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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Technology Seen Spreading
Watchdogs warn more repairs at US nuclear plants
Counterterrorism at top of APEC agenda
Parents of dying Iraqi children vent fury at Bush
EU calls nuclear accord invalid
U.S. Allows Delivery Of Oil to North Korea
N. Korea Calls for Talks on Arms
No More Caving On North Korea
Koreas Seek Nuclear Resolution, but Eyes on U.S.
Eyewitness at the missile brink
China's Jiang Zemin Optimistic on U.S. Visit
U.S. Presents New Draft on Iraq
U.S. Tries to Define 'Regime Change'
MILITARY
Protesters in Ivory Coast target French military base
U.N. Warns of Danger of Ethnic Massacres in Congo
U.S. Says Two Serb Firms Are Helping Iraqis
Terror, Korea, Iraq in Limelight at APEC Summit
Raytheon Reports Third Quarter Profit
Indian troops tired, stressed on border
Iran fails in attempt to extend missile range
In Opening Gates of Its Gulag, Iraq Unleashes Pain and Protest
Palestinians See New Threat to Livelihoods
The Chain of Command
Netanyahu says Israel expects war
Unmanned US planes searching for Al-Qaeda men in Saudi desert
U.S.: $10B If Russia Stops Iran Aid
Chechens Hold Hundreds of Moscow Theater - Goers
Partnership Will Guide Military, Civilian Space Activities
CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations
Israel Holds 10 Bedouins over Lebanon Spying - Police
William J. Clothier II Tennis Player and Spy
U.S. Arms Inspection Plan Faulted
'Big 5' at the United Nations Still Jockeying Over Iraq Text
Anthrax vaccine cited in leaving military
U.S. May Have To Slow Gulf Forces Buildup
Bush Signs Biggest Defense Spending Rise Since '82
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. to keep prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely
Ashcroft: No New Laws For Leaks
Hijackers Had Hoped to Fight in Chechnya, Court Told
ENERGY AND OTHER
FPL plans 600 MW of new wind power across US
Canada needs billions for toxic clean-up - report
ACTIVISTS
Oppose Iraq War Like Gandhi, Says Indian Author Roy
War protests, then and now
Falun Gong says China spies on talks
Rare Protest on Baghdad Streets
Initiative sees medicine as way to beat terrorism
Nuns Face Federal Charges in Protest
Cuba Activist Receives Rights Prize
THE SHAME OF THE POLITICIANS
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Technology Seen Spreading
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-The-Centrifuge-Route.html
The small slender cylinders spin at twice the speed of sound, driving the heavier gas outward with a force a million times greater than gravity, leaving an isotope behind that can light cities -- or level them.
Such uranium centrifuges appear to be key to North Korea's revived nuclear bomb program. In Iraq, centrifuges will be the first things U.N. inspectors look for when they return. And elsewhere in coming years this precision technology may spread to still more hands in what the atomic energy industry foresees as a ``nuclear renaissance.'' It's a rebirth some would resist in the name of arms control.
``It will become a very substantial problem,'' Pakistani physicist Zia Mian, a leading nonproliferation advocate, said of growing access to these tools for enriching uranium.
For electric utilities, centrifuges are the most cost-efficient way to produce fuel for an expansion of nuclear energy to replace coal- and oil-burning linked to global warming.
For those who want doomsday weapons, however, the appeal of uranium gas centrifuges lies in their compactness. A centrifuge plant for a small but significant nuclear weapons program could be hidden in a building the size of a warehouse, said a U.S. government physicist in the front ranks of the fight against nuclear proliferation.
This scientist, discussing official concerns on condition of anonymity, noted that both North Korea and Iraq discarded weapons programs using plutonium, the other bomb material, because they were difficult to hide. ``Centrifuges are what people go to when frustrated with other methods,'' he said.
The danger was clear last June when the U.N. nuclear agency disclosed its concerns that sensitive equipment or design documents may have been taken from a research institute in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. That institute at Sukhumi on the Black Sea, abandoned for nine years in territory controlled by rebels, was the site of breakthroughs in gas centrifuge development by German and Soviet scientists in the decades after World War II.
The principle was simple: The centrifugal force of spinning separates materials by driving the heavier of them to an outer wall first. But the technology is complex: arrangements of vacuums, zero-friction bearings using electromagnets, minute balancing mechanics, thin-walled cylinders of strong but superlight materials.
Uranium gas is fed into the upright ``rotor,'' a cylinder typically three to six feet tall and several inches wide. It spins on its axis at up to 70,000 revolutions per minute, separating the heavier uranium-238 from the rarer U-235, the isotope whose nucleus produces energy when split in the process called fission.
The mixture is pumped through hundreds of centrifuges to boost its U-235 content to over 3 percent -- the level needed for power generators. If extended, the process can produce uranium that is 90 percent U-235 --required for nuclear bombs.
Free-lancing German engineers brought classified centrifuge technology to Baghdad in 1988-89 as Iraq moved toward a nuclear weapon. United Nations inspectors later dismantled that plant, but after a four-year absence they'll look for signs of centrifuge rebuilding on their expected return later this year.
In the early 1990s, the same Germans helped Brazil build centrifuges to produce fuel for nuclear submarines, raising proliferation concerns in Latin America.
Earlier, a Pakistani engineer in Western Europe's nuclear industry brought back to his homeland the knowledge -- and reportedly plans -- for centrifuge technology. Pakistan now has dozens of nuclear bombs.
Some believe North Korea's new weapons plans, disclosed last week, may be all-Korean, based on old, widely known centrifuge technology. Others believe Pakistan helped. American officials say they don't know. ``There are a lot of countries that may have been assisting,'' said Condoleezza Rice, U.S. national security adviser.
Russia, China, Japan and India have centrifuges. Ukraine disclosed it developed its own with help from scientists who fled Georgia's Sukhumi institute. Israel reportedly enriches uranium for bombs. Iran, believed seeking weapons capability, has tried to buy centrifuges from Russia. The United States, meanwhile, is re-emphasizing centrifuges over gaseous diffusion, a more cumbersome enrichment technology.
``It can be as simple as having someone who knows how to do it. That's what's really spreading around,'' said American physicist David Albright, a former U.N. inspector in Iraq.
The industry hopes so. Steve Kidd, research chief for the industry's London-based World Nuclear Association, said all the world's uranium enrichment may be done by centrifuges within 20 years.
Zia Mian, at Princeton University, fears that will put enrichment equipment in too many Third World hands. ``Then there's only the decision of a sovereign government to do what they want with it.''
Such fears are overblown, said Kidd. He questioned whether ``rogue states'' really will master the technology and concluded, ``Any attempt to damn commercial centrifuge plants by association is, in my view, quite wrong.''
-------- accidents and safety
Watchdogs warn more repairs at US nuclear plants
Story by Leonard Anderson,
REUTERS USA:
October 23, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18272/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. nuclear power business, forking out millions of dollars to fix corroded "lids" atop several reactors, likely faces more big repair jobs, industry watchdogs warn.
An aging fleet of 103 reactors - about 20 percent of the nation's power supply - needs to overhaul or replace a host of complex systems, among them giant transformers, circuitry, insulating systems and other costly gear, they said.
Repair bills, however, may soar if the industry's inspection programs don't do a better job of detecting problems at an early stage, a criticism raised by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group.
The biggest price tag is for downtime, which can cost a plant owner nearly $500,000 a day just to buy electricity the plant would have generated otherwise.
The bill for an extended outage at FirstEnergy's badly damaged 25-year-old Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio, for example, is expected to approach $400 million.
While public safety appears to be in no immediate danger, the same cannot be said for the earnings of utilities forced to shut plants for lengthy repairs.
The challenge is that utilities may not be able to pinpoint plant problems because inspections by the industry's chief federal regulator have been cut back, David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the UCS told Reuters.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must have more resources for inspections," Lochbaum said.
A scathing "lessons learned" report issued Oct. 9 by the NRC said the commission failed to carry out inspections that could have found the acid leak that shut Davis-Besse in March.
The acid nearly ate a hole through a 6-inch (15-cm) thick, 150-ton steel lid bolted down on top of the reactor, leaving only a 3/8-inch (1-cm) thick stainless steel liner to contain the enormous pressure inside the reactor.
PREVENTABLE
The NRC's report said the whole mess could have been avoided but was not because, among other things, Davis-Besse's owner "failed to assure that plant safety issues would receive appropriate attention."
Davis-Besse's woes have forced FirstEnergy to replace the damaged lid, delay restart of the idled plant to early next year, and cut its 2002 earnings forecast.
Other operators are scrambling to detect any similar leaks at their own plants, among them Richmond, Va.-based Dominion , which is replacing lids on its four Virginia reactors.
Duke Energy also plans to put new caps on the three reactors at its Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina in 2003-2004. Meanwhile, the company will plug leaks on the lid atop Oconee Unit 2, now shut for refueling.
Despite NRC criticism, nuclear industry officials are confident their inspection programs are in good shape.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, noted that at least two NRC inspectors are stationed full time at each plant to ensure they meet NRC regulations.
Additional NRC inspectors are brought in when needed.
John Vincent, a senior project manager at NEI, said the NRC may conduct 10 to 25 inspections a year at a plant, not counting special NRC team inspections and inspections conducted by the utility's own engineers.
INSPECTIONS REDUCED
Critics, however, accuse the NRC of not being tough enough, of cutting the number of on-site inspectors, and reducing inspection hours by 25 percent over the past five years.
Lochbaum said the cuts reflect "intense pressure to reduce costs due to utility deregulation, and the result is they are cutting back the safety net, which is the NRC."
The NRC acknowledged the cuts but said adding inspectors at its regional offices has given it "more flexibility."
The commission also said fewer inspection hours partly reflect completion of earlier projects, including lengthy safety reviews at the big Millstone plant in Connecticut.
A new reactor oversight process lets the NRC do "more focused" safety inspections, the commission said, adding: "There will always be budget pressures to be more efficient; however, working smarter and more focused does not equate to a cutback of the 'safety net.'"
Lochbaum said, however, that inspectors should do more to examine circuit breakers and outside transformers at nuclear power plants. "This seems to be the next problem on the horizon. They're not tested as frequently," he said.
He cited two incidents involving electrical fires in 2001 at the San Onofre plant in Southern California, 75 percent owned by Edison International's Southern California Edison unit, plus transformer fires at other locations.
Insulation to control heat loss from the maze of pipes and tubes in a reactor building is a concern, Lochbaum said.
A broken pipe might cause insulating material to fall into a water tank and get recycled into the reactor, clogging filters and, in turn, overheating cooling water pumps.
"We hope the the lessons learned from Davis-Besse will lead to better oversight and knowledge, both for the NRC and plant owners," Lochbaum said.
-------- asia
Counterterrorism at top of APEC agenda
By Jeffrey Sparshott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20021023-83893885.htm
Counterterrorism efforts will dominate talks when leaders from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum start wide-ranging discussions today in Los Cabos, Mexico.
North Korean revelations about a secret nuclear-weapons program, a recent terrorist attack in Bali (and the potential for more strikes against APEC countries), and U.S. policy toward Iraq also are likely to be hot topics during APEC meetings, even if all those issues are not on the official agenda, analysts said.
APEC was founded in 1989 to promote trade and economic cooperation along the Pacific Rim, though it has become an increasingly political forum for leaders from the 21 member nations. But trade and the economy will not be completely forgotten in the coming days.
"At APEC, we have set the twin goals of enhancing security against terrorist threats, together with the continued facilitation of the movement of goods, capital and people within the region," Alejandro de la Pena, executive director of APEC's executive directorate, said in a statement.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will lead the U.S. delegation to the ministerial meeting in Los Cabos today and tomorrow. He will shuttle back to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a meeting between Mr. Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin Friday.
Mr. Bush and the secretary of state both plan to be in Mexico for APEC's national leaders' meeting over the weekend, according to the State Department and White House press offices.
In a briefing last week, the State Department's C. Lawrence Greenwood, the senior U.S. official for APEC, outlined U.S. priorities for the forum, including trade policies for electronic business, trade facilitation, such as streamlining customs and improving port logistics, and transparency issues - "things to bring down the cost of transactions."
But technical trade issues are unlikely to dominate talks at the highest levels.
"[APEC has] become a vehicle for addressing a host of security issues," said Lael Brainard, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noting that the emphasis is no longer on APEC itself, but on meetings along the periphery of the economic summit.
U.S. officials are intent on keeping security issues in focus.
"I also don't want to make it sound like there's a difference between economics and counterterrorism, because our counterterrorism in APEC is very much economically focused," Mr. Greenwood said.
During the national leaders' session, APEC officials plan to hand out a report on counterterrorism measures that would suppress terrorist financing and enhance aviation and maritime safety, energy security, telecommunications and information protection, customs procedures, and border security, according to APEC's executive body.
"The recent terrorist bombing in Bali, the September 11 attacks and other terrorist incidents are a direct challenge to the APEC's vision of free, open and prosperous economies," Mr. de la Pena said.
Mr. Greenwood said he expects APEC leaders to deliver a statement on counterterrorism that will lead to "some real concrete outcomes."
The private sector, meanwhile, has not abandoned hope for progress on economic and trade fronts, though security also is high on its agenda. Business priorities include completion of multilateral trade negotiations, financing for small businesses, stopping terrorist financing, improving security for the movement of goods and people, and the use of technology to strengthen security.
"I expect the [APEC Business Advisory Council] dialogue with economic leaders will cover a range of issues and concerns, such as corporate governance, small- and medium-sized enterprise development and financing, and the economic effects of the fight against terrorism," Francisco Gutierrez, executive director of ABAC, the private-sector arm of the APEC forum, said in a statement.
Business advisory council leaders will meet with political leaders in Los Cabos Saturday.
-------- depleted uranium
Parents of dying Iraqi children vent fury at Bush
By Samia Nakhoul
23 Oct 2002
Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/3275570
BAGHDAD, Oct 23 - If President George W. Bush believes that ordinary Iraqis will welcome U.S. troops with open arms he may be in for a rude surprise.
However much they fear to say what they think under the ruthless rule of President Saddam Hussein, their feelings of deep-seated hatred towards Bush are only too clear.
They see the United States as primarily responsible for the sanctions that have destroyed their economy and the social fabric of their once-prosperous lives, as well as leaving an estimated 1.6 million children dead and many more stunted.
As much as the deprivation, they resent the humiliation of having been driven back into an almost pre-industrial age.
Nowhere are these sentiments more in evidence than at the Mansour Hospital for Children, where youngsters with cancer lie dying from what doctors believe are the effects of the 1991 Gulf War.
"Look! These are the children of Iraq," said Nouhad Abdel-Amir pointing at the cancer ward packed with frail children with no hair, many lying unconscious with drips strapped to their bodies.
She herself was holding her one-year-old baby who had his arm amputated to stop the progress of cancer in the absence of injections doctors say are banned by the sanctions committee which claims they have dual use.
"This is what the Americans did to us. This is the effect of all the bombs they fired at us. It is showing now. It is all America's fault that our children are dying," said Najate Salem, whose son Mohammed, five, has stomach cancer.
International medical surveys have reported a dramatic jump in cancer cases, genetic deformities and abnormalities in children born after 1991, especially in the south where depleted uranium munitions were fired by U.S. and British troops as they drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
"The Gulf War is the only indicator for the increase of cancer in Iraq. The rate of cancer has risen five to seven fold more than before 1991," said Loua'i Latif Kasha, a pathologist and director of the 300-bed Mansour hospital.
He said U.S. bombings of water treatment plants, the collapse of the health and sanitation systems as well as a stringent embargo that made it difficult to import medicine has led to the sharp increase in cancer among Iraqis, mainly children.
"Apart from these factors, radiation pollution from depleted uranium bombs by itself causes cancer like leukaemia and thyroid," Kasha, who trained at the Whitechapel Hospital in London, told Reuters.
At Mansour hospital, desperate and broken parents sit by their children's bedside praying for a miracle. Without a miracle, many will die because the appropriate medicines are not all available and are beyond the parents' means.
Humanitarian supplies under the U.N. oil-for-food programme are intended to alleviate the impact of 12 years of sanctions but cannot meet the massive need.
Many parents, originally from poor southern provinces, have sold household goods and furniture to buy expensive medicine.
"We've sold everything we own to get him medicine. We have nothing left except our mattresses and he's dying," said Camila Mohammed, whose son Ali, six, has kidney cancer.
Sleeping on soiled and bare mattresses in stomach-churning smelly rooms, the children with no hair, yellow faces and sad eyes listen to their parents venting their rage at America.
"I pray to God to hit America with a massive strike because a strike from God is much stronger than from a human being...I want them to suffer like we're suffering. They are the reason for our misery," said Kazema Tshaloub, 30.
Whether they like or loathe Saddam, their rage and hatred are mainly directed at the U.S. administration.
Most, who come from areas that witnessed an anti-Saddam uprising after the Gulf War, distrust the declared intentions of Bush to end Saddam's 23-year-old rule.
Bush's father, then President George Bush, encouraged Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north to rise up against Saddam after the Gulf War but did little to help them.
"Bush still wants to hurt us more. What more does he want? Is there anything he hasn't done...All the destruction, sanctions and diseases aren't enough? What have we done to him, we haven't hurt him or attacked him," said another mother Ghaziya Rasheed.
Even if Iraq is about to change for the better, for many people this change will come too late. Nothing will bring back their loved ones.
"They fought us with all their means. Our children are stunted, malnourished and illiterate," said Sahera Khalil whose son Ahmed, four, has leukaemia.
"In six weeks at the hospital I've seen eight children die," she said. "The Americans have no mercy in their hearts. This is what they have done to the future generation of Iraq."
-------- europe
EU calls nuclear accord invalid
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021023-68468743.htm
BRUSSELS - The European Union yesterday followed the United States in pronouncing the 1994 nuclear accord with North Korea invalid because of Pyongyang's admission that it was attempting to make fuel for atomic bombs.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, said in an interview that it would be "difficult" to pretend the deal, known as the Agreed Framework, could be saved and that all of its provisions should be "reassessed."
In a separate development, North Korea early today refused to meet Washington's demand for an immediate end to its efforts to enrich uranium, a fuel for nuclear weapons. Instead, Pyongyang insisted on negotiations and threatened the United States with "tougher counteraction" if it did not accept talks.
In an interview in Brussels, Mr. Solana said the EU was part of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the international consortium building two modern atomic power plants promised in the Agreed Framework.
"We haven't spent as much [money] as the United States, but we've been contributing to the nonproliferation cause," Mr. Solana said.
The EU is the second KEDO member, after the United States, to call for reassessment of the $4.6 billion project.
Japan and South Korea, which are engaged in bilateral diplomacy with Pyongyang, have been more cautious than Washington and Brussels.
Mr. Solana also said the North Korea problem would be a good opportunity for the United States and its European allies, having been at odds on many issues since President Bush assumed office, to work together on the diplomatic front.
The Bush administration's repeatedly expressed intention in the past few days to treat the reclusive regime of Kim Jong-il differently from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a good start, Mr. Solana said.
Unlike the United States, the EU has diplomatic relations with the North, and the Pyongyang-based European envoys can do more than a U.S. official on a short visit.
Today, Mr. Solana meets in Brussels with John Bolton, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, who is consulting with several governments in Europe and Asia on the next chapter of the North Korean saga.
The Bush administration said the North admitted to covert development of a nuclear weapons capability when confronted with intelligence earlier this month by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Meeting until the early morning hours today in Pyongyang with South Korean envoys, officials from the North agreed to resolve the issue through dialogue. But they stopped short of agreeing to Washington's demand to suspend all nuclear activities immediately.
"In order to guarantee peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, the South and North will actively cooperate in resolving all the issues, including the nuclear issue, through dialogue," said a joint statement carried by pool reports from South Korean journalists, the only foreign reporters allowed to cover the meeting.
Another North Korean statement issued several hours earlier sounded much more terse and hostile.
"If the U.S. persists in its moves to pressurize and stifle [North Korea] by force, the latter will have no option but to take a tougher counteraction," the ruling party daily Rodong Shinmun said in an editorial carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
-------- korea
U.S. Allows Delivery Of Oil to North Korea
Nuclear Confession Elicits Restraint
By Mike Allen and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2010-2002Oct22?language=printer
The Bush administration allowed a previously scheduled delivery of heavy fuel oil to North Korea last week after the Pyongyang government admitted it was violating an arms control agreement by trying to build a nuclear bomb, administration officials said yesterday.
The decision not to abort the delivery reflected Washington's restrained reaction to the North Korean confession, a stance that will continue over the next week as President Bush meets with leaders of China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to work out an acceptable way to increase pressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
The White House had vowed to go after Iraq alone if necessary. But a senior administration official told reporters that the United States will enlist the cooperation of other powers in the region to try to force North Korea to destroy its nuclear weapons program. The official said Washington will not formally renounce its 1994 arms agreement with North Korea, nor cut off oil shipments, without making an effort to "ensure that we are in lockstep with our northeast Asian allies."
"People will be wondering, 'Well, why aren't we moving more quickly to take such-and-such a step?' " the official said. "We have to make sure that we work with our allies and make sure that they're comfortable with it and move at the same speed we do."
Though the North Koreans told U.S. officials on Oct. 4 that the 1994 agreement was "nullified," the administration allowed the delivery to North Korean ports on Friday of 43,500 tons of heavy fuel oil as required under the agreement.
"It was previously scheduled," the official said. "The next one is scheduled in about a month." The official said no decision has been made about how to handle the next shipment, but others in the administration said it would not occur.
Another senior administration official said the administration decided not to block the shipment because officials "are looking at everything very carefully right now." He said that rather than halting various parts of the aid at different points, "[we] want to do it as one package" after consulting with allies.
Offloading of the shipment began the day after the administration disclosed North Korea's admission that it had started a secret nuclear weapons program, officials said. Brian Kremer, a spokesman for the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which manages the agreement, said the delivery is still being processed and will be completed this week.
Three months ago, the administration concluded that North Korea had a secret nuclear program in violation of the 1994 agreement to shutter a plutonium nuclear reactor in exchange for 3.3 million barrels (500,000 tons) of annual oil deliveries and the construction of two light-water reactors. The oil shipments are made on a monthly basis, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of about $100 million a year.
A Democratic congressional aide said: "Democrats aren't screaming about it because we think the administration probably made the right decision." But he suggested that Republican critics of the 1994 agreement are letting the Bush administration off easy. "Can you imagine the uproar if Bill Clinton had let the deliveries to go forward if he had been told the agreement was nullified?" he asked.
North Korea's bomb-making confession shot to the top of Bush's agenda for meetings at his Texas ranch on Friday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and in Mexico this weekend with the leaders of Japan, Russia and South Korea.
The United States will eventually insist on a "visible and verifiable dismantling" of North Korea's plutonium and uranium-enrichment programs to ensure that no nuclear weapon is built, the senior official told reporters. "To be in compliance with their obligations, they cannot possess nuclear weapons," the official said. "That's the standard."
But Washington is starting gingerly, unsure of what it can attain. The official said that at this weekend's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Mexico, the United States will try to elicit statements of condemnation and concern from each of the countries but will not seek pledges by the nations to cut aid to North Korea, for instance. The official said the United States wants to increase the pressure and to see how North Korea reacts before taking more severe steps.
"We don't have an exact game plan right now," the official said. "What we're looking for are strong statements saying that this action is unacceptable, it is a threat to regional peace and security, the program has to be rolled back. We are not at the stage yet to discuss further items -- economic sanctions."
The official acknowledged that verification would be difficult if North Korea agrees to dismantle its weapons facilities.
"There's a lot we don't know about North Korea," the official said.
Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
----
N. Korea Calls for Talks on Arms
'Tougher Counteraction' Is Threatened if U.S. Won't Agree
By Paul Eckert
Reuters
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2597-2002Oct22?language=printer
SEOUL, Oct. 22 -- A defiant North Korea, facing pressure to scrap a nuclear weapons program, warned the United States today that it would take unspecified "tougher counteraction" if Washington did not accept talks on the issue.
Breaking its silence about the U.S. disclosure last week that the communist state had acknowledged it was secretly pursuing a uranium-reprocessing program, North Korea said Washington must "opt for reconciliation and peace."
"If the U.S. persists in its moves to pressurize and stifle [North Korea] by force, the latter will have no option but to take a tougher counteraction," the official party daily Rodong Sinmun said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
In Moscow, U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton sought to step up the diplomatic pressure on North Korea, saying its uranium-enrichment program was "real and dangerous."
Bolton was in Russia as part of a tour of Asian and European capitals to enlist support to halt North Korea's arms program by diplomatic means. He was going on to London and Paris.
He told reporters that he had passed on to Russian officials confidential information about the North Korean program and that he expected the issue to be discussed when President Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin meet Saturday in Mexico.
"I should tell you that our very careful, very deliberate, very prudent assessment of the information we have is enough to convince us that this program is real and dangerous, no matter what the North Koreans say," he said.
"What we've said is that they are seeking production-scope capability to produce weapons-grade uranium and that that effort is a violation of the nonproliferation treaty and a grave cause of concern to us, to the states in the region and to the world as a whole," Bolton said.
On Monday, North Korea's number two leader, Kim Yong Nam, told South Korea's visiting unification minister that the North was ready for dialogue.
The U.S. ambassador in Seoul, Thomas C. Hubbard, said today that Washington sought to preempt a crisis through diplomacy, but that North Korea had exhausted its credibility with the secret nuclear program, which violated a previous negotiated settlement.
"We have very little basis for trust in North Korea, very little basis for confidence that further dialogue will lead to a solution," he said.
----
No More Caving On North Korea
By James A. Baker III
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2516-2002Oct22?language=printer
Surprise, surprise -- North Korea now admits it has a secret program to develop nuclear weapons. Analysts have suspected for years that the North had already assembled, or was capable of assembling, one or two bombs. Now there are credible reports that Pyongyang may be no more than a year away from mass producing up to six a year.
The leaders of North Korea starve their people to maintain the world's fifth-largest military force and with it personal power over a bankrupt country. They earn hard currency by selling advanced missile technology in violation of the international missile technology control regime. Potentially just over the horizon is the ultimate proliferation nightmare -- ballistic missiles fitted with nuclear warheads.
This is exceedingly dangerous and enormously troubling. What it is not, however, is surprising. Rather, it is the natural and foreseeable result of the 1994 Framework Agreement between the United States and North Korea.
The government of North Korea holds power by force. All it understands is force, strength and resolve. By acceding to blackmail threats and signing the Framework Agreement, the United States turned a policy based on strength into one based on accommodation, compromise and appeasement.
North Korea signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1985. That treaty required Pyongyang within 18 months to sign a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and allow inspection of its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. Instead, North Korea secretly escalated its nuclear weapons development program.
Little-noticed but intensive diplomacy by the first Bush administration forced the North Koreans on Dec. 26, 1991, to end six years of intransigence on signing the safeguards agreement and allowing inspections. In a follow-up meeting in January, the United States bluntly warned Pyongyang that it either had to live up to the international agreements it had just signed or face further isolation and economic deprivation.
Pyongyang then refused to live up to the agreements it had signed and -- after a change of U.S. administrations -- threatened to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty and, worse, to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire." That's when the Clinton administration signed the 1994 Framework Agreement. "This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective," President Clinton said at the time, "an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula."
But in reality, our policy of carrots and sticks had given way overnight to one of carrots only -- fuel oil to help run North Korea's beleaguered economy, two new nuclear reactors and diplomatic ties. Moreover, Pyongyang was given another five years to do what it had already agreed to do in 1991 -- allow a full inspection of its nuclear facilities.
This agreement was an abrupt policy flip-flop, and in the end has, in my view, proved to be a mistake that has made stability on the Korean peninsula less, not more, likely.
Given their track record before 1994, there was substantial reason to question whether the North Koreans would ever keep their side of the Framework Agreement. The worst part is that it sent this dangerous message to other would-be proliferators in capitals such as Tehran and Baghdad: "Sometimes crime pays."
But those who criticize have an obligation to suggest an alternative approach. So what should we do now? Instead of caving in to Pyongyang's belligerent threats, I think the United States should go to the U.N. Security Council and obtain political and economic sanctions against the North for breach of its solemn international obligations, much as we did against Iraq in 1990; beef up our forces in South Korea to whatever extent necessary; and quietly make it clear to the North Koreans that for more than 40 years the U.S. nuclear deterrent kept the peace in Europe against an overwhelming Soviet conventional superiority, and we are quite prepared to do the same on the Korean peninsula to fulfill our security obligations to South Korea and Japan.
How "natural and foreseeable" was it that the Framework Agreement would produce a nuclear-armed North Korea, not "an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula"? Consider this: Subject only to editing to change tenses and time references, omit extraneous material and provide logical transitions, the preceding four paragraphs are word-for-word from my diplomatic memoir, "The Politics of Diplomacy," written in 1994, immediately after the Framework Agreement was signed, and published in 1995.
I would offer only a few additional observations.
I believe we will be able to get the full support of the U.N. Security Council for the economic and political sanctions elements of this more muscular policy approach. None of the permanent member countries, Russia and China included, wants to see a nuclear-armed North Korea. The United States has properly begun preliminary consultations with those powers and with Japan and South Korea.
We've wasted eight years at considerable cost to our nonproliferation efforts, but what should have been done in 1994 can still be done today.
The writer was secretary of state from 1989 to 1992.
----
Koreas Seek Nuclear Resolution, but Eyes on U.S.
October 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea agreed on Wednesday to seek a peaceful resolution to North Korea's nuclear arms program, an issue that will be the focus of intensive U.S. diplomacy with Asian and Pacific leaders this weekend.
Faced with U.S. evidence, senior North Korean officials acknowledged early in October their country had been processing uranium to build weapons in violation of its international pledges and to the alarm of the United States and its allies.
A cabinet-level delegation from South Korea which had been in North Korea for talks since Saturday returned to Seoul on Wednesday after all-night haggling over the language in their joint statement on the nuclear question.
``South and North Korea will make joint efforts to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula, and will actively pursue dialogue to resolve the nuclear issue and other problems,'' said the key paragraph of the statement.
South Korea had demanded explicit language committing the North to abandoning its covert nuclear arms scheme and upholding the 1994 ``Agreed Framework'' with the United States, which requires inspections to verify that Pyongyang is nuclear free.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said North Korea had reiterated its statement on Monday that it was ready to discuss all security issues ``if the United States is prepared to abandon its hostile policy'' toward the communist state.
WARNING DISMISSED
Although North Korea is holding out for talks with the United States, Jeong put the best face on the agreement in comments to reporters upon his return to Seoul.
``It is significant the North has listened sincerely when we conveyed worries the North's nuclear program raised among Korean people and international communities,'' Jeong said.
``In other times, the North would have defiantly rejected such comments,'' he said.
North Korea stridently warned the United States on Tuesday it would take unspecified ``tougher counter-action'' if Washington did not accept talks on the nuclear issue.
``If the U.S. persists in its moves to pressurize and stifle the DPRK (North Korea) by force, the latter will have no option but to take a tougher counter-action,'' the ruling party daily Rodong Sinmun said in a statement.
U.S. administration officials took a dim view of North Korea's threat, saying Pyongyang's reneging on the 1994 agreement had seriously undermined its credibility.
``In terms of there being an effective mechanism for garnering greater rewards from us, shredding their previous deal with us is not going to be an effective means of convincing us to enter into a new agreement,'' one official said in Washington.
BUSH WEIGHS OPTIONS
Lee Jung-hoon, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, said Pyongyang's nuclear gambit ``will only harden (the U.S.) position on North Korea.''
``(Bush) will cut off all links with North Korea and will encourage allies, particularly Japan and South Korea, to moderate or cut off its dealings with North Korea until North Korea comes out much more genuinely in wanting to deal with this.''
U.S. officials said Bush and his top aides had made no decisions on whether to impose sanctions or other penalties on North Korea in an attempt to force Pyongyang to reverse course.
In talks with Asian and Pacific leaders this weekend the U.S. president would seek strong statements demanding North Korea give up its nuclear weapons program, the officials said.
Bush will host Chinese President Jiang Zemin at his ranch in Texas on Friday. Then on Saturday the pair are to take part in the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum at Los Cabos, Mexico, which is also being attended by the leaders of Japan, South Korea and Russia.
In their Pyongyang talks, ministers from the two Koreas, still technically at war in the absence of a peace treaty after their 1950-53 conflict, also agreed to build a center for reunions of separated families and to confirm whether people still missing from the war are alive.
To build supra-partisan consensus on the nuclear issue ahead of a December presidential election, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung invited all five candidates vying to succeed him to a security briefing at his office on Wednesday.
``I will set policy after numerous discussions with President Bush, Prime Minister (Junichiro) Koizumi, President Jiang Zemin and others in Mexico,'' Kim told the candidates.
``But we must not set a deadline,'' he added.
While all agreed on the need for a peaceful resolution through dialogue, opposition candidate and frontrunner Lee Hoi-chang said Seoul should consider freezing aid to the North.
``I see a problem with continuing as if nothing has changed despite this serious development,'' Lee told President Kim.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Eyewitness at the missile brink
Warren Rogers
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021023-20283396.htm
Rumblings of war against Iraq, a deadly sniper loose around Washington and nuclear missiles in North Korea - each cause for alarm, each frightening for all, and, for those who lived through the Cuba missile crisis, chilly memories of how we teetered on the brink of nuclear disaster back then, exactly 40 years ago this week.
As a Washington correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, covering military and foreign affairs, I was acutely involved in that closest call of the Cold War. My job, like that of all reporters before TV's heyday, was to observe, record and report the world's great events, not to participate in them, much less determine their outcome. Heaven knows, it was a privilege, and fulfilling enough, to be covering the Vietnam War, the civil rights confrontations down South, the White House, Pentagon, State Department and presidential politics in those hectic days.
But apparently I did play a role in the Cuba Missile Crisis of October 1962, and, willy nilly, helped avoid a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union that threatened far more than we realized at the time.
I was surprised to learn, more than 30 years afterward, that what I regarded as everyday journalism had helped change the course of history. Or at least that is what was said in a book about the confrontation, "One Hell of a Gamble," by two historians, American Timothy Naftali and Russian Alexander Fursenko. They wrote their book primarily from just-opened, secret Kremlin archives, such as Nikita Khrushchev's papers and official Soviet files, including those of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the Central Committee, the Armed Forces General Staff and GRU military intelligence. The current issue of American Heritage magazine features an article by Nikita Khrushchev's son Sergei confirming the account in more detail.
The Naftali-Fursenko book, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 1997, noted that my story in the New York Herald Tribune of Oct. 22, 1962, was the first to substantiate rumors that Soviet Premier Khrushchev was putting offensive nuclear missiles into Cuba. President Kennedy went on television that evening, threatening U.S. nuclear retaliation against Moscow - not Havana - if any Cuba-based missiles struck the United States.
The Soviet Embassy in Washington learned Oct. 25 that I was one of eight reporters assigned to land with the U.S. Marines in an assault on Cuba if the missiles were not removed. Embassy officials contacted me and asked if I thought Kennedy meant what he said. The book quoted my reply as: "You're damn right he does. He will do what he says he will do." That deliberate warning was relayed in detail to Khrushchev at a special Kremlin meeting. It became what the authors called "the KGB's best indicator of Kennedy's intentions the star of Khrushchev's intelligence folder." It was then that Khrushchev recalled the ships carrying missiles to Cuba and ordered dismantling of missile launchers already installed on site.
Kennedy and Khrushchev struck a deal that Khrushchev would remove the missiles in return for a U.S. commitment not to invade Cuba, and, as an extra but officially unassociated gesture, withdraw U.S. missiles targeted on the Soviet Union from Turkey. (I learned the other day, incidentally, that the missiles are still in Turkey, but virtually useless, as they were even back in 1962.)
To this day, though, I am convinced Khrushchev had a lot more to go on than my article and warnings. My great colleague, the late John A. Scali, then with ABC News and later U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was eloquently impressing upon his Soviet contacts how serious the situation was. And Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy quietly met several times with Georgi Bolshakov of the Soviets' Tass news agency, passing along messages to Khrushchev through him. It was Kennedy who provided the key to the puzzle when he advised his brother to ignore a threatening Khrushchev cable, as if he had never received it, and respond to a milder, more reasoned one. The president did, and that, indeed, led to agreement.
How I found that the missiles actually were in Cuba and how the Soviets learned of my assignment to a Marine landing party are stories worth retelling.
Throughout 1961 and 1962, one assignment after the other, in Germany, Vietnam and elsewhere, kept me away from home. To try to atone for neglecting my family, I grandly invited my wife and children on October 21 to Sunday dinner at Billy Martin's Carriage House in Washington's Georgetown. As soon as we got seated, I saw across the room six or eight fellows I knew from the State Department and Pentagon, specialists in Soviet and in Caribbean affairs. I went over and said, in my best nerd manner, "Hi, guys. What are you all doing working on a Sunday?"
They seemed to turn green, muttering incomprehensibly, and I went back to my table. My wife, experienced in disappointment, said, "I guess we're going home." I said yes and we piled into the car for the silent trip back to the Maryland suburbs. I drove past the State Department and saw lights burning in what I knew was the Soviet Desk area. At home, I made a few phone calls and, satisfied with what I then learned, called New York and dictated my story. It ran Oct. 22 with a picture of President Kennedy wearing a fedora - which he never-ever did because he looked gawky in a hat - to back up his story that he had cut short his Midwest speaking tour due to a bad cold. Magically recovered, he went on TV that night with his missile speech.
A couple of evenings later, Bureau Chief Robert J. Donovan and I went upstairs from our National Press Building office to the National Press Club, to compare notes on where we were on the missile story. In the tap room, bartender Johnny Prokoff, a Lithuanian emigre who hated the Russians, overheard me arranging with Mr. Donovan for $400 expense money to go to Florida for the Marines' jumpoff. Johnny went down the bar to a Tass reporter and taunted him with the story. The Tass man, a KGB operative, as were all the Russians I knew, immediately reported to the Soviet Embassy, which sent its first secretary to invite me to lunch the next day. I assured him Kennedy meant what he said and that the missiles had to come out or we faced war. He dispatched a cable to the Kremlin, and the rest is history.
My granddaughter Margot Cerutti, attending Boston University in 1997, called me to say she had read a review of the Naftali-Fursenko book in the New York Times, and she asked, "Is it true that you helped save the world from nuclear destruction?" I said modestly, "Yes." She said, "Thanks, Grandpa."
Warren Rogers has covered the White House, national politics and military and foreign affairs since Harry Truman's administration.
-------- us politics
China's Jiang Zemin Optimistic on U.S. Visit
Reuters
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
By Andrew Stern
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3439-2002Oct23.html
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin expressed hope for improving relations with the United States on Tuesday as he arrived for a meeting with President Bush -- a session likely to produce a show of unity despite hot issues ranging from nuclear arms proliferation to Iraq.
"I look forward to my visit with President Bush to exchange views on serious and important subjects ... to help move forward our cooperative relationship," the 76-year-old Jiang said during a toast at a dinner in Chicago attended by political and business leaders.
His remarks were short on specifics but he did mention combating transnational crime, promoting global and regional economic growth and "fighting terrorism" -- an issue which has brought China's support to Washington following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Jiang was greeted on arrival at O'Hare International Airport by a U.S. Navy brass band and about 1,000 members of the city's Chinese community who shouted "warm welcome" and waved tiny red-and-gold Chinese flags.
He stepped onto a red carpet for a handshake from Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, Motorola Inc. Chairman Christopher Galvin and other political and business leaders.
The arrival was free of protesters, 700 of whom marched in downtown Chicago the day before to raise human rights issues. But scores of demonstrators assembled outside the downtown hotel where Jiang was staying, demanding a free Tibet and religious freedom in China.
"There is no rule of law in China," said Erping Zhang, one of the demonstrators. "Any dictator can change the law whenever he wants and there is no independent legal system."
Jiang leaves Chicago on Wednesday for Texas ahead of Friday's informal summit at Bush's ranch. Later he will attend an annual meeting of Asia-Pacific economic leaders in Mexico along with the U.S. president.
White House officials said Bush would discuss with Jiang North Korea's newly disclosed nuclear weapons program as well as Iraq and cooperation in the war on terrorism.
Washington is seeking a unified position from Japan and South Korea, as well as China and Russia, in dealing with Pyongyang in light of the ongoing effort to develop a nuclear weapons.
The United States would like China to better adhere to bilateral nonproliferation commitments with the United States.
IRAQ QUESTION
The question of Bush's effort to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction also would be raised as Washington is seeking international backing for an attack on Baghdad if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein does not comply.
The White House hopes a new resolution being circulated in draft form at the United Nations may be more acceptable to veto-carrying Security Council members, including China.
Human rights groups also urged Bush on Tuesday to pressure Jiang to free political prisoners and discuss China's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Jiang is expected to step down as Communist Party chief next month, his status in the West changed considerably from 1989 when he took power at a time Chinese leaders were decried for crushing student protests around Tiananmen Square.
Jiang has since weathered a barrage of bilateral crises, including a standoff over Taiwan in 1996, the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and a spy plane crisis last year.
His relations with Bush got off to a bad start when China detained the crew of the U.S. spy plane after it crashed with a Chinese fighter, killing the Chinese pilot. Bush also offered China's political rival Taiwan the biggest arms package in a decade, vowing to defend the island Beijing views as a breakaway province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
But relations warmed after last year's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, with Jiang one of the first world leaders to convey condolences, followed by support in the administration's ensuing war on terrorism.
Bush thanked Jiang at a meeting in Shanghai in October of last year and traveled to Beijing for a summit four months later. (Additional reporting by Joyce Armor)
--------
U.S. Presents New Draft on Iraq
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Abruptly stepping up pressure for quick U.N. action, the United States distributed its tough new draft resolution on Iraq to the entire Security Council for the first time Wednesday but Russia immediately rejected it and said France and China were also opposed.
The U.S. decision to move a lengthy debate among the five veto-wielding members to the 15-member council came as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer made clear the United States wants to wrap up negotiations saying talks have reached their ``final moments'' and a vote could go either way.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday's full council meeting was part of a new U.S. strategy to persuade the reluctant permanent members by actively taking the U.S. case to a wider audience.
For a resolution to pass, it needs nine ``yes'' votes in the Security Council and no veto by a permanent member -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
The 10 elected council members got their first look Wednesday afternoon at the new U.S. draft at a closed council meetings where diplomats said each got to make a statement.
``The end is either an agreement or a failure to reach agreement,'' Fleischer said. ``It could be either one right now.''
But the senior U.S. official said he expects negotiations to continue among the five permanent members and in the full council, with the aim of reaching a consensus. ``We want to get on with it ... but it doesn't mean that we're going to be looking for a vote tomorrow,'' the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov quickly rejected the text, saying it contained an unacceptable authorization of force if Iraq fails to comply with its terms and that it provides U.N. weapons inspectors with requirements they can't fulfill -- just as the initial U.S. text did earlier this month.
``Unfortunately, so far we have not seen changes in the text which would take into account these concerns, and they are shared by France and China,'' Lavrov said.
Asked whether Russia had given the United States any reason to believe it would not veto the resolution, he said, ``Well the short answer is `no,' but this was never discussed.''
The United States and Britain have been at odds with France, Russia and China over how tough a new resolution should be.
Washington, backed by London, is pushing a single resolution that would allow force to be used against Iraq if it doesn't meet its U.N. disarmament obligations.
The senior U.S. official said the resolution offered a ``last chance'' to Iraq to comply with inspectors.
``This resolution is not an attempt by the United States to seek an excuse to go to war. ... It's an attempt by us and the British to send a clear message to Iraq and to get a good inspection regime under way and operating,'' the official said.
But Paris, Moscow and Beijing still want a two-stage approach giving Iraq another chance to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors and only authorizing force in a second resolution if Baghdad obstructed inspections.
In Amman, Jordan, Iraq's Culture Minister Hamed Yousef Hamadi called the U.S. draft a ``declaration of war.''
The United States circulated an initial draft to the five permanent members in late September. The new text, a product of nearly six weeks of difficult negotiations, includes two references to Iraq being in ``material breach'' for violating U.N. resolutions, a phrase that some legal experts say could open the door for military action.
It also recalls Security Council warnings that Iraq would face ``serious consequences,'' as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.
On inspections, the text calls on Iraq to allow U.N. inspectors ``immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access to presidential sites equal to that at other sites.''
It would also give inspectors the right to declare no-fly and no-drive zones around inspection sites but drops a demand for armed security guards to help enforce the zones. The U.S. draft also drops proposals that the five permanent members be allowed to join inspection teams and receive information gleaned from inspections.
But it would still allow inspectors to remove Iraqi scientists and their families from the country in order to conduct interviews, without the presence of Iraqi government minders.
The latest American plan would also speed up the arrival of inspectors.
It demands that Iraq accept the resolution within seven days of its adoption and declare its programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles within 30 days. Inspectors would have up to 45 days from adoption of the resolution to resume work, not 45 days from receipt of Iraq's weapons declaration which the previous text called for.
The issue of a new resolution has been at the United Nations since U.S. President George W. Bush addressed the General Assembly on Sept. 12 and warned that if the Security Council didn't act decisively to disarm Saddam Hussein, the United States would take action on its own.
Wednesday's meeting follows comments from senior U.S. military officials that failure to secure quick agreement in the council -- coupled with the possibility that Iraq could initially cooperate with weapons inspections -- could delay military action beyond winter and spring. Those are considered the most suitable times for conducting war in Iraq.
Bush spoke by telephone Wednesday with Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The United States would need his permission to use Turkey's Incirlik Air Base in any assault on Iraq. ``They discussed cooperation on Iraq,'' Fleischer said, without elaborating.
Inspectors must certify that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been destroyed before sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait can be lifted.
--------
U.S. Tries to Define 'Regime Change'
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Regime-Change.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Suddenly, the Bush administration is struggling with what ``regime change'' means as it talks about confronting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and pushes for tougher arms-inspection rules at the United Nations.
Different members of President Bush's team don't seem in sync on the term, although White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed the controversy on Tuesday as involving ``the mother of all hypotheticals.''
The dispute arose after Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared to soften the U.S. stance toward war with Iraq when he suggested during the weekend that the United States might not remove Saddam from office should he abandon all weapons of mass destruction.
``We think the Iraqi people would be a lot better off with a different leader, a different regime. But the principal offense here is weapons of mass destruction. ... The major issue before us is disarmament,'' Powell said Sunday on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''
Those words set off a small tempest. Was the administration softening its often-stated position for ``regime change?''
No, insisted Fleischer.
Then President Bush himself added to the confusion Monday, when he said he did not think Saddam would disarm, even if it would let him stay in power.
``We don't believe he's going to change,'' Bush said. ``However, if he were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, ... that in itself would signal the regime has changed.''
Asked Tuesday whether ``regime change'' meant Saddam himself must go, Fleischer told reporters aboard Air Force One: ``The objective is for Saddam Hussein's Iraq to disarm, to stop threatening its neighbors, to stop repressing minorities within its own country. And that's why Congress passed the policy of regime change.''
``The policy is regime change. Saddam Hussein is the heart of the regime,'' Fleischer said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld clearly wasn't eager to weigh in on the matter.
Asked at a Pentagon briefing whether the administration was now sending a signal that ``regime change'' could come by a change in the regime's behavior, Rumsfeld replied that people could answer that for themselves.
``They can look at the record, they can look at Saddam Hussein, they can look at the country ...''
``How do you answer it?'' the questioner persisted.
``Very carefully,'' Rumsfeld said.
The U.S. policy for ``regime change'' has been interpreted widely to mean Saddam's removal. But with the United States running into difficulty selling its hard-line case at the United Nations, the diplomatic landscape may be shifting.
Wayne Fields, an expert on political rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis, said Bush created a problem for his administration from the outset by personalizing the struggle, much as he had done with his ``wanted, dead or alive'' rhetoric against Osama bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi leader of the al-Qaida terror network.
Bush's case was further complicated by North Korea's admission last week that it has a nuclear weapons program of its own, Fields said. ``So now it becomes: Which of the people that we don't like has which of the weapons of mass destruction that we don't like. And, with Iraq, we have never been clear from the very start what would follow this regime.''
Officials of the administration and its congressional allies repeatedly cite the 1998 ``Iraq Liberation Act'' as justification for seeking regime change.
But that legislation did not suggest that the United States itself unseat Saddam, only to provide support to Iraqi factions who want him gone, beginning with a first installment of $97 million. The legislation did not specify whether the support should be military.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a prime sponsor of the 1998 law, has said he was glad Bush sought and won congressional support for pre-emptive U.S. action against Iraq if he deems it necessary.
Brownback also cited, however, ``a need to increase our workings'' among anti-Saddam factions in northern Iraq and in southern Iraq ``in our efforts to strangle him and make him the `mayor of Baghdad' while the opposition forces build up.''
In other words, Brownback's view of regime change is essentially of a homegrown variety.
James A. Baker III, secretary of state in the administration of Bush's father, said as far as he's concerned, ``The only way to change the regime is to occupy the country -- go into Baghdad, depose the current regime and install a new regime.''
``I don't think there is a magic bullet,'' Baker said Monday in a lecture at the University of Akron in Ohio. Baker reiterated his position that the United States should not go it alone but try to assemble an international coalition.
Fleischer deflected several attempts Tuesday at being more specific on ``regime change.''
``You're asking the mother of all hypotheticals,'' he said at one point. The White House spokesman also likened the dispute to a question of ``how many devils can dance on the head of a pin.''
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Protesters in Ivory Coast target French military base
23/10/2002.
ABC News Online
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s708990.htm]
French troops have fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse thousands of demonstrators in Ivory Coast.
The protesters attempted to storm a French military base in the city of Abidjan.
More than 50 people were injured in the unrest.
Demonstrators tried to force their way into the base before French troops responded with water cannons and tear gas canisters.
The protesters blocked a main road and attacked several foreign motorists.
They called on French officials to hand over Opposition leader Alassane Ouattara.
Mr Ouattara has been in hiding since rebels attempted to stage a coup last month.
Government supporters accuse him of involvement in the uprising.
Rebels and loyalist forces signed a truce on the weekend but both sides remain on alert.
--------
U.N. Warns of Danger of Ethnic Massacres in Congo
October 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-congo-democratic-incitement.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A senior U.N. official warned on Wednesday of the possibility of ethnic massacres in a remote corner of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where clashes have been reported after incitement of ethnic hatred.
``We already have some reports of violent killings, where estimates of the number of dead range from 200 to a thousand,'' said U.N. Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Carolyn McAskie.
There have also been reports of children showing up at hospitals with machete wounds, she told reporters after a visit to the region to assess humanitarian needs.
The reports center on mineral-rich Ituri province in northeastern Congo, near the Ugandan border. The area is near Congo's border with Rwanda where an estimated 800,000 people were butchered during a 1994 genocide stemming from ethnic hatred.
The rapid departure of tens of thousands of Rwandan and Ugandan troops from eastern Congo in recent weeks, fulfilling agreements intended to end the civil war, has instead created a dangerous power vacuum in the region, fueling fresh fighting.
An estimated two million people have already died and massive human rights abuses have occurred in Congo's four-year civil war. The conflict, Africa's biggest war, erupted in 1998 when rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda tried to topple Congo's Kinshasa government, which was propped up by troops from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.
Human rights group Amnesty International urged the U.N. Security Council last week to prevent ``genocide'' in Ituri province and accused the Ugandan army of involvement in mass killings and targeted rape.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan said in a letter to the United Nations that the area was increasingly seeing ``extremist calls for ethnically pure towns and villages.''
EXTREMIST HATRED ESCALATING
``Extremists who were once on the margins of the ethnic groups are now in leading positions. As extreme hatred is escalating, Amnesty International fears that deliberate incitement could lead to the possibility of genocide,'' Khan said.
She urged the Security Council to increase the number of U.N. observers in the region to prevent further attacks against civilians and to ensure that attacks against civilians are investigated and monitored.
McAskie said the council had asked the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUC, for advice on how to handle the situation.
``But pure and simple this is beyond MONUC's current mandate,'' McAskie said.
``We have to get the information out,'' she said. ``We have to put pressure on anybody who might be inciting this.''
Armed clashes between members of the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups have killed an estimated 50,000 people, mainly civilians, since June 1999 and forced around 500,000 people to flee Ituri province, Amnesty International said.
Residents fleeing the town of Nyankunde in Ituri province told U.N. observers in nearby Bunia last month that their village was attacked by tribal warriors and fighters from one of several Ugandan-backed rebel factions.
Church groups say more than 100 people were killed at Nyankunde town in Ituri province and 110 others, mostly women and children, were hacked to death at nearby Bunia in August.
-------- arms sales
U.S. Says Two Serb Firms Are Helping Iraqis
Yugoslav, Bosnian Companies Accused of Repairing Fighters, Sharing Technology
By Nicholas Wood
The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2549-2002Oct22?language=printer
BELGRADE, Oct. 22 -- The United States today accused two state-owned companies in Yugoslavia and Bosnia of repairing the engines of Iraqi MiG fighters and demanded that the two countries' governments act to stop the trade.
"The United States has received clear evidence that the [Bosnian] Orao aviation firm in cooperation with the Yugoslav firm Yugoimport have been refurbishing military aircraft for Iraq," said a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.
The accusations followed a raid by NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia this month on an aviation plant run by Orao.
Public allegations have mentioned only the repair of planes, but senior government ministers in Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, say U.S. officials have presented evidence to them of much broader military collaboration that includes assistance with air defense networks, surface-to-air-missile technology and munitions. The Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, has requested an internal investigation into the matter on the strength of the U.S. allegations.
Yugoslav leaders view the alleged trade as the biggest threat to relations with the United States since ties were restored after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic two years ago.
During the 1999 conflict with NATO over Kosovo, Yugoslavia gained respect among Western military analysts for its air defense network, which managed to pose a threat to enemy pilots in spite of limited access to the latest technology.
It is this expertise that Iraq has been seeking, said Paul Beaver, a defense analyst with a London-based consulting firm, Ashbourne Beaver Associates. "There are numerous reports from usually reliable sources which suggest Yugoslavia has been transfering technology and know-how gained during the 1999 war to Iraq," he said.
With U.S. warplanes patrolling Iraqi skies and preparations underway for possible war with the country, Iraq's air defenses are of high concern in Washington. Iraq is under a U.N. weapons embargo.
On Oct. 11, NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia raided facilities of the Orao company in the town of Bijeljina, located in the Bosnian Serb Republic, which maintains close relations with neighboring Serbia.
Troops remained in the factory for more than 48 hours copying documents and records from computer hard drives. "We have so much," said Yves Vanier, a spokesman for the peacekeeping force in Sarajevo. "It may take five weeks to go through the information."
The U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, William D. Montgomery, later held meetings on the matter with Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic, prime minister of Serbia.
Officials must "undertake the necessary steps to immediately halt any ongoing cooperation with Iraq, to conduct a thorough investigation and to hold accountable those responsible," said the U.S. statement today.
Serbia's interior minster, Dusan Mihajlovic, who is also the head of Yugoimport's management board, has launched a separate investigation. He has issued a statement denying any knowledge of illegal exports.
Western officials familiar with the documentation seized in Bosnia say Yugoimport had gone to great lengths to cover up its work, while at the same time reassuring Yugoslav and Serbian officials that nothing was being sent to Iraq.
Those claims were corroborated by an article published by the Serbian daily newspaper Blic. It quotes a document allegedly seized in the Bijeljina factory that instructs Iraqi officials to go to a shipment of equipment stranded in the port of Bar in Montenegro and "remove all instructions in Serbo-Croatian language and to return them to Yugoimport's experts."
Members of the Serbian government have used the issue to accuse their country's federal authorities of having no control over the military. Yugoimport's management consists mainly of retired generals who are in theory answerable to the Yugoslav Defense Ministry.
"This is not a secret state plan or government plan to do something," said Zarko Korac, deputy prime minister of Serbia. "It's done by individuals who are beyond control. It's clear from this case that some army and some institutions are beyond democratic control."
-------- asia
Terror, Korea, Iraq in Limelight at APEC Summit
October 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-apec.html
LOS CABOS, Mexico (Reuters) - Senior ministers from across the Pacific Rim met in Mexico on Wednesday with the U.S. anti-terror campaign, North Korea's nuclear program and Iraq stealing the limelight from trade and the weak global economy.
Gathering under tight security at this luxury beach resort, foreign and trade ministers from the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping worked to forge a deal on cutting the access of would-be bombers to planes and ships.
The effort, pushed by President Bush since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, is being taken even more seriously after this month's bomb attacks in Bali that killed around 180 people, most of them foreign tourists.
Bush will join the summit here this weekend and his administration has drawn up specific proposals to make life difficult for any extremist groups planning fresh attacks.
They include more effective baggage-screening measures and tighter immigration controls at airports across the world, advance screening of passengers on international flights and reinforcing flight deck doors on passenger aircraft.
Some Asian nations are worried the strict new measures are expensive to implement and could hamper trade, but Washington insists no one can afford to be lax on security issues.
``Terrorists will not wait for us to be ready before they attack again,'' U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta warned. ``A failure to act will cost even more, not only in potential lives lost but also in business losses.''
Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Los Cabos on Wednesday evening to push the anti-terror measures and lobby Russia, China, Japan and other APEC members to back the U.S. stance in the crises over North Korea and Iraq.
LOBBYING RUSSIA AND CHINA
The Bush administration is struggling to win international backing for its demands that North Korea scrap its declared nuclear weapons program and for its policy of openly seeking the ouster of President Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which it accuses of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
The United States introduced its controversial draft resolution on Iraqi disarmament to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday but it immediately drew Russia's opposition.
APEC heavyweights Russia and China are both permanent members of the Security Council with power of veto and Bush will meet with the leaders of both nations in the coming days.
He hosts Chinese President Jiang Zemin at his Texas ranch on Friday and will meet Putin here on Saturday.
The North Korea crisis will be the focus of Bush's meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, also on the fringe of the APEC summit.
Washington's geopolitical agenda has again pushed into the background traditional APEC concerns such as boosting trade among its members and fostering economic growth.
But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said there was a clear link between security and promoting trade.
``There's a recognition that in a world where terrorism is a much sharper threat that you need to make sure you are taking precautions, but not undermining commerce,'' he told Reuters.
Allies backed the line that terrorism was the key issue.
``It is the main problem today, because it is a problem that is around the world,'' Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told parliament ahead of the summit he will also attend here. He said all nations need to ``commit all the resources possible to make sure that terrorism is destroyed around the world.''
With terrorism dominating the summit, Navy warships patrolled the coast around Los Cabos and army and police established a heavy presence. Tourists were barred from luxury hotels where the heads of state will stay and the area's superb beaches and fancy golf courses were virtually empty.
A HURRICANE BREWING
There was, however, some concern that a hurricane out in the Pacific might shift its course and hit Los Cabos. Hurricane Kenna is expected to make landfall on Friday or Saturday, when APEC leaders will be meeting, but is currently expected to hit about 250 miles south from here.
APEC accounts for about 60 percent of global output and almost half of world trade but its members range from political and economic giants like the United States, Russia, China and Japan to relative minnows such as Papua New Guinea and Peru.
Indonesia and Malaysia -- both mainly Muslim nations -- have in the past been critics within APEC of Bush's anti-terror campaign but Indonesia has been shocked into moves toward tougher action against radical groups after the Oct. 12 bombings on its holiday island of Bali.
-------- business
Raytheon Reports Third Quarter Profit
Reuters
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6764-2002Oct23?language=printer
LEXINGTON, Mass. (Reuters) - Defense contractor Raytheon Co. , the maker of Tomahawk and Patriot missiles on Wednesday reported a quarterly profit compared to a loss last year but warned earnings for 2003 would be hurt by pension account expenses.
The company, which has been hurt by charges from its discontinued engineering and construction business, snapped a string of six consecutive quarterly losses with its third-quarter profit report. Raytheon's commercial exposure has kept it from enjoying the boost that most defense companies received from increased government defense spending following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Raytheon posted a third-quarter net profit of $147 million, or 36 cents per share, compared to a loss of $285 million, or 79 cents per share in the same period last year. Sales rose to $4.1 billion from $3.8 billion.
Income from continuing operations, which exclude the company's engineering and construction business, reached $228 million, or 56 cents a share. A year ago, the company posted a loss of $280 million, or 78 cents a shares.
The results from continuing operations matched analysts' expectations gathered by Thomson First Call. The research firm listed its estimates in a range between 54 cents a share and 59 cents a share, with a mean estimate of 57 cents a share.
The profit also was in line with the forecast Raytheon gave earlier in the month, when it released details of delays and cost overruns at the construction sites. Raytheon said it took a $120 million pretax charge in the third quarter from the engineering and construction business.
The power plants are the company's final obligations from a business it sold more than two years ago.
Raytheon tightened its profit outlook for 2002, forecasting earnings per share from continuing operations in a range between $2.10 and $2.15, compared to its earlier forecast of $2.10 to $2.20.
For 2003, Raytheon said it expects earnings per share from continuing operations between $1.60 and $1.70 on revenue growth between 6 percent and 7 percent. Excluding an expected increase in pension expense, earnings are expected to rise by 10 percent, Raytheon said.
The bear market, which has devastated the retirement plans of many U.S. companies, is expected to cut equity by $2.0 billion to $2.5 billion. the company said.
Raytheon said it expected its total debt to rise by about $1 billion to a range of $6.9 billion to $7.2 billion with the elimination of its commercial aircraft financing facility. The financing unit previously had been kept off of Raytheon's balance sheet.
Raytheon's shares closed up 5.22 percent at $30.25 on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock fell 28.1 percent in the third quarter, underperforming the Standard & Poor's Aerospace and Defense index <.GSPAERO>, which fell 17.6 percent during the same time period.
-------- india
Indian troops tired, stressed on border
By Shaikh Azizur Rahman
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021023-8388705.htm
JAMMU, India - Long periods of deployment on the Kashmir border in a heightened state of alert has been leaving the Indian soldiers fatigued and mentally stressed, senior military and civilian officials say.
The condition of the troops has also resulted in a decline in operational efficiency and failure to stop Pakistan-based militants from entering Kashmir, the officials said.
The massive troops buildup, called Operation Parakram, or Courage, began shortly after terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on Dec. 13 last year. India blamed Pakistan-based Islamist militants for the attack, but Pakistan has denied the charge.
Both India and Pakistan have massed nearly a million troops on their borders. Last week, India decided to pull out some troops from the border, and Pakistan responded with a similar pledge. Both countries, however, have ruled out pulling out from Kashmir.
Signs of mental stress are emerging among soldiers on counterinsurgency duty in Kashmir, where more than 4,000 security personnel, mostly from army and paramilitary, have died since the current phase of militancy began in 1989.
A senior army general said there has been a 200 percent rise in stress-related cases of indiscipline in the army since the current buildup began 10 months ago. "Clearly this shows that the troops are under stress due to prolonged deployment and long separation from home," he said.
Defense Minister George Fernandes told Parliament recently that "combat stress" brought on by fighting insurgents in Jammu and Kashmir state had led to more than 20 incidents of "fragging" - the deliberate killing of a colleague by a soldier - since 1997.
A senior army officer in Kashmir said many more "fragging" instances are covered up for reasons of insurance payments and out of respect for the dead soldiers' families.
A doctor at an army hospital in Udhampur, in Kashmir, said an increasing number of soldiers in Kashmir are suffering from hypertension, high blood pressure and excessive sweating. Many of them continue to show signs of mental disorders months after being relieved of their duties in Kashmir.
Doctors at the army's Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi say a combination of high-altitude living and constant stress is sapping the sex drive of many soldiers who report "marriage problems" on return from their tours of duty.
"In most cases we are treating them successfully with a combination of drugs and psychotherapy," said Col. P. Madhusudhanan, an army urologist at the hospital.
After an operational tenure of about two years in Kashmir, each army unit typically moves to a "peace location" for a similar duration, during which troops get a chance to live with their families.
Since the mid-1990s, however, large numbers of troops are not getting this break because of the rise in insurgency in Kashmir. They instead are prematurely recycled into operations.
Letters from some soldiers to their families, intercepted by army authorities, point to the level of trauma.
"I no longer want to continue the service, I am getting tired. We are trained in conventional war to guard our country against a foreign army. But here we are forced to fight an unconventional war against the insurgents who are sneaking in quietly and can strike at any place, any moment," one junior army officer wrote to his wife early this year.
"Courage does not work here and it is heavily stressful. My tension is getting unbearable. For weeks I go without sleep when I find that I cannot leave the army and Kashmir that easily."
-------- iran
Iran fails in attempt to extend missile range
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
The Associated Press
10/22/02
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0759_BC_US-IranMissiles&&news&newsflash-washington
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Iranian missile, modified in an attempt to extend its range, failed during a recent flight test, a U.S. defense official said Tuesday.
The Iranians launched the modified Shahab-3 in July, but the missile did not function properly, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The normal version of the missile can fly about 800 miles; it is unclear by how much the Iranians attempted to extend its range in the July test.
The Iranians conducted a successful flight test of a regular Shahab-3 in May, and tested the missile again in June, the official said. They had launched the missile four times before then, with mixed results.
The missile is based on the North Korean No Dong design but is produced domestically, U.S. officials say. The United States accuses both North Korea and China of assisting Iran's missile program.
The missile's 800-mile range is enough to reach Israel and U.S. troops stationed in the region -- including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of Turkey. It is Iran's longest-range ballistic missile.
U.S. intelligence officials have said Iran can probably fire several of the missiles in an emergency but that it has not yet developed a completely reliable weapon. The missile can conceivably carry conventional, chemical, biological or nuclear warheads, although Iran is not believed to have nuclear weapons.
Last week, an Iranian rebel group, the National Council of Resistance, claimed that Iran flight-tested a new missile, the Shahab-4, with an even longer range, in May and August. Citing internal sources close to the missile programs, the group alleged that Iran had disguised the tests as those of Shahab-3s.
But U.S. officials don't believe Iran's Shahab-4 program has moved beyond the development stages, and Iran's government denies having such a program. The Iranians are not believed to have tested a Shahab-3 in August.
Previous Shahab-3 tests are known to have taken place in July 1998, July 2000 and September 2000. "Shahab" means "shooting star" in Farsi.
The United States can monitor such tests from early warning satellites used to look for nuclear missile launches.
U.S. intelligence has estimated that Iran, if it continues to develop missile technologies, will probably have ICBMs capable of reaching the United States around 2015.
-------- iraq
In Opening Gates of Its Gulag, Iraq Unleashes Pain and Protest
October 23, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/23/international/middleeast/23BAGH.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 22 - President Saddam Hussein's decision on Sunday to open the gates of his prisons and let tens of thousands of political prisoners and common criminals go free has afforded ordinary Iraqis a rare glimpse into the gulag that has maintained his power for 23 years, and prompted small but remarkable protests by some who lost relatives into the grim embrace of the state security police years ago.
The protests over the last two days are the most visible sign of a new and potentially seismic trend: A willingness among ordinary people to speak up - if only in relatively small numbers, briefly, and to the accompaniment of strident praise for Mr. Hussein - for rights obliterated by him in his 23 years as Iraq's absolute ruler.
Iraqis said they knew of no previous occasion, in Baghdad, when people had taken to the streets to march on a government building, and then had persisted in protests even after secret police fired automatic rifles into the air, as they did today.
Some who attended a protest at a secret police headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad on Monday said there were at least 700 people taking part who for some time defied orders that they disperse.
"Where is my son? I demand to know where is my son!" one middle-aged woman in a black cloak cried, as she huddled with a group of women at the head of 150 protesters who staged a noisy rally today outside the Ministry of Information beside the Tigris River in central Baghdad.
Similar cries went up from other women desperate to know what had become of long-lost husbands and sons and brothers, in some cases sisters and daughters, who disappeared into the vast network of prisons and detention centers as long as 20 years ago. The details that stuttered out as the women told their tales were like episodes from the nightmares of Soviet Russia: Men and women, and even teenage children, picked up by anonymous enforcers, usually in unmarked cars, and never heard from again. As officials pushed reporters back, ordered security guards to fire warning shots into the air, and pleaded with the women to still their cries, the women's accounts of their wrenching doorstep partings, and of the dates - 1980, 1987, 1991, 1992, 1997, 1999 - rang out like the tolling of a sexton's bell.
Iraqis who attended the protest on Monday at the secret police headquarters said most in the crowd seemed resigned to the grim inevitability that their relatives were dead. Those Iraqis said they had been told by some protesters of rumors heard years ago that their relatives had been shot or hanged on the day they disappeared. Still, the protesters said, they had never given up the hope, however remote, that the missing had somehow survived to become nameless numbers in some prison or detention cell.
Only now, those Iraqis said, after desperate, unrewarded vigils at the prisons in Baghdad and elsewhere that emptied out on Sunday, had the families accepted that their hopes were gone. Still, those people said, the mothers and fathers and daughters and sons had demanded, when confronted by secret police officials at the Monday protest, that they be told when their relatives had died, and where they could go to find the remains and perform the observances that the traditions of faith in this overwhelmingly Islamic country demand.
Why Iraq's reclusive leader decided so abruptly on an amnesty, abandoning at least for the moment one of his principal mechanisms of control, remained a topic of astonished debate among this nation's 22 million people. But whether he intended to try to checkmate President Bush, who has called him a murdering tyrant, or to build new support among the previously disaffected as he hunkers down for his showdown with the United States, his "gesture of love," as officials described the amnesty, appeared, at least partly, to have backfired.
The desperate searches of many families, from cellblock to cellblock at Abu Ghraib, a grim fortress 20 miles west of Baghdad, then on to other prisons and detention centers, and in some cases from Baghdad to Kerbala and Basra and other cities, seemed only to have confirmed the worst that many Iraqis had feared about the system they have lived under for much of their lives. By letting tens of thousands go, Mr. Hussein, in effect, was revealing to untold numbers of other families that he had nothing to give back to them.
What nobody could know, given the brooding secrecy that envelops all government actions here, was whether Mr. Hussein was wavering in the face of the new challenges, or only pausing before ordering a new crackdown to silence the stirrings of dissent. For the moment, with the protests scattered, drawing modest turnouts and enveloped by the protesters in a wall of praise for Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi leader seemed to have the option of inaction. But that, some Iraqis said, would run counter to every instinct honed by a state used to crushing the slightest hint of opposition.
Officials at the Information Ministry, including some seconded from security agencies, appeared almost paralyzed when the women protesting in the street suddenly marched in the gates and barged their way into the office of the stunned press center director. After a brief exchange, the women were led back into the street, and the protest evaporated, only to reassemble barely an hour later, with even greater vehemence. This time, officials raced into the street, backed by at least one man clutching a Kalashnikov rifle, and roughly ordered the protesters to disperse.
One official who spoke with the women made little headway with what was a circular argument. The man told them that there was no point in demanding that the government tell them what had become of their lost relatives because the prisons and detention centers were now empty - a fact officially confirmed today by the interior minister, Mounzer al-Naqshabandi - and there was nobody left there to release. That, the official said, meant there was nobody left to account for. "Better that you go home, and be calm," he said.
One reason for unease in the government is that many of the political prisoners released on Sunday - and many of those identified as among the missing by the protesters today - were members of the two restive population groups, Kurds and Iraqi Shiites, who have been at the heart of past uprisings against Mr. Hussein. As political prisoners raced for the gates at Abu Ghraib on Sunday, the few who paused long enough to tell their stories spoke of how they had been seized after joining Kurdish nationalist or Shiite opposition groups. Many Shiites, a majority in the Iraqi population, have long resented the government of Mr. Hussein, which is composed mostly of the Sunni Arabs who are a minority in Iraq.
Iraqis with contacts at senior levels of the government said the events on Sunday had caused a new alert to be sent out to the southern governorates, especially Basra, that have been centers of Shiite unrest in the past. As well, security officials were reported to have tightened their grip on Saddam City, a vast poverty-stricken district on the outskirts of Baghdad where many of the capital's three million Shiites live.
Meanwhile, new accounts that became available today suggested that the events at Abu Ghraib (pronounced aboo huh-RAYB) may have been grimmer than first suggested. Those accounts focused on a cell- block known as Division Six, at the southern end of the vast, square-mile prison compound. It had remained sealed by guards for hours even as a mob of 50,000 people, perhaps many more, forced open the prison gates and swept inside to help pull the prisoners from their cells.
Why some guards at the cellblock tried to hold the prisoners back was not clear, because other cellblocks, including one known as the Special Judgment Division, for the highest-priority political prisoners, had emptied out hours before. Families at Division Six told of male relatives who were serving terms of 15 years and more for petty theft, passing bad checks and smuggling. But today, some Iraqis said relatives of men in the cellblock had told them that some prisoners had been killed by guards even as the crowds massed outside.
The Iraqis who passed on those stories today said it was the bludgeoning of some prisoners inside the block that caused the panicked stampede among the prisoners that resulted in the suffocation deaths of about 10 others. One account spoke of something still more grotesque, of prisoners being killed at the last moment with lethal injections. But the account, like much else about the incident, was impossible to verify, including the numbers of dead, especially because officials at Abu Ghraib today barred entrance to all foreign journalists, and seized the film of an Italian television crew that approached the compound.
-------- israel / palestine
[And how does this differ from terrorism? et]
Palestinians See New Threat to Livelihoods
Jewish Settlers Accused Of Attacking Olive Crop
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2596-2002Oct22?language=printer
MAZRAA SHARQIYA, West Bank, Oct. 22 -- Members of the Azzam family gathered in their three-acre olive grove today for a usually routine ritual that in recent weeks has become increasingly hazardous: the annual olive harvest.
As 16 family members, from toddlers to grandparents, shook the branches and raked through the silvery green leaves with their fingers to plunk the small, green olives onto tarps spread like blankets below the trees, they said they were constantly on guard against Jewish settlers who this year are waging a violent and economically devastating war against Palestinian olive pickers.
Next to the family plot, hundreds of olive trees were set afire two weeks ago by residents of nearby Jewish settlements, family members said. Down the road, about 100 other trees were sawed to the ground. Ten miles north, in the town of Aqraba, settlers three weeks ago shot and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian man who was picking olives on his land, according to Palestinian witnesses.
Since the harvest season began in early October, Palestinian communities across the West Bank have reported almost daily attacks by settlers against harvesters collecting the bright green, rock-hard olives that are a staple of the Palestinian diet and economy. On several occasions, Palestinians complained that after driving them from their groves, the settlers collected the olives for themselves.
"They are trying to uproot us from our lands, and without our land, we will have no attachment to Palestine," said Lufti Azzam, 54, as he sat with his family in the shade of an olive tree eating bread and chicken with spicy peppers. "But we are not going to be as simple-minded as our parents and grandparents. We are not going to leave our land like they did. We are not going to Jordan and Syria. We are going to resist them and harvest our olives."
Settlers say their fight is primarily preemptive and defensive against Palestinians who might use olive harvesting as a ruse to sneak up to Jewish settlements and attack them. Palestinians have mounted numerous attacks on Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians see the settlers as illegal occupiers of Palestinian lands.
In areas near Jewish communities, "The army has set a certain distance to be a sterile zone, and no one is allowed into this area because of the fear of terrorists," said Ezra Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
When Palestinians enter the zone, a buffer area that is a different size for every community, depending on the topography, settlers are allowed to fire warning shots, he said, so "if an unknown Palestinian were to approach, I'd be careful."
But according to Azzam Tubaileh, a top official in the Agriculture Ministry of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the attacks on the olive harvest have "nothing to do with security. It's a kind of stealing. It's economic warfare."
Tubaileh said that in the two years since Palestinians began their uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- which prompted the Israeli military to impose strict curfews and close access to numerous towns and roads -- the Palestinian economy has suffered about $700 million in agricultural losses, about a third of that from olive trees and crops.
He said that about 18,000 olive trees have been destroyed by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers. This year's crop, if fully harvested and turned into olive oil, would be worth about $250 million, he said.
A recent report by the international development organization Oxfam estimated that a quarter of the Palestinians' agricultural output is olive production and that this year's production "is at risk of being wiped out" because of Israeli security measures that have blocked many roads and prevented Palestinians from traveling between towns and from their homes to their farmland. The report said 7,000 olive trees were uprooted by Israeli soldiers in the last two years "as punishment for Palestinians throwing stones" at troops.
The Azzam family's two-mile commute to their grove today illustrated the problem.
"We usually start at 5 a.m., but it took us three hours to walk here today because every road we took, [Israeli soldiers] told us to go back," said Lamya Azzam, 40, Lufti's sister-in-law.
Shortly after they arrived, Lufti Azzam said, Israeli soldiers came by in a jeep and told them it was illegal to harvest olives today. Israel Radio repeatedly broadcast reports that the Israeli military had banned further olive harvesting because of the threat of violence, but a military spokesman said the report was untrue.
"It's the other way around," he said. "Palestinians are authorized to do their harvest work in the olive fields in the West Bank, within certain distances from certain communities."
The Azzam family plot lies along the main road between the Israeli settlements of Ofra and Shiloh and is about three miles from each. Two other settlements, Eli and Male Levona, are also nearby.
The Azzams said they have never had any conflicts with local settlers, but that numerous other farmers in the area have. They said more than 1,500 trees have been destroyed on three hills surrounding their town of Mazraa Sharqiya, a farming community of about 4,000 people carved out of the rocky, arid mountains 15 miles north of Jerusalem.
Their family lost about 35 mature trees in the recent burnings, they said, adding that each tree typically would yield about $150 worth of olives during the harvest, which occurs every two years.
----
The Chain of Command
by Uri Avnery,
Media Monitors Network,
October 23, 2002
http://www.mediamonitors.net/
There is little controversy about the facts: last Thursday, in an IDF action in Rafah, at least eight Palestinians were killed (the number will probably climb, since some of the wounded were severely hurt). Five of those killed were woman and children. Almost fifty people were wounded - many of them children who had just left their school after lessons.
The event took place on the "Philadelphi" axis, a narrow strip of land designed to separate the Gaza area from neighboring Egypt. The Palestinians dig tunnels under the strip in order to move people, weapons and goods. The IDF endeavors to prevent it.
Thursday, the IDF sent a bulldozer, guarded by tanks and armored troop-carriers, to block the tunnels.
According to the army version, fire was opened on the bulldozer and the force. The brigade commander gave a tank commander permission to fire shells at the "sources of fire". All in all, five shells were fired at the densely populated refugee camp, including "flanchette" shells which spread thousands of deadly steel arrows, an especially inhuman weapon the use of which is forbidden by international law. The IDF suffered no casualties.
The army alleges that among the Palestinians killed were three "armed men" who had shot at the bulldozer. The Palestinians contend that none of them was a known member of a fighting organization. (This is not necessarily a contradiction: nowadays any Palestinian is liable to open fire on the occupation forces.)
The Palestinians speak about a "massacre". Israeli spokespersons say they regret the deaths of the children. The Americans asked Israel to exercise restraint. "The world" was silently reproachful.
This was not an exceptional occurrence. It has become almost routine.
Who is to blame? Let's try to compose a list.
First: the occupation.
The occupation creates resistance. In order to overcome the resistance, the occupation is forced to use more and more brutal methods. The occupied people, too, become more and more brutal. Human life becomes cheap, the borderline between fighters and non-fighters becomes blurred and disappears.
Second: The axis itself.
When the Gaza Strip was turned over to the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli generals demanded that there be no border between the Palestinian area and Egypt. The Rafah border crossing remained under Israeli control. The "Philadelphi" axis (I have no idea why it was so named) was designed to create the separation all along the border.
In order to guard the axis, a strip six kilometers long and one hundred meters wide, soldiers must pass only dozens of meters away from the Palestinian neighborhoods, which are among the most densely populated in the world.
In times of peace, that is a problematical situation. In times of conflict, this becomes a pressure cooker liable to explode at any moment.
Third: the Sharon-Ben-Eliezer government.
The "political leadership" consists of two generals, whose sole language is the language of force - the one is the leader of the Likud, the other is the leader of the Labor party.
The policy of this government is to break by force the resistance of the Palestinian people to the occupation. It acts according to the typically Israeli maxim: "If force doesn't work, use more force."
It may be that by now the Israeli occupation has become the most brutal of the modern era: millions of people are imprisoned in their homes for weeks and months on end, two thirds of the population have been pushed under the internationally-accepted poverty line, hundreds of thousands suffer from malnutrition, on the border of starvation - all this in addition to almost 2000 killed, among them some 400 children.
There is no sign that the Palestinian resistance is about to break. Quite to the contrary.
By orders and hints, the "political leadership" tells the army to use even more brutal methods, gradually abolishing all limits. To appease international opinion, some tiny restrictions are lifted, while at the same time much more severe ones are put into place. In this game, Shimon Peres, the Nobel hypocrisy prize laureate, plays an central role.
Fourth: the Chief-of-Staff.
Under the military hierarchical system, the Chief-of-Staff is the person solely responsible for all the acts and omissions of the IDF.
General Moshe Ya'alon has already made public his extreme right-wing orientation. He has announced that any concession to the Palestinians constitutes a "reward for terrorism". He has defined the Palestinian resistance as a "cancerous growth".
The Chief-of-Staff controls the actions of even the last man in the army. If he resolutely objects to certain actions, it will travel with lightning speed through the chain of command reaching every soldier, and if he encourages certain actions, or closes his eyes, this, too, will be felt instantly. There is no need for written orders. Every commander senses what his superior wants, every soldier senses was his commander desires. That's how the army works.
Fifth: the Area Command chief.
The Commanding Officer of the Southern area and his staff are well familiar with the topographical realities. They know that if you put tanks into the "Philadelphi" axis, there will be Palestinians who will open fire. There exists, therefore, a high probability that a fire-fight will develop near a densely populated area, and men, women and children will be killed. That's what happened this time, too.
(The same thing has happened in other incidents in the Gaza Strip, such as the one a week before at neighboring Khan Younis, when 17 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed. A different topography, similar circumstances, same command.)
Sixth: the brigade commander.
After the fire fight started, the brigade commander ordered the firing of the shells. He knew that under the circumstances there was no possibility of separating the armed men from bystanders. He acted according to a principle, which seems to have been adopted by the IDF: in order to "liquidate" one armed man, it is worthwhile killing ten unarmed people. He should not have ordered the firing of even one shell, much less five.
He acted with the approval of the division commander, who appeared again on television and boasted about the action. Like the commander of the air force, he seems to sleep very well at night. He has no qualms, no second thoughts, nothing.
Seventh: the tank commander.
A tank commander is supposed to be able to act under pressure and to make decisions under fire. He must have known that under the circumstances, one shell would cause havoc, and much more so several, including the murderous "flachette" variety.
The light finger on the trigger is another symptom of the deterioration of the situation and places a heavy burden of guilt on the whole chain of command, from the Prime Minister down to the last soldier. Shooting shells at curfew-breakers, and especially at children throwing stones at heavy tanks, has already become the bane of the West Bank.
The order to shoot shells may have been a "manifestly illegal order", over which flies "the black flag of illegality", which a soldier is obliged to disobey under Israeli law. No soldier can argue that he "only followed orders".
I cannot judge if the lives of the soldiers were in danger. Fortunately, no soldier even suffered a scratch. IDF soldiers are better protected than any soldier in the world. But if they were indeed in mortal danger - the responsibility lies with the commanders, who deliberately put them into this situation.
----
Netanyahu says Israel expects war
By Jay Bushinsky
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021023-13967505.htm
JERUSALEM - Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes a U.S.-led military onslaught against Iraq is inevitable, and that the Baghdad regime will collapse like a house of cards - but not before Israel sustains a potentially costly blow from President Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons arsenal.
"[T]he imperative is to defang the Iraqi regime by preventing its acquisition of atomic weapons," the still-popular Israeli politician said. "No inspectors will be able to do that job."
Mr. Netanyahu was celebrating his 53rd birthday Monday in his spacious office here, an amenity provided by the Israeli government to all its former prime ministers.
His mood was upbeat, largely because of a stunning victory over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a Likud party vote in its Jerusalem caucus. "It was a nice birthday present," he said.
Mr. Netanyahu's discourse ranged from Israel's dispute with the Palestinians to its struggle with Islamic extremism and crackdown against unauthorized Jewish outposts in the West Bank.
He made short shrift of Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer's threat to resign and take his left-of-center Labor Party out of Gen. Sharon's national unity government. Mr. Ben-Eliezer made the threat after conservative ministers objected to his sending troops and police to oust die-hard, illegal Jewish settlers.
"I don't think he will decide to leave the government until the battle for Labor's leadership is over in mid-November," Mr. Netanyahu said. "If Ben-Eliezer wins, I think the coalition will remain in office. If he loses, the chances of Labor pulling out will be greater. And if that happens, we'll go to an early election."
Mr. Netanyahu offered no sympathy for the so-called "youth of the hills," the militants who fought pitched battles against the uniformed personnel sent by Mr. Ben-Eliezer to evict them. "No one should lift a finger against an Israeli soldier or policeman," he said.
Focusing on the threat posed by Saddam, Mr. Netanyahu predicted the Iraqi ruler would attack Israel in his "last gasps." He said there had been a major change in Iraq's nuclear technology after the Israeli air force bombed the Ossirac nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in June 1981.
"Saddam is using a decentralized system with production sites that are tiny. It is a decentralized technology with small-scale centrifuges that are portable - very small - and can fit into a small room. In a large country like Iraq, it is impossible to uncover this."
Referring to U.N. personnel dispatched to detect this activity, he said: "The inspectors are doomed to failure from the start. I think President Bush understands that, and this is why there will be no alternative other than to take military action to prevent the arming of Iraq with nuclear weapons."
Asked about the worldwide problem of terrorism, Mr. Netanyahu seemed most concerned about Iraq's unconventional weaponry. In his view, attacks like the recent bombing in Bali, Indonesia, are threats of smaller magnitude than the ones posed by Saddam.
"I think that a nuclear bomb in the proverbial suitcase that explodes in downtown Manhattan or Washington is mega-terrorism," he said. He applied the same definition to "a cannister of toxic germs that is put into a water reservoir." "I think that this is the true specter that haunts us in the 21st century," he said.
"We must destroy the terror network that is capable of acting in Bali or the Philippines or Tel Aviv," he went on, "by bringing down the regimes that support it."
Mr. Netanyahu said he assumed that the United States will take action to deny Saddam the ability to launch Scud missiles against Israel from western Iraq.
Washington's motive presumably would be to keep Israel out of the conflict in order to retain the support of as many Arab states as possible. He termed this "a top priority" for Washington.
"I would not make any recommendations about the war plans," he said, "except to say that it is very important to reiterate a message that already has been sent by the U.S. - that those who actually do the launching of unconventional weapons against Israel will be apprehended and tried as war criminals."
Turning to the aftermath of an American military victory in Iraq, Mr. Netanyahu stressed the importance of fostering a genuine transition to democracy, albeit within the parameters of the Middle East's political reality.
"I think we have to be realistic in our expectation," he said. "Iraq will not turn into a model democracy. Even over many years, it might not become a classic democracy as we understand it. But we have no choice but to begin to ventilate these societies, to give people a chance to hear something other than the drumbeat of a clerical fanaticism or the drumbeat of radical despots.
"In both cases, they are poisoning an entire generation and even future generations and instilling in them a cult of death."
--------
Unmanned US planes searching for Al-Qaeda men in Saudi desert
Press Trust of India
October 23, 2002
Hindustan Times
http://www.hindustantimes.com/onlineCDA/PFVersion.jsp?article=http://10.81.141.122/news/181_89484,0005.htm
Washington, Unmanned US military aircraft are searching the Empty Quarter, a desert in Saudi Arabia, where Al-Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding among the local nomadic tribes.
The Al-Qaeda fugitives are moving between Yemen and the Saudi desert and have likely paid the nomadic tribe, the Bedouins, to keep them well hidden in its soaring dunes and craggy valleys, according to senior Yemeni officials.
"They are moving around in a pickup truck with a simple tent on the top and probably a Bedouin who knows the Rub al-Khali (the Saudi name for empty quarter) like you know the palm of your hand," said Abdul Karim Iryani, an adviser to the Yemeni President.
"That is how they have been avoiding the government and your US drones," he was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
Though the unmanned planes were put into operation to capture operatives moving in sufficient numbers but so far such group activity has failed to materialise, the report said.
"They are basically looking for movement within the desert, unusual movement of cars and so forth," said Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubaker al Qirbi.
"They are moving in a highly underpopulated area of the country. It's mostly desert and mountains," he said.
The Al-Qaeda men are wanted in connection with terrorist attacks in Yemen and some fugitives from Afghanistan.
-------- russia / chechnya
U.S.: $10B If Russia Stops Iran Aid
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is holding out the incentive of a $10 billion project for Russia if it would stop helping Iran develop potent missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
The potentially lucrative deal involves storage of radioactive material from around the world.
``If the Russians end their sensitive cooperation with Iran, we have indicated we would be prepared to favorably consider such transfer arrangements potentially worth over $10 billion to Moscow,'' the State Department said.
A tradeoff could resolve one of the most difficult issues in an overall good relationship between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
They will meet this weekend in Mexico at a conference of leaders of Asian and Pacific nations.
Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton was sent to Moscow in advance of the meeting to discuss U.S. concerns about Russia's assistance to Iran.
Bolton has talked to top Russian officials about the problem several times in the past without apparent results.
Specifically, the administration wants Russia to halt construction of a light-water nuclear reactor at the Iranian coastal city of Bushehr.
Russia has denied consistently it is helping Iran develop nuclear weapons or its missiles program.
``The U.S. position is clear,'' the State Department said. ``A weapons of mass destruction-armed Iran would be a major threat to Russia as well as to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.''
Hinting that Bush will take the issue up with Putin, the statement said, ``We will continue to intensively work this issue closely at senior levels with Russia.''
An end to aiding Iran would benefit the U.S.-Russian relationship and help Russia ``economically, politically and strategically far more than any short-term gain from sensitive transfers to Iran,'' the statement said.
The United States controls whether spent fuel from reactors in other countries can be transferred to Russia for storage because it originally provided the fresh fuel to the countries.
Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev, who met with Bolton in Moscow, said afterward on Ekho Moskvy radio that ``Russia is not providing any weapons technologies and is not even negotiating such projects with Iran.''
Also on Wednesday, Bush signed into law the Russian Democracy Act, which authorizes -- but does not actually provide -- U.S. foreign aid to Russia for ``the promotion of democracy, rule of law, international exchanges, human rights, economic reforms, administration of justice and the development of a free and independent media in Russa.''
The bill is H.R. 2121.
--------
Chechens Hold Hundreds of Moscow Theater - Goers
October 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-theatre-hostage.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Chechen guerrillas held hundreds of Moscow theater-goers hostage overnight on Thursday and threatened to blow up the building and all inside if security forces tried to storm it.
The group of about 40, including masked women strapped with explosives, burst into the theater on Wednesday evening firing shots in the air and shouting ``Stop the war in Chechnya.'' They demanded Russia pull its troops out of their Muslim homeland.
The spectacular attack was a stinging blow to President Vladimir Putin, who called off a trip to Germany and Portugal to deal with the drama on his doorstep. An official said the group described themselves as a suicide death squad, or ``smertniki.''
One hostage, reached on her mobile telephone inside the theater, said the rebels had fastened explosives in passageways, on seats and even to hostages themselves.
``A huge amount of explosives have been laid through the place,'' child heart specialist Maria Shkolnikova told Reuters.
The Chechen news Web Site www.kavkaz.org carried what it said was a statement by the attackers' commander, Movsar Barayev: ``There's more than a thousand people here. No one will get out of here alive and they'll die with us if there's any attempt to storm the building,'' the Web Site quoted him saying.
He called on Putin to stop the war and pull his troops out of Chechnya if he wanted to save the hostages' lives -- demands that were confirmed by Russian officials at the scene.
Some nine hours after the drama had begun, reporters nearby heard brief gunfire coming from the direction of the theater. There was no immediate explanation for the shots. But Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed hostage in the theater as saying some of the rebels had fired from a side door.
``They have grenades and they have guns,'' Moscow city police chief spokesman Valery Gribakin said.
Russia has fought on and off for more than eight years to quell a separatist revolt in the North Caucasus territory that costs lives daily among Russian troops and civilians there.
NO STORMING
As two prominent figures in Moscow's Chechen community began efforts to set up negotiations with the rebels, officials played down speculation that heavily armed security forces surrounding the building would try to take it by storm.
``Storming of the building will not be carried out at the initiative of the Russian side if the terrorists do not undertake actions to kill large numbers of hostages,'' Gennady Gutkov, a parliamentary security committee member said.
Putin's decision as prime minister in October 1999 to order troops back into Chechnya helped catapult the political novice into the Kremlin. His firm handling backed by tough, public fighting-talk, made him the country's most trusted politician.
He won immediate sympathy for his plight from Washington and other Western powers with whom he has grown close since he threw Moscow's backing behind the global war on terrorism following last year's September 11 attacks in the United States.
Western criticism of Moscow's hard line in Chechnya -- including widespread allegations of human rights abuses -- has been muted since September 11. The White House condemned the latest hostage seizure and offered help if needed.
``There are no causes or national aspirations that justify the taking of innocent hostages,'' White House spokesman Sean McCormack said. ``We condemn terrorism in all its forms.''
Several shooting incidents were reported in different parts of the five-story theater after the gang burst in during the second act of the Russian musical ``Nord-Ost'' (North-East).
Hostage Shkolnikova said there had been no casualties when the rebels stormed into the theater, a featureless modern building known as the former House of Culture.
The group released up to 20 children immediately from among the audience as well as some Muslims and batches of hostages were released at regular intervals throughout the night. Police said 400-700 remained hostage, including several foreigners.
CRISIS MEETING
Putin called in senior security chiefs and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov for crisis talks in the Kremlin and called off a trip on Thursday that would have taken him to Portugal via talks in Berlin with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
He is due in Mexico at the weekend for an Asia-Pacific summit that should also take in talks with President Bush on Iraq and North Korea.
Early on Thursday, officials reported varying degrees of success for the two negotiators -- Aslanbek Aslakhanov, the deputy who represents Chechnya in the State Duma lower house of parliament, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former parliament speaker.
``The rebels are refusing to have contact. When we have had contact they say their leaders are resting,'' said parliamentary deputy Yuli Rybakov, who is involved in handling the crisis.
An anguished hostage, speaking by mobile telephone from inside the theater, pleaded live on NTV television for the security forces not to storm the building.
``Please to not start storming. There are a lot of explosives. Don't open fire on them. I am very scared, I ask you please do not start attacking,'' said Tatyana Solnyshkina.
Outside, crowds of anxious relatives waited for news.
A distraught woman in her 60s said her daughter and two grand-daughters were at the show on a school trip: ``My daughter managed to speak to me on the phone, literally three words. Then they took their phones away. I just don't know what happened.''
One grandfather shouted out at a police officer: ``When are you going to get these bastards out of Moscow?''
The Moscow hostage-taking incident is the most audacious Chechen attack since the first Chechen war of 1994 to 1996.
In 1995 some 120 people were killed after rebels seized a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk. In 1996 a Chechen group took more than 2,000 people hostage in a raid on the neighboring Dagestani town of Kizlyar.
In Berlin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said three Germans were being held. The British Foreign Office was checking on the fate of at least three Britons thought to have been at the show.
-------- space
Partnership Will Guide Military, Civilian Space Activities
by Tech. Sgt. Scott Elliott
Air Force News Service Washington -
Oct 23, 2002
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-02zc.html
The nation's leading space agencies added a new member to their alliance recently by signing a memorandum of agreement with the director of defense research and engineering, a Department of Defense agency focusing on technology.
The agreement formally establishes cooperative relationships for space technological research and development, said Undersecretary of the Air Force Peter B. Teets during a Space Transportation Association meeting here. He said the partnership is vital to both national security interests and future commercial applications.
"The partnership that comes from these kinds of interchanges (is) important to all of our national security space activities," Teets said. "Our national security activities can pay dividends to the NASA civil space program as well."
The partnership's other members, all of whom had representatives attending the meeting, include NASA, U.S. Strategic Command, the National Reconnaissance Office and Air Force Space Command.
"I think it's natural to develop common technologies together," said Dr. Ron Sega, director of defense research and engineering. "At the end of the day, we may have different requirements and different systems, but there's a lot of ... common work that can we can do in research and development."
Teets said an example of space technology with both military and civil application is the global positioning system.
"I think the recent military conflict has shown us, without a doubt, how important the use of space is to national security and military operations," Teets said. "GPS accuracy and capability ... has been vitally important to our efforts in the war in Afghanistan."
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said assured space accessibility is an area the space technology partnership could immediately address.
"Propulsion power generation advances that are so critical to the purposes of (achieving) our exploration and discovery objectives are the same technologies that national security seeks to utilize," he said.
"Though applications may differ in the end," O'Keefe said, "(they) nonetheless can begin with similar technologies."
A push is already under way to develop a reusable launch system to both assure access to space, and to lower the cost of boosting cargo into orbit.
"I've been concentrating quite heavily on our new evolved expendable launch vehicle program," Teets said. "(But) the EELV isn't the end-all for assured access. We need to look forward to the (next) generation of launch systems.
"We'll be working closely with NASA, as NASA continues to be involved with reusable launch vehicle technology. It's in a technology development phase now, but there's not a doubt in my mind that we will have a reusable launch system," Teets said.
Other research projects include telecommunications initiatives and space-based radar.
"It's important that we leverage our capabilities together, as a nation, to make sure we have the best space program possible, in both (our) military and civilian space programs," Teets said.
-------- spies / spy agencies
CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations
More Offices, More Agents With FBI
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1943-2002Oct22?language=printer
The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI's 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities, a step that law enforcement and intelligence officials say will help overcome some of the communications obstacles between the two agencies that existed before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In many cities, according to local FBI special agents, the CIA employees help plan daily operations and set priorities, as well as share information about suspected foreigners and groups. They do not, however, take part in operations or make arrests.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as his answer to MI5, Britain's internal security service. Unlike the CIA, MI5 is empowered to collect intelligence within Britain and to act to disrupt domestic threats to British national security. "It goes some distance to accomplishing what the MI5 does," Mueller told a House-Senate intelligence panel last week in describing the new CIA role in the FBI task forces.
Separately, the CIA is undertaking what one intelligence official called a "concerted effort" to increase the number of case officers working in the agency's domestic field offices. Those offices, directed by the National Resources Division, are staffed by officers from the clandestine service.
The CIA's domestic field offices recruit foreigners living temporarily in the United States -- for example, scientists at universities, diplomats at embassies and business executives -- to work as agents for the CIA when they return home. They also conduct voluntary debriefings of Americans, mainly business executives and academics, who have recently returned from abroad. The division also is responsible for handling some defectors and for limited counterintelligence targeting.
In the mid-1980s, the agency maintained close to 35 field stations in the United States. But over the last decade, budget cuts and operational restrictions reduced the agency's domestic effort by about 30 percent, according to one former high-ranking CIA official. "They were in bad shape."
Since Sept. 11, the National Resources Division has been given more money and some of its domestic offices have been reopened to bring the number close to 30. "There is a concerted effort to enhance that," said one administration official said.
The CIA's domestic division was created in 1963 to conduct clandestine operations within the United States against foreign targets, usually foreign spies and organizations. But the CIA no longer conducts clandestine operations at home, in part because of the 1973 intelligence overhaul that curbed spying on U.S. citizens and enacted stricter oversight of covert operations. Since then, too, the FBI has strictly limited the information it accepts from the CIA, for fear of "tainting" ongoing domestic investigations with information it is not allowed to use or, in some cases, even possess.
While the new growth in the CIA's domestic work does not involving spying, it does represent a significant step in integrating the CIA's analytical capabilities with U.S. law enforcement efforts to find and apprehend terrorist suspects.
"We are stepping into an area that is fraught with peril," said Frederick Hitz, a former inspector general at the CIA. But Hitz and other analysts applauded the effort.
The CIA's work on the FBI task forces "is a sign of the times," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. "The idea is to get all the intel and law enforcement agencies that might be able to contribute to a coherent and comprehensive plan against terrorist activities."
None of the growth in the CIA's domestic work has required changes in law.
Under Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan, the CIA is permitted to secretly collect "significant" foreign intelligence within the United States if the collection effort is not aimed at the domestic activities of U.S. citizens and corporations.
Ellen Knowlton, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas field office, called the CIA officers in her office "full and active participants" in day-to-day operations. The exchange of ideas among the FBI, the CIA and local law enforcement "is very interactive," she said.
"You balance how you use them" with the potential for compromising officers still under cover, said Joseph Billy Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI's New York field office. "We reserve the right for the CIA to make that call."
For this reason, the identities of CIA officers are often not shared with local law enforcement officials who are detailed, part-time, to work on the task forces. The CIA officers also usually work in special parts of the larger task force building, behind walls impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping.
In Oregon, Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeger said there remains a deep distrust toward giving law enforcement or the CIA expanded powers. Although he approves of the CIA presence, he said he purposefully stays clear of the CIA officers.
"I know very little about them and I chose to keep it that way," he said. "The CIA is not a dirty word," he said. "They have roles and responsibilities that certainly have shifted. I have a lot of admiration for the organization."
While the CIA presence is new in many cities, the agency has worked with local police departments for years in New York, New Jersey and a handful of other locations. The New York joint terrorism task force of 300 people from 21 agencies has had more a dozen CIA officers for years.
The CIA is reluctant to talk about its new task force role, or its domestic field offices. "This increased cooperation is critical in the fight against terrorism," said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield. "It's critical to establish more and better linkages."
--------
Israel Holds 10 Bedouins over Lebanon Spying - Police
October 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-israel-espionage.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Ten Bedouin Arabs including a lieutenant-colonel in the Israeli army have been arrested on suspicion of spying for the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah, police sources said Wednesday.
An army spokesman confirmed the officer's arrest and said the other men were civilians, not soldiers as reported by the police sources.
The police sources said later that most of the 10 were current or former soldiers. The discrepancy could not immediately be resolved. Police said all 10 were from a town in Israel's Galilee region, not far from the border with Lebanon where Hizbollah and Israeli forces still occasionally clash more than two years after the Jewish state withdrew its forces from south Lebanon.
The 10 Bedouin were arrested six weeks ago on suspicion of funneling information to Hizbollah on Israeli army positions and activities along the frontier in exchange for money and drugs, the police sources told Reuters.
The army spokesman said: ``In a Shin Bet (internal security service), police and army investigation, an army officer was recently arrested on suspicion of transferring intelligence information to Hizbollah...for money and drugs. ``The IDFregards with great gravity the transfer of information regarding security forces and operations to an enemy. It ... condemns this unusual incident and all attempts to harm the security of Israeli citizens and soldiers.''
Israel has about 170,000 Bedouin who, along with the Druze minority, perform military service, unlike the rest of the roughly one million Arabs in the country. Bedouin volunteer for service rather than being conscripted like other Israeli soldiers.
BORDER VIOLENCE PERSISTS
There was no immediate comment from Hizbollah, an Iranian- and Syrian-backed Shi'ite Muslim movement whose guerrilla attacks led to Israel's abandonment of a south Lebanon ``security zone'' in 2000 after 22 years of military occupation.
Officials at Israel's Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, which handles questions on internal security matters, refused comment.
Israel radio called the arrests one of the most serious espionage cases in Israel's 54-year history.
Since the Israeli army left south Lebanon, Hizbollah has clashed with Israeli troops in the disputed Shebaa Farms area near the meeting of borders between Lebanon, Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli planes also regularly fly over Lebanon, drawing anti-aircraft fire from Hizbollah.
Tension has risen in recent weeks over a new Lebanese project, pumping water to dry villages from a southern river that Israel also needs for water.
Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said the group, which dominates south Lebanon, would retaliate ``within minutes'' to any Israeli attack on the pumping station.
Israel, which has accused Hizbollah of trying to create a ``second front'' against it as it battles a Palestinian uprising, has warned of possible military action to safeguard water supplies originating in the Wazzani River.
But it indicated it will give time for international mediation to resolve the dispute at the request of the United States, which wants calm on Israeli-Arab fronts to help it woo Arab support for a possible campaign to disarm Iraq.
--------
William J. Clothier II Tennis Player and Spy
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2506-2002Oct22?language=printer
William J. Clothier II, 86, a former tennis star, international spy and grandson of the co-founder of the Strawbridge & Clothier department stores, died of leukemia Oct. 19, the Associated Press reported in Valley Forge, Pa.
While Mr. Clothier won national tennis titles, he also was secretly working as a special agent for the FBI. He later worked for the CIA. He served as an FBI special agent in Peru, Cuba and Chile during World War II. He used his 1938 bachelor's degree in anthropology from Harvard as a cover. From 1952 to 1979, Clothier worked as a CIA agent, gathering intelligence and providing new identities and employment to defectors.
Mr. Clothier, whose father, William J. Clothier, was a national tennis singles champion, toured on the grass-court tennis circuit from 1934 to 1938. Together, the two won a national father-son title twice, once beating Dwight F. Davis, the founder of the Davis Cup, and his son.
-------- un
U.S. Arms Inspection Plan Faulted
Rules for Interviews Called Impractical
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2215-2002Oct22?language=printer
The Bush administration proposal that would authorize U.N. weapons inspectors to take Iraqi scientists and others involved in weapons activities outside Iraq with their families for interviews and possible resettlement could be impractical and possibly a "deal breaker," according to former senior U.N. inspectors and intelligence analysts.
The proposal is contained in the U.S. draft of a new Security Council resolution governing inspections of Iraqi weapons. Under the plan, U.N. inspectors would have the "discretion" to interview Iraqis either inside or outside Iraq and "facilitate the travel of those interviewees and their families," according to a senior White House official.
The proposal, which is being discussed by the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- is aimed at creating conditions under which Iraqi scientists could respond to questions without fear of reprisal from the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The U.S. resolution also proposes that interviews of scientists inside Iraq be held outside the presence of Iraqi government representatives.
Hans Blix, the chief of the U.N. inspections unit, told Iraqi officials in Vienna Oct. 3 that he wanted the U.N. inspectors to "freely choose the mode and location" for interviews with Iraqi citizens without saying where they would be conducted. Blix, although aware of the U.S. proposal, made no mention of taking the individuals and their families out of the country. He did tell the Iraqi officials that that there was a "need for a possibility to interview persons without any official present."
The Iraqis said scientists might not want to be heard without government representatives present and said Iraq wanted one observer and a note-taker present at all interviews, and that each session be videotaped. Blix said later that he did not accept this idea because Iraqi officials had intimidated scientists during past questioning.
An Iraqi letter to Blix dated Oct. 12, expanding on issues raised in Vienna, said only that interviews would be facilitated "in such a way as to ensure the rights of these Iraqi nationals under the law."
Blix last week told the Security Council members that, "Naturally, the inspecting organizations cannot force any Iraqi citizen to be interviewed by them, whether in private or in the presence of Iraqi officials."
"This [U.S.] proposal could be a deal breaker," said a former senior intelligence officer with experience in Iraq. "Saddam could not let the U.N. selectively remove top scientific people from his country."
The official said the U.N. inspectors, without a full investigation, would have trouble determining who had accurate information and who just wanted to get out of Iraq. "It would be impractical for the team to identify someone as a person of interest and then decide who should be included as part of the family," he added.
"If individual governments assist with a defection, that's good," said Terence Taylor, who served as a chief inspector and commissioner between 1993 and 1997. "To make it a formal explicit part of what the U.N. inspectors do is . . . not a good idea and fraught with difficulty," added Taylor, who now heads the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies' Washington office.
David Albright, who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security did analysis of the Iraq nuclear program for the U.N. inspectors between 1992 and 1996 and interviewed some Iraqi nuclear scientists in Iraq in 1996. Albright said taking leading scientists out of the country, particularly to the United States, "would be a very tough sell around the world."
Albright added that "some other Security Council members would not like the precedent," noting that "China would hate it, but they could live with it if it were not a formal part of the resolution."
Another problem, Albright said, "was making sure that we are not ripped off. We don't want to see Iraqis who might be traitors come to this country and thereafter we would have to watch them in the U.S."
Not specified, but implied in the U.S. resolution, is that Iraqi citizens would volunteer to leave the country for their interviews, according to one Bush administration official.
One person who encouraged the U.S. approach was Charles Duelfer, deputy executive director of the previous U.N. inspection team who, in the late 1990s, said he had suggested to the Clinton administration that "if I had 100 green cards to distribute," referring to permanent residency permits, "I could get to the bottom of Iraq's weapons program."
Duelfer said his view now is that the U.N. inspectors should "interview the few hundred key scientists, engineers and technicians who were involved in the previous weapons of mass destruction efforts and have them account for their activities since December 1998." He said that Iraqi government observers should not be present and "the U.N. should offer sanctuary or safe haven to those who find it a condition for speaking the truth."
Both the CIA and the Iraqi exile groups, such as the Iraqi National Congress, already have defector programs that have encouraged scientists and others with information to flee the country. One former U.N. inspector said the proposed U.S. resolution "would put the U.N. in the same business." He pointed out that Khidhir Hamza, who worked for 20 years in Iraq's nuclear program, defected on his own in 1994, and was initially turned down by both the CIA and the Iraqi National Congress, who did not recognize who he was. A year later, he was picked up by the CIA, which was then able to covertly bring his wife and children out of Baghdad and resettle them in the United States.
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DIPLOMACY
'Big 5' at the United Nations Still Jockeying Over Iraq Text
October 23, 2002
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/23/international/middleeast/23NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 22 - In intense negotiations, the United States and Britain pressed the other three permanent members of the Security Council today to accept a draft resolution on Iraq that includes no explicit authorization of military action but leaves the way open for Washington to go to war.
After the United States presented a revised draft on Monday, the permanent members, who hold veto power, met twice today for discussions. Council diplomats said the talks were moving forward, but Washington continued to face resistance from France and Russia to its bid for one resolution that would provide the minimum legal foundation for an American attack on Iraq.
In what American and British diplomats regarded as an important advance, France said today that it would not present a competing resolution, but would negotiate on the basis of Washington's revised draft.
The French Ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, also praised a phrase in the new draft that calls for the Council to "convene immediately" if United Nations weapons inspectors find that Baghdad is balking. This passage is a nod to France, which has insisted on two stages, reserving authorization of force for later, in the event that inspectors report that Baghdad is failing to disarm.
But according to Council diplomats, France asked for clarification of what it saw as ambiguities in the proposal, questioning precisely the new passages that Washington hoped would bridge its deep gap with Paris over when to use force.
In Washington, Pentagon officials said Iraqi acceptance of a Council resolution and renewed weapons inspections could delay military action. No ordered deployments have been delayed, Pentagon and military officials said, and no exercises have been postponed, but they said they were awaiting the final resolution before deciding whether to reschedule deployments.
Much of the heavy equipment recently deployed to the Persian Gulf region would likely remain while inspections were underway. But the personnel sent for exercises and training or standard duty might rotate home if it appears that an inspection cycle would run for a lengthy time, with fresh fighting forces sent in their place at a later date.
The United States ambassador at the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, hinted at both progress and strains this evening.
"We've put on the table a text of a resolution which we believe, if Iraq were to cooperate, could achieve disarmament," he said. "Every country brings its own perspective and point of view to these issues, and these things have to be thrashed out and discussed."
He said the United States still hoped to achieve a consensus among the permanent members, but wanted at least "a sufficient level of understanding between us so that there is no veto in the offing."
The revised text no longer includes a full authorization to use "all necessary means" against Iraq if it fails to disarm. But American officials argued that a careful juxtaposition of three key paragraphs provides the legal grounds that Washington seeks.
In the first of the "operative paragraphs," the Security Council "decides that Iraq is still, and has been for a number of years, in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions." The Council would also decide that this "material breach" would be compounded by even minor new violations by Baghdad, like inconsistencies or omissions in Iraq's arms declarations, which are supposed to guide the inspectors.
The draft resolution then "recalls that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations."
In the Council's arcane parlance, Iraq's ongoing breach of past edicts would in itself be sufficient grounds for a more forceful response by Council members, American officials said.
The resolution would then remind Iraq that it was warned as long ago as 1991 that it would face "serious consequences" for its violations, which can be taken to mean war.
This phrasing is what awakened suspicions by France and Russia that it might be a "hidden trigger," one diplomat said. But administration officials said that if these passages are further softened, there will be no credible threat to President Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction.
Differences also remain over the new terms guiding the inspections, but diplomats on all sides said they were likely to work those out if the major issues were resolved.
Mr. Negroponte suggested that the United States was not prepared to bend much further. "In the end, the proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating," he said. "It's going to be whether we get a resolution or not."
-------- us
Anthrax vaccine cited in leaving military
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021023-60656530.htm
The Defense Department's anthrax immunization program has hurt the Pentagon's ability to retain pilots and aircrew for the National Guard and reserves, the General Accounting Office said yesterday.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report that a "significant number" of pilots and aircrew members who received the required anthrax immunization vaccine cited the program as a major factor in reducing their participation in Guard and reserve activities or leaving military service altogether.
"Anthrax is a serious threat that our soldiers might face on the battlefield," said Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican and chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which requested the study.
"At the same time, this vaccine has been controversial, and it has caused serious reactions in some individuals," he said. "The Defense Department needs to do a better job giving accurate information to our military personnel so they can make informed decisions."
Anthrax is one of the bacterial agents most readily available to terrorists and U.S. enemy states worldwide.
Five persons across the nation died from exposure to anthrax-laced letters. More than a year later, the government has yet to make an arrest in the case. The FBI has consistently maintained that the investigation is on track and that thousands of leads have been pursued by a task force of investigators.
The GAO, in reaching its conclusion, investigated the views of pilots and other aircrew members of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve.
Investigators said an estimated 37 percent of the pilots and aircrew members surveyed had received one or more anthrax shots as of September 2000 and that of those recipients, 85 percent reported experiencing some type of adverse reaction, displaying symptoms such as redness, itching, chills, fever, nausea and dizziness.
At the time of the inquiry, the GAO said, two-thirds of the sample survey did not support the anthrax vaccine program nor any future immunization programs planned for other biological warfare agents.
"Now more than ever, an experienced and well-trained military is critical," Mr. Burton said. "I hope the DOD will take the GAO's recommendations seriously and direct the establishment of an active surveillance program to identify and monitor adverse events associated" with the program. The DOD is the Defense Department.
From March 1998 and March 2002, more than 525,000 U.S. military personnel were vaccinated against anthrax.
The Defense Department has sought to immunize all 2.4 million service members by 2004, at a cost of $130 million. The immunization series calls for six injections of the vaccine over a period of 18 months, followed by annual booster shots.
The U.S. military is the only force in the world requiring all its military troops to take the anthrax vaccinations.
Concerns have also been raised about the vaccine's effectiveness against massive doses of weaponized anthrax anticipated in an intentional biological warfare attack. In addition, the only FDA-approved manufacturer, the Michigan Biologic Products Institute, has repeatedly been cited for quality control problems.
The Anthrax Vaccine Expert Committee, a civilian panel of physicians and scientists set up to monitor the safety of the vaccinations, concluded in a report in April that the vaccinations over a two-year period had not shown a high frequency or unusual pattern of serious reactions.
The committee said that when it reviewed and medically evaluated 602 reports of adverse reactions, it concluded that the number was not excessive and that no deaths had been reported.
----
U.S. May Have To Slow Gulf Forces Buildup
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2299-2002Oct22?language=printer
As U.S. hopes dim for speedy United Nations approval of a new Iraq inspections resolution, Pentagon officials acknowledged yesterday they may have to adjust their timetable for a military buildup in the Persian Gulf and said planners were looking at ways of slowing the deployment of U.S. troops to the region.
While the Pentagon has yet to reveal a firm deployment schedule, troops and equipment have started flowing to the region, setting the stage for what officials had indicated would be a surge in forces to give President Bush the option of attacking Iraq as early as January.
Senior defense officials said yesterday they knew of no decision yet to halt this flow. But they said military planners were considering ways of adjusting it to accommodate a new round of U.N. weapons inspections that may begin later and last longer than once envisioned.
"It's fair to say there's some recalibration going on," one senior defense official said.
At the United Nations yesterday, France and Russia raised objections to a revised U.S. draft resolution that calls for strengthened weapons inspections. The countries cited concerns that it would implicitly authorize the United States to use force against Iraq if the Bush administration determines that Baghdad is refusing to disarm.
Bush, speaking in Bangor, Maine, sought to maintain pressure on the 15-nation council to adopt the U.S. resolution, warning that inaction could consign the U.N. to obsolescence.
"For the sake of peace at home, for the sake of peace in the Middle East, for the sake of determining whether or not that international body is going to be the League of Nations or the United Nations, Saddam Hussein must disarm, and we expect you, the world, to disarm him," Bush said, referring to the Iraqi president.
"But my fellow Americans, if they won't act, and if Saddam Hussein won't act, for the sake of peace, for the sake of our security, we will lead a coalition to disarm that man," Bush added.
The continued wrangling over the language of the resolution has surprised some administration officials. After Congress approved an Iraqi war resolution two weeks ago, senior administration officials said they hoped the United Nations would quickly follow with a tough new mandate for weapons inspectors to return to Iraq.
Instead, the United States has encountered stiff resistance from France and Russia -- two of the five permanent members of the Security Council -- over terms proposed by the administration. Even if agreement were to come soon, conducting the inspections could take months, pushing the potential starting date for any U.S. military action well into the middle of next year or beyond.
The resolution under discussion would give Iraq 30 days at the outset to declare its weapons programs. Another 15 days would be allotted for U.N. inspectors to get into place, followed by a 60-day period for an initial round of inspections and a report on Iraqi compliance.
Pentagon officials are eager to avoid a situation in which tens of thousands of U.S. troops are moved to the gulf and are primed to strike, but must wait months for an order to attack. At the same time, military planners must account for the possibility of new inspections quickly breaking down over renewed Iraqi resistance.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked about the potential impact of a new inspection effort on U.S. military planning, told reporters yesterday that "it would be premature to try to speculate about what could happen," since the wording of the U.N. resolution and its prospects for passage remain so uncertain.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at the same news conference, rebutted a suggestion that further delay played to Hussein's advantage by providing time to bolster Iraqi defenses. But Myers pointed to the challenge confronting the Pentagon in keeping Bush's military options open.
"The last thing we want to do is limit the president or the rest of the national command authority's flexibility in responding to crisis," Myers said. "I can tell you we're postured in a way that that will not be a problem."
In view of the diplomatic and political uncertainties, one option under Pentagon consideration is to continue to build up military equipment in the gulf region, but delay the dispatch of troops and allow some forces already there to proceed with normal rotations home.
For instance, two aircraft carriers currently within striking distance of Iraq -- the Lincoln and the George Washington -- have faced the likelihood of their stays being extended past the end of their regular six-month tours later this year to provide added air power for an invasion of Iraq. But officials said the carriers may be permitted to return home following the arrival of two other carriers -- the Constellation and the Harry S. Truman -- due to leave U.S. ports in November and December.
"The bigger issue for us right now is getting the heavy equipment over there," a senior military officer said. "The troops can wait."
To this end, defense officials reported no change in plans to load large cargo ships that pulled into ports in San Diego and Charleston, S.C., over the past week to ferry Army and Marine Corps trucks and other military gear to the gulf region. Substantial additional stocks of U.S. military equipment could be shipped to the Middle East and left there for months without impairing the ability of U.S. forces to train at home or deploy elsewhere, the officials said.
Officials also reaffirmed plans to proceed with the announced deployment in coming weeks of about 600 staff members of U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the gulf region, as well as headquarters elements of the Army's V Corps and the Marines' 1st Expeditionary Force. Many of these troops could be withdrawn after they erect the mobile command posts in Kuwait and Qatar that would house them during any attack on Iraq.
----
Bush Signs Biggest Defense Spending Rise Since '82
October 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-bush-defense.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush signed into law a $355.1 billion defense spending bill on Wednesday, giving the U.S. military its largest increase in two decades as the United States braces for war with Iraq.
Bush said the $37.5 billion increase would boost spending on armaments, develop new weapon systems and give the military a 4.1 pay raise as it fights the U.S.-led war on terrorism launched after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
``We've asked our military to prepare for conflict in Iraq if it proves necessary,'' said Bush, flanked by the commanders of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force and by key lawmakers at a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony.
``The bill today says America is determined and resolute to not only defend our freedom, but to defend freedom around the world,'' he added. ``We will defeat terror.''
In addition to the defense spending bill, Bush signed a $10.5 billion military construction bill that will fund new and upgraded military installations and military housing.
The bills Bush signed are the only two of the government's 13 annual spending bills to make it to his desk, a fact that reflects wrangling between the Republican White House and the Democratic-led Senate, as well as the overriding desire to protect the United States following the Sept. 11 attacks.
In percentage terms, the 11.8 percent increase in defense spending is the largest since the roughly 17 percent increases in 1981 and 1982, the first years of the massive military buildup under former President Ronald Reagan.
Bush aides have offered a wide range of estimates of what an Iraq war might cost, with estimates from the $60 billion to $70 billion spent on the 1991 Gulf War up to $200 billion. Bush has threatened Iraq with military action if it does not abandon its suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Bush said the military bill would spend nearly $72 billion on weapon procurement, an $11 billion increase; would devote $58 billion to research and development; and would boost funds for operations and maintenance by more than $5 billion.
Among its details, the defense bill will:
-- spend $7.4 billion to develop a national missile defense system, $43 million less than Bush wanted but well above levels pushed by Senate Democrats who questioned whether such a system could work;
-- spend $9 billion for shipbuilding -- $842 million more than Bush sought -- including $2.3 billion for two AEGIS destroyers, $1.5 billion for a Virginia-class attack submarine and $1.3 billion for cost overruns on ships funded by earlier budgets;
-- supports canceling the Army's $11 billion Crusader howitzer program;
-- funds a 4.1 percent pay raise for military personnel;
-- lays the legal groundwork for Boeing Co to lease 100 767 jetliners to the Air Force to serve as in-flight refueling tankers to replace its aging tanker fleet;
-- provides $3.3 billion to buy 15 C-17 transport aircraft, $3.2 billion for 46 Navy F/A-18 fighters, $4 billion for 23 F-22 fighters and $3.5 billion for continued development of the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. to keep prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021023-70186029.htm
The Pentagon will keep the great majority of detainees at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, indefinitely, rather then send them back to their native country, administration officials said.
Pentagon civilians and military officers "have come to a grudging acceptance" that it is too risky to send such dangerous people back to nations that could eventually release them, a senior administration official said. The officials said the military has been debating for months whether to keep the prisoners.
About 70 percent of 598 Taliban and al Qaeda detainees come from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - countries in a region for which U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., has responsibility.
Officials said Central Command opposed releasing detainees because it feared they would eventually be set free by the Afghan government and resume their practice of attacking American troops.
The detainees at the base at Guantanamo are considered the most hardened of thousands of fighters captured during the war in Afghanistan.
"They have no compunction about killing people," said one official opposed to sending them to other countries.
The debate began in the Pentagon like so many other policy questions: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent out a memo asking why not send them home. Officials quote him as saying, "I don't want to be the world's jailer."
In the end, the discussion boiled down to two questions: How could the United States certify that the other countries would continue to hold them, and would the Pentagon and CIA continue to have access for intelligence collection?
One official said the administration could never get assurances from other countries that these two principles would be met. In fact, Saudi Arabia has a track record of keeping terrorist suspects off-limits to any U.S. interrogators, including those who killed 19 American servicemen in 1996 when they bombed Khobar Towers, the military housing complex near Dhahran.
Yesterday, Pentagon officials said a "small number" of Pakistani detainees will be returned to Pakistan as the result of a thorough review process.
"It's true that that process is working, and that there are some people likely to come out the other end of the chute," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon new conference.
He said one criterion for keeping a detainee is "are they people who ought to be kept off the street simply because they might be inclined to go back and again engage in activities that would be opposed to the Afghan government or to the United States?"
Officials say the great majority of detainees fit that description and will be held indefinitely.
In fact, the Pentagon continues to expand the Guantanamo prison, named Camp Delta. There are now 612 units, with another 204 being constructed, to house suspected terrorists from 43 countries.
Since the United States began detaining terrorists at Guantanamo, only two detainees have been released: An Afghan nicknamed "Wild Bill" was repatriated to Afghanistan after doctors determined he was mentally ill. Yaser Esam Hamdi was sent to a Navy brig in Norfolk after authorities found out he may be a U.S. citizen.
"Gitmo," as the base is nicknamed, is more than a military prison. It is a collection center where U.S. interrogators repeatedly question al Qaeda members to glean intelligence about previous, and potential, terrorist attacks.
Two task forces run the operations. Task Force 160 is made up of military police who guard the detainees and run the facility. Task Force 170, a mix of military and CIA intelligence officers, conduct interrogations. Other countries, most notably Jordan, have helped the task force question prisoners.
--------
Ashcroft: No New Laws For Leaks
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ashcroft-Leaks.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. officials must do more to crack down on leaks of national secrets, but new laws may not be needed, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a letter to Congress.
Existing laws are adequate -- if they are properly enforced, Ashcroft said in a letter dated Tuesday to congressional leaders.
As part of a bill last year authorizing intelligence activities, Congress had asked Ashcroft to consult with other administration officials to see if new anti-leak laws should be considered.
The request came a year after President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have made it a felony to leak virtually anything the government deemed classified. Violators could have faced up to three years in prison.
Ashcroft noted that no single law now applies to leaks from throughout the government. Instead, various laws apply to different kinds of leaks. Those laws ``provide a legal basis to prosecute those who engage in unauthorized disclosures, if they can be identified,'' he said.
While new laws might help government prosecute leak cases, it's not clear they would help identify people who leak information or discourage them from doing so, he said.
What's needed, Ashcroft said, is ``a comprehensive, coordinated, governmentwide, aggressive, properly resourced and sustained effort'' to stop leaks.
Among Ashcroft's recommendations:
--Governmental departments should report crimes to the Justice Department, but should not delay their own internal investigations while Justice considers whether to prosecute.
--The Justice Department will provide investigative support for internal investigations.
--Agencies should notify the Justice Department when they have identified someone who leaked classified information.
--The administration should stress to Congress, the media and the American public the damage caused by leaks.
Ashcroft's letter follows more than a year of dialogue between journalists and the Bush administration about how intelligence issues can be reported without damaging national security, said Scott Armstrong of Information Trust, an organization that promotes access to government information and higher journalistic standards.
Through the dialogue, agencies have developed a better understanding of journalists' needs to keep readers and viewers informed, he said. Journalists, meanwhile, have discussed withholding sensitive information that might not be critical for their reports, such as details about agency sources and methods.
``It's been a very responsible conversation,'' Armstrong said.
-------- terrorism
Hijackers Had Hoped to Fight in Chechnya, Court Told
Plans of Hamburg Cell Apparently Shifted During Training in Afghanistan
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2079-2002Oct22.html
HAMBURG, Oct. 22 -- Members of the Hamburg cell that led the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks wanted to fight alongside separatist rebels in Chechnya, but were told while in Afghanistan for training they were not needed in the southern Russian republic, a man charged with helping the hijackers told a court here today.
The statement by Mounir Motassadeq, a 28-year-old Moroccan who has acknowledged knowing the hijackers, buttresses the argument that the Sept. 11 plot originated with the leadership of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The precise origins of the attacks have remained the source of speculation over the last year. Some Western officials have theorized that the leader of the hijacking group, Mohamed Atta, conceived the basic idea, but others have said it flowed from the top of al Qaeda. Motassadeq's testimony was consistent with the description of a chain of events in which the Hamburg group went to Afghanistan with one idea and returned with another.
In the opening day of his trial in a Hamburg state court, Motassadeq testified that he knew of Atta's ambition to fight in Chechnya and that the two men spoke together after Atta returned from Afghanistan in February 2000.
"Atta said to me, 'I was in Afghanistan and the people said to us that the Chechens do not need [fighters] anymore,' " Motassadeq testified.
Motassadeq has denied knowing anything of the Sept. 11 plot and said today that Atta, upon his return from Afghanistan, told him he wanted to leave Germany to obtain a doctorate in Malaysia.
"Atta was respected because of his behavior and not because of what he said," Motassadeq said. "He prayed regularly, and when he spoke, he was calm. He did not give off an aura of power."
The trial opened under heavy police guard in the city where the al Qaeda cell led by Atta operated undetected for 2 1/2 years before spearheading the attacks. Motassadeq is the first person anywhere to go on trial accused of direct involvement in the attacks; proceedings in a federal court in Virginia against an alleged al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, remain in the pretrial stages.
Motassadeq is facing more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder, as well as being charged with membership in a terrorist organization. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
The defendant "was aware of the objectives of the organization, aimed at the commissioning of terrorist attacks, and assisted in the planning and committing of those attacks by a great number of activities," the indictment states.
German prosecutors contend Motassadeq acted as the cell's banker. He forwarded money to hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi in the United States and paid rent, utility and school bills for him in Germany to hide his activities, according to the indictment.
Hartmut Jacobi, one of Motassadeq's attorneys, complained to the court that the prosecutors had portrayed the case as a "terror trial" and said his client's activities were entirely unwitting. "We will ask the court to acquit him," Jacobi said. "We hope that the court will preside over a fair trial."
The trial could test the extent of U.S. cooperation in a foreign prosecution. Motassadeq's attorneys said in an interview this week that they want the court to call as a witness Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged Hamburg cell member who was arrested in Pakistan last month and is being held by U.S. authorities at a secret location.
The defense hopes that Binalshibh will support the contention that Motassadeq assisted the hijackers out of brotherly courtesy because they were fellow Muslims, but was unaware of their plans. If U.S. officials do not permit his testimony, the attorneys said they will ask the panel of five judges to abandon the trial.
Under the German legal system, the lead judge will decide whether the court should hear from Binalshibh and whether his testimony must be taken in Hamburg or can be heard at another location, according to Felix Herzog, a professor of criminal law at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Because Binalshibh could face the death penalty after trial by a U.S. military tribunal, Herzog and other sources said, the United States is unlikely to return him to Germany, where he could launch court proceedings to prevent his return to U.S. custody. German law prevents handing over a suspect facing a possible death penalty.
While Motassadeq today denied the charges, he startled the packed courtroom by admitting he had traveled to Afghanistan in May 2000 for military training -- something that he, his family and his lawyers had denied for months. Motassadeq had maintained that he went only to Pakistan, for the purpose of visiting an Islamic country and studying his religion.
"This is nothing special," said Motassadeq's father, Ibrahim, of his son's stay in Afghanistan. Speaking from Marrakech in a telephone interview tonight, he added: "A lot of young Moroccan people have been there. He knew nothing about what happened in the United States. Everything he said today shows he is not guilty."
Under questioning today by the lead judge, Motassadeq said he went to Afghanistan after consulting with Atta. In his three weeks there, he said, he learned to use a Kalashnikov assault rifle and engaged in fitness training. He added that he believed the Koran compelled him to receive military training.
"I learned that bin Laden was responsible for the camp and had been at the camp sometimes," Motassadeq said. "I didn't know that beforehand, and I didn't meet him, either."
Motassadeq said he and Atta often discussed politics, including conflicts in the Palestinian territories and Chechnya, as well as U.S. foreign policy and the desirability of boycotting U.S. products. But he told Presiding Judge Albrecht Mentz that he never had any hint that Atta intended to commit acts of terrorism, adding, "In my opinion, it is no solution."
"Violence can never solve a problem. . . . You can't defend that as a Muslim," said Motassadeq, whose controlled delivery in German increasingly became agitated as the day progressed.
Special correspondent Souad Mekhennet contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
FPL plans 600 MW of new wind power across US
REUTERS USA:
October 23, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18273/story.htm
NEW YORK - FPL Group Inc , the largest producer of wind energy in the United States, said it is in the process of adding about 600 megawatts of wind-powered generation at sites across the country.
FPL said in a statement the planned projects are as follows:
- The New Mexico wind energy center, a 204 MW facility located in eastern New Mexico which is expected to begin operation in 2003. Output will be sold to PNM Resources subsidiary Public Service Company of New Mexico.
- The High Winds energy center, a 150 MW facility located in northern California which is expected to begin operation in summer 2003. Output will be sold to Scottish Power Plc subsidiary PacifiCorp Power Marketing Inc.
- The North Dakota wind energy center and South Dakota wind energy center, with a combined 80 MW of generation, are expected to begin operations by the end of 2003. Output will be sold to Basin Electric Power Cooperative.
- The Hancock County wind energy center is a 98 MW facility located in northern Iowa which is expected to begin operations by the end of 2002. Output will be sold to Alliant Energy Corp. subsidiary Interstate Power and Light Co. and several local cooperatives and municipalities.
- The Mountaineer wind energy center is a planned 66 MW facility located in northern West Virginia. It is expected to begin output by the end of 2002. Output from the facility will be sold to Exelon Corp. subsidiary Exelon Power.
FPL runs 78 wind facilities across 15 states, generating 5,500 megawatts of electricity.
-------- environment
Canada needs billions for toxic clean-up - report
Story by David Ljunggren
REUTERS CANADA:
October 23, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18287/story.htm
OTTAWA - The Canadian government has bungled the clean-up of thousands of toxic sites and abandoned mines across the country and needs to spend billions of dollars to deal with the mess, according to a damning report released by the country's environmental watchdog yesterday.
Environment and sustainable development commissioner Johanne Gelinas also said Ottawa was not doing enough to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, regulate the use of pesticides and deal with the spread of species alien to Canada.
"Overall, our findings leave me more concerned that ever about the inadequacy of the federal government's investment to protect the environment and meet its sustainable development commitments," she wrote in the six-volume report.
"The federal government has failed to clean up its own backyard," said Gelinas, who reports directly to parliament.
Her insistence on more money comes at a time when Finance Minister John Manley - who will deliver a budget next February - is facing with a shrinking surplus and demands for a multibillion-dollar investment in the health care system.
Gelinas said Ottawa knew it had about 3,600 contaminated sites on its hands and another 1,500 where contamination was suspected. These include harbors, ports, military bases, government laboratories and abandoned mines.
"We estimate that the cost of dealing with known sites under federal responsibility is in the billions of dollars," she said, noting there are no laws obliging Ottawa to clear up the mess left at federal sites.
By contrast, the United States runs a federal Superfund program to clean up the most dangerous contaminated sites.
Gelinas said Ottawa did not know the full health risks posed by the federal sites and had failed to draw up a list of the worst Canadian spots and develop a plan to clean them up.
One serious concern is the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals such as arsenic and cyanide now left at abandoned mines in northern Canada. Cleaning up the 30 worst sites alone would cost C$555 million ($355 million).
The government currently spends C$26 million a year to prevent water contamination at the mine sites, which Gelinas dismissed as "a Band-Aid approach".
In one site alone - the Giant gold mine near Yellowknife - there are 237,000 tonnes of arsenic dioxide dust stored underground. The storage area is now starting to leak.
Gelinas said the problem of abandoned mines had "become dramatically worse" since 1998 and noted the federal approach to tackling the situation was "diffuse and inconsistent".
One reason for the problem is that until recently Ottawa did not oblige owners of mines on federal territory to put up enough money to cover the cost of cleaning up the sites. This meant that when mines closed down, the operators walked away and left the government to clear up the mess.
Gelinas also noted infighting between government departments and expressed surprise that more action had not been taken to identify the risks posed by pesticides and other toxic chemicals.
"To us, the whole situation is confounding. The processes we have observed seem to defy timely, decisive and precautionary action," she said.
"None of this augurs well for the protection of our health. In my opinion, the current situation and future prospects are not environmentally, economically or socially acceptable."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Oppose Iraq War Like Gandhi, Says Indian Author Roy
Reuters
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5063-2002Oct23?language=printer
ROME (Reuters) - Indian novelist Arundhati Roy urged anti-war campaigners Wednesday to use civil disobedience to oppose military action against Iraq, just as Mahatma Gandhi used it to fight for India's independence from British rule.
Roy, whose 1997 novel "The God of Small Things" won the Booker Prize in Britain and has sold six million copies in 40 languages, has become a prominent activist for human rights and environmental causes.
Speaking about actively opposing globalization, Roy told a news conference in Rome "The struggle has hit a dead-end. We need to re-imagine nonviolent resistance. It's not simply about demonstrations on the streets and wearing masks.
"The answer lies in civil disobedience," she said, detailing some of the boycotts and nonviolent protests Gandhi used to weaken Britain's grip on the Indian subcontinent, which gained independence in 1947.
Asked whether she would advocate civil disobedience against a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, Roy said: "Absolutely, of course. That is where it is most urgently needed."
"Those activists who in the past have gone into Palestine, or gone into Iraq and said 'Bomb us, we're here, we're white people and we're here' -- those are fantastic people," she told Reuters.
Roy, 41, was in Italy to speak at a festival featuring films on a campaign of opposition to a hydro-electric dam project in India that has displaced millions of people.
"The idea that America or any other country has the right to organize a pre-emptive strike against Iraq on the suspicion that it might be developing nuclear weapons...it justifies anybody going to war against anybody," she said.
"It justifies India going to war against Pakistan or Pakistan going to war against India based on any suspicion that they have. It's the most outrageous thing you can possibly imagine."
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War protests, then and now
By Robert Kuttner,
10/23/2002
Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/296/oped/War_protests_then_and_now%2B.shtml
AL LOWENSTEIN, where are you now that we need you?
Allard K. Lowenstein, as much as any other person, turned anti-Vietnam war protest into a mainstream cause. Lowenstein, a longtime organizer who later served in Congress, was murdered in 1980 by a mentally ill man who was obsessed with the antiwar leader. During his shortened life, Lowenstein fought for civil rights, liberty in South Africa, and above all an end to the Vietnam War.
Analogies between the impending Iraq war and the Vietnam War are slippery but instructive. In the Vietnam case, war came first, and it took a decade for protest to prevail. In the case of Iraq, if an ill-considered war is to be averted, effective protest needs to be telescoped into a matter of weeks.
In Vietnam, protest slowly built on campuses and streets. With a few notable early exceptions, elite dissent followed. Today, campuses and streets are relatively quiet, but there has already been plenty of elite protest.
Former and current officials of the diplomatic corps, retired and active-duty military officers, CIA officials, and academic experts express doubts about the realism of the administration's war scenario and its larger risks. Indeed, the most penetrating journalism on the subject, by James Fallows in The Atlantic and by Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker, reveal that it is defense hawks outside the narrow Bush circle who offer some of the best-informed skepticism.
The congressional resolution authorizing President Bush to make war got 23 no votes in the Senate and 133 nays in the House. That's not enough to block war, but it is a surprisingly large degree of dissent, given America's post-Sept. 11 psychology and the ability of a president to define a national-security crisis.
Popular support for war is surprisingly thin. Polls suggest that a slender majority of Americans support the president, but the support evaporates when the question is qualified to include nonsupport of America's allies or large numbers of American battlefield deaths or even Iraqi civilian casualties. Public opinion, as political scientist Benjamin Barber has observed, is eerily disengaged. Rather than a passionate national debate, Bush confronts neither dissent nor consent. If ever there were an impending war that cried out for a teach-in movement and extended Senate hearings, it is this one.
Realities on the ground in the Middle East are complex, and the grand designs of Bush's warmakers are simple bordering on simple-minded. The more that Americans learn about this misadventure, the more doubts will grow. Reportedly, there have already been teach-ins on some 200 campuses, but they have neither been widely reported nor galvanized into a movement. Congress, disgracefully, held a few token hearings and went home.
A mass Washington demonstration is planned for Saturday. But like the early anti-Vietnam protests, this one is organized by radicals who will likely scare off the mainstream. The keynote speaker will be Ramsey Clark, the onetime US attorney general turned radical. Clark founded the International Action Center, a group which defends, among others, Saddam Hussein and North Korea. It's one thing to believe this is a dangerous, opportunistic, and ill-considered war. It's another to consider America the font of most of the evils in the world. The former view is held by countless well-informed people who wish America well. With some organizing and education, it could become the majority view. That latter position is hopelessly fringe.
I think of Al Lowenstein because in the mid-1960s it was radicals who were the first wave of antiwar protest. Far more Americans, however, wanted to end the war because it was so clearly ruining our own country. It was Lowenstein and then-student leader Sam Brown who conceived the ''dump Johnson'' strategy in the summer of 1967 - and amazed themselves and the country when Lyndon Johnson announced less than a year later that he was standing down. Teach-ins, meanwhile, acquired their own momentum. Lowenstein, Brown, and others, visiting scores of campuses, went on to fashion a strategy of inquiries and protests that were not hate-America affairs. By late 1969, many millions of clean-scrubbed Americans had attended peaceful marches. They took protest away from the radicals, to the point where most Americans eventually soured on the war, not as Marxists but as patriots.
America today is in a very patriotic mood, as it deserves to be after 9/11. It is as patriots that we should oppose George W. Bush's disastrous war.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 10/23/2002.
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Falun Gong says China spies on talks
By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021023-96764048.htm
Members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in the United States say they are being spied upon and intimidated by Chinese officials in an attempt to foil plans to protest this week's visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
The spying includes high-tech listening devices used to record meetings of Falun Gong members in private homes, they say.
When the meetings end and members return to their own homes, they find parts of private conversations on their telephone answering machines, they say.
"That the Chinese government monitors Falun Gong is not news, but they usually only monitor native Chinese," said Tao Wang, a Germantown engineer and Falun Gong practitioner. "What is new is that they are now spying on Western practitioners.
"Usually when you spy, you do not want the other party to know, but they are taping the meetings and then playing them back. They want us to know we are being watched. The only reasonable explanation is to threaten," he said.
Officials at the Chinese Embassy did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Recent visits by Mr. Jiang to the United States have been dogged by Falun Gong, Tibetan and other human rights activists, who chant anti-China slogans and attempt to interrupt the leader of the world's most populous nation.
Mr. Jiang arrived in the United States yesterday. When his plane landed, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was free of protesters. About 700 people marched in downtown Chicago the day before to raise human rights issues.
Mr. Jiang will visit Chicago and Houston and meet with President Bush at the western White House in Crawford, Texas, on Friday.
Mr. Jiang, who is expected to hand over the reins of the Chinese government soon, hopes to leave the world stage with a successful and unblemished trip to the United States, and the Chinese government is trying to tamp down protests.
The Chinese government released several Tibetan activists from prison in the summer and invited the Dalai Lama's personal representatives to visit China and Tibet last month.
Partly because Tibetans view the moves as an opening in relations, Tibetan leaders have asked their supporters to put the whistles away and stay home during this visit.
But Falun Gong, which was outlawed in China in 1999 as an evil sect, plans to use Mr. Jiang's visit to draw attention to arrests and beatings of its members in China as well as harassment of its members by Chinese officials all over the world.
Karen Hong, who lives in Maryland, made reservations in September and received confirmation numbers for Washington-area Falun Gong members to stay at a hotel in Houston. The hotel is directly across the street from the Inter-Continental Hotel, where Mr. Jiang will be staying.
On Oct. 16, five days before her group was scheduled to arrive, her reservations for 16 rooms were canceled. A total of 50 rooms that were reserved for Falun Gong practitioners were canceled.
The Homestead Village Hotel said it was a simple overbooking problem, and it offered the group rooms at a discount 20 minutes away.
But Falun Gong members accuse the hotel of kowtowing to Chinese government pressure.
"All the big hotels use a computer system. It is impossible to make this kind of mistake," Mr. Wang said. "The Chinese government pressured them to cancel the rooms. They did not want us right across the street."
Mr. Wang also said that the Chinese government is inviting students to form a "welcome group" for Mr. Jiang, who is scheduled to speak at Texas A&M University in College Station.
Students are offered meals, T-shirts, transportation and other incentives to participate. But they also are asked to sign a waiver, which Mr. Wang says forces them to give up their constitutional rights.
"I agree that if any disturbances are caused by me to pay $5,000 as minimal damages for any harm that may result from such disturbances to the group's reputation," says a statement that all welcome group participants must sign. All signers must agree to report any contacts with Falun Gong to welcome group officials.
The document says the purpose of the waiver is to protect the "purity" of the welcome group. The document threatens anyone who violates conditions of the statement with legal action.
In late July, the U.S. House passed two resolutions condemning the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China and the harassment of U.S. members of the group.
----
Rare Protest on Baghdad Streets
Relatives Say Inmates Are Missing Despite Amnesty
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 23, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2262-2002Oct22?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 22 -- Defying a ban on dissent, dozens of anguished mothers and angry young men held a rare unsanctioned protest today, taking to the streets of Baghdad to demand that President Saddam Hussein's government provide information about relatives jailed for political crimes.
The brief but boisterous demonstration, which occurred in front of the Information Ministry building, where foreign journalists have offices, shocked political observers here and left them wondering about its meaning. "Something like this has never happened before," said Wamid Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "It's a very, very important and unusual event."
The protesters, almost all Shiite Muslims, were upset that their relatives had not returned home after Hussein granted an amnesty to almost all the country's prisoners on Sunday. The unprecedented mass pardon sparked bedlam as prisoners overpowered their guards and stormed out of their cells while anxious relatives clambered over penitentiary walls.
In brief interviews before police dispersed the demonstrators and Information Ministry officials ordered journalists away from the crowd, several participants said their relatives had been arrested on charges of participating in political opposition movements, which are illegal in Iraq.
Diplomats, political analysts and even ordinary Iraqis who witnessed the spectacle were unsure of its significance. Some suggested it indicated that opposition to Hussein's more than two decades of rule might be growing. Others, however, cast the event as an epilogue to Sunday's amnesty, perhaps indicating that the release of thousands of prisoners, seen by many as an astonishing act of benevolence by Hussein, may have led people to believe their iron-fisted president had mellowed and now would tolerate public complaints.
One diplomat here said the protest was an indication that Hussein's government, facing the prospect of another war with the United States, was in the early stages of "losing control." But another diplomat said it was too early to draw conclusions about the protest, which was confined to a small part of downtown Baghdad and received no immediate coverage on state-run television and radio stations.
"At this point, it appears to be an isolated event," he said. "It's not something that proves that the Shiites are rebelling again. As far as we know, Saddam is still firmly in control."
Hussein's government, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims, has long been concerned about dissent among Shiites, who account for more than 55 percent of the country's 23 million inhabitants but have comparatively little political influence. Thousands of Shiites participated in a revolt against Hussein in southern Iraq in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War.
The protesters held two demonstrations today. The first one, around noon, attracted about 200 people and was preceded by a banner-waving march down a busy downtown street. Rather than criticize Hussein, the protesters extolled him. A few held aloft glossy posters of the president. A large white banner, originally created for last week's presidential referendum, read: "Yes, yes, yes to Saddam."
But in between the clapping and the cheering, several participants told foreign journalists that their real reason for showing up at the Information Ministry was to ask for information about their relatives from Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, who read Hussein's amnesty declaration on television Sunday.
"Where is my son?" wailed one woman. "Where was he taken?"
Several participants tried to force their way into the building, first through a door leading to the offices of foreign news organizations and then through a back entrance. Security officials pushed them back and asked them to disperse, but the crowd refused to leave the parking lot.
Finally, after about 30 minutes, a ministry official promised to convey their complaints to Sahhaf. A few moments later, a green-uniformed policeman fired an AK-47 assault rifle into the air and ordered the protesters to move away from the building, delivering a clear message that public dissent still is verboten here.
Draped in a black veil that exposed only her weathered face, Fathea Abdullah Ali, 52, said she was trying to locate her 30-year-old son, Hadi Ali Daoud, who was imprisoned two years ago. She said she had not seen her son since his arrest. Before reporters could ask her any more questions, though, a security official pushed her back into the crowd.
The failure of the protesters' relatives to return suggested that they died in prison or that Hussein's government is still holding people it deems politically sensitive. Government officials had said every prisoner would be freed except those charged with spying for the United States or Israel.
Human rights groups have accused the Iraqi government of summarily executing many prisoners, including scores of Shiite political dissidents.
A small group returned to the Information Ministry about two hours later. They, too, chanted slogans of support for Hussein before once again beseeching ministry officials for information about their relatives. After more journalists showed up to cover the demonstration, security personnel forced the group to keep walking down the street before finally ordering them to disperse.
Two women who remained at a street corner a block away said they were trying to locate their sons; one was arrested two years ago and the other was picked up in 1991.
"I don't know where he is," cried the woman whose son was jailed two years ago. "I don't know if he is living or he is dead. I don't know. I don't know."
The other woman said, "We've looked around, but found nothing."
Moments later, a red sedan pulled up at the corner. The driver, apparently an acquaintance of the women, shouted, "Get in! Get in!"
Because of the police presence, it was difficult for journalists to ascertain where else the group had demonstrated and how the relatives had organized. Some participants said they were from Baghdad, while others said they hailed from Shiite-dominated cities in southern Iraq.
Nadhmi said he doubted such a group could have jelled spontaneously, particularly given the venue. "To have a demonstration means there must be some sort of organization behind it," he said.
But Nadhmi, like the diplomats and others interviewed here, said he had no idea who might have been behind the protest. "It's a mystery," he said.
----
Initiative sees medicine as way to beat terrorism
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021023-75866367.htm
A new humanitarian organization is fighting terrorism at the village level by providing medical care to impoverished Muslims in the southern Philippines.
"The program is a creative approach to countering terrorism because it deals directly on the front line, at the grass-roots level in communities where terrorists are recruited," said Al Santoli, head of the new group, called the Asia-Pacific Initiative.
The group's first effort involves sending tons of medical supplies to areas of the Philippines that are fertile recruiting grounds for al Qaeda-related terrorists. Mr. Santoli said that the initiative eventually would help set up educational programs.
There also are plans to extend the program to nearby Indonesia, southern Thailand and parts of India. "These are front-line areas in the war on terrorism," he said in an interview.
Mr. Santoli, a Vietnam War combat veteran, set up the counterterrorism humanitarian organization after moving from the staff of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, in June. The initiative is part of the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council.
Two months later, he was aboard a Philippine military helicopter on its way to what is considered one of the most dangerous Muslim areas in the world - Sulu island in the southern Philippines.
Mr. Santoli arrived there with a small team of Philippine government officials two days after terrorists from the Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda group in the area, killed and decapitated two Jehovah's Witness missionaries and left their heads on display near a village marketplace.
The team met Muslim clerics who are the island's leaders and arranged for a shipment of $1 million worth of U.S. medical supplies. The island is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism, and more militants are heading there as neighboring Indonesia steps up pressure against terrorism after the bombings on Bali island.
"The most important part of this effort is to block the exploitation by the al Qaeda people of the poverty and lack of government programs that address the most basic needs of health care and education," Mr. Santoli said.
Before the visit to Sulu, he helped arrange an emergency shipment of medical supplies to the southern Philippines, where the U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Group was deployed to help train the Philippine military in counterterrorism operations.
Washington-area pharmaceutical manufacturer MedPharm donated 40 pallets of medicines - including antibiotics, anti-malaria and de-worming pills - to the U.S. Special Forces in the Philippines. There was enough medicine to treat 20,000 people on nearby Basilan island, which has almost no running water, electricity or sanitation, much less medical care.
Special Forces civil affairs units conducted scores of medical missions off the coast of Mindanao on Basilan, where the troops are based. The humanitarian work is ongoing, Mr. Santoli said.
The soldiers also worked with doctors from Knightsbridge International, a California-based humanitarian group, in treating local Filipinos.
The private sector programs bolstered noncombat U.S. operations against terrorists in the Philippines because money from Washington for the training mission had run out in July.
Mr. Santoli, with help from Mr. Rohrabacher and Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, had the medical supplies expedited and administered even though the military mission in Zamboanga city had run out of money.
Army Maj. Don Bridgers, who works at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, said the program has been very successful.
"Six months ago this island [Basilan] was practically owned by the Abus," Maj. Bridgers said of the Abu Sayyaf. "When the Americans first showed up, people made slashing gestures [at us]. Now they wave and are happy to see us. Children are back in school and people travel the highway once known as the highway of death."
U.S. soldiers are still on the front line in the war on terrorism there. Abu Sayyaf-linked terrorists killed Army Sgt. Mark Wayne Jackson during a bombing at an open-air market near a Special Forces base in Zamboanga.
---------
Nuns Face Federal Charges in Protest
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Peace-Protesters.html
DENVER (AP) -- Three nuns were indicted Tuesday on charges that they cut through a fence and entered a northern Colorado missile site as a peace protest.
All three women are members of the Dominican order. Two are members of Jonah House, a group that advocates disarmament.
According to Jonah House, the women entered the site Oct. 6 and used their own blood to paint a cross on the silo and the tracks that carry the lid of the silo to its firing position. They also hammered at the silo and the tracks.
The nuns have been jailed since their arrest that day.
According to the indictment, Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson each face one count of willful injury, interference or obstruction of national defense. Each also faces a count of causing more than $1,000 in damage.
The first count carries a sentence up to 20 years in prison. The second carries a maximum 10-year term.
The missile site is located near Greeley, about 60 miles north of Denver.
---------
Cuba Activist Receives Rights Prize
October 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cuba-Opposition-Prize.html
HAVANA (AP) -- Learning that he was chosen for the European Union's top human rights prize, pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Paya said Wednesday that the award honored all Cubans fighting for democratic reforms on the communist island.
``I think this is acknowledgment of what is happening in Cuba, that the Varela Project is moving ahead,'' said Paya, referring to a homegrown signature gathering effort that seeks democratic reforms.
Other Cuban activists were delighted as well.
``We are very proud and satisfied that a man so honest and courageous has won this prize,'' said Luis Octavio Garcia Gonzalez of the Pro Human Rights Party of Cuba. ``We know his work very well.''
The European Parliament's Conference of Presidents announced Wednesday that it chose Paya for the prestigious 2002 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The prize will be presented on Dec. 18 in Strasbourg, France.
Paya joins numerous internationally known rights crusaders who have received the award, including former South African President Nelson Mandela and Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi.
Named after the late-Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, the prize is given annually to people who defend human rights and democracy.
Paya, 50, founded Cuba's Christian Liberation Movement in 1987. The nonviolent, non-denominational opposition movement calls for deep political and economic changes in Cuba's socialist system.
Paya has been a lead organizer of the Varela Project, an island-wide signature gathering effort aimed at forcing a referendum asking voters if they favor guarantees for basic civil rights such as freedom speech and private business ownership, broad electoral reforms, and freedom for political prisoners.
Varela Project organizers in May turned in stacks of petitions signed by 11,020 people asking Cuba's National Assembly, the island's unicameral parliament, for a voters' initiative on the proposed reforms. The Cuban Constitution requires 10,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot.
The National Assembly has not responded to the request.
The Sakharov Award last year was shared by three people: two peace activists -- an Israeli and a Palestinian, and an Angolan priest.
-----
THE SHAME OF THE POLITICIANS
Dan Ellsberg Interviewed
by Jonathan Curiel
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
VOICES
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/10/23/MN196415.DTL
The war debate
With debate now before the U.N. Security Council about a possible U.S. war with Iraq, many in the Bay Area continue to voice concern over what they perceive as a lack of adequate public discussion on the subject. The Chronicle is featuring voices from a variety of perspectives, seeking to highlight some of the key questions and issues involved. .
Daniel Ellsberg is a former Pentagon official who in 1971 leaked a 7,000- page study to the press that detailed American involvement in Vietnam. The release of the study, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, set in motion a chain of events that helped lead to the resignation of President Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg, who lives in Berkeley and Washington, D. C., is the author of the just published Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. He is scheduled to speak tonight at 8 p.m. at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Auditorium, in a speech co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Northern California and the Independent Institute of Oakland. For me, it's as if I'm reliving what was happening in the Pentagon in 1964 and 1965. This time, for awhile, it looked like the Democrats were ready to resist another Gulf of Tonkin (1964) resolution -- which got us into Vietnam --
but in the end they caved. So, now we have Tonkin Gulf II, with key phrases like "as the president determines" and "all necessary measures." That's an absolutely blank check, just like the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Only the place names have changed.
The people who voted for President Bush's resolution, especially the Democrats, covered themselves in shame. They voted away their exclusive war powers to a president who this time -- and this is different from 1964 -- they know is going to use the resolution for war. They won't have the excuse this time that they were lied to, like Lyndon Johnson, who promised that he had no intention of going to war without coming back to Congress for a more specific resolution. Senator Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said he has felt ashamed and guilty for 38 years for voting for the Tonkin Gulf resolution.
It was equally shameful that 75 senators went against Byrd and voted to close off the debate on Iraq, even though they know in their hearts that Byrd and (Sen. Edward) Kennedy, D-Mass., and the others who voted against it are right -- that going to war with Iraq increases our risks of terrorism, strengthens al Qaeda's recruiting efforts and reduces the ability of Muslim countries to cooperate with us against al Qaeda, even if they wanted to.
THE REAL MOTIVE FOR WAR
It's not about stopping proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, like the administration claims -- Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld know better than that. The real reason is right there, like the purloined letter, though saying it stamps you as some kind of vulgar radical or cynic. Oil. This war is going to be not just for Iraq's oil but to strengthen our control of Saudi Arabian oil, and eventually Iranian oil and Kuwaiti oil. War for oil is not some radical slogan, it's a simple statement of reality. The administration thinks that kind of control of the world's resources makes war worthwhile, but they're not putting that out to the public.
What they are holding out is an image of empire that in this chaotic world looks rather attractive to a lot of Americans. But the lesson of Sept. 11 is that it's going to be a very bloody business. That's not to say anything in favor of the people or causes behind Sept. 11. But the fact is, killing innocent civilians in a Muslim country is going to lead to reaction that costs American lives as well. It's wrong of us to even think about waging an aggressive war under these conditions.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
If people in the administration and the Pentagon can hear me, indirectly or directly, I urge them to consider that if they know of untruths; if they know of false arguments being made; if they know, from documents passing their hands, that the country is being deceived into a reckless war, then they should considering doing what I wish I had done in 1964 and 1965, rather than waiting till 1969 and 1971: Going to Congress with the documents, and to the press, and telling the truth.
Interviewed by Chronicle staff writer Jonathan Curiel
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