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NUCLEAR
Nuclear weapons taboo seen to be weakening
Nuclear Issues in India and Pakistan
India can afford to lose 25 million people
Frantic bid to avert nuclear conflict
At the Brink in Kashmir
These nuclear weapons are preventing a war
Between India and Pakistan, A Changing Role for the U.S.
Iran Nuclear Plant Might Be Inspected, Bush Says
Pakistan presses on with missile tests
Putin: 'Great Progress' in Nuke Talks
Nuclear Nightmares
Backlight
Putin: 'Great Progress' in Nuke Talks
Calvert Seeks Views On Budget Increases
Fuel Rods and Brass Tacks
Feds Say S.C. Can't Stop Plutonium
Debate on Arafat Stalls U.S. Policy, Aides to Bush Say
DC/MD/VA For the Record
MILITARY
Around the World, Hints of Afghanistans to Come
Afghan Leader Expected to Get Extended Term
Group Recovers 150 Bodies in Congo
Bargain Bomb Revolutionizes Warfare
Russia opens military supply line for India
Britain blocks the sale of 60 Hawk jets to India
US plan to strike enemy with Valium
Navy's new carriers are too big for British ports
Chile's Military Spending Spree Incites Clash of Priorities
Colombian Vote's Sinister Side
A Candidate With Many Lives
The U.S. Struggle to Battle Drugs, Just Drugs, in Colombia
Voting starts in Colombia's presidential election
Quietly Fearful
Vajpayee: India Patience Wearing Thin
U.S., allies strive to broker India-Pakistan peace
Iran Confirms Ballistic Missile Test
Israeli Army Re-enters Bethlehem as Tensions Grow in Middle East
Bush Sees Palestinians Weighing Authority Reforms
Issues Facing NATO on Eve of Summit
Russia Seen As Key to NATO Relevancy
Issues Facing NATO on Eve of Summit
NATO - Russia Signing Summit Has History
Russia Seen As Key to NATO Relevancy
Bush Joins Putin in Urging Pakistan to Use Restraint
Musharraf Says Raids In Kashmir Have Ended
Pakistan Tests Another Missile, India Boosts Defense
Pakistan warned to stop militants
Boris and Bill
THE NATION CIA-FBI Feuding Runs Deep
CIA Analysts To Help FBI Shift Focus
Death March Horrors to the Fore
Attacks Spark Interest in Military
Bargain Bomb Revolutionizes Warfare
The Hush on Inquiries
POLICE / PRISONERS
The 'First Rough Draft'
FBI Issues New Alert For Small Airplanes
Agent's Role in Inquiries Is Questioned
Lawmaker to Probe Moussaoui Warrant
Pessimism Lingers With Pittsburgh Cops
Signature of a Suicide Bomb
FBI Warns About Small Planes
OTHER
As Congress Stalls, States Pursue Cloning Debate
Study: Errors May Explain Clone Woes
ACTIVISTS
Reservists Shun Duty in Territories
Australia remembers "stolen" aboriginal children
Thousands Paris Protest Bush in Paris
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear weapons taboo seen to be weakening
By Jan Strupczewski
Reuters
Sunday May 26, 2002 1:02 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-107026.html
SIGTUNA, Sweden - International experts said on Saturday they feared that countries could become less inhibited about using nuclear weapons, a chill warning as tensions between nuclear-capable India and Pakistan threaten to erupt into war.
Experts from the Nobel Peace-prize winning Pugwash Committee, who met on arms control and tactical nuclear weapons in the small Swedish town of Sigtuna north of Stockholm, said the end of the Cold War confrontation between Russia and the United States had changed the way nuclear weapons were perceived.
Unlike during the Cold War, the use of nuclear weapons in a possible military conflict between Pakistan and India would not lead to a global nuclear holocaust, weakening the taboo of using them, the experts said.
India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons, have massed a million men on their border, backed by missile batteries, tanks and fighter planes, since a deadly raid on India's parliament in December.
New Delhi says Pakistan-based militants were responsible for the raid. Pakistan denies it backs the guerrillas.
"During the cold war any nuclear use was linked to the general thermonuclear holocaust," said Steve Miller, head of the International Security Programme at the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.
"But no longer. Three weapons used in Kashmir, which of course would be a horrible tragedy, would probably have no great impact on the daily life of the planet."
And with the stakes in a potential nuclear conflict lowered, the use of such weapons was becoming more tempting.
"The taboos that have been surrounding nuclear weapons in the Cold War may now be weakening," said Professor Gwyn Prins of the European Institute of the London School of Economics.
"We are as close to nuclear use as we have ever been in the nuclear age."
The experts said Friday's agreement between Russia and the United States to cut long-range nuclear warheads by two-thirds was of small military significance, as it was less ambitious than the 1997 agreement between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russia's Boris Yeltsin.
They also pointed to the fact that most of the warheads would be moved from the missile sites into storage rather than destroyed.
-------- india / pakistan
Nuclear Issues in India and Pakistan:
Selected Internet Resources at U.C. Berkeley Library
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/nuclear.html
----
031
'India can afford to lose 25 million people. But could Pakistan?'
By Julian West in Jammu and Philip Sherwell,
UK Telegraph
26/05/2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/26/wkash26.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/05/26/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=118546
The Indian officer sat back, took a sip of sweet, milky tea and wrinkled his brow when I raised the threat of nuclear conflagration. "How much do our people and politicians know about nuclear weapons?" he muses aloud at his camp near Jammu in Kashmir. "Nothing. All they've seen is a controlled explosion on TV. They think they're just big firecrackers.
"But if it came to it," he adds, a mischievous glint entering his eye, "India could afford to lose, say, 25 million people. The question is, could Pakistan?" He was quick to add: "That's hypothetical, of course."
The fear felt by the rest of the world, but apparently not by many in India and Pakistan, is that the risk of the first nuclear war erupting in the sub-continent is very far from hypothetical.
This cavalier approach to the prospect of the nuclear conflagration is horrifyingly typical on both sides of the border. There is no sign here of the cold logic of so-called "mutually assured destruction" that helped keep the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet bloc and the West unused during the Cold War.
Nearly 1,000 miles away from Jammu, in the broiling Thar desert close to the Pakistan border, an Indian colonel was in expansive mood as he pointed out the dispositions in his sector from the back of his Ambassador staff car. "Tank leaguers here; that's the bulldozer park of the engineers; those tents are a field hospital," he explains. The litany of hardware and regiments, men and material continued mile after mile as his driver bumped along the potholed road.
"We're going to teach those Pakis a bloody good lesson," he adds enthusiastically. But was he not worried that Pakistan's ruling generals would resort to their nuclear weapons if India invaded in retaliation for a series of recent attacks on its portion of Kashmir?
"We were down in Gujarat after the earthquake," the colonel answers. "Nuclear war can't be worse than an earthquake."
A series of terror raids in the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir by Pakistan-based Muslim militants - which have continued despite the pledge of General Pervaiz Musharraf, the Pakistani leader, to crack down on extremists after the bloody raid on New Delhi's parliament last December - have brought the two nuclear rivals to the brink of all-out war.
The bitter Hindu-Muslim conflict over Kashmir dates back to the partition of India and Pakistan at the end of British rule in 1947. The predominantly Muslim territory was handed to India because the ruling maharajah under the British was a Hindu, setting the scene for half a century of tension, two wars and more than a decade of cross-border attacks by radical Islamic factions.
The latest attack, in which more than 30 Indians were killed, including 22 army wives and children, at a barracks near Jammu, turned Indian anger to incandescent rage. Its people, politicians and military are demanding bloody revenge.
Western intelligence has confirmed that powerful elements within Pakistan's military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency are still backing the militants, despite Gen Musharraf's orders to them to cease their support.
The two countries are already trading bellicose threats, pounding each other's villages to rubble in artillery exchanges and mobilising even more troops to reinforce the several hundred thousand already deployed along their 1,500-mile frontline.
Indian military planners have drawn up preparations ranging from targeted air strikes on suspected terror training camps to a major land invasion. Pakistan has said that it will defend itself with all its "strategic assets" (Islamabad's term for nuclear weapons).
India is believed to possess at least 60 nuclear warheads that can be delivered by fighter jet or fitted to long-range missiles; Pakistan is thought to have an arsenal of 25.
What alarms the West - as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepares to fly to Islamabad and Delhi this week, trailed by Richard Armitage, the US Deputy Secretary of State, a few days later - is that neither side seems prepared to rule out the prospect of a nuclear exchange.
Although India has indicated that it is willing to give a short time for Gen Musharraf to deliver "action not words" by cracking down on the militants, American and British officials have been unable to muster much optimism for their forthcoming trips. "It is mission impossible," observes a senior US diplomat.
"Our expectations for the Foreign Secretary's visit are fairly realistic," says a British official. "The priority is to get the two sides to focus on what will happen if things go wrong; to recognise the reality of a nuclear exchange."
Recent remarks have made clear how difficult that will be. An exasperated Western official who handles South Asia told The Telegraph last week: "The impression on the sub-continent is that nuclear bombs are just bigger bombs than other ones. There is no realisation that use of nuclear weapons would take them across a new threshold. There is a bigger gulf between them than ever."
The gung-ho, pro-nuclear mood is just as strong in Pakistan as it is in India and yesterday's test-firing of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles was greeted enthusiastically, with Gen Musharraf the cheer-leader in chief. "God is Great" he repeated three times on the anniversary of the birth of the prophet Mohammed, before telling a gathering of Islamic scholars that the test had been a success.
Earlier, the Vice Chief of Army Staff, General Mohammad Yusuf Khan, told senior officers: "Indians will get the message loud and clear that we also mean business. They must remember that Pakistan is a nuclear state - its people and armed forces are proud of that fact."
According to Lt-Gen Talat Masood, a former secretary of defence production, most Pakistanis think that death in a nuclear war with India would be justified "martyrdom".
Villagers fled their homes on both sides of the border last weeks as military convoys headed towards the frontline. Bhurchak village, just 400 yards inside Pakistan, stood deserted after heavy Indian shelling. Locals who are used to the normal exchanges across the border say the situation is worse than during the wars of 1965 and 1971. "The other day a major came to inspect the damage and then the shelling began and he had to hide in the cowshed," says a man whose home has been reduced to rubble.
On the Indian side, displaced villagers are in no mood for compromise. "We want war," says Sudesh Kumari, who had fled from Mirpur, a village one mile from the border, for the second time that morning after a mortar shell landed on her house while she was outside cooking. "It's better to die once than to do it every day. For the last week, they've been shelling our village morning and evening."
She and her fellow villagers look puzzled when asked about nuclear war. "Nuclear weapons? "We have much better weapons than Pakistan," says Angrez Singh, a 55-year-old farmer. "I've seen three wars and I know it's better to die now than to live like this."
The villagers were delighted when Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, told his troops in Kashmir that "the time has come for a decisive battle". Pakistan responded by calling on civil defence volunteers and placing its bigger cities on a war footing.
What form the battle might take initially is unclear. Indian military specialists have talked about air strikes on militant training camps in Pakistan Kashmir, or supply routes crossing the border; another alternative is a land invasion across the Rajasthan-Sindh border, with the idea of engaging Pakistani troops elsewhere and possibly seizing territory.
Pakistan could respond by targeting Delhi and other Indian cities with long-range conventional missiles - or arm them with nuclear warheads. Unlike Delhi, Islamabad has not ruled out "first use" of nuclear weapons. Dropping a primitive nuclear bomb remains the possibility that horrifies the world.
After a series of telephone calls from President Bush, Gen Musharraf announced last week that he would clamp down on militant training camps in Pakistan Kashmir. India maintains that these are run by Pakistani intelligence as breeding grounds for the "terrorists", who cross the sparsely populated mountains straddling both sides of Kashmir - a claim that Pakistan denies. But India is far from convinced.
In the Jammu headquarters of the Border Security Force, Gabriel Sebastian, the Deputy Inspector General, says that there has been "no reduction" in the number of militants crossing the border since last year. On a map, he indicates the districts of Rajouri and Poonch, two notorious crossing points in the foothills of the Pir Panjal range, which militants use before the snows melt on the high mountains.
He says that they use nomads or villagers, who are offered large sums of money, or coerced at gunpoint, to reconnoitre an area and possibly stash weapons for them before guiding them across the mountains. Recently security forces have found several dead nomads and villagers in the mountains, indicating that the men now crossing were what Insp Sebastian calls "hardened mercenaries".
"In the last fortnight, we've killed 30 militants in encounters here," he says. "In Jammu, there used to be an attack every six months, but now we're getting one in the same number of weeks. It's impossible to cover every inch of landscape - the terrain is too unfriendly. "Everything is masterminded by the ISI," he says. "How do we know? Because whenever these guys cross over, Pakistani troops give them covering fire."
Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, described the situation last week, as "dangerous". In an irony familiar to most Indians (who know that despite having nuclear capabilities, India is unable to provide proper telephone lines or electricity to its citizens), he added that he had tried to speak to George Fernandes, his Indian counterpart, but had been unable to get through because of a faulty mobile telephone connection.
On the frontline near Jammu, the Indian army officer drinks the last of his tea. "This is the lull before the storm," he says. "But you can be sure that when there's too much of a lull, something drastic is going to happen."
----
Frantic bid to avert nuclear conflict
Observer Worldview
Jason Burke in London, Rory McCarthy in Islamabad and Luke Harding in Srinagar
Sunday May 26, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,722506,00.html
World leaders yesterday mounted a frantic last-ditch diplomatic effort to defuse the conflict between Pakistan and India and avert the threat of nuclear war in south Asia.
As Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepared to fly to the region, the presidents of America and Russia made an unprecedented joint plea for peace, calling on the two countries to attend an emergency summit in Kazakhstan in 10 days.
Yesterday tensions rose further after Pakistan tested a medium-range nuclear-capable missile in a defiant show of strength and the Indians maintained their own belligerent stance. 'We have waited for far too long and our wait is nearing its end,' Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, told journalists.
Straw is expected to arrive in Islamabad early this week before travelling on to New Delhi. Foreign Office sources yesterday welcomed the Russian offer of hosting talks and said Straw was seeking ways of enabling both sides to back down without losing face.
There are concerns that without outside mediation the crisis could swiftly spiral out of control and that both states may deploy their substantial nuclear arsenals. There are now nearly a million soldiers facing off along the border.
Speaking in St Petersburg yesterday Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin urged General Pervez Musharraf, the military leader of Pakistan, to fulfil his pledge to stop hardline Islamic militants carrying out raids into the Indian-controlled sector of the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir.
'It's very important that President Musharraf... stops the incursions across the border,' Bush said. 'We are making it very clear to both parties that there is no benefit in war. We are deeply concerned about the rhetoric. There is a lot of diplomatic effort going into bringing some calm and reason to the region.'
India accuses Pakistan of funding and arming the Islamic militants responsible for a string of attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, and further afield. Relations between the two powers deteriorated sharply following an assault by Islamic militants on India's parliament in New Delhi last December in which 14 died, including the attackers. The two nuclear powers have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two over Kashmir.
Putin said he would invite both the leaders to one-to-one talks on the sidelines of a regional security summit in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in early June. Neither state has yet formally responded to the invitiation.
However Pakistan promised more missile tests of both Ghauri and longer-range Shaheen missiles over the next three days.
Musharraf gave no hint of compromise yesterday. 'We don't want war, but we are ready for war,' he said.
Pakistan's first major missile test for three years was a success, Musharraf told an assembly of Islamic scholars. 'It showed total accuracy. It hit the target,' the former commando said, before repeating, 'God is great.'
Although Musharraf has tried to lead Pakistan in a more moderate direction since 11 September, diplomats say militants backed by the military intelligence service, the powerful ISI, are still crossing into Kashmir.
----
At the Brink in Kashmir
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/weekinreview/26FREN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - TO the knotty complications that have helped make the India-Pakistan face-off over Kashmir the world's scariest crisis, the United States' war on terror has become yet one more devilish twist.
Beset with weak governments that have both tried to use the showdown over Kashmir to bolster their own domestic standing, and egged on by strident nationalists who speak in the stark terms of holy war, the two countries are now locked in a brinkmanship where the slightest misstep could produce a nuclear war.
More than just eyeball to eyeball, South Asia's bitter neighbors have also been watching the United States intently, each seeking to assess how Washington's antiterror campaign in Afghanistan affects the other. The danger, as they have done so, is that the perverse readings that each side brings to the subject can inspire the deadly miscalculation.
Since the two countries explicitly became the third world's first nuclear rivals in April 1998, when India and then Pakistan conducted test explosions, there has been much hopeful talk in the region about a new era of stability - its own version of mutually assured destruction would supposedly ensure that neither country would dare start another war.
Such thinking seems to have been misplaced to begin with because, in addition to the irresponsibility of soldiers and politicians, South Asia's instability derives from the asymmetry of its two largest nations. With a billion people, India dwarfs Pakistan in almost every measure, including troops and conventional arms. Under the circumstances, the nuclear option will always be a tempting, if illusory, survival card for Pakistani generals.
In the present crisis, India has packed its portion of the divided Kashmir region with an estimated 700,000 troops, and has spoken in ever more belligerent tones about punishing Pakistan for backing an armed insurgency there. Yet Pakistan's elite has lulled itself until the last few days with the thought that New Delhi would not dare attack because it would upset Washington's antiterror agenda.
"India's relationship with Washington has acquired a real depth, it has become strategic and not just tactical, like Pakistan's," said Mushahid Hussain, a former Pakistani information minister. "Because of that, people felt that India couldn't possibly start a war. They were taken by surprise by India's sudden raising of the temperature, and only now are we awakening from the slumber."
Islamabad's awakening since late last week has brought repeated calls for India to accept a dialogue, increasingly explicit promises not to give military aid to separatists, plus an offer to place international observers for the Kashmiri Line of Control that separates the two countries' armies.
It is worth remembering that Indian-Pakistani relations have always proceeded by crisis. Pressure mounts inexorably, most often around the zero-sum game of divided Kashmir. The countries have fought two wars over this issue and have lived through countless mini-crises. Somehow, in the end, the pressure has always dissipated before the point of catastrophe, and that could happen now too.
Nevertheless, through most of the week India continued to ratchet up the pressure, complaining that Washington was merely trying to keep a lid on things rather than force its traditional client and vital partner in the campaign against Al Qaeda to permanently sever arms supplies and training for Kashmir's Muslim separatists.
President Bush may have dreamed of a world of moral clarity after the terrorist attacks in the United States, but the crisis in South Asia, like the one in the Middle East, has shown how futile it is to expect people to abandon their own deep and bitter animosities and subscribe wholeheartedly to Washington's still rather abstract call to fight evil as America defines it.
For both India and Pakistan, instead, Sept. 11 has provided a historic opportunity to try to redefine relations with Washington. India saw President Bush's stark with-us-or-against-us language about terrorism as a chance to cast Kashmir's deep complexities in simple black and white. For India, the terror tactics of the separatists who attacked the Indian parliament in December and struck again two weeks ago, killing 35 people in Kashmir, is the only serious issue.
Lost amid India's muscular post-Sept. 11 opportunism, critics of India point out, is that many in overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir strongly resent Indian rule; that India has never allowed a free and fair vote by Kashmiris on self-determination; and that India itself has long engaged in human rights abuses to keep control of Kashmir.
Pakistan's military government, meanwhile, saw in Sept. 11 a chance to arrest the long-term deterioration in its relationship with Washington. Islamabad has repeatedly been subjected to arms embargoes by the United States, suspicion over its sponsorship of terrorism and relationships with radical Islamic causes. By making the painful decision to abandon its longtime client the Taliban, and by allowing the American military access to Pakistani territory to pursue remnants of Al Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf was calculating that Washington would reward Pakistan on many levels, none more important than a sympathetic hearing on the Kashmir issue.
To critics of his government, Mr. Musharraf's bet looks increasingly like a replay of the wager made during the war in the 1980's against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, when Pakistan became the main conduit for a huge American program of assistance to anti-Soviet guerrilla fighters. Then, too, Islamabad's help failed to win it decisive support from Washington over Kashmir.
Then as now, Pakistan's cause was hurt by its own lack of democracy and its penchant for resorting to violence to achieve its aims in Kashmir.
THAT suspicion and frustrations toward the United States are rife in both countries is not surprising, given the fact that a major realignment of Washington's diplomatic positions in the region has been under way since the end of the cold war.
"Pakistan may be the U.S. ally but India pulls more weight in Washington," wrote Hussain Haqqani, a commentator in The Nation, a Pakistani publication. "With the end of the cold war, American suspicions of a nonaligned India with close ties to the Soviet Union have dissipated. India's economic reforms have moved the country away from its quasi-socialist practices, opening a huge market of one billion potential consumers to U.S. businesses. From the U.S. point of view, Pakistan may be America's wartime ally, but it is India that offers the prospect of long-term friendship."
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[To reply: mailto:letters.online@telegraph.co.uk]
These nuclear weapons are preventing a war
26/05/2002
UK Telegraph Opinion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;$sessionid$CDWCPDIAACWKDQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/opinion/2002/05/26/do2601.xml
Each year, when spring comes and the Himalayan snow melts, troops from the armies of India and Pakistan start firing at each other across their common border. Each year television watchers the world over are treated to pictures of this fighting. To the uninitiated observer, and perhaps to the initiated one as well, they often appear to be the same pictures.
The Indo-Pak conflict, as it is sometimes known, has its origins in the partition of the subcontinent after the British withdrawal. In the first 23 years of the two newly independent countries, they fought each other in no fewer than three major wars (in 1947- 48, 1965 and 1971). The second and the third of these were the largest and the most dangerous. They were fought with heavy weapons, including tanks, aircraft, and naval vessels.
In 1965 Pakistan, then under Ayub Khan, launched a full-scale blitzkrieg against India. In 1971 India, then under Indira Gandhi, exploited large-scale unrest in the eastern part of Pakistan that was later to become Bangladesh, to invade and dismember its rival. As the fighting approached its climax, President Nixon considered the situation so dangerous that he sent the nuclear-capable aircraft carrier Enterprise into the Gulf of Bengal. New Delhi immediately took the hint and called off its forces which were poised to overrun Western Pakistan. The conflict ended with each side retreating to the old border.
Thirty one years have passed since that last major conflict, and though India and Pakistan's hatred for each other remains as strong as ever, there has never been another war. There have, of course, been many confrontations like the one we are watching today. The largest and most dangerous was the Kargill War of 1998 when about a thousand Pakistani-supported irregulars moved 150 yards inside Indian territory and had to be ejected. Since then the Indian Army has been doing its best to present that skirmish as a much larger and more dangerous incident than it was in order to get their government to pay for the modernisation their antiquated equipment. That strategy appears to be working, yet even in New Delhi there is a limit to what politicians will believe.
Given this background, it is ridiculous to present the events of 1998, much less the present crisis, as if they constituted a major threat to India's borders. The reason why India and Pakistan have not gone to war since 1971 is, of course, because both sides now have nuclear weapons - India has probably had them since the early 1970s and Pakistan's deterrent has been operational since the late 1970s.
Since nuclear weapons were used for the first time in 1945, they have brought about a remarkable transformation in international politics. First the superpowers were prevented from launching large-scale attacks on one another and were compelled to confine their conflict to threats on the one hand and to limited regional wars by client states on the other.
Next, the close allies of those superpowers became almost as secure against full-scale war as the superpowers themselves and this was as true in Central Europe as it was, from 1950 onwards, in the Korean Peninsula. Nor was this the end of the story. As nuclear weapons proliferated, they also prevented the Soviets and the Chinese, and the Chinese and the Indians from fighting each other in earnest.
Nuclear weapons have made a difference even in the volatile Middle East. Between 1948 and 1973 Israel and the Arab states went to war no fewer than five times. Since then, Israel's possession of nuclear weapons having become a near certainty, there has not even been one. The hostilities between them have been limited to just one day's fighting in 1982 (when Israeli and Syrian forces clashed in Lebanon) and a few missiles launched by Iraq in 1991. What is true in other parts of the world is equally true along the Indian-Pakistani border. Each side may like to bare their teeth at each other but this is partly for internal political reasons. Both have now developed and deployed fighter-bombers and surface-to-surface missiles capable of putting a nuclear warhead on the centres of each other's national power.
Both sides argue that their enemy's nuclear programme is dangerous whereas its own is not. Pakistan claims it needs nuclear weapons to survive against an India that has never reconciled itself to the subcontinent's partition. India claims it needs nuclear weapons to counter Pakistan's aggression as well as its internal political instability. The Indians also argue that they have to consider China as well as Pakistan.
One cannot rule out the possibility that hostilities will escalate and, of course, should both sides resort to using nuclear weapons, the result would be an unprecedented catastrophe. All of Pakistan's main cities would be destroyed, as would New Delhi and other northern and northwestern Indian cities. Radioactive fallout might pollute not just the subcontinent but also parts of the neighbouring countries. This could lead to millions of casualties in the border territories which are among the most densely populated areas in the world.
Fortunately both sides are only too aware of this and their past behavior suggests that, when it comes to nuclear weapons, they are as responsible as anybody else. So far, the logic of deterrence has worked fairly well for the God-loving USA as well as the atheist communists, for Confucians as well as Hindus, for Jews as well as Arab Muslims. We can only hope it works for India and Pakistan as well. If it does, as I firmly believe, then the chances are that the same old pictures will still be running on television in 10 years' time.
Professor Martin van Creveld, of Jerusalem, Israel, is author of Nuclear Proliferation and the Future of Conflict.
----
Between India and Pakistan, A Changing Role for the U.S.
By Steve Coll
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10696-2002May25?language=printer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For more than a decade, America has reacted to hostility between India and Pakistan the way riot police respond to a bottle-breaking brawl between street gangs. Blue lights flash, sirens wail; the diplomatic emphasis is on billy clubs and bullhorns. U.S. envoys are selected for their muscular, intimidating qualities. "Break it up, boys," they growl upon arrival here. And then, with a sharp-clawed grip on the shoulder: "You don't really want to set off a nuclear holocaust, now do you?"
In early June, if shooting doesn't begin first, U.S. deputy secretary of state and thick-necked weight lifter Richard Armitage is set to arrive in New Delhi and Islamabad for his turn at separating the combatants. Like CIA veteran Robert Gates in 1990 and President Clinton in 1999, Armitage may well be able to postpone a war now gathering along the Indo-Pakistani border. But this is not the same old crisis that U.S. diplomats have helped to calm in the past.
September 11 and its aftermath have altered South Asia as profoundly as did the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Among other things, the U.S.-led war on terror provides the dominant language of Indo-Pakistani rivalry. American power -- on display in the thousands of U.S. troops now spread across Central and South Asia -- has become the pivotal factor in war-or-peace decisions in New Delhi and Islamabad.
The role of American mediation also has been recast; Washington's massive new investments in the region have made the United States not just a broker, but a principal. That change, along with the real threat of a fourth war between India and Pakistan, sent high-level Bush administration officials into a frenzy of international phone calling last week as they searched for at least a stand down, if not the beginnings of something more lasting.
The current war scare has already set back the U.S.-led campaign to disrupt al Qaeda and prevent new terrorist attacks on American soil. That fact reveals the stake ordinary Americans have in this mess. Pakistani troops that might otherwise be deployed in Afghan border areas in search of Osama bin Laden's elusive leadership group have been pulled back as a reserve against Indian forces on Pakistan's eastern border. Pakistani intelligence agents who might otherwise be combing Karachi for al Qaeda suicide bombers are instead obsessed by India's threat to strike militants in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. And if an Indo-Pakistani shooting war were to go nuclear, hundreds of recently arrived American soldiers would be at or near ground zero; thousands more would be close enough to inhale the fallout.
The war on terrorism has become infected by the violence in Kashmir, a disputed territory where Pakistani-backed Islamic rebels challenge Indian rule in one of the world's most intractable insurgencies. Kashmir and its connecting threads today form a poisonous spider's web near the center of the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda, disgorging new lines of complication by the day.
Inflamed by their vitriolic dispute, India and Pakistan currently agree on perhaps just one thing: To untangle the crisis, the Bush administration must grapple more deeply with the security threats riling these two intimates. This daunting agenda includes ending Pakistan's covert support for Kashmir's insurgents, curtailing the broader terrorism-laced proxy war that rages between the two countries, stabilizing Kashmir's de facto borders, and yes, even discussing Kashmir's future.
Added to the draining diplomatic demands in the Middle East, South Asia's war threat promises to test the limits of American power and sophistication. In the military arena, it is core doctrine that Pentagon planners must prepare to fight two hot wars simultaneously; the Bush administration will now discover whether it can handle two volatile diplomatic crises at once. Compounding the challenge, Washington's expertise and experience in South Asia is thinner than nearly anywhere else in the world.
Preparations for cataclysm advance daily along the Indo-Pakistani frontier. About 1 million soldiers have crowded to the long border, equipped with missiles, tanks and fighter jets. Artillery duels echo daily across Kashmiri canyons. Assassinations and bombings pockmark the Indian side of the divide. War-fevered politicians in both capitals organize appeals for national unity. They travel to Kashmir and to the vast Rajasthan desert front to inspect their sweltering infantry, applauding in makeshift grandstands as pilots demonstrate bombing prowess. And in the secret military warehouses of both countries, engineers presumably are turning screws on doomsday's reserve force -- two crude but functional nuclear arsenals.
As the war drums pound, India and Pakistan each seek to manipulate the United States. The resulting confusion is amplified by rival American embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad whose daily cables home, insiders say, duel with unusual debate and accusation.
India and Pakistan both accept U.S. engagement, while promoting agendas for U.S. attention that are largely irreconcilable. "The U.S. needs to be a little more forceful," said retired Pakistani Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, one of a small group of Indian and Pakistani generals and scholars who have been meeting to develop a security-focused peace track, with support from their two governments. "The stakes are too high. They need to come down harder. They need to evaluate the situation and determine 'Who's at fault?' and 'Why is this happening?' "
Those are complex, treacherous questions that American diplomacy has for years sought to avoid. In some ways, the current structure of Indo-Pakistani emnity makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem hopeful and malleable.
That is partly because international mediation in the Middle East is far more mature than in South Asia. Decades of U.S.-sponsored negotiations may not have resolved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but they have contained it, and they have helped both parties to visualize an appealing if still-elusive final settlement. No such process exists on the subcontinent. On the contrary, the most commonly visualized end game here involves the sprouting of mushroom clouds.
India's old-line foreign policy establishment recognizes that U.S. investments in South Asia since Sept. 11 have implications far beyond the terror war. To them, "it is obvious that in the short and medium terms, a positive equation with the U.S. is the practical option," as former Indian foreign secretary J.N. Dixit puts it. Presumably that approach would not include starting a war that engulfs a key front in the U.S. campaign against terrorism or brings U.S. troops under fire.
But India's Hindu nationalist politicians, supported by deep public anger over terrorist attacks on Indian targets, may not be fully sold. Ailing and in the last hours of a career devoted to remaking India through religious-nationalist fervor, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is writing the conclusion to his political legacy. Two years ago, reaching out to Pakistan for peace talks, Vajpayee styled himself as an Indian Nixon in China. When his attempt failed, he returned to the martial rhetoric of his party's electoral campaigns. On Wednesday, Vajpayee thundered that India's army should prepare for a "decisive battle" and promised "a new chapter of victory" over Pakistan.
For months, with elections looming, India has been using its war cries in an attempt to coerce progress on the ground in Kashmir. The Pakistani-sponsored insurgency has become India's bleeding wound, draining its treasury, tying down its army, soiling its reputation and constraining its global ambitions.
By threatening conventional war after a suicide attack on its parliament building last December, India believed it was raising a hammer against Pakistan's support for Kashmir's radicals and saw U.S. diplomatic pressure in Islamabad as its anvil.
But it hasn't worked out that way. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's liberal military despot, has cooperated extensively with the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and at times inside Pakistan, impressing American spies and generals with his fortitude and modernizing outlook. Yet by nearly all accounts other than his own, Musharraf also has declined to act decisively against the Pakistani state-sponsored jihadist networks in Kashmir.
Since Musharraf's Jan. 12 speech rejecting jihadism as an instrument of state policy, Pakistan's ruling army has been willing to deactivate its Kashmiri clients to some extent. Yesterday, in an interview with The Post, Musharraf asserted that cross-border infiltration has stopped. But many believe that Pakistan prefers to put its proxy networks into loose storage rather than dismantle them.
Musharraf argues privately to American interlocutors that national pride and domestic politics make it impossible for him to do otherwise under direct Indian military threat. In public, the general and his spokesmen imply that if India insists on launching all-out war to attack Pakistan's support for Kashmiri militants, Pakistan is prepared to go nuclear. This is bluff in reply to bluff, of course, but it contains the potential for miscalculation.
Islamic radicalism remains an element of grand strategy for some Pakistani generals. Anticipating a permanent state of hostility with its more powerful neighbor, the army here sees its jihadist clients as a potent, highly motivated reserve against India's regional ambitions. (The jihadists have a terrible record of promoting Pakistan's welfare, but this somehow escapes analysis.) Some Pakistani generals also foresee a day when the United States finally captures its key al Qaeda enemies and begins to withdraw from South Asia, as it has done after past conflicts. The jihadists then might come in handy again as Pakistan pursues its regional goals.
In New Delhi, the Hindu nationalists' violent, trident-waving radical flanks offer a cultural mirror to Pakistan's Islamic jihadists. India's leaders have yet to make clear that they truly seek a stable, modernizing Pakistan as their neighbor. Caught up in competitive democratic politics, they still demonize Musharraf in ways that preclude rational engagement.
The first challenge facing U.S. negotiators is to convince India to back off from its war threats, while insisting that Musharraf use the breathing space to dismantle the jihadist networks in Kashmir. Such an initiative may require high-level talks, backed by private U.S. guarantees, to help push India and Pakistan away from repetitious border scares and toward sustained political negotiation. It may also require an invocation, whether in public or private, that vital U.S. interests would be jeopardized if either party launches another war.
If Musharraf's pledge yesterday turns out to be the first step in the decisive dismantling of Kashmiri radical networks, India will have to provide him with some cover against domestic criticism that he is selling out a defining national cause. This would mean conducting serious bilateral talks while allowing Pakistan some credit in the search for a resolution in Kashmir. New Delhi would also have to accept, at least in private, that even the most committed government in Islamabad will not be able to eliminate all terrorism inside Indian-held Kashmir. The radicals have enjoyed substantial Pakistani sponsorship, but they also belong to stateless Islamic networks beholden to no capital.
As in the Middle East, the maddening truth about this crisis is that both India and Pakistan understand exactly how to defuse it in ways consistent with their national interests. A constructive negotiating outline has already been embraced publicly by both governments, in between war fevers. Only hate, mistrust, fear, a bloody unfinished history and rampant opportunism stand in the way. Mr. Armitage, as they say around here: You are most welcome.
Steve Coll, managing editor of The Post, served as the newspaper's South Asia correspondent from 1989 to 1992. He is writing a book about U.S. foreign and intelligence policy in Afghanistan.
-------- iran
Iran Nuclear Plant Might Be Inspected, Bush Says
May 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-iran.html
PARIS (Reuters) - President Bush said Sunday Russia had proposed international inspections of a nuclear plant it is helping build in Iran to assuage U.S. fears that the facility might help Tehran produce atomic weapons.
U.S.-Russian differences over the nuclear project had clouded an otherwise friendly summit last week between Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bush had warned the plant could come back to haunt Russia if Iran points nuclear-tipped missiles at Moscow. Putin insisted the plant was only being built for electricity generation.
Bush, at a news conference with Putin in Moscow, had offered the tantalizing clue that Putin had given him ``very comforting'' assurances about the plant, but Putin would not outline what these assurances were.
At a news conference with French President Jacques Chirac, Bush was asked what Putin had told him. He said Putin ``is willing to allow for international inspection teams to determine'' whether the facility would lead to the development of weapons of mass destruction.
``We're thinking about what he told us,'' said Bush.
A senior Bush administration official said Putin had held out the possibility of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring the facility.
``This is a work in progress,'' the official said, when asked to elaborate on Bush's comments. ``They are discussing ways ahead to increase everyone's confidence and to address what both presidents agree is a real potential problem.''
The United States is skeptical Iran really wants the plant for electricity, pointing out Tehran possesses rich reserves of oil.
Washington has designated Iran, Iraq and North Korea as part of an ``axis of evil'' bent on developing weapons of mass destruction, and a senior U.S. official last week called Russia's help in building the plant the single biggest proliferation threat that exists today.
The $800 million plant construction contract is a cash cow for the weak Russian economy. The facility is believed to be years from operation.
``We would certainly like to make certain that the Russians are doing nothing that can contribute to Iran's nuclear technologies, giving them, ultimately, military nuclear technologies,'' Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told ``Fox News Sunday.''
U.S. officials said the issue, while troubling, was being worked on in good faith by the U.S. and Russian governments.
``These two leaders have shown they are problem-solvers. This is an issue that they're talking about. We're looking for ways to continue discussion,'' said one U.S. official.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan presses on with missile tests
Sunday, 26 May, 2002
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_2008000/2008827.stm
More than a million troops are massed on the border Pakistan has carried out its second test-firing of a ballistic missile in two days.
It ignored widespread international concern over the first test on Saturday, at a time when relations with neighbouring India are extremely tense.
As with the first test, India said it was "not impressed".
But in a speech carried live on television, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called on the nation to unite to face the treat of terrorism.
US President George Bush has urged the two countries to show restraint, and expressed "strong reservations" about Pakistan's new missile tests.
Urgency to act
Mr Vajpayee repeated that Delhi's patience was running out.
"In this hour of crisis, we should unitedly prepare to defend ourselves," he said after inaugurating a new road tunnel in a pass in the Himalayan foothills.
"The nation should stand shoulder to shoulder against the challenge. We want victory, victory over terrorism."
Click here for the strategic balance between India and Pakistan
India began the initial military build-up along the border after it said Pakistan had supported a bloody attack by militants on the federal parliament in Delhi last December.
In his remarks on Sunday, Mr Vajpayee said India ought to have responded to that attack. He did not elaborate.
Tension between the two nuclear powers rose again in mid-May 2002 after an attack on an army base in Kashmir in which more than 30 people died.
Their armed forces continue to fire at one another across the line of control in the disputed territory of Kashmir, and their international border.
In the latest violence, the authorities in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir said at least five people, including two children, were killed and eight others injured during Pakistani shelling in two border villages.
'Balancing act'
Sunday's test-fire was of a new Pakistani weapon - a short-range surface-to-surface missile, the Ghaznavi.
It has a range of 290 kilometres (176 miles) and is probably capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear warheads.
The first test, on Saturday, involved a medium-range Ghauri missile, which has a range of 1,500 kilometres (900 miles).
Pakistan argues that it has been holding back while India tested new missiles, and this is about achieving a strategic balance in the region.
The BBC's Mike Wooldridge, in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, says India's apparent unwillingness to go in for any kind of retaliatory measure may give some reassurance about the impact of the missile testing on the critical situation on the India-Pakistan border.
But he adds that it is also clear that the latest has added to the urgency of the international efforts to persuade India and Pakistan to take steps to reduce rather than increase the tension.
Delhi has repeatedly insisted it will not enter talks with Islamabad over Kashmir until Pakistan stops backing militants - an accusation Pakistan denies.
General Musharraf, in an interview with the Washington Post, denied that he was backtracking on his commitment to take tough action against the militants.
He also said he did not think he would ever reach the stage of having to decide whether to use nuclear weapons.
-------- russia
Putin: 'Great Progress' in Nuke Talks
By Deborah Seward
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, May 26, 2002; 5:32 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13720-2002May26?language=printer
PUSHKIN, Russia -- Looking both relieved and relaxed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that he and President Bush made "great progress" toward reducing Cold War nuclear threats during their recent summit.
Putin also said he hoped his talks with Bush would help remove obstacles to further cooperation, such as ratifying the 1996 treaty banning nuclear tests and repealing the 1970s-era Jackson-Vanik law restricting U.S.-Russia trade.
"We have the right to fully consider this visit a success," Putin said.
Putin stressed the importance of the agreement signed in the Kremlin on Friday. It requires each country to cut their nuclear arsenals from current levels of 6,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200.
"That we reached agreement on the key issues and that we signed these documents, this is great progress," said Putin, who insisted on a formal treaty.
Putin said the treaty "gives the right, true signal for the direction of cooperation," including containing threats from nations that aspire to have nuclear weapons.
Putin offered his assessment of the summit at the opulent, 18th-century Tsarskoye Selo palace just outside St. Petersburg, which once was the summer residence for Russia's royals.
Putin spoke moments after Air Force One, carrying Bush, flew above the vast grounds where the Russian president later hosted Finnish President Tarja Halonen. Bush headed to France to meet with French President Jacques Chirac.
Demonstrating that he appears to have greatly improved his English, Putin waved at one of his aides to refrain from translating the treaty question but answered in Russian.
Putin noted that when summit preparations began a year ago Washington and Moscow were at odds over nuclear weapons reductions and other issues.
"On the key issues our positions were either very far apart or were exactly opposite," Putin said.
The agreement to reduce nuclear arsenals formed a good basis for further progress, Putin said.
Turning to economics, Putin expressed disappointment that Congress has not repealed the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links privileges coveted by Moscow to the right of Jews to emigrate. Bush has urged its repeal.
"Of course, we are not thrilled that this didn't happen," Putin said.
However, Putin said he and Bush did a lot to "create the basis for movement" to remove what Russia considers a serious irritation.
Russia also hopes the United States soon will declare Russia a "market economy," a designation important for its entry into the World Trade Organization, which sets and polices world trade rules, and for attracting investment.
Putin was satisfied the United States was seriously considering Russia's primary concerns. He has been accused by opponents of repeatedly giving far too much to the United States on key issues without getting much in return.
"Our American partners pay attention to our concerns and respect them," Putin said.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear Nightmares
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By BILL KELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/magazine/26NUKES.html
Not If But When
Everybody who spends much time thinking about nuclear terrorism can give you a scenario, something diabolical and, theoretically, doable. Michael A. Levi, a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists, imagines a homemade nuclear explosive device detonated inside a truck passing through one of the tunnels into Manhattan. The blast would crater portions of the New York skyline, barbecue thousands of people instantly, condemn thousands more to a horrible death from radiation sickness and -- by virtue of being underground -- would vaporize many tons of concrete and dirt and river water into an enduring cloud of lethal fallout. Vladimir Shikalov, a Russian nuclear physicist who helped clean up after the 1986 Chernobyl accident, envisioned for me an attack involving highly radioactive cesium-137 loaded into some kind of homemade spraying device, and a target that sounded particularly unsettling when proposed across a Moscow kitchen table -- Disneyland. In this case, the human toll would be much less ghastly, but the panic that would result from contaminating the Magic Kingdom with a modest amount of cesium -- Shikalov held up his teacup to illustrate how much -- would probably shut the place down for good and constitute a staggering strike at Americans' sense of innocence. Shikalov, a nuclear enthusiast who thinks most people are ridiculously squeamish about radiation, added that personally he would still be happy to visit Disneyland after the terrorists struck, although he would pack his own food and drink and destroy his clothing afterward.
Another Russian, Dmitry Borisov, a former official of his country's atomic energy ministry, conjured a suicidal pilot. (Suicidal pilots, for obvious reasons, figure frequently in these fantasies.) In Borisov's scenario, the hijacker dive-bombs an Aeroflot jetliner into the Kurchatov Institute, an atomic research center in a gentrifying neighborhood of Moscow, which I had just visited the day before our conversation. The facility contains 26 nuclear reactors of various sizes and a huge accumulation of radioactive material. The effect would probably be measured more in property values than in body bags, but some people say the same about Chernobyl.
Maybe it is a way to tame a fearsome subject by Hollywoodizing it, or maybe it is a way to drive home the dreadful stakes in the arid-sounding business of nonproliferation, but in several weeks of talking to specialists here and in Russia about the threats an amateur evildoer might pose to the homeland, I found an unnerving abundance of such morbid creativity. I heard a physicist wonder whether a suicide bomber with a pacemaker would constitute an effective radiation weapon. (I'm a little ashamed to say I checked that one, and the answer is no, since pacemakers powered by plutonium have not been implanted for the past 20 years.) I have had people theorize about whether hijackers who took over a nuclear research laboratory could improvise an actual nuclear explosion on the spot. (Expert opinions differ, but it's very unlikely.) I've been instructed how to disperse plutonium into the ventilation system of an office building.
The realistic threats settle into two broad categories. The less likely but far more devastating is an actual nuclear explosion, a great hole blown in the heart of New York or Washington, followed by a toxic fog of radiation. This could be produced by a black-market nuclear warhead procured from an existing arsenal. Russia is the favorite hypothetical source, although Pakistan, which has a program built on shady middlemen and covert operations, should not be overlooked. Or the explosive could be a homemade device, lower in yield than a factory nuke but still creating great carnage.
The second category is a radiological attack, contaminating a public place with radioactive material by packing it with conventional explosives in a ''dirty bomb'' by dispersing it into the air or water or by sabotaging a nuclear facility. By comparison with the task of creating nuclear fission, some of these schemes would be almost childishly simple, although the consequences would be less horrifying: a panicky evacuation, a gradual increase in cancer rates, a staggeringly expensive cleanup, possibly the need to demolish whole neighborhoods. Al Qaeda has claimed to have access to dirty bombs, which is unverified but entirely plausible, given that the makings are easily gettable.
Nothing is really new about these perils. The means to inflict nuclear harm on America have been available to rogues for a long time. Serious studies of the threat of nuclear terror date back to the 1970's. American programs to keep Russian nuclear ingredients from falling into murderous hands -- one of the subjects high on the agenda in President Bush's meetings in Moscow this weekend -- were hatched soon after the Soviet Union disintegrated a decade ago. When terrorists get around to trying their first nuclear assault, as you can be sure they will, there will be plenty of people entitled to say I told you so.
All Sept. 11 did was turn a theoretical possibility into a felt danger. All it did was supply a credible cast of characters who hate us so much they would thrill to the prospect of actually doing it -- and, most important in rethinking the probabilities, would be happy to die in the effort. All it did was give our nightmares legs.
And of the many nightmares animated by the attacks, this is the one with pride of place in our experience and literature -- and, we know from his own lips, in Osama bin Laden's aspirations. In February, Tom Ridge, the Bush administration's homeland security chief, visited The Times for a conversation, and at the end someone asked, given all the things he had to worry about -- hijacked airliners, anthrax in the mail, smallpox, germs in crop-dusters -- what did he worry about most? He cupped his hands prayerfully and pressed his fingertips to his lips. ''Nuclear,'' he said simply.
My assignment here was to stare at that fear and inventory the possibilities. How afraid should we be, and what of, exactly? I'll tell you at the outset, this was not one of those exercises in which weighing the fears and assigning them probabilities laid them to rest. I'm not evacuating Manhattan, but neither am I sleeping quite as soundly. As I was writing this early one Saturday in April, the floor began to rumble and my desk lamp wobbled precariously. Although I grew up on the San Andreas Fault, the fact that New York was experiencing an earthquake was only my second thought.
The best reason for thinking it won't happen is that it hasn't happened yet, and that is terrible logic. The problem is not so much that we are not doing enough to prevent a terrorist from turning our atomic knowledge against us (although we are not). The problem is that there may be no such thing as ''enough.''
25,000 Warheads, and It Only Takes One My few actual encounters with the Russian nuclear arsenal are all associated with Thomas Cochran. Cochran, a physicist with a Tennessee lilt and a sense of showmanship, is the director of nuclear issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which promotes environmental protection and arms control. In 1989, when glasnost was in flower, Cochran persuaded the Soviet Union to open some of its most secret nuclear venues to a roadshow of American scientists and congressmen and invited along a couple of reporters. We visited a Soviet missile cruiser bobbing in the Black Sea and drank vodka with physicists and engineers in the secret city where the Soviets first produced plutonium for weapons.
Not long ago Cochran took me cruising through the Russian nuclear stockpile again, this time digitally. The days of glasnost theatrics are past, and this is now the only way an outsider can get close to the places where Russians store and deploy their nuclear weapons. On his office computer in Washington, Cochran has installed a detailed United States military map of Russia and superimposed upon it high-resolution satellite photographs. We spent part of a morning mouse-clicking from missile-launch site to submarine base, zooming in like voyeurs and contemplating the possibility that a terrorist could figure out how to steal a nuclear warhead from one of these places.
''Here are the bunkers,'' Cochran said, enlarging an area the size of a football stadium holding a half-dozen elongated igloos. We were hovering over a site called Zhukovka, in western Russia. We were pleased to see it did not look ripe for a hijacking.
''You see the bunkers are fenced, and then the whole thing is fenced again,'' Cochran said. ''Just outside you can see barracks and a rifle range for the guards. These would be troops of the 12th Main Directorate. Somebody's not going to walk off the street and get a Russian weapon out of this particular storage area.''
In the popular culture, nuclear terror begins with the theft of a nuclear weapon. Why build one when so many are lying around for the taking? And stealing tends to make better drama than engineering. Thus the stolen nuke has been a staple in the literature at least since 1961, when Ian Fleming published ''Thunderball,'' in which the malevolent Spectre (the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, a strictly mercenary and more technologically sophisticated precursor to al Qaeda) pilfers a pair of atom bombs from a crashed NATO aircraft. In the movie version of Tom Clancy's thriller ''The Sum of All Fears,'' due in theaters this week, neo-Nazis get their hands on a mislaid Israeli nuke, and viewers will get to see Baltimore blasted to oblivion.
Eight countries are known to have nuclear weapons -- the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. David Albright, a nuclear-weapons expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, points out that Pakistan's program in particular was built almost entirely through black markets and industrial espionage, aimed at circumventing Western export controls. Defeating the discipline of nuclear nonproliferation is ingrained in the culture. Disaffected individuals in Pakistan (which, remember, was intimate with the Taliban) would have no trouble finding the illicit channels or the rationalization for diverting materials, expertise -- even, conceivably, a warhead.
But the mall of horrors is Russia, because it currently maintains something like 15,000 of the world's (very roughly) 25,000 nuclear warheads, ranging in destructive power from about 500 kilotons, which could kill a million people, down to the one-kiloton land mines that would be enough to make much of Manhattan uninhabitable. Russia is a country with sloppy accounting, a disgruntled military, an audacious black market and indigenous terrorists.
There is anecdotal reason to worry. Gen. Igor Valynkin, commander of the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Russian military sector in charge of all nuclear weapons outside the Navy, said recently that twice in the past year terrorist groups were caught casing Russian weapons-storage facilities. But it's hard to know how seriously to take this. When I made the rounds of nuclear experts in Russia earlier this year, many were skeptical of these near-miss anecdotes, saying the security forces tend to exaggerate such incidents to dramatize their own prowess (the culprits are always caught) and enhance their budgets. On the whole, Russian and American military experts sound not very alarmed about the vulnerability of Russia's nuclear warheads. They say Russia takes these weapons quite seriously, accounts for them rigorously and guards them carefully. There is no confirmed case of a warhead being lost. Strategic warheads, including the 4,000 or so that President Bush and President Vladimir Putin have agreed to retire from service, tend to be stored in hard-to-reach places, fenced and heavily guarded, and their whereabouts are not advertised. The people who guard them are better paid and more closely vetted than most Russian soldiers.
Eugene E. Habiger, the four-star general who was in charge of American strategic weapons until 1998 and then ran nuclear antiterror programs for the Energy Department, visited several Russian weapons facilities in 1996 and 1997. He may be the only American who has actually entered a Russian bunker and inspected a warhead in situ. Habiger said he found the overall level of security comparable to American sites, although the Russians depend more on people than on technology to protect their nukes.
The image of armed terrorist commandos storming a nuclear bunker is cinematic, but it's far more plausible to think of an inside job. No observer of the unraveling Russian military has much trouble imagining that a group of military officers, disenchanted by the humiliation of serving a spent superpower, embittered by the wretched conditions in which they spend much of their military lives or merely greedy, might find a way to divert a warhead to a terrorist for the right price. (The Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, infamous for such ruthless exploits as taking an entire hospital hostage, once hinted that he had an opportunity to buy a nuclear warhead from the stockpile.) The anecdotal evidence of desperation in the military is plentiful and disquieting. Every year the Russian press provides stories like that of the 19-year-old sailor who went on a rampage aboard an Akula-class nuclear submarine, killing eight people and threatening to blow up the boat and its nuclear reactor; or the five soldiers at Russia's nuclear-weapons test site who killed a guard, took a hostage and tried to hijack an aircraft, or the officers who reportedly stole five assault helicopters, with their weapons pods, and tried to sell them to North Korea.
The Clinton administration found the danger of disgruntled nuclear caretakers worrisome enough that it considered building better housing for some officers in the nuclear rocket corps. Congress, noting that the United States does not build housing for its own officers, rejected the idea out of hand.
If a terrorist did get his hands on a nuclear warhead, he would still face the problem of setting it off. American warheads are rigged with multiple PAL's ( ''permissive action links'') -- codes and self-disabling devices designed to frustrate an unauthorized person from triggering the explosion. General Habiger says that when he examined Russian strategic weapons he found the level of protection comparable to our own. ''You'd have to literally break the weapon apart to get into the gut,'' he told me. ''I would submit that a more likely scenario is that there'd be an attempt to get hold of a warhead and not explode the warhead but extract the plutonium or highly enriched uranium.'' In other words, it's easier to take the fuel and build an entire weapon from scratch than it is to make one of these things go off.
Then again, Habiger is not an expert in physics or weapons design. Then again, the Russians would seem to have no obvious reason for misleading him about something that important. Then again, how many times have computer hackers hacked their way into encrypted computers we were assured were impregnable? Then again, how many computer hackers does al Qaeda have? This subject drives you in circles.
The most troublesome gap in the generally reassuring assessment of Russian weapons security is those tactical nuclear warheads -- smaller, short-range weapons like torpedoes, depth charges, artillery shells, mines. Although their smaller size and greater number makes them ideal candidates for theft, they have gotten far less attention simply because, unlike all of our long-range weapons, they happen not to be the subject of any formal treaty. The first President Bush reached an informal understanding with President Gorbachev and then with President Yeltsin that both sides would gather and destroy thousands of tactical nukes. But the agreement included no inventories of the stockpiles, no outside monitoring, no verification of any kind. It was one of those trust-me deals that, in the hindsight of Sept. 11, amount to an enormous black hole in our security.
Did I say earlier there are about 15,000 Russian warheads? That number includes, alongside the scrupulously counted strategic warheads in bombers, missiles and submarines, the commonly used estimate of 8,000 tactical warheads. But that figure is at best an educated guess. Other educated guesses of the tactical nukes in Russia go as low as 4,000 and as high as 30,000. We just don't know. We don't even know if the Russians know, since they are famous for doing things off the books. ''They'll tell you they've never lost a weapon,'' said Kenneth Luongo, director of a private antiproliferation group called the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. ''The fact is, they don't know. And when you're talking about warhead counting, you don't want to miss even one.''
And where are they? Some are stored in reinforced concrete bunkers like the one at Zhukovka. Others are deployed. (When the submarine Kursk sank with its 118 crewmen in August 2000, the Americans' immediate fear was for its nuclear armaments. The standard load out for a submarine of that class includes a couple of nuclear torpedoes and possibly some nuclear depth charges.) Still others are supposed to be in the process of being dismantled under terms of various formal and informal arms-control agreements. Some are in transit. In short, we don't really know.
The other worrying thing about tactical nukes is that their anti-use devices are believed to be less sophisticated, because the weapons were designed to be employed in the battlefield. Some of the older systems are thought to have no permissive action links at all, so that setting one off would be about as complicated as hot-wiring a car.
Efforts to learn more about the state of tactical stockpiles have been frustrated by reluctance on both sides to let visitors in. Viktor Mikhailov, who ran the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy until 1998 with a famous scorn for America's nonproliferation concerns, still insists that the United States programs to protect Russian nuclear weapons and material mask a secret agenda of intelligence-gathering. Americans, in turn, sometimes balk at reciprocal access, on the grounds that we are the ones paying the bills for all these safety upgrades, said the former Senator Sam Nunn, co-author of the main American program for securing Russian nukes, called Nunn-Lugar.
''We have to decide if we want the Russians to be transparent -- I'd call it cradle-to-grave transparency with nuclear material and inventories and so forth,'' Nunn told me. ''Then we have to open up more ourselves. This is a big psychological breakthrough we're talking about here, both for them and for us.''
The Garage Bomb One of the more interesting facts about the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima is that it had never been tested. All of those spectral images of nuclear coronas brightening the desert of New Mexico -- those were to perfect the more complicated plutonium device that was dropped on Nagasaki. ''Little Boy,'' the Hiroshima bomb, was a rudimentary gunlike device that shot one projectile of highly enriched uranium into another, creating a critical mass that exploded. The mechanics were so simple that few doubted it would work, so the first experiment was in the sky over Japan.
The closest thing to a consensus I heard among those who study nuclear terror was this: building a nuclear bomb is easier than you think, probably easier than stealing one. In the rejuvenated effort to prevent a terrorist from striking a nuclear blow, this is where most of the attention and money are focused.
A nuclear explosion of any kind ''is not a sort of high-probability thing,'' said a White House official who follows the subject closely. ''But getting your hands on enough fissile material to build an improvised nuclear device, to my mind, is the least improbable of them all, and particularly if that material is highly enriched uranium in metallic form. Then I'm really worried. That's the one.''
To build a nuclear explosive you need material capable of explosive nuclear fission, you need expertise, you need some equipment, and you need a way to deliver it.
Delivering it to the target is, by most reckoning, the simplest part. People in the field generally scoff at the mythologized suitcase bomb; instead they talk of a ''conex bomb,'' using the name of those shack-size steel containers that bring most cargo into the United States. Two thousand containers enter America every hour, on trucks and trains and especially on ships sailing into more than 300 American ports. Fewer than 2 percent are cracked open for inspection, and the great majority never pass through an X-ray machine. Containers delivered to upriver ports like St. Louis or Chicago pass many miles of potential targets before they even reach customs.
''How do you protect against that?'' mused Habiger, the former chief of our nuclear arsenal. ''You can't. That's scary. That's very, very scary. You set one of those off in Philadelphia, in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and you're going to kill tens of thousands of people, if not more.'' Habiger's view is ''It's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when'' -- which may explain why he now lives in San Antonio.
The Homeland Security office has installed a plan to refocus inspections, making sure the 2 percent of containers that get inspected are those without a clear, verified itinerary. Detectors will be put into place at ports and other checkpoints. This is good, but it hardly represents an ironclad defense. The detection devices are a long way from being reliable. (Inconveniently, the most feared bomb component, uranium, is one of the hardest radioactive substances to detect because it does not emit a lot of radiation prior to fission.) The best way to stop nuclear terror, therefore, is to keep the weapons out of terrorist hands in the first place.
The basic know-how of atom-bomb-building is half a century old, and adequate recipes have cropped up in physics term papers and high school science projects. The simplest design entails taking a lump of highly enriched uranium, about the size of a cantaloupe, and firing it down a big gun barrel into a second lump. Theodore Taylor, the nuclear physicist who designed both the smallest and the largest American nuclear-fission warheads before becoming a remorseful opponent of all things nuclear, told me he recently looked up ''atomic bomb'' in the World Book Encyclopedia in the upstate New York nursing home where he now lives, and he found enough basic information to get a careful reader started. ''It's accessible all over the place,'' he said. ''I don't mean just the basic principles. The sizes, specifications, things that work.''
Most of the people who talk about the ease of assembling a nuclear weapon, of course, have never actually built one. The most authoritative assessment I found was a paper, ''Can Terrorists Build Nuclear Weapons?'' written in 1986 by five experienced nuke-makers from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory. I was relieved to learn that fabricating a nuclear weapon is not something a lone madman -- even a lone genius -- is likely to pull off in his hobby room. The paper explained that it would require a team with knowledge of ''the physical, chemical and metallurgical properties of the various materials to be used, as well as characteristics affecting their fabrication; neutronic properties; radiation effects, both nuclear and biological; technology concerning high explosives and/or chemical propellants; some hydrodynamics; electrical circuitry; and others.'' Many of these skills are more difficult to acquire than, say, the ability to aim a jumbo jet.
The schemers would also need specialized equipment to form the uranium, which is usually in powdered form, into metal, to cast it and machine it to fit the device. That effort would entail months of preparation, increasing the risk of detection, and it would require elaborate safeguards to prevent a mishap that, as the paper dryly put it, would ''bring the operation to a close.''
Still, the experts concluded, the answer to the question posed in the title, while qualified, was ''Yes, they can.''
David Albright, who worked as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, says Saddam Hussein's unsuccessful crash program to build a nuclear weapon in 1990 illustrates how a single bad decision can mean a huge setback. Iraq had extracted highly enriched uranium from research-reactor fuel and had, maybe, barely enough for a bomb. But the manager in charge of casting the metal was so afraid the stuff would spill or get contaminated that he decided to melt it in tiny batches. As a result, so much of the uranium was wasted that he ended up with too little for a bomb.
''You need good managers and organizational people to put the elements together,'' Albright said. ''If you do a straight-line extrapolation, terrorists will all get nuclear weapons. But they make mistakes.''
On the other hand, many experts underestimate the prospect of a do-it-yourself bomb because they are thinking too professionally. All of our experience with these weapons is that the people who make them (states, in other words) want them to be safe, reliable, predictable and efficient. Weapons for the American arsenal are designed to survive a trip around the globe in a missile, to be accident-proof, to produce a precisely specified blast.
But there are many corners you can cut if you are content with a big, ugly, inefficient device that would make a spectacular impression. If your bomb doesn't need to fit in a suitcase (and why should it?) or to endure the stress of a missile launch; if you don't care whether the explosive power realizes its full potential; if you're willing to accept some risk that the thing might go off at the wrong time or might not go off at all, then the job of building it is immeasurably simplified.
''As you get smarter, you realize you can get by with less,'' Albright said. ''You can do it in facilities that look like barns, garages, with simple machine tools. You can do it with 10 to 15 people, not all Ph.D.'s, but some engineers, technicians. Our judgment is that a gun-type device is well within the capability of a terrorist organization.''
All the technological challenges are greatly simplified if terrorists are in league with a country -- a place with an infrastructure. A state is much better suited to hire expertise (like dispirited scientists from decommissioned nuclear installations in the old Soviet Union) or to send its own scientists for M.I.T. degrees.
Thus Tom Cochran said his greatest fear is what you might call a bespoke nuke -- terrorists stealing a quantity of weapons-grade uranium and taking it to Iraq or Iran or Libya, letting the scientists and engineers there fashion it into an elementary weapon and then taking it away for a delivery that would have no return address.
That leaves one big obstacle to the terrorist nuke-maker: the fissile material itself.
To be reasonably sure of a nuclear explosion, allowing for some material being lost in the manufacturing process, you need roughly 50 kilograms -- 110 pounds -- of highly enriched uranium. (For a weapon, more than 90 percent of the material should consist of the very unstable uranium-235 isotope.) Tom Cochran, the master of visual aids, has 15 pounds of depleted uranium that he keeps in a Coke can; an eight-pack would be plenty to build a bomb.
The world is awash in the stuff. Frank von Hippel, a Princeton physicist and arms-control advocate, has calculated that between 1,300 and 2,100 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium exists -- at the low end, enough for 26,000 rough-hewed bombs. The largest stockpile is in Russia, which Senator Joseph Biden calls ''the candy store of candy stores.''
Until a decade ago, Russian officials say, no one worried much about the safety of this material. Viktor Mikhailov, who ran the atomic energy ministry and now presides over an affiliated research institute, concedes there were glaring lapses.
''The safety of nuclear materials was always on our minds, but the focus was on intruders,'' he said. ''The system had never taken account of the possibility that these carefully screened people in the nuclear sphere could themselves represent a danger. The system was not designed to prevent a danger from within.''
Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and, in the early 90's, a few frightening cases of nuclear materials popping up on the black market.
If you add up all the reported attempts to sell highly enriched uranium or plutonium, even including those that have the scent of security-agency hype and those where the material was of uncertain quality, the total amount of material still falls short of what a bomb-maker would need to construct a single explosive.
But Yuri G. Volodin, the chief of safeguards at Gosatomnadzor, the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, told me his inspectors still discover one or two instances of attempted theft a year, along with dozens of violations of the regulations for storing and securing nuclear material. And as he readily concedes: ''These are the detected cases. We can't talk about the cases we don't know.'' Alexander Pikayev, a former aide to the Defense Committee of the Russian Duma, said: ''The vast majority of installations now have fences. But you know Russians. If you walk along the perimeter, you can see a hole in the fence, because the employees want to come and go freely.''
The bulk of American investment in nuclear safety goes to lock the stuff up at the source. That is clearly the right priority. Other programs are devoted to blending down the highly enriched uranium to a diluted product unsuitable for weapons but good as reactor fuel. The Nuclear Threat Initiative, financed by Ted Turner and led by Nunn, is studying ways to double the rate of this diluting process.
Still, after 10 years of American subsidies, only 41 percent of Russia's weapon-usable material has been secured, according to the United States Department of Energy. Russian officials said they can't even be sure how much exists, in part because the managers of nuclear facilities, like everyone else in the Soviet industrial complex, learned to cook their books. So the barn door is still pretty seriously ajar. We don't know whether any horses have gotten out.
And it is not the only barn. William C. Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and an expert in nuclear security in the former Soviet states, said the American focus on Russia has neglected other locations that could be tempting targets for a terrorist seeking bomb-making material. There is, for example, a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium at a site in Belarus, a country with an erratic president and an anti-American orientation. There is enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb or two in Kharkiv, in Ukraine. Outside of Belgrade, in a research reactor at Vinca, sits sufficient material for a bomb -- and there it sat while NATO was bombarding the area.
''We need to avoid the notion that because the most material is in Russia, that's where we should direct all of our effort,'' Potter said. ''It's like assuming the bank robber will target Fort Knox because that's where the most gold is. The bank robber goes where the gold is most accessible.''
Weapons of Mass Disruption The first and, so far, only consummated act of nuclear terrorism took place in Moscow in 1995, and it was scarcely memorable. Chechen rebels obtained a canister of cesium, possibly from a hospital they had commandeered a few months before. They hid it in a Moscow park famed for its weekend flea market and called the press. No one was hurt. Authorities treated the incident discreetly, and a surge of panic quickly passed.
The story came up in virtually every conversation I had in Russia about nuclear terror, usually to illustrate that even without splitting atoms and making mushroom clouds a terrorist could use radioactivity -- and the fear of it -- as a potent weapon.
The idea that you could make a fantastic weapon out of radioactive material without actually producing a nuclear bang has been around since the infancy of nuclear weaponry. During World War II, American scientists in the Manhattan Project worried that the Germans would rain radioactive material on our troops storming the beaches on D-Day. Robert S. Norris, the biographer of the Manhattan Project director, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, told me that the United States took this threat seriously enough to outfit some of the D-Day soldiers with Geiger counters.
No country today includes radiological weapons in its armories. But radiation's limitations as a military tool -- its tendency to drift afield with unplanned consequences, its long-term rather than short-term lethality -- would not necessarily count against it in the mind of a terrorist. If your aim is to instill fear, radiation is anthrax-plus. And unlike the fabrication of a nuclear explosive, this is terror within the means of a soloist.
That is why, if you polled the universe of people paid to worry about weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D., in the jargon), you would find a general agreement that this is probably the first thing we'll see. ''If there is a W.M.D. attack in the next year, it's likely to be a radiological attack,'' said Rose Gottemoeller, who handled Russian nuclear safety in the Clinton administration and now follows the subject for the Carnegie Endowment. The radioactive heart of a dirty bomb could be spent fuel from a nuclear reactor or isotopes separated out in the process of refining nuclear fuel. These materials are many times more abundant and much, much less protected than the high-grade stuff suitable for bombs. Since Sept.11, Russian officials have begun lobbying hard to expand the program of American aid to include protection of these lower-grade materials, and the Bush administration has earmarked a few million dollars to study the problem. But the fact is that radioactive material suitable for terrorist attacks is so widely available that there is little hope of controlling it all.
The guts of a dirty bomb could be cobalt-60, which is readily available in hospitals for use in radiation therapy and in food processing to kill the bacteria in fruits and vegetables. It could be cesium-137, commonly used in medical gauges and radiotherapy machines. It could be americium, an isotope that behaves a lot like plutonium and is used in smoke detectors and in oil prospecting. It could be plutonium, which exists in many research laboratories in America. If you trust the security of those American labs, pause and reflect that the investigation into the great anthrax scare seems to be focused on disaffected American scientists.
Back in 1974, Theodore Taylor and Mason Willrich, in a book on the dangers of nuclear theft, examined things a terrorist might do if he got his hands on 100 grams of plutonium -- a thimble-size amount. They calculated that a killer who dissolved it, made an aerosol and introduced it into the ventilation system of an office building could deliver a lethal dose to the entire floor area of a large skyscraper. But plutonium dispersed outdoors in the open air, they estimated, would be far less effective. It would blow away in a gentle wind.
The Federation of American Scientists recently mapped out for a Congressional hearing the consequences of various homemade dirty bombs detonated in New York or Washington. For example, a bomb made with a single footlong pencil of cobalt from a food irradiation plant and just 10 pounds of TNT and detonated at Union Square in a light wind would send a plume of radiation drifting across three states. Much of Manhattan would be as contaminated as the permanently closed area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Anyone living in Manhattan would have at least a 1-in-100 chance of dying from cancer caused by the radiation. An area reaching deep into the Hudson Valley would, under current Environmental Protection Agency standards, have to be decontaminated or destroyed.
Frank von Hippel, the Princeton physicist, has reviewed the data, and he pointed out that this is a bit less alarming than it sounds. ''Your probability of dying of cancer in your lifetime is already about 20 percent,'' he said. ''This would increase it to 20.1 percent. Would you abandon a city for that? I doubt it.''
Indeed, some large portion of our fear of radiation is irrational. And yet the fact that it's all in your mind is little consolation if it's also in the minds of a large, panicky population. If the actual effect of a radiation bomb is that people clog the bridges out of town, swarm the hospitals and refuse to return to live and work in a contaminated place, then the impact is a good deal more than psychological. To this day, there is bitter debate about the actual health toll from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. There are researchers who claim that the people who evacuated are actually in worse health over all from the trauma of relocation, than those who stayed put and marinated in the residual radiation. But the fact is, large swaths of developed land around the Chernobyl site still lie abandoned, much of it bulldozed down to the subsoil. The Hart Senate Office Building was closed for three months by what was, in hindsight, our society's inclination to err on the side of alarm.
There are measures the government can take to diminish the dangers of a radiological weapon, and many of them are getting more serious consideration. The Bush administration has taken a lively new interest in radiation-detection devices that might catch dirty-bomb materials in transit. A White House official told me the administration's judgment is that protecting the raw materials of radiological terror is worth doing, but not at the expense of more catastrophic threats.
''It's all over,'' he said. ''It's not a winning proposition to say you can just lock all that up. And then, a bomb is pretty darn easy to make. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure about fertilizer and diesel fuel.'' A big fertilizer bomb of the type Timothy McVeigh used to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City, spiced with a dose of cobalt or cesium, would not tax the skills of a determined terrorist.
''It's likely to happen, I think, in our lifetime,'' the official said. ''And it'll be like Oklahoma City plus the Hart Office Building. Which is real bad, but it ain't the World Trade Center.''
The Peril of Power Plants Every eight years or so the security guards at each of the country's 103 nuclear power stations and at national weapons labs can expect to be attacked by federal agents armed with laser-tag rifles. These mock terror exercises are played according to elaborate rules, called the ''design basis threat,'' that in the view of skeptics favor the defense. The attack teams can include no more than three commandos. The largest vehicle they are permitted is an S.U.V. They are allowed to have an accomplice inside the plant, but only one. They are not allowed to improvise. (The mock assailants at one Department of Energy lab were ruled out of order because they commandeered a wheelbarrow to cart off a load of dummy plutonium.) The mock attacks are actually announced in advance. Even playing by these rules, the attackers manage with some regularity to penetrate to the heart of a nuclear plant and damage the core. Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and something of a scourge of the nuclear power industry, has recently identified a number of shortcomings in the safeguards, including, apparently, lax standards for clearing workers hired at power plants.
One of the most glaring lapses, which nuclear regulators concede and have promised to fix, is that the design basis threat does not contemplate the possibility of a hijacker commandeering an airplane and diving it into a reactor. In fact, the protections currently in place don't consider the possibility that the terrorist might be willing, even eager, to die in the act. The government assumes the culprits would be caught while trying to get away.
A nuclear power plant is essentially a great inferno of decaying radioactive material, kept under control by coolant. Turning this device into a terrorist weapon would require cutting off the coolant so the atomic furnace rages out of control and, equally important, getting the radioactive matter to disperse by an explosion or fire. (At Three Mile Island, the coolant was cut off and the reactor core melted down, generating vast quantities of radiation. But the thick walls of the containment building kept the contaminant from being released, so no one died.)
One way to accomplish both goals might be to fly a large jetliner into the fortified building that holds the reactor. Some experts say a jet engine would stand a good chance of bursting the containment vessel, and the sheer force of the crash might disable the cooling system -- rupturing the pipes and cutting off electricity that pumps the water through the core. Before nearby residents had begun to evacuate, you could have a meltdown that would spew a volcano of radioactive isotopes into the air, causing fatal radiation sickness for those exposed to high doses and raising lifetime cancer rates for miles around.
This sort of attack is not as easy, by a long shot, as hitting the World Trade Center. The reactor is a small, low-lying target, often nestled near the conspicuous cooling towers, which could be destroyed without great harm. The reactor is encased in reinforced concrete several feet thick, probably enough, the industry contends, to withstand a crash. The pilot would have to be quite a marksman, and somewhat lucky. A high wind would disperse the fumes before they did great damage.
Invading a plant to produce a meltdown, even given the record of those mock attacks, would be more complicated, because law enforcement from many miles around would be on the place quickly, and because breaching the containment vessel is harder from within. Either invaders or a kamikaze attacker could instead target the more poorly protected cooling ponds, where used plutonium sits, encased in great rods of zirconium alloy. This kind of sabotage would take longer to generate radiation and would be far less lethal.
Discussion of this kind of potential radiological terrorism is colored by passionate disagreements over nuclear power itself. Thus the nuclear industry and its rather tame regulators sometimes sound dismissive about the vulnerability of the plants (although less so since Sept.11), while those who regard nuclear power as inherently evil tend to overstate the risks. It is hard to sort fact from fear-mongering.
Nuclear regulators and the industry grumpily concede that Sept. 11 requires a new estimate of their defenses, and under prodding from Congress they are redrafting the so-called design basis threat, the one plants are required to defend against. A few members of Congress have proposed installing ground-to-air missiles at nuclear plants, which most experts think is a recipe for a disastrous mishap.
''Probably the only way to protect against someone flying an aircraft into a nuclear power plant,'' said Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland, ''is to keep hijackers out of cockpits.''
Being Afraid For those who were absorbed by the subject of nuclear terror before it became fashionable, the months since the terror attacks have been, paradoxically, a time of vindication. President Bush, whose first budget cut $100 million from the programs to protect Russian weapons and material (never a popular program among conservative Republicans), has become a convert. The administration has made nuclear terror a priority, and it is getting plenty of goading to keep it one. You can argue with their priorities and their budgets, but it's hard to accuse anyone of indifference. And resistance -- from scientists who don't want security measures to impede their access to nuclear research materials, from generals and counterintelligence officials uneasy about having their bunkers inspected, from nuclear regulators who worry about the cost of nuclear power, from conservatives who don't want to subsidize the Russians to do much of anything -- has become harder to sustain. Intelligence gathering on nuclear material has been abysmal, but it is now being upgraded; it is a hot topic at meetings between American and foreign intelligence services, and we can expect more numerous and more sophisticated sting operations aimed at disrupting the black market for nuclear materials. Putin, too, has taken notice. Just before leaving to meet Bush in Crawford, Tex., in November, he summoned the head of the atomic energy ministry to the Kremlin on a Saturday to discuss nuclear security. The subject is now on the regular agenda when Bush and Putin talk.
These efforts can reduce the danger but they cannot neutralize the fear, particularly after we have been so vividly reminded of the hostility some of the world feels for us, and of our vulnerability.
Fear is personal. My own -- in part, because it's the one I grew up with, the one that made me shiver through the Cuban missile crisis and ''On the Beach'' -- is the horrible magic of nuclear fission. A dirty bomb or an assault on a nuclear power station, ghastly as that would be, feels to me within the range of what we have survived. As the White House official I spoke with said, it's basically Oklahoma City plus the Hart Office Building. A nuclear explosion is in a different realm of fears and would test the country in ways we can scarcely imagine.
As I neared the end of this assignment, I asked Matthew McKinzie, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, to run a computer model of a one-kiloton nuclear explosion in Times Square, half a block from my office, on a nice spring workday. By the standards of serious nuclear weaponry, one kiloton is a junk bomb, hardly worthy of respect, a fifteenth the power of the bomb over Hiroshima.
A couple of days later he e-mailed me the results, which I combined with estimates of office workers and tourist traffic in the area. The blast and searing heat would gut buildings for a block in every direction, incinerating pedestrians and crushing people at their desks. Let's say 20,000 dead in a matter of seconds. Beyond this, to a distance of more than a quarter mile, anyone directly exposed to the fireball would die a gruesome death from radiation sickness within a day -- anyone, that is, who survived the third-degree burns. This larger circle would be populated by about a quarter million people on a workday. Half a mile from the explosion, up at Rockefeller Center and down at Macy's, unshielded onlookers would expect a slower death from radiation. A mushroom cloud of irradiated debris would blossom more than two miles into the air, and then, 40 minutes later, highly lethal fallout would begin drifting back to earth, showering injured survivors and dooming rescue workers. The poison would ride for 5 or 10 miles on the prevailing winds, deep into the Bronx or Queens or New Jersey.
A terrorist who pulls off even such a small-bore nuclear explosion will take us to a whole different territory of dread from Sept. 11. It is the event that preoccupies those who think about this for a living, a category I seem to have joined.
''I think they're going to try,'' said the physicist David Albright. ''I'm an optimist at heart. I think we can catch them in time. If one goes off, I think we will survive. But we won't be the same. It will affect us in a fundamental way. And not for the better.''
Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for the magazine.
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Backlight - Secretary of State George C. Marshall, 1947
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2497-2002May24.html
http://a188.g.akamaitech.net/f/188/920/1h/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I4144-2002May24
For a man who already had extraordinary accomplishments in life, 1947 was proving to be a watershed year for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, center. In June, his remarks to Harvard's graduating class outlined the Marshall Plan -- a model to strengthen Western Europe's economic superstructure. Three months later, Marshall, along with Warren R. Austin, left, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, and Senate President Arthur H. Vandenberg, right, attended a conference of 19 Western Hemisphere nations in Rio de Janeiro. Here, they've just returned to Washington. The next evening, Marshall and Vandenberg took to the radio waves to discuss the inter-American defense treaty that came out of the conference. The treaty stated that an armed attack against any member state would be considered an attack against all member states. Concluding, Marshall called it "one constructive international development in a world sadly in need of such encouragement."
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Putin: 'Great Progress' in Nuke Talks
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Putin.html
PUSHKIN, Russia (AP) -- Looking both relieved and relaxed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that he and President Bush made ``great progress'' toward reducing Cold War nuclear threats during their recent summit.
Putin also said he hoped his talks with Bush would help remove obstacles to further cooperation, such as ratifying the 1996 treaty banning nuclear tests and repealing the 1970s-era Jackson-Vanik law restricting U.S.-Russia trade.
``We have the right to fully consider this visit a success,'' Putin said.
Putin stressed the importance of the agreement signed in the Kremlin on Friday. It requires each country to cut their nuclear arsenals from current levels of 6,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200.
``That we reached agreement on the key issues and that we signed these documents, this is great progress,'' said Putin, who insisted on a formal treaty.
Putin said the treaty ``gives the right, true signal for the direction of cooperation,'' including containing threats from nations that aspire to have nuclear weapons.
Putin offered his assessment of the summit at the opulent, 18th-century Tsarskoye Selo palace just outside St. Petersburg, which once was the summer residence for Russia's royals.
Putin spoke moments after Air Force One, carrying Bush, flew above the vast grounds where the Russian president later hosted Finnish President Tarja Halonen. Bush headed to France to meet with French President Jacques Chirac.
Demonstrating that he appears to have greatly improved his English, Putin waved at one of his aides to refrain from translating the treaty question but answered in Russian.
Putin noted that when summit preparations began a year ago Washington and Moscow were at odds over nuclear weapons reductions and other issues.
``On the key issues our positions were either very far apart or were exactly opposite,'' Putin said.
The agreement to reduce nuclear arsenals formed a good basis for further progress, Putin said.
Turning to economics, Putin expressed disappointment that Congress has not repealed the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links privileges coveted by Moscow to the right of Jews to emigrate. Bush has urged its repeal.
``Of course, we are not thrilled that this didn't happen,'' Putin said.
However, Putin said he and Bush did a lot to ``create the basis for movement'' to remove what Russia considers a serious irritation.
Russia also hopes the United States soon will declare Russia a ``market economy,'' a designation important for its entry into the World Trade Organization, which sets and polices world trade rules, and for attracting investment.
Putin was satisfied the United States was seriously considering Russia's primary concerns. He has been accused by opponents of repeatedly giving far too much to the United States on key issues without getting much in return.
``Our American partners pay attention to our concerns and respect them,'' Putin said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Calvert Seeks Views On Budget Increases
Additions Benefit Pay, Schools, Sheriff
By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page SM01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7718-2002May24.html
The Calvert County commissioners will hear this week what the public thinks of their proposed $140.2 million county operating budget for fiscal 2003.
The spending plan, which will cover the 12-month period beginning July 1, does not call for a local tax increase. It will be the subject of a public hearing beginning at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Calvert Pines Senior Center in Prince Frederick....
The county will once again benefit from state reimbursements -- an anticipated $6.1 million -- for revenues lost from its largest taxpayer, Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, because of state deregulation of electric utilities, according to Shannon.
-------- new york
Fuel Rods and Brass Tacks
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26INDI.html
BUCHANAN, N.Y., May 23 - For many years, the argument over the Indian Point nuclear power plant here in New York City's northern suburbs was one of the great evergreens of Northeastern environmentalism. It could always be counted on and it never really changed. The positions on both sides, repeated by rote for decades, became a liturgy that was sure to inflame passions without much risk of anything actually happening as a result.
One side said that the plant was unsafe because residents could not be easily evacuated in the event of an emergency, and that its owners were incompetent. The other side said that the reactors were vital to the power grid and that opponents were overwrought and emotional. September's terrorist attacks added a new note to the chorus, but left the strident rhetoric largely intact.
That dynamic is changing. Now, a conversation about Indian Point is likely to drift toward the economic fallout from Enron. People who oppose the plant have also begun to lay out specific horse trades they might be willing to make. Some environmentalists say, for instance, that more air pollution and so-called greenhouse gas emissions, neither of which is a big issue in the case of nuclear power, would be a reasonable price if closing Indian Point meant that the region's old oil-burning plants - many considered to be on their last legs - had to keep running. Both sides are grinding out numbers and studies as never before.
Other new variables have entered the picture as well, like the proposed Millennium Pipeline that would carry natural gas into the New York City area. Many residents in this part of New York vehemently oppose the pipeline, which is stalled by environmental and safety concerns. But both sides in the new plant debate concede that if nuclear power were taken out of the region's mix of energy-making fuels, natural gas would become more crucial than ever.
What has happened, energy experts say, is that the members of the Indian Point debate team - supporters and opponents alike - have been forced, in a way, to grow up. Although most environmentalists and industry officials say the odds are still long that the plant will close any time soon, playing "what if" is no longer the purely theoretical parlor game it once was, and that has made all the difference. Ideology and philosophy are out; nuts and bolts and real-world implications are in.
"When you begin to think through the actual closing of a plant, a lot of issues come up," said Robert H. Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton, who studies energy issues. "Some are nightmarish. They're all difficult."
Certainly, security is still the driving force, especially in the last few weeks since the Bush administration issued a warning about a possible terrorist strike this summer on an American nuclear plant. And the shift toward practical terms and arguments does not make the positions any less sharp or passionately held.
But it does alter the terrain. From its once-narrow base as an environmental issue, the question of nuclear power in New York City's backyard has expanded to envelop almost every aspect of how energy is bought, sold and distributed. Any discussion of electricity economics, energy conservation - even the predictions about the length of the recession, which has reduced energy demand since fall - eventually turns to Indian Point's twin brown domes on the banks of the Hudson River, 30 miles north of the George Washington Bridge.
Some of these new questions are huge and profound: do deregulated energy markets really work, and how exactly would they deal with something like the closing of Indian Point? Is there a threshold at which the potentially huge costs of decommissioning the plant would become too high for society, or the region's economy, to bear?
Other questions are small and profound: should the added security costs needed to operate a nuclear plant be borne by the public or the industry? And if high security is a permanent new cost of business, is it still an economically efficient way to make electricity?
"Things are part of the mix now that never were before," said Jim Steets, a spokesman for the Entergy Corporation, the company based in New Orleans that owns and operates Indian Point.
Among the most novel of the arguments in the new Indian Point playbook is that closing the plant might actually fix some things that are wrong with New York's electricity system, most of which have nothing at all to do with terrorist threats.
One big issue in electricity economics right now is a money drought. Since the collapse of Enron last year, investors who are still bullish on power plant investments in New York have become about as hard to find as Manhattan parking spaces. Seven plants have received regulatory approval around the state, but only one is under construction and no one is sure how many will go forward. The answer, some people say, is to close Indian Point.
Removing 2,000 megawatts from the system, plant opponents say - enough to power about two million average homes - would crimp the regional electricity supply and send a signal to Wall Street, which would see an opportunity to make money and so throw open the money spigot. The plants on the drawing board would be built and Indian Point's electricity gap, they say, would be resolved. Case closed.
"The loss of Indian Point Units 2 and 3 would allow market forces to essentially trump any Enron effect," said Alex Matthiessen, the executive director of Riverkeeper Inc., a nonprofit conservation group based in Garrison, N.Y., less than 10 miles from the plant. "It's essentially a supply-and-demand question."
Other experts say that such a mechanism might in fact work, as odd as it sounds, but that it would be a far more wrenching process than Mr. Matthiessen and other advocates suggest because the triggering event would not be the plant's closing, but the higher electricity prices that would result. Closing alone would not be enough.
"Price is the only signal the market understands," said Dr. Rajat K. Deb, the president of LCG Consulting, an energy advisory firm based in Los Altos, Calif. Dr. Deb said that high prices would also have to remain high for a long time to convince investors that they were not just a blip. "But then the question becomes whether that is politically sustainable when it starts hurting the economy and people lose jobs," he said.
Underlying all the possible plans for Indian Point is the question of time. Mr. Steets at Entergy said if the plant were to be shut down tomorrow, at least five years of cooling would be required before the radioactive fuel could be safely moved. During that time - if not longer because of the uncertainties about long-term storage - the plant would contribute no electricity, but might still be just as much of a terrorist target because of the fuel inside, so little would actually be gained, he said.
Plant opponents, on the other hand, say that there is in New York a window of opportunity that might not come again. A year ago, they say, when the news was filled with talk about the possibility of a California-style energy crisis descending on New York, the idea of taking Indian Point off-line would have been unthinkable. Then new emergency supplies were built in the city, and a recession, compounded by the World Trade Center attack, reduced demand. It's that temporary slack period, they argue, that must be seized.
The other trick, people involved in the debate say, is to calculate the risks in the new Indian Point equation - specifically, which factors can be controlled and which cannot. If the air got dirtier from burning more oil or coal, what would that mean?
"There are in fact significant health risks from coal plant emissions - they're chronic in nature, and they're serious, but nowhere near as serious as if Indian Point was attacked," said Daniel Rosenblum, a senior lawyer at the Pace Law School Energy Project, an advocacy group that works for sustainable energy and conservation. "And we can do things about coal plant emissions."
-------- south carolina
Feds Say S.C. Can't Stop Plutonium
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13696-2002May26?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Attorneys for the U.S. Energy Department say South Carolina's threats to block federal plutonium shipments to the agency's Savannah River Site facility are unconstitutional.
In response to a lawsuit filed by Gov. Jim Hodges, the attorneys argued in court papers released Friday that the governor's plan to use a blockade to keep the nuclear material out of his state would violate the federal government's right to regulate interstate commerce.
Courtney Owings, a spokeswoman for Hodges, said the governor's attorneys were still looking over the filing and had no immediate response.
In his motion seeking a temporary restraining order against the plutonium shipments, Hodges has argued to U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie that the Energy Department has violated environmental and due-process laws.
Currie is scheduled to hear arguments June 13, two days before the Energy Department could begin making the shipments of weapons-grade surplus plutonium from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado.
The plutonium is to be shipped to the Savannah River Site, converted and then shipped out of state.
Hodges has sued to stop the shipments until the Energy Department and the state reach an agreement about how the plutonium will be processed and when it will leave the state.
Hodges also questioned the department's safe-transport capabilities. Last week, he asked Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to put any movement plans on hold.
The Energy Department contends that the shipments to South Carolina are essential to meeting its goal of cleaning up and closing the Rocky Flats site by 2006.
-------- us politics
Debate on Arafat Stalls U.S. Policy, Aides to Bush Say
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/international/middleeast/26ARAF.html
WASHINGTON, May 25 - An intense debate among President Bush and his top advisers over whether to press for the removal of Yasir Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian Authority has effectively frozen the nation's Middle East policy, according to some administration officials.
It has also prompted George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to delay his mission to the region until the policy is worked out.
For more than two weeks, Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell have said that Mr. Tenet will go to the Middle East to work to restructure Palestinian security forces after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank. But no date was set, and until now, there was no coherent explanation for the delay.
In the meantime, the White House has decided to send William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, to the region. He is expected to leave early next week for Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Word of the debate in the White House has reached Mr. Arafat's senior advisers, one of whom has been in Washington for two weeks arguing Mr. Arafat's case in the State Department and the Pentagon. In an unusual meeting about a week ago, that adviser, Muhammad Rashid, debated the "centrality" of Mr. Arafat's role with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, who has been one of the critics of Mr. Arafat in the administration.
President Bush tried to settle the issue of Mr. Arafat's leadership in two meetings of his principal advisers before he left for Moscow on Wednesday, administration officials said, and Mr. Bush took part in the second meeting. But lengthy discussions failed to resolve the question of whether the United States is prepared to accept Mr. Arafat based on his pledge to undertake extensive changes, intended to tighten security, end corruption and broaden the Palestinian leadership.
At the same time, given the current political ferment in the Palestinian territories that has given rise to strong criticism of Mr. Arafat among Palestinians, the delay gives the administration time to assess the political challenges that Mr. Arafat is beginning to face at home, officials said.
"The Americans are watching the situation," said a senior Arab foreign policy adviser whose government has been in close contact with Secretary Powell. "And we do not feel they are off course. The most important thing going on right now is the dialogue among the Palestinians themselves.
"Arafat is admitting mistakes and he is reassessing how to be a better Arafat if he wants to stay," the adviser said.
But one pro-Israeli lobbyist who has been tracking the administration's debate said that Mr. Bush and his advisers "have got themselves tied in a knot."
Mr. Bush is described as being inclined to work with Mr. Arafat, in collaboration with moderate Arab leaders who put pressure on him to make changes. But Mr. Bush has repeatedly spoken of Mr. Arafat's need to fulfill the expectations of Western and moderate Arab leaders.
On Tuesday, before leaving on his trip, Mr. Bush spoke with a number of European reporters and said that Mr. Arafat had "had chance after chance, and by failing to lead, he has really let the Palestinians down." Later he said, "Somebody said, `Has he earned your respect?' I said, `He never had my respect, because he let his people down.' "
The debate in the Bush administration has divided along familiar lines, officials said, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney pressing for a policy that would undermine Mr. Arafat's control over the Palestinian Authority and pave the way for a change in leadership.
Secretary Powell and Mr. Tenet are said to argue that there is no alternative to Mr. Arafat. They advocate keeping him under pressure to deliver on his pledges of change. According to this view, political and economic reconstruction of the Palestinian Authority would set the stage for statehood and the gradual transition to broader leadership.
The notion of working with Mr. Arafat was implicit in the agreement reached between Mr. Bush and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah at the end of April at the president's ranch in Texas. They discussed a division of labor whereby Arab leaders would bring pressure on Mr. Arafat to undertake fundamental security and political changes, while Mr. Bush would bring pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to negotiate with an overhauled Palestinian leadership for new security arrangements and the framework to create a Palestinian state.
One Saudi political adviser said that the prince felt he had brought Mr. Arafat around, but that Mr. Bush had yet to bring Mr. Sharon around.
"The crown prince feels that he has delivered his guy, and now the president needs to deliver his guy," the adviser said. "Arafat has made his commitment on political and security reforms, and we want to hold his feet to the fire, but unless the process moves forward, we could lose the momentum and that could spell disaster."
After the meeting in Texas, Mr. Sharon came to Washington seeking to discredit Mr. Arafat with evidence linking him to groups that carried out suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. After Mr. Sharon's departure, a senior Israeli military official came to Washington with the message that Israel saw no "utility" in the Tenet mission because it was intended to rebuild a Palestinian security force under Mr. Arafat.
Palestinian officials said it would be difficult for Mr. Tenet to undertake serious discussions with Mr. Arafat about security changes if the administration remained uncommitted either to working with Mr. Arafat or to pushing forward on negotiations to create a Palestinian state.
One specialist on Middle Eastern affairs in the administration said there was strong concern that during times of indecision, "events move on," especially toward the return of extremist violence. "And events are not going to wait for us to make decisions," this official said.
The State Department has yet to announce the trip of Mr. Burns, the assistant secretary of state, next week to the Middle East. There was little expectation in the government that he would be able to accomplish much while the debate goes on among the Bush advisers.
Mr. Sharon and his supporters in Washington have been pressing the Bush administration to insist on Mr. Arafat's removal or sidelining. Arab leaders have warned of the dangers of any frontal assault on Mr. Arafat. They warn that any steps that would appear as an American effort to orchestrate Mr. Arafat's overthrow could usher in a more radical leadership.
Some Arab leaders, at the same time, are willing to support a gradual political transition that would, through democratic means, effectively move Mr. Arafat out of his central role over time, some Arab diplomatic sources have said.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the debate, which other administration officials spoke of, adding that a number of Arab and Israeli diplomats had been briefed on the administration's failure to reach a decision before Mr. Bush left town.
The pro-Israeli lobbyist who described the administration as being tied in a knot, said, "they need the Arab states to help with any transition" but the Arab leaders "don't want to be the ones who say that Arafat has to go."
But Arab diplomats have expressed concern that the delay caused by the debate was playing into the hands of extremists.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whom President Bush invited to Washington this month after Mr. Sharon's visit, is said to be concerned that he is arriving at a White House that has not made up its mind, or worse, that may seek Egypt's assistance in orchestrating the removal of Mr. Arafat. Such a course would be politically lethal for Mr. Mubarak at a time when Mr. Arafat's standing in the Arab world has soared.
During two weeks of consultations at the State Department, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, and with American Jewish leaders, the Palestinian aide, Mr. Rashid, said Mr. Arafat was committed to overhauling the Palestinian Authority and its security services.
He also submitted a lengthy list of questions to a senior administration official about whether the Bush administration remained committed to a peace conference this summer, asking whether the goal of that conference would be to create a "time line" for negotiations for Palestinian statehood and what the "milestones" of the Bush policy would be. After days of waiting, Mr. Rashid was scheduled to leave the country without receiving any answers.
----
DC/MD/VA For the Record
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7606-2002May24?language=printer
Here's how some major bills fared recently in Congress and how local congressional members voted, as provided by Thomas's Roll Call Report Syndicate. NV means Not Voting.
HOUSE VOTES
AFGHANISTAN AID
For: 390 / Against: 22
The House approved $1.4 billion in economic, military and humanitarian aid to help Afghanistan rebuild itself. The four-year package (HR 3994) awaits Senate action. It establishes a special Afghanistan fund outside of normal foreign aid channels and requires the Afghanistan government to curb its heroin and opium exports. A yes vote was to approve the aid.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) N
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) Y
Ehrlich (R) Y
Gilchrest (R) Y
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) Y
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) Y
T. Davis (R) Y
Moran (D) Y
Wolf (R) Y
Cantor (R) Y
POST-TALIBAN SECURITY
For: 40 7 / Against: 4
The House required President Bush to provide Congress with a security plan quickly to prevent the return of civil war to Afghanistan. At issue was the existing U.S. and United Nations strategy of restricting the deployment of U.N. troops to Kabul and nearby areas, thus allowing regional warlords to regain power elsewhere in the country. This marked the first time since Sept. 11 that either house has voted to question Bush's handling of the war on terror. It occurred during debate on HR 3994 (above).
A yes vote gave Bush 45 days from enactment of the bill to submit an Afghanistan security plan.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) Y
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) Y
Ehrlich (R) Y
Gilchrest (R) Y
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) Y
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) Y
T. Davis (R) Y
Moran (D) Y
Wolf (R) Y
Cantor (R) Y
U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE
For: 327 / Against: 101
The House passed a bill (HR 3129) authorizing $5 billion in fiscal 2002-2003 for the U.S. Customs Service, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the International Trade Commission. The bill was disputed mainly over new search powers and liability protections it gives customs agents to bolster their efforts against terrorists and drug traffickers. It grants retroactive immunity in cases of allegedly illegal body searches. It authorizes agents to conduct searches of outgoing U.S. mail without a warrant; under existing law, they can open only incoming mail without a warrant.
The bill upgrades the Customs Service computer system, steps up border protection against terrorism and illegal drugs, and increases efforts against the Internet transmission of child pornography. It reestablishes New York City customs offices, including the textile clearinghouse destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) Y
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) N
Ehrlich (R) Y
Gilchrest (R) Y
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) N
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) Y
T. Davis (R) Y
Moran (D) Y
Wolf (R) Y
Cantor (R) Y
LEGAL IMMUNITY
For: 197 / Against: 231
The House refused to remove broad legal immunity for customs agents from HR 3129 (above). This preserved language in the bill giving agents increased protection against lawsuits when they conduct body searches and undertake other inspections at port facilities.
A yes vote was to strip the bill of new legal immunity for customs agents.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) N
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) Y
Ehrlich (R) N
Gilchrest (R) N
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) Y
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) N
T. Davis (R) N
Moran (D) Y
Wolf (R) N
Cantor (R) N
2002 SPENDING HIKE
For: 280 / Against: 138
The House passed a bill (HR 4775) appropriating $29.4 billion in additional fiscal 2002 spending. Although the bill is devoted mainly to paying for the rising costs of the war on terrorism, it contains numerous other provisions, including language setting the stage for an increase in the national debt ceiling (next issue). The bill awaits Senate action.
The bill provides $15.8 billion for military activities; $1.48 billion for technology to detect explosives in aviation baggage and cargo; $25 million for bolstering cockpit doors; $378 million for upgrading security at nuclear power plants and public works; $5.5 billion for New York City; $112 million for the FBI; and $75 million for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It also provides $200 million for Israel, $50 million for Palestinians, $1 billion for Pell Grants to needy college students and $650 million for the global fight against AIDS, among other outlays.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) Y
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) N
Ehrlich (R) Y
Gilchrest (R) Y
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) Y
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) Y
T. Davis (R) Y
Moran (D) N
Wolf (R) Y
Cantor (R) Y
NATIONAL DEBT CEILING
For: 216 / Against: 209
The House approved a rule for debating HR 3448 (above). The procedural measure drew Democratic criticism mainly because it enables the GOP-led House to raise the national debt limit without debating or voting directly on the issue. The rule assured "that the United States government will take all steps necessary to guarantee the full faith and credit of the government." Senate approval and later House action will be needed to enact an administration request that the $5.95 trillion debt ceiling be raised by $750 billion. It would be the first increase in five years.
A yes vote was to approve the rule.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) Y
Cardin (D) N
Cummings (D) N
Ehrlich (R) Y
Gilchrest (R) Y
Hoyer (D) N
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) N
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) Y
T. Davis (R) Y
Moran (D) N
Wolf (R) Y
Cantor (R) Y
TROOPS IN COLUMBIA
For: 192 / Against: 225
The House refused to strip HR 4775 (above) of language expanding the U.S. military role in Colombia. Existing authority allows American forces to support Colombia's war against illegal drugs. This bill expands the role to fighting terrorism as well.
A yes vote opposed expanding the U.S. military role in Colombia.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) N
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) Y
Ehrlich (R) N
Gilchrest (R) N
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) Y
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) N
T. Davis (R) N
Moran (D) Y
Wolf (R) N
Cantor (R) N
BIOTERRORISM
For: 4 25 / Against: 1
The House approved the conference report on a bill (HR 3448) authorizing $4.6 billion over two years to bolster America's ability to detect, prevent and respond to chemical and biological attacks. The bill, which provides $1.6 billion in grants to states, awaits Senate action. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., cast the no vote.
The bill expands stockpiles of medicines, such as antibiotics, smallpox vaccines and potassium iodide, a drug to lessen the effects of radiation. It also requires government actions to ensure that importers, processors and distributors protect the public against contaminated food.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
MARYLAND
Bartlett (R) Y
Cardin (D) Y
Cummings (D) Y
Ehrlich (R) Y
Gilchrest (R) Y
Hoyer (D) Y
Morella (R) Y
Wynn (D) Y
VIRGINIA
J. Davis (R) Y
T. Davis (R) Y
Moran (D) Y
Wolf (R) Y
Cantor (R) Y
SENATE VOTES
MORTGAGE SUBSIDIES
For: 50 / Against: 49
With Vice President Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote, the Senate tabled (killed) a proposal to subsidize mortgage payments for up to one year for workers who lose their jobs to imports. This occurred during debate on a bill (HR 3009) that grants presidents fast-track authority for moving trade agreements through Congress and renews low tariffs for imports from Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. A yes vote opposed mortgage subsidies for workers dislocated by imports.
MARYLAND
Mikulski (D) N
Sarbanes (D) N
VIRGINIA
Allen (R) N
Warner (R) N
AID TO STEELWORKERS
For: 56 / Against: 4 0
The Senate failed to advance an amendment providing a year of health insurance subsidies for steelworkers forced into retirement by imports. This occurred during debate on HR 3009 (above). Backers needed 60 votes to advance the measure, which sought to extend to steelworkers the same medical insurance subsidy -- a 70 percent refundable tax credit -- available in the bill for other workers losing their jobs because of imports. It was projected to cost $179 million over 10 years.
A yes vote was to subsidize steel retirees' medical premiums.
MARYLAND
Mikulski (D) Y
Sarbanes (D) Y
VIRGINIA
Allen (R) N
Warner (R) N
TRADE AND ENTITLEMENTS
For: 66 / Against: 3 0
The Senate sent to conference with the House a bill (HR 3009) giving presidents fast-track authority for moving trade agreements through Congress and expanding entitlement programs for workers dislocated by lower-cost imports. The bill also renews lower tariffs on imports from Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador and Peru.
The bill extends the 40-year-old Trade Adjustment Assistance program to certain farmers, fishermen and other workers harmed by imports. It creates a refundable tax credit to cover 70 percent of the cost of medical insurance for workers whose job loss is attributed to imports. It begins a pilot program of wage insurance for workers forced by imports into lower-paying jobs; the subsidy covers half the difference between the old and new pay levels, up to $5,000 a year, in place of unemployment compensation.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
MARYLAND
Mikulski (D) N
Sarbanes (D) N
VIRGINIA
Allen (R) Y
Warner (R) Y
-------- MILITARY
Around the World, Hints of Afghanistans to Come
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/weekinreview/26FRAN.html
PANKISI GORGE hardly looks like the next capital of radical Islam. Duisi, the largest of the four villages in the remote part of the Caucasus Mountains, is home to a few thousand Chechen refugees living in poverty and about 1,500 Chechen rebels who are not much better off.
But American and Georgian authorities say that 100 or so Arab fighters, some with ties to Al Qaeda, are being sheltered in that lawless section of northeastern Georgia, controlled by drug lords, criminals and the Chechen rebels.
Whether that situation grows into a more dangerous and far-reaching threat will say a lot about the effectiveness of the American effort against terrorism in similar disaffected redoubts stretching from Pakistan to Somalia.
"It is the intersection of an eroding state, which sees the breakdown of police and customs and border controls, and a partnership with a committed group of local people that creates the potential for dangers beyond the borders of a particular country," said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a private research group based in Brussels.
Nearly eight months after the first bombs fell on Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, the effort to stamp out other potential safe havens is like putting mercury back in a thermometer. While bringing stability to Afghanistan is proving tough, hot spots are popping up elsewhere. Some were predictable; others, like Georgia, are surprises.
To keep its message to the American public simple, the Bush administration has lumped all of these places into a pot with Osama bin Laden and the Qaeda network. But many indigenous anti-American movements are growing because of the war on terror.
Analysts said from the start that if a single place were to become a new center for Islamic extremists, it would likely emerge from the same conditions that turned Afghanistan into Al Qaeda's home: a weak or failed central government, widespread discontent and an indigenous movement with ideological links to religious extremism.
Among the countries analysts now see meeting the criteria are Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan and three former Soviet republics, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The chance of any of these countries turning into a breeding ground for global extremism is small, they say - so long as America and its allies take appropriate steps. Each represents a slightly different challenge.
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were barely on Western radar before their proximity to Afghanistan brought them to American attention. They have authoritarian governments and now an American military presence; discontent and anti-American sentiment could nurture extremists.
In tiny Kyrgyzstan, for example, instability is rising as President Askar Akayev becomes more repressive against opposition politicians and the news media while the American force at the new airbase outside the capital, Bishkek, grows.
But both states lack strong local militant groups. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which sought to establish an Islamic state, suffered heavy losses fighting alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Many analysts believe its strength was overestimated even before then.
Some of the deepest concerns about Pakistan have been borne out: the alliance with the United States against Afghanistan inflamed anti-Western sentiment among militant Islamic parties and organizations, which had operated freely before Sept. 11. The attempts by the military government of President Pervez Musharraf to curb them in the months since then are seen as largely ineffective.
Evidence of anti-Western fury has mounted, from the killing of the journalist Daniel Pearl to recent bombings of a church frequented by Americans in Islamabad and a bus carrying French engineers in Karachi, a city that seems always on the verge of anarchy.
In Somalia, long suspected by the Americans as a staging area for Al Qaeda, the collapse of the central government allowed militant local Islamic groups like Al-Itihaad al-Islami, which seeks an Islamic state, to remain prominent. But intelligence officials report little evidence of Al Qaeda's presence.
The government of Sudan, the cradle of Al Qaeda from 1990 to 1996, seems a mixed bag, American diplomats say. It denounced Mr. bin Laden and his associates after Sept. 11, yet remains committed to militant Islam and, alongside Iran, has been prominent in advocating a struggle against Israel.
GEORGIA is a Christian country that has tilted toward the United States since gaining independence a decade ago. But spillover from the Chechen war with Russia and growing domestic anger toward the failed policies of President Eduard Shevardnadze have created a troubling climate.
In the early 1990's, Muslim fighters joined the Chechen struggle; they returned in 1996 after a cease-fire with the Russians broke down. Georgian and American authorities say the few who stayed have links with Al Qaeda and deep alliances with the Chechens that could prompt another influx, particularly if Georgia spirals into civil unrest.
"The numbers are small, but that doesn't mean they could not grow very quickly if there were no controls," said a Western diplomat in the capital, Tbilisi, a three-hour drive from Pankisi.
About 50 Special Forces troops arrived in Tbilisi this month to make sure that does not happen. Over the next two years, they will train and equip an elite force in the Georgian Army specifically to assert authority over Pankisi Gorge.
"The main objective is that the illegal militias and Arabs leave this territory," Valerian Khaburdzania, the Georgian state security minister, said.
If the mission fails, another senior Georgian official said, the ramifications will extend beyond their small country in the Caucasus.
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Leader Expected to Get Extended Term
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/international/asia/XXAFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 25 - When 1,500 Afghans gather here next month to plan the country's future, the American-backed interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is expected to win an easy victory and lead the new government, Afghan officials and Western diplomats said. Mr. Karzai has cleared two important hurdles to getting the job for the next 18 months. He is being strongly backed by the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who recently returned to Kabul after decades in exile, the officials and diplomats say, and he has solidified his ties with several powerful former leaders of the Northern Alliance.
That combination creates a formidable bloc that spans the country's two largest ethnic groups.
The king has kept his promise not to push for the restoration of the monarchy. Zahir has returned to enormous popular support from the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group. Mr. Karzai is Pashtun himself. Former Northern Alliance leaders, who are primarily Tajik, have been bitter rivals of the king but now appear to accept his presence.
"There appears to be a strong consensus that the king would have some kind of symbolic role as father of the country," a Western diplomat said, "but not an executive role."
Representatives to the six-day meeting of elders, known as a loya jirga or grand council, are now being selected across the nation.
This loya jirga, based on a tradition that dates back 300 years, is meant to reach a consensus on forming the new government, not necessarily by majority vote.
Mr. Karzai's strength reflects the enormous influence of the country that is backing him - the United States. From warlords on the country's fringes to ministers jockeying for position in Kabul, many leaders see American money and military clout as the ultimate source of power here. But the Americans cannot dictate events, or they risk making the council appear to be under foreign control, a situation that could boomerang in this nation that is fiercely resistant to foreign domination.
Mr. Karzai's probable selection would return him to the head of a weak central government that is struggling mightily to extend its authority beyond Kabul. Besides that choice, there is little consensus yet.
The most volatile unresolved issue is whether and how the dominant position of three ministers in the interim government, all Tajik and all once connected to the Northern Alliance, will be reduced.
The three - Gen. Muhammad Fahim, Yunus Qanooni and Abdullah - hold the three most powerful ministries, defense, interior and foreign. That fact has angered Pashtuns, who dominate in the south and east, and also leaders from the north and west, who say Uzbeks and Hazaras, two other ethnic groups, are underrepresented, too.
"If the Panjshiris were to come out even stronger," one Western diplomat said, referring to the Northern Alliance leaders, "and the Pashtuns even weaker, that would certainly be a destabilizing force."
Western diplomats and key leaders in Kabul have been holding a flurry of meetings here to try to discuss the shape of a new government before the loya jirga convenes from June 10 to 16. On Friday night, Mr. Karzai and a handful of powerful ministers and senior aides gathered for the latest meeting on the topic.
The dozen participants included the three Northern Alliance ministers, and Ashraf Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun and influential adviser to Mr. Karzai and former World Bank official. Dr. Abdullah said in an interview today that he would back Mr. Karzai, but said the group was not divvying up positions in a future government.
"Everything is decided now? That's not true," he said, adding that he is willing to give up his post if that would help the country. "Have we started beginning a dialogue between groups to make sure the loya jirga is a success? That's true."
The former king, meanwhile, has been receiving delegations of ethnic Pashtuns from across the country. Thousands of bearded Pashtuns in flowing robes and black turbans have traveled from across Afghanistan to hail the king's return.
As the frail former monarch sits beneath a white gazebo dressed in slacks, a pair of sunglasses and a sweater, breathless Pashtuns read statements, recite poetry and weep in appreciation of this return.
All of them call for the restoration of the monarchy. But when asked, many said they would accept any government that the king endorsed.
"In the time that I have left I want to serve my people," the king said today in a typical greeting to a delegation. "But I cannot do anything without your cooperation."
Pashtun leaders in the south and east have high expectations that the council will redress the ethnic imbalance they now see in the government. Even former Northern Alliance commanders who felt they lost out in the negotiations that created the interim administration, like the warlords Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ismael Khan, also see the meeting as their way to regain clout.
Someone, obviously, will have to lose out in that process. Dr. Abdullah said that the large number of ministers in the government was unwieldy and likely to be reduced. There is also talk of creating a parliament or assembly to include more groups in the government.
Some critics have complained that Mr. Karzai's government has been slow in confronting regional warlords and tracking down officials who assassinated a government minister this winter.
But if Mr. Karzai can deliver stability, he could tap into the enormous popular desire among average Afghans for peace after 23 years of conflict.
After the new government has served its 18 month term, elections will be held and a second council will draw up a constitution.
So far, 109 delegates have been chosen, including six women. But there have been complaints of intimidation and bribery, and at least one nominee has been murdered.
At the first round of voting in Hootekhil, a district near Kabul, hundreds of young and old men gathered beside a row of trees outside the crumbling municipal building. Sixty local men, running on platforms that ranged from supporting the king to improving education, offered themselves as nominees.
Several dozen elders gathered in the parking lot. Thirty minutes later, they emerged with six names.
A government official introduced each of the six to the audience and shouted over a microphone the following questions about a nominee named Habibullah: "Did he pay any money to you?" "No!" the crowd shouted back. "Did he force you?" "No!" Loud applause erupted as he was declared an official nominee.
The groups meeting with the king expressed the enormous hopes that surround this meeting.
"When you returned to our country we have rain, we have reconciliation, we have unity," said Fazil Muhammad Fazil, a towering Pashtun village elder who burst into tears as he spoke to the king today.
"I have told all the people that we just want the great Zahir Shah."
-------- africa
Group Recovers 150 Bodies in Congo
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Congo-Uprising.html
KISANGANI, Congo (AP) -- Aid workers recovered at least 150 mutilated bodies from two rivers in eastern Congo, victims of reprisal killings that followed an uprising of mutinous rebel troops.
The number of bodies they said they found in the eastern city of Kisangani was far more than the 39 dead confirmed by the rebel forces who control the eastern Congolese city.
Residents said as many as 100 more were shot in their homes or found buried in mass graves.
Most of the killings took place after the May 14 revolt had been crushed, said Belgian priest Guy Verhaegen, who witnessed some of the killings.
The rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy has controlled the city since early in Congo's nearly 4-year-old war.
During the revolt, mutinous rebel troops captured the state radio station and broadcast messages declaring loyalty to Congolese President Joseph Kabila and calling on residents to arm themselves to drive out the Rwandans who had backed the rebels against the late Congolese President Laurent Kabila.
Thousands of residents reportedly responded to the call -- killing at least five people on suspicion of being Rwandan, according to a U.N. preliminary report on the incident. But the uprising was crushed in just three hours.
Verhaegen, 75, said last week he watched from his parish as soldiers drove through the impoverished Mangobo neighborhood, firing at random into people's homes. He said between 40 and 50 people were killed in that area alone.
Verhaegen himself was beaten by the soldiers, who entered the parish and stole a satellite phone, a radio and other items.
Rwandan and Congolese soldiers later sealed off a bridge and part of the Tshopo river, according to residents who live nearby.
``Many gunshots were heard from 4 p.m. to midnight,'' one local said on condition of anonymity.
The next day, decapitated bodies began floating to the surface, he said. Most were in military uniforms, but some appeared to be civilians, according to another resident who went to see the bodies.
Local employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who also asked not to be named, said 150 bodies were pulled from the Tshopo and Congo rivers.
In addition, U.N. employees said they witnessed the killing of about 60 people -- most of them soldiers and policemen -- the day after the uprising.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the victims were executed at the end of the airport's runway and buried in a mass grave.
Rebel officials dispute the accounts, saying just 39 people have been confirmed dead -- including 24 civilians caught in the cross fire, or who fought alongside the mutinous troops and policemen.
The Congolese Rally for Democracy rebels accuse civic leaders in Kisangani of fomenting the uprising with Congolese government backing.
-------- arms sales
Bargain Bomb Revolutionizes Warfare
By Bill Kaczor
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, May 26, 2002; 12:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12811-2002May26?language=printer
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- Weapons developer Terry Little was explaining plans for a guidance kit that could turn "dumb" bombs into "smart" ones when the Air Force's chief of staff asked about cost.
Caught off guard that day nine years ago, Little put the price tag at $65,000 a copy based on costs for other high-tech munitions.
Gen. Merrill McPeak, now retired, then asked for a cost goal.
"I made up a number right there on the spot of $40,000, which seemed like a nice round number," Little recalled.
He remembers McPeak's reaction: "That's no longer the goal," the general said. "That's the max I want to pay, and if you can't figure out a way to get this under $40,000, I don't want it."
Little's team at this Florida Panhandle base beat McPeak's goal by more than half - $14,000 in 1993 dollars, or $21,000 today. They cut through red tape, used off-the-shelf components, adopted purchasing practices used by private industry and treated contractors as partners instead of adversaries.
The Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM - pronounced "jay-dam" - went on to become the most widely used air-delivered weapon of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan because of relatively low cost, high accuracy and all-weather capability.
"JDAM is a revolutionary weapon, not only in terms of what it does, but in terms of the way in which it was bought," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a research group in Alexandria, Va.
"Sometimes the way in which these (military) contracts are set up, you're actually perversely rewarded for spending more money," Thompson said. "In a normal marketplace you're rewarded for saving money, and that's exactly what the JDAM acquisition did."
Its battlefield success has prompted the Pentagon to triple initial plans and buy 236,000 so-called tailkits through 2009, said Mike Hatcher, who followed Little as the project's program director.
The Air Force and Navy so far have received 18,228 JDAMs, which use inertial and satellite guidance systems. More than 6,600 were dropped in Afghanistan.
JDAM was developed because of problems with laser- and television-guided bombs during the Persian Gulf War. Pilots often were unable to drop them through the smoke of oil fires and bad weather that blocked targets from view.
In a handwritten note dated May 1, 1991, McPeak demanded action: "We need to lay down a requirement for an all-WX PGM" - shorthand for "all-weather program."
The Air Armament Center at Eglin responded with JDAM. The tailkits can be attached to thousands of 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound unguided bombs that are in the U.S. arsenal. A new version for 500-pound bombs successfully passed its first test in mid-April.
Warplanes can carry more of the 500-pound bombs, so fewer aircraft would be needed for each mission. The smaller bombs, sufficient for most targets if delivered accurately, also cut the risk of injuring civilians.
All a pilot has to do is dial in a target's coordinates based on intelligence data or information radioed from troops on the ground.
JDAM's inertial navigation system, like those used for decades on military and commercial aircraft, senses speed and direction to keep it on target. A global positioning system, or GPS, corrects any drift through satellite data.
In tests, 95 percent of JDAMs hit within 10 to 30 feet of their targets, Hatcher said.
"It doesn't care whether it's foggy, doesn't care whether it's raining," he said. "It doesn't have to 'see,' so to speak."
Two friendly fire accidents involving JDAMs dropped by Navy and Air Force jets in Afghanistan remain under investigation, but military officials say the weapon is not at fault in either case.
"It was flat-out human error, putting the wrong coordinates in the wrong place," said Rear Adm. Dick Naughton, commander of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center in Fallon, Nev. "The weapon went where it was aimed."
Getting high accuracy was relatively easy. Doing it at McPeak's price was the hard part. Congress paved the way by passing a purchasing reform law that cut red tape. For instance, a car buyer may ask a dealer for a car with a V-6 engine that can go at 100 mph, but the customer doesn't tell the manufacturer how to build it.
Under the law, the Pentagon waived regulations for five pilot projects, including JDAM.
The Boeing Co., a traditional defense contractor, assembles the kits at a plant in St. Charles, Mo.
Some parts, however, come from suppliers new to defense work such as Stremel Manufacturing Co. of Minneapolis, which makes JDAM's small metal wings. Stremel's other products include lawn mower bodies.
Many vendors refuse military business because they don't want to put up with the rules and regulations, but that changed with JDAM, Hatcher said.
Little left JDAM to head two other weapons programs at Eglin, applying the same techniques after learning changes could be made without passing a law. "It's just a matter of getting the system to be responsive and to be agile," Little said from the Pentagon, where he was transferred this year.
Support from top Pentagon officials protected the program from bureaucrats who fought change and are still fighting it, Little and Hatcher said.
Little directs the Air Force's new Acquisition Center of Excellence where he is applying lessons from JDAM to 13 other programs, looking for more ways to streamline the development and purchase of weapons and other equipment.
On the Net:
Boeing: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/missiles/jdam/flash.html
----
Russia opens military supply line for India
Saurabh Shukla New Delhi,
May 26, 2002
Hindustan Times
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/270502/detNAT03.asp
India's declaration of a 'decisive response' to Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism has received a big boost from its strategic partner, Russia.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin is advocating restraint and has also offered to broker peace, Russia has reportedly begun supplying emergency military hardware to New Delhi to meet the Pakistan challenge.
Back-channel diplomacy has also resulted in Moscow extending 'logisitical support', including intelligence on PoK terror camps to Indian security agencies.
Significantly, Moscow has indicated to New Delhi that if the need arises, it will exercise its 'veto' in India's favour at the UN Security Council. During the 1971 war, the then Soviet Union had similarly acted on four occasions to prevent India from being declared the 'aggressor.'
Sources disclosed that Russia has already diverted emergency military hardware from the stocks of its Red Army. These include spares for MiG aircraft, artillery systems and other defence equipment to meet India's emergency war requirements. "To meet India's needs, we have waived off some regulations to reach material on a priority basis," said a diplomatic source.
While agreeing to militarily back India under the 1993 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, the Putin administration hasn't evidently given up the diplomatic option. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had earlier this week spoken to External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and assured him of his country's full support.
"We have told India that war should be avoided but in case Pakistan does not respond to India's demands and a military operation happens, Moscow will play its role as New Delhi's strategic partner," the source added.
----
Britain blocks the sale of 60 Hawk jets to India
By Colin Brown in London and Peter Popham in Delhi
UK Independent
26 May 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=299050
The British Government has put a block on the sale to India of 60 Hawk jets worth £1bn as part of an arms embargo aimed at averting war between India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons.
Tensions between the two countries over the disputed territory of Kashmir were kept high yesterday as Pakistan test fired a missile and there were heavy artillery and mortar exchanges in the Himalayan region. Pakistan said four civilians had been killed.
The Independent on Sunday has learnt the ban on all arms export licences to India and Pakistan worth £64m and £6m last year respectively was signed by Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, on Thursday. It may be extended to for "dual use" goods such as Land Rovers.
The decision underlines the extreme anxiety felt in London and other capitals at the most serious threat of a nuclear exchange since the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s. The Ghauri missile tested by Pakistan yesterday is capable of carrying a nuclear or conventional warhead nearly 1,000 miles into India.
The crisis yesterday drew concern from President George W Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who were continuing their summit in St Petersburg.
Mr Bush urged Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to fulfill his pledge to stop militants from carrying out raids in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir. The two countries have massed a million soldiers along the border following a militant attack on the Indian Parliament in December.
-------- biological weapons
US plan to strike enemy with Valium
Pentagon scientists aim for future battlefield victories with the aid of tranquillising drugs and GM bugs
Antony Barnett, public affairs editor,
Sunday May 26, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,722395,00.html
American military chiefs are developing plans to use Valium as a potential weapon against enemy forces and to control hostile populations, according to official documents seen by The Observer.
The Pentagon has also asked scientists to evaluate proposals to use genetically modified bugs that 'eat' the enemy's fuel and ammunition supplies without harming humans.
The development of these 'non-lethal' weapons angers campaigners who claim that they would breach international treaties on biological and chemical weapons.
US documents reveal that two years ago the Pentagon commissioned scientists at Pennsylvania State University to look at potential military uses for a range of chemicals known as calmatives. The scientists concluded that several drugs would be effective to control crowds or in military operations such as anti-terrorist campaigns. The drugs they recommended for 'immediate consideration' included diazepam, better known as the tranquilliser Valium, and dexmedetomidine, used to sedate patients in intensive care. The scientists advised that these drugs can 'effectively act on central nervous system tissues and produces a less anxious, less aggressive, more tranquil-like behaviour'.
Other official documents reveal how genetically engineered micro-organisms to destroy equipment but not harm troops are also being considered by US military scientists as 'non-lethal' weapons. One proposal from the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Virginia, proposes creating genetically modified bugs that would corrode roads and runways and produce 'targeted deterioration of metal parts, coatings and lubricants of weapons vehicles and support equipment as well as fuels'.
This group of scientists has already patented micro-organisms that would decompose polyurethane, 'a common component of paint for ships and aircraft'. Another proposal from a biotech laboratory at Brooks air force base in Texas was to modify 'anti-material biocatalysts' already under development. One of these breaks down fuels and plastics.
Most of the research was funded by Washington's joint non-lethal weapons programme, in which Britain plays an active part. But further US documents, also seen by The Observer, reveal how a split has developed between the two nations, with British officials backing campaigners' claims that using drugs such as Valium or other calmatives would be outlawed under the 1991 Chemical Weapons Convention. This protocol prohibits 'any chemical which... can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm'.
A report of a meeting in the Ministry of Defence's headquarters in London in November 2000 states: 'The US and UK interpret the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) differently regarding riot control agents (RCA). The UK interpretation considers them to be chemical weapons under the CWC and thus proscribed; the US view is that they are not banned under that agreement. This could lead to difficulties in combined operations in certain circumstances, a situation compounded by the fact that the UK is a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, which further governs the use of NLW [non-lethal weapons].'
Some experts believe the use of genetically-modified microbes in military operations would breach the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project - the US campaigners against biological and chemical weapons that obtained the documents - said: 'What is absolutely shocking about these disclosures is that it represents either a massive institutional failure to implement US commitments under international treaties or it reflects an effort by some people in the Pentagon to undermine those treaties.'
A US military spokesman has denied that the Pentagon is developing 'non-lethal' biological or chemical weapons.
A spokesman from the Foreign Office said: 'There are discussions between Britain and the US on all sorts of technical issues. But we both share a commitment to comply with all the international conventions governing chemical and biological weapons.'
-------- britain
Navy's new carriers are too big for British ports
Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
Sunday May 26, 2002
Guardian Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,722387,00.html
Britain's empire was built on the ability of its master shipbuilders to construct ships capable of reaching any corner of the world.
Similar feats could soon be impossible thanks to an astonishing blunder by defence chiefs: the next generation of aircraft carriers will be unable to dock at any British port because they will be too big.
Royal Navy insiders have told The Observer the problem has forced the MoD to conduct an urgent review of naval bases around Britain.
One option being considered is to reopen Portland base in Dorset, which the MoD closed 10 years ago at a cost of £300 million.
Facilities were transferred to Portsmouth, yet it now appears Portsmouth harbour is not deep enough to accommodate the two new aircraft carriers commissioned by the MoD at a cost of £2.5 billion, which will be twice as large as existing vessels.
Devonport is also unable to take them, and Navy sources suggest nor could Rosyth.
Mike Hancock, Liberal Democrat MP for Portsmouth South and a member of the House of Commons defence select committee, claimed that there would be a political motive behind any move to reopen Portland in order to benefit local Labour MPs.
-------- chile
Chile's Military Spending Spree Incites Clash of Priorities
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/international/americas/26CHIL.html
SANTIAGO, Chile - After 60,000 acres of forest went up in flames early this year, the government made an announcement that irritated more than a few Chileans. It agreed to a big purchase of F-16 jet fighters from the United States, but claimed it could not afford the planes and helicopters needed to put out forest fires.
Even the country's president faults the spending discrepancy.
The purchase of 10 F-16's will cost the Chileans $600 million. Now the country's navy is heating up the issue further. Having already spent almost $500 million for a pair of submarines, the navy brass maintain that they need at least four frigates.
The rush to build up Chile's military is attracting the keen attention of industrial countries. British, French, German and Spanish shipyards would all like to sell new vessels to Chile, while Britain, Italy, the United States and a Dutch-German consortium are said to be offering used vessels at almost giveaway prices.
The F-16's represent the largest American arms sale anywhere in South America since the 1970's. The new American ambassador here, William R. Brownfield, commenting on local reports that the United States might be willing to donate vessels, said in an interview that that was up to the United States Navy, but he added, "I wouldn't be surprised at all if the United States were able to put together a very competitive proposal."
There is some restraint on the Chilean military. The navy originally hoped to spend $1.25 billion on ships, but backed down after setting off a congressional and popular outcry.
The armed services can afford expensive aspirations because of a so-called copper law, which guarantees them 10 percent of all revenues from copper, the country's main export. As originally written decades ago, the statute gave them only a percentage of the profits, but the provisions were made more generous during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and have never been amended in the 12 years since the return of democracy .
"The copper law is a rather unusual law," the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, acknowledged in an interview here. "It was a small change in words, but it means a big change in money, and this has resulted in a system that seems to me not to be very realistic." Mr. Lagos is Chile's first Socialist president since Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a military coup led by General Pinochet in 1973.
He said he favored a "more natural and logical system" in which Congress would determine the military's budget on an annual basis, "just like any other appropriation."
Under the current system, each of the three branches of the military gets and jealously guards its right to an equal share of the copper revenues every year, regardless of what its needs may be.
Even within Mr. Lagos's administration, there are some who argue in support of the military procurement, saying it may help the armed forces to professionalize and would discourage their future meddling in politics, a strategy that has been used with some success in Argentina.
"The Chilean armed forces want to be viewed as modern" and shed the negative image associated with General Pinochet, said Brian Loveman, an expert on the Chilean military who teaches at San Diego State University.
"They want to be part of the world," he said, able "to interact with NATO-level armed forces and participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions."
Mr. Brownfield said he would like to see "a closer relationship" between the Chilean armed forces and the Pentagon. Chile's military has been "somewhat distrustful of the United States over the last 20 or 30 years," he said, but "could break out of that period of relative caution" and provide valuable assistance "on the law enforcement, antiterrorism and antidrug fronts."
But domestic critics of the military modernization argue that Chile's priorities are skewed. "A country with important needs in diverse sectors like health, education and housing does not have the luxury of miscalculating its decisions, because its resources are scarce," the journal El Periodista argued in an article with the headline, "Can F-16's Put Out Forest Fires?"
In the face of such doubts, military leaders are going to unusual lengths to make their plans more palatable to the public. Jorge Martínez Bush, a former commander of the navy who is now a senator, argues, for instance, that the frigate purchase is necessary on both strategic and environmental grounds.
"We have an obligation to protect, administer and conserve our ecological patrimony, our marine fauna," he said in an interview. "Who better than the navy to enforce the 200-mile limit, ensure that our sovereignty is respected and repel those who don't obey limits on the capture of whales and tuna?"
The F-16's, which are to be paid for over the next decade, remain controversial, and not just because of the cost. Critics claim that the American plane was the oldest, most expensive and least-well-equipped aircraft on the bidding list.
"We have been left with the most expensive acrobatic squadron in the world," said Emilio Meneses, a former professor of defense studies at the Catholic University here. "We had two good European options in France and Sweden, but we made the mistake of allowing the Americans to control us in an area where it is not easy to be controlled."
Military leaders argue that at least some of the naval vessels should be built in Chile, a plan that appeals to the budget-conscious government and to business groups.
A Chilean shipyard has already sold oceanographic vessels in Scandinavia, and some here see that as the germ of a domestic industry similar to Brazil's Embraer, which has become the world's fourth-largest aircraft manufacturer. "This is something fundamental for an exporting country like ours," Admiral Martínez Bush said. "The industrial capacity of the Chilean naval industry not only permits us to make vessels, but to make a valuable contribution to national development and to take a great leap toward technical excellence."
-------- colombia
Colombian Vote's Sinister Side
Rebels Opposed to Front-Runner Threaten Rural Residents
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10729-2002May25?language=printer
UTICA, Colombia -- The men from Colombia's largest guerrilla group delivered their preelection message to this lovely valley town only a few hours' drive from the capital with chilling clarity.
"For every Uribe vote, there will be a grave," town council member Victor Hugo Useche said residents have been told for the past month at roadblocks erected by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as the 18,000-member insurgency is known.
The guerrillas have worked throughout the country against Alvaro Uribe Velez, the front-runner in today's presidential election, who has promised a more aggressive military campaign against them if elected. In towns like this one, 40 miles northwest of Bogota, the FARC's pledge to burn buildings and kill residents for each Uribe vote cast has threatened Colombia's small but not insignificant rural vote as never before.
"Abstention here is going to be close to 80 percent," said Useche, whose town has eight police officers defending it against the area's 600 guerrillas. "We are the orphan of the armed forces."
Useche's prediction is a common one in rural Colombia as the country prepares to vote. The guerrillas and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia -- or AUC, as the privately financed paramilitary group that fights them is called -- have been using a variety of methods to influence the outcome of a campaign that has been conducted in the midst of a worsening 38-year civil war.
The efforts, ranging from death threats to clandestine town meetings, reflect the high stakes for both sides. The election will determine whether Colombia embraces a military solution to a conflict born among the Communist insurgencies of the 1960s and now gaining momentum on drug profits, or returns to negotiations with the guerrillas, an approach that failed under President Andres Pastrana. It will also select Washington's next partner in Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, at a time when the Bush administration is pushing for a wider role in the conflict.
Although only 30 percent of Colombia's 24 million registered voters come from outside its well-fortified cities, those rural ballots could determine whether Uribe wins Sunday. The former governor of Colombia's most populous province has a commanding lead in the polls but appears to be just shy of the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff election in June.
No Colombian president has ever been elected in the first round of voting. That would represent an unequivocal popular endorsement of Uribe's plan to double military spending, create civilian defense groups and give his generals a freer hand in prosecuting a war that features two guerrilla armies battling the AUC and the over-stretched Colombian military.
Uribe's closest rival, former interior minister Horacio Serpa, has campaigned for a return to peace talks with the FARC but under what he says would be more restrictive ground rules. The government's three-year talks with the FARC, held in a Switzerland-size haven turned over to the guerrillas as a negotiating incentive, collapsed in February.
Pastrana, barred by law from seeking reelection, has mobilized 200,000 soldiers, police officers and other security officials to ensure that Colombians can cast their ballots freely. The Organization of American States has sent election monitors, and U.S. Embassy officials are fanning out to the larger cities as informal observers.
Meanwhile, the guerrillas have stepped up military operations in the past week, setting off bombs in cities, seizing thousands of the national identification cards that people need to show before voting and forcing election officials to move as many as one in four rural voting stations to the relative safety of urban centers.
"The guerrillas and paramilitaries are performing armed proselytizing," Serpa said last week in the western city of Cali. "This can't be allowed."
But a tour last week of several towns that once served as weekend retreats for Bogota's wealthy suggested that much of the countryside will likely go to the polls without much protection.
Light tanks rolled into positions along the highway running northwest from Bogota, which drops off the high Andean plain into a warm tropical valley. Military helicopters circled above, a novelty according to residents of this town. But only a few soldiers could be seen outside the larger urban areas, their numbers so small as to be largely useless in the face of any guerrilla attack.
Only a few years ago this town, wedged between two rivers and thick with Spanish moss-draped trees, was a tourist destination. One stream on the town's edge is said to have medicinal properties. Now the town of 12,000 people is part of the FARC's tightening circle around the capital. Since the collapse of peace talks, two new guerrilla fronts have moved into the surrounding mountains.
"I have been asking the central government for help for several months, but nothing has come of it," said Alfonso Mahecha Arias, the town's 30-year-old mayor. "They can't wait long because if the guerrillas find out I have asked for help, they will take me away."
Earlier this month, in the town of Topaipi, 50 miles to the northwest, the FARC killed the mayor for that very reason. "The situation has become so polarized, as these elections have shown, and it now threatens to delegitimize the next government if this vote doesn't happen without coercion," Mahecha said.
About 30 miles west of here, in the town of Guaduas, the AUC is making its own threats. The paramilitaries have told would-be voters that they expect a big turnout for Uribe or else residents should expect a post-election punishment.
But most of the threats in this region have come from the guerrillas. They prohibited traffic on these rural roads starting Friday, which will keep many farmers from traveling to urban voting stations. A rented car made it to this town Friday by flying a white flag from its antenna.
Taxi drivers usually hired by the political parties on Election Day to take supporters to the polls have declined those jobs. Buses that have been on the roads in recent days bear the FARC's spray-painted message: "No voting" and "No Uribe."
A dozen soldiers arrived last week in La Magdalena to protect its four voting stations. Two others will be moved into the town from San Carlos, a few roadside shacks the army has decided it cannot protect.
"They've told us that we should expect a certain numbers of corpses for every Uribe vote," said a man with silver-gray hair, who was the town's lone police official for 23 years before retiring this month. Like others in La Magdalena, he declined to give his name for fear of guerrilla reprisal. "I don't care. I'm voting, with God on my side, for Uribe."
----
A Candidate With Many Lives
Colombia: Likely new president has been targeted by guerrillas and accused of drug ties.
By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER
May 26 2002
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2D000037144may26
BOGOTA, Colombia -- This nation's violence has marked Alvaro Uribe like a firing squad wall.
Three of his childhood friends, all brothers, grew up to be infamous drug traffickers. His father was killed by leftist guerrillas. He helped create citizens defense groups that human rights activists say evolved into vicious paramilitary gangs. He has been the target of assassination attempts.
Now the diminutive politician--whose center-right politics make him a Colombian version of former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani--is set to become the Latin nation's next president. Uribe, 49, holds a commanding lead going into the first round of voting today, with polls showing him close to winning the 50% of the vote needed to avoid a runoff. He insists that his personal history matters less than his desire to set Colombia right.
"I'm not bent on vengeance," Uribe said in a telephone interview. "I'm running because I feel a commitment to change my country, to give a new generation a better country than the one our generation received."
If he wins, Uribe has promised to take on the guerrillas, who have battled the government for nearly four decades. He wants to double the size of the military, boost the defense budget and persuade the United States to directly fund the anti-guerrilla war here.
But for many in Colombia, as well as in Washington, Uribe remains something of a mystery, a newcomer to the national stage whose past is filled with both victory and violence.
Colombians have embraced Uribe as a hard-liner--even a right-wing extremist--bent on beating the guerrillas into submission. His popularity peaked in February at nearly 60%, shortly before the collapse of three years of peace talks that had seen the rebels grow in power and reach.
The guerrillas have taken the threat seriously. By his count, Uribe has survived 15 assassination attempts, the most recent a bomb attack in April that left four people dead and destroyed the armored car in which he was riding. Uribe no longer campaigns in public for safety reasons.
But by U.S. political standards, Uribe is a moderate with a conservative bent, a mix of pragmatist and populist. He is described by friends as intense, focused, bookish.
His most controversial proposal, taken as proof of his militant stance, has been the creation of a million-member citizens defense group, armed with radios, to alert the army to impending violence. Critics charge that it will only turn civilians into targets.
But in a 100-point agenda, Uribe has also proposed slashing the size of Congress, creating 1.5 million educational slots for students and lifting trade restrictions to boost job creation.
What remains unclear is whether Uribe, running as an independent, will have the ability to get his agenda through Congress. Even more uncertain is whether Colombia's failing economy will allow him to implement his ambitious goals.
More than anything, Uribe is a man of contradictions. A politician with a gripping life story, he comes off in person as a humorless technocrat. An avowed proponent of law and order, he spent two academic sabbaticals abroad studying education reform and peace negotiation strategies.
Uribe's closest competitor is Horacio Serpa, a traditional politician who has failed to excite Colombians. Polls show Uribe trouncing Serpa if there is a June runoff.
"Uribe is more complicated and has a wider range than most people think," said Malcolm Deas, an Oxford professor who studied with Uribe and is a Colombia expert. "I don't think he's a single-issue politician."
Uribe is also a man dogged by controversies, so many that they have spawned a hastily written unauthorized biography subtitled "Lord of the Shadows."
Human rights groups have questioned his relationship with Colombia's violent right-wing paramilitary groups. Journalists have tried to link him and close associates to narco-traffickers. Other reporters have accused Uribe of threatening them.
Uribe dismisses the accusations, which have been neither proven nor well documented. Most seem to rest on guilt by association.
A close advisor, Pedro Juan Moreno, once had a shipment of chemicals seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on suspicion that they would be used for manufacturing cocaine. Moreno, who was never criminally charged and whose company was recognized as being "reputable" in a later hearing, called Uribe "honest and hard-working."
Uribe's financial support comes mainly from Colombia's top 300 companies, according to Alberto Velazquez, his campaign treasurer. The country's attorney general recently reviewed about 2,000 donors and concluded that none of them had paramilitary links. Colombian law does not require the release of donor names until after elections, so the claim could not be further investigated.
Uribe said his record speaks for itself.
"On one side is my trajectory of 30 years in politics in Colombia," he said. "On the other side, you have rumors and gossip and attacks. You can compare yourself."
Uribe was born July 4, 1952, in the province of Antioquia, Colombia's heartland. The place looms in the nation's consciousness as a land of mythic proportions--the hardest-working farmers, the biggest families, the most violent crimes. Pablo Escobar, the late drug lord, came from Antioquia.
Uribe's family rose from middle-class origins to own ranches throughout Antioquia's soaring mountains and verdant plains. Uribe's father traveled by helicopter to visit his far-flung spreads.
The family's love of horses frequently brought its members into contact with the Ochoa clan, close partners with Escobar in the freewheeling narco era of the 1980s and early 1990s. Uribe competed in dressage shows against the three Ochoa brothers but said he now has no contact with them.
The relationship, however, has served to feed the rumors of his involvement in drug dealing. As head of Colombia's equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration, he granted pilot licenses and airstrip building permits to people later accused of using them to transport drugs.
But in interviews, Uribe has denied any knowledge of such intentions, saying that underlings provided the licenses only after applicants passed police background checks.
Uribe showed an interest in politics early: From the time he was a boy, he told his brothers and sisters that he wanted to be president, and he participated in Liberal Party politics in college.
After wending through Colombia's political patronage system in a series of bureaucratic jobs, he was appointed mayor of Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city, when he was 30.
In the middle of his term, he experienced the most dramatic turn of his life. His father, flying into a family ranch in June 1983 with a brother and sister, walked into an ambush mounted by leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
In the blaze of gunfire that followed, his father was killed, his brother was wounded, and his sister was nearly kidnapped.
Uribe insists that the experience didn't affect his outlook toward the rebels.
Instead, he says, his pledge to increase military spending stems from his belief that the guerrillas won't negotiate in good faith until the army has established its presence throughout the nation, 40% of which is controlled by the rebels in mostly rural, unpopulated areas.
"I became quite sad because of the assassination of my father, but ... there is no link between the assassination of my father and my running for president," Uribe said.
After his father's death, Uribe went on to serve as a city councilman, then senator, when he first showed a taste for privatization.
In 1993, he took a break from politics to spend a year pursuing a special certificate in administration at the Harvard Extension School.
During that time, he sat in on a weeklong course taught by Roger Fisher, a professor whose specialty is conflict negotiation.
When Uribe returned to Colombia, he invited Fisher down to teach. Since then, Uribe claims, more than 82,000 Colombians have gone through the course.
"He was keenly interested in the way people conduct conflicts," Fisher said. "He wanted me to teach that there were less adversarial ways of negotiating."
The paradox of Uribe's interest in the peace process is that it coincided with the most controversial part of his political career: the so-called pacification of Uraba, a region of Antioquia. When Uribe took over as governor of Antioquia in 1995, Uraba was in chaos, reeling from a "dirty war" between the guerrillas and paramilitary groups. By the time he left three years later, the dirty war was all but over.
Human rights groups suggest a reason: Uribe supported the army as it worked with the paramilitary groups to clear the zone of suspected rebels and sympathizers.
Most significant, Uribe promoted the creation of a sort of aggressive neighborhood watch program called Convivir. The Convivir groups, some of them armed, some of them bearing only radios, worked with the military to warn of suspicious activities.
But these groups quickly spun out of control, becoming paramilitary gangs, the rights groups charge. Left behind, they say, was a trail of dead civilians and extrajudicial executions and a massive stream of refugees.
Uribe emphatically denies any cooperation with the paramilitary groups, and there is no evidence of direct links. His supporters attribute the troubled region's turnaround to better cooperation between locals and the army.
Retired Gen. Rito Alejo del Rio, an Uribe supporter who was then in charge of the region, said Uribe fully backed his efforts.
Del Rio now faces charges of paramilitary collusion before a civilian court and was stripped of his U.S. visa for alleged ties to the paramilitary groups and drug dealing. He denies any wrongdoing.
"Uribe is an honest man who will move this country forward," Del Rio said. "He demonstrated that in order to move forward, you must show authority."
----
The U.S. Struggle to Battle Drugs, Just Drugs, in Colombia
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/weekinreview/26WORD.html
IN the late 1980's, Washington decided to make a priority of shutting off the pipeline of cocaine from Colombia, which provided 80 percent of the United States' supply. But Colombia - with a history of bloody conflict pitting a small population of rich against a huge population of poor - was mired in a decades-old civil war.
American officials offered counternarcotics aid to the Colombian national police, but, worried about being sucked into "another Vietnam," stipulated that it not go to fighting guerrillas. There were always suspicions, however, that the line between the two wars was blurring, especially as both rebels and paramilimitary groups - created by landowners to protect their holdings - cut deals with drug traffickers.
Now, the Bush administration is urging Congress to let Colombia openly use the equipment and training from the United States against the rebels. Colombia has received about $1.8 billion worth of American aid since 2000, mostly for the police and military. And as Colombians go to the polls to elect a new president today, the strong front-runner is Álvaro Uribe, an ultraconservative who wants to double the size of the army's combat force to fight the guerrillas.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental, nonprofit research center in Washington, offer a timely look at the hidden aspects of past American involvement.
• The United States and officials in Colombia were at cross-purposes from the start. A July 1992 memo by the Central Intelligence Agency reveals what the American government was unwilling to admit in public.
Andean governments are likely to continue to stress the links between local insurgencies and the drug trade . . . [to persuade] the U.S. that funding counterinsurgency operations with counternarcotics aid would lead to major gains against traffickers.
However, we do not believe that the drug industry would be substantially disrupted in the short term by attacks against guerrillas. Indeed, many traffickers would probably welcome, and even assist, increased operations against insurgents. Moreover, we believe officials in Lima and Bogotá, if given antidrug aid for counterinsurgency purposes, would turn it to pure antiguerrilla operations with little payoff against trafficking.
The right-wing paramilitaries grew throughout the 1990's. Because some Colombian Army units gave them intelligence and logistical help, Congress placed human rights conditions on aid. A 1997 American intelligence report, "Paramilitaries Gaining Strength," suggests the government of President Ernesto Samper, weakened by charges that his presidential campaign had accepted drug money, was not confronting paramilitaries - contrary to its public stance.
Possible military links to these groups are of particular concern because of the upsurge in human rights violations attributed to paramilitary groups in recent years. Victims of paramilitary violence are most commonly unarmed civilians who are murdered for suspected ties to guerrillas.
. . . President Samper and other top officials have said that the government is prepared to take firm action against the paramilitaries, but so far they have not matched their words with deeds.
Prosecutors have investigated only a fraction of the many serious incidents that have taken place in recent years, and . . . some outstanding warrants have not been enforced. We see scant indications that the military is making an effort to directly confront the paramilitary groups or to devote additional men or resources against them. . . .
The growth of paramilitary violence is likely to complicate U.S. interests in Colombia in the areas of human rights and counternarcotics. . . . Many military officers have been embarrassed by several high profile, rebel-inflicted setbacks over the past year, and some . . . may see tolerance or support for the paramilitaries as one avenue for striking back. These officers tend to blame the military's shortcomings on the government's failure to adequately support the armed forces.
Colombia's police have had staunch allies among the House Republicans managing drug policy. In 1997, Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and other House Republicans sought to lift the human rights restrictions on aid to Colombia. The existing law barred the State Department's counternarcotics funds from being used to buy weapons for foreign military and police units whose personnel were credibly accused of serious human rights violations, unless those men were prosecuted. A May 1997 cable from the American ambassador, describing Mr. Hastert's breakfast meeting with Colombian officials, reveals how the United States was speaking with two voices. In fact, Mr. Hastert's office said, the reference to the people "living outside of the U.S." refered to State Department officials in Clinton administration.
Congressman Hastert . . . said that he and the committee would work to remove conditions on assistance. He said he and like-minded members of Congress are "sick and tired of people who spend most of their lives living outside of the U.S. inhibiting the process by placing conditions on military aid when the lives of U.S. children and youth are being destroyed by drugs."
He decried "leftist-dominated" U.S. Congresses of years past who "used human rights as an excuse to aid the left in other countries," and vowed that he was committed to "correcting" that situation and expediting aid to U.S. allies in the war on drugs. He closed by telling the military and police that they already knew they could bypass the U.S. executive branch and communicate directly with the Congress; he encouraged them to continue to do so.
One way to get around Congressional restrictions was to redefine them. In 1997, the United States and Colombia signed an agreement that was intended to guarantee that the counternarcotics aid be used only in drug-producing areas and exclusively for fighting drugs, a zone referred to as "the box." But three years later, the two nations expanded the definition of the box, a change little noted at the time.
Key change . . . is the dissolution of the previously designated "box" outside of which [U.S. government] material aid [or related training] for counternarcotics operations could not be used. . . .The government of the Republic of Colombia and the government of the United States hereby designate the following areas as the "designated areas" . . . : the entire national territory of the Republic of Colombia, including its territorial waters recognized by the international law, and its airspace.
The Clinton administration, which approved a major increase in aid under Plan Colombia, a counternarcotics and development strategy, struggled to identify antidrug units that were not tainted by suspected human rights violations. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked the American ambassador, Curtis W. Kamman, to look into reports that an American-supported battalion (including Bravo company) was dependent on the Colombian Army's 24th Brigade, which was under scrutiny for suspected atrocities. In a July 2000 memo, Mr. Kamman acknowledged the difficulty Washington faced in separating allies from suspects.
When not conducting operations in the field, Bravo company is bedding down at the headquarters of the 24 Brigade's 31st battalion (which has been tasked to provide Bravo Company with logistical support). . . . The 24th Brigade would provide any quick reaction force needed to reinforce Bravo company should the need arise.
Post views this deployment as wholly consistent with the purposes for which the battalion was vetted, but, given the questioned vetting status of the 24th Brigade, wished to note this deployment for the record.
----
Voting starts in Colombia's presidential election
Sunday May 26, 2002
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-107096.html
BOGOTA, Colombia - After the failure of peace talks, Colombians began voting on Sunday under massive military security in a presidential election expected to hand victory to tough-talking anti-rebel candidate Alvaro Uribe.
Opinion polls show Uribe, a former governor who has pledged to crack down on leftist guerrillas fighting in the country's 38-year-old war, just shy of the absolute majority he needs to avoid a June runoff.
Polls opened at 8 a.m. (1300 GMT) to allow 24 million eligible voters to cast their ballots across this vast Andean South American nation. Polls will close at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT).
Thousands of soldiers and police fanned out across the country to ensure a peaceful poll after rebels blew up bridges, bombed pylons and planted a car bomb on the eve of the vote.
President Andres Pastrana, whose efforts to negotiate an end to a war that kills 3,500 people every year crashed in February, is constitutionally barred from seeking reelection.
Colombia's drug-fuelled war involves leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary outlaws and state security forces.
-------- europe
[To reply: mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
Quietly Fearful
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7628-2002May24?language=printer
President Bush went abroad last week leaving behind an administration that seemed unable to stop jabbering about its fears. In Europe, he is encountering leaders who do not talk at all about many of their deepest concerns. An embarrassed silence covers the reality that they do not have politically palatable answers to the new European conundrum.
Bush is an instinctual politician. That trait should come in handy on a trip where he must listen carefully to what is not being said as well as to the flowery speeches and programmed responses to requests for more European help for America's war on terrorism.
This is not his father's Europe, not Bill Clinton's Europe and not even the Europe that Bush visited a year ago. It is a Europe that is simultaneously expanding its borders and remembering why they were needed in the first place. It is a Europe in which politics increasingly centers on immigration, race and crime rather than on broad economic and security issues. Those issues have been effectively taken off the Old Continent's political chessboard by the end of the Cold War and the arrival of the single euro currency.
The European conundrum is a many-edged problem shaped by declining national birthrates, culturally indigestible masses of foreign workers (and, more important, foreign non-workers) within their populations, dependence on the benefits of the welfare state and a wave of lawlessness and privatized violence to the east in the realm of the former Soviet empire. These factors -- the human factor, in reality -- spark the fears that Europe's leaders think of constantly and speak of in direct terms almost never.
Bush is in France and Italy this week after visits to Germany and Russia. He is no doubt getting an earful about Iraq, about America's sabotage of the Kyoto Protocol and about the perceived U.S. penchant for unilateral action and meaningless multilateral rhetoric. But these topics are in large part symbols chosen to convey the fears the weak inevitably have of even the well-intentioned strong.
When European politicians warn of the dangers of American mishandling of Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are expressing concerns about the large Muslim minorities inside their national borders and even within their electoral constituencies. U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Arabs, however justified, threaten these politicians with riots at home or, perhaps even worse, electoral defeat. Why don't you Americans understand what we can't say?
The broader (unspoken) question European politicians face is this: How do we maintain social peace -- the lack of which voters increasingly associate with immigrants -- and the benefits of the welfare state, which require immigrant labor to fill the gaps created by declining European birthrates? The (unspoken) answer is to shut off immigration from the Muslim nations of North Africa and the Mediterranean and turn to Poland and other East European nations for workers in the future.
The European Union has, with little public debate, recently committed itself to take in a dozen new members in the next two years. "We're not talking about whether we should expand so rapidly, because if we did, we would never do it," says a European Union official. Fears of being overwhelmed by the unemployed or criminal gangs from Ukraine or Russia are expressed indirectly in proposals to have EU border guards help the Poles and other newcomers guard their eastern frontiers as expansion is accomplished.
Fear -- and borders, which are the national expression of fear -- stand center stage in the dawn of the 21st century. The U.S. government guards America's frontiers with new vigor since Sept. 11. On this trip Bush is suggesting that NATO transform itself into an organization capable not just of defending European territory but also of carrying out future Afghanistan-type operations wherever they are necessary.
History shows it has a reverse gear: The optimism of the past decade, when world leaders worked to erase barriers to the free flow of goods, capital and people has been vaporized in today's more threatening international climate. On Bush's trip, there was necessarily a vision of fence-building as well as fence-mending.
Americans need to recognize Europe's new, partly hidden insecurities without exaggerating the dangers they pose. Europe is not being taken over by anti-Semitic neo-Nazis; its political sensibility remains left of center and status quo (a trick only Europeans could pull off) even if the appeal of populist, immigrant-bashing campaigning suggests otherwise. Squaring the circle of revenues and benefits of the welfare state is still Job One on the continent for politicians of the left or right.
But it would be equally mistaken to miss the unspoken parts of the European message. Updating the transatlantic relationship will require more than redefining military missions within NATO.
-------- india
Vajpayee: India Patience Wearing Thin
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan-Vajpayee.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee warned the international community again Sunday that India's patience was wearing thin and that New Delhi would not tolerate terrorist attacks against its citizens indefinitely.
In a hard-hitting speech that was broadcast live on television, Vajpayee said the world should understand that India's patience and tolerance were not without limits.
``When the world is fighting terrorism and American forces are in Afghanistan fighting the forces of terrorism, then how and for how long can India tolerate terrorism?'' he said in Manali, a hill resort 250 miles north of New Delhi where he is currently taking what has been described as a five-day vacation.
The prime minister said he regretted that India had not struck at militant groups soon after a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament Dec. 13.
``India should have taken action against cross-border terrorism soon after the attack on the Parliament,'' he said.
India accuses neighboring Pakistan of sponsoring and funding more than a dozen Islamic militant groups who are seeking independence for the northern Kashmir province or its merger with Pakistan. Pakistan says it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the militants, whom it describes as ``freedom fighters.''
``The world says we understand India's position that cross-border terrorism has to stop and the infiltration of militants into India has to end,'' Vajpayee said.
He said the entire country was united in the fight against terrorism.
``All political parties have extended support to the government in its fight against terrorism which has to be crushed,'' he said. ``We want victory over terrorism, and if we fight terrorism together, it can be crushed.''
Vajpayee's speech comes amid escalating tensions between the two nuclear armed neighbors. India and Pakistan have massed a million troops along their border.
--------
U.S., allies strive to broker India-Pakistan peace
May 26, 2002
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020526-92577955.htm
The United States and other Western powers are negotiating a deal with India and Pakistan that calls for a massive anti-terrorist operation inside Pakistan and a gradual withdrawal of all Indian troops from the border, official and diplomatic sources said.
Under the proposed deal, Pakistan would shut down all religious organizations that have their own militias, are involved in jihad, or holy war, or are propagating jihad as a means for solving political disputes.
This would include groups operating in both the Indian and Pakistani sides of the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf banned five militant groups after a Jan. 12 speech in which he announced his policy for tackling religious fanaticism in his country.
U.S. officials - including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell - have acknowledged publicly that Gen. Musharraf has fulfilled his promise to help fight al Qaeda and Taliban extremists in Afghanistan and is helping trace their remnants in Pakistan.
Privately, however, they complain that he has not been as enthusiastic in curbing the Muslim extremists who carry out cross-border attacks in Kashmir.
"We understand that it is a difficult task. The groups cannot be asked to pack up and go home overnight. But has he done absolute 100 percent to curb the militants operating in Kashmir? No, we don't think so," said a senior U.S. official who spoke to United Press International on the condition of anonymity.
South Asian diplomats in Washington said the proposed operation against the militants would be tied to a gradual withdrawal of Indian troops from the border. According to these sources, India is willing to consider such a move if the United States and other Western powers guarantee Pakistan will stop all cross-border infiltration, disband all Kashmiri groups and dismantle all training camps for the militants.
To achieve this objective, India wants to put Pakistan on a two-month notice, diplomatic sources said. During this period, India would keep a watch on Pakistan and, if convinced that the neighbor is "matching its words with deeds," as Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said, New Delhi would start the withdrawal of troops from the border.
Western negotiators, however, said that while they may be able to convince Gen. Musharraf to act against the militants, "to be put on notice by a rival nation will be too humiliating for him and will definitely stir a violent protest at home."
But from the Indian point of view, they said, it would be difficult for Mr. Vajpayee to go back to his people without appearing to have achieved his main goal - the end of militant activities in Kashmir - after having moved hundreds of thousands of troops to the border.
Also, a public commitment to Indian demands would amount to an open acknowledgement that Pakistan was sending militants to Kashmir and has agreed to stop them, the sources said.
"How can they publicly acknowledge to dismantle the training camps when they say that there are no training camps in Pakistan or Pakistani Kashmir?" a senior Western official in Islamabad said.
Instead, Western negotiators are believed to have suggested that the United States and other Western powers get such commitments privately from Pakistan and stay engaged in the process until Islamabad fulfills these promises.
While apparently receptive to most of these suggestions, Islamabad wants the proposed operation against the terrorists tied to simultaneous withdrawal of troops from the border, sources said.
• Harbaksh Singh Nanda in New Delhi and Shahid Iqbal in Islamabad contributed to this article.
-------- iran
Iran Confirms Ballistic Missile Test
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US-Missiles.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran confirmed recent U.S. reports Sunday that it had conducted a successful test flight of a ballistic missile capable of reaching Israel.
Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said that Iran tested the Shahab-3 missile earlier this month, Tehran radio reported.
``To enhance the power and accuracy of Shahab-3 missile ... we will continue our missile program, and the recent successful tests were carried out in the same context,'' the state radio quoted Shamkhani as saying.
U.S. officials said Thursday that Iran had carried out a successful test of the Shahab-3, which has a range of about 800 miles -- adequate to reach Israel and U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and eastern Turkey.
The test is believed to be the missile's fifth. Some tests have failed, U.S. officials said.
Shamkhani said the test ``should not be considered a new production or a new step to increase the missile's range,'' the radio reported.
Shamkhani said Saturday that U.S. pressure on Russia and China to halt cooperation with Iran had no impact on its missile program.
``Iran's defense industries can produce any conventional weapons the political authorities may want since we are 100 percent self-sufficient in possessing the technology,'' Shamkhani said. ``Therefore, America's pressure on various countries including Russia and China not to cooperate with Iran's missile program will have no effect.''
The Shahab-3 is allegedly based on North Korea's No Dong missile. ``Shahab'' means shooting star in Farsi.
In Moscow on Friday, President Bush said he pressed Russian leader Vladimir Putin about Russia's nuclear help to Iran. Russia insists the technology is being used for nonmilitary purposes.
Also Sunday, Shamkhani denied reports that Iran was planning to produce Shahab-4 or Shahab-5 missiles, which would have longer ranges.
``We have no plan under the name of producing a Shahab-4 and a Shahab-5 missile in our program,'' the radio quoted him as saying.
U.S. intelligence officials have said Iran can probably fire several Shahab-3s in an emergency but that it has not yet developed a completely reliable weapon.
Iran launched an arms development program during its 1980-88 war with Iraq to compensate for weapons shortages caused by a U.S. embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Army Re-enters Bethlehem as Tensions Grow in Middle East
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/international/middleeast/26BETH.html
JERUSALEM, Sunday, May 26 (AP) - Israeli troops fired tank shells and machine guns on Saturday, killing a Palestinian woman and her 13-year-old daughter working on a farm in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian witnesses and doctors said. The army said the two were in a prohibited area near the Israeli border.
As night fell, Israeli troops in armored personnel carriers rolled into the Palestinian city of Bethlehem and surrounded the house of an Islamic militant, Palestinian witnesses and Israeli military sources said.
Also on Saturday, the Israel Army pulled out of the Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank, ending a two-day incursion that uncovered guns and explosives and led to the arrests of about 25 Palestinians suspects, the army said.
But only hours later, the troops went back into the camp and into the town of Tulkarm, Palestinian witnesses said. A Palestinian was killed by Israeli gunfire early this morning, they said. Tulkarm is just inside the West Bank and Palestinian militants have launched many attacks from the town.
In Bethlehem this morning, the troops seized much of the city, imposed a curfew and surrounded the home of Muhammad Shehad, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad group, which has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings.
Palestinian residents heard explosions coming from the area around Mr. Shehad's house, but there were no immediate reports on casualties.
There was no word on how long the army was likely to stay in Bethlehem, which is just south of Jerusalem.
Israel completed a major military sweep through the West Bank several weeks ago, but the army continues to carry out almost daily raids in pursuit of suspected militants. Most of the incursions last a day or two at most, and in some cases, only hours.
In the Gaza shooting, the Israeli Army said soldiers fired on two "suspicious figures" because they were in an area off limits to Palestinians and were moving toward the border fence with Israel. Palestinians have attempted to launch attacks in the area seven times in the past month, military sources said.
Marwan Abu Said, a Palestinian witness and a relative of those shot, said the soldiers fired from three tanks patrolling the border, next to the flat, open field. He said he was not aware of any provocation that prompted the fire.
Kamla Abu Said, 42, was killed, along with her daughter, Amna, 13, according to Dr. Ahmed Rabah, a physician at the Deir al-Balah hospital.
In the northern West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli troops stopped a taxi and arrested a 16-year-old Palestinian boy with an explosives belt strapped to his waist, on an apparent suicide mission, the army said.
--------
Bush Sees Palestinians Weighing Authority Reforms
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Mideast.html
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- President Bush expressed hope Sunday that scrutiny of Yasser Arafat's leadership by fellow Palestinians could lead to changes in the Palestinian Authority, which White House advisers say is rife with division. ``There's a new attitude emerging,'' Bush said.
Hoping to increase pressure on the Palestinian leader, the president and his foreign policy advisers cast the Arab world and factions of the Palestinian Authority as eager to reform the organization and ease tensions in the Middle East -- with or without Arafat's help.
``You're beginning to see talk of reform,'' the president said outside a synagogue he visited before departing for Paris. He wraps up his European trip Tuesday.
``People are beginning to question out loud as to why there hasn't been a success'' under Arafat, he said. ``Evidently, there's a new attitude emerging among the new leadership in the Palestinian Authority.''
The president's remarks may have been designed to deflect criticism that he has failed to ease tensions in the Middle East. But they also reflect a strategy, described by officials traveling with Bush, to encourage Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab nations -- as well as Palestinian leaders inside Arafat's circle -- to either force Arafat to change or make the reforms themselves.
``I'm beginning to hear -- publicly, I'm beginning to hear, I might add -- discussion about, `Well maybe we ought to reassess how to make the Palestinian Authority more accountable,''' Bush said.
The message was echoed by his top foreign policy advisers.
``There is indeed a lot of ferment and a lot of talk about reform in the Palestinian Authority,'' Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
``It's a process that is beginning with discussions among the Palestinians themselves about why they have not had the kind of leadership that is going to bring them security and prosperity and peace with their Israeli neighbor,'' she said.
Appearing on ``CNN's Late Edition'' from here, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Palestinian leaders are ``suggesting that there is a need for reform within the authority in order for them to do a better job.''
The notion of going around Arafat had bipartisan appeal.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that Arafat has been a profound disappointment and the United States should reach out to moderate Arabs. However, Daschle also said Arafat ``is the chosen leader and we've got to deal with him. ... Until some other leader is chosen, there isn't much choice.''
Bush did not cite any evidence of discontent, but U.S. officials noted that Arafat has been pressed from inside his organization to schedule elections.
``He hasn't delivered,'' Bush said. ``He had a chance to secure peace as a result of the hard work of President Clinton, and he didn't. He had a chance to fight terror and he hasn't.''
Later, in a Paris news conference with French President Jacques Chirac, Bush said he was sending U.S. officials to the Middle East next week. CIA Director George Tenet and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will work with officials willing to push for reforms, U.S. officials said.
``The good news is that many in the Arab world are now working with us to help create an environment'' that will lead to creation of a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish one, Bush said at the news conference.
In particular, Bush cited efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
Officially, Bush's position remains that the United States does not choose the Palestinian leader, thus Arafat is part of the process.
But his advisers have long been split on what to do about Arafat.
One faction, led by Powell, argues that the United States must deal with Arafat because, like it or not, he's the Palestinian leader. Others, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, oppose reaching out to Arafat.
Shrugging off the split, Bush said: ``I get all kinds of advice.''
One senior official close to Bush argued that casting the advisers into camps oversimplifies the situation. While some are more anti-Arafat than others, there is a consensus that Arab pressure requires Bush to leave the door open in case Arafat backs reform, while working on the assumption that he won't. That means encouraging others to do so, the official said.
As for Tenet's mission, the immediate goal is to revamp and improve the Palestinian security apparatus to curb attacks on Israel, an essential first step for Israel's re-entry into peacemaking with the Palestinian Authority.
The administration is determined to accelerate what Powell calls the political process even amid uncertainty over Arafat.
Attacks on Israel have declined, but not ended, despite repeated calls by the Bush administration for Arafat to signal to the Palestinians that further assaults on Israel hamper their hopes for a state.
-------- nato
Issues Facing NATO on Eve of Summit
The Associated Press
Sunday, May 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13028-2002May26.html
Issues facing NATO on the eve of Tuesday's summit of the allied leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
RUSSIA: The NATO-Russia Council, to be inaugurated at the summit, gives Russia an equal voice at alliance meetings that set policy on counterterrorism, tactical missile defense, peacekeeping and management of regional crises, civil defense, search-and-rescue at sea, military cooperation, arms control, and controlling the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
NATO leaders hail the accord as an historic step forward, but insist it does not give Moscow a veto on alliance actions.
EXPANSION: In November, NATO is to invite in new members from among 10 candidates. Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria are expected to get the nod. Slovakia's bid hangs on September elections not returning an authoritarian former leader. Albania, Macedonia, Croatia have little chance.
NATO's current members are: Belgium, Britain, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United States.
--- CAPABILITIES: Governments on both sides of the Atlantic worry about the enormous gap between U.S. military might and European armed forces enfeebled by years of defense cuts.
The United States wants allies to increase spending and focus on key areas - such as transport planes to move soldiers and equipment around quickly, precision weapons, more special forces, better intelligence, secure communications. The aim is to enable forces to move quickly and decisively against modern threats such as terrorism, rogue states, regional conflicts.
----
Russia Seen As Key to NATO Relevancy
By Paul Ames
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, May 26, 2002; 1:23 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13027-2002May26?language=printer
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- When Vladimir Putin joins the 19 NATO leaders for a summit at an Italian air force base Tuesday, even the seating arrangements will be loaded with significance.
Previously, the Russian president would be put at the head of the table - the polite way of keeping an honored but prickly guest at arm's length. This time he will sit in between the prime ministers of Portugal and Spain.
That arrangement at the inaugural NATO-Russia Council respects an alphabetical ranking of peers. It shows Moscow's new status as an equal partner in the fight against terrorism and other shared threats. An alliance established in 1949 to defend the West against the Soviet threat has now formally accepted the Russians as partners.
The signing of the sweeping cooperation agreement with Putin at the Pratica di Mare air base near Rome signals the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from a Cold War monolith into a far-reaching, flexible coalition primed to confront the threats of a post-Sept. 11 world - or so NATO's boosters hope.
However, critics believe that giving Russia a say in NATO decision-making is another nail in the coffin of an organization made redundant by the evaporation of the Soviet threat. Critics see a NATO riven by divisions between militarily dominant Americans and fainthearted Europeans, emasculated by Europe's military frailty, just another international talking shop.
"It's becoming more political and less military, and less central to U.S. national security interests," according to Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. "Can we keep NATO relevant by going global and engaging in the war against terrorism? I'm very skeptical."
NATO's champions see the war against terrorism as its primary new mission, yet to some, it reinforces the notion that the alliance has outlived its usefulness.
Sept. 11 prompted NATO member states to invoke for the first time the treaty clause stipulating that an attack on one of them is an attack on all of them, and permits collective retaliation. But during the Afghan conflict, America's European allies could offer little military support to the U.S. arsenal of cruise missiles, smart bombs and missile-firing drones that drove the Taliban from power in only two months.
Doubts grew when the display of diplomatic solidarity after Sept. 11 was replaced by the usual trans-Atlantic squabbling over trade, the Middle East, global warming and the possible extension of the anti-terrorist war to Iraq.
NATO's supporters in Europe began to worry the doubters were gaining influence with the Bush administration. Commentators fretted about a new go-it-alone mood infecting the White House.
President Bush has lately worked hard to counter that notion, repeatedly underscoring U.S. support for the alliance - albeit one adapted to the new global realities.
"NATO's defining purpose - our collective defense - is as urgent as ever," Bush told the German parliament Thursday. "America and Europe need each other to fight and win the war against global terror."
The war on terrorism has led Washington to push an agenda of change for NATO and it has found wholehearted support from Canada and the 17 European NATO allies.
For starters there is the unprecedented embrace of Russia, which for long after the end of the Cold War openly resisted a role for NATO as a primary provider of security in Europe.
Efforts to build a relationship with post-Communist Russia stalled in 1999 after NATO launched its bombing campaign to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw from Kosovo.
However, the resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Dec. 31, 1999 in favor of the more cosmopolitan Putin put relations back on track.
In recognition of Putin's help in fighting terrorism, the new NATO-Russia council gives Moscow a role in crafting and implementing a broad range of joint policies.
These range from counterterrorism and controlling weapons of mass destruction to civil defense and sea rescue.
The new seating arrangement and equal voice for Russia will apply not just to summit ceremonials but to NATO's regular working meetings, setting an unprecedented level of cooperation.
This year, NATO will expand deeper into the old Soviet bloc, bringing in as many as seven new members, from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria in the southeast. Upgrading Russia's relationship with NATO is aimed in part at easing Moscow's fears of its old adversary expanding to its very doorstep.
"America is committed to NATO membership for all of Europe's democracies that are ready to share in the responsibilities that NATO brings," Bush said in Berlin.
The third big change Washington is pushing for may be the hardest for the Europeans to accept - a bigger European contribution to NATO's military might.
Allied foreign ministers, meeting in Iceland this month, recognized the need to modernize Europe's armed forces and close the capability gap with the United States. It is uncertain, however, whether European governments, with their expensive social welfare systems and high tax rates, will be willing and able to finance the extra defense spending.
European allies spend around 1.8 percent of their GDP on defense, compared with the United States' 3 percent.
European forces in modest numbers are fighting alongside Americans in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where British Royal Marines, Norwegian special forces and Canadian commandos now have a front-line role.
However, Europe's armies fall short in several areas, and Washington wants a commitment to boost spending in such areas as transport planes to move soldiers and equipment quickly, precision weapons, more special forces, better intelligence and secure communications.
Even NATO's staunchest supporters warn that unless gap is narrowed, the alliance will fade into obscurity.
"If the U.S. and its allies could no longer act as a meaningful military coalition, it would not matter how many countries joined the alliance. NATO would be marginalized as a serious organization," NATO Secretary General George Robertson said last week.
----
Issues Facing NATO on Eve of Summit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 26, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Changing-NATO-Glance.html
Issues facing NATO on the eve of Tuesday's summit of the allied leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
RUSSIA: The NATO-Russia Council, to be inaugurated at the summit, gives Russia an equal voice at alliance meetings that set policy on counterterrorism, tactical missile defense, peacekeeping and management of regional crises, civil defense, search-and-rescue at sea, military cooperation, arms control, and controlling the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
NATO leaders hail the accord as an historic step forward, but insist it does not give Moscow a veto on alliance actions.
EXPANSION: In November, NATO is to invite in new members from among 10 candidates. Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria are expected to get the nod. Slovakia's bid hangs on September elections not returning an authoritarian former leader. Albania, Macedonia, Croatia have little chance.
NATO's current members are: Belgium, Britain, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United States.
CAPABILITIES: Governments on both sides of the Atlantic worry about the enormous gap between U.S. military might and European armed forces enfeebled by years of defense cuts.
The United States wants allies to increase spending and focus on key areas -- such as transport planes to move soldiers and equipment around quickly, precision weapons, more special forces, better intelligence, secure communications. The aim is to enable forces to move quickly and decisively against modern threats such as terrorism, rogue states, regional conflicts.
--------
NATO - Russia Signing Summit Has History
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROME (AP) -- The seaside site of the upcoming NATO-Russia summit has a ``East meets West'' history worthy of the landmark agreement being signed: it's the site where the ancestors of Rome's mythological founders Romulus and Remus settled more than 3,000 years ago.
But it's a pretty ugly military base, so architects have been working around the clock trying to build an appropriate stage for Russia and NATO to sign an agreement Tuesday making Moscow a partner in NATO's decision-making structure.
The sprawling Pratica di Mare compound, the second-largest military base in Europe after Germany's Ramstein, has no summit facilities and is fairly run down, dotted by squat green buildings and hemmed in by barbed wire.
In the past three weeks, construction crews have built a signing pavilion, meeting hall and press center on the grounds that will be knocked down as soon as the summit is over.
Amid the spare surroundings, architect Mario Catalano says he's has tried to evoke some of Rome's history. The signing pavilion looks like a square Colosseum from the outside, its arched ``windows'' actually sky-blue backboards.
Catalano told reporters visiting the site Saturday that he was aiming for ``Roman classicism'' blended with the warm hues of Rome today. The effect looks like a three-dimensional stage set.
For the hall where heads of state will lunch together, he has provided some authentic Roman history: 20 Roman-era marble statues were shipped last week from Naples' Capodimonte museum.
Crews have also outfitted an old runway hangar as a VIP lounge for delegates, using white Air Force parachutes to create a billowy tent-like roof -- appropriate for a military base, designer Roberto Malfatto says.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi has acknowledged the site isn't the most glamorous, but he stressed the historical significance of the surrounding area, where Romulus and Remus' ancestors settled after the sacking of Troy in 1200 B.C.
``It's a place where the East -- then Troy and today Russia -- and the West have found a way to found a new civilization,'' Berlusconi said last week. ``I think that's an enormous fact.''
It is also the best site for logistical and security needs for the one-day summit.
Ten of the 20 summit delegates will fly in Tuesday morning at the Pratica di Mare airstrip and take off Tuesday afternoon, never leaving the barbed-wire confines of the base.
--------
Russia Seen As Key to NATO Relevancy
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Changing-NATO.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- When Vladimir Putin joins the 19 NATO leaders for a summit at an Italian air force base Tuesday, even the seating arrangements will be loaded with significance.
Previously, the Russian president would be put at the head of the table -- the polite way of keeping an honored but prickly guest at arm's length. This time he will sit in between the prime ministers of Portugal and Spain.
That arrangement at the inaugural NATO-Russia Council respects an alphabetical ranking of peers. It shows Moscow's new status as an equal partner in the fight against terrorism and other shared threats. An alliance established in 1949 to defend the West against the Soviet threat has now formally accepted the Russians as partners.
The signing of the sweeping cooperation agreement with Putin at the Pratica di Mare air base near Rome signals the transformation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from a Cold War monolith into a far-reaching, flexible coalition primed to confront the threats of a post-Sept. 11 world -- or so NATO's boosters hope.
However, critics believe that giving Russia a say in NATO decision-making is another nail in the coffin of an organization made redundant by the evaporation of the Soviet threat. Critics see a NATO riven by divisions between militarily dominant Americans and fainthearted Europeans, emasculated by Europe's military frailty, just another international talking shop.
``It's becoming more political and less military, and less central to U.S. national security interests,'' according to Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. ``Can we keep NATO relevant by going global and engaging in the war against terrorism? I'm very skeptical.''
NATO's champions see the war against terrorism as its primary new mission, yet to some, it reinforces the notion that the alliance has outlived its usefulness.
Sept. 11 prompted NATO member states to invoke for the first time the treaty clause stipulating that an attack on one of them is an attack on all of them, and permits collective retaliation. But during the Afghan conflict, America's European allies could offer little military support to the U.S. arsenal of cruise missiles, smart bombs and missile-firing drones that drove the Taliban from power in only two months.
Doubts grew when the display of diplomatic solidarity after Sept. 11 was replaced by the usual trans-Atlantic squabbling over trade, the Middle East, global warming and the possible extension of the anti-terrorist war to Iraq.
NATO's supporters in Europe began to worry the doubters were gaining influence with the Bush administration. Commentators fretted about a new go-it-alone mood infecting the White House.
President Bush has lately worked hard to counter that notion, repeatedly underscoring U.S. support for the alliance -- albeit one adapted to the new global realities.
``NATO's defining purpose -- our collective defense -- is as urgent as ever,'' Bush told the German parliament Thursday. ``America and Europe need each other to fight and win the war against global terror.''
The war on terrorism has led Washington to push an agenda of change for NATO and it has found wholehearted support from Canada and the 17 European NATO allies.
For starters there is the unprecedented embrace of Russia, which for long after the end of the Cold War openly resisted a role for NATO as a primary provider of security in Europe.
Efforts to build a relationship with post-Communist Russia stalled in 1999 after NATO launched its bombing campaign to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw from Kosovo.
However, the resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Dec. 31, 1999 in favor of the more cosmopolitan Putin put relations back on track.
In recognition of Putin's help in fighting terrorism, the new NATO-Russia council gives Moscow a role in crafting and implementing a broad range of joint policies.
These range from counterterrorism and controlling weapons of mass destruction to civil defense and sea rescue.
The new seating arrangement and equal voice for Russia will apply not just to summit ceremonials but to NATO's regular working meetings, setting an unprecedented level of cooperation.
This year, NATO will expand deeper into the old Soviet bloc, bringing in as many as seven new members, from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria in the southeast. Upgrading Russia's relationship with NATO is aimed in part at easing Moscow's fears of its old adversary expanding to its very doorstep.
``America is committed to NATO membership for all of Europe's democracies that are ready to share in the responsibilities that NATO brings,'' Bush said in Berlin.
The third big change Washington is pushing for may be the hardest for the Europeans to accept -- a bigger European contribution to NATO's military might.
Allied foreign ministers, meeting in Iceland this month, recognized the need to modernize Europe's armed forces and close the capability gap with the United States. It is uncertain, however, whether European governments, with their expensive social welfare systems and high tax rates, will be willing and able to finance the extra defense spending.
European allies spend around 1.8 percent of their GDP on defense, compared with the United States' 3 percent.
European forces in modest numbers are fighting alongside Americans in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where British Royal Marines, Norwegian special forces and Canadian commandos now have a front-line role.
However, Europe's armies fall short in several areas, and Washington wants a commitment to boost spending in such areas as transport planes to move soldiers and equipment quickly, precision weapons, more special forces, better intelligence and secure communications.
Even NATO's staunchest supporters warn that unless gap is narrowed, the alliance will fade into obscurity.
``If the U.S. and its allies could no longer act as a meaningful military coalition, it would not matter how many countries joined the alliance. NATO would be marginalized as a serious organization,'' NATO Secretary General George Robertson said last week.
-------- pakistan
Bush Joins Putin in Urging Pakistan to Use Restraint
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/international/asia/26PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, May 25 - President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia jointly stepped into the India-Pakistan crisis today during their one-day tour of this imperial Russian capital. Mr. Bush urged Pakistan's president to "stop the incursions" of Islamic insurgents into Indian-administered Kashmir, while Mr. Putin deplored Pakistan's decision to conduct new missile tests and encouraged the Indian and Pakistani leaders to attend regional talks next month.
Their joint comments during a tour of the Hermitage, including the Winter Palace, which was stormed by Lenin's guards during the 1917 Russian Revolution, marked the sharpest words Mr. Bush has directed at President Pervez Musharraf since the Pakistani leader sided with the United States last fall during the military action in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bush's aides have said that Mr. Bush has treated his new ally gingerly in the past week, but Pakistan's test-firing today of a surface-to-surface missile at a time of extreme tension with India caused him to speak more forcefully.
A total of one million troops have been massed along the border by the two nuclear-armed countries, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 - two over Kashmir.
"We're deeply concerned about the rhetoric," Mr. Bush said. "It is very important for President Musharraf to stop - do what he said he's going to do in his speech on terror, and that is stop the incursions across the Line of Control," which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Today, according to The Associated Press, the two countries traded mortar fire, killing at least three suspected Islamic militants and two Indian soldiers, an Indian Army spokesman said. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, meanwhile, dismissed the Pakistan missile test, saying, "It could possibly be directed at domestic audiences in Pakistan."
Mr. Putin said that on June 3 he would attend a regional conference - at which the United States is not a participant - where he hoped to meet with President Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India.
Neither leader, he noted, has yet committed himself to attending the meeting in Kazakhstan, but it is seen as the natural opportunity to bring the Indian and Pakistani leaders together at a moment when a separate meeting seems politically impossible for the two men.
"The testing while there is escalating tension really aggravates the situation," Mr. Putin said in comments that he clearly had coordinated with Mr. Bush. "We shall be working together to take steps in order to prevent the escalation of the conflict."
On a day of celebrating the depth of their new partnership, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin clearly reveled in demonstrating that they are working together on a major international crisis, one in which the two countries would have taken opposite sides during the cold war.
This afternoon, repeating a performance they first conducted at a high school in Crawford, Tex., last November, the two presidents spent the better part of an hour fielding questions from students at St. Petersburg State University, where, remarkably, not a single questioner asked about the arms control treaty signed on Friday in Moscow.
Instead, the discussion veered toward how quickly the United States would lift export controls on high technology goods headed to Russia, when Russia would be welcomed into the World Trade Organization, and how the two leaders viewed themselves as managers.
But as the two men toured the majestic palaces of this city, and headed off to a performance of "The Nutcracker" ballet with their wives and foreign policy teams, the growing tension along the India-Pakistan border was clearly on everyone's mind.
Speaking to reporters here this afternoon, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, "I can tell you I am concerned now as I was" back in January, when war seemed imminent but was temporarily defused.
"We've devoted a lot of time and energy to it," he said. "The key thing we are looking for now is to shut down the action across the Line of Control and hopefully that will give us a basis for seeing de-escalation on the part of the Indians."
Mr. Powell said if there was calm on the border, there would be opportunities for further diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions.
On another front, the secretary of state acknowledged that the White House and the Kremlin had ended the working part of this two-and-one-half day summit meeting essentially agreeing to disagree about American assertions that Russian technology and labor are aiding Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons.
As Air Force One touched down in Moscow on Thursday evening, the administration was declaring Russian aid to Iran to be the world's foremost weapons-proliferation problem. Today, Secretary Powell said that Russia and the United States agreed that they opposed the spread of mass-destruction weapons to any nation, "and that includes nuclear-weapons technology to Iran."
But Russian experts also argued that they are not only just as sensitive to proliferation problems as Americans, but are politically closer to Iran as well, and so better able to gauge the extent of those problems, Secretary Powell said.
Secretary Powell also expressed concern that the United States has yet to receive complete information from Russia on the security of its stocks of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons materials and technology. That issue will be a subject for the nations' defense and foreign-affairs ministers as part of a special working group, he said.
Mr. Bush's and Secretary Powell's concerns clouded an otherwise sparkling day in St. Petersburg that was devoted almost exclusively to more of the presidential bonding that has become the signature of this summit meeting.
It commenced in the most somber fashion. Minutes after he touched down in St. Petersburg this morning, after spending the night at the Putins' residence in Moscow, Mr. Bush appeared at Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery north of town.
Here, amid rows of burial mounds spanning the breadth of some 15 football fields, he watched two goose-stepping soldiers lay a wreath to the 490,000 people interred here who perished during the Nazis' 900-day siege of Leningrad, as the city was called, from 1941 to 1944.
In all, as many as 800,000 people perished during the siege, many from starvation, before the Nazis finally gave up without taking the city.
By their midday appearance at St. Petersburg State University, Mr. Putin's alma mater, the sobriety had dissipated, and the two men were shedding the "Mr. President" formality of public summit protocol and calling each other George and Vladimir.
When one student asked the presidents to address a so-called brain drain from Russia, including to the United States, Mr. Putin's reply was immediate: "I'll tell you right away," he said. "He'll say it's good. I'll say it's bad."
In serious moments, however, the men directed their answers as much to each other as to their audience.
Asked, for example, when Russia would start exporting technology and advanced products instead of the lumber, ores and petroleum that now make up the vast bulk of its trade, Mr. Putin first blamed Soviet leaders for walling the nation off from the research and science advances of the outside world.
But "what we need above all for Russia," he added, turning to Mr. Bush, "is an absolutely nondiscriminatory access to world markets and U.S. markets. And we don't need preferences, we don't need subsidies, we don't need special favors. We just want normal, simple, ordinary, fair trade relations."
Russia has chafed at what it regards as a sheaf of unneeded hindrances to trade with the West, from lack of membership in the World Trade Organization to the absence of an American declaration that Russia has a market-based economy, a prerequisite for lowering some trade restrictions. Mr. Bush supports lifting those barriers, but action has been slow to come.
Responding to the same question, Mr. Bush praised Russians for privatizing nearly three-fourths of their economy and for enacting a flat income tax that is perhaps the lowest in all Europe.
But he, too, turned to his partner, saying he was troubled by a Russian tax on its own exports, which raises their prices abroad, and by the country's dilapidated infrastructure, which he said "needs to be modernized as quickly as possible."
For the most part, however, the two leaders used the university session to underscore their growing rapport. "I tell Vladimir all the time - I mean, Mr. President, all the time - that Russia's most precious resource is the brain power of this country," Mr. Bush said at one point.
"I'm absolutely convinced that the future of this country is incredibly bright - first, because of the great imagination and intellect of the Russian people. And second, because you've got a leader who understands that freedom is going to enhance the future of the country."
Mr. Putin gave Mr. Bush two documents from Russian historical archives covering the years of the American Revolution when, Mr. Putin said, Catherine the Great refused England's request to intervene against the rebellious colonies.
"The world was changing over time. Our relations were changing over time," Mr. Putin said. "You can call our relationship today a multicomponent kind of relationship depending on many, many different aspects. But I want to name the one and most important aspect: over the last year and a half or two years, what we've experienced is a huge growth in confidence and trust."
Earlier today, Mr. Putin offered what he seemed to regard as a compelling example of that growing trust. It involved a fish.
At dinner in Moscow the previous evening, Mr. Putin said, caviar was served, and he told his American companions the story of how the culinary delicacy was frequently produced: by gutting a live fish, removing the roe and tossing the fish back into the water.
"Everyone was laughing, thinking that I was really inventing things in the spot, something really improbable," he said. "I was telling the truth - that's how we treated the environment."
Of all the assembled guests, Mr. Putin said, "there was only one person who wouldn't laugh and said, `I do believe you, Mr. President.' "
It was, of course, Mr. Bush.
----
Musharraf Says Raids In Kashmir Have Ended
Pakistani President Demands India's Reply
By Steve Coll - mailto:colls@washpost.com Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10836-2002May25?language=printer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 25 -- Seeking to ease the threat of war with India, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared today that infiltration of Islamic militants into Indian-held Kashmir has stopped, but he demanded an expansive response from New Delhi, including the renewal of direct talks between the two countries.
In an interview, Musharraf rejected criticism that his government has retreated from pledges to crack down on Islamic radicals nurtured by Pakistan's intelligence services, including some who have been inserted for years across Kashmir's disputed mountain boundary to attack Indian targets.
"We will ensure that terrorism does not go from Pakistan anywhere outside into the world," Musharraf said. "That is our stand, and we adhere to it."
Musharraf said he knows "a lot of people are having doubts" about his commitment to forswear Islamic radicalism as a tool of Pakistani policy, but he declared, "Let me assure you, there is no backtracking."
At the same time, the Pakistani leader heatedly accused India of sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan, bullying its neighbors and provoking him with inflamed rhetoric. He said India has used massive border deployments and war threats in recent weeks "to destabilize me, my government and Pakistan." Musharraf threatened that if war erupted between the nuclear-armed rivals, "we'll take the offensive into Indian territory."
India and Pakistan have moved about 1 million soldiers to their border since a suicide squad's attack on India's Parliament complex in December. As attacks by Islamic radicals on civilians in the Himalayan region of Kashmir escalated this spring, India's Hindu nationalist leaders declared that they could be patient no longer. They have threatened repeatedly to attack Pakistani-controlled areas of Kashmir, triggering fears of a wider war that might lead to a nuclear exchange.
As the United States and Britain have sought to ease the crisis through intensive diplomatic talks, they have laid heavy pressure on Pakistan over its involvement in cross-border infiltration of Islamic militants into Indian-held Kashmir. The infiltrations are a decade-old problem that analysts say could not persist without direct aid from Pakistan's army and intelligence services.
The issue is sensitive in Pakistan where the militants described as terrorists by India have been championed as heroic freedom fighters. Musharraf made clear today that he was offering a fresh pledge to end the border crossings, but he declined to offer specifics, and the language he used was at times ambiguous.
Musharraf used the same words four times during the 45-minute interview, stressing that "there is nothing happening across the Line of Control," as the disputed Kashmir border is called.
Asked to describe concrete steps he had taken that would reassure outside observers about this claim, Musharraf demurred. Asked if the absence of militant infiltrations he described had been achieved through specific decisions made in the last week or two, he responded: "I repeat: There is nothing happening on the Line of Control. That is what I would like to repeat. And I would like to repeat again: Reciprocation is important."
Musharraf said he would not consider "de-escalation alone" by India along the border an adequate response, demanding in addition "initiation of [a] dialogue process [and] reduction of atrocities within Kashmir. And when I say that, on defining it, it really means that as a first step, the [Indian] military should leave the towns and cities of Kashmir and be in the outskirts."
Musharraf appeared to be signaling the West and India that he was prepared to be held accountable on the issue of cross-border attacks in Kashmir, although his precisely chosen, repetitive invocations made it difficult to be certain. And by attaching his apparent concession to demands for renewed talks with India and redeployment of Indian forces in Kashmir, Musharraf seemed to indicate that he would not accept a resolution that left him vulnerable to accusations he had merely capitulated to Indian military intimidation.
Relaxed in a charcoal tunic and loose trousers, Musharraf spoke in a reception room of the Chief Executive's Office, a villa previously used by elected prime ministers that commands views and breezes in the barren hills above Islamabad. An army general who took power in a bloodless 1999 coup, Musharraf has appeared regularly in uniform on television as the crisis with India has mounted. But today, while veering off loquaciously to vent his anger at New Delhi, Musharraf spent much of his time emphasizing his commitment to the U.S.-led war on terrorism and his desire to avoid war with India.
Musharraf rejected criticism that his performance has not lived up to a pledge made in a nationally televised speech on Jan. 12, in which he declared that Pakistan's government would no longer tolerate Islamic radicals at home or use them as instruments of foreign policy.
He said Pakistan's commitment to fight Islamic terrorism had three components: its partnership with the United States to battle al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, "the issue of cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir and battles between rival Sunni and Shiite Islamic sects in Pakistan.
Musharraf spoke most forcefully about al Qaeda. "Pakistan will not -- repeat, will not -- allow any foreign mercenaries, militants, anywhere inside Pakistan, whether they are infiltrating through Afghanistan or coming from any other place. Whether they are on our border belt, or in our cities, we will hunt them down."
Pentagon officials complained two weeks ago that Pakistan had hesitated to carry out a military offensive against clusters of al Qaeda fighters in tribal areas nominally ruled by Pakistan but historically self-governed. Musharraf said the criticism was unfounded and that his efforts to send paramilitary and army units to hunt al Qaeda in the territories was unprecedented. "Our forces moved into areas where nobody went. No British troops went into those areas" even during colonial rule, he said. "And we have gone in. We'll take the credit for that."
Yet Musharraf acknowledged that border tensions with India to the east had slowed his ability to commit forces against al Qaeda on Pakistan's western frontier with Afghanistan. "We were going in a big way. We have stalled that," he said. If tension with India rises, "we will have to move [troops] to the eastern border. We haven't done it as yet."
On Kashmir, he defended the cause of the Islamic insurgents but cited the attacks on the Indian Parliament complex, the shooting of civilians in an army camp this month and other, similar incidents as cases where "there were civilians who have been killed -- and I call them terrorist acts. There is no doubt in my mind." But as to accusations that Pakistanis were involved in these incidents, he said: "Let's have proof. Let us have evidence."
Musharraf said he told Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other U.S. officials last week that infiltrations across the Line of Control had ended, and made the same demands for Indian reciprocity. He said he also complained about the volume of "chest thumping that goes on from the other side. Continuously, there is a jabbing at us, a rhetoric, which is annoying."
Asked to describe the circumstances in which he would consider using nuclear weapons, Musharraf said this was a scenario "I wouldn't like even to imagine," and instead talked at length about the potency of Pakistan's conventional army and irregular volunteers. "Pakistan is no Iraq. India is no United States. We have forces. They follow a strategy of deterrence." If deterrence fails, "we are very capable of an offensive defense. . . . These words are very important," he said. "We'll take the offensive into Indian territory."
Western defense analysts agree almost uniformly that India's military could defeat Pakistan decisively in a conventional war. These analysts fear that a battered and desperate Pakistani army, seeking to save itself from destruction, might then decide to go nuclear. Musharraf argued that thousands of zealous Pakistani volunteers in Kashmir, including what he described as 150,000 retired soldiers, could dramatically raise the cost of war for India inside its territory, obviating the need for a nuclear weapon of last resort. "I hope and I pray that we will never reach that stage," he said. "It's too unthinkable."
On the broader problem of conflict between India and Pakistan, countries born in religious hatred and bloodshed 55 years ago as the sun set on Britain's subcontinental empire, Musharraf identified the basic problem as India's unwillingness to accept a growing, stable Pakistan as its neighbor.
"No, sir, this is not what they want. They want a subservient Pakistan which remains subservient to them" and subcontracts foreign and economic policy to New Delhi, he said. "They are arrogant, and they want to impose their will on every country in the region. We want to live in peace. But we want to live in peace with our sovereignty guaranteed, with our honor and dignity not compromised."
For their part, leaders in India, which has managed decades of constitutional stability, see Musharraf as a deceptive, liberal despot who clings to his army's traditional doctrine of bleeding India at all costs. Even if Musharraf delivers on the issue of infiltrations into Kashmir, there are few signs in India's political discourse of a path to lasting peace.
Only the United States, Musharraf said, can help. "They must help. They can bring normalcy here. They must resolve this dispute. And they must ensure balance in the region."
As the interview concluded, Musharraf admitted that he was struggling to compose an important speech to deliver on national television within the next several days about Pakistan's crisis with India. What the message of the speech should be, he said, was "an important question. It has to be -- we want to avoid war. We want to bring peace into the region. So, therefore, the message is to be addressed to the outside world. The message has to be addressed to India. The message has to be addressed to my own people."
"Complicated," a visitor observed.
"Very complicated," he said. "This is a complicated region."
----
Pakistan Tests Another Missile, India Boosts Defense
May 26, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-southasia.html
ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI May 26 (Reuters) - Pakistan tested a short-range ballistic missile on Sunday, ignoring calls to abandon a series of tests that has stoked tension with India and raised fears of war between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.
India has played down the tests as routine but boosted security to protect vital off- and on-shore oil and gas facilities.
``As part of a series of missile tests currently under way, Pakistan today carried out a successful test fire of its newly developed short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile Hatf-3 (Ghaznavi),'' the Pakistani military said in a statement.
The United States and Russia had asked Pakistan to stop the tests that began on Saturday with the launch of a medium-range missile capable of firing nuclear warheads at key Indian cities, including New Delhi and Bombay.
Pakistan said earlier the ``routine'' tests would continue until Tuesday.
The two neighbors have massed a million men on their border since a deadly raid on India's parliament in December that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.
Tension surged in the wake of a bloody May 14 raid on a Indian army camp in Kashmir.
President Bush, in Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin, expressed deep concern on Saturday and called on Pakistan to stop militant raids into Indian-controlled territory.
Putin, speaking after the Saturday test, said it had added anxiety to an already tense climate.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said both the U.S. and the Russian sides had asked Pakistan to stop the tests.
``We believe that such actions amid a crisis of this nature will only complicate the situation and heighten tension and we have asked Pakistan to refrain from taking such steps,'' Ivanov said.
The Pakistani military statement said President Pervez Musharraf had sent his congratulations after the Sunday test.
``This was the first test of the Ghaznavi missile, which is capable of carrying warheads accurately up to a range of 290 km (180 miles). The flight data collected indicated that all design parameters have been successfully validated,'' it said.
Musharraf said on Saturday that Pakistan did not want war but was not afraid of it.
DIPLOMATIC FLURRY
French President Jacques Chirac telephoned India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Saturday to discuss the tension.
Chirac said efforts must be redoubled to dry up the sources of terrorism and to seek a peaceful solution. He was due to telephone U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Musharraf later.
India accuses Pakistan of backing raids by Islamic guerrillas fighting Indian forces in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state. Pakistan says it only offers Kashmiri separatists political support.
India bitterly complains that the United States and other countries are too soft on Musharraf, embracing him as an ally in the war on terror against the al Qaeda network while Islamabad supports what New Delhi calls ``cross-border terrorism.''
Vajpayee, speaking in the northern town of Manali in the Himalayan foothills where he is on a break, said New Delhi's patience was running out and urged world leaders to step up pressure on Pakistan to stop the militants.
The timing of the tests is a defiant gesture that added to world alarm to what Secretary of State Colin Powell called a very dangerous situation on the subcontinent.
The United States warned its citizens against traveling to India and Pakistan and advised those there to consider leaving. Australia issued a similar warning.
``STOP THE RAIDS''
Bush urged Musharraf to fulfil a pledge to stop militant raids into Indian Kashmir while Putin said he hoped Musharraf and Vajpayee could sort out their differences at a regional conference in Kazakhstan in June.
An Indian spokeswoman confirmed Vajpayee would attend the summit and might meet Putin. She could not comment on any plans to talk with Musharraf.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir.
The two sides have regularly traded heavy fire across the Kashmir frontier for more than a week and dozens of civilians and soldiers on both sides have been killed and wounded. Thousands of civilians have fled front-line villages on both sides.
Pakistani officials said at least 11 civilians were killed by Indian fire on Saturday. Ten people, mostly rebels, were killed and 17 wounded in clashes in Indian Kashmir, Indian police said.
--------
Pakistan warned to stop militants
May 26, 2002
Washington Times
From combined dispatches
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020526-26898877.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan yesterday and early today test-fired two missiles capable of dropping nuclear warheads on key Indian cities, stoking tension that threatens to erupt into war between the neighboring nations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said after the first test that it added anxiety to an already tense climate, offered to mediate talks between the leaders of the South Asian adversaries during a summit both countries plan to attend next month.
President Bush, speaking after a summit with Mr. Putin in Russia, cautioned against warlike rhetoric and called on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to stop militants from carrying out raids into Indian-controlled territory.
"It's very important that President Musharraf does what he said he was going to do in his speech on terrorism, and that is to stop the incursions across the border," Mr. Bush said in St. Petersburg, forcefully reminding Pakistan's leader that he vowed in January to crack down on militants. "We are deeply concerned about the rhetoric."
India blames Pakistan for backing raids by Islamic guerrillas fighting Indian forces in the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The two countries have massed a million troops on their mutual border, backed by missile batteries, tanks and fighter planes, since a deadly raid on India's Parliament in December. New Delhi said Pakistan-based militants were responsible.
Gen. Musharraf declared the first test yesterday of the medium-range surface-to-surface Ghauri missile a success.
"God is greatest," he intoned three times in an address to Islamic scholars broadcast on national television on the anniversary of the birth of Islam's Prophet Mohammed. "We don't want war, but we are not afraid of war."
The firing of the Ghauri missile, which also can carry a conventional warhead, was the first in what Pakistan said would be a series of tests lasting until Tuesday. Pakistan has said the tests are not related to tension with India.
The missile's 950-mile range puts India's heavily populated capital, New Delhi, and financial center, Bombay, along with hundreds of millions of people, within striking distance.
But India, which also described the test as routine, downplayed the exercises.
"We don't take test firing of missiles by Pakistan seriously," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as saying in the northern town of Manali, where he is on a break until Wednesday.
However, Pakistan went ahead today and successfully test-fired a second ballistic missile, an official statement said. The missile was a newly developed short-range surface-to-surface Hatf-3 (Ghaznavi), the statement said. It was the first test of this second type of missile, which has a range of up to 180 miles.
But the timing of the missile tests, Pakistan's first since 1999, is a defiant gesture that added to world alarm about the situation on the subcontinent.
"Of course the testing, while there is escalating tension, has really aggravated the situation and I'm concerned about that," Mr. Putin said.
Mr. Putin said he hoped Gen. Musharraf and Mr. Vajpayee could sort out differences at the regional conference in Kazakhstan next month. India and Pakistan are scheduled to attend the summit meeting of the Council on Cooperation and Confidence Measures in Asia to be held June 3-5 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Pakistan welcomed Mr. Putin's initiative.
"Pakistan has all along been pleading for settlement of all issues with India through dialogue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan told the state-run news agency Associated Press of Pakistan.
Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said Mr. Vajpayee would attend the summit and hold talks with Mr. Putin. But, she added, "There is nothing to suggest that Vajpayee and Musharraf will meet directly."
India repeatedly has rejected Pakistan's call for peace talks, saying it would not do so until Islamabad ends the cross-border insurgency of Pakistan-based Islamic militants.
Yesterday, Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged mortar and small-arms fire along the cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between the two nations, killing at least three suspected Islamic militants and two Indian soldiers, an Indian army spokesman said.
The two sides have traded heavy fire across the Kashmir frontier for more than a week, wounding or killing dozens of civilians and soldiers on both sides. Thousands of civilians have fled front-line villages.
World leaders have been scrambling to avert a war between the nuclear-armed rivals, which fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Tensions escalated last week after suspected Pakistan-based Islamic militants raided an army camp in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing 34.
Mr. Vajpayee said New Delhi's patience was running out and urged world leaders to step up pressure on Pakistan to act against militants. The Indian prime minister said he had written to Mr. Bush, Mr. Putin and French President Jacques Chirac calling for action.
The European Union, Britain and the United States have begun a diplomatic offensive, with a flurry of visits and phone calls to Mr. Vajpayee, Gen. Musharraf and their top aides.
-------- russia
Boris and Bill
Two superpowers, two super egos. Strobe Talbott, Clinton's top Russia adviser, recalls the unlikely friendship that changed the world
By Strobe Talbott
Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page W16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2513-2002May24.html
At noon on Monday, June 5, 2000, Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin emerged from the Czar's Entrance of the Grand Kremlin Palace. At this moment, which brought to an end the official portion of Clinton's fifth and final visit to Moscow as president, the nuances were all in the body language: the burly Clinton looming over the welterweight Putin, the ultimate extrovert still trying to connect with the coolest of customers who just wasn't buying.
As they shook hands one last time, I hustled down the steps to take my place on a jump seat in the rear of the armored Cadillac that had been flown in from Washington for the summit. Once Clinton had settled into place, he looked out at Putin through the thick bulletproof window, put on his widest grin and gave a jaunty wave. We then headed toward the western outskirts of Moscow, where former Russian president Boris Yeltsin was now living in retirement.
When we arrived, Yeltsin was waiting at the front door, his wife, Naina, on one side and, on the other, Tatyana
Dyachenko, his younger daughter. As the car slowed to a stop, Clinton remarked that Yeltsin's face was puffy, his complexion sallow; he looked stiff and propped up.
Over the eight years they had known each other, Clinton and Yeltsin often bantered about the advantage of both being 6 foot 2: It was easier for them to look each other in the eye. Now, as the limousine rolled to a stop and Clinton scrutinized his host through the window, he noted that Yeltsin seemed to have lost an inch or two since they had last been together, seven months before, when Yeltsin had still been in office.
After Clinton got out of the car, he and Yeltsin embraced silently for a full minute. Yeltsin kept saying, in a low, choked voice, "Moi drug, moi drug" -- my friend, my friend. Then, clasping Clinton's hand, he led the way through a foyer into a living room bright with sunlight pouring through a picture window that looked out on a manicured lawn and a stand of birches. They sat in gilt oval-backed chairs next to a sky-blue tile stove while Naina bustled about, serving tea and generous helpings of a rich multi-layered cake that she proudly said she'd been up half the night baking.
Clinton settled in for what he expected would be a relaxed exchange of memories and courtesies, but Yeltsin had work to do first. Turning severe, he announced that he had just had a phone call from Putin, who wanted him to underscore that Russia would pursue its interests by its own lights: It would resist pressure to acquiesce in any American policy that constituted a threat to Russian security. Clinton, after three days of listening to Putin politely fend him off on the U.S. plan to build an antimissile system, was now getting the blunt-instrument treatment.
Yeltsin's face was stern, his posture tense, both fists clenched, each sentence a proclamation. He seemed to relish the assignment Putin had given him. It allowed him to demonstrate that, far from being a feeble pensioner, he was still plugged in to the power of the Kremlin, still a forceful spokesman for Russian interests and still able to stand up to the United States when it was throwing its weight around.
Clinton took the browbeating patiently, even good-naturedly. He had seen Yeltsin in all his roles -- snarling bear and papa bear, bully and sentimentalist, spoiler and dealmaker. He knew from experience that a session with Yeltsin almost always involved some roughing up before the two of them could get down to real business.
When Yeltsin finally wound down, Clinton gently took control. He, too, had one piece of business to do. He wasn't sure, he said, how "this new guy of yours" defined strength, either for himself or for the nation. Putin seemed to have the capability to take Russia in the right direction, but did he have the values, instincts and convictions to make good on that capability? Why, Clinton wondered aloud, was Putin so ready to make common cause with the Communists, "those people you, Boris, did so much to beat back and bring down"? Why was Putin putting the squeeze on the free press, "which, as you know, Boris, is the lifeblood of an open and modern society"?
Yeltsin nodded solemnly, but he didn't answer. All the pugnacity, swagger and certainty had gone out of him.
"Boris," Clinton continued, "you've got democracy in your heart. You've got the trust of the people in your bones. You've got the fire in your belly of a real democrat and a real reformer. I'm not sure Putin has that. Maybe he does. I don't know. You'll have to keep an eye on him and use your influence to make sure that he stays on the right path. Putin needs you. Whether he knows it or not, he really needs you, Boris. Russia needs you. You really changed this country, Boris. Not every leader can say that about the country he's led. You changed Russia. Russia was lucky to have you. The world was lucky you were where you were. I was lucky to have you. We did a lot of stuff together, you and I. We got through some tough times. We never let it all come apart. We did some good things. They'll last. It took guts on your part. A lot of that stuff was harder for you than it was for me. I know that."
Yeltsin was now clutching Clinton by the hand, leaning into him.
"Thank you, Bill," he said. "I understand."
We were running late. There was a quick group photo on the veranda, some hurried goodbyes and another bear hug.
"Bill," said Yeltsin, "I really do understand what you said. I'll think about it."
"I know you will, Boris," said Clinton, "because I know what you have in here." Clinton tapped Yeltsin on his chest, right above his ailing heart.
Back in the car, Clinton was somber for several minutes. He looked out the window at the birch trees glinting in the sunshine along the country road leading back to the highway.
"That may be the last time I see ol' Boris," he said finally. "I think we're going to miss him."
It all began far differently, in 1993. The Soviet Union had been disbanded, thanks in large part to Yeltsin, and the Russians were undergoing a tumultuous change from a totalitarian system to a democracy, from a multinational empire to a nation-state, from a state-controlled economy to a market one. For every move Yeltsin made, he was challenged by a Communist-led parliament that was determined to impeach him. It was in this atmosphere that Clinton and Yeltsin met as presidents for the first time.
The summit in Vancouver began on Saturday, April 3, with a meeting between the presidents with just a few aides and interpreters present. The purpose was to break the ice, begin to establish a personal bond and give the two leaders a chance to sound each other out on the agenda before a more formal encounter between the delegations over dinner that evening and a full plenary session the next day.
Clinton tried to win Yeltsin over at the outset by proclaiming his admiration for what Yeltsin was trying to accomplish against heavy odds. "I know this is not an easy time in your country," Clinton began.
Yeltsin listened with obvious impatience as Clinton began to unwrap the contents of a proposed assistance package, then interrupted. Yeltsin didn't like the implication that the United States was coming to his rescue. Yes, he needed outside help, but not too much, since a "dramatic increase" in American aid would bring him "under fire from the opposition: They will say Russia is under the U.S.'s thumb." He was looking for a "modest" boost in U.S. assistance as a demonstration that the outside world stood ready to help Russia in its transition.
There was one area, however, where Yeltsin said he needed as much help as possible and as soon as possible, and that was in emergency funds to build housing for the Russian army officers whom Yeltsin had promised to withdraw from the Baltic states in 1994. In our own program, we had set aside $6 million for this purpose. When Clinton mentioned that figure, Yeltsin said he needed much more, adding that he could raise this request only in private, since it was embarrassing for him to talk about the wretched conditions in which the once-proud Russian army was living.
Yeltsin stayed on the offensive -- jabbing, wheedling, even trying to mousetrap Clinton into approving public statements that would be interpreted as American concessions. None of this seemed to bother Clinton. When the time came to thank Yeltsin for a good first meeting, he seemed to mean it.
He instructed communications director George Stephanopoulos to tell the press that he'd found Yeltsin "full of piss and vinegar, a real fighter," and then added -- not for the press -- "I do my best when I'm under the gun, and so does this guy. He's not deterred by long odds, and now he's at the top of his form."
That could hardly be said when the two delegations joined the presidents for a boat ride around Vancouver harbor that afternoon. We were barely away from the dock before Yeltsin had downed three scotches. At dinner that evening, he knocked back four glasses of wine and ate barely a bite. Secretary of State Warren Christopher passed Stephanopoulos a note: "No food, bad sign. Boat ride was liquid." Keeping count of Yeltsin's intake was to become a standard practice of summiteering.
Yeltsin's speech grew sloshy, his message sappy ("Beeell, we're not rivals -- we're friends!"). His aides eyed him ever more nervously as the evening went on. They tried to shoo off waiters with drinks, only to be countermanded by their president.
Our own president was unfazed. He seemed rather to enjoy Yeltsin's antics.
That evening, back in the presidential hotel suite, Secretary Christopher, national security adviser Tony Lake and I lamented the prospect of having to conduct high-stakes diplomacy under the conditions we'd witnessed during the day. Clinton told us to relax. "I've seen a little of this problem in my time," he said, referring to his experience growing up with an alcoholic stepfather. "At least Yeltsin's not a mean drunk."
Russia's economic well-being and rocky transition to a market economy were not the only issues to dominate the agenda of the Clinton-Yeltsin relationship. The West's desire to enlarge NATO to include former Soviet bloc countries swiftly emerged as one of the toughest problems and one that continually strained relations
between the two presidents. When Yeltsin flew to Washington in September 1994, Clinton was determined to show him that NATO enlargement did not have to threaten Russia and would be a sign that the Cold War really was over.
As Yeltsin emerged from the plane at Andrews Air Force Base and made his way down the mobile stairs, he was gripping the railing and concentrating on each step. His handlers did their best to block the view of the cameras recording his descent. He slipped on the last step and had to grab his wife's arm. That night at Blair House, Yeltsin was roaring drunk, lurching from room to room in his undershorts. At one point, he stumbled downstairs and accosted a Secret Service agent, who managed to persuade him to go back upstairs and return to the care of his own bodyguards. Yeltsin reappeared briefly on the landing, demanding, "Pizza! Pizza!" Finally, his security agents took him firmly by the arms and marched him briskly around in an effort to calm him down.
In the first formal meeting at the White House the next day, with the delegations facing each other across a long table, Yeltsin was sober but supercharged. He galloped through a list of half-baked or overcooked proposals. "Come on, Bill, let's just agree!" he kept saying, barely waiting for a reply, which was just as well, since the reply was always the same: "We'll have our people talk about that, Boris."
It was only when the two presidents met alone that Yeltsin dispensed with the posturing and Clinton could go to work on him. That chance came over a private lunch in the family dining room in the East Wing on September 27. Clinton asked me to sit in on the lunch, in part because I could listen to Yeltsin's answers twice, in Russian and then as interpreted.
We expected Yeltsin to raise the future of NATO, but he didn't. As the lunch progressed, the two presidents covered what seemed to me every issue on the face of the earth except the future of NATO. I began to wonder whether Clinton, too, wanted to avoid the subject.
Finally, as coffee was served, Clinton put his hand on Yeltsin's arm, leaned toward him and said, "Boris, on NATO, I want to make sure you've noted that I've never said we shouldn't consider Russia for membership or a special relationship with NATO. So when we talk about NATO expanding, we're emphasizing inclusion, not exclusion. My objective is to work with you and others to maximize the chances of a truly united, undivided, integrated Europe. There will be an expansion of NATO, but there's no timetable yet. If we started tomorrow to include the countries that want to come in, it would still take several years until they qualified and others said 'yes.' The issue is about psychological security and a sense of importance to these countries. They're afraid of being left in a gray area or a purgatory. So we're going to move forward on this. But I'd never spring it on you. I want to work closely with you so we get through it together."
Yeltsin was listening intently. "I understand," he said when Clinton was done. "I thank you for what you've said. If you're asked about this at the press conference, I'd suggest you say while the U.S. is for the expansion of NATO, the process will be gradual and lengthy. If you're asked if you'd exclude Russia from NATO, your answer should be 'no.' That's all."
Clinton promised that U.S. policy would be guided by "three no's": no surprises, no rush and no exclusion.
That afternoon, Yeltsin and Clinton gave a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House. Yeltsin was in a state that deputy national security adviser Sandy Berger described as "high jabberwocky" -- joking, jabbing the air with his fist, hamming it up, talking a mile a minute, ticking off all the good things that he and his friend Bill were going to do together. The State Department interpreter, Peter Afanasenko, was not just translating, but impersonating with great flair. Clinton was doubled over with laughter. He wanted to make sure that the audience took it all in a generous spirit. Several colleagues who knew about Yeltsin's wild first night at Blair House gave me inquiring looks. I knew what they suspected. I gave a slight shake of my head: I'd monitored Yeltsin's alcohol intake at lunch and it hadn't been enough to explain this manic exuberance.
A pattern was developing in Yeltsin's handling of these meetings: In the plenary sessions, with a large audience on both sides of the table, he played the decisive, even peremptory leader who knew what he wanted and insisted on getting it; in the private meetings, he switched from assertive to receptive, becoming susceptible to Clinton's blandishments and suasion; then, in the wrap-up press conference, he went over the top in a way designed, in his own mind, to project self-confidence and to disguise how pliant he had been behind closed doors.
In October 1995, Yeltsin flew to New York for an appearance before the General Assembly of the United Nations. There he gave a fire-and-brimstone speech excoriating NATO for the bombing of Serb targets in Bosnia and warning that NATO enlargement would mean a "new era of confrontation." Yeltsin and Clinton were scheduled to meet at FDR's former estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., for what was shaping up to be a high-stakes and high-tension meeting on a variety of contentious foreign policy issues. After discussing Bosnia, the two presidents turned their attention to the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE).
Yeltsin was flying high. In a small, private meeting, he was more than ready to get into the details of CFE that had hung up our negotiators for months. Yeltsin had indeed come to Hyde Park to cut a deal, but not in front of subordinates. He sent his foreign policy adviser to fetch a map related to the CFE dispute. While the aide dutifully headed out of the room, Clinton reached over and grabbed Yeltsin's arm.
"Look, Boris," he said, "it's not the details that matter -- it's the main idea. That's what you and I should concern ourselves with. You and I aren't going to get into the weeds of this thing."
Yeltsin frowned and looked uncertainly at the door through which his foreign policy adviser Dmitri Ryurikov had just exited.
Clinton leaned even closer and squeezed his arm. "Boris, look at me! Do you understand what I'm saying? Never mind your guy. This is just between the two of us. I believe you should have some relief on the map, and I've worked to get it for you. But we need to get this done quickly. We don't need more haggling. Agreed? Okay?"
"Yes," said Yeltsin, suddenly deflated, "okay."
A waiter appeared with glasses of dessert wine. Yeltsin, who had already polished off most of a bottle of Russian River wine over lunch, tasted it, rejected it as too sweet and asked for a cognac. Clinton, as the host, felt he had to oblige. It therefore fell to me to see if there was any brandy on the premises. I didn't try very hard. I returned empty-handed just as the aide was scurrying back into the room with a load of papers, including, I'm sure, a Russian counterproposal of some kind. However, by then, the conversation between the two leaders had moved on to other subjects.
Yeltsin wanted to talk for a minute about their public line with the press. He reprised his opening appeal for closer and more regular contact, only with a new burst of maudlin zeal: "Bill, I want to say that our partnership remains strong and reliable. Even on tough problems, like Bosnia, we'll find solutions. Our partnership is the most valuable thing to us. Not only do we need it, but the whole world needs it. You and I might leave the scene, but what we have accomplished together will survive as our legacy. This is the main theme that we must develop between us. It's you and me, Bill and Boris."
As they stood up to go out and face the press, Clinton presented Yeltsin with a pair of hand-tooled cowboy boots that would fit him better than the ones George Bush had given him at Camp David in February 1992. Clinton asked Yeltsin to take off one of his shoes so that they could compare sizes. The two exchanged right shoes, and the fit was fairly close -- allowing Clinton to remark, as he almost always did, how similar they were in build. This was a point that always seemed to please Yeltsin. Yeltsin said perhaps they should wear each other's shoes to the press conference, but his protocol chief, Vladimir Shevchenko, now on the edge of panic, persuaded Yeltsin not to do it. "Boris Nikolayevich," he whispered, "the media will make something unflattering of this!"
At the press conference Yeltsin gave the reporters just the sort of Boris Show they were counting on. He mocked the press for having predicted that U.S. and Russian differences over Bosnia would turn the summit into a disaster. Pointing directly at the cameras, Yeltsin bellowed, "Now, for the first time, I can tell you that you're a disaster!"
Yeltsin always practiced diplomacy as performance art, and when he was drunk, the performance was burlesque: This was the worst incident so far. Clinton, however, doubled over in laughter, slapped Boris on the back and had to wipe tears from his eyes. When he came to the microphone, he said, "Just make sure you get the attribution right!" then continued to laugh -- a little too hard to be convincing.
I sensed that Clinton was trying to cover for Yeltsin. Perhaps he figured that if both presidents seemed to be clowning around, there would be less of a focus in the news stories on Yeltsin's inebriation.
Whatever Clinton's motive, the whole scene sent a familiar shudder through the American entourage. Going back to their first summit in Vancouver, Clinton's lenience toward Yeltsin was sometimes a source of consternation for those of us who worked for him. What we found appalling in Yeltsin's conduct Clinton found amusing.
Shortly afterward, as I took a seat next to him aboard the helicopter for the ride back to New York, Clinton, still chuckling, remarked, "That was quite a show down there, wasn't it?" He was, I suspected, looking for praise of his handling of a perilous moment.
I couldn't bring myself to applaud, but I didn't have the heart, or the guts, to criticize him either. So I simply said, "Well, what went on between the two of you in private was all very positive and helpful. You really brought him along on the substance. I just hope the press conference doesn't do any damage."
Clinton got it, and gave me a long look. Then he said, "You know, we've got to remember that Yeltsin's got his problems, but he's a good man. He's trying to do his best in the face of a lot of problems back home. I think we're going to get this Bosnia deal done, and it's harder for him than it is for me. I've got problems, but nothing like his. We can't ever forget that Yeltsin drunk is better than most of the alternatives sober."
I'd heard that refrain before, but this time it had an edge to it. Clinton felt I was not only being too tough on Yeltsin -- I should ease up a bit on Clinton himself.
I was beginning to figure out something about my boss and his seemingly infinite capacity to put up with, and laugh off, Yeltsin's antics. Part of it wasn't even personal to Yeltsin -- it was a function of our support for the general direction in which Russia was moving. The country, like Yeltsin, was a bit of a mess.
But Clinton's indulgence of Yeltsin's misbehavior seemed to go deeper still. The key, as I saw it, might be that Yeltsin combined prodigious determination and fortitude with grotesque indiscipline and a kind of genius for self-abasement. He was both a very big man and a very bad boy, a natural leader and an incurable screw-up. All this Clinton recognized, found easy to forgive and wanted others to join him in forgiving.
Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state, will become president of the Brookings Institution in July. This article is adapted from The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy by Strobe Talbott, published this month by Random House. Copyright 2002 by the author.
-------- spy agencies
THE NATION CIA-FBI Feuding Runs Deep
Intelligence: Battles between the agencies over advance knowledge of Sept. 11 lead reformers to consider major changes.
By RICHARD T. COOPER and JOSH MEYER
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITERS
May 26 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-000037155may26.story
WASHINGTON -- The controversy over who knew what in the days and weeks before Sept. 11 has vaulted the rivalry between the FBI and CIA--one of the oldest back-fence feuds in the nation's capital--outside the bounds of conventional controversy.
The question of why the deadliest terror plot in U.S. history went unstopped has exacerbated problems at the nation's already-troubled intelligence agencies. And disclosures made in the last two weeks indicate that, despite reform efforts at both the FBI and CIA, the interagency sparring is only getting worse.
''What we've seen in the past two weeks is changing everything,'' a Bush administration official familiar with CIA and FBI operations said Saturday. ''There will be more changes. It has made it apparent that we need to go deeper.'' From scandals of years past--Watergate, for example--have come major reforms. Already, pressure has grown for a broader inquiry into the intelligence agencies' operations and deeper reforms than most Washington officials wanted or thought likely just a few weeks ago. There is, for example, growing support for an independent commission to investigate the agencies.
Both the CIA and the FBI are well into their post-9/11 reorganization plans, which are designed to make them work better together. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has brought on board several CIA officials to work at FBI headquarters, and FBI agents have a stronger presence at the CIA's sprawling Virginia complex.
Perhaps most telling, top FBI and CIA officials--often Mueller and CIA Director George J. Tenet--gather each morning to go over the terrorism ''threat matrix'' so they can brief President Bush together.
But the recent disclosures suggest that the bickering, foot-dragging and bureaucratic gamesmanship continue.
The latest flare-up started with a leak that the CIA warned Bush of possible terrorist hijackings more than a month before Sept. 11. It continued with revelations that a Phoenix FBI agent warned of possible terrorist infiltration of flight schools. And it was capped by the detailed accusations of high-level Washington failures by an FBI lawyer in Minneapolis.
''Obviously it is still going on,'' another Bush administration official said of the CIA-FBI rivalry. ''And we all hope that our leaders ... can find a way to get their agencies to stop worrying about protecting themselves and worry more about protecting all of us, even if it means taking a couple of hard knocks institutionally.''
In the twilight struggle of the Cold War, when lives seemed secure at home, U.S. intelligence officials could battle foreign enemies without missing a step in their fights against political and bureaucratic rivals.
If CIA superiors seemed blind to a mole like Aldrich H. Ames, or if a Robert Philip Hanssen could betray his country from the comfort of an FBI executive office, the country at large took such setbacks in stride.
That may no longer be true.
Today, when warnings of horrific new dangers pour out almost daily and a natural gas explosion at an Encino apartment building sends shivers down the whole country's spine, public tolerance for the old infighting may be evaporating.
The question now is whether Mueller's proposed changes at the FBI go far enough--whether the government should simply shake up the entrenched bureaucracy or reinvent the bureau in a far more dramatic way than Mueller plans.
"In some ways, this is out of his hands now," the Bush administration official said.
But in the meantime, the debate is a hardball contest of leaks and spin, fought by the agencies themselves but also by partisans on the Hill, in news media and in the policy establishment. It is a potent formula that is already nicking careers.
Last week it was that of Mueller himself, who had only been on the job a week when Sept. 11 arrived. The broadside by Minneapolis-based agent Coleen Rowley--in a letter leaked by members of Congress--criticized Mueller personally, saying he made misleading public statements about how the FBI handled the terrorism investigation before and after Sept. 11, downplaying and even leaving out details that would make the bureau look bad.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a fierce FBI critic, lambasted Mueller for withholding Rowley's letter, vowing, "A cover-up is not going to work."
Another Republican, maverick Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has repeatedly demanded the head of Tenet, a holdover from Bill Clinton's presidency. He has also discomfited a Republican White House and many of his Senate colleagues by spreading the alleged shortcomings in the CIA and FBI across the public record.
Law enforcement officials shoot back that Congress itself tied the hands of the CIA and the FBI in the 1970s by restricting the gathering of intelligence--barriers that were lifted after Sept. 11 with the passage of the Patriot Act, which also encourages the sharing of information among the FBI, CIA and National Security Council.
CIA and FBI officials have been maneuvering frantically to shift blame for missing signs of impending domestic terrorism. Both have resorted to orchestrated news leaks and spin-doctoring.
In the most fundamental split, the FBI says the Sept. 11 plot was hatched overseas--in the CIA's domain--while the agency notes that the 19 hijackers roamed extensively through the FBI's U.S. territory.
Until recently, no one outside a small circle of government officials knew that on Aug. 6, more than a month before the attacks, the CIA's daily briefing for the president included a warning that Al Qaeda might contemplate hijacking U.S. aircraft. Public disclosure of the briefing created significant political problems for the White House but also cast the agency in the flattering light of having issued an unheeded warning.
Normally, daily intelligence briefings for the president are among the CIA's most closely guarded secrets. How did congressional investigators learn about the Aug. 6 briefing?
The answer, congressional sources said, is that they were tipped off by officials in the CIA's office of congressional affairs.
Congressional aides described it as an atypically cooperative gesture from a CIA office that had previously been accused by lawmakers of hindering the probe.
"It was like, 'Gee, you might want to look at Aug. 6,'" said one aide. "'We hear that was pretty interesting."'
The information was leaked to the media two days later and was first mentioned on the CBS Evening News on May 15.
The CIA has also aimed elbows at the FBI. The agency particularly seemed to enjoy fallout from the recent disclosure of the so-called Phoenix memo of July 10, in which an FBI agent in Arizona urged bureau headquarters to investigate Middle Eastern men possibly training for terrorist missions at U.S. flight schools.
The leak of that memo--and the FBI's failure to act on it--began a firestorm of criticism.
The CIA seemed to pile on. The agency first declared that it hadn't received the memo until recently; a CIA official then described it as a "remarkable document" that almost certainly would have set off a significant inquiry if the FBI had shared it before it was too late.
Within a day, the FBI anonymously declared that it had shared at least portions of the memo with the CIA. So if the bureau was in the soup, the CIA was with it.
The feud between the CIA and the FBI goes back more than half a century and reflects divergent cultures that all agree must change.
In the 1940s, when the Central Intelligence Agency was created to coordinate America's response to the emerging threat of global communism, the new agency was barred from operating inside the United States. But it received sole responsibility for intelligence and counter-intelligence overseas.
That meant the FBI had to withdraw dozens of agents from posts abroad, which infuriated J. Edgar Hoover, who had made his "G-men" legendary, zealously guarding their turf and his own.
And from the beginning, the cultures of the two institutions could not have been more different. The CIA was a self-consciously cosmopolitan and intellectual elite, patterned after the Oxbridge traditions of the British Secret Service and molded in the blue-blooded Ivy League image of its first director, Allen Dulles.
The FBI saw itself as equally elite but was made of commoner clay. If the CIA was disdainfully aristocratic, the FBI was defiantly middle class, with its lawyers and accountants in their stodgy but mandatory black shoes, white shirts and felt hats.
Even without those cultural differences, the FBI and the CIA face each other across a chasm:
One is devoted to espionage, operating overseas and outside the restrictions of U.S. law. Its goal is gathering information and subverting the enemy by any means.
It subscribes to Winston Churchill's dictum that, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." And for the CIA, all time is wartime.
The FBI, by contrast, is a law enforcement organization, dedicated to prosecuting criminals, not just gathering information.
And it is answerable to the strict standards of the American legal system.
When it has fallen short of those standards, as critics say it did during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, its pursuit of radicals during the 1970s and more recently with the Branch Davidians and at Ruby Ridge, it has been harshly criticized, while the CIA has largely escaped such scrutiny for its dirty tricks abroad.
But the cultures share at least one important characteristic: Both tend to feel that no outsider can judge them and both put loyalty to the organization above all else.
That's why the letter from the FBI's Rowley broke like a thunderclap late last week. It was that rarest of things: criticism from inside.
And, sure enough, it became public through a leak.
Times staff writers Bob Drogin and Nick Anderson contributed to this report.
----
CIA Analysts To Help FBI Shift Focus
Terrorism Prevention Key to New Approach
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10990-2002May25?language=printer
The CIA is dispatching personnel to help the FBI upgrade its ability at headquarters in Washington to analyze intelligence and criminal data for use in preventing terrorist acts, according to senior FBI officials.
More than 25 agency analysts and at least one senior manager from the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence will assist FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in reshaping the bureau into an agency more focused on counterterrorism.
Another group of CIA analysts will soon be dispatched to 10 major U.S. cities to review FBI terrorist cases being pursued in field offices to see whether intelligence information has been missed. They will determine whether, among the separate cases, patterns of behavior, techniques or personnel turn up that may have been overlooked in the past, the officials said.
The CIA transfers illustrate one of the major changes involved in Mueller's FBI overhaul, an approach that will emphasize gathering information to prevent terrorist acts inside the United States while reducing the bureau's traditional criminal work on car thefts, bank robberies and other matters he believes can be handled by local law enforcement agencies.
As early as this week, Mueller plans to begin rolling out a major reorganization of the FBI, whose problems handling clues about the Sept. 11 attacks have become the focus of scrutiny in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The extra CIA help is only a small part of a plan that will include the creation of a Washington-based FBI "super squad" to conduct terrorism investigations and the creation of a clearinghouse for sensitive intelligence on terror.
The plan is aimed, at least in part, at improving coordination within the FBI and with other agencies with which the bureau has occasionally jousted.
Relations between the CIA and FBI during the early Cold War were almost nonexistent, as then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover refused to cooperate with the CIA, preferring to use his own people overseas. After the Cold War, attempts were made at the top to improve relations, but strains still remained at the working level. The creation of interagency centers such as Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism provided a beginning, but as shown in recent years, gaps between the agencies still existed.
FBI officials said they are turning to the CIA to help create a cadre of FBI intelligence analysts who will pull cases together and avoid the apparent lack of coordination illustrated by the failure last year to link a July 2001 memo from a Phoenix FBI agent, suggesting a study of Islamic radicals at pilot training schools, with information from Minneapolis in August about terrorist defendant Zacarias Moussaoui, who came under suspicion because of his actions at a pilot school.
Analysts and research specialists at the FBI have traditionally trained at the CIA, but their main focus has been gathering the type of information that will allow them to stop crimes about to be committed or help the Justice Department bring legal action against individuals, said Harry "Skip" Brandon, former deputy chief of intelligence for the FBI.
For years, FBI counterterrorism analysts focused on "domestic terrorism," trying to track right-wing militia and violent white supremacist groups that could be prosecuted.
"The terrorism program never really had an understanding of true analysis, of mining raw data, drawing independent conclusions and the need to be predictive," said I.C. Smith, former head of the FBI's analysis, budget and training section of the National Security Division.
Eventually the FBI created the Investigative Support Division, which grouped all analysts together at headquarters and made them subordinate to the operational staff, something Smith said impinged on the analysts' ability to function and think independently. Mueller dismantled that division shortly after he arrived.
"Most Western countries separate law enforcement agencies from counterterrorism agencies," another FBI official said. "They require different analyses and different resources, and historically, we have not had the funds needed to do both."
This official pointed out that Britain's MI-5 service, which works on counterterrorism and counterintelligence, "doesn't prosecute criminal cases, and their information for the most part can't be used in criminal trials. That is left to the police."
Another official said the FBI is going to increase its role as an "internal security service" of a type found in Europe. Using analysts to help in FBI criminal prosecutions "will take a back seat," an FBI official said.
"It is really kind of anachronistic to believe that we should be handling terrorism cases the same way we handle narcotics or public corruption," a senior U.S. official said. "This requires a very specialized body of expertise, supported by an abundance of analytic capability. It is impractical to have that sprinkled all over the place."
One reason the CIA analysts can review criminal cases rests in the post-Sept. 11 changes in U.S. law that permit agency personnel to have access through the FBI to criminal investigation information, including material developed by federal grand juries.
In 1995, as the terrorist threat grew, the bureau established its Counterterrorism Center. It included the operations of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section and Domestic Terrorism Operations Section.
The center was patterned in part on the CIA's Counterterrorism Center in Langley, which was created 10 years earlier. Agency officers were brought in to the new FBI center as FBI agents had been placed at the CIA center. At the field office level, 18 FBI joint terrorism task forces were put in major cities to maximize interagency cooperation and coordination among federal, state and local law enforcement.
Although CIA officers and analysts work with FBI personnel in the CIA, and in the FBI Counterterrorism Center at its Washington headquarters, the new deployment will represent a broader sharing between the two agencies.
Brandon said U.S. intelligence services should do what the military began to do in 1986: break down the walls between the services and fight "jointly," or "purple," as it is dubbed. "Talking about all this can be healthy if it will force the civilian intelligence agencies to go purple," he said.
-------- us
[Memorial weekend brings out the horror stories which revive racism. Better memories requested. et - mailto:prop1@prop1.org]
Death March Horrors to the Fore
Bataan Survivors Sue, Push for Recognition Of Wartime Suffering
By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 26, 2002; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11044-2002May25?language=printer
Mel Rosen's introduction to being a prisoner of war came in the first hours after he and his troops surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines in spring 1942.
As they sat in a big field ringed by Japanese machine guns on the Bataan peninsula, a GI tried to use the latrine. A Japanese soldier thrust his bayonet through the American's chest, and when the blade did not come out cleanly, the Japanese soldier used his foot to push the dying GI into the latrine.
"Another Japanese soldier nearby was leaning on his rifle laughing, like it was a joke," said Rosen, a vibrant 83-year-old retired Army colonel living in Falls Church, who 60 years later cannot tell the story without choking up. "You don't know what frustration is till you have to watch something like that and can't do anything about it."
With the 60th anniversary of the Bataan Death March being observed this spring, new attention is being paid to one of the most horrific episodes of World War II.
Today, Rosen will be among the dwindling number of Bataan survivors who will be honored as part of the National Memorial Day Concert. The event will be broadcast live across the country from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, starting at 8 p.m.
Meanwhile, there is a growing movement among Bataan veterans to force Japan to apologize and compensate them, with lawsuits being pursued in U.S. and Japanese courts.
Legislation that would allow survivors to sue Japanese corporations that allegedly enslaved American POWs during World War II was introduced last year in the House and Senate. A House resolution with more than 225 co-sponsors will be pushed in coming weeks.
While the Bataan Death March has entered the U.S. lexicon -- often in references that trivialize its inhumanity -- the full extent of the horrors that ensued for survivors is little understood.
"I think it's time people learned what happened over there," said Paul Rutter, 81, an Oxon Hill man who survived the march and more than three years of captivity. "That part of history has been lost."
Marching for days in terrible heat, beaten and deprived of food and water, an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 of the 78,000 Americans and Filipinos who surrendered to the Japanese died during the march.
Over the next three years, those who survived were kept in horribly debilitating conditions and exposed to tropical diseases, transported in "hell ships" to camps in Japan and elsewhere, and forced into slave labor.
Of the 12,000 Americans taken prisoner at Bataan, only 4,000 were alive by the end of the war, according to authorities on the subject.
Rosen is the lead plaintiff in a $1 trillion class-action lawsuit against Japan filed in September in federal court in Chicago. "Everything the Japanese did to us was deliberate, inhuman, brutal, calculated and racist," he said.
Rounded Up
Hours after the raid on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, U.S. forces in the Philippines also were attacked by Japanese bombers and fighters, and later that month, by a large invasion force of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The U.S. troops and their Filipino allies fighting on the Bataan peninsula across the bay from Manila held out against heavy odds for 150 days, until their ammunition, medical supplies and food gave out. After their surrender April 9, the prisoners were rounded up and marched north for days, up to 55 miles in the heat without water.
"If anybody dropped or couldn't make it, we were not allowed to help. The Japanese clubbed them to death, bayoneted them, shot them or beheaded them," said Rosen, a 1940 West Point graduate who was a lieutenant with the Philippine Scouts. "There were hundreds of American bodies and thousands of Filipino bodies left along the route of the death march."
At a railhead, they were loaded into hot, crowded box cars. "If you died in there, you couldn't fall to the floor even," said Rutter, a B-17 radio operator who was based at Clark Field in the Philippines.
At their eventual destination, Camp O'Donnell, 54,000 prisoners were crammed into facilities built for a fraction as many people. Malaria and dysentery killed thousands more.
In November 1942, Rosen was sent to a penal colony on the island of Mindanao, and he spent the next two years working in rice fields. "I planted rice, weeded rice, harvested rice, milled rice. Got damn little of it to eat," he said.
Aboard 'Hell Ships'
Two years later, he and 1,600 other Americans were loaded onto a ship bound for Japan, where they were to be used as slave labor in factories. Rosen was put in a 30-by-50-foot hold with about 680 prisoners.
Many had diarrhea and dysentery, and the hold was soon ankle-deep in human waste. The next morning, the ship was attacked by U.S. dive bombers, whose pilots did not know that Americans were aboard.
Another attack by U.S. planes came the next day, and as the ship began to sink, prisoners emerged from the hold. "Those of us still alive decided getting our heads blown off by machine gun fire was preferable to going down in a sinking, burning ship," Rosen said.
The 1,300 American survivors who swam ashore were loaded onto a second ship. They reached a harbor in Formosa, now Taiwan, in January 1945 when U.S. bombers struck again. "The Japanese kept us down there with our dead and dying for four days, and on the fifth day, lowered a net and said, 'Pile all your dead in here,' " Rosen said.
Aboard a third ship, prisoners froze as they sailed in the North China Sea with little protection from the January cold. "We were throwing American bodies overboard at the rate of 30, then 40, then 50 a day all the way to Japan," Rosen said.
By various estimates, 200 to 300 of the 1,600 prisoners loaded on the first ship made it to Japan. "The death march was a Sunday stroll compared to the three hell ships," Rosen said.
When Rosen arrived in Japan and was put on a scale, his weight had dropped from a normal 155 pounds to 88 pounds.
Rutter, who had been shipped to Japan earlier, spent two years working in a steel mill south of Osaka. Others were sent to coal mines. "We were money machines for them," Rutter said.
One day in August 1945, Rutter and his fellow prisoners found that their Japanese guards were gone. The Americans asked some Korean prisoners what had happened. "They said the war was over. Something had happened at Hiroshima."
Rosen was at a camp in Korea when liberation came.
"A lot of people say you must really hate the Japanese," Rosen said. He does not, he is quick to say. The home he shares with his wife, Olive, includes Japanese artifacts picked up on travels during a 30-year Army career.
The lawsuit he has filed is being pursued for symbolic, not monetary, reasons, Rosen said. "The Japanese are waiting for us to die off," he said.
When a U.S. Navy submarine accidentally sank a Japanese trawler off Hawaii last year, the U.S. promptly apologized, a proper gesture, Rosen said.
"I have been waiting 60 years for an apology from Japan."
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Attacks Spark Interest in Military
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-West-Point-Applications.html
SALEM, N.Y. (AP) -- Between the day Hunter Southerland applied to West Point and the day he was accepted, America was attacked.
People would ask the high school senior after Sept. 11: Do you still want to go? The answer was always yes.
``I feel like what I'm looking at doing has meaning,'' Southerland said. ``What I'm doing isn't just a waste of money and training. I'm really serving my country.''
At a time when soldiers are deployed in distant danger zones, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is getting more applicants. While some would-be cadets were likely spurred on by Sept. 11, most coming into the academy this fall began the lengthy application process before the terrorist attacks.
For future cadets, like 18-year-old Southerland, the war on terrorism reaffirmed the reasons they want to serve.
Applications for this fall's freshman class at West Point were up about 10 percent to around 11,000.
Maj. Darby McNulty of West Point's admissions office said that while only some of the bump can be attributed to Sept. 11, a better gauge comes from early applications for the Class of 2007, already up 16 percent.
U.S. Naval Academy applications for the Class of 2006 increased 6 percent to 12,323, continuing a four-year upward trend. U.S. Air Force Academy spokeswoman Pam Ancker estimated applications for the Class of 2006 were up 5 percent to 10 percent.
McNulty said well over half the applicants for this fall's plebe class mentioned the attacks in admission essays. Air Force Academy applicants also have mentioned Sept. 11 on their essays, Ancker said. The Naval Academy said several applicants have reaffirmed their desire to serve after the attacks.
Successful West Point applicants are also accepting positions at a higher rate, McNulty said.
``We were actually running ahead of schedule before Sept. 11,'' he said. ``And I think Sept. 11 only firmed up or enhanced young people's desires to serve.''
Southerland is a tall, crewcut teen-ager living in Salem, a little town folded into hilly farmland near the Vermont border. West Point is a few hours south, so he was able to ride down in seventh grade to watch Army football games -- Saturday spectacles with game balls parachuted in and cannon blasts after every score.
Later, a cadet would tell him about life in the long gray line when she came home for breaks. It sounded tough, but he was intrigued. In January 2001, the second half of his junior year, Southerland asked for a nomination to West Point.
Nominations are hard to get. Congress members typically nominate 10 people a year, and the academy thins the list in search of well-rounded people who would make good military leaders. Academics, athletics and other extracurricular activities are considered.
The application procedures for other military academies -- sorting through congressional nominations to choose most incoming cadets -- is similar.
About 40 percent of this year's West Point applicants received Congressional nominations. The academy deemed about 2,200 admissible. According to U.S. News & World Report, 15 percent of applicants get into West Point, making it more competitive than some Ivy League schools.
Southerland is an ``A'' student, National Honor Society member, class president and a member of the varsity basketball, soccer and track teams.
It was applications to Bucknell and Cornell -- both of which accepted him -- that really got him thinking about what he wanted to do.
During a visit to Cornell, representatives mentioned all the things he wouldn't have in the military. The point was driven home weeks later when he stayed overnight at West Point. The two freshmen he roomed with were busy shining shoes, memorizing the day's menu and ``just doing things that people at Cornell would laugh at,'' he said. ``It was hard, and it did make me think about what I wanted to do.''
He received approval from the academy, conditional upon a nomination and a clean bill of health, shortly after the military began bombing Afghanistan in October. He received a nomination from his congressman, John Sweeney, in December.
Southerland has followed the Army's activities and noted when soldiers died on duty.
``It is scary at times. But if you believe in what you're doing and you're confident that you're part of something that's doing the right thing, then that's OK. You'll accept whatever the outcome may be,'' he said.
Southerland graduates from high school on June 28. The following Monday, when many classmates start a summer of lolling or part-time jobs, he will report to West Point for ``Beast Barracks,'' the academy's six-week summer shakedown course of marching, sit-ups and military training for the incoming class.
``I'm preparing myself just getting through what West Point is,'' he said.
--------
Bargain Bomb Revolutionizes Warfare
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-EXP-Bargain-Bomb.html
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AP) -- Weapons developer Terry Little was explaining plans for a guidance kit that could turn ``dumb'' bombs into ``smart'' ones when the Air Force's chief of staff asked about cost.
Caught off guard that day nine years ago, Little put the price tag at $65,000 a copy based on costs for other high-tech munitions.
Gen. Merrill McPeak, now retired, then asked for a cost goal.
``I made up a number right there on the spot of $40,000, which seemed like a nice round number,'' Little recalled.
He remembers McPeak's reaction: ``That's no longer the goal,'' the general said. ``That's the max I want to pay, and if you can't figure out a way to get this under $40,000, I don't want it.''
Little's team at this Florida Panhandle base beat McPeak's goal by more than half -- $14,000 in 1993 dollars, or $21,000 today. They cut through red tape, used off-the-shelf components, adopted purchasing practices used by private industry and treated contractors as partners instead of adversaries.
The Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM -- pronounced ``jay-dam'' -- went on to become the most widely used air-delivered weapon of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan because of relatively low cost, high accuracy and all-weather capability.
``JDAM is a revolutionary weapon, not only in terms of what it does, but in terms of the way in which it was bought,'' said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a research group in Alexandria, Va.
``Sometimes the way in which these (military) contracts are set up, you're actually perversely rewarded for spending more money,'' Thompson said. ``In a normal marketplace you're rewarded for saving money, and that's exactly what the JDAM acquisition did.''
Its battlefield success has prompted the Pentagon to triple initial plans and buy 236,000 so-called tailkits through 2009, said Mike Hatcher, who followed Little as the project's program director.
The Air Force and Navy so far have received 18,228 JDAMs, which use inertial and satellite guidance systems. More than 6,600 were dropped in Afghanistan.
JDAM was developed because of problems with laser- and television-guided bombs during the Persian Gulf War. Pilots often were unable to drop them through the smoke of oil fires and bad weather that blocked targets from view.
In a handwritten note dated May 1, 1991, McPeak demanded action: ``We need to lay down a requirement for an all-WX PGM'' -- shorthand for ``all-weather program.''
The Air Armament Center at Eglin responded with JDAM. The tailkits can be attached to thousands of 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound unguided bombs that are in the U.S. arsenal. A new version for 500-pound bombs successfully passed its first test in mid-April.
Warplanes can carry more of the 500-pound bombs, so fewer aircraft would be needed for each mission. The smaller bombs, sufficient for most targets if delivered accurately, also cut the risk of injuring civilians.
All a pilot has to do is dial in a target's coordinates based on intelligence data or information radioed from troops on the ground.
JDAM's inertial navigation system, like those used for decades on military and commercial aircraft, senses speed and direction to keep it on target. A global positioning system, or GPS, corrects any drift through satellite data.
In tests, 95 percent of JDAMs hit within 10 to 30 feet of their targets, Hatcher said.
``It doesn't care whether it's foggy, doesn't care whether it's raining,'' he said. ``It doesn't have to 'see,' so to speak.''
Two friendly fire accidents involving JDAMs dropped by Navy and Air Force jets in Afghanistan remain under investigation, but military officials say the weapon is not at fault in either case.
``It was flat-out human error, putting the wrong coordinates in the wrong place,'' said Rear Adm. Dick Naughton, commander of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center in Fallon, Nev. ``The weapon went where it was aimed.''
Getting high accuracy was relatively easy. Doing it at McPeak's price was the hard part. Congress paved the way by passing a purchasing reform law that cut red tape. For instance, a car buyer may ask a dealer for a car with a V-6 engine that can go at 100 mph, but the customer doesn't tell the manufacturer how to build it.
Under the law, the Pentagon waived regulations for five pilot projects, including JDAM.
The Boeing Co., a traditional defense contractor, assembles the kits at a plant in St. Charles, Mo.
Some parts, however, come from suppliers new to defense work such as Stremel Manufacturing Co. of Minneapolis, which makes JDAM's small metal wings. Stremel's other products include lawn mower bodies.
Many vendors refuse military business because they don't want to put up with the rules and regulations, but that changed with JDAM, Hatcher said.
Little left JDAM to head two other weapons programs at Eglin, applying the same techniques after learning changes could be made without passing a law.
``It's just a matter of getting the system to be responsive and to be agile,'' Little said from the Pentagon, where he was transferred this year.
Support from top Pentagon officials protected the program from bureaucrats who fought change and are still fighting it, Little and Hatcher said.
Little directs the Air Force's new Acquisition Center of Excellence where he is applying lessons from JDAM to 13 other programs, looking for more ways to streamline the development and purchase of weapons and other equipment.
-------- propaganda wars
The Hush on Inquiries
By Mary McGrory
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7630-2002May24?language=printer
One was in Berlin at a news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the other in a television studio with "Larry King Live"; but they were both on message: The president and vice president were as one about the importance of not having a commission of inquiry into intelligence failures pre-9/11.
It figures that an administration that is prone to coverup -- remember the formerly topless, now decently draped aluminum hussy in the Great Hall of the Justice Department? -- would abhor a blue-ribbon probe of what went wrong. Such a group might lack the proper respect for wartime sensitivities; unelected probers might not tremble at the sight of George W. Bush's approval ratings. It could strike at the heart of Bush's prime claim, competence. The country is supposed to be in the very best of hands, old hands that Bush hired to keep bunglers at bay.
Bush's popularity is the central fact of U.S. politics. Nothing seems to dent it. A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that while 46 percent of the responders faulted the administration for failing to do more against terror, Bush's overall approval rating remains at an astronomical 76 percent, which is a drop of two points since mid-April.
That is why Bush and Cheney are rooting for a congressional panel, such as that of the House and Senate intelligence committees. They are mired in strife and intrigue. According to Post reporters Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, the panel had to replace its staff director and is generally too busy with its own internal rivalries to track the conflict between the FBI and the CIA.
The problem? Members didn't want to be identified as investigating. People might think they were being critical of the president or, God forbid, unpatriotic. Cheney told Larry King, "Our concern is that if we lay another investigation on that we'll just multiply potential sources we can't disclose. The key to our ability to defend ourselves and to take out the terrorists lies in intelligence."
Bush was equally forbidding about the inevitable consequences of letting taxpayers know how their money is being spent -- we shell out $30 billion for intelligence. He said that "we don't want to give away sources and uses and methodology of intelligence gathering."
All presidents wish that Congress and the general public would mind their own business and docilely accept what they are told. But the Bush resistance has a ferocious quality about it. Cheney vociferously protested when the Sierra Club, a leading environmental group, sued him for details about the Enron oil spill on the administration's energy policy. He flatly refused to provide the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee with paper on his parleys with Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, the Texas tycoon who plummeted from favor with a president who once called him "Kenny Boy" but who couldn't remember his name after the fall. Cheney huffed and puffed that the Senate sleuths would endanger a president's right to obtain confidential information from shy sources.
On Thursday, White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales sent an eight-page, single-spaced letter to Chairman Joe Lieberman of the Governmental Affairs Committee. Lieberman says the eight pages are not enough, but they are enough to shred Cheney's claim about the difficulty of getting confidential advice: As far as Ken Lay was concerned, it was hard to get away from it -- not that anyone at the White House particularly seemed to want to.
Ken Lay was extravagant with his advice, dropping names for energy-related posts and policy suggestions on the many opportunities afforded him. Here is a sample from the letter: "A number of White House visits by Enron-affiliated individuals including on occasion, Lay, for ceremonial or large group events such as inaugural festivities, the 2001 Easter Egg roll, a tee-ball game, remarks to the Horatio Alger Association and other presidential or vice-presidential speeches."
The White House was his second home.
The same day, a U.S. District Court Judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, refused to dismiss the Sierra Club's suit against the Cheney energy task force, as Cheney had requested. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, hailed the judge's decision as "a great victory," which means we could find out about an oil policy that was a "joint venture" between the White House and "a current version of the Ponzi scheme."
But Washington is not focused on scandals in Enron or intelligence. Neither can compete with the police investigation of the case of Chandra Levy, a Washington intern with big hair and big dreams and an affair with her California congressman. Her sadly decomposed body was found in Rock Creek Park by a man and his dog who were searching for turtles. The talk is about nothing else.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
[Query: Why hasn't President George Bush fired John Ashcroft? See below: "The New York Times reported on May 21 that both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks about the earlier memo from the FBI agent in Phoenix but that they had not told George W. Bush and his staff about it until recently..." (below). If you know - please mailto:prop1@prop1.org]
The 'First Rough Draft'
By Michael Getler
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
In 1963 the late Philip L. Graham, then the publisher of The Post and the newly acquired Newsweek magazine, gave a speech in which he described the "daily and the weekly grist of journalism" as providing what he called a "first rough draft" of history. It was, and remains, an apt description of the work reporters do, and the information readers, listeners and viewers absorb.
That history, he said, is never complete, as more details become known every day. That is what is happening now. A much fuller picture is emerging about what went on inside the White House, FBI, CIA and Federal Aviation Administration before the deadly terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Disclosures in the past few weeks by The Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Time and Newsweek magazines and others portray a much different, more complicated and more worrisome picture about alertness, coordination and candor at the top of the U.S. government than was the case last fall.
What we know now, first from a scoop in U.S. News & World Report and then from a May 3 AP story, is that last July, an alert FBI agent in Phoenix informed FBI headquarters that several Middle Eastern men were training at an Arizona flight school. He speculated that this could be part of an al Qaeda plot and recommended this be discussed within the U.S. intelligence community. It wasn't. On May 15 CBS News reported that early in August President Bush had been briefed by the CIA that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden had discussed the possibility of hijacking U.S. airliners. Three days later The Post reported that the top-secret CIA memo for that Aug. 6 briefing carried the headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." and said that he and his followers hoped to "bring the fight to America." The New York Times reported on May 21 that both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks about the earlier memo from the FBI agent in Phoenix but that they had not told George W. Bush and his staff about it until recently.
Many other stories have run about what was known by the FBI but not by the White House or the airlines, or what was known by the CIA but not by the FBI. Some warnings, we now know, went back well before July. Given the flood of warnings and raw intelligence routinely generated about terrorism, it would be hard to make the case that even if things were better coordinated, the attacks could have been stopped. But the accumulation of missed opportunities is disturbing. Also disturbing is that the administration said nothing publicly about this history of signs and suspicions until forced to respond to press revelations.
Previously, the public statements were all similar to what FBI Director Mueller said on Sept. 17: "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country." Given the administration's penchant for secrecy -- from the energy task force to the war in Afghanistan -- it should not be surprising that a fuller account did not surface on its own.
Now the revelations are followed instantaneously by dire warnings of new attacks from Vice President Dick Cheney, FBI chief Mueller and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. One must take these seriously, yet the timing and lack of candor earlier feed suspicions.
Among the White House opportunities to reveal more about the pre-attack warnings was an eight-part Post series in January about the immediate post-Sept. 11 period, for which the president was interviewed at length. As some readers have already noted, none of what we've learned about warnings in the past few weeks was revealed then by the president or The Post. But there were some signs. In one segment, CIA Director George Tenet was having breakfast at a hotel on Sept. 11 with former senator David Boren when an aide rushed over to whisper the news to him. "This has bin Laden all over it," Tenet is reported to have said. "I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training?" he was also overheard to say. This is a reference to Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been detained in August after attracting suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 20 that the FBI did not tell the White House about Moussaoui's arrest until after Sept. 11. It did tell the Federal Aviation Administration. But that agency decided against warning the airlines to increase security, the Journal reported.
----
FBI Issues New Alert For Small Airplanes
Associated Press
Sunday, May 26, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10712-2002May25?language=printer
The FBI has issued a fresh warning that terrorists may be interested in using small planes to carry out suicide attacks.
FBI supervisory special agent Steven Berry said yesterday the bureau had issued an "intelligence update" to law enforcement regarding small planes, but he declined to be more specific.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association said on its Web site that the alert was issued because the FBI "has received information indicating that terrorists may still be interested in using small general aviation aircraft for suicide attacks in the United States."
"Pilots are strongly encouraged to remain alert for suspicious activities any time they are flying, or at an airport just before or after a flight," the association said. "Individuals observing anything suspicious should report it to the local FBI or law enforcement officials."
Andy Cebula, the association's senior vice president for government and technical affairs, said that "while the alert is not specific, it is important that everyone in the general aviation community serve as the eyes and ears for law enforcement, watching suspicious activity and persons."
Berry said the FBI notice was sent to law enforcement officials late last week. "There's a lot of information that continues to come in from a variety of different sources, and we inform law enforcement or update them, in this case, of any additional information that might be useful in their efforts," he said.
The government has issued a number of alerts about possible threats in the past week, including warnings about possible terrorist activity directed at rail lines, nuclear plants and New York landmarks.
----
Agent's Role in Inquiries Is Questioned
By NEIL A. LEWIS
New York Times
May 26, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/politics/26FBI.html
WASHINGTON, May 25 - A bipartisan group of senators has demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation explain why a senior agent who had access to two important strands of counterterrorism information never put the information together in a way that might have helped thwart the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to the three senators, a warning last summer from a Phoenix F.B.I. agent about terrorists using American flight schools was sent to the same unit of the bureau that was dealing with the Minnesota field office and its suspicions about Zacarias Moussaoui, a flight student there who officials now say was supposed to be the 20th hijacker.
The senators, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont; Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa; and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, raised questions about the bureau's performance in a letter sent on Friday to the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III.
The senators, who released a copy of the letter to news organizations, asked Mr. Mueller to explain how the head of the bureau's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, David Frasca, dealt with the information from Minnesota and Phoenix.
"Please explain his role and the role of the R.F.U. in evaluating the requests from the Minneapolis field office in the Moussaoui case," the senators wrote. "What connection, if any, he or others drew between the two ongoing investigations; and whether he or others brought such a connection to the attention of higher level F.B.I. officials."
Mr. Grassley, in separate comments, was more blunt. He castigated Mr. Mueller for refusing to release to the Senate Judiciary Committee a letter that Coleen Rowley, a senior F.B.I. agent in the Minneapolis office, wrote to him on Tuesday asserting that officials at bureau headquarters stymied the Moussaoui investigation.
"This letter has me very alarmed about the nation's security," Mr. Grassley said today. "If F.B.I. headquarters is still handling terrorism information like it handled the Moussaoui case, we're in grave danger."
Mr. Grassley added: "This was worse than dropping the ball. This was bureaucrats at headquarters actively interfering with an investigation that had a terrorist in hand."
Steven Berry, a supervisory agent at F.B.I. headquarters, said today that officials had no comment on the senators' letter or on Mr. Frasca's role.
Mr. Grassley, a persistent critic of the bureau, also said: "Director Mueller can label this letter classified, and the F.B.I. can circle the wagons, but a cover-up is not going to work. This letter documents exactly what headquarters knew and when, and how midlevel officials sabotaged the Moussaoui case before the attacks."
The letter from the senators and the harsh comments from Mr. Grassley indicate a new level of Congressional anger at the bureau for its handling of intelligence issues relating to the Sept. 11 attacks.
David Carle, a spokesman for Mr. Leahy, said the senators believed that "understanding Mr. Frasca's role may be a key to understanding how these and other clues were handled." The senators' letter also urged Mr. Mueller to see that no steps were taken against Ms. Rowley in retaliation for her own letter.
Government officials said today that Kenneth Williams, the Phoenix F.B.I. agent who had warned about the flight schools in a July 10 memorandum, had sent the memorandum directly to the attention of Mr. Frasca. Mr. Frasca was also the liaison in Washington for the Minnesota field office's requests about Mr. Moussaoui.
The officials said it was unclear whether Mr. Frasca saw the Williams memorandum before Sept. 11.
--------
Lawmaker to Probe Moussaoui Warrant
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top congressman said Sunday he will examine whether concern the FBI would appear to be using ``racial profiling'' led it to remove key details from a search warrant request whose rejection kept the FBI from learning more about a terrorism suspect before Sept. 11.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss also said he doesn't think the FBI is capable at this point of the intelligence work needed to combat domestic terrorism and needs to reorganize. Goss's comments came as the Senate's leader disclosed that President Bush asked him not to seek an outside commission to investigate pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures.
Goss, whose committee has an investigation under way, said on CBS' ``Face the Nation'' that the handling of the Minneapolis FBI office's application for a warrant to search terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui's computer troubled him.
``Because that basically is hampering an investigative tool which we need very badly right now,'' said Goss, R-Fla.
The Minneapolis office, after arresting Moussaoui at a Minnesota flight school last August, was concerned that he was seeking to hurt Americans and wanted to gather more information.
Goss, whose committee is joining with its Senate counterpart to investigate what the government knew and did to fight terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, referred to a letter Minneapolis FBI counsel Coleen Rowley wrote May 21 to FBI Director Robert Mueller about the Moussaoui case.
The letter alleged that terrorism supervisors at FBI headquarters rewrote the Minnesota office's warrant applications and affidavit and removed key information about Moussaoui before sending them to a legal office that then rejected the paperwork as insufficient.
Rowley wrote that some of the revisions ``downplayed'' the significance of intelligence linking Moussaoui to Islamic extremists, and blamed the changes on a flawed communication process.
Goss said problems with the warrant application worried him most, adding that if the letter is accurate, ``that people were reluctant -- there was a culture in Washington that said, `No, we don't want to rock the boat. We want to -- we're too worried about profiling, those kind of things.' We've got to know about that and figure out as a society how we are going to react.''
Asked if he meant one reason the FBI may have rejected a warrant request was concern about racial profiling, Goss replied: ``I don't know the answer to that. But I'm surely going to ask the question, because it has been suggested.''
The FBI declined to comment.
Also Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle continued to press for an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures leading up to the September attacks.
Daschle, D-S.D., said Bush asked him on Jan. 28 not to seek an outside commission. He said previously that Vice President Dick Cheney made a similar request Jan. 24.
``They were concerned about the diversion of resources,'' Daschle said on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' adding that the request was repeated on other dates.
Bush and Cheney said last week that Congress' intelligence committees -- which can keep secret the classified information supplied by the administration -- are the proper panels for an investigation.
Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice reinforced that position Sunday, saying the administration worries ``about anything that would take place outside of the intelligence committees.''
Ongoing FBI investigations shouldn't be jeopardized by information ``spread to the first pages of the newspapers,'' Rice said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
The first House-Senate intelligence committee hearing into the attacks will take place June 4. It will be closed to the public because classified information will be discussed.
FBI Director Mueller, meanwhile, is preparing to announce an overhaul of the agency to better fight terrorism. He plans to create a new team in Washington to centralize terrorism fighting and ensure all intelligence is evaluated thoroughly, officials have said.
Goss, speaking earlier on Fox, said he thinks the FBI is currently incapable of doing the intelligence work needed to fight domestic terrorism.
``I think they've got to go through a big learning curve, a lot of readjustment,'' Goss said.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said Sunday that more than two dozen agency analysts and at least one senior manager from its Directorate of Intelligence will assist Mueller's reorganization.
In addition, CIA analysts will be sent to several major U.S. cities to review FBI terrorism cases and examine information in the larger context of international terrorism, Harlow said.
``The FBI's focus in the past has been on fighting crime. Analysts at the CIA have probably got a broader experience in dealing with international terrorism,'' he said.
--------
Pessimism Lingers With Pittsburgh Cops
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Policing-Polices.html
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Federal monitoring has improved the city's police department and protected minorities from abuse, but many officers dislike the oversight and many blacks remain suspicious of police, according to a study requested by the Justice Department.
The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and the Justice Department agreed to the oversight and several changes after dozens of residents alleged civil rights abuses by officers.
The consent decree has led to ``many positive changes in Pittsburgh policing,'' according to the preliminary report by the New York-based Vera Institute of Justice, which was hired by the Justice Department to study the changes.
The department reached the agreement to avoid a possible federal takeover. It introduced a computerized system to track officers' behavior; required officers to document traffic stops and the race of the people pulled over; and required annual training in cultural diversity, integrity and ethics.
The report found that disciplinary reports against officers have dropped since 1997, citizen complaints against police have remained steady, and that an early warning system to spot problem officers seems to be working.
It said, however, that more must be done to educate officers, many of whom are skeptical about the reforms, and that it was ``clear that African-Americans were consistently less optimistic about policing under the consent decree than whites.''
``The fact that negative perceptions of the police ... persist in a significant segment of the community makes it that much harder for the bureau to fulfill its mission,'' the report says.
The report also highlighted a problem cited by civil rights activists and a court-appointed auditor -- a backlog at the city's Office of Municipal Investigations, which handles citizen complaints against police. The office had a backlog of 194 cases as of two weeks ago.
The report, which is being circulated among city and police officials, the Justice Department and civil rights activists, does not make any recommendation on whether the city should be released from the agreement. It also offers no suggestions on whether changes should be made in other troubled departments.
``We're not trying to tell anybody what to do,'' Robert C. Harris, the report's lead researcher, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The agreement stemmed from a 1996 class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that accused the city, its highest officials and dozens of officers of condoning a pervasive pattern of abuse.
On the Net:
Pittsburgh Police Bureau: http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/police
ACLU Pittsburgh chapter: http://www.pgh.aclu.org
-------- terrorism
Signature of a Suicide Bomb
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8287-2002May25?language=printer
NAIL IN BRAIN. NAIL IN HEART. Such labels affixed to x-rays in hospital emergency rooms have become almost routine in Israel. They describe victims of Palestinian suicide bombers, who strapped themselves with homemade bombs made of high explosives and packed with the staples of the building trade -- nuts, bolts and nails.
There were three such bombings in the past week, starting with the one last Sunday at a vegetable market in the coastal city of Netanya, which killed three people and injured dozens, including the 31-year-old man pictured here.
He arrived at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikva, near Tel Aviv, with nearly 15 nails and metal fragments embedded in his body. The upper nail in this view had entered his left cheek and penetrated facial bone. The lowerone was endangering the main blood vessels to and from his brain, said Michael Stein, a surgeon and director of trauma at Rabin. Those nails, and six to eight others, were removed. As is typical with such cases, much of the shrapnel remains in his body, because removing it is thought to be potentially more harmful than leaving it.
The patient does not remember much about the blast, Stein said. But this much is clear: The bomber was to his left.
The victim arrived in Petach Tikva ("the entrance of hope" in Hebrew) with shrapnel penetrations along the left side of his body, second- and first-degree burns on the left side of his face and chest, on his left hand and left leg, Stein said. His injuries required five types of surgery. He regained consciousness and was weaned from a ventilator late last week and now faces several months of intensive rehabilitation.
This pattern of injury -- extensive internal trauma caused by as many as 20 nails ("after about 15, they are usually dead," Stein said), has become increasingly common since the latest intifada began 20 months ago. "Patients arrive with 10 or more small holes, but they look okay. The scope of their injuries is only revealed by x-ray and CT scan," said Stein. "Big nails leave very small holes -- innocent-looking holes." He recalled one particularly gruesome case involving a man with a small cut just above his ear, who arrived at the emergency room alert and talking. "We did a CT scan. We were stunned to see a nut in his brain. He didn't even know he had it."
It is a pattern observed at other hospitals in Israel. "For two to three months" the bombers "were using nails, then they added screws, then pellets. Each carries damage," said Irith Hadas-Halpern, chief of radiology at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
Ironically, the hardware may play a useful role in tracing the bomber. "Each bolt or nail carries a 'signature' which is different from [those] manufactured by another brand name," said one defense analyst. That signature can lead to the producer and from there to the retail outlet, "which in turn can, but not always, be useful in identifying who is behind an attack."
-- Kathleen Cahill for Outlook
--------
FBI Warns About Small Planes
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Aircraft-Warning.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has issued a fresh warning that terrorists may be interested in using small planes to carry out suicide attacks.
FBI supervisory special agent Steven Berry said Saturday the agency had issued an ``intelligence update'' to law enforcement regarding small planes but he declined to be more specific.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association said on its Web site the alert was issued because the FBI ``has received information indicating that terrorists may still be interested in using small general aviation aircraft for suicide attacks in the United States.''
``Pilots are strongly encouraged to remain alert for suspicious activities anytime they are flying, or at an airport just before or after a flight,'' the association said. ``Individuals observing anything suspicious should report it to the local FBI or law enforcement officials.''
Andy Cebula, the association's senior vice president for government and technical affairs, said that ``while the alert is not specific, it is important that everyone in the general aviation community serve as the eyes and ears for law enforcement, watching suspicious activity and persons.''
Berry said the FBI notice was sent to law enforcement officials late in the week. ``There's a lot of information that continues to come in from a variety of different sources, and we inform law enforcement or update them, in this case, of any additional information that might be useful in their efforts,'' he said.
The government has issued a number of alerts about possible threats in the past week, including warnings about possible terrorist activity directed at rail lines, nuclear plants and New York landmarks.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- genetics
As Congress Stalls, States Pursue Cloning Debate
New York Times
May 26, 2002
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/politics/26CLON.html
WASHINGTON, May 25 - After nearly a year of emotional arguments in Congress - but no new federal laws - the national debate over the future of human cloning has shifted to the states. Six states have already banned cloning in one form or another, and this year alone 38 anticloning measures were introduced in 22 states.
The resulting patchwork of laws, people on all sides of the issue say, complicates a nationwide picture already clouded by scientific and ethical questions over whether and how to restrict cloning or to ban it altogether.
Like their counterparts here, state legislators say they are deeply concerned about the prospect of cloned babies. They are also deeply divided over the ethics of cloning human embryos for research, which proponents say holds vast promise for treating diseases, and which detractors say raises the specter of "embryo farms."
At the same time, they say they are frustrated with Congress, and hopeful that their legislative actions might ultimately force Washington to follow suit.
"State-by-state legislation is something that I believe we need to do to make a statement," said Jim Reynolds, a Republican state legislator in Oklahoma who this year tried to persuade his colleagues to ban all cloning experiments. "It may, in some small way, put the emphasis on this issue, to get the federal government to finally do something."
Last July, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would ban human cloning for reproduction or research, and President Bush has urged the Senate to do the same. But the Senate is torn between a far-reaching cloning ban, sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, and an alternative measure that would prohibit only reproductive cloning.
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, who supports the alternative, initially promised Mr. Brownback a vote by February or March, then set a deadline of Memorial Day. Now, Mr. Daschle says, the vote will take place in June. Mr. Brownback, irritated, is threatening to attach his bill as an amendment to other legislation to force a vote on it.
Cloning opponents around the country are irritated as well. "The Senate is dragging its feet," said John Redwine, a doctor and Republican state senator from Sioux City who was the chief sponsor of an anti-cloning bill in Iowa.
Dr. Redwine was so committed to his legislation that he turned down a coveted invitation to the White House last month, when Mr. Bush gathered cloning opponents to rally support for a Congressional ban.
Although he is running for Congress and would have relished an opportunity to meet the president, Dr. Redwine said he was too busy to attend because he was shepherding his bill on the floor of the Iowa Senate, which was set to adjourn the next day. "I really had only one shot at this bill," Dr. Redwine said. "I knew there was no way I could go to the White House."
The bill passed, and now cloning experiments are a felony in Iowa, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Other efforts have met with varying degrees of success. Legislation that would have banned cloning for any reason was defeated this year in Kentucky and Florida and killed in New Hampshire and Oklahoma before it came to a vote.
Besides Iowa, only Michigan has outlawed cloning for research and reproduction. Missouri prohibits state financing for experiments intended to clone babies. In California, a commission has recommended that the state's reproductive cloning ban, which expires at the end of this year, be extended and that research cloning be regulated.
Louisiana, Rhode Island and Virginia also prohibit reproductive cloning. But Virginia's law is unclear. It permits "technologies to clone molecules, including DNA, cells or tissues," but makes no mention of embryos. The National Conference of State Legislatures says Virginia bans only reproductive cloning, but some cloning opponents construe the law as a ban on research cloning.
Since 1997, when scientists announced the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, the specter of cloned babies - infants that are, in essence, genetic carbon copies of adults - has loomed large in the public psyche and in the minds of lawmakers. That year, California became the first state to enact cloning legislation. The law banned reproductive cloning and established the commission to make recommendations about how to proceed when the law expires.
"It was very much a bipartisan bill," said Francis Pizzulli, a lawyer who is a member of the commission. "There was a lot of concern about the impact on the children to be."
Today, there is widespread agreement that cloning for reproduction is unsafe and should be banned. Now, the debate has shifted away from the ethics of baby-making and toward the morality of cloning embryos for their cells and tissues, which might be used to treat disease. The controversy pits religious conservatives and abortion opponents, who regard embryos as nascent human life, against patients' groups, scientists and the biotechnology industry.
Last November, a Massachusetts biotechnology company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced that it was trying to clone human embryos for research. Around the country, lawmakers swung into action.
Among them was Kathleen Souza, a self-described "adamant right-to-lifer" and Republican state legislator from New Hampshire. She sought help from Americans United for Life, a public-interest law firm in Chicago devoted to restricting abortion rights, which drafted a bill similar to the one that passed the House of Representatives.
"In the absence of a prohibition, this is legal," Mrs. Souza said. "I would hate to see what has happened in Massachusetts come to New Hampshire. I felt this was an emergency."
Her fellow lawmakers disagreed, and Mrs. Souza's bill died, she said, at the hands of abortion rights advocates. "They said they were afraid that if we acknowledged an embryo was a human life, that somehow the pro-lifers could extend on this argument and impinge on a woman's right to choose," Mrs. Souza said.
Some critics warn that the state-by-state approach will create havens for cloning research unless Congress intervenes. But R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and medical ethics at the University of Wisconsin who favors research cloning, says there is nothing wrong with a patchwork.
"What it reflects is that the depth of the opposition varies considerably from place to place in the country, from region to region," Ms. Charo said.
In the states, as in Washington, emotions have run high in the cloning debate. In Kentucky, where legislation to ban research cloning was defeated this year, some legislators wept as they talked about friends and relatives who were desperate for cures. In Oklahoma, Mr. Reynolds speaks with passion about his 76-year-old father, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and dementia.
"This is not necessarily an easy issue for me," said Mr. Reynolds, 41, who runs a painting business. "My dad cannot reason or understand. But if I said, `Dad, we can create life to possibly find a cure to make you better, would you want me to do it?' I somehow believe in my heart that the answer would be no."
Anticloning measures are pending in several states, among them Massachusetts and New York, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Yet with states hard-pressed for revenues, the question of whether to restrict cloning has become a pocketbook issue as much as a religious one. The biotechnology industry argues that banning research cloning is bad for business.
"States are very interested in growing their biotechnology economic base" said Patrick Kelly, director of state government relations for BIO, the industry's trade group in Washington. Cloning legislation, he said, puts state officials in a bind. "Does the state do something against the industry's better judgment? Or does it say, well, industry is important to us?"
The pocketbook pitch did not prevail in Iowa, however, where Dr. Redwine initially proposed banning not only cloning but also stem cell research on embryos left over from in vitro fertilization treatments. Dr. Redwine said he saw the measure as a logical extension of his long history in "dealing with pro-life issues" in the Iowa Legislature.
The bill passed the Iowa Senate at first but was amended in the House. After several more amendments, the final bill banned reproductive and research cloning and remained silent on embryonic stem cell research.
For Mark Braun, who led the University of Iowa's lobbying effort against the measure, that was victory enough. "We are able to do research using embryonic stem cells, and we believe that research will be fruitful," he said. "The proponents had a conversation among themselves, about do we want the whole thing or nothing? And in the end, they decided to go for half a loaf."
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Study: Errors May Explain Clone Woes
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Cow-Clone.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Researchers working with clones of a Holstein cow say genetic programming errors may explain why so many cloned animals of all types die, either as fetuses or newborns.
In cloning, the DNA of an adult animal is inserted into a donor egg emptied of its own DNA. For that cell to develop, genes that may have been turned off in the adult animal that was being cloned must be turned on again to guide the egg to form a new, genetically identical individual.
In females, the embryo receives two X chromosomes, each containing several hundred genes. In natural reproduction, the genes on the two X's are active in female embryos; one of the X's is later inactivated to match the male complement of one X and one Y chromosome.
However, female clones receive an active X and an already inactive X; the latter, and all its genes, must be reprogrammed and then, later in development, inactivated again.
Scientists at the University of Connecticut studying how the normal patterns of X chromosome inactivation are erased and then re-established during cloning found abnormalities in nine of 10 genes they examined on the X chromosome.
The scientists found the genes had been incompletely reprogrammed in five dead cow clones and one aborted fetus. Looking at four live clones, as well as control animals conceived naturally, the scientists found the same genes were normal.
``Our study demonstrates that in clones, even though they can develop to full term, many abnormalities in gene expression exist, which may be partially responsible for the developmental abnormalities frequently observed, including death,'' said Xiangzhong ``Jerry'' Yang, lead author of the study. Results appear online Sunday in the journal Nature Genetics.
Dr. Robert Lanza, medical director of Advanced Cell Technology and an expert in the cloning of cows, called the study ``solid'' and said that it helps explain the high death rate in cloning. More than 80 percent of clones die during pregnancy or shortly after birth.
``This work gives us a handle on what the problems might be so we can screen for them at the various steps,'' Lanza said.
Cloning is being eyed for dairy and beef cattle to reproduce the genetic traits that make those animals commercially valuable.
On the Net:
Nature Genetics: http://www.nature.com/ng/
-------- ACTIVISTS
Reservists Shun Duty in Territories
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-New-Refuseniks.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- When David Zonshein completed three weeks of army reserve duty at the beginning of the year, he didn't know he was about to launch a movement that would infuriate the military, reinvigorate the country's peace movement and cut him off from much of his own family.
All he knew was that as a decorated officer who was the grandson of Holocaust survivors, he could not serve another day in the Palestinian territories.
``As a Jew, I cannot do the kinds of things that I'm expected to do on reserve duty. Even if the whole world collapses around me, I will never bust into a Palestinian home again and interrogate and humiliate a father in front of his children,'' Zonshein said in an interview with The Associated Press.
So when the 29-year-old software engineer finished his reserve duty in the Gaza Strip in January, he called his commanders to say he wouldn't be back. Then, he and a friend published an anonymous letter on the Internet vowing never to be part of an occupation.
``We were so angry, so traumatized by what we had seen in Gaza that we decided to write the letter and agreed that if we got 10 more officers to join us, then we'd sign our full names.''
``A friend told us it would never happen but I knew that if someone like me could feel this way, then there must be hundreds more.''
He was right.
Within a week, they got 50 responses from officers and ``Courage to Refuse'' was born. They published a letter in the country's most prestigious newspaper and two weeks later, their numbers reached 200.
That was three and a half months ago. Today, they are a group of 460 Israeli men, mostly officers, from different backgrounds who formulated a common opposition to Israel's presence in the territories -- home to some 3 million Palestinians and more than 200,000 Jewish settlers.
It has earned them praise, criticism and a new nickname -- ``refuseniks'' -- the word once used to described Russian Jews who fought the Soviet system and were denied permission to emigrate.
But in a society where the vast majority of Israeli men and women participate in a mandatory draft after high school, and many serve about a month of reserve duty each year until their 40s, the movement has sparked more outcry than applause.
Many Israelis view them as a threat to morale at a time when the army is fighting its biggest battle in decades -- against militants that have carried out scores of attacks on Israelis. The army said it would jail refusers, and in the last four months, 80 have served time in a military prison.
About 200 reserve officers who are serving published a counter letter criticizing the ``dangerous and undemocratic initiative of refusing to serve.''
Nahum Barnea, a liberal columnist for the Yediot Ahronot daily, agreed. He warned that ``such actions poison the army internally ... and abandon it to those with a light trigger finger.''
But to the Israeli peace movement, the reservists have revitalized their cause.
``Our camp collapsed because it became so identified with the peace process which was disgraced,'' said Didi Remez, spokesman for Peace Now. ``We needed time to regroup and rebuild and the reservists gave us the push we needed.''
But there have been personal costs as well.
``Many of my relatives are religious and live in settlements in the West Bank and Gaza,'' said Zonshein, his commanding voice turning softer. ``They took this very hard and won't speak to me anymore.''
Shawn Lacob's family in Israel is the kibbutz, or communal farm, he calls home.
Normally, such communal farm are a bastion of liberalism, but the community was divided when Lacob, who moved to Israel 11 years ago from Toronto, announced in March that he would go to jail before serving in the territories.
The decision came just as another member of Kibbutz Sura had been wounded while serving in the reserves in Jenin -- scene of some of the fiercest fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.
``It became the only topic of conversation,'' recalled Lacob, a trim, 32-year-old who works as a youth counselor on the kibbutz. ``One father didn't want me working in education any more but I promised not to talk to the kids about it.''
He spent 31 days in military jail because he refused to serve three weeks in the West Bank. When he got out, he initially avoided the man wounded in Jenin. ``Now we smile at each other in the dining room but I haven't worked up the guts to talk to him about it all.''
``Courage to Refuse'' is not the first such group that has sprung up during an Israeli-Arab war. Peace Now was originally formed by Israelis who opposed the army's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Very few of those attached to the groups are conscientious objectors in the classical sense, because they are willing to serve inside Israel proper.
``I serve 40 days every year and I'm willing to serve 80 anywhere that I'm needed for Israel's defense, but never again in the territories,'' Zonshein said.
He and others had been reluctant to talk to reporters at first, but growing support from civilians has emboldened them. Not only are they giving interviews, some are participating in speaking engagements and fund-raisers at universities and synagogues across the United States.
Amit Moshiach, whose name literally means 'Friend of the Messiah,'' had also served in the territories, attached to an artillery unit he had served with during his three years of compulsory military duty.
``I've done my share of aiding this occupation. I enlisted in 1990 and have done reserve duty nine times in artillery. I always felt that as long as there was a process, a serious intent to solve the situation in a just way, someone had to maintain the situation until it was brought to an end. But it seems now like there's no intention.''
On the Net:
The Reservists: www.seruv.org.il
The Israeli army: www.idf.il
----
Australia remembers "stolen" aboriginal children
Sunday May 26, 2002
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-107065.html
MELBOURNE - Australia needed to do more for aboriginal people who were taken from their families as children and eventually sent overseas with adopted parents, an activist said on Sunday at an event marking national "Sorry Day".
Walks, concerts and barbecues were among the events held across Australia for "Sorry Day" which remembers the thousands of children who were removed from their families under a former Federal Government policy to assimilate them into white society.
Activist Michelle Buchanan said the number of aboriginal children who ended up leaving Australia with adopted families was not known, but the incidents were under-recognised.
"Some have already passed on and are being left in limbo, being denied their cultural rights to be buried in their own country," she said.
Musician Kutcha Edwards, who was taken from his parents, said the impact of the so-called "Stolen Generation" was widely felt.
"This has not only affected us as stolen generation people, it has affected our whole family structure, he said. "It has festered like a cancerous growth through our whole community."
A 1997 Australian Human Rights Commission report said the policy from the 1880s to the 1960s was a form of "genocide" that could be linked to the family breakdown, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and mental anguish which plague Aboriginal communities.
Australia's 400,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are the most disadvantaged group in the continent of 20 million people.
Prime Minister John Howard has repeatedly rejected calls for the Federal Government to apologize for the past events.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, and patron of the National Journey of Healing committee said on Sunday Australia could not allow the disillusion, despair and anger in many Aboriginal communities to continue.
"If we let this situation fester, sooner or later that anger will spill out beyond the Aboriginal community, and we will all pay a heavy price," he said.
"Think how much destruction can be caused by one angry person with a match on any hot, windy summer day."
Fraser said he believed an apology would take place with a change of government.
"The next government of whatever political persuasion it may be will apologise," he said.
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Thousands Paris Protest Bush in Paris
May 26, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-France-Bush-Protests.html
PARIS (AP) -- Several thousand people marched through central Paris on Sunday to protest President Bush's two-day visit to France and denounce American domestic and foreign policy.
Marchers shouted ``Bush, you are the terrorist'' as they walked from the landmark Place de la Republique to the Bastille, where they burned American flags.
Some 4,500 people attended the march, LCI television reported.
Hours before, several dozen death penalty opponents gathered near a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Paris to denounce Bush's support for capital punishment.
The statue is located near a bridge were death-penalty opponents hung 152 cardboard figures that dangled from string to denote each person executed in Texas during Bush's nearly six years there as governor.
Michel Taube, head of France's ``Together Against the Death Penalty'' Association, said the grim display was a message to ``tell the United States to abolish the death penalty, as European countries have done.''
Leftist and extreme left organizations, ecologists and pro-Palestinian groups were involved in Sunday's demonstration in Paris, where Bush met with French President Jacques Chirac at the presidential palace.
At a press conference afterward, Chirac dismissed the protests against Bush as ``marginal'' and said they did not represent a widespread feeling of antipathy toward the United States or its president.
``Relations between Europe and the United States are not only a very old, not only essential to the world equilibrium, but I would say, in reality, becoming more and more important,'' he said.
Another march took place in Caen in the Normandy region, where Bush will travel on Monday to honor the thousands of U.S. soldiers who died there during World War II. About 1,000 people attended.
French farmer Jose Bove, who shot to fame as an anti-globalization activist after wrecking a McDonald's restaurant in southern France to show his opposition to fast food, accused Bush of pursuing a policy that led to U.S. domination of the world.
Several protesters hoisted a large picture of a pretzel, with a sign that said ``Watch out, Bush!'' The president choked on a pretzel earlier this year while watching football, lost consciousness for a few seconds and fell and hurt his head.
Others taking part in protests include Attac, a Paris-based anti-globalization organization that helped organize mass protests at the Genoa G-8 meeting in July 2001; and environmental groups, which have sharply criticized Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.
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