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NUCLEAR
Cuba to Commemorate Missile Crisis
Analysis: Iraq, Africa and uranium
Iraqis fear calamity is on the horizon
War fear grips people of Baghdad
TEPCO investigating new charge of nuclear cover-up
Plan to destroy Russian weapons nears collapse
Seized Material Not Uranium
Russian parliament could ratify nuclear deal by December
Nuclear nonproliferation needs teeth
Weak Without Treaties
The President's Nuclear Threat
Decommissioning Funds Boosted for Some Nuke Sites
Federal judge fines Nebraska $151 million in nuclear waste dump fight
Bush Presses Congress on Need for Strong Backing on Iraq
Labor Fight Hinders Security Bill
MILITARY
Afghan About-Face
Rwanda Withdrawing 15, 000 Troops from Congo
£10bn jump jet take-off delights UK factories
Records reveal CDC sent germ strains to Iraq in 1980s
Plan to destroy Russian weapons nears collapse
EU to let members sign pacts on ICC
Iraq's children suffer as war looms
Iraq's Little Secret
Bush, Rumsfeld, and Orwell
U.S. offers proof of Iraq defiance
U.S. Asserts Inspection Role for Planes Over Iraq
Iraq and U.N. Agree on Access for Weapons Inspectors
U.S. Official Calls for Pakistan - India Dialogue
The spymasters
Lebanon Court Sentences Accused Spies for Israel
U.N., Iraq Agree on Inspection Terms
Report: U.S. troops at high risk in chemical or biological attacks
U.S. forces get OK to use CIA methods
Navy combat systems unsafe?
Problems Cited in Soldiers' Gear
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
9/11 Panel Eyes Information Failure
Europeans to Exempt U.S. From War Court
ENERGY AND OTHER
Contest seeks to focus interest on solar energy
Japanese Fuel Cell Cars Headed for U.S.
Origin Energy blown over by wind power
Green Power Purchases Honored
AIDS in 5 Nations Called Security Threat
ACTIVISTS
IMF protester protests 'ruthless' police
NATION IN BRIEF - Nebraska
What are willing to do for peace?
-------- NUCLEAR
Cuba to Commemorate Missile Crisis
October 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cuba-Missile-Crisis.html
HAVANA (AP) -- Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara is among American protagonists expected at a conference in Cuba this month marking the 40th anniversary of the missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Also attending the conference, which will focus on Cuba's role in the crisis, will be Arthur Schlesinger Jr., former special aide to President John F. Kennedy, Cuban organizers said Tuesday.
``This was the most dramatic episode of the Cold War, and perhaps of all contemporary history,'' said Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez, a key organizer.
Fernandez said he hoped the academic conference bringing together American, Cuban and former Soviet protagonists would evolve in ``a cordial spirit of analysis, without tensions, insults or hatred.''
The conference's aim is to shed light on events leading up to the crisis, which peaked when the United States learned there were Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba -- an island just 90 miles from the United States.
Following several tense days of negotiations with Washington, Nikita Khruschev withdrew the weapons without consulting with Havana -- a move that enraged Fidel Castro's government.
Former presidential speech writers Richard Goodwin and Ted Sorensen, and then-CIA analyst Dino Brugioni, will also take part, said Fernandez. He said Castro is among the Cuban protagonists invited to participate.
Also taking part in the Oct. 11-13 event will be a number of Soviet military officials, Fernandez said. There will be two days of seminars and a day of visits to sites related to the crisis, including a former missile silo in the western state of Pinar del Rio.
The nonprofit, non-governmental National Security Archive at George Washington University also has been invited. The international affairs research institute maintains an extensive archive on declassified U.S. government documents.
Fernandez said the Cuban government will release a number of formerly classified documents on the crisis in conjunction with the conference.
During a similar conference on the Bay of Pigs last year, Cuban organizers worked with National Security Archive directors to release a wealth of U.S. and Cuban documents on the unsuccessful CIA-backed invasion attempt.
Fernandez, also a key organizer in last year's conference, is a retired military officer who helped lead Cuban troops during the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion the year before the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.
-------- africa
Analysis: Iraq, Africa and uranium
By R.W. Johnson From the International Desk,
United Press International
10/1/2002 5:54 PM
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020927-040712-5883r
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- South Africa has waxed indignant and shrill about Britain's dossier that avers, among other claims, that Iraq is scouring 13 African countries in its search for uranium.
As Iraq lacks a civil atomic program, the insinuation is obvious: the Brits believe someone on the African continent is at least thinking to support Iraq's nuclear aspirations.
Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad, a close confidante of President Thabo Mbeki, furiously denounced the Blair dossier, released a week ago Tuesday, as "vague and ill-founded" and said South Africa would be "demanding an explanation." A spokesman for the Ministry of Minerals and Energy also denounced rumors that a South African company had supplied Iraq with uranium: "It is a very damaging speculation, painting South Africa with such a brush and not saying who is involved," said Khanyo Gqulu.
In fact such speculation is inevitable. South Africa is the only country in the continent able to produce processed uranium, and it is the third largest producer of uranium in Africa in general.
Moreover, it is now known that in the 1980s, under the apartheid regime, South Africa supplied Saddam Hussein with hundreds of thousands of 155mm mortar shells large enough to act as delivery vehicles for chemical agents or poison gas, and that in 1988 it also supplied enriched uranium to Saddam. Contrary to Iraq, South Africa has a civil nuclear industry -- comprising three reactors, to be exact -- and it was only in 1989 under President F.W. De Klerk that it abandoned its covert nuclear weapons program. By then it possessed six air-deliverable nuclear bombs.
In short, South Africa has the uranium, the enrichment and processing capability as well as other forms of nuclear weapons know-how that Saddam wants. And it has a past record of selling both arms and uranium to him.
But the speculation goes further than that. South African arms exports are handled by a committee chaired by Education Minister Kader Asmal and includes Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad, his brother Essop -- President Mbeki's right-hand man and de facto prime minister -- and the director general of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Abdul Minty.
All four men are Muslim Asians with a reported hostility toward Israel. In 1997 only an explosion of American and European indignation stopped them from selling tank-sights to Syria, for example, despite the arms embargo against the Middle East country for state-sponsored terrorism.
Finally, one cannot help but note that while President Mbeki initially condemned the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, the South African government has since swung round to denounce the U.S. and allied operations in Afghanistan as "killing innocent Muslims."
All of which was doubtless known to Saddam's deputy president, Tariq Aziz, who was greeted as "a fraternal comrade" on a state visit to South Africa in early July. At a state banquet in his honor, Deputy President Jacob Zuma attacked "bully states" who tried to impose their will on countries such as Iraq and denounced "the illegality of the no-fly zone" over Iraq. He also spoke of the many South African delegations to Iraq in recent time, his government's wish for stronger trade relations and its donation of humanitarian aid to Iraq.
The next day Aziz had talks with Mbeki, signed an agreement with Eskom, the power utility which operates South Africa's nuclear power stations, and declared himself particularly "interested in South Africa's industrial capacity." Aziz also requested and was granted bilateral talks with the Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who happens to be none other than South Africa's minister for minerals and energy.
It seems unlikely, all the same, that the South African government has sold uranium to Iraq. De Klerk, apprehensive about what might happen with South Africa's nuclear capabilities under an African National Congress government -- now the ruling party -- had made provision for tight and regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the IAEA seems happy that its controls are adequate.
The possibility of Iraq benefiting at some less official level from South African nuclear know-how clearly still exists, however. Meanwhile, it is clear the ANC in general shares the furious opinion of ex-President Nelson Mandela that it is the United States, not Iraq, which is now the pre-eminent "danger to world peace."
The reason for the Mbeki government's furious response is rooted in the American and Israeli walkout from the United Nations World Conference Against Racism held here last year and in President Bush's decision not to attend the U.N. Earth Summit in Johannesburg last month. The speculation making the rounds in the press is that the United States now regards South Africa as an unwise place to visit, particularly in light of Colin Powell's humiliation at the Earth Summit and his rough treatment by Muslim and Communist militants on a previous trip to South Africa.
Why should South Africa, and especially Mbeki, care? In a word: NEPAD. The New Partnership for Africa's Development, an economic recovery plan, is largely Mbeki's child yet the West and its foreign investment will largely be its parent -- if indeed it ever gets off the ground. Despite the support of the likes of World Bank leaders, NEPAD is receiving little real support from a world more focused these days on stamping out terrorism rather than African poverty.
-------- depleted uranium
Iraqis fear calamity is on the horizon
By LARRY JOHNSON,
Hearst News Service
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
http://www.timesunion.com/aspstories/storyprint.asp?storyID=58447
BAGHDAD -- In the shadow of war, the men, women and children of this 1,200-year-old city go about their lives with as much normalcy as can be mustered.
Despite a rich ancient history -- this is Mesopotamia, the Land Between the Rivers, where Western culture began 5,000 years before Christ -- and despite having the world's second-largest oil reserves, Iraq today is a land of poverty, death and desperation.
Iraqis have been ruled by military strongmen for decades; Saddam Hussein has been in charge since 1979. Most Iraqis have no say in who rules them, or what the nation's policies should be. Many have suffered mightily under the repressive regime.
They also have been decimated by previous wars -- the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988 and the Persian Gulf War with the United States and its allies in 1991 -- and by 12 years of United Nations sanctions.
Now, with Congress debating a resolution to allow the United States to use force in Iraq, the shadow of war has darkened. Many Iraqis believe an attack is inevitable.
"The people are very scared," said Abdul Sittar Jabbar of Baghdad, a former civil engineer who now drives a truck to care for his wife and four children. "If the bombs start falling, there is nothing I can do but try to protect my family in any way I can."
Still, in a land where anti-U.S. sentiment is strong and anti-U.S. rhetoric is broadcast daily by the government, individual U.S. citizens are welcomed, albeit with what seems an increasing weariness.
Among those Americans welcomed last weekend were Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California, who have drawn considerable attention in Iraq and controversy around the world for the past three days as they got a close look at the Gulf War destruction of Iraq's infrastructure.
The delegation left Baghdad Monday, saying they were anxious to join in the congressional debate on a resolution giving President Bush authority to enforce U.N. sanctions on weapons inspections.
But McDermott is sure how he will vote.
"I don't see any reason to give Bush any new authority," he said. "We should allow the inspections to proceed."
Under the sanctions, U.N.-controlled oil exports are sold to allow Iraq to take care of its humanitarian needs. However, since the oil-for-food program began in 1996, only $20 billion in goods has been shipped to Iraq. This amounts to less than fifty cents a day per person for food and medicine and to rebuild the country's infrastructure.
"Fifty thousand Iraqi children die prematurely each year because of this destruction that war brought," McDermott said Sunday at a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of the city. "The sanctions have punished the Iraq people; they have not affected the leadership; they have not brought 'regime change,' and to go to war again would simply punish the Iraqi people again, and put our own soldiers in harm's way in this country for a problem that I think can be handled diplomatically."
McDermott also said President Bush might mislead Americans about the threat Iraq poses, comparing the situation to misleading statements made by President Lyndon B. Johnson about the Vietnam War.
Those comments were quickly dismissed by the Senate's second-ranking Republican, Don Nickles of Oklahoma.
"They (McDermott and Bonior) both sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government," he said.
Bonior said he and McDermott had come to Iraq to help make the humanitarian crisis known to the rest of the world. "The other point we've made very forcefully while we were here," Bonior said, "is to make sure that the government of Iraq understands how serious the United States is ... about the need to have unrestricted and unconditional inspections."
U.N. resolutions from the Gulf War require Iraq to allow weapons inspectors to verify that all missiles and other weapons of mass destruction are eliminated before the sanctions, enacted in 1990, can be lifted.
"We are doing what we can to make sure that the message is clear -- to the Iraqi government and to our government, that war is not the answer," Bonior said. "There is a way to resolve this, and the way to resolve it is for the Iraqis not to interfere and for the United States not to interfere with the inspection process."
During an interview later, as his car weaved through downtown Baghdad, McDermott talked about their trip to southern Iraq on Sunday, where they flew into the small civilian airport just after U.S. and British planes bombed what Pentagon officials said was a mobile military unit that had been concealed there. Iraqi officials said the civilian airport's control tower had been the target.
The congressmen also visited a hospital in Basra that treats cancer patients and has done considerable research on the effects of depleted uranium, the slightly radioactive heavy metal the U.S. military uses to coat many of its munitions. Experts say some 300 tons of depleted uranium was used on the battlefields, mostly in southern Iraq, during the Gulf War.
Critics have pointed to depleted uranium as the cause for birth defects, leukemia and the Gulf War syndrome among Iraqis.
----
War fear grips people of Baghdad
A long-suffering land braces for conflict with America
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/89303_iraq01.shtml
EDITOR'S NOTE: P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson and photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. have been dispatched to Iraq to report on the mood and conditions as the country is under threat of attack from the United States. They are among only a handful of Western journalists reporting from Iraq.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the shadow of war, the men, women and children of this 1,200-year-old city go about their lives with as much normalcy as can be mustered.
Despite a rich ancient history -- this is, after all, Mesopotamia, the Land Between the Rivers, where Western culture began 5,000 years before Christ -- and despite the world's second-largest oil reserves, Iraq, today, is a land of poverty, death and desperation.
Iraqis have been ruled by military strongmen for decades; Saddam Hussein has been in charge since 1979. The vast majority of Iraqis have no say in their nation's policies and practices. Many have suffered mightily under the repressive regime.
They also have been decimated by previous wars -- the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988 and the Persian Gulf War with the United States and its allies in 1991 -- and by 12 years of United Nations sanctions.
Now, with Congress debating a resolution to allow the United States to use force to oust Saddam, the shadow of war has darkened. Many Iraqis believe an attack is inevitable.
"The people are very scared," said Abdul Sittar Jabbar of Baghdad, a former civil engineer who now drives a truck to care for his wife and four children. "If the bombs start falling, there is nothing I can do but try to protect my family in any way I can."
Still, in a land where anti-U.S. sentiment is strong and anti-U.S. rhetoric is broadcast daily by the government, individual U.S. citizens are still welcomed, albeit with what seems an increasing weariness.
Among those welcomed recently were Democratic Congressmen Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California, who have drawn considerable attention in Iraq and controversy around the world for the past three days as they got a close look at the Gulf War destruction of Iraq's infrastructure.
"Fifty thousand Iraqi children die prematurely each year, because of this destruction that war brought," McDermott said yesterday at a news conference at a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of the city.
"The sanctions have punished the Iraq people; they have not affected the leadership, they have not brought 'regime change,' and to go to war again would simply punish the Iraqi people again and put our own soldiers in harm's way in this country for a problem that I think can be handled diplomatically."
At an earlier appearance on ABC-TV's "This Week," McDermott said President Bush might mislead Americans about the threat Iraq poses, comparing the situation to misleading statements made by President Johnson about the Vietnam War.
Those comments were quickly dismissed by the Senate's second-ranking Republican, Don Nickles of Oklahoma.
McDermott and Bonior "both sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government," he said.
Washington state Republican Chairman Chris Vance went much further, calling McDermott's actions "outrageous. . . . Congressman McDermott has pulled some absurd stunts before, but nothing like this. For him to go to Iraq now and essentially make excuses for Saddam Hussein is just contemptible."
Bonior said he and McDermott had come to Iraq to help make the humanitarian crisis known to the rest of the world.
"The other point we've made very forcefully while we were here," Bonior said, "is to make sure that the government of Iraq understands how serious the United States is . . . about the need to have unrestricted and unconditional inspections."
U.N. resolutions from the Gulf War require Iraq to allow weapons inspectors to verify that all missiles and other weapons of mass destruction are eliminated before the sanctions, enacted in 1990, can be lifted.
"We are doing what we can to make sure that the message is clear -- to the Iraqi government and to our government, that war is not the answer," Bonior said. "There is a way to resolve this, and the way to resolve it is for the Iraqis not to interfere and for the United States not to interfere with the inspection process."
The sewage plant McDermott and Bonior used as a backdrop for their news conference was a deliberate choice. In the Gulf War, the United States and its allies destroyed electrical plants that powered sewage treatment plants. As a result, raw sewage was and is dumped into the rivers that supply water to most of the country, creating a deadly epidemic of diarrhea for children.
Many water treatment plants have not been repaired, and those that are in operation are not able to supply clean drinking water to all of Iraq's 23 million people.
Under the sanctions, U.N.-controlled oil exports are sold to allow Iraq to take care of its humanitarian needs. However, since the oil-for-food program began in 1996, only $20 billion in goods has been shipped to Iraq. That amounts to less than 50 cents a day per person for food and medicine and to rebuild the country's infrastructure.
During an interview later, as his car weaved through downtown Baghdad, McDermott talked about the congressmen's trip Sunday to southern Iraq, where they flew into the small civilian airport just after U.S. and British planes bombed what Pentagon officials said was a mobile military unit that had been concealed there. Iraqi officials said the civilian airport's control tower had been the target.
The congressmen visited a hospital in Basra that treats cancer patients and has done considerable research on the effects of depleted uranium, the slightly radioactive heavy metal the U.S. military uses to coat many of its munitions. Experts say some 300 tons of depleted uranium were used on the battlefields, mostly in southern Iraq, during the Gulf War.
The effect of depleted uranium on humans is hotly disputed -- the Pentagon says there is little if any adverse effect, a statement that has been supported by some studies.
However, in a report last year the Royal Society, Britain's academy of scientists, concluded that children playing at sites where the uranium munitions fell could be harmed if they ate the soil. In the long term, buried uranium shells also could eventually leach into local water supplies, the report said.
Critics have pointed to depleted uranium as the cause for birth defects, leukemia and Gulf War syndrome.
"You will see pictures you don't want to see of the malformations at birth," McDermott said.
He said almost all of the malformed infants died and the doctors there could do very little for those children who are suffering from leukemia, which has seen a dramatic increase. Most of the medicines needed for cancer treatment are too expensive or impossible to find in this country.
Shortly after the congressional delegation flew back to Baghdad Sunday night, the airport in Basra was bombed again.
The delegation left Baghdad last night, saying they were eager to join in the congressional debate on a resolution giving Bush authority to enforce U.N. sanctions on weapons inspections.
But McDermott is sure how he will vote. "I don't see any reason to give Bush any new authority," he said. "We should allow the inspections to proceed."
IRAQ FACTS
AREA
175,000 square miles, more than twice the size of Idaho.
(For comparison, the United States is 3.85 million square miles, half the size of Russia.)
POPULATION
24 million.
(For comparison, United States: 286 million.)
TERRAIN
Broad desert plains; reedy marshes along Iranian border in south; mountains along borders with Iran and Turkey.
CLIMATE
Mild to cool winters; dry, hot, cloudless summers; snow in northern mountains.
ETHNIC GROUPS
Arab, 75 percent to 80 percent; Kurdish, 15 percent to 20 percent.
RELIGION
Shiite Muslim, 60 percent to 65 percent; Sunni Muslim, 32 percent to 37 percent.
MILITARY
Under order by the United Nations to scrap weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles but has not allowed inspections since 1998. Standing military force of more than 380,000.
LITERACY
Male, 71 percent; female, 45 percent.
(For comparison, United States: Male and female, 97 percent.)
INFANT MORTALITY RATE
105 per 1,000 live births.
(For comparison, United States: 6.8.)
Main sources: UNICEF, CIA, State Department, U.S. Census.
-------- japan
TEPCO investigating new charge of nuclear cover-up
REUTERS JAPAN:
October 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17975/story.htm
TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said yesterday it had started an internal investigation into new allegations that it regularly manipulated safety data at two plants in Fukushima, north of Tokyo.
The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported yesterday that sources at Hitachi Ltd , which checked TEPCO's equipment, said it manipulated the air pressure of nuclear reactor containers in order to pass safety checks.
The incidents occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, it said.
"We are investigating the case and hope to unveil results of the internal investigation this week," a TEPCO spokesman said.
TEPCO admitted in late August that it had hidden the existence of cracks at several of its nuclear reactors over a period of years, partly by falsifying data on safety checks.
Since then several other power firms have said they also failed to report cracks at their nuclear reactors.
Steel containers, usually over 30 metres (100 ft) tall, cover reactor pressure vessels that surround the reactor core. The containers are designed to prevent radiation leaks if an accident occurs in the reactor.
The Yomiuri said TEPCO prepared two versions of in-house inspection reports on regular maintenance checks at both the reactors - an internal one with the correct data and an official one with data after it had manipulated the pressure to give false readings.
The container needs to be completely airtight and tests of the leak rate are an important part of inspections.
TEPCO was able to pass the tests by submitting data which showed leak rates to be lower than they actually were.
Another Japanese newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, said documents showed cheating on air pressure safety tests by TEPCO could be the utility's most dangerous cover-up.
The Asahi said excessive leak rates could result in operations of nuclear plants being suspended.
WORST ACCIDENT REMEMBERED
The newspaper reports coincided with the third anniversary of the nation's worst nuclear accident at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, just 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
Two workers died and hundreds of others were exposed in the accident when poorly trained plant workers at the JCO Co Ltd plant triggered an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.
To remember those that died, dozens of anti-nuclear protestors gathered near the Trade Ministry and offered white chrysanthemums on a makeshift funeral altar.
"They (the industry) say that if a reactor is stopped for a day a company loses a hundred million yen, so they don't want to stop," said Makoto Yanagida, a protestor and a member of anti-nuclear group Tanpopo-sha.
"The operators are very profit-motivated and that is the root cause of the JCO accident three years ago and the same goes for TEPCO."
Resource-poor Japan relies on nuclear power for one-third of its power supply.
Shares in TEPCO ended the day down 0.9 percent at 2,220 yen, while the Nikkei average was off 1.54 percent.
-------- russia
Plan to destroy Russian weapons nears collapse
By Peter Eisler,
USA TODAY
10/01/2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-russian-weapons-1acover_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has spent $230 million trying to build a Russian plant to destroy thousands of tons of deadly chemical munitions from the old Soviet arsenal. This month, unless Congress acts, the Pentagon will begin closing down the project without laying a single brick - or eliminating a single weapon. A Russian soldier examining one of thousands of artillery shells filled with lethal nerve gas at the Russian chemical weapons storage site near Shchuch'ye.
The facility was designed to wipe out one of the world's most worrisome stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction: nearly 2 million artillery shells and missile warheads filled with deadly nerve gasses. Stored in open racks in a cluster of wooden warehouses in the town of Shchuch'ye, they're among the most portable, ready-made weapons of mass destruction a terrorist could obtain. Even the smallest shells, which fit in a briefcase, can kill 100,000 or more if set off in a crowded city. Arsenal at Shchuch'ye
The Shchuch'ye site includes these chemical weapons:
1.97 million artillery projectiles
718 FROG and SCUD warheads
42 bomblet-filled SS-21 missile warheads (each can cause as many casualties as a small nuclear weapon)
Source: Global Green USA/Green Cross International
There have been no reported thefts at Shchuch'ye (SHOO-che), but U.S. officials note that such an act would be hard to detect and represents a serious threat. President Bush called the stockpile's destruction a "vital mission" in a national security address last winter at The Citadel military college in South Carolina.
Yet the U.S. effort to build the plant that would dismantle and neutralize the arms at Shchuch'ye has been unraveling quietly for years. Now, it's close to collapse.
The project is the most costly and ambitious of U.S. efforts to help eliminate Russia's chemical arsenal. With the $230 million spent so far, design and site preparation are complete for the plant. But hundreds of millions of dollars pledged for construction have been frozen for three years by congressional critics who distrust Russia's plans to destroy its stockpile.
Pentagon officials, having kept the project alive with a trickle of residual funds, say they will start canceling construction contracts this month because their money runs out today, the start of the new fiscal year. Even if the cash is released later this fall, the holdup has added years to the project - and to Russia's entire chemical weapons disposal schedule.
The delays in destroying the 5,400 tons of weaponized nerve gas at Shchuch'ye are emblematic of setbacks that have plagued U.S. and international efforts to help Russia wipe out its 40,000 tons of mostly Soviet-made chemical weapons. It's the world's largest collection of nerve and skin-burning blister compounds, stored both in bulk and in munitions. Virtually none has been eliminated.
The U.S. assistance is part of a multibillion-dollar Cooperative Threat Reduction program Congress began in 1992 to help newly independent Soviet states secure and destroy nuclear, biological and chemical weapons they inherited.
A decade later, the effort to address Russia's chemical stocks is perhaps the least successful of its cooperative assistance initiatives. Russia's balky, cash-strapped, demilitarization campaign has no chance of eliminating the arsenal by 2007, the deadline in the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention for destroying stockpiles worldwide.
Critics say Russia's slow progress shows a lack of commitment, and they argue that continued assistance for the Shchuch'ye project is unwarranted.
The critics "don't realize how serious this situation is," says Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who helped set up the assistance program. "This is the kind of stuff, at Shchuch'ye, that (terrorists) are after. We have an opportunity to get rid of it, and we're not moving forward."
The unaddressed threat
The weapons at Shchuch'ye represent one-seventh of Russia's chemical arsenal, nearly all of it inherited from the Soviets. The Soviet chemical warfare program, which continued secretly into the early years of Russian statehood, was the world's most advanced. Besides working with such widely used nerve gases as VX and sarin, the Soviets built a secret program, called novichok, or "new shock," that created more lethal toxins from agricultural compounds.
The Shchuch'ye stockpile, one of seven in Russia, is a major concern:
- The weapons are portable and ready to use, making them a more attractive target for theft than the bulk containers of toxins stored at other Russian sites. Many of the shells and warheads at Shchuch'ye are easy to hide and are launchable from widely available artillery pieces and rockets.
- The stockpile is vulnerable. It sits in an impoverished region near the border with Kazakhstan and Asian havens for al-Qaeda and other terror networks. Security, despite recent upgrades, is weaker than at Russian nuclear facilities and other sensitive sites. There's no reliable inventory, so thefts by an insider could go unnoticed.
- The munitions are deadly. Most of the shells and warheads are packed with sarin, soman and VX gasses, all of which can kill in minutes. An 85mm shell of sarin - the smallest artillery piece at Shchuch'ye - can kill up to 140,000 if set off in a densely populated area. It can fit in a briefcase.
Paul Walker, who toured Shchuch'ye as a congressional staffer on the first U.S. inspection, in 1994, calls it "one of the most vulnerable and worrisome sites worldwide."
"It certainly has the potential of becoming a Wal-Mart for terrorists," says Walker, now with Global Green USA. It's part of an environmental organization, Green Cross International, set up by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to facilitate elimination of weapons stockpiles.
The money spent on the Shchuch'ye plant so far is about a quarter of the $888 million that U.S. officials pledged to complete the project. It is the largest American investment in helping Russia eliminate chemical arms.
The Pentagon also has spent millions to install alarms and other safeguards at both Shchuch'ye and Kizner, a chemical stockpile in central Russia. U.S. officials say the upgrades addressed the sites' big weaknesses, though they remain worried about insider thefts or a well-executed raid.
Other U.S.-backed initiatives focus on dismantling chemical weapons production facilities and providing research equipment and jobs to former weapons scientists who might otherwise be lured to work for rogue states or terrorists.
European nations fund similar projects, including a German-financed disposal plant set to start running this winter at Gornyy, a bulk-container stockpile 500 miles southeast of Moscow.
But the Shchuch'ye plant is the key to Russia's chemical demilitarization plans, which envision expanding the facility to destroy munitions from several stockpiles.
The Russian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the funding freeze. Officials in Moscow have said it's unwarranted. They note that they've boosted budgets for the program and replaced military managers with more committed civilians.
"We are fulfilling all of our obligations," says Nikolai Platé, of the State Commission on Chemical Disarmament. He dismisses criticism that Russia has hidden the true size of its arsenal.
Officials would not underestimate the size of the stockpiles because that might result in less assistance, he says. "The U.S. promised this money, and they should give it to us and come see that we will use it to destroy the weapons," Platé says.
Old suspicions, new hurdles
Questions about Russia's tally of its chemical weapons were a central issue when a small group of mostly Republican lawmakers blocked spending for the Shchuch'ye project in late 1999. The hold lasted until Congress approved $35 million for Shchuch'ye in its 2002 budget. But critics set conditions that still left the Pentagon unable to spend the funds.
The spending restrictions are far stricter than those for other threat reduction programs. Such rules generally require the administration to "certify" that states receiving assistance are making progress in getting rid of the arsenals they inherited. But the added conditions for Russian chemical weapons programs include six criteria, requiring that Russia provide a detailed inventory of its chemical weapons and more verifiable plans for destroying them.
Critics "are using these criteria as a stick to hit the Russians," says Michael Moodie, an arms control negotiator in the first Bush administration who now runs the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington. "Their feeling is, 'If we're going to have these assistance programs, we're going to make it as hard as we can for the Russians.' "
The Bush administration has asked Congress for authority to waive the funding criteria. But the idea has hit resistance.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, an Armed Services Committee member, says it's more likely that Congress will pass a limited, short-term waiver later this year.
"A blanket waiver removes some of the leverage we have to make sure Russia complies with the intended purposes for these funds," he adds, noting that Russia's demilitarization program has a history of management problems. "The bigger issue is how big is the problem and if we spend this much money, how much of a dent will it make?"
Foes of a waiver accuse Russia of lying about the size and nature of its stocks. They note that despite admissions about the novichok program by its former managers, Russia has not detailed what became of those toxins.
They also say Russia has not provided sufficient U.S. access to chemical weapons sites.
"They want a confession, and what we need is a solution," says former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, who now runs the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation that seeks to eliminate excess Soviet weapons. He says the Russians have shown "good faith" and may not know the full extent of their arsenal.
Nunn says U.S. officials should seize the chance to destroy the weapons at Shchuch'ye. "It's going to take unprecedented cooperation to make this work," he says.
The multibuilding complex planned for Shchuch'ye would drain the weapons, neutralize and immobilize their toxins in asphalt, and incinerate the shells. It was to begin operation by 2006, but is at least two years behind schedule.
The Pentagon is requesting $126 million for construction at the site in the new fiscal year. Officials say they need at least the $35 million that is frozen in the bank to keep the project viable after the residual, pre-freeze money they've used to sustain it runs out today.
"If we don't get this money, we're going to have to start taking down the (contracting) teams we've assembled," says Thomas Kuenning, chief of Cooperative Threat Reduction for the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
If the money is released now, construction could begin in weeks, Kuenning adds, but the start-up time will grow exponentially if it becomes necessary to line up new contractors. "Eight months from now, it may take a year. Those people will go and find other work."
Without the assistance, most U.S. officials agree, Russia has no hope of meeting the Chemical Weapons Convention deadline for stockpile destruction, even given the likelihood that it will be extended to 2012 at Russia's request.
U.S. stockpiles, interests
The United States also will be pressed by that deadline, despite having smaller chemical weapons stocks - 30,000 tons vs. Russia's 40,000 - and far more money.
The Pentagon has destroyed a bit more than 25% of its chemical weapons, and officials say the job can't be done by the treaty's original 2007 target. Meanwhile, cost estimates for eliminating the entire stockpile have climbed from $15 billion to $24 billion.
Russia, its economy in shambles, hopes to spend about $6 billion.
Critics say Russia's comparatively small financial commitment and its reluctance to open the books on its arsenal justify the hold on money for Shchuch'ye.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who chairs the House military procurement subcommittee, sees some validity to the criticism, though he wants the project funded. "The Russians have got to be more transparent, more flexible. You can't just blame the Congress."
Supporters of the Shchuch'ye project say it must be viewed in the larger context of U.S. interests.
"I don't think the Russians have been completely up front with us," says Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert at The Henry L. Stimson Center who testifies often before Congress. "Does that mean we should allow the weapons to sit there? We have a chance to address a serious national security problem. It behooves us to do so."
-------- terrorism
Seized Material Not Uranium
Associated Press
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
Washington Post
World in Brief; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25146-2002Sep30?language=printer
ANKARA, Turkey -- Atomic energy officials said a substance seized by the police near the Syrian border was not weapons-grade uranium as Turkish officials first reported, according to the Anatolian News Agency.
Atomic Energy Institute chief Guler Koksal said the material was harmless, containing zinc, iron, zirconium and manganese.
The announcement ended days of speculation that the substance might have been destined for neighboring Iraq, which the United States accuses of trying to smuggle in nuclear material for a secret weapons program.
Police, acting on a tip, recovered the material in a taxi last week in Sanliurfa province. Two Turks who were trying to sell the material as uranium were released from custody.
-------- treaties
Russian parliament could ratify nuclear deal by December
AFP
Oct 01, 2002
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/021001212855.dhvshun1.html
Russia's lower house of parliament could ratify by December a landmark deal on missile defence and strategic arms signed in May by the Russian and US presidents, the house's defense committee chief said Tuesday.
"We hope to hold the final readings at the end of November or beginning of December, so that we ratify the treaty by the end of the year," RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Andrei Nikolayev as saying.
He said the Russian lower house might first debate the accord as early as later this month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and US counterpart George W. Bush signed the disarmament accord on May 24, committing Russia and the United States to slashing their nuclear arsenals by 2012 to no more than 2,200 deployed warheads each.
But other Russian lawmakers were uncertain about the parliamentary timetable, saying the accord might have to wait until next year.
"We should ratify this treaty when the Americans do, so that it does not repeat the incident of START-2 (disarmament accord) which we ratified while the Americans did not," said House Deputy Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Russia last June tore up the 1993 START II arms reduction treaty, which had largely been superseded by the Putin-Bush deal and which Moscow considered irrelevant following Washington's decision to forge ahead with the construction of its missile defence shield.
The US withdrew from the 1972 Soviet- US Anti-Ballistic Missiletreaty, which Moscow had perceived as a cornerstone of arms limitation agreements for 30 years.
----
[To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
Nuclear nonproliferation needs teeth
Gordon Prather
October 1, 2002
Washington Times Editorial
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021001-29737072.htm
President Bush has demanded that the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) authorize the forcible removable of Saddam Hussein if the United States cannot be assured, by a date certain, that Iraq is in complete compliance with various Gulf War-related UNSC resolutions.
The UNSC refused similar demands by President Clinton back in 1998. Are they any more likely to do it now? Well, that depends upon what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Action Team finds when it re-enters Iraq next month.
Following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990, the UNSC did invoke Chapter VII, Article 42 of the U.N. Charter, authorizing the "coalition of states cooperating with Kuwait" to forcibly eject the Iraqi aggressors. That accomplished, a Kuwaiti-Iraqi cease-fire was obtained, wherein Iraq - the aggressor nation - agreed to abide by various UNSC resolutions.
Before the Gulf War, it was known that Iraq was in violation of U.N. chemical and biological weapons conventions. But the discovery of Iraq's massive violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was sobering, to put it mildly.
The UNSC can impose sanctions for violations of U.N. conventions, such as the NPT, and may - if it can be shown that the violations result in immediate danger to other nations - authorize the use of force to remove the danger.
The UNSC did impose economic sanctions on Iraq and directed the IAEA - which is responsible for verifying NPT compliance - to oversee the destruction of Iraq's clandestine nuclear program.
Here are excerpts from the IAEA Action Team assessment of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, as of December 1998:
• There were no indications to suggest that Iraq was successful in its attempt to produce nuclear weapons.
• There were no indications to suggest that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapons-grade nuclear material through its indigenous processes.
• There were no indications that Iraq otherwise clandestinely acquired weapons-usable material.
• All the "safeguarded" research reactor fuel was verified and fully accounted for by the IAEA and removed from Iraq.
• There were no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance.
Hence, by the end of 1998, Iraq's nuclear infrastructure had been completely destroyed, and continuous real-time monitoring systems were being installed at all NPT-relevant sites in Iraq.
Other U.N. inspectors reported that Iraq's chemical and biological warfare capability had been substantially destroyed.
Upon receiving these "final" reports of arms-destruction, UNSC members Russia and France attempted to get the UNSC sanctions lifted. Mr. Clinton vetoed that. Instead, over the vigorous objections of Russia and France, Mr. Clinton attempted regime change in Iraq from 20,000 feet, a la Bosnia.
Failing, Mr. Clinton belatedly sought UNSC authorization for forcible regime change. Russia and France refused that, but did allow - in return for partial lifting of sanctions - the establishment of a new regime to monitor Iraqi activities and verify that nuclear and chemical/biological weapons programs are not reconstituted.
Now, most Americans will support a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq if - and only if - Saddam has nuclear weapons and intends to give them to terrorists. They don't much care whether Saddam beats his wives, or grows "wheat smut" in his basement. It's nukes they care about.
With President Bush holding a gun at his head, Saddam has now agreed to allow all U.N. inspectors immediate and unfettered access to Iraq. The IAEA could be on the job by mid-October.
But, having forced Saddam to admit the IAEA Action Team, Mr. Bush is now attempting to keep it out. He shouldn't.
Here's why. Suppose the IAEA finds that Saddam hasn't jump-started his nuclear weapons program. Our troops can all be home for Christmas. But the IAEA will remain there indefinitely, verifying that Iraq stays in compliance with the NPT, long after the Gulf War sanctions are lifted.
But suppose the IAEA discovers Saddam has restarted his nuclear weapons program. Then the UNSC will almost certainly authorize a U.S.-enforced regime-change in Iraq, and our troops will all be in Baghdad for Christmas.
Either way, Mr. Bush will have put some teeth in the NPT, and the world will thank him for it. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is our last best hope for preventing rogue nations - not just Iraq - and terrorists - not just al Qaeda - from nuking you and yours in your jammies.
Gordon Prather was a nuclear physicist at Sandia National Laboratory, a national security adviser to Senator Henry Bellmon, and a Reagan appointee in the Pentagon.
----
[To reply - mailto:OPED@washpost.com]
Weak Without Treaties
By Michael Krepon
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25098-2002Sep30?language=printer
The Bush administration's new national security strategy reflects an extraordinarily unbalanced approach to dealing with the threats posed by terrorism, asymmetric warfare and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The value of deterrence is downgraded, while preemption is elevated from a military option to a doctrine. Little help is expected from diplomacy, treaties, cooperative threat-reduction initiatives such as the Nunn-Lugar program, export controls and international institutions. Just one sparse sentence in this 31-page document is devoted to the need to "enhance" these instruments, which have been central to the efforts of previous administrations. This skewed approach is unwise, dangerous and extremely burdensome on the U.S. armed forces.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the administration's plans for a military campaign against Saddam Hussein, who has the capacity to use chemical and biological weapons against U.S. expeditionary forces. The Bush administration's preparations for warfare in Iraq have been preceded by the systematic denigration, weakening or rejection of treaties dealing with the deadly weapons that U.S. soldiers might face in combat. Even if victory is achieved on the battlefield with limited casualties, success will be short-lived if nonproliferation and disarmament treaties continue to be weakened and if initiatives to prevent dangerous weapons and materials from falling into the wrong hands are shortchanged.
Military action against Saddam Hussein is justified because of his retention of chemical and biological weapons, in contravention of U.N. resolutions and treaty obligations. His prior use of mass-casualty weapons in aggressive wars and for domestic control constitutes further reason to act. This gruesome record provides an equally compelling opportunity to strengthen international conventions mandating chemical and biological weapons disarmament.
This opportunity is being lost. The Bush administration has spent considerable time and energy to remove the head of the organization to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, while proposing no measures for improved inspections. Instead, the administration continues to maintain the right to veto "challenge inspections" on U.S. soil and to prevent the taking of samples abroad for rigorous laboratory testing.
If mimicked by other states, these treaty-hollowing prerogatives, approved at the insistence of skeptics during the Senate's ratification debate, could prevent the discovery of "smoking guns" during challenge inspections. The United States has walked away from the surprisingly tough inspection system negotiated under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
In addition, this Bush administration has unilaterally rejected an international agreement to add sorely needed monitoring capabilities to the Biological Weapons Convention, developed over six years of painstaking negotiations. These provisions warrant improvement. Instead, the administration has proposed flimsier alternatives, preferring improved domestic legislation that has minimal value in the absence of agreed international standards. Even this weak effort has now been abandoned.
The administration has also severely weakened the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty not only by rejecting the treaty calling for a complete cessation of nuclear testing, but also by withholding funds for international monitoring of covert tests and by shortening time lines needed to resume nuclear testing.
Budgetary priorities reflect current imbalances. More money is now being spent on missile defense than on the State Department's entire budget. The Bush administration allocates one dollar on missile defense programs for every quarter spent on cooperative threat-reduction programs to safeguard dangerous weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union. Almost five times as much is spent on preparedness programs to resume nuclear testing as on programs to control "loose nukes." New contracts for the Pentagon's cooperative threat-reduction efforts in Russia were suspended for four months this year because Bush administration officials could not certify Russia's compliance with its treaty obligations. Another suspension is looming later in the fall. The Bush administration is right in calling for Russia to provide greater transparency for its chemical and biological facilities but wrong in its choice of penalties.
The United States needs multiple lines of defense against the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and asymmetric warfare. But at present, the Bush administration is strengthening the last lines of defense while weakening the front lines.
Defense preparedness is not the problem here. Nor can there be any doubt that Saddam Hussein needs to be separated from his deadly weapons. At issue is the absence of accompanying measures that could lessen burdens on the U.S. armed forces and strengthen nonproliferation and disarmament accords. As long as severe imbalances persist, and as long as preventive diplomacy and treaties are the object of scorn in Washington, proliferation will proceed apace -- even when preventive military action succeeds.
The writer is president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
The President's Nuclear Threat
by James Carroll
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
by the Boston Globe
http://commondreams.org/views02/1001-03.htm
''THE NATIONAL Security Strategy of the United States,'' the document published by the Bush administration last week, explains the rush to war, lays bare how much more dangerous the world is under President Bush, and shows that neither he nor his advisers understand the history they have lived through. In a statement full of disturbing assertions, perhaps the most troubling is the sweeping dismissal of nuclear nonproliferation agreements among nations in favor of ''proactive counterproliferation efforts'' that will now originate in Washington.
A myopic fixation on unproven fears about the capabilities and intentions of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea has blinded the Bush administration to one of the great contemporary triumphs of American-led diplomacy. Far from being a failure, the nonproliferation regime, originating with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, has been a success, the partiality of which underscores its significance.
As I first learned in conversation with nonproliferation expert James Walsh of Harvard's Kennedy School, the true wonder of nuclear weapons is how few nations have come to possess them, how many nations have renounced nukes altogether.
In 1970, five nations openly possessed nuclear weapons, but many others stood on the nuclear threshold. Since then Israel, India, and Pakistan have joined the club, but consider what else happened. Argentina and Brazil, mutually suspicious, both embarked upon nuclear weapons development, but then renounced it. South Africa did likewise, and so did Taiwan.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus could have clung to remnant nuclear capacity and expanded on it, but all three did the opposite. In 1994, even the demonized North Korea, responding to US diplomatic pressure, halted plutonium production, and South Korea stayed on the nuclear sideline. When India exploded three nukes in May 1998, the American intelligence establishment was, as usual, completely surprised, but the real surprise, as one sees in ''India's Nuclear Bomb'' by George Perkovich, should have been that India, having tested its first nuke in 1974, had waited so long.
Nonproliferation defined the international order. The exceptions only prove the point. We could very easily be living in a world with nuclear weapons as common, say, as high-tech fighter aircraft - with countries like Egypt, Indonesia, Australia, and numerous others armed with nukes. Pakistan's nuclear capacity, despite that nation's grave impoverishment, is a signal of how widely dispersed the weapon could be.
The nations that renounced nuclear ambition, and the 167 nations that renewed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995, have done this not out of a preference for powerlessness, but out of commitment to two foundational principles. The first is the ideal of ultimate nuclear disarmament. The cornerstone of the treaty is Article VI in which the five possessor states (United States, Russia, China, France, Britain) agree ''to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, and to nuclear disarmament.''
That process has proceeded in fits and starts, but until now it has remained at the center of international hope. In last week's statement, Bush renounced the ideal of eventual nuclear disarmament, by renouncing any ''intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago.'' American military supremacy, based on nukes, is forever. And so, therefore, is the inherently destabilizing gulf between nuclear haves and have-nots.
The second principle that allowed nonproliferation to take hold is the idea of democracy. The Bush strategy claims to be at the service of democracy, but what Bush fails to grasp is that you can't have democratic nations while repudiating democratic values among nations. The Non-Proliferation Treaty worked because it embodied the idea that nations, even if unequal in power or treasure, are mutually accountable, devoted to common standards, and bound by shared commitments. The main structure of democracy among nations consists precisely in that web of treaties (ABM, Kyoto, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty - now Nuclear Non-Proliferation) that is brushed away by Bush's ''distinctly American internationalism.''
''We will not hesitate to act alone,'' Bush declares, promising to extend American sway by ''convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities.'' The United States has become a ludicrous self-contradiction: a dictator state dictating democracy. And how does Bush imagine others nations will respond?
It is certainly true that no power will compete with us for world dominance, but in the nuclear age total throw-weight is irrelevant. Other nations will inevitably respond to this unprecedented American swagger exactly by pursuing nuclear capability - if only to force Washington to treat them with respect.
Proliferation squared. With nuclear know-how dispersed and, especially, with Russian nuclear materials and capabilities headed to market, the only possible protection from eventual nuclear disaster is precisely the tissue of international agreement that the United States has just crushed and trashed, like used Kleenex.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Decommissioning Funds Boosted for Some Nuke Sites
October 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-01-09.asp#anchor2
WASHINGTON, DC, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to require certain licensees to increase the funds they set aside to pay for the future decommissioning of their sites.
The rule change would not affect nuclear power plants, but would concern nuclear materials licensees, including nuclear waste handlers and large irradiation facilities used to sterilize medical equipment and food products.
The NRC says the changes would bring the amount of money available to shut down and clean up these sites more in line with current decommissioning costs, and provide assurances that quick decommissioning can be carried out following the shutdown of a licensed facility.
The NRC estimates that this additional financial assurance for decommissioning would cost affected licensees about $1.2 million per year, and would provide about $80 million in total additional funds for decommissioning.
The amount of financial assurance that licensees must provide can be based on either a decommissioning cost estimate provided by the licensee in a decommissioning funding plan or on dollar amounts specified in the regulations. The current amounts specified in the regulations are based on decommissioning cost estimates that are about 15 years old.
Studies done for the NRC show that decommissioning costs have increased by at least 50 percent over the past two decades, so the agency is proposing to raise required decommissioning fund amounts by 50 percent.
Under the new rules, all nuclear waste broker licensees would have to provide financial assurance. About half of the 15 NRC waste broker licensees are now required to have financial assurance.
Large irradiator licensees and nuclear waste brokers would not be allowed to use the specific amounts in the regulations as a basis for financial assurance for decommissioning, and would have to base their funding on site specific decommissioning cost estimates. The new rules require that decommissioning cost estimates be updated at least every three years.
Funds for decommissioning most sites may be provided by prepayment, a bond, letter of credit or line of credit, insurance or other guarantee method. Federal, state or local government licensees must provide a statement of intent indicating that funds will be obtained when necessary.
The NRC will accept comments on the proposed rule for the next 75 days at: http://ruleforum.llnl.gov
-------- nebraska
Federal judge fines Nebraska $151 million in nuclear waste dump fight
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
By Kevin O'Hanlon,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10012002/ap_48577.asp
LINCOLN, Neb. - A federal judge fined Nebraska $151 million Monday for thwarting a plan to open a radioactive waste dump in a remote county.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf agreed with utilities and other states that sued former Gov. Ben Nelson, accusing him of acting in bad faith when he refused to issue a license for the multistate dump in 1998.
"Nebraska breached its good-faith obligation under the contract," the judge wrote. He added, "I hope that this opinion will not be misused for partisan political purposes. Nebraskans have had quite enough of that self-serving behavior."
The state is expected to appeal, and the dispute could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nelson was governor from 1991 to 1999 and was elected to the Senate in 2000. He was not governor when the state joined a multistate compact to create a dump or when the other states picked Nebraska to host the site.
The dump, which was supposed to be in Butte along the South Dakota state line, was intended to store low-level radioactive waste from Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Such waste includes contaminated tools and clothing from nuclear power plants, hospitals, and research centers.
The state argued during a trial that Nebraska denied the license because of pollution concerns and a high water table near the proposed site.
Kopf noted comments Nelson made about the dump while campaigning for governor in 1990. "As a candidate, Ben Nelson promised that 'If I am elected governor, it is not likely that there will be a nuclear dump in Boyd County,'" the judge wrote. Kopf also noted that while running for the Senate, "Nelson proudly claimed that 'I kept the nuclear waste out of Nebraska.'"
Nelson denied acting in bad faith. "I held out hope for an unbiased consideration of the facts," he said. "The state has acted in good faith since the inception of the compact in the mid-1980's, and I am confident that on appeal Nebraskans will receive a fair hearing and the judgment will be overturned," he said in a statement.
Alan Peterson, a lawyer for the compact, had no immediate comment.
The battle had its genesis decades ago, when Nevada, South Carolina, and Washington grew tired of accepting low-level radioactive waste from the rest of the country. Congress told states in 1980 to build their own dumps or join regional groups to dispose of the waste.
-------- us politics
Bush Presses Congress on Need for Strong Backing on Iraq
New York Times
October 1, 2002
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/politics/01CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - President Bush said today that he wanted Congress to pass a tough resolution of support for dealing with Iraq, not a measure that "ties my hands." But the president emphasized that war against Saddam Hussein was not his first choice.
"Congress in 1998 passed a very strong resolution," he reminded a small group of reporters at the White House. "Why would Congress want to weaken the resolution?"
Mr. Bush was expressing deep reservations about a compromise being offered on Capitol Hill by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, a high-ranking Republican.
At the same time, the president seemed to be signaling open-mindedness toward Congress and the United Nations.
The 1998 Congressional resolution called for a change of regimes in Baghdad. Mr. Bush, too, has often said he would like to see Mr. Hussein ousted, but he pointedly did not use such language today. "All of us recognize a military option's not the first choice," the president said, "but disarming this man is."
At another point, Mr. Bush was asked if he thought the United States economy was strong enough to withstand a war with Iraq.
"Of course, I hadn't made up my mind we're going to war with Iraq," he replied. "I just made up my mind we need to disarm the man." And yes, Mr. Bush said, the economy is strong enough to withstand whatever lies ahead.
The Biden-Lugar proposal would narrow the conditions for an American invasion of Iraq. It was advanced as Congressional leaders continued to search for language that would be acceptable to overwhelming majorities of lawmakers, as well as to the White House. It was not clear by midday whether final language would be agreed upon by nightfall.
The White House's draft proposal, sent to Capitol Hill last week, calls for enforcement of United Nations resolutions on weapons inspections in Iraq and disarmament. The resolutions would be enforced without international participation, if necessary.
Mr. Bush has repeatedly said that the United States would prefer to have strong United Nations support, but that it was prepared to act without the backing of the international organization if it came to that.
Vote counters believe the president has enough support, in both the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate, to gain passage of a resolution much along the lines he wants. At the same time, Mr. Bush would like the support to be overwhelming, perhaps even unanimous. Hence, the back-and-forth over just what the Congressional resolution should say.
Several liberal Democrats, most notably Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, have spoken out recently against unilateral action by the United States against Iraq.
And on Monday, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican far more aligned with Mr. Bush's political philosophy than is Mr. Kennedy, also warned against a go-it-alone approach. "American power alone cannot carry the day in a project of this magnitude," said Mr. Hagel, a Vietnam veteran.
During this morning's question-and-answer session (after a meeting with several legislators on terrorism insurance), Mr. Bush repeated his message to the United Nations that it must be stronger against Saddam Hussein than it has been. "Put calcium in the backbone," was how Mr. Bush put it today.
At the same time, in his response to a question, Mr. Bush declined a chance to criticize France, which has been pressing for a cautious, two-stage resolution in the United Nations Security Council.
The president was asked if he would modify his position to put it more in line with France's "in the spirit of cooperation to achieve a tough U.N. resolution."
"What I won't accept is something that allows Saddam Hussein to continue to lie, deceive the world," Mr. Bush said.
In his closing remarks, the president sought to convey a desire to work with other countries. The best way to deal with Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush said, "is for the world to rise up and say, `You disarm, and we'll disarm you.' And if not, if at the very end of the day nothing happens, the United States, along with others, will act."
--------
Labor Fight Hinders Security Bill
October 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Homeland-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Legislation creating a Homeland Security Department to meet terrorist threats was on ``life support'' Tuesday after the Senate again failed to break an impasse over labor rights affecting thousands of workers who would be transferred.
The legislation was once considered a sure bet to sail through Congress.
The Senate temporarily moved on to other business after Democratic leaders failed by 15 votes to achieve the 60 necessary to bring more than four weeks of debate to a close. Although negotiations were continuing to reach compromise, many lawmakers said the likelihood of a deal was growing dimmer before the Nov. 5 elections.
``I, for one, think the bill's on a life support system,'' said Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn. ``Unless something happens in the very near future, there will not be a homeland security bill this year.''
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, however, insisted that lawmakers would not abandon the massive government reorganization plan, even raising the possibility that Congress would return after the election to complete the job.
``We're going to stay on this bill and we're going to figure out how to finish it,'' said Daschle, D-S.D.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush has contacted numerous Republicans and Democrats in an effort to get a deal and said the issue would come up when legislative leaders come to the White House for a Wednesday meeting.
``It would just be unimaginable for the Senate to leave town without having taken action to protect the homeland,'' Fleischer told reporters.
The central dividing point for Democrats and Republicans remained President Bush's demand for flexibility to hire, fire and deploy the proposed agency's 170,000 workers and for continued authority to waive union bargaining agreements for national security reasons.
Bush and the Republicans say these powers are essential to create a nimble agency that can react quickly to terrorist threats.
Democrats are backing an alternative that includes much of the personnel flexibility Bush wants but imposes conditions he finds unacceptable on the president's use of the union national security waiver. Many Democrats say Bush's plan amounts to an assault on union bargaining rights.
Other than that, the two sides are largely in agreement on a measure that would combine 22 existing federal entities into a giant new Cabinet department.
Each side accused the other Tuesday of using the delay for political reasons in an election with both the House and Senate at stake. Republicans say Democrats are too closely aligned with labor unions to abandon them on the legislation; Democrats argue that the GOP is resisting compromise in order to blame Democrats for killing the bill.
As the two sides trade shots, a bipartisan group of senators was meeting to try again to bridge the gap. They included GOP leader Trent Lott of Mississippi and Republican Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, along with Democrats John Breaux of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
``Let's not have it reach a dead end here,'' Lieberman said. ``This is too urgent a matter to delay any longer.''
Lott also sounded a concilitory note. ``I'm not going to let it go until all possible avenues of compromise have been explored,'' he said.
Daschle said the Senate would continue to debate the homeland security bill on Wednesday and would return to it after dealing with an Iraq use-of-force resolution later this week. Yet with Congress hoping to leave for the election campaigns on Oct. 11 and their chances of returning uncertain at best, many lawmakers suggested that time could run out.
``The clock is ticking. Will it ever emerge? I don't know,'' Lieberman said.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan About-Face
U.S. Military Takes a Softer Tack
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24870-2002Sep30?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The U.S. military campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban remnants is undergoing a subtle but important shift, relying less on air and ground assaults and more on digging wells, school construction and "stability operations," according to American officials and Western diplomats.
The largely unheralded changes follow complaints by Afghan government officials, aid workers, allied diplomats, CIA personnel and some members of the U.S. Special Forces that heavy-handed U.S. military tactics and civilian casualties have alienated some Afghans who might otherwise be recruited to the anti-terrorist cause.
U.S. combat troops here continue to comb the mountains in pursuit of the goal set by President Bush a year ago -- to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants in the al Qaeda organization. More than 200 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division rolled into southeastern villages Sunday, seizing weapons and searching homes of al Qaeda sympathizers. At the same time, U.S. military commanders say their soldiers also are adopting the new, softer approaches aimed at avoiding unnecessary friction, such as using female military police officers to search Afghan women for weapons and explosives.
The change is most visible in the realm of "civil-military operations," the army's term for humanitarian projects aimed at winning friends in potentially hostile terrain. Such teams operate in 11 villages and cities, a number that is slated to grow to 15, while the number of civil-military affairs specialists -- most of them reservists -- will rise from 150 last month to 350 by early November, U.S. officers say.
"Because the enemy is either unable or has not chosen to engage us, we can use a softer approach, and we will always use that, given the option," Army Maj. Gen. John R. Vines, commander of conventional U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in an interview Saturday. "Ideally, we would never have an American or other coalition soldier raise a weapon in anger at an Afghan."
The emphasis on humanitarian aid and reconstruction dovetails with a similar focus by Bush administration figures, several of whom have traveled here in recent days for discussions with Afghan officials on such topics as rebuilding the army, road construction and the launch of a new currency. Douglas Feith, the Defense Department's undersecretary for policy, told reporters here Sunday that the 8,000-member U.S. military presence will soon be reconfigured to place more emphasis on peacekeeping duties that the Pentagon has resisted until now.
Feith also said the administration would be "perfectly delighted" if the allies expanded the size and range of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, which is made up of European and Turkish troops and currently patrols only the capital.
Despite such adjustments, and the decreasing frequency of hostile encounters over the last three months, U.S. commanders say that their forces remain focused on capturing or killing Taliban and al Qaeda fighters now thought to be moving back and forth across the mountainous border that separates Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan.
From their forward bases in Khost, Kandahar and several other locations, troops from the 82nd Airborne Division -- typically paired with small Special Forces units -- are continuing to conduct patrols, seize weapons caches, call in limited airstrikes and round up Afghans who might be involved in terrorism or have information on those who are, U.S. officers say.
Afghans taken into custody during such sweeps are being flown by helicopter to Bagram air base, the U.S.-led coalition's main headquarters near here, at the rate of about 10 per week, according to Col. Roger King, the coalition's chief spokesman. Most are ultimately sent home to their villages, although a small number are flown to the U.S. interrogation center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"There will be a time when [humanitarian operations] will become a more important part of the mission, but currently the main mission of the force is to close with and destroy the enemy," King said. "This is a long-term war," he added. "There are times when it will be quiet."
In particular, U.S. military commanders, Western diplomats and officials in the government of President Hamid Karzai are concerned about the potential for a dangerous new alliance among remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda and guerrilla forces led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord with extreme Islamist and anti-Western views.
Western intelligence reports indicate that Hekmatyar, formerly based in Iran, is now in the southeastern border area, where he is trying to rally support among Pashtun tribesmen with scant affection for the United States or Karzai. Pashtuns constitute a majority in Afghanistan, and many feel underrepresented by Karzai's government, which is dominated by the country's Tajik minority.
"I see his hand throughout," said Vines, commander of Coalition Task Force 82, mostly drawn from the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, N.C. "There are a whole host of indicators . . . that lead us to believe he is attempting to coalesce various extremist factions."
Vines said that Hekmatyar has in recent weeks been holding rallies at religious schools to convey the message that "Muslims need to unite to repel the infidels" -- an appeal repeated in "night letters," or leaflets, deposited overnight in mosques and other public places.
"At the tactical level -- creating confusion, trying to organize attacks on coalition forces -- I see Hekmatyar as quite active," said Vines. He added, "If we knew where he was, we'd pay a visit on him to see if we can persuade him to stop."
In May, the CIA tried to kill Hekmatyar in Konar province with a Hellfire missile launched from a Predator drone.
Despite the potential for a new insurgency led by Hekmatyar, officials in Karzai's government are increasingly of the view that the Americans have vanquished their enemy and should turn more attention to rebuilding a country shattered by 23 years of war. Moreover, they say, the tactics of U.S. forces cause needless friction with ordinary Afghans, especially because the Americans rarely coordinate their missions with local authorities.
"We have asked the Americans many times to have cooperation and coordination because we can shed light on many issues, but they have not responded," said Namatullah Jalili, head of the Interior Ministry's intelligence bureau. "So we have given up asking."
Vines responded: "We seek to coordinate wherever possible. That said, sometimes coordination equals advance warning. So we have to balance minimum disruption of daily lives . . . with achieving what we have to do."
Both in Washington and at the sprawling base at Bagram, where contractors are busy outfitting tents with heaters and plywood siding for the long winter ahead, commanders have been examining their approach to Afghanistan for about three months, according to U.S. military sources.
That review was spurred in part by the accidental attack on a wedding party in Uruzgan province in July, as well as by continuing pleas from Western embassies and the CIA for the U.S. military to do more to promote stability and less to antagonize the local population, say people familiar with the internal discussions.
"There was too much of a critical mass of reporting in agency channels, in State Department channels, that this was getting counterproductive," one of those people said.
There also has been tension between the Special Forces troops in the countryside and the regular, more strait-laced military -- led by the 82nd Airborne -- at Bagram and elsewhere. Special Forces officers say privately that the regular Army has been prone to displays of strength that sometimes alienate locals at the expense of the overall mission.
Some of the more relaxed Special Forces troops, who sometimes act like a lethal version of the Peace Corps, also were antagonized by a recent order from Bagram to shave their beards and wear at least a semblance of a U.S. military uniform, instead of a combination of camping gear and Afghan tribal garb.
Institutional rivalries aside, military commanders say it was inevitable that American tactics would evolve in keeping with the diminishing nature of the threat. The number of enemy attacks on U.S. forces, often involving wildly inaccurate 107mm rockets, dropped from July to August, and will probably show a further reduction once statistics are compiled for September, according to King. The most serious assault on Bagram in recent weeks involved a young Afghan who fired on -- and missed -- American soldiers with an antique, muzzle-loaded rifle.
As the security situation improves, American civil-affairs teams are fanning out across the countryside to assess local needs and line up contractors for such projects as schools, medical clinics, wells -- even an artificial insemination clinic for livestock.
"What we're trying to do is assist in winning over hearts and minds," said Col. George P. Maugh, who commands the civil-military task force from a fortified residential compound in Kabul. "There are still some areas we have to be careful in, but from everything I've seen, it's getting easier for us to operate."
-------- africa
Rwanda Withdrawing 15, 000 Troops from Congo
October 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-congo-democratic-rwanda.html
KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda said it plans to remove 15,000 troops from Congo on Tuesday in the final and biggest phase of a withdrawal agreed in a peace deal designed to end a disastrous four-year war.
Trucks loaded with troops are due to start rolling out of the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu, taking home the largest number of soldiers repatriated in a single day since the withdrawal began last month.
``Our total withdrawal from Congo will be finished before the end of this week,'' Rwandan army Chief of Staff James Kabarebe told Reuters in the Rwandan border town of Cyangugu, lying just across a river from Congo.
Rwanda says it had 23,400 troops in Congo before the pull-back began, but analysts estimate the number could have been closer to 30,000 or even more.
A pair of camouflage military helicopters flew overhead toward Bukavu, where troops are expected to assemble in a sports stadium before beginning a journey of roughly 125 miles to the Rwandan capital Kigali.
``Fifteen thousand are coming today, with a lot of heavy weaponry,'' said Rwandan government spokesman Joseph Bideri.
``It's a clear sign of the commitment of the government of Rwanda to adhere to the Pretoria agreement,'' he said.
Rwanda signed a peace deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo in the South African city of Pretoria in July, agreeing to remove its troops from the country it invaded four years ago.
In return, Congo has agreed to disarm the Interahamwe hiding in its anarchic eastern jungles. Rwanda fears the militia will attack its western frontier.
BULK OF FORCES IN KIVU
Rwanda initially sent its forces to hunt down the ``Interahamwe'' militia responsible for its 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people died.
Africa's biggest war involves a myriad of rebel factions and militia groups, and has sucked in up to six foreign armies, killing an estimated two million people, mainly through hunger and a collapse in health care systems.
Rwanda, which began its pull-back on September 17, said that by the end of Tuesday it will have withdrawn all its troops from the North and South Kivu regions -- a seething cauldron of instability on Rwanda's western doorstep.
Rwandan military officials say the bulk of its forces were concentrated in the Kivu regions -- a territory bigger than Rwanda itself believed to have a high concentration of the ``Interahamwe'' militia responsible for the genocide.
The withdrawal of one of the most powerful forces in the conflict in the former Zaire has raised fears that various bands of gunmen will compete to fill the power vacuum, leading to greater instability.
Rwanda is handing over nominal control of the third of the country it controlled to the Congolese Rally for Democracy rebel movement, widely regarded as a much weaker military force than Rwanda's army.
-------- arms sales
£10bn jump jet take-off delights UK factories
Terry Macalister and Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday October 1, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,10674,802358,00.html
British defence contractors led by Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems were celebrating last night after the Ministry of Defence announced a £10bn deal to buy 150 F35 Joint Strike Fighters for the RAF and Royal Navy.
BAE Systems believes the decision to choose a model with short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) capability could give it an advantage in its battle against Thales of France to build a new generation of aircraft carrier to accommodate the supersonic jump jets.
Rolls-Royce, provider of STOVL technology for the F35, said the decision would bring revenues of $3bn and secure 3,600 jobs. BAE Systems believed it too would earn "billions" from a 15% stake in the project.
Lockheed Martin, America's biggest defence firm and prime contractor, won the race last year to develop the fighter for the Pentagon in competition against Boeing.
The jets, planned for delivery in 2012, will fly from land bases and the carriers. A £3bn contract, to be announced early next year, involves the construction of two 50,000 tonne vessels, each longer than the Houses of Parliament. They will be built with the flexibility to operate STOVL jets and traditional aircraft that have to be launched by catapult.
The carriers, with a life of 50 years, could also eventually launch unmanned combat aerial vehicles. They will replace HMS Ark Royal, Invincible and Illustrious.
The carrier-borne fighters will take over from ageing Sea Harriers which are to be withdrawn between 2004 and 2006 - up to eight years ahead expectation and at a saving of about £109m. Air defence will be provided by the US until the deployment of the Eurofighter.
Announcing the aircraft contract yesterday, the defence procurement minister Lord Bach said: "This is a critically important decision. We have chosen this variant, which is the one being bought by the US marine corps , because it fully meets our military needs - and it builds on Britain's unique and valuable knowledge of STOVL aircraft acquired during nearly four decades of operations with Harriers on land and sea."
John Rose, chief executive of Rolls-Royce, said he expected more than 750 fighters with STOVL capability would be built.
"The JSF design embodies world-leading new technologies that will keep Rolls-Royce at the forefront of advanced propulsion development and maintain our leadership in the market," he explained.
Rolls-Royce must still compete with partner GE against Pratt & Whitney to win engine orders for the aircraft. The British group is receiving $400m (£266m) of development money from the US military to help develop the F136 engine for the fighter.
-------- biological weapons
Records reveal CDC sent germ strains to Iraq in 1980s
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021001-8211716.htm
Iraq's bioweapons program, which President Bush wants to eradicate, got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta sent samples to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s reveal. Iraq had ordered the samples, saying it needed them for legitimate medical research.
The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus.
The transfers were done in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate banking committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate.
The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program administered by the Commerce Department.
"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector.
"But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."
The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of potentially having provided the key ingredients of the weapons it is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat. Mr. Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional Record this month.
Mr. Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The senator noted that Mr. Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Mr. Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.
"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" Mr. Byrd asked Mr. Rumsfeld after reading parts of an article in Newsweek magazine on the transfers.
"I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it," Mr. Rumsfeld said. He later said he would ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their records for evidence of the transfers.
Invoices included in the documents read like shopping lists for biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out of all three.
The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad, which, U.N. inspectors concluded, had been used as a front to acquire samples for Iraq's biological weapons program.
The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxiod - used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin - to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show.
Botulinum toxin is the paralyzing poison that causes botulism. Having a vaccine to the toxin would be useful for those working with it, such as biological weapons researchers or soldiers who might be exposed to the poison, Mr. Tucker said.
The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus to an Iraqi microbiologist at a university in the southern city of Basra in 1985, the records show.
-------- chemical weapons
Plan to destroy Russian weapons nears collapse
10/01/2002
By Peter Eisler,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-russian-weapons-1acover_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has spent $230 million trying to build a Russian plant to destroy thousands of tons of deadly chemical munitions from the old Soviet arsenal. This month, unless Congress acts, the Pentagon will begin closing down the project without laying a single brick - or eliminating a single weapon.
The facility was designed to wipe out one of the world's most worrisome stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction: nearly 2 million artillery shells and missile warheads filled with deadly nerve gasses. Stored in open racks in a cluster of wooden warehouses in the town of Shchuch'ye, they're among the most portable, ready-made weapons of mass destruction a terrorist could obtain. Even the smallest shells, which fit in a briefcase, can kill 100,000 or more if set off in a crowded city.
There have been no reported thefts at Shchuch'ye (SHOO-che), but U.S. officials note that such an act would be hard to detect and represents a serious threat. President Bush called the stockpile's destruction a "vital mission" in a national security address last winter at The Citadel military college in South Carolina.
Yet the U.S. effort to build the plant that would dismantle and neutralize the arms at Shchuch'ye has been unraveling quietly for years. Now, it's close to collapse.
The project is the most costly and ambitious of U.S. efforts to help eliminate Russia's chemical arsenal. With the $230 million spent so far, design and site preparation are complete for the plant. But hundreds of millions of dollars pledged for construction have been frozen for three years by congressional critics who distrust Russia's plans to destroy its stockpile. Pentagon officials, having kept the project alive with a trickle of residual funds, say they will start canceling construction contracts this month because their money runs out today, the start of the new fiscal year. Even if the cash is released later this fall, the holdup has added years to the project - and to Russia's entire chemical weapons disposal schedule.
The delays in destroying the 5,400 tons of weaponized nerve gas at Shchuch'ye are emblematic of setbacks that have plagued U.S. and international efforts to help Russia wipe out its 40,000 tons of mostly Soviet-made chemical weapons. It's the world's largest collection of nerve and skin-burning blister compounds, stored both in bulk and in munitions. Virtually none has been eliminated. The U.S. assistance is part of a multibillion-dollar Cooperative Threat Reduction program Congress began in 1992 to help newly independent Soviet states secure and destroy nuclear, biological and chemical weapons they inherited.
A decade later, the effort to address Russia's chemical stocks is perhaps the least successful of its cooperative assistance initiatives. Russia's balky, cash-strapped, demilitarization campaign has no chance of eliminating the arsenal by 2007, the deadline in the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention for destroying stockpiles worldwide.
Critics say Russia's slow progress shows a lack of commitment, and they argue that continued assistance for the Shchuch'ye project is unwarranted.
The critics "don't realize how serious this situation is," says Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who helped set up the assistance program. "This is the kind of stuff, at Shchuch'ye, that (terrorists) are after. We have an opportunity to get rid of it, and we're not moving forward."
The unaddressed threat
The weapons at Shchuch'ye represent one-seventh of Russia's chemical arsenal, nearly all of it inherited from the Soviets. The Soviet chemical warfare program, which continued secretly into the early years of Russian statehood, was the world's most advanced. Besides working with such widely used nerve gases as VX and sarin, the Soviets built a secret program, called novichok, or "new shock," that created more lethal toxins from agricultural compounds.
The Shchuch'ye stockpile, one of seven in Russia, is a major concern:
The weapons are portable and ready to use, making them a more attractive target for theft than the bulk containers of toxins stored at other Russian sites. Many of the shells and warheads at Shchuch'ye are easy to hide and are launchable from widely available artillery pieces and rockets. The stockpile is vulnerable. It sits in an impoverished region near the border with Kazakhstan and Asian havens for al-Qaeda and other terror networks. Security, despite recent upgrades, is weaker than at Russian nuclear facilities and other sensitive sites. There's no reliable inventory, so thefts by an insider could go unnoticed. The munitions are deadly. Most of the shells and warheads are packed with sarin, soman and VX gasses, all of which can kill in minutes. An 85mm shell of sarin - the smallest artillery piece at Shchuch'ye - can kill up to 140,000 if set off in a densely populated area. It can fit in a briefcase.
Paul Walker, who toured Shchuch'ye as a congressional staffer on the first U.S. inspection, in 1994, calls it "one of the most vulnerable and worrisome sites worldwide."
"It certainly has the potential of becoming a Wal-Mart for terrorists," says Walker, now with Global Green USA. It's part of an environmental organization, Green Cross International, set up by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to facilitate elimination of weapons stockpiles.
The money spent on the Shchuch'ye plant so far is about a quarter of the $888 million that U.S. officials pledged to complete the project. It is the largest American investment in helping Russia eliminate chemical arms.
The Pentagon also has spent millions to install alarms and other safeguards at both Shchuch'ye and Kizner, a chemical stockpile in central Russia. U.S. officials say the upgrades addressed the sites' big weaknesses, though they remain worried about insider thefts or a well-executed raid.
Other U.S.-backed initiatives focus on dismantling chemical weapons production facilities and providing research equipment and jobs to former weapons scientists who might otherwise be lured to work for rogue states or terrorists.
European nations fund similar projects, including a German-financed disposal plant set to start running this winter at Gornyy, a bulk-container stockpile 500 miles southeast of Moscow.
But the Shchuch'ye plant is the key to Russia's chemical demilitarization plans, which envision expanding the facility to destroy munitions from several stockpiles.
The Russian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the funding freeze. Officials in Moscow have said it's unwarranted. They note that they've boosted budgets for the program and replaced military managers with more committed civilians.
"We are fulfilling all of our obligations," says Nikolai Platé, of the State Commission on Chemical Disarmament. He dismisses criticism that Russia has hidden the true size of its arsenal.
Officials would not underestimate the size of the stockpiles because that might result in less assistance, he says. "The U.S. promised this money, and they should give it to us and come see that we will use it to destroy the weapons," Platé says.
Old suspicions, new hurdles
Questions about Russia's tally of its chemical weapons were a central issue when a small group of mostly Republican lawmakers blocked spending for the Shchuch'ye project in late 1999. The hold lasted until Congress approved $35 million for Shchuch'ye in its 2002 budget. But critics set conditions that still left the Pentagon unable to spend the funds.
The spending restrictions are far stricter than those for other threat reduction programs. Such rules generally require the administration to "certify" that states receiving assistance are making progress in getting rid of the arsenals they inherited. But the added conditions for Russian chemical weapons programs include six criteria, requiring that Russia provide a detailed inventory of its chemical weapons and more verifiable plans for destroying them.
Critics "are using these criteria as a stick to hit the Russians," says Michael Moodie, an arms control negotiator in the first Bush administration who now runs the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington. "Their feeling is, 'If we're going to have these assistance programs, we're going to make it as hard as we can for the Russians.' "
The Bush administration has asked Congress for authority to waive the funding criteria. But the idea has hit resistance.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, an Armed Services Committee member, says it's more likely that Congress will pass a limited, short-term waiver later this year.
"A blanket waiver removes some of the leverage we have to make sure Russia complies with the intended purposes for these funds," he adds, noting that Russia's demilitarization program has a history of management problems. "The bigger issue is how big is the problem and if we spend this much money, how much of a dent will it make?"
Foes of a waiver accuse Russia of lying about the size and nature of its stocks. They note that despite admissions about the novichok program by its former managers, Russia has not detailed what became of those toxins.
They also say Russia has not provided sufficient U.S. access to chemical weapons sites.
"They want a confession, and what we need is a solution," says former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, who now runs the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation that seeks to eliminate excess Soviet weapons. He says the Russians have shown "good faith" and may not know the full extent of their arsenal.
Nunn says U.S. officials should seize the chance to destroy the weapons at Shchuch'ye. "It's going to take unprecedented cooperation to make this work," he says.
The multibuilding complex planned for Shchuch'ye would drain the weapons, neutralize and immobilize their toxins in asphalt, and incinerate the shells. It was to begin operation by 2006, but is at least two years behind schedule.
The Pentagon is requesting $126 million for construction at the site in the new fiscal year. Officials say they need at least the $35 million that is frozen in the bank to keep the project viable after the residual, pre-freeze money they've used to sustain it runs out today.
"If we don't get this money, we're going to have to start taking down the (contracting) teams we've assembled," says Thomas Kuenning, chief of Cooperative Threat Reduction for the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
If the money is released now, construction could begin in weeks, Kuenning adds, but the start-up time will grow exponentially if it becomes necessary to line up new contractors. "Eight months from now, it may take a year. Those people will go and find other work."
Without the assistance, most U.S. officials agree, Russia has no hope of meeting the Chemical Weapons Convention deadline for stockpile destruction, even given the likelihood that it will be extended to 2012 at Russia's request.
U.S. stockpiles, interests
The United States also will be pressed by that deadline, despite having smaller chemical weapons stocks - 30,000 tons vs. Russia's 40,000 - and far more money.
The Pentagon has destroyed a bit more than 25% of its chemical weapons, and officials say the job can't be done by the treaty's original 2007 target. Meanwhile, cost estimates for eliminating the entire stockpile have climbed from $15 billion to $24 billion.
Russia, its economy in shambles, hopes to spend about $6 billion.
Critics say Russia's comparatively small financial commitment and its reluctance to open the books on its arsenal justify the hold on money for Shchuch'ye.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., who chairs the House military procurement subcommittee, sees some validity to the criticism, though he wants the project funded. "The Russians have got to be more transparent, more flexible. You can't just blame the Congress."
Supporters of the Shchuch'ye project say it must be viewed in the larger context of U.S. interests.
"I don't think the Russians have been completely up front with us," says Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert at The Henry L. Stimson Center who testifies often before Congress. "Does that mean we should allow the weapons to sit there? We have a chance to address a serious national security problem. It behooves us to do so."
-------- europe
EU to let members sign pacts on ICC
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021001-6561998.htm
The European Union agreed yesterday to allow its members to sign bilateral accords with the United States exempting Americans on their territory from prosecution by the new International Criminal Court.
But the move failed to impress the Bush administration, which pointed to conditions attached to the decision.
At a meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels, the 15-member union issued certain "guidelines" that limit immunity from the tribunal to U.S. personnel stationed overseas and demand guarantees from Washington that any American facing ICC charges will be tried in the United States.
"If individual states stay within these red lines, the court will not be undermined," said Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, who chaired the meeting as representative of the country holding the rotating EU presidency.
The Bush administration, worried about politically motivated prosecutions of not only soldiers but also senior government officials no matter where they are in the world, wants blanket immunity from the court. In addition, it is reluctant to give assurances about domestic trials for U.S. citizens accused of abuses abroad.
Even though the administration acknowledged yesterday that it had been pursuing the issue "avidly" with the Europeans, it refrained from welcoming the EU decision and said there were matters to be negotiated.
"At this point, I can't give you a definitive opinion," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "We'll study the details of the European Union's decision very closely, and we'll look forward to discussing it in more detail with member states."
In private, senior administration officials said the lack of enthusiasm was due to specific conditions imposed by Brussels that leave member states with little room to negotiate directly with Washington.
"There are some good and some bad things in the decision," said one senior State Department official, "so we are not going to try to be enthusiastic about it."
Mr. Boucher said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the issue during weekend phone calls with several of his European colleagues, including Mr. Moeller, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Javier Solana, the EU secretary-general.
"We think our ability to reach agreements is important, and we have made that clear in Europe and elsewhere," Mr. Boucher said.
The United States began a diplomatic campaign to persuade individual countries to sign bilateral accords after it failed to secure universal immunity for Americans in the ICC statute. Article 98 of that founding document allows for bilateral exemptions from the court's jurisdiction.
So far, 12 non-EU nations have signed or promised to sign such agreements.
The dispute between Washington and Brussels became particularly bitter two months ago when Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, publicly snubbed EU-hopeful Romania for signing the accord without first consulting Brussels.
Mr. Prodi even suggested that such behavior might hurt the country's bid to join the European Union. He warned candidates not to make any decisions before the union formulates a common position.
But Britain, Italy and Spain, whose leaders are President Bush's closest allies on issues of friction such as the ICC and Iraq, signaled that they might sign agreements anyway.
Although yesterday's announcement was viewed by many diplomats as a compromise, some said significant differences among EU members remained.
"This is putting a brave face on disunity," one diplomat was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying. "For the moment it looks like the EU is unified, but there are fundamental differences that will be exposed as states sign up."
Others were more optimistic and even surprised at how smoothly things had gone.
"I think this is better than I had expected," Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said. "I had as a starting point the view that one should under no circumstances allow exemptions at all. But in the face of the risk that several states would enter into their own agreements, I believe this offers clear rules on how to keep the ICC."
While Britain reiterated its intention to sign an accord with the United States, Germany said it would not consider such a deal.
"People are looking to Europe," said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. "What matters is that the Europeans stand together on the basis of a strengthening of the court's statute. What matters to us is not to assuage anyone."
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's strong opposition to U.S. military action against Iraq helped his coalition of Social Democrats and Greens win re-election by the slimmest of margins last month.
But the anti-American tone of his campaign, during which his justice minister reportedly compared Mr. Bush's political style to Hitler's, seriously damaged ties with Washington, prompting the White House to call the relationship "poisoned."
-------- iraq
Iraq's children suffer as war looms
War and sanctions have created a vulnerable population
By Caroline Hawley
BBC Baghdad correspondent
Tuesday, 1 October, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2290202.stm
The 1991 Gulf War has never really ended for most Iraqis, as the threat of another confrontation looms.
Iraqi child in hospital with her mother Children fall sick due to inadequate water and sanitation systems According to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), one in eight Iraqi children still do not make it to the age of five.
The terrible toll of 12 years of sanctions can be seen in the hospital wards.
Beds hold the tiny bodies of children like five-month-old Milad Hanoun, who has had acute diarrhoea for days.
New suffering
The white-faced baby girl is among countless children still falling victim to Iraq's damaged and dilapidated water and sanitation systems.
Iraqi children's right to a quality education is being violated, and that's a concern for the future of the whole country
Baghdad Unicef representative Carel de Rooy In a country with no proper economy, the vast majority of Iraqi families rely on government food rations to survive - and some have to sell them to meet other basic needs.
Unicef says the situation had been getting progressively better since the UN's oil-for-food programme was introduced.
However, it and other aid agencies are now warning that war could wipe out recent gains and cause massive new suffering.
"There's been a steady improvement in malnutrition levels since 1997," says Carel de Rooy, the Unicef representative in Baghdad.
"But that is very tenuous. Malnutrition could revert to drastic levels if food distribution, which is undertaken flawlessly in this country, were to be interrupted."
Poor education
Last week, seven aid agencies operating in Iraq appealed to the British Government "not merely to take effective steps to avoid exacerbating the current humanitarian crisis but to seek ways to improve the humanitarian situation, while pursuing a diplomatic solution to the current crisis."
Woman with bag of food in Baghdad The future of ordinary Iraqis is a major concern for aid workers
It warned: "Years of war and sanctions have already created an extremely vulnerable population whose ability to cope with any additional hardship is very limited."
Children have been hardest hit, with a whole generation now growing up with their future blighted by sanctions.
Take Iraq's collapsing education system. One in four Iraqi children now drop out of school.
At the "Age of Prosperity" school in the poor Shia suburb of Saddam City, on the edge of Baghdad, it is not hard to see why.
Children with no text books cram into classrooms with broken, boarded-up windows.
Rehabilitation needed
There is no running water in the school, no toilets and no electricity.
"We don't even have the very basics," says hard-pressed teacher Leila Mizal, who earns less than $5 a month.
"If something breaks we can't fix it. We do what we can but these are no conditions in which to teach."
They are also no conditions in which to learn.
"[At least] 8,000 schools need rehabilitation," says Mr de Rooy, of Unicef.
"But that is not possible because there is no cash component to the oil-for-food programme.
"Iraqi children's right to a quality education is being violated, and that's a concern for the future of the whole country."
As fears of a new war grow, the future of ordinary Iraqis is now a major concern for aid workers.
They say that renewed confrontation "risks deepening and extending the current humanitarian crisis, creating large numbers of civilian casualties and extending human suffering".
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Iraq's Little Secret
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
October 1, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/opinion/01KRIS.html?ei=1&en=1a989c1cbb721718&ex=1034497567&pagewanted=print&position=top
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The White House is right that Iraq is by far the most repressive country in the entire Middle East - but that's true only if you're a man.
To see how many Arab countries are in some ways even more repressive to women, consider how an invasion might play out. If American ground troops are allowed to storm across the desert from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, then American servicewomen will theoretically not be able to drive vehicles as long as they are in Saudi Arabia and will be advised to wear an abaya over their heads. As soon as they cross the border into enemy Iraq, they'll feel as if they are entering the free world: they can legally drive, uncover their heads, and even call men idiots.
Iraqi women routinely boss men and serve in non-combat positions in the army. Indeed, if Iraq attacks us with smallpox, we'll have a woman to thank: Dr. Rihab Rashida Taha, the head of Iraq's biological warfare program, who is also known to weapons inspectors as Dr. Germ.
A man can stop a woman on the street in Baghdad and ask for directions without causing a scandal. Men and women can pray at the mosque together, go to restaurants together, swim together, court together or quarrel together. Girls compete in after-school sports almost as often as boys, and Iraqi television broadcasts women's sports as well as men's.
"No one thinks that sports are just for men," said Nadia Yasser, the captain of the Iraqi national women's soccer team. "It's true that my mother was a bit concerned at first when I took up soccer, but I insisted, and so she accepted it and just started praying for me."
The point is not to be soft on Saddam Hussein, whose rash wars and policies have killed hundreds of thousands of women as well as men. Iraqi women would be much better off with Saddam gone, and in any case the relative equality of women in Iraq has little to do with his leadership. Iraq has been civilized more than twice as long as Britain, after all (it was old when Babylon arose), and Iraq got its first woman doctor back in 1922. Then the Iran-Iraq war boosted equality by sending men to the front lines and forced women to fill in as factory workers, bus drivers and government officials.
Still, we shouldn't demonize all of Iraq - just its demon of a ruler - and it's worth pondering this contrast between an enemy that empowers women and allies that repress them. This gap should shame us as well as these allies, reminding us to use our political capital to nudge Arab countries to respect the human rights not just of Kurds or Shiites, but also of women.
More broadly, in a region where women are treated as doormats, Iraq offers an example of how an Arab country can adhere to Islam and yet provide women with opportunities.
"I look at women in Saudi Arabia, and I feel sorry for them," said Thuha Farook, a young woman doctor in Basra. "They can't learn. They can't improve themselves."
At the Basra Maternity and Pediatric Teaching Hospital, 25 of the 26 students in ob-gyn are women. Across town, 54 percent of Basra University's students are female.
Iraqi women who work typically get six months' maternity leave at full pay and another six months at half pay. Subsidized day care is usually available at the workplace. Female circumcision, still common in American allies like Egypt and Nigeria, is absent in Iraq.
To be sure, aside from brutal political repression that is gender-blind, Iraqi women also endure groping on crowded buses and an occasional honor killing, in which a man kills a daughter or sister for being unchaste. Honor killings typically result in a six-month prison sentence in Iraq; they sometimes go completely unpunished in other countries.
A glance around any Baghdad street also demonstrates that Iraq doesn't have hang-ups about the female body that neighboring countries do. A man can travel widely in the Arab world and know about women's legs only by hearsay, but careful reporting in Iraq confirms that Arab women do have knees: In Baghdad I saw women volleyball players who felt uninhibited enough to roll up their sweats.
So as we invade Iraq for its barbaric and repressive ways, our allies in the Muslim world should feel deeply embarrassed that a rogue state offers women more equality than they do.
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Bush, Rumsfeld, and Orwell
by Sheldon Richman,
October 1, 2002
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0210b.asp
It has long been clear that little of what government leaders say and do makes no sense unless you understand that they think we are idiots, uninformed, or both.
Could there be better evidence than recent remarks by President Bush and Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld?
Let's start with the much-admired Secretary Rumsfeld. He was asked the other day whether a U.S. attack on Iraq would provoke terrorism against Americans. With his strong, set jaw, steely eyes, and slight, arrogant smile, he said something very close to this: We were attacked on 9/11 when we weren't at war with Iraq.
One problem: Since 1991 there has not been a time when the U.S. government was not at war with Iraq.
John Laughland of the London Spectator reports from Baghdad that U.S. and British forces have flown 4,000 bombing missions in northern and southern Iraq since 1998. (That's after "dropping ... the equivalent of six or seven Hiroshimas-worth of ordnance" during the open war.) The official position is that these sorties enforce the "no-fly" zones, that is, the parts of Iraq that the United States, without anyone's authorization, says the Iraqi government may not patrol from the sky. Are these surgical missions to strike military installations? That's what the U.S. government says. In a fascinating piece of Orwell-speak, the government refers to the "provocative use" of Iraqi anti-aircraft weapons. If the United States flies offensive warplanes over Iraq, that's not provocative. But if Iraq activates defensive anti-aircraft weapons, that is provocative.
Back to the surgical nature of the missions. We need a new surgeon. Laughland says he's told by regular people on the ground that "half a dozen people or so are injured every week in these raids." The Iraqi government is too secretive to say anything about this.
The upshot is that President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are not planning to go to war with Iraq. They and their predecessors have been making war on Iraq for more than a decade without a break. All they are planning to do now is intensify the war and put it back in the headlines.
I'm waiting for one of the "fair and balanced" 24-hour cable news networks to give it to us straight. Maybe if they did that (more than once and not at 2 in the morning), Secretary Rumsfeld might choose his words more carefully.
Mr. Bush's words, on the other hand, are apparently chosen most carefully. He seems to be using as his text George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. This book is revered for many reasons. But an underappreciated virtue of the novel is that it illustrates how foreign policy is effectively used to manipulate the domestic population. Readers recall how in that society, allies became enemies, and enemies allies, overnight, with nary a reference to their former status. Sound familiar? H.L. Mencken, the keen observer of the political scene understood the game: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Mr. Bush is beginning to master the lingo. When he was asked whether Congress would approve his request for a resolution authorizing force, he said, "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force." He's more wordy than the ubiquitous slogan in Orwell's dystopia: "War is Peace."
If this sounds cynical, be reminded that the draft resolution Mr. Bush sent to Congress was not just about Iraq. It was a blank check to let him use force broadly. Here's the relevant passage: "to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce ... United Nations Security Council resolutions ... defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security to the region."
Restore international peace and security to the region? Could the language be broader? This authorization would be Napoleonic in its dimensions.
It's not what the Constitution's Framers had in mind when they gave Congress the power to declare war.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine.
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U.S. offers proof of Iraq defiance
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021001-16834640.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld showed the world yesterday graphic proof of Baghdad's long defiance of the United Nations in the form of surveillance video of Iraqi missiles and shells launched at American aircraft.
He said that since Iraq issued a letter offering to let U.N. weapons inspectors re-enter the country "without condition," the regime has fired 67 times on allied planes, 14 this past weekend.
"With each missile launched at our air crews, Iraq expresses its contempt for the U.N. resolutions," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.
"It bothers me to think that these folks are having to put their lives at risk every day, and yet the firing continues," he said. "And simultaneously the Iraqis are out telling the world that they want to have everyone inspect everything and without conditions, which is so, just patently false."
Mr. Rumsfeld is skeptical that inspections alone will find and destroy Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and its nuclear-weapons components.
The four videos of Iraqi air-defense volleys in the U.N.-authorized northern and southern no-fly zones marked a continued Bush administration offensive to build support for military action to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
President Bush, who is weighing several war plans, has gone before the United Nations to urge members to enforce long-neglected resolutions prohibiting Iraq from owning weapons of mass destruction.
The White House wants a new resolution authorizing military force if Saddam again uses deceit and trickery, as he did in the 1990s, to foil an impending weapons-inspection team.
Mr. Rumsfeld's role has been to remind the public of Saddam's reported treachery and defiance. Last week, the defense secretary for the first time detailed ties between the regime and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11 attacks.
Yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld also pressed the United Nations when he said, "Here you have U.S. and British planes flying daily to enforce the U.N. resolutions, putting their lives at risk, these pilots and air crews, day after day for years, and the U.N. not enforcing its own resolutions."
In the past, the Pentagon had declined to show footage of Iraqi air-defense firings for fear the clips would reveal American ability to evade fire. In 10 years of enforcing the two zones, Iraq has failed to knock down a single manned aircraft, although it did strike a Predator spy drone.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, displayed four videos at the press conference from incidents in 2000 and last year. One showed anti-aircraft artillery in the northern zone; the other three were of two surface-to-air missile firings and one artillery burst south of Baghdad.
Pilots often find it difficult to attack Baghdad's mobile batteries. In recent months, Mr. Rumsfeld authorized commanders to bomb not just the offending anti-aircraft site, but also the command facilities that direct the shooters.
"They don't often move the surface-to-air missiles into the no-fly/no-drive zones," Gen. Myers said. "When they do, they move them around very, very quickly. I'm not going to go into tactics, but we've had some recent success going after some of their surface-to-air missile systems."
He said Operation Southern Watch, which was largely instituted to protect the minority Shi'ite population, involves more than 6,000 personnel and 150 aircraft.
Operation Northern Watch, which protects the minority Kurdish population, requires 1,400 personnel and 45 aircraft. Pilots in the two zones have been fired on a combined 406 times this year.
Asked why the years of bombing radars and guns have not further depleted Iraq's air defenses, Mr. Rumsfeld said that just last week the United States bombed a mobile radar installation at a military airport in Basra but that the Iraqis are likely to replace it soon.
Gen. Myers said the twin missions of enforcing the no-fly zones, while running last year's air war on Afghanistan's Taliban, did tax the available squadrons in the Persian Gulf.
"When we were heavily involved in Afghanistan there weren't as many air sorties available for response as there are today," he said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said Iraq's ability to rebuild air defenses is an example of how U.N.-imposed sanctions since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 have not prevented weapons-related equipment from reaching Baghdad.
"They simply don't stop everything from going in. I mean, fiber optic can be used for a cueing of a radar to an anti-aircraft or a surface-to-air missile, but it can also be used for communications between hospitals, if you will," he said. "Saddam Hussein has gotten many, many billions of dollars illegally and legally under the food-for-oil arrangement, and he has been buying capabilities that have increased his net capability."
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U.S. Asserts Inspection Role for Planes Over Iraq
'Aerial' Surveillance for Weapons Is Valid, Rumsfeld Says
By a Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24799-2002Sep30?language=printer
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asserted for the first time yesterday that U.S. and British warplanes enforcing "no-fly" zones over Iraq are performing "aerial" weapons inspections under a United Nations resolution, a statement that expands the stated mission of the air patrols.
The U.S. government has long justified the missions as necessary to protect Iraqi Shiites and Kurds from helicopter assaults and aerial bombardments by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's military.
But Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, argued that the no-fly zones, which were established in northern and southern Iraq after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, have existed both to protect Iraqi citizens under U.N. Resolution 688 and to perform "aerial inspections" under U.N. Resolution 687. Resolution 688 was passed in 1991 to protect Iraqi citizens from military attacks by their government. Resolution 687, passed the same year, mandated Iraq's disarmament and required that Baghdad allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country to certify it was no longer producing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
But Rumsfeld said that enforcement of the northern and southern no-fly zones have existed as "air components" of the U.N. inspections regime, which ended in 1998 when U.N. inspectors withdrew after repeated disputes with Hussein.
"Aerial inspections, however, continued," Rumsfeld said. "As coalition aircraft attempt to enforce the no-fly zones, they conduct aerial surveillance to help determine compliance with U.N. resolutions 688 and 687, which bans nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld dismissed criticism by Russia's foreign ministry that recent attacks by U.S. and British warplanes enforcing the no-fly zones against Iraqi air defenses have made it more difficult for U.N. efforts to resume weapons inspections in Iraq.
Rumsfeld said the attacks have come in response to fire directed at coalition warplanes by Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries. Joining Rumsfeld, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed reporters video footage taken by F-16 fighters and Predator surveillance drones of Iraqi anti-aircraft shells and surface-to-air missiles being fired at coalition jets.
Myers also released statistics showing that Iraq fired at coalition aircraft 67 times in September, including nine times last weekend. So far this year, he said, Iraq has fired at coalition jets 406 times.
Myers said coalition aircraft responded to Iraqi attacks 32 times in 2000 and 2001 and 34 times so far this year, including a series of attacks last month against radar sights and communications "nodes" linked to those radars. While coalition rules of engagement have always allowed warplanes to target communications centers in response to hostile fire, Rumsfeld recently directed that they place more emphasis on those installations when returning fire.
One U.S. official said Rumsfeld's comments represented the first time that a senior administration official had argued that warplanes patrolling the no-fly zones were actually performing weapons inspections under U.N. auspices. Outside experts agreed.
"These are new interpretations," said Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research at Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "The no-fly zones were established to enforce 688 -- to protect the Iraqi people from the depredations of the regime. This is the first time the U.S. government has ever tied them to enforcement of the inspection provisions of 687."
Pollack, a former CIA analyst who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said he thought Rumsfeld's position will be hard for the administration to sell to the international community, particularly when Russia and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan have said that U.S. and British enforcement of no-fly zones is not sanctioned by either Resolution 687 or 688.
"At a moment when the entire world thinks this administration is hell-bent on attacking Saddam, [Rumsfeld is] trying to take another aspect of Iraq policy and weld it onto inspections," Pollack said. "It's certainly going to look cynical to many foreign governments. And the administration is going to have to do a good job in explaining to foreign governments that it's not cynical."
Patrick L. Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that U.S. U-2 reconnaissance aircraft did fly spy missions over Iraq with fighter escorts from 1991 to 1998 at the behest of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), the agency responsible for weapons inspections after the Gulf War.
But those flights ended with the demise of UNSCOM in 1998, when its inspectors pulled out of Iraq. Clawson said it is a "stretch" for Rumsfeld to argue that U.S. and British warplanes enforcing the no-fly zones are performing the same mission, since the U-2s flew over all of Iraq and were specifically asked to do so by the United Nations.
Rumsfeld began the news conference by reading a lengthy statement linking enforcement of the no-fly zones with U.N. weapons inspections. He noted that Iraq continues to fire at U.S. and British warplanes, even though it sent a letter to the United Nations two weeks ago promising to allow the return of weapons inspectors "without conditions."
"With each missile launched at our air crews, Iraq expresses its contempt for the U.N. resolutions, a fact that must be kept in mind as their latest inspection offers are evaluated," Rumsfeld said.
In response to Iraqi fire, Rumsfeld said, coalition jets attacked and destroyed a "spoon rest" early warning and targeting radar over the weekend at Basra airport in southern Iraq. The system was linked to an SA-2 surface-to-air missile system.
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Iraq and U.N. Agree on Access for Weapons Inspectors
New York Times
October 1, 2002
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/international/01CND-INSP.html
VIENNA, Oct. 1 - Iraq and the United Nations agreed today that inspectors would be given unfettered access to a range of sites, including sensitive areas like the Defense Ministry and the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.
But Iraq stopped short of agreeing that inspectors would be allowed to inspect Mr. Hussein's presidential palaces, as the United States and Britain have demanded. That crucial issue was left off the table in two days of talks at the International Atomic Energy Agency between Iraqi and United Nations officials.
Iraq also delivered on its agreement to hand over four CD's containing a wealth of information about changes it had made in plants and equipment with dual civilian and military uses since the weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998 before American and British bombing raids began.
Asked at a news conference today about access to the eight Iraqi presidential palaces, Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, said the agreement announced today did not change existing special rules.
"On the question of access," he said, "it was clarified that all sites are subject to immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access. However, the memorandum of understanding of 1998 establishes special procedures for access to eight presidential sites." The memo, which was signed by Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations and the Iraqi government. sets out detailed procedures under which these sites are allowed to be searched, effectively ruling out unannounced visits.
Mr. Blix added today that the promise of full cooperation "would, of course, have to be tested" when inspectors returned to Iraq. An advance team is expected to arrive in about two weeks.
The United States is pushing the United Nations Security Council to approve a resolution setting stringent new rules and deadlines for the inspections and authorizing it to use "all necessary means" - including military force - against Mr. Hussein if Iraq does not comply.
On Sept. 16, Iraq invited the inspectors back, and United Nations officials said today that they could be in the country by the third week of October. But over the weekend, Iraq said it would not abide by a new resolution.
-------- pakistan
U.S. Official Calls for Pakistan - India Dialogue
October 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-pakistan-usa.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca met Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday and called for dialogue with India over the disputed Kashmir region.
India has refused Pakistan's offer of talks over Kashmir, saying Islamabad must first end its sponsorship of cross-border infiltration by Islamic militants into Indian-held Kashmir, where a third round of state elections was taking place on Tuesday.
Pakistan denies the accusation, saying it has clamped down on extremist groups in Pakistan since backing the U.S.-led war on terror last September.
``The Pakistan side called for de-escalation and for India to reciprocate the significant measures taken by Pakistan to defuse tensions,'' a foreign ministry statement said, referring to talks between Rocca and Pakistani officials.
The nuclear rivals have around one million troops massed on their border. Pakistan says the standoff in Kashmir is limiting its ability to hunt for al Qaeda agents along its border with Afghanistan.
Rocca flew to Islamabad from Karachi, where she discussed issues including security at the U.S. consulate. The Karachi mission was moved to an undisclosed location after 12 Pakistanis were killed in a car bomb attack outside the consulate in June.
A U.S. embassy spokesman in Islamabad said Rocca was due to leave Pakistan late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday.
-------- spy agencies
The spymasters
Washington Times
EDITORIAL
October 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021001-16826584.htm
Now that the Senate has voted overwhelmingly for an independent probe of the intelligence lapses that left us defenseless against al Qaeda, it seems a safe conclusion that by the second or third anniversary of the September 11 attacks we will have a blue-ribbon report proposing intelligence reforms. That is all well and good, but some urgent steps to enhance our national security can and must be made now. After eight years of budget and personnel cuts, the Central Intelligence Agency is belatedly recruiting the largest class of new spymasters since the Vietnam era. These are the future case officers whose task is to recruit and handle the spies who will give us inside knowledge of foreign governments and terrorist groups. Make no mistake: Today's recruits are not the same caliber that the CIA employed in its pre-Church Committee and pre-Pike Report heyday. To meet politically correct recruitment quotas, the CIA's written tests to qualify for the Career Training Program have been, like the State Department's Foreign Service Exam, dumbed-down. Gone is the CIA foreign language aptitude test. Less knowledge of world history is now required to pass. As a result, CIA instructors say the current crop of case officer trainees lack the requisite "worldliness" and leadership qualities to inspire potential spies to place their lives in the hands of the CIA. One insider remarks that the CIA, unlike the elite agency it once was, is now "no different than the Department of Agriculture." Recently, a case officer who ranked at the top of his class in the 1980s and has excellent performance reviews in difficult assignments was told he would have to remain at the same grade because "diversity requirements" meant more women or minorities had to advance before he could be promoted. This must end. The first task in reforming America's intelligence capabilities is to upgrade the quality of the case officer recruits. The CIA's affirmative action office should be abolished. Recruitment and promotion of CIA case officers should be based solely on merit.
A related weakness of today's CIA is the myth that "ethnic" spymasters - case officers with racial or religious backgrounds similar to the spies they will handle - are most effective. One award-winning white male case officer recruited a panoply of multicultural spies, including several Third World heads of government, during his ongoing career. Another white male from the Baptist-dominated South, Milt Bearden, put together the most successful covert action plan in the CIA's history that eventually drove the Soviets from Afghanistan. To do so, Mr. Bearden won the trust of Muslim Pakistani intelligence officers and Afghan mujaheddin. An African-American operative with the nomme de guerre "The Lion of the North" inspired devout allegiance from Asian tribesmen during the CIA's war in Laos. Many, if not most, potential spies targeted for recruitment want to trust their safety to a stereotypical American, not necessarily someone who reflects their mirror image. Character matters more to a case officer's success than superficial characteristics. Espionage, like romance, flourishes across racial, ethnic, and religious lines. Case officers liken recruiting agents to seduction. The way to get close to a target is to adopt a shared interest, whether it's piloting gliders or indulging a foreign diplomat's taste for rare cheeses. In places with troubled histories like the Balkans, Africa, or Pakistan, a common ethnic background can complicate recruitments. A target may worry that an ethnic spymaster has a stake in her ancestors' regional grudges. Chauvinism is also a problem. Yet today's politically correct CIA sends female case officers to try to recruit Muslim men, as if the workaday world of spies operated under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's workplace rules.
Just as important as upgrading the caliber of CIA officers is changing how they are deployed. Case officers normally work under diplomatic cover in embassies and consulates abroad. This makes them relatively easy to identify, and renders it virtually impossible for them to blend deeply into the local landscape. The remedy is to rely more on officers with "non-official" cover, sometimes called deep cover, as is done by the British, French and Russian intelligence services. Until the 1970s, the CIA had thousands of such spies working under "proprietary" fronts across the world. Most were assumed compromised and dismissed after the CIA had to disclose details of these operations to hostile congressional investigative committees. This operational capability has never been fully reconstituted.
One way to restore this capability is to jettison the cutoff age of 34 for CIA case officer trainees. The emphasis on youth is a legacy from the agency's paramilitary roots in the wartime OSS. The Foreign Service recruits diplomats of all ages. The CIA should do the same in order to immediately expand the pool of talented linguists and those with overseas experience capable of serving in this time of need.
To improve America's intelligence, we need the best spymasters the nation can produce. That starts at the top. The current deputy director of operations, John Plavitch, lacks the depth of knowledge and imagination to steer the revitalized clandestine services. If he cannot be replaced by a deputy director of operations "street man" familiar with field operations, a talented outsider like former Lockheed Martin President Norm Augustine might do. None of these reforms should wait until the blue-ribbon, independent commission issues its findings.
• [Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of editorials addressing needed reforms within the intelligence community.]
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Lebanon Court Sentences Accused Spies for Israel
October 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-lebanon-israel-spies.html
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese military court has sentenced six men convicted of spying for Israel on Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas and the Lebanese and Syrian armies to terms ranging from a year in prison to death.
A statement from the court issued late Monday said Hassan Hashem, a former official of Lebanon's Shi'ite Amal militia who was the most prominent of the defendants, had been sentenced to three years of hard labor. One defendant tried in absentia received a death sentence.
The men were arrested earlier this year and accused of running a spy network that gave Israel information on Hizbollah activities, as well as on Lebanese and Syrian military positions and certain Lebanese political figures and financial institutions.
Prosecutors accused them of coordinating intelligence gathering through meetings with Israeli officials at embassies in Europe. Seven men were charged in the case, but there was no mention of the seventh in the verdict.
Syria, which has about 20,000 troops and effective control in Lebanon, is the main patron of Hizbollah, whose guerrillas helped end the Jewish state's 22-year-long military occupation of south Lebanon in May 2000.
Israel assassinated Hizbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992, and kidnapped senior guerrilla leaders Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustapha al-Dirani in commando raids in 1989 and 1994.
Last year the Lebanese army detained 12 people for allegedly spying for Israel -- with which Lebanon is officially at war -- and accused them of gathering information on Hizbollah.
-------- un
U.N., Iraq Agree on Inspection Terms
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
OCTOBER 01, 15:23 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=iraq&SLUG=WEAPONS%2dINSPECTORS%2dIRAQ
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - U.N. inspectors reached agreement with Iraq on Tuesday about a new mission to reassess Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq said it expected an advance party in Baghdad in two weeks.
The Iraqis did not, however, bend to growing pressure from the United States and Britain to open Saddam Hussein's palaces and other so-called presidential sites to surprise inspections, which were banned under an agreement negotiated between Iraq and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1998. The United States and other Security Council members agreed to the deal at the time.
``The Iraqi representatives declared that Iraq accepts all the rights of inspection provided for in all the relevant Security Council resolutions,'' chief inspector Hans Blix told reporters. ``There is a willingness to accept inspections that has not existed before.''
In what was seen as a concession by Iraq, the talks resulted in ``assurances from the Iraqis that we will have unconditional access to all sites,'' except the presidential sites, said Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the Vienna-based Atomic Energy Agency, where the talks were held.
In addition to the presidential sites, Baghdad had previously put a number of other locations off-limits to surprise visits, including the headquarters of the Republic Guard and Defense Ministry.
The United States says all sites must be open to inspections on demand and wants the United Nations to adopt a new resolution outlining that position as well as the approval of military action if Saddam does not comply.
The Iraqi chief negotiator, Gen. Amir al-Sadi, said the issue of surprise inspections of Saddam's palaces and other presidential sites was ``not a subject on the agenda.''
``Quite honestly I don't understand why it is so critical,'' al-Sadi said.
Immediately after the Vienna agreement was announced, the State Department said any inspections should be deferred until the Security Council adopts a new resolution. However, spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration had no objection to inspectors making arrangements in advance.
As promised, the Iraqis handed over four CDs containing a backlog of monitoring reports for suspect sites and items, spanning June 1998 to July 2002, Blix said. Although that information was not yet analyzed, it would provide important clues about Iraqi weapons activity, he said.
Blix was asked if the results of the two-day meeting were a rebuff to the United States and its ally, Britain.
The chief inspector said he would not be so ``presumptuous'' as to rebuff anyone and that he would report in ``all humility'' to the Security Council Thursday.
Once Blix reports, the council would have to decide on the inspectors' return and probably will be faced with a vote on a tough, new U.S.-British resolution.
But Russia, China and France, the three other permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, oppose issuing threats before inspectors can test Iraq's sincerity.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Monday that France was still interested in a first resolution demanding a return to inspections, followed by a second resolution threatening military action if Iraq fails to comply.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a strong statement Tuesday backing the United States.
``Let us lay down the ultimatum. Let Saddam comply with the will of the U.N.,'' Blair said in a tough speech to a convention of his governing Labor Party.
``If we lose our collective will to deal with it, we will lose the authority not of the United States or of Britain, but of the United Nations,'' Blair said.
At a regular weekly Cabinet meeting led by Saddam in Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials discussed the American efforts toward a new resolution.
``If those evil people think that the war drums that are beating can force Iraq to give up its national rights, its rights according to the U.N. charter and to the (past) Security Council resolutions, they are under an illusion,'' Iraqi TV quoted the unidentified spokesman as saying after the meeting.
Nearly four years ago, inspectors withdrew from Iraq on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes amid allegations that Baghdad was not cooperating with the teams.
By the end of the 1991 Gulf War, IAEA assessments indicated Saddam was six months away from building an atomic bomb. Inspectors discovered the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.
Over the next six years, inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents.
On the Net:
IAEA: http://www.iaea.org
-------- us
Report: U.S. troops at high risk in chemical or biological attacks
Associated Press,
October 1, 2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-10-01-us-troops-chemical-protection_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. troops are at risk of needless deaths in a chemical or biological attack because of inadequate training or protective gear, congressional and Defense Department investigators told a House panel Tuesday.
Democrats opposing a possible invasion of Iraq cited those problems as more reason to oppose President Bush's request for a congressional go-ahead for the use of military force. Bush accuses Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of stockpiling chemical and biological weapons in violation of U.N. resolutions demanding that Iraq disarm.
"Are we exposing our men and women at this point to contamination, ... knowing that we cannot protect them?" asked Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif. "I'm not going to support going blindly into warfare that could result in great bodily harm to our fighting men and women."
Investigators from the General Accounting Office and the Pentagon's inspector general said the military has problems keeping track of its protective gear, supplying enough protective equipment to troops and training them in how to work in a contaminated environment.
"The survival of our service members and military operations in a chemical or biological environment may be at risk," Raymond Decker of the GAO told a House Government Reform national security subcommittee hearing.
Decker and Joseph Schmitz, the Defense Department inspector general, said their reports on problems with chemical and biological protection were largely classified. They cited these unclassified details:
·The Defense Department has not accounted for up to 250,000 defective protective suits. Military officials told the panel there was a low risk those suits would be used in combat.
·The military has shortages of some important protective gear and has not met internal requirements for the number of full protective ensembles, which include gas masks, hoods, suits, boots and gloves.
·Many units have had insufficient training in how to deal with chemical or biological attacks, and the military has implemented only recently requirements that units submit reports on their chemical and biological training. Marine Corps and Air Force training is "more robust" than Army and Navy training, Schmitz said.
The Defense Department recalled almost 800,000 protective suits in 2000 after warnings from internal investigators about defects including holes, improper stitching and embedded foreign objects in the fabric. All were made by a bankrupt New York company, Istratex, whose top officials later pleaded guilty to federal charges.
The Defense Logistics Agency has accounted for about 550,000 of the defective suits, agency official George Allen told the House panel. The agency has offered free shipping and has sent reminder notices to military commanders as recently as a month ago to recover the defective suits, Allen said.
He and Army Maj. Gen. William Bond, a chemical and biological defense official, said remaining defective suits probably would not be in the hands of front-line units.
The military currently has about 4.5 million sets of protective gear, including 1.5 million of the latest version, known as the Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology, or JSLIST.
All four military services have shortages of some items, Decker said, and the shortages are to worsen as older equipment passes expiration dates, he said.
Pentagon officials also said training has improved for chemical and biological attacks. Officers in Central Command - the regional command that covers Iraq, Afghanistan and surrounding areas - are particularly keen to ensure their troops are trained and equipped for chemical or biological warfare, inspector general Schmitz said.
Training has been inadequate for other units, Decker said. Commanders are often reluctant to have troops train with protective gear because it is time-consuming and restricts the soldiers' abilities to do their jobs, he said.
"I'm not convinced that the realism and degree of training that has to happen ... is taking place," Decker said.
----
U.S. forces get OK to use CIA methods
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021001-46068571.htm
American commandos hunting Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas in Afghanistan have gained permission to employ new clandestine tactics that typically are confined to the CIA in the shadows of war.
Administration and military sources said that in recent weeks the covert warriors received authority from commanders in the United States to conduct "source operations," a special-operations term for a number of classified war tactics.
Source operations generally refer to recruiting and maintaining spies within the enemy's camp. In Afghanistan, it will mean finding Afghans and Arabs, possibly within the Taliban and al Qaeda network, who would supply intelligence to U.S. special-operations forces.
But source operations also refers to a number of other classified tactics that can be employed in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. The U.S. military estimates there may be 1,000 or more of Osama bin Laden's terrorists still on the loose in the region.
The authorization is part of a much broader plan to toughen the war against terrorists by allowing commandos to do more clandestine missions in more places overseas.
In July, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., to accelerate the war against al Qaeda and other terror groups by devising a new war plan. Mr. Rumsfeld, who wants al Qaeda members captured or killed at a faster rate, desires a mechanism for the United States to identify and locate terrorists, then dispatch covert warriors in a matter of hours, not days or weeks.
"They are going to use some special-forces-unique skills to track them down," said a military officer involved in war planning who asked not to be named. "There are certain skills and capabilities that are not publicly associated with special forces."
An administration source said, "There are some initiatives that are very, very sensitive."
Source operations may involve finding spies or using a released detainee to spread disinformation.
A second military officer said in an interview that source operations mean that Army Special Forces soldiers, the Green Berets, will shift from informal contacts with local informants to a more structured relationship that could involve exchanging money for information and regular meeting times and places.
"It's making friends and giving them a tip for a tip," the officer said.
Any significant information would be turned over to the CIA, which has officers and paramilitary people deployed throughout the region.
Commandos in Afghanistan are part of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force that has headquarters near Bagram air base north of Kabul, with camps near Kandahar in the south and Khost in the east.
The task force is a combined force of Army Green Berets, Delta Force and Navy SEALs, including its crack counterterrorism unit, the naval special-warfare development group that used to be known as SEAL Team Six. Foreign nations, including New Zealand and Australia, also assigned some of their best "hunters and killers" to the group.
Some units have complained they are not getting good intelligence on al Qaeda and Taliban locations from either the CIA or the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.
Sources say the source operations approval is an attempt to improve the intelligence take.
Units are also wary of "walk-ins," locals who provide information but sometimes have an ax to grind with a rival and want the special operators to do their dirty work.
Much of the hunting for senior Taliban and al Qaeda members is being conducted by a unit called Task Force 11, composed mostly of Delta Force soldiers and SEALs.
The warriors are based at Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which is commanded by Army Maj. Gen. Del Dailey and located at Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Green Berets and the 82nd Airborne Division.
A 2000 U.S. Special Operations Command posture statement says JSOC is "designed to study special-operations requirements and techniques" and "plan and conduct joint special-operations exercises and training; and develop joint special-operations tactics."
Those benign-sounding words mask the command's role as headquarters for super-secret elite units, such as Delta, that specialize in quick raids and deadly tactics.
Special Operations Command is requesting a big budget increase and 9,000 personnel, in addition to the current 47,000, during the next five years to carry out what Mr. Rumsfeld says will be a long war.
----
Navy combat systems unsafe?
Chief tester says weapons deployed before 'acceptable'
October 1, 2002
By Jon Dougherty
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29113
The Navy's chief weapons evaluator says a number of the service's combat systems are being deployed before they have demonstrated an "acceptable" level of performance.
"I am concerned about an apparent trend by the Navy to deploy an increasing number of combat systems into harm's way that have not demonstrated acceptable performance during adequate operation test and evaluation," said Thomas P. Christie, in an Aug. 1 letter to Navy Secretary Gordon England.
Navy Secretary Gordon England
"I strongly recommend that you adopt a policy of deploying new combat systems after they have demonstrated appropriate performance during adequate operational test and evaluation," he wrote.
Specifically, Christie charged that the Navy's Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), three F/A-18E/F systems, the BQQ-10 submarine sonar system, the acoustic rapid COTS insertion (ARCI), and one classified system - "the advanced targeting and designating forward looking infrared system (ATFLIR)" - may be defective.
The F/A-18E/F "Super Hornet," manufactured by Boeing Inc., is the Navy's most advanced fighter aircraft. The first squadron has been assigned to the carrier U.S.S Abraham Lincoln on a six-month mission to the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, just as the U.S. is gearing up for war against Iraq.
A failure of the plane's systems "could seriously affect a pilot's ability to locate and strike enemy targets," said Eric Miller, a defense investigator for the non-partisan watchdog group Project On Government Oversight, which discovered the memo.
"At a time when it is particularly important that our pilots be able to depend on their weapons, the Navy hasn't proven that these systems work," said Miller.
England's office had no comment on the memo, but one employee confirmed it was also sent to the office of the assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, John J. Young.
One of the three F-18 E and F model systems that concerned Christie included an unnamed classified system that flunked its operational test, but was still quickly deployed after Navy officials essentially dumbed-down testing requirements, according to a POGO analysis.
The government accountability group said the Joint Standoff Weapon systems were deployed aboard aircraft on another carrier, the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, without first demonstrating satisfactory performance.
The JSOW is replacing five types of the older air-to-ground "smart-bombs" currently in the naval inventory, said POGO, and it is "planned for use in not only the F-18, but also the F-16, B-52 and B-2 aircraft."
Meanwhile, the BQQ-10 sonar, an upgrade to existing submarine sonar technology, is designed for use on the Navy's new Virginia-class attack submarine of the future, but is being used on board some of today's attack submarines.
Threats to U.S. Navy submarines in the Persian Gulf theater are virtually non-existent, but some nations - Iran, especially - are attempting to develop a better submarine capability.
Boeing delivered its 100th Super Hornet model to the Navy June 14. In June 2000, Boeing and the Navy signed a multiyear procurement contract for 222 aircraft through 2004. Officials are currently discussing a second multi-year contract with the Navy as well, Boeing said.
The aircraft company is the world's largest manufacturer of satellites, commercial jetliners and military aircraft. Total company revenues for 2001 were $58 billion.
Jon E. Dougherty is a staff reporter and columnist for WorldNetDaily, and author of the special report, "Election 2000: How the Military Vote Was Suppressed."
----
Problems Cited in Soldiers' Gear
New York Times
October 1, 2002
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/politics/01GAO.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (Bloomberg News) - The federal program to protect soldiers from chemical and biological attacks is flawed, a Congressional audit has found.
The Pentagon's system for tracking protective gear is confused, said the General Accounting Office, the auditing arm of Congress, in a report that is to be presented on Tuesday to a House panel on national security.
The Pentagon says it has nearly 1.5 million sets of trousers and jackets and cannot account for all of them or for the gloves and boots that complete the protective outfit, it noted. The audit also cites flaws in training programs.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
9/11 Panel Eyes Information Failure
October 1, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Aviation officials might have been able to stop two Sept. 11 hijackers previously linked to al-Qaida if they had been alerted by intelligence agencies, a Transportation Department official asserted Tuesday.
The State Department had placed the two men, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, on its watch list on Aug. 23, 2001, after receiving an alert from the CIA. But no such alert went to the Transportation Department and the men were not added to the FAA's separate watch list, said Claudio Manno, a Transportation Security Administration intelligence official.
Both men bought tickets in their own names for American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon.
``Had we had information that those two individuals presented a threat to aviation or posed a great danger, we would have put them on the list and they should have been picked up in the reservation process,'' he told the House and Senate intelligence committees. The panels are holding a joint inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks.
Manno testified as the committees heard a report from the staff director for the inquiry, Eleanor Hill, saying that legal, bureaucratic and cultural obstacles prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information with the government departments that needed it most, including the FAA and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In a separate development Tuesday, the Justice Department's inspector general criticized the FBI for failing to produce a comprehensive written assessment of the terrorism risk to the nation. The assessment is useful in defining the nature, likelihood and severity of the threat, to identify gaps in intelligence and to allocate resources.
An executive summary of the classified inspector general's review said the FBI had developed a draft report by September 2001 that described terrorist organizations and their state sponsors. But it did not examine the threat and risk of an attack on the United States.
``Among the report's many omissions are assessments of the training, skill level, resources, sophistication, specific capabilities, intent, likelihood of attack, and potential targets of terrorist groups,'' the summary said. ``Further, the draft report does not discuss the methods that terrorists might use'' and there is no analysis of terrorists' progress in developing or acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.
At the congressional hearing, Hill said the FAA, INS and other governmental agencies were not given all the information they needed to prevent terrorist attacks.
``The reasons for this reluctance to share range from a legitimate concern about the protection of intelligence sources and methods to a lack of understanding of the functions of other agencies,'' she said.
In the case of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, Hill noted that the INS received an alert about the two future hijackers in August 2001. But the alert ``was not accompanied by any specific notation that indicated that the INS should use all means possible to find these two suspects.''
INS officials said if they had been told to put the highest priority on the search, they might have found the men before the attacks. Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had been identified by the CIA as having attended an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000.
In another example of the failure to share information, a memo written by a Phoenix FBI agent in July 2001 warning that al-Qaida may be training terrorist pilots in the United States was not turned over to the FAA until long after the attacks.
``I don't think there is a more graphic example with how dysfunctional this system is,'' said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. ``You can't explain that to the public, that something that important, that significant was available in the summer of 2001, can't find its way to your agency until May 2002.''
Hill also said that while the FAA had issued circulars warning the airline industry about the possibility that terrorists might hijack planes or plant explosives, ``none, however, have been found that discussed crashing planes into buildings.''
Asked why that possibility wasn't considered since it was known since 1994 that airplanes could be used as weapons, Manno said the industry was kept apprised of threats, including the possibility of suicide attacks.
Manno and officials from the INS and other agencies told the committees about efforts to improve communications and cooperation, especially since the attacks. But Baltimore's police commissioner, Edward Norris, said local police chiefs still are not being told of federal investigations in their communities, despite being on the front lines of the fight against domestic terrorism.
``Who do we think needs to know more than the chiefs who protect the cities' citizens?'' he said. ``We need to know more than anybody in this country what's going on in our cities, yet we don't.''
-------- courts
Europeans to Exempt U.S. From War Court
New York Times
October 1, 2002
By PAUL MELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/international/europe/01EURO.html
BRUSSELS, Sept 30 - The 15 nations of the European Union agreed today to exempt American soldiers and government officials from prosecution for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, an issue that had troubled trans-Atlantic relations for several months.
The compromise, reached at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers, came close to the blanket immunity for American government employees sought by the Bush administration, although European officials emphasized that in their view it did not undermine the court, which the administration has opposed.
"There is no concession," said Per Stig Moller, foreign minister of Denmark, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union. "There is no undermining of the International Criminal Court."
At a briefing in Washington, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said: "We'll study the details of the European Union's decision very closely, and we'll look forward to discussing it in more detail with member states."
Diplomats said today's deal had been pushed hardest by Britain and by Italy and Spain, whose conservative governments are ideologically closer to the Bush administration than, say, the German government.
France, Germany, Belgium and Sweden offered the stiffest resistance to any form of exemption for American citizens, diplomats said.
The deal that the 15 governments agreed to prevents them from extraditing American government employees accused of war crimes to the court, on the condition that the United States government guarantee that such a suspect would be tried in an American court.
The Bush administration has been pressing governments around the world to sign bilateral agreements not to send American citizens to the International Criminal Court, which is an outgrowth of the ad hoc tribunals set up by the United Nations, with American support, to try war crimes committed in the Balkans and in Rwanda in the 1990's.
The administration fears that with the creation of a permanent court to try alleged war crimes committed anywhere in the world, Americans in peacekeeping or overseas military operations could become targets of politically motivated trials.
Several American nongovernmental organizations have banded together to support formation of the new international court, and their representatives said they were disappointed by today's agreement.
"We are disappointed the E.U. did not take a stronger position amid pressure from the United States, but we agree the I.C.C. has not been de-legitimised by this agreement," said Heather Hamilton, spokeswoman for the World Federalist Association, one of the groups.
Today's agreement allows any European Union nation to sign a separate bilateral agreement with the United States over the court. Germany has been a staunch opponent of this, but Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer noted that today's accord "is very important because the Milosevics and Pinochets of tomorrow will be brought to justice," referring to the former authoritarian leaders of Yugoslavia and Chile.
Britain and Italy are believed to be considering signing bilateral agreements with the United Sates, but diplomats said today's agreement makes such a move less likely. "The E.U. does now appear united on this question," said one diplomat, although differences remain beneath the surface of the compromise.
"This unity could turn out to be no more than skin deep if individual E.U. members go ahead and sign agreements with the United States," the diplomat said.
So far, 12 countries outside the European Union have promised not to extradite American citizens to the court.
The European Union is among those who pushed hardest for an international court, under the auspices of the United Nations, to deal with cases involving genocide, atrocities, war crimes and systematic human rights abuses. More than 80 countries have ratified the court's founding treaty. Notable exceptions include the United States, Israel and most Arab countries.
The court will be based in The Hague, where Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, is on trial on charges that he committed war crimes during the Balkan wars of the 1990's.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Contest seeks to focus interest on solar energy
Story by Manuela Badawy
REUTERS USA:
October 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17973/story.htm
NEW YORK - However unstable the oil-producing regions of the world become, an alternative energy source like solar power can't seem to shake the perception that it's too expensive.
That's why students from across the United States kicked off a competition in Washington last week to build a "solar village" and prove solar power is viable.
Ten years ago, solar energy cost 40 to 50 cents per kilowatt hour, or four to five times more than conventional energy, said Richard King, director of the Solar Decathlon program at the U.S. Energy Department's Solar Energy Technology Office.
"Although solar is not yet at equal par with the overly inexpensive fossil fuels that are sold to Americans, today it's only about two times more expensive, and it's getting more affordable with time," he said.
The corporate and government sponsors of the so-called Solar Decathlon hope the event will show architects, energy companies, and consumers how solar energy could, with time, technology and finance, become a viable energy source for Americans.
Sales of solar energy generation reached 100 megawatts last year, nearly six times as much as 10 years ago, and is projected to produce 1000 megawatts in 2010, according to Energy Department data.
That would still be a fraction of the 786,000 megawatts of electricity produced in 1999 in the United States.
"The renewable market is formative at the moment, so a lot of people don't understand the advantages of solar installation, but we hope that this two-week period will help spark interest in the solar business," said John Mogford of BP, the world's No. 1 solar energy producer and a sponsor of the event.
From Thursday through Oct. 6, 14 teams of students will converge on the National Mall to design, build and operate solar-powered houses that could be sold for between $150,000 to $200,000. Designs will be judged for lighting, refrigeration, livability, hot water, and interior comfort.
"Renewables are going to be playing a larger role by 2020 as the cost of fossil fuels will rise, and in another generation or two they will start to disappear," King said.
While renewable energy currently supplies only 4 percent of total U.S. energy demand, solar energy advocates say it could be, over time, an economic alternative to fossil fuels and improve the quality of life. It also would make the U.S. energy supply more secure, advocates argue.
The United States consumes more energy than all of Western Europe. Advocates say solar energy presents one way to reduce the need for fossil fuels to power residential and commercial buildings - currently 37 percent of overall U.S. consumption.
And with crude oil prices soaring above $30 a barrel, due to growing fears of a U.S. attack on Iraq, Mogford said interest in more reliable sources of energy is picking up.
"Time is on our side, we are going to be the ones left in the end. The sun will be here 2 billion years from now, no way fossil fuels will be," King said.
----
Japanese Fuel Cell Cars Headed for U.S.
October 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-01-09.asp#anchor4
WASHINGTON, DC, Japanese auto manufacturers plan to offer fuel cell vehicles for sale or lease in the U.S. before the end of this year.
Monday's issue of "Japan Auto Trends," the newsletter of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA), says that Japan's automakers will be the first to offer commercial versions of hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Honda and Toyota are both gearing up to sell or lease fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. and Japan by the end of 2002. In July, the Honda FCX became the first fuel cell vehicle in the world to receive government certification from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Honda will start marketing the FCX in both Japan and the U.S. at the end of this year. The Honda FCX, which has a top speed of 90 miles per hour, will be equipped with hydrogen tanks large enough to power it for 220 miles on a single fill.
Toyota plans to offer leases on fuel cell powered sport utility vehicles by the end of 2002. Toyota's U.S. model will be based on the Highlander SUV and have a top speed of 90 miles per hour.
Nissan will enter the commercial vehicle fuel cell market in fiscal year 2003. General Motors Japan plans to road test its HydroGen3 Opel Zafira fuel cell electric vehicle in Japan next year.
Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is kicking off a three year "Japan Hydrogen Fuel Cell Demonstration Project," aimed at showing that hydrogen is safe, effective and environmentally friendly. The project will also demonstrate how to operate the infrastructure needed to distribute the hydrogen fuel.
"In addition to the limited system for supplying hydrogen, we still lack the test and other data to accommodate fuel cell cars in a variety of environments," said Toyota vice president Akihiko Saito.
"Japan Auto Trends" is available at: http://www.jama.org Japanese Fuel Cell Cars Headed for U.S.
WASHINGTON, DC, October 1, 2002 (ENS) - Japanese auto manufacturers plan to offer fuel cell vehicles for sale or lease in the U.S. before the end of this year.
Monday's issue of "Japan Auto Trends," the newsletter of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA), says that Japan's automakers will be the first to offer commercial versions of hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Honda and Toyota are both gearing up to sell or lease fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. and Japan by the end of 2002. In July, the Honda FCX became the first fuel cell vehicle in the world to receive government certification from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Honda will start marketing the FCX in both Japan and the U.S. at the end of this year. The Honda FCX, which has a top speed of 90 miles per hour, will be equipped with hydrogen tanks large enough to power it for 220 miles on a single fill.
Toyota plans to offer leases on fuel cell powered sport utility vehicles by the end of 2002. Toyota's U.S. model will be based on the Highlander SUV and have a top speed of 90 miles per hour.
Nissan will enter the commercial vehicle fuel cell market in fiscal year 2003. General Motors Japan plans to road test its HydroGen3 Opel Zafira fuel cell electric vehicle in Japan next year.
Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is kicking off a three year "Japan Hydrogen Fuel Cell Demonstration Project," aimed at showing that hydrogen is safe, effective and environmentally friendly. The project will also demonstrate how to operate the infrastructure needed to distribute the hydrogen fuel.
"In addition to the limited system for supplying hydrogen, we still lack the test and other data to accommodate fuel cell cars in a variety of environments," said Toyota vice president Akihiko Saito.
"Japan Auto Trends" is available at: http://www.jama.org
----
Origin Energy blown over by wind power
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
October 1, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17977/story.htm
MELBOURNE - Australian power company Origin Energy said yesterday it will buy the entire electricity output from Australia's largest wind farm Challicum Hills.
The company also secured an option to acquire a 50 percent stake in Challicum Hills, near Ararat in Victoria state, which is due to begin producing 52.5 megawatts of power from mid-2003.
"The 100 percent clean energy from the wind farms will supply our growing Green Earth customer demand for clean electricity," Origin's Executive General Manager Retail Peter Vines said in a statement.
Origin has also agreed to buy the 30 megawatts produced by Yambuk wind farm, near Portland in Victoria state, which will be operational by 2003.
The power produced by Challicum Hills and Yambuk, which are both owned by Pacific Hydro Ltd , will be enough to supply the needs of more than 42,000 homes annually, Origin said.
Pacific Hydro said the Challicum Hills project is to consist of 35 wind energy generators, which will be the first supplied under the 600 megawatt agreement between the company and Danish wind generator manufacturer NEG Micon.
"This is the first step in a process that will ultimately see a vibrant local wind energy manufacturing industry established in regional Victoria," Pacific Hydro Managing Director Jeff Harding said.
Shares in Origin were trading down 1.4 percent at A$3.55, while Pacific Hydro shares were down 1.5 percemt at A$3.30 in line with a weaker broader market.
----
Green Power Purchases Honored
October 1, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-01-09.asp#anchor10
WASHINGTON, DC, Organizations who have bought electricity from renewable sources were honored Monday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The businesses and organizations were recognized for their green power purchases at two different events scheduled to coincide with the seventh National Green Power Marketing Conference in Washington, DC.
"These efforts to support clean, renewable energy show that environmental stewardship can also mean good business," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. "This Administration believes that through partnerships with industry - such as the Green Power Partnership - we can harness the creativity and innovation of industry - and put it to work for the environment."
Green power is electricity generated by renewable sources such as solar, wind, water, geothermal, biomass and biogas. Partners in the program must pledge a switch to Green Power for a portion of their electricity needs within the next year. In return, EPA provides technical assistance and public recognition.
Several of the honorees are located in Washington DC, including the headquarters of the National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy, and the U.S. Army - Walter Reed Army Medical Center, among others.
Green Power Leadership Awards were presented to eight organizations, with the top two awards going to Kinko's and the city of Chicago. Kinko's is purchasing green power for stores in states across the country. The city of Chicago decided to obtain one fifth of its electricity from green power sources.
The Green Power Leadership Awards are part of the recognition offered through the Green Power Partnership, a voluntary program working to standardize green power purchasing. The partnership provides technical assistance and public recognition to organizations that commit to using green power for a portion of their electricity needs.
The program now has more than 80 partners, including Fortune 500 companies, states, federal agencies, trade associations and universities.
Partners in the Green Power Partnership have made a combined total commitment to procuring over 500 million kilowatt hours of green power a year. If generated by conventional means, the emissions associated with that much electricity would include over 800 million pounds of carbon dioxide. That is about the same amount of carbon dioxide absorbed each year by 100,000 acres of forest, or the annual emissions of about 80,000 cars.
More information about the Green Power Partnership is available at: http://www.epa.gov/greenpower
-------- health
AIDS in 5 Nations Called Security Threat
New York Times
October 1, 2002
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/health/01IMMU.html
LANGLEY, Va., Sept. 30 - Rates of infection from the AIDS virus in five of the world's most populous countries are rising so fast that they pose potential security threats to their regions and to the United States, a group that advises the Central Intelligence Agency said here today.
The countries - China, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Russia - have 40 percent of the world's population and by 2010 will have more H.I.V.-infected people than any other five countries, an agency official said.
By 2010, the number of infected people in those countries will grow to an estimated 50 million to 75 million, from the current estimate of 14 million to 23 million, said the group, the National Intelligence Council. It is composed of individuals from the government and academic and private sectors.
H.I.V., the AIDS virus, could harm the economic, social, political and military structure in each of the five countries, a C.I.A. official said in releasing the declassified parts of the council's report.
H.I.V. would spark tensions over spending priorities, driving up health care costs and sharpening military manpower shortages, Dr. David F. Gordon, a C.I.A. official and the report's author, said at a news conference at the intelligence agency's headquarters here.
For instance, Dr. Gordon said, the AIDS epidemic in Russia is likely to help shape how that country emerges in the post-Soviet era. Up to one-third of prospective conscripts to Russia's military services are deemed unfit for service because of H.I.V. or chronic hepatitis from drug use, the report said.
Dr. Gordon said the AIDS epidemic could generate political tensions in Nigeria, a major oil producer. He also said the epidemic could weaken Nigeria's peacekeeping role for the United Nations in Africa.
Nigeria's leadership has been the most active among the five countries in trying to raise awareness about AIDS, in part by publicly warning about the risk of "extinction" of Africa's population, the report said.
"The Nigerian military, concerned about the loss of key personnel from AIDS, now mandates training about the disease for soldiers," it said.
In Ethiopia, many soldiers contracted H.I.V. during the civil war in the 1980's by having contact with multiple sex partners. When the war ended in 1991, thousands of infected soldiers and prostitutes returned home, spreading H.I.V. and AIDS in their villages and towns, and the threat continues, the report said.
Although the governments of China, India and Nigeria are beginning to focus more attention on the threat, it said, all five countries need "dramatic shifts in priorities" to control their epidemics by 2010 because the disease has built up significant momentum, health services are inadequate and the cost of education and treatment will be overwhelming.
The report was given to the governments of each of the five countries about two months ago as a measure to help them combat their epidemics, Dr. Gordon said. Although replies have not been received, the group looks forward to a dialogue with the countries, he said.
Dr. Gordon now directs transnational issues for the C.I.A.
The AIDS epidemic is in a different stage of development in each country, but in all of them it is in a much earlier stage than it is in the worst-affected areas in central and southern Africa. In all five countries, risky sexual behaviors are fueling the epidemic, but the rates of spread differ, the agency said.
H.I.V. is spreading to wider circles through heterosexual sex in India, the movement of infected migrated workers in China and frequent amnesty releases of large numbers of infected prison inmates and rising prostitution in Russia.
The council said that in deriving its estimates, it gathered data from governments and nongovernmental organizations and consulted extensively with scientific and AIDS experts in and out of the American government. But it did not collaborate with the governments of the five countries.
The report cautioned that there was a strong likelihood that the inconsistent use of anti-H.I.V. drugs and the manufacture in foreign countries of unregulated, substandard drugs would probably lead to greater spread of drug-resistant strains of H.I.V.
The report is the latest in a series of papers by the National Intelligence Council on AIDS since the late 1980's. It expands on one the group issued in December 1999 on the global threat of infectious diseases, including H.I.V., on the United States. The United States has declared the global epidemic of AIDS a national security threat.
The findings also generally affirm a similar bleak warning issued by the United Nations at the 14th international conference on AIDS in Barcelona, Spain, in July, its first long-range forecast of the global epidemic. At that time, the United Nations said AIDS would claim an additional 65 million lives by 2020, more than triple the number who died in the first 20 years of the epidemic, unless more countries vastly expanded their prevention programs.
-------- ACTIVISTS
IMF protester protests 'ruthless' police
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 1, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021001-1441347.htm
I would like to give my own perspective on Saturday's Page One coverage of the International Monetary Fund protest arrests ("Cops handle protesters; city stays open"). I was among the hundreds of people wrongfully arrested in Freedom Plaza on Friday. I was standing in the park with signs expressing my disagreement with the proposed U.S. policy against Iraq when I turned around to see a circle of police officers closing in. I asked at several points along the police line if I could please leave the park, and each time, I was ordered to get back in the park, orders that were underscored with brandished billy clubs. Even up to the last moment, when the police funneled the whole crowd toward waiting buses, I asked an officer if there was any way I could leave, and he directed me toward officers with handcuffs. I was arrested and detained for more than 30 hours, in part because of the police department's sloth-like ineptitude, but also because of the department's planned tactic to hold people as long as possible so they wouldn't be able to protest the next day. While in custody, I was shackled hand to foot, harassed and intimidated by officers, denied food for 18 hours and lied to about my legal rights. I fail to understand how I could be charged with failure to obey an officer because every time an officer told me to stay in the park, I did, and I was never ordered to disperse, an order I would have obeyed eagerly. Chief Charles H. Ramsey's claim that there was such an order is an outright lie. Among those arrested with me were reporters, nurses attending a convention, people on their way to work and students observing the demonstration for a class. If an order to disperse had been given, wouldn't you think that these bystanders would have promptly chosen not to have a day of their lives stolen by the D.C. police? I'm ashamed and angry to live in a city and country where dissent is so ruthlessly punished.
NOREEN McAULIFFE
Washington
----
NATION IN BRIEF - Nebraska
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
Washington Post; Page A10
From News Services
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25092-2002Sep30?language=printer
LINCOLN, Neb. -- A federal judge fined Nebraska $151 million for thwarting a plan to open a radioactive waste dump in a remote county. U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf agreed with utilities and other states that sued former governor Ben Nelson, accusing him of acting in bad faith when he refused to issue a license for the multi-state dump in 1998. The state argued during a trial that Nebraska denied the license because of pollution concerns and a high water table near the proposed site. But Kopf noted that when Nelson campaigned for the Senate, he "proudly claimed that 'I kept the nuclear waste out of Nebraska.' "
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What are willing to do for peace?
The Iraq Peace Team - 'Good' Americans in Iraq
by Ramzi Kysia
NY Independent -
October 2002
From: Rebekah Crown <rebekah@videotron.ca>
(by way of Marita McComiskey) [mothersforpeace] from a pacifist in Iraq
You get what you pay for in life. What are you willing to pay for peace?
With George Bush as president, it doesn't seem to be a problem any of us will ever have to face again, but you can't be a pacifist only in peacetime. You can't be a pacifist by yelling at your tv set, or forwarding a million emails to everyone you know. Pacifism isn't that passive, it isn't that easy. It is, and always has been, by definition, a radical challenge to every element of worldly power and violence.
I'm in Iraq with a handful of other Americans: Eric Edgin, an Indiana college student; Nathan Mauger, a recent journalism graduate from Washington State; Farah Mokhtareizadeh, a Pennsylvania college student; Jon Rice, a history teacher from Chicago; Henry Williamson, a paramedic from South Carolina; and Joe Quandt, a writer from New York. More are joining us. By the end of October, we'll have over 30 people on our team. By December, our numbers will be over 100. We're here to tell the stories of the Iraqi people; to put our lives on the line to stop this war.
Living in Baghdad, you wouldn't know there was a war. The streets bustle with people on their way to work or school. In the evenings the parks are full of kids playing soccer, people visiting with family and friends. There are no tanks in the streets, no soldiers marching, no civil defense drills, and - other than foreigners like us - no one here seems to be stocking up on food or water. Is it denial? Disbelief? Some inner despair? I honestly don't know.
It's painful that Baghdad is so beautiful. There's a unique and striking blend of traditional and modern architecture. I love the city's parks, it's wide, tree-lined boulevards - each avenue sprouting date palms and poplars. This is truly a green city. I told a cab driver that Baghdad was a beautiful city. He just looked hard at me. "No," he said, "Baghdad is not beautiful. Baghdad is tired."
We hear it over and over again - just below the surface - a melody of melancholy, resignation, and fear. People quietly complain, "What more can America do to us?" We visit a high school, and the kids want to make absolutely sure we really understand that they're not natural-born killers or terrorists. A teacher lets us know that his 8-year-old asks him every day if today's the day he's going to die.
Ask an Iraqi about "liberation," and they'll laugh at you. It's bitter mirth. If the U.S. doesn't bomb the civilian infrastructure again, and if the government falls fast, and if the army doesn't break-up along ethnic and religious lines - then only a few thousand innocent people will be killed when George Bush starts his war. But if Bush bombs the water and power systems like his dad did in '91 - tens of thousands will die from the resulting epidemics. If the army falls apart, there could be a civil war that makes past conflicts in Lebanon or Bosnia look like schoolyard brawls. And if food aid distributed by the Iraqi government under the Oil-for-Food program is disrupted for more than a few weeks, UNICEF is warning there will be country-wide famine.
When will Americans wake up to the fact that we are not the only real people on this planet; that our security cannot depend on the insecurity of everyone else?
George Bush seems to be living out some comicbook fantasy, never sure of whether he's really the President, or just Alfred E. Neumann doing a poor impersonation. Donald Rumsfeld angrily denounces Iraq for having an "insatiable appetite" for weapons. This from a man whose budget for war is over 50 times the size of Iraq's entire economy. And Colin Powell criticizes the UN for forging an agreement to return weapons inspectors - 4 days after Bush demanded that the UN do it or become "irrelevant."
Have we failed to notice that the inmates are now running the asylum?
Some accuse us of being "fools" or "apologists" for the Iraqi government. We don't often have the opportunity to speak with officials here, but when we do we always raise concerns about prisons, extrajudicial killings, and state-directed violence.
That isn't to toot our own horn. Our status as Americans gives us this luxury, in a way that Iraqis do not have for themselves. That's uncomfortable and troubling, and if it strikes some as hypocritical for us to be here as pacifists, I can understand that. But it strikes me as much more hypocritical to speak out against a foreign government for killing innocents - while facilitating the killing of countless more by our own government through our silence and our tax dollars. We apologize for no one but ourselves. According to Human Rights Watch, Iraq has roughly 3,000 extrajudicial killings a year. According to UNICEF, U.S. policy kills over 50,000 Iraqi children every year. Both are terrible. They aren't equivalent.
My government may not care, they may be intent on war no matter what - but I refuse to be "irrelevant." I'm here. I choose to believe that if Americans knew what was being done in our names, we wouldn't allow it. The alternative is madness.
It's disgusting that millions of people being threatened with massive destruction isn't "news," and Americans joining them is. But if the only way to get anyone to pay attention is to be in Baghdad when the bombs fall, so be it. We're here.
Our hotel isn't fancy, but at least it isn't close to anything "strategic." Our risks are the same as the other 5 million people in Baghdad, the other 24 million people in Iraq. As our team's numbers grow, we'll turn the hotel into our own hostel - living 5 or 6 to a room.
We're volunteering with NGOs already working in Iraq, and we're doing regular writing and journaling. Some of that writing will be carried in alternate media and small-town papers, and, even after the U.S. destroys the electricity and phone lines, we'll get reports out through the local press center on a satellite phone. We won't let folks back home forget the human consequences of what they do here. Milan Kundera once wrote, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." We're here to be part of that struggle.
Mohammed Ghani Hekmat is perhaps the most prominent artist in Iraq, and one of the kindest men I've ever met. His sculptures decorate the country. He's proud to be the first Muslim artist ever commissioned by the Vatican. In 1991, he was working on a series of life-size reliefs of the Stations of the Cross, when the Gulf War happened. The windows in his studio were blown out by the explosions. We asked him what he thought of the American people, and his voice filled with anger: "They're innocent," he accused, "Innocent! Like children."
We're here because we know we're not innocent. Being here is our part in the war against terrorism: humanizing Iraqis in the eyes of Americans, humanizing Americans in the eyes of Iraqis - taking direct responsibility for what's done in our names.
Our government, our country - our people - have killed hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq since 1990. We're about to compound that atrocity with another war that, if it goes badly, will likely kill hundreds of thousands more.
In 1945, when the Allies liberated the death camps, the entire Western world was absolutely shocked. We asked, "how could this have happened? How could the German people have allowed this? Where were the 'good' Germans?"
Today, I know where the good Americans are: they're in Iraq, and they're organizing in the streets of America - laying their entire lives on the line to prevent the mass destruction of human life.
We get what we pay for in this life. I don't want to die. I am scared for my life. But this storm is fast upon on us. This is the moment when we all must ask - what are we willing to risk for peace?
Ramzi Kysia is an American peace activist, working with the Education for Peace in Iraq Center
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