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NUCLEAR
Are these really years of living dangerously?
U.S. Used Deadly Sarin in Hawaii Test - Pentagon
Pentagon Aide Plans Nuclear Talks in Korea, Japan
Duratek
U.S. Eyes N.Korea for Missile Tests
Russia Disappointed by Pyongyang Nuclear Stance
South Sees Long Way to Go on North Korea Nukes
Pentagon Aide Plans Nuclear Talks in Korea, Japan
U.S. May Speed Up Hoped-for Scud Nemesis
U.S. Needs More Missile Defenses, General Says
New Patriot System Speed-Up Sought
More U.S. Anti - Missile Rockets Urged
Terror Victims Seek Frozen Assets
From the Lab to the Battlefield?
Neb. Appeals Ruling in Nuke Lawsuit
MILITARY
American Legion: Billions For Baghdad, Nothing For Veterans
US reportedly ties Libya missiles to Serbia
Belgrade Accused of Involvement in Arms Sales to Baghdad
Pentagon: Military tested nerve agent in 1967 in Hawaii
China 'ready' for Taiwan air link
Looking at a MacArthur-type occupation in Iraq
Fight Carefully Then Go, Iraq Opposition Urges US
Iraq Reopens Saudi Crossing After 12 Years
Israeli Labor ministers resign
Profile: Israel's kingmakers
Sharon opts for defence hardliner
NATO says could launch pre-emptive strikes
The legacy of Athens, Pakistani-style
New Russia-U.S. war ties revealed
3 Nations Oppose U.S. Demand on Iraq
No Veto Threat From Security Council
Army Sec.: Troops Ready for Iraq
Air Force Dispatches B-2 Shelters
Bracing for 'Primordial Combat'
At Sea, an Aircraft Carrier Is Ready for a 911 Call
American Muslim TV
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Justice cracks down on voter fraud
Kabul to Send Team to Check on Afghans Held at Guantánamo
U.S. Navy Sonar System Blocked by Federal Court
U.S. Called the Loser in War on Drugs
Ottawa Says U.S. Relents on New Security Rules
As Terror Sweep Begins, Chechens in Russia Say Police Single Them Out
Al-Qaeda changes, as does its threat
Al Qaeda Message Traffic Now Like Before 9 / 11 - Spy
Ridge: Future Attacks Inevitable
ENERGY AND OTHER
Experts Question New Energy Sources
Dell offers recycling option to consumers
World Plants Near Extinction Close to 50 Pct - Study
Indian Innovator Awarded Top UN Environment Prize
Agency Puts Hunger No. 1 on List of World's Top Health Risks
Albanian and Russian observers sent to monitor American elections
ACTIVISTS
Argentina Nuke Accord Stirs Protest
Thousands Protest Free - Trade Talks in Ecuador
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Are these really years of living dangerously?
10/31/2002
By Mark Memmott,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-10-31-danger-usat_x.htm
Smaller threats have replaced the big threat of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War. Experts say Americans are actually safer - even in these seemingly nerve-racking times.
That's because with the Cold War long over, the threat of a nuclear holocaust has diminished and, thanks to medical and scientific breakthroughs, the greatest risks that Americans face every day - from disease to accidents - keep getting smaller.
But this age still feels, to many, like the most dangerous in history. True, there's far less of a chance there will be a nuclear war that wipes out most, if not all, of life on the planet. Up against that, though, are an increasing number of smaller threats that added together make these anxious times. However, psychologists and other health experts say it's important that Americans not focus so much on the new dangers that they ignore the positive trends.
No one can dismiss the seriousness of the dangers in the world today. Last week, a report from the Council on Foreign Relations warned that the next terrorist attack on the United States will likely "result in even greater casualties and widespread disruption to American lives and the economy" than the Sept. 11 attacks.
That report was produced by a task force co-chaired by former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart. They also had co-chaired a separate, government-sponsored commission that warned in 1999 of an attack on U.S. soil by terrorists that would likely cause "large numbers" of deaths. The Council on Foreign Relations, based in New York, is one of the nation's most influential think tanks. The non-partisan organization's 4,000 members are drawn from the United States' top lawmakers, executives and academics.
The White House, in a report released Sept. 17 that outlines the administration's national security strategy, said the world isn't necessarily more dangerous. Even so, it said the grave danger of the past, that a U.S.-U.S.S.R. war would wipe out most life on the planet, has been replaced by a less dire, but more probable threat.
"New deadly challenges have emerged from rogue states and terrorists. None of these contemporary threats rival the sheer destructive power that was arrayed against us by the Soviet Union. However, the nature and motivations of these new adversaries, their determination to obtain destructive powers hitherto available only to the world's strongest states, and the greater likelihood that they will use weapons of mass destruction against us, make today's security environment more complex and dangerous."
Balanced against the terrorist threat are positive changes:
- The end of the Cold War and the continuous improvement in relations between the United States and Russia. "We've traded 'the big one,' " the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union that destroys much of the planet, "for a lot more, but smaller, threats," says P.J. Crowley, a special assistant to the president for security affairs in the Clinton administration and now a vice president at the Insurance Information Institute in New York.
Even the spread of nuclear weapons to nations such as India, Pakistan and possibly North Korea hasn't raised the risk of a nuclear holocaust to Cold War levels, says Linda Rothstein, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, based in Chicago. Since 1947, that bulletin has kept a "Doomsday Clock" that scientists use as a gauge to warn of the chances of a nuclear war. It reached two minutes to midnight in 1953.
The "safest" point the clock has reached came in 1991, when the United States and the U.S.S.R. signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the time was set at 17 minutes to midnight. Now it's at seven minutes to midnight.
- A sharp decline in the numbers of conflicts and all-out wars around the world in the past 10 years. In the early 1990s, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a surge in ethnic and regional fighting. But the number of hot spots has fallen by about one-third. There were 34 wars raging in the years 1991-94, estimates the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. In the years 1998-2001, there were 22 wars.
"The world is not boiling over, even though some (terrorists) may want it to," says Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House, which monitors human rights and conflicts around the globe from its New York headquarters.
- Dramatic advances in medical and safety technology that have helped improve and lengthen most people's lives. Much still needs to be done. In Africa, for instance, an HIV/AIDS pandemic has claimed 17 million lives and threatens millions more.
But the positive effects of medical breakthroughs show clearly in the U.S. data. Life expectancy is up 22% since 1940. The infant mortality rate is down 76% since 1950. The leading causes of death - heart disease and cancer - are primarily illnesses that afflict an older population. The death rate from car accidents each year is down 35% - to 15 deaths for every 100,000 people - from its peak of 23 in 1978, thanks partly to airbags and other innovations.
Though statistics paint a comforting picture about the dangers of the modern world, especially when compared with the threats faced during the Cold War or the past century's two World Wars, even experts admit emotions can be difficult to overcome.
"Rationally, as a historian, I feel the world is a safer place," says Michael Flamm, a history professor at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware. "Emotionally, I'm not so sure." His nerves, like everyone's, get rattled by "the issue of control. It just seems like we have less control over the world."
Others say the positive trends don't matter when weighed against the new evils.
"It is a more dangerous world. Wars between countries may be less frequent ... but now civilians are being targeted" by terrorists with global reach, says Warren Haffar, director of the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa.
It's logical and healthy for Americans to be worried about the threat of terrorist attacks, the implications of a war with Iraq or murder sprees such as the sniper shootings around Washington, D.C., say many psychologists, therapists and other experts.
To ignore such dangers would be irrational. But the experts also say these apparently dangerous times and the new threats need to be put in perspective so that fear doesn't dominate people's lives and Americans can form well-rounded opinions about security issues being debated in Washington and at state capitals.
"By being more informed" about the relative level of danger in the world today, "your reasoning side can do better battle with your emotional side and you're better off," says David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and co-author of the new book Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You.
"There's a lot of value in looking at problems from multiple perspectives" and acknowledging, for example, that terrorist attacks may be a greater threat than before but that modern medicines save and extend millions of lives annually, says Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist and risk expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "So long as that does not lead you to trivialize your legitimate fears."
"We all have to remember," says Stephen Cimbala, political science professor at Pennsylvania State University, "things were never as good or as safe as they seemed in the past, and they're not as bad as they seem right now."
----
U.S. Used Deadly Sarin in Hawaii Test - Pentagon
October 31, 2002
By Charles Aldinger
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=1664221
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military in 1967 conducted tests using the deadly sarin nerve agent in a Hawaiian rain forest as part of a sweeping Cold War series of chemical and biological experiments on land and sea, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
Military units involved in the Hawaii test, dubbed "Red Oak, Phase 1," were not identified and there was no indication of harm to troops or civilians from explosions to determine the effectiveness of artillery shells using sarin in the jungle.
But the Defense Department, releasing five new reports in a continuing series on tests conducted in the 1960s and 70s, urged any troops involved who might have suffered ill-effects to contact the Pentagon.
The Red Oak tests in April and May of 1967 were conducted in both the Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve on Hawaii and near Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone. The Panama phase used only a simulated nerve agent, not sarin.
Sarin is a volatile, deadly nerve agent that can be inhaled or absorbed through the eyes and skin. A sufficient dose within minutes causes difficult breathing, runny nose, confusion and dimming vision -- then coma and death.
Very little information is available involving the long-term effects of low-level exposure to sarin.
The Pentagon on Thursday also released details on four other tests -- three in the Panama Canal Zone and a fourth in an unspecified jungle environment -- but said none used deadly chemical or biological agents.
MAJOR COLD WAR PROGRAM
In addition to the riot-control agent tear gas, however, some of the tests used normally occurring bacteria that more recent information has indicated can cause acute infections of the ear, brain lining, lung, urinary tract and other body sites.
The tests were all part of a major U.S. military review put in motion by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1961 shortly after President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. That study consisted of 150 separate projects.
"As part of the Project 112 review, the Joint Chiefs of Staff convened a working committee that recommended a research, testing and development program for chemical and biological weapons," the Pentagon said in the five new fact sheets.
The United States acknowledged in reports during the summer and earlier this month that it carried out a sweeping Cold War-era test program of chemical and germ warfare agents at sea in the Pacific and on American soil and in Britain and Canada.
The tests of such nerve agents as sarin, soman, tabun and VX were carried out from 1962 to 1973 both on land and at sea "out of concern for our ability to protect and defend against these potential threats," an earlier Pentagon statement said.
An unknown number of civilians were also exposed at the time to "simulants," or what were then thought to be harmless agents meant to stand in for deadlier ones, the Defense Department said. Some of those were later discovered to be dangerous.
More than 5,500 members of the U.S. armed forces were involved, including 5,000 who took part in ship-board experiments in the Pacific.
To date, more than 50 veterans have filed claims related to symptoms they associate with exposure to the tests, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
All of the tests were coordinated by an outfit called the Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas, Utah.
-------- asia
Pentagon Aide Plans Nuclear Talks in Korea, Japan
Reuters
Thursday, October 31, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45015-2002Oct31?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior Pentagon official will visit Japan and South Korea next week to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons program and other issues in the region, U.S. defense officials said on Thursday.
The officials told Reuters that Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith would depart Washington on Sunday or on Monday. Feith will talk with top officials in Tokyo and Seoul about rising tensions on the Korean peninsula sparked by Pyongyang's admission this month that it was conducting a secret program to enrich uranium that could be used to build nuclear weapons.
The U.S. officials did not discuss details, but one said Feith was also likely to exchange views on U.S. plans to hold Defense Consultative Talks with China in Beijing later this year or early next year.
Those talks were put on hold after the April collision last year between a Chinese fighter jet and an a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea.
Despite recent calls from Pyongyang for direct talks with Washington, the United States has ruled out negotiations with the North Koreans until they dismantle the uranium enrichment program.
But the United States has also said it wants a peaceful solution and is maintaining contacts with the North through its U.N. mission.
-------- business
Duratek
TechNews.com
Oct 31, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32245-2002Apr11.html
Duratek, a Columbia, Md., company that provides technologies to manage nuclear and radioactive waste, earned $3.9 million (20 cents per share) in the third quarter, compared with $921,000 (4 cents) in the same period of 2001. Quarterly revenue rose to $72.8 million from $66.7 million. Duratek shares rose 69 cents, to $6.69. [Duratek]
-------- korea
U.S. Eyes N.Korea for Missile Tests
By John J. Lumpkin
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 1:41 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44170-2002Oct31?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NKorea-Missiles.html
WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence is watching for signs that North Korea will conduct a flight test of a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to American soil.
The missile, the Taepo Dong 2, is far enough along in development that intelligence agencies believe the North Koreans could launch one in a test fairly quickly.
For now, U.S. intelligence officials say they have no evidence that Pyongyang is preparing for such a test.
A deployed weapon, while somewhat further off, would threaten the continental United States and probably hasten U.S. efforts to deploy a missile defense system. The North Koreans may also sell it to other countries, including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya and Egypt, as they have many of their other long-range missiles.
Since 1999, the North Koreans have been under a self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile test flights, which are usually a prerequisite to deploying a usable weapon. While earthbound missile tests have continued, North Korean leaders have repeatedly reaffirmed the flight moratorium in public statements.
The most recent declaration came Sept. 17, when North Korea announced it would extend the moratorium until after 2003.
But Pyongyang has also said the flight-test moratorium is contingent on U.S.-North Korean talks moving forward, and the North Korean acknowledgment earlier in October that they were pressing ahead with a nuclear weapons program has scrambled the two countries' relations.
North Korea admitted to a U.S. delegation that it had a program aimed at enriching enough uranium to make nuclear weapons. The CIA believes North Korea probably already has one or two nuclear weapons using plutonium.
Since the admission, U.S. and North Korean officials have been accusing each other of violating the eight-year-old Agreed Framework that was designed to contain North Korea's weapons effort.
Some U.S. experts regard the North Korean acknowledgment of a renewed nuclear program as a strategy to gain new economic and other concessions for the impoverished nation, and the United States and other powers are attempting to address the issue diplomatically with the North Koreans. A test of a Taepo Dong 2 missile could increase the pressure from Pyongyang, intelligence officials said.
Such a test probably would be a space launch similar to the 1998 test of a Taepo Dong 1, in which the North Koreans launched a missile in a failed attempt to put a satellite into orbit, according to U.S. intelligence. Intercontinental ballistic missiles and space rockets are based on many of the same principles.
Daniel Pinkston, a Korea expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, suggested domestic considerations as well as international ones might drive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to order a Taepo Dong 2 test.
Inside North Korea, the 1998 test was portrayed as a successful and glorious first venture into space, rather than part of a weapons program, Pinkston said. It served to raise the stature of Kim, who has portrayed himself a tech-savvy leader.
"It ushered in Kim Jong Il's era, his formal rise to power," Pinkston said.
A military two-stage Taepo Dong 2 would be able to hit Alaska, Hawaii and possibly the western continental United States. A three-stage version, which would be more difficult to engineer, could hit targets anywhere in the United States, according to intelligence analyses.
A functional Taepo Dong 2 also would provide North Korea with a commodity highly sought by a host of countries, many of them unfriendly to U.S. policy.
North Korea, which is short on hard currency and things to export, has sold missile expertise and equipment to Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya and Egypt. A senior administration official recently described North Korea's activities in spreading missile technology as "a sort of 'Missiles-R-Us.'"
In particular, Iran's Shahab-3 missile program, one watched closely by U.S. intelligence agencies, is believed to be based on North Korean No Dong missile technology. The missile, which is still in testing, gives the Iranians the capability to strike Israel and U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and parts of Turkey.
Any ICBM potentially available for sale gives the North Koreans new leverage in negotiations with the United States, as they would be expected to demand concessions for keeping it off the market.
----
Russia Disappointed by Pyongyang Nuclear Stance
Reuters
Thursday, October 31, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47142-2002Oct31?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-korea.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow is disappointed by Pyongyang's response to its request for information on North Korea's nuclear program, Interfax news agency quoted a senior Foreign Ministry official as saying on Thursday.
Russia has formally asked Pyongyang to come clean on the state of its nuclear weapons program after Washington said North Korea had admitted it was pursuing nuclear research in breach of a 1994 agreement to freeze it.
"There is certain ambiguity in the statements made by North Korean representatives," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Interfax.
"We think this ambiguity is very dangerous as it leads to mutual suspicion and will have a negative impact on the situation on the Korean peninsula," he said.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for fuel oil and the promise of two light-water nuclear reactors to generate electricity, all under U.N. supervision.
Losyukov said Pyongyang had sent Moscow its comments on what happened during talks with U.S. envoy James Kelly, which led Washington to accuse North Korea of developing nuclear weapons.
"There has been no public admission that North Korea is pursuing its program to enrich uranium and it is not even clear such an admission was made in talks with the Americans," Losyukov said.
"It sounded more like there was neither admission nor denial," he said.
"We would like both sides to try to act in a way to clarify the issue," Losyukov said. "I also mean the United States because the Russian side has received no convincing evidence that the program exists after all."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher welcomed Losyukov's criticism of North Korea.
"We're obviously pleased to see that the international community is so together on this issue. ... It's important that Russia is part of that," he told a daily briefing.
Moscow, a key Pyongyang ally in Soviet days, has undertaken to resurrect ties with the hermit state after years of cool relations.
President Vladimir Putin became the first world leader to pay an official visit to Pyongyang in 2000. He has met secretive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il twice since then.
The two countries are working with Seoul to rebuild a railway line linking South Korea with the Trans-Siberian railway to boost South Korea's exports to Europe with both Moscow and Pyongyang standing to reap millions of dollars in transit fees.
----
South Sees Long Way to Go on North Korea Nukes
Reuters
Thursday, October 31, 2002
By Paul Eckert
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44426-2002Oct31?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Thursday it was confident there would be a diplomatic solution to the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons, but acknowledged that it was still early days in the impasse with the communist state.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's chief spokeswoman reiterated Kim's demand a day earlier that North Korea take "verifiable action" to defuse a crisis raised by its recently unveiled covert nuclear arms program.
Seoul would proceed with diplomacy with the unanimous backing Kim had won at an Asia-Pacific summit last weekend in Mexico, spokeswoman Park Sun-sook told reporters.
"There is an agreement on the route to resolving the North Korean nuclear problem," Park said. "There is a long road ahead of us. Verifiable action by North Korea is necessary," she added.
Kim flew home on Wednesday after attending a summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping in Los Cabos, Mexico, and holding consultations with allies Japan and the United States and with Pyongyang's old ally, China.
The APEC leaders gave strong backing for Seoul's demand that Pyongyang give up a covert uranium enrichment scheme North Korean officials had admitted to in early October.
Kim acknowledged that the diplomatic support was merely a beginning in efforts to pre-empt what could be the second nuclear crisis triggered by North Korea in a decade, telling his country "the ball is now in North Korea's court."
NORTH REBUFFS JAPAN
But North Korea rebuffed the first allied attempt since APEC to raise the nuclear issue on Thursday. Pyongyang officials told Japanese counterparts the North needed nuclear arms to cope with a U.S. threat and would only deal with Washington.
The two-day talks on normalizing ties between Japan and North Korea ended with the two sides at odds, but they agreed to discuss security issues in a new forum to be created next month and reconfirmed Pyongyang's interest in dialogue on nuclear arms.
North Korea's revelation that that it was reprocessing uranium for weapons use, experts said, put Pyongyang in violation of four nuclear non-proliferation agreements, including the pivotal 1994 Agreed Framework.
Under that accord, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons ambitions in exchange for fuel oil and the promise of two light-water nuclear reactors to generate power.
The United States says it has not yet decided how to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its uranium enrichment program, other than through diplomatic pressure in conjunction with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
In Washington on Wednesday, a small group of lawmakers wrote to President Bush urging him to impose sanctions on North Korea and to nullify the Agreed Framework.
In response to local media reports that the United States had indeed scrapped the landmark pact, a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official told reporters there had been no changes.
"No decision has been taken by South Korea, the United States and Japan with regards to the fate of the Agreed Framework," the official said on Thursday.
South Korea has so far rejected any sanctions and has kept up exchanges with North Korea in the wake of the nuclear revelation.
A North Korean economic mission is now touring South Korea, while Seoul has sent construction ministry officials to Pyongyang to discuss industrial projects and Red Cross officials to the North's Mount Kumkang to discuss reunions of divided families.
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Pentagon Aide Plans Nuclear Talks in Korea, Japan
October 31, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-usa-feith.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior Pentagon official will visit Japan and South Korea next week to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons program and other issues in the region, U.S. defense officials said on Thursday.
The officials told Reuters that Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith would depart Washington on Sunday or on Monday. Feith will talk with top officials in Tokyo and Seoul about rising tensions on the Korean peninsula sparked by Pyongyang's admission this month that it was conducting a secret program to enrich uranium that could be used to build nuclear weapons.
The U.S. officials did not discuss details, but one said Feith was also likely to exchange views on U.S. plans to hold Defense Consultative Talks with China in Beijing later this year or early next year.
Those talks were put on hold after the April collision last year between a Chinese fighter jet and an a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea.
Despite recent calls from Pyongyang for direct talks with Washington, the United States has ruled out negotiations with the North Koreans until they dismantle the uranium enrichment program.
But the United States has also said it wants a peaceful solution and is maintaining contacts with the North through its U.N. mission.
-------- missile defense
U.S. May Speed Up Hoped-for Scud Nemesis
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43523-2002Oct30?language=printer
Top Pentagon officials, worried about the vulnerability of U.S. troops to Iraqi Scuds and other short-range ballistic missiles, want to speed up production of a new anti-missile weapon despite a series of test failures earlier this year.
The weapon is an advanced version of the Patriot system, first used in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 to counter Scuds fired at U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and civilian neighborhoods in Israel. Under development since the mid-1990s, the system known as PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) has a more accurate interceptor as well as improvements in radar and communication links.
But the weapon performed poorly in flight tests between February and May. Interceptors failed to fire in several cases, and when they did, they missed nearly as often as they hit. As recently as last summer, program officials had expected that the test failures would force at least a year's delay in plans to double production of the interceptors from the current six per month.
Nevertheless, aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have signaled a desire in recent days to boost production without waiting for another round of tests that would confirm the latest fixes and validate performance. With only 38 of the new interceptors in the Army's inventory and just 15 more due by December, senior defense officials are concerned that U.S. stocks could be depleted quickly if war with Iraq erupts next year.
"Indeed, we are looking at ways to accelerate the production of PAC-3 out of concern for near-term vulnerability," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said in a speech last week to the Frontiers of Freedom, a missile defense advocacy group.
While Rumsfeld has yet to make a decision, Pentagon officials have notified Congress that there may be a request to shift about $120 million from other missile defense programs into PAC-3. Some of this money would go toward speeding up interceptors in production, and toward sustaining a jump in the number of interceptors rolling out of Lockheed Martin's assembly facility in Camden, Ark.
Congress already has approved upping PAC-3 production by about two interceptors per month. In the 2003 defense appropriations act passed earlier this month, lawmakers added $50 million to the $622 million originally sought by the Bush administration for PAC-3 development and procurement. The extra funding under consideration by the Pentagon would allow for an even larger boost in production and faster turnout rate.
But support is not unanimous within the Pentagon. Officials responsible for overseeing the testing of new weapons caution that a green light to rush out more PAC-3's might take pressure off the program to continue with planned improvements and demonstrate the system can meet all its performance requirements.
Already the program has received Pentagon waivers allowing limited production of PAC-3 interceptors whose performance still lags, particularly against more advanced ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. Plans call for these shortfalls to be addressed in later versions of the interceptor.
Also questionable is the extent to which a boost in PAC-3 production now could make much difference in the number of interceptors available to U.S. troops in any war with Iraq next year. Usually about a year and a half is required to manufacture an interceptor, according to industry and congressional sources.
Still, with strong bipartisan congressional backing for the program, Pentagon officials are unlikely to encounter much, if any, opposition should they decide to move ahead more quickly. They can point to assertions by PAC-3 program managers that nothing is wrong with the weapon's design.
Nearly all the recent test glitches, program officials say, can be attributed to bad luck and rare anomalies. If the test scenarios occurred under combat conditions, these officials argue, the PAC-3 system would have fired more interceptors than were allowed in the tests, thereby improving significantly its chances of success.
During the Gulf War, the military's inability to destroy a single mobile Scud ranked as its single biggest failure. U.S. and British intelligence analysts estimate that Iraq now has only 12 to 25 mobile Scuds, and it is not clear whether any are capable of being fired. Still, among the Pentagon's biggest concerns is the prospect of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, confronted with a U.S. offensive aimed at removing him from power, launching missiles armed with chemical or biological agents.
In recent years, the Army has kept two Patriot batteries in the Persian Gulf region guarding U.S. military facilities and troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But none is equipped with PAC-3 interceptors. If President Bush orders an invasion of Iraq, additional Patriot batteries armed with whatever PAC-3s are available are expected to be among the first units deployed.
----
U.S. Needs More Missile Defenses, General Says
Reuters
Thursday, October 31, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45837-2002Oct31?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should buy new Lockheed Martin Corp. anti-missile weapons as fast as it can to counter a growing threat from states like North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said on Thursday.
"It's not about the Soviet Union," Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish told a defense writers' breakfast. "It's about North Korea. It's about Iraq. It's about Iran. It's about Libya and others that might threaten us."
Information-sharing among nations seeking ballistic missiles, which can deliver biological-, or chemical-, nuclear-tipped warheads, "seems to be pretty good," he said.
"They are making significant progress. And they are moving from a capability of having very good systems in the short-range missiles to the intermediate- and longer-range missiles. That's the trend," he said.
President Bush labeled this year Iran, Iraq and North Korea "an axis of evil," while Libya has made some moves to improve relations after years of enmity.
Kadish said he was recommending increased production and purchases of an advanced version of the Patriot system, first used in the 1991 Gulf War to counter short-range Iraqi Scud missiles fired at U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and population centers in Israel.
Under development since the mid-1990s, the interceptor known as PAC-3, or Patriot Advanced Capability-3, is now performing well in operational tests after problems last year.
"My recommendation has been and will continue to be to buy Patriot 3s as quickly and as fast as we can afford to buy them because they're ready to be bought," he said. The PAC-3 is a speedy missile designed to smash into a ballistic missile.
With deployment of more PAC-3 missiles, in addition to Israel's Arrow system and earlier-generation PAC-2 interceptors, Kadish said he was confident of being able to defend against any Iraqi Scud launches in any new war over President Saddam Hussein's suspected banned weapons programs.
The defenses of the United States and its allies represent a "quantum change from what we had in the Gulf War," he said. U.S. and British intelligence analysts estimate Iraq now has only 12 to 25 mobile Scuds.
Keeping Iraq from causing any harm to Israel with them is a key U.S. goal in an effort to prevent Israel from entering any Gulf war. U.S. officials fear Israel's involvement would fracture any alliance with moderate Arab states that might otherwise go along with a U.S.-led drive to disarm Saddam.
----
New Patriot System Speed-Up Sought
By Matt Kelley
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 11:56 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45714-2002Oct31?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- With the prospect of war with Iraq looming, the Pentagon wants to increase production of its newest Patriot anti-missile system, the head of the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said Thursday.
Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said the United States has about 40 of the latest Patriots, called Patriot Advanced Capability III.
Currently, contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon can make about two PAC-III interceptors per month, and that capability is unlikely to speed up much until next year, Kadish told reporters. Still, "we ought to buy them as rapidly as we can," he said.
Kadish said he was confident the PAC-III missiles would work, despite a series of "extremely annoying" problems that caused several failures during tests earlier this year. Those failures were caused by production problems including improper soldering of electronic components that made a missile fail to fire, Kadish said. Lockheed Martin makes the missiles, while Raytheon makes the sensors and other electronics that guide the interceptor to its target.
"I am very confident we have those problems fixed," Kadish said. The PAC-III missiles already manufactured have been retrofitted to fix the problems, he said.
The PAC-III missile is designed to shoot down cruise missiles and missiles with a range of 620 miles or less.
Those include the Scud missiles that Iraq used during the Gulf War - and which the U.S. believes Saddam Hussein still has an arsenal of up to two dozen. Iraq also has an unknown number of missiles with ranges of 95 miles or less, which they were allowed to continue making under post-Gulf War U.N. sanctions.
Missiles, particularly ones loaded with chemical or biological weapons, are one of Iraq's biggest threats to U.S. forces and allies in the region. Iraq's shortest-range missiles, for example, can easily hit Kuwait, where thousands of U.S. troops are massing in preparation for a possible invasion.
The United States has batteries of Patriot II missiles in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region, but some Pentagon planners worry there aren't enough Patriots to shoot down all the missiles Iraq has. Kadish said Thursday he would like to have even more PAC-III missiles to meet the threat from Iraq and other hostile countries such as Iran, North Korea and Libya.
On the Net:
Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency: http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/
--------
More U.S. Anti - Missile Rockets Urged
October 31, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Threat.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is working to solve problems with its most advanced anti-missile rockets and increase production so the newest Patriots will succeed where their predecessors didn't in destroying Iraqi Scuds, the Missile Defense Agency chief said Thursday.
Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said the United States has only about 40 of its most advanced Patriot missiles to defend against short-range ballistic and cruise missiles. Experts suspect Iraq alone has several times that many Scud and other short-range missiles, which could be topped with chemical or biological warheads.
Earlier versions of the Patriot missile failed to stop deadly Iraqi Scud attacks against Israel and U.S. positions in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. The latest Patriot is meant to overcome those shortcomings, but a round of operational tests this year ended with many of the rockets failing to fire or missing their targets.
Kadish said the problems have been fixed and the Pentagon needs many more of the advanced Patriots to counter threats from North Korea, Iran and Libya as well as Iraq.
The main contractors on the latest Patriot, known as Patriot Advanced Capability 3, can make two of the rockets per month, Kadish said. The Pentagon hopes to speed up that process, but doing so will take time, he said.
``My recommendation is to buy PAC-3s as fast as we are able to buy them,'' Kadish told reporters. Outside experts estimate each rocket costs about $2.7 million, although that cost drops as the production increases.
Congress has already approved increasing PAC-3 production, adding $50 million to the $622 million the Pentagon originally requested for the program for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Pentagon officials have told Congress they plan to shift another $120 million from other missile defense programs to the PAC-3.
Kadish called this year's PAC-3 test problems ``extremely annoying'' and said they included improper soldering of electronic components.
``I am very confident we have those problems fixed,'' Kadish said. The PAC-3 missiles already manufactured have been retrofitted to fix the problems, he said.
The PAC-3 missile is designed to shoot down cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with a range of 620 miles or less.
Those include the Scud missiles that Iraq used a decade ago during the Gulf War. The United States believes Saddam Hussein still up to two dozen of them. Iraq also has an unknown number of missiles with ranges of 95 miles or less. Iraq was allowed to continue making them under U.N. sanctions imposed after the Gulf War.
Iraq's shortest-range missiles can easily hit Kuwait, where thousands of U.S. troops are massing in preparation for a possible invasion.
The United States has batteries of Patriot II missiles in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region, but some Pentagon planners worry there aren't enough Patriots stationed there to shoot down all the missiles Iraq has. The United States has nearly 500 Patriot batteries and thousands of the missiles but they are spread widely around the globe.
Israel, hit by 39 Iraqi Scuds during the Gulf War, also has Patriot missile batteries, plus stocks of the Arrow anti-missile system developed with the United States. The United States has pledged to help defend Israel against Iraqi missile strikes in case of a war to topple Saddam, possibly including supplying more anti-missile weapons to Israel.
North Korea is one of America's biggest missile threats, Kadish and other U.S. officials say, because it is developing long-range missiles and has been willing to sell its missile technology to virtually any country with the cash to pay for it.
Kadish said the United States is concerned by evidence that North Korea is continuing to develop long-range missiles that could hit U.S. territory.
North Korea said last month it would extend a flight test moratorium on long-range missiles through 2003, but it also has said the moratorium will apply only if talks with the United States move forward.
The bilateral relations were scrambled by North Korea's early October acknowledgment that it had a program aimed at enriching enough uranium to make nuclear weapons. The CIA believes North Korea already has one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
A test of the long-range Taepo Dong 2 missile could increase North Korea's pressure for U.S. concessions, intelligence officials said.
The two-stage Taepo Dong 2 could hit Alaska, Hawaii and possibly the western continental United States. A three-stage version, which would be more difficult to engineer, could hit targets anywhere in the United States, intelligence analyses say.
That's a big reason behind the U.S. drive to build an anti-missile testing facility in Alaska, which within two years will have five prototype interceptors in silos near Fairbanks.
While the prototypes would provide a ``residual capability'' against North Korean missiles, the United States would not rely on them alone, Kadish said.
``Along the way, if we get threatened by North Korea, I think the American people understand we would not just sit by with five missiles in the hole and do nothing,'' Kadish said.
North Korea has sold missile expertise and equipment to Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya and Egypt, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Iran's Shahab-3 missile program is believed to be based on North Korean No Dong missile technology. The missile, still in testing, would enable the Iranians to strike Israel and U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and parts of Turkey.
``Iran continues to test, continues to make progress,'' Kadish said. ``They're moving from the capability of having very good systems in the short range to intermediate and long-range missiles.''
Kadish said he also worries about Libya.
``The Libyans have been pretty active in trying to get missile capability, and not just short-range,'' Kadish said. ``They have enough money to buy it. Their indigenous capability is not as good as they thought it was.''
On the Net:
Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency: http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/
-------- terrorism
Terror Victims Seek Frozen Assets
By Melissa B. Robinson
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 2:09 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44203-2002Oct31?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Held as a human shield to prevent enemy strikes on an Iraqi uranium enrichment complex, Avo Boyamian would wake at night, soaked in sweat.
Now the Boston-area businessman, captured on a 1990 trip to Kuwait, could get compensated for his mental anguish. If a provision to a terrorism insurance bill passes into law, victims of terrorism could be paid off from over $3 billion in foreign assets frozen in the interests of national security and foreign policy.
Boyamian, 58, sued Iraq under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which was amended in 1996 to allow Americans injured in terrorist acts to sue the seven foreign countries the State Department classifies as supporting terrorism.
The State Department opposes the provision by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, on the grounds that frozen assets have proven useful in diplomatic negotiations and shouldn't be liquidated for individual claims.
"It would undermine our fight against terrorism," said Brenda Greenberg, a department spokeswoman. The hope of getting assets back is an incentive for states to stop supporting terrorism, she said.
Boyamian's judgment is one of at least 190 outstanding across the country - the vast majority against Iraq for injuries sustained by Americans caught in the Aug. 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait that precipitated the Persian Gulf War. A handful are against Iran for various acts of terrorism, including a 1996 bus bombing in Israel. The average award sought is $500,000; some victims are seeking millions of dollars.
"It was very frightening," said Paul Pawlowski, 60, of Providence, R.I., an architect forced into hiding in Kuwait City with his wife and young daughter. His family was released after nearly six weeks, but Pawlowski was holed up with colleagues for months.
Congress will consider Harkin's provision after it returns Nov. 12. If it becomes law, about $210 million is expected to be paid out for current judgments. It's unclear if judicial or administrative appeals could be employed to stop the payments.
Over time, more victims could benefit if they get judgments against designated terrorist states - besides Iraq and Iran they are Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria - or organizations. Among the pending lawsuits is one against Libya for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.
Blocked assets are among the economic sanctions employed by the U.S. government against targeted countries, terrorists, international drug traffickers and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
While the title to bank accounts, securities and other property in the United States is retained by the targeted country or individual, there is an across-the-board ban, imposed by the Treasury Department, on any transfers or dealings with the property.
The State Department maintains that frozen assets were fundamental to resolving the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, because Iran wanted assets released in exchange for hostages. During normalization talks with Vietnam, blocked assets were used as a bargaining chip to gain information about U.S. soldiers held prisoner or missing from the Vietnam War.
Blocked assets can be given back to a country, as happened in Afghanistan after the Taliban were driven out of power.
The Bush administration favors paying victims with U.S. funds, but there is precedent for distributing frozen assets.
A 2000 law gave access to frozen Cuban assets - over the State Department's objections - to families of workers for Brothers to the Rescue, an exile fliers group whose plane was shot down off the coast of Florida by Cuban jets in 1996. Some Iranian terrorism victims, including former hostage and Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, were paid from the U.S. Treasury, with the money to be recouped from Iran.
Victims say the U.S. strategy of trying to stop terrorism by hoarding assets has been a failure, and it makes even more sense to compensate them with foreign assets in wake of the U.S.-funded compensation offered to the Sept. 11 families.
"We are willing to take taxpayer dollars to compensate people," said Frank Amos, 47, of Gilmer, Texas, whose father Charles was captured by Iraqis as an oil-drilling worker in Kuwait and held at a power plant where emissions were so strong they ate holes in his clothes. "But yet, we're not willing to release funds from people who have actually done that kind of damage."
On the Net:
Sen. Tom Harkin: http://harkin.senate.gov/
State Department: http://www.state.gov/
2001 terrorist asset report: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/reports/
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
From the Lab to the Battlefield?
Nanotechnology and Fourth-Generation Nuclear Weapons
Disarmament Diplomacy
Issue No. 67, October - November 2002
Opinion & Analysis By André Gsponer
The Acronym Institute.
http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd67/67op1.htm
Introduction
In Disarmament Diplomacy No. 65, Sean Howard warned of the dangers of enhanced or even new types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) emerging from the development of 'nanotechnology', an umbrella term for a range of potentially revolutionary engineering techniques at the atomic and molecular level.1 Howard called for urgent preliminary consideration to be given to the benefits and practicalities of negotiating an 'Inner Space Treaty' to guard against such developments. While echoing this call, this paper draws attention to the existing potential of nanotechnology to affect dangerous and destabilising 'refinements' to existing nuclear weapon designs. Historically, nanotechnology is a child of the nuclear weapons labs, a creation of the WMD-industrial complex. The most far-reaching and fateful impacts of nanotechnology, therefore, may lie - and can already be seen - in the same area.
The Strategic Context
Two important strategic lessons were taught by the last three wars in which the full extent of Western military superiority was displayed: Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. First, the amount of conventional explosive that could be delivered by precision-guided munitions like cruise missiles was ridiculous in comparison to their cost: some targets could only be destroyed by the expenditure of numerous delivery systems while a single one loaded with a more powerful warhead would have been sufficient.2 Second, the use of weapons producing a low level of radioactivity appears to be acceptable, both from a military point of view because such a level does not impair further military action, and from a political standpoint because most political leaders, and shapers of public opinion, did not object to the battlefield use of depleted uranium.3
These lessons imply a probable military perception of the need for new conventional or nuclear warheads, and a probable political acceptance of such warheads if they do not produce large amounts of residual radioactivity. Moreover, during and after these wars, it was often suggested that some new earth-penetrating weapon was needed to destroy deeply buried command posts, or facilities related to weapons of mass destruction.4
It is not, therefore, surprising to witness the emergence of a well-funded scientific effort apt to create the technological basis for making powerful new weapons - an effort that is not sold to the public opinion and political leaders as one of maintaining a high level of military superiority, but rather as one of extending human enterprise to the next frontier: the inner space of matter to be conquered by the science of nanotechnology.
The Military Impact of Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, i.e., the science of designing microscopic structures in which the materials and their relations are machined and controlled atom-by-atom, holds the promise of numerous applications. Lying at the crossroads of engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology, nanotechnology may have considerable impact in all areas of science and technology. However, it is certain that the most significant near term applications of nanotechnology will be in the military domain. In fact, it is under the names of 'micromechanical engineering' and 'microelectromechanical systems' (MEMS) that the field of nanotechnology was born a few decades ago - in nuclear weapons laboratories.
A primary impetus for creating these systems was the need for extremely rugged and safe arming and triggering mechanisms for nuclear weapons such as atomic artillery shells. In such warheads, the nuclear explosive and its trigger undergo extreme acceleration (10,000 times greater than gravity when the munition is delivered by a heavy gun). A general design technique is then to make the trigger's crucial components as small as possible.5 For similar reasons of extreme safety, reliability, and resistance to external factors, the detonators and the various locking mechanisms of nuclear weapons were increasingly designed as more and more sophisticated microelectromechanical systems. Consequently, nuclear weapons laboratories such as the Sandia National Laboratory in the US are leading the world in translating the most advanced concepts of MEMS engineering into practice.6
A second historical impetus for MEMS and nanotechnology, one which is also over thirty years old, is the still ongoing drive towards miniaturisation of nuclear weapons and the related quest for very-low yield nuclear explosives which could also be used as a source of nuclear energy in the form of controlled microexplosions. Such explosions (with yields in the range of a few kilograms to a few tons of high-explosive equivalent) would in principle be contained - but they could just as well be used in weapons if suitable compact triggers are developed. In this line of research, it was soon discovered that it is easier to design a micro-fusion than a micro-fission explosive (which has the further advantage of producing much less radioactive fallout than a micro-fission device of the same yield). Since that time, enormous progress has been made, and the research on these micro-fusion bombs has now become the main advanced weapons research activity of the nuclear weapons laboratories, using gigantic tools such as the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) and France's Laser Mégajoule. The tiny pellets used in these experiments, containing the thermonuclear fuel to be exploded, are certainly the most delicate and sophisticated nano-engineered devices in existence.
A third major impetus for nanotechnology is the growing demand for better materials (and parts made of them) with extremely well characterised specifications. These can be new materials such as improved insulators which will increase the storage capacity of capacitors used in detonators, nano-engineered high-explosives for advanced weaponry, etc. But they can also be conventional materials of extreme purity, or nano-engineered components of extreme precision. For instance, to meet NIF specifications, the 2-mm-diameter fuel pellets must not be more than 1 micrometer out of round; that is, the radius to the outer surface can vary by no more than 1 micrometer (out of 1,000) as one moves across the surface. Moreover, the walls of these pellets consist of layers whose thicknesses are measured in fractions of micrometers, and surface-smoothnesses in tens of nanometers; thus, these specifications can be given in units of 1,000 or 100 atoms, so that even minute defects have to be absent for the pellets to implode symmetrically when illuminated by the lasers.
The final major impetus for MEMS and nanotechnology, which has the greatest overlap with non-military needs, is their promise of new high-performance sensors, transducers, actuators, and electronic components. The development of this field of applications is expected to replicate that of the micro-electronic industry, which was also originally driven by military needs, and which provides the reference for forecasting a nano-industrial boom and a financial bonanza. There are, however, two major differences. First, electronic devices which can be manufactured in large quantities and at low cost are essentially planar, while MEMS are three-dimensional devices which may include moving parts. Second, the need for MEMS outside professional circles (medical, scientific, police, military) is quite limited, so that the market might not be as wide as expected. For example, the detection and identification of chemical or biological weapon threats through specificity of molecular response may lead to all sorts of medical applications, but only to few consumer goods.
Near and Long-Term Applications and Implications of Nanotechnology
Considering that nanotechnology is already an integral part of the development of modern weapons, it is important to realise that its immediate potential to improve existing weapons (either conventional or nuclear), and its short-term potential to create new weapons (either conventional or nuclear), are more than sufficient to require the immediate attention of diplomats and arms controllers.
In this perspective, the potential long-term applications of nanotechnology (and their foreseeable social and political implications) should neither be downplayed nor overemphasised. Indeed, there are potential applications such as self-replicating nano-robots ('nanobots') which may never prove to be feasible because of fundamental physical or technical obstacles.7 But this impossibility would not mean that the somewhat larger micro-robots of the type that are seriously considered in military laboratories could never become a reality.8
In light of these extant and potential dangers and risks, every effort should be made not to repeat the error of the arms-control community with regard to missile defence. For over thirty years, that community acted on the premise that a ballistic missile defense system will never be built because it will never be sufficiently effective - only to be faced with a concerted attempt to construct such a system! If some treaty is contemplated in order to control or prohibit the development of nanotechnology, it should be drafted in such a way that all reasonable long-term applications are covered.
Moreover, it should not be forgotten that while nanotechnology mostly emphasises the spatial extension of matter at the scale of the nanometer (the size of a few atoms), the time dimension of mechanical engineering has recently reached its ultimate limit at the scale of the femtosecond (the time taken by an electron to circle an atom). It has thus become possible to generate bursts of energy in suitably packaged pulses in space and time that have critical applications in nanotechnology, and to focus pulses of particle or laser beams with extremely short durations on a few micrometer down to a few nanometer sized targets. The invention of the 'superlaser', which enabled such a feat and provided a factor of one million increase in the instantaneous power of tabletop lasers, is possibly the most significant recent advance in military technology. This increase is of the same magnitude as the factor of one million difference in energy density between chemical and nuclear energy.9
In the present paper, the long-term impact of nanotechnology will not be further discussed. The objective is to emphasise the near- to mid-term applications to existing and new types of nuclear weapons.
Nanotechnological Improvement of Existing Types of Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapon technology is characterised by two sharply contrasting demands. On the one hand, the nuclear package containing the fission and fusion materials is relatively simple and forgiving, i.e. rather more sophisticated than complicated. On the other hand, the many ancillary components required for arming the weapon, triggering the high-explosives, and initiating the neutron chain-reaction, are much more complicated. Moreover, the problems related to maintaining political control over the use of nuclear weapons, i.e. the operation of permissive action links (PALs), necessitated the development of protection systems that are meant to remain active all the way to the target, meaning that all these ancillary components and systems are submitted to very stringent requirements for security, safety, and reliable performance under severe conditions.
The general solution to these problems is to favour the use of hybrid combinations of mechanical and electronic systems, which have the advantage of dramatically reducing the probability of common mode failures and decreasing sensitivity to external factors. It is this search for the maximisation of reliability and ruggedness which is driving the development and application of nanotechnology and MEMS engineering in nuclear weapons science.
To give an important example: modern nuclear weapons use insensitive high-explosives (IHE) which can only be detonated by means of a small charge of sensitive high-explosive that is held out of alignment from the main charge of IHE. Only once the warhead is armed does a MEMS bring the detonator into position with the main charge. Since the insensitive high-explosive in a nuclear weapon is usually broken down into many separate parts that are triggered by individual detonators, the use of MEMS-based detonators incorporating individual locking mechanisms are an important ingredient ensuring the use-control and one-point safety of such weapons.10
Further improvements on existing nuclear weapons are stemming from the application of nanotechnology to materials engineering. New capacitors, new radiation-resistant integrated circuits, new composite materials capable to withstand high temperatures and accelerations, etc., will enable a further level of miniaturisation and a corresponding enhancement of safety and usability of nuclear weapons. Consequently, the military utility and the possibility of forward deployment, as well as the potentiality for new missions, will be increased.
Consider the concept of a "low-yield" earth penetrating warhead. The military appeal of such a weapon derives from the inherent difficulty of destroying underground targets. Only about 15 % of the energy from a surface explosion is coupled (transferred) into the ground, while shock waves are quickly attenuated when travelling through the ground. Even a few megatons surface burst will not be able to destroy a buried target at a depth or distance more than 100-200 meters away from ground zero. A radical alternative, therefore, is to design a warhead which would detonate after penetrating the ground by a few tens of meters or more. Since a free-falling or rocket-driven missile will not penetrate the surface by more than about ten meters, some kind of active penetration mechanism is required. This implies that the nuclear package and its ancillary components will have to survive extreme conditions of stress until the warhead is detonated.
Fourth-Generation Nuclear Weapons
First- and second-generation nuclear weapons are atomic and hydrogen bombs developed during the 1940s and 1950s, while third-generation weapons comprise a number of concepts developed between the 1960s and 1980s, e.g. the neutron bomb, which never found a permanent place in the military arsenals. Fourth-generation nuclear weapons are new types of nuclear explosives that can be developed in full compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) using inertial confinement fusion (ICF) facilities such as the NIF in the US, and other advanced technologies which are under active development in all the major nuclear-weapon states - and in major industrial powers such as Germany and Japan.11
In a nutshell, the defining technical characteristic of fourth-generation nuclear weapons is the triggering - by some advanced technology such as a superlaser, magnetic compression, antimatter, etc. - of a relatively small thermonuclear explosion in which a deuterium-tritium mixture is burnt in a device whose weight and size are not much larger than a few kilograms and litres. Since the yield of these warheads could go from a fraction of a ton to many tens of tons of high-explosive equivalent, their delivery by precision-guided munitions or other means will dramatically increase the fire-power of those who possess them - without crossing the threshold of using kiloton-to-megaton nuclear weapons, and therefore without breaking the taboo against the first-use of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, since these new weapons will use no (or very little) fissionable materials, they will produce virtually no radioactive fallout. Their proponents will define them as "clean" nuclear weapons - and possibly draw a parallel between their battlefield use and the consequences of the expenditure of depleted uranium ammunition.12
In practice, since the controlled release of thermonuclear energy in the form of laboratory scale explosions (i.e., equivalent to a few kilograms of high-explosives) at ICF facilities like NIF is likely to succeed in the next 10 to 15 years, the main arms control question is how to prevent this know-how being used to manufacture fourth-generation nuclear weapons. As we have already seen, nanotechnology and micromechanical engineering are integral parts of ICF pellet construction. But this is also the case with ICF drivers and diagnostic devices, and even more so with all the hardware that will have to be miniaturised and 'ruggedised' to the extreme in order to produce a compact, robust, and cost-effective weapon.
A thorough discussion of the potential of nanotechnology and microelectromechanical engineering in relation to the emergence of fourth-generation nuclear weapons is therefore of the utmost importance. It is likely that this discussion will be difficult, not just because of secrecy and other restrictions, but mainly because the military usefulness and usability of these weapons is likely to remain very high as long as precision-guided delivery systems dominate the battlefield. It is therefore important to realise that the technological hurdles that have to be overcome in order for laboratory scale thermonuclear explosions to be turned into weapons may be the only remaining significant barrier against the introduction and proliferation of fourth-generation nuclear weapons. For this reason alone - and there are many others, beyond the scope of this paper - very serious consideration should be given to the possibility of promoting an 'Inner Space Treaty' to prohibit the military development and application of nanotechnological devices and techniques. Notes and References
1. Sean Howard, 'Nanotechnology and Mass Destruction: the Need for an Inner Space Treaty', Disarmament Diplomacy No. 65 (July/August 2002), pp. 3-16.
2. The decades-long "change from the importance of the big bang to the importance of accuracy" was emphasised by Edward Teller in a paper written shortly after the 1991 Gulf War: "Shall one combine the newly acquired accuracy with smaller nuclear weapons (perhaps even of yields of a few tons) to be used against modern weapons such as tanks and submarines?" Edward Teller, American Journal of Physics, Vol.59, October 1991, p.873.
3. Depleted uranium (DU) munitions were primarily designed to stop a massive tank attack by the nuclear-armed Warsaw Pact Organisation. Their first use during the 1991 Gulf War broke a 46-year long taboo against the intentional use or induction of radioactivity in combat.
4. Most literature related to earth-penetrating weapons refers to devices with a yield in the low kiloton range. However, some experts have argued that much less powerful devices would suffice: "A small-yield nuclear weapon (15 tons or less) would be militarily useful: it could destroy deeply buried targets that otherwise could be readily reparable, and it would do so without placing US forces at greater risk. It would also be politically useful, serving notice to the proliferant that the United States will engage it and, if necessary, escalate the conflict." Kathleen C. Bailey, 'Proliferation: Implications for US Deterrence', in Kathleen C. Bailey, ed., Weapons of Mass Destruction: Costs Versus Benefits, Manohar, New Delhi, 1994, pp. 141-142.
5. The smaller an electro-mechanical system, the higher its resistance to acceleration. This explains why it is possible to design a shock-proof wrist-watch, while a wall-clock falling on the ground is certain to be damaged.
6. Pictures of the 50-micrometer gears of Sandia's intricate safety lock for nuclear missiles were published in Science, Vol.282, October 16, 1998, pp. 402-405.
7. Richard E. Smalley, 'Of chemistry, love and nanobots', Scientific American, Vol.285, September 2001, pp. 68-69.
8. Keith W. Brendley and Randall Steeb, 'Military applications of microelectromechanical systems', Report MR-175-OSD/AF/A, RAND Corporation, 1993, 57 pp. Johndale C. Solem, 'On the mobility of military microrobots', Report LA-12133, Los Alamos National Laboratory, July 1991, 17 pp.
9. Using the language of Endnote No. 7, one can say that photons (i.e., particles of light) are, contrary to atoms, neither "fat" nor "sticky": they can be concentrated in unlimited numbers so that a very localised and brief light pulse can contain huge amounts of energy - so large that a table-top superlaser can initiate nuclear reactions such as fission or fusion.
10. As routinely defined by the US Department of Defense: "A nuclear weapon is one-point safe if, when the high explosive (HE) is initiated and detonated at any single point, the probability of producing a nuclear yield exceeding four pounds of trinitrotoluene (TNT) equivalent is less than one in a million." See, for example, http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/ pdf/3150m_1296/p31502m.pdf.
11. André Gsponer and Jean-Pierre Hurni, The Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Explosives, Inertial Confinement Fusion, and the Quest for Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons, INESAP Technical Report No.1, Presented at the 1997 INESAP Conference, Shanghai, China, 8-10 September 1997, Seventh edition, September 2000, ISBN: 3-9333071-02-X, 195 pp.
12. André Gsponer, Jean-Pierre Hurni, and Bruno Vitale, 'A comparison of delayed radiobiological effects of depleted-uranium munitions versus fourth-generation nuclear weapons', Report ISRI-02-07, due to appear in the Proceedings of the 4th Int. Conf. of the Yugoslav Nuclear Society, Belgrade, Sep.30 - Oct.4, 2002, 14 pp. Available at http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0210071.
Dr. André Gsponer is Director of the Geneva-based Independent Scientific Research Institute (ISRI), founded in 1982 to study the arms-control/disarmament implications of emerging technologies. The author thanks his colleagues at ISRI for their research and comments related to this paper.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nebraska
Neb. Appeals Ruling in Nuke Lawsuit
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 12:01 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43932-2002Oct31?language=printer
LINCOLN, Neb. -- The state on Wednesday appealed a federal judge's order that it pay $151 million for blocking construction of a dump for low-level radioactive waste.
The motion before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals also asks for a chance to present the case to a jury.
In a Sept. 30 ruling, Judge Richard Kopf denied Nebraska's request for a jury trial, and said that former Gov. Ben Nelson, a Democrat who is now a U.S. senator, engaged in a politically motivated plot to keep the dump from being built in Nebraska.
Nebraska officials argued that they refused to license the dump because of concerns over possible pollution and a high water table at the proposed site near the South Dakota border.
The dump was to hold waste from Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska and Oklahoma - which formed the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact in 1983.
On the Net:
Central Interstate Low Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission: http://www.cillrwcc.org/
U.S. District Court for Nebraska: http://www.ned.uscourts.gov
-------- MILITARY
American Legion: Billions For Baghdad, Nothing For Veterans
U.S. Newswire
31 Oct 8:30
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/prime/1031-102.html
To: National and State Desks Contact: Steve Thomas, 202-263-2982, Pager 800-759-8888, PIN 115-8679, or Joe March, 317-630-1253; Pager 317-382-7745, both of the American Legion
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- "I just don't get it!" American Legion National Commander Ronald F. Conley said, referring to the failure of congressional conferees to ignore the specter of a presidential veto and to approve concurrent-receipt legislation before Election Day.
"President George W. Bush said we have billions of dollars to rebuild Baghdad, not to mention Afghanistan," said Conley, whose 2.8-million member Legion is the nation's largest veterans organization. "At the same time, his non-veteran advisors are saying they will encourage him to veto any legislation that corrects the inequity of concurrent receipt, because it is a budget buster. Well, 402 House members and 82 Senators did not think so when they voted for correcting a 100-year-old travesty. The travesty is that service-disabled military retirees, by law, are the only group of Americans who have to give up their retirement pay dollar-for-dollar to collect their disability pay."
The 2003 National Defense Authorization that conferees will deal with after the election contains concurrent-receipt provisions that would allow service-disabled military retirees to receive their full military retired pay as well as their disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Under a federal law passed in the 1890s, service-disabled military retirees receive a cut in their retired pay equivalent to their VA disability compensation.
Consider the case of two service members in the same wartime military unit. One is injured during military service, leaves the military after a five-year enlistment and is awarded VA disability compensation while working a federal civilian job, and continues to collect full disability after retirement.
The other is injured also, and is given a disability rating by VA after retiring with 20 years of military service. Both veterans are federal retirees. But the military retiree is the only federal retiree that receives a cut in retired pay equal to the amount of disability compensation.
"Obviously this is wrong," Conley said. "I'll tell you something else that's wrong. Two weeks before a major national election, the power brokers in Congress stalled the conference committee, so that no version of concurrent receipt could reach the president's desk prior to November 5.
"These same non-veteran advisors to the president claim that paying disability and retirement would jeopardize national defense. My response to that is this: There is money budgeted in the House version and even if there wasn't, no civilized nation can afford to send its young men and women to war, and then play the budget shell game with them after 20 or 30 years of service defending our nation.
"What signal does this send our brave young men and women who are now going to war? Is it, 'Don't get wounded, don't get shot, and don't get ill, because we didn't budget for that?' If we didn't budget for concurrent receipt, then perhaps we should rebuild the Baghdads of this world tomorrow and take care of our veterans today.
"It is the same old story as told by the English poet Rudyard Kipling, when speaking about the British soldiers referred to as Tommys when he said: 'Tommy this and Tommy that. Chuck him out, the brute. But he is the savior of his country when the guns begin to shoot.'"
-------- arms sales
US reportedly ties Libya missiles to Serbia
By Reuters
10/31/2002
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/304/nation/US_reportedly_ties_Libya_missiles_to_SerbiaP.shtml
BELGRADE - The United States has complained to Belgrade that a network of Yugoslav firms has been helping Libya develop long-range cruise missiles capable of striking Israel, according to a report citing what it said was a confidential US document.
The three-page document, published yesterday by the Yugoslav weekly Nedeljni Telegraf, says the firms may also have helped Iraq develop its missiles, but it provides no details.
The technologies in question were capable of helping the delivery of weapons of mass destruction and their export is restricted under the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime.
''The US opposes all missile-related cooperation with Libya and Iraq and works actively to impede their access to missile-related equipment and technology,'' the document said.
Serbia is the dominant republic of Yugoslavia, which also includes tiny Montenegro.
The US Embassy in Belgrade declined all comment on the publication, a new twist in a week-old scandal over sanctions-busting military aviation exports to Iraq.
A Serbian military analyst speculated that the technologies may have included propulsion and guidance systems to convert aging MiG-21 fighters into unmanned flying bombs.
The document said the Libyan missile was designed to carry a payload of 1,100 pounds over a range of 900 miles and would significantly enhance Libya's potential threat to the Middle East and southern Europe.
Three Serbian firms extensively assisted the program over a number of years, the report said.
----
Belgrade Accused of Involvement in Arms Sales to Baghdad
October 31, 2002
By DANIEL SIMPSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/international/31BELG.html
BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 30 - Two years after Slobodan Milosevic was ousted, many features of his rule are still hampering Yugoslavia's integration into the world community - especially the sale of arms to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
Since the United States uncovered evidence that a state-owned company in Bosnia's Serb republic was shipping weapons material to Iraq with help from Belgrade, officials in Yugoslavia and neighboring Bosnia have tried to repair the damage by firing the people responsible.
But there remain plenty of unanswered questions about the links between an aircraft factory in Bosnia, the Yugoslav state trading company and a ship seized in Croatian waters that was found to contain 208 tons of nitrogen-based explosive powder used for artillery and missiles.
In a confidential complaint sent to senior Yugoslav officials this year and reprinted in the Belgrade weekly Nedeljni Telegraf, the United States said it had evidence that "a network of Yugoslav firms" was helping both Iraq and Libya to develop missiles.
But American officials have repeatedly declined to comment on the charges, which cover technologies that could bew used to deliver weapons of mass destruction and are subject to export restrictions under the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime. Violations of that embargo would put Yugoslavia at risk of American sanctions, but diplomats stress that such an outcome is not being considered at this stage.
"We have been encouraged by the response so far," a Western diplomat said. "We have to give them time to complete investigations, but we are pressing them every day."
Military experts in Serbia, the dominant republic in what was left of Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars of the 1990's, question whether the country has the ability to supply cruise missiles to anyone.
"There is definitely not the technological capability to produce cruise missiles here, and I doubt that Yugoslavia even has the know-how," a retired senior Yugoslav military official said.
Yugoslavia's military links to Baghdad date to the 1980's, when American, French and British companies also armed Mr. Hussein's Iraq against Iran.
But concrete evidence that this trade was continuing was amassed only last week when NATO troops raided the offices of Orao, a state-run aviation company in Bosnia that has retained close links to Belgrade.
Diplomats said papers seized from Orao showed that it was continuing to send spare parts and technicians to Baghdad to refit an aging Soviet-era fleet of MIG-21 planes.
But when the Croatian police, acting on American intelligence, impounded and searched a ship in the port of Rijeka, they said they had found nothing that could be linked to aircraft or their engines.
According to officials quoted by the Croatian magazine Nacional, the Tonga-registered Boka Star was carrying nitric acid, which can be mixed with kerosene to obtain fuel for Scud missiles, which Iraq fired into Israel during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Whatever the actual nature of the weaponry being sold, the greatest source of concern for American officials has been the involvement of Yugoimport, a state-run trading company whose director was fired last week for his role in the affair.
Although no one is accusing the Belgrade government of approving trade with Baghdad, its failure to clamp down has exposed its reluctance to tackle reforms of its military apparatus and the enduring presence of many Milosevic-era personnel.
-------- chemical weapons
Pentagon: Military tested nerve agent in 1967 in Hawaii
10/31/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-10-31-secret-tests_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The military secretly tested sarin nerve agent in a Hawaii forest preserve in 1967, the Pentagon acknowledged Thursday in the latest disclosures about Cold War-era testing of biological and chemical weapons.
Other secret tests in Hawaii in 1966 and the Panama Canal Zone in 1963 released a germ meant as a harmless stand-in for the bacteria that cause anthrax, the Defense Department said. A 1966 experiment in an undisclosed "tropical jungle type environment" involved spraying tear gas on unprotected U.S. military volunteers.
The Defense Department released summaries of five chemical and biological weapons tests Thursday. The disclosures were part of an effort to research and make public such tests from the 1960s and 1970s to alert veterans who may have been exposed. (Related item: Descriptions of some of the tests.)
The tests were part of Project 112, a military program in the 1960s and 1970s to test chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. Parts of the testing program done on Navy ships were called Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense.
The United States scrapped its biological and chemical weapons programs in the early 1970s.
Some of those involved in the tests say they now suffer health problems linked to their exposure to dangerous chemicals and germs. They are pressing the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate them.
The Pentagon this year acknowledged for the first time that some of the 1960s tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just benign stand-ins.
The Defense Department has identified about 5,000 service members involved in tests at sea and an additional 2,100 involved in the tests on land, Dr. Jonathan Perlin of the Veterans Affairs Department said this month. He said 53 veterans had filed health claims for their exposure during the tests. The agency has sent letters to 1,400 veterans involved in the tests at sea, Perlin said.
The test using sarin in Hawaii was named "Red Oak" and conducted in the Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve on the island of Hawaii in April and May 1967. The testers detonated sarin-filled 155 mm artillery shells to study how the nerve agent dispersed in a tropical jungle.
Sarin is the deadly nerve agent used in the 1995 terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway that killed a dozen people. Even small amounts can cause a thrashing, choking death.
The health effects of long-term exposure to low levels of sarin have not been determined, the Pentagon said.
Other tests made public Thursday involved the use of Bacillus globigii bacteria, which are related to the Bacillus anthracis germ that causes anthrax. Although at the time officials believed that BG was harmless, researchers later determined that it can cause life-threatening infections in people with weakened immune systems.
In a test called "Yellow Leaf," officials detonated 20 "bomblets" filled with BG in the Olaa Forest, also on the island of Hawaii, during April and May of 1966. The test had been planned for the Panama Canal Zone - a strip of what was then U.S. territory - but "international considerations" forced the Defense Department to move it to Hawaii, a Pentagon statement said.
In a test called "Big Jack, Phase A," U.S. planes sprayed BG on an area near the Fort Sherman Military Reservation in the canal zone in February and March 1963.
Both of those tests were to determine how biological weapons would disperse in the tropical jungle.
The military used tear gas in a test called "Pin Point," conducted at an undetermined jungle test site. The Pentagon statement said officials were trying to determine precisely where the test occurred.
During Pin Point, volunteers from the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps were sprayed with tear gas to measure how it dispersed in the jungle.
Tear gas, which causes skin, eye and throat irritation but is not considered deadly, is not banned under the international chemical weapons treaty and is still in the U.S. arsenal for crowd control and other such uses. Military recruits, for example, are exposed to tear gas during chemical weapons training.
-------- china
China 'ready' for Taiwan air link
Thursday, 31 October, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2380189.stm
China has said it may be prepared to allow charter flights to and from rival Taiwan early next year, according to a senior official.
Taiwanese mother holds her son's ears as they watch a plane land at Taipei domestic airport (AP) Travellers currently have to fly via a third place He was speaking to the official Xinhua news agency after Taiwan said the two governments should discuss lifting the ban, which it imposed more than 50 years ago.
But Li Weiyi, the spokesman for China's Taiwan Affairs office, stressed the flights could only take place if they were not described as being "country to country".
Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province and refuses any suggestion the island is a sovereign state.
"As long as the Taiwan administration accepts the one China principle, the two sides may resume contacts and talks," Mr Li said.
He also said any talks on direct links should be held at a non-government level, and should be economic, not political.
Business booming
On Thursday, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian renewed his call for talks with China on lifting the ban.
"The two sides must sit down and talk if the problems regarding the 'three links' are to be solved," he said, referring to transport, trade and postal services.
But he also said Taiwan "should not be marginalised or relegated to a local government."
China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and Taiwan cut the direct links for what it called security reasons. The two sides have no official diplomatic ties.
Business links have thrived, but the lack of direct travel means businesspeople have to travel via a third place, usually Hong Kong or Macau.
Earlier this month, Mr Chen said the ban on direct links could end "very soon" after China's Vice Premier, Qian Qichen, said the links could be referred to as cross-Strait rather than a "domestic issue".
-------- iraq
Looking at a MacArthur-type occupation in Iraq
Lee Poh Ping,
New Straits Times
http://www.emedia.com.my/Current_News/NST/Thursday/National/20021031082734/Article/
Oct 31: IT was reported recently that the US plans to have a military occupation of Iraq after Saddam Hussein has been overthrown, based on the experience of the American occupation of Japan under General Douglas MacArthur after the Second World War.
That occupation was deemed to be a success for its achievement of the American objectives of turning Japan into a democracy and of preventing it from committing aggression again. One cannot say for certain how serious the Bush administration will be regarding the implementation of this plan.
The impression is that it may have been hastily hatched to counter the argument of critics that the Bush administration has not really considered what would happen to Iraq after an American attack. Still the fact that it has been considered raises the question as to whether the two cases are comparable.
The answer is that apart from the fact that in both cases the defeated nations had and will have a military occupation imposed on them, the differences are significant. The first concerns the psychology of the defeated nation. The nation that greeted MacArthur as he arrived in Japan shortly after the Japanese surrender was one that had accepted defeat after many years of war, and was prepared to accept American rule.
This was particularly so when MacArthur absolved Emperor Hirohito from war guilt and did not force his abdication. Rather MacArthur put the blame on a bunch of militarists and their allies as those who manipulated the Emperor into taking Japan into war.
MacArthur's decision to spare the Emperor had been a controversial one, particularly among the Asian allies, and may have been an important reason why Japan has not really come to terms with its war past as compared to Germany where the Nazis were completely purged by the occupation authorities.
Nevertheless, the Japanese people were greatly relieved as this meant that only a small group, and not they, were responsible for the war. It is no wonder they became receptive to MacArthur's rule and the democratic reforms he pushed on them.
The Iraqi situation is, however, less clear cut. It may be that, as the Bush administration hopes, the Iraqis will be so weary after so many years of Saddam Hussein that they will welcome his overthrow in the way that the Afghans welcomed the defeat of the Taliban. Then the Iraqis will accept, like the Japanese, an American military commander who will impose democratic reforms on them.
But equally likely will be an angry and resentful population resorting to various forms of resistance against American rule. It must also not be forgotten that Iraq can split after Saddam for unlike Japan, Iraq has a very heterogeneous population.
Second, the US in Iraq faces a different regional and even global context from that of Japan after the Second World War. There was very little sympathy for Japan from their regional neighbours such as China, Korea and Southeast Asia who were the victims of Japanese aggression.
They and the other allies such as Britain and Australia demanded that Japan be appropriately punished by, among other things, the payment of heavy reparations. The Americans on the other hand tried to shield Japan from such allied pressures by moderating the reparation payments and ensuring that Japan could get on its feet economically as soon as is possible.
The latter course of action accelerated when the Cold War began when Japan became an ally of the US while the erstwhile ally China became an enemy. Unable to develop any regional sympathy, the Japanese then became more reliant on the Americans, thus making it easier for MacArthur to govern.
In the Iraqi case, almost the entire Middle East, if not much of the globe, are not terribly sympathetic to an American attack, particularly if done without UN approval, and could be deeply affected by an attack. This may not matter to the Americans as they believe an overwhelming display of American military might, particularly if it would result in the swift overthrow of Saddam, would so overawe Iraq's neighbours that they would acquiesce to the new order the US will impose on the Middle East.
Yet another scenario is also possible. The entire Middle East could be turned into great instability by an Iraq breaking up and by an Iraqi counterattack against its neighbours. There is also the possibility of Saddam using chemical and biological weapons if he is cornered. And equally likely, Saddam or other embittered Iraqis and Arabs could link up with global terrorists. In such a scenario, the US will not find Iraq easy to govern.
Finally, it must not be forgotten that personality counts. Vainglorious that MacArthur was, he was already a legend when he arrived in Japan. In addition he had some knowledge of Asian affairs. He had the charisma and authority and some understanding of the Japanese psyche to govern effectively.
Tommy Franks, the putative MacArthur in Iraq, is not a household name and also not known for his knowledge of Arab affairs. How effective he will be in ruling a defeated Iraq remains to be seen.
The writer is a professor at Ikmas, UKM
----
Fight Carefully Then Go, Iraq Opposition Urges US
October 31, 2002
By Michael Georgy and Parisa Hafezi
Reuters
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=politicsnews&StoryID=1662911&fromEmail=true#
LONDON/TEHRAN, Iran - Iraqi opposition leaders said Thursday only U.S. military might could oust President Saddam Hussein -- but the less force they used and the sooner they let Iraqis run their country, the better.
In London and Tehran, they said that if Washington used too much firepower or tried to run Iraq for too long, the gratitude of ordinary Iraqis would soon turn into hostility.
"The opposition alone is not able to overthrow Saddam and needs international support," said Jalal Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan which controls part of a Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq outside Baghdad's control.
He was in Tehran for what he called fruitful talks with fellow opposition leader Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqir Hakim, head of the Iran-based Shi'ite Supreme Council of the Islamic Republic.
Opposition figures in London told Reuters they also had no doubt that nothing short of U.S. firepower would be needed to remove the Iraqi president after more than 20 years in power.
But they urged the United States to show restraint, fearing a full-blown war would destabilize Iraq and undermine chances to recruit potentially rebellious army officers.
"This should not be treated as a war but as an organized regime change. Our concern is that the Americans will not differentiate between loyalist forces surrounding Saddam and others who may want to change sides," said Sharif al Hussein, a senior member of Iraqi National Congress.
"If the Americans wage a blanket campaign to destroy the Iraqi army they will be viewed as occupiers not liberators," he said on behalf of the main Iraqi opposition group.
TARGET THE GUARDS
Opposition figures said the key to U.S. success would be to choose targets carefully to focus on the intelligence services, the 100,000-strong Special Republican Guard and the regular Republican Guard who make up Saddam's core defense units.
"The United States should attack the mechanism of oppression that holds back military units from attacking Saddam so that they will be able to rebel against the regime," Hussein said.
Current chairman of the INC's leadership council, he said the United States should give some officers in the elite Guard guarantees they would not be attacked to entice them to rebel.
The U.S. build-up for a possible campaign has raised fears a war could unleash chaos and bloodshed in a country with volatile ethnic lines and a pervasive state security apparatus.
Aside from balancing the interests of Iraq's Kurds, the majority Shi'ites and Sunni Muslim minority who control Iraq, the United States must let the opposition play a big role in rebuilding after war, INC leaders said.
"In the first few weeks the country will be full of euphoria, then daily reality dawns on people and they will need to see familiar faces," said Nabeel Musawi, a member of the INC and a political adviser to its effective leader, Ahmad Chalabi.
"It would be quite difficult for a (U.S.) officer who has spent most of his life based in Texas to deal with the civilian population in Iraq," he told Reuters.
U.S. TROOPS SHOULD NOT STAY
The PUK's Talabani said U.S. troops should not stay behind.
"There is no need for American forces to remain in Iraq after the attack. The Iraqi opposition can control Iraq after the collapse of Saddam's regime," he told reporters.
Regional governments, particularly Iran, worry that a pro-Washington regime will be installed on their doorstep at a time of growing anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East.
Talabani tried to allay such fears by saying a post-Saddam government in Iraq would not simply dance to Washington's tune.
"Iraq's next government will not be Washington's enemy but that does not mean it would be America's puppet," he said.
Holding the country together could be difficult. Kurds and Shi'ites have long memories of the Iraqi troops who crushed their uprisings after Iraq was defeated in the 1991 Gulf War.
Western critics have expressed concern that Iraq's opposition is too fragmented to form an effective government.
Around 200 officials from Iraq's various opposition groups will meet in Brussels on November 15-22 to try to forge a common post-Saddam policy, fearing that the alternative to democracy could be a new, but more pro-American strongman.
Talabani said the opposition wants a democratic, pluralist and federal Iraq, he said, trying to allay outside fears -- especially in Turkey and Iran -- of a separate Kurdish state.
----
Iraq Reopens Saudi Crossing After 12 Years
October 31, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-saudi.html
AR'AR, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq reopened a border crossing with Saudi Arabia on Thursday, letting through people and goods for the first time since the frontier was shut after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The reopening is one of several signs that Baghdad, facing a the prospect of a U.S. and British military campaign, wants to improve its relationship with its former Gulf War foe.
``The opening of the crossing is a step forward toward promoting and strengthening trade ties with Saudi Arabia,'' Iraq's trade Minister Mohammed Saleh told reporters at Ar'ar.
Saleh said Saudi Arabia is among countries that supply Iraq with goods such as cooking oil, soap and milk powder under a U.N.-administered oil-for-food scheme that allows Baghdad to distribute rations to Iraqis burdened by U.N. sanctions.
Witnesses at the crossing said 100 Saudi trade officials and businessmen crossed into Iraq to attend Baghdad's 10-day trade fair, due to open on Friday.
It is the largest such delegation to come to Baghdad since the two former Arab allies severed ties over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait 12 years ago.
Iraqi trade sources said 43 major Saudi firms plan to take part in Baghdad's trade fair. The border point will allow Saudi Arabia's exports, usually sent to Iraq through neighboring countries, to cross directly into Iraq.
The crossing, 210 miles southwest of Baghdad, was once a major route for goods in and out of Iraq before the Gulf War. During the war, U.S. and coalition troops staged attacks on Iraq from bases in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia asked Iraq to reopen the border crossing in October 2000 and Baghdad gave its approval last June.
Five years ago there was no trade between Saudi Arabia and Iraq but trade between the two states is expected to reach $1 billion in 2002. Saudi Arabia's exports to Iraq under the oil-for-food program stood at $298 million in 2001.
The Ar'ar crossing will be the fifth authorized entry point for humanitarian goods brought with proceeds of Iraqi oil sales under the U.N. deal. U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990 for its invasion of Kuwait.
The four other crossings are at the Iraqi towns of Trebil on the Jordanian border, Al-Walid on the Syrian border, Zakho on the Turkish border and at Um-Qasr on the Gulf.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Labor ministers resign
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 31, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021031-75817032.htm
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government collapsed yesterday when his defense chief and other ministers from the Labor Party quit in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlers.
The demise of the 20-month alliance between Mr. Sharon's Likud Party and Labor makes a general election likely in the coming months, even as war looms in the Persian Gulf and fighting with the Palestinians continues with no end in sight.
To continue to rule, Mr. Sharon must cobble together a narrow majority in parliament based on a new alliance with small parties that are far more hard-line than his own Likud, including religious parties and splinter factions.
The Labor ministers' resignations do not take effect for 48 hours under Israeli law, giving both sides a grace period to ponder a compromise.
But analysts said that reconciliation appeared unlikely, given the acrimony of yesterday's exchanges.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer led the revolt at the end of a day of marathon talks in which Likud and Labor teetered between divorce and reconciliation.
The dispute was over a Labor demand to redistribute $147 million from subsidies for Jewish settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to poorer groups inside Israel. As expected, Mr. Sharon managed to win enough votes to defeat the Labor proposal and pass a budget.
But he now is expected to call elections early in the new year instead of November 2003.
Addressing parliament before a preliminary vote on next year's budget, Mr. Sharon lambasted Mr. Ben-Eliezer for stopping just a few words short of a compromise.
"Over this you are breaking up the unity government? I ask you," Mr. Sharon roared as he slammed his hand on the podium.
"At this critical time for the Israeli economy, what is required of us, both in the coalition and the opposition, is to vote on behalf of the budget. Enough. There is a limit to the disgrace," he said.
Parliament must vote two more times to pass the budget.
Mr. Ben-Eliezer rejected charges that he used the spat over settler subsidies - an insignificant fraction of the spending plan - as an excuse to move into the opposition, where he could improve his chances of beating a challenge to his leadership of the Labor Party expected next month.
"I understand the prime minister didn't expect this. He expected we would continue to be his lackeys," Mr. Ben-Eliezer said after the breakdown.
"If the Labor Party is so important and stability is so important, why didn't [Mr. Sharon] step in our direction?" he said.
Mr. Ben-Eliezer isn't the only one facing a leadership challenge. A general election will force Mr. Sharon into a pre-election showdown against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is still widely popular among the Likud faithful.
The winner of that contest would be the favorite to become the next prime minister, according to opinion polls, which show Likud winning the largest number of votes in the next election.
Despite the daily carnage with the Palestinians and a painful recession, Mr. Sharon's unity coalition was preferred by a majority of Israelis who saw neither Labor nor Likud as capable of providing an answer to the Palestinian uprising.
"The coalition was incoherent because it was not based around a policy," said Ron Dermer, an Israeli political consultant. "It was unity for the sake of unity."
National elections have been held three times since 1996 because of the unstable coalitions created by the country's election system.
"We must fight terror, but this is the day when we have to present a diplomatic horizon," Mr. Ben-Eliezer said. "The prime minister is unable to present a diplomatic horizon."
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who led Labor for much of the past two decades and has been a key supporter of the unity government, tried to convince Mr. Ben-Eliezer to back down.
When the attempt failed, Mr. Peres resigned along with Mr. Ben-Eliezer and four other Labor Party ministers.
In Washington, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, "The United States views the events in Israel as part of Israel's internal democratic process, and we have no comment beyond that."
----
Profile: Israel's kingmakers
Lieberman's party rejects any notions of land for peace
Thursday, 31 October, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2380283.stm
Ariel Sharon is courting the right-wing National Unity-Yisrael Beiteinu Party, an amalgam of three small ultra-nationalistic factions.
The party holds seven seats in the Knesset and could provide the prime minister with enough support to limp along with a marginal majority.
Jewish settlers National Unity-Yisrael Beiteinu advocates Jewish sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza National Unity-Yisrael Beiteinu Party was formed in 1999, bringing together Moledet, Tkuma and Yisrael Beiteinu.
Mr Sharon's attempts to co-opt National Unity-Yisrael Beiteinu and avoid going to the polls could be short-lived.
The party's chairman and founder of the Yisrael Beiteinu faction, Avigdor Lieberman, has previously balked at the idea of rejoining Mr Sharon's government, favouring new elections instead.
Mr Lieberman, who was Mr Sharon's national infrastructure minister, pulled the party out of the coalition in March 2002, in protest against Mr Sharon's decision to lift the siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
Netanyahu ally
The Moldovan-born politician - who earned a reputation as an anti-Arab militant during his student days - is also an ally of Mr Sharon's rival for the leadership of the Likud Party, Binyamin Netanyahu, having served as Mr Netanyahu's chief-of-staff during his tenure as prime minister.
National Unity-Yisrael Beiteinu is implacably opposed to the Oslo peace accords and any territorial compromise with the Palestinians.
Last October, the party resigned from the government in protest after Mr Sharon pulled the Israeli army out of Palestinian areas of the West Bank city of Hebron, but retracted its decision two days later following the assassination by Palestinian militants of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, who was the leader of Moledet.
Mr Ze'evi was succeeded as party leader by Benny Alon.
The faction is perceived as the political heir to the anti-Arab Kach movement, which is banned under Israeli law.
'Transfers'
Its most controversial policy is that of "transferring" the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Moledet joined Tkuma in 1999 to form the National Unity Party, led by Benny Begin, the son of former right-wing Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
The bedrock of National Unity-Yisrael Beiteinu Party's policies are a belief in the integrity of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza.
The party has made it clear that if it props up Mr Sharon's Government, it will be for a price.
----
Sharon opts for defence hardliner
Mofaz has a reputation for adopting harsh tactics
Thursday, 31 October, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2383887.stm
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has offered former army chief General Shaul Mofaz the post of defence minister to replace Labor Party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
The hawkish General Mofaz has a reputation for adopting a harsh line towards the Palestinians and has advocated the expulsion of leader Yasser Arafat.
Mofaz on one side, Ya'alon on the other and Sharon over them, what do you imagine will happen in the region?
Yasser Arafat Senior Israeli officials, including Sharon aide Arnon Perlman, said General Mofaz had accepted the post.
The move has sparked warnings from Mr Arafat, who said that the Mid-East conflict would get worse with a narrow right-wing coalition running Israel.
Mr Sharon is looking to ultra-nationalist and religious parties to shore up his shaky government after the moderate Labor Party quit the coalition over a budget row.
For the past two years General Mofaz has been in charge of combating the Palestinian uprising. His tactics have brought increasing criticism from left-wingers and human rights groups.
Under his command Israeli troops have stepped up targeted assassinations of suspected terrorists, demolitions of their homes and blockades of Palestinian towns and villages.
Ariel Sharon Sharon needs coalition partners
General Mofaz has accused the Palestinian leadership of "being infected from head to toe with terror".
According to Israeli media his appointment must be approved by the government and parliament, probably next week.
Moshe Ya'alon, previously General Mofaz's deputy, succeeded him in July as army chief of staff, and shares his hardline stance towards the Palestinians.
Mr Arafat said the appointments did not bode well for the peace process.
"Mofaz on one side, Ya'alon on the other and Sharon over them, what do you imagine will happen in the region?" Mr Arafat told the Arabic satellite television station al-Jazeera.
Mr Arafat said he expected a military escalation against the Palestinians.
Majority lost
Following Labor's departure from the government coalition Mr Sharon has been left with the support of just 55 members of the 120-strong Knesset (parliament).
To regain a majority he has been seeking the support of ultra-nationalist and religious parties.
Israel radio reported that Mr Sharon has made contact with the ultra-nationalist National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which commands seven seats in the Knesset, enough to restore the prime minister's majority.
Its chairman, Avigdor Lieberman, however, has previously made clear his party would prefer to take part in elections rather than join Mr Sharon's government.
Mr Lieberman is an ally of Mr Sharon's rival for leadership of the Likud Party, Binyamin Netanyahu, who quit Mr Sharon's coalition earlier this year.
US relations
By and large the political parties that Mr Sharon is courting oppose negotiations with the Palestinians and advocate Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Israeli troops detain a Palestinian Arafat says he fears a military escalation
But the BBC's Barbara Plett in Jerusalem says most observers do not expect radical policy changes.
Our correspondent says Mr Sharon is eager to protect his strategic relationship with the United States and Washington has drawn some pretty clear red lines.
A narrow right-wing government would probably continue the military policy against the Palestinians and bury even more deeply the chances of reviving a political process.
Despite the loss of Labor, Mr Sharon said he would continue leading the country.
"I plan to make every effort to establish an alternative government," he told Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.
"I have no intention of initiating early elections," he added.
Mr Sharon's narrow ad-hoc coalition faces its first crucial test in a no-confidence vote which the left-wing Meretz Party has tabled for Monday.
-------- nato
NATO says could launch pre-emptive strikes
By Adam Tanner
October 31, 2002
Reuters
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=1429052
BERLIN (Reuters) - NATO, founded as a defensive alliance against possible Soviet attack, may one day take pre-emptive military action against perceived threats, a senior alliance official says.
"I would not exclude the possibility of NATO acting pre-emptively at some point in the future," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told journalists in Berlin on Thursday.
"But I would also not say that this is the answer to every situation that NATO would face. Certainly it depends on the situation."
U.S. President George W. Bush has moved beyond Washington's half-century-old strategy of deterrence and said the country will launch pre-emptive military strikes when necessary rather than waiting to be attacked by terror groups or rogue states.
But most European allies oppose the idea of pre-emption, especially without a United Nations mandate to use force.
Under the logic of deterrence, an adversary is kept from taking hostile action by fear of massive military retaliation.
"The deterrent power of the United States did not seem to deter al Qaeda in attacking us," the official said. "Pre-emptive action, in certain circumstances, when you have good intelligence, may be the way forward.
"But we are not asserting as a country, as a government, that that is the answer to every security problem around the world."
COLLECTIVE DEFENCE VS PRE-EMPTIVE ACTION
The suggestion of a new approach comes as NATO prepares to accept new members of the former Soviet Bloc at a November summit in Prague. Until now NATO officials have said that the defining principle of the 19-nation alliance -- collective defence -- would remain intact.
Whether European allies would follow Washington's lead in taking offensive military action to eliminate the potential threat of another state or group is far from clear. NATO's rules require all members to agree before taking military action.
Most European allies are reticent about or flatly opposed to a possible U.S.-led strike against Iraq, with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder coming from behind in polls to win narrow re-election last month boosted by his firm opposition to war.
The alliance's charter calls on member countries to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations".
At the NATO summit in Prague, allies will launch a new initiative to build military capability, setting out specifically which countries should do what and by when.
-------- pakistan
The legacy of Athens, Pakistani-style
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
October 31, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021031-12821896.htm
Former Ambassador George Bruno's Sunday Forum column, "There's still no democracy in Pakistan" (Commentary), unfortunately sees Pakistan's democracy as a glass half empty. Contrary to what he perceives, the reality is markedly different and facts prove that a jaundiced perception of the recent elections cannot be borne by what is actually occurring in the country's body politic.
Observers both domestic and international agree that the elections were conducted in a fair, free and transparent manner. The results further proved that many of the bigwigs who were perceived to be the government's favorites lost their seats in their home constituencies.
The victory of the Mujtahida Majlis-i-Amal or MMA (an alliance of six religious parties) should not be seen as an ominous political development. The demographic profile of votes cast in favor of the MMA is emblematic of the collective sense of angst in the Pashtun areas because of ethnic power policies across the border, economic disruptions in the border areas caused by the anti-terrorism campaign, and ennui of voters in general with other political leaders and their legacy of misgovernance and malfeasance.
The performance of the present government has received kudos from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, especially in stemming the hemorrhaging economy. Unemployment, inflation, hard currency reserves, remittances, trade balance and debt servicing all have shown record improvements under extremely trying circumstances without provoking any civil disturbances. This is no mean achievement, bearing in mind Pakistan's domestic, regional and international milieu.
The political developments, especially the constitutional amendments, have in no way neutered the legislature. Rather, these enactments have restored the checks and balances and institutional safety valves that existed from 1988 to 1998. Far from being an impotent body, the parliament has the prerogative to impeach the president and also amend the constitution with a two-thirds majority.
Finally, unlike tangible military and developmental assistance, democracy is germane to each socioeconomic and psychosocial geographic entity and cannot be "imported" or "exported." Rather, it develops intermittently, with fits and starts, because representative government and political pluralism are the products of a historical process, dependent upon the country's political culture.
ASAD HAYAUDDIN
Press attache Embassy of Pakistan Washington
-------- russia / chechnya
New Russia-U.S. war ties revealed
Cooperation in Afghanistan extends deeper than thought
By Michael Moran and Robert Windrem,
MSNBC
Oct. 31
http://www.msnbc.com/news/828715.asp
Sea, land and air links -- in yellow, red and blue -- supplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to Central Command documents obtained by MSNBC.com.
NEW YORK, - In an unprecedented sign of the growing anti-terrorist alliance between the United States and Russia, MSNBC.com learned Thursday that Moscow gave its consent for American ammunition and other war supplies to pass through Russia by rail en route to the war in Afghanistan.
MILITARY DOCUMENTS obtained by MSNBC.com indicate that for months now, huge shipments of American war materiel have been passing through Russian territory by rail, from northern European ports in Murmansk and Helsinki, and from the Russian Far Eastern port of Vladivostok. Not since World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union allied to fight Hitler's Germany, has the American military had such a presence on Russian soil.
The documents, including PowerPoint maps from the U.S. military's Central Command that show main resupply routes for the Afghan campaign, indicate Russian railroads have been used extensively to keep troops supplied. The supplies appear to be destined for U.S. bases in former Soviet parts of Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The documents indicate that the shipments include ammunition, and probably food, medical supplies and other equipment needed to sustain the 7,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan and several thousand more in neighboring Central Asian states.
Other main supply routes run through the Persian Gulf state of Oman, through Pakistan and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
The shipments, until now undisclosed by either government, also shed new light on the complex horse-trading under way over the Iraq resolution at the Security Council, where issues of international law and nuclear proliferation are mingling with oil interests, national pride and the desire of some Council members to exercise a check on unilateral American action.
Asked to comment on the shipments, Sgt. Charles Portman, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said, "We leave it up to coalition countries to discuss any participation" in the U.S.-led Afghan campaign. He referred calls to the Russian Embassy, where several calls for comment went unanswered.
'ANOTHER LEVEL'
Dick Melanson, a professor of national security strategy at the National War College in Washington, D.C., said that if Russia has been helping ship American war supplies to the battle zone, "that takes the relationship to another level."
Ties between Russia and the United States, former Cold War enemies, warmed considerably in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin helped clear the way for U.S. forces to use former Soviet bases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and he used his influence after the war to persuade the Russian-backed factions within the Afghan Northern Alliance to support Hamid Karzai as their new president.
It was widely believed, however, that most of the Russian assistance took place behind the scenes.
"Apparently the Russian authorities don't want to emphasize it," said Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, who noted that Russian nationalists would seize upon the shipments in political attacks on the Kremlin.
U.N. TALKS
Experts also suggested that this kind of cooperation would be considered an important Russian "chit" in the complex negotiations over a new U.N. resolution on Iraq.
Iraq: Order of the battle
"I think that probably makes the Bush administration's efforts to get a new Iraq resolution with teeth that much more difficult," said Melanson, who stressed that his was his own view and not that of the military. "In some ways, the administration is paying the price for not deciding whether the priority is defeating global terrorism, or unseating Saddam Hussein. I can see where the Russians could exploit that."
An Arab diplomat attached to his nation's U.N. delegation confirmed this: "There is more going on than meets the eye between them," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Oil, geopolitical considerations, and especially their mutual interest in fighting what they call terrorism."
Felgenhauer described the Afghan campaign as an area of particular agreement: "The Russians are apparently ready to help, because the al-Qaida and Taliban remnants in Afghanistan remain common enemy," he said.
Russia, along with France, has been reluctant to allow approval of a new resolution on Iraq that would allow the United States to use military force against Baghdad without further consultation at the Security Council should Baghdad fail to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. The United States accuses Iraq's regime of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons and stockpiling chemical and biological weapons in defiance of pledges it made at the end of the Gulf War in 1991 and U.N. resolutions passed since then.
REMOTE REGION
Securing Russia's cooperation ahead of last October's conflict in landlocked Afghanistan was considered a major breakthrough by the Bush administration, which prior to Sept. 11, 2001, had been on shaky footing with Moscow.
Locating reliable supply lines for American troops operating in northern Afghanistan, in particular, had been a major concern of American military planners. Operations in the southern part of the country are supplied largely through Pakistan. But in the mountainous north, air supply would be prohibitively expensive.
"It's cheaper to use rail than to take it all by air, so it makes sense," said Felgenhauer, the Russian military analyst. "Russia can offer a united rail network, left over from the Soviet Union," that still joins far-flung ports in Vladivostok and Murmansk to the now independent states of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which have become important garrisons for American operations inside Afghanistan.
MSNBC.com's Preston Mendenhall in London contributed to this report.
-------- un
3 Nations Oppose U.S. Demand on Iraq
By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 3:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47099-2002Oct31?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.S. demand for speedy U.N. action on Iraq has run into strong opposition from Russia, France and China, who want Washington to change a draft resolution and eliminate any license for the United States to attack Baghdad on its own.
The three veto-holding Security Council members want to ensure that Iraq is given a chance to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors before any military action is authorized - and they're now waiting to see what the United States and Britain are going to do to address their concerns.
After a third meeting council session Wednesday on the U.S. proposal, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Gennady Gatilov said Moscow still has "quite a number of problems" with the U.S. draft, centered on the automatic authorization to use force.
The opposition has stymied the Bush administration's hopes to quickly push a resolution through the world body. In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said debate would likely be concluded toward the end of next week.
The Security Council only got the U.S. draft on Oct. 23 and the three sessions since then gave all 15 members the opportunity to go over it line by line and suggest changes.
U.S. and British diplomats said the views of the council will now be studied carefully, ministers will continue talking, and there will be a response - but when it will come and whether it will meet Russian, French and Chinese demands remains to be seen.
"Don't expect any immediate action," said Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock. "There is going to be no precipitate rush to a conclusion."
China's Ambassador Wang Yingfan said he expected the United States and Britiain to come back with revisions.
"I don't know what kind of progress in the end we'll have," he said.
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said everyone knows Paris' position, but "frankly we don't know where the U.S. is" now on the issue of authorizing force.
The U.S. and British consultations on possible changes to the U.S. draft, coupled with Friday's handover of the Security Council presidency from Cameroon to China and next Tuesday's U.S. election, have pushed back the Bush administration's timetable for a U.N. vote.
On Wednesday, Powell stressed that Washington would not accept a resolution that limited U.S. freedom of action on Iraq.
"There is nothing that we would propose in this resolution or we would find acceptable in a resolution that would handcuff the president of the United States in doing what he feels he must do," Powell said, reiterating the administration's view that the U.S. Congress has already given its authorization for U.S. action against Iraq.
But the administration also wants the United Nations to support a resolution that strengthens inspections, warns Iraq of "serious consequences" if it fails to cooperate, and declares that Iraq is still in "material breach" of its obligations to get rid of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
In an effort to win support, Washington signaled a readiness this week to make some minor concessions involving a new weapons inspection regime. These were welcomed, but the United States has yet to find a solution to the critical issue of the automatic use of force.
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, said Tuesday it isn't the words "material breach" or "serious consequences" that's at issue but their context and the meaning it implies.
In the case of the U.S. draft, Gatilov said Wednesday Russia still has concerns that references to "material breach" could trigger an attack on Iraq.
He stressed that any assurances from the United States and Britain that this is not the case must be in the draft resolution. Diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington could be willing to offer such assurances privately.
At Wednesday's council meeting, diplomats said many nations also objected to an introductory paragraph recalling U.N. resolutions adopted after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait which authorized member states "to use all necessary means" to oust Iraqi troops and restore Kuwait's freedom. There were concerns this could trigger new military action if Iraq failed to cooperate.
The search for an Iraq resolution began on Sept. 12 when President Bush challenged world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly to deal with Iraq's failure to comply with resolutions demanding the elimination of its weapons of mass destruction or stand aside as the United States acted.
On Wednesday, Bush hosted chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix of the United Nations, and Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency, at the White House - two days after they told the Security Council that Iraq should be warned it will face consequences if it doesn't cooperate.
Blix told Associated Press Television News that Bush made clear he was categorically committed to ensuring the success of weapons inspections and wanted to make sure that Iraq could not engage in in any "cat and mouse play" with inspectors.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry denounced the meeting, calling it "a strange and unprecedented move" to "put pressure on the U.N. to adopt the aggressive resolution which distorts facts and adds more conditions."
--------
No Veto Threat From Security Council
October 31, 2002
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/international/middleeast/31NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 30 - The first round of Iraq negotiations including both permanent and rotating Security Council members ended today without threats from France, Russia or China to use their veto or moves to confront Washington with competing resolutions.
But the 15 Council nations remained divided by as little, or as much, as two words: "material breach."
The seemingly picayune focus on these words has tried the patience of Bush administration officials who are ready to get on with disarming President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. But council diplomats agreed that the position of this phrase in the final resolution will determine if, when and how the United States will go to war to strip Iraq of its most lethal weapons.
Diplomats said the council nations broadly agreed that they wanted to tell Mr. Hussein that he has to surrender weapons of mass destruction to United Nations inspectors or face war. "We're looking for a resolution which would be agreeable to all 15 members - to achieve through inspections the full disarmament of Iraq," the ambassador from Ireland, Richard Ryan, said today. "Full stop," he added for emphasis.
"Material breach is a fact," Mr. Ryan added, although Ireland has been viewed as undecided in the debate.
The United States and its ally Britain proposed that the resolution should say that Iraq "is still, and has been for a number of years, in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions." The other council members do not disagree, since weapons inspectors, who are required to monitor Iraq's arms programs under resolutions dating to 1991, have not been allowed to return to the country since 1998.
Yet French and Russian diplomats object to the phrase on the ground that if Iraq is already in breach of past resolutions, any nation on the council is empowered under the United Nations charter to take action, including military force, at any time to enforce compliance.
French officials worry that if the clause remains, the Bush administration will use it to go to war with Iraq even before new weapons inspections begin, or to respond with force to any Iraqi infraction of the inspections without consulting the Security Council. France wants to force the United States to come back to the council, after the inspections are under way, for a second round of decision-making if Mr. Hussein does not comply with the inspections.
In the diplomatic dance over the last two days, both France and Russia have dropped their objections to including these words, if they can be framed in a way that blunts their power to authorize immediate force. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov of Russia told the Council today that it was not the words that mattered but how they could be interpreted.
United States diplomats said they would revise the draft to incorporate some of the council's suggestions. But they warned that the French proposal could seriously dilute the threat to Mr. Hussein, and insisted that the United States would not give up its prerogative to lead a military strike against Iraq when it chose.
Sensing that a compromise was within reach, American and French officials furiously exchanged bits of text looking for language that would allow both sides to say their concerns had been met.
In Washington, Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations biological and chemical weapons inspection team, and Muhammad el-Baradei, the chief atomic inspector, met today with President Bush and senior members of his foreign policy team, including Vice President Cheney; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
Administration officials said the purpose of the meetings was to discuss ways to make inspections work, not to urge Mr. Blix to support the United States resolution.
"There's no point in sending the inspectors back into Iraq if the inspectors themselves don't think they can get their job done," Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, told reporters today. "As the Security Council resolution is debated, it is healthy, it is wise, and it is fitting for the inspectors to meet with the members of the Security Council worldwide, including in the United States, to make certain that they have the tools they need to get their job done."
Mr. Blix has said he hopes the United States and its allies will provide detailed intelligence reports to help the inspectors. United Nations and administration officials said that Mr. Bush seemed intent on sending the message today that he was prepared to provide that kind of assistance.
"We want to make sure that we're doing everything possible," said Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, "because as the president said, military force is a last result."
Secretary Powell, asked about the meeting with the inspectors in an interview today on National Public Radio, said the president "made it clear to them that we have confidence in them and that we are going to give them all the support we can so they can do their job."
Secretary Powell said the inspections could take "months" to complete, a remark that seemed at odds with the administration's insistence that efforts to disarm Iraq not drag on for an extended period.
Asked later if his remarks meant that the United States would rule out military action while inspections were continuing, Secretary Powell said, "There is nothing that we propose in this resolution or we would find acceptable in a resolution that would handcuff the president of the United States from doing what he feels he must do to defend the United States, defend our people and defend our interests in the world.
"We understand it will take time," Secretary Powell said. "And the president understands that that means that we will have to wait for them to do their work and complete their reports."
-------- us
Army Sec.: Troops Ready for Iraq
Thu Oct 31, 2002
By PAULINE JELINEK,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021031/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/army_iraq_1
WASHINGTON (AP) - American troops are ready, should they be drawn into the dangerous and complicated job of fighting an urban war in Iraq, Army Secretary Thomas E. White said Thursday.
That kind of warfare may be necessary to meet President Bush (news - web sites)'s goal of removing President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) from power.
Saddam has promised to take any war with the United States into his cities, and U.S. military and intelligence officials acknowledge that combat in Baghdad's neighborhoods may be Saddam's best chance to counter some of America's military advantages.
In a meeting with reporters Thursday, White declined to talk specifically about Iraq.
"I'll just say the Army's ready," White said. "That's our job, to be ready, and the Army's ready."
Fighting in cities is costly to both armies and civilians. A defending force can choose from a host of hiding place: - buildings, rooftops, cellars. And artillery bombardment and precision airstrikes - key to American military superiority - carry the potential for heavy civilian casualties and damage.
White noted the difference in training for such warfare today compared to a decade ago, saying the Department of Defense (news - web sites) now has excellent facilities for training troops in urban fighting on a number of bases - not just at its major training centers.
"They're really big league facilities," he said.
New technology also gives the soldier better intelligence and night-vision weapons to use in urban fighting.
"There are all sorts of things coming along in the munitions area that will help us operate in urban terrain as well," White said. "So there's a great deal of technology that's being applied to make the individual soldier more effective in what is a very complicated and dangerous environment."
----
Air Force Dispatches B-2 Shelters
By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 4:03 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47159-2002Oct31?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The Air Force has quietly dispatched special climate-controlled shelters for B-2 stealth bombers to air bases in England and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, Air Force officials said Thursday.
It is widely expected that if President Bush decides to use military force to disarm Iraq's Saddam Hussein, B-2 bombers will feature prominently in the air campaign. They could operate from their home base in Missouri, but the Air Force would prefer they fly from "forward operating locations" - Diego Garcia and England's Royal Air Force base at Fairford. They also could operate from the Pacific island of Guam.
Although B-2s flew combat missions in the 1999 Kosovo air war and in the early weeks of the Afghanistan war last fall, they have never operated from an overseas base, other than in training exercises.
The reason they have operated exclusively from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., is that maintenance work on the special coatings and fabric that give the B-2 its radar-evading capability must be done in a controlled climate.
New aluminum-trussed shelters manufactured by American Spaceframes Fabricators Inc., of Crystal River, Fla., were recently delivered to the Air Force and then dispatched to Diego Garcia and Fairford in anticipation of possible B-2 deployments in Iraq. All the B-2s are still at Whiteman.
The shipment of the shelters was not announced by the Air Force but was mentioned in a fact sheet that officials provided to reporters who visited Whiteman Air Force Base on Wednesday. Officials declined to discuss it, apparently because of sensitivities over moves that suggest preparation for a war against Iraq.
U.S. officials had said weeks ago that they were in dicussions with the British government over deploying B-2 shelters to Diego Garcia and Fairford, but it was not clear when the shelters would be erected there. Diego Garcia, which lies in the central Indian Ocean within striking distance of Iraq, is a British territory. B-2s that flew missions over Afghanistan stopped at Diego Garcia on their way home to Whiteman.
All 21 B-2s in the Air Force fleet are in the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman.
The Air Force has five B-2 shelters. Four are at Diego Garcia and one is at Fairford. They cost $2.5 million piece.
The shelters are 250 feet wide, 126 feet long and 55 feet high with an interior volume of 1.1 million cubic feet. They are designed to withstand a 110 mph wind and a snow burden of 40 pounds per square inch.
The B-2, which was built in secrecy in the 1980s, is designed to carry conventional or nuclear arms. The first plane entered the fleet in 1993.
On the Net: the B-2 at http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/B-2-Spirit.html
----
Bracing for 'Primordial Combat'
Army Units' Training for Iraq Highlights Urban Fighting's Perils
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43579-2002Oct30?language=printer
FORT POLK, La. -- Just seven months ago, Capt. Glenn Kozelka and his men from the Army's 10th Mountain Division fought al Qaeda terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan. But last week, as he commanded a furious mock assault on the U.S. military's most sophisticated urban training ground, he began to understand why Army doctrine describes city fighting as "primordial combat."
He had lost an entire squad to mortar fire, a sniper atop an adjacent building was picking off his soldiers in the street one by one, and a rocket-propelled grenade had just slammed into the next room, killing or wounding everyone inside.
"We call it three-dimensional warfare," Kozelka said early one morning. "You can be shot from all around."
War planners at the Pentagon understand this geometry only too well: They foresee a battle for Baghdad, a sprawling city of 5 million people, as one of the most difficult and unsettling aspects of any invasion of Iraq. The last thing they want is to mount a full, frontal assault on the city because of the likelihood of high casualties, both military and civilian, and the demands it would make on already strained manpower.
Lt. Gen. Edwin P. Smith, in last month's issue of Army magazine, called urban warfare "the great equalizer." The U.S. military is trying to minimize that equalizing effect, both in its planning and its training.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Oct. 1 directed Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to conduct "a top down national review and theater review of assets involving urban warfare." Two weeks ago, retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, a Pentagon contractor, briefed Rumsfeld's aides on the results of a two-year urban warfare analysis and recommended that 36 infantry battalions -- about 18,000 troops, or roughly half the Army's infantry force -- receive intensive training in urban operations right up until the time they deploy to the Persian Gulf.
All Army and Marine infantry units have routinely been given training in urban warfare, but recently that training, such as the exercise Kozelka and his troops were on, has increased in intensity and focus, with an eye toward a conflict in Iraq. The Big Unknown
Recent experimentation by the Marine Corps has shown that battlefield casualties exceed 30 percent in simulated urban operations involving troops who receive, on average, only about two weeks of urban combat training per year, said retired Marine Col. Randy Gangle, an official at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.
Senior Iraqi officials have already said they would try to lure U.S. forces into Baghdad, acknowledging that the Persian Gulf War in 1991 taught them the folly of fighting in the desert against superior American armor and air power. Bluffing or not, the Iraqis understand that the U.S. military's overwhelming technological advantages are to some extent nullified in cities, where buildings shelter enemy forces from reconnaissance aircraft and satellites and the presence of civilians makes the use of even the smartest bombs infinitely more difficult.
The big unknown confronting senior defense officials is whether the Iraqi military would fight to save President Saddam Hussein -- and, if it did, whether it would have the discipline and leadership to fall back into the Iraqi capital and extract a heavy price from the U.S. invaders, as Chechen rebels did when Russian forces invaded Grozny in 1994.
Military analysts inside and outside the Pentagon do not think that Iraq's military can or will put up much of a fight, but even a limited number of engagements, most likely against Hussein's Special Republican Guard, could be nasty affairs.
"It is very unlikely that we could become involved in any type of urban warfare and not see young American men and women fight and die," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a former defense official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The worst case in urban warfare is a bad case indeed."
The Army's urban warfare training manual quotes an Israeli officer in starker terms: "Every room is a new battle. . . . Avoid cities if you can. If you can't, avoid enemy areas. If you can't do that, avoid entering buildings."
In addition to posing the risk of casualties, urban operations also require extremely large numbers of troops. One recent Marine scenario that used Chicago as a battle template determined that it would take the entire Marine Corps to clear and hold the city. Far from that kind of block-to-block engagement, Pentagon strategists envision cordoning off Baghdad, providing escape routes for civilians and surrendering military personnel, and striking critical facilities whose loss, over time, should make the city, and Hussein's government, fall .
Navy Capt. Tom Johnston, head of the Center for Joint Urban Operations at the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, said the U.S. military has progressed since World War II from laying siege to cities to waging "effects-based operations" that seek to destroy an enemy's will without harming large numbers of civilians or devastating infrastructure.
"Are we prepared to fight in the urban environment? Sure, but it's going to cost us," said Johnston, explaining that the new organization he commands is working to ensure that any necessary ground attacks "cost less and less and less."
But any engagement in and around a city the size of Baghdad would almost inevitably be characterized to some extent by poor communications, elusive targets and enemy forces typically no more than 50 yards away, Army officers believe. It is for these unforeseeable difficulties that the troops train at Fort Polk. Laser Tag and Grim Lessons
Kozelka, a 29-year-old from LaCrosse, Wis., said his men are ready for combat in Iraq after a year in which they went from their home base at Fort Drum, N.Y., to Uzbekistan and then to Afghanistan for a sweep of the eastern mountains there in March, the last major ground engagement of the Afghan war and the first involving large numbers of U.S. forces.
He and his men arrived at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center in early October with two battalions -- about 1,000 troops -- from the 10th Mountain Division's 2nd Brigade for a regular three-week training rotation that began with live-fire exercises and ended last week with a 10-day force-on-force war.
The simulated combat, which costs more than $1 million a day to wage, involves what is probably the world's most sophisticated game of laser tag against an opposing force, fought over a battlefield in central Louisiana, 15 miles long and 10 miles wide, part of which consists of 28 buildings arrayed across the equivalent of three city blocks.
The Army takes great pains to simulate the strain of actual combat. Every soldier wears a laser sensor that beeps when he or she is shot. Once the sensor sounds, a soldier opens an envelope containing a card that describes how badly he or she is hurt.
Medical personnel must evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield in time to treat their wounds. Soldiers who die are taken to a holding area, where they are made to do manual labor to underscore the point that dying is never fun.
The 2nd Brigade's combat training began with five days of operations against an insurgent force like al Qaeda, switched to a defensive operation against a more conventional invading force with tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, and ended with a night assault on the urban battleground.
A battle plan developed by brigade commander Col. Kevin Wilkerson, 43, who has fought in Grenada and Afghanistan, called for Kozelka's company to execute the all-important breach of the perimeter defenses. This would come after Kozelka's company and five others had traveled nearly 10 miles by truck through enemy country and then marched through two miles of swamp and heavy woods.
Almost nothing went as planned. The enemy compromised the battalion's radio network, and an enemy armored vehicle machine-gunned the convoy and killed two squads of engineers who were supposed to help Kozelka's men cut through the concertina wire around their assault point, Building 13, which they had planned to storm and use as a company command post.
By the time Kozelka made it inside, after 2 a.m., his forces had fallen prey to all the hazards of city combat -- an unseen enemy, fire from guns high in buildings, and maximum confusion. "Hey, captain, I've got six personnel in first platoon left alive," Spec. Matt Floyd, a radio operator, yelled at Kozelka after the rocket-propelled grenade attack on their position.
"Okay, keep 'em alive," Kozelka yelled back.
Commanding from a room littered with casualties, Kozelka was busy calling in suppressive fire on the next building over and warning soldiers over the radio of a machine gun on the roof of another building across the street.
"It's lighting us up," he said.
After a few hours of continuous combat, Kozelka and the remnants of his company captured the post office building across the street. During a lull, Kozelka relaxed and started chatting with an observer. Then, an Opfor soldier burst through the door and shot him. A half hour later, commanders called a halt to the exercise.
"This battlefield throws everything at you all at once," Wilkerson said, mingling with Kozelka and other soldiers as the smoke cleared. "Now, you've done another scrimmage, you've learned how to fight this war, and you'll do it better when there's live bullets."
--------
At Sea, an Aircraft Carrier Is Ready for a 911 Call
October 31, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/international/31KITT.html
ABOARD U.S.S. KITTY HAWK, off Iwo Jima, Oct. 29 - Steel slingshots were catapulting F-14A Tomcat jets off the flight deck here at the rate of one a minute today. The flights were for training, but the men and women aboard this aircraft carrier know that one telephone call can turn training into fighting.
"We are the 911 carrier - if it's an emergency, they call us," Lt. Comdr. Thomas Stanley shouted over the roar of jet turbines disappearing into a blue sky. As the only one of the Navy's 12 aircraft carriers permanently deployed outside the United States, the Kitty Hawk generally provides the fastest response to calls in Asia and the Indian Ocean. With today's sailors plugged into the Internet and satellite television, everyone aboard is waiting for orders on Iraq.
The oldest active-duty ship in the Navy, the 41-year-old Kitty Hawk has often proved to be a bellwether for American military action in this region, stretching from six deployments off the coast of Vietnam during the war there to last fall's work providing a launching pad for helicopters flown into Afghanistan.
"The guys just want to know one way or the other," said Commander Stanley, a 33-year-old from Chicago.
Up and down the 11 stories of the ship, home to 5,500 sailors and airmen, people spoke of a limbo period during the diplomatic maneuvering at the United Nations over a resolution on Iraq.
"A lot of people are talking about it," said Lt. Silas Bouyer, an EA-6B Prowler pilot, as he walked through the cavernous hangar bay where planes are lowered by massive elevators for servicing. "We wouldn't be surprised if one day we go into an operations briefing and they say we are going to go."
On the navigational bridge, Capt. Robert D. Barbaree, the commanding officer, surveyed the flight deck, where men in red vests checked munitions, men in green vests performed maintenance checks, and men in white vests stood by in case an accident or a botched landing.
"We have to be ready to answer the call of the president, if it comes," Captain Barbaree said. "With our assets and our experience in dealing with Iraq, there should be no question in anyone's mind that the military would support the president."
Below decks, some enlisted men and women were less gung-ho for what could be six months at sea, double the normal length.
"School starts in January and I want to be there," said Eric Gillette, 23, a mess hall supervisor. With his three-year hitch soon up, he plans to use veterans' benefits to pay for tuition at a college in Arizona. Declaring his future college major to be "multimedia," he said he feared the United States would win militarily in Iraq but lose "the propaganda war."
Civilian doubts about an attack on Iraq do penetrate the steel walls of the ship, which is based in Yokosuka, Japan. Rear Adm, Steve Kunkle, commander of the carrier strike force, grimaced at a Doonesbury comic strip from The Japan Times. It showed a Navy pilot thinking "Oops!", presumably after accidentally bombing American units fighting door to door in Baghdad.
"To used laser-guided missiles in a house-to-house situation is highly unlikely," said the admiral, who flew 35 combat missions in the Persian Gulf war.
Briefing reporters in a below-decks meeting room brightened with Halloween decorations, he said opinion on the carrier was split on Iraq.
"There are those who got to go last fall and who say, `I did my turn, it should be someone else's turn,' " he continued, referring to the Kitty Hawk's participation in the war in Afghanistan. "Then there are military people who say, `If we are going to conduct operations, we want to be on the front line.' "
-------- propaganda wars
American Muslim TV
October 31, 2002
Embassy Row,
James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021031-1310851.htm
Portraits of American Muslims began appearing on television spots in Indonesia yesterday in an attempt to show that the United States welcomes Islam as one of America's fastest-growing religions.
Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, said, "The mini-documentaries aim to promote greater understanding of America as viewed through the eyes of individual Muslims in the United States."
Each spot runs between one and two minutes and introduces viewers to American Muslims like Farooq Muhammad, a New York paramedic, and Rawia Ismail, a teacher in Ohio.
Mr. Boyce told reporters at a news conference to promote the project that it represents a "post-September 11 effort to reach out" to Muslims in other countries. The project also includes radio spots and newspaper ads.
"We've been working on this for almost a year," he said, explaining the series is paid for by the State Department and the nonprofit Council of American Muslims for Understanding.
He said the series is an attempt to "bridge some gaps in communications" not an "admission of past errors or defeats."
Mr. Boyce said U.S. officials realized that, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, "we clearly had not been doing a good enough job of conveying our story."
The ambassador rejected assertions that a gap is growing between the United States and Muslim countries, some of which have been breeding grounds for anti-American terrorism. Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic nation, suffered a devastating terrorist attack Oct. 12 on the island of Bali on nightclubs frequented by Western tourists.
"I don't accept that there is a conflict between the United States and the Islamic world," he said.
The exact number of American Muslims is not available, but estimates range from 1.5 million to 6 million.
"It's one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States," he said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Justice cracks down on voter fraud
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 31, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021031-30356402.htm
The Justice Department has ordered investigations and close monitoring of polls this Election Day because of increased reports of voter fraud throughout the country.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has directed U.S. attorneys to appoint election officers to deter discrimination and voter fraud and to prosecute violators vigorously under the Voting Integrity Initiative.
"Our goal here is to work hand in hand with civil rights leaders and state and local election officials to prevent violations and bring offenders to justice," said Jorge Martinez, spokesman for the Justice Department.
Voter fraud has been reported this year in Arkansas, South Dakota, California, Louisiana, Nevada, Kentucky, Iowa, Arizona, Rhode Island, New York and Minnesota in federal and local elections.
One of the most bizarre cases occurred in the Minnesota town of Coates, population 163, where 94 voter registration forms had false addresses matching that of Jake's Strip Club. Patrons and dancers registered to vote to oust City Council members who had shut down the club, authorities said.
In Arkansas, Democrats said a former staffer hired two teenagers to recruit voters, but then used a phone book to register hundreds of unwary residents, including dead people and businesses.
Republicans say election fraud is rampant and county clerks often are not requiring identification.
Democrats say demand for identification amounts to harassment and that Republicans are intimidating voters.
"With Election Day a week away, we have already seen a disturbing number of incidents in which Republican operatives are working to chill voter turnout," said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Republicans have targeted minority groups for intimidation. "In my state of South Dakota, we are now seeing a concerted Republican effort to make allegations and launch initiatives intended to suppress Native American voting," he said. "These efforts appear to be motivated more by partisan politics than a concern with clean elections."
Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the assertions by Mr. Daschle and Mr. McAuliffe "absurd and racially charged."
"They have set about to twist and pervert a normal and traditional effort to assure voter integrity, routinely undertaken by both parties, into something that would be outrageous and illegal if it were true," Mr. Racicot said.
In 25 South Dakota counties, state and federal officials are investigating suspected voter fraud and believe one Democratic operative is linked to 1,750 applications for absentee ballots. Becky Red Earth-Villeda was fired by the Democratic Party after the charges surfaced.
"A dead woman signed up twice to vote in two different counties - very active this woman," said Christine Iverson, spokeswoman for Republican Rep. John Thune, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson.
Justice Department officials Tuesday will monitor polls in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Texas.
In other published reports of voter fraud:
•A Louisiana parish (county) councilman is under investigation in a suspected vote-buying scheme and three other elected officials may be linked, Baton Rouge's the Advocate reported.
•FBI agents seized voter records from Nye County, Nev., offices to investigate suspected voter fraud.
•Two Republicans in California have been sentenced to four months in jail after pleading guilty to voter fraud for forging signatures, the Los Angeles Times reported.
•Iowa residents are receiving absentee ballots unsolicited in the mail.
•A Connecticut state representative who lost the Democratic primary last month was placed under investigation for supposedly helping seniors fill out absentee ballots in violation of state law, the Hartford Courant reported.
•The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is examining suspected voter fraud in a Democratic race for Adair County commissioner.
•Three Arizona county officials have been indicted on charges of election fraud and helping illegal aliens to vote.
•In Rhode Island, Providence police are investigating a complaint by a senior citizen who said she was forced to turn over her ballot at a home for the elderly.
•In Texas, 16,000 dead or ineligible voters remain on the voting rolls, "creating an environment that is ripe for fraud and abuse," said Ted Royer, spokesman for the Texas Republican Party.
--------
Kabul to Send Team to Check on Afghans Held at Guantánamo
October 31, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/international/asia/31KABU.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 30 - President Hamid Karzai announced today that he would send a delegation to the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to check the conditions under which Afghans are being held there in indefinite detention. Mr. Karzai made the announcement after meeting today with three Afghan men freed from Guantánamo this week, who said they were innocent and had been wrongly detained for months.
"Mr. Karzai decided to send a team to Guantánamo to find out if the rest of the Afghans there are in the same situation," said Sayed Fazl Akbar, a presidential spokesman, "if there are people there who are innocent and should be released."
Two of the men, who appear to be in their 70's, said in interviews this week that they were snatched from houses during American raids in Afghanistan. Both said they never fought for the Taliban and could not understand why they were held for months in Guantánamo.
The third man said that he was conscripted by the Taliban to fight and that after he surrendered, was wrongly identified as a Taliban commander by troops loyal to an Afghan warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum. Mr. Dostum's troops have been accused of allowing hundreds of Taliban prisoners to suffocate in containers last winter.
American officials said the men were released because they were deemed to not be security threats and had no additional information of value.
Mr. Akbar said one of the elderly men, Faiz Muhammad, raved to Mr. Karzai about the food at Guantánamo. During the interview this week, Mr. Muhammad, an illiterate nomad who was arrested this spring near the hometown of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, appeared to be senile. Mr. Akbar said that during today's meeting at the presidential palace, Mr. Muhammad said: "I had very good food there. Even Mr. Karzai doesn't have as good food here."
-------- courts
U.S. Navy Sonar System Blocked by Federal Court
October 31, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-31-04.asp
SAN FRANCISCO, California, A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction stopping the U.S. Navy from deployment of a new high intensity sonar system that could hurt or kill whales, dolphins, seals and sea turtles with its loud signals.
Granting a request by five environmental groups, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service issued the Navy a permit that likely violates federal law.
On July 15, the Navy received its permit to "harass marine mammals" in the course of operating low frequency sonar used to detect submarines while remaining outside the range of their onboard weapons. The Navy has been approved to deploy two ships that use the new sonar system.
Judge LaPorte found that the plaintiff environmental groups, "have shown that they are likely to prevail on establishing violations" of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
"They have also shown the possibility, indeed probability, of irreparable injury, particularly under the liberal standard applicable under these statutes," the judge found.
Scheduled for immediate deployment, the sonar system, known as Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar (SURTASS LFA), relies on very loud, low frequency sound to detect submarines at great distances.
The environmental groups argued that the survival of entire populations of whales and other marine mammals are jeopardized by the deployment of this sonar, which has been measured at 140 decibels 300 miles away from the sound's source.
Judge LaPorte agreed. "It is undisputed that marine mammals, many of whom depend on sensitive hearing for essential activities like finding food and mates and avoiding predators, and some of whom are endangered species, will at a minimum be harassed by the extremely loud and far traveling LFA sonar," she wrote.
No Navy spokesperson was available for comment on the injunction. But the Navy maintains that SURTASS LFA is an essential component of the U.S. defense arsenal.
"Currently there are 224 submarines operated by non-allied nations, and the submarines prowling the world's oceans today are much quieter and more deadly than ever before," the Navy says on its LFA website. "An undetected enemy submarine is an underwater terrorist, threatening any surface ship or coastline within its range."
Joel Reynolds, senior attorney and director of the Marine Mammals Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the lead plaintiff in the case, said, "Today's decision is a crucial step to protect our oceans and, in particular, whales and other marine mammals that depend on hearing for their very survival."
National Marine Fisheries officials respond to a pilot whale stranding. (Photo courtesy NMFS)
"Deployment of LFA over 75 percent of the world's oceans, more than 14 million square miles in the first year alone, threatens marine life on a staggering and unprecedented geographic scale, not just the 'small number of marine mammals' that the law allows, but countless marine mammals around the world," Reynolds said.
There are two types of sonar - passive and active. Passive sonar listens for noises in the water. Active sonar sends out a loud, low-frequency signal and waits for responding signals that bounce off distant objects such as submarines. Scientists claim that, during testing off the California coast, noise from a single LFA system was detected across the breadth of the North Pacific Ocean.
Still, in granting the permit, the National Marine Fisheries Service said the sonar will have "no more than a negligible impact on the affected species," and "will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of these species or stock(s) for subsistence uses."
But Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, one of the coplaintiffs, says, "From a scientific point of view, there is very little question that, given the right set of circumstances, active sonar can kill marine life."
"The frightening thing about LFA is that we're flying blind, because the Navy has never seriously applied the lessons from previous strandings to its LFA system," said Rose.
This minke whale washed up on Marina State Beach, California was not the victim of sonar, but this species could be affected if the LFA is deployed. (Photo courtesy Moss Landing Marine Labs)
The mass stranding of multiple whale species in the Bahamas in March 2000 and the simultaneous disappearance of the region's entire population of beaked whales has been linked to another type of Navy sonar. A federal investigation identified testing of a U.S. Navy mid-frequency active sonar system as the cause.
In late September, new mass strandings occurred in the Canary Islands as a result of NATO military sonar, and in the Gulf of California two whales died as the likely result of an acoustic geophysical survey using loud air guns.
"The court properly found that the decision to authorize and deploy the LFA system cannot be justified under federal law," said Andrew Sabey, a partner with the international firm of Morrison & Foerster, which is representing the plaintiffs NRDC, the Humane Society, the League for Coastal Protection, the Cetacean Society International, and the Ocean Futures Society and its president, Jean-Michel Cousteau.
"The ocean is a precious resource shared by all the world's peoples," said Cousteau. "The LFA permit is nothing less than a license to kill, and we are enormously grateful to the court for protecting our children's heritage."
The U.S. Navy's SURTASS LFA website is online at: http://www.surtass-lfa-eis.com
-------- drug war
U.S. Called the Loser in War on Drugs
In Prison Interview, Alleged Kingpin Says Demand Fuels Trade
By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 31, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43810-2002Oct30?language=printer
ALMOLOYA DE JUAREZ, Mexico -- Benjamin Arellano Felix, the man accused of running Mexico's most ruthless drug cartel, said the United States has already lost its war on drugs and that violent trafficking gangs will thrive as long as Americans keep buying marijuana, cocaine and heroin.
"It would stop being a business if the United States didn't want drugs," Arellano said Tuesday during a rare interview in the La Palma maximum security federal prison here, where Mexican authorities hope to keep him for the rest of his life.
Most Latin Americans, from presidents to taxi drivers, say that U.S. demand is responsible for the drug trade. But hearing it directly from Arellano Felix, in his first interview with U.S. reporters, provided a seldom-seen glimpse into the thinking of one of the hemisphere's most prominent drug lords.
U.S. and Mexican officials say Arellano, 48, heads the Tijuana-based cartel bearing his family name, which has moved billions of dollars worth of Mexican and Colombian drugs into the United States while committing some of the most vicious murders ever seen in the drug underworld.
But they also acknowledge that since his arrest in March there has been no slowdown in the flow of drugs over the border. "They talk about a war against the Arellano brothers," said Arellano, who eluded the Mexican police and military, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI for more than a decade. "They haven't won. I'm here, and nothing has changed.
"When something is out of reach, it is more interesting to people," Arellano said. "If drugs were like cigarettes or alcohol, there wouldn't be a black market. It would put an end to the capos."
Authorities say Arellano was the capo of capos, the brains behind an organization that controlled a third or more of the cocaine traffic into the United States and spent countless millions to buy protection from police, judges and generals. They said his top enforcer, his brother Ramon Arellano Felix, left a trail of hundreds of mutilated corpses.
Allegations against Arellano have been made for years in newspapers, books, political speeches and court documents in Mexico and the United States. He has been charged with numerous drug offenses. Now, telling his story, Arellano said that the accusations against his family are "all lies" made up by people who are "sick in the head."
"If I had all the money they say I do, where is it? You should be able to see the properties and the money," Arellano said, his face flushing with anger as he sat in a cold prison classroom wearing a beige uniform, slip-on shoes and a heavy beige coat. "I didn't have airplanes, bodyguards and yachts."
Authorities are not sure where Arellano's money went, beyond some real estate investments in Tijuana. Mexican officials say it has been invested in American real estate, while their U.S. counterparts say much of it is hidden in cash in Mexico.
Arellano described himself as a "simple" housing contractor. He said he suffers from daily migraine headaches from the stress of being wrongly accused.
Arellano acknowledged that he has moved frequently in the past decade, living in Mexico City, Monterrey, Puebla and Tijuana. Law enforcement officials said his life has been marked by a complicated series of dodges, aliases and secret dealings all designed to avoid arrest, which Arellano denied.
"I've lived simply, not in hiding," he said. "I wasn't calling attention to myself, but I wasn't running from them. I went to the movies, to restaurants just like you. If I wanted to go somewhere, I got on a plane. I'm a peaceful person. A person could not have done all they accuse me of without being caught."
Told of Arellano's comments, Donald J. Thornhill Jr., a DEA spokesman in San Diego, where for years there has been a joint DEA-FBI task force devoted solely to the Arellano Felix organization, said Arellano will face a mountain of evidence at his upcoming trials.
"This has been the priority case for the DEA for several years," Thornhill said. "They brought their violence into the streets of San Diego. He is an animal. He is a cancer against humanity. They killed so many people it turns my stomach. None of this is hearsay. We have hard evidence."
For nearly a decade, the Arellano brothers' faces looked out from wanted posters in both countries -- Ramon's picture was next to Osama bin Laden's on the FBI's "most wanted" list. They were known to all by their first names, as infamous in Mexico as Al Capone was in the United States. They served as a model for Mexican drug gangs in the Hollywood film, "Traffic," and their infamy combined with their ability to elude justice -- even with $2 million U.S. government bounties on their heads -- gave them an almost mystical aura here.
Arellano said his family has been conveniently demonized by the Mexican government. He said the police could have caught him at any time, but chose not to in order to "blame us for everything." He also said that the government's pursuit of his family was just a show to please Washington. "Mexico has to look good to the United States all the time," Arellano said.
Arellano said he tried to clear his name after the 1993 murder of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, in which the Arellano Felix gang has been implicated. That high-profile assassination brought international attention to the trafficking organization. Another of Benjamin's brothers, Francisco, was arrested soon after on drug charges and sent to La Palma, and Benjamin, Ramon and their brother Javier became fugitives.
Arellano angrily denied any involvement in the Posadas killing. He said he sent a message after the slaying to then-President Carlos Salinas, offering to turn himself in. "But that wouldn't have been convenient for them," he said. "They'd rather blame us for everything."
After Arellano's arrest in March, a judge dismissed all charges against him in the Posadas case for a lack of evidence.
To reach Arellano, visitors must pass through at least 20 sets of barred doors in La Palma, Mexico's most secure federal prison, located about 25 miles west of Mexico City. For the interview, Arellano stood waiting alone in a small prison classroom, where posters warned of the dangers of smoking, and an English lesson on the chalkboard read: "What does Pedro look like? He's fat."
"Hola. Benjamin Arellano," he said, introducing himself in a surprisingly soft voice, holding out a hand to shake. His timid demeanor, more like that of an accountant than a gangster, was hard to square with reports of DEA informants' skulls being cracked open in a vice on his orders.
He is about 5 feet 10, trim, with a bushy black crew cut. He said he is a fitness buff who likes baseball and soccer and never smokes or drinks. His eyes are the color of black coffee, hooded by thick, dark brows. When he speaks he locks eyes with his listener for an uncommonly long time.
Arellano was mostly serious during the 2 1/2-hour interview. But he occasionally lit up with smiles, particularly when talking about how his favorite baseball team, the Anaheim Angels, won the World Series. Arellano, who recently sent a letter to the United Nations protesting the conditions of his imprisonment, said he is almost never allowed out of his cell. He said a video camera is trained on him at all times.
"They watch me when I go to the bathroom, when I bathe, when I eat, when I sleep," he said. "There's always a light on, like I'm a hen they're trying to get to lay an egg." He said his jailers also watch on video during the four-hour conjugal visits he is allowed with his wife every eight days. Conjugal visits are permitted in Mexican prisons.
Arellano said he has occasionally seen his fellow inmate and brother, Francisco, at a distance, but that guards always tell him to turn away and not make eye contact.
Arellano, who did not attend college, was articulate and well-informed during the interview, discussing the recent Moscow theater siege, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and U.S. politics. Asked who his heroes were, one name came out immediately: "Bill Clinton. He did a lot for the United States and the world."
Arellano, whose wife and four children were born in the United States, also faces drug charges in the United States. U.S. officials said they would like to see him extradited to stand trial in San Diego, a move Arellano said he would fight because extensive publicity about him would make a fair trial impossible.
Arellano answered almost all questions directly, except for one. He was evasive about whether he thinks his brother Ramon is dead or alive. Authorities say Ramon was killed last February in a shootout in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan. They said the body, which later disappeared under suspicious circumstances, was identified by DNA testing at the FBI lab in Washington.
"The police say he's dead, but I don't know," Arellano said.
Law enforcement officials said Arellano is being coy to scare potential witnesses against him. They said Ramon was so fearsome that many people began to talk only after he was dead.
With Benjamin in jail and Ramon dead, officials said the Arellano Felix organization has been taken over by Javier and Eduardo, their lesser-known brothers. They said with the two main brothers gone, and with President Vicente Fox squeezing the drug trade with more soldiers and police officers, organized crime in Mexico is still strong but less flamboyant, like Chicago without Capone.
Researcher Laurie Freeman contributed to this report.
-------- immigration
Ottawa Says U.S. Relents on New Security Rules
October 31, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-canada-usa.html
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said on Thursday that Washington had backed down in a dispute over new U.S. security rules and would no longer require Canadian citizens born in some Middle Eastern states to be fingerprinted and photographed on arrival in the United States.
But U.S. officials said that while the rules had been made more flexible, their agents reserved the right to stop any visitor to the United States and -- if deemed necessary -- take fingerprints and photographs.
Canadian legislators were furious over the U.S. rules when it emerged on Wednesday that the Foreign Ministry had issued an unusual travel advisory telling Canadian citizens born in eight nations to think carefully about entering the United States for any reason, just in case they ended up in trouble.
Travel advisories are usually issued for hot spots like the Middle East, not for allies like the United States.
Some members of Parliament said Ottawa should retaliate, perhaps obliging U.S. citizens with criminal records to be fingerprinted before they entered Canada or help launch a court challenge to the new rules in U.S. courts.
Foreign Minister Bill Graham told Parliament that U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci had informed him Canadians would no longer be subjected to the rules, introduced on the anniversary of last year's Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
``What is happened is that we have a clear recognition by the United States that the place of birth is not the determining factor as to whether a person is subject to the security measures,'' Graham later told reporters.
The new U.S. rules affect anyone born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria. Ottawa says Canadians born in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Yemen could also attract special attention.
U.S. officials said Cellucci had in fact told Graham that Canadians who had been born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria would not necessarily be stopped at the border.
``If a person was born in Tehran and hasn't been there for 30 years, there will probably be no problems. If they have been in Tehran in last six months, there will probably be questions,'' one U.S. official told Reuters.
``People could still be subjected to it (fingerprinting and photographs) if there is some suspicion. But just a place of birth (on a passport) wouldn't necessarily trigger this.''
Sarkis Assadourian, a Liberal legislator born in Syria, said he was delighted by Washington's apparent change of mind.
``I'm a very happy Canadian, happier than ever before. I guess they realized they were wrong,'' he told reporters. Earlier in the day he had suggested fingerprinting all Americans with criminal records who wanted to enter Canada.
Ottawa's travel warning followed the controversial deportation of a Canadian citizen by the United States to Syria, his birthplace, earlier this month.
Well-informed sources said bureaucrats at the Foreign Ministry had been deluged by abusive and obscene e-mails from U.S. citizens, many accusing Canada of harboring militants and urging all Canadians to stay home.
Alexa McDonough, leader of the left-leaning minority New Democrats, said she was glad Graham had decided to stand up to Washington after ``wimping out'' on earlier occasions.
``The backbone of the foreign minister has finally been stiffened and it appears he has done what he should have done (earlier),'' she told reporters, saying she still had some reservations over what would happen next.
-------- terrorism
As Terror Sweep Begins, Chechens in Russia Say Police Single Them Out
October 31, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/international/europe/31CHEC.html
MOSCOW, Oct. 30 - As Russian officials began executing a pledge to scour Russia for new clues about terror plots, Chechens in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia accused the police of harassment and false arrest in what some called a campaign of intimidation based on ethnic background.
But some Chechen representatives here said such problems had not reached the scale of those in previous crackdowns, thanks in part to carefully worded statements by President Vladimir V. Putin and other officials urging Russians not to discriminate against Chechens after last week's hostage crisis in a Moscow theater.
One Kremlin aide said today that no sweeping order to detain Chechens had been issued, but acknowledged that "some hotheads among the police" may have exceeded their mandate.
A spokesman for the interior ministry refused to comment or offer any specifics today on how many people had been detained in the search for suspected terrorists.
The Russian police began a new sweep of Chechens in Moscow within hours after the seizure last Wednesday night of nearly 800 people attending a performance of the Russian musical "Nord-Ost."
Mr. Putin stressed then that the hunt should not be interpreted as a blanket condemnation of Chechens.
But the Moscow office of the pro-Kremlin Chechen government said today that Chechens in Russia had lodged several hundred complaints of discrimination in the past week. The office of Aslanbek A. Aslakhanov, Chechnya's representative in the Russian Parliament and a former interior ministry official, also reported nearly 500 complaints.
Six employees and the owner of a small auto service center in Moscow were detained by the police on Friday, the day before Russian forces stormed the captured theater. Five were released on Sunday.
In interviews today, they said the police had first locked them in a room of the service center, then released them and led them to the kitchen. There, the employees said, the police pulled a grenade launcher from behind a refrigerator and accused them of illegal weapons possession.
Magomed Dashayev, who owns the auto center, accused the police of planting the launcher and ammunition. He said the police also confiscated his Volvo and a customer's Mercedes. "I don't see an end to this," he said, adding that the police confiscated all of his papers and a registry of cars in for repair.
Chechen residents of Moscow say the police have stepped up already-frequent visits to check their Russian passports for the residence permit required to live in Moscow. The Chechens say several people have been taken away to be fingerprinted and photographed, a practice that the Kremlin aide who criticized the police said was illegal unless a person was under arrest.
"There are police officers that are detaining people, planting weapons and drugs on them," said Edi A. Isayev, an official at the local office of the pro-Moscow Chechen government, which has opened a hotline. "They should have been so vigilant when the bandits came to Moscow, but now they're going after people who are law-abiding, who came here so their children could go to school."
Abdulla Khamzayev, a former senior prosecutor in the Soviet government who has lived in Moscow since 1965, said in an interview that police officers came to his apartment Saturday morning to check his documents, but left after he challenged their legal right to question him.
Other Chechens, he said, are frequently too cowed to resist. "Some families that were fingerprinted told me, `But at least they're not beating us,' " he said. "`If they didn't cripple anyone, it can be tolerated."'
Ethnic profiling and misplaced suspicions by authorities have been a fact of life for many Chechens who have fled the fighting and chaos that have dominated Chechnya since war between Russian and separatists broke out there in 1994.
Some Chechens said in interviews that they were staying off the street. "We are hostage to all these situations," said Tamara Kantayeva, a writer from Chechnya who is working as a cleaning lady in Moscow to support her family. She said that she had been stopped by police officers on the street and that she had pulled her son out of school during the hostage crisis.
Today, the father of a 13-year-old boy who died from the gas used by Russian forces when they raided the theater pleaded for ethnic tolerance.
"The main thing is that there not be revenge, all the more on an ethnic basis," said the father, Artur Kurilenko. "Because people will die, and the most frightening thing is children will die."
----
Al-Qaeda changes, as does its threat
10/31/2002
By John Diamond and Kevin Johnson,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-10-31-al-qaeda-threat-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - Future terrorist attacks in the United States likely will involve suicidal operatives working alone or in groups of "twos and threes" to try to carry out bombings and other relatively simple assaults, according to U.S. analysts who are tracking al-Qaeda's resurgence.
The emerging profile of the next generation of al-Qaeda attacks, senior U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials say, suggests that the group's new plans to hit America probably will not be elaborate, coordinated assaults like those carried out by the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. Instead, they likely will be similar to last month's bombing of a nightclub in Bali, which killed at least 191 people and was linked to al-Qaeda. (Related story: Al-Qaeda seen dangerous before 9/11)
The apparent return to more traditional terrorist assaults reflects al-Qaeda's resiliency and continuing evolution since its leadership was driven from Afghanistan last year by the U.S. military. It also creates new challenges for U.S. authorities who are trying to prevent terrorism here and abroad, senior intelligence and law enforcement officials say.
With its operatives now scattered around the world, al-Qaeda has become a collection of tiny groups of freelancers who often devise their own plots rather than wait for plans from higher-ups, analysts say. That has made al-Qaeda operatives more difficult to track for FBI and CIA agents who continue to expand their domestic and foreign surveillance.
U.S. authorities say they are certain that al-Qaeda remains capable of carrying out a major attack here. "It just won't look the same" as the Sept. 11 attacks, a senior U.S. official says. "We believe they are actively looking at multiple targets. We expect them to come at us in (teams of) ones, twos and threes."
Signs of a revitalized al-Qaeda have fueled a sense of urgency among U.S. officials in the ongoing worldwide terror probe. Among the latest developments:
U.S. agents now are tracking more than 1,000 people in this country who are "persons of interest" because they are suspected of having links to terror groups, law enforcement sources say. Those under surveillance include U.S. citizens, permanent residents and visitors. About 200, mostly permanent U.S. residents, are suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda.
Using a new policy that gives agents more authority to spy on religious groups, the FBI has stepped up surveillance of several U.S. mosques. A senior U.S. official says the recruiting of al-Qaeda sympathizers through radical mosque leaders is stronger than ever.
The FBI now has added more than 500 agents to its domestic counterterrorism effort, the centerpiece of a reorganization that has put more than 3,700 of the bureau's 11,000 agents on terrorism duty. But officials say it will be at least a year before many of the reassigned agents significantly help the terrorism probe. About 75% of them had never worked counterterrorism cases, a senior U.S. official says.
It's still unclear whether Osama bin Laden is alive, but CIA analysts now believe that removing al-Qaeda's leadership won't kill the network. U.S. officials say that many al-Qaeda cells can plan and finance attacks without direction from above. That makes al-Qaeda a tougher target for investigators because information about individual leaders is not as important as it was just after the Sept. 11 attacks.
----
Al Qaeda Message Traffic Now Like Before 9 / 11 - Spy
October 31, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack-germany-intelligence.html
BERLIN (Reuters) - Western spies have detected a resumption of the intense communication among Islamic activists last seen in the months before the September 11 attacks, a senior Western intelligence source said on Thursday.
The source said Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network had regained strength and was signaling its capability in recent statements broadcast on Qatar's al-Jazeera television station.
``The al Qaeda network's ability to take action has increased and it is signaling this to its followers through an increasing number of messages over al-Jazeera,'' the senior source, who declined to be identified, told Reuters in an interview.
In October alone, al-Jazeera broadcast two statements claiming to be from bin Laden, threatening more attacks on the United States and praising recent attacks on the French-flagged tanker Limburg and on U.S. troops training on a Kuwaiti island.
One statement came in the form of a voice recording broadcast by al-Jazeera, while the other was in text form, on a fax sent to the station.
The last bin Laden video emerged in April, undated, and was a warning to the United States it would not feel safe until Palestinians enjoyed peace.
``Parallel to this there has been heightened communications activity among Islamic activists. The result has been an increase in information from intelligence sources that is similar to the picture of summer 2001,'' the source said.
``The problem remains that the concrete target and concrete date are unknown.''
The source's comments follow repeated warnings from U.S. officials that al Qaeda has regrouped and is planning another attack. The remarks also suggest intelligence services are giving credence to al Qaeda broadcasts on al-Jazeera.
``The terrorist threat to the Western world, including to Germany, is unabated,'' the source said.
Fears have grown that Germany might become an al Qaeda target because the country is holding the world's first trial of a suspect accused of aiding last year's suicide hijacking attacks on the United States that killed more than 3,000 people.
Germany is also taking part in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic extremists, agreeing last year to dispatch up to 4,000 troops, including some elite troops from its ``KSK'' unit which are believed to have been involved in combat in Afghanistan.
CIA Director George Tenet said recently that al Qaeda has reorganized, was in an ``execution phase'' and intended to attack Americans overseas and on U.S. soil, amid a threat atmosphere as serious as in the months before September 11.
U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge will visit Europe next week to bolster defenses against attacks. He warned on Thursday that future terror attacks on the United States were inevitable but that the rest of the world was also vulnerable. Bomb blasts on the Indonesian island of Bali this month killed at least 184 people, many of them Western tourists, and revived fears of random attacks. No one claimed responsibility.
----
Ridge: Future Attacks Inevitable
Oct. 31, 2002
By Scott Lindlaw,
Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/attack/printable527622.shtml
WASHINGTON, It will be years before the United States is fully prepared to deal with the inevitable next terrorism attack, homeland security director Tom Ridge says.
America would be "far, far better prepared tomorrow" than it was a year ago if terrorists attacked with, for example, biological agents, Ridge said Wednesday.
But, he said, "I'm not going to tell you that we would be prepared to the level that both the president and the country desires.
"It is going to take us several years to develop the capacity that we always will have to sustain in terms of being able to equip all of our major metropolitan areas with the kind of response capacity that they need to go forward," he said.
Asked whether another terror attack is inevitable, Ridge said, "The answer is yes."
Ridge's remarks echoed the view of a government task force that warned last week that "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil." CIA Director George Tenet said this month that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network probably will attempt a strike against the United States soon.
Ridge next week goes on his first major trip to Europe as chief of the White House's Office of Homeland Security. He travels to Belgium, Holland and England to meet with world leaders and survey American efforts to secure ports processing U.S.-bound cargo.
"It is a global problem," Ridge said as he previewed the trip for European reporters. He spoke in the Wardroom, a cramped conference room in the basement of the White House West Wing. "There are global vulnerabilities and we need global solutions, and it's to that end that we engage the broader community."
In Belgium, Ridge plans to talk on Monday with European Union commissioners and EU foreign and security policy chief Javier Solana. He will also meet with NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and attend a session of the North Atlantic Council, NATO's political authority.
In the Netherlands, Ridge on Tuesday is seeing Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and touring the port at Rotterdam to inspect the newly inaugurated Container Security Initiative, in which American customs agents screen high-risk U.S.-bound cargo before it leaves foreign ports.
In London on Wednesday and Thursday, Ridge sits down with members of the British government and security agencies and gives a speech at Kings College.
But Ridge's trip was largely meant to gather information and build relationships with other leaders on security issues.
"As I take a look at Europe and the history that our allies have had with terrorism, I don't think they need any message on terrorism from the assistant to the president on homeland security," Ridge said. "They've had to deal with the death and destruction of terrorism in many instances for literally decades."
Ridge's trip comes at a time when the administration's centerpiece domestic-security initiative has stalled at home.
President Bush proposed a sweeping reorganization of the government to create a Department of Homeland Security, plucking existing pieces of the federal bureaucracy into a new agency that would have 170,000 employees. The Democratic-controlled Senate has refused to go along by passing legislation that would establish the department.
The Senate and the administration are locked in a dispute over labor protections for the department's workers. Under the Senate Democrats' proposal, before the president could waive union rights for workers in the new department, a worker's job would have to change substantially. Also, a majority of workers in that unit would have to be involved in terrorism-related investigative or intelligence work. President Bush says those rules would impair his ability to move swiftly against terrorists.
Ridge said that whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate after Tuesday's elections, he is optimistic that the Senate will give Mr. Bush the department he wants in coming weeks.
"I'm optimistic in the weeks ahead that the Senate will do the right thing," Ridge said.
"I still want to believe in my heart of hearts that senators know that the president should retain his national security authority," Ridge said. "In their heart of hearts, they know he has to have the flexibility to move people and resources around."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Experts Question New Energy Sources
By Paul Recer
AP Science Writer
Thursday, October 31, 2002; 2:11 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46286-2002Oct31?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- None of the known alternate energy sources are technically ready to take the place of fossil fuels, suggesting the need for a crash energy development program if the world is to avoid the threat of global warming, experts say in a new study.
The study by 18 scientists and engineers in university, government and private labs evaluated technologies that would make energy without burning oil, coal or natural gas and found that no single system or combination of systems could replace these fossil fuels, based on the present level of development. The study appears Friday in the journal Science.
A few centuries from now society will have to wean itself from fossil fuels because the supply will run out, said Martin I. Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. But because burning the fuels at an increasing rate is putting enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause global warming, the nations of the world must confront the issue of developing clean, renewable energy sources in this century or face a climate disaster, he said.
"What our research clearly shows is that scientific innovation can only reverse this trend if we adopt an aggressive, global strategy for developing alternative fuel sources that can produce up to three times the amount of power we use today," said Hoffert, first author of the study. "Currently, these technologies simply don't exist."
Hoffert said U.S. government policy favors increased domestic oil production and shortchanges energy technology research that might lead ultimately and economically to replacing fossil fuels.
He said a combination of renewable energy sources - such as wind and solar power generation, or electrical power beamed from orbiting solar satellites, and nuclear fusion power plants - "are theoretically capable of keeping our civilization going into the future, but the problem is that we haven't taken the challenge seriously enough to do research in it. We are putting practically nothing into really, seriously studying the problem."
Joel Darmstadter, an energy researcher at Resources for the Future, an energy think tank, said the study by Hoffert and others is a useful review of the technical status of the world's alternate energy systems. The study, he said, could prompt policy discussions because it gives an evaluation of what is possible to replace fossil fuels.
But Darmstadter said the study failed to draw a clear picture of which of the alternative systems should have the highest priority and bases some of the discussion on "far out and highly speculative" technologies, such as the power satellite.
Currently, the world's power consumption is about 12 trillion watts, with 85 percent of it produced by burning fossil fuels. To stabilize the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere by the middle of the century while still permitting the current level of global economic expansion would require production of about 30 trillion watts of power worldwide using power systems that do not emit carbon dioxide, the study found.
For that to happen, said Hoffert, the United States and other countries need a crash program of alternate energy technology development.
The study surveyed the entire field of alternate energy and found most systems have serious technical problems still unsolved. Among them:
-Nuclear fission: It is not the final answer because of a shortage of uranium fuel. The proven reserves of uranium would last less than 30 years if nuclear fission was used to make 10 trillion watts of power, about a third of what will be needed by the end of the century, the study found.
-Solar power: To meet the current U.S. needs with solar power would require sun collectors covering some 1,000 square miles. To make the equivalent of 10 trillion watts of added power would require surface arrays covering almost 85,000 square miles, an area larger than the state of Kansas, the study found.
-Wind power: These systems must operate from remote areas and the current power grids could not manage the load, the study found. New grids, perhaps using cooled superconducting cables, might be needed to harvest power from wind and solar systems.
-Solar power satellites: Orbiting solar arrays could make electricity, convert it to microwaves and then beam that energy to a ground antenna where it would be converted back to electricity. But to make 10 trillion watts of power would require about 660 space solar power arrays, each about the size of Manhattan, in orbit about 22,000 miles above the Earth.
-Hydrogen energy: Hydrogen does not exist in pure, natural reservoirs and has to be extracted from natural gas or water. The study found that more carbon dioxide and less energy is produced by the extraction of hydrogen than by burning natural gas directly. Extracting hydrogen from water using solar or wind power is not now "cost effective," the study found.
-Nuclear fusion: After decades of study, science still has not learned how to extract power from the fusion of atoms. The study said additional research could lead to breakthroughs, but it would require political resolve and heavy investment.
On the Net:
Science: www.sciencemag.org
-------- environment
Dell offers recycling option to consumers
Thursday, October 31, 2002
By GreenBiz.com
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2002/10/10312002/s_48826.asp
AUSTIN, Texas - Dell has begun offering U.S. consumers the option to recycle their used computers. Through the new Dell Exchange option, consumers can recycle any desktop or notebook computer from any manufacturer.
"Our commitment is to deliver end-of-life options that are easy to use and affordable for consumers' computer products. We're excited to begin computer recycling for consumers and are committed to making sure consumers are aware this option is available to them," said John Hamlin, vice president and general manager of Dell's U.S. consumer business.
Consumers who choose the recycling option are responsible only for shipping charges to the nearest recycling center.
The process is simple, with only one step to complete online to receive shipping instructions and a final certificate indicating the process is complete.
Computers recycled through the Dell Exchange are separated into components, primarily plastics, metals, and glass.
Approximately 98 percent of the materials in a computer re-enter the raw material stream through this process.
The recycling process is managed by a Dell recycling partner required to comply with both Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations and federal and state standards for worker safety.
--------
World Plants Near Extinction Close to 50 Pct - Study
October 31, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-science-plants.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The percentage of the world's plants threatened with extinction is much larger than commonly believed, and could be as high as 47 percent if tropical species are included, researchers said on Thursday.
The study, published in the November issue of Science, challenges earlier research that estimated the number of species in danger of extinction was about 13 percent.
Previous studies of extinct plants underestimated the numbers because they failed to include many plants growing in tropical countries such as Ecuador and Colombia.
Plants are becoming extinct for many reasons, including global warming and human encroachment into area habitats, said Peter Jorgensen, a researcher at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis who coauthored the new study.
For example, scientists discovered a single collection of the passion flower, a light purple flower found only in southern Ecuador, during the 1970s, Jorgensen said. But recent trips to the region have found the species has since disappeared.
Jorgensen reviewed data from 189 countries and territories and determined that between 310,000 and 422,000 plants -- or 22 to 47 percent -- could be threatened.
In previous studies ``if you can't evaluate a species you basically don't include it,'' Jorgensen said in a telephone interview.
``Still, we don't know enough ... to go out and do something active on the ground to save them,'' he said. ``Just because there are more of them doesn't mean it's easier.''
Identifying threatened species is a crucial step toward developing better management plans to protect them, but Jorgensen conceded it will take a large amount of money to develop such projects.
Maintaining a global database of threatened plants would cost an estimated $12.1 million annually, the researchers said.
The vast majority of plants that are threatened in tropical areas are those located with a wide variety of plant life or where habitat loss is rapidly occurring.
As a model for their research, Jorgensen and his coauthor, Nigel Pitman from Duke University, analyzed more than 4,000 species that are native to Ecuador.
After sifting through data and determining those that could be on the verge of extinction -- such as plants with small populations or which are located only in a small geographical area -- they determined that 83 percent of all plants in the country are threatened.
The findings for Ecuador are important, Jorgensen said, because the country has one of the most complete databases of plant species. Such results also can be applied to neighboring countries such as Peru and Colombia where data are scarce.
``We know so little about plants in tropical regions,'' said Jorgensen. ``And what really bothers me is we have to guess so much because we don't have enough manpower to go through all the countries.''
--------
Indian Innovator Awarded Top UN Environment Prize
October 31, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2002/2002-10-31-03.asp
NEW DELHI, India, Calling him "one of the world's great environmental thinkers and innovators," the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has awarded to Dr. Ashok Khosla of India the 2002 Sasakawa Environment Prize.
Dr. Khosla was honored with the $200,000 prize for teaching and fostering environmentally friendly, commercially viable technologies across India. Village power plants which use agricultural wastes as fuel, mini-factories that recycle paper, and local businesses that make low-cost roofing tiles are some of the enterprises he has stimulated.
Dr. Ashok Khosla is winner of the 2002 UNEP Sasakawa Environmental Prize (Photos courtesy Development Alternatives)
He is president of Development Alternatives, a group of organizations based in New Delhi which he founded in 1983. Its mission is to promote sustainable national development by innovating and popularizing the means for creating sustainable livelihoods on a large scale, mobilizing widespread action to eradicate poverty and regenerate the environment.
When told he had won the prestigious prize, Dr. Khosla handed the credit along to others. "This award is really for the work of the many, many partners and collaborators with whom I have been privileged to work over the last 40 years," he said.
"It is a wonderful, if unexpected, tribute to their efforts at the desk, in the laboratory and out in the field, courageously experimenting with ideas and action that were mostly unfashionable and often directly opposed to conventional development thinking," said Dr. Khosla.
The Sasakawa Environment Prize will be formally presented to Dr. Khosla at the American Folk Art Museum in New York on November 19.
TARA Mini Paper Recycling Plant turns waste paper, cotton rags and other such waste into paper for all purposes.
Chairman of the Sasakawa Prize Selection Committee, Lord Stanley Clinton-Davis, praised Dr. Khosla as a "tireless defender of the environment" whose work has had "a large ripple effect, not only in India but around the world."
"One of his great achievements has been to bring government institutions on board, creating partnerships that last and rural programs that endure," said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer.
In addition to his work with Development Alternatives, Dr. Khosla is president of several organizations - Technology and Action for Rural Advancement (TARA), Decentralised Energy Systems India Pvt Ltd (DESI Power), and TARAhaat.com - and is managing trustee of People First, and secretary general of the People's Commission on Environment and Development.
The organizations Dr. Khosla has created offer "pragmatic, sensible and life-changing solutions" to the achievement of economic development that respects people and the environment, Toepfer said.
Development Alternatives offers village weavers this new generation weaving machine. The TARAloom's advanced features improve the efficiency of the weaver and the quality of the fabric with existing levels of operational skills.
From 1972 to 1976, as head of the first office of environment in the government of India, and the first in any developing country, Dr. Khosla established the organizational and functional basis for environmental policy making in the country.
At UNEP headquarters in Nairobi from 1976 to 1982, Dr. Khosla designed and established INFOTERRA, the International Referral System for Sources of Environmental Information of the United Nations to improve environmental information exchange. This global network now disseminates information in 110 countries.
Dr. Khosla received his education in experimental physics and natural sciences at Cambridge and Harvard. He told an audience in 2001 of his path from academic pursuits to the villages of India, led by his conviction that poverty was "totally unacceptable in a world that had more than enough resources to eradicate it forever."
"Having had the privileges of attending the best schools and universities in the world, I had ended up working more or less with my hands, directly at the grass roots with things like village cookstoves and mud houses," he said.
TARA supplied concrete block making equipment to Gujarat entrepreneurs.
"My colleagues were as often as not peasants and villagers in a Third World country. My professional concerns were with local initiatives, particularly business initiatives, at the community level, and with how better technology choice could promote self reliance at the national level."
Dr. Khosla's numerous involvements include chairmanships, memberships and advisory roles. He is a member of the UN Secretary General's Task Force to Restructure the Environmental Programs of the United Nations, and serves as special advisor to the World Commission on Environment and Development, Geneva. He advises several departments of the government of India.
Chairman The Development Alternatives Group Center for Our Common Future, Geneva WETV, the Global Access TV Channel, Ottawa International Facilitating Committee, Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro IUCN Commission on Environmental Planning ICSU/SCOPE Project on Environmental Information, Paris SATIS, Utrecht Indian Environment Congress, New Delhi Member World Conservation Union (IUCN) World Wide Fund for Nature Club of Rome, Paris - Vice President EXPO 2000, Hannover Earth Council Television Trust for the Environment Stockholm Environment Institute International Institute for Environment & Development UNEP International Environment Technology Centre World Economic Forum NGO Council Factor 10 Club National Environmental Council of India Science Advisory Council to the Cabinet, government of India Poverty Eradication Mission, government of Andhra Pradesh Delhi Urban Arts Commission National Institute of Design Environmental Planning and Coordination Organisation, Bhopal Sriram Institute of Industrial Research Advisor United Nations Development Programme World Bank Global Environment Facility United Nations University International Development Research Center World Conservation Union (IUCN) International Council of Scientific Unions World Resources Institute East-West Center, Hawaii Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences MacArthur Foundation
Dr. Khosla edited "The Survival Equation" with Roger Revelle, Houghton Mifflin, Boston (1970) and has produced more than 300 professional papers, articles and reports. He also writes in The Development Alternatives monthly journal.
The Sasakawa Environmental Prize originated in 1982, when the UNEP Governing Council accepted an endowment of US$1 million from the Nippon Foundation, largely a Japanese shipbuilding industry foundation, to finance the Sasakawa International Environment Prize, which would be administered by UNEP.
Ryoichi Sasakawa, who died in July 1995, was the founding chairman of the Nippon Foundation, formerly the Sasakawa Foundation. As the chairman, for more than three decades, Sasakawa contributed to social and public initiatives both within and outside Japan, one of which was the establishement of the UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize in 1982.
Now known as the UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize, it is awarded annually to individuals who made outstanding global contributions to the management and protection of the environment.
Initially worth US$50,000, the prize was increased to US$200,000 in 1990, making it one of the most valuable environmental prizes.
Past Sasakawa Prize winners include Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper from Brazil who died leading the fight against cattle ranchers' destruction of the rainforest; Lester Brown, then director of the World Watch Institute, whose writings were instrumental in alerting the world about the threats to the biosphere; Dr. M.S. Swaminathan of India, father of the economic ecology movement, and Ian Kiernan of Australia, founder of the Clean Up the World Campaign.
-------- health
Agency Puts Hunger No. 1 on List of World's Top Health Risks
October 31, 2002
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/international/31HEAL-FOR.html
GENEVA, Oct. 30 (Agence France-Presse) - The World Health Organization today identified 10 major health risks it said accounted for up to 40 percent of the 56 million deaths around the world each year.
The 10 risks are lack of food, unsafe sex, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol, unsafe water or sanitation, high cholesterol, nutritional deficiencies, obesity and indoor smoke from cooking or heating fires, predominantly in Africa and South Asia.
``The potential improvements in global health are much greater than generally realized,'' the report said. ``Extra years of healthy life expectancy could be gained for populations in all countries within the next decade'' by addressing these problems with urgency.
Of the 191 countries included in the report, the data indicates that the average number of years spent in good health ranges from 28.7 years in Angola to 73.6 years in Japan. In most Western European countries, people can expect to spend about 70 years in good health.
The 2002 report, titled ``Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life,'' tries to quantify the reasons for poor health.
``Although the report carries some ominous warnings, it also opens the door to a healthier future in all countries, if they're prepared to act boldly now,'' Christopher Murray, one of the authors, said.
W.H.O.'s director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, said in London that she hoped to ``spur a global reassessment of the way we look at disease.''
``This report provides a road map for how societies can tackle a wide range of preventable conditions that are killing millions of people prematurely,'' she said.
The report says that by reducing the top risks by about a quarter, people could on average expect to live 10 more years in good health, with even bigger gains to be made in poorer countries.
``These are massive gains, and this report is a wake-up call to ministries of health to act now to reduce exposure so they can realize these gains,'' Alan Lopez, the agency's senior science adviser, said.
``Not only is poverty an underlying cause of many of these risk factors, but it's also in the poorer groups of the population where most of the disease burden worldwide, not just in poor countries, is concentrated,'' Mr. Lopez said.
The list of top 10 risks in each region or country varies, but worldwide, the lack of food is No.1, causing 3.4 million deaths in 2000. Unsafe sex ranked second, with H.I.V. infections and death from AIDS lowering the average life expectancy in the most affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa to 47, compared with 62 among tbose without the disease.
About 170 million children in poor countries are underweight because of lack of food, while more than a billion adults in North America, Europe and middle income countries are thought to be obese or overweight, according to W.H.O.
Mr. Lopez said that in emerging countries, mainly Asian nations like China and Thailand, the major risks were much more diverse, ranging from problems like smoking or excessive cholesterol to lack of food.
``The leading cause-of-disease burden in this middle-income group of countries is actually alcohol,'' Mr. Lopez said. ``This is a surprise to us.''
The report advocates ``cost effective'' measures to tackle major health risks, including improved supplies of clean water, action to reduce salt and fat in processed foods, curbs on smoking or tobacco taxes, and better H.I.V. and AIDS prevention.
-------- human rights
Albanian and Russian observers sent to monitor American elections
By Andrew Gumbel
31 October 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=347515
Democrats see hopes of revenge in Florida dwindle
The joke, during the endless presidential election recounts in Florida two years ago, was that Russia and Albania would send poll monitors to help the United States with its unexpected bump on the road to democracy. Now, the joke has become reality.
A high-level delegation of European and North American election observers - including members from Russia and Albania - arrived yesterday for a week-long mission to watch Florida's mid-term elections, which take place on Tuesday.
Their task: to see if the world's most powerful democracy has learned anything from the disastrous 36-day showdown between George Bush and Al Gore in 2000, in which the world saw every wart in Florida's deeply flawed electoral system without ever discovering for sure who had won.
Certainly, the Russians and Albanians know a thing or two about flawed, rigged or fraudulent elections. After receiving a decade of lectures from Western democracies about overhauling their own systems, they also have a good idea how to overcome them. It remains to be seen whether Florida isn't too tough a nut to crack, even for them. "Whatever else it is, it will be an experience," said a tight-lipped Ilirjan Celibashi, head of Albania's Central Electoral Committee.
Mandated by the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the 10-man delegation will not be manning polling stations. However, that might not have been a bad idea, given the experience of the presidential election and the more recent Democratic primary, when voting machines again malfunctioned and hundreds of people complained of being disenfranchised.
Rather, the team will look at the broader picture of Florida's electoral laws, how they are applied, and the ways in which US practices fall short of the stringent requirements imposed on emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
This is the first time international monitors have gone to the United States. The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has been campaigning for some time to improve electoral standards in some of the older, established democracies.
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Argentina Nuke Accord Stirs Protest
October 31, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Argentina-Nuclear-Protest.html
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Hundreds of protesters rallied Thursday outside Congress against a proposed Argentine nuclear accord with Australia.
The demonstrators from Greenpeace, Amnesty International and other groups used their bodies to spell the oversized word ``NO'' on the ground.
The protesters charge that the pact will allow nuclear wastes to be imported, but proponents deny the charges.
Legislative passage is needed to finalize a contract awarded to an Argentine company, INVAP, by the Australian government in 2000 for the treatment of its nuclear byproducts.
INVAP has argued the proposed law does not violate the constitution because the byproducts to be sent are not radioactive and will eventually be returned to Australia.
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Thousands Protest Free - Trade Talks in Ecuador
October 31, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-trade-latam-protest.html
QUITO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Thousands of people marched in Ecuador's capital on Thursday to protest talks for an Americas-wide free trade zone as diplomats under heavy guard led negotiations to lay groundwork for a meeting of ministers.
Trade chiefs from 34 nations across the Americas will meet in Quito on Friday to advance negotiations toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would tear down trade barriers from Alaska to Argentina starting in 2005.
U.S. optimism over the talks has been largely overshadowed by criticism from Latin America's largest economy, Brazil, which has warned it will not join the free trade area unless Washington makes concessions on agricultural subsidies.
Dressed in fedora hats and colorful shawls, Ecuadorean Indians marched with union leaders, students and other protesters on the Andean capital, shouting that the free trade zone would turn Latin America into a U.S. colony.
More than 5,000 armed police fanned out across the capital. Officers in gray fatigues and riot gear stood guard outside the luxury hotel early Thursday where diplomats hammered out details for discussion in Friday's meeting.
Protesters fear opening up trade barriers will flood their developing nations with cheaper goods and that exports will suffer when competing with the world's largest economy, the United States.
``Small businesses are going to fold and if people have no means of work, they have no money ... we live by our stomachs,'' said Pablo Mamani, a Bolivian Indian waving a multicolored flag who traveled five days by land to march in Quito.
The pact would create the world's largest free trade block by expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico to rest of the Americas.
Despite some Latin American countries' misgivings, many governments see the free trade zone as a crucial opportunity to boost exports and spur economic growth in a region battered by sliding currencies and soaring debt.
TECHNICAL MEETING
The Quito summit is ostensibly aimed a nailing down technical agreements, like a long-awaited schedule for market-access proposals -- essentially saying how much countries are willing to cut tariffs, and by when.
Still, Brazil and other Latin American nations hope to use the one-day gathering to express worries over the pact and raise trade gripes with the United States. Diplomats say most of the acrimony will be kept behind closed doors.
But Brazil, which accounts for almost half of South America's economic output, has been vocal in its opposition to U.S. plans to negotiate bilateral treaties with some Latin American nations if regional free trade talks stutter. Brazil says that strategy would ``splinter'' negotiations.
Latin America's diplomatic heavyweight has also demanded the United States cut agricultural subsidies on competing products, like sugar and orange juice, which Brazil prices more competitively. Without such U.S. concessions, Brazil's government has warned it may never join the free trade area.
Aides to President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have been more outspoken, calling the free trade zone the equivalent of an annexation of Brazil.
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