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NUCLEAR
U.S., Russia near deal to ship uranium to Y-12
Regulators say Xcel managers downplayed errors at [MN] nuclear plant
Those near [Indiana] base fear plan to end testing of water
Saddam 'hiding the weapons in mosques'
U.S., U.N. Differ on Arms Hunt
Iraq Weapon Inspectors Set for Last Chance Hunt
With More at Stake, Less Will Be Verified
Inspector: War or Peace Up to Iraq
N. Korea radio says Pyongyang has nuclear weapons
Pyongyang Radio Suggests N.Korea Has Atomic Arms
Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile
Nuclear Study, Given Go-Ahead, Rouses Fears
Report: $3M Los Alamos Items Missing
BNFL's Savannah clean-up slated
MILITARY
U.S. Turns Horn of Africa Into a Military Hub
US strategy in Gulf: Arms for military bases
Tucson to Stage Bioterror Drill
U.K. Denies Reported Gas Attack Plot
Hussein Defenders Seen As Hard Corps Loyalists
U.S. expands Iraq resolution to include no-fly zones
Iraq says U.S.-British airstrike killed 7 civilians
Iraqi Kurds Set Sights on Baghdad
Iraq Can Make Powdered Bio - Weapons
Sharon Calls for Securing Settlements
Saudis Warn U.S. Against War Talk
The Alliance That Lost Its Purpose Is Europe's Most Popular Club
Tough Politicking as Pakistani Parliament Opens New Chapter
Chechens kill, abduct law enforcers
Ukraine's critical period
Distancing Tradition, Marines Eye Role in Special Operations
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
No U.S. domestic spy agency, Ridge says
Agencies Monitor Iraqis in the U.S. for Terror Threat
China's Salt Police Enforce Monopoly
CIA Feels Strain of Iraq and Al Qaeda
'Spy': The F.B.I.'s Worst Mole
Kuwait arrests senior Al-Qaida member
Ridge Says There Are No New Threats Against U.S.
The Warning Overdose
ACTIVISTS
90 Arrested at Army Base Protest
PLAIN FOLKS FOR PEACE
Kyrgyzstan Police Crush Protest, Detaining 100
Iranian Scholars Protest
Hard-Line Hindus Plan Rally, Defying Indian Government's Ban
Protesters Arrested at India Rally
Thousands Protest for Haiti President's Resignation
Greeks Protest Against War in Nov 17 Rally
Police, Protesters Clash in Greece
Venezuela Opposition Stages March
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S., Russia near deal to ship uranium to Y-12
By Frank Munger,
Knoxville News-Sentinel senior writer
November 17, 2002
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_1550995,00.htm
OAK RIDGE - If a U.S.-Russian deal is completed as expected early next year, the Y-12 National Security Complex will begin receiving regular shipments of highly enriched uranium from Russia.
The nuclear material would be used to fuel several research reactors in the United States, including the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The proposal calls for the purchase of 250 kilograms - about 550 pounds - a year for up to 10 years, according to Bill Brumley, the federal manager at Y-12. The price tag is still being negotiated, he said.
Brumley said officials hope that a government-to-government agreement will be reached in December, followed by a contract signing in February.
"Our target is to have delivery of the first shipments in May," Brumley said.
Y-12 personnel have already made one trip to Russia to prepare for the shipments, he said.
The project is part of an international effort to reduce the risk of weapons-usable materials getting into the hands of terrorists or others seeking a nuclear capability.
Among the biggest concerns is the security of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. The head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency earlier this week confirmed that small amounts of material have disappeared from the nuclear facilities, and there are suspicions of much worse occurring.
Y-12's principal mission is production of nuclear warhead parts from uranium and other materials. It is the principal storehouse for bomb-grade uranium in the United States.
The Oak Ridge plant also is heavily involved in the nonproliferation programs, regularly sending experts to Russia and other foreign countries to provide advice and assistance on nuclear security.
In conjunction with ORNL, Y-12 last year established a Joint Center for International Threat Reduction.
Y-12 will not process the Russian uranium into fuel rods or plates for the U.S. research reactors, but will store the material in high-security vaults and dispense it as needed.
Brumley declined to specify the enrichment level of the Russian uranium, but it must be extremely high if it's going to be converted to fuel for the High Flux Isotope Reactor.
The ORNL reactor uses uranium fuel that's more than 90 percent U-235, the fissionable isotope of uranium. That's in the same range as material used in nuclear weapons.
By comparison, TVA's nuclear reactors typically use fuel that's only 4 to 5 percent U-235 to produce electricity for the region.
Brumley said this would be the first U.S. purchase of highly enriched uranium from Russia that does not involve "blending down" the materials to reduce the U-235 content.
By definition, highly enriched uranium contains at least 20 percent U-235, which is the minimum concentration needed for atomic bombs.
A number of research reactors around the world are being reconfigured to use uranium fuel with a lower enrichment. This reduces the risk of reactor fuel being diverted to use in weapons.
Y-12 is supporting this program by taking some of its surplus of highly enriched uranium and blending it with depleted uranium (which has most of the U-235 removed) to provide a fuel stock with an enrichment of 19.75 percent.
"The key is anything below 20 percent can't be used for weapons purposes," Brumley said.
The newly processed uranium is sold to research institutions with reactors that have made the conversion.
Y-12 has a $24 million contract with the Japanese Atomic Energy Institute and an $8.6 million contract with French authorities.
Another deal is nearly completed with a group in Argentina, which is designing and building a research reactor in Australia, Brumley said. Negotiations are under way with South Korea, he said.
Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.
-------- accidents and safety
Regulators say Xcel managers downplayed errors at [MN] nuclear plant
BY DAVID HANNERS
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Sun, Nov. 17, 2002
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/breaking_news/4541900.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
ST. PAUL, Minn. - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - On the morning of Oct. 24, 2001, workers at Xcel Energy's Monticello nuclear power plant, 40 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, were performing a "hot shutdown" of the reactor when they disregarded a previous crew's instructions, opened some valves and vented pressure from the cooling water that protects the reactor from a meltdown.
Unless kept at the proper pressure, the water boils away and exposes the reactor's uranium fuel rods, which would then overheat. By venting the pressure, the workers were, in the words of one expert, "on their way to the Three Mile Island accident."
After about 15 minutes - and after the cooling system had lost nearly 20 percent of its pressure - alarms went off in the control room. When the workers realized their error, they closed the valves. The pressure stabilized and then climbed.
Federal officials think management didn't take the problem seriously enough, a pattern detected in Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspections of Xcel's two nuclear power plants. The plants are managed by Nuclear Management Co., a company founded and partially owned by Xcel.
The NRC complained that the plant's operators downplayed the significance of the event and failed to report it in a timely manner, even though it had "an actual and credible impact on plant safety."
Monticello's operators "did not recognize the potential condition," the NRC said. The incident involved some of the same elements involved in the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 in 1979 and the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, nuclear experts said.
No one claims Monticello or Xcel's other atomic plant, Prairie Island, are unsafe. They're in the "middle of the pack," one expert says. A Nuclear Management Co. official says the plants are safe and working to improve.
But NRC routine and special inspections over the past couple of years have turned up recurring problems.
Those shortcomings include ongoing problems with maintenance; a failure to identify potential problems; a slowness to make repairs; inadequate monitoring of critical safety equipment; bad communication; and problems in assessing risk factors.
"These are not things that cost a million dollars to fix; they are things that cost thousands of dollars to fix. So why haven't they been fixed? Management hasn't gotten around to it. Why don't they bother fixing the minor problems, because the minor problems will add up?" said John Broadhurst, a University of Minnesota physics professor who directed the school's Williams Laboratory for Nuclear Physics.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Friday that the NRC currently is deciding what enforcement action to take after finding that two workers at Prairie Island withheld records during an NRC review of an unplanned shutdown at the plant in 2001. The records showed plant officials had long known of a potential problem with a critical piece of safety equipment but did not rectify it.
The NRC's concerns about maintenance and record-keeping echo complaints raised by workers in Xcel's non-nuclear operations. Company memos obtained by the St. Paul Pioneer Press during the last few months show that, to reduce expenses, Xcel has eliminated all but emergency maintenance, has deferred repairs, has dropped plans to replace old equipment and has cut staff.
Workers claim the cuts have led to a decline in service. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is investigating allegations that the company submitted fraudulent reliability data to the state.
Minneapolis-based Xcel, which was formed by the 2000 merger of Northern States Power and Denver-based New Century Energies, faces money problems. It has cut dividend payments to shareholders in half. One of its unregulated subsidiaries, NRG Energy, is $10.2 billion in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Like other power companies, Xcel has suffered from reduced demand for energy because of the downturn in the economy.
Utility regulators have expressed fears that industrywide financial pressures could prompt nuclear plant owners to cut corners - and safety. A 1996 report prepared for the NRC by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen warned that "the threat exists that nuclear utilities, in their desire to cut costs and increase competitiveness, will be forced to impair their operational safety and increase risk."
Xcel would not provide anyone to be interviewed for this article. But an official with Nuclear Management Co. said its operations at the two plants haven't been affected by Xcel's financial troubles.
The plants are safe, said the official, Michael D. Wadley, senior vice president of Nuclear Management Co., which is based in Hudson, Wis.
"The one thing this industry has to have in the long run is public trust. There's no mandate to operate nuclear power plants in this country," said Wadley. "We exist because people find our operations safe and acceptable, and we provide a beneficial product to the community."
Nuclear Management Co. was formed in 1999 by Northern States Power, and two of its top three executives - Wadley and CEO Michael B. Sellman - came from NSP. Nuclear Management Co. is the license-holder for the plants, but Xcel (which has a 20 percent stake in Nuclear Management Co.) maintains ownership of the facilities and the power they generate. Xcel also foots the bill for maintenance and improvements.
Xcel, through its subsidiary NSP-Minnesota, provides electricity to 1.3 million customers in the state. Nearly 29 percent of the megawatts the company generates come from Monticello, which became operational in 1971, and the two reactors at Prairie Island, which entered service in 1973 and 1974.
From a safety and reliability standpoint, Prairie Island and Monticello - or "P.I." and "Monti" as they are known within the companies - are considered about average, compared with other plants around the country.
"There are clearly some much worse, and there are also some that are much better," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who monitors atomic power issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent nonprofit group that originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Although the plants have passed NRC inspections, federal officials - and the nuclear industry's own evaluators - have noted a decline in maintenance, a failure to fix recurring problems, slow record-keeping and other key problems at the plants since the mid- to late-1990s.
Xcel's Web site notes that in 1998, Prairie Island received its seventh consecutive "excellent" or "1" rating from the nuclear industry's internal evaluation group, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators. Similarly, the Web site notes Monticello got its fifth consecutive 1 rating from INPO in 1997.
Those are the last public mentions of either plant's INPO rating. The ratings, which are closely guarded industry secrets, have fallen at both plants, according to workers familiar with them who spoke only on the condition their names not be published.
Each plant is now a "3" on the 5-point INPO scale, the workers said. INPO spokesman Terry Young, citing the confidentiality of the organization's work, declined to explain what a "3" rating means, other than to say each point on the scale represents "varying levels of proficiency."
INPO was established by nuclear plant owners after the Three Mile Island accident. Its annual evaluations carry great weight because its standards are considered tougher than those of the NRC. Insurance companies use INPO evaluations to set a plant's rates.
"INPO reports are not geared at seeing whether you're meeting regulatory minimums or not. They're judging you against a higher standard, against industry-best practices. If you're dropping away from industry-best standards, that's not a good sign," said Lochbaum.
Lochbaum and Broadhurst, of the University of Minnesota's Williams Laboratory, examined NRC reports at the request of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Each said that while both atomic plants suffer from small and non-safety-related problems that would nag any large industrial facility, they were most concerned by the persistent problems noted at Monticello.
"What made Monticello worse (than Prairie Island) was the recurring nature of some of their things," said Lochbaum, who worked in the nuclear industry for 17 years before joining the Union of Concerned Scientists. "That suggests that there's an unwillingness or inability to learn from mistakes because they keep getting repeated."
Nuclear plants are stunningly complex. They are metallic mazes of equipment, piping and wiring. Inspecting that complexity at a time of shrinking federal budgets led the NRC to change its reactor oversight process in 2000. The commission now places greater emphasis on plant operators identifying, reporting and fixing problems on their own.
"The inspection program looks at activities with the highest safety significance," said Bruce Burgess, the NRC's branch chief responsible for inspections at Monticello. "That gives us some confidence - not complete confidence, but some confidence - that if they're doing the highly significant activities correctly, they're also doing it with the lower ones, as well."
But NRC inspectors have expressed concerns that plant operators haven't focused on what might be considered "small issues." For example, last year the NRC reviewed Monticello's "corrective action" program to assess how well workers identified and resolved problems. The commission said it found "a number of weaknesses in the station's implementation and use of the corrective action program."
The NRC noted that it had found the same problems in an earlier inspection. Wadley said that sometimes there is a lag between the NRC's requiring a change and the company's implementing the change. He said Nuclear Management Co. places an emphasis on small details since they can lead to bigger and more serious issues.
"The focus is on the small issues. If you eradicate those, you stand a good chance of eliminating any event of any significance," he said.
Once a corrective action is identified, plant operators are to complete work orders to fix the problem, then review the work to make sure it was done correctly. At Monticello, inspectors discovered that the process was fraught with lengthy delays.
The NRC found "a significant number of work orders did not receive post-work reviews for more than one year after the work was completed." Similarly, the plant had backlogs of two other important types of documents: assessment of Actions to Correct Conditions, or ACCs, and Actions to Prevent Recurrence, or APRs.
In its inspection a year ago, the NRC discovered 611 unresolved ACCs, some of which dated back to 1993. There were 408 unresolved APRs. Some of them dated to 1995.
The NRC's Burgess said he couldn't tell whether those figures would be considered high. "We don't compare, as part of our process, across sites," he said. "But in my experience, they would not be considered unusual numbers."
The NRC also had concerns about workers' performance, most notably after the October 2001 partial depressurization of the reactor. A crew had just taken over for the previous shift and decided that although they were performing a "hot" shutdown, during which the reactor is still producing heat, they should use the depressurization procedure used in a "cold" shutdown.
The NRC said plant operators failed to recognize the gravity of the crew's mistake and failed to report it in a timely manner.
Monticello officials finally filed a report on the human performance aspects, "but only after station management personnel had been contacted several times by NRC regional management to discuss the issue," the NRC said.
"Following the event ... personnel at all levels of the organization remained fixed on the low risk significance of the issue and the minimal actual plant impact, and did not recognize the potential condition adverse to quality related to the day shift crew's poor performance," inspectors wrote.
While operators at Monticello were generally able to spot things that needed correcting, there were "weaknesses in the identification of specific issues and potentially adverse trends," the NRC said.
The same issue arose at Prairie Island last year and led to a monthlong shutdown of one of the plant's reactors. The NRC found that operators had gone two years without noticing ongoing problems with the plant's emergency diesel generators, which are used to power the reactor's cooling system in certain emergencies.
------- depleted uranium
Those near [Indiana] base fear plan to end testing of water
Army says pollution at ex-test-firing range doesn't appear to be moving from the site.
By Tammy Webber tammy.webber@indystar.com
1-317-444-6212
November 17, 2002
Indiannapolis Star
http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/5/001556-8985-0
Big Creek flows through a former military test-firing range riddled with unexploded shells and more than 150,000 pounds of depleted uranium -- an area so dangerous the Army plans to fence it off forever rather than attempt to clean it up.
But what really worries residents near the 55,000-acre Jefferson Proving Ground in southeastern Indiana is an Army plan made public last week to stop monitoring the creek and groundwater for depleted uranium contamination. ad click here!
"We have no assurance that stuff won't wash down through here over time," said Robert Rosenthal, who lives along Big Creek less than two miles from the site. "At the very least, there ought to be long-term monitoring downstream of the site. Many of us have wells within a stone's throw of the creek."
Jefferson Proving Ground is one of at least nine Indiana military installations contaminated over the years by everything from explosives and heavy metals to polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and petroleum. All of them, including a portion of the proving grounds, have undergone either full or partial environmental cleanups.
Besides the proving grounds, the most highly polluted sites are the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane and the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant in Charlestown, environment officials said. But only the proving ground -- which straddles Jefferson, Jennings and Ripley counties -- includes areas deemed too polluted and expensive to clean up.
The Army, which stopped firing depleted-uranium rounds eight years ago, wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate the Army's license to possess the radioactive metal at that site; if that happens, monitoring would no longer be required, said Claudia Craig, chief of the NRC facilities decommissioning section.
"We would not terminate the license unless we thought no environmental monitoring was needed," Craig said.
Army officials have said the pollution is relatively low -- though there are some hot spots -- and doesn't appear to be moving from the 1,200-acre firing range. But some residents aren't convinced it will stay that way. A group plans to seek a hearing before an NRC administrative law judge, said Richard Harris, president of Save the Valley, a southeast Indiana environmental group and a member of the restoration advisory board established to recommend uses for the base.
"We think they should monitor it longer because it's going to lay there forever," Harris said.
Steve Taylor, national organizer of the Maine-based Military Toxics Project, a national nonprofit network of community organizations on military environmental pollution, agreed.
"They're not the ones who have to live there," he said of the Army. "There is an incredible history of environmental hazards that communities were told would be safe turning out not to be safe."
Army officials could not be reached to comment on the plan.
Although groundwater contamination has been detected at many Indiana military sites, no contamination has been found off-site, said Bruce Palin, deputy assistant commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's office of land quality.
"Our first priority is to prevent any migration off site," he said. "But these sites are so large, the (contamination) is within the boundaries."
There is some concern that heavy metals were washed into the Ohio River from the closed 10,649-acre Charlestown plant, said Doug Griffin, the state's project manager. Most of the contamination -- nitric acid, lead, mercury and explosives -- was captured in a series of basins leading to the Ohio River. Cleanup plans are being finalized for three of the basins and still are being discussed for the two most polluted basins, closest to the river, Griffin said.
That facility, like most that were closed, eventually will be turned over to the state or private residents for redevelopment as recreational, commercial or industrial areas.
Cleanup of buried mustard gas, dyes and explosives has been completed at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, which is still operating and where munitions are being destroyed, Griffin said. PCB contamination still must be cleaned, and ground water may have to be cleaned.
The Department of Defense plans to clean up closed bases by 2005 and the most polluted active bases by 2007; all sites should be clean by 2014, said John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant deputy undersecretary of the environment.
Aside from concerns about environmental testing for depleted uranium at the Jefferson Proving Grounds, environmentalists generally have few complaints about the pace of targeted cleanups, said Paul F. Walker, directory of the legacy program for Global Green USA, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group that addresses post-Cold War environmental issues.
Griffin said cleanup of military installations is fairly straightforward.
"There is no polluted groundwater under subdivisions, no houses on top of pollution . . . there are no Love Canals," he said, referring to a highly publicized New York landfill. "But there are things that still need to be done."
"Lately the (Defense Department) has been just cranking away at those sites."
-------- inspections
Saddam 'hiding the weapons in mosques'
By Philip Sherwell and David Wastell
17/11/2002
Sunday 17 November 2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/17/wirq17.xml/
Saddam Hussein is hiding chemical and biological weapons supplies in mosques and hospitals in an effort to thwart the new United Nations inspection mission to Baghdad, Iraqi dissidents have revealed.
America says the Iraqi leader has also set up highly-trained "clean-up" squads at his most sensitive secret weapons sites to hide evidence and "sanitise" key facilities even as inspectors are on their way.
Saddam was completing his concealment strategy as French and Russian diplomats wrangled with their American and British counterparts at the UN in New York over the Security Council resolution backing the return of the weapons inspectors.
American intelligence has intensified its information-gathering campaign about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme as Washington prepares to provide the inspectors with the data to counter Baghdad's concealment efforts.
In a significant breakthrough, the claims of Adnan al-Haideri, an Iraqi civil engineer who defected to America last year and revealed how Saddam was building underground vaults to hide chemical and biological weapons laboratories, have been backed up by US spy plane missions.
The aircraft are fitted with a device that detects underground voids - such as bunkers and tunnels - through variations in the earth's gravitational field. The device found a void where Mr al-Haideri said there was a subterranean nerve-agent laboratory.
Several scientists responsible for Iraq's WMD programme have been shifted out of the country on false passports already to prevent the inspectors questioning them, leading exiles have told The Telegraph.
In the past fortnight two scientists have been sent to Yemen, two elsewhere in the Middle East and one each to Romania, Malaysia and Singapore, according to the Iraqi National Accord (INA), an opposition group with good contacts within the regime.
Dr Ayad Alawi, the INA's leader, also disclosed that the regime was moving documents and materials from weapons laboratories and a ballistic-missile site into hospitals, schools and mosques in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
The concealment operation is being co-ordinated by Brig Gen Walid al-Nasri, a trusted aide from Saddam's home region of Tikrit who reports directly to Qusay Hussein, the dictator's second son and head of his powerful State Security Organisation.
An official of the US Defence Intelligence Agency said: "They have trained large numbers of personnel in how to deal with an intrusive inspection regime."
These "clean-up" squads have developed methods for rapidly cleaning and sterilising equipment such as fermenters and centrifuges used to manufacture and store chemical and biological agents.
Iraq has also tried to "bury" small-scale weapons-making activity in larger-scale industrial sites.
British and American intelligence have developed a plan for the weapons inspectors that meets a timetable for attack early next year. They want them to look at about 1,000 sites. About 100 are considered certain to contain evidence of illegal activity.
In his first public comments since the UN resolution was passed, Saddam said yesterday that he had accepted the harsh terms to avert a US attack. After again insisting that Iraq was "devoid of weapons of mass destruction", he used typically vituperative language to denounce Israel, America and the "devils" that followed them.
The first test will come on December 8, the deadline set by UN Resolution 1441 for him to declare Iraq's stocks of biological and chemical agents, its nuclear-bomb programme and remaining ballistic missiles.
"If the Iraqis stick with a declaration of 'nil', then it's war," said Dr John Chipman, director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the London-based think-tank that produced a damning recent dossier on Iraq's weapons programme.
He said that Baghdad would most probably come up with a "middling" declaration.
America, backed by Britain, would argue at the Security Council that an incomplete December 8 declaration would put Baghdad in "material breach" of Resolution of 1441. France and Russia would in turn be expected to contend that the inspectors be given the chance to prove that Saddam was lying.
Despite the growing American military build-up, Pentagon planners would still prefer to launch a closely co-ordinated air and ground offensive after late December, when more than 200,000 US troops would be in the region.
The plan is that US intelligence will provide the UN inspectors with the "killer" data once America is ready for the military finale. The inspectors would then make unannounced spot checks while the US kept the sites under surveillance relayed live by unmanned spy drones.
Washington believes the Iraqis will be seen either trying to conceal weapons material or will be caught out. The UN Security Council will be allowed a short time to debate, but the Pentagon will already have launched the final, brief countdown to war.
----
U.S., U.N. Differ on Arms Hunt
White House Urges Intrusive Inspections
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64597-2002Nov16?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 16 -- With an advance team of U.N. weapons inspectors due to arrive in Baghdad on Monday after a four-year absence, the United States and the United Nations are divided over how aggressively the inspectors should conduct their hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq, U.N. and U.S. officials say.
The Bush administration is insisting on the most intrusive inspections possible, pushing U.N. arms experts to probe where previous inspectors could not, and to impose strict reporting requirements on the Iraqi government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cautioned Thursday against the view that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will be given any "slack" in the inspection process that would deter the United States from using force if Iraq fails to cooperate.
The U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has argued for a more measured approach to achieving disarmament. Blix spelled out his aims last month in Vienna at a meeting with recruits to the inspections teams; he said they should be "firm" with their Iraqi counterparts but never "angry and aggressive."
The division reflects broad differences in the U.N. Security Council that remain unresolved despite the council's unanimous approval Nov. 8 of Resolution 1441, which sets out stringent new terms for inspections in Iraq. And it may foreshadow clashes between the United States and its partners in the United Nations as Blix and his teams begin their inspections Nov. 27.
In a letter today to Iraq's parliament explaining why he accepted the resumption of inspections, Hussein reiterated his contention that Iraq is "devoid of weapons of mass destruction."
The claim was dismissed by President Bush in his weekly radio address. "We have heard such pledges before, and they have been unfortunately betrayed," Bush said. "Our goal is not merely the return of inspectors to Iraq; our goal is the disarmament of Iraq. The dictator of Iraq will give up his weapons of mass destruction, or the United States will lead a coalition and disarm him."
While Bush has argued that the 15-nation Security Council should have "zero tolerance," making even minor infractions a potential cause for military action, Blix, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other key Security Council members, such as Russia and France, maintain that Iraq will be held accountable only for serious violations
"The U.S. does seem . . . to have a lower threshold than others may have" to justify military action, Annan told reporters in Washington on Wednesday before meeting with Bush. "I think the discussion in the council made it clear we should be looking for something serious and meaningful, and not for excuses to do something."
Annan's view reflects those of U.N. members who have interpreted comments by senior White House and Pentagon officials as suggesting that conflict with Iraq may be inevitable.
Since the Security Council vote, administration officials have argued that the resolution prohibits Iraq from firing on U.S. and British warplanes enforcing "no fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq. The resolution says Iraq shall not take or threaten hostile acts against U.N. member personnel upholding "any" previous resolutions, but the United States has differed with other U.N. members over whether the Security Council ever sanctioned the "no fly" zone policy.
Asked about the matter in Canada on Thursday, Powell acknowledged that "one could argue" with the U.S. interpretation. But he said the United Nations was seeking a "new spirit of cooperation" from Iraq, and that, therefore, firing on aircraft would suggest Iraq's behavior had not changed. "If they were to take hostile acts against United States or United Kingdom aircraft patrolling in the 'no fly' zones, then I think we would have to look at that with great seriousness," Powell said.
The issue was thrust into the open today as administration officials said they have determined that an attack by Iraqi air defenses Friday against U.S. and British warplanes patrolling a "no fly" zone in southern Iraq was a "material breach" of Baghdad's obligations under the terms of the resolution. The Iraqi government said that seven civilians were killed and four injured by allied planes responding to the attack.
Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will arrive in Baghdad on Monday with more than 25 technical specialists. Blix told reporters Friday that he and El Baradei will meet with senior Iraqi officials while their team tends to communication and transportation. About 12 arms experts are to arrive Nov. 27 and formally begin the inspections. They will be joined by another 80 inspectors in the following weeks.
U.N. officials have voiced concern that the United States will press for the kind of provocative inspections that characterized the 1991-98 disarmament effort by the U.N. Special Commission, known as UNSCOM.
Blix, who assumed leadership of UNSCOM's successor agency in 2000, is trying to change the culture of the arms inspectors, whose predecessors aroused deep animosity in Iraq for using tough tactics to gain access to U.N. sites.
The conduct and composition of the inspections teams have emerged as a major issue. Iraq and other Arab governments appealed to Blix, who has employed more inspectors from the United States than from any other country, to hire more Arab arms experts, who might be more in tune with Iraq's religious and cultural sensitivities.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri made it clear in a letter to Annan on Wednesday in which Iraq accepted the resolution that his government will be monitoring the inspectors for evidence that they are spying on behalf of the United States.
"The fieldwork and the implementation will be the deciding factors as to whether the true intent was for the Security Council to ascertain that Iraq is free of those alleged weapons or whether the entire matter is nothing more than an evil cover" for U.S. aggression, Sabri wrote.
UNSCOM, which was established at the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 to eliminate Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and missiles with ranges longer than 90 miles, is credited with destroying more Iraqi weapons than U.S.-led forces during the conflict. But it was shuttered in late 1999, following revelations that the United States had used the inspection agency to collect intelligence on the Iraqi government.
The Security Council established a successor agency, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, in December 1999 to complete Iraq's disarmament. The new inspectors have been placed on the U.N. payroll to decrease the likelihood that they will serve the interests of their governments.
Iraq refused to allow the new inspection agency to resume its work, however, until it was confronted by a credible threat of U.S. military action.
The United States has pressed Blix to appoint a senior U.S. official to manage the flow of American intelligence to the inspection agency. It has also insisted that Iraq be required to permit its scientists and their families to be interviewed abroad, and imposed a 30-day deadline on Iraq to provide a complete account of the status of its chemical, biological and nuclear facilities.
Blix has not yet agreed to the U.S. request about having an American in charge of monitoring the intelligence flow. Although Blix has pleaded with Washington to increase its intelligence support for UNMOVIC, he has also expressed concern that the relationship could compromise his organization. He said today in Paris that the former inspection agency had "lost its legitimacy by being too closely associated with intelligence and with Western states."
Speaking to reporters Friday before leaving New York, Blix said there may be "practical difficulties" in conducting interviews outside Iraq. He also has questioned whether Iraq could file a full declaration on its petrochemical industry within the 30-day deadline, making it clear that he would judge Iraq's "intention" before deciding whether Iraq has violated any of the resolution's requirements.
Some former weapons inspectors say they are concerned Blix may be falling into an Iraqi trap and have urged him to undertake an even more aggressive approach to inspections than UNSCOM. "Blix may go too far down this line," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Studies. "If you are too weak, the Iraqis will read you in a second and take advantage of it."
----
Iraq Weapon Inspectors Set for Last Chance Hunt
November 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and a team of 30 head into Baghdad on Monday to give Iraq a last chance to convince the world it does not have weapons of mass destruction.
Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, take with them a stick and carrot in their mission to reopen offices shut four years ago.
In 1998, the United Nations lost patience with what it judged as President Saddam Hussein's lack of cooperation after his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War and pulled its inspectors out.
Backed by threats of a U.S.-led war if there is a repeat of 1998, Blix said the weight of deciding if there should be war or peace with Iraq did not rest on his shoulders.
``We will report cooperation and lack of cooperation,'' Blix told reporters on the eve of his departure for Baghdad from Cyprus where the inspectors have set up their logistics base.
``The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq and the Security Council and members of the Security Council,'' the 74-year-old Swede added.
In a sign of building tension, U.S. and British warplanes bombed an air defense system in northern Iraq on Sunday after Iraqi forces fired at the jets in a ``no-fly'' zone.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain said Saddam would make the mistake of his life if he played cat and mouse games in the hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as missiles that could deliver them.
IRAQ PROMISES OPEN ACCESS
Iraq promised there would be no effort to hamper searches and forecast the inspectors would prove U.S. charges that Iraq had been rearming since the inspectors left were false.
``We have given instructions to all responsible people and many government areas to respond immediately to any request to enter their sites and inspect them,'' Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz told London Weekend Television's Jonathan Dimbleby program on Sunday.
IAEA chief ElBaradei said the inspectors would arrive in Baghdad with some knowledge of suspect sites because of tips from U.S. and other intelligence agencies as well as their own advance investigations.
``We have a very good game plan,'' he said.
When asked how sure he would be that Iraq was not concealing weapons, ElBaradei, an Egyptian, replied: ``We do not take 'no' for an answer. We have to verify a 'no' is actually a 'no'.
He said Iraq's reward for full access and a clean report was ``to come back to be fully members of the international community and to eventually eliminate sanctions.''
DECEMBER 8 IS FIRST BIG TEST
Blix, who will return to Cyprus on Wednesday, said his first team would work out logistics like hiring vehicles and setting up laboratories that would test air, water and soil samples.
He said formal inspections start on November 27, and he expects to have 100 inspectors drawn from more than 40 countries in Iraq by the end of the year. Nothing will be off-limits including mosques and Saddam's palaces.
The first significant test is a December 8 deadline for Iraq to submit a full account of all its banned weapons programs. By January 27 next year, the inspectors must have given their first report to the U.N. Security Council.
The team leave Cyprus for Baghdad at about 0800 GMT on Monday, arriving about three hours later on a C-130 aircraft chartered from Safair, a private South African airline which has been involved in other U.N. operations.
Sunday's bombing raids were part of a rise in the number of incidents involving the patrols over no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq as the chances of war loom over inspections.
Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones, set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from attack by Saddam's military.
----
With More at Stake, Less Will Be Verified
By David Kay
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Washington Post; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61790-2002Nov15?language=printer
The first obstacle U.N. weapons inspectors may face when they arrive in Iraq tomorrow will be getting from one place to another.
For symbolic reasons, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) team would prefer not to travel via U.S. or British helicopters. Too bellicose, perhaps. The German government, for domestic political reasons, won't allow its own to be used. Chile has volunteered to lease two Vietnam-era Huey helicopters to the inspectors, as it did in the past, and the United Nations last week was scrambling to figure out how to get them to Iraq in time.
This minor logistical issue will be solved, but the attention to political etiquette when weapons of mass destruction are at stake provides a taste of the difficulties to come. This is not a time for political niceties, yet the multilateral culture isn't comfortable with the tough measures needed to root out hidden weapons. The U.N. is now embarking on its second attempt to use coercive inspections to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. And even though the previous frustrating effort lasted seven years, this one -- with a tougher mandate -- is somehow supposed to be largely wrapped up in just 60 days with half as many inspectors.
The very need for this effort is an admission that the era of non-coercive non-proliferation is over. At the dawn of the nuclear age, the United States relied on unilateral controls on technology exports and diplomatic pressure to prevent unfriendly states from gaining weapons of mass destruction, while offering to keep non-nuclear allies under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Now, it is turning to international inspectors to act as sleuths, to search not only for evidence of a nuclear arms program but for other weapons of mass destruction as well.
International nuclear inspection teams were first created as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970. The teams were never expected to ferret out clandestine nuclear programs. Rather, the IAEA was part of a deal to provide incentives, such as peaceful nuclear technology, in return for voluntary international inspections and a promise that the existing nuclear powers would eventually dismantle their own nuclear forces. Inspectors were there only to verify that commercial nuclear materials were not being diverted to military programs. Member states had to approve, in advance, the locations to be inspected, and the methods and equipment to be used. In reality, these inspections never amounted to much more than confidence-building among the self-proclaimed good guys of non-proliferation.
This mix of U.S. security guarantees, incentives and voluntary international inspections yielded some remarkable successes. Although South Africa, India and Pakistan represent significant failures, South Africa eventually renounced and destroyed its weapons. And many other countries were restrained. At one time or another, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, West Germany, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan all moved toward gaining a capacity to produce nuclear weapons. The non-proliferation policies crafted by the United States managed to bring these programs to a halt.
Iraq's bellicosity and our awareness that it was simultaneously moving forward on several weapons of mass destruction fronts underlined the need for a new sort of inspection program, one that is better staffed, better financed, better equipped and willing to make unapologetic use of the intelligence services of allied countries in trying to uncover hidden programs or weapons.
The first inspections team sent to Iraq -- the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) -- had many of those characteristics as well as sweeping authority from the Security Council. UNSCOM had several unprecedented powers. It could and did go anyplace, anytime, with anyone, without Iraqi permission; it had unlimited authority to take environmental measurements and samples; and it got intelligence from various governments.
Even so, the experience of UNSCOM, of which I was a member, shows how difficult it can be to deal with a recalcitrant nation and what we might expect in the coming weeks from Baghdad .
The cease-fire resolution of 1991, like the resolution just adopted, required Iraq to submit a complete list of the quantities and locations of its prohibited weapons and their production systems. But full disclosure was not in the cards. The Iraqi declaration submitted on April 18, 1991, acknowledged approximately 10,000 nerve-gas shells, 1,000 tons of nerve and mustard gas, 1,500 chemical weapon bombs and shells, and 52 Scud missiles with 30 chemical and 23 conventional high-explosive warheads, but denied having any biological or nuclear materials. Within three months, the U.N. inspectors found four times as many chemical weapons as Iraq had declared and a gigantic nuclear program that could have produced weapons in just two years. By October 1991, inspectors had found more than 100,000 chemical shells -- almost 10 times the amount in the declaration.
Critics of the current Bush administration's willingness to go to war should consider how little happened to Iraq a decade ago as a result of its lack of cooperation with UNSCOM. Economic sanctions were imposed, but had little effect and faint support. Hussein convinced the world that the sanctions were maintained only at the insistence of the United States and that they were hurting Iraqi children. Whether this was true or not became immaterial. Commercial pressures soon made smuggling both lucrative and effective, and the sanctions lost much of their impact. For coercive sanctions to be a credible alternative to military action, the international community must give inspectors greater support than that.
As inspections dragged on, UNSCOM also lost political support because of its reliance on intelligence supplied by national governments, principally the United States. In much of the world, after all, the CIA is seen as the root of all evil. Even those of us involved in gaining access to this intelligence worried that if the cooperation continued for long, the national intelligence services would begin to use UNSCOM for their own espionage purposes. Yet inspectors do not have their own intelligence services. In order to avoid appearing to be in bed with the United States, UNMOVIC has been doing silly things such as buying lower-quality commercial satellite photos of Iraq and refusing to use experts who work for government agencies.
UNSCOM did have some notable successes in its later years. It uncovered a previously unknown biological weapons program, more concealed Scuds, and renewed efforts to perfect chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. But Iraq's hiding, cheating and deception grew in intensity and skill. By 1996 it was clear that inspections by themselves would not disarm Iraq. Finally, in December 1998, UNSCOM withdrew, declaring that Iraq's obstructionism made it unable to carry out its work, and the United States began carrying out limited military air strikes on Iraq. Iraq announced that it would not accept the return of UNSCOM inspectors and denounced them as U.S. spies.
And so in the end, the inspection efforts broke down. Though at the time of the cease-fire, the United States and its coalition allies believed a weak, defeated Iraq would have to give up its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq eventually filed almost two dozen "full, final and complete disclosures" of its prohibited weapons -- and each one proved to be false. Iraq's lack of cooperation with the weapons inspection process has been the one constant throughout the past 11 years. Under the latest U.N. resolution, Iraq's next report is due Dec. 8.
As for Saddam Hussein himself, in 1991 it was assumed that he would be replaced by a regime prepared to live in peace with its neighbors. Otherwise, how could inspections there ever end? Yet the Iraqi leader is still there, presumably preparing to foil a new cadre of inspectors.
No matter what happens in Iraq over the next few months, the dilemma of how to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will not end in Baghdad. Coercive disarmament, by its very nature, violates the sovereignty of the state being disarmed and hence is an unnatural act for international organizations such as the United Nations or IAEA.
In the case of Iraq, the IAEA did not seek, and only reluctantly accepted, an inspection role. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has expressed unhappiness with "UNSCOM cowboys" and sought to ensure that the new inspection efforts are "sensitive to the concerns as to the dignity, security, and sovereignty" of Iraq and more closely conform to U.N. norms. UNMOVIC has largely given up seeking national intelligence information and some providers of such information have ceased to offer it.
The IAEA safeguards prior to the Gulf War were unbelievably lax. This was not a secret. But countries that signed the non-proliferation treaty did not fear the spread of nuclear arms enough to pay the financial and political costs required to tighten up the safeguards. The shock of UNSCOM's discoveries in Iraq -- and, more recently, of North Korea's revelation about its surprisingly advanced weapons programs -- revised this calculus somewhat. IAEA safeguards today are marginally better than before the Gulf War. Whether they are good enough to prevent or detect proliferation remains highly uncertain and is being tested by Iran and perhaps others.
There is still vast room for improving the capabilities for coercive inspection operations, yet there are few proposals for doing that. That's because such inspections only take place when all other options have failed. To plan for failure is one of the most difficult bureaucratic tasks. Moreover, coercive inspections have no organizational champions. Arms control proponents lobby for more resources and attention for their treaties and voluntary organizations. The military services and defense contractors are never short of glossy PowerPoint briefings on new weapon systems. But one will search long and hard for a vocal advocate of coercive inspections with a program of training and systems that could make this approach more effective.
Even after finding weapons, an uncomfortable question remains. You can "rollback" on weapons by destroying them, but how do you roll back knowledge? Only by changing the nature of a regime. Buying time with inspections is worthwhile only if that time is invested in buying fundamental political change. It is the political system that makes Iraq's moves toward weapons of mass destruction a threat, while Sweden's or Belgium's or Japan's or Israel's moves in the past have been seen with concern, but considerably less alarm.
The experience with Iraq leaves the international community with a set of unhappy lessons: Voluntary arms control arrangements may fail to prevent or detect massive violations when faced with a clever, determined violator. Military action may stop short of removing the industrial and technical capabilities needed to support weapons of mass destruction programs, and leave untouched the political will that led a state to seek such capabilities. Finally, coercive disarmament by inspections, even when backed by economic sanctions and access to intelligence information, can fail when met by a determined regime that believes its own interests require possession of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Thus it seems likely that the next time the United States decides to take up arms against a suspected proliferator, the pressure will be intense to "go to Baghdad" -- that is, to carry on the conflict to the point of changing the political leadership -- rather than to end the conflict early and rely on U.N. inspection measures to remove weapons of mass destruction. The unpleasant fact is that if inspections fail to disarm Iraq, this ensures that future conflicts involving proliferation -- North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and, soon, Libya come to mind as possibilities -- will be more violent, with more casualties, and harder to terminate.
David Kay is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. In 1991, he served as chief nuclear weapons inspector of UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq.
----
Inspector: War or Peace Up to Iraq
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Weapons-Inspectors-Iraq.html
LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) -- The chief U.N. weapons inspector landed in Cyprus Sunday to assemble his team for a return to Baghdad and said the ``question of war and peace'' awaits an answer from Saddam Hussein.
President Bush has warned that Saddam faces military action if he fails to cooperate fully with the inspectors, who will fly to Iraq on Monday. Saddam faces a three-week deadline to reveal weapons of mass destruction or provide convincing evidence he no longer has any.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, overseeing the International Atomic Energy Agency's search for nuclear arms, flew to Cyprus from Vienna, Austria. They joined about two dozen other members of the advance team assembling here to prepare for a resumption of inspections after a nearly four-year absence.
``The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq, the Security Council and the members of the Security Council,'' Blix said.
Blix, who will lead the overall mission, said his team was prepared to meet the challenge of ensuring Iraqi compliance. But he said he hoped Iraq would not try to hide anything.
The 74-year-old Swedish diplomat said inspectors would be taking along much more sophisticated equipment than was available when the inspection program was suspended in December 1998.
``We do of course expect to get tips from the (U.N.) member states,'' Blix said. ``We also have modern equipment that is superior to what we had in the past. But...we would like the Iraqis to declare, and this is an opportunity for them to do so and we hope that they will seize that opportunity.''
Bush is insisting on ``zero tolerance'' of the Iraqi delaying tactics and deceit which marked the previous inspection effort.
ElBaradei, an Egyptian, said there was a need for ``intrusive verifications,'' meaning inspectors ``will use every means at our disposal to make sure that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction.''
Also, Iraqis with key information would be interviewed outside the country if it was necessary to protect their safety. But, he acknowledged, ``if people do not want to talk, we obviously will not be able to force them to talk.''
However, Blix favors cooperation instead of confrontation with the Iraqis, and the differences in approach could create tension between the inspectors and the Bush administration, U.N. officials said Sunday on condition of anonymity.
One official said the Americans are keen to beef up the mission with staff and equipment Blix may not consider necessary.
``We're happy for the handshake, but we don't want the hug,'' said the official, referring to Blix's interest in U.S. support but also in avoiding the appearance that Americans are running the show.
ElBaradei spoke of ``second-guessing'' when asked about pressure from Security Council members. Blix acknowledged input from different governments, but said, ``It is we who will decide what to do.''
Although Blix has urged the United States to provide more intelligence support for his mission, he also warned over the weekend of the pitfalls of such cooperation, saying in Paris that the previous inspection mission failed in part because of its close association with government intelligence agencies and Western states.
The last inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 amid Iraqi allegations that some were spying for the United States and countercharges that Iraq was not cooperating with the teams. Their departure was followed by four days of punishing U.S. and British airstrikes on Iraq.
Blix and ElBaradei warned Sunday they would not tolerate attempts to coerce their staff into surreptitiously sharing information with governments.
``I can never guarantee that everyone will be 100 percent in my service,'' Blix said. ``But if we find anyone doing anything else, it's bye-bye.''
In a nod to U.S. concerns, Blix and ElBaradei said inspections will be tough, thorough and leave no space for deceit.
``We do not take 'no' for an answer,'' ElBaradei said. ``We have to verify to make sure a 'no' is actually a 'no.'''
Blix has said that preliminary inspections likely will resume Nov. 27, with full-scale checks beginning after Iraq files a declaration of its banned weapons programs by a Dec. 8 deadline.
Blix then has 60 days to report back to the U.N. Security Council with his findings.
Saddam agreed Wednesday to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after the Security Council approved a toughly worded resolution.
Baghdad, however, insisted in a nine-page letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that it does not have any such weapons.
The U.N. resolution gives Iraq ``a final opportunity'' to eliminate its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them. It gives inspectors the right to go anywhere at anytime and warns Iraq it will face ``serious consequences'' if it fails to cooperate.
After Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Security Council imposed economic sanctions that cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors verify that Iraq is free of such weapons and missiles.
The advance team will reopen the office used by the previous inspections regime and set up secure phone lines and transportation.
-------- korea
N. Korea radio says Pyongyang has nuclear weapons
11/17/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-11-17-north-korea_x.htm
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's state-run radio reported for the first time Sunday that the communist country has nuclear weapons, but South Korean officials doubted the credibility of the report.
Pyongyang Radio reported in a Korean-language report that the country "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons due to nuclear threats by U.S. imperialists," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitors broadcasts from the North.
Some took the report as the North's first confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons. Until now, North Korea had claimed that it was "entitled to have nuclear weapons and more powerful weapons than that to protect its sovereignty from U.S. threats."
But on Monday, South Korean officials were skeptical that the report represented a change in North Korea's official position on nuclear weapons, which has been to neither confirm nor deny that the country has them.
"It's too early to say whether North Korea's official position on its nuclear issue has changed," said Choi Young-joon, a chief analyst at South Korea's Unification Ministry.
"In North Korea, such a report should follow an official government statement or policy announcement or comments by a top official," he said.
Yonhap played down the significance of the report carried by Pyongyang Radio, which is meant chiefly for the South Korean audience. No other Northern media, including its English-language foreign news outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, carried it.
"Also, it was a one-time report and was not repeated," Yonhap said.
Yonhap said it was likely that the news anchor made a mistake or that the North was deliberately trying to create confusion.
In the report, North Korea accused the United States of trying to isolate it from the world by claiming that the communist country had broken nuclear arms control agreements.
"The lie is aimed to tarnish the international prestige and authority of the DPRK (North Korea) and isolate the DPRK on a worldwide scale," said Rodong Sinmun, the North's communist party newspaper.
North Korea "is in full accord with the main spirit and purpose" of a 1994 pact with the United States and other anti-nuclear accords, it said.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons in return for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of oil every year until the reactors were built.
But in September, the North acknowledged to visiting U.S. diplomats that it had a uranium-enriching program to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea says the United States violated the accord first, citing delays in the reactor project.
Pyongyang has said it will only resolve the issue if the United States offers a nonaggression pact. Washington has rejected any talks with Pyongyang unless it gives up the nuclear weapons program.
--------
Pyongyang Radio Suggests N.Korea Has Atomic Arms
November 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean radio broadcast on Sunday appeared to confirm for the first time that the communist state has nuclear weapons in a statement criticizing the United States for raising tensions with disarmament demands.
The broadcast, monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, came as Seoul braced for Pyongyang's reaction to an agreement by the United States and its allies to suspend vital fuel oil shipments to penalize North Korea for its nuclear program.
North Korea's Pyongyang Radio said the country ``has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the U.S. imperialists,'' according to Yonhap, which monitors North Korean broadcasts.
But Yonhap said the language -- which appeared to go further than Pyongyang's previous claims to ``be entitled to have nuclear weapons'' -- may have been deliberately misleading or represent a rare mistake by the North Korean state broadcaster.
South Korean government analysts were not immediately available to comment on the report.
Tension in one of the last Cold War flash points has mounted since U.S. officials said last month that North Korea had admitted pursuing a nuclear arms development program in violation of a landmark 1994 agreement with Washington.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the North promised to freeze its nuclear weapons program in return for fuel oil, paid for by Washington, and two light water reactors that cannot easily be converted to produce weapons material.
On Thursday, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union agreed to suspend the fuel oil shipments to North Korea from December in response to its violation of the pact.
North Korea's ruling party newspaper, in a report with similar content to the Pyongyang Radio broadcast, said the United States was the one who had broken the pact.
``The United States is spreading a whopping lie that the DPRK violates the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework,'' said a Rodong Sinmun article, carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
``The lie is aimed to tarnish the international prestige and authority of the DPRK and isolate the DPRK on a worldwide scale. And it is a cunning plot to cover up the criminal nature of the U.S. posing nuclear threats to the DPRK and divert the public attention at home and abroad elsewhere.''
DPRK is the acronym of the North's official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The communist newspaper said the United States had branded the North part of an ``axis of evil,'' and listed Pyongyang as a target for pre-emptive nuclear attack.
``This is a declaration of war, a nuclear war against the DPRK. Therefore, the U.S. openly violated and destroyed the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework and nullified the North-South joint declaration on denuclearization,'' the Rodong Sinmun said.
North Korea also reiterated terms it set late in October for addressing U.S. nuclear concerns: a non-aggression pact and a guarantee of the impoverished state's sovereignty.
-------- terrorism
Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile
By Philip Delves Broughton
November 17 2002,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/16/1037080966140.html
An Al Qaeda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads.
News of the plot came as the US warned that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks and the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were all possible targets.
In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a former professional footballer in the German league, said he had hoped to attack the Kleine Brogel base in eastern Belgium with a bomb similar to those used to blow up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
The base includes a munitions store and is believed by anti-nuclear groups to contain 20 free-fall nuclear bombs.
"I am guilty, I will have to pay for it," Trabelsi said in the radio interview from his cell. "What I did is not good, but I had no choice."
Trabelsi was arrested last year, suspected of involvement in an Al Qaeda plot to attack the US embassy in Paris.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
THE ARSENAL
Nuclear Study, Given Go-Ahead, Rouses Fears About a New 'Bunker Buster' Weapon
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/17NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - Buried in the $393 billion defense authorization bill that Congress approved this week was an obscure item that has raised concerns that the administration is gradually moving toward creating new kinds of nuclear weapons.
The item authorizes the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the nation's nuclear stockpile, to spend $15 million to study modifying nuclear weapons so they can be used to destroy underground factories or laboratories.
The United States produced a "bunker buster" weapon in 1997 by repackaging a hydrogen bomb into a hardened case. But Pentagon planners contend that such a weapon would not be effective against the deeply buried and fortified installations that some countries, including Iraq and North Korea, are thought to use for producing and storing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Advocates of the study contend that the administration is not yet proposing to create a new weapon and is simply looking at solutions to an increasingly significant military problem.
But critics argue that the study is a first step toward producing weapons that would require a resumption of nuclear testing, which the United States suspended in 1992.
The Energy Department is also considering building a new installation for making the plutonium pits that are at the heart of nuclear bombs. The plant would cost $2.2 billion to $4.1 billion, the department estimates. It intends to issue a decision on construction in April 2004.
"A new `bunker busting' nuclear earth penetrator sends exactly the wrong signal to the world," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. "At a time when we are trying to discourage other countries - such as North Korea - from developing nuclear weapons, it looks hypocritical for us to be preparing to introduce a whole new generation of nuclear weapons into the arsenal."
Democrats had tried to strip the $15 million item from the bill but instead settled for a compromise that would require the administration to issue a report explaining how the modified bomb would be used and whether conventional weapons could be just as effective. The Democrats also inserted a provision requiring the administration to seek Congressional approval before doing any basic research into a new nuclear weapon.
Fred Celec, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear matters, said the Pentagon would study ways of repackaging a weapon in hardened casing that could withstand crashing into solid rock.
Responding to criticism that the Pentagon was trying to make nuclear weapons more usable, Mr. Celec replied, "The definition of deterrence is that you must have the capability and that your opponent must believe you will use that weapon."
But Michael A. Levi, a physicist with the Federation of American Scientists, an arms control group, said that although a bunker buster might release less fallout than other nuclear weapons, it would still spread enough radiation to kill thousands of people. He argued that improvements in conventional weapons had made them almost as effective for closing off underground facilities.
"These are brute-force bombs," Mr. Levi said of the bunker buster. "The collateral damage they cause makes them less usable, and therefore less of a deterrent."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Report: $3M Los Alamos Items Missing
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Lab-Missing-Items.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- Nearly $3 million worth of items owned by Los Alamos National Laboratory have disappeared or were reported missing over a three year period, according to a published report.
The lab's system of reporting lost items ``is conducive to covering (up) for items that are actually stolen,'' said the internal report, prepared within the lab's Office of Security Inquiries in March and obtained by the Albuquerque Journal for a story in Sunday editions.
The author's name was not on the report. It outlined missing items ranging from computers to a fork lift that disappeared between 1999 and 2001.
Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler told the Journal that the lab goes through a rigorous accounting process each year by both lab officials and the Department of Energy. A lab spokesperson did not immediately return calls from the Associated Press Sunday.
Cell phones, cameras, computers and items valued at $5,000 or more are bar coded, Tytler said. The lab has about 80,000 items, valued at slightly less than $1 billion, that are bar coded and inventoried every year.
In 2001 and 2002, the lab reported that it accounted for more than 99 percent of its bar coded items, according to lab memos. Items unaccounted for in 2001 totaled about $100,000, a memo said.
The report indicates that it was written after a staff meeting and was intended to give ``a comprehensive view of the theft picture presently being experienced by LANL.''
Other memos show attempts to use government credit cards for unauthorized expenses including a car payment. The lab stopped that transaction. A U.S. House Committee on Science is investigating allegations that lab employees used lab credit cards to make illegal purchases.
The FBI alleges at least two employees have used lab credit cards to spend more than $50,000 for unapproved merchandise such as a barbecue grill and hunting knives.
-------- south carolina
BNFL's Savannah clean-up slated
By Solomon Hughes
17 November 2002
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=352796
A massive nuclear clean-up operation in the US, run by a subsidiary of BNFL, has been slammed by inspectors for having poor safety management and cost control.
Westinghouse Government Services, in which the nationalised nuclear fuels group has a 40 per cent stake, was criticised in a report into its $600m (£380m) contract to clean up an old nuclear bomb factory at Savannah River in South Carolina.
Inspectors from the US Department of Energy found that WGS had an "inadequate and ineffective" approach to "risk prioritisation" when dealing with safety and a "limited probability of success" in managing costs.
The DofE made a site visit during the summer and found that WGS avoided difficult and expensive work, such as building decommissioning and stabilising nuclear material, "weighs business elements more heavily (by a factor of three) than risk elements" and had a system that did not differentiate between small and large accidents.
Other reports by the nuclear watchdogs exposed unsafe storage of 22,000 tonnes of depleted uranium managed by Westinghouse at Savannah River. It is stored in drums, cardboard and wooden boxes inside "corroded" buildings on timbers that have "rotted and failed".
The criticism, published on the DofE's official website, comes only weeks after managers at Savannah were accused of racism for giving black workers more dangerous jobs than white workers.
It also comes at an embarrassing time for BNFL, as the draft Bill to set up a £48bn agency to sort out Britain's nuclear legacy was highlighted in the Queen's Speech last week. BNFL is expected to be central to this clean-up.
BNFL said it was not the lead contractor on the Savannah River project and referred all calls to Washington Group, its partner, which was not available for comment.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.S. Turns Horn of Africa Into a Military Hub
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/africa/17HORN.html
DJIBOUTI, Nov. 16 - For the first time since American troops withdrew from Somalia after a bloody firefight in the streets of Mogadishu, the United States military is rebuilding its combat power in the Horn of Africa.
The main goal this time is to put American forces in position to strike cells of Al Qaeda in Yemen or East Africa. But the Pentagon has also begun to use Djibouti to train its forces in desert warfare - skills that could be applied in Washington's campaign against terrorist groups or on the battlefields of Iraq.
"We are getting heavy weapons ashore and firing," said Col. John Mills, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has been conducting a major military exercise here for just over a week. "I am preparing my unit to operate in a high intensity conflict."
At a dusty, parched and desolate stretch of African desert, marines used live ammunition as they practiced infantry assaults. Marine howitzers lobbed shells six miles. Harrier jets dropped 500 pound-bombs, and Super Cobra helicopter gunships raked the ground with fire. M-1 tanks and other armored vehicles blasted their targets.
Bereft of oil or valuable resources, the impoverished nation of Djibouti has long been a desirable base for Western militaries. Put simply, what Djibouti offers is location. It is close to Yemen and near the Bal el Mandeb Strait, a critical choke-point where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. The sea lanes near Djibouti are particularly critical since they are used for commercial shipping and to transport American war matériel to the Persian Gulf.
Djibouti has other advantages for the American military as well, including a serviceable airport and harbor. The country is accustomed to the presence of Western military forces and is politically stable.
France, which had colonized Djibouti (pronounced ji-BOOT-e) before it became independent in 1977, still maintains a force of 2,800 strong here. Djibouti, in fact, is France's largest foreign military base.
American marines who have landed on the northern coast of Djibouti three times this year in major exercises are fast becoming regular, if temporary, visitors, but other forces are digging in for the long haul.
The United States Central Command is setting up a military headquarters to oversee operations in and around the Horn of Africa. Led by a Marine officer, Maj. Gen. John Sattler, the headquarters will initially be based on the amphibious command ship Mount Whitney, but it will probably be moved ashore.
About 800 American Special Operations forces and other American troops have already moved into Camp Lemonier, a former French barracks near the Djibouti airport that the Americans have turned into a bastion.
The military is not the only American organization that has found Djibouti to be a convenient launching pad. The Central Intelligence Agency is flying classified missions from an airfield in Djibouti using the Predator, an pilotless drone equipped with Hellfire missiles, according to Western officers.
The C.I.A. missions include a recent strike in which a car was blasted in a Predator attack in a remote area of Yemen, killing a Qaeda operative and five other occupants of the vehicle.
The clandestine flights have occasionally thrown a scare into the Western navies who operate in the region and who have at times mistaken the drone for a possible terrorist kamikaze. With a diverse array of American and European naval, air and land forces, and a variety of security agendas, the Horn of Africa is becoming an increasingly complex military arena.
This is not the first time that the American military has used Djibouti. AC-130 gunships were stationed here during the American military intervention in Somalia. Navy ships also stopped here for fuel until the refueling operation was shifted to Aden, Yemen. (The decision was made to build ties with Yemen's government and provide a more secure environment for replenishing Navy ships, but backfired when the U.S.S. Cole was targeted by terrorists in 2000.)
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the subsequent war in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa became an important hub for military planners.
Worried that Qaeda fighters would flee Afghanistan for Somalia and other lawless regions in Africa, the United States and its allies organized Task Force 150, a naval unit that patrols Africa's eastern coast.
Task Force 150, now under Spanish command, has never captured a Qaeda operative or intercepted a terrorist arms shipment. But while the Horn of Africa does not appear to have become a refuge for Al Qaeda the region is still of great interest for American defense officials.
Yemen, a known Qaeda haven, is just a short hop from Djibouti. There is also is concern that Al Ittiyad Al Ismalia, a militant group that operates in southern Somalia and is linked to Al Qaeda, could emerge as a more serious threat. There are also bandits and smugglers in the region that could be exploited by Al Qaeda, Western officials said.
"It is the job of the special services - ours, the American and the European - to track it and determine if there is something that is happening in the region," Djibouti's president, Ismail Omar Gelleh, said in an interview. "There is always a danger that there is a residue of terrorist cells in the region."
For the Marine Corps, which may be called on to fight in Africa, Yemen or Iraq, Djibouti is also one of the few nations that will let them come ashore in their amphibious landing craft, drive their armored vehicles and trucks from the beach, fire their large weapons and simulate a small war.
More than 1,500 marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit are here for a major exercise. They left Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in August on three amphibious ships led by the Nassau.
The approximately 3,000 forces in the group is a mixture of Navy sailors and pilots, who operate the amphibious warships, and a Marine unit that spends its time lifting weights, studying military procedures - and waiting for their chance to storm the beaches and swing into action.
After leaving North Carolina, the marines did a stint in Kosovo. But the mood changed in October when the Nassau and its sister ships passed through the Suez Canal and moved south through the Red Sea.
During the trip, Capt. Russell P. Tjepkema, the commander of the Nassau, said he became concerned about a merchant ship whose captain indicated that the vessel had mechanical problems. But the ship seemed to be maneuvering in a way that would force the Nassau to sail closer to Yemen, where several speed boats were clearly visible.
Worried that Al Qaeda might be laying a trap, Captain Tjepkema warned the other vessels to stay away and ordered Super Cobra gunships from the Nassau to fly over them. Captain Tjepkema said he was still not sure whether he averted a terrorist attack or simply kept curious locals at bay. "You can't tell and that is the dilemma we have when we operate in this area," he said.
With merchant traffic, coastal graft and potential terrorist threats the Nassau group often has to contend with such ambiguities.
After transiting the Red Sea and emerging in the Gulf of Aden the American ships used classified techniques to disguise their identity as a military flotilla. Last week, the flotilla moved closer to the Djibouti shore for the amphibious landing.
For Capt. Terry O'Brien, the Navy officer who was in charge of the three-ship flotilla, the exercise was an opportunity to practice a land to sea assault.
The Tortuga, one of the ships in the flotilla, moved into position a mile and a half from shore so its amphibious armored vehicles could roll into the water and start moving toward shore. The Austin, another ship in the group, released large amphibious hovercraft that can zoom at 50 miles an hour and maneuver onshore.
The Nassau set loose amphibious landing craft that look like throwbacks to World War II. To launch the landing craft, the Nassau lets water stream into its ballast tanks to lower the stern of the ship. On the Nassau's flight deck, Marine Harrier jets and helicopters took off for missions over Djibouti.
All the while, the Nassau had armed helicopters flying and picket ships at sea to fend off a terrorist attack. While the landing was an exercise, protecting the force against possible terrorists attacks was a real military mission.
Captain O'Brien said his ships would try to use deception when they could to keep potential foes off balance. "And when we can't or don't need to we will come in with force," he added. "So, if you are looking to target, we are not a soft target."
Wearing helmets and flak jackets, the Marines quickly secured the beaches and a pier in Obock, a town north of the capital. But they soon ran into a problem when the residents became alarmed that the marines might occupy the dock and interfere with Obock's supply of khat, a plant that many of Djibouti's men chew for its amphetaminelike effects. After a rowdy demonstration by local residents, a tense standoff ensued. The dispute was defused after the Djibouti military arrived and the marines moved off the dock.
Then the marines began to drive north engulfed in a veil of dust. A military camp was erected in a desolate wasteland, protected by a sand berm and supplied by thousands of gallons of water trucked in from a plant the Marines erected to desalinate sea water. A Cuban-American officer dubbed the base Camp Havana.
The main order of business for the marines was the chance to maneuver and fire their heavy weapons. For Fox Battery, the Marine artillery unit, it was the first time the battery had fired its howitzers since it left Camp Lejeune as well as an opportunity to carry out combined arms exercises with other Marine forces.
In one of the battery's combat exercises, a Marine infantry unit was trying to advance on a determined foe. A forward air controller called in an airstrike. The role of the battery was to fire an illumination round to mark the target for Harrier jets, which would mount a bombing attack, and then to fire a barrage against the enemy's air defenses to keep them from shooting down the Marine planes.
"We are coordinating our artillery, our mortars and our air, along with maneuvers, to engage targets," said Capt. Mike Landree, the artillery battery commander.
As the exercise unfolded, one of the battery's howitzers hurled an illumination round 22,000 feet in the air. It took 80 seconds for the round to land and begin to burn. Before it landed another of the battery's howitzers fired the first of its suppression rounds to disrupt the enemy's air defenses.
Some of the artillery rounds rattled some of the livestock that forage in the desert. But Colonel Mills, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, placated an anxious herder by buying three shell-shocked donkeys for $250 apiece.
With a new headquarters in the region and a growing focus on the Horn of Africa it is likely that Djibouti will become a familiar venue for future Marine expeditionary units, or M.E.U.'s.
"It offers things that are difficult to find, that is your ability to employ your heavy weapons systems," Colonel Mills said. "Ranges for that are disappearing all over the world as areas are getting developed. I think that M.E.U.'s possibly in the future will make this a regular stop."
-------- arms sales
US strategy in Gulf: Arms for military bases
States given approval for major arms purchases
Nov 17, 2002
Straits Times
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/iraq/story/0,1870,155374,00.html
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 US shops for allies willing to assist in its war on terrorism - including a possible attack on Iraq - the administration is employing a time-honoured strategy of using weapons sales as an inducement, analysts say.
Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Saudi Arabia - all countries where the US 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 US bases refuelling and transport planes and has built a command-and-control centre for a possible air war against Iraq, is developing a 'shopping list'. Bahrain, home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet, is buying upgraded radar and advanced missiles. US President George W. Bush has declared the island-nation a 'major non-Nato ally', which will speed further purchases.
Kuwait, from which the US may launch a ground offensive against Iraq, is buying 400 Hellfire missiles and 16 Apache Longbow attack helicopters. The Fighting Falcon, capable of flying at twice the speed of sound and is hard to detect or hit because of their small size, formed the backbone of the last Gulf War's aerial campaign.
The UAE, which allows US warplanes to use its airfields, is buying 80 Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters to be fitted with electronic gear to jam an adversary's 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.
Ms Rachel Stohl, senior analyst with the Washington-based Centre for Defence Information, which is often critical of military spending, has warned that 'these sales are just the tip of the iceberg.
As an unspoken quid pro quo, these 'host' nations are expected by analysts - and many US officials - to permit the American military use of bases within their boundaries even if the US strikes a fellow Arab country such as Iraq. --Washington Post
-------- biological weapons
Tucson to Stage Bioterror Drill
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterror-Drill.html
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Hundreds of volunteers will pretend to be victims of bioterrorism this week in a large-scale drill focusing on the dispensing of antibiotics and vaccines.
The three-day training exercise and conference will test the abilities of local, state and federal agencies to respond to a widespread assault involving a bioterror agent. In particular, it will test the distribution of medications from the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile.
``How well are we prepared?'' said Dr. Elizabeth MacNeill, the health director for Pima County. ``How well did we train our staff and the folks working with us, and what do we need to do differently? The other thing is how many people can we see in what period of time?''
A key will be to ``get all the players to work in the same sandbox,'' said Randall Ogden, a Tucson Fire Department battalion chief and one of the exercise's principal organizers.
He expects the exercise to expose weaknesses in areas such as communication and in transporting people.
The exercise will be watched by hundreds of observers, led by Surgeon General Richard Carmona and Justice Department evaluators. Carmona, a former Tucson trauma doctor, helped develop the Pima County emergency response plan that is being tested.
After the mock attack planned for Wednesday, Pima County supervisors will declare an emergency and ask Gov. Jane Hull to request an aid package from the national stockpile.
A 6-ton training package of equipment and mock medications from the stockpile will be shipped from one of 10 secure sites around the country to the Arizona Air National Guard, and local health officials will use the contents to ``immunize'' about 1,000 volunteers acting as people exposed in a bioterror attack.
In a real attack, the package would be a 50-ton emergency supply called a ``push package'' containing antibiotics, antidotes, vaccines, syringes and other supplies. It would be delivered within 12 hours of the attack and is intended to last two or three days until other federal help arrives.
A related exercise Thursday in Mesa will involve real inoculations against tetanus administered to up to 5,000 high school students.
On the Net:
Public Health Emergency Preparedness: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/index.asp
Tucson Bioterrorism Exercise: http://www.cityoftucson.org/hottopics/bioterrpractice.html
-------- britain
U.K. Denies Reported Gas Attack Plot
By BETH GARDINER
Associated Press Writer
Nov 17, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_TERRORISM_ARRESTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Three men are charged in London with terrorist offenses. (Audio)
LONDON (AP) -- Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott denied a newspaper report Sunday that three men arrested on terrorism charges were planning a poison gas attack on the London Underground.
"It doesn't appear to be that there is any evidence whatsoever there was going to be a gas attack or indeed use of bombs regarding the three people who have been arrested," Prescott told the British Broadcasting Corp. He said police had no evidence the men possessed bombs or gas.
The Sunday Times newspaper reported that the men had been plotting to release poison gas, possibly cyanide, on the London subway system.
Scotland Yard said Saturday that Rabah Chekat-Bais, 21, Rabah Kadris, in his mid 30s, and Karim Kadouri, 33 - all of no fixed address - were charged under the Terrorism Act with possessing materials for the "preparation, instigation or commission" of terrorism.
Police would not comment on the report and declined to specify what the materials were, but said they did not find any gas or other poisonous substances when they arrested the men. According to the BBC and the national news agency Press Association, the illegal materials were false identification papers.
Sunday Times Assistant Editor Nicholas Rufford told Sky News television the group had been infiltrated by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service.
The Sunday Newspaper in France, citing an unidentified source it said was close to anti-terrorist agencies, identified Kadris as having links to the al-Qaida network and said he had been to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The paper said Kadris had been arrested with false French identification papers.
The three appeared at Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London last week. They were being held until their next court appearance on Monday.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking on Sky News, declined to comment on the circumstances of the arrests but said, "So far as I know, it's fully safe to use the Underground."
"Very, very rarely do we get a piece of information which says that X atrocity is about to happen at Y place on Z date," he said. "Things don't work like that."
Bob Crow, general secretary of the Underground train drivers' union, said the Tube was safe.
"We will not be telling our members not to use the Tube on a normal day, because these attacks could have taken place at a museum or football ground or anything of that nature," he told BBC radio Sunday.
Last week Prime Minister Tony Blair said barely a day went by without new intelligence about a threat to British interests - some reliable but some likely misinformation or gossip.
He advised British people to be vigilant against terrorism, but not allow fear to distort normal life.
-------- iraq
Hussein Defenders Seen As Hard Corps Loyalists
U.S. Officers Say Special Republican Guard No Pushover
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64314-2002Nov16?language=printer
Despite doubts about the overall fighting capability of the Iraqi military, the Pentagon considers Iraq's Special Republican Guard a formidable combat force willing to fight and die defending President Saddam Hussein, according to senior U.S. military officers.
Overseen by Hussein's son, Qusay, the Special Republican Guard consists of 15,000 troops whose mission is to protect the president and secure Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. It is the most loyal military component of the system under which Hussein maintains power. The system is dominated by intelligence, security and military units comprised largely of members of Hussein's al-Bu Nasir tribe, its three clans and soldiers from Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
Should President Bush launch a war against Iraq, attacking these interlocking power centers will be a focus of the U.S. war effort, according to defense officials.
Overall, the Iraqi military is but a shadow of what it was at the start of the Persian Gulf War. Its 430,000 troops are less than half of the million-plus soldiers in uniform 11 years ago, and its fighting equipment -- minus 1,200 armored vehicles destroyed during the war -- is old and decrepit. But the U.S. military's respect for the loyalty, discipline and fighting capabilities of the Special Republican Guard and, to a lesser extent, the 80,000 troops of the Republican Guard, remains high.
"I don't think the folks I'm dealing with are thinking this is going to be a cakewalk; it never is," said one four-star general. "Anybody with a gun in his hand who is defending his town or his tribe can be a pretty tough opponent, especially when he's in his own back yard."
The first of Hussein's security rings to be encountered by U.S. forces, should the Bush administration launch an invasion, will be the 17 divisions of the regular army.
This force consists of about 300,000 conscripted troops in 11 infantry divisions, three armored divisions and three mechanized infantry divisions. Most analysts inside and outside the military see the Army as poorly trained, led and equipped and believe only parts of it, notably the six heavier divisions, will show much resistance and effectiveness when attacked.
The 80,000 troops of the Republican Guard make up the next ring. Organized in six divisions around Baghdad, including three armored divisions, the Republican Guard is considered a much more viable fighting force by the Pentagon and CIA. It is led by commanders from Hussein's tribe and Tikrit and equipped with all 600 of Iraq's remaining T-72 tanks.
"I certainly don't take them lightly, and I don't know anyone who might have to fight them who does," one U.S. general said of the Republican Guard. "They are a tough force, who will know the terrain and the cities. I believe they will fight hard."
Next, within Baghdad and Tikrit, are the 15,000 elite troops of the Special Republican Guard, equipped with 100 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles as well as Russian-made Sagger antitank guided missiles. Its armored forces defend entrance routes to Baghdad, and plainclothes units protect Hussein when he travels.
"They're not the best soldiers in the world in terms of being able to execute combined arms operations," said Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer who became the United Nations' chief weapons inspector in Iraq in the mid- to late 1990s. "But they're tough, they're loyal and they will fight to the death."
Ritter said Hussein has created strong bonds between his al-Bu Nasir tribe and other dominant Sunni tribes through marriage and appointment, effectively insulating his power structure from defections. In that regard, Ritter said, the Iraqi leadership structure is fundamentally different from that which kept Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in power in Yugoslavia, the setting of the 1999 U.S.-led air war to liberate Kosovo.
"Milosevic's cronies were all about wealth," Ritter said. "With Iraq's regime, it's about the tribe, it's about the family, it's about influence, it's about pride."
The Special Republican Guard is controlled directly by Qusay Hussein and the Special Security Organization, whose 5,000 members guard the president and oversee other security units, including the Republican Guard. The Special Security Organization and the Special Republican Guard are the most feared security organizations in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, oversees the Special Security Organization with Qusay Hussein, according to U.S. officials. Mahmud works closely with Jamal Mustafa Abdullah Sultan al-Tikriti, another member of Hussein's inner circle who is a cousin to the Iraqi president and is married to his youngest daughter, Hala.
Jamal Mustafa is rare among Hussein's relatives for having military experience and a reputation as a competent commander, according to Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella group of Iraqi exiles. Jamal Mustafa's brother, Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, is a Republican Guard commander who formerly headed the Special Republican Guard.
But even these relatives entrusted with important military commands are kept on edge and constantly tested for loyalty. "Everyone is a 'blade runner,' with the possible exception of three to six people," Amatzia Baram, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, recently wrote in the Journal of International Security.
Qusay Hussein, his older brother Uday, who controls the Iraqi media, and Abid Hamid Mahmud, Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, are the "most sheltered, although not completely immune to the wrath of Saddam," Baram said. After them come Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan al-Jizrawi, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council.
Also in the inner circle are Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti, Hussein's paternal cousin, whom the U.S. government considers the "enforcer of the regime's most brutal policies," according to one high-level administration analysis. Known as "Chemical Ali," Hassan approved the use of mustard gas and nerve agents in the Kurdish villages of Halabja and Dojaila in 1988 to crush a Kurdish revolt.
Ritter said that a strategy isolating Hussein, possibly through a war crimes indictment, could succeed in fomenting internal rebellion and possibly Hussein's assassination if key military and tribal figures believed they would be able to maintain influence without him. Hussein has ordered the execution of family members he deemed disloyal, Ritter said, and presumably family members could be convinced to return the favor.
But a bombing campaign that targets Hussein and his power structure, Ritter said, would have the opposite effect of strengthening the tribal and geographic ties that bind Hussein and his regime to the palace guard and military forces protecting them.
"They have blood oath alliances," Ritter said. "If one member of the tribe betrays Saddam, the enforcement comes from the tribe. It's actually a very strong, stable power base that he has. And when you talk about a military strike, the more people you kill, the stronger you make the pyramid."
Richard N. Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, agreed that military planners "have to assume [the Special Republican Guard] will fight and fight well." But Perle said the lack of ideological loyalty binding Hussein to his inner circle makes his leadership more tenuous than some military planners suspect.
"I don't believe we'll have to go into Baghdad, because I don't believe he will survive in Baghdad for any length of time," Perle said. "Dictators like Saddam do not last very long once it's clear that they have been challenged. Once he's effectively challenged and it's clear he's finished, there's no ideological loyalty."
----
U.S. expands Iraq resolution to include no-fly zones
Saturday November 16
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-134492.html
UNITED NATIONS - The United States said on Friday it had the option of declaring Iraq in serious violation of a new U.N. Security Council resolution if Baghdad shoots at American planes patrolling "no-fly" zones, an interpretation not even close ally Britain shares.
At issue is whether a provision in the new resolution adopted on November 8, applies to the U.S.-British unilaterally declared flight exclusion zones over Iraq, where anti-aircraft fire on U.S. planes is a near-daily occurrence.
For example on Friday, U.S. and British warplanes bombed a radar site in southern Iraq after Baghdad fired at warplanes in the no-fly zone, the Pentagon said.
The controversy over the no-fly zones was one of two major disputes in the Security Council with Russia, France and other members worried about "hidden triggers" in the resolution that would allow unilateral military action by Washington.
Under the measure, U.N. inspectors are to declare or verify any major violation by Iraq and report it to the 15-member Security Council, which must then "assess" whether it is a "material breach" -- two words that could lead to war.
But if the council takes no action on the use of force, Washington is free to move on its own.
Paragraph 8 of the November 8 resolution says Baghdad cannot "take or threaten hostile acts" against a U.N. member "seeking to uphold any council resolution".
Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in Washington that "Iraq's failure to comply with its obligations under paragraph 8 would constitute a material breach."
"This gives us the option of referring violations of resolution 1441 to the Security Council," he said.
Other U.S. officials said that while each violation of the no-fly zone could be reported, Washington would not necessarily do so. But U.N. Security Council members had insisted that the resolution did not cover actions in the no-fly zones.
BRITAIN AND RUSSIA SAY 'NO"
British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, co-sponsor of the measure, told the council before the vote that paragraph 8 referred to any personnel that the inspectors might ask to help them and not the no-fly zones, diplomats said.
And shortly after the vote, Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, in his public council speech, echoed this view, attributing it to "sponsors of the draft".
But hawks in the U.S. administration had argued for the no-flight zone to be included and this week State Department officials leaned toward this interpretation.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested last week that if the Iraqis continued to fire at the warplanes, it would constitute a violation of the new U.N. resolution.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday after a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham in Ottawa, "If they were to take hostile acts against the United States or United Kingdom aircraft patrolling in the northern and (southern) no-fly zone, then I think we would have to look at that with great seriousness if they continue to do that."
The no-fly zone in the north was instituted shortly after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds rebelling against the Baghdad government. The Security Council adopted a resolution in April 1991 condemning the action but it did not authorize enforcement.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, before meeting President George W. Bush on Wednesday, said, "The United States does seem to have ... a lower threshold than others may have."
"I think the discussions in the council made it clear we should be looking for something serious and meaningful, and not for excuses to do something," Annan said.
The second controversy is whether the United States can bypass the inspectors and report a violation to the council itself, without it being verified by the arms experts. U.S. officials said they can while the other 14 council members disagree.
----
Iraq says U.S.-British airstrike killed 7 civilians
Sunday, November 17, 2002
(CNN)
http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/11/16/iraq.strike/
TAMPA, Florida -- A U.S. and British airstrike in Iraq's southern no-fly zone killed seven civilians, an Iraqi military spokesman said Saturday, but the allied command said the warplanes hit an air defense communications facility after the planes came under heavy fire.
Pentagon officials said that the Iraqi anti-aircraft fire on Friday violated the latest United Nations resolution on Iraq. None of the coalition planes was hit, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The Iraqi News Agency quoted a military spokesman saying the airstrike is a "new heinous crime" committed by "American and British murderers" that led to "the martyrdom of seven civilians."
Iraqi missiles, the spokesman said, chased the planes away.
U.S. officials said they had no way to independently verify the Iraqi claims, but Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said Friday from the CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, that the coalition strike "came as a result of Iraqi forces firing anti-aircraft and surface-to-air missiles."
The Pentagon said the hostile action by Baghdad was a breach of U.N. resolution 1441, Section 8, which says "Iraq shall not take or threaten hostile acts directed against any representative or personnel of the United Nations or ... any member state taking action to uphold any Council resolution."
However, military officials said, it is ultimately up to the United Nations to decide if the action was a "material breach."
At the White House, a Bush administration official said, "We consider this to be a violation of the resolution."
The official said the United States could take its complaint to the Security Council, but refused to disclose the administration's plans.
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said, "Iraq should stop firing on U.S. and U.K. warplanes flying in the no-fly zones, not only to ensure the safety of inspectors flying into Iraq, but also to demonstrate its willingness to comply with its obligations under the U.N. Security Council resolution."
This week, both U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they were considering whether to declare such actions by Iraq as a material breach of the resolution, which calls on Baghdad to disclose its weapons of mass destruction and to disarm.
The United States has said it would use military force to disarm Iraq if it commits such a breach.
The strike -- which used precision-guided weapons -- hit the radar facility near An Najaf, about 85 miles southeast of Baghdad, at 2:50 p.m. ET, Balice said.
"Today's strike came after Iraq moved the SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites into the no-fly zone in violation of U.N. resolutions. Presence of the sites is deemed a threat to coalition aircraft," a Central Command statement said.
Iraq has fired on coalition aircraft more than a dozen times since last Friday, when the United Nations adopted the latest resolution against Baghdad. Friday's strike was the first since Baghdad reluctantly accepted the terms of the resolution.
U.S. intelligence officials said that Iraq has also added boosters to some of its missiles to increase their range. Coalition aircraft are adjusting for this modification, officials said.
CNN Correspondents Rym Brahimi and Frank Buckley contributed to this report.
--------
THE OPPOSITION
Iraqi Kurds Set Sights on Baghdad
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/middleeast/17KURD.html
ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 16 - A senior leader of an Iraqi Kurdish group has said his forces intend to push all the way to Baghdad in the event of an American-led war in Iraq.
In an interview here on Friday, Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said he had no intention of limiting his group's military activities to its base in northern Iraq. He predicted that any number of the armed groups who are fighting Saddam Hussein would converge on the capital if the Americans invaded.
"We are looking to Baghdad, we are focusing on Baghdad," Mr. Talabani said on a visit to Turkey. "It is the capital. It is the main part of the country. We are not just looking through Kurdish glasses. We are looking through Iraqi glasses."
The assertion seemed to raise the prospect of a division between the Kurds and American political leaders, who are fearful that an invasion could unleash a stream of bloodletting among the country's ethnic and religious groups. While American officials have indicated that they would like to employ Kurdish forces in the event of a war, they speak of limiting the Kurds' role to their base in northern Iraq.
American officials are working to ease concerns voiced by Turkish leaders, who have been battling a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey near Iraq. Turkish leaders have expressed fears that an American attack on Iraq could embolden the Kurds on both sides of the border to form their own state.
In the interview, Mr. Talabani reiterated his often-stated claim that Iraq's Kurds would not seek independence but rather want autonomy.
Other groups that would converge on Baghdad, he said, include rebels from the majority Shiite population, as well as the minority Turkoman and Sunni Muslims. Mr. Talabani said such interventions would go a long way toward keeping the peace. If these groups can capture the main cities, he said, "this will be a good step forward to prevent civil war, to prevent chaos, to prevent clashes among various Iraqi groups."
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Iraq Can Make Powdered Bio - Weapons
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-Vulnerable-Troops.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraqi scientists know how to make chemical weapons that can penetrate military protective clothing, and Iraq imported up to 25 metric tons last month of a powder that is a crucial ingredient to such ``dusty'' weapons.
Iraq told the United Nations the powder was destined for a pharmaceutical company that a former weapons inspector says was ordered by President Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War to work on chemical and biological weapons.
The powder, sold under the brand name Aerosil, has particles so small that, when coated with deadly poisons, they can pass through the tiniest gaps in protective suits.
Experts inside and outside the U.S. government say they are not certain Iraq has dusty chemical weapons. Declassified U.S. intelligence documents say Iraq produced a dusty form of the blister agent mustard in the 1980s and used it during its eight-year war with Iran.
If Iraq made and used a powdered form of its deadliest nerve agent, VX, it could kill U.S. troops dressed in full protective gear, according to a 1990 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. Although the military's protective suits have been improved since then, experts say dusty weapons could penetrate the new suits.
Pentagon officials refused to discuss the permeability of the new suits or whether Iraq has weapons that could pass through them. Such information is classified, they said.
The 1990 DIA document said soldiers could protect themselves by throwing rain ponchos over their chemical suits, which would reduce the fatality risk to near zero. One expert wrote later: ``One gets the sense that this was recommended in the face of few other options.''
The researcher, Eric Croddy of the private Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said dusty VX would be a serious danger to U.S. troops. VX is so toxic that, in its liquid form, a drop on the skin can kill within minutes.
``The effects of dusty VX, depending on how it gets in the body, would be somewhat faster,'' Croddy said. ``It's certainly much more injurious and much more of a severe threat.''
Dusty chemical weapons are formed by mixing a liquid chemical agent with a fine powder to coat the powder's tiny particles with the deadly poison. The particles' small size allows them to pass through the fabric of a protective suit and any tiny gaps around the seal of a gas mask.
The latest U.S. military protective suits have a layer of charcoal in the fabric to trap any poisons that might penetrate the outer covering, but particles small enough could pass through even the charcoal layer.
``The closest analogy is, no matter what happens when you go to the beach, you still get sand in your shorts,'' Croddy said.
The poisonous powder also would settle in the tiniest nooks and crannies of buildings and equipment, making decontamination extremely difficult. VX in its liquid form already is a decontamination challenge; the sticky poison is persistent and cannot be neutralized easily with substances such as bleach.
Even if dusty chemical weapons caused no U.S. casualties, they could force American soldiers to work in clumsy protective gear, decontaminate their equipment and avoid contaminated areas, giving Iraqi soldiers time to mount defenses.
U.S. intelligence reports before the Gulf War said Iraq was capable of making dusty VX. They said that during the 1980s, Iraq imported more than 100 metric tons of Aerosil, a brand of fumed silicon dioxide.
The reports said no evidence was found that Iraq had made dusty VX, and U.N. inspectors were unable to find any hard evidence of that.
In September, The New York Times quoted an Iraqi defector as saying Saddam's chemical weapons scientists secretly began producing dusty VX as early as 1994.
Aerosil, made by the German chemical company Degussa AG, has an exceptionally small particle size: 12 nanometers. That means more than 2,100 of the particles strung together would be as thick as a human hair.
U.N. documents show that Iraq's Samarra Drugs Industry sought 25 metric tons of Aerosil last year under the U.N.-run oil-for-food program, and at least some of that order was delivered last month.
American intelligence agencies were not overly worried about the shipment of Aerosil because the substance has many legitimate uses.
Richard Spertzel, a former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, was stunned when a reporter told him about the shipment. Saddam ordered the Samarra enterprise to work on chemical and biological weapons in 1989, and his government still controls the company, Spertzel said.
``Do you know how much (dusty agent) a kilogram of that stuff makes? A couple cubic feet,'' Spertzel said. ``This gives me another thing to worry about.''
Hasmik Egian, a spokeswoman for the U.N. oil-for-food program, confirmed that Iraq received a shipment of colloidal silicon dioxide in October. Egian would not identify the brand name, source or amount of the silicon dioxide delivered.
The sale was held up for three weeks by the U.N. commission that oversees the oil-for-food program, Egian said. That commission, whose members include the United States, decided colloidal silicon dioxide was not a banned substance and allowed the transaction, Egian said.
A newly created U.N. body overseeing the oil-for-food program is considering Iraq's request to import more colloidal silicon dioxide, Egian said.
On the Net: U.N. Oil-for-Food program: http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/
Article by Croddy on dusty chemical weapons: http://www.nti.org/e--research/e3--20b.html
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Calls for Securing Settlements
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli helicopters and tanks hit Gaza City early Monday, targeting a main Palestinian security compound, while hundreds of miles away, a security guard foiled an attempt to hijack an Israeli passenger plane.
Despite all the violence and a sudden, bitter Israeli election campaign, negotiations continue over a U.S.-European plan to put an end to the Mideast conflict, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
In Gaza City, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at the headquarters of Preventive Security, the main official Palestinian force, knocking down a wall, security officials and witnesses said.
As tanks moved into the city, Israeli gunboats opened fire on the shoreline, shelling the area where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office was. The complex as destroyed in an Israeli attack several months ago.
Initial reports said two Palestinian security officers were lightly wounded as they ran away from the base. However, the Palestinian security chief, Maj. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaidie, said that Israeli forces blocked roads, preventing ambulances from entering, and cut phone lines. Officials at nearby Al-Quds hospital said Israeli forces fired at one of their buildings.
A TV cameraman working for the Reuters news agency was lightly injured by tank fire, doctors said.
The Israeli military said that attack helicopters struck Gaza and tanks were involved in the operation.
The sounds of explosions could be heard all over the city of about 300,000 Palestinians. Witnesses said troops fired shells at the house of Yusuf Mukdad, a Preventive Security officer arrested recently by the Israelis on suspicion of planning attacks against Israelis.
Mustafa Mughrabi, 45, lives near the Preventive Security base and told The Associated Press by telephone that he was hiding under a bed with his children after gunfire hit his house from three directions. Outside, he said he heard ``the sound of explosions mixed with screams of children.''
Palestinian official Tayeb Abdel Rahim lives about 100 yards from the targeted base. He told the AP that his house was hit by bullets, but he was not harmed. He called the Israeli operation ``aggression'' and warned that ``security and stability for Israeli people cannot be achieved at the expense of the Palestinian people.''
So far Gaza has been spared the large-scale military operations in which Israel has taken control of most West Bank Palestinian population centers, retaliation for bloody terror attacks. However, Israeli leaders have said that militant groups operate unfettered in Gaza, and the Israeli military would confront them at some point.
Meanwhile, Turkish police were interrogating a passenger who officials say tried to hijack an El Al Israel Airlines plane just before it landed in Istanbul with 170 people on board. El Al general manager Amos Shapira told the AP that the passenger, an Israeli Arab, ``tried to reach the cockpit with what we assume now is a small pocket knife,'' but was overpowered by security guards.
The Israeli airline is known for its stringent security. Though it is frequently targeted, the last successful attack was decades ago. Shapira said airport authorities would investigate how the passenger managed to board the plane with a knife.
Though serious incidents of violence were occurring every day, and Israel was at the beginning of a fierce campaign toward a general election on Jan. 28, diplomats were still finding time to fine-tune a document aimed at negotiating a settlement to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The ``road map,'' promoted by President Bush, calls for a three-phase, three-year program that would result in a Palestinian state living in peace beside Israel.
The latest draft, obtained by the AP, contains some answers to Palestinian concerns, including a softening of a demand to name a prime minister to relieve Arafat of some of his duties. Israel has said the plan must be shelved until after its election and formation of a new government.
The so-called ``Quartet,'' working for Mideast peace, is aiming for a mid-December conference at which the final draft of the plan would be presented. The quartet is made up of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations.
On Sunday, Israelis buried most of the 12 soldiers and security guards killed in a Palestinian ambush in Hebron on Friday night, as Israeli troops and tanks fanned out through the West Bank city.
The soldiers were guarding Jewish worshippers returning on foot from Hebron to the nearby settlement of Kiryat