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NUCLEAR
U.S. May Question Russia About Short-Range Weapons
Military Man Says Russia Unhappy with Pact Terms
Russia to preserve ground, air and sea nuclear weapons
Nuclear reactor reduces capacity after malfunction in Ukraine
YUCCA & SPENT FUEL ROD STORAGE
This is no time for criticism: Cheney
A Beautiful Friendship
Bush rebukes 'second-guessers'
MILITARY
1,000 British Marines Join Australians in Firefight
Allies 'fought locals, not the enemy'
Allied troops pursue resistance in the east
Omar says bin Laden lives and U.S. to die
UN: Corpses Bobbing in Congo River
China's military starts war games near Taiwan
US quietly puts down roots in Georgia
India Is Girding Itself for War
India Expels Pakistan Envoy; Islamabad Urges Talks
Before Scheduling Elections, Arafat Demands Israeli Pullback
Arafat links elections to Israeli withdrawal
Militant Group Open to Participation
Congress Passes Legislation Endorsing NATO Expansion
Congress votes to aid NATO aspirants
A Cloak But No Dagger
POLICE / PRISONERS
Airlines Warned of Terrorist Threats
Report for CIA Foresaw an Al Qaeda Plane Attack
1999 Study: Hijack - Suicides Possible
Clues Surfaced Before Sept. 11
Intelligence Comes in Small Pieces
ENERGY AND OTHER
Power Plant Study Raises Concern
UK angry at US rights criticism
UN: Saudi Punishment Breaks Treaty
ACTIVISTS
Activists Damage French Yacht
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- russia
U.S. May Question Russia About Short-Range Weapons
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Washington Post
Saturday, May 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35986-2002May17?language=printer
President Bush may raise the issue of Russia's stockpile of short-range nuclear weapons when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Moscow.
The arms reduction treaty that the two presidents will sign would sharply cut each nation's arsenal of long-range warheads over the next decade, but it does not address tactical, or battlefield, weapons. A senior administration official expressed concern about the size of the Russian stockpile.
----
Military Man Says Russia Unhappy with Pact Terms
By REUTERS
May 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-russia-usa.html
MOSCOW - Less than a week before a Russia-U.S. summit, a top military negotiator complained on Saturday that Moscow remained deeply unhappy about U.S. plans to store rather than destroy nuclear warheads.
General Yuri Baluyevsky spoke before presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush were to sign a pact in Moscow slashing strategic nuclear arsenals to a third of current levels.
Bush announced the deal Monday in a surprise statement at the White House, saying it would ``liquidate the legacy of the Cold War,'' and Putin said he was satisfied with it.
Russian officials say the four-page treaty is a compromise with neither side compromising fundamental national interests. U.S. officials acknowledge the pact was clinched after Russian concessions to ensure a document was ready for the summit.
Baluyevsky, Russia's deputy chief of staff and one of the pact's main negotiators, said Russia's leadership could not accept the notion of ``operationally deployed warheads'' under which stored warheads would not be counted in total arsenals.
``There have been repeated declarations at the highest level...that the concept of operationally deployed warheads is unacceptable for Russia,'' Baluyevsky told a discussion on Mayak state radio.
``Hunters will find this easy to understand. Anyone with a gun has spare shells to use in it. But nuclear weapons are not the sort of gun you need spare shells for. You can't load a nuclear gun a second time.''
He said accepting the principle was ``tantamount to giving a 'green light' to other states who hold or want to hold nuclear weapons. I believe that storing weapons for what amounts to a 'rainy day' is not the path we should be taking.''
Washington says it needs to store, not destroy, the warheads so it can respond to emerging threats from so-called ''axis of evil'' states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
PUTIN STRATEGY
The arms deal is part of Putin's strategy of aligning Russia with the West, underscored by his support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism, and boosting living standards in a country where about a quarter of the population lives in poverty.
A day after the arms deal was announced, NATO agreed to the creation of a 20-member council with Russia to be inaugurated at a summit in Rome later this month.
The arms treaty limits each side's arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads, instead of current levels of 6,000. The document contains no specific provisions on which warheads are to be eliminated though compliance is to be based on the START-1 treaty signed by the United States and Soviet Union in 1991.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview on Saturday that international relations had improved under Bush's leadership. Even his announced intention last year to disregard Russian objections and pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build a missile shield had had little effect.
``The ABM treaty is about to lapse,'' Powell told Britain's Guardian newspaper. ``The geo-strategic situation is not collapsing and no arms race is breaking out.''
But some Russian analysts suggest that the Russian public may object to the treaty's concessions and offer the first real resistance to Putin's foreign policy before the pact goes to parliament for ratification. The Communist opposition has already accused him of selling out the country.
The Russian Foreign Ministry complained Saturday that some U.S. officials were spreading false rumors that Russia planned a resumption of nuclear explosions at its testing ground in the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.
In a statement, it repeated Russian denials that Moscow had any intention of resuming tests and said this was an attempt to distract attention from Congress's failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
-------- treaties
Russia to preserve ground, air and sea nuclear weapons despite arms cuts agreed with US
Sat May 18, 2002
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020518/ap_wo_en_po/russia_us_nuclear_weapons_2
MOSCOW - Russia will maintain the three ground, air and sea components of its nuclear arsenal despite planned arms cuts under a new agreement with Washington, a top military official said Saturday.
"The nuclear triad will be maintained with the parameters that correspond to the national interests of the country," first deputy chief of staff Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said, according to Interfax-Military News Agency.
Baluyevsky said U.S.-Russian negotiators would continue to settle details of implementing the treaty after it is signed at a summit next week in Russia between President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) and U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites).
"We are bound to move together with the United States regardless of disagreements that we have had, have and will have," Baluyevsky said.
He said the final text of the agreement had nearly been finalized and is "result of compromise that suits both parties."
Under the agreement, Washington and Moscow will reduce their number of long-range strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012, down from the about 6,000 each country has now.
-------- ukraine
Nuclear reactor reduces capacity after malfunction in Ukraine
Sat May 18, 2002
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020518/ap_wo_en_ge/ukraine_nuclear_1
KIEV, Ukraine - Operators reduced the capacity of a nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia atomic power plant by 35 percent Saturday after a malfunction in its circulation pump, officials said.
The radiation level at the plant was normal, and works to repair the defect continue, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Ukraine was site of world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded and spewed radiation over Europe. Chernobyl was closed down for good in 2000.
Minor malfunctions at Ukraine's four nuclear power plants occur frequently, but don't usually cause radiation leaks. Currently, 10 Ukrainian reactors are functioning, while three others are under repair.
-------- us nuc waste
YUCCA & SPENT FUEL ROD STORAGE
Sat, 18 May 2002
From: joelstahl@webtv.net
www.plutoniumstorage.com www.nukewaste.com
While the debate goes on - over looked is New Technology that is available NOW using SAFE IN-the-GROUND ON-SITE Modular Storage Buildings made with Radiation-Resistant Polymer Composites that can be shipped in and erected on the site. These SPENT FUEL ROD STORAGE Buildings are THEFT & TERRORISTS PROOF that are earthquake, corrosion & fire resistant. They have Off-Site Controls for inventory that are TAMPER-PROOF. Since we know that Nuclear Power Plants will always have nuclear waste on hand suitable Storage Buildings In-the Ground On SITE will avoid transportation problems. Until a final solution is determined - STORE IT WHERE IT IS NOW and protect what we do have. They will meet DOE/NRC Monitored Rerievable Storage (MRS) Visit www.nukewaste.com for more information. Joel Stahl
-------- us politics
[This self-proclaimed war Cheney shouts about... what would be his worth, without? How does he profit? Let's find out. et]
This is no time for criticism: Cheney
By Siobhan Kennedy in New York
May 18 2002
The Washington Post and Agencies
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/18/1021544075214.html
The United States Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has raised the spectre of a new attack on the US and dismissed Democratic Party criticism of the White House's handling of pre-September 11 terror warnings at such a time as "thoroughly irresponsible".
Mr Cheney said in a speech in New York on Thursday that an investigation by Congress into possible intelligence failings before the September11 attacks, in which about 3,000 people were killed, should be handled with great circumspection.
"An investigation must not interfere with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack, because without a doubt a very real threat of another, perhaps more devastating, attack still exists," Mr Cheney said.
"The people and agencies responsible for helping us learn about and defeat such an attack are the very ones most likely to be distracted from their critical duties if Congress fails to carry out their obligations in a responsible fashion."
Mr Cheney said Democratic Party suggestions that the September11 attacks could have been prevented were "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war".
The White House acknowledged for the first time this week that President George Bush had received an intelligence warning weeks before the September 11 attacks. Responding to a barrage of questions from Congress, the White House insisted it was never presented with specific information that would have enabled it to anticipate or prevent the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
The House of Representatives minority leader, Richard Gephardt, said this week: "What we have to do now is to find out what the President, what the White House, knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it at that time. Was there a failure of intelligence? Did the right officials not act on the intelligence in the proper way? These are the things we need to find out."
Not only Democrats have expressed concern.
"There was a lot of information," said Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. "I believe, and others believe, if it had been acted on properly we may have had a different situation on September11th."
The Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, said he was "gravely concerned" and demanded the White House turn over the relevant CIA briefing and other information.
"Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information?" he asked.
Mr Cheney said he wanted to tell "my Democratic friends in the Congress ... that they need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions ... that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11.
"The President and I believe that one of our most important responsibilities is to do all that we can to ensure that an attack like 9/11 never happens again."
----
A Beautiful Friendship
New York Times
May 18, 2002
By BILL KELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/opinion/18KELL.html
Thanks to some dogged diplomacy and a little skillful spin, two once implacable foes this week achieved a surprising, if temporary, rapprochement.
No, not Russia and the United States, although it has been a pretty good week for those former adversaries too, and we'll get to that in a moment. I mean the Bush Pentagon and the Bush State Department. For followers of the engrossing battle between the treaty-loathing, gloom-mongering go-it-aloners who march with Donald Rumsfeld and the alliance-friendly, deal-cutting pragmatists with Colin Powell, this was a week when creative tension produced a constructive compromise. The agreement to cut Russian and American nuclear arsenals, along with other warm-up exercises for Mr. Bush's Moscow summit meeting next week, represents both the Pentagon view that we can act like masters of the universe and the State Department view that it's not always in our best interest to do so.
First let's dispose of some hype. The arms agreement completed this week does not, as Mr. Bush claimed, "liquidate the legacy of the cold war." (After all, what's Dick Cheney?) The three-page treaty merely codifies cutbacks both sides wanted to make anyway, the Russians because they can't afford the duct tape to keep their missiles in service, the Americans because the strategic nuclear balance is no longer the issue that keeps us up nights. As an arms treaty, it is more loophole than law. It doesn't require that any warheads be destroyed; at the Pentagon's insistence, they can all go into storage for the next crisis. There are some funny counting rules that make the cuts seem deeper than they are. The treaty has a more liberal cancellation clause than some apartment leases. In short, as a Bush official told The Times's military expert Michael Gordon, "That's our kind of treaty."
A hard-core cynic might even say that with this treaty Mr. Bush managed to humiliate simultaneously both Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, by establishing America's power to dictate whatever terms we like to Russia, and his own father, by undoing an important Bush Senior legacy, the ban on multiple-warhead missiles. (Russia likes the big ten-pack missiles because they are a cheap way to flood the zone.)
But that would be greatly overstating the emptiness of the agreement. The fact is, this is a real treaty, not just a handshake and a wink. The seemingly weightless three pages come with a hefty 500-page appendix - all the enforcement and verification protocols of the 1991 Start 1 treaty have been attached to this agreement. That means the Russians and Americans will be in each other's faces more, inspecting and securing and locking down warheads, which is a very good thing if you worry about nuclear weapons and materials falling into the wrong hands.
And treaties usually create a kind of momentum. It is true neither side is obliged to retire a single weapon until 2012, but in reality taking nuclear weapons apart is a long, painstaking procedure that will have to follow a timetable. Unlike his father's last big arms treaty, Start 2, which has languished nine years without Senate ratification, Mr. Bush's deal, bearing both Powell and Rumsfeld seals of approval, should pass without great difficulty. The logic of this agreement should lead to renewal of the Start 1 treaty (it expires in 2009) and an extension of this one when it runs its course, and - who knows? The arms control process may remain on life support, but it is alive.
The new arms agreement is not being hailed by Russia's elites as a triumph for Kremlin diplomacy. The newspaper Nyezavisimaya Gazyeta dismissed the deal as "the most lightweight in the entire history of arms control." It does, however, give Mr. Putin what he needs to keep the paranoids in his military at bay, including recourse to those hydra-headed missiles.
Beyond its minor contribution to the safety of mankind, the agreement represents a continuing maturity in President Bush's relationship with Russia, which has lurched from indifferent to giddy and finally settled into something rather promising.
For those who just tuned in to the world last September, here are a few purely selfish reasons we want Russia on our side:
1. Russia sits astride a world crossroads of oil, weapons, drugs and terror.
2. Russia has close, sometimes problematic but potentially useful relationships with all three of the countries Mr. Bush insists on calling the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran and North Korea. We barely talk to any of them.
3. Russia contains an unnervingly under-policed stockpile of atomic warheads, 603 metric tons of nuclear material suitably enriched for terrorist bomb-making, and mountains of lower-grade radioactive garbage.
4. Russia has enough petroleum to insulate us against a Middle East oil shock.
Mr. Bush campaigned for office on the sneering premise that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had sentimentalized the Russia relationship, letting American interests founder as they propped up Boris Yeltsin and his corrupt cohort. That was unfair. Mr. Clinton helped Mr. Yeltsin move Russia a long way toward the West, in the face of serious opposition from Russian revanchists. It is true that Mr. Clinton's 18 meetings with Mr. Yeltsin set a record for personal summitry, but if congeniality is an indictment someone should point out that, with Presidents Bush and Putin about to hold their fifth meeting in a year, they are well ahead of their predecessors' pace.
Mr. Bush emerged from his first meeting with Mr. Putin, almost a year ago, sounding so lovestruck that his foreign policy chaperone, Condoleezza Rice, quickly assembled reporters to play down the infatuation. Since then, though, the Bush-Putin relationship has been mercifully free of the wild mood swings that marked the Clinton-Yeltsin friendship, partly because Mr. Putin is healthy and sober, but mainly because they both treat it as business.
The two are an interesting pair. Both are abstemious men who succeeded leaders with flamboyant, self-destructive appetites. Both have endured the suspicion of their native intellectuals. Both took office with some question surrounding their legitimacy. Both are known for seeming more confident in a private encounter than on the public stage. Both regard the press as an inconvenience. They even have comparable mixes of bonhomie and cold calculation.
Like Mr. Yeltsin before him, Mr. Putin has clearly decided that Russia's future lies with the West. Unlike Mr. Yeltsin, Mr. Putin does not feel quite the same need to be constantly pleading with America to bail him out of his domestic problems with an infusion of cash or a face-saving concession. To integrate his country with the West, Mr. Putin is willing to swallow a lot - American missile defense, the expansion of NATO right up to his borders, American soldiers flying war missions from his backyard.
Mr. Bush - prodded by his hawks - has not let the relationship become all about keeping Mr. Putin in power, but - prodded by Colin Powell - he has accepted that you can't treat the leader of Russia as your love slave. We want Mr. Putin to survive. We also want the relationship to survive Mr. Putin. Signing a treaty serves both those ends.
As does the agreement this week marrying Russia to NATO, which surpasses anything the Clinton administration was willing to give Mr. Yeltsin. If Mr. Clinton had proposed giving Russia such a loud voice in NATO, he'd have been hammered mercilessly by the Republicans. (Our cynic might say that Mr. Bush doesn't mind giving away the NATO store because he doesn't intend to let NATO slow him down anyway.) Letting Russia sit at NATO's table gives Mr. Putin bragging rights at home. It also plugs his country into one of Europe's civilizing institutions.
By consummating these deals beforehand, the two presidents have dislodged arms control from its dominant place at the summit and left themselves free to deal with the real, dangerous legacies of the cold war, such as Russia's continuing nuclear business with Iran, such as what to do about Iraq, such as the aforementioned atomic detritus.
Mr. Bush, who came into office a foreign-policy naïf, has in this case shown that he is capable of listening to his rival advisers and fusing a foreign policy that draws from both. He has settled into a Russia policy somewhere between the romantic notion that if we bend far enough we can save Russia from its darker instincts and the fatalistic idea that we should write it off as a hopeless cause.
As for the Pentagon and the State Department, that is still a Casablanca affair - not Rick and Ilsa, but Rick and Captain Renault. We'll see how this beautiful friendship weathers the issues that boil blood, like the Middle East. But it is worth recording that this week the administration flapped hard with both wings, and got something important off the ground.
--------
Bush rebukes 'second-guessers'
May 18, 2002
By Joseph Curl and Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020518-70533151.htm
President Bush yesterday angrily criticized the Washington game of "second-guessing" and said had he known terrorists would use hijacked planes as missiles, "I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people."
"You know, it's interesting about Washington. It's a town, unfortunately, it's a kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature," the president told U.S. Air Force Academy football team members who were visiting the White House.
"The American people know this about me and my national-security team and my administration: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people," Mr. Bush said.
A poll conducted by CNN, USA Today and Gallup gave comfort to the White House. Two-thirds of the 598 Americans surveyed said reports that Mr. Bush was told in August 2001 about terrorists' desire to hijack U.S. commercial airliners did not make them less confident in his ability as commander in chief.
Three-fourths said they have confidence in the Bush administration to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.
Speaking publicly for the first time about press reports that he was told on Aug. 6 that Osama bin Laden's terrorist group was planning to hijack passenger planes, Mr. Bush said he is doing all he can to make sure the United States is not attacked again.
"I take my job as commander in chief very seriously. We will use the might of America to protect the American people. We're in for a long struggle. This is a tough war. This is an enemy that's not going to quit.
"So, therefore, in order to protect innocent lives, this country must have the will and the determination to chase these killers down one by one and bring them to justice. And that's exactly what is going to happen, so long as I am the president of the United States of America."
The president spoke as the White House acknowledged that it had drafted a plan to target bin Laden before September 11. The memorandum, prepared by Mr. Bush's security team, was dated Sept. 10, the day before the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and was on the desk of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice awaiting review by the president.
The plan, said White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer, called for dismantling bin Laden's terror network "through what you saw put into place, frankly, rather quickly in our operations in Afghanistan - through work with the Northern Alliance to dismantle al Qaeda and the Taliban."
The White House said the plan was approved by Mr. Bush's national-security team on Sept. 4 and was awaiting the president's review when the suicide planes hit their targets.
"It had not yet gone to the president," Mr. Fleischer said. "That national-security presidential directive was a comprehensive, multifront plan to dismantle the al Qaeda. It involved a direction to the Pentagon to develop military options for the dismantling of al Qaeda. It involved action on the financial front to dry up their resources."
A bipartisan group of senators yesterday moved ahead with plans for a special commission to investigate perceived intelligence failures before September 11, but some Republicans accused Democrats of trying to use the controversy to undermine Mr. Bush.
"I would urge the administration to cease any resistance to the formation of a national commission," said Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, New Jersey Democrats. "It's coming."
Supporters of an inquiry said they would push for a Senate vote as early as next week in hopes of establishing a "fair, nonpartisan" investigation. The sponsors are Mr. Torricelli; Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat; and Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and John McCain of Arizona.
Opponents of the special commission said the inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence committees, now proceeding, is more appropriate.
"We're still in the middle of the war," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican. "There's a legitimate concern on the part of those conducting the war, who are not up here on the Hill that we not compromise our efforts to root these people out."
Mr. Torricelli said press reports about the Aug. 6 CIA briefing that broadly outlined what terrorists could be planning were "particularly troubling" in light of Vice President Dick Cheney's efforts last fall to squelch an independent inquiry. Mr. Cheney urged Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle not to establish such a commission because it could interfere with the war effort.
"Obviously, now [it] raises the question of whether he also had an interest of not having revelations of the administration's knowledge revealed," Mr. Torricelli said. "Whatever his motivation might have been, I think the administration is no longer in a position to argue that there should not be a commission."
Mr. Cheney said Thursday suggestions by some Democrats that the White House could have prevented the terrorist attacks were "irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war." The vice president said: "We believe that a thorough investigation of the events that led up to September 11th is entirely appropriate, and at the president's direction I've worked with the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees to ensure that they get the necessary cooperation from the executive branch."
Said Mr. Fleischer yesterday: "We'll always work with Congress. We're going to continue to work with Congress on what they are working on. And the method that the Congress has set up right now we believe is the appropriate method and we're working very well with them."
Democrats persisted. "I think before the vice president makes charges like that, he should say what has been unworthy," said Assistant Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat. "I've read and listened to all the statements and I have not seen anything that's unworthy."
Mr. McConnell, however, said Democrats "are salivating at the opportunity to try to bring the president down. What's going on here is very transparent. They want to bring the president down. They're jumping at this opportunity to try to do that again, bring his [poll] numbers down."
The first lady, visiting Budapest before joining the president in Moscow next week, rebuked those she suggested were exploiting the nation's grief and fears: "I think it's sad to play upon the emotions of people as if there were something we could have done to stop it, because that's just not the case. I know, I feel very, very certain that anyone, Republican or Democrat, if they had had any sort of specific information, would have done something about it."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
1,000 British Marines Join Australians in Firefight With Suspected Taliban
New York Times
May 18, 2002
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/international/asia/18AFGH.html
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, May 17 - Nearly 1,000 British marines were airlifted this morning to a rugged corner of eastern Afghanistan where an Australian Special Forces patrol had come under heavy fire on Thursday afternoon from suspected Taliban fighters, American and British officials said today.
Several attackers were killed in the battles, north of Khost, which raged for several hours and included American airstrikes, the officials said. No coalition soldiers were wounded. American officials said 100 Taliban or Qaeda fighters were believed to be in the area.
The unexpected attack was the first combat after several weeks of sweeps near the Pakistani border by American, British, Canadian and Afghan soldiers that turned up almost no Taliban or Qaeda fighters. The current British-led mission is expected to last several days.
Afghan officials also reported that an unrelated American bombing near Khost killed nine people who appeared to have no ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. American officials said their planes had been fired on.
In another development today, the United States and other donor countries meeting in Geneva agreed to give enough funds to begin the formation of the new Afghan police force and army.
An Arabic-language newspaper also reported today that it had received recorded statements said to be from the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. He is reported to have said that Osama bin Laden is alive, that the war in Afghanistan is not over and that American forces in Afghanistan will suffer "fire, hell and total defeat."
The newspaper, the London-based Asharq Al Awsat, said the statements were responses to questions it had submitted to Mullah Omar's aides. The veracity of the statements could not be verified.
British officials in Afghanistan said today's operation was purely in response to the attack on the Australian patrol. Brig. Roger Lane, the commander of the 1,700-member British contingent, said the Australians were fired on from locations historically used by the Taliban.
Brig. Mike Hannan, a spokesman for the Australian military, said in Canberra that a heavy machine gun opened fire on a group of Special Forces soldiers, The Associated Press reported. The Australians believe they killed at least one Taliban fighter.
A second group of Australians tried to link up with the first but came under fire four miles from the site of the clash. "They were able to fight their way through and join up, supported by air support from the U.S. Air Force, and then they were able to move to safety," Brigadier Hannan said.
American and British officials declined to give the exact location of the fighting, but said it was unfolding at elevations of more than 8,000 feet 10 to 30 miles north of Khost, away from the Pakistani border. Maj. Bryan Hilferty, an American military spokesman, said the coalition believed that 100 Taliban or Qaeda fighters were in the area.
Coalition forces have destroyed large weapons caches during sweeps across eastern Afghanistan in recent weeks but have not seen large numbers of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Many are believed to be hiding in tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan.
The British contingent is also fighting an unknown contagious disease here that has infected 38 British soldiers. Several became so sick they were airlifted to Europe. British officials said the infections began among workers in the British field hospital here.
The American bombing that killed nine people today occurred in Sabari, about 30 miles north of Khost, Afghan officials there said. Government officials said someone fired at an American plane as two feuding clans met in the town to resolve a dispute. The planes then bombed the area. The Afghan officials said they did not know who fired at the plane.
Other officials said that the clans had fired on each other, or that the shots were fired by revelers at a wedding, according to news reports. Residents of eastern Afghanistan have repeatedly complained of American air attacks that they say have killed civilians.
Major Hilferty, the American spokesman, defended the bombing, saying the planes were fired on first. "I can't say for sure that we did not fire at the wedding and we did not fire at these two tribes," he said tonight, according to The Associated Press. But, he added, "people were trying to kill us."
The renewed pledges of foreign aid came at a meeting of 35 countries at the United Nations offices in Geneva. No exact figures were released, but Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, said enough had been pledged to begin work.
The United States has pledged to aid the training of an Afghan Army. Germany will help develop a police force. Britain will mount an antidrug campaign and Italy will work on an independent judicial system. But some Afghan officials have complained that foreign nations are failing to provide funds they promised months ago.
----
Allies 'fought locals, not the enemy'
CHRIS STEPHEN In Bagram,
Sat 18 May 2002
The Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=536592002
COALITION commanders in Afghanistan were last night fending off allegations that they have launched a major operation involving air power and 1,000 marines after a patrol stumbled into a local tribal firefight.
Fighting broke out late on Thursday, when two Australian SAS patrols working in the southern mountains on Operation Condor were fired on. Coalition commanders say the Australians fired back and tried to pull out, but were pursued through the mountains for five hours, being shot at by rockets and heavy machine-guns.
The argument was finally settled when a US air force AC-130 Spectre gunship, one of the most lethal weapons in the coalition armoury, was summoned. The plane, a converted transport aircraft, blasted the gunmen with a 105mm cannon, plus at least four quick firing machine-guns, saturating the area with munitions and killing an unknown number of enemy forces.
A-10 attack planes and Apache attack helicopters were also on call, but were not needed after the AC-130 attack.
Brigadier Roger Lane, commander of 45 Royal Marine Commando battlegroup, spoke of al-Qaeda units being engaged in a battle, with marine units pouring in as reinforcements from their main base in Bagram. "Clearly, there's a substantial force that's there," he said. "Our mission is to destroy them. We can confirm that the coalition has made contact with the enemy and some have been killed."
However, local reports contradict this version of events. Authorities in the nearest town, Khost, said that the men engaged were from rival Sabari and Balkhiel tribes, apparently fighting each other over ownership of a clump of trees and surrounding land.
The Afghan Islamic Press agency said the US pilots had attacked a wedding, mistaking celebratory fire for an al-Qaeda concentration.
The Coalition was quick to dismiss these reports, saying the Australians believed they were attacked by al-Qaeda because they had been targeted by sustained fire over a long period.
"It was five hours of sustained fire," said Lieutenant Colonel Ben Curry. "It was RPGs [anti-tank rockets] and machine guns. I will say that we have been looking at that area for several days and we believe it was being used by al-Qaeda and Taleban."
Coalition liaison officers have agreed to meet local leaders this morning to look into their claims that they were attacked.
The Coalition force clearly hopes it has stumbled on an al-Qaeda base. The region deep in the southern mountains near the Pakistan border, is prime al-Qaeda country.
Throughout yesterday waves of huge twin-rotor Chinook helicopters, some with underslung 105mm howitzers took off from the main base at Bagram ferrying Royal Marines into the region.
By last light more than 1,000 troops, mostly marines but also including teams of Australian and US special forces, were spread in a search over an area between 30 and 40 square miles. "They've been deployed to the area to support the Australians and are providing searches," said Col Curry.
In fact, al-Qaeda forces have not been seen in large numbers in Afghanistan since March, when they fought a pitched battle with US forces during Operation Anaconda. There is huge pressure on the coalition forces, and especially on the Royal Marines, to produce results after the much-hyped arrival of the British troops.
At home, there were renewed accusations from opposition politicians that ministers had "hyped up" the prospects of combat before the marines were deployed.
Nicholas Soames, the former Tory defence minister, said: "I think this is part of the No 10 spin operation extending into even military operations, and military operations unfortunately cannot be run to the tune of the spinmeisters."
Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, added: "The manner in which expectations of hot combat are massaged with each new operation is simply adding to the confusion surrounding their role."
A suspected terrorist freed by an Old Bailey judge yesterdayu faced further accusations that he sent money to fund the al-Qaeda network.
Yasser Al-Siri, 39, a London bookseller of Edinburgh House, Maida Vale, was bailed at Bow Street Magistrates Court and re-arrested on the basis of a US extradition warrant. He was ordered by the district judge, Timothy Workman, to provide three sureties of £5,000, to sleep at his address, to refrain from entering any port, airport, airfield and Waterloo Station without prior notice to the police, and not to apply for any travel documents.
He is due to appear before the same court on 31 May.
More War on terrorism:
http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1
Websites:
Afghan Network http://www.afghan-network.net/
Iraqi Presidency http://www.uruklink.net/iraq/
Islamic State of Afghanistan http://www.afghangovernment.org/
North Korea News Agency http://www.kcna.co.jp/
Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran http://www.president.ir/
UK Ministry of Defence http://www.mod.uk/
US Department of Defense http://www.defenselink.mil/
----
Allied troops pursue resistance in the east
May 18, 2002
By Todd Pitman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020518-12274422.htm
BAGHRAM, Afghanistan - Backed by U.S. air power, some 1,000 coalition troops spread out into mountainous eastern Afghanistan yesterday to find and fight suspected al Qaeda or Taliban soldiers who had fired on an Australian patrol.
Brig. Roger Lane, the top British commander in Afghanistan, said the targeted assembly of fighters in Paktia province was "a substantial enemy force."
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty said later the coalition believes there are about 100 al Qaeda or Taliban fighters in the area.
No coalition fighters were hurt during Thursday's attack on an Australian special-forces patrol, Brig. Lane said, though some suspected al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers were killed.
"Our ability to respond rapidly to such attacks will serve as a reminder that the coalition will not tolerate such activity and we will hunt the terrorists relentlessly," Brig. Lane said from Bagram, the main allied base north of Kabul.
The 1,000 mostly British coalition soldiers in the newest offensive, named Operation Condor, near the city of Khost is large enough to overwhelm opposing fighters, Maj. Hilferty said.
"The best way to ensure people don't shoot at you is to have an overwhelming force. We have no desire to get into a fair fight with al Qaeda," he said.
Troops are fighting in the mountains at altitudes of 8,000 feet, officials said.
Maj. Hilferty said American forces had not deployed ground troops, but were backing the British-led mission with air power. He said AC-130s had been summoned to assist the Australians on Thursday night, and opened fire on the enemy.
Meanwhile, local security officials said at least 10 Afghan tribesmen feuding over land were killed in eastern Afghanistan when U.S. planes bombarded their positions after shooting erupted on the ground.
Security chief Sur Gul said the Sabari and the Balkhiel tribes were skirmishing over ownership of trees near their villages about 30 miles north of Khost.
Shooting erupted Thursday night, Mr. Gul said, and U.S. planes began bombing shortly afterward.
He said the American bombardment killed at least 10 persons, adding: "We don't know why the U.S. planes fired."
The Afghan Islamic Press agency, quoting unidentified officials from Khost, said the U.S. air assault occurred after wedding guests in Balkhiel fired automatic rifles into the air in celebration.
Maj. Hilferty defended the bombing, saying the planes had been fired upon first.
"We're not perfect. I can't say for sure that we did not fire at the wedding and we did not fire at these two tribes. But I can say we fired on a ridge line in an uninhabited area. They were actively pursing us. People were trying to kill us," he said.
On Monday British-led forces wrapped up a two-week search operation in eastern Afghanistan, saying they had dealt a significant blow to al Qaeda's ability to mount terrorist strikes by blowing up a huge ammunition dump in Paktia province.
At Bagram, 20 more British soldiers have been struck by a contagious but still unidentified illness, bringing the total number infected to 38. The outbreak began Sunday, and several men have been evacuated to Europe.
--------
Omar says bin Laden lives and U.S. to die
May 18, 2002
By Sarah El Deeb
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020518-10788906.htm
CAIRO - Osama bin Laden is alive and the future of the United States in Afghanistan is "fire, hell and total defeat," fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was quoted as saying by a pan-Arab newspaper yesterday.
"We don't consider the battle has ended in Afghanistan. The battle has begun, and its fires are picking up. These fires will reach the White House, because it is the center of injustice and tyranny," Mullah Omar was reported as saying by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat.
"As for the United States' future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors - the Soviets and, before them, the British."
"The sheik is, thank God, still alive, and this hurts [President] Bush, who promised to his people to kill Osama."
Abdul Rahman Rashed, editor-in-chief of the paper, said Mullah Omar answered questions delivered by reporter Badie Qorhani to the mullah's media adviser in northern Pakistan.
Mullah Omar's responses were recorded on tape and returned to the reporter, he said.
Mr. Rashed told the Associated Press that his newspaper ran the story only after a Taliban official confirmed the tape's authenticity by e-mail. The Taliban said on its official Web site that the interview was Mullah Omar's "first with an Arab newspaper after his pullout from Kandahar."
The authenticity of the quotes could not be independently confirmed. The language in the quotes mirrors that of leaflets circulated in Afghanistan and earlier statements by the Taliban.
Mullah Omar, who led the Taliban between 1994 and 2001, has been a fugitive since a U.S.-led force overran his stronghold of Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December. Authorities want to know, among other things, the extent of support lent by the Taliban to bin Laden's al Qaeda network, the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks.
Asked whether he denied that bin Laden was behind the attacks, Mullah Omar said, "Those who carried out the operation had a clear goal, and this goal was dearer to them than their lives, and they achieved it. Asking about them, who they are, is not important."
The interview, accompanied by a blurred archive photo of Mullah Omar, ended with a message to the Palestinians.
"I tell my brethren in Palestine: Be patient, and continue your blessed struggle. We did not forget you. We are still healing another wound in the Muslim nation, which is the occupation of our land by the Americans. Your battle and ours are one and the same."
-------- africa
UN: Corpses Bobbing in Congo River
May 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Congo-Uprising.html
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- The United Nations expressed concern for people of the rebel-held eastern city of Kisangani after a failed uprising there, saying its military observers were spotting corpses bobbing in a Congo River tributary.
The United Nations says more than 20 people have been killed in the bloodshed accompanying a local uprising against Rwandan-backed rebels in Kisangani.
The U.N. mission in Congo ``appeals again for calm and reminds the Congolese Rally for Democracy, the de facto authority of Kisangani, that the security of the civilian population is their responsibility,'' the mission said in a statement.
A Catholic Church official in Kisangani, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals, put the number of dead Saturday at 39, with at least 50 more missing.
The Rwandan-backed rebels said 29 had been confirmed dead in the city, including 10 of their own forces. Only six civilians have been confirmed dead, said Moise Nyarugabo, interim president of the Rwandan-backed rebel movement.
``The civilians killed are those caught in the cross fire and those who fought our troops alongside the mutineers,'' Nyarugabo said in the eastern Congo city of Goma.
The Congolese Rally for Democracy, backed by the Rwandan army, has controlled Kisangani and much of eastern Congo since early in Congo's nearly 4-year-old, multination war.
Congolese mutineers within the Rwandan-backed rebel movement seized a radio station in Kisangani on Tuesday, calling upon local Congolese to revolt.
A reported 1,000 people responded, killing at least two people seen as linked with Rwandans. One man was burned to death, and the other stoned.
Police dispersed the mob then by firing live rounds into a crowd.
Journalists in Kisangani claim the Rwandan-backed rebels are killing civilians in reprisal raids following the uprising.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is helping to recover the dead, refused comment Saturday.
``It is extremely sensitive,'' said Elisabeth Twinch, an official with the ICRC in Goma.
The U.N. mission said its observers had seen ``several'' bodies on the Tshopo River.
The church official said 16 bodies have been collected from the Tshopo River, which flows into the Congo River.
Rwandan and Ugandan forces are supporting Congolese rebels in eastern Congo, saying militias there threaten their own safety.
The Rwandan-backed rebels are deeply unpopular among native Congolese in Kisangani, who say the rebels and Rwandans are there only to control the riches of the diamond-trading center.
-------- china
China's military starts war games near Taiwan
May 18, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020518-9773166.htm
Chinese military forces opposite Taiwan have been placed on the highest state of alert as Beijing begins large-scale annual war games, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The maneuvers in Fujian province include thousands of ground troops and amphibious forces that have begun grouping in the southern China coastal region.
"So far we have not seen any ships," said one U.S. official who is monitoring the war games.
A second U.S. official said the war games are under way. "We're watching it closely," he said.
U.S. intelligence agencies photographed lines of tanks and armored vehicles on roads between the Fujian capital of Fuzhou and the coastal city of Xiamen, directly across the 100-mile strait from Taiwan.
The heightened alert was picked up by U.S. intelligence agencies based on military communications in the region, U.S. officials said.
War games near Taiwan triggered the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, when China fired short-range missiles to ocean areas north and south of Taiwan. The United States responded by sending two aircraft-carrier battle groups to waters near the island.
The maneuvers in 1996 were judged by U.S. Navy intelligence officials as a possible prelude to military action against Taiwan.
China's communist government has stated repeatedly that it would use force to reunite the island with the mainland if Taiwan's government declares independence.
Chinese newspaper Wen Wei Po reported yesterday that the war games will involve as many as 100,000 troops. The maneuvers are expected to continue for six months.
The communist Chinese-owned Hong Kong newspaper, quoting unidentified sources, reported yesterday that the drills are part of a "routine annual military exercise" designed to "test the comprehensive fighting abilities of the three services in joint-landing operations."
The report said the war games will be carried out longer than they were last year and will involve exercises with Chinese military units from the Nanjing and Guangzhou provinces.
The sources suggested that the target of the war games is Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province.
Tensions have increased between China and Taiwan in recent weeks.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan on Thursday criticized remarks by Taiwanese leader Chen Shuibian who said the island is set for independence.
Mr. Kong told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that the remarks, which appeared last week in Newsweek magazine, did not improve cross-strait relations.
He said those who advocate Taiwan's independence are "creating tension."
Despite saying Beijing wants a peaceful reunification, Mr. Kong said, "We cannot undertake to renounce the use of force for the reason that there are people attempting to separate China and uphold Taiwan independence."
Meanwhile, German magazine Der Spiegal reported yesterday that Mr. Chen has accused Chinese leaders of attempting to influence democratic elections in Taiwan.
Mr. Chen told the publication there is evidence the communists had spent money on "candidates they were fond of in order to manipulate the elections."
Chinese officials also have pressured Taiwanese business people to curb support for his ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Mr. Chen said.
Mr. Chen also said he did not expect major changes in cross-strait relations after Communist Party leadership changes are made this year. "We cannot be all too optimistic," he said.
-------- georgia
US quietly puts down roots in Georgia
A $64-million US training program for Georgian troops begins this month.
By Ken Stier
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
May 17, 2002
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0517/p08s01-woeu.html
TBILISI, GEORGIA - A US military training program for Georgia, which gets under way this month, has more to do with stabilizing the still-weak former Soviet republic and furthering a NATO foothold in the Caucasus than in directly enlisting Georgian forces in the US-led antiterrorism campaign. Some two dozen US special forces trainers arrived in Georgia on April 30 as an advance team for the substantial US effort, which will train roughly 2,000 Georgian special forces over the next two years.
While Georgia's troubled Pankisi Gorge is believed to be the base of Al Qaeda-linked militants, a cleanup does not seem imminent. Agence France Presse reported that Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze pledged on Monday not to attack the area, saying: "We will not use force there - we are only concerned with the fate of the refugees [in the gorge]."
US assistance was planned well before Sept. 11, and even after the attacks, its overriding mission remains the same: to mold the Georgian military into a more professional force, capable of handling the myriad challenges facing a country historically racked with ethnic separatism and now on the verge of becoming a important corridor for trade and energy from Central Asia to Europe. But in the process, the program has drawn a jealous eye from Russia, nervous about long-term American interest in the nation.
Focusing on enhancing command and control mechanisms with the defense ministry - including a new National Military Command Center - the US program also aims not only to raise professional competency but to set a new example of interagency coordination, which the military currently lacks.
"Our country must have an effective defense system, and this program is of paramount importance for us ... in creating a new core for our armed forces," says Gela Bezhuashvili, deputy defense minister.
Although US officials emphasize they will pack their bags after the roughly two years it takes to implement the $64-million "Georgia Train-and-Equip" program, this seems more likely a new phase of bilateral ties that will continue expanding.
"Everyone we train is a future trainer.... We want to leave in place a sustainable training program for the Georgians," says team leader Lt. Col. Robert E. Waltemeyer, in Tbilisi before the rest of the estimated 150 special forces trainers arrive by the end of the month.
Georgian defense officials agree this seems a logical progression for defense cooperation that started in 1998, and is in step with Georgia's stated interest in eventually joining NATO. Georgia, for the second year in a row, will host a 16-nation NATO exercise later this month. This broader, long-term agenda explains the howls of protest recently rising from Moscow. "Georgia ... is making a huge strategic mistake by turning to the US for help," says Yury Gladkeyevich, an expert with the Interfax-AVN independent military news agency.
The Caucasus has been in Russia's sphere of influence for 200 years and has always been critical bulwark against Iran (or Persia) and Turkey, a NATO country also actively developing bilateral military ties with Georgia through NATO's Partners for Peace program. For the second year in a row, Russia has not even responded to a Brussels invitation to attend the NATO exercises in Georgia as observers.
But there may be a silver lining: US training could help contain the festering lawlessness of the Pankisi Gorge, where Russia says Chechen rebels train and rearm. The 12-mile long valley near the Chechen border, where Russia wages a brutal war against separatists, is home to 10,000 people. Most are Kists, ethnic Chechens who have been "Georgianized" by living there for generations.
Georgia has hosted more than 7,000 Chechen refugees from the fighting there for the past three years, and Georgian security officials recently conceded they have tacitly allowed in armed rebels as long as they do not create trouble.
This has infuriated Russia, which asserts the right of "hot pursuit." On numerous occasions Russia has violated Georgian airspace - in some instances even dropping bombs.
In recent months Washington's view of the Chechen insurgency has come closer to Moscow's, especially as intelligence connects Al Qaeda with some Chechen leaders, including "Khattab," who was assassinated recently by a poisoned letter.
In February Philip Remler, the charge d'affairs at the US Embassy in Tbilisi, told the Georgian media that "dozens" of Islamic militants fled to Pankisi from Afghanistan.
More recent media accounts report that the American arrival has already encouraged Al Qaeda Arabs to move on.
"I will not speculate on future operations on the Pankisi," said Colonel Waltemeyer last week. At any rate it will take many months before a US-trained battalion would be able to attack Pankisi.
But many analysts say the real problems in the Pankisi are arms (reportedly mostly Russian weapons sold to Chechens to be used against Russians), Afghan heroin, and frequent kidnapping. They have their roots in the morass of corrupt government circles in Tbilisi, just three hours drive away.
Currently, security in the Pankisi is the shared responsibility of border guards, police, and state security (former KGB) forces, allegedly among the most corrupt of Georgian government agencies. A TV station secretly taped a Georgian general, Tristan Tsitelashvili, repenting for his failure to deliver a prepaid order of $50,000 worth of arms to a Chechen rebel - by offering to set up a Georgian businessman for kidnapping.
-------- india
Still Raw From Recent Attack, India Is Girding Itself for War
New York Times
May 18, 2002
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/international/asia/18INDI.html
NEW DELHI, May 17 - Reacting to a terrorist attack on Tuesday that killed 32 people, most of them women and children, senior Indian officials said today that they were considering military action against Pakistan - which they blame for the attack - as well as punitive diplomatic steps.
As a fresh bombing and outbreaks of gunfire ratcheted up tensions in the disputed province of Jammu and Kashmir, a foreboding of war hung over this capital, where some in the government voiced bitter disappointment with the United States. These officials said America had failed to persuade Pakistan, an ally against terrorism in Afghanistan, to stop sponsoring terrorism against India in the five months since a five-man squad attacked the Parliament, killing nine.
Cabinet ministers will meet Saturday to discuss how India should respond to the attack on Tuesday. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is expected to consult with the political opposition next week and announce the government's decision in a nationally televised address sometime later.
"The mood in the country is for some decisive action, and the government will have to respond," one official said. "A war cannot be ruled out."
Here in India's capital and in Washington, diplomats and officials are trying to figure out whether India would actually risk a war with Pakistan, whose leaders have suggested over the years that they would use nuclear weapons if they felt Pakistan's survival was at stake.
India is demanding that Pakistan stop training, arming and harboring extremist Islamic groups using Pakistan-held Kashmir as a base for fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India. Pakistan denies the charges and says it has been a victim of terrorism itself.
A million Indian and Pakistani troops are now fully mobilized along their shared 1,800-mile-long border, a buildup India initiated after the attack on its Parliament. In addition to the fear that fighting between the nuclear-armed nations could spiral out of control, American officials are also concerned that war would disrupt the hunt for members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan and jeopardize American troops stationed there.
As Pakistan denied its complicity, the Parliament in India today unanimously condemned the attack on Tuesday on bus passengers and the family quarters of an army camp and resolved to fight terrorism.
India's Defense Ministry said the three gunmen were young Pakistanis, a fact it said it had deduced in part from the Pakistani cookies and chocolates found on the men's bodies. The three were killed in a shootout on the outskirts of Jammu, winter capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir - a land that India and Pakistan have fought over for more than half a century.
With tensions rising, Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged heavy fire in Jammu today, leaving an Indian civilian and four Pakistani soldiers dead, officials said. Hundreds of families fled border villages in Jammu to escape the fighting.
In Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, a bomb exploded at a crowded intersection this afternoon with a deafening roar, killing 2 people and wounding 15.
In the Indian Parliament, some called for swift military retaliation against Pakistan, some for restraint, but the usually fractious legislature seemed nearly unanimous in assessing the danger that India faced and in identifying the culprit, Pakistan.
Madan Lal Khurana, a leader of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, argued for a strike on some of the more than 70 training camps for militants that Indian officials said have mushroomed recently in Pakistan-held Kashmir. "Have a decisive war to teach Pakistan a lesson," he said. "The prime minister said after the attack on Parliament that we would fight terrorism to the finish. I want to know how that will be done in practice."
In an interview this morning, the hawkish home minister, L. K. Advani, was grim as he discussed his extreme disappointment with the United States and referred contemptuously to Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, as simply "Pervez," unusual in a region where a head of state would rarely be stripped of honorifics.
Mr. Advani said he had repeatedly been assured by American officials - up to and including President Bush - that the United States would attend to India's concerns about Pakistan-sponsored terrorism once Afghanistan had been dealt with, but that nothing had changed for India.
When the American ambassador, Robert Blackwill, visited Thursday, Mr. Advani said he told the ambassador: "Suppose the Americans were to tell Pakistan that we are convinced you are continuing with cross-border terrorism against India, and unless you stop we'll declare you a terrorist state? Consequences would follow that Pakistan just doesn't have the guts to bear. I'm not able to understand why you don't do that."
Another senior Indian official said Mr. Advani's views on the United States are "shared by the entire top leadership." This official also said India had intelligence that Pakistan was planning to disrupt coming state elections in Jammu and Kashmir.
Elections perceived as generally free and fair are an important part of the government's political strategy in Kashmir, he added - and a Pakistani attempt to sabotage them would be seen as provocative.
"We may have to do something which you will not like and which we would prefer not to do," the official said. "I will not go beyond that."
Asked if the government was just bluffing about its military threats, to light a fire under the Americans and get them to jawbone General Musharraf, the official said, "No, you should take seriously what I said."
--------
India Expels Pakistan Envoy; Islamabad Urges Talks
May 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-southasia.html
NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD - India, furious about a fatal attack on an army camp it blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militants, said Saturday it was expelling Pakistan's ambassador in protest.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the decision was meant to tell Islamabad and the world that there must be a crackdown on Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, who New Delhi says still operate freely from Pakistan.
External Relations Minister Jaswant Singh said senior Indian ministers had decided to tell Pakistan High Commissioner (ambassador) Ashraf Jehangir Qazi to return to Islamabad.
Pakistan, which denies helping the Islamic militants cross into India, said it was disappointed by the move and called for talks to ease tensions between the nuclear-capable neighbors.
``We will continue to strive to resolve all issues with India through negotiations and through peaceful means,'' Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told Pakistan Television.
As a first step, it was seen as a fairly muted response to Tuesday's attack on the army camp in which 31 people, including soldiers' wives and children, died before the three raiders were killed.
Some politicians had called for India to sever diplomatic ties, or even launch military strikes against Pakistan.
TROOPS TRADE FIRE
Again highlighting the tensions between the two countries, Indian and Pakistani troops traded fire across the Line of Control -- a cease-fire line dividing disputed Kashmir -- in the second day of heavy border fighting.
Close to a million men have been mobilized on the border after an attack on India's parliament in December which New Delhi also blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
The senior ministers, meeting in the Defense Ministry's ''war room,'' also reviewed India's options and were briefed by army head S. Padmanabhan on the situation on the ground.
India recalled its own ambassador to Islamabad in December after the attack on parliament, and though Qazi stayed on, had ceased to deal with him directly since then.
``For the sake of parity of representation between the two countries, the High Commissioner of Pakistan who is currently in India (will) be required to return to Islamabad,'' Singh said.
A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman added: ``We want to convey to the world and to Pakistan that we are concerned that Pakistan has not given up its support to terrorist activities.''
``There has been no lowering in the number of infiltrators (from Pakistan into India) and terrorist training camps continue to be established and continue to operate from Pakistan,'' spokeswoman Nirupama Rao told a news conference.
In what has become a traditional accompaniment to rising diplomatic tensions, both armies traded border fire and blamed each other for starting the fighting.
In Muzaffarabad, capital of what Pakistan calls AzadKashmir, a police official said four people including a Pakistani soldier were wounded when Indian troops shelled a market in the town of Chakothi overlooked by the Indian army.
But in Srinagar in Indian Kashmir, a police official said five people, including a woman and a child, were injured when Pakistani troops shelled the border areas of Kamalkote and Gurez.
Separately, 12 people including eight rebels and an Indian soldier were killed in separatist violence across the state.
Although troops frequently exchange fire across the border, the intensity of the fighting has increased over the past two days.
LEGACY OF PARTITION
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir.
A legacy of the partition of the subcontinent into Islamic Pakistan and secular but mostly Hindu India, Muslim-majority Kashmir has been at the center of tensions between the two sides ever since its Hindu ruler opted to join India at independence.
After both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998, it also acquired the reputation of being one of the most beautiful and most dangerous places on earth, the potential trigger for the world's first nuclear war.
But analysts say they do not see India and Pakistan going to war, at least not yet, despite some war talk in New Delhi.
Some even see the war talk as saber-rattling as much meant to get the attention of the United States -- preoccupied with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- as to intimidate Pakistan.
``India is angry with Pakistan but deeply disappointed with you (the United States),'' Home (interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani said in parliament Friday.
Pakistan has condemned the attack on the army camp, the first major assault since Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf pledged in January to crack down on Islamic militants.
India, however, says he has not done enough and has called on Washington to put pressure on Pakistan -- its key ally in the Afghanistan campaign -- to crack down harder.
FIRST STEP?
Its expulsion of the Pakistani ambassador, expected to leave within a week, was likely to be a first step in a series of moves ranging from diplomatic and trade sanctions to military action.
After the parliament attack, India cut air and road links and recalled its ambassador, before ordering its army to the border, prompting a similar build-up on the Pakistani side.
Pakistan has long called for talks with India over Kashmir. India says it will not hold talks until Pakistan stops Pakistan-based militants from attacking Indian targets.
But in both countries, commentators warned against a war which could lead to the first military use of nuclear weapons since the United States bombed Japan at the end of World War Two.
``...neither country has the wherewithal to rise out of the ashes like Japan,'' Pakistan's English daily The News said.
``I don't think there is danger of a large scale war. The international community does not want a big conflict,'' said former Pakistan foreign secretary Niaz A. Naik.
``This is not the Israel-Palestine conflict. Both the countries are nuclear powers...it would be a terrible, terrible, destructive war. Everyone can see that,'' he said.
-------- israel / palestine
Before Scheduling Elections, Arafat Demands Israeli Pullback
New York Times
May 18, 2002
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/international/middleeast/18ARAF.html
JERUSALEM, May 17 - Only hours after two of his top aides said he was ready to run for election within six months, Yasir Arafat said today that Palestinians could not hold elections until Israeli forces pulled back from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Mr. Arafat's brief remarks cast some confusion on the drive for reform in his Palestinian Authority, which has increasingly been viewed by many Palestinians as inefficient, corrupt and autocratic.
On Thursday, Palestinian legislators began drawing up a series of reform proposals, envisioning a shake-up and paring down of Mr. Arafat's roster of ministers as well as elections by early 2003. The legislative committee, which included many longtime critics of Mr. Arafat, was moving fast to capitalize on a speech he made Wednesday conceding a need for change.
By Thursday night, two of Mr. Arafat's top aides, Information Minister Yasir Abed Rabbo and the cabinet secretary general, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, were talking of elections as soon as the fall, or within four to six months.
The speaker of the parliament, Ahmed Qurei, known as Abu Ala, was quoted this morning in the Arabic newspaper Al Quds as saying that municipal elections would be held before the end of the year and balloting for the legislature early next year, and other officials said they were already at work compiling the voting rolls.
But as he emerged from Friday Prayer at a sandbagged mosque in Ramallah at midday, Mr. Arafat was asked by waiting journalists when free elections would be held.
"As soon as we'll finish this occupation of our land," Mr. Arafat replied in English. "According to the agreement, it was supposed to be at the beginning of 1999."
No elections, he was asked, before the occupation ends?
"Definitely not," Mr. Arafat replied.
Two aides to Mr. Arafat, Nabil Shaath and Nabil Abu Rdeneh, later clarified his remarks, saying that what he meant was that the Israeli Army must withdraw from the positions it has set up since the current round of fighting flared in September 2000.
Palestinian protests began after Ariel Sharon, now the Israeli prime minister but then the opposition leader, made a provocative visit to the Temple Mount. As the protests raged, the Israeli Army set up checkpoints on the roads in the West Bank and surrounded and sealed off major cities, choking Palestinian commerce and much of daily life.
The Gaza Strip is virtually fenced off and surrounded. At the end of March, the Israelis began a six-week sweep of the West Bank, occupying and closing down the major cities of Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem, imprisoning Mr. Arafat in his own office and causing substantial damage to property, infrastructure and the Palestinian Authority itself.
In recent days, the Israelis have reverted to their earlier practice of carrying out raids in territory that had been turned over to Palestinian control under the Oslo agreement. After raids in Ramallah and villages near Hebron, among other places, they struck at the Jenin refugee camp, scene of the fiercest fighting last month, arresting 20 people.
After Mr. Arafat's comments today, an adviser to Mr. Sharon, Raanan Gissin, suggested that Mr. Arafat was trying to use the Israelis as an excuse to avoid elections.
"He knows very well that as long as he doesn't take any action against terrorism, Israeli forces will have to remain there," Mr. Gissin said.
But one of Mr. Arafat's Palestinian critics, a formulator of the reform legislation, said Mr. Arafat had a point. "I think he is justified in that," said Ziad Abu Amr, a political scientist and legislator from Gaza. "How can we do an election if we do not have any jurisdiction?"
Israeli troops, backed by tanks, poured into the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank before dawn, searching for suspects. A main target was a Hamas militant named Jamal Abu al-Haija. He was not home, but the soldiers burned down his house, Palestinians there said. In the fighting last month in the camp, 23 soldiers - a staggering casualty count by Israeli standards - and more than 50 Palestinians were killed and a wide area of densely packed homes was flattened by Israeli armored bulldozers and tanks.
The Israeli Army described the raid as a "pinpoint operation in the refugee camp," adding that "arrests were made."
In the course of what now passes for a relatively quiet day here, a Palestinian man was shot dead in Gaza trying to charge the Dugit Jewish settlement, an operation claimed by Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Mr. Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement. An Israeli Arab woman was killed in the West Bank when her car was fired on. The Israeli Army said soldiers fired at the car as it sped toward a checkpoint, the Reuters news service reported.
A 7-year-old Palestinian boy, Amid Abu Seir, was shot dead and a half dozen other Palestinians, including his father, were wounded by fire from an Israeli armored vehicle at the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, Palestinian witnesses said.
Meanwhile, in what may prove to be an embarrassing impasse, wrangling European Union diplomats in Brussels have not been able to figure out what to do with 13 exiled Palestinian militants who have spent the last week in a luxury beachfront hotel in Cyprus and who were supposed to be taken in by European countries as part of the deal to end the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
--------
Arafat links elections to Israeli withdrawal
May 18, 2002
By Hadeel Wahdan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020518-91838764.htm
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian officials yesterday linked plans for a general election, which would require Yasser Arafat to face voters for the first time in six years, to an Israeli troop pullback and a lifting of travel restrictions.
Israeli officials said the conditions mean that Mr. Arafat, who is under growing pressure from abroad and at home to reform his government, is not serious about facing the voters.
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers killed three persons: an Israeli Arab woman who was shot when soldiers opened fire on her taxi, a 7-year-old boy who was shot inside his home and an armed Palestinian who tried to infiltrate an Israeli settlement.
Israeli troops also raided the battle-scarred Jenin refugee camp and detained dozens of Palestinians. An Israeli soldier was wounded, the army said. A Palestinian man was killed in an explosion of a homemade bomb that was planted in the camp by fighters last month, sources in the camp said.
Israel wrapped up a six-week military offensive against Palestinian militias in the West Bank last week but has continued to carry out arrest raids, such as the one in the Jenin camp.
The incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas illustrate the difficulties the Palestinians would face in preparing for elections.
"We are looking to run the election within six months," said Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath, adding that work has begun on putting together the roster of 1.6 million eligible voters.
"But these elections need an Israeli withdrawal to the places before Sept. 28, 2000," Mr. Shaath added, referring to the date the current round of fighting erupted.
Such a withdrawal would require the Israelis to remove dozens of checkpoints and pull back forces outside major Palestinian cities. The checkpoints restrict most Palestinians to their hometowns, cities or villages.
Mr. Arafat, when asked yesterday whether elections could take place before an Israeli withdrawal, said: "Definitely not."
"It is very difficult to have elections with occupation," he said.
An Israeli official dismissed the Palestinian calls for a withdrawal. "On the one hand, he talks about reforms; now, he has an excuse not to execute those reforms," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "He knows very well that as long as he doesn't take any action against terrorism, the Israeli forces will have to remain there."
Mr. Arafat is under pressure from the United States, the European Union and his own people to reform the Palestinian Authority and to hold elections.
On Thursday, the Palestinian parliament demanded that the Cabinet be disbanded and a new one be formed within 45 days. It also called for elections by the beginning of 2003.
In the Jenin refugee camp, the scene of the heaviest fighting in the military offensive, Israeli soldiers surrounded the home of Jamal Abu Alhija, the local leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas. Mr. Alhija was not home, and the soldiers hurled grenades into the house, burning it to the ground, the military said.
Palestinians said 40 camp residents were detained, and the army said troops arrested 24 persons.
Last month, 23 Israeli soldiers and more than 50 Palestinians were killed in battles in the refugee camp.
The Israeli troops also entered Jenin city yesterday and picked up Kamal Abu Al-Wafa, a leader of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, Agence France-Presse reported, quoting witnesses.
Israeli tanks also rumbled into the West Bank towns of Tulkarm and El-Bireh, bordering Ramallah, late Thursday, Palestinian security officials said.
In the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, Israeli soldiers fired tank-mounted machine guns at stone-throwing Palestinians yesterday, killing 7-year-old Amid Abu Sir, witnesses said. Six others were wounded, including three boys in their early teens, Palestinian doctors said. Amid was in his home, but the large-caliber bullets penetrated the house, witnesses and relatives said.
In the northern West Bank, soldiers killed an Israeli Arab woman who was driving in a car toward an Israeli army convoy, the army said. The military said the car was being driven "in a suspicious manner."
An armed Palestinian was killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip when he tried to enter the Jewish settlement of Dugit, the Israeli military said. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attempted infiltration.
--------
Militant Group Open to Participation
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The militant Islamic group Hamas left open the door Saturday to its participation in planned Palestinian elections, a move that would present a formidable challenge to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The extremist group, which is second in popularity among Palestinians only to Arafat's movement, also vowed Saturday to continue suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. It said it would not stop until Israeli soldiers halted attacks against Palestinian civilians.
In the West Bank on Saturday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a car that tried to run a roadblock, the army said. One Arab passenger was killed when the car flipped over.
Three Palestinians were killed on Friday, including two who tried to infiltrate into Jewish settlements to carry out attacks.
Meanwhile, 15 Palestinian Cabinet ministers offered to resign Saturday, officials said, a gesture to spur reforms in the Palestinian Authority, headed by Arafat.
The Cabinet ministers signed a letter offering to present their resignations, the Palestinian officials said, but none had actually resigned, and the letter was not presented to Arafat.
On Thursday, the Palestinian parliament put together a list of reform demands, including disbanding the Cabinet and calling elections for president and parliament.
Minister Hassan Asfour said the ministers would resign if Arafat thought that would spur reforms. ``We will follow President Arafat's decision,'' he told The Associated Press.
Arafat, whose popularity is at a low point, has promised to hold general elections but later linked the balloting to an Israeli withdrawal from positions in the Palestinian territories.
His aides said the Israelis must first dismantle dozens of roadblocks that make travel inside of the West Bank extremely difficult. They also said that Israeli soldiers would have to be pulled back from positions that ring Palestinian cities. The elections are expected within six months if the Palestinian conditions are met, they said.
The United States, Europe and Israel have been pressing Arafat to hold elections and reform his administration, which is widely regarded as corrupt.
Israel has said that it will not pull back its soldiers until Arafat's security forces arrest militants and has said that Arafat's conditions are a ploy to avoid elections.
``We're there because he's not doing his job,'' said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Hamas, which boycotted the last elections in 1996, has indicated that it would consider fielding candidates in upcoming elections as long as the balloting has nothing to do with the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians.
Hamas does not recognize the peace agreement and calls for the destruction of Israel. The United States considers the group to be a terrorist organization.
``We do not recognize any elections that came as a result of the Oslo agreement and if the coming elections will be the same as the past we will consider it an obstacle for the participation of Hamas and other parties,'' Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas leader, told AP Saturday.
Arafat has not said that upcoming elections would have anything to do with the Oslo process but it's not clear if he would agree to Hamas participation. Palestinian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Abu Shanab said that Hamas also would consider fielding candidates in local elections, which would be held at the same time as the general elections.
``We have to wait until elections will be declared officially and then we will make a decision,'' he said when asked about the municipal elections.
The election of members of Hamas or other militant groups to the Palestinian parliament would be a massive setback to the already faltering peace process.
``These are organizations that have stated very clearly that they want the destruction of Israel,'' Gissin said.
``Would you imagine that a terrorist group would run for election in the United States or any other democracy?'' Gissin asked. ``Who are you going to negotiate with then?''
Hamas, which provides a social welfare network in the Palestinian territories, is admired by many Palestinians for carrying out suicide attacks against Israelis and is the strongest opposition to Arafat's Fatah movement.
So far, Arafat's only challenger is Abdel Sattar Qassem, a Palestinian political scientist who says he will run on an anti-corruption platform but has no local base of support.
Hamas claimed responsibility for a March 27 suicide bombing which killed 29 Israelis during a Passover Seder, an attack which led Israel to mount its largest military offensive in the West Bank in decades.
Abu Shanab said that Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide attacks since fighting began in September 2000, will continue the attacks as long as Israeli soldiers or settlers are on occupied territory.
``We were forced to commit martyrdom operations by the occupation but if the occupation stops its attacks against civilians our resistance will be limited to settlers, soldiers and their tanks,'' Abu Shanab said.
-------- nato
Congress Passes Legislation Endorsing NATO Expansion
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Washington Post
Saturday, May 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35986-2002May17?language=printer
Congress sent President Bush a bill that endorses NATO expansion and authorizes security assistance for seven nations that hope to join the military alliance.
"This bill will help NATO extend the zone of stability eastward and southward on the continent so that some time in the next decade we'll be able to say, for the first time, I think, in modern history, that we have a Europe whole and free," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Senate voted 85 to 6 for the bill as Bush met at the White House with Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek of Slovenia, one of seven nations seeking entry to NATO. The other six were Warsaw Pact members.
The legislation would authorize $55.5 million in military assistance for the seven countries but does not specifically call for admission to NATO. The aid would go to: Estonia, $6.5 million; Latvia, $7 million; Lithuania, $7.5 million; Slovakia, $8.5 million; Slovenia, $4.5 million; Bulgaria, $10 million; and Romania, $11.5 million.
The House approved the bill in November, 372 to 46.
--------
Congress votes to aid NATO aspirants
May 18, 2002
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020518-28142205.htm
Congress yesterday endorsed President Bush's call for a "robust" NATO enlargement and authorized $55.5 million in military assistance for seven countries believed to have good chances of joining in November.
The Senate approved the bill 85-6 just ahead of Mr. Bush's European trip next week, during which he will visit Russia, Germany, France and Italy. The House passed an identical bill six months ago, 372-46.
On May 28, at an air base outside Rome, Mr. Bush and the other 18 NATO heads of state will welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin as the alliance's newest ally. This will be the first meeting of the NATO-Russia Joint Council, which was established in Reykjavik, Iceland, on Tuesday.
The vote took place yesterday as Mr. Bush was meeting at the White House with Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek of Slovenia, the former Yugoslav republic and one of the bill's beneficiaries.
"This bill will help NATO extend the zone of stability eastward and southward on the continent, so that some time in the next decade we'll be able to say, for the first time I think in modern history, that we have a Europe whole and free," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
The bill, which doesn't specifically back membership for any of the seven nations from Central and Eastern Europe, authorizes an aid package of $10 million for Bulgaria, $6.5 million for Estonia, $7 million for Latvia, $7.5 million for Lithuania, $11.5 million for Romania, $8.5 million for Slovakia and $4.5 million for Slovenia.
The funds, approved by Congress last year, will "help those candidate countries meet the alliance's stringent membership requirements," Mr. Biden said.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and a senior member of the committee, echoed Mr. Biden's comments and said that "the Cold War may be over, but the security and welfare of America and Europe are very closely linked."
NATO will make a decision on this round of expansion, its second since the end of the Cold War, at a summit in Prague. In addition to the seven hopefuls, Albania and Macedonia also have applied but are not seen as viable candidates yet. Croatia, another former Yugoslav republic, also is an aspirant but it submitted its application too late to be considered for this round.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were the first former communist countries to become NATO members. They were invited in 1997 and joined two years later.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a letter to Congress that the new bill will "advance vital American interests in a strengthened and enlarged alliance" and reinforces "our nation's commitment to the achievement of freedom, peace and security in Europe."
But despite Congress' overwhelming support for NATO enlargement, some members are opposing it.
Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, voted against the bill, saying it gives the seven applicants premature hopes for admission. He also said that expansion would burden the United States with significant additional expenses.
"What we are doing is saying to the American taxpayer and the men and women of the armed forces of the United States that an attack against one is an attack against all," Mr. Warner said.
-------- spies
A Cloak But No Dagger
An Ex-Spy Says He Seeks Solutions, Not Scapegoats for 9/11
By Richard Leiby
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36091-2002May17?language=printer
It was a quiet day in September, in a small town in Florida, but Porter Goss could not quell his anxiety about an impending attack by international terrorists. They were coming, he said, and they were certain to pass through the local airport.
It was time to act. An ex-CIA man turned politician, Goss backed a mission worthy of a spy movie. He voted to arm airport cops with Uzis -- those stubby black submachine guns that can deal death at the rate of 10 bullets a second.
"Terrorists pick on the weak," Goss warned. "We're telling people that if you plan to come here and cause trouble, you won't get away with it."
And so it came to pass that the commissioners of Lee County, Fla. -- with Goss as chairman -- procured eight Uzis to defend the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, in the retiree haven of Fort Myers, against the menace of global terrorism. Catering as it did to snow-weary tourists from America's heartland, the airport never faced a hijacking or any other showdown with murderous criminals. The guns were never used.
Today Rep. Goss (R-Fla.) blushes, then laughs, when reminded of that vote 16 years ago. He chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and is one of Congress's most respected voices on terrorism. Those Uzis, he says, sent a message that the little airport was serious: "The idea was, if we're going to play in the big time, we have to be big time."
An overreaction? Perhaps, but today it gives Goss the sheen of prescience. The terrorists were coming, eventually. Now the main question facing Goss, as he helps steer a joint House-Senate investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, is why nobody in the far-flung intelligence bureaucracy -- 13 agencies spending billions of dollars -- paid attention to the enemy among us. Until it was too late.
Goss says he is looking for solutions, not scapegoats. "A lot of nonsense," he calls this week's uproar about a CIA briefing that alerted President Bush, five weeks before Sept. 11, that Osama bin Laden's associates might be planning airline hijackings.
"None of this is news, but it's all part of the finger-pointing," Goss declared yesterday in a rare display of pique. "It's foolishness."
A well-mannered legislator with a well-manicured pedigree (Connecticut-born, wealthy, Yale Class of '60, major in ancient Greek), Goss has repeatedly refused to blame an "intelligence failure" for the terror attacks. As a 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing, Goss prefers to praise the agency's "fine work."
"The trouble with the failure word," he says, "is that it is being used politically for various agendas."
"We're not in the 'Gotcha!' business," agrees Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Goss's friend and, as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, co-chair of the investigation. Both say the crucial issue isn't what the president knew before 9/11 but whyhe didn't have more precise intelligence to act upon.
"The right question is, why didn't the president have the necessary intelligence to take the right steps to avoid the tragedy?" says Goss.
As Graham put it, "No one should expect the president or members of Congress to go put on their James Bond uniforms and become case officers."
On and off Capitol Hill, some critics have been grumbling that Goss is too close to the CIA and that Graham is inclined to tread softly, too.
The committees' investigative work, and most of the hearings, will be conducted in secret. Public sessions -- which Goss predicts will start in June -- are not expected to be anything like the no-holds-barred spy scandal hearings run by Sen. Frank Church in the 1970s.
"The contrast is so stark as to be amazing," says Richard V. Allen, President Reagan's first national security adviser, who has long admired Goss's "unassuming" style. If Goss had led the Church Commission probe, "the outcome could be the same, reining in the excesses of the intelligence community," says Allen, "with much less spin."
The co-chairmen -- so similar of mind they're like "Frick and Frack," in Goss's description -- vow to pose tough questions and serve as truth-seeking advocates for the citizenry. "We are going to go where this takes us," Goss says.
"If the facts indicate there were people whose behavior warrants sanctions, we'll say so," says Graham.
"I have a very low tolerance level," says Goss, striking a patrician tone, "for lack of performance." He relaxes his lanky frame in a leather office chair and poses a question to himself:
"Can I be trusted to be objective in the very responsible role I have as chairman . . . because of my past association with the CIA? The answer, I believe, is yes." He calls himself "harder on the agency than anybody" and points out, "I don't want to be embarrassed, as an alumnus of the organization."
Spoken like a true Company man.
A Sea Change
Resting in his Washington hotel room, the spy felt lightheaded. His pulse raced. He called a doctor. Then he collapsed.
When 31-year-old Porter J. Goss regained consciousness, he was in a hospital, undergoing treatment for a massive infection. It was 1970. The CIA had called him to Washington from his home base in England, where he lived with his wife, Mariel, and four children.
Goss nearly died, and doctors had no idea what caused the staph infection of his heart and other vital organs. Neither did he. (He rules out deliberate poisoning.)
"This was out of the wild blue," says Goss, now 63. The illness put him in a wheelchair, cut short his CIA career and pushed his life in a new direction.
The son of a metals company sales manager, Goss grew up in Waterbury, Conn., and recalls watching World War II artillery shells being transported to the factory floor as a boy. But he wasn't working class. His family could afford to send him to Hotchkiss prep school and Yale, where he joined the Army ROTC and made his first contacts with the Central Intelligence Agency. He trained as a military intelligence officer after graduation, and by 1962 he was working at the CIA, deployed to Miami in time for the Cuban missile crisis.
He did photo interpretation and "small-boat handling" but doesn't want to lay out specifics. "I had some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits," he says. "I don't think I'd be comfortable going to Cuba." (Though earlier this year he visited the U.S. base at Guantanamo, wanting to make sure that debriefings there of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners were "getting the proper results.")
Goss was facile with languages, a student of Greek and Latin who spoke Spanish and French. The CIA sent him to various "hot spots," including Haiti, Santo Domingo and Mexico. He recruited and ran agents, foreign nationals who could help collect what he calls "the gold," the prized nuggets of information that resided inside people's heads: Their "plans and intentions."
Goss was a clandestine service officer in Western Europe when his illness struck. The agency offered him a desk job, but he decided to retire and relocate to Sanibel Island, off Florida's Gulf Coast. He had friends from the CIA there, including retired supervisors in the directorate of operations who were planning business ventures. "Come on down, we can ease you back," they told him.
Goss recalls a long, painful rehabilitation with the help of his wife, "trying to get my health back, a few steps a day," forcing himself to walk a couple hundred yards from his house to the shoreline.
"We started a new life," he says. "We just started all over again, completely."
With two ex-spy partners, he went into the newspaper business. They established a weekly called the Island Reporter in 1972, and Goss became politically active. By December 1974 he was elected the island's first mayor, winning 1,356 votes. He was paid $1 a year. (It helped that his wife came from a rich, old Pittsburgh industrial family.)
As it turned out, that part of Florida was a magnet for former spooks. Attending a meeting with other local mayors -- from Naples, Fort Myers and Cape Coral -- Goss realized they were all former CIA men. So were some of the reporters covering the meeting.
"Of the eight people in the room, seven were agency people!" he says, chortling.
In local elections, conspiracy theories flew. Was the CIA trying to establish Sanibel as a base for another Bay of Pigs invasion? After all, the CIA reportedly had trained Cuban insurgents on nearby Useppa Island in 1960.
Goss and his partners eventually sold the paper "at an obscene price," he says. He continued his political rise when then-Gov. Bob Graham, impressed by Goss's slow-growth efforts to protect the environment in Sanibel, reached across party lines in 1982 and appointed the Republican to fill a vacancy on the scandal-wracked Lee County Commission. In 1988, Goss ran for Congress and won.
Losing the Human Factor
"King Neptune," a newspaper cartoonist nicknamed him: Porter Goss, protector of sea creatures, foe of those who would exploit dolphins in water shows.
The congressman focused initially on what he calls "stewardship of natural resources." He tends to strike balances -- an avid boater who also supports zones to keep manatees safe. As he moved on to the foreign affairs, rules and intelligence committees, he gained a reputation as an honest broker, straight-talking, given to thoughtful deliberation rather than grandstanding. "He's always been policy-oriented as opposed to politics-oriented," says Allen, the former Reagan adviser. (Allen once owned a condo on Sanibel.) "He strikes me as quite atypical of a Washington politician."
As House intelligence chairman since 1997, Goss aimed shots at the Clinton White House, part of a consistent barrage of warnings about the nation's "underinvestment" in the intelligence community, a manpower deficit at the FBI, poor interagency coordination, and a lack of language training among CIA operatives, as well as military officers. "We inherited some serious mess from the Clinton administration," he said yesterday.
Old-school spooks such as Goss often wax nostalgic about the days when "HUMINT" (human intelligence) trumped technological wizardry, when operatives spoke the local lingo and blended into cultures to make connections. The surprise attacks of 9/11 are often attributed, in part, to the CIA's inability to penetrate Islamic terror cells because of a lack of language skills and a paucity of on-the-ground HUMINT.
As this week's headlines show, there were rumblings and red flags last summer that something big was afoot. But counterterrorism operatives evidently weren't close enough to their targets to find the gold: those 19 hijackers' intentions and plans.
"We get piles and piles of information, but how much of it is actually intelligence?" laments one veteran intelligence officer.
"We're like a watchmaker who can't do things in a delicate environment," says another counterterrorism expert. "We've lost the feeling in our fingertips."
"I certainly concur with that," Goss says. "Wholeheartedly.
"I know what a good penetration of a hard target is -- and looks like, talks like and sounds like," he adds, explaining how his background serves him well on the oversight committee. "We are being too namby-pamby about taking risks to get the good penetrations of the hard targets in denied areas. . . . Now, that's the old guy talking to you.
"It's changed very much," he says of the spy agency. "I don't think I could get a job as a case officer today."
Before President Bush's election, Goss's name surfaced as a candidate for the top CIA job amid speculation that Bush would replace Director George Tenet, a Clinton appointee. But Goss brushes that off as a rumor "traveling around the Beltway smoke circuit" and says, "I have never asked for [that] job."
Goss supported Tenet as a holdover and has not wavered in his support amid calls by others for Tenet's resignation after 9/11. After blasting Tenet last fall, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman, also described Goss as "close to a lot of people" at the CIA, telling Roll Call, "I don't think we should be too close to anybody we have oversight of, because you can't do your job."
But other prominent Republicans -- namely Bush and Vice President Cheney -- maintain great faith in Goss. Though Goss had said he would not run again, Cheney was dispatched earlier this year and helped persuade him not to retire. Goss also recalls seeing the president on two occasions and quotes him thusly:
" 'Porter, listen, I really want you to stay.' He said, 'This intelligence stuff is important. I want you here.' " And, Bush told him, "You've got it exactly right."
Going for the Gold
On the morning of Sept. 11, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed -- the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan's intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
A Goss aide handed a note to his boss. Goss read it and handed it to Graham. Soon they would evacuate the Capitol, but not before Goss, the designated speaker pro tempore, symbolically opened the House for one minute.
The discussion that morning touched on Taliban links to terrorism, but Goss says his greatest worry was the dispute in Kashmir -- and the nuclear weapons possessed by feuding Pakistan and India. A few weeks earlier, Goss and other lawmakers had visited the region on a fact-finding tour, but he admits he wasn't focused on bin Laden at the time.
"I had it wrong," he says. "I was looking east [toward Kashmir] instead of west [toward Afghanistan] when I was standing in Islamabad."
He says this with no embarrassment or defensiveness. This is part of why people like Goss. When he gets it wrong, he doesn't dissemble. "Seek Ye the Truth" -- that's the CIA's motto. He would affix the same slogan to his investigation.
"This is a professional, responsible, nonpartisan activity," Goss says. But as far as what kind of weaknesses, flaws or lapses (don't call them failures) he thinks the investigation will uncover -- and how to fix them -- there is little point asking. The chairman is an impenetrable target in a denied area.
That's the way it is in the intelligence game. "You can spend two hours in here saying, 'I've talked to Porter Goss,' and still not have a clue what my plans and intentions are," the Company man says, before bidding farewell to his interrogator with a handshake and smile.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
-------- terrorism
Airlines Warned of Terrorist Threats
By Jonathan D. Salant
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, May 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37490-2002May18.html
WASHINGTON -- Five months before Sept. 11, the government warned airlines that Middle Eastern terrorists could try to hijack or blow up a U.S. plane and that carriers should "demonstrate a high degree of alertness."
The warning, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press, came out after the April 6, 2001, conviction of Ahmed Ressam in connection with a failed plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations.
The memo from the Federal Aviation Administration, dated April 18, 2001, also noted that four al-Qaida members were on trial in New York, accused of being involved in the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
The warning, set to expire July 31, was one of 15 information circulars sent last year that warned of potential terrorist threats before Sept. 11.
Bush administration officials have said the threats were so vague that they did not require tighter security. Nor did they envision a scenario similar to Sept. 11, when suicide terrorists turned four commercial airliners into missiles.
Also Saturday, Republicans stepped up their defense of President Bush against criticism that his administration ignored warning signs about the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Americans know that President Bush, when faced with credible information about a threat, would act swiftly and strongly," Republican Party Chairman Marc Racicot wrote in an e-mail to GOP supporters.
Any statements that suggest "anything to the contrary" are "irresponsible and politically motivated," Racicot wrote. Democrats are suggesting an expansion of inquiries into what the White House and federal law enforcement knew about possible terror attacks.
The airline memos obtained by the AP do not provide specific details about the threats, nor do they instruct the airlines to follow new security procedures.
The April memo, for example, cited "reports that prompt concern about the safety and security of U.S. citizens traveling through the Middle East." The FAA said the potential for a terrorist attack was high, but there were no credible threats against U.S. airlines.
"Nevertheless, some of the currently active groups are known to plan and train for hijackings and have the capability to construct sophisticated (bombs) concealed inside luggage and consumer products," the memo said. "The FAA encourages all U.S. carriers to demonstrate a high degree of alertness."
On June 22, citing "unconfirmed reports that American interests may be the target of terrorist threat from extremist groups," the FAA again alerted airlines.
The security warning, scheduled to expire Aug. 22, talked about a potential hijacking as a way to secure the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, imprisoned for plotting to blow up New York landmarks in 1993.
"Although we have no specific information that this threat is directed at civil aviation, the potential for a terrorist operation, such as an airline hijacking to free terrorists incarcerated in the United States, remains a concern," the warning said.
On Aug. 28, in a memo to expire Nov. 30, airlines were warned that fighting between Israelis and Palestinians had led to threats against airlines flying to and from Israel.
The government said it was concerned about the increased ferocity of Palestinian suicide bombings directed against Israeli civilians, as well as an unconfirmed report in the Arab media that foreign airlines were warned to stay away from Israel.
"At this time," the memo said, "the FAA does not have information of a specific threat against U.S. air carriers operating in Israel, but is concerned about the increasing lethality of the bombing attacks and the information regarding targeting of Ben Gurion International Airport."
----
Report for CIA Foresaw an Al Qaeda Plane Attack
May 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-attack-bush-report.html
WASHINGTON - Despite White House avowals that it would have been impossible to conceive before Sept. 11 of a hijacked plane being used to attack U.S. targets, a 1999 report for the CIA envisioned a very similar threat.
It predicted Islamic militant Osama bin Laden would retaliate ``in a spectacular way'' against Washington for U.S. cruise missile strikes in 1998 against training facilities of his al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.
``Suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's martyrdom battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives ... into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, or the White House,'' the report said.
The report was commissioned by The National Intelligence Council, which reports to CIA Director George Tenet. It was conducted by the research arm of the Library of Congress, well before Bush took office.
One work in a vast output of terrorism studies, the report has long been public and is available on the Internet.But its on-target prediction prompted new questions on Friday over how much the government knew about potential threats, in the wake of disclosures that President Bush was alerted in his daily CIA intelligence briefing last August to the possibility of a hijacking by al Qaeda.
Four hijacked U.S. airliners slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, killing about 3,000 people. Washington has blamed al Qaeda for the attacks.
``I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon,'' Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Thursday.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Thursday the alert to Bush did not say there was a chance planes would be used by al Qaeda as suicide bombs.
``Traditional hijackings prior to Sept. 11 -- it might as well be a different word in a different language from what we have all unfortunately come to know about the post-9/11 world,'' he said.
On Friday, Fleischer played down the significance of the report, saying it was primarily a study of the thinking of potential terrorists and not based on specific intelligence.
He said he had not learned of the report until Friday, but noted it had also long been available to Congress, some of whose members have called for an investigation into potential administration intelligence failures.
``I think what it shows is this information that was out there did not raise enough alarms with anybody ... because it was not intelligence information,'' Fleischer said.
An intelligence official said there was no indication CIA Director Tenet, who briefs Bush, had seen the report. The report was commissioned to be used in a larger study of global trends, he said. It is 125 pages long, plus notes.
The report said retaliation could also come in the form of a ``building buster'' bomb at a federal building or, more likely, a time bomb on an airliner. ``A horrendous scenario consonant with al Qaeda's mindset would be its use of a nuclear suitcase bomb against any number of targets in the nation's capital,'' the report said.
It said other groups that could carry out terror attacks on the United States, including Lebanon's Hizbollah, Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam, and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo.
However, it said, ``al Qaeda poses the most serious terrorist threat to U.S. security interests, for al Qaeda's well-trained terrorists are actively engaged in a terrorist jihad against U.S. interests worldwide.''
--------
1999 Study: Hijack - Suicides Possible
May 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-1999-Warning.html
WASHINGTON -- Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.
``Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,'' the September 1999 report said.
The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration was aware of the report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and U.S. intelligence on emerging threats. He said the document did not contain direct intelligence pointing toward a specific plot but rather included assessments about how terrorists might strike.
``What it shows is that this information that was out there did not raise enough alarm with anybody,'' Fleischer acknowledged.
Former President Clinton, golfing in Hawaii, played down the intelligence value of the 1999 report.
``That has nothing to do with intelligence,'' he said. ``All that it says is they used public sources to speculate on what bin Laden might do. Let me remind you that's why I attacked his training camp and why I asked the Pakistanis to go get him, and why we contracted with some people in Afghanistan to go get him because we thought he was dangerous.''
Also Friday, new information emerged about a memo from the FBI's Phoenix office last July warning headquarters that a large number of Arabs were training at a U.S. flight school. The memo urged that all flight schools nationwide be checked, but the FBI failed to act on the idea before Sept. 11.
Government officials said Friday that two of the more than half dozen names the FBI Phoenix office identified in the memo were determined by the CIA after Sept. 11 to have links to bin Laden's al-Qaida.
Officials said the CIA was not shown the memo before Sept. 11 and even if it had, it did not have the intelligence linking the two men to al-Qaida until after the attacks. The FBI checked the names before Sept. 11 but found no bin Laden ties, the officials added.
Former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council when the 1999 report was written, said officials long have known a suicide hijacking was a threat.
``If you ask anybody could terrorists convert a plane into a missile, nobody would have ruled that out,'' he said.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress raised the volume of their calls to investigate what the government knew before Sept. 11.
``I think we're going to learn a lot about what the government knew,'' Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said during an appearance in New York. She said she was unaware of the report created in 1999 during her husband's administration.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees, demanded the CIA inspector general investigate the report, which he called ``one of the most alarming indicators and warning signs of the terrorist plot of Sept. 11.''
Meanwhile, court transcripts reviewed by The Associated Press show the government had other warning signs between 1999 and 2001 that bin Laden was sending members of his network to be trained as pilots and was considering airlines as a possible target.
The court records show the FBI has known since at least 1999 that Ihab Mohammed Ali, who was arrested in Orlando, Fla., and later named as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, had been sent for pilot training in Norman, Okla., before working as a pilot for bin Laden.
He eventually crashed a plane owned by bin Laden in Sudan that prosecutors alleged was used to transport al-Qaida members and weapons. Ali remains in custody in New York. In February 2001, federal prosecutors told a court they gained information in September 2000 from an associate of Ali's, Moroccan citizen L'Houssaine Kherchtou, that Kherchtou was trained as an al-Qaida pilot in Kenya and attended a meeting in 1993 where an al-Qaida official was briefing Ali on Western air traffic control procedures.
``He (Kherchtou) observed an Egyptian person who was not a pilot debriefing a friend of his, Ihab Ali, about how air traffic control works and what people say over the air traffic control system,'' then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told a New York court.
``And it was his belief that there might have been a plan to send a pilot to Saudi Arabia or someone familiar with that to monitor the air traffic communications so they could possibly attack an airplane perhaps belonging to an Egyptian president or something in Saudi Arabia.''
That intelligence is in addition to information the FBI received in July 2001 from its Phoenix office that a large number of Arabs were training at U.S. flight schools and a briefing President Bush received in August of that year suggesting hijacking was one possible attack the al-Qaida might use against the United States.
The September 1999 report, entitled ``Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?'' described suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks the al-Qaida might seek for a 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
The report noted an al-Qaida-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a mission.
``Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters,'' the report said.
Bush administration officials have repeatedly said no one in government had imagined such an attack.
``I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,'' National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for federal agencies.
--------
Clues Surfaced Before Sept. 11
May 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Overseas-Warnings.html
A plan to crash a plane into CIA headquarters was exposed after an arrest in the Philippines. A meeting of future Sept. 11 hijackers aroused suspicion in Malaysia. Information that al-Qaida was seeking to assassinate President Bush at a summit in Europe led to heightened security.
Clues filtering in from overseas since at least 1994 foreshadowed Osama bin Laden's plans to attack America, and intelligence information from Italy, Israel and elsewhere in the months before Sept. 11 warned that a terrorist strike might be imminent.
The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Bush was briefed by the CIA on Aug. 6 about an al-Qaida hijacking threat. An earlier report by the Phoenix field office of the FBI that may never have reached the president's desk warned that many Middle Eastern men were training at least one U.S. flight school.
The Bush administration said the information was not specific and there was no intelligence before Sept. 11 that al-Qaida planned to use commercial planes as vessels of destruction.
``I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,'' national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
But warning signs that something like Sept. 11 might be contemplated weren't all recent -- and they came from different sources around the world.
In 1994, Algerian militants hijacked an Air France jetliner and killed three passengers before being captured during a stop in Marseilles. It came out that they had hoped to blow up the jet over the Eiffel Tower, debunking the notion that a suicidal airline attack on a prominent target was unthinkable before Sept. 11.
Perhaps the first clue of a similar plot against the United States emerged during the Clinton administration in 1995, when Philippine authorities arrested Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad after a chemical fire at their Manila apartment.
Under questioning, Murad admitted connections to bin Laden and spoke of a plot to dive-bomb a jetliner into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. He also said Middle Eastern pilots were training at U.S. flight schools in preparation for a plot to blow up 12 passenger jets over the Pacific Ocean.
The FBI was alerted at the time and interviewed flight school attendees, but it did not develop evidence that any of the Middle Easterners were plotting terrorism.
FBI and other law enforcement officials involved in the Murad investigation, who spoke earlier this year on condition of anonymity, said American authorities were focused mostly on the plot to blow up the airplanes because it was developed and imminent when Murad and Yousef were arrested. The plan to use a plane as a weapon was largely discounted.
``We shared that with the FBI,'' said Robert Delfin, chief of intelligence command for the Philippine National Police. ``They may have mislooked and didn't appreciate the info coming from the Philippine police.''
Yousef, considered the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Murad were eventually convicted in the United States and sentenced to life in prison.
Larry Johnson, deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism in 1989-93, criticized Rice for discounting the possibility that a Sept. 11-type attack could have been foreseen.
``She's foolish in saying that. Intelligence analysts are paid to imagine the unimaginable. That information was in their files, and if they weren't imagining it, that is a failure of intelligence and a failure of imagination,'' he said.
Another clue to Sept. 11 came in 2000, and it was partially a result of the 1995 Philippine investigation.
The investigation of Murad and Yousef led authorities to a radical Indonesian cleric, Riduan Isamuddin, who was living in Malaysia and was suspected of deep ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations.
The cleric, who goes by the name Hambali, was under surveillance in January 2000 when he met with two future Sept. 11 hijackers -- Saudi nationals Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi -- in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian authorities have said.
Information from the surveillance was shared with U.S. authorities, and the meeting took on new significance when another of the participants, an unidentified al-Qaida operative from the Middle East, became wanted in connection with the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
The two Saudis were not on the intelligence community's radar screens at the time, but their connections to Hambali and the al-Qaida operative wanted in the Cole investigation got them placed on a CIA terrorist watch list in August 2001 -- one month before they helped commandeer the American Airlines jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
The investigation into Hambali has also linked the cleric to another alleged Sept. 11 player, Zacarias Moussaoui, who is on trial in U.S. District Court in Virginia and faces the death penalty if convicted of conspiracy in the attacks.
Two of Hambali's followers, Yazid Sufaat and his wife Sejahratul Dursina, are under arrest in Malaysia -- Sufaat in connection with a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Singapore and Dursina for allegedly providing Moussaoui with an employment letter that helped him get the U.S. visa.
Moussaoui was arrested on a visa violation in August after raising suspicions during flight training in Minnesota.
French intelligence was aware of Moussaoui as early as 1999, when he was placed on a watch-list for alleged links to the Armed Islamic Group, which claimed responsibility for 1995 bombings in the Paris subway.
Whether that information was shared with U.S. officials is not clear, and Moussaoui was granted a U.S. visa to train as a pilot in the United States.
In addition to intelligence about specific Sept. 11 participants, there were signs last summer that al-Qaida was planning a major strike.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said his country passed along information to Washington about a possible threat on President Bush's life at the Group of 8 summit in Genoa, Italy, following a June 13 video made by bin Laden.
Italy closed Genoa's airspace and mounted a short-range, anti-aircraft battery at the airport during the July 20-22 summit, Deputy Premier Gianfranco Fini said.
``Islamic extremists were said to be trying to hit Bush in the air,'' Fini said.
Another clue of terrorist rumblings came from Djamel Beghal, a 35-year-old French-Algerian arrested in Dubai last July with a false passport. Under questioning, Beghal detailed an al-Qaida plot to blow up U.S. interests in Europe, including the American Embassy in Paris.
Beghal said he met bin Laden operatives at mosques in Britain, traveled to Afghanistan for weapons training at an al-Qaida camp, and met at bin Laden's home with his top aide, Abu Zubaydah.
European authorities began looking into the plot on Sept. 10.
Israeli intelligence services were aware several months before Sept. 11 that bin Laden was planning a large-scale terror attack, but did not know what his targets would be, Israeli officials have said.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press shortly after the attacks that ``everybody knew about a heightened alert, and knew that bin Laden was preparing a big attack.''
He said information was passed on to Washington, but denied Israel had any concrete intelligence that could have been used to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
Boaz Ganor, head of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel, said the type of warning described by the Israeli official would have been too abstract for U.S. officials to act on.
``I don't think it would have helped American intelligence,'' Ganor said. ``That's not enough information to make a difference. The number of warnings that Western security services get in a day are in the hundreds and at the end of the day most do not pan out. Intelligence services need concrete warnings such as a date, the names of the perpetrators or their methods.''
The final sign that something was afoot may have come Sept. 9, when suspected bin Laden operatives posing as journalists assassinated Gen. Ahmed Shah Massood, leader of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban northern alliance, in a suicide attack at his headquarters. U.S. officials have speculated the killing was designed to deprive the northern alliance of its boldest and most experienced leader just days before attacks on New York and Washington that bin Laden must have known would prompt a U.S. response against his Taliban hosts.
------
Intelligence Comes in Small Pieces
May 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-The-Chatter.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It comes in fragments of conversations, snippets of technical data, whispers from foreign agents, and boasts of audacious schemes. Most of it means nothing. Some of it means everything.
In the summer of 2001, the river of information flowing into Washington about possible security threats was cresting.
``There was a lot of chatter in the system,'' in the words of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
But what to make of it all? One of the principal challenges for the government's intelligence analysts is to cull tiny bits of wheat from all the chaff.
Tens of thousands of tips about threats against American targets come in every year. The vast majority, says Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, ``tend to be eventually discounted as not being valid, or, at the minimum, not being actionable.''
U.S. officials are this spring once again evaluating a growing body of intelligence suggesting another large scale al-Qaida attack may be in the planning for Europe, the Middle East or the United States, government officials said Saturday.
One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ``chatter among al-Qaida types has been increasing in volume'' over the last several weeks, suggesting the terrorist network is reconstitutiting itself after a winter of disruptions caused by the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and widespread arrests across the globe.
Some of the intelligence suggests al Qaida may be agitating for a large-scale terrorist operation but there is no credible evidence as to the method, date or location, and some potential threats have been discounted as not credible, the officials said.
FBI field offices also have been alerted in recent weeks to be aware of possible activity ranging from attacks on Fourth of July events that draw large crowds to assaults on urban sites such as office buildings and apartments. Concern also has been passed on about attacks on supermarkets or shopping centers -- but, again, with no specifics and no way determine the likelihood of such attacks.
Often, intelligence experts say, there is no specific warning of the most deadly attacks.
There is great debate in Washington about whether the Bush administration should have known and done more in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks. But all sides agree that the government needs to improve its ability to sort through the mountain of raw intelligence it receives and pull together what is most important -- a concept known as fusion.
The intelligence authorization bill passed by Congress in December calls for building up the government's ability to analyze intelligence, increasing the portion of the data that actually gets analyzed and turning it into more useful information.
``You just get a river of this stuff every day,'' said former CIA Director Robert Gates.
``Most of it is uncorroborated,'' he added. ``Most of it is from a single source, and it's very difficult sometimes to assess both the reliability of the information and its provenance -- what kind of authoritativeness there is to it.''
L. Paul Bremer, ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism during the Reagan administration, recalls coming in to work every morning to a stack of intelligence reports that might be 8 inches tall.
``And by the end of the day,'' he adds, ``I would've gone through at least that much again.''
The types of reports that might come in: Someone in a bar is overheard saying they are going to attack Americans; another country's intelligence agent gets wind of a plot to assassinate the American ambassador; a U.S. businessman sees someone who looks suspicious taking pictures of his company's office in Frankfurt, Germany.
``You've got to figure out what to make of it all,'' says Bremer. ``It's damn hard.''
Sometimes, simply a big increase in the sheer volume of intelligence chatter is a clue that something big is afoot and that extra precautions are warranted. That still does not provide the kind of specific information often needed to avert an attack.
In the months before the 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the United States had multiple warnings about a possible attack, says Gates, CIA director from 1991 to 1993.
``Everybody knew something was coming, but you didn't know when and you didn't know how,'' Gates said. ``There's a certain parallel to what happened on September 11. Even as disciplined a group as the Marines could only stay on the highest alert for so long.'' The bombing killed 241 Marine, Navy and Army personnel.
President Bush was advised in the summer of 2001 that al-Qaida terrorists wanted to hijack planes, and there were FBI reports raising concerns about Arab men taking flight training around the country, but the administration says there was no way to act to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. The two key questions about any intelligence report are its credibility and specificity.
In assessing credibility, intelligence analysts must consider whether the source really had access to the type of information being provided, what the source's motives are, whether the source has been truthful in the past, and whether the information can be corroborated.
Even if the information is deemed credible, though, there may not be much the government can do if it is vague.
For example, perhaps a U.S. agent who has infiltrated a terrorist group reports that the chief said ``the attack is on,'' says Bremer.
``That doesn't help you very much if you don't know where, when and against whom.''
Sometimes, intelligence clues are recognized for their full significance only once it is too late.
Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA and FBI was focusing new attention on Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been arrested in August while training at a Minnesota flight school and has now been charged as a conspirator in the suicide hijackings.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Power Plant Study Raises Concern
Citing Health Effects, Clean Air Supporters Urge 5 in Area to Reduce Pollution
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 18, 2002; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36008-2002May17?language=printer
Pollution from five power plants within 50 miles of Washington contributes to more than 260 premature deaths and thousands of respiratory illnesses each year, according to research cited yesterday by local officials and members of Congress campaigning for tougher clean air laws. The study was viewed skeptically by the electricity industry.
Using models that trace the spread of soot by wind, public health researchers calculated that 261 adults across several eastern states die earlier than they otherwise would have from inhaling so-called fine-particulate matter. Half of those deaths would occur in the District, Maryland and Virginia. The researchers also predicted that the pollution causes 4,000 people to visit emergency rooms and 20,000 to suffer asthma attacks annually.
The study concluded that 75 percent of those effects could be eliminated if plants adapted existing pollution control equipment. The study, by Harvard School of Public Health researchers Jonathan Levy, Susan Greco and John Spengler, was released by the Clean Air Task Force and presented yesterday to Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
"The more we learn about the effects of these emissions on health and the Earth's temperature, the more there is to do," said Jeffords, who is the author of legislation calling for deeper, more wide-ranging cuts of emissions than sought by a competing Clean Skies initiative from President Bush. Moran is an original co-sponsor of a similar House measure.
Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the main industry group, said the research isn't definitive. While some studies have found correlations between fine-particulate pollution and health problems, he said, other research funded by the industry either has found no such link, or, "to the extent that fine particles present health concerns, [that] power plants are not the source of the type of emissions that are really at issue."
Scott H. Segal, spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of six utilities, called the study "an unfortunate distraction," given that ozone generated by motor vehicles produces most of the area's air pollution. "This is an attempt to politicize a technical issue in the Clean Air Act by trying to scare citizens in Washington, D.C., over a problem they don't have," he said.
Harvard's health researchers have conducted a series of studies since 1996 to measure the effect of fine-particulate pollution, particles smaller than one-seventh the width of a human hair, created when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide gases react downwind. Environmental groups have targeted the nation's oldest, dirtiest power plants, which the 1970 Clean Air Act assumed would be replaced but have remained in operation.
Researchers estimated that health effects from Washington area plants extend up to 300 miles to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and North Carolina.
Roughly 10 percent of the Washington area's pollution comes from local power plants. But pollution may be easier to cut by further regulating plants than by forcing people to drive less or buy cleaner vehicles.
The plants included in the study are Potomac Power Resources' Benning plant in the District; Mirant Corp.'s Chalk Point plant in Prince George's County, Dickerson plant in Montgomery County and Potomac River plant in Alexandria; and Virginia Power Co.'s Possum Point plant in Prince William County.
A spokesman for Mirant Corp., said the company supports new clean air legislation to reduce several kinds of emissions. But it opposes cracking down excessively on power plants over other polluters or mandating costly upgrades to individual facilities.
"One size does not fit all," said Steven Rabia. "It's not a question of if [emissions should be reduced], it's a question of when and how."
Don Lintvet, spokesman for Pepco Energy Services, said the Benning plant doesn't burn coal, as the study's authors assumed. He added that the facility operates fewer than five days a month to handle peak loads and is responsible for less than 1 percent of the study's claimed impact.
Local governments have pushed for tighter limits on plant emissions of the gases, however, as well as carbon dioxide and mercury.
"This study shows what many of my constituents and area residents already know: The public's health is at risk," said Moran, who has sought to close the Potomac River plant. Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.) backed the House legislation.
Montgomery and Arlington counties passed resolutions this spring in support of the limits favored by Jeffords and Moran, and Fairfax County Board Chairman Katherine K. Hanley (D) also has written members of Congress in support. Prince George's County Council member Thomas Dernoga (D-Laurel) and Loudoun County Supervisor Mark R. Herring (D-Leesburg) also attended the announcement.
-------- human rights
UK angry at US rights criticism
Britain protests at report citing mainland and Ulster abuses
Nicholas Watt, political correspondent
Saturday May 18, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,717788,00.html
Britain has protested to the US after the state department in Washington criticised the government's record on human rights on the British mainland and in Northern Ireland.
Angry cabinet ministers, led by the Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, have told US officials that the state department's annual human rights report paints an outdated view of Britain that reflects the 1970s. The protests, which have been made to senior administration officials in Washington and to the US embassy in London, came after Britain was accused of abusing human rights in the annual report to the US Congress.
The lengthy report, which was published in March, said that the British government only "generally respected" human rights.
Referring to Northern Ireland, it said: "Some members of the security forces committed instances of human rights abuses. Members of the police and military occasionally abused detainees and some other persons."
The report, which pulled its punches against some countries whose support is needed by the US in the war against terrorism, provoked fury in Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Northern Ireland Office. Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office minister, gave a hint of the irritation when she told peers that Britain has "discussed" it with the US authorities.
Mr Reid is understood to have raised the report within days of its publication with President Bush's Northern Ireland envoy, Richard Haas, during a meeting in Washington. One Whitehall source said: "John Reid made it clear to Richard Haas that this was not an up to date picture and was unfair. The report was very 1970s."
Britain was said to have been particularly irritated with the report because ministers believe that it failed to give credit for the sweeping reforms in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday agreement. One source said: "We really picked them up on this one and said, come on get it right."
Mr Haas, who played a pivotal role in persuading the IRA to disarm last year, is understood to have given an assurance that a less negative picture of Britain will be painted in next year's report. It was made clear that the report was produced in a state department "back room".
Under US law, the state department has to produce an annual report on human rights which is passed to Congress. This has meant that senior figures in the administration fail to pay attention to all but the most contentious countries in the report.
The oversight allowed the state department's human rights officials to paint a bleak picture of the United States' staunchest ally. The report complained of "some problems" on the British mainland, adding: "There continued to be deaths in police custody, although their numbers declined.
"Prison conditions, including instances of mistreatment by prison officials, overcrowding and prison suicides also remained problems. Violence and discrimination against women remained problems, although the government continued to take steps to combat them. Societal discrimination against non white and other ethnic minorities, including the traveller community were problems, as was occasional societal violence against minorities and asylum seekers."
The human rights report, which runs to a million words in total, is compiled from reports sent back to Washington from embassies around the world. Human rights organisation have praised it as objective, although there was some concern this year that criticism of allies in the war against terrorism was toned down.
The section on military tribunals in Egypt, whose support against al-Qaida is crucial, attracted particular attention.
Last year the report complained about the lack of due process. But this year it said that defendants have the right to counsel.
----
UN: Saudi Punishment Breaks Treaty
May 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Torture.html
GENEVA (AP) -- Saudi Arabia is breaking an international accord banning torture by carrying out punishments like flogging and amputation, even though it ratified the treaty five years ago, according to the United Nations.
The U.N. Committee against Torture said such punishments ``are not in conformity with the convention'' and that Saudi Arabia should ``re-examine'' them.
The 10-member committee checks on compliance with the 1984 U.N. Convention against Torture. Like the 129 other nations that have signed the agreement, Saudi Arabia must submit reports to show it is applying the rules. It was the first time Saudi Arabia had reported since it ratified the convention in 1997.
The conservative kingdom follows a strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia. Courts routinely order lashings and hand amputations for theft and minor crimes, and public executions for murder, rape and drug trafficking.
Committee chairman Peter Burns told reporters Friday that other Islamic states which have signed the convention did not apply Islamic law in the same strict way.
The U.N. convention defines torture as ``any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted'' to obtain a confession, to punish an act which the victim ``has committed or is suspected of having committed,'' or to intimidate the victim.
Saudi officials told the committee that corporal punishment was an integral part of sharia law and so could not fall within the definition set out in the convention.
Abdulwahab Abdulsalam Attar, the kingdom's ambassador to U.N. offices in Geneva, said that Islamic law was sovereign, and Saudi Arabia ``could not accept any effort to render a sharia-based rule inoperative, nor could it accept any enactment that conflicted with a provision of sharia.''
Saudi law banned what the country considered to be torture, mistreating suspects to extract confessions, for example, the delegation said.
Criticism by the U.N. body brings no penalties but draws international attention to a country's record on torture.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Activists Damage French Yacht
The Associated Press
Saturday, May 18, 2002; 2:25 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38028-2002May18?language=printer
LORIENT, France -- Greenpeace activists rammed a boat into the French challenger for the 2003 America's Cup on Saturday, denting the yacht's carbon hull.
The 82-foot Defi Areva, which is sponsored by a leading nuclear energy company sustained "serious damage," the syndicate running the French challenge said in a statement.
LCI television showed the Greenpeace dinghy speeding toward the yacht, which was moored at its training base in this northwestern French port, but didn't show the impact.
"It's an act of terrorism," Defi Areva's sports director Pierre Mas told LCI.
It was not immediately possible to contact Greenpeace for comment.
Defi Areva is sponsored by Areva, a French industrial holding company specialized in nuclear plant building and nuclear fuels.
The boat is expected to take part in the Louis Vuitton Cup starting Oct. 1. The winner takes on Team New Zealand for the America's Cup from Feb. 2003.
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