Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
UK nuclear liability fund gets go-ahead
German nuclear waste convoy reaches storage depot
India Won't OK Missile - Control Deal
U.N. Official Faults Clause on Interviews of Scientists
Experts: Iraq Hid Vast Chemical - Biological Stocks
Iraq Urged Reveal Arms;
U.S. Allies Back N. Korea Penalties
Russia admits to nuclear theft
Russia: Nuclear Material Missing
FBI issues confidential terror alert
HP ascends supercomputer list
Telerobots Aid in Hazwaste Cleanup
White House tones down terror warning
House Passes Terrorism Insurance Bill
FBI Bulletin Warns of Attack
White House Denies Assertions on Preoccupation With Iraq
MILITARY
U.S. Fighter Planes Bomb Afghan Targets
U.S. Arms Pipeline Flows to Gulf Arabs
Officials cooperate in arms-sale probe
India, U.S. Discuss Sale of Sensors
Jittery Britain to Advise Public How to React to Terror Attacks
Lab-closings defense memo seen as breaking Bush pact
New Leader Chosen in China
China's Jiang Keeps Military Reigns
Iranians may aid U.S. war on Iraq
Baghdad increases range of surface-to-air missiles
Experts: Iraq Hid Vast Chemical-Biological Stocks
Several Jewish Settlers Killed in Attack on Hebron
A Palestinian Camp Mourns Its Slain Children
U.S. Still Trying to Unfold Mideast Road Map
NATO Readies Defense Against Mass Destruction Arms
U.S. headed for largest defense budget hike since Reagan buildup
Military Smallpox Vaccinations Planned
'Spectacular' Warning Confuses Some
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Intelligence Criticized as F.B.I. Issues New Alert
White House Yields on a 9/11 Inquiry Backed by Congress
Report Criticizes FBI Policy
Virginia Executes Pakistani Who Killed 2 at the C.I.A.
French Police Oust Migrants Who Took Refuge in Church
'A supersnoop's dream'
Poindexter's Laboratory
Ashcroft's Shadowy Disciple
FBI Warns 'Spectacular' Al Qaeda Attack Possible
U.S. Captures Senior Al Qaeda Leader
U.S. to Push Anti - Terror Initiative in Hemisphere
ENERGY AND OTHER
Sharp to set up first US solar power plant
Farm group wants ethanol to stay in US energy bill
U.N. Condemns Shooting of Afghan Students
ACTIVISTS
Italian Police Arrest 20 Anti - Globalists
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
UK nuclear liability fund gets go-ahead
Story by Andrew Callus and Dominic Evans
REUTERS UK:
November 15, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18610/story.htm
LONDON - Britain said this week it would go ahead with plans to put its 48 billion pounds of state nuclear clean-up liabilities into a special fund, a move that could open the way for a new round of nuclear privatisation.
The plan is designed to bundle together the future costs of decommissioning and cleaning up nuclear plants and to make sure the state meets those costs.
It came as a surprise to some commentators, who had expected the government to avoid the issue of nuclear industry reform in the wake of recent events.
In September, British Energy Plc , a nuclear power firm privatised in 1996, was forced to crawl back under the state umbrella for a government loan to stop it going bust.
The British Energy crisis prompted protests from groups opposed to nuclear power and a widespread debate over the future of economic and environmental policy in the energy sector.
"Draft legislation will be published on the management of nuclear liabilities," Britain's Queen Elizabeth told parliament in a speech setting out Prime Minister Tony Blair's legislative programme for the next 12 months.
The plan to set up the Liabilities Management Authority (LMA) was first proposed a year ago. It is designed to assume the decommissioning and other costs of state-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), and a smaller set of liabilities of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Together these amount to about 48 billion pounds ($76.22 billion).
BNFL runs the UK's older and more costly Magnox nuclear power stations that were not privatised with British Energy, and the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in northwest England.
UKAEA manages the decommissioning of reactors and other radioactive facilities. It is responsible for the Dounreay plant in Scotland, where 20 workers were exposed to radioactive particles this week.
Analysts and critics see the LMA scheme as likely to help BNFL with its plans to join the private sector, making the business more attractive to investors by keeping the liabilities with the taxpayer.
Some industry sources have suggested the LMA could end up as the vehicle for a rehabilitation of British Energy itself - taking on the privatised firm's liabilities as well and leaving a restructured company that has more investor appeal.
The draft bill, which may be held up by lengthy consultation before being taken forward for legislation, sets out goals to clean up the "nuclear legacy" safely and cost effectively, according to a Department of Trade and Industry document accompanying the Queen's speech.
Commercial contracts will remain with BNFL and will be unchanged by the proposals.
BNFL Chief Executive Norman Askew, who hopes to get the company privatised within the next three or four years, welcomed the plan, though he said he had initially hoped it might happen sooner.
"It's good news," he said. "Initially the intention was to get this in place by April 2004. That probably has slipped six months, but in the scheme of things that's not fatal."
Anti-nuclear group Greenpeace, which has been campaigning for British Energy to be put into administration, said the move raised the spectre of new nuclear plants being built.
"The new nuclear liability legislation will pass the industry's huge clean-up cost on to the taxpayer and so clear the way for dangerous new plants across the country," said a Greenpeace spokesman.
"People living near the sites earmarked for new nuclear stations should today be worried. All this when we have huge untapped reserves of renewable energy in this country."
(Additional reporting by F. Brinley Bruton).
-------- germany
German nuclear waste convoy reaches storage depot
Story by Claudia Doerries
REUTERS GERMANY:
November 15, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18601/story.htm
GORLEBEN, Germany - The largest transport of nuclear waste in German history arrived at a storage depot yesterday after a massive police force escorted the freight train past thousands of demonstrators.
The convoy of 12 containers filled with 1,300 tonnes of reprocessed nuclear waste was the target of anti-nuclear activists for three days. They repeatedly delayed the train by chaining themselves to tracks and disrupting the transport.
The containers had been loaded onto trucks for the final 20 km (12 mile) segment of the journey to Gorleben, north of Hanover, where they arrived at 0621 GMT. The transport began at the French reprocessing plant of La Hague on Monday.
More than 1,000 demonstrators had delayed the convoy by about five hours during the final segment by sitting on the road leading to Gorleben. But police carried the protesters away. Earlier protesters had set tyres on fire on tracks.
"There were some scuffles between police and demonstrators, but there were no major confrontations," said police spokeswoman Michelle Rolof.
Wolfgang Ehmke, spokesman for the demonstrators, said the opponents had nevertheless succeeded in showing the world that the anti-nuclear movement in Germany was still going strong.
"We scored a number of important blows all week," he said. "The resistance to nuclear waste in Germany won't go away."
This week a high-speed train carrying 150 passengers screeched to a halt in Lueneburg, north of Hanover, only 150 metres (yards) from two dozen demonstrators blocking the tracks after two policemen ran towards it waving at it to stop. The train was running at 110 km an hour (70 mph) at the time.
Nuclear power is a controversial issue in Germany, where government and industry agreed in 2000 to phase out all reactors by around 2025.
There are now a total of 32 "castor" containers with nuclear waste in Gorleben. Another 12 containers will be brought to Gorleben each year from France through 2010. From 2005 another five containers will arrive each year from a British reprocessing plant in Sellafield.
The shipments to the Gorleben site have become the object of a ritual confrontation between police and anti-nuclear activists. Some 15,000 police were needed to guard the route last year in the largest peacetime security operation in post-war German history.
Security costs have reached $23 million in past years.
-------- india / pakistan
India Won't OK Missile - Control Deal
November 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Missile-Code.html
NEW DELHI (AP) -- India won't take part in an international agreement to curb the spread of ballistic missiles, the foreign ministry said Friday.
Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said India supports missile curbs, but takes issue with the agreement because it ``refers to ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles without a proper distinction.''
India is the second major country to oppose the code. China said earlier this month that it won't take part. The code calls on nations to curb proliferation and share information about testing ballistic missiles.
It was proposed by French President Jacques Chirac in 2000 and then drawn up by the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international pact that tries to discourage the export of weapons of mass destruction.
Representatives from about 78 countries met in Paris in February to help produce the guidelines.
Conference participants included the five original nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- and three more nations that have tested nuclear weapons or are believed to be capable of doing so -- India, Pakistan and Israel.
The agreement defines a ballistic missile as one capable of delivering a 1,100-pound payload farther than 190 miles. It can carry nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
India's ballistic missile arsenal includes the Prithvi, with a range of 95 to 220 miles, and the intermediate range Agni, which can reach up to 1,500 miles and is capable of delivering a 2,205-pound warhead.
India conducted five nuclear tests in 1998, causing international concern and provoking economic sanctions by the United States and other Western nations. Those tests were followed by nuclear tests by rival Pakistan.
-------- inspections
INSPECTORS
U.N. Official Faults Clause on Interviews of Scientists
November 15, 2002
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/international/middleeast/15INSP.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 14 - A clause in the Iraq resolution that lets United Nations inspectors take Iraqi scientists and their families out of the country for interviews may backfire and make access to the scientists more difficult, a senior United Nations official said today.
Hundreds of Iraqi scientists are thought to know about programs to develop biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, and interviewing them is considered vital to uncovering Iraq's hidden arms. The clause to let them be interviewed outside the country was meant to make them more forthcoming, since they would be away from the customary Iraqi minders, informers and censors.
The problem with the new provision, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that the Iraqis may worry about defections, and thus may be more guarded about the identities of those who work on scientific programs that could produce weapons of mass destruction.
A week ago Friday, the day the Security Council voted unanimously to disarm Iraq with a new inspection regime, euphoric Bush administration officials promoted the idea of Iraqi scientists' defecting. Although today the United Nations official did not mention the administration's comments, he was clearly worried that the prospect of defections would make interviewing more difficult.
The official said it was important to get names of Iraqi scientists who joined the programs since the inspectors left four years ago. Such individuals are now largely unknown, the official said, and discovering their identities will take much work or unusual Iraqi cooperation.
The resolution said inspectors "shall have the right to be provided by Iraq the names of all personnel currently and formerly associated with Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programs and the associated research, development, and production facilities."
It also says that the inspectors may "conduct interviews inside or outside of Iraq and may facilitate the travel of those interviewed and family members outside of Iraq."
It is unclear who was behind the clause allowing interviews outside Iraq. But Bush administration officials praised the resolution and suggested that Iraqi scientists willing to testify about secret weapons programs would be assured that they would not have to return to Iraq under the current government.
The administration officials said defector knowledge about the location of hidden weapons and installations could provide Washington with detailed evidence to challenge Saddam Hussein.
Today, the senior United Nations official expressed doubt about the potential effectiveness of the interviewing provisions, predicting that the discovery of the identities of relatively new scientific recruits would now become one of the hardest aspects of the inspection job.
"The authority to take them out," he said, "will make things more difficult." The official added that under the old inspection regime, from 1991 to 1998, Iraqi officials were often reluctant but nevertheless identified scientists and let them be interviewed, though usually in highly controlled circumstances.
--------
Experts: Iraq Hid Vast Chemical - Biological Stocks
November 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-weapons.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite Iraqi denials, Western experts believe Baghdad has produced and concealed vast amounts of chemical and biological agents and may have rebuilt part of its illegal nuclear program.
In its letter this week to the United Nations accepting the return of weapons inspectors to its soil after a four-year absence, Iraq said it ``has not developed weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, chemical or biological, as claimed by evil people.''
Western analysts, building on what was discovered by the previous U.N. inspection regime known as UNSCOM, which lasted from 1991 to 1998, and what was strongly suspected but could not be proved, believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still concealing a deadly arsenal.
One 1998 assessment by the U.S. House of Representatives task force on terrorism and unconventional warfare concluded, ``Despite Baghdad's protestations, Iraq does have small but very lethal operational arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and platforms capable of delivering them.''
When the UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they said they still did not know the full extent of Iraq's chemical and biological programs but had collected both hard and circumstantial evidence suggesting that the programs were far more advanced and wider in scope than previously believed.
Possibly the most terrifying and least known area concerns Iraqi biological warfare capabilities. After repeatedly denying the existence of such programs, Iraq was forced to admit in 1995 that it had produced anthrax, aflatoxins and botulinum toxin and that it had filled missile warheads and aerial bombs with biological agents.
Iraq said it destroyed all these agents but UNSCOM suspected it had produced and hidden large amounts of all three.
Aflatoxins, a carcinogen naturally found in many nuts and some grains, causes cancer and other diseases and may have been developed for possible use as a slow agent of genocide, perhaps for use against Iraq's Kurdish minority. Botulinum toxin is one of the most toxic substances known to man.
``There was a vast discrepancy between the amount of germ cultures the Iraqis imported and what they said they used for legitimate industrial purposes. They could have hidden enough to produce four tons of germ warfare agents,'' said Jonathan Tucker, who worked on U.N. biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq in the 1990s.
There was also some circumstantial evidence that Iraq was working to develop and weaponize smallpox. There was a natural outbreak of the disease in Iraq in 1971 and scientists could have collected and stored samples.
It is known that Iraq was experimenting with camel pox, a close relative which usually attacks animals but could also harm humans. It might have also been used for experimentation because its chemistry is very close to that of smallpox.
SMALLPOX IS 'SCARIEST UNKNOWN'
``The biggest and scariest unknown is whether Iraq has access to smallpox and whether its scientists have produced a weaponized and militarized version,'' said Michael Barletta of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
An assessment from the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies concluded, ``Iraq has probably retained substantial growth media and biological weapons agent (perhaps thousands of liters of anthrax) from pre-1991 stocks. The regime is capable of resuming biological weapons agent production in weeks from existing civilian facilities. It could have produced thousands of liters of anthrax, botulinum toxin and other agents since 1998.''
Rod Barton, a former Australian defense official who worked on UNSCOM biological inspections in Iraq, wrote in an analysis in 2001 that he believed Baghdad may have perfected a way of freeze drying anthrax so that it would retain its potency for many years.
In the chemical weapons field, most concern centers on VX, a deadly nerve agent where a single droplet can kill. When they were ejected from Iraq in 1998, U.N. inspectors had uncovered evidence that Baghdad had imported precursors sufficient to produce 200 tons of the agent.
Iraq admitted only to having produced 3.9 tons and said it had destroyed it all but inspectors found traces of a VX stabilizer and chemical byproducts of the deadly agent in samples of warhead pieces.
In the nuclear field, experts say Iraq has maintained its scientific and technical expertise and could produce a nuclear weapon within a few months if it could get its hands on weapons-grade fissile material.
CIA director George Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee last February, ``Iraq retains a significant number of nuclear scientists, program documentation and probably some dual-use manufacturing infrastructure that could support a reinvigorated nuclear weapons program.''
Most experts do not believe Iraq has managed to keep more than a couple of dozen ballistic missiles and it is unclear how many would actually work after being in secret storage for the past 11 years since the 1991 Gulf War.
But Iraq is known to have been developing small, unmanned aircraft which would be difficult to detect on radar because of their size, slow speed and lack of metal parts. Such aircraft could be guided to their targets using global positioning devices and used to deliver chemical or biological weapons.
--------
Iraq Urged Reveal Arms;
Inspections Start Nov 27
November 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Declaring spot inspections would begin on Nov. 27, chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix warned President Saddam Hussein on Friday to disclose all his weapons of mass destruction in a report next month.
``This offers a last opportunity for Iraq to declare what they have,'' Blix told a news conference on the eve of his trip to Baghdad. ``An omission can be very serious.''
Iraq, under a new Security Council resolution 1441, adopted Nov. 8, has to give a ``full, accurate and complete'' declaration of all its programs and materiel that can be used to develop chemical, biological and nuclear arms, and ballistic missiles. The declaration is due on Dec. 8.
Iraq has said repeatedly it has no weapons of mass destruction. But Blix said Baghdad had often changed its position in the past and now had time ``to examine their archives and their stores and their stocks and determine whether there is something or not.''
The resolution says any false information in the declaration and noncooperation with weapons inspectors would constitute a ``material breach'' -- legal terminology that could trigger a U.S. attack against Baghdad.
The measure, which gives inspectors new rights, says Blix has to report any serious violation to the council, which would assess it before anyone could take military action. But some U.S. officials would like to report violations themselves, without verification by Blix.
Blix, however, said that if the United States or any other country had evidence, it had to tell the council.
``If others have evidence, then that would be the time to present it ... put it on the table, he said.''
He said that when inspectors were last in Iraq, between 1992 and 1998, the concept was that Iraq would make a declaration and the inspectors would verify it. ``Some said this developed into 'they hide, we seek','' Blix said.
President Bush will seek solidarity from fellow NATO members to support firm action on Iraq during a Prague summit next week. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Bush wanted to hear from allies ``what they are prepared to do and what they can do.''
Washington had hoped Iraqi exiles could form an alternative government to replace Saddam, should it go ahead with plans to overthrow him. So far six opposition parties have failed to organize themselves and in London, representatives of rival Kurdish parties have set two different dates for meetings.
Blix and his counterpart from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, are going to Baghdad on Monday with a team of technicians. They will set up offices, communications and transport to ``make sure the pigeons that have broken through the windows have been cleaned out'' and ``to initiate this new chapter of inspections,'' Blix said.
TIMETABLE ACCELERATED
Blix has also accelerated his reporting timetable.
A week later, about Nov 25, an advance group of about a dozen arms experts go to Iraq and begin the first inspections two days later. Blix said the clock then ``starts ticking'' on the 60-day deadline, now Jan. 27 for his first required report to the Security Council, a month earlier than expected.
That resolution gives inspectors the right to go anywhere, any time, and warns Iraq that it will face ``serious consequences'' if it fails to comply.
But he also said inspector had to use their common sense and ``take into account whether you can read an intention into something.''
Asked about Arab League requests that more Arab inspectors be included, Blix said only Jordanians to date had submitted names. He said inspectors would include about 30 Americans, the largest group but that this number was close in size to a contingent of French or Russian arms experts.
The new resolution also allows Blix and ElBaradei to interview government officials, scientists and their families out of the country so they would not be intimated, in what Blix in the past has called an ``invitation to defect.''
He said again that interviews, without Iraqi minders, would be most helpful but there were ``practical problems'' in getting people out of the country without Baghdad's consent.
However, he said that interviewing people in Iraq may present problems also out of fear of later intimidation.
Blix, the executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission is in charge of biological, chemical and ballistic arms teams, while ElBaradei field nuclear weapons inspectors.
Two senior Russian officials warned Blix not to repeat the mistakes of his predecessor, Australian Richard Butler, who had been vilified by Moscow for presenting a report that trigged punitive U.S.-British air strikes in December 1998.
``Crude and arrogant methods were used which ignored the sovereignty and dignity of Iraq and its people,'' Russia U.N. Ambassador Sergei Lavrov told Moscow television in an apparent reference to U.S. agents among the inspectors.
And Yuri Fedotov, Lavrov's former U.N. deputy and now Russia's deputy foreign minister, said Butler, by withdrawing the inspectors unilaterally ``cleared the way for strikes against that country,'' according to the Interfax news agency.
Butler withdrew the inspectors on the eve of the bombing to prevent them from becoming hostages but Russia said the Security Council should have been informed first.
-------- korea
U.S. Allies Back N. Korea Penalties
November 15, 2002
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-North-Korea.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Demanding the speedy elimination of North Korea's nuclear program, key allies backed the U.S. decision to suspend future oil deliveries to North Korea as punishment for its secret program to develop a uranium-based bomb.
South Korea, Japan, the European Union and the United States said in a joint statement Thursday after a daylong meeting that future shipments will depend on North Korea's ``concrete and credible actions'' to completely dismantle its highly enriched uranium program. This must be done ``in a visible and verifiable manner,'' it said.
The isolated communist nation is destitute and depends heavily on the U.S. oil shipments. The United States and its allies are hoping the prospect of a cold winter for millions of North Koreans will pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
``We strongly ask North Korea to take our message seriously and scrap its plan to develop nuclear arms immediately,'' Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Friday.
Halting fuel oil shipments may force many factories in North Korea to shut down, analysts in Seoul said Friday. North Korea imports all its oil, with about 10 percent coming from the oil assistance program, South Korea says.
``So, it's not difficult to figure out how serious the impact would be,'' from the suspension, said Choi Su-young, a researcher at the Institute for National Unification, a government think tank.
The first to feel the impact could be the North's showcase capital, Pyongyang, the analysts said.
The three allies gave their support to the suspension a day after President Bush made a decision to stop oil shipments, accusing North Korea of violating a 1994 agreement with the United States in which it pledged to become a state free of nuclear weapons.
In exchange for the pledge, the United States had promised to provide more than 500,000 tons of heavy oil per year. In addition, South Korea and Japan offered to pay most of the cost for two light water nuclear reactors that are of limited use for a country intent on developing nuclear weapons. The fate of that project is unclear.
The European Union, the United States, Japan and South Korea are members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, known as KEDO, which operates the 8-year-old oil assistance program.
The KEDO statement said the suspension would begin with the December shipment. In light of the suspension, ``other KEDO activities with North Korea will be reviewed,'' it said. Such programs include economic aid and construction projects.
The allies said North Korea's nuclear program threatens regional and international security and undermines the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Bush decided to suspend the oil shipments following North Korea's acknowledgment of its uranium bomb program on Oct. 4 during a meeting with U.S. officials in Pyongyang. His only concession was to agree to allow a vessel already en route to North Korea to deliver a final oil shipment.
Before the suspension was announced, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a news conference in Ottawa, Canada: ``We cannot continue to provide fuel in this manner, in light of North Korean violation of the understanding.''
In late October, North Korea offered to negotiate a non-aggression pact with the United States, but Powell has said there can be no discussion until Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear program.
The CIA believes North Korea has at least one plutonium-based bomb from an earlier nuclear program. Powell said last week that the North's nuclear weapons arsenal could be increased in a matter of months if Pyongyang decides to reprocess the plutonium now under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Associated Press reporter Dilshika Jayamaha in New York contributed to this report.
-------- russia
Russia admits to nuclear theft
AFP
Friday November 15, 3:28 AM
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/021114/afp/021114192839top.html
MOSCOW (AFP) - Several kilograms (pounds) of low-enriched uranium and a few grams (ounces) of weapons-grade material have been stolen from various Russian nuclear sites over the past decade.
The head of the federal nuclear and radioactive security oversight agency said massive new investments were needed to strengthen safeguards at Russia's nuclear sites and keep the dangerous material out of the wrong hands.
"There have been cases of leakage" over the past decade, said Yury Vishnyevsky, using a slang term for material being stolen by thieves.
"We are talking about grams (ounces) of weapons-grade materials, and kilograms of low-grade uranium used as fuel by nuclear power plants," the official said, according to Russian news agencies.
He said the losses were most frequently recorded at secretive industrial plants like Electroplate, near Moscow, and the Novosibirsk chemical plant.
Both of these sites are believed to be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Vishnyevsky said Russia needs to invest some six billion rubles (190 million dollars) to make these and other sites safe from thieves.
The investment is needed "to modernize technical defense equipment, as well as for preparing and arming the security services at nuclear sites."
Russian officials have in the past denied a series of Western press reports alleging that radioactive material has been stolen from Russian nuclear sites.
Several of these thefts have been pinned by the Western media to people linked to rebels in separatist Chechnya.
Vishnyevsky said the Russian government began to focus its attention on nuclear safety issues following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and that it recently conducted a full inspection of all nuclear facilities.
"After last September 11, the situation turned for the better quite significantly, but it is still not perfect," the nuclear official said.
"Two months ago, we inspected 100 percent of our nuclear facilities, and the findings have been handed over to the Russian security council" for study, he said.
Vishnyevsky said he assessed the chances of terrorist attack against one of Russia's nuclear facilities as virtually nonexistent.
----
Russia: Nuclear Material Missing
November 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- The head of Russia nuclear regulatory agency says small amounts of weapons- and reactor-grade nuclear materials have disappeared from the country's atomic facilities.
``Instances of the loss of nuclear materials have been recorded, but what the quantity is is another question,'' Yuri Vishnyevsky, head of Gosatomnadzor, said Thursday. ``Of those situations that we can talk about in actuality, they involve either grams of weapons-grade or kilograms of the usual uranium used in atomic power plants.''
``Most often, these instances are connected with factories preparing fuel: Elektrostal in the Moscow region and Novosibirsk'' in Siberia, Vishnyevsky said.
He did not give further details on when the losses were discovered or how the material might have gone missing.
The International Atomic Energy Agency lists two known thefts of uranium from Elektrostal, in 1994 and 1995. In both cases, the uranium was seized by Russian police.
The agency also lists the 1994 seizure in Germany of 400 grams of plutonium brought in from Moscow.
A few grams of Uranium-235, the most common weapons-grade nuclear material, would not be sufficient to make a bomb. But reactor-grade uranium can be enriched to weapons-grade through a complicated process believed to be possessed by some countries trying to develop nuclear weapons, such as Iraq.
Russia's nuclear security has been a high concern in the decade since the Soviet Union's collapse brought financial troubles that reduced funding for state facilities and induced poverty that could motivate nuclear workers to sell atomic materials.
Worries have risen in the wake of increasing terrorism, including last month's attack on a Moscow theater by Chechen gunmen who held hundreds of hostages to press their demand that Russia withdraw troops from Chechnya.
``After Sept. 11 of last year, the situation with regard to security at all Russian nuclear facilities changed for the better, but it still has not reached perfection,'' Vishnyevsky said.
He estimated that bringing security to its ideal level at Russian nuclear operations would require about 6 billion rubles, or $200 million.
Vishnyevsky made his statements while criticizing a proposed law on technological regulation now being considered by the Duma, the lower house of parliament.
He presented a letter to the Duma from a number of prominent scientists criticizing the proposed law for calling for ``the minimal necessary demands for security at the same time that in the whole world and in our country the demands for security in using atomic energy should be the maximum.''
It also was reported Friday that a Russian scientific expedition located a Soviet nuclear submarine and 237 containers of radioactive waste in the northern Kara Sea.
The K-27 submarine was dumped in the Kara Sea in 1981, 13 years after one of its reactors released radiation and it was taken out of service, according to the Norway-based environmental group Bellona.
Expedition members also examined what is believed to be the burial site of the reactor section of another nuclear submarine -- the K-254, Russian Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Mikhail Faleyev told the Interfax-Military news agency.
Preliminary tests of water, sediment and sea life found that radiation levels are ``stable'' at both sites, Faleyev said.
Environmental groups say the Soviet Union routinely dumped radioactive waste and nuclear reactors from decommissioned submarines into Arctic waters off the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, a former nuclear testing site.
-------- terrorism
FBI issues confidential terror alert
November 15, 2002
By DAVID JOHNSTON And ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Story/56245.html
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies came under renewed attack in Congress on Thursday for failing to find Osama bin Laden, with the increasing certainty that he is still alive prompting senior Democratic senators to brand the effort to dismantle al-Qaida as a failure.
As even Bush administration officials took the FBI to task for a warning issued on Wednesday about possible attacks on hospitals, the FBI on Thursday issued a vague and alarming alert to state and local law enforcement agencies warning that this week's message from bin Laden, intelligence reports and recent overseas strikes by al-Qaida had raised the threat of "spectacular attacks" in the United States.
"In selecting its next targets," the FBI alert said, "sources suggest al-Qaida may favor spectacular attacks that meet several criteria: high symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy, and maximum psychological trauma. The highest priority targets remain within the aviation, petroleum, and nuclear sectors as well as significant national landmarks."
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged that the Bush administration has been distracted from the fight against terrorism by the preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq.
"They are so focused on Iraq that they aren't paying adequate attention to the war on terror," he said in an interview.
Graham added that U.S. intelligence should undertake a crash program to identify and take action against terrorist threats in advance of any military action in Iraq "before the threat level truly does spike when we don't have enough time."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday underscored concerns that the United States could face increased dangers of terrorist attack if President Bush orders military action against Iraq.
In an hour-long radio interview with Infinity Broadcasting, Rumsfeld said President Saddam Hussein of Iraq might try and organize terrorist strikes against American targets if a U.S.-led coalition moves to disarm him by force.
"I have do doubt that if he's able, he would like to see that terrorist attacks occur in the event that military action was taken," Rumsfeld said.
Graham said that American intelligence agencies have failed to determine the extent of the terrorist threat even as the country prepares for war. If bin Laden is alive, he suggested, then the threat to the United States has increased. "If he is still alive and still in charge, that means al-Qaida continues to have a highly capable and venomous leader."
The FBI warning was sent on Thursday as a confidential alert to 18,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the country, but it was not issued to the public. Government officials said that the threat warning level would remain at the current level of Code Yellow. That was because, the officials said, that the threats were serious enough to warn state and local authorities, but not specific enough to warrant a general alert.
In the past, some lawmakers have criticized the Bush administration for spreading fear by issuing public alerts without providing any information about how to respond as a politically motivated effort to insulate the government from eventual criticism that it failed to act.
But several officials said that Thursday's warning was genuine, although they added that there was no intelligence about the time, place or method of any such attack. They acknowledged that the language of this alert was more extreme than similar alerts issued in the past; earlier alerts have seldom made reference to the expectation of large scale attacks or possible casualties.
At the same time, however, Thursday's two-page warning also urged law enforcement officials to be on guard against smaller attacks with cruder materials such as simple explosives.
One official said that language was a response to the bin Laden tape played on al-Jazeera television on Tuesday, which is increasingly being viewed as authentic, and to other events, including attacks on American Marines in Kuwait and possible reprisal for the killing of an al-Qaida leader in Yemen in an American missile strike. On Thursday night, Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani convicted of killing two CIA employees outside the agency's headquarters in 1993, was executed, adding to concerns about reprisals.
Thomas Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader from South Dakota, said the inability to find bin Laden was a sign of deeper problems in the war on terror. "We can't find bin Laden, we haven't made real progress in finding key elements of al-Qaida. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were one and a half years ago. So by what measure can we claim to be successful so far?"
Answering reporters' questions, Daschle said that intelligence agencies should do a lot more to find where bin Laden's message was sent. "It seems he has the ability to move at will," Daschle said. "It's been a long time. 9/11 was more than year ago, and we have yet to find him."
Thursday's warning was the clearest sign yet of the near certainty in intelligence circles that the audiotaped message broadcast by an Arab television channel earlier this week, praising terror attacks in Bali and Kuwait, was an authentic recording by bin Laden.
A CIA technical analysis of the tape continued on Thursday, but without a final determination about whether the voice was bin Laden's.
The tape is part of the swirl of chatter of intercepted communications and informant reports that American officials said had spiked in recent days. The officials said that the warnings of attacks seemed linked to the Bush administration's preparations for war with Iraq.
Law enforcement officials dismissed the attacks from Senate Democrats as political grandstanding, and insisted that major strides have been made against terrorism.
"We've busted up cells in Buffalo, Detroit and Portland, we've caught several of bin Laden's chief lieutenants, we have driven the Taliban and al-Qaida from Afghanistan, and we haven't had another attack here since 9/11," said a law enforcement official who asked not to be identified. "I would say all in all, were doing an excellent job."
However, not everyone exuded such confidence. "The anxiety level is probably as high as it has been since the anthrax attacks," said one FBI supervisor who asked not to be identified. "We've gone through rises and falls in tension in the last 14 months, but the collective feeling right now seems pretty grim."
The dissatisfaction over the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, appeared to have deepened in recent days. On Thursday a group headed by James S. Gilmore III, a former Republican governor of Virginia, concluded that a new domestic intelligence agency should be established.
"We've got to gather this kind of information so we can disrupt the enemy before they attack us," Gilmore said in an interview after testifying to a House military subcommittee. "We've got to do it. The only real question is do we let the FBI do it, or do we do it in a separate agency, and in our commission the separate agency theory won out." The FBI was under fire on Thursday from some Bush administration officials for sending out a confidential alert on Wednesday warning of possible attacks at hospitals in Washington, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco.
"There are some raised eyebrows here as to why they would put out something like this," said an administration official. "This was a report that didn't have a lot of credibility, then it goes out and now you really have anxiety levels raised in these cities. It was unnecessary."
The FBI has been criticized from many sides in recent weeks, and more bad news is expected on Friday. The Justice Department's Inspector General is expected to issue a report critical of the bureau's disciplinary procedures. The report is expected to highlight a double standard in which senior executives had been given lighter punishments for wrongdoing than rank-and-file agents, according to government officials.
Administration officials voiced concern over the bin Laden tape, in part because an audiotape message last month that was attributed to bin Laden, but never authenticated, seemed to fuel anti-western violence. Unlike earlier tapes, the new tape referred by name to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, raising concerns about the security of senior officeholders.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
HP ascends supercomputer list
November 15, 2002
Stephen Shankland, Staff Writer,
CNET News.com, News.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1001-965923.html
A supercomputer for simulating nuclear explosions has advanced Hewlett-Packard's position in a ranking to be released Thursday night of the 500 fastest supercomputers.
Two segments of HP's ASCI Q system, built as part of the Energy Department's Advanced Simulation and Computing program to substitute computer calculations for full-fledged nuclear tests, took the second and third spots in the ranking.
The new systems, being built at Los Alamos National Laboratory, bumped IBM's ASCI White two spots down the list. NEC's Earth Simulator remains No. 1, with nearly five times the total computing power of each ASCI Q segment.
While HP also maintained its lead over IBM in the sheer number of computers on the list--138 altogether--Big Blue extended its lead in the fraction of the total processing power of the 500 machines. In other words, IBM built fewer systems, but those 134 machines are collectively more powerful.
IBM computers accounted for 33 percent of the total processing power in the June 2002 list and 39 percent in the November 2002 list, continuing a steady increase. HP's position stayed level at 22 percent.
The list is compiled by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Germany's University of Mannheim, and is updated twice a year.
The number of "terascale" computers--those that can perform more than a trillion calculations per second--more than doubled since June, increasing from 23 to 47.
The supercomputing industry has entered a frenzy of activity in anticipation of the beginning of the SC2002 supercomputer show in Baltimore on Monday.
Cray announced a 4,096-processor behemoth Thursday. SGI improved its top-end systems with the release of the Origin 3900 on Monday. Advanced Micro Devices, known mostly for building processors that are popular with consumers, is building a system at Sandia National Laboratories.
HP's top-end Superdome Unix server starting showing a presence on the list in June 2001. Now individual Superdomes aren't powerful enough, but there now dozens of "hyperplex" configurations, small clusters of Superdomes linked with a high-speed network.
Sun Microsystems also has dramatically increased its presence with its Sun Fire 15K "Starcat" server. Sun had 37 systems in the June 2002 list, but wider adoption of the Sun Fire 15K system has given Sun 88 places on the November 2002 list. None of those systems, however, ranks very high. The first Sun Fire 15K appears at No. 173; almost all of the rest swept places 379 through 460.
The Top 500 list is based on a performance yardstick called Linpack, a calculation that represents some aspects of supercomputer capability. In an effort to create a better benchmark, though, market research firm IDC, along with the Top 500 organizers and supercomputer sellers, has created a different measurement called the IDC Balanced Rating intended to reflect real-world performance more accurately.
-------- us nuc waste
Telerobots Aid in Hazwaste Cleanup
November 15, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-15-09.asp#anchor7
OAK RIDGE, Tennessee, Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing robotics technology that can aid in the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.
The telerobotic manipulation system enables cleanup efforts to be conducted remotely from a distant location, performing chores that would have to otherwise be done on site by humans.
Developed by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Robotics Crosscutting program, the system may be used in the future to clean up hazardous waste sites under DOE jurisdiction, and may have additional future uses for various cleanup tasks.
The compact remote control console, which is the front end of the system, provides the operator with the ability to manipulate the telerobot that performs the actual cleanup work.
It includes four monitors for remote task viewing, two touch screen based graphical user interface computers, a telerobotic control computer and hand controllers to command the robot manipulator to complete cleanup tasks.
The compact console was developed by DOE to control the costs of deploying remote systems while maintaining a high level of control. Several compact consoles have been used around the United States for various cleanup tasks.
The compact console component of the telerobotic manipulation system is now available commercially from Agile Engineering of Knoxville.
The telerobotics part of the system combines human input and robotics automation to complete cleanup tasks. The current focus is plasma arc cutting of metal structures to dismantle contaminated equipment.
The testing of the equipment comes during a time when there is an increasing need for remote systems and robotics for cleanup of DOE facilities. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology laboratory managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.
-------- us politics
White House tones down terror warning
By Nicholas M. Horrock
UPI Chief White House Correspondent
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk Published
11/15/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021115-025849-9656r
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- The White House and the FBI Friday began back-peddling from a warning the bureau issued saying al Qaida was plotting "spectacular" attacks against the United States, after critics latched on to it to show progress in the war on terror was faltering.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said at a White House briefing that the FBI's warnings this week are "really are a summary of intelligence, not a new warning. This is a summary of intelligence as we know it."
Her statement came as the Bush administration rushed to offset the FBI's startling language and refute charges by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle that the war on terror was faltering and an attack on Iraq would distract the nation from the more pressing danger posed by al Qaida.
Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that although the terrorism risk level remained unchanged, the FBI report showed, "we are taking additional precautions to meet the threat." He said the intelligence behind the reports was unspecific and did not lend itself to clear warnings.
He said that the bureau's warning, sent to local law enforcement agencies Thursday and then published Friday on the National Infrastructure Protection Center's Web site, had been reviewed by the White House and other agencies, before it was issued.
But the bureau warning came in a week in which world attention turned once again to al Qaida, the shadowy terror organization blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
An audio recording -- apparently the voice of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden -- was broadcast by the Arab language Al Jazeera news network earlier this week. Although U.S. intelligence agencies have not completed a final analysis of the tape, the recording is the first piece of evidence that bin Laden survived the U.S.-led assault on his Afghan sanctuary last year.
Following the broadcast, United Press International reported unnamed senior government officials as saying that "chatter" -- intercepted communications between al Qaida operatives -- was at its highest level.
Two other warnings preceded Thursday's alert.
On Wednesday, FBI told officials in Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington to be alert for threats against hospitals. And the State Department warned Americans abroad, particularly in Pakistan, that the execution Thursday night of a Pakistan citizen for a shooting rampage at CIA's headquarters 1993 might be avenged with attacks.
By Friday, the FBI itself was throwing cold water on its own alert. A spokesman said that "nothing (in the warning) is corroborated, its done out of an abundance of caution."
Rice said that the Bush administration issued these warnings -- which have often in the past been criticized as alarmist and unspecific -- because "it is important that Americans know when this sort of thing comes to the attention of the administration."
Without mentioning Daschle's name, Rice refuted his charge about the progress of the war on terror, saying the United States had eliminated several key al Qaida leaders, eradicated training camps in Afghanistan, destroyed terror command and control and hardened up many of its own defenses. Rice said the 60 nation terror war coalition shared intelligence and that movement for al Qaida was much more difficult.
(With reporting by Michael Kirkland, UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent)
----
House Passes Terrorism Insurance Bill
Senate to Take Up Measure Called Vital to Economy
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 15, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57228-2002Nov14?language=printer
The House passed legislation last night to provide up to $100 billion to help the insurance industry cover claims from future terrorist attacks, sending the measure to the Senate, where Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) has promised prompt action.
The voice vote was a victory for President Bush, who made the legislation's passage a priority in recent weeks, and for the insurance industry and developers of major, high-profile real estate projects. They have said the difficulty in obtaining affordable terrorism insurance has threatened many of their projects and undermined the overall economy.
Racing to wind up its lame-duck session after the Nov. 5 midterm elections, the House derailed another major bill, to overhaul the nation's bankruptcy laws. On a procedural vote, lawmakers blocked consideration of the measure, effectively killing it for this Congress.
Early today, in a parliamentary maneuver that critics likened to "the legislative equivalent of a fraternity stunt," the House reversed itself, dropped a controversial provision dealing with abortion clinics and sent the bill to the Senate, where foes said it would die.
The House agreed to a five-week extension of unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, over protests from Democrats that it was too little in light of high jobless rates in many areas. The Senate last night passed a more generous unemployment package that would extend benefits through March, raising the possibility of an end-of-the-session snag between the two houses.
Meanwhile last night, White House and Senate negotiators agreed on legislation to create an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But an effort to revive a scaled-back version of Bush's proposal to bolster faith-based charities fizzled in the Senate when Democrats tried to add provisions, prompting a partisan deadlock.
The key issue in the terrorism insurance debate centered not on the bill's insurance provisions but on Republicans' longstanding efforts to curb large jury awards in liability lawsuits. The House earlier passed a version of the bill that would have prohibited victims of terrorist attacks from seeking punitive damages from companies and real estate owners.
Courts sometimes assess punitive damages -- on top of awards for monetary loss or pain and suffering -- to punish a company, manufacturer or other party deemed to have recklessly caused injuries or death. The Senate omitted the proposed ban, and the White House last month backed down from insisting on a ban on punitive damages.
But the compromise bill that House and Senate negotiators agreed to did not satisfy House Republican leaders, who strongly supported the ban on punitive damages. They held up consideration of the measure by the full House until last night. But in the end, virtually all opposition to the compromise bill evaporated as the House passed the measure by voice vote.
The bill would provide as much as $100 billion over three years to cover 90 percent of future terrorism-related insurance claims. Government aid would kick in when terrorism-related losses exceed minimum levels of an insurance company's premiums. The threshold levels to qualify for the aid would be 7 percent of premiums in the first year, 10 percent in the second year and 15 percent in the third year.
The measure would consolidate civil lawsuits stemming from a terrorist attack in a single federal court for trial under the laws of the state where the attack took place. That provision, supported by Republicans, is designed to prevent defendants such as property owners and insurance companies from facing multiple claims in several jurisdictions from the same event.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) portrayed the bill as vital for economic development. He said a recent survey estimated that real estate projects worth more than $15 billion have been canceled or are being delayed because of a lack of terrorism insurance coverage.
"This bill is absolutely necessary to the well-being of the American economy," Oxley said. "We need this backstop now."
The only criticism of the bill was voiced by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), reflecting disappointment that the punitive-damages provision had been dropped.
He said the measure will provide "no protection from predatory trial lawyers." He said Bush agreed that this was a shortcoming in the bill and had promised to work to correct it.
"We're going to lock the door to the federal treasury against trial lawyers," said DeLay, who will be House majority leader in the next Congress.
There has been considerable debate over the need for the government to intervene in the insurance market to help companies and real estate developers obtain coverage for acts of terrorism. After last year's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many insurance companies stopped offering such coverage, while others steeply increased premiums.
But in recent months, more terrorism coverage has become available. Some consumer groups charged that the federal legislation was little more than an insurance industry bailout.
"It's a handout and it's way too generous," J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, said when House and Senate negotiators announced a compromise.
Earlier this week, New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. issued a report detailing a steep increase in insurance premiums and a sharp drop in the availability of insurance coverage there after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said premiums on some expensive Manhattan properties rose by 73 percent.
"Insurance companies are taking advantage of New Yorkers," Thompson said. "They are not helping the city right now, and this is undermining our ability to retain and attract new business. Once again, New Yorkers are being penalized."
In other congressional action yesterday, the Senate approved a bill meant to deter terrorism at the nation's 361 seaports. The House extended a law to prevent automatic cuts in Medicare and other entitlement programs and extended the 1996 welfare law through March.
Staff writers Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank contributed to this report.
----
FBI Bulletin Warns of Attack
Rice: Latest Warning is 'Summary of Intelligence'
Staff and Wire Reports
Friday, November 15, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58969-2002Nov15?language=printer
White House officials said Friday that American should remain vigilant in light of a new warning by the FBI, but the nation's threat level remained unchanged.
With the threat level at yellow or "elevated," meaning a significant risk of terror attacks, the FBI said in an information bulletin dated Nov. 14 that the Muslim extremist network may seek to inflict massive casualties, psychological trauma and severe damage to the U.S. economy.
The bulletin cited the Nov. 12 release of an audiotaped message supposedly by bin Laden. The voice on the tape praised recent attacks against Western interests around the world and threatens further attacks against the United States and its allies if the United States takes military steps against Iraq.
"The American people are in many ways the first line of defense," said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. She said the latest warning contained no new information, calling it instead a "summary of intelligence as we know it."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited the lack of any intelligence about specific time, date, location or method of possible attack as the reason for keeping the nation's official terrorist threat level at code yellow, the middle of a five-level scale of risk developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"We continue to be on high levels of alert, we continue to take additional precautions," McClellan said.
Rice, briefing reporters at the White House on President Bush's trip next week to Europe to attend a NATO summit, said a lot is being done by the administration behind the scenes to protect "critical infrastructure" around the country from possible attacks.
Safeguarding the nation against terrorism "is a central focus of this administration," she said. The campaign against terrorism is "a war that is many times being fought in the shadows, so it's not always on television screens," Rice added.
"The warnings that have gone out recently really are a summary of intelligence, not a new warning," she said.
Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, said that the new threats build on ones that the FBI and the White House have been making public since last month.
"Sources suggest al-Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks that meet several criteria: High symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy and maximum psychological trauma," says the alert, which was posted on the FBI's Web site early Friday.
The highest priority targets remain within the aviation, petroleum and nuclear sectors, as well as significant national landmarks, the warning says.
"Target vulnerability and likelihood of success may be as important to a weakened al-Qaeda as the target's prominence," according to the warning.
"Thus, al-Qaeda's next attack may rely on conventional explosives and low-technology platforms such as truck bombs, commercial or private aircraft, small watercraft, or explosives easily concealed and planted by terrorist operatives," it said.
The White House is sensitive to criticism from Democrats that the focus on Iraq is distracting Bush's attention from the broader war on terrorism. "He does not start his day on Iraq. He begins his day on the threat level ... and the war on terrorism," Rice told reporters.
Yet she acknowledged the war against al-Qaeda is far from over.
"I don't think we can be certain of what role Osama bin Laden is or is not playing" in the re-emergence of al-Qaeda, Rice said. She walked through a long list of victories the United States and its allies have had in the war on terrorism, including the victory in its home base of Afghanistan and the disruption of cells in Buffalo, N.Y., and Germany.
Federal authorities previously have issued warnings for specific industries and national landmarks in general. But there is clearly worry that the danger of an attack is growing because of increased "chatter" picked up through intelligence channels, the continuing U.S. showdown with Iraq and the recently revealed audiotaped warnings believed to be from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The government's additional precautions include unspecified "additional steps to ramp up our protection and prevention measures" within federal agencies, he said. The FBI and other agencies also are communicating possible threats and assessments of risk to state and local law enforcement agencies and specific industries that could be targeted.
In recent weeks, the FBI has issued warnings about possible attacks on U.S. railroads and on the energy industry, as well as a more general warning about heightened risk during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started Wednesday and ends Dec. 5.
"We're especially sensitive to timeframes which might be thought by the enemy to be a time when they might want to make a statement," Attorney General John Ashcroft said.
On Wednesday, the FBI told authorities in Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington to be aware of threats against hospitals. Even though that threat was assigned low credibility by senior law enforcement officials, the FBI is preferring to err on the side of caution in terms of giving out information, officials said.
The idea is to increase vigilance among local police and people working in industries that are potential targets.
Last week, the State Department warned that Thursday's execution of Pakistani Aimal Khan Kasi in Virginia could lead to reprisals against Americans. Two days after his November 1997 conviction, assailants shot and killed four American oil company workers in Karachi, Pakistan. Kasi was executed for killing two CIA employees in a 1993 shooting outside the agency's headquarters.
----
White House Denies Assertions on Preoccupation With Iraq
November 15, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/politics/15CND-TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The White House disagreed sharply today with assertions by senior Democratic senators that the campaign against terrorism is lagging and that a preoccupation with Iraq is one of the reasons.
"We have locked up or detained or eliminated important Al Qaeda leaders," Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, said at a news briefing.
"We have eliminated their base in Afghanistan, so they cannot operate in the way that they have in the past. We have strengthened the resolve and the capacity of countries like Yemen and the Philippines and countries in Africa to deal with this threat. A lot has been done."
Dr. Rice noted that Mr. Bush has said repeatedly that the campaign will be a long one. "It took a while for them to lodge themselves in 60 countries around the world, including the United States," she said. "It's going to take a while to break them up."
The presidential adviser said the administration's focus on Iraq is not a distraction from the campaign against terrorism but an integral part of it.
"He does not begin his day on Iraq," Dr. Rice said of the President. "He begins his day on the war on terrorism and the threat levels and the threat information that we have about the United States."
At the United Nations today, the chief arms inspector, Hans Blix, said some members of his team were scheduled to arrive in Baghdad on Monday, after setting up a field office in Cyprus, and hoped to start work in Iraq by Nov. 27. The inspectors will then have 60 days to report back to the Security Council.
Under the Council resolution, Iraq has to present a declaration of what weapons it possesses on Dec. 8. In accepting the resolution last week, Baghdad denied that had any weapons of mass destruction.
Asked how the inspectors might determine if a "serious violation" of the Council resolution had occurred, in the declaration or in cooperating with the inspectors, he said it was an important question because it might involve something that could lead to war. But he added that any "intention" on the part of Iraq might also have to be taken into account.
"We still have to use our common sense in judging whether something is a way of preventing us, or hindering us in the inspections, or if it is not," he said.
He stressed that any judgment of a violation would be for Security Council members to decide, after the inspectors reported to them, and for the Council to determine what action it might take.
Dr. Rice spoke at a session whose main purpose was to brief journalists on next week's NATO summit meeting in Prague, which President Bush will attend. But with increasing speculation that Osama bin Laden is still alive, and with a new alert from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, much of the question-answer session was devoted to terrorism.
"The warnings that have gone out recently really are a summary of intelligence, not a new warning," Dr. Rice said. "We would ask Americans to do what the president has asked them a number of times to do, which is remain vigilant, because the American people are in many ways the first line of defense."
As for Saddam Hussein, whom she labeled "a homicidal dictator," Dr. Rice emphasized that no one is accusing the Iraqi leader of controlling Al Qaeda terrorists or having a role in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But, she said, "We know one thing about bad guys: they tend to travel in packs."
Dr. Rice's remarks came a day after American intelligence agencies came under renewed attack in Congress for failing to find Mr. bin Laden.
Even as Bush administration officials took the F.B.I. to task for a warning issued on Wednesday about possible attacks on hospitals, the F.B.I. issued a vague and alarming alert to state and local law enforcement agencies on Thursday. The alert warned that this week's audiotaped message, apparently from Mr. bin Laden, plus intelligence reports and recent overseas strikes by Al Qaeda, had raised the threat of attacks.
The alert was not made public because there was no specific information about a target, officials said.
"In selecting its next targets," the F.B.I. alert said, "sources suggest Al Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks that meet several criteria: High symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy, and maximum psychological trauma. The highest priority targets remain within the aviation, petroleum, and nuclear sectors as well as significant national landmarks."
Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged Thursday that the Bush administration had been distracted from the fight against terrorism by the preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq.
"They are so focused on Iraq that they aren't paying adequate attention to the war on terror," he said in an interview.
Mr. Graham added that American intelligence should undertake a crash program to identify and take action against terrorist threats in advance of any military action in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld underscored concerns that the United States could face increased dangers of terrorist attacks if President Bush orders military action against Iraq.
In a radio interview with Infinity Broadcasting, Mr. Rumsfeld said on Thursday that Saddam Hussein, might try to organize terrorist strikes against American targets if a United States-led coalition moves to disarm him by force. "I have no doubt that if he's able, he would like to see that terrorist attacks occur in the event that military action was taken," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Graham said that American intelligence agencies had failed to determine the extent of the terrorist threat even as the country prepared for war. If Mr. bin Laden is alive, he suggested, then the threat to the United States has increased. "If he is still alive and still in charge, that means Al Qaeda continues to have a highly capable and venomous leader."
The F.B.I. warning was sent as a confidential alert to 18,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the country, but it was not issued to the public. Government officials said the threat warning level would remain at the current level of Code Yellow. That was because, the officials said, that the threats were serious enough to warn state and local authorities, but not specific enough to warrant a general alert. Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been sent to an undisclosed location under previous alerts, remained in town.
In the past, some lawmakers have criticized the Bush Administration for spreading fear by issuing public alerts without providing information about how to respond as a politically motivated effort to insulate the government from eventual criticism that it failed to act in case of attack.
But several officials said the warning was valid, although they added that there was no intelligence about the time, place or method of any such attack. They acknowledged that the language of this alert was more extreme than similar alerts issued in the past; earlier alerts have seldom made reference to the expectation of large-scale attacks or possible casualties.
At the same time, however, the warning also urged law enforcement officials to be on guard against smaller attacks with cruder materials like simple explosives.
One official said that that language was a response to the tape attributed to Mr. bin Laden played on Al Jazeera television on Tuesday, which is increasingly being viewed as authentic, and to other events, including attacks on American marines in Kuwait, and the possibility of reprisals for the killing of a Qaeda leader in Yemen by an American missile.
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate Democratic leader, said the inability to find Mr. bin Laden was a sign of deeper problems in the war on terror. "We can't find bin Laden, we haven't made real progress in finding key elements of Al Qaeda. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were one and a half years ago. So by what measure can we claim to be successful so far?" The F.B.I. warning was the clearest sign yet of the near certainty in intelligence circles that the audiotaped message broadcast earlier this week, praising terror attacks in Bali and Kuwait, was an authentic recording by Mr. bin Laden.
A C.I.A. technical analysis of the tape continued, but without a final determination whether the voice on it was Mr. bin Laden's.
American officials said that the number of intercepted communications and informant reports had increased in recent days.
The language of the alert was considered by representatives of several executive branch agencies before it was distributed to law enforcement. "This document was coordinated through an interagency process," a White House official said. "It was decided that given the current threat situation it was appropriate that it go out in its present form."
Law enforcement officials dismissed the attacks from Senate Democrats as political grandstanding. "We've busted up cells in Buffalo, Detroit and Portland, we've caught several of bin Laden's chief lieutenants, we have driven the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, and we haven't had another attack here since 9/11," said a law enforcement official who asked not to be identified. "I would say all in all, were doing an excellent job."
However, not everyone exuded such confidence. "The anxiety level is probably as high as it has been since the anthrax attacks," said one F.B.I. supervisor who asked not to be identified. '
The dissatisfaction over the performance of American intelligence agencies, particularly the F.B.I., appeared to have deepened in recent days. A group headed by James S. Gilmore III, a former Republican governor of Virginia, concluded on Thursday that a new domestic intelligence agency should be established.
"We've got to gather this kind of information so we can disrupt the enemy before they attack us," Mr. Gilmore said in an interview after testifying before a House military subcommittee.
The F.B.I. was under fire from some Bush administration officials for sending out a confidential alert warning of possible attacks at hospitals in Washington, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco. "There are some raised eyebrows here as to why they would put out something like this," said an administration official. "This was a report that didn't have a lot of credibility, then it goes out and now you really have anxiety levels raised in these cities. It was unnecessary."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Fighter Planes Bomb Afghan Targets
November 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Bases-Attacked.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- American fighter jets pounded suspected enemy positions in Afghanistan after two U.S. bases came under rocket fire in the east of the country, the U.S. military said in a statement.
In the first attack Thursday evening, nine 107mm rockets were fired at a U.S. military base near Gardez, in eastern Afghanistan. The rockets landed near the base but did not cause any casualties, the military said in a statement from its headquarters at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
The military called in A-10 fighter planes, which dropped several bombs and fired about 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Special forces troops found a suspected enemy vehicle and destroyed a rocket that had not been fired.
Several hours later, a U.S. base in Lwara, 110 miles southwest of Kabul, came under rocket and mortar fire, and at least one round exploded inside the compound, the military said. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne division moved on the launch site, trading small arms and mortar fire with the suspected attackers.
An A-10 plane fired rockets at the launch site and dropped a 500-pound bomb after three suspected enemy fighters were detected moving, and another aircraft dropped a 1,000-pound bomb shortly afterward, the military said.
There were no coalition casualties. The military said it believes at least two of the suspected attackers were killed.
Attackers have been firing crude rockets near U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan for months, but they rarely hit their targets.
U.S. troops regularly conduct patrols along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, hunting for senior Taliban leaders and al-Qaida terrorists.
-------- arms sales
U.S. Arms Pipeline Flows to Gulf Arabs
Bush administration policy for securing allies in the region ahead of a possible war on Iraq includes facilitating high-tech weapons sales, analysts say.
By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 15 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-arms15nov15,0,1403277.story
MUSCAT, Oman -- A strong if silent supporter of the United States for three decades, the sultan who rules this Persian Gulf nation has become a major beneficiary of a Bush administration policy to let friendly nations in the region buy billions of dollars of high-tech American weaponry.
As the U.S. shops for allies willing to assist in its war on terrorism -- including a possible attack on Iraq -- the administration is employing a time-honored strategy of using weapons sales as an inducement, analysts say.
Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- all countries where the U.S. has military forces -- have been given approval for major arms purchases. In some cases, the purchase requests had been stalled for years.
Qatar, where the U.S. bases refueling and transport planes and has built a command-and-control center for a possible air war against Iraq, is developing a "shopping list."
As an unspoken quid pro quo, Persian Gulf "host" nations are expected by most analysts -- and many U.S. officials -- to permit the American military continued use of bases within their boundaries even if the U.S. strikes a fellow Arab country such as Iraq.
In Oman, a Kansas-sized nation of 2.5 million people wedged into the Arabian Peninsula, Sultan Kaboos ibn Said has long allowed the U.S. to base P-3 surveillance planes and AC-130 gunships at three airfields. The U.S. Air Force stores tons of gear at bases here, ready to be immediately sent into a war zone.
One thing the sultan does not do is speak publicly of his long and close ties to Washington.
The sultan's reticence, while more extreme than most, is in keeping with a general policy among Gulf nations to barely acknowledge the presence of U.S. forces.
"The higher the profile of U.S. troops, the easier it is for domestic Islamic activists, as well as Iran and Iraq, to challenge local governments by exploiting nationalistic and religious resentments over what is interpreted by some as foreign encroachment," said Joseph Moynihan, formerly a Middle East expert at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates.
Although it has been U.S. policy since the 1991 Persian Gulf War to help countries in the region upgrade their military, the program kicked into high gear after the Sept. 11 attacks. A fast-track process has been established to consider such purchases.
Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, is buying upgraded radar and advanced missiles. Bush has declared the island nation a "major non-NATO ally," which will speed further purchases.
Kuwait, from which the U.S. could launch a ground offensive against Iraq, is buying 400 Hellfire missiles and 16 Apache Longbow attack helicopters. The Apache purchase has been pending since 1994 amid concern in Washington about whether the Kuwaitis needed such advanced firepower. Now it is expected to be completed around year's end.
The United Arab Emirates, which allows U.S. warplanes to use its airfields, is buying 80 Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters to be fitted with electronic gear to jam enemy radar.
Oman is buying 12 Fighting Falcons for its small air force; laser-guided bombs; Harpoon, Maverick and HARM missiles; and technology that can turn a "dumb" bomb into a precision-guided weapon. The deal is expected to top $1 billion.
Rachel Stohl, senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, which is often critical of military spending, has warned that "these sales are just the tip of the iceberg. After the Gulf War, arms sales to the Middle East skyrocketed."
Scholars who study such sales and their impact on regional conflicts are divided about whether the U.S. policy will increase stability in the Gulf or make future wars virtually inevitable.
Joyce Neu, executive director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, said the policy is shortsighted and makes the U.S. vulnerable to wars in which it could face an adversary armed with American weapons.
"The reason Iraq has the ability to fight us now is because we furnished weapons to it to fight Iran in the 1980s," Neu said. "We need to reward coalition partners, but there are other, more benign ways to do it: trade partnerships, economic enticements and such things as educational, cultural and technical exchanges."
Peter Cowhey, dean of the graduate school of international relations and Pacific studies at UC San Diego, disagrees. Arms sales give the U.S. more influence over the purchaser's foreign policy because modern military hardware requires upgrades, repairs and maintenance, and that means continued contact with the sellers, he argues.
"The nature of international security relations is that benefits rarely come without risks," Cowhey said. "Of course, one could say that we should simply encourage regions to abstain from new armaments. But the problem here is that there are other major suppliers of military technology" from which Gulf nations could buy.
Sultan Kaboos is known in diplomatic and military planning circles as one of the United States' strongest and least demanding friends.
After deposing his father in 1970, the sultan launched a slow but steady modernization drive with U.S. backing aimed at erasing his father's legacy of isolation and bankruptcy.
Kaboos backed the 1979 Camp David accord between Egypt and Israel, brokered by President Carter. The sultan has spoken of the need for rapprochement with Israel.
Grateful for his support, the U.S. has an informal agreement to protect Oman.
With Washington urging Gulf nations to think cooperatively about security matters and drop their go-it-alone approach, the sultan took a lead in urging the 1981 formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council. He pressed the council to form a joint military unit to help rein in Iran and Iraq. Oman stares at Iran across the Strait of Hormuz, through which tankers carrying much of the world's oil must pass.
Although treaties and diplomacy have brought it peace, Oman has had past conflicts with most of its neighbors and fought a war with Marxist rebels in a remote province.
Concern about security runs deep in Omani society. The nation built hundreds of forts to repel invaders from the sea during centuries of trade wars with European powers.
"The sultan is wise times 1,000," said one Omani when asked about the purchase of advanced U.S. military hardware. "His majesty knows that Oman will have security only if we are strong."
But this is also a nation attempting to fund social programs to avoid political unrest among the poor. Although it is trying to diversify its economy, Oman is still dependent on its relatively small reserves of oil and natural gas.
After watching U.S. success in Afghanistan, the Omani shopping list was clear. Reluctant to increase the size of its 45,000-member armed forces, it wanted only the best weapons.
"There is a philosophy by his majesty that it is not important the quantity, but rather the quality that matters," said Abdullah ibn Shuwain al Hosni, undersecretary in the Ministry of Information. "It does not matter how many thousands are in your army, but the quality of those armies."
----
Officials cooperate in arms-sale probe
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021115-948049.htm
The United States said yesterday it is working with the Bulgarian government on an investigation of an illegal transfer of military equipment to Syria that might have been destined for Iraq.
The state-owned company, Terem, had sold spare parts for armored personnel carriers to a Syrian-based company, and the parts were discovered at the Turkey-Syria border, Bulgarian officials said. The deal was not authorized by the Bulgarian government, the officials said.
The State Department said authorities in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, are "actively investigating" the case and "looking closer into allegations that the equipment may have been intended for subsequent transfer to Iraq."
"We are working with Bulgaria to establish effective safeguards to prevent reoccurrence of illegal arms transfers," a State Department official said.
"The Bulgarian authorities are taking vigorous action against the contractor, including the head of the company and other relevant personnel," the official said. "The Bulgarian police have also detained several individuals for questioning."
In Sofia, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy told reporters his country's chances of winning an invitation to join NATO at the alliance's Prague summit next week had been threatened by the revelations.
Syria and Iraq are on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"We are in trouble," Mr. Passy said. "This arms scandal pushes Bulgaria's membership chances back. We have a serious problem and even if we manage to win an invitation, we will have problems with the ratification by the U.S. Senate."
Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and President Georgi Parvanov agreed with the foreign minister, but they said they still hope their nation will receive an invitation from NATO.
The State Department official, asked whether the recent developments would affect Washington's decision on Bulgaria's candidacy, said there are a number of factors the United States is considering in its evaluation of the applicant countries.
"We have raised concerns about proliferation, along with other issues, with all NATO aspirants," the official said.
--------
India, U.S. Discuss Sale of Sensors
November 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-US-Military.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- The United States has removed some legal hurdles delaying military sales to India and now is discussing selling electronic ground sensors to New Delhi for use along the Pakistan border, officials said Friday.
India has said it wants such sensors to monitor infiltration of Islamic militants from Pakistani territory.
``We are in discussion with the (Indian) Ministry of Defense right now,'' a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
The Indian military is studying using the sensors in ``terrain from the desert to the jungles,'' the U.S. official said.
Two U.S. government teams and a group of American defense contractors visited India this week. American military manufacturers are seeking a place in the Indian market, where Russia is the No. 1 military supplier.
India's border extends from the Himalayan slopes in northernmost Kashmir to scorching deserts in Rajasthan. All those areas, which include thick forests, are prone to infiltration by militants, smugglers and illegal immigrants, military officials say.
Relations between New Delhi and Washington were strained during the Cold War, when India was a Soviet ally, and hampered by economic sanctions imposed on India after it conducted underground nuclear tests in 1998.
Most of the sanctions were lifted in October 2001 after New Delhi supported the U.S.-led war on terror. A contract for eight radars was the first deal between the two sides after that.
The condition of mandatory U.S. congressional approval, which India considered another obstacle, also was removed for weapons sales of less than $14 million, the U.S. official said.
India's defense minister and senior officials met with U.S. delegations three times this week to discuss contracts for American military hardware. These included meetings with officials from the U.S. Security Cooperation Group, the Air Force Executive Steering Group and American defense contractors.
-------- britain
Jittery Britain to Advise Public How to React to Terror Attacks
November 15, 2002
New York Times
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/international/15CND-BRIT.html
LONDON, Nov. 15 - Britain will start an education campaign using posters, mock-emergency drills and other devices to advise the public about how to respond to a biological or chemical attack, the government's chief medical officer said today.
A report by the National Audit Office published on Thursday found that many of Britain's state-run hospitals and ambulance services do not have adequate plans or sufficient equipment in place to deal with an assault involving chemical, nuclear, biological or radiological weapons, or one with casualties of 500 people or more.
"However disturbing it may be for some, we must take up the challenge and the unprecedented step of giving the public more `protect and serve' information," said Sir Liam Donaldson, the medical officer. "It is impossible to guard against all the potential risks but simple procedural advice could save lives."
The posters, which are likely to be distributed next year, might contain advice about what to do in a poison-gas attack, such as the advisability of getting away from the gas while leaving other casualties in the hands of emergency workers; not breathing too deeply, or using handkerchiefs as improvised gas masks, Sir Liam said.
In a series of interviews with British news organizations, Sir Liam has sought to allay concerns about Britain's possible lack of preparedness for a large-scale terrorist attack.
The report on Thursday said that the situation is particularly acute in London, where more than 20 percent of the hospitals surveyed for the report said they were unprepared for a large-scale biological attack.
A third of the hospitals surveyed, and half of the ambulance services, said they did not have proper protective equipment or decontamination facilities for health-care workers who might be caught up in such an emergency.
John Lister, director of London Health Emergency, a lobbying group, said the city would find itself helpless in the face of an attack like the recent siege on a theater in Moscow, which left hundreds of people needing intensive medical treatment to counter the effects of the poison gas used to end the standoff.
"The authorities needed hundreds of intensive-care beds to cope with the victims of the gas," Mr. Lister told The Evening Standard. "If something like that happened in London, we simply wouldn't have those beds in place, or the facilities or the training to cope."
Prime Minister Tony Blair added to the general jitteriness here by warning earlier this week that Britain should be on heightened alert for a terrorist attack. Nor did the recent audiotape featuring the probable voice of Osama bin Laden, and carrying a raft of warnings for Britain and other countries allied with the United States, help matters much in a country nervous, however obliquely, that it might be the next target.
All this has left the government trying to negotiate a tricky path between raising people's concerns and not inciting panic. Among other things, Britain has amassed millions of doses of smallpox vaccine, which could be distributed in the event of an attack, first to health-care workers and then to civilians in the area of any outbreak. It has also begun storing antibiotics that could be used to treat people infected with anthrax and the plague.
The health department is also planning to organize simulated terrorist attacks, complete with large numbers of mock casualties, to test the readiness of the country's emergency services.
"It will be alarming for people to see exercises in which pretend casualties are carried away by people in protective equipment and decontaminated, but they will get used to it," Sir Liam said.
-------- business
Lab-closings defense memo seen as breaking Bush pact
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021115-16818244.htm
A senior Pentagon official is moving to close down "out of favor" defense facilities, according to an internal memo that some congressional sources say violates an agreement with President Bush on base closings.
After hard-fought negotiations, members of Congress agreed last year to Mr. Bush's demand to close bases and facilities. The final decisions on closings will rest with an independent commission, which begins work in 2005.
But Michael Wynne, the Pentagon's No. 2 acquisition official, has ordered the creation of an internal committee to identify weapons and science laboratories for closure, according to his Oct. 29 memorandum, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.
Mr. Wynne wrote that after a discussion with a defense advisory committee, "the conclusion that I drew is that labs are out of favor and no longer have a constituency within parent organizations. Their budgets are cut, people are discouraged and their overall utility is in question."
The memo from Mr. Wynne, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, went to the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering.
Mr. Wynne ordered the creation of a committee to identify "those laboratories that are imperative for defense to retain" and proposed that "remnants of the service laboratories" be combined into one "Defense Research Laboratory."
Some functions could be given to the private sector, he stated.
Mr. Wynne is taking aim at a network of more than 100 labs, employing thousands of workers across the country. The Army, for example, operates labs in Aberdeen and Adelphi, Md., Natick, Mass., Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and Yuma, Ariz., among other locations.
Said a Capitol Hill source, "It looks like the Pentagon is jumping the gun on base closings. The deal was 2005."
Mr. Bush wanted to start the politically painful process in 2003, and threatened to veto the 2002 defense bill unless it authorized base closings.
A Pentagon official, who asked not to be named, said it would be "premature" to publicly comment on the memo because its details are still being "clarified."
The official said a meeting is scheduled next week among senior acquisition officials. "Everybody is looking to straighten it out," the official said.
But the Wynne proposal is already meeting resistance inside the Defense Department from lab proponents.
They are citing recent studies that state the importance of retaining in-house technicians to conduct research and development as the labs produce breakthroughs in sensors and other surveillance tools.
A study done during the Clinton administration stated, "The technical capability of responding rapidly to emergency situations and trouble-shooting requirements is essential in solving operational problems."
The study added, "A cadre of highly skilled in-house specialists can best respond to situations of this nature."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has argued that the armed forces can save $3.5 billion annually, beginning later this decade, by closing 25 percent of its facilities and bases.
Congressional opponents argued that the early stage of the war on terrorism was not the time to start closing bases. They also say the defense labs can be an incubator for new technologies needed to fight terrorists.
-------- china
New Leader Chosen in China
Vice President Hu Ascends to Top Post in Broad Transfer of Power
By Philip P. Pan and John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 15, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56817-2002Nov14?language=printer
BEIJING, Nov. 15 (Friday) -- Vice President Hu Jintao, who by exercising extreme caution has survived a decade as heir apparent to the Chinese Communist leadership, rose to the pinnacle of power in Beijing today in the most orderly and peaceful transition in the history of modern China.
In a ceremony rich with Communist pageantry, the 59-year-old hydrologist, known for his powerful memory and colorless personality, was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party. But President Jiang Zemin, 76, who formally stepped down Thursday as party chief after 13 years in power, is expected to continue to exert influence in retirement.
Hu's rise to China's top post, which was sealed at the week-long 16th National Congress of the Communist Party, was part of a broad transfer of power, ushering in a new generation of leaders as the country undergoes enormous social and economic change, and leaves behind the doctrinaire communism upon which Mao Zedong founded the party's rule in 1949.
Hu, dressed in a blue suit and red tie, and his eight new colleagues on the Standing Committee emerged from behind a screen emblazoned with two cranes, a Chinese symbol of longevity, in the cavernous Great Hall of the People just off Tiananmen Square. The committee's new makeup was a testimony to the enduring political strength of Hu's predecessor, Jiang, who succeeded in placing six of his closest allies onto the body and expanding it by two seats.
Surrounded by Jiang's men, Hu will probably need years to secure his position as the most powerful man in China, if he does at all.
"The meeting was very successful," Hu said. "The congress was one of unity, victory and endeavor. It has built on the past and will carry our cause into the future. . . . We won't let the Chinese people down."
State-run television showed delegates to the congress voting for the party's new Central Committee, which then was said to have voted for the Politburo and its all-powerful Standing Committee. But in fact, all decisions were made in secret by a handful of men and revealed officially only this morning as the winners filed onto a stage to address journalists.
Hu is relatively young for China's senior-most office. He will complete his assumption of leadership next March during a session of the National People's Congress, or parliament, when Jiang is to resign as president and make way for Hu to succeed him in that job as well. However, the party announced today that Jiang was reelected chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, a powerful platform from which he can continue to wield influence.
All six of Hu's former Standing Committee colleagues retired yesterday, as did seven other aging members of the 22-member policy-making Politburo. In addition, more than half the 356 voting and alternate members of the Central Committee departed. Generals of the People's Liberation Army over the age of 70 on the Central Committee stepped down as well, presaging a reshuffle at the top of the world's largest army. And several senior ministers left the committee, signaling important changes in the Chinese cabinet when the legislature meets next March.
The men who won the top party jobs are all engineers, men in their fifties or sixties who came of age in Mao's destructive Cultural Revolution and rose to powerful positions in Beijing and the provinces after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. They appear committed to the capitalist-style economic reforms that have brought unprecedented prosperity to the world's most populous nation, and to maintaining good relations with the United States.
They also appear determined to preserve the Communist Party's tight grip on all aspects of political life in China. But at least one corporate executive, Zhang Ruimin, president of the Haier appliance company, which owns a building in Manhattan and is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, won a seat as an alternate on the Central Committee. That was seen as another sign of the party's increasing tilt toward business and away from promoting the interests of China's dispossessed.
Chinese sources and analysts said Hu will face serious challenges as he attempts to exert control over the party in the coming years. Jiang completely dominated the congress; Hu made no major speeches.
Among Jiang's six allies on the Standing Committee is his top aide, Zeng Qinghong, 63, a skillful political operative and the official most responsible for helping Jiang defeat his enemies and hold on to power over the past decade. Analysts said Zeng is Hu's only potential rival in the new leadership; some believe Jiang may eventually attempt to install him in the top job.
Hu is described as a talented and intelligent leader with a photographic memory. But it was Deng Xiaoping, Jiang's predecessor, who made him the Standing Committee's youngest member in 1992 and set him up as Jiang's natural successor. Hu has been so careful not to offend Jiang or make mistakes in the years since that few know where he might lead the nation.
Before joining the Standing Committee, Hu served as the party secretary in Tibet, where he approved the imposition of martial law to crush a wave of protests in March 1989.
"What happens to this leadership depends on what kind of relationship emerges between Hu and Zeng," said Cheng Li, a political scientist at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., who has studied the new generation of leaders. "Their relationship has been both competitive and cooperative up to now, and for the next few years, they will be trying to consolidate their bases of power."
As a result, few changes in the party's basic policies are expected in Hu's first years.
Among other winners in the senior leadership were conservatives such as Luo Gan, 67, the security chief best known for leading a nationwide crackdown on crime that has relied heavily on executions, and Wu Guanzheng, 64, a Jiang ally and party chief of eastern Shandong province, where a violent campaign to suppress the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement has resulted in scores of deaths.
Still, some in the government and state-run media hope Hu and other Standing Committee members, including Zeng and the man expected to be named premier, Wen Jiabao, 60, may be willing to experiment with limited political reforms as the influence of the older generation fades.
Jiang's departure marked the end of an era in Chinese politics that began with his promotion to party chief after the Tiananmen Square crackdown. During his tenure, China moved from 10th in the world in gross domestic product to sixth, and many Chinese enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and personal freedom. The country's international profile rose enormously. Last year it joined the World Trade Organization and Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games.
But the Jiang era was also characterized by successive crackdowns on political dissent and religion, a widening gap between rich and poor, and corruption that rivals that of the Nationalist government that ruled China before the 1949 Communist Revolution.
To the dismay of some Chinese, one man who won a seat on the Standing Committee is Jia Qinglin, 62, an old friend of Jiang's who served as party chief in Fujian province in the mid-1990s when a multibillion-dollar smuggling ring flourished there. In November 1999, as that scandal was being uncovered, Chinese officials in Beijing contacted Western journalists and accused Jia and his wife, Lin Youfang, who ran Fujian's main state-run import-export corporation, of being involved. A month later, however, Jiang moved to protect Jia.
Three other Jiang loyalists on the Standing Committee are Li Changchun, 58, the party official who governed in freewheeling Guangdong province in the south; Wu Bangguo, 61, a deputy premier and longtime aide to the former general secretary; and Huang Ju, 64, the former party chief of Shanghai.
In addition to ushering in a new generation, this week's congress set out a new goal for the Communist Party: building a middle-class nation with a per-capita income of $3,000 by 2020. In a sign of the waning appeal of Marxist ideology, Jiang used terminology from the country's 2,500-year-old "Book of Songs" to describe the mission, saying the party would build a society reflecting the Confucian ideal of a prosperous, peaceful community.
The congress also enshrined Jiang's political philosophy in the party constitution, adding a reference to the "Three Represents." The theory argues that the party should represent China's businessmen, entrepreneurs and other "advanced productive forces," not just workers and farmers. The party constitution was rewritten to allow them to become members.
----
China's Jiang Keeps Military Reigns
Fri Nov 15, 2002
By ELAINE KURTENBACH,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=516&u=/ap/20021115/ap_on_re_as/china_military_3&printer=1
BEIJING (AP) - Fifty-three years after they won a civil war and claimed China as their own, members of the Communist Party's old revolutionary guard are finally retiring from politics. But President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites), who is just as old but never fought a battle, isn't leaving just yet.
As the party's congress closed, none of the men who earned their political clout on the battlefields of World War II and the civil war against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists were seated on the new Central Committee, the pool from which top leadership is chosen.
Neither Defense Minister Chi Haotian, 73, nor Gen. Zhang Wannian, 74, both of whom joined the army as teenagers and fought against the Nationalists during the civil war, retained party posts.
Four other top generals also retired and were replaced by commanders in their early 60s and late 50s, young by the typically geriatric standards of Chinese politics. They represent a broad range of military constituencies, a move designed to ensure stability.
Jiang, the old guard's civilian contemporary, is staying on as head of the world's largest military even as he relinquishes command of the Communist Party after 13 years in power. The maneuver allows him to retain an official role in China's future.
On Friday, party leaders re-elected Jiang, 76, to head their Central Military Commission, which is technically outside the government but charged by law to oversee the People's Liberation Army's 2.5 million soldiers, sailors and fliers. It wields its power through a body with the same name within the actual government.
Vice President Hu Jintao, who took over from Jiang as party general secretary, was re-elected vice chairman of the military commission as the party ended its national congress, held once every five years.
Though both Jiang and 59-year-old Hu are lifelong civilians, the dual role of party and military leader gives the army substantial influence in China's politics, particularly in defense and foreign affairs.
"This way, the military gets a much stronger voice. It would be hard for Hu to go against the views of the military," said Ellis Joffe, an expert on the Chinese military and a visiting professor at the University of Michigan.
The congress marked the end of an era for both China's military and civilian leaders.
Jiang was the first party leader to lack military experience. Mao Zedong helped lead the Red Army to victory in 1949; Deng Xiaoping, who rose to power after Mao's death in 1976, also distinguished himself on the revolutionary battlefield, as had many other senior leaders.
During the decade-long tumult of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao set off in 1966, a number of commanders were appointed to the Central Committee. Direct military involvement in politics declined after the death of Lin Biao, another revolutionary hero, in a 1971 plane crash following an abortive coup attempt.
Jiang was chosen party leader by Deng in the chaos following the military suppression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.
Though he is not considered a hawk, by necessity Jiang has cultivated the military. He backed double-digit increases in the defense budget for each of the 13 years he was in power, approved major purchases of weapons and aircraft, purged generals he believed were disloyal and appointed supporters to key positions.
Among those elected as vice chairmen of the military commission is Gen. Cao Gangchuan, 67, who has handled major weapons purchases and took charge of the huge task of divesting the military of its commercial enterprises.
China is spending heavily on modernizing the army, developing several kinds of missiles and buying supersonic jet fighters and other advanced weaponry from Russia - moves considered a strategic concern by the U.S. government.
-------- iran
Iranians may aid U.S. war on Iraq
By Barbara Slavin,
USA TODAY
11/15/2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-11-14-iran-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - Despite a campaign of mutual vilification, the Bush administration and Iran are moving toward quiet cooperation in any war against Iraq.
A Pentagon official on Thursday acknowledged "preliminary feelers" between the two countries dealing with military emergencies such as downed pilots or naval accidents in the Persian Gulf. A similar arrangement was reached for the Afghan war a year ago. The talks are taking place through Arab intermediaries in a small gulf nation, the official said.
Iran's Islamic regime has also approved letting a dissident group of Iraqi Shiite Muslims based in Tehran work with the U.S. military to oust Saddam Hussein, Tehran-based diplomats say. The group has several thousand armed followers in southern Iraq.
Iranian acquiescence to a U.S.-led war is important because Iran and Iraq share a 730-mile border. Iran sat out the 1991 Gulf War but could be more accommodating to U.S. interests this time. Iran has already stepped up efforts to help the U.S. Navy catch Iraqi oil smugglers in the Persian Gulf by chasing the smugglers out of Iranian waters, Pentagon officials say.
Tehran has motives beyond a deep-seated hatred of Saddam, who ordered an invasion of Iran in 1980, setting off a war that killed or wounded more than a half-million Iranians. Iran's leaders seek:
- To gain leverage in a post-Saddam Iraq.
- To ensure that Iran, which the Bush administration accuses of supporting Middle East militants and trying to develop nuclear weapons, is not the next target of the U.S. war on terrorism.
- To score domestic political points in a growing feud between conservatives and reformers. Conservative clerics who have the upper hand in the Iranian government still chant "Death to America" in public but would want to get credit for any improvement in relations, analysts say. The United States broke off diplomatic ties in 1980 during a crisis over the seizure of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. According to a recent poll, three-fourths of Iranians want such relations restored.
U.S. motives also are complex. Both countries backed the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But in January, when most of the Afghan fighting was over and Israel intercepted a Palestinian ship laden with Iranian arms, President Bush labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and North Korea. In July, Bush issued a statement that appeared to call on Iranians to overthrow the clerical regime.
On Friday, the Bush administration gave permission for a senior Iranian diplomat to visit Washington for the first time in a year. Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Javad Zarif, was scheduled to meet with a group of senators and congressmen at a lunch on Monday. But Zarif decided not to come when he was told he could not give a speech at a reception Monday night at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.
Because the two countries have no diplomatic relations, permission is required for the ambassador to travel outside New York.
The State Department restricted Zarif's itinerary to protest Iran's recent sentencing of an academic to a death sentence for criticizing the country's clerical rule.
In an interview on Friday, Secretary of State Colin Powell called the death sentence "outrageous" and voiced support for thousands of Iranian students who have been holding protest demonstrations this week. "Sooner or later we will have better relations with Iran," Powell said. But he added, "We believe that this government had better start listening to its people."
-------- iraq
Baghdad increases range of surface-to-air missiles
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021115-77865076.htm
Iraq has boosted the range of some surface-to-air missiles as part of its ongoing efforts to shoot down patrolling U.S. and British warplanes, The Washington Times has learned.
Iraqi military forces in charge of air defenses recently were found to have added booster rockets to anti-aircraft missiles, in a makeshift effort to extend their range by several miles, defense and intelligence officials said.
Meanwhile, an advance party of U.N. technicians will reach Baghdad on Monday to pave the way for inspection teams that will search for weapons of mass destruction. It will be the first round of inspections since 1998.
A group headed by chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will arrive in Iraq for the first inspection in a week or so, U.N. spokesmen said.
U.S. officials continued warning Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein yesterday that he must comply with the latest U.N. disarmament resolution.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disputed Iraq's latest claim that it does not have any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
"I'll simply say that they do have weapons of mass destruction, and the purpose of the U.N. resolution, of course, is for them to agree to allow inspectors in and to allow the inspectors to make some conclusions," Mr. Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon.
Noted Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during a visit to Canada: "If the Iraqis do not comply, there will be consequences. Those consequences will involve use of military force to disarm them, to change the regime."
Regarding the missile activity, the Iraqis used booster rockets from two-stage Russian-made SA-2 missiles and attached them to SA-3 missiles in an effort to increase the latter's range, the officials said.
Iraq's SA-2 missiles have a maximum range of about 21 miles, and its SA-3s can hit targets up to 15 miles away. Both systems were first deployed in the late 1950s.
"Any time Iraq uses missiles against us or coalition forces, it's a concern," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He declined to comment on specific efforts by Iraq to increase surface-to-air missile (SAM) ranges.
A military official said intelligence on the SAM range increases was reported within the past several weeks. "There has been no assessment of how effective it has been," the official said. "But they are trying to get better range and [adding boosters] appears to have had that effect."
The extended-range missiles do not appear to be accurate and probably are being fired "ballistically" by the Iraqis without the full benefit of sensors and related guidance systems, the official said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of U.S. forces that patrol the skies over Iraq, declined to comment.
Iraq's air defenses continue to fire regularly at U.S. and British warplanes that are patrolling large areas of Iraqi territory over the northern and southern parts of the country.
Iraq has about 1,500 surface-to-air missile launchers, according to military specialist Anthony Cordesman.
It is not clear whether last week's U.N. resolution, which Iraq has said it accepts, will affect Baghdad's continuous efforts to shoot down patrolling jets.
The resolution states that Iraq cannot threaten or take hostile action against any U.N. representative or member state "taking action to uphold any Council resolutions."
"That could be a trigger" for U.S. action, if Iraq continues firing at patrolling jets, the military official said.
The patrols have been in place since the 1991 Persian Gulf war and are designed to prevent Iraq from attacking opposition forces in those parts of the country.
Since the end of the Gulf war, Iraq has been trying to improve its Soviet-era air-defense forces with new equipment acquired covertly from outside the country. All military equipment is embargoed under U.N. resolutions.
U.S. officials said a Chinese high-technology company provided Iraq with a fiber-optic communications system that was used to enhance the air-defense radar network. The fiber-optic system was bombed by U.S. aircraft last year.
Iraq also has converted commercial trucks imported under the U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program for use as mobile anti-aircraft missile systems, which are more difficult to detect.
Any U.S. military operation against Iraq would begin with massive attacks on all elements of Iraq's air-defense system, which includes mobile and fixed missile sites, anti-aircraft artillery and a nationwide command-and-control system for targeting and attacking jets.
In addition to SA-2 and SA-3 missiles, Iraq also has mobile SA-6 missiles.
According to the private group Global Security.org, Iraqi air-defense systems have been improved in recent years. They have become "amalgams of Western, old East European and Far Eastern technologies that behave in nonstandard ways."
"That makes them less predictable for the U.S. and British planes that are their targets and increasingly difficult to counter," the group said in a report posted on its Web site.
U.S. and allied warplanes have been conducting attacks on Iraqi air-defense sites, both missile batteries and anti-aircraft artillery sites, on a weekly basis.
The last strikes occurred last week, when U.S. and allied jets bombed two surface-to-air missile sites near Tallil, southeast of Baghdad.
The raid was carried out after Iraq moved the two missile systems into an area that violated the air-exclusion zone over southern Iraq.
The U.S. Central Command stated Sunday that the missiles were "deemed a threat" to patrolling aircraft.
On Nov. 7, Iraq fired surface-to-air missiles and artillery guns at patrolling jets, prompting the bombing of an air-defense operations center and integrated air-defense site near Al Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Mr. Rumsfeld announced in September that military forces in Iraq several months earlier abandoned a policy of conducting limited strikes on attacking Iraqi air defenses in favor of bigger attacks on Iraq's overall air-defense network.
"We decided after a great deal of talk that it really didn't make an awful lot of sense to be flying patterns that we were getting shot at, if in response we were not doing any real damage that would make it worth putting our pilots at risk," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
----
Experts: Iraq Hid Vast Chemical-Biological Stocks
Reuters
Friday, November 15, 2002
By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59216-2002Nov15?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite Iraqi denials, Western experts believe Baghdad has produced and concealed vast amounts of chemical and biological agents and may have rebuilt part of its illegal nuclear program.
In its letter this week to the United Nations accepting the return of weapons inspectors to its soil after a four-year absence, Iraq said it "has not developed weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, chemical or biological, as claimed by evil people."
Western analysts, building on what was discovered by the previous U.N. inspection regime known as UNSCOM, which lasted from 1991 to 1998, and what was strongly suspected but could not be proved, believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still concealing a deadly arsenal.
One 1998 assessment by the U.S. House of Representatives task force on terrorism and unconventional warfare concluded, "Despite Baghdad's protestations, Iraq does have small but very lethal operational arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and platforms capable of delivering them."
When the UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they said they still did not know the full extent of Iraq's chemical and biological programs but had collected both hard and circumstantial evidence suggesting that the programs were far more advanced and wider in scope than previously believed.
Possibly the most terrifying and least known area concerns Iraqi biological warfare capabilities. After repeatedly denying the existence of such programs, Iraq was forced to admit in 1995 that it had produced anthrax, aflatoxins and botulinum toxin and that it had filled missile warheads and aerial bombs with biological agents.
Iraq said it destroyed all these agents but UNSCOM suspected it had produced and hidden large amounts of all three.
Aflatoxins, a carcinogen naturally found in many nuts and some grains, causes cancer and other diseases and may have been developed for possible use as a slow agent of genocide, perhaps for use against Iraq's Kurdish minority. Botulinum toxin is one of the most toxic substances known to man.
"There was a vast discrepancy between the amount of germ cultures the Iraqis imported and what they said they used for legitimate industrial purposes. They could have hidden enough to produce four tons of germ warfare agents," said Jonathan Tucker, who worked on U.N. biological weapons inspection teams in Iraq in the 1990s.
There was also some circumstantial evidence that Iraq was working to develop and weaponize smallpox. There was a natural outbreak of the disease in Iraq in 1971 and scientists could have collected and stored samples.
It is known that Iraq was experimenting with camel pox, a close relative which usually attacks animals but could also harm humans. It might have also been used for experimentation because its chemistry is very close to that of smallpox.
SMALLPOX IS 'SCARIEST UNKNOWN'
"The biggest and scariest unknown is whether Iraq has access to smallpox and whether its scientists have produced a weaponized and militarized version," said Michael Barletta of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
An assessment from the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies concluded, "Iraq has probably retained substantial growth media and biological weap