------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Significant Uranium Mineralization Intersected on the Hidden Bay Property
40 Years Of Government Sponsored Ecological Terrorism
Japan's plutonium stockpile alarming
Funding Denied for Nuclear Security
Debate Over Nuclear Lab Security Heats Up
White House Hasn't Sought Money to Guard Atomic Plants
Funds Lacking to Protect U.S. Nuke Labs, Official Says
Official: Nuke Security Underfunded
FirstEnergy submits Ohio reactor report to NRC
Troopers Prepare to Block Plutonium
S.C. Prepares to Block Plutonium
MILITARY
IRA arms buy violates Good Friday accords
Synagogues burn as Europeans rage
Pentagon: Iraq Moving Missiles Into No - Fly Zones
Pentagon: Iraq Testing 'No-Fly Zone'
Defence costs bloat Israeli deficit
Not Quite an Arab-Israeli War
Sharon satisfied as withdrawal begins
Sharon plan for West Bank confirmed
Palestinian Militia Head Said Dead
Pakistani Ruler Says Will Go if Loses Referendum
A Street Fight
UN Chemical Arms Chief Ousted in U.S. - Led Vote
UN conference backs indigenous peoples drug payout
New Command, Old Tricks
Venezuela Debates Truth Commission
Israeli Army Seizes Press Cards
POLICE / PRISONERS
Transcripts Offer First Look at Secret Federal Hearings
Tight rein kept on two terror suspects
Court to Look at Death Row Appeals
'Holy war' urge of new Bin Laden video
Moussaoui Calls for the Destruction of the U.S.
ENERGY AND OTHER
Chinese discuss possible Brazil ethanol imports
Canada welcomes demise of Alaska drilling plan
EU environment policy puts focus on soil quality
Limits of DNA Research Pushed to Identify the Dead of Sept. 11
Scientists Find Gene Tied to Cancer Risk
U.S., Clinton accused of war atrocities
Human Rights Groups Accuse Israel
ACTIVISTS
'Die-ins' to tie up traffic
Mideast Protesters March in D.C.
Marchers Protest Aid to Columbia
-------- NUCLEAR
In 1952, an atomic test conducted in Nevada became the first nuclear explosion shown on live network television.
-------- canada
Significant Uranium Mineralization Intersected on the Hidden Bay Property
Monday April 22, 2001
Press Release
SOURCE: Pioneer Metals Corporation; UEX Corporation
http://biz.yahoo.com/cnw/020422/uranium_mineralizatio_1.html
VANCOUVER - Cameco Corporation ("Cameco"), exploration manager for UEX Corporation ("UEX") on the Hidden Bay property in northern Saskatchewan, has reported to UEX the preliminary results of the winter exploration program of geophysics and diamond drilling on the property. The drilling program was conducted in the West Bear deposit area, with the following highlights:
- a significant drill intersection of uranium mineralization in a potentially new, near surface zone located 550 m west of the West Bear deposit
- intersection of new nickel-cobalt-arsenic and low grade uranium mineralization in a broad zone of intense clay alteration located 200 m east of the West Bear deposit
- a single hole drilled into the West Bear deposit encountered expected uranium grades based on adjacent drill sections, but over a thickness greater than anticipated
- the drilling results indicate that areas to the west and east of the West Bear deposit are prospective for new uranium resources at shallow depths over a minimum strike length of 1.4 kilometers
The exploration program, comprising expenditures of approximately $600,000, which included $450,000 in ground geophysical surveys and $150,000 in diamond drilling, commenced in February, 2002, and was completed in early April.
The 2002 winter program was undertaken to test high priority exploration targets through a combination of ground geophysical surveys and diamond drilling. A total of 423 line kilometers of ground fixed and moving loop EM, horizontal loop EM, and ground magnetometer surveys were undertaken on the West Bear, Raven-Horseshoe, Telephone, Rhino Lake, Wolf and Black Island target areas. Work was performed by Quantec Geoscience Inc. of Porcupine, Ontario. Conductive lithologic units were identified in basement rocks on all of the target areas, and based on their extent, intensity and structural style, will be prioritized for follow-up diamond drilling to test for associated uranium mineralization during upcoming exploration programs.
Diamond drilling was conducted on the West Bear target area to test lateral and down dip extensions of mineralization and new geophysical targets. The West Bear deposit, discovered in 1978 by Gulf Minerals Canada Limited, has a historical inferred resource of 1.27 million lbs U3O8 at grades of 0.44% U3O8 (due to its historical nature, this resource was not calculated in conformity with National Instrument 43-101). During the current program, eleven diamond drill holes totaling 1284 m were completed by Major Midwest Drilling in the West Bear Area, and three holes intersected uranium mineralization with concentrations greater than 0.1% U3O8. Geochemical sample intervals in each of these were selected with guidance from radiometric probe data. Core was split, half core from each interval sealed in sample bags, and submitted to the Saskatchewan Research Council in Saskatoon. After preparation, uranium and base metal concentrations were determined using fluorimetry and ICP analysis.
Results are tabulated below:
Hole Target From To Width (m) % U3O8
------------------------------------------------------------------
WBE-16 Pebble Hill 48.50 50.75 2.25 1.926
------------------------------------------------------------------
including 48.50 49.00 0.50 4.490
------------------------------------------------------------------
WBE-17 West Bear 16.00 25.00 9.00 1.686
------------------------------------------------------------------
including 16.00 22.00 6.00 1.945
------------------------------------------------------------------
including 21.50 22.00 0.50 4.675
------------------------------------------------------------------
WBE-19 West Bear east 43.50 45.00 1.50 0.167
------------------------------------------------------------------
Downhole radiometric logs were also obtained for drill holes using a shielded G375A probe. Readings were collected at 10cm intervals, and equivalent U3O8 grades were estimated using a conversion factor based on correlation of radiometric data with direct chemical analysis of samples by Cameco at other deposits in the region. The radiometric data provide a verification of the geochemical data, and additional information where core loss prevented representative geochemical sampling. Radiometric results for mineralized intervals in drill holes WBE-16 and 17 are as follows:
Equivalent
Hole Target From To Width (m) % U3O8
--------------------------------------------------------------------
WBE-16 Pebble Hill 48.60 51.40 2.80 1.25
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Including 48.60 49.20 0.60 1.82
--------------------------------------------------------------------
And 49.80 51.40 1.60 1.27
--------------------------------------------------------------------
WBE-17 West Bear 13.90 24.90 11.00 1.79
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Including 14.50 21.80 7.30 2.34
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hole WBE-16 was drilled to test the down dip projection of southeast dipping uranium mineralization intersected historically at the Pebble Hill prospect (0.8% U3O8 over 1.5 m in two holes). Although the historic Pebble Hill mineralization was not intersected, a Fe-oxide-clay altered zone in pegmatite was intersected 7.1 m below (true depth) the Athabasca unconformity, which contains 1.926% U3O8 over a 2.2 m interval. This is the most significant intersection ever obtained in the Pebble Hill area. While the field location of the historical drill holes has not been precisely established, historical plans and sections suggest that the mineralization occurs 10-15 m structurally above, and south of, the Pebble Hill prospect, and consequently may represent a previously unknown zone which is open to the south.
Hole WBE-17 was drilled within the West Bear deposit. Historical diamond and reverse circulation drilling in the deposit suffered from poor recoveries due to the altered host rocks, and wet drilling conditions. The current hole was completed to test the potential for upgrading the resource using larger diameter (HQ wireline) diamond drilling techniques to increase core recovery, and modern downhole radiometric probe technology to determine the width and grade of mineralization. The hole, sited between two 30.5 m spaced historic drill sections, intersected significant uranium mineralization in intense clay alteration above and straddling the unconformity over a 9 m interval grading 1.686% U3O8. Although no core was recovered above 16 m, the radiometric logs indicates that mineralization is present as high as 13.9 m in the hole, and is continuous over an 11 m interval (13.9-24.9 m grading 1.79% U3O8 equivalent). This represents the thickest intersection of greater than 1% U3O8 obtained in the deposit to date, and supports the hypothesis that thickness and tonnage of the deposit may be understated. Additional confirmatory drilling on the deposit will have to be completed before this possibility can be confirmed and quantified.
Hole WB-19 was completed to test potential eastern extensions of the West Bear deposit, based on a new interpretation of the strike of host lithologies indicated by the new EM surveys. The hole intersected an intense zone of clay alteration in basement rocks between 30.3 and 50.1 m which contains anomalous uranium mineralization, including an interval grading 0.167% U3O8 over 1.5 m between 43.5 and 45.0 m. Representative spot and continuous geochemical samples collected throughout the alteration zone have returned consistently highly anomalous concentrations of Ni, Co, As, Cu and Zn, including samples containing up to 9.21% Co, 2.86% Ni and 10.8% As in a 20 cm representative spot sample at 33.8 m. Continuously sampled intervals in this alteration zone include 0.38% Co, 0.68% Ni and 0.99% As over 8.5 m between 37.0 and 45.5 m, and 0.35% Co, 1.09% Ni and 1.18% As between 43.5 and 45.0 m. Similar concentrations of these elements, indicative of nickel-cobalt arsenide minerals, are spatially associated with uranium mineralization at deposits such as West Bear and Key Lake. Since this mineralization occurs in a wide gap in historic drilling, it is a high priority follow-up target that could either represent an extension of the West Bear deposit, or a new zone.
Diamond drill holes WBE-12 to 15 and 18, drilled to test potential down dip and western extensions of the West Bear deposit, did not intersect uranium mineralization indicating that historical diamond drilling has effectively bounded the mineralization in these areas. Holes WBE-20 and 21 were drilled to test northeast extensions of the deposit, but may have been targeted too far north since footwall host rocks to the deposit were intersected beneath the unconformity. While no uranium mineralization was intersected in hole WBE-22, a zone of clay alteration was intersected in pegmatite between 47.6 and 90.1 m which may represent the southwestern, down dip extent of the metaliferous alteration zone intersected approximately 150 m to the northeast in hole WBE-19.
UEX management is very encouraged by the results of the 2002 exploration program, which underscores the company's belief that the property contains the potential for the rapid discovery and delineation of new uranium deposits, and the upgrading of the historical resources previously identified at the West Bear and Raven-Horseshoe deposits. The company is in the process of evaluating the numerous exploration targets identified on the Hidden Bay property during historical exploration, and will use the geophysical results and drilling data obtained during the current program to aid in the planning of further drilling programs that will commence this summer.
The information in this document has been compiled by D. Rhys, P. Geo., an independent qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF PIONEER METALS CORPORATION AND UEX CORPORATION
"signed"
Stephen H. Sorensen President & C.E.O.
For further information
PIONEER METALS CORPORATION,
PH: (604) 669-3383,
FAX: (604) 669-1240
UEX CORPORATION,
PH: (604) 669-2349,
FAX: (604) 669-1240
-------- depleted uranium
Re: "40 Years Of Government Sponsored Ecological Terrorism"
From: Mitzi Bowman, upthesun@cshore.com
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 01:42:03 -0000
Here are some additions to the unethical, indeed criminal experiments done by U.S. agencies and military: The "Green Run" at Hanford Military Reservation was an experimental release of 9,000 curies of radioactive iodine 131 on the local population in 1959. The Hanford Reconstruction Project began a few years ago to follow up on effects but the funding was recently withdrawn before the final report could be completed and published and funding for the archives was taken away. Experiments on unknowing human victims with the use of plutonium injections and in food was exposed a few years ago, as well. Most of the victims were low-income people, people of color and some children in a school for the retarded. And of course the use of Agent Orange (with dioxin) in Vietnam and DU in Iraq, the Balkans, and Afghanistan, as well as in the U.S. testing grounds, Vieques, in the factories that prepare DU weapons, etc., as well as the nuclear bomb tests in Utah and Nevada and the South Pacific, are all biological experiments on us, the "low-use population". Quite a history! Mitzi
-------- japan
Japan's plutonium stockpile alarming
Japan Today
Japan News - Commentary -
Andrew Monahan
From: ASlater <aslater@gracelinks.org>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002
A prominent Japanese politician remarked last week that Japan could easily make thousands of nuclear weapons, drawing on the vast plutonium reserves from its civil nuclear power program.
Liberal Party President Ichiro Ozawa made the remarks in a speech delivered in Fukuoka, and said that he had made similar comments to the visiting deputy chief of staff of the Liberation Army of China. "If China gets too conceited, the Japanese will get hysterical," the provocatively-inclined Ozawa said. It could encourage conservatives more aggressively nationalistic than himself to pursue a nuclear weapons program to counter the Chinese threat.
He later insisted that he had merely intended to warn against excessive Chinese military buildup, and that he himself would view a nuclear arms race between the two Asian powers as "a tragedy for both countries."
Ozawa is a politician who captured the public imagination in the early 1990s, both in Japan and abroad, with his book "Blueprint for a New Japan," that rightly advocated an array of forward looking political and economic policies that a decade and a faltering reformist poster-boy prime minister later, Japan still badly needs to implement.
The incident, however, typifies a self-defeating tendency of some Japanese leaders, who speak menacingly about the consequences of perceived future threats, while leaving the historical fact of past unprovoked Japanese aggression largely silent. Such antics illustrate the surest way to fail in achieving a Japan divested of its former hindrances.
The Chinese People's Daily ran an unusually measured, strong criticism of Ozawa's bluster, dismissing the politician as out of touch with the anti-nuclear sentiment of his own country, a sentiment that translated into electoral-power makes points concerning weapons capability moot. China and Japan's other Asian neighbors, furthermore, could be counted on, diplomatically, to nip a weapons program in the bud.
The merest hint of any possible revival of Japanese militarism plays very poorly from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur, among all the countries Japan depends on for a wealth of trade and human capital. These countries still smolder with indignation over past Japanese aggressions and the continuing Japanese refusal to thoroughly acknowledge those crimes.
Tellingly, the People's Daily article on Ozawa ran beside another article detailing a recent contribution of forty-one photos to the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, otherwise known as the Rape of Nanjing, and startlingly not known at all among some segments of the Japanese youth, kept ignorant by leaders who turn history textbooks into exercises in revisionism.
The newly donated photos, like the exhibit on the Nanjing Massacre that opened last December at San Francisco's St Mary's Cathedral and then toured other U.S. cities, document exactly what politicians like Ozawa should want the young Japanese to acknowledge and vow clearly never to repeat.
Blueprints bypassing any trace of this past cannot lead to a new Japan, or at least not to the strong and internationally involved Japan that Ozawa, myself, and many others would like.
For the moment, though, we had better not wait for the old guard of the Japanese political elite to have a change of heart. Their shortcomings will likely pass when they themselves pass from power.
Ozawa's comments, however, highlight a more pressing problem: Japan's huge plutonium stockpile. If the political life of the revisionist right in Japan seems long, consider the 24,000-year half-life of plutonium.
Japan's first encounter with this extremely toxic element came in the horrific bombing of Nagasaki on Aug 9, 1945. Unlike the uranium bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima three days earlier, the Nagasaki bomb was made with plutonium. The 6.2 kilograms used in that bomb, however, pale in comparison to the 30,000-plus kilograms that Japan has accumulated through its plutonium-based civil power production program.
This plutonium could, as Ozawa noted, be used for nuclear weapons. It poses a huge threat to nuclear proliferation, as only a small quantity is necessary to produce a bomb. It is an easy target for terrorist groups, who covet it, stolen or purchased on the black market.
Certainly bureaucratic inertia, more than any sinister or secretive design, keeps the uneconomical and dangerous plutonium program alive, if but barely. Nonetheless, it compromises Japan's status as a key nation in the nonproliferation regime at a crucial moment.
Ozawa and others rightly recognize a Chinese nuclear buildup as undesirable, but the problem demands more than knee-jerk reactionism. Suspicions over the plutonium program already run high, and politicians here are mistaken to think that wielding such suspicions as a deterrent will work.
A better approach is suggested by the former director of the Nuclear Energy Division of the Foreign Ministry, Kumao Kaneko, who has been a leading spokesperson for the move to create a EURATOM equivalent in Asia.
This ASIATOM would likewise function to allay anxieties in the region over the proliferation concerns of the member nations' nuclear materials and facilities involved in civic programs, including of course Japan's. It would aim to include operable inspection and verification machinery to pave the way for the confidence necessary to establish a nuclear-free zone in the area. Constructive Japanese moves in this direction, coupled with thorough apologies for its destructive past, would assuage Asian anxiety, and substantially elevate Japan's diplomatic voice.
Such a voice, if only leaders braver than Ozawa can assume it, will have the strength to challenge the silence, and offer instead the good sense to support an international system that seeks to prevent another Nanjing or Hiroshima from occurring.
The writer is a Fulbright Fellow at the Institute for Peace Science in Hiroshima.
-------- terrorism
Funding Denied for Nuclear Security
By Cat Lazaroff
April 22, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-22-07.html
WASHINGTON, DC, The White House has not appropriated the funds needed to protect the nation's nuclear weapons plants and labs against terrorist attacks, charged a Energy Department official in a letter sent last month to the federal Office of Management and Budget. The letter was released today by Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey, a longtime critic of the nation's nuclear security.
On March 28, Bruce Carnes, director of the Energy Department's (DOE) office of management, budget and evaluation, wrote a letter to Marcus Peacock, associate program director at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California is one of the DOE nuclear sites that watchdogs warn could become a terrorist target. (Photo courtesy Lawrence Livermore)
Carnes noted that the DOE requested additional funds in March to increase security and emergency response capabilities at nuclear facilities "in order to adequately protect the public, our workers, and the environment."
"We are very disappointed that we did not get your support for supplemental emergency funding," Carnes wrote. "The Department's remaining safeguards and security budgets are not sufficient to implement the security posture requirements that appropriately respond to the September 11th attacks."
Carnes notes that the DOE had been told that the funding was not approved because a revised document outlining the basis for various departmental security measures has not been completed.
"This isn't a tenable position for you to take, in my view," Carnes wrote to Peacock.
"We are not operating, and cannot operate, under the pre-September 11" security plan, Carnes argued. Until revised security guidelines are issued, the DOE must operate under interim guidelines, "and you have not provided resources to enable us to do so," he added.
"For months the agency has been publicly denying security weaknesses at nuclear weapons facilities," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO), which first obtained the Carnes letter. "In this document, the DOE acknowledges that they are not currently adequately protecting the public from a terrorist attack."
Representative Markey, the Democrat who released Carnes' letter today, said he has been questioning the safety of nuclear sites since before last year's terrorist attacks. Since September 11, Markey has been seeking information from the DOE and other federal offices to support Bush administration contentions that nuclear facilities are secure.
Nuclear sites face two kinds of major threats, Markey says: the theft of nuclear bomb materials, and attack by terrorists armed with bombs. But the biggest concern could be a combination attack in which an armed group could take over a nuclear laboratory, build a bomb, and blow up the facility.
At least 10 DOE sites, including national laboratories in Denver, Colorado and the San Francisco Bay Area in California, may contain enough weapons grade plutonium or uranium to construct a "crude atomic bomb," Markey said. Those facilities might be vulnerable to infiltration by terrorists, who could then construct and detonate a nuclear device on site, he warned.
Markey has sent letters to the DOE and to President George W. Bush demanding that the administration review and upgrade security measures at DOE nuclear sites.
Representative Edward Markey (Photo courtesy Office of the Representative)
"I am concerned that a successful terrorist attack at one of these facilities could lead to the theft of nuclear weapons grade materials, the rapid construction and detonation of a radiological dispersion device or 'dirty bomb,' or the rapid construction and detonation of an improvised nuclear device or 'homemade nuclear bomb' which could kill numerous people and devastate the nearby communities," Markey wrote to President Bush.
While the Bush administration is actively seeking funds for a missile defense system to protect the nation from warheads launched by other nations, it has done little to protect domestic nuclear facilities from homemade bombs made from the nation's own nuclear materials, Markey says.
"The administration has requested almost $8 billion for missile defense which won't do anything to prevent suicidal terrorists from attacking nuclear facilities and blowing up dirty bombs or homemade nuclear weapons," Markey said in a statement today. "But when the Department of Energy finally admits that security is not what it should be, the Office of Management and Budget refuses to help."
In January, the DOE responded to criticisms by Representative Markey, POGO and other groups by calling their allegations "false and misleading."
General John Gordon, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and DOE's Under Secretary of Energy Security at Nuclear Weapons Facilities, said tests have demonstrated that the DOE's nuclear facilities are secure.
"Nuclear material is not at risk at Department of Energy facilities," Gordon concluded.
But a study released by POGO last fall found that exercises in which federal agents posing as terrorists attacked DOE facilities found that the "terrorists" were able to breach security more than half the time.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Debate Over Nuclear Lab Security Heats Up
By Eric Pianin and Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 22, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25878-2002Apr21?language=printer
The Department of Energy privately warned White House officials in late March that it lacked the funds to adequately protect the nation's nuclear weapons research facilities shortly after the administration had offered public assurances that security was more than adequate.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, concerns have mounted among lawmakers and terrorism experts about lax security at some of these weapons facilities, prompting congressional review.
The Energy Department's chief financial officer complained in a March 28 letter that the White House budget office had rejected a request for increased funding in the current fiscal year to provide for beefed up security at government research laboratories. The letter from Bruce M. Carnes warned that DOE was at "a critical juncture" and that its safeguards and security budget were not sufficient to meet the potential terrorism challenge.
"We are disconcerted that OMB refused our security supplemental request," Carnes said in a letter to Marcus Peacock, a senior official for the Office of Management and Budget. "This isn't a tenable position for you to take, in my view."
The letter was written two months after John A. Gordon, an undersecretary of energy and the administrator of the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, publicly declared that security precautions are strong at the nuclear research laboratories and along the network used to transport nuclear materials. He said allegations that the Energy Department had lax security at its nuclear weapons facilities "are false and misleading."
Gordon was responding to warnings from Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and a watchdog group that terrorist commandos could gain access to weapons-grade nuclear material and rapidly construct and detonate nuclear weapons because of grossly inadequate security at many of the nation's nuclear weapons research sites. According to a study last year by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), federal agents posing as "commandos" in mock exercises were able to breach security at nuclear laboratories more than half the time.
Yesterday, Markey released copies of the Carnes letter and called on President Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to address the security problem and explain Gordon's statements playing down security problems.
"The Administration has requested almost $8 billion for missile defense, which won't do anything to prevent suicidal terrorists from attacking nuclear facilities and blowing up dirty bombs or homemade nuclear weapons," said Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "But when DOE finally admits that security is not what it should be, OMB refuses to help."
Amy Call, an OMB spokeswoman, said that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress approved a $111 million supplement to the fiscal 2002 budget to enhance security at nuclear weapons laboratories. The White House is seeking an additional $665 million for lab security and related expenses in the fiscal 2003 budget, she said. The Energy Department's recent request for more money remains under review, she said, while officials conduct a comprehensive assessment of the vulnerabilities of the facilities.
At the Energy Department, spokeswoman Lisa Cutler said that the letter from Carnes does not contradict Gordon because security at the facilities remains strong.
If the funding request continues to be denied, security needs will be met, "even if we have to shift priorities from another program in the department," Cutler said. "We believe our security is adequate and strong, and that our nuclear facilities are among the most secure facilities in the world and present a formidable challenge to any terrorist organization."
The U.S. nuclear weapons facilities managed by the Energy Department hold weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium in sufficient quantities to create nuclear devices. Many are near major metropolitan areas, such as Denver and San Francisco.
"I am concerned that a group of suicidal terrorists would not bother to attempt to steal nuclear weapons materials from these sites," Markey said in his letter to Bush. "Instead they would gain access to the nuclear materials located within them by killing the security guard forces, and, once inside the facility, would construct and detonate dirty bombs or homemade nuclear bombs."
The internal administration dispute over security at the research laboratories stems from Abraham's March 14 request to OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. for supplemental funding to cover both emergency responses to potential terrorist attacks and enhanced security at the facilities.
Neither OMB nor DOE officials would reveal how much additional money the Energy Department is seeking in fiscal 2002.
OMB agreed to ask Congress for additional funds for emergency responses, but it rejected the request for more money for security at the laboratories pending completion of a revision of the Design Basis Threat, a document that outlines the basis for physical security measures.
"We are not operating, and cannot operate under the pre-Sept. 11 Design Basis Threat," Carnes wrote to the OMB in March. "Until that is revised, we must operate under interim Implementing Guidance, and you have not provided resources to enable us to do so."
Earlier this month, Gordon again told reporters that government officials took a "hard look" at the safety of nuclear weapons facilities after Sept. 11 and that he was "pretty satisfied with where we are." He also reiterated his view that the sites would be difficult to strike and not highly attractive to terrorists.
--------
DOMESTIC SECURITY
White House Hasn't Sought Money to Guard Atomic Plants, Energy Official Says
New York Times
April 22, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/politics/22NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, April 21 - The White House has not asked Congress for the money that the Energy Department needs to harden nuclear weapons plants against terrorist attack, a high-ranking Energy Department official complained in a letter to the Office of Management and Budget.
The Energy Department's budget for security and safeguards, meaning protection against theft of nuclear material or information, is "not sufficient to implement the security posture requirements that appropriately respond to the September 11th attacks," the letter said.
Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has long been critical of nuclear security arrangements, plans to release the letter on Monday.
The letter, dated March 28, was sent by Bruce M. Carnes, director of the Energy Department's Office of Management, Budget and Evaluation, to Marcus Peacock, an associate program director at the Office of Management and Budget, a White House agency.
Mr. Carnes wrote that he had been told that the department's request had been turned down because the government was still rewriting the "design basis threat," the document that describes how many attackers the plants must be prepared to repulse and what information and equipment they will have available.
"This isn't a tenable position for you to take, in my view," Mr. Carnes wrote. "We are not operating, and cannot operate, under the pre-September 11 Design Basis Threat. Until that is revised, we must operate under Interim Implementing Guidance, and you have not provided resources to enable us to do so."
Mr. Markey said he feared that terrorists could break into a weapons plant and use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material, or even assemble a nuclear bomb and explode it.
One of the plants is in the San Francisco Bay area and another is in a Denver suburb.
"The administration has requested almost $8 billion for missile defense, which won't do anything to prevent suicidal terrorists from attacking nuclear facilities and blowing up dirty bombs or homemade nuclear weapons," he said in a statement. "But when the Department of Energy finally admits that security is not what it should be, the Office of Management and Budget refuses to help."
A spokeswoman for the Energy Department, Lisa Cutler, asked about the letter, said on Friday: "The weapons complex is among the most secure facilities in the world, and would present a very formidable challenge to any terrorist organization.
"We took immediate steps in the week of Sept. 11 to improve site security and define our priorities for long-term improvement."
Ms. Cutler said a first request for a budget supplement had been approved, allowing the department to meet its highest priorities.
"If we find we need additional funds to meet our security needs this year, we'll make funds available to meet those needs," she said.
The department could do that by redirecting money, or by having the White House ask Congress for an additional appropriation, she said.
"We are going to meet our security needs, period," Ms. Cutler said.
--------
Funds Lacking to Protect U.S. Nuke Labs, Official Says
April 22, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-energy-bush-nuclear.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020422/pl_nm/energy_bush_nuclear_dc_2
WASHINGTON - An Energy Department official warned the White House last month that the department lacked sufficient funds to meet the post Sept. 11 security needs of the nation's nuclear weapons research facilities, according to an internal letter released on Monday.
But White House officials said extra money could be freed up pending the results of a review of the department's security needs.
Energy Department chief financial officer Bruce Carnes told the White House Office of Management and Budget in a March 28 letter that ``the department's remaining safeguards and security budgets are not sufficient to implement the security posture requirements that appropriately respond to the Sept. 11 attacks.''
``We are disconcerted that OMB refused our security supplemental request,'' Carnes told Marcus Peacock, an OMB associate director. The letter was released by Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
In a statement, Markey criticized the White House for failing to provide the money, saying that 10 Energy Department sites around the country may contain enough weapons-grade plutonium and uranium to build a crude atomic bomb.
He cited reports that members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network viewed U.S. nuclear sites as ``attractive terrorist targets.'' The United States accuses al Qaeda of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
``The administration has requested almost $8 billion for missile defense which won't do anything to prevent suicidal terrorists from attacking nuclear facilities and blowing up dirty bombs or homemade nuclear weapons,'' said Markey. ``But when DOE finally admits that security is not what it should be, OMB refuses to help.''
Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Amy Call said President Bush had made security at the nation's nuclear labs a priority. She said Congress approved a $110 million supplemental to the fiscal 2002 budget to boost security at the labs, and that Bush was seeking an extra $650 million to protect the facilities in his 2003 budget.
Call said OMB was still reviewing the Energy Department's funding request and could provide the extra money it was seeking once a ``vulnerability assessment'' of U.S. sites is completed. ``Obviously security is important and this is an issue we're working on,'' Call said.
--------
Official: Nuke Security Underfunded
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy Department complained to the White House in recent weeks that it was not getting the money to protect against terrorists at its nuclear facilities, according to a letter made public Monday.
In the letter, Bruce Carnes, a senior DOE budget director, complained that his department did not have enough money ``to implement the security ... requirements'' needed in response to last September's terrorist attacks.
The letter, dated March 28, was sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at a time when administration officials, including senior DOE officials, were saying security at the nuclear facilities was at a high level and adequate to meet the terrorist threat.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who released the letter Monday, said it shows ``the White House refuses to deal with the consequences of September 11. ... That is very scary.''
A frequent critic of security at federal and commercial nuclear facilities, Markey said the White House and DOE have not ``put security at the top of their list. Clearly they've decided that even security has to be compromised.''
Lisa Cutler, a spokeswoman for the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, said there is adequate money to meet security needs at weapons facilities and nuclear research labs.
While declining to speak to Carnes' letter specifically, she said ``there are always discussions within the administration on the best way to meet the security challenges.''
But Cutler said, ``If we find that we have any funding shortfalls we will take steps. We will work with OMB or redirect funds from other programs to make sure security needs are met.''
In his letter, Carnes complained that the OMB had ``refused our security supplemental (budget) request'' because the government had not yet completed its revamping of a general security document that outlines what kinds of threats the government must be prepared to defend against.
Carnes wrote to OMB that until the new so-called ``design basis threat'' document is completed the department must work under interim security guidelines reflecting conditions since Sept. 11 ``and you have not provided resources to enable us to do so.''
When Markey was critical of security at the federal research labs and other nuclear facilities in January, John Gordon, director of the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, strongly disputed suggestions that security was inadequate.
Markey said that contrasts sharply from the tone of Carnes' letter. He said he wants to know why OMB ``rejected (the) request for additional funds'' to implement new security guidelines.
-------- ohio
FirstEnergy submits Ohio reactor report to NRC
REUTERS USA:
April 22, 2002
Story by Chris Baltimore
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15579/story.htm
WASHINGTON - FirstEnergy Corp. has submitted a report to U.S. nuclear regulators acknowledging it made missteps which led to deep corrosion at an Ohio nuclear power plant.
The report reiterates findings the firm provided to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on March 22. Regulators have yet to approve a first-of-a-kind repair plan, in which the company offered to spend $16 million to patch the damage near the reactor.
NRC officials were not immediately available for comment.
The report found that boric acid - used in the coolant surrounding radioactive uranium rods in the reactor core - had seeped out around several of the control rod nozzles that penetrate the carbon steel reactor head.
The worst leakage ate a hole through the six-inch (15-cm) thick carbon steel reactor head.
After being harshly criticized by NRC officials in recent weeks, FirstEnergy acknowledged that the problem should have been evident as early as 1999.
"The cracks in the stainless steel nozzles probably occurred over a period of four years, or more," the Akron, Ohio-based firm said in a statement.
The company acknowledged that it "missed opportunities for earlier detection of the problem."
FirstEnergy presented a preliminary plan for repairs to regulators earlier this month, proposing to patch the 150-ton reactor vessel head capping the 925-megawatt Davis-Besse plant.
FirstEnergy officials said at an April hearing that the repair work would take three to four weeks. The company will submit a more detailed plan to the NRC within the next few weeks.
Davis-Besse engineers discovered the problem during a routine refueling and maintenance outage that began Feb. 16 at the 25-year-old plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio.
The NRC stepped up its investigation after finding that workers at the plant had carried microscopic radioactive particles on their clothing to outside locations.
FirstEnergy said the particles found on four workers are unlikely to cause adverse health effects.
The company has estimated that while Davis-Besse is shut, it would have to spend $10 million to $15 million a month buying replacement power for the 4.3 million customers served by its seven subsidiary utilities.
The Davis-Besse plant provides about 7 percent of FirstEnergy's overall electricity supply.
The United States has 103 operating nuclear power plants, providing about a fifth of the nation's electricity supply.
-------- south carolina
Troopers Prepare to Block Plutonium
By Page Ivey
Associated Press Writer
Monday, April 22, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28878-2002Apr22.html
NEW ELLENTON, S.C. -- State law enforcement officers practiced blocking weapons-grade plutonium from entering South Carolina, and Gov. Jim Hodges said Monday he would do "whatever it takes" to stop the shipments.
Hodges, who is locked in a dispute with the Department of Energy over the shipments from Colorado, ordered the practice drill for about three dozen state troopers and transport police officers. Hodges has threatened to lie down in the road if necessary to block the shipments.
As part of the drill, patrol cars blocked a four-lane road near the Savannah River Site, about 10 miles from the Georgia state line. Officers convinced the driver of the vehicle escorting a state-owned tractor-trailer to turn around.
Officials said they didn't know whether it would be that easy when trucks carrying plutonium and escorted by armed federal officers make the same attempted entrance. Energy officials have said shipments could begin by May 15.
Hodges, a Democrat up for re-election this year, said the state will do "whatever it takes" to keep the plutonium shipments out unless the Energy Department signs an agreement that the plutonium won't stay in the state.
The Energy Department plans to reprocess the plutonium into fuel to be used in commercial nuclear reactors.
--------
S.C. Prepares to Block Plutonium
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html
NEW ELLENTON, S.C. (AP) -- State law enforcement officers practiced blocking weapons-grade plutonium from entering South Carolina, and Gov. Jim Hodges said Monday he would do ``whatever it takes'' to stop the shipments.
Hodges, who is locked in a dispute with the Department of Energy over the shipments from Colorado, ordered the practice drill for about three dozen state troopers and transport police officers. Hodges has threatened to lie down in the road if necessary to block the shipments.
``The department is extremely disappointed with Governor Hodges roadblock exercise,'' the DOE said in a statement. ``Fortunately other South Carolina leaders are spending their time today working with the department toward finalizing our plutonium disposition program.''
As part of the drill, patrol cars blocked a four-lane road near the Savannah River Site, about 10 miles from the Georgia state line. Officers convinced the driver of the vehicle escorting a state-owned tractor-trailer to turn around.
Officials said they didn't know whether it would be that easy when trucks carrying plutonium and escorted by armed federal officers make the same attempted entrance. Energy officials have said shipments could begin by May 15.
Hodges, a Democrat up for re-election this year, said the state will do ``whatever it takes'' to keep the plutonium shipments out unless the Energy Department signs an agreement that the plutonium won't stay in the state.
The Energy Department plans to reprocess the plutonium into fuel to be used in commercial nuclear reactors.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
IRA arms buy violates Good Friday accords
April 22, 2002
By David Bamber
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020422-1667320.htm
LONDON - Irish Republican Army commanders bought a consignment of powerful new Russian assault rifles in Moscow last year, flagrantly breaching the Good Friday cease-fire agreement at a time when they were supposed to be putting their arsenal beyond use.
The commanders bought at least 20 AN-94s, which can fire 1,800 bullets a minute and pierce body armor. The weapons can be used as traditional machine guns or in sniper mode as high-velocity rifles for assassinations.
The deal was detected by the Russian security services, which passed details to British military intelligence in London. Cabinet ministers and senior Northern Ireland politicians were briefed on the purchase.
Details remained secret, however, until they were disclosed to the Sunday Telegraph by military intelligence officers in London last week.
Military intelligence officers said in interviews that a senior IRA team was sent to Moscow last fall to buy the weapons from a renegade group of Russian special forces officers.
One said the weapons were bought so the IRA could "continue to be a well-oiled machine."
Critics said the report was evidence of the IRA continuing to build up an arsenal, despite twice handing over arms to a decommissioning body headed by Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain.
"The Good Friday agreement is a sham if the IRA are handing in weapons with one hand and buying them again with the other," said Quentin Davies, the opposition Conservative Party's spokesman on Northern Ireland issues.
Ian Paisley Jr., a Democratic Unionist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, said: "The security forces told me the IRA tried to bring these weapons in on two occasions. I know they failed the first time, but it appears they succeeded on the second. This is more clear evidence that the IRA is not on cease-fire and Sinn Fein should not be in government."
Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, is part of a power-sharing Cabinet for Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid said two weeks ago that he was delighted by the latest IRA act of decommissioning. "This is very welcome news which shows IRA decommissioning was not an isolated event," he said.
-------- europe
Synagogues burn as Europeans rage
April 22, 2002
By Al Webb
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020422-41009042.htm
LONDON - A wave of anti-Jewish attacks - ranging from hate mail and graffiti to stonings, shotgun blasts, gasoline bombs and synagogue bombings - has swept Europe from Britain to Ukraine as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians worsens in the Middle East.
A streak of anti-Semitism, never far beneath the surface of the Continent since World War II, re-erupted with the latest Palestinian "intifada," or uprising, in September 2000 and has taken a particularly ugly turn with Israel's campaign against Palestinian territories that started March 29.
In recent days, one synagogue in Marseille, France, has been doused in gasoline and burned to the ground; another in Lyon, France, was damaged in a car attack; a third, in Brussels, was firebombed; and a fourth, in Kiev, was attacked by 50 youths chanting, "Kill the Jews," who then beat up a rabbi. An unidentified assailant hurled a stone through the window of another synagogue in southern Ukraine yesterday.
In Britain, which takes pride in a "multicultural" society, police have logged at least 15 anti-Jewish episodes this month, including eight physical assaults, synagogues daubed with racist slogans and hate mail sent to prominent figures among the nation's 300,000 Jews.
The attacks prompted Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, to say that "anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe as a whole." He blamed Islamic extremists for "whipping up" sentiment against Jews in Britain and throughout the Continent.
But it is in France, where some 700,000 Jews and 4 million Muslims uneasily coexist, that the problem is particularly acute. The French Interior Ministry has recorded nearly 360 crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions in April alone, coinciding with the escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
The destruction of the synagogue at Marseille was the sixth attack on a Jewish religious site in France in less than a week. In Lyon, 15 masked assailants smashed two cars into a synagogue and set it on fire. Other arsonists tried to set fire to a synagogue in Strasbourg, but the damage was minimal.
There were also attacks on Jewish citizens. A man opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop in a village near Toulouse. A Jewish school at Sarcelles, near Paris, was ransacked. Youths stoned one Jewish school bus and set fire to two others in Paris, and a gang waded into a team of Jewish soccer players, beating them with iron bars.
In Belgium, authorities blamed the increased tensions in the Middle East for the attack on the synagogue in the Anderlecht district of Brussels.
"There is really a climate of hostility, which is a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being transposed into the most troubled district of our capital," said the local mayor, Jacques Simonet.
With one eye on the growing anti-Jewish violence and another on the 113th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday April 20, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which keeps track of neo-Nazi activities around the world, issued a travel advisory urging Jews to exercise "extreme caution" in traveling to France and Belgium.
In a telling reminder of the Holocaust, a synagogue in the German town of Herford was daubed with the words "Six million were not enough" - a reference to the 6 million Jews who died at the hands of Nazis during World War II.
The war did not eliminate anti-Jewish sentiment. Less than a year ago, a survey showed that 24 percent of all Austrians would "prefer" to live in a country without Jews. And even in supposedly neutral Switzerland, a survey reported by the BBC "indicates that 16 percent of Swiss people are fundamentally anti-Semitic, while 60 percent have anti-Semitic views."
In Lithuania, Jewish leaders on Friday reported a rise in anti-Semitism that they believe is related to the prospects that property seized from Jews before World War II will be returned to its original owners. Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas asked the international Jewish community on Tuesday to select representatives to open talks with the government on the issue of property restitution, Agence France-Presse reported. The extremist Freedom Union party then accused the government of "groveling to Jews," while another group ripped up an Israeli flag at a protest the following day.
Meanwhile in France, 70 persons have been questioned and 16 jailed in the latest attacks on Jews and Jewish interests - violence that French authorities say has increased significantly since the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Even in Britain, attacks against Jews totaled 310 last year and 32 so far this year. One was an assault on a Jewish theological student, David Myers. He was reading a book of Psalms aboard a London bus when he was stabbed 27 times.
"If you talk long enough about killing Jews," said Rabbi Sacks, "one day it will happen, God forbid."
-------- iraq
Pentagon: Iraq Moving Missiles Into No - Fly Zones
New York Times
April 22, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-missiles.html
WASHINGTON - Iraq's military has in recent days moved anti-aircraft missiles into northern and southern ''no-fly'' zones to an extent not seen in years, the U.S. military's top general said on Monday.
But Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing the air defense build-up in the two Iraqi zones policed by U.S. and British warplanes appeared simply to be part of ``episodic'' movements in and out of the areas.
Myers noted the western jets attacked air defenses in the zones twice last week in response to threats from the ground, but did not suggest exchanges were increasing after more than a decade of patrols prompted by the 1991 Gulf War.
``It was just reported to me today that some of these movements of surface-to-air missile systems into regions where we enforce the no-fly zones under the U.N. resolutions are greater than they have been in a couple of years,'' Myers told reporters.
``This is one of the things that we have seen over time, that in the no-fly zones there will be surface-to-air missiles moved in, moved around and moved out,'' he added in response to questions.
``It's just a little more activity in the last couple of days than we have seen in the last couple of years. But we don't think it means anything more than what we've been seeing'' before, Myers said.
U.S. and British jets have been patrolling the northern and southern zones in Iraq for more than a decade. The zones were set up after the Gulf War to protect Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims from attack by President Saddam Hussein's military.
GROWING SPECULATION OVER U.S. PLANS
The two routine tit-for-tat strikes last week came amid growing speculation the United States was considering whether to attack Iraq in an attempt to remove Saddam from power. The United States and Britain said, however, that no decision had been made.
The U.S. European command said on Friday U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi air defenses in the northern zone earlier in the day after ground-based radar targeted Western aircraft patrolling the zone.
U.S. and British warplanes struck civilian targets in the southern no-fly zone in Iraq four days earlier, but no casualties were reported by Iraq. The U.S. military's Central Command said coalition jets struck an air defense site after aircraft on patrol in the southern zone encountered hostile Iraqi fire.
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed this month to tackle Saddam over the threat they say he poses with weapons of mass destruction, saying inaction was not an option.
Baghdad has refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq since they pulled out in December 1998 on the eve of U.S.- British airstrikes aimed at punishing the country for failing to cooperate with the inspectors.
The United States and Britain launched a major strike against Iraq's air defenses in early 2000 in an attempt to degrade what the United States said was a sophisticated network supported by modern fiber optic communications cables.
Washington charged at the time that Chinese workers were helping install the communications network.
Myers and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to say on Monday whether Chinese help was still being provided.
``They (the Iraqis) have a very good fiber optics system. I'll just leave it at that,'' said Myers.
----
Pentagon: Iraq Testing 'No-Fly Zone'
Mon Apr 22
By ROBERT BURNS,
AP Military Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020422/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_17
WASHINGTON (AP) - American and British pilots flying patrols over Iraq face new risks from strengthened air defenses, the Pentagon (news - web sites) says.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he learned Monday that Iraq had moved more surface-to-air missile batteries into the "no fly" zones enforced by allied fighter pilots.
He said the additions were the largest in the past couple of years, although he also noted that Iraq has a history of moving such forces in and out of the zones.
Myers did not say how many missile batteries had been added. He said they were moved in the past several days.
The "no fly" zones were created after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) to prevent the Iraqi military from using aircraft against minority Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslim rebels in the south. The zones are an irritant to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), who says they violate Iraqi sovereignty. He has offered financial rewards to any defender who downs an American pilot.
President Bush (news - web sites) has declared Saddam a menace and vowed to remove him as Iraq's leader, although the administration says it has not decided how that goal will be achieved.
Bush has said all options are on the table, including a military campaign to overthrow Saddam if the Iraqi leader continues to deny admission to U.N. weapons inspectors, whose job was to check if Baghdad has dismantled its means to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The inspectors have been barred from Iraq since 1998.
Talks between Iraq and the United Nations (news - web sites) on the return of the inspectors were due to begin in April, but Iraq has asked for a delay on grounds that talks would be dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if held now.
Myers provided few specifics about the latest moves by Saddam to strengthen his defenses in the "no fly" zones, but he said the newly arrived missile batteries were involved in recent confrontations involving U.S. pilots.
He said allied pilots in northern Iraq were threatened by Iraqi air defenses three times since April 1.
"In one case, on the 19th, our fighters launched two missiles at a surface-to-air missile system near Mosul," Myers said. "And this particular system had threatened them during their flight."
On April 15 an allied air patrol in southern Iraq "was forced to respond" with a guided bomb strike on a surface-to-air missile system radar, he said.
Last year Iraqi air defenders frequently challenged allied air patrols by targeting them with radars or firing anti-aircraft artillery guns or surface-to-air missiles. But there have been relatively few challenges this year. The U.S. attack on April 15 was the first in southern Iraq since Jan. 21.
Iraqi dissidents and Arab news reports say leaders of the two main Kurdish parties that control northern Iraq met with U.S. officials last week to coordinate efforts to remove Saddam from power.
Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also discussed plans for a government that would replace Saddam's regime once the Iraqi leader is ousted, the Iraqi dissidents told The Associated Press.
On Sunday, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that both Barzani and Talabani met officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA (news - web sites) in Germany last week.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking at the same news conference with Myers, said he was not aware of any "notable difference" recently in Saddam's behavior and the posture of his military.
"He tends to move things around and do things that are inconsistent with the U.N. resolutions, and his rhetoric has historically been provocative and favoring terrorists," Rumsfeld said.
Myers was asked to describe the additional threat posed by the extra surface-to-air missiles in Iraq.
"If they're moved inside the `no-fly' zones, obviously, that increases risks to the pilots that are patrolling in those zones," he said. "And that's what's been happening. And beyond that, I don't want to get into the specifics of exactly where." He added that they were in both the north and south.
When Bush took office in January 2001, Saddam increased his challenges to allied air patrols over Iraq. Bush responded on Feb. 16, 2001 by ordering a coordinated series of strikes on air defense radars and other targets in and around Baghdad. Officials said later the attacks were in part a response to concern that Iraq had upgraded its air defense network through the use of Chinese-supplied fiber-optic cables.
Asked Monday whether the Chinese were still helping Iraq, Rumsfeld replied, "I don't know that they've stopped."
-------- israel / palestine
Defence costs bloat Israeli deficit
Monday, 22 April, 2002
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1944000/1944846.stm
The cost of invading the Palestinian territories have been huge Israel is taking a hatchet to its budget to try to cope with the swelling costs of the Palestinian uprising.
The Finance Ministry said on Monday that it is proposing cuts to the 2002 budget of as much as 13bn shekels ($2.7bn; Ł1.9bn) together, perhaps, with some tax hikes on cigarettes and petrol.
That could spell further trouble for Israel, whose economy is already beset by the slowdown in the tech sector which saw growth plummet from around 7% in 2000 to a 0.6% contraction in 2001.
The down turn has triggered a significant fall in tax receipts, further exacerbating the problems.
More pressure on Israelis has come today from the Bank of Israel's decision to raise interest rates by 0.2% to 4.6%.
Bursting
Even before the Israeli Defence Force began their incursion into Palestinian-controlled areas in late March, the budget was straining at the seams.
Earlier this month, as "Operation Defensive Wall" got under way, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved a 2bn shekel expansion to the defence budget.
Increased security spending as a result of the renewed Palestinian uprising - which began in 2000 - has combined with Mr Sharon's need to keep the rightwing religious parties in his government.
That meant boosting spending on large families, for example.
Now, though, some of that extra spending could have to go to make up for the defence budget's growth.
It remains to be seen whether Mr Sharon will sanction such a move.
Among other proposals is a boost in VAT to 18% from 17%.
Deficit finance
In the meantime, Israel faces more troubles ahead.
Finance Minister Silvan Shalom said the government's original hopes that the deficit on the 250bn shekel budget would stay below 3% were unrealistic.
Instead, it is aiming for 3.5-3.9% of GDP - although many observers think the actual figure is likely to be closer to be almost double that.
With little or no growth expected this year, Israel's debt could well face a downgrade, making it more expensive to borrow money.
----
Not Quite an Arab-Israeli War, but a Long Descent Into Hatred
New York Times
April 22, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/international/middleeast/22MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
JERUSALEM - The Israeli Army largely withdrew today from six of the West Bank towns it had entered three weeks ago, and already the incursions are assuming their own place in the long list of armed conflicts that Israel has fought with its Arab neighbors through its 54-year history.
Some have names: the War of Independence, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur war; some have only dates: 1956, 1982.
But each marked a milestone in a history of almost constant struggle, and each created a new distribution of power, geography and grievance.
This history has shaped the tactics and obsessed the leaders of this latest conflict, one that is different from any that has come before it.
From the Israeli side, this month's fighting had all the trappings of war. Israel called 20,000 of its reserves to the fight, and Israeli flags sprouted from car antennas across the country.
But it is a mistake to think of this struggle as a conventional war, for it marks a new form of the fight.
There was no clash between military units and no battle back and forth over disputed boundaries. There were no equivalent sovereign powers to sign a cease-fire. There was no one to formally surrender, and no one to claim lasting victory.
It is more useful to compare this fight to a police action, or a rolling counterinsurgency fought out in densely populated cities.
The Israeli Army was out to kill or arrest Palestinian fighters, and to destroy as many bomb-making laboratories as it could find. It wanted to suppress the Palestinians' fighting capacity, knowing that, political oratory aside, it could not wipe it out.
This time, when the Palestinians launched terror strikes, they attacked cities they no longer claimed as theirs, and when Israel went into the West Bank, it went into cities it had ceded to the Palestinians.
Both sides know this is not the end of their struggle. Many Israelis believe that more and larger incursions are yet to come, especially if there are more suicide bombings.
"Unless we have a political cycle that begins now, as a direct continuation of the military operation, all of our losses are for nothing," said Capt. Michael Vromen, a former intelligence officer serving as an army spokesman.
The Battle A Different Fight, A Different Victory
By JAMES BENNET
"They are shelling us from tanks and helicopters," the Palestinian fighter said. "We are in high morale."
It was two weeks ago, and the man was inside Nablus's casbah, the old city, where a diminishing knot of fighters was holding out against an overpowering Israeli force.
The man and his comrades were armed with semiautomatic rifles, pistols and crude bombs made from fertilizer. They were facing off against a better armed and better trained Israeli force equipped with heavy armor, wire-guided missiles and helicopter gunships, sent into action by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
There was no doubt how the fight would end, as it did a day later: The Palestinian resistance collapsed.
Yet, though they were clearly scared, the men were undeniably in high morale.
On Sunday, as the Israeli forces withdrew to the edges of Nablus, fighters returned to the streets, slapping posters on walls to celebrate their dead and vowing an even fiercer struggle against Israel.
That suggests that Israel may find it impossible to sustain its inroads. Israel did not negate the Palestinians' ability to fight back.
The campaign opened with an attack on Ramallah on March 29, after the government of Israel formally declared Yasir Arafat to be an enemy. Within days, Israeli forces attacked Qalqilya, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus.
In each area, its soldiers surrounded bastions of militancy, like the Nablus casbah and the Jenin refugee camp, and then slowly moved in, returning torrents of machine-gun fire and missile fire at any positions that fired on them, and some that did not. The Israelis used sniper fire to enforce curfews.
As they went, Israeli forces ransacked the ministries of the Palestinian Authority, which under the Oslo process has limited authority to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
When he led the invasion of Lebanon 20 years ago, Mr. Sharon, then the defense minister, was concerned that Mr. Arafat had established a state within a state there, what Mr. Sharon called a "kingdom of terror."
Now, as prime minister, Mr. Sharon has used the same language to describe the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian officials say his goal is to destroy it.
The sweep through the West Bank is the most dramatic demonstration of a strategy Israel has been using for more than a year as it tries to beat back the Palestinian uprising. It has relied on its extraordinary intelligence, fed by a network of Palestinian informers, to send forces on targeted missions to capture or kill militants. But it has also repeatedly used blunt force.
Just over a year ago, on April 17, 2001, Israel for the first time seized a swath of Palestinian-controlled territory, in Gaza.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the action "excessive and disproportionate," and Israel hastily withdrew.
But after that, the incursions became more regular. Israel's minister of tourism was shot dead in a Jerusalem hotel on Oct. 17. Within days, Israeli forces had invaded and taken positions in a familiar list of cities: Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Tulkarm, Qalqilya.
This cycle repeated itself at least twice, at steadily more violent levels, before the last operation began. The question, as Israeli forces pull back, is: How could they ratchet up their military pressure the next time?
The History Imperative of Faith, Advanced by Force
By CLYDE HABERMAN
In the Middle East, the numbers have almost mystical properties: '48, '56, '67, '73, '82.
They are years when Arabs and Jews fought major wars. But they are much more than that. For both Israelis and Palestinians, the mere mention of '48 or '67 or '73 conjures up vast stores of accepted wisdom, cherished myths and painful emotions. In interpreting the past, the two sides agree on precious little. They have one thing in common, though. Each is convinced it is history's true orphan.
The Arabs and Jews were already contesting Palestine early in the 20th century. But a reasonable starting point to examine the modern wars is May 14, 1948. That was the day the Jews of Palestine formally proclaimed their state, following through on a United Nations vote in November 1947 to divide Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The new state was Israel.
To Jews, yearning for a return to biblical soil, this was not only an act of historical justice but also one that met their minimum needs. To Arabs, it amounted to a land grab. As they saw it, a guilty world was making them bear a price for the Nazis' mass killing of Europe's Jews.
Within hours, neighboring Arab countries attacked, launching a brutal war that ended with a truce in early 1949.
Mr. Sharon, a 20-year-old soldier then, was badly wounded in a battle for Jerusalem against the Jordanian army. Mr. Arafat, born in Cairo to a family of Palestinian origin, was a student at Cairo University.
For Jews, their surprising victory was confirmation of the promise of Zionism. But it also involved the flight or expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and bordering Arab states. Jews living in North Africa and the Muslim Middle East were displaced by the hundreds of thousands, with most going to Israel.
But the fate of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, now estimated at nearly 4 million, remains the enduring issue.
Each side came to see the other as a challenge to its very existence. Constant skirmishes followed, including the war in 1956 in which Israel joined forces with Britain and France to take control of the Suez Canal and the Sinai from Egypt and its president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, until Washington intervened.
The defining moment for Israelis and Palestinians arrived in 1967, with a war that rearranged the Middle East map in a mere six days. With new military threats from Egypt in the south, Syria in the north and Jordan in the east, Israelis felt the noose tightening. So on June 5, Israel staged one of the boldest pre-emptive strikes in military history.
In less than three hours, its warplanes destroyed the Egyptian Air Force as it sat on the ground. Responding to Syrian shelling, Israeli tanks swept across the Golan.
By the war's end, tiny Israel controlled the Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Most important, it controlled all of Jerusalem, including the Old City and holy sites like the Western Wall, which Jordan had barred to Jews since 1949.
For Israelis, the victory was a miracle. It stirred messianic feelings among some Jews, who believed that their dominion over the entire biblical Land of Israel - not just the thin slice authorized by the United Nations - was ordained by God.
Their fervor, coupled with perceived security needs, led in 1968 to the first moves to build networks of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. A master builder, eventually, would be Mr. Sharon, who had commanded forces in the Sinai during the 1967 war.
Yet Israel's triumph led to the flowering of Palestinian nationalism.
Even before 1967, yearnings for a Palestinian state had begun to roil the Arab world. Mr. Arafat, now based in Syria, had created the Fatah movement, the springboard from which he took over the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1969. But not until Israel displaced Jordan and Egypt in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip did Palestinian nationalism reach full bloom.
The 1967 war also changed international perceptions. Israel's daring captivated the world, displacing the image of a vulnerable country with that of a powerful nation. But the plight of the Palestinians, now under Israeli occupation, also transformed Israel in many international eyes from victim to aggressor.
The Palestinians now had a cause that to much of the world seemed legitimate. Palestinian terrorism became a force. King Hussein of Jordan felt so threatened that he expelled Palestinian guerrillas in 1970, forcing Mr. Arafat to go to Lebanon.
But the ambition of neighboring Arab states to crush Israel was not yet finished. In October 1973, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Egypt and Syria launched a new assault. Israel's leaders were unprepared. As a result, Israel absorbed devastating initial blows both in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights before it turned the tide, with American help. For a while, it even gained new territory. Mr. Sharon, by now contemplating a career in politics, was a hero in 1973, leading his forces across the Suez Canal.
When the dust settled and a cease-fire had been arranged, Israelis' sense of invincibility had been shattered. Egypt and Syria, though losers on any objective basis, saw they could inflict pain on Israel.
But Egypt's president, Anwar el-Sadat, dramatically broke the circle. He understood that Israel would not be displaced militarily, and that conclusion led him to make the first overtures to the Israelis by an Arab leader, resulting in the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
No other Arabs immediately followed suit. Israel's northern border with Lebanon was an open wound. From Lebanon, Mr. Arafat's P.L.O. shelled northern Israeli towns and launched guerrilla raids. The stage was set in 1982 for the first direct encounter between Mr. Sharon, then defense minister, and Mr. Arafat, then based in Beirut.
Convinced that the P.L.O. could be destroyed by a military blow, Mr. Sharon sent Israeli forces into Lebanon, eventually pushing Mr. Arafat onto a Tunis-bound ship.
Despite the apparent victory, many Israelis felt they had been deceived about the scope and duration of the campaign, and Mr. Sharon was held indirectly responsible for the massacre of several hundred Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila by Lebanese Christian militiamen. He was forced to quit the government. Mr. Arafat, his nemesis, pitched camp in Tunis.
The war of 1982 put an end to the notion that either Israel or its Arab neighbors had much to gain through open warfare. The borders with Egypt, Jordan and Syria grew quiet. Only on the border with Lebanon, where Israel retained a buffer zone, did low-level fighting continue.
But within the occupied territories, the Palestinians became ever more restive. In the late 1980's, they broke out in sustained rioting that came to be known as the first intifada. It continued building, despite American-brokered efforts to start peace talks, until Israelis and Palestinians began meeting secretly in Oslo.
The product was the land-for-peace agreement of 1993, a landmark in which both sides acknowledged the right of the other to a homeland. The Oslo accords fired euphoria on both sides, but soon began to unravel in a welter of mutual recriminations. After ceding major towns to Palestinian control, the Israelis broke apart in disagreements over how much more to give. Mr. Arafat, after a triumphant arrival in Gaza, soon demonstrated an unwillingness to stamp out hard-core Islamic militants and their devastating new weapon, the suicide bomber.
After an 11th-hour attempt by President Clinton to broker a deal at Camp David, the dream of Oslo dissolved in a new wave of violence. It began with Mr. Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram El Sharif, with 1,000 security men, but soon it took on a life of its own.
The Leaders Personalities, Politics and Style
By SERGE SCHMEMANN There is a temptation to reduce the current struggle to a personal feud between Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat. They have a long and mutual antagonism and each embodies much of the history of his people. But each is also driven by popular passions, tangled politics and international pressures.
"This is not '82," said Zeev Schiff, the veteran military analyst for the daily Haaretz, referring to the 1982 campaign in which Mr. Sharon invaded Lebanon. "This operation was decided by the whole cabinet, and the only one to vote against it wanted an even harsher operation."
Mr. Schiff's point was that it was not so much Mr. Sharon as it was the Israeli public who wanted harsh measures against the Palestinians. The public became disenchanted with Mr. Arafat after the collapse of the Camp David. Today, the military operations in the West Bank command the support of about 70 percent of the Israeli public.
Over the 13 months since Mr. Sharon took charge, Palestinian-controlled areas have been raided and bombed many times; Mr. Arafat was besieged in December, and in March, the Israeli Army conducted broad raids into Palestinian refugee camps.
The catalyst for the latest raids, and the factor that determined their scope, was the Hamas suicide bombing of a Passover gathering in Netanya on March 27. No Israeli, and no Palestinian, had any doubt that a huge incursion was inevitable.
The only debate in the cabinet, government officials said, was what to do with Mr. Arafat, and Labor Party ministers joined with security chiefs in arguing against killing or exiling him, on the grounds that he would be more dangerous as a martyr than as an isolated leader.
"The incursion was planned over a long period of time by the General Staff, and the suicide bombing made it unavoidable," Mr. Schiff said.
Yet it is Mr. Sharon who has defined Mr. Arafat as an enemy, who has confounded the fluctuating demands of the Bush administration.
Mr. Sharon has few confidants, and keeps his own counsel. He has no close allies in the Cabinet, in which the two senior ministers, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, are members of the moderate Labor Party.
Mr. Sharon's political problem is not the left. During the past 19 months, Israelis have shifted sharply to the right, and the Labor Party is a dispirited ghost of its former self.
The political threat to Mr. Sharon is from the right, and specifically his own party, Likud, whose central committee openly prefers Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, who has positioned himself to the right of Mr. Sharon. It is Likud that will choose the candidate in the next election.
It is Mr. Sharon's dependency on the right that stiffened his resolve to defy the Americans and made him even less prone to make significant concessions in any negotiation.
In the absence of a political team, officials say, Mr. Sharon puts his greatest trust in two circles of advisers. The closest includes his son, Omri Sharon, who is considered a moderating influence; Uri Dan, a journalist, and Ruby Erlich, a public relations executive.
Beyond that, like other former generals in Israeli politics, Mr. Sharon puts a high premium on the military and intelligence chiefs, many of whom were once his subordinates and hold him in high respect. His military aide, Brig. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, is a trusted adviser, and in the planning and execution of the current operation, Mr. Sharon listened closely to the General Staff and its chief, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz. His politics are even more hawkish than the prime minister's, and he opposed curtailing the operation under American pressure.
But by most accounts, their debates were not over whether to attack in the West Bank, but over how far to carry the attack. The only serious issue was what to do with Mr. Arafat.
Here, the advice that carried the heaviest weight was that of the intelligence chiefs, and especially Avi Dichter, the director of Shin Bet, the intelligence service that shaped the operation by identifying the targets and the wanted men. They argued that a dead or exiled Mr. Arafat would be worse than an isolated one.
Though Mr. Sharon defied President Bush's demand that he quickly withdraw from the West Bank, Israelis believe Washington's contradictory statements gave Mr. Sharon room to maneuver. There is widespread speculation here that Mr. Bush's intervention did preclude the widening of the operation to Hebron and the Gaza Strip, which were left untouched.
Though Yasir Arafat arguably enjoys much more unfettered authority in his camp than Mr. Sharon in his, the Palestinian leader's management style has been a matter of considerable frustration.
Mr. Arafat has been effectively cooped up in his darkened headquarters, with little control over events. But the effect has been to increase his standing among Palestinians.
As the undisputed leader of the Palestine Liberation Front for more than three decades, Mr. Arafat's decisions have long been unchallenged - when he makes them. The problem, according to officials who have worked with him, is that he is as obsessive with day-to-day minutiae as he is indecisive on major issues.
"I have been in his office when he called the police in Jenin, ordering whom to arrest, what prison to take him to and whom to release," said one official.
That sort of control has lent credence to Israel's charge that Mr. Arafat must be personally involved in terror attacks carried out by members of his Fatah organization, or that he was directly behind the ship full of arms from Iran that was seized by Israel.
But officials have found that on big decisions, he waits for a consensus to evolve among his advisers, a group of veteran lieutenants engaged in a state of permanent warfare among themselves.
The group includes the security chiefs in the West Bank and Gaza, Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan; Mohammed Rashid, Mr. Arafat's treasurer; and a group of veteran lieutenants: Abu Ala, Abu Mazen, Saeb Erekat, Yasir Abed Rabbo and Hanan Asfour.
The advisers are regarded as generally moderate and pragmatic. (The more radical P.L.O. leaders refused to return from exile.) But the problem, officials who know them said, is their constant maneuvering for power, which is dispensed and withdrawn by Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat's attitude toward terrorism has long been at the core of questions about his ability to take hard decisions likely to be unpopular in his streets. Until this year, suicide bombings were largely a weapon of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose goal was to undermine the peace he was trying to forge with Israel. Mr. Arafat repeatedly changed signals, cracking down and then relenting when he sensed the Palestinian street turning against him.
In January Mr. Arafat's own movement, Fatah, embraced suicide bombings as a weapon through Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Foreign officials close to Mr. Arafat believe the shift was largely motivated by the fear that Hamas was gaining ground in the battle for public opinion.
It was that same political imperative that persuaded Marwan Barghouti, a rising politician in the Palestinian Authority, to shift to militancy and take charge of Fatah's militia, Tanzim, and so indirectly of the Aksa group. The move made Mr. Barghouti a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Arafat one day, but it also placed him on Israel's wanted list and led to his capture last week.
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Sharon satisfied as withdrawal begins
April 22, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020422-6619304.htm
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government yesterday declared a successful conclusion to the first phase of its military operation in the West Bank.
By yesterday afternoon, Israeli troops had pulled back from Palestinian towns, and curfews were lifted in most of the West Bank. Israeli soldiers and equipment remained close by many areas, however, ready to return if necessary.
Troops remained outside Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah and at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, seized two weeks ago by 250 Palestinian gunmen who have barricaded themselves inside. Israeli authorities said their troops would remain there indefinitely. In a sermon at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II demanded an end to the standoff at the Church of the Nativity, saying it was marked by "blackmail and an intolerable exchange of accusations."
"We have finished this stage of the operation, called Defensive Shield," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Israeli Radio. "I believe we have achieved very notable accomplishments."
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the withdrawal was a "big deception" because Israel still has security control of the West Bank. He endorsed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for armed international monitors.
The United Nations, the European Union, the Vatican and Arab leaders have denounced the offensive, which has resulted in severe damage to the civilian infrastructure and what the Israelis describe as the terrorist infrastructure. Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli civilians have declined dramatically since the military campaign began.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday said he had received a "very troubling" report on conditions in the Jenin refugee camp, the scene of the worst fighting between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli troops. He said the United States would send tents, food, water-purification equipment and medicine to the region within 48 hours.
The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees told Reuters news agency that 800 dwellings had been destroyed and many more damaged in the camp, leaving 4,000 to 5,000 persons homeless.
"Certainly there is evidence of overwhelming and apparently disproportionate use of force, even if a battle was going on in Jenin camp," said Peter Hansen, commissioner general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.
Mr. Powell, who concluded a 10-day mission to Europe and the Middle East at the end of the week, suggested yesterday that Israel should loosen its hold on Mr. Arafat and allow him to follow his antiterrorism declaration with meaningful deeds. "I think the more access he is given, the [greater] opportunity he is given to show whether or not he can control forces or bring this security situation under control," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The Sharon government is considering whether to veto the participation of Terje Roed Larsen, the U.N. Middle East envoy, who said after touring Jenin refugee camp earlier this week that Israel's actions were "morally repugnant." Israeli Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh, designated by the government to brief the press yesterday, said Mr. Larsen had lost his neutrality and therefore "has ruled himself out as a judge, an arbiter."
The Israelis regard Mr. Larsen as having co-ordinated "a cover-up" of video evidence in a nine-month investigation of how Hezbollah gunmen crossed into the West Bank from Lebanon in United Nations marked cars 18 months ago, seized three Israeli soldiers and murdered them.
Mr. Annan responded through a spokesman, saying Mr. Larsen has always conducted himself with "objectivity, professionalism and compassion."
The Israelis say the sweeping searches and detainments of Operation Defensive Shield are the only way to root out the Palestinians who have sent suicide bombers into Israeli cafes and religious celebrations. They reject criticism of their military response, arguing that their soldiers have taken unusual steps to protect noncombatants.
In Bethlehem, a Franciscan priest inside the Church of the Nativity said food supplies were exhausted. "There is no food left in the church now for the Palestinians or the monks and nuns," the Rev. Ibrahim Faltas told the Associated Press. Electricity was intermittent and there was no running water, he said.
Israeli officials say 250 Palestinian gunmen are barricaded inside the church, as well as 35 to 40 religious figures. Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowitz said yesterday that the Israelis had learned that an additional 50 "young people" were trapped in the church, built on the site where, many Christians believe, Christ was born. He said that the Palestinians had forced the children to live on one cookie a day, without daylight or care.
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Sharon plan for West Bank confirmed
April 22, 2002
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020422-8855812.htm
Israel's foreign minister yesterday confirmed a report that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to annex up to half of the West Bank.
But Shimon Peres said he does not see this as a permanent solution to the crisis in the Middle East.
Interviewed yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press," the foreign minister was asked about the accuracy of a report yesterday in the London Sunday Telegraph, also published in The Washington Times, that Mr. Sharon has a plan calling for Israel to annex 50 percent of land in the West Bank.
"It's accurate for a while, because that's what Sharon suggests as an interim agreement," Mr. Peres said. "My judgment is they know this is not a solution" and that this is an "unofficial proposal."
Existence of the Sharon plan was disclosed by Ephraim Sneh, the Israeli transport minister, who, like Mr. Peres, is a member of the Labor Party, not Mr. Sharon's Likud Party.
Mr. Sneh told the London paper that the annexation plan is "incompatible with a two-state solution" since it suggests Mr. Sharon wants a Palestinian entity with far less land than envisioned under other peace plans. "It is not realistic," Mr. Sneh said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who appeared on all the network talk shows yesterday, declined to comment on the published reports. Mr. Powell told NBC's "Meet the Press": "Let me talk to Prime Minister Sharon and his foreign policy advisers. I'm not familiar with the view of the minister of transportation."
Mr. Powell said he believes both Mr. Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "understand we have to get to some form of negotiations, a political process that will take us to the desire that all sides have expressed for there to be a Palestinian state by the name of Palestine living side-by-side with a Jewish state, the state of Israel."
The secretary, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," said that while Mr. Sharon has "acted vigorously" against "terrorist attacks," he has told Mr. Powell repeatedly that he "remains committed to negotiations that will lead to a Palestinian state."
Adel al Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who will meet with President Bush on Thursday, referred to the West Bank annexation reports yesterday on "Meet the Press."
Mr. Jubeir said the prince's main advice to Mr. Bush will be that the United States "must be engaged" in the Middle East, that it "must restrain Sharon" and "must put the peace process back on its proper track."
"The onus is really on the Israeli government to make a decision to withdraw," he said.
Mr. Powell reiterated that he believes he made "progress" toward peace during his recent visit to the Middle East. "I'm pleased to note this morning that Israeli forces are now out of the towns that we've been following so closely, with the exception of Israeli forces around Chairman Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah and at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem," Mr. Powell said on "Meet the Press," citing pullouts from Nablus, Jenin and sections of Ramallah.
In addition, he said, "the violence has gone down somewhat in recent days as a result of Israeli actions and, perhaps, as a result of some Palestinian leaders wondering whether they were on the right track."
In the NBC interview, Mr. Powell said Israel should loosen its confinement of Mr. Arafat, who remains under house arrest at the Ramallah compound, to increase his opportunities to take steps toward easing hostilities toward Israel.
"I think the more access he is given, the [more] opportunity he is given to show whether or not he can control forces or bring this security situation under control," Mr. Powell said.
On CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," the secretary was asked about an opinion piece by former President Jimmy Carter that appeared yesterday in the New York Times. Mr. Carter wrote that the United States might want to reconsider all the military assistance it provides Israel, citing concerns that the aid may be used illegally.
"We have no plans, at the moment, to restrict any of the support that we provide to our friends and have provided for many years in fact, since President Carter was in office," Mr. Powell said.
He was asked on ABC's "This Week" if it would be beneficial to have Mr. Carter or former President Clinton involved in the crisis. Mr. Clinton has let it be known he's available. "I'm pleased that both President Clinton and President Carter continue to show an interest in the region. I speak to both of them on a regular basis and I don't have a role for either of them at the moment," Mr. Powell replied.
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Palestinian Militia Head Said Dead
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Attack.html
HEBRON, West Bank (AP) -- A militia leader and another man were killed late Monday in an Israeli helicopter attack in the West Bank city of Hebron, witnesses said.
The helicopter fired missiles at a car, killing Marwan Zalloum, commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militia in the city, residents said. The militia, associated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has taken responsibility for dozens of attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 1 1/2 years of violence.
Palestinian security officials said Zalloum was on a list of 33 activists that Israel turned over to the Palestinians several months ago, demanding that they be arrested.
The Israeli military confirmed that its helicopters fired missiles in a targeted killing. Israeli forces have killed dozens of suspected Palestinian militant leaders in similar attacks during the conflict.
Hundreds of people gathered around the charred car after the attack, which came just before midnight. The bodies of the two men were badly burned, witnesses said. The second man was not immediately identified.
-------- pakistan
Pakistani Ruler Says Will Go if Loses Referendum
April 22, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-pakistan-musharraf.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, who is seeking five more years in office through a controversial referendum, said Monday he would not stay in power against the wishes of the people.
``If the people don't want me, I will go tomorrow, there is no question,'' he said in an interview with a private Pakistani television channel, Indus Vision.
Musharraf, who has said he is confident he will win the April 30 referendum, made the statement when asked whether he might follow the example of previous military rulers who broke their pledges and clung to power.
Musharraf seized power in an army coup in October 1999. He said he had not broken any promise so far and would stick to his word in the future.
A week ago, he had declined to say whether he would step down if he lost the referendum, which most of Pakistan's political parties oppose and has been challenged before the Supreme Court.
``Let us see the result ... then you will see action,'' he told an April 16 news conference, when he also said he had taken a calculated risk he would not have done if there was a risk of losing.
He said Monday the main question in the referendum was whether Pakistanis wanted him to stay in power.
His critics says the referendum would go against a Supreme Court ruling that he hand over to an elected government by next October.
``I have never broken my promise even once till now,'' the general said. ``I have tried not even to deviate by a day on whatever I say.''
He said he had fulfilled his promise to set up local councils by last August and would hold parliamentary elections in line with the Supreme Court deadline by October.
The general, whose support for the U.S.-led international coalition against terrorism won him praise in the West, also denied that Washington was influencing his policies, including key military appointments.
``Not at all, I don't think (there is) any interference from the United States in our policies,'' he said.
``Not once, and you have to believe me, not once has anyone told me who you are making as the vice-chief of army staff, or chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee) or the air chief or the naval chief.''
Musharraf removed or sidelined several army general when he supported U.S.-led military strikes in Afghanistan last year after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
``I am doing it on my own,'' he said and called accusations of U.S. interference a fallacy.
``We are looking after our own interests here. We are doing things which are in the interest of Pakistan,'' he said.
-------- spy agencies
A Street Fight
The CIA was in serious trouble. Then came September 11.
How it's getting in the game-in Afghanistan and beyond
By Evan Thomas
NEWSWEEK
April 29 issue
http://www.msnbc.com/news/741516.asp
Parachuting supplies to CIA operatives working behind enemy lines is a tricky business, even in an age of Global Positioning Systems and spy-in-the-sky satellites.
SUPPLIES MEANT FOR the Alpha or Bravo team sometimes land on the Echo or Foxtrot team. Last fall one frustrated spook, hiding at a secret drop zone near Kandahar, sent this coded message to his handlers: "waited three hours through all possible windows: only one airplane passed and kicked off one bundle: some bags of beans and rice ... and two bags of horse feed rpt horse feed. we do not have any f-king horses."
Other CIA paramilitary officers did have horses, however. And they rode them to victory, in an improbable, partly planned, partly improvised assault on the Taliban that combined high-tech and ancient modes of war. The CIA's success in Afghanistan-the agency's ability to get on the ground quickly, join up with Northern Alliance fighters and guide U.S. Special Forces teams to the enemy-came as a surprise and a relief to many intelligence experts, inside and outside the government. There had been a rising tide of grumbling and at times outright mockery aimed at an intelligence service whose successes and failures over the years have been shrouded in myth.
The critics have not gone away. In recent books and articles a small but outspoken chorus of former CIA case officers has portrayed the once proudly swashbuckling agency as a timid, politically correct bureaucracy, overly concerned with being held to account by the press and Capitol Hill. Senior CIA officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK concede that the agency has gone through some dispiriting times, a period of scandals, drift and second-guessing that reached a low point by about 1995. The agency was spread thin, losing disgruntled old hands and-in hindsight- insufficiently aimed at the hard target of terrorism.
It is focused now. Though the CIA won't reveal details, the agency played a critical role in the massive raid staged last month against Qaeda operatives hiding out in Pakistan, including Abu Zubaydah, Osama bin Laden's key deputy charged with running terror operations on the ground. (Zubaydah was shot in the groin trying to flee. "If he's singing," said a CIA official, "it will be in a higher pitch.") Since 9-11, the agency has been deluged with job applicants and showered with dollars by Congress, enabling the CIA to add more case officers (the CIA refuses to reveal the total, but the overall number is surprisingly small). Well before 9-11, these officials contend, the agency was rebuilding its "clandestine service," the spy handlers who gather HUMINT (human intelligence) and run covert actions. The men at the top of the CIA do not predict miracles: creating a cadre of experienced case officers who can recruit and run agents inside terrorist cells is a very slow and chancy process. "We're about halfway there," said a top official.
How is the CIA really doing in the war on terror? The answer is: better than the agency's more vocal critics suggest. The more difficult question remains whether "better" is good enough. The CIA likes to say that its successes remain secret, while its failures (like a recently busted spying operation in Russia) make the headlines. Nonetheless, it is possible to get at least a partial look inside the shadow war. NEWSWEEK interviewed present and former agency officials and knowledgeable outsiders to put together a picture of the agency's progress. While some intelligence experts remain gloomy, most agree that the CIA is making gradual headway against a very difficult foe. One major terrorist attack, of course, could make even that carefully hedged assessment sound like so much wishful thinking.
The resourcefulness and courage of the CIA men who infiltrated Afghanistan shortly after 9-11 is beyond doubt. NEWSWEEK interviewed a member of the first team that went in, a former Army Special Forces soldier who joined the CIA in the mid-'80s. Rick (not his real name) shipped out with his team-two CIA case officers who speak Farsi and Dari, two former Special Forces operators (a former Navy SEAL and Rick), a communications specialist, a medic and three air crew-on Sept. 19, eight days after the terror attacks. On earlier missions into northern Afghanistan, agency case officers had nearly died in local helicopters ("flying coffins," said Rick), including one that had been chased by a Taliban MiG fighter. So the agency bought a better chopper from the Russians and stenciled on a memorable tail number: 91101. After 9-11, the agency did not wait to obtain landing rights from surrounding countries as it moved its team into northern Afghanistan, and it ignored the military's careful requirement that any commando raid be backed up by an "extraction plan" and search-and-rescue teams. If the CIA group got into trouble it was on its own.
As even Pentagon officials will concede, the CIA can move more nimbly than the military in these situations. It is lucky that the agency has any paramilitary force-its "special activities" group had atrophied after the cold war, dwindling to a skeleton force by 1997. It is also fortunate that the agency had maintained contacts with the Northern Alliance through several earlier, unsuccessful attempts to track and target Osama bin Laden. Landing in the northwest corner of Afghanistan on Sept. 26, Rick and his NALT (Northern Alliance Liaison Team) found their local allies willing to fight the Taliban but woefully lacking in supplies. The first mission was to call in airdrops of "beans, bullets and cold-weather gear," said Rick. (Many of the Afghans were wearing sneakers and sandals.) For themselves, the agency men requested good leather saddles, to improve on the wooden ones provided by their hosts. The NALT team was followed by five more six-men teams, Alpha in the northwest, Bravo at Mazar-e Sharif, Charlie in the west, Echo and Foxtrot in the south. The agency teams secured HLZs-helicopter landing zones-for military Special Forces who arrived with their laser target designators to enable American air power to strike Taliban positions. (Rick named his HLZ after his daughter.) Relations between the military and the CIA-touchy in the past-were relatively smooth. Rick was an old friend of the commander of the Fifth Special Forces. "I'd just pick up the SAT phone and call him," he says.
The NALT leader, Joe (not his real name), a case officer who had been about to retire with 30 years' experience when 9-11 happened, radioed back to Washington that he was "confident" the Taliban would break under bombardment. CIA Director George Tenet brought this on-the-ground evaluation directly to President George W. Bush. By the beginning of November, with little visible progress on the battlefield, some of Bush's top advisers were starting to wonder: is it time to send in heavy reinforcements of U.S. troops? But the agency's man was proved right: by early December, the Taliban was in full rout.
The CIA did have to cope with uncertain allies. The local warlords were sometimes more interested in fighting each other than the Taliban. And the Northern Alliance was thoroughly penetrated by Taliban spies, who reported back on the CIA's presence and location. At one point, a Taliban counterattack threatened to overrun one CIA-Northern Alliance position. While the CIA forces opened fire with automatic weapons, their Afghan protectors hid behind a rock. "Get up! Get up and fight!" shouted a CIA man. Came the reply: "This is not our village. This is not our fight." The CIA man shouted back, "What the hell does it look like? I'm from this village?" The Afghans joined in the battle and the Taliban was repulsed. The every-man-for-himself ethos showed up again at Thanksgiving. The CIA tried to airdrop frozen turkeys to its men, but the Afghans got there first. The Northern Alliance dined on turkey with all the fixin's. The CIA men ate beans.
Some of the airdrops were bundles of $20 bills. The CIA "bought more Taliban leaders than it killed," said one official. The price tag was anywhere from $50 to $100,000 (always paid in U.S. dollars, the preferred currency). "A package of a million dollars looks about like this," said Rick, spreading his arms about two feet wide. Headquarters cabled the operators on the ground to inquire what steps were being taken to safeguard the cash. "We're sleeping on top of it," cabled back the team leader.
In December, when Qaeda and Taliban remnants fled into the mountains near Tora Bora, CIA team leaders warned that the border into Pakistan was "totally porous," said Rick. Central Command would not commit U.S. ground forces, and Afghan and Pakistani efforts to close the door were sometimes halfhearted. At the CIA no one was surprised when bin Laden and most of the top Qaeda leadership got away. "We are in full pursuit, and we will find them," a senior CIA official told NEWSWEEK.
The fall of the Taliban brought little celebrating at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. "We understood that here comes the hard part," said a top official. "Even if we do catch bin Laden, the leadership will be quickly replaced. It's just like a drug cartel." Because the 9-11 attacks caught the intelligence community by surprise, it was widely assumed that the CIA had failed to penetrate Al Qaeda. Agency officials were exasperated when congressmen demanded to know: how come John Walker Lindh, a California teenager, could join Al Qaeda, while the CIA was shut out? In fact, say CIA officials, the agency had "scores" of assets reporting on Al Qaeda before 9-11, though only a few sources were actual terrorists. "So what?" scoffs Robert Baer, a former case officer and one of the agency's harshest critics. "They've got somebody whose cousin has a friend who knows somebody. All these sources didn't warn them about 9-11."
Getting inside a terrorist organization is extremely difficult. The notion that an American can work his way in by putting on a burnoose, speaking Arabic and "hanging around the mosque" is "cowboy stuff," says one top spymaster. During the cold war, the best CIA assets were all "walk-ins," disillusioned Russian military or KGB officials who "self-recruited"-offered their services to the Americans, sometimes to show their disgust with the communist system, sometimes for cash, often for both. In the war on terror, the most useful turncoats still walk in. Before 9-11, the CIA received on average about 15 volunteers a month offering to spy on Al Qaeda. After 9-11, the rate increased to 15 a day. Almost all are worthless-nuts, visa-seekers, scam artists. And the occasional useful walk-in is generally a "scumbucket," says a top spymaster-a thief, a kidnapper, or worse.
CIA officers have always been willing to take risks and go into the "street" to meet would-be spies. But in the mid-'90s, there was a reluctance to recruit assets who could become problem cases. At Langley, the bureaucrats were fearful of being dragged before a congressional committee to justify how they could have hired a "human-rights abuser." Now the cautious approach is "gone," says one high-ranking agency official. "We've sent out every possible guidance: we're taking risks."
The CIA often works with foreign intelligence services to penetrate terrorist groups. The services of some Arab states do not labor under the same constraints as the CIA. "The Egyptians, they're kick-a-. They can do things we can't do," says one CIA official. The Egyptians, as well as the Jordanians and probably others in the Middle East, have been known to arrest whole families in their quest for information. But foreign security services have their own agendas and divided loyalties.
One case officer described his attempt to enlist the services of an intelligence officer working for an unnamed country, a "state sponsor" of terrorism. At first, he got some help from an unusual source. In a casual conversation with the wife of the CIA case officer, the wife of the foreign intelligence officer volunteered that her husband had close ties to a terrorist group. The CIA case officer met with the woman, who offered to help the CIA gain access to her husband's files. But it might be necessary, the woman suggested, for her husband to have "an accident." "We don't do that," the CIA man explained. The wife seemed disappointed. ("It was an arranged marriage. She detested him," explained the agency man.) The woman agreed to help the CIA, even to take a lie-detector test. She stipulated that there were only two things she would not do: personally kill her husband or take off her burqa. "It was clear," the CIA man said, "that of the two, killing her husband would be easier for her." In the end, despite the wife's help, the CIA man never did make an agent of the intelligence officer. Sometimes the culture gap is too wide.
Navigating such treacherous and unfamiliar territory requires exceptional experience, subtlety and skill. Bedeviled by declining budgets and a hostile press and Congress after the 1986 Iran-contra scandal, the CIA became scattered, sclerotic, unsure of its post-cold-war role. From the perspective of 9-11, it's obvious that the agency should have zeroed in on global terrorism. But the agency's various "customers," the federal agencies who count on its intelligence gathering, were also interested in economic spying, nuclear proliferation, the war on drugs and other priorities.
Morale has greatly improved under Tenet, who became director in 1997. Though initially suspect as an outsider-he had been staff director of the Senate intelligence committee-Tenet became popular for his plainspoken and boisterous manner. A basketball and Motown fan who has been known to sing golden oldies in his office, Tenet wisely bonded with Bush by personally delivering his intelligence briefing almost every morning. After 9-11, Tenet's White House connection amounted to job insurance.
In its rush to catch up with Al Qaeda, the agency may act too hastily. One former official notes that almost all the Africa analysts at headquarters were arbitrarily re-assigned to the Counter-Terrorism Center. This ex-spook fears that the agency will go overboard and forget the reforms and controls of the past 30 years. On Capitol Hill the CIA still has to endure a grilling for its role in the 9-11 disaster. "The fact is we had a catastrophic intelligence failure. The whole reason we have an intelligence community is to avoid catastrophic intelligence failures," says one CIA official. Agency officials say that the investigators will turn up some missed signals but no major blunders that could have been reasonably foreseen and avoided. That remains to be seen: congressional investigations have a way of taking on a life of their own. Investigators will look closely at the poor handoff of information between the CIA and the FBI. In the meantime the agency will be scrambling to avert the next nightmare.
In the past presidents had often turned to the CIA when all else failed. Covert action is very tempting when diplomacy doesn't work out or the cost of military action is too high. In real life the CIA often does get stuck with Mission: Impossible. It should be no surprise when the real-world result is less than a success. The difference this time is that the stakes are so high-as high, or higher, than during some of the longest hours of the cold war. With an enemy fanatically determined to use weapons of mass destruction to kill as many Americans as possible, failure is not an option.
-------- un
UN Chemical Arms Chief Ousted in U.S. - Led Vote
April 22, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-chemical.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020422/wl_nm/arms_chemical_dc_5
THE HAGUE - The head of a global chemical weapons control body was ousted on Monday by a United States-sponsored vote provoked by a rift over his diplomatic overtures to secure Iraq's compliance on arms inspection.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has 145 member states, voted to remove Brazilian Director General Jose Bustani at a crisis meeting after the U.S. forced a vote challenging his leadership, the second such ballot in as many months.
Bustani had urged Iraq to join the OPCW but Washington accused him of ``ill-considered initiatives'' and criticized his management. The resulting showdown ended with a U.S. victory over the leadership of a key international body.
Washington has signaled it wants to get rid of President Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad, but it could find it difficult to win backing for military action if Iraq agreed to join the OPCW and admit arms inspectors, analysts say.
The U.S. drive to oust Bustani is its second such campaign -- last week it secured the removal of Robert Watson as chairman of a United Nations climate control body. Watson had advocated a shift away from fossil fuels.
Domestic and foreign critics say the campaigns are evidence of mounting U.S. unilateralism under Republican President Bush on key international issues ranging from human rights to the environment.
``The conference of the states parties has supported the proposal calling for immediate dismissal of the director general,'' OPCW spokesman Peter Kaiser said after a late night vote at the organization's headquarters in The Hague.
BIG SPENDERS
Britain, Germany, Japan and Italy -- which along with the U.S. contribute the lion's share of the OPCW's $55 million annual budget -- had indicated support for the U.S. move earlier this month.
The U.S. proposal to oust Bustani, who served as Brazil's ambassador to Moscow, Vienna and the United Nations, secured 48 votes, while 43 countries abstained and six of the 115 members at the meeting opposed it. Not all countries voted.
Delegates were set to discuss plans to select Bustani's successor on Tuesday. Observers said it could take weeks to choose a replacement. Mexico and Argentina have been floated as potential candidate countries to take over the post.
Bustani, who was unanimously re-elected for a second four-year term last May, had accused Washington of riding roughshod over the independence of a global organization to secure its national interests.
``The choices that you make during this session...will determine whether genuine multilateralism will survive or whether it will be replaced by unilateralism in a multilateral disguise,'' Bustani told delegates in a speech on Sunday.
``He is no longer director general and he does not consider it necessary or appropriate to comment. I will assume he will go back to the diplomatic service in Brazil,'' a spokeswoman for Bustani said after he was ousted.
U.S. DOUBTS
The United States has voiced doubts that United Nations inspections in Iraq for chemical, biological and nuclear arms would reassure people that Saddam Hussein was not stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. The OPCW works closely with the United Nations.
``It would have to be an enormously intrusive inspection regime that could give the rest of the world reasonable confidence that in fact Saddam Hussein was not doing that which everyone knows he has been trying to do,'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier this month.
U.S. officials said that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz earlier this year asked the Central Intelligence Agency to report on two international watchdogs involved in arms control inspections.
One of the bodies, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in charge of verifying that Iraq no longer has weapons of mass destruction, is headed by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix. A U.S. official denied a press report last week that Wolfowitz had asked the CIA to investigate Blix's performance.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed earlier this month to tackle Saddam Hussein over the threat they say he poses with weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq was subjected to U.N. arms inspections after the 1991 Gulf War ended its occupation of Kuwait, but the inspectors left in 1998. The United States and its allies say Baghdad has since pursued chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
The OPCW special session was the first in the body's five-year history. The OPCW is a product of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Member states must provide data on their chemical weapons programs and are subject to challenges and inspections from other members.
Bustani, 59, told a Brazilian newspaper on April 9 it was ''very probable'' he would not survive the meeting because of U.S. influence but he was determined not to resign.
----
UN conference backs indigenous peoples drug payout
REUTERS NETHERLANDS:
April 22, 2002
Story by Otti Thomas
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15574/story.htm
THE HAGUE - A global environmental conference last week hammered out guidelines to encourage big business to pay indigenous communities for the right to use native plants to make commercial drugs and cosmetics.
Delegates from 166 countries adopted global guidelines at the end of a two-week U.N. sponsored conference designed to encourage leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to strike deals with countries where they use genetic resources.
"The guidelines on genetic resources promise to improve the way foreign companies... and other users gain access to valuable genetic resources in return for sharing the benefits with the countries of origin and with local indigenous communities," the Convention on Biological Diversity said.
According to the World Health Organisation there are some 250,000 medicinal plant species in the world, extracts from which are used to produce more than 85 percent of the medicines used by more than 80 percent of the developed world.
Developing countries, whose jungles and wetlands might harbour as yet unknown cures for cancer or AIDS, have long complained they receive little benefit from pharmaceutical firms, which are keen to protect the intellectual property rights to drugs.
The Convention on Biological Diversity guidelines are designed to help governments secure a share of profits and royalties from companies gathering material in their country to use in products or research.
BIOPIRACY
Environmental group Greenpeace was less than happy with the outcome of the conference, which was attended by environment ministers from dozens of countries.
"The ministers... discussed proposals to stop and prevent biopiracy, the theft of genetic resources from developing countries by... pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Greenpeace believes that any agreement to stop biopiracy will be insufficient if the resources to be shared are disappearing," it said.
A spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme said that agreement on the guidelines was an important step forward.
"We all play our roles. Greenpeace's role is to push governments in a direction to do even better. Things should be better and actually need to be better, but we were not there to plant trees. We were actually talking," its spokesman Michael Williams said.
-------- us
New Command, Old Tricks
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, April 22, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27919-2002Apr22?language=printer
Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the creation of a new Northern Command charged with caring for direct defense of the United States, a decision that he called "the most significant reform of our nation's military command structure" since World War II.
Such a claim creates expectations in the public and amongst the military itself that the United States is indeed better protected against the threat of terrorism, and that "transformation" is afoot.
Neither is true. Not only are the changes Rumsfeld announced timid and unimpressive, but there is a bit of flim-flam involved in his claims.
I know that the world does change, and that this sometimes requires something "new" to supplant the old. But in the real world, when it comes to military reorganization, little actually changes in the day-to-day of what is done. Unfortunately, so far, that applies to so-called "homeland defense" as well.
New Tree, Old Monkeys
Anyone who's ever been in the military knows that bureaucratic reorganization is laughably common. A new commanding general or admiral means a change in organization name to better reflect his version of the "mission," with the cascade of vitally important new letterheads, business cards, and directives. The same applies to civilian officials. There hasn't been a new Secretary of Defense who hasn't done the same in the Pentagon, claiming reform and reengineering.
Once the Army had a Materiel Command and then it had a Materiel Development and Readiness Command. But as sure as Beetle Bailey loafs all day, the reorganizers returned, and (I'm not making this up) a few years later, the command's name was changed back Materiel Command.
The Air Force started out with plain air forces, and they became aerospace forces in the space age. But that's out and now it's air and space forces. I could cite dozens of examples for the Navy and Marine Corps as well.
The name changes are the manifestation of competing visions that are not universally accepted. Given powerful interests and reluctance to upset the apple cart, new names at best signal a slow move towards a new and different kind of organization. But slowness is exactly what today's "crisis" supposedly can't wait for. And it is certain that once commanders rotate the organization wars will be fought again. No one accepts change as given. Just wait for the next guy is the attitude. The process of organization and reorganization goes on forever.
No wonder Norman Augustine, the former Defense Science Board chairman and head of Lockheed said in his brilliant book "Augustine's Laws" about the foibles and follies of the Pentagon that the constant tinkering with organizational diagrams was little more than "new tree, same monkeys."
It's Been Done Before
Note to the Secretary. Don't forget that Robert McNamara and James Schlesinger and Colin Powell have tried to do what you are trying to do.
Around the Cuban Missile Crisis, we saw a similar flurry of reorganization to "transform" the command structure and incorporate the forces in the United States into a coherent whole to "defend" the United States proper. In 1961, increasing tensions with Cuba led to the activation of the U.S. Strike Command (STRICOM), combining Army and Air Forces, and charged with defense of the United States. The Navy and Marine Corps argued that their flexibility would suffer by actually being assigned to STRICOM. McNamara capitulated. STRICOM would later pick up responsibility for planning in the Middle East and other areas of the world where no existing joint command had responsibility.
STRICOM was abolished in 1971 and replaced with the United States Readiness Command, otherwise known as REDCOM which had the unlikely "land defense" of the continental United States mission assigned, along with other responsibilities. But it had no assigned forces, not even Army and Air Forces.
In 1974, the Navy and Marine Corps went into battle again, fearing that REDCOM would take on command functions. They argued that it should solely be a training command, an argument that Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger refused to accept. Still, REDCOM was not put in command of defense of the United States, and the command was disestablished in 1987, with responsibilities for the defense of the continental United States ostensibly transferred to U.S. Atlantic Command.
In 1991 the issue arose again. The director of plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed creation of a super Americas Command to streamline the number of headquarters and general officers after the end of the Cold War. Then JCS Chairman Colin Powell, who had watched REDCOM falter because the Navy opted out, suggested a headquarters on the East Coast, preferably in Norfolk as an incentive for the Navy. "None of the choices are pleasant," Powell argued, "but we must get smaller." But in August 1991, commanders from all walks of the U.S. military met to defeat the plan. It was too difficult; there were too many vested interests.
It wasn't until 1993 that Powell was able to assign U.S.-based forces to Atlantic Command, which in a nifty slight of hand, was given a new acronym (LANTCOM was changed to ACOM) to underscore that change had indeed occurred.
Forgetting History
In other words, Mr. Rumsfeld, we've been here before. New commands have come and gone. Your reorganization leaves virtually the same number of generals and admirals and staffs and headquarters in the U.S. military, meaning that nothing profound has really happened.
The argument that "this is the first time that the continental United States will be assigned a commander" is also misleading. Northern Command merely supplants responsibilities that were assigned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before.
According to the classified Unified Command Plan in effect before your announcement: "The Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff is responsible for providing military advice to the Secretary of Defense with respect to ... unassigned areas [including the United States and Canada] in the same manner as CINC's do with respect to their areas of responsibility." In other words, there was a commander for homeland defense: the chairman of the JCS.
And he had plenty of help. Joint Forces Command, a recently reorganized Atlantic Command, was assigned responsibility for "land defense" of the continental United States. Space Command, previously Aerospace Defense Command, was assigned "warning and attack assessment of space, missile and air attacks on CONUS and Alaska." And then there is Strategic Command, responsible for nuclear deterrence of attacks on the United States.
So we are asked to forget all of this history and all of those commands with their failed responsibilities for defending us and hail the arrival of Northern Command. I feel safer already.
-------- venezuela
Venezuela Debates Truth Commission
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela.html
CARACAS (AP) -- Venezuelans on Monday debated setting up a truth commission to investigate the bloodshed that set off the revolt against President Hugo Chavez -- the killings of at least 16 people during a protest against his government.
Chavez's supporters and many opponents have agreed on talk shows that such a panel should uncover who and what sparked shootings during the massive opposition rally April 11 and the violence that accompanied Chavez's restoration. Chavez was sacked by the military April 12 but returned to power April 14.
Some Venezuelan rights activists want outside help, saying the judiciary -- stacked with Chavez allies -- and rival police forces lack credibility, are politicized, or are too divided to do the job. Chavez's backers in the legislature reject outside help.
Sorting the facts could be daunting. Hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters had marched peacefully to the presidential palace. National Guard troops set up to defend the building fired tear gas, and snipers and gunslingers fired indiscriminately into crowds and at civilians cowering behind utility poles.
Rioting claimed dozens of lives and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Some blame armed Chavez supporters for starting it all; others, opposition gunmen. Some blame a resurgent leftist Bandera Roja guerrilla movement; others, Venezuela's rival police and security forces.
What no one wants is a repeat of what happened after 1989 food riots that killed hundreds. Dozens of murder cases from that ugly episode remain unsolved.
``People must be punished for the damage they caused me and my family,'' said Chavez supporter Nicolas Rivera, 26, a radio announcer who claims he was beaten by the Technical Judicial Police, Venezuela's version of the FBI.
Rivera said his attackers accused him of belonging to armed ``Bolivarian Circles,'' Chavez's reputed civilian militia. He said they dragged hims from his car, took him home and beat him in front of his family, demanding to know where he was hiding weapons. He claimed he had none.
Arturo Sanchez, 54, witnessed a firefight between ``Chavistas'' and opposition gunmen. ``I saw two dead and six wounded, at least,'' said Sanchez, who along with Rivera gave testimony to non-governmental groups conducting their own probes.
At least one prominent rights group, Provea, has received death threats after announcing it was investigating.
Unlike other Latin countries that have or are investigating human rights crimes committed in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru, Venezuela has had little experience in truth commissions.
``It's important that it be perceived from the beginning as an extra-judicial effort, that its people are independent of politics, and it have enough political and financial support for its mission,'' said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.
Seven teams from the attorney general's office and a metropolitan police homicide squad are investigating the violence.
Ivan Simonovis said he quit as metropolitan police chief because politics made it impossible to do his job. He claimed that all investigations are paralyzed, suspects have been released and that Miguel Dao, head of the Technical Judicial Police, has been suspended.
``People are talking about a truth commission to get to the bottom of the issue, but the government is doing everything possible to prevent the truth from coming out,'' Simonovis said in remarks published Monday by The Daily Journal newspaper.
-------- propaganda wars
Israeli Army Seizes Press Cards
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Journalists.html
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) -- The Israeli army on Monday seized government-issued press cards from 17 foreign and Palestinian journalists covering the standoff between the army and armed Palestinians holed up in the Church of the Nativity.
The journalists were stopped about 400 yards from Manger Square and the church compound, where 200 armed men and about 100 clergy and unarmed Palestinians have been besieged for 21 days, defying Israeli demands to surrender.
An army officer told the journalists they were in a restricted area and insisted they turn over their press cards. The army did not produce any document backing up his claim that the area was restricted, as required by law.
``It would appear that there was no legal foundation for confiscating the cards and we are looking into it,'' said Deuel Peli, an attorney representing foreign journalists.
Most of the cards, including four taken from Associated Press journalists, were returned later Monday.
Earlier, the local Foreign Press Association called on Israel to ``stop efforts to impede coverage of the crisis'' in Bethlehem.
The cards, issued by the Government Press Office in Jerusalem, identify them as journalists and allow them to work in Israel and Israeli-controlled areas.
The journalists have been moving relatively freely through the city for several weeks, although they have not been allowed to approach the church.
In recent weeks they had been turned back at a checkpoint farther from the church, but no soldiers were at that checkpoint on Monday and the journalists continued walking toward the compound when they were stopped. They passed several other soldiers who did not stop them.
Dan Seaman, director of the Government Press Office, said the cards were taken because ``areas in which military forces are in right now are closed military areas.''
The army imposed sweeping restrictions on access by journalists to occupied zones at the beginning of its offensive on March 29. A week ago, under growing pressure from journalists' groups and threat of legal action, Israel said it would ease the restrictions, but maintained the right to close some areas ``for operational reasons.''
Monday's incident marked the first time press cards were lifted during the three-week confrontation in Bethlehem. The officer said he would deliver the cards to the army spokesman's office in Jerusalem.
The reporters and cameramen were from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, the British Broadcasting Corp., ABC, the ARD network of Germany, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television station and a Spanish journalist.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
THE DETAINEES
Transcripts Offer First Look at Secret Federal Hearings
New York Times
April 22, 2002
By DANNY HAKIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/national/22DETA.html
DETROIT, April 21 - The first glimpse into the secret immigration hearings of Arab men came after the federal government reluctantly agreed on Friday to make public partial records of its case against a Muslim cleric.
The cleric, Rabih Haddad, 41, has been held since December on charges of overstaying his visa. Mr. Haddad, a native of Lebanon who lived with his family in Ann Arbor, Mich., is the chairman of the Global Relief Foundation, a Muslim charity whose assets were frozen after it came under federal scrutiny. His case file - parts of which were made public as the result of a court ruling - includes transcripts of his past immigration hearings as well as numerous documents and exhibits, though material considered sensitive by the government was withheld.
In making its case, the government said Mr. Haddad had been seen in places affiliated with the Qaeda terrorist network during stays overseas in the late 1980's and early 1990's. But a detailed account of the charges, made in a declaration by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, was not included in the documents made public.
Mr. Haddad's lawyer, Ashraf Nubani, said in an interview that the purpose of Mr. Haddad's travels, mostly to Pakistan, was to take part in relief efforts.
"At the time he was in Pakistan, Al Qaeda didn't exist," Mr. Nubani said. "It was a bunch of people going to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan."
"He didn't do anything wrong and he never was a member of Al Qaeda," Mr. Nubani added.
Mr. Nubani contends that Mr. Haddad is a cleric who has been harshly punished for a minor offense. The Global Relief Foundation has denied it has ties to terrorist organizations and has sued several news media organizations for defamation, including The New York Times Company. The group has also brought a civil suit against the government.
Many of the documents that were made public reveal legal skirmishing over issues that offer no clear evidence of serious wrongdoing.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the most conclusive evidence had been withheld to protect "the integrity of the investigation and our ongoing efforts in the war against terrorism."
Mr. Corallo said that there was more evidence beyond the F.B.I. declaration, but that this evidence would probably remain secret as well.
"If it becomes necessary to enter other evidence in the immigration hearing, we will ask the court to close the hearing and enter evidence without public disclosure," he said.
Mr. Haddad, born to Lebanese Christian parents, later converted to Islam and started visiting the United States frequently in 1980, when he began attending the University of Nebraska.
He was taken into custody at his apartment in Ann Arbor on Dec. 14 by immigration agents, who confiscated a shotgun that he said he used for hunting birds. Prosecutors quizzed him on such subjects as why he had not taken a safety course. (He said he did not think one was required when he bought it.)
In the process of arresting Mr. Haddad, an agent asked him to produce his passport, which he retrieved from a briefcase. The agent saw four to six stacks of dollar bills, each about two to three inches high. Prosecutors repeatedly questioned Mr. Haddad about how he earned his living. Mr. Haddad said he was not employed in the traditional sense but received an income from donations he collected during visits to mosques and Islamic centers around the country. He said he also received money from his wife's family.
"He's a fund-raiser," Mr. Nubani said. "Muslims pay in the mosque and other places with dollar bills. He wasn't hiding anything."
Prosecutors further pressed Mr. Haddad about why he claimed on a rental application form that he was employed and earned a salary from the Global Relief Foundation of just under $30,000. He replied that he made roughly that amount of money in donations but he did not think a landlord would take in someone whose income consisted of charitable donations. Asked by his own lawyer if he regretted making the assertion, he said, "More so than you can imagine now, yes."
Until March, Mr. Haddad was in solitary confinement at the Metro Correctional Center in Chicago and granted minimal contact with his wife and four children. Among the documents made public were several stacks of letters of support on his behalf. After a letter-writing campaign and a visit from Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, Mr. Haddad was moved into the general population.
Mr. Haddad's immigration file became public after several Michigan newspapers, along with Mr. Conyers, sued the government to force them to open the hearings. They have been represented by, among others, the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit, and similar ones filed by news media organizations in New Jersey, pit First Amendment rights against a law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that permits the secret detention of immigrants. But Mr. Haddad's case is the first in which the federal courts have ruled.
Though the government released transcripts of Mr. Haddad's past hearings, it continues to seek to close his future hearings. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which denied the government's request to suppress the transcripts, is currently considering the case. It has said, in a decision on the transcripts by a three-judge panel, that there is only a "slim likelihood" it will reverse a lower court's ruling to open the hearings.
Mr. Haddad's next immigration hearing is set for Wednesday, but the government could seek to delay it as the federal appeals process proceeds.
Much of the government's argument in court has been that opening Mr. Haddad's hearing would present a danger to national security. But the government appeared to back away from that position Friday.
"We have concluded, in regard to the single individual in this case, that the release of past transcripts of the immigration proceedings, as required by court order, will not cause irreparable harm to the national security," Jay Stephens, the associate United States attorney general, said in a statement. He said the government was entitled to keep some proceedings secret and would do so.
Lee Gelernt, an A.C.L.U. lawyer, said his group had never pressed for the hearings to be fully open, just for them not to be fully closed.
"In court, the government has said it must conduct every minute of every hearing in secret," Mr. Gelernt said, "but now acknowledges that it is possible to distinguish between especially sensitive and nonsensitive material without a risk of irreparable harm to the American public."
--------
Tight rein kept on two terror suspects
April 22, 2002
By Larry Margasak
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20020422-89489465.htm
Living under tight restrictions in an Alexandria jail, former Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh still can use a StairMaster exerciser. And accused September 11 accomplice Zacarias Moussaoui soon may get the computer he wants to read legal documents.
Both have copies of the Koran but may not participate in group prayers.
Lindh, 21, and Moussaoui, 33, are in near-total isolation in a 15-year-old jail a few miles from the scene of the Pentagon attack. Like the narrow openings in their cells that pass as windows to the outside, each man is allowed only the smallest slice of normal life.
They are confined to their cells 22 hours a day without a radio, television or music. Even when taken for a shower or to the gym - where Lindh prefers the StairMaster - they do not make contact with other prisoners. Officials say the danger of passing messages is too high.
The cells have no desks or chairs. They also have no iron bars, just doors with a small window and a food slot. When Lindh said his cell was cold, officials gave him long johns to wear under his green prison jumpsuit.
Capt. Dave Rocco, the jail's spokesman, said Lindh has not violated any rules, and that Moussaoui has had only minor violations.
He did not describe them, but prosecutors said in court papers that Moussaoui, a French citizen, kept food in his cell until it hardened, considered a health hazard. Moussaoui's violation was costly: Prosecutors said it will keep him - for now - in the small high-security cell he wants to trade for larger quarters.
Daily life for Lindh and Moussaoui can be pieced together from sources familiar with their confinement, from Capt. Rocco's comments and from court filings in Moussaoui's bid to ease his restrictions.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema scheduled a hearing today on Moussaoui's contention that he is too isolated and has too little workspace to assist in his defense.
Moussaoui has demanded a full computer workstation in a larger cell, including a laptop, a printer, a table and storage space for 1,400 CD-ROMs with legal documents.
The government has offered, on an experimental basis, a computer in a secure room outside the cell. He would have to use a mouse to scroll through documents because the government contends a keyboard could be used as a weapon.
Both men can have visits from immediate family, conversing on a telephone through a glass partition. Lindh's parents have been regular visitors. Moussaoui, whose mother lives in France, has made no personal visits, Capt. Rocco said.
Both their cells have fluorescent overhead lights - one brighter than the other - so officials can monitor the inmates. After Moussaoui complained that the bright light stayed on 24 hours a day so he could be observed at a video monitoring station, the government agreed to turn it off at night.
Lindh has lodged no public complaints about prison conditions with the judge overseeing his case.
Guards check on both men about every 15 minutes by peering through the window in their doors.
Each man is confined under "special administrative measures," government rules that apply to a single prisoner. Prosecutors said they were worried about escapes, attacks on guards and coded messages to terrorists outside prison - all known al Qaeda tactics. The indictments of Lindh and Moussaoui contend both were associated with Osama bin Laden's network.
Moussaoui is charged as an accomplice in the September 11 attacks and faces the death penalty. Lindh is accused of conspiring to kill Americans and aiding terrorist networks.
Only the special regulations for Moussaoui have been made public so far.
Those rules require a prison staff member to initiate all calls to his attorney and confirm the attorney's identity before giving Moussaoui the telephone. Phone calls to immediate family members are monitored and recorded.
Moussaoui's personal mail is copied and analyzed, and could be seized if it is found to contain secret messages, encourage acts of terrorism or circumvent jail rules.
Any imam, or Muslim prayer leader, who visits must be approved by the government and cannot have physical contact with the prisoner. Prisoners get three meals a day. Muslims need not worry about prohibited pork; it's never on the menu.
Moussaoui and Lindh's sleeping pads rest on a concrete slab extending from the wall. There is a stainless steel toilet and sink and a ledge for writing.
Each man can have five books at a time, and reading material is brought to their cells.
One thing Moussaoui and Lindh can do is sleep late. Capt. Rocco said there's no wake-up call.
-------- death penalty
Court to Look at Death Row Appeals
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Death-Row-Appeal.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Monday to use a Tennessee killer's death sentence to look at the way capital punishment is applied, and whether to allow more appeals in questionable cases.
Justices had blocked Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman's execution earlier this month and will now decide whether he can pursue appeals on new developments.
Other courts had ruled that it was too late for him to bring up new allegations that the state didn't turn over evidence as it should have, made misleading statements and improperly prepared witnesses.
The man said he killed an alleged drug dealer to stop narcotics dealing to children.
His case brought the court back to a subject that has troubled some of the justices: whether poor people accused of murder are being adequately represented.
One of Abdur'Rahman's new lawyers, Tom Goldstein, said the outcome will determine whether new developments in criminal cases can be brought to federal court.
``We hopefully will finally have the chance to establish there was grave misconduct by the prosecutor in this case. We've never had our day in court and hopefully we'll now get it,'' Goldstein said.
Abdur'Rahman has also argued that he was not adequately represented at trial. One of his government-provided trial lawyers said a defense strategy was never planned for the trial or for sentencing phase. It was the attorney's first capital case.
His lawyers relied on information from prosecutors that blood was found on Abdur'Rahman's clothing. The spots were paint.
The Supreme Court is already reviewing several death row cases with major constitutional questions. The justices will decide before July whether states can execute the mentally retarded and whether it is constitutional for a judge, not a jury, to decide a death sentence. They will also say when convicted killers can bring up claims of ineffective counsel.
The latest case, which will be heard in the court's term that begins next fall, illustrates the court's current interest in capital cases.
Abdur'Rahman was on parole for another killing when he stabbed Patrick Daniels and Daniels' girlfriend in Nashville in 1986. The girlfriend survived.
A majority of the jurors in his trial have said they would not have sentenced him to death had they known about his history of sexual and physical abuse and mental problems, according to his lawyers.
His new lawyers want another jury to decide his fate. That jury could be told about his past. Abdur'Rahman, formerly known as James Lee Jones, was beaten by his father with a bat and a leather strap while growing up on a military base, and he was sometimes locked in a closet naked, according to Vanderbilt psychologist Linda Manning. Manning also is Abdur'Rahman's Buddhist spiritual adviser.
``As a consequence of the prosecutorial misconduct, especially when combined with the deficient performance of defense counsel, the state presented a prejudicially false and misleading case to the jury,'' Goldstein told the court in a filing.
He had lost in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jennifer L. Smith, assistant attorney general in Tennessee, had told the Supreme Court that it did not have jurisdiction to review part of Abdur' Rahman's appeal. Justices disagreed.
The case is Abdur'Rahman v. Bell, 01-9094.
On the Net:
Supreme Court: http:/www.supremecourtus.gov/
-------- terrorism
'Holy war' urge of new Bin Laden video
Monday 22nd April 2002
Ananova
http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_572554.html
Osama bin Laden has urged Muslims to join his holy war in new video footage found in Afghanistan.
The tape was found by a Kabul resident in a house previously used by pro-Taliban or al-Qaida forces.
It's not known when it was filmed.
The footage lasts more than an hour but there is no specific mention of the September 11 attacks.
Bin Laden is filmed telling an audience to reject modern life and choose holy war. Battle, he says, is the best way to heaven.
Sky reports the video shows Bin Laden weave together religious stories, political rhetoric and a stern view of the secular world.
He speaks quietly, occasionally raising his voice or wagging a long finger to make a point during a rambling, repetitive talk.
Bin Laden briefly mentions the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya and the Palestinian territories and the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, particularly women soldiers.
He dismisses those who warn it is impossible to defeat America, recalling fighters in Afghanistan drove out a Soviet army far stronger than they were.
Bin Laden appears healthy but, as in a videotape aired on the Arab channel Al-Jazeera in December, his left arm is kept immobile at his side.
----
Moussaoui Calls for the Destruction of the U.S.
New York Times
April 22, 2002
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/international/22CND-DETAIN.html
ARLINGTON, Va., April 22 - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged with conspiracy in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, called today for the destruction of the United States and Israel in his first extensive public comments since his arrest. He urged a federal judge to allow him to fire his court-appointed defense lawyers and represent himself.
"America, I am ready to fight," said Mr. Moussaoui, who was arrested in August and has been accused by federal authorities of being the "20th hijacker" in the attacks.
A hearing that was supposed to focus on Mr. Moussaoui's prison conditions took a startling turn when the 33-year-old French citizen raised his hand almost immediately after entering a courtroom here and, in a 50-minute discourse on Islam and what he described as a corrupt American justice system, accused his lawyers of joining in a conspiracy to see him executed.
"They have no understanding of terrorism, Muslims, mujahadeen," he said in heavily accented English. "They are not my attorneys, and this point is clear. I believe they are experienced. They are experienced in deception." He said he was prepared to represent himself.
As his three lawyers looked on, occasionally shaking their heads in what appeared to be exasperation, Mr. Moussaoui also spoke out against several countries, including the United States, Israel and Russia, saying he was praying to Allah for "the destruction of the United States of America" and for the "destruction of the Jewish people and state."
The judge in the case, Leonie Brinkema of federal court in Alexandria, which is near the Pentagon, said that she was ready to allow Mr. Moussaoui to serve as his own lawyer if he submitted to a examination by a psychiatrist who found that he was mentally competent.
But she urged him to reconsider, and she said she would keep the defense team in place to serve as a backup if he were found incapable of defending himself against charges that he conspired with Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "If you don't want to talk to them, it's at your own risk," she said.
With his remarks today, Mr. Moussaoui, who was born in France and lived for several years in Britain, appeared to embrace the government's description of him as a Muslim extremist who supported Mr. bin Laden's call for the destruction of the United States. Quoting frequently from the Koran, Mr. Moussaoui said that his trial amounted to a struggle between Muslims and "pagans, Jews, Christians and hypocrites."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Chinese discuss possible Brazil ethanol imports
REUTERS BRAZIL:
April 22, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15593/story.htm
RIO DE JANEIRO - Chinese sugar industry executives from the northeastern state of Heilongjiang are visiting Brazil to investigate the production and possible import of sugar cane-based fuel alcohol (ethanol), a Sao Paulo Cane Agroindustry Union (Unica) official said last week.
"They are observing how Brazil implements its fuel alcohol program," the Unica official said by phone from the organization's Sao Paulo headquarters, adding that the Chinese were interested in logistics.
Brazil, the world's largest sugar cane producer, launched the Pro-Alcohol programme in the mid-1970s in a bid to reduce dependence on oil imports and risk of soaring prices.
Brazil, which has just started harvesting what is expected to be a record cane crop, is seeking new export markets for its fuel alcohol. Unica estimates that most of a forecast 28 million tonnes increase in cane output will be crushed into fuel alcohol rather than sugar.
Heilongjiang, which started testing the use of anhydrous alcohol in motor vehicles last July, plans to start commercial production in 2003.
"Chinese gasoline demand is rising fast and they are worried about the cost of imports and air pollution in the cities. They also want to boost agriculture," said the Unica official, who accompanied the Chinese during talks with sugar companies in Sao Paul on Tuesday.
Although China is the world's third largest ethanol producer, after Brazil and the United States, output is mostly corn-based and destined for industrial or direct human consumption.
The Chinese mission was in Brasilia on Wednesday for talks with government officials.
-------- energy
Canada welcomes demise of Alaska drilling plan
REUTERS CANADA:
April 22, 2002
Story by David Ljunggren
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15592/story.htm
OTTAWA - Canada, a long-time opponent of Washington's proposal to drill for oil in an Arctic wildlife refuge near its borders, gleefully welcomed last week the U.S. Senate's decision to kill off what Ottawa says was always a fatally flawed idea.
Canada had long objected to plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeast Alaska, saying to do so would ruin the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd upon which native Gwich'in Indians in both Alaska and Canada depend heavily.
The Democratic-led Senate killed the drilling idea last week, a big defeat for the national energy plan advanced by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.
Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson, who has campaigned tirelessly against the idea for years, was clearly delighted by the news.
"Of course I'm happy. But I don't think we owe them anything for it...I hope it's the end of the game (for drilling)," he told reporters with a broad smile, but noted the White House had promised to keep pressing the idea.
"We're going to be very vigilant to make sure this is the end. ANWR drilling was a mistake when it was first proposed, it's a mistake now and it will be a mistake in the future," Anderson said.
Ottawa, which says both countries should provide permanent protection for the wildlife populations that straddle the border, has already slapped a development ban on areas frequented by the Porcupine herd on the Canadian side of the border.
The U.S. administration and many Senate Republicans framed the debate as a national security issue, saying the oil in the refuge - estimated to contain up to 16 billion barrels - would help reduce U.S. dependence on crude from unfriendly countries such as Iraq.
But Anderson said that even if oil were found in great quantities, many years would pass before it made its way on to the American market.
"If it's going to take 10 years for ANWR to come on stream, which is likely - heavens, the Americans have a much bigger problem than they've been willing to admit on the issue of supply of energy," he said.
Canada says there are plenty of other energy sources in North America that could be developed before ANWR needed to be touched. These include the vast tar sands of Alberta, believed to be richer than the entire reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Anderson said that with ANWR drilling now off the agenda, he wanted to work closely with U.S. Environmental Protection chief Christine Todd Whitman on such topics as cleaning up air pollution in both countries.
-------- environment
EU environment policy puts focus on soil quality
REUTERS EU:
April 22, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15575/story.htm
BRUSSELS - Soil is the next big green challenge for the European Union, the EU's executive Commission, the body which drafts most of the bloc's environmental legislation, said.
"We are placing soil protection on a level with cleaning up our water and air," EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.
Eroded, polluted and dried-out soil poses a serious threat to human health and the environment, the Commission said in a policy paper, promising to bring out a range of policies in the coming years to address the issue.
Certain farming practices, industrial pollution and the encroachment of buildings and roads were the main culprits to be dealt with, the Commission said.
Over the next two years it will draft policies on industrial emissions that contaminate soil, procedures for disposing of mining waste and a revision of EU sewage regulations.
In 2004 it plans to present a complete strategy on soil protection, including rules on monitoring soil quality in member states.
-------- genetics
Limits of DNA Research Pushed to Identify the Dead of Sept. 11
New York Times
April 22, 2002
By ERIC LIPTON and JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/nyregion/22IDEN.html?pagewanted=all&position=bottom
A right hand, a forearm and a clavicle, and the DNA they carried, were all investigators had to identify the remains of Timothy Stout, who worked on the 103rd floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center.
Two fingerprints and a dental pattern proved key to confirming the death of David Suarez, who worked a few floors below.
A genetic analysis of a bone fragment determined the final fate of John C. Hartz, who was on the phone with his wife describing the horror of the first attack when the south tower, where he worked, was struck by a second hijacked plane. "I have never been able to understand why people have been so intent on recovering bodies," said Mr. Hartz's widow, Ellie. "Now I understand. It is a basic human need. We are tactile."
These confirmations, achieved in the last month, are each scientific miracles made possible by the largest forensic investigation in United States history, one that is pressing the limits of biomedical research even as it brings a painful mixture of relief and fresh grieving to families. But these are just 3 out of 972 identifications that investigators have made as of Friday.
A third of the 2,824 victims of the World Trade Center attack have now been identified, a number far beyond what many had thought would be possible. The goal now, experts involved in the effort say, is to use new scientific techniques to identify half or even two-thirds of the victims, despite the miserably deteriorated state of many of the remains being pulled from ground zero.
The endeavor spans the nation, from genetics laboratories in Utah, Texas, Maryland and Virginia to law enforcement bureaus in Washington and Albany; even a California forensic statistician is helping. But the federally financed job, of course, is centered in New York City, at the World Trade Center site, where remains have been meticulously collected, and at the medical examiner's office, at 520 First Avenue in Manhattan, where 18 refrigerated trailers hold the evidence.
To date, 18,937 body parts have been recovered, along with 287 whole bodies. Most of the first successes in identifying victims have come through traditional resources like fingerprints and dental records, and those techniques are still yielding results. But because of the extraordinary trauma involved in the towers' collapse, DNA is often the only hope of matching remains to a name, a family, a life story. In fact, through Friday, only 10 victims so far have been identified solely by visual confirmation.
DNA, first used as a forensic tool in 1985, led to the identification of all of the bodies in a Swissair plane crash in 1998 and an EgyptAir plane crash in 1999, two accidents in which jets plunged into the Atlantic. In the days after the Sept. 11 attack, city officials announced that they felt compelled to test each bit of human remains that could be found.
"This is an historic event of unprecedented magnitude, and the question was if the scientific community could respond to that need," said Mark D. Stolorow, executive director of Orchid Cellmark, a genetics company. "The response has been surprisingly swift. We are scientists, but we are also American scientists."
Progress has not come at an even pace. Only 2 of the 65 people aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which struck the south tower, have been identified, according to city records. By comparison, 182 of the 343 city firefighters, who wore protective gear, have been identified.
Since the day of the attack, the identification effort has proceeded simultaneously on multiple tracks. Dental records, details on any tattoos, engraved rings or other unique items were collected by the police, in the hope that traditional identification approaches might be sufficient. But city investigators also started immediately to assemble DNA from victims' families, who supplied toothbrushes, razors, even lip balm used by a victim, which presumably would contain his or her DNA. Cheek swabs from the victims' relatives were also taken.
Each person's DNA, or genetic code, consists of a string of three billion "base pairs," or large molecules, represented by the letters "A," "G," "C," and "T." Sequences of those four molecules create the code for all human characteristics, and variations in those sequences make one person different from another. Those same variations also allow DNA to be used like a fingerprint.
To start this effort, the city relied on a well-proven DNA technique, called Short Tandem Repeat, in which the laboratories looked for 13 different markers in each sample of human remains collected from ground zero, measuring the size of each marker and assigning the equivalent of a Social Security number to each fragment of remains. An analysis would also be done on the 6,908 razor blades, combs, toothbrushes and other personal items, and the 6,889 cheek swabs from victims' relatives.
Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City and the Bode Technology Group of Springfield, Va., handled most of this initial work. Bode alone has been sent 12,000 bone samples, 5,500 soft tissue samples and 1,800 samples from family members. The results are being sent back to the New York State Police, and then the city medical examiner's office, where staff members start on the difficult work of matching DNA profiles from the remains with those from the family items and confirming the accuracy of each step.
This effort gradually started to produce significant results: 57 DNA identifications in November, 69 in March and 92 in April, as of Friday. But nothing is coming easily.
The fires that burned for weeks after the towers fell were so hot that even when bones were recovered, they were often little more than ash. The moisture at the site and bacteria caused further degradation. The result is that nearly half of the first round of samples tested at DNA labs have come back with incomplete profiles, city officials said.
In as many as 700 cases, the medical examiner's office has been unable to link a DNA profile that was isolated from a piece of remains with any of the profiles established based on the items supplied by the victim's families. Making the matches has become almost an obsession for Dr. Robert Shaler, the director of forensic biology with the city's medical examiner's office. He finds himself at his office at 5 a.m., at his computer, again and again, trying to make just one more match. He wonders as he arrives for work: "Can I make matches? Can I make matches?"
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he already was amazed at the success Dr. Shaler, and his boss, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the city's chief medical examiner, have had. "I honestly think on the evening of Sept. 11th, none of us who observed it, saw it, watched it, were involved in it, ever thought you would have been able to identify a third of the people," Mr. Giuliani said.
But Dr. Shaler and other city officials say they are far from satisfied. They believe they have another eight months of work, as they are just now pushing ahead again, in a second wave of testing.
Celera Genomics, a Maryland company best known for its work in sequencing the human genome in recent years, is applying its fast DNA sequencing machines to the World Trade Center identification effort. Celera's work, in conjunction with its Applied Biosystems division, is focusing on tiny rings of DNA in cell structures called mitochondria. These maternally inherited rings are hardier than the long strands of DNA used in the more traditional tests, and there are as many as 10,000 of them in each cell, giving investigators much more to work with. This approach has been used before - including the 1994 identification of the remains of Czar Nicholas II of Russia - but never before on such a large scale.
The city is also turning to techniques that have never been used before in forensic investigations: single nucleotide polymorphisms, known as snips, are telltale variations in single base pairs scattered throughout the genome - an A instead of a T, say. The snips can be found even when a victim's DNA has been broken into fragments as short as 60 to 80 base pairs, much less than required in the traditional tests, Mr. Stolorow of Orchid Cellmark said.
In preliminary attempts, the success rate for developing DNA profiles of victims who could not be identified with the other methods has been "encouragingly high," Mr. Stolorow said. The full process of getting profiles, matching them with DNA from relatives and other sources is expected to take two to three months, he added.
These incursions into uncharted scientific territory and even the identifications that have come from traditional means have produced a volatile amalgam of deep gratitude, a resurgence of September's searing grief, the need to grapple with unfamiliar choices, and more than a few surprises in the worlds of bereaved families.
One surprise lay hidden in the hopes of 12-year-old Brendan Regan until the remains of his father, Robert Regan, a lieutenant in Engine Company 205, Ladder Company 118 in Brooklyn Heights, were found and identified on New Year's Day. The results came quickly, based on dental records and a medal of St. Florian, patron saint of firefighters, inscribed with his children's names.
"It turned out that up until that point, my son had held out an unbelievable hope in his heart that he was still capable of having a miracle occur," Lieutenant Regan's widow, Donna Regan, said. "He felt my husband may have crawled to a safe spot" and somehow survived, she said. Now, Mrs. Regan hopes, her son can begin the long and difficult process of healing.
But the prospect that science could again and again identify more of a victim's remains has put some families in a torturous limbo. "We decided to hold off on the funeral," said Robert Alonso, whose wife, Janet Alonso, worked for Marsh & McLennan on the 95th floor of the north tower. Some of her remains were identified less than two weeks ago.
"The last thing we needed was to have a service and then say, `They've found more remains at ground zero,' " Mr. Alonso said.
The impact on families of techniques that can identify almost any fragment of a loved one's remains is not always positive. "It's very upsetting," one widow said of the news. "I almost threw up."
Given those emotions and the fact that dozens of distinct remains are being found at times from a single victim, the medical examiner's office is giving families the option of being notified only once, when the first confirmation is made. They are also giving families the alternative of leaving any identified remains at the morgue until all testing is over, so that a single burial can take place.
Still, everyone expresses thanks for the monumental effort taking place at ground zero and at labs across the country. The identifications help families escape what Mrs. Regan calls the "vanish factor": not having anything tangible on which to focus the last goodbyes.
Mr. Alonso said thoughts of his children, ages 2 and 3, help him cope with the upwelling of grief that the identification of his wife has brought. "Questions will be coming as we get older: `Where's Mommy? What happened to Mommy?' " Mr. Alonso said. A grave site, he said, "brings me a place where when the kids get older and understand, I can bring them and show them something."
-------- health
Scientists Find Gene Tied to Cancer Risk
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Researchers have identified a gene that when mutated can lead to a slightly higher risk of breast cancer.
The altered gene, called CHEK2 or CHK2, can double the estimated 13 percent lifetime risk of breast cancer faced by women in the United States, according to a report published online yesterday by the journal Nature Genetics.
About 1 percent of people, women and men, carry the mutated gene. Carrying it does not mean someone is destined to develop breast cancer, the scientists said. Instead, they said, the risk is comparable to that faced by women who have a mother or sister with breast cancer, who never have children or who experience menopause at a later age.
"CHK2 is not something anyone should go out and get tested for," said Dr. Michael Stratton of the Institute of Cancer Research in England, who is co-author of the report.
Two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, are the only ones linked to a much higher risk of breast cancer. Carriers of those genes have as much as an 85 percent risk of developing inherited forms of breast cancer.
In the study, researchers studied 1,071 patients who had a family history of breast cancer but who had not inherited BRCA1 or BRCA2. Scientists said the findings might help explain cases in which families have a strong history of breast cancer and no one carries the high-risk genes.
-------- human rights
U.S., Clinton accused of war atrocities
April 22, 2002
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020422-7801660.htm
The lawyer for a Croatian general indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague says his client's case opens the possibility that former President Clinton will be charged with crimes against humanity for authorizing a Croatian military offensive in 1995 that recaptured territory from rebel Serbs.
"According to the unjust indictment brought against my client, there is a basis for an investigation and indictment of high-ranking Clinton administration officials who oversaw Operation Storm," said Luka Misetic, the defense attorney for Gen. Ante Gotovina.
The high-ranking Croatian general was indicted in June 2001 by the prosecutor's office at the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on charges that he exercised "command responsibility" over the military campaign in which 150 Serbian civilians were killed.
Secretly supported by the Clinton administration, Croatian forces launched a three-day massive military offensive - known as "Operation Storm" - on Aug. 5, 1995 in which Croatia recovered territories occupied by rebel Serbs following Croatia's bloody drive for independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
Gen. Gotovina was the military commander of Sector South of the operation, which was responsible for the capture of the rebel-held city of Knin. He is also accused of overseeing the ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Serbs who fled from Croatia during the military offensive.
The United States provided military and technical assistance to Operation Storm in order to block then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's goal of forging an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia."
The Clinton administration viewed Croatia's military campaign as pivotal to tilting the strategic balance of power in the region against Serbian forces, paving the way for the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in neighboring Bosnia.
However, Mr. Misetic said U.S. support and approval for the military offensive means the indictment against Gen. Gotovina could lead to the prosecution by The Hague tribunal of Mr. Clinton and other high-ranking U.S. officials on charges of having command responsibility for war crimes that were committed during the operation.
"The theory against Gotovina can now be brought against Clinton, [Assistant Secretary of State Richard] Holbrooke and all the way down the U.S. chain of command. On the prosecution's logic, they should be indicted as well. They knew the attack was coming and gave it the green light," Mr. Misetic said.
"The prosecutor's office is punting on an issue that is clearly there. They are claiming that ethnic cleansing took place during this operation. They are claiming that by virtue of his position, Gotovina had knowledge of war crimes. His knowledge was shared and given to him by the Pentagon," he said.
Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, said the tribunal is not challenging the legitimacy of Croatia's military offensive but individual atrocities carried out by Croatian soldiers whose actions fell under the responsibility of Gen. Gotovina.
"It is not Operation Storm that is being indicted, but the crimes that were committed during and afterward," Mrs. Hartmann said.
U.S. support for the operation "has to be established," she said. "I don't know that the [Clinton] administration was involved."
Asked whether the prosecutor's office was planning to issue indictments against either Mr. Clinton or other administation officials, Mrs. Hartmann said: "We have no comment because there is no evidence to substantiate the charges of Gen. Gotovina's lawyers. They can make their case with evidence to the court."
Mr. Misetic dismissed Mrs. Hartmann's comments as "blatant hypocrisy."
--------
Human Rights Groups Accuse Israel
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Human-Rights.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel violated international humanitarian laws during its military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, leading human rights organizations charged Monday.
Palestinians charge that Israeli troops committed a massacre of civilians during the operation, which ended with Israel's withdrawal April 11. Israel denies that, saying that most of the Palestinian casualties were gunmen or bombers. Israel lost 23 soldiers in the weeklong camp battle.
The International Red Cross and U.N. Relief and Works Administration said the army ignored international norms on human rights in the camp. It also refused to help rescue Palestinians buried in the destruction, they said.
``When we are confronted with the extent of destruction in the Jenin refugee camp, in an area of civilian concentration, it is difficult to accept that international humanitarian law has been fully respected,'' said Rene Kosirnik, regional chairman of the Red Cross.
Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz accused UNRWA and the Red Cross of pro-Palestinian bias, saying the organizations have never held press conferences to accuse Palestinian militants of violating human rights by killing Israelis in suicide bombings.
In London, Amnesty International said it has evidence of human rights abuses, including the possible use of Palestinian detainees as human shields.
Amnesty, which recently began an investigation in the heavily damaged camp, said an international probe must be conducted to determine whether Israeli forces violated humanitarian laws or committed war crimes.
The human rights group did not present any evidence it said its investigators have come up with. It also said its preliminary investigation had found no evidence of mass graves.
Hospital officials in Jenin report fewer than 50 bodies have been recovered, but the Palestinians say hundreds of people were killed and may be buried under houses bulldozed by the Israeli army. Israel says the number of dead is fewer than 100.
Kosirnik did not detail which laws had allegedly been violated, but held up a copy of the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians in a war zone.
Israeli soldiers did not intentionally kill civilians in the Jenin refugee camp while Palestinian militants intentionally kill civilians in attacks on Israelis, Rafowicz said. ``The camp became a camp of terrorists,'' Rafowicz said. ``Civilians are killed when they are used by terrorists as a human shield.''
The military did not respond immediately to the Amnesty International charges.
-------- ACTIVISTS
'Die-ins' to tie up traffic
April 22, 2002
By Matthew Cella and Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20020422-86057094.htm
Police officers almost outnumbered protesters outside the well-guarded World Bank headquarters yesterday morning. But authorities warn that the long weekend of peaceful demonstration may end on a sour note this morning when some militant protesters plan to lay down in the street to block rush-hour traffic.
"We're going to have problems [today]," said D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. "We don't know what they're going to do, but they're going to do something."
With demonstrations scheduled at the National Mall and U.S. Capitol this morning, and on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest this afternoon, police aren't dropping their guard.
Protesters, calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Colombia, will rally at 7 a.m. at the Washington Monument before marching to Upper Senate Park, near the Capitol.
Police issued permits for rallies at the two locations, but no permits were issued for a march, and officers also are preparing for a "die-in" - protesters playing dead in the street - near the corner of Constitution Avenue and 14th Street NW.
Eric M. LeCompte, outreach director with School of the Americas Watch, the group organizing the demonstration, said the die-in is meant to commemorate the ongoing massacre of innocents in Colombia.
He said he doesn't anticipate any disruption of traffic on Constitution Avenue, but police are preparing for the worst.
What could dispel Chief Ramsey's concerns is the simple fear expressed by some of being arrested again. Police on Friday arrested 41 protesters on bicycles, charging them with traffic violations and disobeying orders; all were released after paying fines of up to $100. On Saturday, 25 more were arrested and charged with unlawful entry into an underground garage in Northwest.
"I'm not really interested in getting arrested again," said Adam Eidinger, 28, an organizer for the D.C.-based Mobilization for Global Justice who was among the 41 taken into custody Friday.
This morning's demonstrations seek an end to aerial fumigation of crops in Colombia and the closure of the successor to the Army's School of the Americas, Mr. LeCompte said. The school at Fort Benning, Ga., closed in 2000 and was replaced a year later by what he calls a "training ground for Latin American terrorists."
At noon, police will close a stretch of Connecticut Avenue NW, just north of Dupont Circle, where the Committee in Solidarity with the People of Palestine plan an anti-Israel demonstration outside the Washington Hilton. Chief Ramsey last week said he's concerned the protest could draw counterdemonstrators and become violent.
Members of a D.C.-based anarchist group said they'll be on hand supporting pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Some organizers said clashes are expected with police if enough demonstrators try to gain entry into the hotel, where Israeli leaders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee will meet.
While wary of today's protests, Chief Ramsey said he was "not surprised but pleased" with how smoothly the weekend demonstrations went.
A week of demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, organized by the same group two years ago, resulted in about 1,200 arrests, but police say no arrests were made during yesterday's demonstrations.
The only incident that required police intervention yesterday occurred when a splinter group of protesters on the Washington Monument grounds turned on the main group that was sitting on the lawn at the Sylvan Theater listening to a folk-rock band.
A shouting match followed, and an American flag held by a protester in the splinter group was set on fire.
U.S. Park Police immediately stamped out the fire, but whoever set it disappeared into the crowd.
There were other indications that some demonstrators, many of whom arrived from around the country, were growing impatient with the peaceful nature of the events.
Katie Renier, 22, of Stevens Point, Wis., took hold of a live microphone after the rally at the World Bank headquarters ended to complain that singalongs and puppet shows were not getting the attention of the global finance ministers. "They're pressing their riot cops on us," she added, motioning to the police line. "This is not a democracy."
An organizer of the rally on another microphone said the police, who were not wearing riot gear, were only doing their job.
But Dana Smith, 23, who traveled from Wisconsin with Miss Renier, agreed with her friend. "I didn't come here to have a picnic in the park," she said from beneath a black bandana covering her face below her eyes. "It's not enough anymore. It's just not enough."
Several times black-clad protesters tried to provoke officers by running toward the barricade, but they retreated just as quickly.
Brant Olson, a Mobilization for Global Justice organizer, said this weekend's events were only a way for demonstrators to organize for a massive mobilization in the fall to "shut down the World Bank."
"We're going to bring thousands and thousands of people," said Mr. Olson, 24.
From World Bank headquarters at 18th and H streets NW, the demonstrators marched to the Sylvan Theater. Police cars set roadblocks at intersections in front of the marchers. About 100 protesters already at the Sylvan Theater cheered the larger group's arrival after the peaceful half-hour march.
As the band played and the crowd spread out on the lawn, one counterdemonstrator challenged the sincerity of some young white men wearing black T-shirts with revolutionary logos on them.
Tito Munoz argued steadily in English and Spanish in favor of American military aid and stamping out drug use in his native Colombia with a revolving group of protesters.
"You are using Colombia for your own political agenda," said Mr. Munoz, wrapped in a Colombian flag and waving his passport. "You do not represent the feelings of the people of Colombia."
•Jabeen Bhatti and Arlo Wagner contributed to this report.
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Mideast Protesters March in D.C.
April 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Capital-Protests.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After reciting a pledge against vandalism, violence and even running or swearing, hundreds of protesters marched peacefully to the Capitol on Monday to oppose U.S. funding for the Colombian military.
Four days of demonstrations in the nation's capital wrapped up Monday evening with a large pro-Palestinian rally outside the annual convention of a powerful Jewish lobbying group. Though the weekend's protests were organized around the now-ended spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, a wide variety of causes was on display.
Police steeled for trouble each day, especially during Monday's unauthorized demonstrations that organizers had said could produce disturbances. But all events were mostly peaceful.
Police officials credited protest leaders for urging nonviolence. A large law enforcement turnout also appeared to dampen any enthusiasm for confrontation.
Protesters gathered before dawn Monday near the Washington Monument to object to U.S. aid to the Colombian military in its anti-guerrilla war and to a U.S. Army school that trains Latin American soldiers, some of whom have gone on to commit human rights abuses.
``Our money is going to kill people and that terrifies me,'' said Kristin Kumpf, 26, a St. Louis University student.
Led by an organizer with a bullhorn, demonstrators recited a nonviolence pledge before setting off on the 1.5-mile hike to the Capitol. As they walked, they were flanked by solid lines of police on motorcycles and horseback and in full riot gear.
Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer estimated there were about 1,000 protesters and about 700 police.
Police Chief Charles Ramsey said a quick pace and the early start contributed to city streets that were hardly more snarled than usual. ``People are being very peaceful and I appreciate it,'' he said.
A few dozen activists kneeled, hands linked, to block two entrances to the Capitol grounds. Eventually, Capitol Police pulled out plastic handcuffs and arrested 37 people for obstructing traffic. Ramsey thanked some of those who were arrested for being peaceful.
One minor scuffle occurred when police corralled a large group into a Capitol Hill park, producing some shoving and flared tensions. But there were no arrests there and the crowd soon proceeded to an approved celebratory rally in another park across the street.
Later, across town, several hundred people opposed to U.S. military aid to Israel assembled in the street outside a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. A large number of police guarded separate cordoned-off areas for pro-Palestinian groups and an expected pro-Israel counter-demonstration, which never happened. A mile-long portion of one of the city's major thoroughfares was closed for several hours to accommodate them.
Some of the pro-Palestinian protesters were unnerved by the arrival of dozens of police in riot gear, but police chief Ramsey said their dress was the result of a misunderstanding and the officers were sent away and told to return in regular uniforms.
Dozens of protesters from the anarchist Black Flag group carried several sections of a chain-link fence onto the street and massed behind it, attracting many of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Police massed on the other side of the fence to keep protesters from pushing down a residential street. The standoff remained peaceful, with Ramsey at one point joking to the protesters, ``Next time, we'll let you make our fences for us.''
The Palestinian supporters beat drums and chanted ``free, free Palestine'' and ``Israel out of Palestine.'' They circled around a black coffin, led by young men wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with the word ``jihad'' and with pictures of rifles.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher defended the administration's Latin American and Mideast policies that were the subject of the protests.
``We'll continue to look carefully at the needs of the people of the world and do what we think we can to help their development,'' he said.
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Marchers Protest Aid to Columbia
By The Associated Press
April 22, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Capital-Protests.html
Protesters marched to the Capitol on Monday, proclaiming their opposition to U.S. military aid to Colombia and their commitment to nonviolence. They sang, hugged and mingled under a heavy police presence that kept streets mostly clear for the morning commute.
Scores of police on horseback, motorcycles, bicycles and foot flanked the demonstrators, keeping them from tying up intersections for long on their march from the Washington Monument. Commuters appeared to face little more than the usual traffic snarls.
The protesters did not have a permit for their march to Capitol Hill and more than 30 were arrested in a crowd that police officials estimated at 1,000 to 3,000 at its height.
``People are being very peaceful and I appreciate it,'' Police Chief Charles Ramsey said.
Demonstrators defended their right to make their case.
``Civil disobedience is part of this movement,'' said Glenn Fiscella, 47, of Newport News, Va. ``It's like a democratic tool that you use like voting or writing a letter to the editor. You can be forceful, you can be militant, without being violent ... and that's where this movement's at.''
The 37 protesters arrested Monday morning were charged with obstructing traffic on Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $500 fine, according to Capitol Police spokesman Dan Nichols.
The protest on streets, sidewalks and a path along the 1.5 miles from the monument to the Capitol and another scheduled later in the day outside the annual convention of the largest pro-Israel lobbying group followed a weekend of largely peaceful demonstrations surrounding spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
On a gray drizzly Monday, a protest organizer with a bullhorn led the crowd in chants before everyone set off to the Capitol. She had them pledge not to be violent, use drugs, run through the streets or use profanity. Many children were in the crowd.
At their destination, dozens kneeled on the Senate side of the Capitol grounds, singing. Police let them sing for 10 minutes before telling them they were breaking the law by obstructing a roadway, and those who were not arrested moved on.
City officials had braced for the worst from anti-globalization protesters who have clashed with police several times since their movement surfaced with violent demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. During protests at the financial institutions' meeting in Washington two years ago, police made 1,300 arrests.
But the weekend protests were largely peaceful, with police praising organizers for keeping the events orderly. Sixty-five people in two groups were arrested for interfering with traffic and unlawfully entering a parking garage.
The protesters concerned with Colombia object to a proposal by the Bush administration to let U.S. aid now tied to the drug war be used to fight guerrillas in that country. U.S. Special Forces have been training Colombian troops.
Both the State Department and the United Nations have criticized the human rights record of the Colombian military.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters marched through the capital's streets to support the Palestinians and oppose the Bush administration's war on terrorism, and 1,000 came out Sunday.
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