------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Exelon Quitting New Nuclear-Plant Project
Duratek awarded water-processing contract
Dutch govt buys nuclear waste storage operation
India's communal cauldron sparks political crisis
Nuclear nightmare
Nuclear Deal to Include Disarmament
Off to the arms race
Ad Aims to Sway Senators Over Yucca
Foes of Nuclear Waste Project Air First TV Ad
Analyst: Utility Needs To Stay Open
Dispute Over Plutonium Shipment to S.C. Intensifies
Missiles a minor threat to Yucca waste
U.S. Denies Wrongdoing in Venezuela

MILITARY
U.S. and Britain Begin New Combat Mission in Afghanistan
More Afghan Attacks on Americans
Whiskey, weapons go-go in Pyongyang
Bio-defense requires smallpox vaccine
Colombia Wants U.S. Help Vs. Rebels
Colombian Aid Limits Reviewed
Justices Tackle Implications of a Rule on Drug Sentences
The Bush Administration's 'Drugs = Terrorism' Fraud
High Court Considers Drug Searches
Afghan poppy growers settle in for long struggle
Secret UK report says Gujarat death toll 'much greater'
Israel Pursues Military Actions as Powell Prepares to Leave
Sharon vows to withdraw his forces
Palestinians to Be Held in Desert
Children's Corpses Legacy of West Bank City Fight
Lives Reduced to Rubble
Japanese legislation expands military role
Security for Israel via NATO?
Navy Drone Washes Up in Puerto Rico
Abuses in Chechnya Alleged
British Spies to Get Unionized
Accidental Blast Kills 4 American Soldiers in Afghanistan
Pentagon Changing Command Structure
Pentagon Eyes Cuts in Some Weapons to Pay for Others
Defense Secretary Wants Cuts in Weapons Systems
Machines Are Filling In for Troops
Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader

POLICE / PRISONERS
eds Reviewing Fake Drug Plants
Few Death Sentences or None Under Overhaul
Al - Qaida Backers Claim Yemen Blast

ENERGY AND OTHER
Solar Power Could Come From the Moon
Morally misguided scientific paralysis

ACTIVISTS
DC Peace Events
Colombia Mobilization to Washington DC
Protest Organizers Announce Schedule
Protesters Target U.S. Embassy
30 protesters arrested in OAK RIDGE, Tenn.
Early Folk Music Tapes to Be Preserved



-------- NUCLEAR

Exelon Quitting New Nuclear-Plant Project

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/business/16EXEL.html

WASHINGTON - The Exelon Corporation, the nation's biggest owner of nuclear power plants, is dropping out of an international consortium that is developing a smaller, cheaper kind of nuclear plant, an Energy Department official said today.

The utility, which is based in Chicago, will halt its financing of the so-called pebble bed modular reactor, now in the design stage, said Norton Haberman, the department official.

The pebble bed modular reactor produces about one-tenth of the electricity of a typical nuclear plant, which produces about 1,000 megawatts. Supporters of the new technology say it would be faster, cheaper and safer to build because it uses helium as the plant's coolant instead of pressurized water.

Exelon executives were meeting with other project investors in South Africa and were expected to make an announcement on Tuesday, an Exelon vice president, Elizabeth Moler, said. She refused to comment further on the status of the project.

Exelon holds a 12.5 percent stake in the project. Other participants include South Africa's state-owned electric utility, the Industrial Development Corporation, with 25 percent, and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., with 22.5 percent. The consortium had planned to build a $300 million demonstration model in South Africa beginning next year.

-------- business

Duratek awarded water-processing contract from Chicago utility firm Exelon

Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56996-2002Apr15?language=printer

Duratek, a Columbia radioactive-waste disposal firm, was awarded a water-processing contract from Chicago utility firm Exelon for work at the Byron nuclear power plant in northern Illinois. Under the contract, Duratek will install and operate an advanced liquid-waste processing system at Byron. The system, which will be installed at Byron in August, is designed to remove ionic impurities from liquid radioactive waste at nuclear power plants. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

-------- europe

Dutch govt buys nuclear waste storage operation

REUTERS NETHERLANDS:
April 16, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15495/story.htm

AMSTERDAM - The Dutch government said yesterday it had agreed to take over the domestic organization for radioactive waste storage COVRA from the owners of nuclear power plants in the Netherlands and a Dutch energy research center.

The current stakeholders will pay the Dutch government an amount to cover costs for the storage of their radioactive waste, the government said in a statement.

EPZ, owner of a nuclear plant at southwestern town of Borssele, will pay the Dutch state 45 million euros ($39.65 million), and the owner of a closed plant near the center-Dutch town Dodewaard will pay 11 million euros, the government said.

It disclosed no details on the amount payed by energy research center ECN.

COVRA monitors the storage of radioactive waste in the Netherlands, the government said.

-------- india / pakistan

India's communal cauldron sparks political crisis

Tue Apr 16, 2002
By Myra MacDonald
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020416/wl_india_nm/india_69246_1

NEW DELHI - When India's embattled Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went into state elections earlier this year, it tried to play on fears of the enemy without -- Pakistan -- and failed.

Now hardline Hindus in the BJP, which dominates the ruling coalition government, are widely perceived as trying to play on fears of an enemy within -- among the minority Muslim population -- to try to revive its flagging electoral fortunes.

It is a potent combination which at the very least has made India's complex social and political fabric even more unpredictable than ever; at the very worst laid the groundwork for a new outburst of still simmering communal violence.

The country had already been shaken by Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat, in which more than 800, mostly Muslims, died. Then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appeared to blame it all on Muslims by highlighting the risks of militant Islam.

"Muslims, wherever they are, don't want to live peacefully. They want to spread terror in the name of religion," he said last Friday at a public meeting in Goa. "Leaders around the world I have met are worried about this.

"There are two faces to Islam, one...teaches tolerance and truth, and the other is militancy, jihad in the name of Islam, they want the whole world to be in the Islamic fold. This is the face we are seeing nowadays everywhere," he said.

The comments, though softened later, drew howls of outrage from the English-language press, the opposition Congress party and even from his own secular coalition government allies.

Mostly Hindu India, but with a 12 percent Muslim population, has long prided itself on its secularism -- in marked contrast to Islamic Pakistan -- and Vajpayee's comments were seen as gambling with this secular tradition in order to win Hindu votes.

"He maligned the entire Muslims of the world in his speech," said Khushwant Singh, a Sikh and veteran campaigner for religious tolerance. "It gives encouragement to lumpen elements elsewhere."

But as a sign of how far opinions have been polarised, Vajpayee's speech -- along with a decision to hold early state elections in Gujarat to consolidate the Hindu vote -- was welcomed by the party faithful, and by the widely read Hindi-language press.

"Vajpayee's assertion that Islamic militancy is the main danger facing the world today is absolutely right," the mass circulation Hindi daily Dainik Jagran said. "It's not right to conceal the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism."

ROLL BACK TO SEPTEMBER 11

To understand the depths of India's current crisis, you have to roll back to the September 11 attacks, which led to the U.S. campaign against the Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.

Despite Washington's insistence its war is on terrorism, not Islam, many Indians privately cite the U.S. campaign to justify the BJP's current hardline stance against Islamic militancy.

Then on December 13, Islamic militants who New Delhi said had links with Pakistan attacked the parliament -- triggering a massive military build-up between the two nuclear rivals.

To this day, a million men are massed along the border, and analysts see little chance of any climbdown soon, with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf gearing up for a referendum on his rule later this month, and Vajpayee facing domestic upheaval.

It is in that explosive context that India's domestic crisis is now playing out.

The BJP -- which had put aside its hallmark Hindu revivalism to win support from secular coalition allies when it took office in 1999 -- first tried to use the Pakistan threat to swing voters behind it in a string of state elections in February.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP's traditional heartland, BJP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh even had pictures of soldiers and tanks emblazoned on his campaign truck to make the point.

Playing on fears of Pakistan failed. The BJP was defeated in Uttar Pradesh and in three other states, leaving it in control of only three states in the country, including Gujarat.

GODHRA

Then came an attack by a Muslim mob on a train in Godhra in western India on February 27 in which 59 Hindus died, triggering revenge killings in which at least 750, mostly Muslims, died.

Last Friday, Vajpayee fell into line with hardliners in his party by blaming Muslims in Godhra for starting the violence.

The enemy without had become the enemy within, and party hardliners say they are willing to use this to win votes.

"Forget about whether holding elections in Gujarat is right or wrong, the fact is we will sweep the elections. No Muslim will have the guts to come out and vote," said a BJP leader. "If I were the prime minister, I would go for (national) elections, after the Gujarat verdict. This is the time to strike."

In any other country, the current situation would be a recipe for a swing even further to the far right. Or for a backlash against the BJP which toppled the coalition government altogether.

But that is to reckon without the complexities of Indian coalition politics, where a combination of powerful regional politicians and a fractured electorate limit extreme swings.

Vajpayee's biggest coalition ally, for example, the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has tried to insist that the BJP fire Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over the communal violence.

But TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu is seen as wary of pulling out of the national BJP-led government since in his own state of Andhra Pradesh the TDP's main enemy is the opposition Congress.

And even if he and other allies were to quit, the BJP can still count on other regional leaders waiting in the wings.

Among them is film star turned politician Jayalalitha who has just returned as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Then there is Mayawati, of the lower caste Bahujan Samaj Party, seeking BJP backing to become Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in return for her support for the national government.

"The government is not likely to fall any time soon," says commentator Inder Malhotra. "Jayalalitha is absolutely eager to jump on the bandwagon. Mayawati is trying to clinch a deal."

"It is not very likely there will be a very early election," said analyst Pran Chopra. "He (Vajpayee) would much rather have to his credit the management of the coalition to its full term."

-------- terrorism

Nuclear nightmare

EDITORIAL
April 16, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020416-562503.htm

In just the latest indication of the horrors that Osama bin Laden has in store for us, two Afghan nuclear physicists have revealed that al Qaeda attempted to recruit them to build a nuclear bomb. Julian West of The Washington Times reported Thursday that the scientists risked their lives by hiding enough radioactive materials to build dozens of "dirty" nuclear bombs in the ruins of a Kabul mental hospital and the basement of a university's nuclear physics department. Last week, they directed a team of specially trained British soldiers equipped with state-of-the-art detection equipment to the hidden materials. The British soldiers were astonished by what they found.

"We've been finding stuff that's far more potent and dangerous than even 'dirty bombs,' " said Capt. James Cameron, head of the British team. Capt. Cameron works for the British Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Regiment, which also monitors Saddam Hussein's weapons programs from Kuwait. In the cancer treatment room of the hospital, they found a broken radiotherapy machine containing enough cobalt 60 to kill a man instantly. In the basement of Kabul University, they found containers of solid and liquid radioactive material and chemical warfare agents. Had the scientists not put their lives on the line by defying the Afghan government by tearing up their research documents and stashing the materials where al Qaeda and the Taliban couldn't find them, the consequences could have been horrible.

One of the hero-scientists was Mohammed Korbani, a nuclear physics professor. He said that after the Taliban seized power in Kabul, he was approached by a mysterious organization known as the Chand Groupi or Multi Group, located in a part of the city where many Arab al Qaeda fighters lived and bin Laden operated terrorist safe houses. The organization was linked to a charity run by a renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist named Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud, a man described by the CIA as "bin Laden's nuclear secretary." Mr. Mahmoud is currently under house arrest in Pakistan. Weapons found in Mr. Mahmoud's home showed that he was involved in experiments to float an anthrax-laden helium balloon over the United States and that he was attempting to build a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Korbani said that members of Mr. Mahmoud's organization "offered me a lot of money, and said they wanted me to find 100 other nuclear scientists and technicians and come to Karachi [Pakistan]," adding that "they kept calling me, but I never returned" the calls. Capt. Cameron told The Washington Times that there was little doubt that the Taliban and al Qaeda were also seeking to make chemical weapons. Were it not for the heroic behavior of Mr. Korbani and his colleague, Mohammed Jan Naziri, al Qaeda might have been able to build several "dirty" nuclear bombs. All civilized people owe Messrs. Nazari and Korbani a tremendous debt of gratitude.

-------- treaties

Nuclear Deal to Include Disarmament

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A nuclear arms deal on the agenda of next month's U.S.-Russian summit for the first time will include ways to verify the dismantling of the warheads themselves, arms control analysts said Tuesday.

Earlier arms control agreements contained controls to verify the dismantling of nuclear submarines, missiles and bombers, but not warheads, said Rose Gottemoeller, an arms control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

``Historically, the strategic arms reduction agreements hadn't touched on warheads because they were considered to be too sensitive and difficult to monitor,'' Gottemoeller, who served on the National Security Council staff under former President Clinton, told a news conference.

``In this new agreement there will apparently be some measures to monitor warheads cooperatively,'' Gottemoeller said. ``This is a very welcome innovation in the strategic arms control process and the first in many years.''

President Bush has promised to cut the U.S. arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, while President Vladimir Putin has said Russia could go even lower, to 1,500 warheads from the current 6,000 that each country is currently allowed under the 1991 START I treaty.

Bush initially favored an informal deal, but later acceded to Putin's push to formalize the cuts in a written, legally binding agreement.

``It's much better for the predictability of our nuclear relationship if we proceed together under a legally binding agreement,'' Gottemoeller said.

While U.S. and Russian officials say that nuclear arms will top the agenda of Bush's visit to Russia, talks have been difficult because of Moscow's objection to the Pentagon's decision to stockpile decommissioned nuclear weapons rather than destroy them.

Russia's opposition began to melt last month, when Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov abruptly announced on a trip to Washington that Russia wouldn't mind if the United States put some of the decommissioned weapons in storage.

Despite Ivanov's optimism that a deal could be reached by the summit, Russian negotiators still oppose the U.S. plan to store the decommissioned weapons, said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear analyst with Carnegie's Moscow office.

Pikayev predicted that Russia would end up accepting the U.S. reduction plan because ``a bad deal is better than a good fight,'' but would demand in return to be freed of constraints under previous arms control agreements.

START I banned Russia from modifying its existing land-based nuclear missiles, the cheapest way to maintain nuclear parity with the United States, and Moscow wants to dump the restrictions, Pikayev said.

Russia will also push for inspections to be less intrusive than those provided under START I, which allowed U.S. inspectors wide access to Russian military facilities.

--------

Off to the arms race

Tuesday, April 16, 2002
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/16/ED92089.DTL

THE UNITED STATES is quietly preparing to withdraw from the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Treaty that prohibits the development of missile defense systems. By the fall of 2004, Pentagon officials expect to open the first missile shield site in Alaska.

Critics of the Star Wars program are rightly disturbed by our nation's unilateral withdrawal from a treaty that successfully slowed the Cold War arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States and prevented both superpowers from militarizing outer space.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, has long championed an offensive space-based military, which defensive missile defense technology will make feasible.

By abrogating the ABM treaty, the United States risks igniting a space- based arms race, as well as damaging its international credibility. Protests from Russia, China and the European Union have been largely ignored. On April 5, an international conference on disarmament, held in Beijing, called upon the international community to act immediately to prevent weapons from being used in outer space. Officials and experts from 20 countries criticized the United States for violating a 1967 treaty that prohibits the militarization of outer space and for withdrawing from the ABM treaty.

So far, our country has spent an estimated $60 billion on developing anti- missile technology. Yet last March, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, confirmed allegations that poorly-designed scientific analyses accounted for some of the technological successes claimed by Pentagon officials.

This year, the Pentagon will spend an additional $8 billion on Star Wars. Yet, as the world has sadly learned, neither a missile shield nor space-based weapons can protect civilians from a suicide bomber or a plane turned into a weapon of mass destruction.

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

-------- nevada

Ad Aims to Sway Senators Over Yucca

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Opponents of a nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert are taking their fight to the airwaves -- in Vermont.

An ad, which began airing Tuesday and will run for a couple of weeks, asks viewers to call Vermont's senators, who will vote on the Yucca Mountain project this summer.

Organizers chose Vermont as the first state to air the commercial because it has a strong environmental movement that often works closely with the state's political leaders. And one of Vermont's senators, independent James Jeffords, chairs the Senate's environment committee.

In choosing Vermont, however, opponents also underscored the difficulty of their task. Jeffords, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and Democratic Gov. Howard Dean all support the Nevada dump.

A prime reason for their backing lies in the cooling pools at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, Vt., where spent nuclear fuel has accumulated for 30 years.

``The alternative to Yucca Mountain would be to store spent nuclear fuel in `dry casks' on the banks of the Connecticut River, which I believe poses serious and unacceptable environmental and safety risks,'' Jeffords said in a statement. Dry casks are giant concrete and steel containers; most spent nuclear fuel is kept in water to cool it.

Leahy spokesman David Carle said the senator still favors Yucca Mountain but wants the Bush administration to answer questions raised about transporting the waste around the country.

A major thrust of the opposition is that shipping the waste from the nation's nuclear plants through more than four dozen states to Nevada runs a risk of accidents, with the potential for radioactive releases.

The shipments by truck, train and, possibly, barge also could be targets for terrorists, opponents say.

``If we license Yucca Mountain, every day can be Sept. 11 because that is the kind of threat we're exposing our nation, our communities, our families to,'' said Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, at an anti-Yucca Mountain rally Tuesday at the foot of the Capitol.

The radio commercial stresses the potential for accidents and contends approval of Yucca Mountain would lead to ``dozens of new nuclear power plants.''

``That's the goal of the nuclear power industry,'' the announcer says in the 30-second ad, paid for by environmental groups. Opponents are considering more ads but will not say where they will run.

Environmental activists and members of Congress who oppose Yucca Mountain are recommending the same type of onsite storage that Jeffords criticized.

The Senate vote this summer is expected to be the last legislative chance to kill plans for the repository for 77,000 tons of radioactive waste beneath a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, under unusual rules written by Congress, rejected President Bush's recommendation of the site this month. Congress will cast the deciding vote.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who spoke at the Capitol rally, acknowledged to reporters that opponents lack the votes to kill the project. He said, however, that several senators remain undecided.

The House is expected to ratify Bush's recommendation. A vote is likely in late April or early May, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said Tuesday at a news conference organized by Yucca Mountain supporters.

``We're now coming at least to the beginning of the end,'' Barton said, referring to the 20 years and $7 billion the federal government has spent studying the issue.

On the Net:
Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov
Pro-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nei.org
Anti-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nirs.org

--------

Foes of Nuclear Waste Project Air First TV Ad

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-energy-congress-yucca.html

WASHINGTON - Foes of President Bush's plans to put a permanent nuclear waste depository in Nevada warned in their first television advertisement on Tuesday the project could be prone to accidents and a target for terrorists.

The spot, designed to drum up public opposition to the project, was announced at a rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol shortly after proponents held a news conference to say they were confident they would win needed U.S. congressional approval for the proposed facility.

``After decades of confirming scientific research and billions of dollars spent, it's time for the federal government to fulfill its obligation to safely store the nation's used nuclear fuel,'' said Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who supports the nuclear depository and serves as chairman of a House of Representatives energy subcommittee.

The House and Senate must decide within a few months whether to sustain or overturn Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of plans by the Bush administration to bury thousands of tons of nuclear waste from across the nation at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, making it the nation's permanent nuclear waste depository.

Foes concede they will be unable to prevent an override by the Republican-led House, but they contend could win in the Democratic-led Senate in an uphill battle. Both chambers must vote to override to put the project back on track.

Guinn has also challenged the project in court, arguing that despite government assurances to the contrary, the depository would be unsafe. Opponents also say the shipment of radioactive waste through 44 states to the facility also would pose risks.

``This is not just a problem for Nevada, it is a problem for the country,'' Senate Democratic Whip Harry Reid of Nevada told the rally, sponsored by hundreds of state and local public interest groups.

Reid announced the first of what he said would be a number of nationwide TV ads against the project. The ad campaign will begin airing on Tuesday in Vermont.

The 30-second spot shows trucks laden with nuclear waste and declares the proposed facility would mean such traffic ''right through the towns we live in.''

``Nuclear accidents are inevitable, and terrorists attacks will become harder than ever to prevent,'' the announcer says. ''Only the Senate can stop this now. Call your senators today.''

Guinn has said his state plans to spend around $10 million in its campaign against the project, scheduled to open in about 2010.

Proponents, who include members of the nuclear industry as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's biggest business group, plan to dig deep into their pockets to win approval.

Both sides have hired a small army of lobbyists to make their respective cases on Capitol Hill.

-------- new hampshire

Analyst: Utility Needs To Stay Open

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-FPL-Nuclear-Plant.html

SEABROOK, N.H. (AP) -- A Florida utility that has agreed to buy New Hampshire's only nuclear power plant faces a competitive market and will need to keep the plant running year-round to make money, an analyst said Tuesday.

``As long as it's running 85 to 90 percent of the year, you're going to be pretty successful. It's when problems arise that cause you to be down for an extended period of time that you run into trouble,'' said Andre Meade, an energy analyst with Commerzbank in New York.

FPL Group Inc.'s plan to buy an 88 percent share of Seabrook for $837 million was announced Monday. It could take until the end of the year for state and federal regulators to approve the deal.

Meade said Seabrook is one of the last nuclear plants in the country to go on line. Because it is a newer plant and has been run fairly well, it has generated a lot of interest in the industry, he said.

``New England is fundamentally an attractive market because there isn't a lot of coal-fire capacity there, which means you have gas-fired facilities running around the clock and therefore higher prices,'' Meade said.

The challenge for FPL, Meade said, is making headway in a region that has a lot of power plants.

FPL executives said Tuesday they have no immediate plans to change the management of Seabrook and that the 806 Seabrook employees will keep their jobs at similar wages for at least one year.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

``It very much fits with our overall strategy,'' said Lew Hay, chairman and chief executive of FPL Group. ``We want to have a sizable presence in the market.''

Customers of three New Hampshire utilities would get rate cuts under the deal, though not right away. They are Public Service Company of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Electric Cooperative and Granite State Electric Co.

The 1,161-megawatt plant near the Atlantic Ocean began operating in 1990.

FPL Group is the parent company of Florida Power & Light, Florida's largest electric utility. It serves 3.9 million households in 34 Florida counties. It owns power plants in 15 states.

The Seabrook shares being sold are those owned by Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities, Public Service's parent company; United Illuminating Co. of New Haven, Conn.; British-based National Grid Group; Boston-based NSTAR; BayCorp Holdings of Eliot, Maine; and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative in Plymouth. (Granite State Electric is part of National Grid.)

Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co., Taunton (Mass.) Municipal Lighting Plant, and the Hudson (Mass.) Light and Power Department are keeping their shares, FPL said.

Seabrook was a major political issue in New Hampshire from the 1970s through its completion -- billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The mounting debts pushed Manchester-based Public Service, which owned 36 percent of the project, into bankruptcy in 1988.

The company emerged from bankruptcy as a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities.

Public Service no longer owns any of Seabrook, but spokesman Martin Murray said it is obligated to buy Seabrook power and its customers still pay construction costs for Seabrook, called ``stranded costs,'' in their monthly bills. He said customers should see rates drop about 7 percent in 2004.

Shares of FPL Group closed up 47 cents to $60.98 each on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

On the Net:
http://www.seabrookstation.com
http://www.fplgroup.com
http://www.nationalgrid.com
http://www.nu.com

-------- south carolina

Dispute Over Plutonium Shipment to S.C. Intensifies

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Gov. Jim Hodges isn't backing down from the federal government just because the Energy Department says it's ready to begin shipments of plutonium to South Carolina next month.

Hodges had said previously that he's ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them. His spokesman renewed those calls on Monday upon learning that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham wants to start the shipments around May 15.

``The governor made it very clear that the 30-day notice would escalate the situation,'' spokesman Jay Reiff said. ``Troopers blocking shipments is an option. Legal avenues will be aggressively pursued. You use every feasible tool.''

Abraham said in a letter to Hodges that it was ``essential'' to begin the shipments to meet a schedule for closing the Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado by 2006.

The Bush administration wants to transport excess plutonium from weapons facilities around the country to the department's Savannah River complex near Aiken, where it will be made into mixed oxide fuel to run commercial nuclear reactors.

Hodges has vowed to intercept any shipments unless he gets firm agreement -- subject to federal court enforcement -- that the plutonium will not remain in South Carolina permanently.

By giving the 30-day notice required by Congress, Abraham issued a clear signal to Hodges that the Bush administration intends to pursue the shipments, over the governor's objections if necessary, Energy Department officials said.

A spokesman for the department would not discuss how the federal government would react to troopers at the state's borders or lawsuits.

It's not in the government's best interest to talk about ``armed confrontation,'' spokesman Joe Davis said. ``We think we can get these issues resolved.''

In a separate letter to key members of Congress, Abraham said his intention is to begin shipments of 76 trailer loads of plutonium from Rocky Flats shortly after May 15, continuing through June, 2003.

Reps. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Spratt, D-S.C., were working on legislation that could break the impasse, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said. A bill under consideration could require that plutonium not be left in the state permanently.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., called the department's decision ``great news'' and said he would work with South Carolina's congressional delegation to ease the state's concerns.

The standoff over the shipments escalated last week when Abraham rejected a demand from Hodges that a federal judge oversee the enforcement of any agreement on the plutonium shipments.

Abraham outlined what he called a string of concessions to ease the governor's concerns. Among them is a formal commitment to take the plutonium back if the conversion plant falls behind schedule or runs into funding trouble.

But Hodges told Abraham he wants more assurances in a formal consent agreement that would allow a federal judge to oversee the process.

Abraham rejected the courts' involvement, saying it would amount to ``an attempt to conduct ... national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process'' and ``goes beyond what we can do.''

-------- us nuc waste

Missiles a minor threat to Yucca waste

By Scott R. Burnell
UPI Science News
April 16, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/14042002-081426-5935r.htm

WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- (Editor's note: This is the second article in a four-part series from United Press International examining some of the scientific issues related to using Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository site. Congress has started a 90-legislative-business-day period where it must vote to override the state's objections to continue the project. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is to hold a hearing on the project on April 18.)

Those opposed to the proposed nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain often refer to horrific scenarios involving anti-tank missiles being fired at transport casks filled with waste, but the science of the matter is less dramatic.

Although the current debate in Congress involves whether the site itself is suitable for a long-term storage facility, opponents also are focusing on the risks of transporting waste from more than 100 sites around the country.

Both rail and road shipments are possible, though no railroad to Yucca exists. Failure to build one would mean more than 100,000 casks of spent nuclear power plant fuel and other waste would have to travel by truck, said Robert Halstead, an adviser to the state of Nevada, which is fighting the Yucca proposal.

"If rail access is achieved, the combined number of rail and truck shipments could be reduced to 36,400," Halstead said. "That works out to roughly between 1,000 and 2,900 shipments per year over 38 years."

Halstead and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., are among those who have publicized a video taken during a test of a shipping cask. The warhead of a TOW antitank missile placed against the sidewall of the cask is detonated, putting a hole through the diameter of the container.

Thousands of TOW missiles exist around the world, Halstead said. The radioactivity released by such an attack in an urban area could kill several people immediately, and eventually could cause at least 3,000 deaths from cancer, he said.

Antitank missiles and their effects present a possibly serious situation, but on a much smaller scale than envisioned by Yucca opponents.

A shipping cask consists of an outer jacket of steel a few inches thick, several feet of lead shielding and spent fuel assemblies at the center. The assemblies are tubes of zirconium cladding surrounding ceramic uranium fuel pellets, said Edwin Lyman, scientific director and upcoming president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a group advocating stronger security at nuclear power plants and more effective handling of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

When the protection requirements for transport casks were written, intentional attack was not considered, Lyman told United Press International. Sandia National Laboratories later determined such an attack might cause casualties.

"On that basis the Nuclear Regulatory Commission imposed a restriction that basically banned casks from going through urban areas," Lyman said. "That was based on a postulated release without technical backup."

Further investigation involved tests similar to that shown in the video.

Antitank warheads also are called shape charges, where high explosive surrounds a hollow cone of copper, glass, or another dense material, said Charles Cutshaw, a former U.S. Army officer who specialized in antitank weapons and now is an editor with Jane's Infantry Weapons. When the charge hits an object, the extremely rapid detonation of the explosive forces the cone into a thin jet of molten material, whose velocity and density forces its way through armor plate.

"It does not actually 'burn through' the armor," Cutshaw told UPI. "As it goes through, it loses weight off the jet, but if it does penetrate, you find a slug of the metal behind the armor."

NRC tests showed only the material directly in the path of the jet would be shattered, and half of the zirconium tubes would be ruptured, Lyman said. There also are inert gases present in the fuel assemblies, but there is nothing in the cask to cause a secondary explosion after the warhead detonates, he said.

The tests concluded casualties from such an event would be limited to a few latent cancer cases, prompting the NRC to replace the urban transport ban with a requirement for armed escort in such areas, Lyman said. But those tests failed to take into account radioactive gases, such as krypton-85, which are generated by the fuel pellets after use in a reactor, Lyman said.

"If (the cladding) is punctured, that gas will be vented," Lyman said. "There are also some isotopes that become gaseous at moderate temperature. Cesium-137 is probably the worst actor, because it becomes volatile at a temperature of about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and it's a long-lived isotope."

Lyman recalculated the consequences based on the additional materials and determined Sandia's first estimates of several hundred possible latent cancer cases are probable.

All of this assumes use of an advanced, actively guided antitank missile, which is not the most likely situation, Cutshaw said.

"You don't always look at the worst-case threat, but what constitutes a reasonable threat," Cutshaw said. "First of all, getting a TOW and maneuvering it into position is going to be really problematic."

The missile is several feet long and together with its launcher weighs more than 200 pounds. The system is mounted on a vehicle or carried by a team of several people -- not something a terrorist could toss in a backpack and lug around, Cutshaw said.

The system is not "fire and forget," either. It requires an operator to keep the guidance scope centered on a moving target for the entire flight of the missile, possibly in the face of return fire from armed escort. This is something reliably achieved only with regular training unavailable outside military installations.

A more probable attack, Cutshaw said, would involve human-portable antitank weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades or the LAW and AT4 systems in the U.S. inventory. While these weapons are more easily obtained, they have smaller warheads, less range and are far less accurate, Cutshaw said.

"I'm not sure a LAW or an AT4 would completely penetrate a cask. I'm not even sure it would even get through one side," Cutshaw told UPI.

Another factor to consider is how the warhead would hit a cask, since the molten jet travels in a straight line. Scenarios such as those Lyman and the NRC investigated assume the warhead hits the sidewall within a few degrees of perpendicular in order for the jet to pass through the center of the cask. Less-than-perfect shots, even with a TOW, would only affect the lead shielding or fail to penetrate the entire cask.

Lyman and others have suggested terrorists could cause much greater damage with demolition charges. This scenario, however, would require attackers to gain full physical control of a cask, Lyman said.

-------- us politics

U.S. Denies Wrongdoing in Venezuela

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Venezuela.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration brushed aside suggestions Tuesday that it quietly encouraged the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was deposed from power last week only to be reinstated after a brief period.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said that in meetings with Venezuelan leaders over several months, U.S. officials have delivered a consistent message.

``The political situation in Venezuela is one for the Venezuelans to resolve peacefully, democratically and constitutionally,'' he said. ``We explicitly told opposition leaders the United States would not support a coup.''

Fleischer was bombarded with questions about a New York Times account that senior Bush administration officials met with members of the coalition that helped depose Chavez and agreed with them that Chavez should be removed.

The Times said one senior official suggested that the Venezuelans use constitutional means to achieve that goal, such as a referendum. It was not clear whether the official quoted by the Times was reflecting official policy or speaking for himself.

Fleischer's responses during a sometimes testy news briefing did not address whether the administration favored a referendum as a means of ending Chavez's rule.

Attempts to obtain clarification from the White House were not immediately successful.

The initial State Department response last Friday to Chavez's ouster suggested that the mercurial leader got what he deserved. It said that Chavez provoked his own demise by ordering his supporters to fire on anti-Chavez demonstrators, killing more than 10 and wounding hundreds.

Fleischer noted that once the situation in Venezuela was clarified with Chavez's reinstatement, the United States joined with its colleagues in the Organization of American States and condemned Friday's ``alteration of constitutional order.''

Meanwhile, the State Department said Tuesday it was authorizing the voluntary departure from Venezuela of U.S. Embassy personnel in nonemergency positions and family members of U.S. government personnel.

It reaffirmed an earlier warning to Americans against travel to Venezuela due to the unstable security situation.

The department's initial welcome of Chavez's premature departure just three years into his term seemed at odds with the position of successive administrations that constitutional procedures must be strictly upheld in the hemisphere.

This policy has gained momentum over the past decade. Officials have frequently expressed pride that the hemisphere is all democratic -- with the exception of Cuba.

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican, suggested that threats to Venezuelan democracy and to its constitution began long before the events of last weekend.

``I personally urge Mr. Chavez to make good use of this second chance to raise a little more strongly the principles of democracy than he has in the past,'' Helms said.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., noted that in contrast to the United States, the vast majority of hemispheric governments lived up to their responsibilities and denounced the unconstitutional efforts to take power from a government which had been freely elected.

``I am extremely disappointed that rather than leading the effort to reaffirm the region's commitment to the democratic principles outlined in the OAS Charter, only belatedly did the United States join with other OAS members to respond to the Venezuelan crisis,'' Dodd said.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said: ``I think it's clear that Mr. Chavez is not exactly pro-American, and we've got to accept the ramifications of that. But I don't think we throw out democratic principles, regardless of circumstance.''

Javier Corrales, a Venezuela expert at Amherst College, said the administration would have been much better off last Friday if its statement began by stressing that any interruption in democratic procedures is always regrettable.

Corrales expressed strong doubt that the administration was in any way involved in the coup and noted that it never endorsed the unconstitutional successor government that held power briefly before Chavez's reinstatement.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

U.S. and Britain Begin New Combat Mission in Afghanistan

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/16CND-PENT.html

A new operation to search out and destroy Al Qaeda and Taliban forces is under way in eastern Afghanistan involving a sizable contingent of British Royal Marines, Pentagon officials said today.

"This is not the first time the British have been with us," Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr. of the Air Force said at a Washington briefing today. "They've been with us since day one. They've had their special forces with us.

"But this is the 41st Commando, Royal Marines, and they're just now becoming operationally - fully operationally capable, and we just wanted to acknowledge their efforts."

The British, numbering about 1,700, are part of a coalition force also involving American and Afghan troops, but a large percentage of the Royal Marines are engaged in support roles, so not all will be engaged in combat, General Rosa said.

The general, deputy director of current operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to say how many troops were in the coalition force.

General Rosa said he did not believe there had been any contact with Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters since the operation began on late Monday. It is being carried out in Paktia Province, near the Pakistani border, in the area of Gardez and Khost, he said.

He declined to say if he believed that there might be an Al Qaeda command structure in the area, saying instead: "You really don't want to tell people what you're seeing. You don't want to tell people how you see the enemy reacting and what they're doing."

In Afghanistan, a United States military spokesman, Maj. Bryan Hilferty said the operation was the first large-scale combat operation for the allies since a 12-day assault last month in the Shah-i-Kot mountains.

The identities of four American troops killed on Monday near Kandahar as they worked on defusing 107-millimeter rockets were announced at today's briefing by the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke.

They were Staff Sgt. Brian T. Craig, 27, of Texas; Staff Sgt. Justin J. Galewski, 28, of Kansas; Sgt. Jamie O. Maugans, 27, of Kansas, and Sgt. First Class Daniel A. Romero, 30, of Colorado. Their hometowns were not provided.

Staff Sergeants Craig and Galewski and Sergeant Maugans were members of the 710th Explosive Ordnance Detachment based at San Diego. Sergeant Romero was with the 19th Special Forces Group in Pueblo, Colo.

General Rosa said an investigation was continuing into the explosion that caused their deaths.

-------

More Afghan Attacks on Americans

By Christopher Torchia
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; 1:10 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57362-2002Apr16?language=printer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- At least four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday and a fifth was injured when rockets they were trying to destroy accidentally blew up. The casualty toll could rise because some soldiers were missing after the noontime explosion, U.S. officials said.

The accident, coming at a time of increased combat activity as the winter snows melt in the rugged Afghan mountains, highlights the dangers troops face even when not under hostile fire, Pentagon officials said.

The blast occurred at a demolition range next to the compound that once housed former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, according to local government spokesman Yusuf Pashtun. Several U.S. special forces troops live in the compound.

An Afghan guard, who gave his name only as Ramatullah, said U.S. troops had been collecting confiscated weapons and ammunition and storing them at the compound for disposal. He said he heard a series of six explosions about noon Monday.

"We certainly want to express our sorrow and grief to the families of those that have been killed and injured," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing. "And we salute the brave men and women in uniform who do, in fact, put their lives on the line every day to defend their country."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the accident shows "our servicemen and women remain at risk."

The U.S. military has not released the names of the soldiers who were killed, but one was identified by his family as 27-year-old Jamie Maugans of Derby, Kan., an ordnance disposal specialist based in San Diego. His grandmother, Shirley Maugans, of Wichita, said the family found out about his death Monday afternoon.

"He was a gentle man, from the time he was born," she said. "He was a gentle man, very, very sweet and kind, and he was tall. He was a big gentle man."

At Bagram air base north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty said about 10 soldiers were disposing of the rockets when the accident happened. He said the injured soldier was flown to the U.S. military base just south of Kandahar, where American authorities said his injuries were not life-threatening.

On March 28, a Navy SEAL, Chief Petty Officer Matthew J. Bourgeois, 35, of Tallahassee, Fla., was killed when he stepped on a land mine during a training mission near Kandahar. Another serviceman was wounded.

The enemy fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S.-controlled airfield in the southeastern city of Khost, near the Pakistan border, on Sunday night, officials at Bagram said. Two other rocket-propelled grenades exploded in the same area the night before.

Also Saturday, U.S. and Afghan troops came under fire during a night patrol, Hilferty said. The troops called in support from an AC-130 airborne gunship, which killed five of the attackers, he said.

There were no U.S. or coalition fatalities in the weekend attacks, but Afghan authorities said three Afghans were wounded in the incident Saturday near the Khost airstrip.

Rumsfeld said military planners had expected more activity with the end of winter, making it easier for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters to move out of mountain hide-outs.

Despite security uncertainties, authorities pressed ahead with plans to return the country's deposed former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, to Afghanistan this week. Zaher Shah has lived in Rome since he was ousted by his cousin in 1973.

A C-130 military aircraft outfitted to respond to missile attacks will carry the 87-year-old ousted monarch back to his homeland, Italian officials said.

Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai leaves for Rome on Tuesday to accompany Zaher Shah home, either Wednesday or Thursday, officials said. The former king is expected to convene a grand council, or loya jirga, in June to choose a new Afghan government.

In advance of his arrival, security forces blocked off three streets Monday in the capital to rehearse measures to protect Zaher Shah. Four armored personnel carriers belonging to the international peacekeeping force were stationed near the refurbished house where the former king will live.

In other developments:

-The head of the U.N. refugee agency said he will rely on Ismael Khan, a key power broker in western Afghanistan, to provide security for thousands of refugees streaming home from Iran.

"I think a person like Ismael Khan, like the other governors elsewhere, are key in providing security," said Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

More than 231,000 Afghans have returned from Iran, Pakistan and other neighboring nations in the past six weeks, according to the United Nations. Iran and Pakistan have been home to about 3.5 million Afghan refugees.

-Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab satellite network, broadcast parts of another Osama bin Laden videotape. It was unclear when the tape was made. It showed bin Laden, his top deputy and another man. The deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, was claimed on the tape that the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States a "great victory."

The tape included a segment of a man, identified on the video as a Sept. 11 hijacker, speaking to the camera in a style similar to videotapes made by Palestinian suicide bombers before attacks.

Rumsfeld said he had been told the tape "very likely was using a patchwork of clips from previous periods along with some dialogue of more recent periods."

-------- arms sales

Whiskey, weapons go-go in Pyongyang

April 16, 2002
By Damien McElroy
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020416-5521495.htm

PYONGYANG, North Korea - If President Bush's "axis of evil" has a watering hole for its arms dealers, it is the circular bar on the 44th floor of the Koryo Hotel in Pyong-yang, the most isolated - and perhaps the most mysterious- of the "axis capitals."

As dusk - and the latest electric-power cut - shrouds the North Korean capital in socialist gloom, the bar bustles to life, its black-and-yellow, floral-pattern capsule chairs filling up with Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans and other patrons from Middle Eastern and African nations.

This nameless institution, renowned as the meeting place of choice for arms traders in the Far East, buzzes with intrigue, if not necessarily romance, every night.

Wandering past a low-slung plastic-topped table opposite the bar moves a man named Udai, who claims to be from Baghdad. A reporter asks if he's in Pyongyang to purchase arms, missile parts, components - anything that would break the arms embargo against his country.

"Maybe, maybe not," he says with a smile. "I come to Korea often but I cannot say why. It's a secret." He quickly returns to a whispered conversation with his Korean companions.

Arms sales are a sensitive subject in Pyongyang. Foreign diplomats in the North Korean capital estimate that each year Pyongyang sells at least $500 million worth of weapons parts, mostly components for short-range missiles and guidance systems, to pariah regimes, often in the Middle East.

As bar patrons down tumblers of Johnny Walker and the local firewater, the discussions around the tables seem somewhat more furtive than Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, recently proclaimed. "Let's just say that the North Koreans have been known to go around with glossy brochures about their ballistic missiles," Miss Rice said. "They are stocking a lot of the world right now."

The country's contribution to international weapons proliferation earned it a place, alongside Iran and Iraq, in the "axis of evil" denounced by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address in January.

Pyongyang's lucrative arms exports are the result of its tinkering with Scud missiles supplied by the Soviet Union almost two decades ago. Its spare parts and re-engineered launching systems are sent across the Third World on cargo ships that have been chartered for legitimate trade.

Firms that charter ships in Southeast Asia say that North Korea frequently commissions vessels to take a commodity such as sugar from the Far East to Europe, but the boats go missing for days while making unscheduled stops in places such as Libya.

"Every flight into Pyongyang from Beijing carries businessmen from the Middle East and Africa," says a diplomat who is a frequent visitor to the country. "Not all of them are arms dealers, but apart from weapons exports the country doesn't really have much to interest people from that region."

-------- biological weapons

Bio-defense requires smallpox vaccine

April 16, 2002
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020416-413667.htm

British Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of smallpox vaccine after Vice President Richard B. Cheney visited last month and warned about the threat of an attack by Iraq.

In a short stopover March 12 on his way to the Middle East, Mr. Cheney met with Mr. Blair for several hours at the prime minister's 10 Downing Street office. The vice president detailed reports from intelligence sources that said the United States and Britain would be the prime targets of a biological terrorism attack.

Just two days after the pair met, health ministers from Britain, Japan, Mexico, France, Germany and the United States met in London to trade intelligence on vaccine stocks and methods of responding to a bioterrorism attack, the London Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.

Three weeks later, the British government placed a $46 million order for 16 million smallpox vaccines with a British company, PowderJect of Oxford.

A senior administration official, who yesterday confirmed the Telegraph report, said the warning was not based on new information.

Instead, the official said, the vice president was merely passing on intelligence that Britain would be among the top targets.

U.S. security reports say Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would use all weapons - including chemical and biological arms - if attacked. Earlier this month, President Bush and Mr. Blair discussed options for handling Iraq, which has become increasingly belligerent.

While both leaders, who met for a weekend at Mr. Bush's Texas ranch, say there are no imminent plans to attack Iraq, each has said Saddam is a threat that cannot be ignored.

"This guy, Saddam Hussein, is a leader who gasses his own people, goes after people in his own neighborhood with weapons of - chemical weapons," the president said.

Mr. Blair was equally adamant. "The president is right to draw attention to the threat of weapons of mass destruction. That threat is real. That the threat exists and we have to deal with it, that seems to me a matter of plain common sense."

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox in the world was in 1977, but Iraq is believed to have developed stocks of the smallpox virus during the 1980s, using smallpox from an outbreak in the mid-1970s.

The only known remaining stocks of virus are in two laboratories, one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the other in Russia.

Bioterrorism experts fear that some of the Russian stockpile may have fallen into the hands of rogue scientists in nations like Russia, Iraq and North Korea.

Talk of weapons loaded with smallpox, a highly contagious disease fatal to about one in three persons, dissipated in the aftermath of anthrax attacks across the United States. Since then, however, Iraq was caught attempting to ship arms to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Intelligence sources think that if attacked, Saddam would unleash attackers armed with smallpox in the United States and Britain.

Smallpox causes pustules over the entire body, kills about 30 percent of its victims and disfigures survivors. Furthermore, because its sufferers often take 10 days to show symptoms, the disease can spread quickly over large areas, including other countries.

The United States has made dramatic steps to increase its stockpile of 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine. The government has ordered another 209 million doses from Acambis, a British pharmaceutical company. About 150 million of those doses were not due until 2004, but all will be delivered by the end of the year.

-------- colombia

Colombia Wants U.S. Help Vs. Rebels

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Courting-Aid.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- His peace dreams in shambles and guerrillas setting off bombs in Colombian cities, President Andres Pastrana flew to Washington on Tuesday seeking approval to use U.S. counterdrug aid in his country's war against leftist rebels.

By casting Colombia as a Latin American beachhead in the global war on terror, Pastrana should find broad sympathy during the three-day visit. But he will also encounter skepticism from lawmakers and human rights activists who fear the United States is sliding into a Vietnam-style entanglement in the Andes.

The Bush administration -- in a major departure for U.S. policy -- has already asked lawmakers to eliminate firewalls preventing the use of helicopters and other counterdrug aid to fight guerrillas.

Bush is also asking Congress for $133 million to help Colombia stop guerrilla attacks on an oil pipeline, reduce kidnappings and rebuild bombed police stations -- plus $439 million in longer-term aid.

U.S. Special Forces would continue training Colombian troops, but there are no plans to involve U.S. troops in combat or increase their number in the country, officials say.

Under the Clinton administration, Congress insisted that military aid be targeted against drugs, not rebels. But with the insurgents immersed in the drug trade, that distinction has become ``politically unrealistic and militarily futile,'' Assistant Secretary of State Peter Rodman told a congressional hearing in Washington last week.

Pastrana, whose four-year term ends in August, is scheduled to visit President Bush at the White House on Thursday. He also has meetings planned with congressional leaders, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

In addition to military support, Colombia wants low U.S. tariffs extended on its exports. It argues that boosting the legal economy will weaken booming exports of cocaine and heroin.

Concerns remain about the human rights record of the Colombian military -- criticized in recent reports by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Ma., wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell last month to demand progress, including the firing of three Colombian generals for allegedly collaborating with a brutal right-wing paramilitary group.

Some lawmakers and U.S. officials also question Colombia's own commitment to the war. The 38-year conflict kills thousands each year and cripples foreign investment, but Colombia spends just 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product on the military -- less than many countries at peace -- while loopholes shield upper class draftees from combat.

Evidence is also mounting that $1.7 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 has not slowed the flow of drugs to the United States or weakened insurgents said by U.S. officials to be making $300 million a year off the drug trade.

Still, the image of Colombia's democracy under attack from terrorists could sway the debate.

``Like the United States in the fight against al-Qaeda, we are fighting a multinational terrorist network,'' Pastrana wrote in an editorial Monday in The Washington Post.

Colombian armed forces chief Fernando Tapias said Monday the nation's main rebel group has learned to build better bombs from the Irish Republican Army. Three alleged IRA members captured last year are awaiting trial in Bogota.

Rebel violence has escalated since the February collapse of peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Bombings blamed on the rebels have rocked major cities in recent weeks, including against Pastrana's likely successor, Alvaro Uribe, on Sunday.

Uribe, a hard-liner pledging to crack down on terror, has a big lead in polls ahead of the May 26 presidential election. Pastrana is constitutionally barred from re-election.

The violence continuing, authorities on Tuesday said rebels attacked three towns in southern Narino state the day before. The guerrillas destroyed homes with crude mortars, killed a policeman, injured three civilians and had apparently kidnapped 10 more officers, state police said.

--------

Colombian Aid Limits Reviewed
Pastrana, Bush Ask a Skeptical Congress to Lift Restrictions

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56662-2002Apr15?language=printer

Another difficult and controversial foreign policy issue is about to crowd onto President Bush's already overflowing plate, as Congress takes up his plan for a major expansion of U.S. involvement in Colombia's guerrilla war.

Hearings scheduled to stretch into next month began last week on the proposal to stop restricting U.S. military aid to Colombia's fight against cocaine and heroin production and export.

The restrictions were designed to keep the United States from becoming directly involved in South America's oldest guerrilla conflict. But the Bush administration maintains that left- and right-wing insurgents fighting the Colombian government and each other are both drug traffickers and terrorists whose activities threaten not only Colombia but the stability and security of Latin America and the United States.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana arrives in Washington today for a four-day visit to help lobby for the plan, which would also waive a number of human rights provisions and other restrictions Congress has attached to Colombia aid.

With little to show for nearly $2 billion already spent fighting Colombia's drug war since 2000, however, Bush and Pastrana face an uphill task. Skeptical legislators have indicated they want a better explanation of past failures and a far more detailed description of the new policy than has been provided.

"You're asking for an unprecedented level of decision-making power over policy in Colombia -- with no specifics," Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) told Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing last week. "I don't feel I know any more about what U.S. policy in Colombia is than I did before."

Language authorizing the policy change is contained in one sentence, deep inside the voluminous White House request for $27 billion in emergency anti-terrorism aid sent to Congress last month. Superseding all existing restrictions, it says that all previously approved and future aid "shall be available to support a unified campaign against narcotics trafficking, terrorist activities, and other threats to [Colombia's] national security."

The administration has said it will not send U.S. combat troops to Colombia, nor extend the U.S. military mission beyond training and supplying military equipment. But there would be no restrictions on Colombia's use of U.S. equipment and U.S.-trained troops.

The new request explicitly retains Congress's 400-person cap on the number of U.S. military personnel in Colombia, and observance of a worldwide requirement for human rights vetting of any foreign troops trained by U.S. forces.

Grossman explained that the "new authority would allow us to address the problem of terrorism in Colombia as vigorously as we currently address narcotics, and help the government of Colombia address the heightened terrorist risk that resulted" from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The change, he said, would also help Colombia deal with the collapse of peace talks last month between Pastrana and the largest rebel group, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The State Department lists both FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces, a paramilitary group of equal size and viciousness, as "foreign terrorist organizations," along with a smaller leftist guerrilla group. All are financed principally by the illegal drug business that supplies nearly all of the cocaine that enters the United States, and much of the heroin. The three groups regularly attack civilians in addition to their battles with the Colombian army and each other.

FARC, in particular, has escalated attacks against Colombia's national infrastructure since February, when Pastrana ended three years of sputtering peace talks following a spate of kidnappings of public officials.

The proposed change in ground rules for Colombian aid marks the first time since Sept. 11 that the administration has suggested that domestic insurgents in another country pose a terrorist threat even if they have not directly targeted the United States and have no known connection to any group that has.

With virtually no progress in the drug fight, some in Congress have suggested the administration is creating a terrorist danger in Colombia to justify throwing good money after bad, and in the process risking a Vietnam-type quagmire.

Worse than a "slippery slope . . . I think we're approaching a cliff," Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) told Assistant Secretary of State Otto J. Reich at a House International Relations subcommittee hearing last week.

Administration officials say that the infusion of drug money into FARC and AUC has led to their rapid growth and inserted a new element into the long history of Colombian insurgency. The drug and terror wars are now so intertwined, they argue, that neither can be won without U.S. involvement in both.

Beyond the firewall restricting the use of U.S.-trained troops and U.S-provided equipment to counter-narcotics missions, more specific limits on Colombia assistance would also be waived under the new policy.

Congress has refused to release any military-related funds in a $300 million Colombia aid package it appropriated for 2002 until the administration can certify that the Colombian army has ended collusion with the AUC, suspended and prosecuted senior officers credibly alleged to have been involved in human rights violations and moved to arrest AUC leaders. The leftist FARC and the right wing AUC are officially equal enemies, but both the Colombian and U.S. governments display far more interest in combating the former than the latter.

Money to continue a U.S.-paid aerial fumigation program has been withheld pending proof that the herbicide being sprayed on drug crops is nontoxic and safely used. Neither the military certification nor the herbicide information has been provided.

In February, the Senate prohibited spending any of the new 2002 money for any purpose, until the administration provides a more detailed outline of its strategy.

According to senior Colombian and U.S. officials, the cutoff is beginning to pinch. "We're scraping bits and pieces" left in accounts from earlier years to keep the military and spraying programs going, an administration official said. But "we're at a precipice in terms of where there begins to be an impact."

While arguing there has been modest progress in all areas of U.S. effort in Colombia, the administration agrees it has been insufficient. Army collusion with AUC, which the State Department's human rights reporting holds responsible for civilian massacres and brutality as well as drug trafficking, has continued, while there have been few advances in the war that both are fighting against FARC.

Members of Congress also have asked why the administration proposes spending more money to defend Colombia, including more than $500 million requested for 2003, when Colombia itself is spending less.

Although Pastrana increased defense spending in 1998, his first year in office, it has declined as a percentage of gross domestic product every year since then. Colombia now spends slightly less than 2 percent of its GDP on the army, and 3.3 percent for all security forces combined.

"I'm not at all satisfied with the commitments" Colombia has made, Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.) told administration officials. "We're talking about a lot of money going into a very small area that can show me zero progress."

-------- drug war

SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP
Justices Tackle Implications of a Rule on Drug Sentences

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/national/16SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, April 15 - It was time for the Supreme Court today to begin confronting the practical implications of the sharp new direction it took two years ago in criminal sentencing.

In an appeal from the federal government, the justices heard an argument about what should happen now to drug defendants whose extra-long sentences were impermissibly based on a judge's rather than a jury's conclusion about the amount of drugs involved in their crimes.

A federal appeals court ruled last year that such sentences were subject to automatic reversal under the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey. That decision, issued in June 2000, held that any factors that increase a sentence above the ordinary maximum must be charged in the indictment and proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Until the Apprendi decision, federal drug indictments did not ordinarily specify a quantity of drugs, leaving that finding to be made by the judge at sentencing. Federal drug laws impose a series of escalating sentences, depending on drug quantity.

The government quickly changed its practice after the Apprendi ruling and now includes drug quantity in the indictment. But it has maintained that enhanced drug sentences should generally be regarded as valid if they were handed down before the ruling and the defendants did not object at the time.

At stake in the case argued today, United States v. Cotton, No. 01-687, is a relatively small number of cases, perhaps fewer than 100, in which major drug defendants whose cases were still open on appeal at the time of the Apprendi ruling had received more than the ordinary 20-year maximum sentence that applies to those found guilty of trafficking in "any detectable quantity" of narcotics.

The Cotton case involves seven defendants, leaders and participants in a major drug ring in Baltimore, five of whom received life sentences on the judge's finding that each was responsible for more than 1.5 kilograms of cocaine base. The other two received 30 years. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled that all must be resentenced to no more than 20 years.

Although the immediate impact of the Supreme Court's ruling may not be great, the implications of a decision that adopts the appeals court's reasoning could be broader.

For example, it could affect sentences imposed under the Federal Death Penalty Act, under which the "aggravating circumstances" that make a defendant eligible for the death penalty are not charged in the indictment. Two weeks ago, in a case called Allen v. United States, No. 01-7310, the government asked the Supreme Court to defer action on a federal death row inmate's appeal until a decision in the Cotton case.

The Cotton case also raises interesting questions about the role of the grand jury. Timothy J. Sullivan, representing the defendants, maintained that errors in an indictment could never be overlooked without jeopardizing the grand jury's role in protecting the rule of law.

"The integrity of the courts would be impaired if the decision is that you can be indicted for one offense and convicted of another," Mr. Sullivan told the justices.

Michael R. Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general arguing for the government, said that to the contrary, when evidence of guilt is so overwhelming that "any rational grand jury" would have produced a proper indictment if asked, an error in the indictment should be regarded as "harmless."

The Cotton case is one of three Apprendi sequels that the court is considering this spring. Next week, in Ring v. Arizona, No. 01-488, the court will consider whether the death penalty laws in nine states, affecting some 800 defendants, are constitutionally flawed in providing for the judge rather than the jury to issue a death sentence.

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The Bush Administration's 'Drugs = Terrorism' Fraud

by James Bovard,
April 2002
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0204f.asp

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spent more than $3 million for two TV ads during Sunday's Super Bowl. One ad asked viewers: "Where do terrorists get their money?" The answer: "If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you." Drug users are portrayed as terrorist financiers - practically the moral equivalent of the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center towers.

President Bush hit the same theme when he recently signed the Drug-Free Communities Act: "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."

Unfortunately, U.S. drug laws have done far more to empower terrorists than Bush & Co. would like to admit. Drug laws are far more effective at putting profit into narcotics than law enforcement is at taking the profit out.

Afghanistan produces about 70 percent of the world's opium. Revenue from opium production helped finance both the Taliban government and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Narcotics have also provided huge windfalls to the leftist guerillas in Colombia. The White House claims that more than a dozen terrorist groups are funded by illicit drugs.

Government prohibitions make drug trafficking far more risky and far more profitable than it would otherwise be. The only reason that opium is more profitable for terrorists than beer is that the United States and other governments prohibit opium while tolerating beer.

Because narcotics are illicit, they tend to attract violent, ruthless people and organizations to carry out their production and marketing. Groups that specialize in violence - such as terrorists - take to drug trafficking like a duck to water.

Drug Enforcement Agency chief Asa Hutchinson told Congress in October, "The DEA will continue to aggressively identify and build cases against drug-trafficking organizations contributing to global terrorism. In doing so, we will limit the ability of drug traffickers to use their destructive goods as a commodity to fund malicious assaults on humanity and the rule of law."

But how will the DEA change the laws of agricultural economics that encourage farmers to grow crops disapproved by the U.S. government? Afghan farmers can easily earn ten times more from growing opium than from growing wheat or other crops. The effort to persuade Third World farmers to abandon illicit crops will be about as successful as trying to persuade stockbrokers and law-firm partners to abandon their high-paid jobs, move to Mexico, and scratch out a livelihood assembling toilet brushes for sale at Wal-Mart.

If the Bush administration is really serious about defunding terrorist groups, it should summon the courage to look at drug laws themselves. The falling price of cocaine and heroin in recent decades is proof of the failure of drug warriors to close the borders. Federal officials have admitted that the government fails to interdict up to 90 percent of the drugs being smuggled into the United States. This failure rate is absolutely intolerable when illicit drugs finance terrorism.

The futility of government drug bans was made stark by one White House anti-drug ad that purported to show the different costs that go into a drug smuggler's operation. One item that flashed briefly on the screen was thousands of dollars for bribes. The ad did not mention who was being bribed - whether it was the U.S. Coast Guard, or the Customs Service, or perhaps foreign government officials. It is ironic for the drug czar's office to complain that drug users help finance bribes to government officials - but to say nothing about the G-men who take bribes.

American policymakers make a careful distinction between the financing of terrorist activity by selling illicit drugs and the U.S. government's financing of terrorist-like activity to suppress drug cultivation. While Bush went ballistic over "terrorists" mailing anthrax to government offices, the United States is conducting a chemical warfare campaign in Colombia, fumigating much of the countryside with deadly herbicides to suppress coca production. Unfortunately, the U.S. campaign has devastated the crops of many law-abiding farmers and left children gasping and ill.

The U.S. government spent more than three times as much on the drug war as it did in fighting terrorism before 9/11. While drugs can leave a person in the gutter, they do not destroy 110-story buildings. While drugs can blur people's vision, they do not turn airliners into suicidal missiles. While drugs can perforate a person's sense of responsibility, they do not leave large holes in the side of the Pentagon.

How many more Americans must die in order to perpetuate the fiction that the U.S. government can completely control every farmer in the world? This is the phantasm at the heart of the U.S. war on drugs and on U.S. efforts to intervene anywhere in the world to suppress any product that offends or frightens American politicians.

Are politicians more interested in controlling people or in protecting them? Unless President Bush can guarantee that none of the profits from illicit drugs will seep back into terrorist organizations, he should do the honorable thing and end the war on drugs.

James Bovard is policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, and author of Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion & Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin's Press, 2000).

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High Court Considers Drug Searches

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Bus-Search.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday debated bus passengers' rights in a case testing the limits of officers' authority to seek out possible drug dealers or terrorists on public transportation.

Most justices seemed unswayed by arguments that passengers, confined to small spaces, might feel coerced when officers board and ask permission to search their belongings.

Larry D. Thompson, deputy attorney general, said that officers should not be saddled with court-imposed rules for conducting sweeps.

``Buses in today's environment are vulnerable, vulnerable to specific public safety concerns,'' he told the court.

The case of two men arrested with drugs on a Greyhound bus in Florida came to the court as private airline travelers deal with baggage searches and more intrusive personal checks for weapons.

Public transportation riders may incorrectly believe they have to agree to searches, Justice Stephen Breyer said.

Justices have a chance to tell police who want to look for drugs or evidence of other crimes that they must first inform passengers of their legal rights.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist warned that such a ruling would create ``another layer of litigation.'' Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said arguments that ``the government has some obligation to teach everybody about their rights -- that's a sweeping proposition and not required by the Constitution.''

Gwendolyn Spivey, an assistant federal public defender representing the bus passengers, said the court should recognize that typically bus riders are poorer and have less knowledge of their rights. ``They don't know who their congressman is,'' she said.

The millions of people who use public transportation should be free of unreasonable searches, she said.

The two men caught ferrying drugs say they didn't feel free to get up and leave when police stood over them in the aisle of a Greyhound bus and started asking questions. One officer was positioned at the front of the bus.

Officers asked to pat down the men's baggy clothing. The men agreed, and officers felt hard objects on the men's legs that turned out to be packets of cocaine. They were convicted of drug charges.

Christopher Drayton and Clifton Brown won a lower court ruling that the 1999 drug sweep aboard a bus in downtown Tallahassee, Fla., violated their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.

Thompson said the officers did not point weapons or use threatening language while checking passengers on the bus, which was headed to Detroit from Fort Lauderdale.

The officers' behavior, Thompson said, was appropriate under the 1991 Supreme Court standard that bus passenger searches are allowed if a ``reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers' requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.''

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that the cocaine should not have been used as evidence against the men. The Bush administration appealed to the Supreme Court.

Since Sept. 11, justices have sided with law enforcement in two other Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases and seem poised to give the government another win in this one. The other cases involved a traffic stop and the search of a home.

``You would certainly think in a post-9-11 context, the justices are going to be more conscious of and sensitive to the needs of law enforcement to have as much investigative power as is constitutionally proper,'' said Donald J. Hall, a law professor at Vanderbilt University.

The case is United States v. Drayton, 01-631.

On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
11th Circuit Court of Appeals case: http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/oct2000/99-13814.man.html

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Afghan poppy growers settle in for long struggle

April 16, 2002
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020416-68644248.htm

Drug policy chief John Walters yesterday said it could take as long as three years for the United States and its allies to ensure that Afghanistan does not return to the opium business as a key source of revenue.

Mr. Walters called efforts to restore Afghanistan's schools, health and economic institutions, and its police and security infrastructure a battle between allied forces and that nation's illicit poppy growers, who seek to return to business as usual.

"For the first time in history, we have an opportunity to influence the worldwide opium problem, working with our allies to do as much as we can to eradicate and disrupt the opium trade," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.

"It will require staying power, perhaps as long as two to three years, but banning opium production has got to be a priority," he said. "We cannot allow Afghanistan to again become a haven for illicit money, a haven for terrorists."

Mr. Walters, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, also said Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government, has made "outstanding" progress in curtailing opium production in that country - "even at substantial risk to himself and his government."

He said Mr. Karzai and other Afghan leaders have been threatened, and some involved in the eradication efforts have been killed.

The former Taliban regime, which was aligned closely with terrorist Osama bin Laden, collected millions of dollars a year in profits from illicit opium sales - with some of the cash going to terrorists who hid and trained in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban took control in 1996, Afghanistan accounted for more than 70 percent of the global supply of poppies, the source crop for opium and heroin. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the heroin sold in Europe was processed from opium produced and stockpiled in Afghanistan.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials have estimated that profits from opium sales netted the Taliban $40 million annually, with some estimates ranging far higher.

Mr. Walters said Afghan police and security officials have to be trained on how to eradicate and disrupt that country's opium production and that the job would fall mainly on military authorities and others from the United States, Great Britain and Germany.

He said major buyers of Afghan opium and heroin were in Britain and Germany, and that those countries had to be willing to "pay the price" to eliminate the drug's production and shipment to Europe.

Mr. Walters noted that the British already had begun eradication efforts, eliminating 1,000 acres just last week, and that Germany had begun to train Afghan police and security officials in anti-drug measures.

He said those efforts already have seen some results, adding that the purity of heroin arriving in Britain from Afghanistan is down.

"When the purity of the product drops, the market is under stress," he said. "It's like the Old West; when the supply is off, they start watering down the whiskey."

Mr. Walters noted that the first big test of the effectiveness of the effort to reduce opium production will come in October, when farmers there begin the planting season.

The crop generally is harvested for raw opium gum, from which heroin is made, between March and May.

"We will be in a better position next fall to figure out where we are," he said.

"We need to make a substantial effort to ensure that we are successful, but not pay the lion's share," he said. "It's time Europe stepped up to the plate."

The Bush administration's anti-drug strategy is focused on reducing supplies from foreign countries, undermining domestic demand and providing effective drug treatment to addicts.

The president has vowed to cut illegal drug use in America by 10 percent within the next two years and by 25 percent within five years.

President Bush called for $19.2 billion to fight illegal drugs, a 2 percent increase over current spending.

-------- india

Secret UK report says Gujarat death toll 'much greater'

By Peter Popham in Delhi
16 April 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=285447

The pogroms that erupted in the state of Gujarat six weeks ago continue to haunt India.

Yesterday three more people died in violent clashes in the city of Ahmedabad and a curfew was clamped on affected areas. The Hindustan Times, a national newspaper, claimed that a secret internal report prepared by British diplomats here for the Foreign Office put the death toll in the state at about 2,000 - nearly 1,200 more than the official figure - and stated that the violence was not spontaneous but planned.

A spokesman for the British high commission in Delhi said: "We will neither confirm nor deny what was in the report because we do not comment on leaks." But the report conforms to what non-government organisations have been claiming about the true scale of the carnage, in which the overwhelming majority of the victims were Muslims.

Both houses of India's parliament were forced to adjourn in uproar yesterday as opposition MPs attacked the government for failing to control the violence. "Today Gujarat is burning, tomorrow the country will burn," said Satyavrat Chaturvedi of the Congress party.

The opposition is angry because the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who belongs to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controls the ruling coalition, has not only avoided the sack for allegedly conniving in the pogroms but is being encouraged by the BJP to stand in new elections. The party appears to believe that, in a violently polarised election, the party will gain the votes of the great majority of Hindus and secure a massive new mandate in the western state.

The opposition, in common with many disinterested observers, believes that the violence in Gujarat, which followed the massacre of 59 Hindu activists on a train in the town of Godhra on 28 February, was not a spontaneous eruption of Hindu emotion but meticulously planned by militant neo-fascist groups - the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and Bajrang Dal. They also believe that Mr Modi allowed it to happen. The state police, it is claimed, either did nothing or deliberately instigated violence and fired on the Muslim victims.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Prime Minister, has been under enormous pressure both from the Opposition and coalition partners to punish Mr Modi for turning a blind eye to the worst communal violence in India in 10 years. But radical voices within the BJP, calling on the leadership to keep faith with the Hindu chauvinism that is the party's core ideology, now appear to have prevailed. After weeks of prevaricating, Mr Vajpayee has now made clear that Mr Modi's sacking is out of the question.

At a BJP conference in Goa on Friday he even jumped on to the Muslim-bashing bandwagon. He said in a speech: "Wherever there are Muslims, they do not want to live with others [of different faiths]. Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating terror in the minds of others."

This broadside delighted his audience of activists but it is an approach that puts the survival of the ruling coalition, which has two more years to run if it can sustain its majority, in doubt. For years Mr Vajpayee has specialised in putting a moderate, secular face on his party. His sudden return to ideological basics has helped to unite the opposition in hostility to the BJP, and has come close to bouncing his party's most important coalition partner, the Telugu Desam Party from Andhra Pradesh, into the opposition camp, too. If the opposition can force a vote on Gujarat in parliament, the government might not have enough votes to win it.

Indian politics has taken an ugly turn. After several electoral setbacks in recent months, the BJP has returned to the communal politics that once made it a parliamentary leper.

The long-term result is anybody's guess. If it succeeds in galvanising Hindu votes across India, more pogroms like those of Gujarat may be on the way. But if the party continues to lose ground, the murderous thugs who support it may prove even more unruly.

-------- israel / palestine

Israel Pursues Military Actions as Powell Prepares to Leave

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN and TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/16CND-POWE.html

JERUSALEM, April 16 - As Secretary of State Colin L. Powell prepared today to end his peace mission to the region, the Israeli military pursued its operation in the West Bank. Israel was on high alert for suicide bombers, and the secretary himself took pains to play down expectations for any last-minute surprise.

``I think we are making progress and I look forward to furthering that progress over the next 24 hours,'' Secretary Powell said today. But he added that whatever was achieved, it would fall short of the formal cease-fire envisioned in past American proposals. ``The specific term cease-fire has not quite the same significance as what actually happens,'' he said.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made clear that the Israeli dragnet through West Bank cities and towns is not over. He reiterated today that the Israeli Army intended to pull out of Jenin and Nablus by week's end, but he said the army would maintain a tight military ring around these and other cities. These positions enable Israeli forces to go in at will to nab suspects, as Israeli forces did in Tulkarem and two villages today.

``I know the United States has problems on its mind, but we will carry out our operation,'' Mr. Sharon told Israel Radio in an Independence Day interview. ``Even after we pull out of the cities, we will surround the cities in order to monitor the area to see whether the terror resumes its actions.''

Secretary Powell has a second meeting with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat scheduled for Wednesday. But it already appears that the most the secretary may be able to secure from his shuttle diplomacy is a vague commitment to a cessation of hostilities, an eventual Israeli withdrawal at an unspecified date and a possible international peace conference.

The other thing the secretary has clearly achieved is to plunge the Bush administration into the midst of the quest for a Middle East peace, the very role it long sought to avoid. Whether this involvement will prove fruitful, or merely frustrating, remains to be seen.

Danny Ayalon, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Sharon, said at a news briefing this evening that Mr. Sharon and Secretary Powell had ``a very good and friendly meeting'' today and ``discussed the ways to move ahead.''

Mr. Ayalon also pronounced Israel's operation on the West Bank a success that ``proved that terror can be fought militarily, if you will.'' He said there had been two suicide attacks since the operation began, compared with ``two a day'' before it.

But Saeb Erekat, a leading Palestinian negotiator, said in an interview: ``If Mr. Powell leaves the area without having Sharon withdraw, that's a bad sign. I don't think there's anything saying that Sharon is withdrawing. Sharon is maintaining and keeping up the occupation. Destroying the peace process is his end game.''

Certainly, Israel gave few signals of a readiness to compromise today. The head of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi, said, ``We've not afraid to go into the cities to get the terrorists. If we have to go in again, we'll go in again.'' General Zeevi said that of the 4,250 Palestinians rounded up in the 19-day offensive, 400 were wanted Palestinians, including 15 top militants.

Mr. Sharon also made clear that the army would remain in Bethlehem until the 250 gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity surrendered, and in Ramallah until two wanted men in Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority compound had been arrested.

Mr. Sharon's statements, coming 11 days after President Bush demanded that he withdraw from West Bank cities ``without delay,'' and five days after Secretary Powell arrived in anticipation of an Israeli withdrawal, indicated that the Israeli prime minister was serious when he told the Americans that he would not set limits on Israel's military operations.

At the same time, the chance that terrorist attacks had been halted by the operation seemed slight, at least to the vast majority of Israeli citizens who stayed inside on the eve of Independence Day, usually a night of parties and fairs. The one event in Jerusalem that was not canceled, a rock concert, drew a loose sprinkling of celebrants, and the rest of the city was eerily empty, except for police and soldiers who set up innumerable roadblocks.

Security officials had issued warnings that suicide bombings had been planned specifically for this evening, and in the minds of many Israelis, the danger was increased after Israel on Monday arrested Marwan Barghouti, the a popular Palestinian leader who took charge of the Tanzim militia during the current uprising. Mr. Barghouti, whom Israelis accuse of authorizing several recent bombing attacks, is being held in a Jerusalem jail.

Mr. Sharon declared today that Mr. Barghouti would be put on trial for ``horrendous acts of murder of hundreds of Israelis.''

Members of Mr. Barghouti's organization, which includes the Al Aksa Brigades, which carried out the majority of suicide bombings since January, appear certain to try to avenge his arrest. Many Israelis suspect that his followers will seek to kidnap Israelis and then try to swap them for Mr. Barghouti.

Secretary Powell met one-on-one for more than an hour with Mr. Sharon this afternoon, and he is to meet Mr. Arafat in Ramallah on Wednesday morning. He will then fly to Cairo for quick consultations with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and probably Jordanian and Saudi officials, before heading back to Washington.

``We'll have a statement from him tomorrow, hopefully followed soon after by statements from Israelis and Palestinians,'' one senior administration official said, referring to Mr. Powell.

A regional peace conference was first proposed by Mr. Sharon on Sunday, but the idea remained vague. The idea he initially floated was for Israel to meet with a number of moderate Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco, as well as with the Palestinians, but without Mr. Arafat. In a television interview this evening, Mr. Sharon said the conference could take place in June, perhaps in the United States.

Secretary Powell suggested that the meeting could be held at the ministerial level, so that Mr. Arafat's presence would not be required. ``The conference in and of itself isn't the solution, but it's a way to get the parties together and talking,'' he said.

But the idea was greeted with skepticism by the Palestinians, who viewed it largely as a way to placate Americans and to win time. Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, who originally welcomed Mr. Sharon's proposal, said today that the conference was intended only to avoid a real peace negotiation, and that he also opposed it because it excluded the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Adding to questions about whether Secretary Powell had made any headway were tough statements by Mr. Sharon reiterating that Israel would continue to pressure the Palestinians until Mr. Arafat did more than make a statement to end violence. Mr. Arafat insisted that Israel must withdraw from occupied areas before he would agree to a cease-fire.

Even as Secretary Powell has sought repeatedly on this trip to start parallel security and political discussions, Mr. Ayalon, the adviser to Mr. Sharon, repeated Israel's longstanding position that a cease-fire is the key to any progress. ``There's no way you can negotiate politically under terror and fire,'' he said.

This stance appeared to explain why Secretary Powell tried today to avoid using the term ``cease-fire,'' and to focus instead on a joint statement condemning terrorist attacks against Israelis and Palestinians and calling for political negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state and continued action against terrorism.

In effect, Secretary Powell's hopes seemed limited to returning the parties to roughly where they were before the Passover bombing in Netanya and the ensuing Israeli raids on West Bank towns and villages.

Early today, Israeli tanks and troops re-entered Tulkarem for several hours and arrested four members of Hamas, the militant Islamic movement. Raids into two other towns yielded eight more arrests, the Israelis said.

The army also sent tanks and armored personnel carries into three Palestinian suburbs of east Jerusalem early today and declared a tight curfew. An Israeli military official said there had been information that a terrorist attack was being planned from these areas.

The army also confirmed that it was reopening the Ketziot detention camp in the Negev Desert to hold some of the Palestinians rounded up in the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians were kept at Ketziot in the first Palestinian uprising from 1987 to 1993, suffering severe heat and bitter cold.

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Sharon vows to withdraw his forces

April 16, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020416-41069860.htm

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged yesterday that his troops would withdraw from Jenin and all other West Bank cities and towns except Ramallah and Bethlehem "in less than one week."

Israeli soldiers also entered two small towns near Bethlehem yesterday, defying Washington's demands that they withdraw from the West Bank immediately. Israeli armor rumbled back into Tulkarm early today a week after pulling out of the West Bank city, in what Israeli military sources called a limited operation to arrest Palestinian gunmen.

"This is not a reoccupation," one military source told Reuters news agency. "It is a limited operation to search for terrorists."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians since Friday, but he hasn't made much progress toward a cessation of hostilities or a political solution to the conflict. He went to Lebanon yesterday and later returned to Jerusalem.

He is to meet with Mr. Sharon again today and may meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat tomorrow.

The stench of death greeted independent observers allowed into the Jenin refugee camp yesterday, where they found more than a dozen decaying bodies but could not find evidence of Palestinian charges of a massacre.

That claim, if verified, may require months of investigation, but Jenin, the site of ferocious fighting between Palestinians and Israelis last week, is a humanitarian disaster zone.

"There is no water, the civilians are in urgent need of basic sustenance, and most of the families have lost contact with their loved ones," said Jessica Barry of the International Red Cross.

She and other Red Cross workers entered the camp with deliveries of medicine yesterday. There was no way to know how many died in the camp, she said.

"It is impossible to make an estimate because we were only in a small part of the camp," Miss Barry told the Agence France-Presse news service.

Accompanied by officials of the Red Cross, the Israeli army, which had sealed off Jenin during the fighting, collected bodies of dead Palestinians, as ordered Sunday by the Israeli High Court.

The mayor of Jenin, Walid Abu Mueiss, told AFP by phone that he had accompanied the Red Cross, where they came across 15 bodies.

The Red Cross declined to confirm that figure, suggesting the question of the toll had gained too many political overtones for the organization to become publicly involved. The Palestinians have said "hundreds" were killed; Israeli sources put the figure at 35 to 40.

The Israeli army continued to block reporters and photographers from the camp.

Aid workers, as well as reporters, were prevented from entering Bethlehem's Manger Square, where soldiers held a tense shootout with Palestinians sheltering inside the Church of the Nativity.

Two armed Palestinian policemen - one shot and severely wounded, the other apparently suffering from the noise of the persistent explosion of Israeli percussion grenades and sirens - were taken into custody.

The standoff at the Church of the Nativity, a holy shrine to Christians, many of whom believe it is the site of the birth of Christ, has become a liability for the Israelis.They have sealed inside an estimated 200 Palestinians, many of them armed, as well as civilians and clerics.

Some governments in Europe and the Middle East and certain religious organizations have condemned the firing on religious sites. The Israeli government says it is exercising restraint in the face of fire from the Palestinians inside the church.

Soldiers also have encircled and occupied Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah, and they are waiting to apprehend several key associates who are accused of masterminding terrorist activities.

Yesterday they arrested Marwan Barghouti, a key political associate and the leader of the militant group Fatah, charging him with coordinating attacks, including suicide bombings, by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Israeli television reported the capture of two more wanted Palestinians late yesterday.

Mr. Sharon yesterday spoke of his desire for peace but noted that Mr. Arafat is not a "partner" in the effort. He said that Mr. Powell should not have met with him on Sunday.

In Geneva yesterday, the U.N. Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution sponsored by Islamic states that condemned what it called Israel's "mass killings" and endorsed what it called the Palestinians' "legitimate right to resist." Seven nations on the 53-member panel abstained. France and Austria voted for the resolution.

Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Levy dismissed the document as "window dressing" and said it does not condemn the suicide bombings, but in fact gives Palestinians "a license to continue this policy of terrorism. That's why it is so wrong."

Meanwhile, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees accused the Israeli government of violating the Geneva Convention during its "war on the camps" and said troops had willfully destroyed U.N. medical supplies. "I cannot say we never had access, but I can say we have not had anywhere near the access that one would have expected if the Geneva Convention would have been observed," U.N. Relief and Works Agency chief Peter Hansen told Reuters in London.

The Israeli government, concerned by the harsh anti-Israeli tone of much of the reporting from the region, loosened its media blackout on Nablus and other towns yesterday where the aftermath of the invasion was evident. In Nablus' Old City, narrow alleys were lined with scorch marks and carpeted in broken glass. Trash fires - lit to control pestilence - sent an acrid smoke into homes through busted windows. Apartment houses were reduced to rubble fields. Some residents said the occupants were buried inside.

As many as 1,800 people have died since the latest uprising began in September 2000, with Palestinians accounting for the majority of casualties. Most of the Israeli dead died at the hands of suicide bombers, who targeted civilians.

--------

Palestinians to Be Held in Desert

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinian-Prisoners.html

KETZIOT, Israel (AP) -- Israel has reopened a sprawling desert detention camp made infamous during the first intefadah to hold some of the thousands of Palestinians it has rounded up during its current West Bank sweep.

Associated Press reporters saw bustling signs of activity at the Ketziot camp in the southern Negev Desert: Spotlights beamed down and soldiers stood in guard towers; civilian and military trucks entered and left, and bright new Israeli flags hung limply in the baking desert air.

An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Tuesday that Israel reopened the camp this week.

Ketziot held thousands of Palestinians during the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987-93. Prisoners were held 26 to a tent, exposed to searing heat in the summer and bone-chilling cold in the winter. The camp was closed in 1996.

The army declined to comment on the reopening. The Palestinian security chief in the West bank, Jibril Rajoub, said reopening the prison would only increase Palestinians' desire for freedom from Israel's control. ``The Israelis will discover that they are wrong in their belief that opening this prison ... will break the determination and the unity of the Palestinian people,'' he said.

In the current offensive, in its 19th day Tuesday, Israel has detained 4,258 Palestinians including suspected leaders of the Palestinian uprising, the army said.

The army said 387 of the thousands detained this month were previously known terror suspects. Suspicions against others emerged during interrogation and altogether about 1,200 men would be kept in custody, Israeli security sources said. The army has started releasing the others, said the Israel military official who confirmed the camp's reopening, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The first 310 Palestinians were transferred to Ketziot from a prison in northern Israel this week, said Lior Yavne, a spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, citing army officials.

The latest top Palestinian to be detained was Marwan Barghouti, the top-ranking grass-roots activist in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. Barghouti was taken from his hide-out in the town of Ramallah on Monday.

Israel accuses Barghouti of commanding the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia, which is linked to Fatah and has carried out scores of shooting and bombing attacks on Israelis.

Barghouti has never acknowledged he was the militia's leader, though he has said he considered Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip legitimate targets for attack. At the same time, Barghouti advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, not instead of it.

Barghouti was being interrogated Tuesday at a Jerusalem police compound.

Other high-profile detainees included Nasser Awais, a regional leader of the Al Aqsa militia; Thabet Mardawi, an Islamic Jihad leader in the Jenin refugee camp; and Bilal Barghouti of the Islamic militant Hamas group.

Bilal Barghouti, a member of the same extended clan as Marwan Barghouti, is accused by Israel of involvement in two deadly suicide bombings, a June attack on a Tel Aviv disco and a blast outside a Jerusalem pizza restaurant in August.

Security sources said leading suspects were sent to a prison in central Israel, while most other detainees were being held at the army's Ofer camp near Ramallah and several hundred had been transferred to Ketziot.

An Israeli human rights official said she expected most of those would be given open-ended prison time without trial, a policy known as `'administrative detention'' that has raised protests by human rights groups in the past.

``Some have already been served administrative detention orders,'' said Hannah Friedman, director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. ``Most of the rest will probably receive them too.''

A Red Cross spokesman said the organization had asked to visit the prison camps but was still waiting for its requests to be expedited.

Ketziot is known to Palestinians as ``Ansar III'' after the grim Ansar prison run by Israel during its military occupation of south Lebanon. An Israeli prison in the Gaza Strip was known as ``Ansar II.''

The desert camp was first used to detain Palestinians shortly after the December 1987 outbreak of the previous uprising. During the first five years of that conflict Israel jailed about 14,000 Palestinians without trial, most of them held at Ketziot, according to B'tselem.

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Children's Corpses Legacy of West Bank City Fight

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-palestinians-family.html

NABLUS, West Bank - The dusty corpses of the al-Shabi children are frozen in time, testimony to their last moments of life in the battle-scarred ancient quarter of this Palestinian city in the West Bank.

Seven-year old Azam's arms cover his head as if he was trying to shield himself from the rubble of his home as it came crashing down, killing him and seven other members of his family more than a week ago during an Israeli military offensive.

His four-year-old sister Anis has her little fists clenched to her stomach. She is curled up, still dressed in her green sport shirt and pants.

``They were all together in a bombed building in the old city,'' said Anan Qadri, the head of the emergency medical committee in Nablus. ``The Israelis destroyed their house in a missile attack and then destroyed it with bulldozers.''

The eight members of the al-Shabi family were among 71 Palestinians killed in Nablus during the Israeli sweep since April 3, according to Nablus's Rafidia Hospital records obtained by Reuters.

Nablus was viewed as a stronghold of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, which has claimed responsibility for some of the recent suicide attacks inside Israeli.

Israeli armored personnel carriers and tanks churned up the hilly streets of the West Bank's largest Palestinian city on Tuesday, enforcing a reoccupation in a campaign Israel says is aimed at uprooting terrorism.

Qadri had no breakdown for the number of gunmen and civilians killed in Nablus. ``We are still working on this but many of them are civilians,'' she said.

The military curfew imposed on the more than 100,000 residents of Nablus has grisly implications in a city where tradition calls for mass public burials and three-day condolence visits.

``We have to prepare the tombs, and the families have to come but we are under curfew,'' said Qadri. ``The Israeli liaison officer said we will allow you to only bury them one by one, so we refused.''

This means that the bodies of the Shabi family and 25 other Palestinians are kept in a refrigerated dairy truck in a parking lot behind the hospital because the mortuary is overflowing with even more corpses.

``Good health and strength!'' the advertisement on the side of the truck says above a collage of colored milk cartons in vivid colors. A generator hums softly next to the vehicle, keeping its contents cold.

TEMPORARY GRAVES

The Israeli army said it had no figures for Palestinian fatalities in Nablus, and added it was checking the policy on burials.

The dead are being lowered into shallow temporary graves, covered in palm leaves in the Islamic tradition. Three corpses have been buried in the hospital garden.

And in the old quarter of Nablus, stone steps lead up a narrow alley toward a wooden door between houses with arched windows their residents say are centuries old. The door swings open onto a lilac-scented garden.

Under the shade of lush almond and peach trees, two indentations in the ground mark the spot where 13 Palestinians have been buried in a temporary mass grave.

Palm fronds fan across the soil. Two military-style olive green overcoats are splayed in the dirt, riddled with what look like shrapnel perforations.

``We buried them here,'' said Nafez Eissa, whose home opens up onto the garden. ``We will dig them up when the Israeli army withdraws and give them a decent burial in the cemetery.''

And in the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, the Abu Aisha family buried their 11-year old son Qusay near their home. He was shot dead with two bullets in his chest during the Israeli army incursion into the camp on Tuesday.

NABLUS'S BATTLE-SCARRED CASBAH

Inside the Old City, known locally as the Casbah, or bazaar, hundreds of fighters mingled with Palestinian police and security forces of Arafat's Palestinian Authority in preparation before the Israeli incursion.

Graffiti on the walls urging more militant attacks is scrawled next to signs which urge residents not to park in driveways.

Blood stains spatter the rubble in front of scorched groceries and shops. The facades of houses are busted through with gaping holes residents say were made by helicopter rocket attacks. Bomb-blasted buildings have been reduced to mounds of yellow stone and dust.

The door of the 300-year old Al-Beik mosque in the old quarter is spattered with blood from the dead and injured who were brought into the prayer room, which was transformed into a temporary operating theater and first aid station.

Blood-caked surgical instruments soak in dirty water, and plastic sheeting covers the floors under the mosque's sparkling chandeliers.

Israeli tanks had sealed off the narrow alleyways into the old quarter during days of fierce fighting.

``After the incursion we turned the mosque into a hospital,'' said Doctor Tawfik Ghazal. ``We could not evacuate injured Palestinians from the old city. We tried to save lives in the street under gunfire.

``I saw four patients due before my eyes because we had no blood for infusions and no proper facilities. We worked under very difficult conditions.''

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[Did Israelis used depleted uranium rounds in their US-supplied Apache helicopters? et]

Lives Reduced to Rubble
Jenin Camp Is a Scene of Devastation But Yields No Evidence of a Massacre

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56619-2002Apr15?language=printer

JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- The heart of this battered Palestinian shantytown of 13,000 inhabitants has been erased from the face of the earth, its maze of apartment houses and twisting streets bulldozed by the Israeli military into a vast crater of broken concrete.

The crater -- about the size of two square city blocks -- lies at the end of a dusty river of destruction that looks as if it swept through in a fierce flood, taking with it sad souvenirs from the homes and lives it obliterated: a hand-knit blue sweater, a lace window curtain, cooking pots, a car sliced in half.

The rubble has obscured many facts, but some are indisputable. Some of the most brutal urban battles, heaviest air barrages and most devastating ground tactics in more than two weeks of Israeli assaults against Palestinian towns and communities across the West Bank have been waged here.

Others are less clear. Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops.

Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the Israeli military and aid groups.

"Everybody was thinking mass graves in the way we think of Kosovo," said Guy Siri, deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. "I don't think we have seen that."

Residents related numerous accounts of individual killings of noncombatants. Nasser Abu Hatab, a mentally disabled man, was shot once in the head and nine times in the chest by soldiers when he failed to follow orders to leave his house minutes before it was bulldozed, they said. Hafaf Dusoky, 54, apparently did not answer a jittery soldier's knock quickly enough and was shot dead through the door.

Residents also said that Israeli war tactics became especially harsh after 13 soldiers were killed April 9 in an elaborate ambush set by Palestinian fighters in the camp. One resident said he counted 71 helicopter missile attacks within a 30-minute period the night after the ambush, nearly as many as had been fired previously in an entire night. Residents also said the military stepped up the pace of the bulldozings and stopped giving them advance warnings to leave their homes.

Ali Damaj said he peeked through his kitchen window as a bulldozer leveled his entire neighborhood -- first one house, then two, then six. Suddenly, he said, he was watching the wall of his neighbor's house push his refrigerator across the room.

"I felt the house shaking back and forth," said Damaj, whose house was left partially standing. "I was in a state of shock. My hair was standing on end."

Abdul Hassan Bahaldin, 26, said he heard the first tanks roll into the camp from all four sides of town at around midnight on April 3. "It sounded terrible, it was very frightening, the kids started screaming, we panicked," he said.

All 21 members of his family who lived in a house on the edge of the camp scampered into what they considered the safest room, the basement. They had already stockpiled supplies. A few hours later they heard footsteps on the floor above them and soldiers burst into the basement demanding to know, "Where are the men? Where are the men?"

Bahaldin said he knew the soldiers meant fighters for the militant groups that operated in the camp. Israeli officials have called the Jenin refugee camp a nest that housed both suicide bombers and architects of suicide attacks.

The soldiers wore night-vision goggles, communicated with soldiers outside on wireless phones and seemed "frightened" and eager to move on to their next command post, according to Bahaldin, who said they used his three-story home as "a bridge to the camp."

The next day