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NUCLEAR
Brazil says summit considers boosting nuclear power
Japanese Executives Resign Over Falsified Atom Plant Records
Japan Power Co. Execs to Resign
Missile Defense Choices Sought
Bush Urged to Narrow Missile Defense Focus
'Yellowcake' towns suffer
Sabre-rattling Cheney exposes rifts in Bush camp
Senate Opens Debate on Domestic Security Plan
MILITARY
Ukraine - Iraq Arms Deals Alleged
Blair Prepares Britain for War with U.S. on Iraq
DEA Presses Drug Sales - Terror Link
Saddam: Iraqis Will Triumph in Any Showdown
Israeli Court Approves Palestinian Expulsions
Israel Plans for Possible Strike
Navy Begins New Vieques Exercises
Pentagon fights on two fronts
Commanders Want Elite Units Freed From Qaeda Hunt
POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI will tap into personal profiles
Attacks Yield New Surveillance Laws
Training Center Crammed to Capacity
ENERGY AND OTHER
Schroeder calls energy conference in Germany
Energy the crunch issue as Earth Summit talks resume
Arab states resist renewable energy at Earth Summit
Energy Plan Reached at Summit
Compromise Brings Accord on Renewable Energy Closer
World Petroleum Execs Ponder Social Responsibility
Industry up in arms over new Europe recycling law
Russia to Ratify Kyoto Protocol
World Summit - Kyoto Protocol: Glance
Ex - EPA Head Criticizes Bush Air Plan
Mosquito diet pill seen as West Nile weapon
ACTIVISTS
World oil summit long on pledges to better protect the environment
Top American Green Ashamed of Summit Energy Deal
S. African court fines, expels Greenpeace activists
Denver Police Open 'Spy Files'
World Bank, IMF Protests Planned
Israeli Computer Hackers Foiled, Exposed
-------- NUCLEAR
Brazil says summit considers boosting nuclear power
Story by William Maclean
REUTERS SOUTH AFRICA:
September 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17555/story.htm
JOHANNESBURG - Brazil and green groups said the Earth Summit was considering giving a boost to nuclear energy, seen by environmentalists as a pariah technology blighted by a poor safety record.
They said a paragraph proposed for inclusion in the summit agreement originally intended to boost renewable energy such as solar and wind power had been amended to included an open-ended reference to "energy technologies".
The reference, in a passage calling for diversifying energy sources and transfering energy know-how to poor countries, would be seized on by the nuclear industry as an opportunity to promote the controversial technology, Brazilian government delegates and environmentalists argued.
"We do not believe this (paragraph) is the place to put nuclear," Brazilian Environment Minister Jose Carlos de Carvalho told Reuters.
"This is absolutely outrageous," said Greenpeace policy director Remi Parmentier. "It would open the way to increasing the world's share of nuclear power."
The clause is part of a sweeping United Nations plan for easing poverty while protecting the environment which negotiators are struggling to agree before world leaders gather in Johannesburg yesterday, hoping to sign off on the pact.
Delegates and environmentalists said the energy proposal had been made by the United States late on Saturday and had the backing of OPEC oil producers and a number of members of the G77 group of developing countries.
A U.S. delegate confirmed his team had put forward the proposal. Asked if the move meant Washington was advocating nuclear power, he replied: "It is fair to say that we advocate all forms of energy technologies."
PRESTIGE SUFFERED AFTER CHERNOBYL
Nuclear energy suffered a blow to its prestige when an blast took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the former Soviet Union in 1986, the world's worst civil nuclear accident.
Green groups say nuclear power is not only unsafe but also produces waste which will stay around for millennia.
But nuclear power still comprises about seven percent of world energy consumption, especially in the centrally planned energy systems of Russia, Taiwan, the Koreas, Japan, and France.
And partly because of its military applications, it still soaks up large amounts of taxpayer money in rich countries.
Between 1974 and 1998, 51 percent of government research and development spending on energy among the wealthy nations of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development went on nuclear power, although that proportion is now declining.
Brazilian delegate Suami Coelho said: "The problem with this paragraph is that it doesn't specifically exclude nuclear."
Green groups say the move threatens hopes of addressing climate change and pollution.
Advocates of renewable energy say nuclear power plants are not only expensive but also financially risky because of huge construction and repair costs and environmental liabilities.
Greens argue that while nuclear plants do not produce the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the nuclear process is so expensive the same money invested in efficiency measures or natural gas-fired power plants would offset more climate change.
Parmentier said: "Ever since we have been confronted with nuclear power we have seen it was an fundamentally unsustainable technology. It creates very large quantities of radioactive waste for which there is no solution.
"The proposal, which could be seen as opening the door for more nukes, is making a farce of this entire summit."
-------- japan
Japanese Executives Resign Over Falsified Atom Plant Records
New York Times
September 3, 2002
By KEN BELSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/03/international/asia/03JAPA.html
TOKYO, Sept. 2 - Top executives of Japan's largest electric power utility announced their resignations today after the government accused the company of falsifying repair reports at several of its nuclear plants for more than 15 years.
The resignations came just days after Japanese regulators opened an investigation of the country's nuclear power producers. The scandal is the latest in a series involving corporate malfeasance and lax government oversight and is one of the gravest because the utility, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, is a pillar of the business sector.
The findings may also slow the development of a new fuel - called mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX - that the government and several utilities have been promoting. Tokyo Electric Power had been testing the material at its installations, but government inspections, which began today, will force the company to halt the tests as it shuts down five reactors temporarily.
In announcing his and other departures, the Tokyo Electric Power's president, Nobuya Minami, conceded that his employees had hidden evidence and falsified 29 reports that included records of cracks in eight of the company's reactors. Nuclear regulators and the company said the cracks did not pose an immediate safety threat.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency ordered other utilities to check for cracks and other problems similar to the ones found at Tokyo Electric Power.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his ministers, angered by the reports, called on the power company to take responsibility for its actions. Akira Kawate, deputy governor of Fukushima prefecture, where two of Tokyo Electric's plants are situated, also expressed anger.
The problem became known when General Electric International Inc., a subsidiary of General Electric Company ,was hired to inspect Tokyo Electric Power's reactors. It told Tokyo Electric Power it had found that some safety documents might have been falsified.
Several local news organizations also suggested that General Electric International employees told regulators about the problems two years ago, though it is not clear why the problem was not publicly disclosed then.
Tokyo Electric Power's cover-up may have gone back as far as 1986 and continued through the mid-1990's, involving about 100 workers, Kyodo News reported.
The government will release a report of its findings in mid-September.
The turmoil is another setback for the government's program to develop the new fuel, which is made by mixing plutonium with uranium. In July, another Japanese utility returned a shipment of defective mixed-oxide fuel from Britain. The British company reportedly also falsified safety documents. Public protests ensued and will probably follow this time, experts said.
Kiyoshi Sakurai, an independent analyst formerly affiliated with Japan's Nuclear Power Research Institute, said the fuel program was sure to be delayed, adding, "The electric companies have completely damaged the trust of the citizens."
Still, the government supports production of the fuel to reduce the country's dependence on oil, all of which must be imported. Japan has more than four dozen nuclear reactors, which generate about 30 percent of the country's electricity.
Mr. Minami will step down in October as president of Tokyo Electric Power as well as from his posts as chairman of the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan and deputy leader of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives. The utility's chairman and three other executives will leave their posts this month.
--------
Japan Power Co. Execs to Resign
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nuclear-Power.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's biggest utility provider announced the resignations of three of its top executives and said that five of its nuclear reactors will be shut down for safety checks after the company admitted it failed to report previous problems.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Hiroshi Araki and Vice President Toshiaki Enomoto plan to step down by the end of September, company president Nobuya Minami told reporters Monday. Minami said he would quit in October.
Also expected to resign were Gaishi Hiraiwa and Sho Nasu, two former presidents who have been working as advisers.
``Company workers showed poor judgment in thinking that they could avoid disclosing the presence of cracks in the reactors because they didn't affect safety or require repairs,'' Minami said.
He didn't name any successors.
Minami also said Tokyo Electric Power would immediately shut down five nuclear reactors for two months to conduct a safety check.
Following an investigation by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the company admitted last week that it didn't report problems at three of its power plants in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
An internal probe revealed 29 cases of cracks or minor structural damage at 13 of the company's 17 plants, but the company later said the problems weren't serious enough to affect safety.
Meanwhile, investigators raided three of Tokyo Electric Power's plants Monday to collect files, check safety records and conduct an on-spot inspection of the reactors, ministry official Noriko Higuchi said.
Higuchi declined to say whether the company would be penalized.
Resource-poor Japan relies on nuclear power for about 30 percent of its electricity. Tokyo Electric Power's plants supply nearly half of the country's nuclear energy.
The public has become increasingly wary of nuclear power since a 1999 radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant killed two workers.
The ministry launched its investigation of Tokyo Electric Power's plants in July 2000 after receiving a tip from an employee of U.S. company General Electric, which was contracted to inspect the plants.
-------- missile defense
Missile Defense Choices Sought
Panel Urges Focus On 2 Approaches
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 3, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27522-2002Sep2?language=printer
An influential Pentagon advisory group has urged the Bush administration to narrow the focus of its missile defense program and concentrate on just two experimental approaches for guarding the nation against ballistic missile attack.
The previously undisclosed recommendation, which came last month from a group of prominent defense experts under the auspices of the Defense Science Board, puts added pressure on the administration to begin defining an actual missile defense architecture. It reinforces complaints among some in Congress, the defense industry and elsewhere about the lack of specificity in an administration plan that involves as many as eight different approaches for knocking down long-range missiles.
Since taking office, President Bush has made the deployment of antimissile defenses a top military priority, citing a mounting threat from the long-range missile development programs in such hostile nations as North Korea and Iran. Bush has boosted spending on missile defense by about 50 percent, to $7.7 billion a year, and has expanded research on a slew of technical approaches for firing interceptors or lasers from land, ships, aircraft or space platforms and for striking enemy warheads at every stage of flight, from just after launch to the final seconds before impact.
Despite several successful flight tests and plans to have a rudimentary ground-based system in place in Alaska by 2004, parts of the Pentagon's development effort remain slowed by technical challenges, cost overruns and congressional budget trims. Defense officials have avoided presenting a plan for fitting any of the experimental systems together, saying time is needed to test which weapons will work, particularly now that the demise of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has removed testing constraints.
The Defense Science Board panel concluded that enough is known to warrant some choices sooner rather than later, which in turn would increase the prospects for a timely deployment of a workable system. "The program needs to get away from the relative comfort of having a wide-open horizon with no defined architecture," said a source in summing up the group's findings. "It needs to focus on a much narrower set of initial capabilities in order to get something that's worth fielding."
One approach endorsed by the panel is a system of land-based interceptors aimed at hitting warheads during their midcourse phase -- that is, after they have soared out of the atmosphere and while they are arcing through space. This system is the furthest along in development, with flight tests having begun in 1999 under President Bill Clinton.
The panel's other favorite is a proposed system of ship-based interceptors that would be targeted at missiles in their boost and ascent phases. This option has strong backing among some congressional Republicans and such missile defense advocacy groups as the Heritage Foundation and High Frontier. Advocates contend that the Navy's fleet of 61 Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers -- designed to counter aircraft and cruise missiles -- can provide ready platforms for combating ballistic missiles, and can be equipped for this purpose in only a few years and for a fraction of the cost of a land-based system.
But the expert panel, while supporting the idea of a sea-based system, rejected the notion that it could be accomplished relatively easily or quickly. Members concluded that for such a system to work, the Pentagon would have to develop a much faster interceptor than the Navy's newest one -- the Standard Missile 3 -- which is intended to go against medium-range missiles.
The panel's recommendation is understood to reflect some of the thinking of Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, who has been given broad authority by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Kadish and the Pentagon's chief acquisition official, Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., had asked the Defense Science Board to undertake the study.
"We've got some tough choices to make," a senior Pentagon official said. "The DSB report is one set of recommendations going into the hopper for decision-making, but it's certainly an influential set."
The president and other White House officials have not been briefed on the Defense Science Board report, the final draft of which is still being written. But a summary of the panel's findings and briefing charts were recently presented to Kadish and other defense officials.
In a status report on the missile defense program that Rumsfeld and Kadish gave Bush at his ranch in Texas on Aug. 21, the president was advised not only of the program's progress but also of the issues up for decision this autumn, including the possibility of giving some approaches greater emphasis. "No decisions were made," the senior Pentagon official said.
The panel's recommendation carries particular weight because the group included some of the nation's most respected authorities on missile defense and was headed by retired Gen. Larry D. Welch and William Graham.
Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff who runs the Institute for Defense Analyses in Virginia, has chaired three independent missile defense studies over the past four years that have helped shape the Pentagon's program. Graham is a former science adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a onetime NASA deputy administrator.
Welch and Graham served with Rumsfeld four years ago on a congressionally-convened commission that warned of a growing missile threat and that gave impetus to a renewed push for a national antimissile system. The chairman of the Defense Science Board, William Schneider Jr., also served on that commission and remains close to Rumsfeld.
The open-ended nature of the administration's program has drawn widespread criticism. Congressional Democrats, long skeptical that any effective and affordable national system can be built, have accused the administration of being fiscally irresponsible in not putting forward a specific architecture that could be priced. Republican missile defense advocates have also expressed frustration, arguing that greater definition and an emphasis on some approaches over others would speed deployment.
Defense contractors, too, complain about the absence of a clearer, long-range program.
"We are at the point where additional definition is needed," said an executive with one of the major missile defense contractors. "We could continue the 'let 1,000 flowers bloom' philosophy, but the government needs to decide what it wants to deploy and assign resources accordingly."
Kadish is said to be firmly opposed to spelling out a "grand design." Not confident yet that all potential technical options for missile defense are known, let alone thoroughly studied, he still argues against getting locked into a specific architecture, according to officials familiar with his thinking.
Kadish agrees that the land-based midcourse system and the sea-based, boost-phase option are the most promising approaches and should be emphasized now. But he continues to favor an evolutionary approach to development, telling listeners that the "most common sense" course is to build a missile defense network "a piece at a time when it's ready."
In its quest for a network of antimissile defenses, the Bush administration has pursued a vision that is somewhere between Reagan's notion of a national shield against a massive attack -- dubbed "Star Wars" by critics -- and Clinton's proposal for a set of land-based interceptors to counter a very limited attack.
Under Bush, the objective remains to be able to block a modest number of missiles. But to ensure success, administration officials have talked about erecting a "layered" network of weapons. They have reaffirmed the priority of this effort even after launching the war on terrorism last autumn.
The ground-based, midcourse-intercept approach counts on interceptor rockets speeding into space and releasing "kill vehicles" designed to home in on and to obliterate enemy warheads by the force of collision. After failing to hit its target in two of the first three tests under Clinton, a prototype of the proposed system has scored intercepts in the past three attempts under Bush. Another test, delayed last month, is due before year's end.
But the system's biggest weakness remains the extent to which it can discriminate between real missiles and decoys. Kadish and his staff have acknowledged the need for improvement. Even so, the Defense Science Board panel recognized the value of, at least, a second layer of defense.
Some missile defense advocates continue to argue that the optimal solution lies in the use of interceptors or lasers fired from space-based platforms. And the Pentagon has been trying to develop an airborne weapon consisting of a chemical laser mounted on a modified Boeing 747 jetliner, with the first test shot scheduled for late 2004. But work on space-based systems has remained beset by technical problems and congressional opposition.
"If you're going to meet the guidance to get something deployed, you're going to have to do something faster than most of the panel thought that spaced-based could be done," the informed source said.
--------
Bush Urged to Narrow Missile Defense Focus
September 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-missiles-recommendation.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Pentagon advisory board has recommended that the Bush administration narrow the focus of its missile defense program and concentrate development on two approaches to an anti-missile shield, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
Officials told Reuters that the Defense Science Board made the preliminary recommendation in a draft report in August, but stressed that the board had not completed an in-depth study of the ballistic missile defense program.
They said the panel, following a summer meeting in California, had called for concentrating current efforts in the multibillion dollar program in two areas of maturing technology:
-- Land-based interceptors aimed at hitting warheads as they speed through space in mid-course toward a target.
-- Warship-based interceptors that would be targeted at missiles in their launch and ascent phases.
The officials, who asked not to be identified, confirmed a Washington Post report the board had concluded that enough information was known about the two systems to narrow the choices and perhaps accelerate the overall architecture for a missile defense system.
The Post said President Bush and other White House officials had not been briefed on the draft report.
``This is not a final report by any means,'' said one official. ``But the board felt that more focus is needed on promising building blocks to get something deployed.''
MOVING TOWARD 2004 TARGET
The administration is moving quickly to build a ground-based antimissile ``test bed'' centered in Alaska that it says could provide a rudimentary bulwark against a limited number of incoming missile warheads by the end of September 2004.
In addition to the ground-based antimissile system designed to shoot down incoming warheads as they hurtle through space, the Pentagon is developing ship-based and space-based defenses as well as a modified, laser-firing Boeing 747 airliner.
Bush pledged during the 2000 presidential campaign to build a ``layered'' system capable of shooting down missiles at every stage of their trajectory.
The Defense Department declined comment on the report, noting that the science board was not expected to complete a study of the anti-missile research efforts until next year.
``All of the programs in their various phases will be evaluated and the technologies that prove to be the most effective will be pursued,'' Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told Reuters in response to questions.
Critics of the anti-missile program question whether any system to shoot down incoming missiles will be fully reliable and say efforts to build a shield for the United States, its allies and troops may prove too costly to be practical and could spark an arms race.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency said last week it would pay Boeing Co. another $125 million and Lockheed Martin Corp. another $108.7 million for speeded-up work on existing missile shield projects.
The Pentagon last month put off for more than a month plans to try and shoot down a dummy missile over the Pacific, citing concerns about seals on 30-year-old rocket motors that were to be used in the previously-scheduled August 24 ground-based defense test.
Four of six such previous tests have been successful.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
'Yellowcake' towns suffer
By MICHAEL MARIZCO Staff Reporter
Arizona Daily Sun
09/03/2002
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=48037
With cancer rates higher for Native Americans than any other population in this country, Michael Amundson, an assistant professor of history at Northern Arizona University, has one suggestion for the NAU scientists who received a $4.5 million to study the issue.
Look at a map, find the uranium mines, then superimpose them on a map of where the poorest people in the country live. The two maps, he noted, will be almost identical.
"People with the least amount of power get the most environmental damage," said Amundson, who has detailed that damage in a new book, "Yellowcake Towns," published by University Press of Colorado.
Yellowcake was the nickname given to processed uranium ore.
NAU will use the grant ito study why cancer rates are so much higher for Native Americans than for other populations. Some suspect the cancer rates are higher because of uranium.
Grant supervisor Roger Van Andel has said the possibility exists because of the piles of radioactive ore that have survived on the reservations. Dust from the tailings is inhaled, and stormwater seepage increases the likelihood that the tailings have entered the water supply.
Amundson said the uranium mining business has been big business in this country dating back to 1889. The business boomed on the Colorado Plateau beginning in 1922.
The ore found north of Durango, Colo., contained carnotite, a radioactive mineral. From this, mining companies were able to separate three basic elements: radium, a steel alloy named vanadium and uranium.
The amount of radium produced was 21/2 pounds for every 100,000 tons of ore.
"It was used to cure cancer, but they also caused cancer," said Amundson.
During the Manhattan Project, 14 percent of the uranium used for the first atom bombs was pulled from the Colorado Plateau. What Amundson called a "green sludge" was eventually refined and made into the Hiroshima bomb.
After World War II, the government began rummaging through the stockpiles of that same ore to pull out the uranium as part of the Cold War nuclear buildup.
"You have to remember, those were the early days of the Cold War and the government paid for uranium," Amundson said.
Rather well, too.
Uranium mining towns began sprouting throughout the Southwest, including Moab, Utah, Grants, N.M., and Tuba City, about 100 miles north of Flagstaff.
One of the byproducts uranium decay was a little-known gas called radon. A highly radioactive, inert gas, it has been used in the treatment of cancer.
These days, radon is known as the second-highest cause of lung cancer, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.
"Back then, it was not regulated," said Amundson. "There was no OSHA; these people were breathing in radon."
In "Yellowcake Towns," Amundson said uranium towns were "subject to colonial control -- whether by the federal government, the market or the company."
They were also pro-nuclear towns, introducing uranium into the towns' culture. Uranium cafes sprang up, the towns held "Uranium Days" and a Miss Uranium pageant. The winner of the pageant received a truckload of uranium ore.
The uranium industry boomed in the late 1940s and busted in the 1950s, then saw a resurgence in the 1970s after the oil embargo.
"That's when it really grew," he said. "It pretty much collapsed by 1985."
On the reservations, debris piles of the uranium ore still exist. So far, nobody has made a direct correlation between high cancer rates among Native Americans and old uranium mining towns.
But the National Cancer Institute has published its findings on cancer incidence rates for 1995 to 1999. For gall bladder cancer rates, the numbers for races and ethnic groups showed a drop for each one except Native Americans, which rose about 10 percent.
Leukemia rose 10 percent for Native Americans while dropping 5 percent for Hispanics and rising only 1 percent and 2 percent for Asian and Anglo-Americans, respectively
Stomach cancer has gone down in every group except Native Americans, where it has risen 10 percent.
Amundson wouldn't be surprised to find that uranium is a cause of those higher cancer rates. He has seen signs posted by the federal government near tailing sites. Because there is no guarantee the English language or the Arabic numbering system will still be alive in 10,000 years when the material is still hot, nuclear scientists have tried using symbols which might still carry some meaning that far in the future.
Amundson said he has seen the symbols intended to tell future civilizations to keep out. One symbol portrays a field of harsh, metal spikes meaning: Don't walk here, it will hurt. Stay away.
"The legacy of the nuclear age is still here," he said.
"Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West," by Michael A. Amundson, University Press of Colorado, July 2002, 208 pp.,$24.95.
-------- us politics
Sabre-rattling Cheney exposes rifts in Bush camp
By Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, agencies,
September 3 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/02/1030953435627.html
George Bush has moved to distance himself from his Vice-President after it was revealed Dick Cheney's sabre-rattling speech on Iraq was made without full White House approval.
In a clear sign of disarray at the top of the Bush Administration, it has emerged that Mr Cheney may have gone too far in his bellicose address last week in which he dismissed out of hand the usefulness of pushing for weapons inspectors to be allowed back into Iraq.
Newsweek magazine reported that the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, said Mr Bush had not authorised Mr Cheney's language on inspections, and it was toned down in a second version of the speech.
The confusion was compounded by renewed reports in the United States that Colin Powell was planning to quit as Secretary of State at the end of the President's first term. Mr Powell's recommendations for a more multilateralist foreign policy have repeatedly been ignored.
As President Bush's most senior officials air public differences over Iraq, he is under fire across the political spectrum for failing to get his team in line.
"There have been nuanced disagreements from day one ... and they should be brought under control," said a former Republican secretary of state, Alexander Haig.
"He's got to lead. He's got to unify. He's got to ... start speaking with one voice."
Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to the United Nations under president Bill Clinton, described the latest disagreements as "more of a summer of public disarray by the Administration".
"Instead of making the case unambiguously with a single group of people singing from the same song sheet, they're singing at least, at a minimum, different lyrics to the same music, and they're undermining their case."
In a BBC interview, Mr Powell argued that UN weapons inspectors should be sent back to Iraq as a "first step" towards dealing with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. This echoed the position taken by Britain and the European Union, and contradicted the speech by Mr Cheney to US war veterans last week.
The Vice-President said the inspectors "would provide no assurance whatsoever" of Iraqi compliance with UN disarmament resolutions, but would increase the danger by providing "false comfort".
A Newsweek survey shows 81 per cent of respondents believe it is important to gain the formal support of the UN for military action, and 86 per cent say it is important to get support from most European allies.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Tareq Aziz, said yesterday that the return of UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad was being considered.
--------
Senate Opens Debate on Domestic Security Plan
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Returns.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate opened debate Tuesday on legislation creating a new Homeland Security Department as White House officials voiced confidence that they and Democrats will settle differences over the bill.
Sen.Joseph Lieberman, the chief Senate sponsor, called the measure ``the single most important thing we can do now'' in building better defenses against terrorism within U.S. borders.
``If we marshal these strengths of ours, we can make another Sept. 11-type attack impossible,'' Lieberman, D-Conn., said in opening what is likely to be a lengthy Senate debate.
Tom Ridge, the White House homeland security chief, predicted agreement would be reached but warned anew that President Bush will not accept a version of the bill pushed by Senate Democrats. Bush says that bill would deny the president the flexibility needed to manage an agency of roughly 170,000 employees.
``I think we will get it done before they recess for the November elections,'' Ridge said on NBC's ``Today'' program. But he said ``I would have to recommend the president veto'' the bill, if it were passed in its current form in the Senate, because of a lack of managerial flexibility.
Appearing on the same program, Lieberman said, ``I think the White House is making up this issue.''
``It is not a real issue,'' he said, ``and certainly not reason to veto this bill and delay the security of our defenses, the raising of our guard against terrorist attack.''
Ridge and Lieberman sparred on the morning television shows as members of the House and Senate were returning from their summer vacation.
On Monday, Bush jawboned lawmakers to pass the version of the bill that he wants. ``Congress needs to get moving,'' he told a Labor Day crowd near Pittsburgh.
Bush, who returned from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, over the holiday weekend after a month of combined leisure and business travel, invited Republican senators to the White House Tuesday afternoon to discuss the measure. ``The president's message is, give me a homeland security bill that allows us to do what we need to do to protect Americans from future attacks,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
That was to be the first of several meetings the White House planned for this week to push Bush's legislative wish-list.
But this also is a critical campaign season for midterm elections in which the balance of power in Congress is in play. So lawmakers are hoping to get out by early October, even as they face a fast-approaching deadline for finishing work on the federal budget.
Congressional leaders will be under strong pressure to recess and then return to finish their work after the Nov. 5 midterm elections. Four incumbent Senate Democrats -- Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Jean Carnahan of Missouri -- are in tight races that could determine whether the party holds onto its one-seat majority.
In the 435-member House, Democrats need to pick up seven seats to end the GOP's eight-year control.
Among pending issues in addition to counterterrorism legislation are bills designed to shore up the protection of people's pensions and to overhaul U.S. energy policy. And Congress has yet to give final approval to any of the 13 federal appropriations bills for 2003.
But the first order of business for the Senate is the homeland security measure. Democrats are balking at Bush's insistence on greater power to hire and fire and a provision that would bar union membership for some of the employees who would be assigned to that agency.
Bush has argued that he needs the flexibility because the agency would be designed to respond quickly to threats against domestic security.
Ridge said Tuesday ``the president believes that you can't just buckle up and bolt things together'' in the new department. He said the administration needs flexibility in hiring, firing and assignments.
In an appearance on CBS' ``The Early Show,'' Ridge said that ``if you limit the ability of the president to move people around within this organization, you will not have done everything you can to protect this country and our way of life.''
Lieberman, in the NBC interview, declared: ``I'm basically trying to stick with the tried and true civil service system.''
On the Net:
Congress site: http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
Ukraine - Iraq Arms Deals Alleged
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Iraq.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- An opposition Ukrainian legislator claimed Tuesday to have evidence that President Leonid Kuchma was involved in military deals with Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Hrihoriy Omelchenko, the head of a parliamentary commission, also asked the Ukraine's prosecutor general indict Kuchma on criminal charges related to the death in 2000 of a journalist who crusaded against alleged high-level corruption, Heorhiy Gongadze.
Omelchenko's commission is investigating the accuracy of Ukrainian news reports implying that Kuchma, former security chief Leonid Derkach and other officials participated in arms sales to Iraq.
``The names, the weapons and the bank accounts into which the money was deposited will be revealed when the committee completes its investigation,'' Omelchenko said at a news conference.
Omelchenko gave no details about the weapons allegedly involved, but said there are four Ukrainian-made Kolchuha radar installations in Iraq.
He said he met last month with U.S. Justice Department officials investigating allegations of arms deals between Ukraine and Iraq.
Kuchma, who was attending a summit conference in South Africa, and other officials did not immediately respond to Omelchenko's accusations about the alleged military deals.
U.S. embassy spokesman Vadim Kovalyuk would not comment on Omelchenko's claims Tuesday, saying only that ``the U.S. takes such allegations very seriously and thoroughly investigates any such allegations whether against Ukraine or any other country.''
Gongadze disappeared in September 2000. After more than a year of stalled investigations, Ukraine's chief prosecutor Svyatoslav Piskun said Tuesday a panel of forensic experts had confirmed beyond doubt that a headless body found in the woods outside Kiev later that year was that of Gongadze.
Earlier, Ukrainian authorities had refused to confirm the results of DNA tests by Russian and U.S. investigators who said they were 95 percent certain it was Gongadze's body.
When the body was found, it touched off months of protests against Kuchma, whom opposition leaders -- based on statements attributed to the president on an audiotape recorded in Kuchma's office. Kuchma denies any involvement.
Omelchenko said his committee has ``sufficient evidence'' to prove that Kuchma, Parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn and other high-ranking political figures ``organized the disappearance of Heorhiy Gongadze.''
-------- britain
Blair Prepares Britain for War with U.S. on Iraq
September 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain.html
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, bidding to calm growing public alarm at the prospect, has begun preparing the nation for war with Iraq in his most uncompromising speech to date on the subject.
``I hate war. Every sensible person does. But sometimes it is the right thing to do,'' he told reporters at his Sedgefield constituency in northern England, promising convincing evidence soon that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
``Iraq poses a real and unique threat to the security of the region and the rest of the world. Saddam Hussein is continuing his efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Confronted with this reality, we have to face up to it and deal with it.''
Many British newspapers embraced the rhetoric with relish.
``War will not wait'' splashed the tabloid Sun on its front page, while the Daily Mail trumpeted ``Blair lights the fuse.''
The right-wing broadsheet Times joined the chorus with a front page headline ``Everything points to war with Iraq.''
``The elimination of Saddam's ambitions in this theater is in Britain's national interests,'' it added in an editorial.
Blair, who has twice taken his country to war -- in Kosovo and Afghanistan -- in just five years in power, said there was no realistic alternative to removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
``Either the regime starts to function in a completely different way -- and there's not much sign of that -- or the regime has to change,'' he said.
``This is an appalling, brutal, dictatorial, vicious regime...the people that would be most delighted if Saddam Hussein went would be the Iraqi people.''
SALESMAN FOR WAR
But Blair is facing an uphill struggle with an opinion poll this week showing 71 percent of Britons were against the country joining any United States attack on Iraq without the blessing of the United Nations.
``The important thing...is that the U.N. has to be the route to deal with this problem, not a way of people avoiding dealing with this problem,'' he said, suggesting a bid to get U.N. approval but hinting the wait would not be indefinite.
The left-wing Guardian newspaper -- in an oblique reference to World War II -- dubbed Blair's speech the Battle for Britain and said he had made a poor case for war.
Blair said no decision had been taken -- either in London or Washington -- on action against Baghdad, but insisted that he was fully behind President Bush's increasingly belligerent stance on the ``axis of evil'' nation.
``The policy of containment as it exists now cannot be continued effectively,'' he said. ``It simply can't.''
The Daily Telegraph newspaper said Blair, who adopted the role of global salesman for Bush's ``war on terror'' after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington last year was assuming the mantle yet again for a strike against Iraq.
``Blair will demonstratively use his good offices to bring round the German and French leaders, thereby gaining prestige in Washington,'' it said in an editorial, adding that Blair had now irrevocably tied his future to that of Bush.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said London's priority is to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
But Blair said Baghdad's record of frustrating U.N. arms inspectors from 1991 until they left in 1998 meant the world would need convincing they will able to do their job properly.
``Weapons inspectors should go back in unconditionally. Any time, any place, anywhere under a weapons inspection regime that really makes a difference,'' he said. ``If the Iraqis refuse then we have to find a different way of dealing with it.''
-------- drug war
DEA Presses Drug Sales - Terror Link
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terrorists-Drugs.html
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani helped open a museum exhibit Tuesday intended to show Americans that buying illegal drugs can support terrorist attacks.
The exhibit, titled ``Target America,'' includes Sept. 11 rubble from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It is housed at a museum in the Drug Enforcement Administration's headquarters.
DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson said the exhibit aims to educate Americans about the role drug money has in terrorism.
``Before terrorism hit home on Sept. 11, few Americans realized the connection, and fewer still understood that drug money has been used to fund terrorism,'' Hutchinson said.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said, ``Terrorism and drugs go together like rats and the plague. ... They thrive in the same conditions, and they feed off of each other.''
The exhibit, supported by $650,000 from the DEA budget plus private financing from donors, will go on nationwide tour next year.
It includes photographs from Afghanistan that outline connections the al-Qaida terror network and the Taliban militia, Afghanistan's former rulers, have had to drug trafficking. An interactive map illustrates that some reputed opium sellers and distributors support the Taliban.
The rubble from the World Trade Center sits as part of a replica of the ruins left after the towers fell. Another section of the exhibit is devoted to exploring the history of the ``narcoterrorist,'' the Bush administration's label for drug runners who support groups like al-Qaida.
Since Sept. 11, the war on drugs has taken a lower emphasis to the war on terror. In June, FBI Director Robert Mueller told DEA agents that they could expect less field support from FBI agents, who have been redeployed to domestic security.
The museum exhibit brought criticism from some groups pressing for legalization of drugs.
``This is a sad exploitation of the memories of the 3,000 people killed Sept. 11,'' said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman at the Marijuana Policy Project. ``We felt it was important to tell the true story: It is the war on drugs that funds terrorism by driving up drug profits and forcing the drug trade underground.''
Federal authorities have recently amassed what they say is hard evidence of connections between drugs and terrorism, uncovering an illegal drug operation in the United States that was funneling proceeds to Middle East terror groups such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah.
A series of DEA raids in January indicated a methamphetamine drug operation in the Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been shipping money back to terror groups, officials said.
DEA officials said the men, most of whom were indicted on drug charges after their January arrests, were smuggling large quantities of the chemical pseudoephedrine from Canada into the Midwest.
Giuliani said the links between drugs and terrorism are substantial.
``The link has been known to law enforcement for a long time, but we didn't see it as Americans because we thought we were immune to terrorism,'' Giuliani said.
On The Net:
Museum: http://www.deamuseum.org/
DEA: http://www.dea.gov/
Marijuana Policy Project: http://www.mpp.org/targetamerica
-------- iraq
Saddam: Iraqis Will Triumph in Any Showdown
September 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-saddam.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Tuesday that his country would emerge victorious in any showdown with their enemies, a clear reference to threatened U.S. military action against Baghdad.
``We have prevailed before and we will also prevail in Umm al-Ma'arik (Mother of All Battles) at the end, God willing,'' Iraq's state television quoted Saddam as saying in an open letter to the Iraqi people, referring to the 1991 Gulf War.
According to the Iraqis, the confrontation with the United States that began in 1991 is still going on, in the form of repeated attacks by U.S. and British aircraft policing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.
The two zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, were imposed to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from possible attack by government forces.
``Victory is in the heart and when it becomes a faith it will not be affected or confused by things around it, including kinds of weaponry and the technical supplies possessed by your enemy, hostile media campaigns, fabricated news and psychological disturbance caused by the enemy,'' Saddam said in his letter, which was read out by a television anchor.
President Bush, who has said Iraq is part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iran and North Korea, has accused Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction and called for ``regime change'' in Baghdad, meaning the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
A senior U.S. official said Tuesday that no decision had been taken on possible military action against Iraq.
``With respect to Iraq, the United States has expressed its very deep, very serious concern over the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his regime,'' U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield told reporters in Damascus.
``With respect to ... timing, I can only repeat what has been said from Washington many times: No decisions have been presented to the president, no decisions have been made by the president in this regard,'' he said.
Satterfield was speaking after Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said Baghdad was ready to seek an overall solution to its confrontation with Washington as long as U.S. concerns about weapons programs were not just a pretext for an attack.
Aziz also repeated an invitation for U.S. politicians to visit Iraq and check for weapons of mass destruction, an idea ridiculed in the West as a ploy to avoid the return of U.N. weapons inspectors who left in 1998 and have not been allowed back in.
The weapons inspectors were in Iraq to help implement U.N. resolutions calling for the destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Iraq says its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been destroyed.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Court Approves Palestinian Expulsions
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's Supreme Court gave the army a new tool in its two-year struggle against Palestinian violence Tuesday, allowing it to expel Palestinians from the West Bank to Gaza for aiding terrorist suspects.
In the first case of its kind, the court upheld the expulsion of two relatives of a terror suspect, but overturned an order against a third person, ruling that expulsion must be limited only to relatives directly involved in terror attacks.
Palestinians called for foreign intervention to stop the Israeli practice, while human rights groups said it violates international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions.
Israel said the two, a brother and sister of a suspected terrorist, would be taken to Palestinian Authority territory on the edge of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Palestinian officials said they would stay in a hotel and then move to a housing project in Gaza City.
In a separate development, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dropped his earlier opposition to allowing the Palestinian parliament to convene in the West Bank town of Ramallah but said the ban stands for legislators he deems involved in terror. The parliament is to approve the new Palestinian Cabinet and consider reform measures.
Sharon said a change is appearing among the Palestinians, who ``are realizing that we cannot be defeated by force, and this can certainly be an opening to our restoring calm.'' Sharon was addressing Israeli police.
Also Tuesday, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians walking near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. A military official said soldiers saw one of the men carrying a weapon and fired a tank shell at him. Palestinians said both men were unarmed.
In the Jenin refugee camp, seven Palestinians, including two children, were hurt when a bomb exploded, residents said. They said it was apparently left over from a battle with Israeli forces in April, when Palestinians planted hundreds of bombs in the camp.
At the Supreme Court hearing, the Israeli military argued that expulsions are an effective deterrent against suicide bombings and other attacks.
Human rights lawyers said the measure violates the Geneva Conventions, which forbid ``individual or mass forcible transfers'' or deportations of ``protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country.''
The court accepted the state's argument that the West Bank and Gaza Strip constitute one territory, and so sending people from the West Bank to Gaza did not amount to deportation. Israel has never acknowledged that the Geneva Conventions apply to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat called the expulsions war crimes and said the Palestinians may ask the U.N. Security Council to discuss the matter.
The justices approved the expulsion of Intisar and Kifah Ajouri, sister and brother of Ali Ajouri, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia. Ajouri allegedly sent two suicide bombers to Tel Aviv on July 17, and two Israelis and three foreign workers were killed in the attack.
Ali Ajouri was killed in an Israeli army strike on Aug. 6.
The court said Intisar Ajouri sewed the explosives belts for the bombers, and Kifah kept watch while his brother moved explosives between hiding places.
The judges overturned the expulsion order against Abdel Nasser Asidi, brother of a Hamas activist accused of involvement in two West Bank attacks that killed 19 Israelis.
The conflicting rulings indicated that every time the military tries to use expulsion, it may face court hearings.
Lawyer Leah Tzemel, who represented two of the petitioners, said, ``It puts Israel into difficulties with international law and leads soldiers into the possibility of being sentenced as war criminals.''
She said the Hague-based International Criminal Court had jurisdiction only in cases dating from July 1, 2002, when it came into being.
The ruling, written by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, said that the military can expel a relative of a militant only if that person poses a real security threat.
The ruling said the court sought to balance security concerns and human rights. ``In this balance, human rights cannot receive complete protection as if there were no terror, and state security cannot receive complete protection, as if there were no human rights,'' Barak wrote.
Intisar and Kifah Ajouri, the two Palestinians slated for expulsion, are residents of the Askar refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Nablus.
Their mother, Rashida, 64, said the two had not seen Ali for six months before being arrested. Two days after the Tel Aviv bombing, army bulldozers demolished the family's three-story house with six apartments for Mrs. Ajouri, her husband and their unmarried daughter, Intisar, and her five sons and their families.
``That was not enough for them. They want to kill everyone in the family by deportation,'' Mrs. Ajouri said.
On May 10, 26 Palestinian militants were expelled from Bethlehem to Gaza at the end of a 39-day Israeli siege at the Church of the Nativity. That case was not tested in court because it was the result of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
--------
Israel Plans for Possible Strike
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Iraq.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel has asked its security and emergency services to complete preparations for a possible U.S. attack on Iraq -- and an Iraqi counterstrike against Israel -- by Nov. 1, officials said Tuesday.
The United States has not told Israel if or when it will attack Iraq, and Nov. 1 was chosen by Israel as a ``reasonable'' deadline for preparations, to make sure no branch of the security or emergency services lagged behind, said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Security officials, including a senior member of the Home Front Command, confirmed they have been asked by the government to present their plans by Nov. 1.
Israel is getting ready for the possibility that if the United States attacks Iraq, President Saddam Hussein will strike against Israel, as he did during the 1991 Gulf War. In 1991, Israel did not respond when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at it, but officials have publicly said Israel will retaliate if Baghdad attacks again.
The officials would not say what sort of preparations would be made. The army said that the Home Front Command, responsible for defense against an attack on Israeli soil, had held an exercise in the past two weeks.
The newspaper Maariv reported that the military was training for a possible attack by chemical or biological weapons, with soldiers practicing distributing antibiotics to a civilian population.
Israel has also deployed anti-missile batteries in central Israel and in the Negev Desert near its nuclear reactor.
Last month, Israel's Cabinet decided to inoculate 15,000 security and rescue officials against smallpox to prepare for what officials called the very remote possibility of an Iraqi attack with non-conventional weapons. In 1991, all the Scud missiles fired on Israel had conventional warheads.
President Bush has called for Saddam's removal, but aides have said repeatedly that Bush has not made a decision on what to do. Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the administration have called for pre-emptive military action against Saddam.
Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, refused to discuss Israel's preparations, except to say that Israel would be forewarned about any U.S. action.
``The President of the United States will give us ample warning so that we can prepare for the possibility of an Iraqi attack on Israel,'' Gissin said.
Maariv reported that Sharon met Tuesday with the heads of his security forces to discuss a possible U.S. attack on Iraq.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Sharon, would not confirm Tuesday's meeting but said there have been ongoing meetings recently to discuss a possible U.S. attack.
Israel, he said, ``is examining all possible developments'' in case of a U.S. attack on Iraq ``without necessarily putting a date on that or without necessarily taking it for granted that the attack will take place.''
-------- puerto rico
Navy Begins New Vieques Exercises
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Fighter jets buzzed over Vieques on Tuesday as activists shied away from their usual raucous protests, fearful of stiff jail sentences and fines in a post-Sept. 11 climate.
Pilots practiced fly-overs, U.S. Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Kim Dixon said, while the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and 11 other ships would likely practice shelling the bombing range on Wednesday. The exercises, the third since Sept. 11, are expected to last for 23 days.
The military has used the prized bombing range on Vieques for more than six decades. Opposition to the exercises grew when a civilian guard was killed after a Navy jet dropped two bombs off-target in April 1999. Since then, only inert bombs have been used.
Hundreds of people have tried to thwart the exercises by breaking onto the bombing range, often getting arrested, jailed and fined. But the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon muted the protests.
Five men entered Navy land at dawn on Tuesday and were quickly detained, said pro-independence Sen. Fernando Martin. Aside from that, only a dozen activists showed up for lackluster protests.
Activist camps -- which would have been bustling a year ago before the attacks -- were half empty on Tuesday.
Clare Hanrahan, 53, from Asheville, N.C., said Tuesday she feared a long jail sentence if she trespassed in the wake of Sept. 11.
``I'm not going to step over the fence,'' she said. ``I'm more valuable outside of prison.''
Elizabeth Roebling, 55, and also from Asheville, blamed the poor turnout on tougher jail sentences since the Patriot Act was passed following the terror attacks. Roebling was arrested in June 2001 during bombing exercises and was released two days later.
``I'm personally not willing to risk it,'' she said.
``The Bush administration has made it sound like protesting (since Sept. 11) is un-American,'' she said.
President Bush has promised the Navy will withdraw its forces from Vieques by May 2003. Some remain skeptical though.
``My dream is that they leave in 2003, but Bush likes war just as much as his father did,'' said Elba Perez, a 45-year-old cashier on Vieques.
Rafael Rivera Castano, 68, a retired university professor on Vieques said the protests may be quieter but the sentiment remains the same.
``The people continue to believe that the Navy has to leave,'' he said. ``Smaller groups don't mean the ideal has changed.''
The Navy bombing range covers 900 acres on the eastern tip of Vieques -- less than 3 percent of the Caribbean island off the east coast of the U.S. territory.
The Navy has said the bombing range is vital to military preparedness, but officials say they are looking for alternative sites.
Opponents say the exercises harm the environment and health of Vieques' 9,100 residents. The Navy denies the claim.
Gov. Sila Calderon, an opponent of the exercises, has said she will visit the island on Friday.
Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York who visited Vieques two years ago, on Tuesday called on Bush to stop the exercises immediately.
``The Navy has demonstrated in practice that its training needs can be satisfied through other sites and means,'' he said.
As part of the effort to halt the bombing, 27 members of Congress have called on Bush to issue an executive order guaranteeing the Navy's departure from Vieques by May 2003.
-------- us
Pentagon fights on two fronts
September 3, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020903-28606605.htm
The military has slashed thousands of jobs at its various headquarters in Washington, saluting an order from Congress and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to make the Defense Department a leaner war machine.
But there are worries inside the department that the streamlining is driving seasoned pros away from top Pentagon jobs. The exodus comes as the services face two major tasks from President Bush: run the war on terrorism and transform the armed forces to fight new types of enemies.
Mr. Rumsfeld declared war on a top-heavy bureaucracy in a Sept. 10 speech, the day before hijacked airliners crashed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, touching off the military's global war on terrorism. Nearly one year later, the 24-hour demands of that war have not prompted Mr. Rumsfeld, or Congress, to back down from a goal of 15 percent staff cuts.
The defense secretary has two objectives: cut uniformed positions to free up more desk jockeys for combat jobs, improving the so-called "tooth-to-tail" ratio; and streamline acquisition and policy decisions by reducing the number of bureaucrats stirring the pot.
There will be no net decrease in the number of department personnel, just a spreading of personnel from the top to operational units and field activities.
Mr. Rumsfeld's target in his "battle against bureaucracy" is what the Pentagon calls the major headquarters activities (MHA), comprising 63,300 jobs that are mostly in Washington. The most recently available numbers show the Pentagon has trimmed MHA slots by 4,400, to 58,900, a cut of 7.5 percent, half of the defense secretary's 15 percent goal.
A Pentagon statement to The Washington Times said, "The secretary's 'battle against bureaucracy' will allow the department to target its scarce personnel resources toward the most critical operational requirements at the lowest possible organizational level."
Mr. Rumsfeld has not dictated which jobs should go away, leaving those decisions up to the services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defense agencies and combatant commands.
The Air Force said it has reduced the number of personnel at major headquarters by more than 1,500, and will cut 1,200 more spaces by 2004.
The Marine Corps has cut 420 jobs from headquarters in the Washington area.
The Navy could not provide comparable numbers, but Secretary Gordon England said in a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld that he has targeted 25 percent of his staff.
The Army has cut 940 slots among 7,000 Pentagon employees. By 2004, it also will have axed 700 of 7,000 Army agency positions and 900 of 13,000 jobs at major command headquarters.
"The Army has been working assiduously since [Army Secretary] Tom White took office to reduce its Pentagon staff, and now we're working on the major subordinate commands around the world," said Charles A. Krohn, an Army spokesman. "This is something the Army is very proud of. This is the first major structural reform of the Army since 1900."
Mr. Krohn said the Army has achieved reductions by combining civilian and uniformed officers with redundant missions into one unit, as Congress directed.
For example, the Army used to maintain two Pentagon offices for personnel, one run by an assistant secretary, the other by a three-star general. Now, the two offices are combined and work as one.
"What we looked for was redundant functions that had built up over the years, and eliminated the redundancy," Mr. Krohn said.
He said of the 940 eliminated positions, all but 42 employees have found new jobs in the government.
The slim-down is not sitting well with all Pentagon employees. They say the cuts have contributed to a low-morale problem in the defense secretary's policy shop, prompting meetings between Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and his staff.
Officials also point to the case of Paul Schneider. A longtime Navy civilian employee, Mr. Schneider is considered one of its best authorities on shipbuilding and acquisition.
The Navy is eliminating all its principal deputy assistant Navy secretaries, a title Mr. Schneider holds in the acquisition shop. Rather than take a new position, Mr. Schneider is leaving to become the National Security Agency's top acquisition executive.
"The recent [Navy secretary]-directed reorganization has resulted in a situation whereby I would be better professionally doing something else outside the Department of Navy," Mr. Schneider said in an e-mail to colleagues.
An internal Navy document shows the research, development and acquisition branch is combining weapons offices and abolishing all deputy positions, starting this month. Mr. Rumsfeld began his battle in a speech to Pentagon employees nearly one year ago.
"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," he said. "It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. Not the people, but the process. Not the civilians, but the systems. Not the men and women in uniform, but the uniformity of thought and action that we too often impose on them.
"We have so many general counsel offices that we actually have another general counsel's office whose job is to coordinate all those general counsels."
--------
Commanders Want Elite Units Freed From Qaeda Hunt
September 3, 2002
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/03/international/asia/03INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 - Commanders in the American military's most elite Special Operations unit are contending that their troops should be freed from the fruitless hunt in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden, military and intelligence officials say.
Some senior officers in the Joint Special Operations Command have concluded that Mr. bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was probably killed in the American bombing raid at Tora Bora last December, officials said. They concluded that he died in a bombing raid on one of several caves that had been a target because American intelligence officials believed they housed Qaeda leaders.
Yet the Special Operations leaders lack hard forensic evidence that would prove Mr. bin Laden is dead, and acknowledge their conclusions are deductive, drawn partly from the lack of recent confirmed sightings or radio intercepts indicating he is still alive, officials say.
Other military and intelligence officials have sharply disagreed with their assessment, and the analysis by some commanders of the Joint Special Operations Command does not represent a consensus of all Special Operations forces leaders, military officials said.
The analysis concerning Mr. bin Laden's fate plays into a deepening debate under way among Special Operations leaders about how best to use the military's super-secret counterterrorism forces.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing for an expanded use of Special Operations forces units beyond Afghanistan to kill or capture terrorists. As a result, Special Operations leaders are trying to determine whether the hunt for the elusive Qaeda leader is still the best use of the limited resources of the most elite units.
At least publicly, President Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have said they do not know whether Mr. bin Laden is alive or dead. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the American military effort in Afghanistan, said last week that he had not seen "convincing proof" that Mr. bin Laden had been killed. But General Franks added that he did not know Mr. bin Laden's fate.
American intelligence agencies have received reports from people on the ground in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region claiming to have information that Mr. bin Laden is alive.
Still, the assessment suggesting he is dead comes from the commanders of the elite military units responsible for counterterrorism, which have been on the front lines of the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. They are so respected that senior intelligence and law enforcement officials elsewhere have been briefed on the assessment, leading to more debate on whether Mr. bin Laden is dead or alive.
Despite the debate within the Special Operations ranks over Mr. bin Laden, American and allied ground troops - including the elite commandos - continue to scour Afghanistan, searching for pockets of Qaeda fighters and clues about Mr. bin Laden. Barring conclusive evidence that Mr. bin laden is dead, the military's default position is to assume he is still alive and to keep hunting for him. Yet Special Operations forces are increasingly frustrated by how little they have to show for their efforts.
In the late spring or early summer, a meeting of Special Operations leaders was held to discuss how to allocate Special Operations resources, officials said. At that meeting, some senior commanders told their colleagues that they believed Mr. bin Laden was dead, officials familiar with the meeting said.
"There are a lot of people - though it's not an official position - who think he's gone, way gone," said one senior military officer.
The meeting's focus pivoted to implications of that assessment, the officer said. "It was a discussion of what requires us to stay there in Afghanistan," the officer said. "If Osama bin Laden is presumed dead, then it would reduce the pressure to keep the forces in Afghanistan."
Spokesmen for Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the two men had not been briefed on the discussion, suggesting that the commanders' assessment was not a formal written intelligence report that was handed up the chain of command.
Still, officials at other intelligence agencies said they were familiar with the assessment that Mr. bin Laden was dead, indicating that the unit's views have circulated widely among the government's counterterrorism experts. But Special Operations leaders remain divided on the issue, officials said.
"There have been no formal intelligence assessments suggesting definitive conclusions concerning bin Laden within the Special Operations forces community," said a military spokesman. "However, there are some members of the intelligence community within S.O.F. who have asserted independently in formal settings that it is their personal belief bin Laden was killed at Tora Bora.
"The individuals making this case claim no more than that their conclusions are deductive and they have offered no definitive proof," the military spokesman said. "Others contradict them with their own assertions that he is probably still in rural Pakistan. Bottom line: no concrete conclusions guided by rule of thumb in the intelligence business which is, until you can produce the body, you can't make the claim."
The Joint Special Operations Command, based at Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, is responsible for conducting the military's most sensitive counterterrorism missions. The unit is so secretive that the Army refused to release the résumé of its commander, Maj. Gen. Del Dailey.
Within the command, two highly secretive, relatively small groups are designated for counterterrorism missions: the Army Special Operations unit known as Delta Force, and the Naval Special Warfare unit, often called Seal Team 6, senior military officials said.
The Joint Special Operations Command is subordinate to the larger United States Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla. In Afghanistan, the Special Operations forces have worked closely with paramilitary officers from the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division.
Now, as President Bush weighs whether to attack Iraq, and Mr. Rumsfeld is seeking an expanded worldwide role for Special Operations forces, a number of Special Operations commanders say their scarce elite forces could be employed more effectively if sent on other sensitive missions, military officials said.
"The issue is, what are your options, and how many places do you stay engaged and committed?" said one senior military officer. "If the assumption is bin Laden is dead, then maybe you don't need those assets in Afghanistan anymore."
In the global campaign against terrorism, the military's Special Operations units are already stretched thin. Officials say that fewer than 1,000 commandos are part of frontline counterterrorism teams, out of total combat Special Operations troops of between 7,000 and 8,000, which includes Army Rangers, other Seal teams, and Air Force Special Operations units. Overall, the military has about 46,000 personnel in Special Operations forces, including those involved in civil affairs and other nondirect action roles.
But it takes years to recruit and train members of the elite counterterrorism units, and their numbers have clearly not grown as rapidly as the number of jobs they may soon be called upon to accomplish.
Should President Bush decide to invade Iraq, for instance, Delta Force and Seal Team 6 would probably be asked to perform another one of their specialized missions - counterproliferation. They would be assigned to help hunt down and destroy Iraq's suspected arsenal of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and the missiles to launch them.
Despite the desire by some Special Operations officials to move on to new assignments, others in American intelligence agencies, the military and law enforcement remain uncertain about Mr. bin Laden's fate.
"I would bet my paycheck, but not my mortgage, that he is still alive," said one senior American official.
Intelligence officials acknowledge that they have no hard evidence that Mr. bin Laden escaped Tora Bora. American intelligence agencies have not obtained any intercepted communications indicating that Mr. bin Laden is alive since the assault on Tora Bora. In mid-December, the United States intercepted a radio transmission on which analysts believe they could hear Mr. bin Laden giving orders to Qaeda fighters. He has been silent ever since.
American intelligence agencies have received reports from people on the ground in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region who have claimed that they have information that Mr. bin Laden escaped Tora Bora and made his way into Pakistan. These reports are not conclusive, but are numerous enough to convince some officials that he did escape Tora Bora.
American intelligence officials also say they believe that if Mr. bin Laden was dead, other Qaeda leaders, as well as Mr. bin Laden's family, would behave differently than they appear to be acting today. "If he is dead, very few people in Al Qaeda know it," said one official.
Mr. Rumsfeld says that he has no idea whether Mr. bin Laden is alive or dead. "He's either alive and in Afghanistan or somewhere else, or he's dead," Mr. Rumsfeld said last month.
But in July, Dale Watson, the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism chief, became the first senior government official to say publicly that he believed Mr. bin Laden was dead. Mr. Watson said that he did not have hard evidence to support his opinion. It is unclear whether he had heard about the commanders' assessment before making his statement.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI will tap into personal profiles
No legal basis for suspicion needed
By Bruce V. Bigelow STAFF WRITER,
San Diego Union Tribune,
September 3, 2002
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/tue/news/news_1n3fbidata.html
When direct marketing consultant Mike DeCastro gets hired to plan a campaign pitching vacations in Mazatlan or cell phone service in San Diego, one of his first moves is to consult an online catalog of customer lists.
Such lists are the lubricant that keep the wheels of our consumer society spinning. If you applied for a loan or used a credit card, your name is on a list. They identify almost everyone who has attended school, subscribed to anything, or bought anything from a catalog, direct mail or online merchant.
Ultimately, such lists also provide the raw material used to build sophisticated computerized databases that have become a multibillion-dollar industry.
"Just about anything that you want to know about anybody is available in a commercial database," said DeCastro of San Francisco.
Most people don't have a clue that such databases compile information from a variety of sources, linking their names to their Social Security numbers, credit profiles, employment histories, travel records, court records, personal interests and chronic health conditions.
And now, under changes ordered by Attorney General John Ashcroft, the FBI is moving to use commercial databases in its efforts to prevent acts of terrorism in the United States.
The change was part of a broader decision, announced by the Justice Department May 30, to loosen the internal policies that guide federal terrorist investigations.
Now, even if they don't have a specific suspect or legal basis for suspicion, "FBI agents under the new guidelines are empowered to scour public sources for information on future terrorist threats," Ashcroft said.
The attorney general did not specify how the FBI would use commercial databases, and a Justice Department spokesman did not return calls seeking elaboration.
Experts say the FBI would likely use special software and advanced "data-mining" techniques that can sift through enormous fields of data to identify patterns and characteristics of potential terrorists.
Given the potential threats to American security, some say the changes were long overdue.
"The computer systems that were available to the general public were not available to agents like me," said Darwin Wisdom, a former FBI agent who runs the Baker Street Group, a San Diego investigative firm. "I was always dismayed by our inability to access information that was available on computer just about everywhere else."
'Dr agnet-style'
Before Ashcroft changed the guidelines, the FBI could not even use standard Internet search engines such as Google to look for information concerning terrorist activity, said Mitch Dembin, who resigned two years ago as a federal prosecutor specializing in computer crimes. Investigators first had to have suspicion.
"The guidelines cannot be so strict that they shut out from law enforcement the very tools that are available to you and me," Wisdom said. "That's preposterous."
Ashcroft's changes have stirred some opposition. The American Civil Liberties Union says the new FBI guidelines reversed many self-imposed restraints the Justice Department adopted in the 1970s after revelations of FBI illegal spying.
"For over a decade, the commercial data collectors have promised Americans they would not turn this data over to law enforcement," said Chris Hoofnagle, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "This was a guarantee that has staved off legislation and allowed this data collection to continue."
The new capabilities of these technologies now allows "suspicionless, dragnet-style investigations of all Americans," Hoofnagle said.
FBI agents could use commercial databases before Ashcroft changed the guidelines, but only after indications of criminal activity were established, Hoofnagle said. A prosecutor would then obtain a warrant that allowed a search, as well as electronic eavesdropping.
"Under the old guidelines, they were not allowed to engage in prospective searches - meaning they could not sit down and say all Protestant men between 20 and 24 are likely terrorists and print out a suspect list," Hoofnagle said.
By using commercial databases, DeCastro said, the FBI could generate lists of potential suspects based on a profile using such criteria as race, religion, travel, bank accounts and even grocery-store purchases.
"It's a disaster," said John Perry Barlow, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This information has been gathered with an assurance to the consumer that his privacy was being protected, except when warrants were issued for a specific release."
Said Barlow: "We have increasingly what strikes me as the foundation for a police state in the United States."
But Wisdom, who spent 27 years as an FBI agent before retiring in 1995, said it's premature to become alarmed about potential abuses.
"The key is not whether the FBI can access databases," Wisdom said. "The key is what they do with it. You have to trust your law enforcement community that even though they have access to privileged information, that they have the good judgment to use it properly."
Troubling tactics
Privacy advocates and others, like DeCastro, who are knowledgeable about the industry say they are alarmed by the consumer marketing industry's practices.
Many people would be horrified if they understood the scope of personal information collected in commercial databases, said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.
Much of that personal data comes from supermarket loyalty-club programs and credit-card purchases, which can be used to build customer profiles, Givens said. Other data comes from consumer surveys offering giveaway merchandise and from product warranty cards that can mislead consumers into believing they must complete the form to activate the warranty.
Using advanced computing capabilities, many companies then "enhance" their database by combining data from public records and other sources, Givens said.
Acxiom Corp. of Little Rock, Ark., compiles information from many sources, then uses advanced data-mining techniques to produce specialized marketing lists. In this way, Acxiom can identify thousands or millions of people who fit particular profiles: for instance, 18-to 28-year-old men who purchase certain products or drive certain cars.
Such profiles can be highly specific, but Givens said they also can generate misleading and bogus information.
Larry Ponemon of Privacy Council, a Dallas consulting firm, said in an interview in June that one study reportedly done on the 19 airline hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks found a pattern in their orders for pizza.
"Most college kids order pizza all the time," Ponemon said. "But most people pay cash for pizza. These guys paid with a credit card. That was an odd thing. That became one of the correlates for doing a profile."
Other major companies, such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, have long used data-mining techniques to assess and score consumers' credit risk, detect fraud and conduct other data-crunching services.
Off-limits data
Another goliath, ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Ga., has emerged in recent years as the nation's biggest job-screening concern. The FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service also have used ChoicePoint to find fugitives, illegal immigrants and other subjects of investigations.
Prospective employers use ChoicePoint to compare job candidates' names against a database of 14 billion records, including arrest records and credit data.
DeCastro said such databases also can turn up information that employers are legally prohibited from asking job candidates, such as an applicant's age, marital status or HIV diagnosis.
Much of the information collected in databases also is wrong, said Givens, who notes people are not always truthful when they fill out consumer surveys and product warranty cards.
"By trolling through such a large amount of data from disparate sources, the FBI is likely to add one and one and get three," Givens said.
There also are disturbing examples of how information in databases gets misused, such as the personal example that Ponemon described in the April 2000 issue of CIO magazine.
In 1995, when Ponemon was part of PricewaterhouseCooper's compliance risk group, he provided information about his family to a Jewish organization building a database to reunite families who had moved or changed their names after the Holocaust.
While conducting an audit of a direct marketing company's database 21/2 years later, Ponemon discovered the organization to which he had given his information had sold its database to a direct marketing group to raise money. That marketing firm integrated the information with its own data, and the compiled information was bought, added to and sold at least 10 times after it left the marketer's hands.
Ultimately, the database, which by then included enhanced details about Ponemon's family, credit and occupational history - and thousands of others - went to a neo-Nazi group in Idaho.
DeCastro said many organizations sell their membership rosters and enrollment lists. Some even count on income from selling their lists as a regular source of revenue.
Staff writer Kathryn Balint contributed to this report.
Bruce Bigelow: (619) 293-1314; bruce.bigelow@uniontrib.com
----
Attacks Yield New Surveillance Laws
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 3, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Privacy-Worldwide.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Governments worldwide have made it easier for authorities to augment citizen databases and eavesdrop on telephone and online conversations in order to fight terror, according to a survey of privacy regulations released Tuesday.
The report, written by privacy activists Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International, show the United States was not alone in passing new laws that value increased security over personal privacy.
``It's a general theme toward total identification,'' said Sarah Andrews, an author of the report. ``When you're outside in public or when you're online, you can be identified.''
That dismays privacy groups, who worry about free speech restrictions and abuses of power. They have fought new laws like the U.S. anti-terror legislation that lowered the bar on surveillance requirements by authorities.
``They haven't been backed up by evidence that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were hampered before because they didn't have these powers,'' Andrews said.
Stewart Baker, a former general counsel for the National Security Agency, said increased data sharing might have helped identify the Sept. 11 hijackers.
He said many surveillance proposals were already moving toward passage, and speeded up by legitimized fears of a terrorist threat.
``They're really complaining about changes in the world rather than changes in the law,'' said Baker, now a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson in Washington.
In addition to the United States, the report listed new anti-terrorism legislation in Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Singapore and Sweden.
In June of this year, the European Union allowed its member states to require that Internet providers retain traffic and location data of all people using any electronic communications device, like mobile phones, faxes, e-mails, chat rooms or the Internet.
The Russian internal security service recently tried to order all Internet providers to install surveillance software, at the company's cost, so that police could perform instant searches without a warrant. After an Internet company sued, a Russian court decided the rule was unconstitutional.
There also is increased interest in personal surveillance through biometric technology and spy cameras. The report lists the use of cameras at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., to search for suspected terrorists. Perhaps no country likes such cameras more than Britain, where an estimated 1.5 million cameras watch public streets and parks.
The report found that governments also want to merge their existing databases, such as those for social programs and traffic infractions, to create profiles to catch suspected terrorists.
Many of the proposals, the report notes, had been proposed and rejected for years. Only after the terror attacks, it said, did they gain acceptance.
``The environment was ripe for these things to go through without the necessary debate,'' Andrews said. ``People weren't asking the same questions anymore.''
The report doesn't just show invasions of privacy, however. Several countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America have new laws to protect personal data from unauthorized disclosure. Finland, Sweden and Russia are working on regulations to protect privacy in the workplace.
The United States recently has brought action against companies that inadvertently leak personal information.
Magazine publisher Ziff-Davis last month agreed to pay three states a total of $100,000 after an Internet security breach that exposed subscriber information, and Microsoft recently made changes to its Internet services after the Federal Trade Commission worried that its security was too loose to protect customer data.
``Before, people were barely held to account for things they were doing deliberately,'' Andrews said. ``Now, there is more accountability for even accidental disclosures.''
On the Net:
Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://www.epic.org
Privacy International: http://www.privacyinternational.org
----
Training Center Crammed to Capacity
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sept-11-Training-Feds.html
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) -- There's enough ammunition at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center to fight a small war, but the 15 million rounds of bullets and shotgun shells have barely lasted the year.
The crush of new federal officers hired since Sept. 11 has stretched resources to the limit at the center, which trains agents and officers for 76 federal agencies.
James Lanier, chief of the center's Firearms Division, said he has made a few emergency credit card buys to keep from running out of ammo.
``We're maxing out our facilities and maxing out our instructors to provide the training, whereas before we at least had some breathing room,'' Lanier said.
The 130 instructors have been working six-day weeks since January. Some of them will soon pull double shifts at the 17 firing ranges so students can train after dark.
The center, established on the Georgia coast in 1975, has had its training load double in the past year as the government rushed to hire new officers to improve homeland security.
Including its satellite campuses in New Mexico and South Carolina, the center has trained 52,000 federal law officers since Sept. 11, compared with 26,000 the previous year.
Though it does not handle FBI or Drug Enforcement Agency agents, those it does train include Secret Service, Border Patrol and Customs agents, Capitol police officers, air marshals, and police officers who guard the nuclear power plants of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
``They're all over the place,'' said Rep. Jack Kingston, a Republican whose district includes the center. ``The Park Service police, you'd think they're guarding Yellowstone. But they guard the Mall and the Washington Monument, places of very high profile that could be targets for attacks.''
If Congress and the President agree to put guns in the cockpits of commercial airlines, many of the nation's 70,000 pilots would train at the center as well.
The center expanded to a six-day training week in January and has housed some trainees in hotels up to 30 miles away. Many of the center's 2,500 instructors get just one full weekend off a month.
The load has begun to take a toll on morale, said center Director Connie L. Patrick. When she was sworn in as director last month, Patrick said more time off for employees was her highest priority.
``They were gung-ho after Sept. 11. They would work seven days, 24 hours a day,'' Patrick said. ``But now it has been about a year, and there's the burnout factor. No matter how much you want to do the job, physically and spiritually you can't do that.''
Congress has given the center authority to hire back up to 250 retirees with no penalties against their pensions. So far it has hired 92.
The headquarters, which trained 76 percent of center graduates last year, is also relying more on its satellite campuses. Plainclothes air marshals who guard domestic flights are being trained in Artesia, N.M., while additional Border Patrol agents have been sent to Charleston, S.C.
Patrick says next year will be the center's busiest ever, with about 56,000 students expected. The new Transportation Security Administration is building new facilities to train its agents, expanding the Brunswick campus' 1,500 acres.
The center, which falls under the Treasury Department, hopes to see its $200 million budget expand.
``Certainly they need additional training facilities in terms of firing ranges,'' said Jimmy Gurule, Treasury's undersecretary for enforcement. ``I would like to see them have additional funding for housing facilities and additional trainers.''
There has been talk of moving FLETC from Treasury and into the Justice Department or the new Department of Homeland Security. Kingston has spoken in Congress against putting the center under the Justice Department's control, saying he's concerned it might have to compete with the FBI for funding.
Patrick says her agency will do its job wherever the center ends up.
``We think it's kind of exciting,'' she said. ``It's nice to be kind of fought over. If nobody wanted us, I'd be more concerned about that.''
On the Net:
http://www.fletc.gov/
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Schroeder calls energy conference in Germany
REUTERS SOUTH AFRICA:
September 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17556/story.htm
JOHANNESBURG - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told delegates at the Earth Summit yesterday Germany was ready to host an international conference on renewable energy. "I will send out invitations to an international conference on renewable energy in Germany.
We want to supplement what we achieved at the end of last year at the Bonn water conference in the field of energy," he said in a speech to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
He gave no further details of the meeting. Germany organised an international fresh water conference in Bonn last December, where delegates reiterated pledges to provide adequate supplies of drinking water worldwide.
Schroeder referred to last month's dramatic flooding in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and China. The floods, which killed dozens in Europe and hundreds in China, were blamed by some on global warming caused by burning fossil fuels.
"Climate change is no longer a sceptical prognosis, but a bitter reality. This challenge demands decisive action from us," Schroeder said.
He said the Earth Summit should pressure states to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate as quickly as possible so that it can come into force this year. He also appealed to nations such as the United States, Canada and Australia to make some contribution to climate improvement.
"For those industrialised countries that have not signed up, I appeal to them at least to contribute to an equivalent reduction of greenhouse gases," Schroeder said.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol required developed countries to reduce their emissions of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere.
----
Energy the crunch issue as Earth Summit talks resume
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
By Jodie Ginsberg,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09032002/reu_48321.asp
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Ministers at the Earth Summit rushing to agree to an action plan on poverty and the environment were deadlocked on Monday over whether the world needs a target to boost green energy, diplomats said. With world leaders already addressing the summit in a grand conference hall, some of their ministers were under great pressure in a small room nearby to bridge their differences.
The future of non-polluting renewable energy is the toughest issue on that table and pits Europe and Latin America, which want a global target to boost such sources, against the United States, Japan, and many developing countries which do not.
Ministers talked into the early hours of Monday, but failed to settle the matter. "Discussions have been intense," one official said . "So far there is nothing new. They are just reiterating there positions," another said.
Addressing the summit, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso weighed in directly on the dispute.
"By the year 2010, 10 percent of total energy consumption should come from renewable sources. Latin American and Caribbean countries support this target," he said.
The European Union has proposed a 15 percent target for that date. The E.U. target would be easier to reach than the Brazilian one, which excludes major hydro power projects and traditional fuels like firewood and dung.
The E.U. also wants industrialized countries to increase their use of renewable energy sources by two percentage points by 2010.
Environmentalists consider renewable energy as a key to reducing the emissions from fossil fuels that are blamed for causing climate change and air pollution.
Following the rejection of the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty by the United States last year, campaigners are keen to get Washington and others to declare the importance of wind, solar, and other renewables and promise to use more of them.
"Clean, renewable energy is the key to resolving the enormous threat posed by global climate change," Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth said.
Green groups accuse the United States of taking the line of its domestic oil lobby and of siding with the OPEC countries to resist a target, an accusation Washington rejects.
"The targets we have seen emphasise a technology and not performance. We may get far more going on cleaner use of existing fuels with a commitment to action," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans John Turner told Reuters.
A proposal backed by the United States, Japan, and the G-77 group of developing countries highlights the need to clean up the use of fossil fuels, but only "recognizes the role" of national or regional targets for renewables. But delegates said that during Monday's discussions divisions had emerged between the G-77 countries. Brazil's Cardoso told Reuters after his speech that his ministers were pushing for targets.
"I understand the possibility of some regional adaptation, but on the whole I think this [proposal] is very important.... We have to look ahead and it is impossible to continue to utilize fossil energy so why not to put some reasonable targets."
South African Environment Minister Valli Moosa told reporters: "We will get a deal on energy... whether it's a satisfactory deal I cannot tell you.'"
After lunch delegates were expected to reconvene to consider a proposal by chair South Africa that aimed to combine "as much as possible" of the G-77 and E.U. proposals, a South African official said.
---
Arab states resist renewable energy at Earth Summit
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
By Mariam Isa,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09032002/reu_48318.asp
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The United States has taken much flak for not sending its leader to the Earth Summit but Arab leaders are also noticeable by their absence from the talks, stalled by their shared opposition to an energy deal.
Ministers at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, rushing to agree an action plan on poverty and the environment, were deadlocked on Monday over whether the world needs a target to boost "green" energy.
"Iran and Iraq are siding with the United States. All Arab states are taking the same position as Arab oil producers... I don't think this is in their interests because they have a better future with renewable energy," said Abdullah Darwish, president of Lebanese environmental group Greenline.
Many Arab states have sent high-level delegates to fight for their political and economic interests but Arab environmental experts say these issues, rather than the environmental crisis facing the planet, are setting their agenda.
"They are playing politics to cover their own interests," Darwish said.
Brazil has proposed that 10 percent of the world's total energy consumption should come from renewable sources by 2010. The EU has proposed a 15 percent target, although this is based on a looser definition of renewable energy sources.
The United States and the Arab world - led by its oil producers - are adamantly opposed to unilateral targets.
The alliance is seen as deeply ironic, given U.S. President George Bush has threatened to attack Iraq to oust President Saddam Hussein, while ordinary Arabs are furious with Bush for his perceived one-sided support for Israel.
SAUDI ARABIA LEADS
Arab environmentalists are also concerned about the way Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has taken the lead in thorny negotiations that affect the futures of other, poorer Arab states whose economies are not dependent on oil.
Lebanese Greepeace activist Zeina al-Hajj said the issue of setting targets for the use of renewable energy, to gradually replace more polluting fossil fuels such as oil, was arguably the most contentious at the summit.
"On this issue unfortunately Saudi Arabia is leading the talks on behalf of the Arab group," she said. "There will be no confrontation on this issue and it's not rational - the only benefit to Arab countries is for the oil producers. There is a political decision to stand as one for the sake of Arab unity."
Saudi Arabia has sent its commerce minister, Osama bin Jaafar bin Ibrahim Faqih, to the summit. Kuwait has sent its health minister, Mohammad al-Jarallah, while the United Arab Emirates has sent the head of one of its tiniest states, Fujairah.
That is basically it for senior delegates from the six countries in the wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council, which with Iraq and Iran straddle two thirds of the world's proven oil reserves. Egypt and Iraq have sent their foreign ministers.
"The Arab group is taking this position to have a better bargaining stand overall on trade and finance," Darwish said.
But some Arab environmentalists are more cynical.
"None of the governments here really have the political will to talk about the environment," said Razan Zuayter, co-ordinator of the Jordan-based Arab Group for the Protection of Nature.
"People know what they want. But there is not enough communication between them and their governments."
---
Energy Plan Reached at Summit
U.N. Forum Delegates Endorse Shift to Cleaner Sources With 'Urgency'
By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 3, 2002; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27761-2002Sep2?language=printer
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 2 -- Negotiators at the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development agreed today on a global plan to reduce the use of oil and switch to other forms of energy that are cleaner and more efficient.
The agreement on renewable energy addressed the last outstanding issue for delegates attending the 10-day conference, named the Earth Summit, which focuses on efforts to protect the environment and reduce poverty. The plan, about 70 pages, is not legally binding and is to be submitted for approval by more than 100 world leaders attending the summit before the official closing on Wednesday.
"This plan of implementation provides us with everything we need to make sustainable development happen over the next several years," said Nitin Desai, the summit's secretary general. "The test is whether governments, along with civil society and the private sector, can pursue the commitments that are in the document, and take actions that achieve measurable results."
The agreement calls for countries to act "with a sense of urgency" to substantially increase the global share of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydro power. But like most of the agreements included in the draft document, the provision does not set specific targets or timetables for compliance.
The conference's focus on methods for implementing existing and new agreements without establishing defined schedules was supported by Bush administration delegates, who contend that targets are meaningless without charting a course for governments, particularly in the developing world, to carry out the proposals.
"It's true that targets for the sake of targets has never been our objective," said John Turner, an assistant U.S. secretary of state attending the conference. "Implementation was our real focus."
With two days remaining, negotiators agreed on a number of plans including limiting dangerous industrial emissions, protecting fisheries and reducing state agricultural subsidies to farmers in wealthy countries.
But delegates from poorer countries and non-governmental organizations accused the United States of watering down the agreements by refusing to agree to hard targets or timelines.
"It's a tragedy for poor countries," said Alex Renton, a spokesman for the relief organization Oxfam. "They have been given nothing."
But Turner said, "There are some real accomplishments in that document." The U.S. delegates did agree to a plan to reduce by half, within 13 years, the estimated 2 billion people worldwide who do not have access to adequate sanitation.
More than 100 presidents, prime ministers and members of royalty are scheduled to attend the summit, and more than half arrived over the weekend for the final sessions. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will be the senior U.S. official to participate.
Among heads of state who addressed delegates today was Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, who defended his government's seizure of farms owned by whites and blamed Zimbabwe's problems on rich countries.
"Ours is an agrarian economy," said Mugabe, noting that Zimbabwe's whites account for less than 1 percent of the country's 13 million people, but own 70 percent of its arable farmland. To effectively combat poverty in any developing country, Mugabe said, "the land comes first, before all else."
Mugabe, 78, has repeatedly characterized his polarizing land reform policies as an effort to address a lingering colonial imbalance. His remarks here today underscored the tensions between wealthy countries, predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere, and the mostly poor countries from the south.
Officials from the United States, Britain and other wealthy nations have widely criticized Mugabe's land seizures, and a violent political campaign that culminated in his disputed reelection in March, as examples of the corruption and mismanagement that undermine foreign aid and development in poor countries. Zimbabwe faces widespread starvation as a result of the agricultural crisis.
U.S. negotiators this weekend managed to insert a "good governance" clause in the draft proposal, protecting property rights and requiring member nations to uphold the rule of law. U.S. officials said they insisted on the language because of the situation in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has moved to force nearly 3,000 of the country's 4,500 white farmers off their land to redistribute it to landless blacks.
But Mugabe and other heads of state from poor countries, especially in Africa, say that wealthy countries have ignored the impact of colonialism, Cold War policies and the inequities of the global trading arrangements that have emerged over the past decade.
Addressing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been particularly critical of Zimbabwe's land policies, Mugabe said: "Keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe."
Blair spoke before Mugabe and did not respond directly to his comments afterward. But in remarks to reporters outside the conference center, he responded to Namibian President Sam Nujoma, who defended Zimbabwe's land reform program.
Blair said Nujoma, a hero of his country's liberation war like Mugabe in Zimbabwe, was defending the "utterly indefensible behind the cloak of colonialism."
Other leaders addressing the assembly spoke of the responsibility of wealthy nations to fight poverty in the developing world.
"Today in Johannesburg, humanity has a date with destiny," said French President Jacques Chirac. "Our house is burning down and we are blind to it."
---
Compromise Brings Accord on Renewable Energy Closer
New York Times
September 3, 2002
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/03/international/africa/03SUMM.html
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 2 - The first of 100 world leaders who are to address the environmental summit meeting here issued strong criticism today of rich polluting nations - the United States chief among them - for refusing to ratify a treaty intended to prevent the devastating effects of climate change.
But despite the pointed remarks from the leaders of France, Britain and other nations about the treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, American officials succeeded tonight in winning an important concession.
A plan for converting world energy production from fossil fuels to solar and wind power and other renewable energy sources no longer contains a commitment to ensuring that such sources account for 15 percent of world energy output by 2010.
Officials said delegates were close to final agreement on the plan, now that the provision has been dropped.
Yvon Slingenberg, a senior member of the European Union's delegation, expressed disappointment that the United States and other countries had refused to embrace the targets for renewable energy.
"We would have preferred to have a target and we would have preferred to have a timeline," Ms. Slingenberg said. "This was not possible. We tried until the very end. At a certain stage there is a point of exhaustion."
Environmentalists, too, were critical, saying the United States, which has opposed targets and timetables, had repeatedly watered down the text. "It's a shameful abrogation by governments who should be delivering on protection of climate, on protection of air quality," said Kate Hampton, international coordinator of Friends of the Earth, an advocacy group.
The United States says it prefers concrete action to target dates that might ultimately prove meaningless. In getting the time frame eliminated, it found allies in developing countries, as well as Japan and Australia.
Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for global affairs, defended the Bush administration's position, saying, "The document clearly highlights the need to increase access to modern energy services and signals the valuable role renewable energy will play in the future."
During the course of the meeting, the administration has acceded to other proposals, agreeing for example on efforts to halve the number of people without sanitation by 2015 and to reduce the loss of endangered plants and animals by 2010.
But the concessions have not quieted the discontent among America's allies, who argue that as the world's most powerful nation, the United States should do more to protect the environment. "Our house is burning down and we're blind to it," President Jacques Chirac of France said in his speech here today. "The earth and humankind are in danger, and we're all responsible. It's time to open our eyes."
"Climate warming is still reversible," Mr. Chirac asserted. "Heavy would be the responsibility of those who refused to fight it."
In his speech, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said leaders could not afford to allow poverty and environmental degradation to continue unchecked. "Kyoto is right; it should be ratified by all of us," he said. "The consequences of inaction on these issues are not unknown. They are calculable. Poverty and environmental degradation, if unchecked, spell catastrophe for our world. That is clear."
In speechmaking today, several leaders took the opportunity to weigh in on their own specific issues concerning the environment, politics and one another.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called for the creation of a global fund to ease poverty. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda urged rich countries to open their markets to products from poor countries.
Mr. Chirac called for an international solidarity tax on items like airline tickets and health products that would create a pool of money to help developing nations.
And President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe received rousing applause from his fellow heads of state when he told Mr. Blair to stop interfering with his land redistribution program.
Mr. Mugabe, saying sustainable development was not possible without land reform, said: "Blair, keep your England. Let me keep my Zimbabwe."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is representing the United States in the absence of President Bush, will take his five minutes at the podium on Wednesday, officials say.
American officials dismissed the criticisms made today, saying most delegations had responded positively to American contributions to the summit meeting's action plan.
John F. Turner, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, said he was pleased with the commitments that had been made. He pointed to agreements on sanitation, improved governance and a deal to restore depleted fisheries, where possible, by 2015.
As for global warming, Mr. Turner reiterated Washington's position. Mr. Bush asserted in rejecting the Kyoto treaty that it was unfair that the accord did not bind developing nations, especially China and India, that are also major emitters of gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
"We're strong supporters of the compromise on climate change," Mr. Turner said. "We have our sovereign choice to pursue another path."
-------- energy
World Petroleum Execs Ponder Social Responsibility
September 3, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2002/2002-09-03-02.asp
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil,Executives of the world's largest oil and gas companies gathered here for the 17th World Petroleum Congress are, for the first time, debating the issue of corporate social responsibility in the oil industry.
"Companies in our business have to consider the interests of all stakeholders. We have to worry about the impact of our activities on all of those around us and, in particular, on the communities in which we operate," said Francisco Gros, president of the Brazilian state oil giant Petrobras and of the World Petroleum Congress National Brazilian Committee.
Brazilian First Lady Ruth Cardoso with Petrobras President Francisco Gros at today's Social Responsibility Luncheon (Photo by Cristina Lacerda courtesy WPC)
Some 60 national committees and 3,000 delegates are meeting in the Riocentro Convention Centre September 2 to 5. Attendees include oil and natural gas industry executives, scientists, engineers, economists, academicians and government officials from more than 90 countries. With more than 800 exhibitors, the Rio Oil & Gas Expo 2002 is showcasing the petroleum industry's most recent innovations.
Responsible for some of the world's worst environmental disasters through oil spills from ships and pipeline leaks, disruptive drilling, and polluting manufacture of petroleum products, the industry is finally taking formal notice of the concept of sustainable development.
"For the first time, we are clearly articulating the words responsibility and society as a whole," said executive director of the Brazilian organizing comittee for the meeting, Milton Costa Filho.
Geographically distant from the ongoing World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, the petroleum industry is beginning to incorporate the idea of sustainability - leaving the environment at least as healthy for future generations as it was prior to development.
The theme of this year's congress is "Excellence and Responsibility in Serving Society" For the first time, nongovernmental organizations have space to exhibit their products and ideas.
The Social Responsibility Arena, an unprecedented event for the triennial congress, is bringing together some 30 governmental, nongovernmental and business organizations that are currently developing social and environmental action programs and projects, as well as experts and opinion makers.
Open to the general public, the Social Responsibility Arena is meeting from September 2 to 5 in the Riocentro, the same convention facility where the congress is being held.
The seminar themes - issues such as social responsibility, education and social change, sustainable development and the environment - are being developed in the form of conferences, panels, round tables and case presentations conveyed in a talk show format.
Among the 30 organizations participating in the Social Responsibility Arena are the Brazilian Nature Conservation Foundation which supports public and private initiatives for conservation through environmental education, the International Conservation Institute of Brazil, which aims to protect biodiversity and ecosystems in Brazil and in 30 other countries, and the Pro-Natura Institute which encourages social and technological innovations for sustainable development through community and environment projects.
The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) is another participant, and so is The Blue Wave Movement Foundation, known in Portuguese as OndAzul. Created in 1990 by the composer Gilberto Gil, the foundation manages more than 15 social and environmental projects with the main focus on the defense of water resources and associated ecosystems.
The congress is taking responsibility for the waste it generates. Event organizers estimate that, together, the congress and the Rio Oil & Gas Expo 2002 will generate a total of 16 metric tons of recyclable waste - plastic, aluminium, paper and glass. These materials will be recycled, and the proceeds will be passed on to a residents' co-operative with 6,000 inhabitants located in the port area of Rio de Janeiro.
-------- environment
Industry up in arms over new Europe recycling law
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
By Jeremy Smith,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09032002/reu_48317.asp
BRUSSELS - Europe's food and drink industry is preparing to fight an ambitious new proposal to raise recycling targets for packaging material in the European Union.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament takes up a bill that will require E.U. states to recycle 65 percent of their packaging waste by weight, against a current minimum of 55 percent. The bill also seeks to broaden the definition of packaging material. Some industry lobbyists say the proposal is unrealistic and warn it will cost less efficient nations dearly.
Tabled by Dutch socialist Dorette Corbey, the proposal seeks to amend a 1994 European Commission law on recycling. The bill gets its first reading on Tuesday and lobbyists hope to secure changes in time for the second and final reading. The E.U.'s Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries says raising targets would make it harder for less efficient nations to catch up with leaders in recycling.
"We think that given the current achievements, if we put targets much higher... it would reinforce the differences between member states and make it more difficult to catch up," the confederation's Thierry Dieu said.
E.U. countries have widely different recycling rates. Germany and Sweden lead the pack in efficiency, while Ireland and Greece languish at the bottom of the table. The confederation said the new targets would increase costs for less efficient members.
PAPER AND PLASTIC
Corbey hopes competition between packaging firms to improve the environmental standards will force them to invest in recycling capacity. The new bill proposes different recycling targets for glass, metal, paper, and plastic. It would also offer incentives to promote goods derived from recycled packaging waste.
The bill will require E.U. states to ensure that by January 2006 they allow new packaging into the market only if producers have done everything to minimize its damage to the environment.
Other members of the European Parliament say 2006 is too ambitious a target date.
"We all want to see a reduction in the amount of packaging waste. However, 2006 is an unrealistic date for many member states, including the U.K.," said John Bowis, U.K. delegation spokesman for the conservative EPP-ED group in the European Parliament.
The Corbey proposal will also try to redefine packaging to include a number of new items. The new criteria will be keenly watched by manufacturers of CD cases, tea bags, ink cartridges, and even flower pots, all of whom may soon have to comply with waste recycling rules.
Environmental groups have broadly welcomed the proposal.
"If you look at longer-term objectives, the higher the recycling targets the better," said Greenpeace U.K. campaigner Mark Strutt.
----
Russia to Ratify Kyoto Protocol
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-World-Summit.html
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Russia announced Tuesday it will ratify an accord on reducing smokestack emissions and other causes of global warming. Moscow's approval would clear the way for the agreement to become law in much of the world -- but not the United States.
Russia's promise on the agreement, which the United States has rejected, came as leaders at the World Summit wrapped up a long-term blueprint for tackling the global woes of poverty and pollution. Attention at the summit shifted to immediate crises, including Iraq.
Ahead of the arrival of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz sought support from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former South African President Nelson Mandela for heading off a threatened U.S. attack.
Annan urged Aziz to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions, which call for the unconditional return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, his spokeswoman said.
The United States continued to be criticized for its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to 1990 levels by 2012. Many countries view the accord as crucial to reversing a global warming trend blamed for cataclysmic storms, floods and droughts worldwide.
``All countries around the world need to address the questions of environmental protection ... under the same rules,'' said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
U.S. Environmental Protection Administrator Christie Whitman said the United States supported other countries' ratification of the deal. But she said the agreement was not appropriate for the United States, which is taking other action to limit climate change.
Russia's ratification of Kyoto would meet the last requirement for the accord to come into effect: that the countries on board account for at least 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions based on 1990 output.
Once that happens, the nations that have accepted it -- 87 so far -- would be required by law to start reducing the carbon dioxide and other gases pumped out by factories, cars and other sources thought to trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the Earth.
The United States, which rejected the accord last year, would not face the requirements, which the Bush administration says would set back the U.S. economy.
Among the main industrialized nations, Australia and Canada are also holdouts, though Canada promised Monday to put the accord before its Parliament this year.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov did not say exactly when Moscow would ratify, frustrating Kyoto's U.N. and European backers, who had hoped for a commitment to get it done this year.
``Russia has signed the Kyoto Protocol and now we are preparing for its ratification,'' Kasyanov said. ``That ratification will occur in the very near future.''
The promise comes after much wavering by Moscow.
Russia, whose industry -- and pollution -- has declined dramatically since 1990, had hoped to benefit greatly from Kyoto mechanisms that allow those who come in under their emissions quota to sell the right to pollute to other nations.
But the United States, as the biggest polluter, was expected to be the biggest buyer.
Environmentalists said they suspected Russia was dragging its feet hoping to gain in other areas, such as increased financial aid or compensation for maintaining its vast forests as a ``carbon sink.''
Ecologists often describe forests and rain forests as the ``lungs of the planet,'' absorbing carbon dioxide and transmitting oxygen to the atmosphere.
Ecuador's president, Gustavo Noboa, raised a call for such compensation during a forum on financing for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
``If the developing world needs our oxygen, we must be economically compensated,'' he said, referring to competing demands between developing and preserving tropical rain forests.
``I agree that we should fight against terrorism,'' he said. ``But I would like to give some of the same impetus and financial resources to the fight against poverty.''
His call for action was echoed by most of the dozens of leaders who spoke Tuesday.
``Put your money where your mouth is,'' said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Balkenende. ``We've done the talking, so let's start walking!''
Late Monday, negotiators resolved the last main sticking points in a 70-odd page plan to turn commitments made 10 years ago at the Rio Earth Summit into reality. Most of the items were geared to helping the world's poorest people without polluting. The deal is next to be given final approval by the summit.
After losing its push for targets on increasing the use of wind and solar energy, the European Union said Tuesday it would form a coalition of nations willing to commit to such strict timetables.
Many developing countries had sided with the United States and Japan against renewable energy targets, arguing they were a rich country's luxury.
The final plan's agreed text includes a commitment to ``urgently'' increase the use of renewable energy sources, but says cleaner use of fossil fuels is also acceptable, diplomats said.
Earlier, discarded language that linked women's health care to human rights became a sticking point in 11th hour deliberations, but the language was restored before the plan was official adopted by the summit's main committee of ministers.
On the Net:
Main summit site: http://www.johannesburgsummit.org
U.N. Climate Change Agreement site: http://unfccc.int
--------
World Summit - Kyoto Protocol: Glance
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-World-Summit-Glance.html
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol calls on industrialized nations to cut the carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to cause global warming. A look at details of the accord, and what must happen for it to take effect:
-- Kyoto requires industrialized nations to reduce emissions to 1990 levels. Developing nations are exempted.
-- To take effect, the countries ratifying must account for at least 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions based on 1990 output.
-- The United States says it will not ratify. The Bush administration says the treaty would cost the U.S. economy up to $400 billion and 4.9 million jobs.
-- The United Nations Environmental Program says 87 nations have ratified, but their combined emissions comprise 37 percent of global emissions. Russia said Tuesday it will ratify the accord, and its emissions total would push that over the threshold.
-- Other industrialized nations that have not ratified include Canada and Australia, though Canada has promised to put it before parliament.
-- U.S. carbon emissions from energy sources over the next 10 years are estimated to grow by 9.5 to 13 percent. The White House has offered voluntary measures to reduce carbon emissions.
-- Japan ratified in June. The 15 members of the European Union ratified in May.
---- The agreement allows for emissions trading -- buying and selling the right to pollute. Countries also may offset emissions reductions by counting the amount of carbon that their forests and landscapes absorb from the atmosphere.
--------
Ex - EPA Head Criticizes Bush Air Plan
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Clean-Air.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New proposals to ease air pollution requirements on power plants will produce dirtier air and harm the public's health, the woman who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration said Tuesday.
Former EPA Administrator Carol Browner accused the Bush administration of misleading lawmakers by suggesting that the agency during her tenure sought a similar easing of requirements on power plants in 1996 and again in 1998.
While the EPA looked at possible changes in the clean air rules, known as ``new source review,'' Browner said at a Senate hearing, ``we didn't support the changes. ... We didn't adopt them.''
In a letter last week to Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who held Tuesday's hearing, Christie Whitman, the current EPA administrator, suggested many of the proposed changes now being pursued were proposed first by Browner in 1996. The head of the EPA's air pollution control office reiterated the claim at Tuesday's hearing.
``Taking (public) comments on ideas should not be taken as support,'' Browner insisted. She said such changes were later dropped because she determined they would harm air quality.
Jeffrey Holmstead, chief of the EPA's air office, said he was caught off guard by Browner's testimony. ``I quite frankly was surprised and I'm not sure what to make of it,'' he said.
``Everything that we're doing is well within the scope of what was proposed back in 1996,'' he said. ``The agency formally proposed these ideas and formally analyzed them at the time.''
The dispute concerns a Bush administration proposal to make it easier for operators of power plants to make changes that would allow them to produce more power without having to install new air pollution equipment. Federal clean air laws require new pollution controls if the changes result in a certain amount of additional smokestack emissions.
``The proposed rule changes amount to a gift for oil companies and power companies and a kick in the gut for thousands of people with serious health problems,'' said Edwards, a potential Democratic presidential contender.
The Bush administration has been viewed as politically weak when it comes to environmental issues. Edwards appeared Tuesday to be ready to use air quality as an issue should he challenge Bush in 2004.
Edwards, chairman of the Health, Education and Labor subcommittee on public health, said the administration has produced ``zero analysis'' on the health impacts of the proposed changes, which critics argue will produce more pollution from power plants and refineries.
Browner, in her first public comment on the issue, unleashed a detailed critique of the Bush administration proposal and said it would create ``loopholes that fly in the face of common sense'' by allowing more pollution. ``They will allow the air to become dirtier,'' insisted Browner.
Many Democratic senators have sharply criticized the proposed changes, which are under review in the White House, and demanded a detailed analysis from the EPA on their effect on public health. Power plant emissions are a major source of chemicals that produce smog and acid rain.
The EPA has refused to produce such an analysis until after a final proposal is made.
``EPA will provide a full opportunity to comment on these changes, and EPA will consider these comments in the development of the final rules,'' Whitman wrote Edwards in her Aug. 28 letter responding to the request from 44 senators, mostly Democrats.
Edwards said he and other senators are considering a rider to the EPA's budget that would block further action on the proposal, pending a clearer picture on health impacts.
The EPA's Holmstead said the changes will improve power plant efficiency and remove obstacles that now inhibit plant operators from engaging in environmentally beneficial projects, including those that encourage emissions reductions and pollution prevention.
Browner replied: ``There is ... no evidence or disclosure demonstrating that the current administration's announced or proposed changes will make the air cleaner. In fact, they will allow the air to become dirtier.''
On the Net:
EPA: http://www.epa.gov/
-------- health
Mosquito diet pill seen as West Nile weapon
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
By Jane Sutton,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09032002/reu_48319.asp
VERO BEACH, Fla. - Biologists are calling them the "perfect diet pill" for mosquitoes: yeast granules laced with a naturally occurring hormone that starves the insects to death before they grow big enough to bite.
The larvicide, which could hit the commercial market next year under the brand name Skeetercide, holds promise as a powerful and environmentally safe new weapon against mosquitoes that spread a host of illnesses such as West Nile, dengue fever, and malaria. It will be tested soon in salt ponds in Key West.
"It's a perfect diet pill," said Dov Borovsky, the biochemist who developed it at the University of Florida's Medical Entomology Laboratory in Vero Beach. "In four to six days they're all going to starve to death."
Epidemiologists have long considered killing mosquitoes in the larval stage the best way to halt the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile. The virus, found in birds and spread by mosquitoes, has killed 31 people in the United States so far this year.
The insects lay their eggs in water - along the edges of ponds, in pet water dishes, in old tires, or anything else that collects rainwater. There they hatch into larvae, emerging in a few days as adults. That's where the trouble starts. The males feed on nectar and are harmless to humans. But the females must sip blood in order to produce more eggs and continue the species.
With every blood meal, they ingest whatever parasites are in the blood of their victims, be it birds, horses, reptiles, or humans. And with every subsequent meal they pass on the microorganisms that can sicken whomever or whatever they bite.
Killing larvae in the water is considered most efficient because once the adults start flying around, "It's a shot in the dark," Borovsky said.
And all the pesticides used against adult mosquitoes are neurotoxins. Though regulators insist they're safe, residents of neighborhoods targeted for spraying sometimes balk, and health officials consider them a weapon of last resort.
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM SWITCHED OFF
The University of Florida researchers were looking for a mosquito birth control pill when they discovered the hormone trypsin modulating oostatic factor, or TMOF.
It is produced in mosquito ovaries and they thought it worked by halting development of the eggs. The scientsts extracted it from thousands of mosquito ovaries, synthesized it in the lab, and injected it back into female mosquitoes.
When they later cut the mosquitoes open, they found their bellies full of blood, which would normally be digested quickly to nourish developing eggs. They realized what they had found instead was something that switched off the digestive system.
"The female has a natural hormone that controls the digestion of blood. Without the blood they cannot produce eggs ... hence they become sterile," Borovsky said.
The hormone had the same effect on mosquito larvae, switching off the digestive system and starving them to death. Borovsky said the hormone kills all varieties of mosquitoes they've tested it on - there are some 3,000 species. It works in salt and clear water, does not harm the environment or other species, and is safe enough to use in drinking water containers, he and the biologists developing it for commercial use said.
"Each mosquito has lots of this hormone. Bats, birds already get it naturally when they eat mosquitoes," he said.
Borovsky's research drew widespread attention about 5 years ago when he isolated the gene that makes the hormone and spliced it into a common algae called chlorella, creating mosquito-killing pond scum.
In adapting the discovery for practical use, he found that transplanting the gene into yeast worked better. Yeast reproduces much more quickly than chlorella, taking less time to crank out sufficient quantities of the hormone.
And, Borovsky said, "Mosquito larvae love yeast."
The next step was formulating the dried yeast so it would work effectively in the water. Too powdery and it would blow away; too heavy and it would sink out of the mosquito larvae's reach. The researchers hit the right formulation by binding it with cellulose particles to produce granules that are stable in the water for about 20 days.
"When you treat a pond, you can treat every three or four weeks," Borovsky said.
FIELD TESTING IN SEPTEMBER
The University of Florida holds the patents and licensed them to a North Carolina company, Insect Biotechnology Inc., which won permission earlier this year from state officials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to begin field testing.
Those tests are due to start in September, when the Insect Biotechnology researchers will sprinkle the granules around the edges of some small salt ponds in Key West and measure the mosquitoes' death rates.
"In our laboratory testing in the last 18 months to two years, we've always managed to kill all of them," said Dr. John Bennett, a company co-founder.
"We should be on the market ... the first part of next year, before the next mosquito season," said Dr. Alan Brandt, the other co-founder.
Public health officials would welcome another weapon against mosquito larvae.
"We have very few larvicides, biological or chemical, available to us," said Mark Latham, president of the Florida Mosquito Control Association and director of mosquito control for Manatee County.
The two most widely used mosquito larvicides, Bti and methoprene, are regarded as safe and effective weapons.
But Bti, a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin that disrupts the mosquito gut, breaks down quickly and is not ideal for use in heavily polluted water. Scientists have also begun to raise concerns that mosquitoes in some areas are growing resistant to methoprene, which prevents larvae from maturing by mimicking a natural growth-regulating hormone.
"Down the road we don't know if resistance will occur ... We don't want to reach that point and have nothing else to turn to," Latham said. "We are looking for alternatives that are very biologically friendly and specific to mosquitoes."
-------- ACTIVISTS
World oil summit long on pledges to better protect the environment
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
By Bill Cormier,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09032002/ap_48324.asp
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The world's top oil producers tried to clean up their image as enemies of the environment Monday with delegates to an industry summit calling for companies to look for cleaner ways to do business.
The possibility of war in Iraq and the impact on world oil prices shadowed the World Petroleum Congress, which drew more than 3,000 delegates from 59 oil producing or consuming nations, and top oil executives.
For the first time, environmental defenders such as Greenpeace, Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund were invited to the meetings and delegates pledged to seek cleaner-burning fuels and reduce the gases blamed for global warming.
"Oil companies have to continuously seek out new, alternative ways of doing business which will have the least impact on the environment," India's oil minister, Ram Naik, told the convention.
Naik said India, with a market of nearly 1 billion people, has followed Brazil's lead in mixing gasoline with ethanol to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
A recycling center for the tons of garbage produced by the congress was even set up at the site. But for some groups, the environment-friendly spin was simply for show.
"I think it's greenwash," said Frank Guggenheim, executive director of Greenpeace in Brazil. "We are participating so they can't say we're against dialogue, but I don't think the people at the conference are serious about protecting the environment ... They talk about environment, but from the point of view of accidents, you have to be a little skeptical."
Oil officials urged governments and oil companies to share "clean" technologies and redouble efforts to protect the environment.
"It is no longer possible for any of us to carry out our oil or gas exploitation activities without proper regard to the broader issues of environmental protection," said Lew Watts, group managing director of Shell Sustainable Development and Latin America.
----
Top American Green Ashamed of Summit Energy Deal
By REUTERS
September 3, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-environment-summit-usa-pioneer.html
JOHANNEBURG (Reuters) - A pioneer of the growing U.S. ``green'' business lobby said on Tuesday she was ashamed of the Earth Summit's failure to set targets for boosting renewable energy, dismissing a compromise accord as ``pretty verbiage.''
Hunter Lovins, an expert on industrial efficiency whose clients include the Pentagon and big business, said the failure at a U.N. summit of world leaders meant the planet would pay a high price to get to a sustainable future, including more climate chaos and possibly wars over resources.
``I am ashamed of my government and now I am ashamed of the leaders of all the world, with the exception of those countries that tried very hard to get those targets,'' said Lovins, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. green movement.
``This text will not help us get to sustainability. It is simply pretty verbiage.''
The summit aims to boost ``sustainable development,'' in other words finding ways to make poor countries richer without spoiling the environment.
On Monday evening the European Union dropped its insistence on setting the world's first targets to boost the use of renewable energy sources, in what was widely viewed as a victory for the United States and OPEC oil-exporting states.
Lovins said the energy chapter of the accord did nothing to stop governments using taxpayers' money to subsidize conventional energy sources such as oil, gas and nuclear at the expense of renewables like wind, solar and modern biomass.
FLOODS, FAMINES AND VIOLENT STORMS
Lovins, who estimates these subsidies at $200 billion, argued that the world would now ``pay twice'' to clean up the damage she said these technologies caused.
``We didn't have to do this the hard way. But now the world is going to pay much of the money that could have been used for sustainable development to forms of energy that are endangering life on the planet.''
``This will lead to floods, famines and violent storms which will force the world community to pay yet again to deal with those disasters which they caused by paying those stupid subsidies in the first place,'' she said.
Lovins is no eco-warrior. She is one of a growing band of green thinkers, lawyers and industrialists who recognize the profit motive as the best way to turn businesses into agents of environmental revival while maintaining shareholder returns.
She co-wrote a book -- ``Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution'' -- that shows how innovative businesses reap big productivity gains by behaving as if living systems, such as the water storage role of forests, were properly valued.
Hundreds of U.S. firms are hearing the call, using energy efficiency to slash power bills and fatten profits, she says.
She argues climate change could become as faded a memory as the oil crises of the 1970s if nations realize that such change is not an inevitable result of normal economics but the product of doing business in irrationally inefficient ways.
HUGE SAVINGS
``Climate change is a problem we don't need, can't afford and can avoid with huge financial savings to society,'' she said. ``We are losing species. Every major ecosystem is in decline. We are clearly suffering climate change.''
Lovins said the wording of the energy section of the accord allowed development of nuclear energy, seen by many as a pariah technology because of fears about its safety and cost.
Perhaps in a sign of the nuclear's contentiousness, the accord does not mention the word, but it promotes ``advanced energy technologies,'' seen by greens as a code word for nuclear.
Lovins said the accord's advocacy of cost effective energy meant that nuclear should not have a place. She said new nuclear power cost 10 cents a kilowatt hour for distributed electricity whereas new wind plants come on line at four cents and the cost of energy efficiency measures are half a cent to a cent.
``You do the math,'' she said.
She and other experts are convinced change is on the way but when is uncertain because the world does not seem to agree on how urgent the problem is.
Ironically, she said she has been heartened by many people in the military who have realized that unless the U.S. gets serious about creating real global security they will be increasingly involved in fights over resources.
``But if you perceive that climate change is not a problem, and you don't mind being flooded out, and you don't mind that for the first time in history we have West Nile fever in Colorado, if you are happy with all of that, then let the transition take its own good time and 50 years from now we will have companies behaving much more sustainably on probably what is going to be a really impoverished earth,'' she said.
----
S. African court fines, expels Greenpeace activists
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09032002/reu_48320.asp
CAPE TOWN, - A South African court fined 12 Greenpeace activists a total of 5,000 rand (US$473) on Monday after they staged a protest at Africa's only nuclear power station in an action linked to the Earth Summit.
Prosecutor Liesl America said the 12, who were from nine countries, were ordered to leave the country.
They were fined 4,000 rand for entering the security area of the Koeberg power station illegally on August 24 and a further 1,000 rand for failing to disclose the purpose of their visit aboard the Greenpeace campaign ship Esperanza.
The activists had acknowledged guilt at an appearance last week and Monday's proceedings at the Atlantis Magistrate's Court outside Cape Town were to pass sentence.
The Greenpeace protest was the first by environmentalists linked to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which ends in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
A failure to agree targets for a switch from carbon-based to green energy continued to divide the summit on Monday as world leaders arrived to finalize a programme to fight poverty and protect the planet.
The court ordered the return of the activists' boats they used to enter the power station's small harbour and the equipment they used to scale a five-story pumphouse and hang antinuclear banners.
"We are delighted that all the activists are now free to go home, but sad for South Africa that they will leave behind a nuclear facility that can only bring long term pollution and threat to the country," said protest coordinator Mike Townsley.
He said in a statement the ease with which the Greenpeace campaigners had gained access to the plant about 30 km (20 miles) north of Cape Town showed its vulnerability to terrorism.
Greenpeace said the 12 would leave South Africa aboard commercial flights later on Monday.
----
Denver Police Open 'Spy Files'
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Spy-Files.html
DENVER (AP) -- The Police Department opened 3,200 ``spy files'' on religious, peace and other groups Tuesday, and activists lined up to see if their names were included.
City officials conceded police went too far in collecting information in some cases.
News that religious and peace groups were among those placed under surveillance since about 1999, when the files were computerized, drew charges of police misconduct, an investigation by a three-judge panel and the decision to let some people see their files before the reports are purged.
Mayor Wellington Webb, himself the subject of police surveillance when he was a young activist, has condemned the keeping of files on peaceful protesters and said it violated city policy.
Records of people not suspected of crimes will be released to those named in them, then purged after Nov. 1. However, the city attorney's office will keep copies of all files, including those eliminated by police.
The names of people or groups considered legitimate targets of surveillance, as determined by an outside auditor, will remain in the files and won't be released.
Officials haven't indicated whether any files from before 1999 will be retained.
The partial release concerned some activists waiting in line.
``They're not being totally upfront, which makes you think they're not telling you everything,'' said Wendy Hawthorne of the Denver Justice and Peace Committee.
Department of Safety spokeswoman C.L. Harmer said she was surprised when she learned that Nobel Peace Prize winners Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, had been monitored. However, she said the groups may have been included inadvertently because police were not familiar with their activities.
``I'm a former member of the American Friends Service Committee. My late husband was a Quaker,'' she said. ``The groups may have been misclassified.''
Police had classified the Quaker committee as a criminal extremist group, according to files obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. Police told the ACLU the department had no written guidelines for making such classifications.
Mark Silverstein, legal director of the Colorado chapter of the ACLU, said his group never disputed the need for legitimate criminal intelligence operations.
``But legitimate criminal intelligence operations is not writing down license numbers of everybody who attends an Amnesty International rally,'' he said.
The ACLU is suing the city on behalf of the Denver Justice and Peace Committee, which claims a police search of its office in 2000 was illegal. A separate lawsuit challenges the police department's surveillance of peaceful protest groups.
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World Bank, IMF Protests Planned
September 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-IMF-World-Bank-Protests.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anti-globalization demonstrators, relatively subdued since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, are preparing a clamorous return to the streets this month when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meet.
Protest organizers said Tuesday they expect thousands to turn out on the weekend of Sept. 28 outside the Washington headquarters of the global financial institutions. The demonstrators oppose policies they say harm the environment and people in poor countries.
Liz Butler, an organizer with the Mobilization for Global Justice, said that since Sept. 11 people in this country feel more in common with suffering people around the world.
``The United States finally knows what it's like to have things so unsure,'' she said after a news conference. ``Last year taught everyone that we have to act now because we don't know what the future holds.''
In a protest preview, about 20 members of Butler's group demonstrated outside the World Bank building Tuesday, chanting: ``We'll be back and we'll be stronger.''
The global financial institutions have already scaled back their annual meeting, from a week to two days, in an effort to trim soaring security costs.
Last year's meeting was canceled after the attacks, so protesters called off their plans, with many holding anti-war demonstrations instead.
Protests here during the April meetings of the IMF and World Bank were peaceful and focused on issues ranging from the war against terrorism to U.S. Mideast policy.
District of Columbia police did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the coming protests. Earlier Tuesday on WTOP, an all-news radio station in Washington, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said it's not his department's job to protect ``a bunch of bankers from around the world.''
He said that his department can't afford the $14 million needed to safeguard the meetings and that the federal government should help pay. Ramsey also said he is having trouble getting officers from other jurisdictions to help police the event because it's not clear how they will be paid.
The conservative group Free Republic is planning a smaller counter-demonstration to oppose the anti-globalization protesters.
``They're people in search of something to complain about,'' said Free Republic organizer Kristinn Taylor.
Meetings of global financial institutions have been a magnet to violence-scarred protests since 1999, when anti-globalization protesters clashed with police in Seattle.
In April 2000, Washington police arrested about 1,300 people during demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank.
Confrontations last year outside the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, caused extensive property damage, hundreds of arrests and injuries and the death of one Italian protester who was shot by police.
While calling most protesters peaceful, police have blamed much of the violence on small numbers of self-described anarchists.
One anarchist group known to participate in anti-globalization events, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, said on its Web site that its goal later this month is ``not just shutting down the meetings but extending our protests to disrupt all of the institutions headquartered in D.C. that play a part in this system.''
The Mobilization for Global Justice, which advocates nonviolent protests and serves as an umbrella organization for a number of activist groups, said it wants the financial institutions to open their meetings to the public and to end harmful economic policies. The protesters also want Third World debt canceled.
``Debt has become a new form of slavery for the developing world,'' said organizer Marie Clarke. ``It's people's lives we're coming out to defend.''
On the Net:
Mobilization for Global Justice: http://www.globalizethis.org
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Israeli Computer Hackers Foiled, Exposed
By Michael Gillespie
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
9/03/02
http://www.middleeast.org/comments/1/5669.shtml
Israeli cyber warfare professionals targeted human rights and anti-war activists across the USA in late July and August temporarily disrupting communications, harassing hundreds of computer users, and annoying thousands more.
The Israeli hackers targeted Stephen 'Sami' Mashney, an Anaheim, California, attorney active in the effort to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians.
'People have found an alternate way to communicate through the Internet,' Mashney, a Palestinian-American, told the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 'and this attack is backfiring on the hackers. Many people are being educated.'
Mashney, who co-manages a popular pro-Palestinian e-mail list hosted by Yahoo! logged onto his Internet accounts on July 31 to find hundreds of e-mail messages from angry Americans. He quickly realized that hackers had appropriated or 'spoofed' his e-mail addresses and identity and sent out a message titled 'Down With America' in his name. The message named and included contact information for 16 well-known human rights activists and falsely claimed the activists wished to be contacted by anyone desiring advice or assistance in fomenting and carrying out anti-American, anti-Christian, or anti-Jewish activities. In an obvious attempt to damage Mashney's reputation, the hackers appended his name, office telephone number, and website address to the spurious e-mail.
As Mashney was looking up the telephone number of the local FBI office to report the hackers' crime, his phone rang. It was the FBI calling, from Washington, with questions about the forged e-mail message. Mashney later met with FBI agents in California.
'I answered all their relevant questions,' said Mashney, who notes that the hackers' attacks continued unabated for weeks and expanded to include other new and innovative methods of harassment that were used against many other activists associated with Free Palestine and other public and private e-mail lists.
Dr. Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, is a human rights activist who served on the board of Amnesty International USA. A member of Free Palestine and other activist lists, Dr. Boyle was also targeted by Israeli hackers who sent counterfeit e-mails in his name. Again, the hackers' intention was to sow confusion, provoke animosity, damage a reputation, and restrict ability to communicate. When Boyle returned from a vacation in mid August, he found 55,000 e-mails waiting for him. Like Mashney, Boyle spent days sorting through the messages, writing personal apologies to those offended by the bogus e-mails, and deleting thousands of bounced messages. Unflappable, Boyle takes it all in stride.
'You can't keep the Irish down,' wrote Boyle in an e-mail message to this reporter.
Israeli hackers also targeted Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. The hackers forwarded to some 1,500 members of the Yale community e-mails that Qumsiyeh had sent to a private list of activists. Many of his university colleagues were annoyed, but Qumsiyeh, too, feels that the hackers are doing the Zionist cause more harm than good. Qumsiyeh said the hackers' efforts have generated new networking opportunities among activists and groups who did not know of each other's existence before the hackers targeted them.
Monica Terazi is director of the New York office of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Terazi's e-mail privileges were yanked by Yahoo! for a time after hackers 'spoofed' her e-mail address and identity to send a message to some 80 Yahoo! groups. Terazi, like Mashney, spoke with the FBI about the new Israeli cyber warfare tactics, which have piqued the interest of Internet communications professionals. For a story published August 23, Terazi wrote to Wired News reporter Noah Shachtman, 'While these e-mails are a nuisance, offensive and intimidating, the FBI didn't find anything illegal: There haven't been threats that rise to the level of a hate crime, no money has been stolen, public safety has not been endangered and, as far as we can tell, our computers have not been hacked or 'technically intruded into' as one agent put it.' The offensive messages are all protected by the First Amendment, said Terazi.
By mid August, the Israeli hackers had begun to target activists in Iowa, where it seems the Israeli hackers have 'technically intruded' into computers. It is also likely their helpers here have forwarded addresses from private lists to Israel. Iowa activists report that people and organizations on their private e-mail lists: family members, friends, acquaintances, media contacts, government officials, interfaith relations organizations, activists, and activist organizations suddenly found themselves receiving tens, hundreds, or thousands of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian 'spam' e-mails per day. Many on private e-mail lists reported receiving anti-Arafat cartoons and racist diatribes, along with e-mail thataggressively connected to a web site that took control of their computers, turned the screen white, and made it necessary to shut down and re-start the computer. Some also reported that their e-mail addresses had been 'spoofed' and their on-line identities appropriated for the distribution of racist messages.
Darrell Yeaney, a Presbyterian campus minister who retired after serving at the University of Iowa, is active in Friends of Sabeel, an ecumenical Christian organization that supports the ministry of Sabeel, the center for Palestinian Ecumenical Liberation Theology. He and his wife, Sue, now serve as co-moderators for the Middle East Peacemaking Group in Iowa. The Yeaneys report that the hackers appropriated their address and sent out spurious e-mail in their names.
Ames-based activist, author, and editor Betsy Mayfield, whose work has appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, was busy with plans for a mid-September Des Moines film festival, 'Boundaries: The Holy Land,' when the hackers turned their attentions to her computer.
Several Ames women whose only association with the crisis in the Holy Land is their commitment to the Ames Interfaith Council (AIC) reported being shocked by the sudden appearance of pornographic e-mail and racist diatribes on their computer screens.
Many Iowans were targeted for harassment by the hackers, and hundreds of others suffered varying degrees of inconvenience because they were somehow connected to the cause of peace and justice in the Middle East. Similar scenarios played out in other states across the USA.
The scale of the Israeli cyber warfare campaign, the number of targets, and the variety of techniques used, coupled with specifically targeted intrusions calculated to provide additional target addresses for the application of the hackers' various forms of harassment, suggest a sophisticated, coordinated, government-sponsored program designed to impact directly upon the communications abilities of the human rights and pro-Palestinian anti-war activism communities in the USA.
When the Israeli hackers 'spoofed' the AIC's e-mail address, they invited a response they did not expect. Because the AIC list was hosted by Iowa State University (ISU), because the world's first electronic digital computer was invented at ISU in a Physics Department laboratory in the early 1940s, and because he has represented the ISU Muslim Student's Association on the AIC cabinet, ISU Physics Department computer administrator Dr. Bassam Shehadeh decided to track the hackers down.
'The hackers access the internet via an ISP called on the West Bank,' said Shehadeh.
When did not respond to his repeated e-mail enquiries, Shehadeh called the company, informed their representative that Palnet facilities were being used to interfere with communications at a state institution in the USA, and demanded an explanation. He provided information that enabled Palnet technicians to identify the phone number of the customer harassing Iowans.
'Everyone here is a victim but the hackers,' said Shehadeh. 'The hackers use stolen identification to get access to Palnet.'
Shehadeh said the contact line the hackers used for at least one message to the AIC list address was an Israeli number in West Jerusalem or one of the surrounding settlements. A Palnet representative also told Shehadeh the hackers have used several lines and methods to access Palnet's facilities.
'Afterwards, the hackers compromise another service system here in the USA by passing the e-mail message with Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), using HELO verb. The hackers don't have a valid principal host but overcome that by using a bracknternet Protocol number (IP address) at a location anywhere on the web. Web hosting servers tricked into transferring these e-mails include Digital Cube, Inc., Verizon DSL Network, and Iowa Online Web Access located in Washington, Iowa,' said Shehadeh
Shehadeh and other computer professionals working in the USA report that ISPs and companies with IP addresses are typically very cooperative when notified that their equipment is being misused. Most act promptly to end the hackers' access.
Given widespread and systematic destruction of electronic communications facilities by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in the West Bank in recent months, the continued existence of Palnet facilities suggests that the Israeli government had reason to permit Palnet's continued operation and raises questions about the ability of Palnet's owners to refuse service to Israeli hackers or otherwise interfere with their activities.
This particular campaign in Israel's cyber war seemed to have been curtailed, at least temporarily, on August 29, soon after Shehadeh tracked the hackers to the West Bank ISP and, finally, to an Israeli phone number, while other computer professionals in the USA, along with some of the targeted activists themselves, quietly contacted management representatives at various IP addresses around the globe and notified them that their facilities were being abused.
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