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NUCLEAR
U.S., NATO Discuss Nuclear Threats
Bush Intervenes in Effort to Stop a Kashmir War
NATO Discusses Mass Destruction Weapons
House Rejects Vote on ABM Treaty
Russia to Start Ratification Process
NRC assessing US nuclear plants' airstrike risk
US Senate panel approves Yucca nuclear waste site
Residents near NY nuke plant to get iodide pills
South Carolina has had enough of being the nation's dumping ground
Radioactive Waste Goes Under Tents
Bush Environmental Plans Challenged
Bush to Seek Cabinet-Level Domestic Security Office
Who Pays for the New Security Dept.?
MILITARY
Training an Afghan Army That Can Shoot Straight
Defense chiefs eye ancient tome for advantages in war
Iraq Is Said to Step Up Attacks on Allied Jets
Rumsfeld seeks alliance against Saddam
UN Wants Decisive Talks with Iraq on Arms Inspectors
Israelis storm Arafat compound
A Defiant Arafat Emerges From Compound After Israeli Attack
NATO Considers Changes to Confront Terrorism
NATO Pledges Muscle, Not Yet Cash, for New Threats
Pakistan Refuses Offer for Joint Patrols
Russia Holds Anti - Terror Exercise
UN Warns of Rollback in Liberties After Sept. 11
POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI Chief: 9/11 Surveillance Taxing Bureau
F.B.I. Chief Tells Congress His Agency Needs More Resources
Bush to Announce Restructuring of Homeland Security
Policy targets Middle Easterners
Fla. Police May Be Given New Powers
Guantanamo Detainees Innocence Cited
Mueller Outlines Origin, Funding of Sept. 11 Plot
Rumsfeld: West Must Act Vs. Terror
Landscape Plan for Pennsylvania Ave
ENERGY AND OTHER
Australia joins ethanol rush with new plant
Wind power set for greater Australian role
German carmakers plan joint hydrogen car tests
Questions Raised Over Energy Dept. Official's Industry Ties
ACTIVISTS
Senator Tired of Capitol Hill Celebs
-------- NUCLEAR
[Bear in mind that a hefty percentage NATO countries possess or host nuclear weapons. et]
U.S., NATO Discuss Nuclear Threats
By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Thursday, June 6, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4645-2002Jun6?language=printer
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The United States and its NATO allies agreed Thursday that links between international terrorists and nations that illicitly develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons pose an urgent threat, especially to civilians, a senior U.S. official said.
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said NATO defense ministers agreed to put new emphasis on improving their ability to detect, prevent and respond to attacks by weapons of mass destruction - particularly biological, nuclear and radiological.
The agreement was part of a broader discussion, led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, of ways the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can modernize its command structure and focus member countries' spending on high-priority defense items as the alliance prepares to add new members.
The U.S. official said the ministers discussed a concern that is at the top of Rumsfeld's list of priorities - the nexus between terrorism and nations like Iraq that could provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Other countries mentioned in this context were Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Cuba, the official said.
There was no discussion of whether to undertake a pre-emptive attack on Iraq or other countries, the official said.
On Wednesday, Rumsfeld and his British counterpart singled out Iraq as a growing threat to the West.
"We know that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq has had a sizable appetite for weapons of mass destruction," and it is finding ways to acquire their ingredients, Rumsfeld said Wednesday.
"We know the borders into that country are quite porous," he added, allowing Iraq to import technologies useful for both civilian and military industries "as well as illicit materials that are helpful in their programs for weapons of mass destruction."
"There is not a doubt in the world that with every month that goes by, their programs mature," he said in London before flying to Brussels for meetings Thursday and Friday with NATO allies.
Iraq denies it possesses or is developing weapons of mass destruction, but it has refused to allow the international inspections that it accepted as a condition of ending the 1991 Gulf War.
Rumsfeld would not discuss the possibility of U.S. military action to topple Saddam, saying that was a matter for President Bush to decide. He spoke at a joint news conference with British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon after meetings to discuss Iraq and other issues.
The two defense chiefs flew together to Brussels, where Iraq is expected to be a topic of discussion in NATO meetings Thursday, including the first-ever session of the NATO-Russia Council. Rumsfeld also was holding a one-on-one session with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov.
Rumsfeld and Hoon both expressed their governments' hope for a lowering of tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan. Rumsfeld's stop in London was the first on a 10-day journey that is scheduled to take him to the Indian and Pakistani capitals next week.
For months the Bush administration has been publicly making the case for strong action - possibly by military means - against Iraq, but allied nations have been slow to offer support.
In Washington on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said his fellow Democrats expressed support for a push to topple Saddam. "The question is when and how and under what circumstances," Daschle told reporters.
Hoon said the Iraqi military threat has increased in recent weeks. Asked in a later interview to elaborate, Hoon said Iraq's air defenses are more aggressively trying to shoot down the U.S. and British pilots who regularly fly combat air patrols over northern and southern Iraq.
He was alluding to the fact that U.S. and British pilots have reported a series of attacks in recent week by Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles. The allied planes have responded by bombing various elements of Iraq's integrated air defense system.
Since the start of U.S. and British enforcement of the "no fly" zones more than a decade ago, Iraq has considered them a violation of its sovereignty and has vowed to shoot down pilots.
Hoon said that immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, there was a marked decline in Iraqi targeting of allied pilots enforcing the "no fly" zones south and north of Baghdad.
"We judged that the regime in Iraq seemed to have got the message that military action would follow if they were not very careful," Hoon said in an interview with reporters accompanying him and Rumsfeld aboard an Air Force jet en route from London to Brussels.
The recent Iraqi aggressiveness would suggest a new, more worrisome Iraqi attitude, Hoon said.
"Clearly they are feeling a little more confident than they have in the recent past," he said.
-------- india / pakistan
Bush Intervenes in Effort to Stop a Kashmir War
New York Times
June 6, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER with CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/international/asia/06PREX.html
WASHINGTON, June 5 - President Bush directly intervened today in the effort to keep India and Pakistan from going to war, calling the leaders of the nuclear-armed rivals and urging them to listen to new proposals that two of his envoys will be delivering in the next few days.
Administration officials would not discuss those ideas in detail, but Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said they involved a series of steps based on an American assessment that each side "may well be looking for ways to tamp things down rather than see things escalate."
Officials said the calls were intended to pave the way for Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who is expected to meet President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad on Thursday, and then proceed to India for talks with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr. Rumsfeld will follow several days later.
In a call to General Musharraf at 8 a.m. in Washington, Mr. Bush used what one senior White House official called "very firm language" to demand that the Pakistani leader immediately stop infiltrations by Islamic militants across the border into India.
Nearly five hours later he called Mr. Vajpayee, and the back-to-back conversations suddenly made Mr. Bush a central if reluctant player in the dispute - exactly the situation he now finds himself in over the Middle East. As in that conflict, Mr. Bush is looking to use whatever leverage he has, without putting Washington in the position of proposing a territorial solution.
The phone calls today came as Mr. Vajpayee repeated a tough line that no progress toward scaling back tensions could be made until Pakistan not only put an end to infiltrations but also dismantled what he said were training camps for "over 3,000 terrorists."
"Pakistan claims infiltration has stopped," Mr. Vajpayee said at a news conference before returning home from Almaty, Kazakhstan, where he and General Musharraf attended a summit meeting on regional security.
"But we want the terrorist camps across the border to be closed down, too," he said. "After these steps are taken and verification of these actions are carried out, we can think of further steps which could lead towards a de-escalation."
Mr. Vajpayee's statements indicated that India was not willing to engage in a process, as some Western diplomats had hoped, in which Pakistan would first stop the infiltration, then wait for a reciprocal gesture from India - perhaps, moving some forces away from the border where the two nations have massed a million soldiers.
Instead, Mr. Vajpayee's remarks suggested that Pakistan would both have to stop the infiltrations and dismantle what India has called "the infrastructure of terrorism" before India would take concrete steps to reduce tensions.
The phrase appeared deliberately borrowed from Mr. Bush's own words about Al Qaeda's operations, and has been echoed already by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel in portraying his own struggle with the Palestinians as part of the campaign against terrorism.
In a carefully worded statement issued this afternoon, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, appeared to side with Mr. Vajpayee, at least as far as insisting that the first steps must be taken by General Musharraf.
"The president reiterated to President Musharraf that the United States expects Pakistan to live up to the commitment Pakistan has made to end all support for terrorism," Mr. Fleischer said.
While Mr. Bush did not say so explicitly, that meant he was insisting that General Musharraf crack down on elements within his own government that have supported terrorist activity, a major test of the Pakistani leader's authority.
"The president emphasized to Prime Minister Vajpayee the need for India to respond with de-escalatory steps," Mr. Fleischer quickly added.
He described the administration's objectives in the most modest of terms. "In a tense situation," he said, "lack of war is the goal."
Still, even as the exodus of Americans from India continued after warnings to leave by the State Department, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today he thought the situation was "marginally better."
"I'm hearing different kinds of rhetoric in the last day or so," he said. Secretary Powell insisted that the caution that Americans should avoid India, and leave if currently visiting or residing there, "didn't reflect necessarily any further deterioration; it's just that we wanted to encourage people to defer their travel to the region for now and to consider coming home under our voluntary authorized departure rules."
Mr. Rumsfeld is now scheduled to visit India and Pakistan in the middle of next week, and he was asked whether tensions between the two nuclear powers warranted a speedier arrival. He said he would visit the two nations "when the time is right."
Mr. Bush apparently described, in sketchy terms, some American ideas for defusing the tension during his phone calls today. But two senior administration officials said that so far there had been no formal proposals by the United States for international monitoring of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir.
"It may be on the plate when Armitage arrives," one official said. But the immediate strategy, the official added, was to keep both sides talking to someone - President Bush, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, or their envoys - each day.
"The betting is that as long as we keep a steady parade of dignitaries coming through to talk peace, neither side will launch something," the senior official said. "But it's only a bet."
The standoff between India and Pakistan began in December after five heavily armed men attacked the Indian Parliament, and India begain building up its forces along the border. Pakistan responded in kind.
Even as the forces remained on the border, tensions soared once again when three men killed 32 people in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on May 14. Most of the victims were wives and children of soldiers. India blamed both attacks on Pakistani-backed militants.
Senior Indian intelligence officials here in the capital say that it is still too early to know whether the general did, as he claims, order his army commanders to seal the Line of Control in Kashmir and stop infiltration. India's home minister, L. K. Advani, took the same position.
Indian military and intelligence officials in Kashmir itself say they believe, based on intercepts, that the order has been given not to cross into Indian territory and that infiltration is down - though they, too, say there is still no definitive evidence.
The uncertainty about levels of infiltration has translated into an uncertainty about whether India and Pakistan are headed for war or peace. Some days, officials say things that raise the hope the crisis may be defused.
Mr. Vajpayee did as much himself today, when he briefly lifted hopes for a reconciliation between India and Pakistan as he suggested that India would consider joint patrols with Pakistani troops to catch Islamic militants trying to sneak into Indian Kashmir.
But the hopes were short lived. The notion that India would agree to let Pakistani soldiers patrol its territory seemed incredible - and it was.
Indian officials quickly clarified that Mr. Vajpayee meant that such patrols could only start after the current crisis had past and India was convinced that Pakistan had stopped helping the militants cross the line that divides Kashmir between them.
"The positions remain the same," said P. K. Bandyopadhyay, a spokesman for India's Ministry of Defense. "To take it as a thaw in relations is premature."
-------- terrorism
NATO Discusses Mass Destruction Weapons
June 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nato-weapons.html
BRUSSELS - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told NATO defense ministers on Thursday the task of developing protections against biological, chemical and nuclear weapon threats was urgent.
He said the alliance must go on the offensive because a terror attack could occur at any time.
Rumsfeld said threats from terrorists, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and missiles had been consistently underestimated and that ``absolute proof cannot be precondition for action,'' according to an outline of his presentation.
The ministers discussed a range of countries Washington considers to be threats for what it says is their development of weapons of mass destruction. These include Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Libya and Syria, a senior U.S. defense official said.
President Bush several months ago branded Iran, Iraq and North Korea an axis of evil seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The United States added Cuba, Libya and Syria to the list last month.
Rumsfeld said proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was ``pervasive'' and it was inevitable terrorists would have access to such capabilities, according to the outline.
``Attack will happen. Just question of when, where, and how,'' the outline of Rumsfeld's presentation said. ``Could happen tomorrow, or years from now.''
He said NATO should pool its knowledge on terrorist and WMD threats and perhaps develop a threat assessment and launch a campaign to raise awareness of the threat.
A senior defense official said the ministers had had detailed discussions on the problem of weapons of mass destruction, links between such weapons and terrorism and the need to develop new ways to deal with problems and threats the alliance would face in the 21st century.
``There was broad agreement that (the) WMD threat is a threat to the alliance and especially to civilian populations, there was a focus of that in some of the communique language,'' the official said.
The official said participants at the meeting had endorsed specific ideas to improve defenses against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the ability to respond to them.
``The alliance in the past has frankly focused more on the chemical problem and less on radiological, nuclear and biological problems, so there is more of an emphasis now in this initiative on the biological side.'' the official said.
-------- treaties
House Rejects Vote on ABM Treaty
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-ABM-Treaty-Congress.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans rejected a Democratic lawmaker's attempt Thursday to force a vote on President Bush's decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, argued that Bush does not have the authority to unilaterally pull out of the treaty and should first seek the consent of Congress.
Bush, who advocates creation of a missile defense system, announced in December that the United States would withdraw from the treaty signed with the Soviet Union that bans national missile defenses. The U.S. withdrawal becomes official June 13, six months after the announcement.
Kucinich sought to bring a motion to the House floor under a procedure that would have required an immediate debate and vote on his resolution stating that the president should seek approval from Congress before withdrawing from the treaty.
But the presiding officer in the Republican-controlled House turned down his motion, and the House voted 254-169 to uphold the decision of the chair. Every Republican voted in favor of the decision.
Kucinich argued that a treaty becomes the law of the land and it is the constitutional function of Congress, not the president, to repeal laws. ``This is not about the ABM treaty. This is really about the role that this institution has in a democracy.''
Kucinich cited an 1835 House vote opposing an attempt by President Jackson to withdraw from a treaty with France.
But Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said there have been many treaties terminated without the consent of Congress. Congress has a role in implementing the rules of treaties, he said, but ``that is a far cry from saying we must approve the termination of a treaty.''
In 1979 the late Sen. Barry Goldwater and other lawmakers went to court to reverse President Carter's decision to pull out of a military treaty with Taiwan after the United States switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to the Chinese government in Beijing. The case went to the Supreme Court, which said it was a political issue and declined to rule on it.
Kucinich said he and other lawmakers have also left open the option of filing a lawsuit before the treaty withdrawal takes effect.
--------
Russia to Start Ratification Process
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian lawmakers may start debating a landmark nuclear arms treaty as early as next week, just weeks after it was signed by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior Russian legislator said Thursday.
The treaty, signed by Bush and Putin on May 23 during Bush's trip to Russia, calls for the United States and Russia to slash their deployed strategic nuclear arsenals over the next decade to 1,700-2,200 warheads each, down from about 6,000 each now.
The lower house of parliament is expected to consider a draft of a document outlining members' general position on the treaty on June 14, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the State Duma's international affairs committee, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Putin has yet to formally submit the treaty for ratification, Rogozin said. Russian lawmakers have predicted the final vote on the treaty will be held in the fall. It is widely expected to win approval.
Rogozin, who has praised the treaty, said the document to be debated next week would focus on the benefits the pact offers Russia.
The U.S. Senate has been less enthusiastic. Bush summoned lawmakers Wednesday to press for Senate approval this year of the treaty, but the senators expressed concern that Russia doesn't have the money to safely store deactivated warheads.
U.S. lawmakers also complained that the treaty does not provide verification measures essential for tracking Russian arsenals.
Russian officials, however, point out that it was U.S. officials who insisted on a pared-down treaty without verification mechanisms. Russia also opposed the U.S. demand that the countries be allowed to store decommissioned warheads instead of destroying them.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NRC assessing US nuclear plants' airstrike risk
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS USA:
June 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16285/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, under pressure from lawmakers to do more to safeguard the nation's 103 nuclear power plants, said yesterday it was analyzing what devastation might occur if a fuel-laden commercial airliner crashed into a reactor.
The agency may also order nuclear power plants to conduct more frequent drills against potential sabotage or terrorist attacks, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
As a part of the agency's review of security measures since the deadly Sept. 11 hijack attacks, Meserve said the agency is conducting a "major engineering evaluation" of nuclear plant vulnerability to airplane strikes.
Some U.S. lawmakers and activist groups are concerned that a Sept. 11-type attack against a nuclear power plant would release deadly radioactive materials that could spread for miles.
"Civilian nuclear power plants are at the top of the list of targets," Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts testified, pointing to plant diagrams found in caves abandoned in Afghanistan by al Qaeda, the group Washington blames for the hijack attacks.
Meserve acknowledged that "no existing nuclear facilities were specifically designed to withstand a deliberate, high-velocity, direct impact of a large commercial airliner."
At the same time, the reinforced concrete containment structure around U.S. nuclear plant reactors are strong enough to turn away "tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, floods and earthquakes," he said.
As a part of its study, Meserve said the NRC may ask Sandia National Laboratories to create computer models detailing the destruction that could happen if a commercial airliner made a direct hit on a nuclear plant.
"We're evaluating (airplane strikes) ... for various types of plants and we may end up doing it for each plant," Meserve told reporters after the hearing.
In 1988, Sandia conducted a related test and slammed an F-4 Phantom fighter jet into a concrete block at 481 miles per hour (775 kph) to measure the force of the impact of the jet. The aircraft's fuel tanks were filled with water instead of flammable fuel.
The test showed the F-4 broke up and only penetrated several inches.
But the 1988 test was not designed to measure the strength of nuclear plant containment structures. "We don't make any claims as to having tested a containment structure," a Sandia spokesman said.
The Senate committee is considering Democratic-proposed legislation to federalize the privately employed security guards at plants.
The NRC and U.S. utilities oppose making nuclear plant security guards federal employees. They also object to proposals to station military anti-aircraft defenses around nuclear plants to shoot down attackers.
Such measures could "lead to significant collateral damage to plant workers and members of the public," Meserve warned, calling airport security measures the best way to guard against attack.
Republican committee members criticized the chairman, independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont, for holding an open hearing on nuclear plant security. They demanded that any future hearings on such a security-sensitive topic be held behind closed doors.
"It's safe to say that the people that want to hurt us are watching," said Robert Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, commenting on the hearing's live television coverage.
Jeffords countered that the public "has a right to know what's going on," and pointed out that he scheduled a closed-door nuclear security briefing last year.
Nuclear power plants provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.
-------- nevada
US Senate panel approves Yucca nuclear waste site
Story by Thomas Ferraro
REUTERS USA:
June 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16286/story.htm
WASHINGTON - A divided U.S. Senate Energy Committee set aside Nevada's objections yesterday and gave its blessing to President George W. Bush's decision to bury deadly nuclear waste from across the nation in the state's Yucca Mountain.
On a 13-10 vote, the panel sent a resolution to override Nevada's veto of the $58 billion project to the Democratic-led Senate for anticipated final congressional approval within the next two months.
"We will prevail," said Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska, the panel's ranking Republican and a chief proponent of plans to build the nation's first permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada, 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Las Vegas.
A similar resolution passed the Republican-led House of Representatives last month on a bipartisan vote of 306-117.
Congressional approval would clear the way for the U.S. Energy Department to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the project, scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 70,000 tonnes of radioactive material.
Nuclear power plants produce more than 20 percent of the country's energy and many waste storage tanks are nearly full. The government has faced lawsuits for failing to meet a 1998 deadline to open a permanent nuclear waste storage site.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham hailed the committee's action yesterday as a bipartisan step toward "enhancing our national security and environmental protection."
Abraham said it is now up to the full Senate to decide "whether to leave nuclear waste stranded at 131 sites in 39 states or allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make the independent determination that Yucca Mountain is suitable to serve as a geological repository."
In a setback for opponents yesterday, Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico joined two other Democrats - Bob Graham of Florida and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana - in voting to override Nevada's veto.
'IT ISN'T OVER YET'
One Republican, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, broke ranks and voted to sustain the veto.
"It's still an uphill battle, but it isn't over yet," said Tessa Hafen, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat leading the charge against the project.
"We actually did better than expected today," said Hafen, noting earlier predictions the committee would back the project by a wider margin.
"They didn't get the overwhelming victory they expected to buy," Hafen said, referring to the money the nuclear power industry has spent lobbying Capitol Hill.
Republicans said they figured Reid was able to use his personal power of persuasion to get a couple of other Democrats to side with him yesterday - at least in the committee.
In addition to Nevada, the project has been opposed by a number of environmental and public interest groups who agree with the state that it would be unsafe.
The Bush administration contends $4 billion in studies over the past two decades have shown Yucca Mountain to be a safe and sound site for a nuclear waste repository
In April, Nevada Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed Bush's decision to accept Abraham's recommendation to build the repository in Nevada. Guinn has also filed court challenges.
Bingaman, in voting to move ahead with the project, said: "Although the governor raised several serious questions about the geology of Yucca Mountain, the design of the repository, the credibility of DOE's (Energy Department's) computer models and the safety of waste shipments - those questions are best answered by the technical experts at NRC."
"Nothing in the record ... justifies our terminating the program and preventing DOE from applying to the NRC for a license," he said.
Under a 1982 federal law on nuclear waste disposal, a state governor may veto the president's plans to put a depository in his or her state. The veto can be overridden by Congress with a majority vote in each chamber.
-------- new york
Residents near NY nuke plant to get iodide pills
REUTERS USA:
June 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16290/story.htm
WHITE PLAINS, New York - Amid fears nuclear power plants could be the target of terror attacks, officials plan to provide residents near the Indian Point installation, just north of New York, with potassium iodide pills to protect against any release of radioactive gases.
West Chester County officials said that beginning on Saturday the pills will be distributed on the first three Saturdays in June at three local schools.
The distribution of the pills, which were provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and are known as KI, comes after federal warnings that nuclear power plants could be the targets of future attacks.
KI helps to prevent thyroid cancer in the event of a radiological emergency, officials said, by blocking the absorption of radioactive iodide, one of the gases that can be released in a nuclear accident.
The county has also stockpiled the KI pills and will distribute them to local schools on request. Forty-six pharmacies in the county have agreed to stock the pills, the Westchester County Health Department said.
-------- south carolina
South Carolina has had enough of being the nation's dumping ground
Thursday, June 06, 2002
By Jeffrey Collins,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/06/06062002/ap_47471.asp
NEW ELLENTON, South Carolina - In the early Cold War '50s, people around here welcomed the opening of "the bomb plant" along the Savannah River. In fact, South Carolinians for decades have embraced just about any industry that could bring jobs to the countryside.
But now that attitude is changing, as illustrated by South Carolina's plutonium standoff.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced plans last fall to ship weapons-grade plutonium from its Rocky Flats installation in Colorado to the Savannah River site, where it would be converted into nuclear reactor fuel over the next two decades in an operation that could create up to 800 jobs.
But Gov. Jim Hodges has said he does not trust the government to keep its word and fears the plutonium will be left at Savannah River permanently. He has vowed to do "whatever it takes" to prevent the radioactive material from being stored here - including lying down in the road to stop the plutonium-laden trucks. The Highway Patrol has conducted drills on how to block the shipments. And the governor is suing the Energy Department.
"Dumping this weapons-grade plutonium in our state turns us into a terrorist target. We cannot allow the federal government to paint a bull's-eye on South Carolina," Hodges, a Democrat up for re-election in November, said earlier this year.
The shipments were set to begin May 15 but were put on hold for a month to see how the lawsuit plays out. The case is set to be heard on June 13. The dispute is part of what some see as a turnaround in public opinion in South Carolina.
With its cheap labor and little concern about the environment, South Carolina has long been home to some of the nation's most dangerous substances. In addition to the Savannah River site, the state has a low-level nuclear waste dump in Barnwell.
But a hazardous waste landfill near Sumter and a medical waste incinerator in Hampton have been shut down in recent years by state officials, reflecting what some see as greater environmental awareness. "South Carolina has always tilted toward anything that would create jobs. But recently there has been a gradual awareness that some industry does more damage than good," said Jim Farmer, a history professor at the nearby University of South Carolina-Aiken.
Sporadic attacks on Hodges for putting Savannah River site jobs at risk with his stand against the plutonium have not caught on with the public. "People worry we'll lose the reasons why people come here: the beaches, the beautiful environment," said Democratic state Sen. Phil Leventis, a harsh critic of the Sumter-area landfill in his district.
The Savannah River site is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of the Augusta, Ga., area. It has 477,000 people and lies 170 miles (274 kilometers) east of Atlanta, a metropolitan area with a population of 4 million.
In 1950, the government bought up 300 square miles of land near Ellenton and over the next three years constructed the five Savannah River reactors that would be used to process plutonium for nuclear weapons. During the height of the Cold War, Savannah River employed 26,000 people.
-------- us nuc waste
Radioactive Waste Goes Under Tents
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Waste.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government spent $62 million on a building to store and treat low-level radioactive waste at a California nuclear weapons laboratory, then decided the structure wasn't secure enough.
So where is the waste kept now? Under tents.
Hundreds of bright yellow, 55-gallon drums are stacked under the tents outside the building at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, east of San Francisco.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the area's congresswoman, is incredulous.
``You're not trying to tell me that between the building and a tent, the tent wins?'' asked Tauscher, a Democrat. ``In a post-Sept. 11 environment, you've got to say to yourself, 'Let's find a way to get that stuff in the building.'''
The barrels hold liquid and solid hazardous wastes, as well as articles of clothing that became contaminated through exposure to highly radioactive materials, said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis.
The waste, said Davis, ``is stored safely and securely.''
Terrorists' use of airplanes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon have raised concerns about the ability of nuclear plants and storage facilities to survive similar attacks.
Highly radioactive materials -- spent fuel from nuclear reactors and other materials that emit dangerously high levels of radiation for thousands of years -- are stored in other buildings at Livermore, Energy Department officials said.
Low-level wastes, like those being kept outside under tents, typically decay in a matter of years.
The Livermore building has been substantially complete since last June, but Tauscher said the Energy Department has refused to let Livermore workers begin using it. Tauscher said since January she has been given different explanations for why the building remains unused.
Initially, she said she was told the building could not withstand a direct hit from an airplane.
Then Jessie Roberson, the assistant energy secretary for environmental management, wrote Tauscher in May that the construction plans did not sufficiently assess potential hazards and risks -- and what to do about problems that may arise.
A third explanation came from Davis, the Energy Department's chief spokesman in Washington, to whom calls to the laboratory were referred.
``The building is still under construction,'' Davis said. ``If you use the facility to store waste, you can't continue with the construction. We're not going to compromise safety and security just to get it operating quicker.''
Tauscher said no one, including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, told her construction was ongoing.
``We can't even get a straight answer out of them,'' said Tauscher, the top Democrat on a House Armed Services Committee panel that oversees the Energy Department's reorganization, focusing on nuclear weapons programs.
Under the department's latest plan for the low-level waste, barrels of it would be stored inside beginning in September. Treatment wouldn't begin until August of next year.
The Energy Department has been trying since the mid-1980s to build a new decontamination and treatment facility at Livermore for low-level waste, fighting off objections from area residents before finally obtaining money from Congress in the late 1990s.
Tauscher attributed the delay to bureaucratic intransigence and said the Energy Department's record on the issue undermines the public's confidence.
``How could they consider a building built to their own specifications to be inadequate?'' Tauscher asked. She has asked the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, to report on the situation.
On the Net:
Lawrence Livermore lab:
http://www.llnl.gov/
-------- us politics
Bush Environmental Plans Challenged
Bills Target Logging, Toxic Waste; President Wins Vote on Nuclear Waste Site
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 6, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2444-2002Jun5?language=printer
Lawmakers challenged President Bush on several environmental fronts yesterday in a bipartisan show of concern over his approach to logging, nuclear waste disposal and the cleanup of Superfund toxic waste sites.
The president prevailed in the day's action on one of the most hotly disputed issues -- the plan to build a centralized nuclear waste repository beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But the Senate majority leader has vowed to fight it on the Senate floor. Meanwhile, some Democrats say environmental issues may play well for their party's candidates in November.
"I think the whole Bush administration environmental record will be on trial this fall," said Jane Danowitz, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign and a Democratic activist.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended the administration's policies and said the Democrats were engaging in "the same old divisive rhetoric of the past that only serves to slow cooperative progress towards safeguarding our air, land and water and protecting the public health."
Yesterday, Reps. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) introduced legislation backed by 172 other House members that would put into law a Clinton administration rule barring logging and road construction in much of 58.5 million acres of untouched national forest land in 39 states. The timber industry is challenging the rule in court. And the Bush administration has ordered a forest-by-forest review with an eye toward making changes in response to complaints from local officials and commercial interests.
"In moving this bill forward, we are not just codifying an agency rule; we are enshrining in law the views and values of the American people," Boehlert said at a Capitol Hill news conference.
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) will jointly introduce legislation today to reauthorize an expired corporate tax that generated more than $1 billion a year to help clean up Superfund sites. The tax expired in 1995, and the Bush administration declined to seek its reauthorization. That prompted Senate Democrats to accuse the administration of letting corporate polluters off the hook financially while badly shortchanging the funding of new cleanup operations.
"Moving away from the 'polluter pays' concept is very unpopular," Boxer said. "And cutting cleanup in half is very unpopular."
Administration critics say polls suggest that most Americans are concerned about waste cleanup issues and protecting national forests and other natural resources. A recent Bloomberg poll of 1,200 adults found that 45 percent trusted congressional Democrats to do the most to protect the environment, while 26 percent named Bush and 14 percent chose congressional Republicans.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 13 to 10 yesterday to approve the president's plan to create the first centralized nuclear waste disposal facility in the Nevada desert. Three Democrats, including chairman Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), supported it and Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.) opposed it.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) have vowed a vigorous floor fight against the plan. They said there were many unanswered scientific questions about the project and cited the possible danger of transporting 77,000 tons of nuclear waste cross-country.
But Reid and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) acknowledged after the committee action that there is little chance of stopping the project if it comes up for a direct vote in the Senate. Reid and Ensign said they hope that many senators will adhere to a Senate tradition that frowns on a measure being forced to a vote over the majority leader's objection.
The House approved the project May 8. Under a 1982 nuclear waste law, any senator -- Republican or Democrat -- can now bring the matter up for fast-track consideration provided action is taken before July 25. Without further action, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project would stand.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called the Senate committee vote a bipartisan step toward "enhancing our national security and environmental protections."
--------
Bush to Seek Cabinet-Level Domestic Security Office
New York Times
June 6, 2002
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/politics/06CND-BUSH.html
WASHINGTON, June 6 - President Bush will tell the American people tonight that he wants to create a Cabinet-level domestic security office in what the White House says would be the biggest government reorganization in more than a half-century.
Mr. Bush will talk about his proposal in a television address beginning at 8 p.m. The White House has asked the networks to broadcast the speech.
"The purpose is to protect the homeland from terror," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman. "We can and will do more."
The president's speech, at least in part, appears intended to deflect some of the attention from the security hearings on Capitol Hill, where the administration has come under criticism from some members of Congress. The president will speak to the people barely an hour after the evening news programs carry reports about the Senate hearings into security breakdowns before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Word of Mr. Bush's television appearance was spreading even as the Senate Judiciary Committee was listening to F.B.I. Director Robert S. Mueller III and preparing to hear Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent and whistle-blower, about the Federal Bureau of Investigation's inability to anticipate the Sept. 11 attacks.
Thus, the president's announcement was immediately viewed as an attempt by Mr. Bush and his advisers to shift the emphasis, from what went wrong before the attacks to what the White House is doing to protect the people.
Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor, is the current director of homeland security. If Mr. Bush does not push for Mr. Ridge to head the new Cabinet-level entity it would be an unmistakable signal that the Pennsylvanian has fallen from favor and has little real power.
The White House spokesman responded somewhat obliquely when asked if Mr. Ridge would head the new agency. "Let me put it to you this way, Governor Ridge will be the one fighting for the creation of this department," Mr. Fleischer said. "Governor Ridge will be the voice and the face of the message for creating this department."
Some listeners interpreted Mr. Fleischer's remarks as a hint that Mr. Ridge was indeed the choice, and that Mr. Fleischer did not want to detract from the president's announcement by being explicit.
Mr. Fleischer said the proposal, if carried out, would amount to the biggest government restructuring since 1947, when the Central Intelligence Agency was created. The new department would be responsible for border security, intelligence and other functions that several federal agencies now supervise. It would not replace the F.B.I. and C.I.A. but supplement their efforts.
The approval of Congress would be necessary for creation of a Cabinet-level department. Mr. Bush was expected to ask for Congressional action this year.
Congress has actually been pressing Mr. Bush to elevate Mr. Ridge's office to Cabinet status so Mr. Ridge could be compelled to testify before Congress, something he does not have to do now as a presidential adviser.
Mr. Fleischer said the president's plan would not cost more money but would shift current operations within the government without enlarging the bureaucracy. But if a new department is indeed created without costing money and adding more people, it would be counter to Washington history.
Nor was it immediately clear whether creation of a new agency, as envisioned by Mr. Bush, would indeed amount to the biggest government restructuring since the post-World War II era. Several Cabinet departments (Housing and Urban Development, Education, Transportation, Energy) have been created in recent decades.
--------
Who Pays for the New Security Dept.?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 6, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Bush-Glance.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security, if approved by Congress, would draw from the budgets and jurisdictions of eight current Cabinet departments or Cabinet-level agencies, including:
--Justice Department: Attorney General John Ashcroft's agency would lose the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Office of Domestic Preparedness and the Domestic Emergency Support Team, as well as the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center. The plans were discussed among only the most senior officials, including Ashcroft, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and Ashcroft's chief of staff, David Ayres.
--Treasury Department: Secretary Paul O'Neill's agency would lose the Customs Service and the Secret Service. Officials said O'Neill was briefed on Bush's plan Wednesday and was supportive. The officials did not yet know how many workers would be affected.
--Transportation Department: Secretary Norman Mineta's agency would lose the Coast Guard and the fledgling Transportation Security Administration. The TSA is aiming to hire 67,000 workers, including more than 30,000 people to staff airport checkpoints plus air marshals, law enforcement officers, and workers to screen checked baggage for explosives.
Mineta was consulted in advance, said spokesman Chet Lunner. There are 36,000 people in the Coast Guard, which rescues boaters in addition to patrolling ports and offshore platforms and tracking smugglers and drugs.
--Health and Human Services Department: Secretary Tommy Thompson's agency will lose all workers doing bioterrorism research, preparation and response. That includes the Office of Public Health Preparedness, which Thompson created last year to consolidate bioterrorism work. It will also affect National Institutes of Health researchers working on vaccines for various deadly agents and epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who respond to public health emergencies such at last fall's anthrax attack. Thompson was told of the president's plans Wednesday, an HHS official said. The plan was to affect about 300 agency workers and $4 billion per year.
--Agriculture Department: Secretary Ann Veneman's agency will lose the Plant Health Inspection Service and the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
--Energy Department: Secretary Spence Abraham's agency will lose the nuclear incident response team and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., which researches detection devices and defenses against chemical, biological and radiological attacks.
--Commerce Department: Secretary Donald Evans' agency will lose the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office.
--Defense Department: Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's department will lose the National Communications Systems division.
--The General Services Administration: The GSA will lose the Federal Computer Incident Response Center and the Federal Protective Service.
--Interior Department: Secretary Gale Norton's agency, which protects parks, national landmarks and dozens of Western dams, does not yet know whether it will lose functions, a spokesman said. Norton has been involved in planning the new department.
--The Federal Emergency Management Agency, now an independent agency, would be folded into the new department's emergency response and preparedness division.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Training an Afghan Army That Can Shoot Straight
New York Times
June 6, 2002
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/international/asia/06AFGH.html
PUL-I-CHARKHI, Afghanistan - The Afghan Army recruits, some wearing combat boots, others in sneakers, took turns showing off their marksmanship on a dilapidated rifle range outside Kabul.
They were outfitted with new American-made uniforms and canteens labeled "U.S.," but their antiquated Soviet-era assault rifles appalled their American instructors.
Like so much in battered Afghanistan, they do not look like much. But young men like these may determine the future of this country and, especially, the duration of the American military deployment here. They are the first unit of a new 80,000-troop Afghan Army being trained by United States Special Forces soldiers.
No other aspect of the international effort to stabilize Afghanistan is likely to prove more important, Western diplomats said. A new, multiethnic army is expected to unify the country, defeat craven warlords and keep Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at bay. If it succeeds, American troops will someday be able to go home.
"This day is about you," Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the United States-led campaign in Afghanistan, told the recruits at a flag-raising ceremony here in May. "This is about your beginning. We recognize that you are special, because you represent the future of this country."
But training sessions here, and interviews with Afghan officers and recruits, showed that the effort was crippled by a lack of money and proper military equipment.
Also, while the force is somewhat diverse, most of the recruits sent here by the interim Afghan defense minister, Gen. Muhammad Fahim, are members of his own ethnic group - Tajiks.
As a result some Pashtuns, who are the country's largest ethnic group, are growing suspicious that General Fahim is turning the new army into a Tajik-dominated force. Tajiks make up roughly 30 percent of Afghanistan's population.
A colorless former chief of staff who rose to command the Northern Alliance when its legendary commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was assassinated last fall, General Fahim is becoming a lightning rod as the country prepares to hold a loya jirga, or grand council, to choose a new government.
Some Western diplomats and some Tajiks regard the general as a loose cannon since he opposed the deployment of international forces in Kabul, campaigned - unsuccessfully - for the creation of an enormous 200,000-soldier army and bestowed the title of field marshal on himself.
Two hundred American Special Forces soldiers have begun training about 500 Afghan soldiers and officers on this crumbling military base. Eight months ago, American bombers pulverized part of it.
Other paradoxes lurk amid the layers of history at the base. In the late 1980's Soviet advisers trained Afghan soldiers here. Two hundred rusting tanks show the scale of their effort. But the Afghan Army they trained quickly crumbled after Soviets withdrew.
"There's probably someone sitting in Russia who is saying, `Good luck,' " an American Special Forces soldier joked.
The commander of the Afghan soldiers being trained here was in charge of the last multiethnic unit formed in Kabul, in 1995. Made up of 100 men from the five main political parties, the unit dissolved within seven months. Soldiers obeyed the orders of their political party, not their commander.
"It's completely different," insisted Colonel Najibullah, the Afghan commander of the trainees here. "At that time everyone was a commander issuing the orders. Right now, we are under the command of the Americans. When I give an order people obey it."
Col. Kevin M. McDonnell, commander of the Special Forces trainers here, said the 10-week training was intended to create a cadre of Afghans who would run the training themselves by the end of next year.
Soldiers are drilled in physical fitness, marching, marksmanship and basic tactics, a regimen similar to American basic training. Officers are taught to support a military unit in the field and carry out a coordinated infantry attack.
Both groups receive classes in human rights and the laws of war. In a country riven by contentious warlords, American officers say they emphasize the importance of obeying civilian authority.
Special Forces instructors say the Afghans are better in some ways than soldiers they have trained in Africa and the Middle East. After 23 years of war, Afghans' familiarity with weapons is high, one instructor said. But few of them have had formal instruction on how to set the sights on their rifles correctly.
Instructors recognized another reason why some soldiers did not shoot straight: they could not see the targets. Americans hope to have an optometrist, rare in Afghanistan, outfit soldiers with glasses soon.
The Afghans' motivation is often higher than that of recruits from wealthy countries who think "they can hire people to defend them," one instructor said. But two decades of war have created other hurdles. Forty percent of the recruits are illiterate.
One American instructor said a class had stopped following his lecture when he described how to use gravity to help slow a wounded soldier's bleeding. Most of the Afghans had never heard the term gravity.
Afghan officers and recruits described both disappointing and promising signs about the army's future. All of them complained that the Defense Ministry had given them decrepit rifles and had not paid them their $40 monthly salary.
The equipment situation is so dire that the army of Romania is donating 1,000 Kalashnikov rifles for the fledgling Afghan force.
A senior Afghan official said General Fahim was under intense pressure to continue paying former units of the Northern Alliance, which led the victorious campaign against the Taliban that brought the current government to power, until they can be fully demobilized into civilian jobs.
"He has a problem, because he has to deal with the armed forces now, the commanders," the official said, adding that much of the foreign aid promised for demobilization and other projects was months late.
Some recruits also grumbled that they had been tricked or forced into going to Kabul by commanders in their home provinces. "They promised they would send us to some other countries for training and studying," said Amin, a 25-year-old recruit from Bamian in central Afghanistan.
But at the same time, from Colonel Najibullah on down, officers and soldiers from different ethnic backgrounds consistently described themselves as brothers who were committed to building a multiethnic army that would end years of conflict in this country.
Colonel Najibullah complained that a senior Defense Ministry official, Gen. Lutfullah Khan, had ordered him to put up a poster of the slain Northern Alliance commander, Mr. Massoud, in his office. The colonel said he had barred photos of different factions' military leaders in the barracks to preserve unity.
"There are many tribes in Afghanistan," he said, "and everyone will want to put up pictures of their own leaders.
But neither Afghan nor American officials responded to requests for figures detailing the new unit's ethnic makeup. Colonel Najibullah said his battalion had 605 soldiers. But American officials said they were training roughly 500 men.
The colonel, who is a Tajik himself, at first said the unit had 90 Pashtuns, 90 Uzbeks, 60 Tajiks, 60 Hazara and roughly 270 soldiers described as members of smaller minority groups. But in response to questions, the colonel disclosed that most of the 270 members of those groups were, in fact, Tajiks, making them more than 50 percent of the unit.
A spokesman for the Defense Ministry insisted that General Fahim and his staff were committed to the creation of a truly multiethnic army.
As Afghans prepare to choose a new government, Western diplomats say General Fahim is likely to retain his position. He holds a trump card. Northern Alliance units still deployed around Kabul are unlikely to obey orders from a defense minister from another ethnic group, particularly a Pashtun, the diplomats said. Proposals to dilute General Fahim's power are circulating in Kabul, but it is not known which, if any, will be adopted by the loya jirga.
Colonel Najibullah, the training commander, said he had seen factions try to control a new national army with disastrous results in the past. The colonel said he would not tolerate that now. This army is Afghanistan's last chance, he warned.
"I gave my resignation letter before," he said. "If they continue to make these problems, I will resign."
-------- india
Defense chiefs eye ancient tome for advantages in war
By Shaikh Azizur Rahman
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020606-73711642.htm
BOMBAY - India's Defense Ministry is looking for a battlefield edge against arch enemy Pakistan by studying a 2,325-year-old book on warfare.
The book of Arthashastra, written by the ancient military strategist Kautilya, offers tips on how to feed soldiers and drive the enemy insane. It contains a prescription that purports to endow soldiers with night vision.
India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has joined the scientists of University of Pune and National Institute of Virology in western India to study the ancient text.
Defense Minister George Fernandes recently told Parliament that he was satisfied with progress of the project, named "Scientific Investigation of Warfare Practices in Arthashastra."
"The literature survey has been completed and now other practical experiments are being conducted by the experts," Mr. Fernandes said.
According to a Pune University report, the book says:
•Soldiers fed with a single meal of special herbs, milk and clarified butter can keep going without any other food for an entire month.
•Shoes made of camel skin smeared with the serum of the flesh of owl and vulture can help soldiers walk some hundreds of miles without feeling tired.
•A powder made from fireflies and the eyes of wild boar and some other animals could endow soldiers with night vision.
Kautilya, who was a prime minister in the court of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya in 4th century B.C. was well known as a military strategist.
In his book, he said that a ruler could use any means to attain his goal and his actions required no moral sanction.
"Our focus at present is on how humans can control hunger for longer durations and walk for longer period without experiencing fatigue," said V.S. Ghole, head of the environmental engineering department of Pune University. He is leading the project.
"Once we have made some headway, we will go into researching Kautilya's notes on night vision and other fields," Mr. Ghole said.
Soumya Ghosh, another scientist involved with the project said: "In high altitude border areas like Kashmir, our soldiers need to walk long [distances] daily. Our military establishment is quite hopeful that Kautilya's special diet will be of big help to keep their backpacks lighter on vigilance assignment and also during an emergency like war."
Another member of the team, S.V. Bhavasar, a space scientist who has spent many years researching the Arthashastra, said: "All of us are excited about the possibilities and do not for a moment think that the idea is crazy. Decoding ancient texts is not an easy task but we are very hopeful of success."
Mr. Bhavasar said the team also has plans to research ancient Hindu texts.
These include manuscripts that "claim to provide secrets of manufacturing planes which cannot be destroyed by any external force, could be motionless in the sky and even invisible to enemy planes," he said.
-------- iraq
Iraq Is Said to Step Up Attacks on Allied Jets
New York Times
June 6, 2002
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/international/middleeast/06IRAQ.html
BRUSSELS, June 5 - After a significant lull in Iraq's efforts to shoot down American and British warplanes patrolling two no-flight zones over its territory after Sept. 11, those efforts have increased again to worrisome levels in recent weeks, the British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, said today.
"Immediately after September the 11th, there was quite a fall-off in the incidents over the no-fly zones," said Mr. Hoon, who spoke to reporters aboard Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's plane on the way to a NATO defense ministers' meeting here.
"Indeed, we judged that the regime in Iraq seemed to have got the message, that military action would follow if they were not very, very careful," Mr. Hoon said.
But he added that recently "there has been an increase in the number of attacks on aircraft" flown by British and American pilots over the northern and southern flight-denial zones set up a decade ago by the United Nations.
Mr. Hoon declined to say whether the attempts to shoot down allied warplanes were being matched by any other kind of war footing in Iraq, in particular in its program to acquire and field weapons of mass destruction.
"But clearly, they are feeling a little more confident than they have in the recent past, and that's obviously a concern for our people, for the very important job that they're doing," he said, referring to the British and American pilots.
After a day of talks in London, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Hoon emphasized that no decisions had been made on military action to topple President Saddam Hussein. But Mr. Hoon said, "We both believe that Iraq would be a much better place" if Mr. Hussein were no longer ruling.
Mr. Hoon emphasized the importance of allowing United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq with the freedom to roam the nation.
"Unless and until we have U.N.-mandated inspectors on the ground, freely going where they want to in Iraq, we can only be deeply suspicious as to what is happening there," he said. "We obviously have to take appropriate action to deal with that threat."
Mr. Rumsfeld, however, has expressed skepticism about the ability of international arms monitors to puncture the disinformation, decoys and denials from Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Rumsfeld said today that "the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq has had a sizable appetite for weapons of mass destruction. Every month that goes by, their programs mature." That, he said, "is not something that is a happy prospect for that region."
Mr. Rumsfeld was in London and then Brussels today, opening a 10-day tour that will also take him to Estonia, for a meeting with Nordic and Baltic defense ministers, and to three Persian Gulf states before visits to India and Pakistan.
--------
Rumsfeld seeks alliance against Saddam
June 6, 2002
By Michael Standaert
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020606-77930621.htm
BRUSSELS - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld faces a tough sell at NATO meetings today and tomorrow, where he will try to convince the European allies of the need for tough action against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The meetings mark the first leg of a trip that will also take the secretary to the Gulf states of Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait for talks on the Middle East, and then to South Asia to try to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Rumsfeld made clear during a stopover in London yesterday that the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction will be high on his agenda for the Brussels meetings.
"We know that the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq has had a sizable appetite for weapons of mass destruction," he said after meeting British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon. "Every month that goes by, their programs mature. That is not something that is a happy prospect for that region."
However, most European leaders - and their publics - remain skeptical about the need for military action to overthrow Saddam. That attitude was not much changed by President Bush's rallying cries during his whirlwind visit to the region late last month.
Many object that the United States offers military action but has provided few ideas about what will happen once Saddam's regime is toppled.
They are also worried about estimates attributed to Gen. Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, that the operation would require at least 200,000 U.S. troops and could result in heavy casualties.
"We need an idea of White House thinking which goes beyond slogans and the talk of smart bombs and invasion," said British commentator Henry Porter recently in the Sunday Observer.
"The White House has offered no post-Saddam vision for a country which contains 9 percent of the world's known oil reserves and ... some of the most abused and terrorized people on earth."
U.S. officials reiterate that they are not at the stage where they are soliciting allies for possible operations against Iraq, nor have they drawn a war plan for a possible invasion.
Along with the threat from weapons of mass destruction, defense officials say, Mr. Rumsfeld will "stress the need ... to restructure NATO's command system and adapt it to new threats."
A London Sunday Telegraph article, published in The Washington Times on Monday, said the United States is drafting plans for a number of small, highly mobile military units that could be deployed quickly to trouble spots.
The creation of such units, with U.S. troops participating, could undermine planning for a Rapid Reaction Force under the auspices of the European Union.
The Brussels meetings will include the first meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, whose formation was concluded during Mr. Bush's visit last month.
Other issues, such as further NATO expansion, the upgrading of forces in candidate countries, and increased burden-sharing between the United States and its NATO allies, will be discussed at a larger NATO summit in the Czech Republic in November.
Over the weekend, Mr. Rumsfeld will visit the German air base and German crews that manned AWACS aircraft to protect the skies over the United States after the September 11 terror attacks.
--------
UN Wants Decisive Talks with Iraq on Arms Inspectors
June 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-un-talks.html
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Security Council members and the chief U.N. arms inspector expressed hope on Thursday that forthcoming talks between the United Nations and Iraq would be ``decisive'' and lead to the return of weapons experts after a more than three-year hiatus.
But Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, told reporters there were no positive signs from Iraq yet on the inspectors but ``we hope that it will come.''
The arms experts, key to suspending 12-year-old U.N. sanctions against Iraq, left shortly before the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in December 1998, and have not been allowed to return since. The third round of high-level talks since March between the United Nations and Iraq will be in Vienna on July 3-4.
``I think there was positive support by the council for the continuation (of the talks), and at the same time a hope that this third round will be a decisive one and will lead to an invitation for inspections,'' Blix said.
``There is a wish that one would come to results and that is shared all around in the council,'' Blix said after briefing the council on how he was organizing teams to check if Baghdad still had weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. officials have said that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan would be reluctant to continue discussions with a delegation led by Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri if there were no positive signs in Vienna.
``It is expected that during or after the meeting there would be an announcement on letting the inspectors in,'' said one American. ``Otherwise why continue the talks?''
But British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock said there was no talk about stopping discussions after Vienna, although it was time for the issue to be resolved.
``It's time to get some results from those talks. We don't want them to stretch out. But no one is going to say this is the last round,'' he said.
Blix, who had attended the previous meetings in New York, said Iraq had posed questions on the inspections, which showed an interest in how they would be conducted.
``At the same time I must be frank and say that they have not yet made any invitation for inspections,'' he said.
IRAQ VOICES CONDITIONS
Iraqi U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri, in a recent interview, said Baghdad was ready to accept the return of weapons inspectors ``in principle'' -- albeit with conditions.
One of them was the route toward lifting sanctions, another is the Bush administration's threats to topple President Saddam Hussein and a third is the no-flight zones the United States and Britain have imposed over parts of Iraq.
``We have received some answers but not for the most important questions: the horizon for the lifting of sanctions, secondly, the American and the British threat on Iraq and thirdly, the no-fly zones,'' Aldouri said.
Annan is not authorized by the Security Council to negotiate on these issues.
Nevertheless, Blix is getting ready for a possible return of the inspectors, with his teams having studied satellite photos over the past year.
He told the council he needed more permanent staff at U.N. headquarters as some of them would have to go to Iraq. He has some 230 inspectors on standby in various parts of the world, most but not all of whom would still be available.
``We feel that the discussions have gone so far that it is immediate and prudent for us to increase our readiness and that we do by taking on some more permanent staff here in New York,'' Blix said. ``Once we go to Iraq we will have to send some people from New York there."
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis storm Arafat compound
June 6, 2002
By Danielle Haas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020606-2239795.htm
JERUSALEM - Israeli tanks firing heavy machine guns broke into the compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah early today, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
The sources said the shooting broke out after around 50 Israeli army tanks, backed by armored vehicles and six giant bulldozers, rolled into the Palestinian-ruled town.
Mr. Arafat was reported inside the compound but was unharmed.
The army attack came after a massive bomb yesterday killed at least 17 Israelis, 13 of them soldiers, unleashing a new cycle of violence in the Middle East.
The powerful explosion from a Palestinian suicide bomber ripped through a packed bus in northern Israel. Dozens were wounded in the attack, a major setback to Middle East peace moves.
The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the car bombing.
In Washington, the White House condemned the suicide bombing and said it wanted results in battling terrorism, regardless of who held the Palestinian leadership.
"Chairman Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian Authority, but there are many other people who play constructive roles," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said before the Israeli attack. "What the president is interested in is results from whatever corner they may come from."
"If that's Chairman Arafat, that's fine with the president; if it's others, that's fine with the president," Mr. Fleischer said.
Mr. Fleischer had no immediate comment on the Israeli attack, but the White House reiterated President Bush's skepticism about Mr. Arafat's trustworthiness in battling terrorism.
"In the president's eyes, Yasser Arafat has never played a role of someone who could be trusted or who was effective," Mr. Fleischer said.
One White House official said on the condition of anonymity that the United States was neither asked for nor did it grant a "green light" for the Israeli action in Ramallah. The administration has said that Israel does not seek U.S. approval for such attacks.
Mr. Bush waved off reporters' questions last night at a White House barbecue and did not mention the situation to gathered lawmakers.
One of Mr. Arafat's personal bodyguards was killed in the Israeli attack, the Palestinian Red Cross said.
A spokesman said Tarek Al Khandkhaji, 20, was killed when Israeli tanks fired dozens of shells at Mr. Arafat's base.
Mussa Abu Hmeid, head of the West Bank hospital system, said six Palestinians were wounded.
Hours after the Palestinian suicide attack, the Israelis delivered their first response. Their tanks rolled into the West Bank city of Jenin in what the army said was a routine patrol carried out almost daily in Palestinian cities and towns to seize suspected militants.
The Israeli security Cabinet held an emergency session to weigh more broadly its responses to the explosion. It was not clear how long the raid into Jenin would last. Jenin is the Palestinian-ruled city that was home to the bomber, Ramzi Samudi. Israel has long viewed Jenin as a hotbed of terrorism.
The morning rush-hour blast at Megiddo Junction, a mainly Israeli Arab area close to the northern West Bank and an Israeli jail housing hundreds of Palestinians, turned bus No. 830 into a fireball as it headed from the coastal city of Tel Aviv to Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee.
Witnesses said a car driven by the bomber exploded beside the bus, sending smoke and fire coursing through both vehicles.
"There was a big blast and plumes of smoke. One soldier emerged - with a broken leg," eyewitness David Bador told Israel's Channel Two television. The driver, who had survived three previous attacks, escaped with cuts and bruises.
The charred bodies of a couple locked in an embrace could be seen hanging from a rear window, together with three bodies clad in olive-green army uniforms lying in front of the wreckage.
At least 45 persons were wounded, 10 of them seriously, in what military sources said was the 10th car-bomb attack in 20 months of the current Palestinian uprising.
In a departure from recent suicide attacks, the assailant used a moving car capable of carrying large amounts of explosives, said Reuven Paz, an Israeli counterterrorism specialist. Until now, suicide attacks largely have involved individuals on foot who were wearing less-powerful explosives belts.
Israeli officials said Palestinian militant groups are trying to carry out a so-called mega-attack that would cause many casualties.
Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey said yesterday that in the March 27 Park Hotel bombing that killed 29 Israelis, militants planned to release lethal cyanide gas but were held back by technical difficulties. He said no cyanide was found at the scene: "We are talking about an intention."
The blast in the coastal town of Netanya triggered Israel's six-week military offensive against Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
Last month, militants detonated a bomb under a tank truck as it was refueling at Israel's largest fuel depot in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
An initial police investigation indicated the bomber had carried out yesterday's attack, the most severe leveled against Israelis since the end of Israel's military offensive in the West Bank last month, by driving a stolen Renault van from the West Bank into Israel.
Because of the bombing, which coincided with the 35th anniversary of the Six Day War of 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delayed his scheduled departure for the United States, canceling weekend meetings in New York. He now is to leave Saturday night for talks in Washington on Monday with Mr. Bush, Mr. Sharon's office said in a statement.
Mr. Sharon is eager to emphasize to Washington, while it is formulating its policy toward Mr. Arafat, his opposition to negotiating with the Palestinian leader or holding any political talks before a cease-fire.
While Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority issued a statement condemning yesterday's suicide attack, Israeli and Palestinian officials pointed familiar fingers of blame at one another. Abdel Rahman, an aide to Mr. Arafat, attributed the bombing to "continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas."
David Baker, an official in Mr. Sharon's office, rejected that claim and said it was clear that the Palestinians "have no intention of giving up their campaign [of violence]."
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
A Defiant Arafat Emerges From Compound After Israeli Attack
New York Times
June 6, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/international/middleeast/06CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, June 6 - A defiant Yasir Arafat emerged from his smashed headquarters today after Israeli ground forces pulled back from an attack before dawn today on his compound in Ramallah, surrounding his offices with tanks.
The troops were sent in after 17 Israelis, including 13 soldiers, were killed in a Palestinian suicide attack on a bus in northern Israel.
Flashing V-for-victory signs as he stepped out of his smashed headquarters this morning, Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, accused Israel of "fascism" and told reporters, "No one can defeat the Palestinian people."
This afternoon, Israeli forces entered the Ramallah industrial suburb of Beituniya and surrounded a large apartment complex. A suspected Palestinian militant was arrested. During the raid, troops came under fire and responded with machine-gun fire from tanks and helicopters, The Associated Press reported.
As Israeli infantry advanced on the Arafat compound earlier, Palestinian officials reported heavy machine-gun fire and at least six Palestinian casualties, including a member of the security forces who was killed by a gunshot to the head.
After the suicide bombing, early Wednesday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's aides announced that he still planned to travel to Washington to meet on Monday with President Bush, but would delay his departure by a day, until Saturday. The raid on Mr. Arafat's headquarters threw into doubt the ability of President Bush's envoy, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to accomplish much on his mission.
Israeli officials said Mr. Arafat was not the target of the raid.
"Arafat is not the target," said Gideon Meir, a senior Foreign Ministry official. "What Israel is doing is the minimum that it can do as an act of self-defense after the recent terror attacks, especially yesterday's vicious terrorist attack, which was aimed to kill innocent Israelis."
The Israeli defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said today that the raid was "designed to focus responsibility on the behavior of the Palestinian Authority for terror in general and the current wave in particular against which the P.A. and its head do not enough to stop."
He added in a statement, "It is not possible to exercise restraint in face of these murderous attacks."
The Israeli military said in a statement that it acted amid "a wave of Palestinian terrorism sweeping the state of Israel," including the bus attack. The statement said Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority was "directly responsible for terrorism that originates in its territory."
Before the Israelis pulled back, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' chief negotiator, said he had spoken to Mr. Arafat by telephone. "President Arafat is a few meters away from the tanks," he said. "His life is in danger."
As the fighting broke out, muffled explosions could be heard in Jerusalem, more than five miles south. "There is heavy exchange of fire," said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information and culture.
A senior Bush administration official said the White House had "no advance warning" of the specific Israeli action, though other officials said Israeli officials had suggested a response was planned. American officials said that they knew little of the details of the Israeli operation and that the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was making calls to learn more.
In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, made a terse statement: "We're following the situation closely. We've been in touch with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and are getting regular updates from our representatives in the region."
Wednesday's suicide attack came on the 35th anniversary of the start of the 1967 war, which led to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it came a day after George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, met with Mr. Arafat in a bid to persuade him to reform his security agencies and crack down on violence.
The extremist group Islamic Jihad, an opponent of any peace treaty that preserves a Jewish state here, claimed responsibility for the bombing. Bent on continuing the conflict with Israel, Palestinian militants have repeatedly greeted high-level peace proposals by the Bush administration with bursts of violence.
At the White House, officials said Steve Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, had told President Bush about the Israeli action just before the president walked onto the South Lawn to greet members of Congress at the annual White House Congressional picnic.
Mr. Bush made no mention of the Israeli attack at the gathering. He thanked the lawmakers for their support in the battle against terrorism and shook a few hands.
Officials from President Bush on down have said repeatedly that they had received a pledge from Prime Minister Sharon not to try to kill or harm Mr. Arafat, even as they made clear their determination to restructure Palestinian institutions and work with other leaders as well.
Israel released Mr. Arafat from a monthlong siege on May 2, after the Bush administration brokered a compromise to take men sought by Israel from inside the compound and put them in a jail in Jericho, under the supervision of American and British wardens.
Mr. Sharon has hoped to exile Mr. Arafat, but his government did not support taking that step during the previous siege. Mr. Sharon has also felt his room to act was limited by a promise he made last year to President Bush not to harm the Palestinian. Israeli officials said he was honoring that pledge.
Hours after the bombing early Wednesday, Israeli tanks and helicopters once again raided Jenin, on the West Bank, just a few miles southeast of the site of the attack, in what the army called a routine action.
Mr. Sharon met with his top security advisers, and Israeli officials said that they were planning further retaliation.
Mr. Arafat's leadership group condemned the bombing in a statement and, in an unusual remark, said it had had no advance knowledge of the attack.
But Israel continued to hold Mr. Arafat personally responsible, demanding that he act immediately against Palestinian violence or else make room for a Palestinian leader who would do so.
The bus was packed with soldiers returning to duty. Parts of the bus and of its passengers were strewn across the road and into the surrounding brush as the bus careened into a ditch. The blaze blackened its skeletal remains, filling the air with a stench of burning flesh and rubber.
"The bodies we found were in very, very bad condition," said a volunteer gathering the remains and struggling to identify them. "You could not see a face."
One couple burned to death in an embrace, the Israeli Army Radio reported.
For Israel, the attack was more proof that Mr. Arafat was fomenting terrorism, not fighting it. Raanan Gissin, Mr. Sharon's spokesman, urged the United States and European nations to press Mr. Arafat to relinquish control of security and finances in the Palestinian Authority, which has limited authority to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
"If he wants to continue to function there, he has to get used to the fact that he is the president - O.K., he is the president of the Palestinian people - but actual power of the day-to-day government is in the hands of a prime minister," Mr. Gissin said. He called for a Palestinian government modeled on the interim government set up in Afghanistan after the recent war there.
He said that Mr. Sharon planned to raise these issues in his meeting with President Bush.
Palestinian officials say that Israel's demands for reform only hamper their own efforts for democracy and other change.
Wednesday's attack was similar to car bombings against Israeli forces in Lebanon by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and it represented a shift in Palestinian tactics. Previously, bombers have boarded buses and blown themselves up among the passengers.
But bus drivers have grown increasingly vigilant. An advertisement blown off the destroyed bus expressed thanks to bus drivers, along with security forces.
The bombing, which dented the pavement and hurled the remains of the bomber's car some 50 yards, took place directly in front of a prison where many accused Palestinian militants are held by Israel. Green sheet metal torn from the bus lodged in the barbed wire atop the prison's fence.
The conflict has mooted strategic differences among Palestinian factions, which have raged in the open in the past when Mr. Arafat moved to quell militants' actions. Some diplomats here believe Mr. Arafat is no longer strong enough politically to rein in violence without political gains to show for it.
Nabil Aburdeineh, a senior aide to Mr. Arafat, called for deeper American involvement and a timetable for achieving a Palestinian state.
"This is the climate that can stop the attacks," he said. He said he was not seeking to excuse the violence.
"If the Americans move away, things will deteriorate, or will explode," he warned.
In Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell condemned the bombing "in the strongest possible terms." But he continued to hold out hope that Mr. Arafat would prove willing and able to control the violence, calling on him to "show leadership by continuing to signal clearly to his people that terror and violence cannot help the Palestinians achieve their national aspirations."
However, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, and other senior administration officials also took pains to say that the United States was talking with other Palestinians, besides Mr. Arafat, calling on them and "for that matter, other Arabs, to take responsibility for stopping the violence," as one official put it.
Officials in Washington made it clear that the bombing would not sidetrack the administration's latest diplomatic push, which is now focused on a meeting this weekend between Mr. Bush and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at Camp David, followed by the meeting with Prime Minister Sharon on Monday.
After that, one senior official said, the administration knows the international community will be expecting it to sketch out its own views of how to proceed with more detailed plans for a peaceful settlement, including an international foreign ministers' conference, perhaps as soon as next month.
"How much we can say will depend on how much things have come together," the official said. "We're listening but we're also bouncing ideas off others, and we're hearing from them in more specific form than we have before and we're sort of into this real discussion phase of how we move forward."
A ceremony planned for Wednesday night in Israel to award medals of honor to soldiers who took part in the West Bank offensive earlier this spring was postponed.
After the bombing, the most hawkish members of Mr. Sharon's government again called for Israeli forces to fully reoccupy the West Bank.
Mr. Gissin noted that Mr. Sharon was building a 68-mile buffer zone - fences, ditches, patrols and electronic monitoring systems - near Jenin, Tulkarm and other cities. But Mr. Sharon has resisted building a fence along the entire boundary, as some members of his own government have demanded. Such a fence would yield a de facto border, right-wing politicians fear, and it would leave Israeli settlers on the wrong side.
The bombing took place in Megiddo, a strategic crossroads bloodied for 4,000 years by battles among Egyptians, Israelites, Greeks, Crusaders and others, gave rise to the concept of Armageddon, the final clash between good and evil, some archeologists say.
Mickey Harel, the driver of the bus, who escaped by jumping at a window, said he had three previous brushes with terrorist violence.
Mr. Harel said that many of his passengers prefer his bus, the 830, because it is an express and does not stop at Israeli Arab villages, as does another bus, the 823. The 830 was traveling from Tel Aviv to Tiberias when it was attacked just after 7 a.m.
"Don't you know you're not supposed to take the 830?" joked a soldier standing by the hospital bed in Afula of Liran Ben-Or, 20. Mr. Ben-Or's left eye was covered with a bandage, the left side of his face was pitted with cuts from flying glass, and blood smeared his throat.
Like some of his comrades, Mr. Ben-Or was sleeping, near the middle exit door, when the car exploded. "I was awakened by the force - the bus was already destroyed," he said. He said he managed to get outside, where he discovered he was bleeding. "The bus was completely in flames," he said.
Survivors and other witnesses described multiple small explosions after the initial blast, apparently caused by the soldiers' ammunition.
Another wounded soldier, Guy Pollack, said he woke to feel a wave of heat rolling over him, then was knocked unconscious. "When I woke up I was outside," he said. "They told me I flew outside from the force."
Earlier in the day, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, voiced disdain for Mr. Arafat and his pledges to curb terrorism.
"In the president's eyes, Yasir Arafat has never played a role of someone who could be trusted or who was effective," Mr. Fleischer said.
The remarks appeared to signal a willingness by the Bush administration to deal with other leaders yet to emerge from within the Palestinian ranks.
-------- nato
NATO Considers Changes to Confront Terrorism
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Defense.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European allies voiced support Thursday for plans to give NATO more flexible, rapid-reaction forces to project power to far-flung regions harboring terrorists.
They also said it was urgent to move against the possibility of extremists obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told fellow ministers the allies must not wait for ``absolute proof'' of an impending terrorist attack before acting to stop it. An outline of the main points of Rumsfeld's speech was provided to reporters, but his speech was not open to coverage.
He also told the ministers the ``real situation'' with terrorists and their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is ``worse than what (the) facts show.''
At a news conference after the meeting, Rumsfeld was equally blunt.
``It does not take a genius to figure out that global terrorist networks are going to have their hands on weapons of mass destruction in the period ahead. No one can say if it's a week, or a month or a year or two years,'' Rumsfeld said.
The French defense minister said new risks from terrorism mean NATO change was a necessity.
``Recent conflicts showed that our forces need to be more flexible, more mobile and we have to make them less vulnerable to chemical or biological attacks,'' said Michele Alliot-Marie.
``Awareness of the new risks that threaten us all must lead to a real will to push through the changes,'' she told reporters.
President Jacques Chirac has suggested France plans to increase its military firepower after years of declining defense spending. But in other European nations, notably Germany, increasing the military budget remains sensitive at a time of tight finances and impending elections.
The defense ministers may consider changes to NATO's high command structure, set up at the height of the Cold War and divided between the European headquarters based near Mons in southern Belgium and the Atlantic command in Norfolk, Va.
Opening the meeting, NATO Secretary General George Robertson said the alliance must commit more resources to adapting forces to the new threats since Sept. 11.
``The attack on the United States last September brought home to everybody that there is no relief in today's world from the obligations of defense or the need for military preparedness,'' Lord Robertson told the ministers.
Afterward, Rumsfeld led a discussion of ways the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can modernize its command structure and focus member countries' spending on high-priority defense items as the alliance prepares to add new members.
A senior U.S. official said the United States and its NATO allies agreed that links between international terrorists and nations that illicitly develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons pose an urgent threat, especially to civilians.
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said NATO defense ministers agreed to put new emphasis on improving their ability to detect, prevent and respond to attacks by weapons of mass destruction -- particularly biological, nuclear and radiological.
Later Thursday, the first ministerial meeting by the new NATO-Russia council launched last week will be held at a summit outside Rome.
The NATO ministers want to work out a series of cooperation projects on counterterrorism and other issues with their Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov. Rumsfeld also met one-on-one with Ivanov after the morning session.
Although soldiers from many European nations are now fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan, officials are increasingly worried that NATO risks being undermined by the widening gap between the U.S. military power and underfunded European forces.
They are working to halt that trend ahead of a NATO summit scheduled for Nov. 21-22 in the Czech capital where alliance leaders are expected to agree on a package of military reforms.
``NATO's Prague summit . . . must be a watershed in our efforts to ensure our forces are properly organized and equipped for their future missions,'' Robertson said.
NATO experts have indicated a shortfall of large transport planes to deploy troops and equipment quickly to distant combat zones; countermeasures against mass destruction weapons; secure communications and precision munitions.
NATO officials are also looking at how smaller allies can better contribute to the fight against terrorism through greater military specialization or pooling of resources.
They point to the role played by Norwegian mountain troops fighting in Afghanistan and Czech units specialized in defending against chemical or germ warfare as examples of how smaller allies can develop useful niche roles.
--------
NATO Pledges Muscle, Not Yet Cash, for New Threats
June 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nato.html
BRUSSELS - NATO defense ministers pledged on Thursday a radical transformation of their forces and command structures to meet new threats from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
But they stopped short of agreeing to raise defense spending.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson opened the meeting by urging ministers to spend more on their military forces to ensure the alliance remains relevant for new security challenges in a post-September 11 world.
``The attack on the United States last September brought home to everyone that there is no relief in today's world from the obligations of defense or the need for military preparedness,'' Robertson said.
A senior NATO official said there was consensus on the need for allies to acquire new, long-range capabilities to confront threats wherever they arose in the world, but no one promised to match the United States by hiking defense budgets significantly.
``No nation has actually pledged an increase in spending,'' the official said. ``But there was full recognition that the effort we are going to undertake will require more money.''
The yawning capability gap between the United States, set to spend about 3.4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense this year, and most of its European allies, who average 1.8 percent of GDP, has raised doubts about whether the alliance will ever again be used to conduct a war.
However, Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo said the new capabilities did not necessarily require higher defense spending because of possible synergies, pooling of resources and specialization by individual allies.
NEW EQUIPMENT
The ministers agreed to draw up in time for a November NATO summit in Prague a catalog of new equipment they would acquire with fixed dates for delivery.
Robertson said the Prague summit must be a watershed in efforts to ensure forces are properly organized and armed ``even if that means additional resources for defense and security.''
The top priorities -- more targeted than the ineffectual laundry list adopted in 1999 -- would focus on air and sealift, defenses against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, secure and inter-operable communications, air-to-air refueling, surveillance and precision-guided munitions.
Asked how far NATO was prepared to operate outside its Euro-Atlantic area under the new doctrine, the official said: ''As far as the threat comes from.''
The ministers also instructed NATO's military staff to conduct a fundamental review of a military command structure that has changed little since the end of the Cold War.
After the United States gave ministers a classified briefing on nuclear, biological and chemical arms threats, a senior U.S. official said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of ``a great urgency to this weapons of mass destruction problem.''
Rumsfeld attended the Brussels meeting on his way to try to head off war between India and Pakistan, but there was no indication that NATO ministers had discussed that crisis.
The 19-nation alliance was also due to hold its first ministerial meeting with Russia since it forged a new forum of equals for cooperation with its Cold War foe in Rome last week.
NATO-RUSSIA TIES WARMER
Relations between NATO and Moscow have warmed considerably since Russian President Vladimir Putin aligned his country behind the U.S.-led coalition against terror after September's hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington.
But Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov sounded a sour note ahead of the Brussels meeting on NATO's expansion plans behind the old Iron Curtain, plans Moscow insists are a ''mistake.''
``We will not bless the admission of new members with our presence in Prague,'' Ivanov said, referring to the Prague summit at which up to seven eastern European countries are expected to be invited to join the alliance.
Doubts about Washington's commitment to NATO surfaced after it sidelined the alliance and took its military response to September 11 to Afghanistan with just a sprinkling of help from selected European allies.
But Bush stressed the importance of NATO in his speech to the German Bundestag last month, and Rumsfeld made clear greater European defense efforts were key to preserving the alliance.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Refuses Offer for Joint Patrols
Vajpayee Again Urges End to Kashmir Raids
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 6, 2002; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2465-2002Jun5?language=printer
NEW DELHI, June 5 - Pakistan today dismissed an Indian proposal for joint military patrols to curb the flow of Islamic militants into the contested Kashmir region, as each side maneuvered for advantage before the arrival of high-level U.S. officials.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee suggested the patrols before departing today from Almaty, Kazakhstan, where he had attended a security conference with regional leaders, including Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Despite the efforts of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Vajpayee refused to meet with Musharraf during the session, saying there was no point in doing so until Pakistan halted incursions by Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, a divided region claimed by Pakistan and India.
The Bush administration has also pressured Pakistan to end the incursions; some U.S. officials had expressed hope that joint patrols might help ease the standoff between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, which have positioned 1 million troops on either side of their 1,800-mile border.
President Bush called Musharraf and Vajpayee today, urging them to take steps to lower tensions and pursue a diplomatic solution to their dispute.
In his conversation with Musharraf, Bush again said he expects the Pakistani leader to make good on his commitment to end the incursions by Islamic militants, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Bush later told Vajpayee that India would have to respond with "de-escalatory steps" of its own. Fleischer said this could include withdrawing troops from the border.
Pakistani officials said they are complying with the U.S. request to curb the incursions while continuing to support the cause of Kashmiri Muslims opposed to Indian rule. In a statement released in Islamabad, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry brushed off the Indian proposal for joint patrols as unworkable and unnecessary. "The proposal is not new," the statement said. "Given the state of Pakistan-India relations, mechanisms for joint patrolling are unlikely to work."
The statement reiterated Pakistan's long-standing willingness to accept "neutral" third-party monitoring of the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir into Indian- and Pakistani-controlled sectors. Indian officials reject that idea, contending that any steps toward "internationalizing" the conflict would encourage separatists in other parts of their country.
In Washington, U.S. officials said they were not especially upset by the Pakistani comments, saying that Islamabad could eventually soften its position. A State Department official said he was pleased that the sides were debating confidence-building measures at all.
"What's good about it is that the Indians at least are talking about mechanisms to reduce tension rather than decisive victories and things like that," said the State Department official, who asked that he not be named. "If Pakistan is going to want to see some give from the Indians, they're going to have to show some give themselves."
The diplomatic maneuvering came as each side sought to position itself for separate visits by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Armitage is scheduled to meet with Pakistani officials on Thursday before traveling to India; Rumsfeld arrives in the region next week at the end of a trip to Europe and the Middle East.
India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, have been bristling at one another since an attack in December by Islamic militants on the Indian Parliament. The confrontation escalated on May 14 when militants staged an attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir, in which 34 people, mostly women and children, were killed. Vajpayee responded to the second attack by threatening to launch a "decisive" battle against Pakistan, spurring ambiguous retaliatory threats from Islamabad that have raised fears of a nuclear exchange.
India's defense minister, George Fernandes, today told reporters in the southern city of Bangalore that there had been no "substantial or noticeable reduction in infiltration" along the Line of Control. Pakistan disputed that claim and said that only an outside party could render an impartial judgment. "We refuse to accept the Indian claim of being the accusers as well as the judges," Musharraf said in an interview with CNN. "If they are the accusers, let there be somebody else to act as the judge."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Musharraf's efforts did seem to be having some effect. "In the last couple of days, we have started to pick up some indication that would suggest that there is a little less activity going on across the Line of Control," he said in an interview with National Public Radio.
Concerned that U.S. citizens were not heeding a week-old advisory to leave India, the State Department today issued an even more ominously worded warning that "strongly urges" them to depart because of the danger of war.
The State Department also repeated an earlier warning strongly urging Americans to leave Pakistan.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia Holds Anti - Terror Exercise
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Anti-Terrorism-Exercise.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian authorities held a security exercise at a chemical weapons depot in central Russia to practice emergency procedures in case of a terrorist attack, officials said Thursday.
Police, security agents, weapons experts and health officials dealt with an imaginary terrorist attack on a chemical weapons facility in the town of Kambarka in the Udmurtia autonomous republic, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement.
The exercise emphasized coordination between law enforcement and medical workers to provide rapid treatment and evacuation of residents who could become exposed to chemicals in the event of an accident or attack, the statement said. The exercise also tested how to contain any chemical spill or explosion as quickly and safely as possible.
U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about the dangers of poor security at Russia's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities -- and the possibility of international terrorists either getting their hands on weapons material or staging an attack at a poorly guarded facility.
The U.S. Nunn-Lugar program has spent billions of dollars to improve security at weapons storage sites in Russia and other former Soviet republics, but U.S. officials say only a fraction of Russia's weapons sites have sufficient safeguards in place.
-------- un
UN Warns of Rollback in Liberties After Sept. 11
June 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-rights-britain-robinson.html
LONDON - The U.S.-led ``war on terror'' is threatening civil liberties and human rights around the world, the United Nations said Thursday, echoing a warning by Amnesty International a week ago.
U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson told an audience at London's Commonwealth Institute that security concerns in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States should not be a reason to neglect the rights of individuals or groups.
Robinson claimed official reactions to the attacks ``at times have seemed to subordinate the principles of human rights to other more 'robust' action in the war against terrorism.''
``There has been a tendency to ride roughshod over -- or at least to set on one side -- established principles of international human rights and humanitarian law,'' the high commissioner for human rights said.
Robinson cited Amnesty International's annual report issued on May 28 in which the human rights watchdog accused governments from the United States to South Korea of rushing through laws giving themselves emergency powers with little regard for rights.
Her warning came as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told NATO defense ministers in Brussels they must go on the offensive because a terror attack could occur at any time.
Robinson said there need be no contradiction between security and human rights.
``We need no reminding today of the urgency of implementing these interconnected ideals and goals, as two Commonwealth members India and Pakistan stand poised for open conflict, or if we think of the continuing conflict in the Middle East,'' she said.
Rumsfeld is heading to nuclear powers India and Pakistan to try to defuse growing tension over the disputed region of Kashmir, which he fears could harm the war on terror.
The United States is concerned the movement of Pakistan's troops away from its border with Afghanistan to mass instead on the Indian border will impede the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, blamed for September's attacks.
Robinson ended her speech with an appeal to learn the lessons of Sept. 11.
``We now understand in a more profound way that no nation can isolate or exclude itself from the effects of global problems of endemic poverty and conflict,'' she said.
``If it is to succeed in its goal of ensuring greater human security, combating terror must also be a war on disadvantage, discrimination, and despair.''
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI Chief: 9/11 Surveillance Taxing Bureau
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 6, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2572-2002Jun5?language=printer
The FBI has placed a "substantial" number of people suspected of ties to terror under constant surveillance, sending out special teams of agents to various parts of the United States roughly every two weeks in a mission that is seriously taxing the agency's resources, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday.
Mueller would not specify how many possible terrorists the agency is tracking, but he said the bureau has been "pushed, really pushed" to keep up with them. And he acknowledged that agents have no choice but to monitor those people around the clock when they cannot be detained for immigration or other violations.
"Our biggest problem is we have people we think are terrorists. They are supporters of al Qaeda. . . . They may have sworn jihad, they may be here in the United States legitimately and they have committed no crime," Mueller said in a 90-minute lunch with Washington Post reporters and editors. "And what do we do for the next five years? Do we surveil them? Some action has to be taken."
Mueller's remarks are among the strongest government assertions that people with suspected connections to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network remain in the United States, and they reflect the FBI's consuming race to thwart another attack. They come a little more than two weeks after a succession of Bush administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mueller warned the public that another strike against the United States is likely.
Even as Mueller moves to reorganize the FBI and substantially beef up its counterterrorism forces, the current solution to tracking possible terrorists is special squads -- surveillance teams that the FBI has been dispatching about every other week since Sept. 11, particularly to locations where its field offices lack agents or translators to do the tedious work.
The surveillance can be done on the ground, by air or, in some cases, with court-approved wiretaps, he said.
"There are gradations of persons who we might look at and their affiliation with a terrorist," Mueller said, explaining they could range from someone "who has called a number of a prominent terrorist overseas" to a person distributing literature supporting bin Laden. "There are all gradations along that spectrum," he said.
Mueller declined to say what kinds of leads have been developed as a result of the surveillance work.
In the months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, authorities moved against possible terror suspects by detaining more than 1,200 people on minor immigration charges, such as overstaying their visas, and hundreds of others on state and local criminal charges.
In some cases, federal prosecutors obtained material witness warrants to hold people suspected of having information related to the hijackings.
Mueller said officials were looking at other options to root out terror suspects, including the Alien Terrorist Removal Act, a 1996 law that permits the deportation of suspected alien terrorists by a special court, based on classified information submitted in secret. No one has been deported under the law since its enactment.
The FBI has come under intense criticism in recent weeks for mishandling clues to the attacks, including a July memo from a Phoenix agent that terrorists might be training at U.S. flight schools and the arrest in August of Zacarias Moussaoui, who aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school. Moussaoui was subsequently indicted as a conspirator in the attacks.
Mueller, who took office Sept. 4, is scheduled to address those issues in testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Senate panel also is scheduled to hear today from Coleen Rowley, the chief legal counsel of the Minneapolis FBI office, who wrote a blistering memo to Mueller last month complaining that the Moussaoui investigation was stalled last summer by FBI headquarters. Mueller yesterday declined to provide details about the Moussaoui investigation, saying that to comment would be inappropriate because the criminal case is pending.
A week after announcing plans to broadly reorganize the FBI to improve its ability to thwart terrorism, Mueller said yesterday that he would do whatever it takes to keep up surveillance and other efforts aimed at preventing another attack. Roughly one-fourth of the FBI's 11,500 agents will be devoted to counterterrorism work under reorganization plans, but Mueller said that many more will be added as the need arises.
Mueller said the FBI will be better equipped to track terrorist activity because of changes made last week to guidelines governing the conduct of FBI investigations. For example, agents now will be able to observe activities in public places, including houses of worship, to develop leads even when they have no evidence of criminal activity. And they will be able to more freely surf the Internet in search of clues to terror plans.
Despite the enhanced authority, Mueller said yesterday that the FBI has no plans to conduct widespread surveillance of mosques, a concern raised by Arab American leaders and civil liberties groups.
"We don't have a plan to go into mosques," Mueller said. "We take each investigation on its own and look at it and then do what's appropriate for the investigation."
Mueller said the new guidelines do not infringe upon personal freedom and "allow us to go where the public can go" in an attempt to generate anti-terrorist leads. In particular, he said, agents intend to surf the Internet, for clues on bin Laden's network and other groups. In the past, the guidelines did not permit such work without evidence indicating criminal activity was taking place.
"Not just al Qaeda but you look at neo-Nazis, you look at other groups that have either chat rooms or spew their language on the Internet," Mueller said. "This will specifically allow agents to go out and look at that, without any initial lead from a source . . . and then use that as a predicate for doing something else."
The FBI director also repeated his long-held position that authorities have not settled on a single theory about last fall's anthrax mailings, which killed five people and made 13 others ill. He said that investigators are awaiting the results of numerous scientific tests.
A profile previously released by the FBI and other comments by officials indicate that the bureau suspects the attack was most likely the work of a lone, domestic scientist -- possibly someone formerly associated with the U.S. biological defense program or one of its contractors. But Mueller, who said the investigation has been more difficult than anticipated, said a range of possibilities remains open.
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F.B.I. Chief Tells Congress His Agency Needs More Resources
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress on Thursday his agency needs to devote more agents, money and time to meeting its ``paramount mission of prevention'' in an age of terrorism.
``The need for change was apparent even before Sept. 11. It has become more urgent since then,'' he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a nationally televised hearing. ``I believe our culture must change as well.''
Prodded by one member of the committee, Mueller also defended his decision not to alert the panel last fall about a memorandum written last summer noting that several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school in Arizona. The FBI chief said he thought the information about the so-called Phoenix memo should go to a different committee, but Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., replied, ``That's not true. That's not true.''
Mueller also renewed a pledge of whistle-blower protection for an FBI attorney in Minneapolis who has criticized the pre-Sept. 11 investigation into a man now identified as a 20th hijacker in last fall's terrorist attacks. The lawyer, Coleen Rowley, was on the panel's witness list for later in the day.
The FBI chief spoke as President Bush readied a prime time speech to announce changes in the homeland security system he established last fall in response to the attacks that killed thousands in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Bowing to persistent calls from Congress, officials said Bush would propose creation of a new Cabinet agency, a Department of Homeland Security, to act as a clearinghouse for terrorism intelligence.
In addition, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees were meeting behind closed doors to continue their own review of the unprecedented Sept. 11 attacks that shattered the nation's complacency about terrorism, as well as thousands of lives.
Sen. Patrick Leahy gaveled the Senate committee hearing to order in a cavernous committee room. The Vermont Democrat complimented Mueller for his candor in the months since the terrorist attacks, particularly for conceding that it is impossible to say if the attacks might have been prevented if ``all the dots had been connected and all the leads had been followed.''
At the same time, Leahy expressed unhappiness that Congress had not been informed earlier about the existence of the Phoenix memo pointing out that several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school in Arizona.
Specter picked up on that subject later in the hearing. ``If we had know about the Phoenix memorandum, we could have made some pretty good suggestions to you,'' the Pennsylvania Republican said.
Mueller also told Specter that an unnamed FBI employee had recently put together a demonstration showing how ``database mining'' technology could potentially have been used to find links among terrorists in advance of Sept. 11.
Despite Specter's critical remarks, the Republican senator stressed his support for Mueller, as did several other members of the panel.
The memo relating to flight schools was one of two documents that have drawn attention in recent weeks. The other was the letter that Rowley, an FBI lawyer in Minneapolis, sent to Mueller on May 21 saying he and other senior FBI officials had skewed facts in their post-Sept. 11 accounts of what they had known before the attacks and were trying to ``circle the wagons.''
Rowley also claimed FBI headquarters shelved her requests in the weeks before the attacks to aggressively investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, who was being held in Minnesota and now is charged as an accomplice in the hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., challenged Mueller on new Justice Department plans to fingerprint and photograph more than 100,000 visa holders deemed to pose a national security threat. Mueller said that was done to comply with congressional requirements, but Kennedy disputed that.
Mueller had previously announced plans to reorganize the FBI to devote greater resources to anti-terrorism, including the need to improve its ability to analyze available intelligence. ``This Congress is all too familiar with the FBI's analytical shortcomings,'' he said. ``...Building subject area expertise or developing an awareness of the potential value of an isolated piece of information does not occur overnight,'' he said. ``It is developed over time.''
Mueller said the need for FBI reform is urgent because ``those who want to hurt us remain highly motivated, well-funded and spread throughout the world.''
Leahy and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, both questioned Mueller about Rowley. ``Can you personally assure this committee unequivocally there will be no retaliation of any kind against either Coleen Rowley ...any FBI employee'' for whistle-blowing activity?'' asked Leahy
``Absolutely,'' Mueller said, adding he would ``not tolerate reprisals or intimidation'' in such cases.
In his testimony, Fine said his office knew about the so-called Phoenix memo on Sept. 29, days after the attacks. Congress found out about it last month.
In his prepared testimony, Fine said his office had ``conducted a preliminary inquiry in the fall of 2001 into the handling of the Phoenix EC at FBI headquarters.''
On the Net:
Senate committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov.
FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
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Bush to Announce Restructuring of Homeland Security
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Bush.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a major restructuring, President Bush will propose creation of a Cabinet domestic security department to take over border security, intelligence and other issues now housed in eight separate federal agencies.
``The purpose is to protect the homeland from terror,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. He said Bush is pleased with stopgap reforms enacted since Sept. 11 but, ``We can and will do more.''
The proposal, which Fleischer called the biggest government restructuring plan since 1947, will be announced by Bush in a Thursday night address from the White House. The White House has asked television networks to broadcast the speech.
The proposal, which must be approved by Congress, is part of a stepped-up effort to shield Bush from criticism that his administration did not do enough to prevent the attacks. Not coincidentally, FBI Director Robert Mueller was testifying before Congress Thursday about the agency's failure to anticipate the terror attacks.
Mueller recently announced a major restructuring of the FBI.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said Congress had no inkling that Bush was planning this reorganization. ``I think this is a very strong departure from the current situation. We'll have to listen to their rationale and to the Senate and House intelligence committees and see what they think about this.''
Kennedy said he wasn't sure whether an internal reorganization was needed. ``The question is whether shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic is the way to go.''
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge is the current homeland security adviser, and Congress has been pushing a reluctant Bush to elevate the office to Cabinet status because lawmakers would have oversight authority over a new department of homeland security. As an adviser, Ridge has been able to avoid formal testimony before Congress.
With pressure mounting, the White House signaled this spring that it would make the domestic security office a Cabinet agency. Ridge had planned to unveil his homeland security strategy in the fall, but the schedule was pushed up in part to counter the congressional hearings, one senior White House official said.
Fleischer said the new agency will oversee border and transportation security; emergency preparedness and response; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures; the analysis of intelligence from the FBI, CIA and other agencies as well infrastructure protection.
Fleischer said the FBI and CIA will remain as independent agencies, not seeing major changes under the proposal.
Congress must pass legislation to implement the plan. Bush will ask for its passage by year's end.
Fleischer said the plan will not cost more money; it will shuffle current operations within the government without expanding the bureaucracy
Fleischer was asked whether Ridge would head the new agency.
``Let me put it to you this way, Governor Ridge will be the one fighting for the creation of this department. Governor Ridge will be the voice and the face of the message for creating this department,'' he replied.
Fleischer said ``recent noise'' about counterterrorism failures at the FBI and CIA did not precipitate the president's plan. But, the spokesman added, ``There is the recognition that we still need to keep the FBI and CIA working closely together and this new entity will be one place where information will get pulled together.''
Ridge and White House congressional liaison Nicholas Calio have been consulting members of Congress. ``The initial reaction from the Hill has been good but reorganizing the government has never been easy; it involves turf,'' Fleischer said.
Bush, who had expressed support for the FBI and CIA in the early days of the controversy, acknowledged for the first time this week that the agencies failed to communicate adequately. But he said there was no evidence that better communication could have prevented the attacks.
Mueller conceded for the first time recently that a better analysis of warning signs might have prevented the attacks.
Ridge has been working on a restructuring proposal since his appointment last fall -- meeting heavy resistance from law enforcement and intelligence bureaucracies.
One senior White House official familiar with the tightly held plan said the proposal will include elements of Ridge's push to consolidate border-security agencies. With 100 executive branch entities and 88 congressional committees and subcommittees now sharing jurisdiction over homeland security, coordination has become unmanageable, the official said. This source described one scene illustrating the problem: When Bush summoned relevant committee chairmen and ranking members to the White House last October, they had to be divided into two groups for separate meetings that still filled the Cabinet Room beyond capacity.
The new intelligence entity would supplement efforts of the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, not replace them, the officials said.
The idea is to have one office that helps the intelligence agencies analyze the data they gather.
Associated Press writer Sandra Sobieraj contributed
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Policy targets Middle Easterners
June 6, 2002
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020606-12861569.htm
Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday announced new immigration regulations that will "expand substantially" America's scrutiny of foreign visitors, requiring the photographing and fingerprinting of visitors suspected of posing a threat to national security, mostly Middle Eastern men.
The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System is part of a "first crucial phase" that will track in the first year nearly 100,000 foreigners who visit the United States.
Under immigration rules adopted in 1998, only foreigners from Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan currently must register with federal authorities and submit to photographing and fingerprinting.
The new system requires that those from countries identified as having the highest risk for terrorism be subjected to the same scrutiny. None of the nations was identified yesterday, but Justice Department officials acknowledged that it will be applied to additional Middle Eastern countries.
"On September 11, the American definition of national security changed and changed forever. A band of men entered our country under false pretenses in order to plan and execute murderous acts of war," Mr. Ashcroft said.
"Some entered the country several years in advance; others entered several months in advance. Once inside the United States, they were easily able to avoid contact with authorities and to violate the terms of their visas with impunity."
He told reporters at a press conference that terrorists relied on evading recognition at the U.S. border and on escaping detection once inside the United States, and made clear the "vulnerabilities of our immigration system."
The new program requires fingerprinting and photographing at the border; the periodic registration of aliens who stay in the United States 30 days or more; and exit controls that will help the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) remove aliens who overstay their visas.
Eventually, Mr. Ashcroft said, the government will evaluate individual visitors to gauge the risk of their involvement in terrorist activity, and will impose similar requirements on visitors who fall into categories of elevated national security concern.
The INS and the State Department will work together to identify those individuals who could be deemed as potential terrorist threats before their entry into the United States.
The Ashcroft announcement was criticized by several civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which said that the plan to fingerprint, photograph and track visitors to this country was discriminatory and would be ineffective.
"The Bush administration is, step by step, isolating Muslim and Arab communities both in the eyes of the government and the American public," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU legislative counsel. "This latest move needs to be seen in the larger context of all the actions targeted at people of Middle Eastern descent since September 11."
The ACLU also questioned whether the plan would increase national security. "It's pretty obvious this plan won't work at anything except allowing the government to essentially 'pick on' people who haven't done anything wrong but happen to come from the administration's idea of the wrong side of the global tracks," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU immigrants' rights project.
"Selective enforcement of any law based on unchangeable characteristics like race, ethnicity or national origin is at its core un-American."
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the plan, saying it indiscriminately targeted Muslim and Arab nationals. He said it was proposed without any consultation with Congress and did little to provide protection against terrorism.
"It will give U.S. government officials unfettered discretion to use secret criteria to decide who should be registered in a data base we usually reserve for terrorists and criminals," he said, and "further stigmatize innocent Arab and Muslim visitors, students, and workers who have committed no crimes and pose no danger to us."
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the plan a "reasonable first step" in regaining control over an immigration system he called "out of control."
"These actions are the first steps that the department is taking in connection with a comprehensive entry-exit program, mandated by Congress, which will enable the United States to record the entry of aliens into the United States and identify those aliens who have violated our laws by failing to depart our country."
Rep. Mark Foley, Florida Republican, also lauded the plan, although he urged Mr. Ashcroft to require registration of foreign visitors to the United States overseas when they first apply for a visa. "Entrance into the United States is not a guaranteed right. We need to require all people who want to come to the United States from a country proven to sponsor terrorism to register before they even think of getting on a plane or boat." Mr. Foley has co-sponsored legislation dismantling the INS.
"All people, whether American or not, must realize that times have changed. It may not be pretty, and it may not be convenient, but we will defend Americans at any cost. We have to eradicate the cancer at the source, and that's in the terrorists' back yards."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said there was "no question" that existing laws "allow the United States government to protect the American people." President Bush "knows we can take action to protect people that is fully in accordance with protecting civil rights and civil liberties."
Mr. Ashcroft said the fingerprinting of foreigners is essential to the new system, adding that terrorists and criminals often attempt to enter the country using assumed names or false documents and passports. He said fingerprints "don't lie," and instant checks will be made at the border.
The 19 hijackers who crashed three jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon entered the country legally, although three had overstayed their visas at the time of the attacks.
• Dave Boyer and Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
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Fla. Police May Be Given New Powers
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Florida-Immigration.html
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Police officers in a state anti-terrorism unit will have the power to enforce immigration law under a pilot program created with the federal government, the state said Thursday.
The 35 members of the state's Domestic Security Task Force will not conduct routine immigration enforcement, such as checking someone's immigration status, but could detain a suspected terrorist for violating immigration laws.
``It's targeted only to terrorist investigations -- not checking green cards and work camps,'' said Tim Moore, commissioner for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Florida is the first state in the program, and it could be expanded to other states if it's successful, Moore said. The agreement should be signed in about a week.
A spokesman for the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.
The FDLE has met with leaders in immigrant communities to stress that the officers will not target people just for immigration violations. Explanatory pamphlets were printed in English, Spanish, French, Creole and Arabic.
``We are not attempting in any way of assuming the responsibilities of INS -- that's not our job, that's not our responsibility and we're not equipped to do it,'' Moore said.
Some advocates for immigrants are concerned local officers or the INS could abuse the new power.
``We certainly are concerned about racial profiling and officers abusing their power,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami. ``Post 9-11, there's a sense among the immigrant community that INS and local police have carte blanche to do whatever they want.''
Gov. Jeb Bush, however, said he is comfortable with the program because it is limited to just a few officers already assigned to domestic security.
``I would have a lot of trepidation if ... every police officer was going to be a sworn INS officer and our duties end up with local law enforcement becoming the immigration cops of the country,'' Bush said.
The INS will train the state officers for six weeks and supervise their work. They will have access to INS records, Bush said.
The 35 officers are among 100 on the state's regional anti-terrorism task forces and will include FDLE agents and local officers assigned by their departments, Moore said.
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Guantanamo Detainees Innocence Cited
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Guantanamo-Detainees.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An attorney representing the families of 70 detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base said some of the captured men were rescue workers or Taliban sympathizers, but few fought U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
At a news conference Thursday, Najeeb Al-Nauimi said the men's families and other witnesses have confirmed their innocence.
Nauimi also said the U.S. government has done little to investigate which detainees might not be enemies.
``Some of these young men were hiding out with Taliban because they wanted a way to safely surrender with a large group,'' Al-Nauimi said.
Others wanted to help in some background capacity because they saw the bombing of the Red Cross building and other non-military targets, he said.
``There is a principle that says when you are at war with a foreign power you have to help ... but that's something different than when you call for Jihad,'' Al-Nauimi said.
About 350 men are being held at the base in Cuba indefinitely until authorities interrogate them and determine whether they should be sent back to their homelands or face military tribunals, according to U.S. officials. Many of the detainees were captured in Afghanistan, others were turned over by countries in the region.
The United States has not recognized Al-Nauimi as a representative of the detainees' families.
The detainees have met with officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross and some with government officials from their countries.
The United States considers the men ``unlawful combatants ... who may be detained at least for the duration of hostilities,'' according to a State Department statement.
The detainees have been allowed to write letters to their families, Al-Nauimi said. In the letters Al-Nauimi has read, the detainees wrote that they are well fed, well-kept and allowed to practice their religion.
Al-Nauimi displayed part of a letter from 22-year-old Yasser Essam Hamdi, an American-born prisoner who has been transferred from Guantanamo to a prison at the Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia.
In the letter, which was translated from Arabic, Hamdi asked his family to pray for him.
``My father, I repeat, I beg you, I beg you to forgive me,'' Hamdi wrote. ``I cannot come out of here without the permission of Allah.''
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Mueller Outlines Origin, Funding of Sept. 11 Plot
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 6, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2648-2002Jun5.html
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday that investigators believe the idea of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon came from al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, the actual plotting was done in Germany, and the financing came through the United Arab Emirates from sources in Afghanistan.
Mueller also said that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, 37, a Kuwaiti-born terrorist, played a key role in planning the attacks. Mohammed was put on the FBI's most-wanted-terrorist list last year for his alleged involvement in a 1995 Manila-based plot to bomb 12 U.S. commercial airliners. He is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.
"I think we're confident that he was one of the key figures" in last year's attacks, Mueller said in an interview with editors and reporters of The Washington Post. Mueller said investigators have focused on Mohammed "for a long time," though until this week the name had not figured publicly in discussions of the Sept. 11 plot.
Mueller's comments were among his most detailed public comments on the origins of the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York and at the Pentagon. In outlining Mohammed's role, Mueller was for the first time drawing a strong connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and a series of other terrorist operations in the 1990s that involved Osama bin Laden and members of his network.
Mohammed is related to Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six and wounded more than 1,000, and the originator of the 1995 Manila plot for which Mohammed was also indicted as a co-conspirator. Yousef was captured in Pakistan in 1995 after Philippine police discovered his computer in a Manila apartment.
In the interview yesterday, Mueller appeared to stress that the origins of the Sept. 11 plot lay in Afghanistan, among the al Qaeda leadership, not in Hamburg, Germany, where some of the hijackers first congregated. One school of thought within the U.S. intelligence community has emphasized the "Hamburg cell" as the inspiration for the attacks.
"We think the masterminds of it were in Afghanistan, high in the al Qaeda leadership," Mueller said. "Plotters and others -- the principals -- came together in Germany and perhaps elsewhere."
The new emphasis on Mohammed this week came after he was described by recently captured, high-ranking al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida as the person who "came up with the plan" to hijack four airliners and target the Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, according to a senior administration official.
Some intelligence officials have their doubts about Zubaida's credibility, particularly after his statements in recent months prompted authorities to issue nationwide alerts on terror threats that didn't materialize. Others say that some of his statements about al Qaeda's operations track with other evidence authorities have been gathering.
Zubaida has suggested to his interrogators that Mohammed was "central" to the plot, the official said. Zubaida, who played an active role in recruiting al Qaeda trainees who came to bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, also played a major role in sending them to different countries after their training was completed.
He therefore had contact with Mohammed, who in Afghanistan was involved in planning for al Qaeda operations, often years in advance of the actual event. Surveillance for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was initially done in 1994, according to court testimony.
Overall, Mohammed served as "a key aide to bin Laden," the senior official said, but below the top echelon of al Qaeda military and political leaders, such as Ayman Zawahiri, whose status is unknown, and Muhammad Atef, who was believed killed in November in Afghanistan in a U.S. bombing raid.
In addition to Zubaida, other Afghan sources and captured al Qaeda fighters have said Mohammed was "a fairly central figure" in terrorist planning, the official said.
Mueller would not discuss anything that has emerged from Zubaida's interrogation, which is taking place at an undisclosed site in Pakistan. Mueller did say investigators are "continuing to trace the monies" and that "persons that have been detained in Pakistan, Zubaida being one of them, could shed some light on that.
A once-secret 1995 FBI intelligence analysis, obtained this week by The Post, describes Yousef and his Manila partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, as belonging to "new Sunni Islamic groups" that "have access to a worldwide network of support for funding, training, and safe haven," but does not mention al Qaeda.
The report, based on interrogation of Murad, mentions bin Laden as the possible source of funding for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and identifies Murad as the person who chose those New York City landmarks as the target for Yousef to hit.
The bureau analysts described Yousef's network as being "composed primarily of former schoolmates and associates from his days in Afghanistan," which, the report says, "provided an arena for paramilitary and terrorist training." Afghanistan also "provided Yousef with an opportunity to recruit new confederates," noting that "hundreds, perhaps thousands of Arab extremists traveled to Afghanistan to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union."
The report added that Yousef was to travel to Egypt and Algeria after the Manila plot "to train his Muslim brothers in how to make his nitroglycerin bomb and smuggle it aboard an airplane." One technique employed by Yousef, according to the report, was to carry bomb detonators or timing devices for bombs onto airliners in his shoes -- a technique that may have been imitated in the case of Richard Reid, who was arrested last year after allegedly trying to blow up an airplane flying from Paris to Miami.
Murad said he also discussed attacks in the United States with Yousef, "including possibly flying a plane filled with explosives into the CIA building," the report says.
Reflecting conclusions contained in the bureau's 1995 report, Mueller said, "You look at Indonesia, you look at Malaysia, you look at the Philippines.
There are various groups in all of these countries that to a greater or lesser degree believe in the same principles articulated by bin Laden.
But are they the same group? It's hard to say."
Mueller also drew a distinction between those formal members of al Qaeda "who have actually sworn allegiance in some sort of formal ceremony," and others who work more informally within the bin Laden network.
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Rumsfeld: West Must Act Vs. Terror
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rumsfeld.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The United States and allied nations must not wait for ``absolute proof'' of an impending terrorist attack before acting to stop it, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.
Addressing a meeting of defense ministers from the 19 NATO nations, Rumsfeld said the world has consistently underestimated the threat of terrorist attacks. The only surprise, he said, is that ``we are still surprised when this happens,'' according to an outline of the main points he made. The outline was provided to reporters; his speech was not open to coverage.
Rumsfeld said it is inevitable that terrorists will gain access to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and that governments as well as the general public need to better understand the threat.
``Real situation worse than what facts show,'' was among the key points in the outline of his remarks.
Another point: ``Absolute proof cannot be precondition for action.'' Although the outline of his remarks made no mention of Iraq, the point about acting in a timely way fits with Rumsfeld's expressed view that in some cases the United States must take pre-emptive action to protect America.
European nations have been skeptical of pre-emptive military action.
Earlier Thursday, another U.S. official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said NATO defense ministers agreed to put new emphasis on improving their ability to detect, prevent and respond to attacks by weapons of mass destruction -- particularly biological, nuclear and radiological.
The agreement was part of a broader discussion, led by Rumsfeld, of ways the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can modernize its command structure and focus member countries' spending on high-priority defense items as the alliance prepares to add new members.
The U.S. official said the ministers discussed a concern that is at the top of Rumsfeld's list of priorities -- the nexus between terrorism and nations like Iraq that could provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Other countries mentioned in this context were Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Cuba, the official said.
There was no discussion of whether to undertake a pre-emptive attack on Iraq or other countries, the official said.
On Wednesday, Rumsfeld and his British counterpart singled out Iraq as a growing threat to the West.
``We know that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq has had a sizable appetite for weapons of mass destruction,'' and it is finding ways to acquire their ingredients, Rumsfeld said Wednesday.
``We know the borders into that country are quite porous,'' he added, allowing Iraq to import technologies useful for both civilian and military industries ``as well as illicit materials that are helpful in their programs for weapons of mass destruction.''
``There is not a doubt in the world that with every month that goes by, their programs mature,'' he said in London before flying to Brussels for meetings Thursday and Friday with NATO allies.
Iraq denies it possesses or is developing weapons of mass destruction, but it has refused to allow the international inspections that it accepted as a condition of ending the 1991 Gulf War.
Rumsfeld would not discuss the possibility of U.S. military action to topple Saddam, saying that was a matter for President Bush to decide. He spoke at a joint news conference with British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon after meetings to discuss Iraq and other issues.
The two defense chiefs flew together to Brussels, where Iraq is expected to be a topic of discussion in NATO meetings Thursday, including the first-ever session of the NATO-Russia Council.
After morning NATO meetings, Rumsfeld held a one-on-one session with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov. It originally was to last 40 minutes, to be followed by a joint news conference. But the session with reporters was scratched, and aides said the two officials planned to hold a second session Thursday evening after NATO's afternoon conference was over. Aides offered no word on what Rumsfeld and Ivanov talked about or why a second session was needed.
Rumsfeld and Hoon both expressed their governments' hope for a lowering of tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan. Rumsfeld's stop in London was the first on a 10-day journey that is scheduled to take him to the Indian and Pakistani capitals next week.
For months the Bush administration has been publicly making the case for strong action -- possibly by military means -- against Iraq, but allied nations have been slow to offer support.
Hoon said the Iraqi military threat has increased in recent weeks. Asked in a later interview to elaborate, Hoon said Iraq's air defenses are more aggressively trying to shoot down the U.S. and British pilots who regularly fly combat air patrols over northern and southern Iraq.
He was alluding to the fact that U.S. and British pilots have reported a series of attacks in recent week by Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles. The allied planes have responded by bombing various elements of Iraq's integrated air defense system.
Since the start of U.S. and British enforcement of the ``no fly'' zones more than a decade ago, Iraq has considered them a violation of its sovereignty and has vowed to shoot down pilots.
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Landscape Plan for Pennsylvania Ave
June 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pennsylvania-Avenue.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A temporary landscaping plan for Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House that would replace current security measures with something nicer to look at was endorsed unanimously Thursday by the National Capital Planning Commission.
The proposal includes a small roadway that could be used by circulator buses -- limited-use vehicles serving the national mall area -- operated under a security arrangement with the U.S. Secret Service.
``The most obvious security solutions are ugly and undemocratic,'' said NCPC board member Richard L. Friedman, who said the current system of huge concrete planters, stout bollards and metal security barriers was intolerable.
``Everybody recognizes that we've got to have good security, but it has to be unobtrusive and it's got to be beautiful,'' said Friedman, who has participated in 25 meetings over the past six months in an effort to reach a consensus on how to meet those goals.
The two-block section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was abruptly closed in April, 1995, within days of the truck bombing of Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Since then, vehicles have been forced to detour around the area, and businesses located just outside the perimeter have suffered.
After reviewing proposals from four landscape design firms, a task force recommended the New York-based firm of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates be allowed to refine its concept.
The proposal still has a long way to go. It needs numerous other committees to sign off on it, and Congress would have to provide the money.
Friedman predicted the $10 million project could be completed in time for the 2005 presidential inauguration.
The plan includes security checkpoints one block east and west of the executive mansion; a landscaped pedestrian plaza between the wrought iron fence on the north side of the White House and what is now Lafayette Park; and a narrow tree-lined roadway for the circulator buses south of Lafayette Park.
``We very much would like to have the symbolism of 'America's Main Street' having some form of vehicular traffic on it,'' said Friedman. The buses potentially could be used by tourists and government workers.
While District of Columbia officials have repeatedly called for reopening of Pennsylvania Avenue because of its importance to local commerce, a city representative on the NCPC said this plan seemed like a reasonable compromise.
``It will make us feel like this is still an operating road. We'd like to see it opened, so we hope these changes aren't final,'' said Patricia Ellwood, a mayoral appointee to the panel. Ellwood voted for the measure only after assurances that a tunnel or reopening the road with improved security remained options.
On the Net:
National Capital Planning Commission:
http://www.ncpc.gov
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Australia joins ethanol rush with new plant
Story by Michael Byrnes
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
June 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16294/story.htm
SYDNEY - Australia is joining an international drive into ethanol fuel following a decision by a private group to build a A$70 million ethanol plant in the state of Queensland.
The plant at Dalby, about 250 km west of Brisbane, will produce 60 million litres of ethanol a year from sorghum, feed wheat and maize and will be the largest ethanol plant in Australia.
Queensland's Environment Minister Dean Wells told a conference in Brisbane yesterday the new plant could provide a catalyst for development of more ethanol production in the state, from both grain and sugarcane-based products.
Bill Elliott, ethanol project manager for privately-owned Toowoomba-based Petro Fuel and Lubricants Pty Ltd, earlier told Reuters the plant would produce beyond its nominal capacity to up to 80 million litres a year and was expected to be commissioned at the end of 2003.
First ground would be broken later this year, and construction would start early next year, Elliott said.
Wells said stage one will use about 150,000 tonnes of grain a year.
Ethanol from the new plant would be blended with petrol sold through Petro's 40 or so service stations in Queensland and through independents and oil majors' service stations, he said.
"The proposal has been the subject of a 12-month study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the company has informed me that they are ready to finance and develop the project," Wells said in a statement.
POTENTIAL EXPANSION
He told the inaugural Ethanol Conference yesterday that Petro's decision highlighted the significant potential for expansion of an ethanol industry in Queensland.
"We are actively seeking alternatives to traditional fuels. We need to find ways to reduce our use of fossil fuels and therefore decrease greenhouse gas emissions," Wells said.
The production and use of ethanol in Queensland had enormous potential, with flow-on effects that were beneficial economically, socially and environmentally, he said.
The Petro project had been facilitated by the Queensland government's Environmental Protection Agency, supported by the Department of State Development and the Dalby Town Council, which was helping to secure land for the project, Wells said.
Elliott said the economics of the plant depended on ethanol remaining free of federal excise fuel tax, and said the outlook for other projects was very promising.
However, he and other industry figures reiterated a call for the federal government to require oil majors to blend ethanol with petrol.
Petro's ethanol plant upstages vocal calls by Australia's struggling sugar industry for the establishment of sugar-based ethanol plants in Queensland.
The sugar industry believes ethanol plants could inject new profits into an industry plagued by low world prices caused by massive production in Brazil, the world leader in ethanol.
The planned new Australian plant comes as Australian and global attention focuses on ethanol as a clean fuel, with Europe and the United States building ethanol fuel industries.
Existing Australian ethanol production is comparatively small-scale and mainly for export to Asian markets as an alcohol additive.
----
Wind power set for greater Australian role
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
June 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16288/story.htm
MELBOURNE - Wind power is set to become a significant feature of the Australian electricity market with more than 1,600 megawatts to be introduced by 2005, the National Electricity Market Management Company (NEMMCO) said yesterday.
NEMMCO head of planning Tim George told an Energy Users Association of Australia seminar that NEMMCO needs to work quickly to understand how wind power could be used in the market.
"For us to plan, to be able to plan in advance how much capacity we need, we need to understand how much capacity we can rely on," George said.
"So this is going to require a lot of study on weather patterns to see what conditions are going to be like. We have to move fairly quickly on that as wind energy is going to be a significant feature very soon."
Hydro Tasmania currently produces 60 percent of Australia's wind energy, which it hopes to be able to export to the mainland through the A$500 million Basslink undersea project joining island state Tasmania to the national electricity market.
A government advisory panel draft report has given conditional approval to Basslink and a final recommendation to the Victorian, Tasmanian and federal governments is due in July.
Yesterday, Hydro Tasmania announced it had signed a deal with Aurora Energy to connect the Woolnorth wind farm, which is due to start producing 10.5 megawatts by July, to Tasmania's national power grid.
---
German carmakers plan joint hydrogen car tests
REUTERS GERMANY:
June 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16291/story.htm
FRANKFURT - A group of leading German carmakers and engineering firms plan to set up a joint project to test hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and other cars powered by "clean energy", the firms said this week.
The project, bringing together DaimlerChrysler AG , BMW AG , GM unit Adam Opel AG, and Ford's German research centre, will set up a hydrogen refuelling centre in Berlin and a fleet of 30 cars to test the new technologies. European car makers have been investing in green technology to safeguard their long-term survival against the risk of fossil fuels running out and increasing government pressure to build cars which damage the environment less.
The five-year programme has similarities to one set up in California two years ago to test fuel cells, which use hydrogen to create electricity, said Wolfgang Scheunemann, a DaimlerChrysler spokesman.
But the German project, part funded by the government and also involving fuel station company Aral, engineering company Linde and trucks and engineering firm MAN , may also test other fuels such as methanol and synthetic diesel.
"We need the community of auto producers if we want to get new engines and fuel cells in the market," said Scheunemann. "We need volume and scale otherwise the fuel companies will say 'why should we set up a whole network of fuel stations for your three cars?'"
He declined to give financial details for the project, which will be launched formally later this week.
DaimlerChrysler, seen by experts as a leader in fuel cells, will have invested $1 billion in the technology in the 14 years to 2004 and plans to produce small numbers of fuel cell powered buses from next year and cars by 2004.
But problems involved in the transport and storage of hydrogen and the lack of any infrastructure have raised doubts as to its viability.
Diesel engines, which emit up to 30 percent less carbon dioxide than petrol engines, have proved popular in Europe in recent years, although the fuel has high nitrogen oxide and particles emmissions.
-------- energy
Questions Raised Over Energy Dept. Official's Industry Ties
New York Times
June 6, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/06/politics/06CARD.html
Before he was named under secretary of energy by President Bush last year, Robert G. Card was a top executive of the companies whose multibillion-dollar contracts his office now controls. Those companies performed some of the nation's most sensitive and expensive jobs, cleaning up highly toxic waste from nuclear weapons factories.
Now, with the storage of that waste becoming a political issue in races around the country, Mr. Card has come under scrutiny for decisions that could add millions of dollars to the contracts of his previous employers. Critics in Congress and elsewhere are calling for an investigation into his ties to the nuclear cleanup industry.
Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, wrote to the Office of Government Ethics last week, raising questions about Mr. Card's actions, saying he believed they might violate Bush administration guidelines and federal statutes governing conflicts of interest.
"Until those questions are answered, the integrity of Mr. Card's decisions will be in doubt, including those related to Yucca Mountain," Mr. Reid said.
Yucca Mountain is the Nevada site recently chosen by the Energy Department for long-term storage of nuclear waste, a decision opposed by Mr. Reid and most Nevada officials. Because very few companies are able to build such a repository, opponents of the site have said that Yucca Mountain will be a windfall for Mr. Card's former employers, the Kaiser-Hill Company and CH2M Hill Inc.
Energy Department officials note that Mr. Card has divested himself of his former companies' stock and renounced his pension benefits, and they suggest that his critics are motivated by their political disagreement with the Yucca Mountain decision.
Late yesterday, the Office of Government Ethics issued a letter disagreeing with Senator Reid's claims. The letter, based on the Energy Department's assurances to the office that Mr. Card had not participated in any matter relating to his former employers, said Mr. Card's actions had been proper.
"We do not believe that CH2M Hill, Kaiser-Hill, or Kaiser Group Holdings Inc. was a party or represented a party in any of the matters discussed above in which Under Secretary Card participated," Amy Comstock, director of the ethics office, wrote. "Accordingly, it appears that none of Mr. Card's actions violated any ethics statutes or regulations."
But Mr. Card's critics, who include Democratic elected officials in Nevada and South Carolina who are at odds with some of his decisions, say his ties to the industry make it impossible to determine whether his favorite projects are good public policy or favors to old colleagues. Mr. Reid said he would pursue an inquiry into Mr. Card's role.
Most accusations against Mr. Card involve contracts by his former companies to clean up two of the country's biggest environmental hazards: the Rocky Flats Site near Denver and the Hanford Site in Washington State, both of which processed plutonium for nuclear weapons before closing. CH2M Hill, where Mr. Card was a director and senior vice president, has a $2.2 billion contract to manage radioactive waste storage tanks at Hanford and decommission them as the waste is processed. Mr. Card was chief executive of Kaiser-Hill, which is half-owned by CH2M Hill and which has a $4 billion contract to clean up Rocky Flats.
As under secretary for energy, science and environment, Mr. Card supervises the Office of Environmental Management, which is in charge of cleaning up nuclear waste sites and manages the contracts of his old companies. In March, that office said it was sending $433 million from an $800 million discretionary cleanup fund to Hanford, much of which would go to expedite CH2M Hill's cleanup work.
On March 6, in testimony to a Congressional committee, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Mr. Card played a major role in the decision. The extra financing for Hanford's cleanup came about because of an agreement between Mr. Card and the State of Washington, Mr. Abraham said, after "a top-to-bottom review that Under Secretary Card and Assistant Secretary Roberson completed."
Mr. Card took the microphone at that hearing to describe the expedited cleanup work, and people who met in February with Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, a Democrat, to discuss the financing confirmed that Mr. Card was present and played a leading role in the talks.
Mr. Card declined to be interviewed. An Energy Department spokesman, Joseph Davis, said that while Mr. Card had a role in working with Hanford officials to accelerate the cleanup, he had not been involved in deciding how much money would be sent to the site for the accelerated program, or how much would go to CH2M Hill. That decision, Mr. Davis said, was made solely by Assistant Secretary Jessie Roberson, who reports directly to Mr. Card.
At Rocky Flats, the project he supervised in the private sector, Mr. Card has taken a vocal public role in urging that the cleanup be hastened and the plutonium there be shipped to South Carolina for processing, a decision applauded in Colorado but unpopular in South Carolina. The contract with Kaiser-Hill provides a $340 million incentive if the company can complete the cleanup by 2006. That provision, negotiated by Mr. Card while at Kaiser-Hill, has led to accusations by South Carolina officials that Mr. Card is trying to benefit his former company at state expense.
"How are we supposed to be comfortable that we're getting a fair shake in South Carolina when the man we're negotiating with is a former employee of the company that clearly stands to gain financially if Rocky Flats is closed on a timely basis?" Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, a Democrat, asked on Tuesday.
The Energy Department's general counsel wrote to Governor Hodges this year that Mr. Card had severed his financial ties to Kaiser-Hill, other than his vested interest in its pension plan. On Tuesday, Mr. Davis said that Mr. Card had volunteered to forgo any benefits from the pension plans at the two companies, which combined would provide about $2,400 a month beginning in 2018.
But federal ethics rules require presidential appointees to go even further than selling stock in their previous employers, as Mr. Card did. As a condition of his appointment, Mr. Card agreed to recuse himself from department matters in which he was involved "personally and substantially" while at Kaiser-Hill or CH2M Hill.
Department officials say his recusal and his divestiture of company stock means that there is neither a conflict nor an appearance of one.
"The department's legal counsel has reviewed all of the critics' charges and found no basis to them," Mr. Davis said. "I think various opponents of the department's position on Yucca Mountain are trying to rehash unfounded and baseless allegations. In a word, I believe it's unfair."
But Mr. Card's critics are calling for a further investigation. Earlier this year, Representative Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat and another opponent of the Yucca Mountain plan, asked the department for documents on Mr. Card's role, which she has turned over to Congressional investigators. She said she was concerned about a potential windfall to one of Mr. Card's former employers if the mountain storage site is built.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Senator Tired of Capitol Hill Celebs
By Malia Rulon
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 6, 2002; 8:02 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4623-2002Jun6?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- C-SPAN is looking more like "Entertainment Tonight" these days.
Check out the glitterati who have shown up at congressional hearings recently: Julia Roberts. Christie Brinkley. Michael J. Fox. Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys.
At least one senator says enough is enough. Political analysts agree there's a fine line between celebrities with legitimate expertise and those who have been invited to appear before Congress just to draw media attention.
Fox and former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali told members of Congress last month that more money is needed to turn scientific findings into a cure for Parkinson's disease, which they both have.
It's the Backstreet Boy that has Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, fuming. Richardson was scheduled to appear Thursday before a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee. He was to testify on mountaintop removal mining, a controversial practice in which the top of a ridge or mountain is sheared off to expose a coal seam, pushing dirt and rock into nearby valleys and waterways.
"It's just a joke to think that this witness can provide members of the United States Senate with information on important geological and water quality issues," Voinovich said. "We're either serious about the issues or we're running a sideshow."
Last year, pop singers Alanis Morissette and Don Henley told a congressional panel that artists' concerns have been ignored during legal battles between recording labels and Internet companies like Napster.
"Certainly, members of the entertainment community have expertise on many issues that are important for Congress to consider," Voinovich said. "This isn't a case like that."
A spokesman for Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who invited Richardson to testify, said the pop star's environmental group, Just Within Reach, has been active on the issue of mountaintop removal mining, which is used in Richardson's home state of Kentucky.
"He has his own environmental advocacy group," said Adam Kovacevich, a Lieberman spokesman. "He has credibility on this issue. We believe that his voice is one that the committee should hear."
Earlier this year, the Environment committee heard from Brinkley on nuclear energy. The model has been active on nuclear issues since she learned about radioactive leaks at the Shoreham and Brookhaven nuclear reactors near her home in Long Island, N.Y.
"A model talking about a nuclear power plant is going to capture a different audience then a nuclear scientist will," she told reporters at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.
Roberts, who spoke about Rett Syndrome during a tearful speech last month before the House Appropriations Committee, has filmed a one-hour documentary on the illness.
"We should be glad that there are celebrities out there who care enough to use their fame to shine the spotlight for a day on an obscure disease and the children that it afflicts," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who invited Roberts.
Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said, "If they get a celebrity in there, the cameras will follow and what might have been a hidden or invisible issue will suddenly become a matter of public discussion."
Other celebrities who have appeared on Capitol Hill in the past few years have included Christopher Reeve, Katie Couric, Tony Bennett and Mary Tyler Moore.
"When journalists cover celebrities, what they are doing is they are relying on a crutch," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "They are hitchhiking on the celebrity of a person to get their story noticed rather than figure out a way to make mountaintop mining, or whatever the issue is, interesting in its own right."
Baker pointed out that it's a 180-degree change from the 1950s, when Hollywood stars were summoned to Capitol Hill to testify in the anti-communist hearings.
"Now, they come as honored guests and are sought out eagerly," he said.
On the Net:
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: http://epw.senate.gov/
Just Within Reach: http://www.justwithinreach.org
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