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NUCLEAR
Taiwanese aborigines in protest over nuclear waste
Finns divided over more nuclear power plants - poll
Europe's Choice: Nuclear Dangers or Global Warming
North Korea Is Prepared to Negotiate, U.S. Reports
US Customs to Up Radiation Detection
Russia - U.S. Nuke Pact Could Be Near
Livermore Weapons Lab Candidate Out
Exelon eyes Illinois nuclear site for early permit
At Indian Pt. Hearing, Crowds, Speeches, but Not Much Listening
S.C. Governor Sues Energy Dept.
Powell Wants Freer Hand in Mideast
Hu Holds Get - Acquainted Talks with Bush, Cheney
Treasury Seeks Borrowing Authority
On Russia, Think Bigger
Defense Glance
MILITARY
Group: Mass Graves in Afghanistan
U.S. troops mass at Afghan-Pakistani border
Bosnians Serious About Terrorism War
US team to destroy Uzbek anthrax
Colombia Military Meets Rights Mark
U.S. indicts six rebels, FARC in three killings
Iran Repeats Call for Oil Sanctions
U.S., British Air Raids Kill 1, Injure 3
UN - Iraq Weapons Talks to Resume
U.S. Warplanes Strike Iraqi Air Defenses
Iraqis Bring Arms Experts to New UN Talks
Israeli Troops Pull Out of Arafat's Compound
Jenin 'massacre' reduced to death toll of 56
New Strategy Set by U.S. and Saudis for Mideast Crisis
US NATO Allies Feel Slighted
NATO Seeks New Role After Sept. 11
Missile Hits Near U.S. Forces in Pakistan
U.S. Troops Deploy Near Border of Pakistan
Top Pakistani Wins a Ballot; Few Surprised
Poison Hidden in a Letter May Have Killed Rebel in Chechnya
Saudi women to train for civil defence
Space shuttle replacement could eliminate pilots
Mossad chief may quit over Sharon
Iraq accuses UN of double standards
U.N. May Drop Inquiry at Jenin as Israel Resists
House Panel Supports Base Closures
Air Force Pilot Missing After Crash
Pentagon Cuts Back on US Air Patrol
Lawmakers wary of sending troops
Judge Bars Navy Bombing on Farallon de Medinilla
POLICE / PRISONERS
Bioterror Bill Awakens Opponents
"Detainees," "Unauthorized Combatants," "Pirates," et cetera
Prison Guards Convicted in Beating
More Detainees Arrive in Guantanamo
Reports: Turkey target for terrorists
ENERGY AND OTHER
Ontario Fosters Cross-Border Electricity Trade
Pesticide contaminant found in Florida aquifer
Don't Shun Genetic Research, W.H.O. Advises Poor Lands
Method May Transform Cells Without Cloning
Hatch backs limited cloning research
ACTIVISTS
French Rally Against Extreme-Right Leader
Police and Activists Clash in May Day Protests
Huge Crowds March in France Against Le Pen
Thousands of Venezuelans March
Police, Berlin Youths Clash
May Day Brings Clashes, Marches, Bomb
Thousands March in Australia May Day Protest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
Taiwanese aborigines take over power company's offices in protest over nuclear waste on the small outlying Orchid Island
Wed May 1, 2002
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020501/ap_wo_en_ge/taiwan_nuclear_protest_1
TAIPEI, Taiwan - Scores of aboriginal protesters stormed government offices on a small island off Taiwan's eastern coast on Wednesday, demanding that officials find a new home for about 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste.
After negotiations with officials broke down on Orchid Island, the demonstrators - some wearing traditional loin cloths, wooden helmets and carrying spears - pushed past riot police and took over the offices of state-owned Taiwan Power Company, responsible for the waste. They remained in the offices late Wednesday afternoon.
The nuclear material has been stored on the island - home to the Yamis, one of Taiwan's 10 aboriginal tribes - for two decades. But a government contract to keep the waste there expires at the end of the year.
Protesters pledged to continue their protests until Premier Yu Shyi-kun, the island's No. 3 ranking leader, promised to move the waste away.
The aborigines were not consulted before the waste was dumped on the island. The decision was made during Taiwan's martial law era - a time when citizens, especially minorities, had few rights. After martial law ended in 1987 and the island became democratic, the government told the protesters that it was unable to find another place to store the waste.
On Wednesday, the entire island went on strike to protest the waste. Students skipped classes and businesses closed their doors. Carrying banners and kicking mock yellow barrels of nuclear waste with skull and crossbones painted on them, protesters shouted: "Remove the nuclear waste! The government lies!"
Lin Ming-hsiung, a Taiwan Power official told TVBS cable news, "Once we find a place for the waste, we will say when it can be moved."
Taiwan Power is considering moving the waste to another outlying island. The company is also studying the possibility of shipping the waste abroad. Russia might be one possibility because the Russian government passed a bill last year that allows it to receive foreign nuclear waste.
-------- europe
Finns divided over more nuclear power plants - poll
REUTERS FINLAND:
May 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15746/story.htm
HELSINKI - Finns stand divided over controversial plans to build a fifth nuclear power plant just one month before parliament is due to vote on the issue, a poll released yesterday showed.
Some 44 percent of 1,500 Finns surveyed were in favour of building a new plant while the same percentage opposed the plans, the poll by agency Taloustutkimus for Social Democratic paper Uutispaiva Demari showed.
Supporters say more nuclear energy is needed to meet growing electricity consumption and enable a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Opponents say the risks involved are too high and the question of nuclear waste disposal is still unanswered.
The government passed to parliament in January a proposal by energy group Teollisuuden Voima to build a new nuclear reactor in Finland. The move comes at a time when the rest of Western Europe is shifting to alternative forms of energy.
Keenest in favour of building more nuclear power plants, according to the poll, were supporters of the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, the two main groups in the country's five-party coalition.
Opposition was strongest among supporters of the Left Alliance and the Green Party, junior members of the coalition.
One in 10 of those surveyed were undecided. The margin of error for the poll, conducted in March, was three percent.
The party positions were roughly in line with a previous poll of members of parliament published earlier in the month.
--------
Europe's Choice: Nuclear Dangers or Global Warming
May 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-01-03.html
PAMPLONA, Spain, Governments must overcome public concerns about nuclear energy if the European Union is to comply with its Kyoto Protocol commitments, European Energy and Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio warned an informal meeting of EU energy ministers in Pamplona on Sunday. Under the protocol, EU countries must cut the emission of six greenhouse gases linked to global warming by 2012.
European Energy and Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio (Photo courtesy Office of the Commissioner)
Discussions on renewables and energy efficiency, the declared purpose of the meeting, were overshadowed by the strongly pro-nuclear declarations of de Palacio.
Donald Johnston, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), added his voice in her support on behalf of the 30 OECD free market democracy member countries. Johnston said that the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change outweigh the risks associated with nuclear energy such as release of radioactivity during power generation or waste transport.
"We have to choose," said de Palacio. "If we give up nuclear energy, we will not comply with Kyoto."
"We need to make an enormous effort," she said, "to convince the public about the benefits of nuclear energy."
Commissioner de Palacio restated her commitment to introducing common European rules on nuclear safety. She pledged to end a 50 year tradition of national prerogatives over nuclear energy safety by proposing common European rules.
With EU enlargement approaching, de Palacio told Members of the European Parliament last week, "the time has come" for "common standards and control mechanisms which will guarantee the application of the same criteria and methods in the whole of enlarged Europe."
"I don't understand how we can have very detailed EU standards for things such as water quality while having no common approach for assuring high nuclear safety standards," she said.
Eastern European countries due to join the EU are the commissioner's main target. She described progress towards closing down dangerous reactors - especially in Bulgaria and Lithuania - as unsatisfactory. In addition, she said, the EU is not applying standards consistently in negotiations with the 13 applicant states.
Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Turkey are seeking access to the already existing union of 15 European states.
On Sunday the commissioner warned that there would be "no transition period" on nuclear safety standards to allow applicant states to phase them in slowly.
The Czech Republic's Temelin nuclear reactor (Photo courtesy Westinghouse)
Any suggestion of a loss of national prerogative implicit in the proposals was downplayed by a senior Spanish energy ministry official who declared that they "do not involve any loss of sovereignty."
With regard to renewables, the meeting agreed that these energy sources offer advantages over and above climate change control by reducing external energy dependence and generating energy, technological development and employment in peripheral areas.
But renewable sources are not yet capable of competing in a fully liberalized market so financial support will remain necessary.
According to an energy directorate spokesperson, no decision on harmonization of financial support plans will be made before 2007. The importance of emissions trading as a way of turning renewable sources into an indirect source of income was also highlighted.
EU energy ministers discussed the compulsory labeling of electricity. According to a European Commission official, labeling of "green" electricity will come into force with the transposition of the renewable energy directive in September 2003.
While he accepted that "in the future we will have to generalize the label of origin of electricity", he added that "labeling will only work in a fully liberalized market."
On the question of reducing demand, ministers agreed that while "very positive results" have been achieved in energy efficiency in the industrial sector, the consumption patterns of individuals are rigid. Further energy saving could be obtained by market liberalization, the establishment of price mechanisms that reflect real costs, and an increased effort to promote public transport.
{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}
-------- korea
North Korea Is Prepared to Negotiate, U.S. Reports
New York Times
May 1, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/international/asia/01KORE.html
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said today that North Korea, one of the three countries President Bush had identified as part of an "axis of evil," was prepared to restart negotiations with the United States on a range of issues, apparently including its missile and nuclear weapons programs and the use of troops on the South Korean border.
The announcement, in a terse statement issued by the White House today, was interpreted by some national security officials as a ratification of their strategy of taking a tough line against North Korea.
Other officials said they thought that North Korea had decided to restart talks, which have not taken place since President Clinton left office, because their energy shortages have worsened and their efforts to develop separate talks with European and Asian powers had yielded few results.
"It's a mystery why they make the decisions they do, but clearly they got the message that the U.S. was capable of turning its sights on them," one senior American official said.
Many Asian experts inside and outside the administration had cringed when President Bush included North Korea in his list of countries that made up what he referred to as an "axis of evil."
They feared that the use of such a term would solidify the position of hard-liners in the North who view any discussions with the United States as fruitless and who believe that the Bush administration is simply trying to bring about the collapse of the North's Communist government.
But some officials said today that they now believe that Mr. Bush's approach may have forced Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, to return to talks with the United States.
At a Senate hearing last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said: "We do not step back in the slightest in the president's description of North Korea. We believe it is a regime that is not serving its people well. But at the same time, the president made it clear that we were willing to talk to them any time, any place, and without any preset agenda."
Today, Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, said, "We anticipate these talks will begin."
The talks will be headed by Jack Pritchard, a Korea expert in the State Department who worked in President Clinton's National Security Council. He will first meet North Korean representatives in New York, and then may travel to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
The decision to restart talks was applauded by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I hope this means the administration is prepared to back South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in his steadfast pursuit of reconciliation with North Korea," said Mr. Biden, a Democrat from Delaware.
The announcement comes at a time when the Pentagon is studying whether it has the resources that would enable it to maintain its current military operations around the world if it were to invade Iraq. Establishing better relations with North Korea could reduce demands on American forces in the Pacific.
The Bush administration is also preparing to withdraw in June from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which prohibits development of missile defenses. North Korea's missile program is widely cited as a major reason for developing a missile shield, and a rudimentary antimissile system the Pentagon hopes to build in Alaska by 2004 will be aimed mainly at thwarting an attack from North Korea.
Last June, following a review of North Korea policy, Mr. Bush said he was prepared to restart the negotiations only if North Korea accepted a broader agenda that would include North Korea's conventional forces.
The North Korean government initially balked at Mr. Bush's proposal. Last month, North Korea also postponed talks with an American-led consortium that is building two nuclear reactors in the country as part of a plan calling for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
But during meetings earlier this month with a special South Korean envoy, Lim Dong Won, North Korean officials said they had accepted Mr. Bush's proposal and would be willing to receive Mr. Pritchard.
-------- terrorism
US Customs to Up Radiation Detection
By Melissa B. Robinson
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17689-2002May1?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Customs Service plans to double its capacity to check foreign mail and cargo for radioactivity within a year by buying thousands more personal radiation detectors.
Commissioner Robert Bonner, in a letter sent this week to Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said 4,300 more detectors are needed to provide one to each of the agency's inspectors, canine enforcement officers, mail specialists and seized property specialists.
More than 4,000 customs inspectors already screen foreign shipments with personal radiation detectors, and the rest will be bought by January 2003 with $7.3 million, Bonner said.
The agency also is obtaining larger radiation screening devices as well as more sophisticated ones for identifying specific isotopes, said Customs spokesman Dean Boyd. It has donated at least 600 monitors to international inspectors, which resulted in a discovery two years ago in Uzbekistan of radioactive materials destined for Pakistan, he said.
Bonner's letter was prompted by misgivings raised by Markey that terrorists could use carriers such as Federal Express to get radioactive materials into this country, possibly to be assembled into a "dirty bomb" that could spread radioactivity.
Markey started an inquiry into foreign shipments of nuclear material after a package sent via Federal Express from Sweden to Louisiana was found in January to be leaking radioactivity.
Although Customs has increased its inspections of people, goods and cargoes, and mail at all ports of entry since the Sept. 11 attacks, not all packages are subject to radiation screening.
Some shipments are selected for special scrutiny based on anomalies in entry data, prior violations, or other suspicious indicators, Bonner said.
Also, the agency is "continually researching to determine whether or not al-Qaida members have imported radioactive materials from abroad," he said.
Federal and international regulations require that both shippers and recipients of radioactive materials be licensed to possess them. It is up to the shipper to verify the licensing, not a federal agency or carrier, Markey said.
Customs is working with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on a requirement that Customs verify licenses of radioactive importers, Bonner said.
In January, a radioactive leak in a steel container from Sweden was discovered by workers who picked it up at the New Orleans airport.
Bonner said the shipment was low-risk, properly licensed and probably didn't start leaking until it was en route to New Orleans. FedEx transported the package from Stockholm to Memphis, then hired a trucking company to drive the package to New Orleans.
On the Net: Customs Service: http://www.customs.gov/
Rep. Markey: http://www.house.gov/markey
-------- treaties
Russia - U.S. Nuke Pact Could Be Near
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. officials held out hope Wednesday of wrapping up a new agreement on nuclear arms reductions in time for President Bush's meeting this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has said the United States intends to reduce its nuclear arsenal from more than 6,000 warheads to as few as 1,700 regardless of when -- or even if -- a deal with Russia is concluded, declined to predict how soon the final details would be worked out.
``I'm not going to try to put a smile or a frown on it,'' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. ``It's a process. It's been going along very well.''
One of Rumsfeld's top aides, J.D. Crouch, said in separate remarks to reporters that the final roadblocks to an agreement with Russia are relatively minor and could be overcome in time for the Bush-Putin summit in late May.
``The problems are typical of the endgame in a negotiation in the arms control process -- things that may in fact be more important to the arms control bureaucracies than they are to senior officials and the presidents,'' said Crouch, assistant defense secretary for international security policy.
Bush has said he intends to reduce the U.S. long-range nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads over the coming decade, regardless of whether Russia reciprocates. Putin has said Moscow would be willing to reduce to 1,500 warheads but has insisted that the U.S. and Russian reductions be made legally binding so the commitments would remain after he and Bush leave office.
Bush initially argued that since the United States and Russia no longer are adversaries there is no need for detailed, Cold War-style arms treaties. Rumsfeld also holds the view that arms treaties should not be a focus of the U.S.-Russian relationship.
``What's taking place between the United States and Russia is the development of a new relationship, a new framework between our two countries. Does it all have to be in writing? No,'' Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, discussed the nuclear arms cuts in Moscow on Monday and told reporters afterward they had made modest progress. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was resuming the discussion Thursday and Friday in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
One of the remaining sticking points is the Russians' insistence that the weapon reductions be made ``irreversible,'' Crouch said. The Russians want the Americans to destroy, rather than put in storage, the warheads they take out of service; the Americans say they will destroy some and keep others.
``A point we've been trying to make is that in fact the reality is that there is no such thing as `irreversible.' Given enough time and given money and given will, anything can be reversed,'' Crouch said.
Some U.S. arms control experts are critical of Bush's stance on retaining retired warheads.
``U.S. storage of large warhead reserves will lead Moscow to do the same, under dangerously insecure conditions,'' a group of private arms control experts wrote in a letter to Bush. ``To reduce this threat, we urge you to agree with Moscow to jointly monitor non-deployed warheads until they can be dismantled and the nuclear materials rendered unsuitable for reuse in nuclear weapons.''
A copy of the letter, dated Monday with copies to Rumsfeld and Powell, was made public Wednesday.
Crouch provided some new details on the administration's plan for reducing nuclear weapons. He said the D5 missiles aboard Trident nuclear submarines, which now carry eight warheads each, will be reduced to between four and six warheads each. The number of Trident subs will be reduced from 18 to 14, and there will only be enough warheads to equip 12 submarines, he said.
As previously announced, the United States will retire all 50 of its land-based Peacekeeper missiles, Crouch said.
He also said the United States probably will keep 500 Minuteman III land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in active service, along with about 75 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 20 B-2 bombers. Decisions about how many nuclear weapons will be assigned to each type of delivery system have yet to be made, he said.
``We want to retain our flexibility,'' he said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Livermore Weapons Lab Candidate Out
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Livermore-Director.html
LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) -- The leading candidate to take charge of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has dropped out, citing the ``unwarranted linking'' of his name to the Wen Ho Lee debacle.
Ray Juzaitis, who leads nuclear weapons research at the national laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., said in a bitter letter Wednesday that controversy over the Lee case could have made it tough to lead Livermore, one of the government's top nuclear weapons labs.
``Events of the last week, including the unwarranted linking of my name to the Wen Ho Lee affair in an attempt to cast a cloud of the appropriateness of my appointment, suggest that the unfounded controversy may hinder my effectiveness in leading the Laboratory,'' Juzaitis wrote.
The University of California runs Livermore and Los Alamos for the Energy Department. University president Richard Atkinson selected Juzaitis for the Livermore job last week. But the Energy Department became concerned about the perceived connection to Lee at the last moment and UC called off Friday's announcement, university officials said.
Juzaitis, who did not actively seek the Livermore position, had supervised Lee through several layers of management in the Los Alamos lab's top-secret X Division where Lee was working when he became the focus of a federal investigation.
Lee was eventually indicted on 59 felony counts alleging he transferred nuclear weapons information to unsecure computer terminals and computer tapes. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months, though never charged with spying.
As the government's case crumbled, Lee pleaded guilty to a felony count of downloading sensitive material, and was set free.
Lee's case, coupled with a nearly two-month disappearance of several Los Alamos hard drives and news that Livermore's $1 billion laser project faced substantial delays and was hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, put UC's management of America's nuclear labs in jeopardy.
In January, 2001, UC reached an agreement extending its contract, but the government demanded changes to prevent future security lapses including new powers over who could work at the labs.
Atkinson on Wednesday described Juzaitis as ``a brilliant scientist,'' and said UC reviewed documents about Lee and found nothing to change that assessment.
-------- illinois
Exelon eyes Illinois nuclear site for early permit
REUTERS USA:
May 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15752/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - Exelon Generation said yesterday it has selected its Clinton nuclear power station in Illinois as the site for the possible addition of a new nuclear reactor.
Exelon has previously notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its intention to submit an application by June 2003 to "bank" a potential site for a new nuclear reactor, but until now has not identified the site.
The company said in a statement, however, that it has not yet decided whether to construct a nuclear plant at the site.
It will only apply for an early site permit, which gives a company the option of building a new nuclear reactor on its land for up to 20 years without specifying the reactor type or committing to construction.
Review and approval of the application is expected to take 18 to 30 months, Exelon said.
The permit process, which examines a site for safety, environmental factors and emergency preparedness among other things, is the first step in the NRC's new, streamlined licensing process and has not yet been tested.
Exelon said it chose the Clinton site in DeWitt County, Illinois, partly because it was originally designed for two units. The site currently houses a 950-megawatt reactor.
The Clinton plant is owned and operated by AmerGen, a joint venture of Exelon Corp. and British Energy .
Exelon Nuclear, a division of Exelon Generation, is the largest nuclear plant operator in the nation. It owns and operates 17 reactors at 10 stations.
Exelon Generation is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp.
Exelon said it is has not made a decision on the type of reactor design it may chose to use if it proceeds.
Earlier this month, Exelon Corp. said it is dropping out of an international consortium developing a smaller, cheaper kind of nuclear plant, the so-called pebble bed modular reactor, which is is currently in the design stage.
Two other companies - Entergy Nuclear, a unit of Entergy Corp. , and Dominion Resources Inc. - are also preparing early site permits for possible new nuclear reactors.
But the two companies also emphasized that, although they want to keep their options open, they have no plans to build new nuclear plants at present.
No commercial nuclear power plant has been ordered in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, when there was a partial meltdown of a reactor core.
-------- new york
At Indian Pt. Hearing, Crowds, Speeches, but Not Much Listening
New York Times
May 1, 2002
By WINNIE HU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/nyregion/01NUKE.html
WHITE PLAINS - The battle lines were clearly drawn tonight over the Indian Point nuclear power plant as its critics and defenders sparred over its fate before county legislators.
In front at the meeting at the Westchester County Center, the critics wore red shirts and jackets and waved red paper, all to call attention to the plant's safety lapses. In the back, plant workers and others pinned on Indian Point buttons and displayed signs and small American flags.
Neither side seemed willing to listen to the other, and after about 45 minutes of impassioned speeches - punctuated occasionally by jeers - nearly all of the plant workers walked out in anger and frustration.
"We don't think it's a fair hearing," said Zvi Eisenberg, 52, a systems engineer at the plant.
More than 350 people attended the meeting, held by Westchester legislators to address safety concerns about the plant's two working reactors in Buchanan, about 40 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. In recent months, a growing number of state and local politicians, environmental groups and residents have demanded the decommissioning of Indian Point.
Tonight's meeting was called after such a large crowd jammed into a March 21 meeting that about 150 people who signed up to speak were not given a chance. Only those people were allowed to take the floor tonight, drawing complaints from Indian Point workers and others who also wanted to be heard.
Westchester legislators are considering two resolutions about Indian Point, including one that calls for decommissioning it and, if possible, converting it to natural gas or alternative-fuel operation. The other resolution urges an evaluation of Indian Point's emergency plan by an independent group outside the government. The resolutions could be voted on as early as next month.
Legislator Michael B. Kaplowitz, who proposed the resolution to decommission Indian Point, said that after hearing the public comments, he was "as fervent as ever."
But even if county legislators adopt a resolution calling for the closing of Indian Point, it would be largely symbolic. Though it would be a first for Westchester, the Rockland County Legislature and many towns, villages and school boards in both counties have passed similar resolutions, with little effect.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees Indian Point, has approved its operations.
The Entergy Corporation, which owns Indian Point, has maintained that its operations are safe, and plant workers and others have increasingly mobilized to counter growing opposition to the plant.
-------- south carolina
S.C. Governor Sues Energy Dept.
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges sued the federal Department of Energy on Wednesday to stop plutonium shipments scheduled to begin later this month.
Hodges, who has said he would lie down in the road if that's what it took to keep plutonium-carrying trucks out of Savannah River Site, wants an enforceable agreement to ensure that the nuclear material won't remain in his state indefinitely.
``While some progress has been made, the clock is ticking,'' Hodges wrote to the state's congressional delegation. ``Unless we act now, plutonium could begin crossing our borders two weeks from today with no legal safeguards for our state.''
Hodges claims the Energy Department failed to file the appropriate environmental impact statements. He wants the court to block the shipments from the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado until the federal government complies with the law.
Conducting environmental impact studies is an extensive process requiring public input and could take six months to a year to complete, Hodges said.
``If we're successful, there will be a significant delay,'' he said. ``It will throw a significant roadblock in their way.''
Hodges said the lawsuit could be dismissed if the state reached a legislative agreement with Energy officials.
A DOE spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The Energy Department wants to ship the nuclear material to the site near Aiken, just over the Georgia boarder, to be converted into fuel for nuclear power plants. But Hodges worries the fuel program will never be funded and the plutonium will be left parked in South Carolina.
Under a plan proposed by Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the federal government would be fined $1 million a day starting in 2011 if more than 1 ton of the plutonium has not been made into fuel for nuclear reactors. The government would have to move the plutonium or speed up the conversion to stop the fines.
The fines would start again on Jan. 1, 2017, if all the plutonium is not converted. The penalties would continue at the same rate and with the same $100 million cap until all the nuclear material has left South Carolina. The fines would have to be paid and the material would have to be removed, Graham said.
Hodges and Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., said Graham's proposal is incomplete and never spells out when the plutonium would leave.
Hodges said in his letter Wednesday that he wanted to keep negotiating with DOE officials for a solution. If negotiations do not produce the outcome the governor wants, Hodges said the state likely will file for a temporary restraining order within a week to prevent the shipments.
-------- us politics
Powell Wants Freer Hand in Mideast
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Powells-Frustration.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, former national security adviser and now secretary of state, Colin Powell doesn't like being micromanaged.
But that's the way Powell feels these days after his latest trip to the Middle East, which yielded scant results, a senior administration official says.
And much of his frustration is directed at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has a greater say over Middle East policy than his predecessors, says the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. That region has been the traditional preserve of the secretary of state.
One core issue is the degree to which Israel should strike back militarily at Palestinians in response to suicide bombings and other attacks. Another issue is the extent to which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat can be counted on to crack down on violence and deliver a peaceful settlement.
The Pentagon has made clear it favors wider latitude for Israel to press military operations against the Palestinians. And defense officials are among those in the Bush administration who seem to have given up on Arafat as a credible partner for peace.
Powell, while no fan of Arafat, has argued successfully so far that no settlement is possible without the Palestinian leader.
Summing up the dilemma, former Pentagon aide Richard Perle said Tuesday that President Bush ultimately ``has to decide how much confidence he wants to repose in Yasser Arafat and whether Arafat is part of the solution or part of the problem.''
Another quandary for Powell has been the mixed messages about Middle East policy, particularly from the White House. Days before Powell embarked on his Middle East mission, Bush demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdraw his forces from the West Bank.
Powell then traveled to the Middle East, hoping for a show of flexibility from Sharon. But Bush appeared to undercut Powell by calling Sharon a ``man of peace'' despite Sharon's seeming disregard for the president's appeals.
The secretary of state's frustration has reached a point where there are rumors -- strongly denied by State Department officials -- about a possible Powell resignation.
Reports of a Powell-Rumsfeld rift began surfacing not long after the Bush administration took office.
Last July, in a rare joint news conference in Australia, reporters peppered the two with questions about whether they were seeing eye-to-eye on policy issues.
``There is no real space between us, as suggested,'' Powell said. Replied Rumsfeld, flashing a grin: ``Are you trying to find some daylight between Colin and me?'' They were perceived to have differing views on deployment of a missile defense and on re-engagement with North Korea, among other issues.
As America's chief diplomat, Powell meets with fellow foreign ministers all the time and naturally is influenced by their views. Secretaries of state are more prone to attach importance to multilateral approaches and to coalition building. Defense secretaries spend less time with foreign diplomats and see the world through a different prism.
James Phillips, Middle East Expert at the Heritage Foundation, says he is not surprised that Powell and Rumsfeld may have policy differences. He says it's hard for the administration to fight terrorism and to end the violence in the Middle East without conflicting views.
``The global war on terrorism impinges on the Middle East in many ways,'' he says.
This is not the first time secretaries of state and defense have squared off. It was almost 20 years ago that Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger fought tooth and nail over Lebanon.
Shultz believed a strong U.S. military presence in the region would help bring stability; Weinberger thought the risks in having U.S. troops there were greater than any potential reward. At Weinberger's side in those days was a top military aide named Colin Powell.
For Powell, not much has changed. Knowing what to do in the Middle East is no less difficult now than it was then.
EDITOR'S NOTE -- George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
--------
Hu Holds Get - Acquainted Talks with Bush, Cheney
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-china-usa-hu.html
WASHINGTON - Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao, in line to be China's next leader, held get-acquainted talks with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday that covered human rights, Taiwan and China's missile technology exports.
Hu's Oval Office meeting with Bush went on 10 minutes beyond its scheduled 20 minutes. ``The meeting was quite good,'' a smiling Hu, 59, said to reporters as he departed the White House by limousine.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the two leaders discussed the U.S.-led war on terrorism, agricultural issues, Taiwan, missile proliferation, trade and human rights.
``The president talked about the importance of U.S.-China relations and said he is pleased with the relationship,'' Fleischer said. ``The president expressed his belief that the United States and China can work well together on a wide range of issues.
``He noted there may be some disagreements, but he believed they could be addressed productively,'' he said.
During a 45-minute meeting with Cheney followed by lunch, Hu and Cheney discussed the terror war, China's economic development, Taiwan, and Chinese missile technology exports, Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise said.
The United States wants China to guarantee it will not export weapons technology to nations hostile to Washington. China wants the United States to lift sanctions imposed for violating a November 2000 agreement and resume issuing licenses to U.S. companies to launch satellites on Chinese rockets.
Over lunch, Cheney and Hu were joined by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to discuss economic restructuring in China and economic recovery in the United States.
HEIR-APPARENT STATUS
It was the central day of Hu's first visit to the United States, and in keeping with the low-key nature of the visit, no joint statement was issued.
Hu, expected to succeed Jiang Zemin as head of the Communist Party this fall and as China's president in 2003, wants to avoid saying or doing anything that could jeopardize his heir-apparent status, China watchers in the United States said.
Hu arrived from New York on Tuesday after visits to Honolulu and San Francisco. His U.S. visit is seen as an important step toward building an international profile for Hu, who is largely unknown on the world stage.
Hu met on Capitol Hill on Tuesday with bipartisan members of the U.S. House of Representatives leadership. He refused to accept four letters from members of Congress delivered by House Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi that raised human rights issues and urged China to release political prisoners.
``I am extremely disappointed that the vice president refused to accept these letters,'' said Pelosi, a California Democrat. ``I had been hopeful that we could at least talk about human rights issues in China and Tibet, but Mr. Hu's refusal demonstrates how serious the problem remains.
``China's human rights abuses continue to be an obstacle in developing the full potential of relations between our two countries,'' she said.
Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican who led a congressional inquiry into alleged Chinese espionage against the United States, called Hu's visit a get-acquainted session.
``Hu Jintao is himself going to be somewhat constrained because he is not in charge and a lot of people are watching him. ... He needs to become leader before he is free to engage on a broad range of issues,'' Cox said.
There was a bit of mystery surrounding Hu. Little was known about him personally except that he likes dancing and table tennis and is said to have a photographic memory.
Despite cooperation in the war on terrorism, U.S.-Chinese relations remain clouded by the issue of Taiwan, which China sees as a breakaway province but which has been receiving overt signals of stronger support from the Bush administration.
On the eve of the meetings, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official traveling with Hu called the question of Taiwan the most important issue in Sino-U.S. relations.
--------
Treasury Seeks Borrowing Authority
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Debt-Limit.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States will once again face an unprecedented default on the national debt -- this time in mid-May-- unless Congress extends the government's authority to borrow, a request that has been mired in a political fight.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill dodged a default in April by moving federal retirement funds into a non-interest-bearing account, freeing room for more borrowing.
On Wednesday, the Treasury Department said the debt limit is expected to be hit in mid-May, earlier than the latter-June time frame that O'Neill laid out in an April 17 letter to congressional leaders.
Treasury pushed the date forward because lower-than-expected income tax payments are forcing the government to borrow $1 billion in the April-June quarter. That's a sharp reversal of earlier plans to actually retire $89 billion of the national debt in the quarter.
This is the first time since 1995 that the government has needed to borrow in the April-June quarter, a quarter normally flush with cash from a flood of income tax payments.
O'Neill has repeatedly asked Congress to boost the debt ceiling by $750 billion, but the request has become stuck in a political fight over the budget. The limit now stands at $5.95 trillion.
``No one wants the government to default on its responsibilities,'' said the House Ways and Means Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. ``But the people and their representatives have a right to know how the Bush administration plans to get the nation out of this fiscal mess before it authorizes a debt ceiling increase.''
If the debt limit isn't raised by mid-May, Treasury said, it can use a number of stopgap measures to stay under the debt limit and avoid a default. Those measures include shifting funds and tinkering with Treasury auction schedules to make room for increased borrowing.
But those stopgaps won't help in the ``latter half of June when regularly scheduled payments to Social Security and other government trust funds will require the treasury to borrow beyond this additional, limited capacity,'' Treasury warned.
Without such juggling of funds, Treasury would not be able to borrow the money it needs to keep the government operating, including making payments on debt that is coming due.
If those payments are missed, the government would be technically in default on the $5.95 trillion national debt, something that has never happened.
Given that Treasury can take steps to maneuver around the debt limit and that Congress is sure to eventually raise the ceiling, economists said there is never a real danger of a default, which likely would touch off an economic crisis.
Budget experts predict the United States will record a budget deficit for this entire fiscal year, which has not happened since 1997.
The Bush administration has blamed the return of red ink on a recession that began in March 2001 and the costs of waging war in Afghanistan and battling terrorism at home. But Democrats blame the 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut that President Bush pushed through Congress last year.
To help replenish coffers, Treasury plans to sell $33 billion of new securities at regularly scheduled auctions next week: $22 billion in five-year notes Tuesday and $11 billion in 10-year notes Wednesday.
--------
On Russia, Think Bigger
By Leon Fuerth
Wednesday, May 1, 2002
Washington Posy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11913-2002Apr30.html
It seems only yesterday that the Bush presidential campaign had scathing things to say about American Russia policy as conducted during the Clinton/Gore administration. The idea of a strategic partnership between the two countries was dismissed as "romanticism," the product of an overheated relationship between Clinton and Yeltsin, neither of whom could be said to really be defending the core interests of their respective countries. But that was then, and this is now -- and late next month there will be yet another summit between presidents Bush and Putin, working on their version of a strategic partnership.
Much of the credit for this development goes to Putin, who took 9-11 as the moment to turn Russian policy decisively toward cooperation with the United States. But that arrangement is far from being a partnership of equals.
We wanted full Russian cooperation in the war against terror and we have received it.
Putin wanted to keep the ABM Treaty, and the United States announced its abrogation and an intention to weaponize outer space. He wanted deep, irrevocable and binding cuts in strategic nuclear weapons. We, at least initially, wanted only to take such reductions as suited us, under arrangements designed to be reversible, and in any event not legally binding.
He wanted some means to make Russia's voice heard in NATO's councils, especially as the alliance prepares to expand. We offered a reinvented version of what already exists, in the form of yet another forum with circumscribed authority.
He wanted to develop trade and investment with the United States. We imposed an exclusionary tariff on Russian steel. (The U.S. industry is in real trouble, but we need to recognize the impact of our actions.)
He wanted an end to U.S. criticism of how Russia conducts its operations in Chechnya. We gave him a massive State Department exposé (one can be glad for honesty on our part, yet recognize what this means for him).
It is the kind of treatment you get when you play with a particularly weak hand. The Bush administration knows this and exploits it. Putin knows it and has to bargain for the best deal he can get. But solid partnerships are not built on winner-take-all rules; they require a search for win-win outcomes. Putin does have critics at home, and they have taken note of the unequal returns to Russia on his investment in the Bush administration. If the administration does not begin to find ways to restore a real sense of give and take, it may lose its chance to build the solid relationship to which it now aspires.
In the long term, Russia will regain its stature as a major power. That makes it important to determine whether we are building a relationship that will work for us when that time comes. The May summit offers a chance to put win-win to work.
In arms control, it should be made possible for Putin to bring home agreements that are not only substantial but verifiable, irreversible and fully binding. And that's not just because Russia needs these things. We should want them, too. The Bush administration, which took office intent on avoiding anything but tacit agreements on nuclear weapons, has been giving ground on this position only reluctantly. It's time to accept the idea that we need the structure provided by an arms control agreement -- whatever the administration chooses to call it. In particular, the Russians have been right to want such an agreement to extend to nuclear warheads and to provide for their dismantling, not storage.
We should also be looking for ways to promote the downsizing of Russia's huge plant for the production of nuclear weapons. That's part of irrevocability too, and we have long since cut our own establishment down to post-Cold War size. The Russians might resist such a drastic change, but they would have little basis for doing so, given the U.S. reductions. They might also ask who would help them foot the enormous bill for carrying out such a cutback. Will we be ready to provide that help?
The ABM Treaty is dead, but the need to address the role of defenses in our strategic relationship is still very much present, even greatly intensified. We need a truly imaginative approach designed to engage Russia in the construction of a defensive system capable of offering protection to the United States, Russia and Europe against a possible nuclear/missile threat from rogue states. According to the press, the issue of missile defense will be one of the first agenda items for the proposed new NATO-Russia council. But what specific ideas will we bring to the table? Proposals could include helping the Russians fill gaps in their long-range ballistic missile warning system. We could also propose joint work to develop and deploy limited ground-based systems against very basic threats from rogue states, to be followed by a jointly developed boost-phase defense against more sophisticated threats. If so, the latter should be ground-based; the United States needs to avoid, not promote, space-based defensive systems, because these can be brought to the point where they threaten the Russian Federation's retaliatory capability, something ground-based systems can't do.
Further expansion of NATO is justifiable, and in the end Russian involvement with NATO cannot be permitted to become a Russian right to veto action from within the alliance. But the expansion underscores a problem Russia has with old treaty restraints on its placement of major military equipment near what used to be the NATO/Warsaw Pact front line and flanks. The Russian Federation inherited these constraints on Conventional Forces in Europe from its predecessor and is living with them -- but not happily. After all, three of the countries that used to be military allies of the Soviet Union are now members of NATO, and more will certainly be coming on board in the next few years. In light of the radically changed circumstances, the Bush administration ought to be open to some kind of easing of these treaty provisions.
The administration, like its predecessor, has promised to "graduate" Russia from provisions of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which sought to promote free emigration from certain countries. The time has come to honor that promise, but it won't be easy, and a substantial investment of political capital may be needed to get it done. The administration should make that investment. Russia also needs to join the World Trade Organization, and while membership is not ours to confer -- it is Russia's to earn through compromise and reform -- we can make it clear we strongly favor Russian entry.
Measures that the Clinton administration proselytized to a skeptical and preoccupied Yeltsin government are now the core agenda of the Putin administration -- for its own good and sufficient reasons. Much remains to be done in the reform, but a great deal has been accomplished. And yet, American private investment in Russia remains relatively minute. Our president ought to use the summit to help revive and expand the interest of American investors in Russia.
This summit can be a point of departure for U.S.-Russian relations. But if it is anything less, Putin may have to reassess his policy toward us. Combating terrorism is a true mutual interest. But as we are seeing, it is not enough to sustain the whole weight of American concerns in the world -- nor can it serve as the one load-bearing wall in U.S.-Russian relations. It is time for the Bush administration to finally present its case for a larger vision of our relations with Russia.
The writer was national security adviser to former vice president Al Gore and is now Shapiro visiting professor of international relations at George Washington University.
--------
Defense Glance
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18306-2002May1?language=printer
Highlights of the bill passed by the House Armed Services Committee authorizing military spending by the Defense and Energy departments:
-$7.8 billion for development of a national missile defense system.
-Allow military retirees who are at least 60 percent disabled to collect disability benefits on top of retirement pay by 2007, at a cost of $5.8 billion.
-Accelerate development of pilotless planes for surveillance and attack, such as the Predator planes used extensively in Afghanistan and Global Hawk high-altitude planes.
-Billions for a new generation of stealth jet fighters.
-Across-the-board military pay raise of 4.1 percent.
-Extra $3.2 billion above the Bush administration's request for buying weapons, including an additional $1 billion to build ships, for a total of $73.4 billion.
-$1 billion more for military construction, which under Bush's proposal was to have dropped to $4.8 billion from $6.5 billion
-Increase of about 1 percent to the 1.4 million active-duty troops, for a total of 12,650 more personnel across the four services, the largest increase since 1986.
-American troop levels in Colombia would be limited to no more than 500 at one time, with certain exceptions, although the defense secretary could waive that cap if demanded by national interests.
-Exempts habitats on military installations from Endangered Species Act protections if a separate natural resources management plan is in place and allows the Pentagon to kill migratory birds by accident during operations. Similar requested relief from laws protecting marine mammals, clean air and hazardous-waste cleanup went unheeded.
-Defense secretary must submit to Congress by Sept. 1 a report detailing the budget, headquarters location, staffing levels, relationship with other federal agencies and other details of a new military command, to be known as the Northern Command, whose sole mission is to defend American territory.
-Changes the title of the secretary of the Navy to secretary of the Navy and the Marine Corps.
-Requires the Pentagon to present a plan on how it can achieve the ability to shorten the time it would take to prepare to conduct nuclear tests to one year.
-Requires National Academy of Sciences studies on the likely effects on civilian populations of using nuclear bombs to demolish deeply buried military facilities and using nuclear-tipped interceptors in a ballistic missile defense system.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Group: Mass Graves in Afghanistan
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan-Mass-Graves.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Hundreds of men -- likely Taliban prisoners killed by their northern alliance captors -- are buried in a mass grave in a stark desert in northern Afghanistan, says the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights.
Interviews and investigations by the group in January near the city of Mazar-e-Sharif indicate the men in the mass grave -- one of the largest in Afghanistan -- may have died after they surrendered to northern alliance soldiers who were U.S. allies in the war that defeated the Taliban religious militia. Many in the alliance now make up the interim Afghan regime.
Dr. Jenny Leaning, a board member of the Boston-based rights organization, said Wednesday that they are trying to get protection for the grave site, threatened by dogs and men scavenging earth filled with bones, prayer caps, beads, trousers and more.
Leaning, who discovered the site, asked that a small group of international soldiers cordon off the area until it can be investigated, the numbers of bodies determined and their identities uncovered.
The task would then begin of finding out how they died, Leaning said in a telephone interview.
``It isn't at all clear who was responsible,'' she said.
Afghan commanders loyal to a variety of groups were operating in the area, as were U.S. troops, further complicating the issue, she said.
``At the time the U.S. was very active in the air and on the ground. What did the U.S. know and when and where and what did they do about it?'' she asked.
At Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., spokesman Col. Rick Thomas said he was not aware of the assertions by Physicians for Human Rights. He said others in recent days had asked about allegations that Taliban prisoners had been executed while U.S. special forces soldiers stood by and watched. ``We checked and didn't have anything'' to substantiate those allegations, Thomas said.
The Physician for Human Rights said its report was made public this week after a letter sent March 1 to Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai went unanswered.
``There is a deep reluctance to look into something that could be politically explosive,'' Leaning said.
There is no doubt that it is a mass grave, Leaning said. It has already been examined by forensic experts with the group.
``We saw the two sites ... with clear marks of trucks, mounds of disturbed earth and as you walked across it there were bones scattered on the surface, prayer caps, beads, men's shoes, trousers and as you moved the bones around some had flesh on them, some were clean and there were skulls as well,'' she said.
While it's not certain who is buried in the mass grave, Leaning said there is evidence to indicate it could well be Taliban soldiers. When northern Kunduz and Taloqan collapsed, as many as 5,000 Taliban fighting there later surrendered. But only 3,000 have been accounted for, she said.
Witnesses said they saw northern alliance soldiers, their noses and mouths covered against the stench, dumping entire railway containers into the area in late December and early January. Leaning said the stench was still noticeable when she was there in January.
Such containers have been used as makeshift prisons throughout the country, including for prisoners moved to Shibergan prison west of Mazar-e-Sharif. The grave site is in the Dasht-e-Laili desert a half-hour outside of Shibergan. From the size of the site -- a 125-by-125-yard plot and a nearby smaller site -- Leaning estimated that it could hold up to 1,000 bodies.
Northern Afghanistan has one of the worst histories of mass killings in 23 years of invasion and civil war. The United Nations investigated a report of as many as 2,000 Taliban massacred in 1997, finding evidence of mass graves. A year later, the Taliban were accused of massacring minority Shiite Muslims when the religious militia retook the city.
Most of Afghanistan's northern alliance warriors belonged to Afghanistan's minority ethnic groups, while the Taliban hardline rulers were mostly Pashtuns. Since the collapse of the Taliban, the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan has been looked upon with suspicion and seen as sympathetic toward the Taliban.
There have been complaints by human rights groups that the interim regime is ignoring abuses against majority Pashtuns and Leaning worries that the grave site may be suffering a similar fate.
Mass graves have been found in several places of Afghanistan. The victims belong to every ethnic group. There are at least 13 mass graves in northern Afghanistan and there have been tips of many more, said Leaning, whose group, founded in 1986 and funded largely by grants and donations, has investigated mass graves in the Balkans.
The Taliban were accused of slaughtering ethnic Hazaras, who are minority Shiite Muslims identified by the Hazarajat region in which they live. Karzai last month visited Bamiyan, a Hazara stronghold, to see mass graves discovered there.
``I think this is the time to make the case that this is a country that is going to have to come to terms with the diversity of ethnic tragedies and ugly history,'' Leasing said.
``There are no clean hands in Afghanistan, certainly at the leadership level,'' she said. ``That also means there is an opportunity for everyone to come forward and say 'we were harmed and we did harm and we need to acknowledge that in order to move on.'''
--------
U.S. troops mass at Afghan-Pakistani border
05/01/2002
By Cesar G. Soriano and Jack Kelley,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2002/05/01/afghan-pakistan.htm
Several hundred U.S. troops backed by Apache attack helicopters are being deployed to the Afghan-Pakistani border to root out Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters regrouping there, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday.
Soldiers from the Army's 101st Airborne Division will join British Marines already near the Afghan city of Khost, 20 miles from the Pakistani border, to search caves and mountains for Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. The Army also is deploying AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to a base near Khost.
"The United States and coalition forces will be, have been and are engaged in a variety of operations in Afghanistan," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday. He declined to say where or how many troops were involved.
Pentagon officials believe hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters and their Taliban allies could be gathering in the area. They said they do not believe Osama bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, both blamed for the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the USA, are among the al-Qaeda remnants in the area.
"There is still some middle-level al-Qaeda leadership" in Afghanistan, said Army Maj. Gen. Franklin L. "Buster" Hagenback, commander of the 12,000-strong international coalition force there. "All the reports that I get tell me that they have the ability to conduct low-level terrorist activities."
In early March, U.S. troops and their Afghan allies conducted a major two-week operation, dubbed Operation Anaconda, in the mountains around Gardez to destroy Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. The latest offensive, which is much smaller than Operation Anaconda, is also centered in the Mezzai Mountains near the Pakistani border, just south of Shah-e-Kot.
Soriano reported from Bagram air base, Afghanistan, and Kelley reported from Washington.
-------- balkans
Bosnians Serious About Terrorism War
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Bosnia.html
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Bosnia's foreign minister pledged continued cooperation Wednesday in the fight against terrorism and authorities said raids against more Muslim aid groups were possible, a day after evidence found here led the FBI to arrest the head of a Chicago charity for allegedly lying about ties to Osama bin Laden.
Bosnian police raids on the local office of the Benevolence International Foundation in March turned up loaded weapons and military manuals as well as separate photos of bin Laden and the foundation's executive director, Enaam M. Arnaout, U.S. authorities said Tuesday.
Based largely on that evidence, Benevolence on Tuesday became the first charitable organization in the United States to be charged criminally in the war on terrorism. Arnaout, a 39-year-old born in Syria, was ordered held until a hearing set for May 7 in Chicago.
The FBI affidavit cited alleged links between Benevolence and terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a plot to bomb U.S. airlines and a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his 1995 visit to the Philippines.
The FBI also said that members of al-Qaida have held positions within the charity, and that a man who tried to obtain uranium for bin Laden even listed the charity's Illinois address as his home.
Bosnian authorities say their investigations are continuing and that raids against other aid organizations in the Balkan country are possible. In an interview at his office Wednesday, Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija told The Associated Press that the actions underscored his country's will to join with the West in efforts to eliminate the terrorist threat.
After Sept. 11, ``the world split into a modern civilization and one of barbarism and terrorism,'' Lagumdzija said. ``Bosnia-Herzegovina has chosen to ally with the civilized world. It has decided to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.''
Bosnia has been a focal point in the international investigation launched after Sept. 11. The country is home to hundreds of Islamic fighters who came from Arab nations to help Bosnia's Muslims in their 1992-95 war against the Serbs and Croats.
The raid on Benevolence came after a Bosnian government review in February to determine whether any of the country's charitable organizations had financial or other links to terrorists.
Investigators said a subsequent review of Benevolence's bank records indicated missing funds and that Arnaout frequently traveled to Bosnia to withdraw cash from the charity's account.
Then on March 19, police raided the BIF's Bosnian office. Police said then that some employees of the charity were conducting activities unrelated to humanitarian work. Three days later, the U.S. Embassy briefly shut down all operations, for the second time since Sept. 11, because of a terrorist threat.
The U.S. and British embassies were also closed for several days in October but reopened after local police arrested six naturalized Bosnians, all of them Algerian natives, suspected of plotting attacks on U.S. interests in Bosnia and elsewhere.
The suspects were handed over to U.S. authorities in January, and are now believed to be at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the six were employed as humanitarian aid workers; one was suspected of being a top bin Laden lieutenant in Europe.
Lagumdzija said the ongoing operation shows that Bosnia is doing all it can to detect and expel terrorists despite the ``thousands of problems'' it has faced internally since the end of the war. Difficulties in getting Bosnia's rival ethnic groups to work together has hampered the country's anti-terrorist effort, he conceded.
``For our own sake, we have done the best we could in the past seven months'' to crack down on terrorist elements, he said. ``I understand that this is a big deal now in the United States but for us the big deal was ... Sept. 11 and when we chose sides.''
-------- biological weapons
US team to destroy Uzbek anthrax
Experts say the likelihood of infection is low
By Catherine Davis
BBC Central Asia correspondent
Wednesday, 1 May, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1962000/1962056.stm
An American-led team is to begin destroying anthrax bacteria at what was the former Soviet Union's main open air biological testing site.
It will be the first time the US Government has carried out a pathogen destruction operation like this overseas, and the attacks on the United States last September have given the project added impetus.
Specialist equipment has been transported to the remote Vozrozhdeniye island in northwest Uzbekistan.
The Vozrozhdeniye Pathogen Destruction Operation, as it is known, is expected to take about 30 days to complete.
The project is being carried out under the US Co-operative Threat Reduction Programme (CTR).
Tight security
Vozrozhdeniye island is situated in the Aral Sea which is shrinking rapidly, causing concern that one day it will become part of the mainland.
The anthrax is buried in 11 pits there. The plan is to soak the area in a chlorine bleach solution first, then excavate the pits.
Samples from each one will be analysed at a specially built on site laboratory.
When it is clear no material remains, the dirt will be returned to the pits, which will be capped.
Once the excavation starts, it will be an exhaustive, round-the-clock operation until the process is completed.
Security will be tight, with not only armed guards but helicopter patrols too.
Little danger
Experts consider the anthrax in the pits to be highly dangerous, but the likelihood of it spreading infection is said to be low.
An engineer working on the project said the equipment on the island had deteriorated due to years of neglect and could not be used for proliferation purposes.
Since the Soviets left in 1992, scavengers have stripped the original test site bare.
The island is now becoming more accessible as the surrounding sea recedes.
But soil samples taken from the island earlier this year - according to American specialists - showed no contamination.
They say anthrax does not last well in the sandy soil and hot dry climate, where temperatures reach 60 degrees in the summer.
-------- colombia
Colombia Military Meets Rights Mark
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Colombia.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Colombian military has met congressionally mandated human rights requirements, freeing $62 million in U.S. military aid, the State Department said Wednesday.
The sum represents 60 percent of $104 million appropriated by Congress for the Colombian military in December. The remaining money can be disbursed only after further certification later this year.
Secretary of State Colin Powell certified that Colombia had met the congressional requirements, drawing praise from Colombian authorities.
``This is a recognition of the (military's) upright behavior,'' said Defense Minister Gustavo Bell.
Gen. Fernando Tapias, commander of Colombia's armed forces, said the decision ``is a reward for what the Colombian commanders and soldiers have done in the field of human rights, and also in combatting drug trafficking and terrorism.''
But the certification drew strong objections from Human Rights Watch, the Washington Office on Latin America and Amnesty International.
The groups said the Colombian government has failed to take ``even minimal steps to meet the conditions.''
``The decision to certify Colombia on human rights misrepresents the facts in order to keep the aid spigot open,'' said Bill Spencer, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America.
Congress conditioned the military aid on Powell's certification of progress in such areas as suspension of military personnel alleged to have been involved in rights violations and on a severing of ties between the armed forces and a rightist paramilitary group.
There also was a requirement that suspended personnel be turned over to civil authorities for prosecution.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that despite real progress in some areas, both the U.S. and Colombian governments recognize that protection of human rights in Colombia needs improvement.
He said that while most rights violations are committed by illegal armed groups of the left and right, ``the government of Colombia has assured us of its understanding the protection of human rights is a special responsibility of government.''
A senior U.S. official who briefed reporters acknowledged that the Colombian judicial system is extremely weak, with only 3 percent of investigations leading to prosecutions.
As evidence of progress, the official, asking not to be identified, said the highest ranking officer in the Colombian Marines was restricted to administrative duties because of his poor human rights record.
The official also said legal action was taken last month against four armed forces personnel alleged to have colluded with paramilitary personnel in a July 1997 massacre.
The paramilitary group, known by its Spanish initials, AUC, is accused by the State Department and others of being responsible for the majority of rights violations in Colombia.
Links between the Colombian military and the AUC have been a source of concern among U.S. officials and human rights groups for years.
The official said those links have been diminishing, adding that Colombian military operations are increasingly targeted at the AUC.
Human Rights Watch Americas Director Jose Miguel Vivanco said ties between the Colombian military and the AUC remain.
``The administration is proposing millions in counterterrorism aid to Colombia even as the Colombian military refuses to break ties with a designated terrorist group,'' he said.
Other illegal armed groups in Colombia are two leftist insurgencies -- the FARC and the ELN, both of which are on the foreign terrorist organization list.
The decision to certify came as no surprise as the Bush administration has been seeking to congressional authority to allow the Colombian military to use American-supplied equipment for counterinsurgency activities. Current rules limit use of the equipment for counternarcotics operations.
--------
U.S. indicts six rebels, FARC in three killings
May 1, 2002
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020501-36676534.htm
A federal grand jury yesterday indicted a Marxist rebel organization in Colombia and six of its members on charges of murder in the deaths of three Americans kidnapped while working with Indians in northeastern Colombia.
The indictment, handed up in U.S. District Court in Washington, signaled the Justice Department's renewed commitment since September 11 to prevent further attacks by targeting narcoterrorists, Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday.
Mr. Ashcroft, in announcing the indictment at an afternoon press conference, said the government brought charges against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, in an effort to hold the organization accountable for its "reign of terror" in Colombia and against U.S. citizens in that country.
"Just as we fight terrorism in the mountains of South Asia, we will fight terrorism in our own hemisphere," Mr. Ashcroft said, calling the indictment a "step toward ridding our hemisphere" of the FARC threat.
In March, three FARC members and four others were indicted on charges of conspiring to transport cocaine into the United States. Those suspects, along with the six named yesterday, remain fugitives, and it is not clear whether they will be arrested.
The three slain Americans were Terence Freitas, 24; Ingrid Washinawatok, 41; and Lahee'Enae Gay, 39. They were kidnapped by FARC guerrillas Feb. 25, 1999, and killed March 4, 1999.
"These three workers went to Colombia to do good but instead met with great evil," Mr. Ashcroft said. "Despite its attempts to portray itself as a band of revolutionaries or of freedom fighters, today's indictment describes the FARC as a fiercely anti-American terrorist organization."
The indictment said the FARC, designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, targeted the three Americans, conducted surveillance of their activities, abducted them at gunpoint and killed them "with multiple gunshots to the head and body."
It accused the FARC and its members of one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree, three counts of murder in the first degree and one count of using a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence. It said the FARC considers all U.S. citizens in Colombia to be military advisers and, as a result, legitimate military targets.
The Justice Department certified that the acts of extraterritorial murder charged against the FARC were intended to "coerce, intimidate or retaliate against Americans."
"Today's indictment reminds us in no uncertain terms of where the path of terrorism ultimately leads: to lives lost and families decimated," Mr. Ashcroft said.
The six FARC members indicted yesterday were German Briceno Suarez; El Marrano, also known as Fernando and "The Pig"; Jeronimo; Gustavo Bocota Aguablanca; Nelson Vargas Rueda; and Dumar. Limited identifications were available for three of the men.
Mr. Ashcroft said he would ask the Colombian government for their extradition. Luis Alberto Moreno, the Colombian ambassador to the United States, told reporters his government would study the request but did not know whether any of the men would be detained.
The three Americans were found dead in a field just inside Venezuela on March 4, 1999, after they had been abducted in Colombia by masked FARC rebels. Colombian intelligence officials said they were killed by members of Front 45, a FARC group whose leader is Briceno Suarez, who also is known as "Grannobles."
Evidence gathered by Colombian and U.S. authorities pointed to Briceno Suarez as ordering the murders because he suspected that the three Americans were CIA agents. The authorities said rebels seized and then executed the three after finding them on lands of the 8,000-member U'wa indigenous nation.
The three Americans were helping set up a U'wa school system. Mr. Freitas was a biologist; Miss Washinawatok was a teacher; and Mrs. Gay served as the director of the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International.
The indictment said that after being held for eight days, the three were tied with nylon cords, blindfolded and shot. The indictment also said that the FARC's official spokesman claimed responsibility for the murders on behalf of the group.
The FARC has long been considered the most dangerous terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere. Since 1980, it has murdered 13 Americans and kidnapped more than 100 others, including three U.S. missionaries kidnapped in 1993 who are believed to be dead.
Yesterday's charges follow a separate indictment handed up in March that accused FARC leader Tomas Molina Caracas and six others, including three Brazilian nationals, of conspiring to transport cocaine to the United States.
Molina Caracas and the others were charged with conspiracy to import cocaine into this country and to manufacture and distribute cocaine in Colombia with the intent of exporting it to the United States.
The March indictment said Molina Caracas was the commander of the FARC's 16th Front and leader of that group's drug-trafficking operation. It said that between 1994 and 2001, he controlled the remote village of Barranco Minas near the Venezuelan border, where his group processed and collected cocaine from other FARC fronts and sold it to international drug traffickers.
That indictment said Molina Caracas and his co-conspirators in Barranco Minas loaded cocaine onto airliners bound for the United States.
Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC - with 16,500 members - is that country's oldest, largest and best-equipped Marxist insurgency. It has been involved in bombings, murders, kidnappings, extortion and hijackings, as well as guerrilla and conventional military action against Colombian political, military and economic targets.
-------- iran
Iran Repeats Call for Oil Sanctions
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Oil.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Islamic nations should agree to impose a one-month cut in oil supplies, state television quoted Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying Wednesday.
The proposal for a one-month cut is a ``basic and serious issue,'' said Khamanei, repeating a call he made last month.
Khamenei, President Mohammed Khatami and Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh have said Iran would halt oil exports to supporters of Israel for one month if other Islamic nations followed suit, in response to Israel's invasions of Palestinian-run territories.
``A one-month cut will demonstrate that the Islamic nations have the capability to confront international dictatorship,'' Khamanei said.
Iran, which regards the United States as the foremost supporter of Israel, has been a vocal advocate of using oil as a weapon against Israel and its Western supporters in a bid to force them to compromise on the Palestinian issue. But unlike Iraq, it has not moved unilaterally.
Tehran wants other Islamic and Arab oil producers, like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to join the embargo before its turns off its own supplies. The Iranians are said to believe a unilateral move would have little market impact because other producers are likely to fill the gap.
In April, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein cut off Iraq's oil exports, saying sales would not resume for 30 days or until Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories. No other oil exporter has followed Iraq's lead.
Iran is the second-largest producer inside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer by far, has dismissed the sanctions notion.
-------- iraq
U.S., British Air Raids Kill 1, Injure 3: Iraqi Spokesman
XINHUA NEWS AGENCY,
May 1, 2002
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=121h2936&Section=Main&page=Home&channel=All%20Arab%20News&objectid=2A17E941-F5E0-11D4-867D00D0B74A0D7C
BAGHDAD (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- One Iraqi was killed and three others injured when U.S. and British warplanes bombed northern Iraq on Wednesday, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
The unidentified spokesman told the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) that the hostile planes bombed "civil and service installations" in the northern Iraqi province of Neineva and led to the casualties.
Iraqi air defense artillery opened fire at the U.S. and British planes and forced them to flee away from the Iraqi airspace, the spokesman added.
It is not immediately known whether the air raids were related to Iraqis' unprecedented celebrations of President Saddam Hussein's birthday, which fell on April 28.
U.S. President George W. Bush has branded Saddam as an "evil" person and Iraq as part of an "axis of evil" and strongly warned that Iraq may become the next target of the U.S.-led war on terror.
Neineva Province, along with other two provinces in northern Iraq, have been located inside the northern no-fly zone, set up by the U.S.-led Western allies after the 1991 Gulf War with the claimed aim of protecting the Kurds from the persecution of the Iraqi government.
A similar air exclusion zone was also established in southern Iraq to allegedly protect the Shiite Muslims there.
Iraq has never recognized the two no-fly zones and has regularly opened fire at the Western planes enforcing them.
----
UN - Iraq Weapons Talks to Resume
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iraq and the United Nations begin talks Wednesday that U.N. officials hope will lead to the return of weapons inspectors to Baghdad. But the Iraqis want to talk about a broader range of issues, including U.S. threats to topple Saddam Hussein.
The return of inspectors after more than three years is a key demand of the United States, which has accused Iraq of trying to rebuild its banned weapons programs and of supporting terrorism.
The second round of talks between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in less than two months is taking place as debate intensifies in Washington about whether the Bush administration will launch an attack against Saddam's government.
Sabri refused to answer any questions on his arrival at U.N. headquarters.
Iraqi U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Al-Douri said in an interview Tuesday that his government wants ``a comprehensive'' discussion of all outstanding issues, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions, the U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the skies of Iraq, and U.S. threats against the country.
The return of weapons inspectors is just ``one of the issues,'' he said.
``We come with hope,'' Al-Douri said. ``We expect that we will have certainly a successful dialogue with the secretary-general.''
Wednesday's meeting started with a short private session between Annan and Sabri which was to be followed by a longer meeting with their delegations. Experts from both sides will meet Thursday and another high-level round of talks will be held on Friday.
The talks were originally set for mid-April, but Iraq demanded a delay, believing the meetings would be dominated by the Palestinian issue if they were held so soon.
Wednesday's session is scheduled to start with a short face-to-face meeting between Annan and Sabri, followed by a longer session with their delegations. Experts from both sides will meet Thursday, and another high-level round of talks will be held on Friday.
Both sides are bringing additional technical experts to focus on some of the 19 questions that Sabri posed to Annan at their first meeting on March 7.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard has said the objective of the talks is for Iraq to fully comply with Security Council resolutions, which means allowing U.N. inspectors to return to finish verifying that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated.
Sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until inspectors certify that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons have been destroyed along with missiles to deliver them.
The inspectors left Baghdad ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes in December 1998 that were meant to punish Iraq for not cooperating with the inspection program. Iraq has barred them from returning.
Sabri indicated that Iraq wants inspections to be conducted for a limited time and lead to certification that the country is free of weapons of mass destruction. Western officials, however, reject any conditions set by Iraq and demand unfettered access to suspected weapons sites.
President Bush has warned Saddam that he faces unspecified consequences if he fails to heed American demands for inspectors to re-enter Iraq.
Annan will be accompanied at the talks by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix. Blix told the Security Council on March 8 that if Iraq were to resume active cooperation with the U.N. inspection agency, he could envision the council considering a suspension of sanctions within a year.
--------
U.S. Warplanes Strike Iraqi Air Defenses
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-warplanes.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American warplanes on Wednesday bombed air defense targets in a ``no-fly'' zone in northern Iraq after Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft guns at the jets, the U.S. military said.
A brief announcement from the U.S. European Command in Germany said the aircraft dropped precision-guided bombs after they were targeted by guns around Saddam Dam.
``All coalition aircraft departed the area safely,'' the announcement said.
U.S. and British jets have been patrolling northern and southern no-fly 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.
Wednesday's latest of a series of numerous tit-for-tat exchanges over the years occurred as speculation grew about possible plans for a U.S. military invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam from power. Washington says Iraq's president is actively trying to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The U.S. military's top general said last week that Iraq's military had recently moved anti-aircraft missiles into northern and southern no-fly zones to an extent not seen in years.
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.
GROWING INVASION SPECULATION
Myers noted on April 22 that the western jets attacked air defenses in the zones twice in the previous 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.
Despite growing media reports on plans being drawn up by the U.S. military for a possible invasion, the United States and Britain have stressed publicly that no decision have been made.
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed last 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, but is currently discussing the issue of opening the door to those inspectors. The inspectors left more than three years ago on the eve of U.S.- British airstrikes aimed at punishing the country for failing to cooperate with the inspectors.
The New York Times reported last week that the Bush administration was plotting a potential major air campaign and ground invasion early next year to topple the Iraqi government.
The use of 70,000 to 250,000 troops was being considered, the Times said, adding that President Bush had not issued any order for the Pentagon to mobilize its forces and there was no official plan for an invasion.
The Times reported the use of American or combined allied forces became a possibility after two alternate scenarios were rejected. The White house concluded a coup in Iraq would be unlikely to succeed and a proxy battle using local forces there would be insufficient to bring a change in power.
``There have been at least six coup attempts in the 1990s, and they consistently fail,'' an administration official told the Times.
--------
Iraqis Bring Arms Experts to New UN Talks
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-un-talks.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wanted to focus on the return of weapons inspectors in talks with Iraq on Wednesday, but Baghdad also sought to raise U.S. threats to overthrow President Saddam Hussein.
``We are discussing all the issues related to the Iraq-U.N. relationship, ``Iraq's Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, said at the end of the first day of discussions with Annan on Wednesday.
He heads a delegation of some 14 officials, at least four of them arms experts, including Gen. Hussan Amin, the Iraqi government's chief liaison official with the U.N. inspectors.
Diplomats expect Iraq to be flexible on the U.N. arms experts but not give an unconditional ``yes'' or ``no'' reply on their return before the talks close on Friday.
Some envoys, however, thought Iraq might invite to Baghdad chief inspector Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. But Sabri said, ``We didn't discuss this and it was not on the agenda..''
The inspectors first went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, spending seven years checking into weapons of mass destruction. They left shortly before the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in December 1998 to punish Baghdad for not cooperating with the arms experts.
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, said earlier that Baghdad wanted to raise all pending issues: the U.S.-British imposed no-fly zone, American threats against Baghdad, and the lifting of U.N. sanctions imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
``It will be a very wide spectrum of discussions. We cannot focus on only one issue,'' Aldouri said.
As the talks were in progress, American warplanes on Wednesday bombed air defense targets in the ``no-fly'' zone in northern Iraq after Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft guns at the jets, the U.S. military said.
Annan made clear he would focus on getting the inspectors back to Iraq. ``I would hope that we would spend a considerable amount of time on the return of the inspectors,'' he said before the talks began.
But he said ``there must be something on the minds of the Iraqis that they would also want to put on the table.''
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington the inspectors should be the key issue. ``It doesn't take long to say 'yes,''' he said.
Nevertheless, the admission of the inspectors might be Iraq's best chance of putting off a military showdown with the United States. The Bush administration has made no secret of its intention to move against Saddam Hussein at some point, saying Iraqi was probably accumulating dangerous arms.
The UN meetings are the second round this year between delegations led by Annan and Sabri. Baghdad postponed a mid-April session saying the world should keep its focus on violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
After the last talks on March 7, Sabri sent 20 questions to Annan on a variety of political subjects but the U.N. Security Council could not agree on answers. U.S. and British officials said only questions on arms inspections should be discussed.
The talks continue on Thursday among experts but without Annan, who will be at meetings in Washington on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with U.S., Russian and European officials. He returns on Friday for the last round of discussions.
Aside from Blix, Annan was joined by Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and chief U.N. legal counsel Hans Corell.
COUNCIL WEIGHS VOTE ON SANCTIONS REVISION
While the Iraqi delegation is in New York, the Security Council may adopt new regulations on sanctions. These would allow the freer flow of civilian supplies to Iraq but include a ''goods review list'' of items with possible military use that need to be approved by council members.
Russia and the United States have approved the cumbersome list but other nations raised questions about the more than $5 billion worth of goods ordered by Iraq but blocked by the United States.
Currently, many items, except food and medicine, are subject to a separate review by council members, any one of whom can block a contract.
The new regulations are part of the oil-for-food program, which is renewed every six months. The program allows Iraq to sell oil and use the money for food, medicine and a host of other goods to ease the impact of sanctions on the population.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Troops Pull Out of Arafat's Compound
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli armored vehicles began rumbling out of Yasser Arafat's battered compound Wednesday night, ending his five months of confinement in a diplomatic breakthrough that also saw six wanted Palestinians whisked away to a West Bank jail in a U.S. and British convoy.
The U.S.-brokered deal produced a dramatic resolution to one of the thorniest confrontations in the Mideast conflict. However, Israelis and Palestinians remain far apart on larger issues, such as a cease-fire and a resumption of peace negotiations.
In another key conflict spot, witnesses early Thursday said fire had erupted at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where about 200 people have been holed up since April 2. The flames broke out during an eruption of Israeli gunfire, with soldiers firing flares and throwing smoke bombs, witnesses said.
The standoff at the church began last month, when Israeli troops invaded the town. Israeli troops fired flares in the air and threw smoke bombs Thursday, covering the church compound with thick white smoke. There was no immediate word on casualties or what set off the gunfire.
Arafat was expected to remain inside his rocket-scorched offices until the Israelis had finished leaving Ramallah early Thursday, and was likely to remain in the Palestinian territories for at least the next few days.
``His plans are still that he's going to stay in his headquarters,'' Nabil Abu Rdeneh, Arafat's spokesman, told CNN. Arafat will begin traveling abroad, but first wants to focus on the ongoing crises in the West Bank, Abu Rdeneh said.
Israel agreed in principle on Sunday to release the Palestinian leader from five months of increasingly stringent confinement -- first to the town of Ramallah, then to the compound, then to a few rooms in his office building.
The standoff ended when the sides accepted President Bush's plan to move the six wanted Palestinians from Arafat's offices to a jail in the West Bank town of Jericho, where they will be watched over by American and British wardens. Israel had been demanding custody of the men.
A dozen U.S. and British armored vehicles pulled into Arafat's compound around sundown Wednesday, picking up the men as they walked out of Arafat's office building. Led by three Israeli security jeeps, the vehicles traveled in single file as they left the complex, littered with crushed cars and bullet-pocked buildings.
An hour later, Palestinians lining the street in front of the jail clapped and whistled as the six men arrived at the jail in Jericho, about 22 miles away.
At the same time, some Israeli trucks and armored personnel carriers began pulling out of Arafat's compound, part of a planned withdrawal from the entire city that was expected to take up to six hours, according to Israeli military officials.
Some troops shouted and waved as the tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks drove through the otherwise deserted streets of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem.
``We now expect to see Arafat translate his words into deed and to actively fight terror emanating from his own society,'' said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Sofer.
The six wanted men had been holed up with Arafat and about 300 other people since Israeli forces charged into the compound at the beginning of a March 29 invasion in the West Bank, aimed at rooting out Palestinian militants.
In a lightning trial at the compound last week, four were convicted of the killing of Israeli Cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi in October.
The two others are Ahmed Saadat, leader of the radical PLO faction that carried out the assassination, and Fuad Shobaki, alleged mastermind of a seaborne Palestinian arms shipment intercepted by the Israeli navy in January.
Israel's Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the success of Israel's military offensive in the West Bank ``will be judged by the speed with which we return to diplomatic negotiations.''
But prospects for talks remained dim amid the ongoing violence.
In the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians were killed Wednesday by Israeli fire, including a 2-year-old girl.
A roadside bomb was detonated early Wednesday near an Israeli tank deployed at the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, along the Israeli-Egyptian border, the military said.
Palestinian witnesses said tanks then fired machine guns and shells at a nearby neighborhood, killing the 2-year-old and a deaf man in their homes. Palestinians said tanks then drove into the Rafah refugee camp, prompting an exchange of fire in which two more Palestinians were killed.
The military said soldiers spotted the Palestinians who set off the roadside bomb, fired on them with light arms and hit one of them. A second attacker was captured, the army said.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and two other youngsters critically wounded in a mysterious explosion near a Palestinian police station. The army said it was investigating the blast.
Also Wednesday, Palestinian officials said a total of 52 bodies -- up four from last week -- have been recovered at the Jenin refugee camp, scene of a fierce battle last month between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen and subject of intense international scrutiny.
Palestinians say Israeli troops carried out a massacre of civilians, killing hundreds. But Israel says the death toll is about 50 or slightly higher, and that most of the dead were gunmen killed in combat.
At the Jenin camp, Fahri Turkman, head of the local emergency committee, reiterated allegations that Israeli troops carried out a massacre -- even though the number of bodies found so far appeared to support Israel's version.
``The number (of dead) will increase because we are missing so many people and we don't know if they are in jail or under the rubble,'' Turkman said. He said it was difficult to put together a list of the missing because Israel has not handed camp officials a list of names of those detained in Israel's offensive.
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan abandoned a U.N. fact-finding mission to the Jenin camp because of Israel's refusal to cooperate with the team's mandate was changed.
Earlier Wednesday, two Palestinian policemen, one wounded and the other ill, emerged from the besieged Church of the Nativity. The standoff at one of Christianity's holiest shrines showed no signs of abating. Israel and the Palestinians are at odds regarding about 30 gunmen still inside, with Israel insisting they either surrender or accept exile. The Palestinians propose that they be taken to Gaza.
--------
Jenin 'massacre' reduced to death toll of 56
May 1, 2002
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020501-5587072.htm
JENIN, West Bank - Palestinian officials yesterday put the death toll at 56 in the two-week Israeli assault on Jenin, dropping claims of a massacre of 500 that had sparked demands for a U.N. investigation.
The official Palestinian body count, which is not disproportionate to the 33 Israeli soldiers killed in the incursion, was disclosed by Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern West Bank, after a team of four Palestinian-appointed investigators reported to him in his Jenin office.
Two weeks ago, when European and particularly London newspapers were reporting estimates of "hundreds" massacred, Israeli sources in Washington said they expected the Palestinian toll to reach "45 to 55."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested yesterday, in the wake of the Palestinian body count, that he may disband a U.N. fact-finding team that was to visit the camp to determine whether a massacre had taken place.
Mr. Annan was responding to a decision by the Israeli security Cabinet earlier in the day not to cooperate with the U.N. team.
The U.N.-Israeli dispute appeared unrelated to the Palestinian admission there had been no massacre.
The Palestinians had suggested that most of the bodies were buried beneath the rubble of houses bulldozed by Israeli troops. No digging for bodies was taking place here, and there was no stench that could have come from decaying human flesh.
The earlier Palestinian claims had sparked international outrage and prompted the Bush administration to press Israel to accept a fact-finding mission by the United Nations, an organization that the Jewish state regards as having a pro-Palestinian bias.
Mr. Kadoura yesterday showed a reporter for The Washington Times the official Palestinian list of those who died. It contained 50 names. Six additional bodies, he said, had not been identified.
He no longer used the ubiquitous Palestinian charge of "massacre" and instead portrayed the battle as a "victory" for Palestinians in resisting Israeli forces. "Here the Israelis, who tried to break the Palestinian willpower, have been taught a lesson," Mr. Kadoura said.
He insisted that Israel had tried but failed, thanks to the heavy fighting, to destroy the entire warren of homes in the camp that had housed 11,000 people.
The destruction, pictured graphically on television, appeared linked to Israeli bulldozing of the houses from which the remnant of the resistance forces were firing.
In fact, it covers the size of a large football field and constitutes only about 10 percent of the housing in the camp, and a far smaller proportion of the housing in the city, which was largely left untouched by the Israeli incursion.
The figures shown to The Times included 233 injured persons, mainly men. The figures revealed that 18 persons had been injured and one had died after the fighting had ended, the result of accidentally detonating either shells left after the fighting, or booby traps that were set by Palestinian gunmen throughout the camp.
A British expert attached to the International Red Cross said these booby traps were almost identical to those used by the Irish Republican Army.
The British claim suggested to analysts that IRA guerrillas were schooled in terrorist weaponry and irregular warfare, as were many radical guerrilla movements, in Palestinian, Syrian and Iranian training camps in Lebanon.
From behind a desk bedecked by portraits of Mr. Arafat, a string of past "martyrs" and of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Palestinian chief official in the city, who is also the Fatah leader, portrayed in an interview the events as another chapter in a long saga of resistance to foreign invaders - from Crusader times onward - that, he said, had made Jenin "the heart of Palestine" for centuries.
The propaganda war continues, meanwhile, in the refugee camp itself. Families whose homes had been destroyed were ordered to sit and lie inside tents pitched near the destruction, to be available for interviews and filming with foreign reporters and photographers. At dusk, with the press opportunities concluded, they returned to houses offered to them in the undamaged city or in the rest of the refugee camp.
Other young men, members of various factions, have been on duty in the camp's narrow streets, eager to conduct foreign correspondents to places where they say Israelis killed militants after they surrendered or had been captured.
Others in the city say the resistance to the Israeli incursion had been carried out by only about 10 percent of the militants who had originally been in the area. Most had retreated into the hills or into city back streets as the Israelis entered the area, they said.
Families living in houses directly opposite the destroyed area have told The Washington Times that Israeli soldiers, who temporarily occupied their houses just before the final battle began, treated them without violence and assured them: "You will not be harmed."
They confined the 36 members of the Abu Khalil family to two rooms, allowing them out one by one, and set up a snipers' point upstairs through two holes in the wall - under a family framed message in Arabic: "There is No God but Allah and Mohammed is His Messenger."
They confiscated identity cards but left them on the table before slipping out during the night.
At the United Nations in New York, Undersecretary-General Kieran Prendergast said "a thorough, credible and balanced report on recent events in Jenin refugee camp would not be possible without the cooperation of the government of Israel."
"Since it appears from today's Cabinet statement by Israel that the difficulties in the way of deployment of the fact-finding team will not be resolved anytime soon, the secretary-general is minded to disband the team," he told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council.
Diplomats said Mr. Prendergast told council members that Mr. Annan was leaning toward disbanding the three-member team, which has been joined by numerous advisers. The team, which was to have arrived in Jenin on Saturday, remained in Geneva yesterday.
The Security Council is to take up the issue of whether or not to disband the mission at a meeting today.
The United States put forward the resolution adopted by the Security Council welcoming the dispatch of a U.N. team to find out what happened in Jenin during the Israeli military's attacks.
Israel initially agreed to the idea, but subsequently raised questions over the composition of the team, its scope of inquiry, who could be called as a witness and what documents would be presented to the panel.
Mr. Prendergast said that "with every passing day, it becomes more difficult to determine what happened" in Jenin. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Mr. Annan was considering whether to let the fact-finding team begin its work in Geneva or "simply abandoning the mission on the assumption that satisfactory terms of reference could not be worked out."
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
-------- mideast
New Strategy Set by U.S. and Saudis for Mideast Crisis
New York Times
May 1, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/international/middleeast/01DIPL.html
WASHINGTON - President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, during private discussions over five days last week, agreed on a new strategy of joint action and pressure to break the deadlock in the Middle East crisis, American and Saudi officials said today.
As part of that "division of labor," as one official described it, American officials plan to talk bluntly with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel during his visit to Washington next week about breaking the psychology of violence.
Arab leaders are expected to do the same at a meeting with Yasir Arafat, perhaps in Cairo, American and Saudi officials said.
The agreement, though not formalized, propels the Bush administration into the leading Middle East role that it had once resisted, one in which it is now allied with a Saudi leader who had also traditionally resisted a highly visible role.
"It is obvious that the United States has influence with Israel and the Saudis could use their influence" with Palestinians, a senior administration official said today, speaking of the joint diplomatic venture.
Prince Abdullah, now in Casablanca, Morocco, is ready to travel to Arab capitals to organize a meeting with Mr. Arafat that would coincide with Mr. Sharon's visit in Washington. Officials close to the prince say his gloomy assessment of President Bush's leadership going into the meeting last week was transformed by five hours of talks with Mr. Bush.
In those talks, the officials said, Mr. Bush said he would demonstrate that he was ready to lead an international peace effort if the Arabs came along.
Mr. Bush recognized the importance of Abdullah's role as the author of the peace proposal offered to Israel last month at an Arab summit meeting in Beirut.
"The weight of the Arab world is now behind peace with Israel," a senior administration official said, "and that's the only positive development that's taken place in the last year, and something that the president's moving quickly to take advantage of."
But to do that, the official acknowledged, Arab leaders would have to do their part, as the United States and Western countries did theirs.
This approach emerged from the otherwise tense atmosphere that preceded the Bush-Abdullah meeting, including a warning of a rupture in relations with the Arab world over the perception of Washington's support for Mr. Sharon's military policies. The new approach, still not announced in Washington or Riyadh, would bring Arab and other Western governments into a broad collaboration aimed at getting a cease-fire and total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian areas.
That would be followed by an appeal to Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat to authorize negotiations for a political settlement leading to Palestinian statehood, along the broad outlines that were on the table at the end of the Clinton administration.
Those negotiations could take place in a peace conference convened by the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, whose foreign ministers meet in Washington this week, plus five Arab nations designated at the summit meeting in Beirut: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Morocco.
A senior American official and a senior Saudi official said a final decision on the conference and its format remained under intense discussion.
"For this, we really don't have to re-invent the wheel," said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. Speaking by telephone from Houston, he said a meeting in Washington this week of the Western powers would be important in advancing the discussion.
But, he added, the political "content" of the conference - fulfilling the vision for a Palestinian state - was the most important objective. "I think good things are happening for a change," he added.
Still, there were no illusions about the difficulties ahead, officials said.
Mr. Sharon has publicly stated that he will never accept going back to the 1967 borders to define a Palestinian state, and it remains to be seen just how much pressure the Bush administration is willing to exert.
Mr. Sharon has shown his determination to resist international pressure, as he has done regarding a United Nations investigation into the fighting in Jenin, on the West Bank.
American and Saudi officials said they believed that a peace proposal with strong international backing would undermine resistance to compromise and peace.
Mr. Bush is expected to press Mr. Sharon next week for a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday Mr. Bush won agreement from Israeli and Palestinian leaders to accept "monitors" from the United States and Britain to guard Palestinian prisoners and the jails that house them.
Arab leaders are expected to press Mr. Arafat to accept an unprecedented level of supervision, assistance and guidance in rebuilding the Palestinian Authority, whose security forces will be instructed to crack down on terrorists and cooperate with Israeli and Western intelligence in preventing terrorism.
The main short-term objective, officials said, was to create a period of calm in which disengagement, rebuilding, jobs and greater security will induce a peace psychology, with the visible entry of the United States and the international community into the process, lots of monitors and financial aid.
American, European and Arab governments would undertake aggressive steps to rebuild the Palestinian Authority, and a new Palestinian security force that would operate under United States, British and Arab guidance to stop terrorism against Israel.
At the same time, they would press Israel to support the rebuilding of Palestinian institutions, especially the police, and once again work with a rebuilt Palestinian police force to pre-empt terrorist attacks.
The first signs of the new division of labor between the United States and Saudi Arabia were visible over the weekend when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the foreign minister, Prince Saud, four times to seek Saudi assistance in winning Mr. Arafat's agreement to the terms that opened the way for the end of Mr. Arafat's month-long captivity.
Prince Abdullah also called Mr. Arafat during the weekend, an American official said, to express Saudi Arabia's expectation that he comply with terms of the American-brokered deal to free him.
-------- nato
US NATO Allies Feel Slighted
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NATO.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's NATO allies were justified in feeling slighted during the opening weeks of the war on terrorism, but coordination has improved since then, Bush administration officials said Wednesday.
The United States was slow to accept offers of assistance from NATO countries and did not show enough gratitude at first when the alliance invoked its collective defense provisions after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Marc Grossman, undersecretary for political affairs in the State Department.
``It took some time to get some traction,'' Grossman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He added that America initially ``blew off a little bit'' NATO's contribution of AWACS surveillance airplanes to help patrol U.S. airspace.
Several senators on the panel said political leaders from NATO countries are grumbling that they felt slighted by what they see as their junior role in the global war on terrorism.
``We have conveyed the strong impression that in future conflicts, the U.S. will do the war fighting,'' said the committee's chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. ``And the Europeans will be expected to clean up after the parade.''
Pentagon policy chief Douglas Feith said the United States was slow to respond to NATO offers of help because officials were so busy putting together a war plan. The campaign in Afghanistan began Oct. 7, less than a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
``I cannot say that it went exactly smoothly and well from Day One, because nothing in the government went extremely brilliantly and well in the days after Sept. 11,'' Feith said.
Both Feith and Grossman said coordination with NATO and other terror war allies has improved greatly, citing the liaison officers from allied countries stationed at the Tampa, Fla., headquarters of the war's commander, Gen. Tommy Franks.
Nine of the 19 NATO countries have troops participating in Afghanistan, another five countries have sent forces to aid the effort and all but three NATO countries offered military forces, Grossman said.
Alliance members plan to meet in Prague in November to discuss transforming the alliance and adding new members. One of the United States' priorities in advance of that meeting is to persuade NATO members to increase their military spending, Feith and Grossman said.
The only way to close the ``capabilities gap'' between U.S. and other NATO militaries is to spend more money on the problem, the Bush administration officials said.
The two officials said the United States wants to see as many countries as possible be invited to join NATO at the November meeting. Most NATO countries are beginning to share the view ``that we ought to be as big as possible,'' Grossman said.
The alliance is considering offering membership to 10 countries, including the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The other candidates are Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Albania.
--------
[How about cleanup of depleted uranium and other toxics they left behind in the Balkans? See http://prop1.org/2000/du/dulv.htm. et]
NATO Seeks New Role After Sept. 11
By Paul Ames
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 1, 2002; 1:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12421-2002May1?language=printer
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- With global terrorism replacing the Soviet Union as a major threat, NATO is considering changes that could produce the biggest transformation of the alliance since its creation 53 years ago.
In advance of a November summit in Prague, alliance members are working on three fronts to:
- Deal with terrorist threats and close the gap between capabilities of the U.S. and European militaries;
- Expand NATO membership to include new democracies of eastern and central Europe;
- Improve cooperation with the old enemy, Russia.
The goal is to make the NATO alliance relevant to the modern era now that the Cold War is over and global terrorism has become a significant security threat.
"The new security threats are not abstract any longer," NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said recently. "They are here. They are real. And they are lethal. We must take action. We simply have no choice."
Those threats now include militant nationalism, weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of ballistic missile technology and terrorism.
NATO planners believe the key to a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy is to forge stronger ties with Moscow, including an institutionalized relationship which some describe as a form of "associate NATO membership" for Russia.
NATO officials hope to wrap up an agreement by May 14 when NATO foreign ministers meet in Reykjavik, Iceland. President Vladimir Putin is to join NATO leaders in Rome two weeks later to seal the deal.
The advantages of Russian cooperation became clear after Sept. 11, when the Russians shared intelligence on international threat groups and smoothed the way for U.S. troops to move into former Soviet republics of Central Asia to support the war in Afghanistan.
NATO planners foresee some sort of arrangement in which the Russians would join alliance members as an equal partner to devise a common strategy for fighting terrorism and combatting the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
That could in turn lead to join programs in such areas as peacekeeping, arms control, civil emergency planning, disaster relief and even joint missile defense.
"There should be a common process for assessing threats, to share information," said Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. "It's very important to have a process for early common planning."
A new relationship with NATO would also soothe Moscow's unease over alliance plans to offer membership to former pro-Soviet states of eastern Europe, particularly Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All three used to be part of the Soviet Union.
During the Nov. 21-22 summit in Prague, NATO is expected to send membership invitations to selected eastern European countries. In addition to the three Baltic countries, NATO officials are considering offering membership to Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria in an expansion that will take the alliance's frontiers to within a few hundred miles of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
"We must take on new members, securing freedom from the Baltic to the Black Sea," President Bush said at a recent White House meeting with Robertson.
Increasingly, NATO officials feel problems of corruption, military backwardness or political instability in some of the candidates are outweighed by the advantages of bringing them into the fold.
Romania and Bulgaria, for example, could offer the alliance a bulwark in the volatile Balkans.
"The creation of a joint defense area is of crucial importance for the promotion of security in Europe's southeastern flank," Greek Defense Minister Yannos Papantoniou said. "We face common threats."
At the same time, alliance officials say NATO must address the imbalance in military power between the United States and its NATO partners.
"Many militaries in Europe remain organized, trained and equipped just as they were in the latter half of the previous century," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in the April edition of Britain's Royal United Services Institute Journal.
"In terms of providing a real improvement in fighting capabilities for European members ... not much as been accomplished."
NATO wants European leaders in Prague to agree to improve their capabilities against threats from nuclear, chemical or biological weapons; enhance their precision guided munitions; build up their fleets of transport planes to move troops quickly; and improve communications, surveillance and intelligence.
That could be difficult for European governments, which have been reluctant to divert resources from social welfare systems to their militaries.
Lord Robertson has warned, however, that failure to do so could have severe political repercussions.
"If we do not develop our capabilities ... how will we explain to our publics if the next major terrorist attack uses microscopic germs instead of massive jetliners and we are unable to respond?" Robertson said.
-------- pakistan
Missile Hits Near U.S. Forces in Pakistan
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-pakistan-usa-missile.html
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - A missile exploded Wednesday near a government compound housing U.S. personnel in Pakistan, close to the Afghan border, but caused no injuries or major damage, residents said.
The missile fell just yards from a vocational school in Miranshah, capital of Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal agency, where residents say U.S. personnel have been staying.
U.S. officials last week said a small number of U.S. special operations forces were in Pakistan pursuing remnants of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban movement and Osama bin Laden's militant al Qaeda network, blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Residents of Miranshah say the U.S. personnel have been staying in the vocational school for the past few weeks.
Ghulam Farooq, the political agent, or administrator, of semi-autonomous tribal region, confirmed the incident but denied the presence of U.S. personnel in the area.
``A missile hit the outer wall of the government degree college (opposite the vocational school) at around 2 a.m. (4 p.m. EDT Tuesday),'' he told Reuters. ``But no U.S. troops are present here.''
Pakistan denies U.S. or other foreign troops are operating in the country to pursue Taliban or al Qaeda militants, but President Pervez Musharraf said last weekend that some U.S. communication experts were providing support to Pakistani troops.
Last week, residents said about 200 Pakistani paramilitary troops assisted by about 10 U.S. soldiers raided a religious seminary set up by former Taliban minister Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani near Miranshah.
U.S. officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said last week the introduction of U.S. military forces in Pakistan was a highly sensitive issue and followed a ''very loose, informal'' arrangement with Pakistan.
Musharraf threw his weight behind the U.S.-led war on terror after the September 11 attacks, a move which angered some religious and political factions inside Pakistan.
--------
U.S. Troops Deploy Near Border of Pakistan
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-afghan-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is deploying hundreds of troops and attack helicopters to the Afghan mountains near Pakistan to support British marines in pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
One senior official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters U.S. soldiers from the elite 101st Airborne Division troops based in Afghanistan would join several hundred British Marines already leading an operation near the city of Khost.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that up to 1,000 U.S. soldiers could join the operation near Khost only 20 miles from the Pakistan border.
But both the U.S. Central Command based in Tampa, Florida, and the senior U.S. official disputed that figure.
``The number is high. But certainly a large number are being moved,'' the official told Reuters.
The Pentagon believes hundreds of al Qaeda fighters of fugitive Osama bin Laden, blamed for September attacks on America, and their Taliban allies could be gathering in the area.
One U.S. official confirmed the Post report that the United States had also moved AH-64 ``Apache'' attack helicopters to a U.S. special forces base near Khost.
U.S. and Afghan troops conducted a major two-week operation in the mountainous region around Gardez in early March. American warplanes dropped more than 2,500 bombs in ``Operation Anaconda,'' reportedly killing hundreds of regrouping al Qaeda and Taliban.
A SPRING OFFENSIVE?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him on a trip to Afghanistan last week that spring could bring a regrouping of remnants of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. But he said 7,000 U.S. and 5,000 other Western troops in Afghanistan were ready.
Asked about the current troop movement, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, headquarters for the war in Afghanistan, disputed the size of the U.S. deployment.
``The numbers that they're reporting are inaccurate,'' Navy Cmdr. Frank Merriman told Reuters, adding that a fewer number of troops were on the move.
In keeping with Pentagon policy, Merriman declined comment on the operation itself.
``People are seeing activity and they're making assumptions about what's going on. But we are, and have been, constantly looking for remaining Taliban and al Qaeda and it will be an ongoing process until they are neutralized,'' Merriman said.
The Post said U.S.-led forces on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border were acting in part on recent unconfirmed intelligence reports that place al Qaeda leader bin Laden and his top lieutenant in the tribal areas on the Pakistani side of the border.
The Post report of new troop movement coincided with word from Afghan officials in the border region that coalition forces were preparing for another major operation against remnants of bin Laden's al Qaeda network and Afghanistan's Taliban militia.
--------
Top Pakistani Wins a Ballot; Few Surprised
New York Times
May 1, 2002
By SETH MYDANS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/international/asia/01STAN.html
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, April 30 - Here in the North-West Frontier Province, the vote for President Pervez Musharraf is, Yes! It's yes in Punjab. Yes in Sindh. Yes in Baluchistan.
As far as reporters around Pakistan could tell, almost nobody voted no. Instead, Pakistanis stayed away from the polls in protest or apathy - as many as 75 percent of them, according to the information minister, Nisar Memon.
Today was the day organized by President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a nonviolent coup in 1999, to put the seal of legitimacy on his leadership through a referendum. A "yes" vote, he said, would allow him to extend his presidency for five years, overriding the results of a parliamentary election scheduled for October.
Votes were still being counted tonight, but the result, it was already evident, will be no clear result at all. General Musharraf will almost certainly win his five-year extension in power, but legitimacy will remain elusive.
"We believe that a voters' turnout of 25 percent and above will represent a widespread public support for the president's economic and political reforms," Mr. Memon said.
But political parties that had united to oppose this end-run around the electoral process and had called for a boycott said the low turnout amounted to a resounding defeat.
"Today the people of Pakistan have given their verdict against General Musharraf," said Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, head of the 15-party Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy. "We demand he should immediately step down."
In three weeks of campaigning and on voting day today, General Musharraf and his men have been cranking their pump mightily, but the well of support and enthusiasm has seemed shallow.
It appeared that people who turned out in heaviest numbers were those who felt they had little choice: soldiers, government employees and civil servants who cast their ballots in boxes that had been set up conspicuously at their work places. In Hyderabad, according to a local report, the only crowded polling station was at the Nara Prison, where 3,500 votes were cast.
"People are fed up with these things," a civil servant said, careful not to give his name. "For the last 15 years, they are fed up. Who is coming and who is going, they don't care."
It has now become routine for the leaders of military coups to vote themselves into office through referendums. There is an Urdu word to describe the day's events, the civil servant said: natak. "It means `theater,' " he said. "In one word, it explains everything."
There was a lively performance in Peshawar at a segregated women's polling station at the Kohati Gage school, with drums beating wildly and rose petals flying through the air as wives of local officials arrived to vote.
"Of course yes, definitely yes," said the wife of the provincial information minister, who identified herself as Mrs. Imtiaz Gilani. "Because I know the gentleman personally. In two and a half years, it's easy to see the progress we've made. Finally we've started to be proud to be Pakistanis."
But at other polling stations offstage, in the alleys of this thrumming border city, polling officers passed the day quietly with their pads of ballot papers: no drums, no rose petals, not many voters.
"There was no need to hold a referendum because we don't have any other option," said Faraz Chaudhry, 24, a sales consultant, who said he had not cast a vote. "He would have won anyway."
The low turnout was all the more notable because of the loose, come-one-come-all voting rules the government put in place. In order to improve the turnout, the government lowered the voting age to 18, from 21, and set up 100,000 polling stations just about everywhere: in schools, factories, government offices, bus and railroad stations, shopping centers, bazaars, hotels, airports and gasoline stations.
Voters' lists were dispensed with, meaning that anyone could vote anywhere and, if they rubbed the ink mark off their fingers, as often as they wished. Almost any form of identification was accepted, including photocopies, letters of recommendation from local officials and the 12 million expired identification cards that remain in circulation.
The system for counting votes seemed particularly relaxed. Since this is not a party election, there were no poll watchers. At the end of the day, officials said, poll takers simply dumped the ballots out of their boxes, added them up and phoned in the numbers.
-------- russia / chechnya
Poison Hidden in a Letter May Have Killed Rebel in Chechnya
Russia: Reports suggest that the Arab guerrilla, one of Moscow's chief enemies in the separatist republic, succumbed to a toxin hidden in a letter.
By JOHN DANISZEWSKI,
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER
May 1, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000030912may01.story
MOSCOW -- It is a time-tested way to dispose of enemies. Now a prominent Chechen Web site and some newspapers here are suggesting that a fast-acting poison hidden in a letter was the instrument used in March to kill one of Russia's chief enemies: an Arab guerrilla named Khattab.
If so, it would resurrect a method of assassination often used in czarist times and by the former Soviet Union.
The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, announced Thursday that Khattab--one of the country's most wanted foes and a prominent rebel in the separatist republic of Chechnya--had been killed in late March in the Chechen mountains through an unspecified "special operation." The next night, FSB officials released a videotape of what appeared to be the corpse of Khattab, a bushy-bearded warrior accused by the Russians of being the Chechens' conduit to the terror organization of Osama bin Laden. He was shown laid out on the ground, surrounded by comrades, dressed in T-shirt and camouflage pants, with no evident wounds on his body.
A Web site used to distribute news from Chechen guerrillas, who are seeking independence from Russia, acknowledged Monday that Khattab--generally known by that one name--had indeed been assassinated.
"According to information from the headquarters of the Chechen moujahedeen, Amir Khattab was poisoned on March 19 by a letter that was brought to him by a messenger," said the Kavkaz Center site, www.kavkaz.org.
"It has been established precisely that Khattab was poisoned by that letter," the statement continued. "Khattab knew the messenger who brought the letter," and the assailant is now believed to be with the Russians, it added.
Russian newspapers were quick to take up the theme Tuesday that Khattab had been poisoned, suggesting that the FSB had played a role in stoking rivalries within the rebel camp until Khattab was betrayed by one of his own comrades.
Another report said that Khattab, who was believed to have been born in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, was done in by Jordanian intelligence agents and Chechens, with hardly any connivance on the Russian side.
"In the opinion of extremists, Khattab died having opened a poisoned letter delivered to him by someone from his closest entourage," the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported Tuesday. "Khattab was betrayed by his own people, which ... does not rule out a secret operation carefully planned by the FSB, cleverly making use of the incredible discord among bandit formations."
Russian officials were noncommittal when asked about the possible poisoning. "To what extent is the poisoning version credible? I personally am accustomed to disbelieving everything I hear on Chechnya and about Chechnya until I hold fully reliable proof of something right in my hands," said Alexander V. Machevsky, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin's administration.
"As for the killing of Khattab, it was such a complex operation that it is impossible to find out exactly," he said, adding that the FSB is giving no details.
But the reports of poisoning are certainly believable, said Igor N. Prelin, a retired KGB colonel who worked for nearly 40 years in Soviet foreign intelligence.
"A poison is a rather convenient means of destroying someone--it allows the executor to remain at a distance from the target and not risk his own safety," he observed. "With this in mind, [poisoning] appears to be a quite acceptable way of liquidating him."
Russian history is rife with episodes of poisoning. Ivan the Terrible is thought to have poisoned two of his wives. Czar Boris Godunov is believed to have poisoned Ivan's son. Rasputin was poisoned, but the mad monk who advised the imperial family of Nicholas II finally had to be shot and drowned too before he died.
In the Stalin era, the KGB had a special laboratory to produce poisons for the purpose of assassination, tested on unwitting convicts to determine which were the most effective.
There have been claims that the writer Maxim Gorky, later lionized in Soviet propaganda, was in fact poisoned on Stalin's orders.
Perhaps the most famous case in recent times was the 1978 assassination of Georgy I. Markov, Bulgaria's best-known dissident, who was pricked with a poison-tipped umbrella.
Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.
-------- saudi arabia
Saudi women to train for civil defence
Wednesday, 1 May, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1961000/1961905.stm
The Saudi authorities are reported to have launched a campaign to train women in civil defence skills.
A report in the London-based newspaper Alsharq al-Awsat says the first phase of the campaign will begin on 12 May.
Senior civil defence officer Major Fahd Al-Nafei was quoted as saying that thousands of female teachers would be trained in first aid, fire extinguishers, evacuation of females from schools and other sites.
The move follows an incident earlier this year, when 15 school girls were crushed to death in a stampede after a fire broke out in their school.
The high number of casualties was officially attributed to lack of safety precautions, but there were also reports that rescue workers were blocked by zealous religious police.
These reports were later rejected by the authorities as false.
But the incident led to the sacking of the head of the girls' education department and its merger with the education ministry.
Restricted role
A new charter was approved in April last year allowing women to volunteer for civil defence work.
But the charter does not allow women to undertake tasks which "contravene Islamic rules and traditions".
The role of women in Saudi Arabia is heavily restricted by Sharia law, and work opportunities are limited mainly to the health and education sectors.
Women have to wear veils in public and cannot travel without the approval of a husband or father.
Schools in the kingdom are segregated by gender.
-------- space
Space shuttle replacement could eliminate pilots
05/01/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/01/shuttle.htm
CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) - The replacement for NASA's aging space shuttles may take off like a plane, be propelled by booster rockets that fly back to Earth and, in one of the more radical moves, eliminate pilots.
The reusable space plane, equipped with crew escape and automatic landing systems, would be far safer than the shuttle, officials said Tuesday in unveiling 15 design concepts. It also would be much cheaper to operate, they promised.
The goal is to have it flying by 2012, right around the time the space shuttles should be retiring.
"It's a little bit smaller vehicle so it may not be quite as impressive and loud and energetic maybe as when the shuttle takes off," said Dennis Smith, manager of NASA's $4.8 billion Space Launch Initiative program. "But it has some pretty neat attributes to it."
For instance, the booster rockets could peel away, turn around and fly back to the launch site. The shuttle's two boosters parachute into the ocean and are retrieved by ships.
NASA would use slightly different types of its new spaceship to transport astronauts and equipment to the international space station. The commercial industry would use the same system to launch satellites, with military involvement likely as well.
Among NASA's main objectives: to lower the cost of delivering payloads to orbit from $10,000 a pound on the shuttle to $1,000 a pound or less, and reduce the risk of a deadly catastrophe from the current 1-in-almost-500 to 1-in-10,000.
The space shuttle lacks a viable crew escape system for launch, something that is crucial if NASA hopes to achieve its desired safety margin, Smith said.
"It's very aggressive, there's no question about it," he said.
Smith said ejection seats are being considered along with flyaway crew modules. Kennedy Space Center likely would serve as the launch site, although that is not a requirement. Both vertical and horizontal liftoffs are being considered.
The spaceship might be able to double as a space station lifeboat. Pilots may not be needed to take up space station crews, Smith noted.
Over the past year, NASA whittled down the list of ideas from thousands to 15 represented by three industry teams: Boeing of Seal Beach, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Corp. of Denver; and a combined Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and Northrop Grumman of El Segundo, Calif.
The concepts rely on two-stage rockets, with engines fueled by kerosene, hydrogen or a combination.
NASA plans to settle on two concepts next year. Full-scale development of one of the ships would begin in 2006, with the first flight hopefully in 2012. In case of delays, NASA plans to keep the shuttles flying until 2020.
"We went to the moon in nine years and we developed the shuttle in eight years," Smith said. "Here we are 10 years away and really it comes down to a commitment to get behind the new system."
-------- spy agencies
Mossad chief may quit over Sharon
May 01, 2002
UK Times
From Richard Beeston in Washington
and Ross Dunn in Jerusalem
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-284164,00.html
ARIEL SHARON, the Israeli Prime Minister, faces a deep split with Mossad, the country's famed intelligence agency, over his strategy to defeat the Palestinian uprising.
According to Israeli officials and intelligence sources, the split could result in the departure of Ephraim Halevy, the highly respected spy chief, who has on several occasions openly challenged the Israeli leader.
The British-born Mossad director has been named as a possible Ambassador to Washington, a post which became vacant earlier this month. Although he has told colleagues that he is not interested in the appointment, he is coming under pressure to take it and open the way for a new intelligence chief from within Mr Sharon's circle of confidants.
"Some people (in Government) are mentioning his name in connection to the post in Washington, because they want him out of Mossad," an Israeli official said. "It has become very political."
Mr Halevy, aged 67, has clashed with the Israeli leader on a number of occasions. First he opposed the decision taken in December to place Yassir Arafat under house arrest, arguing that it would only boost his popularity among Palestinians.
The most serious disagreement occurred a month ago after the devastating Passover suicide bombing in Netanya killed 28 people and triggered the current Israeli incursion into the West Bank.
Mr Sharon told the Cabinet that he wanted to exile Mr Arafat. But Mr Halevy, who was supported by other security chiefs and military advisers, spoke out against the move, arguing that "Arafat abroad will be far more dangerous to us than in the territories".
Mr Sharon backed down but the two clashed again when the Israeli leader barred a European delegation from visiting Mr Arafat, a decision Mr Halevy insisted was counter-productive.
"There are two types of official, one who says: 'Yes, Minister', and the other who gives his honest opinion," said an official. "Halevy is definitely from the second category."
Israeli intelligence sources insist that Mr Halevy, a nephew of Sir Isaiah Berlin, is a highly professional veteran diplomat and an intelligence officer with no political affiliations.
He is credited with spearheading the negotiations which led to the normalisation of relations with Jordan and with organising the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. More recently he served as Ambassador to the European Union before being appointed to head Mossad in 1998.
Nevertheless, he took up his post at a time when Israel expected peace to be concluded with the Arab world and his recent achievements were scored on the diplomatic field rather than in the world of espionage.
Mr Sharon is known to favour someone with a more aggressive approach, preferably drawn from the military.
"The relationship between the Prime Minister and the head of Mossad is absolutely critical to Israel," an Israeli intelligence source said. "The country's security depends on them having a good, honest relationship."
Mr Halevy, in keeping with other intelligence chiefs like George Tenet, the CIA Director, has an interest in seeing the peace process, which he helped to establish over the past decade, resurrected.
Israeli, American and British intelligence officers are thought to have been instrumental in brokering the deal which allowed Mr Arafat to be freed from four months under house arrest.
-------- un
Iraq accuses UN of double standards
AP
WEDNESDAY, MAY 01, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=8571579
BAGHDAD: Iraq accused the United Nations on Wednesday of double standards saying that while the world body insists Iraq accept weapons inspectors, it failed to press Israel to let a UN team to investigate violence in a Palestinian refugee camp.
"Israel, after stalling and blackmailing, said, "I won't deal with this committee." What did the (UN) secretary-general do?" said Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister. "The secretary-general of the United Nations is thinking of obstructing a resolution issued by the Security Council because Israel refused to deal with this committee."
Aziz spoke at a conference in Baghdad on the UN sanctions against Iraq. He refused to speak to reporters.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday he is "inclined to disband" a UN fact-finding team that was to look into Israel's military assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
Israel's security Cabinet decided yesterday not to cooperate with a UN inquiry until Israeli demands had been met regarding the mandate and composition of the team.
The Palestinians accuse the Israeli army of a massacre of civilians during eight days of fighting that left part of the Jenin camp in rubble. Israel says its army fought intense gunbattles with Palestinian gunmen, who were the main victims, stressing that 26 suicide bombers came from Jenin.
Aziz said Annan's handling of the Jenin fact-finding issue was proof of "double standards," arguing that while the United Nations remains firm on its resolutions on Iraq, it has done little in the face of Israel's resistance to UN Security Council resolutions, even resolutions supported by the United States.
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U.N. May Drop Inquiry at Jenin as Israel Resists
New York Times
May 1, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/international/middleeast/01MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, April 30 - Israel challenged the United Nations today by once again blocking a proposed fact-finding mission to examine fighting earlier this month in the Jenin refugee camp, prompting Secretary General Kofi Annan to consider disbanding the investigative team.
Israeli officials said they preferred the short-term cost in world opinion of resisting the United Nations to the long-term risk of possibly exposing the army to war-crimes trials in what they feared would be a biased investigation.
As Palestinian officials charged a cover-up, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, a former general who has fought in all of Israel's wars, invoked his own service as a soldier in declaring that he would protect Israel's troops now.
"No effort to doubt us or put us on an international trial will prevail," Mr. Sharon declared.
He rejected Palestinian accusations that war crimes were committed in Jenin, saying, "We made extraordinary efforts not to harm innocent people."
To Mr. Sharon and other senior Israeli officials, the United Nations inquiry is a case of selective investigation, to be followed, they fear, by spurious prosecution. Why, they ask, does the United Nations show no interest in investigating suicide bombings that have killed Israelis? Why does it show no interest in investigating Israel's charges of ties between Yasir Arafat and terrorism?
Supporters of the inquiry, on the other hand, marveled that the United Nations had so far been stymied in its attempt to work inside a refugee camp that is overseen by one of its own agencies, within occupied West Bank territory that by treaty is controlled by the governing Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Sharon has believed since the United Nations created Israel 54 years ago that the Jewish state would sometimes have to stand alone in a world biased against it, his close associates say. His conviction that the Jenin operation has been unfairly attacked abroad is widely shared by Israelis, and his popularity has rebounded since he ordered Israeli forces into the West Bank a month ago.
Today he was also banking on support from an ally he has carefully cultivated, President Bush.
Israel agreed on Sunday to a compromise proposed by President Bush to end the armed siege of Mr. Arafat in Ramallah partly in the hope that the United States would muffle any United Nations criticism, senior Israeli officials said. But they said Mr. Sharon struck no explicit bargain for American support.
The United States originated the United Nations resolution that set up the fact-finding mission in mid-April, and gave the inquiry aggressive backing last week. But today, in yet another shift by Washington, the Bush administration offered little more than the wan observation that it could do nothing if Mr. Annan dropped the inquiry.
"We continue to be quite supportive of the idea," said a senior Bush administration official. "But if he decides it isn't worth the trouble, we're not going to be able to push it on our own."
American and British officials met in Ramallah tonight to work out details for moving six wanted men from Mr. Arafat's besieged compound into a Palestinian prison under international guardianship. The transfer could take place as soon as Wednesday, possibly distracting attention from the fight at the United Nations, officials said.
Israel also withdrew its ground forces from Hebron, a West Bank city south of here that they occupied on Monday after Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis, including a 5-year-old girl, in a nearby settlement.
Mr. Annan, faced with the latest Israeli rejection, was inclined to disband the inquiry team, according to Kieran Prendergast, undersecretary general for political affairs.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, appealed to Mr. Annan to stand firm. "I think this is equivalent to giving Sharon the license to do it again, to kill again and to commit slaughter again," he said.
He said he was consulting with lawyers to see if he could prepare a war-crimes case against Israel. Charges that there was a massacre in the Jenin camp have taken on a life of their own, particularly in the Arab world.
"We will never forget, and we will never forgive," Mr. Erekat said.
Israel says 23 suicide bombers came from the congested Jenin camp. It sent troops inside on April 3 in what it called a hunt for the terrorists responsible. Over the next eight days, Israel lost 23 soldiers in house-to-house fighting. At least 45 bodies of Palestinians have been found so far, most of them apparently men of fighting age.
Palestinian officials have said hundreds of bodies could be buried in rubble left by Israeli bulldozers, but excavation so far has not supported those claims.
Today, the group Physicians for Human Rights issued a preliminary forensic assessment of the camp's dead and wounded, raising concerns about the shooting of civilians and blocked access to medical care and calling for an international investigation.
Mr. Prendergast, the United Nations official, said that "with every passing day it becomes more difficult to determine what took place on the ground in Jenin."
After meeting today, Israel's security cabinet, led by Mr. Sharon, issued a statement saying the United Nations had failed to adjust the mission to accommodate Israel's concerns. "As long as these terms have not been met, it will not be possible for the clarification process to begin," the statement read.
Mr. Annan said he had met Israel's concerns.
Israel originally resisted the idea of a fact-finding mission but reluctantly agreed to a compromise on April 19, during a United States maneuver to block a strongly worded Arab resolution at the United Nations supporting a mission.
Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, asked Mr. Annan to appoint a mission personally, saying Israel had "nothing to hide." A milder United States resolution was unanimously approved. But Israeli officials immediately raised objections, saying the people chosen for the mission team lacked military experience and would be inclined to ignore the threat Israel felt it faced from Jenin.
On April 24, Israel first announced that it would delay the arrival of the team, which has been waiting in Geneva. Mr. Peres, who was still seeking a compromise, told Israel radio today that he was concerned that the United Nations Security Council might now impose the inquiry on Israel. "We must take into consideration the possibility we will be left entirely on our own," he warned.
Tonight, a caucus of Arab nations was drafting a Security Council resolution demanding that Israel immediately cooperate with the fact-finding team.
In Bethlehem, 26 Palestinian men voluntarily left the Church of the Nativity today, the largest departure of Palestinians from the compound thus far in a siege that is nearly month old.
The men, looking weary but healthy, emerged at midafternoon and were quickly taken to a nearby Israeli military base for identification and questioning. None were believed to be militants, and they were all expected to be released soon.
In the Gaza Strip, three Palestinians, including a 2-year-old girl, were killed early Wednesday within a span of four hours when Israeli troops opened fire on residential areas in the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian hospital sources told Agence France-Presse. Israel said militants had tried to detonate explosives in one incident, forcing them to open fire.
In Hebron, the Israeli Army said it had arrested 150 Palestinians it described as terrorists, including 47 who were on its list of wanted men.
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House Panel Supports Base Closures
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House panel on Wednesday endorsed a new round of military base closings in 2005 over the objections of lawmakers who said shuttering more facilities would harm the nation's war on terrorism and economic recovery.
``We are at war now ... and here we are shutting down bases,'' said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas. ``I think it's the wrong time.''
A proposal to repeal a new round of closings approved by Congress last year failed on a 38-19 of the House Armed Services Committee. The panel moved toward approval of legislation to authorize military spending by the Defense and Energy departments for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The Pentagon has said it needs the savings it would reap from more base closings to pay for essential military activities. The previous four rounds of base closures led to the shutdown or realignment of 451 installations, including 97 major bases.
``We have to cut the waste out of the federal budget and that means closing some facilities,'' said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa. ``We've got to make tough decisions. It's not about getting everything we want.''
The total amount the panel was expected to endorse would roughly match President Bush's $396 billion defense spending proposal, the largest increase in two decades.
As House lawmakers worked on their version of the spending blueprint in subcommittee meetings over the last week, however, they pushed spending above Bush's request in several areas. Two were relative losers in the administration proposal: military construction and Navy shipbuilding.
Lawmakers have been advocating meeting current military needs with a $10 billion war reserve fund since it appeared in the White House's budget request. Lawmakers of both parties have objected to giving Bush essentially a blank check to spend for unspecified future needs in the war on terrorism without further congressional action.
Debate before the full committee was expected to focus on that reserve fund, as well as missile defense and efforts to change the arcane process of privatizing Defense Department functions.
Lawmakers predicted Tuesday that the Pentagon's wish for relief from portions of several environmental protection laws would prove especially contentious.
In earlier subcommittee action, lawmakers approved exemptions from the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act, agreeing with Defense Department arguments that complying with the laws at military facilities hampers training. Requests for similar relief from the Clean Air Act went unheeded.
On Tuesday, the procurement subcommittee supported an extra $3.2 billion for weapons, including an additional $1 billion to build ships for a total of $73.4 billion. Last week, a separate panel added $1 billion for military construction, which on Bush's schedule was to have dropped to $4.8 billion from $6.5 billion.
Additionally, the research and development subcommittee approved a small $21 million extra Tuesday to the administration's request for missile defense, to $7.8 billion.
House lawmakers also have endorsed increasing active-duty troop levels in the four services by a total of about 12,650 personnel, or about 1 percent, the largest since 1986. The administration sought no increase in the current force of 1.4 million.
``We are beginning to turn the corner in the need to establish strength in our defense capabilities,'' said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.
The overall bill would also begin allowing military retirees to collect disability benefits on top of retirement pay; accelerate development of pilotless planes for surveillance and attack; provide billions more for a new generation of stealth jet fighters; earmark $27 billion for fighting terrorism; and boost military pay by at least 4.1 percent.
It was expected to reach the House floor next week, just as the Senate Armed Services Committee begins work on its version. Congressional appropriators also must write separate appropriations legislation before the money can be spent.
The increase for shipbuilding came after lawmakers from shipbuilding states such as Mississippi, Maine and Virginia complained about Bush's proposal for only five new warships next year.
Part of the extra $1 billion would pay for one additional ship, a guided missile destroyer, but only if a proposed settlement to a 9-year-old lawsuit is approved.
The lawsuit involves a 1991 decision by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to cancel a Navy project to build the A-12 radar-evading jet. General Dynamics Corp. and Boeing Co., which acquired the other original contractor, McDonnell Douglas Corp., sued two years later.
Without the settlement, the remaining extra funds would be redirected to other shipbuilding priorities, such as nuclear submarine refueling, Weldon said. A Justice Department spokesman would not comment, and a Navy spokesman did not immediately return a call.
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Air Force Pilot Missing After Crash
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-F-15-Crash.html
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AP) -- The Coast Guard suspended its search Wednesday for the pilot of an Air Force F-15C Eagle fighter that crashed in the Gulf of Mexico during a weapons testing flight.
The plane flown by Maj. James A. Duricy, based at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle, crashed Tuesday about 60 miles south of Panama City, Air Force official said. Duricy's age and hometown were not released.
The search area had been expanded to 150 miles offshore earlier Wednesday because of currents and the jet's speed, but it was suspended around midday, said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Jeff Murphy in New Orleans.
Some debris was found and if anything new developed, the search could resume, he said. The Coast Guard has asked boaters to be on the lookout for the pilot.
There was no indication whether the pilot was able to eject, said Col. Dennis Sager, commander of the 46th Test Wing, part of the Air Force's Air Armament Center at Eglin.
The pilot was testing a newly developed air-to-air missile, but the weapon was unarmed and was not to be launched, Sanger said.
A tanker and an F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter also participated in the test, but neither was nearby when the F-15 crashed.
``The first indications that there was something wrong was that the chase aircraft made several radio calls inquiring to the test aircraft and there was no response,'' Sager said at a news conference Tuesday. ``We don't have enough information to know what happened.''
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Pentagon Cuts Back on US Air Patrol
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Air-Patrols.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hundreds of European and American pilots and crew are going home as the Pentagon cuts back on round-the-clock air patrols that have been guarding U.S. cities since Sept. 11.
Improved airport security and other safety measures allowed NATO and the U.S. military to reduce flights that had taxed manpower and equipment.
Officials hastened to say Wednesday that Americans are still safe.
``There are still combat air patrols,'' said Maj. Barry Venable of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the Colorado-based operation with authority to protect U.S. and Canadian airspace. ``And they were just one component of a comprehensive military air defense.''
Venable refused to confirm that fighter jets have stopped the all-hours flights over New York and Washington started after terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But other defense officials confirmed that the Pentagon a month ago began phasing them out in favor of occasional patrols based on the threat on any given day.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's announced Wednesday that NATO's AWACS early-warning airplanes and crews that have helped by providing radar to the fighters will return home in mid-May.
``I certainly want to express my full appreciation and the appreciation of our country to our NATO allies and to the many dedicated air crews that have helped to defend our country in the immediate aftermath of September 11,'' he told a Pentagon press conference.
He said some 830 crew members from 13 NATO nations had been on patrol, flying some 4,300 hours and over 360 missions. It was the first time NATO had deployed over the continental United States to support a U.S. operation.
Pentagon records seem to indicate a decline in the use of American pilots as well.
The Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard reported this month that more than 1,400 people had been taken off active duty.
National Guard troops had flown many of the patrol missions. Though the figures could reflect a decline in missions over Afghanistan as well, officials said it was safe to say some of those were released due to the decline in air patrols.
Immediately after the attacks, jets were sent up in constant patrols over New York and Washington and randomly scheduled patrols over dozens of other American cities and potential terrorist targets.
Fighters were put on alert at more than two dozen air bases across the country to be scrambled in case of emergency.
The patrols were using 11,000 people and 250 aircraft, including the AWACS and tankers for midair refueling.
After months of the patrols, the military argued for changes. Officials said constant flights no longer were needed and that a large number of jets, pilots, maintenance and other support crews was being diverted from their normal training for combat.
The patrols also cost the Air Force as much as $60 million a week.
A revised system approved by the White House in March meant a change in the location, frequency and intensity of the patrols so they are flexible and dependent on the military's assessment of air threats.
The Pentagon does not want to publicly acknowledge exactly what the system is -- or even that there is a new system -- because it does not want terrorists to know when and where it will fly.
But as an example, officials say, at the highest threat level, a large number of fighters would patrol continuously over many major cities. At the lowest level, some fighters would fly intermittent patrols over randomly selected cities; others would be on short-notice alert.
The fighter pilots still have authority to shoot down a hijacked aircraft.
The new arrangement reflects the fact that security on commercial airliners and at airports -- considered the first line of defense against suicide hijackers -- has been strengthened.
It also reflects shortened response times for fighter jets at various military bases on ``strip alerts'' -- a 15-minute notice for combat duty -- in part because new links between military and Federal Aviation Administration radars give a better picture of potential air threats, officials said.
Regardless of the threat level, intermittent patrols will still be flown over a number of cities and sensitive facilities. Special events such as the World Series that draw tens of thousands of people will draw extra patrols
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Lawmakers wary of sending troops
May 1, 2002
By Dave Boyer and Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020501-16031744.htm
Lawmakers voiced renewed reluctance yesterday about sending U.S. troops to the Middle East as peacekeepers to enforce a negotiated settlement in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"This is a big, big problem, and we are nowhere near peace from what I can see," said Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. "To suggest any kind of troop deployment is ill-advised."
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Texas Republican, said he is concerned about a growing sense of inevitability in Congress that U.S. troops will be required in a peacekeeping role.
"It's not something I would like to see us doing," Mr. Armey said. "I have real reservations. But I do believe that Israel lives in a world where it must first depend upon the United States."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last weekend that calls for a multinational peacekeeping force were "premature," though he didn't rule out the eventual need for such a force.
The Washington Times reported in September that the Army School of Advanced Military Studies had devised a plan for enforcing a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord that would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly created Palestinian state.
At the time, however, there were no plans to put American soldiers in the Middle East to police such an agreement. U.S. troops are part of a multinational peacekeeping force that has patrolled the Sinai desert between Israel and Egypt since those nations signed a peace treaty in 1979.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who said last weekend it "may be the time to send in peacekeepers," yesterday said Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat first must publicly reject terrorism.
"He has to renounce the terror, renounce the suicide bombers and bring some tranquillity, some stability to the region," said Mr. Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. "But I think there would be an interest on the part of the United States [to deploy peacekeepers], so long as both sides are in agreement."
Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the United States should not commit troops "if it's a goal in which we're just putting our people in between the fusillade of bullets."
"There's a difference between peacemaking and peacekeeping," Mr. Graham said. "You have to know the context in which we're being asked to participate. But I'm certain in the future we're going to play a role, and that may include some U.S. personnel on the ground."
But Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has advocated only civilian observers.
"He's never suggested at all that there would be U.S. troops in there, and I think we should be very careful about that," Mr. Lott said. "I'm not sure I would support it anytime soon, anyway."
"We're not there yet," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Before we get to that point, there needs to be a peace to protect."
Mr. Hagel said the Bush administration has "considerable latitude" in sending U.S. troops to the region as peacekeepers but has not indicated to him that such action is imminent.
Many lawmakers say they would support the use of U.S. troops only as part of a NATO peacekeeping force.
"It seems to me that's the solution," said Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Warner said a NATO peacekeeping force composed of Americans and Europeans would be advantageous because the United States is viewed as favoring Israel and Europeans "are perceived as being leaning toward the Palestinian interests."
"The NATO force is the one that should be used, once both parties agree that an outside peacekeeping force must be constituted," he said.
Mr. Santorum said committing U.S. troops apart from a multinational force "would be just inadvisable."
"I'm not a fan of using U.S. troops very many places in a peacekeeping role," Mr. Santorum said. "I just don't think that's what we should be doing. That's what the United Nations can do. We have committed U.S. troops to do peacekeeping in that region in the past; there are some currently stationed there. But I don't think that is necessarily the best role for us in this conflict."
Mr. Warner said a NATO force could defuse a situation that threatens to spin further out of control.
"This conflict could spread beyond the borders now. There could be more tragic killing, and it's impairing, I think, the president's courageous efforts against worldwide terrorism," Mr. Warner said. "So I'm a strong advocate of NATO, in the event that both parties agree to it. NATO goes in, we go in. That's the only option at the moment I think I would support."
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Judge Bars Navy Bombing on Farallon de Medinilla
May 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2002/2002L-05-01-07.html
WASHINGTON, DC, A federal judge has issued an injunction halting all military activities at Farallon de Medinilla that would harm or kill migratory birds.
There are just two breeding colonies of the great frigatebird in the Mariana island chain, one of which is on Farallon de Medinilla. (Bird photos courtesy Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund)
Judge Emmet Sullivan, district judge for the District of Columbia, issued the order in a case brought by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), represented by Earthjustice. CBD had sued the Navy for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) at the island, and on March 13, Judge Sullivan declared that the Navy's use of Farallon de Medinilla violates the law.
The Navy had nevertheless continued to use the island for live fire exercises using bombs, air to ground missiles and other munitions, while acknowledging that the exercises were killing migratory birds.
Sullivan's ruling should put a halt to the training exercises, though the Defense Department is now seeking other avenues, including new legislation, to gain exemptions from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and other environmental laws.
"The Navy is not above the law," said Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff. "This case stands as an important reaffirmation of the separation of powers that is a cornerstone of our democracy."
U.S. Marines storm ashore in a military joint exercise. The U.S. military considers Farallon de Medinilla essential to live fire training exercises. (Photo courtesy LCPL Penny Surdukan, U.S. Marine Corps)
Located 45 nautical miles north of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the 200 acre island is long and narrow with dramatic ocean cliffs. Uninhabited by humans, Farallon de Medinilla hosts breeding colonies of great frigatebirds; masked, red-footed, and brown boobys; red- and white-tailed tropicbirds; white and sooty terns; brown and black noddys; and other species of migratory seabirds.
Farallon de Medinilla is one of only two small breeding colonies of the great frigatebird in the Mariana island chain, and is also the largest known nesting site for masked boobies in the Mariana and Caroline islands.
Since 1976, the Navy, together with other branches of the U.S. military, has used Farallon de Medinilla and a three mile buffer around the island for target practice throughout the year.
The military uses the island for live fire training, during which bombers drop 500, 750, and 2000 pound bombs, precision guided munitions and mines. Naval ships fire deck mounted guns, using high explosive, point detonating rounds, at the island, and aircraft fire machine guns, cannons and missiles at Farallon de Medinilla.
Farallon de Medinilla hosts the largest known nesting site for masked boobies in the Mariana and Caroline Islands.
The Navy says that procedures are in place to help limit the impact of the training exercises on the island. But not surprisingly, birds are sometimes killed during these exercises.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) is one of the nation's oldest conservation laws. Enacted in 1918, it implements international treaties between the U.S., Japan, Russia, Mexico and Canada designed to "save from indiscriminate slaughter and insure the preservation of such migratory birds as are either useful to man or harmless."
The MBTA makes it "unlawful at any time, by any means or in any manner," to, among other prohibited actions, "pursue, hunt, take, capture, [or] kill" any migratory bird included in the terms of the treaties without a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
The USFWS turned down the Navy's 1996 application for a permit to bomb FDM. The Navy did not appeal or reapply, but continued to bomb the island.
Sooty terns soar over Farallon de Medinilla.
Although the Navy argued to the court that uninterrupted use at Farallon de Medinilla is vital to national defense, the court noted the testimony of military officers that other facilities exist that could meet the military's training needs.
The battle to protect Farallon de Medinilla will likely not end here, however. Last week, the Department of Defense submitted to Congress a sweeping proposal to exempt military activities from the MBTA, along with many other environmental laws. The Defense Department has more than 25 million acres of land under its jurisdiction.
Between them, these lands host most of the migratory bird species in the U.S. during some period of the year. Environmental groups say the proposed exemptions could leave many of these hundreds of species, and their habitat, vulnerable to unchecked pollution and active destruction.
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Bioterror Bill Awakens Opponents
Passage-Bound Legislation Would Give State Broad Powers In A Biological Terror Attack
May 1, 2002
Hartford Courant (Connecticut)
By CARRIE BUDOFF, Courant Staff Writer
http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-smallpox0501.artmay01.story?coll=hc%2Dheadlines%2Dhome
It sounds like a science fiction plot. Smallpox rips through a community. Public health officials order the quarantine and vaccination of an entire city. The governor suspends laws and seizes property.
Those broad powers are part of a bill gliding through the General Assembly that expands governmental authority during a bioterrorist attack. The bill created barely a whisper of opposition from legislators as it passed through three committees with near-unanimous votes.
But word of the bill is now setting off alarm bells with a variety of constituencies: Christian Scientists, civil libertarians, naturopaths, parents and former military officials.
As the bill heads for a floor vote in the House of Representatives, it could offer the clearest test of the delicate balancing act between civil liberties and governmental powers in this post-Sept. 11 world.
"It is beyond our comprehension to think any of these powers are necessary, but so was the [attack on the] World Trade Center," said Rep. Mary Eberle, D-Bloomfield, co-chairwoman of the public health committee. "We are contemplating things we wouldn't use except in the most dire situations."
The bill would give officials temporary power to, among other things:
Quarantine entire municipalities to prevent the spread of disease.
Transport, store and dispose of corpses.
Seize biological agents.
Vaccinate anybody believed to be at risk, with the only option for appeal being a court hearing within 48 hours.
The debate is playing out nationally as states grope for ways to prepare for the unthinkable - the unleashing of smallpox, Ebola or some other highly contagious and lethal disease-causing organism. Similar bills, based on model legislation developed with the input of various national public health and legal experts, have been introduced in legislatures across the country.
The legislation in Connecticut, for the most part, expands powers that are already in statutes. Local health directors may currently vaccinate or quarantine people, but the law deals with isolated cases and does not address the types of catastrophes public officials now fear. For example, in a penalty far from a deterrent by today's standards, any person who refuses a vaccine under current law would face a $5 fine.
The vaccination provision has generated the most strident response because, unlike other areas of state law, the legislation has no exemptions for religious or medical reasons. However, that could change. Eberle said Tuesday that exceptions may be inserted into the bill because of numerous requests from legislators.
In recent weeks, lawmakers have been hearing more often from people like Pramila Vishvanath, a Fairfield naturopath and president of the Connecticut Society of Naturopathic Physicians who believes the body has an innate way of boosting its immune system without the aid of vaccines.
There's Rodman A. Savoye, of the Christian Science Committee on Publication for Connecticut, who has quietly told lawmakers that the bill is an imposition on the right to practice that religion.
And then there's Lisa Reiss, who is president of the Connecticut Vaccine Information Alliance, but more importantly a mother whose daughter had a reaction to a hepatitis B vaccine just after birth.
"We do not believe that public health and the right to personal liberty need to be mutually exclusive," Reiss said. Other options exist, she said, such as home confinement.
The opponents began raising their collective voice as the bill crept further and further through this session's legislative process without a hint of dissension from lawmakers. The quiet response has as much to do with the need-to-do-something mentality following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and anthrax scare as the culture of the legislature. A flood of bills wash across lawmakers' desks, a portion of which they don't study until a floor vote.
Even legislators who backed religious exemptions in the past found themselves supporting the bill as it moved through committees. They said they felt the need to react.
"We will be talking about extreme examples when most of the normal yardsticks do not apply," said Rep. Andrew M. Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, a public health committee member. "If we are facing an epidemic like the Black Plague, my guess is the normal rules don't apply."
From a public health standpoint, the usual rules should not apply, said Patricia Checko, a former president of the Connecticut Association of Directors of Health.
The point of vaccines and quarantines is to stop the spread of disease, she said. "This is something that just doesn't affect the person opting out. They put many people at risk," Checko said. "One of the things public health is all about is, at some point, community rights and community risks outweigh individual rights. This is one of those situations."
Lawmakers hope to see the bill passed before May 8, the last day of the session. Now it's a question of coming to an agreement on the final language.
"A conscious balance can be made," said Teresa Younger, executive director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union.
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"Detainees," "Unauthorized Combatants," "Pirates," et cetera
by Joseph R. Stromberg,
May 1, 2002
http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg33.html
The Bush II Administration has experienced, or created, some confusion in the matter of prisoners taken in the ongoing "war." This is not entirely without antecedents, some of them tracing back to our very own War of the Roses (floruit 1861-1865). I refer of course to the War of Secession.
All my life I have heard the question, posed by outsiders, "Why do they keep fighting that old war?" It is a good question, especially in the form, "Why do Yankees keep fighting that old war?" I can say this with little rancor and with no wish, right now, to open up debate on the merits of the case and whether the better side won, and so on.
The All-Changed Post-9/11 climate has raised this question in new ways and whittled it down to a point sharper than the average Neo-Con's wit. Within days of Nine Eleven, sundry pundits, historians, and neo-cons without portfolio were appealing to the "best" in American traditions, with the "best" understood as a truckload of post- or supra-constitutional abuses undertaken in major wars by strong presidents. Much was heard of Abraham Lincoln conjuring up numerous ways of dealing with dissent and opposition, while brooding over his duty to re-found the union. These ways are now gilded, or at least brazen, "precedents."
There were allusions to the 15,000 or so "Copperheads" imprisoned without warrant, charges, or any hint of legal ground, in the north. Suspension of the Bill of Rights was mooted. Less was said about prisoners of war, until numbers of captured Taliban began turning up in Cuba in those moronic orange jumpsuits. There were those who brought up the Geneva Convention, but the administration waved that aside while simultaneously juggling several theories about the status of the... no one knows... "detainees," perhaps.
All this brings me to the colorful memoirs of Admiral Raphael Semmes, CSN, best known as Captain of the very successful Confederate raider, Alabama. I should preface this section by saying that, as an advocate of free markets and commerce, I do not regard attacks on private property and shipping as a really good idea, even - or especially - in wartime. (See my comments on Gustave de Molinari's views.) On the other hand, all the powers thought differently in the mid-19th century and Mr. Lincoln's government had set the standard with a draconian blockade of Southern ports, which has some resemblance to the US embargo of Cuba. Given these facts, I am not going to worry as much about Confederate commerce raiders as I otherwise might.
In the hands of someone like Semmes, such naval operations were carried out with maximum adherence to the rules. Some have found him the model of absurdly outmoded punctilio on the grounds, one reckons, that Total War was the wave of the future and that the Future must always be embraced. That's progress, you know. If the old rules said that a raider must utter a particular formula, treat those on board an enemy ship with a certain respect, and stand by to aid those in danger of drowning once a battle was over, Semmes followed them.
This helps explain Semmes's indignation over the other side's pragmatic outlook, as displayed upon the sinking of the Alabama by the USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg on the English Channel on June 19, 1864. It wasn't just that he lost his ship; there were principles at stake. I shall not discuss the battle; Semmes does that ably and with great style.
It is enough to say that, with his ship damaged beyond hope of escape or recovery, Semmes struck his colors. He writes: "The Alabama was sunk in open daylight - the enemy's ship being only 400 yards distant - and ten of my men were permitted to drown. Indeed, but for the friendly interposition of the Deerhound, there is no doubt that a great many more would have perished" (Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States (reprint, 1987), p. 759).
This was in direct violation of the existing rules of naval warfare. John A. Winslow, Captain of the Kearsarge, excused himself by reporting that he had feared a Confederate "ruse." Writing to advise Charles Francis Adams, US Minister to London, on what he should say to Lord John Russell, US Secretary of State William H. Seward said, "it was the right of the Kearsarge that the pirates should drown," unless they somehow saved themselves, or were saved by the Kearsarge as a matter of policy, but in any case "without the aid of the Deerhound" (p. 762, Semmes's italics).
Semmes says, rather dryly, "the American war developed 'grand moral ideas,' and Mr. Seward's, about the drowning of prisoners, was one of them" (p. 776).
That Semmes and his crew were prisoners was the natural assumption of the pragmatic union-savers. Charles Francis Adams, a real son of a President, wrote Secretary Seward on June 21 in some excitement, complaining about the "conduct of the Deerhound" and asking whether he could demand "the surrender of the prisoners" (p. 765). A private vessel had rescued drowning men, taken them ashore in a neutral country, and the US representatives wanted "their prisoners"! There was really nothing to be said.
Shortly, Adams got his instructions and made his demands. Lord John Russell's reply performed, in effect, an indelicate surgery on Adams. As if politely correcting an especially dull schoolboy, Russell restated the prevailing rules of naval engagement and concluded that the captain of an English yacht "was not under any obligation to deliver to the captain of the Kearsarge the officers and men whom he had rescued from the waves" (p. 766). Russell rubbed in salt by saying that there was no treaty between the US and Britain applicable to the case.
Semmes held that as the Kearsarge never had his crew in hand, the latter were never prisoners.
The union-saves maintained that if they had accorded belligerent status to the Confederacy in any respect, this flowed solely from their great kindness or their considered policy. At sea, the Northern government took the line that Confederate raiders were mere "pirates." Semmes comments: "It did not occur to the wily Secretary, that, if we were 'pirates,' it was as competent for Great Britain to deal with us as the United States; and that, on this very ground, his claim for extradition might be denied..." (p. 778).
Seward intimated that John Lancaster, owner of the Deerhound, had been turned from his duty to hand over the "prisoners" by money tendered him by Semmes. The latter comments that it "was quite natural" for Seward to "suppose that money and stealings had had something to do with Mr. Lancaster's generous conduct. The whole American war, on the Yankee side, has been conducted on this principle of giving and receiving a 'consideration' and on 'stealings'" (p. 779).
It mattered a great deal to Semmes whether or not he and his men were prisoners, even in theory. For in the Northern government's mind, they would not have been real prisoners of war, but pirates liable to be hanged. The US government has had difficulty, at times, with the existing rules of war.
The Spaniards were a real enemy in 1898, but the Filipinos in the so-called Philippine Insurrection (the sequel) were bandits to be killed out of hand. In World War I, the US treated Germans as real soldiers but compensated for this by treating the German government as illegitimate. At best, there has been a certain reluctance on the part of the United States to accord its enemies any legitimacy. That reluctance reflects a kind of moral imperialism whose first great victory was over the Southern states. But it makes it hard for policy-makers to decide just what the status of defeated, captured enemies is.
Just imagine: All that moral grandeur embodied in one government, and one government alone.
I have only pointed out a persistent syndrome. Am I comparing Confederates and Taliban? I think not. Anyway, a host of northern writers and pundits have been doing just that ever since 9/11. Mr.Victor Davis Hanson can't let a day pass without praising General Sherman for burning and looting his way across Georgia and South Carolina. (As if to prove my point, he has issued another NRO medal to Sherman in his column of April 30.) Other kindly souls have taken to calling Confederates "terrorists" and recommending Mr. Lincoln's brazen usurpations of power to meet the present situation. I suppose it's their idea of reasoning by historical analogy. Nonetheless, they have set the terms of discussion.
I do wish those fellows would quit fightin' that old war.
Joseph R. Stromberg is holder of the JoAnn B. Rothbard Chair in History at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a columnist for LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com.
----
Prison Guards Convicted in Beating
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Prisoner-Beating.html
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Three prison guards were convicted and three others found innocent Wednesday in the beating of an inmate planning to snitch on one of their own.
Donti Hunter, 20, was punched and kicked by guards at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, according to testimony. He required 19 stitches to close cuts on his scalp and face.
Former prison guards Reginald Steptoe, 38, and Cornell Tyler, 39, were found guilty of depriving Hunter of his civil rights in the March 1999 beating. Two other guards, Albert Payne, 39, and Anthony Black, 33, were found innocent of the same charges.
The jury found now-retired prison Sgt. Dennis Hardeman, 60, innocent of charges he did nothing to stop the beating. Glen Guadalupe, 40, who was deputy warden of the prison at the time, was found guilty of one count of obstruction of justice and innocent of another count of obstruction.
All six defendants were found innocent of conspiracy charges.
Guadalupe faces 24 to 30 months in prison; Steptoe and Tyler each face 57 to 71 months. Sentencing was scheduled for September.
The guards said the fight broke out after Hunter attempted to flush marijuana down the toilet in his cell during a shakedown. Hunter admitted trying to flush the marijuana but said he was beaten in retaliation for his planned testimony against a prison guard who allegedly helped him escape from a youth facility in the mid-1990s, prosecutors said.
Hunter is serving a 10-year sentence for heading a violent drug gang. He is now in a federal prison in Lewisburg.
--------
More Detainees Arrive in Guantanamo
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Guantanamo-Prison.html
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- Shackled and wearing orange jumpsuits and goggles, 32 detainees arrived on this bleak outpost Wednesday -- the first large group of arrivals in more than two months.
The detainees were led off the C-17 military plane as a battalion of guards and soldiers in riot gear backed by armed Humvees stood by on alert.
The detainees waddled off the plane in groups of four led by guards, who checked for contraband in their shoes, mouths and jumpsuits. Two fell to their knees as guards kicked their legs apart. It was unclear whether the men struggled first with the guards.
Journalists were allowed to watch the arrivals from about 100 yards away but were not allowed to film the event.
The arrivals bring the total number of detainees to 332 from more than 30 countries at Camp Delta, the permanent prison where they will be held until authorities decide whether to send them back to their homelands or try them for unspecified crimes in military tribunals.
``It appears we had a very smooth and efficient operation,'' said Maj. James Bell, a spokesman for the detention mission.
The new arrivals come as the U.S. government intensifies its interrogation process, hoping to further its search for renegade Taliban and al-Qaida members and the elusive Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile the United States blames for the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
``From an interrogation seat, all the appropriate steps and measures are being taken to turn the interrogations up a notch,'' Capt. Riccoh Player, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an interview Tuesday.
White buses shuttled the detainees to a ferry that carried them to the seaside Camp Delta.
Until last weekend, detainees had been staying at Camp X-ray, a makeshift facility of chain-link cells where the men could see and communicate with each other. They could also shout complaints at visiting journalists who were driven around the camp perimeter.
At Camp Delta, the men have less contact with each other. Except for a window in each cell, the camp is cloaked by netting. Journalists no longer can see the inmates.
Officials think the isolation may make them talk, Player said.
Since the first prisoners arrived in January, the population has grown to represent at least 33 nationalities. Detainees speak several languages and dialects and represent at least two religions, Islam and Christianity.
It was unclear whether more nationalities were represented with Wednesday's arrivals.
The last detainee to arrive at the outpost on Cuba's eastern tip was a lone detainee the Zambian government had handed over.
Few details were available on the captive, who arrived April 20, other than he was in good medical condition. He was the only prisoner to be flown to Guantanamo Bay alone. The others came in groups of about 30 in a series of flights in January and February.
On April 5, Yasser Esam Hamdi, the only known American-born prisoner brought to Guantanamo, was flown back to the United States.
Hamdi, 22, was captured with fighters of the former ruling Taliban militia and the al-Qaida terrorist network. He was removed from Guantanamo after records showed he was born in the United States.
-------- terrorism
Reports: Turkey target for terrorists
May 1, 2002
By Andrew Borowiec
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020501-68460586.htm
NICOSIA, Cyprus - Turkey has been listed as a high-priority target for terrorist attacks by agents recruited across the Middle East and trained in Iranian camps, according to diplomatic reports.
The objective of the reported Iranian plan is to destabilize Turkey, Washington's key ally in the region and a country plagued by economic difficulties and guerrilla war by Kurdish separatists.
The United States regards Iran as one of the countries sponsoring international terrorism. In recent weeks, Iran has intensified verbal attacks on Washington for its support of Israel.
Last week, President Mohammed Khatami charged that "radical warmongers" in the United States wanted to widen conflicts in the region to justify U.S. military presence and to help to Israel.
The reports of plans targeting Turkey are largely based on information from Iranians applying for visas for travel to the United States at the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus.
They coincide with a lengthy statement by exiled Iranian opponents, outlining an intricate recruitment and training program of potential terrorists. The program is said to be under the direct supervision of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.
A statement issued by the People's Mojahedin, an Iranian opposition group operating in Western Europe, mentions Turkey as a potential target, along with several Muslim countries in the region.
They include Pakistan, Lebanon, Algeria and Tunisia.
Earlier this year, U.S. diplomatic sources in the Middle East said Iran had stepped up supplies of arms and explosives to extremist Islamic groups in Lebanon.
The People's Mojahedin, considered by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization "not compatible with U.S. values," has been waging a long propaganda campaign against the Islamic regime in Iran. U.S. suspicions of the group are based on the regional support it receives from Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.
Nonetheless, U.S. officials acknowledge that the People's Mojahedin is the leading opposition force with contacts across Iran's entire political spectrum.
Some of the group's information distributed to selected media outlets has been corroborated by defectors and diplomatic sources in Tehran.
In February and March 2000, the Mojahedin said it was the perpetrator of bomb and mortar attacks close to the presidential palace and a base of the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran, which injured several people.
The group's latest statement said that activities against Turkey are planned by the "Third Corps" of the "Qods Force," which handles "external operations" consisting of exporting terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism to selected countries.
U.S. specialists in the area are familiar with the force, its objectives and methods.
As far as Turkey is concerned, according to the Mojahedin, the specific task of the Third Corps is to "interfere in Turkish affairs" and "establish contact with Kurdish groups opposed to the Turkish government."
The Mojahedin statement says training of potential terrorists by Iran has not diminished after September's terrorist attacks in the United States.
It quoted an unnamed member of the Qods Force as saying: "After September 11, our activities have become more sensitive. It was decided that until the turmoil cools off, we should have higher security as far as the selection of individuals brought in for training is concerned."
The Mojahedin also indicated that 50 volunteers from countries such as Pakistan and Morocco are undergoing terrorist training in Iran, including preparation for suicide attacks, kidnapping, hijacking planes and hostage taking.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Ontario Fosters Cross-Border Electricity Trade
May 1, 2002
By BERNARD SIMON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/business/worldbusiness/01POWE.html
TORONTO - The ties that bind the United States and Canada will become a little tighter this week when the province of Ontario, home to more than a third of all Canadians and 40 percent of Canada's economic activity, throws open its electricity market.
The move, which is described as deregulation but in reality keeps the market tightly regulated under different rules, will make it easier for American and Canadian power companies to sell their electricity across the border.
The closer integration of the two countries' power grids will reinforce the growing trade and investment that have resulted from a 1988 bilateral free trade deal, which was bolstered six years later by the North American Free Trade Agreement, which also includes Mexico.
Several smaller Canadian provinces, including British Columbia and Quebec, are already allowing electricity imports from the United States.
"It doesn't matter whether there's a maple leaf or the Stars and Stripes on an electron," said Michael Hobbs, director of marketing at the Mirant Corporation, an Atlanta-based energy trading and supply group. Mirant has set up an operation in Toronto to trade electricity both within Canada and across the border. It owns 2,500 megawatts of generating capacity in New York and Michigan, and it plans to sell any surplus electricity to Ontario. "It's a great fit for us," Mr. Hobbs said.
The Canadians see things much the same way. "Ontario sits snugly at the center of the Northeast and Midwest," said Graham Brown, chief operating officer at Ontario Power Generation, based in Toronto. "It's a natural place for electricity trade to take place." Ontario Power Generation's assets include two of the continent's biggest nuclear power plants.
Ontario's provincial government took the first step toward a more open marketplace three years ago by breaking up Ontario Hydro, a nonprofit power supply monopoly.
Ontario Hydro's plants went to the newly created Ontario Power Generation, known as O.P.G., while another new company, Hydro One, took over the transmission network. To help make the companies attractive to potential outside investors, the province took over more than half of Ontario Hydro's $24 billion in debt and pension liabilities.
Under the new rules, which take effect on May 1, other suppliers can sell electricity in Ontario on long-term contracts or on the spot market. On the buying side, utilities, big industrial users and a new group of electricity retailers will compete for supplies.
To grease the wheels of competition, Ontario Power Generation must give up control over at least 4,000 megawatts of price-setting generating capacity, out of a total of 24,700 megawatts, over the next three and a half years. By 2012, the company can control no more than 35 percent of the province's electricity supply.
Ontario Power Generation began the process in 2000 by announcing an 18-year lease of its Bruce nuclear station, on the shores of Lake Huron, to British Energy, based in Edinburgh, and the Cameco Corporation, Canada's biggest uranium producer.
Some consumer groups and trade unions have protested the move to open markets geared toward profit, saying that consumers will have to pay higher rates and local industries will be hurt.
The government has sought to allay such fears by capping the price at which Ontario Power Generation sells 70 percent of its power at 3.8 Canadian cents a kilowatt-hour, compared with the current market price of just over 4 Canadian cents. Distributors are also subject to price controls.
Still, the opponents successfully petitioned a court this month to stall the planned privatization of Hydro One. The company had scheduled an initial public offering, expected to raise about 5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.2 billion), for mid-June, but a judge ruled that the law setting up Hydro One did not give the province authority to sell it. The government has said it will appeal. In any case, it plans to amend the law so the privatization can proceed later in the year.
An Ontario Power Generation offering is likely at some point, but no timetable has been set.
As both companies gear up for competition on their home turf, they are casting their eyes southward. In its preliminary stock offering prospectus, Hydro One highlights the consolidation of the American power industry and Ontario's proximity to the most heavily populated and industrialized regions of the United States.
The company recently received approval from United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build an underwater cable across Lake Erie to link the Canadian and American power transmission grids. The project is expected to be completed in summer 2004.
FERC has also licensed Ontario Power Generation to sell power in the United States. "We're not just ready for interregional trade," Mr. Brown said. "We're positively hungry for it."
With low-cost hydroelectric power making up a sizable chunk of their generating capacity, Canadian utilities have a significant edge over their American rivals. "O.P.G. will make more money exporting electricity than selling it here," said Andrew J. Roman, a lawyer specializing in energy issues at Miller Thomson in Toronto.
To overcome that disadvantage, some American companies are building their own power plants north of the border. Sithe Energies of New York, for instance, is spending about $958 million to put up two natural gas plants in the Toronto area, with a combined generating capacity of 1,700 megawatts.
But the opportunities could be limited by an expected surplus of electricity over the next few years, resulting in part from Ontario Power Generation's putting one of its big nuclear plants back in service after a five-year shutdown
Political sensitivities are also an issue.
In a recent speech, Ronald Osborne, the chief executive of Ontario Power Generation, said that anyone advocating a smaller role for his company should ask whether there was "a value in having electricity decisions made in Ontario, rather than turning electricity generation into a branch-plant industry, with all major decisions made outside our borders."
-------- environment
Pesticide contaminant found in Florida aquifer
05/01/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/01/florida-pesticide.htm
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Central Florida's main source of drinking water contains traces of a potentially toxic chemical leaking from a former Superfund cleanup site, officials said.
Environmental Protection Agency officials hope to identify the pollutant in the coming weeks and determine its health risk, the Orlando Sentinel reported in Wednesday's editions.
The substance, composed of pesticide molecules long classified as toxic, seeped into the ground below the abandoned Tower Chemical Co. plant, roughly a dozen miles west of Orlando.
The pollutant then traveled through a sinkhole 90 feet underground into the Floridan Aquifer, a layer of porous rock from which most of the region draws its drinking water.
EPA officials don't know how far the chemical might spread.
So far, most of the contamination is within 100 feet of the sinkhole, said EPA site manager Galo Jackson, of Atlanta. Minute traces were also found in drinking water wells of several nearby homes.
The crumbling factory sits about a half-mile from a subdivision of more than 350 homes.
Tower Chemical, which operated from 1957 to 1980, produced chlorobenzilate, used by the citrus industry to kill rust mites. In its final year, the company also extracted chemicals from DDT, which had been banned as a pesticide in 1972.
The site's $6 million cleanup ended 10 years ago. About $15 million worth of work originally slated to remove more pollutants was deemed unnecessary.
-------- genetics
Don't Shun Genetic Research, W.H.O. Advises Poor Lands
New York Times
May 1, 2002
By PHILIP J. HILTS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/science/01WHO.html
Despite their pressing, immediate health needs, developing countries should devote some time and money to keeping up with genetic research because of its promise in battling the diseases most important in the third world, the World Health Organization said in a report released yesterday.
The report, "Genomics and World Health," is the first major study to address the question whether developing countries should stick to health care basics or to devote resources to genomics research.
"Some of the claims for the medical benefits of genomics have undoubtedly been exaggerated," the report says, but a review of the evidence suggests that major advances in health will come from the study of genomes and they may not necessarily involve sophisticated technology and lots of money. Some might be cheap diagnostic tests and effective but relatively inexpensive vaccines or treatments for major diseases.
Dr. Barry Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the contributors to the report, said it was essential that developing countries begin to take advantage of genome research. "If you improve the health of a nation, its economy improves," he said.
The W.H.O. report noted that health research for developing countries is lagging. "Of the 1,233 new drugs marketed between 1975 and 1999," it says, "only 13 were approved specifically for tropical diseases." Six of the 13 were developed not by pharmaceutical companies, but by W.H.O. itself.
"Developing countries cannot rely on the largely market-driven research agenda of the developed countries to address their health needs," the report says.
Dr. Tikki Pang, director of research policy cooperation at the World Health Organization, said that "the first and most expensive step has already been taken: the results of genome research are publicly available.
"So scientists in developing countries can now use that to pursue creatively the needs of their own countries," he said.
The report gave many examples of genome work that has already demonstrated possible health benefits for the developing world. One of the DNA projects yielded quick results when researchers at Justus Liebig University in Germany used DNA sequence information from the malaria parasite to show that a new drug for malaria with few toxic effects in humans was possible. The group found that a drug that met the requirements, fosmidomycin, existed, tested it and began trying it in human clinical experiments in near-record time: it took two years from lab to human experiments, a quarter of the time companies usually take for early development.
Similarly, possible new vaccines against one organism that causes meningitis, and against the organism that causes tuberculosis have also been created with genome work.
Work in Latin America has demonstrated that disease testing can be made simpler and cheaper in developing countries by using technology called P.C.R. (for polymerase chain reaction) to decipher DNA codes. Tests for dengue fever and leishmaniasis used by local scientists in several Latin American countries proved effective and far cheaper than their commercial counterparts, the report said.
Numerous other diseases are candidates for such simplified DNA testing, the report said.
Work on the genomes of humans and disease organisms in the more distant future may also prove valuable in identifying patients who are susceptible to certain diseases, or are more likely by virtue of their genes to be susceptible to certain drug treatments.
The report noted that in the future it may also be possible to alter genes in organisms that carry diseases, such as the mosquitoes that spread malaria.
--------
Method May Transform Cells Without Cloning
May 1, 2002
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/science/01CELL.html
A team of scientists from Norway and the United States say they are developing a technique that transforms one type of cell from the body into another type without using cloning or embryonic stem cells.
The scientists say they have made human skin cells in a test tube behave as if they were immune system cells, by bathing the skin cells in extracts of the immune cells. In more preliminary work, they have been able to get skin cells to behave as if they were nerve cells.
"We can take a skin cell from your body and turn it directly into a cell type that you need to treat a particular disease," said Dr. Philippe Collas, the leader of the team, whose work is being published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
"The message here is we are developing an entirely new approach to tissue replacement therapy that avoids many of the issues" related to cloning, Dr. Collas said.
But Dr. Collas, a researcher at the University of Oslo Medical School and chief scientific officer of Nucleotech, a biotechnology company in Westport, Conn., conceded that the skin cells were not completely transformed into other types of cells. Other experts said it remained to be seen how complete and long-lasting a transformation could be achieved.
"It's an interesting step," said Dr. M. Azim Surani, a professor of developmental biology at Cambridge University. "It still would need quite a bit of work to be able to use it in a practical sense."
Still, if such a technique could be perfected, it could have a big impact, not only in medicine but perhaps in the political and ethical debate over cloning.
Many scientists hope to use embryonic stem cells to generate tissues like new brain cells to treat Parkinson's disease or cardiac muscle to repair damaged hearts. One way to generate the embryos needed for stem cells is by so-called therapeutic cloning, in which a cell from a patient, like a skin cell, is fused with a woman's egg that has had its nucleus removed. But use of embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning are controversial because they require the destruction of the early stage human embryos, which some people see as nascent life.
The technique being developed by Dr. Collas would allow skin cells from a patient to be turned directly into other types of cells without having to revert first to an embryonic state and without needing women's eggs.
Dr. Jose Cibelli, vice president for research at Advanced Cell Technology, a rival, said Dr. Collas's technique could be a breakthrough that would be easier than therapeutic cloning. But Dr. Cibelli said tissues made by therapeutic cloning might have a longer life than cells made directly from skin cells, because reverting to the embryonic state appeared to rejuvenate cells.
The Senate is now debating whether to ban all cloning, including therapeutic cloning. Mary Cannon, executive director of Stop Human Cloning, an advocacy group, said the new work showed that tissues could be generated from adult cells without the need to destroy embryos.
But Michael Werner, vice president for bioethics at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group that opposes a ban, said the new work was not advanced enough to make it a sure substitute for therapeutic cloning.
Dr. Collas's work is based on the fact that all the body's cells have the same genes, but different genes are active in different types of cells.
Dr. Collas's team took skin cells known as fibroblasts and poked microscopic holes in their membranes using chemicals. The skin cells were then immersed for an hour or two in a soup made of extracts of immune cells known as T cells. The skin cells were then removed and the pores were sealed with calcium.
It appears that some T-cell proteins that turn on particular genes migrated from the soup into the skin cells. Certain genes that are active in T cells became active in the skin cells, while some genes normally active in skin cells became inactive, he said. The skin cells also produced certain surface molecules, known as receptors, that are characteristic of immune cells. The effect lasted several weeks.
Still, it is unclear whether skin cells that display the behavior of T cells or nerve cells would actually function that way in the body or would be useful for therapy.
--------
Hatch backs limited cloning research
May 1, 2002
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020501-586723.htm
Supporters of cloning research gained an important ally yesterday when pro-life Sen. Orrin G. Hatch announced his support for legislation that would allow such research but outlaw efforts to create the first cloned infant.
The Senate bill unites similar bills in an effort to compete against a House-passed measure introduced in the Senate by Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, and supported by President Bush, that would outlaw the cloning of human embryos for any purpose, including medical research.
"We must craft a law to make sure that human beings are not cloned," Mr. Hatch, Utah Republican, said at a press conference about the bill. "At the same time, we must not stand in the way of scientific advances that hold the promise of treatments and cures."
Mr. Hatch said he comes to the debate "with a strong pro-life, pro-family record. But I also strongly believe that a critical part of being pro-life is to support measures that help the living."
The Senate is expected to debate the issue before the Memorial Day recess at the end of May.
Mr. Hatch joined Sens. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat; Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat; Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican; and Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, in introducing the bill. It would prohibit people from implanting or attempting to implant the product of nuclear transplantation in a uterus or the equivalent of a uterus, to conduct human cloning.
"Nuclear transplantation," or somatic-cell nuclear transfer, is the cloning procedure. It consists of removing the nucleus from a donated egg and inserting in its place the nucleus of a body cell, such as a skin cell.
In so-called reproductive cloning, which the bill would outlaw, the early stage embryo that results from the nuclear transfer is nurtured to the point that it can be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother to develop. There is broad support to outlaw this procedure.
But in medical-research cloning or therapeutic cloning, which the bill would permit, the development of the resulting primitive embryo, or blastula, is halted as soon as a cluster of stem cells develops. The stem cells are then harvested for research purposes.
The Brownback bill would ban both types of cloning.
Proponents of medical-research cloning say it is not human cloning because it does not produce an infant. "Nuclear transplantation research has nothing to do with cloning humans," Mrs. Feinstein said.
Some also argue that the cloning procedure does not produce a human embryo because it does not involve sperm. Most importantly, they say, it could hold the key to curing a host of ailments because stem cells derived through human cloning theoretically could be used to produce tissues that would match the patient's DNA and thus would not be rejected by the body.
"We must not let the misplaced fears of today deny patients the cures of tomorrow," Mr. Kennedy said at the press conference.
Mr. Hatch agreed that banning the research would be a "tragic mistake" that would force Americans overseas for the latest treatments.
But supporters of the Brownback bill say the facts prove that the cloning procedure does produce a human embryo and that it should not be destroyed in the name of science.
"Cloning is cloning is cloning," Mr. Brownback said. "Whether the use of the cloning procedure is employed for the purposes of bringing a clone to live birth or for the purposes of destroying it during research it is still wrong."
"This bill does not prohibit the creation of cloned humans; it allows human cloning but then requires the death of each cloned human embryo," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, in response to the bill.
Mr. Hatch said a key part of his decision to support the bill was his belief that human life "requires and begins in a mother's nurturing womb," not a petri dish.
Ken Connor, president of the pro-life Family Research Council, called that view "nonsensical."
"The cloned human embryo Hatch wants to tinker with and destroy for research has all the genetic components that a human embryo inside a mother's womb has. No scientist would argue with that," Mr. Connor said.
Mr. Hatch also noted that there are "safeguards" in the bill to guide the research. The research would be subject to federal ethics guidelines. But he said these safeguards might need clarification.
Mr. Johnson predicted the bill would not become law because the House and Mr. Bush have rejected that approach.
-------- ACTIVISTS
French Rally Against Extreme-Right Leader
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-France-Politics.html
PARIS (AP) -- Well over a million people across France marched against Jean-Marie Le Pen, carrying signs calling the far-right leader a ``Nazi'' and comparing him to Adolf Hitler on Wednesday, just four days before he faces President Jacques Chirac in a race that has mobilized the country.
The marches on the traditional labor holiday of May Day were the culmination of nearly two weeks of public protests following Le Pen's stunning showing in the presidential election's first round.
The largest march was in eastern Paris, centered around the Place de la Bastille, site of the revolutionary-era prison that is a symbol of French democracy. At least 400,000 people of all ages and classes of society chanted anti-Le Pen slogans, held up banners, played instruments or beat drums to reggae beats.
Didier Hughes, 56, an economist, called Le Pen ``a fascist, and so dangerous for France that we all must unite.'' He added: ``I've not seen this kind of atmosphere on the streets for 30 years.''
Elsewhere in France, more than 900,000 others marched in a dozen cities, including Grenoble, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille, Toulouse and Strasbourg.
The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although 12 people were taken into police custody for allegedly having weapons and other minor infractions, authorities said.
``Le Pen is a danger to liberty. We just have to block him,'' said Francois Taquet, 48, of Saint Ouen near Paris.
The anti-Le Pen rallies came after the far-right leader held a much smaller demonstration in Paris to honor his party's heroine, Joan of Arc.
In an annual May Day event that took on added importance this year because of Le Pen's surprise showing, he placed a bouquet of white flowers at a gilded statue of Joan of Arc riding a horse and waving the national flag. For Le Pen's National Front party, the 15th-century peasant girl who led a series of victories against the English is a symbol of French resistance against foreign ``invaders.''
In a speech, Le Pen promised an ``electoral earthquake'' in the election's final round, which Chirac is expected to win easily. ``The ground's going to crumble under their feet,'' he said.
Police and observers estimated the pro-Le Pen crowd at 10,000 to 12,000 people, though Le Pen's party claimed there were as many as 100,000 marchers.
Wednesday, a sunny day in Paris and a national holiday, was the climax of snowballing protests against Le Pen. Last week, in the previous highest turnout, about 350,000 people protested across the nation.
Some 3,500 police, from riot police to plainclothes officers, were deployed in Paris alone.
At the Bastille, good-natured crowds shouting, ``Down with Le Pen!'' packed the square and surrounding side streets. A few people handed out sing-along lyrics mocking the far-right leader.
Thousands carried signs calling Le Pen and his National Front party ``Nazis.'' Many signs were emblazoned with the swastika, and some showed Le Pen with a narrow mustache drawn in, to resemble Adolf Hitler.
``Down with the National Front -- N as in Nazi, F as in fascist,'' protesters chanted.
Some held up posters of Martin Luther King with the caption: ``Don't Break His Dream.''
One demonstrator, 20-year-old Abdoul Fofana, said, ``If Le Pen wins there will be a world war in France.'' Fofana, who came to France from the Ivory Coast 10 years ago, was worried about Le Pen's fiercely anti-immigrant stance.
Some of the protests were combined with traditional May Day labor protests by unions. In Paris, 1,000 marchers from a labor union headed toward the center of town, protesting Le Pen, capitalism and fascism.
A few May Day protests elsewhere in Europe made reference to Le Pen. Dieter Scholz, a German labor union official, drew applause at a rally of about 10,000 people in front of Berlin City Hall when he said: ``Whoever preaches hate and xenophobia has no place in this city, in Germany or in Europe. That is why we declare solidarity with French unions in the campaign against Le Pen.''
At the pro-Le Pen demonstration in Paris, Maurice Dumontot, a 58-year-old retired police brigadier, admitted that ``Le Pen is the unloved candidate.''
``But he's our only chance to put things in order to stop all the crime and have people respect our laws,'' he said.
A few people showed their anger at Le Pen's parade. One family, standing on a balcony above the marchers, hung out a banner that read, simply, ``No.''
On a bridge over the Seine, about 1,000 people honored the memory of a Moroccan man who was drowned by National Front supporters during a rally on May 1, 1995. A group of skinheads at the rally pushed the man, Brahim Bouarram, off the bridge.
Le Pen has been convicted of racism or anti-Semitism five times. He blames immigration, particularly from Muslim North Africa, for unemployment -- which edged up in March to 9.1 percent -- and for rising crime. His success in the April 21 first round of elections stunned France and most of its allies and neighbors.
The far-right leader wants to pull France out of the European Union and return to the franc, the currency abandoned in favor of the euro at the start of this year, as well as deport all illegal immigrants and tighten border controls.
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Police and Activists Clash in May Day Protests
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-May-Day.html
BERLIN (AP) -- Anti-capitalist protesters set cars on fire and hurled rocks and bottles at police, turning Germany into a flashpoint on a day designated for workers but marked worldwide by rallies for a host of causes.
Police in Berlin turned water cannons on masked youths, who went on the rampage as thousands of authorized demonstrators converged on the city's gritty Kreuzberg district, a flashpoint of May Day clashes for the last 15 years. The protesters, self-described anarchists, whooped and screamed as police chased them through streets to one of the district's main squares.
But in many countries, the holiday known in most of the world as labor day was not all about the worker.
In France, more than 1 million people in Paris and other cities turned out to demonstrate against far-right presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.
In London, about 7,000 people marched to Trafalgar Square shouting slogans and carrying banners against everything from global warming to right-wing extremism. An effigy of President Bush was burned to applause.
Protesters in Greece and Turkey proclaimed solidarity with the Palestinians in their bloody struggle with Israel.
``A thousand greetings to the Palestinian resistance,'' read a slogan at a rally in Istanbul, Turkey. In Athens, about 6,000 people marched to the U.S. and Israeli embassies to protest Israel's military incursion into Palestinian areas.
In Russia, May Day served as an occasion to express nostalgia for the past as people turned out for marches carrying red banners and Soviet flags.
At least 140,000 trade union supporters, many holding pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin, rallied in downtown Moscow, while the Communists held a separate rally.
In Zurich, police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse several hundred protesters as opposing leftist and right-wing factions confronted each other in the tidy Swiss financial capital. About 100 people were detained.
Germans also rallied against the homegrown extreme right in several cities including Berlin, where some 800 supporters of the fringe National Democratic Party marched under heavy police guard in a suburb and were heckled by counter-demonstrators shouting ``Nazis out.''
As dusk fell in Berlin, left-wing protesters tested this year's police tactics -- worked out by the city's new left-leaning government -- of showing a restrained street presence. That followed major street battles last year after authorities banned the main leftist May Day demonstration and ordered what critics viewed as heavy-handed policing.
Already the night before, police in Berlin and Hamburg detained a total of about 80 people after overnight clashes with leftist protesters who threw rocks and set street fires. Police used tear gas to break up those protests and said more than 80 officers were injured in Berlin alone. An 18-year-old woman in Berlin was hospitalized with serious injuries after being hit in the head with a bottle during one overnight melee.
In Havana, Cuban President Fidel Castro declared his country to be the world's most democratic and called other Latin American leaders who joined a U.N. vote criticizing Cuba's human rights record hypocritical ``trash'' who he said bowed to U.S. pressure.
Wearing his traditional olive green uniform and cap, Castro delivered a 50-minute speech to a sea of cheering, flag-waving government supporters cramming the Plaza of the Revolution.
In Asia, police clashed with protesters in the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia, while elsewhere workers demonstrated peacefully for better working conditions and higher pay.
Philippine leftist groups used the holiday to protest against the government and U.S. military exercises, while thousands of backers of ousted leader Joseph Estrada marked the first anniversary of their deadly attempt to storm the presidential palace. A grenade explosion killed three people and wounded 50 others in the southern city of Cotabato.
Activists in Sydney, Australia, used May Day to highlight the plight of thousands of asylum seekers kept in detention centers for up to three years while their cases are reviewed. Police on horseback charged demonstrators after 500 people blockaded offices of a company that operates five of the detention centers.
In one of the poorest corners of Europe, workers in Macedonia handed out platefuls of hearty cooked brown beans -- considered a laborer's staple -- in the capital, Skopje, as they demonstrated for an ``end to poverty.'' The country has the highest jobless rate in the Balkans.
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Huge Crowds March in France Against Le Pen
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-france-election.html
PARIS - Jean-Marie Le Pen's opponents took heart from a massive turnout at May Day rallies across France as well over a million people demonstrated their determination to stop the far-right leader becoming president on Sunday.
But for the left, eliminated before Sunday's runoff between the anti-immigrant National Front chief and conservative President Jacques Chirac, it was bittersweet to see 1.3 million marchers at traditional left-wing Labour Day festivals -- since it ironically reinforced expectations of a Chirac landslide.
Chirac and Le Pen will take center stage again on Thursday, with major campaign rallies near Paris and in Marseille respectively. The southern port is one of Le Pen's heartlands.
Chirac, 69, is trying to convince voters he truly shares their anxieties after more than three decades in high office.
Le Pen, a 73-year-old former paratrooper and perennial loser in presidential races, portrays himself as the champion of the ``little people.'' He branded his opponent the ``godfather'' of a corrupt political class at a rally in Paris on Wednesday.
With Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin edged into third place and out of contention by Le Pen, who scored 17 percent in a first round of voting on April 21, most of the left has thrown its weight behind Chirac, despite accusing him of corruption.
``Against the fascist, vote for the crook,'' ran a popular slogan around the hundreds of demonstrations on Wednesday.
Some leftists plan to cast their ballots for Chirac wearing gloves or holding their noses with clothes pegs.
Yet Socialist leaders, stunned by Le Pen's success, are already looking beyond Sunday to a parliamentary election in June when they still hope to form a government under Chirac.
``The turnout is a good omen for the parliamentary election,'' Segolene Royale, Jospin's family affairs minister, was quoted as saying by France 2 television.
NO TO ``APARTHEID''
After the despair 10 days ago, when a low turnout and the scattering of the left-wing vote among a handful of more radical candidates conspired to let Le Pen through and end Jospin's career, Wednesday's marches restored the left's morale.
``The spirit of solidarity is looking healthier,'' said Mouloud Aounit, head of the anti-racist group MRAP, as 400,000 people marched by the Bastille in Paris, birthplace of the revolution and its values of liberty, equality and fraternity.
``France is saying loud and clear that it does not accept the program of apartheid and institutional discrimination put forward by the National Front.''
Late on Wednesday night, riot police with shields and truncheons moved in to the Place de la Nation square where the march ended to disperse a few hundred youths who had lingered on.
Reporters said some of the youths threw bottles at the police and brief scuffles flared before the square was cleared. At least one youth was detained.
Le Pen has played on fears of crime, immigration and the loss of sovereignty to the European Union and global business.
Noel Mamere, the Greens candidate in the first round of voting, said the peaceful and festive demonstrations reminded him of the student movement of May 1968: ``It shows there's a democratic wake-up call as big as the earthquake of April 21.''
Among the ironies of the daily demonstrations that followed Le Pen's success has been that many taking part were among the 28 percent who did not bother to vote in the first round or the similar proportion who backed no-hopers to Jospin's left with the intention of backing the moderate premier in the runoff.
VOTE ON SUNDAY
The test for the left now will be to dispel widespread perceptions that its leaders are simply part of a Paris establishment as divorced from ordinary people as Chirac and to turn popular enthusiasm on the streets into ballots.
CFDT trade union leader Nicole Notat, marching in Paris, warned people on the left not to let their dislike of Chirac prevent them casting a vote against Le Pen on Sunday.
``People must resist the temptation to abstain or spoil their ballot and must cast their vote for Jacques Chirac,'' she said.
Few seriously doubt Chirac will win a second term.
But at home and abroad, where Paris's EU partners are bracing for a more awkward, nationalistic France whatever the outcome, there will be considerable focus on Sunday night on just how big a percentage Le Pen can muster.
---------
Thousands of Venezuelans March
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela-Protest.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Hundreds of thousands of chanting, flag-waving Venezuelans marched for and against populist President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday, the first large demonstrations since bloody street clashes last month sparked a failed coup.
The rival marches in Caracas, the nation's capital, took place peacefully, as helmeted riot police stood guard.
But the fiery rhetoric in each camp highlighted the bitter divisions sparked by Chavez's 3-year-old rule in the oil-exporting South American nation.
Shouts of ``Assassin, Assassin,'' and ``Chavez Must Go'' rose from the anti-government ranks. Protesters demanded the president step down or agree to a referendum on his rule.
Chavez supporters -- many wearing the red berets made fashionable by the army paratrooper-turned president -- held banners labeling the president's opponents ``fascist dictators.''
Ricardo Vannini, a 46-year-old businessman taking part in the anti-Chavez protests, blew on a whistle as he marched toward the whitewashed halls of Congress.
``I grew up with democracy and I never saw divisions like the ones we have now,'' Vannini said. ``Chavez has planted hatreds that are scaring off investment.''
Opposition forces were hoping to bounce back after the demoralizing events of Apr. 11-14.
Chavez was ousted by the military amid accusations that the president was to blame for the shooting deaths of 17 people during a massive anti-government march on the presidential palace. Three days later, loyalists troops backed by pro-Chavez militants swept him back into office.
With the killings still under investigation, some predicted people would be too scared to march Wednesday. But it appeared each side turned out at least 100,000 people.
``I was in bed crying for two days when they kicked out Chavez. Then when he came back we were so happy,'' said Haydee Carriella, 55-year-old woman who came out to support the president.
``The opposition was left like kings without crowns,'' she said.
Although many poor Venezuelans consider Chavez their champion, critics accuse him of pushing the country on the road to socialism since his 1998 election.
Chavez has become a close ally of communist Cuban president Fidel Castro, has stocked the government and judiciary with allies and has given the state a bigger role in the economy.
Critics say neighborhood groups Chavez organized to promote support for his ``revolution'' are turning into armed vigilante squads that intimidate dissenters.
At the pro-Chavez march, many proudly wore red T-shirts reading ``Bolivarian circles,'' as the neighborhood groups are known.
``The only weapons we have are the lessons we give the poor -- to help them fight for their rights,'' said Angel Yaraguin, a farmer, joining a stream of people marching toward the presidential palace.
Since nearly losing the presidency, Chavez has promised a more conciliatory government. He named a state oil company director trusted by business leaders and welcomed opposition groups on Tuesday to seek common ground with the government.
But many remain distrustful. Opposition lawmakers are trying to force a referendum as early as December.
``I don't see any effort to change,'' said Carlos Ortega, head of the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation, the country's largest labor union, which organized the anti-Chavez march commemorating May Day. ``He's just trying to buy time.''
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Police, Berlin Youths Clash
May 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Germany-May-Day.html
BERLIN (AP) -- Masked young people from the far-left hurled cobblestones and bottles at police Wednesday in an outburst of May Day violence in the German capital.
Authorities blocked parts of the city to demonstrators and sent extra police to other parts of the country to keep a lid on protests.
Clashes erupted after several authorized demonstrations wound down in the central Kreuzberg district, a regular flashpoint of May Day disturbances for the past 15 years. Groups of protesters dug up cobblestones and hurled them at police and looted a supermarket that had already been ransacked the night before.
Hundreds of police in riot gear swarmed into the streets from vans parked in the area and turned water cannons on the demonstrators.
Tuesday night police in Berlin and Hamburg detained a total of about 80 people after clashes with leftist protesters who threw rocks and set street fires. Police used tear gas to break up those protests and said more than 80 officers were injured in Berlin alone. An 18-year-old woman in Berlin was hospitalized with serious injuries after being hit in the head with a bottle during one overnight melee.
Earlier Wednesday, far-right marches in several other German cities sparked clashes with authorities and jeering counter-demonstrators.
In Frankfurt, police used truncheons to beat back neo-Nazis gathering for a rally when some of them tried to reach the march route without allowing police to conduct body checks. About 100 marchers finally got under way, shouting ``We are the people'' and anti-U.S. slogans.
About 800 of the party's supporters marched in a Berlin suburb, having been banned from the city center by authorities. A mob of nearly 2,000 police prevented clashes with counter-demonstrators who threw eggs and shouted ``Nazis out!''
In Berlin, hundreds of supporters of the far-right National Democratic Party marched through a northern suburb, escorted by police who kept them apart from heckling counter-demonstrators who shouted ``Nazis out'' and blew whistles.
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May Day Brings Clashes, Marches, Bomb
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-life-mayday.html
PARIS - May Day protests around the world brought violent demonstrators up against riot police, well over a million people to the streets of France and a car bomb explosion next to a Madrid soccer stadium.
Police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse young radicals in the Swiss city of Zurich and used water cannons against rowdy demonstrators in Berlin, where one injured woman was fighting for her life.
An estimated 1.3 million people demonstrated across France in a massive show of opposition to far-right presidential contender Jean-Marie Le Pen. The rallies eclipsed a march by some 10,000 supporters of Le Pen's anti-immigration National Front party in Paris.
Chanting ``N like Nazi, F like Fascist,'' anti-Le Pen demonstrators packed dozens of French towns and cities, while their main protest started later in the capital.
In Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA claimed responsibility for a car bomb which exploded near a Madrid soccer stadium hours before a European Champions League semi-final match.
Madrid police said nine people were slightly injured in the blast, which destroyed several cars.
Shortly after the bombing, there was a second, smaller explosion on the other side of the city that authorities said was likely to have been the attackers blowing up a getaway car.
In eastern Turkey, security police clashed with some 1,500 protesters and used armored vehicles to break up a May Day protest. Larger demonstrations in the capital Ankara and the country's biggest city Istanbul passed off peacefully.
WORKERS' RIGHTS
Almost every country in the world marks May Day in one way or another, and the date is officially recognized by the United Nations as International Labour Day.
Droves of anti-globalization and anti-pollution protesters clogged the streets of London with carnival-style protests including a picnic and a cycle ride, under the watchful eyes of police forewarned of possible anarchist attacks.
In other cities, trade unionists marched in more traditional May Day parades, calling for better workers' rights.
In Stockholm, youths smashed shop windows and clashed with police as a May Day evening street festival in the Swedish capital turned into a riot. Witnesses said hundreds of people took part in the rioting and dozens of shop windows were smashed by people wielding baseball bats.
It was not immediately clear if anybody had been hurt.
A sea of red flags and banners transformed a medieval piazza in Bologna, northern Italy, as some 75,000 labor union members, many clutching red carnations, attended a Labour Day rally with the slogan: ``For peace, employment, the defense of rights and against terrorism.''
Greek protesters used May Day marches to denounce Israel's incursion into the West Bank, burning an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon outside the U.S. embassy in Athens.
A huge workers' rally in the Syrian capital Damascus quickly turned into a show of solidarity with the Palestinians.
``Sharon you dog!'' some protesters shouted.
PAPAL MESSAGE
In warm Italian sunshine some 18,000 people gathered in front of the basilica of St. Peter's in the Vatican to listen to Pope John Paul deliver his May Day audience.
``Today is Labour Day...through work, man becomes more human. But for hard work to allow man to become more human it must always exist within a social framework,'' he said.
Pro-Kremlin parties and trade unions stole the show from communists in Moscow by staging an estimated 140,000-strong rally in the Red Square -- something the country has not seen since the Soviet days.
In Caracas, tens of thousands of Labour foes and backers of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez held rival May Day marches, three weeks after a short-lived coup against him marked by bloody street protests.
Cuban President Fidel Castro staunchly defended his revolution in a May Day speech in Havana and attacked Latin American critics who have taken a more forceful stance on the island's human rights record as ``lackeys'' and ``bootlickers'' of the United States.
In Mexico and Central America, workers and leftist leaders called for better wages and labor conditions and lambasted U.S. economic and political policy in largely peaceful protests.
In Mexico, which is embroiled in a diplomatic spat with Cuba, protesters vilified leaders for being beholden to the United States, Mexico's powerful neighbor and chief trading partner.
In Mexico City, demonstrators raised enormous cardboard figures of a devil with the face of President Vicente Fox shaking hands with President Bush, who in turn held a leashed dog with the face of Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. Castaneda is widely blamed for cooling relations toward Cuba at Washington's behest.
Activists in El Salvador and Costa Rica voiced support for the Palestinians against Israel and denounced globalization, free trade and privatization policies.
In Nicaragua and Guatemala, among the poorest countries in the region, demonstrators took to streets to protest burgeoning government corruption scandals.
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Thousands March in Australia May Day Protest
May 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-australia-protests.html
SYDNEY - Thousands of protesters choked the streets of Melbourne on Wednesday in a peaceful May Day rally, while in Sydney police arrested dozens of protesters in small, but rowdy demonstrations.
``We can build a better world,'' Leigh Hubbard, secretary of the Victorian state Trades Hall Council, told the Melbourne protest which had a number of themes ranging from worker rights to opposition to Australia's detention of asylum seekers.
In Sydney, scuffles broke out between police and a few hundred protesters trying to block access to the offices of private security firm Australasian Correctional Management (ACM), which runs Australia's outback detention centers.
Police said protesters threw marbles and fireworks at police. A row of mounted police finally pushed through the crowd, sending some protesters and a horse falling. Dozens were arrested.
``We are happy the majority of protesters are peaceful,'' said New South Wales assistant police commissioner Dick Adams.
``There are just a handful that have a stated intention of fighting police,'' he told reporters.
Protesters in Sydney ranged from self-declared anarchists to environmentalists and school students.
``Our aim today is to actually shut down the offices of ACM,'' protest organizer Zanny Begg told Australian television.
``We feel that their treatment of refugees is so inhumane that for one day we are actually going to imprison them so they know what it feels like,'' said Begg.
Australia has come under attack from U.N. human rights and religious groups for its mandatory detention of boat people -- mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan -- who arrive seeking asylum.
Protesters in Sydney also demonstrated outside the Israeli consulate and the Australian Stock Exchange.
``SMASH CAPITALISM''
Trade unions accused Sydney protesters of hijacking May Day.
``We are concerned about May Day being used to promote other causes,'' said John Robertson, secretary of the New South Wales Labor Council, one of Australia's major trade union bodies.
``It's the traditional day of international solidarity for working people,'' he said. ``The methods used to promote these other causes are a concern to us and...detract from May Day.''
Trade union May Day marches will be held around Australia on Sunday to enable all workers to attend, he said.
In Melbourne, where the mass protest was actually staged by the state's trade union organization, worker rights dominated the rally in the center of the city.
The protesters waved placards with messages including ''Globalise freedom, smash capitalism'' and ``What's disgusting? Union busting.''
``The richest 300 people in the world today control more wealth than the poorest three billion people and that's a dramatic sign of a society in chaos and a world in crisis,'' Jeff Sparrow, marching with the Socialist Alternative, told Reuters.
In Melbourne, a few hundred protesters used wire mesh to erect a makeshift ``detention center'' around the department of immigration offices.
A small protest was staged in Brisbane against the asylum seeker detention centers. Three people were arrested.
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