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NUCLEAR
PLAYING "GOTCHA" WITH NATIONAL SECURITY
Israel weighs expanding navy to protect its nukes
N. Korea Warns of Lifting Freeze on Missile Tests
North Korea Warns of New Tests Unless Japan Ties Improve
N.Korea May Reconsider Missile Test Moratorium
United States: Machine Failures Threaten Plutonium Shipment Schedule
THE U.N. U.S. Refines Resolution on Iraq as Hopes Rise
MILITARY
Global Diamond Trade Accord Reached
Rights Group Says Governor in Afghan West Abuses Power
U.S. Plans Africa Anti - Terror Force
Smallpox I: United States Fingers Four Countries With Covert Stockpiles
4 Nations Thought To Possess Smallpox
Britain sends warships to the Persian Gulf
Rumsfeld comfortable with carriers proposal
Moscow Toll Revives Concerns Over Chemical Attacks
Three Held in HK for Alleged Al Qaeda Missile Deal
Report From Basra: Iraq Prepares For War
Questions about weapons inspections
Israel seeking formal upgrade in relations with U.S.
Bomber Kills 2 and Hurts 30 in Israeli Mall
In a Surprise Move, Sharon Calls New Elections in Israel
Official offers bases for U.S. use
No Decision Yet on Letting U.S. Use Bases, Saudi Says
U.S. Hails Attack on Car, Yemen Silent
NATO bombing of Yugoslav factories
NATO Looking Ahead To a Mission Makeover
Pak to acquire anti-ballistic missile from US
U.S. Is Reported to Kill Al Qaeda Leader in Yemen
'P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty
Unmanned Craft a Terror War Tool
Army Shoots Down Artillery Shell with Laser
U.S. Still Opposes 'Target' Killings
Massive military cargo ships leave U.S. ports
Are Papers Ready To Cover War At Home?
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Court says Chicago can sue gun makers
Supreme Court weighs Calif. 3-strikes law
Lessons Drawn From Attack on Pentagon May Stay Secret
20 terrorists handed over to U.S.
OTHER
In Bolivia, a river of failure, death
ACTIVISTS
Letter From an Israeli Jail
Top Iranian Dissident Pardoned
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
PLAYING "GOTCHA" WITH NATIONAL SECURITY
November 5, 2002 -
AIM Report #19
http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/2002/19.html
ABC World News Tonight played "gotcha" journalism with the U.S. Customs Service on the one-year anniversary of the September 11 tragedy. ABC's story ran twice on September 11, 2002; first on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and later, in a somewhat longer version, during its coverage of the day's events in the observance of 9/11. ABC News says it was performing a service by alerting the public to security vulnerabilities that could permit a catastrophe worse even than 9/11. Critics said the segment was misleading. One even denounced it as "irresponsible" for teaching terrorists how to defeat Customs Service's safeguards at U.S. ports.
ABC reporter Brian Ross reported he had slipped 15 pounds of depleted uranium by Customs inspectors at the Port of New York. He pointed out that depleted uranium is not dangerous, but he said that if it had been highly enriched uranium, it would have been almost enough for either a crude nuclear device or a "dirty bomb"-a radiological dispersal device (RDD). In early June, the U.S. announced the arrest of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen with possible ties to Al Qaeda, on suspicion of plotting to build and explode an RDD in the United States, which seemed to make ABC's exposé timely.
Ross charged that the failure of Customs to detect the radioactive material raised serious questions about our ability to thwart a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons. He showed a video of an American anti-nuclear activist accusing Customs of "covering up" its detection failure. In its promotions for the segment, ABC told its viewers they would be "stunned to see how vulnerable we are to nuclear terrorism." Peter Jennings pronounced Ross' segment a "truly chilling report." And ABC quoted a Harvard professor saying that the "single, largest, most urgent threat to Americans today is the threat of nuclear terrorism." The segment implied that the Bush administration hasn't kept its promises to increase security against weapons of mass destruction at the nation's borders.
Tough Detection Challenge
ABC doesn't deny this, but it says that its intent was simply to highlight a national security threat that has plagued us for years. At a news conference the next day, citing the ABC report, Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) criticized the Bush administration for neglecting homeland security. In an op-ed article in the New York Times, Schumer charged that the administration and its friends in Congress would rather risk lives and spend billions warring on Iraq than implement security at the nation's port facilities. He also wrote a letter to Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner urging the service to "address these lapses in our security before it is too late."
Through its report, ABC News highlighted the most difficult nuclear-smuggling challenge facing the U.S. government. Ross used depleted uranium as a surrogate for highly enriched uranium (HEU). HEU is classified as a "special nuclear material" by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; it is produced by processing natural uranium to make it suitable for use in nuclear warheads. HEU is an unlikely candidate for an RDD. For that terrorists are more likely to use more readily available highly radioactive materials like Cobalt-60, Cesium-137, medical isotopes or radioactive waste. Such a weapon cannot produce a Hiroshima-like explosion, but it can emit life-threatening radiation. Quantities well beyond that featured in Ross' report would be necessary to do much damage and would be readily detectable should a terrorist try to smuggle a bomb by Customs.
Critics knowledgeable about nuclear materials and detection devices charge that ABC News misrepresented both the threat and our ability to counter it. They say that the story failed to credit Customs' efforts to mitigate this threat here and abroad. Beyond that, many of those interviewed by AIM thought ABC News was making sweeping conclusions from a minuscule amount of information. Ralph Anderson, a health physicist at the pro-nuclear- power Nuclear Energy Institute, told AIM that it was difficult to tell from ABC's story if this sting operation was a legitimate test of Customs' capabilities.
"Taco Drop" Revisited
The Brian Ross caper was reminiscent of an effort ABC News made a decade ago to disparage the efforts of Customs to intercept illegal drugs being smuggled from Mexico. The February-A, 1993 AIM Report told of an effort by ABC's 20/20 to show that the Customs Service's elaborate system of balloon-borne-radar sensors, chase aircraft and helicopters to intercept illegal drugs being flown in from Mexico was a flop. 20/20 reporter Tom Jarriel tried to prove this point by flying a taco inside a news pouch across the border into Arizona using a small plane. The plane descended to 250 feet and a news pouch containing the taco was dropped, mimicking an illegal drug drop. Customs tracked both Jarriel's plane and the ABC car that retrieved the pouch. If it had contained drugs Jarriel and his crew would have been arrested.
The failure of the ABC caper was reported by the Arizona papers and the Associated Press, but not by ABC News. When 20/20 aired its segment, Jarriel didn't mention that Customs had intercepted the taco. Instead, he went on at length about how Customs' technology was failing to stop airborne smugglers.
A Flawed Exercise
This time around, ABC News' modus operandi was about the same. The segment opened with reporter Brian Ross boarding a train in Austria carrying a suitcase containing the depleted uranium stored inside an industrial-type pipe with two screw-on caps. Ross said the pipe was lead-lined, which would shield the low-level radioactivity emitted by the depleted uranium. Ross was shown traveling through Europe to Istanbul, Turkey, said by ABC to be a major transshipment point for nuclear smugglers. During his trip, Ross crossed several borders, but the suitcase remained untouched on a luggage rack above his head.
In Istanbul, several men, Middle Eastern in appearance, were videotaped packing the suitcase inside an ornate shipping crate, which was then placed inside a larger shipping container together with other household-type items. All of this took place in a market square out in broad daylight, but the suitcase was never opened on camera to show the pipe with the uranium inside. The container was then loaded onto the Singapore Bay, a freighter bound for New York.
Demonizing Depleted Uranium
The depleted uranium's journey didn't begin in Europe. ABC borrowed it from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) library, in Washington, D.C., where it had been on display for about 20 years. In addition to providing ABC with the material, the NRDC, along with a well-credentialed director of a university physics department in Austria, provided technical advice to ABC during the preparation of the segment. The NRDC is an environmental-activist non-profit organization. A number of former NRDC activists served in and others acted as advisors and consultants to the Clinton administration. It has a strong anti-nuclear agenda and favors the elimination of fissile material for both military and civilian purposes altogether.
Depleted uranium is the material left over after natural uranium is enriched and separated out for use as fuel. Depleted uranium is 40 per cent less radioactive than the natural uranium commonly found in the ground, rivers and streams, or oceans. It has numerous commercial uses, such as counterweight in passenger jets like the one ABC used to ship the material to Europe. Its main health concerns stem from the potential toxicity of its chemical properties rather than from radioactivity. Fifteen pounds is the upper limit on the amount of this type of material that may be used or shipped without a specific license under Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules. Consequently, shipping the depleted uranium both out of and back into the U.S. was perfectly legal.
Safeguarding HEU Has High Priority
Second, nuclear smuggling is not exactly a "new" threat to U.S. national security. Nuclear-materials smuggling has been a concern for decades, but worries peaked in the mid-1990s after a German intelligence sting showed how easily such materials could be transported from Moscow into Western Europe. That set off a chain of events that led to the U.S. pouring millions of dollars into the former Soviet Union to help the Russians secure their stockpiles of nuclear materials. Millions more were spent moving such materials out of harms way, from hot spots throughout the old Soviet Union.
Only recently it was disclosed that more than 100 pounds of weapons-usable material was moved from a vulnerable nuclear- research reactor in Belgrade to a secure location in Russia. Meanwhile, scientists at laboratories throughout the United States, Russia, and Europe have been developing new and improved sensor technologies to detect and prevent nuclear materials smuggling.
Finally, scientists involved in the fight against nuclear smuggling credit the U.S. Customs Service with being far ahead of the rest of the government in deploying modern radiation detection technologies and procedures. Approximately 16 million shipping containers are estimated to enter the U.S. every year with 20 percent of these coming into New York and New Jersey ports. Few Americans seem ready for the major disruptions in the flow of commerce that would result from opening and inspecting hundreds of these shipping containers daily. In order to balance the dictates of commerce against the potential smuggling threats, Customs has developed a set of protocols to guide its inspectors when they encounter suspicious containers.
Sailed Right Through...Or Did It?
Customs also says it has deployed a multi-layered defense that extends outward to potential foreign sources of nuclear materials, and shipment points. It trains foreign border guards and customs officials to detect nuclear materials, and claims eight significant overseas seizures since 1998. This includes a Bulgarian seizure of a small quantity of highly enriched uranium in May 1999 after the inspector and his supervisors had been recently trained under the Customs Service's program. Several critics said that focusing on one aspect of Customs efforts was unfair and missed the point of the service's overall approach to combating nuclear-materials smuggling.
In his World News Tonight segment, ABC reporter Brian Ross said that the package of depleted uranium "sailed right through" port authorities, but that is not quite accurate. Customs also knows what ABC knows about Istanbul as a potential shipping point for nuclear smugglers, and, following its protocol, it identified container "GTSU414048" from among 1139 on the Singapore Bay for further scrutiny. Customs says that its inspectors detected no radioactivity emanating from the container. ABC News' experts professed shock and some dismay at the putative failure. ABC's NRDC expert said, "This is what [customs is] looking for, or should be looking for...and this is what they absolutely have to stop." The longer segment shown later in the evening includes Ross' statement that the container had been "targeted for special screening." ABC News defended its conclusion that "it sailed right through" by showing that the crate had not been opened. This led Ross to conclude that Customs had failed to detect the depleted uranium.
But technical experts interviewed by AIM were not surprised that Customs' detectors failed to pick up any radioactivity; they said that 15 pounds of depleted uranium would be an incredibly small radioactive source, especially when shielded with lead, no matter how close detectors got to the package. Others said that customs' equipment should be set up to detect weapons-usable nuclear materials, like highly enriched uranium or plutonium. These experts commented that since depleted uranium is not a threat, why waste detection resources on it?
Following its protocol, Customs says it took x-rays and determined that ABC's container with the depleted uranium inside was too small to warrant opening the crate for a closer look. Did the inspectors make the right call? Again, technical experts told AIM that they did. In their view, the package was too small to represent a threat, although no one wanted to discuss potential sizes and shapes of nuclear warheads on the record. One expert said that ABC News shipped a worthless piece of junk. Scott Peterson, a vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said that ABC "might just as well have been carrying 15 pounds of oranges" in its suitcase.
On camera, however, the NRDC spokesman described Ross' suitcase as a "perfect mockup." "It replicates everything but the capability to explode." Perfect mockup of what? ABC reporter Ross referred to it as looking like a "pipe bomb," but to detonate a package of weapons-usable material this size would require high explosives, initiators, and electronics. Then the package would have the "capability to explode." But then the package would also be heavier and present a very different image to x-ray devices. ABC News may have meant a "perfect mockup" of smuggled nuclear material that could later be combined with more nuclear materials and wired up to create a terrorist nuclear device.
What ABC Really Meant
NRDC and ABC say, yes, that is exactly what they meant. By adding a tad more lead shielding, a terrorist could slip through enough highly enriched uranium to build a one-kiloton bomb. That's really scary, but is it accurate? On camera, Brian Ross said that depleted uranium gives off a signature much like that of highly enriched uranium, leading the viewer to conclude that if Customs couldn't detect this package, how could it pick up weapons-grade material. He included a caveat, saying that the signatures would appear similar "to detection scanners now in use" presumably by Customs officials and others.
Technical experts say that too is misleading. First, no radioactivity was detected. Second, depending on the sensitivity of the detectors now in use, highly enriched uranium can be detected. Experts say that highly enriched uranium (HEU), unlike plutonium, is devilishly difficult to detect. Add enough lead shielding to packaged HEU and detection is even more difficult, but not impossible.
Isotopes within the HEU do give off detectable signatures and may also give off some spontaneous fission products, also detectable, but experts refused to discuss these in detail with AIM, and presumably ABC News, due to classification concerns. Enough lead shielding could significantly reduce those signatures, which is why Customs has developed a multi-layered defense, including the use of powerful x-ray devices. Adding more lead, however, adds to the material density of the package which, in turn, presents a different image to x-ray devices.
ABC Plays "Gotcha" With Customs
Customs opted not to open the crate, leading ABC News to conclude that Customs had not picked up the radioactivity. Customs agrees and says that's why the package was x-rayed. Here is where ABC News couldn't resist the "gotcha" spin in putting together its segment. ABC interviewed a Customs inspector who said that "if we can't tell exactly what's in the container by those screenings, we're going to get into the container and find out for ourselves." On its Web site (ABCNEWS.com), the inspector, identified as the "chief of the contraband enforcement team," says that "we're doing whatever it takes to screen a high-risk device."
In an on-camera interview, Brian Ross challenged U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner to produce evidence that his inspectors had indeed detected the material. Bonner responded that Customs had taken radiation readings, then x-rayed the container and made the call. Ross asked Bonner for the x-rays, but Bonner declined to show Ross or the viewing audience the pictures. Ross then cut to a clip of the NRDC spokesman charging that the inspectors missed the package and Bonner with "covering up" their mistakes. That editing suggested that Bonner was lying about the existence of the x-ray pictures, an allegation ABC News denies was its intention. That is one explanation.
Need To Know?
Or it could be that Bonner didn't want to compromise the sensitivity or sophistication of the technologies available to our inspectors or reveal too much of our protocols and procedures for countering such a threat. Customs press officers made this point, saying that, as a policy, Customs declines to reveal the sensitivities of its detection technologies to any reporter. They don't want to alert the bad guys to Customs' capabilities and make a tough job even tougher. One of the main principles governing the handling of classified information is "need to know." Individuals are supposed to be able to demonstrate "need to know" before they can access classified information. Customs judged that ABC News, and through ABC the bad guys, don't have a "need to know" these details. Customs officials did offer to show AIM copies of the x-ray pictures taken of the container. And Customs described to ABC News the configuration of the items in the x-rayed package, but ABC didn't include this in its segment.
ABC News says that during the making of its segment, Customs never intimated that it possessed any technical capabilities or methods beyond those displayed during the Ross report. A Customs Service news release issued after the report stated that the service "employs an arsenal of inspection technology (other than radiation detection devices) that could potentially detect such a device. Radiation detection technology is not the only way to detect shielded uranium."
Technical experts, including those engaged in the development of radiation detectors, readily agreed that Customs shouldn't reveal its capabilities to ABC News; some even termed the report "irresponsible" for discussing Customs' supposed vulnerabilities on the air. Few experts interviewed by AIM dismiss lightly the problem of detecting highly enriched uranium, if that was indeed ABC's objective. Most criticized the use of depleted uranium as a surrogate for HEU, however, to make judgments about current Customs Service capabilities.
And The Point?
So what was the point of the story? And why run it on the first anniversary of September 11? ABC News Vice President Jeffrey W. Schneider told AIM, "The media has always provided essential checks on claims made by the government. Our report-which exposed a dangerous hole in the Nation's security-fulfilled that fundamental mission." This suggests that ABC News is claiming that the nation has no defense against terrorists smuggling HEU into the country. Critics acknowledge the difficulty of detecting HEU, but say the task is not impossible.
It is possible that Customs is shielding its vulnerabilities behind a curtain of government classification rules. Many experts AIM talked to, both in government and out, refused to go beyond generalities and categorically declined to discuss the specifics of radiation detectors now in use. AIM's interviews indicate that the handheld radiation pagers used by Customs inspectors and shown in the ABC segment are the most sensitive available for their size. The "laws of physics" will make it difficult to improve much on these. As Senator Schumer indicated, there are sensitive devices currently in research and development at the nation's nuclear labs and elsewhere, but deployment still seems some years away.
The customs inspectors said they were looking for "high-risk" threats, a category that clearly does not include depleted uranium. Commissioner Bonner said that his service had determined that the package did not represent a threat, and it didn't.
Did ABC intend to show that Europe has porous borders, especially the former Warsaw Pact states, like Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania? But who doesn't know that and why not mention the programs Customs has to train foreign border guards and customs officials? And what about Customs' recent successes in Bulgaria and Uzbekistan at interdicting real nuclear materials?
Could Customs use more funding and personnel to expand these programs? What bureaucracy would ever turn down an increase in its budget? That probably accounts for Commissioner Bonner's admission to ABC News that his system does have some vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, ABC News offered no solutions to the "dangerous" problem it says it exposed. The NRDC offered some solutions on its Web site, mostly along the lines of getting rid of all nuclear materials or throwing a leak-proof security cordon around them. But these solutions are simply extensions of existing U.S. programs that have been underway for some time. None address the fundamental physics problem of detecting highly enriched uranium, especially if shielded, in a nuclear smuggling scenario.
Some critics believe that the problem with ABC News' story was a lack of expertise on the part of ABC's experts. They say that depleted uranium is no more dangerous than the taco ABC tried to smuggle across the U.S. border ten years ago. The problem of detecting highly enriched uranium, especially when shielded, is well known and has forced Customs and other federal agencies to develop multiple, synergistic approaches to combating this threat. But ABC News said nothing about those efforts.
Beyond urging homeland security upgrades, however, it is possible that ABC News was joining in with Senator Schumer and others arguing against war on Iraq by pointing to "other, more significant threats" to U.S. national security. ABC News denied that, saying that its story had been months in preparation and was timed to air on the 9/11 anniversary. That's plausible, but the public interest might have been better served by a program focusing on what Iraq is doing to develop weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.
What You Can Do Send the enclosed cards or your own cards or letters to David Westin, the President of ABC News, and Fred Graham of Court TV, which failed to honor its commitment to air the Wichita Massacre trial.
NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF BY By Reed Irvine
THIS REPORT ON THE EFFORT OF ABC NEWS TO DEMONSTRATE HOW EASY IT WOULD BE for terrorists to smuggle uranium into the U.S. to make either a "dirty" bomb or an A-bomb alludes to the bias in ABC's reporting on the issue of going to war against Iraq. Our friends at the Media Research Center tallied 51 pro and con sound bites by members of Congress on this subject that were used on the evening newscasts by ABC, CBS and NBC in the four weeks preceding the last day of the debate in the House and Senate on the resolution authorizing the President to use military force against Iraq. Of the 51 sound bites that either favored or opposed the resolution, 30 were in favor and 21 were opposed. CBS aired 12, evenly divided pro and con. NBC aired 32, of which 15 were pro and 17 con. ABC aired 7, every one of them opposing the use of force. The actual vote in the House and Senate combined showed that 70 percent of the members favored the resolution. One might say that CBS was being fair in giving both sides the same number of sound bites and NBC came very close, and ABC was showing its bias by excluding the supporters. A card calling this to ABC's attention is enclosed.
IF ABC KEEPS THIS UP THEY WILL TAKE OVER THE BIAS CROWN THAT CBS HAS WORN FOR years. Also, ABC President David Westin should be reminded that he has not yet required George Stephanopoulos to disclose what transpired at the secret meeting he attended in the White House situation room on the night TWA Flight 800 crashed. You may recall that George mentioned this meeting when he and Peter Jennings were filling air-time on Sept. 11, 2001, saying that the meeting was held in the wake of the TWA Flight 800 "bombing." Brian Ross, who carried out the depleted uranium caper discussed in this report, promised me that he would ask George about this. As far as I know, he hasn't done so.
THE OUTCOME OF THE VOTE ON AUTHORIZING THE PRESIDENT TO USE FORCE AGAINST Iraq suggests that the influence of TV network news is not what it used to be. ABC, CBS and NBC did not air President Bush's speech in Cincinnati in which he laid out the case for Congress passing the resolution. The last time the broadcast networks all failed to air an important speech the President wanted the nation to hear was on Oct. 14, 1987 when Ronald Reagan gave a speech from the Oval office to explain why he was continuing to press for a Senate vote on the nomination of Judge Robert Bork as a Supreme Court Associate Justice. It was aired only on CNN and reached only a small fraction of the voters. Peter Jennings, instead of apologizing for ABC's failure to carry the speech, pointed out that very few people had heard it and said, "It is getting harder for the President to put forward a strictly partisan view." He was telling the White House that ABC, the other networks and the opposition party would decide if the President would be permitted to address the nation from the Oval office using network facilities. If the Great Communicator had been able to deliver that speech to a national television audience, Robert Bork might be sitting on the Supreme Court today.
BRIAN ROSS, WHO REPORTED THE DEPLETED URANIUM CAPER CRITIQUED IN THIS REPORT, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC News. He came to ABC in July 1994 from a stint as Chief Investigative Correspondent for NBC's news magazine Dateline. An investigative report, Cataract Cowboys, that he did for NBC in 1993 charged that some eye clinics were making big bucks with unnecessary cataract surgery paid for by Medicare. It was seriously flawed, and a clinic sued NBC. AIM reported the flaws. This year Ross has been covering the FBI's efforts to link Dr. Steven Hatfill to the anthrax letters. He reported a Newsweek story about bloodhounds rented by the FBI reacting to Hatfill after sniffing a "scent pack" which theoretically had absorbed scents from an anthrax letter using "new technology." Notra Trulock found that law enforcement officials with long experience in conducting "scent discrimination" with bloodhounds scoff at the Newsweek account. No FBI spokesman would say that the FBI was the source. These officials speculated that the FBI was trying to obtain a "confession" by making Hatfill think that a bloodhound had connected him to the anthrax letter. They say that detectives sometimes try to obtain confessions from suspects by claiming to have evidence such as fingerprints or a bloodhound's reaction that proves they are guilty. This is often seen on TV shows such as Law and Order.
BELOW IS THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY OF MURRAY BARON, WHO SERVED AS AIM'S president from 1976 until his death at age 94 on Sept. 23. An eloquent speaker, he was tireless in promoting AIM. He obtained the funding for our Speakers Bureau and often joined me in raising questions at shareholder meetings. He was irked by the grand obituaries the New York Times gave to dead reds like Bella Abzug and its modest obituaries for those who were heroes of the resistance to the expansion of the Evil Empire. I reminded the Sulzbergers, Arthur Sr. and Arthur Jr., of this. They saw to it that the Times gave Murray a decent obituary. Douglas Martin researched it well. He even found that Murray's name had appeared in the Times over 240 times. I supplied the story about Murray's speech at the1988 CBS annual meeting, but Doug had to leave out the punch line. Read the last paragraph of the obit before you read on.
WHEN MURRAY FINISHED HIS scathing criticism of Dan Rather, the audience applauded, and Chairman Larry Tisch, said, "Mr. Baron, I'm not going to comment on the accuracy of everything that you say, but in 30 years of running annual meetings, that's the finest speech I ever heard."
FROM 1978 TO 1997, WHEN Punch Sulzberger retired as chairman of the Times, Murray and I met with him annually to discuss AIM's criticisms and suggestions. These meetings were far better than the shareholder meetings as a venue for raising questions. Vice Chairman Sydney Gruson usually attended.
AT ONE MEETING, MURRAY asked Gruson how he would have voted in a contest between Czar Nicholas and Lenin, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung, Batista and Castro. In each case, Gruson chose the Communist. That told us a lot about the ideological climate at the Times. Murray had read the Times since he was a young boy, and he remembered what position it had taken on almost any controversial issue. In 1984 he reminded Punch that in '78 and '79 the Times was calling for U.S. pressure to overthrow Somoza. Handing Nicaragua to the Sandinistas proved to be a disaster. Gruson insisted that the Times had no responsibility for it. At our next meeting, we gave him a 7-page memo documenting the role the Times played.
-------- israel
Israel weighs expanding navy to protect its nukes
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, November 7, 2002
http://216.26.163.62/2002/me_israel_11_06.html
TEL AVIV - Israel is reviewing proposals to deploy strategic military assets at sea to protect them against an Arab or Iranian missile strike or a Palestinian insurgency attack.
Officials have argued that the Israeli use of the Mediterranean Sea is vital because of the nation's limited territory, the emergence of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the vulnerability of Israeli military bases from Hizbullah rockets along the Lebanese border.
Officials said the Israeli assets being considered include everything from missile defense units to strategic weapons, Middle East Newsline reported. Israel is said to possess up to 200 nuclear weapons.
The discussions include whether Israel's military should focus on building a more powerful navy at the expense of the air force after the procurement of 102 F-16 Block 52 multi-role fighters. Proponents argue that Israel has exploited its air potential given its small air space and the improving capability of Arab and Iranian surface-to-surface missiles.
Yuval Steinetz, chairman of the parliament's subcommittee on military doctrine, has been discussing the issue with senior defense officials.
The parliamentary chairman has long called for the bolstering of Israel's navy as a strategic force. Steinetz said Israeli military and strategic facilities, particularly airports, are increasingly vulnerable to Palestinian insurgents, armed with short-range rockets.
"There is also a need to deploy in the sea," Steinetz said. "Then, these assets could not be silenced by primitive means."
Officials said at least one leading Defense Ministry official, Yisrael Tal, supports this concept. Tal is a senior adviser at the ministry and the designer of the Merkava main battle tank.
Steinetz said Israel would require a powerful navy with strategic assets to ensure superiority in the Mediterranean amid the emerging rivalries from Egypt. He said Israel's military would also require the drafting of a new concept for the use of naval platforms with cruise missiles and long-range artillery. Such artillery would have a range of up to 200 kilometers.
The naval platforms would contain helicopters, unmanned air vehicles, and air defense missiles.
"There is a need to establish an alternative to that of airports and ground facilities," Steinetz said. "In case they are under attack, Israel has another source of firepower."
Steinetz would not say how many naval platforms are required. But he stressed the expansion of the naval capability to deploy strategic assets would be expensive.
"It's not cheap," Steinetz said. "But it's much more expensive to keep buying squadrons of planes in the tiny expanse in Israel."
The discussion over the use of the sea as a strategic arena began in early 2000, officials said. They said the discussion now includes the use of the Mediterranean for deployment of Arrow-2 missile defense systems.
"At a certain point, Israel will not have enough space for additional Arrow batteries," a senior defense source said. "And it is clear that Israel needs at triple the number of batteries now deployed." Officials said that so far no decisions have been taken.
-------- korea
N. Korea Warns of Lifting Freeze on Missile Tests
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 5, 2002; 12:32 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7456-2002Nov5?language=printer
TOKYO, Nov. 5 - North Korea has warned that it may end its freeze on missile tests, raising the ante in the standoff over U.S. demands that it end its program to make fuel for a nuclear weapon.
The warning, carried by the official North Korean news agency, was directed at Japan, which is under pressure by the United States to halt recent diplomatic progress toward normalizing ties and extending economic aid to the dictatorial regime.
If those negotiations stall over the nuclear issue, North Korean officials are "of the view that [North Korea] should reconsider the moratorium on missile test firings," the Korean Central News Agency said, quoting a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
A North Korean long-range missile test unnerved Japan and rattled other Asian neighbors in 1998. In 1999, North Korea pledged to keep a moratorium on missile tests in a gesture aimed at the United States, and it has repeatedly extended the freeze.
The Bush administration stopped negotiations with North Korea for two years and announced last month that it would not engage in talks with the regime until North Korea dismantled its program for enriching uranium. It has urged other nations to put similar pressure on Pyongyang, and talks between North Korea and Japan last week foundered, principally on the nuclear issue.
Analysts had predicted North Korea would respond with increasing threats. Some experts say they expect the regime will stage an actual missile test or will move spent reactor fuel out from under its current international supervision, in order to increase pressure on the United States to negotiate with it.
In other commentary, the KCNA repeated the country's fear that the United States intends to invade North Korea and called again for a "nonaggression treaty" with America. The agency asserted that "the best way for the United States to solve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is to sit with [North Korea] and have a frank discussion."
In Cambodia, where he is attending a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi noted that his Sept. 17 summit agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il included a pledge that North Korea would continue the missile test moratorium until after 2003.
"I do not believe North Korea will trample on the fundamental spirit of our Pyongyang agreement," Koizumi said at a news conference in Phnom Penh.
The prime minister said Japan will "speak firmly as we continue our negotiations," indicating Japan will keep talking with North Korea despite the American preference for isolating the regime.
In an interview here today, the head of the Japanese negotiating team with North Korea acknowledged there are limits to Japan's role in solving the confrontation.
"The talks cannot resolve the issue between [North Korea] and the United States," said Katsunari Suzuki, the Foreign Ministry's ambassador extraordinary for the talks. "To resolve those issues, there have to be bilateral talks" between Washington and Pyongyang.
Suzuki also said Japan does not accept Washington's position that the 1994 Agreed Framework pact, in which Pyongyang promised to end its nuclear program and Washington promised to improve ties, was renounced by North Korea. Both sides have accused the other of breaking the pact.
"Neither party has said it is nullified. The United States certainly did not say that clearly. [North Korea] may have murmured it, but didn't say that clearly," he insisted. "Our position is to maintain the Agreed Framework as long as possible."
Suzuki said Japan is "strongly urging" the United States, North Korea and South Korea "that unless we find some better alternative, its very risky for all of us to throw the Agreed Framework away."
--------
North Korea Warns of New Tests Unless Japan Ties Improve
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/05CND-KORE.html
TOKYO, Nov. 5 - North Korea warned today that unless relations with Japan are quickly normalized it would resume its testing of ballistic missiles.
The thinly veiled threat was issued by an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman less than a week after the first high-level talks between the two countries in two years, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ended in an angry stalemate.
Today's statement said that the "relevant organs" would "reconsider the moratorium on the missile test-fire in case the talks on normalizing the relations between North Korea and Japan get prolonged without making any progress, as was the case with the recent talks."
North Korea shocked this country in 1998 with a surprise test of a Taepodong intercontinental ballistic missile, which overflew Japan. North Korea later claimed that the missile test was a satellite launch, and has refrained from further testing for several years. It reaffirmed a self-imposed moratorium on missile testing only six weeks ago in a meeting between North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan.
Speaking in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Mr. Koizumi dismissed the warning today, saying it did not figure in any government-to-government communication.
He expressed confidence that Japan's diplomatic engagement with the North would bear fruit. "I believe North Korea will not do anything to trample the spirit of the Pyongyang declaration," Mr. Koizumi said.
During Mr. Koizumi's one-day meeting with Mr. Kim, the North Korean leader pledged not only to continue to observe its missile test moratorium, but also to abide by all international obligations regarding nuclear weapons.
The meeting seemed to put the two countries on a fast track toward establishing diplomatic relations.
Since the demise of the Soviet bloc, North Korea has suffered devastating famines and increasingly severe economic hardships. In preparatory negotiations, Japan offered large financial incentives to the North to change its repressive, militaristic behavior, promising a major aid package in case of normalized relations.
Since the Sept. 17 meeting, however, the United States announced that North Korea had acknowledged the existence of a previously secret uranium-based nuclear weapons development program, which America says violates international commitments made by the North in 1994.
Until now the principal issue separating Japan and North Korea had been North Korea's kidnapping of 13 Japanese citizens, beginning in the late 1970's, for use as trainers in the country's spy program. Washington's insistence that North Korea eliminate its secret weapons program before receiving Japanese economic aid has revived tensions.
The five survivors among the 13 kidnapped Japanese, who are now visiting Japan for the first time in a quarter century, have become a political and emotional football between the two countries.
North Korea initially granted the five permission to visit Japan for two weeks, and kept their spouses and children behind, ostensibly as a guarantee of their return. On the eve of the normalization talks, however, Japan raised the stakes, announcing that it would extend the stay of its citizens indefinitely. It urged the North to allow the immediate relatives of those who had been kidnapped to travel here.
North Korea then angrily accused Japan of breaking the agreement. Following the stalemated talks with Japan, North Korea has resumed calls to the United States to normalize relations, saying it will surrender its nuclear program if the United States will guarantee the North's security.
Even as it sends out feelers like these, however, North Korea's official news media continue to issue belligerent statements. This week, for example, the daily Rodong Sinmun lashed out at the United States and others that have said the North was seeking economic rewards for dropping its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
This means that if North Korea "puts down arms, it will receive sugar," the Workers' Party daily said in an editorial, adding, "This is an unbearable insult."
"It is the faith and will of the Korean people that they can survive without sugar but not without arms," it said, adding that the country "cannot sacrifice its army for a piece of gold."
--------
N.Korea May Reconsider Missile Test Moratorium
November 5, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-japan-korea-north-missile.html
TOKYO/PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - North Korea, increasingly isolated over its nuclear arms program, threatened Tuesday to reconsider a moratorium on test-firing missiles if talks on normalizing ties with Japan failed to make progress.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won a pledge from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to extend the moratorium, originally set to end in 2003, at a summit in September where Kim also apologized for abductions of Japanese citizens decades ago.
The concessions cleared the way for the resumption of talks to establish diplomatic ties. But initial negotiations in Kuala Lumpur last week left the two sides far apart on the key issues of Pyongyang's nuclear arms program and Tokyo's demand that the children of five Japanese abductees now visiting Japan be allowed to join them.
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agencyquoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the communist state's policymakers were ``of the view that the DPRK (North Korea) should reconsider the moratorium on the missile test-fire in case the talks on normalizing the relations between the DPRK and Japan get prolonged without making any progress as was the case with the recent talks.''
Koizumi said Tuesday that Japan was in no mood to give way in the talks but he expected Pyongyang to stick to the moratorium.
``I do not believe North Korea will trample on the fundamental spirit of our Pyongyang agreement,'' Koizumi told a news conference in Phnom Penh, where he met Southeast Asian leaders.
``We will speak firmly as we continue our negotiations.''
The outlook for the normalization talks was complicated when North Korea admitted last month it had pursued a nuclear arms program in violation of a 1994 agreement with Washington. Pyongyang says the United States first broke the pact.
North Korea shocked Japan and other neighbors in August 1998 when it test-fired a missile that flew over Japan's main island of Honshu. It later said it would not carry out further testing until 2003 at the earliest.
``CRIME-WOVEN PAST''
U.S., Japanese and South Korean leaders agreed at a three-way summit late last month to demand that North Korea halt the program and senior U.S. officials will be traveling to Seoul and Tokyo this week for more discussions.
Other Asian countries, including North Korean ally China, added their call for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula at a meeting of Association of South East Asian Nationsleaders in Phnom Penh Monday.
North Korea, eager to win financial aid for its struggling economy, had urged Japanese negotiators to take up the issue of such aid at the two-day talks in Kuala Lumpur last week.
But Tokyo insists that the nuclear arms and abductions issues take priority -- a stance Pyongyang blamed for the lack of progress at the talks.
``The key point in the implementation of the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration is for Japan to settle its crime-woven past,'' KCNA, monitored in Tokyo, quoted the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying in an apparent reference to Tokyo's harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
Koizumi apologized for Japan's actions during its colonial rule in his summit with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. But he rejected Pyongyang's demand for reparations and instead the two leaders agreed to discuss economic aid later.
Pyongyang also lashed out at Japan for breaking what it said was a promise to send the five surviving abductees back to North Korea as originally scheduled, by October 28.
``As far as the issue of the kidnapped Japanese is concerned, the Japanese side broke the first promise made to the DPRK, thus damaging the confidence, spoiling the hard-won atmosphere of cooperation and rendering the situation more complicated,'' the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
The issue of the abductees, snatched from their homeland in the 1970s and 1980s and taken to North Korea to train its spies, is an emotional one in Japan.
Japanese officials are pressing for more information on another eight abductees whom Pyongyang says died from accident, illness or suicide, but who many Japanese believe are either still alive or were the victims of foul play.
-------- us nuc waste
United States: Machine Failures Threaten Plutonium Shipment Schedule
NTI Global Security Newswire,
November 5, 2002
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_11_5.html#5
Equipment failures might delay shipments of U.S. plutonium from Rocky Flats, Colo., to South Carolina's Savannah River Site, Scripps Howard News Service reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 6).
Flaws in the semi-automated machine that loads plutonium into shipping containers have already caused some, according to the news service. The machine, which loads the plutonium into the containers and then seals them, shut down for three weeks in September, and one in five containers are still failing weld or safety tests, said David Hicks, a U.S. Energy Department plutonium removal manager.
"The machine is still temperamental ... but there's every reason to believe we will finish, probably in the summer," Hicks said.
Rocky Flats workers had planned to load and seal the expected 1,900 containers of plutonium by January 2003 - an average of 140 barrels per month, according to Scripps Howard. Over the 17 months that the machine has been in operation, however, only 1,050 containers have been completed - an average of 62 per month. Rocky Flats managers have said they need to complete the plutonium shipments by the end of next year to meet a 2006 deadline to close the site.
"If we complete packaging by summer, we will have no problem supporting the shipping campaign," Hicks said (Katy Human, Scripps Howard News Service, Nov. 4).
-------- us politics
THE U.N. U.S. Refines Resolution on Iraq as Hopes Rise
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/middleeast/05NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 4 - Bush administration officials worked today in Washington to put the finishing touches on a Security Council resolution for tough weapons inspections in Iraq, and major Council nations said they were optimistic that the measure would be adopted soon and with broad support.
In a radio interview in Mexico City this morning, the country's foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, said that after intensive negotiations this weekend, "the impression we have is that there already is an agreement, and it is a very good agreement for the world, for the United Nations and for Mexico."
President Bush called President Vicente Fox this morning to seek his support, administration officials said. Mr. Castañeda said he spoke by telephone over the weekend with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw; the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin; and the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov.
Based on those conversations, Mr. Castañeda said in an interview with Radio Red, he expected that the new draft would "reflect an important number of changes introduced by France, by Russia, by Mexico." He predicted that the Security Council would adopt it with 14 votes in favor and Syria abstaining.
American and British officials cautioned that Mr. Castañeda's comments seemed premature. In Washington, administration officials met today to consider suggestions they have received since last week from many Council nations, and from Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief United Nations weapons inspectors, officials there said.
In Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein softened his tone about the resolution, saying Iraq would "take it into consideration" as long as it "respects the United Nations Charter and international law."
British diplomats said late today that they expected to comment on the new language before the revised draft was distributed to other Council nations. Britain is co-sponsoring the resolution. French diplomats said they would not comment because they had not seen the most recent version, which they were told had not yet been approved by Mr. Bush.
But American and British diplomats said they hoped to present the revised draft by Wednesday.
"We are reaching the point of closure," Prime Minister Tony Blair said today.
The last issue left to resolve was the hardest one: the difference between the United States and Britain, on one side, and France and Russia on the other, over when military force against Iraq could be authorized. During seven weeks of negotiations, France and Russia coined a new term for their objections, saying they did not want "automaticity" for the United States to go to war. They insisted on a second vote in the Council to approve military action if Iraq failed to comply with the arms inspections.
China, the fifth permanent veto-bearing member of the Council, leaned toward France's view but stayed in the background.
Mr. Castañeda said the new draft would include a "carrot" proposed by Mexico, making it clear that Iraq could avoid war and further economic sanctions if it disarmed.
"The carrot is not quite as explicit as we had wanted," he said, "but it includes the notion of what happens if Iraq does comply." He said Mexico agreed that the measure should threaten "serious consequences" if Mr. Hussein blocked inspections.
Mexico was "leaving behind any impression of frictions with the United States," Mr. Castañeda said. Mexico is one of 10 nonpermanent members in the current Council, with no veto power. But for weeks, Mr. Fox resisted Mr. Bush's lobbying efforts, tipping his support toward France in order to press the United States to give a little.
The Russian ambassador here, Sergey Lavrov, said today that Russia broadly favored tougher inspections.
"We repeatedly said that on substance of a new, strengthened expanded inspections regime, we won't see any differences in the Council," Mr. Lavrov said. He said Russia suggested language changes to describe the inspections "professionally and in a nonaggressive way."
-------- MILITARY
Global Diamond Trade Accord Reached
November 5, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Switzerland-Conflict-Diamonds.html
INTERLAKEN, Switzerland (AP) -- Governments and the diamond industry reached a worldwide accord on Tuesday to stop trade in diamonds from conflict zones, but campaigners complained it lacks the muscle needed to stamp out a main source of funds for civil wars in Africa.
Starting Jan. 1, batches of exported rough diamonds must be accompanied by government certification that they do not come from territory held by rebels. No gems can be imported into another country without the certificate. A purchaser can demand a retailer prove the origin of diamonds on sale.
Anyone who breaks the rules, whether a private exporter or importer, would lose their trading license. Exporting countries that fail to respect the deal also would be barred from selling diamonds and could face international sanctions.
``This will bind everybody who is involved in the diamond chain,'' said South African Mineral and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. However, the certification applies only to rough diamonds, not cut gems.
The 52-nation agreement seals 2 1/2 years of discussions launched after disclosure that diamond production was financing deadly conflicts in nations like Angola and Sierra Leone.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. government welcomed the agreement. He said it creates a ``trading system that fulfills an international commitment to the innocent victims of conflicts that have been fueled by the proceeds of conflict diamonds.''
But campaigners said they were unhappy that monitoring had been left to the industry, under the watch of individual governments.
Ian Smillie of Partnership Africa Canada said campaigners favored an international body with its own customs agents to oversee the agreement, because ``a lot of governments have been implicated in the trade.''
A U.N. embargo on exports from Africa's war zones did not keep the diamonds off the market. Many dealers skirted detection by passing gems through other African countries. The Central African Republic, for example, exports three times more diamonds than it produces.
Conflict diamonds, also called blood diamonds, are estimated to make up only about 3 percent of the annual global production of rough diamonds, which totaled $7.8 billion last year. Most of the gems are beyond reproach, coming from Botswana, South Africa, Canada and Russia.
Rough diamonds from a particular region often have characteristics like color or size that would match the description on the certificate and allow experts to determine where they came from.
However, governments acknowledge diamond traders could still duck the restrictions.
``It is difficult to estimate to what extent a certification scheme will actually be able to contain the trade in blood diamonds,'' Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, which organized the Interlaken meeting, said in a statement.
But Eli Izhakoff, chairman of the New York-based World Diamond Council, an industry body, said ``fingers will be pointed at those governments'' that ignore the rules.
-------- afghanistan
AFGHANISTAN
Rights Group Says Governor in Afghan West Abuses Power
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/asia/05AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 4 - Human Rights Watch, in a new report, accuses one of Afghanistan's most powerful regional governors of creating a "virtual ministate" in western Afghanistan where "political intimidation, arrests, beatings and torture" are widespread.
The human rights group, in a report to be issued on Tuesday, also contends that the commander, Ismail Khan, who controls the western province of Herat, is reinstituting Taliban-era restrictions on dress for women and is banning Western movies and music.
The group also says the United States and the United Nations are not doing enough to rein in Mr. Khan, who is accused of personally ordering political arrests and beatings, and it accuses the United Nations of turning a blind eye to the violations in the hope of maintaining stability.
Mr. Khan, an ethnic Tajik who battled the Taliban, is also accused of overseeing the systematic harassment of ethnic Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and a large source of support for the Taliban.
"One of the underlying purposes of this report is to challenge this conventional wisdom outside of Afghanistan that the situation is solved, that it's been liberated," John Sifton, co-author of the report, said in a telephone interview from New York.
"The truth that most people who have been outside of Kabul know is that the security situation in most of Afghanistan is deplorable," he said. "Herat is just the worst example of it."
Mr. Khan could not be reached for comment today. In the past, he has denied abusing his authority.
Fighting between the forces of Mr. Khan and a Pashtun commander based south of Herat, Amanullah Khan, has flared in recent weeks. On Sunday, aides to the Pashtun commander accused Ismail Khan's forces of firing a rocket into a market and killing two civilians. The account could not be confirmed.
The report accuses Mr. Khan of violently suppressing all dissent to his rule in the Herat area. Challengers to his rule, it said, are subject to beating and torture.
"Herat has remained much as it was under the Taliban," the report says. "A closed society in which there is no dissent, no criticism of the government, no independent newspapers, no freedom to hold open meetings, and no respect for the rule of law."
While recognizing that Mr. Khan has greatly increased access to education for women, it accuses him of placing severe social restrictions on men and women reminiscent of the Taliban.
The report says the government instructs men and women to wear non-Western, Islamic clothes. Men are instructed not to shake hands with women. People caught committing what are considered vice crimes, like drinking alcohol, can be publicly denounced on television, or their heads can be shaved as punishment.
The report calls on the United States, which has Special Forces soldiers stationed in the area, to pressure Mr. Khan to reform and to support aggressively an expansion of an international peacekeeping force now limited to Kabul.
"From the U.N. we want to see increased human rights monitoring," Mr. Sifton said. "And we want to see the U.S. stop supporting the warlords and robustly pursue a new security strategy."
-------- africa
U.S. Plans Africa Anti - Terror Force
November 5, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-War.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is setting up a special military command on the Horn of Africa to track down al-Qaida terrorists trying to slip into countries like Yemen and Somalia to plan more attacks on U.S. interests.
Yemen is of particular interest, although the U.S. counterterrorism strategy there goes beyond use of the U.S. military. Officials said a U.S. aircraft -- perhaps under control of the CIA -- fired a Hellfire missile at a car in northern Yemen on Sunday, killing at least six terrorists, including al-Qaida's top man in Yemen, Qaed Salim Sunian al-Harethi.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, while not saying who conducted the attack, said he understood al-Harethi was among those killed. He said al-Harethi was involved in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the Navy warship bombed while in the port of Aden, killing 17 sailors.
``It would be a very good thing if he were out of business,'' Rumsfeld told reporters.
To coordinate U.S. military operations against terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere in the vicinity, the Pentagon is establishing a Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, to be based in the tiny country of Djibouti, between Somalia and Ethiopia.
A headquarters element of the 2nd Marine Division, numbering about 400 troops, will head the command, officials said. It initially will operate from a Navy ship in the Red Sea, probably the command ship USS Mount Whitney, for the 60 to 90 days it likely will take to build a command post ashore.
There already are about 800 Army Special Forces soldiers in Djibouti. More Marines could be added later, officials said. They described the arrangement as a significant step forward in the global war on terrorism, likening the task force to a similar command running operations in Afghanistan.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the plan at a Pentagon news conference.
``The Horn of Africa turns out to be a fairly busy place in terms of the flow of people and other instruments of war -- weapons, explosives, perhaps weapons of mass destruction,'' he said.
Myers described the Horn of Africa -- which includes Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, as well as Yemen across the Gulf of Aden -- as a region in which ``terrorists can gather and either do operational planning or training. ... We're very interested in the area for that reason and have positioned forces there to take appropriate action.''
The task force is nearly ready to begin operating, Myers said.
Djibouti, a sleepy Muslim nation that lives off port fees, base rentals and foreign aid, has worked closely with the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and has welcomed U.S. and other foreign troops that have trained in Djibouti. For a period during the Cold War, the U.S. Army used a Djibouti base as a listening post to collect intelligence.
U.S. Special Forces soldiers conducted counterterrorism training with Yemeni forces earlier this year, and Rumsfeld said in a joint appearance with Myers on Monday that a small number of U.S. military personnel are still there.
``We have some folks in that country that have been working with the government and helping them think through ways of doing things,'' Rumsfeld said. ``It's been a good cooperation, and we've shared some information and we think that over time it ought to be beneficial because there is no question but that there are al-Qaida in Yemen.''
Rumsfeld said terrorists have ``taken advantage'' of sea routes in and out of Yemen as well as its porous borders.
On the Net:
Defense Department at http://www.defenselink.mil
2nd Marine Division at http://www.lejeune.usmc.mil/2dmardiv/
-------- biological weapons
Smallpox I: United States Fingers Four Countries With Covert Stockpiles
NTI Global Security Newswire,
November 5, 2002
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_11_5.html#6
U.S. intelligence officials believe that Russia, France, North Korea and Iraq maintain undisclosed stocks of smallpox virus, the Washington Post reported today.
Intelligence officials also have said that documents captured in the war on terrorism indicate that al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden has pursued smallpox and other biological weapons. While U.S. intelligence has reportedly identified a "top five" list of agents that al-Qaeda has been seeking - including anthrax, ricin and botulinum toxin - an official said there is "no reason" to believe that bin Laden actually has acquired smallpox.
The CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center revealed the smallpox assessments in briefings circulated among senior U.S. officials responsible for preventive measures. According to reports circulated last spring, the CIA's confidence level varies for the assessment for each country - Russia is the most certain to possess covert stocks - but one U.S. official said that the reports included only those countries for which "we have good evidence."
Russia maintains one of the world's two legal and acknowledged smallpox sites in Siberia, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps the other legal stock in Atlanta (see GSN, Oct. 25).
The probability that Iraq and France maintain stockpiles of smallpox is "high," officials said. France's stockpile is believed to be for defensive purposes, according to the Post.
There is a "medium" chance that North Korea has smallpox, according to the officials.
"The assessment is, they have it," a U.S. official said of his own intelligence agency's opinion of North Korea. "We don't say 70 percent certainty. We assess that they have it."
Others said, however, that in secretive countries it is difficult to know for sure.
"I have concluded on a very personal basis that there is a small chance that we will have definitive evidence, smoking gun evidence, for countries like North Korea, very closed societies," an official said.
Some White House officials said that the recently revealed assessments alter the debate on whether, and how extensively, to inoculate the U.S. population. An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recommended immunizing 500,000 first responders across the country (see GSN, Oct. 17).
"They give the scientific assessment of the what the risks of vaccination are," a Bush administration official said of the CDC panel. "They do not have the same amount of information" about the risk of a bioterrorist attack, the official said.
Reports of Iraq's smallpox capability have alarmed its neighbors, according to the Post. Kuwait's U.S. ambassador Salem Abdullah Jaber Sabah said his country had requested smallpox vaccine last summer "in readiness for any eventuality."
In light of the needs of the domestic population and political repercussions, the vaccine would probably not be provided to Iraq's neighbors, according to U.S. officials. Officials said that U.S. President George W. Bush could only promise assistance if an outbreak were to occur (Barton Gellman, Washington Post, Nov. 5).
----
4 Nations Thought To Possess Smallpox
Iraq, N. Korea Named, Two Officials Say
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 5, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5113-2002Nov4?language=printer
A Bush administration intelligence review has concluded that four nations -- including Iraq and North Korea -- possess covert stocks of the smallpox pathogen, according to two officials who received classified briefings. Records and operations manuals captured this year in Afghanistan and elsewhere, they said, also disclosed that Osama bin Laden devoted money and personnel to pursue smallpox, among other biological weapons.
These assessments, though unrelated, have helped drive the U.S. government to the brink of a mass vaccination campaign that would be among the costliest steps, financially and politically, in a year-long effort to safeguard the U.S. homeland. Public health authorities in and out of government project that the vaccine itself, widely administered, could kill more Americans -- 300 is a common estimate, and some are higher -- than any terrorist attack save that of Sept. 11, 2001. It has been left to President Bush to resolve a deadlock among his advisers. Vice President Cheney is said by participants in the debate to be pressing for rapid, universal inoculation, while Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson prefers a voluntary program that would wait at least two years for an improved vaccine.
In public, the White House has described its smallpox concerns in only hypothetical terms, and until now the gravity of its assessment has not been known. Bush administration officials did not share their evidence with a panel of outside scientists established to advise them on smallpox. Some officials said the reticence results from unwillingness to compromise intelligence sources. Others cited fear of provoking public demands for action the government is not yet prepared to take.
Washington's anxiety about smallpox, and limited intelligence-sharing with friendly governments, have prompted urgent requests from allies in the Middle East -- including Jordan and Kuwait -- for assistance in obtaining vaccine before the outbreak of war with Iraq. The National Security Council's Deputies Committee, a panel of officials just below Cabinet rank, met last Tuesday to weigh the allies' requests.
Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt. The last case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980. All but two countries reported by Dec. 9, 1983, that they no longer possessed the virus, but the World Health Organization had no means to verify those reports. Seed cultures are now held officially in only two heavily guarded laboratories, one in Atlanta and the other in Koltsovo, Siberia. The United States renounced germ warfare in 1969 and has undertaken no known offensive program since.
An authoritative official said there is "no reason" to believe bin Laden succeeded in obtaining the smallpox pathogen. Bin Laden's efforts are significant chiefly because U.S. policymakers believe he would use it.
"Al Qaeda is interested in acquiring biological weapons, to include smallpox," according to a classified intelligence summary prepared for senior officials debating options on the scope of a preventive vaccination campaign. Officials who read the homeland security briefing said bin Laden's organization spent money on the effort, but gave higher priority to other biological and chemical agents. The "top five list" for al Qaeda, one official said, included anthrax, the nerve agent ricin, and botulinum toxin.
The U.S. government has known since the early 1990s about Soviet-era smallpox weapons, and collected circumstantial evidence of programs elsewhere. But substantial new reporting has circulated in recent months. "This is not an issue where once every two years we put out an intelligence estimate," one official said. "There's an ongoing requirement to assess the threat. I see reports on this every other week."
The CIA now assesses that four nations -- Iraq, North Korea, Russia and, to the surprise of some specialists, France -- have undeclared samples of the smallpox virus.
The agency's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) described a sliding scale of confidence in those assessments in a briefing prepared last spring. The briefing circulated among senior homeland security, public health and national security officials. Though the quality of its information varied from "very high" to "medium," one official said the report covered only nations for which "we have good evidence."
WINPAC placed Russia in the top category, saying that contrary to diplomatic assurances, Russia retains covert stocks of the virus. The Soviet Union produced smallpox by the ton -- a laborious endeavor, since the standard method is to grow cultures in the lining of chicken eggs. Ken Alibek, who was second in command of "black biology" at Biopreparat before he defected in 1992, said in an interview that he supervised production of the virus in liquid form, suitable for delivery on intercontinental missiles. U.S. officials said they generally accept his account.
Iraq and France are assessed to have smallpox with high, but not very high, confidence.
U.S. officials said the French program is believed to be defensive in nature, and some of them expressed consternation that its inclusion in the WINPAC report was disclosed to a reporter. It could not be learned whether the Bush administration has objected to, or sought information about, the French program. France is one of five members of the U.N. Security Council with a veto, and it is the linchpin of U.S. diplomatic efforts to establish a legal basis for war with Iraq.
Jacques Drucker, who stepped down recently as director of France's National Public Health Surveillance Center, said his country favors research with live smallpox that is forbidden under present conventions. France recently opened one of the world's only Biological Containment Level 4 facilities. Drucker said the Jean Merieux Laboratory in Lyon works with viruses that "could be used for bioterrorist purposes," and mentioned hemorrhagic fevers such as ebola, Marburg and lassa. The lab is "equipped for smallpox," he said, but "I would suspect that if there was variola virus left in France it would be on the military laboratory research facilities."
Some of the evidence on Iraq emerged from unpublished discoveries of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which searched for prohibited weapons after the Persian Gulf War. In 1995, David Kelly, a British inspector, led a team to the maintenance shop of the State Establishment for Medical Appliances on the edge of Baghdad. There he found a freeze drier labeled "smallpox." Two years later, on Oct. 7, 1997, inspector Diane Seaman seized a document on the grounds of the Al Rasheed Military Hospital describing vaccines currently in use for Iraqi troops. Third on the list was smallpox. Confronted with other evidence on pox research, Iraq's chief bioweaponeer, Hazem Ali, told UNSCOM inspectors that he had considered camelpox as a weapon because Iraqis, unlike Americans, spent enough time near camels to be immune.
Richard Spertzel, UNSCOM's chief biological inspector, said that explanation was laughable. "Only one person ever died of camelpox," Spertzel said in an interview. Ali was "much too good a scientist to believe the story."
On Jan. 14, 1991, the Defense Intelligence Agency said an Iraqi agent described, in medically accurate terms, military smallpox casualties he said he saw in 1985 or 1986. Two weeks later, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed current immunity to smallpox, which had not occurred naturally in Iraq for 20 years. The same prisoners had been inoculated for anthrax, a well-established Iraqi bioweapon.
More recently, according to the WINPAC report, a former Soviet scientist told U.S. officials that his country "transferred [smallpox] technology in the early 1990s to Iraq." Northern Iraq suffered one of the last known smallpox epidemics in 1971-72. The WINPAC report assessed that Iraq "retained samples from the 1971 outbreak."
The last country on WINPAC's list is North Korea, which the authors wrote "has a longstanding and active biological weapons program." Though assessing that Pyongyang has the smallpox pathogen, WINPAC said its evidence was of "medium" quality.
On March 5, 1993, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that "North Korea is performing applied military-biological research" with "pathogens for malignant anthrax, cholera, bubonic plague and smallpox." Gordon Oehler, then head of WINPAC, told Congress that the Russian report was "not a bad summary." Much more recently, sources said, the United States has obtained reports of ongoing pox research and manufacture of vaccine.
"I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the biological weapons threat," one policymaker said in an interview, "and I have concluded on a very personal basis that there is a small chance that we will have definitive evidence, smoking gun evidence, for countries like North Korea, very closed societies."
Confidence about the smallpox evidence varies somewhat among the 14 U.S. intelligence agencies and departments.
"The assessment is, they have it," said one official, speaking as he held his own office's written summaries of evidence on North Korea and Iraq. "We don't say 70 percent certainty. We assess that they have it."
Officials who agreed that the evidence is not decisive said few differences exist in the ultimate judgment of national security and homeland defense officials. One person who has access to the compartmented intelligence on smallpox offered to "bet my next year's salary" that the four countries named in WINPAC's report have live seed cultures.
Bush administration officials with central roles in smallpox policy said the government-commissioned Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was unequipped for its ostensible role of balancing the risks of vaccination against the risks of a smallpox attack. The committee recommended against a broad vaccination campaign, but many members said they would change their views if they knew a rogue nation possessed the virus.
"They give the scientific assessment of what the risks of vaccination are," a senior administration official said. "They do not have the same amount of information that is circulated around this issue here."
Those who disclosed the intelligence assessments described above, speaking on condition of anonymity, were not authorized by the White House to do so. Those assigned to speak for the administration's views, who also declined to be identified, would not discuss intelligence reports. They hewed to their public position, as one of them put it, that "there is a concern with regard to North Korea and Iraq that they may have smallpox."
U.S. allies' smallpox fears come in part from U.S. reports and -- especially in Jordan -- from independent intelligence on the Iraqi threat. In an interview, Kuwaiti ambassador Salem Abdullah Jaber Sabah acknowledged that his government asked for vaccine last summer "in readiness for any eventuality."
Two U.S. officials called the requests unlikely to be granted. The scarcity of vaccine, and likely repercussions in domestic and coalition politics, permit Bush to do no more, they said, than offer assurances of help if Iraq's neighbors suffer an outbreak.
Cheney, who confronted biological threats as defense secretary years ago, was energized about smallpox by a videotape and briefing shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. In a war game called Dark Winter, former senator Sam Nunn played a president who failed to contain a fictional smallpox outbreak that began in Oklahoma City. It spread in less than two weeks to 25 states and 15 countries overseas, inflicting "massive civilian casualties."
"It's a dramatic briefing," Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, recalled, "but we were well on this road already." Libby said Cheney favors "a forward-leaning position on protecting Americans from this threat," but declined to describe his advice to the president.
At Health and Human Services, officials said, Thompson has been influenced by doubts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"If you look at the vice president's office, they're thinking strategic, not public health," said one debate participant. He cited the swine flu debacle of 1976, when President Gerald Ford had to abandon plans for universal inoculation after people starting dying of the vaccine and others developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare and occasionally fatal paralysis. "If something bad happens, the public is not going to be blaming Dick Cheney, they're going to be blaming Tommy Thompson. And the fact is they're going to be blaming the president. That's why the political people are weighing in, and that's why the decision is still sitting on his desk."
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- britain
Britain sends warships to the Persian Gulf
11/5/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021105-114229-7553r
SUEZ, Egypt, Nov. 5 -- Five British warships passed through the Suez Canal Tuesday on their way to the Persian Gulf in an apparent move to reinforce British and U.S. forces in the region.
Sources at the strategic waterway that links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea said the vessels were four minesweepers and a supply ship. The vessels entered the Red Sea early Tuesday.
Observers saw the ship deployment as part of a build up of forces in preparation for a possible U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq to topple its leader, Saddam Hussein.
The United States and Britain have notified Egyptian officials that they will be sending more navy vessels through the 100-mile-long canal. Egyptian authorities have requested that foreign warships traverse the canal after midnight for security reasons.
-------- business
Rumsfeld comfortable with carriers proposal
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 5, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021105-80847103.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he "feels very good" about a Navy proposal that, according to defense sources, calls for building a new generation of big-deck aircraft carriers starting in 2007.
The Washington Times reported last week that the Navy has won the internal budget debate to build the futurist CVNX aircraft carrier. It is proposing to skip the first model and proceed to the CVNX-2.
The plan would fit in better with President Bush's desire to transform the military. The "2" model would come with a new nuclear power plant, smaller superstructure, advanced flight deck and high-tech systems for launching and recovering aircraft.
Mr. Rumsfeld met Friday morning in his office with Navy Secretary Gordon England and Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, to hear the plan.
"I feel very good about the proposals that the Navy has put forward," he told reporters yesterday, "and they're then going to have to go back and do some additional analytical work and punch some numbers and come back."
Mr. Rumsfeld's civilian staff, led by Stephen Cambone, a close aide, are forming the next defense budget. It is expected to provide Mr. Bush with his first opportunity to make decisions on major weapons systems in his transformation plan.
One major issue was whether the Navy would continue building large-deck carriers or switch to smaller, faster ships. The Navy has won the argument to build the CVNX, defense sources said, and now the question is whether to begin in 2007, or, as some civilian analysts have recommended, in 2009.
Both Navy and civilian officials agree that the best way to achieve transformation is to skip CVNX-1 and move to the more advanced CVNX-2.
"On the carrier," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I suspect that when all the dust settles, what you'll find is you will find the maximum amount of new technology and transformational capabilities. What you'll find is that we will have gone right there and found the exact balance between moving things forward and not going so far that you inject risk elements that very likely couldn't be achieved and would put in jeopardy the time schedule."
A Pentagon official said yesterday that he views Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks as confirmation that CVNX-2 will be built on the Navy's proposed schedule.
It will cost the Navy $10 billion to develop and build the first CVNX. Moving directly to the CVNX-2 is expected to add $1 billion in cost. The CVNX would replace the Nimitz-class carrier built at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Newport News, Va., shipyard.
-------- chemical weapons
THE DOCTOR'S WORLD
Moscow Toll Revives Concerns Over Chemical Attacks
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/health/policy/05DOCS.html
Russia's decision to blow an aerosolized form of a powerful narcotic through the ventilation system of a theater to end a hostage crisis in Moscow late last month raised anew an inevitable and terrifying question: what if a terrorist unleashed a potentially lethal chemical in this country?
Particularly since Sept. 11, many public health officials have worried about possible bioterrorist attacks with chemicals, smallpox or other microbes. Now, the use of the narcotic fentanyl has refocused attention on those concerns, particularly in light of Russian doctors' criticism that their government did not organize enough rescue workers to give victims an antidote, naloxone.
Time is critical in seeking the identity of any chemical used as a weapon because the body can wash it out or break it down into other compounds in minutes, leaving health officials unsure what the substance is or how to treat its effects.
Timing of treatment is also crucial because many chemicals start producing damage immediately and delayed treatment can permanently damage the brain and other organs. Antidotes exist for many chemical agents, but not for many others. In such cases, all doctors might be able to offer is fresh air and supportive care.
Dr. Lewis R. Goldfrank, who directs emergency medicine at Bellevue Medical Center and at New York City's Poison Control Center, voiced confidence in the ability of American health care to respond successfully to a chemical attack.
"We'd have no difficulty recognizing" the chemical and providing the appropriate care, Dr. Goldfrank said. But the Moscow disaster and a theoretical attack on this country differ in crucial ways.
Russian officials knew what agent they used, although they did not publicly identify fentanyl until four days after the attack. Fentanyl is a short-acting painkiller that is 100 times as powerful as morphine and accounts for about half of the use of anesthestics in the United States, said Dr. James E. Cottrell, who is chairman of anesthesiology at the State University of New York Downstate in Brooklyn and president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists.
But in the first hours of a chemical attack, authorities may not know the agent's identity. Because chemicals often bring on classic symptoms, doctors may guess the type of agent by observing the victims and their physical reactions and use that information to begin therapy.
If the agent is a narcotic like fentanyl or heroin, victims will probably be calm, their pupils pinpoint size, their breathing and heart rates slow and their blood pressures low. Other types of drugs could produce opposite symptoms. If it is scopolamine, an anti-motion sickness drug that robbers have used to incapacitate victims, people may be delirious.
A toxin that causes botulism will lead to double vision, difficulty speaking, weakness and other neurological problems.
Emergency responses to chemical attacks are based in part on what doctors learned in World War I and more recently from heroin overdoses, which can be treated with naloxone.
After Sept. 11, public health officials were given increased government money to buy equipment and train workers for a possible chemical attack.
Standard procedure at the scene of an attack calls for evacuating victims, getting people to fresh air, putting masks around victims' faces to help provide respiratory support for those needing it, placing breathing tubes in windpipes and determining victims' conditions to decide who is sent to a hospital first.
All emergency medical service ambulances in New York City and most large American cities carry naloxone, Dr. Goldfrank said. In many cities standard protocol calls for immediately injecting sugar water (in case of an insulin coma) and naloxone into someone who is unconscious and a suspected poisoning victim.
Ideally, workers would decontaminate victims at the scene by removing their clothes and giving them showers. At a hospital, patients could receive showers outside. Bellevue soon expects to complete a new $500,000 decontamination unit, where large numbers of victims can be washed down by huge amounts of water. Many other hospitals are equipped with tents and portable units for such emergencies.
While treatment progresses, toxicologists will use laboratory tests to try to quickly identify the chemical used in the attack. All major cities have equipment to identify or rule out certain classes of chemicals. Many hazardous materials teams carry mass spectrometers and other analytical tools that can screen a large number of chemicals and provide specific identification of an agent, said Jerome M. Hauer, who directs the Office of Public Health Preparedness in the Department of Health and Human Services.
But toxicologists must guard against misreading the information and falsely identifying a particular chemical unrelated to the attack. Another worry is that if terrorists develop and use a novel agent, American scientists may not have a good standard to detect it, Mr. Hauer said.
-------- china
Three Held in HK for Alleged Al Qaeda Missile Deal
November 5, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-hongkong-usa.html
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Three men have been arrested in Hong Kong over an alleged attempt to buy four Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for al Qaeda from undercover U.S. FBI agents, the Hong Kong government said on Tuesday.
It was the first time that Hong Kong authorities had reported any al Qaeda-linked activities in the Chinese territory. The case is certain to revive worries of Hong Kong being used as a trans-shipment center for the clandestine transfer of arms and as a transit point for illegal immigrants.
``Based on remarks made to the FBI agents, it is believed that the defendants intended to deliver the Stinger missile systems to a designated foreign terrorist organization, namely the al Qaeda,'' the Hong Kong government said in a statement.
The Stinger is a small shoulder-launched missile designed for attacking aircraft at low altitude, possibly during take-off or landing.
The three detainees, two Pakistanis and a U.S. citizen of Indian origin, appeared in a Hong Kong court on Tuesday to fight an extradition request from the United States.
They had been arrested on September 20 for trying to sell 600 kg of heroin and five tons of hashish to fund the purchase of the missiles, the statement said.
The court remanded them in custody until November 15 pending further information from Washington, the government said.
``All three refused to consent to surrender,'' it said.
Hong Kong, a former British colony which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, has an extradition agreement with the United States, although Beijing does not.
A Hong Kong-based security expert cautioned against reading too much into the arrests being made in Hong Kong.
``We have to be careful not to read too much into the location of the arrests because Stinger missiles are not Chinese weapons, they are American weapons and neither are drugs manufactured in Hong Kong,'' said Stephen Vickers, president and chief executive officer of International Risk Ltd, a risk assessment consultancy.
STING
``In such sting operations, places like Hong Kong and Singapore can sometimes be used to effect arrest if necessary because they have credible law enforcement and judiciary systems, unlike other places where systems are not as solid.''
``The dynamics of where the arrest was made may have been dictated by the FBI. Therefore Hong Kong may not necessarily be the relevant factor in the case,'' Vickers said.
Hong Kong has of late gone all out to close possible loopholes to guard against being used by terrorists as a money-laundering center.
It recently enacted an anti-terrorism law compelling banks and financial institutions to report suspicious transactions and accounts as a part of the global fight to cut funding to the extremist militant network.
A U.S. court issued a warrant for the arrest of the three -- Syed Mustajab Shah, Muhammed Abid Afridi and Ilyas Ali -- on September 17, the statement said.
Washington blames al Qaeda, the radical Muslim group led by fugitive Osama bin Laden, for the hijacked airliner attacks on Nw York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, that killed 3,000 people.
On Friday, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller said he believed that the al Qaeda network had been disrupted but remained capable of carrying out coordinated multiple mass casualty attacks.
Mueller said the al Qaeda network had the potential to carry out attacks both overseas and in the United States.
Last month, a bombing in the Indonesian resort of Bali killed nearly 200 people. Some foreign governments believe that the Southeast Asian Islamist group Jemaah Islamiah, which has been linked to the al Qaeda network, was involved in the attack.
-------- iraq
Report From Basra: Iraq Prepares For War
By Jeremy Scahill,
IraqJournal.org
November 5, 2002
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14475
BASRA-Iraq's southern oil-belt is preparing for what many here see as an inevitable massive attack by Washington. Small military bunkers, equipped with sandbags, barbed wire fences and machine guns line the long stretch of highway heading north out of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Army soldiers stand guard on large concrete walls, stretching around military garrisons.
For hundreds of years, Basra was called the Venice of the East. Sinbad the Sailor's adventures were launched from its shores. The city is connected by a web of footbridges and canals that empty into the Shatt Al Arab, a focal point of the Arab sea trade for more than 1300 years. It endured both Ottoman and British occupation and, more recently, 20 years of war.
From morning until night, the waterfront is crowded with the hustle and bustle befitting the country's main port. Fishermen and ships line the boardwalk that houses 101 towering, individual bronze statues, each representing an Iraqi Army soldier killed during the Iran-Iraq war. Each of the figures is unique and contains intricate details on the faces of each of the men. They stretch down the boardwalk for a mile, all of them with their arms raised, fingers pointing accusingly toward the Iranian border, some 6 miles to the east. Over the last few months, amid threats from Washington, the soldiers have been given a new coat of black paint.
Young boys sit at the bases of the statues, selling cigarettes and imitation Pepsi and 7-up. Old men play dominoes on cardboard boxes, as ships move along the canal. But the statues serve as a haunting reminder that Basra has long ceased to be thought of as anyone's Venice. The city's strategic location at the mouth of the Shatt Al-Arab, one of the most ancient and busiest trade routes of the Middle East, has doomed the city.
Basra has been one of the most fought-over areas in the world. It's a stone's throw from both Iran and Kuwait and suffered tremendously during both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. Many buildings along the boardwalk remain riddled with bullet-holes. Though war has not been declared on Iraq, Washington's warplanes regularly bomb in and around the city under the guise of so-called no-fly zones. Officially, the Bush administration says the planes are there to protect the Shi'ite Muslims from the forces of the central government. But no one in Basra says the missiles make them feel safer. These zones have no basis in international law and were never authorized by any body of the United Nations. Baghdad says that more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in these attacks.
Throughout Basra, people are paying very close attention to what is happening at the UN Security Council in New York. Many a street corner houses a gathering of older men huddled around transistor radios. In addition to the state radio broadcasts, they also get BBC, Radio Monte Carlo and other Arabic language foreign broadcasts. This is certainly true throughout Iraq as well, but in Basra people know that they are likely to be living in a major frontline of any "new" war. This, coupled with the regular sound of air-raid sirens and bombings, has caused many residents to have nervous breakdowns. Several people we spoke with, particularly women, reported having severe emotional and psychological problems sparked by the sound of American and British jets. While people are generally well informed on the current developments and haggling at the UN, no one rules out a surprise attack from Washington.
Throughout Iraq, Disaster Preparedness Teams are training to respond to a US attack. An Iraqi who is working on these teams in the south told Iraqjournal.org that weekly meetings are being held and "pick-up" routes are being plotted to gather members of the disaster teams in various areas in the event of bombings. "Disseminators" from the teams are holding workshops in factories, schools and union halls to educate people on such things as how to cope with a total absence of clean drinking water in the event that water treatment plants are targeted as they were in 1991. Separate from this, several people said that courses are also being conducted in "civil-defense" to prepare for the possibility of a ground invasion.
Indeed, in several rural locations outside of Basra, we saw what appeared to be armed civilian militias. Men riding on trucks or gathered on roadsides, dressed in traditional Iraqi garments carrying automatic weapons. Already, most Iraqi households have guns--and not just pistols. Several non-military people have boasted to us that they have M-16s or other machine guns in their homes.
This would seem to contradict the Bush administration's assertion that the Iraqi government sees its own population as a great threat. The weapons are certainly in circulation for an uprising. But if the government viewed this as a danger to its stability, it could easily ban the possession of guns by private citizens. What is clear is that the government knows well that regardless of what people think of Saddam Hussein, they intend to fight a foreign occupier.
What is also significant is that these armed militias are in the south of Iraq, one of the areas touted by the Bush administration as a potential hotbed of anti-government activity in the event of a US attack. In 1991, after the Gulf War, Shi'ite guerrillas in the south heeded "Big Bush's" call for the Iraqis to take matters into their own hands. For days, a bloody rebellion ensued, resulting in the execution and torture of members of the Ba'ath Party and other people considered to be "collaborators." Despite numerous appeals for assistance from the Bush administration, Norman Schwartzkopft's forces stood idly by as Baghdad's forces mercilessly crushed the rebellion. In fact, at the time, Washington even lifted its ban on over-flights, allowing Iraqi attack helicopters to suppress the rebellion.
This history is well remembered in the south. Add to that the bloody toll the "no-fly zone" attacks and sanctions have taken on the predominantly Shi'ite population and one can see Bush's dreams of a Northern Alliance type force floating slowly down the banks of the Shatt Al-Arab.
Another factor that cannot be ignored when gauging potential support for the US in the south is the unimaginable suffering caused here by the sanctions. Basra and its surrounding area were the epicenter of Washington's use of depleted uranium munitions and the hospitals are like virtual morgues for children with leukemia and other treatable diseases. In the words of one doctor in Basra, rampant congenital deformities (birth defects) have parents "no longer asking the sex of their children, but whether or not they will have a healthy child or a child with a malformation."
While Basra is a poor devastated area, the people are proud and dignified. Even in the poorest slums, people speak of defending their homes against American invaders. In some cases, these are rat-infested hovels with no plumbing, running water or electricity. People are scared and anxious. The military and militias are being prepared and once again families brace for their children to be caught in the middle, as they have been in Basra so many times through the centuries. Sadly, one man told us that he doesn't need to talk to his children about what may lie ahead, saying, "War is like daily bread to them."
Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist, who reports for the nationally syndicated Radio and TV show Democracy Now! He is currently based in Baghdad, Iraq, where he and filmmaker Jacquie Soohen are coordinating Iraqjournal.org, the only Web site providing regular independent reporting from the ground in Baghdad.
----
Questions about weapons inspections
By SEAN GONSALVES SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Tuesday, November 5, 2002
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/94169_sean05.shtml
"Unfettered access" and "material breach." On the surface, it all seems so clear and straightforward. If Iraq does not give weapons inspectors "unfettered access," they will yet again be in "material breach" of the United Nations' weapons of mass destruction disarmament mandate.
But what does the actual inspections record tell us? We pick up the story in September 1997. UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler had been on the job for only a month, having replaced Rolf Ekeus who served in that post from 1991 until 1997.
Because it had become evident that Iraq was still concealing its mostly defanged weapons of mass destruction program, UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter was given a new angle: Assume Saddam Hussein could not be trusted and find out, by clandestine scientific means, what he was hiding.
Hence, the formation of the Capable Site Concealment Investigations team -- an entity designed to stimulate concealment activities.
Hidden in the back of CISI vehicles were "covert communication interceptors" -- a network of 10 radio receivers, each specifically tuned to a unique frequency. The receivers were linked to digital tape recorders hidden in the inspectors' personal backpacks, making them walking microphones.
The idea was to initiate confrontations at presidential security organizations to get senior Iraqi officials yakking on their radios. That way, secret and sensitive information could be gathered by UNSCOM.
Oct. 1, 1997: UNSCOM 207 -- a surprise inspection of a secret biological unit inside Iraq's Special Security Organization headquarters in Baghdad. But with guns pointed at them, the inspectors were denied access to the SSO's Al-Hyatt building.
Iraq cried foul, aware that UNSCOM was being manipulated by U.S. intelligence sources and that the inspection protocol was being violated, according to a Security Council-approved agreement set up by Ekeus in 1997.
The agreement declared certain sites off limits -- presidential palaces, for example. (Imagine the United States granting "unfettered access" to all of its weapons facilities but denying access to CIA headquarters, Camp David or the president's private residence.)
Dismissing concerns about sovereignty, which the U.N. Charter promises not to violate except when approving self-defensive military action, CISI was being pushed by U.S. planners to go on wild goose chases.
"A lot of information we were given was provided to us by the Americans," explains former UNSCOM inspector Roger Hill. "It was either out of date, incorrect or it was completely false and designed to take us down the wrong path."
It soon became evident to the inspectors that U.S. officials didn't want the inspections to end. They wanted "containment." As long as the inspections were unfinished, the United States could keep Iraq under its control with "Saddam in his box."
Saddam was playing games and the Clinton administration was too. CISI team leader Chris Cobb-Smith became convinced the inspections had become politicized by a U.S. effort to purposely provoke confrontations of "access."
Ritter was instructed to come up with a plan that he later presented to senior staff in the White House situation room. Ritter's plan was approved with one addition: "inspect" Iraq's Defense Ministry.
During the meeting, Butler drew a timeline. According to Ritter, Butler instructed him to provoke a confrontation by early December 1998 because the United States planned to launch a military strike in mid-December.
As planned, Iraq denied access. But U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan persuaded Iraq to relent. The Defense Ministry was inspected. Nothing was found. Then, confirming inspectors' suspicions, Butler shut down CISI and "decided" that its function would be turned over to U.S. intelligence officials, which effectively gave the United States cover to move the disarmament goal posts by simply asserting it had weapons "intelligence" about some site.
Ritter resigned in frustration. Hill replaced him and carried out UNSCOM 258 in violation of the agreement. As Butler was meeting with the Security Council to discuss the matter, Clinton gave the green light for Operation Desert Fox.
What assurances are being taken this time to protect the integrity of the internationally supported inspections and what's to stop U.S. hawks from arbitrarily moving the disarmament goal posts indefinitely as a pretext for unilateral action?
None of these questions are being debated in public. That should make anyone concerned about peace and honesty quite nervous.
Indeed, "the time for denying, deceiving and delaying (ought to) come to an end." And that goes for U.S. hawks, too. Saddam has been cast as the demon but, as the cliché has it, the devil is in the details.
Sean Gonsalves is a columnist with the Cape Cod Times. E-mail: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com
-------- israel / palestine
Israel seeking formal upgrade in relations with U.S.
By Nathan Guttman,
Ha'aretz,
November 5, 2002
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pa
WASHINGTON - Israel is currently brushing up a request to upgrade its relations with the United States and to attain full official status as an ally of the Americans.
Officials at the Foreign Ministry and at Israel's embassy in the U.S. have started work on this request for a diplomatic upgrade. The Israelis plan to submit the request formally after the two sides come to an understanding about its contents.
Senior Israeli officials report that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has authorized preparation of this upgrade request, even though Israel has yet to decide how and when the request is to be delivered to the U.S. government.
Today Israel's relations with the U.S. are officially defined as those of a "non-NATO ally." This ranking is lower than that of a NATO member; and the inferior status has influenced the level of strategic cooperation between Israel and the U.S., as well as the sharing of intelligence information, joint project development and mutual defense agreements.
Israeli officials explain that Israel today enjoys benefits that are reserved for states that have status as NATO members. However, the formal upgrading of Israel's status could ensure these benefits' continued conferral in years to come, the officials say.
In Washington and Jerusalem, Israeli officials are now consulting about precise formulations in such a relations upgrade request. They are also mulling the timing of such a request, as well as the issue of the utility to be derived from it. Israeli sources predict that contacts with U.S. officials in Washington about the request will last months, if not years.
--------
Bomber Kills 2 and Hurts 30 in Israeli Mall
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/middleeast/05ISRA.html
KFAR SAVA, Israel, Nov. 4 - A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at an entrance to a shopping mall here this evening, killing two other people, one of them a security guard who apparently stopped him, and wounding more than 30.
The attack in this town northeast of Tel Aviv came hours after a vehicle carrying a militant from the armed wing of Hamas exploded in the West Bank city of Nablus, killing him and a second passenger. In the Gaza Strip today, Israeli soldiers shot and killed another Palestinian in what the army called an exchange of gunfire.
The fresh surge of violence came as the shrunken coalition of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon survived three no-confidence motions in Parliament, which also approved the appointment of Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish former army chief of staff, as defense minister.
The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack in Kfar Sava. A separate claim, reported on the Israeli radio, was made by a previously unknown group called the Jerusalem Brigades, composed of militants from both Islamic Jihad and the mainstream Fatah movement. The brigades group identified the bomber as Nabil Sawalha, 20, from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, which Israeli troops have occupied since June.
The bomber struck on a warm autumn evening in the heart of Kfar Sava, a town of tree-lined streets about three miles from the West Bank that has been the target of previous Palestinian attacks. As he tried to enter the mall, a complex of stores and restaurants built around a broad plaza, he was apparently stopped by one of several security guards posted there.
Eli Avitan, 32, the manager of an electric appliance store, was at the register serving a customer when he was jolted by the powerful explosion a short distance away.
"The whole store fell on us," he said as he lay in a hospital, his pants stained with blood. "Washing machines flew in the air, refrigerators fell, the ceiling came down, and we looked for a way out. I saw blood and bits of flesh, and pieces of the bomber. His leg was in the store."
The glass facade of the shop was shattered. Blood spattered the pink stone columns of the mall building, and twisted sheets of metal roofing littered the ground, along with debris and human remains.
Public Security Minister Uzi Landau visited the scene of the attack and said there should be tougher military responses in West Bank and Gaza Strip cities, which he called hotbeds of militant groups. He said he expected firm action by Mr. Mofaz, who as the army chief directed the reoccupation of West Bank cities in response to suicide bombings.
In Nablus a few hours before the bombing, a leader of the military wing of Hamas, Hamed Sadr, was killed along with another person when a vehicle they were riding in exploded. Palestinians accused Israel of responsibility. Mr. Sadr's nephew carried out a suicide attack last week in the West Bank settlement of Ariel that killed three soldiers.
The Israeli Army said a Palestinian killed today in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, near the border with Egypt, had been hit by return fire after soldiers were attacked by gunmen who also threw grenades.
In the first parliamentary test of Mr. Sharon's narrowed coalition, which now controls only 55 seats in the 120-member legislature, he enlisted the support of the far-right National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu faction to defeat three no-confidence motions submitted today by opposition parties.
The seven-member rightist faction abstained from the vote, denying Mr. Sharon's opponents the necessary majority, but the group seems ready to support the government only long enough to pass the 2003 state budget. As a condition for joining Mr. Sharon's coalition, it has made stiff political demands like the formal scrapping of the Oslo accords with the Palestinians, and it could ultimately favor early elections.
Mr. Sharon, meanwhile, appeared to reject a condition set by a former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in exchange for joining the government as foreign minister. Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would accept Mr. Sharon's offer to join the government only if elections were held soon.
Mr. Sharon, whose leadership of the Likud Party would face a formidable challenge from Mr. Netanyahu in pre-election primaries, rejected the idea of early elections.
"Taking the nation to immediate elections would be irresponsible," he told Likud lawmakers today. "I hope everyone acts responsibly and doesn't try to make it difficult for a stable government to function."
It remained unclear whether Mr. Sharon's statement was the last word in the jockeying with Mr. Netanyahu.
A footnote to the political maneuverings in Parliament was the swearing in of its first openly gay member. The legislator, Uzi Even, 62, a chemistry professor and gay rights advocate, took the oath of office after strictly Orthodox lawmakers left the chamber in protest.
Mr. Even pledged in his first speech to work for a more tolerant Israeli society, saying he saw himself as a representative of "all those minorities that our society, sated with war and grief, does not take the time to listen to."
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In a Surprise Move, Sharon Calls New Elections in Israel
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/middleeast/05CND-ISRA.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 5 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced today that Israel would hold elections early next year, eight months ahead of schedule, as he reluctantly invited an intense political contest that Israeli officials said was likely to freeze any diplomacy here in the meantime.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister and Mr. Sharon's chief right-wing rival in the forthcoming elections, then said that he was accepting a previous offer to become Mr. Sharon's new foreign minister.
Five days after the left-of-center Labor Party bolted his unity coalition in a budget dispute, Mr. Sharon gave up his attempt to form a narrow majority government. He accused his potential right-wing allies of making demands to harden policy toward the Palestinians that would have jeopardized Israel's relationship with the United States.
Trying to position himself at the center of Israel's politics, he criticized rivals to the right and left as irresponsible or self-interested, forcing him to choose elections as the ``least bad option.''
Mr. Sharon's surprise announcement resounded like a starter's pistol, sending his adversaries sprinting to microphones.
Israel's politics, relatively stable through 19 months of unity government, convulsed in a sudden campaign over the country's uncertain security and limping economy, against the backdrop of a two-year conflict with the Palestinians and a possible American war on Iraq.
Avraham Burg, the speaker of Parliament, said, ``Not since 1973 has Israel entered elections in such a complicated political, diplomatic and economic reality.''
The leader of the Labor Party, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, made his sharpest attack yet on Mr. Sharon as favoring settlers over the poor, the reason he gave for leading Labor out of the government last week. ``There will be no peace without taking down settlements,'' said Mr. Ben-Eliezer, who was defense minister in the unity government.
Mr. Sharon repeated his criticism of Labor as breaking his coalition out of political ambition. Mr. Ben-Eliezer is in a tough three-way race to hold on to his leadership of the party, in a primary scheduled for Nov. 19.
Last week, while trying to secure his depleted coalition, Mr. Sharon offered the Foreign Ministry to Mr. Netanyahu to shore up his right-wing support and to blunt Mr. Netanyahu's political threat by turning him into a subordinate.
But Mr. Netanyahu volleyed the political dilemma back at the prime minister by conditioning his acceptance on Mr. Sharon's calling early elections - accepting the post, in other words, on condition that Mr. Sharon put his own job at risk, and saving the government while ensuring its demise.
Today Mr. Netanyahu said his condition had been met.
From the high-profile platform the prime minister has now given him, Mr. Netanyahu will fight Mr. Sharon for leadership of their party, the Likud. Mr. Netanyahu supports the exiling of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and he opposes creating a Palestinian state.
Mr. Sharon has endorsed the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, and while he has favored exiling Mr. Arafat he has said he was constrained from doing so partly by a promise to Mr. Bush not to harm the Palestinian leader.
Before Mr. Netanyahu formally accepted the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Sharon drew an implicit contrast between his rival and Shaul Mofaz, a former chief of staff who has agreed to serve as defense minister. ``He came to serve his country without preconditions,'' Mr. Sharon said of Mr. Mofaz.
Under Israel's parliamentary system, each voter selects a party, not a candidate, in casting a ballot. Seats in the Parliament are then awarded to each party based on its proportion of the national vote.
After the election, Israel's president, Moshe Katzav, will select one member of the Parliament - most likely the leader of the party with the most seats - to form a new government and serve as prime minister.
As coalitions have formed and shattered, Israel has had five prime ministers in the last seven years. The first of them, Yitzhak Rabin, of Labor, was assassinated, shot in 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to his efforts to reach peace with the Palestinians. Mr. Ben-Eliezer echoed a campaign theme of Mr. Rabin from 10 years ago when he said today that it was time for ``a change in priorities.''
One potential problem for Mr. Ben-Eliezer is that, as Mr. Sharon's defense minister for 19 months, he has been a partner in expanding settlements, as in Mr. Sharon's other priorities. Israel's left has been all but moribund since February 2001, when Mr. Sharon soundly defeated Ehud Barak, the former Labor prime minister, after Mr. Barak tried and failed to make peace with Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Ben-Eliezer dwelled today on the state of Israel's economy, which is emerging as the foremost issue in the campaign.
On Sunday the government issued a report finding that nearly one in five Israelis, and more than one in four Israeli children, were living in poverty. The poverty line was set at a monthly income of $934 for a couple with two children.
Mr. Ben-Eliezer's competitors for the Labor post are Haim Ramon, a seasoned politician, and Amram Mitza, the mayor of Haifa and a former general. Both men have staked out positions to Mr. Ben-Eliezer's left.
President Bush recently submitted to Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian leadership a ``road map'' for achieving peace and a Palestinian state in 2005. Mr. Sharon, who is cool to the plan, is supposed to submit a formal response soon. But there is no way to know whether the next government will embrace or reject the plan, which is certain to be an issue in the campaign.
``Everything - everything - is now on hold until after the election,'' a senior Israeli official said. ``I think even the American administration understands that.''
Mr. Sharon is popular nationally, but Mr. Netanyahu, who speaks American-accented English and has cultivated a slashing debate style, has made himself a formidable challenger on the right.
Mr. Netanyahu was careful to declare today that he did not want ``to say anything bad'' about the prime minister. But he perhaps did so by implication when he talked about his own plans to run for prime minister, saying, ``I intend to form a government of solutions.''
Mr. Netanyahu also stressed the state of the economy. ``The country is facing imminent economic collapse,'' he said.
The date for the Likud primary has not been set. But by late December each party must submit to Parliament its list of those whom it wants to occupy any seats it wins in the elections, ranked according to the party's preference. The primary must take place before then to establish the rankings. Mr. Sharon and Mr. Netanyahu are competing for the first ranking on the list.
By law, the elections must take place within 90 days. They are expected in late January or early February.
Labor's departure deprived Mr. Sharon of 25 seats in Parliament, leaving him with a minority of 55 seats and vulnerable to a majority vote of no confidence.
Mr. Sharon survived three votes of no confidence, but he faced a future of perpetual dickering in Parliament to erect other temporary bulwarks against such threats, including a new no-confidence motion filed by Labor over the poverty report.
Mr. Sharon had tried to turn his new coalition into a slender majority of 62 seats by bringing in the seven seats of the National Union-Israel Beiteinu faction led by a radical nationalist, Avigdor Lieberman. But that effort failed. Mr. Sharon referred bitterly today to a speech on Sunday by Mr. Lieberman in which he said no new unity government should be formed after elections.
``I will not surrender to political blackmail from any party,'' Mr. Sharon said, alluding to a ``long list of demands'' from Mr. Lieberman.
Early this morning Mr. Sharon met with Mr. Katsav, the Israeli president, and asked him to dissolve Parliament and call new elections.
Mr. Katsav agreed. ``We are in the midst of a difficult security situation, one of the most difficult in the state's history,'' he said later. ``The economic and social situation is difficult.''
Therefore, he said, the campaign should be ``as short as possible'' and ``very dignified.''
-------- mideast
Official offers bases for U.S. use
From combined dispatches
November 5, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021105-11712980.htm
KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait offered its military bases to American forces yesterday in a U.N.-backed campaign against Iraq, a boost to the Bush administration coming one day after Saudi Arabia suggested that it would put its bases off-limits to U.S. troops.
"They are here in our bases. ... They are here. How can they not use them?" Foreign Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah told reporters yesterday, speaking about American troops.
"If there is a Security Council resolution, they will be used," said Sheik Sabah, who also serves as deputy prime minister.
His comments came as the United States began a fresh bid for consensus in the U.N. Security Council to authorized force against Iraq.
Just one day earlier, the Saudi foreign minister said the United States should not count on using his nation's bases.
"We will abide by the decision of the United Nations Security Council, and we will cooperate with the Security Council. But as to entering the conflict or using facilities ... that is something else," Prince Saud al Faisal told CNN.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that after looking at Prince Saud's remarks and subsequent contacts between the United States and the Saudis, Washington had not concluded that Riyadh had ruled out the use of Saudi bases.
Kuwait, in making its offer yesterday, said it required backing from the United Nations.
It also said its armed forces would not take part in an operation against Iraq.
Sheik Sabah said U.S. forces deployed in Kuwait would be able to use the facilities under a joint-defense pact with Washington, which has governed the presence of U.S. troops in the oil-rich state since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Since the Gulf war, Kuwait has signed defense pacts with all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Russia, the United States, Britain, France and China.
Sheik Sabah said Kuwait supported a tough U.S.- and British-sponsored draft resolution on disarming Iraq.
The United States has been pouring military hardware into the region, particularly Kuwait, in recent months in apparent preparation for a war on Iraq, but officials insist it is for an intensified training program.
U.S. forces are deployed in the desert, in two Kuwaiti air bases, in Camp Doha, and on the outskirts of Kuwait City, and are expected soon to use a new base being readied in the south of the country.
----
No Decision Yet on Letting U.S. Use Bases, Saudi Says
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/middleeast/05SAUD.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said today that the kingdom had not decided whether it would make its airspace and air bases available to the United States in the event of war with Iraq.
Speaking by telephone from Riyadh, Prince Saud sought to amend remarks he made in a CNN interview over the weekend, in which he appeared to state that Saudi Arabia would not allow an American-led coalition to use Saudi air bases and airspace to attack Iraq.
The remarks on CNN caught Bush administration officials by surprise. They conducted urgent consultations with Saudi officials today before formulating a response indicating that Washington did not think Saudi Arabia had closed the door to providing American forces with military support.
Today, Prince Saud said there had been a misunderstanding about his use of the word "no" when asked in the CNN interview if Saudi bases could be used in a military operation against Iraq. He said today that if Iraq "refuses the implementation" of the United Nations resolutions "concerning inspections" of its programs for weapons of mass destruction, Saudi Arabia would be obliged to "cooperate" with the United Nations.
"But that does not mean we have to join the fighting or indeed to leave our bases for use," he said, adding, "This is a sovereign right of Saudi Arabia to decide when the time comes."
Pressed on whether Saudi Arabia's day-to-day ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, had made a decision on the critical question of whether to support an American-led military campaign, Prince Saud said he could not go further. "No foreign minister who wants to keep his job," he said, can say what the ruling family will decide if war returns to the region.
Experts said Prince Saud's backtracking reflected the tension in the Saudi royal family between pro-American moderates promoting quiet military cooperation with the United States under a United Nations mandate, and more conservative princes angry at the rancor and recrimination focused on Riyadh since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"It is not an easy time for them because they have their own public opinion and crusty members of the family," said Richard W. Murphy, a Middle East specialist and assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration.
"There is obvious tension among senior members of the family," he added. "People feel we unjustly pushed them around roughly for a year and are very much aware of our military vulnerability there, and they would like to close it out." Others, he said, are seeking "cover" from the United Nations "so they can quietly cooperate with us" and eliminate Saddam Hussein's rule from the region.
Since September, when Prince Saud said publicly that the Bush administration's decision to work through the United Nations on Iraq would oblige other nations to "follow through," it has been widely believed in the United States military that Riyadh would put its basing and storage facilities at the disposal of American and allied forces in the event of a confrontation with Iraq. The crucial Saudi installation is the Prince Sultan Air Base, which was designed and built by the United States to house the air staff of the Central Command in wartime. "They cannot do it without us," one Saudi diplomat said.
Just in case, officers of the Central Command have established a command post in Qatar, one of the sheikdoms on the Persian Gulf coast. A week ago, Lt. Gen. Charles F. Wald, commander of the air war in Afghanistan and incoming deputy commander of the United States European Command, expressed confidence on the Saudi basing question. "I don't know why they wouldn't be participants with us if there was a reason to do this," he said.
At a Pentagon news briefing today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not think that Prince Saud's remarks on CNN represented a policy shift because they were carefully hedged. "I don't find it notable in any sense," Mr. Rumsfeld said of the interview.
Also today, a senior Air Force official said top Pentagon aides were playing down the foreign minister's comments. "The reaction here was more like, `There they go again,' " the official said. "It may be meaningful and lasting. But it's not necessarily the last word. Sometimes with them, black doesn't mean black. It means gray."
Prince Saud said his country was focused on achieving a consensus for a strong resolution on Iraq in the United Nations Security Council, so inspectors could return with access to everything they demand to see. "A peaceful solution for the Iraqi question is at hand," he said, adding that Iraq's as yet untested promise to comply with inspectors' demands "gives us tremendous hope that this will be solved diplomatically."
But there were other, deeper concerns that Prince Saud said caused him to put a premium on diplomacy: the continuing turmoil in the Holy Land; the Turkish elections heralding a return of Islamic politics; and the crisis over North Korea's openly declared nuclear weapons program.
"If you put all these things together," he said, "one of the reasons why we are concentrating so much on resolving the Iraqi question peaceably is because that would maintain the focus" on "resolving the Palestinian question," and "then we could concentrate on an issue like the threat from North Korea."
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U.S. Hails Attack on Car, Yemen Silent
November 5, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-yemen-usa.html
WASHINGTON/SANAA (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday an attack on a car in Yemen at the weekend which killed six suspected al Qaeda members was ``a very successful tactical operation.''
His remarks came as the Yemeni authorities refused to comment on the cause of the car blast -- apparently a rocket from an unmanned U.S. drone -- and offered safety to repenting al Qaeda militants in the country.
Those killed when their car exploded in the easterly Marib province on Sunday included Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, a suspect in the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden two years ago which killed 17 U.S. sailors.
Wolfowitz told CNN: ``One hopes each time you get a success like that, not only to have gotten rid of somebody dangerous, but to have imposed changes in their tactics and operations.
``Sometimes when people are changing, they expose themselves in new ways.''
Pressed to provide details, a senior Pentagon official praised the Yemeni government for cooperating with the United States, but refused to say whether Washington might launch similar attacks in the future.
``We have had pretty good cooperation with the government of Yemen and it has certainly improved a lot,'' he said, adding: ``We don't discuss future operations.''
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer would not say whether or not President Bush had approved the attack, or give any details of the operation.
Yemeni officials said the blast was under investigation and refused to comment on earlier remarks by a U.S. official in Washington that the car was hit by a missile fired from an unmanned Central Intelligence Agency aircraft.
Yemen said arms, traces of explosives and communications equipment were found in the car.
Interior Minister Rshad al-Alimi gave a report on the blast to the Yemeni cabinet on Tuesday.
Members of the cabinet refused to comment on what had caused the blast, but in a statement urged Yemenis to cooperate with security forces against those responsible for ``terrorist activities targeting our country, its people and its national economy,'' the official Saba news agency reported.
The cabinet said al-Harthi was also wanted for attacks on oil installations in Yemen, a small independent crude producer.
Washington blames the Cole blast on the al Qaeda network of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, whose ancestral home is Yemen.
SAFETY FOR THOSE WHO REPENT
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said in a speech broadcast on state media on Tuesday that he would ensure the safety of al Qaeda members in the country if they ``repent and express regret for their sins against the homeland.''
In the speech marking the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, he said: ``We invite anyone from our people who was a member of al Qaeda...to return to the right path and then their safety will be guaranteed. They will be granted all rights and obligations stipulated by the constitution.''
In September Yemen dismissed reports that U.S. forces could launch covert operations in the country against al Qaeda militants believed to have fled Afghanistan.
But U.S. drones are known to have been used to search for fugitive al Qaeda members believed to be protected by armed clans in the country's remote tribal regions.
The search for al Qaeda suspects has presented vast problems for Yemen's overstretched military. In December, Yemeni special forces lost 18 men in a clash with tribesmen during an attempt to arrest al-Harthi.
The Arab state, keen to shake off its image as a haven for Muslim militants, says it has detained 85 people in its hunt for suspected members of al Qaeda and other militant groups.
U.S. military trainers were sent this year to advise Yemeni troops on striking al Qaeda guerrillas reportedly hiding there.
The CIA previously used ``Predator'' drones to fire missiles at suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
The long-range, remote control aircraft is able to loiter over a target for 24 hours, providing still photographs or video footage that can be transmitted within six seconds. It can read traffic signs from 2.8 miles away and has been armed with Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.
The State Department announced the U.S. Embassy in Yemen would be closed to the public on Wednesday for a security review.
``The embassy will reopen at the appropriate time. I am not going to speculate as to when that will be,'' added the official, who asked not to be named.
Security at the embassy in Sanaa was already tight because of fears that al Qaeda members in Yemen might attack it.
-------- nato
NATO bombing of Yugoslav factories may have health and environmental effects - with implications for Iraq, study says
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
By Edith M. Lederer,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/11/11052002/ap_48881.asp
UNITED NATIONS - The bombing of factories during the 1999 NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia may have long-term environmental and health effects, a new environmental report says, raising questions about targets in possible future conflicts such as Iraq.
The report, obtained Monday by the Associated Press, warns that precision bombing of industrial facilities can lead to contamination that is very difficult to clean up and may violate international humanitarian law.
Civilians living near the targets may also be exposed to greater health risks from contamination of the air, water, and food products, said the report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit organization based near Washington that investigates scientific issues.
"Precision targeting may be intended to minimize civilian damage, but the choice of targets may still violate the international laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions," said Nicole Deller, a lawyer and co-author of the study. "The deliberate targeting of industrial facilities that hold little military value yet can cause severe health and environmental damage appear to violate these laws."
The study noted that "precision weapons have been used in Afghanistan and are likely to be a major part of the military strategy in any proposed war with Iraq if it is carried out."
The institute expressed hope that legal, health, and environmental issues raised by the study will be applied to other armed conflicts. It said these issues "should not be dismissed out of hand because countries are ruled by ruthless dictators."
The institute studied the NATO bombings of the Zastava car factory in Kragujevac, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Belgrade, and a petrochemical plant, a fertilizer plant, and an oil refinery in Pancevo, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of the capital. The two sites were designated as environmental "hot spots" by the U.N. Environment Program Balkans Task Force as a result of the bombings.
"There is no doubt that the bombings released large quantities of contaminants such as mercury, but it is impossible to precisely determine their effects because of lack of data about pre-conflict pollution levels," said Sriram Gopal, a scientist at the institute who was the report's main author.
In Pancevo, the bombings resulted in major releases of the toxic chemicals dichloroethane and mercury, pollution created by bomb-related fires, and other environmental damage, the report said. In Kragujevac, bombed transformer stations at the car factory leaked toxic PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls, which have been linked to some cancers.
The institute said its investigation was hampered because the U.S. Department of Defense rejected its Freedom of Information Act request for the targeting criteria used during the bombings, handing over 42 blank pages that were marked declassified. An analysis of the Yugoslav bombing campaign carried out this year by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also remains classified, it said.
Despite these setbacks and the incomplete data, the institute said the report shows the need to redefine how targets are chosen and how collateral damage caused by a bombing attack is evaluated. "Currently collateral damage is measured in terms such as the number of civilian casualties or the cost of replacing property," Gopal said. "Long-term harm to the environment can be much more difficult to quantify and evaluate, despite its very significant costs."
In the case of the two Yugoslav sites, the study said, the PCBs and mercury and some of the other pollutants last for generations in the environment and can have long-term effects on the health of civilians living nearby.
"As modern warfare becomes more technologically sophisticated and targeting more precise, it is essential not to succumb to the idea that the damage on the ground is also precise and limited," the institute said. "As this study indicates, the health and environmental consequences of precision bombing can affect unborn generations far into the future, even when the bombs are entirely successful in finding their targets."
----
NATO Looking Ahead To a Mission Makeover
New Members, Force and Philosophy
By Robert G. Kaiser and Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 5, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5067-2002Nov4?language=printer
BRUSSELS -- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization appears set to embrace a radically new military posture and strategy that would profoundly alter the shape and mission of the world's most significant military alliance, according to NATO officials here and government officials in a half-dozen European capitals.
In a series of interviews, these officials said the planned changes -- on the agenda of a NATO summit in Prague beginning Nov. 21 -- could remake the alliance more significantly than the other major item on the agenda, the admission of seven new members from Eastern Europe. A consensus on their entry was reached last summer, but invitations will be issued officially only during the Prague meeting.
Most dramatically, the NATO heads of government could announce creation of a multi-national rapid deployment force of about 21,000 troops that would allow NATO to operate quickly and effectively against new enemies far from Europe, the area NATO was formed to protect against the Soviet Union 53 years ago. NATO members may also announce commitments to acquire new aircraft and equipment that would make this an effective force and allow it to deploy on a week's notice.
"We're deconstructing the old NATO to build a new one to meet the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction," said Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to the alliance.
Burns is one of a group of NATO officials pressing for changes they believe will preserve its importance. That means being willing and able to confront threats to the security of NATO members wherever they arise -- very likely far from Europe. NATO's board of directors, the North Atlantic Council, quietly negotiated a new agreement to this effect earlier this year, which NATO foreign ministers ratified -- without attracting any publicity -- at a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, last spring.
After years of debate over whether NATO should operate "out of area," meaning out of Europe, the foreign ministers agreed that "NATO must be able to field forces that can move quickly to wherever they are needed" so the alliance can "more effectively respond collectively to any threat of aggression against a member state." This was an important step toward the new NATO rapid deployment force idea.
"It was done by stealth, but everyone was conscious of its significance," said a West European ambassador to NATO who asked to remain anonymous. "No one wanted it to become a controversial political matter at home." The accord was overshadowed by the announcement on the same day of a new agreement with Russia making it a kind of associate member through a new NATO-Russia joint council.
Officials from numerous nations involved in preparations for the Prague meeting expressed optimism that their intense but little-noticed diplomacy over the last year has produced broad agreement on the fundamental changes. The next step must be approved in Prague by the political leaders, who will consider an unusually ambitious agenda for such a meeting.
In addition to the anticipated admission of seven members and formation of a rapid deployment force, the officials said they foresaw an announcement that groups of NATO members wouldjointly agree to lease U.S.-made tanker aircraft for in-flight refueling and long-range strategic air transports to carry troops to far-flung battlefields. Germany is key to the decision on leasing C-17 transports -- Berlin would take the lead, and pay the most, in this arrangement -- but the German government has not made a final decision, according to NATO diplomats.
Leaders at the Prague summit may also agree to acquire a fleet of JSTAR aircraft, which carry advanced electronics to track targets on the ground, to provide intelligence for NATO military operations. NATO diplomats are trying to reach final agreement on a plan for joint response to any nation's use of weapons of mass destruction -- biological, chemical or nuclear. Members may commit to fielding additional special forces troops, and to acquiring improved communications equipment to allow secure exchanges among NATO member forces. And they will announce plans to reduce the number of NATO commands and headquarters, and reorient the remaining ones to new tasks.
These initiatives have all been prompted by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent realization that the old NATO, a collective security organization designed to protect Western Europe against Soviet invasion, was at risk of becoming irrelevant in a world in which terrorism has become the principal strategic threat.
The decade-long dispute over whether the alliance should operate out-of-area has "fallen away," said Benoit D'Aboville, France's ambassador to NATO -- "fallen away with the twin towers." The French, long skeptical about collaboration with NATO outside Europe -- and often inside, too -- have changed their minds. "We think NATO is moving in the right direction," D'Aboville said in an interview here.
"NATO's credibility," said George Robertson, secretary general of the alliance, "comes from its capability." The Prague summit, he said, should give the alliance the tools it needs to remain relevant in a changed world.
NATO officials acknowledged that the agreements announced in Prague will be statements of intention. Actual implementation will have to be worked out over time and funded by member governments, and it will take several years to put new capabilities into action. Even with new capabilities, NATO will take action only when all its members agree to do so -- its traditional mode of operating by consensus. A military action against Iraq could provide an early test of sentiment for operations well beyond Europe.
On Sept. 12, 2001, NATO's European members had the exhilarating experience of reaching consensus on the need to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the heart of the alliance. It calls on all members to respond to an attack on any member as if they had been attacked themselves. Article 5 was written to guarantee a U.S. military response to any Soviet offensive against Western Europe, so its invocation after a terrorist attack on the United States was both unexpected and sensational.
But then, nothing happened. The United States sought and received assistance from individual NATO members for the war in Afghanistan, but never formally responded to NATO's offer to help.
This led to "a kind of mutual remorse," said Robert Kupiecki, a diplomat in the Polish mission to NATO. "It left some bruises and some resentment," said Robertson. U.S. diplomats have apologized to NATO officials for the failure to respond more enthusiastically to the invocation of Article 5, according to several ambassadors here -- though civilian officials at the Pentagon did not join the apologies, said one envoy.
Anxiety about the Bush administration's true intentions toward the alliance is an undercurrent in NATO's current deliberations, according to several ambassadors here. "The real question is, what does the United States want from NATO?" said one ambassador, who entertained the possibility that the Bush administration really didn't want much. For their part, some U.S. officials, particularly at the Pentagon, have questioned whether an alliance governed by consensus will ever have the will or capability to take urgent military action.
Among NATO officials, "relevance" is a new catchword. For example, John McCallum, Canada's defense minister, said in an interview that a capable rapid reaction force under NATO command "guarantees relevance for NATO in the post-September 11 world."
The idea for this force of about 21,000 soldiers, to be contributed to by as many NATO countries as are willing, has caught on with surprising speed since the United States first floated the proposal through diplomatic channels last spring. Based in part on the enthusiastic response, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld formally suggested the force at a NATO defense ministers meeting in Warsaw in September.
The force would be based on "niche contributions" from member states, including some of the weakest and least technologically advanced, according to architects of the plan.
For example, one official said, the Czech Republic could contribute its specialists on biological and chemical warfare; Romanians could contribute a specially trained mountain battalion, or military police.
These troops would be dedicated to a new NATO command, and would remain on call for rotations of six months, when they might be called into action on very short notice, and be able to sustain themselves in the field for a month. They would train together for joint operations and would be equipped with new technology to give them maximum flexibility and effectiveness.
The idea of niche contributions is popular not least because countries can make them without increasing defense spending, something most NATO members seem unprepared to do. The United States spends about 3.5 percent of gross domestic product on defense, but many European nations spend less than 2 percent, and show no appetite for more. Specialization gives every country a chance to contribute from its existing military. "Not every ally can do everything," Burns said in a speech in Berlin last week, "but every ally, whether big or small, can contribute something."
"Niche contributions are what's going to make or break this organization," said Karel Kovanda, the Czech ambassador to NATO, because this concept gives every member a chance to do something important for the alliance. "It gives what you might call self-respect to the smaller nations."
Niche contributions can be made, officials said, by all seven countries set to be invited to join at Prague: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Last week, U.S. officials said, senior Pentagon officials raised last-minute doubts about the readiness of Bulgaria, Latvia and Slovenia to become part of NATO, but at a Cabinet meeting on Friday, Rumsfeld joined others in a unanimous recommendation to President Bush that all seven be invited to join.
NATO officials said that a rapid deployment force, though a fundamental departure for the alliance, is a logical extension of its activities in the last seven years, since NATO launched air attacks against Serbian positions in Bosnia in May 1995. That operation, on territory outside the boundaries of any NATO country, was unprecedented. It was followed by the 1999 bombing campaign in Kosovo, then a brief but effective effort to disarm rebels in Macedonia in 2001. Robertson recounted proudly that 4,800 troops from 12 NATO countries assembled in Macedonia in five days to receive weapons from rebels who had agreed to disarm.
At the time NATO was founded in 1949, the heart of the alliance was the pledge of each member to come to the defense of the others. In the past, adding a batch of new members would have meant being ready to defend a lot of new territory. Today, said a senior Bush administration official, "bigger can be better," not riskier or more expensive, "because the goal of territorial defense of Europe is no longer relevant."
Among the reasons for expansion is to extend stability and democracy in Europe. Gebhardt von Moltke, the German ambassador to NATO, said bringing in still-struggling new democracies such as Romania and Bulgaria will give the older NATO countries "more influence over their developing the way we want them to than by keeping them on the margins."
The former communist countries that are or soon will be NATO members constitute a new class of allies -- those who craved membership as evidence that they belong in the West. The first to be admitted -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- were not brought in to strengthen the alliance, but to push the perimeter of democratic Europe eastward. "From the military point of view," acknowledged Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Poland's foreign minister, in a recent interview in Warsaw, "we were not the best-prepared candidates."
But these three have proved to be enthusiastic members, especially eager to please the United States, which backed their admission. The next seven will be similarly staunch NATO enthusiasts and supporters of the United States, according to NATO officials and representatives of those countries. "The balance in the alliance might shift" in favor of "a more robust NATO" more closely aligned with U.S. policy, said one senior American official.
The backstage diplomacy that laid the groundwork for the Prague summit and for a new NATO has been conducted by a small group of officials here and in the capitals of NATO members. A few elected politicians -- Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) , for example -- have followed these events and spoken up to support them. But remaking NATO has gotten very little attention from parliaments or news media in the NATO countries.
"Our parliaments and people at home have not realized what's going on," said von Moltke, the German envoy. "Things are evolving so fast -- we all feel we are in a different environment."
-------- pakistan
Pak to acquire anti-ballistic missile from US
PTI
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 05, 2002
Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=27359505
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has approved the acquisition of an anti-ballistic missile system from the US, at an estimated over $1.5 billion, to be deployed at key sensitive installations and nuclear facilities, Kyodo news agency quoting authoritative defence sources reported on Tuesday.
The sources told the Japanese agency, on condition of anonymity, that the Defence Ministry has narrowed down its choices to the Patriot Air Defence System, the Nike Hercules missiles and the Hawk missile system.
The deal is estimated to cost more than $1.5 billion and would be in addition to the military purchase that Pakistan has been negotiating with the US under the aegis of the Pakistan-US Defence Consultative Group, which met in Islamabad in September this year.
Washington has lifted a 1990 ban on supply of military equipment to Pakistan after Musharraf backed the US in its war against terrorism following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.
The sources said preliminary talks have been held with the US, which reportedly has expressed its willingness to supply an anti-missile system to Pakistan to discourage further missile proliferation in the region.
The defence sources said Pakistan was moved to acquire a US anti-ballistic missile system following "reliable reports" that India was exploring the feasibility of acquiring an anti-ballistic missile system from Russia.
The three types of US anti-missile systems under consideration are readily available and delivery time is not expected to be long, the sources said.
The sources said the anti-ballistic missile system to be acquired from the US would be deployed mainly at nuclear facilities, and sites where indigenously built-short and medium-range missiles are stored or deployed.
The Patriot is a long-range, all-altitude, all-weather air defence system to counter ballistic missiles. The Hawk missile system can be used against enemy aircraft and is capable of intercepting and destroying enemy missiles. The Nike Hercules missile is an anti-missile system in use by the US and Nato forces.
-------- spy agencies
U.S. Is Reported to Kill Al Qaeda Leader in Yemen
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN with JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/middleeast/05YEME.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - The Central Intelligence Agency, using a missile fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft, killed a senior leader of Al Qaeda and five low-level associates traveling by car in Yemen on Sunday, American officials said today.
The officials said the missile strike killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, also known as Abu Ali, a man they described as the senior Qaeda operative in Yemen and perhaps one of the top dozen or so Qaeda figures in the world.
A C.I.A. spokesman refused to comment today. Nor would White House officials confirm the Predator strike in Yemen or say whether President Bush had personally authorized it.
The attack was the first using an armed Predator against suspects outside of Afghanistan, officials said, and it appeared to signal the beginning of a more aggressive phase of the American effort against terrorism.
American officials said today that armed Predators had been flying over Yemen for some time, ready to strike in case targets came into their sights. In the attack on Sunday, the target was a car in northwestern Yemen. Its occupants in addition to Mr. Harethi were five people described as low-level Qaeda operatives. American officials said the Yemeni government had been kept informed about the operation.
A Yemeni Interior Ministry official told the Saba news agency in Yemen that traces of explosives and remnants of communications equipment had been found in the wreckage of the car, which had been traveling in eastern Marib province.
Yemen has become a major focus of American counterterrorism operations in recent months. American officials believe it to be a haven for a significant number of Qaeda operatives, including many who fled Afghanistan last year. Al Qaeda has initiated deadly attacks against Western targets there, including the October 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer Cole, which killed 17 American sailors, and a similar attack on a French oil tanker last month, in which one crew member was killed.
Although officials said they were unsure if Mr. Harethi was directly involved in the Cole bombing, his leadership role in Al Qaeda in Yemen made him an important target of American efforts there.
Over the past year, the United States has worked closely with dozens of other nations to detain or arrest thousands of suspects in an effort to disrupt Qaeda operations. But the strike in Yemen suggests that the United States is now ready to move beyond intelligence-sharing and law enforcement cooperation and instead extend military action far beyond the Afghan battlefields.
The decision to use military force to attack Qaeda leaders in Yemen rather than to try to arrest them fits in with a broader administration view that the world is a battlefield in the campaign against terrorism, and that Qaeda operatives should be treated as enemy combatants.
"We're at war with Al Qaeda," a senior Pentagon official said earlier this year. "If we find an enemy combatant, then we should be able to use military forces to take military action against them."
Missile-carrying Predators were first used in Afghanistan last year; one was reportedly used to kill Muhammad Atef, Al Qaeda's chief of military operations, during a raid near Kabul a year ago. Before the strike on Sunday, the last time officials confirmed an attack by an armed Predator was in early May, when the C.I.A. tried to kill an Afghan factional leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had vowed to topple the government of Hamid Karzai and attack American forces.
The strike follows extensive American efforts, dating back to the Cole attack, to gain Yemeni help on counterterrorism matters. F.B.I. officials sent to Yemen after the Cole bombing were initially frustrated by what they believed was a lack of cooperation from Yemeni officials.
Although cooperation between the countries has increased in recent months, American counterterrorism officials have expressed frustration with Yemen's apparent inability to exert much control over its remote and largely lawless border region with Saudi Arabia, which the Americans say serves as the country's main sanctuary for Al Qaeda. For instance, a Yemeni operation last December to interdict Qaeda operatives in the region led to a bloody and unsuccessful confrontation.
The United States has kept up the pressure for Yemeni assistance even as the American military presence in nearby countries has expanded, reflecting the higher American priority on regional counterterrorism operations.
Across a narrow strait from Yemen, American military operations throughout the Horn of Africa will soon be coordinated by a new task force to be based in Djibouti, officials said today. The Pentagon has initial plans to increase its force in Djibouti to about 1,200 troops, allowing them to conduct training missions and prepare to attack Qaeda fighters believed to be hiding throughout the region. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has described the Horn of Africa as "a fairly busy place in terms of the flow of people and other instruments of war - weapons, explosives, perhaps weapons of mass destruction."
The region is one where "terrorists can gather and either do operational planning or training," he said.
The growing military presence so close to Yemen may have sent a message to the Yemeni government that the United States might act against terrorists inside its borders with or without its cooperation, and so could have helped persuade the Yemeni government to work with the Americans.
-------- us
'P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty
By David Isenberg
Asia Times Middle East
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK05Ak02.html
"Run away from the light": Such might be the motto of a new, covert policy that the Bush administration is considering implementing. According to recent news reports, it would be the largest expansion into the world of black ops and covert action since the end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
And that's saying quite a lot, considering that since Vietnam the Pentagon has not exactly been dormant in this area.
As well-known military analyst William Arkin pointed out in an October 27 column in the Los Angeles Times, the development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The army created a highly compartmentalized organization that could collect clandestine intelligence independent of the rest of the US intelligence community, and follow through with covert military action. Today, it operates under the code name Grey Fox. In Afghanistan it operated alongside the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) paramilitary Special Activities Division and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command.
Then there are numerous recent initiatives, such as net assessment capabilities at combatant commands, a new campaign support group at Fort Bragg, a counter-terrorism Technology Support Office, to name just a few.
Yet the Pentagon wants more. Its Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a 2002 "Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism". Excerpts from that study, dated August 16, were leaked and obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, which posted them on their website. The report was produced by a 10-member panel of military experts that included Vice Admiral William O Studeman, former director of the National Security Agency.
According to the leak, the United States is engaged in a global war on terrorism that is "a real war" in case anyone doubts it. This means, among other things, a "committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach" against whom the US will wage "a long, at times violent, and borderless war" which "requires new strategies, postures and organization".
That explains why the United States has, so to speak, decided to fight fire with fire. Although the study is filled with lots of the usual buzzwords and phrases that Pentagon planners love, such as "robust connectivity, agile ground forces, adaptive joint command and control and discriminant use of force", one thing that does stand out is its call for "preemption/proaction/interdiction/disruption/quick-response capabilities".
This is consistent with the administration's new National Security Strategy, which called for preemption; indeed, since the DSB study preceded the release of the strategy, it is possible that the strategy was written to incorporate some of its aspects.
The study urges the Pentagon to "take the terrorist threat as seriously as it takes the likelihood and consequences of major theater war", urging officials to launch secret missions and intelligence operations to penetrate and disrupt terrorist cells abroad. Some of those operations should be aimed at signaling to countries that harbor terrorists that "their sovereignty will be at risk".
If adopted, some of the proposals appear to push the military into territory that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed on CIA activities.
But William Schneider Jr, chairman of the DSB, rejected such concerns, saying that the panel set out to identify ways that special operations units could do more to assist the war on terrorism, not encroach on other agencies' authority.
"The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets," Schneider said. He emphasized that the board was not recommending any changes to long-standing US policies banning assassinations, or requiring presidents to approve in advance US covert operations. Nor, he said, was the panel advocating changes that would erode congressional oversight.
Yet lawmakers have expressed concern with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's push to expand the Pentagon's covert capabilities, mainly because the Pentagon is not subject to rules that require the CIA to report its covert activities to Congress.
The DSB summary document suggests that many changes are already under way. It cites the expansion of existing intelligence analysis centers and the creation of new management teams to direct covert operations at such installations as Fort Bragg, where US special forces such as Delta Force are based. It recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.
For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities. To bolster government HUMINT capabilities, the task force advances the idea of an intelligence "surge/unsurge" capability - a "robust, global cadre of retirees, reservists and others who are trained and qualified to serve on short notice, including expatriates". This group could be pressed into service during times of crisis.
P2OG would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to "quick-response" attacks by US forces. The means by which it would do this is the far greater use of special operations forces.
Responsibility and accountability for the P2OG would be vested in a "Special Operations Executive" in the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC would plan operations but not oversee their execution in order to avoid comparisons to past abuses, such as the Iran-Contra operations run out of the NSC by Oliver North during the Reagan administration. Under the board's proposal, NSC plans would be executed by the Pentagon or the CIA.
Costs would include developing new means to enable "deep penetration of adversaries" ($1.7 billion annually); exercises and gaming ($100 million annually); development of technical capabilities and the hiring of 500 new staff ($800 million annually); establishment of centers of excellence to handle increased workload ($500 million annually); and expansion of the Joint Forces net assessment activity ($100 million annually). The total cost is envisaged as $3.3 billion.
The DSB study also provides tantalizing glimpses of new capabilities already in the works, referring to new high-tech sensors in development that would enable the United States more closely to track the movements of vehicles or even individuals by satellite. Some of these capabilities are already advanced, such as high-altitude airships, thermobaric weapons and improved urban assault capabilities. Other new projects are being executed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
If the DSB proposal is adopted, it would only reinforce recent Pentagon activity. The Washington Post reported last month that the Pentagon was preparing to consolidate control of most of the global war on terrorism under the US Special Operations Command, signaling an intensified but more covert approach to the next phase in the battle against al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.
Special Operations units have been active in Pakistan for months and are training military forces in Yemen and Georgia. These missions could provide a cover for conducting any covert raids and other actions against suspected al-Qaeda members in the two countries.
The United States has also placed more than 500 Special Operations troops in the African nation of Djibouti, where they are near potential hot spots such as Yemen and Somalia. The USS Belleau Wood, an amphibious assault ship that carries attack helicopters and a handful of Harrier jump jets, has been stationed off the Horn of Africa for about six weeks, ready to carry those troops and some specialized helicopters.
And, in early October, the Washington Times reported that US commandos hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas in Afghanistan gained permission to employ "source operations" - clandestine tactics typically confined to the CIA. "Source operations" generally refers to recruiting and maintaining spies within the enemy's camp. In Afghanistan, it means finding Afghans and Arabs, possibly within the Taliban and al-Qaeda network, who would supply intelligence to US special-operations forces.
----
Unmanned Craft a Terror War Tool
November 5, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Killer-Predator.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Remote-controlled Predator aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles have become a deadly tool and a powerful psychological weapon in the war on terrorism -- threatening a fiery strike that seemingly comes out of nowhere.
Missiles fired from lurking Predators have killed Osama bin Laden's operations chief and, earlier this week, a top al-Qaida operative in Yemen. The deadly drones give the CIA a way to track and kill suspected terrorists without putting U.S. pilots at risk -- though with the possibility of unintended civilian casualties.
``It's a demonstration that al-Qaida can run but they can't hide,'' said Daniel Mulvenna, a terrorism expert at the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in suburban Washington. ``Eventually the technological reach of the U.S. intelligence community is going to produce these opportunities.''
The Yemen strike killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, al-Qaida's chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors, U.S. officials said. Five other people, also believed to be al-Qaida operatives, were riding in al-Harethi's car and also died in the attack.
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lundh condemned the strike, calling it ``a summary execution that violates human rights.''
``Even terrorists must be treated according to international law, otherwise any country can start executing those whom they consider terrorists,'' she said.
The airstrike on al-Harethi's car was reminiscent of Israeli airstrikes targeting the vehicles of the radical Islamist group Hamas, a practice the U.S. government has criticized.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher deflected questions Tuesday on the attack in Yemen while saying that U.S. opposition to ``targeted killings'' of Palestinians by Israel remains.
``If you look back at what we have said about targeted killings in the Israeli-Palestinian context, you will find that the reasons we have given do not necessarily apply in other circumstances,'' Boucher said.
The White House, meanwhile, defended the operation.
``Sometimes the best course is a good offense,'' presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday.
``The president has made clear that we fight the war on terrorism wherever we need,'' Fleischer said. ``Terrorists don't recognize any borders or nations.''
The use of the armed Predator apparently was the first outside Afghanistan, where CIA-operated drones have fired at least four times. One of those attacks, a November operation that also included strikes by U.S. military aircraft, killed al-Qaida military head Mohammed Atef.
The United States developed the Predator after the 1991 Persian Gulf war to give military commanders a view of the battlefield without having to put a pilot there.
First used in 1995, the remote-controlled spy plane can lurk in an area for up to 16 hours, unseen and unheard at 15,000 feet, its cameras transmitting live video, infrared or radar pictures to military commanders or intelligence officials anywhere in the world. The video is sharp enough to be able to spot a person from five miles away, officials say.
The CIA was the first to fly Predators modified to carry one Hellfire missile under each wing. Originally built as anti-tank weapons for Army helicopters, the 125-pound Hellfires streak through the air faster than the speed of sound to deliver about 17 pounds of sophisticated high explosives.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the CIA had balked at using armed Predators, said Daniel Benjamin, a National Security Council staffer under President Clinton. CIA officials contended the agency's use of deadly force could put CIA operatives in danger worldwide, said Benjamin, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Newer versions of the Predator made for both the Air Force and the CIA will have missiles attached. Air Force officials have not said if they are using any armed Predators yet.
The Bush administration has ordered another 22 of the aircraft and their associated ground stations at a cost of about $160 million. The Air Force already has about four dozen of them and the CIA has an unknown number.
About half the size of an F-16 fighter, the propeller-driven aircraft are flown by a ``pilot'' at a computer terminal as far as 400 miles away. They are made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of San Diego.
But the Predator has its limits, as well. Like other small planes, it can't fly in harsh weather like snow or fog -- although its video wouldn't be very useful in those conditions anyway.
The plane also can be difficult to fly and vulnerable to enemy anti-aircraft fire. At least nine Air Force Predators and one CIA drone have crashed during missions involving Afghanistan or Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
On the Net:
Air Force Predator fact sheet: http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/RQ--1--Predator--Unmanned--Aerial.html
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems: http://www.gat.com/asi/aero.html
----
Army Shoots Down Artillery Shell with Laser
November 5, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-laser.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army used a high-energy laser to shoot down an artillery shell in mid-flight on Tuesday in a defense industry breakthrough, the Army and the manufacturer said.
The Army and TRW Inc, which developed the weapon, said in a joint statement that the laser tracked, locked onto and fired a burst of concentrated light energy photons at the speeding shell over the White Sands test range in New Mexico.
``Seconds later, at a point well short of its intended destination, the projectile was destroyed,'' the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command said.
The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL) is being developed by TRW for the Army and the Israeli Defense Ministry. Lasers have been used in past tests at the range to shoot down slower Katyusha Rockets similar to those fired at Israel by militant guerrilla groups in neighboring Lebanon.
``This shootdown shifts the paradigm for defensive capabilities. We've shown that even an artillery projectile hurtling through the air at supersonic speed is no match for a laser,'' said Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, head of the missile defense command.
``Tactical high energy lasers have the capacity to change the face of the battlefield,'' he added.
The laser was fired from a static testbed in a carefully controlled test, but TRW officials said they looked forward to producing a truly mobile version as the program progressed.
Tuesday's test -- the first time a laser had shot down an artillery shell -- was part of a new series to determine MTHEL requirements and demonstrate the system's capabilities against a wide range of airborne targets.
In earlier tests in 2000 and 2001 the testbed focused on the threat of artillery rockets and shot down 25 Katyushas fired singly and in salvos.
The U.S. military has shot down dummy intercontinental missile warheads in tests both inside and outside the atmosphere using projectile weapons and is also examining the possible use of long-range lasers to burn up such warheads in flight.
----
U.S. Still Opposes 'Target' Killings
November 5, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Yemen-Explosion.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration renewed its opposition Tuesday to Israel's assassination of terror suspects, even after a U.S. missile killed a top al-Qaida operative and five other people in his car in Yemen.
Sunday's strike in Yemen was the first such overt attack outside Afghanistan and could signal a new U.S. strategy against anti-Western terrorists.
Israel, which pioneered targeting militants for assassination, sometimes also killing and injuring civilians in the attacks, has been admonished publicly and regularly by the State Department for the tactics.
On Tuesday, while declining to discuss the U.S. operation in Yemen, spokesman Richard Boucher said, ``Our policy on targeted killings in the Israeli-Palestinian context has not changed.''
Suggesting the two situations were not comparable, Boucher said, ``The reasons we have given do not necessarily apply in other circumstances.''
While criticizing Israel for targeting suspected Palestinian terrorists, the State Department usually has suggested the preferred approach would be to some form of prosecution.
Also, State Department officials generally have coupled the criticism with calls for restraint while endorsing Israel's right to defend itself.
For the most part, the State Department worries that assassinations contribute to a cycle of violence.
The U.S. assassination of Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi and five of his associates Sunday in northwestern Yemen drew criticism from Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.
``If the U.S.A. is behind this with Yemen's consent, it is nevertheless a summary execution that violates human rights,'' she said. ``If the U.S.A. has conducted the attack without Yemen's permission it is even worse. Then it is a question of unauthorized use of force,'' Lindh told Swedish news agency TT during an official visit to Mexico.
``Even terrorists must be treated according to international law. Otherwise, any country can start executing those whom they consider terrorists,'' she said.
U.S. counterterror officials say al-Harethi was al-Qaida's chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole.
----
Massive military cargo ships leave U.S. ports
Tuesday November 5, 2002
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-132662.html
LONDON - Three enormous U.S.-military owned cargo ships capable of carrying tanks have left U.S. shores in recent days, a U.S. navy official said on Monday, amid mounting evidence Washington is building up firepower to attack Iraq.
The latest deployment comes as the aircraft carrier battle group the USS Constellation set sail for the Gulf from San Diego, California this past weekend.
The cargo vessels, the USNS Bellatrix, the USNS Bob Hope and the USNS Fisher, just short of the length of aircraft carriers themselves, are some of the largest transport ships in the U.S. military's inventory.
Marge Holtz, director of the Military Sealift Command (MSC), a branch of the U.S. Navy charged with running the ships on behalf of the U.S. armed forces, declined comment on the exact destination of the vessels.
"It is part of the repositioning of forces and equipment in support of the war on terror. They are on route," she told Reuters from Washington.
Two, the USNS Fisher and USNS Bob Hope, have seven decks capable of carrying tanks, helicopters and other heavy armour MSC says.
Over 275 metres long and 100 feet wide each has a hold capacity of 35,300 sq metres -- equivalent to eight soccer fields.
According to MSC the vessels are capable of carrying 58 Abrams battle tanks, 48 track vehicles, such as armoured vehicles, and 900 other trucks.
Holtz said the ships would also carry "tanker trucks and bridge sections".
Eight of their sister ships, known as the Watson-class, and similarly packed with armour and supplies for the U.S. Army, are anchored around the British base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, within a few days sail of the Gulf.
The fast sealift ship the USNS Bellatrix, of a similar size but quicker -- it is one of the fastest cargo ships in the world -- loaded equipment for the U.S. Marine Corps on the west coast of the United States and set sail last week.
The two others, Large Medium Speed Roll-on Roll-off (LMSR) ships, had loaded equipment for mechanized U.S. army units on the east coast and set sail in the last 14 days. "One last week and one the week before," Holtz said.
There are another six fast sealift ships and seven LMSRs berthed at U.S. ports awaiting orders according to the MSC.
In addition to these government-owned ships the Department of Defense has regularly chartered merchant vessels to carry tanks, ammunition, helicopters and other supplies to the Gulf.
Since August the Pentagon has chartered at least eight large vessels.
On Friday MSC confirmed to Reuters it had chartered two ships to move a massive quantity of ammunition and a smaller quantity of armour to the Gulf and the Red Sea.
-------- propaganda wars
Are Papers Ready To Cover War At Home?
Coverage Of Large Anti-war Protest Is Controversial
By Dave Astor and Chris Nammour
NOVEMBER 05, 2002
http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1754818
NEW YORK -- Newspapers are gearing up to cover the probable U.S. war against Iraq -- but are they ready for the war at home that would likely result? Right now, it's impossible to say, based on coverage of the surprisingly strong turnouts for protest marches Oct. 26 in Washington and San Francisco.
The New York Times, for example, seemed to underplay its coverage of the march in the nation's capital -- then scrambled to reverse its judgment. The Boston Globe, meanwhile, might have overplayed coverage of that rally, one of the paper's editors tells E&P.
"The media is generally slow to pick up on citizen actions like that, but there's a growing awareness in newsrooms that there's something going on out there," says Peter Hart, media analyst for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
Sara Flounders, co-director at International Answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), which helped organize the rallies, says many papers ignored previous demonstrations until the Oct. 26 ones got too large to dismiss. (By police estimates, the Washington rally drew 100,000, making it the biggest antiwar march there since the Vietnam war, and the San Francisco rally drew about half that number.) Flounders adds that papers may cover rallies for a day, but write little about ongoing antiwar actions even as they constantly publicize the Bush administration's war plans.
But Roger Aronoff, a media analyst for Accuracy In Media, thinks the pendulum has swung too far at some papers. He calls The Washington Post's coverage of the Oct. 26 demonstration, for example, "too sympathetic" and says it "completely ignored who the leaders of the rally were." These leaders, according to Aronoff, included "hardcore Marxists" and "supporters of terrorist groups."
Reflecting the national split on this issue, The New York Times, over a four-day period, infuriated observers on both the pro- and antiwar sides. The day after the march, the Times ran a relatively short piece noting that the "thousands" of protesters in Washington comprised a smaller total than organizers had hoped for. Since the organizers had only taken out a permit for 20,000, this was, of course, quite false. Three days later, as if to make amends, the paper ran a second, longer story noting that the huge turnout "startled even organizers."
How did such different accounts of the same rally get published in the same paper? When E&P contacted the Times' Lynette Clemetson, author of the first story, she would only say: "I advocated for broader coverage of the march, and I regret that we didn't run a more comprehensive story."
Outraged marchers and other readers flooded the Times with complaints about the Oct. 27 story. Flounders says International Answer received "thousands" of e-mail messages and calls from people saying they had contacted, or were going to contact, the Times, while FAIR had sent out an alert for people to write the newspaper.
Kathy Park, manager of public relations for the New York Times Co., said in a statement e-mailed to E&P: "We were attentive to complaints from a fair number of readers that the number of demonstrations around the country and the number of participants in Washington warranted further coverage. We also looked at what news agencies and other publications had reported, and we felt that there was more we ought to say."
What did some other newspapers do? The Washington Post ran a front-page-of-Metro-section, 1,600-plus-word, staff-written story noting that 100,000 people attended the march. A photo appeared on A1. The Washington Times published a photo of the rally on page A1, and a staff-written story and more photos occupied just under a half page on A11.
The Los Angeles Times placed its staff-written rally story on page A17, with the 965-word article pegging the Washington crowd at 100,000-plus. The San Francisco Chronicle published a Page One story about the Bay Area demonstration that ran more than 25 inches. Why so long? "It was the biggest protest march of any kind here since the Vietnam era," says Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal.
The Boston Globe, which sent a reporter to the Washington demonstration by bus, devoted a front-page Associated Press photograph to the story in Oct. 27's paper, along with an 882-word article and staff photograph on A29. "It seems to me a staff-written story and a front-page article might have been a bit much," says National Editor Kenneth Cooper. This might surprise many who would expect the traditionally liberal Globe to cover the rally in-depth. "There have been many protests in Washington," Cooper explains. "We don't cover all of them. A protest there with 100,000 people is actually kind of middling. ... If another protest happened on the same topic with the same amount of people, we'd probably do less."
Chicago Tribune Managing Editor James O'Shea believes his paper gave the right amount of attention to the protest, which was the lead story on Sunday's national page. "We had a reporter on the scene and a reporter in Chicago who contributed," he says. "Since this controversy started, we've had stories on the front page and inside the paper [on antiwar efforts] ... We're making a conscious effort to cover the protests. They're not as large as Vietnam, but they really picked up steam after that war was under way. People have strong feelings about this. It seems the momentum is picking up a bit."
FAIR's Hart noted that some papers still ignore or trivialize antiwar sentiment, but, as attendance at rallies rises, more dailies are treating protests at least somewhat more respectfully. He says: "You're seeing a bit less of the potshots and the comments about hairstyles and dress."
Source: Editor & Publisher Online Dave Astor and Chris Nammour . Astor is senior editor for E&P. Nammour is an intern.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
Court says Chicago can sue gun makers
November 5, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021105-122457-3789r.htm
CHICAGO, Nov. 5 -- An Illinois state appeals court has ruled that the city of Chicago can sue the gun industry for creating a public nuisance by irresponsibly selling firearms.
The decision, handed down Monday, is a victory for Mayor Richard M. Daley who backed the city's $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry filed in November 1998.
The Illinois Appellate Court said handgun manufacturers can be held liable for the crime and threat to public safety caused by its products.
The decision said: "In our view the plaintiff's complaint sufficiently pleads facts that, notwithstanding actual knowledge that the guns would be brought into Chicago and used in crimes, the manufacturers failed to alter their actions, thereby creating a public nuisance."
The lawsuit claimed gun manufacturers used a few suburban gun shops to flood Chicago with handguns that were illegally resold by traffickers to criminals.
An attorney for the gun industry said the manufacturers would file an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.
A spokesman for the Illinois State Rifle Association called the ruling "ludicrous."
City lawyers applauded the decision.
"The court ruled today that if you market guns like an ostrich, ignoring the fact that people coming in are clearly gang gun runners, clearly want them for illegal purposes, you are going to be held liable and the courts are going to require you to reform your marketing practices," Deputy Corporation Council Lawrence Rosenthal told the Chicago Tribune.
The ruling allows city attorneys to return to trial court to pursue a suit against 22 gun makers and distributors. Some 21 municipalities have filed lawsuits against the gun industry and 10 have been dismissed.
----
Supreme Court weighs Calif. 3-strikes law
By Michael Kirkland
UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
November 5, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021105-112819-9876r.htm
WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in two cases that challenge California's "Three Strikes and You're Out" law.
At issue in both cases is whether the effect of a law can be so Draconian that it violates the Eighth Amendment's ban against "cruel and unusual punishments."
Each of the two cases reads like a study in haplessness.
The first involves Gary Albert Ewing, who stuffed three golf clubs into his pants at a golf shop in Los Angeles County.
According to court records, Ewing told a shop employee he was headed to the driving range. Instead, he headed for his car in the parking lot, exhibiting a rather stiff-legged limp that drew the employee's suspicions. Police were called and found three clubs in Ewing's pants. The clubs were valued at $399 each, enough to constitute felony theft.
Under the state's 1994 three-strikes law, Ewing was sentenced to 25 years to life because of prior convictions -- he had four earlier felony convictions -- a sentence that was upheld by the California appeals courts.
Speaking for Ewing before the Supreme Court Tuesday, Federal Defender Quin Denvir conceded the facts in the case -- his client did stuff those golf clubs down his pants. Denvir also conceded that Ewing had a long history of crime, including felonies as well as misdemeanors.
At that point, the court-appointed attorney had to deal with some skeptical questions from the bench.
"The purpose of the three-strikes law is to take off the streets the tiny percentage of people who commit most of the crimes," Justice Antonin Scalia told Denvir. "... It seems to me your client is a prime candidate for this law."
"It's the process that produces an unconstitutional sentence," Denvir told Scalia and the rest of the court. "Although prior crimes are relevant, the focus should be on this particular case."
Later, Chief Justice William Rehnquist asked Denvir: "Why can't California decide that enough is enough?"
"If that were true," then there is no Eighth Amendment restriction on recidivist laws, Denvir replied.
The argument was not all serious give and take. Scalia said of Ewing that "his score was not improved" by taking the clubs.
Justice John Paul Stevens, a dapper, short 82-year-old who plays golf in Florida every chance he gets, said: "I'm curious about one thing. Was he a very tall man or were these irons?"
Though it did not come up in court, Ewing was accused of taking the much longer drivers rather than the shorter irons.
Speaking for California, state Deputy Attorney General Donald DeNicola said the three-strikes law "reasonably moves toward a policy of incapacitation" -- keeping repeat offenders locked away for life or for a long time.
"For a court to second-guess (the Legislature)," DeNicola said, "that comes perilously close to suggesting there are certain times a court can tell the Legislature there are certain crimes that cannot be declared a felony."
DeNicola was supported by the Bush administration.
Assistant Attorney Michael Chertoff, chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, told the justices that Ewing has never completed parole or probation since 1984. "He was always violating parole by committing another crime."
In the second, parallel case before the Supreme Court Tuesday, Leandro Andrade and a female companion entered a Kmart store in Ontario, Calif., on Nov. 4, 1995.
"Andrade looked around, selected some videotapes and stuffed them inside his trousers," the state's petition to the Supreme Court said. "Andrade looked around again, grabbed some more tapes, and stuffed them inside his trousers."
He made it only as far as the sidewalk in front of the store when he was stopped by security personnel and arrested for shoplifting. The value of the merchandise: $84.70.
While that charge was pending, Andrade and two female companions entered a Kmart store in Montclair, Calif., two weeks later.
"Andrade selected a videotape and put it down the waist of his pants," the state's brief said. "Andrade selected two more tapes and went behind a partition."
He was again stopped and detained by store security personnel and charged with shoplifting. The combined value of the merchandise: $68.84.
Andrade was convicted by a state jury in San Bernardino, Calif., of two counts of petty theft. The jury also determined that Andrade had committed "three prior serious or violent felony convictions" under the meaning of California's three-strikes law.
A state judge sentenced him to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life. In effect, he would have to serve 50 years before being considered for parole. The state appeals courts upheld the sentence.
Andrade then took his case to federal court, but a U.S. judge rejected his claim that the California law constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Finally, a federal appeals court reversed, saying his sentence was "grossly disproportionate to his misdemeanor thefts of nine videotapes."
The appeals court pointed out that Andrade's two prior offenses were petty burglaries "enhanced to felonies as allowed under the California Penal Code, and then enhanced again to third and fourth strikes under California's Three Strikes and You're Out Law."
If Andrade's sentence were allowed to stand, the appeals court said, he "would not become eligible for parole until 2046, after serving 50 years, when he would be 87 years old."
California then asked the Supreme Court for review, saying the appeals court ruling conflicts with high court precedent and the standard of review in constitutional cases as prescribed by Congress.
State Deputy Attorney General Douglas Danzig spoke for California Tuesday, arguing that the three-strikes law as it was applied against Andrade was constitutional.
Los Angeles attorney Erwin Chemerinksy spoke for Andrade. Like Denvir, Chemerinksy contended that the law as applied against his client violated the Eight Amendment.
Decisions in both cases should be handed down within the next month or so. -- (Nos. 01-6978, Ewing vs. California; and 01-1127, Atty Gen Lockyer et al vs. Andrade)
-------- terrorism
Lessons Drawn From Attack on Pentagon May Stay Secret
November 5, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/nyregion/05TOWE.html
It was a rare sliver of positive news on Sept. 11. Unlike the twin towers, where many of the 2,795 people who died were trapped inside until the structures collapsed, the Pentagon - where 125 military personnel and civilian workers were killed - contained the blast and fires well enough to allow nearly everyone who survived the initial impact from the hijacked jetliner to escape.
Just three days after the crash, a blast expert at the Army Corps of Engineers was at the scene to begin leading the Pentagon team that would assess the attack's effect on the building. At the trade center, it took an investigative team weeks to assemble, and then it had trouble gaining access and crucial documents. The Pentagon team's report, completed last July, contained not only an analysis of how the building, parts of which had been recently renovated and reinforced, held up, but also recommendations for using the lessons learned to make other buildings safer.
But there is another sharp contrast between the two efforts. The World Trade Center report was completed and released last spring, but the Defense Department, fearing that the strengths and perhaps vulnerabilities of its headquarters were too clearly drawn, has held up the Pentagon study in a classification review and may never allow it to be publicly released.
The review, which was specifically intended to consider Pentagon security in the light of new terrorist threats, has provoked strong but conflicting reactions from engineers who saw it before all copies were abruptly ordered returned. Some, confused over what could be considered sensitive in the report, have expressed outrage that the lessons it may hold for other buildings could be squandered. They also think that a deeper understanding of what happened at the twin towers, gained through a comparison with the findings at the Pentagon, could be denied both the general public and the families of victims.
"I really think this is nothing but bureaucratic inertia," said Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University who is a member of the Pentagon assessment team, and who was asked to return his copies of the report around the first anniversary of the attack.
"I don't see anything there that would be against a national interest or make it more likely to be a terrorist target," Professor Sozen said.
That is not the view taken by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, created last May. Its acting director, John Jester, points out that terrorists returned to the World Trade Center after a bomb failed to destroy it in 1993.
"We're concerned that when we do reviews of buildings, we're looking at how are they good and how are they bad, and you don't want to advertise that to the world," Mr. Jester said. "We've obviously been the site of a terrorist attack, so we don't want to disclose anything that would assist someone who would want to attack us again."
Mr. Jester said he thought it was likely that parts of the report contained material too sensitive to release, but added that a final determination on the report's release had not been made.
The study, led by Paul F. Mlakar, a blast expert at the Research and Development Center of the Army Corps of Engineers, was sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers with the approval of the Pentagon. Dr. Mlakar said team members knew from the start that the report would see a Defense Department review, and so they attempted to avoid including any sensitive material.
The team's findings identify "things I think we want to incorporate in other buildings for lots of unforeseen incidents" - like terrorist attacks, Dr. Mlakar said. But if those lessons are ultimately classified, Dr. Mlakar said, even he would have mixed feelings about the decision because he is aware of security concerns.
Engineers outside the investigation say the implications are considerable, since the reinforced-concrete structure of the Pentagon - unlike the steel skeleton of the twin towers - is similar to the buildings in which most Americans live and work. The investigation, like others the engineering society carried out after the Loma Prieta earthquake in California in 1989 and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, is therefore more likely to result in changes to building practices.
The findings of the World Trade Center investigation have already led to a re-examination of building codes and engineering practices in New York and other cities. And those who have seen the Pentagon study say that parts of it support a finding that was already hinted at in the trade center study: that some older buildings with sturdy structural frames and thick, stout layers of fireproofing may perform better than modern, lightweight structures in the extreme conditions of a terrorist attack.
"I think it's critical that it be published," said Charlie Carter, chief structural engineer for the American Institute of Steel Construction in Chicago, who said he was asked to review the Pentagon report. "It has information directly relevant to all the things that have either been claimed or mistaken about other structures that were hit that day."
The Pentagon was built in just 16 months, mostly of steel-reinforced concrete. Construction began on Sept. 11, 1941. The five outer faces, each 922 feet long, were built of heavy layers of limestone and brick as well as concrete. Partly because it was thought the building would ultimately become a warehouse for paper records, the structure was made especially strong.
Tight spirals of steel reinforcing bars were embedded in each of the 41,492 concrete columns within the building's five stories and 6.5 million square feet of space. The floors were designed to support 150 pounds of weight per square foot, more than double the strength of many modern office buildings.
Throughout the building, reinforcing bars from one section had long, tightly connected overlaps with those from the next. On Sept. 11, that continuity "made the whole thing perform together rather than as little pieces," said W. Gene Corley, a structural engineer and senior vice president at Construction Technology Laboratories who led the World Trade Center investigation.
Several people who have seen the Pentagon review said it shows that when the hijacked Boeing 757 plunged through the west face, the spirally reinforced columns inside acted as powerful shock absorbers, often bowing sideways without snapping.
Parts of the plane bowled through the bottom two floors of three of the Pentagon's five concentric rings, but the stout, continuous structure was able to bridge over the missing columns and avoid an immediate collapse. The structure was even able to stand up against the raging fire that broke out when the plane's fuel ignited.
"It was striking to me how little of the building was involved in the fire," said Dr. Corley, who has reviewed the Pentagon report. The fire, he said, "didn't spread and and trap other people in the building."
Of the 2,600 people in the immediate area of impact, all of those above the second floor had time to escape before a 100-foot-long section of the outer ring collapsed 35 minutes into the disaster. Recently installed blast-proof glass and new steel reinforcements in the impact zone have also been credited with saving some lives on the upper floors.
While 125 Pentagon workers and 59 passengers and crew members on the plane died, few if any of the workers who died were from outside the immediate impact zone.
"The engineer wants to design to resist collapse," said Dr. Mlakar, the team leader. "We had a very positive example of the kinds of things that will do that in the Pentagon."
Several engineering experts said that a direct comparison with the collapse of the twin towers was fraught with difficulties. The towers were 110 stories high and held up with steel protected only by lightweight, spray-on fireproofing that was probably dislodged by the impacts of the planes.
But the engineers said that the differences themselves should help them understand which vulnerabilities were peculiar to the towers and which ones might be true of any building, no matter how it was constructed.
An understanding of certain older buildings around the perimeter of the trade center site, which were hit with flaming debris but remained standing, should also be advanced by the Pentagon findings, some of the engineers said.
Mr. Jester of the Pentagon said that even if the study is classified, its findings could probably be shared with officially sanctioned engineers working on projects like government or military installations. But a public document would almost certainly see wide distribution, finding its way onto the Internet, for example, Mr. Jester said. Then, he added, "it can be reviewed by anyone in the world."
Because the findings could likely be applied to a wide range of projects, however, many wonder where the line between military security and public safety should be drawn.
"I have conflicting feelings," said John Durrant, executive director of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. "We believe the findings would be of benefit to the profession. On the other hand, we are very sensitive to the need for national security."
----
20 terrorists handed over to U.S.
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
November 5, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021105-20209696.htm
Pakistani officials said yesterday they had handed over to the United States at least 20 members of al Qaeda, the same group reported earlier to include a son of Osama bin Laden.
The transfer of prisoners to the United States was made about two months ago, after Iran deported the men to Pakistan, according to two Pakistani officials who were reached by telephone in the capital, Islamabad.
The Pakistani officials said they were not able to confirm whether the group contained one of bin Laden's male offspring.
A U.S. official said he could not discuss "who the Pakistanis had turned over to us and how."
"We are very pleased with the level of cooperation we have with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and we will continue working with them," the official, who works at the U.S. State Department, said.
Later, he added that his guess was that if the Iranians had bin Laden's son, they would not have given him to the Pakistanis.
"They would hand him over to the Saudis because he is a Saudi national," the official said, adding, "It's just a thought."
On Sunday a government spokesman in Tehran confirmed a report published in the Financial Times that bin Laden's son was among the 20 al Qaeda suspects deported to what he described as a "neighboring country" two months ago.
"Since they were not holding ID cards, we repatriated them to the country they were coming from," said Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, the Iranian government spokesman, referring to a group of 20 persons detained in a border security operation in eastern Iran.
He said Iranian authorities later learned that bin Laden's son was among them but did not say how.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the Financial Times that a much larger group of people - 250 in all - suspected of having links with al Qaeda had been deported to their home countries.
Mr. Ramzanzadeh added to the confusion yesterday by contradicting his previous statements, saying that he, too, was not sure whether one of bin Laden's sons was in the group.
"Later we heard gossip that bin Laden's son was among them," he told the Iranian student news agency ISNA.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
In Bolivia, a river of failure, death
By Vanessa Arrington
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 5, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021105-58909600.htm
LA PAZ, Bolivia - The Choqueyapu River used to be the town's treasure, filled with the gold that five centuries ago attracted the Spaniards to this basin in the Andes mountains.
Precious metals are nowhere to be found near the Choqueyapu these days. Human feces, dead dogs and noxious chemicals fill its waters as the river winds through La Paz, bringing disease and overpowering odors to those unlucky enough to live near its banks.
"The Choqueyapu River is no longer a source of pride for La Paz," said Fernando Cajias, a historian. "It is now just a dead, dirty river that shows the failures of this city."
Not only is the river dead, but it's also deadly. In February a fierce rainstorm combined with inadequate drainage systems to swell the Choqueyapu out of its banks, sweeping away dozens of homes and drowning more than 60 persons.
The tragedy could have been prevented, city planners say. Officials have known for years about the flooding danger from a fast-flowing river that drops 2,000 feet from its source 14,000 feet above sea level to the city that lies in a sloped basin where hundreds of rivers meet.
Although the city turned stretches of the Choqueyapu into canals after a deluge in the 1930s, flooding is still common during the rainy season from late November to March.
A $100 million plan to improve flood controls was drawn up years ago, but as is often the case in Bolivia, South America's poorest nation, there was no money for it. The city is hoping for outside donations.
"We've always felt the importance of implementing the plan, but there simply haven't been the resources," said Guido Capra, a city councilman and engineer. "But there didn't have to be so many deaths [during this year´s flood]. This plan needs to be a priority now."
What is likely to take even longer to deal with is the contamination of the river - a tragedy in itself, said Waldo Vargas, the city's environmental director.
"This river is born out of a glacier," he said. "Its waters are impeccable. There are various categories of water, and this river starts with the highest."
But by the time the waters reach downtown La Paz, they have dropped from class A to class E, the filthiest, Mr. Vargas said.
The river barely stands a chance as it winds 25 miles through La Paz, encountering all sorts of contamination and pollution.
Mountain communities near the river's source muddy the water while extracting peat to sell to garden owners. Farther along people dig sand and rocks to sell for construction.
But the most serious trouble begins on the outskirts of the city, where construction workers regularly dump unwanted bricks or cement.
Then comes the capital's industrial zone, where textile factories let their chemicals drip into the river and slaughterhouses dispose of animal fat and blood.
One of the worst - and most unlikely - polluters is Aguas del Illimani, the company that provides water to La Paz's 800,000 residents. While purifying the water taken from the Choqueyapu, the company's machinery produces sludge that oozes back into the river.
At this point, the Choqueyapu flows underground, traveling through flood-control channels downtown. Even here the river is a garbage trough. Most apartment buildings above the channels have connected their sanitation systems to the waterway.
Mr. Vargas said that of the 500 tons of garbage produced in La Paz each day, at least one-fifth finds its way into the Choqueyapu.
"This is a result of a complete lack of education," Mr. Vargas said. "To most of the people living here, this river has always been dirty. They don't know what it's like to use a river for recreation instead of as an instrument for transporting garbage."
He has begun a pilot program along a remote section of the Choqueyapu that is intended to teach people about the dangers of polluting their own water.
The chemicals and garbage create a stench when the river leaves the tunnels of downtown and flows south, passing by a small community of tent-dwellers who bathe and wash clothes in the filthy river.
La Paz was originally located in the high plains of the Andes, but when the Spaniards discovered gold in the river in the 16th century, it was moved lower down, and the Choqueyapu became a social-class divider.
Indigenous people who cultivated potatoes - Choqueyapu means "where potatoes grow" in the Aymara language - were pushed to the west side of the river. The Spaniards built their houses and businesses on the east bank.
Today the class divider is elevation. La Paz lies 12,000 feet above sea level, and unlike in most cities, those with money prefer to live downhill, where it's warmer and there's more oxygen.
The poor, many of them indigenous people, live closer to the river's source, in the high Andes, where the air is thin and the weather harsh.
As the river descends, it passes the middle- and working-class districts in the center of La Paz, then the land occupied by La Paz's small wealthy sector at the bottom of the basin. But the rich build their homes away from the river.
Those fully at the mercy of the contamination are the rural people living farther south, who often suffer breathing problems and cholera, Mr. Vargas said.
Mainly farmers, they use the river water - now filled with chemicals and bacteria - to irrigate crops. Their fruits and vegetables go back to city markets and often cause stomach illnesses.
Although people like Mr. Vargas dream that the river will one day flow through the city crystal-clear, many are skeptical, given public apathy and the government's lack of emphasis on environmental issues.
"On a political level, the environment is not considered to be all that urgent," said engineer David Rada, a consultant to the government's environment department. "Building a school pays off a lot more politically than preserving natural resources."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Letter From an Israeli Jail
by YIGAL BRONNER,
The Nation
November 5, 2002
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021118&s=bronner20021105
Dear Friends,
I would like to share with you some of my thoughts as I pass the long hours peeling bags of onions, washing dozens of large oily pots, or when I am asked to explain myself to those around me, people who find it difficult to understand my motives. Why does a man of my age--married with two children--"need all this"? Why is it worth my while to refuse serving in the occupied territories?
Such questions have forced me to examine my actions from the perspective of the other prisoners. Here is a man, 36 years old, who is imprisoned with soldiers half his age. He is separated from his family, forbidden to take off his hat (even when sitting in his cell or while eating), to use a pillow or sheets, to wear a watch, to eat in the dining hall (rather, he eats on a folding table in the hallway near his cell, all the while behind bars) and to speak while working or eating. He is forced to work fourteen hours a day (in the kitchen or cleaning the bathrooms on the base), to stand at attention and yell "Attention!" every time an officer passes and to obey a long list of other commands and prohibitions, whose sole purpose is to humiliate him. Why would anybody in his right mind subject himself to this?
In order to answer the above question seriously, one has to recall the alternative, what it was I refused to do. There is indeed an effort to humiliate me through a variety of regulations. But I believe that humiliating another human being is more humiliating by far. To look, for example, into the eyes of a Palestinian at a checkpoint and prevent him/her from reaching work, school, or the hospital. To look into the eyes of the residents upon whom I have just imposed another day of curfew--a curfew that seems to have no beginning and no end. To look into the eyes of a farmer whose orchards I am ordered to uproot--or in the eyes of a family whose house I am about to demolish. And to see my reflection in the eyes of these people: a despised soldier in front of trembling people who beg for his mercy. This, to me, is much, much more humiliating.
There are, of course, those who claim that the presence of people like me in the occupied territories can make the occupation more humane. Indeed, it cannot be denied that one can uproot an orchard politely, demolish a house quietly and in a civilized manner, and perhaps even expel an entire population from their village--as has been done in South Hebron--in an organized and less violent way. It is possible, it seems, to calmly dispossess and oppress an entire people. The question, however, still arises: Can a person who wishes to retain his humanity carry out such actions?
For me, the answer is clear: No.
So when we, the refuseniks, declare that there are certain things that a just person simply does not do, we do not mean working in a kitchen, since such work is dignified. We mean actions that humiliate and deny the humanity of the Other. There is no doubt that it is better to sit in jail, isolated, wearing a hat, silent, washing dishes and peeling onions.
I prefer--by far--to shed tears when I cut bag after bag of onions over the tears that arise whenever I conjure up images of the occupation.
Sincerely, Yigal
----
Top Iranian Dissident Pardoned
November 5, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nouri.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pardoned the country's top jailed dissident, boosting the troubled reformist movement at a critical moment in its power struggle with conservative rivals.
Abdollah Nouri, a former vice-president and close ally of President Mohammad Khatami, is seen as a potential leader of Iran's reformists and is second only to Khatami in popularity.
Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, granted the pardon late Monday in response to the sudden death of Nouri's brother, a reformist parliamentarian killed in a car crash last week, a close aide to Nouri told Reuters.
The decision released Nouri two years early from a five-year prison term for political crimes.
Khatami is struggling to break a conservative grip on power which has hamstrung his efforts to create a more open and free society in the Islamic Republic of 65 million people.
``(Nouri's) release will strengthen the reform movement and could break the political deadlock,'' political analyst Saeed Leylaz told Reuters.
Tens of thousands joined Nouri Tuesday in his hometown of Isfahan in southern Iran at a commemorative service for his brother, witnesses said.
``It's really crowded. In Isfahan, they love Nouri,'' Hamed, a local resident, told Reuters by telephone.
A mid-ranking cleric seen by many as a potential successor to Khatami, Nouri is, however, currently banned from running for office due to his conviction.
He was sentenced to five years in jail in 1999 for a range of crimes including propaganda against the Islamic state and insulting the founding father of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
During the televised trial, which transfixed the country, he openly discussed taboo subjects such as the possibility of moderating Iran's uncompromising stance on Israel, saying: ``We shouldn't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians.''
POPULARITY GREW IN JAIL
``Nouri's imprisonment made him more popular among officials and the people,'' Leylaz said. ``Like other conservative methods, it backfired.''
``I would say that he is the only one in this country who is like Khomeini. He has his charisma, he's brave like him, he understands society,'' he added.
While elated by the unexpected news of Nouri's release, senior reformists cautioned against over-optimism.
``I'm worried because when people see him as the potential leader of the reform movement it could cause disappointment if he's not ready to take this responsibility,'' a high-ranking government official said.
A close family friend told Reuters Nouri, 54, was devastated by his brother's death. ``He was like a son for him,'' he said.
The release of such a prominent reformist figure comes as Khatami is attempting to moderate the powerful influence of mostly unelected conservative-controlled institutions.
Elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2001 with huge majorities and backed by the reformist-dominated parliament, Khatami has been thwarted at almost every turn by conservatives at the heart of the state apparatus. Monday, prominent reformist Abbas Abdi became the latest in a long line of outspoken dissidents to be jailed by hard-line courts in the last 2 1/2 years. Scores of liberal newspapers have also been banned.
With frustration among the electorate growing, Khatami has introduced two reform bills which would curb the power of the judiciary and the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog which vets all legislation and election candidates.
The bills have met stiff opposition from conservatives, who described them as a bid for ``dictatorial power.''
Leading reformists have called on Khatami to resign if, as expected, the Guardian Council blocks the two bills.
With tensions between the rival camps building, Khamenei, who has the last word on all matters of state, Monday sought to calm the troubled political waters.
``Everyone's responsibility is clear... Don't fight each other. Keep the unity,'' he said.
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