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NUCLEAR
Baby teeth studies reveal childhood radiation exposure
Navy Seals Join Federal Search of Cargo Ship
Flotilla sails to protest UK nuclear fuel ships
Activists Criticize Proposed Nuclear Waste Facility
EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants
White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons
S.Korea Presses North on Nuclear Inspections
US nuclear guards said overworked, undertrained
FirstEnergy to Cut 350 Jobs
Who is the Madman Here?
Bush 'Highly Doubtful' Iraq Will Meet Demands to Disarm
The Guns of September
MILITARY
U.S. Cites Russian Firms in Arms Sales to Lands Tied to Terror
Irish antinuclear activists set sail to intercept British ships
Britain to deploy armor to Kuwait
British Military to Move Equipment
Northrop Grumman to Sell Two Business Units to L-3
Stocks and Bombs
Navy Awards $5 Billion Warship Contracts
U.S. Labeling of Group in China as Terrorist Is Criticized
China Tells UN Taiwan Will Never Win Independence
Colombia Calls for World Help in War Against Drugs
From Tracking to Teaching
Violence Mounts Across Kashmir As Election Nears
U.S.: Iraq Has Mobile Weapons Labs
Bush wants Iraqi action in "days and weeks"
Backing on Iraq? Let's Make a Deal
Transcript: Fox News Interviews Scott Ritter
Observers: Evidence For War Lacking
Bush Names Hussein Public Enemy No. 1
Iraq says it helped Kurdish rebel leader fight Al-Qaeda terrorists
Israeli Forces Invade Area in Southern Gaza
Peres Acknowledges Iraq Attack Risk
Japan considers role in U.S. campaign
Land Mine Campaigners Criticize India, Pakistan
Qatar Would Consider Base Request
NATO candidates aim to please U.S., Europe
Echoing Bush, Putin Asks U.N. to Back Georgia Attack
Russia Angered by U.S. Sanctions
Envoys say pressure to act now on U.N.
Text of President Bush's Address to U.N.
Iraq first, Iran and China next
Billions, and It Can't Make Change
Republicans Target Defense Issues with New Ads
State Dept. Web Site Linked to GOP
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Secret Court to Reveal Ruling
Mugging for the cops
Sept. 11 Suspect Captured
ENERGY AND OTHER
Confusion, conflict stall spread of alternative fuel vehicles
New California law doubles renewable energy target
ACTIVISTS
British Lawmaker Wants Human Shield to Protect Iraq
Remembering September 11
Criticism of war on terror dominates interfaith meeting
-------- NUCLEAR
Baby teeth studies reveal childhood radiation exposure
Friday, September 13, 2002
By Joni Praded,
E/The Environmental Magazine
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/09/09132002/s_47827.asp
The discovery came last spring. Some Washington University researchers were wading through a musty old ammunition bunker at Missouri's Tyson Research Center, doing some cleaning.
There they stumbled across a bizarre find: hundreds of boxes containing baby teeth. Each tooth was accompanied by a card carrying details of the child who lost it. There were 85,000 teeth in all, and stumped university administrators nearly discarded them.
Luckily, they didn't; the cached teeth turned out to be a scientific treasure trove. Over the next few years, they will give researchers the rare chance to measure how radiation levels in children's bodies affect their health in later life.
The teeth were unused specimens from the St. Louis Baby-Tooth Survey, a massive public health study mobilized by scientist and antinuclear activist Barry Commoner from 1958 to 1970.
The United States had been conducting above-ground nuclear weapons tests, setting off about 100 bombs in the American West in the years following World War II. Radioactive fallout was increasingly detected in milk supplies and in the environment, and the public was growing uneasy about how much radiation might be accumulating in their own bodies and what ills it might spur.
Researchers working on the survey collected some 300,000 baby teeth from children in the St. Louis area to see if strontium-90 (a carcinogenic radioactive agent) was accumulating in their bodies. They found that the amount of strontium-90 in those teeth rose dramatically during bomb-test periods and fell dramatically after testing ceased. This helped spur the United States to sign the 1963 treaty banning atmospheric bomb tests.
TRACKING THE BABIES
But what happened to those St. Louis children later in life? Did their exposure lead to high cancer rates or other illnesses? No one knows, but Joe Mangano and his colleagues at the New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) now have the opportunity to find out.
The 85,000-tooth goldmine has been shipped to RPHP's lab, the only place in the United States currently measuring the level of radiation in people's bodies. (The U.S. government hasn't funded such research in nearly 20 years.)
These modern-day tooth fairies test fallen teeth from children born near nuclear power plants. And like their predecessors, their aim is to find out how much strontium-90 resides in these children's bodies and what impact it has on them. Says Mangano, the St. Louis teeth have provided an opportunity to follow the medical histories of thousands of people with known levels of childhood radiation exposure.
For countless boomers who strolled around in the 1950s and '60s wearing "I Gave My Tooth to Science" pins, the news of the tooth discovery has revived old questions. As they heard about the find, many of them began contacting Mangano. "So far, 2,150 people have called, and they're all willing to fill out health questionnaires," said Mangano. RPHP's task is to match teeth with owners, analyze radiation levels and health histories, and begin to assess what impact the Cold War fallout had on public health.
"It's not an idle look into the past," said Mangano. "It's about the present and the future." And the reason why should pique the interest of every parent, because many of the teeth from today's children show strontium-90 levels as high as those found in St. Louis children at the height of the atmospheric bomb tests.
WHAT RADIATION?
But where is today's radiation coming from? Not from residual bomb fallout, say nuclear experts: Strontium-90 from the bomb tests would have decayed to fairly low levels by now. According to RPHP studies published in peer-reviewed journals, the radioactive agent appears to be highest in children born near nuclear power plants.
Strontium-90 enters human bodies through cow's milk, water, and fruits and vegetables grown in soil exposed to radioactive runoff or contaminated rainfall. Since it mimics the calcium fetuses and young children need to form teeth and bones, it easily permeates growing bodies. Once there, it can disturb bone marrow - where the immune system forms the white cells that fight cancer, bacteria, and viruses. All of this, postulate researchers, puts exposed children at risk of leukemia, cancer, and infectious diseases.
Over the past few years, Mangano and his fellow researchers have released their findings on some 2,000 teeth from children born near reactors in five states. In some regions, the researchers have shown that radiation levels and death rates from childhood cancers have grown at an almost identical pace. They have also found that when reactors close, area infant mortality rates improve dramatically, and cancer mortality rates of those over 65 improve even more significantly.
So far, teeth from children born in Miami-Dade County and other southeastern Florida counties have the highest concentrations of strontium-90 in the United States, which might be explained by the fact that two nuclear reactors there emitted 10.39 trillion picocuries of radioactivity into the air between 1970 and 1987, an amount equal to about three-fourths of all the radioactivity released during the infamous Three Mile Island accident.
In the same region, cancer rates for children under 10 rose 35.2 percent from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, compared to a 10.8 percent rise nationwide, according to one RPHP report. Breast cancer mortality rates are up 26 percent near one of the reactors and 55 percent near the other, compared to a 1 percent increase nationwide.
Childhood cancer rates jumped 75 percent in the San Louis Obispo, Calif., area after a reactor opened there. In Pennsylvania, the baby tooth researchers also tracked a rise in childhood cancers that corresponded with a reactor opening. "We think that when you have this documented increase in radiation in the body after the reactor is opened, followed by an increase in childhood cancer, this is strong evidence suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship," said Mangano.
A CALL TO ACTION
As startling as they are, RPHP findings haven't yet translated into public policy, which worries the researchers more than ever. Little more than a year ago, most pundits were predicting a gradual phase-out of nuclear power in the United States. But now the Bush Administration wants to license new nuclear power plants, and many of the 103 nuclear power plants soon up for relicensing may get a previously unexpected extended lease on life.
According to Victor Sidel, past president of the American Public Health Association, "The [RPHP] studies are certainly cause for others to be done. If the findings are the same, then that's cause for social policy to be based upon them." The odds of other studies getting underway, though, do not appear high. The baby-tooth researchers have had to rely on private grants and direct-mail appeals for funding and volunteers to solicit teeth.
Connecticut nurse Agnes Reynolds is one of those volunteers. The mother of a 9-year-old boy battling leukemia, Reynolds doesn't know what caused her son's illness. But she does want to know why childhood cancer rates are soaring among children living near nuclear power plants, as her family does.
So she asks parents to snatch fallen teeth from beneath their children's pillows and donate them to the baby tooth project. She posts messages to online parenting groups, stocks flyers in waiting rooms, and otherwise helps to get the 3,000 new baby teeth needed for further study. She wants people "to pay attention" to the risks around them. That's a lesson she says she may have learned the hard way. Unless the government taboo on studying radiation-caused health risks is broken, say researchers, countless others will too.
New Hampshire-based writer Joni Praded covers wildlife and environmental issues for a variety of magazines.
-------- accidents and safety
Navy Seals Join Federal Search of Cargo Ship
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By RONALD SMOTHERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/nyregion/13SHIP.html
NEWARK, Sept. 12 - For a second day, investigators and technicians just outside New York Harbor pored over a ship and its cargo today, concerned about low-level radiation readings detected the day before the anniversary of the World Trade Center attack.
Navy Seals were joining Department of Energy technicians in the inspection of the vessel, the Palermo-Senator, according to a military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But the official cautioned that the presence of highly trained combat and special operations troops did not necessarily mean that investigators considered the vessel a serious threat. He explained that the Seals had special expertise in dealing with nuclear-powered vessels and maritime settings, which might aid the inspections.
Sandra Carroll, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said high winds and choppy seas on Wednesday had cut short the effort to thoroughly inspect the 708-foot vessel and its more than 650 40-foot containers, the contents of which were unknown. Meanwhile, she said, investigators had found no reason to detain members of the ship's crew while the vessel remained six miles outside the harbor.
Since last year, when the New York port was closed on Sept. 11 and reopened a day later, new security requirements have been imposed on the estimated 11,000 vessels carrying three million shipping containers and nearly 30 billion gallons of petroleum products that enter the port annually. Those ships must submit crew and passenger lists and cargo manifests by radio 96 hours before entering the port.
The information is checked to determine if it is necessary for the Coast Guard to board the ship, inspect it and interview its occupants. As of last spring, Coast Guard officials said they were boarding three to five ships a day.
Officials familiar with the maritime industry said they could remember only one other extended search of a vessel because of signs of radioactivity. That came in February, when radiation was detected on a vessel carrying conventional arms.
The Palermo-Senator is a 10-year-old vessel owned by Reederei F. Laeisz, a company based in Hamburg, Germany. It is jointly chartered by the giant Korean shipping company Hanjin, the United Arab Shipping Company and the Bremen, Germany-based Senator Lines.
-------- britain
Flotilla sails to protest UK nuclear fuel ships
Story by Michael Roddy
REUTERS REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:
September 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17751/story.htm
DUBLIN - A protest flotilla led by the Greenpeace flagship "Rainbow Warrior" sailed from Dublin yesterday to follow a shipment of nuclear fuel bound for a British reprocessing plant.
The environmental group said it hoped the shipment of five tonnes of mixed plutonium-oxide MOX fuel bound from Japan to the British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) plant in Sellafield, 110 miles across the Irish Sea from Ireland, would be the last.
"The 80 governments that oppose this particular shipment make it the most controversial nuclear transport in history," said Sean Burnie, Greenpeace international nuclear campaigner.
The shipment has been met with protests at several locations on its journey from Japan, which began two months ago.
The environmental group plans to join up with about 20 vessels and then meet up with the two cargo ships, the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, when they enter the Irish Sea this weekend or early next week.
Greenpeace press officer Mhairi Dunlop said the protest would be peaceful and the flotilla would not take any action that would impede the safe movement of the cargo ships.
"This particular protest is to stop the seas being used as a nuclear dumping ground and a nuclear highway," Dunlop said.
The cargo vessels, armed with 30 mm cannon and protected by special guards, are returning a shipment of MOX fuel rejected by Japan.
BNFL has insisted the shipment is safe from attack or environmental catastrophe.
But Greenpeace claims such shipments are not only hazardous if the ships are involved in any accident, but also pose a tempting target for terror attacks.
Dunlop said the exact whereabouts of the cargo ships is unknown, but they were sighted most recently off the west coast of Madeira, travelling at about 10-1/2 knots, and are expected in the Irish Sea in a few days.
The Irish government, which has challenged the operation of the Sellafield plant in the international arena, has said it would send its navy and air force to monitor the nuclear shipment's progress but would not join in the protest.
-------- canada
Activists Criticize Proposed Nuclear Waste Facility
Friday's Canada News Briefs
The Associated Press
Friday, September 13, 2002; 9:24 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15164-2002Sep13?language=printer
OTTAWA (AP) - An outdoor radioactive waste dump, a financially troubled company, and one of the world's primary freshwater sources are a lethal mix, environmentalists said Friday.
They issued that assessment as they called for a public, international review of a proposal to store high-level nuclear waste at the Bruce nuclear power station on the shores of Lake Huron.
"This facility . . . would be a primary terrorist target," said Kevin Kamps, an anti-nuclear activist from Michigan.
"It would represent a radioactive bull's-eye in the heart of the Great Lakes, a terrorist's dream-come-true."
British Energy Corp., the financially troubled parent company of Bruce Power, recently received a multibillion-dollar British government bailout.
Now, Ontario Power Generation, the company that owns and leases eight reactors to Bruce Power and operates the waste storage facilities there, is asking the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for special status.
If given, it would effectively grant the facilities public financial protection for what one activist called "the highest concentration of nuclear risk in the world."
-------- europe
EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants
Story by Yves Clarisse
REUTERS BELGIUM:
September 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17748/story.htm
BRUSSELS - The European Union's top energy official said yesterday she would propose common safety standards for nuclear plants with cross-border inspections, in a move to reassure the public and promote nuclear power.
Atomic energy provides 33 percent of EU electricity and 14 percent of all energy consumption in the 15-nation bloc, but policy is largely in the hands of individual member states.
"We regulate the quality of bathing water in the European Union but there is nothing on the safety of nuclear power plants. We have to say that, whether you like it or not, nuclear power is unavoidable," EU Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio told reporters.
She said she would put forward draft directives in the coming weeks to make International Atomic Energy Agency safety standards legally binding in the EU, allow cross-border "peer review" of nuclear plants and set a deadline for building storage sites for radioactive waste.
De Palacio also said the EU would open talks with Russia on nuclear fuel supplies to candidate countries in eastern Europe which are entirely dependent on Moscow for fissile material to run Soviet-designed power stations.
The proposals appeared aimed primarily at dispelling fears in western Europe about safety at those plants once those countries join the EU.
CROSS-BORDER INSPECTIONS
De Palacio said she did not plan a corps of EU inspectors, but experts from one member state should be able to carry out inspections in another EU country.
"We will establish compulsory European standards as was demanded of the candidate countries. Once the candidates are in, we will either have to stop checks on them, or we will have to check everywhere," the commissioner said.
Because of fierce resistance by environmental campaigners, most EU states lack long-term storage facilities for spent fuel and store nuclear waste at power plants or temporary sites.
De Palacio said funds established in member states to pay for the dismantling of ageing nuclear plants were inadequate.
She would demand that such funds be "sufficient and available" in all member states.
The commissioner said the EU had no hope of reducing its output of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto treaty to combat global warming without nuclear power.
The EU has a rule that no member state may depend on a single supplier for more than 20 percent of its nuclear fuel, but the candidates cannot meet that target because Russia is the only country that produces the fuel used in their stations.
"So we have to negotiate with the Russians," de Palacio said. Moscow earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year by supplying fissile material to run 18 or the 19 nuclear plants in former communist east European countries.
-------- iraq
White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By JUDITH MILLER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/middleeast/13ARMS.html
Seeking to buttress the case for military action against Iraq, the Bush administration published a brief paper yesterday outlining what it says are efforts by Saddam Hussein to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them.
Some senior Democratic lawmakers have complained that the Central Intelligence Agency has yet to deliver an updated National Intelligence Estimate documenting Iraq's military programs. They have also asserted that some of the intelligence that the administration has provided about Iraq's weapons activities is sketchy and out of date.
But the administration insists that despite Iraq's efforts to hide its activities to develop or acquire nonconventional weapons, Baghdad has shown a clear pattern of violating its commitments in all areas.
President Bush's speech yesterday at the United Nations and the new document - a fact sheet, the White House calls it - are intended to bolster the case for action by specifying how Iraq has violated its international pledges on arms and human rights since 1991.
In both the speech and the paper, the White House asserted that Iraq's efforts to buy specially configured aluminum tubes was evidence that President Hussein was still trying to make nuclear fuel for a bomb.
Senior officials acknowledged yesterday that there have been debates among intelligence experts about Iraq's intentions in trying to buy such tubes, but added that the dominant view in the administration was that the tubes were intended for use in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.
George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has been adamant that tubes recently intercepted en route to Iraq were intended for use in a nuclear program, officials said. They also said it was the intelligence agencies' unanimous view that the type of tubes that Iraq has been seeking are used to make such centrifuges.
The Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency support the C.I.A. view, the officials said.
Although the C.I.A. position appears to be the dominant view, officials said some experts had questioned whether Iraq might not be seeking the tubes for other purposes, specifically, to build multiple-launch rocket systems.
Specifically, Washington officials said, some experts in the State Department and the Energy Department were said to have raised that question. But other, more senior, officials insisted last night that this was a minority view among intelligence experts and that the C.I.A. had wide support, particularly among the government's top technical experts and nuclear scientists.
"This is a footnote, not a split," a senior administration official said.
The government has shown great sensitivity about suggestions that intelligence experts differ over Iraq's intentions, because Mr. Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is the centerpiece of the argument for planning a military campaign to topple him.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the dominant view was that the tubes were for Iraq's nuclear program and that it was only one of several indications that Iraq was reconstituting and expanding its effort to acquire nuclear weapons.
The White House paper today also repeated the charges that Mr. Hussein's government was trying to develop mobile laboratories that could be used to make biological weapons.
On chemical weapons, the report said, Iraq is trying to buy ingredients that could be used to make poison gas. The fact sheet also said Iraq was trying to hide activities at its plant at Fallujah. Iraq, the report said, can make chlorine at Fallujah and three other plants.
Though Iraq claims that the production is to purify its water supply, the production capacity at the plants, the report said, is greater than Iraq needs for civilian purposes. The report says some of the chlorine supply is being diverted for military purposes.
On ballistic missiles, the report says Iraq is trying to develop missiles with a range of more than 90 miles, the upper limit established under the cease-fire after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The report says Iraq has made preparations for testing the engines of prohibited longer-range missiles at its Al Rafah North complex.
Iraq has also rebuilt structures at Al Mamoun that were dismantled years ago at the insistence of United Nations weapons inspectors. The original structures were dismantled because they were intended to make solid-fuel engines for a long-range missile.
Regarding its nuclear programs, the report notes that Iraq has withheld documentation from the United Nations of its past nuclear program and relates that Mr. Hussein has repeatedly met his nuclear scientists in the last 14 months.
An administration official called discussions about the aluminum tubes and Iraq's intentions "a normal part of the intelligence process." The administration has stopped Iraq several times from buying such tubes. Officials said yesterday that earlier shipments differed from latter ones and that the specifications of the earlier shipments were not as clearly suited for nuclear purposes.
"There are tubes and then there are tubes," the administration official said. He added that the best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the C.I.A. assessment.
-------- korea
S.Korea Presses North on Nuclear Inspections
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-un-korea.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - South Korea on Friday pressed rival North Korea to begin complying immediately with a provision of a 1994 nuclear agreement calling for inspections to determine how much weapons-grade material Pyongyang may have produced.
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong said the accord, known as the Agreed Framework, ``has reached a critical juncture.''
``As the light water project progresses, it is now essential that the full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency begin without further delay for the implementation of safeguards requirements of the Agreed Framework,'' he said.
Under the agreement, negotiated by the United States to defuse a crisis with North Korea, Pyongyang promised to freeze its nuclear program.
In return, Washington promised to provide the North with $5 billion package of heavy oil and two nuclear power reactors that would help meet the North's energy generation needs but are less useful for producing nuclear weapons material.
U.S. officials had hoped to build the first of two reactors by 2003 but the project is several years behind schedule because of funding difficulties and tension on the Korean peninsula.
Former U.S. officials who negotiated the pact say North Korea is not obliged to submit to the IAEA inspections until key nuclear reactors components near delivery.
But the administration of President Bush, who has called North Korea part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran, has demanded that Pyongyang act now on this requirement.
Officials and experts have speculated that Pyongyang has produced enough nuclear material for one or two weapons.
The top U.S. arms control official, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, recently warned that the 1994 accord may be scrapped if North Korea continued to reject calls for an IAEA examination of the reclusive regime's past nuclear activities.
In the U.N. speech, Choi expressed satisfaction that after many ups and downs, the peace process between Seoul and Pyongyang ``is finally back on track and moving forward again.''
Inter-Korean meetings and exchanges have resumed at all levels covering all subjects and next week the two sides will begin construction of railways and roads that have been severed for five decades, he noted.
He spoke as a group of South Koreans traveled to the North for a reunification with loved ones they have not seen since the 1950-53 Korean War.
``The overall progress report to date amply demonstrates that the engagement policy (pursued by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung) works,'' Choi said.
``No one can deny that the Korean people on both sides of the peninsula today enjoy a stronger peace than ever and that the risk of war is at an all time low since the end of the Korean War,'' he added.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US nuclear guards said overworked, undertrained
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS USA:
September 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17739/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Guards at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants are overworked, undertrained and outgunned and some of them doubt they could repel a terrorist attack, a study by a government watchdog group said yesterday.
Interviews with 22 guards at 13 U.S. nuclear power plants revealed many had doubts about preparedness and training, the Project on Government Oversight reported.
The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is rethinking industry security guidelines in the wake of last year's deadly attacks on Washington and New York, criticized the study for relying on "a very thin sample" of the 6,000 guards posted at U.S. nuclear plants.
Almost a year to the day after the attacks, the NRC on Tuesday advised nuclear plant operators to boost their security levels after the government issued a general alert for a possible terrorist attack.
Al Qaeda, the Islamic extremist network Washington blames for the hijack attacks, may have singled out U.S. nuclear power plants as a possible target.
"It is prudent to assume that al Qaeda may consider nuclear facilities as potential targets," NRC Chairman Richard Meserve said at an industry event this week.
The non-profit watchdog group said it found nuclear plant owners have ordered only minimal increases in the number of guards, and are relying heavily on overtime for existing guards rather than hiring new ones.
Some guards interviewed by the advocacy group said they worked 12-hour shifts for up to six consecutive days. Most guards interviewed "believe that they are still below adequate levels to defeat a real terrorist attack," the group said.
"If an attack took place, most of the guards would run like hell," one guard told the group in an interview.
Guards said they were plagued by fatigue during long and tedious night shifts. "There's a major problem with guards sleeping, especially on the night shift," one guard said.
GUARDS WORKING 'EXTENSIVE OVERTIME'
Meserve acknowledged that some U.S. utilities have used "extensive overtime" to maintain security while they carry out "extensive new hiring" of guards as part of a post-Sept. 11 push to boost security.
With a total of 6,000 guards at U.S. nuclear facilities, the report used "a very thin sample in which to draw very profound conclusions," Meserve told reporters.
"The security at nuclear plants is very strong and the plants have the inherent capacity to withstand severe events of all types including those that might be attempted by terrorists," Meserve said.
The Project for Government Oversight defended its report.
"The vast majority of the concerns the guards raise ring absolutely true," said researcher Pete Stockton. "They believe they don't have a chance" against an attack, he said.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby, called the report "an insult to the 6,000 highly trained, well-armed security officers" defending nuclear plants.
Most guards interviewed by the advocacy group said they practice firing their weapons only once or twice a year during annual qualification tests, far less than the time necessary to become and remain proficient, the report said.
Guards also told the group they did not feel adequately equipped to deal with attackers. Many guards have only shotguns while attackers would likely be armed with sophisticated assault rifles, grenades and automatic weapons, Stockton said.
In the event of an attack, plant guards "would be seriously outgunned, and won't have a chance," one told the group.
Some Democrats have sought to impose tougher security at nuclear power plants. "Nuclear power plants are at the very top of the target list and their security must be permanently upgraded," said Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat backing legislation to give guards authority to use deadly force against attackers.
-------- ohio
FirstEnergy to Cut 350 Jobs
The Associated Press
Friday, September 13, 2002; 4:56 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13948-2002Sep13?language=printer
AKRON, Ohio -- FirstEnergy Corp. plans to cut 350 jobs, or 2.4 percent of its work force, by the end of 2004 to save about $135 million annually.
The first job cuts - 39 - were announced Thursday and are mostly in Cleveland and Akron. Most of the other job cuts will take place in 2003 and will be in support services, such as information technology, communications, accounting and personnel, FirstEnergy spokesman Ralph DiNicola said.
Akron-based FirstEnergy has 14,600 employees.
The reduced staffing is part of a plan to reduce the utility holding company's debt after its merger with GPU Inc. nearly a year ago. DiNicola said FirstEnergy's problems with its damaged Davis-Besse nuclear power plant and the collapsed deal this summer to sell four coal-fired plants are not reasons for the job cuts.
The Davis-Besse plant has been closed for months after investigators discovered during a maintenance shutdown that boric acid had nearly eaten through a 6-inch steel cap on the reactor vessel. FirstEnergy hopes to reopen the plant near Toledo by the end of the year.
Many of the 350 job cuts will be in Reading, Pa., where there are former GPU Energy support offices, and in Akron, FirstEnergy spokeswoman Ellen Raines said Friday. Exact numbers of cuts at those locations are not available, she said.
Employees who lose their jobs will be able to bid on other positions in the company or be able to fill open jobs created through retirements.
In trading on the New York Stock Exchange, FirstEnergy shares gained 75 cents, or 2.5 percent, to close Friday at $30.84.
On the Net:
http://www.firstenergycorp.com/welcome/
-------- us politics
Who is the Madman Here?
Bush's UN Non-Sequiturs
by Tom Gorman
CounterPunch
September 13, 2002
http://www.counterpunch.org/gorman0913.html
President Bush spoke to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, September 12 about the supposedly urgent need to attack Iraq. The following is a list of statements made by him that are either illogical, half-truths, or outright falsehoods, with responses to each.
1. "Twelve years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait without provocation."
Kuwait had been slant-drilling the Iraqi oil field of Rumallah as well as driving down the price of oil at a time when Iraq was in desperate need of funds to rebuild its infrastructure after the Iran-Iraq War (in which Iraq was the favored state of the US). While it is arguable whether this was justification for an invasion, this provocation is significantly less specious than that cited for, say, the American invasion of Panama seven months earlier.
2. "And the regime's forces were poised to continue their march to seize other countries and their resources."
Satellite imagery showed no Iraqi military buildup in the border regions with Saudi Arabia in either Iraq or occupied Kuwait in September 1990, as revealed in a series of articles in the <St.Petersburg> (FL) Times in January 1991. Yet the elder President Bush fabricated this "aggression" to justify Operation Desert Shield.
3. "Had Saddam Hussein been appeased instead of stopped, he would have endangered the peace and stability of the world. Yet this aggression was stopped by the might of coalition forces and the will of the United Nations."
Hussein was appeased by coalition forces. After the cease-fire of March 1991, Hussein asked for permission to fly air strikes against rebels in both the northern and southern no-fly zones of Iraq. The elder Bush granted Hussein's wish, even though the American President had publicly encouraged the Kurdish population of Iraq to rise up. Hussein brutally suppressed the rebellion.
4. "In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities, which the council said threatened international peace and security in the region. This demand goes ignored."
Of course it goes ignored, considering Bush's father gave Hussein the green light to continue his brutal suppression of Iraq's minorities.
5. "Last year, the UN Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights and that the regime's repression is all-pervasive."
Yes, and UN organizations have also repeatedly stated the devastating effects of US-led sanctions on the people of Iraq. Should Iraq then call on the international community to attack the US?
6. "Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape."
Unfortunately, this is quite the norm in many places in the Middle East, including close American allies Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Pakistan.
7. "In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the Emir of Kuwait and a former American president."
In retaliation for this attempted assassination, evidence of which was dubious at best, the Clinton Administration launched 24 cruise missiles against Baghdad, killing six civilians, including artist Laila al-Attar. By this standard, Iraq could launch cruise missiles at Washington, as their leader has been the object of several assassination attempts by the US. (They would, of course, have to get in line behind Cuba, whose leader has been the target of American assassination attempts for much longer.)
8. "United Nations' inspections also reviewed that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons."
The technology for such chemical and biological weapons was, of course, first given to Hussein by the US. The "Butcher of Baghdad" joyfully used this capacity against Iran (the intended targets of the American "largesse") as well as against Iraq's Kurdish minority (a nice ancillary benefit). The details of this American support for Hussein's chemical weapons program were detailed in an August 18, 2002 front-page article in The New York Times.
9. "We know now, were it not for that war, the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993."
Making it only the second nation in the region to be so armed (third if we count Pakistan). Israel, of course, sought to maintain its neighborhood nuclear monopoly by bombing an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, an action condemned by the US so as to show support for its new ally, Saddam Hussein.
10. "Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced or cast aside without consequence?"
From Israel's 35-year-old refusal to abide by Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for an immediate end to the US client's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and citing "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" (the same rationale which compelled the Security Council to condemn the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait), "cast aside without consequence" seems to reflect the position of the American government.
11. "We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced."
Read the above as, "We want those resolutions--and only those resolutions--aimed at America's official enemies to be enforced."
12. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it--as all states are required to do by UN Security Council resolutions."
Strange words from the leader of the only nation to be condemned by the World Court for terrorism, namely the United States terrorist war against Nicaragua.
13. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkemens and others--again, as required by Security Council resolutions."
And again, standards to which US allies are not only not held but are actively supported in violating (Indonesia murdering the Timorese, Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Turkey brutally oppressing its Kurdish minority). Never mind that, as stated above, Hussein's suppression of his domestic population was encouraged and supported by the US--both before and after the Gulf War.
14. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown."
Assuming they were even so inclined, it is unlikely that the Iraqi infrastructure--destroyed by over a decade of sanctions and bombing--is capable of making any accounting for missing coalition military personnel. Accounting for the more than 200,000 civilians killed by those coalition forces is itself an impossible task.
15. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the Oil-for-Food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people."
Demanding that Iraq "accept U.N. administration of funds from" Oil-for-Food makes as much sense as demanding that a prisoner serving a life-sentence "accept" that he is incarcerated. All money from the Oil-for-Food program is kept in a UN-administered account at the Bank of Paris in New York. Roughly thirty percent of that goes to pay the UN administration costs and reparations to Kuwait. The remainder is not spent on palaces, weapons, or anything else Hussein might desire, for he never sees or controls the money.
16. "The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. They've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it."
Indeed, but liberty from whom? From the former American client, Saddam Hussein, who falls in and out of grace of the US, or Anglo-American-led sanctions that intentionally seek to deprive the Iraqi people of the most basic necessities of life? What is it exactly that the people of Iraqi deserve? Apparently, not even the means to repair their water filtration systems to prevent children from dying by the hundreds from diarrhea.
17. "Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest. And open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder."
Except, of course, the United States, which threatened the entire world with destruction for forty years, thinking billions of people better dead than Red.
Bush's thesis seems to be simple: Iraq cannot have nuclear weapons. This seems reasonable only for the two seconds that it takes to realize that Bush is the leader of the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in anger. Hussein is not allowed even to contemplate a horrible act for which the United States remains not only unapologetic, but even proud.
Who is the madman here?
Tom Gorman lives in Pasadena, CA. He welcomes comments at tgorman222@hotmail.com.
----
Bush 'Highly Doubtful' Iraq Will Meet Demands to Disarm
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER with ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/politics/13CND-PREX.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 13 - President Bush said today that he thought it was "highly doubtful" that Saddam Hussein would meet demands to disarm, but that he was expecting a quick United Nations resolution on the issue. And Iraq faced mounting diplomatic pressure to readmit United Nations weapons inspectors so that a military conflict might be averted.
Mr. Bush expressed annoyance today with Congressional Democrats, who have asked for time to consider any use of force by the United States against Iraq. He told reporters that he could not imagine an elected member "of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, `I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision.' "
"If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I would explain to the American people and said, you know, `Vote for me, and oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act,' " he said.
Meanwhile, Russia, the European Union and some Arab states expressed annoyance with Iraq.
Russian diplomats told their Iraqi counterparts that they must obey United Nations resolutions. "Security Council resolutions are binding," the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, told reporters.
European Union officials had similar comments. Arab officials said Egypt and Jordan had also urged Iraq to accede to a resumption of United Nations inspections.
The president's comments, and the increased pressure on Iraq, came a day after he challenged the United Nations to force Mr. Hussein to disarm and end torture and repression of his people, saying that if Iraq continued its defiance of international resolutions, "action will be unavoidable."
After expressing doubt today that Iraq would respond to any international demands, he added: "I hope the world community knows that we're extremely serious about what I said yesterday and we expect quick resolution to the issue, and that's starting with quick action on a resolution."
Asked how soon he expected the United Nations to act, Mr. Bush said, "As soon as possible."
The intensified diplomatic pressure on Baghdad was not seen as any endorsement of United States military action against Iraq. But it seemed to signal that diplomats from other countries were responding not only to Mr. Bush's tough stance, but also to his willingness to work at least initially within the United Nations framework.
As for domestic politics, the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said again today that legislators would not be rushed into giving the president a blank check. "We see it as our role to ask questions," Mr. Daschle said.
Asked whether he was concerned that deliberateness on the part of Democrats would make them politically vulnerable on the issue of national security, the senator replied, "It would be unfortunate if people drew from that the conclusion that we are opposed to what the president is doing."
Mr. Daschle spoke with editors and reporters of The New York Times over lunch. He said it was important that Mr. Bush "put his shoulder to the wheel" and build a coalition of support for action against Iraq, as his father did.
The senator said on Thursday that he thought it likely that Congress would vote on a resolution of support before it adjourns for the year. But at lunch today he said he still had serious concerns, including how the United States would deal with an Iraq without Mr. Hussein and the administration's assertion that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq would be justifiable.
If the United States could carry out a pre-emptive strike, what would prevent, say, India from carrying out a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan? Mr. Daschle asked.
In a forceful, blunt address at the General Assembly, Mr. Bush told world leaders that the United States was determined, and invited them to take the same firm stand. He argued that President Hussein had ignored 11 years of United Nations resolutions ordering him to destroy his weapons of mass destruction, to cease supporting terrorism, to account for prisoners from the Persian Gulf war and to end a pattern of repression.
Mr. Bush's aides said the president had instructed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to begin work on a plan of action through the 15-member Security Council, but they made it clear that the United Nations had to act within weeks.
Mr. Bush did not threaten war, but that was his clear implication. "The just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable," he said. "And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power."
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, leader of the Pentagon's Central Command, briefed the president last week on the latest concept for an American offensive against Iraq, a senior administration official said Thursday, meaning that even while Mr. Bush was pressing for a diplomatic solution, he was continuing to refine his options for an attack.
"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger," Mr. Bush said in his half-hour address, continuing to talk even as a red light on the podium flashed on to indicate that his time had long expired. "To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble."
Foreign leaders and delegates applauded politely and expressed relief that the president had turned to the United Nations for another Security Council resolution to press his case against Iraq. But some said they were concerned that the world body would, in effect, be used to oust the leader of a member nation.
Mr. Bush also announced that the United States would rejoin Unesco, the United Nations organization that promotes cultural exchanges, after an absence of 18 years.
In his speech, the president turned his campaign in a new direction, making no mention of Osama bin Laden or of nations his administration has identified as threats, like Iran and North Korea. He made only a passing reference to Al Qaeda.
He never mentioned resuming weapons inspections in Iraq, a step Vice President Dick Cheney said last month would be "dangerous" and would provide "false comfort." His aides, however, told reporters that the United States would not oppose inspections as long as they occurred in the next few months, without interference from Iraq, and as long as they resulted in the immediate destruction of Mr. Hussein's stocks of chemical and biological weapons and nuclear installations.
Mr. Bush said that in facing down Iraq, the United Nations' relevance was at stake, suggesting that it would become a toothless institution if it failed to enforce its mandates.
"In one place and in one regime we find all these dangers in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront," he said.
Yet he also made clear that the United States would act alone if the United Nations hesitated. One of his senior aides said this time "there will be no negotiation with Saddam Hussein."
Mr. Bush pursued his case throughout the day and evening, including at a reception tonight for visiting leaders held in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, on the edge of ground zero. The seven-story-deep pit where the World Trade Center once stood was a stark backdrop, and a reminder of his warning earlier in the day that if Iraq's weapons of mass destruction fell into the hands of terrorists, "the attacks of Sept. 11 would be a prelude to far greater horrors."
Traversing the East Side under security made even tighter by the high alert issued by the government on Tuesday, Mr. Bush pressed his case against Iraq with the leaders of India, Pakistan, Japan and the new government of Afghanistan. But he also had other themes, including defusing the Kashmir crisis, energizing a stalled economic reform program in Tokyo and routing returning Qaeda fighters in the Afghan provinces.
The White House had promoted Thursday's speech as an indictment of a decade of Iraqi crimes, and one of the most important moments in Mr. Bush's 20-month-old presidency. He used prosecutorial language that is rarely heard in the General Assembly, and he went to great lengths to paint a vivid portrait of Mr. Hussein as an enemy of civilization.
"Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution, and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape," he said. "Wives are tortured in front of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents - and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state."
He added, "He blames the suffering of Iraq's people on the United Nations, even as he uses his oil wealth to build lavish palaces for himself, and to buy arms for his country."
Mr. Bush referred obliquely to an assassination attempt against his father, the former President Bush, after he left office, saying, "In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the emir of Kuwait and a former American president." A senior aide told reporters, "Obviously, one doesn't want to appear to personalize this."
Simultaneously, the White House released a 22-page document titled "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," which lists Mr. Hussein's efforts to avoid inspections and to import banned equipment for making nuclear and biological weapons, and work on missiles that Iraq agreed not to conduct as part of the cease-fire that ended the gulf war in 1991.
But for all the anti-Hussein language, the administration was deliberately vague about exactly what it wanted the United Nations to do next, and how fast. Officials acknowledged that the United States did not want to be seen as prescribing a specific course of action, for fear of the usual charges that Washington was dictating its terms to the international community.
Tonight, a senior official involved in the continuing negotiations here said, "What we are looking for is a resolution that, at least initially, makes clear that Iraq is in violation, that Iraq has to do something about that, and makes clear that if it doesn't, there will be consequences."
But, the official continued, "exactly how those elements are going to be worded, that's what we have to work out in consultation."
Secretary Powell is to pursue that issue on Friday at a lunch with the permanent members of the Security Council and in other consultations.
Mr. Bush met before his speech with Secretary General Kofi Annan and told him, according to an aide, that "we want to make sure that the United Nations does not turn into a League of Nations." Mr. Bush, who used the same phrasing in his speech, was referring to the organization that was formed after World War I, without American participation, and collapsed in 1940, largely for having failed to confront Hitler.
Mr. Annan has been openly critical of what he sees as Mr. Bush's rush to action against Iraq, and at the meeting this morning, the two leaders posed stiffly for pictures until Mr. Annan said quietly to the president, "Let's shake." Although Mr. Annan delivered an address before the president's today that warned strongly against unilateral action, he also said the United Nations had to act.
"If Iraq's defiance continues, the Security Council must face its responsibilities," Mr. Annan said.
Thursday's meeting with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan required a particularly delicate dance: Mr. Bush had to find a way to chastise General Musharraf for his decision to amend the country's constitution to perpetuate his own rule.
Mr. Bush began the meeting, an administration official said, by telling General Musharraf, "Adherence to democracy is key." But he was vague, and when pressed, administration officials said there had been no talk of penalizing Pakistan for its retreat from democratic reforms.
Pakistan has also refused international inspection of its nuclear installations, and American officials have made no secret of the fact that they are worried about whether Islamic radicals in its military or intelligence service could gain control of nuclear weapons. Asked whether the administration was setting a double standard - one for Pakistan, another for Iraq - a senior official said, "Iraq is an outlaw regime."
Later in the day on Thursday Mr. Bush met with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and the United States announced an $80 million contribution to a $180 million project to build a new road in Afghanistan.
--------
The Guns of September
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/opinion/13KRIS.html
President Bush yesterday offered an eloquent, forceful and overdue call for the U.N. to hold Saddam Hussein accountable.
Just one problem: He cited no evidence of any immediate threat, no reason that invading Iraq is any more urgent today than it was in, say, 2000, when Mr. Bush as a candidate huffed and puffed about Saddam but never shared with voters any plans for an invasion.
For months there have been hints about intelligence that the administration supposedly has gathered about an imminent Iraqi threat and about links to terrorism. So it was deflating to hear again that Saddam is a monster whose regime tortures children in front of parents. All true - as it was a decade ago.
Contrast Mr. Bush's appearance with a legendary moment at the United Nations. On Oct. 25, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson denounced the new Russian missile sites in Cuba.
The Russians and Cubans scoffed that it was all a lie, so Stevenson brought in an easel and blown-up photos of the Cuban sites.
Where is the comparable evidence of urgency today?
It's the Bush administration that raised the parallel to the missile crisis, noting that Kennedy had considered pre-emptive strikes. Fair enough.
Yet it is the differences that are most telling. To begin with, Kennedy used the U.N. spotlight to offer specific, incontrovertible evidence of an urgent new threat - and then he opted not for an invasion of Cuba but for an internationally supported naval quarantine.
"Yes, Kennedy did consider a lot of alternatives, including military strikes," recalled Theodore Sorensen, a key aide to Kennedy during the crisis. "But after considering the innocent civilians who would be killed, considering the international law that would be broken, Kennedy rejected that possibility."
President Kennedy was deeply conscious that wars can slip out of control, and during the crisis he read Barbara Tuchman's "Guns of August." Mr. Sorensen recalls Kennedy telling aides that he didn't want future generations asking how the missile crisis had spiraled into war and nobody having a good answer.
In his speech yesterday, President Bush displayed Kennedy's toughness, resolve and even eloquence. But he did not display the other qualities of statesmanship: humility about the risks of miscalculation, a passion to avoid war.
Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who has written a book about the missile crisis, noted that Kennedy had stipulated that the missiles absolutely had to be removed from Cuba. But Kennedy turned first to diplomacy and a blockade. He offered the Russians a graceful exit and thus saved lives and avoided a dangerous spin into the unknown.
Today as well, why shouldn't war be a last resort instead of the first tool that President Bush grabs off the shelf?
"The fundamental question is left unanswered: Why initiating war against Saddam is better than the next option, which is deterring and containing him," Professor Allison said. "You could agree that this is an evil guy - he is evil - who defied the U.N. resolutions - he did - and still ask why he is not susceptible to the same treatment that was used against Stalin, who was also evil and dangerous and cheated."
A succession of presidents chose to deter and contain Stalin - rather than invade and occupy Russia - just as every president until now has chosen to deter and contain Saddam.
Before launching a war, Mr. Bush still needs to show two things: first, that the threat is so urgent that letting Iraq fester is even riskier than invading it and occupying it for many years to come; second, that deterrence will no longer be successful in containing Saddam.
How would J.F.K. have handled Iraq?
"As a believer in the U.N., he would have done everything he could, with U.S. muscle, to get U.N. inspectors in there," Mr. Sorensen believes. Such a Kennedyesque approach, built around robust international inspections backed by the threat of force as a last resort, would also reduce the political fallout of war if it eventually erupted.
Unfortunately, what we still have not heard from Mr. Bush is a compelling case for the one course of action on which he seems fixated - immediate war.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
U.S. Cites Russian Firms in Arms Sales to Lands Tied to Terror
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/europe/13MOSC.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - The Bush administration imposed penalties today on three Russian military contractors that sold weapons to countries that the State Department says support terrorism.
The companies, all government owned, are said to have sold conventional military equipment like missiles and rocket-fired grenades to Libya, Sudan and Syria, officials said. The penalties mean that the companies will not be able to do business with the United States government, sell their equipment here or buy certain equipment and services from American businesses.
The companies are the Tula Design Bureau of Instrument Building, which makes antiaircraft and antitank systems; the State Scientific Production Enterprise Bazalt, which makes bombs, grenades and other munitions; and Rostov Airframe Plant 168.
Although all three companies are state owned, no penalties are being imposed on the Russian government, a State Department official said.
The sanctions are announced as the Bush administration is urging Russia to halt its sales of military equipment and advanced technology to countries that support terrorism, particularly Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the countries that President Bush has called "an axis of evil."
Russia maintains strong trade relations with all three, and Washington contends that Russian know-how and equipment may have helped them develop chemical, germ and nuclear weapons.
The penalties involve less dangerous equipment sold to less threatening countries. The State Department said it had imposed the sanctions to send a message that despite good relations between Moscow and Washington, the administration is not always happy with Russian efforts to stop weapons proliferation to terrorists.
"We have a new relationship here, and we're working with them," a State Department official said. "There is a sense that they are taking this seriously."
The director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, Gary Milhollin, said the sanctions were virtually meaningless, because it is highly unlikely that the Russian companies conduct much, if any, business with the United States. Mr. Milhollin said the only way to crack down on such companies was to expand the punishment to include their subsidiaries or the Russian government itself.
"These are pointless," he said. "We have to rethink our sanctions laws."
Mr. Milhollin said although the weapons that the Russian companies sold were not particularly powerful, any actions that helped arm terrorists or their state sponsors were potentially harmful to the United States.
Libya, Sudan and Syria are among the seven countries that the United States has designated as state sponsors of terrorism. The others are Cuba, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Libya has curtailed its contacts with terrorist groups, the most recent State Department report on global terrorism said. Syria has not been implicated in terrorism acts since 1986. But it allows Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, to maintain offices in Damascus and Hezbollah to operate in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa in Lebanon, the report said.
The report said Sudan had stepped up efforts to cooperate with the United States in fighting terrorism since Sept. 11. But the report said several international groups, including Al Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, continue to use Sudan as a safe haven.
-------- britain
Irish antinuclear activists set sail to intercept British ships
Friday, September 13, 2002
By Shawn Pogatchnik,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09132002/ap_48421.asp
DUBLIN, Ireland - Irish antinuclear activists led by Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, left port Thursday to intercept two armed British vessels carrying a cargo of rejected nuclear fuel toward the Irish Sea.
The protesters, aboard about 10 vessels, said they wouldn't try to board or block the two ships operated by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL), which runs the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant on England's northwest coast. BNFL said the two ships would stay away from Irish waters, which extend 12 miles (19 kms) off the coast.
All major Irish parties for decades have appealed for Britain to shut Sellafield, one of the world's few facilities for recycling nuclear waste, about 150 miles (250 kms) northeast of Dublin.
Scientists agree that radiation levels are low in the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland. But since the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, politicians here have increasingly worried that Sellafield or its nuclear shipments could became a target.
Antinuclear sentiment has been flaring in Ireland in the buildup to the expected arrival within the next week of the two British Nuclear Fuels ships, which are carrying about five tons of fuel pellets made from reclaimed uranium and plutonium. A Japanese nuclear plant rejected the pellets and ordered them shipped back to Britain after BNFL admitted its Sellafield staff fabricated safety checks on its 1999 production.
Greenpeace campaigner Shaun Birnie said their protest would gather more antinuclear vessels from Wales and Scotland before trying to locate the two ships, the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, possibly as soon as Sunday. As of Thursday the two BNFL ships were still sailing north off the Portuguese island of Madeira.
Birnie said protesters from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales would demonstrate a "united voice from all the nations of the Irish Sea that this should be the last plutonium transport by BNFL."
The Greenpeace-led mission received backing from Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who visited the Rainbow Warrior on Wednesday, and the largest opposition party, Fine Gael.
"I stand by my assertion that if Sellafield were hit by terrorists, then death would be the least we had to fear," Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said Thursday aboard the Rainbow Warrior before it departed Dublin's River Liffey for the Irish Sea. He also visited the ship last week. Referring to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union, he said Irish people were determined "to see that Ireland doesn't become another Belarus, and that our children don't become the new Chernobyl children."
Ahern's government has already ordered the tiny Irish navy and air corps to monitor the Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal to ensure neither sinks or is seized by terrorists.
British Nuclear Fuels insists its double-hulled ships are among the sturdiest boats afloat and, armed with small-caliber cannons and armed officers from Britain's Nuclear Energy Authority, would make difficult targets for pirates. The company insists its cargo, which includes low-grade plutonium, couldn't be used by terrorists or a renegade state to make a nuclear bomb.
Mixed-oxide fuel is made by reprocessing spent uranium fuel rods from nuclear plants. The Sellafield plant separates the rods' plutonium radioactive waste from the remaining unused uranium. Recycled uranium and plutonium is made into ceramic pellets that can be used again in a nuclear power plant. British Nuclear Fuels says one fingernail-sized pellet could generate as much energy as a ton of coal.
Ireland is heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels and highly polluting peat for its energy needs.
----
Britain to deploy armor to Kuwait
By Michael Smith
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
September 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020913-77914118.htm
LONDON - Britain will begin deploying advance parties to Kuwait within two weeks in preparation for an attack on Iraq, which could involve up to 30,000 British troops, defense sources here said yesterday.
At the same time, attacks on Iraq by aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones will be stepped up with the intention of piling the pressure on Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass-destruction programs.
There are signs that this has begun, with a recent 100-aircraft raid on an air base in western Iraq. The aim was to clear a corridor to allow special forces into western Iraq to prevent Saddam from moving Scud missiles to threaten Israel.
The British deployment will begin after Sept. 24, when Parliament debates support for U.S. action against Iraq, the sources said.
But it will take at least three months for British tanks to get to Kuwait, ruling out any attack on Iraq this year. Government officials said the United States was now determined to try to pressure Baghdad through the United Nations before initiating any attack.
The British Ministry of Defense denied reports that two British armored brigades would be in the desert within two weeks. But the sources confirmed that plans were in place to deploy a "light" armored division to Kuwait.
U.S. war plans will require a five-division assault on Iraq's southern flank. This will include four American divisions.
In the north, U.S. airborne troops, likely to be supported by Britain's 16th Air Assault Brigade, would occupy Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and a U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force is likely to mount an amphibious attack from the northern Gulf. The strike also could involve the British Royal Marines' 3rd Commando Brigade.
Every British army unit has been asked to provide a full status of its readiness for deployment, the sources said.
However, the British division is expected to be made up of 1st Armored Division, plus 4th Armored Brigade and 7th Armored Brigade, the "Desert Rats." With logistical support, that would total about 20,000 troops.
The number of British aircraft in the region will be tripled with the six Jaguars based at Incirlik in Turkey. In the event of war, these would move to bases in northern Iraq already prepared by U.S. engineers.
The number of Tornado GR4s would increase to about 30 aircraft based in Kuwait, and the number of Royal Air Force personnel would rise to about 5,000.
The British navy is expected to provide an amphibious carrier task force led by Ark Royal, which is on its way to the Mediterranean. The group would include the amphibious assault carrier Ocean, which is in the Indian Ocean, and would involve about 4,000 servicemen and women.
The plans were leaked after discussions between Geoff Hoon and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the British and U.S. defense secretaries, on U.S. preparations for Iraq. Senior officers also participated in the talks.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has decided to start moving his command post to the Gulf soon - a clear sign that the United States is preparing for war.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair received strong backing yesterday from Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative Party leader, for the dispatch of troops.
--------
British Military to Move Equipment
September 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Military-Moves.html
LONDON (AP) -- Thousands of British troops are moving weapons and equipment to central marshaling points, the Ministry of Defense said Friday, denying reports that it signals imminent action against Iraq.
Officials said the activity was a long-planned exercise and not linked to Britain's backing of U.S. calls for action against the Mideast nation.
The operation involves 6,000 regular and reserve troops moving weapons, equipment and supplies to a Royal Air Force base in Suffolk, eastern England and a military port near Southampton on the south coast.
The ministry said the logistical exercise, which runs to Oct. 12, had been planned for many months.
A spokesman also denied a report in The Daily Telegraph newspaper that advance parties of British troops would begin deploying to Kuwait within weeks in preparation for an attack on Iraq.
``There is absolutely no truth in that whatsoever. It is pure speculation and there are no plans for the deployment of troops,'' a spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.
The government has repeatedly said that no decision has been made on a military attack against Iraq, but pressure is mounting from the United States and Britain, for action to ensure Saddam Hussein does not maintain chemical and biological weapons or develop nuclear arms.
Ian Kemp, news editor of Jane's Defense Weekly, said whatever its intention the exercise ``sends a clear message to the Iraqi government that Britain does have this sort of capability and can put it in to practice.''
Many people in Britain -- including lawmakers from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party -- remain skeptical about the need for military action.
Parliament is to be recalled from its summer recess on Sept. 24 for an all-day debate on Iraq, but lawmakers will not be given a vote on the issue.
-------- business
Northrop Grumman to Sell Two Business Units to L-3
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10286-2002Sep12?language=printer
Defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp. said yesterday that it is selling two business units to L-3 Communications Corp.
New York-based L-3, a supplier of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance products, declined to say how much it would pay for the units. But it said they would add $140 million to its revenue next year and 4 cents a share to its earnings.
One of the units, Electron Devices, specializes in the microwave technology used by the U.S. military for radar jamming and in its guided missiles. The other, Displays-Navigation Systems, produces equipment for ships' command and control centers.
"These two product companies are . . . excellent strategic fits for L-3," Frank C. Lanza, L-3's chairman and chief executive, said in an interview.
The sale is a quick turnaround for Los Angeles-based Northrop, which acquired the businesses in 2001 as part of its $5 billion acquisition of Litton Industries Inc. They were integrated into Northrop's Baltimore-based Electronic Systems division.
"These are excellent, well-managed businesses. However, our long-term strategic plan is to concentrate on mission-enabling electronic systems," Kent Kresa, Northrop's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
Northrop is focusing on designing entire defense systems. These may include the rugged laptops built by one of the units, for example, but also could incorporate radios and other communications systems from outside suppliers, said spokesman Randy Belote. It is cheaper to buy the components than to continue manufacturing them, he said.
The deal still must be approved by the Justice Department. It should close by November, L-3 officials said.
There should be no layoffs among the units' 900 employees, most of whom are in California, company officials said. Instead, L-3 expects to be able to improve profit margins by reducing other costs, Lanza said.
For L-3, this continues an acquisition binge -- 40 deals since 1997 -- that has helped it go from $500 million in revenue to a projected $4 billion by the end of 2002.
More acquisitions are likely, the company said. "There are still a lot of little companies that can't make it by themselves," said Lanza, who controls about 6 percent of L-3's shares. New York-based Citigroup Inc., L-3's biggest shareholder, owns 14 percent of the company.
--------
Stocks and Bombs
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
This stock-market situation - what are the military options?" That was the caption of a New Yorker cartoon last month. But these days reality has a way of outrunning satire; way back in June the CNBC pundit Larry Kudlow published a column in The Washington Times with the headline "Taking Back the Market - by Force." In it he argued for an invasion of Iraq to boost the Dow.
Pretty amazing stuff, though not as amazing as a July column in The New York Post by John Podhoretz, whose headline read "October Surprise, Please," followed by the injunction "Go On, Mr. President: Wag the Dog."
In general it's a bad omen when advocates of a policy claim that it will solve problems unrelated to its original purpose. The shifting rationale for the Bush tax cut - it's about giving back the surplus; no, it's a demand stimulus; no, it's a supply-side policy - should have warned us that this was an obsession in search of a justification.
The shifting rationale for war with Iraq - Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11 and the anthrax attacks; no, but he's on the verge of developing nuclear weapons; no, but he's a really evil man (which he is) - has a similar feel.
The idea that war would actually be good for the economy seems like just one more step in this progression. But one must admit that there are times when war has had positive economic effects. In particular, there's no question that World War II pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. And today's U.S. economy, while not in a depression, could certainly use some help; the latest evidence suggests a recovery so slow and uneven that it feels like a continuing recession. So is war the answer?
No: World War II is a very poor model for the economic effects of a new war in the Persian Gulf. On balance, such a war is much more likely to depress than to stimulate our struggling economy.
There is nothing magical about military spending - it provides no more economic stimulus than the same amount spent on, say, cleaning up toxic waste sites.
The reason World War II accomplished what the New Deal could not was simply that war removed the usual inhibitions. Until Pearl Harbor Franklin Roosevelt didn't have the determination or the legislative clout to enact really large programs to stimulate the economy. But war made it not just possible but necessary for the government to spend on a previously inconceivable scale, restoring full employment for the first time since 1929.
By contrast, this time around Congress is eager to spend on domestic projects; if the administration wants to pump money into the economy, all it needs to do is drop its objections to things like drought aid for farmers and new communication gear for firefighters. In other words, if the economy needs a burst of federal spending, neither economics nor politics requires that this burst take the form of a war.
And in any case it's not clear how much stimulus war would provide. One assumes that the necessary munitions are already in stock, so there will be no surge in factory orders. There will be spending on peacekeeping - won't there? - but it will be spread over many years.
Meanwhile there is the potential economic downside, which may be summed up in one word: oil.
Iraq itself currently supplies so little oil to the world market that wartime disruption of its production would pose little problem. But neither the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 nor the Iranian revolution of 1979 directly affected oil production.
Instead, the indirect political repercussions of conflict were what caused oil prices to surge. This time around, Arab leaders have warned that an invasion of Iraq would open the "gates of hell." That doesn't sound good for the oil market.
It's worth remembering that each of the oil crises of the 1970's was followed by a severe recession - and that the milder oil price spike before the gulf war was also followed by a recession. Could rising crude prices undermine our weak economic recovery, creating a double-dip recession? Yes.
None of this should deter us from invading Iraq if the administration makes a convincing case that we should do so for security reasons. But it's foolish and dangerous to minimize the potential economic consequences of war, let alone claim that it will be good for the economy.
--------
Navy Awards $5 Billion Warship Contracts
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Military.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said on Friday it had awarded General Dynamics Corp. (GD.N) and Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC.N) a total of $5 billion in contracts to build 10 guided missile destroyers.
Navy Secretary Gordon England said that award of the contracts to build the ships over the next three years would save American taxpayer more than $500 million.
The Bath Iron Works unit of General Dynamics received a $3.17 billion contract to build six DDG-102 guided missile destroyers and Northrop Grumman's shipbuilding system received $1.97 billion for four DDG-51 guided missile destroyers.
The General Dynamics work will be done at the Bath Iron Works yard in Bath, Maine, and the Northrop Grumman work will be done at the former Ingalls Shipbuilding yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
-------- china
U.S. Labeling of Group in China as Terrorist Is Criticized
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/asia/13CHIN.html
BEIJING, Sept. 12 - The Bush administration's decision to brand as terrorist an obscure Muslim group with roots in western China has been greeted with skepticism by many Western diplomats and scholars. They say the Americans have offered little hard evidence for applying the label, and seem more concerned with softening Chinese opposition to a possible attack on Iraq than with the potential threat posed by the group.
The well-publicized American declarations on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, one of several small, militant groups seeking independence for Uighur Muslims in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, has also caused dismay and anger among Uighur exiles. The majority of them reject indiscriminate violence in what they call a struggle against ethnic tyranny.
Uighur groups charge that China is taking advantage of the American step to justify a crackdown on Uighur identity. They warn that the United States has endangered its standing among Uighurs, those in China and abroad, who in the past have seen America as a beacon of hope.
"This listing was a sop to the Chinese, giving them a lot of face," said Dru Gladney, an expert on Chinese Muslims at the University of Hawaii, who sees no reason to single out this group and said terrorism had actually been uncommon in Xinjiang.
"Is it worth alienating an entire people in order to achieve short-term gains?" he asked in an interview.
Erkin Dolat, editor for the Uighur Information Agency, an exile group in Washington, said the American condemnation of the separatist group "is disastrous to the Uighur freedom movement" and had "opened the floodgates of Chinese persecution." He said the timing of the decision, and its announcement in Beijing rather than Washington, had fed the suspicions about American motives.
In Beijing two weeks ago, a visiting American diplomat disclosed that Washington had acted to freeze any financial assets of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement because it had engaged in indiscriminate killing of civilians.
This week, the United States joined China in persuading the United Nations to add the group to its global watch list - a step that a Chinese spokesman trumpeted here today as "an encouraging result from China's cooperation with the United States and other countries in fighting terrorism."
Announcing the United Nations designation in Washington today, Philip T. Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said: "The East Turkestan Islamic Movement is a violent group believed responsible for committing numerous acts of terrorism in China, including bombings of buses, movie theaters, department stores, markets and hotels; assassination; and arson."
Several diplomats from allied nations said the charges provided by the United States appeared to be largely a rehash of unproved Chinese assertions. They said their governments had acquiesced in the United Nations listing only to preserve unity.
State Department officials refused to provide instances of violations by the group, while asserting that Washington has independent evidence of its terrorist acts both in and out of China.
But if the Bush administration has such evidence, it was not visible in the internal "background statement and press guidance" the State Department prepared on Aug. 30. The document went beyond any recent Chinese charges, blaming this single group for all the violent acts in the last 11 years that the Chinese had ascribed to a spectrum of separatist organizations.
In a report on "East Turkestan Terrorist Forces" issued on Jan. 21, China's State Council said that from 1990 to 2001, assorted separatist groups "were responsible for over 200 terrorist incidents in Xinjiang," resulting in the deaths of 162 people. Many of the listed incidents, like attacks on police stations or killings of judicial officials, might not qualify for an international terrorist label, while others, like bus bombs in 1992, clearly would. But in many cases, the Chinese have never identified those responsible, and no separatist groups have claimed responsibility.
The Chinese report condemns a host of groups: an East Turkestan Liberation Organization; a "Shock Brigade" of the Islamic Reformist Party; an East Turkestan Islamic Party; an East Turkestan Opposition Party; an East Turkestan Islamic Party of Allah; a Uighur Liberation Organization; the Islamic Holy Warriors; and an East Turkestan International Committee. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement does receive special mention for its purported close links to Osama bin Laden and for allegedly sending trained agents and weapons into Xinjiang in 1998.
The American State Department document, in contrast, heaps the blame for what are apparently the same 200 incidents, causing 162 deaths, on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement alone. Officials have declined to explain the discrepancy.
The State Department also said last week that the government of neighboring Kyrgyzstan had deported two suspected members of the group to China on suspicion that they were scouting Western embassies in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, for a planned attack.
None of the skeptics denies that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement exists, or that at least some of its members may have been drawn into the "holy war" spirit of Central Asia before Sept. 11. Hundreds of Uighurs are believed to have trained in Afghanistan, and some may have been captured by American forces there. It remains unclear whether any were specifically trained to fight back in China, or even whether they had come from China or the scattered Uighur communities of central Asia.
But experts note that in his various tapes describing plans for holy war across Asia, Mr. bin Laden never once mentioned Xinjiang as a target.
"Some of the other Uighur groups have been more directly linked to violence," said Mr. Gladney of the University of Hawaii. "If you're going to condemn this one, why not condemn them all?"
In January, as the Chinese began focusing attention on the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a threat, the group's leader, Hahsan Mahsum, gave a telephone interview to Radio Free Asia from an undisclosed location.
He refused to condemn violence, saying, "Any rational human being has the duty to fight against invaders to protect his homeland." While some individuals may have been drawn to the Taliban, Mr. Mahsum said, there were no organizational links and he received no funds from Al Qaeda.
He said the group, building on a long history of Uighur resistance, was formed in the early 1990's by people who fled Xinjiang during China's suppression of a 1990 uprising in the town of Baren.
In the late 1990's, as Central Asian countries bordering China began cracking down on Uighur activists, a group of perhaps 100 people affiliated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement gathered around a religious school in Pakistan, according to Peter Sinnott, an expert on Central Asia's Muslims at Columbia University.
But in June, as Pakistan began its own suppression of Islamic militants, it rounded up some 80 of these Uighurs and sent them to China, Mr. Sinnott said. American and Chinese officials would not confirm this.
"It would be naïve to say the E.T.I.M. was not involved in military training," Mr. Sinnott said, though he stressed that he knew of no evidence linking the group to particular terrorist acts and saw no reason to single them out.
Mr. Mahsum is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, Mr. Sinnott said, but he is now "a leader without a movement."
Anger over the "terrorist" labeling will fuel emerging anti-American feelings among Uighurs and other Muslims in China, Mr. Gladney said. Traditionally, religious extremism has been uncommon among the Uighurs. But in Xinjiang, where 8.5 million Uighurs now account for less than half the population and occupy the bottom economic rungs, many youths feel abandoned by the West.
American officials have taken pains to continue speaking out against Chinese human rights violations in Xinjiang and have pressed China to release its best-known Uighur prisoner, Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent businesswoman whose husband criticized Beijing from exile.
--------
China Tells UN Taiwan Will Never Win Independence
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-un-china.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - China vowed before the U.N. General Assembly on Friday that it would never allow Taiwan to become independent, which it said could undermine peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region.
``We will resolutely combat any act that would contribute to the independence of Taiwan. We will never permit anyone to separate Taiwan from China,'' said Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of China, which has viewed Taiwan as a wayward province since their split in 1949.
``All acts aimed at the independence of Taiwan are doomed to fail. The great work of China's reunification will surely be accomplished,'' Tang told the 190-nation world body at the start of its 57th session.
He also called on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council to ensure that Iraq comply with its resolutions demanding the return of U.N. weapons inspectors and destruction of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
But he signaled Beijing would not sign onto any threat of force against Baghdad if it failed to implement the relevant resolutions.
``We believe the problem of Iraq must be resolved through political means,'' he said.
China would be expected to abstain if a resolution calling for the use of force were to come to a vote in the 15-nation council, where it enjoys veto power.
Tang said the majority of Taiwan's more than 23 million people favored peace, stability and strong ties across the Taiwan Strait while Taiwan's leaders supported a ``separatist plot'' backed by a small minority.
``There is only one China in the world,'' he said. ``To achieve our country's reunification is our firm and unwavering goal.''
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian infuriated Beijing in August by saying there were two countries on either side of the Taiwan Strait and a referendum on the island's formal independence was a basic human right.
China and its supporters blocked for the 10th consecutive year this week a bid by Taiwan to gain membership in the United Nations, keeping the matter off the agenda of the current General Assembly session, which opened on Tuesday.
Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government lost a civil war to the Chinese Communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949, but held onto China's U.N. seat until 1971, when the General Assembly expelled it and gave the seat to Beijing.
-------- colombia
Colombia Calls for World Help in War Against Drugs
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-un-colombia.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe implored the world community on Friday to make good on its commitment to wage war on terrorism by cracking down on the illegal narcotics trade and seizing the assets of people who finance extremist acts in his country.
In a passionate speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Uribe, who took office last month, coupled a call for action with a sobering assessment of the effects of violence on his country, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
Calling the situation in his country a potential risk to democratic stability in the region, Uribe said, ``We require the world's assistance to resolve it.''
His appeal was a lonely one, as the focus at the United Nations was overwhelmingly on Iraq and international fears that the United States might take military action against Baghdad over what Washington sees as its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Uribe said he shared such concerns but ``we must understand that drugs have the capability for mass destruction equivalent to that of our most feared chemical weapon.''
With Latin America's most powerful rebel army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, protecting an estimated 300,000 growers, Colombia has become the world's largest producer of coca, allowing the rebels to reap up to $100 million in cocaine cash annually, Colombian officials say.
FARC, the armed forces and paramilitary gunmen are locked in a 38-year-old guerrilla war.
``We cannot continue with timid, halfway actions and decisions. While we discuss endlessly, more drugs are planted and traded by terrorism,'' Uribe said.
``We demand effective cooperation because the violence ... is financed through the international drug trade and is waged with weapons not made in Colombia,'' said Uribe, whose father was killed by Marxist guerrillas and who won office promising to get tough on leftist rebels.
``Do not send us your weapons. Destroy your markets for drugs and chemical precursors. Help us with aerial interdictions and drug seizures in the Pacific and Caribbean,'' Uribe urged U.N. members.
The United States has provided Colombia more than $1.5 billion in mostly military assistance in the past four years to fight drug trafficking. Under a new U.S. law, Colombia can also use U.S. aid against leftist guerrillas and militias, which Washington calls terrorists.
A U.N. anti-terrorism resolution orders the seizure of bank accounts, investments and other assets of individuals who commit terrorist acts.
Uribe said the resolution had been ``a dead letter in those countries where the resources that finance terrorist acts in Colombia circulate.'' He did not name any of the countries.
-------- drug war
From Tracking to Teaching
U.S. Customs Unit Trains Officials in Former Soviet Bloc
By Walter Berry
Associated Press
Friday, September 13, 2002; Page A37
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10322-2002Sep12.html
PHOENIX -- For three decades, a Native American unit known as the Shadow Wolves has used its desert tracking skills to help stem the flow of drugs across the Mexican border.
Now the Shadow Wolves, a part of the U.S. Customs Service, are taking their expertise to Eastern Europe in a U.S. effort to prevent the smuggling of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Three members of the 21-person unit spent three weeks last month in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, training customs officials, border guards and national police in how to detect and follow those suspected of carrying weapons components. Other Shadow Wolves traveled to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan earlier this year.
Kevin Carlos, a Shadow Wolves team member who went to the Baltics, said his foreign counterparts learned to search for footprints, broken branches and other clues.
"They all said they can now see the forest from a different point of view," said Carlos, a Tohono O'odham Indian who learned some of his tracking skills through deer hunting.
The overseas trips are part of an effort by the State Department, the Customs Service and other agencies to assist more than two dozen nations, most of them in the former Soviet bloc. The one-week training sessions consist of classroom lectures on tracking techniques and outdoor simulations.
"They basically teach them how to pick up foot signs," said Kyle Barnette, associate agent in charge of the Customs Service's Arizona district. "The terrain in the Baltics is very similar to the Arizona desert. There's a lot of rocky terrain, so our trackers adapt well."
The unit, headquartered in Sells, Ariz., consists of 19 men and two women, all Native Americans from nearly a dozen tribes around the country.
It began in 1972 with about 12 Tohono O'odham Indians under a program created by Congress to foster relations with the tribe and help patrol its Arizona reservation. The tribe's reservation shares 76 miles of border with Mexico.
"They have been a great asset," said Joseph Delgado, assistant tribal police chief. "They've helped us numerous times in everything from tracking down suspects in stolen vehicles to finding missing children. They assist us a lot."
But the unit's main mission is stopping smugglers hauling marijuana, cocaine or heroin on foot or horseback across the Mexican border.
Instead of relying on high-tech equipment, the Shadow Wolves track the old-fashioned way. They look for such clues as disturbed rocks or fibers left behind by a burlap bag, and work at all hours of the day or night.
Customs officials say the armed Indian trackers seize more than 70 percent of the drugs the agency finds on the 3 million-acre Tohono O'odham reservation. So far in the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1, the Shadow Wolves have arrested 400 smugglers and seized 96,000 pounds of marijuana, said John Martelli, one of the group's supervisors.
"It's their heritage. Those tracking skills have been passed on from generation to generation," Barnette said. "These people are successful at whatever they trail. They're the best I've ever seen."
-------- india - pakistan
Violence Mounts Across Kashmir As Election Nears
Indian Officials Accuse Musharraf Of Breaking Vow to Stop Militants
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 13, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10530-2002Sep12.html
SRINAGAR, India, Sept. 12 -- Barely three months after high-level U.S. diplomacy headed off a possible war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region is once again on the boil.
With a series of brazen and lethal attacks, Islamic militants have intensified their efforts to spoil state legislative elections in the Indian-held portion of Kashmir, killing 23 political activists and two candidates since Aug. 22, along with scores of others. The spike in violence has paralleled what Indian officials said was a sharp increase in incursions by Islamic militants across the Line of Control, the truce line separating Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir.
In an interview today, a senior Indian security official said as many as 200 militants may have infiltrated Indian-held Kashmir during August. Radio traffic between the militants and their commanders inside Pakistan also has surged, another official said.
Indian officials said the renewed activity pointed to a clear breach of the pledge made by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in June to Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage to permanently halt the infiltrations by militants fighting to end Indian rule in mostly Muslim Kashmir.
Musharraf's vow defused, at least temporarily, the immediate threat of war between the two nuclear-armed powers. But neither side has withdrawn its army from their common border, where hundreds of thousands of troops have been in a tense standoff since December. As the violence in Kashmir escalates, Indian officials have once again begun to hint at the possibility of a military response.
"We are at our wits' end," said the Indian security official in Kashmir, where elections will be held on Sept. 16, Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and Oct. 8. "Our patience may run out after the elections."
Pakistani officials have publicly scorned the elections but said that they would do nothing to disrupt them and that Musharraf has honored his pledge to end the infiltrations. Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly in New York today, the Pakistani leader said: "Elections under Indian occupation will be rigged. They will not help peace. They may set it back, in fact."
Musharraf denied Pakistan was fomenting unrest in Kashmir and instead accused India of trying to "tarnish Pakistan with the brush of terrorism and drive a wedge between Pakistan and its coalition partners" in the international campaign against terrorism.
The struggle over Kashmir dates to 1947, when Britain quit the Indian subcontinent and left two new nations there -- India and Pakistan. At the time of independence, the region known as Jammu and Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu prince, who chose to accede to India.
But Pakistan has never recognized the legality of the accession. Formally, at least, it continues to insist that Kashmiris be allowed to determine their future in a referendum. But its broader goal, as the weaker party, is to leverage its position by involving outside powers in resolving the conflict. India contends that the matter can only be settled through direct bilateral negotiations -- though not until Pakistan ends its support for what India calls "cross-border terrorism."
A succession of attacks, including an assault on the Indian Parliament grounds last December, led to a massive Indian military deployment along the border, which Pakistan answered in kind. After Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee threatened to launch a military response, and Pakistan upped the ante by testing ballistic missiles, senior U.S. and British officials converged on the region to counsel restraint.
The diplomatic offensive paid off, at least in the short term. India responded to Musharraf's pledge in part by withdrawing warships from off the Pakistani coast. At the same time, Vajpayee's government insisted that any further warming of relations, including a resumption of talks on Kashmir, would depend on whether Pakistan refrained from interfering in the elections.
Indian officials said that in the weeks immediately after Musharraf's pledge, the number of incursions did drop sharply, but has since begun to climb. They based their estimates on the number of militants killed along or near the Line of Control, assuming that four or five make it across for every one who does not. On that basis, they said, the slaying of about 40 would-be infiltrators by Indian forces in August indicates that about 200 militants crossed that month, up from an estimated 110 in July.
It is impossible to verify the Indian claims, which are routinely denied by Pakistani spokesmen in Islamabad. India has an obvious interest in rallying as much international pressure as possible on Musharraf to rein in the militants, who have long enjoyed close relations with the Pakistani military and intelligence services.
But the violence is real, and so is the frustration of Indian officials who had hoped the elections could prove a turning point. U.S. and British officials have also expressed support for the elections, describing them as a precursor to the eventual dialogue that Pakistan says it wants.
This afternoon, mourners gathered in the town of Sogam for the funeral of the state law minister, Mushtaq Ahmad Lone, who was assassinated on Wednesday. Lone, a candidate in legislative elections, was speaking at a village campaign rally when a gunman who had sneaked into the event with a group of women pulled an automatic rifle from beneath his robe and fired into Lone's chest and abdomen at point-blank range. The man then killed four policemen and two workers from the National Conference, the state's pro-Indian ruling party.
Today's funeral was disrupted when militants opened fire on Indian soldiers half a mile away, sparking a fierce 25-minute battle involving guns, grenades and mortars that sent mourners scrambling for cover, according to Kashmiri journalists who were present. Three soldiers were wounded. Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, who had planned to attend the service, delayed his arrival, although he later made an appearance.
In Srinagar, the state's summer capital and onetime British playground, life was relatively peaceful this balmy afternoon. Scooters, buses and motorized rickshaws jockeyed for position on the narrow streets of the old city. Golfers swatted balls under cloudless skies, shading themselves with umbrellas between shots. Laundry flapped from lines on wooden houseboats berthed along the muddy banks of the Jhelum River.
But security was heavy, with police and paramilitary troops hunkered down behind sandbags or patrolling in armored vehicles, and it is likely to get even heavier in the days ahead. India has augmented its already robust forces in the state with 28,000 additional troops, the security official said. The troops will be deployed around polling places and, in light of the recent attacks on candidates, will also take a more "proactive" approach to curbing violence, the official added.
-------- iraq
U.S.: Iraq Has Mobile Weapons Labs
By Matt Kelley
Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; 5:43 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14209-2002Sep13?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The United States has evidence Iraq has mobile laboratories to make chemical or biological weapons, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday.
Gen. Richard Myers also said the Pentagon probably would move a regional military headquarters to the Persian Gulf from their current base in Tampa, Fla.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have said that Iraq could have mobile weapons production labs, citing U.N. inspectors' reports that Iraq was trying to build them. Myers' comments at the National Press Club were the first suggesting that the United States has evidence.
"There is evidence to support mobile production capability for chemical and biological weapons," Myers said. "It does not take a lot of space for some of this work to go on. It can be done in a very, very small location. And the fact that you can put it on wheels makes it a lot easier to hide from people that might be looking for it."
President Bush has asserted Iraq has chemical and biological weapons programs, a main reason, he asserts, for possible military action to remove from office Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein. Iraq claims such allegations are lies.
A mobile biological weapons production facility capable of making significant amounts of materiel could be set up in three to five tractor-trailers, according to a senior Pentagon official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity Friday.
Iraq's biological weapons program produced thousands of gallons of anthrax and deadly botulinum toxin before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.N. weapons inspectors found. The inspectors concluded they had too little evidence to believe Iraqi claims that all the material was destroyed and said Iraq could have produced much more than it acknowledged.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday the administration also has classified information that shows Saddam is rebuilding his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
"There's an emerging threat here that must be addressed," Cheney said on radio host Rush Limbaugh's syndicated program.
Myers said Rumsfeld probably would decide to put a forward command center for the U.S. Central Command at a large air base in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. Central Command officials announced this week that about 600 core staff would move from the command's current headquarters in Tampa to Qatar in November for a training exercise.
"It just makes sense to have your headquarters in your area of responsibility," Myers said.
Central Command oversees U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf, east Africa and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Iraq. Its commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, has recommended moving headquarters to the Persian Gulf.
The Qatar location is significant because the United States has been building a modern air operations center there as an alternative to one in Saudi Arabia.
If Saudi Arabia were to prohibit the United States from using its command post to coordinate attacks on Iraq, the facilities at Qatar's al-Udeid air base could serve the same purpose. There is some question, however, about the Qatari government's willingness to play that role.
In recent months Qatar has emerged as among the most accommodating Gulf allies for U.S. military forces in the global war against terror, but it has not publicly supported military action against Iraq.
The Qatari foreign minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, said Thursday in Washington that a war in Iraq would destabilize the Middle East. He said the Bush administration has not asked for permission to use al-Udeid air base to launch strikes against Iraq.
"If they ask us, we will consider it carefully," he said.
The minister met with senior officials at the Pentagon Friday.
On the Net:
Central Command: http://www.centcom.mil
Navy 5th Fleet: http://www.cusnc.navy.mil
----
Bush wants Iraqi action in "days and weeks"
Friday September 13, 2002
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020913/1/32r2b.html
US President George W. Bush declared that a new UN resolution on Iraq must demand Baghdad's compliance in "days and weeks, not months and years" under the threat of possible military action.
"There will be deadlines within the resolution," he told reporters a day after demanding UN action on Iraq. "We must have deadlines, and we're talking days and weeks, not months and years."
Bush, speaking as he met with Central African leaders, again warned the United Nations that its response to the threats posed by Baghdad would determine the world body's place in international affairs.
"How we deal with this problem will help determine the fate of a multilateral body that has been unilaterally ignored by Saddam Hussein. Will this body be able to keep the peace and deal with the true threats ... or will it be irrelevant," he said.
In a tough speech to the United Nations Thursday, Bush left Saddam a splinter of a chance to avoid military action by swiftly complying with the 16 UN resolutions he agreed to live by in order to end the 1991 Gulf War.
And he warned the UN General Assembly delegates that failure to act would mean that unilateral US "action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power."
Bush laid out five demands of Saddam: scrap his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs and stockpiles; end support for terrorism; end persecution of Iraq's civilian population; free or account for non-Iraqi citizens missing since the Gulf War; and end all efforts to circumvent UN economic sanctions.
----
Backing on Iraq? Let's Make a Deal
Allies: Behind-the-scenes talks get underway to see which inducements might sway nations.
By PAUL RICHTER and GREG MILLER,
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITERS,
September 13, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-bazaar13sep13.story
WASHINGTON -- After struggling for months to talk other nations into helping oust Saddam Hussein, President Bush is beginning to use terms they might find easier to understand: cash, weapons, business deals and favors.
Bush's speech Thursday at the United Nations marked the start of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations to see what inducements will help convert countries that so far have been balking, at least publicly, at joining the anti-Hussein campaign.
U.S. officials expect the Turks to ask for weapons and debt relief, the Russians and French for access to Iraqi oilfield business, the Qataris for cash to build an air base, and the Jordanians for guarantees of oil and trade. Officials expect many other countries to join the horse trading, and predict that they won't be shy.
"Countries in the Middle East take the bazaari approach," said Danielle Pletka, a former Senate aide who now works at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. "Once they know we want to buy ... the sky's the limit."
Said a senior congressional aide, "This is a great time to step forward and get something you want from the United States."
The administration's initial focus will be on members of the United Nations Security Council, notably Russia, France and China, officials say. Their backing will be important soon, as the United States tries to persuade the council to enforce resolutions demanding that Iraq abandon its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
But U.S. officials will also try to persuade many other countries in the Middle East and farther afield to cooperate with a military campaign, or at least to temper their opposition.
The Pentagon still needs to win commitments from countries near Iraq for use of military bases and overflight rights.
The effort mirrors U.S. coalition-building before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and before the U.S. assault last fall on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Yet this job promises to be considerably tougher, because many nations are skeptical of the need for war, and the United States doesn't have access to the billions of dollars that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others contributed to the 1991 Persian Gulf War campaign.
"The horse trading will be much more difficult this time," predicted Edward S. Walker Jr., a former assistant secretary of State for the Middle East who is now president of the Middle East Institute.
"Part of what you've been seeing is people making a public display of opposition that will increase the price," he said.
Most countries resent any suggestion that their support can be bought. These countries insist that such deals are needed simply to reduce the economic costs and political risks of cooperation.
Turkish officials were furious last winter when former Clinton political guru Dick Morris declared on American TV that the U.S. had bought their nation's military cooperation over time by pressing for a generous International Monetary Fund loan program.
"They were outraged," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish expert and former specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It's precisely the wrong image."
Turkey's strategic location and frequent cooperation have made it America's most important military partner in the region. The Turks contend that their participation this time would add a huge burden at a time when their country is trying to cope with crushing economic problems. They are also deeply worried that war with Iraq might lead to an independent Kurdish state that would threaten their own eastern territory.
Accordingly, they have a long wish list, including advanced weapons, relief on their $5-billion debt to the U.S. for weapons purchases, and help from the United States in ensuring that Turkey continues to receive IMF credits, U.S. officials say. Some Turkish officials have also pressed the United States to ensure that any military campaign doesn't take place in the summer, when it could damage the country's tourist industry.
Turkish officials argue that their country has lost more than $40 billion in revenue by cooperating with the United States during the Persian Gulf War and the sanctions against Iraq since.
Turkey stepped in under U.S. pressure this year to lead the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. Congress recently appropriated $228 million to cover Turkey's costs there.
Russia has made little secret of the importance that economics will have in winning its cooperation. Moscow has told U.S. officials that it wants any new Baghdad government to honor Iraq's approximately $8-billion debt to Russia. The Russians also want assurances that any successor government will allow Russian companies to keep their large share of the Iraqi oil business, and to get a piece of the business that develops in the new Iraq.
Although State Department officials insist that the U.S. government has made no commitments, Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, told reporters this week that Moscow's investments in Iraq would be "better protected under new leadership."
Russia has yet to receive "a single kopek" of the billions in debt, he noted.
Another demand may be Washington's silence on Russia's planned $1-billion nuclear power plant for Iran. After years of complaining that the project posed a nuclear proliferation threat, the White House has recently lowered the volume.
Russia's arrangement with the United States could involve an important non-financial issue: Washington might have signaled that it will give the Kremlin a free hand against Chechen separatists, including those taking refuge in U.S.-allied Georgia. Publicly, however, the State Department told wire services that the U.S. would oppose unilateral Russian military action inside Georgia.
President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to be preparing fellow Russians for a reversal of the Kremlin's rejection of military action against Iraq when he proclaimed that Russia had the right to attack Chechen bases in Georgia to do its part in the war against terrorism.
In France, an official denied that President Jacques Chirac's government would seek any financial deal as part of an agreement to join the United States.
"Our focus on Iraq is about disarmament, not about access to oilfields if there's a new government," the official said. Yet a U.S. official noted that the French complained often that after the Gulf War, French companies were not included in the rebuilding of the Kuwaiti oilfields, as they had been promised. He said American officials expect to hear from France on this issue before long.
"We're still in the process of establishing positions, before the French get to their dollar value," the U.S. official said.
It is not clear whether China will ask the United States to protect its small but growing business stake in Iraq, or provide other help. China is not expected to directly support a U.S. campaign; the question is how vocal and obstructive the Communist nation might be.
In exchange for not loudly opposing U.S. action in Iraq, Beijing will probably press for satisfaction on its biggest diplomatic concern: Taiwan. The issue will almost certainly come up during President Jiang Zemin's visit with Bush in Texas next month. China has been displeased with what it sees as a tilt toward Taiwan by the Bush administration.
Meanwhile, some foreign diplomats and experts see Iraq as the real reason the U.S. two weeks ago unexpectedly backed Beijing in its efforts against a separatist group in northwestern China, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. After resisting such action, the United States added the organization to its list of terrorist groups and backed China in adding the group to the U.N.'s terrorist list.
In the Middle East, Jordan, with a large population of Palestinians and a border with Iraq, is not expected to play a visible role in any attack on the Iraqi president. But the United States is eager to ensure Jordan's long-term stability, and it would probably take steps to ensure a continued supply of oil and other goods that the Jordanians now receive from Iraq.
The Egyptians, recipients of huge U.S. aid, would likely receive some additional assistance, even if they are not active participants in an attack. Syria may use the opportunity to press the United States for an important non-economic goal-return of the Golan Heights from Israel, a U.S. official said.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was aware of pressure from countries such as Russia and France, and urged the White House to consider such requests.
"My own hope is that we would look at this," Lugar said. "That's the way the coalition is going to be built."
Staff writers Carol J. Williams in Moscow, Henry Chu in Beijing, David Holley and Maria De Cristofaro in Rome, and special correspondent Amberin Zaman in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
----
Transcript: Fox News Interviews Scott Ritter
Friday, September 13, 2002,
Fox News
http://foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,62916,00.html
Following is the full transcript of Fox News Channel's David Asman's interview with former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, Sept. 12, 2002. Since this transcript is based on closed-captioning feeds, Fox News cannot verify the absolute accuracy of each statement.
DAVID ASMAN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: President Bush at the U.N. today mapping out Saddam Hussein's violations of U.N. resolutions. Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who at one time warned in similar tones about Saddam Hussein, sounds different now. The question is why.
Scott Ritter joins us here in our studio. Good to have you, sir.
SCOTT RITTER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Thanks a lot.
ASMAN: Let me read to you a couple of quotes. I'm sure you've heard it before, but these are from four years ago, when you sounded about Saddam Hussein not very much different from the way President Bush did today at the U.N.
This one is from this week -- August 30, 1998 -- "Six months is a very reasonable time scale for Iraq to resume weapons capabilities."
The second two are from Good Morning America also in August of '98.
First, "Iraq's job is to avoid bringing the world's attention to the fact they've retained these weapons," and then, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike." Sounds like Saddam Hussein is very dangerous and could mount a chemical strike right now.
RITTER: And what point are you trying to make?
ASMAN: Do you disagree with that in any way, shape or form?
RITTER: I don't disagree with anything I've ever said. Why in God's name would I disagree with something I've said?
ASMAN: Then how is it that people have gotten the impression that since those statements were made, you're now being somewhat apologetic for what Saddam Hussein is doing?
RITTER: Forget those people. Let's deal with the facts.
First of all, it's a matter of perception. When I resigned, I didn't resign as someone beating the drum of war. I'm not out there promoting war. I didn't promote war when I was a weapons inspector. I'm not promoting war now.
I'm promoting the process of weapons inspections as mandated by the Security Council. So I resigned in protest from being unable to do the job of completing the disarmament of Iraq.
ASMAN: So you think Saddam Hussein still has these chemical weapons capabilities?
RITTER: No, I said Saddam Hussein has the potential of having chemical weapons capability. We haven't completely confirmed the final disposition of these capabilities and they must be of concern. But to say that Saddam Hussein retains chemical weapons -- there's a big difference between weapons and capability.
ASMAN: You're talking about delivering the arsenal he has.
RITTER: I'm saying Saddam Hussein has the capability, inside Iraq today -- Iraq has the capability to convert aspects of its civilian infrastructure to reconstitute chemical weapons. Six months is not an unreasonable time. I said it then and I'm saying it now.
ASMAN: So he might still have all of those barrels of evil stuff, the biochemical weapons?
RITTER: It's not a matter of "still have," he might have been able to make those weapons in the intervening time.
ASMAN: Right, and chances are he has those weapons but he doesn't have the power to deliver them?
RITTER: No, first of all, I never said he has them and I'm not saying chances are he has them, I'm saying there's a possibility he could reconstitute this capability and that's why we have to have inspectors in place.
You can't go from the fact we can't confirm the final disposition of important elements of his program -- which is the case -- to suddenly giving Saddam Hussein massive strike capability that threatens the United States of America. You can't make that leap.
It is something you have to be concerned about. But the problem with what Bush is doing today is that he's made that leap, void of any intelligence information to substantiate that.
ASMAN: But it's not void of actions, Mr. Ritter. It is particularly in light of what happened on September 11, 2001 and the fear that there are evil people out there, some of whom may have consorted with Saddam Hussein in the past, that would get together and use some of these chemical weapons -- if they're in Iraq -- on U.S. citizens.
RITTER: But this is a purely hypothetical situation. Show me where is the link.
ASMAN: September 11, 2001 was not hypothetical, nothing hypothetical at all.
RITTER: Don't disgrace the death of those 3,000 people by bringing Iraq into the equation.
ASMAN: We know there are people out there willing to do the dirty deed and we also know Saddam Hussein has had contacts with these people in the past.
RITTER: No, you don't know that.
ASMAN: We know from Czech intelligence. Czech intelligence says that an Iraqi met with Mohammed Atta twice.
RITTER: What does the CIA and FBI say?
ASMAN: The FBI and CIA say the situation is not clear but Czech intelligence says it is. And why it is that the only person, only Arab leader that Usama bin Laden likes and approves of and speaks highly of is Saddam Hussein, why?
RITTER: That's an absurdity, David. Usama bin Laden in 1991 was offering his services to confront Saddam Hussein. Usama bin Laden has issued fatwas against Saddam Hussein.
ASMAN: We talked to representatives of Al Qaeda here in 1998 shortly after the bombings of those embassies in Africa. The only Arab leader -- I spoke to them personally, the only Arab leader they were willing to praise, not to condemn, was Saddam Hussein. Why?
RITTER: Well, I'm just telling you that the fact of the matter is the Iraqi government -- and I'm not an apologist for the Iraqi government, Saddam Hussein is the most brutal dictator I can think of today and from my lips to God's ear, I wish he was dead -- but the fact of the matter is Iraq is a secular dictatorship that has struggled against Islamic fundamentalists for 30 years.
ASMAN: Exactly. So why it that Saddam Hussein supports this secular individual?
RITTER: Well, first of all, I don't think that case has been made.
ASMAN: It's been made not only by Usama bin Laden himself but by representatives of Al Qaeda to me personally on air. We've got the tape. I can show it to you.
RITTER: I'm not disputing that.
ASMAN: You were disputing it.
RITTER: I'm not disputing that people have sat before you and said these things. I'm disputing that Al Qaeda is somehow in allegiance with Saddam Hussein.
ASMAN: Why shouldn't they be? They both want the destruction of the United States. You don't think they do? You don't think Usama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein want the destruction of the United States?
RITTER: Let's keep Usama bin Laden out of this equation because I'm not linking them.
ASMAN: He's directly a part of it. That's the point, Scott, the fact that Usama bin Laden has had, or is suspected to have had contacts, well, just a suspicion when thousands of American lives are at risk. Isn't a suspicion alone enough to really act upon?
RITTER: It's enough for us to be extremely concerned about, but when you want to take action, there has to be justification found in an international law. Let's remember there's two documents every American --
ASMAN: Isn't that what just happened today when George Bush went to the United Nations?
RITTER: No, actually George Bush was dictating to the United Nations, not trying to work with the United Nations.
ASMAN: In what way did he dictate?
RITTER: He said that you must hold Iraq accountable for its actions and if you don't, if you fail to do so, we will step forward.
ASMAN: That's not dictating -- that's just mentioning their obligations under the U.N. Charter.
RITTER: Well, let's remember the United States's obligations under the U.N. Charter, which is to go to the Security Council and seek Security Council action.
ASMAN: But remember who lost the war, Scott. You don't have to be told who lost the war in 1991.
RITTER: I fought in the war.
ASMAN: Exactly. Who lost? It was Saddam Hussein. He signed these agreements as a result of his loss so that he could keep his nation in power.
RITTER: First of all, he didn't sign a single agreement.
ASMAN: The conditions laid out by the U.N. were agreed to by the Iraqis.
RITTER: Correct. But don't say Saddam signed the agreement.
ASMAN: The point it that -- You know it's a dictatorship. Are you here to tell me Iraq is a democracy?
RITTER: No.
ASMAN: So Saddam Hussein clearly allowed his people to accept those documents from the U.N.?
RITTER: Absolutely.
ASMAN: So they were forced to accept those documents saying they would allow U.N. inspectors unfettered access -- and they didn't. Do you deny that?
RITTER: First of all, it's not that black and white. We achieved a 90-95 percent level of disarmament in Iraq. We could not have done that without unfettered access.
I got into the sites I needed to get to. Was it easy? Was it pretty? No. Did I achieve a certain level of disarmament? Yes. Did other inspectors achieve a certain level of disarmament? Yes. We fundamentally disarmed Iraq and that's the point that has to be made. We succeeded in eliminating the threat posed to the world by Iraq --
ASMAN: Wait a minute. Even you said 95 percent was destroyed but five percent could not be accounted for, correct?
RITTER: Five to ten percent.
ASMAN: That's a lot of potential biochemical weapons.
RITTER: First of all, it's not just biochemical, it's across the board.
ASMAN: Nevertheless, for a madman like Saddam Hussein, who you just said you'd be for getting rid of in a heartbeat, for him to have 5 percent of that arsenal is still a dangerous thing.
RITTER: Again, let's put this in the proper perspective. Biological weapons -- everybody's concerned about that. Anthrax -- we suffered a horrific anthrax attack here in the United States. Iraq produced liquid bulk anthrax, that's all they ever produced, not the dry powder that we saw here in the United States.
ASMAN: How are you sure about that? You're saying inspectors weren't sure of what happened. How do you know it did?
RITTER: Because this is the finding of the United Nations.
ASMAN: But, Scott, you just said that we're not sure.
RITTER: I'm going to deal with the facts that we know of. I'm not going to get into the hypothetical. What we know is that Iraq only produced liquid bulk anthrax. There is no evidence --
ASMAN: I gotta stop you Scott. You just said we don't know that, we don't know that they didn't produce powdered form of anthrax. How do you know? How?
RITTER: No, we do know that they didn't produce powdered form of anthrax. Because we inspected the facility, we did the testing on the facility.
ASMAN: It could not have been a facility you didn't know about?
RITTER: Well, now you're going off the map.
ASMAN: The guy's got trillions of dollars' worth of oil. Couldn't he have within his --
RITTER: Has millions of dollars' worth of oil.
ASMAN: Well, the reserves are trillions of dollars, if you add it up at 25 dollars a barrel. The point is he's got enough cash to do all sorts of things that we don't know about, correct?
RITTER: No. Again, we deal in the world of reality. Weapons of mass destruction aren't pulled out of a black hat like a white rabbit at a magic show. They're produced in factories. There's science and technology involved. They're not produced in a hole in the ground or in a basement. It's an industrial facility, we investigated the industrial facility, anthrax, liquid bulk deteriorates after three years under ideal storage conditions.
The last time he produced it, in 1991 -- we were there from '91 to '98 and never detected any evidence of production. So for Iraq to have anthrax today they would have had to rebuild these factories since the last time inspectors were there.
ASMAN: 1998. You yourself said it would take six months to rebuild those facilities. So they could have built that. They could have built that four, six times over.
RITTER: They could have.
ASMAN: And isn't that a risk that we have to be particularly cognizant of, and if the Iraqis won't allow our inspectors unfettered access, isn't our only option to go in there and take out Saddam?
RITTER: Yes. Now let's get to the bottom line here. The last time we allowed inspectors into Iraq unconditionally, with unfettered access, what happened? The United States took these inspectors and used them to spy on Saddam Hussein.
ASMAN: Wait a minute, are you including your former boss Richard Butler in that category?
RITTER: Richard Butler was totally complicit with it.
ASMAN: Richard Butler, you're saying, was a spy for the United States, not an independent U.N. weapons inspector?
RITTER: Richard Butler allowed the United States to use the United Nations weapons-inspection process as a Trojan horse to insert intelligence capabilities into Iraq, which were not approved by the United Nations and which did not facilitate the disarmament process, were instead focused on the security of Saddam Hussein and military targets.
ASMAN: So you think Richard Butler was an agent of the CIA?
RITTER: Don't put words in my mouth.
ASMAN: I'm asking you.
RITTER: Richard Butler facilitated American espionage in Iraq. Richard Butler facilitated American manipulation of the inspection process.
ASMAN: With the full knowledge of what he was doing? Was he a dupe?
RITTER: Well, that's a question to ask Richard Butler. I think he knew because on four occasions, from March 1998 until my resignation in August 1998, I wrote Richard Butler a memorandum saying, "Boss, if you continue down this path you are facilitating espionage. This is not what we're about and you can't let this happen."
He received this memorandum and disregarded my warning and ultimately, in the end, let's ask ourselves why the inspectors aren't in Iraq today.
It is not because Iraq kicked them out -- it's because the United States government through their mission in New York picked up the phone, ordered Richard Butler to withdraw the inspectors. He did so without going to the Security Council.
Two days later the United States bombed Iraq using an inspection that was manipulated by the United States as justification for triggering, and using intelligence gathered by the inspectors to bomb Saddam Hussein's targets that weren't weapons-of-mass-destruction-related.
Why would the Iraqis immediately roll over and say "Come on back in," unless they're given guarantees that the inspectors won't again deviate from the task?
ASMAN: I have to ask this question. Why it is that we should not believe Richard Butler who was chief weapons inspector, or believe people like [unintelligible], the former nuclear scientist who worked on Saddam Hussein's campaign who says he still has an active policy to get a nuclear weapon and has other capabilities -- why should we not believe all of these other people and believe you?
RITTER: Again just believe the facts. In 1998 [unintelligible] was a minor functionary there in the Iraqi nuclear program. He was brought in to head up a cell that was to do research on the Iraqi nuclear program. He came up with an $8 billion program that was found to be too expensive. He was fired and released. He was a fraud.
As for Richard Butler, you have ask him why he's now distorting the truth. I can document everything I say and if you'd kindly bring Richard Butler on stage with me sometime we can have a face-to-face.
ASMAN: Let's do that. We have contacts with him so let's try to do that.
RITTER: The facts have not been contradicted on the point of fact regarding Iraq. U.S. News & World Report reported on Richard Butler's close cooperation with the United States. The United States government has admitted doing what I said.
ASMAN: Wait a minute. The United States has admitted that they used Richard Butler as a pawn in an intelligence operation thwarting the neutral interests of the United Nations?
RITTER: Yes. Read the Washington Post -- [unintelligible] Gelbart's two articles written in November. Read U.S. News & World Report from December.
ASMAN: Richard Butler, as far as I know, and we can back it up, we have a good brain room here, has never admitted that he worked for U.S. intelligence to thwart the neutral interests of the United Nations.
RITTER: I'm saying that Richard Butler as the executive chairman of UNSCOM --
ASMAN: Knowingly allowing them neutral reputation of the United States -- United Nations to fall by the wayside in order to work with United States intelligence is nothing that he's ever admitted to.
RITTER: Well, then these four memorandums from his chief inspector responsible for squaring out these sensitive intelligence operations, four memorandums from March 1998 to August 1998 warning him that if he continues it is tantamount to espionage and -- he received these memorandums and disregarded the memorandums. He knew what he was doing.
ASMAN: But you're saying you have access to information he does not have and therefore you have the ability to say this information, he was lying about it.
RITTER: I'm saying when I wrote a memorandum to him [about] the program. When I confronted him with what was happening with the program, he disregarded my warnings.
ASMAN: We will work our best to get Richard Butler on here. Stay with us. We have a short break. We'll be right back with him more questions on Fox in a moment.
ASMAN: We're back with the former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter. We just took a break. You have to make sure you know all the facts. A lot of people saw you go to Iraq. They said, 'He's a traitor.' Take care from people who are sworn enemies.
How does that make you feel?
RITTER: Sworn enemies, that's a curious statement.
ASMAN: ... They say they want death and destruction for the United States. The vice president of Iraq said it is the duty of Arabs anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world, to attack U.S. interests and U.S. individuals. This is the vice president of Iraq. You just admitted it is a dictatorship.
RITTER: ... I love my country more than anything. I spent 12 years in the United States Marine Corps. I know what it means to defend this country.
ASMAN: That's why people, when they see you in Iraq with these Iraqi government officials, they wonder what the heck is going on.
RITTER: I went to Iraq on my own initiative. I made the decision to approach and say I think it is time for me to deliver a message to the Iraqi government that if they don't allow ...
ASMAN: Paid for out of your own pocket?
RITTER: Hell, yes. Or by an anti-sanctions group in the case of South Africa, they didn't spend a single damn penny. I wouldn't accept their money, it is against the law.
ASMAN: Some people say that some of this money has come from Iraqi-Americans, there's one Iraqi-American in particular, who is perhaps not pro-Saddam but at least people say he's against the U.S. position towards Iraq, that that in itself kind ... of [proves that] Iraq is giving people money to do their bidding.
RITTER: ... He's a Detroit-based American businessman. An American citizen. He has family in Iraq. People have to put this in perspective. They are looking death and destruction in the face. You can't blame a guy that is trying to prevent a war.
ASMAN: He has no contact whatsoever with anybody in the Iraqi government?
RITTER: I didn't say that. How do you think I got the government with him? He can get me the audience. I take advantage. ... I am waging peace in the same way other people wage war -- I am trying to stop a war that doesn't need to be fought. This is not anti-American.
[Unintelligible] ... put my life on the line for my country. And I would do so again if the cause is just, if the cause is founded. If there is a threat worth dying for, make the case, Mr. Bush. And I will support your war with Iraq to the hilt. But until you make that case, all we have is speculative rhetoric and that is not justification.
ASMAN: We have clear rhetoric coming from Iraq. Arabs have the duty to attack and kill Americans even on U.S. soil. They are saying that. The vice president said it this week. Don't you think they are the enemy?
RITTER: The situation that's evolving there's definitely an atmosphere of conflict between us and -- United States and Iraq. I'm not going to defend a damn word they say.
ASMAN: You're taking money from a guy affiliated from the foreign minister/deputy prime minister.
RITTER: I'm not taking any money. It's not going into my pocket.
ASMAN: They paid for the trip to Iraq.
RITTER: It was paid for by the Public Institute of Accuracy.
ASMAN: Just to clear this up for the record, this Iraqi businessman, he is friends with Aziz, he knows people in the Iraqi government. What is he paying to you, anything at all? Are you getting any money?
RITTER: [Unintelligible] ... Is there a hand up my back moving my mouth? No.
... not associated with or affiliated with any particular government outside of the United States. The point is we are not being used as a mouthpiece as some people say that Iraqi-American businessman is.
You yourself said he's friends with and ... essentially one of Saddam Hussein's henchman.
ASMAN: He's a henchman of Saddam Hussein.
RITTER: He's had to say things that are [a] total fabrication. I am trying to facilitate peace by making the case a for peace and the only way to do that, you can't get into Iraq unless you have the Iraqi government open the door. Aziz can open the door. If you want to condemn me for making a case so I can diffuse a war-like situation that is going to put hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk, then condemn me. I don't care. ... I am doing everything I can [to ensure] that we exhaust every avenue possible short of war before we go to war.
ASMAN: When was the very last time you received any intelligence about what Iraq is doing from the United States government?
RITTER: [Unintelligible]
ASMAN: It is conceivable, is it not, that they have created in the four years since we have been there quite a stockpile of chemical [and] biological weapons.
RITTER: It is conceivable they could have created chemical weapons.
ASMAN: Why do you think it is that they did that?
RITTER: Detectable ...
ASMAN: Under what conditions?
RITTER: I don't want to get any sources. Any professional will tell you [there are] ways to detect the -- the efforts by a nation, especially a nation like Iraq which had its infrastructure diminished, weapons of mass destruction capacity they would have to reconstitute, acquire technology, they would have to reconfigure technology.
ASMAN: You know all the back-door channels. Oil-for-food program and all the other ways in which to help Iraq to get the cash they need to do what you're saying.
RITTER: I worked with the Israeli government for four years setting up capability to monitor Iraqi -- they tracked them and monitored them. I'm not doing it anymore. I know the Israelis are, [and the] United States is. ... Make the case, Mr. President, make the case.
ASMAN: He made a case ... the question comes down to this, Scott Ritter, who do you trust more, President Bush and the case he is making against Saddam Hussein, or the rhetoric coming out of Iraq?
RITTER: I'd like to put it this way. Who do I hold accountable, the president of Iraq or the president of the United States. I hold my government accountable to the facts. I hold my government to a higher standard than I do Saddam Hussein. I am an American citizen who believes in the Constitution and believes in my obligation as a citizen to hold my government [accountable].
ASMAN: I'm a journalist. ... which information do you think is more reliable right now? That coming out of Iraq or that coming out of President Bush?
RITTER: ... The bottom line is I believe that the United States government -- the Bush administration is deliberately distorting the record in regards to weapons of mass destruction. I have trouble believing what they are saying. Not that I believe what Saddam Hussein is doing. Not that I believe Saddam Hussein more. I don't trust based upon my extensive experience what is coming from the Bush administration. They need to make a better case with substantive fact.
ASMAN: Scott Ritter, we do thank you for coming on today.
RITTER: Thank you very much.
----
Observers: Evidence For War Lacking
Report Against Iraq Holds Little That's New
By Dana Priest and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 13, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10645-2002Sep12.html
The White House document released yesterday as evidence that it is time to overthrow Saddam Hussein is a concise summary of his regime's abuses of Iraqis and its past use or possession of chemical and biological agents.
But it contains little new information -- and no bombshells -- showing that Hussein is producing new weapons of mass destruction or has joined with terrorists to threaten the United States or its interests abroad.
Administration officials, seeking to persuade the public, Congress and foreign allies that it is time to go to war, had indicated recently that their strongest case rested on evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and its efforts to develop ballistic missiles to launch them beyond its borders.
But experts on Iraq's weaponry say that on this subject the report, with few exceptions, recycles a mix of dated and largely circumstantial evidence that Hussein may be hiding the ingredients for these weapons and is seeking to develop a nuclear capability and to weaponize chemical and biological agents.
The 20-page paper, "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," concludes Iraq harbors stockpiles of chemical and biological weapon it created before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as well as a limited number of missiles and other systems for delivering them. The stockpile includes highly lethal VX, a nerve agent so potent that a few drops on the skin can kill, as well as anthrax and other staples of germ warfare.
The report concludes that Iraq retains the expertise and infrastructure to build new weapons and is seeking to acquire critical parts and supplies. On Iraq's nuclear program, it repeats a British think tank's finding last week that Iraq could likely build a nuclear weapon within a few months, but only if it managed the difficult feat of acquiring enriched uranium from an outside source.
The bulk of the report's assertions were attributed to reports by U.N. weapons inspectors who scoured Iraq for outlawed weapons programs from 1991 to 1998. Although the inspectors destroyed large amounts of weaponry and equipment, they were unable to account for all the chemical and biological warheads and bombs Iraq has admitted making. They disputed Iraq's claims that it destroyed the weapons to hide evidence.
Other claims in the report were attributed to Iraqi defectors or to surveillance imagery that showed new construction in places where Iraq once manufactured weapons.
Weapons experts who reviewed the document noted a few previously undisclosed details, such as a new test platform reportedly built for longer-range missiles at Iraq's al-Rafah-North facility. But several expressed surprise at the lack of fresh revelations.
"Given the high priority for knowing what is going on in Iraq, I'm stunned by the lack of evidence of fresh intelligence," said Gary Milhollin, executive editor of Iraq Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit institution that tracks developments in Iraq's weapons program. "You'd expect that, for the many billions we are spending on intelligence, they would be able to make factual assertions that would not have to be footnoted to an open source."
The document's evidence of Iraq's "support for international terrorism" is one-page long and lacks any reference to al Qaeda or to a purported meeting in Prague between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent. The document confirms that the last terrorism operation by Hussein's regime was the 1993 attempt to kill then-President George H.W. Bush during his visit to Kuwait. It cites Iraq's shelter of various anti-Iran and extremist Palestinian terrorist groups and says Hussein has increased from $10,000 to $25,000 his compensation to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
President Bush has been under pressure to reveal why he is pressing for a war with Iraq in the near future, and many analysts believed the document would make his case with new information of a more urgent nature. The absence of evidence, they say, suggests Bush will rely on what he believes are Hussein's intentions and potential actions, rather than on concrete, current activities.
"This is a glorified press release that doesn't come close to the information the U.S. government made available on Soviet military power when we were trying to explain the Cold War," said Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert who has participated in many major studies of Iraq's capabilities. "It's clumsy and shallow when what we need is sophisticated and in-depth . . . as an overall grade, I'd give it a D-minus."
White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said yesterday that the document was meant to show Hussein's violation of U.N. resolutions. "It was never meant to be a smoking gun . . . this is a debate that's going to continue for weeks. There will be more documents and briefings that will be offered."The most detailed case made in the paper is that Hussein's regime routinely tortures and abuses its citizens, including children. Citing already published State Department, U.N. and Amnesty International human rights reports, the document contains seven pages of examples covering executions, torture, rape, disappearances, forced military training of children and crimes against Muslims, particularly the majority Shiite Muslim population.
For more information on the White House report, go to washingtonpost.com.
--------
Bush Names Hussein Public Enemy No. 1
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/13ASSE.html
President Bush has formally changed the face of America's primary enemy from Osama bin Laden, whereabouts unknown, to Saddam Hussein, an old nemesis who cheated both Mr. Bush's father and President Clinton out of fulfillment of the terms of surrender that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The president's forcefully delivered speech at the United Nations significantly escalates the mission he assigned to himself after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he said that fighting terrorism was now the focus of his presidency. "We must stand up for our security," Mr. Bush said from the podium in the vast hall of delegates who gathered under the most stringent security measures ever.
America's security, he said, is "challenged today by outlaw groups and regimes that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions." And so the prospect that the United States could be at war with Iraq by Christmas or soon thereafter began to settle over a country both disturbed and a little numb from the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Bush made no case today that Mr. Hussein's government in Baghdad was connected in any way to the terrorists who plotted the hijackings and assault on the United States. Nor did he share any new intelligence that Iraq has made any significant strides in rebuilding its arsenal of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, though the record of Mr. Hussein's deception, packaged by the White House and released today, is extensive.
Instead, the president moved on to new ground, arguing that the credibility of the United Nations and a secure world order require that the international community respond to the intolerable threat Mr. Bush says is posed by Iraq's "weapons of mass murder," developed to brandish against America and its allies.
That threat is so strong, he said, that Mr. Hussein should be removed from power.
Mr. Bush made no pledge to wait for United Nations approval for military action, only to work with the Security Council for the "necessary resolutions" that would give Washington freedom of action. A senior White House official said after the speech that neither was Mr. Bush willing to get drawn into a lengthy tussle over sending United Nations weapons inspectors back to Iraq. "Even when there were inspectors in, he was managing to keep them from doing their work," the official said, referring to Mr. Hussein.
In the last several days, the Bush administration has moved adroitly to exploit every crack in the edifice of European opposition to war in Iraq. After President Jacques Chirac of France said in an interview that the Security Council could set a deadline of three weeks for Iraq to admit weapons inspectors, after which Washington could petition for Security Council backing to use military force, Bush administration officials praised the proposal.
They pointed out that the positions of Britain and France were converging on how to handle Mr. Hussein.
In addition, Mr. Bush timed this speech to coincide with the anniversary events, reminding the country - and to some extent the world - how united both were in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Some of those sentiments benefited Mr. Bush today.
"I think the country generally speaking liked what he said even though there is a tremendous amount of concern about war," said Robert J. Strauss, a longtime Democratic strategist, diplomat and admirer of the fellow Texan who sits in the White House. "I also think he has made the decision that he can keep the political consensus behind him."
That may depend on whether an Iraq campaign is short and easy or long and hard.
Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona who contested Mr. Bush for the nomination in 2000, made a point of saying today on Capitol Hill: "I am very certain that this military engagement will not be very difficult. It may entail the risk of American lives and treasure, but Saddam Hussein is vastly weaker than he was in 1991."
Mr. McCain also said it was possible that military action may take place before Congress comes back in January.
He appeared with the Senate's Republican leader, Trent Lott, to express strong support for the president's call to arms. They said they would work to convince the Democrats, who control the Senate, to pass a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq before Congress adjourns for the November midterm elections.
But the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, laid out three specific questions and a more profound concern "about the politicization of this whole issue" as the White House has seemed to orchestrate the convergence of a fall war strategy with its fall campaign strategy to maintain control over the House and take back the Senate.
Mr. Daschle said, first, it was important to gauge foreign reaction to Mr. Bush's speech. He also wondered whether a major diversion of military resources to Iraq would undermine the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, and he said the administration had yet to address "to whom will we turn for leadership in Iraq" after Mr. Hussein was overthrown.
But Mr. Daschle said the Democrats were "not prepared to make any commitment" to voting on a war resolution "until we've had more of an opportunity to answer these questions."
What was most striking about the speech was how Mr. Bush shifted his ground to address the criticism that continues to dog his administration, that it is hostile to international institutions and their role in regulating national behavior.
Today that criticism came from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, who proclaimed in introducing Mr. Bush, "I am a multilateralist." Mr. Bush answered by asking how a multilateral institution like the United Nations could assert its role in keeping the peace - indeed, remain true to the very principles for which it exists - if it failed to act against the willful defiance of a militaristic dictator like Mr. Hussein.
"We want the United Nations to be effective," Mr. Bush said. "We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime."
In Mr. Bush's view, Mr. Hussein is the unilateralist.
"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace," Mr. Bush said. "All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"
----
Iraq says it helped Kurdish rebel leader fight Al-Qaeda terrorists
September 13, 2002
AFP
http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,287744,00.html
DUBAI - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said that Baghdad, far from "supporting terrorism" as President George W. Bush has claimed, had given rebel Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani weapons to fight militants linked to the Al-Qaeda terror network in northern Iraq.
Whatever "remnants" of Al-Qaeda are in Iraq can be found in the province of Suleimaniya, which is held by Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and outside Baghdad's control, he told Dubai-based Saudi-owned MBC television.
"Why didn't US officials question Talabani about the Islamist radicals when he recently met them in Washington?" Aziz asked.
The PUK leader, whose faction shares control of the Western-protected Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), had sought Baghdad's help to combat the Al-Qaeda extremists and "we gave him weapons and equipment," Aziz said.
The PUK has clashed in recent months with Islamist extremists in the part of Iraqi Kurdistan it controls, pushing them back to Biara, which borders Iran.
A PUK spokesman told AFP in May that the extremists were affiliated with "Ansar al-Islam" (Supporters of Islam), which comprises a number of groupings, including 200 to 300 members of the so-called Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam).
The fundamentalists are suspected of being responsible for a series of recent incidents, including bomb blasts, in the Kurdish enclave, which has been off limits to the Baghdad government since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
Aziz rejected the charge that Iraq supported terror because it gave financial aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, saying the Palestinians were not terrorists but freedom fighters, and Baghdad was "proud" to help them.
The Iraqi official was commenting on Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday in which he warned that US military action was "unavoidable" unless Baghdad scrapped probibited weapons it allegedly possesses.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Forces Invade Area in Southern Gaza
Reuters
Friday, September 13, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10900-2002Sep12.html
GAZA CITY, Sept. 13 (Friday) -- An Israeli helicopter fired at least one missile into a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip as armored combat vehicles invaded the area early today, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
The invasion sparked a gun battle as Palestinians, roused by a message broadcast on mosque loudspeakers, took up arms to oppose the advancing forces. Families in the area known as Brazil sought refuge away from the fighting, witnesses said.
A hospital source said one man was killed by shrapnel from a tank shell and one was injured with bullet wounds in his legs.
Dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into two districts of Palestinian-ruled Rafah and its Brazil camp near the Egyptian border. Troops conducted house-to-house searches.
Helicopters accompanying the armored forces fired at least one missile, security sources and witnesses said.
The army had no immediate comment.
----
Peres Acknowledges Iraq Attack Risk
By George Gedda
Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; 5:05 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13986-2002Sep13?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres acknowledged Friday that Iraq could respond to a U.S. military attack by launching missiles against Israel. He said Israel is prepared to accept that risk.
"By running away from what should be done, you solve nothing and you make the situation worse," Peres said, speaking to a gathering sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Peres is here for talks with Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other officials.
On Thursday, he was at the United Nations and said President Bush impressed him with his "very forceful, very convincing speech" to the General Assembly on a need for the U.N. to stand up against Iraq.
He called Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a "cruel, cold-blooded killer."
Any decision to leave Saddam unchecked "is maybe to make the same mistake as taken by Europe in 1939 in the face of the emergence of Hitler." He implied that a European decision to confront the German leader would have prevented World War II and saved millions of lives.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, Iraq fired 39 missiles at Israel. The United States, concerned that Israeli retaliation would fracture the coalition fighting Saddam's forces, convinced Israel to hold its fire.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last week that the United States would give Israel sufficient warning before an attack on Iraq to allow the Jewish state time to prepare for expected counterattacks against it by Baghdad.
Peres described Israel as a "loyal soldier" in support of the United States in its quest to dislodge Saddam.
"When somebody goes to war he knows there are risks. You don't do it out of pleasure but you do it with the deep conviction that by running away from what should be done, you solve nothing and you make the situation worse.
"We can imagine having dangers," he said. "But this is our duty. We belong to the same world. We shall not pass the buck."
In comments published Friday, Iraq's trade minister said his country will attack Israel if it joins America in trying to oust Saddam.
"Israel will suffer a profound and an unforgettable strike if it interferes in the (U.S.-led) war (against Iraq)," Mohammed Mahdi Saleh told the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al-Khaleej.
On the Palestinian issue, Peres said recent developments have given him a "certain hope" about the prospects for forward movement.
He cited statements by prominent Palestinians that the Intifada was a mistake and that the violence must end.
Peres said he is pleased to see a debate among Palestinians about democracy.
"I think the Palestinians need it not in order to please the United States or to please Israel," he said. "They need it for their own destinies. They cannot continue with having a one-man show. It doesn't function."
-------- japan
Japan considers role in U.S. campaign
By Ted Hattori
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020913-69329130.htm
Although Japan has supported the U.S.-led war against terrorism in various ways for nearly a year, its government is considering legislation that would allow the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to operate in Afghanistan in case the United States shifts its military forces to Iraq.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi are visiting the United States this week and next. Mrs. Kawaguchi will come to Washington on Sunday from New York City and stay until Wednesday.
In addition to attending the opening debate of the U.N. General Assembly, the top Japanese officials expect to meet with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
"Of course the main topic of the meetings will be Iraq," said a veteran Washington correspondent from Japan who did not want to be named.
"The Japanese government was reluctant to cooperate with a U.S. pre-emptive attack against Iraq and its consequences," the correspondent said. "But now the usually indecisive Japanese government may be making up its mind to help the U.S. war against Iraq."
Echoing a widespread opinion, the correspondent went on: "Japan has never had a clear foreign policy. It moves if it gets pressured by somebody. And Japan has been obedient, like a primary school student, to the United States for more than a half-century."
In a speech this year, Mrs. Kawaguchi told the Japan Press Club in Tokyo that her foreign policy could be summarized in three words: strong, caring and straightforward. She said Japan-U.S. relations are strong, confirmed by Mr. Bush's February visit to Japan.
The Japanese foreign minister, unlike most of her predecessors, seems eager to express Japan's perspective to the rest of the world. For example, Mrs. Kawaguchi insisted that global warming was an important issue, and that Japan would continue to pursue a constructive response from the United States while seeking international rules with the participation of developing countries.
"Needless to say, the [Japanese] government will continue to act proactively to ensure the safety of the state and its people on its own initiative, but under international cooperation," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda.
Although Japan's postwar constitution prohibits recourse to war and its neighbors worry about any return to militarism, Mr. Fukuda emphasized the importance of "international dialogues."
Mr. Koizumi announced in Tokyo last month that he would visit North Korea on Tuesday for talks with leader Kim Jong-il. Mr. Koizumi's visit will be the first to North Korea by a Japanese prime minister, and the summit with Mr. Kim is also unprecedented.
"Leaders must show political will," said Mr. Koizumi. "That's why I decided to go there."
The visit will come less than nine months after the Japanese coast guard sank a North Korean vessel disguised as a fishing boat. The sinking came after a chase from Japanese to Chinese waters in which the intruders reportedly fired shoulder-launched rockets that missed the Japanese ships.
The Japanese salvaged the sunken craft from the bottom of the East China Sea on Wednesday, a week after another suspected North Korean spy ship was photographed approaching Japanese waters.
Even so, a high Japanese government official says North Korea - which is suspected of having kidnapped Japanese citizens in the 1960 and 1970s to help train its spies - has shown interest in dialogue with Japan.
"For instance, on the abduction issue, they had been saying that issue did not exist, but now call it 'a political matter,' suggesting Mr. Kim is ready to discuss it."
Besides discussing normalization of relations and North Korea's weapons development and nuclear program, the Japanese official said, the issue of "unidentified ships" in Japanese waters will be aired. For North Korea, compensation and an apology for Japanese colonialism are expected to be important.
The Japanese official said that reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and having North Korea join the international community are crucial for the stability of East Asia.
But for Yohei Mori, Washington correspondent of the Ryukyu Shimpo in Okinawa - a part of Japan distant from its four main islands where most of the U.S. military presence is based - all the declarations of Japanese politicians and officials amount to mere words.
"Japan has no strategy [in foreign policy], but the U.S. has. So Japan always asks the United States what strategies it has, and exactly follows it." Mr. Mori said this may be "the DNA of Japanese diplomacy."
"In the short-term perspective, this tendency has worked for about 50 years, and especially after the September 11 attacks. But in the longer view, Japan has lived under the huge influence of China for hundreds of years," said the correspondent of the Okinawa newspaper.
"Koizumi is saying what he wants to say [to distinguish himself from] his predecessors. He is nice-looking and young. But regarding the substance of what he has done, there is almost no difference," Mr. Mori said.
"For example, in the Persian Gulf war, Japan did just merely what the U.S. wanted Japan to do. As for Okinawa, where U.S. military bases occupy about half of its territory, Koizumi has never told the U.S. to reduce its bases there. It's because he knows the United States cannot do that in the present situation, and he does not want to get Washington upset."
As for Mrs. Kawaguchi, Mr. Mori said, she did acted on reforms in response to corruption in the Foreign Ministry, "but in diplomacy, she has never done anything new. She just follows precedent."
In May, when Chinese police pulled out several North Koreans seeking refuge in a Japanese Consulate, Japan was not decisive, he said. "Japan is always swinging between countries that have clear attitudes."
But Mr. Mori sees some hope. When Mr. Armitage visited Japan last month, Japan and the United States began a "strategic dialogue" in which both countries examined each other's strategy in order to avoid differences or misunderstandings. The Bush administration has a similar arrangement with Australia, the Okinawa correspondent said, and representatives of the three countries have met in Japan to open a dialogue.
"The U.S. wants Japan [to act as the] Britain of Asia. So it wants Japan to establish a law to protect classified information - so it can talk about anything, as it does with Britain," Mr. Mori said. "But when one country has no strategy, is a dialogue possible?"
Despite limited interest of Japan in the United States and frequent references to President Roosevelt's characterization of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as "a day that will live in infamy," Japan's image among Americans appears to be improving.
In this year's Gallup poll of U.S. attitudes toward Japan commissioned by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, 67 percent of respondents in the "general public" group and 91 percent of "opinion leaders" rated Japan as "a dependable ally or friend."
Those were record highs since the annual surveys began in 1960, the ministry said. Respondents who viewed Japan "favorably" also set a record - 49 percent of the American general public, and 81 percent of opinion leaders.
On other Gallup questions, 46 percent of the general public and 64 percent of "opinion leaders" ranked Japan as "the most important partner to the U.S. in the Asian region;" 56 percent and 94 percent of those respective groups felt Japan played an important international role in science and technology; 51 percent and 94 percent said Japan played an important role in the global economy, and 85 percent of respondents in both groups considered Japan-U.S. security arrangements to be either "very important" or "somewhat important" to U.S. security interests.
-------- landmines
Land Mine Campaigners Criticize India, Pakistan
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-mines.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The widespread use of anti-personnel land mines by nations such as India and Pakistan is hampering efforts to eliminate a weapon that kills or maims thousands of people every year, campaigners said on Friday.
India and Pakistan have laid large numbers of such mines along their common border since coming close to war over Kashmir in December 2001, the International Campaign to Ban Land mines said in a report.
Land mines are also widely used by Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, by Russia in Chechnya, and on a smaller scale in Nepal, Somalia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the Land mine Monitor Report 2002 said.
The United Nations estimates that land mines still kill about 10,000 people a year around the world, and activists said the devices injure about another 10,000, often requiring the amputation of limbs.
Up to 40 percent of all mine victims are children under 15, according to the United Nations.
The report was issued before the start of a week of talks in Geneva on Monday to review the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines.
Some 125 countries have signed and ratified the treaty, while 18 have signed but not yet ratified it.
But 50 countries, including big powers such as China, Russia and the United States, have rejected the landmark pact, and 14 countries still produce land mines.
``Three-quarters of the countries in the world have renounced the anti-personnel mine, and together they need to bring more pressure on the recalcitrant few,'' said Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch, which was a founding member of the campaign.
Jody Williams, an ICBL ambassador who shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with the ICBL, criticized Washington for not signing the treaty, saying the United States was in the company of nations like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, states defined by President Bush as forming an axis of evil.
But Williams, speaking in Oslo, said Washington had given money for mine clearance and had destroyed three million of its stockpiled mines. The United States has not used mines since the 1991 Gulf War and has not produced any since 1997.
DAILY THREAT
The ICBL, a global network of over 1,200 non-governmental organizations in 60 countries, says the weapons pose a daily threat in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya, Croatia, Iraq, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Somalia and many other places.
On the positive side, both government and rebel forces in Angola and Sri Lanka stopped using land mines in 2002, and some 34 million mines have been destroyed since the Ottawa treaty came into force, the report said.
``We would be hard pressed to identify another disarmament or arms control agreement that has accomplished so much so quickly,'' Kerstin Vignard, of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), told a news briefing in Geneva.
The report said some 230 million anti-personnel land mines are still stockpiled by 94 states, including 110 million in China, 60-70 million in Russia and 11 million in the United States.
The number of land mines planted around the world is estimated at 50-60 million and land mines linger for years, but funding for mine clearance has stagnated at about $240 million a year, it said.
The report said groups in at least 14 countries used land mines last year, including both the Northern Alliance and the toppled Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
There was also disturbing evidence that Iran had provided mines to Northern Alliance fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere, despite declaring an export moratorium in 1997, the ICBL said.
Mary Wareham, ICBL land mine monitor coordinator, told the Geneva briefing the heavy use of mines by India and Pakistan meant that ``...we believe more mines went into the ground (globally) than during the previous reporting period.''
But overall, ``it is abundantly clear that the 1997 mine ban treaty and the ban movement more generally are making tremendous strides in eradicating anti-personnel land mines and in saving lives and limbs in every region of the world,'' she added.
-------- mideast
Qatar Would Consider Base Request
Site Could Be Used to Launch Warplanes, Combat Forces Against Iraq
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; Page A32
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10316-2002Sep12.html
Qatar's foreign minister said yesterday that his government would seriously consider any request from the Bush administration to launch warplanes and combat forces from the Al Udeid Air Base, noting Qatar's "very special relationship with the United States."
Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani spoke publicly at the Brookings Institution and met privately with members of the House International Relations Committee. The U.S. Central Command announced Wednesday that in November it would send 600 personnel from its base in Tampa to Al Udeid to test a headquarters that could be used to oversee a war against Iraq.
The United States has not yet requested "permission for an attack from Qatar to Iraq," Hamad said at Brookings. "If they ask us, we will look seriously, but at the moment there is no decision" because there has been no request.
Hamad said he met recently with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Hamad said he told the Iraqi leader that, in an attempt to avert a war in the region, he must allow United Nations weapons inspectors into Iraq without conditions.
But Hamad indicated that Hussein was under no illusions about where Qatari sympathies would lie in the event of a conflict with the United States. "The Iraqis know that we have a very special relation[ship] with the United States," he said. "It is not secret and [American forces] are already in Al Udeid."
While the Pentagon has called the deployment of 600 troops to Qatar in November part of a one-week biennial training exercise, it acknowledges that some of those forces, if not the entire Central Command headquarters, could remain in the Persian Gulf if a war against Iraq seems close at hand.
The Pentagon has spent the better part of this year rapidly expanding its presence at Al Udeid, a base 400 miles from the southern border of Iraq and 710 miles from Baghdad. It has a 15,000-foot runway, which can handle all types of U.S. aircraft.
The move to expand and improve facilities at Al Udeid has accelerated in recent months as relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have frayed over the issue of Islamic extremism since Sept. 11, 2001. The Saudi government has also been critical of the administration's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it has expressed doubts about the administration's desire to take military action against Iraq.
Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research at Brookings' Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the Qataris consider their relationship with the United States so important that they would be "very, very reluctant to turn us down" if the Americans ask for permission to attack Iraq from bases in their country.
But the Qataris, he said, are still in an uneasy position. "The Qataris would prefer that we not do it right now, certainly," he said, "and I think they're very nervous about the political context in which an attack occurs -- whether the Palestinians and the Israelis are at each others' throats or not."
Pollack said the Qataris also value relations with Saudi Arabia, and would not want to see the United States launch an attack on Iraq without at least the Saudis' acquiescence.
"The Saudis are very concerned about the status of the violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis and what they see as inaction on our part," said Pollack, a former CIA analyst, who served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. "But the rumors of the death of the U.S.-Saudi relationship have been greatly exaggerated."
-------- nato
NATO candidates aim to please U.S., Europe
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020913-26321036.htm
This is the first in a series of reports from seven NATO aspirant nations in Central and Eastern Europe before the alliance's November summit in Prague, where they are expected to receive memberhip invitations.
The prospect of a war against Iraq and other recent irritants in Washington's relationship with its European allies are causing fear in several nations eager to join NATO that they will be judged by criteria other than their actual readiness during the alliance's new round of enlargement in November.
What makes their position particularly awkward, officials in these former communist states say, is the difficulty of satisfying those "other" conditions, such as their stance on Iraq or the new International Criminal Court (ICC), in a way that pleases both the United States and Europe.
"It's not easy to go to the Americans and the Europeans with different scripts based on the same facts, but that's exactly what's happening," one senior official said. "If these two sides can't find a compromise, then who can?"
A senior diplomat from one of the Baltic states said the candidate nations feel "sandwiched" between solidarity with the United States in hard times and the appeal of Europe's policies of internationalism and multilateralism.
Although no Bush administration officials have yet linked support for U.S. action in Iraq with NATO membership, "many things are never said, so I'm sure Iraq will come up, and countries will be judged by their behavior," said Miroslav Wlachovsky, foreign-policy adviser to Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda.
But senior U.S. officials insist there will be no surprises at the alliance's Prague summit and that the only requirements the applicants will be expected to meet are those outlined in the so-called Membership Action Plan.
"We are taking great care to make sure that the decision is based on such criteria as the applicants' military readiness, institutional strength and human rights record," Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in a telephone interview from Brussels.
"We are not judging candidates on other issues like Iraq," he said. "Nothing has happened over the summer that will derail NATO enlargement. There is a consensus that the number of countries invited will be historic."
The matter of U.S.-European tensions was raised by government officials and other political and civil-society leaders during visits to several Central and East European NATO hopefuls in dozens of interviews over the past three weeks. Along with Iraq and the ICC, they cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Kyoto protocol on climate change as other examples of friction.
Of all these issues, a war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was cited as potentially the most worrisome because of the uncertainty of its implications. The fact that most of the world, with a few notable exceptions, opposes unilateral U.S. military action in Iraq further complicates the situation, officials and diplomats said.
"On one hand, the war on terrorism has strengthened the case for our membership, but on the other, the uncertainty of the Iraq situation is also a factor," said Romanian Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha agreed that after September 11 the "probability" that his country and Romania will be invited to join NATO has increased because of their strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. But with a war in Iraq looming, he noted, "nothing can be taken for granted."
Most of those interviewed said that, except for Slovenia, all of the candidates expected to receive invitations in Prague - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia - are much more pro-American than some of the current NATO members, such as France, Germany and Greece.
Two more countries, Macedonia and Albania, also are on the formal list of candidates for NATO membership but are given little chance of receiving an invitation to join in this round.
So much new support for the United States coming into the alliance may not be to the liking of some Europeans, one senior Slovak official said. Although he predicted that the new members probably would side with Washington on Iraq, he said that no premature conclusions should be drawn and no decisions should be made before Prague.
In Romania, where public support for NATO membership is higher than in any other applicant nation, the government hopes that its strong pro-American positions will not hurt its relations with the Europeans. Romania was the first to sign an agreement exempting U.S. soldiers on its territory from the jurisdiction of the ICC, angering the European Union.
"If someone decides to bring the Iraq issue into the bargaining in Prague - and I don't want to name names - that will be shortsightedness," Mr. Pascu said.
A senior Western diplomat in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, said the aspirant countries feel "very uncomfortable" because they were asked by the European Union to "make a choice" between the United States and Europe on the ICC. "They were never told those were the conditions" for NATO or EU membership, he noted.
The official U.S. position is that the ICC, which the Bush administration opposes, will have no impact on the candidates' chances to become NATO members. However, some lawmakers have said both in Washington and during visits to applicant nations that they cannot be good allies if they fail to protect American peacekeepers.
"It's not very helpful when members of Congress come here and link the ICC with NATO membership," said Jelko Kacin, chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee in the Slovenian Parliament, referring to a delegation led by Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
On Iraq, Mr. Kacin said his country "will not follow the United States blindly," because "people are very rational here, they don't react emotionally, and they need proof" that Saddam poses a serious threat.
In Slovenia, where public support for NATO membership is below 50 percent, the ICC and Iraq have had a particularly strong resonance among the population. Even the government is divided on what stance to take on Iraq.
"As a true partner, we will support U.S. action in Iraq," said Slovenian Defense Minister Anton Grizold. "Otherwise, how can we be a credible partner? We have to stick together and express solidarity."
But Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said U.N. inspections in Iraq should be given another chance. He also expressed measured frustration with some Bush administration policies.
"We would love to stay in the group of American friends, but sometimes certain statements from Washington are not helpful in making U.S. policies popular," Mr. Rupel said.
Even Romanian President Ion Iliescu, despite his country's pro-American stance, said Washington "should not go to war by itself, because it's necessary to have solidarity in such an important step." "I hope that the United States will rethink its position and that no dramatic decisions on Iraq will be taken before Prague," he said. As for NATO enlargement, the alliance "has to take into consideration the general context and not forget all our achievements."
Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana, citing the series of military and political reforms the applicant nations have implemented to prepare for membership, said "enlargement is on track and we have moved too close for issues like Iraq to have an impact on the process."
But he warned that the meeting in Prague could be hijacked by the Iraq issue, just as NATO's 50th-anniversary summit in Washington three years ago was dominated by the war against Serbia over Kosovo.
Senior U.S. officials, while acknowledging their intention to focus much of the summit's attention on Iraq, said it would not be the only issue and enlargement would get a prominent place on the agenda.
"Iraq is a very important issue, and it will be central for the discussion in Prague, but the summit will stand on its own feet," Mr. Burns said. "The focus will be the future of NATO, the development of a new set of military capabilities and the decision on which of nine candidates to invite to join."
Mr. Burns noted that all alliance members try to be "very deliberate about this round of enlargement," because "membership is a contract for life, with no possibility for divorce."
"There hasn't been a substantive discussion with the allies on who should be invited," he said. "We have been deliberately putting it off, because there are still events that will play a role in the decision."
-------- russia
Echoing Bush, Putin Asks U.N. to Back Georgia Attack
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
September 13, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/europe/13RUSS.html?ei=1&en=337b0538b76f5d24&ex=1032935472&pagewanted=print&position=top
MOSCOW, Sept. 12 - In words echoing the language of the Bush antiterrorist campaign, President Vladimir V. Putin appealed today to the United Nations to support Russia's threat of military strikes against the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
In a letter to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and the four other permanent members of the Security Council, he accused the Georgians of a "grievous failure" to comply with a resolution to combat international terrorism. He also reiterated his warning that Russia would attack unless Georgia did more to root out what he called terrorists on Georgian territory.
Mr. Putin said bluntly that Georgia's harboring of Chechen fighters gave Russia the right to act in self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and the antiterrorism resolution passed last year after Sept. 11.
"If the Georgian leadership does not take concrete actions to destroy the terrorists, and bandit sorties continue from its territory," Mr. Putin wrote, "Russia, acting strictly under international law, will take adequate measures to oppose the terrorist threat."
Mr. Putin's warnings, first issued on Russian television Wednesday night, brought simmering tensions to a boil between Russia and its much smaller neighbor to the south. They also deepened the fear that the Russian war in Chechnya could spread still farther beyond its borders.
Russian aircraft reportedly have crossed into Georgian airspace at least five times since July, evidently in pursuit of Chechen fighters. In the most recent such case, on Aug. 23, Russian bombs killed a Georgian man and wounded several people.
Although there were no signs today that military action against Georgia was imminent, Russia's defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, said commanders would be able to present Mr. Putin with plans for military operations within a few days.
It also appeared unlikely that Mr. Putin's appeal would win broad support. The Bush administration, which early this year sent special operations forces to train and equip Georgian troops, expressed its support for Georgia today.
"We take strong exception to statements yesterday by President Putin threatening unilateral action against Chechen targets on Georgian territory," a State Department spokesman said.
In New York, an administration official traveling with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell echoed that response, saying, "The Pankisi Gorge is in Georgia, and thus is a Georgian issue."
Russian attacks could put the United States in an uncomfortable - even dangerous - position between countries it considers allies in the campaign against terrorism. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, sharply rebuked Russia after the bombing raid on Aug. 23, a strike Russia still denies.
Georgia's president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who on Wednesday called Mr. Putin's statement "hasty," met for four hours today with his national security advisers but did not issue a public response to Mr. Putin's letter.
After the meeting, Georgia's defense minister, David Tevzadze, said the military was making necessary defensive preparations, but he did not elaborate. Georgia's Parliament adopted a resolution calling Mr. Putin's statement "a signal of the threat of aggression from Russia," and unjustified under international law.
"The roots of terrorism are in Russia," the resolution read. "Russia is using its inability to settle this problem as a motive for aggression against a sovereign state."
Characterizing Russia's Chechen war in terms familiar from the Bush administration's campaign against terrorism, Mr. Putin said in his letter today that the terrorists in Georgia were the same as those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, apparently meaning they had links to Al Qaeda. He also accused Georgia of failing to enforce the Security Council resolution passed after the attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon last year, saying Russia had a right to attack any country harboring terrorists as a matter of self-defense, as Mr. Bush argued in the case of Afghanistan.
"I count on an understanding of our position and support of the decisions that Russia will take in the interests of combating international terrorism, protecting civilian lives, ensuring stability and security in the Caucasus region," Mr. Putin said.
Relations between Russia and Georgia have been tense ever since the Soviet Union collapsed more than a decade ago, but they have badly soured ever since the snows melted along Georgia's mountainous 50-mile border with Chechnya this summer. That opened the rugged passes of the Caucasus for Chechen fighters to continue harassing Russian forces who have been fighting a Chechen separatist movement since 1999.
In late July, a large group of Chechens, who Russia said came from Georgia, clashed with Russian troops not far the town of Itum-Kale in Chechnya, killing eight Russians. Last month, under pressure from Russia, Mr. Shevardnadze ordered 1,000 police and security forces to move into the Pankisi Gorge, a rugged area said to be home to Islamic militants and Chechen fighters as well as an estimated 4,000 Chechen civilians who sought refuge there in 1999.
Mr. Putin ridiculed that operation, saying that Mr. Shevardnadze's government, after first denying the "presence of terrorists," signaled the deployment of security forces in advance so that any fighters who were in the region had time to leave.
----
Russia Angered by U.S. Sanctions
By Sergei Venyavsky
Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; 2:06 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13260-2002Sep13?language=printer
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- A U.S. State Department decision to impose sanctions on three Russian companies for allegedly violating non-proliferation norms drew angry responses Friday from government and company officials.
Washington announced the sanctions Thursday against Tula Design Bureau of Instrument Building, the State Scientific Production Enterprise Bazalt and Rostov Airframe Plant 168.
Under the penalties, all three companies will prohibited from doing business with the United States, exporting their products to the United States and receiving some services and supplies from U.S. firms. The sanctions will last for a year.
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, on a visit to Russia, said the sanctions were imposed because of the sale of "lethal military equipment" to countries accused of sponsoring terrorism.
U.S. officials did not specify what states were involved or the equipment, but the Russian media identified the countries as Syria, Sudan and Libya.
"Military-technology cooperation between Russia and these countries is absolutely legitimate," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov, according to ITAR-Tass news agency. "Moreover, it has a highly limited character."
He said that Russia was particularly disappointed that such a step was taken at a time when Moscow and Washington "are partners in the anti-terror coalition."
Washington and the Kremlin have developed a much warmer relationship since Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his firm support to the U.S.-led war on terror. But tensions have risen, largely because of Russia's close ties with Iran, Iraq and North Korea, three nations that President Bush labeled an "axis of evil."
The Bush administration has also expressed concern about a Russian project to help Iran's nuclear energy industry, which could give Tehran the ability to produce nuclear weapons. Russia has dismissed the concern. Washington and Moscow have also failed to find common ground on Iraq, where Russia has deep economic interests.
Gennady Ryabokonov, deputy general director of the Rostov plant in this southern Russia city, said his factory "has the right to trade our products with any country in the world."
He suggested that the U.S. sanctions were an attempt to push Russian companies out of a competitive market. His company recently signed deals with countries in South America and Asia.
Leonid Roshal, deputy chief designer of the Tula Design Bureau, told ORT that he believed the sanctions were a bid by the United States "to divert attention from their decisions regarding Iraq."
-------- un
Envoys say pressure to act now on U.N.
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020913-99639358.htm
NEW YORK - Foreign diplomats yesterday praised President Bush's pledge to work through the United Nations to deal with Iraq but acknowledged that his blunt challenge put the onus squarely on the international body to get results.
Recounting in detail Iraq's flouting of U.N. regulations and omitting any explicit reference to unilateral or pre-emptive U.S. military action, Mr. Bush appeared to have succeeded in putting the focus of the debate on the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the credibility of the United Nations.
"Now we have to press Iraq," said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, a critic of unilateral U.S. action against Saddam. "If [the United Nations] doesn't deliver, it will be uncomfortable for some European countries not to support the United States."
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen said Mr. Bush's remarks were "a challenge to live up to our responsibilities. He was very clear on all the violations which we certainly have to take seriously."
"I guess we will have to choose among a lot of bad options, really," Mr. Petersen said.
Indeed, every speaker from the U.N. podium who addressed the issue directly yesterday echoed Mr. Bush's call for Iraq to comply fully with weapons inspections and other Security Council resolutions.
Even U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had earlier called the idea of military action against Baghdad "unwise," urged council members yesterday to take action or risk losing legitimacy.
"The existence of an effective international security system depends on the council's authority - and, therefore, on the council having the political will to act, even [in] the most difficult cases, when agreement seems elusive at the outset," he said.
U.S. officials are going to discuss new measures against Iraq with foreign ministers and other dignitaries this week, several diplomats said, with the intention of drafting a strongly worded resolution.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is to explain the U.S. position to the ten elected council members in a meeting scheduled for this morning.
Foreign diplomats were quick to echo Mr. Bush's harsh critique of Iraq's record.
"We don't have any sympathy for the Iraqi regime," said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.
The Iraqi government "defies the authority of the Security Council, raises the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and, therefore, jeopardizes the stability of the region," he added. "We have to act legitimately, collectively and responsibly."
Asked if that meant authorizing military action to force compliance, he demurred. "We don't want to anticipate what people will do, or France would do in that situation. We will look at all the options."
Britain, which has been the Bush administration's staunchest ally in the debate over Iraq, praised the speech as "tough and effective," in the words of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. However, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the most vocal critic of Washington's plans, said he remained opposed to military action against Iraq in any form.
"Based on what I know [of the speech] - and nothing has changed in my opinion - Germany will not take part in any military intervention in Iraq under my leadership," Mr. Schroeder said at a political rally yesterday.
Iraq's top official to the United Nations immediately denounced the president's remarks.
Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri - who sat impassively through the 15-minute speech - dismissed it as a "series of fabrications" and said that Mr. Bush had offered no evidence to link Iraq to terrorism.
"I would have been pleased if the U.S. president had talked about his true motives behind his speech - revenge, oil, political ambition, and also the security of Israel and targeting every independent state that would refuse to adhere to the American policy," Mr. Aldouri said.
But other Arab officials praised the thrust of Mr. Bush's remarks, saying they held out the hope that aggressive diplomacy through the United Nations, rather that military action, could resolve the standoff.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa welcomed Mr. Bush's call for new council action. Both Mr. Moussa and Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani said it was possible Saddam would allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
"I think there is a hope that Saddam could accept the inspectors," said Sheik Hamad, in Washington this week for talks with top Bush administration officials after meeting Saddam in Baghdad late last month. "He is just worried that if he allows the inspectors in, the military action will be done anyway."
But former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, testifying before the House Government Reform Committee, warned that the United States must not get tied down by international commitments in dealing with Saddam.
"If a pre-emptive action will be supported by a broad coalition of free countries in the United Nations, all the better," Mr. Netanyahu said. "But if such support is not forthcoming, then the United States must be prepared to act without it."
The General Assembly opening ceremonies yesterday were conducted amid tight security. Sand-filled dump trucks and legions of police and security forces stopped cars and pedestrians from venturing close to the U.N. headquarters.
Every one of the two dozen speeches yesterday denounced the World Trade Center attacks and praised international efforts to thwart the growing threat of terrorism.
The U.S. address, which is always delivered to a full hall on the opening day, is one of the most heavily anticipated speeches in international diplomatic circles.
• David R. Sands contributed to this report from Washington.
---
Text of President Bush's Address to U.N.
Federal News Service
Friday, September 13, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10879-2002Sep12.html
Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates and ladies and gentlemen. We meet one year and one day after a terrorist attack brought grief to my country and brought grief to many citizens of our world. Yesterday, we remembered the innocent lives taken that terrible morning. Today, we turn to the urgent duty of protecting other lives without illusion and without fear.
We've accomplished much in the last year in Afghanistan and beyond. We have much yet to do in Afghanistan and beyond. Many nations represented here have joined in the fight against global terror, and the people of the United States are grateful.
The United Nations was born in the hope that survived a world war, the hope of a world moving toward justice, escaping old patterns of conflict and fear. The founding members resolved that the peace of the world must never again be destroyed by the will and wickedness of any man.
We created the United Nations Security Council so that, unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than talk; our resolutions would be more than wishes. After generations of deceitful dictators and broken treaties and squandered lives, we dedicated ourselves to standards of human dignity shared by all and to a system of security defended by all.
Today, these standards and this security are challenged. Our commitment to human dignity is challenged by persistent poverty and raging disease. The suffering is great, and our responsibilities are clear.
The United States is joining with the world to supply aid where it reaches people and lifts up lives, to extend trade and the prosperity it brings and to bring medical care where it is desperately needed. As a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to UNESCO. This organization has been reformed, and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning.
Our common security is challenged by regional conflicts -- ethnic and religious strife that is ancient but not inevitable. In the Middle East, there can be no peace for either side without freedom for both sides. America stands committed to an independent and democratic Palestine living side by side with Israel in peace and security. Like all other people, Palestinians deserve a government that serves their interests and listens to their voices.
My nation will continue to encourage all parties to step up to their responsibilities as we seek a just and comprehensive settlement to the conflict.
Above all, our principles and our security are challenged today by outlaw groups and regimes that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions. In the attacks on America a year ago, we saw the destructive intentions of our enemies. This threat hides within -- hides within many nations, including my own. In cells and camps, terrorists are plotting further destruction and building new bases for their war against civilization. And our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale.
In one place, in one regime, we find all these dangers in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront.
Twelve years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait without provocation, and the regime's forces were poised to continue their march to seize other countries and their resources. Had Saddam Hussein been appeased instead of stopped, he would have endangered the peace and stability of the world. Yet this aggression was stopped by the might of coalition forces and the will of the United Nations.
To suspend hostilities, to spare himself, Iraq's dictator accepted a series of commitments. The terms were clear to him and to all, and he agreed to prove he is complying with every one of those obligations. He has proven instead only his contempt for the United Nations and for all his pledges. By breaking every pledge, by his deceptions and by his cruelties, Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself.
In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities, which the council said threatened international peace and security in the region. This demand goes ignored.
Last year, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights and that the regime's repression is all-pervasive. Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape. Wives are tortured in front of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents, and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state.
In 1991, the U.N. Security Council, through Resolutions 686 and 687, demanded that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke this promise. Last year, the secretary general's high-level coordinator for this issue reported that Kuwaiti, Saudi, Indian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Bahraini and Omani nationals remain unaccounted for -- more than 600 people.
One American pilot is among them. In 1991, the U.N. Security Council, through Resolution 687, demanded that Iraq renounce all involvement with terrorism and permit no terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke this promise. In violation of Security Council Resolution 1373, Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel and Western governments. Iraqi dissidents abroad are targeted for murder. In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the emir of Kuwait and a former American president. Iraq's government openly praised the attacks of September the 11th. And al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq. In 1991, the Iraqi regime agreed to destroy and stop developing all weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and to prove to the world it has done so by complying with rigorous inspections.
Iraq has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge.
From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons. After a senior official in its weapons program defected and exposed this lie, the regime admitted to producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs and aircraft spray tanks. U.N. inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared and has failed to account for more than three metric tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons. Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
United Nations inspections also reveal that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.
And in 1995, after four years of deception, Iraq finally admitted it had a crash nuclear weapons program prior to the Gulf War. We know now were it not for that war, the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993.
Today, Iraq continues to withhold important information about its nuclear program, weapons design, procurement logs, experiment data and accounting of nuclear materials and documentation of foreign assistance. Iraq employs capable nuclear scientists and technicians. It retains physical infrastructure needed to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.
Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.
And Iraq's state-controlled media have reported numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons.
Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles, with ranges beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the U.N. Work at testing and protection facilities shows that Iraq is building more long-range missiles that it can inflict mass death throughout the region.
In 1990, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the world imposed economic sanctions on Iraq. Those sanctions were maintained after that war to compel the regime's compliance with Security Council resolutions. In time, Iraq was allowed to use oil revenues to buy food. Saddam Hussein has subverted this program, working around the sanctions to buy missile technology and military materials.
He blames the suffering of Iraq's people on the United Nations even as he uses his oil wealth to build lavish palaces for himself and to buy arms for his country. By refusing to comply with his own agreements, he bears full guilt for the hunger and misery of innocent Iraqi citizens.
In 1991, Iraq promised U.N. inspectors immediate and unrestricted access to verify Iraq's commitment to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. Iraq broke this promise, spending seven years deceiving, evading and harassing U.N. inspectors before ceasing cooperation entirely.
Just months after the 1991 cease-fire, the Security Council twice renewed its demand that the Iraqi regime cooperate fully with inspectors. Condemning Iraq's serious violations of its obligations, the Security Council again renewed that demand in 1994, and twice more in 1996, deploring Iraq's clear violations of its obligations. The Security Council renewed its demand three more times in 1997, citing flagrant violations, and three more times in 1998, calling Iraq's behavior totally unacceptable. And in 1999 the demand was renewed yet again.
As we meet today, it's been almost four years since the last U.N. inspector set foot in Iraq -- four years for the Iraqi regime to plan and to build and to test behind the cloak of secrecy. We know that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass murder even when inspectors were in his country. Are we to assume that he stopped when they left? The history, the logic and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence.
To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take.
Delegates to the General Assembly, we have been more than patient. We've tried sanctions. We've tried the carrot of oil for food and the stick of coalition military strikes. But Saddam Hussein has defied all these efforts and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one. We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming.
The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence?
Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?
The United States helped found the United Nations. We want the United Nations to be effective and respectful and successful. We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced, and right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraq regime. Our partnership of nations can meet the test before us by making clear what we now expect of the Iraqi regime.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally foreswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomen and others -- again, as required by Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown.
It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly, for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
If all these steps are taken, it will signal a new openness and accountability in Iraq. And it could open the prospect of the United Nations helping to build a government that represents all Iraqis -- a government based on respect for human rights, economic liberty and internationally supervised elections.
The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. They've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause and a great strategic goal. People of Iraq deserve it.
The security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder.
The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq. We can harbor no illusions, and that's important today to remember. Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. He's fired ballistic missiles at Iran and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel. His regime once ordered the killing of every person between the ages of 15 and 70 in certain Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. He has gassed many Iranians and 40 Iraqi villages.
My nation will work with the U.N. Security Council to meet our common challenge. If Iraq's regime defies us again, the world must move deliberately, decisively, to hold Iraq to account. We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions, but the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced, the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable, and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.
Events can turn in one of two ways.
If we fail to act in the face of danger, the people of Iraq will continue to live in brutal submission; the regime will have new power to bully and dominate and conquer its neighbors, condemning the Middle East to more years of bloodshed and fear. The regime will remain unstable -- the region will remain unstable with little hope of freedom and isolated from the progress of our times. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.
If we meet our responsibilities, if we overcome this danger, we can arrive at a very different future. The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world. These nations can show by their example that honest government and respect for women and the great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph in the Middle East and beyond. And we will show that the promise of the United Nations can be fulfilled in our time.
Neither of these outcomes are certain. Both have been set before us. We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress.
We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. And delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well.
Thank you very much.
-------- us
Iraq first, Iran and China next
Weapons of mass destruction aren't the issue, it's about global control
Dan Plesch
Friday September 13, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,791301,00.html
President Bush's concern over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is a pretext for a global strategy of pre-emptive attack. He and his advisers intend to establish precedents with Iraq that can be used against other states that stand out against US global control. The US, he says, cannot allow anyone the capacity to attack it, but the country will keep its own power to destroy all-comers.
How we tackle this debate is critical. How the Iraq crisis is resolved will shape future crises, for Iraq will probably be part of a series of campaigns against the "axis of evil". It is likely that Saddam does have some WMD, likely that the security council will endorse action that ends in his overthrow and likely that the war will be won quite easily. Iraq's forces were shattered and have not been rebuilt, US power is unbelievably greater.
Why then should President Bush's policy be opposed and what changes must we insist on? He summarises his policy as tackling "the worst weapons in the hands of the worst leaders". But little is being done with respect to the "worst weapons". Attempts by the international community to control nuclear, biological and chemical weapons have been relentlessly undermined by Bush's Republican party for more than a decade.
Military action against states flouting international norms on WMD can only be justified if we and the US are implementing them too. Saying "do as we say", not "do as we do", is an invitation to everyone to acquire them. Tony Blair is making terrorism and proliferation far easier by accepting Bush's deliberate introduction of anarchy in international security. Members of the Bush administration were in office in the 1980s and were silent when Iraq used poison gas on Iran, the US's arch-enemy at the time. And we in Britain may have forgotten that our airforce used poison gas to suppress rebellion in Iraq in the inter-war period; one can be sure that the Iraqis have not.
You will hear two further arguments in support of US policy. The first is: "We are democracies so our weapons are OK and we do not need further control." This is no more than saying that because we are good we cannot be bad. The second is that only western nations believe in ethics and law, so they are no good in the real world. This is as self-contradictory as the first, and insidiously racist.
Sustained by such principles, the architects of President Bush's policy hope to see it applied to Iran, North Korea and, ultimately, China. For those Republicans who pride themselves on having destroyed the Soviet Union and unified Germany, their duty now is to achieve the same success over Beijing's nuclear-armed communist dictatorship, which oppresses the Tibetans, runs its economy from a prison gulag and represses religious freedom.
Friends look at me as if I have lost the plot when I say this. But John Bolton, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Gaffney and Paul Wolfowitz have no problem with a pre-emptive political-military strategy towards an emerging China. Ambassador David Smith, who contributed to the influential National Institute for Public Policy report on nuclear strategy, explained that "the US has never accepted a deterrent relationship based on mutual assured destruction with China" and will act to prevent China gaining such a capability.
Even though we were told that deterrence had stopped Saddam from using his weapons in the last Gulf war, now it is said that he cannot be deterred and must be pre-empted. Yet it is safer and easier to replace deterrence with elimination of all WMD. A policy of inspections that are militarily enforced would be quite useful if it were applied universally and provided a guarantee against one nation breaking a global ban on nuclear arms. We need to use the fact that WMD and human rights are now on the international agenda as an opportunity. The introduction of a pre-emptive strategy by Washington contradicts Nato strategy and must be rejected at the alliance's November summit.
Our immediate focus should be a precise and public debate on the terms of the cabinet discussion, in accordance with the constitutional principle of collective responsibility. We should insist that the UN mandate a conference to manage and eliminate all WMD without exception - including American and British nuclear weapons - in accordance with the existing obligations of UN member states.
If economic and other events do not deflect an attack on Iraq, there will be no declaration of war by the Commons because our constitution gives that power to the prime minister. Perhaps people should insist that parliament change the constitution, so that it appropriates the power to make war on behalf of the people. Britain would then be importing some of America's democratic, rather than its military, strength.
· Dan Plesch is senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and author of Sheriff and Outlaws in the Global Village
dplesch@rusi.org
----
Billions, and It Can't Make Change
Theorist Behind Pentagon Transformation Says Glass Is 'Not Empty'
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; Page A37
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10321-2002Sep12.html
When virtually all of his fellow serious thinkers at the Pentagon were preoccupied in late 1990 with a looming war against Iraq, Army Lt. Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich found himself leading a very different mission of one.
Krepinevich worked for the legendary Andrew Marshall, whom many consider the most serious Pentagon thinker of all. And Marshall, then (and still) director of an obscure but highly influential unit called the Office of Net Assessment, wanted him to answer a couple of enormous questions:
Was the Pentagon in the midst of a "revolution in military affairs," a period in which emerging technologies and new warfighting concepts change the very nature of war and produce dramatic gains in military effectiveness?
And if it was, how could the U.S. military adapt its ways and its weapons to avoid falling victim to complacency?
From the vantage point of a decade, the 40-page white paper that Krepinevich completed in July 1992 -- about to be made public for the first time -- stands as the defining document for what the current Bush administration and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have embraced as their primary thrust at the Pentagon: "transformation" of the U.S. military from an industrial age force to one grounded in the information age.
Indeed, Krepinevich's far-reaching conclusions now make for a case study of institutional inertia inside the $1 billion-a-day U.S. military establishment and a roadmap, Krepinevich believes, for how little has really changed.
His Pentagon career also stands as a classic example of what can happen to intellectuals inside the military -- and how many of them come to have far more sway over defense policy from the outside than they ever had within.
Krepinevich, 52, now directs the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank that focuses on military issues and consults for the Department of Defense. His close ties to Marshall -- and Marshall's close ties to Rumsfeld -- give Krepinevich more influence over the acquisition of weapons systems and the development of doctrine than many a general.
"Transformation," Krepinevich said in a recent interview, "is the product of the belief that you are in a period of military revolution. Otherwise, why transform, especially if you're the dominant military. You transform because the competition is changing and if you don't, then your advantage is going to erode, perhaps precipitously."
What kind of marks does he give Rumsfeld and the Bush administration on military transformation?
"They've done a terrific job in identifying the new challenges," he said, but have fallen down badly in defining what kind of weapons systems and war fighting doctrine they need to meet them.
Rumsfeld took office with transformation at the top of his agenda but, in the face of opposition from the uniformed services, took no immediate steps to define what he meant by the term or what weapons systems he planned to kill to fund futuristic technologies such as space-based radar. But Rumsfeld's transformation plans have recently been revived by his increased clout flowing from his successful handling of the war in Afghanistan.
"In a sense, the glass, it's not empty. But I'm not sure it's half full yet," Krepinevich said, noting that the military services like to talk about the "digital battlefield" as they propose spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 to 20 years on more of what they've coveted for the past half century: fighters, helicopters, armored vehicles, warships and submarines.
Krepinevich's paper, which his think tank is soon to publish with the Pentagon's consent, is titled "The Military-Technical Revolution: A Preliminary Assessment."
In it, the Harvard-educated Krepinevich concludes that the United States was in the early stages of the third revolution in military affairs of the 20th century. The first took place between 1917 and 1939 through the combination of internal combustion engines, improved aircraft design, radio and radar, producing the German blitzkrieg, carrier aviation and strategic aerial bombardment.
The second began at the end of World War II with the advent of nuclear weapons -- "a shift in technology so radical," he writes, "it convinced nearly all observers that a fundamental change in the nature of warfare was at hand."
And the third, still gathering steam, is the product of information technology: reliable ballistic and cruise missiles, precision-guided bombs, stealth aircraft and digitized reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence sensors that enable war planners to fix and strike targets with pinpoint accuracy from hundreds of miles away.
"The revolution seems to have arrived operationally, at least in part, in the Gulf War in 1991," Krepinevich writes. "Extended-range, advanced conventional munitions, when combined with the information revolution, may permit simultaneous engagement of the enemy throughout the theater of operations, blurring the distinction between tactical, operational, and strategic operations and forces."
Describing how the U.S. military needed to change, Krepinevich questioned the continuing utility of tanks, manned aircraft and large surface ships, and said the military had to reform its heavily bureaucratic system for procuring weapons with one agile enough to keep pace with changing technology.
He presciently concluded that "information dominance could well be the sine qua non for effective military operations in future conflicts." And he came quite close to describing Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network and the regimes supporting it when he said the most likely threat in 10 to 20 years would come from what he called a "streetfighter state," possibly armed with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, energized either by a hostile ideology or radical theocratic values "with emphasis on terrorism, subversion and insurgency."
Fred Downey, defense aide to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) who worked with Krepinevich on Marshall's staff, calls his study "the intellectual basis" for today's emphasis on military transformation.
"The concepts in it provided the framework for much of the modernization that has started over the last 10 years," Downey said. "But more than that, it shaped the thinking of an emerging generation of military and civilian policymakers."
Once Krepinevich turned in his assignment, Marshall shared it with key lawmakers and found two main adherents: Lieberman and then-Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.).
Lieberman and Coats sponsored legislation creating a National Defense Panel that produced a study in 1997, "Transforming Defense." The panel's two congressional appointees: Krepinevich and Richard L. Armitage, a former Pentagon official who is now deputy secretary of state.
Then, Armitage was working for George W. Bush's presidential campaign and, on the subject of defense, whispering "transformation" in his ear and inserting the phrase into key campaign speeches.
And so it is that six "operational goals" set forth in Rumsfeld's September 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review mirror those Armitage and Krepinevich put into "Transforming Defense" in 1997: Protecting forward bases; ensuring continued defensive and offensive information operations; projecting force into distant, inaccessible environments; denying enemy sanctuaries; enhancing space systems and making computers and sensors "talk" to each other across a seamless digitized battlefield.
Krepinevich said last week that if the Bush administration wants to strike deep inside enemy territory against a "streetfighter state's" weapons of mass destruction, Cold War tank maneuvers or aerial dogfighting won't do much good.
"You've got to have long-range, stealthy, highly capable systems," he said, "that can strike unwarned over long distances and achieve significant effects."
-------- propaganda wars
Republicans Target Defense Issues with New Ads
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-politics-arms.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republicans, spotlighting national defense issues as a debate builds over Iraq, launched a new round of ads on Friday attacking Democratic candidates for taking donations from a prominent arms control group.
The Republican Senate campaign committee sponsored new advertisements criticizing Democrats Tim Johnson in South Dakota and Alex Sanders in South Carolina for taking donations from the Washington-based Council for a Livable World.
``Would you stand with one of the most dangerous anti-military groups in America? One that advocates crippling defense cuts even today?'' said a Republican ad scheduled to air for at least a week in South Dakota. ``Tim Johnson's answer was yes.''
Ads focusing on the council have already aired in South Dakota and Arkansas, while local Texas Republicans hit Democratic Senate candidate Ron Kirk on the issue. More of the 17 Democratic candidates who have taken money from the group could be next.
``If you're taking money from an organization that's espousing deep cuts in the military budget at a time of war, that's a serious issue,'' said Dan Allen, a spokesman for the national Republican Senate committee.
Republican charges that Democrats are weak on defense or do not support weapons systems like the Patriot missile and F-22 fighter have featured prominently in key Senate races in Arkansas, South Dakota, New Hampshire and Texas.
The Arkansas ad, aimed at Democrat Mark Pryor, said the Council for a Livable World opposed Arkansas-based production of the Patriot missile, threatening hundreds of state jobs.
COUNCIL HEAD SAYS ADS DISTORTED
John Isaacs, president of the council, said the ads distorted the group's position on the military budget and were an attempt by Republicans to cash in on the war on terror.
While the group targeted wasteful Pentagon spending and the elimination of unnecessary Cold War-era weapons systems, it did not oppose production of the newest Patriot PAC-3 missile, he said.
``They're just using us as a vehicle,'' Isaacs said of the Republican ads. ``The Republicans are trying to politicize the war, and the way they can do that is by attacking the Council for a Livable World.''
Debates on defense and national security traditionally favor Republicans, while polls find Democrats score better on domestic issues such as providing prescription drug benefits under Medicare, protecting Social Security and the economy.
Democrats called the Council for a Livable World ads cynical, and questioned why they attacked the patriotism of Democratic candidates so close to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
``Sen. Johnson has backed the president every step of the way in the war on terrorism,'' said Dan Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Johnson, who is locked in a bitter re-election struggle in South Dakota with Republican Rep. John Thune.
Isaacs said the council has been giving money to mostly Democratic candidates since its first donation to a little-known George McGovern in 1962.
Like some other political action committees, it ``bundles'' donations from its list of supporters, gathering individual contributions and sending them along to candidates together.
WELLSTONE GETS MOST HELP
Financial records show that by mid-August the group and its supporters had given more than $575,000 to Democratic Senate candidates, including more than $20,000 each to 11 candidates. Topping the list is Minnesota's liberal Sen. Paul Wellstone at $83,536, followed by Arkansas' Mark Pryor at $73,503. Johnson got $60,701 and Sanders $41,009.
In Texas, Kirk received $6,429 from the council, but Texas Republicans spent $750,000 on television ads criticizing Kirk for accepting the group's support.
``It's a perfect way to illustrate the difference between us on defense issues,'' said David Beckwith, a spokesman for Republican Senate candidate John Cornyn, who has painted Kirk as weak on defense in President Bush's backyard, the home of 17 military facilities and billions of dollars in military contracts.
Kirk has said he supports Bush's requests for more defense spending and praised Bush's speech on Iraq on Thursday. But Beckwith said the ads are ``one of the ways we are showing that Kirk is putting up a facade.''
Democrats say the ads will not work.
``Nobody comes up to Mark and says 'tell me about the Council for a Livable World,''' said Michael Teague, a spokesman for Pryor. ``The issues that are important to voters are education, the economy, prescription drugs and Social Security.''
--------
State Dept. Web Site Linked to GOP
September 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-State-Department-GOP.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It was an honest mistake, the State Department says, explaining how its Web site for visitors and residents in Guadalajara, Mexico, served simultaneously as a gateway for a Republican Party sales pitch.
With one click, a handsome photograph of President Bush appeared. Another served up advice on how to get involved with the GOP and even how to make a donation.
The link, which apparently had been operating for at least a week, was removed Thursday after a reporter inquired about it.
On Friday, a department official blamed a local employee in the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara. The official said the link has been removed and replaced with a link to the White House's Spanish language Web site.
Federal laws bar government resources from being used for partisan political purposes
The New York Times said the site recounted highlights from President Bush's record and offered for sale Republican memorabilia that included mugs, ties, scarves and ball point pens.
A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said party officials had no idea that a government agency's Web site had a link to the party's site.
The State Department is acting to ensure that all of its Web sites worldwide connect to appropriate sites, the official said.
On the Net:
U.S. Consulate, Guadalajara:
http://www.usembassy-mexico.gov/Genglish.htm
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Secret Court to Reveal Ruling
By Jesse J. Holland
Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; 11:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12657-2002Sep13?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- One of the nation's most secret courts has assured senators that it will reveal to them its decision on whether the Justice Department should have more power to wiretap suspected terrorists and spies.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review told the Senate Judiciary Committee it will send them an unclassified copy of its decision on whether the Justice Department has gone beyond the limits of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in its wiretapping requests.
Senators wanted to know the secret court's ruling so they could know how prosecutors are using the additional powers Congress granted after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"As soon as we have an opinion completed, I will be sure to see that you get an unclassified copy," said U.S. Appeals Court Judge Ralph Guy, a member of the review court, in a Wednesday letter to the Judiciary Committee.
For the first time in its 24-year existence, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review met Monday to review a Justice Department request to use espionage wiretaps for criminal operations.
Its lower court in August struck down a Justice Department surveillance request and its assertion that it can use Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wiretaps for criminal as well as espionage operations. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the higher court.
The appeals court made no announcement of whether it had made a decision or whether it would be made public.
But senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee immediately asked the court to make its decision public. Lawmakers are arguing over whether the anti-terrorism law they passed after the Sept. 11 attacks gave the Justice Department permission to expand its espionage wiretapping activities.
"We need to know how this law is being interpreted and applied," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Tuesday.
The Justice Department says the USA Patriot Act changed the surveillance law to permit its use when collecting information about foreign spies or terrorists when it is "a significant purpose," rather than "the purpose," of such an investigation. Previously, the FISA wiretaps could only be used for foreign intelligence investigations and not criminal investigations.
Democrats say they didn't intend to expand the wiretapping powers to criminal investigations, while Republicans insist that it's what the law intended.
----
Mugging for the cops
By William Glanz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20020913-96526518.htm
In Virginia Beach, Va., police started a digital manhunt for criminals this week by pairing surveillance cameras with new identification technology.
It is the second U.S. city to hunt for fugitives by scanning public streets while software compares images of pedestrians captured on camera to digital versions of police photos.
Surveillance cameras have long been used on private property, from banks to airports, and their use in public spaces such as the National Mall is becoming more common.
Police in Virginia Beach and Tampa, Fla., the other city where this technology is used, see the cameras as a strong deterrent to criminals. But privacy advocates say combining surveillance devices with software to hunt for people walking in public places marks the erosion of freedom because it puts scores of innocent people in a digital lineup.
Public officials in Virginia Beach decided to use biometrics - technology to identify people by using algorithms that measure faces, fingerprints and irises - to help them locate criminals wanted there on outstanding felony warrants. That can improve safety in a city that attracts 3 million tourists a year, Virginia Beach Police Chief A.M. "Jake" Jacocks Jr. said.
The technology has not led to the arrest of any suspect in the United States. But advocates also see the cameras as a powerful deterrent.
"We may not even make an arrest as a result of using this technology," Chief Jacocks said. But "if it keeps criminals out of the resort area and keeps the resort area safe, then that's a success."
Police won't say where the cameras are, but the innocuous-looking globes hover above three busy intersections along Atlantic Avenue, the bustling center of the oceanfront community's tourist area. The cameras scan a face in less than a second and up to six images at once, Deputy Police Chief Gregory G. Mullen said.
Face-scanning software relies on biometrics to measure 80 facial features, from the distance between a person's eyes to the length of a person's face.
Police monitor images from the cameras at the police department's 2nd Precinct headquarters. An alarm sounds if a camera determines that at least 14 measurements match a digital photo. That signals that a potential suspect is on Atlantic Avenue. Officers will determine whether the match is valid by looking at surveillance video themselves. If they confirm the person matches the photo, an officer will be sent to question the person.
Police in Virginia Beach, a city of 425,000 people, have digital photos of 650 criminals in their database. But the hardware can store 30,000 digital photos. The department expects to work with other law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to search for fugitives and missing persons believed to be in Virginia Beach.
Kathleen Stant stood along Atlantic Avenue on Monday in view of one of the city's new high-tech cameras. While she took a picture of her husband, Vernon, Mrs. Stant didn't know police were able to take her picture and instantly compare it to the database of fugitives.
No one came for Mrs. Stant, but the technology still made her feel uneasy.
"It's kind of 1984-ish," said Mrs. Stant, referring to the novel of that name written by George Orwell about a futuristic society in which the government wields oppressive power over the people.
"I understand why people feel the need for it. But the concern is whether police abuse it," said Mrs. Stant, a 50-year-old Richmond resident who traveled to Virginia Beach for the day.
Police have tried to ease concerns.
Cameras scan scores of innocent people each minute, but police have said they won't store images in their database of people who don't match police photos. In addition, the computer system will only be accessible from the 2nd Precinct headquarters and isn't connected to the Internet, so it can't be hacked. A Citizen's Advisory Committee was appointed to audit the department's use of the technology.
Despite those measures, face-scanning software is new and inaccurate and could lead to false positives, when police stop innocent people mistakenly identified as suspects, said Kent Willis, head of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"We will be very concerned if false positives happen and people get arrested who shouldn't be," he said.
The software also is easily fooled, said Michael Thieme, director of special projects at private consulting firm International Biometric Group in New York.
"Changes in hairstyle and adding or taking off glasses can really change the accuracy. It shouldn't, but it does," Mr. Thieme said.
During a test of Virginia Beach's software, it accurately identified people 87 percent of the time during the day and at dusk, according to data released by the police department. At night it was accurate 75 percent of the time.
The Tampa Police Department has used the same biometric software since 2001 that Virginia Beach police are using.
Tampa created a stir during the 2001 Super Bowl - dubbed the Snooper Bowl by privacy advocates - when it secretly used the software to scan crowds for suspected criminals.
There is concern that police are overreacting because of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"Have we become a crime center all of the sudden? This is very scary technology, and I am concerned about an abusive, intrusive government," said Robert K. Dean, spokesman for the Virginia Beach Libertarian Party and the Virginia Beach Taxpayers Alliance.
But the debate in Virginia Beach over face-scanning technology did change after the attacks. Federal law-enforcement officials notified Virginia Beach police that two hijackers - Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi - were in the city in February 2001 and April 2001.
-------- terrorism
Sept. 11 Suspect Captured
New York Times
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/13WIRE-CAPTURE.html
WASHINGTON, Sept 13 - Ramzi Binalshibh, a key al Qaeda member accused of helping plan the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on the United States, has been captured in Pakistan, U.S. officials said on Friday.
Binalshibh, who is wanted by Germany for his alleged role in planning and carrying out the deadly attacks, is one of the most important members of al Qaeda to be taken into custody over the past year.
U.S. officials have said the Yemeni national, who was refused a visa into the United States at least four times before Sept. 11, wanted to join the 19 hijackers involved in last year's attack.
A U.S. official said Binalshibh was captured in Karachi around Sept. 11 by Pakistani authorities with help from the FBI and CIA. He was found based on information provided by U.S. intelligence.
Binalshibh's capture came just days after a journalist with al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television said he interviewed the Yemeni in or around Karachi. Binalshibh and another key al Qaeda member reportedly affirmed that Osama bin Laden was personally involved in planning the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people.
Binalshibh was one of the roommates of Mohamed Atta -- the suspected ringleader of the hijackers -- in Hamburg. He is also known as Ramzi bin al-Shaibah.
One of the suspected hijackers had tried to enroll Binalshibh in a flight school in Florida. After Binalshibh was unable to get into the United States, the leaders of the plot may have tried to find someone else to take part in the hijacking of the fourth plane, top FBI officials have said.
The airplane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11 had only four hijackers. The other three airplanes, which smashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, each had five hijackers.
Binalshibh is mentioned repeatedly in the indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
The indictment mentions at least four times that Binalshibh applied for, and failed to receive, a visa to enter the United States.
It also details various money transfers he made to the hijackers and to Moussaoui.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Confusion, conflict stall spread of alternative fuel vehicles
Friday, September 13, 2002
By Andrew Bridges,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09132002/ap_48417.asp
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. - In the parking lot of a building squeezed between Interstate 80 and the Sacramento River, Kota Manabe did something at once as elemental as it was revolutionary: he topped off the tank of a sport utility vehicle.
The only suggestions that anything was out of the ordinary were the flame-retardant suit the Toyota engineer wore and the fuel he pumped into the Highlander: pure hydrogen.
"Basically, it's just like refueling at a normal station," fellow engineer Kyo Hattori said.
Almost. While hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, as an automotive fuel it's about as commonplace as moon travel. There are only two hydrogen filling stations in the entire state.
The futuristic SUV being tested at the California Fuel Cell Partnership is part of an international push to create cars and trucks that run more cleanly and efficiently than any in history. Fuel cells that power the vehicles combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. They emit only water vapor and heat.
But the hydrogen-powered Highlander also exemplifies a critical problem faced by alternative vehicles: They may be friendly to the environment but they're a mystery to consumers. That conundrum stems from several factors, including consumer uncertainty about performance and resistance to change by automakers. As a result, the spread of alternative fuel vehicles has been slow.
"The Big Three have often used future vehicles as an excuse not to produce current innovations," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "It's the Wimpy approach, the 'I will gladly pay you Tuesday, but don't make us do anything today to increase fuel efficiency, and in 10 to 20 years we will produce a much more efficient car.'"
For decades, California has been at the forefront of the clean vehicle movement aimed at fighting smog and global warming while cutting dependence on oil. The innovations have been driven by California's Air Resources Board, which sets air quality standards independent of the federal government. The board says its regulations have spawned innovations in fuel cells, hybrid cars, and fuel efficiency to an extent automakers never thought possible.
Now enterprises like the California Fuel Cell Partnership aim to help meet the state's zero emission mandate, which requires an increasing percentage of new cars and trucks to emit no pollution. The mandate was to have taken effect next year, but auto manufacturers won a preliminary injunction in June that delays implementation for two years.
Alternative fuel vehicles are a big part of the mandate, but thus far the movement has failed to gain much speed. As of 2001, there were about 456,000 alternative-fuel powered vehicles licensed in the United States, including those that run on batteries, natural gas, and ethanol, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Another 40,000 are hybrids, in which a gasoline engine is paired with an electric motor to boost fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. These numbers are dwarfed by the 210 million gasoline and diesel cars and trucks on the nation's roads.
Automakers argue that consumers won't buy cars simply because they are environmentally friendly. "There can be no sacrifices. This vehicle has to be a better car," said Anthony Eggert, an engineer with Ford's Think Technologies, which is developing a hydrogen fuel-cell car.
Nor will anyone buy newfangled technology unless it's appealing, said Leonard Stobar, a professor at Art Center College of Design, the Pasadena school that turns out roughly half the world's car designers. "You've got to make them attractive. You can make any vehicle that is good to the environment, but if I don't want to be seen in it, you won't sell it," said Stobar, who is helping develop a three-wheeled vehicle capable of driving coast to coast on a single tank of gas.
Automakers say hydrogen fuel cell vehicles come closest to fitting the bill because their power sources can be packaged in a way that allows more radical body designs. They can also pack a punch, as Eggert demonstrated on a recent test drive by gunning a Ford prototype.
They're also the cleanest thing going, since they spew only warm water vapor clean enough to inhale. Honda and Toyota plan to introduce the first hydrogen-powered vehicles in very limited numbers by year's end but claim they need another decade to perfect them. Safety is a big reason, as hydrogen is highly volatile.
For the time being, that leaves battery-powered vehicles as the only pure, zero-emission offerings. But their cost, limited range, and recharging delays have hampered their popularity. A number of models have come and gone. The latest are Ford's Think electric vehicles, which the automaker intends to stop selling in the United States because of lack of demand.
One way to lower emissions is to boost fuel economy. But the Bush administration has been loath to boost efficiency requirements, instead throwing its support behind hydrogen research.
Fewer than 6 percent of new U.S. cars and trucks get better than 30 miles per gallon, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 2001, the weighted average of all new passenger cars and trucks was 20.4 mpg - a 21-year low.
Auto manufacturers say consumers don't want fuel-efficient vehicles. "The fuel economy of our cars will be decided by consumers. They will choose the vehicles that suit them best," said Charles Territo, spokesman for the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers.
Surveys say 60 percent of car and truck buyers are interested in fuel economy but are unwilling to compromise on design and performance, said Thad Malesh, auto analyst with J.D. Power and Associates. "What they are saying is, 'I still want my truck; I just want better mileage,'" Malesh said.
Despite all the challenges, cars and trucks have quietly become cleaner and more efficient. New versions of the Honda Accord, Nissan Sentra, and Toyota Prius hybrid are included in California's fleet of "super low-emissions vehicles" since they are 90 percent cleaner than the average new car. About 50,000 such vehicles have been sold or leased in California.
Some observers find that encouraging. "There is going to be an explosion of choice for consumers," predicted John Boesel, president of transportation technology consortium Calstart. "My neighbor will come over and say, 'John, I got a new car,' and the natural question will be, 'What fuel?'"
----
New California law doubles renewable energy target
REUTERS USA:
September 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17745/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - California Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation yesterday that requires the state to double its supply of renewable energy to 20 percent of all retail power sales by 2017, the highest level in the U.S.
The bill, by state Sen. Byron Sher, means the state's investor-owned utilities and other retail sellers of electricity will have to boost their use of renewable resources by at least 1 percent a year until the 20 percent goal is met by a 2017 deadline.
About 10 percent of California's electricity can already be traced back to renewable resources like wind, geothermal, biomass and solar power.
But natural gas remains California's biggest fuel source, accounting for about half of the state's power generation.
Consumer and environmental groups supported the legislation, saying it would cut power plant emissions, secure more reliable energy supplies, and bring down power prices in the long run.
Davis also signed another bill by Sher that continues various programs to encourage the use of renewable energy and conduct energy research.
-------- ACTIVISTS
British Lawmaker Wants Human Shield to Protect Iraq
September 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain-galloway.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Anti-war British lawmaker George Galloway will call for international volunteers to form a human shield in Baghdad to try to thwart any attack after he flies to Iraq on Saturday. ``One of the ideas will be an international peace brigade of volunteers from around the world. People who will go to Iraq and offer themselves to be witnesses to what may well be about to happen,'' parliamentarian George Galloway told Reuters on Friday.
He expected significant numbers of Britons to come forward.
Asked if it would in effect constitute a human shield of people trying to prevent any bombing raids, he said: ``A voluntary one, yes.''
He said: ``There are many, many millions of British people who are determined that the Iraqi people will not be bombed in their name.''
Galloway, who met President Saddam Hussein last month and has tirelessly campaigned against war with Iraq, is going to Iraq for the Baghdad peace conference -- an international group that meets every six months.
``It would normally have met in November, but it has been brought forward to Monday because of the emergency,'' said Galloway, a member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party.
He said he did not expect to meet Saddam on this trip, which lasts until Wednesday, but would be meeting Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz who is chairing the conference.
Galloway said President Bush was intent on war and had used his speech to the United Nations in New York on Thursday as a smokescreen trying to hide his true intentions.
``It is clear that yesterday's performance in New York was simply a ruse to pretend that some sort of recourse to the U.N. and diplomacy was going to be sought,'' he said.
``I suspect that while war is never inevitable...it is looking increasingly more likely,'' Galloway added.
Bush, who has called for ``regime change'' in Iraq, said on Thursday U.N. arms inspectors who left in December 1998 had to be unconditionally readmitted now.
On Friday as Aziz ruled out the re-entry of the inspectors who had been seeking to dismantle Iraq's program to build weapons of mass destruction since the 1991 Gulf War, Bush called for a deadline for action counted in weeks at most.
Galloway urged the U.N. Security Council to stand up to what he called the bullying tactics of the Bush administration.
``If it wants to avoid global turmoil it will stand up and insist upon taking charge of this matter itself,'' he said.
Galloway said he did not intend staying in Baghdad with any volunteer human peace shield. His place was in the corridors of power and on the streets of London trying to persuade Britain to back out of a coalition with the United States.
``It is the coalition of the mad dog and the Englishman. If we can stop the Englishman then we can keep the whole world out of the blinding midday sun.''
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Remembering September 11
PBS Commentary
9.13.02,
by Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/now/commentary/moyers12.html
My colleague was in the subway below the World Trade Center when the first plane hit at 8:46 on September 11th a year ago. She walked up the stairs to the street just as the second plane hit. She heard the boom, looked up at the flaming towers, saw falling bodies -- and shuddered. A wave of heat descended on her and she ran - ran to safety before the buildings came down.
For two months she sat at the window of her apartment, paralyzed by fear. The sound of a plane would take her back to that day, as if had been the beginning of the world coming to an end. A year later she still has nightmares, still sees - in the poet's prophetic metaphor - "the great dark birds of history" that plunged into our lives.
She's not alone. No matter where we live today, we live at ground zero. Sitting at our window we wonder what's next; we walk looking over our shoulder, nervously. This is what terrorists want. They aim to possess our psyche, pillage our peace of mind, deprive us of trust and confidence - and keep us from ever again believing in a safe, decent, or just world, from working to bring it about. This is their real target - to turn each and every imagination into a personal Afghanistan, a private hell, where they can rule by fear, as the Taliban did.
They win only if we let them; only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid, invoking a God of wrath. Having lost faith in themselves, they have nothing left but a holy cause. They win, if we become holy warriors, too; if in trying to save democracy, we destroy it; if we strike first, murdering innocent people as they did; if we show contempt for how others see us; exploit patriotism to increase privilege; confuse power for the law, secrecy for security; and if we permit our leaders to use our fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth.
What, then, can I say to my colleague, to myself, to all of us survivors, tempted to keep sitting there, in the chair by the window. Just this: we are vulnerable - not only to the fear of them but to our own shaken faith. And this, remember not only the terror but the beauty revealed that day -- when through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the human kindness - the heroism, sacrifice, and compassion - of ordinary people who did the best of things in the worst of times. I say -- this beauty in us is real. It makes democracy possible, and no terrorist can take it from us.
Remembering this, one year later, we can praise the mutilated world and get on with our work. Democracy is our work, and there is much to do - if we are to keep it.
For now, I'm Bill Moyers.
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Criticism of war on terror dominates interfaith meeting
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR. Palermo,
Italy National Catholic Reporter,
September 13, 2002
http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives/091302/091302d.htm
If there's a stock criticism of the summit of world religious leaders hosted each year by Sant'Egidio, a lay Catholic movement famed for conflict resolution and promotion of human rights, it's usually that everyone is too polite. The hundreds of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists and others who show up, unflappably committed to dialogue, often seem to have more in common with each other than with hardliners in their own traditions.
So the strong discontent with post-Sept. 11 American foreign policy voiced at this year's summit was especially striking. Good manners, it appears, stop where the "war on terror" is concerned.
Also striking was the fact that some of the criticism, especially on a possible war with Iraq, came from Vatican officials who in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 seemed more tolerant of America's use of force.
A characteristic scene unfolded at a packed Sept. 2 session titled "After Sept. 11: Is a Conflict of Civilizations Inevitable?" During the question period, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Ramzi Garmo of Tehran, Iran, threw down a gauntlet.
"If Sept. 11 had happened anywhere else, would it have had the same impact?" Garmo asked. "Take Iraq as an example. Hundreds of thousands have died because one very powerful nation wants the embargo to continue. What is the difference between Iraqi children and the victims in New York? Is American blood worth more than blood in other countries?"
Garmo drew strong applause.
Later, in an interview with NCR, he added: "On Sept. 11, planes became bombs in New York, and we call this terrorism. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, planes bring bombs upon innocent people. This is not terrorism?"
The Sant'Egidio meeting, titled overall "Religion and Cultures: Between Conflict and Dialogue," took place Sept. 1-3. It brought together some 400 religious leaders, including 12 cardinals and 30 bishops and abbots, 18 representatives of Orthodoxy, 18 Protestants, 9 representatives of Judaism, 28 Muslims, 13 adherents of Asian religions (from India, Japan, Singapore and Sri Lanka), plus 57 representatives of international organizations and 19 diplomats.
To be sure, participants emphasized that rights and wrongs exist on all sides, and that nothing can justify terrorism. Moreover, some degree of anti-American posturing was to be expected, in part from religious leaders representing countries where authoritarian regimes back home were watching, in part from European leftists who gravitate to Sant'Egidio, for whom anti-Americanism is often an automatic response.
It was nonetheless clear that American policy choices have stirred passions.
"The events that occurred in New York and Washington, although horrible, are not a reason for violating the safety of other nations or communities," said Ayatollah Mohamed Ali Taskhiri of Iran. "Such atrocities as those exerted by the U.S. administration in Afghanistan, whose people were the victims of the Taliban regime, are not reasonable."
The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, James Nicholson, had a chance to deliver a strong defense of American policy in a panel on reconciliation Sept. 3. Nicholson presented President George Bush's post-Sept. 11 policy as a model "of how justice and reconciliation can conquer vengeance and anger."
"The president did not call for revenge or incite people to hatred," Nicholson said. "He reminded Americans that goodness, remembrance and love have no end." Then, Nicholson said, Bush built a "mighty coalition" of 174 nations to share military campaigns, law-enforcement efforts and humanitarian initiatives to combat terrorism.
Citing Bosnia and Kosovo, Sudan, the India/Pakistan conflict, and Korea as examples of recent American successes in efforts to promote peace, Nicholson said the United States has a "complete toolbox" of military, political and economic instruments.
To judge from this gathering, however, there seems doubt in some quarters about the uses to which those tools are being put.
One jarring illustration, at least for American sensibilities, came from Bernard Koucher, a French physician who was among the founders of Doctors Without Borders, and who later served as a U.N. special representative in Kosovo. Koucher said that in some neighborhoods of Paris teeming with immigrants from northern Africa, Osama bin Laden today is a revolutionary superstar on a par with Che Guevara. T-shirts and posters are sold with his likeness.
In a similar vein, Italian journalist Gianni Riotta pointed out that books purporting to prove that the attack on the Twin Towers was a CIA plot are selling well in Europe and the Arab world. "The United States should ask why people are prepared to believe this sort of thing," he said.
Mehmet Aydin, a Turkish theologian trained in England, said that one cannot reject bin Laden's rhetoric simply because "an evil person said it."
Aydin cited three points: 1) the humiliation of Muslims by the West after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; 2) the Palestinian question, which Aydin said is in the "depth psychology" of young Muslims; and 3) the American presence on the Arabian peninsula, which contains the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.
Interestingly, several Vatican officials joined the criticism of American policy, especially on a strike against Iraq.
"Every part of the earth suspected of complicity in terrorism has been placed under threat. Iraq too now finds itself on the waiting list. The members of Al Qaeda are pursued everywhere. Despite it all, bin Laden can't be found, and Al Qaeda has not yet been reduced to silence," said Cardinal Ignatius Moussa I Daoud, [a Syrian] who heads the Congregation for Oriental Churches.
"Can peace really be established using war to stop war, violence to stop violence, demanding the enemy surrender arms by using arms?" Daoud asked, contrasting Bush's "war on terrorism" with John Paul II's appeal for a culture of peace, including attention to the causes of violence.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, apostolic nuncio of the Holy See to the United Nations, was critical of the way U.S. religious leaders responded to the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Instead of 'Holy God We Bless Thy Name,' many were singing 'God Bless America,' " Martin said. "We can't allow other things to slip into our message."
Several voiced concern about an attack on Iraq.
"More than ever today, there's nothing that can be resolved in the Middle East with a war," said French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, a longtime Vatican official who today functions as the pope's informal diplomatic troubleshooter. German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's top ecumenical official, said there are neither "the motives nor the proof" that would justify war.
All of this seemed in some contrast with the position taken by Vatican spokesperson Joaquín Navarro-Valls days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he seemed to support strikes against regimes considered sponsors of terror.
Other religious leaders, even some obviously repelled by Saddam Hussein, were also skeptical.
Amos Luzzatto, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, cited two nagging doubts.
"First, is this really a means of resolving tensions, or is it about saving face for the failures of the first Bush administration?" Luzzatto asked in an interview with NCR. "Second, there is no willingness in the Arab world to mobilize against Iraq. I wonder if an attack would do more damage than any benefits it might gain."
It fell to an American, David Smock of the government-funded United States Institute of Peace in Washington, to try to extract a moral from the story. Smock, who said he was speaking personally rather than on behalf of his agency, worried that the United States has missed the lessons of Sept. 11.
"We experienced what it's like to be a victim but we have not translated that into understanding of what victimization is like in other parts of the world," Smock said. "The philosophy of isolationism and unilateralism, the atmosphere of expanding conflict are troubling. There is an unwillingness to understand the sources of hatred."
During the session with Nicholson, a Muslim woman said she would like to love the United States, but many of its policies -- from its lead role in the arms trade to its refusal to join international agreements on the environment and a new criminal court -- hold her back.
Addressing her, Nicholson said: "You would like to love the United States? My advice is, go ahead!"
The ambassador delivered the invitation with verve, but in the end, it was unclear whether his questioner or others like her gathered in Palermo were inclined to accept.
John L. Allen Jr. is NCR Rome correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org
Related Web site
Community of Sant'Egidio www.santegidio.org
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