------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Mina Ivanovic Obituary - War Correspondent, Yugoslavia
N. Korea Reactor Project on Course
Megawati: NKorea Open to New Talks
U.S. to Close Bases in S. Korea
Bush, Putin May Sign Accords in May
More Review on Nukes, Please
Government Moves to Overturn Ruling Favoring Navajo Nation

MILITARY
Air Force Picks Boeing Over Airbus
U.S. to Seek Removal of Chief Of Chemical Weapons Group
Evict Jeb Bush
Decision May Allow Vote on Marijuana
European Gov'ts React to Crisis
Saudi Puts Faith in Iraqi Pledge
Analysts Discuss Iraq Challenges
Taking on Iraq Glance
Water Is the Root of Israeli-Palestinian Evil
Troops prepare to raid Arafat's office
U.S. to Support U.N. Resolution
In Ramallah, a Methodical Exercise of Military Might
Arafat: Israeli incursion is terrorism
Troops Keep Arafat Confined; U.N. Urges Israeli Withdrawal
Israelis Besiege a Defiant Arafat in His Office
Hezbollah, Israel Trade Strikes
Explosion in Tel Aviv, Many Casualties
U.S. Agents Seize Terror Suspects in Pakistan Raid
Russia orders clean-up of special operations in Chechnya
Russians for peace
U.N. Calls for Israeli Pullout From Palestinian Cities
Special U.N. Session on Mideast Violence
32 accidental deaths since October: US military at home
'Friendly Fire' Probed in Death
In Israel, Press Kits Roll Out With Tanks

POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI Joined Pakistan In Staging Raids
More Security Called in Refugee Hunt
Prisoners in Peru Seek a Way Out
Senate approves felon vote measure
Md. to Settle Suit Over Abuse at Boot Camps
Top Developments in Terror Attacks

ENERGY AND OTHER
Warning About Risks to Wildlife Posed by Arctic Drilling Rejected
Pentagon Seeks Exemption From Environmental Laws
WHO pledges that gene research will benefit rich and poor

ACTIVISTS
April 16th Yucca Mountain Lobby Day
Thousands of anti-war demonstrators march
Americans arrested in Falun Gong protest
Asylum-Seekers on Run in Australia
Arabs Protest Over Israeli Attacks
Thousands Join Pro - Palestinian Marches in France
Berlin's Palestinians Protest Israeli Raids



-------- NUCLEAR


-------- depleted uranium

[A victim of depleted uranium as a war correspondent? et]

Mina Ivanovic Obituary - War Correspondent, Yugoslavia

The Associated Press
Friday, March 29, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37518-2002Mar29?language=printer

ATLANTA - Mina Ivanovic, a Yugoslavian-born journalist who covered the Balkan crisis for CNN, died Wednesday of cancer. She was 36.

Raised in New York, Ivanovic was fluent in Serbo-Croatian and English and began her career with the network as a temporary interpreter.

She free-lanced for CNN, then was hired in 1994 as its Atlanta-based international assignment reporter.

"Hiring her was great for us and great for her. During the Balkan crisis, she was enormously helpful to us," said Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive.

Jordan described Ivanovic as "a tenacious competitor and a hard-charging reporter" who sometimes juggled conversations around the world on three telephones at once.

She was banned from her home country by the Milosevic government for her reporting from Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia and Macedonia, said her sister, Gordana Ivanovic of Belgrade and Atlanta.

-------- korea

N. Korea Reactor Project on Course
Tensions With U.S. Fail to Derail Accord

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37976-2002Mar29?language=printer

SEOUL -- Though harsh rhetoric continues to fly back and forth between Washington and Pyongyang, an international consortium that includes the United States will apparently continue construction of twin nuclear power reactors in North Korea, according to the chairman of the group doing the work.

"Nobody wants to be the first one to run away" from the 1994 Framework Agreement, "and have the blame at their doorstep," said Chang Sun-Sun, South Korea's ambassador to the project. He was referring to the accord under which the United States, along with South Korea and Japan, agreed to construct the safer, light-water reactors in exchange for North Korea ending its nuclear program. To abandon the agreement, he said, "would have enormous impact on the overall peace and security on the Korean Peninsula."

Both sides recently have issued warnings about the accord. President Bush this month refused to certify North Korea's compliance with the pact, reflecting the administration's dissatisfaction with it. North Korea, in turn, has threatened to abandon the agreement and resume work on older Soviet-built nuclear plants from which it could extract bomb-grade material.

Chang, who also serves as chairman of the project's executive board, called the warnings nothing more than "rhetoric." But he and other analysts predicted that North Korea will not immediately agree with inspections being demanded by the United States -- and called for under the agreement -- which could reveal whether North Korea has made enough plutonium for a nuclear bomb.

First, he said, North Korea wants the consortium to finish more of the construction work on the reactors, for which only the foundations are dug. "They want to see some progress for themselves," he said. "When the concrete pours in August, I think it might have some impact on their way of thinking."

Relations between Washington and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, have suffered during the Bush administration, which suspended talks with the Stalinist government, labeled it part of an "axis of evil" and listed it as a potential U.S. nuclear target. Bush administration officials have never embraced the Framework Agreement, which was negotiated by the Clinton administration.

On March 19, Bush declined to certify to Congress that North Korea was upholding the agreement, although the administration offered no evidence it had been violated.

Pyongyang, in turn, said "nuclear lunatics have taken office in the White House," and threatened to end its observance of the pact. Reflecting its desperate shortage of electricity, North Korea caused consternation in Washington by inviting Russia in to build a nuclear power plant, a move Moscow said it was "considering."

The bitter language between the countries is expected to preclude a resumption of talks. Analysts expressed concern it might have more serious consequences if North Korea resumes producing plutonium, or resumes the missile tests it pledged to suspend until next year as a gesture to the United States.

"Washington is playing a dangerous game," Robert M. Hathaway, director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, wrote in the daily Korea Times newspaper. "It will give new ammunition to the hard-liners in Pyongyang. It might lead North Korea to do something truly dangerous."

The twin light-water reactors were supposed to be built by next year by the Korean Peninsula Economic Development Organization, a consortium of the United States, Japan and South Korea. Each side has blamed the other for delays in the project, caused by difficult negotiations with North Korea, labor problems, opposition from Congress and lapses in funding. Excavation for the foundation of the plant is just being completed, and the pouring of the concrete is supposed to begin in August.

A key requirement of the deal is North Korean acceptance of an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body that monitors nuclear development, to determine if nuclear fuel was diverted from a North Korean power plant to use in building weapons. The CIA has said North Korea may have diverted enough plutonium to make one or two nuclear bombs.

The United States and the IAEA want the inspections to begin now, and Bush has cited North Korea's refusal as part of his justification for his hard-line stance.

But North Korea suspects that Washington wants the IAEA inspections to start now to find a reason to stop work on the reactors project, according to Paik Haksoon, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute in Seoul.

"North Korea feels it has been deceived by the United States and cannot trust Bush," he said. "They are keeping their nuclear card until the United States has reached the point of no return" in constructing the light-water reactors, he said.

Chang, the South Korean official, agreed: "They want to see some progress for themselves," he said. "When the concrete pours in August, I think it might have some impact on their way of thinking."

The 1994 agreement requires the IAEA inspection to be completed before "key components" of the reactor are delivered, tentatively scheduled to occur in 2005. U.S. and IAEA officials have estimated the inspection could take three or four years and argue that inspectors should begin work now.

But North Korean officials have balked, complaining of Washington's desire for "early" verification. In addition, the construction timetable for the reactors has repeatedly slipped; some officials involved in the project have said it may not be finished until 2010. Chang said project officials no longer publicly predict a completion date.

----

Megawati: NKorea Open to New Talks

By Paul Shin
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002; 1:04 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38675-2002Mar30?language=printer

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il responded "affirmatively" to a South Korean offer to reopen talks with the United States, Indonesia's president said Saturday after a diplomatic trip.

Megawati Sukarnoputri flew to Seoul after an official three-day visit to North Korea, during which she held talks with its reclusive leader and carried a message from South Korea.

"I delivered a message from (South Korean) President Kim Dae-jung, to which (North Korean) leader Kim Jong Il responded affirmatively," Megawati Sukarnoputri said at a joint news conference with the South Korean president.

The Indonesian president did not disclose details of her discussion with Kim Jong Il, but South Korean officials said the message she delivered to him included an appeal for Pyongyang to revive stalled dialogue with Washington.

It was the first sign that North Korea might be open to a Bush administration offer to restart talks on a range of issues, including its missile stockpile and other weapons of mass destruction. Ties between all three nations suffered after President Bush said North Korea was part of "an axis of evil."

North Korea has already agreed to reopen a stalled dialogue with Seoul by accepting a special South Korean envoy next week. The envoy's mission is to revive stalled reconciliation talks aimed at eventually reuniting the divided Korean peninsula.

Inter-Korean exchanges, which flourished after the two Korean leaders met in Pyongyang in 2000, are currently frozen amid tension between the United States and North Korea.

Shortly after taking office, President Bush expressed skepticism about the North Korean leader. Relations worsened after Bush labeled North Korea part of "an axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq, accusing all three nations of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.

During a visit to South Korea in February, Bush said his view of North Korea had not changed. He offered, however, to start talks with the North despite U.S. concerns over Pyongyang's alleged attempts to build nuclear weapons after promising in 1994 to stop the arms program. North Korea rejected that offer.

South Korea is a key U.S. ally. About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. The Korean border is the world's most heavily armed, with nearly 2 million troops deployed on both sides.

Megawati and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, are childhood acquaintances. They first met in 1965 in Indonesia at the 10th anniversary of a summit of the Nonaligned Movement of third world countries. They were accompanying their fathers at the summit.

Kim Jong Il took power after his father Kim Il Sung, who ruled North Korea for nearly half a century, died in 1994.

Friendly relations between Indonesia and North Korea ended in 1966 when Indonesia's second president, Suharto, ousted Megawati's father, Sukarno. Suharto outlawed communism and banned Indonesians from visiting communist countries.

Sukarno visited North Korea in 1964.

----

U.S. to Close Bases in S. Korea

WORLD In Brief
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38370-2002Mar29?language=printer

SEOUL, South Korea -- The U.S. military will close half of its bases in South Korea over the next 10 years but will not reduce the number of troops stationed here.

The U.S. military will shut 28 combat and support facilities and three training ranges, returning more than half the land currently occupied by U.S. forces to the South Korean government by 2011, according to a joint statement.

"There is no reduction in U.S. forces," Gen. Thomas A. Schwartz, commander of U.S. Forces in South Korea, said after signing an agreement with South Korea's defense minister, Kim Dong-Shin. "We will stay at our current strength level."

As many as 12,000 of the 37,000 U.S. troops based in South Korea will move to new facilities, said Col. Robert Durbin, assistant deputy chief of staff for the U.S. Forces in South Korea.

Schwartz said the U.S. military would benefit from consolidating the number of bases from 41 to 23, offering greater efficiency, enhanced force protection and better-quality facilities.

-------- treaties

Bush, Putin May Sign Accords in May

By Carolyn Skorneck
Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 29, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37937-2002Mar29?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and Russian negotiators have made so much progress on offensive weapons and a new strategic framework that President Bush and Vladimir Putin may sign agreements on both at their Moscow summit in May, the State Department says.

"There are issues that remain to be discussed, as there always are in this sort of affair," John Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and international security, told reporters Friday at the Foreign Press Center.

"But we're making good progress, and I think it accurately reflects the maturing and merging relationship that is both strong and deep and hopefully will culminate in being able to sign and release these documents in May," he said. "Their determination to move forward is quite evident."

Among the issues still to be worked out are the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and a U.S. proposal for a new way to count warheads as the United States and Russia reduce their strategic arsenals to 1,700-2,200 each.

"The nonproliferation question is a very high priority for us," Bolton said. He said the Bush administration is focusing on sales to Iran and other "countries of concern" that could lead to new nuclear-armed militaries.

Although the United States suspects Russia of helping Iran develop nuclear weapons, Bolton indicated the two generally worry about many of the same countries.

When U.S. and Russian officials spoke last fall about Bush's plan to forge ahead with missile defense, the United States said the two countries were not a danger to each other, but "we both faced threats from other states, from rogue states," Bolton said.

"On the Russian side, their threat assessment ultimately was not that different than ours," he said. Russian military officials recognized they faced even greater danger. "The countries we're concerned about are closer to Russia than they are to the United States," Bolton said.

He said the United States hopes to work with Russia to develop defenses against the common threat, but that can't happen until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty expires on June 13, six months after Bush announced the United States was withdrawing from the pact.

Citing what he called a "curiosity" in the ABM treaty, Bolton said it "precludes the sharing of technology and research and development on missile defense from one country to another." So cooperation must wait until the treaty expires.

Another matter under negotiation is how to count the 1,700-2,200 warheads that will remain after the two sides make cutbacks their presidents have vowed to make. The United States wants to change the counting procedure so the arms agreement will focus on weapons both sides worry about the most, he said.

Their descriptive, though cumbersome, name is "operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads." That means warheads installed in intercontinental ballistic missiles or submarine-launched missiles or those near heavy bombers and heavy bomber bases - weapons that can be used immediately.

Under START I, the arms-control agreement now in place, counting was based on warhead delivery systems, not the number of warheads.

If a missile could carry 10 separately targeted re-entry vehicles, each with a warhead, a single missile counted as 10, "no matter how many re-entry vehicles it actually has," Bolton said. START I limited each side to 6,000 warheads on strategic offensive nuclear weapons.

"The Russian side certainly began with a preference to use START I counting rules," he said.

On the Net:
State Department's arms control page:
http://www.state.gov/t/

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

More Review on Nukes, Please

Saturday, March 30, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38334-2002Mar29?language=printer

Walter Pincus's March 23 news story, "U.S. Nuclear Arms Stance Modified by Policy Study," left the impression that the preemptive nuclear strikes contemplated by the Nuclear Posture Review would be "against hostile countries that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction."

Mr. Pincus did not mention that the review also envisions launching such first strikes "in the event of surprising military developments" or "against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack."

Frankly, the standard seems to be something like "nuclear weapons can be used whenever we think we would need them to win." And not only in cases where American interests are directly at stake -- the review plans for the possibility of a nuclear attack against China in the event of a "military confrontation over the status of Taiwan."

Do Americans really want to restart the arms race by developing a more "flexible" arsenal of nuclear weapons and looking for more occasions on which to use them? I don't think so, but nobody seems to be asking us. Has Congress abdicated its role in shaping nuclear weapons policy? It ordered this review and should respond to it.

Decisions this momentous must not be made without democratic deliberation and oversight.

SUE HEMBERGER
Washington

-------- us politics

Government Moves to Overturn Ruling Favoring Navajo Nation

"Forcing the government to pay damages could set a dangerous precedent" - Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, in court papers.

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38416-2002Mar29?language=printer

The Bush administration wants the Supreme Court to overturn a decision in a long-running contract dispute that could force the government to pay the Navajo Nation as much as $600 million.

The tribe won a lawsuit in August, when a federal appeals court ruled that the government is liable for damages in failing to protect the tribe's interest in mining leases on reservation land. The Navajos claim that then-Interior Secretary Donald Hodel conspired with Peabody Coal Co. to undermine the tribe's contract negotiations with the firm. The talks began in 1984 and ended with a contract signing in 1987.

Forcing the government to pay damages in a case in which a tribe negotiated the leases could set a dangerous precedent, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson said in court papers.


-------- MILITARY

-------- business

Air Force Picks Boeing Over Airbus

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002; Page D13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38437-2002Mar29?language=printer

The Air Force notified Congress yesterday that it will immediately begin negotiations with Boeing Co. for the lease of 100 wide-body 767 military tankers after rejecting a competing tanker design offered by Airbus Industrie.

Congress last fall authorized the Air Force to negotiate a multibillion-dollar lease with Boeing for 100 tanker aircraft as a first step toward replacing the service's aging fleet of KC-135 tankers, many of which are now more than 40 years old.

While the Air Force began considering a 767 tanker lease with Boeing last spring, the idea gained momentum on Capitol Hill after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the war on terrorism in Afghanistan straining the Air Force's tanker fleet and the financial struggles of the airline industry cutting heavily into Boeing's orders for commercial airliners.

When officials from Airbus and its parent company, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS), complained about the sole-source deal, the Air Force issued a "request for information" earlier this year asking both Boeing and Airbus to describe the type of tanker aircraft they would be able to provide.

But any hope Airbus had of participating in lease discussions ended yesterday when the Air Force, in a single-page statement sent to key lawmakers, cited four factors that eliminated Airbus from consideration, including the company's lack of experience in building tanker aircraft used for midair refueling.

Nonetheless, the Air Force said it wanted to "encourage" Airbus to continue developing tanker prototypes "to ensure a vibrant and fully competitive global defense industrial base well into the future."

Replacement of the Air Force's fleet of tankers, AWACS and Rivet Joint intelligence aircraft over the next two decades represents a huge potential market for both aircraft manufacturers, with Boeing the odds-on favorite to receive much of the work over is European rival.

"This is just the beginning of a huge number of sales for Boeing -- the Air Force has 565 KC-135 [tankers], and [Air Force Secretary James] Roche told me they need to replace them on a one-for-one basis," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington. "They also need to replace their 33 AWACS aircraft and their 20 RC-135 intelligence aircraft, so by the time this is all over, Boeing will sell the Air Force 600 767s for various large-body missions."

Thompson said he believes there is "a fairly high likelihood" that the Air Force and Boeing will come to terms "because Afghanistan has underscored how critical the tankers are -- and the Air Force doesn't have an affordable way of buying new ones anytime soon."

But he and other defense analysts acknowledge that considerable opposition remains on Capitol Hill to the lease, given the added costs inherent in any leasing arrangement. A number of influential lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), argue that buying airplanes is far more cost-effective than leasing them for just 10 years.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) discounted the opposition, saying after the Air Force released its statement that a Boeing lease has ample support in Congress, which must be notified of the terms of any final lease arrangement and could vote to reject a deal.

Jerry Daniels, president and chief executive of Boeing's military aircraft and missiles division, acknowledged that Boeing, in negotiations with the Air Force, must offer terms that are competitive with a purchase deal for a comparable number of aircraft.

But he added: "I'm confident we can make it happen."

Daniels said there is no money in the Air Force budget to begin purchasing tankers before the end of the decade, when the oldest KC-135s -- modified Boeing 707s, which the airlines retired 30 years ago -- will be approaching 50 years old. If terms of a lease can be negotiated this year, Daniels said, Boeing could begin replacing the oldest 136 KC-135s with 100 new 767 tankers in 2005.

Gregory H. Bradford, president of EADS, said Airbus officials knew all along that "being in the game and certainly winning some of the first 100 tankers was a long shot."

The fact that the Air Force is now on record as encouraging Airbus to remain in the tanker business and continue bidding on contracts, Bradford said, is a victory for the company.

-------- chemical weapons

U.S. to Seek Removal of Chief Of Chemical Weapons Group

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38416-2002Mar29?language=printer

Accusing the head of a chemical weapons monitoring body of mismanagement and "confrontational conduct," the State Department is taking steps to seek his ouster at a meeting of the 145-member group in three weeks.

A senior official said yesterday that the administration decided on the action after Director General Jose Bustani refused to resign following a vote in which the organization's 41-nation executive committee approved a no-confidence motion. The vote was 17 in support of the motion and five against, with 18 abstentions. Bustani, a Brazilian, heads the technical secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The countries represented in the Netherlands-based organization are subject to regular inspections of suspected chemical weapons stockpiles.

The senior State Department official, asking not to be identified, told reporters the administration plans a major campaign in advance of the special meeting, tentatively set for April 21 and 22, to ensure Bustani's ouster.

-------- drug war

Evict Jeb Bush

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
March 30, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020330-81092792.htm#3

In your March 27 story "Court upholds drug-use eviction," you reported that the Supreme Court ruled that the government may evict the entire family of a drug user under the one-strike law.

If everyone in public housing must be responsible for his or her family's drug use, the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, should move. His daughter was arrested in January for trying to fill a fake prescription for tranquilizers, and he lives in public housing.

The rules for the general public should apply to politicians, as well.

NORMA SAPP
Norman, Okla.

--------

Decision May Allow Vote on Marijuana

March 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Medical-Marijuana.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge's decision could pave the way for supporters of legalizing marijuana in the nation's capital for medical purposes to place the matter before city voters this fall.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday overturned a federal law that had effectively blocked District of Columbia residents from putting the issue on the ballot.

The law was first enacted by Congress 1998, after district residents voted to legalize marijuana for medical use. Known as the Barr Amendment for its sponsor, Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the law has since been added yearly to legislation governing federal spending in the district.

The ballot initiative, which supporters want to again place on the city's ballot in November, would change city law to make it legal for seriously ill patients to get and use marijuana if their physicians recommend it.

But the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics declined to certify the proposed initiative, citing the Barr Amendment's ban on the city using federal funds to pursue it. The initiative's supporters, the Marijuana Policy Project, then sued the city and federal governments.

Sullivan granted their request for an injunction barring the law's enforcement, saying it unconstitutionally limits political speech.

``The Constitution does not allow Congress to pre-clear acceptable viewpoints for public debate and expression,'' he wrote.

Sullivan noted Congress could enact a law prohibiting changes in district drug laws or veto any legislation passed by citizens.

In order for the initiative to appear on city ballots in November, supporters must get petition forms approved by the board and then collect and certify 16,000 valid signatures, all by July fifth.

-------- europe

European Gov'ts React to Crisis

March 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mideast-World-Reax.html

MOSCOW -- European nations demanded on Saturday that Israel immediately comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution and end its siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound.

From Moscow to Paris, European governments also warned Israel that it can not disregard Arafat, whom the Israelis blame for not doing enough to stop a series of deadly attacks against Israeli citizens.

``It would be a grave mistake to imagine that the elimination of Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, could lead to anything positive,'' French President Jacques Chirac told RTL radio.

Israel has said it doesn't intend to harm Arafat but insists the raid on his offices is necessary to stop Palestinian militant attacks. In the third such attack in four days, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe Saturday, wounding 29 people. On Wednesday, the suicide bombing of a Passover meal in Netanya killed 22 people.

The Israeli siege provoked a second day of protests across the Middle East. Burning American and Israeli flags, tens of thousands of protesters took to streets in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen on Saturday. Smaller anti-Israeli demonstrations were held in Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Syria and Kuwait.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, joined other members of the U.N. Security Council in approving the resolution Saturday. President Bush, speaking from his ranch in Texas after the 14-0 vote, said Arafat ``can do a lot more'' to prevent attacks against Israelis and that the United States supports Israel's right to defend itself.

The resolution calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Ramallah and other Palestinian cities and urges both sides to fully cooperate with U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni to work on a cease-fire and start negotiations for a political settlement.

``Russia demands that the parties fully and immediately observe all provisions of this resolution,'' Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Saturday, adding that he was immediately instructing Russia's envoy to the Middle East, Andrei Vdovin, to initiate talks with both sides.

``The international community must ensure that an end be put to this insanity, which daily claims human lives and is fraught with catastrophe for everybody,'' Ivanov said. ``It is necessary to make joint efforts to help the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to find a way out of this tragedy.''

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, whose country holds the temporary presidency of the European Union, said the Israeli siege of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah ``will exacerbate a situation which is already causing great instability and most of all a huge number of mortal victims.''

``Nothing will be gained'' by the destruction of the Palestine National Authority, Aznar told reporters while vacationing in the southern Spanish town of Sanlucar de Barrameda.

In Paris, more than 1,000 people demonstrated against the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, many carrying Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans. Similar demonstrations were held in several smaller French cities, and in the German capital, Berlin.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sent a message to Arafat, through the Italian consul-general in Jerusalem, to ``express his concern over the dramatic developments of the last hours and his hope that all violence stop immediately.''

In Athens, Greece, a cross-party group of lawmakers delivered a letter of protest to the Israeli Embassy about the Israeli troop movements.

``Any attempt against the life of Yasser Arafat will lead to extensive bloodshed in the region,'' said Theodoros Pangalos, a former foreign minister, representing Greece's governing Socialist party.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit warned that Israel's actions threatened the whole of the Middle East. Ecevit called on the United States, usually Israel's strongest ally, to reign in Sharon's government.

Ecevit said the U.N. resolution could only be effective if ``the United States delivers a serious warning to the Israeli prime minister.''

Muslim Turkey has developed close military ties with Israel in recent years but also has good relations with the Palestinians.

In the Arab world, the support for the Palestinians was unqualified and angry. Jordan's King Abdullah II used a telephone conversation with Bush to urge him to ``swiftly'' intercede with Israel to end its ``aggression on the Palestinian people and the siege on President Arafat.''

Following an emergency Arab League meeting, Secretary-General Amr Moussa said Arab states disagreed with U.S. calls for Arafat to rein in Palestinian militants.

``How (can Arafat act first) while Israeli troops are few meters (yards) away from his office ... This is a surrender,'' Moussa said Saturday.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said he was disappointed that the U.N. Security Council resolution was not stronger, but he added that Israel must abide by the ruling.

``I hope all would realize the importance of making Israel listen and stop this aggression,'' Maher said.

In Britain, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw appealed to both sides to show restraint.

``It can only be through negotiation that there will ever be a peaceful future for the citizens of Israel, for the Palestinians and for everyone in the region,'' Straw said.

-------- iraq

Saudi Puts Faith in Iraqi Pledge
Crown Prince Says He Trusts Vow to Respect Kuwait's Borders

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38065-2002Mar29?language=printer

BEIRUT, March 29 -- Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said today that despite U.S. skepticism he expects that Iraq will honor its promises to respect Kuwait's sovereignty and never again invade the tiny Persian Gulf emirate.

"This is a very positive achievement," Abdullah said in an interview after a two-day Arab League summit here during which he exchanged kisses on the cheek with the chief Iraqi delegate, Izzat Ibrahim. "It is incumbent on the Arabs to agree to move closer together rather than move farther apart."

The Saudi effort to help usher President Saddam Hussein's government back into the comity of Arab nations complicates the Bush administration's campaign to enlist support for its determination to do something -- perhaps including military action -- about Hussein. Although the Bush administration has focused on Hussein's unwillingness to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq -- and not on the status of Kuwait -- it would need cooperation from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries for any strike on Hussein's government.

Vice President Cheney earlier this month visited Saudi Arabia and 10 other Middle Eastern countries seeking in part to explain the U.S. view on Iraq and solicit Arab support. Instead, he was met in capital after capital with public expressions of doubt from high-level officials about the wisdom of any military campaign to unseat Hussein.

Abdullah's statements today seemed designed to make the doubts even clearer and more pointed.

After recording Iraq's pledge to respect Kuwait, the Arab League unanimously opposed any U.S. attack and said that it would regard an assault on any Arab nation as a threat to each country's national security. "They refuse, totally, any attack against Iraq," said Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League.

The promise from Iraq marked the first time since the Persian Gulf War in 1991 that Hussein's government has acknowledged the independence of Kuwait, whose land and oil riches Baghdad has long complained were carved from Iraq by Western powers.

Although Hussein was not at the meeting here, Ibrahim, a powerful vice chairman of Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council, told Arab leaders that Iraq "wants the security of all the Arab countries, including Kuwait."

"We affirm a commitment to respect the sovereignty of Kuwait, its independence, and stability and the security of its land within its own borders," he added.

Ibrahim's delegation also pledged to cooperate with Kuwait in determining the fate of Kuwaitis missing since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the six-month occupation that followed.

The statements earned Ibrahim a behind-the-scenes handshake form Kuwaiti officials, the public embrace from Abdullah and the possibility of resuming formal diplomatic relations with both countries. Arab leaders have sought similar promises from Iraq in the past, only to earn angry denunciations that they were puppets of the United States and Israel.

Abdullah said today that he accepted the Iraqi promise on face value, as he would accept a promise from anyone else.

At the same time, the leaders encouraged Iraq to continue discussions with the United Nations about the return of weapons inspectors. Iraq agreed to accept inspectors as part of the cease-fire agreement that ended the war. But they have not been allowed in the country for three years, and the Bush administration has charged that Hussein is trying again to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Against that background, U.S. officials cautioned against reading too much into the agreement in Beirut.

"We can make far too much of a handshake," a State Department spokesman said. "Anyone who trusts Saddam Hussein takes a big chance." On the other hand, he added, "If it were true there was a real Iraqi agreement, we welcome that. But given their record of flouting international obligations, we are quite doubtful."

Abdullah said that he and Ibrahim, during a private meeting, did not discuss the "substance" of a possible return of the inspectors. An initial meeting in March between U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and an Iraqi delegation headed by Foreign Minister Naji Sabri has helped raise hopes, however. A follow-up meeting is scheduled for mid-April.

Coupled with the approval of an Arab peace proposal to Israel, the fence-mending among Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq was further evidence of efforts by Arab leaders to become more active in trying to solve the region's problems in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

President Bush has dubbed Iraq, under Hussein, part of a global "axis of evil" and has sought his removal from office. Military action has been mentioned as a possible part of that effort. But Arab leaders have cautioned that they want the United States first to pay attention to the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians. In addition, they have expressed worry about the repercussions of toppling the Iraqi leader without a clear substitute.

In part, Moussa and other leaders said, the declaration opposing an attack on Iraq was meant to signal that leaders in the region regard the possibility of an assault as more of a threat than Hussein's rule. U.S. officials might be wary of Iraq, Arab officials at the summit said, but Washington should note that Baghdad on the same day recognized both Kuwait and Israel, a sign that the mood in the Arab world has shifted since Sept. 11.

"This spirit will allow us to move on," Moussa said. "It will allow us to do a lot if calm prevails."

The summit declaration in some ways was the fruit of a recent diplomatic campaign mounted by Hussein's government among the Arab states to shore up support in the face of the repeated U.S. threats against his rule.

Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, singled out Qatar and Oman, two Persian Gulf states where U.S. military units are stationed, for playing "a basic role in bringing viewpoints together" between Iraq and Kuwait. Ibrahim said his country's gesture "was not adopted out of fear of the United States" but out of goodwill.

Iraqi officials have repeatedly predicted a U.S. attack is on the horizon -- and Washington's declarations have done nothing to dissuade them. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the U.S. Central Command, disclosed today that Pentagon officials are looking at putting additional U.S. troops into Kuwait.

More than 3,000 airmen are in Kuwait associated with Operation Southern Watch, the patrols that fly over the southern part of Iraq.

In addition, Franks told reporters at the Pentagon that a "brigade-minus," two battalions of U.S. soldiers, had been sent to Kuwait "two or three months ago . . . as a hedge against miscalculation."

"At some point we may make that a full brigade," he said. "I'm not sure." The purpose of the deployments, he added, is to provide "a great training opportunity for our ground forces to be able to cooperate and train with forces in the region."

Staff writer Walter Pincus in Washington contributed to this report.

----

Analysts Discuss Iraq Challenges

By Sally Buzbee
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40079-2002Mar30?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- It would start with a fierce air bombardment. Next, special forces could fan out to create "no-movement" zones and then search for biological and chemical weapons. Predator remote-controlled planes would patrol for Scuds on the ground.

In the end, however, it would take a much more massive military commitment than in Afghanistan if the United States were to attack Iraq.

In all, analysts say, 100,000 or more American troops might be needed against Saddam Hussein, who could shield his elite Republican Guard troops by placing them among Baghdad's civilians - and who might retaliate with chemical attacks.

"It is a major, major decision," Sen. John Warner warned the Bush administration last week. If the government is contemplating full-scale military action against Iraq, "We've got to prepare the American people for what the consequences would be," said Warner, R-Va.

U.S. officials say they have not decided whether to attack Iraq. The administration accuses Saddam of developing weapons of mass destruction and sponsoring terrorists, and says it is considering options from diplomatic pressure to covert action to military strikes.

If Bush did decide on military action, he would have options ranging from isolated airstrikes to support for Iraqi rebels to a full-scale assault aimed at overthrowing Saddam.

"Anything short of a ground invasion would run a high risk of failure," said Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution, who echoes many analysts in saying that if military action is taken, it must be decisive.

An attack generally would feature more special forces and more precision bombs than were used in the 1991 Gulf War.

Most analysts believe an attack would not come before the fall because the administration would give Saddam a chance to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors first. The United States also would need several months to build up troops in the region, as well as restock precision-guided munitions depleted during the Afghan fighting.

Iraq is much more robust militarily than the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan, although Iraq is weaker than before the 1991 war. It now has an estimated 2,000 tanks, several hundred aircraft, about 350,000 to 400,000 troops and a fairly sophisticated air defense system.

If an air campaign were to begin, Saddam might try to launch Scud missiles, perhaps with chemical or biological weapons on them, against Israel or U.S. troops, said retired Rear Adm. Stephen Baker of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

The United States could use unmanned, armed Predator aircraft to try to search for and destroy Scud launchers and the missiles themselves before they are fired.

"Handling this threat will be one of the hardest, most challenging missions in Iraq," Baker said.

The United States also might try to insert special forces teams to create areas under U.S. control where the Iraqi army could not operate and where Americans could search for elusive biological, chemical and nuclear weapons sites.

Several carrier battle groups probably would be in the area - one or two in the Red Sea and two or three in the Persian Gulf - to launch airstrikes or perhaps serve as a base to insert special forces, Baker said.

The Air Force would want to operate bombers from bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia - depending on who allowed that. Ground operations might be staged mostly from Kuwait.

Only cooperation from Kuwait is necessary to begin an invasion, but cooperation from Saudi Arabia would help immensely, said Kenneth Pollack, director of national security affairs for the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. officials say they are taking steps, including moving equipment to a base in Qatar, to ensure they could spearhead a war in the Gulf, even if Saudi Arabia refused to allow U.S. operations on its soil.

U.S. forces have been increased in recent months in Kuwait - from 5,500 to about 10,500 - but only to warn Iraq not to make threats against its neighbors, defense officials say.

The number of U.S. military personnel in the Gulf region and Central Asia - from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan - has increased from fewer than 25,000 to nearly 80,000, since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The U.S. military also might send special forces teams to work with Kurds or with Iraqi dissident groups in the north, where Saddam's army cannot operate because of a no-fly zone.

One hope is that once U.S. military action began, those groups would rebel. If Saddam seemed in jeopardy, regular army soldiers and officers might rebel. It is unclear how loyal the Republican Guard would prove.

Another problem would loom if Saddam tried to place the Republican Guard in Baghdad. The United States would have to decide whether to attack at the risk of killing Iraqi civilians.

And, there is always the wild card that Saddam might launch other attacks with weapons of mass destruction if he felt personally threatened.

In the end, many analysts believe America would succeed if it launched a full-scale invasion, although it probably would mean casualties.

But then, the tough job of stabilizing Iraq would begin - an effort that could mean placing tens of thousands of U.S. military troops in Iraq for years to come as America and others scramble to find a stable leader.

"Removing Saddam will be opening a Pandora's box, and there might not be any easy way to close it back up," Gordon said.

----

Taking on Iraq Glance

The Associated Press
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39985-2002Mar30?language=printer

A look at Iraq's military, weakened since the 1991 Gulf War but still capable of fighting:

-Iraq has a large standing army, somewhere between 350,000 to 400,000 troops, or about 40 percent as large as the army was before the war.

-Iraq's army is now geared toward fighting insurgents and keeping leader Saddam Hussein in power, U.S. military analysts believe. Before the war, its prime function was to make Iraq a regional power. It is still capable of defeating poorly armed internal opposition groups and threatening its neighbors, the CIA says.

-Many of Iraq's best troops in the Republican Guard remain close to Baghdad, essentially serving as Saddam's private guards.

-Most of Iraq's equipment is of pre-1990, Warsaw Pact vintage. It has about 2,000 tanks, including a few hundred relatively modern T-72s.

-It has a few hundred jet fighters and interceptors. It is unclear how well-maintained they are because of sanctions making spare parts hard to come by.

-Iraq has relatively modern air defenses potentially capable of shooting down U.S. airplanes.

-Iraq has short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, but some could be upgraded to hit more distant targets. It probably has a few hidden Scud missiles capable of reaching Israel.

-Iraq has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, U.S. officials believe, many in hardened bunkers, or hidden beneath sites like hospitals or in Saddam's palaces.

-Kurdish groups have created a safe enclave in northern Iraq protected by U.S. and British jets who enforce a no-fly zone. That could provide the United States a base of operations inside the country.

-------- israel / palestine

Water Is the Root of Israeli-Palestinian Evil

March 30, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2002/2002L-03-29-02.html

JERUSALEM, The Israelis and the Palestinians each blame the other for the violence that is consuming the region with renewed ferocity. Each side sees itself as the victim. The convoluted conflict which has its origin in Biblical times is created in part by the arid nature of the disputed lands.

Dwindling water resources increasingly affected by pollution, agricultural and industrial use and population growth, have elevated the strategic importance of water in the region. The water issue is at the root of the struggle over territory.

Israel is made up of five million Jews and one million Palestinians. The West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are inhabited by 2.5 million Palestinians.

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) complains that Israel controls the sources of water and one third of West Bank inhabitants have only intermittent water supplies. Israel has complete control over water resources in the West Bank and uses 82 percent of the underground water, the PNA says.

Palestinians in the West Bank are charged three times as much per unit of water as Israeli settlers.

The West Bank town of Hebron where 400 Jewish settlers live in a zone, shown here, guarded by 2,500 Israeli military in the city of 119,000 Palestinians. (Photo courtesy Strategic Pastoral Action Network)

The Israeli newspaper, "Ha'aretz," reported that more than half a million of the Palestinian inhabitants in the West Bank have not consistently received water for more than two months.

The yearly Israeli consumption of water is 12 million cubic meters. The Palestinian National Authority says "this 12 million cubic meters is the percentage of deficiency that cities in Gaza lack."

The Palestinian daily consumption of water is 35 to 50 liters per capita, while the daily consumption of the Jewish settlers is 280 to 350 liters per capita.

Both sides rely for water on the West Bank Mountain Aquifer, which straddles the demarcating border of the disputed West Bank territory. It currently provides a third of Israel's water supply and 80 percent of Palestinian consumption.

Despite being the most important source of long term water for Israel, use of the Aquifer has not been implemented to the fullest extent possible. "Israeli officials, while cognizant of the growing water crisis, fear Israeli dependency on potentially Palestinian controlled water sources," said Ilan Berman and Paul Michael Wihbey of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a Jerusalem based think tank.

Due to the shortage of water in the Israeli-Palestinian common resources, the local authorities, the municipality, and the Palestinian Water Authority have been obliged to periodically transfer massive water pipes from certain areas in order to supply others.

Tahir Nasir Eldin, director general of the Palestinian Water Authority in the West Bank, told the "Ha'aretz," newspaper that in the summer months Macarot Israeli Water Company reduces the supply of water to the Palestinian areas and the settlements.

For instance, the 300,000 inhabitants who live in Hebron need 25,000 cubic meters of water daily. However, Macarot supplies this area with 5,500 cubic meters only.

Pharmacy in Bethlehem destroyed by Israeli military forces today. (Photo courtesy The Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People)

The 180,000 inhabitants of Bethlehem need 18,000 cubic meters of water daily during the summer, but they get only 8,000 cubic meters.

Bethlehem residents must buy water from the citizens who are connected to the Israeli lines. These citizens fill their tanks in the few days when they have water, and conserve it for the days when they will not have any water.

The 1993 Oslo Accord requires the Israeli government to continue its control over the Palestinian water resources, and that they decide the amount of water that can be used.

According to the agreement, the Palestinian National Authority can supply water tanks separate from the ones they currently share with the settlements. However, the PNA says, "the Americans are funding most of the expense of these water tanks, and as a result have delayed this project for many long years."

On July 23, 2001, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) West Bank & Gaza Mission transferred legal title for water infrastructure in the West Bank valued at $75 million to the Palestinian Water Authority. USAID's West Bank Water Resources Program, which began in June 1996, has enhanced the availability and quality of water for more than 300,000 Palestinians.

Phase I of the program financed four major production wells and a water transmission system in the Bethlehem-Hebron area, as well as a water transmission system for 11 villages in Jenin. These structures, all of which had been in operation for more than a year, were the subject of the legal transfer.

Still, the PNA says, Jenin residents do not have the water they need, and were grateful to accept 150,000 liters of water given to them by Jewish peace activists.

Nasir Eldin asserts that the Jewish settlements obtain their full water needs from the common Israeli-Palestinian water lines.

But an Israeli expert who prefers not to be named said that the reduced supply of water to the Palestinian areas takes place when most or all of the water pipes that lead to them are closed.

On the contrary, another expert in the Israeli Water Authority said that they don't close the water pipes, and that the shortage of water which the Palestinians face results from high consumption.

He claimed, "We are responsible for the drinking water supply and the current amount of water is enough. We have no intention of reducing the water which the Palestinians get in order to transfer it to the settlements."

Israeli water rights demonstration, July 4, 2001 (Photo courtesy Middle East Online)

Environmental experts say Israel has only itself to blame if its taps run dry. All three of Israel's main water sources - the Sea of Galilee, a coastal aquifer and the West Bank Mountain Aquifer shared with the Palestinians - are dangerously depleted.

Israeli water experts fear that those three sources have gotten to the red lines past which there is a danger they will be irremediably contaminated by salt deposits.

An Israeli Water Commission spokesperson said Israel itself suffers from a water shortage because of low rainfall. "Israel and the Palestinians both have a problem of water," she told the "Jordan Times" December 7, 2000. "As for consumption," she said. "It's a way of life. If you take the numbers, it's true they are not using the same amount. "But it's not that they are asking and we are not giving."

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said 215,000 Palestinians in more than 150 villages are not connected to running water, and that Israel has discriminatory allocation. "At a time when the Israeli public debates whether to water the lawn or wash their car, Palestinians suffer from a shortage of water to meet their most basic needs," B'Tselem said in a statement.

Nasir Eldin said that the reasons for the fatal water crisis which the Palestinians are enduring are overpopulation, the high standard of living of the settlements, the illegal waste of water for agricultural use, and Israeli negligence in maintaining the water tanks in the West Bank for more than 40 years, which has led to the loss of 11 percent of the total amount of water.

Even the Multilateral Water Resources Group, created in 1992 as part of the peace process negotiations, has failed to get the parties to move toward agreement on water sharing.

The Oslo Accord allows the Palestinians to dig a number of wells. However, not all of them are working. Nasir Eldin says, "What is left for the Palestinians is an observant conservation of the drinking water, and proper organization for the distribution of water. I don't have any good news for the Palestinian people, and we don't expect to have a solution for the current situations this summer."

"We are in a very bad situation," then Palestinian Water Authority Chairman Nabil Sharif told a water conference in September 2000. "Unless the United States will do everything possible to convince the Israelis, at the end there will be no real peace if there is no water. If there will be no water, I don't think any agreement of peace will live more than two or three years."

----

Troops prepare to raid Arafat's office

By Saud Abu Ramadan
From the International Desk
3/30/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=30032002-015211-7449r

GAZA, March 31 -- Israel alerted Palestinian Authority officials late Saturday that its troops in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound plan to storm his office, Palestinian sources said.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Al Jazeera Television that "the Israeli troops are preparing to enter Arafat's office. The situation is extremely serious and dangerous."

Israeli military sources said they are after wanted people who have found refuge there, not Arafat and his advisers. "There is no ultimatum," an authoritative source in the Central Command told United Press International.

The United States said Israel has given assurances it will neither harm Arafat nor take him captive. President George Bush said Saturday it is up to Arafat to make it clear his government does not support terrorism and should do more to prevent the recent series of suicide attacks.

"I think Chairman Arafat can do a lot more. I truly believe that. I believe he needs to stand up and condemn, in Arabic, these attacks. He's got a security force that admittedly is somewhat on the defensive right now. But, nevertheless, there is a security force, there is a security apparatus," Bush said.

"We've been dealing with the leaders of the security apparatus. And they have got to do a much better job of preventing people from coming into Israel to blow up innocent people. The leaders in the region must do the same thing."

Iranian President Mohammed Khatami condemned the "aggression targeting" Arafat and called for stern measures for "the criminal action committed by Israel against Arafat and the Palestinian people."

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud told Khatami that the Israeli attack "confirms one more time Israel's rejection of all initiatives aimed at achieving the just, comprehensive and lasting peace."

Israeli troops mounted a strong military campaign Friday, breaching the walls surrounding Arafat compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Israelis were reacting to a series of suicide bombing, including one Wednesday in which more than 20 people died.

Abed Rabbo said Arafat by telephone told him that he received a call from the Israeli army commander who leads the Israeli troops telling him that the Israeli army would enter Arafat's offices.

Abed Rabbo said the commander told Arafat that the troops would enter and would have the right to arrest who they want and release who they want.

"President Arafat said (Friday) that he would never surrender or give himself up to the soldiers and he prefers to resist them and die as a Shahid (martyr)," said Abed Rabbo.

Abed Rabbo urged Arab and world leaders to interfere because if the troops enter Arafat's office, the life of the Palestinian leader would be in danger.

The source in the Central command told UPI the Israelis want all the people who are with Arafat "except for him and his advisers to get out." Wanted militants should surrender, the source said.

Channel 1 TV's military commentator, Ron Ben-Yishai, quoted a very senior military source that he did not identify, as saying that Arafat and his men are not under threat. "They were not told their lives were in danger," Ben-Yishai said.

There is no threat to break in, the source told Ben-Yishai.

Israel radio said a GHQ negotiating team and representatives of the Israeli civil administration had met Ramallah's Palestinian governor, at his request, and discussed Israel's demands.

During the previous Israeli raid in Ramallah, top militants found refuge in the compound that included Arafat's headquarters, a local hospital, and the headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security in nearby Bitunia.

The Central Command source said soldiers are searching for wanted people all over Ramallah, and want to arrest also those in Arafat's office. The source would not say who is there and did not confirm they included the assassins of Tourism Minister Rehavaam Zeevy and the man who planned the arms smuggling shipment from Iran, Fuad Shubaky.

TV footage showed soldiers walk through a hospital ward. Troops are also around the Preventive Security headquarters. Ben-Yishai quoted his source as saying that if the PPS head in the West Bank Col. Jibril Rajoub and his men "want to get out and go home, they can. But the wanted people should hand themselves in.

Earlier the army said it detained 145 people in Ramallah. The previous raid yielded few militants in Ramallah as most wanted people hid.

Saturday, soldiers using loudspeakers ordered Palestinian men to pull up their shirts, a move designed to show they were not carrying suicide belts, and then advance with their hands up. The soldiers then handcuffed them and took them for questioning.

A military source said the Israelis have meanwhile supplied Arafat and the people with him with 1,000 pitas (Arab bread), 20 bottles of mineral water, eggs, cheese, flashlights, canned meat and 20 boxes of candles, the army reported.

(With contributions from Joshua Brilliant in Tel Aviv and Dalal Saoud in Beirut.)

----

U.S. to Support U.N. Resolution
Security Council Wants Israeli Troops Out of Ramallah

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37967-2002Mar29?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS, March 30 -- The United States was prepared in principle early this morning to back a Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Ramallah and other Palestinian cities. U.S. officials said the final draft was still subject to changes but that they had no objection to a council resolution urging an Israeli pullback.

The decision to support action by the 15-nation council to press for an Israel retreat came several hours after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell expressed sympathy with the Israeli operation and said that Israel had the right to decide what action to take to protect Israeli citizens.

The American commitment to support a Norwegian-sponsored draft resolution led to a rare public dispute at the United Nations between the United States and Israel, which said the resolution would hamper its efforts to crack down on Palestinian "terror" networks.

"Our position is not to support any text which calls for the withdrawal of Israel from the territories while we are conducting an operation that is in our legitimate self-defense," said Israel's U.N. ambassador, Yehuda Lancry. "We don't intend to stay there long, but to cut short Israel's action places obstacles in our fight against terrorist networks."

Israel's siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat received widespread international condemnation Friday night as governments from around the world called on the Israeli military to withdraw from Ramallah and other Palestinian cities.

Addressing an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, delegates from nearly 30 countries said Israel's military offensive has needlessly humiliated the Palestinian leader while failing to offer a remedy for the country's worsening political violence.

While most council members joined Washington in denouncing recent suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, they characterized Israel's reaction Friday as excessive. Envoys from more than a dozen countries argued that Israel's siege of Arafat's compound had undermined his capacity to honor Israeli demands to rein in the violence. "He cannot fulfill this role if he is not allowed to," said Richard Ryan, Ireland's U.N. ambassador.

"There is no excuse for the killing of innocent civilians," added Security Council President Ole Peter Kolby of Norway. But "the Israeli bombardment of Palestinian cities and institutions, which has lead to death and destruction, is unacceptable."

For much of Friday, the Bush administration sought to fend off an effort by the Palestinians to persuade the Security Council to formally criticize Israel's siege of Arafat's headquarters and order the "immediate withdrawal" of Israeli forces from Ramallah and other Palestinian towns. But U.S. officials said this morning they would support a resolution that would demand Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories but not set a deadline.

Israeli officials have said they intend only to conduct the current military operation for a few weeks to root out terrorists.

American diplomats placed responsibility for the crisis squarely on the shoulders of Palestinian militants, saying that Israel had been forced to confront it.

"It is terrorism, repeated brutal acts of terrorism perpetrated against innocent civilians by those who oppose peace, that has brought the situation to the current extremely grave, dangerous state," James B. Cunningham, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, said at an emergency council meeting convened at the request of Arab states. "Both Israeli and Palestinian hopes for a peaceful future are under attack by this terror."

The Palestinian Authority's U.N. representative, Nasser Kidwa, accused Israel of trying to destroy the Palestinian Authority and its leader.

"The whole Middle East is in need of your action," he told the council. "This represents the beginning of the destruction of the elected Palestinian Authority and the beginning of getting rid of Yasser Arafat and the reoccupation of Palestinian territory. Let me state here that any harm to President Arafat would be the mother of all these mistakes."

---

In Ramallah, a Methodical Exercise of Military Might
Armor, Bulldozers Open the Way for Israeli Troops

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38056-2002Mar29?language=printer

RAMALLAH, West Bank, March 29 -- The Israeli army assault on Yasser Arafat's headquarters here was a choreography of controlled destruction, a noisy drama apparently scripted in advance and executed almost in slow motion.

Once the tanks and armored troop carriers had moved into Ramallah overnight Thursday, they blocked its main intersections with ditches and mounds of dirt and took up positions on key streets. Snipers peered out from tall buildings. From that point, the actual entry into Arafat's lair looked like an exercise.

Arafat's West Bank headquarters consists of two buildings connected by a covered overpass. The south wing, where the Israelis entered, is a renovated British colonial police station dating from the 1930s.

The direct assault on that building began with sprays of heavy machine-gun fire along the east and west sides. If anyone was prowling those parts of the building's three stories, they were driven deeper inside. Tanks and troop carriers took up positions on each side to protect the work of bulldozers topped with iron shields. The bulldozers opened gaping holes to permit easy entrance of soldiers from the troop carriers.

The squat, tracked carriers pulled up slowly to the new passages and soldiers emerged from front hatches. Every once in a while, soldiers outside fired stun grenades into the air.

Once inside the compound, the soldiers began kicking down doors or blasting them open with gunfire. Inside the building, they appeared to move room to room, sometimes tossing stun weapons and live grenades before entering. By nightfall, dozens of troops had occupied two sides of the building.

The seven deaths in the fighting -- five Palestinians and two Israelis -- occurred before dawn and in early daylight, when resistance was heaviest and Israeli troops were quickest on the trigger.

Arafat's main office sits in the middle of the south wing, but it is uncertain where he was hiding out. The complex is equipped with deep bunkers. A videotape broadcast on al-Jazeera satellite television showed Arafat sitting on a Victorian-style chair in a windowless room devoid of the patriotic artwork and flags that usually adorn official Palestinian offices. He was making international telephone calls to try and whip up international pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to pull back.

Less than two years ago, Arafat was a prime player in talks to end the long and violent Palestinian-Israeli conflict and a well-known face on the international stage, accustomed to being received in halls of power the world over. Tonight, he was trapped somewhere inside the compound in a provincial Palestinian town as Israeli soldiers closed in.

Ramallah itself was almost a ghost town. Stores were shuttered and, except for a few children and an old lady or two, people stayed indoors. Tanks crushed some parked cars, turning some streets into auto graveyards.

Palestinian militiamen roamed pockets of downtown, but they steered clear of the growling Israeli tanks and armored vehicles that moved over scarred thoroughfares.

Civilians mixed defiance with fatalism. "They can kill Arafat, but not the nation," said a bespectacled worker, Nidal Nafez, who lounged at home near Arafat's compound. "It depends on what God and the international community do."

A Palestinian policeman who identified himself only as Abu Ibrahim said, "The Israelis are just trying to scare us by saying, 'This is your leader, we can kill him, we can arrest him.' Yes, they can. But we already knew that."

Israeli officials said they did not want to kill Arafat, but "isolate" him. It was not clear, if that was the goal, why they were going to such trouble. For the last four months, Sharon has confined Arafat to Ramallah. At any time, the army could have tightened its ring of tanks around his compound and barred visitors.

The Israelis said they were also rounding up Palestinian militants inside, but reporters who witnessed the methodical takeover saw no one taken out. The room-to-room search also may be aimed at obtaining documents about Arafat's administration.

----

Arafat: Israeli incursion is terrorism

By Joshua Brilliant and Saud Abu Ramadan
United Press International
March 29, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/28032002-101825-6689r.htm

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accused Israel of terrorism Friday, after its tanks and troops fired on and occupied his headquarters compound in Ramallah killing five Palestinians -- a move the Israelis said was in retaliation for Wednesday's suicide bombing.

"Our people will continue (to be) steadfast in the face of this terrorism. This is the real terrorism of the occupation," he told CNN by telephone, machine gun fire audible in the background. "They are using American weapons against us, F-15s and F-16s and rockets and bombs and artillery and everything," he went on.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Israel to "carefully consider the consequences" of its actions -- while condemning the suicide attacks that Israel says led to its assault.

"Once again, terrorists have set back the vision of the Palestinian people for a state that would live in peace side by side with Israel," Powell said at the State Department. "The United States government condemns these acts of terror and those responsible for them."

Israel says the attacks -- including Wednesday's suicide bombing in the Israeli town of Netanya that killed 22 people celebrating the Passover holiday -- prompted its seizure of Arafat's entire compound in Ramallah, except his personal offices.

"We are in the entire area around the chairman's (Arafat's) structures and very close (to them)," the head of Israel's Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, said.

The Israelis broke into the Mukata'a compound, partly by demolishing a wall that surrounds it. Eitan said the troops came under fire from Arafat's offices and returned fire. He said, however, they were not operating inside the Palestinian leader's complex of offices.

Powell said he understood Israel's desire to respond but urged caution.

"While we understand the Israeli government needs to respond to these acts of terror and the right of the Israeli government to decide what actions best serve the interest of the Israeli people, we call on Prime Minister Sharon and his government to carefully consider the consequences of those actions," he said.

"Chairman Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian people, and his leadership is now even more central to trying to find a way out of this tragic situation."

Eitan said 70 suspects had been detained for questioning. Soldiers captured lots of weapons, ammunition and anti-tank weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, he added. Palestinian security officials said Israeli troops had arrested 60 Palestinians, among them people who were on an Israeli wanted list.

The officials added four Israeli army tanks entered Arafat's compound after firing several shells at nearby offices. Qatar's Al Jazeera television network reported a room-to-room exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Arafat's bodyguards.

Palestinian medical sources said at least five Palestinians were killed and more than 40 injured. An Israeli officer was killed and four soldiers were wounded, an Israeli military spokesman said.

The Israeli Cabinet, after an emergency all-night meeting, declared Arafat an "enemy" and said he would be "isolated." It also authorized calling up 20,000 reserves.

Planned operations will be much more "significant" than previous sweeps through Palestinian towns and refugee camps, said Eli Yishai, Israeli interior minister.

The decision followed a spate of attacks by Palestinians that has killed 106 Israelis in March alone, more than a quarter of all the Israeli deaths since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, the Israeli Defense Forces said.

It was unclear what Israel planned to do with Arafat, but Powell said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised he would not be harmed. "He ... advised me that whatever actions they might decide to take, it would include bringing any harm to Chairman Arafat or killing him."

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer indicated Israel did not intend to capture Arafat, either.

"Where Arafat sits is not our target and we do not intend to enter it," he said.

Israeli Channel 1 TV said Israel intended to post soldiers at the door to Arafat's chambers and decide who went in and who did not. Officials would not comment on the report.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an aide to Arafat, said the Palestinian leader was in good health and was sitting among Palestinian officials and bodyguards.

"The situation here at the president's office is very dangerous and risky," he said. "He (Arafat) is fine, but there are attempts from time to time to break into the main office where the president sits."

But Palestinian Local Governance Minister Saeb Erakat said Arafat and Abu Rudeineh were the only two people in Arafat's office and were being guarded by Arafat's special bodyguards.

Mohamed Dahlan, chief of Palestinian preventive security in Gaza, told Al Jazeera Arafat's office came under heavy fire, putting his life in danger.

"They are firing directly at President Arafat's office in Ramallah," he said. The president's life is in danger."

He said Arafat was shifted to another office on a lower floor.

Several Palestinian officials criticized the United States for the attack.

"With strong regret, we haven't heard from the United States any serious will to stop the aggression," Shaath said.

Palestinian negotiator Mohamed Rashid said the United States had prior information of Israel's attack on Ramallah.

"The United States did not stop Israel," he said.

Erekat said: "If we want to assume that the United States did not give Israel the green light to carry out its offensive, I would say that the United States did not also give Israel the red light to stop the offensive."

Arafat urged Arab and foreign leaders to act immediately to end the Israeli army offensive. He telephoned Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and other regional leaders and diplomats.

"We are all for martyrdom," he told Lebanon's Al Mustaqbal television in an interview.

Al Mustaqbal reported also that Arafat had placed a 9mm weapon on the table in front of him, apparently to use should the Israelis reach his office.

In another interview, Arafat told the Al Jazeera network he had been in contact with a U.S. official, who he did not name. He said he asked the American: "Where are you? Don't you know that this will shake the Middle East?"

On Thursday, Arafat said he was ready to implement an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in the Middle East. Israelis responded by saying words from the Palestinian leader were not enough.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Tel Aviv told United Press International that U.S. envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni would continue his mission to bring about a cease-fire.

"Zinni is continuing his mission," the embassy spokesman said, adding the envoy had not commented on the Israeli operation in Ramallah.

Zinni met Erakat in the West Bank town on Jericho to discuss developments.

"During the meeting, Zinni spoke with President Arafat who is under serious offensive and told him (Arafat) that he (Zinni) is going to do his best to bring calm to the situation," Erekat said.

A cease-fire is part of a plan put forward by CIA Director George Tenet, which Zinni is trying to implement.

The plan says Israel and the Palestinian Authority would immediately resume security cooperation, enforce "strict adherence" to a cease-fire, and "move aggressively" to prevent attacks from their areas.

Arab leaders were quick to criticize the Israeli action, which came a day after the Beirut summit unanimously endorsed a Saudi initiative for peace in the region.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asked President Bush Friday to personally intervene, Egyptian television said.

Qatar, which presides over the Organization of the Islamic Conference, asked Russia Friday to call for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the situation.

Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri telephoned French President Jacques Chirac and asked him to contact European leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also said Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah contacted President Bush Thursday night to discuss the developments.

But in Washington, National Security Council spokesman Mike Anton told UPI that Bush had neither made nor received any calls from regional leaders.

A member of the Lebanon's militant Hezbollah movement, Hussein Khalil, told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. "No one can stand with his hands crossed to watch what is happening" in the Palestinian territories.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, who hosted the Arab summit, telephoned Arafat to check on his safety and relay Arab countries' strong condemnation of the Israeli action.

He called on the U.N. Security Council, Russia and European Union to support the Arab peace initiative and for immediate action to deter Israel from further assaults.

Some 1500 people took to the streets in Beirut to denounce the attack and show support for the Palestinians.

Escorted by Lebanese Army soldiers and policemen, the angry protestors waved Palestinian and Hezbollah flags as well as pictures of Arafat. They gathered in front of the United Nations House in Beirut's downtown area before marching down the capital's main street.

The Saudi plan calls on Israel to withdraw from land captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, for a "fair solution" to the problem of Palestinian refugees who fled during the creation of Israel, and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who proposed the peace initiative passed at the Beirut conference, said Sharon's actions were disturbing the initiative.

Sharon's actions demonstrated he had "no mind, humanity or morals," Abdullah said. The flurry of diplomacy did little to end the spiral of violence, however.

A female suicide bomber blew herself up at the entrance to the Supersol supermarket in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood in Jewish west Jerusalem Friday, killing one or two other people, Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonishki said. At least 21 people were wounded, officials in two hospitals said.

Witnesses said there were two guards at the entrance to the supermarket, one of them checking shoppers with a metal detector. Apparently, the woman was stopped there and set off an explosive device.

Dr. Avraham Ben-Yaakov, a witness, said black smoke spread from the entrance into the supermarket. One of the bodies was severed and one of the wounded people lost a limb, he added.

The Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, which Israel says is affiliated with Arafat's own Fatah party, reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack. An anonymous caller to the Lebanese al Manar TV said the attacker was a 17-year-old girl, adding more attacks were under way in response to the Israeli strikes.

Several hours earlier, dozens of Muslims stoned policemen in Jerusalem at the site the Jews call the Temple Mount and the Muslims call Haram al Sharif. Police entered the compound using stun grenades and dispersed them. A policeman was slightly injured, a spokesman for the Jerusalem police said.

Thursday and Friday, militants penetrated two Jewish settlements, one in the West Bank, another in Gaza, killing six people and wounding several others. Izzedine al Khassam, the armed wing of the Islamic militant Hamas group claimed responsibility for the West Bank attack and identified the militant, who was dead when he was found by police, as Ahmad Abdel Jawad, Israel Radio said.

The two attackers were killed, spokesmen for the army and the settlers said.

The militant Islamic Jihad's armed wing, Saraya al-Quds, claimed responsibility for the Gaza Strip attack.

Oussama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, said Arafat's isolation was the first step in Israel's plan to storm all Palestinian cities.

"It is a war of wills and an open war," he told UPI. "Israel is exercising political pressure by force. Either Arafat surrenders or makes concessions. It is hard that the Palestinians make concessions. No one would accept this."

--

(Joshua Brilliant reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Saud Abu Ramadan from Gaza. With additional reporting by Dalal Saoud in Beirut, Lebanon and Kathy Gambrell and Krishnadev Calamur in Washington, DC)

----

Troops Keep Arafat Confined;
U.N. Urges Israeli Withdrawal

New York Times
March 31, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/31/international/middleeast/31MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, March 30 - Israeli forces tightened their grip around Yasir Arafat today, sealing the Palestinian leader into three rooms of his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian officials said, even as the United Nations Security Council with United States backing called on Israel to withdraw.

Mr. Arafat was able to hear the Hebrew of his captors through the wall of his office, Palestinian officials said, as he nursed a dying cellphone battery that sustained his remaining link to the outside world.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, said that Israel would not harm or expel Mr. Arafat, and that it was restoring electricity, water and telephone service to his compound.

"Also, his compound is being guarded so he won't be hit," Mr. Peres said in a telephone interview.

But Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information, dismissed Mr. Peres's claims. "He is a liar," Mr. Abed Rabbo said. "They are all liars."

He said that Israeli forces were using bulldozers and tanks to flatten other buildings in Mr. Arafat's compound, and he repeated Palestinian claims that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was out to kill Mr. Arafat. Mr. Abed Rabbo hailed the United Nations Security Council vote this morning, which called for Israel to pull back its troops from Ramallah and other Palestinian cities. [Page 7.]

But he added that the move now required forceful action by President Bush. "It needs one serious push from Bush, in order to make it really news and not just another message," he said. "This administration is fond of sending us visions and sending the Israelis green lights. Visions - we are fed up with them."

Mr. Bush said last year that he envisioned a state of Palestine, but Palestinian officials have repeatedly said the Bush administration has not done enough to turn that vision into reality.

Mr. Bush, on a visit to Crawford, Tex., made a series of phone calls today to affirm that his administration is committed to the peace process and that it plans to keep the envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, in the Middle East in the hope that peace talks might resume.

Mr. Bush called the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah of Jordan and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

They were the first known calls by Mr. Bush during the current surge of violence. Each call lasted about 5 to 10 minutes, officials said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society appealed to the Israeli army to permit food and water into Mr. Arafat's compound. Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that Mr. Arafat was seeking to portray himself as a victim. "He is not a victim, he is a terrorist," Mr. Meir said.

As night fell, Mr. Arafat managed a candlelit interview in his ruined headquarters with Reuters television, which has a bureau in Ramallah with a Palestinian crew.

"I appeal to the international community to stop this aggression against our people, this military escalation, this killing," Mr. Arafat pleaded in English.

Then, in Arabic, he added: "Together we will march until one of our children raises the Palestinian flag over the churches and mosques of Jerusalem," accusing Israel of "terrorist racist actions using all kinds of American weapons."

For a second day, tanks and troops were ranging throughout Ramallah. In at least one neighborhood, the wealthy al-Bireh area, Israeli soldiers called over loudspeakers for Palestinian boys and men aged between 15 and 45 to gather at a school for questioning. Soldiers were sifting the population for terrorists, an army spokesman said, adding that they were asking men to assemble voluntarily in hopes of avoiding entering people's homes.

The army said it had arrested 145 people, and Mr. Peres said that two of those arrested were responsible for devastating attacks on Israelis.

Mr. Abed Rabbo said that the bodies of five Palestinian policemen had been found in the Cairo-Amman Bank. The men had been shot in the head, evidently at close range, he said. The Arabic-language network Al Jazeera broadcast footage of the bodies.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli Army said that soldiers had raided a building in Ramallah and came under fire. She said that Palestinian gunmen in one room started shooting at the troops, who fired back, killing them at close range. Two Israeli soldiers were moderately wounded in the exchange, she said.

Mr. Peres declined to say if he fully supported the military campaign, but he argued that Israel had little alternative after a series of attacks had left at least 30 Israelis dead since Wednesday night.

"I got calls from all over the world, saying the international situation of Israel is in danger," the foreign minister said. "Maybe. But we have to answer our own people. What are we going to do?"

The problem, he said, was Mr. Arafat.

"He must decide if he is a national leader or a religious leader," Mr. Peres said, "if he is a national leader who opposes terror, who is for a dialogue and negotiations, or a religious leader that uses slogans that can be translated easily as permission to continue the terror."

Mr. Abed Rabbo, for his part, said that the problem was Mr. Sharon, whom he accused of trying to destroy the decade-old Oslo peace process. "His plan is to reoccupy for a long time - this is his long-term interim solution - hoping sometime in the future, he will find some Palestinians who will say, `Yes , we will call our slavery freedom. We will call occupation whatever you like.' "

Today was the Jewish Sabbath and most Israeli officials, including Mr. Sharon, remained out of sight.

In Ramallah, gunfire sounded across the city as fighting continued to break out. Israeli forces besieged one office building, exchanging gunfire with Palestinians inside. After the building caught fire, fighters and men in civilian clothing came out in surrender. Soldiers ordered them to lie on the ground and in some cases to raise their shirts to show they were not wearing explosive belts.

Troops and tanks also surrounded the hilltop headquarters of Jibril Rajoub, the chief of security in the West Bank for the governing Palestinian Authority.

Differing claims about the situation in Ramallah could not be independently verified because Israel sealed off the city today, calling it a "closed military area," and blocked journalists from entering.

Violence flared across Israel and other parts of the West Bank. Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli police patrol along the boundary between Israel and the West Bank, north of Tulkarm. One policeman was killed, as were the two gunmen.

Israel's northern border came under attack as well. Mortars were fired from Lebanon at Israeli outposts along the border, the Israeli Army said, but no one was injured.

Before dawn, Israeli forces seized positions in Palestinian-controlled territory in the town of Beit Jala. The Israeli Army said it was responding to a mortar fired overnight Friday at the Jerusalem area of Gilo, built on land taken in the 1967 war.

This afternoon, Israel ground forces also pushed into Palestinian territory in the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinians said.

Today, General Zinni met with a group of foreign diplomats known as the "quartet." They are the representatives of the United States, United Nations, the European Union and Russia, who have been most actively involved in seeking a solution for the conflict.

Mr. Peres said that the United Nations Security Council action could provide a way out of the impasse, if Mr. Arafat would accept a proposal by General Zinni for carrying out a truce agreement previously negotiated between the antagonists.

After two previous attempts to broker a truce failed, General Zinni returned to the region two weeks ago and began holding tripartite security talks to implement the truce agreement, known as the Tenet workplan. But once again, General Zinni's mission has been marked by escalating violence and deepening hostility.

Mr. Abed Rabbo insisted that Palestinians had accepted the Tenet plan, and that all that remained was to put it into action. "Every time we accept a plan, they suggest a second plan," he said.

Israel began its current operation after a string of attacks, including a suicide bombing in Netanya on Wednesday night, the first night of Passover, that left 22 Israelis dead.

Palestinian officials had predicted a wave of such attacks after a major Israeli sweep through Palestinian cities and refugee camps, which ended shortly before General Zinni arrived.

Israeli officials have said that they are preparing to launch an even more aggressive campaign, to root out terrorists and illegal weapons.

Throughout Ramallah, residents of that city said, soldiers were seizing private homes for use as outposts. Dr. Jihad Mashal, the director of the Union of Palestine Medical Relief Committees, said by telephone that his family and three others in one building - 24 people in all - had been herded into a two-room apartment in the basement on Friday morning and had been held there since.

"Our building has been transformed into a camp for tens of soldiers," he said. "It's a horrible situation."

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Israelis Besiege a Defiant Arafat in His Office

New York Times
March 30, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/middleeast/30MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=bottom

JERUSALEM, March 29 - Israeli ground forces stormed Yasir Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah today, smashing through walls and battling from room to room as the Bush administration's campaign for a truce staggered beneath a wave of anger and violence.

Declaring that he wished for a martyr's death, Mr. Arafat holed up with aides in an office on the second floor, a machine pistol on the table before him, while Arab and European nations protested the Israeli raid as a threat to his life.

As darkness fell, with his electricity cut and machine gun fire still pounding outside, Mr. Arafat was sitting by a single candle, one witness said. Food in the compound was running low.

Palestinian officials accused Israel of seeking to kill Mr. Arafat, and Israeli officers acknowledged that soldiers had fired on his office. They said the soldiers were returning Palestinian fire, an assertion rejected by people in the compound.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Israel had assured the United States that it would not deliberately harm Mr. Arafat. He said the Bush administration's envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, would continue his pursuit of a truce.

After an all-night session of his government, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today called Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, "an enemy" and declared, "He will be isolated."

As the fighting continued in Ramallah this afternoon, an 18-year-old Palestinian woman blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket, killing two others and bringing to 30 the number of Israelis slain in Palestinian attacks in the last three days.

Five Palestinians and an Israeli Army officer died in the fighting in Ramallah today.

The fighting and the war of words brought Israeli and Palestinian relations to their lowest point since the antagonists embarked on the Oslo peace effort almost a decade ago.

Israeli tanks and bulldozers crashed through the walls of the Arafat compound, and some tanks fired shells. Soldiers in camouflage dress and carrying semiautomatic rifles scrambled over crushed cinder blocks to make their way through holes smashed in the walls.

The size of a city block, the compound once served as the headquarters of Israeli occupation forces in Ramallah. Israel has struck buildings inside the compound from the air several times, but it had not previously invaded it. Mr. Arafat has been trapped inside since early December, after an earlier series of Palestinian attacks.

By telephone, Adam Shapiro, an American living in Ramallah who reached Mr. Arafat's compound late today in an ambulance, described an eerie atmosphere inside. Policemen, guards and office workers were sitting on the ground in the darkness, he said, illuminated by flickering candles and lighters as they stayed away from the windows and waited out the fighting.

"They were just shooting at the building for about 20 minutes," Mr. Shapiro said of the Israeli forces. "They shot from one side of the building and then from another side. You can hear the heavy machine guns. You can feel when it hits this side of the building. You can feel it hitting the walls, and you can hear the bullets flying around."

He said Palestinians were not shooting back. "There's no resistance here whatsoever," he said.

Secretary Powell somberly assessed the rise in violence between the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Christian holiday of Easter, saying it had brought new movement toward peace "to a halt."

He blamed Palestinian attacks for the bloodshed, though he urged the Sharon government to weigh the consequences of its actions. Mr. Arafat's leadership, he said, was "now even more central to trying to find a way out of this tragic situation."

In the secretary of state's words, the long Middle East impasse seemed to find expression: a Palestinian leader, described at once as responsible for terrorism and central to the quest for peace, facing an Israeli leader tempted to give Israel's military might free rein but held back by an American administration with many good intentions but seemingly few concrete proposals.

As a hard, cold rain fell on Ramallah and Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians appeared to be girding for all-out conflict. Israeli Army officers promised a long-term, thorough campaign to round up Palestinian militants and weapons. Israel embarked on a similar sweep late last month, but interrupted it after the Bush administration announced that it was returning its envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, to the region.

That operation was Israel's largest ground invasion in 20 years, and the early signs were that this one would prove even more aggressive - though it was also possible that the Israelis were trying to bluff the Palestinians into a cease-fire. The government called up thousands of reservists. Israelis were reminded of scenes from the wars of 1967 and 1973 as Israeli television showed the citizen-soldiers reporting for duty.

"This is the rock bottom of the Oslo process," said Martin Indyk, who was ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.

For the Oslo accords, Mr. Arafat, now officially an enemy of Israel, shared a Nobel Peace Prize with a former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and with the current foreign minister, Shimon Peres.

On the Qatar-based television network Al Jazeera, Jibril Rajoub, Mr. Arafat's security chief in the West Bank, denounced Mr. Sharon as a "liar, criminal, butcher." Mr. Rajoub has been one of the top Palestinian officials attending truce talks meetings led by General Zinni.

Mr. Sharon's endgame for the Ramallah mission remained unclear tonight. Israel's top security officials opposed a demand made by government ministers that Mr. Arafat be banished, and Israeli officials said that was no longer an option.

"The heart's desire was to expel, but reality dictated otherwise," an Israeli official said. "When people tell you that it is not advisable - the prime minister's no fool." The official said Mr. Sharon had also considered the diplomatic repercussions of such a step.

For Palestinian officials, the Israeli operation reprised a siege of Mr. Arafat led by Mr. Sharon in Beirut, Lebanon, 20 years ago. That time, Mr. Sharon succeeded in expelling Mr. Arafat, until the Oslo effort returned him to Jerusalem's doorstep.

Palestinian leaders accused Mr. Sharon of seeking to undermine a proposal for peace unanimously adopted at an Arab summit meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, this week. The Arab nations offered to exchange normal relations with Israel for a full Israeli withdrawal from the land it occupied in the 1967 war and a just solution to the plight of refugees of the 1948 war.

Col. Gal Hirsh, the chief of operations for the Israeli Army's central command, said Israeli forces in Ramallah had arrested 70 Palestinians, though it was not clear how many were wanted men. He also said Israeli forces had found weapons that were illegal under the Oslo accord in the compound, including rocket-propelled grenades.

"We are acting all over the Arafat compound," he said. "The only place we don't enter is the house of Arafat and his offices. Arafat is not the target." The Palestinian leader has a small apartment off his office in the compound.

Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, the chief of the Israeli central command, said: "We are not shooting at Arafat's office. Unfortunately, people are shooting from his house, so sometimes we are returning fire."

Israeli officials insisted that the forces had no intention of remaining in Ramallah, which they raided before dawn today. The operation followed a suicide bombing in Netanya on Wednesday night, at the beginning of Passover, that killed 22 Israelis.

Here in Jerusalem, the Israeli police used stun grenades on the Aksa Mosque compound today to disperse Muslim worshipers who were throwing stones.

As has been the case with other West Bank cities during Israeli invasion, the streets of Ramallah, which is just north of Jerusalem, were eerily empty today, as tanks and armored vehicles clanked through them, occasional ramming parked cars out of their way.

Near Manara Square, three Palestinian gunmen hid behind a building. One young man, covering his face with a black-and-white head scarf, said the Israeli assault had come as no surprise. Israeli forces were operating in Ramallah just two weeks ago. "This will be the last strike," he predicted, "and afterward the government of Israel will fall."

Mr. Sharon, who campaigned more than a year ago on a promise of peace and security, has been under increasing pressure from his political right to reoccupy broad areas of Palestinian-controlled territory and sweep them for weapons and militants.

Mr. Arafat, trapped in his office, worked the telephone today, speaking to other leaders and giving the occasional television interview. The official Palestine News Agency quoted him as saying Israel wanted him to become "either a hostage, a runaway, or a martyr," adding, "I tell them I will be a martyr, a martyr, a martyr."

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Hezbollah, Israel Trade Strikes

March 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Lebanon-Israel.html

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets at Israeli posts in a disputed border region Saturday, prompting Israeli missile strikes in south Lebanon and raising worries of a new front heating up as Israel wages an assault against the Palestinians.

Israel evacuated 2,000 visitors from the Mt. Hermon ski resort in the Golan Heights because of the Hezbollah rocket fire, said an Israeli army spokesman, Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz.

The Lebanese guerrillas said they attacked six Israeli positions in the Chebaa Farms area, a patch of land claimed by both Israel and Lebanon where the borders of Lebanon and the Israeli-held Golan meet. It was not immediately clear if the six Israeli positions were hit. Witnesses said black smoke billowed from one hilltop outpost.

The Shiite Muslim guerrilla group issued a statement protesting Israel's ``escalation against the struggling and aggrieved Palestinian people,'' warning that Israel's military operations against the Palestinians would bring ``very dangerous repercussions.''

Israeli jets fired at least three missiles on suspected guerrilla trails, and Israeli gunners fired about 30 artillery shells at a valley near the Lebanese villages of Halta and Kfar Chouba. Three civilians were hospitalized with injuries, the Lebanese officials said on condition of anonymity.

The exchange of fire comes at a critical time. Israeli troops took over the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday and were inside Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in an operation described by Israeli officials as the first stage of a much larger assault in response to Palestinian suicide attacks.

Rafowicz accused the guerrillas of trying to fuel more violence.

``The Hezbollah wishes in crude and violent fashion to heat up the area and provoke Israel. We view with severity the decision of Hezbollah, in violation of the U.N. position, to stage attacks in the north,'' he said.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar television reported ongoing ``clashes'' between guerrilla fighters and Israeli troops in the area. The report could not be independently confirmed, although witnesses reported hearing machine-gun fire. Hezbollah anti-aircraft gunners fired at Israeli jets, but no hits were reported.

The last time Israeli jets fired at Hezbollah positions was Jan. 23, after the guerrillas attacked Israeli army positions in the same area.

Lebanon considers the Chebaa Farms area its territory, and Hezbollah has vowed to liberate it. Israel did not withdraw from the area when it pulled out from the rest of south Lebanon in May 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.

The United Nations says the territory belongs to Syria, which lost the Golan Heights to Israel in the 1967 war, and should be discussed between Syria and Israel.

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Explosion in Tel Aviv, Many Casualties

March 30, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-blast.html

TEL AVIV - A huge explosion, apparently caused by a suicide bomber, ripped through a busy restaurant in downtown Tel Aviv on Saturday evening, wounding over 20 people.

The blast, at about 9.30 p.m. (1830 GMT), devastated Cafe Bialik on Allenby Street in the center of the coastal city.

Medical officials said they had evacuated more than 20 wounded, four of them seriously hurt.

``Until now we are talking about oneperson...apparently the bomber,'' a police spokesman said.

Many ambulances converged on the scene, sirens screaming. Shards of glass and twisted metal were strewn across the street.

Moshe, a vendor at snack stand just down the road from the restaurant, told Reuters: ``There was a huge explosion. I ran outside and took one look. There were people scattered all over the road in bad shape. I couldn't look any longer. I turned and ran as fast as I could,'' he said.

Israel's Channel Two television quoted a witness as saying: ''The place was full of people...I got there at the moment of the blast. I arrived and suddenly ``boom'' -- people on the floor.''

Onlookers stampeded in panic at one point when a rumor circulated that there might be a second bomb and one distraught man ran around out of control screaming ``Enough, enough.''

The blast occurred one day after Israeli tanks and troops stormed into Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah in what Israel said was a response to a suicide bombing on Wednesday which killed 22 Israelis.

The U.N. Security Council on Saturday called on Israel to withdraw from Ramallah and other Palestinian-ruled cities.

JEWISH PASSOVER

A small group of right-wing Israelis held up placards reading ``Prosecute the Oslo criminals'' and chanting ``Peres is guilty, Peres is guilty'' -- a reference to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords with the Palestinians.

The attack came during the Jewish Passover holiday and at the end of the Sabbath when Israelis often go out to restaurants and entertainment spots after their day of rest.

``Once again innocent Israelis have become victims to the murderous deeds of the Palestinian Authority, which will stop at nothing for the purpose of inflicting as many casualties as it can,'' said David Baker, an official at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office.

``The Palestinians continue to resist any opportunity to achieve a cease-fire and bring an end to this murderous campaign directed against Israelis,'' he said.

There was no immediate comment from Palestinian officials.

The blast coincided with a call President Bush for Israel to find a path to peace. Bush also said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had to speak out and make clear he did not support ``terrorists.''

Police sealed off the area around the bomb site, but at one point a shrieking middle-aged woman raced toward the police cordon. ``My baby, my baby'' she cried as ambulance workers rushed up to her. ``My daughter was here tonight and now I can't reach her on the cell phone,'' she said,

A paramedic tried to reassure her by saying most mobile cell phone networks crashed right after such incidents, but the woman was inconsolable and was shepherded to an ambulance.

-------- pakistan

U.S. Agents Seize Terror Suspects in Pakistan Raid

New York Times
March 30, 2002
By RAYMOND BONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/asia/30STAN.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A team of American law enforcement and intelligence officials stormed several houses in Pakistan early Thursday and captured five Taliban fighters and 25 Arabs suspected of having links to Al Qaeda, senior Pakistani law enforcement officials said today.

The operation, in the towns of Faisalabad and Lahore, was carried out with the Pakistani government's permission and with special Pakistani police forces, the officials said. At least two Pakistani policemen and one suspect were killed in the raid, Pakistani officials said.

It was believed to be the first time that American law enforcement and intelligence officials had conducted such a raid in another country since the Bush administration began its campaign against terror. Until now, American help in pursuing terror suspects abroad has largely been limited to training and intelligence sharing.

The Pakistani officials were reluctant to provide details of the operation, fearful that the heavy American involvement in what amounted to a police action could inflame sensitivities over sovereignty for Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.

In an interview today, Interior Minister Moinhuddin Haider appeared to lay to rest another issue striking the same nerve, saying that the main suspect in the killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl would not be handed over to the United States to stand trial any time soon, if ever.

One senior Pakistani official said the Americans involved in the operation on Thursday included four F.B.I. agents equipped with sensitive monitoring equipment that allowed them to pick up telephone conversations in Arabic and pinpoint them.

Another official said the American team also included one C.I.A. agent and one official from the American Embassy. He also said that some 20 heavily armed Americans took part, though Gen. Tommy R. Franks, chief of the United States Central Command, said in Washington that none of his troops were involved.

"I think that there was cooperation between assets of our government and assets of President Musharraf's government," he said. "And I suspect, in the days and weeks ahead, that the full construct of all of that will come out."

A spokesman for the American Embassy here declined to comment on the raid, beyond saying that the United States and Pakistan had been cooperating on several investigations.

"It was a joint operation," a senior Pakistan government official said.

Pakistani officials said the raid took place 12 hours after the Americans approached the Pakistan government with intelligence about the suspects and then sought and received Pakistani permission to carry out the operation.

Those rounded up, the officials said, will be flown to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and eventually to Guantánamo Bay. The detained included Afghans, as well as men from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, officials said. They said most had fled Afghanistan in recent weeks.

The Pakistani officials would say little more about the circumstances of the raid and about those seized. Nor would they say whether the suspects might have been involved in previous terror attacks or were planning new ones. They said they had no evidence that the men were connected to the bombing of a Protestant church here on March 17 that killed five, including the wife of an American diplomat and her daughter.

American officials have been saying for weeks that many Al Qaeda and Taliban members have slipped across the border into Pakistan, where they are regrouping and preparing terrorist activities.

Mr. Haider, who is one of President Musharraf's closest advisers, said the raid "should make it very clear that no terrorist can enter our territory and not be found."

He also said Pakistani troops were doing their best to seal the border, but "we cannot guarantee with 100 percent certainty that no one will get through."

American officials have suggested that American soldiers may cross the border into Pakistan in pursuit of the fleeing enemy, a possibility that has caused a political maelstrom here. Mr. Haider said that American forces would not be granted permission to carry out such an operation.

He said that if the United States would provide the intelligence on the whereabouts of suspects, "we will do the dirty work."

Mr. Haider, whose older brother was assassinated by extremists last December, touched on another delicate subject, the possibility that Pakistan would hand over Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the main suspect in the killing of Mr. Pearl, to the United States.

Going beyond what officials have said before, Mr. Haider said that, if convicted, Mr. Sheikh would have to complete his sentence here before being turned over to the American authorities.

Previously, Pakistani officials had held out the possibility that Mr. Sheikh would be turned over after his trial here ended. Mr. Haider's statement appeared to be a defeat for the Bush administration, which has made no secret of its desire to have Mr. Sheikh brought to trial in the United States.

Several senior Bush administration officials made requests to President Musharraf directly that Mr. Sheikh be handed over.

Mr. Haider said that he had had numerous conversations with American officials about the case and that they were satisfied that Mr. Sheikh would not be handed over.

"They feel that the Pakistan judicial system will do justice in this case," he said.

If convicted, Mr. Sheikh could be sentenced to death and hanged, an outcome that the Bush administration has said would be satisfactory, a senior Pakistani official said. He added that the Bush administration had indicated that it would push for Mr. Sheikh to be taken to the United States if he was acquitted or given a sentence of only 20 to 30 years.

Mr. Sheikh was brought into court in Karachi today for the final reading of charges against him. The trial is scheduled to begin April 5, the prosecutor, Rafi Qureshi, said, and under the antiterrorism law it should be finished in one week.

The trial may be held in the prison, for security reasons, and it may be closed to the public, Mr. Qureshi said.

-------- russia / chechnya

Russia orders clean-up of special operations in Chechnya

Saturday March 30, 2002
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020329/1/2n7u0.html

Russia has introduced measures to eliminate human rights abuses committed during "special operations" by its forces in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, the Kremlin said.

The commander of federal forces in the North Caucasus, Vladimir Moltensky, has ordered that troops carrying out sweeps be accompanied by officials from the Chechen administration or the prosecutor's office, local elders or the clergy, said chief Kremlin spokesman on Chechnya Sergei Yastrzhembsky.

Russian troops sent into Chechnya in October 1999 to put down a separatist insurgency have frequently been accused of committing human rights violations, including pillage, rape, kidnapping and murder.

Moltensky's order stipulates that suspects arrested during sweeps must be handed over to interior ministry and local officials, a measure intended to allay fears by Chechen civilians over numerous "disappearances".

Yastrzhembsky said he hoped the new procedures would "significantly improve" the situation in Chechnya, admitting that sweeps in the past had frequently been marred by "marauding, brutality and actions exceeding the orders given to troops."

He said rights abuses had "hindered the return to peaceful life" in Chechnya, where Russia's 80,000 troops have failed to impose their control over large areas of the republic, and deterred many Chechen refugees from returning to their homes.

However he denounced as "demagogy" based on "unconfirmed reports" criticisms expressed by organisations such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch or the aid group Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).

The spokesman pointed out that 33 Russian troops, including four officers, have been convicted over crimes committed against Chechen civilians.

A total of 132 criminal investigations have been opened, of which 75 have been completed. Forty-six cases involving 62 soldiers have been sent to trial, he said.

Several Russian officials or pro-Russian Chechens welcomed the measures, including the head of the Chechen government Slanislav Ilyasov, the head of the pro-Russian Chechen administration Akhmad Kadyrov and the Russian presidency's human rights representative Vladimir Kalamanov.

Human Rights Watch, through a spokesman in its Moscow bureau, said it did not share Russian optimism over Moltensky's order.

Similar pledges have been made before without changing anything, spokesman Diederik Lohman told the Interfax news agency.

Moltensky's measures were simply a reaffirmation of legal provisions that already exist but are not observed, he said.

----

Russians for peace

EDITORIAL
March 30, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020330-54370102.htm

Some Russians have become tired of watching in horror as their military forces ravage the Chechen people and, in doing so, damage their country's image as well. They are taking their own initiative - putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to play catch-up. Europe's role, meanwhile, in helping to broker unofficial Russian/Chechen peace talks is making America's failure to speak out against Russian atrocities glaringly conspicuous.

Over the past few weeks in Moscow, Russian lawmakers have met with Chechen leaders in hiding. This round of talks has been mediated by the Council of Europe. These unofficial talks follow a breakdown of negotiations between the Putin administration and Chechen leadership last fall.

Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov has declined to participate in the latest talks until they make some headway. "It would be absolutely immoral for us to maintain contact with Putin and the Russian side against the background of the escalation of atrocities," Akhmad Zakayev, Chechnya's European envoy, told the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Mr. Putin is unwilling to reign in his thugs in Chechnya. In fact, he is deploying the widely feared Khanti-Mansiisk special-police brigade back to Chechnya, which committed widespread abuses there in the past. "This is worse than the SS going back there," said Glen Howard, executive director of The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, of the brigade's return.

But as the Chechen crisis grows worse, the Bush administration has fallen silent. Clearly, the White House has bartered its criticism on the Chechen issue for the Kremlin's support of U.S. counter-terrorist initiatives. This is a Faustian bargain.

In late February, the administration demonstrated how far it was willing to go to oblige Mr. Putin. In a move that seems rather Kremlinesque, the administration blocked Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from launching 15-minute broadcasts in the Chechen language, as requested by Congress last year. Although Mr. Putin has long demonstrated his eagerness to crackdown on freedom of the press to expose the ferocity of Russia's onslaught of Chechens, Washington hardly needed to contribute by blocking our broadcasts.

Russian lawmakers are showing Mr. Putin they won't stand idly by. Europe is sending Russia its own signals. If the White House is unwilling to lead, when will it at least follow?

-------- un

U.N. Calls for Israeli Pullout From Palestinian Cities

March 30, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/middleeast/30mide-wires.html

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli troops tightened their siege of a defiant Yasser Arafat in his battered headquarters on Saturday as the U.N. Security Council, with rare U.S. support, called for Israel to quit Palestinian cities.

Israel criticised the council resolution for not stressing Palestinian responsibility for "terrorist" attacks which it said had prompted its drive into Palestinian areas.

The Palestinian Authority said the resolution was positive and demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israeli tanks blasted their way into Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's base on Friday.

Aides said the embattled leader was losing contact with the outside world after Israeli forces cut telephone lines and water and power supplies to his ruined compound. Two of his bodyguards were wounded when tanks shelled their operations room overnight.

After an all-night session, the Security Council passed a resolution urging Israelis and Palestinians to move immediately to a "meaningful ceasefire." It "calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah."

The Foreign Ministry said Israel had no interest in remaining in Ramallah or any other areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but gave no hint that it would leave.

"The resolution correctly notes the need for a ceasefire as the first stage. Unfortunately, until now the Palestinians have acted to torpedo any effort to achieve such a ceasefire," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Palestinians welcomed the resolution "provided that Israel implements it immediately and does not use it as a cover for procrastination and to prolong the invasion and the siege of the president," Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said.

"Everything depends on the Americans now," he told Reuters.

The violence sweeping the region for the past 18 months shifted up a gear after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Arafat an enemy and ordered an offensive, backed by tanks, against his Ramallah headquarters early on Friday.

U.S. SHIFT

The U.S. decision to support the resolution marked a change of position from Friday's comments by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who expressed sympathy with Israel's decision to respond militarily to a series of attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israel's treatment of Arafat has drawn fierce international condemnation and severely dented hopes raised by an Arab summit's endorsement this week of a Middle East peace plan.

The European Union's Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos said he was returning to the region on Saturday to promote a ceasefire. "Arafat is not an enemy," he said in a statement, calling on Israel to lift its siege of Arafat's compou