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NUCLEAR
Submarine Runs Aground Off Scotland
A Baghdad Diary
'PAKISTAN' Country in Turmoil, and It Has the Bomb
N.Korea Sees 1994 Pact 'Hanging by a Thread'
N. Korea Hints at Missile Test
Negotiating With Nuclear North Korea
North Korea Says It May Restart Missile Tests After Talks Fail
Two Koreas Talk Business Despite Nuclear Dispute
Ukraine Fails to Reassure West on Iraq
Feds, State Address Ordnance, Explosives at Idaho Lab
U.S. Presents Iraq Draft, but France Seeks to Up Ante
Cheerleaders, Put On Your Gas Masks
MILITARY
Disarmament Begins in Northern Afghanistan
Afghan Women Die Giving Birth at Staggering Rate
U.S. urged to develop nonlethal arms
Chem, Bio Weapons Experts Urge History Lessons
Defense Stocks Rise on Republican gains
Defense Stocks Rise on Republican gains
Report Urges U.S. to Increase Its Efforts on Nonlethal Weapons
Iran Reportedly Pledges Help in Ousting Qaeda From North Iraq
Weapons inspectors urged to locate 'human capital'
Iraqi strongman 'not a lunatic'
U.N. allowed Iraqi purchase of agent usable for weapons
Sharon dissolves parliament
Netanyahu Approved as Israel's Foreign Minister
Missile Strike Carried Out With Yemeni Cooperation
U.S. Embassy in Yemen Closed
US to write off Pak's $1 bn debt, says official
Pakistani Envoy:
Report: Yemen Killing Based on Bush Rules
Yemen Killing Based on Rules Set Out by Bush
U.S.: Cuban U.N. Diplomats Spying
U.S. uses unmanned plane against terrorism
Army Laser Shoots Down Artillery Shell
U.S. Would Use Drones to Attack Iraqi Targets
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
RUMSFELD WANTS EDUCATORS TO SUPPORT WAR ON TERROR
Justices to Rule on 'Three Strikes' Law
Justices cool to challenge of 3 strikes law
Court Reinstates Chicago Suit Against Gunmakers
U.S. Port Security Plan Irks Europeans
Feds Bust Colombians in Drugs-For-Guns Deal
Arrests Made in Alleged Drug-for-Weapons Scheme
Three tied to al Qaeda arrested
ENERGY AND OTHER
Arctic Town to Get Offbeat Tidal Energy
Dutch government unveils green energy production subsidy
Herpes Virus Suspected As Cancer Risk Factor
ACTIVISTS
Antiwar views split along generation gap
Chinese Dissidents Urge Reforms
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Submarine Runs Aground Off Scotland
November 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Submarine-Accident.html
LONDON (AP) -- A British nuclear submarine ran aground on Wednesday while taking part in a military exercise, an official said.
The HMS Trafalgar managed to get free after the incident and was traveling toward a naval base under its own power to have its damage assessed, a Ministry of Defense spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The cause of the accident was not known.
The submarine was taking part in a training exercise. One of the Trafalgar's 130 crewmen suffered a broken nose and another strained his back, the official said.
The vessel took part in the first wave of U.S.-led attacks against Afghanistan in October 2001. The main role of such ``hunter-killer'' subs is to seek out and destroy ships or other submarines.
-------- depleted uranium
A Baghdad Diary
By Saul Landau Guest Contributor
11/6/2002
The Black World Today
Comments and suggestions mailto:editors@tbwt.net
http://athena.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=1897
We share the one hour Gulf Falcon Air 747 flight from Damascus to Bagdad with dozens of Iranian women pilgrims who used knife sharpened elbows to get first in line through Syrian immigration and then onto the plane. "Saddam Hussein would be better off using them than weapons of mass destruction," said New Yorker writer Milton Viorst, a member of our delegation.
The Mission to Baghdad is led by Congressman Nick Rahall, Democrat from West Virginia and former Senator James Abourezk from South Dakota, both of Lebanese descent. They intend to try to convince Iraqi leaders to readmit UN weapons inspectors and thus destroy President Bush's pretext to make war.
As we arrive at the Baghdad airport and get ushered to the VIP lounge past the scowling Iranian pilgrims, the Iraqi officials eagerly inform us that they have arranged for us to inspect supposed sites of weapons of mass destruction. The Congressman tactfully assures them that we wouldn't know a soap-making factory from an anthrax production plant. So, we avoided that pitfall. The Iraqi handlers look pained. I feel little sympathy for them.
I rely on Scott Ritter a former Marine Corps officer and also a Republican. He belonged to UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission, created in 1991 to inspect Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. Ritter claims that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction and was "qualitatively disarmed" disarmed when the team left in 1998 when the team left in 1998 just days before Clinton renewed bombing raids during Operation Desert Fox.
As we saw in the street and in the suk, Iraq is a Third World country. It's military prowess, greatly exaggerated by Bush the First, has now fallen to less than a fifth of what it was during the gulf war. Iraq has no navy and a very small air force. How it could pose a threat to US national security has not been explained by Bush not even in his September 12 UN speech to the General Assembly. Well, we all know Saddam is evil and therefore, I suppose, capable of anything and besides "I don't go to show you no stinkin' facts."
At 2 AM, I step on George Bush's face as I enter the Al Rasheed Hotel. Yes, his face has been inlaid in mosaic tile on the hotel entrance floor thus making it hard not step on the face of "George Bush: The War Criminal."
Welcome, the smiling doorman says. The bellhops who carried my bag a few feet demand tips. I offered a dollar for the guy. One of them snarls nastily. I gave him six. I go downstairs to the cafeteria. Welcome, says the manager, welcome, says the waiter.
I'm really suspicious when I go the men's room and get a huge, grinning "welcome" from the attendant there. He doesn't follow me to the latrine. If I tip at the rate I started, I'll be broke before we leave. We finish snacking at 4:00a.m. I'm too exited to sleep. I look out the window at the lights of Baghdad and recall scenes from the Gulf War as I watched flashes from Peter Arnett's window while he described US bombing and missile attacks.
At 9 tk, the Minister of Health, a former cardiologist, now clad in his spinach green government uniform, tells us how the UN sanctions interfere with the integrity of the Iraqi health system. "It's not the UN," he says, "it's the American delegate to the Committee overseeing the sanctions and sometimes the British delegate who vetoes our medical purchases."
He explains with a grim look on his middle aged face how by refusing one part of the cocktail of chemotherapy drugs you render the whole treatment null and by omitting one part of a surgical hookup you invalidate the whole procedure.
As if to prove his point, we're whisked to a nearby hospital where we see small children suffering from leukemia. I see Abourezk trying to cover a tear as he observes blood oozing from the mouth of a five year old girl who lived too close to fragments of a bomb dropped by the US air force made of depleted uranium. At least that's what the pediatrician told us.
"My daughter's that age," Abourezk says. I recall that former Secretary of State Madeline Albright when asked in a May 11, 1996 interview with 60 minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl whether the over 500,000 Iraqi children killed by the sanctions was worth it, Albright said, "It's a hard choice, but I think, we, think, it's worth it."
The children's mothers would probably disagree as they sit beside their beds, fanning their cancer-ridden offspring. They implore us to help them get medicine. We stare. With IVs stuck in their toothpick like arms, the emaciated kids cry or whine softly. After seeing six of them, the nausea hits me -- and I worked for years in a hospital.
The doctors drone on as did the Health Minister about the thousands of bombs the American planes dropped during the war and afterwards in the no-fly zones, areas arbitrarily created by the US and UK. The Pentagon claims that Iraqi fire anti-aircraft at the US bombers flying over Iraqi territory and therefore forced to fire missiles at or bomb the installations. Later, kids play near the areas. The worried mothers dressed in black, except for a Kurdish woman in a long grey dress, plead with us for help -- medicine. Congressman Rahall, like Abourezk, shows emotion on his face.
It's over 100 degrees outside as our Mercedes limousines push their way through the busy and chaotic Baghdad auto and bus traffic. Exhaust fumes pour out and mix into the dusty heat. We visit a turbulent suk, in which peddlers and hawkers offer local crafts, canned and fresh -- well, sort of --food, plastic toys, electronic gadgets, CDs, video cassettes of X-rated movies and regular Hollywood fare. The women wear the traditional long black dresses, with the black shawl covering their heads, not their faces.. A few wear only the hijab and occasionally I spy a woman wearing western garb. About half the men sport the dishdashas, the long white robe, with or without the kefiya on their heads.
They push their wares in our faces, at very low prices. Harold, a member of the group, stops at a rug merchant and begins the bargaining process in English. I ask him how he feels about the war. He smiles. "Why you want war? What good is from war? We have plenty of war. We know bombs. We know destruction. What we do to you?" Harold nods approval and the rug merchant immediately resumes his sales pitch. He makes a sale.
Other people in the area grow curious, crowd around us. Our nervous handlers, push them away, usually kids and teenagers whom they feel might be threatening and finally say "enough" and herd us back into the Mercedes.
We're set to see Tariq Aziz next, the English speaking Deputy Prime Minister, former Foreign Minister. Slightly built, with neatly combed gray hair and a trimmed mustache, he looks out at us through thick eyeglasses. Rahall and Abourezk held a private meeting with him while the rest of the delegation stared at Saddam Hussein portraits in the waiting area. In three hours, I'd already counted eight different Saddam poses. I asked our foreign ministry guide how many there were. He glared at me scornfully. I said I liked the one of Saddam in the black derby holding a rifle in the air. He snorted.
It becomes clear very quickly that this secular dictatorship has nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism. You don't need Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the CIA's counterterrorism office, to assure you that Iraq has no links to al-Qaeda. To rev up the war engines, the White House had been desperately pushing a bogus Prague meeting between September 11 villain Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer. One of our foreign ministry guides assures me with murderous intensity that an Al-Qaeda operative in Baghdad wouldn't last five minutes.
Bin Laden, I'm reminded by our guide, offered to mobilize 100,000 fundamentalists to resist the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait so the Americans wouldn't have to come in. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iraq has no religious police. The more myths dispelled about Iraq, the better, I think. I've seen women with pony tails in tight slacks walking next to those in long black robes.
Deputy Prime Minister and a Christina to boot, Tariq Aziz emerged with Rahall and Abourezk, and then held forth at length while we asked questions and argued. Rahall pressed the case for readmitting the inspectors. Aziz described them as spies, a conclusion backed by Scott Ritter. "And we didn't kick them out," he reminded us. They left two days before Clinton bombed us in 1998.
"We're doomed if we do let them in," Aziz said, wringing his hands, "and doomed if we don't." He shook his head. We shook our heads. This avuncular looking Christian high in the Cabinet of a Muslim country exudes a kind of frustrated fatalism.
He belongs to the fraternity of Baath Party members who created the nationalist regime that overthrew the Revolutionary Command Council led by President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr on July 16, 1979. Saddam has ruled since then as the President and chief ideologue of Ba'thism, a kind of mélange of anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist doctrine. It stressed true Arab independence from all forms of colonialism. Saddam's Iraq represents that last disobedient obstacle to US domination of the Middle East. I wonder if that's how the Iraqi people perceive Saddam? He may be a tough, cruel bully, but he's a kind of protector from the American bully?
In addition to his own palaces, he has led his people to build a modern country, with a solid infrastructure -- until the United States et al bombed much of it into stone and sand. In the ensuing twelve years since the end of the Gulf War, the regime has rebuilt the highways and hospitals, the water and sewage treatment plants and pushed the economy into forward motion. And now, says Aziz, we who have done nothing to provoke or threaten the United States are about to be attacked again.
"Why?" The question echoes from the lips of every street person we ask. "Why you want war?" asks a rug merchant. "Peace," he screams into our camera.
As soon as people discern that we're Americans, they use their poor English to plead, beg, demand, exhort us to not bomb them again -- as if we had any more control over our government than they have over theirs.
That night we meet "intellectuals," a group of English speaking men and women who discuss with us "the situation." Rahall and Abourezk stoically receive an anti-Zionist rant from a former Iraqi diplomat, a retired general, an English lit teacher and several other party-liners. The Zionist lobby runs America and the entire anti-Iraq scheme was cooked up in Israel.
The next morning we visit a bomb shelter that took two direct hits in the 1991 Gulf War. The government has converted the place where 408 women and children turned from flesh to ashes into a museum. The guide, a beautiful and bitter women named tk from the neighborhood tells us that "the Pentagon discovered its mistake and four days after killing it said sorry. Too late."
Inside, the photos of many of the deceased line the walls. Wires and bent iron rods that once reinforced the concrete dangle from the ceiling. "This, tk says, "is what war does." She points to what looks like the outline of a woman etched into the wall. The bomb literally burned her into the side of the shelter so that her image, with her clothes remains embedded there.
That night I had a nightmare that I had agreed to help kill my daughter. At first, I watched as some men manipulated a machine to deprive her of breath and then I actually participated in cutting off her oxygen supply. She stared at me in disbelief that I could be an accomplice to her murder. That ended my short sleep for the night.
The next day, as I still shook from both the nightmare and the appalling scene of the bombed shelter that I felt had produced it, we begin our feast of mosques. We had already seen tk, an enormous gold painted structure in south Baghdad. Men and women enter the mosque like they do a subway station, only they kiss the door before entering or utter a brief payer.
Inside, whole families eat lunch or take naps, "feeling their spiritual roots," the Imam tells us. Thousands of people enter and leave or remain inside. I counted. Outside the mosque on the busy street I see fast food places but no McDonald's or KFC as they apparently have built in the Holy City of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Across the street, a dark souk lures me. Inside, I feel like a character in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Men thrust object in my face, screaming in Arabic. I assume they want me to buy their wares. It doesn't sound like "Yankee Go Home." My chauffeur-body guard gets worried and yanks me out.
In the late after noon we rent a small boat for a ride on the Tigris River, one of the waterways along with the Euphrates that produced the Fertile Crescent, the source of agricultural wealth for Mesopotamia (land between two rivers) The names now take on meaning. During the Gulf War, raw sewage poured into the Tigris, polluting it. Like most of the damage caused by the bombing, the sewage treatment plant has been mostly restored by Saddam's government. So he kills a few hundred opponents each month, I say to myself, at least he fixes the infrastructure. I try to forget about the thousands of communists he whacked on his road to absolute power in the 1970s.
Was he different than King Nebuchadnezzar or Hamarabi who also offed opponents they felt were unreasonable. Hey, if they didn't, the opponents would kill them. That's been a political axiom in the region for a few thousand years.
As we stare at the acres of reconstructed palace of King N the II, built in 600 something BC, I begin to understand tradition. In the United States a fifty year old house gets landmarked. Anthropology Professor James Jennings, another member of the delegation accompanies us and explains where the hanging gardens once amazed all visitors, how the kings designed their structures, how they made war alongside of giving law, like Hamarabi. He reads inscriptions still visible on the original bricks in ancient languages that predated Hebrew and Arabic.
Kids dive into the river for a swim in the 105 degree heat. A man in a long white robe casts his net. A pesky jet skier revs his engine alongside the boat. You find showoffs everywhere. At dinner, on the banks of this Biblical river we watched a boatload of teenagers rocking to hot Middle Eastern rhythms. Other boats pulled alongside and people jumped on board to join the party. The restaurant goers smiled their approval. Hardly the Taliban here I thought.
Next day we took the road south to Babylon. Once we get outside of Baghdad, I see women dressed only in the traditional black robes that cover their heads, men dressed in the dishdashas, white robes, with Kefiyas on their heads. In the mosques at Kerbala and Najuf, cities inside cities, I see whole families eating their lunch on the mosque marble floor, or sleeping on makeshift blankets. Men and women kiss the door of the Kerbala mosque and men pray as they leave.
Inside, the men put their heads to the ground and rise, five times, in prayer. The Mosque is painted gold, its inlaid wall tiles and marble floor bespeak of the wealth and power of the religion here,
We drive back through Baghdad and its four plus million people and hundreds of thousands of cars -- not quite LA -- and onto the four lane highway south to Babylon. I had remarked earlier to Warren Strobel, the Knight Ridder reporter, that I had seen no preparations for war on the streets, no mass mobilizations, no parades of military vehicles; not even a demonstration. "Yes," he agreed, "but how do you prepare for The Leviathon."
We have a session with Sa'doun Hammadi, the Speaker of the Parliament. A University of Wisconsin PhD in economics, the now frail scholarly looking man repeats Aziz' arguments, offers numbers and facts on the perfidy of the weapons inspectors (details tk) and finally responds to a question of what Iraq will do. "I'll fight," he declares," his voice in full throttle barely rising above a whisper. Hardly more of a threat to the Pentagon than the sharp elbowed Pilgrims, Sa'doun nevertheless reflects the anger of even the most reflective of officials. Yes, how do you prepare to meet The Colossus?
In five days I have seen the palace of King Nebadchudnazer, the ancient Mosques in Kerbala and Najef and the fascist-like modern government buildings in Baghdad. George W. Bush, who probably can't count the number of days since he last visited a library, prepares to authorize bombing of a place where libraries existed while western Europeans were throwing rocks at each other.
The last day in Baghdad. A woman with dyed blond hair and tight pants runs a shop. She tells me she has just returned from a vacation with her Algerian live-in boyfriend to Barbados and Martinique and "I could hardly wait to return home. I love it here."
I ask her how she will respond if war comes. She shrugs. "I am Christian," she declares, "and I love my president because he is strong and protects us. Without a strong president like him, we would be persecuted. All of Iraq would be chaos, disorder. I stand with him against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Bin-Laden and George Bush." Her Algerian boyfriend grins in agreement.
The despotic Saddam, like the late Tito in Yugoslavia, simply does not permit ethnic or religious friction in public. What I have seen of Iraq confirms that it is a deeply religious country, predominantly Muslim -- both Shia and Sunni -- with a secular society and government.
The dozens of people with whom I spoke said the same thing: "Why?" They refer to what they see as Bush's intention of killing innocent Iraqis and reducing their developed infrastructure to rubble as his father had done almost twelve years before. To a person, they cannot see how Iraq has harmed or threatens the United States. Indeed, they point out that none of their neighbors complains about them as a threat. So, for lack of another explanation, they fall back on the Zionist conspiracy. They have not read Bush's naked imperial plan to achieve full spectral dominance.
We say goodbye to the friendly and tip-crazy hotel staff and to our guides and chauffeurs and gives sighs of relief that the sharp elbowed Iranians are nowhere to be seen. As we watch from the plane to Damascus as see the lights of Bagdad, I wonder how many September 11ths the people of that city and those of other Iraqi "targets" will suffer before Gulf War II finally winds down and Iraq and its people are thrown into chaos and disorder.
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-------- india / pakistan
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
'PAKISTAN' Country in Turmoil, and It Has the Bomb
November 6, 2002
New York Times
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/books/06BERN.html
In 1987, while touring the remote, feudal, strategically situated Pakistani province Baluchistan, Mary Anne Weaver had dinner with Akbar Khan Bugti, the nawab-sardar, or traditional chief, of the Bugti tribe. The dinner was in Quetta, the provincial capital, where one of the two foreign diplomatic missions belonged to Iran, and Ms. Weaver asked the sardar what that particular consulate was doing there.
" `Buying Stingers,' he answered matter-of-factly," Ms. Weaver writes, referring to the hand-held heat-seeking missiles that were devastatingly effective against Soviet helicopters during the Afghan war. "He then told me that it was in Quetta in June of 1987 that the mujahedeen had sold their first large consignment of Stingers to Iran."
That is a fascinating and important revelation. It illustrates the missing-arms aspect of the larger phenomenon that came to be called "blowback," the ways in which American money and guns for the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 generated evil winds that blew back on the United States. The anecdote also illustrates the knowing and sophisticated quality of Ms. Weaver's new book, "Pakistan." A reporter for The New Yorker, Ms. Weaver has spent much of the last two decades roaming the Islamic world, and her book shows the fruits of those journeys.
"Pakistan" is a valuable and information-rich, if also ramshackle and meandering, portrait of a poor and deeply divided country that, she says, could very well become the next of the world's failed states - like Egypt, the subject of her previous book. The main thrust of Ms. Weaver's account, as her subtitle suggests, is to illustrate the ways in which Pakistan has been changed by the decade-long war fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the rise of the militant Islamic groups fighting jihad, or holy war, Osama bin Laden's Qaeda and the recently deposed Afghan Taliban among them. Ms. Weaver's findings are not surprising, but they are worthy of attention because of Pakistan's special circumstances.
Like Egypt, Pakistan is poor, politically divided and ruled by an authoritarian government; like Egypt also, it contains an Islamic fundamentalist movement that has become more menacing and powerful since the Afghan jihad. But unlike Egypt, Pakistan is engaged in a bitter conflict with a neighbor, India, and it possesses nuclear weapons. In other words, Pakistan is a poverty-racked, deeply divided country where drug and arms cultures are rife, where central government control is diminished by a chaos of tribal loyalties, where war with India threatens constantly and where ferociously anti-Western and anti-American Islamists are vying for political power - and it has the bomb.
Ms. Weaver illustrates this point tellingly, even if her book is at times like one of those drafty museums you find in South Asia, containing plenty of interesting treasures but badly organized and sometimes poorly lighted, a place that needs a tidier and more selective curator. She begins, strangely, with a seemingly hasty introduction that has some careless mistakes. She says, for example, that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, "passed quietly . . . in and out of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the jihad years," when there is no information indicating that Atta went either to Pakistan or Afghanistan before 1999.
In this same introduction, Ms. Weaver gets the takeoff time of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 wrong - it was 7:59 a.m., not 7:45 - as well as the amount of time that passed before it hit the north tower of the World Trade Center: 47 minutes, not 1 hour 3 minutes.
These are minor factual errors, and Ms. Weaver, an experienced and normally reliable reporter, quickly regains her footing as her examination of Pakistan gets going in earnest. But her book has no footnotes, and some factual assertions are unsubstantiated: for example that more than 7,000 madrasas, or Islamic schools, "quickly sprang up" during the Afghan jihad years in Baluchistan alone. Other sources, including the Pakistani newspaper Jang (as reported by Stephen Schwartz in his book "The Two Faces of Islam") indicate that as of 2000 there were 6,761 madrasas in all of Pakistan. Clearly there are a lot of schools, and they are the centers for recruiting young men to the fundamentalist cause, but you want to have confidence that your author is getting the small things right as well as the big.
The biggest thing, and Ms. Weaver does get it right, is that Pakistan is an afflicted, complex, utterly fascinating country, and despite her wobbly beginning, she provides an intimate portrait of the place. Over the years, she has talked to everybody from the current leader, Pervez Musharraf, to former leaders like Zia al-Haq and Benazir Bhutto, and she offers compelling portraits of all three, along with accounts of their eventful careers.
She fills in the deeper background of the terrible conflict with India over Kashmir. She details the rise of Islamic militancy, at one point visiting the al-Haqqania madrasa, one of the biggest of the Islamic schools and one of the closest to Afghan's now deposed ruler, Mullah Omar.
"What do you think of Osama bin Laden?" Ms. Weaver asked Sami ul-Haq, the madrasa's leader.
"What do you think of Abraham Lincoln?" he replied.
Along the way, and very disturbingly, Ms. Weaver unfavorably analyzes American policy toward Pakistan, finding it inconsistent, careless, heedless at times and a major contributor to the rise in popularity of the very Islamist forces that pose the most direct threat to American interests.
Despite its faults, Ms. Weaver's book is full of acute observation, telling detail and clear insight. Given that Pakistan, as it faces its uncertain future, is going to become more important, not less, we can be thankful that Ms. Weaver has been paying close attention.
-------- korea
N.Korea Sees 1994 Pact 'Hanging by a Thread'
Reuters
Wednesday, November 6, 2002
By Paul Eckert
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18815-2002Nov6?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea sees its 1994 nuclear pact with the United States as "hanging by a thread" but not yet void after the revelation of a new arms program, former U.S. envoy to Seoul Donald Gregg said on Wednesday.
North Korea made a shock admission to the United States last month that it was enriching uranium to support a nuclear weapons program, in breach of the 1994 Agreed Framework that had defused an earlier nuclear crisis with the communist state.
North Korea had also sown confusion about the status of the pact, leading the United States to say that it believed Pyongyang's assertions the agreement was void. But Washington said it was interested in retaining some elements of the accord while it worked to pre-empt a crisis.
Gregg told reporters in Seoul that during a private trip to Pyongyang, his entourage asked North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju how the North's admission to running a nuclear program had affected the Agreed Framework.
"Kang's response was it is hanging by a thread, meaning that it was in a very tenuous state, but that the North Koreans were still supporting it," Gregg said at a news conference.
Kang was the North Korean official who admitted to U.S. envoy James Kelly on October 4 that Pyongyang had a covert arms program, a development that alarmed the North's neighbors and galvanized U.S. opponents of the Agreed Framework.
NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY
The pact obliged North Korea to freeze a suspected nuclear arms program using plutonium in exchange for fuel and safer atomic reactors funded and built by Washington and its allies.
On Wednesday the European Union's top energy official said the bloc was considering what to do about its funding for North Korean atomic power plants in the wake of the revelations.
"We must work in concert with our friends and allies in persuading North Korea to honor its commitments in terms of non-proliferation," Energy Commissioner Loyola De Palacio told the European Parliament.
Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, told the PBS television network on Tuesday there now appeared to be little support in Congress for continuing fuel oil shipments to North Korea.
Gregg said that in more than nine hours of talks with senior officials during his November 2-5 stay in Pyongyang, his hosts made it clear that "they truly fear a U.S. attack" in the wake of tough rhetoric by American officials.
"I think they want the U.S. to give them some assurance that we don't want to blow them out of the water," he said.
Gregg said the North Koreans repeatedly referred to their October 25 statement demanding that Washington sign a non-aggression treaty with Pyongyang to resolve the dispute.
Kelly told PBS the current situation with North Korea was "not an unsolvable problem, but it is clearly one that there's really nothing to negotiate, at least at this time."
KELLY RETURNING TO REGION
The State Department announced on Wednesday Kelly would return to the region on Thursday to visit Tokyo on Nov. 9 and 10, Seoul from Nov. 10 to 12 and Beijing on Nov. 12 and 13.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Kelly's discussions "will continue our ongoing consultations on matters related to the Korean Peninsula."
The North Koreans were coy about details of the highly enriched uranium program for weapons that was disclosed last month, specifically on when they started the scheme and whether they actually had nuclear bombs, Gregg said.
"The North Koreans said they adopted an NCND -- neither confirm nor deny -- policy toward the highly enriched uranium issue, although some comments that we heard were very close to admission that they had such a program under way," he said.
Gregg is a former intelligence agent who served as U.S. ambassador in Seoul under the first George Bush administration and now heads the New York-based Korea Society. He said he was invited to North Korea before the nuclear dispute had flared up.
The nuclear issue also topped the agenda of visiting U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who held talks on Wednesday with South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jun and Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong.
REFUGEES RETURN
In a fresh reminder of continued economic misery in the North, 15 North Korean asylum seekers flew into Seoul on Thursday from Manila after having sought refuge at South Korea's embassy in Beijing.
The 15 are the latest of nearly 100 North Koreans to defect to the South this year after taking refuge in foreign missions in China. A total of 900 North Korean refugees have reached South Korea this year, up from 586 in 2001.
Seoul has said it would increase funds for resettling the refugees.
Public criticism in light of the nuclear issue had prompted the government to trim the 2003 aid budget for North Korea by about $155 million, a cut of roughly 40 percent.
South Korea Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said on Wednesday that Seoul would maintain exchanges with the North.
But he added: "If North Korea truly wants reconciliation with the South, the only course is to solve the nuclear question."
(US$1 = 1225.0 Won)
----
N. Korea Hints at Missile Test
Threat Aimed at Jump-Starting Talks With Japan
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 6, 2002; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10432-2002Nov5?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 government.
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 in 1998 unnerved Japan and other Asian neighbors. In 1999, North Korea pledged to maintain 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 further talks until North Korea dismantled its program to enrich uranium. It has urged other nations to put similar pressure on Pyongyang, and talks between North Korea and Japan foundered last week, principally on the nuclear issue.
Analysts had predicted North Korea would respond by increasing threats. Some experts said they expected the government to stage a missile test or move spent reactor fuel away from international supervision to increase pressure on the United States to negotiate.
In other commentary, the Korean Central News Agency repeated the country's fear that the United States intends to invade North Korea and called again for a "non-aggression treaty" between the countries. 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, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan noted that his Sept. 17 summit agreement with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, included a pledge that North Korea continue the missile test moratorium after 2003, when it had been scheduled to expire. "I do not believe North Korea will trample on the fundamental spirit of our Pyongyang agreement," Koizumi said at a news conference in the Cambodian capital, 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 U.S. preference for isolating Pyongyang.
In an interview here today, Japan's chief negotiator in the talks with North Korea, acknowledged there were limits to Japan's role in easing the confrontation. "The talks cannot resolve the issue between [North Korea] and the United States," said Katsunari Suzuki . "To resolve those issues, there have to be bilateral talks" between Washington and Pyongyang.
Suzuki also said Japan did 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, had been renounced by North Korea.
Both sides have accused the other of breaking the pact.
"Neither party has said it is nullified," Suzuki insisted. "The United States certainly did not say that clearly. [North Korea] may have murmured it, but didn't say that clearly. Our position is to maintain the Agreed Framework as long as possible." He added that Japan was "strongly urging" the United States, North Korea and South Korea "that unless we find some better alternative, it's very risky for all of us to throw the Agreed Framework away."
----
Negotiating With Nuclear North Korea
By Anthony Lake and Robert Gallucci
Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10405-2002Nov5?language=printer
Why did North Korea make its bald admission that it has a secret nuclear weapons program? The experts don't know -- or understand well enough for us to place our policy bets on only one theory.
But while the North Korean regime is as inscrutable as it is unpredictable, there is no reason that we should also misunderstand the history of American policy on North Korea -- as a number of recent commentators writing on these pages have done. They have promoted myths about the Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994.
In 1993, as since, it was the judgment of our intelligence agencies that North Korea likely had one or possibly two nuclear weapons, manufactured from plutonium produced some years earlier. President Clinton therefore decided that it was vital not to allow the North to produce more plutonium. This we did. The Agreed Framework we negotiated secured the spent fuel they held in storage (enough plutonium for five nuclear weapons), and all other plutonium-producing facilities were frozen under inspection. Had these facilities been allowed to become operational, North Korea would by now be producing enough plutonium for 30 nuclear weapons each year, a capacity far greater than, by most estimates, those of India, Pakistan and Israel combined. This has been greatly in our interest.
In return, the Clinton and Bush administrations and other governments have been supplying North Korea with heavy fuel oil. We also promised, but have not yet been bound to deliver, light-water nuclear reactors.
Now Pyongyang has revealed that it more recently initiated a dangerous, secret uranium enrichment program. It is true that the Agreed Framework did not create a new, comprehensive inspection regime that could have prevented this. We would have to rely on our own intelligence in this regard. But this would have been the case without the agreement. And the deal did at least give us new leverage. In 1999 we used the agreement to gain access to a suspicious site identified by intelligence.
Simply put, the Agreed Framework was not based on trust. It was designed to leave us in a better position no matter what the North did. And so we are.
Since the agreement was violated by the North Koreans, critics argue that it was the product of a capitulation by the Clinton administration, that we offered Pyongyang only carrots while brandishing no sticks. James A. Baker III, writing in The Post on Oct. 23 [op-ed], claimed that Washington folded after North Korea threatened to turn the capital of South Korea into "a sea of fire." This simply is not true. In fact, the "sea of fire" threat came in March 1994 as a reaction to our deadly serious plans for sanctioning the regime over its nuclear facilities and as we were stationing Patriot missiles in the South. As the crisis became more heated, we built up our military forces in the region and reviewed in great detail the Pentagon's plans for a winnable but tremendously destructive war.
Thereafter, a number of books and articles argued that the agreement was reached despite, rather than because of, the pressure of threatened sanctions and American military preparations. Their prescription of only carrots was as wrong as those who now argue for all sticks and no negotiations.
It is time to step back, take a deep collective breath and design a strategy that is built around both. The choices in 1994 were the same four we have today: We could launch a military strike against the identified nuclear facilities; we could refuse negotiations and go to the United Nations for sanctions to isolate and contain the North's nuclear program; we could essentially accept the new nuclear weapons status of North Korea and try to contain the damage to international nonproliferation efforts, as well as to our alliances with South Korea and Japan; or we could negotiate with the North to stop the nuclear weapons program that creates the crisis.
The consequences for South Korea of the first option, a preemptive strike, make it, for almost all commentators, and apparently for the Bush administration, at best an option of last resort. The second, sanctions alone and no talks, the one favored by former secretary Baker, would be tantamount, in practice, to the third: acceptance of the North Korean program. Nobody in 1994, and probably few today, expect international sanctions alone to stop a North Korean nuclear weapons program. The Chinese, and perhaps others, would provide enough aid to prevent sanctions from starving the North into submission.
Using the threat of sanctions and isolation can, however, force the North to see the wisdom of a negotiated halt. That was the course chosen by President Clinton, and it may well be the one President Bush is settling on as well. For this course of action to be most effective, though, a powerful military reaction to any North Korean provocation should be on the table, too, as was the case in 1994, while also reserving the possibility of a preemptive military strike.
In short, we should be prepared to go to the table with the North, as we were in 1994, to use a combination of sanctions and rewards to stop its new nuclear weapons program. We must recognize that we can neither move the North Koreans nor build support from South Korea, China and Japan if we refuse ever to talk, directly or indirectly, with Pyongyang. Instead, we should, first, persuade our allies to suspend economic and political engagement with the North, except for vital food aid. Second, we should suspend our own performance under the Agreed Framework until the North shows us the destruction of its uranium enrichment facilities. Third, some changes to the agreement are needed in light of the North's clandestine activities: immediate initiation of full-scope inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency; prompt shipment of the stored spent fuel out of North Korea; and agreement by the North to accept any future requests from the IAEA for special inspections.
An ideological disdain for negotiating with our adversaries seldom serves our interests, and in this case could be highly dangerous. The Bush administration faces a difficult and dangerous challenge in dealing with a regime that is drawn to a negotiating style of clumsy brinkmanship. The president deserves support as he engages the North Koreans. And he deserves better counsel than that of those who consider carrots sufficient or those who favor only sticks. Successful diplomacy is wedded to power -- and our global power depends also on our successful diplomacy.
Anthony Lake was adviser to the president for national security affairs and Robert Gallucci was ambassador at large during the first Clinton administration. Both are now with Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
----
North Korea Says It May Restart Missile Tests After Talks Fail
November 6, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/asia/06KORE.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 countries in two years, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ended in an angry stalemate.
The statement today said 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 flew over Japan. North Korea said the test was a satellite launching and has refrained from testing for several years. It reaffirmed a self-imposed moratorium on missile testing six weeks ago in a meeting between North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan.
Mr. Koizumi, who is attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, today dismissed the warning, saying it did not figure in any government-to-government communication, and 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," he 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 countries on a fast track toward establishing diplomatic relations. Since the demise of the Soviet bloc, North Korea has suffered 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, the United States announced that North Korea had acknowledged the existence of a uranium-based nuclear weapons development program, which the United States says violates international commitments made by the North in 1994.
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 language trainers in a spy program. Washington's insistence that North Korea eliminate its secret weapons program before receiving Japanese economic assistance 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.
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 media continue to issue belligerent statements.
Washington's position 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."
--------
Two Koreas Talk Business Despite Nuclear Dispute
November 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20461-2002Nov6?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korean officials opened economic talks in the communist state's capital on Thursday as inter-Korean exchanges continue apace despite a brewing dispute over North Korea's nuclear arms program.
A 35-member South Korean mission led by Vice Finance Minister Yoon Jin-Shik flew to Pyongyang via China Wednesday for four-day talks on economic projects, including an industrial park in the North for manufacturers from the South.
The proposed complex at the border city of Kaesong is one of many projects the two Koreas agreed to in 2000 but have only started to implement since ties warmed up in August.
But last month North Korea made a shock admission to the United States that it was enriching uranium to support a nuclear weapons program.
The United States has stepped up diplomatic efforts to halt the North's weapons program, which breaches a 1994 Agreed Framework that had defused an earlier North Korean nuclear crisis.
South Korea has joined with its ally the United States and other regional powers in demanding an end to the North's program. But Seoul says maintaining exchanges with Pyongyang is the best way to ensure a peaceful resolution of the dispute.
In the three weeks since the North's nuclear confession was made public by Washington, South Korea has held ministerial talks with the North in Pyongyang and hosted a Northern economic team for a nine-day survey of industrial and commercial facilities.
The rival Korean armies have continued mine-clearing across the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula into the capitalist South and the communist North.
South Korean media pool reports from Pyongyang Thursday said North Korea proposed breaking ground at the Kaesong site on around December 20.
The industrial park at Kaesong, an ancient Korean capital and commercial city about 50 km (31 miles) north of Seoul, would marry South Korean capital and technology with the North's cheap labor to help revive North Korea's decrepit economy.
-------- ukraine
Ukraine Fails to Reassure West on Iraq
Weapons Inspectors Say Evidence of Sale of Radar Is Inconclusive
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 6, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10424-2002Nov5.html
MOSCOW, Nov. 5 -- Ukraine has failed to persuade U.S. and British investigators that it did not sell arms to Iraq in violation of international sanctions, a finding that could jeopardize future U.S. economic aid to the country and worsen relations with the West.
In a report delivered to the Ukrainian government today, the weapons inspectors said they could not conclusively determine that it sold a sensitive antiaircraft radar system to Iraq. However, they said they did not find that the government had presented conclusive evidence to back up its denial, according to Ukrainian officials and an independent analyst who consulted with Western officials.
The investigators' findings could lead to further diplomatic action against Ukraine at a time when the arms sale allegations appear to have stalled integration with the West. The United States has already suspended $54 million in assistance, and NATO decided last week against inviting President Leonid Kuchma to Prague later this month, when the alliance will invite several of Ukraine's neighbors, including Romania and Slovakia, to join.
At one point this year, Ukrainian and Western officials had hoped to use the Prague summit as an opportunity to help propel integration of the second-largest former Soviet republic into the West. But now, in the wake of the Iraq dispute, NATO's plan threatens to become a diplomatic embarrassment as Kuchma has suggested he might go to Prague without an invitation.
"It doesn't mean Ukraine is heading toward isolation . . . but it certainly scuttles the whole idea of grand overtures to show the public that Ukrainian-NATO relations have been elevated to a new level," Markian Bilynskyj, vice president of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, said by telephone from Kiev, the capital. "The problem for the Ukrainian side is how to get out of this with some kind of dignity in the face of international displeasure that's being expressed."
Kuchma might not be the only unwelcome guest at the Prague party. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, whose authoritarian ways have made him a pariah in Europe, said he also plans to go.
As members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a NATO-affiliated group that will meet during the Nov. 21-22 summit, both Ukraine and Belarus are entitled to send representatives, and officials in the Czech Republic said they probably would not deny visas to Kuchma and Lukashenko. However, NATO decided that another related body, the NATO-Ukrainian Council, would hold its meeting at the foreign minister level to avoid giving Kuchma an official reason to attend.
The NATO spokesman, Yves Brodeur, said Kuchma and Lukashenko could not attend the main summit sessions but that neither would be excluded from the partnership council meeting if they showed up.
"Certainly if they come they will have a seat at the table," Brodeur said from Brussels. "Now what I can't predict is how other nations will react. . . . You could have empty chairs, I don't know."
Both Belarus and Ukraine have been accused of illicit dealings with Iraq, but Ukraine has come under tougher scrutiny lately because of a tape recording made by a former bodyguard on which Kuchma's voice is reportedly heard ordering the sale of a sophisticated Kolchuga radar system to Baghdad. The Kolchuga would allow the detection of U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the "no-fly" zones above Iraq without the pilots realizing it.
After U.S. law enforcement authorities authenticated the tape and concluded that the voice was Kuchma's despite his denials, Washington and London sent investigators to Kiev to examine Ukrainian records. Spokeswomen at the U.S. and British embassies in Kiev confirmed that the investigators' report was turned over to the Ukrainian government but declined to comment on its contents.
Without addressing the report, Kuchma acknowledged that "relations between [Ukraine] and the alliance have [been] temporarily aggravated," according to the Interfax news agency. But he insisted the rift would not be permanent. "I reject the logic that baseless suspicions can torpedo Ukraine-NATO cooperation," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- idaho
Feds, State Address Ordnance, Explosives at Idaho Lab
November 6, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-06-09.asp#anchor4
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - Unexploded ordnance dating back to World War II, explosive residues, and lead contamination at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) will be dealt with under a Record of Decision signed Monday by the Energy Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the state of Idaho.
The INEEL is an applied engineering national laboratory that supports U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) missions in environment, energy, science and national security. The INEEL is operated for the DOE by Bechtel BWXT Idaho, LLC.
The unexploded ordnance, or UXO, was left from Army and Navy artillery testing, storage bunker and transportation safety testing, and bombing ranges.
Soils contaminated with the explosives trinitrotoluene (TNT) and royal demolition explosive (RDX) are addressed in the Record of Decision, and so are soils contaminated with lead at a gun range used by INEEL security personnel from 1983 through 1990.
Part of the remedy will be restrictions on access and land use at three artillery and bombing ranges within the INEEL boundary.
A removal and treatment remedy will be applied to five sites where soil is contaminated with TNT and RDX, and to one site, the INEEL Security Training Facility Gun Range, where soil is contaminated with lead fragments.
The selected remedy for the UXO, the TNT/RDX contaminated sites, and the gun range conforms to the preference for treatment outlined in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), known as the Superfund Act.
The decision includes institutional controls for seven other sites at the INEEL - a leach pond, ditch, reactor building and a buried reactor associated with the Boiling Water Reactor Experiments that operated between 1953 and 1964.
Institutional controls will be used for a fuel oil tank near the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I (EBR-I) facility, another leach pond at the former site of Organic-Moderated Reactor Experiment facility, and at the Juniper Mine site.
No further action was required on 41 other sites included in the Record of Decision.
Site wide ecological monitoring will take place to ensure the no action approach remains protective of human health and the environment.
The groundwater downgradient from the contamination areas will be sampled and analyzed for traces of TNT and RDX. If none is found after five consecutive years of monitoring, no further monitoring for these compounds will be required.
If TNT or RDX is found, groundwater monitoring will continue. If the contaminants are detected above levels specified in the Record of Decision, cleanup alternatives will be developed and evaluated, and a preferred alternative will be selected by the agencies after addressing the public's concerns. The Record of Decision would then be amended to reflect the new cleanup project.
Because parts of the selected remedies outlined in this Record of Decision result in contaminants remaining in place at levels greater than allowed for unrestricted use, the three agencies will review the selected remedies every five years.
The Administrative Record can be accessed online at: http://ar.inel.gov/home.html. More information on the EBR-I/BORAX sites is available in a fact sheet online at: http://www.inel.gov/publicdocuments/factsheet/01-ga51010-01.pdf.
-------- us politics
U.S. Presents Iraq Draft, but France Seeks to Up Ante
November 6, 2002
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/06CND-NATION.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 6 - After eight weeks of hard-fought global negotiations, the United States presented the Security Council with its final proposal today for a resolution to give Iraq a last chance to disarm through rigorous weapons inspections or face an American-led war.
The United States ambassador, John D. Negroponte, put the draft, co-sponsored by Britain, on the Council table after Bush administration officials determined they had made sufficient compromises to draw the support of France, an American ally that had argued steadfastly against an immediate authorization of force. Mr. Negroponte called for a vote on Friday.
In intricate language displaying a work of diplomatic filigree, the latest draft both preserves the United States' prerogative to launch a military attack if Iraq violates the United Nations inspections, and also allows for the new round of Council decision-making that France sought.
But France, seeking once again to up the ante, did not endorse the draft today. President Jacques Chirac agreed in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to try to "remove certain ambiguities" about the use of military force, a spokeswoman in Paris said.
The French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-David Levitte, said that "very important progress has been achieved," and he added that France was still working for the broadest possible support on the Council for the measure.
Mr. Negroponte stressed that the United States is committed to allowing the arms inspections to go forward. Addressing the fears of some war-wary members of the Council, he called the draft resolution "the best way to achieve the disarmament of Iraq by peaceful means."
----
Cheerleaders, Put On Your Gas Masks
November 6, 2002
Military.com,
by David H. Hackworth
http://www.military.com/Resources/ResourceFileView?file=Hackworth_110602.htm
Cheered on by a chorus of bloodthirsty TV, radio and newspaper savants - few of whom have ever worn a soldier suit - and equally unqualified politicians also burning to take out Saddam, the Washington Warlords say, "Regime change in Iraq will be a cakewalk."
And for once these know-it-alls are right.
Remember in 1991 when "the fourth most powerful army in the world" melted down after the first tank shot and surrendered to TV crews? Expect a replay when the bombs fall and our troops slash toward Baghdad.
My concern is not whether our warriors - thousands of whom are about to hook up with tens of thousands more around the Persian Gulf, where they'll all remain on hold until whenever, because politics is out-of-sync with the realities of war-fighting - are up for the job, but if their biological and chemical gear can adequately protect them. For it's a given that Saddam will try to splash our troops with every bio/chem weapon he's got before he's incinerated. And immediately after the first such attack, we'll just as surely dispatch nukes and do unto Iraq as we did unto Japan.
Yesterday, I suited up in a charcoal-lined Mission Oriented Protective Posture suit - MOPP - complete with M-40 protective mask, rubber gloves and rubber boots. While it was far from desert weather on my mock battlefield, I came away from being hermetically sealed in that spacewalker suit at MOPP4 - the highest level of protection - convinced our soldiers won't be able to function for long in any environment in this type of gear.
My instructor, who'd spent hard time at the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., couldn't wait to tell me horror stories about the heavy heat-related casualties he'd observed during training exercises, when our troops were in MOPP 4 suits for only short periods of time. Scores of warriors now deployed in the oven-hot Gulf share this captain's righteous concern.
While encased, I couldn't help wondering about performing basic body functions like eating and evacuating, let alone kill-or-be-killed drills. How could our Joes and Janes function as tankers, cannon-cockers, riflemen, flight ground crews, medics or truck drivers in this cumbersome stuff?
An old pro warrior now in the Gulf says: "Having trained for years in MOPP gear, I can best describe life wearing it as being truly miserable. I've seen soldiers in excellent condition unable to move after a moderate level of exertion. Will it work for more than a few hours here? Right! And I'm the tooth fairy."
Let's get a grip and find out what's really going down: Why not send the war-pushing pundits, politicians, Pentagon big wheels and service chiefs off for two weeks of fact-finding in Kuwait?
The first week, the best experts going on bio/chem defense would train them. The second week, they'd be suited up at MOPP 4, moved to an isolated section of Kuwait along the Iraqi border - close to the area where there's still 350 tons of U.S. depleted uranium fired by us during Desert Storm - and for seven days they'd function as rear-echelon supporters, tasked with the vital bringing-up-the-rear jobs, and as frontline grunts, manning guns and tanks and conducting infantry battle maneuvers. While, of course, bio/chem weapons like the ones our intell folks say Saddam has - anthrax, smallpox, mustard and sarin gas, to name but a few - were sprayed in and around them.
But, hey, we don't need to sweat these high-profile folks. They won't be guinea pigs like our Desert Storm troopers - who've suffered more than 170,000 dead and disabled out of the 700,000 who served there because of top-brass dereliction of duty. This time around, they'll be as safe as our kids when they jump off. After all, the gear and the vaccines procured to protect our soldiers from Saddam's vile weapons of mass destruction have been Pentagon and Food and Drug Administration certified as good to go.
This testimony to our wonder gear could and should be broadcast live, straight from the test site to the American public - a top-rated TV reality show that would allow these VIP pols and pundits to get their war message out to a larger-than-ever audience share. At least for as long as they survived.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Disarmament Begins in Northern Afghanistan
November 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-afghan.html
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Rival factions in northern Afghanistan began turning in their weapons on Wednesday as part of a United Nations-monitored program to curb violence.
More than 120 assault rifles and some artillery pieces were seized from soldiers loyal to Abdul Rashid Dostum and fighters under Ustad Atta Mohammad in the Sholgara district, southwest of Mazar-i-Sharif, a spokesman for Dostum's faction said.
The arms were stored in the presence of a security commission including U.N. officials, Amir Jan Nasiri, a commander serving under Atta, told reporters.
The program will progress from Sholgara into other areas of recent fighting until all northern areas have been disarmed, the spokesman for Dostum said.
Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, and Atta, a Tajik, are formally part of a council representing the central government of President Hamid Karzai, but they have a long history of fighting for control of the north. Mazar is now largely held by Atta.
The U.S.-backed Karzai, whose control outside the capital Kabul is weak, has vowed to strip regional warlords of their powers unless they fall into line with his government.
The disarmament grew out of talks last month involving Dostum, Atta and the Shi'ite group Hezb-i-Wahdat.
The agreement also followed a meeting of the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmai Khalilzad, with Dostum and Atta in Mazar, at which Khalilzad passed on his government's concerns about growing insecurity in areas under their control.
As part of the accord, fighters can choose to withdraw from positions they occupy and can join the national army.
Karzai made it clear to Dostum and Atta they must decide whether they will support his government. The warlords remain in Kabul, where Khalilzad has demanded they speak further with Karzai.
Mazar was the first city from which the ruling Taliban regime was ousted in the U.S.-led campaign last year.
Since then, forces loyal to Dostum and Atta have fought on several occasions in northern areas, killing dozens of fighters and civilians and forcing Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan but a minority in the north, from their homes.
Dostum, Atta and the Wahdat group agreed to disarm in key cities earlier in the year, but that did not take place and sporadic fighting resumed.
--------
Afghan Women Die Giving Birth at Staggering Rate
November 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-childbirth.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Women in war-shattered Afghanistan are dying during childbirth at a staggeringly high rate, U.N. and U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday, recommending broad improvements in maternal health care.
While maternal death rates vary considerably from region to region and are significantly higher in rural areas than in cities and towns, they are overall among the highest in the world, the researchers found.
In rural Badakshan province in northern Afghanistan, mothers are dying while giving birth at the highest rate ever documented -- 6,500 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, according to their survey.
``Among the women who died in this study, about 87 percent of maternal deaths were considered preventable,'' said the study conducted jointly by the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The United Nations is guiding the rebuilding of Afghanistan, with significant financial help from Washington, after decades of internal warfare, years of drought and a U.S.-led bombing campaign that drove the Taliban from power after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijack attacks on the United States
The research team visited some 13,000 families in four Afghan provinces, Badakshan in the north, Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan and Kabul and Laghman provinces in eastern Afghanistan.
Researchers first identified those families in which a woman between 15 and 49 years old had died between April 1999 and March 2002, and then sought to identify the cause of death through interviews.
Access to any type of health care at all was a key gauge of maternal survival. While in Kabul, there was at least one functioning maternity hospital, health care access in Badakshan was ``profoundly limited,'' the study found.
The high death rate for mothers also had profound implications for their children, the researchers reported.
A newborn baby had only one chance in four of surviving until its first birthday if its mother died in childbirth, the study found. ``Most of these infants died in the first month of life from acute malnutrition due to lack of breast milk.''
Only 5 percent of the women studied could read or write and only 36 percent of the families interviewed owned a radio, the researchers found.
In addition to generally improving health services and increasing access to skilled caregivers, they recommended that women be taught ahead of time about healthy pregnancies and delivery and be screened for preventable causes of maternal complications such as pre-eclampsia, malaria and anemia.
-------- arms
U.S. urged to develop nonlethal arms
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
November 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021106-87146499.htm
The United States has made an attempt to develop mood-altering weapons similar to the gas used in a recent hostage crisis in Moscow but abandoned the program because it could not be reconciled with international law, a government-sponsored scientific panel said.
The disclosure is contained in a 250-page report issued Monday by the National Research Council, which urged the Pentagon to take another look at nonlethal weapons now that U.S. forces face a greater chance of getting involved in urban combat.
Research into fentanyl-based chemicals known as "calmatives" was sponsored by the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Command and conducted at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland 10 to 15 years ago, according to the document.
The council described the program as "significant" but stopped short of revealing details, because they remain classified.
However, use of calmatives was discussed on a few occasions at the office of the secretary of defense and by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which has concluded that in their current form, these agents would be illegal under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
"The physiological effects of all calmatives that have been examined occur as a result of depression of the central nervous system, accompanied by mood alteration and respiratory depression," the council said.
But the scientists also discovered it was very easy, particularly in combat situations, to cross the line in dosages beyond which calmatives could become lethal.
To solve the problem, they tried to add weakening components, but it all came to naught.
"The principal effect was still unconsciousness, which is unacceptable under most interpretations of the CWC," the report said.
At least 119 persons were killed in Moscow last month when Russian security forces pumped a fentanyl-based gas into a theater taken over by Chechen rebels seeking independence from Russia.
The gas knocked out many of the more than 800 hostages held in the theater as well as most of their captors.
Although the Moscow hostage crisis occurred when the report was already completed, the council said post-September 11 security challenges should compel U.S. military planners to reassess the importance of nonlethal weapons.
Defense experts believe that if President Bush decides to start a military operation against Iraq, U.S. soldiers will have to fight in densely populated urban areas, which will lead to inevitable casualties among the civilian population.
Minimizing collateral casualties and damage could become "of the utmost importance for maintaining fragile coalition relations with Middle Eastern states, in particular," the report said.
To these ends, the council displayed a vast array of stun guns that knock down people at more than 60 yards, immobilizing foams, noise-creating devices and a stink bomb designed to make people hold their noses and flee.
Work also is under way to address the situation created by the 2000 attack of the USS Cole, when a small explosives-laden boat approached the destroyer in the port of Aden and blew a hole in its hull, killing 17 U.S. sailors.
To keep crewmen from firing on every approaching boat, scientists are working on a nonlethal torpedo that would be able to stop small vessels without killing their occupants, according to the report.
-------- biological weapons
Chem, Bio Weapons Experts Urge History Lessons
By J.R. Pegg,
November 6, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-06-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC, - Preparation for a biological or chemical attack has become a higher priority for virtually every government over the past year, but there is concern the United States and others are forgetting history as they try to plan for the possibility.
"Lessons are still being ignored," said Jane's Information Group's nuclear, biological and chemical analyst John Eldridge. "We need to be more honest and open about the lessons learned from real events."
A member of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team enters a suspected hot zone during an exercise at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in June. Photo by Staff Sgt. Kathleen Rhem (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Defense)
Eldridge spoke Tuesday at the Jane's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) 2002 Conference in Washington, DC. Organized by the London based military publisher Jane's Information Group, the two day event featured speakers from the private and public sectors, discussing issues of preparing for potential radiological, biological or chemical attacks.
The United States and others would be wise to have a closer look at the lessons of the sarin gas attacks in Japan in 1994 and 1995, said Anthony Tu, Colorado State University professor emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Tu advised the Japanese government in the wake of the sarin gas attacks, which were carried out by the Aum Shinrikyo cult.
The first attack came in Matsumoto City on June 27, 1994 and left seven people dead with some 500 injured. This compares with the attack on the Tokyo subway on March 26, 1995 that killed 12 people and injured some 4,000 others.
The contrast, Tu said, is stark because an attack in a subway would be expected to cause a higher rate of fatalities because it is a "closed-air system." The gas used in Matsumoto City had little impurity, but the sarin released in the Tokyo subway was only "20 percent pure," Tu explained.
Japanese soldiers decontaminate subway after a sarin attack. (Photo courtesy Japan Defense Agency)
The Japanese were ill prepared to handle the attacks, with their police lacking the proper equipment. They did not learn from the first attack, Tu said, and kept their discoveries from that incident secret from the public. Rescue and hospital personnel were also inadequately trained for the events, with simple things such as decontaminating patients prior to treatment often overlooked.
Now more than seven years after the attacks, there has been "tremendous progress in defense against chemical weapons and biological weapons since the Tokyo attacks," Tu said. But the Japanese, he added, did not become serious about obtaining new equipment or preparing for such attacks until after the anthrax attacks in the United States late last year.
It is also hard to gauge what the United States may have learned from the Japanese experience, Eldridge said. Much of the material on the American response to the anthrax attacks, which killed five people, remains classified as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) continues its search for those responsible. But other agencies are beginning to share information on the cleanup of anthrax from the U.S. Senate Hart office building, where two letters containing anthrax were received in October 2001.
Major Tony Intrepido of the U.S. Army's Preventive Health and Medicine Division told conference attendees that the initial response to what became the "100 day anthrax war" was chaotic. The effort involved a slew of different agencies, all working within a crime scene investigation led by the FBI.
Anthrax contaminated letter to Senator Tom Daschle that contaminated the Hart Senate Office Building (Photo courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
The cleanup of the Hart Senate Office Building was a unique venture, Intrepido said, because of the political pressure to get senators and staffers back to work as quickly as possible. The Centers for Disease Control could not say what level of measurable anthrax was safe, despite believing that some level could probably be deemed safe.
"We had no track record with anthrax," Intrepido said.
Thirty buildings, spanning some nine million square feet had to be analyzed and potentially decontaminated. The anthrax delivered in letters to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, both Democrats, was very pure and it easily re-aerosolized.
A peer review by 20 organizations determined the use of chlorine dioxide was the best means of cleaning the building. The Hart building, which houses the offices of 50 of the 100 senators and their staffs, was returned to service January 22, just a day before the scheduled start of the 2002 congressional session.
"Resources were stretched at all times," said Richard Rupert, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on-scene coordinator for the cleanup effort. "We could not have handled two like this at the same time."
Roosevelt Meriweather and Rob Smith check the operation of the chemical biological mass spectrometer developed partly by Oak Ridge National Lab researchers for use in helping U.S. soldiers detect the presence of biological and chemical weapons. (Photo by Curtis Boles courtesy ORNL)
Rupert cited the need for a core group of personnel from multiple agencies as well as overall improved means of communications among agencies as two key recommendations for improving the ability to respond to this kind of an attack.
Improving coordination within the U.S. federal government to respond to terrorist attacks is one reason advanced to justify the proposed Department of Homeland Security, but questions remain about how this new agency might take shape.
According to Steven Caldwell, assistant director of the Defense Capabilities and Management Team in the U.S. General Accounting Office, the theory behind the department is for create a "federally led response for crisis management."
'There is much unclear in the proposal, Caldwell said, including how the federal reorganization might "affect the roles of various federal, state and local authorities."
"But at least in the short run, the Department of Homeland Security will cause confusion," Caldwell told the conference. "There is a lot in limbo."
-------- business
Defense Stocks Rise on Republican gains
Reuters
Wednesday, November 6, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16766-2002Nov6?language=printer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense stocks jumped on Wednesday as investors bet that the Republican sweep of Congress would translate into steady profit growth for the sector, analysts said.
"The Republican control of the Senate means homeland security, missile defense, and other parts of the defense budget that were opposed by the Democrats are no longer going to be under such negative pressure," said Paul Nisbet, aerospace analyst at JSA Research Inc.
In Tuesday's midterm elections, Republicans regained control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives, defying the historical trend of the party holding the White House losing seats in by-year contests.
The Standard & Poor's Aerospace and Defense index <.GSPAERO> was up 3.3 percent in midday trading, with all nine component stocks trading higher. The sector was the top-performing group in the S&P 500 index, surpassing even big gains in the pharmaceuticals sector, which is also seen as a big winner in the GOP victory.
Shares of Boeing Co. , Goodrich Corp. , Raytheon Co. and Honeywell International Inc. were all up more than 4 percent in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The stocks of General Dynamics Corp. , United Technologies Corp. , Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. were also higher.
"With the likelihood that these defense companies will have double-digit earnings growth for the next couple of years, you are going to be hard-pressed to find any other group that is likely to do that," said Nisbet, who owns stock in Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
While spending on specific programs may rise more under Republican control, it is not certain that their control of both chambers means the total defense budget will surge, analysts said.
"We believe that the reality is that the overall size of the defense budgets will be largely unaffected. Both parties maintain they are in favor of rising defense budgets," Wachovia Securities analyst Sam Pearlstein said in a note to clients ahead of the election.
--------
Defense Stocks Rise on Republican gains
November 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-election-defense-stocks.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense stocks jumped on Wednesday as investors bet that the Republican sweep of Congress would translate into steady profit growth for the sector, analysts said.
``The Republican control of the Senate means homeland security, missile defense, and other parts of the defense budget that were opposed by the Democrats are no longer going to be under such negative pressure,'' said Paul Nisbet, aerospace analyst at JSA Research Inc.
In Tuesday's midterm elections, Republicans regained control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives, defying the historical trend of the party holding the White House losing seats in by-year contests.
The Standard & Poor's Aerospace and Defense index (.GSPAERO) was up 3.3 percent in midday trading, with all nine component stocks trading higher. The sector was the top-performing group in the S&P 500 index, surpassing even big gains in the pharmaceuticals sector, which is also seen as a big winner in the GOP victory.
Shares of Boeing Co. (BA.N), Goodrich Corp. (GR.N), Raytheon Co. (RTN.N) and Honeywell International Inc.were all up more than 4 percent in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The stocks of General Dynamics Corp. (GD.N), United Technologies Corp. (UTX.N), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N) were also higher.
``With the likelihood that these defense companies will have double-digit earnings growth for the next couple of years, you are going to be hard-pressed to find any other group that is likely to do that,'' said Nisbet, who owns stock in Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
While spending on specific programs may rise more under Republican control, it is not certain that their control of both chambers means the total defense budget will surge, analysts said.
``We believe that the reality is that the overall size of the defense budgets will be largely unaffected. Both parties maintain they are in favor of rising defense budgets,'' Wachovia Securities analyst Sam Pearlstein said in a note to clients ahead of the election.
-------- chemical weapons
CHEMICAL WARFARE
Report Urges U.S. to Increase Its Efforts on Nonlethal Weapons
November 6, 2002
New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/national/06WEAP.html
The American military should redouble its efforts to develop and deploy nonlethal weapons, an expert panel reported on Monday. Written before the recent hostage crisis in Moscow, the report backed drugs similar to the knockout gas used in Moscow to free hundreds of people, as well as other weapons.
The Pentagon insists it has stopped all work on incapacitating chemicals, an assertion that critics dispute. The issue is controversial because work on some chemical incapacitants can violate arms control treaties.
The new report, An Assessment of Nonlethal Weapons Science and Technology, was done at the Pentagon's request by the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. Incapacitating chemicals and other types of nonlethal arms "should be given a higher priority," it says.
The military already uses some forms of nonlethal or humane arms - tear gas, for example - in some peacekeeping operations. The report said these weapons were likely to become important in defending ships and singling out terrorists hidden among civilian populations. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, it said, have added urgency to the acceptance and carrying out of the report's recommendations.
The report was critical of what it called several obstacles to progress, including limited research, few new ideas and poor understanding of weapons effects. It said such problems could preclude nonlethal weapons "from becoming an integral force option."
The report was written by a panel of 17, including its chairwoman, Miriam E. John, head of the California branch of the Sandia National Laboratories, which helps maintain the nation's nuclear arsenal.
The government has, at relatively low levels of financing, explored an array of technologies that can immobilize people and machines, including loud noises, bright lights, horrific odors, electrical shocks, dense smoke, superglues, rigid foams, slippery greases, blunt projectiles and bursts of microwave radiation.
The new report said that mind-altering or sleep-inducing chemical agents, which the military calls calmatives, offered "strong potential" as weapons meant to dissuade, temporarily inhibit, incapacitate or otherwise impede dangerous crowds and individuals.
It said future research on calmatives needed to focus on quantifying their effectiveness, increasing their margin of safety and developing the means of rapidly delivering the appropriate dose. These problems, and the lack of sufficient antidotes, became large factors in the Moscow hostage crisis, where 118 people died, roughly one in seven of the 763 hostages.
The report mentioned fentanyl, the drug used in Moscow. It cited the drug as particularly fast acting, "on the order of one minute after exposure."
The report said nonlethal arms could be used to block the kind of attack that struck the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000, when suicide bombers pulled a small boat packed with explosives alongside the ship and detonated the payload. The report said nonlethal arms could be directed to try to cripple approaching threats and, if unsuccessful, could be followed up with deadly force.
The report called for new research in areas like chemicals, directed energy like microwaves, barriers and entanglements.
The development of chemical nonlethal weapons has all but stopped since the adoption of a 1997 treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, the report said. Even so, the study added, "there are compelling applications in engine stopping and crowd control that cannot be achieved by others means."
-------- iran
THE KURDS
Iran Reportedly Pledges Help in Ousting Qaeda From North Iraq
November 6, 2002
New York Times
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/middleeast/06SYRI.html
DAMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 5 - An Iraqi Kurdish leader said today that Iran had promised military help to oust Islamic militants suspected of having ties with Al Qaeda from a swath of northern Iraq.
The militants are believed to have carried out raids, assassinations and bombings in the region, including an attack on a Kurdish checkpoint outside Halabja, near the border with Iran, on Monday night.
The Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, said in an interview here that he had not consulted the United States about such a plan. He said he would expect nothing in return from the United States for waging such a fight, nor did he say whether American approval would be sought for the action. "They are America's enemies and the Kurdish people's enemies and the enemies of the people of the Middle East," he said of the militants, adding, "The day we need America's support we will go and talk to them."
He added: "We are planning to do it with the support from our brothers in Iran to clean the area of this terrorist group." He did not elaborate on the kind of aid Iran would give and declined to provide the timing or details of a possible attack. "They promised to help us in this plan," he said.
Mr. Talabani, echoing other Kurdish officials, said the militants in northern Iraq are Arabs who came from Afghanistan and number about 120, with several hundred Kurdish allies. They operate in a mountainous patch on the border with Iran.
Kurdish leaders contend that the militants have ties with Al Qaeda, but United States officials are skeptical and have not given direct military aid, as they did for the Philippines and Yemen after the attacks on Sept. 11. Other Islamic-oriented parties operate in the area.
Mr. Talabani hedged a bit. "I cannot say if they are Taliban or Al Qaeda, but they are people from Afghanistan, and they are well trained there," he said.
Mr. Talabani leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish groups that hold sway in northern Iraq under the protection of American and allied warplanes. He was on a mission to reassure neighboring countries that the Kurds of northern Iraq have no intention of establishing an independent state. He arrived in Syria on Friday after four days in Iran.
"The message which we are always giving to Turkey, Iran and Syria is about the Kurdish determination to remain within the framework of Iraq," he said, "to have a united, democratic, federative parliamentary Iraq, not to support any separatist movement."
Syria, Iran and particularly Turkey, which fought a 15-year war against its own Kurdish insurgency, are fearful that Kurdish independence could stir similar desires in their own Kurdish populations.
It was unclear whether Mr. Talabani's assertions about taking on the militants were merely posturing. But whether the offensive he described comes to pass, his statement portrayed the Iraqi Kurds as fighting on the side of the United States as they seek a role in a Iraqi government free of Saddam Hussein.
In the clash last night, the militants attacked a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan checkpoint outside Halabja, Mr. Talabani said. They left behind two dead, one an Arab and the other a Kurd, and retrieved other casualties, he said, while the Kurdish forces suffered two dead and two wounded.
The Iraqi Kurds have thousands of men under arms and have built the semblance of a ministate, paving roads, building schools and reconstructing villages. Allied planes began enforcing a no-flight zone over Iraq after the Persian Gulf war.
One question is whether the Iraqi Kurdish fighters would take part in military actions against the Iraqi Army if war breaks out. Mr. Talabani said he had not been asked to do so by the Americans. "It depends on the agreement between Iraqi opposition and the United States," he said.
He also said he was opposed to long-term American control of Iraq. "We would not fight it, but of course politically we will oppose it," he said.
Representatives of the 3.6 million Iraqi Kurds, after years of internal fighting, took an important step toward unity last month when their parliament met for the first time in six years. It discussed a draft constitution that called for an Arab-Kurdish federation in Iraq. The Kurdish entity would have its own defense force, a legislature and an executive branch, though the central government would control foreign affairs and decisions about oil investment.
The proposed Iraqi Kurdish capital would be Kirkuk, a potentially explosive idea. The Turks have threatened to seize Iraqi territory if the Kurds take Kirkuk Province, which is rich in oil and has a volatile mix of Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds. Arabs elsewhere in Iraq may resent Kurdish domination of oil interests in the province.
But Mr. Talabani dismissed such fears, saying that greater oil reserves lay elsewhere and that the Kurds had promised to share the oil. He also backed away from the suggestion that Kirkuk would be a Kurdish capital. "It is not the last decision," he said.
Iraqi opposition groups are expected to meet this month in Brussels to coordinate their efforts. Mr. Talabani said he had high hopes that the parties would come to an agreement over a post-Saddam structure.
-------- iraq
Weapons inspectors urged to locate 'human capital'
By Mark Clayton
November 6, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021106-344194.htm
BOSTON - If U.N. inspectors return soon to Iraq, it won't be just weapons of mass destruction they're hunting. Perhaps an equally crucial mission will be to find the people who know how to build them.
As the United States and United Nations wrangle over a new inspection regime, former weapons inspectors warn against becoming preoccupied hunting for missiles, bombs and laboratories. They recommend instead focusing more on finding Iraq's top weapons experts.
Over the years, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has assembled an army of microbiologists, chemical engineers and nuclear physicists who, if questioned carefully, may reveal as much about weapons development as any search for petri dishes or aluminum tubes.
Indeed, unlike military hardware, "human capital" will not be easy for Saddam to replace, says David Kay, the U.N.'s former top nuclear-weapons inspector in Iraq. "Facilities you can destroy," he said. "But Saddam has the money to repurchase the best equipment. The one thing they don't have in abundance is the embedded human capital."
One irony is that if inspectors do locate any of the bomb makers, a translator may not be necessary. That's because many in Saddam's weapons-development brain trust apparently got their training at universities in the United States, Britain and Europe.
Just ask Khidir Hamza, who received his master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Florida State University. As Saddam's director of nuclear weaponization, he became in 1994 the highest-ranking scientist to defect.
In an interview, Mr. Hamza recalled a meeting in the late 1970s when he and other Iraqi scientists sat down to plan the nation's nuclear-weapons development plan. With him at the table were Husham Sharif and Moyesser al-Mallah, both U.S. university-educated nuclear experts, he said.
"Most of the nuclear era's earlier programs, the core personnel, were U.S.-trained," Mr. Hamza said. "We were telling them actually where to send the [Iraqi] students."
Even after the Gulf war, many Iraqi students continued to attend U.S. universities to study nuclear physics and engineering.
Mr. Kay, the former weapons inspector, discovered this during a 1993 visit to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In his lecture to a roomful of nuclear-engineering graduate students, he was surprised to find nearly a dozen young Iraqis.
"This was after the Gulf war - and they were here quite legally," he said. "I was talking about what we had learned about Iraq. They asked very good questions. Most of them intended to go back home."
A recent study of doctorates earned in the United States corroborates that personal observation. Researchers at Georgia State University in Atlanta found that from 1990 to 1999, 1,215 science and engineering Ph.D.s were granted to students from five of the seven countries listed by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism.
Still, that's only about 2 percent of degrees granted to foreign-born students, and Iraqis earned 112 science and engineering Ph.D.s. Of those, 14 were in sensitive fields like nuclear or chemical engineering or microbiology. There's no clear indication how many returned to Iraq.
But small numbers may be misleading. It takes only one or two gifted students to run an entire weapons program, experts say.
----
Iraqi strongman 'not a lunatic'
By Peter Ford
November 6, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021106-15066442.htm
PARIS - In the high-stakes game of geopolitical chicken in which Washington and Baghdad are engaged, President Saddam Hussein is not going to blink first, say biographers of the Iraqi leader and others who have studied his character and behavior.
"He can bob and weave, but he becomes dangerous when he is backed into a corner and he can lash out," said Jerrold Post, a former CIA analyst who pioneered political-psychological profiling of foreign leaders.
Adept at tactical maneuvering, determined to retain power, but aware that bowing to the Americans would destroy his self-image as the new Nebuchadnezzar, Saddam would fight to the end if it came to war, say specialists.
In the meantime, as pressure mounts, expect some fancy diplomatic footwork. "Saddam has always been much better with his back to the wall," said Patrick Cockburn, a British journalist who co-authored a recent biography of the Iraqi leader. "Maybe it's because his vanity has been punctured, maybe because he is better at accepting advice."
Saddam's notorious brutality and his mistakes in launching costly wars against neighboring Iran and Kuwait have earned him the nickname "madman of the Middle East."
Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Said Aburish, a Palestinian writer who once worked for the Iraqi government and has written an account of Saddam's life.
"He is not a lunatic," Mr. Aburish said. "In fact he is very consistent - the most methodical Arab leader of the 20th century." Having set himself a goal, whether it be agricultural development, the perfection of a weapon of mass destruction, or the status of the undisputed leader of the Arab world, he is steadfast in pursuing his purpose. He is also a workaholic, reportedly sleeping only four hours a night.
The Iraqi president has demonstrated that persistence, and patience, in his efforts in recent years to mend fences with neighboring countries and to cultivate governments farther afield.
Showing a more sophisticated grasp of international affairs than in the run-up to the Gulf war, Saddam has restored his reputation among Arab leaders - he was welcomed back into the fold of the Arab League two years ago - and dangled economic incentives such as trade deals in front of permanent U.N. Security Council members China, Russia and France. This has complicated creation of the sort of international coalition he faced in 1991.
Saddam has always been skilled in domestic politics, with a good instinct for whom to choose as allies and when to drop them. He has showed special mastery of the extreme violence that has characterized Iraqi political life since the British carved a new country out of the Ottoman Empire in 1921.
Saddam first made his mark on Iraqi politics in 1959, leading an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Abdul Karim Kassem. Twenty years later, on assuming the presidency, he had 21 senior officials of his Ba'ath Party - potential rivals - killed en masse.
On one celebrated occasion in 1982, he interrupted a Cabinet meeting to step outside with his health minister, Reyadh Ibrahim Hussain, who had overseen the purchase of a defective batch of penicillin for the army, said Mr. Aburish. The president shot the offending minister dead in an anteroom, then returned to chairing the Cabinet session.
Such behavior, copied by Iraqi security forces, has instilled great fear throughout the population - giving the president absolute power over his country. "There are no restraints," said Mr. Cockburn. Such power "went to his head," suggests Mr. Aburish, pointing out that in his earlier days, Saddam was known for not standing on ceremony and for working efficiently on ambitious development plans for the country's oil industry, its transportation sector and its schools.
Twenty years ago, Mr. Aburish remembers, government offices were hung with photographs of a small room in a modest village house - Saddam's birthplace in the poverty-stricken region of Tikrit. Today, the offices are decorated with grandiose portraits of the president. "It reflects a certain transformation in the character of the man," said Mr. Aburish.
He also points to how Iraqi officials a few years ago stopped using the traditional Arab hug and kiss on the cheek in greeting Saddam, and instead began kissing his lapels. "That's what you do to a holy man," he noted.
Such signs appear to confirm what expert observers have long seen as Saddam's "exaggerated sense of his own heroic role in history," as Mr. Cockburn puts it, illustrated by his dedication to rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon, even at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.
The Iraqi leader has made no secret of his ambition to build on his deep nationalism to become the undisputed leader of the Arab people, defying the West in the fashion of the late Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser.
Behind the grand vision and the iron fist, however, some analysts suggest that Saddam Hussein may be insecure. "I firmly believe that the man is shy," said Mr. Aburish. "He avoids eye contact, there is no small talk in him," and those who have met him have noted his limp handshake.
"His grandiose facade masks underlying insecurity," Mr. Post, the former CIA analyst who now teaches psychology at Georgetown University, said in testimony to Congress before the Gulf war.
That may account for Saddam's secretive habits. The day before the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait in 1990, fewer than a dozen people knew of the war plan, according to Saad al-Bazzaz, who headed Iraqi radio and television at the time. In 1972, when Saddam nationalized the oil industry, he told local industry employees of his intentions only two hours before the official announcement.
That approach probably means that few people even in his inner circle know how he intends to play his hand now. But in Mr. Post's view, the Iraqi president sees the weapons of mass destruction he is said to control as central to his self-image as a world-class politician.
"Big boys have big toys," said Mr. Post. "The chances of his yielding on weapons of mass destruction are between zero and none. But he is quite prudent, and I see no chance of him giving such weapons to terrorists or launching a direct attack on the U.S.," because that would bring catastrophic retaliation from Washington.
Those weapons, if he possesses them, give Saddam a degree of power - and he would do anything to hold onto them, since "power is the only language he understands," Mr. Post argues. "He is impressive, a very wily guy, a quintessential survivor, and if he can stave off disaster by making a show of open inspections, he will."
But Washington's talk of "regime change," not just disarmament, "is backing him into a corner. He doesn't have to be paranoid to think that we are out to get him," Mr. Post added. If Saddam were attacked, "we could reliably predict the use of such weapons [of mass destruction] against Israel and U.S. ground forces."
----
U.N. allowed Iraqi purchase of agent usable for weapons
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021106-6179116.htm
The United Nations overruled U.S. government objections and allowed Iraq to buy a specialty chemical that U.S. intelligence officials say will boost Baghdad's chemical and biological warfare agents.
A large quantity of a chemical known as colloidal silicon dioxide was ordered by the Iraqis in August 2001 and held up by the U.S. government because of concerns about its use.
However, the United Nations approved the sale and it was shipped to Iraq last month, said Hasmik Egin, a U.N. spokeswoman.
Colloidal silicon dioxide is used in making commercial products such as glass or electronic-circuit boards.
But the superfine powder also has a military use. It is a key element in producing what are known as "dusty" chemical or biological weapons, agents that are able to penetrate protective suits, equipment and facilities, U.S. intelligence officials said.
"The U.N. is helping the Iraqis to enhance their biological and chemical weapons," said an intelligence official familiar with reports of the chemical sale.
The chemical is not contained on the United Nations' list of banned equipment and material known as the Goods Review List (GRL), said Miss Egin, a spokeswoman for the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.
"If it is not a GRL item, it is up for approval," Miss Egin said in a telephone interview.
The initial contact for the colloidal silicon dioxide was "placed on hold" by the U.S. government, Miss Egin said.
When additional information on the sale was provided to a special sanctions committee, "that hold was lifted," she said.
The first shipment of the chemical was carried out under procedures that have since been changed, she said.
The second contract for the chemical was rejected as "noncompliant" with the Goods Review List but is under review by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, Miss Egin said.
The supplier of the chemical and the size of the shipment were not identified.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
According to chemical-weapons specialists, colloidal silicon dioxide, also known as silica sol, has particles so small they are largely unaffected by gravity.
As a result, adding the particles to a mixture of chemical or biological agent will enhance the lethality of the agent by making it easier to disperse.
Eric Croddy, a chemical- and biological-weapons specialist, said colloidal silicon dioxide is a fine powder that could greatly enhance nerve or toxin weapons.
"We know the Iraqis did prepare dusty mustard" agent, Mr. Croddy said. "In the desert, where temperatures reach 104 degrees, they want to make sure their agents don't dissipate in the breeze."
Colloidal silicon dioxide would also enhance the killing power of the nerve agent VX, said Mr. Croddy, who is a researcher with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
"If you have a dust, the agent can get everywhere and can defeat protective gear," he said.
Mr. Croddy said the U.S. government knows about the utility of silicon dioxide because it was used in U.S. weapons development in the past.
Mr. Croddy said in a recent article that U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that the use of a dusty nerve agent can cause as high as 38 percent fatalities in troops wearing full protective gear.
"With a concern that dusty agents might defeat chemical protective masks and garment ensembles, U.S. military researchers subsequently looked to topical skin protectants for additional protection against dusty agents," he said.
"Because Iraq has proven artillery systems for chemical delivery, the alleged Iraqi development of a dusty VX formulation further increases the chemical exposure risks to U.S. troops that may be operating in theatre," Mr. Croddy said.
A CIA report made public last month stated that Iraq has imported $10 billion worth of goods a year under the U.N. oil-for-food program. Some of the imported goods "clearly support Iraq's military and [weapons of mass destruction] programs," the report stated.
"Iraq has been able to import dual-use, [weapons-of-mass-destruction]-relevant equipment and material through procurements both within and outside the U.N. sanctions regime," the report said.
The agents in Iraq's arsenal include the chemical nerve agents VX, sarin, cyclosarin and the blistering agent mustard.
Its biological and toxin weapons include anthrax, botulinum toxin and aflatoxin.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon dissolves parliament
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 6, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021106-81862729.htm
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday dissolved parliament and scheduled elections in January, a move that effectively froze efforts to end the Palestinian uprising and added an element of uncertainty to U.S. plans to strike Iraq.
Mr. Sharon, 74, said he decided on the elections because he was unable to form a new coalition with far-right parties after the dovish Labor Party pulled out of the government last week.
Mr. Sharon first faces a stiff primary challenge for Likud party leadership from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has agreed to become foreign minister in the outgoing government.
Yesterday, Mr. Netanyahu reiterated his long-standing view that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat should be expelled and said the explusion could come during a U.S. strike against Iraq.
"I think the most appropriate time will be when Saddam Hussein is thrown out," Mr. Netanyahu told Israel TV. "I think that will be possible."
The prime minister told a press conference broadcast live from his Jerusalem office that he had tried to avoid early elections. Potential coalition partners such as the ultranationalist National Union-Israel Beitenu party, he said, made "unreasonable demands" in coalition talks, leaving the government short of a working majority in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
"Elections at this time are not what the country needs," said Mr. Sharon, who was elected in February 2001 by the largest margin in Israeli history.
However, "opposition to this government has led me to make a decision which is the most responsible and the least awful." Under Israeli law, he was obliged to call elections by October 2003.
The vote, nine months ahead of schedule, will mark Israel's third prime-ministerial election in less than four years. Polling must take place within about 90 days under Israeli law.
A Knesset spokesman said the elections could be held Jan. 28, though lawmakers will set the date later this week.
A day of back-to-back press conferences by political leaders began with an early-morning meeting in which Mr. Sharon formally announced new elections to President Moshe Katsav, whose largely ceremonial position included agreeing to the dissolution of parliament.
Mr. Sharon blamed Labor for the early elections, calling its decision to withdraw from the government an act of "political caprice." The prime minister had advertised his alliance with Labor as a key to Israel's strength amid geopolitical and economic instability.
It also helped him moderate his hawkish image in the eyes of the Israeli public.
Labor leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has been accused of fomenting the split to distance himself from Mr. Sharon and improve his prospects among Labor faithful in a party leadership election Nov. 19. He faces a tough challenge from two dovish candidates: Amram Mitzna, mayor of the Arab-Jewish city of Haifa, and former trade unions chief Haim Ramon.
Mr. Ben-Eliezer, 66, who until last week served under Mr. Sharon as defense minister, signaled that Israel's economic troubles would be a central campaign theme.
Labor ministers resigned from the government last week after differences over the 2003 budget, which they said favored Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the cost of poor and needy Israelis.
"There will be no peace without dismantling the settlements," Mr. Ben-Eliezer said. "Our government won't take from the pensioners and give to the settlers. In our government, there won't be a half-million people in poverty."
However, the Palestinian uprising and Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are likely to be just as dominant in the election, analysts said.
The campaign is likely to place any progress in the peace process on hold.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat called the elections an "internal" Israeli affair but expressed hope "that this time the Israeli people will choose a government that's capable of delivering peace."
Mr. Netanyahu, 53, held his own press conference to say he would accept Mr. Sharon's offer of the Foreign Ministry position, replacing Labor's Shimon Peres.
Mr. Netanyahu insisted on new elections when the job was offered to him last week.
"We need to elect a new Knesset," said Mr. Netanyahu, who led the government from 1996 to 1999. "I am convinced that the Likud will win a clear majority in the election."
Public opinion polls indicate that the winner of the Likud contest will become the front-runner in the general election.
Labor's chances depend on the party's ability to focus on the economy, which is expected to sputter through a third year of recession in 2003.
"Security and foreign policy work for the Likud," said Avraham Diskin, a political science professor at Hebrew University.
"People don't forget who are responsible for the Oslo dream. The very existence of Israel is endangered, and people realize that today."
Meanwhile, four Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem pleaded guilty yesterday to direct involvement in four bombings that killed 35 persons, including five Americans at Hebrew University, the Associated Press reported quoting court officials.
Prosecutors said the four Palestinians belonged to a 15-member cell that had orchestrated attacks including a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem cafe in March that killed 11 Israelis and the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing in July that killed nine persons.
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Netanyahu Approved as Israel's Foreign Minister
November 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Politics.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Benjamin Netanyahu was approved as Israel's foreign minister Wednesday, bringing him into the Cabinet of the man he seeks to succeed as prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Opinion polls gave Sharon the edge in their rivalry.
Polls also suggested Sharon's right-wing Likud party would make strong gains over the moderate Labor Party in the January that Sharon called a day earlier, sending Israel into a turbulent campaign.
Before the general vote, both parties will hold primaries to choose a leader and candidate for prime minister.
In Likud, Sharon leads the former premier Netanyahu by 44 percent to 38 percent, according to a poll by the Dahaf institute published in the Yediot Ahronot daily. The survey had a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.
Despite the rivalry, Netanyahu agreed to Sharon's request to serve as foreign minister in the caretaker government, and the appointment was approved by parliament Wednesday, in a 61-31 vote, with five abstentions.
Sharon's offer and Netanyahu's acceptance have been portrayed as part of a complex game between the two, with each trying to win points with Likud voters for seemingly placing the national interest ahead of their rivalry.
Opposition legislators criticized the appointment a farce, saying Netanyahu will be preoccupied with primaries.
``Who actually believes that Netanyahu will deal with Israel's foreign policy?'' said Ofir Pines-Paz, head of the Labor Party faction in parliament.
No date has been set for the Likud primary. Sharon wants to hold it as quickly as possible, perhaps by late November, while Netanyahu wants more time in order to campaign among party members.
Speaking to reporters in the parliament minutes after being sworn in, Netanyahu said he proposed that he and Sharon make a joint statement saying that the winner of Likud's leadership race would have the support of the other.
Netanyahu said he saw no problem in working with Sharon before or after the Likud primaries.
``Both of us have served as foreign minister, both of us have served as prime minister and I have no doubt that we can work perfectly well together,'' he said.
In Labor's Nov. 19 contest, party chief Binyamin Ben-Eliezer faces two dovish candidates, Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna and legislator Haim Ramon.
Mitzna, who leads the trio in polls among party members, said Wednesday that as party chief he would not lead Labor into another coalition with Likud.
Many Labor members have sharply criticized Ben-Eliezer for serving as Sharon's defense minister for the past 20 months and overseeing major offensives against Palestinian militants.
``The Labor Party made a very serious mistake when it joined the Likud government,'' Mitzna told Israel Army Radio on Wednesday. ``I will not make the same mistake.
Labor bolted last week, after Sharon rejected Ben-Eliezer's demand to cut funding to Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, six days after Labor's departure, Sharon called early elections, saying he had been unable to restore a stable parliamentary majority.
The Dahaf poll indicated that Sharon has the best chances of becoming prime minister. Under Israel's electoral system, voters choose a party, not a candidate. The party leader first able to form a stable coalition is named prime minister.
The survey among 550 Israeli adults indicated that Likud would win 33 seats in the 120-member parliament, up from 19, and emerge as the strongest party. Israel's right wing, overall, would make strong gains, the poll indicated, giving a Likud leader a better chance than his Labor rival to form a coalition. Labor would lose seven seats and drop to 19, the poll said.
Another survey by the Geocartographia agency showed 34 percent of respondents preferred Sharon as prime minister, 29 percent favored Netanyahu, 15 percent chose Mitzna, while 3 percent each gave their backing to Ben-Eliezer and Ramon. Sixteen percent either had no opinion or said they didn't like any of the candidates. The survey had an error margin of 4.3 percentage points.
The vote is expected to be held Jan. 28, though legislators still have the option of moving the date forward by a week or two.
Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar denied the intention was to give Netanyahu less time to prepare his campaign.
``The only considerations here are considerations of the public good,'' he told reporters. ``There is no practical use in having a long election campaign, full of arguments and which will cost the taxpayer a lot of money. We need to bring forward the date as much as possible.''
A central campaign issue will be how to approach the Palestinians.
Mitzna, for example, proposes restarting peace talks on establishing a Palestinian state despite two years of violence.
Netanyahu on Tuesday reiterated his view that Arafat should be expelled -- possibly during a U.S. strike against Iraq.
``I think the most appropriate time (to exile Arafat) will be when Saddam Hussein is thrown out,'' Netanyahu told Israel TV. ``I think that will be possible.''
Responding to Netanyahu, Arafat said Wednesday: ``No one can deport me from my homeland ... They have to remember that they are dealing with Yasser Arafat.''
Arafat called on Netanyahu to resume peace talks, noting that as prime minister he negotiated interim peace agreements with the Palestinians. Palestinian militant groups could influence the vote's outcome. If there is an increase in bombings and shootings, the Israeli electorate is expected to lurch even further to the right. A lull in violence could help Labor.
The Islamic militant group Hamas said it would continue carrying out attacks.
On Wednesday, a Hamas gunman who worked as a laborer in the Jewish settlement of Shalev in the Gaza Strip killed his employer and another Israeli before being shot dead by a guard. On Monday, a bomber from the Islamic Jihad group blew himself up in a shopping mall in central Israel, killing two Israelis.
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Missile Strike Carried Out With Yemeni Cooperation
Official Says Operation Authorized Under Bush Finding
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 6, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9663-2002Nov5.html
The U.S. missile attack launched from a Predator drone aircraft that killed six suspected al Qaeda terrorists traveling in a vehicle in Yemen on Sunday was carried out with the cooperation and approval of that country's leadership, U.S. sources said yesterday.
An administration official with knowledge of the attack said the CIA-controlled Predator was being operated under a presidential finding that authorized covert actions by the agency against Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, and although civilians were killed in the attack it was considered a military action and not an assassination.
Nevertheless, the attack has touched off a new debate on whether the United States -- with or without the assistance of friendly foreign governments -- should attack suspected terrorists outside of military zones.
Current and former government officials said the Yemen attack illustrates that the war on terrorism requires new rules for fighting. The sources emphasized that the Bush administration expects that future attacks would be carried out in cooperation with other governments, as was this one -- if sometimes secretly. White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "The president has said very plainly to the American people that this is a war in which . . . sometimes there are going to be things that are done that the American people may never know about."
The remotely flown Predator fired a missile that obliterated the vehicle and its passengers. The administration official knowledgeable about the attack said the extraordinary damage -- the vehicle was blown up and the individuals were burned almost beyond recognition -- was caused by an "unexplained secondary explosion," which indicated the occupants were carrying arms, explosives or extra gasoline.
Yemeni officials privately told reporters in that country that their intelligence agents were watching and communicating to U.S. intelligence the movements of Abu Ali al-Harithi, the senior al Qaeda operative who was the primary target in the attack. The government of Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih has announced only that it is investigating the cause of the explosion, according to the country's official news service.
In the wake of the attack, however, a statement by Salih was read over Yemen national television, asking those who had joined bin Laden's network to come forward in order to avoid what happened to al-Harithi. "We call on everyone from among our countrymen who have been entangled in membership of the al Qaeda organization to repent . . . and renounce all means of violence," Salih's statement said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on any U.S. role in the attack.
Asked how the action in Yemen squares with past U.S. opposition to Israeli "targeted killing" of Palestinians, Boucher said, "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."
While other senior officials declined to discuss the Yemen attack on the record, Deputy Defe