the necessary decisions to resolve the matter expeditiously."

It said it was difficult to know "how much criticism should be directed at Marquise," but said he should have investigated more thoroughly after he received e-mails from Teater indicated a problem with the documents.

When the belated discovery of 4,500 pages of FBI documents abruptly postponed McVeigh's execution, it generated an immediate outcry and questions about the FBI's performance. At the time, FBI officials blamed a computer glitch for the failure to discover the documents.

But people familiar with the inspector general's findings, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the internal review identified several human errors involved in the FBI identification, production and preservation of documents that should have been turned over to McVeigh's defense.

Among them, according to the sources, were:

- At least two FBI offices began destroying documents in the McVeigh case before such permission was granted by records archive officials in late 2000.

- The FBI's Oklahoma City bombing task force lost some documents and evidence during the five years of investigation, trials and appeals.

- Nine FBI field offices destroyed documents that either should have gone to the defense or which they could not rule out should have gone to McVeigh's legal team.

- There was confusion and differing interpretations inside the bureau about what types of documents needed to be produced to defense lawyers.

-------- terrorism

Al Qaeda Is Still a Threat, C.I.A. Chief Says

March 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Threat.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Surviving leaders of the al-Qaida terrorist network are rallying followers to conduct more attacks despite the arrest of hundreds of extremists worldwide, CIA Director George J. Tenet said Tuesday.

Some 1,300 people alleged to have ties to al-Qaida have been detained by 70 foreign governments since Sept. 11, Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee. But al-Qaida cells in Europe and in the Middle East remain capable of attacks, he said.

``Al-Qaida leaders still at large are working to reconstitute the organization and to resume its terrorist operations,'' he said.

Roughly half of the 1,300 remain in custody, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The rest have been released by the foreign governments.

More prisoners are in U.S. hands -- in domestic jails, in Afghanistan, or at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.

Other officials have said al-Qaida financial activity and communications have increased in recent weeks, suggesting plans for new attacks. The activity is centered in northwestern Pakistan. Al-Qaida members also continue to seek chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Tenet said.

In addition, Tenet said U.S. intelligence is watching for alliances forming between disparate Muslim extremist groups. Once divided by ideology, Sunni and Shiite groups may begin working together out of hatred for their common enemies -- the United States and Israel. Osama bin Laden's network is largely Sunni, as is the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Iran and Hezbollah are Shiite.

``The distinctions between Sunni and Shiia that have traditionally divided terrorist groups are not distinctions you should make anymore, because there is a common interest against the United States and its allies in the region,'' Tenet said.

Officials said that cooperation of this nature isn't yet happening to any great degree. However, Tenet noted that Iran ``has failed to move decisively against al-Qaida members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan.''

Tenet also said U.S. intelligence has not ruled out the possibility that Iraq, Iran or another country sponsored the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In other developments concerning Afghanistan on Tuesday:

-- All U.S. and Canadian forces have withdrawn from the eastern Shah-e-Kot Valley, where the biggest U.S.-led ground offensive of the war took place, Maj. Gen. Frank L. Hagenbeck, the commander of coalition troops, said in Kabul. Still, he said, ``when we find pockets of resistance, we'll go after them.''

-- Thirty-one prisoners captured in the latest raid on a suspected Afghan terrorist compound have turned out to be neither Taliban nor al-Qaida and will be released, military officials said in Washington.

-- CNN quoted a half-brother of bin Laden as saying his family believes bin Laden is still alive. Sheikh Ahmad, the half-brother who refused to give his family name, said their mother received a call three weeks ago with that information, but he did not say who made the call.

On Iraq, Tenet said the United States believes Saddam has not abandoned his program to try to develop nuclear weapons. The Iraqis are also developing long-range ballistic missiles, even though such work is prohibited, he said.

He also said the Bush administration has not made up its mind on how to proceed against Iraq. Actions including increased diplomatic and economic pressure, covert action, support for insurgents and a full-scale invasion are reportedly being considered.

``Nobody's made any decisions to do anything,'' Tenet said.

He refused to speak publicly about the possible strength of opposition groups inside Iraq, telling senators he would discuss such issues with them in a closed session.

Saddam, meanwhile, has embarked ``on a political and diplomatic charm offensive,'' Tenet said.

Hamid Karzai's interim government in Afghanistan will be ``especially fragile'' during the next few months, Tenet said. Power struggles between ethnic Pashtun leaders, future attacks by al-Qaida and Taliban forces still in the country, renewed opium production and Iranian efforts to undermine U.S. influence all threaten to destabilize the Karzai government, he said.

Tenet, outlining a wide array of threats facing the United States from countries including Iraq, Iran and North Korea, also told Congress that the United States is facing losing its longtime superiority in satellite reconnaissance.

China and India are developing increasingly sophisticated satellites, and sophisticated imagery is also available commercially, Tenet said.

``The advantage we have enjoyed is eroding,'' he said.

--------

CIA Does Not Rule Out Iraq, Iran Role in Sept. 11

March 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-cia.html

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies have not ruled out the possibility that Iraq or Iran were linked to the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks on America, CIA Director George Tenet said on Tuesday.

``There is no doubt that there have been (Iraqi) contacts and linkages to the al Qaeda organization,'' Tenet told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

``As to where we are on Sept. 11, the jury is out,'' he said. ''It would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship whether Iranian or Iraqi. We'll see where the evidence takes us,'' Tenet said.

The United States has blamed Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for the attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

Some U.S. officials see Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a threat to the United States and have pushed for a greater U.S. role to oust him from power. Vice President Dick Cheney has been on a tour of Europe and the Middle East seeking to gauge support for possible military action against Iraq.

Cheney said Washington had made no decision on any strike against Iraq despite speculation to the contrary.

Tenet also said ``nobody has made any decisions to do anything,'' but if the president ever reached that decision, top U.S. officials would build a coalition.

``My experiences have been everybody changes their views depending on what you're putting on the table, and I'm not aware that anybody has put anything on the table,'' Tenet said.

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the senior Republican on the committee, expressed concern that action against Iraq could spawn an increase in terrorism against the United States.

``It's very hard to speculate,'' Tenet said. ``I would not make a one-for-one correlation.''

'AXIS OF EVIL'

``It is a major, major decision that we've got to prepare the American people for what the consequences may be, yet we would destroy weapons of mass destruction and the ability of that nation to produce them, but in the wake would we spawn a higher, much higher degree of terrorism?'' Warner said.

President Bush has labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea an ''axis of evil'' for developing weapons of mass destruction that could threaten the United States.

Some Senate Democrats, including committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, urged Bush not to undertake any major action against Iraq without consulting Congress. But one

Republican said few people should be made aware of such plans.

``If in fact there is a direct connection and it is a connection that we can actually prove, that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 (attacks) ... I think the president should probably consult with very few members up here,'' said Sen. Jim Bunning, a Kentucky Republican.

The U.S.-led war on terrorism has disrupted terrorist operations and potential attacks, with the arrest of more than 1,300 extremists believed linked to al Qaeda in more than 70 countries, Tenet said.

But the threat of another attack remained, he said. ``We assess that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups will continue to plan to attack this country and its interest abroad.''

Documents recovered from al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan showed that bin Laden was pursuing ``a sophisticated biological weapons research program,'' Tenet said. ``We also believe that bin Laden was seeking to acquire or develop a nuclear device.''

The war in Afghanistan has succeeded in denying al Qaeda sanctuary and eliminated an international training center for terrorism, intelligence officials said.

But U.S. forces face a different type of warfare in coming months as they battle remaining pockets of resistance.

``What you see now is enormous progress being made against al Qaeda and the Taliban, but a very widespread probability of insurgency type warfare or operations that may bridge the difference between terrorism and insurgent warfare,'' Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson said.

``And that's what the military has to be preparing for in the urban areas, in the rural areas anywhere if they're operating in Afghanistan. And they are preparing,'' he said.

Preventing al Qaeda and Taliban members from escaping across the borders of Afghanistan into neighboring countries still required more effort, especially from Iran, Tenet said. ''We're frustrated that people did get away.''

While Iran had diplomatically supported the creation of an interim Afghan government, on the ground in Afghanistan its interests had taken a divergent turn, Tenet said.

``It may indicate the dramatically two faces of this government,'' Tenet said. ``It's worse than schizoid but I'm not a psychologist.''


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- environment

River pollution threatens English fertility - paper

REUTERS UK:
March 19, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15077/story.htm

LONDON - The urine of English women who take the contraceptive pill is changing the sex of male fish and may be making Englishmen less fertile, a British newspaper reported.

Fears for the sperm count, in decline for decades, arose after Environment Agency research showed that half of all the male fish in low-lying English rivers are changing sex as a result of water pollution, the Independent on the weekend said.

The government-funded research showed that an "exquisitely potent" form of the female hormone oestrogen, found in the urine of women taking contraceptive pills, was contaminating English rivers - source of one-third of the country's drinking water.

Male fish are developing female characteristics in many of those rivers. "In some stretches, all the male fish have been feminised," the paper said.

The Environment Agency's revelations, due to be published later this month, may explain the steep fall in English sperm counts. "Danger to human fertility cannot be ruled out," said opposition Conservative environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth.

Professor Charles Tyler of Exeter University, one of the research team's leaders, said the oestrogen was so powerful that even undetectable levels could have an effect.

"So we cannot be sure that some of these compounds, albeit of very low concentrations, aren't getting into our drinking water," the paper quoted him as saying.

----

The Cancer In the Air We Breathe Local Risks From Pollution Probed

By David Snyder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47453-2002Mar18?language=printer

Washington area health experts and regional transportation specialists seeking changes in environmental quality are seizing on a recently published study that shows local residents face an above-average risk of contracting lung cancer from fine particles in the air. They say the goal of meeting federal air quality standards by 2005 is at risk.

Despite improvements in some measures of local air quality over the last two decades, the study showed fine-particle pollution from power plants, industrial emissions and diesel engines severe enough to increase disease risk. It compared the effects of this kind of pollution with second-hand cigarette smoke.

"[The study] adds urgency," said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the region's Transportation Planning Board, which votes on all road and transit projects and makes sure they conform to pollution limits. "The different governments [in the Washington area] are still unenthusiastic about finding the dollars, because clean air costs" a lot, he said.

Agreed George Thurston, professor of environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine and co-author of the study, "We've made a lot of progress, but we still have a long way to go."

The study, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), provides the first definitive link between cancer risk and extended exposure to fine particles of pollution from power plants and diesel engines. Previous studies had made similar links, but with less data gathered over a shorter period of time.

While the study's authors emphasized in interviews that their research wasn't aimed at assessing health risks for residents of specific cities, Washington area residents, as part of the polluted Northeast corridor, face significantly higher cancer risk from pollution than those living in most rural areas.

The findings may help to explain why doctors in recent decades have been seeing more cases of lung cancer in nonsmokers, said Paul Y. Song, a radiation oncologist for Inova Fairfax Hospital and a member of the board of directors of the Washington-area chapter of the American Cancer Society. "In the past almost everyone you ever saw with lung cancer was a smoker," said Song, who called the link shown by the JAMA study "alarming."

But so far such reports are largely anecdotal; lung cancer mortality figures reflect too many possible contributing factors to be viewed as a measure of air quality. According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and assembled by the American Cancer Society, the rate of deaths from lung cancer in Washington, Maryland and Virginia is higher than the national average. Of the three jurisdictions, Maryland has the highest lung cancer mortality rate, averaging an annual 52.9 deaths per 100,000 people over the period 1994 through 1998. The District's rate is 51.7, and Virginia's is 52. The national average is 48.8.

Because smoking is a greater risk factor for lung cancer and because rural areas tend to have more heavy smokers, disease incidence data -- the number of new cases per year -- also don't correlate with the pollution study findings.

In the Washington region, some rural or semi-rural areas show higher incidence rates than more urban areas. In mostly rural Charles County, for example, 59.3 people per 100,000 were diagnosed with lung cancer in 1999, compared with 39.2 in Montgomery County, according to the Maryland Cancer Registry. In Virginia, 54.2 new cases of lung cancer per 100,000 people were diagnosed in a rural part of Shenandoah County in 1998, significantly more than in Fairfax (34.3) or Alexandria (30.9), according to the Virginia Cancer Registry.

The Washington area is not, and has never been, as industrialized as Baltimore or New York, where measures of particulate matter have historically been higher. But there are about two dozen power plants within 100 miles of Washington, about evenly split in numbers between Maryland and Virginia. Applications to build nearly a dozen more are being reviewed by Maryland and Virginia officials, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).

People who live within 25 to 30 miles of coal-burning power plants -- generally the most polluting type of facility -- appear to be at greatest risk for exposure to particulates, Thurston said. For example, measurements of fine-particle pollution in Charleston and Huntington, W.Va., both in coal-mining country, near several coal-burning plants and in an area heavy in chemical manufacturing, show levels comparable to those in New York, Thurston said.

Reducing exposure is difficult -- or impossible -- since fine-particle pollution is in the air. The only way to improve conditions is to reduce the overall quantity of the stuff in the air -- something determined by national, regional and corporate policies. "[The study] makes it clear that since much of the pollution we're talking about is caused by fossil fuel combustion, energy policy is really also environmental and health policy," Thurston said.

Measurements of fine-particle pollution in the Washington regiongenerally show that the District's urban core has slightly higher readings than the suburbs, said David Krask, chief of technical services for the D.C. Air Quality Division.

Industry officials responding to the study called the link between power plant emissions and disease risk less clear than the researchers saw it, and said that further anti-pollution measures beyond those already planned would hurt their competitiveness.

"What this study is calling for is already happening," said Dan Genest, a spokesman for Dominion Virginia, which provides electricity to about 850,000 Washington area customers.

Genest said Dominion Virginia had already made major reductions in emissions and is in the process of installing new technologies to further reduce pollutants. At the company's Mount Storm power plant, a coal-burning plant about 100 miles west of Washington in West Virginia, $120 million worth of new pollution-reduction equipment will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 95 percent this year, Genest said. Similar technology is being installed at three of the company's other coal-burning plants, with reductions in nitrogen oxide projected to be around 80 percent, Genest said.

Joan Rohlfs, chief of air quality planning for COG, said that the council's staff has only recently begun tracking fine-particle pollution and that it will be some time before they can say whether Washington is in compliance with 1997 federal guidelines, limiting such emissions to 15 micrograms per cubic meter.

Of more concern traditionally in the Washington region, she said, have been ozone precursors like carbon monoxide, which come from many sources, including automobiles. In the area of ozone pollution, the Washington metro area has for years been considered an EPA "non-attainment area," meaning ozone levels exceed government standards. The region was required to meet such standards by 1999, but failed and was granted an extension to 2005.

Diesel-engine pollution, also linked to lung cancer by the JAMA study, has been a primary focus for regional planners.

The JAMA study concluded that people living in heavily polluted areas, such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, have a 12 percent greater risk of dying from lung cancer than people in the least polluted cities, such as Billings, Mont., and Bismarck, N.D.

The cancer link, made in earlier studies but never so comprehensively as in the JAMA study, comes at a time when local clean-air advocates have been seeking incentives to switch diesel trucks and buses to cleaner forms of fuel and local government efforts have been hampered by tight budgets.

Late last month, members of the Transportation Planning Board, which includes representatives from local governments in the District, Maryland and Virginia, said they would likely have to delay new pollution-cutting measures because of budget constraints. But after a surprise announcement by Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), the board unanimously voted to adopt stricter and more costly anti-pollution measures. Maryland officials have yet not indicated how much money they will provide for the new regional programs, which could include replacing taxis and buses with vehicles that run on cleaner fuel, encouraging people to use public transit and replacing engines on heavy diesel trucks.

Nationally, the Bush administration is adopting rule changes to discourage government lawsuits against dozens of coal-fired plants that violated the law in recent years by expanding without installing new anti-pollution devices.

The JAMA study gathered EPA air pollution data and 16 years of personal health records of 500,000 people. Earlier research by Harvard University (1993) and the American Cancer Society (1995) examined the health impact of fine-particle pollution over a shorter period of time.

----

Antarctic ice shelf collapses: global warming blamed

Tuesday March 19, 2002
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020319/1/2lz4d.html

In what is being touted as the biggest event of its kind in 30 years, an Antarctic ice shelf has collapsed and broken up into thousands of icebergs, the US based National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said.

On its website (nsidc.org) the University of Colorado-based center said a major part of the Larsen B ice shelf, believed to have been there for up to 12,000 years, had collapsed over a 35-day period.

On the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, due south of South America's Cape Horn, Larsen has been a centre of concern for several years and is believed to be suffering the effects of global warming.

The area that collapsed totalled 3,250 square kilometres (1,300 square miles).

It contained 720 billion tons of ice. Over the last five years the shelf has lost a total of 5,700 square kilometres (2,280 square miles), and is now about 40 percent the size of its previous minimum stable extent.

The center said the latest collapse of the 220-metre (733-foot) thick shelf began on January 31.

"The shattered ice formed a plume of thousands of icebergs adrift in the Weddell Sea," it said.

"This is the largest single event in a series of retreats by ice shelves in the Peninsula over the last 30 years. The retreats are attributed to a strong climate warming in the region."

It said the rate of warming was around 0.5 degrees Celsius (32.9 Fahrenheit) per decade, and the trend has been on since at least the late 1940s.

Around the Peninsula since 1974, NSIDC said, the seven ice shelves declined by a total of about 13,500 square kilometres (5,212 square miles).

It said the break up of the Peninsula ice shelves had little consequence for the global sea level but could affect the rate of ice flow off the continent.

"Ice shelves act as a buttress, or braking system, for glaciers," the center said. "Further, the shelves keep warmer marine air at a distance from the glaciers; therefore, they moderate the amount of melting that occurs on the glaciers' surfaces.

"Once their ice shelves are removed, the glaciers increase in speed due to meltwater percolation and/or a reduction of braking forces, and they may begin to dump more ice into the ocean than they gather as snow in their catchments.."

Last November the head of the Glaciological Division of the Instituto Antartico Argentino, Pedro Skvarca, warned of a possible break-up of Larsen, due to warm spring temperatures and a dramatic 20 percent rise in the rate of flow of the ice shelf.

An NSIDC researcher Ted Scambos said the ice disintegrates because of the presence of ponded melt water on the surface in late summer as the climate has warmed in the area.

Meltwater acts to enhance fracturing of the shelf by filling smaller cracks and forcing them through the thickness of the ice due to the weight of the water.


-------- ACTIVISTS

UPI hears ... mass demonstrations

Insider notes from United Press International for March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/19032002-113010-1530r.htm

Vice President Dick Cheney may have missed them, but a spate of mass demonstrations in the Arab world in recent days refutes the bland suggestions of U.S. officials that the once-legendary "Arab street" has ceased to matter. Tens of thousands of students at Cairo's universities were out on three successive days last week, another 10,000 trade unionists marched in Alexandria and massive demonstrations organized by the Islamic Movement took place in Amman, Jordan, in defiance of police bans.

----

France's Bove warns Spain on strict police control

REUTERS SPAIN:
March 19, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15075/story.htm

BARCELONA - French activist Jose Bove, a hero in the anti-globalisation movement, warned Spain against cracking down on protesters, saying a heavy hand would only fuel greater demonstrations in the future.

At least 29 people were arrested during clashes between police and protesters in Barcelona, where EU leaders met to negotiate the opening of European energy and capital markets to greater competition, an anathema to protesters on the streets.

A massive final demonstration was planned for later on Saturday after the summit concluded and Bove said he hoped "police pressure does not make it evolve into confrontation".

"These will not be the last demonstrations in Spain under Spanish presidency (of the European Union). And repression will not stop us from demonstrating but in fact it will reinforce our action," Bove told reporters in Barcelona.

"So, Mister Aznar, you'd better be careful," he said in reference to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who will also host an EU summit in Seville in June.

Bove was made famous by ransacking a McDonald's restaurant in protest at U.S. trade barriers in 1999, for which he was sentenced to three months in jail. But he claims to have no special ranking or power in the anti-globalisation movement, which prides itself on not having a hierarchy.

He said the "social movement" would gain strength by meeting on the sidelines of other upcoming events this year including the World Food Summit in Rome in June and the Rio Plus Ten environmental meeting in South Africa in September.

----

Flag flap spurs South Carolina suit

By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020319-87032056.htm

South Carolina filed a lawsuit yesterday to block rest-stop demonstrations by the NAACP and a white pride group in a dispute over the Confederate flag.

Attorney General Charlie Condon said he had warned the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the European-American Unity Rights Organization (EURO) that their protests were illegal.

The organizations are at odds over whether the flag should be flown on the grounds of the Statehouse. It was put there after being removed from the Statehouse dome and the legislative chambers in July 2000, six months after the NAACP began a boycott of the state to protest the flag.

The NAACP began its "border patrols" on March 2 with group members gathering at welcome centers along South Carolina's borders to discourage motorists from spending money while traveling through the state.

A week later, the New Orleans-based, white-rights group countered with its own patrols. EURO national director Vincent Breeding said yesterday there are no plans for more events.

In the lawsuit, Mr. Condon asked the court to declare those patrols illegal and to order the groups to pay for the extra law enforcement needed to oversee the protests.

He said that the protests violate both state and federal law at the federally funded welcome centers.

State NAACP Director Dwight James said he would not comment until he had seen the lawsuit, filed in York County, S.C.

----

Four Die in Kyrgyzstan Protest

Associated Press
WORLD In Brief
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47480-2002Mar18?language=printer

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- Supporters of a jailed opposition lawmaker battled police in southern Kyrgyzstan, leaving four dead and dozens injured. The president urged calm after the rare clash and blamed his political foes for the violence.

The bloodshed Sunday marked the first time that an opposition protest has turned violent in the 10 years this Central Asian nation has been independent. U.S. and other foreign forces are deployed here for the anti-terrorism campaign in nearby Afghanistan.

Opposition groups said riot police initiated the violence; officials insisted that demonstrators started the rampage.

President Askar Akayev, who in the early 1990s was hailed by Western governments as a visionary reformer in a region of authoritarian rulers, has cracked down on dissent in recent years.

-------

Rock Band REM Seeks Protection of America's Forests

March 19, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-19-09.html#anchor2

HOLLYWOOD, California, A new public service announcement featuring the rock band REM calls for Americans to adopt tree free paper - paper made from recycled materials rather than from virgin trees.

"Insist that the paper you use is tree free," said REM front man Michael Stipe in the public service announcement launched in major media markets across the nation today by The Paper Campaign. The campaign is a national grassroots effort led by the Dogwood Alliance and ForestEthics to save forests by changing the way paper is made in the United States.

"The perception is that third world countries are the only places being wiped out," adds REM bassist Mike Mills. "What people don't realize is that the forests being most devastated are in our back yard - the American South."

All three REM members - Stipe, Mills and guitarist Peter Buck - are featured in the campaign, which was unveiled Monday night at the Vanity Fair "Rock the Casbah" pre-Oscar party in Hollywood benefiting the Environmental Media Association. Among those attending the party included Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ingo Rademacher, Ed Begley Jr., and Wendie Malick.

The band was attracted to the issue of saving forests, and to The Paper Campaign's approach to forest protection, which involves taking its environmental message to the marketplace rather than waiting for legislative or litigation solutions.

"Market campaigns, like the one being led by the Dogwood Alliance and ForestEthics, are the most effective way to cut to the chase and protect our forests," said Buck.

The Paper Campaign aims to change the purchasing policies of corporations, insisting that they stop buying products made from U.S. public lands and endangered forests, as well as increasing their use of post consumer recycled content paper. The U.S. southeast, where REM is headquartered, supplies the world with 25 percent of its paper, resulting in more than five million acres of forests being clearcut each year, the Campaign says.

The Campaign's first corporate target is office supply company Staples Inc. Staples' best selling copy machine paper has no recycled content.

"Make no mistake - our goal is to reduce the demand we are placing on not only southern forests, but forests around the world - so we can leave behind a natural legacy for future generations," said Danna Smith of the Dogwood Alliance. "We expect corporations like Staples to do the right thing and protect America's forests."

The public service announcement can be viewed online at: http://www.ThePaperCampaign.com


-------

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