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NUCLEAR
Gulf veterans leery of another war
In war, Israel retains the Samson option
Missile Silo and Chalet for Sale
New Bush Strategy: America As World's Cop
Bush administration asks Congress to shelve new Syria sanctions
MILITARY
Rwanda enlarges Congo pullout amid fears of chaos
Economists Weigh the Uncertainties Arising From War With Iraq
The War And Iran
U.S. Vehicle Aids in Mine Clearing
NATO rapid-reaction force urged
U.S. Wants to Reshape NATO Missions
Russia opposes new resolution
Putin bows to Blair and Bush over Iraq resolution
Iraq not alone in defying resolutions of U.N. body
Pentagon Loses Track Of Millions in Aid
Bush Gets Military's Plans for Iraq
Bush Has Received Pentagon Options on Attacking Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI Agent Warned About 9/11 Hijacker
Agent: FBI never got 9/11 data
Twenty-eight dead in Dominican prison riot
Del. City Defends Photography Policy
Residents Unprepared For Attack, Leaders Say
ENERGY AND OTHER
Freedom from Oil's Yoke
Bhopal Seethes, Pained and Poor 18 Years Later
ACTIVISTS
Arrested for Peace?
Civil Liberties Groups Warn on Surveillance
Police Consider Legal Action In Effort to Disrupt Protests
Falun Gong Members Receive Stiff Sentences
Bishops, Ethicists Urge Bush to Avoid War
Vigil Draws Attention To Suffering in Sudan
China Frees AIDS Activist After Month of Outcry
Activist to Document Actions in Iraq
China Frees AIDS Activist After International Protests
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Gulf veterans leery of another war
U.S. hasn't updated chemical warfare equipment, they say
By Dick Foster,
Rocky Mountain News
September 21, 2002
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1430552,00.html
If President Bush is counting on veterans of the last Persian Gulf War to support a new one, he might be counting wrong.
Many Gulf War veterans are casting a wary eye on the administration's plans and reasons for another war against Iraq.
There's no shortage of patriotism among the vets. They recognize Saddam Hussein as the dangerous tyrant they drove out of Kuwait 11 years ago.
Some support action to oust him and finish the job left undone in 1991.
But many vets doubt the administration's arguments that Saddam poses an imminent threat to the United States that is worth American lives.
Some say policymakers are underestimating Saddam's ability to complicate any campaign against him, a mistake that caused tens of thousands of American casualties in the first Gulf War. Many say the military has not updated equipment to protect troops from chemical and biological weapons that caused such havoc after the first conflict.
This time, the vets expect prolonged, bloody guerrilla warfare in the streets of Baghdad and the renewed use of chemical and biological weapons. They do not want to see their successors pulled into an unexpectedly costly war.
"It's a very risky proposition. It's going to be a bloody mess if we do this," said Dennis McCormack, a retired Army helicopter pilot from Colorado Springs who logged three tours in Vietnam and flew in northern Iraq protecting the Kurds immediately after Desert Storm.
"There will be guerrilla war in the cities. It won't be like the last one. It will be more like Somalia, where we're outnumbered 20 to 1 and every window on every street could have somebody shooting at you. It's going to be bloody and long and indecisive," he said.
McCormack is concerned that the U.S. might be short of the forces needed for waging the war alone, without the coalition of 34 countries who supplied a quarter-million troops in the last war. "Even then, we were pulling units from everywhere to fight. We don't have those forces now, and I don't know if there's enough to do the job," he said.
Steve Robinson, a 20-year Army veteran who served in the Gulf War, agreed that close-in combat is inevitable.
"War can't be won by air alone," he said. "If you're going to make a regime change in Baghdad, you're going to have to put troops on the ground and go in and fight. That's the kind of battle we're going to face, and it's one we haven't trained for."
Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an organization of about 10,000 Gulf War veterans, said the Bush administration has not made a case that Saddam is a threat to the United States.
"We're not saying we want to prevent a war with Iraq. If the president can show us that we're in a situation where we've got to lay down American lives because Saddam Hussein is going to affect our nation, then he needs to make that case," Robinson said.
Jim Van Houten, a Gulf War veteran from Denver, agrees on the hazards but says Saddam "has to go."
"In 1991, I said that because we did not take care of it now, within 10 years we're going to be dealing with this man again. I was just one year off," Van Houten said.
"It scares me a little that we've got to do it by ourselves, but my sense is he's working on a nuclear capability. If you weigh what we're doing against the consequence of not doing it, it seems we have to take the action."
But the veterans worried that the U.S. military is inviting thousands of new American casualties by its failure to heed lessons of the first Gulf War.
Retired First Sgt. Dennis Ward of Houston, a member of the Gulf War Resource Center, said the military has changed none of its protective equipment for chemical and biological weapons encountered in the first Gulf War and it has not trained for the prolonged conflict that may ensue this time.
"The American public has got to be prepared. They don't know what kind of a war this is," Ward said. "The civilian sector has state-of-the-art chemical hazardous material suits. We don't have them in the military. We are not ready to go into sustained operations in chemical environments."
"We know that there are serious deficiencies and flaws that have not been corrected as we approach this new Gulf War. We know that if Iraq is going to use chemical and biological weapons, we're going to be fighting on a battlefield even worse than the one we faced the last time," Robinson said.
The 1991 war was at first hailed as a stunning victory for the U.S. and its allies, but the years have told a different story.
The coalition of 34 nations and nearly 1 million troops, including 697,000 Americans, smashed Saddam's army in four days with minimal casualties. There were 213 coalition troops killed in battle, 148 of them Americans. Another 145 Americans died in non-combat circumstances and 467 Americans were wounded.
But 11 years later, the human toll has soared. More than 159,000 American Gulf War veterans are receiving disability payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Thousands suffer from memory loss, dizziness, blurred vision, speech difficulties, nerve disorders, muscle weakness. Many have chronic skin disorders, including rashes. They have reported incidences of cancers in themselves and birth defects in their children, though U.S. government studies deny they are related to the war.
Research has failed to pinpoint the cause of the soldiers' disabilities, but the potential sources were many. Thousands of troops may have been exposed to chemical weapons launched by Saddam on SCUD missiles or dispersed into the atmosphere when the U.S. bombed Iraqi munitions plants and destroyed stockpiles. Others were exposed to radiation on the battlefield with the use of armor-piercing depleted uranium ammunition by U.S. forces.
Thousands of troops also had received batteries of shots that included anthrax vaccinations now the subject of controversy and an experimental anti-nerve gas pill, pyridostigmine bromide.
"We're now 11-plus years after the last Gulf War," Robinson said, "and I get calls every day from veterans who can't work anymore because they're so ill, their families are falling apart, they're losing their homes and they can't get access to the VA. Is that what we want with this next generation?"
fosterd@RockyMountainNews.com or (719)633-4442
-------- israel
In war, Israel retains the Samson option
September 21 2002
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/20/1032054963247.html
In biblical times, the Israelites relied on God to triumph miraculously over their enemies.
Modern Israelis rely for protection on weapons with God-like powers that could destroy entire nations.
The frightening possibility that Israel may unleash these weapons of mass destruction is preoccupying strategic planners and analysts as the United States prepares to attack Iraq, because Israel is a likely target for retaliation by Baghdad.
In the 1991 Gulf War Saddam Hussein hit Israel with Scud missiles. But he used only conventional warheads, which did not cause significant casualties.
This helped the US to make a deal with Israel's then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, not to fire back at Iraq.
Would both countries show such restraint in a future war?
Saddam has good cause to think twice about going a step further and using biological or chemical weapons against Israel, as the consequence could be that he and his country might cease to exist.
Israel, of course, does not officially admit that it has nuclear weapons. Since 1965 it has "refused to confirm or deny", although it has said that it "will not be the first to introduce them into the Middle East".
It has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying it cannot rely on international safeguards when it is in a permanent state of war with much of the Arab world.
In declarations to the United Nations, Israel has instead offered to negotiate a multi-lateral agreement involving all the nations in the region to transform the Middle East into a nuclear-free zone.
Shimon Peres, the Foreign Minister, has offered the clearest public admission that Israel has nuclear weapons.
"We felt that the reason why Israel was attacked five times, without any provocation, was because some of our neighbours thought they could overpower us, and we wanted to create a situation in which this temptation would no longer exist," he said.
The rest of the world is in no doubt. In 1999 the US Department of Energy ranked Israel, one of the smallest countries on Earth, sixth among nations possessing nuclear weapons.
And many believe it would be prepared to use them.
As Israel's most respected military affairs commentator, Ze'ev Schiff, has put it: "If Iraq strikes at Israel with non-conventional warheads, causing massive casualties among the civil population, Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country."
The possibility of Israel using its secret arsenal against Iraq was first raised in the Gulf War by the then US defence secretary, Dick Cheney, who is now Vice-President.
"This assessment has only been strengthened since then, because, according to all the signs, Iraq now has biological weapons that could cause mass casualties," Schiff wrote.
"According to one assessment, military-grade biological weapons could be almost as lethal as a nuclear bomb."
Anthony Cordesman, a fellow at the Centre for Strategic Affairs, told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee he believed Israel would respond with nuclear strikes against Iraq if there was a "lethal biological strike on an Israeli city".
The American journalist Seymour Hersh has referred to the "Samson option", referring to the biblical figure who pushed apart pillars to bring down a temple in Gaza, killing 3000 Philistines and himself.
"Should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel ... a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a [last] resort, would now be a strong possibility," Hersh wrote more than 10 years ago.
He also wrote at the time that "the size and sophistication of Israel's arsenal allow men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East, aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force".
Hersh may not have foreseen that Mr Sharon would be Prime Minister today. But Mr Sharon does not rule alone and he will have plenty of advice that the nuclear option is strictly a last resort.
In particular, Mr Peres will be arguing that the weapon's greatest power is to bring Arab leaders to the negotiating table, not to their knees.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Missile Silo and Chalet for Sale
September 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Silo-Chalet.html
SARANAC, N.Y. (AP) -- On the surface, the house built by Bruce Francisco looks like a modest mountain chalet, with a wraparound porch and a big sunny room to take in the view.
Then look at what lies below.
A heavy steel door opens to stairs descending into a cool, silent habitat built within the cylindrical remains of a Cold War relic.
Francisco and his cousin, Gregory Gibbons, converted a former Atlas F missile silo site into a luxury home. Now they're trying to sell it on the Internet auction site eBay.
``This represents a unique period of American history,'' Francisco said.
The silo, which lies north of the High Peaks of the Adirondack Mountains and about 25 miles south of the Canadian border, was built when the nation's fears were focused not on terrorism but on the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Atlas F missile silos were constructed around the country in the late 1950s and early '60s, only to be decommissioned when the missile technology became obsolete.
Most were abandoned. Steel salvagers gutted many. At some sites, town highway departments have stashed equipment or stockpiled sand on top of sealed silo doors.
Only a handful of people, like Francisco, have turned them into homes.
``We took the end result of $18 million in government wasted spending (1958 dollars) and turned it into a rare and unique private airport mountain getaway,'' Francisco and Gibbons say on their Web site, http://www.silohome.com.
Francisco said the silo is designed to withstand a nuclear impact, making the home about as secure as one can get.
Each Atlas F site housed an 85-foot-tall intercontinental ballistic missile in a 185-foot-deep, 50-foot-wide, underground cylinder of ``super hardened'' concrete.
Beside that cylinder was a second that housed the launch control center, which is where Francisco and Gibbons put in three bedrooms, baths and a kitchen.
Visitors descend two flights of stairs in a concrete shaft and go through two bank-vault-like steel doors. A door opens into a wide cylindrical room with gleaming hardwood floors and a 10-foot-high ceiling.
The space is silent as a tomb.
``Nobody would have any trouble sleeping down here,'' Francisco said.
Converting the aging bunker was no easy task.
The silo and control center were filled with some 3 million gallons of water and sludge, which had to be pumped out. The 2,000-pound blast doors in the access tunnels were rusted in place.
The laundry area leads to the missile silo. Illuminated by stadium lights, the rusty nine-story framework that once cradled a doomsday missile looks like a science fiction movie set.
Francisco's Web site includes the question: ``Does Russia still have this site as a target?''
The answer -- ``NO.''
The silo home has been on the market for two years. Bidding in the eBay auction, which ends Sept. 25, starts at $2.1 million. So far, the eBay site shows no bids.
Ed Peden, who runs 20th Century Castles from his silo home in Dover, Kansas, markets similar missile sites as potential homes or industrial facilities. He said he has sold 27. His Web site, http://www.missilebases.com, lists 10 Atlas F sites for sale.
On the Web:
http://www.silohome.com
http://www.missilebases.com
http://www.atlasmissilesilo.com
-------- us politics
New Bush Strategy: America As World's Cop
Phil Brennan,
NewsMax.com
Saturday, Sept. 21, 2002
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/9/20/215753.shtml
America's new policy defining its role in the world as announced today by the White House presents the U.S. as anxious to preserve peace and democracy, but on closer reading it becomes clear that the real role is that of the U.S. is to be the World's beat cop.
"We will not hesitate to act alone, to exercise our right to self-defense by acting pre-emptively" against terrorists," President Bush warned in a new document issued at the very moment where U.N. member states such as Russia are showing serious reluctance to back U.S. calls for a new resolution that would authorize an attack on Iraq.
The lengthy, 33-page document, "The National Security Strategy of the United States," is a report that the president must, under law, submit to Congress, but this report goes far beyond any other presidential strategy report issued in the past.
Observers say Bush's announced strategic policy is the most aggressive since the Reagan administration, if not before. In it, the White House calls it a value-oriented strategy, encompassing the idea that it is up to the United States not only to make the world safer, but better.
"America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones," the document proclaims.
In releasing the document, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said in a statement that the report sets forth the principles that will guide the U.S. henceforth under the Bush administration.
"America must always stand for and protect the universal values on which it was founded. To this end, President Bush makes clear that the United States will use its position of strength and influence in the world to defend, preserve, and extend the peace," Fleischer said. "This strategy states that the safety and security of America is the first and fundamental commitment of the our government."
The report opens by noting that "The great struggles of the 20th century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise. In the 21st century, only nations that share a commitment to protecting basic human rights and guaranteeing political and economic freedom will be able to unleash the potential of their people and assure their future prosperity.
"People everywhere want to say what they think, choose who will govern them, worship as they please, educate their children - male and female, own property and enjoy the benefits of their labor. These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society - and the duty of protecting these values against their enemies is the common calling of freedom-loving people across the globe. . . .
"The events of Sept. 11, 2001, taught us that weak states like Afghanistan can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.
According to the New York Times, the report states that American strategy requires that the U.S.:
# Speak out honestly about violations of the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity using our voice and vote in international institutions to advance freedom;
# use our foreign aid to promote freedom and support those who struggle nonviolently for it, ensuring that nations moving toward democracy are rewarded for the steps they take;
# take special efforts to promote freedom of religion and conscience and defend it from encroachment by repressive governments. . . .
# Our priority will be first to disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations of global reach and attack their leadership; command, control, and communications; material support; and finances. This will have a disabling effect upon the terrorists' ability to plan and operate. "
"We will disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations by:
# direct and continuous action using all the elements of national and international power. Our immediate focus will be those terrorist organizations of global reach and any terrorist or state sponsor of terrorism which attempts to gain or use weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.) or their precursors;
# defending the United States, the American people and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders. While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively; . . . and
# denying further sponsorship, support and sanctuary to terrorists by convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities.
"We will also wage a war of ideas to win the battle against international terrorism. This includes:
# using the full influence of the United States, and working closely with allies and friends, to make clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate so that terrorism will be viewed in the same light as slavery, piracy, or genocide: behavior that no respectable government can condone or support and all must oppose;
# supporting moderate and modern government, especially in the Muslim world, to ensure that the conditions and ideologies that promote terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation; . . .
"America's comprehensive strategy to combat Weapons of Mass Destruction includes:
# Proactive counterproliferation efforts. We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. . . . Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today's threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries' choice of weapons, do not permit that option. . . .
"We will use our economic engagement with other countries to underscore the benefits of policies that generate higher productivity and sustained economic growth, including:
# pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment, innovation and entrepreneurial activity;
# tax policies, particularly lower marginal tax rates, that improve incentives for work and investment;
# rule of law and intolerance of corruption so that people are confident that they will be able to enjoy the fruits of their economic endeavors. . . .
"Beyond market access, the most important area where trade intersects with poverty is in public health. We will ensure that the W.T.O. intellectual property rules are flexible enough to allow developing nations to gain access to critical medicines for extraordinary dangers like H.I.V./AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
"A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just nor stable. Including all of the world's poor in an expanding circle of development and opportunity is a moral imperative and one of the top priorities of U.S. international policy. . . .
"The United States Government will . . . provide resources to aid countries that have met the challenge of national reform. We propose a 50 percent increase in the core development assistance given by the United States. . . .
"The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy - whether a state or nonstate actor - to impose its will on the United States, our allies, or our friends. We will maintain the forces sufficient to support our obligations, and to defend freedom. Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. . . .
"Ultimately, the foundation of American strength is at home. It is in the skills of our people, the dynamism of our economy and the resilience of our institutions. A diverse, modern society has inherent, ambitious, entrepreneurial energy. Our strength comes from what we do with that energy. That is where our national security begins."
The message to the world is clear: Get ready for Pax Americana.
----
Bush administration asks Congress to shelve new Syria sanctions
Friday-Saturday, September 20-21, 2002
AFP / Jordan Times
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news4.htm
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The administration of US President George W. Bush has asked Congress to shelve proposed new sanctions against Syria, taking the unusual step of protecting the nation its calls "sponsor of terrorism" from fellow congressional Republicans.
"We do not believe this is the right time for legislative initiatives that could complicate or even undermine our efforts," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield told the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on Wednesday.
"The imposition of new sanctions on Syria would severely limit our ability to address a range of important issues directly with the highest levels of the Syrian government," he explained.
The request came as lawmakers began debating the so-called Syria Accountability Act, which was introduced in the House of Representatives last April by Bush's fellow Texan and key political ally, House Republican Majority Leader Richard Armey.
Accusing Damascus of colluding with the Islamic resistance group Hizbollah and continuing its "occupation" of Lebanon, the bill calls for a ban on sales of munitions and dual-use items to Syria and prohibits financial assistance to US businesses considering projects in that country.
It also asks the president to choose at least two out of six other punitive measures, which include an embargo on non-humanitarian exports and investments, and a ban on Syrian aircraft landing in the United States or overflying its territory.
"Our inaction in holding Syria accountable for its dangerous activities could seriously diminish our efforts in the war on terrorism and our efforts in brokering a viable peace in the Middle East," argued Armey.
He charged that Syria was illegally importing from Iraq about 200,000 barrels of oil a day and, citing unnamed Iraqi opposition sources, insisted that Iraq had recently obtained Scud-class missiles through Syria.
But Satterfield said that while the administration in full agreement with the goals underlying this bill, President Bush and Secretary of States Colin Powell were "in the middle of an extremely sensitive effort" to put the stalled Middle East peace process back on track and needed Syria's cooperation. Powell was scheduled to meet with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al Sharaa in New York next week.
Satterfield also said Bush had taken note of Syria's cooperation with the United States in its "war on terror," which he stressed "has been substantial and has helped save American lives."
Administration officials have been refusing to detail this cooperation, but NBC News reported earlier this month that the Syrians had given the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) access to Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who is believed to have recruited some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Syrian-born Zammar was arrested in Morocco earlier this year and deported to his native land, where he is being questioned along with two dozen other suspected members of the Al Qaeda terror network, according to the report.
The CIA has declined to confirm or deny the account. The State Department has declared Syria state sponsor of terrorism, along with Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Cuba and North Korea.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Rwanda enlarges Congo pullout amid fears of chaos
Reuters
Saturday September 21, 19:14 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-126395.html
KONGOLO, Congo (Reuters) - Rwanda launched the second wave of a military withdrawal from Congo on Saturday, loading weapons onto cargo planes in four jungle towns amid fears of militia mayhem once their forces fly home.
Rwandan officers in this eastern town said their soldiers were coming under sporadic attack by Rwandan Hutu extremist guerrillas as they vacated outlying jungle strongpoints for Kongolo to prepare to fly back to the Rwandan capital Kigali.
But officers said the attacks would not delay the withdrawal from Kongolo, one of four Katanga province towns that the Rwandan troops will leave in the second phase as part of a peace accord aimed at ending a war in Africa's third-largest country.
"If Kabila is ready to hand over the 'negative forces', our interest ends here," Rwandan area commander Major Richard Bwembo said, referring to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila.
"We are ready to go home," he said, speaking as troops loaded mortars, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns and boxes of bullets on to planes for flights to Kigali later in the day.
Rwanda often uses the phrase negative forces to refer to the Rwandan Hutu extremists who slaughtered 800,000 minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu Rwandans and fled to Congo in 1994.
STAFF EVACUATED
In Kongolo, a town of about 100,000 people, some foreign aid agencies have started to evacuate their staff due to fears for their security once the Rwandans pull out, residents said.
Rwanda began withdrawing its forces from the DRC this week, pulling out more than 1,400 troops from Kindu and Kalima towns in eastern Maniema province.
Rwanda agreed to withdraw its troops -- estimated at more than 20,000 -- under a deal struck in July aimed at ending a four-year-old war that has killed an estimated two million people in a humanitarian disaster largely unnoticed by the West.
In return, Congo must help disarm Rwandan Hutu militiamen on its territory responsible for Rwanda's 1994 genocide, as well as a host of other bands of scavenging gunmen.
Rwanda says the second phase will last five days and see troops leaving Kabalo, Kongolo, Nyunzu and Kalemie towns in Katanga, a southeastern province rich in timber, copper, diamonds and coltan, a mineral used in the electronics industry.
One battalion -- which means between 800 to 1,000 men in the Rwandan army -- is expected to start flying home from each of the four towns on Sunday or Monday, some officers said.
Rwandan officials have said that a third and final phase will begin on September 27, removing soldiers from strife-torn North and South Kivu provinces directly bordering Rwanda.
Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo in 1998, accusing Kinshasa of sheltering the killers responsible for Rwanda's genocide. Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent troops to back Kinshasa.
All foreign armies in Africa's biggest war are pulling out of the former Zaire under renewed peace efforts, but the power vacuum created by departing Ugandan and Rwandan forces has triggered ethnic and factional violence in the north and east.
More than 100 people were killed last month in ethnic clashes in Bunia, near the Ugandan border. Many of the dead were women and children hacked to death with machetes.
Rwandan officers said villagers from outlying areas had started to come into Kongolo due to fears that anti-Rwandan Congolese jungle fighters known as Mai-Mai would attack their settlements now that the Rwandans were no longer there.
In Kindu, clashes erupted on Thursday between anti-Rwandan jungle fighters and Rwandan-backed militiamen within hours of the departure of the last planeload of Rwandan troops.
Officials in Kinshasa have accused Rwanda of instigating the violence in Kindu. A Rwandan government spokesman in Kigali dismissed that allegation as "total rubbish".
-------- business
Economists Weigh the Uncertainties Arising From War With Iraq
By John M. Berry
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 21, 2002; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46041-2002Sep20?language=printer
The last time war flared at the head of the Persian Gulf, in 1990, the resulting spike in oil prices helped tip the U.S. economy into recession.
Now, as memories of that time are being revived by the prospect of another war in the region, economists are being bombarded with questions: What happens to the U.S. and global economies if the United States attacks Iraq? Would there be another recession? The typical short answer has been, it depends.
Specifically, the economic impact of a war would depend on how it affects oil prices, the prices of stocks and other assets, federal spending and consumer and business confidence -- all of which are difficult to predict. Take consumer behavior. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, oil prices jumped and American consumers, remembering the inflationary chaos caused by soaring oil costs 10 years earlier, sharply cut their spending. But last fall, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, consumer confidence plummeted while consumer spending soared.
"Each time we were asked [about the impact of a war], we responded with the same answer. We do not know, and we have no way of knowing," said Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics Ltd. in Valhalla, N.Y.
Most analysts believe the short-term impact would again be negative, but there is no way to tell with any degree of confidence just how negative. For instance, analysts are sure oil prices would increase, but do not know how much they would rise or how fast they would fall again.
"By focusing on oil prices, asset prices and the cost, we are asking the right questions," said Kermit Schoenholtz of Salomon Smith Barney Inc. in New York. As for answers, he added, "Humility is appropriate in a time of uncertainty."
The difficulty, of course, is that no one can be sure how such a war would progress. The 1990-91 Persian Gulf War ended relatively quickly, but that may not be much of a guide, Weinberg said.
Also, the U.S. economy is in better shape now than it was in mid-1990, when it was already flirting with recession. Inflation was a problem, interest rates were fairly high, federal budget deficits were spiraling out of control and numerous financial institutions were either broke or nearly so. The Iraqi invasion was the last straw, economically.
Today, even though the U.S. economy has not regained all the ground lost in last year's recession, inflation and interest rates are very low, financial institutions are healthy, and while the federal budget is back in deficit, the outlook is not as dire as it was then.
The major weakness now is the fragile state of the stock market, which has declined sharply over the past two years. Also, the current economic recovery has been uneven and somewhat unpredictable, with businesses so far unwilling to resume buying new equipment on a large scale, said Martin N. Baily of the Institute for International Economics, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration. "This is already a time of considerable economic uncertainty" and a war might have an unexpected impact, he said.
This week, Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, a St. Louis forecasting firm, released what it called a "naive" forecast of what might happen to the U.S. economy if there were an attack on Iraq early next year. The firm labeled the forecast naive because it was created by making a small number of assumptions and plugging them into the firm's macroeconomic model to see how the course of the U.S. economy would be changed.
The key assumptions were that an attack would drive up the cost of oil to U.S. refiners by $15 a barrel, to $41.50 in the first quarter of next year, dropping to $36.50 in the second quarter. Stock prices were assumed to fall 6 percent, and consumer confidence would take a hit as well.
With these assumptions, which Chris Varvares, one of the firm's economists, stressed were not predictions, the economy would grow less while unemployment and inflation would rise more next year than they would otherwise.
Specifically, the economy would contract at a 0.7 percent annual rate in the first three months of next year, instead of growing at the 2.8 percent pace shown in the firm's regular forecast. Growth would resume in the second quarter at a 1.5 percent annual rate, well below the 3.8 percent rate otherwise forecast.
Then, beginning in midyear, the surge in oil prices would largely be gone and some of the economic ground lost in the first half of the year would begin to be regained, with the economy growing at an average 4.3 percent annual rate, compared with the 3.8 percent rate in the regular forecast.
The temporary contraction would add about half a percentage point to the nation's jobless rate and keep it above 6 percent throughout next year. The regular forecast shows it falling to about 5.5 percent in the second half of 2003. There would also be a temporary rise in inflation.
The war scenario assumes that the Federal Reserve would leave interest rates unchanged at their already-low levels, choosing to postpone rate increases that otherwise would be made in response to strengthening growth.
"The economy is staggered by this temporary rise in oil prices, but because the rise is temporary and the Fed responds, a full-blown recession is avoided," Macroeconomic Advisers explained.
Last week, in testimony before the House Budget Committee, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said a spike in oil prices would not have a large impact on the economy "unless the hostilities are prolonged." That's because the U.S. economy uses far less oil to produce a dollar's worth of goods and services than it did at the time of the Gulf War.
Nonetheless, at the start of any military action against Iraq, about all that is certain about oil prices is that they will go up, perhaps by a very large amount. When the availability of future supplies of any commodity comes into question, current prices often skyrocket.
Baily said that at $30 a barrel, world oil prices probably are already higher than they would be if there were no threat of war with Iraq. And "as long as the conflict is confined to Iraq, and the other suppliers increase production" if needed after an attack, "the most likely outcome is that we would get some increase in oil prices, but not a big one," he said.
Baily wondered what would happen if a conflict spread to Kuwait and what the Russian reaction would be in terms of oil production.. "If we did get a wider conflict, or a longer one," oil prices could rise very substantially, he said.
Baily said each $10 increase per barrel of crude oil costs U.S. consumers about $120 billion a year. "That's a fairly considerable hit. An increase to $35 is not too big."
But does the current price include a war premium? Some analysts, such as Lawrence J. Goldstein of the PIRA Energy Group, think not. With the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries setting quotas on members' oil production -- which were reaffirmed Thursday at an OPEC meeting in Japan -- current prices reflect a tight world supply, not war fears, Goldstein said.
If Goldstein is right, the world oil market could be more vulnerable to the uncertainty generated by a U.S. attack than some observers have been saying.
Higher oil prices would hurt not just the U.S. economy but also Japan and most European nations. Other than oil producers Britain, Norway and Russia, those countries import larger shares of their energy than does the United States. European economies generally are growing very slowly and Japan's has been stagnating. If those economies falter further, it could affect the United States by reducing demand for U.S. exports.
Another question is how a war in Iraq would affect U.S. government spending. Baily said increased federal spending could give the economy some short-term boost. However, some of the added purchases -- of such items as fuel -- would be made abroad rather than in the United States, and the munitions initially used would spur production of replacements months after the war began. In the 1990-91 Gulf War, U.S. allies covered most of the cost of the conflict, something not likely to occur this time.
In the longer term, financing a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and helping rebuild the country while providing assistance to a new government could be costly while providing little if any benefit to U.S. economic growth. However, within a few years, repairs to Iraqi oil fields and increased production could help bring down world oil prices, and that could benefit the U.S. economy.
-------- iran
The War And Iran
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46992-2002Sep21?language=printer
Kamal Kharrazi, the foreign minister of Iran, was interviewed by Washington Post columnist Lally Weymouth this week while he was in the United States for an international conference. These are excerpts from the interview:
Q: What was your response to President Bush's speech at the U.N.?
A: Referring the issue of Iraq to the United Nations system was a victory for multilateralism. In that sense I believe that everyone was happy that now instead of unilateral action by Americans at least the United Nations system is engaged. After that, of course, with the intervention of many countries, including Arab countries and the secretary general, Iraq responded positively to receive the inspectors.
Q: But you know Saddam well and your country has suffered from his use of chemical weapons.
A: That is true.
Q: Do you really believe that he will comply?
A: That is the problem. He is little trusted, but still this time may be different. . . . Everyone, especially the neighboring countries, believes that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have to be eliminated.
Q: Would you support the United States if he doesn't comply and there is a war against Hussein?
A: We are basically against a military operation against Iraq. Of course, it all depends. If Americans are going to attack Iraq unilaterally, we certainly would not be supportive. In the case that Iraq does not comply and the Security Council would authorize using force against Iraq, it would be a different story. But basically we cannot agree with the U.S. policy to use force in order to change the regime of another country.
Q: Back in 1991, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, didn't Iran, Syria and Turkey have consultations?
A: We had consultations in regards to the developments in the Kurdish area because all three countries that you mentioned, Iran, Turkey and Syria, have Kurdish populations and all of them are very sensitive to [the idea of] any independent entity for the Kurdish people.
Q: There is a rumor that the consultations have begun again, starting with the recent visit of Turkey's Foreign Minister [Sukru] Gurel to your country.
A: It has been on a bilateral basis, not a trilateral basis.
Q: So the consultations on northern Iraq have started between your country and Turkey?
A: That has always been on the agenda for us, the Turks, as well as the Syrians.
Q: You mean what to do if there is a vacuum in northern Iraq, for instance?
A: That is a legitimate concern for all three neighboring countries. We are against any disintegration of Iraq into different parts.
Q: Aren't you concerned that if there is a war, no matter what the United States promises, there will be an independent Kurdish entity?
A: That is what we cannot accept.
Q: I don't know how to put this delicately, but I can't imagine that you would be too sad to see Saddam Hussein go.
A: It is a matter of principle. We have the United Nations system. We have democratic values. We believe that it is the right of people in each country to decide about their future, not others from the outside.
Q: Surely you think that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction should be eliminated.
A: Yes, sure. That is exactly the concern we have about Israel, because it has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and we believe that the Middle East should be free from any weapons of mass destruction.
Q: Why are you backing Hezbollah?
A: The capability of Israel is a threat to the whole region. This is not only the concern of Iran but of all the countries in the region.
Q: So you back a terrorist group against Israel?
A: You should not mix issues. Hezbollah is a legitimate party in the Lebanese political system that has been resisting against occupation.
Q: Do you support suicide bombings?
A: I don't like these sorts of questions.
Q: It is a pretty big issue.
A: No, this is not the way to interview. If you have any meaningful questions I will let you ask [them].
Q: How would you describe right now your relations with the United States? Are they improving?
A: They have not been improving since the new administration has been in office. During the Clinton administration there was some hope, but it did not materialize.
In the last stages of the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright . . . expressed regret about the involvement of the United States government in the 1953 coup against the nationalist prime minister of Iran. [But] in the same speech she talked about elected and non-elected officials in Iran, which had a very negative impact in Iran. She was claiming that there are some officials that are not elected in Iran, but in fact all the officials are elected in Iran.
Since the new administration has come into office, we have been facing a negative approach from the United States, although in Afghanistan, Iran played a very important and constructive role. It was right after the Afghanistan crisis that President Bush came up with the notion of the "axis of evil," which, of course, was rejected by the Europeans. He accused us of supporting al Qaeda, which was not true.
Q: Why are you building a nuclear program? I know that the Russians have been supplying you with nuclear components and technicians.
A: That is for peaceful purposes. We don't have a program for nuclear weapons.
Q: But you are developing long-range missiles. You are developing intermediate-range missiles.
A: No, that is for defense.
Q: Do you recognize the right of Israel to exist as a state?
A: We do not recognize Israel as a government. We believe that eventually Palestinian refugees have to return to their homeland. Under the supervision of the United Nations, there should be a referendum and the original inhabitants of that land, including Palestinians, Jews and Christians, should decide about any political entity to be established.
Q: So you do not support President Bush's two-state solution?
A: We believe that eventually there should be one state. If the Palestinians agree to have a two-state solution, we are not going to block it.
-------- latin america
U.S. Vehicle Aids in Mine Clearing
September 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Mine-Clearing.html
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- It's a bad day for U.S. soldiers David Paulk and Bryan Allen when they don't hit a land mine.
``We're having so much fun when the mines are exploding,'' says Paulk, a 24-year-old National Guardsman from Vick, La., who operates a Hydrema 910 MCV, a massive armored truck with flailing chains designed to trigger mines, at Bagram Air Base, the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan.
``Days like these, when we ain't hitting a thing, it's like we're just driving a truck,'' adds Allen, 30, who monitors the Hydrema's computerized systems and helps Paulk steer a steady course through the cloud of dust kicked up by the machine. Both men are with the 769th Engineers Battalion based out of Baton Rouge, La., which is also Allen's hometown.
``It just ain't right,'' he says with a laugh.
Jokes aside, clearing minefields is serious business at Bagram, a former Soviet base that is now the dusty home of about 3,500 coalition troops.
U.S. and coalition forces have cleared an estimated 7,000 mines since the first allied troops arrived late last year, but about 15,000 mines remain around the base. It was once the front line between Taliban and northern alliance fighters, and is among the more densely mined areas in Afghanistan, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.
Allen, Paulk and the four other U.S. soldiers that operate the three Hydremas at the base have been at it for three months, taking over from the Norwegians who cleared mines with the machine since the beginning of the year.
``I don't think I'd want to be out there clearing these fields,'' said Paulk, looking out the window of the Hydrema cabin. ``In here, it's good, fun work.''
Outside, the vehicle's chains turned a strip of grassy field into a swath of dirt and dust.
The Hydrema looks like an armored truck with a heavy plate and a long, metal tube wrapped in chains mounted on top of the back half.
Press a few buttons, and the plate -- a blast shield -- extends parallel to the vehicle's rear. Beyond it, two arms hold the metal tube in place as the 72 chains unfurl. The two seats in the cabin swing around, allowing the operators to steer the vehicle, which goes backward when clearing.
With the flick of a few more switches, the metal tube begins spinning and the chains, which have weights on the ends, churn up the earth underneath, sending up a plume of dust and triggering any mines they hit.
At least a dozen U.S. and coalition soldiers have been injured trying to clear mine fields since efforts to remove mines at Bagram began late last year.
Nearly all of those injured were clearing the mines the old-fashioned way -- gingerly walking through fields and searching out mines with prods, marking and exploding the ones they uncover.
Not one soldier has been hurt using a Hydrema in Afghanistan.
That safety record isn't a fluke, said Mikael Larsen, a Danish engineer who maintains the vehicles at Bagram.
``The drivers are the most important things,'' said the 30-year-old from Seeland, who has been working with Hydrema's since the first one was built in 1998. ``Machinery is replaceable.''
The Hydrema's cab, like the entire vehicle, is heavily armored. The eight windows are about 3 inches thick.
The vehicle's tires are filled with foam -- ``it helps absorb fragments if the wheel hits a mine,'' Larsen said.
The company that makes the vehicle guarantees the machine will withstand a blast from up to 22 pounds of explosives without anyone getting injured.
``We've had incidents of up to 15 kilograms,'' -- about 33 pounds, Larsen said.
The biggest threat comes from large unexploded ordinance, such as bombs that could tear a Hydrema apart.
To minimize that threat, individual mine clearers and specially trained dogs check fields before the Hydremas go in.
With little threat of injury, Allen and Paulk are relaxed about clearing mine fields. For them, the key word is ``fun.''
Still, their families worry.
Allen said his wife was upset when he first told her about his assignment. ``But then I called and told her about how much fun I'm having and, since then, she doesn't mind as much,'' he said.
The most exciting kind of mine to hit?
``An anti-tank mine, definitely ... I wish we could hit one today,'' said Paulk, who works as correctional officer when he's not serving in the National Guard. They've hit six so far.
``It's an experience,'' adds Allen, a slot-machine technician, from the passenger seat. ``It just shakes this thing up and down, throws you around the cabin, it's loud, the whole cabin fills with dust. You have to stop ... it makes you want to have a cigarette.''
-------- nato
NATO rapid-reaction force urged
By Gareth Harding
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
September 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020921-87463625.htm
BRUSSELS - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is expected to urge NATO allies next week to set up a rapid-reaction force capable of taking swift military action anywhere in the world.
If NATO defense ministers give the green light to Mr. Rumsfeld's proposals at a meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Poland, the 19-member alliance could be transformed from a regional self-defense organization into an offensive military body with global reach.
NATO officials remained tight-lipped about the details of Mr. Rumsfeld's plans, but said there was a groundswell of support within the alliance for a more mobile military force capable of intervening in conflicts outside the North Atlantic area.
"We have to be able to move quickly, far away and in difficult terrain," one official said.
Another said that the days when NATO was faced with a static threat from the east were over.
The end of the Cold War triggered intensive soul-searching within the world's most powerful military alliance. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, many commentators questioned whether NATO had a role to play in the security structure of Europe and America.
The September 11 terrorist attacks have led the Brussels-based body to focus its attention on fighting terrorism, protecting civilian populations and preventing rogue regimes from procuring weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking on the anniversary of September 11, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said: "Defeating terrorism is the first major challenge of the 21st century."
Mr. Robertson also threw his weight behind Mr. Rumsfeld's plans for a rapid-reaction force, saying, "To deter potential attackers and prevent terror being launched against us, [the military] must be equipped and trained to mount complex operations over long distances, in difficult country and for prolonged periods."
The former British defense minister added: "You cannot defend cities now on national frontiers. It's no longer realistic to think in those terms anymore. So we need lighter, more rapidly deployable forces - forces available at short notice."
Britain and Spain share Mr. Rumsfeld's and Mr. Robertson's vision. However, France and Belgium believe a NATO force could jeopardize the creation of a 60,000-strong European Union rapid-reaction force that is to be assembled next year.
NATO officials stress that no formal decisions are expected at next week's meeting in Warsaw.
However, the meeting is the last chance for defense ministers to reach agreement on a raft of thorny issues before a mid-November summit of NATO leaders in Prague.
In addition to redefining the alliance's strategic goals, the Transformation Summit - as officials are billing the Prague meeting - is expected to accept several membership applications from former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe.
--------
U.S. Wants to Reshape NATO Missions
September 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NATO.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is looking for NATO agreement to reshape the alliance's military operations to allow rapid deployment to far-flung locations.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who first raised the idea at a NATO gathering in June, said Saturday that the resulting streamlined military organization will be along lines the administration has worked to create with the U.S. forces.
A U.S. proposal to set up such a force, to project alliance power outside NATO's borders on as little as a week's notice, will be a major order of business for Rumsfeld at a NATO defense ministers' meeting starting Tuesday in Warsaw, Poland.
The administration brought up the idea of such a force in June at a ministers' meeting in Brussels, Belgium. Rumsfeld at the time recommended a review of NATO's command structure to give its forces the speed and agility necessary for an offensive force. That would represent a shift from the anti-Soviet defensive bulwark underpinning the alliance's creation early in the Cold War.
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said Saturday that Rumsfeld is laying groundwork for President Bush to discuss go to the heads of government for disposition.
``Strengthening NATO's military capability to handle 21st century threats is a major piece of President Bush's agenda for the November summit in Prague,'' McCormack said.
``We are working with our allies on a number of proposals aimed at achieving this objective, and Secretary Rumsfeld will discuss these proposals when he meets next week in Warsaw with his counterparts.''
Rumsfeld told CNN that the proposal ``is really no different than the kind of thing we've been doing here in the United States.''
He spoke of developing ``a quick-reaction force that would be able to respond to a problem in a matter of days, rather than weeks or months,'' thus offering ``the kind of agility to deal with the types of problems that exist today.''
Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Poland's defense minister, said the U.S. proposal would include ground troops, AWACS radar planes and shared allied intelligence. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it also could include naval forces and chemical-biological defenses.
The official said the force would have a core of 20,000 U.S., Canadian and European combat and support troops, coming from all 19 alliance members for six-month tours of duty.
It would be separate from a European-only force of 60,000, which is to become operational next year and will be used mainly for peacekeeping operations. Previous post-Cold War missions outside NATO's borders, such as those in the former Yugoslavia, have entailed airstrikes but little ground combat, focusing largely on peacekeeping.
Also coming up at the Warsaw meeting will be the question of who will replace Turkey as leader of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul, Afghanistan, when the Turks' commitment expires in December. Rumsfeld wants another European country, probably Germany.
A German government spokesman said last week that German and Dutch experts have been considering leadership arrangements for the 19-nation, 5,000-soldier force.
Germany previously has resisted appeals by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to take over the force, on the ground that its forces already are stretched thin by peacekeeping in the Balkans.
-------- russia / chechnya
[Conflicting headlines, here. et]
Russia opposes new resolution
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020921-323496.htm
Russia yesterday refused to agree to a White House demand for a new U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein, setting President Bush on a course to block the reintroduction of arms inspectors into Iraq.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who spoke by telephone for half an hour yesterday with Mr. Bush, said getting a U.N. inspection team back into Iraq to look for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons remains the priority.
"It is vital to concentrate on the fastest possible deployment of U.N. inspection and monitoring missions" to Iraq, Mr. Putin said in a Kremlin statement.
The Russian stance differs from that of the Bush administration, as articulated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday. Mr. Powell said sending weapons inspectors back to Iraq under existing U.N. resolutions dating back to 1990 is "unacceptable."
"There is standing authority for the inspection team, but there are weaknesses in that authority, which make the current regime unacceptable. We need a new resolution to clean that up and to put new conditions on the Iraqis so that there is no wiggling out," Mr. Powell said.
The secretary of state went so far as to say the existing inspections regime - flouted by Saddam for years before he kicked U.N. inspectors out of Iraq in 1998 - is so unacceptable that "if somebody tried to move the team in now, we would find ways to thwart that."
The differing positions on inspectors has set up a collision course between the United States and Russia, which, as one of the five permanent members on the U.N. Security Council, has veto authority over any resolution.
France and China, the other permanent members on the Security Council along with the United States and Britain, have also called for a return of inspectors to enforce the existing 16 U.N. resolutions on Iraq. Only Britain supports the U.S. position of a new U.N. resolution calling for an inspection regime backed by the threat of force if Saddam thwarts inspectors' efforts.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell have both rejected Iraq's offer this week to readmit inspectors, calling it a "ploy" by Baghdad. The president said Saddam will obstruct inspectors as he did in the 1990s, calling the offer "the same old song and dance we've heard for 11 years."
Mr. Bush met yesterday in the Oval Office with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who characterized the talks as virtual agreement about the two nations' goals.
"Russia and the United States are firmly in favor that Iraq should fully comply with the provisions of all respective resolutions of the Security Council. Russia and the United States firmly believe that the international U.N. inspectors must return to Iraq," the Russian foreign minister said.
"Russia and the United States are firmly interested in making the work of international inspectors in Iraq effective and ensuring that this work gives a clear answer whether there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not," he said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, however, said Mr. Bush was firm with the Russians.
"The president stressed in the meetings the importance of making certain that the United Nations doesn't make the same mistake twice, and that it's important to have a different type of inspection, one that is effective, one that will make certain that Iraq has disarmed," Mr. Fleischer said, adding, "The president is focused on disarmament. That remains the key, not the process of inspectors."
The prospect of drafting a tough U.N. resolution fell apart earlier this week. Russia, France and Britain had been ready by Monday to back a resolution authorizing unspecified - but firm - consequences if Baghdad did not allow the swift return of U.N. weapons inspectors, but the deal fell apart after Saddam said he would allow the "unconditional" return of inspectors.
"From our standpoint, we don't need any special resolution," Russia's foreign minister said Monday.
Since then, however, Iraq has backed away from its "unconditional" offer.
Declaring Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam sent a message to the United Nations accusing Washington of fabrications in order to attack his country and take control of Middle East oil.
Reading a message from Saddam to the U.N. General Assembly, Iraq's foreign minister yesterday also said that U.N. weapons inspectors returning to his country had to respect arrangements on Baghdad's sovereignty and security, suggesting that some areas - like presidential palace grounds - would again be off-limits to the arms experts. Administration officials have in recent days ratcheted up talk about unilateral U.S. action in the event the United Nations fails to deliver the type of resolution Mr. Bush desires.
"We will preserve at all times the president of the United States' ability to defend our nation and our interests as he sees fit. Do it with our friends, do it with the United Nations, or do it alone," Mr. Powell told lawmakers Thursday.
Other senior administration officials, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney, have laid out the case for pre-emptive strikes to deal with imminent threats to the United States.
On Thursday, Mr. Bush laid out his vast presidential authority - as well as powers granted him by the United Nations and Congress - in a resolution he sent to Capitol Hill.
In the draft resolution, Mr. Bush states that "the United States has the inherent right, as acknowledged in the United Nations Charter, to use force in order to defend itself."
The resolution also says the president has the congressionally recognized "authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States," as well as the "authority under the Constitution to use force in order to defend the national-security interests of the United States."
While the resolution does not explicitly call for the ouster of Saddam, it does cite the 1998 congressional approval of a bill calling for "regime change," signed by President Clinton.
"Congress in the Iraq Liberation Act [of 1998] has expressed its sense that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime," it says.
White House lawyers in July determined that Mr. Bush has the authority to use military force without approval from Congress.
Most importantly, Mr. Bush cited "the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1)," which was passed by Congress in 1991. The law authorized the use of military force - which became Operation Desert Storm - as part of enforcement of the U.N. Security Council resolutions to drive Iraq from Kuwait and "to restore international peace and security in the area."
The law remains in effect and is still applicable as long as Saddam continues to violate U.N. resolutions.
----
Putin bows to Blair and Bush over Iraq resolution
By Toby Harnden in Washington and Ben Aris in Moscow
21/09/2002
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/21/wirq21.xml/
Russia signalled yesterday it was prepared to consider a fresh United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq following a diplomatic blitz led by President George W Bush and Tony Blair.
Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, said after meeting Mr Bush at the White House: "We agreed to pursue our exchange of views about how to make the work of the inspectors more effective."
Russia had previously said that the UN inspectors should return to Iraq without a new mandate, but the Bush administration insisted that a fresh resolution was needed before they went back. Mr Ivanov appeared to open the door to Russia backing a resolution.
Earlier, Mr Bush and the Prime Minister telephoned President Vladimir Putin at his holiday home in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to urge him not to use his veto on the Security Council to block a resolution authorising the use of force against Saddam Hussein if he refuses to co-operate.
The Bush administration has threatened to block the return of inspectors if they are not given the ability to go anywhere in Iraq to check for weapons of mass destruction. In a congressional hearing on Thursday, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, said: "There is standing authority for the inspection team but there are weaknesses in that authority which make the current regime unacceptable.
"And we need a new resolution to clean that up and to put new conditions on the Iraqis so that there is no wriggling out."
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, has said his team will go to Iraq on Oct 15. But Mr Powell said this would not happen without a new resolution "with teeth" and "if somebody tried to move the team in now, we would find ways to thwart that."
Both Mr Blair and Mr Bush have built strong personal relationships with the Russian leader.
Iraq is a traditional ally of Russia but British and American diplomats believe that the lure of oil contracts in a post-Saddam Iraq could persuade Mr Putin to back Washington's tough line.
The Kremlin has welcomed Baghdad's offer to allow UN weapons inspectors to return without conditions.
Mr Putin wants to give the weapons inspectors the chance to determine if Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction before he will contemplate an attack or new Security Council resolutions.
After Mr Putin's conversation with Mr Bush, the Kremlin said: "Putin stressed that in the current situation it was vital to concentrate on the fastest possible deployment of UN inspection and monitoring missions."
Relations between Russia and America improved dramatically after the September 11 attacks last year but have cooled more recently as Washington's attention turned to Iraq.
Russia has been hoping to capitalise on its long-standing ties with Baghdad by developing Iraq's oil deposits, which are second only to those of Saudi Arabia.
The Kremlin highlighted its support by signing a £26 billion economic co-operation package with Baghdad last month.
Relations have also been made difficult by America's reluctance to accept Mr Putin's efforts to link the American campaign against al-Qa'eda with Russia's fight against Chechen separatist rebels. Tensions have risen further as Russia threatens to pursue rebels into the Pankisi Gorge in northern Georgia on the Chechen border.
The Kremlin claims that rebels are using the gorge as a safe haven from which to launch operations in the breakaway republic. Russia earned a rebuke from Washington after Russia bombed bombing villages in the gorge, killing one civilian and injuring seven, last month.
Mr Putin raised the stakes last week by ordering his Defence Ministry to draw up a plan for unilateral, pre-emptive strikes against Chechen militants in the gorge.
He cited a UN resolution that allows states to pursue terrorists into another country if their national security is threatened as justification.
Diplomats at the UN have said America is unlikely to get direct authorisation for the use of force in a resolution but might be able to secure language finding Iraq in "material breach" of UN mandates. In American eyes, this would support an attack.
But Bush administration officials have said they would rather have no UN resolution than a weak and toothless expression from the Security Council.
-------- un
Iraq not alone in defying resolutions of U.N. body
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020921-99664032.htm
Iraq may be the most blatant, but it is far from the first country to defy the will of the U.N. Security Council.
Officials from the United Nations say they do not keep a statistical record of members' compliance with resolutions of the 15-member council. However, it appears that dozens of resolutions, including those on North Korea and the Middle East, have been disregarded.
"There's a substantial record of noncompliance" with Security Council dictates, said David Malone, president of the International Peace Academy, an independent New York-based think tank specializing in U.N. and peacekeeping issues.
Compliance has moved front and center, as President Bush last week cited Iraq's failure to follow a dozen U.N. mandates during the past 12 years as justification for concerted international action against Baghdad.
The Bush administration's latest diplomatic tack has been to punish Iraq's past disregard of resolutions by promoting yet another Security Council resolution.
"Usually the defiance is not anywhere near as clear-cut as with Saddam, but it is not as if Iraq was the first state to defy the wishes of the Security Council," Mr. Malone said.
North Korea's defiance of U.N. demands that it reverse the invasion of the South produced a Security Council resolution that marked the beginning of the Korean War in 1950.
Trade sanctions embodied in Security Council resolutions on white-ruled Rhodesia in 1966 and South Africa in 1977 were often violated, and the apartheid regime in South Africa ignored for decades a U.N. demand to terminate effective control of neighboring Namibia, administered by Pretoria initially as a U.N. trust terrority.
Security Council Resolution 353, passed in July 1974, demanded an "immediate end to foreign military intervention in the Republic of Cyprus" after Turkey deployed troops to prevent what it said was a Greek attempt to annex the ethnically divided island. The troops remain, and U.N. efforts to mediate continue.
The pace of confrontations and defiance has increased in the past decade, even as the number of Security Council resolutions has expanded sharply.
Until 1990 and the end of the Cold War, the Security Council issued 647 resolutions, ranging from the bland to the belligerent, on international disputes, humanitarian efforts and peacekeeping missions.
According to an extensive analysis by researchers George A. Lopez and David Cortright, the Security Council has issued 787 resolutions in the 12 years since, including full or partial economic sanctions on Iraq (1990 and 2002), Yugoslavia (1991, 1992, and 1998), Libya (1992), Liberia (1992), Somalia (1992), parts of Cambodia (1992), Haiti (1993), Angola (1993, 1997 and 1998), Rwanda (1994), Sudan (1996), Sierra Leone (1997) and Afghanistan (1999).
Mr. Lopez and Mr. Cortright called the surge in coercive resolutions "particularly striking," dubbing the 1990s the "sanctions decade."
Ruth Wedgwood, professor of international law and diplomacy at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, said the Security Council's readiness to throw resolutions at intractable problems left it "looking pretty feckless at times."
"There's a significant point of view out there that the Security Council is much too quick to think that rhetoric by itself can solve something," she said. "That's why Bush is skeptical, and that's why I would be, too, about Iraq."
Not every Security Council demand brought the desired result.
Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid refused to permit U.N. humanitarian efforts in his divided country, setting the stage for a disastrous U.S. military intervention in late 1993.
Also in 1993, Cambodia's communist Khmer Rouge tried to disrupt U.N.-sponsored elections in regime-controlled areas.
Security Council resolutions proved inadequate to halt the genocide of ethnic Tutsis by Rwanda's majority-Hutu population a year later.
Even the U.S.-led drive for new "smart sanctions" against Iraq earlier this year was a tacit admission that previous Security Council demands to cut off Iraq's international trade were not being honored.
Far more common than outright defiance has been protracted, often hair-splitting debates over who is in violation of what.
"Iraq is a real outlier because it's had such an in-your-face approach to the U.N.'s demands, particularly in the last few years," Miss Wedgwood said. "Far more common is the kind of 'so's your mother' arguments, where both sides in a given dispute say the other is in violation."
Marie Okabe, a spokeswoman in the U.N. press office, said the organization doesn't compile a list of resolution violators because of that ambiguity.
"That is not the kind of thing the U.N. Secretariat could even track," she said. "Whether a member is in compliance is really a judgment that must be made by the Security Council and by individual states."
In one of the most bitter U.N. disputes, Arab leaders have long argued that Israel is in violation of Resolution 242, which, they say, requires a complete withdrawal from lands seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
Threatening Iraq with military strikes for violating Security Council resolutions while not pressing Israel just as hard amounts to a "blind bias," Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Shara told the U.N. General Assembly in an address on Sunday.
"Why would the world request Iraq to adhere to Security Council resolutions while Israel is allowed to be above international law?" he said.
But Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said his government categorically denies being in violation of Resolution 242, contending that it does not specify which lands must be relinquished and that promises of security and peaceful relations with Israel's Arab neighbors have not been met.
Mr. Regev also said Lebanon and Syria have not honored a 1978 Security Council resolution to restore "effective order" in Lebanon's southern regions after Israel's troop withdrawal from the area in May 2000.
"If the Arab world is truly concerned about the sanctity of U.N. resolutions, where is the action on this matter?" he asked.
-------- us
Pentagon Loses Track Of Millions in Aid
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Washington Post; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47052-2002Sep21?language=printer
The Pentagon cannot keep track of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons and emergency aid given to friendly countries, congressional investigators found.
The Defense Department agency that is supposed to track the donations reported about $300 million worth of transfers since 1993, while records from the four military services showed close to $725 million in transfers, the General Accounting Office said.
The Pentagon agreed it needs to create a record-keeping system for an accurate accounting of the donations to other countries, known as drawdowns.
For the Record
• The Army postponed plans to begin burning Cold War-era chemical weapons at its new incinerator in Anniston, Ala., next month, citing new objections from state environmental officials. The Army's spokesman for the project, Mike Abrams, said burning will probably not begin until after Jan. 1.
----
Bush Gets Military's Plans for Iraq
By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Saturday, September 21, 2002; 11:02 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48218-2002Sep21.html
WASHINGTON -- President Bush has received a detailed Pentagon plan containing military options for deposing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a senior defense official said Saturday.
The highly classified plan, delivered to the White House in early September by Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command chief who would execute any military action in Iraq, will undergo additional refinements in the weeks ahead, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On a visit to U.S. troops in Kuwait, Franks said Saturday his forces are ready if called upon.
"We are prepared to undertake whatever activities and whatever actions we may be directed to take by our nation," he said at a news conference. But he also noted: "Our president has not made a decision to go to war."
Thousands of American and Kuwaiti forces are preparing to begin a large-scale training exercise, called Eager Mace, using amphibious, ground, air and naval forces. The exercise, which is held periodically in the Kuwaiti desert - most recently in May 2001 - has not been publicly announced.
Franks' delivery of his war plan to Bush was first reported in Saturday's New York Times. The newspaper cited officials familiar with war planning as saying the Franks' plan contains the number of ground troops, combat aircraft and aircraft carrier battle groups that would be needed to knock out Iraq's air defenses and military communications and then seize Baghdad.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a key concern of war planners is the possibility that Iraq would launch an attack on U.S. and allied forces in the region using weapons of mass destruction. He suggested that Iraq's means of delivering such weapons - by ballistic missile, aircraft or other means - would be among the priority targets at the outset of a U.S. attack.
As Bush considers his options for using military force against Iraq, his administration is simultaneously consulting with Russia and other countries on a new U.N. resolution that would threaten Iraq with war if it does not meet its decade-old obligation to disarm.
Russia is leaving the door slightly open to compromise on the U.N. resolution. Russia's decision could turn on whether it gets new and convincing evidence that Saddam is building up stockpiles of dangerous weapons.
Talks will continue at the United Nations, where the United States and Britain are trying to overcome resistance from Russia, China and France to leveling new demands without proof.
A defiant Iraq announced Saturday that Baghdad would reject any new U.N. resolutions Saddam's government believes are unfavorable.
"The American officials are trying ... to issue new, bad resolutions from the Security Council," Iraq's state-run radio said.
There was no immediate comment from the White House. Bush's request for a congressional resolution to authorize the use of force against Iraq continues to draw a mixed reception.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., criticized Bush's approach and said "we must not be hell-bent on an invasion until we have exhausted other possible options to assess and eliminate Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction program.".
"We must not act alone," he said. "We must have the support of the world."
But Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said there was now broad support among Democrats for Bush's resolution. "We feel that the president should be authorized to take military action (without) the U.N. if the U.N. will not do it," he said.
--------
Bush Has Received Pentagon Options on Attacking Iraq
New York Times
September 21, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/21/international/middleeast/21PLAN.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Pentagon has completed and delivered to President Bush a highly detailed set of military options for attacking Iraq, Pentagon and White House officials said today.
The commander of forces in the Persian Gulf region, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, presented the war-planning document to Mr. Bush in early September, just days before the president spoke to the United Nations on Sept. 12 and demanded that it authorize military action against Saddam Hussein. In his speech, Mr. Bush made clear that the United States was prepared to act unilaterally.
The highly classified plans, which were presented to the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the president was briefed, are the most specific plans the military has presented to Mr. Bush so far.
"The president has options now, and he has not made any decisions," Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, said in an interview today. He noted that Mr. Bush had asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in August to send him options that were more concrete than earlier concepts.
Senior administration officials declined to comment on the details of the war document, which will continue to be polished while Mr. Bush decides whether to order an offensive. In a brief interview this week, Mr. Rumsfeld said he would not discuss the war-planning process. Senior Pentagon officials said he had demanded more creative options from his field commanders.
Officials said, however, that any attack would begin with a lengthy air campaign led by B-2 bombers armed with 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs to knock out Iraqi command and control headquarters and air defenses. They said a principal goal of the aerial bombardment would be to sever most communications from Baghdad and isolate Saddam Hussein from his commanders in the rest of the country.
At the same time, according to officials knowledgeable about the planning, tens of thousands of marines and soldiers would stage out of Kuwait and possibly other countries in the region, officials said.
Officials familiar with the war-planning document say its contents include the number of ground troops, combat aircraft and aircraft carrier battle groups that would be needed. It also contains detailed sequencing for the use of air, land, naval and Special Operations forces to attack thousands of Iraqi targets, from air-defense sites to command-and-control headquarters to fielded forces.
"We're very comfortable with the state of planning right now," a senior Pentagon official said.
Until recently, the White House said Mr. Bush had "no war plan on his desk." But today, Mr. Fleischer said, "I am not saying there is no plan on his desk."
Asked about how to suppress Iraq's capability to use chemical or biological weapons on American troops or Israel, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that "one of the things you'd think about doing would be attacking his delivery means or his weapons of mass destruction."
It is an issue, General Myers said with some understatement, "that General Franks would pay a lot of attention to."
The Pentagon regards January or February as the most suitable for any ground attack because the short winter days play to the American edge in night-fighting and the cooler temperatures ease discomfort for troops dressed in chemical warfare gear. Because of that, Mr. Bush's top national security advisers decided this summer that their diplomatic and military strategies must be worked out simultaneously.
So since July, General Myers or his deputy, Gen. Peter Pace, have attended a series of classified meetings at the White House with Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
The themes of Mr. Bush's speech to the United Nations were first conceived in those sessions, and military options were also discussed.
The meetings have been considered so sensitive that the word Iraq never appeared on the private schedules of those attending. Instead, the sessions have been listed under the phrase "Regional Strategies Meeting." They have usually been run by Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser and one of the principal architects of the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against nations with weapons of mass destruction.
A participant in the meetings said the goal was to "explore all the elements - regime change, what military options there might be, how the diplomatic process fits in."
The principals did not examine individual military strategies. "We would look at the question of how might you have regime change thought of as liberation rather than occupation?" the participant said. "That was a question put before the principals, and then there would be a paper done on it."
But by August, from his ranch, Mr. Bush asked for specific military options. Those were settled on at the White House in early September, shortly after he had returned to Washington.
Much planning remains both at the Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and at other military commands. That includes the Special Operations Command, whose highly specialized counterterrorism and counterproliferation troops, including the Army unit known as Delta Force, would have responsibility for hunting down storage and production sites for Iraq's suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
Special military assessment teams throughout the armed services have been assigned to study specific problems, ranging from tracking and destroying Iraq's mobile Scud missiles to assessing how to separate Iraq's security forces from the regular Iraqi army. The army may be more willing than the security forces to turn against the Iraqi leader after several days of punishing American airstrikes.
But as the administration presses the United Nations and Congress for resolutions supporting the use of force against Iraq, Mr. Bush now has a highly refined set of options to topple Mr. Hussein and eliminate Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction, officials said.
The plans represent weeks of discussions among Mr. Rumsfeld, General Myers, General Franks and other top military and national security officials. Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks usually speak at least twice a day by telephone or secure videoconference.
Mr. Bush had received at least three briefings from General Franks on the broad outlines, or "concept of operations," for a possible attack against Iraq. The most recent of these briefings was on Aug. 5, according to the White House.
In these meetings, General Franks reviewed options including one in which a military operation using about 250,000 troops, with an initial invasion force of fewer than 100,000 troops and a larger force in reserve.
In early July, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Myers sent General Franks a classified written directive about five pages long, spelling out in detail what the war plan should contain: the role of allies, how to address Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, how to stabilize the country after a war; all issues underlying the primary goal: deposing Mr. Hussein.
Pentagon officials said the written planning order helped crystalize the work of planners at Central Command, and other commands that were working on elements of the war effort. But the document also raised new questions and issues, and officials said General Franks asked for an extension until early September to work through the detailed underpinnings of the detailed options, Pentagon officials said.
"Up to then, Franks was going on verbal guidance," said one senior officer who reviewed the planning order. "This was a well-written directive that would drive detailed planning."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI Agent Warned About 9/11 Hijacker
Sat Sep 21, 2002
By KEN GUGGENHEIM,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&u=/ap/20020921/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/attacks_intelligence&printer=1
WASHINGTON (AP) - Thirteen days before the Sept. 11 attacks, a frustrated FBI ( news - web sites) agent warned headquarters that "someday, someone will die" after he was denied permission to pursue a man who would become one of the hijackers, a congressional panel was told Friday.
The agent's efforts were among many missed opportunities to stop two of the hijackers after they were spotted attending an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, according to the report to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
It was the latest revelation of missed clues by intelligence and law enforcement authorities before the attacks.
Poor communications between the CIA ( news - web sites) and FBI - partly caused by legal restrictions - and limited counterterrorism staff kept authorities from aggressively pursuing the two hijackers, lawmakers were told.
The committees have been meeting since June, conducting an inquiry into intelligence agencies' counterterrorism efforts before the attacks. On Friday, President Bush ( news - web sites) reversed course and backed efforts by many lawmakers to have an independent commission conduct a broader investigation.
But Stephen Push, a leader of a group of Sept. 11 relatives, said Bush's proposal isn't good enough because it apparently wouldn't include an investigation of the intelligence agencies themselves.
"This is disgraceful, what we're learning about intelligence failures, and the White House is trying to cover it up," he said.
In her report Friday, inquiry staff director Eleanor Hill said two hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were able to live openly in San Diego even after they were spotted in the Malaysia meeting. They used their true names on an apartment lease and al-Mihdhar obtained a driver's license. They also took flight lessons. They could obtain and renew visas, and leave and re-enter the United States.
Not until Aug. 23, 2001, were they put on the State Department's watch list for denying visas. Even after that, the New York-based FBI agent was denied permission by headquarters to use his office's full resources to find al-Mihdhar.
In an e-mail, headquarters denied the request because al-Mihdhar was not under criminal investigation. It cited the "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement.
The unidentified agent replied: "Someday someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems."
The agent appeared at Friday's hearing, sitting alongside an unidentified CIA officer. Their backs and sides were shielded by a screen, revealing their faces only to lawmakers and their staff.
He recalled learning the hijackers' identities after Sept. 11.
"When I heard the name Khalid al-Mihdhar, I was upset," he said. "I remember explaining this is the same Khalid al-Mihdhar we had talked about for three months."
Through hearings this week and some in the future, Hill is painting a picture of missed opportunities. Individually, none may have prevented the attacks. But collectively, they might have unraveled the plot.
The missed opportunities also include the FBI's failure to follow up a memo by a Phoenix agent warning that U.S. flight schools may be training terrorist pilots and its refusal in August 2001 to pursue a warrant to search the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, now charged with conspiring in the attacks.
Against that is the backdrop of a report Hill presented Wednesday: that U.S. intelligence agencies were receiving many vague reports of possible terrorist attacks. At least 12 suggested the use of airplanes as weapons.
In neither the CIA nor FBI "did anyone see the potential collective significance of the information, despite the increasing concerns throughout the summer of 2001 of an impending terrorist attack," Hill said.
In May, Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice ( news - web sites), had said no one could have predicted terrorists would try to use an airplane as a missile. On Friday, she acknowledged "somebody did imagine it." But she said she did not know about the intelligence until well after May.
Asked if she should have known about it, she said, "There are always shards of intelligence and of different kinds of analysis. I mean, how do you stack it up against hundreds of reports about car bombs? So I wouldn't make that claim."
In her report Friday, Hill said she has found no indication that authorities had information about 16 of the 19 hijackers. It had limited information about al-Hazmi's brother, Salim-al-Hazmi, who, like the other two, was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon ( news - web sites).
Hill said CIA interest in the Malaysia meeting faded after January 2000, gradually resurfacing after a participant was linked to the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole ( news - web sites) in Yemen.
But the CIA gave limited information about the Malaysia meeting to FBI agents investigating the Cole attack, Hill said. Part of the reason was the legal restriction on the use of foreign intelligence in criminal prosecutions. Congress modified those restrictions shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
CIA officials have acknowledged they could have handled intelligence on the Malaysia meeting better, but maintain they provided the FBI information on al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi well before the attacks.
The FBI agent who sent the Aug. 23 e-mail urged intelligence committee members to ease those restrictions.
Sen. Carl Levin ( news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., praised the agent's work and lamented his anonymity.
"You will never receive the public recognition that you deserve for what you tried to do, for your e-mails, for your efforts to break down walls, reals and imaginary, for your effort to break through bureaucracy," he said.
----
Agent: FBI never got 9/11 data
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 21, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020921-22587350.htm
An FBI agent told Congress yesterday that days before September 11 he complained to FBI headquarters that "someone will die" because senior bureau officials refused to permit him to pursue one of the men who later took part in the Pentagon suicide attack.
The New York-based FBI agent told a joint House-Senate hearing on the intelligence failures of September 11 that he and other FBI agents were denied CIA intelligence information on Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi.
The two al Qaeda terrorists would end up aboard the aircraft that flew into the Pentagon in a suicide attack.
The CIA had identified the two terrorists from a meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 but never informed the FBI, officials testified yesterday.
The FBI agent said a bureaucratic "wall" prevented intelligence from being shared in a criminal investigation of the two terrorists.
"This resulted in a series of e-mails between myself and the FBI headquarters analyst working the matter," the agent said.
The agent sent an e-mail message to headquarters complaining about the information blockage on Aug. 29, 2001: "Whatever has happened to this, someday someone will die, and, wall or not, the public will not understand why we were not more effective in throwing every resource we had at certain problems. Let's hope the national security law unit will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, [Osama bin Laden], is getting the most protection."
The FBI agent's testimony is among numerous intelligence failures related to the September 11 attacks now being probed by Congress.
Earlier, Eleanor Hill, the staff director of the congressional panel, testified that numerous intelligence signs were missed.
Neither the CIA nor FBI was able to "see the potential collective significance of the information, despite the increasing concerns throughout the summer of 2001 of an impending terrorist attack," Mrs. Hill said.
The testimony made clear that legal restrictions that prevented sharing intelligence information that could be used in legal prosecutions were a major impediment in pursuing terrorists.
Mrs. Hill stated in testimony yesterday that Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi lived openly in San Diego after being linked to al Qaeda in Malaysia. The two used their names on an apartment lease, took flight lessons and obtained and renewed visas.
The two men were placed on the State Department's watch list on Aug. 23, 2001, and the FBI in New York was prevented from investigating the two men.
The FBI agent and a CIA officer testified at the congressional hearing from behind a glass enclosure to obscure their identities.
After learning that Al-Mihdhar was one of the September 11 attackers, the FBI agent said: "I was upset. I remember explaining this is the same Khalid Al-Mihdhar we had talked about for three months."
The FBI was faulted at the hearing for failing to pursue an FBI agent's warning in a memorandum from Phoenix that U.S. flight schools should be investigated for possible al Qaeda terrorists. It was also blamed for refusing to obtain a surveillance warrant for a computer used by Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been charged in the September 11 plot.
The CIA did fully share its intelligence about the January 2000 terrorist meeting in Malaysia with the FBI, which was investigating the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000.
The Clinton administration imposed new restrictions that prohibited sharing intelligence information with criminal investigators, according to U.S. officials. The restrictions were lifted after September 11.
Mrs. Hill, the inquiry staff director, testified that the CIA and FBI had no information linking 16 of the 19 hijackers to terrorism or terrorist groups before the attacks.
Al Qaeda terrorist leaders may have selected the terrorists because they were not well known to authorities, she said.
In addition to Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi, U.S. agencies had information about Al-Hazmi's brother, Salim Al-Hazmi.
According to Mrs. Hill, the CIA was unaware that the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping, had gathered information on Nawaf Al-Hazmi, linking him to al Qaeda.
The NSA failed to share the information with the CIA, she said.
According to testimony yesterday, the CIA learned in March 2000 that Nawaf Al-Hazmi came into the United States through Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 15, 2000.
----
Twenty-eight dead in Dominican prison riot
Saturday September 21,
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-126356.html
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Twenty-eight inmates were killed and as many as 100 were injured when a mutiny at a prison in the Dominican Republic on Friday resulted in a huge fire, officials and news reports said.
The riot at the prison in La Vega, about 70 miles (110 km) north of the capital, Santo Domingo, erupted during the morning when guards began a routine cell search and inmates resisted, authorities said. Prisoners set fire to mattresses and other objects, starting the blaze, news reports said.
Some injured inmates were treated locally; the worst cases were later transferred to a hospital specialising in burn injuries in the capital. The death toll could rise as some of the injured were very badly hurt, doctors said.
Media reports said the blaze, which was brought under control by more than a dozen fire fighting units, was so powerful it killed everyone inside some cells.
Hundreds of family members of prisoners flocked to the prison, and to La Vega's public hospital, to find out what had happened to their relatives. Many were weeping.
The government ordered an inquiry into how the mutiny and fire occurred and senior officials went to the scene.
The prison has a population of 691 inmates, sources at the National Prison Service in Santo Domingo said.
Authorities said the mutiny broke out when inmates resisted what they said was a routine check of cells for weapons and other banned items.
"Until now, we have been informed that the prisoners resisted when the authorities were undertaking a check of the prison, something that is very common," said Attorney General Virgilio Bello Rosa. He added that investigations were still under way.
Authorities would be scrupulous in identifying exactly who died, police said. In cases of deaths in prison, inmates serving long terms sometimes try to swap identities with people who have died, and who faced shorter terms, in order to reduce their own terms, they said.
The Dominican Republic is a Caribbean nation of about 8 million people that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
In the last serious prison mutiny in the country, inmates revolted two years ago at Victoria national penitentiary, about 20 miles (30 km) west of the capital, and eight people were killed.
----
Del. City Defends Photography Policy
September 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Police-Photos.html
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) -- The city police department's Corner Deployment Unit is known as the ``jump-out squad'' for bursting out of vehicles to question and search suspects. Its officers also are known for something else: snapping photos of suspects they stop, even those they don't arrest.
City officials defend the practice as a legal and effective part of fighting drug dealing and street crime.
Critics say it violates the constitutional rights of innocent people.
In an era when surveillance cameras peer from buildings and parking lots, courts have ruled that people can't expect privacy in public places. Civil libertarians argue that police photographing people they don't arrest is a different matter.
``There's no authority to forcibly photograph someone and enter them into a database when they have committed no crime,'' said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
``I'm not aware of any other municipal police department that has engaged in this type of behavior,'' he said.
Wilmington Mayor James Baker describes such criticism as ``blithering idiocy,'' saying police take pains to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens while targeting people ``who are killing our neighborhoods, who are killing our people.''
City officials deny police are photographing individuals they believe are likely to commit crimes. Some media reports have compared the technique to ``Minority Report,'' a recent science fiction movie in which police identify criminals before they commit crimes.
``It's not a Gestapo technique, it's not anything other than a progressive means of policing an urban environment,'' said police spokesman Cpl. Stephen Martelli.
Among other things, the photos can serve as proof that a person arrested for loitering received other warnings. They also are kept as ``possible evidence for ongoing investigations,'' authorities said.
Police Chief Michael Szczerba said his department has taken photographs of suspects for years without complaints.
It's ``highly improbable'' that innocent people were caught up in the stops, he said.
According to city officials, 658 people were stopped and questioned between June, when the jump-out squad's ``Operation Bold Eagle'' began, and last week. Among them, 546 were arrested, and 708 charges were filed.
Police believe the other 112 are involved in criminal activity, even if officers didn't find enough evidence that day to arrest them.
Drewry Fennell, executive director of the ACLU's Delaware chapter, argues that shouldn't matter.
``Their criminal histories are not relevant to their rights to move freely about on the street,'' Fennell said.
The ACLU is considering a lawsuit but, so far, no one has come forward with a formal complaint, he said.
City officials have met with ACLU, NAACP and Urban League representatives to hear their concerns, and another meeting is scheduled Wednesday.
In crime-troubled neighborhoods, some residents have welcomed the camera-toting police.
``I would rather have innocent people's pictures taken than innocent people shot,'' said Barbara Washam, who joined a rally last week to support the police.
Mayor Baker said the photo policy doesn't violate the Constitution or the U.S. Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio that police may stop and frisk people if they have reasonable suspicion they are engaged in criminal activity.
The state attorney general and chief federal prosecutor for Delaware agreed that Wilmington police appear to be acting within the law.
But others disagree, saying the Terry decision allows police only to briefly detain and question suspects.
``They can't use Terry as a pretext to go out and gather a photographic database of suspects,'' said professor Phyllis Bookspan, who teaches constitutional criminal procedure at Widener University.
City officials say officers exercise discretion.
On a recent Friday night at a corner reeking of alcohol, the squad frisked and questioned six men while investigating suspected drug dealing.
Patrol Officer George Collins questioned one of the men, then pulled a digital camera from his pocket and asked if he could take his picture.
``Can I ask why you're doing this to me?'' replied the man, who showed identification and told police he just was walking to the store.
``If you're not a criminal, you don't have anything to worry about,'' Collins answered. ``It's for future reference.''
Satisfied with the identification, Collins pocketed his camera without snapping a photo.
``He was a resident, so I gave him the option,'' Collins explained.
-------- terrorism
Residents Unprepared For Attack, Leaders Say
Business Officials Fault Governments' Efforts
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 21, 2002; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46334-2002Sep20?language=printer
Federal, state and local governments have not done enough to educate residents near the nation's capital on how to protect themselves from biological, chemical or radiological attacks, area business leaders told Congress yesterday.
In the sharpest critique so far of preparations for possible future acts of terrorism in the region, local officials said the coordination of law enforcement, emergency response and other crisis operations continues to be stymied by a maze of competing federal jurisdictions and turf battles between state and regional leaders.
Homeland security leaders say another attack is a matter of "when, not if." But witnesses said the public remains mystified about what to do in the event of another crisis similar to Sept. 11.
"We are concerned that a year after the attacks, the overwhelming majority of the region's population simply does not know what to do in case of another emergency," George Vradenburg, who co-chairs an emergency preparedness task force for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, told the House Government Reform subcommittee on the District.
"What is the plan? What's our role in it? What should I do to protect my family or my business, to add strength to the region's plan or protect my kids or my workforce?" asked Vradenburg, strategic adviser to AOL-Time Warner.
The hearing on emergency preparedness, called by Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.), chairman of the subcommittee, brought together representatives of the District, Maryland and Virginia, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Metrorail and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Government officials defended their overall work, grading their readiness at just under seven on a scale of one to 10. They agreed that more needs to be done.
As an example of improved relationships, they cited an advisory emergency coordination plan produced by COG that is now going before 17 local governments for adoption.
The governors of Virginia and Maryland and the District's mayor are working with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to execute agreements on eight emergency actions. Internally, all the agencies have overhauled their contingency plans and begun practice drills and exercises.
"A plan itself is nothing. It's the planning that's important," said Donald L. Keldsen, acting director of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency. "A plan isn't always going to work out as it was laid out. You need to adapt, and we will be able to because we are working together."
Lawmakers were supportive but skeptical. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, ranking Democrat on the panel, said residents worry that governments seem preoccupied with protecting top officials, not them.
"It's interesting to see you giving yourselves such high marks," Norton said. "I grade on a curve."
Morella said there seemed to be no shortage of plans but not enough coordination. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said the Office of Personnel Management, for example, has developed a new emergency protocol for deciding whether federal workers should stay at work or go home -- but has not coordinated its plan with the Office of Homeland Security's color-coded threat advisory system.
Davis pressed state and local officials to adopt COG's emergency response plan or come up with their own measures. He also said localities have not conducted a thorough analysis of their security weaknesses.
"Why is there not yet a list of key infrastructure improvements necessary to respond to future disasters?" he said.
District, state and Metro officials said more federal funding is needed beyond the $432 million approved for emergency preparedness.
Lawmakers said residents have many questions. What should they do if they are caught in the Metro system during a disaster? How will they know when to stay in or leave their homes?
Emergency managers agreed that the safest course of action is often to take shelter at home or work and wait for instructions, rather than evacuate. But that will work, others argued, only if government has educated people and has their full trust.
"We need to wipe the word 'evacuation plan' from the dictionary as far as responding to terror," Norton said, noting that doing so will be difficult. "I can assure you that in this building everyone is going to jump up and run."
Officials said they had learned the lessons of Sept. 11 but could not be sure that the confusion of that day would not be repeated.
"We must have a dose of reality. No protocol, no matter how well thought out, can completely control everyone's actions," said Scott Hatch, spokesman for OPM Director Kay Coles James. "If [the] scenario played out again tomorrow, in exactly the same fashion, there is no guarantee that people would not again flood the streets of their own volition."
Davis broke with his two local colleagues by withholding judgment on a Senate proposal to create a federal director for homeland security in the region.
Morella and Norton support the measure, introduced by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.).
"We have come to the point where we need someone high in the federal government who is solely responsible for coordination of federal responses within the national capital region," Morella said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Freedom from Oil's Yoke
By Warren Brown
Friday, September 20, 2002
Washington Post; 12:02 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44019-2002Sep20?language=printer
AUSTIN, Tex. - Imagine an America in which oil is irrelevant. Imagine the seemingly impossible and, at the moment, the practically improbable: an America no longer dependent on fossil fuels, free from reliance on wholly unreliable Middle East "allies" for barrels of crude.
Such an America is not beyond reason, according to Jeremy Rifkin, futurist guru and author of a new book on energy alternatives, "The Hydrogen Economy: The creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth" (Penguin Putnam Inc., www.penguinputnam.com).
The thesis of Rifkin's book is simple and not at all new to anyone familiar with ongoing research and development of hydrogen fuel cell technology. To wit: The history of human struggle is rooted in the perennial battle for control of access to energy sources, such as food, wood, coal and oil. At the moment, the world's primary sources of energy are fossil fuels - crude oil and its derivatives and natural gas. The world rapidly is running out of those fuels, especially oil, the largest estimated ultimately recoverable reserves of which are located in the Middle East.
America is the single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, which puts the country in a tenuous, extremely dangerous relationship with nations that have large oil reserves, but that also would like to do us harm. What to do? Historically, the answer has been to go to war, which seems an increasingly likely occurrence today.
But for nearly five decades, many scientists and energy experts have advocated the pursuit of alternative energy forms - a radical turn away from carbon-based fossil fuels to widely available, low-pollution hydrogen. And the focus on hydrogen primarily has been on the development of hydrogen fuel cells - mini-power plants that combine hydrogen and oxygen in an electrochemical reaction to produce electricity.
Hydrogen can be extracted from water using renewable solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal energy, according to research by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute in Washington, D.C.
Hydrogen also can be taken from anything that contains hydrocarbons, including gasoline, natural gas, biomass, landfill gas, methanol, ethanol, methane, and coal-based gas, according to the EESI.
When fuel cells use that hydrogen to produce electric energy - which can turn car wheels, or power buildings and spacecraft - the waste that is produced is little more than water vapor.
The genius of Rifkin's book is that it takes all of those known things about energy sources and source depletion - and the necessary hunt for alternative energy forms - and turns them into one of the most forceful arguments for hydrogen fuel cell development to date. Not only could success in that endeavor free the United States from the yoke of foreign oil, but it could also free individual energy consumers from the often autocratic controls of traditional, fossil-fuel energy suppliers.
Indeed, automotive companies such as General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. already have been examining the concept of individual energy independence - or at least more energy freedom and options for individual energy consumers. Conceivably, according to GM engineers, a vehicle powered by fuel cells also could be used to power a home. It is a seemingly wild idea fraught with numerous technical, financial and political problems that doubtless will be met by resistance on a variety of fronts.
But that kind of resistance always has greeted shifts to new energy sources, Rifkin says in "The Hydrogen Economy." There was resistance when societies shifted from wood fuel to coal, from coal and steam to fossil fuels, and from fossil fuels to nuclear power. A shift to fuel cells, believed by many energy experts to be necessary to preserve national energy independence, probably will be met with even more resistance because it also promises greater individual freedom, Rifkin said.
In that regard, he might also have said the same thing about the development of the automobile itself. The car and its various iterations are the greatest users of fossil fuels and, as a result, could become the greatest beneficiaries of fuel cell technology. But since their inception, cars always have come under attack, ostensibly because of their risks to personal and environmental safety.
Those automotive risks are real, of course. But as each one has been removed or minimized, attacks on auto-mobility have increased. I suspect, and I am not alone in this suspicion, that many of those attacks - such as the current jihad against sport-utility vehicles - have more to do with the fear of the democratizing effects of automobiles than they do with automobiles themselves.
It will be interesting to see what happens if, or when car companies succeed in removing sport-utility vehicles from the environmental and energy arguments, possibly through the employment of fuel cells.
Don't laugh.
Toyota is launching an SUV fuel cell project this year. The company is building 20, mid-size Toyota Highlander hybrid hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for demonstration purposes. Here's wishing the company success - and waiting to see how SUV and other anti-auto critics will respond if that success comes about.
-------- health
Bhopal Seethes, Pained and Poor 18 Years Later
New York Times
September 21, 2002
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/21/international/asia/21BHOP.html
BHOPAL, India - Eighteen years after thousands of people died here in a cloud of gas, the only monument to their memory is a rain-worn statue of a mother holding a baby and covering her face as another child hides behind her skirts.
No one knows for sure what caused the lethal leak of methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in October 1984, and no one knows for sure how many people died.
Shamshad Begum, however, thinks she knows who is responsible. She lost her 6-year-old son, Raja, on Dec. 3, 1984, and says of the man she blames, "If I see him, I'll physically crush him."
That man is Warren Anderson, the former chief executive of Union Carbide Corporation, now a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. Mr. Anderson has been living a low-profile retirement on Long Island and in Florida. But on a Bhopal wall, across the street from the plant site, he is remembered with neatly painted words: "Hang Anderson."
When Mr. Anderson came to Bhopal just after the disaster in 1984, he was detained by Indian authorities, then released on bail. He left the country and has not returned. For nearly two decades, a group of victims has pursued him with the relentlessness of the Furies. They have helped keep alive a court case that the Indian government would happily have seen die.
The government sought to downgrade the charges against Mr. Anderson, now 81, from culpable homicide to a nonextraditable offense, but last month a court refused. The government then said it would pursue extradition, but few think it will succeed. Beyond the legal hurdles, India's fear of discouraging foreign investment must also be overcome.
Defending Mr. Anderson's response to the gas leak, his lawyer, William Krohley, said: "He went to India when he first heard about the disaster to help. There's absolutely no connection between anything he did personally and the events that took place in Bhopal 18 years ago."
That view was echoed recently by Mr. Anderson's wife, Lillian, who answered the door at the couple's home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. Saying events had been "all misrepresented in the press," Mrs. Anderson told a reporter, "This is something that happened 20 years ago and was taken care of."
But here in Bhopal, Mr. Anderson remains a foil, a prism of sorts through which to view the evolution of the victims. For some of the victims, compensation is the issue; for others, vengeance. Some have moved on; some seem frozen in 1984.
The victims were sleeping through a winter's night when the gas infiltrated their homes - and lungs and eyes. Within days, some 3,000 people were dead. The official cause was "poisoning by irrespirable gases."
About 2,000 more deaths were directly attributed over the next few years to the leak, according to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief Department. By the official reckoning, 578,000 people were affected. That was the number finally awarded compensation by specially created claims tribunals.
Long before the antiglobalization movement gained prominence, and before chief executives in handcuffs became a news staple, Union Carbide became, for many, an emblem of the evils of multinationalism.
The company has always claimed that the leak was a result of sabotage, but no one has been charged. Instead, even as recently as the hearings on whether to downgrade the charges against Mr. Anderson, the evidence has pointed to poor safety procedures and maintenance. And the site, which still has not been cleaned up, may be leaking contaminants into local groundwater.
So to some, like Mrs. Begum, Mr. Anderson is an unforgivable loose end, a callous corporate criminal whose shoddily built plant poisoned loved ones as they slept.
But to others, Mr. Anderson is irrelevant. Akbar Khan Bundela, 52, said he had no interest in bringing back "Andersonji," using a term of respect. "We will not get anything out of him being punished," he said.
What Mr. Bundela and other victims want, he said, is the rest of the money awarded by Union Carbide. The company paid the government $470 million to settle the victims' claims. Yet only about half of it has been distributed, in most cases at $550 per recipient. Quite literally adding insult to injury, some tribunal officials extracted bribes from victims for processing their claims.
Other efforts, too, have fallen short. The Indian government has spent nearly $70 million on rehabilitation, much of it on 200 new buildings to help with the victims' medical and economic rehabilitation.
But a number of the buildings are shuttered or underused. Industrial estates and work sheds meant to provide employment have mostly been closed or given over to other uses. Fewer than 100 victims have been given jobs through government efforts, victims' advocates say.
Mr. Bundela and Mrs. Begum both live in a "gas victims' colony" built by the government. With 1,500 conjoined houses, archways and rough-hewn brick streets, it has the feel of a medieval village where survivors are eternally stitched together in a community of loss, isolated from the city and therefore from work.
For 18 frustrating years, they have watched an enormous medical-industrial complex, including six government hospitals, being created in their name. Along the way there have been allegations of malfeasance and corruption, and windfalls for contractors.
"This incident was a tragedy for some people, and an opportunity for others," said Abdul Jabbar, who runs the Bhopal Women Gas Victims' Industrial Association.
Union Carbide, too, built a hospital, at a cost of over $40 million, selling off its Indian assets to do so. Opened two years ago, it is a gleaming white elephant on 87 acres on the city's outskirts, filled with the latest medical equipment but rarely more than half full.
The hospital's doctors and consultants had homes built on the grounds, along with a swimming pool. Over two years, the head of the trust overseeing the hospital's construction spent an average of $1,250 a day - double the compensation most victims received - on administration, including his own fees.
While costing a lot, the new hospitals have helped only a little. Many victims say they spent their compensation money on private doctors.
"This gas has reduced us to beggars," Amran Khan, a 45-year-old welder, said, as he lay in a bed in the Kamla Nehru Hospital. "Whatever we had, we sold to survive."
One difficulty for health care providers is the fact that long-term effects of the gas exposure remain unclear. A 1987 study of 370,000 people found that 30,000 had solid evidence of long-term injury, whether lung damage or neurological problems, but no study has been conducted since. The Indian government stopped recording disaster-related deaths in 1992, and ended long-term medical studies two years later.
Union Carbide, meanwhile, has never released the composition of the gas, citing trade secrets, which doctors said made understanding its effects more difficult.
Victims invoke the disaster just about every time they have an ailment, from heart disease to breathing trouble to Parkinson's disease. Bureaucrats and doctors have tended to be more skeptical, saying they believe victims have their eye on more compensation. They point out that more than a million people applied for compensation - far more people than lived in Bhopal at the time of the leak.
Some doctors say the victims' ailments have as much to do with poverty as with gas. One criticized groups like Mr. Jabbar's for focusing on Mr. Anderson's extradition when victims fall prey to diarrhea because they lack clean water.
But Mr. Jabbar, who lost his father and brother, said he had no intention of letting the Anderson case die.
He said that in years of activism he had discovered that even gas clouds can have silver linings. Activism around Bhopal's disaster had transformed women and brought them out of their houses.
Indeed, if Mr. Anderson's departure nags at Mrs. Begum, it energizes her, too. She travels to Delhi for protests, pumps her fist in the air and chants "Hang Anderson!"
Keeping the "Hang Anderson" campaign alive, Mr. Jabbar said, kept the women's voices alive, too.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Arrested for Peace? News of anti-war arrests wanted!
From: Felice & Jack Cohen-Joppa - nukeresister@igc.org
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002
The Nuclear Resister newsletter -http://nonviolence.org/nukeresister - reports news of all anti-war and anti-nuclear arrests in North America, and many around the world. Since 1980, we also encourage international support for the people jailed as a result of these actions.
We need your help to gather and report this news!
As the United States threatens massive escalation of the war against Iraq, we know that activists will be arrested in dozens of places around the country and around the globe as the bombs fall.
Please send us ANY news of anti-war or anti-nuclear arrests in your area, via email, post, phone or fax (##s below). If you were arrested, tell your story and what you know of the legal status for yourself and others arrested. If you saw a news story, send the basic information or a clipping. We will follow up for necessary details.
Thanks for your help, and for making the news we report.
the Nuclear Resister POB 43383 Tucson AZ 85733 phone/fax: 520-323-8697 e-mail: nukeresister@igc.org
About the Nuclear Resister:
The Nuclear Resister began publishing in 1980, originally to provide information about and encourage support for the women and men jailed as a result of anti-nuclear civil disobedience.
Since the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, the Nuclear Resister newsletter has also included comprehensive reports of anti-war arrests, including those resulting from civil disobedience, direct action, conscientious objection, or as the unintended consequence of other anti-war activity.
In 1990 and 1991, the Nuclear Resister reported over 6,000 anti-war arrests at more than 225 protests in 27 states, and published the addresses of scores of imprisoned activists along with the addresses of more than 40 public conscientious objectors who served time in military brigs.
One-hundred-and-thirty consecutive issues have chronicled more than 50,000 anti-nuclear and 12,000 anti-war arrests, and encouraged support for hundreds of resisters serving prison sentences up to 18 years.
Write or e-mail for free sample issue: the Nuclear Resister POB 43383 Tucson AZ 85733 e-mail: nukeresister@igc.org Jack & Felice Cohen-Joppa, editors
PLEASE FORWARD TO ACTIVIST LISTS AND ORGANIZATIONS -- APOLOGIES FOR DUPLICATE POSTINGS
----
Civil Liberties Groups Warn on Surveillance
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Washington Post; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47052-2002Sep21?language=printer
A secret appeals court should turn aside the Bush administration's effort to expand surveillance powers in the war on terror, civil liberties groups said.
In court papers, the groups said expansion would jeopardize the rights to privacy and to engage in lawful public dissent and the warrant, notice and judicial review rights guaranteed by the Constitution's Fourth and Fifth amendments.
"The government should not be permitted to turn the quest for foreign intelligence into a 'pro forma justification for any degree of intrusion into zones of privacy,' " the court papers stated, quoting a 1973 case on Fourth Amendment rights.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has not publicly disclosed any of its rulings in nearly two decades, rejected in May some of the Justice Department guidelines for FBI terrorism searches and wiretaps as "not reasonably designed" to safeguard the privacy of Americans.
The Justice Department amended its guidelines and won the court's approval. Meanwhile, Bush administration officials are appealing the restrictions, arguing that the limits inhibit the sharing of information between terrorism investigators and criminal detectives.
----
Police Consider Legal Action In Effort to Disrupt Protests
By Manny Fernandez and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 21, 2002; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46371-2002Sep20?language=printer
Law enforcement authorities are considering legal maneuvers against groups planning disruptive or violent demonstrations during next weekend's World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said yesterday.
Gainer, asked about the protests during a congressional hearing on the region's general emergency preparedness, said he and D.C. police had met with the U.S. attorney's office and the Department of Justice to discuss protest plans that include trying to shut down the District, clog the Capital Beltway and vandalize stores and police cars. The major street protests are scheduled to begin Friday.
Authorities had discussed whether such activities "are so deleterious to security efforts that we ought to take proactive action, whether there are violations of the law that are so potentially egregious that they outweigh the First Amendment rights of someone to come in and speak with their life and shut down our intersections," Gainer said.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said the protests were discussed at a regular meeting with law enforcement, but he declined to say what subjects the meeting included and would not talk about Gainer's remarks.
Protesters reacted with indignation to Gainer's remarks and said they would not be cowed.
A statement issued yesterday by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, the group calling for a shutdown of the city Friday, said police have been "spreading lies about the nature of the demonstrations and the actions planned. Thus far, the ACC has mainly been planning and publicizing marches on K Street and bike rides and anti-war leafleting and theatrical production." The statement said accusations that the group is planning violence are "reckless and unfounded."
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for the District-based Partnership for Civil Justice, dismissed Gainer's comments. She said her group and the National Lawyers Guild plan legal support for activists. "This is their standard demonization tactic," she said. "There has been no call for violence by any of the people in organizations who are coming to Washington to protest."
"The police department is once again demonstrating their contempt for the constitutional rights of protesters in this city," she said. "Frankly, when they talk about preemptively shutting down protests and First Amendment speech, that is a hallmark of a police state and a repressive government."
She predicted that "more and more people will take to the streets to oppose [President] Bush and [Attorney General John D.] Ashcroft if they try to shut down protests in the city."
After the hearing, Gainer said that no legal action had yet been taken against protesters and that the option would be further discussed next week.
"I don't know why we have to wait until after they've inflicted damage," Gainer said after yesterday's hearing.
Police officials have voiced concern for days about the protests, raising the possibility that they might serve as cover for terrorist activities, and some businesses are being urged to let their employees telecommute, although the mayor's office is urging people to go about their business as usual.
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said commuters should stay off District roads, or expect to sit in traffic jams Friday.
Demonstrators plan five days of marches, teach-ins, vigils and civil disobedience beginning Wednesday to protest the meetings of the World Bank and IMF at the institutions' Foggy Bottom headquarters next Saturday and Sunday.
Ramsey and Gainer have said they are most concerned about a planned "People's Strike" on Friday and calls to shut down the city that day. The ACC is encouraging activists to block downtown intersections and Metro stops, slow down Beltway traffic, stay away from work or school, and protest at specific government and corporate offices.
Ramsey's concerns have led the Greater Washington Board of Trade to advise firms to let employees who cannot get to work by Metro to use phones and computers at home. A spokesman for Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said people should still go to work but should take Metro.
Law enforcement officials intend to establish a security perimeter and, although they have not said how large it will be, have indicated that it will take in the White House, the IMF and World Bank offices and surrounding blocks.
Protesters target the World Bank and the IMF as proponents of globalization, which they say leads to socially and environmentally destructive policies.
But the protests are expected to include a variety of voices, from those against war with Iraq to pro-labor and pro-environment groups. The Mobilization for Global Justice, a coalition of D.C.-based activists that helped organize demonstrations in Washington in April 2000, plans a downtown march Saturday.
The number of participants expected is unclear in a protest movement known for leaderless coalitions and seat-of-the-pants planning. "We know that thousands of people are coming," said coalition organizer Patrick Reinsborough, 30. "Will it be 10,000? Will it be 20,000? We don't really know."
Many demonstrations are permitted events that organizers say will be loud but peaceful. But Friday's action, protesters said, is intended to be disruptive. Nevertheless, "this isn't a plan to burn down the city," said Mike Wilson, 19, a Georgetown University sophomore and organizer for the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. "It's a plan to show that there a lot of people fed up with the way things are going."
Organizers said they plan to have dozens of motorists drive at or below the speed limit on the Beltway on Friday to slow traffic. State police in Virginia and Maryland will have extra troopers on the Beltway.
Metro Police Chief Polly Hanson said her officers are ready for any event in and around Metro stations. Metro plans regular service next weekend but expects that some Metrobus routes will be detoured.
One Web site has particularly rankled police. It announces a "scavenger hunt," suggesting the awarding of points for radical tasks, such as occupying offices of a K Street public relations firm, smashing a McDonald's restaurant window or puncturing a police car tire.
Ramsey said, "Obviously, some of that stuff is outright criminal."
But ACC members said they do not endorse the scavenger hunt or the Web site, run partly by an ACC founder who is not organizing with the group.
It was unclear yesterday exactly what sort of legal action authorities could take against the Web site's owner or against others.
Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the government would have to meet a high burden of proof. One hurdle, he said, would be to convince a judge that the plans were certain to lead to serious mayhem.
Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Neil Irwin and Lyndsey Layton contributed to this report.
---
Falun Gong Members Receive Stiff Sentences
Fifteen Members of Banned Chinese Group Get Up to 20 Years for Hijacking TV Signals
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 21, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46286-2002Sep20?language=printer
BEIJING, Sept. 20 -- Fifteen members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement were sentenced today to up to 20 years in prison for cutting into cable TV networks in northeastern China and transmitting films protesting the government's crackdown on the group.
The sentences, announced on state television and by the official New China News Agency, are among the stiffest meted out to Falun Gong practitioners in the three years since the government banned the organization as an "evil cult" and are comparable to the longest sentences given to political dissidents in China.
The sentences' severity appeared to reflect the ruling Communist Party's concern about an ongoing Falun Gong campaign that has challenged the government's control of the media by hijacking television signals and broadcasting videos accusing authorities of torturing and killing hundreds of practitioners.
State media said the defendants convicted today were responsible for hacking into cable systems on March 5 in Changchun, about 560 miles northeast of Beijing, and nearby Songyuan -- the first time Falun Gong has done this, as far as is known. Since then, Falun Gong has interrupted TV programs in several other cities, and it managed to hack into a state satellite system in June and briefly beam its message to millions.
Falun Gong supporters have also risked arrest by bombarding residents with fliers, videodiscs and automated phone calls that play recordings attacking the government.
State television showed the defendants, 11 men and four women, wearing prison uniforms and standing side by side before judges in Changchun. Some bowed their heads. Zhou Runjun, who allegedly organized the TV hijacking, and Liu Weiming, a former television engineer said to have provided technical information, received 20-year prison terms. Twelve other defendants were given sentences of 12 to 19 years, and one defendant was ordered to serve four years.
State media said they were convicted not because of their beliefs but because they damaged television facilities and "undermined enforcement of state laws by organizing and using cults."
"These saboteurs have committed a gang crime," said prosecutor Liu Rongsheng, according to the New China News Agency. Police also accused the Falun Gong leader, Li Hongzhi, who lives in the United States, of supporting the defendants and providing technical guidance on the Falun Gong Web site.
Falun Gong's information center in New York condemned the sentences and defended the television-signal hijackings: "By broadcasting programs that expose what is really happening in China, practitioners of Falun Gong are exercising their right to freedom of speech, using peaceful means that harm no one."
----
Bishops, Ethicists Urge Bush to Avoid War
In Brief
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Washington Post; Page B09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46948-2002Sep21?language=printer
The nation's Roman Catholic bishops said they have told President Bush it is "difficult to justify extending the war on terrorism to Iraq, absent clear and adequate evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attacks of Sept. 11."
Nor could an attack be justified without evidence of "an imminent attack of a grave nature" by Iraq, the bishops said in a letter to Bush hand-delivered to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In a separate action, 100 Christian ethicists from more than 50 universities and seminaries have signed a statement that the president has made "no compelling moral case" for a preemptive war against Iraq, said Shaun Casey, organizer of the petition and professor of ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Northwest Washington.
The Catholic bishops' letter, dated Sept. 13, was given to Rice during a meeting at the White House on Monday. Also attending were the presiding bishops of the Episcopal Church, Frank Griswold, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Mark Hanson.
"We respectfully urge you to step back from the brink of war and help lead the world to act together to fashion an effective global response to Iraq's threats that conforms with traditional moral limits on the use of military force," the bishops wrote.
Last year, the bishops said the use of force against Afghanistan could be morally justified if it followed such "just war" norms as using minimal force to get the job done and not targeting civilians.
"We believe Iraq is a different case," the bishops said.
---
Vigil Draws Attention To Suffering in Sudan
In Brief
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Washington Post; Page B09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46948-2002Sep21?language=printer
The Church Alliance for a New Sudan is holding a week-long vigil at the U.S. State Department to draw attention to the persecution of Christians in the African country.
"For 20 years, Christians in Sudan have suffered unspeakable evil unlike anyplace else on Earth," said Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, of which the alliance is a project. Since 1983, Sudan has been engaged in a civil war between the ruling Islamic government and largely non-Arab opposition groups -- mostly in the south -- that include large numbers of animists and Christians.
The vigil, which began Wednesday and continues through Tuesday at Galvez Park (26th and E streets NW), is timed to recent efforts for peace and justice in Sudan, organizers said. There have been peace talks between Sudanese officials and rebels, but vigil organizers want to see greater U.S. involvement in the process.
"American citizens must demand that our own government be critically engaged," Knippers said in a statement. She compared the involvement of churches on the issue to previous efforts to rid South Africa of its apartheid system of racial segregation.
Participants have included United Methodists, Episcopalians, Southern Baptists, Catholics and Jewish organizations. Leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals plan to meet with State Department officials at the conclusion of the vigil.
-- Religion News Service
--------
China Frees AIDS Activist After Month of Outcry
New York Times
September 21, 2002
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/21/international/asia/21CHIN.html
BEIJING, Sept. 20 - China's most prominent advocate for AIDS patients, Dr. Wan Yanhai, was unexpectedly released today after nearly a month's detention by China's State Security apparatus.
The release came after an international outcry over his arrest, with an extraordinary range of voices, including the State Department, United Nations officials, and Act Up, the protest group concerned with AIDS issues, expressing their concerns.
Human rights advocates said they could not recall anyone detained by China's secretive State Security apparatus having been released so quickly and with so few apparent restrictions; many detainees have been placed directly on planes out of the country. But in a telephone interview tonight on his cellphone, Dr. Wan said that he had been released at noon today, and he vowed that "my work against AIDS in China won't be hindered."
"If this incident helps attract more concern and support for victims of AIDS and their families and children here in China, then it can be considered an opportunity we should grasp," he said. "I'll be considering how to best continue my work in the future."
Dr. Wan's four-week detention has probably done more to highlight China's AIDS problem and to press the government to act than his years of hard work that came before it. Although China has recently begun to acknowledge its AIDS crisis, government officials view independent advocates like Dr. Wan as a threat.
With President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States only a month away, high-level State Department officials expressed their concern about Dr. Wan's disappearance. Chinese health authorities were warned that their pending $90 million application for financing from the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would not be approved with Dr. Wan in detention.
Within the past week, there have been angry protests at the Chinese Embassy in France, where protesters splattered the Chinese flag with fake blood. In New York on Thursday, demonstrators held banners in Chinese proclaiming "Silence = Death" - the slogan that galvanized the United States government to act against AIDS 15 years ago.
Protests have flooded into the Chinese Foreign Ministry from foreign diplomats and scholars. In the end, Chinese authorities apparently realized that they were losing far more than they were gaining by holding the doctor.
"They really want - they really need - the money from the Global Fund," said a person familiar with the application. "There was just too much at risk."
That application is to be submitted next week, and some drafts have even included an allocation for Dr. Wan's group, the Aizhi Action Project, the person said.
Dr. Wan, who disappeared on Aug. 24, is a former health education official. His group has long operated a Web site about AIDS in China and has more recently started to organize small support and advocacy groups for people who have H.I.V. In recent years, the soft-spoken but determined Dr. Wan has split his time between China and the United States, where he is completing a project on a Fulbright grant and where his wife is a student.
Dr. Wan confirmed that he had been detained by State Security for posting on the Internet a classified health document concerning an AIDS epidemic among people who sold their blood under unsanitary conditions in central China's Henan Province. "It was marked `classified,' and I should have been aware of that. It was a mistake and I behaved recklessly," he said, in a rare moment of contrition.
The English language service of the New China News Agency said Mr. Wan had been detained on suspicion of leaking state secrets and had confessed. He "deserved leniency according to the law," it said. There was no mention of his case on the Chinese language wire.
Through his Internet postings, Dr. Wan helped expose the scandalous epidemic in Henan, and his writings contain far more information than the document that got him in trouble, even though it was marked "secret."
Doctors here estimate that one million poor farmers in Henan were infected with H.I.V. in the 1990's after selling their blood to government-affiliated collectors.
In some villages where selling blood was common, more than half of adults are now infected, villagers said. Most have no access to medicines and are now dying, leaving behind many orphans, some of whom were also infected.
The document posted by Dr. Wan showed that provincial health authorities were well aware of a serious H.I.V. problem in Henan by the mid-90's, even though they publicly denied it for years afterward.
Dr. Wan said he was treated "cordially" in prison and was in good health. He said he was not told to leave the country, but said it would be inappropriate to discuss any conditions that might have been imposed. He said he was unaware of the campaign to secure his release.
"I'm extremely moved and grateful," he said. "I was also extremely moved that all my friends here involved in fighting AIDS did not back down or give up because of my case."
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Activist to Document Actions in Iraq
September 21, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-Peace-Activist.html
CHICAGO (AP) -- At age 25, Nathan Mauger has seen much of the world -- and been kicked out of some of it. He was banned this year from Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for delivering food and medical supplies to Palestinians who'd occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Now the young peace activist from Spokane, Wash., is off to Iraq. Despite strong disapproval from the U.S. government, Mauger and six other members of an American ``peace team'' are positioning themselves in Baghdad in case of a U.S. attack there.
Mauger plans to stay ``indefinitely'' to report the stories of Iraqi citizens for newspapers and television stations in his home state, using video and audio equipment he's bringing along.
He's not an apologist for Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. But Mauger and others in Voices in the Wilderness, the Chicago-based group organizing the trip, believe the suffering of the Iraqi people has not been highlighted enough. They oppose a U.S. attack and want an end to sanctions.
``The goal is to humanize Iraq because it is a nation of human beings,'' Mauger said last week before leaving for Iraq. ``There are 25 million people; it's not just Saddam Hussein.''
Relief groups say life for the average Iraqi is difficult at best.
Contaminated water has created an epidemic of dysentery and infectious diseases, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. UNICEF says Iraqi children younger than age 5 are dying at more than twice the rate they were before the sanctions.
At least one U.S. official called the peace team's concerns for the Iraqi people ``valid.''
``It's just that we don't feel anything's going to change by ending sanctions or making it easier for Saddam,'' said Gregg Sullivan, a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. ``This is a guy who's not a force for alleviating human suffering in the world. He's a force for exacerbating it.''
Neither that argument, nor the $10,000 fines imposed on some activists who've gone to Iraq in recent years without U.S. government permission, sway Mauger.
He knows many Americans deplore what he's doing. He also concedes that the Iraqi government is ``as horrible as people say'' and admits he's more than a little frightened.
He says it was his experience studying abroad in the West Bank -- seeing death and destruction firsthand -- that turned him from a ``mainstream liberal'' college student to peace activist.
``When you see a war happening in front of you, with people you care about caught in the middle, you don't forget that,'' he said. ``It changes you. It changed me.''
In Bethlehem, Mauger was among a group of Palestinian supporters, called the International Solidarity Movement, who tried to bring food and supplies to Palestinians holed up inside the Church of the Nativity on May 2. Ten made it inside; Mauger and a dozen others didn't and were deported.
Mauger, who's awaiting a journalism degree from Washington State University while credits transfer from his Chinese language studies in the West Bank, made the comments last week at a Chicago apartment that is part office for Voices in the Wilderness, part living quarters for its volunteers. He joined the group two months ago after being released from an Israeli prison and returning to the United States.
As he packed Wednesday, Mauger listened to music through headphones, while recording two CDs. They are among the only personal possessions he took with him.
Mauger left Chicago's O'Hare International Airport Thursday for Iraq via Jordan with two large duffel bags in tow -- most of them filled with medical journals, donated clothing, vitamins, children's pain reliever and cough syrup and a few packages of magic markers to give to kids.
The team expects to be in Iraq by Monday. Eventually, Mauger plans to settle into a Baghdad hotel and volunteer at a hospital.
Adly Natsheh, a 21-year-old Palestinian who met Mauger while both were students at Washington State, said he realizes Mauger's cause may be unpopular here. But he calls his friend ``my American hero.''
``There are few people in the world like him,'' Natsheh said.
Though his cause can be a lonely one, Mauger and Voices in the Wilderness do have allies.
Both Scott Ritter, an ex-Marine and former U.N. weapons inspector, and Hans von Sponeck, a German who also resigned from the U.N. after overseeing the organization's oil-for-food program, have gone on the public speaking circuit to oppose attacking Iraq and the sanctions.
Still, polls show that most Americans support President Bush's tough stance on both fronts. Mauger hopes reports and film footage he sends back home will change some minds.
``I'm hoping for the best,'' he said, ``But expecting the worst.''
On the Net:
Peace team: http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org
State Department travel warning: http://travel.state.gov/iraq--warning.html
Martha Irvine can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org
----
China Frees AIDS Activist After International Protests
Former Health Official Posted Government Report on Internet
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 21, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46275-2002Sep20?language=printer
BEIJING, Sept. 20 -- China today freed Wan Yanhai, the country's leading AIDS activist, after an international uproar followed his Aug. 25 arrest by national security officials for revealing state secrets.
Wan said he was released after confessing to the offense. He said he had acknowledged breaking the law when he posted a government document on the Internet showing that Chinese officials knew of a brewing AIDS crisis in a central province years earlier than previously believed.
Significantly, Wan said he was not being forced into exile, like so many other Chinese citizens who have run afoul of the shadowy state security police. He said he planned to continue his work in China, lobbying on behalf of people with AIDS and working on prevention of the disease. Last month, Wan and several other activists applied to open a nonprofit organization that will focus on AIDS issues, and he said he still hopes to start it.
"The government was very forgiving," Wan said in a phone interview in Beijing, adding that he intended to visit his wife, Su Zhaosheng, in Los Angeles in late October. "They released me. As of now, I will not be charged. That could change, of course."
China's reasons for releasing Wan were unclear. But Wan's disappearance on Aug. 25 sparked a global campaign to set him free, led by Western AIDS organizations such as ACT UP, as well as Chinese expatriates and AIDS researchers. China has recently applied for a $90 million grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Its previous request was rejected because the fund said China had not done enough to educate its population about AIDS.
Wan, 38, a former Health Ministry official, was one of a few crusading Chinese who sought to highlight China's emerging AIDS crisis, which a U.N. report in June called a "titanic peril." A Chinese health official said recently about 1 million people are estimated to be carrying HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, a figure that could rise tenfold before the end of the decade. Most researchers place the real figure much higher.
Wan particularly infuriated health officials in Henan province, where an AIDS crisis has been developing since the 1990s when that province, and many others, encouraged farmers to sell their blood for cash. Crude methods of blood collection, including the reuse of needles and mixing of blood, caused hundreds of thousands of people to become infected with HIV. Some estimates place HIV infections at 1 million in rural Henan alone.
However, the provincial government has not removed any senior health officials, something that Wan railed against on the Web site of the Aizhi Action Project, a group he founded in 1994 to fight discrimination against homosexuals and people with AIDS. Even now, Henan health officials have made no serious efforts to deal with the crisis because, in the words of one official, acknowledging it "might affect the investment environment."
In August, Wan received a document showing that Henan officials knew of the AIDS crisis in 1995. He posted it on his Web site on Aug. 17. Eight days later Wan disappeared after dining with friends in Beijing.
The official New China News Agency said Wan was "admonished" and released today after "confessing to his crimes and agreeing to cooperate with police in the investigation."
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