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NUCLEAR
Iodide pills given as radiation care
Two Nuclear Cargo Ships in Britain
MOX Fuel Shipment Completes Japan-UK Journey
Nuclear Plant Safety
White House: Demands Not Met
U.S. assertions go beyond its intelligence
MILITARY
Food and Hope Are Scarce for Returning Afghans
Rockets Fired Near U.S. Afghan Base
North Korea amasses chemical weapons
U.S. Official Warns of Teen Pot Use
Air Patrols Shift Targets in Iraq,
Iraq to readmit U.N. arms inspectors
Allied warplanes expand counterattacks
Terrorist suspect delivered to U.S.
Powell Says U.N. Needs New Resolution on Iraq
U.N. Says Inspectors Ready for Iraq Duty
Pentagon Seeks N. Indian Ocean Base
How Do the Pentagon's 'War Games' Work?
U.S. Seeks to Ship More Military Hardware to Gulf
Ousting Saddam 'would be good business'
War Horrors Take a Toll on Reporters at the Front
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Terrorism Suspect Taken to U.S. Base for Interrogation
Six Suspects Charged Under Broadly Worded Act
ENERGY AND OTHER
Calif.: Blackouts Weren't Necessary
LA babies get lifetime's toxic air in 2 weeks - study
ACTIVISTS
Throngs Rally Against Ukraine's Scandal-Scarred Leader
10 'ambassadors for peace' are recognized
Moscow weighs future of 'Iron Felix' statue
Dozens Injured as Police Break Up Paraguay Protest
50,000 call for Kuchma's resignation
Anti-War Rally Outside Air Force Expo
Protesters hunt nuclear fuel shipment in Irish Sea
Confrontation at sea as nuclear ships near England
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Iodide pills given as radiation care
By Larry O´Dell
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 17, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20020917-68190316.htm
RICHMOND - The state this week will begin distributing pills that would prevent one type of radiation poisoning in the event of an accident or terrorist attack at Virginia's two nuclear power plants, Health Commissioner Robert B. Stroube said yesterday.
One dose of potassium iodide, used to block radioactive iodine in the thyroid, will be given to each of the estimated 330,000 people who live or work within 10 miles of the plants near Mineral in central Virginia and Surry in southeastern Virginia. The state will keep an additional 330,000 doses in storage for emergency distribution.
The drug will be handed out over the next few weeks at 18 locations, starting at noon tomorrow at the Peninsula Health Department in Newport News and the Isle of Wight County Health Department in Smithfield. Residents will have to show proof of identification and residence to obtain the drug.
President Bush signed a bioterrorism bill in June that requires potassium iodide to be available to all residents living near nuclear power plants. Sixteen of the 33 states with nuclear reactors asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to provide potassium iodide, and Virginia is the 11th state to begin distribution, according to the American Thyroid Association.
Dr. Stroube said residents should store the medication in a convenient place and should not take it unless his office instructs them to do so during an emergency.
"Potassium iodide is most effective if taken within a few hours before, during or immediately after exposure," Dr. Stroube said. "The medication can help prevent thyroid cancer, especially in children."
Potassium iodide saturates the thyroid with safe iodine and blocks radioactive iodine from entering. The use of the drug in Poland after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the former Soviet Union was credited with greatly reducing the number of thyroid cancers.
One tablet is believed to protect an adult's thyroid gland for about 24 hours - long enough to give the person time to evacuate the danger area. The drug does not protect against other illnesses caused by radiation.
"This is a supplement to the evacuation and sheltering," said Dr. Khizar Wasti, director of the state health department's Division of Health Hazards Control. "It is not a substitute for evacuation."
Alan Morris, president of Anbex Inc., which manufactures the drug, noted that the American Thyroid Association recommends making potassium iodide available to people who live up to 50 miles from a nuclear plant.
Dr. Wasti said the 10-mile limit was set by the NRC, not state health officials.
"That's the most susceptible area, within 10 miles," he said. "All the modeling they've done shows the chances of radioactivity going past that is almost negligible."
Some states have elected not to distribute the drug, fearing that it would lull residents into a false sense of security. Dr. Wasti said Virginia officials rejected that argument.
"Our feeling was that we will not mandate it, but give the option to the public - leave it up to them," Dr. Wasti said.
The Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of potassium iodide in 1982. Mr. Morris said some drugstores stock the drug, which also can be purchased over the Internet.
People allergic to iodine should not take potassium iodide, the health department said. Also, people with certain thyroid diseases and skin diseases should consult their physician before taking the drug.
-------- britain
Two Nuclear Cargo Ships in Britain
September 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Nuclear-Cargo.html
LONDON (AP) -- Two ships loaded with radioactive plutonium completed their Japan-to-Britain journey Tuesday, pulling into a northwestern English port trailed by environmental protesters' boats.
The Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal steamed into Barrow-in-Furness, near the Sellafield nuclear complex, accompanied by armed police boats. Police helicopters hovered overhead.
Workers then unloaded the nuclear cargo onto trains for the short trip to Sellafield.
The British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. vessels left Japan on July 4 with a load of Sellafield-produced fuel that had been rejected by a Japanese nuclear plant. Managers at Sellafield, which recycles nuclear waste into usable fuel pellets, admitted their staff fabricated safety checks on the fuel's manufacture in 1999.
Environmental groups have protested the freighters' journey, saying the voyage was too dangerous and the radioactive cargo not secure from possible attack. Greenpeace said the ships carried enough plutonium to make 50 nuclear bombs.
British Nuclear Fuels disputed the claims, maintaining the shipment was safe.
--------
MOX Fuel Shipment Completes Japan-UK Journey
BARROW-IN-FURNESS, United Kingdom,
September 17, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2002/2002-09-17-03.asp
A shipment of defective radioactive plutonium and uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel being transported from Japan back to the United Kingdom today reached its destination at the British Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (BNFL) Sellafield complex in West Cumbria.
The BNFL nuclear freighters Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal left Japan on July 4 and have sailed about 18,000 miles back to the UK carrying the eight MOX fuel assemblies.
The MOX fuel, delivered to Japan in 1999, was rejected by Kansai Electric Power Company for its Takahama nuclear generation facility when BNFL employees were found to have falsified data sheets related to the manual confirmation of automated checks during the manufacturing process.
BNFL agreed to compensate Kansai and return the fuel to the United Kingdom at its cost. The embarrassing lapse forced the resignation of BNFL's top executive and several others and led to three separate inquiries by branches of the UK government. Nuclear power companies in Germany and Sweden cancelled their MOX contracts as the data falsification scandal emerged.
BNFL chief executive Norman Askew (Photo courtesy BNFL)
Today, BNFL chief executive Norman Askew, speaking at Sellafield, said with relief, "The safe and secure delivery of this fuel is a very important milestone for BNFL and our customers. This now draws a line under the MOX quality assurance issue."
"I promised our Japanese customers that we would return the fuel in 2002, and we have now delivered on that promise," said Askew. "I now look forward to continuing to improve our relationships with our Japanese customers."
Greenpeace ships have been shadowing the two nuclear freighters along much of their supposedly secret route.
As the two freighters entered the port of Barrow this morning, they were met with a peaceful demonstration by the yachts of the Nuclear Free Irish Sea Flotilla, protesting the transport of nuclear materials through the Irish Sea. Boats from the Republic of Ireland, Britain and the Isle of Man took part.
Nuclear Free Irish Sea Flotilla protests against BNFL shipment of plutonium. The City of Dublin gave its official support to the flotilla. (Photo (c)Greenpeace/Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert)
Captain Malcolm Miller, Head of BNFL's Marine Transport business said, "As the ships sail through the Irish Sea, we recognize that individuals and groups have the right to peacefully and lawfully protest about our activities.
"I very much welcome the public assurances repeatedly given by Greenpeace that they will not interfere with the safe navigation of our ships," Miller said. "I hope they will be true to their word and that other members of the Greenpeace organized flotilla will also respect the rules of the sea."
The ships were escorted through the Walney Channel by a police launch, seven police inflatables and a security helicopter. The yachts from the Nuclear Free Irish Sea Flotilla fell into formation behind the Pacific Pintail once the nuclear freighter carrying the cask of rejected plutonium MOX had passed them at the entrance to the Channel.
"The Flotilla is a partnership of individual seafarers who use the Irish Sea," said Dr. Warren Scott, skipper of the yacht Swn y Mor from Glasson Dock. "We wish to let BNFL and the UK and Japanese governments know that we are no longer willing to sit back and allow the Irish Sea, or any sea, to be used as a nuclear highway."
Demonstrators aboard the Swn y Mor (Photo courtesy Greenpeace)
En route, countries called for the BNFL ships not to enter their 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zones, a call which the ships did not obey. The BNFL transport was less than 30 miles from the Irish coast when it encountered the Irish Sea Flotilla Monday afternoon.
Greenpeace said that more than 80 governments condemned the shipment, citing environmental, security and safety concerns.
BNFL says there is no danger of radiation from MOX fuel pellets, which are a hard, ceramic, stone-like material. "The pellets are so durable that if dropped into water, they would take thousands of years to dissolve. The pellets are loaded into fuel rods made from zirconium alloy which are corrosion-resistant and able to withstand depths of several thousand metres of water," the company said.
The rods are loaded into fuel assemblies which are then loaded into the transport casks. The fuel assemblies are safe enough to allow workers to work immediately next to them, says BNFL.
For this voyage, the fuel assemblies were transported in Excellox 4 MOX transport casks which have been built to, and certified to meet, the standards required by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The fuel assemblies have been transported from Barrow to Sellafield by rail. The MOX fuel will be placed into temporary storage at Sellafield, BNFL said, before the constituent parts are recovered prior to re-manufacture into new fuel.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuclear Plant Safety
New York Times
September 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/opinion/L17GUAR.html
To the Editor:
Re "Surveyed Reactor Guards Feel Vulnerable" (news article, Sept. 12):
All 103 of our nation's nuclear power plants meet exacting federal standards for security programs and for the 6,000 paramilitary officers who safeguard them. The plants are among the most secure facilities in our nation's infrastructure.
Nuclear plants are the only industrial facilities with established security programs that are scrutinized by federal regulators. These programs, in place for more than 25 years, are the benchmark for other industrial sectors.
You report that Richard A. Meserve, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that, even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, nuclear power plants "had significant security protections." That fact has been universally confirmed by the F.B.I., state homeland security officials and a host of governors and congressmen.
SCOTT PETERSON Vice President Nuclear Energy Institute Washington, Sept. 13, 2002
-------- us politics
White House: Demands Not Met
Associated Press,
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,63262,00.html
UNITED NATIONS - The White House dismissed Iraq's offer Monday to let weapons inspectors return there unconditionally -- a move that could be an attempt to split the Security Council and preclude stern U.S. action against Iraq.
The White House released a written statement that called the offer "a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong U.N. Security Council action."
"As such, it is a tactic that will fail," spokesman Scott McClellan said in the statement.
"This is not a matter of inspections. It is about disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime's compliance with all other Security Council resolutions," McClellan said in Washington.
Another White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the letter did not surprise the administration, because of a historical pattern of such 11th-hour communiques and because Bush administration officials had prior indications that Iraq was preparing it.
The administration seeks three things in a new U.N. resolution: a list of Iraqi violations of previous resolutions; steps Iraq needs to take to comply; and consequences Iraq will face if it does not comply.
The new Iraqi offer meets none of the administration's demands, and U.S. officials see no reason to budge from its position, this official said. A second senior official described White House's attitude toward the letter as "very, very dismissive."
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein waited just four days to notify U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that he will allow unfettered inspections.
Saddam made the offer just as consultations over the wording of a new U.N. Security Council resolution were in the initial stages.
The letter, released early Monday evening, is certain to be seized on by countries opposed to any move by the Security Council to give the United States the green light to depose Saddam militarily if he attempts to limit inspections.
France, in particular, believes the focus of the international community should be on disarmament, not regime change, a point underscored Monday by French Foreign Dominique de Villespin during a luncheon with reporters.
As analysts see it, the letter will have an impact on the coming debate over the wording of the resolution. The Bush administration will attempt to convince fellow Security Council members that nothing has changed.
Officials are still demanding a decree from the United Nations that would make plain that the organization will enforce the 16 resolutions Saddam has broken, McClellan said. The statement did not mention the White House's previous insistence that Iraq allow inspectors to go anywhere in the country, at any time.
It demanded a "new, effective U.N. Security Council resolution that will actually deal with the threat Saddam Hussein poses to the Iraqi people, to the region and to the world."
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U.N. Security Council is moving toward the U.S. position on Iraq, but France objected strongly to the Bush administration's insistence that Saddam must go.
A senior U.S. official accompanying Powell said the Iraqi inspections letter was flawed partly because it did not include "a promise to disclose or a disclosure of all of Iraq's prohibited weapons programs."
Annan credited President Bush for the Iraqi reversal of policy. He said the president has "galvanized the international community" with his speech last Thursday.
In rejecting the U.S. goal of ousting Saddam, de Villespin said, "We have one goal, which is the fight against proliferation" of weapons of mass destruction.
"There has been talk about working for regime change," de Villespin said. "This is not included in the mandate of the United Nations. If we begin discussing it, where will it end? It's a totally different process."
The goal of removing Saddam from power was adopted during President Clinton's tenure, and President Bush, pursuing the objective, is threatening to use force to achieve it. The U.S. policy is that disarmament in Iraq, as ordered by U.N. Security Council resolutions, will not be possible so long as Saddam remains in power, with or without renewed U.N. inspections.
Powell met Monday with delegates from several Security Council countries, including Britain, Colombia, Mexico and Syria.
At Dubuque, Iowa, Bush pressed his case for deposing Saddam. Outside the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, he called the Iraqi a "tyrant [who] must be dealt with." About 100 demonstrators held signs that read, "Drop Bush Not Bombs" and "Please No War in Iraq."
"If Iraq's regime continues to defy us and the world, [the United States] will move deliberately yet decisively to hold Iraq to account," with or without the United Nations, Bush said.
----
U.S. assertions go beyond its intelligence
By John Diamond,
USA TODAY
09/17/2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-16-intell_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is expanding on and in some cases contradicting U.S. intelligence reports in making the case for an invasion of Iraq, interviews with administration and intelligence officials indicate. Saddam Hussein meets with his advisers in an image from Iraqi state television Monday. AFP
Administration officials accuse Iraq of having ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and of amassing weapons of mass destruction despite uncertain and sometimes contrary intelligence on these issues, according to officials. Key events
Iraq agreed Monday to permit United Nations weapons inspectors to return after a four-year absence. Major developments in the weapons-inspection program:
April 1991: After Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, U.N. requires inspections of suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites.
June 1991: Iraq turns away inspectors at a nuclear facility near Baghdad. When allowed in, inspectors find nuclear materials and chemical weapons were removed.
July 1991: Iraq releases what it calls "a detailed list" of hidden nuclear technology. It describes three bomb-making programs and admits producing enriched plutonium, usable in nuclear bombs. Inspectors say Iraq has 46,000 chemical weapons, four times the number originally declared.
January 1993: U.S. cruise missile strikes a nuclear facility south of Baghdad for non-compliance with inspections.
August 1995: Saddam's son-in-law and former weapons chief, Hussein Kamel, defects to Jordan; reveals information that leads inspectors to a trove of documents on biological weapons.
July 1996: Less than a month after promising free access, Iraq blocks an inspection team.
October-November 1997: Iraq says it will bar Americans from inspection teams. Security Council condemns Iraq. United States prepares military strike. Iraq accepts Russian plan for inspectors.
January-March 1998: Iraq bars inspectors. United States plans military strike. U.N. brokers compromise for inspections.
April 1998: U.N. says Iraq is failing to give full account of its biological program and may be trying to deceive inspectors.
October-December 1998: Iraq suspends cooperation. United States plans "significant" military strike but stops after Iraq agrees to allow more inspections. Inspectors return but leave within weeks saying Iraq still not cooperating. U.S. and British jets bomb Iraqi military installations.
January 1999: Controversy erupts over press reports that the United States is using U.N. weapons inspectors to collect intelligence to undermine Saddam's regime.
August 2000: Iraq says it will not allow inspectors even if threatened with force.
December 2000: U.N. Security Council creates a new inspection organization to disarm Iraq and demands that Iraq comply.
November 2001: Bush administration begins talking of possible military action against Iraq.
Sept. 12, 2002: President Bush tells U.N. it risks becoming irrelevant unless it backs enforcement of resolutions on Iraq, and says the United States will enforce them.
In some cases, top administration officials disagree outright with what the CIA and other intelligence agencies report. For example, they repeat accounts of al-Qaeda members seeking refuge in Iraq and of terrorist operatives meeting with Iraqi intelligence officials, even though U.S. intelligence reports raise doubts about such links. On Iraqi weapons programs, administration officials draw the most pessimistic conclusions from ambiguous evidence.
Although the Bush administration made significant progress last week in generating international and domestic support for a campaign against Iraq, some lawmakers and diplomats question the evidence being assembled by the U.S. and British governments. Hans Blix, the chief United Nations arms inspector, said satellite images of Iraq show no evidence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was rebuilding an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that in secret intelligence briefings, administration officials were presenting "embellishments" on information long known about Iraq.
A senior Bush administration official conceded privately that there are large gaps in U.S. knowledge about Iraqi weapons programs but insisted that the only prudent course is to suspect the worst. To give Iraq the benefit of the doubt, officials argue, would be naive and dangerous.
Last week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice boiled the administration's case down to a single line that evoked both the uncertainty and the risk associated with Iraq: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
The differences between the administration and intelligence officials may be, in part, institutional. The CIA tends to be cautious in its predictions and estimates and careful not to overinterpret a situation based on incomplete information. Some agency officials say privately that they do not want to be pushed into going beyond the facts to provide justification for a war.
Not only the facts are in dispute, but also the interpretation of those facts. CIA analysts have reported that Saddam wants weapons for prestige and security, not for an attack on U.S. interests that would almost certainly bring a devastating U.S. response. Bush administration officials warn that once Saddam develops his arsenal, he must be considered a risk to use it.
Conversely, the CIA says the U.S. military should assume that Saddam would use chemical and biological weapons against American invaders if the survival of his regime were at stake. Bush's top advisers view this risk as manageable.
One of the administration's key arguments is that the intelligence on Iraqi weapons may be wrong.
Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recall that inspections after the 1991 Persian Gulf War found Iraq much closer to fielding a nuclear weapon than the CIA had estimated. Now the administration warns that the latest CIA estimates - that Iraq may be years away from building a nuclear weapon - could be based on incomplete intelligence and wishful thinking.
Administration officials cite two problems facing U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq:
- Because of the absence of U.N. arms inspectors since 1998 and Saddam's ability to conceal his activities from technical intelligence assets such as U.S. spy satellites, the evidence against Iraq is, at best, dated and circumstantial.
- Because of Saddam's insistence, on pain of death, on unwavering loyalty from his inner circle, little is known about whether he plans to use weapons of mass destruction or merely hold them to enhance his standing in a dangerous region.
Cheney and Rumsfeld question the CIA's insistence that it can find no link between al-Qaeda terrorists and Saddam's regime. They accept reports from Czech diplomats that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met in Prague, Czech Republic, with an Iraqi intelligence officer in April 2001. Administration officials speculate that the pair were discussing the Sept. 11 attacks, or possibly plotting to bomb the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters in Prague, which is regarded as one of the most likely terrorist targets in Europe.
Subsequent investigations, however, found that the Iraqi officer met regularly with a friend, a used car dealer, who closely resembles Atta. Inquiries also suggested that the source of the Czech information came from Prague restaurateurs trying to impugn a competitor whose establishment was used for the supposed meeting.
More recently, the CIA, under pressure from Cheney and Rumsfeld, could not confirm that al-Qaeda members are hiding in Iraq with Saddam's blessing. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice have accepted these reports as accurate.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Food and Hope Are Scarce for Returning Afghans
September 17, 2002
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/international/asia/17AFGH.html
SHOGHLI, Afghanistan, Sept. 14 - The farmer bent to pluck at the dry grass. "Tell them that we don't have anything to eat, we have no money to buy food, we have nothing," he said today, holding out a few dried stalks in his hand. "We do not know what to do. We don't even have winter clothes."
Like every other farmer around here, Shah Wali, 29, father of five, is worried that he will not be able to feed his family this winter. Buoyed by the promise of foreign aid, he and thousands of others returned home from their refugee camps to their drought-ravaged lands, only to find that they cannot manage.
"All the villages are in a bad way," he said. "There is only one person in a hundred who has anything, and everyone is trying to get something from that person."
Conditions in Afghan villages like this one in northern Afghanistan are so poor, and international assistance so starkly insufficient, that villagers may abandon their homes once again and return to refugee camps that have only just emptied, Afghan and international aid officials in northern Afghanistan say. Only an estimated 20 to 30 percent of the land was cultivated this year and most villagers, who are subsistence farmers, have not been able to grow enough to feed themselves and their families.
Three major factors contributed to the crisis here. The first is four years of drought, the worst in living memory. The second is the flood of returning refugees throughout Afghanistan - 1.7 million have returned from outside the country, double the number expected, aid agencies say, and another 900,000 have returned home from refugee camps in Afghanistan. The third factor is that donor countries have failed to come through with the large-scale assistance needed to get the rural population back on their feet.
Officials at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program expressed deep concern in recent interviews that the shortage of food assistance is hitting vulnerable Afghan communities at the most crucial time - when they are trying to establish themselves ahead of the winter.
Abdul Rashid, 30, led a delegation to seek aid for 420 families from Shoghli and surrounding villages who lived for three years in refugee camps in northern Afghanistan. They returned too late to plant for the harvest, and anyway had no seeds, tools or farm animals to work the land, like thousands of other farmers across the north.
Some of the men in Shoghli have worked for other farmers during the harvest but the payment in grain will not see them through the winter, they said. None have been able to rebuild their houses because there is not enough water and the organization planning a shelter project has postponed the plan until next year. They returned discouraged.
"It is a huge concern, how people are going to survive this winter," said Cecile Fradot, protection officer at the United Nations refugee agency. "We are already aware of communities that are already talking of moving again. They have only been back two or three months and if they leave it will not be a failure, but partly a failure," she added, flushing with frustration.
"To prevent another disaster, we have to get assistance to them urgently," she said.
But the aid agencies themselves are short of supplies. The World Food Program says it will only be able to meet 45 percent of its aid commitments in northern Afghanistan with the grain it has received from donor countries, and officials said they were now urgently drafting contingency plans for another crisis this winter.
Steve Loegering, the deputy chief of the World Food Program's mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, who is responsible for seven northern provinces, said that in the last few weeks his supplies have been so short that he has suspended nine food aid projects.
That will cut supplies to several thousand people, said Saikouba Ahmed, the agency's program officer here.
Another 17 proposed projects will not even be considered, so drastic is the shortfall in grain supplies, Mr. Ahmed said.
Even before the aid cuts could be felt, villagers in Shoghli, a small collection of mud-walled houses scattered on the steep sides of dust-brown hills a nearly six-hour drive from Mazar-i-Sharif, sounded the alarm.
They sent out a plea for help two weeks ago, dispatching the ablest among them, by donkey and bus, to appeal to the aid agencies in the city. Two hundred families, who only returned home three months ago from a miserable life in the refugee camps, will not survive the winter without outside assistance, they warned, and some families were already planning to move.
"We love it here because it is our home, but when we do not have food or water, how can we live here?" said Mr. Rashid, who was selected to make the plea for help.
"More than 50 percent of the village will leave if there is no help," said Ruzi Qul, 55, a weathered man in a black turban. "What to do if there is no harvest?"
The villagers' most immediate problem is water, because of the drought. Shoghli lies in a group of 86 villages known collectively as Sheram, where the only source of water is rain and winter snow. Rainwater is traditionally collected during the winter in deep reservoirs carved out of the rock. Because the reservoirs are in poor repair and were already so low this year despite a reasonable rainfall, there is still not enough to go around.
Virtually the entire population of Sheram - nearly 2,000 families - left their villages over the last few years, exhausted and impoverished by the drought. As the harvests failed, they lost or sold their livestock and many of their belongings and eventually moved to the cities in search of work and food. They returned this summer, on the wave of optimism after the fall of the Taliban and as international agencies began a huge assistance program in Afghanistan.
"We thought we could manage; we thought the rains were enough," said Ghulam Nabi, a father of eight, who abandoned his home in a neighboring village last year.
Now their return seems almost foolhardy in the absence of the assistance they were hoping for.
Mr. Rashid said he had not gone begging for handouts, but had asked for a project that would bring work to the area. He had in mind the sort of project - like road building or construction of dams, in which workers are paid in grain - that the World Food Program is having to suspend.
Large, labor-intensive construction projects employing hundreds of thousands could have saved northern Afghanistan from widespread hunger had they been carried out this year, one United Nations official said.
"I am pretty disappointed that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have not started with labor-intensive road construction, hydro-electric dams and so on," he said. That was another plan this year that did not materialize, he said.
Ms. Fradot, of the refugee agency, is monitoring the warning signals with a sense of doom. "It is so sad," she said. "This year we had so many happy stories of people returning, but we will still see people displaced again."
--------
Rockets Fired Near U.S. Afghan Base
September 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Rocket-Attacks.html
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- Rockets were fired Tuesday near U.S. forces and a U.N. compound in separate areas of the country, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
An Afghan working for the United Nations was seriously injured when two rockets struck a compound housing the offices of the U.N. Children's Fund, or UNICEF, in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Police Chief Haji Ajab Shah blamed the attack on Taliban or al-Qaida fugitives.
One rocket was fired at a U.S. position in the eastern city of Asadabad but missed, U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King said. Another landed about 800 yards from a U.S. position in the southeastern town of Shkin in Paktika province along the Pakistani border, King added.
U.S. officials said they didn't know who fired either rocket, but Taliban and al-Qaida remnants are active in both areas.
The attacks come a day after Afghan government officials said a volley of rockets were launched at a U.S. base in the southeastern city of Khost, prompting the Americans to send planes to patrol the skies of the tense city.
King denied those reports Tuesday, saying they were part of a disinformation campaign organized from neighboring Pakistan by remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and the Taliban.
``This attack never happened,'' King said. ``It is another manifestation of the disinformation campaign of the enemy.''
Reports of Monday's rocket attack in Khost and other similar incidents usually ``don't stand up,'' King said. ``But, it's enough to get the word out that something bad is happening to coalition forces, which, in turn, supports their side. ... The people who may hear this may be heartened.''
-------- chemical weapons
North Korea amasses chemical weapons
September 17, 2002
By Jong-Heon Lee
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020917-84317288.htm
SEOUL - North Korea has a stockpile of 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons and is believed to be capable of producing 1 ton of biological weapons annually, South Korea's Defense Ministry said yesterday.
The communist state's stockpile of chemical weapons consists of 17 different types that can be used to dispense nerve gases, the ministry said in a report presented to the National Assembly. North Korea can produce about 4,500 tons of chemical weapons every year, it said.
Pyongyang's army also has biological weapons involving 13 different lethal germs and viruses, the ministry said.
Mike Moody, president of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington, said the South Korean estimates represented "a significant amount" of chemical weapons.
By comparison, Russia had 40,000 tons of chemical weapons when it was forced to declare the numbers by the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty. The United States had 30,000 tons before it began to dismantle its reserves.
Mr. Moody noted that the production of an agent does not always translate into an effective chemical or biological weapon. Its effectiveness depends on several factors, including the quality of production, means of dispersal and intended target.
North Korea signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1987 but has been called a leading violator of the international treaty that bans germ warfare.
Under its ruling principle of "army-first politics," North Korea has produced and deployed long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States and has sold some missiles to Iran and Syria. Experts say the missiles can be fitted with biochemical warheads.
To cope with attacks from the North, South Korean military authorities have bought vaccines capable of inoculating 10,000 soldiers against anthrax, officials said.
Last month, South Korea renounced the use of biological weapons "under any circumstances," despite criticism that the decision was "premature" as long as North Korea poses a military threat.
"The decision was aimed at putting pressure on North Korea to take a reciprocal measure against biochemical weapons," a senior official said on the condition of anonymity. But South Korea has retained the right to use chemical weapons as a deterrent against the North, the official said.
John Bolton, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, echoed the concerns about North Korea's biological and chemical warfare capabilities during a recent visit to Seoul.
"In regard to chemical weapons, there is little doubt that North Korea has an active program," he said in a speech last month. "The U.S. government believes that North Korea has one of the most robust offensive bioweapons programs on Earth."
The United States believes North Korea has also diverted enough plutonium to make one or two nuclear bombs before agreeing to freeze production in 1994. Pyongyang has rejected international calls for inspectors to be allowed into its nuclear facilities to verify that weapons development has halted.
South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong urged North Korea last week to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities, saying "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" was a key challenge in the peace process between the two Koreas.
"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 1994 nuclear accord, he said in an address on Friday to the U.N. General Assembly.
•Staff writer Maria Tsigas contributed to this report in Washington.
-------- drug war
U.S. Official Warns of Teen Pot Use
September 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Marijuana-Kids.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's drug policy director warned parents Tuesday against trivializing the dangers of marijuana to their kids, warning them that more teens are addicted to pot than to alcohol or to all other illegal drugs combined.
Many parents and children have outdated perceptions about marijuana, said John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. They believe marijuana is not addictive, that it's less dangerous than cigarettes or that it has few long-term health consequences.
In reality, more teens enter rehabilitation centers to treat marijuana addiction than alcohol or all other illegal drugs combined, Walters said.
``Our effort is to correct the ignorance that is the single biggest obstacle to protecting our kids,'' he said as he announced an advertising campaign by his office and 17 education, public health, anti-drug and family advocacy groups.
The national effort will include advertisements on television, radio and print media, along with ones that will air in NFL stadiums and inside game programs.
``For too long our nation's teens have been getting the wrong message about marijuana. Youth popular culture has trivialized the real harm of marijuana in kids,'' Walters said.
A common misperception is that smoking marijuana is less dangerous than smoking a cigarette, said Surgeon General Richard Carmona. But marijuana contains three to five times more tar and carbon monoxide than a comparable amount of tobacco, he said. It also affects the brain in ways similar to cocaine and heroin.
Carmona said that one out of five eighth-graders has tried marijuana -- twice as many who tried it a decade ago.
``Marijuana is not a rite of passage but a dangerous behavior that could have serious health consequences. Parents must realize that what they tell their children about drug use makes a difference,'' Carmona said.
Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the Safety First Project of the Drug Policy Alliance, disputed some of Walters' figures. ``What can he possibly be talking about?'' she said. ``Alcohol dwarfs marijuana in terms of use. It's true that half of high school students have experimented with marijuana, but 80 percent have used alcohol.''
Rosenbaum, whose project is meant to educate parents about teenagers and drugs, said: ``The notion that marijuana is addictive, as evidenced by increased treatment rolls, is misleading. ... When young people are caught they have a choice between getting kicked out of school, losing their jobs or going to treatment. What would you do?''
The result, Rosenbaum said, is that teenagers are counted as addicts ``even if they simply smoked a joint on Saturday night.''
The Drug Policy Alliance describes itself as independent drug policy reform group which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs.
In Washington, Dr. Richard Corlin, former president of the American Medical Association, urged parents, teachers, doctors and anyone else working with children to stop sending conflicting signals.
``We must lead by example and not use marijuana ourselves or condone its use by anyone of any age,'' he said.
``We'd rather kids didn't use drugs,'' Rosenbaum agreed. ``But we need to educate them properly and be there to help them out if they do get into trouble.''
On The Net:
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign: http://www.mediacampaign.org
``The Anti-Drug'': http://www.theantidrug.com
Drug Policy Alliance: http://www.drugpolicy.org/
-------- iraq
Air Patrols Shift Targets in Iraq,
Clearing the Way for Any Attack
New York Times
September 17, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/international/middleeast/17MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - American and British warplanes patrolling Iraq's no-flight zones have recently shifted tactics to bombing major air defense sites in those areas, a move that could help clear air lanes for an allied attack, military officials said today. Meanwhile, the military is preparing to base B-2 bombers outside the United States for the first time, officials said.
As part of its effort to ratchet up pressure on Saddam Hussein, the United States has asked Britain to allow the bombers to use an air base on the tiny British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. That would reduce the flight distance to Baghdad to about 3,300 miles, from 6,800 miles.
The B-2's can carry 16 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs and the Air Force is preparing within the next few months to equip the aircraft to hold as many as 80 500-pound laser-guided bombs, which the Air Force is expected to stock in its arsenal within months, an Air Force official said today.
In response to almost daily Iraqi antiaircraft fire at allied planes patrolling the no-flight zones in northern and southern Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that he had recently ordered warplanes to strike command-and-control sites, linked by Chinese-made fiber-optic networks, that guide the Iraqi surface-to-air missiles to their targets.
"I directed it," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters. "I don't like the idea of our planes being shot at. The idea that our planes go out and get shot at with impunity bothers me."
In the last 10 days alone, allied warplanes have attacked five sites across southern Iraq, including an air defense communications installation near Tallil, 160 miles southeast of Baghdad, on Sunday.
While the total number of strikes against Iraqi targets this year is about the same as in past years, the focus of the attacks has changed.
Since the new tactics took effect, the military says, the strikes have weakened Iraq's air defenses, which unlike the rest of its military infrastructure, Baghdad has been able to rebuild largely to levels that existed before the Persian Gulf war.
"The recent strikes have degraded the air defense capabilities," said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The American military is already stationing B-52 bombers at Diego Garcia. Mr. Rumsfeld and British officials declined to discuss any future deployments, but other officials said the Pentagon had asked Britain to allow the Air Force to erect portable, climate-controlled shelters for four to six B-2 bombers, which are normally based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
The skin of the radar-evading planes is sensitive to heat, humidity and moisture, and the planes require a special hangar for maintenance. Air Force officials say the shelters take about a month to erect.
The deployment plans for the bat-winged B-2 were reported today in The Wall Street Journal. If they are realized, it will be the first time the planes, which cost about $2 billion each, will be based overseas for combat missions.
Stealthy B-2's would lead any military campaign to topple Mr. Hussein, and Iraq's formidable air defenses would be among their first targets.
Mr. Rumsfeld, however, declined to say today whether the change in tactics was essentially meant to lay the groundwork for an attack against Iraq, asserting that President Bush had not yet decided that.
The United States typically flies patrol missions over southern Iraq from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. If American warplanes on routine patrol are fired on by Iraqi antiaircraft batteries, warplanes from Kuwait are usually called in to retaliate using a list of preapproved targets.
Until a few months ago, retaliatory strikes were typically made against Iraqi missile launchers, antiaircraft artillery emplacements or the radars used to cue them.
"It really did not make an awful lot of sense to be flying patterns that we were getting shot at if, in response, we were not doing any real damage that would make it worth putting pilots at risk," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Under the new tactics, General Pace said, the retaliatory strikes are being directed at fixed targets like buildings, command-and-control centers and military airfields instead of mobile radars and other shifting targets.
Mr. Rumsfeld said he did not know how quickly Baghdad could repair command-and-control buildings and military airfields.
The commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, was scheduled to arrive in the gulf state of Qatar on Tuesday for a regional environmental conference. But in further evidence of American war preparations, American officials said General Franks would also meet with senior Qatari officials to discuss his plans to move a part of his headquarters in Tampa, Fla., to an airfield outside Doha, the Qatari capital.
About 600 planners under General Franks's command will move to Qatar in November. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the vanguard would probably establish a forward headquarters, allowing General Franks to have a battle staff in place should Mr. Bush order an attack on Iraq later this year or early next.
Military officials also said about 2,000 marines would begin an amphibious assault exercise in Kuwait later this month. The biannual exercise is scheduled to last about a month and, like the shift in bombing tactics, could foreshadow an attack against Iraq, military officials said.
At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld praised a top Saudi official for comments made on Sunday indicating that Saudi Arabia would let the United States use its military bases in a United Nations-backed attack on Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld said the Saudi remarks, which represented a shift, would intensify pressure on Iraq.
When a country like Saudi Arabia supports "what the president is doing and what we're trying to achieve in the Congress and the United Nations, that's helpful," he said.
--------
Iraq to readmit U.N. arms inspectors
September 17, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020917-52214772.htm
NEW YORK - The Iraqi government, responding to unrelenting U.S.-led international pressure, agreed last night to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors without conditions.
But the White House dismissed the offer as a tactical ploy by Baghdad that should not be used to prevent tough action from the United Nations.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri handed a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan confirming Baghdad's intention to cooperate after President Bush accused Saddam Hussein's regime of repeatedly defying U.N. mandates.
In the missive, the Iraqi government said it based its decision "on its desire to complete the implementation of relevant Security Council resolutions and to remove any doubts that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction."
The transmission of the letter followed two meetings between Saddam and his top aides in Baghdad yesterday to discuss "the current political situation," the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
Iraq has long contended that it has no proscribed weapons of mass destruction.
In a statement, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Iraqi offer was "a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong U.N. Security Council action."
"As such, it is a tactic that will fail," Mr. McClellan said. "This is not a matter of inspections. It is about disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime's compliance with all other Security Council resolutions."
The dramatic capitulation by Baghdad follows more than a week of pressure by its Arab and Russian allies, an offer of Saudi bases for a possible U.S.-led military strike, and appeals for Iraqi cooperation by scores of foreign leaders during the current U.N. General Assembly session.
The annual discussion opened Thursday with Mr. Bush's blunt warning to Iraq to end its refusal to allow international inspections and his challenge to member states to enforce binding Security Council resolutions.
"I believe the president's speech galvanized the international community," Mr. Annan said yesterday. "Every speaker in the General Assembly urged Iraq to accept the inspectors."
Mr. Annan particularly singled out the Arab nations for counseling Iraq to readmit the inspectors or risk "the dire consequences" of war, as Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher put it Sunday.
Security Council members greeted news of the letter with relief and some wariness.
"Saddam's regime has a long history of playing games," said a spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "Let's see what they are offering."
The Russians were more enthusiastic.
"Thanks to our joint efforts, we managed to avert the threat of a war scenario and go back to political means of solving the Iraqi problem," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in New York. "The main thing is for [the inspectors] to resume their work."
Iraq's intransigence has dominated the United Nations for weeks, as the Bush administration threatened military strikes to force Baghdad to accept the new weapons regime.
"We are maintaining constant contact with the Iraqi delegation here, as well as with the delegation of the Security Council members," Mr. Ivanov said shortly before the letter was delivered.
If Iraq does comply fully with inspectors, he said, the council will be "obliged" to explain how the sanctions can be lifted.
Mr. Ivanov also said that the United Nations' executive body was divided on whether a new Security Council mandate would be required before dispatching the inspectors.
The Security Council imposed sweeping sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. After U.N.-authorized coalition forces defeated Iraqi troops, the sanctions were left in place until international inspectors could determine the size of Iraq's illicit weapons program.
Eleven years later, the sanctions remain, and Iraq complains that cooperating with U.N. inspectors won't be deemed enough to lift the sanctions. The Clinton administration advocated leaving them in place until Saddam was out of power, saying that he could not be trusted.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell indicated as recently as Sunday morning that "regime change" was still the official U.S. stance on Iraq.
He told reporters yesterday morning that Washington would continue efforts to draft a tough new Security Council resolution for Iraq, notwithstanding the letter delivered by Mr. Sabri.
"The one thing I'm absolutely sure about is that we're going to continue to move forward within the Security Council on a new resolution," he said.
Mr. Annan has passed the letter to the Security Council, whose 15 members will soon decide how to proceed.
"They will decide what they do next and, of course, Mr. Blix and his team will be ready to continue their work," he said.
Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, welcomed the news last night, but spokesman Ewen Buchanan was unable to say how quickly they could get an assessment team on the ground in Iraq.
First, he said, a series of practical arrangements must be agreed to, from helicopter landing sites to increased security. After that, a roster of experts from more than 20 countries would have to be organized and deployed.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said the Security Council would consider whether a new resolution would still be needed in light of Iraq's change of heart.
"Different options are open. We will discuss with our Security Council partners what might be needed once the inspectors are to return," Mr. de Villepin told reporters.
He said he thought the inspectors could be back in Iraq "within a few days, if not a few weeks."
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
Allied warplanes expand counterattacks
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020917-29771086.htm
The Pentagon has ordered expanded retaliatory attacks on air-defense targets in Iraq in response to threats to patrolling U.S. and British warplanes, senior officials said yesterday.
Bombing raids against Iraqi air-defense sites and related targets have increased in intensity in recent weeks and appear to be preparation for military action against Saddam Hussein.
Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said tactics have been altered in recent months to expand retaliatory attacks on more targets.
The strategy is a shift from limiting strikes to Iraqi air-defense systems that illuminate by radar or fire upon patrolling U.S. and British aircraft.
Under the new rules, warplanes have begun attacking "radars and the buildings that have the command nodes in them and the airfields [and] more of the targets like communications buildings that are not easily moved," Gen. Pace told reporters at the Pentagon.
"The recent strikes have degraded the air-defense capabilities," Gen. Pace said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who spoke to reporters with Gen. Pace, said, however, that it was not clear whether the stepped-up counterattacks weakened Iraq's air defenses.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the Iraqis "are constantly trying to improve [air defenses]."
"They have been putting in fiber optic, and they have been doing a whole series of things - developing queuing techniques," he said. "And I am not in a position to know if they have been net degraded."
Mr. Rumsfeld said he does not know whether Chinese state-run companies are continuing to help Iraq build fiber-optic communications networks linking up air defenses around the country.
Asked whether China still is supporting the upgrading of Iraqi air defenses, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "They sure did for a long time. Whether they are currently in there, I don't know."
Mr. Rumsfeld also said the Bush administration in the next few weeks will be making its case to Congress on the threat from Iraq.
"The goal will be to try to take the pieces and help people understand that it isn't simple, that there isn't a single smoking gun that everyone nods and says, 'Aha. That's it,'" Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"If we wait for a smoking gun in this instance, it obviously would be after the fact. You'd find it after the fact. You'd find it after lethal weapons were used against the United States, our friends and allies. And that's a little late when you're dealing with capabilities of the lethality that represent these capabilities."
Gen. Pace said commanders in charge of enforcing the air-exclusion zones over northern and southern Iraq have expanded counterattacks beyond specific radar involved in electronically illuminating and firing missiles at aircraft.
The Iraqi military in the past moved missile batteries and radar that confronted patrolling warplanes before the U.S. and British jets were able to counterattack them.
Under the new rules, military planners are "picking targets that are still part of that continuum of air defense" and targets that "provide appropriate level of response to that kind of provocation."
Asked whether the expanded strikes were laying the groundwork for future attacks, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "Well, it can't hurt."
Noting that President Bush has not made a decision on attacking Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "There's no question but that to the extent they keep shooting at our airplanes, and to the extent we keep engaging in response options, and to the extent that those response options are harmful to their air defense, which they are, that that's good."
The defense secretary said he ordered the expanded retaliatory raids within the past six months "because it seemed right at the time."
"I don't like the idea of our planes being shot at," he said. "We're there implementing U.N. resolutions. It's not just the United States. It's the British, the coalition forces involved. And the idea that our planes go out and get shot at with impunity bothers me."
Iraq's government has offered bonuses to Iraqi anti-aircraft-missile units that shoot down patrolling U.S. or British warplanes.
The air-patrol operations have been under way since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war and are authorized under U.N. resolutions.
U.S. officials have said the limited response to hostile Iraqi ground forces - either radar illuminations or missile and gun firings - were designed in part to avoid upsetting the governments of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which provide the bases used by the patrolling warplanes.
Limited retaliation, Mr. Rumsfeld said, was "only marginally effective, both in the north and the south."
"And we were flying patterns that were getting us shot at," he said. "And our responses being what they were, at some point we decided, after a good deal of talk, General Pace, General Myers, others in the National Security Council, that it really did not make an awful lot of sense to be flying patterns that we were being shot at if in response, we were not doing any real damage that would make it worth putting pilots at risk. So we modified some of our flights to that they were then flying in areas that were less likely to put them at risk and more in keeping with the value of what we were achieving by doing it."
Mr. Rumsfeld said Iraq's air-defense capabilities improved as the fiber-optic cable linked components of the air-defense network.
The Iraqis also improved the capability of their air-defense systems to "queue" target data - communicate information on patrolling aircraft to various air-defense weapons.
Commanders then decided to pick targets for retaliatory raids that "cause us the least grief in terms of risk to our pilots," Mr. Rumsfeld said, noting that fixed and movable targets now are bombed.
"So we ought not to think of it as a static situation," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
On Sept. 5, U.S. Navy F-18 and Air Force F-16 jets attacked anti-aircraft gun and missile sites in southern Iraq. It was the fourth time in 11 days that targets were struck.
-------- pakistan
Terrorist suspect delivered to U.S.
September 17, 2002
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020917-13926419.htm
Pakistan yesterday turned over to U.S. authorities a self-professed organizer of the September 11 terrorist attacks, who President Bush said aspired "to be the 20th bomber," and four other al Qaeda suspects arrested last week.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh "sends a message to other terrorists" and will give U.S. authorities valuable information during interrogation at an undisclosed location.
"An awful lot of the ones we pick up do," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "They provide it by whatever they have in or around them, the people that were with them, what they say, what they don't say, how they handle themselves."
The handover took place after a Pakistani official said police were investigating whether some of those arrested with Binalshibh were involved in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted in Karachi in January.
If a link is established, it would be the first evidence that al Qaeda was involved in Mr. Pearl's abduction and killing.
Mr. Bush crowed about the capture of Binalshibh while addressing workers at a manufacturing plant in Davenport, Iowa.
"He thought he could hide," Mr. Bush said. "He thought he could still threaten America. But he forgot the greatest nation on the face of the Earth is after them, one person at a time."
Binalshibh and four underlings were captured Wednesday - the anniversary of the September 11 attacks - after intelligence received by the FBI prompted a raid on a Karachi apartment block where the suspected terrorists were holed up. The capture followed a fierce, three-hour gunbattle in which two other terrorists were killed.
The men were held in Pakistan until yesterday, when they were flown out of the country and turned over to the United States. Administration officials declined to say where Binalshibh was being held or whether he would be brought to America.
"We got him," a senior administration official told The Washington Times. "But as to who has him and where he is, we're just not talking about it."
It was considered the most significant arrest since March, when one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, Abu Zubaydah, was arrested in Pakistan.
The FBI had evidence that Binalshibh shared a room in Hamburg, Germany, with Mohamed Atta, believed to have been the leader of the hijackers, and was a key aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, thought to have been a top planner of the attacks.
Binalshibh boasted of his role in planning the attacks during an interview in Karachi with the Arab satellite TV station Al Jazeera. The interview was broadcast last week, but the station said it was taped in June.
Authorities were eager to learn as much as possible from Binalshibh.
"This is somebody that we want to talk to," the senior official said. "Every indication is that he was involved in the planning for 9/11 and is somebody that's involved in al Qaeda and terrorist planning.
"By breaking up these al Qaeda cells and getting our hands on these al Qaeda members, our top priority is to obtain information from them that will help prevent future attacks," the official added. "That information can take many forms - either plans for future attacks or leads as to other al Qaeda members."
Among those captured during raids last week and since handed over to U.S. custody was Umar al-Gharib, a brother of al Qaeda leader Tawfiq Attash Khallad, a U.S. defense official in Washington said on the condition of anonymity. Khallad is thought to be one of the masterminds of the deadly October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen.
Though not a leader in al Qaeda, al-Gharib may have valuable information, the official said.
German prosecutors believe Binalshibh, 30, was meant to be the fourth suicide pilot in the attacks on the United States. After he was refused a U.S. visa, he instead arranged payments to American flight schools and made frequent organizational trips.
"After his exclusion as the fourth pilot, Binalshibh became the most significant contact person inside the network," chief German prosecutor Kay Nehm told reporters in August.
Mr. Rumsfeld characterized the capture of Binalshibh as a significant blow to al Qaeda.
"The more of these people that are rolled up and put in jail and interrogated, the more difficult it is to recruit, the more difficult it is to retain people, the more difficult it is to raise money, the more difficult it is to transfer money, the more difficult it is for those folks to move between countries, the more careful they have to be in everything they do," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
It was not clear whether the four militants handed over with Binalshibh were the ones Pakistani police suspected were linked to Mr. Pearl's slaying. Mr. Pearl's dismembered body was found in May in a shallow grave in Karachi.
Four Pakistani militants, including British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed, were convicted in Mr. Pearl's abduction, though those who carried out the American's killing have not been arrested. Saeed was sentenced to death by hanging, and the others received life sentences.
Pakistani police said they were led to Mr. Pearl's grave by three men who had been detained but never charged. The government has never confirmed they are holding the three.
The senior official said the Bush administration had not yet decided Binalshibh's ultimate destination. Potential sites include the United States, a U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or a military base in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rumsfeld said it was not clear whether the administration would seek to classify Binalshibh as a prisoner of war, which would make him eligible for certain protections under the Geneva Convention.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
-------- un
Powell Says U.N. Needs New Resolution on Iraq
New York Times
September 17, 2002
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/international/middleeast/17CND-REAC.html
Declaring that Iraq's decision to allow weapons inspectors back "was a beginning, not an end," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United Nations needs to pass a new resolution that will make it clear to the Iraqis that they had to comply with its demands.
"We will press for a resolution," Secretary Powell said. If the Iraqis are serious, he said, "they will want one."
The United Nations has to make sure that inspectors have full access to all areas of Iraq's weaponry, he said, making it clear "that this is not going to be business as usual or a repeat of what happened in the past."
Iraq responded to international pressure following President Bush's address to the General Assembly, Secretary Powell said at a meeting at the United Nations with Secretary General Kofi Annan, leading European Union officials and Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister.
That pressure has to be kept on, he said, adding, "but we cannot just take a one-and-a-quarter-page letter" signed by Foreign Minister Naji Sabri of Iraq as the end of the matter.
"We have seen this game before," he said, declaring that "the issue is not inspectors; the issue is, in the first instance, disarmament."
In a campaign appearance in Tennessee today, President Bush showed no softening in his tone toward Iraq. Calling on the United Nations to act against Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush said it was time for the member nations "to determine whether or not they'll be the United Nations or the League of Nations. It's time to determine whether or not they'll be a force for good and peace or an ineffective debating society."
Today's comments from the United States came after Iraq continued to insist that its decision to unconditionally allow weapons inspectors back had eliminated any reason for an attack on Baghdad. Mr. Hussein, meanwhile, said he would soon send "a message to the peoples of the world" through the United Nations.
Britain continued to express doubts about Iraq's true resolve, but the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who has opposed a war in Iraq, called Baghdad's decision "a great success for the United Nations," singling out Mr. Annan for praise.
But Mr. Schröder's main rival in Sunday's election, the conservative Edmund Stoiber, said the Iraqi letter was a sign of Mr. Schröder's failure, since it was world pressure on Iraq, fearful itself of war, that caused Baghdad to welcome inspectors.
Russia and China, both Security Council members, said Baghdad's decision provided an opportunity for diplomacy to work and that it could avert the use of any force.
In remarks made before the meeting attended by Secretary Powell, Mr. Ivanov told reporters at the United Nations in remarks broadcast on Russian television: "It's principally important that today, through our joint efforts, we have managed to put aside the threat of a war scenario around Iraq and return the process to a political channel."
In Baghdad, Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, said Iraq had balked at complying with United Nations resolutions because it was not sure if American and British demands were "a genuine concern or a pretext."
"If the inspectors come and act honestly, professionally in order to search for the truth they can reach the truth within a reasonable time," he told a conference attended by delegates from around the world who are sympathetic to the Iraqi position.
"But if the Americans are using this as a pretext, they might use some other way in order to commit an aggression against Iraq," he added.
The United States and Britain have described the Iraqi decision "as a tactic and a maneuver," he said, but he insisted, "It is not true because it is not the nature of the Iraqi leadership to maneuver and make tactics in such a genuine issue."
The inspectors were withdrawn in December 1998, just before the United States and Britain began bombing Iraq for violation of Security Council resolutions.
Mr. Hussein's announcement about sending a letter to the United Nations, reported from Baghdad today by the official Iraqi News Agency, contained no details about what it might contain. The agency said it would be read to the General Assembly by Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who is in New York at the United Nations assembly meeting.
Britain's home secretary, David Blunkett, warned against letting Mr. Hussein "make a monkey" of the world.
"This is a very, very serious step forward, but we are dealing with serious politics here, with someone who has every intention of making a monkey of the rest of the world," Mr. Blunkett said in a radio interview.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw expressed similar skepticism.
"We've had games played by Saddam Hussein over the last 12 years," he told reporters. "The one thing I know for certain about the Iraqi regime is that it only responds to steadfast determination by the international community."
NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, said in Brussels that the decision by Iraq was welcome, but that what Mr. Hussein did was more important than what he said.
China, a longtime supporter of Iraq, said Iraq's decision gave it a fresh chance to implement United Nations resolutions adopted at the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. A foreign ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said at a news conference in Beijing that the decision was "a positive step." Many Arabs welcomed the Iraqi move, but hopes of averting a war were tempered by fears that the decision to move militarily against Baghdad had already been taken.
Iraq's decision was welcomed in Jordan, which depends heavily on trade with Baghdad, particularly in oil.
"The Jordanian government considers this a wise decision," an official statement released in Amman said.
In Cairo, the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, said, "This is the beginning of a process of easing the tensions."
But an Arab official told Reuters that Washington seemed to have made up its mind to strike, even though Baghdad had now agreed to the world's demands.
"If the U.S. isn't happy with this, it means that they have already decided to attack Iraq, whatever Iraq does," he said.
Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, urged Washington to stop beating the "drums of war" and to work with the United Nations to resolve the crisis.
The secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, who has said a strike against Iraq would "open the gates of hell" in the Middle East, also welcomed Iraq's decision.
Arab states have said they oppose a United States strike against Baghdad, which they fear could bring instability to the region and arouse public anger, but they have also urged Iraq to let weapons teams back in to prove it is not developing weapons of mass destruction.
--------
U.N. Says Inspectors Ready for Iraq Duty
September 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-iaea-inspectors.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The United Nations' nuclear watchdog said Tuesday its weapons inspectors were ready to resume a comprehensive search for arms in Iraq ``tomorrow'' once the U.N. Security Council gave it the go-ahead.
``We are now awaiting a green light from the U.N. Security Council,'' the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said: ``We could start work tomorrow but we need the Security Council's OK. We have a team in place, we have a plan and a number of our inspectors were in Iraq before the team left in 1998 and know the country well.'' Asked if the green light could come Tuesday, Fleming said it was too early to say but did not rule it out.
The U.N. inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, a few hours before bombing by the United States and Britain.
Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction is a key requirement for the lifting of sanctions, which were imposed when Baghdad invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
The statement said that if the teams from the IAEA and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) can report full cooperation from Iraq and progress in their work, they will recommend the suspension of sanctions.
``Assuming we get full cooperation...we expect that within one year the IAEA should be in a position to report to the U.N. Security Council that as regards nuclear activities, the conditions for suspending sanctions...have been met,'' it said.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, battling world diplomatic pressure backed by the threat of U.S. military action, agreed on Monday to let inspectors back without conditions. Baghdad said that thwarted any justification for a U.S.-led attack.
``All the reasons for an attack have been eliminated,'' Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said in Baghdad.
Despite Iraq's change of position, Washington remained skeptical, insisting there was still a need for a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.
In a briefing with journalists Tuesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was asked if the U.S. would be satisfied if Iraq cooperated to the full extent required by the U.N..
``I'm not going to speculate about what would constitute compliance or satisfactory access beyond saying that we think the steps outlined for U.N. action are the ones that ought to be followed,'' he said.
``President (George W.) Bush made it clear in his speech,'' he said, referring to Bush's speech Thursday to the U.N. General Assembly. Bush has said he was ``highly doubtful'' that Saddam Hussein would meet U.S. disarmament demands.
-------- us
Pentagon Seeks N. Indian Ocean Base
Tue Sep 17, 2002
By ROBERT BURNS,
AP Military Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020917/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_military_1
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is seeking permission from Britain to base a small number of Air Force B-2 stealth bombers on the island of Diego Garcia in the northern Indian Ocean, officials said Tuesday.
The B-2s, which cost $2 billion apiece and would figure prominently in any U.S. war against Iraq, have never been based outside the United States. B-2 attack missions flown against targets in Kosovo in 1999 and in Afghanistan last year were launched from the planes' home base in Missouri.
Basing the bombers at the Indian Ocean site would cut in half the distance they would need to fly to reach Iraq. Because of the special maintenance required to preserve the B-2's radar-evading stealth qualities, climate-controlled shelters would have to be erected on Diego Garcia before the planes arrived.
Gen. John Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, declined Tuesday to confirm that the U.S. government is discussing the basing question with the British government, which controls Diego Garcia.
"I don't want to go into any details of what might or might not happen with regard to basing," he told reporters. "The B-2 is obviously fundamental to our concept of operations in any potential conflict."
Another senior defense official, however, confirmed that discussions with the British were under way.
The New York Times reported in its Tuesday editions that the United States wants to base four to six B-2s at Diego Garcia.
Asked about the advantage of stationing B-2s closer to Iraq, Jumper said, "Anytime that you can put one forward and have the reliability and the maintenance to go along with it, it helps in sortie generation."
Air Force B-1 and B-52 bombers have been allowed to use the island base to launch strikes in Afghanistan; B-52 bombers used the island during the 1991 Gulf War ( news - web sites).
In London, a spokesman for the Foreign Office said, "The issue of possible upgrades to facilities on Diego Garcia was discussed at annual talks between the U.K. and U.S. governments. The details of these talks are confidential."
On the Net:
The B-2 bomber at http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/B_2_Spirit.html
----
How Do the Pentagon's 'War Games' Work?
By Brendan I. Koerner
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2071076
The United States military recently completed its biggest "war game" ever, a three-week-long, $235 million exercise called Millennium Challenge 2002. How do modern war games work?
Every good war game starts with a plausible scenario. In the case of Millennium Challenge 2002, the U.S. military (known as the "Blue force") was pitted against a Persian Gulf nation controlled by a megalomaniac dictator (no, not Iraq, but the "Red force"). Specifics of the scenario are classified, but the game is widely believed to have centered on a mock invasion of the Red force's territory.
There are two components to a war game: field exercises and command post exercises. For the former, actual troops are dispatched to either defend or attack airfields, communications centers, and other militarily significant sites. Millennium Challenge 2002 involved nine such sites in California and Nevada, two states whose climate and terrain closely mimic those of the Near East. Hundreds of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, for example, were dispatched to capture a Red airfield in the Mojave Desert. Once secured, the airfield served as a staging ground for C-130 cargo planes to deliver Stryker armored vehicles, which then attacked adjacent facilities acting as chemical weapons plants. Live ammunition was verbotenâ€"electronic sensors mounted on people, vehicles, and buildings tallied the damage.
Command post exercises, by contrast, are exclusively virtual affairs. Generals, colonels, and other high-ranking officers sit in command centers and move around blue or red dots on screens, not terribly unlike Matthew Broderick playing "Global Thermonuclear War" in the 1983 film WarGames. Such exercises are good approximations of large-scale maneuvers, which cannot be easily replicated in the real worldâ€"it's one thing to stage a small airfield seizure, quite another to float an aircraft carrier group into a waterway that accurately approximates the Persian Gulf.
Many war games are scriptedâ€"that is, both Red and Blue officers are required to perform certain attacks and responses. A smaller number are "free play," which means anything goes. Controversy erupted over Millennium Challenge 2002 when the Red forces, commanded by a retired Marine general named Paul Van Riper, engaged in some clever free play tricks that deviated from what the Blues were expecting. Van Riper used virtual motorcycle messengers to relay orders to his virtual field commanders, for example, thereby negating the Americans'â€"er, Blue force'sâ€"ability to eavesdrop. Mere days into the game, a squad of Red digital soldiers had sunk several Blue ships in the Persian Gulf by carrying out suicide attacks with explosives-laden speedboats. That's not in the script, countered the referees, who ordered the Blue fleet to be magically resurrected.
Next question?
Explainer thanks Lt. Col. (Ret.) Fred Villella of Securesoft Systems Inc., John Pike of globalsecurity.org, and William Knowles of c4i.org.
----
U.S. Seeks to Ship More Military Hardware to Gulf
September 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-us-gulf.html
LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy is seeking to ship military vehicles and hundreds of containers full of ammunition from Europe to the Gulf amid talk that Washington is preparing for a strike on Baghdad, shipping sources said Tuesday.
The Navy's request for a large roll-on roll-off vessel is the fourth major U.S. arms delivery using commercial shipping to the Gulf since early August, which industry experts interpret as a sign it is building firepower ahead of a possible attack.
The latest request by the Military Sealift Command (MSC), the U.S. Navy's agency responsible for moving equipment by sea, was the largest so far. It was capable of carrying over 3,000 tons of materiel.
The request was made before Iraq's offer to readmit weapons inspectors Monday night, which was dismissed by Washington as a ``tactic that will fail.''
The tender document, seen by Reuters, specifies that the ship will load at three separate ports in northern and southwestern Europe for discharge in three unspecified Gulf ports in late September or early October.
The manifest specifies the ship should carry ``rolling stock, breakbulk and containers.'' It also stipulates the ``securing and stowing of ammunition containers.''
The Pentagon has said previous shipments were for planned military exercises with Kuwait, but military analysts have said the shipments, some from the United States, are consistent with a military build-up.
-------- propaganda wars
Ousting Saddam 'would be good business'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
17/09/2002
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/17/wirq217.xml/
Saddam Hussein's removal from power would be a great boost for the global economy even though war in Iraq could cost America up to £140 billion, the White House has said.
Larry Lindsey, President George W Bush's economic adviser, said increased oil production in a free Iraq could drive down oil prices.
"When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add three million to five million barrels [per day] of production to world supply," he said. "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy."
But Mr Lindsey said the bill for war could be up to four times a previous estimate by the Pentagon of £35 billion. He did not provide a breakdown but the Pentagon figure included the cost of transporting and supplying troops and producing smart bombs.
The last Gulf war in 1991 cost £40 billion.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr Lindsey said the cost would not be enough to push America into recession or spark a rise in inflation.
On the contrary, removing Saddam would take away a "huge drag on global economic growth for a foreseeable time". He said: "It's hard for me to see how we have sustained economic growth in a world where terrorists are running around."
Some American opponents of war have suggested that the economy could be severely damaged by military action. This was dismissed yesterday by Paul O'Neill, the US treasury secretary, in a speech in Portland, Maine.
"Whatever it is that's finally decided to be done, we will succeed and we can afford it," he said.
The White House had previously been reluctant to talk publicly about the potential economic benefits of military action for fear of being accused of going to war over oil.
In an effort to offset the effects of a temporary disruption in oil production from Iraq, the Bush administration has been steadily increasing the amount held in the strategic petroleum reserve.
There are currently about 600 million barrels - a month's supply - in the emergency oil stock kept in underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico. The reserve was established after the 1973-74 oil crisis to protect America against sudden supply reductions.
Oil was discovered in Iraq in 1927 at the site of what was believed to have been the "burning fiery furnace" of King Nebuchadnezzar.
Now it has reserves of at least 112 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia's 261 billion. But Iraq's oil production has dropped to 1.7 million barrels a day, compared to 3.5 million barrels before the Gulf war in 1991.
The oil price is currently hovering around $30 a barrel. This figure has gone up as anxieties over war have increased. Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, said he expected that the oil price would go up to $35 or even $40 per barrel at the start of an Iraqi conflict. But this would probably drop swiftly.
In the long term, he argued, the effect on oil prices would depend on whether US military action stabilised or destabilised the Middle East, where two thirds of the world's oil is produced.
"A viable, solidly grounded and happy democracy in Iraq would be good for Iraqis," said Dr Yergin. "It would also be good for the region and for the world economy."
----
War Horrors Take a Toll on Reporters at the Front
New York Times
September 17, 2002
By ERICA GOODE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/health/psychology/17WAR.html
The stereotype of the flinty, hard-bitten war reporter, immune to the blood and carnage of the battlefield, is common not just in Hollywood but among many reporters themselves.
But a study of foreign correspondents from six major news organizations who regularly covered wars and other armed conflicts found that a significant number were severely traumatized by what they had witnessed and experienced, so much so that their distress disrupted their daily lives.
The war reporters had substantially higher rates of serious depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than did reporters who did not cover wars.
The rates of these illnesses were also higher than those found among police officers and in the population at large, the investigators said, though comparable to those of combat veterans.
"This is a group of individuals who have returned repeatedly to war and often spent long periods of time in zones of conflict," said Dr. Anthony Feinstein, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the study, which appears this month in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The journalists in the study who had post-traumatic stress disorder, he and his colleagues wrote, were "profoundly affected by their symptoms," which included flashbacks, recurring nightmares, irritability, difficulties in concentration and hypervigilance.
The correspondents reported a range of social difficulties, the researchers found, including an inability to adjust to civil society, a reluctance to mix with friends, troubled relationships and the use of alcohol as a hypnotic.
Yet they were also unlikely to seek professional help. "There has been a culture of silence for some time in this group," Dr. Feinstein said.
He said that, to his knowledge, the study was the first of its kind.
As a group, the 140 war correspondents in the study, men and women, scored significantly higher on standardized tests measuring symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and general psychological distress than did a comparison group of 107 journalists who had not covered wars.
Among 28 correspondents who also underwent more extensive clinical interviews, the researchers found that 10.7 percent had post-traumatic stress disorder and 7.1 percent were severely depressed. More than a quarter of the journalists had had post-traumatic stress disorder at some time - in a vast majority of cases, after they began covering wartime violence - and 21.4 percent had experienced severe depression.
In comparison, none of 17 reporters who had not covered wars and were interviewed for the study had ever had post-traumatic stress disorder. One had been seriously depressed.
Dr. Feinstein and his colleagues said that of the 28 war reporters who participated in the interviews, every one had been shot at "numerous times." One survived a plane crash that killed the pilots. Two had experienced mock executions by militia groups.
One man was sleeping in a hotel room in Bosnia when a mortar shell came through the window and lodged in a cabinet beside his bed. "He was blown across the room, but he survived and took pictures of it," Dr. Feinstein said.
The risk for traumatic stress reactions among police officers and combat veterans is widely known. But Dr. Feinstein and his colleagues wrote that war reporters often knew little about post-traumatic stress and did not recognize its symptoms in themselves.
"A number of the journalists interviewed were deeply unhappy, prey to symptoms of P.T.S.D. and depression, but surprisingly unaware of what afflicted them," the researchers wrote.
On average, the foreign correspondents in the study had spent 15 years in conflict zones including Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Somalia and Afghanistan.
Dr. Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist at Michigan State University and a founder of the DART Center for Journalism and Trauma at the University of Washington, said the study was important because "the bottom line here is that journalism is a decade or so behind" in recognizing the risks to reporters who cover wars and other types of violence.
Still, Dr. Feinstein said his findings could also be viewed in another way, as evidence that on the whole, the war correspondents were remarkably resilient.
The study, he said, was meant "not to pathologize an industry, but rather to highlight the fact that a minority of war journalists do get into emotional difficulties and, as such, would benefit from treatment."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Terrorism Suspect Taken to U.S. Base for Interrogation
New York Times
September 17, 2002
By DAVID JOHNSTON with DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/international/asia/17TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the suspected member of Al Qaeda captured last week, was flown from Pakistan today under armed guard to a military base outside the United States in preparation for what senior government officials said would be a lengthy interrogation and a possible trial before a military tribunal.
The officials said lawyers from the White House, Justice Department and Pentagon have debated Mr. bin al-Shibh's legal status since he was captured last week in a shootout in Pakistan. The officials said President Bush had not yet decided Mr. bin al-Shibh's legal status.
President Bush said today that the arrest indicated that Americans remained resolved to carry on with the campaign against terrorism.
"He's the one that thought he was going to be the 20th bomber," Mr. Bush said in Davenport, Iowa. Mr. Bush was referring to the belief of federal investigators that Mr. bin al-Shibh's failed efforts to enter the country before Sept. 11, 2001, suggested that he was meant to be part of the hijacking plot.
"He thought he could hide," Mr. Bush said of Mr. bin al-Shibh. "He thought he could still threaten America. But he forgot the greatest nation on the face of the Earth is after them, one person at a time."
In Singapore today, authorities announced the arrests of 21 men they identified as members of a militant Islamic organization, strengthening evidence that the group was preparing attacks on American targets.
American officials said today that one of the other suspects arrested with Mr. bin al-Shibh was the brother of a Qaeda leader who was thought to be a central figure in the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000 as it entered the port of Aden in Yemen.
Of approximately 10 people reported captured in Pakistan with Mr. bin al-Shibh, 4 were flown out with him today, Pakistani officials said. Some officials said Mr. bin al-Shibh's ultimate destination was the detention center at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, but other officials would not confirm those reports.
Administration officials said military tribunals were created for someone precisely in Mr. bin al-Shibh's situation - a noncitizen taken into custody outside the United States who was sought for terrorism-related offenses.
A trial before a military tribunal, officials said, would allow authorities to try Mr. bin al-Shibh in a proceeding that permits the government to protect national secrets more easily than if he were tried in a civilian criminal court.
In addition, holding Mr. bin al-Shibh as a military prisoner gives intelligence and law enforcement authorities greater latitude in questioning him. In such a setting he could be held incommunicado and would not have the right, as a criminal defendant would, to have a lawyer present during questioning.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials regard Mr. bin al-Shibh as a key figure in Al Qaeda. He is believed to be one of the few people alive with a detailed knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot and has extensive information about Qaeda operations in Europe and Southeast Asia.
Several senior administration officials said today that Mr. bin al-Shibh's legal status as a military prisoner had been largely settled. But others said the issue remained open and might not be decided by President Bush for some time. Given the extraordinary nature of the situation, officials said they were deferring to the White House on that issue.
Some Justice Department officials have opposed tribunals on principle, arguing that they lack the credibility of criminal trials. But the officials said that even if Mr. bin al-Shibh was tried and convicted in a military court he could be tried later in a criminal court in the United States without being placed in double jeopardy, as long as the charges against him were substantially different.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that the capture of Mr. bin al-Shibh was a powerful signal to terrorists.
"Let there be no doubt it sends a message to other terrorists," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a briefing. "The more of these people that are rolled up and put in jail and interrogated, the more difficult it is to recruit, the more difficult it is to retain people, the more difficult it is to raise money, the more difficult it is to transfer money, the more difficult it is for those folks to move between countries, the more careful they have to be in everything they do."
Umar al-Gharib, another suspect arrested in Karachi, is said to be a brother of Tawfiq al-Atash, also known as Walid ba Atash, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, who American investigators have said was a central planner of the Cole plot.
Mr. Atash, who is still at large, provides a critical link between the Cole operation and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Along with other Cole suspects, Mr. Atash, using the name Khalad, attended a meeting in January 2000 in Malaysia with Khalid al-Midhar, a Saudi of Yemeni descent who was one of the hijackers of the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
Officials in Pakistan said Pakistani forces would continue to search "relentlessly" for Qaeda members. But they continued to play down the number of Qaeda members that they estimated remained at large in the country.
The decision to turn Mr. bin al-Shibh over to the United States followed an announcement on Sunday by the German government that it would not seek Mr. bin al-Shibh to answer murder charges filed there.
--------
Six Suspects Charged Under Broadly Worded Act
New York Times
September 17, 2002
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/nyregion/17CHAR.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - The six men from western New York who have been accused of having ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network are being prosecuted under a broadly worded 1996 law that the Justice Department has depended on in several recent cases and that at least one federal judge has described as unconstitutional.
The law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was passed by Congress largely in response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, makes it illegal to provide "material support or resources" to any group designated by the United States as a "terrorist organization."
Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Justice Department has brought several cases in which defendants have been charged with providing "material support" for terrorists.
Last month, a Seattle man, Earnest James Ujaama, a Muslim who was born James Ernest Thompson, was indicted under the law and accused of conspiring to provide training, computer services and safe houses to Al Qaeda. John Walker Lindh, the young Muslim convert from Northern California who was captured in Afghanistan, was charged under the 1996 law; he eventually pleaded guilty under a different but related law and confessed that he had signed on as a Taliban soldier.
The Justice Department won its first conviction under the 1996 law in June, when a Charlotte, N.C., businessman was convicted of financing Hezbollah terrorists.
On that same day, however, a federal judge in Los Angeles, Robert M. Takasugi, dismissed the department's case against seven people accused of funneling charitable donations to an Iranian military group.
Judge Takasugi declared the law "unconstitutional on its face" because it gave groups accused of terrorism - as opposed to people accused of providing them with support - no chance to contest the allegation. The Justice Department has appealed.
In the case of the six Arab-American men arrested so far, prosecutors have alleged that by traveling to Afghanistan last year to attend a Qaeda training camp and offering to serve as soldiers, the suspects provided "material support" to Mr. bin Laden.
There has been no allegation that the men, all native Americans of Yemeni descent, had planned any terrorist attack.
Federal officials have said they are convinced that Congress intended the law to be used in cases like the one in Buffalo. "The legislative history is full of references to the need to block people from providing any sort of assistance to terrorist groups," said a department official.
The law says "material support" includes almost anything of value, except for medicine or religious supplies, and includes a ban on "personnel" or "training" for terrorist groups. "Even if a defendant intends for his donation to a terrorist group to be used for a beneficial purpose - even if it's meant for widows and orphans - it's still illegal," the official said.
David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said he believed the 1996 law was unconstitutionally broad because it resulted in "guilt by association." He said its definition of terrorism "could include wholly protected First Amendment activity, including merely writing an op-ed piece or lobbying."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Calif.: Blackouts Weren't Necessary
September 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-California-Power.html
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Most of the blackouts that plagued California during its 2000-2001 energy crisis would have been avoided if power wholesalers had operated at capacity, according to a report released Tuesday by state power regulators.
The analysis by the California Public Utilities Commission and Portland-based McCullough Research found that all four Southern California blackouts and four of the seven Northern California blackouts occurred because power-plant operators produced less than they could have.
Commission President Loretta Lynch said the five largest non-utility electricity generators were not operating at maximum capacity on all but two of the 32 days during which the state saw either blackouts or cuts in service to customers that had agreed to give up power during electricity crises.
``The only reason that is imaginable as to why generators would not generate power ... is because they thought that withholding (energy) from the market would drive the price up,'' said the commission's general counsel, Gary Cohen.
Jan Smutny-Jones, executive director of the Independent Energy Producers, challenged the report's findings, arguing California's generators increased output by 88 percent during the energy crisis.
``California's merchant generators ran at historically high levels to power our state throughout the crisis,'' Smutny-Jones said in a statement. ``Our collective failure to address the state's dysfunctional electricity market is what cultivated the energy crisis.''
The report was presented Tuesday to a state Senate committee investigating price manipulation of the wholesale energy market. It's based on information obtained through the committee, which has subpoenaed more than two dozen energy companies.
The state claims it was overcharged nearly $20 billion during the power crisis by the five largest generators: Duke, Dynegy, Mirant, Reliant and AES/Williams. The companies bought power plants from the state's three major investor-owned utilities under state-ordered electricity deregulation in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gray Davis signed into law Tuesday a bill that requires power companies to start building generating plants within 12 months of receiving a construction permit.
The bill's author, Sen. Steve Peace, said it is designed to stop energy companies from trying to sell or trade their permits after receiving them to turn a profit.
Permit holders would be eligible for an extension after the 12 months if they could prove the delay was because of circumstances beyond their control.
-------- environment
LA babies get lifetime's toxic air in 2 weeks - study
REUTERS USA:
September 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17792/story.htm
LOS ANGELES - A two-week-old baby <p align="right">in the Los Angeles area has already been exposed to more toxic air pollution than the U.S. government deems acceptable as a cancer risk over a lifetime, according to a report yesterday by an environmental campaign group.
The study of air pollution in California by the National Environmental Trust also said that even if a young child moved away from California, or if the air had been cleaned up by the time he or she reached adulthood, "the potential (cancer) risk that a child rapidly accumulates in California from simply breathing will not go away."
California, known to be the nation's smoggiest state, already has a potential cancer risk to adults that is hundreds of times above levels seen as acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.
But the report said children were more vulnerable to pollutants than adults because, pound for pound, they breathe more air, drink more water, eat more food and play outdoors more than adults.
"A baby born in California will be exposed to such high levels of toxic air contaminants that the child will exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) lifetime acceptable exposure level for cancer at a very early age, and will exceed the lifetime acceptable exposure level by many multiples by age 18," the Washington D.C-based environmental campaign group said.
The "Toxic Beginnings" study divided California into five geographical areas. It concluded that in Los Angeles an infant would have reached the EPA's one chance in one million limit of contracting cancer from contaminants in 12 days, and in Sacramento it would take 23 days.
It said diesel exhaust - from trucks and cars, school buses, and farm and construction equipment - was still the worst source of air pollution. But it also took into account chemicals emitted by dry cleaners and factories as well as pesticides, adhesives and lubricant oils.
The National Environmental Trust urged federal and state policy makers to make cleaning up the air a priority.
"The overwhelming policy implication of these findings can be reduced to one word: URGENCY", it said.
It recommended that regional and local governments emphasize alternative technologies and fuels, replace diesel school buses and other municipal vehicles with cleaner alternative fuel models and enforce existing laws on fuel emissions.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Throngs Rally Against Ukraine's Scandal-Scarred Leader
New York Times
September 17, 2002
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/international/europe/17KIEV.html
KIEV, Sept. 16 - Thousands of protesters filled downtown Kiev's central square today to demand the resignation of Ukraine's scandal-ensnared president, Leonid Kuchma. An unrepentant Mr. Kuchma gave no hint of acceding to them.
As a throng of demonstrators stretched perhaps a half mile down Kiev's main avenue, waving placards and chanting antigovernment slogans, Mr. Kuchma was in Salzburg, Austria, at an international economic forum. The police and government security agents watched the protesters, some filming events with hand-held video cameras.
Demonstrators said 100,000 people had turned out, while the police said it was closer to 15,000. Reuters news agency estimated 20,000, and said it was the largest rally since Ukraine became independent 11 years ago.
The true test of today's outpouring was likely to be whether the protests gain strength, as Mr. Kuchma's critics predict, or fizzle out, as some private experts suggest.
Organizers staged simultaneous protest rallies in other major cities today, with varying results. In Lviv, a western city that was the seat of the nation's independence movement, as many as 10,000 people were said to have turned out. But in Dnipropetrovsk, a much larger eastern city that is a seat of Soviet nostalgia - and Mr. Kuchma's hometown - a rally was said to have drawn only about 3,000.
Mr. Kuchma initially appeared in serious trouble when similar protests stretched over three months in early 2001. But he rode them out, and it was unclear today whether average Ukrainians, inured by years of scandal, have the stomach for a concerted move to oust their president.
Mr. Kuchma's prime minister, Anatoly Kinakh, contended that the protesters had drawn far fewer supporters than they had predicted, proof that Ukraine's political situation is "under control and stable."
But a 33-year-old protester who identified himself only as Volodya, pausing tonight while erecting a tent in the street in front of Mr. Kuchma's administration building, said: "Before, it was just some of the socialists against Kuchma. Now it's a united opposition. And the more people unite, the more I hope Kuchma will see it and have to resign."
At first blush, the protesters did present a united front. It was initially organized by the Communists, the Socialists and a maverick political faction run by a charismatic legislator, Yulia Tymoshenko.
Over the weekend, Ukraine's most popular politician, former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, placed his faction, Our Ukraine, solidly behind the protests.
Beneath the surface, however, the factions differed over what they wanted to achieve. While the organizers want Mr. Kuchma to quit, Mr. Yushchenko, a centrist, has called only for an end to the corruption and mild political repression that have been staples of Mr. Kuchma's tenure. He also seeks a new coalition in Parliament, where Mr. Kuchma's forces have used pressure tactics and presidential favors to keep control despite losing large numbers of seats in elections last spring.
"All experts and representatives of the opposition think that today's action should be considered only as the beginning of a long period of protest," Mykola Tomenko, a member of Our Ukraine who heads Parliament's committee on freedom of information, said in an interview before the protest began. "But it will all depend on today's actions."
Mr. Kuchma's presidency has been in trouble virtually since he won re-election to a second five-year term in late 1999. But serious street protests erupted only in early 2001, after a presidential security guard released secretly taped conversations that appeared to implicate Mr. Kuchma in the abduction of an opposition journalist, Georgy Gongadze, whose killing remains unsolved.
Mr. Kuchma has adamantly denied any role in the crime and has suggested that the clandestine recordings had been doctored to make him appear involved.
His political standing has fallen further this year with the release of more secret tape recordings, this time seeming to link him to proposals to smuggle arms to Iraq and other nations. Ukraine's cabinet denied again today that the government had sold any arms to Iraq.
A string of disasters - the accidental downing of a Russian passenger airliner one year ago by a Ukrainian missile; a crash at a Lviv air show this summer that killed 23 children and 53 adults, and a coal-mine explosion in July in which 35 workers died - have only reinforced the idea of a government either unable or unwilling to pull the country out of its Soviet-era slough.
The protest followed a string of government warnings that demonstrators would face arrest or worse if their actions got out of hand.
But tonight, the police made no move to stop protesters from erecting a tent city outside the president's offices.
On Independence Square in Kiev, where protesters converged, 27-year-old Alla Schpak stood at her sidewalk beer stand and said it had been a banner day for alcohol sales. "But I'd have preferred a better day than this - maybe a holiday," she said. "People were really angry."
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10 'ambassadors for peace' are recognized
September 17, 2002
By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020917-445433.htm
Hak Ja Han Moon called on several hundred "ambassadors for peace" yesterday to join the cause for unity in the world.
Mrs. Moon, the wife of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the founder and president of the Women's Federation for World Peace, spoke to an audience of 750 persons at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, the first stop of a 12-city tour to recruit "ambassadors" for the effort.
"We are living in a truly historic and providential moment," she said. "This is a time of great heavenly fortune, the time when we will build the ideal world of peace."
Mrs. Moon identified 10 community leaders as "ambassadors for peace," an award recognizing "the most active and committed peacemakers." They include:
•Angela Sailor, associate director, White House office of public liaison
•Elroy Sailor, deputy chief of staff, House Republican conference
•Larry Pressler, the former Republican senator from South Dakota, and his wife, Harriet Pressler, a Washington real estate broker.
•Blasco Penaherrera, Ecuadorian ambassador to the United States, accepting for his wife, Zeyned Penaherrera.
•Florence Pendleton, Washington's "shadow senator," or lobbyist for District statehood.
•Virginia Williams, mother of Mayor Anthony Williams.
•Dottie J. Tiger, coordinator, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
•The Rev. Betty Lancaster-Short, Howard University.
•Mrs. Thuy Nguyen Hugo, community services director, Metropolitan Washington YMCA.
Mrs. Moon, who has just completed a tour of major Asian cities, will speak at Bridgeport, Conn., Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Newark, N.J., and New York City, the final stop, on Sept. 30.
Last night she urged her audience to join "all humanity to fulfill the responsibility to which we have been called by uniting to build a world of peace that transcends race, ideology and national boundaries."
The Ambassadors for Peace initiative is a project of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace.
"She is reaching out to women in particular, and challenging leaders from all religions, races, and professional backgrounds to find the keys to peace within the common values of the world's religious traditions," spokesmen for the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification of North America, also founded by Rev. and Mrs. Moon, said last night. The federation said Mrs. Moon "plans to recognize the most active and committed women peacemakers as 'ambassadors for peace.' They will share this honor with thousands who have been similarly recognized around the world."
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Moscow weighs future of 'Iron Felix' statue
September 17, 2002
By Anthony Louis
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020917-39880815.htm
MOSCOW - A Russian reform party and human rights activists staged a rally yesterday in central Moscow to block the return of a statue of Soviet-era secret police chief Felix Dzerzhinsky to its site in front of the FSB security service headquarters.
The Union of Rightist Forces, known by its Russian initials of SPS, began collecting signatures to block the return of the monument, which had been removed from Lubyanka Square in August 1991 after Communist rule crumbled.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov sparked the debate on the future of the statue last week, insisting the 14-ton bronze monument was an outstanding work of art that deserved to regain its prominent place in the heart of Moscow.
Mr. Luzhkov said the dismantling of the monument a decade ago was motivated "exclusively by the wave of protest against the existing [Soviet] system, but not against the monument itself."
However, as debate raged among the intelligentsia, politicians representing reform parties, such as Yabloko and the SPS, said they were categorically opposed to the return of "Iron Felix," as the founder of what became the KGB is known.
"Dzerzhinsky was a butcher who killed millions of Russians," SPS leader Boris Nemtsov told a crowd of supporters gathered in front of the headquarters of the FSB, formerly the KGB.
Mr. Nemtsov said Dzerzhinsky's name alone was a constant reminder of the atrocities committed by the Soviet regime.
"It is not a question of whether this monument is good or bad. It is a symbol of a totalitarian era that ended not so long ago," Mr. Nemtsov said.
Among those to support the return of Iron Felix were the leaders of Communist, nationalist and agrarian parties.
Mr. Luzhkov, who had expected a heated debate about the future of the statue, infuriated and astonished many as he had earlier supported the removal of the statue and called for a new monument to replace it.
In 1998, Mr. Luzhkov rejected a motion by Communists to restore the statue, but he was a changed man during the weekend, championing the benefits of restoring the "beautiful architectural and artistic composition which was a dominant feature of the square."
Mr. Luzhkov said the statue was so fine it was "flawless" and "beyond reproach."
In Russian minds, Dzerzhinsky is still most often associated with the brutalities of the Bolshevik regime and the omnipotence of its secret services, which he came to epitomize from the early days of Communist rule.
Dzerzhinsky was the chairman of the notorious Cheka, the first Soviet secret police organization, the precursor of the NKVD and later KGB.
A Pole by nationality, Dzerzhinsky also became known for his fanaticism in serving the Soviet regime and ruthless use of terror against all dissenters. After leaving the secret service, he held other important posts in the Soviet government.
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Dozens Injured as Police Break Up Paraguay Protest
September 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-paraguay-protests.html
ASUNCION, Paraguay (Reuters) - Paraguayan police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse anti-government protesters on Tuesday, injuring 67 people and arresting dozens more, officials said.
Some 9,000 demonstrators had gathered near Congress on Monday night to demand the resignation of unpopular President Luis Gonzalez Macchi, besieged by an economic slump and soaring unemployment in this poor, landlocked South American nation of 5 million people.
About 5,000 followers of Gonzalez Macchi's rival, alleged coup plotter Lino Oviedo, who lives in exile in Brazil, had decided to remain in front of Congress until the president resigned, but riot squads and mounted police moved in.latest troubles subsided in this California-sized country, beset by political instability in the 1990s after the end of a military dictatorship.
But it could be only a brief respite. Farmers, a powerful sector in Paraguay, plan a national protest on Monday against the economic policies of the government.
Supporters of Oviedo, popular in polls despite allegations he had plotted coups, also clashed with security forces two months ago, leaving two protesters dead and dozens injured and prompting a temporary suspension of civil liberties for the first time in two years.
``We exhausted all attempts at peaceful negotiation,'' said state prosecutor Alejandro Nissen, who ordered police to break up the latest protest. Four former lawmakers, all Oviedo sympathizers, were ordered arrested, he added.
Sanchez Villagra, one of the politicians arrested, charged that there was ``police brutality here.''
``It was not necessary to use this kind of force against women and children,'' Villagra said.
Gonzalez Macchi decided to work at his official residence instead of the presidential palace, which is near Congress.
BACKTRACKS ON PRIVATIZATIONS
Paraguay is suffering from economic crises in neighboring giants Argentina and Brazil. Fear of contagion -- similar to that in Uruguay last month -- led to a run on the frail banking system earlier this year.
Social unrest this year has already forced Gonzalez Macchi to backtrack on privatization plans. The president, who was appointed in 1999 after his predecessor resigned, also has been linked to a series of corruption scandals.
Many of Paraguay's people live in poverty, often as landless subsistence farmers. Economists estimate nearly half of the country's economy, stagnant or shrinking since 1995, depends on smuggling of goods like cigarettes, VCRs and fake brand-name clothes.
Paraguay has not achieved democratic stability since a 1989 coup ousted dictator Alfredo Stroessner, ending 35 years as one of South America's most notorious police states.
Oviedo, in exile in Brazil, began a presidential campaign in 1998 but stepped down when he was charged with having plotted a 1996 coup attempt.
Investigators suspect him of masterminding the assassination of Vice President Luis Argana, an avowed rival, in 1999 and a military rebellion in 2000 that failed to unseat Gonzalez Macchi's government.
Paraguay's next presidential election is due in 2003.
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50,000 call for Kuchma's resignation
By Natalia A. Feduschak
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 17, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/200
KIEV - About 50,000 people converged on the Ukrainian capital yesterday demanding the resignation of President Leonid Kuchma in the largest display yet of public opposition to his rule.
Their calls were supported by four leading opposition leaders, including Victor Yushchenko, a popular reformist, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a former oil and gas baroness who has become the president's leading critic.
The protests came two years to the day after the mysterious death of Internet journalist Georgiy Gongadze. His headless corpse was found in a forest some 90 miles outside Kiev shortly after a voice, reported to be that of Mr. Kuchma, was heard on secretly recorded tapes telling aides to get rid of the journalist.
Organizers say they expected twice the number of protesters, but that the government took extreme measures to block the arrival of participants.
Militiamen were stopping busloads of passengers bound for Kiev. In the western city of Lviv, only 10 buses out of ones carrying nearly 10,000 people were able to make it to the capital, said Taras Chornovil, a lawmaker representing the region.
Rukh, the pro-democracy movement, reported that an estimated 10,000 people demonstrated in Mr. Kuchma's hometown, the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. Russian television reported some 20,000 people at a rally in Lviv, where Mr. Gongadze lived, called for the president's resignation as well as those of regional leaders.
There was a coverage blackout until an hour before the protests, which began at 3 p.m. All of the country's national television stations underwent unscheduled "profilaktyka," or technical inspections.
Yesterday's action puts Mr. Kuchma, who was away from Kiev at an economic forum in Salzburg, Austria, in a delicate situation.
On Aug. 24, the president announced that Ukraine needed significant reforms. He proposed constitutional changes that would transform the country to a parliamentary-presidential republic, where the president's role would be weakened.
But opposition forces, led by Mrs. Tymoshenko, said they will settle for nothing less that the president's resignation.
They contend that Mr. Kuchma has corrupted government, is driving Ukrainians to the brink of poverty and lacks the moral authority to rule.
"We want honest politics," she told demonstrators through a loudspeaker in the pouring rain. It is not clear if Mr. Kuchma, who arrives from Austria today, will meet with opposition leaders who pledged to wait overnight outside his office.
The conflict is also awkward for Mr. Yushchenko, who is considered a presidential front-runner. Although he signed the appeal calling for the Mr. Kuchma's resignation, he has sought a more moderate approach to the leadership crisis.
Over the weekend, Mr. Yushchenko sponsored a forum of democratic forces that concluded with an agreement with some pro-presidential political groups that would open the door to a coalition government.
Mr. Yushchenko's political grouping, called Our Ukraine, has given Mr. Kuchma until Sept. 29 to decide whether he will concede to a coalition government. Otherwise, parties aligned with Mr. Yushchenko said they will again take to the streets demanding reforms.
"Ukraine is without a government," Mr. Yushchenko told protesters yesterday. "But we know how to get out of this situation ... and what road to take."
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Anti-War Rally Outside Air Force Expo
METRO In Brief
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Washington Post; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26764-2002Sep16?language=printer
About 50 anti-war demonstrators rallied yesterday morning at Connecticut Avenue and Woodley Road NW near the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, where the U.S. Air Force Association is holding its annual Aerospace Technology Exposition.
The rally was organized by International ANSWER, a coalition of anti-war groups.
Protesters chanted slogans opposing possible military action in Iraq and criticized the Pentagon's spending policies. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was scheduled as a keynote speaker, but he was unable to attend.
The expo continues through tomorrow, and protesters said they plan to demonstrate each day. The Air Force event features booths from more than 100 defense contractors promoting everything from air-to-ground missiles to waterproof combat boots.
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Protesters hunt nuclear fuel shipment in Irish Sea
REUTERS UK:
September 17, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17781/story.htm
LONDON - A flotilla of yachts headed by the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior set sail on the weekend to find and protest against two ships carrying nuclear fuel to Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant.
Protesters say the MOX fuel aboard the two ships, Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, is vulnerable to terrorist attack and should not travel by sea.
"The Irish Sea should never be used as a nuclear highway ever again," Jim Corr, guitarist with the Irish rock band The Corrs, said in a statement. He was sailing with protesters on the Rainbow Warrior.
The ships are nearing the end of an 18,000 mile (28,800 km) journey to Britain from Japan, where the fuel was rejected because documents about the shipment had been falsified by state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL).
The fuel is a mix of plutonium and uranium oxides (MOX) which could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Rainbow Warrior Captain Daniel Rizzoti told Reuters by telephone early on the weekend: "We're heading south through the Irish Sea and the other half of the flotilla has headed north. There's been no sighting of the ships, but we'll find them for sure."
The two ships, each armed with a 30 millimetre cannon, are being tracked by two British nuclear submarines for security reasons, the Observer newspaper said on the weekend.
"There is now more chance of an attack on a nuclear facility or vessel since September 11," campaigner Des Llewellyn said in a statement.
"The UK government are making it easier for terrorists to make that attack by shipping nuclear material around the world," he added.
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Confrontation at sea as nuclear ships near England
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
By Georgina Prodhan,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09172002/reu_48434.asp
LONDON - Antinuclear activists and two ships carrying radioactive material confronted each other in the Irish Sea Monday as the shipment neared its English destination after a controversial two-month journey from Japan.
A flotilla of boats and dinghies led by the flagship Rainbow Warrior of the environmental group Greenpeace circled the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, which fired water cannons to keep protesters at bay, according to an activist on board the Rainbow Warrior.
"The ships are passing us right now," said Greenpeace campaigner Mhairi Dunlop. "They've got water cannons on now and armed guards are on board. They've got five guards down one side of the Pintail. We're making sure that they hear us loud and clear. They're only one mile outside Irish territorial waters. It's sheer arrogance from this nuclear company that thinks it can just railroad everyone and bully everybody," she added.
The shipment of nuclear waste by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) - the first of its kind since last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States - stirred up international protest during its epic 18,000-mile voyage from Japan to the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria, northwest England.
INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION
Environmentalists and national governments from New Zealand to Ireland feared the cargo of potentially weapons-usable MOX - mixed uranium and plutonium oxide fuel - could prove an attractive booty to terrorists on the high seas. New Zealand was particularly vocal in its opposition to the shipments passing through the Pacific Ocean, demanding Britain and Japan accept full responsibility for any accident that might occur.
The transport has also provoked a row between Britain and Ireland, just 110 miles across the Irish Sea from the Sellafield plant. Irish Environment Minister Martin Cullen said as the shipment set off from Japan that it posed "an unacceptable risk to the environment of Ireland and the health and economic wellbeing of its population."
The shipment has proved an embarrassment to state-owned BNFL. The company was forced to take the MOX back from the Japanese clients to whom they had sold it after admitting they had falsified safety documents.
And the episode comes at a time of crisis for the creaking British nuclear industry.
NUCLEAR CRISIS
BNFL runs the country's oldest reactors, including six Magnox plants some 50 years old, and manages fuel and waste operations. The company announced record losses of US$3.6 billion in the year to March. The rest of the nuclear power industry was privatized six years ago as British Energy and produces one-quarter of the nation's electricity, but last week had to be bailed out by the government to the tune of $640 million.
BNFL was not immediately available for comment on the confrontation with Greenpeace. But in an earlier statement, the company's head of marine transport, Malcolm Miller, said, "I would call upon anyone wishing to protest to do so in a safe and responsible manner."
A second flotilla of protest vessels was preparing to meet the two nuclear ships on their arrival in Cumbria Tuesday morning.
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