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NUCLEAR
UN Assesses Depleted Uranium in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Uranium weapons 2001-2003 update
Film ties Germans to Iraqi nuclear program
A - Bomb Survivors at Risk for Tumors
Kazakh 'nuclear soldier' paints warning for future
Castro Worried Ahead of 1962 Crisis
US missile defence test dodges decoys
US missile defense notches another kill
U.S. Scores Missile Defense Success
Rumsfeld sets out 'war principles'
A Common Problem For Bush and Sharon
Bush Aide Touts Iraq Regime Change
MILITARY
Bases Attacked in Afghanistan
Indonesians Questioned in Search for Al Qaeda Clues
Peace is Bullish, War is Bearish
Oil pumping halted after suspected rebels attack pipeline in Colombia
Colombia Asks Neighbors to Join Drug War
Legal crops' damage
Iranian War Victims Still Suffering
Who Hates Ya, Baby?
Next Round of U.N. Inspections Would Build on Previous Efforts
Strikes Focus on Southern Iraq Base
Israel Says It May Expand West Bank Pullout
Sharon Urges Palestinians to Replace 'Murderous Regime'
Official sees strain on ties with U.S.
Chilean Air Force Chief Quits
ATTACK ON AMERICANS
Indonesian anger at FBI investigation
Pakistan coalition wants U.S. out
F.B.I. Aids Pakistan in Arrest of 4 Afghans Linked to Qaeda
Religious Leader in Pakistan Sets Moderate Tone After Vote
Many Nations Oppose Iraq Resolution
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
National ID cards are not in order
Scorn for the judiciary?
Ballistic fingerprinting is no magic bullet
Has Big Brother arrived, and is he watching us?
Weaker Al Qaeda Shifts To Smaller-Scale Attacks
U.S. 'in the dark' on bin Laden note
Excerpts of Purported Statement by Bin Laden
Bush Links Blast at Bali Nightclub to Qaeda Network
TERRORISM WATCH
ENERGY AND OTHER
Cape Cod wind farm plan stirs up controversy
BURRY PORT JOURNAL
Progress in War on Hunger Grinds to Halt, U.N. Says
ACTIVISTS
Forty held in UK nuclear reactor protest
Dissident demands Castro tell of petitions
Amending Cuba's constitution
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
UN Assesses Depleted Uranium in Bosnia-Herzegovina
October 15, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-15-02.asp
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, At the request of the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a team of experts from the United Nations Environment Programme is investigating 12 sites in the country that may have been targeted by ordnance containing depleted uranium (DU) during the Bosnian conflict in 1994 and 1995.
The 17 member team UNEP Depleted Uranium Assessment Team began its research October 12 and will be in the field until October 24. Their conclusions will be presented in a report to be published in March 2003.
Pekka Haavisto examines a DU munitions target for radioactivity. (Photo courtesy UNEP Post Conflict Assessment Unit)
The assessment mission is headed by Pekka Haavisto, the former Finnish environment minister who has led war damage assessment teams in the Balkans, and most recently in the Palestinian Territories.
"UNEP's aim is to determine whether the use of depleted uranium during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina may pose health or environmental risks - either now or in the future," said Haavisto.
"Previous studies of DU in Kosovo and Serbia recommended that governments and civilians take precautionary action to avoid contact with DU," he said.
The team will take soil, water, air and vegetation samples at six sites that have been identified by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as having been struck by DU weapons. They will examine six other sites that local residents believe may have also been targeted.
At the request of the local authorities, the medical sub-team, led by an expert from the World Health Organization (WHO), will examine data on cancer rates in the main urban centres of Sarajevo and Banja Luka. They will also visit a local hospital in Bratunac to meet with the local medics and with patients who may have been exposed to DU during the conflict.
The mission is being funded by the governments of Italy and Switzerland.
Radioactive materials found by a UNEP post-conflict assessment team in Vinca, Serbia in 2001 (Photo courtesy UNEP)
The assessment team includes experts from UNEP, the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority, Spiez Laboratory of Switzerland, Italy's National Environmental Protection Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Greek Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine, the Nuclear Safety Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Bristol, UK.
The samples being collected will be analyzed in detail for radioactivity and toxicity in the Spiez Laboratory, in Italy's National Environmental Protection Agency lab, and at Bristol University.
The uranium remaining after removal of the enriched fraction contains about 99.8 percent 238U, 0.25 percent of 235U and 0.001 percent 234U by mass. This material is referred to as depleted uranium or DU.
Due to its high density, about twice that of lead, and other properties, DU is used in munitions designed to penetrate armor plate and for protection of military vehicles such as tanks.
DU is described by the World Health Organization (WHO) in an April 2001 Fact Sheet as "weakly radioactive." A radiation dose from it would be about 60 percent of that from purified natural uranium with the same mass.
DU has both chemical and radiological toxicity that affects the kidneys and the lungs.
UNEP's Balkans Task Force report giving field measurements taken around selected impact sites in Kosovo indicates that contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of meters around impact sites.
"We learned," UNEP reports, "that still, more than two years after the end of the conflict, particles of DU dust can be detected from soil samples and from sensitive bio-indicators like lichen."
The "extremely low" levels were only detectable through lab analysis, but UNEP confirmed that "contamination at the targeted sites is widespread, though no significant level of radioactivity can be measured."
Djakovica, Kosovo. UNEP assessment team member measures DU contamination with a gamma meter. (Photo courtesy UNEP)
But the task force found that levels of DU may be significantly raised over background levels in close proximity to DU contaminating events.
Over the days and years following such an event, WHO warns, the contamination will become dispersed into the wider natural environment. "People living or working in affected areas can inhale dusts and can consume contaminated food and drinking water."
"Levels of contamination in food and drinking water could rise in affected areas after some years and should be monitored where it is considered that there is a reasonable possibility of significant quantities of DU entering the ground water or food chain," the agency says.
Young children playing in or near DU impact sites could ingest the radioactive substance lingering in contaminated soil when putting their fingers in their mouths, WHO warns.
There is a possibility of lung tissue damage leading to a risk of lung cancer if a high enough radiation dose results from insoluble DU compounds remaining in the lungs for many years, says WHO. "No reproductive or developmental effects have been reported in humans, but studies are limited."
The UNEP Balkans assessment team used modern air sampling techniques and detected airborne DU particles at two sites, indicating for the first time, that the radioactive substance could remain in the air for months, and possibly for years.
"One of the most significant findings," of the Balkans research, UNEP says, is that "future risks to groundwater maybe posed by the gradual corrosion of DU penetrators." The magnitude of this risk is unknown, and UNEP recommended continued monitoring.
In April 2001, WHO published a monograph entitled "Depleted Uranium: Sources, Exposures and Health Effects" which reviews the best available scientific literature on uranium and depleted uranium.
UNEP's post-conflict depleted uranium reports are online at: http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.htm#du
----
Uranium weapons 2001-2003 update
Dai Williams, independent researcher,
UK eosuk@btinternet.com
Tue, 15 Oct 2002
New web pages and PDF files are now available regarding Hazards of Uranium weapons for the proposed war in Iraq, discovery of US patents for Uranium warheads in guided weapons and (EFP) cluster bombs and their implications for Uranium hazards in Afghanistan.
Summary (with links to the other new pages and files): Hazards of Uranium weapons in the proposed war on Iraq (Summary) 24 September 2002 http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm
Full Report (HTML) Hazards of Uranium weapons in the proposed war on Iraq (Full Report) 24 September 2002 http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u231.htm
Full Report (PDF) Hazards of Uranium weapons in the proposed war on Iraq (Full Report) 24 September 2002 http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/Uhaziraq1.pdf
==
The latest update (13 October) is a new Appendix 2 to the Iraq Summary:
US Patents confirm Uranium warheads (13 October 2002) http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm#USpatreport
and PDF report: United States Patent Office references to conventional guided weapons with suspected Uranium components at: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/USpats.pdf
==
The US Patent information includes Patent 6,389,977 (application 1997) for a Shrouded Aerial Bomb - the specification for upgrading the 2000 lb BLU-109/B warhead to contain the AUP-116 dense metal penetrator.
This invention describes the design of the BLU-116 warhead used with various guidance systems in the following guided bombs: GBU-15, 24, 27 and 31 plus the rocket boosted AGM-130. The patent plainly defines 2 versions - one with Tungsten and the other with Depleted Uranium explosive penetrators.
This Patent is consistent with the USAF Mission plan 1997 for upgraded hard target guided weapons (see pages 15-20 of Depleted Uranium weapons 2001-2002 available in PDF version at http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm )
The US Patents identified indicate definate Uranium warhead options for 6 of the weapon systems suspected in my recent analyses. They also specifically include depleted uranium as an optional material in several other weapons systems. The large Bunker Buster weapons (GBU-28, 37 and Big BLU) also use the same advanced penetrator warhead technology, though without the "shroud" (outer casing) in the BLU-109 upgrade patent. By implication these are equally likely to have Uranium warhead options. A denial from UK Government in November 2001 (Du weapons report above, pages 52-53) that Depleted Uranium is unsuitable for hard target guided weapons is clearly obsolete.
The upgraded GBU-24 and related guided bombs were tested extensively in the Balkans War. Hundreds have been used in Afghanistan. Another patent defines the new Tomahawk penetrator warhead. These patents radically alter the assumptions made by UNEP that the only Uranium contamination in the Balkans came from A10 shells. They also invalidate assumptions in medical reports about hazards of depleted uranium that only assumed contamination risks from small penetrators as used in the 1991 Gulf War (30 mm - 100mm and 0.275 - 5.0 kg.). I have updated the web page about the hazards of Uranium weapons in Afghanistan accordingly at: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm
I would be grateful if you could bring these issues to the attention of military and political decision makers currently involved in the proposed war on Iraq.
They also indicate the need for increased vigiliance for Uranium contamination and health consequences for medical practioners and researchers responsible for the health of troops and civilians who have been deployed in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro and Afghanistan.
-------- germany
Film ties Germans to Iraqi nuclear program
By Charles J. Hanley
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021015-90292292.htm
NEW YORK - A new investigative film traces the roots of the Iraq nuclear crisis to links between German industry and Baghdad's bomb builders, and questions the lenient sentence - probation - handed down to a German engineer for treason in aiding the project.
The documentary, "Stealing the Fire," also offers a rare close-up look at a "proliferator," the engineer Karl-Heinz Schaab, who emerges on film as a bland, gray, fastidious 68-year-old technician who protests that he is "too small to be turned into a scapegoat for the others."
The film, produced and directed by Oscar-winning documentarian John S. Friedman and Eric Nadler, premieres today at a New York theater.
Blueprints and other documents that Schaab and associates brought to Iraq in the late 1980s, along with Schaab's own hands-on skills, were a vital boost to Baghdad's development of gas centrifuges - machines whose ultra-fast spinning "enriches" uranium by separating U-235, the stuff of nuclear bombs, from non-fissionable U-238.
Much of Iraq's nuclear infrastructure subsequently was wrecked by American and allied bombing in the 1991 Gulf war.
More was destroyed during U.N. inspections inside Iraq in the 1990s. Baghdad officials deny they are working on atomic weapons today.
But reconnaissance photos released by the Bush administration, as it seeks support for a potential war against Iraq, indicate the Iraqis have been rebuilding sites previously used for nuclear development. A newly released U.S. intelligence report says they may have nuclear weapons by 2010.
"Stealing the Fire" looks at the source of these capabilities.
Iraq was failing with other enrichment technologies when German centrifuge specialists Bruno Stemmler and Walter Busse, recruited by a German company, H&H Metallform, came to Baghdad in 1988 and sold the Iraqis old designs for centrifuges.
The next year they brought Schaab, who provided components, technical reports and, most important, a stolen design for an advanced "supercritical" centrifuge.
The design, classified secret in Germany, was used in enriching nuclear-power fuel at the European government consortium Urenco, for which a Schaab-owned company worked as a subcontractor. The Iraqis paid $62,000 for the key documents.
In an on-film interview, Schaab said that on his last Baghdad visit, in April 1990, he personally helped install Iraq's first test centrifuge. Bomb production would require thousands of such devices.
A German court on June 29, 1999, convicted Schaab of treason and sentenced him to five years' imprisonment and a $32,000 fine, but then suspended the prison term because he had served 15 months in a Brazilian jail.
He had fled to Brazil in 1995 after U.N. inspectors uncovered documents in Iraq exposing the German connection. At Germany's request the next year, the Brazilians arrested the fugitive engineer, but freed him when a Brazilian court held that his crime was political and he could not be extradited.
In 1998, Schaab returned to Germany to be with his dying mother and to surrender to authorities, apparently assured his cooperation would win him leniency.
The light sentence he received raised questions, however, among nonproliferation specialists. American physicist David Albright, who was on the U.N. inspection team, suggested that the German government wanted to minimize public perception of Schaab's crime.
"I think they wanted the Schaab story to disappear.
The film suggests that some people want Schaab himself to disappear. His attorneys told the filmmakers that Brazilian authorities had warned them that foreign secret services wanted to kill or kidnap their client, and suggested that the closely timed deaths of associates Mr. Stemmler and Mr. Busse in the early 1990s might not have been natural, as reported.
"Stealing the Fire" leaves such questions unexplored, but it firmly establishes that German companies have supplied technology usable in Baghdad's plans.
One high-ranking defector from Iraq's nuclear program said Germany was an "open field" for Iraqi ambitions in the 1980s, particularly for purchases from such companies as chemical giant Degussa.
A top Degussa executive retorted that "by the German laws, there were no illegal deliveries" during this pre-Gulf war period.
German export controls, widely regarded as too lax, were toughened after the Gulf war. German industry was not alone, however, in helping develop Iraqi capabilities. From 1985 to 1990, the U.S. Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses.
Schaab "of course did it for the money," said his attorney, Michael Rietz. But the centrifuge specialist - described by wife, Brigitta, as "very quiet, very well-behaved; he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink" - insisted he was focused as much on the technological challenge, and not on illegality and international repercussions.
"I stumbled naively into this thing," he said.
-------- japan
A - Bomb Survivors at Risk for Tumors
October 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-A-Bomb-Tumors.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have a 40 percent increased risk of developing a rare brain tumor and have a slightly elevated lifetime risk of other types of nervous system tumors, according a new study.
Dr. Dale Preston said a study of the medical histories of some 80,160 Japanese survivors of the nuclear attacks found that they had about a 6 percent increased risk of developing some type of tumors in the brain or spinal cord over a lifetime. But for schwannomas, the risk soared to about 40 percent, he said, although he emphasized that even with this increase the occurrence of these tumors is rare.
Out of the more than 80,000 survivors, Preston said they found 55 cases of schwannomas. He said this is about 20 more cases than would be expected to occur among a typical population not linked to known radiation exposures.
A report on the study appears Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Preston is a researcher with the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, a joint U.S.-Japanese agency that studies the health effects of the nuclear attacks on the Japanese survivors.
The U.S. military dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The attack was swiftly followed by the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.
Schwannomas are tumors of the nerve sheath and usually occur along nerves of the spine and along the auditory nerve in the brain.
``These are dangerous because of their location,'' said Preston.
Preston said the conclusion does not suggest that current allowed exposures in routine medical procedures, such as X-ray, pose a significantly increased risk of cancer because the atomic bomb survivors were exposed to higher doses.
-------- kazakhstan
Kazakh 'nuclear soldier' paints warning for future
Story by Dmitry Solovyov,
REUTERS KAZAKHSTAN:
October 15, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18173/story.htm
SEMIPALATINSK, Kazakhstan - "I saw birds turning into ashes in the sky," said the stooping old man, tears in his eyes. "Believe me, that is still painful to recall."
Alexander Shevchenko, a frail 75-year-old, is one of the few surviving "nuclear soldiers" who lived through the horrors of the first Soviet nuclear blasts tested on live humans at the Semipalatinsk test site.
"We were treated like human waste. We were all nameless, just known as guinea pigs," he said.
In his palsied hands he holds an allegorical painting, a white dove - the fragile symbol of peace - is dying, tangled on a strand of barbed wire,as the ominous giant mushroom of a nuclear explosion rises against the skyline.
He says his pictures, stored in a squat house in this bleak town in northeastern Kazakhstan, are a message to posterity.
One features stone-faced Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, dispassionately looking past a heap of human skulls while a nuclear mushroom looms nearby.
Another depicts a mother in Kazakh national dress, sitting in the middle of a vast steppe overcast by a huge nuclear cloud. She is breastfeeding an emaciated child with protruding ribs, a disproportionately large head, and horror in his wide eyes.
"The child is the spitting image of a sick boy abandoned by his parents whom I once saw in an orphanage here," Shevchenko said softly. "He later died."
"I am pressed for time to accomplish all my plans," said the painter, who has not yet fully recovered from his fifth heart attack. "The truth must be told."
CRIPPLED LIFE
The story of Shevchenko, an ethnic Ukrainian from southern Russia, resembles that of many who, against their will, found themselves on the Semipalatinsk test site at the wrong time.
In October 1947, he was brought to this god-forsaken spot in the endless Kazakh steppe as a private in the Red Army to take part in secret work ahead of the first blast on August 29, 1949.
The young man had no choice: before his mission he had been sentenced to eight years hard labour. His crime - living on territory which was occupied by the Nazis during World War Two.
Shevchenko, labelled "an enemy of the people", was just one of thousands to be crippled during Stalinism's uncompromising nuclear race with the United States.
"We had no safety gear and were completely exposed to this deadly radiation. The trenches we dug were our only protection," said the old soldier who served at the test site until 1951.
"When a nuclear bomb explodes, you can see through the body in front of you. All his guts and bones are visible, like in an X-ray," said Shevchenko, who after one such test in 1950 lost consciousness and was treated for leukaemia.
By the time of its 1989 closure, following growing popular protests which even the Soviet leadership could no longer ignore, Semipalatinsk had held 30 surface, 88 atmospheric and 340 underground tests.
The 1949 explosion, which established nuclear parity with the United States, was given ecstatic coverage by the Soviet propaganda machine.
Subsequent nuclear tests were routinely kept secret or, later on, tersely reported on by compliant media as a "forced measure to strengthen the nuclear shield of the Motherland".
There is no precise information on how many people died as a result of these experiments on live people, but some blood-curdling details are becoming available.
HUMANS OR CATTLE?
Boris Gusev, now 64, knows more than most.
In 1961, as a newly qualified doctor, he signed strictly confidential papers with the feared KGB secret police, vowing to keep silent on his future work at the top-secret Dispensary Number Four, set up in Semipalatinsk in 1957.
The nondescript building officially housed a team of doctors dealing with brucellosis, a widespread contagious disease usually affecting sheep and cattle.
In fact, this was a myth invented by the KGB to conceal the real task of the secret laboratory - studying the impact of radiation on human health.
"That was yet another cynical legend by the KGB. If they could call plants producing nuclear missiles "chocolate factories", then why not call this place a brucellosis dispensary?" Gusev said.
Few in Semipalatinsk knew of the real dangers of the tests conducted near this industrial town. All reports were sent straight to Communist Party and KGB elites in Moscow.
Gusev is visibly upset even now when he recalls how the Soviet Union treated people who underwent tests near Semipalatinsk.
"After the 1945 tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all possible effects of nuclear tests on humans were already well-known to the world. What was done here was beyond reason, could have been avoided and was an outrage," he said.
He said soldiers wearing only gas masks were sent on military exercises just minutes after nuclear tests, and tanks and aircraft had to go through radioactive dust and clouds.
"A lot of people routinely fell ill with acute leukaemia after such tests, and many died," Gusev said.
"But everyone was confident that one day there would be an all-out nuclear war with America. So military chiefs just said 'that's the way it is' and sent the soldiers to die," he added.
"I myself feel bitter now. As a doctor, I helped many who fell ill. As an enthusiastic youngster, I was proud (of our nuclear achievements), although I realised I would get 15 years in prison if I started talking about what I knew."
Atmospheric and surface tests were conducted until 1962 before being replaced with much safer underground explosions.
DISASTROUS LEGACY
Gusev said that even the top-secret dispensary, now Kazakhstan's Research Institute for Radiation Medicine and Ecology, did not know how many nuclear tests had been conducted until information started seeping out in the early 1980s.
He estimated that some 800,000 of the 15 million inhabitants of the vast Central Asian state of Kazakhstan now lived in contaminated areas around the test site. He said around 370,000 people had suffered directly from nuclear tests.
Both brothers and the father of the artist Shevchenko died of cancer. Cases of cancer, alongside birth defects and cardio-vascular diseases, are several times more frequent than the national average in areas near Semipalatinsk.
Shevchenko says proudly that last year Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma - himself dealing with the legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster - named him a Merited Artist of Ukraine and helped stage an exhibition of his work in Kiev.
He said he had received offers for some of his pictures but had declined to sell any of them. "When I die, all of them must be shown as one big warning for the future," he said.
-------- missile crisis
Castro Worried Ahead of 1962 Crisis
By George Gedda
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; 1:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28899-2002Oct15?language=printer
WASHINGTON - Weeks before the Cuban missile crisis erupted, Fidel Castro's biggest concern was that his "imperialist" neighbor would somehow discover the secret Soviet rocket deployments on Cuban soil.
Castro outlined his concerns in a speech he delivered to a Communist Party conclave in January 1968. Excerpts of the speech, kept secret until now, are contained in a book by two American professors that coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis.
When Castro dispatched his brother, Raul, to Moscow to raise his concerns about possible American discovery of the missiles, Raul got the following response from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev:
"Don't worry. I'm going to grab Kennedy by the testicles and he will just have to come and talk it over because, after all, they have our country surrounded by bases, in Turkey, here, there, everywhere."
The United States did, indeed, discover the missiles, and on Oct. 16, 1962 - 40 years ago Wednesday - President Kennedy was informed of them.
Khrushchev's actions in the aftermath did not match the swaggering threat he had described in his conversation with Raul. After two weeks, he agreed to withdraw the missiles - but not before the two superpowers had come closer than at any time during the Cold War to nuclear annihilation.
Fidel Castro spoke to the Communist Party's Central Committee for 12 hours over two days in January 1968. Raul was at his side, and it was he who summed up Khrushchev's ribald response about how he planned to deal with Kennedy.
The passage is contained in "Sad and Luminous Days," by James G. Blight of Brown University and Philip Brenner of American University.
According to the book, Fidel Castro also had these observations about the crisis:
- The Soviets showed great "carelessness" in not doing more to keep the 20-meter-long missiles out of view. "In a country so full of construction projects, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for us to build those emplacements under the guise of something totally different and they never would have been discovered. ... I was amazed that they weren't discovered earlier."
- The high-level contacts that Cuba had with the Russians in Moscow were so secretive that Cuba's official interpreters were barred from the meetings.
- After three years of U.S. harassment, having missiles available was a heady feeling for Castro despite the dangers. "We were defending those rockets with amazing fervor and love. For the first time we were participating in a certain state of equality with an enemy that had been attacking us and provoking us incessantly, and we were really enjoying such a new and different situation."
- The missiles raised the possibility of Cuba entering into a negotiation with the United States over their fate, an idea that Castro relished. He believed the missiles would have given him leverage to reclaim the naval base at Guantanamo Bay from U.S. control.
- On Oct. 26, during the darkest hours of the crisis, Castro said in a memo to Khrushchev: "I believe that aggression is imminent in the next 24 to 72 hours."
Much of the world applauded days later when the crisis ended with Khrushchev's promise to remove the missiles in exchange for a pledge by Kennedy not to invade Cuba and to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, a Soviet neighbor.
But the outcome left Castro inconsolable. He told Khrushchev in a letter: "We knew - do not presume that we did not - that we would be exterminated. ... Nonetheless, we did not ask you to withdraw the missiles.
"Do you perhaps believe that we desired that war? But how could it have been avoided if they had invaded. ... The majority of Cubans are currently experiencing unspeakable bitterness and sadness. The imperialists have again begun to speak of invading our country, a demonstration of how short-lived and untrustworthy their promises are."
-------- missile defense
US missile defence test dodges decoys
Will Knight
15 October 02
NewScientist.com news service
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992924
The most advanced test of the US Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system took place in the early hours of Tuesday.
A dummy ballistic missile was successfully intercepted and destroyed above the Pacific Ocean, according to a statement released by the Missile Defense Agency, which conducted the test.
The flight test saw a prototype Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle hit its target at an altitude of 227 kilometres. The Agency says that four decoys were also released alongside the missile, but the interceptor correctly identified the right target. The test is the seventh in a series that started in 1999.
But an expert contacted by New Scientist questioned the validity of recent tests. Ted Postol, a physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an ex-military scientist, says all the latest tests have involved only easy-to-spot decoys.
He says that after the first two tests revealed an inability to identify more advanced decoys reliably, they were replaced to prevent failure. "They're completely rigged, quite frankly," he says.
Work in progress
However another expert says this is all just part of the testing process. Mike Lennox, editor of Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems says: "If you're doing an early flight test, there's not much point in using targets you can't hit. Nobody knows how the system will eventually look like."
But Postol also questions the Bush administration's justification for the missile defense system: "It's ridiculous to talk about a country like Korea or Iraq posing a ballistic missile threat."
In the latest test of the GMD system, a modified Minuteman missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 0200 GMT. The experimental interceptor was launched 22 minutes later from a base 7775 kilometres away on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Six minutes after that, the interceptor destroyed the Minuteman, having released a "kill vehicle" projectile that closed in on the target at over 6.7 kilometres per second.
Ground and air
The test was declared an overall success but a Department of Defense spokeswoman says it will take weeks to examine all the data gathered. Only then will it be possible to determine whether any minor problems cropped up.
The Department says the test saw the greatest integration of ground-based tracking systems including an early warning radar at Beale Air Force Base and a prototype ground-based radar system at the Ronald Reagan Missile Test Facility at Kwajalein Atoll.
The test also involved a US Navy Destroyer for the first time. This would have been forbidden under the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, from which the US formally withdrew in June 2002.
----
US missile defense notches another kill
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021014-054042-9007r.htm
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- The United States' fledgling missile defense program notched another success Monday night when, for the fourth consecutive time, a target missile launched from California was obliterated by a killer rocket fired from a distant South Pacific Island.
The direct hit by the "exoatmospheric kill vehicle," or EKV, high above the Pacific was the fifth successful test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system in seven tries, and the first to include the radar system of a Navy warship, something that would have been prohibited had the United States not withdrawn from the historic Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue the development of a missile defense system.
"We achieved a successful intercept at around 10:30 p.m. EDT this evening," Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin told United Press International.
A bright contrail was traced in the early-evening sky as far away as Las Vegas when the target missile, a modified Minuteman, lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles at 10 p.m.
About 20 minutes later, the EKV interceptor missile was launched from Kwajalein Atoll, 4,800 miles away in the Pacific.
The EKV is about six-feet long and 123 pounds. It uses a combination of sensors to find the warhead in space and slam into it. Monday's meeting in space took place 140 miles above the earth with the two missiles kilometers above the earth, and the two bodies close at speeds faster than 15,000 miles per hour.
"This test is a major step in an aggressive developmental test program, and we will continue to pursue this testing regime to achieve a layered approach to missile defense... to deter the growing threat of ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction," the Pentagon said in a statement. "Over the next several weeks, government and industry program officials will conduct an extensive analysis of the data received during the flight test."
The Pentagon said the "system-level" test appeared to be a rousing success in that its sophisticated targeting equipment detected the Minuteman and put the EKV on the right path while ignoring decoy warheads.
"Sensors aboard the EKV successfully selected the mock warhead from among the five objects in the target array, including three decoys," the Pentagon said. "Only system-generated data was used for the intercept after the EKV separated from its booster rocket."
The mock warhead carries countermeasures to try to confuse the interceptor. The Pentagon decided last spring it would no longer discuss the kinds of countermeasures used in order to prevent tipping off a potential enemy about the system's limitations.
In the past, however, the Pentagon has packed the mock warheads with large Mylar balloons that inflate in space, challenging the interceptor's ability to find the correct target. The last test involved three decoys; the interceptor found its mark successfully.
Critics, such as the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, contend the countermeasures are not nearly daunting enough to truly test the system's capabilities. The Pentagon has reassured that the countermeasures would get steadily more difficult -- having similar heat and size signatures as the target -- as time went on.
The possibility that an enemy could use countermeasures or sheer numbers of missiles to defeat the space-intercept system has compelled the Pentagon to try to craft a multi-layered defense in which an enemy warhead that got by one layer would be picked up by another layer of defense.
The Navy's AEGIS SPY-1 radar made its debut in this test, the first step in determining whether or not AEGIS-equipped cruisers and destroyers could be an effective component of the anti-missile umbrella. The 1972 ABM Treaty barred the use of "theater," or closer-range assets like the SPY-1 radar, in a strategic missile defense system.
The Bush administration withdrew from the treaty in June, paving the way for the destroyer USS John Paul Jones radar to track the target and interceptor missiles from its decks Monday.
"Although the radar was not integrated into the battle management system for the intercept, it did gather important data on the capabilities of the radar against a long-range ballistic missile," the Pentagon said. "Future tests will include direct participation of the radar in order to determine its potential capability against long-range missiles."
The first successful test was held in October 1999. The next two tests failed, causing a yearlong retooling of the systems. The remaining three tests scored direct hits, with the most recent occurring in March.
The Pentagon will receive nearly $8 billion in 2003 for its missile defense development program.
(With reporting by Hil Anderson in Los Angeles)
--------
U.S. Scores Missile Defense Success
October 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Launch.html
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- An interceptor rocket destroyed a Minuteman II missile high above the Pacific in the latest test of the nation's missile defense system.
Monday night's test was the seventh such test for the Missile Defense Agency and the fourth consecutive success, said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner in Washington. Of the seven tests, five in all have succeeded.
The test provided a colorful light show for much of California as the launch of the Minuteman II created a fiery trail seen by people from as far north as the San Francisco Bay area and south to Los Angeles.
The modified Minuteman II, carrying a mock warhead and an unspecified number of decoys, was launched from this central California base at 7 p.m., sent on a 4,800-mile path toward the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
At 7:22 p.m., an interceptor missile was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll, and it hit the Minuteman six minutes later.
``It directly collided with the Minuteman,'' Lehner said.
President Reagan had proposed building a national missile system two decades ago. The concept gained momentum recently with the Bush administration's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had banned such systems.
The ongoing tests cost roughly $100 million each and are part of the Pentagon's drive to develop such a missile defense network.
Construction is under way in Alaska on a simple version of the system, which the administration hopes to complete by fall 2004. Critics say the program -- which the Pentagon will spend more than $7 billion on next year -- is too expensive and the technology too uncertain.
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld sets out 'war principles'
From Roland Watson in Washington
October 15, 2002
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-447462,00.html
AMERICA should never allow the concerns of allies or worries of the public to dictate its military aims, according to Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary.
Mr Rumsfeld said that the United States "must not dumb down what is needed by promising not to do things", such as not to endanger civilians or bomb during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The maxim is among several personal principles that Mr Rumsfeld believes should guide the deployment of US forces. Together, the "Rumsfeld guidelines" make up the clearest definition of when and how the Pentagon plans to unleash America's military might for a decade.
Others include the statement that if Americans or others are likely to be killed, the US "must have a darn good reason" for proposing military action. Just as the risks of military action needs to be considered, "so, too, the risk of inaction needs to be weighed".
When Colin Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he said that "overwhelming force" should be used when it was required.
----
A Common Problem For Bush and Sharon
At Meeting, Each Will Aim to Support Other's War Without Weakening His Own
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25538-2002Oct14?language=printer
President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who will meet Wednesday at the White House, have a common problem: Each wants to support the other's war without undermining his own.
Bush would like Sharon to refrain from actions in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza that would inflame the Arab region while the potential of a U.S. invasion of Iraq remains high, senior administration officials say. He will also ask that Sharon's government tone down its promises to retaliate aggressively if Iraq responds to a U.S. attack by lobbing missiles at Israel.
U.S. friends in the Arab world, including leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, have warned that a unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq would cause a major upheaval throughout the Middle East, where many believe strong American support for Israel represents antipathy toward Arabs. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has increasingly equated his defiance of the United States to the Palestinian fight against Israel, even as the Bush administration has cited ties between Palestinian terrorists and Baghdad.
Sharon, Israeli officials said, is seeking Bush's assurance that the administration does not expect Sharon to temper Israel's response to Palestinian terrorists to keep the Arab world quiet while the United States acts against Iraq.
"Nobody wants Hamas and Hezbollah to think Israel will not respond" to attacks while war against Iraq is underway, one Israeli official said of the militant Palestinian groups. Many Palestinians applauded when Iraq fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But they didn't take advantage of the situation by launching their own strikes against Israel because they knew that then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would show them no mercy, the official said.
Israel, acting at U.S. request, did not use its formidable arsenal to retaliate against Iraq in 1991. U.S. officials said the Bush administration has made no such request this time but would like Sharon to, in the words of one official, "just stop talking" about the issue for now.
Sharon's three-day visit comes at a time of little optimism for forward movement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Apparent momentum during the summer, when new Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad moved to reorganize Palestinian finances, and Jordan and Egypt began training a new Palestinian security force, has all but ceased since early September.
"We were beginning to see some progress" in Palestinian reforms, said one administration official, who noted that Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was forced to fire his cabinet when the newly emboldened Palestinian legislature threatened to vote a no-confidence motion.
But the process slowed considerably last month when Israeli forces again occupied and largely destroyed Arafat's government compound in Ramallah, a move the Bush administration publicly criticized as "unhelpful." A new rash of Palestinian terror bombings and Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilian areas has followed.
Arab and European governments have again criticized the administration for impeding efforts to complete a "roadmap" -- setting out time frames and responsibilities for Israelis and Palestinians to reach the three-year target of a Palestinian state set by Bush in June.
"I don't think it's that they've been distracted" by Iraq, said one senior Arab diplomat, who charged the administration with a "lack of commitment."
"This is the approach that they put out after the Bush speech . . . if you can fight two and a half wars at a time, you can deal with two and a half problems," he said.
After an absence of high-level U.S. involvement in the region for the past several months, a period marked by regular Palestinian terror attacks and ongoing Israeli military occupation, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will start an extensive tour of the area late this week.
He will first stop in Paris to meet with counterparts from Europe, Russia and the United Nations, who hope to release the "roadmap" in the next few weeks. In a lengthy trip that will combine the Israeli-Palestinian issue with that of Iraq, Burns will stop in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and will meet with Palestinian officials before visiting the Persian Gulf states.
In Israel, Burns will work on two issues administration officials said Bush will also press on Sharon on Wednesday. The administration wants Israel to make more progress in humanitarian issues such as easing the system of checkpoints and roadblocks that prevents Palestinians from traveling and working. It also wants Israel to begin regular payment to Fayyad's finance ministry of Palestinian tax revenue that is being withheld.
Sharon's last scheduled trip here, in September, was postponed after Democrats complained that his plans to attend an Israeli solidarity rally with Florida's Republican Gov. Jeb Bush the day before the Sept. 10 primary in the state would unduly influence the outcome. President Bush hosted Sharon at the White House in June, shortly before delivering a June 24 speech that called for Palestinian statehood and the ouster of Arafat as Palestinian leader. A visit in May was cut short when news of a new Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel reached the two leaders as they were meeting in the Oval Office.
In addition to seeing Bush at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Sharon expects to meet with Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and members of Congress before departing on Thursday.
----
Bush Aide Touts Iraq Regime Change
October 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A senior Bush administration official called Tuesday for the removal of Saddam Hussein's top lieutenants as well as the Iraqi president in order to restore stability in the Persian Gulf region.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton said ``it's not just the one person only, it's the top people around him'' who pose a danger.
Alluding to what the United States and its allies did in Germany at the end of World War II, Bolton said he was prescribing a form of ``de-Nazification'' for post-war Iraq.
The targets besides Saddam, who other senior administration officials already have likened to Adolf Hitler, were Iraqis ``who are fundamentally a part of Saddam's regime.''
After World War II, the United States and its allies oversaw a major housecleaning of Germany's leadership. While Hitler disappeared and was presumed to have committed suicide, the allies prosecuted several of his top lieutenants as part of a process of converting a Nazi regime to a democratic one.
``There will be no stability in the region until he's gone'' along with his top lieutenants, Bolton said in drawing a parallel also to Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was ousted five weeks after the United States attacked last year.
The Bush administration is in the midst of sifting through historical models in plotting a postwar Iraq. The occupation of Germany and the installation of a U.S.-directed regime in Japan are among those under consideration, Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week.
Bolton said he did not need any more evidence to convince him that Saddam has hidden chemical and biological weapons and is pursuing nuclear weapons, as well.
U.S. war planning is aimed at ``neutralizing him quickly to protect our troops and keep him from using the weapons,'' Bolton said.
If Iraq has a chance, ``it is going to use the weapons and kill a lot of civilians,'' Bolton said at a breakfast session with Pentagon and State Department correspondents.
In the skies over Iraq on Tuesday allied planes bombed a military command facility in the southern no-fly zone after taking fire from Iraqi forces, Pentagon officials said.
The bombing brought to 50 the number of days this year that such strikes were reported by the United States and the United Kingdom coalition, whose mission is to patrol two zones set up to protect Iraqi minorities following the 1991 Gulf War.
At the United Nations, the United States and Britain continued to struggle for support for a resolution that would warn Iraq of ``consequences'' if it did not disarm.
Powell and the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw met at the State Department in Washington. Powell told reporters that negotiations on a resolution were ``intense and are continuing.''
``I hope we will find a solution,'' Powell said.
``The French had some ideas,'' he said, without elaboration.
France is the most stubborn holdout against threatening Iraq with war if it refuses to disarm.
At a political rally Monday in Michigan President Bush said Saddam wants to use al-Qaida as his ``forward army'' against the West. He pointed to the Indonesian car bombing as fresh evidence of the need to stamp out the terror network.
``We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al-Qaida to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind,'' Bush said Monday at a rally for Republican candidates.
``This is a man who we know has had connections with al-Qaida. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaida as a forward army,'' Bush said later at a Dearborn, Mich. fund-raiser.
Bush has not provided concrete evidence of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam. But as he seeks a United Nations resolution giving Iraq one last chance to disarm or face U.S.-led action, he is warning of such a link, and the danger it would pose.
``I know the threats,'' Bush said of al-Qaida. ``The threats should be vivid in everybody's mind, after seeing pictures of the devastation, the size of the bomb crater, the absolute needless murder, that took place in Indonesia.'' More than 180 people, including two Americans, died in the attack there on Saturday.
Bush called attacks in Indonesia, Kuwait and Yemen part of a grim pattern of terror, and said ``We've got a long way to go'' to defeat Osama bin Laden's global network. But he said America can fight Iraq and al-Qaida simultaneously.
``We will fight, if need be, the war on terror on two fronts,'' Bush said three days after Congress gave him authority to use force against Saddam Hussein.
``Iraq is part of the war on terror.''
Appearing on NBC's ``Today'' show Tuesday, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, was asked if he shared Bush's view.
``I believe that they are linked in some way,'' Shelby replied. ``The groups, a lot of them are affiliated with al-Qaida. ... So there's a deep connection here.''
``It says that we're really challenged and that we've got a long way to go'' to combat terrorism, the senator said. ``We're open to more attacks. There will be more attacks, perhaps on our own soil, as well as soft attacks which we have seen in recent weeks.''
``We have been successful in Afghanistan,'' he said. ``We have destroyed their sanctuary and they have dispersed all over the world, but now we have to go after them. Are we totally successful? No.''
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Bases Attacked in Afghanistan
Associated Press
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Washington Post; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26184-2002Oct14?language=printer
BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- Three U.S. bases were attacked with gunfire and rockets in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend, the U.S. military said yesterday. There were no reports of casualties. Helicopter pilots spotted tracer fire at an outpost near Lawara, 110 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, while they were landing and taking off on Saturday night, a spokesman said.
Also Saturday night, two 107mm rockets exploded 500 yards and 800 yards from a U.S. base near Khost. A platoon sent to find the launch site found an 82mm mortar. In another incident, three rockets were launched Saturday at a base near Gardez but landed far from their target, the spokesman said.
Citing unspecified security threats, the United Nations said it was diverting all U.N. humanitarian aircraft from the Kabul airport. U.N. flights from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, were landing instead at Bagram air base, the headquarters of U.S. and coalition forces about an hour's drive north of Kabul.
-------- asia
Indonesians Questioned in Search for Al Qaeda Clues
October 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-indonesia-explosions.html
BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian investigators searching for links between the Bali bomb blasts and the al Qaeda network were interrogating two Indonesians Tuesday, and had found traces of plastic explosives.
As anguished relatives sought to identify loved ones killed in Saturday night's explosions there were signs Islamic extremists in Indonesia were on the defensive, even though Jakarta has not yet cracked down on them.
The Laskar Jihad, the most prominent face of militant Islam in Indonesia, said it had disbanded and would withdraw its militia forces from the Moluccas islands where they have fought in a vicious conflict with indigenous Christians.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Bali blasts, but national police chief Da'i Bachtiar told reporters: ``We are interrogating two people intensively,'' adding both were Indonesians. ``One said he was present when the incident occurred.''
He said the other person was related to someone whose identification card had been found at the blast site but who had not been located. He gave no further details.
Elsewhere in the region, Thailand beefed up security at its beach resorts amid fears bombers who killed 181 people -- most of them foreigners on Kuta Beach -- could strike again.
And the Philippines called for a regional coalition against the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah, which has been linked to al Qaeda, and which Asian neighbors fear is using Indonesia as a base of operations.
Australia said it would press for Jemaah Islamiah to be put on the U.N. list of terrorist organizations.
FLOWERS FROM AUSTRALIA
Indonesia Monday for the first time linked Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to the Bali explosions, and U.S. President George Bush said he also saw in them the handiwork of the group held responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
In Bali, an ashen-faced Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Justice Minister Chris Ellison walked past the mangled wreckage of the Sari Club, which took the brunt of the explosion along a strip of bars and discotheques.
Downer carried a large bouquet of flowers and Ellison a traditional Balinese wreath.
Australians account for the largest single group of victims, with 22 confirmed dead and 160 missing. Up to 30 Britains are feared killed.
Tuesday Australia sent five refrigeration units to the resort island to preserve the decomposing bodies now lying in hospital morgues.
Bachtiar also said investigators in Bali had questioned a witness at Paddy's bar, situated across the road from the Sari, who saw a man placing a white plastic bag at the scene.
``When he walked up to the man, he ran away and afterwards the place exploded,'' Bachtiar said.
Police and witnesses have described a small blast at Paddy's followed by a much larger explosion, possibly a car bomb, outside Sari's. Bachtiar said the larger blast appeared to have been caused by C-4 plastic explosives, suggesting a relatively sophisticated device.
A U.S. intelligence official told Reuters the bombings pointed to a sophisticated terrorist group because of the large amount of high explosives used and the coordinated attacks.
Conflicting information emerged about a group of 10 Pakistanis.
Some police reports said the group, apparently licensed to conduct religious activities on Bali, had been held for questioning after the blasts. Others said they had been quizzed before the explosions and were now being more closely monitored. It was not even clear whether the 10 were still on Bali.
None of the reports indicated any evidence the group was connected to the atrocity.
LASKAR JIHAD DISBANDS
Agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Australian federal police are helping search for clues. Officers from Britain's Scotland Yard are expected to join them along with others from Japan and Germany.
U.S. President George Bush said the blasts appeared to be part of a new global pattern of attacks that he vowed to stop.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to fight terror on two fronts, dismissing suggestions the murderous blasts in Bali meant al Qaeda extremists had replaced Iraq's Saddam Hussein as public enemy number one.
``I reject that entirely,'' he said.
As the United States began the evacuation of some embassy staff from Indonesia, Jakarta sought to deflect criticism from the United States and Asian neighbors about its slow response to the threat of terrorism by showing new resolve.
Diplomats were watching for any moves against Jemaah Islamiah. Southeast Asian nations have rounded up scores of its members and warned others have gone to ground in Indonesia.
A key leader of Jemaah Islamiah has been identified as militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who runs a religious school on Java island to the west of Bali. Bashir denies any terrorist links or knowledge of Jemaah Islamiah and has blamed what he called the ``brutal act'' on the United States.
The leader of Indonesia's high profile militant group Laskar Jihad said his organization had disbanded.
Jafar Umar Thalib denied the move was linked to the Bali bombings. He said the group made the decision to close and bring home its fighters from the Moluccas islands on October 7, days before the Bali explosions.
Nevertheless, Laskar Jihad is struggling. Thalib is currently on trial for inciting violence, and there are reports his group, which analysts say is sponsored by segments of the armed forces, is now running short of cash.
Laskar Jihad sent thousands of fighters to the Moluccas in mid-2000 to help Muslims fight Christians during bouts of communal violence. Critics have said its continued existence was another sign of the authorities' lax stance toward terrorism.
In Bali, distraught relatives waited in a morgue to identify loved ones. Indonesian and Australian officials said relatives will find it difficult to identify the badly charred bodies.
``There may still be more bodies which, and I'm sorry to put it as crudely as this, but who were very close to where the bomb went off and the bodies have disintegrated,'' Downer told reporters.
A large number of Indonesians were among the dead, many of whom have not been identified. Among the dead and more than 300 wounded were Americans, Swedes, Swiss and Dutch.
``This will be a long and hard process. We are in for a long and hard time,'' said Australian embassy spokesman Kirk Coningham.
An Indonesian official said dental records and DNA techniques would be required to identified most bodies.
-------- business
Peace is Bullish, War is Bearish
Memo on the Margin
October 15, 2002
http://supplysideinvestor.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=2257
Memo To: Wall Street retail and institutional investors
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: The Saddam Stock Market
The chief reason Polyconomics has been so popular with institutional investors over the last 25 years is our successes in forecasting compared to our competitors. A big reason we are so successful is that we are willing to be politically incorrect in our financial advice. We cannot be financial advisors and at the same time be team players, either on behalf of a political team or an economic agenda advanced by one political party or another.
In the last several weeks, we have been telling our clients and subscribers that the biggest risk to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ is the possibility that President Bush will pull the trigger on Iraq. When there is news about peace reaching the market, these market indices will improve. When the news all points in the direction of war, the markets head south in a hurry. Our calls have been clearly correct, but if you are not a client of Polyconomics you are totally unaware of the Saddam Stock Market. You may hear Iraq mentioned in news reports as a reason for "market uncertainty," with commentators saying that once the decision is made, and it is either war or peace, the market will recover because the uncertainty will be over. This is nonsensical, but almost all the financial commentary we read about in the major media - or hear about on all the major network and cable financial programs - makes little sense. If analysts must ignore the tidal waves, they are forced to concentrate on the rain drops.
Why is this? It is because the financial press is not free to report "news" if it appears to be "opinion." The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, is totally conflicted. It is philosophically committed to having a "regime change" in Baghdad, even if it takes another 88,000 tons of bombs dropped on the 5 million people of Baghdad, several hundred thousand casualties, and several hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money. I can only sympathize with my old colleagues at the WSJ, because I know they are conflicted. They want a regime change in Baghdad and they want the American economy to improve and the stock market to rise, not fall. They have to then pretend that the declining stock market has to do with "bubbles" that were initiated back in the days of the bad old Clinton administration. The WSJ editors cannot even examine the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, because they got into bed with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan several years ago, and now they are stuck with him. I feel sorry for the Journal editors, because they do not have the luxury I have. I can say nice things about Greenspan on Monday and say awful things about him on Tuesday. The Poly team cannot be embarrassed in telling its Wall Street clients that the dollar value of equities will rise if the Pentagon is losing in its ongoing struggle with the State Department over Iraq, and vice versa.
I'm not going to bother you with all the ups and downs of the market with the variations of peace and war in Iraq. If you would like to become a client, of course we will inundate you with proof of our perspicacity. It is only enough for me to point out that when Wall Street had its monster rally on the last two days of last week, climbing 600 points, there was only one voice noting the coincidence of a rally among the forces of peace. We sent this flash e-mail report to our institutional clients on Friday: There is no doubt this is a Saddam rally. In order to win over the Senate doves, the administration has agreed to let diplomacy prevail over a unilateral pre-emptive strike. The tough talk from the administration on how they are already planning the post-Saddam regime masks the fact that there are now enough assurances given to the Senate that weapons inspectors will return to Iraq, unfettered. This dramatically reduces chances of military action after the November elections, or next year for that matter. We cited Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's statement of support, which listed four points covering his agreement with the White House in the wording. The most relevant were the second and third points. The second says the President "should continue to work through the United Nations Security Council in order to secure Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions. Unfettered inspections may or may not lead to Iraqi disarmament. But whether they succeed or fail, the effort we expend in seeking inspections will make it easier for the President to assemble a global coalition against Saddam, should military action eventually be needed." Point three says the resolution makes it clear that, "before the President can use force in Iraq, he must certify to the Congress that diplomacy has failed."
As long as the President agrees to get the UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq, and that is what happens, the threat of war dramatically recedes. We noted in our Friday report: "It seems most unlikely this will now unravel as the Pentagon hawks have pushed every possible button to head off the inspectors and still have been outflanked by Colin Powell."
The financial market is much wiser than the financial commentators. It quickly sees the reduction of risks to war as a reduction of risks to commerce. Many financial commentators still remember learning from their Nobel Prizewinning economics professors that war is good for the economy because it puts people to work and puts money in their pockets. When it finally becomes clear to the news media that there will be no war with Iraq, the peace rally will be over.
The Saddam Stock Market
Peace or war with Iraq swamps all other information coming in to Wall Street in this "Saddam Stock Market," as I named it in writings three weeks ago. Nothing else really matters to the U.S. financial markets at the moment. The financial press continues to talk about Fed policy and earnings reports, with some commentators at long last even dragging "deflation" into their analysis of why there is so much volatility-at times seeming on the verge of hysteria. Those forces are certainly still in play and have their varying effects on individual stocks or fixed-income securities within the larger whirlwind, but for the foreseeable future it is Iraq that occupies investment calculations. This should have been clear on October 1, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 350 points on the news that the United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, had come to terms with Baghdad on the modalities for upcoming inspections.
[Read the Full Report -- PDF only -- http://subscriber.supplysideinvestor.com/Subscriber/showpdf.asp?pdf=SSI_Oct02.pdf]
-------- colombia
Oil pumping halted after suspected rebels attack pipeline in Colombia
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/10/10152002/ap_48706.asp
BOGOTA, Colombia - An attack by suspected leftist guerrillas on an oil pipeline in northeast Colombia forced operators to halt pumping, military officials said Monday.
On Sunday night, explosives blew up a part of the pipeline in a rural area outside of Arauquita, a small town 240 miles (390 kilometers) northeast of Bogota.
"Pumping has been halted while repairs are made by technicians, who are being protected by troops sent to the area," said Army Col. Jesus Ruiz.
The pipeline transports oil from Cano Limon, an oil field operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum in conjunction with Ecopetrol, Colombia's state oil company. Last year, rebels attacked the pipeline 170 times. Army brigade troops in the area are scheduled to receive U.S. military training next year to better protect the pipeline.
Arauquita falls within a new "rehabilitation zone" where President Alvaro Uribe invoked special powers allowing authorities to make arrests and conduct searches without warrants, order curfews, and regulate travel.
Colombia is torn by a 38-year civil war that pits leftist rebels against the government and outlawed paramilitary forces.
Meanwhile, a woman was killed and three police officers wounded as rebels and police battled in neighborhoods on the outskirts of Medellin, police said.
News video showed police ducking from bullets and explosions in the streets of Colombia's second-largest city. At least three small bombs were set off, said Eliana Lopez, police spokeswoman in Medellin.
Lopez said a 19-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet and three police officers were wounded.
Rebels have been fighting police and an outlawed right-wing paramilitary group since late last year in their efforts to take control over lower-income neighborhoods in Medellin, which has 2 million residents. The urban warfare marks a new phase in Colombia's 38-year conflict, which has largely been fought in the countryside.
----
Colombia Asks Neighbors to Join Drug War
By REUTERS
October 15, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombia-uribe.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe called on fellow South American nations on Tuesday to join his twin wars on drugs and terrorism, warning cocaine-fueled violence could spread throughout the region.
The Colombian president, addressing a Miami conference in a video-link from Bogota, also said it was a ``necessity'' to eventually create a South American military force dedicated to fighting transnational drug trafficking and organized crime.
His comments came the same day that Army Gen. James Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, urged South American nations to band together -- with U.S. help -- to fight drugs.
``The continent must defeat terrorism and narcotics trafficking. Today, these plagues are hitting one (South American) nation the hardest -- our nation. Tomorrow, they could strike at the others,'' Uribe said.
``The Colombian conflict has the potential to spread to all of the countries in the hemisphere, and cause extreme damage,'' he told the gathering of political and business leaders, without entering into specifics.
Uribe, who took office two months ago during a deadly rebel mortar attack on the nation's capital, has pledged to establish law and order in a country gripped by nearly four decades of guerrilla war. The conflict claims thousands of lives a year.
The Andean nation's violence, funded by the world's largest kidnapping and cocaine industries, has long been a worry to neighbors -- faced with the Herculean task of policing thousands of miles of jungle borders along Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Panama and Peru.
Colombia's violence frequently spills over Ecuador's border and far-right Colombian paramilitary outlaws have allegedly sponsored a sister-group in Venezuela.
Brazil's cocaine-king was captured in Colombia last year, after allegedly selling weapons to rebels in exchange for drugs. The rebels also allegedly received arms from jailed Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos.
U.S. URGES COOPERATION
Speaking with reporters in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, Hill said that Colombia's war was a problem for the entire region -- and for the United States, the world's top consumer of cocaine.
``The problem that is in Colombia, is Ecuador's problem, it is Brazil's problem, it is Venezuela's problem, it is Peru's problem, it is the United States' problem, and we will only fix it if we fight collectively against it,'' Hill said.
Meanwhile, Uribe repeated calls for an immediate resumption of U.S.-backed drug interdiction flights, which were suspended last year when Peru's air force accidentally shot down a small civilian plane, killing a U.S. missionary and her child.
The United States has poured more than $1.5 billion in Bogota's drug war -- making this Andean nation the world's third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The White House said in August that flights could resume over Andean region as soon as mid-autumn.
``We need a resumption in aerial interdiction, in the coming days, to defeat narco-trafficking. Because, despite all of our efforts, we have only been able to seize about 20 percent of the drugs leaving Colombia,'' he said.
-------- drug war
Legal crops' damage
By Rachel Van Dongen
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021015-82149522.htm
CANA BRAVA, Colombia - Surveying his charred landscape that once contained a promising harvest of "lulo," a pulpy, orangelike tropical fruit, Victoriano Mora admits that he used to grow coca like thousands of other farmers in Putumayo province.
But after the first U.S.-financed aerial sprayings destroyed his coca crops last winter, Mr. Mora said, he, like many other farmers in Putumayo, began eradicating his coca plants and cultivating legal crops such as lulo, plantain and yucca on his 12-acre farm deep in the Colombian Amazon.
But on Aug. 10, five U.S.-provided spray planes came anyway, turning his food crops into a scorched-earth nightmare. "There is nothing of coca," Mr. Mora said of his current farm. "I feel tricked."
Mr. Mora is one of 37,000 farmers who signed voluntary eradication pacts in Putumayo with the Colombian government in exchange for help growing legal crops and marketing them. But in recent interviews with dozens of farmers in that province, the heart of Colombia's coca growing region, they say that their legal crops are being sprayed in the most ambitious U.S.-driven effort to date.
"Here the majority of the people complied with the pact," Mr. Mora said of the voluntary eradication. "There are some that have tiny [coca] crops, but with one plant, they damage the rest of us."
However, the reality of the Putumayo situation is more complex. On a tour of his farm, Mr. Mora pointed to an intact coca plant, which he said had long since been abandoned. But sophisticated U.S. technology, which is able to distinguish coca plants from other crops by detecting the light their leaves reflect, is designed to target all coca to radically reduce the amount of drugs grown in the region by 2004.
Under the auspices of Plan Colombia, the United States has spent $584 million on drug-eradication efforts in southern Colombia. Most U.S. officials concede that the effort has yet to produce the intended results.
American officials blame the failure on the policies of former Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who halted spraying in Putumayo for what they term "political considerations." But with a nod from Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Velez and an additional half-million dollars from the Bush administration, aerial crop destruction in Putumayo began again at the end of July, and U.S. officials believe that with a sustained effort it will succeed.
"By 2004 you're going to see cultivation has gone down significantly," said one U.S. official involved in the spraying efforts. He indicated that it will take one more year of intense spraying to eliminate most of the coca in Putumayo.
Coca farmers "can sustain their losses once. Some of them can sustain them twice, but none of them can sustain them three times," he said.
Mr. Uribe said, "The goal is to destroy 100 percent of the coca crop. We will not stop. We will spray and spray."
U.S. and Colombian authorities waited exactly a year from the date the last voluntary-eradication pact had been signed in July 2001 before embarking on their latest efforts. In an aggressive operation that will involve 16 U.S. aircraft by the end of the year, the goal is to destroy 300,000 acres of coca in 2002, up 30 percent from last year.
As for farmers like Mr. Mora, the American official said, "Nobody gets an amnesty."
Human rights ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes is demanding a halt to the U.S. sprayings after 6,533 complaints from farmers.
"With one hand, they give us resources, and with the other they fumigate," he told El Tiempos newspaper, referring to the United States.
Mr. Cifuentes said there have been 318 complaints of spraying legal crops, affecting 6,076 families and 12,500 acres in Puerto Asis, Orito and the Valle del Guamez.
The governor of Putumayo, Ivan Gerardo Guerrero, also wants the aerial spraying stopped and says 5,000 acres have already been manually cleared of coca plants. According to statistics provided by Plan Colombia, more than 100,000 acres have been sprayed this year in middle and southern Putumayo province.
In Puerto Asis, a frontierlike town where the war against drugs is based, Edison Trujillo, the Colombian army's anti-narcotics chief for the region, said the farmers who say they have eradicated their coca crops are lying.
"They are not complying with the pacts," Mr. Trujillo said.
He believes that fumigation with a controversial substance called glysophate - the active chemical in the herbicides Roundup and Rodeo - which the State Department recently certified did not pose "unreasonable risks" to human health, is winning the war on drugs.
"It is working," Mr. Trujillo said in an interview at his office. "We are not even seizing a gram of coca."
He dismissed complaints by farmers that the spray-plane pilots commit errors, saying that the "strategy" of the farmers is to grow smaller plots of coca within larger fields of legal crops, hoping they are not detected by the spray planes.
Mr. Trujillo estimated that as many as 80 percent of the farmers who agreed to voluntarily stop growing coca were cheating.
Another measure of the U.S. strategy's success, according to Mr. Trujillo, is the city's declining economy. Rubber boots, worn by farmers working their fields, are in short supply, as is liquor in the bars and discotheques. Crime is up, including murders and robberies.
"There is going to come an economic crisis," Mr. Trujillo said. "There is no money because the coca is gone. There is nothing to buy because there is nothing to produce. The land is sick."
Nevertheless, Mr. Trujillo backs widespread aerial spraying of herbicides as a way to get out of the "labyrinth" of narco-trafficking, and free up his anti-narcotics forces to go after the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which occupies the countryside, and the anti-Marxist paramilitaries who dominate towns such as Puerto Asis.
"For me, it is a good strategy because the fumigation attacks the problem at the source," he said.
Despite disagreement on whether coca production rose or fell in the past year, there is no question that aerial spraying in Putumayo is having a devastating effect. Interspersed with green hillsides where cattle graze are seared patches of brown landscape with neither coca nor any legal crop.
Farmers in the area say it takes about eight days for green hillsides to turn brown after fumigation. They say that spraying herbicide has effects other than destroying the coca crops. It leaves cattle with little but contaminated grass to graze on and nothing of legal crops that provide food for people.
They say the chemicals used in the spray, glysophate and a surfactant used to help it stick to the coca leaves called Cosmo Flux-411, cause illnesses including skin and eye irritation, respiratory problems and fever.
A recent Environmental Protection Agency report found no conclusive evidence linking sickness in Putumayo to aerial spraying efforts.
In Buenos Aires, on the road from Puerto Asis to Orito, Jesus Eduardo Gomez was tending his yucca crops when the spray planes arrived at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 1.
He said he was sick with fever for a month after the mist enveloped his 110-acre farm - which is made up of mostly palmetto trees that would have yielded hearts of palm, a food crop.
"Here we don't have coca. They fumigated food. We don't know what we're going to do," Mr. Gomez said.
Like Mr. Mora, Mr. Gomez said he stopped a decade of coca-growing after the first fumigation, in 2001. But his farm had had five to seven acres in coca, which he said is dead and abandoned, and this may be the reason the spray planes still target him.
No matter what, Mr. Gomez said, he won't return to coca farming.
"If there is a way, we have to move forward," he said. "With this damage, we aren't going to return" to cultivating coca.
Mr. Gomez doesn't blame the government as much as he does his neighbors, who he said have not pulled up their coca to plant legal crops.
He said the spray from the fumigation planes then drifts down to his farm, leaving his 25 cattle to graze on dry grass and destroying his papaya, yucca and palmetto.
In Orito, the offices of Fundacion Huairasachac, a nongovernmental organization that is helping farmers manually eradicate coca, was filled recently with angry farmers complaining that their legal crops had been destroyed in the latest round of aerial spraying.
Manuel Meneces, the president of a farmers association in Las Americas that has promised to do away with coca, said his land has been fumigated three times, twice in 2001 and once this year.
He said he quit growing coca two years ago and now harvests only corn and plantain.
"The animals have died from the poison," he said. "The government of the United States has to put its hand over its heart. They are fumigating us like rats."
Like many other farmers, Mr. Meneces can think of no other reason the government has fumigated his land than to force him to leave it. "If the government of the United States doesn't help us find work in another way, the coca won't go away. The people have to survive."
Unlike most people, who are skeptical of whether they will ever be compensated, Mr. Mora, the lulo farmer, has filed a formal complaint with the Colombian government about the damage to his crops.
But the complaint was filed Aug. 20, and nobody has arrived to determine its veracity, citing the dangers from armed groups in the area.
Looking down at a mud road that is soon to be paved with the same American dollars that sprayed herbicide on his land, Mr. Mora said with irony that the road is the "reward that they are giving us for the fumigations."
But like other farmers, Mr. Mora said he doesn't plan to go back to his old way of life, even though his new one is in jeopardy.
"If you grow coca three times, three times it will be fumigated," he said.
-------- iran
Iranian War Victims Still Suffering
By Brian Murphy
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; 2:09 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29008-2002Oct15?language=printer
TEHRAN, Iran -- To understand the unending nightmare of an Iraqi chemical barrage, there's ward 10-D.
The patients - all veterans of Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq - shuffle about in plastic sandals and pale yellow hospital pajamas. They talk little. Even a shallow breath can be painful.
In the special wing at Baqiatallah Hospital, run by the powerful Revolutionary Guards, the reality of Saddam Hussein's chemical weaponry is evident.
Doctors do what they can for some of the thousands of soldiers exposed to Iraqi poison gas. There are no cures. Just ways to lessen the ailments: scarred lungs, ravaged bowels, disorientation, welts and blisters.
About once a week, Iranian newspapers carry small items about another veteran succumbing to chemical-related disorders.
"I feel just half alive," whispered Jalal Taqvi, whose right side is numb and partially paralyzed. "The day I breathed the poison gas was the day I started to die."
He recalls every moment of the attack near the southwestern Iranian border city of Abadan in 1987. Soldiers started to wheeze and gasp. They were blinded by uncontrollable tears. And everywhere was the smell of onions - a characteristic of mustard gas.
If U.N. weapons inspectors return, a prime objective will be to discover what - if anything - remains of Iraq's chemical arsenal.
Iraq insists it has abandoned its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs. But U.S. authorities claim Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, which they fear could slip into the hands of terrorists.
In 1997, the year before the United Nations suspended operations in Iraq, the former head of the U.N. inspections team, Rolf Ekeus, said he believed Saddam maintained a "strategic capability" with chemicals.
Backed by the West during the eight-year war against Iran's Islamic regime, Iraq unleashed dozens of chemical attacks, according to international monitors. Two main Western-developed formulas were verified by U.N. investigators: mustard gas, an oily liquid first used in World War I whose vapor can remain deadly for days; and tabun, a nerve gas that causes convulsions and paralysis before death.
Estimates of Iranian battlefield deaths from chemical attacks range from hundreds to as many as 5,000. Thousands more were stricken but survived.
"Sometimes I feel fine. Then the problems return. Every breath becomes painful," said veteran Rashid Imani, who also lost his right foot in a mine blast. "They burned our clothes after the attack. But they could do nothing for us. The demon of the chemical was inside us."
One of the ward's physicians, Dr. Kamran Zamanian, said nothing can reverse the damage.
"We just try to make them comfortable and take away some of the pain," he said. "For a doctor it is frustrating. You can never cure this."
Near the end of the war in March 1988, a poison gas attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja killed an estimated 5,000 people. Iranian soldiers about six miles away entered Halabja before the gas had fully dissipated, veterans said.
"I should be dead by now," said Haji Reza Rahimi, who was in the first wave. "The doctors gave me five years to live after I was exposed. I don't know what keeps me going. There are days it's so hard to breathe that I just wish I would die."
Rahimi, who said he has severe respiratory problems and chronic infections, spends most of his time at a self-help center set up by chemical attack veterans in northern Tehran.
Bowls of fruit and vegetables, a traditional Iranian gesture, rest on tables.
"I would give anything just to eat them again," said Ali Khalaj, whose infantry division was gassed in 1986. Portions of his intestines and colon have been removed.
"I hate what they did to me. But, you know, I can't really blame the Iraqis," he added. "I blame the Western countries that gave the Iraqis these evil weapons."
In Tehran's huge main cemetery, near the tomb of the Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Yasser Mahmoudi often visits the graves of chemical attack victims. He said he left high school in 1986 to join a basiji, or volunteer, corps. Within weeks he was on the front-line.
"I remember looking for a gas mask, but we didn't have them. I fell to the ground and started to cough blood," said Mahmoudi, 32, who had a lung removed.
"One day, I know I will be unable to breathe anymore," he said. "We are all just waiting to die."
-------- iraq
Who Hates Ya, Baby?
By Art Buchwald
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; Page C02
Washington Post; Tribune Media Services
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26126-2002Oct14?language=printer
I have a confession to make. I hate Saddam Hussein. I hate him more than anyone in the world.
I hate him even more than Washington does.
It was a shock to read in Newsweek that Washington didn't always hate Saddam Hussein.
According to State Department reports just released, a secretary of defense, who shall remain nameless, went over to Baghdad as a special envoy in 1983 for President Reagan. His mission was to sell Hussein biological weapons so Iraq could poison the hell out of Iran, which at that time was the United States' worst enemy.
The secretary persuaded Hussein to buy 2,200 gallons of anthrax spores, which were shipped from Manassas, Va.; 5,300 gallons of deadly botulinum, which could be loaded into warheads; and hundreds of gallons of germs that could be used to make gas gangrene.
When Saddam Hussein was losing the war against Iran, the United States also supplied him with tanks, helicopters and other military equipment.
I played no part in any of this. Unlike Washington, I hated Hussein long before he got into a war with Iran. I didn't come late into the Hating Game because every time I saw him on TV, I suspected him of one day turning against us.
The other day a diplomat friend defended the secretary for not hating Saddam at that time, and even for shaking his hand in the Iraqi capital. He said, "It's one thing to hate a dictator all the time, but it's another if you're trying to help one dictator to beat another dictator."
He said, "The fact that you support one side one day and the other side the next day is what real diplomacy is all about. That was Henry Kissinger's specialty. Suppose Iran had defeated Iraq? Don't you think the Iranians would try to build weapons of mass destruction?"
I said, "But what about all the tanks, helicopters and missiles we gave Iraq? Won't they be used against us if we go to war now?"
"If they dare use that equipment, they will get a bloody nose from the secretary of defense. It's hard for him to explain to the Pentagon why he had his picture taken in 1983 with Saddam Hussein."
My diplomat friend said, "This isn't the first time the Americans have changed enemies. Stalin was our friend during World War II, and after the war he became our mortal enemy.
"After we beat Germany and Japan, we gave them all the equipment needed to make automobiles. And even now we're urging American tourists to go to Vietnam."
"So what do we do now?" I asked.
He said, "Our plan is to bomb Baghdad in a preemptive strike and force Iraq to surrender. But after the war we're not going to help them make automobiles. The United States is no longer going to be known as Mr. Nice Guy."
----
Next Round of U.N. Inspections Would Build on Previous Efforts
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25577-2002Oct14?language=printer
In September 1997, United Nations inspectors in Iraq were blocked when they tried to search a facility in one of the presidential areas that housed President Saddam Hussein's Special Security Organization, which handled the Iraqi leader's personal security and was involved in concealing Iraq's programs for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Nine months later, U.N. inspectors surprised officials at Iraq's Air Force headquarters and found a document detailing the use of "special weapons" during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The documents proved Baghdad had lied about the chemical weapons used in that war. Almost immediately, Iraq took the document from the U.N.'s chief inspector, an act that played a major role in the withdrawal in December 1998 of U.N. inspectors.
The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is continuing his negotiations with the Iraqi government over resumed weapons inspections for the first time in four years, even as the U.N. Security Council debates whether to approve a new resolution proposed by the Bush administration that would give the inspectors a toughened mandate. But should the U.N. send its inspectors back, they will be guided, at least at the outset, by the experiences of the previous inspections regime.
Blix has told colleagues that it would be weeks or months before he could reliably report to the Security Council on Iraq's level of cooperation. During that time, monitoring and inspections would begin. Overall, Blix has said, he would need a year or two before it could be determined whether Baghdad was in compliance with U.N. resolutions.
The inspectors will be permitted immediate access to sensitive sites without notice, Blix and Iraqi officials agreed in Vienna earlier this month. The sites would include military camps, such as Air Force headquarters, and "premises of security services" such as the Special Security Organization and the Special Republican Guard, another elite security unit.
U.N. and U.S. officials expect that Iraq will eventually permit unrestricted and unannounced inspections at the eight presidential sites that were given special status under a 1998 agreement negotiated by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The initial push to search presidential sites was primarily to obtain documents related to Iraq's concealment of weapons of mass destruction and not for prohibited chemical, biological or nuclear materials, laboratories or their production facilities, according to former senior members of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the inspections organization disbanded in 1999.
"We did have a real reason to go there. It was to investigate their concealment system," said Charles Duelfer, deputy executive director of UNSCOM, who led the eventual search.
Other details of how the new inspections would be carried out have been obscured in the negotiations over the consequences of Iraq's possible noncooperation or violations. Also lost is the level of intrusiveness posed by inspections and monitoring of Iraq's dual-use facilities -- those that have nonmilitary operations but also could be used to create weapons of mass destruction.
Although inspections get almost all the attention, monitoring of facilities that could produce prohibited missiles and chemical, biological or nuclear components is also a major part of the U.N. inspection operation.
A permanent group of U.N. employees monitored a facility in Baghdad that contained computer and other analytical tools, including a complete if modest laboratory. Agreement has been reached to reestablish and refurbish that facility.
The monitoring system in the past, and the one contemplated in the future, would involve placing new, 24-hour television cameras in missile-building facilities to watch production lines to make certain the rockets built stay within the 150-kilometer range approved in the United Nations. All Iraqi missile tests would be attended by U.N. monitors, as in the past.
The Blix team has already identified more than 300 sites that involve use of either machinery or materials that could produce prohibited weapons, based on a review of past facilities and Iraq's purchases over the past four years.
The CIA report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, released last week, noted that screening by Blix's organization of Iraq's purchases under the U.N.-authorized oil-for-food program already has provided leads for facilities to be investigated.
Some purchases were designed to rehabilitate facilities that had been used for both industrial and weapons programs. President Bush in his speech on Iraq last week released photos showing new buildings at an Iraq facility identified in the past as home to that country's now-prohibited nuclear weapons program.
Plants apparently involved in commercial activities -- such as breweries, dairies, paint or oil producers -- that could be converted to produce chemical or biological weapons materials or components will have video coverage as well as sensors to gather air and dust residue. U.N. scientists in Baghdad will regularly go into the field and collect water, air and soil samples, and inspectors will conduct aerial surveillance from helicopters and U-2 planes.
The CIA report noted that although Iraq occasionally obstructed access to sensors and manipulated cameras, on the whole Baghdad "generally accommodated U.N. monitors at declared sites."
At U.N. headquarters in New York, intelligence will be collected from governments as well as defectors. Special inspection teams will examine specific buildings or sites for two or three weeks to look for parts of missiles or chemical or biological equipment that could be violations.
To frustrate interference, lists of inspectors entering Iraq will only be given to the Iraqi government one hour before arrival and the nationality of staff members will not be disclosed. In the Vienna talks, Iraq agreed to admit inspectors with only a U.N. certificate as identification. Inspectors will bring satellite phones and other communication equipment that may not be searched by Iraq.
Teams will be flown into Baghdad airport rather than to one 50 miles outside the city, and Blix's fleet of four or more helicopters will be stationed at an air base near Baghdad. The helicopters will be used for aerial photography and for quickly moving inspection teams to sites.
Another possible means to reduce the time between determining what needs to be inspected and reaching a site will be establishment of U.N. field offices in Basra and Mosul. When Blix raised the issue in Vienna, the Iraqis showed "a readiness to accept" such a move, Blix told the Security Council last week.
There remain what Blix has called "loose ends" that must be settled before he will send an advance team back to Iraq to prepare for inspectors, according to a source close to the U.N. operations.
One, considered vital by the United States, is the manner for interviewing Iraqi scientists and others familiar with Iraq's weapons programs. The draft U.S. resolution calls for taking such individuals out of Iraq, along with their families. In Vienna, Blix raised the issue and mentioned that UNSCOM felt interviewees were intimidated by Iraqi government observers who sat in on these meetings.
He proposed keeping government officials out of such interviews but did not put forward the U.S. position. The Iraqi response was that its government wanted an observer, a note-taker and a video of such meetings, and the matter was left open for future discussion.
----
Strikes Focus on Southern Iraq Base
By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; 1:54 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28912-2002Oct15?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- A key target of U.S. and British bombing in Iraq in recent weeks has been an air base south of Baghdad that would be central to Saddam Hussein's defense against an American invasion.
Since mid-September, Tallil Air Base - a key link in an Iraqi air defense network that remains formidable despite damage from years of periodic U.S. bombing - has been struck six times, more than any other target in that period, according to Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. operations in the Persian Gulf.
The choice of bombing targets could reflect Pentagon efforts to lay the groundwork for an invasion if President Bush decides military force is needed to oust Saddam Hussein. Pentagon officials, however, say the attacking pilots are simply responding in self-defense to provocations from Iraqi air defense guns and radars.
Although Tallil has been a frequent target lately, the bombing has not been extensive enough to neutralize the target. Over the years, Iraq has shown a remarkable ability to repair and replace damaged air defenses.
Besides Tallil, the other major air defense sites in southern Iraq that have been hit recently are Al Kut, Al Amarah and the airport at Basra. On Tuesday, the Central Command said allied aircraft bombed a command and control communications facility near Al Kut, in response to unspecified "hostile acts" by Iraq.
Tallil, about 160 miles southeast of the Iraqi capital, is an air defense sector headquarters. It has surface-to-air missiles and the communications facilities to link them to the rest of Iraq's air defense network. It also has two substantial runways and can support dozens of fighters
In contrast to the recent flurry of allied attacks in the south - 23 since Aug. 27 - there were none reported in northern Iraq in that period.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the U.S. attacks are simply a necessary response to Iraqi efforts to shoot down the U.S. and British pilots who patrol the skies over northern and southern Iraq to enforce "no fly" zones. Iraq has long asserted that the flight zones are a violation of its sovereignty.
Rumsfeld did acknowledge last month that he ordered U.S. forces to take a different approach. Instead of firing mostly at Iraqi air-defense guns and radars, pilots are now targeting more of the communications centers, command buildings and fiber-optic links that are easier to find and harder to replace.
In at least a few cases, U.S. targets have appeared related to preparations for war.
On Sept. 5, for example, allied pilots bombed a military airfield 240 miles west of Baghdad. The target, as described by Central Command, was ordinary: an air defense command and control facility. But the location was unusual: a remote airfield known as H-3 that originally was built to support an oil pumping station near the Jordanian border. In a break with its usual practice, Central Command did not identify the location.
Stephen H. Baker, a retired Navy rear admiral who served aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt during the Gulf War, said the strike at H-3 was unprecedented in the decade-long history of "no fly" zone patrols.
"The objective of the strike could have been to destroy air defenses to allow easy access for special operations helicopters to fly into Iraq via Jordan or Saudi Arabia as part of a critical primary mission to hunt down Scud" missiles, Baker said recently. "Knocking out Iraqi radars at H-3 also would allow allied aircraft mounting major raids on Iraq a clear route into the country."
The spate of aerial attacks on the Tallil base began Sept. 15.
In its typically cryptic description of U.S. and British bombing, the Central Command said precision-guided munitions struck an air defense communications facility at Tallil that day. Nine days later, other unspecified "air defense facilities" were bombed at Tallil and Al Amarah, another repeated target.
Tallil was targeted by allied bombers during the 1991 Gulf War, in part because it was considered a probable storage site for chemical weapons. It reportedly served as a staging point for Iraq's airborne chemical attacks against Iran in the 1980s. Post-Gulf War U.N. inspections found no evidence of chemical weapons there.
Al Amarah has an air defense base and headquarters for the Iraqi Army's 4th Corps. It is on the Tigris River, about 165 miles southeast of Baghdad.
On Sept. 27, allied planes again attacked Tallil, this time targeting what Central Command described as a surface-to-air missile control radar and a surface-to-air missile launcher. On the same mission, Al Amarah was hit again; Central Command reported targeting an air defense operations center there but gave no details.
The next attack on Tallil was Oct. 3. Central Command said the targets were an air defense sector headquarters building and an integrated operations center. Surface-to-air missile sites at Tallil were bombed on Oct. 10 and 11.
On the Net:
Operation Southern Watch at http://www.centcom.mil
Operation Northern Watch at http://www.eucom.mil
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Says It May Expand West Bank Pullout
Reuters
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; 10:15 AM
By Michele Gershberg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28040-2002Oct15?language=printer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's defense minister said Tuesday it may soon pull troops out of another West Bank city amid U.S. demands for an easing of pressure on Palestinians to help Washington build Arab support for possible war on Iraq.
Shortly before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington to see President Bush, four Israelis were lightly injured in an apparent shooting attack on a bus in northern Israel near the West Bank border, police said.
At their White House meeting set for Wednesday, Bush was likely to urge Sharon to do more to relieve hardships imposed on Palestinian cities after suicide bombings in a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence.
Israel's superpower patron, laying out ground rules for the run-up to any campaign against Iraq, was also expected to urge Sharon to exercise maximum restraint should the Jewish state be targeted by Iraqi missiles during a U.S.-led attack.
Sharon will be trying to patch up rare disharmony between the White House and Israel caused by army raids on Palestinian militants that killed civilians and a siege of Yasser Arafat's compound last month, later aborted under U.S. pressure.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel Army Radio during a visit to France the government was holding "intensive talks on widening the area" of withdrawal from Bethlehem, completed in August, to the rest of the southern part of the West Bank.
He mentioned the city of Hebron, near Bethlehem, as the next possible focus of a tank and troop pullback.
"I hope that by the end of the week this will happen if the conditions in the field will allow it," he said.
PALESTINIANS IN DARK
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister and President Arafat's chief negotiator, told Reuters Israel was not talking with the Palestinian Authority about a new withdrawal. "It (pullout) should have happened a long time ago," he said.
Palestinians say army curfews and blockades imposed on West Bank cities in response to suicide attacks only breed bitterness ensuring violence will continue, thwarting any resumption of talks on Palestinian statehood that collapsed in mid-2000.
Israeli authorities have said suicide bombings tend to increase whenever the army relieves its grip on the cities.
Israel removed tanks and troops from the city of Bethlehem on August 20 in a deal requiring local Palestinian police to restore calm by clamping down on Palestinian militants there.
The biblical town has been generally quiet since then.
"If the situation right now allows Israel to get out of Hebron, I will definitely encourage this," Ben-Eliezer said. "We are already out of Bethlehem. I assume that Hebron and Bethlehem will join the area of Jericho (free of troops)..."
Efforts to broaden the security arrangement beyond Bethlehem stalled when new violence erupted elsewhere in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, dashing hopes the plan could lay the foundation for a gradual cease-fire.
Gunfire smashed several windows of the Israeli bus in the Galilee town of Bet Shean and police said a gunman was believed to be roaming in the region.
"We have people wounded by the glass and some who are in shock," regional fire chief Avraham Rahamim told Israel Radio.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the militant groups leading the uprising, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In Gaza, the Israeli army said it prevented an attack on the Jewish settlement Tuesday when soldiers outside it found and defused two 175-pound bombs wired to each other.
JERUSALEM MUFTI DETAINED
Israeli police detained Ikrima Sabri, the Mufti of Jerusalem who is the Palestinian Muslims' highest religious authority, for several hours Tuesday to question him about alleged statements published in Arab newspapers saying suicide bombings amount to legitimate self-defense against occupation.
Israel reoccupied seven of eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank in June in a clampdown it said was needed to prevent Palestinian militant groups from slipping more suicide bombers into Israel, where scores of civilians have died in attacks.
Palestinians say the army's presence and curfews amount to collective punishment crippling their economy and daily lives and violate interim peace deals between the sides under which they received control of West Bank and Gaza cities in the 1990s.
Sharon urged Palestinians Monday to change their leaders, whom he denounced as "murderous gangs," and said he hoped for a turning point to end Middle East violence in the next year.
Israeli leaders have acknowledged the new Iraq war dynamic in relations with the United States, noting Bush fears harsh moves against Palestinians will make it harder for Washington to woo Arab governments for a campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.
At least 1,614 Palestinians and 604 Israelis have been killed in the uprising which erupted after talks on a final peace accord addressing terms for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza broke down.
--------
Sharon Urges Palestinians to Replace 'Murderous Regime'
October 15, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 14 - As he prepared to leave Israel for a meeting with President Bush, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called on Palestinians today to change their "murderous regime," saying the coming year could be "a year of change."
"Your terrible pain is unnecessary," Mr. Sharon said, addressing Palestinians during a speech opening the winter session of the Israeli Parliament. "The blood you have spilled has been spilled in vain."
In Gaza City today, a Palestinian promoted by Israeli and American officials as a possible alternative to Yasir Arafat as Palestinian leader said in an interview that he had offered his resignation as a senior adviser to Mr. Arafat.
The adviser, Muhammad Dahlan, is a careful politician who has been trying to broaden his base of support. He offered his resignation a year ago, citing a lack of civic reform, but Mr. Arafat refused to accept it.
"I'm resigning because I don't want to have an official position within the Palestinian Authority at this time," he said today, refusing to elaborate.
The resignation comes as Mr. Arafat is forming a new government, under pressure from the Palestinian parliament. Mr. Dahlan may be angling for a top post.
This is a particularly tense time for the governing Palestinian Authority, and Mr. Dahlan's move may also amount to an effort to gain some political distance.
The Authority is locked in a bitter standoff in the Gaza Strip with the Islamist group Hamas, which it accuses of involvement in the killing of a colonel in the Palestinian police last week.
Regarding the slaying as a challenge to its control, the Authority has demanded that Hamas hand over the men involved. Hamas has refused, and at least five people have been killed in resulting clashes.
The Authority retains the force of arms. But at least in Gaza, Hamas appears to have the sympathy of typical Palestinians, presenting a quandary for any ambitious Palestinian official.
On Friday, when thousands of Palestinian Authority security officers turned out for the funeral of the slain colonel, Mr. Dahlan was not seen.
A further quandary is presented by Mr. Arafat himself, the subject of fierce Palestinian ambivalence. He is respected as a revolutionary symbol and an aging fighter but is criticized for larding the Authority with corrupt or inept ministers.
In meetings with Gazans in recent weeks, Mr. Dahlan has been critical of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, but he has generally declined to repeat his criticisms to the press. He has repeatedly affirmed his loyalty to Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Bush, who will meet with Mr. Sharon on Wednesday, has also called on the Palestinians to replace Mr. Arafat as their leader, endorsing Mr. Sharon's demand that a change in leadership precede substantive peace negotiations.
The Palestinian Authority has scheduled elections for January, but the Bush administration is resisting that step, fearing in part that the elections might strengthen Mr. Arafat. Israel has re-established military control of the West Bank, throwing the prospect of elections into further doubt.
In his speech, Mr. Sharon said the Palestinians' "murderous regime must be removed and replaced with one of peace."
Yossi Sarid, the Israeli opposition leader, laid some of the blame on Mr. Sharon when he followed the prime minister to the lectern. "You are leaving behind you a scorched land, a scorched country, and you are mainly leaving behind you scorched people," he said. "And this will be beyond repair."
Both men devoted much of their remarks to the grim Israeli economy, with Mr. Sharon urging passage of his budget. He said the budget "implies painful compromises for everyone."
In the West Bank town of Jenin today, Israeli troops in tanks fired on a car as Israeli helicopters circled overhead, killing two members of the militant group Islamic Jihad and wounding another, the group said. It identified them as Muhammad Musa, 27, and Wassim Sabari, 23. An army spokeswoman had no initial comment.
In Bethlehem today, Palestinians buried a militant who died on Sunday when the receiver of the public telephone he was using exploded. Palestinians called the death an Israeli assassination and accused Israel of seeking to provoke Palestinian violence in Bethlehem, which has been relatively quiet for weeks. Israeli officials declined to comment.
The dead man, Muhammad Abayat, 25, was identified by Palestinians as a relatively low-ranking member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the militia connected to Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement. Two of Mr. Abayat's relatives, more senior members, had already been killed by Israel.
Israeli forces pulled out of Bethlehem two months ago in exchange for assurances from local security officials that they would keep the city quiet. The deal has substantially held until now.
-------- japan
Official sees strain on ties with U.S.
By Ted Hattori
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021015-76824624.htm
U.S.-Japanese relations will be jeopardized if Japan goes ahead with proposed economic aid to North Korea, a senior Japanese politician said after meetings in Washington with leading Bush administration officials.
Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara told Japanese reporters that U.S. officials had reacted unhappily to a recent visit to North Korea by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Japanese reacted enthusiastically to the visit, in which Mr. Koizumi promised to discuss financial aid to North Korea after the Koreans confessed to having kidnapped several Japanese citizens in the 1970s.
But the reaction to the visit "was 180 degrees different [in Washington] from what it was in Japan," Mr. Ishihara said at a private briefing for Japanese reporters at the end of his visit.
During his Oct. 6-11 visit, Mr. Ishihara met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Undersecretary of State John Bolton and National Security Council officials James Moriarity and Michael Green.
In addition, he told the reporters, he was invited to dinner by a "very important person who is over [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice and very close to the president." He said other senior officials also attended the dinner.
The Tokyo governor said half the time he spent in meetings in Washington was taken up by the North Korea issue.
"If Japan will pay money to North Korea, it would mean stabbing our [U.S.] ally in the back, because a country once called part of the 'axis of evil' has not changed at all," he said.
"It is absolutely clear that North Korea is supplying parts of Scud missiles to Iraq," he said.
"It has made those parts in the course of developing its Taepodong missile and is still making them. The Japanese media and Foreign Ministry know it but just don't say so."
Mr. Ishihara told the reporters that Japanese politicians have failed to make good use of what he described as the "North Korea card."
"The North Korea card is very important. We should use this card positively," he said.
Mr. Ishihara has long been known for his controversial statements. In the United States, he is best known for his book, "The Japan That Can Say No," which advocates a more assertive Japanese foreign policy.
In a speech in May to the Japan Self-Defense Force, he offended Koreans by using the term "sangoku-jin," a disparaging word meaning literally "men from the third country."
Mr. Ishihara said he had told the guests at the Washington dinner party that Japan's international airline system will collapse within two years because of overcrowding at existing airports.
He said some of the guests expressed sympathy for his proposal that the Yokota U.S. military base in Tokyo be opened to co-use by civilian flights.
------- latin america
Chilean Air Force Chief Quits
WORLD In Brief
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Washington Post; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26184-2002Oct14?language=printer
BUENOS AIRES -- Chile's embattled Air Force chief, Gen. Patricio Rios, resigned Sunday as accusations mounted that his branch of the armed forces hid information on the fate of 3,000 political prisoners during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship.
Pressure mounted on Rios after the recent indictment of Gen. Patricio Campos, whom Rios appointed to investigate murders and disappearances but who later confessed to destroying pertinent documents.
Rios is the highest-ranking military commander forced to resign for actions related to Pinochet's dictatorship since Chilean democracy was restored in 1990. He may also face criminal prosecution on charges of obstructing justice. In a letter to President Ricardo Lagos, Rios said he was innocent but was resigning "for the sake of the nation and the air force."
Anthony Faiola
-------- mideast
ATTACK ON AMERICANS
Gunfire Erupts Again in Kuwait
October 15, 2002
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/middleeast/15KUWA.html
KUWAIT, Oct. 14 - Gunmen fired at American marines in northern Kuwait early today, the United States Embassy here said, less than a week after a marine was killed in an attack here by a man professing allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
No one was injured in the incident, at about 7:50 a.m. local time. The gunmen, in two sport utility vehicles, approached the marines near a military training area and started firing, an embassy spokeswoman said. She said that the American troops did not return fire and that neither the vehicles nor the assailants have been found.
It was the third shooting incident in less than a week, though some Kuwaiti officials privately discounted the report today as a possible misunderstanding caused by bird hunters. Last Wednesday, an American soldier fired a single bullet at a car in northern Kuwait, apparently sensing a threat as troops traveled on a highway. No one was injured.
Many people fear that the latest spate of violence is a result of Al Qaeda's influence among a sliver of Kuwait's young Islamic militants, like those who carried out the attack last week.
But many Kuwaitis say that American support for Israel's harsh treatment of Palestinians is also responsible for a growing anti-American sentiment in this country and that it could be inflaming militant passions.
"Solve the Palestinian problem, and you will neutralize most of these people," said a retired Kuwaiti oil executive at a traditional gathering of men, in a wealthy neighborhood here this evening.
Most of Kuwait's 800,000 citizens remain grateful for United States protection following the Persian Gulf war in 1991, in which American troops rescued their country from an Iraqi invasion. But perceptions that America has acquiesced in Israel's use of force against Palestinian civilians and the support in the United States for Israel's claim that Jerusalem is its capital have gradually eroded some of that good will.
Kuwaiti news organizations give prominent coverage to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often emphasizing the Palestinian point of view. Muhammad al-Jassem, editor of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan, said the Kuwaiti government had focused on the conflict in the official news media to demonstrate its solidarity with the Arab world.
Most people here doubt the attack last week and the shooting today have much to do with the growing likelihood of an American attack on Iraq. The government here opposes a unilateral American attack and has said it would only support an attack authorized by the United Nations.
-------- pacific
Indonesian anger at FBI investigation
Dan McDougall
Tue 15 Oct 2002
The Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1139392002
BY THE time the news of the bombing in Bali reached the American public early on Sunday, a team of officers from the FBI was already heading to a military airfield on the outskirts of Washington en route for Indonesia.
As the US agents arrived in Kuta, officially to assist the Indonesian police in the forensic hunt for victims, they were joined by anti-terrorist officers from Scotland Yard and a much larger contingent from the secret service wing of the Australian Federal Police.
In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, where reaction to the intervention of foreigners, particularly the FBI, was angrily received, few believed the foreign agents were there in a purely advisory capacity.
In fact, as the FBI arrived to "advise" the Balinese police, the Indonesian authorities were already coming under intense international pressure to concentrate their energies on bringing the perpetrators of the atrocity to justice.
Last night, Scotland Yard confirmed it had despatched members of its anti-terrorist squad to Bali specifically to help gather forensic evidence that may lead the Indonesian authorities directly to the bombers.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "We can confirm we have offered to help with the task of identifying victims, but a number of our forensic officers will also be making detailed examinations at the bomb site in a bid to piece together clues as to how the device was put together and who may have planted it.
"Scotland Yard officers are keen to speak to Britons caught up in the blast as their evidence may help in the Indonesian authorities' inquiries. The anti-terrorist branch in particular wants to see video footage and photographs taken by holidaymakers which may hold vital clues about the incident."
The US State Department was more candid about the involvement of the FBI, issuing a simple statement confirming their agents were present in Kuta.
Jo-Anne Prokopowicz, a State Department spokeswoman, said: "These incidents are under investigation and we are assisting the Indonesians in every way we can. I don't want to speculate about possible perpetrators, motivations or connections."
Yesterday, at the scene of the bombing itself, rescue workers continued to work round the clock, sifting through the rubble for clues. On the ground, US and British agents were seen at the bomb site sifting through the rubble, retrieving samples of blood and tissue that may offer DNA readings and conclusively identify the victims.
'Many people will be asking why are we allowing the US to run an investigation in our own country' WIMAR WITOELAR As well as attempting to track down the fragments of the bombs themselves in a bid to identify how they were made, the forensic officers also retrieved the burned and fragmented remains of personal items helpful in the identification process, including wallets, belt buckles, pieces of jewellery and photographs.
Last night, no group had claimed responsibility for the worst terrorist attack in Indonesia's history, but the finger of blame remained clearly pointed at the Indonesian Muslim radical, Abubaker Baasyir.
Baasyir, who has been labelled Indonesia's Osama bin Laden, is widely-believed to be the head of the militant Islamic faction Jemaah Islamiah (Islamic Community), which hopes to create an Islamic state in Malaysia, the southern Philippines and Indonesia.
Earlier this year, the group was accused by Singapore and Malaysia of planning attacks on US interests in Singapore. Indonesia's two neighbours claim the network, with tentacles across the region, is led by Baasyir, a Muslim cleric who lives near the central Java town of Solo.
Ralph Boyce, the US ambassador, said that while the Bali bombings couldn't yet be pinned on al-Qaeda, there was direct evidence that the group and its affiliates were operating in Indonesia and reaching out to local extremists.
Yesterday, after increasing pressure from the US, Megawati Sukarnoputri, the Indonesian president, faced increasing calls to arrest Baasyir, whom the US has long believed is directly linked to al-Qaeda.
However, Alexander Downer, Australia's foreign minister, said it would be premature to arrest Baasyir, while Muslim leaders warned Megawati that many Indonesians believe Baasyir is innocent and that if she arrests the cleric, she risks appearing to be a lackey of the US.
According to Wimar Witoelar, a political analyst on Indonesia, the president had already made a serious error by allowing the FBI into the country.
He said: "She has to show she is not dancing to the tune of the US and many Indonesians will see the immediate involvement of the FBI in the investigation as an unnecessary intrusion.
"The question many people in Jakarta will be asking is why are we allowing the US to run an investigation in our own country."
In Australia, where parliament was recalled to discuss the tragedy, some political observers claimed Australians themselves had been the direct target of the attack, saying that the Indonesian military may have orchestrated the bombing to take some revenge against them for leading the United Nations peace-keeping operation in East Timor in 1999.
Many Indonesians, including the military and some hardline Muslim groups, continue to blame Australia for East Timor's independence, saying it manipulated the UN referendum held in 1999.
Despite accusations aimed at the military in Jakarta, Matori Abdul Djalil, Indonesia's defence minister, yesterday directly blamed al-Qaeda and its extremist allies for the attack. He said: "We are sure al-Qaeda is here. The Bali bomb blast is related to al-Qaeda with the co-operation of local terrorists."
But according to Bali police chief, Brigadier General Budi Setiawan, his force was no closer to solving the mystery behind the attack.
He said: "We have not caught anyone yet, but we are doing everything we can and when we get a lead on this, we will announce it to the world."
AL-QAEDA ARE THEY RESPONSIBLE?
For
Intelligence sources in Indonesia have pointed the finger of blame for the bombing at Jemaah Islamiah, an Islamic fundamentalist group with strong links to al-Qaeda. Militant Muslims are known to be active in Indonesia. Abubaker Baasyir, widely believed to be the leader of Jemaah Islamiah, has praised Osama bin Laden as a "great Islamic warrior".
Experts, including Professor Paul Wilkinson, the chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, believe the bombing bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda. It targeted Westerners in a club where Balinese were banned. The operation was well-organised and executed and one of the three bombs went off outside the US consulate.
FBI sources claim messages in recent audio tapes of bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, may have given agents the signal to strike.
US state department officials believe the recent attacks on the French oil tanker, Limburg, in Yemen, and the shooting of a US marine in Kuwait were linked to the bombing and signified a new al-Qaeda campaign.
Against
Police in Bali already claim to have the names of at least half a dozen people who may be linked to the weekend blasts, but not linked to al-Qaeda.
Because the majority of victims were Australian, some experts have speculated that the attack may have been aimed specifically against them. In 1999, Australian troops took control of East Timor, which Indonesia had invaded 25 years earlier, after the territory's voters opted for independence in a United Nations referendum. The action infuriated many in Indonesia, who saw it as part of a neo-colonialist policy aimed at breaking up their country.
Baasyir has condemned the bombing as "brutal" and denied that he was responsible. He said he was not linked to terrorism or to Jemaah Islamiah. Bambang Susilo Yudoyono, the Indonesian security minister, said there were signs that terrorists not directly linked to al-Qaeda were planning attacks against key industrial sites.
Analysts say al-Qaeda only attacks "symbols of US power" and that the Sari Club could not be described as such.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan coalition wants U.S. out
By Ralph Joseph
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021015-30441604.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - An alliance of hard-line Islamic parties called yesterday for the removal of U.S. forces from the country, prompting fears that major electoral gains by the coalition would hurt cooperation in the search for al Qaeda and Taliban stragglers along the Afghan border.
Leaders of the Mutahidda-e-Amal, or MMA Islamic coalition, also said they would insist on the introduction of strict Islamic law, sending shudders through a secular elite whose members are already warning that "Taliban-like" governments may emerge in two provinces bordering Afghanistan.
The alliance of six clerical parties captured large pluralities in the provincial assemblies of North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan while racking up strong gains nationally in parliamentary elections last week.
The clerics fell short of outright majorities in the two provinces where the search for al Qaeda is concentrated but captured enough seats to enable them to form governments in both.
They could also end up with control of the federal Senate, in which seats are allocated on a geographic basis. That would give them a powerful voice in foreign affairs and defense.
"We assure the international community that we are not terrorists," MMA Vice President Qazi Hussain said at a news conference yesterday. "We will not use this country for terrorism, nor allow anyone to use this country for terrorism."
But, he added, "We do not approve of foreign interference. For this we do not need any help from the American forces nor their bases in the country. There should also be no such bases here which could be used for interference in the affairs of neighboring states."
The United States has been using an airfield at Jacobabad in Pakistan as a base for search-and-rescue operations in Afghanistan. It also has a small number of CIA and FBI operatives in the country to advise on the search for wanted militants.
Another MMA leader, Munawar Hasan, went even further when speaking to reporters yesterday in Karachi, where a number of al Qaeda operatives are believed to be sheltering in safe houses.
"The Taliban and al Qaeda members are our brothers," he said. "We will not hand over anybody to the United States without proof" that they were involved in terrorism.
President Pervez Musharraf insisted during a visit to Turkey yesterday that his policy of close cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism would continue.
"As far as national policies are concerned the national strategy does not change with a change of government; it continues," he said.
Indeed, it is still not clear whether the MMA will be part of the national government after its third-place finish - behind the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), or PML(Q), and the Pakistan Peoples Party, led by self-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
But local police forces, which must play a large role in the hunt for terrorists, are under the control of the provincial governments and could be ordered to cut back or end their cooperation in any MMA-ruled territories.
At a press conference yesterday in Karachi, MMA Chairman Shah Ahmed Noorani said his party also supported the introduction of Islamic law, or Sharia, which includes such harsh penalties as stoning and amputation.
"Our first priority is to implement Islamic laws in the country, and we will not compromise in this issue. Now it is the responsibility of the state to protect Islam and do away with secular norms," he said.
Such remarks are unnerving Pakistan's secular intelligensia.
"In my opinion, the [North West Frontier Province] is in for a government which is going to be pretty close to the Taliban," said a former senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
He said the emergence of the clerics as a potent force was probably the result of interference in the democratic process by Gen. Musharraf, who enhanced his own powers before the election and prevented the leaders of the two main secular parties from participating.
Gen. Musharraf "deliberately hobbled the two major parties and tried to create this 'king's party,'" he said in reference to the PML(Q).
"OK, so they've achieved one objective, that the king's party has come out in the lead, but they've created space for the MMA."
Ijaz Shafi Gilani, who is head of the Gallup International polling organization in Pakistan, said he considered the rise of "Taliban-like" governments in the border provinces unlikely because of the number of votes the MMA received from traditional supporters of the main secular parties.
--------
F.B.I. Aids Pakistan in Arrest of 4 Afghans Linked to Qaeda
October 15, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/15CND_STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 15 - The Pakistani police, accompanied by F.B.I. agents, arrested four Afghan men suspected of ties to Al Qaeda in a refugee camp near the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said today.
A Pakistani investigator said one of the men, Abdur Rehman, was of particular interest to American investigators, but he declined to say why.
The raid took place early Tuesday in the Jalozai refugee camp, about 25 miles east of the city of Peshawar, officials said. Two passports, one from Afghanistan and one from Saudi Arabia, were found with the four Afghan men, along with a computer, compact disks and a mobile phone.
A Pakistani police official said the operation had been carried out over the course of several days. He said Pakistani intelligence officials were questioning the men.
In an unrelated interview tonight in Islamabad, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a senior leader in the coalition of hard-line religious parties that gained broad support in elections last week, reiterated the parties' call for the expulsion of all American soldiers and F.B.I. agents from Pakistan. Next month, the coalition is expected to take control of the provincial government in the area where the arrests took place, the Northwest Frontier Province.
Running on an anti-American platform, the coalition of parties swept the area in the elections and won 20 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. While other coalition leaders have softened their stand since the election, Mr. Rehman did not back away tonight from their campaign call for the ouster of Americans.
"We think that we can take care of the internal law-and-order situation ourselves," Mr. Rehman said, promising that the area would not be used as a base for terrorism. "Our national integrity and sovereignty should be of prime importance."
--------
Religious Leader in Pakistan Sets Moderate Tone After Vote
October 15, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/asia/15STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 14 - Qazi Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani religious leader whose sudden popularity here is making generals in Islamabad and Washington nervous, says he has a message for the American people. We do not dislike you, he says, we dislike what your president is doing.
"This is not against America," Mr. Ahmed said. "This is against the wrong policies of America."
Mr. Ahmed, 63, is a former professor who is the leading moderate voice in an unwieldy coalition of six Islamic religious parties that unexpectedly won broad support in elections last week. He has become one of the most closely watched men in Pakistan. A campaign demand from the formerly obscure coalition that American soldiers and F.B.I. agents be expelled from Pakistan has turned into a potential threat to the American-led campaign against terrorism.
In the elections, the first since the military coup in 1999 that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power, members of the conservative religious coalition won control of the governments of two strategic provinces bordering Afghanistan, of the largely ceremonial upper house of the Parliament and roughly 20 percent of the seats in the powerful lower house.
The coalition has never before won control of a province, and with no party winning a majority, the coalition is in a position to play a major role in government for the first time.
Today, in a news conference and an interview, Mr. Ahmed maintained the relatively moderate tone toward the United States that his coalition has adopted since election night. The soft-spoken academic and religious leader, who has spent much of his life in a seemingly futile effort to build his party, Jamaat-e-Islami, into a dominant political force, backed away from the demand to expel American troops and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.
"We will discuss it with him," he said, referring to General Musharraf. "We will show flexibility."
But he openly challenged the general, a major American ally in the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Ahmad announced that he and his coalition would only swear allegiance in Parliament to a Constitution stripped of the 19 amendments General Musharraf unilaterally enacted this summer, largely seen as cementing his hold on power.
Mr. Ahmed's comments came at the outset of an anticipated two weeks of political negotiations to form a government.
The party tacitly backed by General Musharraf won at least 76 seats of the 272 filled directly by election. The party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto won at least 62. An official from Mr. Ahmed's coalition, which is known as the United Action Council, said it expects to hold at least 51 seats. Its best previous showing was 9 seats.
General Musharraf still wields near-dictatorial powers, though. He commands the military, will remain president for five years and has given himself the power to dismiss the new Parliament, which he has promised will sit by Nov. 1.
Officials in Mr. Ahmed's party privately expressed fears today that the general will quickly dismiss the Parliament or not allow it to sit, creating the potential for a volatile civilian-military confrontation. They said they worried that the general might try to use the threat of Islamic militancy to gain American support if he takes such an action.
Today, Mr. Ahmed distanced himself from hard-line Islamic views, painting his party in terms reminiscent of the reformist Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He said he opposed violence and believed in the establishment of Islamic law, or Shariah, through democracy. His version would include equal education and employment for women.
But Mr. Ahmed's unwieldy coalition includes two factions of the more militant Party of the Islamic People, headed by Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman. Religious schools run by that group produced much of the Taliban leadership. Both Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Rahman were jailed by General Musharraf after leading protests against American bombing in Afghanistan last fall.
The group also includes a pro-Saudi orthodox Islamist party, a pro-Iran Shiite Muslim party and a small moderate party. The militant parties won more seats than the comparatively moderate parties, weakening Mr. Ahmed's position within the coalition.
But his group remains one of the best organized and most politically savvy parties in the country. Winning seats for the first time in Islamabad and major cities, it fielded moderate and charismatic candidates who ran on promises of curbing corruption and poverty.
Mr. Ahmed smoothly articulates the sophisticated, politicized version of Islam that has become widespread here. Cobbling together tenets of Islam, Marxism and current events, it paints the United States as bent on subjugating the world.
"We are against the hegemonic attitude of the U.S. administration," he said.
-------- un
Many Nations Oppose Iraq Resolution
By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; 1:46 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28894-2002Oct15?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS -- France, Russia, China and several other members of the U.N. Security Council remain opposed to a resolution backed by the United States and Britain that would authorize military action against Iraq if it fails to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Intense negotiations have been going on among the five veto-holding nations, and U.S. deputy ambassador Richard Williamson said Tuesday that "the dance continues."
"No breakthroughs have taken place to date, but the conversations continue," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said in Washington. President Bush has said "he was content to wait for days and weeks, not months. It still is within that days and weeks timeframe. ... We'll see if it goes beyond that."
France has led the opposition - instead favoring two U.N. resolutions - a first toughening U.N. inspections and a second authorizing action against Iraq if it fails to comply.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin reaffirmed on Monday that Paris is opposed to unilateral U.S. military action and urged the Bush administration to "remain faithful to the vision of collective security that rests on the law."
"America seems tempted by the solitude of power," he told the Institute for National Defense Studies, a think tank in Paris. "We cannot accept an intervention that is not a last resort, the final resort."
China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Tuesday that inspectors should return to Iraq before the Security Council decides on any action.
"We believe that the imperative is to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq as soon as possible to have outside inspection and then submit a report to the U.N. Security Council. After reviewing such an objective report, then the U.N. Security Council should take some actions," she said.
Affirming China's opposition to military action, Zhang said, "A political and diplomatic way should be sought within the U.N. framework."
Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was asked to brief the council Tuesday at Russia's request on two letters from Iraq on the return of inspectors after nearly four years, diplomats said.
Blix, who is in charge of searching for biological and chemical weapons, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is in charge of nuclear inspections, asked Iraq to confirm agreements reached in Vienna earlier this month on resuming inspections.
The two Iraqi letters did not explicitly confirm the agreements, but Iraq said it saw no obstacles to a resumption of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction and promised to behave "professionally" if U.N. weapons inspectors return.
Meanwhile, negotiations on a new U.N. resolution continued.
In a move to placate France, U.S. diplomats last week offered to remove a threat to use "all necessary means" if Saddam Hussein doesn't cooperate. France objected because the new U.S. draft resolution would still threaten "serious consequences" if Iraq remained defiant, which U.S. officials said was enough for Washington to attack if necessary.
On Monday, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte met France's U.N. Ambassador John David Levitte. Council diplomats said France still insists on a two-stage resolution but offered more precise language in its draft to address U.S. concerns.
Secretary of State Colin Powell scheduled talks with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the administration's closest ally, in Washington on Tuesday.
Council diplomats said Monday they did not believe the United States and Britain have enough support in the 15-member Security Council for a resolution that would give a green light for the use of force in Iraq. To win approval, a resolution must get nine "yes" votes and must not be vetoed by a permanent member.
Diplomats said they believe a U.S. resolution with any language that could authorize force would likely be opposed by France, Russia, China, Syria, Ireland, Mexico, Cameroon, Guinea and probably Mauritius - which means it would get a maximum of only six or seven "yes" votes.
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told the General Assembly on Monday that U.N. inspectors should be given "the strongest powers possible to ensure successful disarmament and to make it crystal clear to Iraq that this time, it is complete disarmament or serious consequences."
But last week, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said "the member states want a two-stage approach" and on Tuesday, Colombia's U.N. Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso, a council member, echoed this assessment.
The council is expected to hold a two-day open debate on Iraq starting Wednesday to hear a wide range of views.
"I think most of the countries are going to call for a very strong position on Iraq, but at the same time I would say they are going to make reservations about the authorization of the use of force," Valdivieso said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
National ID cards are not in order
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021015-25948126.htm
I totally agree with your Oct. 5 editorial "Big Brother's national ID card." Such a document would result in far more problems and abuses than any positive results could justify.
Just think back to all of the bad movies we have seen, wherein some totalitarian thug with a badge or a uniform and a gun goes up to some innocent citizens and demands to see their "papers." We already know what happens if the papers are "not in order," and we also know who gets to decide what is "in order" and what is not.
The last thing we need is yet another way for any police agency, federal, state or local, to inconvenience and harass people for fun or with the hopes of producing a few arrests to impress superiors.
I rarely go out without two forms of photo ID. Those two documents and some others with my name and address should be all any reasonable, minimally intelligent officer should need to verify who I am. It will be mere minutes before fake IDs will be available on the black market, anyway, and this alone will dilute any value of such a program.
There are many other ways to improve our national integrity without resorting to another branch, bureau or department of government to create and administer such a program. We really don't need yet more unelected, unaccountable officials deciding what is best for us.
Let's think this out very carefully before rushing to the floor of Congress and doing something that many generations will regret.
RALPH IRISH
Utica, Mich.
----
Scorn for the judiciary?
Bruce Fein
October 15, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021015-71565464.htm
During wartime, presidential powers peak. But the checking powers of the federal judiciary and Congress should not retire on half pay. They must remain vigilant to prevent war coronations from displacing presidential inaugurations.
To the Bush administration, however, the Constitution's separation of powers should bow to the greater wisdom of the Executive Branch alone. The Founding Fathers mistakenly believed absolute power would corrupt, and would signal the end of our cherished liberties. Contrary to James Madison, father of the Constitution, men become angels when they occupy the White House and endowed with greater infallibility than the pope on matters of national security. In sum, there is only one legitimate authority in wartime, and it is the president.
The alarming imperial powers claimed by President George W. Bush featured in the equally alarming and supine decision last week by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in New Jersey Media Inc. vs. Ashcroft (Oct. 8). In the wake of September 11, Michael Creppy, the chief United States immigration judge, directed the categorical closure of all deportation proceedings designated "special interest" by Attorney General John Ashcroft. A consortium of media groups brought suit challenging the constitutionality of the Creppy directive under the First Amendment.
Public deportation adjudications involving terrorists suspected of complicity in the September 11 abominations, however, might assist their terrorist comrades in confounding the deportation proceeding itself, evading detection or deducing American vulnerabilities to future villainies. But these genuine and urgent national security justifications for secrecy, it was said, should be made case-by-case, not unthinkingly presumed as universally true.
Speaking for a 2-1 panel majority of the 3rd Circuit, Judge Edward Becker sustained the blanket secrecy directive. He conceded that openness of deportation adjudications furthered manifold constitutional values: an informed public; a perception of fairness necessary for public confidence in adjudicatory decisions; community therapy, including nonviolent anger toward evildoers; checking official corruption; deterring perjury; and, inspiring participants' bravura performances.
But September 11, according to Judge Becker, changed the American constitutional landscape as dramatically as the Ninth of Thermidor shook Revolutionary France: "The era that dawned on September 11, and the war against terrorism that has pervaded the sinews of our national life since that day, are reflected in thousands of ways in our legislative and national policy, the habits of daily living, and our collective psyches. Since the primary national policy must be self-preservation, it seems elementary that, to the extent open deportation proceedings might impair national security, that security [militates against openness]."
Up to this point, Judge Becker's observations are impeccable. But he traveled further to embrace executive branch absolutism. Dale Watson, counterterrorism chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, submitted a declaration insisting that case-by-case closures would be unworkable because immigration judges are too dull to appreciate national security dangers and that the introduction of evidence to support secrecy might clue our enemies. But the latter problem is obviated by holding the closure hearing itself in camera and ex parte.
Experience and Supreme Court precedents also militate against Pavlovian obedience whenever the national security banner is waved. Pearl Harbor was as transforming of American life as September 11. Self-preservation was the overarching national policy. Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt was dispatched to the West Coast in February 1942 to assess the national security threat posed by more than 100,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry. He spotted no signs of sabotage or disloyalty, which immediately aroused fear that treason was afoot, necessitating exclusion or concentration camps. Reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland," Gen. DeWitt sounded the tocsin: "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." What a monstrous delusion. Japanese-Americans fought with exceptional valor during World War II to preserve the freedoms and liberties of the likes of Gen. DeWitt and his ill-thinking superior, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
President Harry Truman claimed a national security justification for seizing steel mills during the Korean War. The Supreme Court rejected that kingly assertion in Youngstown Sheet and Tube vs. Sawyer (1952), and Truman's fears proved chimerical.
President Richard M. Nixon insisted federal judges were too naive to understand the necessity of warrants authorizing electronic surveillance for domestic security. Such snooping, he maintained, should be permitted on the president's say so alone. In rejecting that monarchical scripture, the Supreme Court in United States vs. United States District Court (1972) retorted that security dangers unfathomable to judges were more likely contrived than genuine.
In the Pentagon Papers litigation, New York Times vs. United States (1971), the high court denied President Nixon's quest to enjoin publication because an alleged direct, immediate, and irreparable national security harm had not been proved. Publication ensued, and the nation's security was unimpaired.
The Bush administration eagerly enlists history to demonstrate the greater danger of inaction over action in Iraq or otherwise. The United States slept amidst Japan's occupation of Manchuria, Benito Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, the Nazi reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Munich summit and the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. But concentration camps for Japanese-Americans and national security overreaching by presidents are equally part of history.
President Bush's reading of an expurgated edition is a clear and present danger to coveted freedoms.
To be sure, the president deserves great deference by the coequal branches of government in wartime. But demanding capitulation is constitutional heresy.
Bruce Fein is founding partner of Fein & Fein law firm in Washington.
----
Ballistic fingerprinting is no magic bullet
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021015-25948126.htm
In his Friday Commentary column, "'Fingerprint' bullets?" Clarence Page called for a national "ballistic fingerprinting" system. This idea has several problems.
First, the expense of collecting, processing and storing such a database would be prohibitive, especially given its limited usefulness. A small fraction of firearms, about two-tenths of 1 percent, is ever used in the commission of a crime. There are more than 200 million firearms in the United States. Forcing American taxpayers or legitimate gun owners to pay for such a scheme is unfair. By Mr. Page's logic, in an effort to solve future crimes, we also could argue for fingerprinting and getting DNA samples from every baby born in the country.
A vast assortment of illegal weapons are available on the black market. Criminals throughout the region already have access to almost any type of gun from underground sources, only a few of which have been "fingerprinted." We cannot even stop the flow of illegal drugs or counterfeit watches into the country; it is unlikely that we could stop the flow of illegal guns - or gun barrels - rushing in to meet an increased black-market demand.
Third, each time a gun is fired, its ballistic fingerprint changes because of minute scratches to the barrel. This means that a gun will have a slightly different "fingerprint" at the time of manufacture than it will after hundreds or thousands of rounds have passed through it. Fourth, criminals would soon learn to swap the gun barrels of weapons they obtained, replace the original barrels with those manufactured illegally in clandestine factories, or change the ballistic fingerprint by scratching the inside of the barrel.
Fifth, as we have seen in the recent sniper attacks, bullets often are not recovered in a condition that would allow for comparison of ballistic fingerprints. In many of the attacks, only bullet fragments were recovered, which then were compared with the composition of other recovered fragments. When a gunman uses high-velocity, lightweight bullets like the .223 being used by the D.C.-area sniper, only fragments may ever be recovered.
We absolutely should "fingerprint" every firearm used in a crime or recovered from a criminal. However, to some anti-gun activists, no burden or expense is too great for gun owners to bear. The expense and impossibility of implementing a plan such as Mr. Page proposes means the end result would only be wasted time and effort. Universal "ballistic fingerprinting" would not provide us with a "magic bullet" to solve crimes.
JAMES TERPENING
Washington
--------
Has Big Brother arrived, and is he watching us?
Government's expanding powers, which it says are needed to fight the war on terrorism, worry many people because of the long-term consequences for ordinary citizens, including a loss of privacy.
By JAMES HEANEY
News Staff Reporter
12/15/2002
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20021215/1007874.asp
John D. Ashcroft is accused of discouraging disclosures under the Freedom of Information Law.
Steps taken in the name of fighting terrorism are producing changes in American society that, according to critics spanning the political spectrum, could leave citizens with less personal privacy, a government that operates in greater secrecy and a judicial system that denies some defendants due process.
It's not a someday possibility, these critics charge. It's already happening.
Consider:
The military is developing a high-tech system that would allow the government to track the daily activities of its citizens, everything from the e-mail they write to the goods they charge to the library books they borrow.
Authorities have jailed a number of immigrants, and one U.S. citizen, without bringing charges against them.
Government agencies have a growing backlog of unanswered Freedom of Information Law requests from the media and public, thus hindering the free flow of information about government activities.
The government's expanded powers are a "worrisome trend," according to Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "It raises the specter of (George) Orwell's "1984' vision being fulfilled," said Tapscott, director of the foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy.
It's not necessarily the near term he's concerned about, but the long-term implications. "The problem is a government power sooner or later will be abused," he said.
But federal government officials contend that the changes are necessary, that they need more surveillance powers and aggressive law enforcement authority to counter terrorism.
While officials at the Department of Justice, where many of the government's policies are originating, declined to comment, others sympathetic to the government's position say much of the criticism is premature or overstated.
"The suggestion we're talking about Big Brother looking over the shoulder of 300 million Americans is a little bit of an exaggeration," said Philip Anderson, a senior fellow and director of the Homeland Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Critics, however, see a largely unchecked growth in government powers that they say goes well beyond what is necessary to fight terrorism.
They warn that safeguards are now being undone that were achieved in the 1970s after U.S. intelligence agency abuses came to light - including snooping on Vietnam War and civil rights protesters. These laws were seen as promoting openness in government, protecting privacy and limiting government surveillance.
"Those laws are now under attack," said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who served as President Bill Clinton's special counsel on privacy. "The problem is that they are redefining surveillance powers, but we haven't had one-tenth the same attention paid to updating our rights to privacy and liberty."
The Bush administration maintains it has struck a proper balance between national security and civil liberties. But critics as well as many who generally support measures adopted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, say scant attention has been paid to the issue inside the halls of power.
Absent that debate, the Bush administration has moved aggressively on a number of fronts, laying the groundwork for what some envision as a more invasive, more secretive government.
More investigative powers
Congressional approval of the USA Patriot Act last year and the Homeland Security Act last month already has changed some of the rules relating to privacy and the court system.
The acts give intelligence and law enforcement officials greater leeway in searching homes and businesses, tapping telephones and monitoring Internet use. The "probable cause" standard that had typically been required in the past has been eased in many circumstances, and authorities can use these investigative powers in criminal as well as terror-related investigations. The act also permits authorities to operate with less court oversight.
Swire sees several problems with the new powers. They lack checks and balances that discourage abuse, he said, while granting authorities too much access to what should remain the private business of citizens, such as their Internet activity.
Clyde W. Crews Jr., director of technology studies at the Cato Institute, also has concerns.
"What has to be done, and is yet to be done, is to ask, "What does it mean to have Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure in a digital age?' " he said. "We have to define what the government's limits are."
Anderson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said critics are reading too much into the legislation and discounting the role courts have in addressing abuses. "It's pretty widely understood that the Patriot Act is not a perfect product, and we have the ability to make corrections in the courts," he said.
Controversial project
The concerns raised by the Patriot Act almost pale in comparison to the alarm bells sounded after the recent disclosure of the military's Total Information Awareness program. About $200 million has been earmarked for the project, which will take several years to develop.
Planners describe it as an effort to use technological components to integrate information into a single system that could be used to deter terrorist attacks. Doing so would require collecting vasts amounts of information - such as e-mail correspondence, credit card and banking transactions, telephone logs, and library, school and medical records - not just on suspected terrorists, but on ordinary citizens.
"We're talking about a tremendous amount of data," said Rob Courtney, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "A lot of us every single day create a digital footprint in ways we don't even realize. We buy gas with a credit card. We drive through a tollbooth that sees our license plate. We go to the hospital and generate medical records. We send e-mail that's stored somewhere."
Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a group that keeps tabs on the White House Office of Management and Budget, said many people overlook the way government intelligence operations can infringe on the privacy of average citizens.
"Most people think it's someone else they're tracking. But what I don't think they get is that in order to track someone else, they may have to track you," he said.
Others say the government's new tools are warranted.
"The war against terrorism at home will be mostly invisible, and it will be won or lost depending on how we use information and intelligence," said Philip Zelikow, director of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, and a member of the president's foreign intelligence advisory board.
Criticism of government policies is premature, he said, because the administration has yet to formulate an information policy, and some efforts, such as Total Information Awareness, are only in the research stage.
"You don't want to prematurely censor research, as long as it's just research," he said.
Detention of immigrants
In some ways, revisions in immigration law, enacted by Congress and executive branch fiat, have represented the most dramatic change since 9/11. Prior to the attacks, the government had the power to detain and deport immigrants, but it did so within a legal framework that guaranteed due process that was open to the public.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has been empowered to extend the time to file charges against detainees and hold them indefinitely in some cases. Judicial proceedings can be, and have been, held behind closed doors.
At the same time, the government has applied a different interpretation to a statute regarding material witnesses and applied it to more than two dozen immigrants. The traditional way was to hold reluctant witnesses, usually for a short time, to ensure they appear to testify before a grand jury. Now authorities are using the statute to detain immigrants for up to months at a time for questioning that doesn't necessarily result in an appearance before a grand jury.
Since 9/11, the government has jailed 1,200 to 2,000 immigrants - authorities won't say exactly how many - and has fought efforts to disclose names and charges.
None of the immigrants has been charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks.
David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and author of "Terrorism and the Constitution," said the government is practicing preventive detention, which he termed "a very troubling development."
Further steps are being contemplated. The Bush administration is planning a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects - both foreigners and U.S. citizens - could be investigated, tried and punished without many of the legal protections guaranteed by the criminal court system.
Cole said laws passed in the early part of the last century that targeted "alien radicals" later were reapplied to suppress domestic political dissent.
"History shows that what we do to foreign nationals in times of crisis is invariably a precursor to similar measures extended to (regular citizens) thereafter," Cole said.
Secrecy predates attacks
While many changes in law were triggered by 9/11, the Bush administration's propensity for greater government secrecy predates the terror attacks, many experts say. For example, the number of federal records that were classified by the government increased by 44 percent for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2001 - covering Bush's first nine months in office.
Critics point to a number of steps taken by the Bush administration before and after 9/11 to limit access to what had been considered public information.
Bush has used executive orders to stop the scheduled release of the presidential papers of Ronald Reagan and blocked disclosure of paperwork involving the controversial pardons issued by President Clinton in the waning days of his administration.
Senators and House members of both parties have complained about the administration's refusal to answer questions on a range of topics. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, went so far as to sue the White House over its refusal to report who served on an energy task force headed by Vice President Cheney. It was the first such suit in the GAO's history, one dismissed last week.
And just last week, the CIA, backed by the Justice Department, asserted that it should not have to reveal its budget from 1947-48 because of national security concerns.
"Information policy is always more restrictive in wartime than in peacetime," said Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists. "Nevertheless, it is clear this administration's secrecy policies far exceed any war-related justification. They are simply resistant to disclosure."
Anderson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the administration should get the benefit of the doubt, given the times. "This is all new ground. There is going to be a lot of caution on the part of the senior leaders of the country, and I think that's understandable," he said.
A month after the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft revised the federal government's policy on handling requests made under the Freedom of Information Law in a way that has been interpreted in many quarters as discouraging disclosure.
While journalism organizations say it's too early to assess the impact, a GAO report issued this fall found there is a growing backlog of FOIL requests involving records in electronic format, which is increasingly the format of choice.
"We're shifting from a society premised on the right to know to one premised on the need to know, where the government determines whether or not you should have access to the information. That's a fundamental shift in our democratic principles," said Bass of OMB Watch.
e-mail: jheaney@buffnews.com
-------- terrorism
Weaker Al Qaeda Shifts To Smaller-Scale Attacks
Experts Say New Strategy Aims at Disruption
By Peter Finn and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25832-2002Oct14?language=printer
Recent suicide bombing attacks and plots against Westerners show that al Qaeda loyalists are heeding their weakened leadership's call to initiate a new terror campaign using rudimentary, smaller-scale operations aimed at creating economic hardship, according to U.S., Western and Arab intelligence officials and experts.
With its leaders in hiding and its finances and communications slashed by the war on terrorism, al Qaeda is resorting to more indiscriminate attacks against "soft" targets. But officials warn that while the strategy may be a sign of weakness, the simplicity of these attacks might make them more difficult to predict and prevent.
Saturday's car bomb attack in a nightclub district on the Indonesian island of Bali, which Indonesia's defense minister yesterday linked to al Qaeda and its local allies, was the latest in a string of fatal attacks that include sniper shootings in Kuwait, Afghanistan and the Philippines, and suicide bombings in Pakistan and against European tourists in Tunisia.
Moroccan officials have said they broke up plans to target tourist sites this spring and averted suicide assaults on U.S. and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. In one case, al Qaeda operatives, who had fled the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, planned to detonate a bomb in a popular square in Marrakech, the officials said.
Saudi officials said they had broken up planned attacks on government buildings and prevented the killing of Americans on the streets of the kingdom. Arrested militants linked to al Qaeda were exploring the possibility of using silencer-equipped weapons to kill Americans at close range in public places, Saudi officials said.
Yesterday, the pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite television network broadcast what it said was a written statement by Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda's leader, applauding last week's attacks on U.S. Marines in Kuwait and a French oil tanker near Yemen. The statement also condemned U.S. plans to attack Iraq. "We congratulate the Muslim nation for the daring and heroic jihad operations which our brave sons conducted in Yemen against the Christian oil tanker and in Kuwait against the American occupation," the statement said.
Other statements last week attributed to bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, also praised the attacks and warned Western governments of more to come.
Up to and including Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda's signature actions were elaborately planned and centrally controlled -- the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and the suicide airliner hijackings that struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- and all of them took months or years to plan.
Intelligence officials said that after the U.S.-led defeat of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters were told to flee Afghanistan to their home countries and then independently target American, Jewish and other Western interests. These operatives were expected to conceive and execute acts of terror independent of the group's leadership, Arab officials said.
Frank Anderson, the CIA's former top Middle East operations official, said the emphasis on smaller targets shows that the al Qaeda leadership "has been significantly reduced. . . . If al Qaeda has gotten down to ones and twos, that's better than one hundreds and two hundreds."
U.S. intelligence officials said they intercepted communications in late September signaling a strike on a Western tourist site. Bali was mentioned in the U.S. intelligence report, officials said.
Foreign diplomats have suggested complicity in the Bali attack by Jemaah Islamiah, an Indonesian group with training and financial links to al Qaeda. A senior U.S. official described Jemaah Islamiah and al Qaeda as "fellow travelers." The Indonesian group has its own agenda, envisioning the establishment of an Islamic state in the area of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It has been accused of bombings in the Philippines and Singapore, and of operating training camps for fighters.
Al Qaeda's desire to form deeper alliances with other Islamic extremist groups can be seen in Pakistan. There, the organization has linked itself with local militants to advance a campaign of destabilization and simultaneously find the shelter necessary to build a new command center.
According to Western and Pakistani officials, al Qaeda is seeking allies or recruits among defectors from Pakistani militant groups who are unhappy with the military regime's cooperation with the United States and what they believe is their own leadership's acquiescence in the government's campaign against al Qaeda.
Police officials in Karachi said in recent interviews that they believe al Qaeda is attempting to absorb a breakaway faction of Jaish-i-Muhammad, a banned Pakistani militant organization. And police and intelligence officials in Karachi said they had evidence that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a Sunni Muslim group responsible for the killing of dozens of Shiite Muslims in recent years, had already come under the al Qaeda umbrella and was providing safe houses and intelligence for fighters fleeing Afghanistan.
Three Lashkar activists were implicated in the murder of American newspaper correspondent Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal. Karachi police said a senior al Qaeda figure, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, also directly participated in the journalist's slaying.
Pakistani and Western officials say they believe that Mohammed, a Pakistani born in Kuwait, is hiding in Karachi and directing operations worldwide -- within the constraints of the limited forms of communication he can employ.
Mohammed, for instance, has been directly linked to an April suicide attack on a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people, most of them tourists. Three hours before the attack, the driver of a truck laden with liquid propane called Mohammed in Karachi to signal that the attack was imminent, according to Western officials.
Mohammed surfaced most recently in an interview in Karachi, broadcast last month by al-Jazeera, in which he appeared with Ramzi Binalshibh, a key member of the cell that led the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Binalshibh was captured in Karachi, on the first anniversary of the attacks, with seven other al Qaeda members.
Western, Pakistani and Arab officials say they believe that other senior al Qaeda figures, including bin Laden's son, Saad, if not Zawahiri and bin Laden himself, are also hiding in Pakistan. Arab officials said that Saad, who is in his early twenties, has been using the Internet to contact al Qaeda members and supporters worldwide to encourage further attacks.
In speaking of the attacks of the past 10 days, Senate intelligence committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who is briefed regularly on terrorism issues, said: "All of them have the fingerprints of al Qaeda. Was it a coincidence? I won't count on it.
"We are in a period in which these acts of terrorism directed against foreigners -- and against Americans when available -- will become more continual."
Finn reported from Berlin, Priest from Washington. Correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi and staff writers Walter Pincus and Susan Schmidt in Washington contributed to this report.
----
U.S. 'in the dark' on bin Laden note
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021015-16023643.htm
U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether a statement from Osama bin Laden made public yesterday is authentic and can prove that the elusive al Qaeda terrorist leader is alive.
"Right now, we're in the dark," a U.S. intelligence official said of the letter. "We don't have any information on its authenticity."
The note, handwritten in Arabic, had bin Laden's signature and appeared on a Web site known to be an outlet for al Qaeda writing. It was broadcast later on Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite television network.
The note praised recent terrorist attacks in Yemen, where terrorists blew up a French oil tanker on Oct. 6, and in Kuwait, where terrorists fatall shot a U.S. Marine on Oct. 8. Al Qaeda is suspected of carrying out both strikes.
If confirmed as authentic, the note would bolster recent U.S. intelligence reports indicating that bin Laden is alive and hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The last time U.S. intelligence agencies had proof that the Saudi-born extremist was alive was in December, when he was overheard talking on a hand-held radio in the Tora Bora region of southeastern Afghanistan.
The agencies have obtained samples of bin Laden's handwriting and might be able to tell whether the note was written by him or was fabricated to make it appear as if he were alive.
Without the actual written message, it will be difficult to determine whether the note is a forgery, one official said.
"We congratulate the Muslim nation for the daring and heroic jihad [holy war] operations that our brave sons conducted in Yemen against the Christian oil tanker and in Kuwait against the American occupation and aggression forces," the statement said.
The letter did not claim direct responsibility by al Qaeda for the attacks but stated that the strikes coincided with the anniversary of the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, which began Oct. 7 last year and ousted the ruling Taliban militia by December.
The letter warned that al Qaeda will continue to attack "until they take their hands off our Muslim nation and stop their aggression against us and their support to our enemies."
The disclosure of the letter follows earlier taped messages from bin Laden and his key deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
On Oct. 6, Al-Zawahiri threatened in a recorded message to conduct attacks against the United States, its economy and its allies.
U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the tape had been made within the past two months and that the voice was Al-Zawahiri's.
It also was a sign that Al-Zawahiri, considered the No. 2 leader in al Qaeda, had survived the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.
The statement attributed to bin Laden also criticized U.S. plans to attack Iraq and said that America is seeking to steal "riches," including crude oil, from Arab nations.
"The priority in this war at this stage must be against the infidels, the Americans and the Jews who will not stop infringing upon us except through jihad," the statement said.
U.S. intelligence officials said al Qaeda appears to be engaged in stepped-up terrorist strikes after a period of relative quiet.
The new campaign is focused on using terrorist attacks to destabilize fragile U.S. and world economies.
Al Qaeda also is believed to be behind the terrorist bombing at a vacation resort in Bali, Indonesia, that killed 190 persons, including many young Westerners.
The Office of Naval Intelligence also issued a notice to U.S. merchant ships earlier this month warning that al Qaeda has targeted oil tankers in the Arabian Gulf and near the Horn of Africa.
The notice said the threat information was uncorroborated but should be "taken seriously."
"This reporting substantiates previous indications of al Qaeda intent to attack commercial shipping as a means of creating economic instability," the office stated.
The warning was made public before the bombing in Yemen of the French oil tanker Limburg, which suffered damage after a small boat packed with explosives blew up beside the ship near the port of Ash Shihr, about 350 miles up the coast from the port of Aden.
In October 2000, the destroyer USS Cole was bombed in Aden harbor by al Qaeda terrorists using a small boat packed with explosives that was detonated next to the ship as it sought to refuel. The blast killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured scores more.
The FBI last week issued a warning to law-enforcement officials throughout the United States, saying al Qaeda has threatened to attack "against U.S. economic interests."
The warning was based on bin Laden's audiotape, broadcast by Al Jazeera on Oct. 8, and similar threats made by Al-Zawahiri in his audiotape message.
The statements, when combined with information by al Qaeda prisoners, "strengthen previous assessments that al Qaeda continues to plan major attacks against U.S. interests," the FBI said.
"The statements suggest that an attack may have been approved, while the specific timing is left to operatives in the field," the bureau said.
A senior al Qaeda member in U.S. custody said the terrorist network would release a statement only "after approving a specific plan for an attack," according to the FBI. Al Qaeda is seeking to manipulate the worldwide Islamic extremist community to attack the United States "at home and abroad," the bureau said.
---
Excerpts of Purported Statement by Bin Laden
Reuters
Tuesday, October 15, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25582-2002Oct14?language=printer
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 14 -- Following are excerpts, translated from Arabic, from a statement attributed to Osama bin Laden:
About a year has passed since the start of the U.S. crusade declared by the U.S. president in which he led an international coalition of more than 90 nations against Afghanistan.
America is now preparing a new stage in its crusade against the Islamic world, this time against the Muslim Iraqi people to complete its scheme to divide and rupture the [Muslim] nation, rob its riches and pave the way for a greater Israel after expelling the Palestinians. . . .
Oh nation of Islam . . . whether this whole nation is targeted without distinguishing between allies or foes is no longer an issue because the enemy helped us unveil this fact. The issue now is how do we face this flagrant aggression.
If we want God to grant us victory . . . we should arm ourselves with several tools, including:
• A return to God through repentance, honest work and true intentions.
• To unite under God. If it is true that conflict and differences are the main reasons for failure, matters our nation is suffering from, it is true that unity, consensus and faith are the key to victory and the gate to domination.
• To stimulate the nation's capabilities, most important of which is the Muslim who is the fuel of battle.
• Our nation is one of the richest on Earth. Its resources have for ages been exploited to serve our enemies and conspire against our brethren. And its vast military capabilities are rusting in warehouses in Islamic nations.
• It is high time that these capabilities are freed to explode and defend the targeted faith, the violated sanctity, the tarnished honor, the raped land and the robbed riches. . . .
• The priority in this war at this stage must be against the infidels, the Americans and the Jews, who will not stop infringing upon us except through jihad.
There are also merchants and capitalists who are not any less important than others in pushing this battle forward to its aim of spreading God's religion and teachings on Earth. Your money will stop a flooding that seeks our destruction. . . .
We congratulate the Muslim nation for the daring and heroic jihad operations which our brave sons conducted in Yemen against the Christian oil tanker and in Kuwait against the American occupation and aggression forces.
By striking the oil tanker in Yemen with explosives, the attackers struck at the umbilical cord of the Christians, reminding the enemy of the bloody price they have to pay for their continued aggression on our nation and robbing our riches.
The heroic Kuwait operation also proves the level of danger that threatens U.S. forces in Islamic countries, and the political office will issue two separate statements on the two operations and their indications. . . .
The timing of the attack against a military target of such importance as Marine forces in Kuwait and the bombing of an economic target the size of the oil tanker in Yemen, and issuing oral and written statements from Taliban and Qaeda leaders who America thought it had killed. . . .
The fact that all this coincided with the one-year anniversary of the start of the Christian crusade is not a coincidence but a clear and strong message to all our enemies and friends alike that the Mujaheddin, thanks be to God, have not been weakened or exhausted and that God repaid those who sinned with their mischief.
We are continuing our path . . . and we renew our promise to God, and to the nation, and our promise to the Americans and Jews that they will not be at peace and should not dream of security until they let our nations be and stop their aggression and support for our enemies. The unjust know what awaits them.
----
Bush Links Blast at Bali Nightclub to Qaeda Network
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
October 15, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/asia/15PREX.html
WATERFORD, Mich., Oct. 14 - President Bush said today that the bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda and that the attack was part of a pattern that included recent attacks in Kuwait and Yemen.
Those incidents, he said, show that Al Qaeda is on the rise and will continue to be a threat to the United States.
"I'm concerned about our homeland," Mr. Bush told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving for a political fundraising trip here. "Obviously, if I knew of a specific piece of intelligence that would indicate a moment or a place in which the enemy would attack, we'd do a lot about it."
The Bush administration has repeatedly pressed Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, to crack down on Islamic extremists there, only to have its concerns brushed aside by top Indonesian officials. But the attack on Saturday in Bali, in which many of the victims were foreign holidaymakers, seemed to mark a turning point in their attitude.
An Indonesian official made that nation's most explicit acknowledgment that Al Qaeda was operating there. "The Bali bomb blast is linked to Al Qaeda with the cooperation of local terrorists," the defense minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, said in Jakarta, the capital. "I am not afraid to say, though many have refused to say, that an Al Qaeda network exists in Indonesia." [Page A12.]
Mr. Bush had particularly strong words today for Indonesia's president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, suggesting that his patience with Indonesia's lack of cooperation had grown thin. He said that he planned to call Mrs. Megawati to discuss the terrorist acts there and that he expected a "firm and deliberate" response from her. "I'm going to make it clear to her that we need to work together to find those who murdered all those innocent people and bring them to justice," Mr. Bush said. "And I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes that any time terrorists take hold in the country it's going to weaken the country itself."
It was the Indonesians, rather than the Americans, who today were warning of further terrorist attacks. The security minister, Bambang Susilo Yudoyono, told reporters that security was being increased at American-run industrial sites, including an Exxon Mobil liquefied natural gas plant in the province of Aceh and a Caltex refinery in Sumatra.
Although Indonesia overwhelmingly embraces a moderate form of Islam, radical groups have raised their profile in the last year, exploiting widespread anti-American sentiment as well as divisions within the government.
Some Islamic militants were pressing a theory that the United States had masterminded the Saturday attack as a means to manipulate the Indonesian government and to strengthen its argument for a war against Islam.
"The United States intelligence agency is behind the Bali bombings in an attempt to justify their accusation that Indonesia is a terrorist base," said Abu Bakar Bashir, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic group that many analysts say may itself have organized the attack.
Mr. Bashir condemned the bombing and denied that his group was involved. "All the allegations against me are groundless," he said at a news conference. "I challenge them to prove anything."
Today was the first time that Mr. Bush had connected the Bali nightclub blast that killed more than 180 people to an attack on American troops in Kuwait that killed one marine on Oct. 8 and the bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen on Oct. 6.
"I believe the attack on the French vessel was a terrorist attack," Mr. Bush said. "Obviously, the attack on our marines in Kuwait was a terrorist attack. The attack in Bali appears to be an Al Qaeda-type terrorist - definitely a terrorist attack, whether it's Al Qaeda-related or not, I would assume it is. And therefore it does look like a pattern of attacks that the enemy, albeit on the run, is trying to once again frighten and kill freedom-loving people."
Mr. Bush added that "they're trying to intimidate us, and we won't be intimidated."
The president said that the attacks showed once again that the campaign against terrorism would be a protracted one and that his administration had a long struggle ahead. He added that he did not know whether Osama bin Laden was dead or alive but that he did know that "there are still some of his top lieutenants roaming around" and that Al Qaeda remains dangerous.
"It's going to take a while to fully rout Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush said. "We just learned a lesson this week. It's going to take a while to succeed."
The president said that the attacks showed once again that the campaign against terrorism would be a protracted one, and that his administration had a long struggle ahead. "It's going to take a while to fully rout Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush said. "We just learned a lesson this week. It's going to take a while to succeed."
He added that disarming Saddam Hussein was part of the campaign against terrorism, and that the United States military was capable of fighting terrorism on two fronts, in Iraq and the rest of the world.
The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution this evening condemning the bombing in Bali and urging all countries to help Indonesia bring to justice the "perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks."
At a political rally at the Oakland County International Airport here, Mr. Bush again linked Mr. Hussein to Al Qaeda, without citing evidence, and suggested that the Iraqi leader could give a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon to the terrorist organization for use against its enemies. "We need to think about Saddam Hussein using Al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind," Mr. Bush said.
At a fund-raising dinner in Dearborn after the rally, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Hussein "would like to use Al Qaeda as a forward army" and that while he wanted the Iraqi leader to disarm, "I doubt he's going to do that."
A large part of his remarks today focused on the Washington-area sniper attacks that have killed eight people and terrorized the community. The president said he was "sickened" by the attacks and called them a form of terrorism, but he said he had no evidence that they were linked to a terrorist group.
--------
TERRORISM WATCH
Al Qaeda Evolves Into Looser Network, Experts Say
October 15, 2002
New York Times
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/asia/15QAED.html
Since the rout of Al Qaeda last year in Afghanistan, intelligence and law enforcement officials in the United States and elsewhere have been forced to redefine their thinking about the organization and the threat it represents.
Stripped of their sanctuaries in Afghanistan and with their leadership on the run, Al Qaeda's followers dispersed throughout the world to re-establish themselves within a loosely knit alliance of like-minded but independent groups, officials said.
In some cases these groups share planning with operatives of Al Qaeda and receive money from its financial network, government officials said. But more often the extremists are linked by a common ideology without direct ties to Al Qaeda, officials said.
In its simplest terms, American and European officials said, Afghanistan was the training ground for a new generation of Islamic extremists who have moved their operations into basements, apartments and remote areas around the world to plan their own attacks.
Within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some senior officials no longer use the name Al Qaeda. Instead, in recognition of the threat's broader dimensions, they refer privately to a radical international movement pursuing the United States and its allies.
"There is a radical international jihad, with some influences of midlevel Al Qaeda operations, that will remain a very difficult force for us for many years," a senior government official in Washington said.
Some counterterrorism experts outside government said the Qaeda rubric was applied too easily to many attacks and groups. Rather, they said, Al Qaeda is best described now as an ideological movement, not a traditional terrorist group with a strict hierarchical command.
"Today it is much more steered from the bottom up than from the top down," Magnus Ranstorp, acting director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said in a telephone interview. "Localized interests will take inspiration from tapes that are aired urging attacks, but the local interests take precedence."
Experts inside and outside governments say the knowledge for carrying out attacks, even on the scale of the weekend bombing in Bali, is widely available through the Internet and CD-ROM's.
For years Al Qaeda aligned itself with other militant groups, providing training and sometimes financing and planning. In February 1998, Osama bin Laden established the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, which trained at least 10,000 potential fighters in eastern Afghanistan.
Sworn members of Al Qaeda are estimated by American intelligence at no more than 300, but the organization's reach greatly expanded through graduates of its curriculum for terrorism and through the inspiration of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Even before the bombing in Bali and the attacks last week on a French oil tanker off Yemen and American marines in Kuwait, a senior French intelligence official warned of the threat from Qaeda copycats and freelancers inspired by Mr. bin Laden's organization.
A message identified as being from Mr. bin Laden appeared on Islamic Web sites today, praising recent terrorist attacks, including those in Kuwait and off Yemen.
Sifting through evidence accumulated from several attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks, intelligence and police officials there have not come up with any direct links to Al Qaeda, according to officials. But the group's tactics and influences were discerned in some of those attacks, most notably a car bombing that killed 11 French engineers and three other people in Karachi in May and a larger blast outside the American Consulate there in June.
American investigators briefed on the Bali investigation said today that it was too early to say definitively whether the weekend blast was a Qaeda operation or the work of local groups like Jemaah Islamiyah.
But Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said American intelligence officials told him today that the attack appeared to be linked to Al Qaeda.
"The intelligence is early and not conclusive, but the feeling is Al Qaeda was part of the bombing plot, probably in conjunction with a local Islamic militant organization," Mr. Graham said.
Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, said the authorities were still trying to determine whether the Bali attack had been ordered or inspired by Al Qaeda.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Cape Cod wind farm plan stirs up controversy
Story by Christopher Noble,
REUTERS USA:
October 15, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18180/story.htm
BOSTON - The image of a thicket of 40-story wind turbines humming in the breeze off the coast of Massachusetts' Cape Cod, a futuristic environmental paradise to some, may soon be a daily reality for locals used to postcard-perfect seascapes.
A plan to build the country's first offshore commercial wind-powered electricity generator in cape waters has sparked a fierce debate over nearly every aspect of the project, driving a wedge among New England environmentalists.
Supporters say the so-called wind farm would cut pollution while easing global warming and the nation's reliance on foreign oil.
Opponents argue the project would hurt sea birds, scenic views and tourism, the cape's key economic engine.
Wind power is the fastest-growing commercial energy source in the world. Wind farms already dot the countryside in nearly 30 U.S. states, Europe and Australia. Denmark, among the biggest European users of wind-generated electricity, has one of the world's most successful offshore wind farms.
In many states, new laws require utilities to increase their use of renewable energy. In Massachusetts, a law taking effect next year requires that by 2009, the state must produce enough renewable power to light about 100,000 homes. Other New England states have similar requirements.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
The need for clean power in New England, where strong sea breezes are common and dense population concentrations are coupled with an older electricity grid, would seem to make wind power an easy sell.
But some residents and environmental groups argue the turbines would mar Cape Cod's pristine oceanscapes by planting a forest of enormous towers in plain site. They say the project would damage tourism, wreck commercial and weekend fishing and put boaters and recreational flyers at risk.
"We feel this is going to endanger the environment and hurt both sea birds and mammals," said Isaac Rosen, of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "We fear there will be a deleterious effect on tourism, which is the backbone of the cape's economy."
The project has drawn ardent support from clean energy advocates and others who say the wind farm, which would produce about half the electricity needed by Cape Cod and the nearby islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket on an average day, would combat global warming, ease pollution and lessen the country's need for imported oil.
"We believe the public benefits of this project are going to far outweigh the negatives," said James Gordon who heads Cape Wind Associates LLC, the project's backers.
Opponents suffered a legal setback in early October when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit that tried to block Cape Wind from building a data communications tower.
The judge declined to issue an injunction, ruling the opponents had no legal standing, would not suffer irreparable harm if the tower went up and were not likely to succeed at trial on the merits of their case.
Gordon called the decision "an important victory" and said the firm would start work on the data tower within days. It was expected to begin operating before the end of November.
While the wind farm still faces another federal lawsuit and must complete extensive permitting, the judge's decision gave the project a big boost.
170 40-STORY TOWERS
The farm would be comprised of 170 giant wind turbines anchored in the shallow waters of Horseshoe Shoals, about six miles (10 km) from Hyannis, Massachusetts, and nine miles (15 km) from the Vineyard. The turbines, which would be about 40 stories tall, would be spaced six to nine football fields apart over 28 square miles (73 square km).
The wind turns the turbines, which power a generator in the turbine hub, which generates electricity.
At peak output, the wind farm would generate 420 megawatts of power, enough to satisfy nearly the entire 440 megawatts the cape uses on peak demand days, Gordon said. Average demand is about 350 megawatts and Cape Wind's average output of 170 megawatts would satisfy about half of that need.
The electrical output would replace the equivalent of 113 million gallons (429 million litres) of oil or 500,000 tons of coal a year.
Gordon also pointed out that because of the project's placement, the power generated would actually be used by cape residents.
"Electrons take the path of least resistance," he said. "The electricity will flow to the schools, businesses and homes of the cape and the islands."
Gordon said the $700 million for the project would come from institutional investors and bank loans, but declined to give details.
Opponents, led by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and joined by the Humane Society of the United States, the Earth Island Institute and other groups, say Cape Wind would be industrializing one of the world's last great natural resources and profiteering at the expense of cape residents.
"This is nothing more than a corporate land grab," Rosen said. "This is a use of the ocean that has not been authorized by Congress."
Rosen and other Cape Wind opponents say they are in favor of wind power, but argue the project's backers are taking advantage of a legal vacuum to set up the farm without regulation. The plan risks a backlash, Rosen said.
"If we are serious about renewable energy, and we should be, it seems reasonable to ask Congress to step in and establish criteria for siting," he said.
"There is a danger that if this wind project goes forward and is the disaster that we fear it will be, it is going to be a big setback for the renewable energy movement."
NIMBY
But advocates say such fears are a thin disguise for what is really driving opposition to the wind farm.
"It's a very interesting case of NIMBYism," said Gary Skulnick of environmental group Greenpeace, alluding to a "Not In My Back Yard" attitude.
"You look at the Massachusetts area and you have two huge coal-burning power plants ... and you don't have people complaining," Skulnick said. "If you want to complain about destroying the views, that's what people should focus their ire on."
Skulnick said the benefits of Cape Wind would be immediate and dismissed critics as short-sighted.
"Wind turbines don't make a lot of noise; they don't spew toxic chemicals. If I lived in the area, I would feel great about being on the cutting edge of innovation in this area," he said.
"You have to think big picture. If we don't reduce global warming, then Nantucket and Cape Cod and all the beautiful beaches are going to disappear," he said.
----
BURRY PORT JOURNAL
Sniff. What's Cooking? Funny Fuel, That's What.
October 15, 2002
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/international/europe/15WALE.html
BURRY PORT, Wales, Oct. 11 - Mayor Pat Jones would hate to give the impression that her town is some sort of hotbed of tax evasion.
But the news that the local police have recently caught more than a dozen motorists perpetrating a novel alternative-fuel scheme has brought an unmistakable sheen of notoriety to this seaside community. Before the drivers were detained, few people in the United Kingdom were aware that it was possible to run a diesel car - however foolishly - on home-brewed fuel consisting mostly of cut-price vegetable oil from the local supermarket.
In fact, said Ms. Jones, nothing so singular has happened to Burry Port since Amelia Earhart landed here after her first trans-Atlantic flight in 1928, opened the airplane door, and, according to local legend, said, "Where am I?"
"We were the first with Amelia Earhart, and the first with the mackintosh," said the mayor, alluding to the fact that the process for making mackintosh-style raincoats is said to have been invented at a factory down the road. "And now we are the first place to have this happen with cooking oil."
Interviews with residents and fuel experts disclosed, however, that the practice in question - essentially, making one's own fuel from a mixture of vegetable oil and methanol without paying taxes on it - is growing, particularly in Britain, where fuel prices are the highest in Europe. What sets the local evaders apart is that they were caught.
Earlier this week, officers in unmarked police cars lay in wait, apparently having been tipped off that lawless fuel-using was going on. Alerted by a telltale odor - cooking oil in fuel tanks is said to smell like used French fry grease - the officers stopped the miscreants, impounded their cars, and penalized them with heavy fines.
"The police officers got straight out of the car and went to the fuel tank and dipped it, and they found the cooking oil," one scofflaw told The South Wales Evening Post, which first described the phenomenon in an article titled "Chips Hit Pan in Diesel Car Scam." "I put my hands up to the offense and the car was towed away."
Robert Buxton, a law enforcement spokesman for the Department of Customs and Excise, said the main problem was not the fuel itself - although it is likely to damage a user's engine valves before too long - but the tax implications.
"If you use a substance as a fuel to propel a vehicle on the road, you have to pay duty at the rate of the substance" being substituted, Mr. Buxton explained. So, while vegetable oil at a nearby ASDA supermarket, where many of the scofflaws are said to have stocked up, retails at just 42 pence a liter, people using it on public roads should, by law, pay an additional 46 pence a liter in tax, as they would for gasoline. Quite right, too, said Ann Rees, who with her husband, Barrie, runs Barrie's Plaice, a fish and chips shop in the center of town. "Everybody else has to pay the tax when they use the road," she said. "Why shouldn't these people?" Nor was she thrilled at the idea of cars reeking of fried food. "It's already on my clothes when I go home," she said. "I'd hate to have it in the road as well."
The news of the fuel bust, which quickly spread to alternative-fuel users around the world via the Internet, enraged people developing government-sanctioned forms of bio-diesel, nonpetroleum fuel made by a strict formula with processed, filtered fat or oil.
Referring to an article in The Guardian titled "Frying Squad Foils Cooking Oil Scam," Joe Jobe, executive director of the National Bio-diesel Board, a nonprofit trade association for the bio-diesel industry in the United States, said he worried that such reports were giving bio-diesel programs a bad name.
"These kind of articles - where people characterize it as this goofy little hippie thing, people throwing vegetable oil into fuel tanks - just make fun of and trivialize what we have worked hard to develop as a commercial industry," he said by phone from Jefferson City, Mo. His group most certainly does not promote the use of home-brewed fuel.
"When people are out there doing that and they have engine problems, the public assumes that bio-diesel causes problems," he said. "They don't know it was homemade fuel."
Not only that. "It's just unsafe for people to play around with methanol in garages. It's flammable, it's toxic, and it's something you just shouldn't be tinkering with."
But there is also a feeling here that the vegetable oil users were onto something. "It is in the glorious British tradition of the amateur scientist, knocking up inventions in his shed in the bottom of the garden to make life a little easier," The Daily Telegraph said in an editorial, adding that the residents had found "an excellent way of running their cars cheaply."
Sian Evans, 31, interviewed at the ASDA in nearby Llanelli (pronounced, roughly, clan-ETH-ly), where the oil stockpiling was said to be going on, agreed. "Good on them," she said. "You can't say the Welsh aren't creative." The wife of a mechanic, she added that she was not surprised at what they had done.
"You can also use central heating oil in a diesel engine," she noted. "It's not so good for the car, but if it's an old banger, what the hell?"
Inside, Paul Martin, an ASDA manager, denied reports that the store was rationing vegetable oil to thwart its lawless applications. But it was true, he said, that sales had increased in the course of the week, as they have in other parts of Wales.
"Each to his own," he said, surveying the store's extensive cooking oil display. "I wouldn't do it myself. Cooking oil is for cooking. If it was to act as diesel, it would say `diesel' on it, wouldn't it?"
-------- human rights
Progress in War on Hunger Grinds to Halt, U.N. Says
October 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-world-food-hunger.html
ROME (Reuters) - Poverty, war and political indifference have crippled attempts to cut in half by 2015 the number of people in the world who are hungry, and nearly a sixth of the global population is undernourished, the United Nations said Tuesday.
``This year we must report that progress has virtually ground to a halt,'' wrote Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, in a foreword to FAO's annual hunger report.
Most of the hunger in a world of plenty results from poverty, but the report also blamed droughts, floods, armed conflict, the forced displacement of people -- and a lack of political will.
``What remains to be proven is that we care enough, that our expressions of concern in international fora are more than rhetoric, that we will no longer accept and ignore the suffering of 840 million hungry people,'' Diouf said.
The FAO report said 25,000 people die daily from hunger and poverty, and that each year six million children under the age of five die as a result of hunger.
In 1996, world leaders said they would cut the number of hungry or chronically malnourished people in the world to 400 million. But that goal seems likely to go unmet.
``If we continue at the current pace, we will reach the goal (of halving the number of hungry people) more than 100 years late, closer to the year 2150 than to the year 2015,'' said the FAO report.
FAO's latest estimate is that in 1998-2000 there were 840 million undernourished people in the world, including 799 million in developing countries, revising upwards its previous estimate of 815 million, including 777 million in poor nations.
POLITICAL WILL
Diouf said the world could still achieve its goal by 2015 if it found the motivation.
FAO hosted a world food summit in Rome earlier this year where major power leaders were conspicuous by their absence.
``The price we pay for this lack of progress is heavy indeed,'' Diouf said. ``The hungry themselves pay most immediately and most painfully. But the costs are also crippling for their communities.''
FAO has proposed global public investment of $24 billion a year to jump-start an accelerated campaign against hunger.
In London, FAO Assistant Director General Hartwig de Haen said a fairer trade system between rich and poor countries could help ease poverty and hunger.
``The developed countries have to change their support to agriculture to make it less trade distorting,'' he told Reuters.
The U.N. World Food Program, or WFP, the world's largest food aid agency, said it was deeply concerned about its inability to respond fully to ever-mounting hunger crises.
``This disturbing new phenomenon is not simply a lack of cash,'' WFP Executive Director James Morris said in a statement. ``The main challenge comes from a surge in new needs, driven primarily by weather-related disasters and by HIV/AIDS.''
The number of undernourished people around the world has also risen due to rapid population growth, the FAO report said.
But, in a sea of gloom, some countries have reported breakthroughs against hunger.
China has reduced the number of hungry people by 74 million since 1990-1992, FAO said, while Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru, Thailand and Vietnam have all achieved reductions of more than three million.worsened.
``Most of the increase took place in Central Africa, driven by the collapse into chronic warfare of a single country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the number of undernourished people has tripled,'' FAO said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Forty held in UK nuclear reactor protest
REUTERS UK:
October 15, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18174/story.htm
LONDON - More than 40 anti-nuclear protesters were arrested yesterday during a rooftop occupation at British Energy's Sizewell B nuclear power station to campaign against state funding for the industry.
Environmental activist group Greenpeace said 150 people occupied the eastern England site but had not entered any buildings and were not a safety hazard. They would "maintain a safe, peaceful and non-violent occupation of the site until the government commits to ending the British nuclear programme".
"Forty people have come down off the roof and those people have now been arrested," a spokesman for the Suffolk police said yesterday evening, adding that four people had been arrested earlier in the day.
"We are continuing to liaise with those who remain on the roof in an effort to bring this situation to a peaceful conclusion," the spokesman said.
It was not clear how many remained on the roof yesterday night.
Greenpeace has stepped up its campaign against nuclear power since September, when British Energy was provided with emergency funding from the state to stave off insolvency.
A British Energy spokeswoman called the occupation at the site of the last nuclear power station to be built in Britain "a breach of security" and said the protesters had used ladders to scale a perimeter fence at the plant on the Suffolk coast near Ipswich.
"Safety is the paramount issue here and we are cooperating with the police to that end," she said.
Nuclear power provides about a quarter of Britain's electricity, but its stations are ageing and suffer from high costs and low flexibility in a newly liberalised wholesale power market that has sent prices down 40 percent since 1998.
Greenpeace argues that the possibilities for radioactive contamination and the costs of storing waste make the industry dangerous and uneconomic. It says the stations should be closed down as soon as possible and be replaced by wind energy and other renewable sources.
Others in the power industry say the shortfall from nuclear closures could not be made up fast enough and that the nation needs nuclear power for its electricity and to keep down the polluting carbon dioxide emissions produced by other traditional generators.
----
Dissident demands Castro tell of petitions
By Fran Coombs
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021015-83044708.htm
HAVANA - The chief architect of a petition seeking basic individual freedoms in communist Cuba yesterday demanded that Fidel Castro tell Cubans about the referendum drive.
"Our leaders prefer to speak to the international community," Oswaldo Paya said in the aftermath of Mr. Castro's first public acknowledgement of "the Varela Project," which he made in an ABC-TV News interview broadcast Friday.
"We are demanding that [he] make the same statement to the Cuban people," Mr. Paya told a visiting delegation of American newspaper editors yesterday.
The remarks by Mr. Paya, one of Cuba's leading anti-Castro dissidents, highlighted an extraordinary appearance at the home of James C. Cason, the United States' unofficial representative in Cuba.
Mr. Cason introduced Mr. Paya and two other prominent dissidents - Vladimiro Roca and Martha Rocque - to a surprised group of editors, visiting Cuba under the auspices of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Mr. Cason made no secret of U.S. willingness to help the dissidents bring peaceful democratic change to Cuba, but he said he does not believe Mr. Castro will allow it. "Castro is a dinosaur," he said.
But the U.S. envoy stopped short of saying publicly that the Bush administration is pushing "regime change" for the island nation. U.S. support for the dissident movement comes not in the form of money, but of fax machines, paper, pens, copies of the Cuban Constitution and Cuban history books, he said.
Ultimately, Mr. Cason said, any change in government is "up to the Cuban people."
Organizers of the Varela Project collected more than 11,000 signatures on a petition calling for a referendum asking Cubans whether they favored the expansion of basic liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to own a business. The constitution allows citizens to initiate new legislation with a petition containing 10,000 signatures.
But few Cubans were aware of the project until Jimmy Carter, the former president, cited it in a speech here in May that was televised throughout the island.
Mr. Castro responded by organizing a signature campaign to permanently enshrine socialism in the Cuban Constitution.
Other than that, he has had no comment about the Varela Project until the Friday night interview with Barbara Walters. When she asked him about it, he said the petition will be considered "in due time" by the National Assembly.
Cuban television aired the interview Sunday night and scheduled a discussion of its contents by Cuban officials to be shown last night.
In the interview, Mr. Castro said Mr. Paya's group - Todos Unidos or "All United" - was within its rights to petition, but said it will not be allowed to change the 1940 Cuban Constitution.
"The Varela Project does not request changes in the constitution," Mr. Paya said yesterday. "It asks that the law be changed to respect the constitution."
Contrasting the Varela effort with Mr. Castro's famous mass rallies in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion, Mr. Paya said, "Change is not in the plaza raising the hand but in the voting booth." Mr. Castro "is not the only Cuban. There are 11 million others [who want] a normal life. That has been our fight from the beginning."
Mr. Paya said the members of Todos Unidos are continuing to collect signatures despite continued harassment by the government, including beatings, mob violence outside their homes and even the killing of family pets.
"This is not a period of perestroika," he said. "This is a period of Stalinism."
Asked whether his appearance with the two other dissidents at the U.S. residence will fuel Mr. Castro's criticism of them, Mr. Paya said, "Even when we didn't come here, the Cuban government accused us of being paid agents of the U.S. government. We assume the risk because we know what we are doing."
Although they criticized Mr. Castro for addressing an international audience that the financially crippled country needs to impress, the three dissidents agreed that their own efforts are better known outside the country than among their fellow Cubans.
"But change is happening," Mr. Paya said.
Referring to international press accounts of the dissident movement, Mr. Roca said in a separate interview yesterday, "Your articles will come to Cuba with tourists and on Radio Marti, the BBC, VOA and Radio Netherlands."
Tourism, primarily from Europe and Canada, is Cuba's primary source of desperately needed hard currency. The dollar is the overwhelming currency of choice for Cubans and tourists alike.
Mr. Paya congratulated Mr. Carter for winning the Nobel Peace Prize and said that members of Todos Unidos believe the award was due to his mentioning of Project Varela in Cuba.
Backers of the project "feel the peace prize is as much theirs as President Carter's," he said.
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[A response in the following day's Washington times:]
Amending Cuba's constitution
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021017-23412975.htm#2
Tuesday's Page One article about the Varela Project ("Dissident demands Castro tell of petitions") incorrectly identified the present Cuban constitution as the "1940 Cuban Constitution." In fact, the constitution that the Varela Project has petitioned to change is the 1976 document titled "Constitution of the Republic of Cuba." Published in 1977 by Cuba's Ministry of Justice, it was approved by the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party that same year. Its preamble declares, among other things, that Cubans are "guided by the victorious doctrine of Marxism-Leninism; basing ourselves on proletarian internationalism, on the fraternal friendship, help and cooperation of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries."
JULIO VERA
Los Angeles
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