------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Bush commends Sharon's war, redescribing him as 'a man of peace'
Indian embassy says its official abducted in Islamabad
Bush to Host Next U.S.-E.U. Meeting
Nations Review Nuke Treaty
Nations reviewing nuclear nonproliferation treaty
Nuclear reactor temporarily shut down after short-circuit in Ukraine
IDAHO: ACCORD ON RADIOACTIVE WASTE
Area 51 Workers' Attorney Appeals To Supreme Court
Doubts Are Cast Over Plan for Converting Warheads
Feds Doubt Plutonium Conversion Plan

MILITARY
''A message to troops, would-be troops, and other youth''
LOOSE CANNON
Boeing Signs $4.5B Contract With Korea
U.N. To Indict Kosovo Albanian
Boeing Wins S.Korean Jet Deal
U.S. Bomb Kills Four Canadians In Afghan Unit
U.S. military moves raise fears
Europe Hampered in Mideast Peace Talks
European Poll Faults U.S. for Its Policy in the Mideast
India Blames Pakistan for Explosions
Indian military to train with U.S. forces in Alaska
Iran takes hostile tone toward United States
U.S. has completed 'basics' of plan to attack Iraq
US Planes Bomb Northern Iraq
Conflict in Gaza Strip Escalates After Withdrawal in Jenin
U.S. Technology Aids al - Qaida Hunt
U.N. Envoy Calls Camp 'Horrifying'
Annan Seeks Probe Of Israelis at Jenin
UN Council Approves Fact - Finding Mission for Jenin
U.S. PLANS MILITARY AID INCREASE TO BAHRAIN
US to spend £90m on air base in Oman
A Repaired USS Cole Sails Again
Rumsfeld Resisting Calls From Military to Build Up Forces
Rumsfeld says U.S. capable of fighting 2nd war

POLICE / PRISONERS
Border Security Bill Clears Senate
Malnutrition, Disease Rampant at Prison for Taliban

ENERGY AND OTHER
Senate Vote Blocks Drilling in Refuge
Senate Seeks to Wrap Up Energy Bill
Utility Buys Out Contaminated Ohio Town
Spain Is Racist in Its Treatment of Immigrants




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

Bush commends Sharon's war, redescribing him as 'a man of peace'

Palestine-Israel, Politics,
4/19/2002
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/020419/2002041911.html

[....]

People coming from the occupied Palestinian territories and experts at UNRWA said that they found in Jenin camp internationally banned weapons and bullets of 5 mm caliber used by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinians.

Jordanian medical sources said that one of the wounded who was admitted in one of the Jordanian hospitals was hit by a uranium depleted bullet.

[....]

-------- india / pakistan

Indian embassy says its official abducted in Islamabad

Fri Apr 19, 2002
By AMIR ZIA,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020419/ap_wo_en_ge/pakistan_india_7

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Indian High Commission on Friday alleged that one of its staffers was abducted in Islamabad by Pakistani intelligence personnel, apparently in retaliation for the arrest of a Pakistani diplomat earlier in the week.

The staffer, identified only as Khana, was picked up outside his home in the Pakistani capital's diplomatic enclave when he was coming to the office Friday morning, said Indian High Commission spokesman Rahul Rasgotra. He said a complaint was immediately lodged with Pakistani foreign ministry.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, said he had no knowledge of the incident.

No other details were immediately available.

The two South Asian rivals regularly accuse each other's diplomats of spying charges and expel them. It is also not unusual for them to accuse one another of abducting embassy staffers.

On Wednesday, Pakistan accused India of abducting and torturing one of its diplomats, Ali Abbas, in New Delhi.

Indian External Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao acknowledged that Abbas was in Indian custody on a spying charge, but denied he had been "abducted" and said there had been "no maltreatment."

Tensions between the two nuclear nations have escalated since a Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament, which India blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups and Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence. The Pakistan government and the rebel groups have denied the charge.

Since then, the two countries have amassed a total of more than 1 million troops along their shared border.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

-------- missile defense

Bush to Host Next U.S.-E.U. Meeting

The Associated Press
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17013-2002Apr19?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will be the host for the annual U.S.-European Union meeting in Washington on May 2.

"The United States and the European Union have a rich and close agenda of cooperation," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday.

"The president looks forward to this opportunity to review our trans-Atlantic agenda with European Council President Jose Maria Aznar (of Spain) and European Commission President Romano Prodi," Fleischer said.

At last year's meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, Bush sparred with European leaders over his missile defense plans and his rejection of the Kyoto treaty on global warming.

-------- treaties

Nations Review Nuke Treaty

By Gerald Nadler
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18145-2002Apr19?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS -- Nations reviewing the keystone Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty said Friday the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms even more imperative, and urged Iraq to open its country to U.N. arms inspectors.

The report, adopted by 137 nations, also expressed concern at the U.S. decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - another basic arms control pact - and build a missile shield, saying it could lead to a new arms race that could extend into outer space.

The two-week meeting at U.N. headquarters was the first to prepare for a major review in 2005 of implementation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - the cornerstone accord aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. It was the first meeting since the Sept. 11 attacks and the first since President Bush took office.

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have given an even greater sense of urgency to the common efforts of all states in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation," said the report by the conference chairman, Sweden's Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament Henrik Salander.

"Reinforcing of the non-proliferation regime (is) imperative to prevent the use of nuclear materials and technologies for criminal purposes," the document said.

Iraq, it said, should allow weapons inspectors back as soon as possible to verify the Arab country has not developed weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes.

Baghdad - which signed the NPT - is under sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and they cannot be lifted until inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been eliminated. Iraq has refused to let inspectors back, insisting it has complied with the U.N. resolutions.

The treaty reviewers called on the four states that are not part of the NPT - Cuba, India, Israel and Pakistan - to join the pact. India, Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons. If they joined the accord, they would have to give the weapons up.

The review also urged the United States and China to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prevents all nuclear testing. Although the United States signed the pact, the Bush administration no longer supports it and said it has no intention of sending it to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

"If the United States does not take seriously its own treaty commitments, it risks undermining the NPT's vital role in preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons," said Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Policy. The institute is a non-profit organization that monitored the two-week conference.

Many states also were deeply concerned about the Bush adminstration's review of U.S. nuclear policy which spoke of plans to develop new nuclear weapons and new uses for nuclear weapons - such as an earth-penetrating warhead.

The U.S. nuclear review published in January indicated that following Sept. 11 the United States is keeping all its options open, including the possible testing of new nuclear weapons.

William Peden of the environmental group Greenpeace charged that the nuclear weapons states - Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States - have done nothing to reduce their nuclear arsenals, and called the two-week meeting "a spring cleaning exercise."

Unless the five big nuclear states take the lead, Peden said, how can they exhort India and Pakistan to give up their nuclear weapons. The Subcontinent nations say they need nuclear arms for defense.

Johnson accused the Bush administration of using the horror of the Sept. 11 tragedy to push through a hard-line unilateral foreign policy, noting Washington had left the multilateral Kyoto climate treaty, the ABM pact with Russia, and intends not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The next session to prepare for the 2005 review conference will be held in Geneva from April 28 to May 9, 2003.

-------

Nations reviewing nuclear nonproliferation treaty;
consider Sept. 11 terror attacks

Fri Apr 19, 2002
By GERALD NADLER,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020420/ap_wo_en_ge/un_nuclear_treaty_3

UNITED NATIONS - Nations reviewing the keystone Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms even more imperative, and urged Iraq to open its country to U.N. arms inspectors.

The report, adopted by 137 nations and released Friday, also expressed concern at the U.S. decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - another basic arms control pact - and build a missile shield, saying it could lead to a new arms race that could extend into outer space.

The two-week meeting at U.N. headquarters was the first to prepare for a major review in 2005 of implementation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - the cornerstone accord aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. It was the first meeting since the Sept. 11 attacks and the first since U.S. President George W. Bush took office.

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have given an even greater sense of urgency to the common efforts of all states in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation," said the report by the conference chairman Henrik Salander, Sweden's ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament.

"Reinforcing of the non-proliferation regime (is) imperative to prevent the use of nuclear materials and technologies for criminal purposes," the document said.

Iraq, it said, should allow weapons inspectors back as soon as possible to verify the Arab country has not developed weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes.

Baghdad - which signed the NPT - is under sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and they cannot be lifted until inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been eliminated. Iraq has refused to let inspectors back, insisting it has complied with the U.N. resolutions.

The treaty reviewers called on the four states that are not part of the NPT - Cuba, India, Israel and Pakistan - to join the pact. India, Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons. If they joined the accord, they would have to give the weapons up.

The review also urged the United States and China to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prevents all nuclear testing. Although the United States signed the pact, the Bush administration no longer supports it and said it has no intention of sending it to the U.S. Senate for ratification.

"If the United States does not take seriously its own treaty commitments, it risks undermining the NPT's vital role in preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons," said Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Policy. The institute is a non-profit organization that monitored the two-week conference.

Many states also were deeply concerned about the Bush administration's review of U.S. nuclear policy which spoke of plans to develop new nuclear weapons and new uses for nuclear weapons - such as an earth-penetrating warhead.

The U.S. nuclear review published in January indicated that following Sept. 11 the United States is keeping all its options open, including the possible testing of new nuclear weapons.

William Peden of the environmental group Greenpeace charged that the nuclear weapons states - Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States - have done nothing to reduce their nuclear arsenals, and called the two-week meeting "a spring cleaning exercise."

Unless the five big nuclear states take the lead, Peden said, how can they exhort India and Pakistan to give up their nuclear weapons? The Subcontinent nations say they need nuclear arms for defense.

Johnson accused the Bush administration of using the horror of the Sept. 11 tragedy to push through a hard-line unilateral foreign policy, noting Washington had left the multilateral Kyoto climate treaty, the ABM pact with Russia, and does not intend to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The next session to prepare for the 2005 review conference will be held in Geneva from April 28 to May 9, 2003.

-------- ukraine

Nuclear reactor temporarily shut down after short-circuit in Ukraine

Fri Apr 19, 2002
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020419/ap_wo_en_ge/ukraine_nuclear_3

KIEV, Ukraine - A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Rivne nuclear power plant was shut down temporarily after a short-circuit in electricity lines, officials said Friday.

The safety system prompted plant workers to turn off reactor No. 3 on Thursday evening, the Energoatom state nuclear company said. The reactor was restarted about four hours later.

It was the second incident in five days at the Rivne plant. On Sunday, workers shut down the No. 3 reactor after detecting a hydrogen leak in the generator's cooling system.

Ukraine was the site of world's worst nuclear disaster in April 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl atomic plant exploded. The plant was closed for good in 2000. Minor malfunctions occur frequently at the country's four other atomic power plants.

Currently, 10 nuclear reactors are working and producing about 40 percent of the country's electricity output, while three reactors are undergoing repairs.

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

-------- idaho

IDAHO: ACCORD ON RADIOACTIVE WASTE

New York Times
April 19, 2002
National Briefing: Northwest
Matthew Preusch (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/national/19BRFS7.html

Federal and state negotiators have agreed on a plan to clean up radioactive waste in Pit 9 at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said, ending a decadelong dispute. Under the agreement, the federal government will pay the state $800,000 in fines for delays in the cleanup and will establish a $5 million reserve fund to pay any future penalties if the projects is further delayed.

-------- nevada

Area 51 Workers' Attorney Appeals To Supreme Court

By Tony Batt Donrey,
Washington Bureau,
Las Vegas Review-Journal
4-19-2
http://www.rense.com/general24/appeal.htm

WASHINGTON - The attorney for workers at Area 51, the classified base in the Nellis Air Force Range, has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a court order protecting information about the base.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, claims two workers died from exposure to toxic waste burning at the base, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

"What happened was an outrage, and we will remain active in pursuing justice," Turley said Monday.

Turley filed the appeal July 27, asking the Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The appeals court, in a 3-0 decision on Jan. 8, upheld the Air Force's claim that disclosure of the information Turley seeks could endanger national security and violate a 1995 order by President Clinton.

The appeals court ruled that five current and former workers at the base and the widows of the two dead workers, all represented by Turley, are not entitled to learn whether hazardous substances exist at Area 51 or how they are handled. The court also ruled that the results of a federal inspection of the base and even its name could not be disclosed. Turley's request for a rehearing was rejected on April 24.

Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said Monday the department has not been notified of Turley's appeal to the Supreme Court but would have 45 days to respond "and we will."

The Supreme Court is out of session until October. When the justices return, it should take about six weeks for them to decide whether to consider the Area 51 case.

Turley acknowledged his appeal is a long shot, noting that few cases are accepted by the Supreme Court. But he said the issues in the Area 51 lawsuit should interest some justices.

"The 9th Circuit's ruling seemed to create new law in national security as well as environmental law that contradicts past Supreme Court rulings," he said. "This case has many of the elements the court looks for. The question is whether a sufficient number of justices will be interested."

Turley has raised his national profile in recent weeks by appearing on several television talk shows to criticize Clinton's actions in response to allegations of sexual misconduct with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"If the president had shown a fraction of the concern for the workers (at Area 51) that he has shown for his own case, this case would have ended long ago," Turley said.

The White House referred a phone call about Turley's comments to the National Security Council, which did not respond.

-------- south carolina

Doubts Are Cast Over Plan for Converting Warheads

New York Times
April 19, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/politics/19PLUT.html

ATLANTA - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has expressed doubt about the Bush administration's $3.8 billion plan to convert nuclear warheads to power-plant fuel, raising questions about whether it will become the nation's principal method of disposing of plutonium once aimed at the Soviet Union.

The doubts expressed by the commission, which is independent, appear to bolster the contention of the State of South Carolina that plutonium scheduled to be shipped from Colorado next month may never be converted to fuel at a government plant on the Savannah River.

South Carolina's governor, Jim Hodges, has threatened to block the shipments with state troopers unless the federal government guarantees that the plutonium will be removed from the state if the conversion program collapses.

The conversion plan is part of the 1996 agreement between the United States and Russia to decommission most of their cold war missiles and render the plutonium inside unusable for weapons. In January, the Bush administration announced that it had settled on a plan to process the warheads into mixed-oxide fuel for power plants, but the plan is contingent upon the Russians doing the same.

Most of the converted fuel, known as MOX, would have gone to two nuclear power plants in North Carolina and South Carolina run by the Duke Energy Corporation. In February, Duke officials told the regulatory commission that the conversion plan might never happen.

"Substantial uncertainties and contingencies continue to surround the program," the company wrote in a legal memorandum. It said the program's future depended on Russia's cooperation, future decisions by the federal Department of Energy, and the ability of the department to get a license for the conversion plant.

At the time, Duke was fighting off a challenge by two environmental groups, which argued that the company's reactor licenses should not be renewed if Duke planned to use the untested MOX fuel. On April 12, the regulatory commission dismissed the environmental groups' challenge, saying the future of the MOX program was so uncertain that it should not be the basis of a license challenge.

The commission said "we see no reason to doubt Duke's statement" that the MOX program was riddled with uncertainties, and it said any number of events could occur in the next six years that would make it impossible to use the converted fuel in a power plant.

The statement was welcomed in the South Carolina governor's office, which said it had every right to worry that the plutonium would not be processed and would remain in the state permanently.

"The Duke and N.R.C. statements validate Governor Hodges's position against allowing plutonium into South Carolina without an ironclad agreement that it will be removed," said Cortney Owings, a spokeswoman for the governor. "There are a lot of questions that need to be answered involving this process."

The Department of Energy has said it must begin shipping plutonium from the Rocky Flats nuclear site outside Denver by May 15, or it will not make its deadline to close down the site by 2006.

Ambassador Linton Brooks, chief of the Energy Department's nuclear nonproliferation programs, said today that the regulatory commission's position simply stated the obvious fact that the program was not finished yet. But Mr. Brooks said resolving the dispute with South Carolina would eliminate much of that uncertainty.

"There are a lot of things that we need to make sure come out right, and that's why we're so anxious that we resolve the issue with the state," he said. "The biggest impediment to getting the Russian program going is uncertainty about our program."

The department's insistence that the shipments begin quickly was supported on Wednesday by the Kaiser-Hill Company, a private contractor that is cleaning up the Rocky Flats site for the department. In November, the president of the company said it did not matter when the first shipments began, but in Wednesday's statement, the company agreed with the department that the shipments must begin by late spring or the deadline would not be met.

Company officials said they had a strict timetable that required the plutonium to be removed by 2003, so full decontamination of the site could begin. The shipments from Colorado to South Carolina are estimated to take at least a year, assuming Governor Hodges allows the trucks in.

Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado, who has led the effort to close Rocky Flats, said the administration's support of immediate shipments from his state had nothing to do with his re-election campaign, as South Carolina officials have charged, but with the need to ensure that the agreement with Russia was proceeding.

"This issue has never been about Colorado vs. South Carolina," Mr. Allard said. "It has always been about national security."

If the shipments do not begin in 30 days, he said, "our national security and environmental safety will be compromised."

--------

Feds Doubt Plutonium Conversion Plan

New York Times
April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14985-2002Apr19?language=printer

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The agency that oversees the nation's commercial nuclear reactors says there is no guarantee that a controversial federal program to turn plutonium from nuclear weapons into fuel for reactors will ever start.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressed its concerns in a memorandum filed in a relicensing case last week. Gov. Jim Hodges' office says it validates his fight to keep federal shipments of plutonium out of the state, a fight that could lead to a showdown with federal officials next month.

The regulatory agency agreed with Duke Energy Corp., which also worries whether a program to convert the plutonium at the federal nuclear facility called the Savannah River Site will fail before it begins. The Savannah River Site is south of Aiken, near the Georgia state line.

Duke Energy's concerns were filed as part of the utility's plans to relicense several nuclear power plants that would use the new form of fuel made from weapons-grade plutonium, company spokesman Tom Shiel said. The new nuclear fuel is called mixed oxide or MOX.

In its memo, the NRC wrote that agency officials ``see no reason to doubt Duke's statement that its submittal of a MOX license amendment application is uncertain.''

Cortney Owings, Hodges' spokeswoman, said the NRC and Duke misgivings about the feasibility of converting to use of MOX ``validate Governor Hodges' position'' against allowing plutonium into the state.

``There are a lot of questions that need to be answered involving this process,'' she told The New York Times.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has said his intention is to begin shipments of 76 trailer loads of plutonium from the former nuclear weapons facility in Rocky Flats, Colo., to South Carolina shortly after May 15. The shipments would continue through June 2003.

Hodges, a Democrat, wants Abraham to sign documents that could be enforced by the courts assuring the plutonium won't be stranded in South Carolina if the Energy Department changes its plans. He has said he is ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them.

Abraham says he would commit to taking the plutonium out of the state if the plan falls through, but does not want courts to be involved in national security decisions.

Department of Energy spokesman Joe Davis said the government is so committed to the MOX program that it has pledged to spend $4 billion over the next 20 years.

``This is the policy of the United States,'' he said.

Besides, he said, the NRC's doubts about the program are Hodges' fault. ``It's because the governor won't agree to allow us to move forward,'' he said.

The MOX program is part of an international arms agreement between the U.S. and Russia in which each country pledged to convert some of their plutonium used to arm nuclear missiles into fuel.


-------- MILITARY

''A message to troops, would-be troops, and other youth''

Friday, April 19, 2002
By Jeff Paterson,
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States)
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=221

Do you know anyone in the military, or thinking about signing up soon? Pass this along to them. They may or may not appreciate it, but they deserve a heads up.

In August of 1990, I was an active duty U.S. Marine Corps Corporal. I was ordered to the Middle East; we were on the verge of the Gulf War. Four years prior, thinking I had nothing better to do with my life, I had walked into the Salinas, California recruiting station and told them to "put me where I was most needed."

"What am I going to do with my life?" has always been a huge question for young people. Today, in the wake of the horror and tragedy of September 11th, this question has increased in importance for millions of young people.

No one who has seen the images will ever forget them. In a scene as unreal as the Matrix, a conflict reached into American reality in an unthinkable way. From copy clerks to administrative assistants, restaurant workers to firefighters, thousands of lives were ripped away from friends and family as those hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center. Now the television shouts, "revenge," "infinite justice," and "something must be done!" America continues to wave red, white and blue flag to ease the sorrow; to declare, "We're not going to take it."

If it weren't for those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be like the youth who are walking to the U.S. military recruiters right now, wanting to fight for their country. During my four years, most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared struggle against "American interests" in their homelands, specifically Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.

I saw dire poverty in the Philippines; U.S. government-sanctioned prostitution rings to service the U.S. Armed Forces in South Korea; and unbridled racism towards the people of Okinawa and Japan, where the standard response to a child waving a "peace sign" at us with his fingers was "yea, ha, ha; two bombs little gook."

I began to understand why billions of people around the world really do hate the United States - specifically its war machine, covert "contra" wars, and the whole system of economic globalization that replaces hope with 12-hour days locked in sweatshops producing "Designed in the USA" exports.

Faced with this reality, I began the process of becoming un-American; meaning, the interests of the people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest.

When the U.S. launched the Gulf War, I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop deployment. Although they did not look much like me, I found that I had more in common with the common peoples of the Middle East than I did with those who were ordering me to kill them. My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag-heads until they all glow" was not reassuring.

Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist, and I pledged that if I were dragged out into the Saudi desert, I would refuse to fight.

A few weeks later, I sat down on an airstrip as hundreds of Marines, many of whom I had lived with for years, filed past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from a military brig, and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped spring me, we fought the war in the streets.

But back then we failed to stop the war. Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi people have died, not mainly from the massive U.S. bombing which continues from the sky, but from a decade of economic sanctions. All the while the U.S. government has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are not "worth it" in order to achieve strategic regional objectives. So today, as the U.S. government demands the world mourn with us for our loss, we in turn are expected to ignore the suffering that this nation produces.

Every time the U.S. war machine is kicked into high gear, acknowledgements are made about past "mistakes" such as: Gulf War sickness, Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam, massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear exposure guinea pigs after World War II, internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Yet after this acknowledgement comes: "Trust us, this time it will be different." But it never is.

One need not be a pacifist, a communist, a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose this current "War on Terrorism." However, it certainly helps to be an internationalist, realizing that our collective future is bound up with the majority of humanity, and not with those who are taking this horrific opportunity to wage war.

For the women and men in uniform, you have to make a choice. Silence is what your "superiors" expect of you, but the interests of humanity expect more. Think. Speak out. And if you make the choice to resist, there are hundreds of thousands who will support you - many of whom have already taken to the streets to oppose this war.

Like his father before him, Bush Jr. has drawn a line in the sand: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Simply put, the rulers of the U.S. see much unfinished business for their "New World Order." While we grieve, they announce that "the normal rules no longer apply" (translation: now is the time to settle our scores), and we have "a blank check to act, the nation is united" (translation: dissent will be ignored, or suppressed, as required). Now, more than ever, the people of the world, along with American citizens, are not safe from the U.S. government.

I will not wave the red, white and blue flag; instead, I will wear a green ribbon in solidarity with immigrants and Arab-Americans facing increased racist attacks.

Stop the War. Support U.S. troops who refuse to fight.

Let's dedicate our live to changing this situation.

Jeff Paterson encourages your comments: USrefusenik@yahoo.com

----

LOOSE CANNON

From Tom Newton Dunn At Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan,
And Andy Lines, U.S. Editor
Apr 19 2002
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=11800733&method=full&siteid=50143

FOUR Canadian soldiers were killed when a US reservist jet pilot dropped a laser-guided bomb on them as they practised shooting on a rifle range.

Eight others were injured - one critically - when the pilot attacked them believing he was himself under fire.

CASUALTY: US soldiers in Germany carry a wounded Canadian

US military officials said last night the pilot, a member of the Air National Guard, was on night patrol in a F-16 Falcon when he reported enemy fire from the ground.

He was denied permission to drop his weapon but was told to mark the target and return for a second look.

On the second fly-over he again saw shooting but was denied permission to return fire unless he felt he was acting in self-defence. After seeing more firing he dropped the 500lb bomb. The soldiers were on a firing range which was a former al-Qaeda training camp three miles from Kandahar. It was clearly marked out on maps as a training area.

The F-16 bomber was on a routine patrol waiting to offer air support to ground forces.

The bombing brings the death toll from coalition friendly fire in Afghanistan to seven in two incidents. It could rise to eight with the outcome of an inquiry into the death of a US Special Forces soldier.

After the deaths, President Bush telephoned Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien to offer condolences.

Bush said later: "Canada's fallen heroes and their families are in our hearts and prayers."

He praised Canada: "It is shouldering great burdens and making tremendous sacrifices to make the world a safer place for all people."

Mr Chretien told his nation that any questions raised by the incident would be answered.

He said: "President Bush has pledged full co-operation in the investigation that is already under way." His defence chief Gen Ray Henault added: "My understanding is that there was no hostile activity in the area.

"How this sort of thing could happen is a mystery to us. But we remain committed in our duty to this campaign."

US officials at Bagram yesterday vigorously defended the Air National Guard, most of whom are former full-time warplane pilots or civilian pilots for most of the year. Maj Brian Hilfrety said: "It may not necessarily be right to blame this tragedy on the fact that the pilot was a reserve. Some of our very best and most experienced men are exactly that."

Both the Canadian and US flags at Kandahar airport flew at half-mast yesterday out of respect for the dead.

-------- arms sales

Boeing Signs $4.5B Contract With Korea

By Soo-Jeong Lee
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15621-2002Apr19?language=printer

SEOUL, South Korea -- Boeing Co. won a $4.5 billion contract Friday to build 40 F-15K fighter jets for South Korea's air force, the country's defense ministry said.

Boeing's F-15K beat out the Rafale made by French firm Dassault in the competition to build a fleet of new jets for the South Korean air force by 2009, the ministry said in a news release.

General Electric Co. will build the engines for the Boeing jets, it said.

The Russian Sukhoi Su-35 and the Eurofighter Typhoon were also vying for the project. Both were eliminated in a first round of bidding last month.

The Su-35 was the cheapest plane to buy and maintain, and the Rafale deal offered the most generous technology transfer. South Korea's defense ministry declined to disclose which plane it considered the front-runner in combat capabilities.

The F-15K had been the front-runner in competition for the contract because of South Korea's close military ties with the United States.

About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and South Korea has tried to make sure that new weapons systems are compatible with the United States' systems.

The contract is a boon for Chicago-based Boeing, which last year lost the largest U.S. defense contract in history - the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter project - to rival Lockheed Martin Corp.

The F-15 is a product of Boeing's St. Louis-based Military Aircraft and Missile Systems division. But the loss of the Joint Stroke Fighter contract left the long-term future of jet fighter production in St. Louis in doubt just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had decimated orders in the company's commercial division.

Jerry Daniels, president and CEO of Boeing Military Aircraft and Missile Systems, said the contract with South Korea will sustain at least 1,000 jobs for employees now working on the F-15 program.

"This is a great shot in the arm, a great boost in morale to a team that could sure use the victory at this time," Daniels said.

At full production, several thousand Boeing workers staff the F-15 line in St. Louis, but - prior to the Korean decision - the company only had orders for 10 planes from the Pentagon.

Those final 10 jet orders existed primarily to keep the line open while Boeing competed for the South Korean and other international business.

Dassault claims that its Rafale outdid the F-15 in the first-round appraisal of combat capabilities, and has accused the defense ministry of adopting the playoff format as "a lifesaver for the U.S. competitor."

"The decision is not fair," said Yves Robins, Dassault's vice president of international relations, shortly after Friday's announcement.

Dassault had earlier asked a South Korean court to freeze the competition. The court had been expected to rule on the case later this month. "We will proceed with our legal action," Robins said Friday.

General Electric prevailed over United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney unit to build the engines for the F-15Ks.

The contract calls for 80 engines, plus eight spares, worth a total of about $340 million. They are to be delivered beginning in 2005 and continuing through 2008, GE officials said.

In midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Boeing shares were down 40 cents at $43.30 while GE shares fell 6 cents to $33.74.

-------- balkans

U.N. To Indict Kosovo Albanian

April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kosovo-War-Crimes.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The chief U.N. prosecutor said Friday that a Balkan war crimes tribunal that has so far focused on Serbian suspects may finish investigations into ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo later this year and hand down indictments.

Carla del Ponte met top Kosovo officials at the end of a three-day Balkan tour in which she pressed governments in Bosnia and Serbia to hand over indicted suspects for trial in The Hague, Netherlands.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal has been criticized for alleged bias against Serbs. Most of those indicted for crimes in the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovo wars are Serbs held responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. No ethnic Albanian has been publicly indicted so far for wrongdoing.

But Del Ponte said her investigators hoped to finish probes later this year into three cases involving suspects from the Kosovo Liberation Army, a rebel group that fought for independence of the Yugoslav province.

``I'm sure that this year we will issue the first indictment,'' she said.

Standing at her side, Michael Steiner, the top U.N. official running the province, said his mission will offer full support to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, regardless of their origin.

``There is no nationality when it comes to war crimes,'' Steiner said.

Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova and Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi pledged their support.

``We have said before that no one stands above the law,'' Rexhepi said. ``The tribunal has the right to investigate in every place where the fighting took place.''

NATO's air war in 1999 ended former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians that left at least 10,000 of them killed. Milosevic is currently on trial in the Hague.

A committee gathering information on crimes against humanity and violations of international law in Belgrade says 3,276 Serbs and other non-Albanians are missing since the 1998-2001 conflict in Kosovo.

Most of the victims were killed or abducted after NATO-led peacekeepers and the United Nations took over the province in June 1999, according to the committee.

On Friday, assailants hurled a hand grenade into the last Serb-owned restaurant in the predominantly ethnic Albanian town of Presevo in southern Serbia, near the Kosovo border. No one was injured, but the restaurant was ruined, a Yugoslav government statement said.

-------- business

Boeing Wins S.Korean Jet Deal

New York Times
April 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-korea-fighter.html

SEOUL - South Korea awarded a $4.5 billion fighter jet deal to Boeing Co Friday, opting to stay with U.S. military suppliers despite a strong challenge from European rivals.

The latest version of Boeing's F-15 won over the Rafale from Dassault Aviation SA, though the French firm said it would pursue an injunction filed earlier this month seeking to overturn the decision.

``We considered security, foreign policy and economic factors (making the decision),'' a Ministry of National Defense statement said.

The ministry narrowed a four-way race to two finalists last month and in a final round of evaluation Seoul's close defense and trade relations with Washington proved decisive.

There are 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and the bulk of aircraft and weapons systems used are from U.S. manufacturers.

ENGINE DEAL HISTORIC

Seoul also chose U.S. manufacturing titan General Electric Co to supply engines for the F-15K, marking a first in the F-15's 28-year history. The engine deal is expected to be worth $350 million.

GE edged out United Technologies unit Pratt & Whitney which had supplied engines for every F-15 ever sold.

This week, a defense ministry investigation concluded that a fighter jet crash in February was due to a problem with a Pratt & Whitney engine in the third such incident in South Korea involving the same engine since 1997.

FRENCH PROTEST

Dassault spokesman Yves Robins said Dassault hoped a court ruling due in late April or early May might overturn the jet fighter selection.

Dassault filed an injunction this month demanding South Korean officials reveal details of their two-year evaluation in which the French firm maintains it offered better technology and a cheaper price than the U.S. aircraft maker.

``Rafale won this evaluation but will not be awarded this contract,'' Robins said by telephone from Paris.

``The injunction is intended to stop the process of the acquisition,'' he said. ``The Korean ministry of defense has once more made its choice solely for ROK (Republic of Korea)-U.S. political considerations.''

INDIGENOUS FIGHTER

Boeing in a statement called the bidding process ``one of the most honorable and tough'' evaluations it had been through.

The deal is expected to include almost $3 billion in jobs and technology for South Korea, which hopes to develop its own fighter by 2015.

``I know the F-X project will deliver the value and longevity that Korea requires,'' Jerry Daniels, Boeing's president for military aircraft and missile systems, said in the company's statement.

``We will provide the foundation for Korea's indigenous fighter.''

Seoul is expected to take delivery of its F-15K fighters between 2005 and 2009.

The twin-engined F-15K will become South Korea's top fighter, with air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-to-surface (sea) capabilities.

South Korea also flies the smaller, single-engined KF-16, a locally built version of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-16.

EUROPEANS OUT

European rivals had hoped to unseat U.S. makers in supplying South Korea. Dassault is still hunting for its first export order for the Rafale.

Orders from the French government have been slower than expected and the South Korean deal offered one of the larger contracts expected as countries such as Singapore and Australia shop for new fighters.

European consortium Eurofighter GmbH, eliminated with Russia's Sukhoi from the competition last month, had hoped to land its first non-European order for the Typhoon fighter.

Eurofighter is owned by European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co NV of Germany and France, Britain's BAE Systems Plc and Finmeccanica SpA of Italy.

It plans to deliver the first Typhoons to Britain and Germany late this year.

-------- canada

U.S. Bomb Kills Four Canadians In Afghan Unit

By Peter Baker and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12091-2002Apr18?language=printer

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Four Canadian soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan early today when a U.S. warplane mistakenly bombed them during a military exercise, prompting anguished demands for answers in Canada as the country mourned the first combat fatalities among its forces in a half-century.

At least one U.S. Air National Guard pilot flying an F-16 fighter on patrol passed over the Canadian troops near the southern city of Kandahar, apparently unaware that a nighttime live-fire training drill was underway, military officials said. The pilot mistakenly thought he was under attack and dropped one or two 500-pound laser-guided bombs, killing the four soldiers and injuring eight other Canadians, according to officials.

Some of the wounded were reported to have suffered life-threatening injuries. Most were flown to a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, but two of the soldiers who suffered minor injuries remained in Kandahar.

The soldiers killed were the first Canadian troops to die during a combat mission since the Korean War of 1950-53, although others have been killed during peacekeeping operations. Seventy-eight Canadians died fighting under the U.S. flag in Vietnam.

The incident was one of the deadliest friendly-fire episodes of the six-month-old war in Afghanistan and triggered consternation not only in Ottawa but also among other partners in the U.S.-led military coalition here. Because British, French, Australian, Afghan and other troops also have been fighting alongside Americans, the operation has required close coordination to avoid lethal errors.

U.S. and Canadian officials launched investigations into the bombing.

President Bush called Prime Minister Jean Chretien to express his condolences. In a written statement, Bush said he told Chretien of his "deepest sorrow and sympathy at this tragic accident."

"We will work together with Canada in a thorough and timely investigation," said Bush, adding: "We will draw every possible lesson from what happened and do everything we can to protect coalition forces engaged in this vitally important mission."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld released a statement expressing "deep regret and sadness over the tragic accident in Afghanistan that killed and wounded a number of Canadian troops. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them, their comrades, and their families."

The Canadian training exercise was being conducted about nine miles south of the base at Kandahar when at least one U.S. warplane flew overhead at 1:55 a.m. today.

Marine Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, said an Air National Guard F-16 dropped a single laser-guided, 500-pound bomb on Canadian forces operating near Kandahar. He declined to identify the pilot or the pilot's unit and offered no explanation for why the pilot dropped a bomb on the Canadian troops.

"There's an investigation ongoing that's involving U.S. and Canadian authorities," Lowell said. "You've got to understand the sensitivity behind this. We draw lines when it comes to making comments about other forces."

But a senior defense official at the Pentagon, who asked not to be quoted by name, said preliminary reports indicate that the pilots of two F-16s observed ground fire and thought it might be aimed at them. Stressing that his account was based on "first and early reporting," the official said the pilots "possibly or probably" requested and were denied permission to bomb the target.

The pilots were then given permission to fly back and mark the target by determining its exact location, the official said. "In the process of making that run, one of the guys observed what looked like the other guy taking ground fire and invoked the right of self-defense and dropped the bomb and reported hitting the target," the official said.

The official also said the Canadian troops appear to have been operating in a "designated training area with restricted air space over it." The pilots would not have been seeking to bomb the target had they known Canadian troops were training, the official said, "so you wonder what happened. That's the issue. . . . That's why we had to do an investigation."

Gen. Raymond Henault, Canada's chief of defense staff, said about 100 Canadian soldiers were involved in the training exercise and were using live ammunition. Henault said he did not know which targets they were using but "this was an exercise training on surface-to-surface firing, not ground to air."

"How this sort of thing can happen is a mystery to us," Henault said in Ottawa. "That's what the investigation will determine. I can't speculate on it at this point in time. All I can say is without a doubt there was a misidentification of the Canadians and what they were doing on the ground."

The mistaken bombing of the Canadian troops is the fourth acknowledged incident since the war began Oct. 7 that U.S. warplanes have mistakenly fired on friendly troops. The deadliest also occurred in the south, when B-52 bombers mistakenly bombed U.S. and Afghan forces fighting the Taliban near the city of Tarin Kot on Dec. 5. The attack left three Americans and five of their Afghans allies dead.

While some Canadian officials questioned why Air National Guard pilots would be flying combat missions over Afghanistan, U.S. officers bristled at suggestions that the tragedy might have been caused in part because the pilots were not active-service personnel.

Army Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking, a Pentagon spokesman, said Air National Guard fighter pilots have flown more than 20,000 combat air patrols over U.S. cities since Sept. 11. They have also been involved in patrolling "no-fly" zones over Iraq for several years.

"The Air National Guard has been in theater since the beginning," he said. "They've taken part in airlift, refueling and certainly fighter missions. Our Air National Guard pilots receive the same training as their active duty counterparts."

The U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base north of Kabul, Maj. Bryan Hilferty, said: "They often fly [Boeing] 747s at work and then they come here and fly F-16s, so they're serious, experienced pilots."

Hilferty said accidents such as today's are an inherent risk in wartime. "We are in a very, very dangerous business," he said. "We play with stuff that kills people."

Troops from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group arrived in Afghanistan in January as part of the war against terrorism and up to 800 soldiers have been deployed to help hunt down al Qaeda and Taliban fighters roaming the Afghan countryside. Canadian troops helped mop up the battlefield in the Shahikot mountains in eastern Afghanistan last month after the end of the U.S.-led Operation Anaconda.

British commandos who swept into Shahikot in recent days to chase down any stragglers and prevent enemy guerrillas from reoccupying the area wound up their operation today. Several hundred Royal Marines combed through caves and mountaintops searching for enemy fighters without finding any, but they did discover booby-trapped bodies and new weapons caches that convinced them that al Qaeda had hoped to reclaim the region.

Loeb reported from Washington. Correspondent DeNeen L. Brown in Toronto contributed to this report.

----

U.S. military moves raise fears

April 19, 2002
By Mark Blanchard
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020419-72720468.htm

TORONTO - The Canadian government is under fire from conservatives who fear the nation's sovereignty is threatened by Washington's latest effort to wage war on terrorism in North America.

The Pentagon announced this week a new Northern Command - to begin operating Oct. 1 - that will be responsible for defending the U.S. homeland, including the waters off the East and West coasts.

The problem is that the command, run by U.S. generals, also plans to defend Canada even though Canadian armed forces won't be a part of it.

"It's almost like Canada is a protectorate, that we're depending on the United States," said Leon Benoit, a member of Parliament with the conservative Canadian Alliance. "Pretty soon the country protecting you becomes more and more involved in domestic affairs."

The new command will be responsible for a security zone stretching from Alaska's northernmost tip to Mexico's southern border with Guatemala.

"We now have a command assigned to defend the American people where they live and work," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters Wednesday. "The highest priority of our military is to defend the United States."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the command will essentially mirror NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, and also take over responsibility to aid civil authorities in a terrorist attack.

In fact, NORAD's commander will head the Northern Command and that alone has Canadian critics wondering why Canada isn't included in the new structure.

"The reason Canada doesn't have a part is our military has been allowed to deteriorate under this government," Mr. Benoit said, referring to the Liberal Party administration of Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

"We simply don't have a strong enough military to be involved in the way we should be," Mr. Benoit said.

Canada's army has too many cooks and not enough soldiers, according to a report this week by the nation's auditor-general.

The report also said the military wasted $174 million on a satellite communications project that was never used, and that aging military helicopters literally fall out of the sky because plans to replace them have been put off.

Mr. Chretien says the new Northern Command won't affect Canada's autonomy - or its relationship with the United States.

"This decision by the American administration about their own defense, it is their own business," he said. "The defense of Canada will be assured by the Canadian government."

Criticism of the new command is also coming from Canada's left. The socialist New Democratic Party has called on Mr. Chretien to let Parliament debate whether Canada should forge closer military ties with the United States.

-------- europe

Europe Hampered in Mideast Peace Talks

By Robert Wielaard
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15476-2002Apr19?language=printer

LUXEMBOURG -- In dealing with the Middle East, the European Union claims to have a single vision of how to end the conflict at its Mediterranean doorstep and a more balanced view than Washington's.

The reality is different.

Fresh from their triumphant introduction of their single currency, the euro, the Europeans would love to follow up with a foreign policy success. But instead of producing a united strategy for quelling the Israeli-Palestinian violence, the 15-nation bloc has long been a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas.

Most of its member states differ critically from American thinking, as well. Add Israel's perception that Europe is plagued by age-old anti-Semitism, and it's easy to see why West Europeans, despite their historic ties and economic clout in the region, continue to play second fiddle to the United States.

"If Europe wants to play a role in the Middle East, it better align itself with the United States and not push its own agenda too much," said Alfred Pijpers of the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank in The Hague.

"But that, of course, requires very tight coordination."

So far, it hasn't happened.

"There is no 'Europe' in the Middle East in the sense that European states share a common set of interests and priorities," Anthony Cordesman and Arleigh Burke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a paper presented to a recent forum organized by the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies.

"Far too much of the dialogue on Europe's role in the Middle East ... focuses on how to critique American policy rather than refine European policy."

Israel's fierce assault on Palestinians since March 29 has underlined a trans-Atlantic rift already inflamed by disputes over trade, remedies for global warming and President Bush's missile defense plans.

Much of the devastation inflicted by Israel's U.S.-supplied tanks and warplanes has been on Palestinian Authority buildings funded by the European Union, including its airport.

A week before Secretary of State Colin Powell went to Israel, an EU delegation went there to urge an end to the occupation of Palestinian towns. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wouldn't even see them, and also kept them away from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's besieged Ramallah headquarters.

Israel's prickly attitude stems not just from the actions of Europe's governments, but from the utterances of prominent - but nonpolitical - Europeans.

Portuguese author Jose Saramago, a Nobel literature laureate, set off a storm of protest in Israel when he compared Ramallah to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Then came two members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo saying they wished they could revoke the 1994 award to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Israelis were quick to note that co-laureate Arafat wasn't criticized, though they hold him responsible for the suicide bombings that have killed dozens of civilians in shopping malls, restaurants, religious feasts and outside synagogues.

"Whatever explanation is given has a component rooted in a long history of Jew-hatred," wrote Dan Margalit, a respected political commentator for Israel's mass-circulation daily Maariv.

"It passes from generation to generation."

European diplomats and analysts reject such charges.

"Europeans have a more balanced assessment of the Middle East than American public opinion," Eberhard Rhein, a former head of the European Commission's Middle East section, said in an interview.

"As far back as the 1980s, they have been calling for a Palestinian state. That was heresy then! Today, that view is shared by the United States and the international community as a whole."

France, Belgium, Italy and Spain are the most Arab-leaning EU members. Britain, due to its close U.S. ties, and Germany, due to its Nazi past, lead a more pro-Israel camp.

This week, Britain and Germany broke ranks with other EU nations, voting against a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Commission that accused Israel of "mass killings," sieges and attacks on ambulances and hospitals.

At the same time, in Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers found no unanimity for trade sanctions, or for proposals to at least chastise Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.

----

WESTERN OPINION
European Poll Faults U.S. for Its Policy in the Mideast

New York Times
April 19, 2002
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/international/middleeast/19SURV.html

WASHINGTON - People in Europe, while sympathetic to recent American efforts in the Middle East, strongly feel that the United States has not done enough to bring about a peace settlement, according to coordinated polls in Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

A key reason for the European unhappiness appears to be a much greater sympathy for the Palestinians than is found in the United States.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, showed that majorities of 71 percent in France, 67 percent in Italy, 64 percent in Germany and 57 percent in Britain said the United States was not "doing as much as it can to bring about a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

The respondents, about 1,000 people in each country, were asked, "In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, which side do you sympathize with more?" In none of the European countries did more sympathize with Israel, while in a companion poll in the United Sates, 41 percent sided with Israel to 13 percent for the Palestinians.

The closest European division in the poll - conducted with the International Herald Tribune and the Council on Foreign Relations - came in Germany. There 24 percent sided with Israel and 26 percent with the Palestinians, a difference that fell within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

But in the other three nations, the Palestinian side was preferred, 36 percent to 19 percent in France, 30 to 14 in Italy and 28 to 17 in Britain.

The surveys were conducted early this month and all were finished before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell arrived in Jerusalem on April 11.

Despite the general sympathy in Europe toward Palestinians and the lack of respect for American policies in the Middle East, as measured in other questions, at least three-fourths of the respondents in each country said they liked the United States "recent" peacemaking efforts.

The survey also found that European opinion of President Bush as a foreign policy leader has improved markedly since Sept. 11, but the war on terrorism is seen as benefiting American interests, not international ones.

Backing for Mr. Bush's international policy ranged from 32 percent in France to 44 percent in Italy. A poll last August found a low of 16 percent in France to a high of 29 percent in Italy.

But while the percentages went up significantly, only in Britain and Italy were the respondents close to evenly split. In Britain, 40 percent approved and 37 percent disapproved, while in Italy, 44 percent approved and 47 percent disapproved.

The poll found strong support across Europe for the United States' military campaign in Afghanistan, ranging from 59 percent in Italy to 73 percent in Britain.

Even greater majorities, up to 77 percent in Britain, agreed that the United States was right to be concerned about international terrorism and was not overreacting.

But at the same time, majorities ranging from 68 percent in Italy to 85 percent in Germany said the United States' conduct of the war was based "mainly on its own interests" without taking into account the concerns of its allies. That finding corresponds to pre-Sept. 11 views about Mr. Bush's overall conduct of foreign policy.

Support for extending the war on terrorism to include military action to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq was limited. The British and the French were about evenly divided, while three-fifths of the Italians and Germans were opposed.

But when the respondents were asked if learning that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons would be a "very important" justification for military action, clear majorities in Britain, France and Germany and 49 percent of the Italians agreed.

-------- india/pakistan

India Blames Pakistan for Explosions

April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kashmir-India-Pakistan.html

JAMMU, India -- India threatened to retaliate for 60 explosions it claimed Pakistan detonated in ditches the Indian army dug for a fence along their tense border.

The explosions began early Thursday and lasted for four hours near the border in the Arnia sector, about 17 miles southwest of Jammu, the winter capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, said an Indian police officer speaking on condition of anonymity.

India is building an iron fence along the 1,800-mile border, where hundreds of thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops have been massed since the two nuclear-armed nations went on war alert in December.

``Clearly, this is another attempt by Pakistan to disrupt this fencing work, which is an effective mechanism against cross-border infiltration of terrorists, smugglers and other illegal entrants,'' a Foreign Ministry statement issued in New Delhi said Thursday.

``(The) government of India remains determined to take necessary action to put an end to such interference.''

There was no immediate reaction from Pakistan.

The troop movements along the border followed an attack on India's Parliament, in which 14 people, including the four gunmen, were killed. India accused Pakistan and two Islamic militant groups based there of planning the attack.

Pakistan and the two groups denied responsibility.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over conflicting claims to all the Kashmir region, which is divided between them.

India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and funding Islamic militant groups fighting for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan. The Islamabad government says it supports their cause, but denies it gives them substantive aid.

--------

Indian military to train with U.S. forces in Alaska

April 19, 2002
By Shyam Bhatiaand Desikan Thirunarayanapuram
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020419-83206325.htm

India and the United States are planning joint military exercises in Alaska that could boost Indian capabilities in the Himalayan glaciers of northern Kashmir where it faces Pakistan and China.

A spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii said the plan is being worked out and the exercises will be held next year.

The U.S. plan to help India, which in the past has fought at high altitudes against both China and Pakistan, is likely to anger those countries. Pakistan has become an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

This will be the first time Indian forces have been invited to participate in military exercises on the North American continent. It signals an expansion of defense links between the two countries that already encompass intelligence sharing and joint naval patrols in the Indian Ocean between the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Hormuz.

"Post September 11, there has been a sea change in our relationship with the United States, and things have changed," Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said in an interview. "Our troops and air force units will soon go to Alaska to do joint exercises. You wouldn't have thought about it earlier."

Mr. Fernandes said the climate and terrain in Alaska would match conditions in the Siachen Glacier of northern Kashmir, where the Indian and Pakistani armies have clashed periodically.

"After all, the Indian army would also like to be trained in areas where the climate is like Siachen. There is nothing amazing about it," Mr. Fernandes said.

The U.S. and Indian air forces also will conduct joint exercises in the South Asian region, he said. "All the three services will have joint exercises."

Joseph Cirincione, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the plan for exercises in Alaska "definitely marks new levels of cooperation" with India. The United States conducts these kinds of training exercises only with its allies and close friends.

Mr. Cirincione said Washington should be prepared to face the political and diplomatic implications of the move. "It's very likely that Pakistan will have a strong reaction. The same might be said of China. What's the purpose of this training, and who are they training against?"

Capt. John Singley, spokesman for the Pacific Command, which deals with India but not Pakistan, said the plan includes airborne, platoon-level training with the U.S. Army in Alaska. A platoon is composed of roughly 60 soldiers. The Indian side would include a platoon and some observers.

During a visit to New Delhi on Nov. 29, Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of the Pacific Command, proposed improving bilateral military ties that had been frozen since India conducted nuclear tests in 1998. The plan for the Alaska exercises was requested by Mr. Fernandes, Capt. Singley said.

Adm. Blair's visit was followed by a defense policy group meeting in December and a lower-level executive steering group meeting in February, when several training opportunities between the two countries, including the Alaska exercise, were discussed, Capt. Singley said.

He said the original idea was for a "mountain warfare exercise." The mountains in Alaska are "tall and cold," Capt. Singley said, but "it may not be extremely accurate" to derive that the intent of the exercises is to prepare India for warfare in the Himalayan glaciers.

At an altitude of 18,000 feet with temperatures dropping to 50 degrees below zero and sudden blizzards, Siachen Glacier, claimed by both India and Pakistan, is one of the toughest battlefields in the world.

At $13.3 billion, India's defense budget is a fraction of the U.S. defense budget of $379 billion. Meanwhile, India's powerful neighbor, China, has projected its annual defense spending this year at $20 billion.

Mr. Fernandes said India's defense budget for this fiscal year will grow - 14 percent according to published figures - but that substantial sums are needed to build houses for armed forces personnel and to upgrade weapons that he describes as of "vintage quality."

•Shyam Bhatia contributed to this article from New Delhi.

-------- iran

Iran takes hostile tone toward United States

April 19, 2002
By Andrew Borowiec
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020419-95428762.htm

NICOSIA, Cyprus - Iran's Islamic rulers have stepped up anti-American propaganda in what diplomats consider to be an about-face after last fall's overtures to the United States.

The change, according to diplomats, was triggered by what is perceived by Iran to be U.S. backing for Israeli repression in the Palestinian territories.

The long-awaited thaw in the relations between Washington and Tehran has been replaced by a barrage of official and semiofficial Iranian statements stigmatizing U.S. support for the Jewish state.

Diplomats describe the statements as being in sharp contrast to earlier indications that Iran was willing to cooperate in the U.S. war on terrorism and even share intelligence on the Taliban after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

In a series of recent statements and television appearances, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi stated bluntly that the Muslim countries "will never experience real peace with Israel" and that the Jewish state will remain "an entity foreign to the region, created on the basis of colonialist and imperialist aims."

Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the "supreme guide" of Iran's Islamic revolution, has branded President Bush as "a thirsty vampire," wrote the Tehran daily Jomhuri-ye-Eslami.

"The alliance of the English with the Americans in backing the bloodthirsty regime of Israel has became brazen and shameless and has totally isolated England within the framework of the European Union. Israel is a Western tool to undermine the unity and create division inside the Islamic world," the newspaper said.

Diplomats in the area say Iran's verbal broadsides are likely to exacerbate the growing anti-American mood in most Arab countries.

According to one diplomatic assessment, "Iran has a big role in the area and is being listened to."

Some Iranian statements and diplomatic notes have made direct references to the deadlock in U.S.-Iranian relations, stressing a deterioration due to the events related to the Palestinian uprising.

The main signal from Tehran was summarized by Mohammed Javad Larij, a former member of the Majlis (parliament) who said that, "U.S. policy in Islamic countries has been discredited because of the events in Palestine."

However, Mr. Kharazi, the Iranian foreign minister, did not slam the door on the dialogue with Washington in his latest televised interview on Tehran's Network 2, saying Iran was willing to resume indirect contacts "but only on the basis of equality and dignity."

"Lack of relations between Iran and America has had some positive outcome for us. We advanced in our search for self-sufficiency. We proved that it is possible to live without America. Of course, we have paid the price in economic and political spheres. But this is that path that we chose to safeguard our honor and dignity," Mr. Kharazi said.

The United States, he said, "has shown so far that it wants relations with Iran but based on hegemony."

-------- iraq

U.S. has completed 'basics' of plan to attack Iraq

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://216.26.163.62/2002/ss_iraq_04_19.html

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has completed the framework for a military campaign against Iraq, defense sources say.

"U.S. Central Command already has the basics of a major campaign put together," a report by the Washington-based Center for Defense Information said. "Component commanders of each service are now at their forward headquarters in the region with more than 1,000 war planners, logistics experts and support specialists. This operations plan is being refined regularly and the target list is being validated and updated daily."

Health insurance for the self-employed: Special offer

Defense sources said that amid an intense debate within the Bush administration the U.S. Central Command has established a framework to conduct major military operations against Iraq from neighboring Kuwait and other areas of the Persian Gulf, according to Middle East Newsline.

The center said in its report that the United States will probably launch an offensive against Iraq in the spring of 2003. The earliest the U.S. military would be ready for an attack would be the "mid-fall of 2002."

The sources said the opposition by Arab countries to a U.S. military campaign would require more time for any operation. They said the Arab and Islamic opposition appears to have delayed plans to begin operations by the end of the summer.

The report - authored by [Ret.] Rear Adm. Stephen Baker, former chief of staff for naval forces in U.S. Central Command in Bahrain, and research analyst Michael Donovan - said some of the requirements of a military operation would include the deployment of up to 100,000 U.S. troops and 25,000 support personnel in Turkey and Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be the most likely staging grounds for an offensive, the chief aim of which would be to locate and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"The general expectation among U.S. military planners - but not a given - is that Iraqi air defenses, command and control facilities, the Iraqi army and Republican Guard would be rapidly overwhelmed and defeated swiftly," the report said. "The threat of biological or chemical weapons targeting Israel, neighboring countries, or U.S. troops will be a major concern. Handling this threat will be one of the hardest, most challenging missions in Iraq."

----

US Planes Bomb Northern Iraq

April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- U.S. and British planes patrolling a no-fly zone over northern Iraq bombed Iraqi air defense systems Friday in response to anti-aircraft fire, U.S. officials said.

The bombs were dropped after Iraqi forces east of Mosul fired on a routine air patrol, the U.S. European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a written statement.

``All coalition aircraft departed the area safely, the statement said.

It was the first bombing of northern Iraq since February and the third this year, U.S. officials said, and came amid intense debate on whether Iraq will be the next target in what the U.S. administration is calling a war against terrorism.

U.S. and British planes based in southeast Turkey have been flying patrols over northern Iraq since 1991. The two countries say the patrols are designed to protect the Kurdish population of northern Iraq from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Washington has hinted it could launch a military campaign to overthrow Saddam if the Iraqi leader continues to deny admission to United Nations weapons inspectors, who are tasked with checking if the Baghdad regime has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors have been barred from Iraq since 1998.

Talks between Iraq and the United Nations on the return of the inspectors were due to begin mid-April, but Iraq has asked for a delay on the grounds that talks would be dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if they were held at this stage.

-------- israel / palestine

Conflict in Gaza Strip Escalates After Withdrawal in Jenin

April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at an Israeli military checkpoint Friday, ending a period of relative quiet in the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops withdrew from the West Bank town of Jenin in line with a promise to the United States to scale down a 3-week-old military offensive.

Also Friday, seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including two gunmen trying to infiltrate into a Jewish settlement, and two boys, ages nine and 14, who doctors said were shot by troops enforcing a curfew in the town of Ramallah.

In funerals in the Gaza Strip, supporters of Islamic militant groups and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement threatened to carry out new attacks in Israel to avenge at least 200 Palestinians killed in the Israeli offensive.

Leading a funeral procession in Gaza City, a masked Fatah activist told mourners he had a message for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: ``You have opened the gates of hell .... Murder for murder, and destruction for destruction.''

The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for Friday's suicide bombing at an army checkpoint near the Kissufim crossing between Israel and Gaza, the first such attack in the strip in five months. The assailant was killed and two soldiers were lightly wounded.

In the past 19 months of fighting, scores of suicide bombings have been launched from the West Bank, but none from the Gaza Strip, which is separated from Israel by a high fence. However, the command center of the largest Islamic group -- Hamas -- is in Gaza, which has not been targeted in the Israeli offensive.

Hamas leaders have said the group would carry out new attacks soon, and sources in the group said Hamas bomb-makers were now using much deadlier weapons-grade explosives, rather than fertilizer bombs.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops pulled out of Jenin and the adjacent refugee camp, but deployed at the outskirts in a tight blockade, barring residents from leaving. The withdrawal enabled families from the camp, scene of the deadliest fighting of the Israeli offensive, to collect their dead from temporary graves in a hospital courtyard to give them proper farewells.

A white-frocked medical worker in the camp hospital packed the remains of Tariq Darwish, 27, in a plastic bag and placed it in a plastic-lined raw wooden coffin brought by his father. Iyad Darwish said he spoke for the last time to his son, a Palestinian policemen, two days before he was killed.

``He said he was in the camps fighting with his friends. We told him to get out but he didn't want to leave the fight,'' said the grizzled man as he sat in the front seat of the ambulance and wiped his tears with the edge of his headscarf.

Dozens of homes in the center of the camp were pounded into rubble by Israeli shelling and bulldozers during the weeklong battle between scores of Palestinian gunmen and advancing Israeli troops.

On Friday, men, women and children -- some with shovels, others with bare hands -- picked through heaps of debris, salvaging torn clothing, TV sets, photographs, roller-skates, whatever they could.

Others are still looking for missing relatives, said the U.N. envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen. ``We saw children looking for their parents. We saw fathers, brothers, sisters digging in the rubble in order to find the corpses of their dear ones,'' Roed-Larsen told a news conference in Jerusalem.

International aid workers began assessing the damage and reviewing a population registry of the camp to determine who was missing.

Camp residents have accused the Israeli military of carrying out a massacre and burying hundreds of civilians under the rubble of their homes, along with gunmen. The army has vehemently denied the charges, saying at most several dozen people have been killed, most of them gunmen.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer insisted Friday that the army took pains to minimize casualties. ``We fought from house to house, and from corner to corner,'' Ben-Eliezer said, adding that the massacre allegations were ``simply shameful.''

However, Roed-Larsen, who toured the camp Thursday, said he was ``horrified beyond belief'' by what he saw, and sharply criticized the military for hampering rescue efforts by keeping the camp under curfew for days after fighting ended.

``Not any objective can justify such action, with colossal suffering'' to civilians, said Roed-Larsen, walking in a blue flak jacket over ruins of houses.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah, troops enforcing a curfew shot dead a 14-year-old Palestinian boy Friday morning as he walked from his house to the adjacent bakery where he worked, Palestinian doctors said. In the neighboring village of Beitunia, troops shot and killed a 9-year-old boy as he played in his backyard on Thursday evening. The army said it was checking the reports.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops moved briefly into Palestinian-controlled territory near the border with Egypt, scene of frequent clashes and incursions. Palestinians opened fire on Israeli troops, who pounded the area with heavy machine gun fire, witnesses said. Palestinian doctors said three Palestinian civilians were killed and six wounded by Israeli gunfire.

Also, the military said soldiers killed two armed Palestinians who tried to infiltrate into the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in Gaza. The Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the attempted raid.

In other developments Friday:

--In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, security forces arrested Khalid Tafish, described as a Hamas leader -- the second catch of a high-ranking Hamas official in two days. Another unidentified Hamas fighter was arrested in the same operation.

--The international Red Cross said it began visiting Palestinians detained by Israeli forces during its offensive. Red Cross delegates visited the Ofer military camp where Israel says over 1,000 detainees are held.

--Also in Bethlehem, the standoff continued between Israeli troops and armed Palestinians who took refuge in the Church of the Nativity April 2. The sound of gunfire and stun grenades could be heard late Thursday near the church, and smoke rose from the compound. The Israeli military said gunmen in the church opened fire, and soldiers responded. The military has banned reporters from the area.

--Israel said its forces moved into the West Bank town of Qalqiliya before dawn, describing the operation as a pinpoint mission, not occupation of the town. A military spokesman said the troops quickly withdrew.

-------- spy agencies

U.S. Technology Aids al - Qaida Hunt

April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Al-Qaida-Online.html

In the tiny towns that dot the Pakistani mountains east of the Afghan border, small shops that seemingly offer residents little more than dusty packs of cigarettes and canned goods are stocked with one more essential -- computers with Internet access.

It is from this area, in northwest Pakistan, that U.S. intelligence in recent weeks has picked up on increased communications among al-Qaida members, according to U.S. officials.

Shortly after Sept. 11, intelligence experts argued that America should have been infiltrating groups such as al-Qaida instead of sinking its budget into satellite imagery, communications interception and reconnaissance equipment. But as the war on terrorism enters its seventh month, America's technological expertise may be paying off as it tries to root out a computer-savvy foe.

``Abu Zubaydah used the Internet from Faisalabad in Pakistan when he was captured,'' said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. Abu Zubaydah, the no. 3 in Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, is the highest ranking al-Qaida member in U.S. custody.

He was caught by Pakistani and U.S. authorities in a joint raid on a hide-out in Pakistan on March 28. Pakistani intelligence officials have said quietly that a mobile phone call Abu Zubaydah made to al-Qaida leaders in Yemen led to his arrest.

When the suspected kidnappers and killers of Wall Street Journal Reporter Daniel Pearl sent e-mails that included his photographs in January, U.S. investigators traced the communication to an Internet service provider in Karachi whose computer logs led them to a key suspect.

Fahad Naseem denied sending any e-mails on Jan. 27 and Jan. 30, the same dates that the Pearl photographs were sent. But the records showed otherwise and when police confiscated his computer they found the e-mails on his hard drive. He was arrested Feb. 3, three days after the second e-mail was sent.

During interrogation, Naseem gave police the names of three other suspects, including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born militant thought to have orchestrated the kidnapping.

Knowing where Pearl was abducted helped narrow the search. But with al-Qaida cells allegedly operating around the globe, the search can be much harder, especially when the Internet offers so many ways to hide.

Providers of free e-mail, such as Yahoo and Hotmail, require no real information from a user. Messages can be kept secret with encryption, a digital technology that encodes the information on one end and reads at another using a special algorithm.

Even messages that seem meaningless to terrorism trackers can be treacherous. Experts have said that al-Qaida may be using steganography, a process that hides one message within another or somewhere in a picture file.

``You need some kind of intelligence, such as in the Pearl case,'' said Chris Aaron, the editor of Jane's Intelligence Review. ``In the past, the focus was on identifiable targets such as Iraq or Russia, whereas when dealing with a target such as al-Qaida, it's harder to know what to target. You still need the human intelligence in order to know what to target,'' Aaron said.

Electronic mission aircraft being used in Afghanistan can detect, pinpoint to a certain area and jam satellite uplinks. But unless the call is intercepted, there is no way to know if the satphone user is an al-Qaida member in a cave or a journalist calling in a story from a valley nearby.

The transmissions coming from Northwest Pakistan, where many of bin Laden's foot soldiers are believed to have fled, may be more definitive.

``There is a concentration of al-Qaida in Pakistan along the border areas and if Internet use there is up, it's only because of the large numbers of al-Qaida there,'' Cannistraro said.

And the signs that supporters are trying to keep the organization alive are growing

The FBI's cybersecurity unit posted a bulletin on its Web site in January warning that ``a computer that belonged to an individual with indirect links to Osama Bin Laden contained structural architecture computer programs that suggested the individual was interested in .... dams and other water-retaining structures.''

The National Infrastructure Protection Center's site also said that ``al-Qaida members have sought information on water supply and wastewater management practices in the U.S. and abroad. There has also been interest in insecticides and pest control products at several web sites.''

In early February, the London-based Al-Quds newspaper published excerpts from an Arabic-language Web site that claimed to represent al-Qaida. An article on the site, hosted by Geocities, which is owned by Yahoo! Inc, bragged that the group carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, warned of further violence and outlined an ideological future for the organization.

The author of the article had not been previously identified, but intelligence experts say that the writer may be less important than the message.

``This a blueprint for the future of al-Qaida, and it indicates that there are a lot of people out there still ready to support its aims,'' said Yigal Carmon, the former head of Israeli counterterrorism and the president of MEMRI, a research institute which translates, disseminates and analyzes Arab media.

Al-Qaida operatives were computer savvy before PCs were household fixtures in the United States -- something which has helped them and helped the United States.

In 1995, authorities in the Philippines seized a computer from Ramzi Yousef -- the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- and found a treasure trove of information and plans, including one to attack a nuclear facility in the United States.

A computer purchased by a Wall Street Journal reporter in Afghanistan included the movements of an al-Qaida operative which were similar to those of Richard Reid -- accused of trying to ignite explosives in his shoes during a trans-Atlantic flight in December.

Ahmed Ressam, convicted of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport in 1999, said during court testimony that the one thing a colleague needed to pack when heading off to Afghan training camps was a computer.

``Internet communications have become the main communications system among al-Qaida around the world because its safer, easier and more anonymous if they take the right precautions and I think they're doing that,'' Cannistraro said.

EDITORS: Associated Press Writer Brian Bergstein contributed to this report.

-------- un

U.N. Envoy Calls Camp 'Horrifying'
Israel Condemned For Slowing Rescue

By John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11963-2002Apr18?language=printer

JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, April 18 -- The U.N. envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, stood on a pile of rubble and surveyed a landscape of wretchedness and destruction. Just a few feet away, two middle-aged brothers used plastic buckets to excavate the ruins of their former home and unearthed a partial human torso. It was all that remained of their father.

"What we are seeing here is horrifying -- horrifying scenes of human suffering," said Roed-Larsen, who helped shepherd Palestinians and Israelis toward the 1993 Oslo peace accords. "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."

After trying for 11 days, Roed-Larsen got permission from the Israeli army today to enter the Jenin refugee camp, where a two-week battle killed 23 Israeli soldiers and an unknown number of Palestinian fighters and civilians. Palestinians have said they incurred significantly higher casualties.

Once inside the camp, where 13,000 Palestinians lived until recently, Roed-Larsen accused Israel of compounding human suffering by refusing to allow in search-and-rescue teams with heavy equipment and dogs, suggesting that some people could still be alive beneath the rubble.

Palestinians displaced by the fighting in Jenin continued to trickle back to their neighborhoods. Some sat numbly on ruins where their homes once stood. Others used buckets, shovels and their bare hands to dig through concrete that had been pulverized, searching for prized possessions and sometimes the remains of relatives.

A spokesman for the Israeli army, Capt. Samuel Benalal, said soldiers have "not in any cases disturbed the distribution of humanitarian aid" and have only barred rescue crews from working in the camp out of concern about booby traps, some of which the Israeli military said have been found wired to corpses. He repeated army denials that noncombatants had been deliberately buried in their homes by army bulldozers, saying that soldiers "several times a day" offered residents a chance to leave and that many of them chose to do so.

"Most of the people left the refugee camp, and once we were sure that the people who stayed in were fighters and not civilians, we decided to fight against them," Benalal said. "In some cases, the booby-trapping and the kind of operations they planned to do with those buildings forced us to destroy those buildings."

Israel said the area remained a closed military zone, and tried to keep out journalists and human rights investigators. But many eluded army checkpoints by driving or walking through surrounding villages and vegetable fields.

The army withdrew the last of its tanks from the camp this morning, apparently having achieved its mission of driving out armed Palestinians accused of using Jenin as a launching pad for suicide bombing missions against Israeli citizens. The tanks have been repositioned on surrounding hills.

The Associated Press, citing Israeli radio, reported early Friday that Israeli forces had completed their pullback from Jenin. Also Friday, Israeli troops moved briefly into Palestinian-controlled territory in Gaza near the border with Egypt. Palestinian doctors said two people were killed by Israeli gunfire.

In addition, Army Radio reported that Israeli tanks moved into the West Bank town of Qalqilyah, describing the operation as a pinpoint mission, not a reoccupation of the town.

The partial pullout today followed pledges by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel would withdraw not only from Jenin but also from Nablus and parts of Ramallah in the next few days.

All are major West Bank cities that have been occupied by Israeli forces in the course of their three-week-old offensive in the West Bank, the latest and most violent chapter in the Palestinian uprising that erupted in September 2000. Although the shooting has ebbed in recent days, and almost a week has passed since the last suicide bombing in Israel, there was no sign of an end to the offensive.

Israeli troops maintained their siege of the Ramallah compound of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, as well as around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where about 200 Palestinian gunmen and other officials have taken refuge along with dozens of clergy members. And Israeli television reported tonight that the army, despite its pullback from Jenin, will keep the northern West Bank city and adjacent refugee camp under a tight military cordon.

The Jenin camp, a ragged, semi-permanent city, dates to Israel's war of independence in 1948, when many Palestinians were displaced from their homes in what is now Israel. It is set amid the stony hills and olive groves of the West Bank, about 45 miles north of Jerusalem.

Many residents of the hillside camp have been too frightened to return since fleeing when the fighting broke out. But some began doing so Wednesday. This morning, with a brief break in the military curfew, the camp was teeming with activity, as residents picked their way through an avalanche of broken concrete, splintered furniture and shredded bedding and clothing. Some held scarves to their mouths to keep from gagging on the sickeningly sweet smell of rotting flesh.

Among the residents to return recently was Samih Abu Sibaa, 43, who lived at the base of the camp with his parents and other relatives in a three-story building. Ten days ago, Sibaa said, his father walked onto a veranda and was hit in the neck and abdomen by bullets fired by an Israeli sniper.

"Had the ambulance been allowed to retrieve him, he would have stayed alive," said Sibaa, who estimated his father's age as between 65 and 75.

As it was, Mohammed Sibaa died several hours later. His sons wrapped his body in a rug and covered it with a blanket, intending to bury him when the shooting stopped. But then Israeli forces began knocking down houses with bulldozers -- a technique it began using more aggressively after 13 Israeli soldiers were killed here April 9 in a single attack -- and the family was forced to flee without him.

"We left our father because we could not carry anything with us," Sibaa said. "They would have thought that anything was an explosive device."

He and his brother began digging for the corpse Wednesday. Today they found part of it, a partial torso with rib cage exposed, at the bottom of a hole.

"We kept digging until we saw the rug and the blanket that we covered him with," Sibaa said. They placed it on the edge of the hole, where a rescue worker wrapped it in white plastic and took it away.

Roed-Larsen, who witnessed the scene, said he was shocked by what he had seen this morning, including the charred body of a 12-year-old boy. "They are not only fighters," he said. "We've seen kids. There was a 60-year-old woman who was found. . . . What is really shocking beyond belief is that the Israelis have not conducted a search-and-rescue operation in 11 days."

Palestinian officials have backed away from earlier charges of a massacre in Jenin. But much about the battle remains a mystery. The director of the hospital run by the Palestinian Authority in Jenin, Mohammed Abu Ghali, said he knows of 37 bodies recovered from the camp. Twenty-three of them have not yet been claimed by relatives from shallow temporary graves in a dirt lot next to the hospital.

But Abu Ghali said he believes many other bodies are hidden beneath collapsed apartment buildings in the camp.

"It's very hard to determine" the number of combatants and civilians killed in the fighting, said Tim Keenan, an orthopedic surgeon from Perth, Australia, who is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross at the hospital. "A lot of it's sort of anecdotal."

There is not even agreement on the number of people who were in the camp of 13,000 at the time of the worst fighting. Some estimates are as high as 8,000.

"It's been incredibly difficult to tell the difference between fighters and civilians," said Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York, who evaded Israeli checkpoints to sneak into the camp. "I think it's clear that in the end what actually happened in Jenin will fall somewhere in between what the Palestinians are alleging and what the [Israeli army] claims. But only an independent authority can establish what actually happened."

----

Annan Seeks Probe Of Israelis at Jenin
West Bank Peacekeeping Force Urged

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Friday, April 19, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13153-2002Apr19?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS -- Secretary General Kofi Annan called today for an investigation into the conduct of Israeli forces during their two-week siege of the U.N.-administered refugee camp at Jenin and renewed his appeal to the Security Council to send an international peacekeeping force to the West Bank.

U.N. diplomats said Annan hopes an outside investigation could settle a dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis over the battle. Israel said its forces killed no more than 50 Palestinians, mostly combatants, while the Palestinians say as many as 500 people were killed, including scores of civilians.

Annan said the first priority should be to bury the dead, tend to the hungry and wounded and "then move on to the investigation." He said that an initial assessment of the camp carried out today by his senior political and humanitarian representatives, Terje Roed-Larsen and Peter Hansen, left him "deeply disturbed."

"They witnessed people digging out corpses from the rubble with bare hands," he told the Security Council. "Meanwhile, no major emergency rescue operation has been allowed to begin. The destruction is massive and the impact on the civilian population is devastating."

John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned the council in a closed-door session today that the Bush administration is prepared to veto a Palestinian-backed draft resolution calling on Annan to investigate Israel's conduct in Jenin. The Arab resolution demanded that Israel end its siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where armed Palestinian militants sought refuge. It also accused the Israeli army of engaging in the "massacre" of large numbers of residents.

Annan's call for an investigation is independent of the Arab effort. After the Security Council meeting, Annan told reporters an investigation would be conducted whether it was ordered by the council or not. A European diplomat said the probe would probably be carried out by an independent investigator.

Annan told the council that the Israeli-Palestinian violence underlined the necessity for the establishment of a large international peacekeeping force to guarantee a cease-fire, monitor Israel's withdrawal and help the Palestinian Authority impose order and stem the activities of Palestinian militants.

The U.N. chief suggested that a proposal by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to send a limited number of U.S. observers was inadequate. "The force must be impartial and capable of taking decisive action," Annan said. "It must have a robust mandate, credible strength and be large enough to carry it out."

While Annan said that he expected the United States "to play an important role" in assembling such a force, Negroponte made it clear that such a force would require the approval of the Israelis and Palestinians. Aaron Jacob, Israel's deputy U.N. representative, said the force proposed by Annan would "serve no useful role."

Annan later met with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, who said he is planning to visit the West Bank with a interfaith delegation of religious leaders.

Jackson, who said that he had been in contact with Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres over the past two weeks, called on Israel to open Jenin to humanitarian aid workers and criticized Powell's Middle East trip, which ended Wednesday.

"It was a gallant effort," he said. "But in the end he took nothing and he brought back nothing."

----

UN Council Approves Fact - Finding Mission for Jenin

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

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council, with U.S. support and a green light from Israel, voted unanimously late Friday for a U.N. fact-finding mission on the devastation in the Jenin refugee camp.

The resolution says U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with cooperation from Israel, was welcome to send a ``fact-finding team'' to gather information on recent events in Jenin, scene of the heaviest fighting since Israeli incursions into the West Bank camp some three weeks ago.

The United States had threatened to veto an Arab-drafted measure calling for a formal U.N. investigation of the ''massacres'' in Jenin. But then Washington presented its own milder text after Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres telephoned Annan to say his representatives would be welcome.

The resolution is the fourth in a month on the escalating violence. The 15-member Security Council approved three resolutions in March and early April demanding an immediate cease-fire and an Israeli troop withdrawal from West Bank cities ``without delay.'' It reaffirmed those resolution's in Friday's text.

Each time the Bush administration has offered a substitute text to soften the language, in an apparent attempt to avoid using a veto and thereby further inflame tensions in the Arab world.

-------- us

U.S. PLANS MILITARY AID INCREASE TO BAHRAIN

Middle East Newsline,
April 19, 2002
http://menewsline.com/stories/2002/april/04_19_4.html

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has requested a major increase in military aid to Bahrain as part of the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

The administration's request comes as the Defense Department plans to expand U.S. military assets in the kingdom. Bahrain is one of several Gulf Cooperation Council countries meant to receive aircraft and other systems that have been removed from Saudi Arabia.

Officials said the administration has requested $28.5 million in the emergency supplemental budget for fiscal 2002. The money is meant to help countries that are participating in the U.S. campaign against terrorism. Bahrain is home for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

The additional U.S. aid to Bahrain is meant to help the kingdom purchase military systems. The officials said Bahrain faces difficulties in purchasing undisclosed weapons from Washington.

----

US to spend £90m on air base in Oman

IAN BRUCE
April 19 2002,
UK Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/19-4-19102-0-9-2.html

AMERICA is to spend £90m to build a new airbase in Oman with runways long enough to handle B52 strategic bombers and heavy-lift transport aircraft.

The move is seen as providing Pentagon planners with options for a possible aerial blitzkrieg against Iraq which do not depend on Saudi Arabia's co-operation.

The base, at Musnanah, about 80 miles west of Muscat, the Gulf sultanate's capital, is ostensibly being provided "for the use of the Omani air force" under the US foreign military assistance programme.

But Oman has no aircraft which need runways almost three miles long, the key specification for the new airfield.

The US is also paying for expansion of the infrastructure at Udeid airbase in Qatar, including new computer equipment and housing. US surveillance, airborne refuelling tankers, and fighters already operate from the base.

Work on turning the Prince Sultan facility in the desert 60 miles south of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia into America's regional war-fighting command centre was completed last year, but now faces an uncertain future because of Saudi opposition to a renewed military assault on Iraq. The US has maintained a garrison of about 4500 troops and 100 aircraft in the country since the end of the 1991 Gulf war as a deterrent to Saddam Hussein's territorial ambitions. The Prince Sultan complex, one of the best-equipped anywhere in the world, has been the nerve centre for co-ordinating air attacks during the campaign in Afghanistan.

Growing unrest among Islamic militants in the feudal kingdom, including a bomb attack on US barracks four years ago, have forced the US to maintain a low profile away from main cities.

A Pentagon source denied yesterday expansion of airbase options in Qatar and Oman were the opening moves in a withdrawal from Saudi Arabia.

"We have no current plans to move the Prince Sultan combined air operations centre, but that doesn't mean we don't have plans to replicate it elsewhere," he said.

Meanwhile, Britain's military top brass say the defence budget is being subjected to a series of "stealth cuts" which could render the armed forces incapable of taking an effective part in any future campaign against Iraq.

A behind-the-scenes battle has been raging between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence for the last two years, with chancellor Gordon Brown determined to slash £1.5bn from military spending to fund health and education programmes.

All non-operational military training this year has been put on hold, and a major annual tank exercise in Canada designed to keep the armoured battlegroups which would spearhead any ground war in Iraq at peak readiness cancelled to save £19m.

The 5000-strong UK peacekeeping garrison in Kosovo is to be cut to 1200 men, and orders for overdue Nimrod surveillance aircraft have been reduced from 21 to 18 to prune £500m from a procurement budget which is already between £400m and £600m short of requirement.

Despite public promises by prime minister Tony Blair the cost of the UK's involvement in the war against terrorism would be met from contingency funds, the Treasury has agreed to meet only £155m of the £261m tab for operations in Afghanistan to the beginning of April.

The announcement the Royal Navy's three Sea Harrier squadrons are to be disbanded means any maritime task force sent to a troublespot after 2006 will need US aerial protection.

It will be 2012 at least before a naval version of the still experimental joint strike fighter becomes available to replace the Sea Harrier, the aircraft credited with more than 80% of air-to-air "kills" during the Falklands war.

Until the JSF is operational, British warships will be highly vulnerable to attack. Even the new Type 23 frigates, designed for anti-aircraft warfare, are equipped with radar which is effective to only 20 miles.

Last night a militant Islamic group voiced concerns for the welfare of four Britons arrested by security forces in Egypt.

The Islamic Liberation Party, which is outlawed in Egypt, confirmed three of the four were members of the organisation.

Imran Waheed, who represents the party in the UK, said he was concerned the were being treated harshly, but the Foreign Office has confirmed consular officials visited all four last week.

----

A Repaired USS Cole Sails Again

April 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-USS-Cole.html

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) -- Rebuilt and combat ready, the USS Cole returned to the open seas Friday, 18 months after a terrorist attack in Yemen left 17 sailors dead and crippled the ship.

Hundreds of people cheered and waved U.S. flags along the shore as the Cole, gleaming in the sunlight, set off from Northrop Grumman's Ingalls Shipyard for its home port in Norfolk, Va.

The Cole returns to duty with 14 months worth of repairs and the additions of many new features, including 17 stars laid in the hallway floor -- one for each of the sailors killed when an explosion tore a hole in the ship's side on Oct. 12, 2000.

Navy leaders said Friday that the return is a clear and confident sign of America's commitment to overcome international terrorism.

The send-off was as much a tribute to the hundreds of shipyard workers who handled repairs as it was a farewell to the destroyer, said Rear Adm. John G. Morgan Jr., commander of the USS Enterprise Battle Group.

``Our job is to do the nation's work ... around the world, around the clock. That's the gift you've given us,'' Morgan said.

At dawn Friday, sailors made their way aboard the Cole carrying duffel bags. Many shook hands with workers as they arrive at the shipyard, the same place where the Cole was built and christened in 1995.

``We've been waiting for this day for 18 months,'' said Mike Chapman, an Ingalls employee and the general ship superintendent for the Cole.

Security was extremely tight with military police and guard dogs posted around the shipyard. No official public ceremony was planned, but people gathered along the shore nearby while workers stood on cranes and unfinished hulls of other boats to watch the Cole's departure.

The crew that departed Friday includes about 40 sailors who survived the attack on the guided missile destroyer.

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network has been blamed by U.S. officials for both the Sept. 11 attacks and the Cole blast, carried out by terrorists who pulled an explosives-laden skiff alongside the destroyer as it refueled.

Cmdr. Kevin Sweeney said Thursday that the vessel will return to its home port in Norfolk, Va., but he didn't know its next destination. Officials said the ship would participate in some unspecified sea exercises while on its way.

The Cole has been upgraded with two new 27-ton main engines, 350,163 feet of electrical cable, 550 tons of new steel and improved security, among other changes, he said.

The Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington says it expects the final tab to be about $250 million -- about one-quarter of the ship's original cost.

The Cole is protected by patrols and helmeted crew members posted at guns along the railings. It went through a two-day sea trial last week.

``Everything worked,'' he said. ``The crew performed beautifully.''

-------

Rumsfeld Resisting Calls From Military to Build Up Forces

By James Dao
New York Times
April 19, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/politics/19PENT.html

WASHINGTON, April 18 - Contending that the armed forces have been stretched thin by the campaign against terrorism, senior military officials are urging Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to expand the forces by 50,000 or more men and women.

Though George W. Bush criticized the Clinton administration in the 2000 presidential campaign for overextending the military, Mr. Rumsfeld is resisting calls to expand the forces, arguing that the cost is too high.

The chiefs of the four services assert that the high pace of war operations in Central Asia combined with heightened security at all military installations across the world and the expansion of military activities into countries like the Philippines and Yemen have put immense stress on the nation's 1.4 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, senior officers said.

At the same time, the Pentagon has activated more than 80,000 national guard and reserve troops to help in the war effort, requiring many of them to take extended leaves from jobs and, in some cases, to be away from families for months.

Rather than accept requests for added troops, Mr. Rumsfeld has ordered the secretaries of the armed services to eliminate nonessential duties or transfer people to relieve stress on the troops.

"It is time we begin to reduce our current commitments," Mr. Rumsfeld said in a memorandum to the service chiefs last month.

Even if Congress allocated money, it seems unlikely that the services could immediately attract tens of thousands of recruits, since they have had trouble meeting recruitment quotas in recent years.

The services say there is no evidence that the strains of globe-spanning commitments are hampering the troops' abilities to perform their duties. Early statistics indicate that recruitment and retention are level or slightly up - a result, senior officers say, of a wave of patriotism stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks.

But military experts and officials say they expect the services to have problems retaining active duty and reserve troops if the high tempo of war continues for many months, as President Bush has predicted.

"If people are constantly being deployed, they will vote with their feet," said Jayson Spiegel, executive director of the Reserve Officers Association. "At some point the family considerations loom large."

Some senior officials contend that the potential troop shortage could mean that the United States would have trouble mounting a large-scale attack against Iraq while maintaining commitments around the globe.

"We do not have forces to do the missions you have outlined," Gen. Joseph Ralston, the commander of NATO forces and United States troops in Europe, told lawmakers recently when asked if he had the resources to launch an invasion of Iraq while continuing operations in the Balkans and elsewhere.

The Pentagon has not increased the size of the forces since President Ronald Reagan expanded them by more than 140,000 people, to a peak of 2.2 million active duty and full-time guard and reserve troops in 1987. The number has fallen steadily since then, hitting a low of 1,447,000 in 2001.

Mr. Rumsfeld has told the Army that it can add nearly 5,000 soldiers in the coming year, but the Army secretary, Thomas White, is pushing for 20,000 to 40,000 more than that over the next five years. Air Force officials say they need at least 7,000 and possibly more than 20,000 more airmen; the Marine Corps has requested an increase of 2,400 marines.

While the Navy had declined to provide a specific number, Admiral Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, has told Congress that increasing the size of the Navy has become one of his top budget priorities.

The main reason Mr. Rumsfeld is resisting calls for expansion is that the Pentagon's personnel costs are rising sharply, a result of recent improvements in pay and health care benefits. The average annual cost per service member, including training, pay and benefits, has risen to $98,425, from $83,009 five years ago, according to calculations by Stephen Daggett, a military analyst at the Congressional Research Service.

Senior lawmakers say it will be hard to find money for troops this year, even though Congress seems likely to approve President Bush's request for a $48 billion increase in the Pentagon budget. Most of that money will go toward maintaining aging equipment, buying weapons, expanding weapons research and improving health care benefits for retirees, Pentagon officials say.

Nevertheless, Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he planned to push legislation that would add several thousand troops by 2003.

"They don't have enough resources to meet their missions," Mr. Skelton said in an interview. "Young men and women are stretched pretty hard right now."

While more than 5,000 American troops are in Afghanistan, many thousands more are involved in support operations.

The greatest demand, however, has been for heightened security at bases and embassies around the globe. Thousands of guardsmen and reservists have been called up to help stand guard at bases and fly patrols over American cities.

Tech. Sgt. Eric Vega of Woodbridge, Va., for example, is a security guard with 459th Airlift Wing, a reserve unit out of Andrews Air Force Base, who has been on leave from the Virginia state troopers since being activated on Sept. 22.

Though his base pay as a full-time reservist is similar to his police pay, Sergeant Vega estimates that he will lose $25,000 in overtime pay this year. He also is routinely working 14- to 18-hour days, leaving him little time to see his 11-month-old twins.

Sergeant Vega says he expects to re-enlist. But as a career counselor with the 459th, he hears much grumbling from his fellow reservists.

"A lot of my colleagues are fearful of long-term financial effects," he said. "We are definitely going to have a retention problem."

--------

Rumsfeld says U.S. capable of fighting 2nd war

April 19, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020419-13680502.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday said the U.S. military has the firepower to fight another war before it finishes the search-and-destroy phase of the war in Afghanistan.

His remarks to troops at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., came the day after President Bush again sent signals that he plans to use the military to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.

Asked during a "town meeting" before U.S. Transportation Command personnel if new missions can be tackled while the anti-terrorist operation is being conducted in Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "It is not so manpower-intensive that we're not capable of doing something else at the same time."

Administration officials have been saying for months that Mr. Bush wants Saddam ousted during the president's first term. If left in power, officials argue, Saddam will eventually obtain nuclear weapons that could be used by terrorists to inflict widespread damage to America.

"Today the power and reach of weapons is so great and the nexus between terrorist networks and terrorist nations that have weapons of mass destruction is so close, that our margin for error has suddenly shrunk," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

In a speech Wednesday to future military officers at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Mr. Bush again referred to Iraq as forming an "axis of evil," a term he uses to describe Saddam's regime, Iran and North Korea.

"In their threat to peace, in their mad ambitions, in their destructive potential and in the repression of their own people, these regimes constitute an axis of evil and the world must confront them," the president said.

The administration has downplayed the importance of eliminating Osama bin Laden, after Mr. Bush initially said he wanted the terrorist mastermind "dead or alive" for the September 11 attacks.

Mr. Rumsfeld stuck to the newer message yesterday. He suggested that if bin Laden survived the months of intensive coalition air strikes in Afghanistan he is at best neutralized.

"The one thing we know of certain knowledge is that he is busy," the defense secretary said. "He's on the run. He's hiding. If he's alive, he's hiding."

U.S. officials believe bin Laden remains in eastern Afghanistan or just over the border in Pakistan. Some have a firm belief that he was wounded during the war and is in poor health.

The Arab-language Al Jazeera television news network yesterday showed more excerpts of a video documentary produced by a group that supports bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization.

The segments resembled clips broadcast by the Qatar station on Monday. They show bin Laden and his top adviser, Egyptian surgeon Ayman Zawahiri, seated outside, with a backdrop of grass, a stream and mountains.

U.S. officials believe the tape was made months ago and released now to try to reassure al Qaeda followers that the terrorist leader is alive and well.

The fact that supporters would perhaps doctor a tape to make it appear contemporary may show that bin Laden is unable to record one of his trademark videos, or is, in fact, dead, officials said.

In his last tape made in early December and released later that month, bin Laden appeared grayer, thin and shaken, his left arm still. This week's tape showed a healthier-looking bin Laden. Analysts say this is more proof that the tape was made last year, perhaps between the September 11 attacks and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7.

On Wednesday, Saudi-owned MBC television showed a tape on which al Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaith for the first time claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks.

"We were able to hit the head of the infidels on his own turf," Ghaith said, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Border Security Bill Clears Senate
Tighter Watch on Student Visas Sought

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11552-2002Apr18?language=printer

The Senate last night unanimously approved a bill to tighten security at the nation's borders, including closer monitoring of immigrants with student visas.

The legislation was passed 97 to 0 and includes an array of provisions -- prompted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- aimed at preventing terrorists from obtaining visas to enter the United States. The measure is similar to a House-approved bill, and its sponsors said the House is likely to go along with minor Senate changes and send the legislation to President Bush.

Bush issued a statement immediately after the vote, commending the Senate for its action and saying he looked forward to signing the bill. He also urged Congress to complete action on immigration legislation that the Senate will consider separately in the near future.

The bill authorizes 200 new border agents in each of the next five years, along with more money for training. Congress would have to fund the legislation in a separate bill; the estimated cost over three years is $3.2 billion.

The bill attempts to tighten control over student visas in several ways. The government would have to monitor a student's entry into this country and report it to the student's intended school. The school would have to notify the government if the student fails to report for class. At least one of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the country on a student visa but did not show up for classes.

The bill also calls for creating an electronic database from law enforcement and intelligence sources, including a sophisticated name-matching system, to help immigration and consular officials identify and bar possible terrorists. Also, consular offices would be required to transmit an electronic version of an immigrant's visa file to U.S. immigration officials before the person's arrival.

High-level approval would be required before any visa could be issued to people from countries the United States has designated as terrorist.

All commercial airlines and ships coming to the United States would have to provide a list of passengers and crew before arrival. U.S. airlines now provide such lists but many foreign carriers do not.

By October 2004, all travel documents for those entering or leaving the country would have to be tamper-resistant and machine-readable, and a year later equipment to handle the documents would have to be installed at all ports of entry. The passports, visas and other documents would have to include biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or retinal scans.

Last March the House passed a broader bill that combined the border security provisions with more controversial legislation making it easier for some illegal immigrants to gain permanent residency in the United States.

The House bill would revive the recently expired Section 245 (i) program, under which illegal immigrants could remain in this country while seeking to become permanent residents if they pay a $1,000 fee and have a close relative or employer to sponsor them.

Senate leaders temporarily dropped the immigration provisions at the insistence of Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), who contended they amounted to amnesty for people who broke the law. Senate leaders of both parties said they intend to bring up the provisions as soon as possible.

Byrd also insisted on a number of technical changes in the border security bill but dropped more controversial proposals, including one, aimed at China, that would bar imports produced by prison labor or child labor.

Angela Kelley, deputy director for the Washington-based National Immigration Forum, applauded the Senate for taking action that "isolates terrorism without isolating America."

"These are just common-sense measures that keep us a nation of immigrants," Kelley said. "It's a forward-looking approach to national security."

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol agents, praised the bill for including additional training and enhanced technology. "It closes a lot of the loopholes that exist in the way the system works now," he said. "It's not the end-all but . . . I think it's a good start."

James W. Ziglar, head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, declined to comment on the legislation. But a Justice Department official said the bill will help the agency "do our part in fighting terrorism."

Staff writer Cheryl W. Thompson contributed to this report.

----

Malnutrition, Disease Rampant at Prison for Taliban
Red Cross Begins Emergency Feeding

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11821-2002Apr18?language=printer

SHEBERGAN, Afghanistan, April 18 -- They are too weak to stand for long, gaunt young Afghan men scratching at the lesions on their arms, picking at the lice in their beards and coughing incessantly. For nearly five months, they have had little more than bread and rice to eat.

Now, hundreds of these captured Taliban fighters are suffering from severe malnutrition, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Here at the prison in which they have been held since the Taliban's defeat last fall, the Red Cross today began the emergency feeding of almost 100 of the worst-off captives; up to 500 eventually will be moved into tents for medical treatment.

Conditions at the prison are so bad that the Red Cross is planning to start a food program for all of the Taliban fighters being kept here. There are 2,770 -- 800 are Pakistanis, the rest Afghans -- and in addition to malnutrition, many suffer from tuberculosis, severe diarrhea, respiratory infections and other afflictions. Cells are overcrowded, with 50 men or more crammed into a room, and officials here said dozens have died while in detention.

"We all feel hungry all the time," said Mohammed Ebrir, 18, from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. He crouched beside a Red Cross tent, waiting for another glass of the fortified milk he will receive five times a day until he is well enough to eat solid food. Nearby, other young Taliban soldiers wilting in the heat sat with their shirts off, revealing protruding ribs.

Ebrir and the other prisoners here are the forgotten detritus of the collapsed Taliban government, mostly foot soldiers and conscripts who were rounded up when their enemies captured the northern city of Kunduz during U.S. airstrikes. U.S. investigators have taken custody of fighters thought to have ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, selecting suspects during interrogations here at Shebergan and at the Qala-i-Janghi fort 75 miles east. During a four-day riot at Qala-i-Janghi, 600 people were killed, including CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann.

The interim government in Kabul has declared an amnesty for most rank-and-file Taliban members, which probably would cover many of the fighters here. Yet while most of their former leaders remain at large, these men are still being held by Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek militia leader who controls much of the north. Three hundred and fifty prisoners -- the youngest and oldest, according to the chief jailer -- were released in February on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

But for the rest, the question is not when they will be released, but how long they can survive.

Physicians for Human Rights, a group based in Boston, protested the conditions here in February and faulted the United States for not using its influence with Afghan leaders to resolve the problem. No action was taken, and the Red Cross intervened, but insisted that it remained the "responsibility of the authorities" to provide adequate food, as Simon Brooks, head of the Red Cross's program in northern Afghanistan, put it.

But Gen. Jura Bek, who runs the prison, said that "the food is enough for them." Standing just feet away from hollow-eyed prisoners huddled near the Red Cross tent, he said: "They are not starving. The food here is enough for prisoners. They don't work, they don't use energy, so the food is enough for them."

At midday today, after the worst cases had gulped down three glasses of the fortified milk provided by the Red Cross, Bek read off the list of what he said was their regular daily ration: 200 grams of rice, 600 grams of bread, 30 grams of oil, 160 grams of carrots, 5 grams of tomato paste and 2.5 grams of salt.

Expressing indignation at the charge that the prisoners were malnourished, the general stomped into the prison kitchen, where greasy rice was being cooked in round aluminum pots and giant sacks of carrots sat on the dirt floor. "See," he said, grabbing the sleeve of a prisoner-cook, "he is fat, and he eats the same food."

The general said about 50 Taliban prisoners have died since coming here, including one Pakistani on Wednesday, who he said died of tuberculosis. The Red Cross would not provide its own statistics on the prison deaths.

But Kirsten Gocher, a Red Cross nutritionist whose previous assignment was treating starving people in Africa, said the condition of the prisoners here "shows there's been a problem of food for quite some time." Over the last few days, the Red Cross has put up five giant white tents in the prison courtyard, each capable of holding 128 patients. The prisoners are being weighed and evaluated, and the ones deemed most in need of treatment will be sent to the tents, which are guarded and surrounded by barbed wire.

The first 93 prisoners, all of them Afghans, arrived Wednesday night. Every few hours, they receive a plastic cup filled with milk containing vitamins and antibiotics, Gocher said. But even those considered not severely malnourished, she said, show signs of hunger.

The prisoners are so weak, she said, that the Red Cross will even hold off giving the dirt-encrusted men showers until their health improves. "We'd rather have dirty prisoners for a week," she said.

"We can't sleep well in the night because we are so hungry," said Khalid Rahman, 18, from the southern city of Kandahar. "We are very weak now, that's why they brought us here."

Like many of the prisoners, Rahman insisted that the Taliban pressed him into service. "I wasn't Taliban," he said, nodding between sniffles at the Red Cross tent behind him. "I was a shopkeeper." Rahman said his family sent him to Kunduz to find out whether his uncle, a Taliban soldier, was still alive.

"They [the Taliban] tricked me. They told me my uncle was there, but when I got to Kunduz they gave me a gun." He was a Taliban fighter for three weeks and was then taken prisoner, he said.

Now, he said, "I would like to have a whole big meal -- a good rice pilau. Can you give me some?"


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- energy

Senate Vote Blocks Drilling in Refuge
GOP 14 Votes Short on Alaska Oil Plan

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12079-2002Apr18?language=printer

In an emphatic defeat for President Bush and the centerpiece of his energy program, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted yesterday to block drilling for oil and gas in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The 54 to 46 vote left Republicans 14 votes shy of the 60 they needed to end Democratic delaying tactics and force approval of the intensely controversial proposal, which Congress has debated for years.

GOP leaders had wanted at least 51 votes to be able to claim that a majority of senators favored the drilling initiative. Even a slim majority, they said, would bolster their case for reviving the plan in negotiations with the House on a final version of a larger energy bill. Hoping to attract wavering votes, Republicans added pro-Israel provisions and offered a separate proposal with a steel industry bailout -- both without apparent effect. When the roll was called on yesterday's key amendment, eight Republicans joined all but five Democrats in voting against drilling in ANWR.

Even if yesterday's vote was expected, it nonetheless came as a disappointment to the White House and others who say the United States should find and extract more petroleum from its own lands. When the GOP-controlled House narrowly approved ANWR drilling last year, it marked the greatest advance these advocates had achieved in years.

But environmental groups fought back tenaciously, warning lawmakers in this election year that they viewed ANWR as a nonnegotiable priority. Yesterday's results cast doubt on whether the Senate will agree to any compromise. They also illustrate the potential potency of environmental issues this year for Democrats, who hope to regain control of the House while preserving their slim Senate majority.

The long and intense lobbying campaign pitted Democrats and environmentalists against an unusual alliance featuring a Republican administration, a number of normally Democratic labor unions, veterans organizations and some pro-Israel groups. Native Alaskan groups were divided on the issue. The state of Alaska spent millions of dollars lobbying for a go-ahead for drilling. Bush argued for the proposal in speeches, although he never wasted political capital lobbying personally for it after it became a lost cause.

Especially after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the administration and its allies tried to portray the refuge's oil as essential to national security because it would reduce U.S. dependence on oil from countries like Iraq.

The United States is already too reliant on foreign oil and "we'll be more dependent on foreign oil in six years if we don't open the Arctic refuge," Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) argued in yesterday's debate.

Democrats, some moderate Republicans and environmental advocates contended that the refuge would not produce enough oil to reduce imports significantly, and warned that drilling would threaten caribou, polar bears and other wildlife that inhabit or traverse the targeted area.

"The limited amount of oil, and the problems of extracting it, make it very clear we should not risk opening the refuge, which is the last 5 percent of Alaska's vast North Slope that remains protected," argued Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). "There are other . . . more effective ways to deal with our country's energy needs."

Proponents responded that new technologies allow drilling without environmental damage and frequently displayed large photographs showing caribou nuzzling an Alaska pipeline.

To many lawmakers, the issue had gained a symbolism out of proportion to reality, with serious political implications because influential groups on both sides intend to make it a key issue in this fall's congressional elections.

The White House response was low-key, criticizing the vote while promising to keep fighting for permission to drill in the refuge.

"At a time when oil and gas prices are rising, the Senate today missed an opportunity to lead America to greater energy independence," press secretary Ari Fleischer said. He did not say whether Bush would sign an energy bill without the drilling provision, but many Republican lawmakers have said they believe he would do so.

Senate Republicans were more aggressive in their response to the defeat.

"This was a mistake, and we'll live to regret it," said Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

"Sooner or later this nation will open up ANWR. World events will dictate that," said Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), a leader of the pro-drilling forces.

Democrats were also barbed in their comments. "I think it really comes down to this: We are just not going to allow Republicans to destroy the environment," Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) said just before the vote. "That's exactly what this issue's been about from the very beginning -- whether or not you protect the environment."

The Senate battle over the refuge was fought to the last hour, even after it was clear that Republicans had nowhere near the 60 votes needed to prevent a Democratic filibuster. Leading the opposition were Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), both possible contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

In a last-ditch effort to gain votes, Stevens and Murkowski offered several "sweeteners." Among them were proposals to exclude Israel from a ban on exporting oil produced from the refuge, and to extend an existing promise to come to Israel's rescue if its oil supplies are shut off. But these proposals did not appear to have much, if any, impact.

Stevens offered a separate amendment to link the refuge proposal to a multibillion-dollar rescue plan that would use revenue from drilling leases and production royalties to help the financially strapped steel industry pay health and related benefits to its retirees. But steel-state Democrats, the intended targets, turned down the deal after unsuccessful talks with the White House. Conservative Republicans opposed the idea of a bailout.

Stevens's proposal lost by an even bigger margin than the other refuge amendment: 64 to 36.

Both Democrats and Republicans said they believe it may be possible to pass the energy bill next week, triggering a conference with the House to resolve differences over the refuge and other topics. The House bill focuses largely on incentives for domestic production of oil, coal and nuclear energy, while the Senate bill relies more on conservation and development of wind, solar and other renewable sources of power, including corn-based ethanol as a gasoline additive.

In yesterday's roll calls, Maryland Democratic Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes voted against the drilling proposal, while Virginia Republican Sens. John W. Warner and George Allen voted for it.

----

Senate Seeks to Wrap Up Energy Bill

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15845-2002Apr19?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The Senate is moving to wrap up an energy bill, but without two proposals that sparked the greatest political fireworks and may have had the most impact.

Drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which environmentalists made a symbol of their opposition to the Bush administration's policies, and slapping automakers with tough new fuel economy requirements were found to be politically too hot to accept.

In a showdown Thursday over the future of the refuge, drilling supporters could muster only 46 of the 60 votes needed to end a Democratic filibuster and allow a vote on putting the refuge provision into a broader energy bill.

The House already had approved drilling as part of its energy package and President Bush had made it a centerpiece of his energy agenda. He was noncommittal when reporters asked him Friday if he would sign an energy bill without the ANWR drilling plan. "We'll see what happens," the president said.

"The Senate missed an opportunity to lead America to greater energy independence," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declared, echoing Alaska's two senators who described the refuge as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on dictators such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein for its energy.

Still, eight Republicans abandoned Bush and joined with most Democrats in rejecting drilling in ANWR, as the refuge is called. "There are other, more feasible options for ... reducing national foreign oil dependence," said Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I.

"Development would irreversibly damage this natural resource," argued Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., referring to the refuge's coastal plain where thousands of caribou visit and give birth to their young each summer, joined by millions of migratory birds, musk-oxen, polar bears and other wildlife.

While drilling advocates argue the oil could be developed while still protecting the wildlife, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., maintained that the oil - estimated as likely between 5.7 billion and 11.6 billion barrels - still wasn't enough to make a serious dent in imports when it would start flowing south in eight to 10 years.

What would help, Kerry argued, would be a significant increase in the fuel efficiency of automobiles and sport utility vehicles, which guzzle 70 percent of the 19 million barrels of oil consumed each day in the United States.

But like the Arctic drilling, the auto fuel economy became a lightning rod in the energy debate. When Kerry pushed to boost federal fuel economy requirements by 50 percent, the auto industry and autoworkers said jobs would be lost and suburban soccer moms would no longer be able to buy SUVs. The proposal was killed last month on a 63-38 vote.

Many of the same senators who opposed the fuel economy increase raised alarms during the Arctic refuge debate over U.S. reliance on oil imports, said Kerry. "They had no interest in national security when we put before the Senate a plan that would have saved America 1 million barrels a day in 2015 and 2 million barrels a day by 2020."

The Senate likely will finish its energy legislation, covering more than 580 pages, sometime next week. Both Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi want a bill, as does the White House. While lacking either oil drilling in ANWR or significant auto fuel economy measures, the bill includes myriad items that are attractive to politically powerful energy industries.

Among them:

-A compromise on renewable fuels that would triple the use of ethanol, a boon to farmers.

-A phaseout of the water-fouling gas additive MTBE, welcomed by a number of states, including much of the Northeast.

-Elimination of an oxygen requirement for gasoline and a reduction in "boutique" gasoline blends, making it easier for refiners to meet air quality regulations.

-Government help for the nuclear industry to develop its next generation of power plants and continued limits on reactor accident liability.

-Loan guarantees to build an Alaska natural gas pipeline, a $20 billion project aimed at providing access to large gas reserves on the North Slope.

-Tax and other incentives for purchase of hybrid gas-electric vehicles, build more fuel efficient buildings and sell more efficient appliances.

Among the issues not yet resolved, and likely to come up early next week, are details of proposed tax breaks, totaling nearly $16 billion, for energy conservation, renewable fuels an energy development.

EDITOR'S NOTE - H. Josef Hebert has covered energy and environmental issues for The Associated Press since 1991.

-------- environment

Utility Buys Out Contaminated Ohio Town

April 19, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-19-06.html

CHESHIRE, Ohio, American Electric Power has agreed to buy an entire town in Ohio that has been contaminated by sulfuric acid from one of the utility's coal burning plants. The company will spend $20 million to acquire about 200 parcels of land that make up the southeastern Ohio community of Cheshire, relocating all 221 residents of the tiny hamlet.

Last summer, blue clouds of sulfuric acid gas drifted into the village more than a dozen times, causing headaches, burning eyes, sore throats, and chemical burns on the mouths of local residents. A federal study concluded that the sulfuric clouds were not life threatening, but noted they could be harmful to people with asthma.

American Electric Power's General James M. Gavin power plant (Photo courtesy Windsor Star)

On Friday, members from about 68 Cheshire families attended a town meeting to discuss American Electric Power's (AEP) offer to buy out their homes. After the meeting, almost all of the town's residents voted to accept the deal.

"This is a solution that meets the needs of all involved," said Bill Sigmon, AEP senior vice president for unregulated power generation.

"The decision to buy the property provides us with land that can be used to enhance the operations of our General James M. Gavin plant at Cheshire, including the potential for expanding our barge unloading capabilities to facilitate fuel deliveries to the plant," Sigmon said. "It also addresses the concerns of our neighbors, who experienced unanticipated conditions during the initial operation of new pollution control systems at Gavin last year."

The 2,600 megawatt Gavin plant provides nearly all of the power for the city of Columbus, Ohio.

The plant's emissions became a problem after the utility installed new emissions control equipment last year. The new scrubbers, required under the federal Clean Air Act, remove nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions that lead to smog.

However, the new scrubbers also produced a small increase in the level of sulfur trioxide (SO3) in the emissions coming from the plant's two 830 foot high smokestacks.

The situation was compounded by weather conditions that periodically forced the stack exhaust plume to the ground producing a blue haze at ground level.

"At no time during the plant´s operation did emissions in the plume exceed any health based ambient air quality standards or permissible exposure limits established by federal or state regulations," the American Electric Power (AEP) company said in a release.

AEP reached the agreement to buy the town of Cheshire with lawyers representing the town's residents.

"While the plant operates with emission levels well within all health based air quality standards, we understand the concerns of our neighbors and care about the welfare of the community," Sigmon said. "As part of this agreement, we are resolving all claims of impacts that the residents have."

Students at Kyger Creek Middle School (Photo courtesy Kyger Creek Middle School)

But not everyone is happy with the deal. For example, the deal does not include buying out or moving Kyger Creek Middle or River Valley High schools, located within 600 yards of the plant. About 800 students, including 25 from Cheshire, are bused to the schools each day.

"Relocation will not be easy, especially for some whose families have lived in Cheshire for generations," Cheshire Mayor Tom Reese told the "Columbus Dispatch." "It will be sad, indeed, to see our village disappear."

The village will literally disappear, buried under tons of dirt to form a new site for barges to dump the tons of coal they bring to fuel the Gavin plant. The relocation project could be completed by the end of the year, AEP's Sigmon said.

Cooling tower at American Electric Power's General James M. Gavin power plant dwarfs the town of Cheshire. (Photo courtesy Ohio Citizen)

"The footprint of our Gavin plant has grown significantly since the plant was completed in the mid-1970s," Sigmon added. "Additional space was required for environmental control systems like scrubbers for reducing sulfur dioxide emissions and selective catalytic reduction for reducing nitrogen oxide emissions."

"This equipment has made Gavin one of the nation's cleanest coal fired power plants, but it has also extended plant operations closer to the property line," he noted. "As a result of expansion, the property AEP will be acquiring is more suitable now for power generation activities."

The company is now installing three separate systems for controlling the plants sulfur emissions, at an estimated cost of $7 million. Combined with the $20 million costs of acquiring the town of Cheshire - a price well above the $6 million estimated market value of the lots - the company's investment is still expected to be much cheaper than the costs of settling lawsuits that Cheshire residents had threatened to file over the plant's pollution.

-------- human rights

Amnesty International: Spain Is Racist in Its Treatment of Immigrants

April 19, 2002
By EMMA DALY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/19/international/europe/19SPAI.html

MADRID - Amnesty International has accused Spain, the steppingstone to Europe for thousands of poor immigrants, of "frequent and widespread" mistreatment of foreigners and ethnic minorities, including torture, and called for the authorities to adopt a plan to combat racism.

The organization's report, the first on racism in a European country, investigated more than 320 cases of abuse from 1995 to 2002, including deaths and rapes while in custody, beatings and verbal abuse. Amnesty International also expressed concern about the widespread use of racial profiling by the police.

"The cases we have documented show a pattern of violation by law enforcement officers of the rights of members of ethnic minorities or persons of non-Spanish origin," writes Gillian Fleming, the author of the report. "Discrimination against these people, tolerated by the authorities, makes them especially vulnerable to torture and ill treatment by state officials."

The economic boom in Spain in the last few years, and its position at a southern frontier of Europe, has spurred an increase in immigration.

The number of foreigners living legally in Spain has risen sharply in 20 years, with an 18 percent increase in 2000 alone, to 1.1 million. The number was about 200,000 in 1981, the report said. Moroccans make up the largest group, followed by Ecuadoreans.

Amnesty International focused on Spain in part because it currently holds the presidency of the European Union.

It says that racist attacks have increased as the immigrant population has grown, with the recent influx bringing about "a general recognition that racism and xenophobia are at least as serious a problem in Spain as elsewhere in Europe."

In the report, the human rights group detailed the cases of four immigrants who died in police custody, as well as five women who reported being raped or sexually assaulted.

It also examined the plight of children living without their families or in the street. The report says immigrant children often face abuse, deportation without regard to the law or their family situation, and a lack of protection and legal representation.

"Physical ill treatment and abuse of authority by police officers," Amnesty International said, was "frequent and widespread," although, for a variety of reasons, "only a small number of ill-treatment cases result in judicial complaints."

The report says many undocumented immigrants, "living in the hope of receiving work and residence permits, are afraid to lodge complaints with the police or courts." Even when complaints are made, investigations have fallen short of international standards, the reports finds.

In its discussion of racial profiling, the report cited the case of Rodney Mack, an African-American who is principal trumpet player with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, who said he was badly beaten by officers in Barcelona looking for a black car thief.

In Spain, Amnesty International found, officers routinely detain black people and members of other ethnic minorities on suspicion of drug dealing or of not carrying the identity documents that are obligatory in Spain.

The report was rejected by Spanish officials. Ignacio Gil- Lázaro, a congressman from the ruling Popular Party, said, "The police and Civil Guard confront immigration in a deeply humanitarian way."



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