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NUCLEAR
U.S. Aides Sued Over Weapons Tests
USEC
UN Agency Wants to Pick Inspectors
Bush, Cheney Host U.N. Arms Inspectors for Talks
Pyongyang defiant on nuke program
North Korea Rejects Demands to End Atom Bomb Program
North Korea Halts Talks on Nuclear Program
CIA 'Jealousies' Blamed for Bay of Pigs Fiasco
BLAIR WILL HELP STAR WARS BID
ESCHEWING LAW IN FAVOR OF FORCE:
Current VA and DOD Officials Allegedly Covered Up Medical Records
U.S. Ambassador Critical of Russia In Hostage Crisis
Bush Meets Blix on Iraq Inspections
Bush Optimistic on Terror War
MILITARY
Karzai Toughens Stance on Feuding by Militia Leaders
Mistaken Fire Killed American, U.S. Says
Returned Afghan Detainees Deny U.S. Mistreatment
U.S. to Add to Forces in Horn of Africa
UN: Asian Kids Forced Into Militias
Veterans Say Pentagon Still Covering Up Weapons Tests
Gulf syndrome forces vicar's retirement
Canada Cautions Some on U.S. Travel
Russia's Poison Gases
U.S. and France Near Deal on Iraq Attack
Danish Police Detain Chechen Envoy
Bush Meets With United Nations Weapons Inspector
US warned not to seize control of Iraqi oil
U.S. Doesn't Plan to Control Iraq's Oil
Israeli Coalition Collapsing as Labor Ministers Resign
Arafat's New Cabinet, With Few New Faces, Is Approved
Russian Official Confirms Opiate Used in Theater Raid
UN Agency Wants to Pick Inspectors
'Friendly fire' cited in death of soldier
Gen. Franks to Oversee New Gulf Post
Combat Class Offered to Journalists
White House Welcomes Radio Hosts
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
SUSPECT 'Enemy Combatant' Fights to Obtain Counsel
Washington Jail Fined for Hazwaste Violations
U.S. Requires Sea Cargo Details
Court backs doctors on medicinal marijuana
Medical Marijuana Wins a Court Victory
Since Attacks, U.S. Admits Fewer Refugees
As Cameras Roll, Haitians Dash From Stranded Boat to Florida Shore
C.I.A. Warns of Net Terror Threat
ENERGY AND OTHER
Hybrid Vehicles Lead Fuel Efficiency Ratings
Hoarding the world's oil: A new Bush family value?
Superfund Cleanups Underfunded and Slowing
New Initiative Explores Threats to Aging Population
Gene-Mappers Take New Aim at Diseases
ACTIVISTS
Rally in Washington Is Said to Invigorate the Antiwar Movement
Poll: Support slipping for military action in Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
U.S. Aides Sued Over Weapons Tests
October 30, 2002 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Veterans-Lawsuit.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41979-2002Oct30?language=printer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two groups of military veterans charge in federal court that they cannot get proper medical treatment because the government will not release records of their exposure to tests of atomic, chemical or biological weapons.
The suits say federal officials, dating to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, have refused to produce the records of weapons testing and details of whether the veterans were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation or toxic chemicals during experiments about which they were not told.
A spokesman for the Veterans Administration had no immediate comment Wednesday.
The suits, filed in U.S. District Court and announced Wednesday, cover 425,000 veterans. ``I wasn't asked if I wanted to be a human guinea pig,'' said one plaintiff, Robert Bates, a Navy veteran. ``And now, I can't get my complete medical records form the government so that I can get needed benefits.''
Lawyers for the veterans say government officials are failing to live up to their responsibilities.
Veterans Affairs spokesman Jim Benson said he could not comment on the lawsuits, but said the department had programs to treat veterans exposed to radiation and chemicals, and was studying long-term health effects.
-------- business
USEC
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
Washington Post; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38394-2002Oct29?language=printer
USEC Inc., a Bethesda-based maker of enriched uranium for nuclear power plants, said it earned $1.2 million (1 cent per share) on revenue of $360.8 million in its first quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of $4.7 million (6 cents) on revenue of $300.5 million in the same quarter of 2001.
The company said higher prices and increased sales volume led to the rise in earnings.
USEC said yesterday that although it expects to break even or post a loss for the next two quarters of its fiscal year, it still forecasts earnings of $9 million to $12 million for the full year.
-------- inspections
UN Agency Wants to Pick Inspectors
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Weapons-Inspectors-Iraq.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The U.N. agency poised to send monitors to search Iraq for signs of illicit nuclear weapons said Wednesday that it should have the sole authority to pick inspectors for its teams.
``It should be left to us in the United Nations to determine the composition of our team, so that the inspectors are perceived as representing the United Nations and not any single member states,'' said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Gwozdecky spoke to The Associated Press ahead of planned meetings Wednesday between President Bush, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based agency, and chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix. The two were invited to the White House to discuss implementation of the U.S. draft resolution on Iraq, U.N. officials said.
While teams answerable to Blix are responsible for the search for any biological and chemical weapons in Iraq once the green light comes in form of a U.N. Security Council resolution, ElBaradei's agency is in charge of looking for clandestine nuclear arms programs.
It was unclear what prompted the agency to publicly request that it be given a free hand in the composition of its inspection teams. But diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested ElBaradei feared pressure could be exerted on him during the meeting with Bush regarding the composition of the team.
The United States has called for ``the most qualified experts available,'' to be part of inspection teams, leading to some concerns that could lead to insistence that the teams be weighed in favor of Americans and Britons, they said.
Even while holding open the option of going to war against Iraq without U.N. backing unless Baghdad destroys its weapons arsenals, the United States is seeking compromise with other Security Council members on a resolution that would force Iraq to disarm.
France, China and Russia oppose authorizing military action against Baghdad before inspectors determine whether Iraq is ready to cooperate with them.
ElBaradei would make clear in talks with Bush that ``he hopes the Council will adopt a ... resolution that will lead to a peaceful resolution of the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,'' said Gwozdecky.
``We appreciate the opportunity to have whatever influence we may have on the decision-makers in Washington,'' he said.
The agency has said its inspectors are prepared to return to Iraq within 10 days of Security Council approval of a new resolution broadening and toughening the inspection regime.
The inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes, amid allegations that Baghdad was not cooperating with the teams.
By the end of the 1991 Gulf War, inspectors discovered the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.
Inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents.
--------
Bush, Cheney Host U.N. Arms Inspectors for Talks
October 30, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un-blix.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush is due to meet chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix on Wednesday as the Security Council grapples with conflicting views of how to disarm Iraq.
U.N. and U.S. officials said the White House had invited Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to brief Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
``It's a regular update,'' a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity, noting that Blix had already traveled to France, Russia, China and Britain, which also may veto Security Council resolutions.
``There is nothing unusual in this,'' the official said. ``It's to consult on a way forward. Blix is going to be the guy on the spot. He's going to be the guy who has to put a team together and take them in.''
At the United Nations, U.S. and French officials scrambled behind the scenes to reach a compromise on a U.N. resolution on Iraqi disarmament.
``A package is taking shape but it is not there yet,'' said a diplomat. ``They could sort this out in an hour flat, but that doesn't mean they will.''
At issue is what France, Russia and China consider ``trigger'' language in the U.S. text that they say would allow Washington to attack Iraq, overthrow President Saddam Hussein and then contend the United Nations had authorized it.
France, which has led resistance to the U.S. text, has drawn up alternative proposals that would force Washington to go back to the council for consent to launch a military strike if U.N. inspections are obstructed.
Secretary of State Colin Powell engaged in a flurry of telephone calls Monday and Tuesday with his counterparts -- Dominique de Villepin of France, Igor Ivanov of Russia and Jack Straw of Britain -- and with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Powell told a news conference that negotiations, now in their seventh week, were making progress.
``We're getting close to a point where we'll have to see whether or not we can bridge these remaining differences -- in the very near future, I don't want to give you days or a week but it certainly isn't much longer than that,'' he said.
RIVAL RESOLUTIONS
``We'll have to see whether or not we can get for the most part consensus on a resolution and, if not, we'll have to make a judgement as to whether we start putting resolutions up, competing resolutions for votes,'' he said.
Powell repeated the U.S. position that Bush reserved the right to attack Iraq without U.N. approval if he wanted to, even after the United Nations passed a resolution.
Blix and ElBaradei were also expected to see White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington.
One U.N. official said the meeting indicated the United States was now serious about the possibility of weapons inspectors returning to Iraq. The U.S. official said the Bush administration had never given up on inspections.
Blix is executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, known as UNMOVIC, which is in charge of accounting for Iraq's chemical and biological arms and ballistic missiles.
UNMOVIC left Iraq in 1998 following repeated disputes over access to suspected military sites. Baghdad has not let the inspectors return since then, but changed its position about four weeks ago and said inspections could resume under current U.N. resolutions.
ElBaradei's Vienna-based agency is responsible for checking for any nuclear weapons Iraq may have.
The two inspectors briefed Security Council members Monday and backed most of the demands in the U.S.-drafted resolution.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan made clear on Tuesday that Baghdad did not trust the United States or the U.N. inspectors.
``America doesn't want the return of inspectors. It wants to issue a (U.N.) resolution with a formula in order to be rejected by Iraq and give it a pretext to commit aggression against Iraq,'' Ramadan said in remarks published by Baghdad newspapers.
Proposing that independent media and individuals should accompany the U.N. inspection teams, he said, ``We will not allow the inspectors to be the sole source because we don't trust them.''
-------- korea
Pyongyang defiant on nuke program
By Eric Talmadge
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 30, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021030-6226750.htm
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Blaming the United States for pushing it into a corner, North Korea yesterday rejected demands that it give up its nuclear-weapons program, Japanese officials said.
The rejection came during an acrimonious opening round of talks with Japan on establishing diplomatic ties. These were the first such talks in two years, and hopes were high that North Korea would offer some sort of concession on the nuclear issue and growing outrage in Japan about the kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s.
But along with ignoring calls to halt its nuclear-weapons development, North Korea strongly rebuffed Japan on the abduction issue, heightening an already-emotional tug of war between the Asian neighbors.
"Not much progress," Japanese delegation chief Katsunari Suzuki said as he returned from the talks.
Still, officials said talks would continue as scheduled today.
Since North Korea acknowledged its nuclear-arms program this month, Japan has insisted scrapping it was a precondition for normalization between the longtime rivals.
North Korea "completely denied" calls for the country to give up its nuclear-weapons program, a senior Japanese delegation official said. North Korea blamed concerns about its nuclear-weapons program on the United States, saying the hard-line U.S. stance against it was the "root of the problem," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The North has long justified efforts to bolster its military by claiming that the presence of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Japan and South Korea is a threat against which it must be able to defend itself.
"Japan wants to focus on the abduction and security issues," said Pak Ryong Yeon, the North Korean delegation's No. 2 official. "But our thinking is that if we work toward diplomatic ties, then the security issues will be solved along the way."
North Korea acknowledged the secret nuclear-weapons program to a visiting senior U.S. official this month. For Japan, the news was especially frightening because Pyongyang has demonstrated that it can fire missiles well beyond Japan's main islands.
The normalization talks are the offshoot of an unprecedented Sept. 17 summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. But the nuclear issue and Japanese anger about the abductions have soured the budding detente.
Revelations that just five Japanese abductees survive from the 13 kidnapped by North Korea caused widespread anger in Japan.
The five survivors are in Japan for their first homecoming. But Tokyo announced last week it will not return them to North Korea as planned and is demanding that their seven children, as well as the American husband of one, be allowed to travel to Japan.
In yesterday's talks, the North Koreans accused Japan of breaking a promise to return the five, prompting Japan to remind Pyongyang that the five abductees were "the victims of a criminal act."
Even so, Japanese officials acknowledged they did not persuade North Korea to set a date for the children's departure.
North Korean officials have criticized Japan for overreacting to the abduction issue, saying it was insignificant compared with Japan's brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until its World War II defeat in 1945.
North Korea was expected to press Japan today for compensation for the colonial period and economic aid.
----
North Korea Rejects Demands to End Atom Bomb Program
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/asia/30MALA.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct. 29 - North Korea today flatly rejected international demands that it abandon its nuclear weapons program. The statement came at the opening session of talks with Japan aimed at establishing normal relations between the two countries.
The rejection, reflected in opening remarks and repeated during the first day of talks, followed consultations in Mexico that ended two days ago, in which the United States, South Korea and Japan urged the North to end its bomb program.
"Japan expressed grave concern on nuclear issues, and we also referred to the statement issued last week by Japan, the United States and South Korea," a Japanese official here said. "To put it in one sentence, North Korea's response was they do not accept it at all."
Even before talks opened here this morning, a North Korean diplomat, Jong Thae Hwa, signaled his delegation's unwillingness to discuss security issues, saying, "We have come with no such preparations."
In a brief exchange of greetings, Mr. Jong set the tone for difficult talks, adding, "Although we gathered here for talks on normalizing ties, certainly, we are far apart."
In a statement issued in Mexico, the United States, South Korea and Japan warned that "North Korea's relations with the international community now rest on North Korea's prompt and visible actions to dismantle its program to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons."
Japanese diplomats said Mr. Jong blamed Washington's "hostile stance toward North Korea" for the region's security problems.
The heightened interest in security issues comes after the North's surprise admission during talks with the United States last month that it has been developing nuclear arms in secret, through uranium enrichment.
The admission came after the United States confronted North Korea with intelligence revealing the weapons program, which violates a 1994 agreement.
The United States has since urged Japan and South Korea, as well as China, to help it apply "maximum pressure" to force North Korea to halt the program. So far, none of those countries has shown the commitment that the Bush administration has sought on the issue.
Indeed, South Korea, which under President Kim Dae Jung has become a major supplier of aid to North Korea, has in recent days cast doubt on American characterizations of Washington's recent conversations with North Korea.
In secret discussions with the North that began more than a year ago, Japan has reportedly offered a huge amount of economic aid in exchange for normal diplomatic ties.
In the last week, though, senior Japanese officials have said normalization talks can bear fruit only if the North satisfies international concerns about nuclear weapons. Regional political analysts say that message has been substantially muddied by the issue of abductions by North Korea.
During a meeting between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, last month, North Korea acknowledged the kidnapping of 13 Japanese, beginning in the late 1970's, for use in the country's spy training program.
The 5 of the 13 who survive were allowed to visit Japan this month, and Tokyo extended their stay indefinitely. The visit has caused a groundswell of emotion over the stories of separated families and hardship and, significantly, fanned criticism of Mr. Koizumi's diplomacy.
On Sunday, for example, Japan's largest business daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, reported that the United States had informed Mr. Koizumi of North Korea's secret uranium enrichment program three weeks before his trip to Pyongyang.
The newspaper said the Bush administration, frustrated that its information had not deterred Japan from moving ahead with normalization talks, took the unusual step of contacting former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, a rival within Mr. Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party, to warn of the dangers of proceeding.
But Mr. Koizumi went ahead and signed a memorandum of understanding in which North Korea said it would abide by all international agreements on nuclear arms.
"The information from the United States was just that there is strong suspicion, so we didn't take it so seriously," the newspaper quoted a senior aide to Mr. Koizumi as saying.
Japanese officials have made it clear that the abduction issue is the most important topic in their talks with North Korea, though they do not seem to be making progress in winning the release of the abductees' families.
"The North Koreans are playing remarkably well from a pretty week hand," said Robyn Lim, an expert in East Asian politics at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. "South Korean officials are already publicly disputing Bush administration accounts of discussions with Pyongyang, and the wedge between Washington and Japan looks like it is growing too."
----
North Korea Halts Talks on Nuclear Program
Sets Stage for Confrontation
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 30, 2002; 1:01 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40978-2002Oct30?language=printer
TOKYO, Oct. 30 - North Korea halted its recent moves toward conciliatory diplomacy at talks this week with Japan, and it set the stage for confrontation with the outside world over its program to develop a nuclear bomb.
In two days of talks in Kuala Lumpur, North Korea refused to dismantle its nuclear program without direct negotiations with the United States. It also balked at allowing the release of children of five Japanese natives who had been kidnapped by North Korean agents and allowed to return to Japan on a "visit."
By refusing to negotiate with Japan over its nuclear program, North Korea shunned a diplomatic route that could have defused a potential showdown with the United States. Washington has demanded that the regime undertake an unconditional "complete and visible dismantling" of its efforts to process uranium into a nuclear weapons fuel.
Instead, Pyongyang has upped the stakes. It has demanded talks on the nuclear issue only with the United States. The Bush administration, pursuing a hard line with a country the president has deemed part of an "axis of evil," has said it will not negotiate with Pyongyang.
Pyongyang is retreating to a familiar role of brinkmanship, Scott Snyder, an author who has written about negotiating with North Korea, said in Tokyo today. "We can expect some form of crisis escalation."
Japanese negotiators in Kuala Lumpur acknowledged disappointment in the deadlock at the end of the talks tonight.
"Although we made utmost efforts, to our regret, we failed to secure a change in their position," chief Japanese negotiator Katsunari Suzuki told reporters.
Washington revealed North Korea's uranium enrichment program Oct. 16 and said North Korea had admitted the program. In remarks to reporters in the Malaysian capital, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official, Pak Ryong-yeon, defended Pyongyang's arms ambitions.
"As long as we are threatened by the United States, we have no need to vindicate ourselves," Pak said, according to wire service reports.
The uranium program violates a 1994 agreement made with the United States to end another crisis over North Korea's attempts to become a nuclear weapons power. North Korea contends the United States already had broken the pact, which called for improved relations between Pyongyang and Washington and construction by next year of two power plants for the energy-starved country.
One note of optimism was Pyongyang's request to schedule more talks with Japan next week. Tokyo, under pressure from the United States to stop any diplomatic progress with North Korea until the uranium enrichment program is scrapped, said it would consider the request. The two sides did agree to hold lower-level "security talks" in November.
The nuclear impasse already is complicating the item on the top of Tokyo's agenda: fully resolving the emotion-laden issue of Japanese kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. And it has made the Japanese kidnap victims hostages to the bargaining.
Five of the 13 persons North Korea admitted abducting came to Japan for a two-week "visit" on Oct. 15. The others are said to be dead. Japan has balked at sending them back to North Korea - although several have indicated their desire to return - and instead have demanded North Korea set a date to send to Japan their families. The Japanese abductees - two couples and a Japanese woman married to an American soldier who defected in 1965 - have seven children among them, aged 15 to 21.
According to the Japanese negotiators, North Korea balked at sending the families to Japan, saying the five abductees should first return to North Korea to discuss the matter. The North Korean Red Cross today criticized Japan for holding the five abductees in the dispute.
"This is a breach of the bilateral agreement," the Red Cross said, noting that it poses a "serious obstacle" to Pyongyang's ability to cooperate with Japan.
North Korea had admitted the abductions in a surprise at the one-day summit between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il Sept. 17. It was part of what seemed like a new face to the long-combative and isolated regime. Kim apologized to Japan and asked for a resumption in talks stalled for two years over normalizing their ties. In addition, North Korea began forging closer ties with South Korea, and undertook a diplomatic opening that resulted in diplomatic recognition by most of the European Union and - this week - announcement that a North Korean embassy will open in Canada.
Much of that is in danger of being negated now, as the European nations and North Korea's Asian neighbors have been urged by Washington to demand that Pyongyang give up its nuclear program.
Koizumi, with some prodding by the United States, has said there can be no economic aid to Pyongyang until the nuclear issue is resolved.
"Without normalization of ties, there will be no economic aid," chief negotiator Suzuki told the North Koreans, according to Japanese officials.
South Korean President Kim Dae Jung today warned of a retreat from negotiation, saying the world must avoid a new crisis with North Korea.
"For our security and for North-South coexistence, North Korea must abandon its nuclear weapons development," he said in Seoul.
"Once again I call on North Korea to show us prompt and visible action."
-------- missile crisis
CIA 'Jealousies' Blamed for Bay of Pigs Fiasco
October 30, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-usa-cuba-bayofpigs.html
LONDON (Reuters) - The failure of the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was due in part to ``intense internal jealousies'' within the CIA, British documents released Wednesday claimed.
The documents, regarded as secret until now, are scathing about the Defense Department's preparation for the invasion, which heightened tension between the United States and the fledgling regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In April 1961, around 1,500 opponents of Castro launched a surprise attack on Cuba in a bid to topple the government. The invasion was a fiasco and was easily repelled.
A month later, an aide to U.S. President John F. Kennedy came to London to brief the British Foreign Office on what had gone wrong. The Foreign Office forwarded information from the briefing to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
``The intelligence failure of the CIA appears explicable only on the assumption of intense internal jealousies..,'' Foreign Office official H.A.A. Hankey writes in a letter to Tim Bligh, Macmillan's principal private secretary.
``The Department of Defense also seems to have failed to consider the most elementary point -- where to invade,'' continues the letter, dated May 5, 1961, and released by Britain's Public Record Office (PRO).
``They really could hardly have chosen a worse point,'' it says.
Another letter, also from May 1961, suggests Kennedy's faith in the U.S. intelligence service was shattered by the Bay of Pigs debacle.
``The President has certainly lost confidence in the CIA,'' David Ormsby Gore, Britain's ambassador to Washington, writes to Bligh.
``The American public was in a mood of extreme frustration (following the botched invasion) and the President had felt it necessary to make some rousing speeches ...''
Earlier correspondence between Macmillan and Kennedy's predecessor Eisenhower suggests Britain felt it had been left in the dark over U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Eisenhower wrote to Macmillan in July 1960 to ask for Britain's support in isolating Castro, who was forming ever-closer ties with the Soviet Union.
In his reply, Macmillan agrees that the Cuban leader ``is really the very devil'' but says he needs more information.
``It would ... make it easier for us to help if we had a rather clearer understanding of your actual intentions,'' Macmillan writes. ``I am not very clear how you really mean to achieve this aim.''
The Bay of Pigs fiasco heightened Cold War tensions and marked the start of 40 years of animosity between Cuba and the United States.
It foreshadowed the Cuban Missile Crisis of a year later, which some analysts still regard as the closest the world has come to nuclear war.
With hindsight, one memo from the British Foreign office to its ambassador in Washington in 1960 appears particularly prophetic.
``The greatest danger, which must be avoided at all costs, is an unsuccessful operation that would leave Castro in power but more embittered than ever,'' it reads.
-------- missile defense
BLAIR WILL HELP STAR WARS BID
By Bob Roberts
UK Mirror,
October 30, 2002
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12322922&method=full&siteid=50143
TONY Blair will back George W Bush's plans for a Star Wars missile defence system, it was claimed last night.
Senior defence sources said the PM made the pledge in return for a guarantee that the system will cover the UK.
British officials insist no formal request has been received from the US to use our early warning radar stations.
But a senior defence source said: "Blair told Bush if we were covered by the system there would not be a problem."
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told MPs earlier this month: "The Government would agree to it only if the security of the UK and Nato would be enhanced."
But Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn said: "This is a coded statement that Britain will take part in missile defence. It will cost this country and line us up more closely with the US against the rest of the world."
-------- us politics
ESCHEWING LAW IN FAVOR OF FORCE:
The Problem With The Administration's National Security Strategy And U.S. Unilateralism
By MICHAEL C. DORF
Professor of Law at Columbia University.
Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2002
FindLaw's Writ
http://writ.findlaw.com/dorf/20021030.html
The administration's National Security Strategy, announced last month, is a stunning example of America's insensitivity to how the world views us. This document asserts that the U.S. will actively thwart the efforts, should they occur, of other countries to achieve superpower status.
This is not a policy aimed at curbing threats from terrorists and other non-state actors. It aims at other sovereign states.
Given American economic and cultural power--and the resentment they inevitably breed--one would think that a prudent American leader would do everything in his power to reassure the world that American hegemony will not become imperialism.
And yet, with the noteworthy exception of last year's military campaign in Afghanistan, the Bush administration has almost invariably chosen unilateralism that comes across--even to our friends--as bullying.
The Folly of Announcing to "Adversaries" that We Will Maintain our Supremacy The National Security Strategy remarks upon the U.S. commitment to fostering democracy around the world. Nevertheless, it also asserts the goal of maintaining superpower status vis-a-vis all comers - including democratic regimes.
It proclaims broadly that: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
Yet who are our potential adversaries? China, a resurgent, nationalist Russia, and even the European Union and its member states all might pose long-term challenges to our dominant position. The European Union member states are democracies, as is Russia, for now anyway, while China's continuing reforms may eventually lead to democratization. None of these potential rivals is a rogue state in the manner of Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Kim Jong Il's North Korea.
Perhaps the National Security Strategy can be defended as an exercise in realpolitik, merely forthrightly stating what would be true of any great power--that it will attempt to maintain its dominance. If so, shouldn't the administration be commended for its honesty?
The short answer is no. It hardly counts as competent geopolitics to announce a policy of determined, indefinite military supremacy. Assuming that is our goal, why alienate those already suspicious of our intentions?
Seeing Ourselves Through Other Countries' Eyes
The fundamental public relations problem with American foreign policy is that the rest of the world does not share our own estimation of our aims as benign.
Consider the question of nuclear weapons. Citizens of other lands have not forgotten that the United States remains the only country in the world ever to have used nuclear weapons against civilian (or for that matter, any human) targets.
To be sure, the purpose of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to avoid even greater casualties from a land invasion of Japan--although recent historical research suggests that Japan might well have surrendered without a land invasion or a nuclear attack.
And the fact is that, whether justified or not, American use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II demonstrated that we considered them a legitimate military tool--a policy that continued through the Cold War and remains in effect today.
None of which is to say that we lack moral standing to object to nuclear proliferation. The prospect of Iraq or North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons is profoundly disturbing. The Bush Administration is thus right to try to thwart Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il. But that is because Iraq and North Korea are aggressive dictatorships that pay little heed to the rules and customs of civilized nations--not because they are U.S. rivals.
The Power of Law: Why the U.S. Should Not Merely Invoke Force
If we are to succeed in our foreign policy aims, we cannot consistently act alone. And if we are to enlist foreign support for those aims, we must be able to marshal reasons beyond the fact that we have the biggest stick.
Fortunately, there is a mechanism for justifying coercive action--whether by the state against the individual or by the world community against rogue regimes. That mechanism is law.
Failure to abide by U.N. resolutions or to obey treaty obligations is quite a different matter from acting in ways that harm the perceived self-interest of the United States. The former provides a basis for concerted action by the world community, while the latter merely explains why a powerful nation might choose to act.
However, if we want to invoke international law, we cannot afford to appear to do so purely opportunistically. And yet that appearance is almost unavoidable. The current administration, for instance, opposes the Kyoto Accords on global warming, and U.N. efforts to impede the flow of small arms.
It also opposes the International Criminal Court, having gone so far as to press nations around the world for guarantees that U.S. soldiers and others would not be subject to its jurisdiction. And the administration's claimed power to make war pre-emptively in the face of no imminent threat - a key component of the National Security Strategy - is a clear violation of the U.N. charter.
Law as Pragmatic, Not Idealistic
I want to be clear that I am not saying that international law has any independent moral force. Not all proposed treaties are beneficial, nor is it even necessarily wrong to violate international law.
If, for example, we had good reason to believe that Saddam Hussein or someone else was about to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction against us, and if we also had good reason to believe that we could only stop him with military force, then we would be right to use military force--regardless of what international law or the U.N. said. The law of survival takes priority over all other laws.
Nonetheless, and this is the crucial point, one cannot make the case for extenuating circumstances too frequently without becoming a vigilante.
Vigilantes like Dirty Harry make for good cinematic heroes precisely in those circumstances in which the law has broken down. The vigilante hero takes the law into his own hands because there is no law, and certainly no justice, otherwise.
But a world in which the law has broken down is a dangerous place to live. And unfortunately, the more that we act like vigilantes, the more we are likely to bring about just such a world.
A note from Professor Dorf: In my last column I referred to the Supreme Court's "denial of review in Forrester v. New Jersey Democratic Party," thereby suggesting that the high court had disposed of the case entirely. In fact, the Court merely denied the application for an emergency stay of the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision. It has not yet acted on the certiorari petition. The archived version of my column has been amended to correct the error.
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Vietnam-Era DOD Secretary Robert Mcnamara,
Current VA and DOD Officials Allegedly Covered Up Medical Records
Shaw Pittman:
U.S. Newswire
30 Oct 2002 13:29
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/prime/1030-117.html
To: National Desk
Contact: Nicole Quigley, 202-973-1328,
for Shaw Pittman, LLP, or nquigley@levick.com
Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara is among 11 defendants named in two first-of-their-kind class action lawsuits for allegedly covering up medical records without which veterans of atomic, biological and chemical warfare testing cannot receive needed medical and other benefits. The plaintiffs include veterans, their families, and the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), who allege a deliberate and ongoing cover-up by U.S. government officials to conceal and ignore relevant records, many of which are personal medical records that would allow them to seek proper benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for the often devastating long-term health effects of the government's testing of weapons of mass destruction.
Brought by the law firm of Shaw Pittman, LLP, the complaints -- one for veterans exposed to atomic detonations and the other for veterans exposed to biological and chemical tests, as well as their survivors -- aim to hold the government officials personally responsible for their involvement in illegal and unethical activities and to obtain justice for aging veterans. The complaints tell disturbingly similar stories of government and military officials protecting the government and themselves from liability for the effects of cold war atomic, biological, and chemical experiments on their own troops, sailors, airmen, and marines.
The complaints point to several smoking guns, including a White House memo that describes the classification of records as a tactic to minimize public relations risks and ultimately limit the government's legal liability. The veterans and their families also cite original test documents and reports that record large-scale radiation overexposures and medical test procedures that directly contradict government and military official statements that veterans were not used as test subjects and were not exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
The "Atomic Veteran" plaintiffs consist of approximately 415,000 surviving veterans exposed to radiation as part of the government's atomic testing and military programs in the 1940-1950s and their survivors. The plaintiffs in the second complaint are the approximately 10,000 military personnel used as involuntary test subjects in biological and chemical warfare tests in the 1960s known as "Project SHAD" (Shipboard Hazard and Defense). Additionally, VVA serves as a named plaintiff in the SHAD case on behalf of the thousands of Vietnam-era veterans affected by the government's actions
"The VA has a statutory mandate to advocate for and protect the interests of these veterans, but instead VA officials have purposefully failed them. This is the age of Enron, when the government contends that you are personally responsible for your unethical decisions. We're holding up a mirror and expecting them to practice what they preach," said Shaw Pittman partner David Cynamon, who filed the complaints.
"America's veterans deserve proper health care for illnesses that may be due to exposure to harmful agents as a result of their military service," said VVA National President Thomas Corey. "Veterans deserve to be told the truth about their military service, as well as accountability from senior bureaucrats and other government officials. Justice for our nation's veterans is at the heart of VVA's mission. This class action will help veterans obtain the justice to which they have long been entitled," Corey added.
Former Navy crewmember of the USS Navarro in 1963 and plaintiff Robert Bates said, "I wasn't asked if I wanted to be a human guinea pig. I wasn't told that I was part of an experiment until thirty years later. And now, I can't get my complete medical records from the government so that I can get needed benefits." Bates suffers from congestive heart failure and joint problems thought to be related to the chemical warfare tests.
The Shaw Pittman complaints allege a policy that government and military officials began in the 1940s and current officials continue to carry out in order to keep veterans from claiming their just medical benefits. For example, government and military officials admit that Project SHAD medical records were and remain "classified" and unavailable to veterans attempting to claim VA benefits for health problems arising from biological and chemical agents used on them by their own military. The government contends that other relevant records disappeared, were destroyed, or never existed.
"They tell you that they can't give you benefits until you prove you were involved, but they keep the documents that can prove it in a sealed vault behind their desks. This is not the government my husband intended to serve," said Pat Broudy, whose husband died due to lymphoma, a cancer known to be caused by radiation exposure. Her husband had served in the occupation of Nagasaki, Japan, trained on a radioactive target ship, and participated in mock assaults on ground zero following atomic detonations in the Nevada desert but was denied VA benefits.
Shaw Pittman began representing veterans as a result of a pro bono project that relied on the firm's litigation and scientific expertise. "As Americans, we expect our government and military officials to adhere to a basic standard of legal and ethical conduct. We've seen Congress and the Administration rightly insist that corporate officials be held legally accountable for their actions. They need to know that they can't hide behind their organizations anymore," said Shaw Pittman attorney Douglas Rosinski.
The complaints were filed October 29, 2002 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Shaw Pittman, LLP has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Northern Virginia, London and Los Angeles. The firm provides business and technology legal services on a global basis. It can be accessed online at http://www.shawpittman.com.
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U.S. Ambassador Critical of Russia In Hostage Crisis
Gas Secrecy May Have Cost Lives, He Says
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 30, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38161-2002Oct29?language=printer
MOSCOW, Oct. 29 -- The United States criticized Russia today for keeping secret the type of gas used to end last week's theater hostage crisis, as indications increased that some or even most of the 115 civilians killed by the gas might have been saved if medical crews had been prepared.
As Moscow began to bury its dead, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said Russia had still not disclosed to him the gas used in Saturday's commando raid but confirmed that American doctors had determined it was a form of opiate similar to fentanyl. The failure to inform Russian doctors who treated the hostages may have cost lives, he said.
"We regret that the lack of information simply contributed to the confusion after the immediate operation to free the hostages was over," Vershbow told a briefing at Spaso House, the ambassador's residence here. "It's clear that perhaps with a little more information at least a few more of the hostages would have survived."
Vershbow's comments deviated from the congratulations he and other U.S. officials offered when the death toll was still not clear in the hours immediately after Russian special forces stormed a theater where Chechen guerrillas had taken 800 people hostage. All but two of the 117 hostages killed died from the gas, according to Moscow medical authorities. Among the dead were an American citizen and a Ukrainian with a U.S. green card.
A Russian doctor who has been treating the hostages at a Moscow hospital constantly since Saturday said the failure to prepare medical rescue units led to many of the deaths. Agreeing that the gas appeared to be an opiate, the doctor said "it's a fairly harmless substance" if used correctly, but the rescue crews that first arrived on the scene "weren't prepared for detoxification."
"If people were intubated and helped to breathe with artificial ventilation while still in the vehicles being brought to the hospitals, almost everyone would have survived," the doctor said in an interview tonight on the condition that he not be identified for fear of reprisals. The doctor blamed Moscow city health officials for not agreeing to accept additional resources from the federal government, such as paramedics and medical equipment.
All of those who died, he added, were already dead by the time they arrived at the hospital: "Everyone brought to my hospital alive is still alive."
The ripple effects of the hostage crisis continued to play out across Russia today, from the cemeteries where the first funerals were held to the State Duma where lawmakers debated a response and to Chechnya where rebels shot down an Mi-8 military helicopter, killing four aboard.
Police fanned out across Moscow today in search of other guerrilla cells lying in wait and rounded up dozens of Chechen men. Some had traces of explosives on them while police found two homemade explosive devices and a plan of a railway station, officials told Russian news agencies.
Investigators labored to figure out how at least 50 heavily armed Chechen militants made it to Moscow and into the theater where "Nord-Ost" ("North-East"), a popular musical, was playing last week. Officials are exploring whether a car bombing at a McDonald's restaurant four days earlier might have been related. There have also been conflicting reports in the Russian media as to whether a Russian police officer had been arrested on suspicion of collusion.
"Today the Interior [Ministry] forces are conducting unprecedented actions aimed at exposing a terrorist network in Moscow and the Moscow region," Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov announced. "We have already detained several dozen men suspected of involvement with the hostage-taking."
Moscow remained skittish. A theater where the American musical "42nd Street" is playing was evacuated this evening by a bomb threat. And the director of "Nord-Ost," which lost 17 cast and crew members, announced today that his musical would close. "Even if the Moscow administration reconstructs [the theater]," Georgi Vasilyev told Echo Moskvy radio, "this place will still remain accursed."
While focusing on the hunt for Chechen militants, authorities maintained silence about the gas they used to subdue the hostage takers at the House of Culture for the State Ball-Bearing Factory. Western physicians who have examined freed hostages have concluded it was a morphine-like opiate, probably a gas version of fentanyl, which is used as an anesthetic.
As 16 victims were laid to rest today, another 317 freed hostages remained in hospitals recovering from the after-effects of the gas, including seven children. Twenty-seven were listed in critical condition.
Physicians remained hamstrung in helping their patients as the government continued to withhold any information. "The patients are currently being treated with antibiotics as a way of preventing potential pneumonia," Nellogi Saakyan, head of surgery at Moscow's Hospital No. 13, the main treatment center for freed hostages, said today. "We are not familiar with the specific substances used."
According to U.S. experts, fentanyl belongs to a group of medicines called narcotic analgesics that suppress breathing. While similar to its cousins morphine and Demerol, medical specialists said fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine.
A normal dosage goes to the brain but is then redistributed quickly to the rest of the body, making it a short-acting anesthesia. But a larger dose does not redistribute as well, remaining concentrated in the brain and shutting down respiratory functions.
"It just turns off your desire to breathe," said Barry L. Friedberg, an anesthesiologist in Newport Beach, Calif., and fentanyl critic. "It takes three to five minutes of not breathing to have death from lack of oxygen. . . . Once you head into that downward spiral, you can't be resuscitated."
Friedberg said fentanyl is normally administered as a liquid, either by drinking or injecting, and he had never heard of a nebulized or gas version. The drug naxolone counteracts its effects but would have had to be administered within minutes by Russian rescue workers who were never informed what medications to bring with them.
The Kremlin dismissed questions about its decision to pump gas and storm the building. "The [command] headquarters did not have a single scenario which would guarantee survival of the hostages and special forces given that 150 kilograms [330 pounds] of explosives had been placed inside the theater," Kremlin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said.
In his remarks, Vershbow stressed that the United States still backed Russia's decision to take action and only questioned its conduct afterward. "They had a difficult decision to make. With the bombs that were there they probably saved hundreds of lives, even though we regret that more than 100 died."
However, he added that Russia still needs to address the greater problem of the war in Chechnya. "We continue to see the Chechen conflict at its roots as an internal separatist movement that has been in some ways exploited by international terrorist groups that see this as part of their global agenda," Vershbow said. In staging terrorist acts, the Chechens "compromise their own cause. They've crossed a line and are carrying out acts that we can only condemn."
----
Bush Meets Blix on Iraq Inspections
Reuters
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
By Steve Holland
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41545-2002Oct30?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush on Wednesday underscored the need for a rigorous inspections system for Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction in a meeting with chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix, who has questioned some U.S. proposals.
With the United States and France moving closer to a compromise on a resolution to disarm Iraq that would allow a return of U.N. weapons inspectors, Blix made the rounds at the White House, meeting Bush for 10 minutes, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Separately, U.S. officials said the administration was building cases against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and key members of his inner circle with an eye toward charging them with crimes against humanity in the event the Iraqi government is toppled and Saddam survives.
"If Saddam Hussein's regime collapses and he survives, of course the world will want to bring him to justice," said a senior administration official. "He shouldn't expect to receive a pardon."
The United States accuses Saddam and his inner circle, including sons Uday and Qusay, of a history of brutal repression and atrocities.
Bush talked to Blix about the importance of "protecting the peace and making certain that Saddam Hussein disarms," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Blix has hinted the United States should modify certain provisions in a draft resolution. One is a demand for an exhaustive list of weapons and related materials within 30 days.
Blix said on Monday the deadline might be too short for Iraq to account for its large civilian chemical programs, particularly materials used in its oil industry.
He also questioned a proposal that would give inspectors the right to take Iraqi scientists and their families out of the country for interviews, saying this would be difficult without Iraqi cooperation.
Bush wants a short deadline to force Saddam to quickly disarm or face U.S.-led action, without dragging inspections out for months. And he wants to bring out the scientists so they can tell what they know without fear of torture or death.
Fleischer stressed the Security Council would set the terms for the inspections. "The inspectors are not the drafters" of the resolution, he said.
"The message is that it's important for the inspections to be effective. It's important for the inspectors to carry out the will of the world community as expressed through the Security Council to inspect for the purpose of disarmament," Fleischer said.
IRAQ UPDATE
Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave Bush and Cheney an update on the Iraqi situation. Blix had already traveled to France, Russia, China and Britain, which with the United States comprise the five veto-bearing members of the Security Council.
Blix is executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, known as UNMOVIC, which is in charge of accounting for Iraq's chemical and biological arms and ballistic missiles.
U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 following repeated disputes over access to suspected military sites. Baghdad has not let the inspectors return since then, but changed its position about four weeks ago in the face of U.S. threats and said inspections could resume under current U.N. resolutions.
Iraq said the meeting was an attempt by Washington to interfere in the work of the U.N. inspection teams.
"They (U.S.) don't allow others to work freely. They want to impose their policy on Iraq and not follow the Security Council or the United Nations' rules," Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh said in Baghdad.
The meeting came as the United States and France moved closer to agreement in the U.N. Security Council, with Washington conceding the need to consult the world body before any attack against Iraq.
At issue is what France, Russia and China consider "trigger" language in the U.S. text that they say would allow Washington to attack Iraq, overthrow Saddam and then contend the United Nations had authorized it.
France, which has organized the main resistance to a tough U.S.-British draft resolution, still wants the council to vote before any possible military strike against Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was making phone calls to foreign ministers of other Security Council nations on Wednesday looking to resolve the remaining differences.
"These are serious talks, and people are approaching them seriously. There still are some differences that remain. Efforts are being made to bridge those differences, and we will see," Fleischer said.
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Bush Optimistic on Terror War
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-The-Optimist.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has been sounding optimistic about how American will and determination will prevail in the war on terrorism, yet given the headlines over the past month, rosy predictions of victory seem to some hard to justify.
His optimism was on display during political campaign stops in five states over the past few days in the run-up to next week's midterm elections.
``We're making progress at dismantling the terrorist organization. We've hauled in a couple of thousand. One by one we're finding them and bringing them to justice,'' Bush said Monday in Denver.
But the president's confidence is difficult to square with alarmist predictions of the intelligence community and a decided uptick in the number of terrorist incidents.
``They are coming after us,'' CIA Director George Tenet told Congress two weeks ago, contending that al-Qaida is now ``reconstituted'' despite efforts by the United States and others to ``root them out.''
Last Thursday, the FBI warned about possible terrorist attacks on the U.S. transportation network, especially railroads. The warning was based on debriefings by al-Qaida prisoners.
Terrorists have been increasingly active elsewhere. Between Oct. 6 and Oct. 23, a French oil tanker was bombed in Yemen, two Americans were shot in Kuwait, a suicide bomber in Indonesia left almost 200 dead and Chechen rebels seized hundreds in a Moscow theater. In all cases, al-Qaida or affiliates of the terror organization are believed to have been responsible.
In between the events came word that North Korea had started a uranium enrichment program to develop nuclear weapons. Pyongyang may already have a a bomb or two stashed away from an earlier plutonium-based program, the CIA says.
All this is unrelated to what the administration believes is the most imminent threat of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction threat, Iraq. Bush vows to disarm Iraq with or without U.N. Security Council support.
And if Bush's we're-going-to-be-all-right optimism is contagious, Republicans should do well next Tuesday.
He acknowledged to his Denver audience on Monday that the struggle against terrorists ``is not an easy lift. It's going to take a while. This isn't one of these instant gratification deals.
``The best way to make sure we defend our freedoms and fulfill our obligations to our children is to hunt these killers down one at a time and bring them to justice, which is exactly what we're going to do.''
Bush recognizes that events have conspired to make the world smaller, and in so doing, have made America more vulnerable.
``We used to think two oceans could protect us from harm,'' Bush told a political rally last Thursday in Alabama. ``For a long time, our country felt like oceans could keep us immune from personal attack. We learned a horrible lesson.''
The lesson is not exactly new. Since the advent of ICBMs and long-range bombers during the Cold War, neighboring oceans have been less of a security buffer than before. Now they count for even less.
Indeed, terrorist groups pose a greater threat to the American homeland than the German Luftwaffe did in 1940, a time when oceans on either side really did provide a measure of security.
Not to worry, Bush says. ``You got to know the manhunt is on and it doesn't matter how long it takes. I like our chances better than theirs,'' he says of the terrorists.
``We got a fabulous military. And we got a great resolve. I can't imagine what was going through their minds. They must have thought our religion was materialism. They must have thought we were so self-centered, so absorbed with our ... shallow materialism that all we would do after September the 11th was file a lawsuit.
``They just didn't understand. And they're going to pay a dear price for doing what they did to America.''
EDITOR'S NOTE -- George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Toughens Stance on Feuding by Militia Leaders
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 30, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38061-2002Oct29?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 29 -- President Hamid Karzai, angered by continued abuses and armed feuding among regional militia commanders, has shifted from trying to persuade the powerful gunmen to behave and publicly warned he will remove them if they do not.
Karzai's tough talk is being supported by U.S. officials, who back his administration politically but whose military campaign against terrorism here has often worked against him by bolstering local gunmen who collaborate with American troops in the hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.
Karzai, who commands no troops, has little authority over vast areas where autonomous militia commanders hold sway. His government is heavily dependent on foreign military support, with some 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 4,000 multinational peacekeepers patrolling Kabul.
Last week, U.S. military officials in Afghanistan said they had stopped turning over weapons recovered by U.S. troops to local militia commanders. They said that any usable weapons will now be given to the Afghan national army being formed with international assistance.
The Bush administration's special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said here on Monday that Washington was "very supportive" of Karzai's new stance and urged militia leaders to cooperate with him. "We judge the behavior of these actors as a factor in our relationship with them," Khalilzad added.
In a speech to a group of judges last week, Karzai departed from his prepared remarks and lashed out at the militia commanders, accusing them of having returned to power last year with American help and then reverting to their former habits of harassing the populace and clashing with each other.
"We gave them a chance to bring peace and Islam to the country, but now I see the same old behavior," Karzai said, referring to the intimidation, looting and feuding that pervaded Afghanistan before the Taliban took over in 1996. "I warn them we will not be soft forever. We will not tolerate abuse of authority."
Karzai's unusually sharp comments, which were broadcast on national television over the weekend, drew widespread acclaim from Afghans.
"The whole country is happy with what Karzai said. He should have done this long ago," said Syed Azam, 19, a medical student. "These commanders are criminals and thieves. They want to make money, not bring peace. This is supposed to be a legitimate government with foreign support, so it should be able to punish them."
Mohibullah, 37, who sells blankets in a Kabul bazaar, said Karzai's speech had shown "he is the leader we need. We are secure here, but in the provinces these commanders have all the power. He should ask them to change their ways, but if they don't, he should take military action against them."
U.S. officials, while endorsing Karzai's comments, said they were continuing to try to persuade militia leaders to curb violence. On Sunday, Khalilzad met with two feuding commanders, Abdurrashid Dostum and Attah Mohammad, in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, where a fresh outbreak of armed clashes last week killed six people.
On Monday, U.S. Ambassador Robert P. Finn said Washington suspended new aid projects in the north four months ago, because Dostum and Mohammad could not guarantee security for foreign workers and because Washington wanted to signal its displeasure over the continued clashes.
Militia leaders have also been feuding or defying central authority for months in the western province of Herat and in the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktia. On Sunday, Khalilzad said it was time for regional strongmen to "clarify" whether they want to join the government "that advocates democracy and peace, or choose another way."
Over the long run, Khalilzad and other Western officials said they are counting on the new, multiethnic national army to counter the militias. But recruiting and training have been plagued by financial and political problems, including resistance from the Defense Ministry, which is dominated by Tajik militia forces from the Panjshir Valley, Karzai's political and ethnic rivals.
A new plan for forming the army, drafted by a government commission and released by the ministry last week, focuses on protecting the rights of former Islamic "freedom fighters," veterans of the anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban guerrilla campaigns. It awards them temporary commands over military units whose size would be based on how many weapons they turn in, and it gives them a year to join the new army or give up their weapons.
"This plan gives priority to the Panjshiris, the warlords and the mujaheddin [freedom fighters], not to professional considerations such as who is capable and where military units are needed," said a dissident on the committee. "This way, they can bring in extra weapons, turn them over and be rewarded with a regiment to run."
Both Karzai and U.S. officials voiced dissatisfaction with the plan and said it was being revised. Khalilzad said the "primary focus" of his meetings with Afghan officials has been finding ways to "accelerate" the training and deployment of multiethnic national troops.
Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, a Panjshiri and the former militia leader who is Karzai's most prominent rival, reportedly has attempted to favor loyalists in the new army setup. But Fahim's recent statements have stressed his commitment to developing a professional army that is loyal to the central government and ethnically balanced.
During an extended trip to Europe by Fahim this month, rumors persisted that he was being forced to resign and would be named ambassador to a Western country. But his aides and Karzai's spokesmen denied the rumors, and Fahim returned to Kabul on schedule Friday.
Karzai's criticism did not mention Fahim or other officials by name and appeared to be directed largely at local commanders who abuse their power. One widespread problem he mentioned is the reported practice of gunmen intimidating or extorting travelers on rural highways.
In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Karzai said that he was disturbed by fresh reports of such abuses from delegations he had sent to several provinces and that he was he upset to hear many rural Afghans say the government was causing them problems rather than providing solutions.
"There are continuing warlordish elements, and people don't like me being soft on them," he said. "I want things to happen peacefully, but people are right to be impatient."
While many Afghans said this week that they welcomed Karzai's threat to crack down on abuses by militias, some said it would be difficult for him to follow through, because U.S. and peacekeeping officials have resisted his pleas to expand their role and police the countryside, and because he is still perceived as a leader without an army in a country ruled by guns.
"It's good Karzai has finally spoken up and shown some muscle, but what will happen now if Mr. X decides to challenge him and refuses to bow? How do you replace him, and with whom?" asked a politician who supports Karzai. "We are five years away from establishing the new army. If we expect Karzai to do away with the warlords now, it is we Afghans who must shoulder him to the task."
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Mistaken Fire Killed American, U.S. Says
Soldier, 3 Afghans Hit by Air Force
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 30, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38497-2002Oct29?language=printer
Military investigators have concluded that a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, killed at the outset of a major battle in eastern Afghanistan in March, died from mistaken fire by an Air Force AC-130 gunship and not from al Qaeda mortar shelling as originally reported, defense officials said yesterday.
The deaths of Chief Warrant Officer Stanley Harriman and three Afghan soldiers factored significantly in a controversial decision by Afghan commanders to halt their assault into the Shahikot Valley within hours after it began and to withdraw. The retreat compelled U.S. forces to take over more of the ground fighting than initially planned and led to American grumbling about the staying power of their Afghan militia partners.
Asked about the incident yesterday, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who oversees U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as head of the Central Command, declined to provide specifics, saying that a final report is being reviewed by attorneys for public release. But other defense officials expressed surprise and frustration that the investigation's findings have taken so long to surface.
Franks ordered an inquiry into the incident seven months ago, saying an AC-130 gunship had reported firing on an enemy convoy about the time that Harriman had come under attack on March 2. Harriman, riding in a pickup truck, was traveling in a column of U.S. and Afghan troops.
The finding on the cause of Harriman's death, first reported in yesterday's New York Times, would if approved mark the fourth instance in which "friendly fire" has killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Three U.S. Special Forces soldiers died in December when a bomb dropped from a B-52 slammed into their position north of Kandahar. Five U.S. soldiers were injured by an errant American bomb outside Mazar-e Sharif last November.
The Harriman case raises fresh questions about the operations of the AC-130, whose primary mission is to hover over a battlefield and support ground forces with heavy, pulverizing machine gun and cannon fire.
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Returned Afghan Detainees Deny U.S. Mistreatment
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 30, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38531-2002Oct29?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 29 -- Looking weary and bewildered, three Afghan prisoners released after nearly one year's detention at a U.S. military base in Cuba said today that they were not mistreated during their confinement but were exhausted from the long trip home.
Two of the freed men were elderly Afghans with white beards and Muslim skullcaps, and one of those was toothless, used a cane and asked for his medicine as soldiers hustled him from a military hospital room into a police van here this morning. The third, a younger man, wore stiff iron manacles on his wrists.
"We were not tortured. . . . We were not unhappy," said one of the elderly men, who gave his name as Hajji Faiz Mohammed and claimed to be 105 years old. "The Americans treated me well, but they were not Muslims, so I didn't like them."
The three Afghans, who arrived here today after a four-day trip, were freed along with one Pakistani man in the first release of long-term prisoners from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay since the fall of the Taliban last November. One mentally ill Afghan was sent home in May.
U.S. officials in Washington and Kabul said the four were released because they no longer represented a threat to U.S. security, were not going to be prosecuted for any crime and could provide no further useful information to authorities. They also said medical considerations had been taken into account.
Another 625 detainees of various nationalities remain at Guantanamo Bay, according to U.S. officials, who said some may be released if they meet the same criteria. There was no explanation from U.S. officials as to why the Afghans and the Pakistani had been held for at least 10 months.
Faiz Mohammed, speaking briefly in Afghanistan's Pashto language to a crowd of journalists in his cramped hospital room this morning, said he had not been a supporter of the Taliban or al Qaeda and had been detained mistakenly by U.S. and Afghan troops late last year while visiting a village in his native Uruzgan province.
"I was shouting and angry, and I cried when they put me in chains," he said. "The Americans took me away in a car, but I didn't know my sin." He also said he believes Americans are infidels and enemies of Islam.
A second released prisoner, Jan Mohammed, 35, said he had been forcibly conscripted into the Taliban army last fall and was arrested by Afghan troops during fighting in northern Kunduz province. He said Afghan militia leaders first imprisoned him and then turned him over to U.S. forces, claiming falsely that he was a "high-ranking Taliban."
"I don't know anything," he told journalists today, describing himself as a farmer from Helmand province. "The questions the Americans asked me are the same ones you are asking: Why was I arrested, was I in the Taliban."
The third Afghan prisoner, an elderly man from Paktia province named Mohammed Sidiq, did not speak with journalists.
The men described their confinement at Guantanamo as boring but not inhumane. They said they were allowed to bathe and change clothes once a week and were given copies of the Koran to read. Faiz Mohammed said the food was good, but he complained that there was no okra or eggplant.
Jan Mohammed said he had seen numerous high-level Taliban officials among the detainee population at Guantanamo, including Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, and several other senior Islamic clerics. He also said he saw as many as 200 Arab prisoners and about 50 Pakistanis, as well as a few Australians and Britons.
The three men were flown from Cuba to Bagram air base, a U.S. military facility north of Kabul, where they were handed over to Afghan authorities Monday under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
That night they were taken to Kabul's military hospital for medical examinations, and today they were transferred by police van to the Interior Ministry, where officials described them as temporary "guests" and said they would probably be released Wednesday to go home.
"We do not know if they were unresponsible or a little responsible" for Taliban activities, Interior Minister Taj Mohammed Wardak said tonight, adding that U.S. officials had merely informed Afghan authorities the three would be arriving. "We don't want to bother them. They are our guests."
-------- africa
U.S. to Add to Forces in Horn of Africa
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/30MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - The United States is increasing its forces stationed around the Horn of Africa to about 1,200 troops, allowing them to conduct training missions and remain positioned to stage attacks against fighters for Al Qaeda who are believed to be hiding throughout the region, military officials said today.
About 400 troops assigned to the United States Central Command will soon arrive in Djibouti to establish a headquarters for the 800 American troops, including Special Operations forces, already in the East African country or on ships offshore.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf, said at a Pentagon news conference today that the troop buildup was intended to allow the United States to broaden its security assistance to regional allies, while remaining poised to attack terrorists.
"It's tied to the global war on terrorism, and for sure it is," General Franks said. "But you also know that we have security relationships or engagement opportunities - however you choose to think about them - in a great many countries in the Horn of Africa: Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen."
General Franks also fielded several questions about Afghanistan, where about 8,000 American troops continue to scour caves for die-hard Qaeda and Taliban fighters, and help the government of President Hamid Karzai rebuild the devastated country.
One area American troops will stay clear of is drug interdiction, Gen. Franks said. Opium production in Afghanistan skyrocketed to near-record levels this year, making the war-ravaged nation again the world's leading producer of the drug, according to a United Nations estimate released over the weekend.
During the war in Afghanistan, allied forces, particularly British forces, targeted production, storage and transportation facilities for heroin and other drugs that flood European markets.
Efforts by the Karzai administration to eradicate opium production by paying farmers to destroy their crops have failed because of a lack of money, violent demonstrations by farmers fearing their livelihoods were in jeopardy and the refusal of some local officials to destroy the crops.
General Franks said resolving the issue was up to the Afghans and nonmilitary agencies.
-------- asia
UN: Asian Kids Forced Into Militias
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Thailand-Child-Soldiers.html
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- As many as one-quarter of the world's 300,000 child soldiers are serving in East Asia and the Pacific, and soldiers recruited as young as 7 often are forced to murder, a new UNICEF report says.
The report, released Wednesday, details the methods used to recruit the children, the violent acts they are forced under threat to commit, and the consequences of their experiences: nightmares, lack of education and illiteracy.
The report and other recent research ``has clearly shown that thousands of children are still being recruited -- often by force -- into state and non-state armies in the region,'' UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in a statement.
The use of child soldiers should be considered ``an illegal and morally reprehensible practice that has no place in civilized societies,'' she said.
UNICEF's study, titled ``Adult Wars, Child Soldiers,'' is based on interviews with 69 current and former child combatants from Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.
According to their own accounts, the children suffered brutal training sessions, hard labor and severe punishments, and some saw their own families and friends killed.
Others said they were forced to commit or witness atrocities, including murder and rape. Nearly all those interviewed were given weapons and served in combat. Their average recruitment age was 13.
One soldiers, identified as Vasco, said he joined a militia in East Timor for eight months when he was 14.
``When the militia came, my parents were very afraid and said to me, 'If the militia ask you to do anything, just do it or they will kill us,''' the UNICEF report quoted Vasco saying.
``They ordered us to rape,'' he said. ``They beat me with a piece of wood everyday ... I wake up still from bad dreams. I am still constantly afraid.''
The youngest of the 67 boys and two girls interviewed was a Myanmar boy, who said he was 7 when recruited by government soldiers promising food and candy. Another boy from Myanmar, who joined the military at 9, said he was dragged from his house because he was considered an adult.
``It is time for all parties to acknowledge this and work together ... to bring an end to this profound abuse of children's rights,'' Bellamy said.
The UNICEF study calls for demobilizing all child soldiers; providing support for their reintegration into society, especially through education and vocational training; and providing appropriate psychological and social care and support for former combatants.
-------- biological weapons
Veterans Say Pentagon Still Covering Up Weapons Tests
By Katherine Stapp,
IPS,
10/30/2002
The Black World Today
http://athena.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=1855
NEW YORK - The U.S. Defence Department gave them cryptic names like 'Fearless Johnny', 'Errand Boy' and 'Rapid Tan'. But Jack Alderson, then a 31-year-old Navy lieutenant, knew the tests were part of a biological weapons project.
He and his men had been deployed in five tugboats to remote Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean to take part in an operation dubbed Autumn Gold. For weeks, they would head out to sea as jets screamed by overhead, releasing a misty cloud of chemicals.
''We would line up on the grid and get sprayed,'' Alderson testified to a Congressional committee 40 years later.
''We would leave the test subjects (rhesus monkeys) outside in cages while the crew were inside in the citadel. We had filters for the air coming inside, but we knew, because we had accumulators in the interior, that we had leaks. We did get agents inside..''
Autumn Gold, it turns out, involved a bacteria called bacillus globigii, which the Defence Department (DoD) says is harmless to humans. The way BG disperses in the air simulates more deadly pathogens, and it is often used as a stand-in for anthrax in studies.
Other ships were sprayed with far more deadly agents, like VX and Sarin gas. VX, the Pentagon acknowledges, is one of the most dangerous chemicals ever created. Sarin gas gained notoriety in 1995, when an obscure Japanese cult released it in Tokyo's subway system during the morning rush hour, killing 12 people.
For decades, the DoD suppressed the tests, collectively known as Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defence). In recent months, after intensive lobbying by veterans like Alderson and some members of Congress, the DoD admitted it had carried out live chemical and biological weapons experiments in the 1960s and '70s.
Land-based tests were conducted in Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Utah, Canada and England. Sea-based tests were carried out off the coast of California, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
Altogether, 113 tests were planned, although the DoD says many were cancelled. It has released brief ''fact sheets'' on 37 of the tests, and is still investigating others. The Pentagon has notified about 1,400 servicemen about their involvement in SHAD, which lasted from 1962 to 1973.
Government officials insist that SHAD participants were given appropriate protective clothing, and say there is no evidence that anyone - military or civilian - was sickened by the tests.
''The purpose of these operational tests was to test equipment, procedures, military tactics, etc., and to learn more about biological and chemical agents,'' said William Winkenwerder, assistant defence secretary for health affairs.
''The tests were not conducted to evaluate the effects of dangerous agents on people,'' he emphasised.
Alderson is sceptical about this explanation. ''The rhesus monkeys were put in cages exterior to the vessel, not inside any citadel,'' he said. ''If you were going to test the protective capabilities of a ship, you wouldn't put your test subjects on the exterior.''
Some veterans groups believe the Pentagon is still dragging its feet in disclosing all the details of the tests.
''SHAD veterans were unwitting participants in these tests,'' said Rick Weidman, director of government relations for the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). ''DoD continues to withhold the evidence needed by these veterans to meet the burden of proof that VA (the Veterans Administration) requires for care and compensation.''
''At VVA, we have a phrase to describe this phenomenon: the disposable soldier syndrome,'' Weidman said. ''This pattern has repeated itself over and over again. Consider the plight of military personnel and veterans concerning the effects of gas in WWI; radiation in WWII; Agent Orange in Vietnam; toxic exposures in the Persian Gulf.''
Weidman is pushing for the creation of an independent National Institute of Veterans Health, under the National Institutes of Health, that would be empowered to investigate controversial Pentagon operations like SHAD.
California Congressman Mike Thompson, who helped lead the long fight to get the SHAD records opened, has also introduced legislation to declassify information on other Cold War era weapons tests dubbed Project 112.
''The Department of Defence has not only subjected our own soldiers to dangerous substances, it may have our civilians it is charged with protecting at risk,'' said Thompson. ''It is appalling that 40 years have passed and our veterans are just now receiving this information that may be vital to their health and well-being.''
The DoD says it will continue to release details of the SHAD tests as they become available, with a completion date estimated for June 2003. But some feel the Pentagon lacks a sense of urgency in notifying servicemen about what they were exposed to.
''One of the reasons that we want the sailors of Project SHAD looked at is there is no way that somebody today would consider something that happened 35 years ago the cause of health problems today,'' said Alderson, who himself suffers from skin and prostate cancer.
According to Veterans Administration documents obtained by the VVA, the mortality rate from respiratory and brain disease among SHAD participants is three times the expected rate.
''I come from a rural area of Northern California,'' Alderson said. ''There is no way that a doctor in Humbolt County is going to recognise symptoms of some of the things that we were exposed to. He would not know what to look for. He just wouldn't recognise it. He would be looking for something else.''
-------- britain
Gulf syndrome forces vicar's retirement
Wednesday, 30 October, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/england/2374675.stm'
A former Army chaplain is being forced to retire because of illnesses he believes are caused by Gulf War Syndrome.
Reverend Dave Peachell is leaving his duties at Hockering church in Norfolk and three other nearby churches.
The father-of-two, who served for three months in the Gulf with the 16/5 Lancers, will deliver his last sermon the day before Remembrance Day.
But he will officially be discharged from the Church on Thursday this week, suffering from a string of illnesses which have attacked his nervous and immune systems.
The Church has officially recognised "Gulf War Illness" as the grounds for Mr Peachell's retirement.
Mr Peachell, 57, said successive governments had not faced up to the illness, which campaigners claim has killed more than 500 Gulf War veterans and left more than a thousand ill.
"None of them are good enough to say sorry. They are hoping that we will die," he said.
The clergyman for Hockering, Honingham and East and North Tuddenham, near Norwich, said: "I could have hidden all this, but I have hidden it since 1991.
"It has reached the point now where my GP has said stop, and I have been medically discharged from the Church of England.
"My Army pension has been released without question because of the conditions I have.
"The consensus has come to me that it is due to Gulf War Syndrome."
Mr Peachell, who also served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, is suffering from diabetes, auto-immune and depressive disorders, neurological diseases and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Campaigners believe a cocktail of injections given to troops to protect against chemical and biological attack may have caused the illness.
'Can't hack it'
He said: "I am not prepared to crawl away and die like a poisoned rat.
"America has come clean about it and pensioned people and treated people.
"But here no politician or prime minister can hack it. They have not got the calibre."
-------- canada
Canada Cautions Some on U.S. Travel
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Canada-US-Travel-Advisory.html
TORONTO (AP) -- The Canadian government has issued a travel advisory with a twist: It suggests citizens born in Iraq, Syria and other countries targeted by U.S. anti-terrorism policies consider avoiding travel to the United States.
The advisory issued Monday focuses on a U.S. regulation adopted a year after the Sept. 11 attacks that permits American authorities to closely monitor travelers born in certain countries suspected of terrorism links.
Canada considers the system discriminatory because it targets citizens based on where they were born, said Reynald Doiron, a foreign affairs department spokesman.
``It's against basic principles on both sides of the border,'' Doiron said Wednesday. ``Canadian citizens should be exempted from that measure.''
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, `` I don't think we find it surprising that Canada has told its citizens about what to expect'' when they cross the border.
Asked if he thought the measures were discriminatory, Boucher said ``Our goal is to make our country safer. That's the same goal the Canadian authorities have. We do have an enormous border.''
He said talks were under way with Canada and a number of other governments concerning how to handle people with two passports, or one passport with a Middle East birthplace listed.
A man holding joint Canadian-Syrian citizenship was detained Sept. 26 while changing planes at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and deported to Syria. Canada protested the deportation of Maher Arar, 32, saying he should have been sent to Canada due to his Canadian citizenship and residence.
Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan are the countries listed in the U.S. National Security Entry Exit Registration System introduced on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The system authorizes the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to photograph, fingerprint and monitor the arrival and departure of visitors born in or citizens of those nations.
The Canadian travel advisory notes that people from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen ``could also attract special attention from American immigration and security authorities.''
``In these circumstances, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade advises Canadians who were born in the above countries or who may be citizens of these countries to consider carefully whether they should attempt to enter the United States for any reason, including transit to or from third countries,'' the advisory said.
Arar, a telecommunications engineer, was returning home to Montreal from a trip to Tunisia when he was stopped by U.S. authorities in New York.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham protested the deportation to U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci. Graham said U.S. officials told him they believed they could send Arar to Syria because of his Syrian citizenship. Canada has generally acceded to U.S. demands for greater border security since the December 1999 arrest of Ahmed Ressam, who tried to cross into Washington state from British Columbia with explosives in the trunk of his car.
Ressam was convicted of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations and is scheduled to be sentenced this year.
None of the Sept. 11 hijackers had known links to Canada.
Canada has joined the United States in tightening border security while trying to ensure that commercial traffic continues flowing smoothly to feed the world's biggest trade partnership, worth more than $1 billion a day.
On the Net:
Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade at www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service at www.ins.usdoj.gov
-------- chemical weapons
Russia's Poison Gases
October 30, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER CHYBA
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/opinion/30CHYB.html
STANFORD, Calif. - More than 100 hostages are dead after Russian authorities used an unidentified gas to incapacitate terrorists holding 750 people in a Moscow theater. Nearly all of the deaths were due to the gas, which Russian authorities have so far refused to identify.
Press coverage has rightly emphasized grief and the question of why antidotes were not immediately available. It has then focused on whether the Russians' use of gas was a violation of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. But this focus, while important, risks overlooking the big picture when it comes to Russian chemical weapons.
The Chemical Weapons Convention is a global treaty with more than 170 signatory nations. It bans the production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons - the first arms-control treaty to outlaw an entire class of so-called weapons of mass destruction. It also requires its signatories to declare and destroy, by certain deadlines, the chemical weapons they possess.
Since the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in war - a reaction to gas attacks in World War I - the world has struggled to ban these weapons. In part, this is because of their indiscriminate nature.
After Sept. 11, 2001, it seems all the more important to eliminate stocks of such weapons because access to them could confer such power to terrorists. In a world with 70,000 metric tons of chemical weapons agents, some of which may be vulnerable to terrorist theft, the verified elimination of these weapons will be a step toward greater security for all. This is true despite the disturbing fact that Iraq, North Korea and certain other nations are not parties to the convention.
The weapons convention permits the production and use of riot-control agents for law enforcement purposes. Until the Russians inform us of the agent used, whether they were in violation of the convention will remain uncertain. But renewed attention to Russian chemical agents should focus on a more important issue. Russia retains some 40,000 tons of chemical warfare blister agents and nerve gas. It is required by the convention to destroy them, and the United States and European nations have agreed to help. But American efforts under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program are stalled in Congress.
The Cooperative Threat Reduction program began in 1992. It provides expertise and funding to help the former Soviet Union secure and destroy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and materials. Progress with chemical and biological weapons has been especially slow, and the Russians have too often been less than forthcoming.
Of particular concern has been the Russian stockpile at Shchuch'ye, a town near the southern border with Kazakhstan. The Shchuch'ye stockpile contains nearly two million artillery shells - and hundreds of missile warheads - filled with nerve gas or other chemical weapons. Although stockpile security has been upgraded with help from American financing, the threat of insider theft remains real. Many of the shells are in working condition, and they are small and easily transportable.
Cooperative Threat Reduction funds have paid to design a plant for construction at Shchuch'ye to destroy these weapons securely and safely. The Pentagon wants $130 million for construction in the new fiscal year. Russia, its economy still weak, won't do this without American assistance. But the program is currently stalled in a Congressional conference committee due to a disagreement over granting the president authority to proceed with the project.
The Bush administration's new national security strategy has emphasized the destruction of weapons of mass destruction by pre-emptive strikes if necessary. But at Shchuch'ye alone, the United States could destroy over 5,000 tons of ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction through a different kind of pre-emptive strike - action by a Congressional committee.
Christopher Chyba, codirector of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, served on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration.
------- europe
U.S. and France Near Deal on Iraq Attack
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/middleeast/30DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - The United States and France are moving toward a compromise on Iraq that would oblige the Bush administration to consult the United Nations Security Council before embarking on military action against Saddam Hussein but still leave it the freedom to act alone.
American officials and foreign diplomats said that under the proposed compromise, the United States would take part in a Security Council debate if Iraq failed to comply with expected new United Nations demands for the destruction of its chemical and biological weapons.
For six weeks now, to the growing irritation and impatience of President Bush, France and the United States have been arguing over how many resolutions and what sort of triggers would be needed to open the way for United Nations-backed military action against Iraq. France has argued for two resolutions; the United States has balked.
In interviews published today in the daily newspapers Le Monde and The Financial Times and in other European publications, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell gave what administration officials described as the most explicit outline of the American compromise proposal.
Referring to French demands that the Security Council meet and decide on whether or not military action is needed in the event of Iraqi defiance over the coming weeks, Secretary Powell said, "We essentially believe we have accommodated those who wanted an opportunity to decide this."
He added, "They have now the opportunity to decide or not to decide it, to pass a second resolution or offer a second resolution or not, and we will be part of that debate."
Going further, the secretary told the European journalists that in a so-called second stage, "We would certainly prefer to see the U.N. act in a multilateral way."
But under the proposed compromise, American officials made clear that the United States would reserve the right to lead a military action against Iraq if Iraq continued to block inspections, even if the Security Council did not give its approval.
Administration officials stressed that Secretary Powell told the European reporters that the United States would not be "handcuffed" by the United Nations if it failed to authorize force.
Nevertheless, the new promise to consult Security Council members before any military action appears to have gone some way toward reassuring the French.
"We are much closer to an agreement than we were a week ago," said a French official, adding that the United States seemed to be making every effort to win French, Russian and Chinese approval of a resolution on Iraq. Each of the five permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China - has veto power.
Although the proposal falls short of French demands, the administration's assurances that it would at least give the Security Council a role, including a chance to debate the issue and pass a second resolution, has been welcomed by France and other nations.
The gesture could also help to break the impasse holding up a first resolution sending inspectors into Iraq, according to American officials and foreign diplomats.
Administration officials said they were hopeful that an agreement on the resolution's wording could come as early as Friday, but that most likely it would be next week. Secretary Powell said today that "we're hard at work, and I think we're getting closer" to a compromise on a resolution on Iraq.
He spoke twice by telephone in the early morning with Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, bringing him up to date on the progress of the negotiations, the officials said.
Mr. Annan has warned that it could be very damaging to the United Nations if the negotiations collapse and the United States goes outside the organization to lead a war against Iraq. He is anxious to assist in breaching the gap between Washington and Paris, United Nations officials said.
While voicing some optimism, however, the administration has kept up public warnings that time is running out for the United Nations to agree on an inspections measure. Mr. Bush has asserted several times in recent days that the United States will act against Iraq if the United Nations does not.
Secretary Powell said that within "days or a week" Mr. Bush might press for a vote and take subsequent action if it lost.
France has taken the lead in negotiating with the United States on the Iraqi resolution. Administration officials say they expect China and Russia to be guided by what the French decide.
The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, told a newspaper in Paris this week that France had garnered support among a majority of the 15 nations on the Security Council for its so-called two-stage approach.
The compromise now being neared would leave enough ambiguity about what exactly those two stages would consist of to satisfy both France and the United States.
But some other differences remain. Another contentious issue in the draft resolution is the use of two crucial words, "material breach," to describe Iraq's past and potential future rebuffs of weapons inspections.
In an earlier draft, the United States had insisted on using these words to describe how a future Iraqi rebuff of inspections would be viewed.
French diplomats said that using such a phrase to describe future hypothetical actions by Iraq amounted to an "automatic trigger" for using force.
Mr. Villepin, the French foreign minister, said that since there was an agreement on a second United Nations meeting to consider what to do about a possible future Iraqi violation of the inspections measure, "no new mechanisms circumventing the approach should be added to the text presented by the United States."
France wants the words "material breach" to be included to describe past and current actions by Iraq, but not future hypothetical ones. The United States wants it to apply to both.
At a Pentagon news conference, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf, indicated today that the United States did not need a United Nations Security Council resolution to win allied support for an American-led campaign to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
General Franks said the Bush administration's preference would be to work within a Security Council resolution, but failing that, the United States has enough regional and international support to lead a coalition to oust President Hussein and disarm Iraq.
"The best case for us is to be able, as the president carried the case back in September to the United Nations, to be able to build our force list, our coalition, based on work by the Security Council," General Franks said.
But General Franks quickly added, "I will say that my sense, visiting the region - and I mentioned that I had just come back - my sense is that we have a great many friends, partners and allies who see the situation the same way we do."
In a brief interview afterward, General Franks said the United States had not yet formally requested the use of bases, overflight rights or other support from countries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
But he said he and other American officials had held numerous talks with allies to let them know what Washington might need should Mr. Bush order an offensive against Iraq.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, today to attend a joint planning committee meeting with other American officials and their Saudi counterparts. Also at the talks were Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; the American ambassador, Bob Jordan; and Lincoln Bloomfield, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.
Pentagon officials said General Myers made no formal requests for logistical or military support from the Saudis, or from officials in Bahrain earlier in his trip.
--------
Danish Police Detain Chechen Envoy
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Denmark-Chechen-Detained.html
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- A top aide of Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov was arrested by Danish authorities Wednesday and Russia sought his handover, saying he may have been involved in the Moscow hostage siege and other terror attacks.
Akhmed Zakayev, 43, was detained Tuesday evening after a Chechen Congress concluded in the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Danish authorities acted after Russia requested Zakayev's extradition.
``Zakayev is suspected for a series of terror attacks during the period 1996-1999 and is suspected of taking part in the planning of the hostage-taking crisis in Moscow,'' a Danish police statement said.
The Kremlin had been angered by Denmark's hosting of the Chechen congress, which gathered rebels and opponents of the war in the breakaway province. Russia said the conference was organized by terrorists, but Denmark had insisted it would do nothing without proof.
A judge on Wednesday ordered Zakayev jailed until Nov. 12 pending an investigation. The two-hour hearing was closed to the public at the prosecutor's request and was held amid tight security.
Zakayev had not yet decided whether to appeal, said his lawyer, Ervin Birk Nielsen.
In Moscow, Russian officials cheered Zakayev's arrest and prosecutors requested his extradition, saying they had given Denmark written assurances they would not seek the death penalty.
``We hope that the Danish authorities will give us all necessary assistance in handling this issue,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Loshchinin told the upper house of parliament, Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported.
The two countries do not have an extradition treaty because Russia has not abolished capital punishment, but Danish officials said Zakayev could be extradited under a European agreement concerning political crimes.
``We are in a situation where in certain circumstances he can be extradited to Russia,'' Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen said, adding that Denmark needs ``guarantees that he will not face the death penalty.''
Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1996 to gain entrance into Europe's leading human rights body, the Council of Europe.
Zakayev had represented the separatist leader Maskhadov at the two-day Chechen conference in Copenhagen, attended by some 100 Chechen rebel envoys, Russian human rights activists and lawmakers from Russia and other European countries.
The conference aimed at a peaceful solution to the ongoing war in the breakaway Russian republic, and Chechens at the gathering denied any role in the hostage taking. On Monday, Zakayev expressed willingness Monday to start unconditional peace talks with the Russian government over ending the war in the breakaway republic.
Russia had condemned Denmark for hosting the two-day congress and asked the government to cancel the event after Chechen gunmen stormed a Moscow theater Oct. 23 and held hundreds of people hostage for 58 hours. At least 118 hostages and 50 hostage-takers died in the siege and subsequent rescue effort Saturday.
A Copenhagen-based Chechen rebel representative said Zakayev cooperated with Danish police when they arrived at his hotel Wedneday.
``The Danish intelligence service asked him some questions and said they could go to the police station. So he walked with them,'' Osman Ferzaouli told The Associated Press. ``He is not related to the criminals, to the terrorists.''
Russian forces retreated from Chechnya after a 1994-1996 war that left separatists led by Maskhadov in charge. Putin sent troops back in 1999 after rebel attacks on a neighboring region and deadly apartment-building bombings were blamed on the rebels.
Western governments have urged Russia to negotiate a peace settlement with the Chechens, and they long perceived Maskhadov, the Chechens' elected president, as a possible interlocutor.
Zakayev is the official foreign emissary for Maskhadov. He frequently visited foreign capitals for unofficial consultations on the Chechen conflict.
But for the past few months, the U.S. government has regarded Maskhadov as ``damaged goods'' and it no longer considers him a viable candidate to negotiate for Chechens, a senior U.S. diplomat in Moscow said Monday.
The diplomat said there was evidence Maskhadov had renewed a formal alliance with Shamil Basayev, an influential rebel leader accused of maintaining ties with international terrorists.
-------- iraq
Bush Meets With United Nations Weapons Inspector
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush met with the U.N. chief weapons inspector Wednesday as U.S. diplomats struggled to give the inspections team power to ``carry out the will of the world community'' and disarm Saddam Hussein.
The meeting with chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency came as Secretary of State Colin Powell signaled a willingness to strike a compromise to get U.N. Security Council approval of a tough resolution on Iraq.
Powell said Tuesday ``there may be a way'' to bridge remaining differences with France, Russia and China on the draft proposed by the United States and Britain.
However, he said the resolution must warn Iraq of consequences if it refuses to agree to destroy its weapons arsenals.
``Otherwise,'' Powell said at a news conference, ``Iraq will try to deceive and distract'' the U.N. weapons inspectors who would go back to Iraq after four years to search for chemical and biological weapons and a nuclear weapons program.
``We cannot accept any language that suggests that, in the presence of new Iraqi violations, those violations would be ignored and there would be no consequences,'' he said.
Amid the tense diplomatic struggle, Bush welcomed Blix to the White House and thanked him for his service and stressed the importance of his mission, Fleischer said.
``The message is it's important for the inspections to be effective, and it's important for the inspectors to carry out the will of the world community as expressed through the Security Council to inspect for the purpose of disarmament,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
He noted that it is the job of the Security Council, not Blix, to give inspectors the power to examine and disarm Saddam's arsenal.
``This is a consultation that Hans Blix is doing as a thorough and deliberate inspector,'' Fleischer said of the meeting with Bush, noting Blix has previously met with leaders in other U.N. Security Council nations. ``The president was pleased to see him here, he stressed how the United States wants to work with the inspectors to make sure that they are able to carry out whatever the ultimate decision of the U.N. is, which is the disarmament of Saddam Hussein.''
In a separate matter, Fleischer was asked whether Saddam would be charged with crimes against humanity if the Iraqi government is toppled.
``These are decisions that get made by the international community, but certainly the atrocities that have been committed are serious, and I don't think the world is interested in looking the other way,'' he told reporters.
Blix and the IAEA official were invited by the White House to discuss implementation of the U.S. draft resolution, U.N. officials said.
They have underscored a need a tougher weapons inspections rule, and the Bush administration has used their advice to push the U.S. demand for a tough resolution.
The arms inspectors met also with Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, who attended all three meetings.
The struggle to win over critics of a tough resolution continued at the United Nations, where France, China and Russia oppose authorizing military action against Iraq before inspectors find out whether Iraq would cooperate with them.
In Beijing, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said the Security Council should decide how to deal with Iraq only after new inspections.
``In our view, the most important thing to solve the Iraqi issue is to allow as quickly as possible the return of the U.N. inspectors,'' spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
Three administration officials told The Associated Press there could be changes at the margins of the proposed resolution to satisfy such Security Council holdouts as France and Russia.
Specifically, one official said on condition of anonymity, the United States was prepared to give Iraq more than the 30 days the resolution permits for Iraq to list chemical programs unrelated to weapons.
Also, taking a cue from Blix, the administration is easing its demand that Iraqi scientists who worked on weapons programs be interviewed outside the country. The revision would approve such interviews but not insist on them, a U.S. official said.
Powell, even while hinting at compromise, said ``our basic principles remain the same.''
``Clear indictment of Saddam Hussein's past behavior and current behavior has to be in the resolution,'' he said, and ``there has to be a very tough inspection regime.''
Powell also warned again that if the Security Council does not act Bush ``has what he believes is the authority needed and, frankly, the obligation to act with like-minded nations to disarm Iraq.''
A White House official said the Bush administration was using its threat to act alone against Iraq as a strategy to compel Russia and France to back the joint U.S.-British resolution.
While they do not like the resolution, the administration is hoping they will support it rather than be left behind, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
At the United Nations, Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, said Russia doesn't want use of force to be automatic ``and this is still our position.''
Powell said ``we're getting close to a point where we'll have to see whether or not we can bridge these remaining differences in the very near future.''
``I don't want to give you days or a week, but it certainly isn't much longer than that,'' he said,
If a decision on the resolution is not reached for a week, Bush would be spared making a potentially explosive decision on whether to go to war before the congressional elections next Tuesday.
----
US warned not to seize control of Iraqi oil
October 31 2002
The Guardian, Agencies
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683473584.html
The chief executive of BP, Lord Browne, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war.
The comments from the most senior European oil executive, who has impeccable political connections in Britain, will be seen by anti-war protesters as further proof that the United States President, George Bush, has already made his mind up about an early attack.
The warning came as United Nations negotiations continued for a compromise resolution on Iraq that will satisfy Washington, Paris and Moscow.
Lord Browne's comments serve to underline concern that the US is primarily concerned with seizing control of Saddam Hussein's oil and handing it over to companies such as ExxonMobil rather than destroying his weapons of mass destruction.
Britain's biggest company is reviewing what impact the overthrow of Saddam would have on its own business and global crude supplies. Both London and Washington have been lobbied by the British oil giant, which is concerned that European companies could be left out in the cold.
"We have let it be known that the thing we would like to make sure, if Iraq changes regime, is that there should be a level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if they're needed to do the work there," Lord Browne said on Tuesday.
The jockeying for oil continued as French and United States officials scrambled behind the scenes to reach a compromise on the UN resolution.
"A package is taking shape but it is not there yet," one diplomat said. "They could sort this out in an hour flat, but that doesn't mean they will."
At issue is what France, Russia and China, which hold veto power in the 15-member Security Council, consider hidden "trigger" language in the US text that they say would allow Washington to attack Iraq, overthrow Saddam and then contend the UN had authorised it.
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said on Tuesday that negotiations were making progress: "We're hard at work and I think we're getting closer."
Asked how long Washington could wait, he said: "We're getting close to a point where we'll have to see whether or not we can bridge these remaining differences - in the very near future, I don't want to give you days or a week but it certainly isn't much longer than that."
In Washington, the chief UN arms inspector, Hans Blix, and Mohamed El Baradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, were to meet Mr Bush and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.
----
U.S. Doesn't Plan to Control Iraq's Oil
October 30, 2002
By Tom Doggett
Reuters
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=politicsnews&StoryID=1657403&fromEmail=true#
WASHINGTON - The White House said on Wednesday the United States has no interest in controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves if the Bush administration decides to take military action to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Saddam has accused President Bush of planning a war against Iraq in order to take over the country's oil.
"The only interest the United States has in the region is furthering the cause of peace and stability ... not his country's ability to generate oil," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
Iraq has oil reserves of 112 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
When asked if the United States would take over Iraq's oil fields if the U.S. attacked Iraq, Fleischer responded: "No. The purpose of any plan the United States has is to make certain that Saddam Hussein complies with all U.N. resolutions."
Fleischer said Saddam is to blame for bringing Iraq to the point where the United Nations must decide what steps are necessary to force Saddam to abide by U.N. resolutions, including demands that Iraq dismantle its program to develop weapons of mass destruction.
When asked, Fleischer refused to say whether the U.S. military might administer Iraq's oil fields.
"I think that it's impossible for anybody to speculate about anything and everything that could possibly happen under any military scenario. And I wouldn't even try to start guessing what the military may or may not do," he said.
However, Fleischer took a stronger stand against the suggestion that the United States could divvy up Iraq's crude if the U.S. military controlled the country's oil fields.
"That's not the way America works," he said.
The State Department plans to meet in early December with Iraqi opposition members on the future of Iraq's oil and natural gas sector once Saddam Hussein is removed from power.
Recommendations from the working group on how to restore Iraq's energy sector would be presented to a new Iraqi transitional government. The working group may include former officials from Iraq's petroleum ministry who have recently defected.
United Nations sanctions have blocked Iraq's oil industry from obtaining the foreign investment needed to run at full capacity. American and foreign energy companies want to get into Iraq to develop the country's underperforming oil fields.
Money from more oil exports would restore Iraq's economy and help pay for a possible U.S. military occupation government if the United States attacks Iraq and removes Saddam.
While Iraq is a member of OPEC, its oil production is not limited by an OPEC quota, but is overseen by the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The U.N. allows Iraq to produce as much oil as it can to help buy medicine and other humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Coalition Collapsing as Labor Ministers Resign
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/30CND-ISRA.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 - Talks designed to prevent a breakup of the 19-month-old coalition government ended in failure today, resulting in the resignation of Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.
The decision by Mr. Ben-Eliezer, the leader of the left-leaning Labor Party, presaged an almost certain vote by Labor representatives in Parliament against a budget proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Labor has complained that the budget favors settlers over the poor, but Mr. Sharon has said he would dismiss anyone from his government who opposed his plan.
``We did everything possible to preserve the government, but to my great regret there were those who believed that this was the time to break up the government,'' said Finance Minister Silvan Shalom of the Likud Party, which is led by Mr. Sharon.
A Labor legislator, Haim Ramon, who is challenging Mr. Ben-Eliezer for party leadership, praised the defense minister's decision.
``I'm happy that we will not be partners in a government that is a failure in all aspects of life,'' Mr. Ramon said. ``We need to leave the government and present an alternative.''
Mr. Sharon has said that he would govern without Labor, with a narrower coalition. If he is unable to sustain that government, which would be more right wing, elections would probably be held within 90 days.
Earlier there was air of optimism about the talks as two private lawyers shuttled all day between the party leaders.
The Israeli public has made it overwhelmingly clear in opinion polls that it prefers the continuation of the broad-based coalition government.
A confrontation dismissed by politicians and analysts days ago as mere posturing has now revealed itself as Mr. Sharon's most dire political crisis.
Labor has repeatedly trimmed its policies to fit Mr. Sharon's approach to the economy and security. But Mr. Ben-Eliezer is trailing in a three-way race to remain as party leader, with internal Labor elections set for Nov. 19. Either of his competitors, if victorious, would almost certainly pull Labor out of the government, depriving Mr. Ben-Eliezer of his powerful defense job anyway.
He has now chosen to make a stand - over a relatively small slice of the budget, $147 million - on an issue that combines an appeal to his left-wing base with a broader, populist draw.
Mr. Ben-Eliezer wants the money shifted from settlements to finance social programs, like pensioners' benefits, that are being cut to restrain an expanding budget deficit.
It is a showdown more about social and economic priorities than Israel's familiar concern with security, but it threatens to undermine the national consensus behind Mr. Sharon's hard-line approach toward Palestinians and shift Israel's government further to the right.
Late Tuesday night, a Palestinian gunman penetrated the fence of an Israeli settlement, Hermesh, on the northern West Bank near Jenin. He opened fire on people walking outside their homes, killing two teenage girls and a woman, Israeli security officials said, before being shot dead himself in a firefight with residents and soldiers. Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, a militant group affiliated with Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The killings illustrated once again how explosive the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank remains. Mr. Sharon has shown broad support for the settlements.
As the Israeli political situation deepened, Mr. Arafat, who in more than three decades as Palestinian leader has seen Israeli cabinets and prime ministers come and go, blunted reformers' demands, at least for now. He gained support on Tuesday for a new government that closely resembled his old one.
Labor ministers said that Mr. Sharon's budget priorities were scrambled, favoring settlers over pensioners. ``We can't accept that there is one sector in Israeli society - and I mean the settlers - who are exempted from shouldering the burden,'' said Ephraim Sneh, the minister of transportation.
He added, ``We don't underestimate the importance of our participation in the cabinet, but it can't be at all costs.''
Natan Sharansky, the housing minister and leader of a small, right-leaning faction, dismissed Mr. Sneh's comments about settler favoritism. Needy settlers faced the same cuts in mortgage subsidies as needy residents of Tel Aviv, he said.
He accused Mr. Ben-Eliezer of manufacturing this fight, and noted that as defense minister, Mr. Ben-Eliezer had not until recently objected to the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
Months ago, Mr. Ben-Eliezer's aides outlined his evolving strategy for an eventual race to become prime minister; they said that he hoped to neutralize Mr. Sharon's advantage on security issues, and then challenge him on the economy, which continues to deteriorate. The strategy also called for Mr. Ben-Eliezer to leave the government about now.
General elections are not scheduled until next fall, but most politicians have anticipated that they will take place sooner, brought on by a dispute like this one.
Business leaders, who met with both sides in the dispute on Tuesday, pleaded for support of the budget, calling it necessary to safeguard Israel's precarious international credit rating and avoid further damage to the economy. But Mr. Shalom, the finance minister, predicted that the budget would pass even without Labor's support.
Mr. Sharon may have trouble sustaining a new government. There are 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament, with the three main parties of the governing coalition - Likud, Labor and Shas - together holding 61 seats. While Mr. Sharon could govern with a minority, he would be vulnerable to a majority vote expressing no confidence in his government.
Some right-wing leaders favor going immediately to elections, believing that they could increase their support at the expense of Labor, whose influence they bemoan as moderating Mr. Sharon's treatment of the Palestinians.
Avigdor Lieberman, whose small fusion party might otherwise fit in a new Sharon government, said on Tuesday that he favored elections instead. ``My opinion is clear: I am against any attempt to form a narrow government,'' he said.
Mr. Sharansky said he also had doubts about a narrower coalition. ``The political price of keeping such a government would be so high,'' he said. ``It will be very vulnerable to extreme demands.'' Compared with the present government, a narrower coalition could be more easily brought down by a small faction, dramatically increasing each member's bargaining power.
The newspaper Yediot Ahronot published an opinion survey on Tuesday suggesting that Mr. Sharon's Likud Party would increase its number of seats in Parliament in any election, and therefore its proportionate voice in the government, to 29 seats from 19; Labor, it found, would decline to 21 seats from its current 25.
The survey of 550 adult Israelis was taken on Monday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. It found that Mr. Sharon was in a strong position to prevail in internal party elections over his Likud rival, the former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But Mr. Ben-Eliezer was shown to be trailing his Labor competitors, Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa and a former general, and Haim Ramon, a seasoned politician and skilled speaker.
A separate poll published by Yediot on Monday found that 78 percent of Israelis surveyed think most settlements should be dismantled as part of an agreement with the Palestinians. One out of five surveyed said that no settlements should be touched. That poll had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
The findings followed by a week confrontations in the West Bank between settlers and soldiers who were seeking to dismantle outposts the Israeli government called illegal. At one of the outposts, Havat Gilad, settlers clashed with the army and then rebuilt their camp after the army took it apart.
In a surprise move Monday night, soldiers again dismantled Havat Gilad. Settlers returned there and began setting up new structures today.
--------
Arafat's New Cabinet, With Few New Faces, Is Approved
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/middleeast/30ARAF.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 29 - Yasir Arafat won overwhelming approval for his new cabinet from the Palestinian parliament today, turning back a legislative challenge to his authority that had forced his ministers to resign last month. Meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, the Palestinian Legislative Council voted 56-18 to approve a trimmed-down 19-member cabinet, which included only three new faces. The cabinet is expected to serve until after Palestinian elections, which are scheduled for Jan. 20.
Despite criticism by some reform-minded legislators that provoked angry outbursts from Mr. Arafat, he won the support of council members who had previously contested his appointments and accused his ministers of corruption and incompetence.
The lineup presented by Mr. Arafat strongly resembled the outgoing cabinet, which resigned on Sept. 11 when it faced a no-confidence vote by the legislative council.
The most prominent of the three new members is Hani al-Hassan, a senior member of Fatah and a political adviser to Mr. Arafat, who was named as the new interior minister, responsible for the overhaul of the security forces. Mr. Hassan, 65, replaced Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, one of several ministers appointed by Mr. Arafat last June under heavy American and Israeli pressure to institute reforms.
Some lawmakers said today that despite lingering reservations about the reshuffled cabinet, their vote reflected a desire to rally around Mr. Arafat after efforts by Israel and the United States to sideline him while pressing for sweeping reforms.
The legislators cited a 10-day Israeli siege of Mr. Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah last month, and a new American blueprint for peace that calls for creation of the position of Palestinian prime minister and makes no mention of elections for president, the post Mr. Arafat holds and is expected to retain in any future vote.
Kadura Faris, a legislator from Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction, said that the message reaching lawmakers from rank-and-file party members was clear. "The president is a target now for the United States and the Israelis, we had a siege against the president and we must make every effort to be together with the president and have a government," Mr. Faris said.
Mr. Arafat was reported to have made similar arguments for unity in recent meetings with dissenting Fatah legislators, contending that a vote of no confidence in the his new cabinet would only play into the hands of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, serving his efforts to weaken the Palestinian leader.
"The vote of confidence was a message to everybody everywhere that you will not interfere in our internal affairs, and that we are the ones who will reform our political system, not under obligation from outside," said Dalal Salameh, a Fatah legislator from Nablus.
Yet dissenting voices were heard in the council chamber as some legislators called Mr. Arafat's cabinet lineup a mere reshuffle that kept ministers tainted with corruption in office. The speakers included legislators from the Gaza Strip who spoke to the gathering by video link after they were barred by the Israeli authorities from traveling to Ramallah.
When one outspoken advocate of reforms, Abdel Jawad Saleh, accused the government of corruption, Mr. Arafat lashed out, saying, "I will not allow you to humiliate us." Mr. Arafat tried to silence another legislator who said that the new cabinet was not competent to lead the Palestinians out of their current predicament.
Outside the meeting hall at Mr. Arafat's headquarters, Hanan Ashrawi, another advocate of reforms, told reporters that she would vote against the new cabinet. "I don't believe that this is the proper cabinet that would exhibit real accountability, real efficiency, real professionalism and real dedication to democracy," she said.
In a speech presenting the new cabinet, Mr. Arafat pledged "to continue the reform process in all fields" and assured Israelis that "we want to live alongside you as neighbors."
"We extend our hand to you in reconciliation and we extend the olive branch to resume the path that we began in Madrid and Oslo," Mr. Arafat added, referring to the sites of peace talks that led to the 1993 interim accords on Palestinian self-rule.
When the cabinet was finally approved, Mr. Arafat's supporters burst into applause. "We are proud of our democracy," he said later.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Official Confirms Opiate Used in Theater Raid
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Theater-Raid-Gas.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's top health official said Wednesday that the gas used in the storming of a Moscow theater held by Chechen gunmen was based on fentanyl, a fast-acting opiate with medical applications, Russian news agencies reported.
Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko said the compound was an anesthetic and would not normally cause death, the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported.
``By themselves, these compounds cannot provoke a fatal outcome,'' Shevchenko was quoted as saying.
The announcement appeared to be an attempt to counter criticism that Russian officials were being too secretive and that the lack of information about the gas used in the special forces raid on Saturday may have increased the number of fatalities. At least 117 of the hostage-takers' victims were felled by the gas.
But Shevchenko said the deaths were caused by the use of the chemical compound on people who had been starved of oxygen, were dehydrated, hungry, unable to move adequately and under severe psychological stress.
``It is precisely these factors that led to a fatal outcome for some of the hostages,'' Shevchenko said.
However, injected, skin patch and oral doses of fentanyl sold in the United States carry warnings that the anesthetic can be fatal if administered in too high a dose, and that doses must be customized, taking into account the patients' size and to any previous exposure to similar drugs.
The incapacitating gas was intended to prevent the hostage-takers from triggering explosives strapped to their waists and rigged around the theater. It worked but it also knocked out most of the hostages.
The hostage-takers seized the theater, with more than 800 people inside, on Oct. 23. They demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya, where the most recent war began in 1999.
On Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, said the lack of information provided by Russian authorities ``contributed to the confusion after the immediate operation to rescue the hostages was over.''
``It's clear that perhaps with a little more information at least a few more of the hostages may have survived,'' he said. Dr. Thomas Zilker, a toxicology professor at Munich University Clinic in Germany, said Wednesday that blood and urine samples from two Germans among the former hostages showed traces of halothane, a gas used as an inhaled anesthetic. He said he believed the gas pumped into the theater likely also contained other substances.
Shevchenko defended the actions of medical workers after the storming, saying they had prepared more than 1,000 doses of an antidote that could help victims overcome the effects of the gas.
He did not name the antidote -- and top Moscow doctors who were personally involved in the rescue operation had said earlier in the week that they, too, had not been informed about just what gas had been used.
The effects of opiates like fentanyl can be reversed with the drug naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan. U.S. officials said some of the former hostages had responded to doses of Narcan.
Fentanyl was among drugs that Pennsylvania State University researchers suggested two years ago that the U.S. military explore as weapons to subdue angry mobs. The Pentagon has put such research on hold, however, because of worries that it would violate the international ban on chemical weapons.
Shevchenko adamantly denied that the use of the gas could have violated the Chemical Weapons Treaty.
``I officially declare that chemical compounds that could fall under the authority of the international convention banning chemical weapons were not used during the course of the special operation,'' Shevchenko said.
-------- un
UN Agency Wants to Pick Inspectors
By George Jahn
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, October 30, 2002; 9:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40005-2002Oct30?language=printer
VIENNA, Austria -- The U.N. agency poised to send monitors to search Iraq for signs of illicit nuclear weapons said Wednesday that it should have the sole authority to pick inspectors for its teams.
"It should be left to us in the United Nations to determine the composition of our team, so that the inspectors are perceived as representing the United Nations and not any single member states," said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Gwozdecky spoke to The Associated Press ahead of planned meetings Wednesday between President Bush, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based agency, and chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix. The two were invited to the White House to discuss implementation of the U.S. draft resolution on Iraq, U.N. officials said.
While teams answerable to Blix are responsible for the search for any biological and chemical weapons in Iraq once the green light comes in form of a U.N. Security Council resolution, ElBaradei's agency is in charge of looking for clandestine nuclear arms programs.
It was unclear what prompted the agency to publicly request that it be given a free hand in the composition of its inspection teams. But diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested ElBaradei feared pressure could be exerted on him during the meeting with Bush regarding the composition of the team.
The United States has called for "the most qualified experts available," to be part of inspection teams, leading to some concerns that could lead to insistence that the teams be weighed in favor of Americans and Britons, they said.
Even while holding open the option of going to war against Iraq without U.N. backing unless Baghdad destroys its weapons arsenals, the United States is seeking compromise with other Security Council members on a resolution that would force Iraq to disarm.
France, China and Russia oppose authorizing military action against Baghdad before inspectors determine whether Iraq is ready to cooperate with them.
ElBaradei would make clear in talks with Bush that "he hopes the Council will adopt a ... resolution that will lead to a peaceful resolution of the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," said Gwozdecky.
"We appreciate the opportunity to have whatever influence we may have on the decision-makers in Washington," he said.
The agency has said its inspectors are prepared to return to Iraq within 10 days of Security Council approval of a new resolution broadening and toughening the inspection regime.
The inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes, amid allegations that Baghdad was not cooperating with the teams.
By the end of the 1991 Gulf War, inspectors discovered the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.
Inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents.
-------- us
'Friendly fire' cited in death of soldier
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 30, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021030-42482125.htm
U.S. military investigators have concluded that a U.S. soldier killed at the outset of a major battle against al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan in March was hit by American forces, not hostile mortars as was originally believed, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.
Chief Warrant Officer Stanley L. Harriman, 34, a native of Nixa, Mo., and a member of the Army's Special Forces, was the first of eight Americans killed in Operation Anaconda, the last major battle in Afghanistan. The seven others were killed when two U.S. helicopters took enemy fire from al Qaeda defenders.
The Pentagon originally said Chief Warrant Officer Harriman was killed by enemy mortar fire as his convoy of U.S. and Afghan forces moved into position at the outset of Operation Anaconda on March 2. But a subsequent investigation found that he was hit by gunfire from an Air Force AC-130 gunship that mistook his convoy for enemy forces, the senior official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Details of the investigation report, which is classified because of sensitive information about the AC-130 gunship, have not been made public.
Gen. Tommy Franks, who has run the war in Afghanistan from his Central Command headquarters, told reporters yesterday that the investigation report is in the hands of military lawyers. He said he had not yet seen it.
Another senior official, who discussed the matter on the condition of anonymity, said Central Command has declined to discuss the findings publicly because of sensitivity about the legal implications of "friendly fire" cases.
Two Air Force F-16 pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan in April, killing four Canadians, were charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and dereliction of duty.
Shortly after Chief Warrant Officer Harriman's death, Gen. Franks said he had noticed that reports of a convoy of U.S. and Afghan forces coming under fire roughly coincided with reports of an AC-130 gunship attacking an enemy convoy. He ordered an investigation. He said yesterday that he will review the investigators' report when it reaches his desk.
----
Gen. Franks to Oversee New Gulf Post
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Oct 30, 2002 11:01 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ_MILITARY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Franks says he would prefer to go to war in Iraq with an international coalition backed by the United Nations. (Audio)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The military command that would run a war against Iraq is preparing to set up shop in the Persian Gulf for at least a few weeks to test communications links with key battle staffs in the area.
The move, described by officials as an exercise, could prove more lasting if President Bush approves a military plan to disarm Iraq, officials said. Gen. Tommy Franks, the commanding general of Central Command, said Tuesday he will oversee the command post at al-Udeid air base in Qatar for a week or so in early December.
"Does it give us increased capability? You bet," Franks told a Pentagon news conference.
Franks said that while Bush has not decided whether to use military force against Iraq, U.S. troops are prepared to carry out whatever mission they are given.
"In fact, that's what our planning activity is all about," he said.
Franks, whose headquarters is in Tampa, Fla., was in Washington to meet with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Franks said they discussed his recent visit to the Gulf region.
Asked to comment on the uncertainty over resuming United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq, and whether the Bush administration would attack Iraq without full U.N. backing, Franks said the "best case" would be to build an international coalition of forces to take on Iraq.
"My sense is that we have a great many friends, partners and allies who see the situation the same way we do. And I'll leave it at that," he said.
Asked for his assessment of whether Iraq has ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, Franks said he cared less about that than the potential for Iraq to provide weapons of mass destruction to any number of terrorist groups.
"The linkages between the government of Iraq and other transnational terrorist organizations like al-Qaida is not the issue with me," he said. "The issue is the potential of a state with weapons of mass destruction passing those weapons of mass destruction to proven terrorist capability. And I believe that that risk exists."
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday to attend a joint planning committee meeting with other U.S. officials and their Saudi counterparts. Also at the talks were Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; U.S. ambassador Bob Jordan; and Lincoln Bloomfield, the assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.
U.S. forces at Prince Sultan Air Base in central Saudi Arabia maintain an elaborate air command center that could be used to coordinate strikes against Iraq. Because it is not clear whether the Saudi government would allow that, Franks has established a similar capability at al-Udeid air base in neighboring Qatar.
Starting in late November, Central Command will pack up and ship to al-Udeid a set of modular buildings and communications equipment that are designed to replicate the command functions of Franks' permanent headquarters in Florida.
The deployable command post will be used in an exercise in early December called Internal Look, Franks said. It will test communications links with the land, sea and air components that comprise Central Command forces in the Gulf region - namely, Army commanders in Kuwait, air commanders in Saudi Arabia and the Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Between 600 and 1,000 troops will operate the command post at al-Udeid, which already is hosting more than 3,000 U.S. troops and numerous support aircraft. Franks said he has not yet decided whether the command post and its staff would return to Florida when the Internal Look exercise is finished in mid-December.
On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil
Central Command: http://www.centcom.mil
-------- propaganda wars
Combat Class Offered to Journalists
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Media-Training.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is offering to train journalists in the basics of military combat as part of its contingency planning for media coverage of a possible war with Iraq.
Details of the one-week training sessions are being worked out, but Pentagon officials said Wednesday the training would be led by each military service.
Journalists would learn about military customs, ammunitions, basic first aid and how to protect themselves in the event of nuclear, chemical and biological attack. They also would learn about the rules of engagement, the U.S. command structure and military customs, according to a memo sent to bureau chiefs in Washington.
In a meeting with news managers Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the training would provide a measure of confidence for commanders that journalists would not hinder their operations. He said the training was not a prerequisite for joining a military unit and neither was it a guarantee of access.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said it was ``generally almost always helpful'' to provide access for journalists, though he added ``there are times when it is not appropriate.''
Pentagon officials maintained that U.S. officials have yet to make any decisions about starting any battles with Iraq. But Whitman also said the Pentagon was committed to embedding reporters with military units early, if there is a conflict with Iraq.
``We think this training is an excellent idea. AP journalists will benefit from it, and the commanders will become more comfortable with the media,'' said Mike Silverman, managing editor of The Associated Press. ``If there is a war with Iraq, we hope the Pentagon will allow journalists to move quickly into the theater and embed with military units at the front.''
--------
White House Welcomes Radio Hosts
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Radio.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six days before Election Day, the White House opened its gates Wednesday to talk radio hosts, staging an invitation-only North Lawn gabfest that gave the select few direct access to Bush administration officials.
Democrats complained that the event favored conservative radio programs and was just the latest example of Bush's willingness to use every tool at his disposal to influence next Tuesday's elections by getting out the conservative vote.
About 50 radio talk shows and news programs participated in ``Radio Day,'' held under a vast, heated tent just outside the White House's front door from 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on a cold, rainy day. Most of the shows broadcast live from the North Lawn, with the rest using material from stringers or correspondents.
Made available to them for brief interviews: Cabinet secretaries, senior Bush administration officials and White House staff. Not made available, even for hellos and handshakes: President Bush himself.
Shrugging off the timing as mere coincidence, the White House denied any political motive for the special-invitation talkfest. Taylor Gross, the press office staffer who organized the event, said it was long in the making and designed to give access where it is rarely granted.
``These are people who do not get to come to the White House, who do not get to talk to Cabinet secretaries or senior officials,'' Gross said. ``I just don't see a political component to it at all. ... This is the people's house.''
Those chosen came from across the political spectrum, from liberal to conservative to just-the-news neutral, Gross said.
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri found the White House explanation lacking, saying the event represented an inappropriate mixing of the official and political with the overt purpose of promoting the Republican Party's agenda.
``I don't find that believable,'' she said. ``First of all, there just aren't that many liberal talk show hosts, that's the sad fact. ... It's clear that the White House's Radio Day is a thinly veiled get-out-the-vote effort.''
Though a few regular White House radio news correspondents were in the mix, the Bush administration was not allowing reporters access to the event until late afternoon.
Those participating included such syndicated conservative hosts as Oliver North and Sean Hannity; the John Boy and Billy show out of Charlotte, N.C.; WTMJ in Wisconsin and KERN in Bakersfield, Calif.; and Nashville, Tenn. host Steve Gill.
They were selected from a White House list of shows that have requested just this kind of access, regular callers for comment and interviews, and suggestions from industry wags, Gross said.
By midday, guests had already included Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, and Bush top political adviser Karl Rove.
President Clinton held a similar event in 1993 to promote his health care proposals.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
SUSPECT 'Enemy Combatant' Fights to Obtain Counsel
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/national/30BOMB.html
Lawyers for Jose Padilla, the man accused of plotting to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States, argued to a federal judge in New York yesterday that the government should not be allowed to deny his right to counsel "merely by transferring his custody to another branch of the government."
In a filing in United States District Court in Manhattan, the lawyers also asked the judge to order that they be allowed to meet with Mr. Padilla so they can consult with him about his case.
Mr. Padilla, an American who was initially charged as a material witness, was declared an enemy combatant by President Bush in June and placed in military custody. Since then, he has been held in a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he has been allowed no contact with his lawyers.
The government, meanwhile, argued in an earlier filing on Monday that Mr. Padilla, who is also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, has no right to counsel because he is being detained solely as an enemy combatant in wartime. "His detention as an enemy combatant is in no sense `criminal,' and it has no penal consequences whatsoever," the government said.
The further debate on Mr. Padilla's right to counsel came at the request of the judge, Michael B. Mukasey, who is considering a petition filed on Mr. Padilla's behalf seeking to test the legality of his detention.
The government has taken a similar stand against the right to counsel for the other American designated an enemy combatant, Yasser Esam Hamdi, who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and is being held in solitary confinement in Virginia.
But Mr. Padilla's case is different in that he was taken into custody in the United States and had a lawyer, in the material witness case, before he was moved into military custody.
The government argues in its brief that recognizing a right to counsel "would jeopardize the two core purposes of detaining enemy combatants - gathering intelligence about the enemy, and preventing the detainee from aiding in any further attacks against America." A lawyer could also become an unwitting conduit for transmitting information that could damage national security, the government said.
The government brief was submitted by the United States attorney in Manhattan, James B. Comey, and Paul D. Clement, deputy solicitor general.
Both sides also made further submissions about whether the judge should read a classified document that is said to lay out the case against Mr. Padilla. The government has not given the document to Mr. Padilla's lawyers, but it has released an unclassified version, which it says "is more than sufficient" to establish that Mr. Padilla was properly designated as an enemy combatant. But, the government says, the judge should be able to review the full set of facts.
Mr. Padilla's lawyers argued in their filing that Judge Mukasey should not review the classified version, nor should he base a decision on either version unless the lawyers are allowed to consult with Mr. Padilla and get his response. "Jose Padilla should be granted the fundamental right to have his voice heard by this court," they wrote.
----
Washington Jail Fined for Hazwaste Violations
October 30, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-30-09.asp#anchor5
SPOKANE, Washington, A penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington, has been fined $54,000 for long time violations of hazardous waste rules.
After seeing several violations of hazardous waste rules go uncorrected for many years, the state Department of Ecology (Ecology) decided to fine the state Department of Corrections for problems at the Walla Walla facility. The penitentiary failed to properly manage its dangerous wastes, such as paints, used oil, anti-freeze, dental wastes and solvents, Ecology said.
According to inspection reports, the waste was not "clearly and correctly" labeled, some of it was being illegally stored, and by law some should have been removed from the facility for proper disposal. In addition, the prison failed to conduct proper inspections of its dangerous waste, and the penitentiary staff had not been trained to handle dangerous waste.
"We worked for several years with the penitentiary to help the management understand and comply with the rules," said Greg Sorlie who manages the state's hazardous waste program. "We need the Department of Corrections to take these matters very seriously and bring them way up on the priority list."
Along with the $54,000 penalty, the Department of Corrections was ordered to take immediate steps to remedy the violations. For example, all containers must be properly labeled, inspections must be scheduled, and hazardous waste must be sent to proper treatment, storage or disposal facilities.
"The Department of Corrections and the penitentiary take the Department of Ecology report and findings very seriously," said prison superintendent Richard Morgan. "Compliance is a foremost priority for us. We will be working closely with Ecology and staff from [the Department of] Corrections to meet environmental regulations and correct deficiencies."
-------- customs
U.S. Requires Sea Cargo Details
October 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Customs-Cargo.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Customs Service will require sea carriers to provide details of the contents of sea containers destined for this country 24 hours before the cargo is loaded onto ships at foreign ports.
The new rule, announced Wednesday, marks the agency's latest effort to prevent terrorists from bringing nuclear and other deadly weapons into the United States.
``Terrorist organizations pose an immediate and substantial threat to the global trading system,'' said Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner. ``With this rule, customs can better protect the American people and the global trading system as a whole from the threat of nuclear terror using sea containers.''
Companies that fail to provide accurate manifest information 24 hours before loading would be subject to fines, under the rule. Bonner, however, has said customs also can prevent a company from unloading a cargo container, an option at its disposal to penalize violators.
Taking a more drastic step of barring a noncompliant sea carrier from entering a U.S. port would be ``highly unlikely,'' said customs spokesman Dennis Murphy.
Currently, many U.S. and foreign sea carriers voluntarily give customs advance cargo information, but customs may not get the information until a few days before a ship carrying the cargo reaches a U.S. port, Bonner said in a recent interview.
Sea carriers are companies that own container ships, such as Maersk Sealand, Murphy said. They won't have to comply with the new rule until early next year, giving them time to work with customs on implementing the requirement, the agency said.
Customs said the regulation won't apply to ships carrying bulk cargo, such as oil, grain, coal or lumber.
The agency said it needs timely and accurate manifest information to effectively evaluate and identify cargo that may pose a risk to U.S. security.
That information also is crucial to another cargo security effort spearheaded by Bonner -- the customs container security initiative -- which plays a key role in President Bush's homeland security strategy.
Under that initiative, U.S. customs officers, stationed at select foreign seaports, screen high-risk U.S. bound cargo containers before they leave port. Japan, China, Singapore and Germany are among the countries that have agreed to participate in the program.
With 5.7 million cargo containers entering U.S. seaports each year, customs says it is critically important to prevent terrorists from using sea containers to smuggle nuclear, chemical, biological or other deadly weapons into this country.
Some of the manifest information that would have to be provided in advance includes a precise description of each container's contents, date of scheduled arrival in the United States, the foreign port of departure, shipper's name and address and vessel name and number, said Murphy.
On the Net:
Customs Service: http://www.customs.gov
-------- drug war
Court backs doctors on medicinal marijuana
October 30, 2002
Associated Press
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021030-31727713.htm
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled for the first time yesterday that the government cannot revoke doctors' prescription licenses for recommending marijuana to sick patients.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled the Justice Department's policy interferes with the free-speech rights of doctors and patients.
"An integral component of the practice of medicine is the communication between doctor and a patient. Physicians must be able to speak frankly and openly to patients," Chief Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder said.
The 9th Circuit upheld a 2-year-old court order prohibiting the government from revoking licenses to prescribe medication.
The dispute is one of several cases resulting from medical-marijuana laws on the books in eight states.
Federal prosecutors argued that doctors who recommend marijuana are interfering with the drug war and challenging the government's determination that marijuana has no medical benefits.
Graham Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, had urged the judges to preserve the sanctity of doctor-patient interactions. "That is speech that is protected by the First Amendment," he argued.
The case was brought by patients' rights groups and doctors, including Neil Flynn of the University of California at Davis, who said marijuana may help some patients but that doctors have been fearful of recommending it.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup responded by prohibiting the Justice Department from revoking Drug Enforcement Administration licenses to dispense medication "merely because the doctor recommends medical marijuana to a patient based on a sincere medical judgment." Judge Alsup's order also prevented federal agents "from initiating any investigation solely on that ground."
The case was an outgrowth of a measure approved by California voters in 1996. It allows patients to use marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.
Following the measure's passage, the Clinton administration said doctors who recommend marijuana would lose their federal licenses to prescribe medicine, could be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid programs, and could face criminal charges. The Bush administration has continued the fight.
Other states with medicinal-marijuana laws include Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court said clubs that sell marijuana to the sick with a doctor's recommendation are breaking federal drug laws.
Pot clubs continue to operate, including several in San Francisco, as local authorities look the other way. But federal officials have raided many clubs in California, the state where they are more prevalent.
One case challenging such raids is pending before the 9th Circuit. That case, brought by an Oakland, Calif., pot club, argues that states have the right to experiment with their own drug laws and that Americans have a fundamental right to use marijuana as an avenue to pain relief.
--------
Medical Marijuana Wins a Court Victory
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/national/30POT.html
A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled yesterday that the federal government may not revoke the licenses of doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, is the biggest legal victory yet for voter initiatives in nine states that legalized marijuana for medical purposes. It upholds a five-year-old lower-court decision that blocked the government's efforts to frustrate a 1996 initiative in California.
There was no immediate word if the government would appeal yesterday's ruling. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration said only that the government was reviewing the decision.
In prohibiting the government from enforcing the policy, the appeals court, one of the most liberal in the nation, entered a complex and heated debate at the intersection of medical science, the First Amendment rights of doctors and patients, and federal power over the states.
"This is one of those big culture-war decisions," said Graham A. Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented the plaintiffs.
The judges accepted every major argument offered by the plaintiffs, who are California doctors and patients with serious illnesses.
The California law, Proposition 215, allows patients to grow and possess marijuana so long as they have a doctor's written or oral recommendation. It says doctors may not be punished for making such a recommendation.
Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have similar laws; all but Maine and Colorado are in the Ninth Circuit. Rather than focusing on doctors, federal efforts to override state medical marijuana initiatives have generally taken the form of raids on marijuana clubs and collectives, mostly in California.
Yesterday's decision, written by Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder, held that the policy effectively prohibited candid discussions between doctors and patients, in violation of the First Amendment.
"Physicians must be able to speak frankly and openly to patients," the court said.
Quoting Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, Judge Schroeder added that federal courts should defer to the states in "situations in which the citizens of a state have chosen to serve as a laboratory in the trial of novel social and economic experiments."
Judge Schroeder was joined by Judge Betty B. Fletcher, who like her was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, and by Judge Alex Kozinski, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Boyd of the A.C.L.U. said that because patients in California and elsewhere may use medical marijuana only with a doctor's recommendation, the federal policy could have frustrated all medical marijuana initiatives.
"This is really the central issue in medical marijuana," he said.
The appeals court held that a recommendation is not a prescription. A doctor actually prescribing marijuana, the panel said, "would be guilty of aiding and abetting in violation of federal law."
Dispensing information rather than drugs, the court held, is protected by the First Amendment. The court rejected the government's argument that "a doctor's `recommendation' of marijuana may encourage illegal conduct by the patient." It called the link between the prohibited speech and criminal conduct "too attenuated."
Vikram Amar, a law professor at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, said that aspects of yesterday's decision were too sweeping.
"The big flaw in the majority's First Amendment argument," he said, "is that it doesn't acknowledge that the government has traditionally been allowed to regulate the professions without violating the First Amendment."
Professor Amar also criticized another aspect of the decision, which forbade the government to investigate doctors on the basis of their recommendations.
"The idea that you can't initiate an investigation based on an invocation of the First Amendment is bizarre," he said.
Judge Kozinski, in a concurring opinion, said that doctors would have had much to lose and little to gain by violating the government's policy.
"They may destroy their careers and lose their livelihoods," he wrote. "Only the most foolish or committed of doctors will defy the federal government's policy and continue to give patients candid advice about the medical uses of marijuana."
Judge Kozinski described what he called "a legitimate and growing division of informed opinion" on the medical usefulness of marijuana.
He cited reports by the National Academy of Sciences, the Canadian government and the British House of Lords ("a body not known for its wild and crazy views," the judge noted) concluding that marijuana has at least potential medical uses in controlling pain and nausea and in stimulating the appetite.
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the decision took issue with a particularly intrusive form of federal interference with state law.
"They are really making it impossible for the state to implement its own regulatory scheme," he said of the federal government's policy.
Keith Vines, an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, is one of the plaintiffs. In 1993, he developed wasting syndrome, a little understood metabolic change associated with H.I.V. infection that caused his weight to drop from 195 pounds to 145 pounds. "I was a patient facing death desperately looking for an option," he said.
After Proposition 215 passed in 1996, Mr. Vines discussed marijuana with his doctor. She recommended it, and he found it helped his appetite.
"It was a miracle," he said. "My weight came back."
Mr. Vines, who prosecuted one of the largest marijuana cases in California history and says he opposes recreational use of the drug, was pleased by yesterday's decision.
"The decision today is of really great practical importance," he said. "The federal government has no business telling doctors what they can and can't say."
-------- immigration
Since Attacks, U.S. Admits Fewer Refugees
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/international/americas/30REFU.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - The number of refugees admitted to the United States declined sharply in the 2002 fiscal year because security concerns stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks bogged down the screening process, State Department officials say.
The Bush administration has rejected calls from refugee advocates and a bipartisan group of lawmakers to make up for the shortfall in the federal refugee resettlement program, which officials concede marks the biggest drop in two decades.
The United States had allocated space and money for up to 70,000 refugees for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1, 2001, but it admitted only 27,113, sacrificing 61 percent of the slots, the officials said. In the previous year, Washington took in 68,426 refugees.
For this year, President Bush this month approved a ceiling of 70,000 refugees, but he designated only 50,000 slots for people from specific regions. He held the rest in reserve for contingencies that may or may not put them to use.
"It's very distressing and at the same time it's somewhat understandable," said Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International. While refugee advocates sympathized with the administration's need to protect against terrorist infiltrators, he said, "The system clearly didn't work this year."
A bipartisan group of 41 lawmakers, including the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate subcommittee that handles refugees, wrote to the president last month asking for 100,000 slots for the new fiscal year.
"Tens of thousands of refugees have been stranded overseas in places of danger or squalid refugee camps, and have not been able to find a new secure future in the United States during this past year," the lawmakers said. "These unused spaces are in essence like unused lifeboats on a sinking ship."
By law, the president each year provides a limit on the number of refugees who may be resettled in the United States as well as a region-by-region breakdown. Slots that are not used in one year do not carry over into the next.
But the White House rebuffed the lawmakers, and State Department officials, who administer refugee resettlement in tandem with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said they are hamstrung by logistical difficulties.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the resettlement program was halted for two months, as officials adopted new security measures, like running all applicants' names through intelligence and law enforcement data bases, fingerprinting applicants and setting up secure procedures for flying in the new arrivals.
The program was further hampered last year by an inability of I.N.S. workers to conduct on-site interviews in some countries because of security concerns. In a report to Congress this month, the State Department described problems slowing the processing of refugees, including "deteriorating security conditions in refugee camps, the inadequacy of medical facilities required to conduct thorough medical screenings, and concern about integrity, including fraud and corruption."
State Department officials said they are addressing the problems by hiring more screeners, cracking down on fraud and expanding the number of interview sites at a cost of nearly $20 million.
"Our No. 1 goal, obviously, is to protect the American public, but at the same time, continue this generous program," said a department spokeswoman, who asked not to be named. "We are confident that the steps we've taken to address the processing complexities have laid the groundwork for smoother processing in the future."
Refugee advocates question whether their clients should be processed through the same immigration and security procedures used for foreign businessmen and other travelers. The F.B.I. and the Central Intelligence Agency have been overwhelmed with background checks, delaying visas for months. But refugees, the advocates say, are already among the most closely vetted of immigrants, and many of them are in desperate circumstances.
To qualify for refugee status, an applicant must show "a well-founded fear of persecution" on the basis of race, religion, nationality or social or political affiliations.
Estimates of the number of refugees fluctuate between 12 million and 15 million. Among the most vulnerable populations are Burmese in Thailand, Sudanese Christians in Kenya, Sierra Leoneans and Liberians in Guinea, religious minorities in the former Soviet Union and Iraqis in Saudi Arabia, officials said.
The administration's allocation for 2003 would grant the greatest number of slots to Africans. It sets a ceiling of 20,000 from Africa; 4,000 from East Asia; 2,500 from Eastern Europe; 14,000 from the former Soviet Union; 2,500 from Latin America and the Caribbean; 7,000 from the Middle East and South Asia. In addition, there are 20,000 contingency spaces.
Some critics in Congress say such numbers are stingy. The United States is still the world leader in admitting refugees, but, despite relatively steady demand, the number of admissions has declined from a high point of 132,173 in 1992.
"A reduction in refugee admissions represents substantial human hardship, and it undermines the leadership role of the United States in the world community," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusets Democrat who chairs the subcommittee that oversees refugee resettlement.
Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who is the subcommittee's ranking member, said the administration cannot expect other countries to take in refugees if the United States does not take a leadership role.
"I don't think we're providing the example to the world we should," Mr. Brownback said. "Look what we ask other countries to do. We ask Pakistan not to turn back Afghan refugees. We ask China not to send back North Korean refugees. We need to be willing to step forward as an example."
Refugee groups say that other nations that have a tradition of welcoming refugees are also beginning to cut back on their admissions. Australia, Canada and Western European nations are scaling back because of a combination of security jitters, lackluster economies and a public that is increasingly hostile to immigration, according to Joung-ah Paula Ghedini, a spokeswoman for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.
The world "has become much less friendly toward accepting refugees," Ms. Ghedini said. "We need to remind ourselves that these people are fleeing incredibly horrific circumstances."
--------
As Cameras Roll, Haitians Dash From Stranded Boat to Florida Shore
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By DANA CANEDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/national/30MIGR.html
MIAMI, Oct. 29 - About 200 Haitian refugees jumped off a stranded wooden freighter this afternoon into the shallows off Key Biscayne, lunging through chest-deep water in a scramble to evade the Coast Guard and the police and to complete their desperate journey to Miami.
With news helicopters capturing them live on national television, dozens of Haitians, many in their Sunday best, flooded onto a causeway leading to Miami, about a mile away, as police officers converged. Many refugees tried to jump into passing cars and pickup trucks, begging for rides.
Parents dropped children from the boat into the arms of other refugees and rescue workers. A pregnant refugee was taken to the hospital, the police said.
The boat arrived about 3:30 p.m. just off the Rickenbacker Causeway, which links Miami to Key Biscayne, an affluent barrier island community. The Miami police closed the causeway for about two hours, clogging rush-hour traffic as they searched for refugees under a bridge and in bushes.
"A lot of them were trying to get off the bridge and use any vehicle at their disposal to do so," said Delrish Moss, a police spokesman. "We will never know how many got away."
At a makeshift command post, officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service processed dozens of detained Haitians, many wrapped in yellow blankets. The refugees were put on buses and taken to detention centers. Coast Guard representatives said that the Haitians were generally in good health but that some suffered from dehydration. None were believed to have drowned.
Petty Officer Anastasia Burns said the Coast Guard had two aircraft and 12 vessels trying to find refugees. "We're doing a search of the entire area to make sure no people are left on the water that we may have missed," Petty Officer Burns said. "We are conducting a search effort to make sure we've rescued everyone. We have no reports of injuries or fatalities yet."
When asked how a boat full of Haitians could have come so close to shore without being detected, a Coast Guard spokesman said the freighter was typical of those that clog the shipping lanes off Miami, and thus did not stand out the way an overcrowded passenger boat or raft might have.
One of Haitians, Yolette Baptiste, a woman with two children, said she had paid someone to make the trip. "We were at sea for eight days," Ms. Baptiste said in Creole just before a police officer ordered her onto a bus.
Witnesses described watching a heart-wrenching struggle for freedom. "It was very frightening to see," said Mayra Vidal, 44, who lives on Key Biscayne and was driving on the causeway when she spotted the boat. Ms. Vidal said the children caught her attention, and one in particular "stuck out in my mind."
"This little girl in a party dress with two bows in her hair," she said. "It broke my heart. They dressed her up to celebrate."
Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women in Miami, a Haitian advocacy group, described similar scenes. "The children that we saw were shivering, cold and hungry," Ms. Bastien said.
In Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, people took to the streets with signs demanding that the detainees be allowed to remain in the United States.
That is unlikely. Under a Bush administrative directive that does not apply to refugees of any other nationality, Haitians seeking political asylum are held in detention centers pending the dispositions of their cases. All others are to be returned to Haiti.
Civil rights advocates and a growing number of lawmakers from both parties have criticized the policy as discriminatory. The immigrants' advocates said that today's events were powerful evidence of just how dire life in Haiti had become.
"Haitians will still risk their lives to make it here because things out there are so bad," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "It's very difficult for them to apply for political asylum, and it's very unfair. Fortunately, Cubans don't have to go through that."
By United States law, Cubans picked up at sea are returned to their country, but those who make it ashore are permitted to remain.
Immigration service officials did not return calls for comment today, but the agency has long said that the policy of detaining the Haitians is necessary to deter thousands from taking to sea in rickety rafts and flooding South Florida, or dying en route.
-------- terrorism
C.I.A. Warns of Net Terror Threat
October 29, 2002
Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer,,
CNET News.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1023-963771.html
Al-Qaida is not the only terrorist network hoping to wreak havoc on the United States through "cyberwarfare," the CIA says.
America's spooks have named Sunni extremists, Hezbollah and Aleph--formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo--as other top threats.
"These groups have both the intentions and the desire to develop some of the cyberskills necessary to forge an effective cyberattack modus operandi," the CIA said in a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The CIA's report, which responds to a list of questions from senators, also says that scientific data posted online aids terrorists: "Terrorist groups worldwide have ready access to information on unconventional weapons, including nuclear weapons, via the Internet."
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, government pressure to self-censor scientific information has grown. It prompted the presidents of the National Academies to say in a statement on Oct. 18 that "restrictions are clearly needed to safeguard strategic secrets, but openness also is needed to accelerate the progress of technical knowledge and enhance the nation's understanding of potential threats."
"Aleph, formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo, is the terrorist group that places the highest level of importance on developing cyberskills," said the CIA report prepared by Stanley Moskowitz, the agency's director of congressional affairs. "These could be applied to cyberattacks against the U.S. This group identifies itself as a cybercult and derives millions of dollars a year from computer retailing."
The Aum Shinrikyo religious group carried out the deadly nerve gas attack in a Tokyo subway in 1995, which killed 12 people and sent more than 5,000 to hospitals. The group is a doomsday cult that believes the end of the world is near.
The CIA report, along with two others from the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency, were prepared in March and April but were not made public by the Senate until this month.
In September, the White House released a 64-page report on securing networks and thwarting "cyberterrorism." Richard Clarke, an adviser to President Bush, said at the time: "We rely on cyberspace, and it is not yet secure. We know the vulnerabilities, and we know the solutions. Let us all work together."
In the past, some intelligence officials have been criticized for being overly alarmist. At an unclassified hearing in February 2001, Adm. Tom Wilson, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, predicted that Fidel Castro might be preparing a cyberattack against the United States.
Wilson told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Castro's armed forces could initiate an "information warfare or computer network attack" that could "disrupt our military."
Castro denied the charge as "craziness," saying his nation did not have the technical ability to succeed in such an attack even if it wanted to launch one.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Hybrid Vehicles Lead Fuel Efficiency Ratings
October 30, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-30-09.asp#anchor1
WASHINGTON, DC, For the third year in a row, the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius hybrid electric vehicles are the fuel economy leaders in annual ratings of new vehicle fuel efficiency.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the 28th annual miles per gallon (mpg) estimates for 2003 passenger vehicles on Tuesday, offering consumers important information on the energy efficiency and pollution emissions of new cars and trucks.
"The fuel economy guide allows consumers to make informed purchasing decisions about what kind of gas mileage a new vehicle gets during normal usage," said Whitman. "By choosing more efficient models, people will not only save themselves money at the pump, they will help improve the quality of our environment. I believe that when people are provided the information this guide contains, they will make smart decisions that benefit both their checkbook and the air we all breathe."
Besides the hybrid Honda Insight and Toyota Prius, the top rated fuel efficient vehicles include the Honda Civic Hybrid and several diesel Volkswagen models. The Toyota Echo is the only gasoline fueled vehicle to have made the top 10 list for fuel efficiency.
The 2003 model vehicles with the lowest fuel economy are generally luxury class vehicles, including several Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari, and Maserati models, the Lamborghini L-147, and several large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.
A joint EPA and Department of Energy web site, http://www.fueleconomy.gov, provides detailed information on vehicle fuel economy, including a complete version of the Fuel Economy Guide. The site includes fuel economy information going back to 1985, which can be helpful for buying used cars.
The website also includes emissions and safety data for model year 2003 vehicles as well as fuel saving tips for drivers. The printed version of the "2003 Fuel Economy Guide" will be available at car dealerships, public libraries and credit unions later this fall.
"The DOE and EPA have joined forces to provide clear, unbiased information to help car buyers choose the most fuel efficient vehicle that meets their needs," Abraham said. "By driving a more fuel efficient vehicle, a vehicle powered by alternative fuels, or even by driving our current vehicles more efficiently, we can all do our part to reduce our nation's reliance on imported oil and strengthen our energy security."
Federal fuel economy estimates are determined by averaging numbers gathered through tests conducted by manufacturers and verified by the EPA. Vehicles are tested in a controlled setting and the results are adjusted to reflect actual driving conditions.
All vehicles are tested in the same way so consumers can compare the results when choosing a vehicle type or class. The miles per gallon ratings appear on window stickers on all new cars and light trucks prior to sale.
The EPA has also posted the 2003 models on the Green Vehicle Guide website to give consumers a full picture of fuel economy and automobile emissions. Consumers can use this guide to locate the cleanest and most fuel efficient vehicle that meets their needs. The green vehicles guide is at: http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles
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Hoarding the world's oil: A new Bush family value?
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002
From: jane stillwater <jpstillwater@yahoo.com>
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Is getting a stranglehold on the world's oil an appropriate family value? What do you think? If the Bush family held a monopoly on the world's oil supply and hoarded it and used it to control the world, would you perhaps consider that a tad bit pushy?
Would Europe, Japan, China, Latin America and Cleveland think it a bit...ur...impolite...to be held in a stranglehold for oil?
If the Bush family were to get their hands on Iraq's oil fields, combine them with their control of the Saudi fields and dominate the world's oil supply, would they be tempted to perhaps squeeze us for every penny we own? Surely not!
Having gained control of the world's oil, do you think the Bush family would be able to use their power benevolently? Would they be able to resist doing to the world what Enron did to California? Surely they would use their awesome powers to help the poor and educate children and bring the world (especially America) decent medical care! Surely they would.
"Gee, Ashley," I said to my teenage daughter this morning, "everything the Bushes have done in the past 20 years -- from Alaska to Venezuela -- suddenly makes sense to me. They want to get a stranglehold on the world's oil!"
"I hate to burst your bubble," replied young Ashley, "but everybody already knows that." Wow! America knows that? Then all us Americans must have faith that the Bush family won't just cut off our supply of democracy, free trade, civil rights, SUV's and oil if we don't do what they say. How touching! Or maybe Americans think that the Bush family will make them honorary cousins and cut them in on the deal? Or maybe Americans think that world domination will have a calming effect on the Bushes.
It's always good to be optimistic.
Go Poppy! Go Jeb! Go Dubya!
Best regards, Jane Stillwater, Berkeley, CA
"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!" Plus it would help the Bush family upgrade their family values.
-------- environment
Superfund Cleanups Underfunded and Slowing
October 30, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-30-09.asp#anchor2
WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to provide a single dollar of funding to clean up 32 Superfund sites across the nation, shows a report by the agency's office of the inspector general.
According to the Inspector General report, regional EPA offices requested cleanup funds for 81 high priority remedial waste sites, but the EPA refused to fund 20 sites, including seven listed as a top priority by the National Risk-Based Priority Panel. Remedial sites are those that need construction work such as building removal to stabilize the site and prevent additional pollutant seepage.
In addition to the sites receiving zero funding, the EPA only partially funded another 35 sites, meaning that 55 of the 81 high priority waste sites received less funding than needed to make them safe.
The report also revealed that another 12 long term response sites are not being funded at all, and 19 long term sites are being funded inadequately. These response sites, with ongoing operating and maintenance activities, were denied 43 percent of the funding requested, putting communities where cleanups are close to completion at risk of recontamination.
The funding slowdown means more health and environmental risks for nearby communities. For example, copper wastes are continuing to pollute a stream near the Elizabeth Mine site in Vermont, and pollution from the Atlas Tack site in Massachusetts is damaging wetlands.
"Many of the sites that have received no funding are in communities that have waited years for corporate polluters to clean up their messes. It is unjust to force these people to wait any longer," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club environmental quality program.
The Sierra Club said the best solution is to restore the polluter pays principle to give the government enough money to clean up these toxic sites. Since the Superfund law was signed in 1980, Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton all supported a tax on chemical and oil companies that funds cleanup of sites on the National Priority List or Superfund list.
But this tax expired in 1995, and Congress has refused to renew it. In 1996, the Superfund trust fund had a balance of $3.8 billion collected from polluters for cleanups. Next year, the fund is projected to contain just $28 million, shifting the clean up costs to taxpayers.
"By letting polluters off the hook and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for cleaning up toxic waste sites, the Bush Administration is leaving our communities at risk from toxic waste," Hopkins said. "Families shouldn't have to worry about toxic waste festering near their homes. This report shows that Americans families are paying a terrible price for the Bush Administration's decision to turn its back on the sensible, obvious solution: Make the polluters pay."
The Inspector General report also documents that the EPA's effort to clean up toxic waste sites is slowing under the Bush administration. The EPA completed construction on only 47 sites in 2001, far fewer than the 75 it projected and just over half of the 87 achieved in 2000.
The Inspector General report is available at: http://www.epa.gov/oigearth/ereading_room/boxer.pdf
----
New Initiative Explores Threats to Aging Population
October 30, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-30-09.asp#anchor7
WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing an Aging Initiative that will examine and prioritize environmental health threats to older persons.
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman met with the heads of the nation's leading aging organizations on Tuesday to announce the new initiative, which will examine the impact that a growing older population will have on ecosystems as well as encourage older persons to volunteer in their own communities to reduce hazards and protect the environment for future generations.
This will be the first coordinated approach by the agency to address environmental hazards that affect the health of the elderly, and to encourage older persons to volunteer in their communities to reduce hazards and protect the environment for future generations. Thirty-five different organizations were represented at Tuesday's meeting.
"Protecting the health of older Americans must be one of EPA's priorities," said Whitman. "There is much we can do together to make older persons and their families aware of - and safe from - environmental hazards that may impact their health and quality of life."
Speaking on behalf of the 50 member Leadership Council of Aging Organizations (LCAO), president and CEO of the National Council on the Aging James Firman said, "We commend the EPA for focusing on the health and safety of older Americans. We know many LCAO members will want to work with the EPA to educate seniors about such threats and promote civic engagement of seniors nationwide in combating these problems."
There are now 35 million people in the United States aged 65 years and older, and that number is expected to double over the next 30 years. In 2011, the first of the baby boomers will begin to turn 65.
Among older Americans there is an increasing number who are at risk of chronic diseases and disabling conditions that may be caused or exacerbated by environmental conditions. Hazards that may impact the health of older Americans are lead, indoor and outdoor air pollution, microorganisms in water and pesticides.
In December, the National Academy of Sciences will hold a workshop in Washington, DC, to examine the susceptibility of older persons to environmental health hazards, and what interventions can be undertaken to reduce the exposure to these hazards.
The Aging Initiative will draw on the expertise of professionals and researchers at the federal, state and local levels in the fields of environment and health. The EPA will also work with the public and service provider organizations dealing with the aging population.
Whitman announced that public meetings to get input for the Initiative would be held in the spring in California, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, DC.
-------- genetics
Gene-Mappers Take New Aim at Diseases
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/health/30GENO.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - A $100 million project to develop a new kind of map of the human genome was announced today by an international consortium. Its goal is to hasten discovery of the variant genes thought to underlie common human diseases like diabetes, asthma and cancer.
The consortium includes government agencies from Japan, China and Canada, and a medical charity, the Wellcome Trust of London. Its largest contributor, from the United States, is the National Institutes of Health, which is investing $39 million over the project's three years.
The map will be constructed by analyzing the genomes of people in four ethnic groups: Japanese, Chinese, the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and Americans of Northern and Western European descent. If these four groups do not capture a thorough enough pattern of human variation, more may be added later.
The principle underlying the map is a discovery about the human genome made only a year ago by Dr. Mark J. Daly and colleagues at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass. They found that human DNA has been inherited generation after generation in large, unchanged blocks, up to 100,000 units in length, from the ancestral human population and, contrary to what had been assumed, has not yet been thoroughly mixed by the vigorous shuffling of DNA from the maternal and paternal chromosomes that takes place between generations.
These large blocks of DNA are known as haplotypes, and the new map, called the International HapMap, will chart the location of these blocks throughout the human genome. Dr. Eric Lander, Dr. David Altshuler and other members of the Whitehead Institute have rapidly expanded on Dr. Daly's discovery, and the N.I.H. has boldly built the hapmap project around it.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the genome institute at the N.I.H., said today that the undertaking was virtually certain to be successful. He described it as a project that "will provide a critical missing link to allow researchers all over the world to uncover the hereditary factors in common disease and behind the response to drug therapy."
But in part because the discovery is so new, other population geneticists do not yet agree on the nature or the extent of the haplotypes in the human genome, and some doubt that the hapmap approach will be very useful in tracking down the variant genes that cause common diseases.
"I have some major reservations," said Dr. Kenneth Kidd, a population geneticist at Yale. "I'm not opposed to going ahead, but a smaller-scale effort would probably be better. When there are fundamental basic science questions, a factorylike approach is not the best way."
Dr. Kenneth Weiss, a population geneticist at Pennsylvania State University, said he was "skeptical about the chance the hapmap will satisfy the objectives of identifying common major disease variants."
And Dr. Kari Stefansson, chief executive of Decode Genetics of Reykjavik, Iceland, said he thought the hapmap would be an inefficient way of finding disease genes. Dr. Stefansson said his company had identified seven common disease genes and found the location in the genome of 25 others by studying patients in Icelandic genealogies. In his view, the hapmap approach "isn't useless, but this is not the most effective way of doing what they want to do."
The goal of the hapmap is not to find disease genes directly but to create a general tool that will allow others to do so. It is designed to work in general populations and does not require patients to be related to one another, unlike the basis of the Decode approach in Iceland.
The $3 billion human genome project provided the sequence of a single genome but did not catalog the variations that are thought to underlie many common diseases. The genome sequence was expected to speed the search for such variations, but in practice they have proved much harder to find than expected.
The disappointment has been all the greater because of the success scientists have had in identifying the cause of diseases that proceed from a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis; most of these diseases are quite rare.
Unlike the single-gene diseases, most common diseases are thought to be caused by several variant genes acting together. Because each contributory gene has a weak effect, none stands out.
Since 1996, geneticists have hoped to track disease genes by establishing a SNP map. SNP's (pronounced snips) are the sites of common single base variations in the human genome. With a set of SNP's spread out across the genome, it should be possible to see where in the SNP field the patients differ from people free of a disease, and thus to pinpoint the genetic changes at the disease's root.
But some 500,000 SNP sites across the genome are needed to make the process work, and given the cost of detecting each SNP - some 30 cents - the price of charting each person's SNP map became prohibitive.
That gloomy picture seemed to change when Dr. Daly and his colleagues, looking for the genetic cause of Crohn's disease, an inflammation of the bowel, found that large blocks of SNP's stayed together between the generations and seemed to have been inherited more or less unchanged from the ancestral human population. The swapping of genetic material seems to occur at special hot spots along the chromosome, leaving the material in between pretty much unshuffled.
Since SNP's are inherited in blocks, or haplotypes, the Whitehead scientists soon figured out that it should be possible to define a block by identifying just a few of its SNP's. If a haplotype map of the human genome could be constructed, then the genomes of patients and control groups could be compared block by block, helping to identify the block in which a disease-causing gene resides. Present data suggest that each block comes in three or four versions in the human population, said Dr. Altshuler, of the Whitehead Institute.
Dr. Collins, of the N.I.H., said the hapmap would provide "a powerful and elegant shortcut" to locating disease genes.
Though most geneticists believe that the hapmap will be useful to some degree, there is a range of expectations. Dr. Collins said his guess was that "well over 60 percent of the genes in common disease will be amenable to this approach."
But some experts feel that less than 60 percent of the genome exists in haplotypes. Further reducing the hapmap's reach, the haplotype approach is likely to find only the disease-causing variant genes that are reasonably common in the population. Some geneticists argue that most disease-causing variants are in fact rare, and will not be picked up by the hapmap.
Because of these possibly severe constraints, several geneticists voiced suspicion that the project's ulterior purpose was to provide work for the big genome centers, like that of the Whitehead Institute, now that the human genome project is nearly finished.
Dr. Collins, however, said that "I completely reject the idea that this is a make-work project for the genome centers."
-------- ACTIVISTS
DISSENT
Rally in Washington Is Said to Invigorate the Antiwar Movement
October 30, 2002
New York Times
By KATE ZERNIKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/politics/30PROT.html
Emboldened by a weekend antiwar protest in Washington that organizers called the biggest since the days of the Vietnam War, groups opposed to military action in Iraq said they were preparing a wave of new demonstrations across the country in the next few weeks.
The demonstration on Saturday in Washington drew 100,000 by police estimates and 200,000 by organizers', forming a two-mile wall of marchers around the White House. The turnout startled even organizers, who had taken out permits for 20,000 marchers. They expected 30 buses, and were surprised by about 650, coming from as far as Nebraska and Florida.
A companion demonstration in San Francisco attracted 42,000 protesters, city police there said, and smaller groups demonstrated in other cities, including about 800 in Austin, Tex., and 2,500 in Augusta, Me.
"The rally was like a huge gust of wind into the sails of the antiwar movement," said Brian Becker, an organizer of the Washington protest. "Our goal was not simply to have a big demonstration, but to give the movement confidence that it could prevail. The massive turnout showed it's legitimate, and it's big."
Building on those demonstrations, a coalition of groups called International Answer - short for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism - is asking people to vote in a referendum called VoteNoWar.org, which organizers hope will serve as a countervote to the Congressional resolution in support of military action in Iraq.
The coalition, which has absorbed several smaller groups around the country, is also planning another protest on Jan. 18 and 19 in Washington, to coincide with the commemoration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and the 12th anniversary of the Persian Gulf war. Organizers are also planning what they call a Grass Roots Peoples' Congress to publicize the results of the referendum.
Smaller groups that attended the demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington said they were planning their own protests back home. Protesters plan to march in New Orleans and Tampa, Fla., this weekend; in Charleston, S.C., in mid-November; and again in San Francisco on Nov. 22. A group in Louisiana is planning a peace walk between Baton Rouge and New Orleans at the end of November, and the National Council of Churches is discussing another rally in Washington for Nov. 24.
MoveOn.org is conducting an online petition drive and has raised about $2 million for candidates, including the late Senator Paul Wellstone, who opposed a war in Iraq.
In California, college students are leading teach-ins against the war at high schools. Richard Becker, an organizer with Answer in San Francisco, said the group was setting up an emergency response plan to accommodate a mass protest - complete with sound systems, placards, the requisite permits and even portable toilets - on the day United States troops enter Iraq.
"There is not going to be one speech or one demonstration, after which everyone goes home," said Barbara Lubin, the founder of the Middle East Children's Alliance in Berkeley, Calif. "This is a movement against war, and it's building momentum."
Those who have been organizing and attending demonstrations for several months said the swelling size of the protests showed how much antiwar sentiment had increased as the threat of war intensified.
In San Francisco, a march on Sept. 6 drew 2,500 people, one two weeks later, 6,000, and one on Oct. 6, 10,000.
"People are very emboldened right now," said Mike Zmolek, an organizer with the National Network to Stop the War in Iraq. "We've been in a financial crunch since we started - suddenly people are sending checks out of nowhere."
Mr. Zmolek said his organization had attracted 100 new antiwar groups across the country in the last three months.
The march in Washington was planned by International Answer, with coordinators of local chapters working in more than two dozen cities around the country. It attracted homemakers as well as college students, seasoned activists and those who had never attended any kind of political rally before.
"It was beautiful," said Merrill Chapman, 35, who called herself "just a housewife" in Charleston, S.C. "I'm in a very conservative town, and I feel like the lone voice. Being in Washington energized me, by seeing I was not alone."
Ms. Chapman had never been to a protest before the demonstration in Washington, but got involved after organizing a group called Thinking People in Charleston. She is planning a rally for Nov. 16 in her city.
In Houston, Lois Wright, a 46-year-old saleswoman in a drapery workroom, said she felt compelled to take the two-day bus ride to Washington, because the Bush administration seemed "hellbent on going to war."
"It's O.K. to do stuff in Houston, but nobody gets to hear about it," she said. "I felt if we were right in their faces, they couldn't ignore us."
Polls show that about 50 percent of Americans support sending ground troops to Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Antiwar organizers acknowledge some public support for military action, but said that until now, the voices of those who do not support the policy have not been heard.
"I think the president has considerable support," Mr. Zmolek said, "but I think the nation is pretty divided on this."
Certainly, there is still debate. In Austin, the University of Texas student government passed a resolution on Oct. 22 opposing an attack, by a vote of 20 to 17. Some students seek to have that vote overturned, saying it does not reflect the sentiment of the campus's 50,000 students.
--------
Poll: Support slipping for military action in Iraq
10/30/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-30-iraq-poll_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Public support for military action against Iraq, while still in the majority, is slipping amid increased concerns about consequences, says a new poll. Six in 10 fear Iraq would use chemical or biological weapons in response.
Just over half, 55%, support military action against Iraq to replace Saddam Hussein, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. That is down from 64% in mid-September. And support for such action drops by half - to 27% - if the United States is not joined by allies in such an effort.
"In addition to concerns about whether it is a multilateral effort, the public has deep concerns about chemical or biological attacks on U.S. troops, casualties or the higher risk of domestic terrorism," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. He said the concerns about the increased risk of terrorism here are almost 20 points greater than in 1991, before the Gulf War and the Sept. 11 attacks.
He noted that support for the war dropped this summer when prominent Republicans raised concerns, and went back up when President Bush spoke out publicly on a need for action.
People were about evenly divided on whether the president has clearly explained what's at stake in using military force in Iraq. Half said there has been too little discussion of ways to deal with Saddam other than using military force while a fourth said there has been the right amount of discussion.
The poll of 1,751 adults was taken Oct. 17-27 and has an error margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
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