------- 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 compound at once and withdraw from all Palestinian-ruled areas.

U.N. envoy Terje Roed Larsen told Reuters Israel had denied him permission to visit Arafat.

The Palestinian president had responded to the assault on his compound with defiant telephone interviews to the media, but these dried up after his telephone lines were cut.

"Nobody is shaken, afraid, or retreating," Arafat said in one such interview on Friday. "We are going to Jerusalem, giving millions of martyrs on the way."

Israeli forces, in a hard-hitting response to a suicide bombing which killed 22 Israelis on Wednesday, had used armoured bulldozers to smash their way into Arafat's West Bank headquarters and battled his forces from room to room.

At least six Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed in some of the fiercest fighting since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000. Scores of suspected militants were arrested.

The Israeli attack coincided with fresh violence as an 18-year-old woman suicide bomber blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket, killing two people and wounding at least 20.

The attack, claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Arafat's Fatah group, was the second such suicide bombing carried out by a Palestinian woman.

FATAH FOUNDER SEIZED

Israeli forces seized Sakher Habash, a founder of Arafat's Fatah movement, after battering his offices in Ramallah on Saturday, Palestinian security officials said.

They said Habash, in his early 60s, had been detained with a score of others, including several Palestinian policemen, who had been holed up in a commercial building in Ramallah.

Israeli troops detained scores of Palestinians in house-to-house searches elsewhere in Ramallah. The army said it had rounded up 145 Palestinians for questioning.

An Israeli security source identified two of the detainees as wanted Fatah militants named Abdul Karim Aweis and Hader Dabaya, both from the West Bank town of Jenin.

Egyptian and Palestinian officials said Israel's latest actions amounted to a declaration of war after 18 months of strife in which 1,112 Palestinians and 383 Israelis have died.

Israeli armoured vehicles rumbled into the Palestinian town of Beit Jala between Jerusalem and biblical Bethlehem early on Saturday in an incursion the army said was aimed at preventing gunfire from Beit Jala at the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo.

In Gaza, about 4,000 people, including many gunmen, marched in the funeral of an Islamic Jihad militant killed on Friday after he stabbed two Israelis to death at a Jewish settlement.

--------

Special U.N. Session on Mideast Violence

March 30, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/middleeast/30NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 29 - The United Nations Security Council was called into an emergency session today in the wake of Israeli attacks on Yasir Arafat's headquarters and another Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel.

The session is not likely to produce immediate action, beyond a condemnation of the deteriorating situation. Some diplomats said that with events still in flux, the Council had little room to act. It has repeatedly called for a cessation of hostilities in the 18 months since the current round of fighting began.

Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Council this evening that he was "deeply alarmed" at the rapid escalation of the violence. He said attacks against Israeli civilians were "aimed at undermining any prospect for a political settlement." Turning to Israel, Mr. Annan added, "Yet, I have also consistently voiced criticism over Israel's use of disproportionate lethal force," which "will bring neither peace nor security to Israel."

He urged both Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and Mr. Arafat to take advantage of the opening created in Beirut by the adoption of a Saudi-sponsored peace plan. He called on Mr. Arafat to accept the American cease-fire proposal and on Mr. Sharon to halt the assault on the Palestinian Authority.

-------- us

32 accidental deaths since October: US military at home

NATION IN BRIEF
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38369-2002Mar29?language=printer

LOS ANGELES -- A mortar round exploded prematurely during a training exercise at Fort Irwin, killing three soldiers from Fort Riley, Kan., and wounding a fourth, officials said. There have been 32 accidental, on-duty Army fatalities -- four more than last year -- since Oct. 1, military statistics show.

----

'Friendly Fire' Probed in Death
Airstrike May Have Hit Afghan Convoy

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37853-2002Mar29?language=printer

A Special Forces soldier who died in the opening hours of Operation Anaconda in eastern Afghanistan this month may have been mistakenly killed by an American AC-130 "Spectre" gunship, defense officials disclosed yesterday.

Initial reports from the battlefield south of Gardez indicated that Army Chief Warrant Officer Stanley L. Harriman, 34, of Wade, N.C., and several Afghan fighters died in an al Qaeda mortar barrage.

But Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the war in Afghanistan, said he has asked for a review of the March 2 incident because Harriman was accompanying an Afghan convoy at the same time the AC-130 reported attacking an enemy convoy in the same general area.

"As Operation Anaconda kicked off, there was reporting of a friendly convoy of Americans and Afghans being under fire," Franks said yesterday. "Simultaneously, on a different radio network, I noticed reporting by an AC-130 gunship that it was engaging a convoy. . . . I've asked our Special Operations component to investigate the facts and circumstances and see if there is any connection between the two."

Harriman, 34, was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. The medals were presented to his father, Buzz Harriman, a retired Army major. Stanley Harriman's widow, Sheila, told the Associated Press yesterday that her husband was "still fighting for his country" no matter how he was killed.

"It will never change the fact that he was over there fighting for our freedom," she said. "He's still a hero."

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Franks released a list of 10 incidents investigated by the U.S. Central Command involving "friendly fire" accidents, airstrikes that hit relief operations, allegations of abuse by al Qaeda and Taliban detainees and a controversial assault by U.S. Special Forces at Hazar Qadam in which 16 "friendly" Afghan fighters were killed.

With the exception of the attack in which Harriman was killed, all the incidents had been reported previously. In releasing the list, the Central Command noted that U.S. and coalition warplanes have flown more than 36,564 sorties over Afghanistan and dropped 21,737 munitions.

The list begins with an Oct. 26 airstrike that heavily damaged a warehouse compound in Kabul, the Afghan capital, run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The errant attack, for which the Central Command has accepted responsibility, took place even after the ICRC provided U.S. military commanders with the facility's coordinates after it was initially bombed by mistake on Oct. 16.

The final incident under investigation is a March 6 airstrike on a vehicle carrying a suspected al Qaeda leader near the village of Shikin just south of the Operation Anaconda engagement zone. "The attack resulted in 14 fatalities and one wounded," the list states. "Among the killed were eight adult males, three adult females and three children."

Asked about varying reports from U.S. commanders about the number of al Qaeda forces killed during Operation Anaconda, Franks said only that "there were hundreds killed in this operation."

He took strong issue with claims by Afghan commanders that hundreds of al Qaeda fighters had managed to escape from the battlefield and cross the border into Pakistan, as happened earlier in fighting at Tora Bora.

"I really have no doubt that, during the course of any one of these military operations, that we will see threes and fives and, maybe in some cases, fifteens, if you will, who will exfiltrate the battle area," Franks said. "The speculation about large numbers -- I wouldn't buy the numbers. The placement of Special Operations forces, the placement of Afghan forces . . . was such that, in my view, it would be infeasible to expect that large numbers of enemy forces exfiltrated this battlefield and moved in any direction."

With Operation Anaconda, the largest ground engagement involving U.S. forces in Afghanistan, over for several weeks, Franks was asked if he has been asked to prepare for a possible attack on Iraq. Franks said that he has received no orders from either President Bush or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to begin prepositioning troops or supplies for such an action.

But steps are being taken, he said, to improve the Central Command's command and control capabilities throughout its area of responsibility. He said there is no plan to move the Air Force's Combined Air Operation Center -- the command post for the air war over Afghanistan -- from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Franks said he might, however, try to "replicate" the air operation center somewhere else in the region.

He also noted that 3,000 to 4,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Kuwait two to three months ago as a "hedge against miscalculation" by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in terms of another invasion of Iraq's southern neighbor. Another 3,000 to 4,000 U.S. airmen, he said, are also in Kuwait conducting Operation Southern Watch, which enforces the Southern No-Fly Zone.

-------- propaganda wars

THE MILITARY
In Israel, Press Kits Roll Out With Tanks

New York Times
March 30, 2002
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/middleeast/30ARMY.html

JERUSALEM - Israel's army and its government - and its vast public relations apparatus - appeared to be mobilizing today for a long, drawn-out battle against the Palestinians.

As Israeli tanks today broke through the walls of Yasir Arafat's compound in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and fighting was reported to be raging from room to room through the complex, the commander directing the attack, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, said such battles could go on indefinitely.

"The operation will last as long as necessary, without a time limit, according to an ongoing situation assessment and according to the directives of the political echelon," General Eitan said at military briefing. "The forces are operating to hit the terrorist infrastructures, to catch wanted people, to hit terrorists and to defeat terrorism."

His chief of operations, Col. Gal Hirsh, indicated that similar operations could spread throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and that they could also continue for a long time.

"Since we are fighting against the terror infrastructure, it may take time," he said. "Since we witnessed this large Palestinian terror offensive against us, it may take time."

Even as the tanks rumbled into Ramallah this morning, Gideon Meir, Israel's deputy foreign minister for public affairs, was setting up a huge government information office in Jerusalem's Convention Center to provide daily briefings for the international press corps pouring in here. It was, he said, part of an emergency plan that had been developed over the last two months.

"We have had the experience of September 2000," Mr. Meir said, referring to the start of this period of conflict and the images of Israeli soldiers shooting at young people throwing rocks. "And we have learned from some of our mistakes."

This is a country obsessed with its image abroad, and public relations is regarded as a vital - and sometimes losing - part of the battle. The Hebrew word is hasbara, which literally means "explanation," but carries the connotation here of something like "information offensive."

All of the Israeli embassies and other offices abroad, normally closed for the weeklong Passover holiday, have been ordered reopened, Mr. Meir said today, and all Foreign Ministry personnel have been recalled to duty, many of them reassigned from their usual jobs to the public relations effort.

"We will fight the Palestinian incitement and propaganda campaign," Mr. Meir said. "It will take some time, it will take a lot of patience."

Workers bustled about today, setting up tables, computers and telephone lines. On a long row of tables, there were handouts ranging from maps and pamphlets with basic facts on population to piles of CD-ROM's.

The discs included "Surviving Terrorists," ("The gripping stories of six Israelis whose lives were turned upside down by terrorist attacks. Their will to live represents the courage and hope for peace that every Israeli represents.") and "Seeds of Hatred" ("Today, the Palestinian Authority is methodically and systematically indoctrinating a new generation of children with dangerous and irrevocable messages . . .").

Looking about the briefing room taking shape, Eric Silver of the British newspaper The Independent, a correspondent here for decades, said the mobilization reminded him of the conflict in 1973.

Colonel Hirsh, the army chief of operations, said he anticipated that the army's offensive would be substantial, without a commitment to "finish in any geographical point."

He explained his thinking by saying, "We just heard today during our defensive measure in Ramallah that, still, the call for a million martyrs to march to Jerusalem is still relevant - and the results you've seen this afternoon in Jerusalem," referring to a young woman who carried out a suicide bombing in a supermarket, killing two Israelis, along with herself.

The army says that 20,000 reservists have been called up for this campaign. That is the total number of troops used for the army's incursion into Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank earlier this month, at the time the largest military action since the 1982 war in Lebanon.

Today's assault was led by Special Forces soldiers known as Sayeret, or Reconnaissance, Colonel Hirsh said. The army used tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers to break into the compound, backed by regular infantry.

"That compound is the base for terrorism and President Arafat's security is part of it, Force 17 and the Presidential Guards," Colonel Hirsh said. "Nothing in the Palestinian Authority is spontaneous or innocent."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

FBI Joined Pakistan In Staging Raids

By Kamran Khan and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37934-2002Mar29?language=printer

KARACHI, Pakistan, March 29 -- FBI agents joined Pakistani police officers in the pre-dawn raids that scooped up 26 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives from homes in the eastern Pakistan cities of Faisalabad and Lahore early Thursday in the most visible cooperation to date between American and Pakistani law enforcement agencies in the war against terrorism.

The lightning raids, prompted by communications intercepts gathered by U.S. intelligence, represented a dramatic departure from the low profile that American investigators have maintained in Pakistan even while providing such crucial assistance as the computer sleuthing that helped authorities close in on the kidnappers of slain American newspaper correspondent Daniel Pearl last month.

Today, four men charged in the Pearl case, including accused ringleader Sheik Omar Saeed, learned that their trial will begin April 5 and be held inside Karachi Central Prison for what prosecutors said were security reasons.

But as with the Pearl abduction, which took place only days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced a crackdown on religious militants, Thursday's raids renewed questions from police, diplomats and others about Pakistan's professed commitment to eliminate homegrown extremist groups.

Several of the fugitives in Faisalabad were found inside the home of a senior official of a Pakistani religious party that the United States lists as a terrorist organization and that Pakistan had officially banned. Yet Pakistani authorities acknowledged that Prof. Hameedullah Khan Niazi, the local leader of Lashkar-i-Taiba, or Holy Army, had not been detained until a pair of FBI agents arrived with Pakistani police officers early Thursday.

"This provides glaring indications that some[militant] organizations are involved in providing shelter for fleeing al Qaeda and Taliban [fighters] from Afghanistan," said a police official in Punjab, the province where the raids occurred.

One suspect was killed in the operation; he was identified by authorities only as an Arab who had pulled a knife after being taken into custody.

The remaining suspects, who include Egyptians, Syrians and Yemenis, were gathered in Lahore to be interrogated by investigators from the United States and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Pakistani authorities said. The approximately 40 Pakistani residents swept up in the raids, including Niazi, remained in custody of local police.

The U.S. Embassy declined to discuss the raids, which were announced late Thursday by Pakistan's Interior Ministry. A senior ministry official, speaking to reporters, described the raids as a Pakistani operation with U.S. cooperation. But police sources in Punjab said the operation was U.S.-driven, with local authorities informed only hours before the raids were launched.

The tension reflects more than the usual jockeying for credit. How free a hand Americans have in Pakistan -- always a delicate issue here -- has been particularly sensitive since the ranking U.S. general in Afghanistan last week acknowledged that American troopsmight, "as a last resort," pursue fleeing al Qaeda or Taliban across Pakistan's porous frontier. The remark caused a stir in Pakistan.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said today he believed "there was cooperation between assets of our government and assets of President Musharraf's government" in the Thursday operation. He refused to elaborate, the Associated Press reported.

Provincial police officials said one pair of FBI agents accompanied each of eight teams of Pakistani police in the raid in Faisalabad. In deference to Muslim sensibilities, three of the teams included female U.S. agents, so that even rooms with women inside could be quickly searched.

The targets included homes conspicuous for the barbed wire strung atop compound walls or for the number of foreigners noticed by neighbors. In one home, officials counted nine Arabs, including women and children, whom authorities left behind.

Although Pakistani border patrols have apprehended larger groups crossing from Afghanistan, the 26 held for interrogation might stand as the largest group of suspected al Qaeda or Taliban fighters apprehended away from border areas. (Both Faisalabad and Lahore are much closer to India than to Afghanistan.) Pakistani officials said that U.S. investigators had tracked them there after intercepting communications from individuals.

One Western diplomat said the raids underscored the ambiguity that has restrained Pakistan's participation in the U.S.-led war on terror. Until the Sept. 11 attacks, Pakistan had been the primary supporter of the Taliban, whose extremist rule in Afghanistan included harboring Osama bin Laden's terrorist empire.

"I don't know that it shows that it's easy for al Qaeda [fighters] to cross the border, or that it's hard to survive in Pakistan," the diplomat said.

In the Pearl case, defense attorneys in Karachi today asked Shabbir Ahmed, a High Court judge with a reputation for independence, to preside over the murder trial. Instead, Ahmed sent the case to an anti-terrorism judge who will begin proceedings next Friday inside Karachi's main prison.

Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Islamabad contributed to this report.

----

More Security Called in Refugee Hunt

By Rick Rycroft
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41136-2002Mar30?language=printer

WOOMERA, Australia -- Dozens of extra security staff were bused into a troubled detention center early Sunday as the hunt continued for 11 refugees who fled Friday after a mass breakout.

Immigration officials said 47 refugees escaped from Woomera Detention Center, a former missile-testing base where 300 mostly Afghan and Iraqi refugees are being held. All but 11 were later rounded up and returned to custody.

The escaped occurred as police clashed with hundreds of protesters demonstrating against Australia's policy of detaining illegal immigrants in remote camps while their applications for asylum are processed - a process that can take up to three years.

The asylum seekers, including three children, escaped by scaling and cutting through razor-wire-topped fences with bolt cutters provided by some of the demonstrators.

Sixteen protesters were arrested Friday on charges of harboring the escapees, said South Australia state police spokeswoman Kylie Walsh. Police arrested four others late Saturday afternoon when they broke through a fence to reach an outer wall of the center.

The protesters planned another demonstration Sunday before heading to a nearby uranium mine to lobby for its closure.

Seventeen security guards and 14 asylum seekers suffered cuts and bruises in Friday's clashes, during which tear gas was used to control inmates who flung chairs, rocks, bed posts and garbage bins inside the center, said Immigration Department spokesman Paul Olive.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said Saturday that those who escaped had blown their chance of being granted asylum. "Australia is under no obligation to give protection to people who commit serious criminal offenses," he said.

----

Prisoners in Peru Seek a Way Out

New York Times
March 30, 2002
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/international/americas/30PERU.html

LIMA, Peru, March 26 - Condemned to life in prison for treason, Wagner Aponte was once resigned to spending the rest of his days behind bars, like hundreds of others imprisoned for joining rebel groups that waged war against the government during a 20-year conflict.

So year after year since he was convicted in 1994, he has passed the time in a prison on Lima's outskirts, reading, writing a journal and, as of late, playing the violin. But now Mr. Aponte is pleading for a retrial, arguing that special antiterrorism courts that convicted him and others under wartime laws were unjust.

"What we ask," said Mr. Aponte, who is 30, sitting on the bunk of an 8-by-4-foot cell, "is for a way out."

Prisoners like Mr. Aponte are creating a sticky problem for President Alejandro Toledo, who won election in June 2001 promising a democratic break with the decade-long authoritarian rule of Alberto K. Fujimori. About 2,200 Peruvians are in jail for participating in rebel movements, and they have begun to press the government for new trials. While acknowledging that many may have been unfairly condemned, Mr. Toledo's government faces fierce public opposition to any leniency for them.

"Public opinion is completely resistant when it comes to the situation of the terrorists," said a high-ranking official in the Interior Ministry. "Any sentiment that there has been some kind of injustice simply does not exist."

The prisoners believe that Mr. Toledo should order new trials because they were convicted by hooded judges, often on the basis of coerced testimony. Many officials concede that the arbitrary judicial system Mr. Fujimori used to prosecute the guerrillas violated the rights of thousands of them.

But the officials, along with experts on Peru's conflict, also say that many inmates convicted of treason or terrorism were rebel fighters or associates who could very well remain committed to violence. Nearly all were tied to one of Latin America's most fanatic rebel groups, the Shining Path, which tried to install a Maoist state in Peru through terror bombings and assassinations until it was largely defeated in the 1990's.

Many Peruvians believe that opening an avenue to freedom for the inmates would be a colossal mistake, invigorating a rebel group that, while weak, has been stirring. In recent months, small bands of Shining Path guerrillas have stepped up attacks on police officers in isolated regions. The group may have been responsible for the car bomb that killed nine Peruvians on March 20, just three days before President Bush arrived to meet with Mr. Toledo, officials here said.

"People are fearful of letting them out because the Shining Path almost caused the collapse of the country," said Ernesto de la Jara, director of the Legal Defense Institute, which has taken up the cause of a number of Peruvians whose terrorism convictions he says were clearly unfair.

The inmates, nearly 500 of whom are serving life terms, are determined to be heard. In February they began a nationwide hunger strike that lasted 31 days and at its height included 850 prisoners in 18 jails.

One participant was Lori Berenson, the New York woman who won a retrial after she was sentenced to a life term by a military tribunal for collaborating with rebels in a foiled plan to take over Peru's Congress. She was recently sentenced in a second trial to a 20-year term.

The inmates, communicating from prison to prison with the help of relatives, demanded retrials and political prisoner status. They called for three prisons to be closed and for a role for former rebels in a government truth commission that is investigating rights abuses during Peru's conflict. Their demands were rejected by the government.

But groups like Human Rights Watch, an American monitor, and some government officials acknowledge that the status of the inmates must, in time, be addressed. "Yes, we have to combat terrorism, but we also have to do this," said Wilfredo Pedraza, who oversees prison programs for Defender of the People, a government human rights agency. "I believe we need to punish, but to punish with legitimacy."

In recent years Peru has released more than 700 prisoners, called the innocents here, who were able to show they were unjustly convicted. Rights groups and Defender of the People estimate that perhaps 50 innocents remain imprisoned.

Of the roughly 2,200 current prisoners, hundreds who were convicted on charges of treason or terrorism were minor collaborators with the rebels. They were given harsh sentences for small-scale political advocacy or painting graffiti, said Sebastian Brett, the Peru researcher for Human Rights Watch. Many of them say they want what only Ms. Berenson has received, a retrial. "To retry does not mean they are given freedom," said Carlos Tapia, a member of the Truth Commission, created to study the justice system under Mr. Fujimori. "It means you are doing what corresponds to a democratic government."

The remaining inmates, anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 prisoners, include hard-line members of Shining Path. Even human rights groups say that some of them remain staunchly committed to the group's violent cause. They view their imprisoned leader, Abimael Guzmán, as a messiah.

Still, the families of the prisoners are mounting a spirited, if uphill, campaign to prod the government to act, organizing forums and protesting in front of the Justice Ministry.

Speaking outside Castro Castro prison near Lima, where Mr. Aponte and many others are confined, Patricia Asencio said the families were not demanding immediate freedom for jailed relatives, but retrials. "Our relatives have sentences of 20 years to life, with no chance of reincorporating into society," said Ms. Asencio, who said she was the secretary of the Association of Families of Political Prisoners and Disappeared of Peru. "But the conflict has ended, and they want to make their way back into society."

Inside the dirty peach walls of Castro Castro prison, inmates speak of how they were tortured until they signed confessions, then convicted in trials lasting only minutes before judges in hoods who did not permit cross-examination.

But several men made it clear that they were members of Shining Path and continued to believe in its cause of overturning a government they regard as capitalist and corrupt. Several inmates spoke reverently of Mr. Guzmán, referring to him by his Shining Path nom de guerre, President Gonzalo. The men acknowledge that the group committed "errors" during the conflict, but say that a vast majority of abuses took place at the hands of state security forces.

"We have had affinity and sympathy for the organization, which is called a terrorist group," explained Helmer Aponte, 28, Mr. Aponte's brother who is also serving a life sentence at Castro Castro prison. Both men said they were students working on political issues, not armed fighters, when they were tried and convicted.

Others, like Percy Mendoza, 30, said they played a role in military operations. "It was a war, and for a war, you need soldiers," Mr. Mendoza said.

But the men also say, as has Mr. Guzmán in talks with government representatives, that the conflict has ended and that the inmates, if given their freedom, would not return to violence. They say they will work through the group's political wing, the Peruvian Communist Party.

"We have two ways to go, all-out war or a political resolution," said Camilo Baras, a prisoner leader in Castro Castro. "And President Gonzalo says he wants a political resolution."

----

Senate approves felon vote measure

By Margie Hyslop
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20020330-215291.htm

ANNAPOLIS - The Maryland Senate approved a measure that would let twice-convicted felons vote three years after completing their sentences and paying fines and restitution.

The Senate bill, unlike that approved by the House, would prohibit anyone convicted of two violent crimes from voting.

Even that provision didn't satisfy Sen. Walter M. Baker, upper Eastern Shore Democrat, who asked for a delay in the final vote.

Mr. Baker said that, given an extra day, he would offer an amendment to create an irrevocable trust with authority to cast votes for victims as long as the felons who killed them remained alive.

Mr. Baker's proposal for a delay failed 16-30, and the Senate approved the bill 26-20.

Black legislators have advocated for the restoration of voting rights. The current law, they argue, has disproportionately disenfranchised blacks, who have been convicted and incarcerated at higher rates than white defendants.

Most Democrats, including all nine black senators, voted for the measure. One Republican also voted for it: Sen. Robert H. Kittleman, a white legislator and past president of the Howard County NAACP.

Eight Democrats joined 12 Republicans in opposing the bill.

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a Baltimore Democrat who is chairman of the law and justice panel of the Legislative Black Caucus, said "half a loaf" is better than none and that the change will restore the voting rights of many people who have paid their debt to society.

Mrs. Marriott said she would recommend that the House tailor its bill to the Senate version to avoid getting bogged down in negotiations that could kill the measure with little more than a week remaining in the legislative session.

"Why should we muck around with a conference when this is an election year?" Mrs. Marriott asked.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat, has indicated he will sign the Senate version, said his spokesman, Mike Morrill.

Sen. Delores G. Kelley, a Baltimore Democrat who sponsored the Senate bill, said some clergy - who argue that the legislation follows Judeo-Christian principles of redemption - are upset that both the House and Senate weakened the original proposal.

As introduced, the bills would have restored the vote to any people convicted of any crime as soon they finished their sentence.

Since 1974, Maryland law has allowed people convicted of one "infamous crime" to vote after serving their sentence and paying their debt.

A crime is classified as infamous if it involves deceit, but the category encompasses a broad range of offenses from passing bad checks to rape and murder. Roughly 500 offenses qualify as infamous crimes, according to state Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr.

Anyone convicted of a second infamous crime of any kind is permanently barred from voting in Maryland under current law.

Maryland and 12 other states restrict felons' voting rights.

----

Md. to Settle Suit Over Abuse at Boot Camps
State to Pay $4.6 Million for Assaults by Staff That One Lawyer Called 'Sinister'

By Maureen O'Hagan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38438-2002Mar29?language=printer

A class-action lawsuit was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on behalf of youths who went through the state of Maryland's abusive juvenile boot camps -- along with a proposed settlement reached between the youths and the state.

The legal actions stem from allegations that staff members regularly assaulted youths who were sent to the three military-style camps in Western Maryland from 1996 to 1999, the year the camps were ordered closed. Among the injuries inflicted by camp guards were broken bones, chipped teeth, lacerations, deep bruises and limb dislocations that required surgery to correct.

Under the proposed settlement, which involves 890 youths and 14 plaintiffs' attorneys, the state will pay $4.6 million. The youths were ages 14 to 17 when they were sent to the camps.

The allegations came to light in December 1999 after a Baltimore Sun reporter was allowed to follow a group of youths through the program at the Savage Leadership Challenge in Somerset County. There, in view of the reporter, guards regularly slammed youths into walls, punched them, sat on them and made them cry. The published reports prompted a state investigation, which confirmed that there was a "pattern of abuse" at the camps and that the illegal behavior continued despite directives to change.

The lawsuit contains details of some of the most serious allegations:

• Joe J., of Baltimore, was blindfolded and forced to do jumping jacks at the edge of a rocky ditch. An officer allegedly pushed him into the ditch, where he cut his scalp and began bleeding profusely. Before the youth was hospitalized for stitches, boot camp officials allegedly told Joe to lie about what happened.

• Gary J., of Talbot County, allegedly broke his wrist when he was yanked to his feet by his handcuffs. He was made to do pull-ups, push-ups and other activities until he was finally taken to a doctor a week later.

• Perry G., of Waldorf, allegedly was thrown by guards to the ground so hard that his kneecap was facing in the wrong direction. When he couldn't get up, officers began kicking him. Two days later, he was taken to the hospital and required surgery.

• Hubert S., of Charles County, had a disability that made it look like his eyes were crossed. Officers made fun of his condition, poked him in the eye and punched him in the face. When he passed out from physical exhaustion, an officer used his boot to smash Hubert's head to the ground until an imprint was left on each side of his face. After that, an officer slammed his head into a chalkboard, cracking the board.

"It was sinister," said Stacey Gurian-Sherman, a Takoma Park lawyer who represented eight youths. "How it could have gone on is mind-boggling. . . . Their experience in the boot camps made them worse than when they went in."

The state admits no wrongdoing in the proposed settlement. However, after the allegations came to light, new leaders were assigned to the Department of Juvenile Justice, and an independent monitor was set up to oversee the state's remaining juvenile facilities.

Of the $4.6 million settlement, which must be approved by a judge, $2.1 million would be used to cover partial tuition payments for any of the affected youths who want to attend college or a trade school, or get a high school equivalency certificate.

Ten youths who suffered serious physical injuries at the hands of guards will divide a separate award of $1 million, and 50 youths who suffered lesser injuries will divide $795,000. Attorneys for the youths will divide $690,000.

John Coale, a veteran class-action lawyer who worked on the 2 1/2-year project pro bono, said that during negotiations, the state acted "unlike most defendants, who are usually hiding or trying to cover it up. [Instead, they] came right out of the box and said yes, this is a problem. Let's solve it."

Maureen Dove, assistant attorney general, said that the terms of the settlement were unusual. "The Department of Juvenile Justice said rather than make this a money thing . . . we should make it something that will help them, that will add value to their lives."

Although the two sides could have reached a private settlement, Coale said, filing it in court means that the judge will have the power to enforce the terms.

Advocates for juveniles said that they are pleased with the landmark settlement but that they are still pushing for more change in the detention centers, including downsizing, improved education and mental health programs, and higher pay to attract better-trained staff.

"There are kids who are still in crisis in this system," Gurian-Sherman said. "We need only look at this child who committed suicide" March 14 in a juvenile center.

-------- terrorism

Top Developments in Terror Attacks

The Associated Press
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40367-2002Mar30?language=printer

- A Navy SEAL was killed when he stepped on a land mine Thursday during a training mission near the U.S. base in Kandahar and another serviceman was wounded in the blast, U.S. military officials said.

- The first American soldier killed during the assault in Afghanistan this month may have been hit by U.S. rather than enemy fire, the Pentagon said Friday in a report on some of the war's deadliest accidents.

-Suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters planned to kill international peacekeepers by setting off car bombs in Afghanistan's capital, authorities said. No arrests had been made in the plot.

- American troops will soon begin helping to train an Afghan army to try to maintain security and guard the borders in that still-unstable nation, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

- A Pakistani judge on Friday ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born Islamic militant, to stand trial in the kidnap-slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

- The Bush administration said Thursday it will seek to execute Zacarias Moussaoui in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and appealed to European allies to keep cooperating with terrorism investigations despite their opposition to the death penalty.

- The intense fires that erupted when hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11 disabled the water supply for hoses, sprinkler systems and other fire-suppression equipment in the buildings, according to a federal report. The structure of the buildings responded surprisingly well but the towers could not withstand the ensuing fires that burned as hot as 2,000 degrees, generating heat equivalent to the output of a nuclear power plant, the report said.


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- environment

[To reply, mailto:OPED@washpost.com]

Warning About Risks to Wildlife Posed by Arctic Drilling Rejected

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

The Bush administration repudiated a report by government biologists that concluded that drilling for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge would pose substantial risks to the Porcupine caribou herd and other wildlife.

Charles Groat, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, which issued the report, wrote Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton that he was asking scientists to reevaluate their conclusions using drilling plans that the administration contends would be less damaging to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"We're not looking at what the USGS studied," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, who was with President Bush in Texas yesterday. "We are talking about exploring a very small part of ANWR."

----

Pentagon Seeks Exemption From Environmental Laws

New York Times
March 30, 2002
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/politics/30ENVI.html

WASHINGTON, March 29 - Concerned that several environmental laws are interfering with the military's ability to train soldiers and develop weapons, the Pentagon is seeking a Congressional exemption from an array of measures that have protected endangered species and their habitats for years.

A draft of the exemption bill, circulating in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, seeks exemptions on national security grounds for bombing ranges, air bases and training grounds from sections of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Noise Control Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act.

The Defense Department controls about 25 million acres for training grounds, about 90 percent of which is undeveloped buffer. It spends about $4 billion a year to comply with environmental laws, money that Pentagon officials say could be better spent preparing the military for combat, especially in light of the Sept. 11 attacks.

For example, the Navy spends $2.4 million per year to protect a bird called the loggerhead shrike, an endangered species on San Clemente Island, off California. It also closes its bombing range there four days a week during the shrike's breeding season, and since the Navy has been doing that, the shrike population has grown to 160 birds, from 13.

"This environmental success has necessitated reducing one of the two firing ranges in size by 90 percent and the other by 50 percent" at certain times, Representative Joel Hefley, a Colorado Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee on military readiness, said recently at hearings on the subject.

But, Mr. Hefley wondered, where will it end? "How many shrikes must be reintroduced into the wild and maintained on San Clemente Island before we can say that the Navy can once again devote its complete attention and dollars to its primary mission of preparing our military forces to ensure national security?" he asked.

The legislation that the Pentagon is preparing, which would be introduced as part of the defense spending bill after the Easter recess, would protect the military from lawsuits for violating rules like the ones protecting the shrike, officials said.

A draft of the bill says, "Federal departments and agencies shall not place the conservation of public lands, or the preservation or recovery of endangered, threatened or other protected species found on military lands, above the need to ensure that soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines receive the greatest possible preparation for, and protection from, the hazards and rigor of combat through realistic training on military lands and in military airspace."

Environmental organizations are beginning to rally in opposition.

"The forces are gathering," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit group representing civil servants who work on military bases and in environmental agencies. "This is seen as a major threat, and there's a growing cast of thousands meeting next week to plan to counter it."

If the environmental laws are breached, Mr. Ruch said, the military will be free to contaminate public drinking water with munitions, discharge air pollutants in bombings and exceed noise limits as well as test weapons that could harm whales and other marine life.

He said that few members of Congress were aware of the proposal, but he noted Congress's overwhelming support for the administration's efforts to respond to terrorism.

"Sept. 11 has given them a lot more political currency to do a broad-brush kind of thing," he said.

In his hearings two weeks ago, Mr. Hefley highlighted protections that some people might easily consider extreme and trivial when weighed against military needs.

He said that at Fort Hood, Tex., one of the Army's top training installations, 84 percent of the 200,000 acres devoted to training were subject to limits to protect two endangered species and cultural artifacts.

At Camp Pendleton, Calif., protections of tidal estuaries and rare plants and of mud puddles housing two species of microscopic shrimp produce what he called "an impossibly truncated mishmash of the land available for combat training."

Paul W. Mayberry, deputy under secretary of defense, told the subcommittee, "Both the room to maneuver and the ability to fire live ordnance are essential."

In Kosovo, it was evident that soldiers without live ordnance training were less effective than those with such training, Mr. Mayberry said.

Environmental laws prohibit or restrict flights over certain public lands and restrict the landing of amphibious craft on beaches. Simulated exercises are no substitute, he said, adding, "Our troops' first exposure to live fire cannot come as they land on a hostile beach in combat."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has authority to invoke exemptions from environmental laws, but he has not done so.

A spokeswoman for the Pentagon, Lt. Col. Cynthia Colin, would not comment on any aspect of the proposed legislation, except to say that discussion with other agencies on how to respond to the environmental limitations were under way.

In a statement, Colonel Colin said, "We are always concerned by anything that might adversely impact the training needed to protect our military people, our nation and our way of life."

-------- genetics

WHO pledges that gene research will benefit rich and poor

By Patrick Rucker
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020330-5275872.htm

HAVANA - Doctors, lawyers and teachers at a U.N. conference here this week vowed to help poor nations benefit from the advances in human genetic research done in the United States and other developed countries.

The conference on the human-genome project - the mapping of the human genetic makeup which is expected to help find cures for many diseases - was organized by the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO).

"We often hear about the 'digital divide' - how 95 percent of Internet productivity is in the hands of the developed world. WHO is committed to avoiding a 'genome divide,'" said Dr. Tikki Pang, the Geneva-based U.N. agency's director of research policy and cooperation.

In June 2000, researchers announced that they had developed a first draft of the human genome. The news was met with much media attention and speculation about where that research would lead. Proponents of the project promised that the work would produce medical breakthroughs. Detractors warned of the potential for its misuse in human cloning and genetic engineering.

Researchers have yet to identify all the approximately 30,000 genes in human DNA and what medical advances that information will hold. Still, genes associated with more than 30 disorders have been pinpointed. Further research could lead to cures for cancer, prevention of developmental abnormalities and other maladies.

This week's conference brought together ethicists, lawyers, and medical researchers from among the WHO's 191 member countries in advance of a report on the issue, "Genomics and World Health," due for release at the end of next month.

"If [public education in genomics] is not achieved," the report warns, "it will be impossible for society to enter into informed debate about the ethical issues involved, and there is a danger that those who administer health services will be unable to distinguish between hyperbole and reality in a new and rapidly expanding research field."

Dr. Pang, an Indonesian physician, said the speed and scope of human-genome research need not be a source of public apprehension if the work is done in an ethical way and for the benefit of all.

"Eighty percent of the research that went into mapping the human genome occurred in the United States," Dr. Pang said. "That is to their credit, but who would suggest that the West should receive all the benefits?"

Andrew Pleasant, 31, a Cornell University instructor, said Havana is an appropriate venue for the conference since Cuba's high literacy rate, over 98 percent, underpins Central America's strongest public health care system.

"There is a long-established correlation between a nation's literacy rate and the health of its people," Mr. Pleasant said. "Modest improvements in education can bring great advances in general wellness."

Dr. Pang said he fears the developing world could face difficulties in receiving the benefits of the genome research similar to the problems in procuring AIDS-treatment drugs. Western pharmaceutical companies that developed and patented AIDS drugs have been criticized for not making them more affordable for underdeveloped nations.


-------- ACTIVISTS

April 16th Yucca Mountain Lobby Day

Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002
From: "Lisa Gue" <LISA_GUE@citizen.org>

We invite your participation in the upcoming National Rally and Lobby Day at U.S. Capitol against Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump!

Tuesday, April 16, 2002
sponsored by NIRS, Public Citizen, and Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

PROGRAM:

9:00 a.m. Pre-lobbying preparation briefing on Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste transport issues in the basement of the US Capitol (House Conference Room 8), by Lisa Gue of Public Citizen and Kevin Kamps of NIRS.

11 a.m. Rally and press conference at the foot of the Capitol Dome, on the west (Mall) side of the U.S. Capitol Building. Speakers will include Members of Congress, as well as environmental, public interest, and Native American leaders from across the country.

1 to 5 p.m. Meetings with your Senators and/or their legislative staff! Urge them to sustain Nevada's veto of the unacceptable Yucca dump, and to fight against high-level atomic waste trucks and trains through your community!

YUCCA MOUNTAIN UPDATE:

Disregarding his campaign promise to Nevadans that "sound science" would rule his decision on Yucca Mtn., on Feb. 15th George W. Bush hurriedly approved Energy Secretary Abraham's rash recommendation that the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump move ahead despite weak and incomplete technical studies and the ever-more-obvious scientific unsuitability of the site.

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn has vowed to veto Bush's decision by mid April, which then kicks the battle into the US Congress, where a simple majority vote in both the House and the Senate would be required to override Nevada's veto. It appears the House Leadership will move very quickly to override Nevada's veto, and that the more contentious vote in the Senate could happen by the end of July, if not earlier. The Yucca Mountain showdown on Capitol Hill is imminent! Our Members of Congress need to hear from us!

LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS:

If you are planning to come to DC for this event and need assistance with travel, lodging, setting up meetings with your Senate offices, etc. - or for more information - please contact:

Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Information & Resource Service: 202.328.0002; kevin@nirs.org

Lisa Gue, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program: 202.454-5130; lisa_gue@citizen.org

For those who can't come to D.C., consider helping to set up local lobby visits at your U.S. Congress Members' district offices near you. Coordinate a coalition of local organizations and concerned citizens opposed to Yucca and high-level waste shipments through your area. Arrange to meet with your Members' district staffpersons, urging your U.S. Senators and Representative to uphold Nevada's veto.

For more information on this issue, please contact us or visit www.citizen.org/cmep or www.nirs.org.

----

Thousands of anti-war demonstrators march against possible U.S. military action against Iraq

Sat Mar 30
By ED JOHNSON,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020330/ap_wo_en_ge/britain_iraq_34

LONDON - Waving placards and chanting slogans, thousands of anti-war demonstrators marched through central London Saturday, calling on Prime Minister Tony Blair to steer the United States away from military action against Iraq.

The "Don't Start Wars" protest was arranged by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament amid mounting speculation that U.S. President George W. Bush is planning to launch an offensive against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime.

"It is no good demonizing Saddam Hussein. He's not a nice man but demonizing a country is a different matter," Labor lawmaker Tam Dalyell told demonstrators, who gathered in Trafalgar Square carrying signs reading "Don't Attack Iraq" and "War Is Not The Answer."

Dalyell, a veteran and very vocal backbench member of Blair's governing Labor Party, insisted the dispute over U.N. weapons inspectors being allowed back into Iraq must be resolved through diplomacy.

Scotland Yard estimated that 3,500 people took part in the rally.

Earlier Saturday, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales warned that U.S.-led military action against Iraq could further destabilize the Middle East.

"If a unilateral attack on Iraq would in fact cause instability, would cause the loss of ultimate peace in the Middle East, then, in my view, it would be a very dangerous step to take," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor told the British Broadcasting Corp.

The cardinal urged Blair, who is scheduled to meet with Bush in Texas next week, not to take any action which would lead to a split with the rest of the European Union (news - web sites), where many countries are deeply concerned about the prospect of an attack on Iraq.

Speculation that Saddam would be the next target of the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism has grown since Bush said Iraq, along with North Korea (news - web sites) and Iran, formed an "axis of evil."

The United States has demanded the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq and has hinted that it might expand its war on terrorism to the oil-rich Mideast nation.

Blair and members of his government have made increasingly strong statements about the dangers posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But a growing number of lawmakers has emerged to oppose a military strike. Some 130 signed a motion expressing "deep unease" at Britain's potential involvement in military action against Saddam.

Labor lawmaker Alice Mahon, who tabled the House of Commons motion, said Iraq was a "phantom menace."

"If we go to war then it will be the poor, the elderly and the sick who will be affected, not the regime," she told demonstrators Saturday.

CND said the rally was also against the U.S. government's proposed missile defense system, dubbed Star Wars, which they claim could give America the ability to launch a nuclear strike without fear of reprisal.

"The event has been organized to oppose U.S. foreign policy, particularly missile defense, Star Wars and the escalation of the war on terror," said CND spokesman Nigel Chamberlain.

"We want the U.K. government to use the special relationship to steer the U.S. toward more peaceful paths," he added.

----

Americans arrested in Falun Gong protest

By Steve Park
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020330-67428382.htm

China has released an American student arrested for campaigning for Falun Gong but his family says his brother may still be in custody on similar charges.

Two U.S. lawmakers traveling to China plan to call for his release.

Daniel Pomerleau, 22, was arrested by Chinese secret police on Monday hours after he began to distribute pamphlets on Falun Gong in Beijing.

"They slapped, kicked and punched me during interrogations," said Mr. Pomerleau, a student at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "They wanted to know if I knew anyone in China."

Mr. Pomerleau, who was deported Wednesday after 48 hours in detention, said the Chinese police did not allow him to contact the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. Pomerleau said he was released after the authorities seized $200 worth of his personal belongings and made him buy another plane ticket.

But Mr. Pomerleau said his brother, Jason, might not be so lucky and worried that the Chinese government might detain him for longer time.

Jason Pomerleau, 25, of Vassalboro, Maine, went to China with his Canadian girlfriend, Christine Loftus, 22, to protest China's ban on Falun Gong. The couple, who traveled to Beijing via Hong Kong, were arrested on Thursday. The family has not heard from them since then, Daniel Pomerleau said yesterday.

He said his family learned of his brother's detention through a photograph posted on a Chinese Internet site.

The Chinese "might not deport him the way they deported me," he said.

But a State Department spokesman said yesterday that Jason Pomerleau's arrest has yet to be confirmed. "At this point I am not able to confirm or deny," he said. "That is all I can say."

Jason Pomerleau graduated from Tufts University in 1999 and Miss Loftus is a student at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario.

Meanwhile, a delegation of approximately of 20 senators and congressmen left for Beijing via Hong Kong yesterday. The team is expected to meet with Chinese officials and participate in a forum organized by the think tank Aspen Institute.

Two members of the team from Maine - Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe and Democratic Rep. Tom Allen - are expected to take up the case of Mr. Pomerleau with the Chinese leaders.

Mrs. Snowe is aware of the issue and will raise it at the forum, her spokesman, Dave Lackey, said.

"The State Department is trying to locate and arrange his release," Mr. Lackey said. "The situation moved quickly once Daniel was located, and we hope the same [will happen] with his brother."

Allen spokesman Mark Sullivan also said the congressman will raise the issue and take necessary measures for the prompt release of Mr. Pomerleau.

China outlawed Falun Gong in 1999, labeling it an "evil cult" that forces its followers to commit suicide. However, the group claims it has promoted good health and moral living through meditation and exercises according to Buddhism and the teachings of the group's founder, Li Hongzhi.

----

Asylum-Seekers on Run in Australia

By Rick Rycroft
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, March 30, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39606-2002Mar30?language=printer

WOOMERA, Australia -- Police and immigration officials searched for 10 asylum seekers Saturday following a mass escape from a remote Australian detention center that occurred when about 700 protesters clashed with riot police outside.

Police said that 37 asylum seekers and 16 protesters were arrested after a night of violence Friday at the Woomera Detention Center. Australian immigration said 10 escapees of the 47 who broke out were still on the run.

South Australia state police spokeswoman Kylie Walsh said the protesters arrested Friday were all charged with harboring the escapees.

Another four protesters were arrested Saturday afternoon when they managed to break through a fence to reach an outer wall of the center. The charges they face were not immediately disclosed.

The asylum seekers, including three children, escaped by scaling and cutting through razor-wire-topped fences. They are among 300 mostly Afghan and Iraqi refugees being held at the center.

They were helped by hundreds of activists who had gathered at the former missile testing base to protest the government's policy of detaining asylum seekers in remote camps while their applications for refugee status are processed - which can take up to three years.

By early afternoon Saturday, 300 to 400 protesters had again converged on the main gate of the detention center. A spokesman for one of the groups said a split has emerged between two factions - those who wanted to peacefully protest and others who want to storm the center.

"We've got a predicament here," said Elise Sargin of the Refugees Action Collective of Melbourne. "The general consensus was that we wanted non-arrestable action, for it to be peaceful."

Most of the activists stopped near a double-fenced area and the protest remained mostly peaceful. They wanted to send a delegation into the camp to deliver toys to the children inside.

By nightfall, some of the protesters packed up tents and belongings and appeared to be leaving the area.

Earlier Saturday, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock criticized police for not intervening earlier to disperse protesters on Friday. Additional riot police were brought to the camp on Saturday.

Ruddock said the escapees had ruined any hope of being granted refugee status "if people commit a serious offense under our law, and that involves jail sentences."

During a melee with security guards Friday, some of the protesters provided bolt-cutters for refugees to cut holes in fences, Immigration Department spokesman Paul Oliver said. Oliver said Saturday that 17 security guards had suffered cuts and bruising in the Friday clashes, as had 14 asylum seekers.

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Arabs Protest Over Israeli Attacks

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

CAIRO, Egypt -- Huge crowds of protesters took to the streets across the Arab world Saturday, chanting ``Death to Israel'' and denouncing the siege of Palestinian cities while violence in a disputed border area threatened to further inflame the Mideast crisis.

Protesters marched in the tens of thousands through cities in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen. Smaller anti-Israeli demonstrations were held in Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Syria and Kuwait.

Burning American and Israeli flags, about 10,000 demonstrators in Baghdad urged President Saddam Hussein to ``hit Tel Aviv,'' reviving memories of Iraqi Scud missiles fired on Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

It was the second day of protests against Israel's storming of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Surrounded by Israeli tanks and snipers, Arafat and a handful of aides were confined Saturday to one building in the compound.

Following an emergency Arab League meeting in Cairo, the group's 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 away from his office?'' Moussa said. He said to give in to the Israeli pressure would be ``surrender.''

In Bahrain, nearly 1,000 people marched through Manama with banners reading ``Yes, to holy war. No to negotiations.'' The procession was headed by a man dressed as an undertaker who dragged an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp outside Damascus, Syria, and in the Baqaa camp outside Amman, Jordan, also rallied. ``Our suicide operations are in retaliation for Sharon,'' read a banner in Yarmouk, where the protesters numbered about 3,000.

Meanwhile, near the border between Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets and mortars on Israeli outposts in the disputed Chebaa Farms area. Israel responded with artillery fire and air raids. Three civilians were injured.

The Chebaa Farms is situated where the borders of southern Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights meet. Iranian-backed Hezbollah battled Israeli forces throughout the Jewish state's 18-year occupation of south Lebanon, which ended in 2000.

``Hezbollah is carrying out their duty to liberate every inch of their land and warns the Zionist enemy against continuing and escalating this attack on the struggling Palestinian people,'' the group said in a statement later Saturday.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said ``Hezbollah is trying to escalate the situation.'' Speaking on Israeli TV, he said the Hezbollah attack must have been carried out with Syrian and Lebanese government knowledge. Syria is the main power broker in Lebanon.

Arab newspaper editorials condemned Israel and the United States.

``The United States gave the green light for the annihilation of the Palestinian Authority and the isolation of its President Yasser Arafat,'' Abdul-Wahab Badrakhan wrote in the leading pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat.

The leaders of Egypt and Jordan -- two of only three Arab nations to have signed peace treaties with Israel -- spoke by phone Saturday. They denounced the confinement of Arafat and warned Israel not to harm him.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II both phoned President Bush. Abdullah urged Bush to swiftly intercede to end Israel's ``aggression on the Palestinian people'' and the siege of Arafat.

The United States voted in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution Saturday urging Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestinian cities including Ramallah. The resolution passed 14-0.

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Thousands Join Pro - Palestinian Marches in France

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

PARIS - Thousands gathered across France on Saturday to call for an independent Palestinian state after Israelis thrust into Palestinian cities and smashed into the compound of their leader Yasser Arafat.

Protesters gathered in Strasbourg, Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux, shouting slogans such as ``Free Arafat,'' ``Respect Palestinian rights'' and ``No peace without justice.''

Some 2,500 people marched past the European Parliament and Court of Human Rights in the northeastern city of Strasbourg, waving Palestinian flags and chanting ``Bush, Sharon assassins, Europe accomplice,'' referring to the U.S. and Israeli leaders.

Protesters carried scrolls marked with an alternative ``10 Commandments,'' including ``Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's land'' and ``Thou shalt dissolve Zionism.''

``This demonstration is not meant to transport the Middle East conflict to France but to show our support for Palestinians,'' said Mohamed Latreche, President of the Party of Muslims in France which organized the march.

A brief quarrel broke out before the march started between organizers and a small group from Germany intent on shouting violently anti-Semitic chants, a Reuters reporter said.

In Lyon, where masked vandals smashed cars into a synagogue earlier on Saturday and then set them ablaze, at least 5,500 gathered in the main square shouting ``No peace without justice.''

In Paris around 1,000 demonstrators called for an international protection force for Palestinians.

Some 2,000 people marched to the Israeli consulate in the southern city of Marseille, yelling ``Free Arafat,'' and ``Sharon SS.''

``I'm marching today because both peoples are in danger,'' Mireille Tal Delamarre, member of the Union of French Jews for Peace, told Reuters.

``The decision taken by Sharon's government goes against security for Israel... It is moral suicide,'' she added.

France, one of the first western countries to advocate the creation of an independent Palestinian state, has condemned attacks by Israel on Arafat's compound.

President Jacques Chirac on Saturday repeated an appeal to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's and Arafat's sense of responsibility to do everything possible to halt the violence. He insisted the Palestinian leader remained a legitimate authority.

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Berlin's Palestinians Protest Israeli Raids

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

BERLIN - Hundreds of demonstrators, many of them Palestinian, marched through central Berlin on Saturday and set fire to an Israeli flag to show solidarity with the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

A Reuters cameraman estimated over 1,000 took part in the rally against military action taken by Israel under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The marchers chanted ``Sharon is a murderer and a fascist,'' ``Israel out of Palestine'' and ''Child-killer Israel.''

Israeli troops tightened their siege on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's compound on Saturday, despite calls from the U.N. Security Council -- with rare U.S. support -- for Israel to quit Palestinian cities.

On Friday, Israeli forces reoccupied the West Bank city of Ramallah, where tanks smashed their way into Arafat's headquarters. They also thrust into the West Bank town of Beit Jala overnight as part of what Israel says is retaliation for a wave of suicide attacks on its civilians.


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