Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
US Congress delegation visits Basra
GULF WAR VETERANS FEAR FOR NEXT BATCH OF TROOPS
Pak nukes in US custody?
Turkey Seizes Weapons-Grade Uranium
Turkey makes huge haul
Turkish Police Say Seized Uranium Weighs 5 Ounces
Refined uranium found in Turkey weighs grams, not kilograms
Turkish uranium suspects released
Long After the Atlas, a Shrug: Missile Site Draws No Bidders
Why? Because We Can
MILITARY
Tent City an Oasis of Hope for Afghanistan Refugees
US 'set to arm Taiwan with destroyers'
Smallpox vaccination too risky?
With Court Nod, Parents Debate School Drug Tests
Rehab centers monitor Bush case
India Says Is Curbing 'Cross - Border Terrorism'
Iraq to Deliver Weapons Reports
Iraq Rejects Inspection Revisions
Baghdad's Rebuff Comes Even as Lobbying Continues in U.N.
Aiming to Disrupt Diplomacy, Iraq Risks War by Rejecting Plan
Saddam's faceoff with West earns admirers
Troops kill protester at rally for intifada
Palestinians Rally in Gaza at 2-Year Anniversary of Conflict
Israel Begins to Pull Out Forces From Arafat's Compound
Israel Ends Arafat Siege, Licks Political Wounds
Indictment Brings Back Horrors of 'Dirty War'
Al Qaeda's Gold and the U.A.E.
Russians Battle Chechen Force in Ingushetia for 3rd Day
Ex - Spies Protest in S. Korea
Tanks Test a 'Barrier' to Baghdad
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Panel's Findings Take Intelligence Officials by Surprise
Agency Probes D.C. Wireless Network
ENERGY AND OTHER
Negotiators Near Agreement on Energy Bill
Nancy Reagan Fights Bush Over Stem Cells
Antibiotic resistance on the rise
IMF told to devise bankruptcy plan
When the IMF extends an embrace
Calculating Checks and Balances at the World Bank
ACTIVISTS
Thousands march on Cheney's house to protest a war with Iraq
Specter of War Stirs Campus Dissent
Demonstrators rally peacefully
Protesters in D.C. Plan Next Move
Protesters' Momentum Weakens as Crowd Thins
Britons March Against War With Iraq
Biggest protest in a generation hears calls for peace with Iraq
Choosing Up Sides
Anti-War Concert at Ex-Nazi Lab
Indians run 'Trail of Dreams' to save sacred site from mine
Peace Comes to Livermore
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
US Congress delegation visits Basra
Basra, Sept 29, 2002,
INA
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/9950/home6.htm
US Congress delegation has visited a number of service and health installations in Basra province.
Delegation got acquainted with the nature of services presented by Sinbad Project for children's treatment established by Iraqi Red Crescent Society in cooperation with Italian Childhood Friends and Bridge to Baghdad Organizations.
US delegation also visited patients residing at Ibn Ghazwan General Hospital and got acquainted with the nature of some diseases Iraqi children, women and the elderly inflicted due to the continuation of the malicious aggression and unjust sanctions.
Hospital's physicians presented a detailed explanation on mortality rates over the last ten years due to the harm inflicted Basra's citizens' as a result of depleted uranium used by forces of US-led-33-states aggression on Iraq in1991 . A number of experts and international organizations proved the existence of the radioactive toxicity.
US delegation visited stations of drinking water purification and what these stations suffered due to the shortages in equipment required in purification and sterilization as a result of hindrances placed by US and British delegates at UN 661 Sanctions Committee to block contracts related to these stations.
Members of US Congress have met a number of National Assembly members in Basra province who presented a detailed explanation on impacts of aggression and unjust sanctions. And the daily US aircraft violation of the residential sites by missile bombing leading to increase environment contamination rate.
----
GULF WAR VETERANS FEAR FOR NEXT BATCH OF TROOPS
Sep 29 2002
UK Sunday Mail
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12237768&method=full&siteid=86024
GULF War veterans yesterday attacked Tony Blair's Iraq dossier.
They claim the document failed to accuse Saddam Hussein of using chemical and nuclear devices against British forces in 1991.
The veterans said that admitting the weapons were used against British troops would force the Government to pay millions of pounds in benefits.
Earlier this year, we revealed that a Government-backed laboratory found enriched uranium poisoning in two veterans - Shaun Foulds and Michael Burrows.
The radioactive metal is used to make nuclear bombs.
Royal Scots chef Foulds fears he and others were the victim of a missle packed with radioactive fragments.
His seven-year-old son, Michael, who was born brain-damaged, is on a waiting list for blood tests at St James's Hospital in Leeds.
Foulds said: "I want to find out if Michael's condition is in any way linked to mine.
"I've always had suspicions that they are linked, but I want some peace of mind.
"While preparations are being made for a new Gulf War, we are still suffering the affects of the last one.
"We need the Government to fully recognise our illnesses and bring some sort of conclusion to our problems, before risking more lives."
Meanwhile, hundreds of serving soldiers have swamped the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association 24- hour helpline.
Concerns centre on vaccinations against biological weapons such as anthrax and contact with depleted uranium which is used in US and UK ammunition.
Association chairman Shaun Rusling, a former paratrooper, said: "They've seen how friends and colleagues have fallen ill to Gulf War Syndrome and are worried about how another dose of vaccines will affect them.
"How can the Government send out another batch of men and women when they haven't dealt with those who fell ill the first around?"
The association say 555 veterans have died since April 1991.
-------- india / pakistan
Pak nukes in US custody?
Vishal Thapar New Delhi,
September 29, 2002
Hindustan Times
http://www.hindustantimes.com/onlineCDA/PFVersion.jsp?article=http://10.81.141.122/news/181_74834,00050002.htm
A Harvard University paper has put forth the engaging hypothesis that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is under the "custodial control" of the US. Here's how:
On November 1, 2001, the then Pakistan Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar, had made a statement that Pakistan had accepted a US offer for training Pak experts "for security and protection of nuclear assets".
Sattar, known for his precise choice of words, went on to say, "Pakistani experts would be apprised of the security measures being applied by the United States". The interpretation is that the US was "applying security measures" even before Pakistani personnel had been trained.
"Pakistan's strategic assets are under foolproof custodial control," Sattar said, without specifying whose custody, and leaving open the interpretation that custodial control was being exercised by someone else.
A loaded endorsement of the safety of Pakistan's nuclear assets by Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes makes the case stronger.
A day before the Sattar statement, Fernandes said, "Those concerned with Pakistan's nuclear weapons are responsible people".
Just as Sattar has a reputation for precision, Fernandes has one for speaking loosely. In 1998, he inadvertently revealed India's assessment that the main strategic threat to it was not from Pakistan but China. During the Kargil conflict, he gave a clean chit to Nawaz Sharif and blamed the intrusions on General Musharraf. This too proved correct.
If the US is indeed exercising custodial control, then one need have no fears of an Indo-Pak nuclear flashpoint. Assuming this is true, the logical inference is that it becomes incumbent on the 'custodian' to ensure that Pakistan does not suffer a military defeat at the hands of India.
Spilling beans
Were the Indian defence forces mobilised for war during the Kargil skirmish or not? At a seminar on 'Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia' last week, General (Retd) V P Malik, while intervening in an innocuous discussion, said the forces were indeed mobilised along the entire front, "very close to the present levels".
There was a flutter when Lt-General (Retd) B S Malik -- who was Chief of Staff of the critical Western Command during the Kargil scrap -- got up to question this claim. "Sir, were we really mobilised?" B S Malik asked V P Malik. The audience gasped. "Yes we were. You don't know. I was the Chief. I ordered it," rasped V P Malik.
B S persisted: "But sir, was the War Book employed?" "I'm telling you, there was mobilisation, but not legally (officially)," VP shot back. With the Maliks spilling the beans, the audience was amused.
War Book procedures have been invoked in the present build-up. But the Kargil skirmish was officially not war, only a conflict. That's why VP says mobilisation was there but there was nothing official about it.
An American participant's observation was telling: "South Asia is, in one sense, a wonderful laboratory!"
-------- terrorism
Turkey Seizes Weapons-Grade Uranium
The Associated Press
Sunday, September 29, 2002; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18714-2002Sep29?language=printer
ANKARA, Turkey -- Paramilitary police have seized about 35 pounds of uranium and arrested two Turks who they said planned to sell the weapons-grade substance, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Police, acting on a tip, stopped a taxi on a highway near the southeastern city of Sanliurfa, Anatolia said Saturday. They found the uranium in a secret compartment under one of the car seats.
Police in Sanliurfa confirmed the arrests but refused to give further information.
Anatolia said the uranium was enriched for use in weapons. Police believe it was smuggled from an eastern European country.
The agency did not say when the arrests were made. Sanliurfa, some 480 miles from Ankara, is close to the Syrian border.
----
Turkey makes huge haul
By Seva Ulman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
September 29, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200292923828.htm
ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish police seized about 33 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, valued at $5 million, and detained two men, Turkey's Anatolian news agency reported yesterday.
If further tests uphold the preliminary police findings, the quantity would be by far the largest yet captured from illegal hands anywhere in the world. The previous record was set in July 2001, when security forces in Georgia arrested several men trying to sell less than 4 pounds of weapons-grade - also called enriched - uranium to Turkish buyers. Smaller amounts have been captured on several other occasions in the region.
It is not yet clear whether the source of the seizure reported yesterday came from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, but Anatolian described it as coming from an Eastern European country. It was also unclear when the seizure took place.
The Anatolian report said two men were arrested on smuggling charges after authorities acted on a tip-off and stopped a taxicab in the southern province of Sanliurfa, which borders Syria and is about 155 miles from the Iraqi border. The uranium was in a lead container hidden under a seat.
Anatolian gave only the first names of the suspects, which appeared to be Turkish.
Officials at Ankara's Atomic Energy Institute, when contacted by Reuters news agency, would not confirm they had been notified about the material seized from the taxi.
"Our investigation on whether the uranium was destined for a neighboring country is continuing," Anatolian quoted a Sanliurfa police official as saying. Police officials in Sanliurfa and Ankara declined to comment on the case.
Smugglers use Turkey's porous eastern border to import drugs, and hundreds of thousands of migrants illegally cross the rugged border each year on their way to more affluent European Union nations.
Police in Istanbul seized more than 2.2 pounds of weapons-grade uranium in November that had been smuggled into Turkey from an East European nation. The smugglers were detained after attempting to sell the material to undercover police officers.
Though substantial, the 33 pounds of enriched uranium reported seized yesterday is not quite enough to make a "proper" nuclear bomb, according to U.S. government information. About 55 pounds is considered the standard threshold to ignite such a device's searing force. Nuclear bombs also require at least 17.6 pounds of plutonium.
However, the seized amount is likely to work as a crude nuclear bomb, combined with conventional explosives to form a "dirty bomb," or - in the worst case - blended with previously smuggled and as yet undiscovered amounts of enriched material to form an actual bomb.
----
Turkish Police Say Seized Uranium Weighs 5 Ounces
September 29, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-turkey-uranium.html
DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) - A Turkish police official said on Sunday the amount of uranium recently seized by officers was around 5 ounces and did not weigh 33 lbs as initially reported.
The state-run Anatolian news agency on Saturday reported that paramilitary police in the southern province of Sanliurfa detained two men after discovering 15 kg of uranium in a lead container hidden beneath a taxi car seat.
But that amount had included the weight of the container and the radioactive material was actually around 140 grams, an official from the gendarmes force in Sanliurfa said on condition of anonymity.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna was also skeptical because the amount previously reported would have been enough to make a nuclear bomb, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told Reuters on Sunday.
The Turkish official said the weapons-grade uranium was seized on Friday after police stopped the vehicle on a road in Sanliurfa, which borders Syria and is about 155 miles from the Iraqi border.
The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between the United States and Iraq, accused by Washington of developing weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush claims Baghdad has tried to acquire uranium to develop a nuclear bomb as his administration works to build international support for a military operation to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The IAEA also questioned the contents because the word uranium was spelled in a strange way on the container, which itself was made in West Germany, Fleming said.
``We have no primary information and are trying to verify the contents of the object but it's very suspicious,'' she said.
The Anatolian agency on Sunday quoted Sanliurfa's provincial governor Muzaffer Dilek as saying experts had yet to determine the amount of uranium but that intelligence agents believed it only weighed about 100 grams.
Dilek also said police charged the two men in connection with the case but released them pending trial.
``These people said they believe that what was given to them was medical material,'' he said, adding police were now looking for two other suspects.
----
Refined uranium found in Turkey weighs grams, not kilograms
By Yossi Melman,
Ha'aretz Correspondent, and Agencies,
29/09/2002 Last update - 17:34
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=214088&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
The refined uranium caught by Turkish police Saturday weighed far less than originally thought, an official source in southwestern Turkey said Sunday.
It was originally believed that the Turkish paramilitary police had seized over 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium in the operation that also resulted in the detention of two men accused of smuggling the substance. The actual weight of the uranium turned out to be hundreds of grams, a fraction of the initial estimate.
The uranium is to be sent for tests to the local Atomic Energy Agency. The two suspects were brought before a judge Saturday night charged with the illegal sale of the material.
Officers in the southern province of Sanliurfa, bordering Syria and 250 km from the Iraqi border, were acting on a tip-off when they stopped a taxi cab and discovered the uranium in a lead container hidden beneath the vehicle's seat, the Anatolian news agency said Saturday.
The incident came at a time of mounting speculation the U.S. could attack neighboring Iraq for its alleged program of weapons of mass destruction.
Officials at Ankara's Atomic Energy Institute would not confirm they had been notified about the material. "Our investigation on whether the uranium was destined for a neighboring country is continuing," a Sanliurfa police official was quoted as saying by Anatolian.
Authorities believe the uranium came from an east European country and has a value of about $5 million, Anatolian said. It was not immediately clear when the operation was carried out. Anatolian only gave the first names of the suspects, which appeared to be Turkish.
Smugglers use Turkey's porous eastern border to import drugs, and hundreds of thousands of migrants each year illegally cross the rugged frontier on their way to more affluent European Union nations.
Police in Istanbul seized more than one kg of weapons-grade uranium last November that had been smuggled into Turkey from an east European state. The smugglers were detained after attempting to sell the material to undercover police officers.
----
Turkish uranium suspects released
Sunday, September 29, 2002
ISTANBUL, Turkey
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/29/turkey.uranium/
Turkish authorities Sunday released two men accused of attempting to smuggle a quantity of uranium, saying the amount in their possession was only a fraction of what officials originally estimated.
Turkish officials announced Saturday they had seized a box filled with nearly 35 pounds (15 kilograms) of uranium. But Muzaffer Dilek, the mayor of Sanliurfa, a Turkish city near the Turkey-Syria border, said Sunday that the material amounted to only 140 grams -- about five ounces.
The two men arrested with the material were released due to lack of evidence and have since disappeared, Dilek said.
The material is being taken to a nuclear research facility in Ankara to determine its composition, Turkey's Ministry of Internal Affairs said. That analysis was expected to be complete by Monday.
The men, who were riding in a taxi with the box, were stopped en route from Sanliurfa to the nearby city of Gazi Antep in southeastern Turkey, police said. The driver of the taxi was interviewed and released. Authorities displayed the material, which they said was worth $5 million and originated in the former Soviet Union, to reporters in Sanliurfa.
Turkish officials said they did not know whether the uranium was refined weapons-grade material or naturally occurring uranium, which would have to be refined before it could be used in a weapon. However, they said they did not believe the material posed a radiation danger.
U.S. officials and technical experts are in touch with Turkish authorities about the incident.
"If this is real, it is frightening," said a U.S. official familiar with the discussions. "But it is best now that we all look at this with a fair amount of skepticism until we know what it is that they have."
Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright suggested the men could have been trying to swindle potential buyers. But he said investigators should try to determine both the source and the intended purchaser.
The U.S. official said such material "isn't exactly easy to come by" and added, "There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there who claim to be selling fissile material and weapons-grade material who turn out to be frauds. That is why until we know more I would be more skeptical than anything else. But we are hurrying to learn as much as we can."
-- CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King and Producer Fatih Turkmenoglu contributed to this report
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Long After the Atlas, a Shrug: Missile Site Draws No Bidders
September 29, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/nyregion/29SILO.html
The house in the Adirondacks has a Jacuzzi, an airstrip, an underground living space and even its own missile silo. But so far it has no takers.
An auction for the converted missile site began on eBay last month with a minimum price of $2.1 million. When it closed on Wednesday without a single bid, the owners decided to slash the price drastically and try again.
The new minimum bid is $550,000, with added incentives for early bidders. In the second auction, which ends on Oct. 25, the owners have thrown in 78 more acres and have promised to build an 800-square-foot addition to the above-ground home. "The right person is going to think it's a steal," said a co-owner, Bruce Francisco.
The property in Adirondack Park, midway between Plattsburgh and Saranac Lake, N.Y., was one of a dozen Atlas-F missile sites built in the early 1960's in the region surrounding Plattsburgh Air Force Base. But the missiles soon became obsolete and the sites were deactivated by 1965.
Mr. Francisco's cousin, Gregory Gibbons, bought the land a decade ago for $55,000, pumped out the water and sludge that had filled the silo and launch control center, and began construction.
The property now includes a rustic ranch house above ground and two underground floors with kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and living room. The attached silo is still undeveloped.
In the first auction, the site was pitched as a safe haven from terrorism or attack, a strategy that drew news media attention, if not buyers. The new description on eBay continues in the same vein: "This may be your last chance to find an uncontaminated and usable hardened underground complex," it says.
Still, the owners remain flexible. "What you have there is not just a house, it's a concept," Mr. Francisco said. "If something happened in the world, you could live down there for six months. If we find world peace, we'll open a nightclub in there - how's that?"
-------- us politics
[Compelling. et]
Why? Because We Can
By MAUREEN DOWD
September 29, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/opinion/29DOWD.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON - The Boy Emperor's head hurt.
All the oppressive obligations of statecraft were swimming through his brain like hungry koi.
He summoned the imperial war tutor to the oval throne.
"I'm confused, Wise Rummy," he confessed. "Is the war pre-emptive, preventive or preventable? Is Saddam fissile or fissible? What in creation is counterproliferation? Everything's moving so fast. It's a puzzlement. Why are we mad at Saddam?"
"Because he wants to attack our country," the mandarin replied.
"Why?" the Boy pressed.
"Because we want to attack his country," the tutor said.
"Why?" The Boy was insatiable.
"Because Saddam tried to destroy your dad."
"Why?"
"Because your dad tried to destroy Saddam."
"Why?"
"Because he's evil."
"Why?"
"Because he's pretending to go along with inspections so he can get bombs."
"Why?"
"Because we're pretending to go along with inspections so we can bomb."
"What is our smoking gun against Saddam?"
"Reply hazy. Ask again later."
"Why do you sound like a Magic 8 Ball, teacher?"
"We don't have the intelligence on Iraq or we don't want to talk about it. You decide."
"But can we really tie Al Qaeda to Saddam?"
"Goodness gracious! Al Qaeda is dangerous. Iraq is dangerous. We have to connect the dots of the future and not dwell on the dots of the past. It's unhelpful to get into a lot of detail because it just changes our capabilities."
"I don't understand."
"It is not possible to find hard evidence that something is going to happen down the road because you will have known it happened only after it happens. It's very difficult to get perfect evidence before an event occurs or even after it occurs. Pre-emption requires only pre-evidence."
"You've flipped your cap, Rummy," the Boy Emperor wailed. "Get me Condi!"
"The problem with it," Rummy continued, ignoring the Boy's outburst, "is that when intelligence is gathered, it's gathered at a moment, and then that moment passes and then there's the next moment and the moment after that. It is not possible to know whether the information that was accurate is still accurate. Do you follow me?"
"But aren't we just killing our own Frankenstein monsters, teacher? Didn't we help build up Saddam when he was fighting Iran, and Osama when he was fighting the Soviets? How do we know which people we like now might someday do something that we would hate if we knew what they might do?"
"Holy mackerel, my young Padawan! The risks of doing nothing are greater than the risks of knowing nothing and doing something."
"Why do we give intelligence to the terrorists in their jail cells, instead of getting intelligence on the terrorists that puts them in jail cells?"
"Our intelligence agencies are dumb."
"Why can't we make them smart?"
"Because we're too busy planning war with Iraq."
"Why are we attacking Iraq, which may someday team up with terrorists, instead of Iran, which has already teamed up with terrorists?"
"Midterms."
"Multiple choice, right? I hate those essay tests. But haven't Pakistan and Saudi Arabia also supported terrorists?"
"Those creeps are our creeps."
"Can you explain the Bush Doctrine again, Rummy Sensei?"
"We start with self-defense, which is legitimate, and journey up to anticipatory self-defense, which has to do with history and real estate. Then we follow the rising path of wisdom to prevention, which sounds somewhat more acceptable than pre-emption, and which is about oil at $17 a barrel."
"Is Tom Daschle right that our war is political?"
"Is the White House white?"
"Why is President Gore running against me again?"
"He's unpatriotic. We should give that guy a one-way ticket to Guantánamo."
"What's the difference between Guantánamo and Guantanamera?"
"Golly."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Tent City an Oasis of Hope for Afghanistan Refugees
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/international/asia/29REFU.html
ZHARE DASHT, Afghanistan - The sandy road to this tent city winds for eight miles down a safe corridor through a minefield. At the camp, home to 6,000 people, there is no visible ground water, no cooking fuel. The barren, chalk-dry landscape explains the name: Yellow Desert.
Yet, in a measure of the human misery that afflicts 500,000 people uprooted by war and drought in southern Afghanistan, this camp is a coveted address.
"Here, there are no jobs for me, but there are wells with water, we are eating," said Kamail, a 35-year-old war refugee, as he waited for British nurses from Doctors Without Borders to weigh Abdul Hamid, his 8-month-old malnourished son.
Abdul Hamid, a bright-eyed baby who let out a loud yell at the indignity of being placed naked on baby scales, has already experienced the travails of Afghanistan's domestic refugees.
When he was 2 months old, his mother was killed as American planes bombed his village. Jeeploads of Taliban soldiers had taken refuge in their northern town.
Then, an Uzbek militia swept through, driving out the Taliban and stealing his father's possessions, from a flock of 50 sheep down to their drinking glasses.
"We only escaped with our clothes and a donkey," Mr. Kamail said, describing how the family walked for three months, until spring, when they reached the safety of the majority-Pashtun south. But the family had also walked into the jaws of the country's four-year-old drought. Half of southern Afghanistan's four million people are short of food.
The United Nations World Food Program plans to distribute 43,000 tons of food, largely American wheat, in the region this fall. To a lesser degree, the north has its share of refugees and farmers who returned home either too late or lacking the wherewithal to plant crops.
Little aid money has flowed beyond Kabul, and regional leaders now fear that the attention of the United States, the largest donor, may turn to Iraq. But in this camp, at least, there is still hope.
"Abdul Hamid was just a wee scrap of a thing when he arrived here," said Fiona Howell, a British nurse. Recalling that Abdul Hamid weighed eight pounds at 8 months, a normal weight for a baby at birth, she added: "He was covered with dust, with no sign of life in his eyes."
With his father carefully spooning a cold porridge of milk and biscuits into his mouth, Abdul Hamid quickly bounced back to 12 pounds. "The color has come back into his eyes," the somber, bearded father said approvingly, looking at his only child.
Bundling Abdul Hamid against flies and desert winds, Mr. Kamail embarked on a short walking tour of the camp. His family's water source was a stainless steel hand pump connected to a well, one of about 100 drilled here by Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund.
His home, tent number 626, was a boxy, but sturdy canvas shelter, with "UNHCR" - for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees - stenciled in black. Somewhere in the desert beyond is a farm plot where he hopes to grow potatoes and okra, once land mines are pulled out and irrigation ditches are put in. But even these modest living conditions have become a powerful magnet.
"The predominant problem we have in the south is internally displaced people," Abdulkadir Haji Jama, local director for the refugee agency, said in Kandahar, the regional capital. "It is increasing daily. We are getting more people leaving their villages, going to refugee camps so at least they can get food."
In Afghanistan, where political warfare has been the norm for the last quarter century, supporters of the new government say they feel they are in a race to deliver improvements before frustration leads to fighting over scraps of power.
In August, Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Kandahar and the military commander in the south, tore open his cotton tunic - a traditional gesture of frustration and anger - at a meeting of United Nations donor agencies here.
"It is true that I tore my shirt," he said in an interview, still wearing a head bandage from an assassination attempt. "I have 500,000 refugees for which I am responsible. Where can I turn? The United Nations doesn't listen to me."
In contrast to this well-organized tent city, many refugees languish in improvised squatter settlements. Some of these unwelcome groups have been forced to move on after their well-established neighbors poisoned the newcomers' wells.
Throughout Afghanistan's rural south, the refugee agency is providing housing, the food program is feeding the refugees, and Unicef is opening schools.
The challenges are enormous. With few city workers interested in commuting through a minefield, Unicef surveyed residents here to see whether any might be used as teachers. Of 6,000 residents, only 15 had attained a sixth-grade education.
In cities like Kandahar, people see a different picture and think they have not been getting their share. They speak of foreign aid workers roaring around in expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Aid groups "are renting expensive houses, when there are poor who cannot buy notebooks, pens, who go to bed without anything to eat," complained Khan Muhammad Mujahed, the Afghan military commander of Khandahar.
Khalid Pashtoon, a Kandahar government spokesman, warned that unless people here soon started to see foreign aid flowing, paving roads and creating jobs, "Afghans will go back to what they have been doing for the last 23 years - fighting."
But out here in the refugee camp, residents expressed a forward-looking optimism. At the end of the camp tour, Mr. Kamail pointed to faraway knots of men - United Nations-financed teams deactivating land mines. Gesturing again to the desert, he said, "Soon the de-mining people will clean the area, and then I will be able to plant."
-------- arms sales
US 'set to arm Taiwan with destroyers'
September 29 2002
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/28/1032734373418.html
The United States is ready to sell state-of-the-art Aegis class destroyers to Taiwan to boost its naval air defence capability but wants the island to acquire four Kidd class destroyers first, a report said yesterday.
In a dispatch from Washington, the Taipei-based Liberty Times quoted an unnamed US government official as saying the administration of President George W Bush "is expected to announce the sale of Aegis destroyers within the next few months".
But the official said Taiwan would not be able to take delivery of the Aegis destroyers before 2010, and to fill the vacuum Washington still hopes Taipei will purchase four second-hand Kidd class destroyers, which are equipped with Standard II air defence missiles.
The first two Kidd class destroyers could join Taiwan's navy by 2005 if the arms deal is approved by Taiwan's parliament.
Taiwan's present Gearing class destroyers, armed with US-made Standard I missiles, would not be able to cope with intensive air attacks, the official said.
The Kidd-class destroyers were part of the most comprehensive arms package to Taiwan for almost a decade announced by Bush in April last year.
Taiwan's opposition strongly opposes the acquisition of the Kidd destroyers although the defence ministry has budgeted the planned arms purchase to be screened by parliament.
Critics have expressed concern the second-hand warships would prove a financial "bottomless pit" and that the 9,000-tonne warships would be easy targets for any Chinese attack in case of war.
But despite the criticism, the Taiwanese navy has pushed ahead with the plans to meet a growing threat from the Chinese navy.
The navy insists it needs to boost its anti-aircraft, anti-submarine and anti-missile capability and would only have to spend 1.65 billion Taiwan dollars ($87 million) a year in maintaining the four destroyers.
The four destroyers joined the US navy in 1981 and 1982 and were decommissioned in 1998 and 1999 after only half their service life. Since then they have been in storage.
US arms sales to Taiwan are guided by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which charges the United States with providing the island with the means to defend itself.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of a civil war, but Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan if it declared independence.
-------- biological weapons
Smallpox vaccination too risky?
09/29/2002
By Anita Manning,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-09-29-smallpox_x.htm
SAN DIEGO - Scientists warned over the weekend that widespread vaccination against smallpox in advance of a terrorist attack could cause many more deaths than last fall's anthrax attack, and, in an era of uncertainty, it may be up to each American to decide whether to take the risk.
The warnings follow a report Friday that the Bush administration plans to announce a policy to offer voluntary smallpox vaccinations to thousands of hospital emergency care workers, health care providers, fire and police personnel and, ultimately, all Americans before an attack occurs.
Administration insiders here at an international meeting of the American Society for Microbiology would not confirm that report on Sunday. "A number of policies are under consideration," said Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe says no decisions have been made and "we continue to review and examine this issue."
Some scientists and political leaders have argued mass vaccination could thwart a bioterrorist attack, but in June a panel of experts advised pre-attack immunization only for teams of health investigators and hospital workers. Unless there is heightened risk of attack, the panel concluded, the vaccine side effects outweigh its benefits.
For every million immunized, one or two people will die from the vaccine, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday. About half of those vaccinated for the first time suffer muscle aches or fever. Serious side effects were rare during mass vaccinations in the '60s, he said, and complications in people being revacci- nated were even rarer. It's estimated that 64% of today's workforce probably was vaccinated before 1972, when routine smallpox vaccination ceased.
But it's a different world today. Ronald Atlas, president of the microbiology society, said 20% to 25% of those who suffered reactions were people who had not been vaccinated, but caught the vaccine virus from recently immunized people. Today, with so many more cancer patients, people with HIV/AIDS and others with weakened immune systems, the number of serious side effects could be "much higher, by orders of magnitude."
"If someone told me we were going to be attacked tomorrow, I'd be the first to favor mass vaccination. (But) as long as the perceived risk is low, risking the death of hundreds, to thousands, of Americans is not a step I'd endorse. We have to assume the vaccine will kill more people than last fall's anthrax attack," in which five died.
The implications of vaccine side effects may not be widely understood, said Michael Osterholm, a special adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. "I would like to see universal smallpox vaccination," he said. "It would be the first time in history we would eliminate a bioterrorist threat. But at what price?"
-------- drug war
With Court Nod, Parents Debate School Drug Tests
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By TAMAR LEWIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/national/29DRUG.html
NEW BUFFALO, Mich. - In this serene lakeside town, a group has gathered at the high school each week since August to try to hammer out a consensus on drug testing in the schools: a pastor, a basketball coach, a sheriff, a social worker, a superintendent and assorted parents, teachers, students and school board members.
They have debated whether a first offense should bring counseling or punishment and whether they can best deter drug use through education or testing. They have studied the merits of urine, hair and saliva tests. But week after weary week, they have adjourned without agreement.
"It cuts deep down to how one sees the world, and people have different views," said Michael Lindley, the superintendent. "Some say it's invasive and you're assuming my child is guilty until proved otherwise. Others say if kids have nothing to hide, it's not invasive. We don't have a huge drug problem here but we don't want to have our heads in the sand."
Until last spring, when the United States Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that schools could conduct drug tests on students involved in extracurricular activities, the school board here had given the matter little thought. But now, here and in small towns across the nation, drug testing has become a hot issue. Rather than resolving the question, it seems, the court's decision has touched off a new round of passionate debate.
From Glen Cove, N.Y., to Lockney, Tex., hundreds of school boards are now considering whether - and how - to use drug tests. The proposals they are considering range from voluntary programs offering incentives like discount coupons for students who agree to be tested, to, in a few places, testing all students.
Before the Supreme Court's decision, about 5 percent of the nation's public school districts conducted drug tests of student athletes - a practice that the court upheld in 1995. But many districts decided the legal parameters of testing were so uncertain that they should await further guidance before adopting a plan.
The new ruling opened the way for much wider testing of students. It upheld the Tecumseh, Okla., schools' policy that required random urine testing as a condition for participating in any extracurricular activity involving interscholastic competition, including sports teams, the chorus and the Future Homemakers of America. Lindsay Earls, the student who challenged the policy, said it violated her privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches.
But the majority opinion, by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the search was entirely reasonable, given the nationwide epidemic of drug use by schoolchildren. By emphasizing the schools' "custodial responsibilities" for their students, the majority opinion seemed to point to judicial support for testing all students.
Most large urban districts have shown no interest in drug testing. But many smaller districts, especially in the South and Midwest, are very interested. The Tecumseh district has received a stream of calls from school districts that want copies of its drug-testing policy.
"It's stayed steady ever since the ruling," Danny Jacobs, Tecumseh's assistant superintendent, said recently. "I had two calls just this morning. I tell everybody to read the policy we've posted on the Web. Then they call back and ask how we started, and how we put it in place. It isn't letting up at all yet."
While the court ruling resolved some of the legal questions, it did nothing to end the controversy about whether drug testing programs make sense as educational policy.
Many health and education groups, from the National Education Association to the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose drug testing. Students involved in extracurricular activities, they argued in the Tecumseh case, are less likely than others to use drugs, so requiring drug tests as a condition of participation may scare students away from the very activities that help deter drug use.
The Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group in Oakland, Calif., that opposes drug testing, recently started a project to help parents and educators who want to resist school boards' efforts to begin drug testing.
But last month the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy began distributing a guide supporting drug testing in schools.
"Testing has been shown to be extremely effective at reducing drug use in schools and businesses," the government guide said. "As a deterrent, few methods work better or deliver cleaner results."
John Walters, director of the White House office, stresses that community debate is crucial in deciding whether to adopt random drug testing. "It's a very, very powerful tool," Mr. Walters said. "But it's not for everybody, and it's not a drop-in, add-water, solve-the-problem kind of tool. You need to have the local community work through the issue, talking to parents and kids and the people who do drug treatment."
To avoid all legal uncertainty, some districts are modeling their testing plans directly on the Tecumseh policy upheld by the court: Each month, a group of students in extracurricular activities is chosen, at random, to provide a urine sample. Those who test positive are initially sent for counseling and, in case of a second offense, suspended from extracurricular activities.
"I tell districts that if they adopt the same verbatim policy as Tecumseh, that would be safe," said Paul Lyle, a Plainview, Tex., lawyer who represents about 50 small West Texas districts. "But I tell them, if you change a comma, it could open the door to something. "
The Lockney district is one of his clients that has followed that advice. Previously, Lockney adopted random testing for all students, but when the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy, Lockney agreed to stop enforcing it.
But after the Supreme Court ruling, Lockney wanted to resume drug tests, and on Sept. 17, the school board voted unanimously to adopt the Tecumseh policy.
"We'll probably get 85 percent of the kids in extracurriculars," said Raymond Lusk, the superintendent. "I think it would be fairer to test everybody, because why are some kids more important than others? But we've seen how much litigation costs."
In Conway, Ark., where the school board last year approved random testing of students in extracurricular activities but suspended it until the Supreme Court ruling, the board voted again in August and deadlocked, 3-3, with one member out of town.
"When I got home, everywhere I went, people were coming up and saying, `This is something we really need,' " said Gary Greene, the absent member, who ultimately voted for the testing program. "I'd been leaning toward voting no, but I must have heard from 75 or 100 people who wanted it. I was just flabbergasted. I've been on the school board since 1988, and I've never seen this many people get so involved."
Others take a different approach: In Autauga County, Ala., students who join a voluntary drug testing program, and test negative, are given an identification card entitling them to discounts at dozens of local fast-food places and stores.
In New Buffalo, the school board was on the verge of adopting a policy in August, under which 10 students would be randomly selected, six times a year, for testing. But at the meeting where the policy was read, opposition prompted Dr. Lindley to create a task force - three supporters of drug testing, three opponents, and three who were undecided - to hold open meetings to gather community reaction and then to recommend a policy to the school board.
Some opponents quickly began circulating a petition against drug testing, at church picnics and Little League gatherings, collecting more than 200 signatures. But the task force started from square one.
"We looked at the advantages and disadvantages of urine testing and hair testing," Dr. Lindley said. "I doubt that we'll get to saliva, because it just tells you about drug use in the previous day. If I had my druthers, we'd look at hair, which is more expensive, but lets you pick up drug residues from three months ago."
Here, as elsewhere, there has been a split between those, like Chuck Heit, the school board treasurer and former police chief, who thinks students who use drugs should be punished, and those - the majority here - who are more interested in arranging for counseling or treatment.
The task force found some common ground: everyone agreed that student use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco should be addressed; that education, deterrence and counseling should begin early; and that the policy should enhance the sense of community, not divide it.
"We're trying to be communitarian, and it's not a quick process," said the Rev. Brad Bartelmay, a local pastor. "The issue, not just for this community, but for the whole nation, is getting people to buy in to a common goal."
But whenever the talk turned to drug testing, there was nothing close to agreement, among students or adults. Recently, a survey by the local paper found the town evenly split on the issue. At the recent meeting there was a general feeling that the task force was getting nowhere.
"We all came out of that meeting thinking we'd taken a step backwards," said Traci Lauricella, a member of the school board. "It's not a good feeling to think you spent all these weeks and got nowhere. But we're meeting again Wednesday. I haven't given up hope, but I'm buckling my seat belt for a bumpy ride."
--------
Rehab centers monitor Bush case
09/29/2002
By Deborah Sharp,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-29-noellebush-drug_x.htm
MIAMI - An Orlando judge is expected to decide today whether staff members at a rehab center can be forced to cooperate with police investigating possible drug charges against Noelle Bush - the daughter of Gov. Jeb Bush.
Because of its high profile - Noelle, 25, is also the president's niece - the case is being closely watched by about 14,000 drug treatment centers nationwide where 1.1 million abusers sought help in 2001.
"The treatment community has a lot to lose if the judge rules these employees have to testify," says Ronald Hunsicker of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers. "All of this could have been done privately. Instead, it's become a national debate."
The centers' biggest fear is that patients won't seek help if they can't be guaranteed confidentiality. Nationwide, about 6.1 million Americans need help kicking drugs, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Policies vary, but experts say drug use by rehab patients is more commonly treated as a relapse than a criminal matter. The consequence is generally determined by a treatment team, which often includes a judge monitoring a patient's progress through a drug court - as in the Bush case.
Prosecutors in Florida argue that cocaine possession is a felony, and that the law protecting a patient's confidentiality allows for exceptions when a crime is committed.
Bush's attorney says police are being tougher on her because they don't want to be criticized for coddling the governor's daughter.
"We're not treating her any differently," counters Jeff Ashton, an assistant state attorney in Orlando.
Catherine O'Neill, a lawyer with the Legal Action Center, a non-profit organization that focuses on discrimination and privacy in drug treatment, says the center's national hotline receives four to five calls a week from treatment centers reporting police on their doorsteps with subpoenas. Only judges can order cooperation, O'Neill says, and court rulings on the issue have been split.
The federal law mandating confidentiality for those undergoing drug or alcohol treatment has been in effect since the 1970s. In deciding whether to waive confidentiality, courts weigh several factors, including the severity of the crime being investigated and whether harm might come to the person in treatment or to others.
A graduate of Tallahassee Community College and a former student at Florida State University, Noelle Bush entered The Center for Drug-Free Living in Orlando in February, a month after she was arrested and accused of trying to buy the tranquilizer Xanax with a fake prescription.
Whispers of a drug problem had circulated in Florida's political circles for years. It became public with her arrest at a pharmacy drive-through in Tallahassee. In the past, Jeb Bush had often spoken of his family's personal heartache with drug abuse, but he always refused to say which of his three children struggled with the issue. Noelle, the second child, has two brothers.
In July, she spent 48 hours in jail after treatment center staff members reported that she had taken prescription drugs from a medicine cabinet.
Her latest troubles began Sept. 10 when a staff member reportedly found a small rock of cocaine - 0.2 of a gram - in Bush's shoe. Another patient then called 911.
"She does this all the time, and she gets out of it because she's the governor's daughter," the unidentified patient told police, according to a police transcript. "But we're sick of it here, 'cause we have to do what's right, and she gets treated like some kind of princess."
Police say the staff member who found the cocaine wrote a statement for them but tore it up and stopped talking after a supervisor intervened.
Without the statement, police have no probable cause to arrest Bush. She remains in the treatment center.
For the most part, her difficulties have been hands-off in the battle for the governor's seat. But critics have used the case to criticize her father's drug policies. They said though his daughter receives treatment, the governor embraces jail for those less privileged.
Bush opposed a controversial amendment to the state constitution that would have guaranteed first-time offenders treatment without the threat of jail. A similar measure passed in 2000 in California. Supporters say they hope to get the issue back on the Florida ballot in 2004.
Bush's drug czar says the criticism is unfair. "Jeb Bush understands the need for treatment," says James McDonough, head of Florida's Office of Drug Control.
He points to several changes since Bush took office in 1998: the number of young Florida addicts getting treatment jumped 77%, to 21,659 last year; and the number of drug courts has doubled to more than 70 courts monitoring the treatment of 11,000 offenders like Noelle Bush. Bush's office says the $247 million budget he proposed for drug abuse prevention and treatment in 2002-2003 is an increase of $95 million over spending in 1998.
Calling it a private matter, the governor has refused interview requests about his daughter's drug problems. But his wife, Columba, is the state spokesperson on drug prevention. Questions about Noelle have brought him to tears at campaign appearances.
"This is tough enough when you're doing it in private. It's excruciating when you're doing it in public," McDonough says.
-------- india
India Says Is Curbing 'Cross - Border Terrorism'
September 29, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-kashmir.html
NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - India said on Sunday that state elections in Kashmir -- now at the midway stage -- had been successful and showed it had made big strides in curbing ``cross-border terrorism'' from neighboring Pakistan.
``Pakistani-sponsored terrorist groups tried everything to dissuade the people of Kashmir from participating...it is a victory of democracy,'' Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said ahead of the third round of voting set for Tuesday.
``I have no doubt the remaining two rounds will also be successful,'' he told a police conference, saying turnout in the first two phases of the vote represented ``a significant victory in our fight against cross-border terrorism.''
He made the statements as nuclear-armed India and Pakistan remained locked in a military standoff over New Delhi's charges that Islamabad sponsors militant attacks against India.
Pakistan and Kashmiri separatist groups boycotting the vote dismiss the polls, clouded by violence, as a farce. They say a U.N.-mandated plebiscite should be held in Kashmir to decide whether the territory should be folded into India or Pakistan.
Indian officials said the first two voting rounds in Jammu and Kashmir recorded turnout of more than 40 percent, despite threats by Muslim separatist militants to kill candidates and voters in the four-stage election which winds up on October 8.
More than 570 people, including a state minister, have been killed in rebel-related violence since the vote was announced on August 2. Campaigning for the third round ended on Sunday.
Separatist groups in Kashmir, officially secular but mainly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state, have accused officials of inflating the turnout in the vote that New Delhi hopes will bolster its rule in the disputed Himalayan region.
Election officials have denied the allegations.
The issue of cross-border militancy has become critical during the elections and after a raid last weekend on a Hindu temple in western Gujarat state in which Muslim gunmen barely out of their teens shot dead 28 people and wounded more than 70.
Advani, who has linked the massacre to what he said was militant unhappiness over the elections in Kashmir, blamed Pakistan for the raid again on Sunday.
He said police leads pointed ``to the act being not merely an act of terrorism but of cross-border terrorism'' aimed at stirring communal violence in Gujarat, convulsed by religious riots earlier in the year.
Pakistan has condemned the attack in the state capital Gandhinagar that ended when commandos shot dead the assailants, and denied it had anything to do with it.
KEPT PEACE
Advani praised Indians for maintaining religious peace after the raid on the imposing sandstone temple. ``Our people...have responded well to this sinister conspiracy,'' he said.
In February and March in Gujarat, at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, died in reprisal killings after a Muslim mob torched a train, killing 59 Hindus.
Late on Sunday in Gandhinagar, at least 20,000 people crowded the Akshardham temple complex, its walls pockmarked by bullets from the all-night siege, to mourn the massacre victims.
Shastrinarayan Swaroop Das, head of the Swaminarayan sect, which has a tradition of social work, appealed for ``calm and peace.'' He said ``there is conflict among religions only because we have failed to understand our own religions.''
To provide greater security during the polls, thousands of soldiers and paramilitary troops have been deployed across Kashmir and the vote has been staggered over several weeks.
India sees the vote as a test of Pakistan's pledge earlier this year to halt incursions by Muslim militants it blames for attacks that brought the neighbors to the brink of war in June.
Islamabad, which says it gives political support to the ``freedom struggle'' of the Kashmiri people, says infiltration, except by rogue elements, has ended. But the U.S. envoy to New Delhi said last week Washington believed incursions had risen since campaigning began on August 2.
On Sunday, police said militants hurled a grenade at a bus station in Kashmir, killing a man and wounding 17 people in Tral, one of the areas with elections on Tuesday. Militants also fired another grenade in the area, injuring a security man.
In other weekend violence, a politician was wounded and four people, including her father, were killed on Saturday when their vehicle ran over a land mine planted by militants.
Police said guerrillas also gunned down an activist with Kashmir's ruling National Conference party late on Saturday in Ganderbal, east of the state's summer capital, Srinagar.
Elsewhere in India, police said they killed five Muslim militants in a shootout on Sunday in southern Bangalore city and linked their leader to pro-Pakistan Kashmiri separatists.
-------- iraq
Iraq to Deliver Weapons Reports
Filing May Signal Tack on Inspections
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17186-2002Sep28?language=printer
A preliminary test of whether Saddam Hussein has changed his approach to a resumption of U.N. arms inspections will take place in Vienna on Monday, when the Baghdad regime is to deliver three years of semi-annual monitoring declarations that it has refused to produce since the international inspectors left Iraq in 1998.
The documents, required under previous U.N. resolutions, disclose Iraq's accounting for the number and location of so-called dual-use equipment, such as machine tools, and materials, such as chemicals, that can be employed for civilian purposes or for the development or production of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
At a Sept. 17 meeting to prepare for resumption of inspections, senior Iraqi official Saeed Hasan, who oversees relations with the United Nations, agreed to deliver the documents in Vienna to Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, as part of preparations for resumption of inspections. Iraq had one day earlier proposed that inspections resume.
While U.N. officials would view delivery of the declarations as one sign that the Iraqi president may be serious, a White House spokesman described it as "one very small step against a pile of obligations he has ignored." He added that President Bush laid out a much broader agenda in his Sept. 12 speech at the United Nations for determining whether Hussein is prepared to stop thwarting inspectors while continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction.
These promised Iraqi papers are far different from the "full, final and complete declaration" on the status of all banned Iraqi weapons programs that is demanded in the draft U.N. Security Council resolution now being circulated. Such a "final" disclosure has been demanded of Saddam Hussein since 1991, and each time inspectors found more than Baghdad had reported, the "final" report was amended, said U.N. officials.
Even if the Iraqis deliver the reports, the real work of the two-day Vienna session between Blix and the Iraqis is to settle on practical arrangements required by Security Council resolutions to renew inspection and monitoring of Iraq.
Blix told the Iraqis at the Sept. 17 meeting that he needed agreement on issues such as visas for entering and leaving Iraq for his inspectors and their support personnel; accommodations for the inspectors; landing sites for fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters; and advance clearance for overflights of Iraq. He wants to reopen the previous ongoing monitoring and verification center in Baghdad with its offices and laboratories that have been closed for four years, replacing old computers and other equipment for communication inside Iraq and with New York. He also wants to establish regional offices outside Baghdad in Basra and Mosul.
The new documents, which should run to thousands of pages, will be compared with reports provided between 1991 and 1998 and should help Blix determine a baseline of what existed before and what has been introduced since the inspectors left. That data would help determine priorities for any resumed inspections. Blix has said he has constantly updated the database of Iraqi sites with open-source satellite imagery in addition to what he received from governments.
Although Blix outlined an inspection schedule that would run for more than six months, the United States is working on a new inspection resolution that would require resumed inspections to reach some tentative conclusions on Iraq's cooperation in a shorter time.
Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Iraq would not accept any extra procedures for weapons inspections as contained in the draft resolution envisaging a 30-day deadline for Baghdad to provide the new "final" declaration of its programs for weapons of mass destruction.
"Our position on the inspectors has been decided, and any additional procedure that aims to harm Iraq is unacceptable," Ramadan said.
----
Iraq Rejects Inspection Revisions
Teams Free to Return Only Under Old Rules
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17231-2002Sep28?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 -- Iraq said today it would not comply with any new U.N. Security Council resolution that incorporates demands by the Bush administration to revise the rules governing the work of weapons inspectors in Iraq.
Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, said weapons inspectors were free to return under an existing arrangement with the United Nations, but not if the Security Council adopts a draft resolution being circulated by the U.S. government, which calls for inspectors to be accompanied by guards and be allowed to freely enter President Saddam Hussein's palaces. The draft also orders Iraq to declare all weapons of mass destruction programs within 30 days and implicitly threatens military action if Iraq fails to comply.
"Our position on the inspectors has been decided, and any additional procedure that aims to harm Iraq is unacceptable," Ramadan told reporters here.
Iraq announced Sept. 16 that it would accept the unconditional return of U.N. weapons inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998 after a dispute over which facilities they would be allowed to visit. But within days, Hussein's government stipulated that it "will not cooperate with any new resolution that contradicts what has been agreed upon with the [U.N.] secretary general," including providing advance notice and conducting inspections in the presence of diplomats. Iraq accused the United States of trying to pressure the Security Council into issuing "new, bad resolutions."
In Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is spending the weekend on his ranch, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said today: "This is not a matter open to negotiations with Iraq. This is a matter for discussions with the United Nations. It's clear for all the world to see that Iraq's intentions are to delay, to argue, to confuse and finally to defy, so they can continue to build up their arms. It makes it even more important for the United States to take strong action."
Bush, in his weekly radio address, contended that any delay in dealing with Iraq could have disastrous consequences. "The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and year to year," he said. "To ignore these threats is to encourage them -- and when they have fully materialized, it may be too late to protect ourselves and our allies."
Ramadan's statement appeared to be designed to pressure Russia, China and France -- each of which has veto power on the Security Council -- to oppose the Bush administration's proposed resolution. The three nations already have voiced deep skepticism about the administration's insistence that the resolution authorize the use of force against Iraq if Hussein fails to comply.
In an effort to sell the draft, the administration has engaged in some frantic diplomacy. On Friday, Bush telephoned French President Jacques Chirac, while Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, held meetings in Paris.
Grossman traveled today to Moscow, where he and British diplomat Peter Ricketts met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Afterward, Ivanov gave no indication that Russia's doubts about revising the inspection mandate had been allayed, saying: "Our position is that U.N. weapons inspectors should return to Iraq as quickly as possible. The necessary conditions for this exist." But Grossman stressed that "our purpose here today was not to negotiate a text, was not to come to any agreement."
Britain, which has voiced support for the U.S. draft, has sent diplomats to lobby Beijing. In London, however, thousands of protesters rallied today in opposition to military action against Iraq, and an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people marched through Rome for the same cause.
Like its adversaries, Iraq also has been trying to shore up diplomatic support. Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, who was in Egypt last week, arrived in Tehran today for meetings with his Iranian counterpart. Although the two nations fought a war for much of the 1980s and still have a tense relationship, Iraq wants to ensure that Shiite Muslim opposition groups will not be allowed to base their activities in Iran.
Iraq also lashed out today at recent allegations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that Iraq has provided training and other assistance to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. The Babel newspaper, owned by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, called the accusations a "stupid new American ploy" in a front-page editorial. The newspaper claimed that the "ideology, structure and philosophy of our country do not meet with that of the al Qaeda organization whatsoever."
Staff writer Edward Walsh in Crawford, Tex., contributed to this report.
----
Baghdad's Rebuff Comes Even as Lobbying Continues in U.N.
By JULIA PRESTON and PATRICK E. TYLER
New York Times
September 29, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/international/middleeast/29NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 28 - Iraq rejected today a proposal by the United States and Britain for a Security Council resolution imposing tough weapons inspections, saying that it would not accept any new rules for the work of United Nations inspectors.
Diplomats from Washington and London shuttled to Moscow and Beijing today after consulting in Paris, trying to overcome strong objections to the draft resolution among the other three permanent, veto-bearing members of the Security Council. The proposal gives Iraq 30 days to make full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction and provides for intrusive inspections, authorizing a military attack if Baghdad does not comply.
In Baghdad, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan of Iraq said that his government had agreed to allow the weapons inspectors to return under conditions laid down previously by the United Nations and would not accept new terms.
"The stance on the inspectors has been decided and any additional procedure that aims at harming Iraq will not be accepted," Mr. Ramadan told reporters. He rejected as "lies" the accusations by Bush administration officials of ties between President Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, warned that the United States would sustain heavy losses in an attack and pledged that Iraq would fight a fierce war.
The Bush administration quickly responded that the resolution was up to the Security Council to decide. "Iraq does not have a say in this matter," said Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary. "Even if they did, it again shows that they want to string things out, change their tune and build up their arms."
Even as the diplomacy continued, the United States and Britain signaled their determination to take military action if Iraq did not comply with their tough demands. The resolution they have drafted would give Iraq one week to make an initial weapons declaration and accept the Security Council's terms, and a further 23 days to reveal all of its weapons programs, the start of disarmament under United Nations supervision.
In his weekly radio address today, President Bush lobbied for another resolution he needs before moving forward: a Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force.
"By passing this resolution we will send a clear message to the world community and to the Iraqi regime the demands of the United Nations Security Council must be followed: the Iraqi dictator must be disarmed," Mr. Bush said.
"These requirements will be met, or they will be enforced," he said.
After several days of debate in which leading Democrats have spoken against giving Mr. Bush the free military hand he has sought, the president said he remained optimistic that Congress would in the end approve a war powers resolution.
"We're making progress, we are nearing agreement, and soon we will speak with one voice," he said.
In Moscow today, Marc Grossman, the American under secretary of state for political affairs, worked to persuade Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, to accept the new resolution. After the discussions, which lasted for more than two hours, Mr. Grossman expressed optimism, although he did not mention any details about the American and British draft proposal.
"Everyone agreed that there is a challenge to the United Nations," he said. "I think all members of the Security Council want to see if we can solve it."
Russian officials, however, were more reserved. Mr. Ivanov, in an official statement after the meeting, reiterated Russia's position that weapons inspectors should return to Iraq immediately on the basis of existing Security Council resolutions.
Only international inspectors "should give the answer to whether there are weapons of mass destruction there," he said, referring to Iraq, in the statement.
British officials said today that the Defense Ministry was pulling up to 4,000 of its front-line troops off domestic assignments and placing them in a high state of readiness to join more than 60,000 American forces based in the region or heading there. These forces are expected to double by December, American officials say, if Mr. Bush goes forward with a large call-up of reserves followed by the deployment of major air and ground forces to the gulf.
The Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, traveled to Tehran today to seek support from Iran, which had been one of Iraq's most bitter enemies after a war from 1980 to 1988.
Arriving at the airport in Tehran, Mr. Sabri said the real "axis of evil" was Washington and Tel Aviv, borrowing President Bush's phrase for Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Mr. Sabri noted the rift on the Security Council over Washington's proposal.
Hans Blix, leading the team of United Nations inspectors preparing for a return to Baghdad, departed today for Vienna, where on Monday morning the team will sit down with three Iraqi military officials and make an initial set of demands to smooth the transport of more than 280 inspectors into the country around the middle of October.
An official from the inspection team said Mr. Blix was not concerned that his mandate from the Security Council would not be clear by Monday since this meeting was about "practical arrangements" relating to transportation, housing and communications. Still, given the attention riveted on Iraq, Mr. Blix's encounter will be an early test of Baghdad's willingness to allow unconditional and unfettered access.
French officials said today that President Bush had thus far failed to persuade President Jacques Chirac to back the stringent American and British draft resolution that would demand that the Iraqi leader admit his "material breach" of past disarmament resolutions
Russian and French diplomats have said they fear that Washington wants to increase the Council's demands so sharply that Baghdad will balk, and the weapons inspections will never get under way.
It was too early to determine whether Russia, China and France would be able to force a compromise on Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, representing the other two permanent members of the Security Council, or would offer a competing proposal.
The compromise France was seeking would give the 15-member body a role in authorizing war through a second resolution should Mr. Hussein reject or obstruct the return of United Nations inspectors. Mr. Bush and his national security advisers oppose the two-resolution approach, but much was still under discussion, including how Security Council members might travel to Iraq with a military guard to protect them, diplomats said, and directly supervise the work of inspectors.
Mr. Grossman was in Moscow today after stopping in Paris, to press the American and British draft. The precise text was being tightly held to preserve room for compromise, diplomats said. Separately, Britain dispatched two senior diplomats, Peter Ricketts, to Paris and Moscow, and William Ehrman to Beijing, for negotiations.
Meanwhile, Iraqi opposition forces in northern Iraq observed Iraqi military forces pulling back from front-line positions facing the Kurds. In one area near Erbil, the Kurdish capital, Iraqi forces had retreated 10 miles. Kurds speculated that Iraqi commanders were widening the distance to prevent defections. Control points between the Kurdish enclave and central Iraq were also being tightened to prevent defections and infiltrations, officials said.
Mr. Hussein was also said to have replaced several key governors, including in the southern Basra region, with officers from his security forces to bolster discipline against defections and betrayal.
Iraqi opposition members were lining up to volunteer for American training as fighters, interpreters, spies and target spotters, after the State Department announced that it would use part of the $92 million allocated under the Iraq Liberation Act to train thousands of recruits from the Iraqi opposition, as well as members of the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq.
The United States has also increased the tempo of patrols and bombing missions into Iraq, administration officials said. These patrols were authorized by the United Nations to enforce no-flight zones to prevent Iraq's air forces from attacking Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north. There have been 42 such bombing missions this year, Pentagon officials said.
--------
Aiming to Disrupt Diplomacy, Iraq Risks War by Rejecting Plan
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/international/middleeast/29IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - Iraq's rejection of any new United Nations resolution that toughens the terms of disarmament appeared calculated to widen the gap dividing the United States and Britain from the other big powers at the United Nations as they were struggling to find a common approach to confront Saddam Hussein.
But if it stands as Iraq's last word, this refusal could also mark the beginning of the transition from diplomacy to war in the Persian Gulf, as President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were already wheeling their military forces to higher states of readiness.
The verbal blast from two of Mr. Hussein's top aides, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, made it apparent that Mr. Hussein was seeking to disrupt the Bush administration's diplomacy as American and British diplomats were engaging in urgent consultations with France, Russia and China.
But the tactic could backfire. The fiery statements from Baghdad may actually please the Bush administration because Iraqi intransigence will make it easier to argue the case for military action. At the same time, the Iraqi defiance may make it more difficult for critics here and abroad to question the Bush administration's unrelenting campaign to bring the Iraq situation to a head.
It seemed possible that Iraq's intervention could further alarm Europeans who are already opposed to or jittery about war and who have argued that no immediate threat to security has been established. That would strengthen the position of those Security Council members who would like the United States and Great Britain to tone down their insistence on tight deadlines and maximalist demands that to some appeared too provocative and, therefore, unlikely to test the possibility for a negotiated outcome.
Baghdad's determination to pre-empt a return of United Nations inspectors without any conditions to hamper their work, on the other hand, shows that Mr. Hussein understands the gravity and potential consequences of the Bush administration's approach, which calls for sending an armed security force with the United Nations inspectors. A team of diplomats from the Security Council's five permanent members would also accompany the inspectors and supervise their work.
And Mr. Aziz's sober warning that "the assault against Iraq will not be a cakewalk" but rather "a fierce war during which the United States will suffer losses they have never sustained for decades," was timed to exploit the concerns expressed by American political and military figures that the task of removing Mr. Hussein's government could devolve into punishing urban warfare and thousands of American casualties. The Americans and British have been lobbying hard, but with little success, for a dramatically stronger weapons inspection program for Iraq. Washington and London planned to submit a new resolution to the Security Council this coming week with the new terms.
Their draft resolution began to circulate Friday and its text was still being closely held, but diplomats said it declared that Iraq was in "material breach" of past resolutions and carried a threat of force if it did not return to compliance.
It also called on Baghdad to fully disclose information about its hidden weapons programs under a seven-day deadline and then to allow intrusive inspections to verify those disclosures under a further 23-day deadline.
The draft resolution was regarded as provocative by a number of European governments, Western diplomats said, and the hope of opposition within the Security Council may have prompted Baghdad's effort to pre-empt the diplomacy before Washington could win over the other permanent members of the Security Council.
"That can never fly," a German diplomat said after he learned from the French the basic outline of the draft. Germany joins the Security Council as a non-veto member in January and has strongly opposed war with Iraq.
"Even the British have informed the Europeans that they were clearly insisting on a real option for Saddam Hussein," the German diplomat said. "Either there are to be inspections and the destruction of weapons of mass destruction, if they are found, or the destruction of the regime.
"But any text," the diplomat said, "must clearly give the impression that there is a real option, not a zero option or something so narrow, in order to take as quickly as possible a decision on military action."
The Iraqis could not have missed the testimony of three retired four-star American generals who issued a series of cautions in testimony to Congress this week.
Among them was Gen. John P. Hoar, who noted that Mr. Hussein appeared to be preparing for a defense of Baghdad. General Hoar said he feared a "nightmare scenario" of six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six additional tank divisions ringed by several thousand antiaircraft guns.
"The result would be high casualties on both sides, as well as in the civilian community," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "U.S. forces will certainly prevail, but at what cost? And at what cost as the rest of the world watches while we win and have military rounds exploding in densely populated Iraqi neighborhoods?" he asked.
Separately today, Mr. Hussein dispatched his foreign minister, Naji Sabri, to the capital of his old enemy, Iran, seeking an 11th-hour alliance against the United States.
"Arab and Muslim governments have rejected the option of an attack against Iraq, and the peoples of the region will stand together against an eventual attack," Mr. Sabri said in Tehran.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi of Iran met Mr. Sabri at the airport and told reporters, "It is absolutely imperative we make serious efforts to prevent a new war in the region, because the region cannot support a new war" that would touch off "insecurity and instability."
In Arab countries, reports about the American-British draft resolution were touching off other concerns, and Mr. Hussein seemed bent on exploiting them.
Saudi officials have signaled the Bush administration that they would join an American-led campaign to topple Mr. Hussein as long as it is conducted under the mandate of the United Nations.
But one adviser to the Saudi leadership asked after hearing a description of the resolution, "Are they just trying to intimidate him to say no?"
Another Saudi diplomat said he was distraught about the prospects for war. "You know all of the Arab nations would like to wake up tomorrow and hear that this guy has died in his bed. I say that with all heart because the Iraqi people do not deserve this, to be controlled by a crazy guy, but they also do not deserve a war that will be a disaster for the area."
Saudi interests could be affected, as one oil analyst pointed out.
"In Afghanistan, you were bombing opium fields, but in the Middle East you will be bombing oil fields," the Saudi official said, adding that in the latter case, the United States could be hit by soaring oil prices and economic disruption.
--------
Saddam's faceoff with West earns admirers
09/29/2002
By Vivienne Walt,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-29-baghdad_x.htm
BAGHDAD - Rafa Sabih is too young to remember a time when Saddam Hussein was not her country's ruler, but she knows he should remain so. "He represents us. We've chosen him. This is our internal business. Why should the United States interfere?" asks Sabih, 26. "Of course we'll choose him again," she said as she shopped with her nephew in an outdoor market in downtown Baghdad.
That opinion was shared by several people who were questioned about their views of Saddam and President Bush's call to end his 23-year-rule. Whether any were being sincere was questionable given the circumstances of the interviews and the nature of Saddam's regime.
While people approached on the street are more than willing to talk politics, the discussions take place in front of a government-provided translator. Under censorship laws, Iraqi citizens can only be interviewed in the presence of a government representative. Also, speaking out against Saddam is a crime here that dissidents say is dealt with harshly.
In about a dozen interviews conducted over the weekend, Iraqis claimed Bush's campaign to end Saddam's rule has rallied them behind him. Several people say they distrust Bush's motives for wanting to oust their president and do not believe that Bush has their interests at heart.
"A lot of people wouldn't care if Saddam was overthrown. But no Iraqi believes the United States is actually interested in bringing democracy here," says Wamidh Nadhmi, 61, a senior political science professor at Baghdad University. "People believe Americans are just interested in Iraqi oil."
Iraq has the world's second-largest reserves after Saudi Arabia. U.S. oil companies are forbidden to do business in Iraq under economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.
Nadhmi says the U.S. proposal to oust Saddam has united Iraqis.
"Some people will go and vote out of patriotic solidarity," he says.
That vote is an Oct. 15 referendum on whether to re-elect Saddam as the country's leader. Westerners would barely recognize the vote as an expression of electoral freedom.
The Iraqi leader is the only candidate on the ballot in a daylong poll organized by the ruling Revolutionary Command Council of Saddam's Baath Party, the dominant political force in Iraq. All Iraqis over 18 can check boxes marked "yes" or "no" to keep the president in power until 2009. In the last referendum in 1997, barely one in 2,500 people dared to check the "no" box. Submitting a blank vote as a silent protest is illegal here.
For weeks, Iraqi television and radio broadcasts have reminded citizens of next month's vote. Neighborhood officials from Saddam's Baath Party are expected to announce within the next two weeks where local residents can vote. Although voting is not compulsory, neglecting to go to the polls could be seen by local officials as not showing enthusiasm. The government does not release percentage results for elections.
In the media and on the streets, Iraqis are reminded constantly that their leader is worthy of their loyalty. Every public building in Baghdad has a larger-than-life Saddam wall painting or statue outside. They depict the president as a man at ease in all situations, whether he's wearing an Arabian headdress, laughing in a sports jacket or standing at attention in military uniform.
Saddam's hold on power has lasted through a long war against Iran, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the short, but brutal 1991 Gulf War. Since then, he has ruled Iraq through more than a decade of sanctions. The United Nations-enforced system obliges Iraq to trade oil through a U.N. account, and bans Baghdad from buying materials that could used for military purposes.
Despite the hardships caused by war and U.N. sanctions, some of the Iraqis questioned said Saddam's endurance has won over many Iraqis. They said they see him as having faced down his powerful Western foes.
"I don't like to talk about politics. But as an ordinary citizen, I'm proud of my president. He's the person we've elected," says Ahlam Abdullah, a 48-year-old seamstress out shopping for cosmetics for her teenage daughter in a downtown market.
"Our hope is to live peacefully with Saddam Hussein," she says.
-------- israel / palestine
Troops kill protester at rally for intifada
From combined dispatches
September 29, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020929-47764522.htm
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops shot dead a protester in Palestinian demonstrations yesterday marking the second anniversary of their uprising as Israel sought U.S. help in resolving its widely criticized siege of Yasser Arafat.
The Palestinian leader vowed no letup in the revolt and won fresh vows of loyalty from his people 10 days after the Israeli army trapped him in his offices and razed the compound around him in response to suicide bombings that killed seven Israelis.
The siege has shored up Mr. Arafat's slumping popularity and stalled the Palestinian reforms that are key to resuming peace diplomacy, dismaying the United States, which was seeking a respite in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to help win Arab states over to its cause for a military campaign against Iraq.
Israeli diplomatic sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had sent a senior aide, Dov Weisglass, to Washington for talks to discuss how to end the impasse between Israeli forces and Mr. Arafat and some 200 Palestinians holed up with him. But White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said he had no information about upcoming White House meetings with Mr. Weisglass.
Israeli troops killed a demonstrator and wounded at least 22 others in clashes with stone throwers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, after killing a militant in a Gaza refugee camp, witnesses and medics said.
In Gaza City, a teeming militant stronghold, thousands of protesters bearing national flags and portraits of Mr. Arafat heard an address from the Palestinian leader relayed from his besieged lodgings and office in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Organizers said they had asked militants not to bring guns to the rally in the city, where some earlier protests had been peppered with shots fired into the air. They said 50,000 people turned out. The crowd waved Palestinian flags and chanted support for Mr. Arafat, whose standing had appeared to flag before the latest Israeli siege.
Protesters in several West Bank communities, including Ramallah and a refugee camp near Bethlehem, sent hundreds of balloons into the sky. Children clutching candles gathered by night at Mr. Arafat's Jericho office and heard the leader tell them by phone, "You are our future. We are together until victory."
In Ramallah, soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and tear-gas grenades to disperse stone-throwing youths.
Hospital officials said a 66-year-old Briton in a group of pro-Palestinian foreign peace activists in Ramallah was wounded by rubber bullets at one rally.
Several thousand Palestinian children holding candles marched after nightfall through the West Bank city of Jericho, which has been largely calm throughout the uprising and not under curfew, witnesses said.
Yesterday marked two years since the right-wing Mr. Sharon, then opposition leader, visited a Jerusalem site holy to Muslims and Jews. The Palestinian revolt erupted right afterward.
At least 1,572 Palestinians and 601 Israelis have died in the violence over the past two years.
In Israel, hundreds of Israeli Arabs and left-wing Jews observed the anniversary in the northern town of Kfar Manda. Carrying Palestinian flags, they urged Israel to quit the West Bank and Gaza Strip, captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Rallies saluting the Intifada were also held in Cairo, where about 500 people gathered, witnesses said.
----
Palestinians Rally in Gaza at 2-Year Anniversary of Conflict
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/international/middleeast/29MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Sept. 28 - Thousands of Palestinians marked the two-year anniversary of their latest conflict with Israel today by holding a rally in Gaza City, staging marches in several West Bank cities and releasing balloons in defiance of an Israeli curfew in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
At least two Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire in incidents in the Gaza Strip. The episodes once again increased the death toll in a conflict that has defied United Nations and United States intervention.
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, addressed a rally of thousands in Gaza City, speaking by telephone from his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where a renewed Israeli siege stretched into a 10th day. Dismissing the siege, Mr. Arafat said that Palestinians should remain steadfast in demanding territory.
"This revolution is remaining, and winning, with God's will," he said.
Mr. Arafat declared that "noble Jerusalem will be the capital of Palestine whether anybody wants it or not." The rally, and Mr. Arafat's message, were broadcast live on Palestinian television.
Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, describes Jerusalem as Israel's eternal, undivided capital.
With the West Bank almost entirely under Israeli military control and largely under curfew since midsummer, many Palestinians have been questioning the wisdom of pursuing their struggle by violent means. Today, the demonstrations were angry but largely peaceful. The balloons released by demonstrators in Ramallah were tied to Palestinian flags.
Among the many matters in dispute here are when and why this latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began.
Palestinians date it from two years ago today, when Mr. Sharon, then a candidate for prime minister, paid a visit in the company of hundreds of Israeli policemen to the Jerusalem site sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Israeli officials, who say that Mr. Arafat planned and orchestrated the uprising, tend to date it from the day before that, when a Palestinian bomb killed an Israeli soldier in Gaza, or the day after, when Palestinians rioted in protest over Mr. Sharon's visit and four demonstrators were shot dead by the Israeli police.
In southern Gaza, a Palestinian man was shot and killed today as he stepped out of his house in the Rafah refugee camp, Palestinians said.
The Israeli Army described the man as a member of the militant group Islamic Jihad, and said that soldiers fired at him after grenades were thrown from his roof toward Israeli forces.
Another man was shot dead and at least two youths were wounded while throwing stones near a Jewish settlement in Gaza, Palestinian hospital officials said. The army said soldiers fired after being menaced by Palestinians throwing bottles and rocks.
The militant group Hamas released a statement today regarding Muhammad Deif, the elusive bomb maker Israel tried to assassinate with a missile strike in Gaza City on Thursday. Mr. Deif was believed to be wounded in the attack.
The Hamas statement acknowledged that Mr. Deif had been at the site but reported that he was "in good health and in a safe place among his brother fighters."
--------
Israel Begins to Pull Out Forces From Arafat's Compound
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/international/middleeast/29WIRES-ISRA.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel bowed to U.N. demands and U.S. pressure Sunday, pulling troops and tanks out through the barbed wire that encircles Yasser Arafat's headquarters. The Palestinian leader said the move was only "cosmetic."
As troops removed sandbags, generators and debris from around the Ramallah compound to end the 10-day standoff, Israel said it still planned to arrest alleged terrorists it says are holed up with Arafat.
Nevertheless, both sides offered conciliatory gestures.
Briefly emerging from his building -- one of the last still standing in the Palestinian government complex -- Arafat flashed a V-for-victory sign to a crowd of several hundred supporters. He renewed his promise to order a cease-fire if Israel were to take troops and soldiers out of all Palestinian territory.
Israel demanded a Palestinian crackdown on terror but eased restrictions on Palestinian trying to enter Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Jobs in Israel are crucial to many Palestinian families.
Under the new rules, 25,000 Palestinian workers will be allowed to enter Israel daily instead of the current 15,000. The quota of Palestinian businessmen was raised to 8,000 from 5,000.
Nevertheless, Arafat accused Israel of continuing to violate Tuesday's U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an end to the siege as well as to Israel's months-long occupation of Palestinian cities and to terrorism and other violence from both sides.
"They are trying to deceive the Security Council," a stern and seemingly weary Arafat told reporters in his office, minutes after Israeli troops had moved away. He called the pullback a "cosmetic movement."
Some Israeli troops remained within a few hundred yards of the compound and Israeli officials said they still planned to arrest wanted men who were among the 200 people holed up with Arafat since the siege started on Sept. 19.
"We are talking about approximately 18 people who are in the compound who have direct involvement in organizing and conducting terror activities.... Some of them have blood on their hands," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled told the Associated Press.
Hesaid some others inside "may be wanted for interrogation," but Israel did not know the identities of all in the compound.
Asked if Israel would try to arrest the 18 if they leave, he replied: "That is our intention."
He indicated that Israel was not ready for an unconditional pullback from Palestinian cities, but would move "once we see a serious commitment from the other side in taking over those territories and showing us a halt to violence and terror."
Arafat issued a proclamation repeating "full commitment with all cease-fire decisions," though his aides have often said that his ability to control militant Palestinian factions is limited. Israeli officials have accused Arafat of doing little to try.
Also on Sunday, the militant Palestinian group Hamas marked the second anniversary of the Palestinian uprising with a pledge to continue its suicide attacks against Israel.
A suicide attack claimed by the Hamas militant group killed six Israelis on a Tel Aviv bus on Sept. 19, triggering Israel's attack on Arafat's compound.
The U.S. administration, trying to rally support for an action against Iraq, soon put heavy pressure on Israel to halt the siege.
In a statement announcing its decision to end the siege, the Israeli Cabinet of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon noted "the deep friendship between Israel and the United States" and promised "to do everything ... to enhance the strategic cooperation and relations."
U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen entered the building immediately after Israeli troops left. "This is not the end of the crisis but a springboard to put us back on to political process" toward a peace agreement, said Mark Dennis, a spokesman for Larsen.
In Texas, where President Bush was vacationing, the White House praised the withdrawal but said not only Israel but the Palestinians should act to bring peace.
"The president is pleased with this development," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Sunday. "Both parties need to live up to the requirements for peace, stability, as well as reform in the Palestinian Authority."
But Israeli politicians from both the left and the right called the decision a surrender. Many have argued the operation strengthened Arafat at a time when he had been facing growing pressure to reform his government and cede some powers.
Yossi Sarid, Israel's dovish opposition leader, welcomed Sunday's decision but added that it amounted to a capitulation by "a foolish government that can't see two steps ahead."
Hawkish legislator Avigdor Lieberman said the protracted siege was a mistake and interfered with the U.S. efforts on Iraq.
A poll released Sunday by the Palestinian-run Jerusalem Media and Communication Center found that Palestinian support for Arafat's re-election during January elections has risen to 60 percent from 48 percent during the last survey in June. The poll had a 3 percentage point margin of error.
The survey of 1,199 Palestinians also found that support for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians dropped slightly to 64.3 percent from 68.1 percent in June.
--------
Israel Ends Arafat Siege, Licks Political Wounds
September 29, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel licked its political wounds after ending its siege of Yasser Arafat under White House pressure to avoid upsetting U.S. plans for possible war on Iraq.
Blowing kisses and making a V-for-Victory sign, the Palestinian president emerged from his battered compound on Sunday in the wake of clouds of dust from tanks retreating from a 10-day-old blockade that drew international condemnation.
The pullback was an embarrassing climbdown for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, which sent armor roaring into the sprawling West Bank complex on September 19 after back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings killed seven people in Israel.
Sharon had vowed to end the siege -- his latest attempt to sideline a leader Washington says should be replaced by Palestinians ``not compromised by terror'' -- only when Arafat turned over 50 suspected militants holed up with him.
``The assessment was that we would be able to isolate Arafat,'' Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin, a member of Sharon's right-wing Likud party, told Israeli television. ``To our great sorrow, we cannot always get everything we want.''
The about-face followed a message by President Bush to Sharon demanding a speedy end to a siege the United States apparently feared could raise regional tensions and hurt its efforts to win international support for war on Iraq.
``We correctly preferred to give a boost to the matter of an American attack on the Iraqis over something we can always do later,'' said Ephraim Eitam, an ultranationalist member of Israel's cabinet.
But Bush's rare rebuke appeared to signal a new dynamic in Sharon's close relationship with the president and in the prime minister's policy toward the Palestinians, who have accused the White House of turning a blind eye to Israeli army clampdowns.
ISRAEL MUST WEIGH OPTIONS
Before launching any future action against Arafat or a possible Gaza offensive against militants, Sharon would have to weigh the almost certain anger such moves would trigger in Washington as it prepares to confront Saddam Hussein.
The White House said Bush welcomed the Israeli pullback, which Arafat called deceptive because Israeli forces remained in Ramallah -- still under night curfew -- and other West Bank cities reoccupied in June after suicide bombings.
``All parties need to live up to their responsibilities to promote peace, stability and reform in the Palestinian Authority,'' White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
Hundreds of elated Palestinians rushed to the presidential complex in Ramallah after Israeli tanks pulled back from the compound they invaded 10 days ago.
The Palestinian flag was raised above a partly demolished building in the sprawling complex that Israeli armored bulldozers and explosives largely reduced to rubble in what Israel had hoped would be a blow to Arafat's prestige.
Instead, Palestinians rallied nightly in the West Bank and Gaza in support of a leader who had been under fire from his own people over the slow pace of reforms demanded by the United States as a condition for resuming talks on statehood.
It was unclear how long Arafat's domestic political honeymoon would last, but he was clearly invigorated by the cheers that greeted him as he emerged from his sandbagged office block -- the only building the army left standing.
Beaming at the crowd, Arafat raised his arms in a victory salute before returning to the office he has rarely left since June.
ARAFAT COMPLAINTS AGAINST ISRAEL
But in earlier comments to reporters inside, he said the Israelis had not complied with a September 24 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate end to the siege and ``expeditious withdrawal...from Palestinian cities.''
``This is not withdrawal,'' Arafat said. ``This is only moving a few meters away. They are trying to deceive the world.''
He repeated a call for a ``complete cease-fire,'' an appeal unlikely to lead to any breakthrough without agreement by militant Islamic groups that are dedicated to Israel's destruction and have rejected truce efforts in the past.
At least 1,572 Palestinians and 601 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising for statehood began in September 2000 after peace talks stalled.
Israel said its troops would stay close enough to the compound to prevent the escape of the 50 wanted militants it said were inside. But Israeli television showed armed men slipping away soon after the tanks pulled back.
The blockade caused tension within Sharon's ruling coalition, where the center-left Labour Party maintains an uneasy partnership with right-wing and religious parties.
``The whole world is against us,'' Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of the Labour Party was quoted by Israeli media reports as telling Sharon at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.
``The whole world is always against us,'' Sharon was said to have replied.
-------- mexico
Indictment Brings Back Horrors of 'Dirty War'
Victims Say Mexican General Oversaw Widespread Torture
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17309-2002Sep28?language=printer
MEXICO CITY, Sept. 28 -- Octaviano Santiago Dionisio remembers the torturer's voice, leaning in close and telling him to confess all his crimes or "I'm going to take you apart."
During the next 10 weeks, from September to November 1978, when Santiago was held incommunicado by soldiers and police, the torture-master kept his word.
Santiago said he was dunked, over and over, into a tank of water with an electrical current running through it until he nearly passed out. He said he was beaten endlessly, had carbonated water forced up his nose and received so many electrical shocks to his genitals that he developed a horrible infection.
In an interview today, Santiago said the man overseeing the torture, the one who threatened him and helped in the beatings, was Mario Arturo Acosta, an army general charged this week, along with two others, in the murders of 143 activists in the 1970s during Mexico's "dirty war."
"I know personally of Acosta's bestiality and inhumanity," said Santiago, a longtime legislator in the state of Guerrero, whose wife disappeared in 1978 and was presumed murdered by soldiers or police. "He is the most evil person in the recent history of our country."
Military prosecutors filed mass-murder charges this week against Acosta, Gen. Francisco Quiros Hermosillo and retired Maj. Francisco Javier Barquin. The Mexican military has long been a secretive and insular agency, protected from almost all public scrutiny by the country's political leaders.
Until this week, the military leadership had vehemently denied what the Mexican public has commonly taken as fact for decades: that soldiers were deeply involved in the disappearances and killings of hundreds of the government's perceived enemies in the 1970s and 1980s. During those years, as in much of Latin America, Mexico's authoritarian leaders turned to a secret campaign of torture and murder to suppress students and others demanding more democratic leadership.
The army's denial of its role ended Thursday, when a military prosecutor stood before a military judge and charged the three men with what amounts to one of Mexico's bloodiest killing sprees.
Accusations of Acosta's involvement came as no shock to Santiago and others who have followed his career with dismay and horror for decades.
"When people think of Acosta, they immediately think of repression, torture and disappearances," said Maribel Gutierrez, a journalist in Guerrero who has reported on human rights issues there for years. "He has always acted with violence."
Acosta and Quiros had already been disgraced, arrested and jailed in September 2000 on charges of being in business with a notorious drug lord. Some human rights activists here say the murder charges against the two men are too convenient, that they will allow the military to sacrifice already tainted officers and avoid difficult questions about who gave them their orders.
But some people find it hard to believe that Acosta, 63, could be punished by the military for his role in the dirty war. He is widely remembered as one of the most feared characters in one of the country's most violent and repressive states.
Gutierrez said that many people in Guerrero recall how Acosta built his reputation. He first appeared as a military captain in the state's mountain villages as part of the notorious anti-guerrilla squads known as the "White Brigades." She said villagers remember that he arrived with long hair and wearing white outfits that looked like medical garb, a common ploy used by the brigades to gain the trust of villagers and obtain information from them.
Acosta is reputed to have played a role in securing the release of Guerrero Gov. Ruben Figueroa, who was kidnapped by guerrillas in 1974. Acosta's role in the governor's release remains unclear: By some accounts, he disguised himself as a woman as part of the operation.
What is clear is that soon after, the governor appointed Acosta as head of Acapulco's police department -- in keeping with the blurring of civilian and military jurisdictional lines that was common in much of Mexico at the time. Acosta was later made head of all police in the state.
Earlier in his career, the Mexican media have reported, Acosta was a commander of the army battalion responsible for what is known as the Tlatelolco massacre of student activists in October 1968. That event inflamed anti-government sentiments for decades to come and led to the formation of many guerrilla groups in places like Guerrero.
Hilda Navarrete, a human rights activist in Guerrero, said she still bears scars from her encounters with Acosta in October 1976, when police under his command arrested her for suspected involvement with guerrillas.
She said they laid her out on a table and shined bright lights into her eyes for hours. They crushed lighted cigarettes on her legs. "The scars on my soul are worse than the ones on my legs," she said. "Acosta was bloodthirsty."
Navarrete said that two weeks after she was tortured, her brother was picked up by police. She said she went to Figueroa and pleaded for mercy. "He picked up the phone and called Acosta and said, 'Don't touch a hair on him. He cannot die. You have to return him alive,' " she said. "That saved my brother's life."
Navarrete said she is surprised that Acosta has been charged with murder and that his impunity may finally be lifted. She said that when he was arrested on the drug charges in 2000, she and her brother shared a beer in celebration.
"We were filled with happiness," she said. "God had allowed me to live to see that day when he would pay for his crimes. Now that he is charged with murder, we're hopeful there will finally be justice."
-------- mideast
Al Qaeda's Gold and the U.A.E.
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Washington Post; Page B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13852-2002Sep27?language=printer
The Sept. 3 front-page story "Al Qaeda Gold Moved to Sudan" reported that the Taliban and al Qaeda were shipping large quantities of gold from Karachi, Pakistan, to Sudan "either through Iran or Dubai" in the United Arab Emirates. The government of the United Arab Emirates is committed to cooperating with international efforts to combat terrorism.
Further, the reference to the United Arab Emirates as a transit point for the smuggling operations is baseless. The government affirms that these alleged shipments did not transit through its borders to a third country.
The transfer of gold and other precious metals is subject to strict controls by the government, and the United Arab Emirates is determined to ensure regional and international security and stability.
JASSIM AL HOUSANI
Counselor
Embassy of the United Arab Emirates
Washington
-------- russia / chechnya
Russians Battle Chechen Force in Ingushetia for 3rd Day
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/international/europe/29RUSS.html
GALASHKI, Russia, Sept. 28 - Russian forces battled a large group of Chechen fighters and foreign mercenaries for a third day today in the rugged mountains east of this village in the southern Republic of Ingushetia.
The fighting began here on Thursday morning, when Russian military and security troops intercepted the rebels - about 200 of them, one commander estimated today - as they tried to cross the mountains into Chechnya. The separatist Chechnya republic has been mired in three years of war.
Early today Russian fighter jets and helicopters, as well as artillery batteries, struck at what commanders said were pockets of 50 to 70 fighters who had escaped from the initial clash here, not far from the Chechen border.
In the village of Galashki, hundreds of military and security troops patrolled the dusty streets today, setting up checkpoints and laying booby traps in the ravine that cleaves the valley, apparently fearing a resumption of fighting in the village.
Capt. Alikhan Gaisanov, commander of a detachment of the interior troops that arrived when the fighting began, said the Chechen border was heavily guarded and mined, effectively trapping the rebels in the forest east of here.
"I don't think all of them managed to break through," he said. "That's why we are waiting here."
The fighting here was the fiercest in the war this year and the first to spill into Ingushetia, which until now had largely escaped the conflict raging next door. It has also raised the specter of a Russian strike inside Georgia, to the south, which President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has threatened, accusing the Georgians of providing a safe haven for Chechen fighters.
Russian officials said this force had crossed into Ingushetia from Georgia earlier this month.
Officials told the Interfax new agency today that 110 of the fighters had been killed, but troops here said today that they had so far collected bodies of only 11 in and around the village. On Friday night a military truck hauled out the bodies of two fighters, stopping at a checkpoint near the village to display them.
At least eight others were captured, as were two people officials accused of waiting to meet the rebels as they passed through the village. Captain Gaisanov said they had been captured with two vehicles loaded with supplies that included, incongruously, many boxes of Snickers candy bars.
The battle is a rare Russian victory in what has become a bloody war of attrition - but it came at a cost. A missile brought down a Russian Mi-24 helicopter, sending it crashing through a pumpkin patch in the village center, killing three crew members. The rebels also destroyed an armored vehicle, killing 12 people.
The fighting terrified villagers who already had been rattled by several nights of intense shelling near the village early this month. One woman in the village was killed and a man was seriously wounded in the fighting on Thursday.
-------- spy agencies
Ex - Spies Protest in S. Korea
September 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SKorea-Former-Spies.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Police detained about 200 former South Korean spies who protested Sunday against the government's alleged refusal to pay bonuses for secret missions they carried out in communist North Korea decades ago.
A total of 218 protesters were detained for questioning after they took over two lanes of a six-lane road in Seoul, wielding metal rods and setting fire to gas canisters, said Seoul police Sgt. Lee Sang-chul.
Nineteen policemen and 10 demonstrators were injured, he said. Police quickly put out the blazes but traffic was backed up. Television footage showed four riot police taking away one bleeding demonstrator. About 1,000 policemen were used to stop the hour-long protest.
The former spies demanded the government follow through on alleged promises to give them cash bonuses, houses and other benefits for infiltrating North Korea between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and the early 1970s.
Thousands of operatives from the South were sent over the border to spy on the North during that period. Some 300 of them were killed, 203 wounded, 130 arrested, while 4,849 are listed as missing, Korean officials say.
The number of operatives sent north diminished in the 1970s as the United States became capable of spying on the North with satellites.
Last year, a law was adopted in the National Assembly to compensate families of former spies who were killed or wounded in action. They can receive up to $82,101, plus a monthly stipend of $550.
Government officials said many of the spies have already received compensation paid at the end of their missions.
-------- us
Tanks Test a 'Barrier' to Baghdad
In Texas Exercise, Army Tackles Challenges of Crossing Euphrates
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17335-2002Sep28?language=printer
FORT HOOD, Tex. -- There is a reason that "Aftermath," "Antisocial," "Aliterot" and hundreds of other M1 main battle tanks from the Army's 1st Cavalry Division spent much of last week roaring across the dusty outback of this huge base.
If the United States attacks Iraq, the biggest single difference from the 1991 Persian Gulf War would be that this time, U.S. forces would go all the way to Baghdad. And to get to the Iraqi capital, the U.S. Army would have to cross multiple channels of the Euphrates River, the wide, slow-flowing barrier where it halted 11 years ago.
Over the last week, the armor-heavy 1st Cavalry, which is said by Defense Department officials to be likely to be used in any new attack in Iraq, conducted a huge river-crossing exercise involving much of the division.
Here at Fort Hood, located in the scrubby Texas prairie a bit south of President Bush's ranch in Crawford, officials insisted that the exercise wasn't driven by the possibility of an imminent deployment to Iraq. "We've been given no mission, so we continue to train as hard as we can," said Brig. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, an assistant commander of the division.
But back at the Pentagon, military officials say the broad Euphrates is the major hurdle that would confront U.S. commanders leading an armored thrust across Iraq. "It's the single biggest military problem the U.S. military faces in Iraq, because the Iraqi military can't do anything once we cross," said one military planner.
Some analysts worry that the Army would slow or get bogged down as it prepared to cross the river, giving the Iraqi military a chance to lob artillery shells at the Americans. Another worry is that Iraqi combat engineers, who are considered one of the most competent parts of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's military, would dynamite the standing bridges over the Euphrates, which is too deep to ford and so would need somehow to be bridged.
Getting 2,000 vehicles and more than 10,000 troops across a river while supposedly engaged in combat is a novel challenge for most of the soldiers in the 1st Cavalry, who were barely teenagers when the Gulf War was fought. "It's amazing," said Lt. April Angelo, 24, a chemical weapons officer who has been in the Army less than three years. "I've never seen anything like this before."
The task facing 1st Cavalry's commanders is to get their troops across the water as quickly as possible while not concentrating them so much that they might become targets for enemy fire. It is all too easy to become bogged down in a snarl of traffic and then, in the nightmare scenario, to be hit by enemy artillery shells laden with toxic chemicals. So the essence of the operation is orchestrating the movement of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of heavy tanks so they proceed without getting in one another's way. "A river crossing is a race between the crossing force and the enemy," states the Army's manual on the subject. And it warns, "Even successful crossings seldom go according to plan."
"This is one of the most difficult things a division can do," said Maj. Gen. Joe Peterson, the 1st Cav's commanding general, watching from a muddy shoreline as dusk fell and the assault began.
Like other commanders, Peterson said that no one has told him to prepare to deploy to the Middle East. But that possibility clearly was on the back of people's minds as the exercise got underway. The planning map for the practice run posited, for example, that the division on the right flank of the 1st Cavalry would be the 3rd Infantry Division, which is based at Fort Stewart, Ga., and which Pentagon officials have said is also likely to be used in any attack on Iraq.
The multistage operation began on schedule at dusk with rubber boats carrying infantrymen at "Gold 2," a 450-yard wide neck of Lake Belton, the body of water being used as the "river." Indeed, this is about as wide as the channels of the Euphrates are in the part of Iraq in which the U.S. Army would be likely to attack, said one military analyst.
As darkness fell, 150 infantrymen in 10 RB-15 rubber boats paddled silently into the haze of white smoke being pumped out by an artillery unit upwind on the bank. The smoke, which would be used in a real battle, conceals the boats' slow movement across the water.
Two Black Hawk helicopters slipped by overhead, carrying 17 troops to be placed on higher ground to call in artillery strikes on any enemy units. Peterson gazed at the black helicopters plunging into the hazy distance. "They'll provide eyes deep," he said, using military shorthand for having troops well forward. In the exercise scenario, the enemy's 59th Armored Division was bearing down on the river-crossing force, hoping to catch the Americans halfway through their move across the water.
At 10:42 p.m. word came from the infantrymen who crossed in the rubber boats that the far shore was secure. It set the stage for the next step in the exercise: getting a few armored vehicles across the water as fast as possible to reinforce the vulnerable troops holding it.
That was done by rafting M1 tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles across at "Gold 3." Underscoring the careful orchestration of the movement of troops, the rafting site was quiet, almost lonely. But in the wooded hills just south of the lake, there were thousands of troops hiding, awaiting their turn to move.
The rafting began at midnight with the movement of boats, 27-foot metal hulls sitting on trucks, their crews already in them. In six minutes, five boats, camouflaged in splotches of brown, black and green, were dumped into the water, looking a bit like a scene from "Apocalypse Now." Other trucks dumped 12 bridge sections in the water, which were then pushed together by the boats and assembled into two rafts. It was all done in the middle of the night with almost no illumination -- just soft green chemical light sticks and night vision goggles. Occasionally a woman's voice would drift across the water, underscoring the new roles that female soldiers have taken on in recent years.
During the Gulf War, there were no women in the engineering units that did front-line, river-crossing work. In the 220-strong unit handling this crossing, 20 percent of the soldiers were women.
A huge cloud of smoke rose into the moonlit night along the shoreline to the east, the billowing plume catching the illumination of a nearly full moon. It came from "Gold 5," a deception site. That concentrated cloud was the military equivalent of a "kick me" sign. "If they want to put artillery in that place, that's fine," said Col. Ken Cox, the engineering commander.
At 1:19 a.m., 89 minutes after the boats hit the water, the first two Bradley Fighting Vehicles rolled onto a raft and began moving to the far shore, pushed by a motorboat on either side of the raft. Through the rest of the night about 45 tanks and Bradleys rafted over, providing enough combat power on the far shore for commanders to feel secure enough to begin building the temporary bridge in the morning.
Construction of the temporary span was scheduled to take one hour.
At 9 a.m., the shady crossing site -- "Gold 1" -- was a tranquil Texas river scene in which egrets and cattle outnumbered soldiers. Five minutes later it was the hectic focus of the entire exercise. Trucks backed to the river bank and dumped five boats in the water, moving out quickly to permit other trucks to deliver bridge sections. Revving their dual hydrojet propulsion engines and spewing black smoke, the boats pushed the sections into position for assembly.
Capt. Andrew Kelly's 74th Multi-Role Bridge Company soon had a half-bridge assembled along either shore, but found it unexpectedly difficult to fit the pieces together. Prefabricated bridges come in lengths that don't necessarily fit the river they are to span.
By 11 a.m., Cox, the commander of the overall operation, was gritting his teeth as he watched the boats struggle to join the sections. "I'm getting frustrated," he muttered through a big cigar. In a combat crossing, every added minute gives the enemy another chance to get off a shot.
The sergeant directing the operation hit upon an unexpected solution: He called for a truck to back up to the south bank and winch one end of the bridge, pulling it up the bank, permitting the two pieces to fit together.
Finally, at 11:31, the two sections meshed. Soldiers from Kelly's company scrambled to secure them, flipping "dog" bars and turning T-bars to send home the locking pins. It had taken 90 minutes longer than expected.
Twenty minutes later, Kelly gave the order that was the whole point of the exercise. "Let's roll," he shouted. He pointed at the column of Jeep-like Humvees facing him on the dusty road, stretching back into the hills where 1,800 vehicles and their troops were waiting. "All these guys roll." He paused a second, then shouted impatiently at the lead vehicle: "Roll!"
Kelly's troops hopped off the side of the new bridge into their boats, tethered there to be able to quickly replace any section of the bridge that broke, or to move it if it came under enemy fire.
Spec. Emily Germain slumped in a corner of one boat and lunched on an energy bar. Tough work? "Nah," said the young Arizonan, wiping sweat from her brow. "Our adrenaline is pumping so much you don't even realize it."
Behind her, an M1A2 tank with the name "Batman" stenciled in black block letters on its gun tube jolted across the bridge, each section sinking slightly under the burden of its 70 tons, its treads sounding like a cascade of metal chains on the hollow deck.
Despite the delays, it all worked. For the rest of the day, 200 vehicles trundled across the temporary bridge every hour. One brigade went on to hold the bridgehead, while another charged 15 miles to attack the next objective.
Overall, said Peterson, it is a more competent division than the one that fought toward Basra during the Gulf War. "I think the Army of today is better trained and better equipped," the 30-year-veteran said. "We are just a better organization all the way around."
Over the same period the quality of the Iraqi military has declined precipitously, noted the military planner in Washington. And that is why, he said, the biggest challenge facing the Army on the road to Baghdad is the Euphrates. "You get across the river quickly, the war's done," he predicted. "Once you're across with 30 or 40 tanks and heading like a bat out of hell to Baghdad, the place will fall apart."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Panel's Findings Take Intelligence Officials by Surprise
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/politics/29INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - An aggressive Congressional investigation that has yielded new evidence about lapses in counterterrorism at the C.I.A. and F.B.I. before the Sept. 11 attacks has surprised and enraged senior officials at both agencies, say lawmakers and intelligence officials.
The findings of a joint committee, especially revelations that the C.I.A. and F.B.I. had for years collected information that showed Islamic militants hoped to strike in the United States, have been far more damaging than most officials at either agency expected when the panel's inquiry began early this year.
Even more than the findings of missed signals, however, the increasingly combative tone of the committee's staff and the tough language of its three interim reports on specific terrorism issues that have infuriated senior officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
With George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the bureau, scheduled to testify before the panel in coming weeks, along with Louis J. Freeh, the former bureau director, the committee's investigation has added heat to hearings that at first seemed unlikely to produce either fireworks or revelations. The new disclosures from the first two weeks of hearings and the increasing acrimony surrounding them have left officials at the two agencies expecting an even more protracted and potentially damaging investigation by an independent commission.
The main conclusion of the hearings so far is that the bureau and the intelligence agency missed warning signals of the attacks and focused too much attention on threats overseas rather than on the possibility of an attack on United States soil. The reports by the ad hoc joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence panels have also included declassified intelligence that has created a far fuller account of the Sept. 11 plot and the 19 hijackers.
Antagonism between the Central Intelligence Agency and the joint inquiry erupted publicly on Friday, when Mr. Tenet sent an angry letter to the panel's leaders, protesting the treatment of a senior agency officer who testified on Thursday.
Mr. Tenet's letter was in response to a disclosure that the joint committee staff had predicted in a briefing book to committee members that Cofer Black, who was until recently the chief of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center, would "dissemble" in his testimony. Mr. Tenet said that the disclosure revealed that some members of the committee staff were motivated by "bias, preconceived notions and apparent animus."
The F.B.I., meanwhile, has gone to court to keep officials from testifying. Mr. Mueller failed in an attempt to avoid appearing in an open session by asking the judge in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, to excuse Mr. Mueller and other bureau agents from appearing before the committee because of concerns that it might disclose information at issue in Mr. Moussaoui's prosecution. On Friday, the federal district judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema, refused.
A sign of the joint committee's success in raising new questions about the government's performance before Sept. 11 was President Bush's decision a week ago to drop his opposition to an independent commission, created by Congress, to conduct a broader inquiry. A commission could mean that the bureau and the intelligence agency will be under scrutiny for years.
The joint committee has touched nerves at the two agencies by focusing much of its inquiry on a few key incidents in which the two agencies were slow to follow trails of evidence leading to the hijackers. The joint committee revealed a wealth of new details about the case of Khalid al-Midhar, a leading hijacker who was able to slip into the United States even after the C.I.A. had discovered that he had attended a meeting in Malaysia of people suspected of being Al Qaeda operatives.
The panel also issued a detailed report that was critical of the way in which the bureau handled the case of Mr. Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker" who was arrested in Minneapolis in August 2001. The committee found that F.B.I. headquarters had rejected a request by the bureau's Minneapolis office to search Mr. Moussaoui's laptop computer and other belongings, even though agents in the field suspected that Mr. Moussaoui might be part of a larger aircraft-related terrorist plot.
But officials at the two agencies have complained that the staff of the joint inquiry has taken material it has been given by the agencies out of context for shock value. At the bureau, officials were furious about the testimony in which an unidentified agent from the agency's New York office, speaking from behind a glass partition, said that he warned his superiors by e-mail that "someone would die" unless the government more aggressively investigated the mysterious trail of Mr. Midhar. The officials said the committee did not make it clear at the hearing that the agent's warnings had been passed on to the appropriate units within the bureau and were under investigation at the time of the attacks.
The officials believe that the inquiry has tried to paint many of the incidents they have documented, and the intelligence reports on potential threats received before Sept. 11, in the worst possible light. The officials also say they were never given enough resources before Sept. 11 to counter the threat.
"They said we were asleep," a counterterrorism official said. "The problem wasn't that we were asleep. We didn't get enough sleep."
At the start of the year, few officials at the two agencies believed that the review of their performances before Sept. 11 was likely to amount to much. They said that was because the committee's staff seemed ill equipped to wade through the more than half a million pages of classified documents.
At times, lawmakers on the committee fought in closed session over the scope and direction of the investigation, with some questioning the wisdom of heavily examining the missteps of intelligence agencies at a time when the country was engaged in a war against the Qaeda threat.
The committee staff, hired to conduct the inquiry, often seemed in disarray. L. Britt Snider, the first director of the panel, was forced to resign in April over the hiring of an employee who was being investigated for failing a C.I.A. polygraph exam.
But the Congressional committee seemed to have found a surer footing since the hiring of Eleanor Hill, a former inspector general at the Pentagon, who replaced Mr. Snider. She has been credited with helping to focus the hearings, sifting through a huge mass of fragmentary information to focus on the performance of the bureau and the intelligence agency in surprisingly powerful reports.
But F.B.I. officials disputed her assertion that the bureau had only one analyst working on strategic assessments of Al Qaeda, saying the agency had several dozen analysts assigned to two operational units focused on Osama bin Laden and radical fundamentalists groups.
Several lawmakers said that the bureau had been more badly damaged than the intelligence agency after a year in which the bureau's senior managers have been repeatedly criticized by lawmakers for lacking the analytical ability to grasp the danger posed by Al Qaeda.
Publicly, bureau officials said that they welcomed the review of their efforts, hoping that the committees would come up with recommendations that could improve the bureau's counterterrorism program.
Privately, several veteran agents bitterly complained that the F.B.I. had been singled out for criticism, that the committees had failed to look more broadly at failures of the Clinton or Bush administrations to exercise the "political will" to act against Al Qaeda until after the hijackings. "They took satellite graduation pictures of bin Laden's training camps and that's about it," as one agent put it.
Behind the scenes, the bureau has fought a running battle with the committee to keep agents from testifying publicly about the bureau's operations and to keep classified documents from being made public.
But in Congress, the joint inquiry's first two weeks of public hearings are widely seen as highly successful. Senator Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican and a ranking member on the joint committee, said that the hearings have demonstrated the need for an intelligence overhaul.
"The hearings have exposed the failures of our intelligence agencies to the light of day," Senator Shelby said. "The much-needed reform of our intelligence agencies won't happen without the American people driving them every step of the way."
--------
Agency Probes D.C. Wireless Network
September 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Wireless-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secret Service agents are putting a high-tech twist on the idea of a cop walking the beat. Using a laptop computer and an antenna fashioned from a Pringles potato chip can, they are looking for security holes in wireless networks in the nation's capital.
The agency best known for protecting the president and chasing down counterfeiters has started addressing what it calls one of the most overlooked threats to computer networks.
``Everybody wants wireless, it's real convenient,'' Special Agent Wayne Peterson said. ``Security has always been an afterthought.''
The effort is part of a new government plan to build relationships with businesses so that they will feel more comfortable reporting hacking attempts to authorities. Recent anti-terrorism legislation gave the FBI and Secret Service joint jurisdiction over electronic crimes.
Wireless networks are cheap; a small one can start at less than $200. They make it easy for workers to wander around with their laptop or handheld computers and for visiting employees with their own computers to get on to the local office network.
These networks are becoming common in airports, universities, coffee houses, businesses, homes and even some public squares. But they are sold with no security measures, and protecting a wireless network from hackers takes more knowledge than what network installation guides typically offer.
Because of security concerns, the White House recently proposed banning some wireless networks in federal agencies. Faced with industry protests, the administration dropped the idea when it released a draft version of its cybersecurity plan this month.
That has led some independent security researchers to drive -- or even use a private plane to fly -- through cities to map networks. Those maps, which are usually posted on the Internet, show where a person can get a free Internet connection on a private network.
The Secret Service wants to let businesses know that their Internet connections and private networks might be at risk. Companies informed about security holes can reconfigure their networks to make them more secure.
Peterson's tools are a laptop, a wireless network card and one of three antennae mounted on his car. One is a small metal antenna; the second is a large, white, 2-foot-tall tube; the third is a homemade antenna made out of a Pringles can. They boost the reception of his wireless network card, allowing the agent to point them in different directions to get the best signal.
A Pringles can is ideal because of its shape -- a long tube that lets someone to point it at specific buildings -- and its aluminum inner lining. It acts like a satellite dish, collecting signals and bouncing them to the receiver, which is then wired into a laptop.
Peterson recently drove down a major Washington street and found over 20 wireless networks, many of which had no security at all. Peterson said his probes are part of good police work, like a patrolman driving through a neighborhood.
``I feel it is part of crime prevention to knock on the door,'' Peterson said.
The act of ``wardriving,'' a term taken from older ``wardialing'' programs that called random telephone numbers looking for unlisted modems, has become so prevalent that enthusiasts are using chalk marks on streets and sidewalks to point out networks in public places.
Peterson said there has not been any reported ``warchalking'' in the Washington area yet, but if one was found agents would alert the network owner.
Chris McFarland, head of the Secret Service's Electronic Crimes Task Force, said his agents have begun evaluating computer security along with other concerns when they scout out a place where the president or other protected dignitary will go.
McFarland said, for example, that agents have had extensive discussions with officials at George Washington Hospital about improving its wireless network security.
While the agents plan to offer their expertise to anyone who asks, they are focusing on places most important to their mission of protecting public officials. The hospital is several blocks from the White House and treated Vice President Dick Cheney during his heart problems.
Agents also checked out computer systems at the Salt Lake City Olympics, last year's Super Bowl and the World Bank in advance of weekend protests.
``People can wreak havoc with these systems very easily,'' McFarland said. ``It's almost like triage.''
On the Net:
Secret Service: http://www.usss.treas.gov
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Negotiators Near Agreement on Energy Bill
Analysts Say Legislation Will Make Little Dent in Nation's Dependence on Foreign Oil
By Dan Morgan and Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17330-2002Sep28?language=printer
Working against the backdrop of a possible war in Iraq, House and Senate negotiators are nearing completion of once-in-a-decade energy legislation that many analysts contend will do little to reduce the nation's reliance on Middle East oil.
New fuel economy requirements for gas-hungry sport-utility vehicles will save the equivalent of about 10 days of oil imports over seven years. Meanwhile, a proposed concession for vehicle manufacturers could more than offset that meager gain, government analysts say.
"There's really not much in the likely legislation that will affect supply or demand for oil," said Howard Gruenspecht, resident scholar at Resources for the Future, a Washington research organization.
It's unclear whether the House and Senate will pass the compromise legislation before adjourning in about two weeks. The White House and several key lawmakers support it.
The debate largely centers on whether to place greater emphasis on energy conservation or increased energy production. Last week, congressional Republicans renewed their push to allow drilling for oil in the environmentally pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR oil, they said, could more than offset recent U.S. imports of Iraqi petroleum.
But agreement on the divisive issue is highly uncertain. A recent study by the Department of Energy found that the new Alaskan oil would barely dent the nation's oil imports from the Middle East and elsewhere.
"There's nothing in this bill that will make a substantive difference in addressing the rising U.S. dependence on foreign oil," said Amy Jaffe, senior energy adviser at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston. "There's zero political will."
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said: "There's an invocation of Iraq, but no signal to Iraq or OPEC [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] that we're serious about energy independence."
Some Republicans disagree, saying the legislation contains worthwhile incentives for conservation and domestic production. The legislation "is all about the Middle East," said Rep. W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), who chairs the House-Senate negotiations. "It's about the fact that we're too dang dependent on Middle East fuel."
He cited the ANWR drilling proposal and provisions that would encourage energy conservation and increased use of renewable fuels. Negotiators are near agreement on federal funding increases for research and development on products ranging from more efficient light bulbs to alternative-fuel cars. They also are expected to approve a major initiative that would require gasoline refiners to more than double the amount of ethanol -- produced mainly from corn -- included in fuel mixes in the next decade. The proposed increase would slightly reduce the demand for motor fuels made only from petroleum.
Negotiators are also considering a Senate provision directing large electric utilities to generate 10 percent of their power from wind, solar and other renewable resources by 2020. That, however, would have little effect on oil imports since oil is not widely used to generate electricity.
Pending are provisions that would give tax breaks to coal companies, nuclear power operators and small domestic oil producers, as well as royalty relief for oil and gas producers.
Proponents of a $20 billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states are seeking tax credits and incentives to launch the mammoth project. And last week, House Republicans proposed protections against lawsuits for manufacturers of the fuel additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether. The MTBE industry is centered in Texas and Louisiana, a GOP power base in the House. It includes a company in which the Saudi government owns a major interest.
The hodgepodge of proposals, many of them modest in scope, has led several key Democrats to complain that Congress is missing a unique opportunity to deal with the nation's vulnerability to foreign oil exporters. "We are doing very little in this bill to address that," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The administration's National Energy Policy, released more than a year ago, called for steps to conserve energy, including increasing the efficiency of vehicles. President Bush and his advisers, many of whom have close ties to the oil and gas industry, have weighed in mainly on behalf of more domestic oil production in Alaska and the Rocky Mountains. Some Democrats want a greater emphasis on energy conservation.
Democrats from Great Plains farm states and Midwest labor strongholds earlier this year blocked the adoption of tougher gasoline mileage requirements for light trucks, minivans and SUVs. The new rules, they said, would have cost jobs in the automobile industry and saddled farmers with lighter, less-safe vehicles.
During initial Senate debate on the energy bill in March, five farm-state Democrats backed an amendment co-sponsored by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) that ruled out tougher fuel efficiency standards for those types of vehicles. The amendment gave the Bush administration two years to develop its own rules.
Automobile fuel economy standards were first passed in 1975 after the 1973 oil embargo by Arab nations, which sent gasoline prices soaring. The result was a dramatic increase in the efficiency of new cars, from an average of 14 miles per gallon in the mid-1970s to 27 miles per gallon a decade later.
But the average has remained at 27.5 miles per gallon since 1986. Meanwhile, surging sales of SUVs and minivans, which are exempt from the requirements, have caused the average for all vehicles to drop to 24.6 mpg.
This dramatic change in U.S. driving habits had a major impact on oil markets and geopolitics. Oil imports have increased from about 9 million barrels a day in 1990 to nearly 12 million barrels a day last year. New fuel efficiency standards adopted this month by House and Senate conferees require automakers to redesign SUVs and light truck to save at least 5 billion gallons of gasoline between 2006 and 2012. That amounts to about 120 million barrels of oil, or about 10 days of imports.
The same legislation extends for at least four years a loophole that could more than offset the 5 billion-gallon saving, environmental groups say. The provisions, enacted in 1992, were meant to encourage automakers to build "dual fuel" vehicles capable of operating on either regular gasoline or a mixture of gasoline and ethanol. Manufacturers of such vehicles received credits allowing their other vehicles to be slightly less efficient.
The manufacturers responded by building more than 1 million dual fuel vehicles. But recent studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Transportation have found that owners of dual-fuel cars, trucks and minivans have mainly continued to use regular gasoline because of a shortage of service stations offering the ethanol product.
Last year, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the provision, if anything, "has had a negative effect on fuel economy, petroleum consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and cost." But under strong pressure from the auto industry, congressional energy negotiators included the provision in the new legislation..
"Congress is piously saying they've acted to cut America's oil consumption," said Sierra Club energy policy director Dan Becker, "when they're actually extending a loophole [that] increases our dependence on imported oil and enshrining it as national policy."
-------- genetics
Nancy Reagan Fights Bush Over Stem Cells
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/politics/29NANC.html
When Nancy Reagan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House last summer, she cast her eyes demurely downward as President Bush praised her 1980's "Just Say No," campaign against teenage drug use.
Mr. Bush did not cite Mrs. Reagan's current and far more divisive cause - federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, which anti-abortion groups oppose. Last year Mr. Bush sharply limited such research. At 81, the former first lady is obliquely but persistently campaigning - through friends, advisers, lawmakers and her own well-placed calls and letters - to reverse the president's decision.
Mrs. Reagan believes that embryonic stem cell research could uncover a cure for Alzheimer's, the disease that has wiped out her husband's memory. She was dismayed, friends say, when the White House took issue on Monday with a new California law that encourages embryonic stem cell research.
Her advisers say Mrs. Reagan's sense of decorum and party loyalty inhibit her from publicly challenging a Republican president.
Instead, she is expressing her frustration through emissaries.
"A lot of time is being wasted," she told a friend last week who was given permission to pass her words on to The New York Times. "A lot of people who could be helped are not being helped."
Mrs. Reagan's dispute with Mr. Bush is complicated by the long, rather strained history between their families. The Reagans had a famously civil but cool relationship with Vice President George Bush and his wife, Barbara.
The Bushes' eldest son, George W., who in 1986 left his Texas oil business to work on his father's presidential campaign, witnessed an icy distance that did not melt even after the Reagans left Washington and George and Barbara Bush moved into the Executive Mansion.
The current President Bush has worked hard to charm the woman who has become an icon of Republican nostalgia. In July, Mrs. Reagan spent two nights at the White House in the Queen's Bedroom, a pink and white room usually reserved for visiting royalty. At her arrival, the Bushes gathered all the White House servants who had worked for the Reagans and held an intimate dinner with her the night before the award ceremony.
"She really likes George W.," Frederick J. Ryan Jr., chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said. Mr. Ryan, who gave a large dinner for Mrs. Reagan after she received her medal, added, "I think she sees him as emulating Ronald Reagan's presidential style. She sometimes calls me when someone has been critical of him and says, `What are we going to do about this?' "
But Mrs. Reagan, whose stepfather and stepbrother were neurosurgeons, dissents on the subject of stem cell research.
Bob Colacello, a Vanity Fair writer who is working on a biography of Mrs. Reagan, said, "In the four years that I have been working on the book, I have never seen or heard her talk about a policy issue - except stem cell research."
Scientists contend that embryonic stem cells, which can form any of the body's cell types, will one day be used to treat many diseases. But researchers must destroy human embryos to get the cells, and that is why anti-abortion groups oppose the work and Mr. Bush restricted federal financing for it last year.
Mrs. Reagan voiced concerns about the president's policy on stem cell research with the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., at the dinner party in her honor, an aide to Mr. Card said. But her friends say it is unlikely she would have breached etiquette by raising the issue with Mr. Bush while a guest in his house.
Direct confrontation was never her style. In the Reagan White House, Mrs. Reagan was a stealth first lady who pursued her husband's political and personal agenda behind the scenes, using her network of friends and advisers to lobby decision-makers or leak information to the news media.
Now Mrs. Reagan is a stealth lobbyist, working her old network to once again wield influence in Washington. She has personally contacted 20 members of Congress, button-holed administration officials and conferred with leading scientists, including Dr. Richard D. Klausner, who resigned as director of the National Cancer Institute last September and now runs the global health program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
"Mrs. Reagan has been very helpful in talking to members about the use of stem cells," said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is seeking to resurrect legislation to authorize so-called therapeutic cloning, a type of stem cell research that also involves the destruction of embryos. "She's a former first lady, she holds a special position because of her own persuasive personality, and her husband, President Reagan, has Alzheimer's. She's a triple threat."
Her mobilizing is bipartisan. Mrs. Reagan has even discussed the issue with Warren Beatty, a liberal Democrat.
Last year Mrs. Reagan wrote to Mr. Bush, saying she hoped that sparing other families what hers had suffered could be part of her husband's legacy. She then entrusted two advisers to show it to influential Republican legislators. On the eve of Mr. Bush's decision last year, she instructed an ally, veiled under the stiff euphemism, "people familiar with Mrs. Reagan's feelings," to inform reporters that she had communicated her views on stem cell research to Mr. Bush.
Last Wednesday, frustrated scientists testified before Congress that the president's restrictions had stymied stem cell research, or as Dr. George Q. Daley of the Whitehead Institute in Boston put it, threatened to "starve the field at a time when greater nourishment is critical."
That evening, Mrs. Reagan appeared on the CBS program "60 Minutes II" in a taped interview with Mike Wallace, 84, who has known her since the 1940's. Mrs. Reagan told Mr. Wallace that her husband no longer seemed to recognize her. She spoke eloquently of her loneliness, but she did not discuss her anger.
"I didn't know or I would have asked her," Mr. Wallace said after the interview was broadcast, referring to Mrs. Reagan's efforts on behalf of embryonic stem cell research. "But she is always reluctant to do anything that could be perceived as anti-Republican."
Mr. Wallace said he was surprised that Mrs. Reagan replied "Yes," when he called to ask if he could relate her views to a Times reporter. Mr. Wallace said that a few minutes later she called him back and added her concern that time in the search for a cure to Alzheimer's was being wasted.
The White House responded delicately. "A great many good-hearted people have strong feelings about this," Adam Levine, a spokesman, said. "The president is confident that the decision he made last year strikes the right balance between moral and ethical responsibility and furthering scientific research."
As first lady, Mrs. Reagan was not always popular; White House aides feared her, and even many Republicans were put off by her preoccupation with fashion, high society and astrology.
Her reclusive, unswerving devotion to her husband has mollified her detractors. Once Mr. Reagan fell ill, Mrs. Reagan stopped going to parties. She now rarely leaves her Bel Air mansion and allows no visitors. Mrs. Reagan told Mr. Wallace that her life was lonely.
"Because really, you know, when you come right down to it, you're in it alone. And there's nothing that anybody can do for you."
Her oldest friends, however, have joined her campaign against the disease that has stricken her husband.
A Republican legislator recently told Michael Deaver, a Reagan adviser and confidant, that some conservatives contend that Ronald Reagan would never have approved of embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Deaver said he retorted, "Ronald Reagan didn't have to take care of Ronald Reagan for the last 10 years."
-------- health
Antibiotic resistance on the rise
09/29/2002
By Anita Manning,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-09-29-drugs-usat_x.htm
In the battle between bugs and drugs, the bugs are scoring some big wins.
Scientists here at an international meeting of the American Society for Microbiology warn that disease-causing microbes are becoming immune to a growing list of antibiotics, and new antibiotics and vaccines are barely keeping ahead of them.
"There are patients today in hospitals for whom there are no effective therapies," says Gary Doern, director of clinical microbiology at the University of Iowa, a panelist at a briefing here of the International Forum on Antibiotic Resistance.
Until recently, almost all drug-resistant bacteria were confined to hospitals, where a concentration of sick people and high antibiotic use contributed to the evolution of strains capable of evading antibiotic attack.
Now, Doern says, it's not uncommon for patients to come in the door carrying drug-resistant microbes that are circulating in the community. Among concerns highlighted by doctors at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy:
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, accounts for more than half of hospital-acquired bloodstream infections caused by staph. In some cities, 31% of such infections outside the hospital are methicillin-resistant, and in nursing homes, 71% of staph infections are MRSA. In some areas, about 50% of Campylobacter bacteria, the most common cause of diarrhea, are resistant to Cipro. About a third of the germs most commonly responsible for severe pneumonia, Streptococcus pneumoniae, are resistant to penicillin in the USA, and about 25% are resistant to multiple drugs. Resistance to fluoroquinolones, a newer class of drugs, also is on the rise. Researchers in Toronto reported Sunday that in 2001, 1.2% of the S. pneumoniae bacteria in Canada were resistant to levofloxacin, a fluoroquinolone introduced in 1996, compared with 0.9% in 2000 and 0.4% in 1999.
"We are living in a time where increasing drug resistance is frustrating treatment of common infections," says Roger Finch, professor of infectious diseases at England's University of Nottingham. "It is having an impact on hospitals and forcing us to use (antibiotics) we might have kept in reserve" to use only against the most persistent infections.
Antibiotics wipe out bacteria that are susceptible to them. But when used improperly, they can encourage the growth of bacteria that have adapted to them. And because bacteria can swap genes under the right conditions, drug-resistant germs can share their resistance mechanisms with other germs.
That is what is thought to have happened in the case of a Michigan woman reported this summer. She acquired the USA's first case of Staphylococcus aureus, a common bloodstream and skin infection, that was impervious to the antibiotic vancomycin, says Michael Rybak of Wayne State University in Detroit. Vancomycin has been known as the drug of last resort; it is used to treat infections that don't respond to other drugs. But in recent years, it has been used so often that intestinal bacteria called enterococci have become resistant.
The Michigan patient already was infected with vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and those microbes might have passed their drug-resistance mechanisms to the staph bacteria, creating what doctors call a "superbug."
As bacteria evolve resistance to more classes of antibiotics, drug companies are racing to create new ones. Rybak presented data Saturday showing that a drug being developed by Cubist Pharmaceuticals, daptomycin, was effective against vancomycin-resistant S. aureus.
Company officials say the drug has been tested in more than 2,500 patients, and they hope it will be reviewed for licensing within a year. In other studies, researchers reported that another new antibiotic, telithromycin, is effective in treating drug-resistant pneumonia.
Though new antibiotics are welcome, doctors say that unless patients and health care professionals learn to use them more carefully, the bugs will continue to outsmart the drugs.
Education strategies in hospitals and in communities, aimed at both doctors and patients, are achieving success in reducing overuse and misuse of antibiotics, researchers say.
"If we use antibiotics, some level of antibiotic resistance will emerge," Doern says. To slow that down, "we should use antibiotics only when needed, and, when needed, use the right one
-------- imf / world bank
IMF told to devise bankruptcy plan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 29, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020929-90251338.htm
Finance leaders directed the International Monetary Fund yesterday to develop a dramatic new approach to resolving debt crises that have engulfed countries from Asia to South America.
The goal is creation of a process by which nations with unmanageable debt could declare bankruptcy and force creditors to negotiate more-lenient repayment terms.
The order for the 184-nation IMF came from the lending institution's policy-setting committee of finance ministers.
The step is a milestone in overhauling the global finance system. The effort has moved in fits and starts since the Asian currency crisis of 1997-98 pushed 40 percent of the world's economy into recession.
The announcement by Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, and the IMF's managing director, Horst Koehler, was likely to be the biggest achievement of this year's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank.
The meetings came against a backdrop of rising worries about the uncertain economic recovery from last year's recession. Chief concerns are plunging stock markets, Latin America's debt crisis and possible war in Iraq.
The finance ministers who serve as the IMF's board of directors sought to allay those fears. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill said "handwringers" were ignoring positive economic developments.
But efforts to project an optimistic front were undermined by mixed signals by financial officials from Japan about how Tokyo planned to deal with its troubled banking sector and revive the world's second-largest economy.
As in the past, the meetings attracted thousands of anti-globalization protesters who contend the institutions' policies favor wealthy nations.
The bankruptcy proposal faces stiff opposition from large banks that make loans to developing countries. Banks oppose making it easier for those nations to win new repayment terms.
The Bush administration originally favored a limited approach by which a majority of creditors could agree to accept lower repayments from countries in dire circumstances. A single creditor can, in most instances now, block reduced repayment terms.
A week ago, the administration indicated it supported a two-track approach that included its proposal and the more sweeping IMF plan.
Mr. Koehler said hard work lies ahead in developing the details to put the bankruptcy process into place. The IMF will listen to the concerns of banks and others creditors, he said.
The proposal will be presented to the IMF's directors in April. The plan ultimately would require approval from each of the organization's 184 members.
Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Brown yesterday also expressed optimism that despite the current economic turmoil, the world was on track for higher growth.
Intruding upon that optimism was a disagreement in the Japanese delegation. Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa publicly rebuked his top aides yesterday for a statement that contradicted an assertion he had made the day before about his talks with Mr. O'Neill.
Mr. Shiokawa had said he held out the possibility that Japan would use government money to shore up Japan's troubled banks. The dispute left other nations wondering just what policies Japan would now pursue.
As another response to the protesters in the streets, Mr. Brown said a group of 15 rich countries would soon announce commitments to fill a $1 billion financing gap in a program that provides debt relief for the poorest nations.
That did not impress debt-relief advocates. Julia Tilford, a spokeswoman for Oxfam International, said the new money was a "patch-up job for what is a failing initiative" that needed fundamental reforms.
----
When the IMF extends an embrace
Alan Reynolds
September 29, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020929-26312876.htm
Thousands of frenzied demonstrators tried to bring traffic to a halt in Washington, D.C., on Friday. That was inexcusable trespassing, yet it provoked mixed emotions. For one thing, anything that slows the federal government is generally a good thing. For another, these rowdies focused their ire on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - an admittedly tempting target.
The world might be a far more pleasant place if someone would fire the IMF's 2,600 overpaid workers and convert their imposing office buildings into a gigantic shopping mall.
The IMF appointed itself economic central planner for the world, devoted to righting what it calls "imbalances." During the economic flare-ups that always astonish them, however, IMF firefighters have an unfortunate tendency to try extinguishing the fire with gasoline.
In 1997 and 1998, there were many gloomy forecasts that it would take decades for those economies to recover. Yet Asia and Russia rebounded quickly and vigorously, despite some foolish outside meddling (such as the IMF demanding higher taxes in Thailand). Countries that refused IMF loans and policies, such as Malaysia, bounced back as well as those who sipped the evil brew.
Crises have always been temporary, which allows IMF spokesmen to claim credit for the upturns and never for the downturns. On closer inspection, that ends up being the opposite of what really happened. I surveyed the IMF track record through the early 1990s in a chapter in "Money and the Nation State," a 1998 volume edited by Kevin Dowd and Richard Timberlake. I found that IMF requirements to raise taxes and debauch the currency had always contributed to crises, while policies that lifted countries out of crises - and even created "economic miracles" - were always home-grown.
The IMF mandated massive currency devaluations and higher taxes and tariffs for South Korea in 1980, Chile and Mauritius in 1982, and Jamaica in 1978 and 1983. In every case, the predictable result was a deep collapse in production and employment, and a huge increase in inflation. South Korea's economy, for example, shrank by 5 percent in 1980 and inflation jumped to 35 percent. The IMF proudly points out that trade deficits did, however, "improve" - which merely proves that devastated economies cannot afford even essential imports.
Once free of the IMF's pythonlike embrace, reformed IMF victims often adopt the exact opposite policies. In 1982, South Korea slashed its highest income tax rate by 19 percentage points, later cutting that tax rate in half. In 1983, Mauritius cut the top tax from 70 percent to 35 percent. In 1985, Chile slashed its top tax from 65 percent to 35 percent, massively reduced tariffs and corporate taxes, and eliminated Social Security taxes through privatization. In 1986, Jamaica cut its top tax rate from 58 percent to 33 percent. In 1999, Malaysia suspended income tax altogether. In 2001, Russia adopted a 13 percent flat tax.
Today, IMF policies continue to bring great pain, and relief still comes only if and when those policies are discarded. Argentina appeased the IMF by enacting sizable tax increases every year from 1998 through 2001, then it robbed its citizens last January by abandoning a promise to convert pesos to dollars, 1-for-1. The results of rising taxes and falling money are now painfully obvious.
Russia was under the IMF's thumb from 1992 through 2000, with the customary disastrous effects. On July 16, 1998, Russia promised the IMF that "the federal government budget will target a primary surplus of at least 3 percent of GDP on the strength of tax policy measures" (including a new 5 percent sales tax and a 3 percent surcharge on tariffs). That pitiful economic suicide note succeeded in attracting another $21 billion of foreign loans, mostly from the IMF, but also in provoking a mass exodus of capital that pushed Russia into default and devaluation four weeks later. The economy shrank 5 percent.
Once free from the IMF program, however, the Putin government pulled Russia out of the IMF's suffocating squeeze. In 2001, Russia enacted a 13 percent flat tax on individual income (down from 30 percent), cut the corporate profits tax from 35 to 24 percent and cut payroll taxes by 4 points. With more incentive to work and less to evade taxes, the IMF reluctantly acknowledges that "tax performance has exceeded expectations across the board." For the past two years, Russia also enjoyed the world's largest stock market gains.
Countries with too much debt and too little income do not need more IMF debt, and they do not need the lower income that follows IMF austerity schemes. Their companies and workers should be encouraged to produce more income, not less. And when it comes to debt, they need workouts, not bailouts.
IMF bailouts just make local politicians and their foreign bankers more careless, guaranteeing more trouble ahead. If the IMF has any legitimate role to play in preventing or fixing economic crises, it has yet to be demonstrated in practice.
Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist.
----
Calculating Checks and Balances at the World Bank
New York Times
September 29, 2002
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/weekinreview/29STEV.html
FINANCE ministers and central bankers from around the world streamed into Washington late last week for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They were shadowed by thousands of protesters who see the institutions as embodiments of fiscal policies that make globalization a destructive force and leave the world's most vulnerable people without the assistance they need.
After a few experiences with this now-familiar dance, has the World Bank changed? In fact, just what does the World Bank do?
No Free Toasters
The World Bank, the world's leading poverty-fighting organization, makes loans to struggling countries to help them improve health, education and other services. It finances the construction of roads, power plants and other expensive projects necessary for development, and administers a plan to write off some debts run up by its client nations over the decades.
It is the sister agency of the I. M. F., which bails out governments that find themselves faced with a financial crisis. Both the bank and fund were founded in 1944, the brainchildren of John Maynard Keynes and other economists and government officials who gathered in Bretton Woods, N.H., to plot a postwar economic strategy.
The bank is theoretically governed by 184 member nations. As a practical matter, the United States, which has what amounts to nearly 20 percent ownership of the bank, has the greatest influence. Reflecting that clout, the president has always been an American. It is currently James D. Wolfensohn, an Australian-born former investment banker who was appointed in 1995 by President Bill Clinton.
The World Bank doesn't have any A.T.M.'s, but in some ways it functions much like Citicorp or any other big commercial bank. It raises most of its money by selling bonds to investors, including some individuals, then lends the money back out through its main subsidiary, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, roughly at market rates of interest.
The bank also makes special low-interest loans to the very poorest nations, financed out of contributions from 40 donor nations, including the United States, which next year will give about $875 million (Japan will give around $700 million and Germany and Britain less than $500 million each.)
Whether the World Bank has actually done much to alleviate poverty is a much-debated question. Even the bank's supporters say it has not achieved enough.
In fairness, the bank is dealing with intractable problems, primarily in Africa, Asia and Latin America. And it is trying to do so in a way that reflects shifting theories about economic development and political crosscurrents from the rich donor nations, starting with the United States.
Dam Fools
Faced with intense criticism from both the left and the right, and from governments and street protesters, the bank has transformed itself in many ways over the last decade.
Up through the early 1990's, its focus was on big building projects intended to provide the power, transportation and communications systems that are the physical foundations of an economy. But those projects were often ill conceived and poorly executed, and became magnets for protests in Washington and in the countries where the bank operates.
Some of the most vilified projects were hydroelectric dams, which were often the centerpiece of World Bank development programs. One of the most infamous was a dam-building project on the Narmada River in India. The bank originally helped India's government finance the project. But after years of protests that the building of the dams was leading to the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of people and widespread environmental damage, the bank commissioned an independent review in 1992 that found that the bank had violated many of its own policies in approving loans for the dams. The next year the bank pulled out of the project, which the Indian government has continued on its own.
The Narmada debacle helped speed a shift in the bank's focus from big construction programs to dealing with health, education and improving the ability of governments to deliver services. In 1980, according to the bank's Web site, 21 percent of bank lending went to power projects like dams. The figure now is 7 percent. During the same period, lending for health, education, nutrition and other social services has grown to 22 percent of the bank's lending, up from 5 percent.
The protesters who have taken to the streets over the weekend tend to view the economic philosophy adopted by the bank and monetary fund as part of a monolithic "Washington consensus," a belief in the primacy of market forces and fiscal austerity.
What Consensus?
But if there ever was such a consensus, it is awfully frayed now. The Bush administration, in fact, is openly pushing for a re-examination of the way the bank operates. It is demanding that programs demonstrate quantifiable results, like a rising number of children in school or fewer people diagnosed with H.I.V. or increased economic productivity.
The administration has also pushed, over the objections of some European countries, to replace low-interest loans with outright grants. The American position is that the loans are so subsidized as to be grants in all but name, and that it makes no sense to force recipients to treat them as debt. Europeans fear that the change would be cover for cutting back contributions.
The bank has also sought to involve its critics in the process of developing programs for poor countries. It has reached out to the advocacy groups that deal with poverty, health, the environment and other development issues in Washington and in the countries in which it operates; the banks says two-thirds of the projects it approved last year involved such organizations.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Thousands march on Cheney's house to protest a war with Iraq
DAVID HO,
Associated Press Writer,
Sunday, September 29, 2002, 16:03 PDT (AP)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/09/29/national1705EDT0545.DTL
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of people opposing a war with Iraq marched to the residence of Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday, culminating three days of smaller-than-expected demonstrations.
Protesters, some holding signs that said "No Blood for Oil," blamed Cheney for pushing the nation toward war. Police estimated about 2,500 people turned out for the peaceful event.
Demonstrator threats to shut down the nation's capital and disrupt meetings of world financial leaders during the weekend fell flat and all protesters had evaporated from city streets by dusk Sunday.
However, protest organizers insisted their goals were met: drawing attention to those seeking more money for global AIDS research and calling for changes in world economic policies.
"It's been a highly successful couple of days," said David Levy, who was the only protest organizer to show up for a Sunday morning news conference to evaluate the demonstrations.
Police had prepared for as many as 20,000 demonstrators, but during the largest event, on Saturday, a much smaller number filled a five-block long stretch of a four-lane street as they shouted opposition to policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which were holding their annual meetings nearby.
"No, we didn't change the state of the global economy," said Zoe Baldwin, 21, a college senior from Garfield, N.J. "The main purpose for most of these demonstrations, it's basically a huge outreach tool."
Meetings of global financial institutions have been a magnet to violence-scarred protests since 1999, when anti-globalization protesters clashed with police in Seattle. In April 2000, Washington police arrested about 1,300 people during demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank. There were fewer than 700 arrests this year, almost all of them people who gathered in a park Friday without a permit to demonstrate.
The World Bank and IMF scaled back this year's September meeting from a week to two days to trim security costs. The finance ministers return to Washington in the spring, but next year's larger annual fall meeting is to be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
On the Net:
Mobilization for Global Justice: www.globalizethis.org
District of Columbia police: www.mpdc.dc.gov
----
Specter of War Stirs Campus Dissent
Opposition to U.S. Action in Iraq Quietly Grows as Many College Students Question Administration's Motives
By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16442-2002Sep28?language=printer
AUSTIN -- On a sun-soaked lawn at the University of Texas's sprawling campus here, three college juniors lounged, cross-legged, between classes the other day, sipping soft drinks on the grass. But the image of carefree undergraduate torpor at one of the nation's largest universities dissolved when the subject turned to the prospect of a new American war in the Persian Gulf.
"It's just a grudge match, unfinished business between Saddam Hussein and [President Bush's] dad," said Blake Chaifetz, 20, an American studies major from Houston whose light-brown dreadlocks spilled from the bandanna on his head.
"I haven't seen the evidence [of Hussein's threat to the United States], if they have any," said Caren Panzer, 20, a journalism major from Houston. "He's committed us to war whether we want it or not."
As the Bush administration presses its case for deposing Hussein and committing U.S. troops to what could be a long stay in the region, many American students seem far from convinced. Protests and rallies -- a hallmark of campus life in previous conflicts -- are still a distant prospect, but anti-war sentiment made up the plurality of opinions expressed in scores of interviews at 10 universities around the country this week.
In this sampling, some undergraduates expressed support, hearty or muted, for a war in Iraq. Others acknowledged that their attentions lay elsewhere, or professed helplessness in the face of what they regard as an inevitable conflict. But the largest number of students interviewed were skeptical, overtly cynical or downright hostile to the administration's determination to oust Hussein.
David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 U.S. colleges and universities, said students "seem to be apprehensive in a very quiet way. They are not protesting more loudly because they simply do not know what is going to happen." And unlike undergraduate men during the Vietnam War, they are not subject to a military draft.
At several campuses, anti-war organizing and petition drives had begun, apparently unmatched by similar pro-administration efforts. And while the academic year is young, and the odds of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq are uncertain, a number of students' comments suggested that their campuses could contain the seeds of a peace movement.
"You definitely wouldn't see me in a uniform," said J. Patrick Bland, a sophomore at Tulane University in New Orleans. "I don't care if they call my number or not. This isn't war; this is political posturing."
Bush's arguments that the Iraqi regime poses a threat to the United States and the world have hit home with some students. Eric Israel, a freshman at Tulane, said: "It's a good idea. Saddam Hussein needs to be ousted. He needs to go. Little Bush needs to clean up what Big Bush didn't."
Yet even among some students who were more receptive to Bush's position, there were wincing acknowledgments that a war and its aftermath -- including the possibility of long-term nation-building in Iraq -- could be painful, costly and fraught with risks for the United States.
"My first choice would be a covert operation -- 21 guys go in and take out Saddam Hussein," said Dale Freytag, 19, a sophomore at the University of Texas.
The interviews were conducted earlier this week at Tulane, the University of Texas, Columbia and New York universities in New York, Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind., the University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University in Washington, the University of Maryland at College Park and St. John's College in Annapolis. In addition, several students at Texas A&M University in College Station were interviewed by telephone.
Few students defended the Iraqi regime or expressed doubts about U.S. military capabilities. Rather, most were skeptical about Bush's motives, doubtful that a war was necessary and worried by the lukewarm or nonexistent support from U.S. allies.
On Tuesday morning, Marie Frisoff was plastering Columbia's stone buildings and sober statues with neon-green posters headlined "Not so sure?" and inviting classmates to a meeting to discuss the potential war on Iraq. "There are a lot of people that just have a lot of questions," said the 21-year-old political science major from Cleveland.
Within yards of Frisoff's green poster trail, James Catrambone, 20, polished off an early lunch and offered his support to Bush. "We should just set a deadline and use force," said the sophomore economics major. Catrambone said he rarely confronts the students who thrust anti-war fliers before him as he heads to class each day. "I get a little annoyed with students on campus protesting for what America stands for."
At New York University, there seemed to be little enthusiasm for a war. "I feel like there's absolutely nothing any of us can do about it," said Sara Schwartz, a 20-year-old sophomore from Philadelphia. "I don't think it's going to help our relations in the Middle East."
In the Washington area, some students said they were preoccupied with sports and studies. But Sean Douty, a freshman architecture major at the University of Maryland, pronounced himself unworried by the Bush administration's designs for Iraq. "If they decide war is necessary and the right thing to do, then I support that," he said.
At Georgetown, several students questioned why President Bush seems to be pressing for war and dismissed arguments that Hussein might be stockpiling or preparing to use weapons of mass destruction. "You can't just start a war because you think something might happen," said Jennifer Rooke, a 20-year-old junior majoring in marketing and international business.
Christopher Trott was equally wary. A 21-year-old senior international economics major who runs the Georgetown Voice, a campus newspaper, Trott said: "I don't think we have clear support from the rest of the world . . . . We'll look like bullies."
At St. John's, the liberal arts college known for its Great Books Program, politics had touched the school only lightly. Yet when a group of sophomores fell into a discussion of Saint Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law and how it related to the overthrow of a head of state, Matt Gates brought the discussion to the real world.
"I feel like Bush is kind of obsessed with this," Gates said. "I question whether preemptive military strikes are legally justified by international law."
At Berkeley, Tulane and Notre Dame, there was little organized opposition to a war, but little enthusiasm for an attack on Iraq.
"We were responding to aggression before," said Jon Kocarnik, a Notre Dame sophomore. "This time, our motives seem unclear."
Lance Wescher, a graduate student in economics at Notre Dame, said most of his fellow students were strongly opposed to a new American war in Iraq. He said he was, too, for the time being, "although I'm not saying I couldn't support it later on."
At the University of California at Berkeley, a focal point of past protest movements, an undergraduate handed out pencils the other day to dramatize the message that international sanctions on Hussein's regime have "denied an entire generation books and even pencils." Several students said they were opposed to a war to topple Hussein but had noticed no great wellspring of protest on campus.
Opinion at Tulane was divided, but those most passionate on the subject of war in Iraq seemed to oppose it. "It's going to completely increase anti-American feeling all over the world," said Adam Morris, a sophomore.
The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M, archrivals on the football field, also seemed divided on the subject. At UT, even students at a sign-up table for Young Conservatives of Texas acknowledged that campus opinion is anti-war for now. "The case [for war] still needs to be made," said Austin Kinkhorn, 19, a junior majoring in religious studies.
Steps away from the Young Conservatives, students opposed to the war were collecting petition signatures and planning organizational meetings. Shawn Yanklowitz, 21, a senior communications major, said, "I'm not skeptical about the problems in Iraq, but I am skeptical about turning our back on the international community and going about this so unilaterally and so aggressively," he said.
But at Texas A&M, a conservative campus, few students appeared anxious about or even focused on Iraq. "Most people here are not crying, 'Where's the proof?,' " said John Mathews, 20, a member of the student government who is majoring in business finance.
Contributing to this report were staff writers Nelson Hernandez in Annapolis, Theola Labbé in College Park, Nancy Trejos in Washington, Christine Haughney in New York, Amanda Zamora in Austin and Michael Fletcher in Washington, with correspondents Liz Garone in Berkeley, Adam Nossiter in New Orleans and Mike Schmuhl in South Bend.
----
Demonstrators rally peacefully
By Matthew Cella and H.J. Brier
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 29, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20020929-73358746.htm
Thousands of protesters held a mostly peaceful march and rally in front of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund yesterday in stark contrast to Friday's protests in which 649 persons were arrested.
"They had their voices heard, and the city was not shut down," said Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who described the protests yesterday as "peaceful."
However, four demonstrators were arrested at 20th and K streets NW and charged with possession of explosive devices.
Police Cmdr. Cathy Lanier said the four protesters - two men and two women - were assembling a weapon in an alley when officers approached. They ran off but were quickly caught.
Cmdr. Lanier said the weapon contained nails, but she declined to provide more details.
The four, dressed in black, appeared to have two coffee cans, each with a wick or string about 2 feet long, the Associated Press reported.
A lawyer with the Lawyers Guild, which has been working with the protesters, said police stopped the suspects because they were carrying a banner, then searched their backpacks and found the materials.
A few thousand protesters carrying signs for a wide variety of causes, including workers' rights and water for Ghana, gathered at the Sylvan Theatre in the shadow of the Washington Monument for speeches and music. About 3 p.m. the protesters marched their oversized puppets, colorful banners and drums up 15th Street.
Several heckled police along the parade route, but there were none of the confrontations that marked Friday's demonstrations. Conspicuously absent was Chief Ramsey, who has become a familiar sight at the head of these parades, leaning on his nightstick, talking with protesters and posing for pictures.
Police spokesman Sgt. Joe Gentile said Chief Ramsey spent his day greeting officers on the police line on the parade route. About 1,700 officers from 24 jurisdictions from as far away as Chicago and Macon, Ga., were in town to assist the Metropolitan Police Department.
Demonstrators are expected to march from Dupont Circle to Vice President Richard B. Cheney's residence at the Naval Observatory today to protest the impending war on Iraq.
Yesterday, Chief Ramsey spent much of his time behind the police line surrounding Murrow Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue NW in front of World Bank headquarters. He could be seen talking frequently with U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, whose 320 officers manned the police line between the park and World Bank headquarters.
Chief Gainer said Chief Ramsey "had a good plan and executed it well" and contrasted the march with Friday's activities.
"When you have 500 arrests, it's not perfect," Chief Gainer said. "This is the way it's supposed to go."
The permitted march was diverted down I Street and made a stop at Farragut Square, where some protesters mounted the statue in the center of the park, attaching a black flag and protest banners. Several small paper fires were lit at the base of the statue, but they were quickly extinguished by the protesters. However, protesters went on to burn an effigy of corporate greed suspended from a pole wedged into the monument.
U.S. Park Police arrested one protester for defacing a statue.
The protesters arrived at Murrow Park at 6 p.m. A concrete jersey wall with a black steel fence bolted to its top that stood about 5 feet high separated police and demonstrators. The wall hemmed in protesters, who had planned to "quarantine" the annual meetings at the financial institution by joining hands in a circle around the block to prevent delegates from leaving the building. Police arrested one protester for throwing a bottle.
There were scattered disruptions outside the perimeter, as several small groups danced in intersections and stretched yarn across roads that had already been closed, but they disbanded as fast as they attracted the attention of police.
The march and rally was sponsored by the Mobilization for Global Justice, which for three years has attempted to disrupt the meetings. They say they want the institutions to drop the debt of poor countries, end policies they say impoverish people around the world, stop environmentally damaging projects and bring openness to the meetings of the finance ministers.
Protest organizer Robert Weissman, who spent the day at the head of the parade in the back of a pickup truck with speakers offering music and instructions, called the demonstration a success.
"I think we're all really thrilled," said Mr. Weissman, 29. "We gave a clear message to the IMF and World Bank, and highlighted the harms they have perpetrated around the world."
----
Protesters in D.C. Plan Next Move
By JONATHAN D. SALANT
Associated Press Writer
SEPTEMBER 29, 08:01 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=NATIONAL&SLUG=OBIT%2dMINK
WASHINGTON (AP) - A day after their peaceful march and rally, demonstrators were gathering again Sunday in the nation's capital to plan how to continue their opposition to global trade policies and to protest war with Iraq.
Before leaving Washington, protest organizers were asking participants to talk about the rally and offer suggestions for future protests.
The agenda also included a march to the residence of Vice President Dick Cheney to protest war with Iraq.
AP/Susan Walsh [26K]
Protesters on Saturday filled up five city blocks as they declared their opposition to policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The policies, they say, force developing nations to take money away from social services to pay debt, and require them to turn over such necessities as health care and water systems to private industry, which prices those services out of the reach of poor citizens.
``They go into these countries and they take their resources,'' said one protester, 21-year-old Erin Flowers of Little Rock, Ark. ``None of it goes to the native people of the land.''
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who spoke at the rally, said corporate greed is on the minds of voters this fall.
``People around the country know something is wrong,'' he said. ``The majority of polls are very suspicious of corporate globalization. The impact is being felt in one community after another.''
AP/Matthew Cavanaugh [30K]
Following the larger march and rally, hundreds of protesters walked an additional two blocks to a park across the street from the World Bank. They chanted and waved signs behind Jersey barriers and rows of helmet-wearing police officers in riot gear.
``It's such a symbol for what's happening in the world today when supposedly democratic institutions have to meet behind barriers and battalions of heavily armed police,'' said David Levy, a spokesman for Mobilization for Global Justice, the group that organized Saturday's demonstration.
Only a handful of arrests were reported Saturday in sharp contrast to the 649 taken into custody a day earlier.
Two men and two women who refused to identify themselves were arrested Saturday evening on illegal weapons charges. The suspects were found with an explosive device which the police described as a coffee can filled with nails and an explosive ordnance. They also had smoke bombs, law enforcers said.
On the Net:
Mobilization for Global Justice: http://www.globalizethis.org
District of Columbia police: http://www.mpdc.dc.gov
----
Protesters' Momentum Weakens as Crowd Thins
Police Making Preemptive Arrests, Some Say
By Monte Reel and Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17468-2002Sep28?language=printer
Protesters who threatened to blockade the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank largely abandoned those plans yesterday, the second time in two days that a heavy security presence overwhelmed their ranks and easily controlled downtown Washington.
Police had prepared for as many as 20,000 activists, and some organizers expected the biggest demonstration against the two financial institutions in Washington since the raucous protests of April 2000.
But by last night, police estimated the turnout at 3,000 to 5,000, and plans to blockade the meetings and keep delegates from leaving fizzled when only scattered groups of protesters showed up.
Organizers with the Mobilization for Global Justice said last night that police had established too large a perimeter for them to be able to block delegates, but they claimed victory nonetheless. "The point was putting out our truth," protester Charity Ryerson said. "And we did that."
As demonstrators capped a largely peaceful day of marching by streaming into a small park outside the IMF and World Bank offices at 5:45 p.m., the large, homemade Trojan horse they were carrying snagged on a tree branch, and its cardboard head broke off. "Kind of symbolic of the protests," Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said later.
But protesters talked of being inspired by the thousands-strong call for an end to corporate greed and said numbers did not matter. Others in the crowd suggested that the anti-globilization movement has suffered from a shift in activist priorities since Sept. 11, 2001, and that it embraces issues that do not provide easy rallying points.
"It's a bit disappointing," said Cathal Healy-Singh, who came from Barbados for the march. "It would be greater if the issues were more visible."
The April 2000 protests came several months after activists in Seattle had shut down meetings of the World Trade Organization amid clouds of tear gas and street battles with police. Last year's annual meetings were called off because of the terrorist attacks, and the anti-globalization protests scheduled to coincide with them were replaced by smaller antiwar marches. Some activists said the time gap between protests cost momentum.
But organizers for MGJ, the D.C.-based group that helped coordinate the latest protests, applauded this weekend's turnout and estimated that it far exceeded police counts, despite visual evidence that the crowd was far smaller than that of 2000. But even if the numbers didn't match that turnout, organizers offered that yesterday's action showed that their movement was regaining steam.
"We needed to get back in the streets in force after 9/11," said Nadine Bloch. "We have shown that the global justice movement is alive and well and ready to kick some corporate booty."
Ramsey didn't necessarily see the turnout as the end of the movement. He said that the preparations of police were based on monitoring previous protests elsewhere.
"If they've still got some momentum, we may have to do this again," he said. "If it starts to peter out, we may not have to."
The protest, which ended about 6:40 p.m. after a last burst of chanting at Edward R. Murrow Park, across the street from World Bank headquarters, had started as a rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument. Activists gathered at the Sylvan Theatre about noon and listened to speakers and musical groups. About 3 p.m., they headed north on 15th Street NW, turned west on I Street and stopped at Farragut Square, where they rallied for an hour or so.
On the way, they encountered a group of counter-protesters who chanted, "Go to Cuba!" As they crossed paths, everybody seemed to be videotaping everybody else. The police were filming the marchers. The marchers were filming the police. Counter-demonstrators were filming the marchers, and the marchers were filming the counter-demonstrators.
"I think they have it wrong," said John Mitchell, 24, of the District referring to the counter-demonstrators. "I don't think criticizing the government means we're unpatriotic. I mean, I think it incredibly patriotic to challenge your country when it's wrong."
It took about 15 minutes for the parade of activists to march by.
"That was it?" said Joseph Trimpert, 28, a computer technician and former Marine from Arlington. He held U.S. and Israeli flags as he watched, saying he wanted to show support for the U.S. war on terrorism.
When protesters reached Farragut Square, they were surrounded by police. Activists set fire to a dummy designed to look like a man in business attire and two U.S. flags, one designed with corporate symbols replacing the stars, were also set aflame, but other people rescued them from ruin.
Not all of the protesters were pleased with the way the protest in the park was unfolding.
"I don't dispute their right to burn the flag," said Joseph Thornhill, 21, a student at Mary Washington College. "As soon as the media saw the flag burning, everything else that happens here becomes nothing. The message becomes we're angry young people."
Shortly after 5 p.m., an organizer in the park announced that protesters were negotiating with police to head to Murrow Park. The activists had planned to surround the IMF and World Bank offices, preventing delegates from leaving their meetings. But police had established a perimeter around the building and had lined the park, at 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, with Jersey barriers.
On Friday, police established a hard-line policy during scattered demonstrations that resulted in 649 arrests. Yesterday, some protesters said the heavy police presence may have intimidated some activists.
"It seems like it's risky to have a diverse opinion," said Jim Dobbs, 18, who attends DePaul University in Chicago. "We're all trying to feel secure."
The issues on the list of activists' grievances is varied: military action against Iraq, big oil companies, Third World debt, environmental abuses, racism and the AIDS crisis. The IMF and World Bank exploit poor nations in deference to large corporations, they said.
When protesters first met at the monument grounds, the atmosphere was festive under bright skies. Activists staged puppet theater productions criticizing corporate excess and inflated a giant pig balloon with "Hog-tied Corporate Glutton" emblazoned on its plastic hide.
Much of the conversation centered on Friday's protests and the arrests of 649 people. Many of the protesters said they believed the arrests were preemptive and based on what police feared they might do, not what they actually did. There were scattered outbreaks of minor property damage, including the breaking of two windows at a Citibank branch at K Street and Vermont Avenue NW.
In D.C. Superior Court yesterday, 184 protesters arrested Friday were arraigned, according to Betty Ballester, president of the Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association, which coordinated the protesters' defense. Chief Judge Rufus I. King III dropped charges against 100 because there was no paperwork, Ballester said. All but four women were released by 9:30 p.m. The women were detained because they refused to give their names, Ballester said, and are to face trial within seven days.
"It's just so outrageous. Two windows get broken, and everyone in the city loses their rights," said lawyer Mark L. Goldstone, who was at the courthouse representing some of the demonstrators. "It's very clear these were a lot of preemptive arrests, and [Ramsey is] taking a page right out of [the movie] 'Minority Report.' "
Anthony and Virginia Czarnecki of Spotsylvania, Va., said they were upset that their 20-year-old daughter was arrested Friday for sitting in a crowd and dancing. "I think what it is going to do for most of these kids is strengthen their resolve," Virginia Czarnecki said.
Six arrests were reported yesterday. Four people were charged with possessing an explosive device after police saw them trying to assemble something in an alley at 20th and K streets NW, authorities said. Another protester was accused of putting sticky tape on the statue of Adm. David Farragut in Farragut Square, and one man was arrested after a confrontation with officers, police said.
Some sightseers hovered at the day's rallies.
Tony Shaffer, 42, sat on a bench in the middle of the park. "These so-called anarchists are also known as cowards," he said. "Broken windows -- those are people's businesses."
Lydia Stein, 24, of Vermont, countered that those concerned about property damage are blind to the injustices caused by corporate-based international policies.
"The damage goes much deeper than that window," she said. "Thousands are suffering because of what that window represents."
More protests are scheduled for today, including a march against war in Iraq. It will begin at Dupont Circle and stop at several embassies, including those of Britain, Japan and Turkey. It will end with a rally outside Vice President Cheney's residence at the Naval Observatory.
Staff writers Michael Barbaro, David A. Fahrenthold, Jonathan Finer, Annie Gowen, Neil Irwin, Fredrick Kunkle, Allan Lengel, David Nakamura, Mary Otto and Abhi Raghunathan and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
----
Britons March Against War With Iraq
By Audrey Woods
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, September 29, 2002; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17900-2002Sep29?language=printer
LONDON -- More than 150,000 Britons from all regions, ages and social backgrounds, marched in central London Saturday, urging Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush not to invade Iraq. As they wound their way from Embankment on the River Thames to Hyde Park, many of the marchers stopped to shout through the gates of Blair's 10 Downing St. residence.
"Tony Blair, shame, shame, no more killing in my name," went one chant.
"We believe it would be wholly immoral and wrong and criminal for the United States and Britain to attack Iraq and inflict casualties upon innocent people," Tony Benn, a former Labor Party legislator and veteran left-winger, told a huge crowd seated in Hyde Park. "We must see it is not allowed to happen."
Tam Dalyell, a senior Labor Party legislator, said the confrontation with Iraq was the most dangerous standoff since the Cuban missile crisis.
"We are sleepwalking to disaster," he said, to thunderous applause from the crowd.
Streams of people poured out of subway stations near the march's starting point and demonstrators at the back of the march were still setting off from Embankment after those at the front had reached Hyde Park, more than a mile away.
Scotland Yard said more than 150,000 demonstrators took part in the march.
The Stop the War Coalition, which helped organize the march, estimated that 400,000 people took part.
There were many families in the crowd. Parents pushed babies in strollers; the young, old and middle aged from all social backgrounds walked the route, some waving placards, some blowing whistles or banging drums.
"Don't be bullied by Bush," read one placard. "No war for oil. Stop the war machine," said another.
"Iraq is not our enemy, stop Bush," said a homemade banner carried by Irial Eno, 12, who attended the rally with her sister, mother and grandmother.
Irial's mother, Anthea Eno, said she would support an attack on Iraq if it had United Nations backing, but added that she did not expect that to happen.
"There must be some other way," she said. "People are going to suffer, as always."
The march came as Britain and the United States worked together on a draft resolution on Iraq which they plan to propose to the United Nations. It would call on Saddam to reveal all materials relating to weapons of mass destruction and to give U.N. weapons inspectors unfettered access to presidential sites.
Blair has been Bush's staunchest ally on Iraq and last week released a dossier claiming Saddam Hussein has stockpiled chemical and biological weapons, and is trying to develop nuclear arms.
Legislators from the prime minister's own Labor Party are among the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, which organized the march with the Muslim Association of Britain.
The march was also meant as a protest against Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza, and many protesters expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause. "Stop Israeli war crimes," said one sign.
"These people are saying clearly two things - no to war against Iraq, yes to a Palestinian state," said Michel Massih, chairman of a group called Palestinian Community.
A couple of London shoppers, halted by the march as it wound toward Piccadilly Circus, said they were lucky to live in a place where people were allowed to express themselves so freely.
"When we lived in Saudi Arabia, we didn't have any marches like this," said Brian McGuire, who spent four years in the Middle Eastern country.
Police said only three people were arrested for minor offenses and said demonstrators were dispersing peacefully.
On the Net:
Stop the War Coalition, http://www.stopwar.org.uk
----
Biggest protest in a generation hears calls for peace with Iraq
By Andrew Johnson and Jonathan Thompson
29 September 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=337616
As many as 350,000 people marched through central London yesterday in one of the biggest peace demonstrations seen in a generation.
Organisers said the numbers protesting against war in Iraq were three times higher than expected, though police put the figure at 150,000.
Led by the Stop The War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Great Britain, protesters marched from the Embankment,made their way past the Houses of Parliament and through Piccadilly to Hyde Park.
There they were met by speakers including former MP Tony Benn, London Mayor Ken Livingstone, former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the Bishop of Bath and Wells and the father of the House of Commons, Tam Dalyell.
Mr Dalyell, a Labour MP, told the crowd: "We are sleep walking to disaster. The Government's dossier states that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons ready to use. We can be sure they will use them if cornered."
Mr Livingstone said: "This is all about oil and there is nobody in this country so stupid that they don't realise that."
Hundreds of coaches brought protesters from across Britain, including lecturers, priests, students and Iraqi and Palestinian citizens. The march passed off peacefully.
--------
Choosing Up Sides
Demonstrators sound off on Iraq
By Abbott Koloff,
Daily Record (New Jersey)
09/29/02
http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/02/09/29/news1-Picprotest.htm
ROCKAWAY TWP. -- The protesters stood along a grassy embankment near Picatinny Arsenal, holding up anti-war signs, sometimes getting called names, sometimes getting words of encouragement. One person in a pickup truck yelled that they should go to a place that is the opposite of heaven.
"I guess that's the counterprotest," said Sandy DeSmedt of Boonton, one of the anti-war demonstrators.
About 50 people gathered Saturday afternoon alongside Route 15 North to demonstrate against the possibility of war with Iraq in an attempt to topple Saddam Hussein. They held up signs saying, among other things, that "peace is patriotic."
Counterprotest
About a half-mile away, five men protested the protesters, one of them holding up a sign that said: "Save freedom; remove Saddam."
Traffic backed up occasionally as cars coming off Route 80 onto Route 15 slowed down while passing the anti-war protesters. Some people honked their horns and gave the protesters a thumbs-up sign. Others used their fingers in gestures that were less approving.
The anti-war demonstrators said they chose a location near Picatinny Arsenal because the Army has developed depleted uranium shells there that are used to penetrate armor. The protesters said that depleted uranium poses a radiological threat wherever it is used.
Madelyn Hoffman of Roxbury, director of New Jersey Peace Action, said Americans are a little more receptive to her group's message of peace than they were a year ago when Peace Action opposed military action in Afghanistan.
'No link'
"After Sept. 11, people wanted to stop acts of violence against the United States," said Hoffman, who was the Green Party's candidate for vice president in 1996 and a former candidate for New Jersey governor.
"There has been no credible link between what happened on 9/11 and Iraq. There is no justification for a preemptive strike. ... Nobody is disagreeing that Iraq presents a problem. But if the only way to deal with a perception of a threat are bombs, then we're in for a tough time. There has to be a better way."
A half-mile north, the men waving American flags in the counter-demonstration said they hadn't known each other before Saturday, but they wanted to make their own statement after reading about the anti-war protest. They said that, unlike the anti-war protesters, most of whom belonged to peace groups, they didn't represent anyone but themselves.
"We are just five Americans," said Fred Perez, 37, of Wharton, who said he's a veteran of the Navy.
"I'm a supporter of my government. If President Bush said let's sit down and negotiate, I'd support that."
Carl Rupp, 43, of Rockaway Township said he welcomed a debate over what the United States should do about the possibility of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein developing nuclear weapons. He said that some peace groups are too quick to paint America as being in the wrong.
"I'd say you need to examine the evidence and realize the United States is not the bad guy in the world," Rupp said. He added that certain groups have "a general critical orientation toward America's motives."
The larger anti-war protest was an outgrowth of a bus tour by a group called Voices in the Wilderness. The tour began at ground zero in New York on Sept. 11 and will remain in New Jersey until Oct. 6, with a stop today in Ridgewood.
Ceylon Mooney, 27, a member of Voices in the Wilderness, said he'd been to Iraq twice, including once late last year. He said most Iraqis he talked to blamed the West, and America in particular, for their problems, because of the economic sanctions. He said they didn't have much to say about Saddam, but added that they probably didn't feel comfortable, or safe, criticizing their leaders to an outsider.
"They certainly aren't going to criticize their leaders to me," he said.
His group was joined by people from various other groups, including New Jersey Peace Action, and people such as DeSmedt, who didn't belong to any group. DeSmedt said she read about the protest in the newspaper and wanted to support it.
"Saddam Hussein is definitely an evil person," DeSmedt said.
She added that she believed war would only destabilize the Middle East and produce more violence, and that economic sanctions against Iraq had caused more harm than good, contributing to the death of Iraqi children. Her sign read: "Drop sanctions, not bombs."
Terri Seuss of Newark, a member of Peace Action, said there seemed to be an undercurrent of anti-war sentiment growing in the United States, and that some people don't believe the government's contention that Iraq is linked to al-Qaida terrorists and poses an imminent threat to the United States.
"People feel this is fabricated," she said.
Some protesters suggested that oil companies were helping to push the agenda of war and suggested that the United States would be better off developing alternative forms of energy. They said weapons inspectors should be given time to do their jobs once they're allowed back into Iraq. Others suggested that the United States set an example by getting rid of its own weapons of mass destruction.
"Peace will never come until the great powers courageously decide to disarm themselves," said Anna Nelson of South Orange.
Some protesters said they were against war for religious reasons, not political ones.
Stephanie Abraitis and Hilary Leonard, both juniors at New York University, said they oppose all war on moral and spiritual grounds.
"The deep spirituality of nonviolent Christianity is our lives," said Leonard, who is from Salt Lake City. "We're not secular."
Abbott Koloff can be reached at akoloff@gannett.com or (973) 989-0652.
----
Anti-War Concert at Ex-Nazi Lab
By Toby Axelrod
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, September 29, 2002; 12:00 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18473-2002Sep29?language=printer
PEENEMUENDE, Germany -- This wind-swept Baltic island town, once home to the Nazi ballistic missile program, resounded with music Saturday during an anti-war concert aimed at underscoring European unity and international peace.
Soviet-born cellist Mstislav Rostropovich conducted a requiem to postwar peace for a distinguished audience that included former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, German President Johannes Rau, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Daniel Coates and the British ambassador, Sir Paul Leven.
The performance has special relevance for a town with a double-edged legacy: Scientists at Peenemuende helped further missile technology that put man on the moon, but tens of thousands of Nazi-era slave laborers died in the Third Reich's race to build the rockets.
In his opening speech before the concert, Rau warned against allowing the belief in technology to overshadow the tragedy of the lost lives.
"Here in Peenemuende, remembering and commemorating should not fall victim to a fascination with technology," Rau said. "We must not allow others, whether for commercial or political reasons, to rob this place of its true meaning."
Not entirely comfortable with its past, the town once tried to emphasize the positive - with embarrassing results. In opening a town museum 10 years ago, Peenemuende tried to celebrate its role in technological achievement but instead evoked protests from politicians in Germany, Britain and elsewhere. The event was canceled.
After a decade of soul-searching, the directors of the town museum and Usedom island's ninth annual music festival are staging a very different kind of event - one confronting the darker history. The Rostropovich performance opened the festival.
"Ultimately, this concert is our attempt to show the public that in the last 10 years, Peenemuende has learned something," museum director Dirk Zache said.
Today, museum exhibits include information about the Nazi history. After the British bombed Peenemuende in 1943, about 60,000 slave laborers built tunnels for V-2 rocket production at a concentration camp in Thuringia state in central Germany.
More than 20,000 of the slave laborers died and about 5,000 people were killed in ballistic missile attacks on England, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Peenemuende's avoidance of its Nazi past is due partly to its location in former East Germany, where the communist government rejected any responsibility for the Third Reich, identifying instead with the Soviet Union.
The town also felt pride that technology developed in Peenemuende helped fuel the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States.
The famous Peenemuende scientists included Wernher von Braun, who as an administrator for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration eventually sent men to the moon. Von Braun died in 1977 without ever seeing his Nazi past investigated.
"For us, the important thing is to think about what happened here. It was a technical advance and also a tragedy," festival organizer Thomas Hummel said.
For Hummel, the crowning achievement of this year's festival was the appearance by Rostropovich, whose past performances at humanitarian events include playing his cello at the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
"He is the messenger of peace. No other conductor in the world could do it better than he," Hummel said.
The "War Requiem" was composed by Benjamin Britten for the 1962 rededication of St. Michael's Cathedral in Coventry, England, which was destroyed by Nazi bombs. The Lord Mayor of Coventry attended Saturday.
The text of the "War Requiem" comes from the traditional Roman Catholic Mass for the dead and the poetry of Wilfred Owens, a decorated World War I solider killed a week before the Armistice.
Britten, a pacifist who died in 1976, dedicated his "War Requiem" to Germany, Great Britain and Russia.
----
Indians run 'Trail of Dreams' to save sacred site from mine
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 29, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020929-72474734.htm
For centuries, young American Indians have run a series of trails along the Colorado River separating Arizona and California.
Running them has been at the center of the Quechan Nation's religion, traditions and history. Now 30 young men are running to try to save the paths for the next generation.
The runners are making a 700-mile relay trek through California to focus attention on state legislation that seeks to protect ancient sites like the one they hope to prevent from becoming a gold mine.
The group wants Gov. Gray Davis to sign a bill that would require local governments to notify a tribe of proposed construction within 20 miles of a reservation and to protect sacred sites from development.
Opponents of the bill said it could grant tribes veto power over both private and public land. The California Chamber of Commerce said the bill threatens to delay or stop public improvement projects, school buildings and new homes.
Mr. Davis, who has until month's end to sign or veto the bill, has not publicly taken a position.
"This is not only for politics," said 15-year-old runner Richard "Ticky" Smith, a Quechan tribal member who sweated through triple-digit temperatures in California's Central Valley this week. "It's for all the elders - the ones that passed on, the ones who are sick, the ones who can't run or walk or hear or see. It's also for the future."
The run began Sept. 20 in Sacramento, Calif., and was expected to end yesterday at the tribe's Imperial Valley reservation. The proposed mine site - at Indian Pass, a remote spot near the Arizona-California line - is on federal land outside their reservation.
Lillian Sparks, an analyst for the National Congress of American Indians, said no state has enacted legislation similar to the bill before the governor.
"California is really taking initiative to protect Native American sacred places, and we're hoping other states will follow through until we can get protection at the federal level," Miss Sparks said.
Across California, about 300 sites that average a quarter-acre each need protection, according to the Native American Heritage Commission.
Under the legislation, a local government would hire an outside investigator such as an anthropologist to check historical records and determine whether a site has long been considered sacred. The investigator would also look at whether the area has a shrine or other religious artifacts.
The bill stems from Quechan opposition to plans by Glamis Gold Ltd., a Reno, Nev., company that wants to build an open pit gold mine on 1,600 acres of Bureau of Land Management land near the tribe's reservation. The Bureau of Land Management parcel includes a site of religious ceremonies that contains ancient pottery shards and petroglyphs.
Charles Jeannes, senior vice president of Glamis, said the proposed state bill could ruin the company's efforts to create an operation on which has already spent $15 million.
Mr. Jeannes said the bill on Mr. Davis' desk would hamper development statewide by only allowing construction on sacred sites of projects that have an overriding environmental, public health or safety reason.
"It's a fairly narrow exception, and it gives the native tribe any right to veto any project they deem sacred," he said.
----
Peace Comes to Livermore
Report from Aug. peace event/Livermore Lab
by Tara Dorabji from Tri-Valley CAREs'
September 2002 newsletter,
Citizen's Watch
From: marylia@earthlink.net (marylia)
"It is never too late, it is never too early, the time is now," chanted MCs Wilson Riles and Patricia St. Onge throughout the August 3 rally to stop the development of new, earth penetrating and other nuclear weapons at Livermore Lab. The rally in downtown Livermore commemorated the victims of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and empowered people of all ages to say "never again" to nuclear weapons and war.
Some 500 folks converged in Carnegie Park, shaded by maple trees. Throughout the day, rally speakers gave eloquent voice to a movement based on principles of nonviolence and seeking the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction. Clan Dyken and the Funky Nixons got their groove on, and the crowd danced while Food Not Bombs provided delicious vegan food.
More than 60 peace and environmental groups supported the action; some local, some coming from as far away as Salinas and Mendocino. Their booths filled the park and offered petitions, newsletters, cool signs, T-shirts and stickers.
The shaded park was hard to leave, but nearly 300 participants marched the sun-drenched three miles up East Ave. to the Lab. The Catholic Worker provided lemonade along the way, while the Peace and Freedom Party drove shuttles from the park to the Lab for those who could not march.
"No nukes;" the chants were varied, the songs many, and the banners held high as onlookers honked and waved support. The message was clear -- the community would not be silent and allow the further development of nuclear and other weapons.
The police blocked vehicle access to East Ave. between Vasco and Greenville, creating an intimidating presence as the march approached. As hundreds gathered, Clan Dyken began drumming from the center. Surrounded by police, people came together in a circle dance -- symbolizing an unending commitment to peace and healing for the earth, living our connection.
54 people came forward and "crossed the line," risking their personal freedom to expose the deadly research happening on the other side of the fence. The day ended with the sun low in the sky and a feeling of unity in nonviolence emanating from the crowd into the Lab, the City of Livermore and beyond.
Marylia Kelley Executive Director,
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA 94551
Phone: 1-925-443-7148 Fax: 1-925-443-0177
Web site: http://www.trivalleycares.org is our new web site address.
Please visit us there.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.