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NUCLEAR
India investigates blast at nuclear site
Dirty Bomb Conference Set for March 2003
UN Weapons Inspectors Bring Hi-Tech Gadgets to Iraq
U.N. Inspectors in Iraq as Western Warplanes Raid
U.N. Inspectors Return to Iraq
North Korea gets low-key brushoff of treaty
North Korean Radio Asserts Country Has Nuclear Arms
N Korean nuclear 'admission' in doubt
N.Korea confuses US and allies over nukes
North Korea Revises Confusing Nuclear Report
North Korea Clarifies Statement on Possessing Nuclear Arms
U.S. Says Decision Time Looms for Missile Defense
US Official Wants Review of Nuclear Test Freeze
Sun expands supercomputer effort
Yucca Mountain Debate NPR
Lawmakers Sweat Homeland Details Before Vote
Ridge Doubts Domestic Spy Agency
Doubts and Debate Before Victory Over Taliban
CIA Led Way With Cash Handouts
Showdown Could Impact Homeland Security Bill
MILITARY
Target missed on ballistic fingerprinting
China's Military Retains Strong Role
Colombian Town Rises Up in Outrage
Iraq takes delivery of powder used in chemical arms
Israeli forces destroy bomb-making plant
On Hebron Ambush Site, a New Settlement Rises
Land Mine Explodes in India, 20 Die
NATO Envoys Agree on Modernization
Bush denies plans to take out Pak nukes
U.S. Taking Steps to Lay Foundation for Action in Iraq
Air Forces Replaces F / A - 22 Managers
Why No Outrage Over How We Treat Our Own Citizens?
Protesters decry step by Chavez on police
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Appeals Panel Reverses Limits Placed on Justice Dept. Wiretaps
Court Overturns Limits on Wiretaps to Combat Terror
Secret Court OKs Broad Wiretap Powers
Ehrlich will clear way for executions
System ready to alert to bioterror attacks
Letter vows attacks
Indonesia schools targeted by terrorists
Voice on Tape Is bin Laden's, U.S. Intelligence Says
ENERGY AND OTHER
Hydrogen Station Opens in Las Vegas
Fuel Cell Provides Cheap, Clean Energy
Spain's Iberdrola in wind asset swap with partners
Oil, Air, Energy Laws In Play
Controversial Navy Sonar Cleared for Limited Testing
Flash Points Loom in War on Hunger
ACTIVISTS
Opportunity To Provide Comments on Jefferson Proving Grounds DU License
Thousands rally against Iraq war
Reporting for Duty ... Not
Antiwar Activists Plan to Stay The Course
Nuns Arrested During Military Protest
Bomb Blast at Venezuela TV Station
Victoria's Secret Special Sheds Its PETA Moment
Peaceful Tannery Protesters Charged with Rioting
Sea Shepherd Launches First Vegan Anti-Whaling Campaign
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
India investigates blast at nuclear site
Monday, 18 November, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2489247.stm
The Indian government has ordered an inquiry into a blast at a nuclear fuel complex near the southern city of Hyderabad.
There was no fire or leakage of any radio-active material from the blast
Official statement
The explosion which took place on Sunday damaged the complex but there were no casualties.
Officials said there was no leakage of radioactive material due to the blast.
The Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) is the only plant that produces fuel for nuclear power plants in India.
It also exports a range of fuel products to other countries.
A high-level team from India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board in Bombay (also known as Mumbai) has been sent to Hyderabad for investigations, officials said.
Secrecy
The blast occurred in the early hours of Sunday in the purification plant of ammonia nitrate which was away from other plants handling the radio active material.
Bhaba nuclear reactor Safety in India's nuclear plants has been a concern
An official press release issued by NFC said, "there was no fire or leakage of any radio-active material from the blast."
The press release said that there has been no spread of radio-active material in and around the plant.
The powerful blast brought down the roof of the chemical plant.
The BBC's Omer Farooq in Hyderabad says there was a complete cover of secrecy around the incident because the NFC is a high-security establishment and no outsiders including the media, are allowed to enter the complex.
NFC officials said the plant area had been sealed off after the incident.
The NFC's Chief Executive Officer, Dr C Ganguly, has ordered a high level inquiry in to the causes of the incident.
There are reports that a team from Japan is likely to come to Hyderabad to investigate what happened.
Internet links:
Indian defence ministry US Defence Security Cooperation Agency: http://www.dsca.osd.mil/
-------- depleted uranium
Dirty Bomb Conference Set for March 2003
November 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-19.asp#anchor2
WASHINGTON, DC, The United States, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will jointly sponsor a three day, international convention on radiological dispersal devices, or "dirty bombs," next March in Vienna, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced.
The International Conference on Promoting the Security of Radiological Materials will be open to all member countries of the IAEA to join together in addressing threats posed by dirty bombs, DOE said.
"Safeguarding weapons usable material should be the highest priority for the IAEA and its member countries," U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said. "However, the organization also needs to seek ways to formally expand its scope to deal with the dangers posed by lower grade nuclear materials. Working with [IAEA] Director General El Baradei and our counterparts in Russia, this conference is a first step to expanding those efforts."
Abraham proposed the conference two months ago while attending the IAEA's 46th General Conference in Vienna.
Addressing the new and present threats posed by dirty bombs and their potential use for terror is vital to America's homeland security and international security.
"The detailed instructions on how to make dirty bombs found in Al Qaeda's caves make horrifyingly clear our need to have a firm plan to reduce the vulnerability of dangerous radiological materials to acquisition by those seeking to use them as weapons," Abraham said.
Topics of discussion for the conference will likely cover four major themes: 1) recovering and securing high-risk, poorly controlled radioactive sources; 2) strengthening long-term regulatory control of radiological materials; 3) interdicting illicit trafficking/border controls; and 4) RDD scenarios, possible consequences, mitigation strategies, and emergency response.
Radiological Dispersal Devices, or dirty bombs, are much simpler to make and use than nuclear weapons.
"Unlike nuclear weapons, which require scarce, highly enriched uranium and plutonium for their destructive capabilities, dirty bombs can be made using many different types of dangerous radiological material," Secretary Abraham said. "While dirty bombs are not comparable to nuclear weapons in destructiveness, they are far easier to assemble and employ."
In June, the U.S., Russia, and the IAEA established a tripartite working group on "Securing and Managing Radioactive Sources." This group is developing a coordinated strategy to locate, recover, secure, and recycle orphan radiological sources throughout the Former Soviet Union.
-------- inspections
UN Weapons Inspectors Bring Hi-Tech Gadgets to Iraq
Reuters
Monday, November 18, 2002
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5190-2002Nov18?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. weapons inspectors may be in the dark about what has gone on in Iraq for the last four years, but the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said on Monday the technological leaps of the last half decade make them a tough team to fool.
Advance teams led by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Baghdad on Monday, four years after inspectors left on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign.
Under the threat of a possible U.S. attack, Iraq -- which denies it is developing weapons of mass destruction -- allowed the return of inspectors and vowed to fully cooperate with them.
Armed with a tough new U.N. Security Council resolution permitting them to go anywhere, anytime in Iraq, inspectors will be using dozens of new devices that enable them to work faster and more effectively than before they left in December 1998.
One of the speedy little machines the IAEA's Iraq action team will have is the Ranger, a portable radiation detector.
Not much bigger than a large flashlight, this device is lighter and faster than the bulky machines used in the old days.
"The first thing you need is something that will allow you to detect gamma radiation," a U.N. official close to the weapons inspectors told Reuters. "That's what the Ranger's for."
But traces of radiation indicating Iraq has tried to revive its nuclear weapons program are not the only things the U.N.'s nuclear sleuths under chief nuclear inspector Jacques Baute will be hunting for.
A MACHINE CALLED ALEX
Another gadget inspectors will have on hand sports the friendly name ALEX. This bright-yellow machine, about the size of a small chainsaw, quickly analyzes the composition of metals to root out traces of substances useable in nuclear weapons.
"For example, to make UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), you have to use hydrochloric acid. Then you'd need a copper-based tank," the official said, adding that ALEX could easily detect minute copper traces.
Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which will hunt for biological, chemical and ballistic weapons, have a similar device called HANAA that can detect traces of anthrax and other lethal germs in minutes.
In addition to the pocket-sized laboratories inspectors will use to analyze soil, water and swabs of Iraqi offices, factories and labs, there were many advances in computer technology and software that decrease the time it takes to analyze the masses of data inspectors will send back to Vienna.
The IAEA official said that the 21-person nuclear weapons inspection team was deceptively small, as the inspectors would be sending images, data, documents and other information to Vienna for the agency's 2,600 staff to examine.
"We try to stress that the first thing you need is your basic information," said the official, referring to up-to-date military intelligence inspectors have asked U.N. members to provide. "The best tools in the world won't give you that."
He also said that scientific knowledge and experience would give the inspectors from the IAEA and UNMOVIC the ability to walk into a room and smell suspicious activities.
"In the end, these guys are like cops, like detectives," he said. "And they know how to do their job."
----
U.N. Inspectors in Iraq as Western Warplanes Raid
Reuters
Monday, November 18, 2002
By Hassan Hafidh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5344-2002Nov18?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad on Monday to search for weapons of mass destruction, a mission which will decide whether the United States goes to war with Iraq.
As chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team of about 30 experts flew into Baghdad to resume U.N. work in the country after a four-year absence, Iraq vowed to defend "every inch" of its land if attacked.
It also lashed out at Washington as U.S. and British jets again raided Iraqi air defenses, rejecting U.S. charges that it had violated a new U.N. resolution by continually trying to shoot down the warplanes patrolling "no-fly" zones.
Blix, who arrived from Cyprus with Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, went into his first talks at the Foreign Ministry with General Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein.
"We have come here for one single reason and that is because the world wants to have assurances that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Blix told reporters on arrival.
"The situation is tense at the moment, but there is a new opportunity and we are here to provide inspection which is credible," the 74-year-old Swede said.
Referring to U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq because of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, he added: "We hope that opportunity will be well utilized so that we can get out of sanctions."
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Iraq's leader to give "prompt and unfettered access" to sites suspected of having nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
"I urge President Saddam Hussein to comply fully for the sake of his people, for the sake of the region and for the sake of the whole world," Annan told a news conference in Sarajevo.
U.N. DEADLINES
The members of Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) arrived aboard a privately chartered C-130 aircraft carrying the U.N. insignia. Blix was greeted by Husam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, which liaises with U.N. arms inspectors.
The U.N. team was expected to go to the U.N. inspectors' old Baghdad offices at the Canal Hotel before starting work on logistics such as hiring vehicles and setting up laboratories.
Formal inspections are not due to start until November 27. Under the U.N. Security Council resolution adopted on November 8, the first big 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.
In Monday's skirmish in the skies over Iraq, U.S. commanders said U.S. and British aircraft retaliated after being threatened as they patrolled a northern "no-fly" zone. Analysts say such clashes could ignite full-scale conflict.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday that Iraqi firing at Western warplanes patrolling the "no-fly" zones, set up after the 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraqi invasion forces out of Kuwait, was a violation of the U.N. resolution.
But he stopped short of suggesting the United States would refer the issue immediately to the U.N. Security Council.
Iraq said such statements proved Washington was using the resolution to justify its "aggressive intentions."
"This U.S. declaration is an additional expression of American intentions to use (U.N.) resolution 1441 as a cover to justify its aggressive actions against Iraq," a Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted by the official INA news agency as saying.
President Bush has repeatedly urged "regime change" in Iraq in recent months, meaning Saddam's overthrow, and has vowed to wage war if necessary if Iraq fails to disarm.
Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's highest authority, the Revolutionary Command Council, vowed on Monday that Iraqis would fight back if attacked.
"We will fight them on every inch of Iraq's soil and every Iraqi will fight them," he was quoted by INA as saying.
IRAQ VOWS TO COOPERATE
Iraq's press said on Monday Baghdad would cooperate fully with the inspectors, but it urged them to be neutral and honest.
"We want these teams to prove to the Americans that our country is free from weapons of mass destruction," said a newspaper owned by Saddam's son Uday.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in Brussels before a European Union ministerial meeting: "The ball is in Saddam Hussein's court. It is up to him now whether he is disarmed peacefully or by other means."
In 1998, the United Nations lost patience with what it saw as Saddam's lack of cooperation and pulled its inspectors out.
IAEA chief ElBaradei has said the inspectors have a good "game plan," having some knowledge of suspect sites because of tips from U.S. and other intelligence agencies as well as their own advance investigations.
Blix says nothing will be off-limits and inspections could include mosques and Saddam's palaces.
----
U.N. Inspectors Return to Iraq
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Weapons-Inspectors-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.N. arms inspectors who returned Monday to Iraq after a four-year hiatus called on President Saddam Hussein's government to cooperate with their search for weapons of mass destruction in the interest of peace. But Washington said it already sees likely violations.
The inspectors arrived in the Iraqi capital as allied warplanes bombed Iraqi air defense systems in the northern no-fly zone after the U.S. military said the jets were fired on during routine patrols. Iraq considers such patrols a violation of its sovereignty and frequently shoots at them.
At the White House, spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday the Iraqi anti-aircraft fire ``appears to be a violation'' of the U.N. resolution that sent the inspectors back to Iraq.
It was unclear, however, whether other countries on the Security Council would consider incidents in the no fly zone serious enough to merit a response since those patrols were never explicitly authorized by the council. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, traveling in Chile, said the United States is waiting for a pattern of Iraqi misdeeds before going back to the council.
The return of the inspectors is widely seen as Saddam's last chance to avoid a devastating war with the United States. U.S. President George W. Bush has warned Saddam that failure to cooperate with the inspectors will bring on an American attack and that Washington will pursue a policy of ``zero tolerance'' toward Iraqi infractions.
Saddam's deputy, Izzat Ibrahim, told the official Iraqi News Agency that Iraq will work with inspectors to protect its people from America, but will fight ``if war is imposed on us.''
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, who oversees the International Atomic Energy Agency, sat down Monday night with Gen. Hosam Amin, who acted as an Iraqi liaison for past inspectors, and Iraqi presidential adviser Amir al-Saadi in their first official meeting.
After the two-hour meeting, ElBaradei said the two sides had begun to discuss arrangements for the inspections and would continue Tuesday. ``I think we are making progress,'' he said.
However, the long history of confrontation between the Iraqis and previous U.N. inspectors -- especially over sensitive sites such as presidential palaces, mosques and military bases -- cast doubt on how smoothly the two sides will be able to cooperate this time.
The gulf between the way the issue of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction is perceived in the United States and throughout the Arab world was dramatically illustrated moments after Blix's white cargo plane -- emblazoned with the black letters U.N. touched down at Saddam International Airport.
At a chaotic airport press conference, Iraqi and other Arab reporters demanded to know whether the inspectors expected friction with the United States and whether they would accept intelligence information from Washington. The inspectors said they did not expect trouble from the Americans and welcomed information from all over the world.
A front-page editorial in the ruling Baath Party newspaper Al-Thawra called the previous U.N. inspection program ``an American organization to spy on Iraq,'' and said it hoped the new team would avoid that trap.
``The situation is tense at the moment, but there is a new opportunity and we are here to provide inspection that is credible,'' Blix said. ``Inspection that is credible is the only thing that is in the interest of Iraq and in the interest of the world, and we will try to do so.''
He said inspections could begin as early as Nov. 27. Blix then must report to the Security Council within 60 days about his progress.
``Total cooperation from Iraq is important to us,'' ElBaradei, an Egyptian, said. ``We hope this is going to be the case.'' He promised that the inspections would be impartial and in-depth.
Under the new U.N. resolution, inspectors have the right to go anywhere and talk to anybody they want in order to determine whether Iraq still maintains banned weapons. In the past, weapons inspectors had to give advance notice of visits to sensitive sites including eight vast presidential palace complexes, losing the effect of surprise inspections.
The new resolution gives inspectors the explicit authority ``to inspect any sites and buildings, including immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to presidential sites equal to that at all other sites.'' Blix told a news conference before leaving for Baghdad that even mosques are not off limits.
In the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also called on Iraq to ensure a smooth inspection program. ``I urge President Saddam Hussein to comply fully for the sake of his people, for the sake of the region and for the sake of the world order,'' Annan said.
Now that the inspectors are back in Iraq, the government must file a detailed report of its banned weapons programs by Dec. 8, informing the United Nations either where the arms are located or providing convincing evidence that they no longer exist.
The inspectors must verify that Iraq is free of proscribed weapons before the Security Council will lift strict economic sanctions imposed after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov was quoted Monday by Russia's Interfax news agency as saying Moscow would push for ending sanctions if Baghdad cooperated with the inspectors. Russia is a longtime ally of Iraq.
-------- korea
North Korea gets low-key brushoff of treaty
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021118-21016878.htm
North Korea is about to lose all its benefits under a 1994 nuclear agreement with the United States, including two light-water reactors currently being built in the North. But a senior U.S. official says Washington is in no hurry to resolve its dispute with Pyongyang because it might interfere with the Iraq conflict.
The Bush administration will also refrain from "doing anything dramatic" before a new South Korean president assumes office in January, hoping that the winner of next month's election will be more supportive of the tough U.S. stance and will scrap the "sunshine policy" of outgoing President Kim Dae-jung, the official said.
"What we've been doing is trying to avoid [letting] the North Korea situation interfere with Iraq. Not that North Korea is a lower priority or that we are less concerned about it, but you can only handle so many international crises at the same time," the official said in an extensive interview on the administration's policy toward Pyongyang.
"We've had a number of different considerations we've been wrestling with, but the ultimate conclusion that the North's benefits under the Agreed Framework are about to disappear is not in dispute anymore," he said late last week.
Washington claims North Korea has in effect invalidated the nuclear accord by developing a covert uranium-enrichment program, which Pyongyang acknowledged during a visit in early October by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs. The administration has demanded complete and verifiable dismantling of the program before any dialogue can take place.
But, fundamentally, the U.S. policy based on negotiations and agreements is being replaced by one of containment and isolation, the senior official said.
"It's not all wrapped up, because we do have to deal with allies and the international community, and we've got Iraq there. We are not in a hurry to get this to a resolution quickly, but there shouldn't be any misunderstanding as to what our direction is," he said.
More specifically, he noted that after last week's decision to stop the delivery of heavy fuel oil to the North in December, the next step will be to abandon the light-water reactor project in Kumho, on North Korea's northeastern coast.
Although the reactors are funded mainly by Japan and South Korea, "everybody knows that if we are not committed to this thing, it's not going to happen," the official said. More importantly, he added, "the Japanese Diet is not going to appropriate another yen for those things given the current circumstances," and once Mr. Kim leaves office in Seoul, "support for this house of cards will collapse."
"There won't be any light-water reactors," he said. "When the chicken stops twitching I don't know, but its head has been cut off."
The fate of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), which was founded by the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union to implement the Agreed Framework, has yet to be decided, the official said, but "if KEDO doesn't have any funding, it's hard to see how it will continue."
The intelligence indicating that the North had a secret nuclear weapons program "came in a relatively short period of time" in midsummer, he said, but it was no reason to cancel the participation of Jack Pritchard, the States Department's special envoy for North Korea, in a subsequent concrete-pouring ceremony at the reactors' Kumho site.
What was significant about the intelligence, the official noted, was that the North "had moved from research and development in uranium enrichment to a production-size operation," which was a "major shift."
Confronted on the program by Mr. Kelly, the North Koreans said: "We are entitled to it, and you are in breach of the Agreed Framework [because you are behind schedule with the reactors]. We have even more powerful weapons, and why don't we have a summit in Pyongyang and see what we do next," the U.S. official said.
"We were absolutely amazed [by the transcript], and we speculated what it meant," the official recalled. "The generally accepted view is that the North Koreans were going to try again what they did in 1993 and 1994 - put it on the table for bargaining purposes and see what they can get out of it, which was a big miscalculation on their part."
Critics of the Bush administration's "limited" approach say it should not rule out talks entirely before the uranium program is eliminated and spell out what "completely and verifiably" means.
"We have to be specific," said a former senior U.S. official who has negotiated with the North Koreans. "They have to know what is expected of them. Someone else could deliver the message now, but at some point down the road, we have to talk."
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the "most effective way to halt Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program is tough but pragmatic engagement rather than confrontation and isolation."
"Instead of cutting off contact with North Korea and precipitously terminating the Agreed Framework, the Bush team, in coordination with Congress, should link future energy assistance to North Korea to visible evidence that its uranium-enrichment activities have ended," he said.
Both the former official and Mr. Kimball said the prospect of Pyongyang reopening its plutonium program, frozen in 1994, posed a much greater danger than the uranium program, which appears to be in its early stages.
But the senior official said such a move would put the North "in such variance with everybody else in the world that I think we would have nearly total support for a policy of isolation."
----
ATOMIC ANXIETY
North Korean Radio Asserts Country Has Nuclear Arms
November 18, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/international/asia/18NUKE.html
TOKYO, Nov. 17 - North Korean state radio announced today that the country has nuclear weapons, which it said were developed to defend against attack by American imperialists.
The broadcast appeared to be the first time that North Korea has publicly acknowledged having nuclear arms. It reflected sharply rising tensions with the United States and its East Asian allies over the cutoff of fuel supplies to the North.
On Thursday, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union agreed to suspend the fuel oil shipments to North Korea, starting in December, in response to the country's violation of a 1994 nuclear weapons agreement.
Under the accord, known as the "Agreed Framework," North Korea deactivated a plutonium-based nuclear power operation and placed its fuel under international supervision in order to ensure that the plutonium was not being used to build bombs. In exchange, the United States, South Korea, Japan and other allies agreed to build North Korea two light-water nuclear reactors, which are less prone to be used for weapons development. In the meantime, the United States made a commitment to provide the country with 500,000 tons of heavy oil a year.
The agreement has faced cancellation since early October, when a senior State Department official, James A. Kelly, visited Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and confronted North Korean officials with intelligence evidence that the North was secretly building a uranium-based nuclear weapons program. The next day, North Korea reportedly confirmed Mr. Kelly's assertions.
American intelligence estimates have long held that North Korea probably has two nuclear devices. Recent Chinese estimates have reportedly put that figure as high as five.
North Korea, which faces repeated famines and severe economic shortages, relies on the fuel shipments for 2 percent to 15 percent of its energy needs, according to Western estimates. The public assertion that the North possesses nuclear weapons was the first substantive response to the fuel cutoff.
The North Korean broadcast was monitored by the South Korean news agency, Yonhap, which said the language - which appeared to go further than the North's previous claims to "be entitled to have nuclear weapons" - might have been deliberately misleading or might even have been a rare mistake by the North Korean state broadcaster.
The broadcast was similar in tone, however, to a newspaper commentary today.
"The United States is spreading a whopping lie that the D.P.R.K. violates the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and the D.P.R.K.-U.S. agreed framework," said an article in the Rodong Sinmun, carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. D.P.R.K. are the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"The lie is aimed to tarnish the international prestige and authority of the D.P.R.K. and to isolate the D.P.R.K. on a worldwide scale," the newspaper said. "And it is a cunning plot to cover up the criminal nature of the U.S. posing nuclear threats to the D.P.R.K. and divert the public attention at home and abroad elsewhere."
----
N Korean nuclear 'admission' in doubt
Monday, 18 November, 2002
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2487437.stm
The alleged weapons programme has shocked the world South Korea has cast doubt on a North Korean radio transmission that appeared to acknowledge for the first time that the country has nuclear weapons.
South Korean officials said the radio announcer's key phrase could have been spoken in error or a verb may have been misheard by monitors, leading to the statement being misinterpreted.
In coping with mounting nuclear threats from the US imperialists, we have come to have powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons
North Korean radio statement, 17 November
That view appeared to be backed up on Monday when a new transmission changed the wording of the key phrase to say that North Korea was merely "entitled" to own nuclear weapons.
North Korea is widely believed to possess enough nuclear materials to make a small number of bombs, but in the past it has always refused to confirm or deny this.
In coping with mounting nuclear threats from the US imperialists, we are entitled to have powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons
North Korean radio statement, 18 November The original North Korean statement, broadcast on Sunday, appeared to be a response to mounting diplomatic pressure since the United States said in October that Pyongyang had admitted to having a nuclear weapons programme.
Last week, Washington and its allies agreed to halt fuel oil to North Korea, arguing that Pyongyang's admission constituted a breach of a 1994 pact under which it agreed to freeze its nuclear programme in return for aid.
Russia's foreign ministry has added its voice to mounting worries about North Korea, expressing "serious concerns" about the "contradictory" messages coming from Pyongyang.
The North Korean broadcast on Sunday said that the country had "come to have powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons, in order to defend our sovereignty and right to existence".
But the South Korean news agency, Yonhap, quoted a unification ministry official as saying that the North Korean announcer's accent had confused Southern listeners monitoring the broadcast.
Only one syllable turned "is entitled to have" (kajige tui-o-itta) into "has come to have" (kajige tui-otta), the official explained.
North Korean orphan The US and its allies have halted fuel aid to the North
BBC Monitoring said four of its monitors had double-checked the disputed passage and were confident there was no missing syllable.
Brinkmanship?
North Korea's official media often contains hostile rhetoric when the country's leadership is actually in an apparent process of engagement with the outside world.
Sunday's broadcast also repeated Pyongyang's demands that the US must sign a non-aggression pact, insisting it was the only way to resolve the nuclear issue.
The timing of the broadcast fits in with a pattern of North Korean "confession", according to Michael Yahuda, professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He told BBC News Online, it appeared they wanted to clear the way for talks.
"The US is threatening and, by responding, Pyongyang is sending out a message: 'We have nuclear weapons as well, so lets find a way to negotiation'," he said.
North Korea followed Sunday's controversial broadcast with a repeated threat on Monday to end its moratorium on missile testing if Japan continues to push for development of a missile defence system with the US.
----
N.Korea confuses US and allies over nukes
By Jong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021118-062657-8074r.htm
SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Facing growing international pressure against its nuclear ambitions, North Korea has confused the United States and its allies with conflicting signals regarding Pyongyang's possession of atomic weapons.
Officials and analysts here were stunned Sunday when North Korea's state-run media said that the country "has come to have nuclear weapons" to deal with U.S. military threats. But on Monday, they expressed doubt about the credibility of the report, saying it may be misinterpreted or was a rare mistake by the North Korean state broadcaster.
Radio Pyongyang said that North Korea "has come to have strong military countermeasures including nuclear weapons to cope with increased nuclear threats by the U.S. imperialists," according to Seoul's official Yonhap News Agency that monitors North Korean broadcasts.
The statement, in a commentary accusing the United States of escalating tensions over North Korea's nuclear program, was interpreted by some analysts as Pyongyang's first confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons. Radio Pyongyang is one of North Korea's two main radio broadcasting stations that have served as the North's official voice.
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."
"It is too early to say that the short and one-time report represented a change in North Korea's official position on nuclear weapons," a Foreign Ministry official told United Press International. North Korea has neither confirmed nor denied its possession of nuclear weapons.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said: "If the North were to announce that it has the nuclear (weapons), it would definitely make big issue out of it, broadcasting the message simultaneously all over the world."
"It is possible that North Korea deliberately attempted to create confusion over the nuclear issue," the official said.
North Korea has left the international community to make guesses about its nuclear weapons situation since it admitted to a visiting U.S. special envoy in October that it had a covert program to make nuclear weapons with enriched uranium.
Pyongyang's media moves came just days after the United States and its allies decided to cut off oil shipments to North Korea because of a violation of a 1994 accord under which it agreed to freeze its plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons.
U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed the international move to suspend fuel oil shipments, saying, "North's Korea's clear violation of its international commitments will not be ignored."
In a statement on Friday, Bush also demanded North Korea dismantle its nuclear program while reiterating the United States has no intention of invading the isolated country.
North Korea has not responded to the decision to cut the fuel shipments, but angrily responded to Bush's statement.
"U.S. President Bush's remarks are invasion talks seen the other way around," Pyongyang's media said. "The United States is spreading a whopping lie that the DPRK (North Korea) violates the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework," said Rodong Sinmun, the publication of the ruling Workers' Party.
"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," it said.
----
North Korea Revises Confusing Nuclear Report
Reuters
Monday, November 18, 2002
By Paul Eckert
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5343-2002Nov18?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Monday retracted a controversial weekend radio broadcast that confused and alarmed its neighbors by appearing to confirm for the first time the reclusive communist state has nuclear weapons.
The rare North Korean amendment followed its threat to restart missile tests -- highlighting another of the world's worries about the isolated country and its crumbling economy.
On Sunday, the official Pyongyang Radio caused confusion with a statement that appeared to declare that Pyongyang had nuclear arms -- a development that would sharply raise the stakes in allied efforts to pre-empt a Korean peninsula nuclear crisis.
But on Monday, the Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS) stated that North Korea believed it was "entitled" to have nuclear arms -- a revision that was likely to ease some concern but nonetheless puts Pyongyang at odds with the United States and allies Japan and South Korea.
The initial statement said the country "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the U.S. imperialists."
Following statements by analysts in Seoul and Tokyo that the report was probably misinterpreted, KCBS issued a new version of the report which said: "To safeguard our sovereignty and right to exist we are entitled to have powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons."
OIL CRUNCH, FOOD SHORTFALLS
The world's last Cold War flashpoint went from reconciliation to crisis prevention last month, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted pursuing a nuclear arms development program, violating a landmark 1994 agreement with Washington.
Washington and its allies decided last week to stop vital fuel oil aid to penalize Pyongyang for breaking a slew of non-proliferation pledges. The cuts will hit North Korea just ahead of winter, which brings sub-freezing temperatures.
Underscoring the depth of Pyongyang's humanitarian woes, the U.N. food aid chief visited Seoul on Monday and appealed for help to make up a shortfall which threatens 6.4 million North Koreans who have been fed by the United Nations in recent years.
James Morris, Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Program, said the WFP needs 130,000 tons of grain to avoid steep cuts in feeding programs in North Korea for infants, schoolchildren and pregnant and nursing mothers.
North Korea has not yet responded to the decision to cut the fuel shipments -- a move Pyongyang envoys have said would be viewed as a hostile act and could prompt the isolated state to end its already tenuous cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
MISSILE THREAT
Since October 25, Pyongyang has asserted that it was entitled to have nuclear weapons in the face of a U.S. government that has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq and talked of preemptive military strikes against hostile states.
But it had always been ambiguous about its arsenal, taking what one recent U.S. visitor called a "neither confirm nor deny" stance about the extent of its nuclear program.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said world governments would have to respond if North Korea did indeed admit to having nuclear arms despite being a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"If they now come and make it clear that they have weapons, this is original sin," he said in televised remarks from Baghdad, where his agency is involved in U.N. arms inspections.
"This runs contrary to the whole very purpose of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and if that's true obviously the international community would have to react."
South Korean analysts and officials said the North Korean broadcast may have confused listeners with a Northern accent that obscured the one-syllable difference between the Korean expression for "is entitled to have" and "has come to have."
U.S. officials have said they do not know how far North Korea has got with its highly enriched uranium scheme.
In 1994, at the height of an earlier North Korean nuclear crisis that was defused by the Agreed Framework, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made public an estimate that North Korea had possibly already produced one or two nuclear weapons.
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 atomic weapons material.
On Monday, North Korea reiterated a threat to resume flight tests of ballistic missiles, saying it may end a three-year-old test moratorium if Tokyo goes ahead with developing a missile defense shield with the United States.
In the third threat issued by the North this month to resume missile testing, the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper criticized comments by Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba suggesting Tokyo step up missile shield research.
Japan decided to conduct joint research with the United States on developing a missile defense program following North Korea's test firing of a missile which flew over Japan in 1998.
--------
North Korea Clarifies Statement on Possessing Nuclear Arms
November 18, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/international/18CND-KOREA.html
TOKYO, Nov. 18 - North Korea clarified a statement today made in a weekend radio broadcast that appeared to claim publicly for the first time that the country possesses nuclear weapons.
The unusual rectification followed a flurry of statements of concern in the region over the radio commentary, which was widely interpreted as saying that North Korea "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the U.S. imperialists."
In a commentary broadcast today by the official Korean Central Broadcasting Station, however, instead of saying it had come to have the weapons, the government said it was "entitled" to have nuclear arms because of what it said were continuing threats from the United States.
"To safeguard our sovereignty and right to exist we are entitled to have powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons," the passage read in its entirety.
The difference in the language between the Sunday and today's messages hung on as little as a single syllable in the Korean language, a nuance attributable by some to regional differences in pronunciation, which led to dramatically different readings of the initial commentary.
The first reports by the foreign news media of Sunday's commentary came from South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which suggested that North Korea had made an affirmative statement that it possesses nuclear weapons.
Japanese and British broadcasting monitoring services interpreted the Sunday commentary along much the same lines as today's clarification. Amid the differing interpretations of the broadcasts, analysts stressed that it was impossible to understand with any certainty the North Korean Government's intentions.
"It was either a broadcaster's mistake in North Korea, a mistake in transcription or translation, or a distortion by Yonhap, which is pretty well known for propagating rumors, especially by hard-line elements in South Korea," said Peter Hayes, director of the Nautilus Institute, a California-based nonprofit research group on international security and conflict resolution.
"My sense of the story is that it didn't stack up, because in the same breath, the announcer was saying we want to continue to negotiate nuclear agreements."
Another possible interpretation that was widely discussed in the region is that North Korea was engaging in a bit of deliberate ambiguity in order to warn the United States and its neighbors, Japan and South Korea, while maintaining a scrap of deniability.
Since 1994, American intelligence estimates have said that North Korea probably possesses as many as two nuclear devices. Recent estimates from China have reportedly placed the number as high as five.
North Korea is also a producer and exporter of rudimentary but operational intercontinental ballistic missiles that are based on the Scud missile developed by the former Soviet Union.
Pyongyang shocked Japan in 1998 when it launched an unannounced test flight of a Taepodong missile over Japanese airspace. And today, North Korea threatened to resume flight tests of ballistic missiles, saying it may end a three-year-old test moratorium if Tokyo goes ahead with developing a missile defense shield with the United States.
Tensions have risen sharply in East Asia since early October when visiting American diplomats confronted the North Korea Government with intelligence evidence proving the existence of a secret nuclear weapons development program in violation of a 1994 arms control agreement.
North Korean officials reportedly acknowledged the program, and warned the American diplomats that they possessed a variety of other dangerous weapons. Since then the United States, South Korea and Japan have agreed to suspend deliveries of heavy fuel oil to North Korea, which had been provided under the arms control regime in exchange for a deactivation of the country's nuclear energy program.
The United States and its East Asian allies had also committed under the arms control regime, known as the "agreed framework," to build two light-water nuclear reactors for the impoverished communist country. In exchange, North Korea agreed to permit international inspectors to monitor the nuclear fuel produced by its old plutonium-based reactors, which could be readily used in weapons production.
With Washington warning Pyongyang that it must immediately abandon all of its nuclear weapons programs, and North Korea claiming that the United States threatens its survival, both countries have said the agreed framework is facing possible termination. North Korea recently described the arms control agreement as "hanging by a thread."
-------- missile defense
U.S. Says Decision Time Looms for Missile Defense
Reuters
Monday, November 18, 2002
By Dominic Evans
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5038-2002Nov18?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - The United States warned its allies on Monday time was running out for them to "climb on board" its plans for a missile defense shield.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Washington was talking with NATO and individual U.S. allies about its proposed protective umbrella, which it hopes will thwart missile attack from rogue states, and was impatient to get started. "It is no longer a question of whether missile defense will be implemented," he told a conference on missile defense at London's Royal United Services Institute.
"The question is what, how and when. The train is about to pull out of the station. We invite our friends and allies...to climb on board," Bolton said.
As an example of a threat he singled out Libya, which he said had "pursued a very successful program to expand its capabilities in the chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile field" since the suspension of U.N. sanctions three years ago.
Critics of the missile defense project, which involves knocking out incoming missiles with interceptor missiles, say it will trigger a renewed arms race and offers no protection against a September 11-style attack.
In a first step toward setting up a missile defense shield, the United States in June unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty which banned such systems.
Washington may also require approval from NATO allies Denmark and Britain to upgrade radar bases on their territory if the plans are to go ahead.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has signaled he will override objections from his own ruling Labor Party and embrace the project, but has declined to commit himself to approving the upgrade of radar facilities at Fylingdales RAF base in northern England until Washington makes a formal request.
Bolton said that time was soon approaching.
"Our desire to develop and protect the technology and get to the deployment as fast as we can means we will be coming to a decision on some of these requests that will be necessary in the very near future," he said.
The U.S. general in charge of missile defense, General Ronald Kadish, will visit the early warning system at Fylingdales on Wednesday on what British officials have called a "private familiarization" trip.
Missile defense will be part of discussions at NATO's summit in Prague this week and Bolton said the shape of any defense umbrella, and the siting of its command and control facilities, depended on the support shown by Washington's NATO partners.
"It depends on the political evolution of missile defense," he said. "The political cooperation required to carry that further, particularly in allocation of command and control facilities, is in the hands of NATO allies.
"They are the ones that will have to make the choice."
While the U.S. administration's primary motivation was to protect its own territory, "I don't think there's any hesitation to address as many threats as our budget is capable of handling," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US Official Wants Review of Nuclear Test Freeze
Reuters
Monday, November 18, 2002
By Jonathan Wright
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5468-2002Nov18?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. military official has recommended the United States consider resuming nuclear tests, which were suspended in 1992, according to a memorandum made available on Monday.
In the Oct. 21 memo to members of the Nuclear Weapons Council, Defense Undersecretary Edward Aldridge said, "It would ... be desirable to assess the potential benefits that could be obtained from a return to nuclear testing with regard to weapon safety, security and reliability."
A leading arms control specialist, Daryl Kimball, said the memo was another sign the Bush administration is moving toward a resumption of nuclear weapons tests, a step that would probably generate an international outcry.
When the tests ended, the United States said it was confident it could manage and maintain its stockpile of thousands of nuclear warheads through computer simulations and "sub-critical" tests that do not produce nuclear explosions.
Aldridge, who is undersecretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology, argued in the memo that the United States faces "major challenges" in maintaining the reliability of its nuclear arsenal and deterrent.
"We will need to refurbish several aging weapon systems, but the limitations of the nuclear weapon complex will not permit us to perfectly replicate the original designs.
"We must also be prepared to respond to new nuclear weapon requirements in the future," Aldridge added.
He did not specify any new requirements but, in a review of nuclear policy in 2001, the administration said it was assessing the need for weapons to penetrate bunkers and nuclear warheads that reduce collateral damage.
OVERCONFIDENT
Aldridge appeared to be preparing the groundwork for new tests by saying that nuclear experts may have been overconfident about their ability to assess weapon components.
Aldridge made a series of recommendations for reviewing the system of stockpile management that began when the United States gave up testing.
One suggestion was the nuclear weapons laboratories, "readdress the value of a low yield testing program."
Kimball, who is executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, told Reuters, "I think this is yet another sign that some in the Pentagon are trying to move the White House toward a resumption of testing.
"He is saying two things -- that the labs need to be prepared to respond to new nuclear weapons requirements in the future and that maintaining confidence in the existing arsenal will be very challenging."
The Bush administration has asked Congress for money to improve the readiness of the nuclear test sites and to explore the idea of bunker-busting weapons.
U.S. officials say the administration has not made any decision to resume nuclear tests.
But the administration has abandoned its predecessor's commitment to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban all nuclear tests in perpetuity.
--------
Sun expands supercomputer effort
November 18, 2002
Stephen Shankland, Staff Writer,
CNET News.com, News.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1001-966123.html
Sun Microsystems will take a major step into supercomputing on Monday with the announcement of Fire Link, a technology that joins its high-end servers with a single high-performance cluster.
In earlier years, supercomputers were single, massive systems with vast amounts of memory. Since the mid-1990s, though, more and more have been built out of clusters of separate systems connected with high-speed links. At the extreme of this newer trend are "Beowulf" clusters, with dozens or hundreds of lower-powered Linux servers.
With its Sun Fire Link, the company now is joining IBM and Hewlett-Packard with an alternate approach, offering clusters made of a smaller number of higher-powered computers.
The Sun Fire Link technology, code-named Wildcat, can directly link two or three computers together, said Steve Perrenod, director of high-performance and technical computing at Sun. With the use of a Sun-designed switch, as many as eight computers can be interconnected.
Sun has shown more ambition than success with its supercomputer effort, though its presence on the Top500 list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers more than doubled from 37 systems in June 2002, to 88 this month.
The Sun Fire Link adds about 5 percent to the price paid for the systems. For example, a Sun Fire Link would cost about $1 million for a large cluster with $20 million worth of servers, Perrenod said.
Sun Fire Link works with Sun's three highest-end systems--the 24-processor Sun Fire 6800, the 52-processor Sun Fire 12K and the 106-processor Sun Fire 15K, Perrenod said.
With Monday's announcement, Sun joins a parade of companies announcing new supercomputer products to coincide with the SC2002 supercomputer show beginning Monday in Baltimore. Last week, IBM introduced its new p655 on Friday; Cray announced its new X1 Thursday; and SGI improved its top-end systems with the release of the Origin 3900.
Several of the new Sun Fire Link-powered systems appear on the latest Top 500 list, including the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory in Canada and another host of systems based in Cambridge University in England.
Computers in Beowulf clusters are linked with regular Ethernet network cards or special-purpose network cards from companies such as Myricom. The Sun Fire Link, in comparison, uses connections directly to the "backplane" of the Sun Fire system, the high-speed wiring that connects the systems processors together.
Using the backplane connection means shorter delays when sending messages from one part of the cluster to another, a way to avoid communication bottlenecks. However, such connections are more unusual and expensive.
The Sun Fire Link technology was developed partly through funding from the Energy Department's Advanced Simulation and Computing Path Forward program, part of a national effort to simulate nuclear weapons tests within computers, Perrenod said.
On Monday, Sun also will announce version 2.0 of its Capacity on Demand (COD) server feature, which allows customers to buy a system with more processors than are immediately needed, paying for the extra ones only when they're activated.
With the first version of Sun's COD program, customers could fire up extra processors, but had to switch them all active at the same time and pay a lump sum. With the second version, customers can activate new processors one by one, paying a smaller amount each time, said Chris Kruell, director of outbound marketing for Sun's enterprise system products.
The first version of COD, introduced in 1999, worked only with Sun's E10000 server. The new version works with Sun's 3800, 4800, 5800, 6800, 12K and 15K.
Though customers were eager for the improvements, the first version of capacity on demand was popular, with about 20 percent to 25 percent of E10000 customers using it, Kruell said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Yucca Mountain Debate NPR
From: Erin Mooney - emooney@asc.upenn.edu
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 17:20:37 -0500
Join the live audience of National Public Radio's award-winning, Justice Talking on Monday, November 18, at the Wistar Institute, 36th and Spruce streets, Philadelphia, PA.
To sign up for tickets: http://www.justicetalking.org/upcoming.asp or call Erin Mooney at 215-898-7757.
Monday, November 18, 2002 Yucca Mountain 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Joan B. Claybrook, president of Public Citizen debates Angie Howard, executive vice president of Policy, Planning and External Affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Mobile Chernobyls. That is how the opponents of the proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada describe the transport of tons of radioactive waste from more than 100 temporary storage sites at nuclear power plants across the nation. They also warn that the mass movement of radioactive material through 43 states creates ready targets for terrorists and endangers millions of Americans. Over the objections of Nevada's Governor and its citizens, Congress recently voted to locate a permanent facility at Yucca Mountain, a two-hour drive south of Las Vegas. Proponents say that long-term underground storage at a central location is the best and safest solution to the nuclear waste problem. On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Trent Lott urged his colleagues to choose science over scare tactics and vote in favor of the proposed site. Is Yucca Mountain a reasonable solution or a nuclear nightmare in waiting?
Erin Mooney Associate Producer NPR's Justice Talking Annenberg Public Policy Center University of Pennsylvania 3620 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6220
tel. 215.898.7757 fax 215.898.2024
-------- us politics
Lawmakers Sweat Homeland Details Before Vote
Monday, November 18, 2002
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,70713,00.html
WASHINGTON - Senators are holding the homeland security bill hostage over partisan politics, even with the threat of future terror attacks from Al Qaeda and a possible war with Iraq looming.
Senate Democrats say they will spike the homeland security bill if a number of Republican-inspired "goodies" aren't taken out of the legislation. Republicans say the provisions are homeland security-related and they insist on keeping them in.
Though a vote was expected late Monday, a standoff could affect whether the bill, which includes provisions for establishing a new 170,000-employee homeland security agency, will be passed by the end of the 107th Congress this year.
The vote on Monday is expected to strip away seven GOP items from the bill - and Republicans say if that happens, it won't get to President Bush's desk in 2002.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said Sunday that House Republicans slipped several provisions into the bill without consulting Democrats.
"The bill the president supported was 35 pages long. The bill that I've been asked to vote on Monday or Tuesday is 484 pages long, filled with special interest legislation, loaded up by the House Republicans in the last few days," Dodd said Sunday in a televised interview.
The worst of the offending provisions, say Democrats, is a measure that would protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits over the vaccines they create and their side effects, including wiping out lawsuits already in court.
"Does this have anything at all to do with homeland security? The answer is no," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said last week.
Republicans deny that the provision would wipe out current lawsuits, and say future liability protection is needed to ensure that drug companies will produce the vaccines that America needs to fight the war on terrorism.
Some lawmakers, including Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said the provision would block children's and families' access to compensation after being injured by a vaccine.
Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge begged to differ.
"If you look at the present system, these families and these children have access to compensation through a special fund that was set up. And if they're not satisfied with that, they still reserve the right to litigate it. So I would disagree with his conclusion," Ridge said Sunday.
Other GOP measures include liability shields for airport security companies and businesses that sell approved anti-terrorism technologies, and a provision that would block Senate-approved legislation to bar government contracts with corporations that have moved their headquarters offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.
The bill could also create at least one hometown pork project: a new university-based homeland security research center that Democrats say is intended for Texas A&M University, a favorite of retiring Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas. Republicans disagree, saying it could go to any number of universities.
If the bill is changed substantially, aides said, the leaders are unlikely to call House members back to Washington to consider it, thus killing it for the year.
If a homeland security agency is created, it would combine the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and much of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. President Bush is expected to nominate Ridge to head the new cabinet agency.
Once the Senate finishes with the homeland security bill, it will move on to the terrorism insurance legislation passed by the House.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
----
Ridge Doubts Domestic Spy Agency
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HOMELAND_SECURITY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says he doubts the Bush administration would create a domestic intelligence agency separate from the FBI. But some senators seemed open to the idea, skeptical about whether the bureau can fill the spying role.
Ridge, appearing on television talk shows Sunday, also played down as "really nothing new" an alleged statement from al-Qaida threatening new terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
Meanwhile, the Senate, meeting in an unusual postelection session, could vote as soon as Monday to create a Department of Homeland Security. Ridge declined to say whether he wants to run the new Cabinet department, but a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity said the former Pennsylvania governor is President Bush's choice.
Ridge said his recent visit to MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, was "very revealing," but that the powers the British agency wields would be unacceptable under the U.S. Constitution.
He said he thought it unlikely the administration would create a similar agency. He noted, as did several senators, that FBI Director Robert Mueller is working under orders from Bush to reorganize the FBI to improve domestic intelligence gathering.
"I don't think you're going to see a similar organization be developed in this country," Ridge said on CNN's "Late Edition." "That's not to say that not on a regular basis we don't sit down and see how we can improve our intelligence-gathering capacity domestically and how we share it."
Some top senators appeared open to creating such an agency; others urged caution.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the FBI isn't doing the job yet and he isn't sure that it can.
"If they don't, we're going to have to look somewhere else," he told CNN. "We're either going to have to create a domestic intelligence service, by standing alone, or we're going to have to put it into (the Department of) Homeland Security if the FBI doesn't measure up."
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., the intelligence panel's outgoing chairman, agreed. But he said a war with Iraq would delay any reorganization of the nation's domestic intelligence capabilities.
"Once we get past this period of immediate threat, whenever that may be, I think we ought to look seriously at an alternative, which is to do as the British and many other nations have done, and that is to put their domestic intelligence in a non-law enforcement agency," Graham said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., urged caution, saying a lot has been done in the name of national security, mostly in the 20th century, that the country has later regretted.
He said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the idea for such an agency "would have to be sold to a majority of Congress before the first steps are taken."
Ridge, meantime, dismissed the importance of an alleged statement by al-Qaida threatening terror attacks on New York and Washington. "We're familiar with that piece of information. There are no new threats. There are the same old conditions," Ridge told "Fox News Sunday." "It's just part of the continuing threat environment that we assess. It's really nothing new."
On other matters, the homeland security chief:
-Sidestepped questions about surveillance of Iraqis in the United States, reported by The New York Times, in an attempt to identify possible terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
-Took issue with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who said the administration's inability to catch al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden raises questions about "whether or not we are winning the war on terror." Bin Laden is the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York and Washington.
Ridge said the military has basically liberated Afghanistan and disrupted al-Qaida training camps, and that the United States and its allies have frozen more than $100 million in terrorist network assets and detained nearly 2,700 people for questioning, among other efforts.
"We will get bin Laden, we're committed to that," Ridge vowed.
-Said an unidentified senior al-Qaida leader now in American custody after being captured overseas is helping U.S. officials.
----
'BUSH AT WAR'
The First Two Months
Doubts and Debate Before Victory Over Taliban
Bush Demanded Advisers Be Patient
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 18, 2002; Page
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3084-2002Nov17?language=printer
From the second of three days of excerpts from the book "Bush At War," by Bob Woodward, an inside account of the internal debate within the Bush administration that led to U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the decision to aggressively confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (Simon & Schuster, copyright 2002):
On the evening of Oct. 25, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called President Bush's personal secretary, Ashley Estes, and asked whether it was all right with the president if she came and saw him for a few minutes in the White House residence. Rice, along with Vice President Cheney and a handful of senior advisers, could see Bush on the spur of the moment.
"What's up?" Bush asked when Rice joined him a few minutes later in the Treaty Room. It was the end of a normal working day for the president, about 6:30 p.m. Bush had just finished his daily physical fitness routine and was still in his exercise clothes. He was not dripping sweat but had cooled down -- perhaps the right time for such a conversation, if there ever was.
Just over two weeks after the commencement of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance -- a loose confederation of warlords who opposed the ruling Taliban militia -- was making little progress on the ground. At a National Security Council meeting two days earlier, Cheney had addressed the core issue. "Do we wait for the Northern Alliance, or do we have to go get involved ourselves, which is a wholly different proposition?" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was secretly working on contingency plans for putting 50,000 U.S. troops on the ground -- if that was the only way to win.
Then, at a meeting of principals, they had discussed how disappointed they all were in Gen. Mohammed Fahim, the leader of the Northern Alliance, who was promising to move but failing to advance. The CIA had reported that the Taliban forces opposite Fahim's lines had increased by an astonishing 50 percent. Satellite and other intelligence only weeks ago had shown anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 Taliban fighters at the front. Now the count was 10,000 to 16,000 -- and no one seemed to know why.
Normally, Rice saw her job as twofold: first, to coordinate what Defense, State, the CIA and other departments or agencies were doing by making sure the president's orders were carried out; and second, to act as counselor -- to give her private assessment to the president, certainly when he asked, perhaps if he didn't. "She's a very thorough person," Bush said in an interview, "constantly mother-henning me."
In other words, she was the president's troubleshooter. And this was trouble.
The south of Afghanistan was dry, and the north was not moving, she told the president. "And we've bombed everything we can think of to bomb, and still nothing is happening."
Bush sat down.
"You know, Mr. President, the mood isn't very good among the principals, and people are concerned about what's going on," Rice said, referring to the principal war cabinet members. She said there was some hand-wringing.
The president jerked forward. Hand-wringing? He hated, absolutely hated, the very idea, especially in tough times. He was getting some reports from senior advisers Karen P. Hughes and Karl Rove about media stories, but not much more.
"I want to know if you're concerned about the fact that things are not moving," Rice said.
"Of course I'm concerned about the fact that things aren't moving!"
"Do you want to start looking at alternative strategies?"
"What alternative strategies would we be looking at?" he asked, as if the possibility had not crossed his mind. Bush's leadership style bordered on the hurried. He wanted action, solutions. Once on a course, he directed his energy at forging on, rarely looking back, scoffing at -- even ridiculing -- doubts and anything less than 100 percent commitment.
Careful reconsideration is a necessary part of any decision-making process. Rice felt it was her job to raise caution flags, even red lights if necessary, to urge the president to rethink.
Sometimes, the best decision is to overrule an earlier one. Now, events were their own caution flags. The static situation in Afghanistan might signal big problems. On top of that, the news media were raising questions about progress, strategy, timetables and expectations. Newsweek magazine had used the dreaded "Q" word -- quagmire -- evoking Vietnam.
"There always is the thought that you could use more Americans in this. You could Americanize this up front," Rice said. That could mean substantial ground forces -- several Army or Marine divisions. A division normally has about 15,000 to 20,000 troops.
Bush was aware that in these very rooms 35 to 40 years earlier, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had confronted similar decisions. Vietnam was the precedent.
"It hasn't been that long," the president said, referring to when the military action had begun.
"That's right."
"Do you think it's working?"
Rice did not really answer.
"We have a good plan," the president said. "You're confident in it?"
Rice intentionally ducked. She was unwilling to take a firm position, worried it might tilt further discussion, close off options. Also, she was unsure. She felt most comfortable when she knew precisely what the president was thinking, so she was sounding him out. But the president was on his chosen course, and he had not really thought of shifting strategies.
The really important thing, she told the president, was for him to take the principals' pulse the next day, and if he was committed to the strategy, he had better let people know it. He didn't want people starting to fall off.
Starting to fall off? Who was nervous? Who was concerned? The president wanted to take names.
Everybody is concerned, she said. Nobody is very sanguine or comfortable. They all have concerns about what they are achieving and might be able to achieve. He had heard some; she had heard more. He was going to have to make some tough decisions pretty soon -- about whether they were just going to stay on course or whether they were going to try to make adjustments.
The National Security Council was going to meet the next morning, she mentioned, and that was the time to affirm the plan or consider changing it. Winter was coming to Afghanistan, the conditions would be brutal and military gains on the ground could become increasingly difficult.
"I think it would be good if you expressed confidence in this plan. Or if you don't feel that, then we need to do something else." Did they need an alternative strategy? The important thing, she said, was for him to think about it before the NSC meeting the next morning. Then, at the meeting, he could give his view. "You need to talk about this," she said at the end of their 15- to 20-minute talk.
"I'll take care of it," the president said. 'We Need to Be Patient'
The next morning, before the NSC meeting, Bush talked to Cheney about what Rice had brought to him.
"Dick," he asked, "do you have any -- is there any qualms in your mind about this strategy we've developed? We've spent a lot of time on it."
"No, Mr. President," Cheney replied.
When the meeting began in the White House Situation Room, Bush decided to let the meeting proceed with its routine presentations and updates before getting to the point.
"I just want to make sure that all of us did agree on this plan, right?" he said after the reports. He looked around the table from face to face.
There is an aspect of baseball-coach, even fraternity-brother, urgency in Bush at such moments. He leans his head forward and holds it still, makes eye contact, maintains it, saying, in effect: You're on board, you're with me, right?
Are we right, the president was asking. Are we still confident? He wanted a precise affirmation from each one -- Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Rumsfeld, CIA Director George J. Tenet and Rice -- even backbenchers Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. He was almost demanding they take an oath.
Each affirmed allegiance to the plan and strategy.
"Anybody have any ideas they want to put on the table?"
No's all around.
Rice believed the president would tolerate debate, would listen, but anyone who wanted debate had to have a good argument, and preferably a solution or at least a proposed fix. It was clear that no one at the table had a better idea.
In fact, the president had not really opened the door a crack for anyone to raise concerns or deal with any second thoughts. He was not really listening. He wanted to talk. He knew that he talked too much at times, just blowing off steam. It was not a good habit, he knew.
"You know what? We need to be patient," Bush said. "We've got a good plan."
"Look, we're entering a difficult phase. The press will seek to find divisions among us. They will try and force on us a strategy that is not consistent with victory."
In the secrecy of the room, the president had voiced one of his conclusions -- the news media, or at least some elements, did not want victory or at least acted as if they did not.
"We've been at this only 19 days. Be steady. Don't let the press panic us." The press would say they needed a new strategy, that the current strategy was a failed one. He disagreed. "Resist the second-guessing. Be confident but patient. We are going to continue this thing through Ramadan," the Muslim holy month. "We've got to be cool and steady. It's all going to work."
Hadley thought the tension suddenly drained from the room. The president was saying he had confidence and they should have confidence. In their souls, Hadley believed, some of them had to wonder whether the president might be losing confidence in them. Presidential confidence, once bestowed, was vital for all of them to function. Any hint of less than full confidence would be devastating. They served at his pleasure. They could be gone or sidelined in an instant. Not only had Bush declared confidence in their strategy, but more important, Hadley believed, he had declared confidence in them.
Tenet wanted to stand up and cheer. He went back to CIA headquarters and told his senior leadership what the president had said. What it meant, Tenet said, was simple: Keep going.
Rice believed it was one of the most important moments. If the president had opened up to alternatives, the war cabinet would have lost the focus of trying to make the strategy work and flitted off to think up alternatives. She hoped that the recommitment would cause everyone to redouble their efforts on the current strategy that he had just then fully blessed.
Rumsfeld reported to some of his senior aides that the president had been particularly strong that day. He didn't provide details.
Powell found the situation in Afghanistan troubling, but he didn't think they were in a quagmire, yet.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, their ally in the war in Afghanistan, was interviewed that evening by ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who asked him right off the bat whether the United States was facing a quagmire.
"Yes," the Pakistani president declared, "it may be a quagmire." The Media and the 'Quagmire'
During the early morning secure phone conversation that Rumsfeld had with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, on Saturday, Oct. 27, the secretary wanted to make sure they were planning and thinking way ahead -- to the worst-case scenario, if necessary.
Suppose the Afghan opposition, the Northern Alliance, the mercenary force that was being paid by the CIA, could not do the job? They were going to have to consider the possibility that they would have to send in large numbers of U.S. ground forces.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was taking notes in a white spiral notebook. He wrote, "Be prepared to go in -- major land war -- either on our own or with coalition partners. . . . Process of organizing for it would be very, very useful. . . . It would become visible and people would know that we're not kidding, we are coming, if you don't change sides now, we are going to continue the process."
Rumsfeld and Franks agreed to step up bombing of the Taliban front lines as the Northern Alliance wanted. With the first U.S. Special Forces A-teams now inside Afghanistan, that would be possible. But both the secretary and Franks were skeptical of the Alliance and Fahim, who seemed slow to move on their own.
Rice and the others were on edge as the administration was being murdered in the media.
On Tuesday morning, Oct. 30, two leading conservatives, Bush's usual allies, had blasted the war effort on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. William Kristol said, "It's a flawed plan," because of too many self-imposed constraints. Charles Krauthammer said the war was being fought with "half-measures."
On Wednesday, Oct. 31, some war cabinet members read a news analysis by R.W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times.
"Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not."
Earlier in the week, a military analyst on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" had leveled the unkindest cut of all, saying that Bush was practicing "the Bill Clinton approach to warfare . . . thinking small."
At his Wednesday morning meeting with senior staff, Bush expressed his pique at the media.
"They don't get it," the president said. "How many times do you have to tell them it's going to be a different type of war? And they don't believe it. They're looking for the conventional approach. That's not what they're going to see here. I've talked about patience. It's amazing how quickly people forget what you say, at least here in Washington." The quagmire stories made little sense to him. They had a good plan. They had agreed to it. "Why would we start second-guessing it this early into the plan?"
Rumsfeld had declared publicly that day that he was following the news commentary about the alleged stalemate or quagmire in Afghanistan. "I must say that I find those differences of views often helpful and interesting and informative and educational," he had said at his regular Pentagon briefing, trying to avoid a defensive tone.
To his senior staff, he had referred once to the authors and television talking heads as "K Street pundits," former government officials and hangers-on who occupied the downtown corridor of K Street that housed seemingly endless consultancies and think tanks. To Rumsfeld, K Street was a low-life refuge for those who couldn't get real jobs, or didn't have the independence of spirit to leave Washington once they were through.
"Of course that's what they are saying," he had said, "they've got the attention span of gnats." The news business manufactured urgency and expectation. He was convinced that the public was more realistic, more patient. Planning for Boots on the Ground
"Well, there's buzzing in the press," Powell said at the beginning of the NSC meeting the next day, Friday, Nov. 2. "Buzzing" was an understatement that brought some half-chuckles around the table. "The countries in the coalition are still with us," he added, somewhat confidently.
After a long presentation by Franks, Cheney said to him and Rumsfeld, "We may need to think about giving you more resources, a different timeline, more forces and a higher tempo of operations."
Franks and his staff and the Joint Chiefs were forcing themselves to face the possibility that a large ground force of U.S. troops would have to be sent to Afghanistan. The numbers 50,000 to 55,000 were being mentioned. These were staggering numbers, suggesting the kind of land war that military history dictated should be avoided in Asia, at all costs.
The president was aware of the figure under consideration. In a later interview, he recalled dealing with "the scenario where we may need to put the 55,000 troops in there."
"What's the capability of the opposition forces?" Powell asked. "Do we need to train them?" In his 35 years in the military, he had found that good training could go a long way. Neither Powell nor anyone was prepared for Franks's answer.
"I don't place any confidence in the opposition," the commander said. On the question of whether the Alliance could be trained, he said, "I don't know." He was depressed about Fahim, who had the advantage and was not really moving. In contrast, Abdurrashid Dostum, another Alliance general who commanded cavalry, was aggressive, a General George Patton. "Dostum rides 10 to 15 miles a day in windstorms or snowstorms with guys lacking a leg. They go to blow up a Taliban outpost and take casualties knowing they had no medical assistance."
So even though he had lost confidence in the opposition forces, Franks said he would continue with the current strategy "while at the same time doing some planning to see if we need to be able to do the kind of things the vice president described."
The president had not known that Cheney was going to raise these issues, but he had found that when Cheney asked questions, it was worth listening to them. He wanted Franks to take them seriously. "When can you give me some options," Bush asked Franks, "along the lines of what the vice president talks about?"
"In one week," Franks said, "to a very small group."
Bush had previously asked Franks what response would be possible if al Qaeda struck the United States at home again in a major way, and he wanted to order an escalation.
"And I also owe you options of what we do if we get hit again," Franks said.
"We might take Mazar in 24 to 48 hours," Tenet told skeptical colleagues at a principals' meeting on Thursday, Nov. 8, six days later. Dostum and another commander were engaged in an envelopment of Mazar-e Sharif, the major city in northern Afghanistan. "One is seven and one is 15 kilometers from the town."
At the Friday, Nov. 9, NSC meeting, Franks reported, "We're doing 90 to 120 sorties a day; 80 or 90 percent are going to support the opposition. We're focusing on Mazar." He said they were supplying five of the 10 main tribal leaders. "We're doing cold-weather gear and ammunition. We assemble the packages in Texas, they're staged in Germany. It takes two days to get them into Germany, and then we distribute them two or three days thereafter." They were starting to get a reliable logistics chain.
"By the end of the month, we're going to have it in good shape around Mazar. And we're working on Fahim Khan to get him to move."
"We've got to keep our expectations low," he concluded.
Well after lunch, Army Lt. Col. Tony Crawford, an intelligence specialist and executive assistant to Rice, walked into her corner West Wing office.
"Mazar has fallen," he said. "We're getting reports that Mazar has fallen."
"What does that mean?" Rice asked skeptically. "Are they in the center of the city? What does 'Mazar has fallen' mean?" Crawford said he would find out what it meant.
He was back shortly to report that Dostum's troops were indeed in the center of the city. The locals were throwing off their Taliban clothing. They were celebrating. Sheep were being sacrificed. Women were waving, cheering and clapping.
What does the national security adviser do in such a situation? She turned on CNN, which confirmed the reports, and called Rumsfeld to tell him the news.
"Well," he replied, "we'll see."
His view was that first reports are almost always wrong, and this sounded like one that was. Maybe it fell today, and maybe it won't have fallen tomorrow.
Rice walked down to tell the president. He had already heard. "That's good," he said, controlling his enthusiasm.
She noticed that he didn't get out a cigar to chew -- a standard sign of genuine celebration.
Instead, Bush asked Rice, "Well, what next?"
At a meeting later in the afternoon, the president did not conceal his astonishment at the shift of events. "It's amazing how fast the situation has changed. It is a stunner, isn't it?"
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
----
'BUSH AT WAR' | The First Two Months:
CIA Led Way With Cash Handouts
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 18, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3105-2002Nov17?language=printer
From the second of three days of excerpts from the book "Bush At War," by Bob Woodward, an inside account of the internal debate within the Bush administration that led to U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the decision to aggressively confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (Simon & Schuster, copyright 2002):
At 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2001, a husky, 59-year-old man with a round, cheerful face and glasses was huddled in the back of a Russian-made, CIA-owned Mi-17 helicopter that was going to have to strain to climb to 15,000 feet to clear the Anjoman Pass into the Panjshir Valley of northeastern Afghanistan.
Gary, an undercover CIA officer whose last name is not being used, was leading the first critical wave of President Bush's war against terrorism. With him was a team of CIA covert paramilitary officers with communications gear that would allow them to set up direct, classified links with headquarters in Langley, Va. Between his legs was a large strapped metal suitcase that contained $3 million in U.S. currency, non-sequential $100 bills. He always laughed when he saw a television show or movie in which someone passed $1 million in a small attaché case. It just wouldn't fit.
Several times in his career, Gary had stuffed $1 million into his backpack so he could move around and pass it to people on other operations. He had signed for the $3 million as usual. What was different this time was that he could dole it out pretty much at his discretion.
Gary had been an officer in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA for 32 years, the type of CIA clandestine operative who many thought no longer existed. In the 1970s, he had been an undercover case officer in Tehran and then Islamabad. He had recruited, developed, paid and run agents who reported from within the host governments. In the 1980s, he served as chief of the CIA base in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and later as chief of station for Kabul. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul was closed due to the Soviet invasion, so he operated out of Islamabad.
In the 1990s, he served as deputy chief of station in Saudi Arabia, then chief of a secret overseas station that operated against Iran. From 1996 to 1999, he had been chief of station in Islamabad, and then deputy chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asian operations division at Langley.
On Sept. 11, Gary had been almost out the door, weeks from retirement. Four days later, he received a call from Cofer Black, the head of the agency's counterterrorism center, asking him to come to headquarters. "I know you're ready to retire," Black told him. "But we want to send a team in right away. You're the logical person to go in." Not only did Gary have the experience, but he spoke Pashto and Dari, Afghanistan's two main languages.
A team would be a small group of CIA operatives and paramilitary officers working out of the super-secret Special Activities Division of the Directorate of Operations.
"Yeah, I'll go," Gary said. When he was Islamabad station chief, he had made several covert trips into Afghanistan, meeting with leaders of the Northern Alliance, the loose confederation of warlords and tribes that opposed the Taliban, and bringing in cash, normally $200,000 -- a bag of money on the table.
Go in, Black told Gary, persuade the Northern Alliance to work with us and prepare the ground in Afghanistan to receive U.S. forces, to give them a place to come in and stage operations. There would be no backup. There would be few search-and-rescue teams available to get them out if something went wrong.
Four days later, on Sept. 19, Black called Gary back to his office. The team, formally called the Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team (NALT), was given the code word "Jawbreaker." They were to deploy the next day, proceed to Europe and then into the region and into Afghanistan as fast as possible.
Jawbreaker had another assignment. The president had signed a new intelligence order; the gloves were off. "You have one mission," Black instructed. "Go find the al Qaeda and kill them. We're going to eliminate them. Get bin Laden, find him. I want his head in a box. . . . I want to take it down and show the president."
"Well, that couldn't be any clearer," Gary replied.
Gary left Washington the next day, and the team hooked up in Asia. There was a maddening wait for visas and clearances to get into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Now in the helicopter, he had to worry through the 2 1/2-hour overflight into Afghanistan. A CIA man in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was in regular radio contact with the Northern Alliance and had radioed that the team was heading in. But the radio link was not secure, and though the territory they were flying over was supposed to be controlled by the Northern Alliance, any Taliban or al Qaeda soldier with a Stinger missile or a Z-23 antiaircraft gun on a hilltop could have shot the Mi-17 out of the air.
Jawbreaker touched down in a landing field about 70 miles north of Kabul, in the heart of Northern Alliance territory, at about 3 p.m. local time. The team comprised 10 men -- Gary, a senior deputy, a young Directorate of Operations case officer who had four years in Pakistan and spoke excellent Farsi and Dari, an experienced field communications officer who had worked in tough places, a former Navy SEAL, another paramilitary operative, a longtime agency medic, two pilots and a helicopter mechanic. The men spanned nearly 30 years in age and were of different shapes and sizes. They wore camping clothes and baseball caps.
Two Northern Alliance officers and about 10 others greeted them. They loaded the gear on a big truck and drove about a mile to a guesthouse in a tiny village. The village had been cordoned off with a checkpoint at each end. The Alliance officers were nervous and wanted the team out of sight.
By about 6 p.m., they had their secure communications up. Gary sent a classified cable asking for some additional supplies. In the exuberance of the safe arrival and mindful of Black's request for bin Laden's head, he added a line to the cable requesting some heavy-duty cardboard boxes, dry ice and, if possible, some pikes. Million-Dollar Impressions
Gary's first meeting that evening was with engineer Muhammed Arif Sawari, who headed the Alliance's intelligence and security service. Arif recognized Gary from the previous December, when, as deputy division chief, he had met in Paris with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader assassinated on the eve of the Sept. 11 attacks. Arif seemed to relax when he recognized him.
Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in 10 stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say: We're here, we're serious, here's money, we know you need it.
"What we want you to do is use it," he said. "Buy food, weapons, whatever you need to build your forces up." It was also for intelligence operations and to pay sources and agents. There was more money available -- much more. Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.
The Northern Alliance welcomes you, Arif said.
The plan, Gary said, was to prepare the way for the U.S. military forces. "We don't know how they're coming or how many, but we're looking at Special Forces, you know, small units, guys coming in to do operations and help you and help your army and coordinate between your forces and the U.S. forces that are going to come and attack the Taliban army. We need to coordinate this."
Great, Arif said.
The next day, Sept. 27, about noon local time in the Panjshir Valley, Gary sat down with Gen. Mohammed Fahim, commander of the Northern Alliance forces, and Abdullah, the Alliance foreign minister. He put $1 million on the table, explaining that they could use it as they saw fit. Fahim said he had about 10,000 fighters, though many were poorly equipped.
"The president is interested in our mission," Gary said. "He wants you to know the U.S. forces are coming and we want your cooperation and he's taking a personal interest in this." He had secure communications set up with Washington, and, exaggerating, he said, "Everything that I write back home [the president] sees. So this is important." Without exaggerating, he added, "This is the world stage."
"We welcome you guys," Fahim said. "We'll do whatever we can." But he had questions. "When does the war start? When do you guys come? When is the U.S. really going to start to attack?"
"I don't know," Gary said. "But it will be soon. We have to be ready. Forces have to be deployed. We have to get things together. You're going to be impressed. You have never seen anything like what we're going to deliver onto the enemy." What Works -- and What Doesn't
Gary dispatched several of his men to the Takar region, the front between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban forces. They went north, a good 60 miles to the east of Kunduz. They found the Northern Alliance forces disciplined, their clothing and weapons clean. But the rifles' safeties were on, a signal that this was not a hot combat zone. The troops lined up in formations and conducted drills. There was a command structure. But there were not enough troops or heavy weapons to move against the Taliban, who were dug in on the other side.
Gary knew that CIA headquarters believed that the Taliban would be a tenacious enemy in a fight and that any U.S. strike would bring out its sympathizers in Afghanistan and in the region, especially Pakistan. They would rally around Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader.
Gary saw it differently. He believed that massive, heavy bombing of the Taliban front lines -- "really good stuff," as he called it -- would cause the Taliban to break and change the picture. On Oct. 1, he sent a secret appraisal to headquarters. "In this case," he wrote, "a Taliban collapse could be rapid, with the enemy shrinking to a small number of hard-core Mullah Omar supporters in the early days or weeks of a military campaign." The report was received with vocal skepticism at the Directorate of Operations, as the old hands and experts openly disparaged the appraisal. But CIA Director George J. Tenet took the cable to President Bush.
"I want more of this," said the president.
On Wednesday, Oct. 3, Gary went in search of an airfield to bring supplies into Northern Alliance territory. The team found one airfield in an area called Golbahar that had been used by the British in 1919. He asked Arif, the Alliance's intelligence chief, to grade out an area and turn it into an airstrip, and he handed out another $200,000. He bought three Jeeps for $19,000 and forked over an additional $22,000 for a tanker truck and helicopter fuel. Arif promised they would buy the truck in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and drive it over the mountains to the CIA team, but it never arrived.
That day, the CIA's counterterrorism special operations chief, Hank, whose last name is being withheld, met in Tampa with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, who would be in charge of the war. Using maps of Afghanistan, Hank laid out how CIA paramilitary teams working with the various opposition forces could get them moving. The opposition forces, chiefly the Northern Alliance, would do most of the ground fighting. If the United States repeated the mistakes of the Soviets by invading with a large land force, they would be doomed.
Franks's Special Forces teams would be used to pinpoint targets that could be hit hard in U.S. bombing runs. On-the-ground human intelligence designating targets would allow extraordinarily specific and exact information for the precision bombs.
Hank, under instructions from Tenet, made clear that the paramilitary teams would be working for Franks, and in that spirit and somewhat contrary to recent practice, the CIA would give Franks and his Special Forces commanders the identities of all CIA assets in Afghanistan, their capabilities, their locations and the CIA's assessment of them. The military and the CIA were to work as partners.
Franks basically agreed with the plan. He disclosed that the bombing campaign was scheduled to begin any time from Oct. 6 on -- three days away.
Money talked in Afghanistan, Hank said, and they had millions in covert action money. On one level, the CIA could supply money to buy food, blankets, cold-weather gear and medicine that could be airdropped. Warlords or sub-commanders with dozens or hundreds of fighters could be bought off for as little as $50,000 in cash, Hank said. If we do this right, we can buy off a lot more of the Taliban than we have to kill. Good, the general said.
Through the middle of October, Jawbreaker was still the only American on-the-ground presence in Afghanistan. They were trying to find bombing targets.
"Just hit the front lines for me," Fahim told Gary. Bomb the Taliban and al Qaeda on the other side. "I can take Kabul, I can take Kunduz if you break the line for me. My guys are ready." Fahim was short and stocky, looked like a thug, and appeared to have had his nose broken about three times. His forces were decked out in new uniforms, supposedly waiting for the carpet bombing to begin so they could attack.
Gary visited Fahim's general who was in charge on the Shomali Plain, the area just north of Kabul where Alliance and Taliban troops were dug in. The general was even more bullish, saying the Alliance could take Kabul in a day if the front lines were broken with U.S. bombing. The bombing around the country wasn't accomplishing anything, the general said. His men were intercepting some Taliban radio communications showing that the Taliban were unimpressed. The general was disappointed. He pointed at the Taliban lines: Look, that is where the enemy is. Blowing up some depot in Kandahar wasn't doing anything for them.
Gary concluded that the bombing might be making the chain of command back in Washington feel good, but it wasn't working.
At 10:20 p.m. on Oct. 19, the Jawbreaker team marked a landing zone on the Shomali Plain. The first U.S. Special Forces A-team, Team 555, "Triple Nickel," was finally on its way after numerous weather delays. Two MH-53J Pave Low helicopters, the Air Force's largest, missed the target zone and landed far apart from each other. Army Chief Warrant Officer David Diaz and his 12-member A-team hopped out of the copter.
They were the essential eyes-on-target that the American pilots needed to bomb front lines. Each man was responsible for about 300 pounds of gear and supplies, including equipment needed to laser-designate targets.
For the next week, the Special Forces teams used laser target designators to direct U.S. bombing runs. Though the A-team had some initial successes, Gary could see they were getting leftovers -- U.S. bombers who had been assigned to other fixed targets. If these bombers didn't find their target or for some reason did not expend their munitions, they were available to come to the front lines and attack Taliban fighters there. But Gary had witnessed too many occasions when the A-team would spot a convoy of Taliban or al Qaeda trucks -- once, there were 20 trucks -- and would call and call to get a bomber but couldn't get one. The planes were still focused on predesignated fixed targets.
Gary sat down at one of the 10 computers his team had in their dusty quarters and wrote a cable to CIA headquarters. If we don't change the pattern, we're going to lose this thing, he wrote. The Taliban had never been bombed hard. They think they can survive this. The Northern Alliance is ready. They want to go, and they are as ready as they ever will be, but they're losing confidence. They think what they are seeing is all we can do. If we hit these Taliban with sustained bombing for three or four days, the young Taliban are going to break.
Gary sent the cable, which was only two pages long. Tenet decided to take it to the White House the next day. 'That's One Bargain'
Hank went to Afghanistan to assess the front lines with some of the agency's paramilitary teams. The millions of dollars in covert money that the teams were spreading around was working wonders. He calculated that thousands of Taliban members had been bought off. The Northern Alliance was trying to induce defections from the Taliban itself, but the CIA could come in and offer cash. The agency's hand would often be hidden as the negotiations began -- $10,000 for this sub-commander and his dozens of fighters, $50,000 for this bigger commander and his hundreds of fighters.
In one case, $50,000 was offered to a commander to defect. Let me think about it, the commander said. So the Special Forces A-team directed a J-DAM precision bomb right outside the commander's headquarters. The next day, they called the commander back. How about $40,000? He accepted.
The CIA and Special Forces teams were concentrated around Mazar-e Sharif, the city of 200,000 on a dusty plain 35 miles from the Uzbek border. A week earlier, a Special Forces lieutenant colonel had been infiltrated into the area with five other men to coordinate the work of the A-teams. The teams were directing devastating fire from the air at the Taliban's two rings of defensive trenches around the ancient city.
One team had split into four close air support units, spread out over 50 miles of rugged mountain terrain. The absence of fixed targets had freed up the U.S. bombers for directed attacks by the separate units, which were able to use bombs as if they were artillery. The big difference was the precision and the size of the munitions. These were 500-pound bombs. Taliban supply lines and communications had been severed in the carpet bombing. Hundreds of their vehicles and bunkers were destroyed, and thousands of Taliban fighters were killed, captured or had fled.
The massive violence the United States could bring was finally being coordinated.
On Nov. 9, Mazar fell. Three days later, the White House learned that Kabul had been abandoned. And on Dec. 7, the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar fell, effectively leaving the Northern Alliance, its Pashtun allies and the United States in charge of the country.
In all, the U.S. commitment to overthrow the Taliban had been about 110 CIA officers and 316 Special Forces personnel, plus massive air power.
Tenet, the CIA director, was extremely proud of what the agency had accomplished. The money it had been able to distribute without traditional cost controls had mobilized the tribals. In some cases, performance standards had been set: Move from point A to point B, and you get several hundred thousand dollars. A stack of money on the table was still the universal language. His paramilitary and case officers in and around Afghanistan had made it possible -- a giant return on years of investment in human intelligence.
The CIA calculated that they had spent only $70 million in direct cash outlays on the ground in Afghanistan, and some of that had been to pay for field hospitals. In an interview, Bush said, "That's one bargain," and he wondered aloud what the Soviets had spent in their disastrous war in Afghanistan that had contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
----
Showdown Could Impact Homeland Security Bill
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Terrorism.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Senate showdown over what Democrats call Republican special-interest goodies in the homeland security legislation could determine the bill's fate in Congress this year.
The Democratic-controlled Senate was expected to vote Tuesday morning on whether to strip seven GOP items from the bill. Republicans say that move could kill any chance that the Homeland Security Department legislation would make it to President Bush's desk this year.
``With Congress' vote on the final legislation, America will have a single agency with the full-time duty of protecting our people against attack,'' Bush said over the weekend. In the new agency, he said, ``We'll have good people, well-organized and well-equipped, working day and night to oppose the serious dangers of our time.''
Senate Democrats say majority House Republicans slipped several provisions into the bill that they say have nothing with homeland security -- and without consulting Democrats.
``The bill the president supported was 35 pages long. The bill that I've been asked to vote on on Monday or Tuesday is 484 pages long, filled with special interest legislation, loaded up by the House Republicans in the last few days,'' Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said Sunday on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
The most egregious, Democrats say, is language to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits over the vaccines they create and their side effects, including wiping out lawsuits already in court.
``Does this have anything at all to do with homeland security? The answer is no,'' Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said last week. And one GOP lawmaker, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, said he was unaware of the provision when he voted for the bill last week and now wants it removed. He said it would take away the rights of families whose children are injured by a vaccine.
Republicans deny that the provision would wipe out current lawsuits, and say future liability protection is needed to ensure that drug companies will produce the vaccines that America needs to fight the war on terrorism.
Bush's homeland security chief, Tom Ridge, took issue Sunday with Burton's characterization of the provision.
``If you look at the present system, these families and these children have access to compensation through a special fund that was set up. And if they're not satisfied with that, they still reserve the right to litigate it. So I would disagree with his conclusion,'' Ridge said on ABC's ``This Week.''
The bill also include liability shields for airport security companies and businesses that sell approved anti-terrorism technologies, and a measure to block Senate-approved legislation to bar government contracts with corporations that have moved their headquarters offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.
The bill would also create at least one new university-based homeland security research center. Democrats say it was intended for Texas A&M University, a favorite of retiring Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas. Republicans say it could go to any number of universities.
GOP leaders argue that all of the provisions are related to homeland security and should not be taken from the House-approved bill.
If the bill is changed substantially, aides said, the leaders are unlikely to call House members back to Washington to consider it, thus killing it for the year.
Once the Senate finishes with the homeland security bill, it will move on to the terrorism insurance legislation passed by the House.
Under the bill, the government would cover up to $90 billion annually in insurance claims from any future terrorist attacks for the next three years. The government would cover up to 90 percent of insured losses from major attacks, with the insurance industry covering up to the first $15 billion in annual claims.
The measure does not cover last year's terrorist attacks, which generated an estimated $40 billion in claims that insurers had to cover.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
Target missed on ballistic fingerprinting
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
November 18, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021118-46254714.htm#2
The gun-control arguments of Martin Schram ("Shooting down worthy laws," Commentary, Saturday) fail on several counts. Ballistic fingerprinting is dubious for at least three reasons: 1) The ballistic fingerprint of a newly manufactured gun under highly controlled conditions will change as it is broken in and used; 2) the print can depend on the type and brand of cartridge; and 3) it can be changed easily by simple home-remedy gunsmithing. Furthermore, guns used in crimes typically are obtained illegally, making it impossible to trace from the print to the user. All this makes the highly expensive scheme totally useless.
Mr. Schram's argument concerning confiscation is erroneous in that pro-gunners are not concerned about foreign enemies, but rather our own government. While many anti-gun folks are well-intentioned, the dedicated and well-financed members of the anti-gun lobby, in their more candid moments, make no bones about the fact that their ultimate goal is a total ban on private gun ownership.
Their motives and actions have nothing to do with crime or gun safety but everything to do with control over citizens, which we don't need. As to comparing the situation to automobiles, I have never seen the slightest hint of a movement to ban the private ownership of automobiles.
The whole debate on firearms should focus on the overall benefits and advantages of gun ownership versus the disadvantages, as pointed out in the excellent column by Thomas Sowell ("In for repair and recrimination?") in the same edition. Well-researched data shows that the many positives of gun ownership far outweigh the negatives.
Additionally, two important aspects of private gun ownership should be kept in mind, one symbolic and one practical. Tyrannical governments and citizens with the right to keep and bear arms are incompatible notions, as our Founding Fathers realized. As a practical matter, gun ownership makes the citizen able to defend himself and his family rather than be dependent on and under the control of the government.
We need no new laws, but - as evidenced by the fact that Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, where sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad bought his gun - apparently was still in business, we need tougher enforcement of existing laws.
May common sense ultimately prevail.
JOSEPH A. GILLIS
Arnold, Md
-------- china
China's Military Retains Strong Role
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Loyal-Army.html
BEIJING (AP) -- ``Long live the Communist Party of China!'' So proclaims a banner held aloft by flag-waving soldiers in olive drab.
Though aging revolutionary heroes finally withdrew from active politics last week and economic might has replaced Mao Zedong's ``barrel of the gun,'' China's communist leadership is likely to continue doing what it can to keep the 2.5 million strong People's Liberation Army happy -- even if it means rattling neighbors with occasional missile tests or talking tough toward Taiwan.
The man who replaced 76-year-old President Jiang Zemin as party general secretary during a congress that ended Friday, Vice President Hu Jintao, will be depending on army and paramilitary units to keep China stable as he wrestles with rising crime, massive unemployment and rampant corruption.
``The people's army is a staunch pillar of the people's democratic dictatorship,'' Jiang declared to the congress.
Six new members of the nine-person Politburo Standing Committee, the party's inner sanctum, are considered Jiang's proteges. More crucially, he remains chairman of the Central Military Commission, the organ that oversees the army. That gives him official say over the military and added leverage over Hu.
``It will be very difficult for Hu -- like I think it was for Jiang -- to go against a united front of the military, especially given the fact that he has no military background whatsoever,'' says Ellis Joffe, an expert on the Chinese military and a visiting professor at the University of Michigan.
The PLA evolved from the Communist-led peasant-soldier insurgencies that vanquished Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and seized power in 1949. Jiang knows the importance of keeping the army on his side: He was named party leader by Deng Xiaoping in 1989 after the military assault on Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrators.
As the first top leader with no military credentials -- both Mao Zedong and Deng were revolutionary heroes -- Jiang strengthened his hand during his 13 years in power by appointing supporters and purging generals suspected of disloyalty.
Under Jiang, the government has tried to streamline and professionalize China's soldiers, sailors and flyers. Military assignments were rotated fairly often to prevent development of regional factions, long a hazard in Chinese politics.
``Under Jiang Zemin, many things have been done to institutionalize the party's control of the army,'' says Zhang Yongnian of the National University of Singapore's East Asian Institute.
The military budget -- a record $20 billion this year -- was boosted to raise army salaries, support development of missiles and fund purchases of advanced weaponry, destroyers and supersonic jet fighters from Russia.
China's true military spending is estimated by experts to be up to five times the official figure.
``They (the army) supported Jiang Zemin where it counted, and he gave them a lot,'' Joffe says. ``He gave them autonomy, he gave them budget increases, he gave them a voice in policymaking in issues that mattered to them like Taiwan and relations with the United States.''
Though U.S. officials consider China's military modernization a concern, many in the PLA view it as long overdue.
Jiang is not considered hawkish, and the new leadership includes educated generals with more international experience than the departing revolutionary veterans. But those newly promoted generals represent powerful interests that could push for even more spending and a hard line on Taiwan.
One of the two new vice chairmen of the military commission is Gen. Cao Gangchuan, 66, a logistics and armaments specialist who has handled major weapons purchases and tackled the huge task of divesting the military of its commercial enterprises. Cao is said to be tough on Taiwan.
Gen. Liang Guanglie, 61, a commission newcomer, heads the Nanjing military region, China's front line for Taiwan. He has commanded eastern-seaboard war games that analysts say prove Beijing would use force to reclaim the island, which it considers part of its territory.
Other generals promoted at the congress include the commander in charge of the Muslim region of Xinjiang, the commander handling Tibet and the commissar of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, which oversees key defense conglomerates.
After the 1989 crackdown, military leaders appeared to gain influence. Some analysts say missile tests aimed at Taiwan in 1995-96 were evidence of pressure from the army. Since then, despite occasional flare-ups of saber-rattling, Beijing has adopted a more conciliatory tone as it builds up diplomatic stature.
But like any military, the basic job of China's is unchanged.
``It's in the military's interest to have a tenser situation,'' says Bruce Jacobs, a professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
``Then,'' he says, ``they get more toys to play with.''
-------- colombia
Colombian Town Rises Up in Outrage
Politician's Slaying Sparks Revolt Against Paramilitary Influence
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 18, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/
CONCORDIA, Colombia -- This town on the banks of a vast tropical swamp lost its mind one day this month.
In an act of collective rage following the assassination of a beloved mayoral candidate, roughly 500 men and women ransacked government offices, the headquarters of rival politicians and the state-run phone company. The mob used sledgehammers to weaken walls, gasoline to burn filing cabinets and furniture inside, and stones to batter away at the bricks. Much of the work, carried out through the night of Nov. 7, was done with bare hands.
The spontaneous uprising marked a new turn in Colombia's year-long experiment with civil resistance as a way of opposing the various armed groups engaged in its long civil war. It came as the new U.S.-backed president, Alvaro Uribe, urges citizens to stand up to the two leftist guerrilla groups and a privately funded paramilitary force that are dominant in much of rural Colombia.
Uribe's idea has been to seek ordinary people's help in the effort to strengthen the state's security presence -- the army and police instead of irregular combatants from the left and the right -- in the loosely governed countryside. The vacuum in government authority has been cited as one of the main reasons the war, in which the Bush administration has made a growing commitment on the side of the government, seems to endure year after year with no end in sight.
Even before Uribe took office in August, civil resistance to armed groups was blooming in Colombia's countryside. Early this year, a series of village demonstrations began against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as the largest leftist insurgency is known. With the small revolt here in Concordia, the protests have now extended to violent resistance against the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a paramilitary force that combats the guerrillas, often in tandem with the official army.
The townspeople who went on a rampage here hold the AUC responsible for killing Eugenio Escalante, 47, a favorite son whose body turned up soon after he met with several paramilitary leaders who wanted him to get out of next month's mayoral elections. The AUC has deep ties to Colombia's political and financial establishment. The links are strong here, too, and Escalante apparently was killed for campaigning on a promise to end them.
For at least two years, townspeople said, the sitting mayor and his allies have given the paramilitary group a slice of the municipal budget. In addition, they said, the municipal authorities have looked the other way while the AUC carried out a brutal "cleansing" campaign against drug users, drunks and presumed leftists. Finally, the disgruntled town residents charged, the local authorities plotted with AUC leaders to stay in power -- making Escalante's popular candidacy a threat.
Only those buildings associated with the current municipal government were sacked, leaving intact the small pink hospital and the school that were financed by the central government. The entire municipal government has since fled. Local paramilitary leaders have also stayed away.
"This was indignation," said a doctor here, bleary from drink, sleeplessness and fright, who like all those interviewed during a recent visit declined to be identified for fear of reprisal. "No one that night was acting with a clear head. This was a murder that was planned, and now it is going to be very difficult for this group to operate here with any help from us."
A native son who earned his medical degree in Paraguay, Escalante was ultimately too brave or foolhardy to survive politics in this town, which lies 390 miles north of the capital, Bogota. It has never had a permanent National Police presence or an army base. Instead, guerrilla and paramilitary forces have taken turns standing in, leaving local officials to the whims of whichever of the armed groups was in ascendancy at the time.
More than half of Colombia's 1,098 mayors are working under death threats issued by guerrilla or paramilitary groups, according to the Colombian Federation of Municipalities. Over the course of this year, 10 mayors have been killed and 10 others kidnapped. Their fate underscores the importance that the armed groups place on controlling the budgets and political agendas of local governments.
Concordia's early mayoral race, only the second here since it became an independent jurisdiction in the year 2000, offers a grim preview of the hundreds of regularly scheduled municipal elections next year. Gilberto Toro, director of the municipal federation, said "the situation would be pretty much the same for candidates almost everywhere" if the elections were held now. In 2000, 18 mayoral candidates were killed across the country.
"In some cases, candidates were forced to make alliances with the armed groups," Toro said. "At times, the people have managed to protect their leaders, mainly by surrounding them or protesting vigorously against the threats, but this time they couldn't. Despair led them to react the way they did."
Concordia sits on a low sweep of land that juts into a broad swamp dotted with clumps of water lilies. Twin yellow church bell towers, draped with Spanish moss, rise from the banks. On the choppy water, fishermen stand in shallow canoes casting nets, as hundreds of white herons swarm above for a chance to scavenge the catch.
Many of Concordia's sagging plaster and mud houses date to the turn of the century. The muddy streets have never had a patch of pavement. Pigs root in tall grass while peacocks bounce among the tin rooftops, a rare graceful note in an otherwise bleak village landscape.
From many of the town's walls, Escalante's bespectacled gaze still glowers from campaign posters under a crown of black hair parted in the middle. A dermatologist by training, he was a father of three young children and brother of 10 siblings, so many here are related to him by blood. "Special," "smart" and "determined to change this place" were the most frequent descriptions of him, offered by people too frightened to say more than a few anonymous words.
Escalante's slogan, "Welfare and Progress," still splashes across the wall of a small home at a split in the dirt road entering town. A statue of the Virgin Mary sits at the divide, across from the headquarters of Anibal Castro, handpicked by the current mayor and his paramilitary patrons to succeed him. Castro, also a doctor, has since fled town. Only his torched office remains, its tin roof collapsed on a pile of ashes.
His political sponsor, sitting Mayor Pablo Salas, fled to the provincial capital of Santa Marta as the mob gathered force and reduced City Hall, the Municipal Council building, the Social Solidarity Network headquarters and the Telecom office largely to rubble and ash. Salas, according to townspeople, essentially answered in his daily duties to a woman named Sonia. She was identified by residents as the local commander of the AUC's Northern Bloc, which arrived two years ago to evict the FARC from this town and others like it along the Caribbean coast.
The fight here has been mainly for strategic position. Concordia sits near the Rio Magdalena, Colombia's largest river, which is used like a highway to move drugs, guns and goods from the interior to the coast. Neither group has offered much of a political program for the town over the years, viewing it as a place to raise money and hold ground against the other side.
In the weeks before Escalante's murder, Sonia asked him several times to leave the race as it became clear that he would win and end the paramilitary's cut of the budget.
"Look around this town, take pictures of it, and you will see not one bit of government action on our behalf," said a longtime resident, adding that much of the public money went into paramilitary pockets. "He [Escalante] told me late last month that he was being pressured to pull out. He just said, 'I'll never do it.' "
On the afternoon of Nov. 7, Escalante was summoned to a meeting of paramilitary commanders, local ranchers and business leaders in a private home here, according to townspeople. Again he was told to leave the race to Castro, and again he refused. Two hours later, less than a mile on the main road out of town, Escalante's body was found at twilight. He had been shot four times in the head.
"The town erupted," said an old man with a red baseball cap sitting across from the ruined City Hall. "There is no democracy here, no government, just a caudilla who ordered this killing. Now, maybe, there is no one at all."
Escalante was buried a few days later at a funeral attended by 5,000 people, but his small yellow house across from City Hall is still the site of mourning. Dozens of his relatives -- brothers and sisters, their children, his wife -- line the walls of the dark living room in plastic chairs. Candles burn along one wall before a framed photograph of him and a cluster of flowers.
The town is terrified, awaiting the paramilitary response. But already, from the groups of men talking in whispers on many street corners, a plan has emerged to make their message clear in the mayoral election still scheduled for Dec. 15: "We're all going to vote for Escalante in his tomb," the doctor said.
-------- iraq
Iraq takes delivery of powder used in chemical arms
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021118-96845891.htm
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. A former weapons inspector says that company 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.
Researchers 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 gas 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 (DIA) assessment. Although the military's protective suits have been improved since then, researchers 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 researcher 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," Mr. 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," Mr. 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 of 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, Mr. Spertzel said.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli forces destroy bomb-making plant
By Joshua Brilliant and Saud Abu Ramadan
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021117-044951-8549r.htm
TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Israeli troops raided the Palestinian Preventive Security headquarters in southern Gaza City early Monday, destroying a bomb-producing plant, lathes for manufacturing weapons, and a Qassam rocket found on the premises, the Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said.
Preventive Security in Gaza has changed "from a body whose function is to foil terror into an organization that carries out, initiates, backs and provides auspices to a long list of terror attacks," the army said in a statement.
Israel's new Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the raid's findings "have again proven the strong link between the Palestinian Authority security services and Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose members perpetrated last Friday's attack in Hebron."
Mofaz referred to an attack on soldiers and border policemen who were guarding worshippers walking from the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron to Kiryat Arba after the Sabbath evening prayers. Nine soldiers and policemen and three settlers who had rushed to help were killed in the attack, for which Islamic Jihad assumed responsibility.
In the Gaza City raid, at least 35 Israeli army tanks and armored personnel carriers spent about four hours in southern Gaza City, pulling out just before dawn, witnesses and security sources said.
The operation began Sunday night, when the Israeli army vehicles -- supported by Apache helicopters -- departed from the Jewish settlement of Netzarim and drove into the southern neighborhood of Gaza City known as Tal el Hawa.
During the operation, dozens of rockets, tanks shells and rounds of heavy ammunition were fired from the helicopters and the tanks, causing severe destruction to parts of the preventive security organization's main headquarters, Palestinian sources said.
The head of the Palestinian Preventive Service in Gaza, Col. Rashid Abu Shbak, said that the Israeli forces had targeted the training department, adding that Israeli troops raided the headquarters supported by tanks and bulldozers and destroyed several buildings inside.
The IDF spokeswoman said the soldiers had "encountered resistance that included light arms and anti-tank rocket fire. Shots were also fired at the troops from a neighboring hospital," the IDF spokeswoman said.
Medical sources at Shiffa Hospital said five Palestinians, two policemen, a news photographer and two civilians were wounded during the operation. Severe damage was done to some adjacent civilian buildings.
After the Israeli army forces left the area, the Palestinian residents and security officers found a leaflet from Israel Defense Forces telling the preventive security officers that they didn't intend to harm civilians.
The IDF leaflet said the Israeli forces had come to the security organization's headquarters because some of its officers were using the building to help Palestinian militants carry out attacks against Israel.
The Palestinian Authority said in a statement that it strongly condemned the Israeli operation, and it warned Israel against continuing operations that injured civilians and destroyed the authority's infrastructure.
(Joshua Brilliant reported from Tel Aviv and Saud Abu Ramadan from Gaza.)
--------
On Hebron Ambush Site, a New Settlement Rises
November 18, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html
HEBRON, West Bank, Nov. 17 - It is because they believe that Abraham bought a cave to entomb himself and his family here 4,000 years ago that religious Jews feel they must live in Hebron now.
It was because 12 Israelis were killed in an ambush here on Friday night that Naaman Menachan, a 20-year-old yeshiva student, came to a recently bulldozed Palestinian orchard on Saturday evening with a submachine gun across his chest and a sleeping bag over his shoulder.
In Hebron, where the political and religious divisions are animated by death, a new settlement was born on Saturday. Following the tradition of their tenacious movement, settlers converted sorrow and anger into territorial gain, building a rough outpost near the site of the Friday ambush. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon endorsed the settlers' aims during a visit to Hebron today.
In the first 24 hours of the settlement's life, its builders went from pitching tents to hooking up water lines and a generator and, tonight, to discussing where to get closets and carpeting. By dusk, Israeli boys were laughing and playing soccer on a field where they had never dared to venture before, as soldiers set up a seven-foot-high concrete barrier around the new community.
Held under curfew for a second day, Palestinians watched the bustle silently from surrounding rooftops, then withdrew into their houses as night fell.
Nowhere else in Israel and its occupied territories do Israelis and Palestinians live as close together and as far apart as in Hebron.
The Hebrew root of "Hebron" is the same of that of "to unite," and the Arabic name of the city, El Khalil, is based on the word for a close friend. Yet peaceful coexistence died bloodily here decades ago, to be replaced by fear and seemingly irreconcilable claims. This is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's frontier, and perhaps its future.
Gazing at the darkened Palestinian houses, Mr. Menachan tried to envision the city in 20 years. "What I hope is, no Arabs," he said, as a fire made of brambles and olive branches crackled nearby. "If they continue to make trouble, no Arabs, and a Jewish city. If they're good people - if they know this is our land, that God gave it to us - they can stay.
"If they behave like animals," he added, nodding at the site of the shooting, "then not."
About 150,000 Palestinians live in Hebron. Inside the city, near the Cave of the Patriarchs, venerated by Jews and Muslims as Abraham's tomb, 450 Jews live in an intently guarded settlement that was started in 1979.
Less than half a mile away, at Hebron's edge, is another religious settlement, Qiryat Arba, with about 7,000 residents. It was established after the 1967 war, when Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan and Jews returned to the city for the first time in 20 years.
The ambush on Friday took place along an exposed road between those two settlements, in the Israeli-controlled section of the city. The Israeli Army initially said the attack was on Jewish worshipers, but it appears to have been directed at security forces who guard settlers. Three security guards from Qiryat Arba were killed, along with five members of the border police and four soldiers, including the commander of forces in Hebron.
By sundown on Saturday, when the Sabbath ended, settlers were grieving and seething. More than 1,000 of them gathered next to the road, where a Palestinian orchard had recently been bulldozed after another attack. The dirt had been graded as though in preparation for building.
In between somber psalms, speaker after speaker called for the creation of a new settlement on the spot to join Qiryat Arba to the settlement inside Hebron.
"There won't be just a Jewish neighborhood here," declared Benny Elon, a member of Parliament. "There will be a Jewish town here."
After the rally, some youths tried to run into Palestinian Hebron, only to be turned back by Israeli forces. In a turbulent crowd, they pounded on the doors of nearby Palestinian houses and then smeared the pale stone with blue graffiti: "Every Arab killed - for me it's a holiday," and, over and over, "Vengeance."
What happened down on the field, by contrast, was calm and purposeful.
A man in running shoes, jeans and a prayer shawl strode to the edge of the clearing and began praying intensely, bending rapidly back and forth at the waist over his prayer book. The outpost took shape around him during the next four hours, as midnight approached.
A truck pulled up and, without a word, the driver unloaded a water tank the size of a small car beside the praying man, who did not look around. Steps away, two dozen young people formed a bucket brigade and began pulling stones from an old wall beside another orchard, passing them along to build an enclosure behind a green trailer.
First a lean-to appeared, then three silver tents were pitched. Benches were set up, and a rabbi began leading a group in prayers and songs. A flatbed truck arrived carrying a red container for conversion to a shelter.
The work proceeded even though those working at the site did not have a formal permit to build a new settlement and did not know who owned the land.
Children gathered by the olive-tree bonfire to watch. "Because people died here, we must be here," said Sophie Guveri, 15.
To a stranger, the children told stories of Arab deceit and cruelty: there was the Palestinian who cleaned for the mayor and stole maps of Qiryat Arba; there were the Palestinians who abused their jobs in an Israeli metal shop to make weapons.
And then there was the attack on Friday. David Frank, 16, lived next door to one of the Qiryat Arba guards who was killed. He recalled watching each morning as the man lingered to play with a young son before reluctantly leaving for work. "Friday morning I saw him with his child, and now he's gone," the teenager said. "We can't leave. We'll stay here together."
A small community of Jews lived alongside an Arab majority in Hebron for hundreds of years. But as the national aspirations of the two peoples began to grow in the 20th century, so did the violence. In 1929, Arabs rampaged here, killing 67 Jews, including women and children, and burning Torah scrolls. Jews drew profoundly different lessons from that massacre, said Avraham Burg, the speaker of the Israeli Parliament. Until the riot, Mr. Burg's family had lived here for seven generations.
He said his mother, then a baby, survived because her grandfather's Arab landlord posted himself in the doorway and took a savage beating to protect the family. But other family members who hid with Mr. Burg's great-uncle were killed. Now, he said, his family was split.
"Half will never believe any Arab - you will find them in each settlement," he said. "And half of my family you will find in the peace camp, looking for the individual Arab who will overcome the mob and make peace with us."
Asked if Jews and Palestinians could coexist here, Mr. Burg said, "It's impossible, and it cannot become possible. We're talking about a deeply religious city that attracts the fundamental emotions on both sides. It attracts extremism, intolerance and inability to compromise."
In 1980, just after Jews moved back into Hebron, six Israelis were killed, also on a Sabbath eve.
In 1994, a doctor from Qiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, originally of Brooklyn, opened fire on Muslims at prayer here. He killed 29 and wounded 150 before he was beaten to death. He remains something of an underground hero here.
The Palestinian mayor of Hebron, Mustafa Natsheh, said the settlers "have no intention at all to coexist with our people." The "original Jews of Hebron" would be welcome to return, he said, provided that Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war, when Israel declared independence, were granted the right to return to homes in Israeli cities like Haifa and Jaffa.
"The settlers are not the original Jews of Hebron, and these people are trying to create tension and chaos," he said. "They look on us as their enemy."
Mr. Natsheh seemed unsurprised by the new settlement, calling it the realization of an old plan to link Qiryat Arba to Hebron.
At the funeral today of the three settler guards, Zvi Katsover, a leader of the Hebron settlement, suggested that the settlers had capitalized on an opportunity provided by the attack on Friday night. "We have created a new settlement outpost, and it would have been a historic sin not to have made use of this occasion," he said.
Today, the water tank was supplemented by a sink, connected to a pipe run from Qiryat Arba. Israeli children yanked up radishes from a Palestinian field, until Israeli police officers shooed them away.
This evening, settlers connected a roaring generator to electric lights strung from a half-dozen shelters. On benches, a group of organizers urgently discussed how to get food, furniture and chemical toilets. They had not yet turned to the question of a name for the settlement.
"This is how we will avenge our dead," said one of the organizers, Bella Gonen.
Although shut in, Palestinians monitored the construction. Thawre Jabr, 19, lives with her mother and five relatives in a house by the lane where the ambush was laid. She said settlers had tried to break in and drive the family out. "If we leave, they will take the house," said Ms. Jabr, an architecture student. "They want to make a street just for settlers and take the houses from all sides."
Ms. Jabr is no stranger to the violence of the conflict. She said that her father, who died this spring, served 15 years in jail for killing a settler. Although she feared she would die during the firefight on Friday, she clearly took pride in the attack. "When they killed them," she said of the Palestinian gunmen, "they tried to liberate our country."
Jewish settlers here expressed no doubt that God deeded them this land.
"This is more ours than Tel Aviv," said Meir Menachem, a teacher of history and Judaism and a leader in Qiryat Arba. "This is the land of the Bible, not Tel Aviv."
Mr. Menachem, 43, said the new settlement would survive if its creators were stubborn enough. "We are a very stubborn nation," he said.
Predicting that Palestinians would vanish from Hebron, he said, "This is our land, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We returned here after 2,000 years, and we don't have any other place to go."
Mr. Menachem said he had buried more than 30 friends since he moved here in 1979.
"Until the Messiah will come," he said, "there will be no peace." He said the Messiah would come soon.
-------- landmines
Land Mine Explodes in India, 20 Die
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Bus-Blast.html
HYDERABAD, India -- A land mine exploded under a passenger bus Monday as it traveled through a dense forest in southern India, killing at least 20 people, police said.
The bus was completely destroyed in the attack, about 125 miles north of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state. After the blast, the attackers opened fire on the flaming wreckage, apparently mistaking it for a police transport, said Gautam Swang, deputy inspector-general of the district police.
No police were aboard the bus, said Swang. "The extremists have committed a ghastly mistake," he said.
He said the bus was carrying more than 40 passengers and that at least 20 had been killed. The survivors, including many critically injured, were taken to the nearest village, but there was no doctor there to treat them, he said.
Swang blamed the leftist People's War Group, which mostly targets rich landowners, police and government officials. The group claims to be inspired by the communist ideology of Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
Police had been patrolling the forest area Monday after exchanging fire with the rebels over the weekend. At least five of the rebels were killed Sunday.
Swang said the police investigation of the blast would continue after dawn Tuesday. The bus attack occurred just before the forest road closed for the night, at about 7 p.m.
The People's War Group is fighting for an independent homeland in five southern Indian states. More than 6,000 people have died in the fighting since in 1981.
The group announced a unilateral cease-fire earlier this year, hoping for peace talks, but called it off in July, accusing the government of failing to restrain police from attacking guerrilla camps.
The thick forest where the bus blast occurred is dotted with hamlets and small villages. The rebels are able to hide and regroup easily there, but Swanga said the latest attack could turn local supporters against them.
"They think they are secure in their forest, but they won't be anymore," he said.
-------- nato
NATO Envoys Agree on Modernization
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Summit-Military.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Ambassadors from the 19 members of the NATO alliance agreed Monday on ways to respond better to new threats from terrorists or rogue states.
Officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels said the ambassadors finished a draft agreement on a rapid deployment force of over 20,000 troops. A core group would be able to deploy within a week.
The plan will involve land, sea and air units from Europe and North America. Details will be announced at a larger NATO summit that opens Thursday in the Czech capital Prague.
The ambassadors also held a final, behind-closed-doors meeting on NATO's plan to invite new members from the old communist bloc to join the western alliance.
They didn't say which countries will gain membership to the alliance. But senior officials said there won't be any surprises when the announcement is made Thursday, suggesting the seven front-running candidates will be invited to join in early 2004.
They are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.
The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined NATO in 1999.
The ambassadors also agreed on measures to modernize NATO's military hardware and better prepare alliance forces for the dangers of the post-Sept. 11 world. Plans include leasing transport planes so alliance forces can get to trouble spots quickly and developing equipment to guard against radiation, poison-gas, or germ warfare.
Members also want secure communications and jamming gear to ensure enemies cannot listen in on alliance troops; ground surveillance and midair refueling planes; and more precision-guided munitions.
The so-called ``Prague capabilities package'' is an attempt to narrow the gap between U.S. military might and European forces weakened by years of defense cuts. The plan will be confirmed at the summit.
Britain, France, Norway and Portugal have already announced increases in defense spending. Other nations are expected to follow and have agreed to share weaponry and other equipment to make better use of limited resources.
Monday's meeting did not work out details on prolonging NATO's peacekeeping role in Macedonia beyond a Dec. 15 deadline. Diplomats said the allies will stay in the Balkan country, but would meet again Tuesday to look at the details of the extended mission.
NATO must stay because the European Union hasn't agreed with NATO member Turkey on allowing a EU military force to take over in Macedonia and use NATO facilities.
By denying the EU access to NATO planning, Turkey has effectively vetoed the European bloc's efforts to set up a military wing that would eventually include a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force ready for peacekeeping missions.
Turkey says it wants stronger guarantees that such a force would never be used against its interests, particularly in sensitive areas such as Cyprus or the Aegean Sea. Turkey is also pressing the Europeans to open negotiations on its bid for EU membership.
EU defense ministers are scheduled to discuss the impasse Tuesday in Brussels.
-------- pakistan
Bush denies plans to take out Pak nukes
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=28566919
WASHINGTON: President Bush has denied reports that the United States has contingency plans to neutralise Pakistan's nuclear assets.
The US president seemingly offered this assurance to Pakistan's General Musharraf when the two met on the sidelines of the UN summit this year, following the publication last December of an article in the New Yorker magazine by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, saying the US and Israel had contingency plans to take out Pakistan's nuclear warheads in the event of the country falling to fundamentalists.
"Seymour Hersh is a liar," Bush is quoted as telling Musharraf in a Washington Post article that previewed a forthcoming book by its Managing Editor Bob Woodward about the war on terrorism in which the comment is made.
It is not clear from the article in what context Bush made the remark and who raised the issue. But Bush evidently proferred the assurance before reports saying US intelligence has evidence that Pakistan provided nuclear know-how to North Korea till as recently as three months back.
In the New Yorker article, Hersh, quoting unnamed intelligence officials, says the Pentagon has developed contingency plans to work with an Israeli special operations unit to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons if the country became unstable.
"In recent weeks, the administration has been reviewing and "refreshing" its contingency plans. Such operations depend on intelligence, however, and there is disagreement within the administration about the quality of the CIA's data," Hersh reported. "The American intelligence community cannot be sure, for example, that it knows the precise whereabouts of every Pakistani warhead - or whether all the warheads that it has found are real."
He then quoted an official as saying Pakistan has some dummy locations, and if the US-Israeli operation mounted an operation and failed to clear all the nukes, then "the cat is out of the bag".
US officials had scoffed at Hersh's report even at the time it was published, but there was plenty of discussion - in undertones - in the government, think tank and media circles about the need to exfiltrate Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, especially after reports of its top nuclear scientists having connection with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
The issue has resurfaced in recent days following the episode involving North Korea and the impending war on Iraq. In a critique of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, New York Times editorialist Nicholas Kristof on Saturday wrote, "After all, if it's appropriate to carry out pre-emptive strikes on countries that sponsor terrorism and secretly develop nuclear weapons, then we could launch an invasion today - of Pakistan."
But Bush and other senior administration officials have continued to insist that Pakistan has met the standards for being an ally in the war on terrorism despite skepticism in many circles.
In the analysts' community, speculation is rife that the seeming abandon with which the Bush administration views Pakistan's shenanigans suggests it already has a handle on the country's nuclear assets.
Soon after the Hersh report, when Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, he said he was confident that he (Musharraf) understands the importance of ensuring that all elements of his nuclear programme are safe and secure.
"And he knows that if he needs any technical assistance in how to improve that security level, we would be more than willing to help in any way that we can," Powell added meaningfully.
Seymour Hersh is a widely acclaimed investigative reporter who is the author of a book on Israel's nuclear programme. But he gained notoriety in India for calling former Prime Minister Morarji Desai a CIA agent, an allegation he did not retract despite a lawsuit.
In his New Yorker piece, Hersh says some senior officials say they remain confident that the intelligence community can do its job (of taking out Pakistani nukes), despite the efforts of the Pakistani army to mask its nuclear arsenal.
"We'd be challenged to manage the problem, but there is contingency planning for that possibility," he quotes a military adviser as telling him. "We can't exclude the possibility that the Pakistanis could make it harder for us to act on what we know, but that's an operational detail. We're going to have to work harder to get to it quickly. We still have some good access."
Shortly before Hersh's article and soon after the 9/11 catastrophe, there were several commentaries on the think tank circuit - usually a sign of the thinking within the administration - calling for greater accountability of Pakistan's nuclear assets because of the danger of fundamentalists taking over.
Arguing for contingencies, non-proliferation scholar Jon Wolfstal had said that time that US plans "should include the ability to rapidly deploy forces to Pakistan to find and regain control of any lost nuclear materials and, only as a last option in a crisis, remove them from Pakistan to a secure location.
"These steps might seem extreme. Yet when faced with the real possibility of losing control of nuclear weapons to the types of organisations capable of the destruction seen September 11, they could be considered realistic and even prudent. The consequences of not being prepared to act are too great for us to imagine, even with our new ability to imagine the horrible," Wolfstal had maintained.
-------- us
PREPARATIONS
U.S. Taking Steps to Lay Foundation for Action in Iraq
November 18, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/international/18MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - The Bush administration is initiating a series of diplomatic and military steps that must be completed before the United States could go to war in Iraq, American and allied officials say.
The tasks, some of which could take weeks or even months to carry out, include formalizing allies' roles in any offensive, discouraging neighboring countries like Turkey and Israel from taking their own action, and deciding whether to seek United Nations support for an attack. Failure to accomplish many of these objectives could delay or complicate the onset of war.
The administration is moving urgently to accomplish its objectives, even before the start of the weapons inspections ordered by the United Nations. One goal is to create a credible threat of force, which might pressure President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to comply with the new resolution of the United Nations Security Council. The other main reason for acting speedily is to be ready for combat in Iraq before the hot weather sets in there next year.
There has already been some progress, officials said.
American officials have privately secured informal assurances of basing and overflight rights in several Central Asian and Persian Gulf countries, including Kuwait and Qatar, but those commitments need to be formalized. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is expected to consult with allies this week at the NATO summit meeting in Prague on how they might fill in for American forces now in Europe and the United States that would be moved to the gulf area.
The United States has stockpiled tanks and heavy equipment for more than 30,000 troops in several gulf states and on ships nearby. But additional heavy equipment for Marine or Army divisions would take three to four weeks to reach the Persian Gulf from ports like Beaumont, Tex., or Savannah, Ga.
American diplomats have intensified talks with two important allies, Turkey and Israel, to persuade them to remain on the sidelines during an invasion. Quietly, often through informal channels, Washington has also broached discussions with Iran about preventing Iraq's Shiite majority from trying to seize control of Baghdad or form a separate state if Mr. Hussein falls.
If Mr. Hussein defies or obstructs weapons inspectors, the Bush administration will have to decide whether to seek approval from the Security Council for a military strike. Administration officials say President Bush would like Council support, provided it can be obtained quickly. Diplomacy to lay the groundwork for winning that swift passage is in the most preliminary stages.
Senior military officials say the portion of a total force of about 250,000 troops needed to begin the "rolling start" of an air, land and sea attack could be in place within 30 days of Mr. Bush's order.
"We're making preparations every day," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said on Friday. "I don't want to start saying exactly when we're at peak readiness, but it would be a terrible mistake for anyone to underestimate our ability to act if needed."
The timing of any offensive, however, hinges greatly on the outcome of the weapons inspections. "A lot depends on how things come out with the U.N. resolutions," said one senior military official.
But the administration has already begun laying the groundwork with dozens of countries for a possible attack. In a flurry of recent meetings and telephone conversations, some in Washington and some overseas, American officials have asked for assistance from allies and antagonists - and received demands in exchange for their cooperation.
Turkey, which has several bases that would be critical for American troops and aircraft driving into northern Iraq, has received some of the most serious attention. In the past two weeks, Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, and John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, visited Ankara, while the new Turkish chief of staff, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, met with officials in the Pentagon and State Department.
Turkey wants assurances from Washington that independence-minded Kurdish factions in northern Iraq will not attempt to form a separate state, a move that it fears could incite Kurdish separatists in its own country. Turkey has more than 3,000 troops in northern Iraq and could take steps to counter any efforts by Kurds there to seize territory. To ease Ankara's concerns, the Pentagon is preparing war plans to dispatch troops to protect the oil fields around Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
At Ankara's behest, Washington is also pushing European countries to accept Turkey into the European Union. Turkey, a major trading partner with Iraq, is also seeking compensation for economic losses that might result from war. Negotiations are under way for a multibillion-dollar aid package that would include forgiving Turkish debts, and military aid and grants, diplomats said.
"Should a crisis come because of Iraq's defiance, we will work to ensure that the safety net under Turkey's economy stays in place," W. Robert Pearson, the American ambassador to Turkey, said in a statement.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has vowed to retaliate if Mr. Hussein launches missiles at Israel, a move that could swiftly undermine the support of moderate Arab states for an American invasion, perhaps igniting a broader war.
To allay Israel's concerns, Mr. Bush has approved a war plan that calls for American forces to seize land in western Iraq to destroy Scud missiles that could reach Israeli cities. Also, American diplomats are urging Israel to limit any responses to Iraqi aggression to purely defensive actions, such as firing Arrow antimissile weapons.
In turn, Israel, during a meeting between its national security adviser and senior Pentagon and State Department officials last Thursday, urged the United States to help resolve a water dispute with Lebanon and Syria, officials said.
The administration has quietly reached out to Iran, often through third parties, to enlist Tehran's support in discouraging Iraqi Shiites, who represent 60 percent of Iraq's population, from engaging in terrorism or forming a breakaway republic, officials said. Those channels include the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents American interests in Iran, various relief groups, the United Nations and a Tehran-based Iraqi Shiite opposition group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
In exchange for cooperation, Iran wants the United States to release billions of dollars in assets frozen in American financial institutions after American Embassy workers were taken hostage in 1979. It is also seeking pledges of assistance for Iraqi refugees who might pour into Iran if war breaks out.
In one sign that Tehran was trying to reach out to Washington, Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, requested permission to visit Washington this week to meet with members of Congress. But the State Department, which must approve his travel plans beyond New York, would not allow him to stay overnight, and he canceled the trip.
"I think sooner or later we will have better relations with Iran," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Friday. "We stay in touch with people who might be on the same side of this as us, but I don't want to give the impression there is a great rapprochement about to take place with respect to Iran."
The diplomatic talks are closely linked to troop deployments.
American diplomats and senior military officials - including Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf area - have fanned out across Europe and Southwest Asia in recent weeks to discuss basing agreements for American troops and aircraft, and to determine which nations may contribute forces or equipment to an offensive to disarm Iraq.
General Franks said in a recent interview that the United States had not yet made formal requests for assistance. But several countries have given private assurances to provide troops, equipment, basing, supplies and other support for a war, officials said. Saudi Arabia, the most important gulf ally in the 1991 war, has given conflicting signals on whether it would allow the military to use a major air operations center outside Riyadh or its spacious air bases for another war against Iraq.
General Franks has set up an alternate command post in Qatar, and other countries, from Kuwait to Oman, could pick up the slack if the Saudis restrict their bases.
"We'll have the access we need wherever we need it to do our job," said Gen. Charles F. Wald, a former head of American air forces in the gulf who is the new deputy commander of United States forces in Europe.
The United States has already stockpiled hundreds of M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers in the region, particularly in Kuwait. The military has also been stockpiling precision-guided munitions in the area and lining up local contractors to provide supplies for troops.
And while tens of thousands of American air, land and sea troops are now within striking distance of the gulf, an offensive, and any peacekeeping operation afterward, would require many thousands more.
Logistical equipment - tugboats, forklifts and other equipment used to unload heavy gear - is either en route or ready to be sent, as is portable bridging that the Army would use to ford rivers in Iraq. Heavy equipment for Marine or Army divisions would go via fast sea-lift ships that take about a month from Gulf of Mexico and East Coast ports.
B-2 bombers, which would play a pivotal role in destroying Iraqi air defenses, would fly from bases in Britain and the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The bombers' sensitive radar-evading skin requires the Air Force to erect portable hangars.
"There's an enormous amount already in theater, and I'd say within 30 days of an order, we'd have a substantial tank and mechanized force in place," said Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army commander from the gulf war in 1991.
A war with Iraq could require more than the 265,000 National Guard and Reserve troops summoned to active duty in the war in 1991, largely to protect valuable sites in the United States like airports, power plants and pipelines. Finally, any military campaign against Iraq would begin with a psychological operations campaign intended to turn Mr. Hussein's forces against him. Mr. Rumsfeld has approved the outlines of an ambitious plan that goes beyond traditional leaflet drops and broadcasts, a senior Defense Department official said. Of course, officials said, the buildup of American forces in the region is a big psychological operation in itself.
--------
Air Forces Replaces F / A - 22 Managers
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Stealth-Fighter.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force said Monday it has replaced the top two managers of its F/A-22 stealth fighter program, which faces possible cutbacks by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Last week the Air Force announced that the F/A-22 program faced a potential cost overrun of $690 million. It appointed a team of technical and financial experts from industry and the Air Force to investigate.
Initial findings of the investigation, led by an official at the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, are due by the end of the month. The Air Force said last week that the added costs did not indicate any problem with the plane's advanced technology or its performance in test flights.
The F/A-22, which has been in development for more than a decade, is intended to replace the F-15 Eagle fleet of ground-attack planes. The F/A-22, nicknamed the Raptor, is one of several high-cost programs that Rumsfeld has been reviewing for months with an eye to possible cutbacks, consolidations or even cancellations.
The Air Force had planned to buy 339 of the planes, but some in Rumsfeld's office have suggested cutting that to 180.
Congress has set a cost limit of $37 billion on the program.
Monday's announcement said Brig Gen. Mark D. Shackleford, director of the F/A-22 program office at the Aeronautical Systems Center, was replaced by Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Owen, who has held the equivalent job in the C-17 Globemaster program. The C-17 has been one of the Air Force's most successful programs.
The top F/A-22 program officer at the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. William J. Jabour, was replaced by Brig. Gen. Richard B.H. Lewis, who has been director of the Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization.
In announcing the changes, Air Force Secretary John Roche made no mention of the $690 million cost overrun.
Roche said that he and Gen. John Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, reviewed all aspects of the program.
``When necessary we've made changes to ensure the success of this critical contributor to America's joint warfighting capability,'' Roche said. Lewis and Owen, he added, ``have the right operational requirements expertise and technical backgrounds to bring the program into its next phase'' by next summer.
Jumper praised Shackleford and Jabour for their efforts but said he and Roche decided ``new leadership was necessary.''
On the Net:
F/A-22 Raptor: http://www.f22-raptor.com/
-------- propaganda wars
Why No Outrage Over How We Treat Our Own Citizens?
By Courtland Milloy
Monday, November 18, 2002
Washington Post; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3440-2002Nov17?language=printer
"We must choose between a world of fear and a world of progress."
-- President Bush, warning of a possible war with Iraq before the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 12.
It's been apparent for some time that President Bush sees the world in terms of either/or: good or evil, black or white, his way or the highway. And this simplicity obviously resonates with many Americans.
Consider some of the responses to a column last week about an antiwar talk by former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter at the University of Maryland.
"As for Mr. Ritter asking if Iraq is worth dying for, my answer is HELL YES," one reader wrote. "Life means nothing if you have to constantly live in fear of these animals. If we do not fight today, you will miss this country tomorrow."
Another wrote: "If 3,000 or 3 million people, young or old, die to save the lives of Americans, then so be it."
In choosing a "world of progress," a lot of Americans apparently believe that war is the way to get there. Which means that those who find the very notion of war for progress to be perverse must have chosen a "world of fear."
"As you can imagine, this campus is strongly pro-war and backs up Bush all the way," wrote a student from the Idaho campus of Brigham Young University-Idaho. "The ROTC is very popular here. Take it from me, fanatic Middle Easterners aren't the only ones who believe in the oxymoron 'holy war.' "
According to opinion polls, those who subscribe to Bush's view of the world are clearly in the majority. A CBS/New York Times poll published Nov. 8 found that 64 percent of Americans approve of the United States taking military action against Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
From Ritter's pro-war detractors, impassioned moral arguments for such action poured in: Hussein is not fit for a civilized society because he kills his own people; Hussein builds weapons of mass destruction and threatens his neighbors while neglecting the needs of his own people; Hussein gets richer, while his own people get poorer.
Odd, though, how that same sense of righteous indignation can hardly be found when it comes to this nation's shortcomings. There are, in fact, fat cats here, too, living among hungry children. But that's no big deal.
We also spend billions on weapons of mass destruction -- daring anyone to challenge our supremacy -- while the needs of millions of Americans go unmet. And yet, all of that money could not stop what happened Sept. 11, 2001.
Sentencing people to death while reasonable doubt remains about their guilt is certainly not the same as Hussein gassing his own people. But it's still wrong, and a majority of Americans apparently don't give a whit about it.
So, how did we suddenly become so angry with Saddam Hussein and outraged by the way he treats his people? Although 59 percent of Americans said the economy was more important than Iraq, according to that CBS/New York Times poll, the Bush administration's war talk obviously kept the electorate from dwelling on it.
After all, under Bush, jobs have been lost by the millions, life savings by the billions, while untold numbers of lives have been lost for lack of adequate health care.
Could it be possible that Bush rolled all the hurt over his failed domestic agenda and our lingering fear and anger over 9/11 into one big ball of rage to be tossed at the evildoer easiest to reach? (Osama bin Laden being unavailable at the moment.)
All of our pent-up frustrations had to go somewhere.
"I'm tired of giving dictators and butchers an even break as a reward for the hellish calamities they inflict on people," one reader wrote. "Saddam and his henchmen must go."
Might he have also had Enron et al. in the back of his mind?
At any rate, onward toward a world of progress. Or, more realistically, a world of fear.
As a correspondent from St. Louis put it: "In my opinion, we are in a MAD situation (mutually assured destruction) with respect to Iraq, but President Bush refuses to acknowledge it. Let's roll (the dice)."
E-mail: milloyc@washpost.com
----
Protesters decry step by Chavez on police
By Fabiola Sanchez
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021118-2921155.htm
CARACAS, Venezuela - Hundreds of people banging pots and pans faced off against national guardsmen at a police station yesterday to protest President Hugo Chavez's order to take over the Caracas police.
The protesters, who gathered outside several other precincts as well, shouted, "Get out, get out" and "Coup plotters" as they waved Venezuelan flags.
About 100 soldiers equipped with shields and tear gas formed a chain to keep protesters from entering the station, home of an elite motorcycle unit in the hills overlooking Caracas.
Police refused to accept the takeover, and control of the force remained in question.
On Saturday, the government took command of the 9,000-strong force to end a 11/2-month labor dispute between officers loyal to Mr. Chavez and others who support the outspoken mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Pena.
Mr. Chavez deployed soldiers in armored troop carriers to Caracas' 10 police stations in what critics said was a move to weaken Mr. Pena.
Police Chief Henry Vivas, appointed by Mr. Pena, refused to step down even after Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello named Gonzalo Sanchez Delgado as the new chief.
Speaking during his weekly radio program "Hello President," Mr. Chavez said the government ordered the takeover because disputes within the force had become "unbearable," and Mr. Pena had failed to resolve the situation.
"This has been done without violence, without violating anybody's rights," Mr. Chavez said. "We have to impose authority."
The takeover raised concerns that police would not be able to guarantee security during the country's frequent political demonstrations. The Democratic Coordinator movement, a coalition of opposition groups pushing for a referendum on Mr. Chavez's rule, condemned the takeover.
"We must tell [Mr. Chavez] that he can't intimidate us with armored personnel carriers. We must show that we will restore constitutionality in Venezuela," the group said in a statement.
Mr. Pena accused Mr. Chavez of trying to create chaos and ruin negotiations mediated by the Organization of American States so that the president could declare martial law.
Opponents say Mr. Chavez has divided the military, dragged the nation into recession, and polarized the country. Venezuela's largest labor confederation said it may call a general strike this week.
Venezuela's opposition accuses Mr. Chavez of trying to avoid a nonbinding national referendum on his rule. Opponents say his public support has fallen substantially since his 1998 election and re-election to a six-year term in 2000.
Mr. Chavez accuses the opposition of seeking another coup. He denied that the takeover violated constitutional norms.
"Some are calling this a coup. Let them say what they will. It is up the executive to see that the laws are observed," said Mr. Chavez.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Appeals Panel Reverses Limits Placed on Justice Dept. Wiretaps
November 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Spy-Court.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department has broad discretion in the use of wiretaps and other surveillance techniques to track suspected terrorists and spies, a federal appeals court panel ruled Monday.
In a 56-page opinion overturning a May decision by the ultra-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the three-judge panel said the expanded wiretap guidelines sought by Attorney General John Ashcroft under the new USA Patriot Act law do not violate the Constitution.
The special review court ordered the lower court to issue a new ruling giving the government the powers it seeks. The spy court's restrictions, according to the ruling, ``are not required by (the law) or the Constitution.''
Ashcroft said the decision ``revolutionizes our ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts.''
The American Civil Liberties Union and several other groups had argued that Ashcroft's proposed guidelines would unfairly restrict free speech and due process protections by giving the government far greater ability to listen to telephone conversations and read e-mail.
``We're disappointed with the decision, which suggests that (the spy court) exists only to rubber-stamp government decisions,'' said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU staff attorney.
Ashcroft said he believes there are adequate safeguards in the act to ensure the government does not overstep its bounds in gathering information.
``We have no desire whatsoever to in any way erode or undermine constitutional liberties,'' he said.
It was not immediately clear whether the ACLU or other groups will appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The government has sole right of appeal under the law, but attorneys were exploring other ways of getting the case to the high court.
The decision was issued by a trio of judges appointed by President Reagan: Ralph B. Guy Jr., a semiretired judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati; Edward Leavy, a semiretired judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco; and Laurence Hirsch Silberman, a semiretired judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
They are sitting as the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which is named by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
The intelligence court, created in 1978, is charged with overseeing sensitive law enforcement surveillance by the U.S. government. Its May 17 ruling was the first-ever substantial defeat for the government on a surveillance issue, and its unprecedented, declassified public opinion issued in August documented abuses of surveillance warrants in 75 instances during both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
The Justice Department had argued before the appeals panel that the spy court had ``wholly exceeded'' its authority and that Congress clearly approved of the greater surveillance authority when it passed the Patriot Act a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The changes permit wiretaps when collecting information about foreign spies or terrorists is ``a significant purpose,'' rather than ``the purpose,'' of an investigation. Critics at the time said they feared the government might use the change as a loophole to employ espionage wiretaps in common criminal investigations.
The spy court had concluded that Ashcroft's proposed rules under that law were ``not reasonably designed'' to safeguard the privacy of Americans.
But the three-judge panel overturned that, saying the new law's provisions on surveillance ``certainly come close'' to meeting minimal constitutional standards regarding searches and seizures. The government's proposed use of the Patriot Act, the judges concluded, ``is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable.''
On the Net:
http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov
--------
Court Overturns Limits on Wiretaps to Combat Terror
November 19, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/19/national/19COUR.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - A special federal appeals court ruled today that the Justice Department has broad new powers under the antiterrorism bill enacted last year to use wiretaps obtained for intelligence operations to prosecute terrorists.
The immediate effect of the ruling by the three-member panel is that criminal prosecutors may now take an active role in deciding how to use wiretaps authorized by a special intelligence court and should have greater access to information obtained from them. For more than 20 years, prosecutors have been prohibited from making decisions on which intelligence wiretaps to apply for because the standards of proof are widely believed to be lower than for regular criminal wiretaps.
But the judges today said that the passage of the legislation, the USA Patriot Act, ensured that there is no wall between officials from the intelligence and criminal arms of the Justice Department. In fact, the judges asserted that the 20-year-old practice of keeping the two largely separate was never required and was never intended by Congress.
"Effective counterintelligence, as we have learned, requires the wholehearted cooperation of all the government's personnel who can be brought to the task," the panel wrote. "A standard which punishes such cooperation could well be thought dangerous to national security." [Excerpts, Page A19.]
Today's unanimous ruling was a significant victory for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who announced immediately that he would use it to greatly expand the use of the special intelligence court by prosecutors to obtain wiretaps of people suspected of involvement with terrorists.
"This is a giant step forward," Mr. Ashcroft said at the Justice Department, adding that he would swiftly increase the number of lawyers both at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and in prosecutors' offices around the country to seek authorization for new wiretaps and surveillance orders to combat terrorism.
"This revolutionizes our ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts," he said.
The ruling also adds momentum to the Bush administration's determination to shake off restrictions on how investigators have operated since the Sept. 11 attacks, including the lifting of restrictions on investigators using the Internet to compile databases for combating terrorists. It may also oblige the F.B.I. to share information gathered by its counterintelligence agents more readily.
Both the appeals court and the court whose opinion it overturned today were created solely to administer a 1978 law allowing the government to conduct intelligence wiretaps inside the United States. The three-member appeals court, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, in issuing its first opinion ever, said that the lower court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, had erred when it tried to impose restrictions on the Justice Department.
The Court of Review, which had never met before and essentially existed on paper, is made up of Judges Ralph B. Guy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; Edward Leavy of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and Laurence H. Silberman of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. All were appointed to the panel by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court.
Because of the unusual nature of the law on which the case was decided it is unclear whether anybody is in a position to appeal today's ruling to the Supreme Court. The only party was the Justice Department, which won; the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who filed briefs, were afforded only friend-of-the-court status, which does not entitle them to appeal.
Ann Beeson, a litigation director at the civil liberties union, said her group was exploring whether to seek to be allowed to intervene as a party.
The case arose in May when the lower court, which decides whether to grant intelligence authorizations, ruled on an application submitted by Mr. Ashcroft's investigators. At the time, the court ordered the government to meet certain conditions to obtain the authorization to wiretap an individual who is identified in court papers only as a resident of the United States who is working as an agent of a foreign power.
The three members of the lower court ordered the Justice Department to show that the primary purpose of the application was for intelligence gathering and not a criminal case. Moreover, the court ordered that prosecutors in the Justice Department's Criminal Division could not take an active role in directing the activities of the intelligence division.
The notion of a separation arose in the 1980's and was put into department regulations in 1995. The reason was that the requirements for obtaining a wiretap for intelligence gathering were thought to be easier to meet than those for a straightforward criminal investigation. As a result, investigators were instructed not to try to avoid the stricter standards for a criminal investigation by pretending it was for intelligence.
Although the world of national security wiretaps has always been conducted out of public view, Mr. Ashcroft's challenge of the lower court ruling exposed the debate in the government over the balance between civil liberties and national security that heated up after Sept. 11.
In an unsigned opinion, the appeals court unanimously ruled that Mr. Ashcroft was correct in saying that the USA Patriot Act swept away the distinctions between the intelligence and criminal sides of the national security operations. Even more striking in the court's ruling was the strong assertion that the restriction that had been observed for two decades was never required.
The appeals court noted that the lower court had said there was a "wall" between the investigative and intelligence sides. But the judges today said that there is not and never was supposed to be a wall between the two and that the Justice Department contributed to this mistake by writing it into its regulations.
The appeals court was harsh in its language directed at the lower court for trying to retain a wall between intelligence officials and prosecutors. The panel said that the judges on the FISA court, as the lower court is known, were improperly trying to tell the Justice Department how to run its operations and that that was a violation of the Constitution's separation of powers between equal branches of government.
The lower court ruling was written by Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who was until recently the chief judge of the FISA court. Judge Lamberth had complained angrily that Justice Department officials had frequently misled the court by claiming they were seeking wiretap authorization for intelligence gathering but had been deceptive in that they were trying to obtain a wiretap for a criminal investigation.
The appeals court also asserted that the requirements for obtaining wiretap authorization under the intelligence law were not that different in a constitutional sense from the requirements for obtaining a warrant in a criminal case, challenging a widely held assumption. Applications for criminal warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment's proscriptions against intrusive searches and require an official declaration that there is "probable cause" to believe the subject is involved in a crime. By contrast, the intelligence surveillance law requires only a showing that there is probable cause that the subject is the agent of a foreign power.
-------- courts
Secret Court OKs Broad Wiretap Powers
Mon, Nov 18, 2002
Reuters,
By Deborah Charles
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=578&u=/nm/20021118/ts_nm/attack_surveillance_dc&printer=1
WASHINGTON - In a victory for the Bush administration, a secretive appeals court Monday ruled the U.S. government has the right to use expanded powers to wiretap terrorism suspects under a law adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The ruling was a blow to civil libertarians who say the expanded powers, which allow greater leeway in conducting electronic surveillance and in using information obtained from the wiretaps and searches, jeopardize constitutional rights.
In a 56-page ruling overturning a May opinion by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the three-judge appeals court panel said the Patriot Act gave the government the right to expanded powers.
Sweeping anti-terror legislation, called the USA Patriot Act and signed into law in October last year after the hijacked plane attacks, makes it easier for investigators and prosecutors to share information obtained by surveillance and searches.
In the May ruling, the seven judges that comprise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court unanimously told the government it had gone too far in interpreting the law to allow broad information sharing.
The Justice Department (news - web sites) appealed, saying the order limited the kind of coordination needed to protect national security.
Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) hailed Monday's ruling and said he was immediately implementing new regulations and working to expedite the surveillance process.
"The court of review's action revolutionizes our ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts," he said. "This decision does allow law enforcement officials to learn from intelligence officials and vice versa."
FOURTH AMENDMENT ISSUES
Civil liberties groups, which had urged the appeals court -- comprised of three appeals court judges named by Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist (news - web sites) -- to uphold the court's order, slammed the ruling.
"We are deeply disappointed with the decision, which suggests that this special court exists only to rubber-stamp government applications for intrusive surveillance warrants," said Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites).
The groups had argued that broader government surveillance powers would violate the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
But the appeals court said the procedures as required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were reasonable.
"We think the procedures and government showings required under FISA, if they do not meet the minimum Fourth Amendment warrant standards, certainly come close," the judges wrote in their ruling, which was partially declassified and published.
"We, therefore, believe firmly ... that FISA as amended is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable."
Ashcroft said the government would uphold the Constitution. "We have no desire whatever to, in any way, erode or undermine the constitutional liberties here," he said.
The appeal is the first since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court and appeals court were created in 1978 to authorize wiretap requests in foreign intelligence investigations. Under the procedures, all hearings and decisions of the courts are conducted in secret.
The appeal hearing was not public, and only the Justice Department's top appellate lawyer, Theodore Olson, presented arguments.
Although the court allowed "friend of the court" briefs to be filed by civil liberties groups and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, since the Justice Department was the only party the ruling can likely not be appealed.
"This is a major Constitutional decision that will affect every American's privacy rights, yet there is no way anyone but the government can automatically appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court," Beeson said.
-------- death penalty
Ehrlich will clear way for executions
By S.A. Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20021118-80076852.htm
Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said he will keep his campaign promise to lift Maryland's death penalty moratorium as soon as he takes office in January.
The move would clear the way for as many as seven executions in Mr. Ehrlich's first year in office.
Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat, ordered the moratorium in May, pending a University of Maryland study into possible racial bias in dispensing the state's death penalty. Results of the study are due in December. Their September release was postponed to avoid having them politicize the Nov. 5 elections.
Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said he would review each death-sentence case instead of halting all of them. When making the announcement Friday, he did not indicate how the study might influence his review of Maryland's 13 pending executions.
Death-penalty opponents are planning to lobby Mr. Ehrlich heavily to postpone lifting the moratorium until the legislative session ends in April.
Maryland and Illinois halted executions because of doubts about the fairness of the penalty. Mr. Glendening said he was troubled by charges that blacks who killed white victims are disproportionately sentenced to death.
Though most murder victims in the state are black, all 13 men on Maryland's death row were convicted of killing white people.
Nationwide, 82 percent of executed inmates were convicted of killing white people, though more than 50 percent of murder victims are black. About a year ago, 43 percent of the nation's death-row convicts were black. Maryland had the highest percentage of black, death-row inmates, with more than 70 percent.
Death-penalty critics also argue that capital punishment is disproportionately imposed on poor people because they receive inadequate legal representation from court-appointed lawyers.
Despite postponing releasing the results from the university study, the death penalty became a campaign issue with the capture of two suspects in the Washington area serial sniper attacks: John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17.
Mr. Ehrlich and his Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, supported the death penalty for Mr. Muhammad if convicted. Mr. Ehrlich expressed stronger support for the death penalty in general, saying he would back legislation to make 17-year-olds eligible for capital punishment in Maryland.
Six of the 10 fatal sniper shootings were in Maryland. But the suspects are expected to be tried first in Virginia, the site of three shooting deaths, because the commonwealth is considered more likely to impose the death penalty.
-------- terrorism
System ready to alert to bioterror attacks
By Bill Baskervill
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20021118-21020826.htm
RICHMOND - A statewide communication system to exchange critical information in the event of a bioterrorism attack is up and running, and officials are moving quickly on other fronts to combat the threat, a state Health Department report says.
The department submitted a "public health preparedness and response" report on Nov. 1 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state must meet requirements of the CDC to receive federal bioterrorism funds.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
Parts of the report were excised by the department because they detailed specific emergency procedures. Revealing the information "would jeopardize the safety of governmental facilities, buildings, structures or information storage," said department spokeswoman Trina H. Lee.
However, the report provides glimpses into the state's anti-terrorism efforts since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the subsequent anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five.
The Health Department report said 100 percent of Virginia's population is covered by a Health Alert Network that provides a flow of critical health information among hospital emergency rooms, state and local health officials, and law enforcement officials.
In addition, the department said it has created redundant methods of sending and receiving critical alerts that provide other private health care providers with timely notification and information.
The department said it gained useful experience in this area by disseminating information about West Nile virus and malaria during the summer.
The report said the department has hired 20 epidemiologists, specialists who identify and control communicable diseases.
It said it will have an epidemiologist in all 35 health districts by March.
Eleven of 35 bioterrorism coordinators also have been hired.
The anthrax attacks and hoaxes, some in Virginia and the District taught health officials that Virginia needed to add a lot more epidemiologists as soon as possible because the department had to divert a lot of resources during the scare.
Officials said it became obvious the state did not have the human or physical resources to respond to an outbreak of anthrax, smallpox or other diseases.
The report said the Health Department has established a system to rapidly detect a bioterrorism attack through a mandatory disease surveillance system.
Complete response plans have been drafted for widespread influenza and smallpox outbreaks.
Specific guidelines have been completed for anthrax, plague and viral hemorrhagic fevers, including physician fact sheets, diagnosis guidance and treatment and infection control.
The report said the department is capable of distributing antibiotics, vaccines and poison gas antidotes throughout the state.
Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, approved most of Virginia's bioterrorism plan in June and released $18.5 million to the state to strengthen further its public health and emergency response systems.
Another $465,000 will be released after Mr. Thompson signs off on the Nov. 1 plan, which answered additional questions by the federal government.
Virginia so far has received $23.7 million in federal bioterrorism-preparedness grants.
----
Letter vows attacks
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021118-86261805.htm
A statement attributed to al Qaeda calls on Americans to become Muslims and warns of new terror attacks in Washington and New York unless the United States stops supporting Israel.
But Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge yesterday downplayed the importance of the unsigned, six-page statement received by Yosri Fouda, a journalist with the Qatar-based satellite television channel Al Jazeera.
In an interview yesterday on CNN, Mr. Fouda said he was certain the letter, which he received last week through "previously tested channels," was written by a top leader in Osama bin Laden's terror network, though he was unsure which leader.
The statement warns the United States to "stop your support for Israel against the Palestinians, for Russians against the Chechens and leave us alone, or expect us in Washington and New York," CNN reported.
"Do not force us to ship you in coffins," it said.
Mr. Fouda said the document ends with a call for the American people to convert to Islam.
On Iraq, the document states: "You are placing Muslims under siege in Iraq where children die every day. Oh how weird that you don't care for 1.5 million Iraqi children who died under siege. But when 3,000 of your compatriots died, the whole world was shaken."
In an appearance yesterday on "Fox News Sunday," Mr. Ridge dismissed the letter, saying "we're familiar with that piece of information. It's really nothing new."
"The threats contained in that piece are the same threats we've been hearing now for the past year. The conditions are the same. We can't add any special credence to it," he said.
In the interview, he noted that intelligence personnel have "heard increased chatter about potential [terrorist] activity in the United States and around the world."
"We've taken additional precautions and additional protective measures within the government and in the private sector" as a result, Mr. Ridge said.
London's Sunday Times, which reported the terrorist letter yesterday, quoted it as saying: "We have the right to attack our attackers, to destroy villages and cities of whoever destroyed our villages and cities, to destroy the economy of those who have robbed our wealth, and to kill civilians of the country, which have killed ours."
Mr. Fouda, who received the mystery letter, is the same reporter who last week received an audiotape purportedly made by bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people. Some see the new tape as proof bin Laden is alive, as the speaker mentions recent terrorist attacks in other parts of the world.
"We know that this reporter has pretty good connections with the al Qaeda leadership and we know that New York and Washington continue to be potential targets for another attack," Mr. Ridge said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
Mr. Fouda told CNN yesterday the unsigned letter he received focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and Kashmir. The letter apparently also called for the removal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, but those appear to have been moved further down on al Qaeda's list of priorities.
Disclosure of this letter with its threats of further domestic terrorism came two days after the FBI warned that al Qaeda might be planning "spectacular attacks" against landmarks and aviation, petroleum and nuclear targets in this country in a bid to hurt the economy, cause mass casualties and "inflict massive psychological trauma."
On CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat and a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the alarmist way these potential attacks were described, given what "we were told afterwards."
He noted that federal officials subsequently explained that the so-called "spectacular attacks" were actually "an accumulation of evidence dating back months."
"I'm wondering who's in charge here that should be making statements like that. I think one source this morning called them Chicken Little alerts," said Mr. Dodd, who was referring to an editorial in the New York Times.
Published reports yesterday said Mr. Ridge has received the nod to be secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security. Passage of the homeland security bill could come today, before the Senate adjourns this week.
Mr. Ridge declined to confirm his appointment in talk-show appearances yesterday, but the Associated Press said it had confirmed the decision with a senior White House official.
Mr. Ridge was also asked about reports that the Bush administration is considering a new domestic counterterrorism agency, modeled after MI5 in Great Britain, which Mr. Ridge visited last week.
Mr. Ridge told ABC there are no plans to set up a domestic spy agency separate from the FBI.
He said President Bush is pleased with the progress FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has shown on this front. He said he's not sure that an MI5 equivalent - an intelligence-gathering agency with no law-enforcement powers - would ever work in the United States.
Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat, and Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican, the top members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, both said on "Late Edition" that the FBI has much to learn in terms of intelligence gathering and said an alternative like MI5 is worth examining.
However, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, cautioned against assuming any need for such an agency, and for acting without congressional approval.
"A lot of things have been done in the name of national security, particularly in the 20th century, that we've regretted retrospectively," Mr. McCain said on "Face the Nation."
Mr. Ridge sidestepped questions about whether U.S. officials had a program to spy on Iraqis living in the United States if a war breaks out. On Fox, he said, if there is a war, "additional security measures would have to be taken domestically."
But he added: "We operate under a rule of law," so any steps taken "would have to be consistent with the U.S. Constitution."
Mr. Shelby, on the other hand, backed such moves, saying, "We should do everything we can to disrupt and destroy any cells, any activity that would do us harm in this country."
----
Indonesia schools targeted by terrorists
November 18, 2002
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021118-070802-5778r.htm
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Nov. 18 -- International schools in Jakarta were closed Monday following warnings from the U.S. and Australia that they could be the target of terrorist attacks.
At least three of Jakarta's leading international schools shut Friday after the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade received information of the possibility of schools being targeted by terrorists.
The U.S. and Australian embassies said in notices to their nationals issued on Friday that they has received "credible information about possible targeting of schools" in Jakarta associated with Western interests.
"This information is being provided to the Indonesian security authorities and international school officials so that they may take appropriate action," the notice said.
However, Indonesian police played down on the threats, saying there was a lack of justification for the alert. Jakarta police spokesman Anton Bahrul Alam said officers would meet with school officials to discuss the threat but added that there was nothing to worry about.
The Jakarta International School said on its Web site, in a message from Headmaster Niall Nelson: "Central to that decision (on when to reopen) will be the response of the government of Indonesia to embassy requests for a higher security presence at the various international schools in Jakarta."
There were reports of bomb threats received by several high-rise office buildings in Jakarta during the past several days, in particular since the Oct. 12 bombings in Bali. The calls were apparently hoaxes.
Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz on Monday criticized police searches of Islamic boarding schools as part of their investigation into the Bali blasts, urging the police to change their heavy-handed raids.
"I hope raids like the previous ones, which were not pleasant, will not happen again," Haz, a Muslim politician, said.
Over the past two weeks, police have repeatedly raided the al-Islam boarding school in East Java village of Tenggulun, in their search for suspects in the Bali explosions, in which some 180 people -- mostly foreign tourists -- died. Police arrested Amrozi, the first suspect in the bombings, two weeks ago in the same village, where his family founded the school. Police are looking for at least one of Amrozi's brothers, identified as Ali Imron, who is also a teacher of the boarding school.
--------
Voice on Tape Is bin Laden's, U.S. Intelligence Says
November 18, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/international/18CND-TAPE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - American intelligence analysts said today that they had concluded that the voice on an audiotape that emerged last week was indeed Osama bin Laden's, and that the tape was made quite recently.
The authentication of the tape, while not unexpected, is quite significant in that it represents an official determination after almost a year of doubt that the terrorist leader is still alive.
The conclusion follows days of intensive analysis of the tape by experts at the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. The analysis included studies by linguists and translators familiar with Mr. bin Laden's voice.
The experts said earlier that the tape appeared to be genuine, but they refrained from saying so definitively, until today.
"The intelligence experts do believe that it is, that the tape is genuine," a White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said at a news briefing.
Mr. McClellan conceded that the genuineness of the tape "cannot be stated with 100 percent certainty," but he said again that intelligence officials believe it is real.
Until the tape was broadcast last week, there had been speculation about whether Mr. bin Laden, the presumed mastermind of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, perished in the American-led bombing of the caves in Afghanistan last fall. Since the tape was a voice recording and not a videotape, like those of a year ago, there has been some conjecture that Mr. bin Laden's health has deteriorated or that he is injured - and hence reluctant to show himself to the world.
But regardless of Mr. bin Laden's health, intelligence analysts said today that they had shed their doubts about genuineness of the tape and had concluded that the tape was just what it purported to be when it was broadcast on Al Jazeera, the Arabic satellite television network.
In that tape, the voice now concluded to be that of Mr. bin Laden reads a statement promising new terrorist acts against the United States and its allies. The voice mentions the takeover of a Moscow theater by Chechen rebels in late October, the bombing of a nightclub in Indonesia on Oct. 12 and other recent events.
The conclusion announced today was anticlimactic in the sense that President Bush and national security officials said earlier that the tape "put the world on notice yet again that we're at war," as Mr. Bush said last week.
Even before the authenticity of the tape was established, the details of the message were considered ominous, since it refers to the "criminal gang at the White House" and mentions President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by name, while also warning of further strikes against Western targets.
"As you kill, you get killed, and as you bomb, you get bombed," the voice states.
Administration officials have also said that they were concerned that the tape might include hidden messages to Al Qaeda followers, and that these might spur further terrorist attacks.
Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, the reporter who provided the tape to Al Jazeera, said it had been given to him on Tuesday in Islamabad, Pakistan, by a bin Laden emissary.
Previously, the last seemingly incontrovertible evidence that Mr. bin Laden was alive was recorded on Nov. 9, 2001, when he had dinner with several aides and followers. A videotape of the meal was recovered by United States forces in Afghanistan.
Late in December, another videotape of Mr. bin Laden surfaced. He appeared thin, raising questions about his health. References in the tape suggested it was made in late November or early December last year.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Hydrogen Station Opens in Las Vegas
November 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-09.asp#anchor3
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, The world's first hydrogen energy station featuring the co-production of hydrogen fuel for vehicles and clean electric power using fuel cells has opened in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The project, a public-private partnership between the Department of Energy (DOE), the sity of Las Vegas, Air Products and Chemicals Inc. and Plug Power, will be a learning demonstration of hydrogen as a safe and clean energy alternative. The co-production of hydrogen fuel and electricity also offers a potential business opportunity for the sale of merchant hydrogen or for generating electric power while hydrogen vehicles are developed.
Hydrogen powered vehicles are the focus of the FreedomCAR project launched by the Bush administration.
"This project supports FreedomCAR by providing the means for learning about hydrogen infrastructure technologies necessary for clean energy efficient vehicles," said David Garman, assistant energy secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The fueling station is located at the city of Las Vegas vehicle maintenance and operation service center. It is capable of dispensing hydrogen, hydrogen enriched natural gas and compressed natural gas and consists of an on-site hydrogen generator, compressor, liquid and gaseous hydrogen storage tanks, dispensing systems and a stationary fuel cell.
The costs for the $10.8 million project were split evenly between DOE and the Air Products team. The Air Products team was responsible for the design, construction and operation of the hydrogen facility.
Plug Power was responsible for manufacturing and installing the proton electrolyte membrane fuel cell. DOE is also sharing the cost with the city of Las Vegas and NRG Technologies Inc. to convert and operate hydrogen-based vehicles for use at the new hydrogen energy station.
Future work under this project will evaluate hydrogen operating safety, the reliability of fuel cell power and its overall economic feasibility, and verify the integration of power generation and vehicle refueling designs. This project is one of the Department of Energy's strategies to develop hydrogen and fuel cell technologies that will reduce dependence on imported oil.
For more information, visit: http://www.eren.doe.gov/hydrogen
----
Fuel Cell Provides Cheap, Clean Energy
November 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-09.asp#anchor6
BERKELEY, California, Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have developed a solid oxide fuel cell that they say can generate electricity as cheaply as the most efficient gas turbine.
Their innovation, which paves the way for pollution free power generators that serve neighborhoods and industrial sites, lies in replacing ceramic electrodes with stainless steel supported electrodes that are stronger, easier to manufacture, and cheaper. This latter advantage marks a turning point in the push to develop commercial fuel cells.
"We're closer to breaking the cost barrier than ever before," said Steve Visco, who developed the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology with fellow Materials Sciences Division researchers Craig Jacobson and Lutgard De Jonghe.
The cost barrier is $400 per kilowatt, a bar set by the Department of Energy's Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance, a government, industry, and scientific group tasked with developing affordable fuel cell based power generators. The $400 target - about one-tenth the cost of today's fuel cells - is equivalent to the most efficient gas turbines and diesel generators, and is based on the premise that a fuel cell's success hinges on its competitiveness.
"Green is great for marketing, but people won't buy an environmentally friendly product if it's twice as expensive," Visco said.
Fuel cells work by converting chemical energy to electrical energy, capitalizing on hydrogen and oxygen's tendency to bond and form water. Unlike gas turbines, this process does not emit air pollutants such as nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide.
Because fuel cells are more efficient than gas turbines, they emit far less carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
Visco and colleagues' foray into affordable fuel cell design began several years ago when they developed a way to lower a fuel cell's operating temperature to 800 degrees Celsius without sacrificing efficiency. Until then, fuel cells worked best at 1,000 degrees Celsius, a high temperature that decreases the cell's life span and precludes the use of metal components.
They fabricated thin ceramic electrodes that conduct ions at 800 degrees Celsius as well as thicker electrodes do at 1,000 degrees Celsius. Lowering the temperature also allowed them to use metal components, instead of ceramic, to connect several ceramic cells into a stack.
Their design did not hit the $400 per kilowatt target, but it allowed them to reduce the cell's operating temperature without sacrificing performance.
Since then, they have developed a fuel cell that features 10 to 15 microns of a zirconia based electrolyte layered onto 10 to 20 microns of a nickel based electrode. These are supported by and bonded to about two millimeters of porous high strength commercial alloy.
"The low cost of a metal based SOFC's raw materials, and its design flexibility, should allow a stack to be manufactured below the $130 fuel cell target," Visco said.
To meet the $400 generator target, the Berkeley Lab fuel cell must now be developed into other stack designs, and paired with a low cost inverter and other supporting technology.
"Instead of building a large, fuel cell based power plant, which is expensive and therefore risky, it makes sense to start smaller," Visco concluded. "The big question is not if fuel cells will enter the market, but when."
----
Spain's Iberdrola in wind asset swap with partners
SPAIN: November 18, 2002
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18629/story.htm
MADRID - Spanish utility Iberdrola said last week it agreed to swap assets with three partners in a deal that would more than double its wind power capacity and generate 130.1 million euros in new revenue.
Iberdrola and its partners in a renewable energy venture - Sodena, Cementos Portland and Caja Navarra - will split up and reassign assets.
Iberdrola, Spain's second largest electric company, will end up with projects in the Spanish regions of Castille-La Mancha and Murcia while the other partners will form a new company to take over assets in Navarre and Valencia.
The deal will provide Iberdrola with an additional 1,173 megawatts of generating capacity, increasing its wind power capacity to 1,909 MW and putting it on target to meet its goal of having 3,834 MW of renewable energy generation by 2006.
The swap and its side agreements will result in 130.9 million in additional revenues, the company said in a statement without saying when those revenues would be realised.
-------- energy
Oil, Air, Energy Laws In Play
Environmentalists Fear New Senate
By Eric Pianin and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 18, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3220-2002Nov17?language=printer
Suddenly, President Bush's proposals to drill for oil in an Alaskan wilderness, boost energy exploration in the Rockies and consider changes to some major environmental laws are back in play, following the Republicans' resounding success in the Nov. 5 congressional elections.
Nothing illustrates the shift in environmental politics more vividly than the leadership changes about to occur on two key Senate committees. The environment committee's chairmanship is switching from James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), a hero to many environmentalists, to James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of their least-liked lawmakers.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee, meanwhile, will be headed by Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), who supports drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The question of whether to drill in ANWR holds almost iconic status for conservatives and conservationists alike, and Democrats no longer have the Senate or White House control that helped them hold off the proposal for years.
Domenici says he plans to vigorously promote energy exploration on federal lands -- including ANWR -- after he replaces Democrat Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) as committee chairman. "Absolutely," Domenici said in a recent interview, "ANWR's got to be looked at." A senior Domenici aide went further, saying, "Any new energy bill would include ANWR."
Diemer True, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents 8,000 producers, said: "Clearly a Republican majority in the Senate will be more focused on domestic energy production, and we think that bodes well for domestic oil and gas producers."
Energy exploration isn't the only issue the new Republican-controlled Congress will revisit. GOP leaders say they will challenge or review a handful of key environmental laws that govern power-plant emissions, water quality, endangered species, mining and other subjects. Those laws sometimes pose unnecessary impediments to production, Bush administration officials have said.
The administration has tried to win many of these changes in the past 18 months through regulatory reform, executive orders and legislation. But it encountered stiff resistance from the Democratic-controlled Senate and from environmentalists who went to court to block drilling, mining and logging on government land.
With many moderate Republicans sympathetic to green causes, few expect a repeat of the assault on bedrock environmental laws waged by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and House Republicans in 1995, which triggered a voter backlash and contributed to Gingrich's political demise. Instead, Democrats and environmentalists say, the changes are likely to be achieved in more subtle ways, through riders to spending bills and tweaking of budgets for enforcing environmental regulations.
"The real question for the Republicans and the White House is will they overplay their hand again?" said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.
Administration officials say a renewed effort to adopt the president's energy and environmental proposals is necessary to meet energy needs and to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil -- arguments that could become a rallying cry if the United States goes to war with Iraq. The House last year approved a version of the president's plan that included $33.5 billion in tax breaks and other incentives aimed at increasing oil and gas exploration, developing new coal-burning technologies and promoting nuclear energy and alternative energy sources.
"The president remains committed to working with Congress to pass a comprehensive energy plan that expands conservation, increases energy efficiency and encourages more domestic exploration and production, in an environmentally responsible way," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
But environmentalists and Democrats fear that with the Senate no longer an automatic brake on administration initiatives, officials will press for revisions to the National Environmental Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act and other landmark laws.
"I think the big picture is that we'll have a huge fight on our hands to protect everything we've achieved in the past 30 years," said Gregory Wetstone of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned Republicans that "anyone who wants to appeal to the public is going to have to stick to the mainstream on the environment."
One of the most dramatic signs of the new order is Inhofe's replacement of Jeffords as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Jeffords, whose defection from the GOP enabled Democrats to claim control of the Senate 17 months ago, has been a staunch ally of environmentalists and sharp critic of Bush's policies. Inhofe is a conservative and vigorous critic of the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws.
Inhofe, 67, a former real estate developer, has frequently accused the Environmental Protection Agency of exceeding its powers in regulating industry. Last week he said he will press government agencies to apply cost-benefit standards and "sound science" to proposed environmental rule making, an approach strongly favored by the White House budget office and libertarian groups that favor reducing government regulations. He also pledged to provide "strong oversight" and review of the enforcement of clean air laws and other environmental measures. Some environmentalists see that as code for seeking to weaken or gut the laws.
Inhofe said: "I want to work in a bipartisan fashion to create fiscally responsible policies that are based on sound science and cost-benefit analyses."
Meanwhile, Domenici intends to increase spending on nuclear energy facilities, according to aides. New Mexico is home to the Department of Energy's Los Alamos and Sandia National laboratories. Domenici is a champion of nuclear energy research and production.
Domenici, 70, also would like to restrict environmentalists' ability to go to court to block mining, drilling, logging and grazing on federal lands, saying those decisions should be left to Congress and federal agencies. He said in an interview he will launch a comprehensive review of government management practices of "the entire public domain," with an eye to seeking management changes. "I'm concerned about how those who don't like the laws of our land find loopholes and other ways to get the land into court because they want their way," Domenici said.
With so much on next year's congressional agenda -- from transportation, power-plant emissions, global warming and forest fire management to Superfund toxic site cleanups -- significant environmental policy changes appear inevitable.
The Nov. 5 elections netted at least two new Senate votes for oil and gas drilling in Alaska. The House, but not the Senate, voted this year to allow drilling in ANWR. Republicans concede they are still short of the 60-vote majority needed to break a Democratic-led filibuster against the drilling proposal. Several senators, including Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), have indicated a filibuster is likely to block what they say would be irreparable harm to a unique wilderness area.
Washington Post Energy Special Report
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/specials/energy/
-------- environment
Controversial Navy Sonar Cleared for Limited Testing
November 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-06.asp
SAN FRANCISCO, California, A federal judge has lifted a worldwide ban on the U.S. Navy's experimental new sonar system, clearing the way for limited testing of the controversial system. The judge approved an agreement reached by the Navy and a coalition of environmental groups who seek to limit the sonar's potential impacts on marine mammals.
sonar SURTASS LFA undergoing tests (Photo courtesy U.S. Navy) Friday's agreement will allow limited testing of the Navy's Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar (SURTASS LFA) while the federal court in San Francisco considers a lawsuit challenging the legality of the system. Conservation groups have argued that the federal government has not done enough to ensure that the new, high intensity sonar system will not hurt or kill whales, dolphins, seals and sea turtles with its loud signals.
Late last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte had issued a preliminary injunction stopping the deployment of the sonar system, which relies on very loud, low frequency sound to detect submarines at great distances. On Friday, she signed a temporary agreement between lawyers for the Navy and a coalition of conservation groups, allowing limited testing of the sonar system under strictly defined conditions.
The Navy originally had planned to deploy SURTASS LFA across about 14 million miles of the North Pacific by the end of last summer. The Navy developed the system to protect warships against super quiet diesel submarines, owned by Russia and other nations.
Under the agreement signed Friday, the Navy will launch the system in about one million square miles of ocean around the Mariana Islands, avoiding to coasts of the Philippines and Japan.
"What the Navy sought - and had been permitted for - was 14 million square miles of Pacific Ocean," said Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the groups that has challenged SURTASS LFA in court.
"What we ultimately agreed upon, after winning the preliminary injunction, was somewhere between 10 -15 percent of that - in an area of the Pacific Ocean that our experts unanimously told us was among the least productive sections of the much larger permitted area," Reynolds added.
The NRDC agreed to the limited deployment after concluding that Judge LaPorte was unlikely to authorize a complete ban on the sonar system while the court heard continuing arguments in the case. After issuing her temporary injunction, LaPorte had ordered the Navy and conservation groups to work out a compromise that would allow testing to begin.
"The very real risk of not reaching an agreement was that the court was not prepared to order anything close to the amount of geographic exclusion that the Navy finally accepted," Reynolds explained, adding that the NRDC and the other environmental plaintiffs will still seek to get the Navy's permit for SURTASS LFA "invalidated on a permanent basis as soon as possible."
On July 15, the Navy received a permit under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to "harass marine mammals" in the course of operating SURTASS LFA, and was approved to deploy two ships that use the new sonar system.
diver The Navy carefully monitors divers involved in SURTASS LFA testing due to concerns that the system may cause physiological harm similar to that seen in whales and other marine mammals.(Photo courtesy U.S. Navy) The National Marine Fisheries Service, which issued the permit, concluded that the sonar would have "no more than a negligible impact on the affected species," as long as it was operated at least 12 miles from shore, and was shut down if its operators spotted whales or other sensitive species.
But environmental groups argued that the survival of entire populations of whales and other marine mammals may be jeopardized by the deployment of this sonar, which has been measured at 140 decibels 300 miles away from the sound's source.
"From a scientific point of view, there is very little question that, given the right set of circumstances, active sonar can kill marine life," says Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, one of the coplaintiffs.
"The frightening thing about LFA is that we're flying blind, because the Navy has never seriously applied the lessons from previous strandings to its LFA system," said Rose.
The mass stranding of multiple whale species in the Bahamas in March 2000 and the simultaneous disappearance of the region's entire population of beaked whales has been linked to another type of Navy sonar. A federal investigation identified testing of a U.S. Navy mid-frequency active sonar system as the cause.
In late September, new mass strandings occurred in the Canary Islands as a result of NATO military sonar, and in the Gulf of California two whales died as the likely result of an acoustic geophysical survey using loud air guns.
Under Friday's agreement, the Navy can immediately begin testing SURTASS LFA in the deep waters of the western Pacific, in a region that is believed to avoid major whale migration routes, feeding areas and breeding grounds. The testing area excludes a marine protected area around the Mariana Islands.
The compromise will "minimize the exposure to a long list of endangered and depleted species," said the NRDC's Reynolds.
The U.S. Navy's SURTASS LFA website is available at: http://www.surtass-lfa-eis.com
-------- hunger
OVERSEAS
Flash Points Loom in War on Hunger
November 18, 2002
New York Times
By DANIEL B. SCHNEIDER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/giving/18SCHN.html
OVER the last decade, the news about world hunger has not been all bad.
On the plus side, the number of people who are chronically undernourished or starving dropped by 20 million during the 1990's, according to a recent report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
On the minus side are two grim facts: the overall number is still huge - 840 million - and the strong gains in a relatively small number of countries, notably China, must be measured against a steady slide in the 47 worst-off countries. These are mostly in Africa, where the ranks of the hungry grew by 96 million.
At the moment, the news is particularly disheartening. The World Food Program, a United Nations agency and the world's largest food distribution organization, "has probably never had as many serious challenges as we have today," said James T. Morris, the executive director of the agency.
As a matter of perspective, it should be noted that the percentage of undernourished people in most developing countries has actually decreased, while the absolute number has risen largely as a result of population growth. And while prospects are bleak in sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Middle East, both the prevalence and the amount of undernourished people have been reduced, in some cases drastically, in West Africa, Southeast Asia and South America since the 1990's.
But droughts and famines unfold almost in slow motion, and emergency relief must often wait until after the effects of a food shortage become evident and intrusive. In the interim, the suffering worsens. "Those disasters that receive the highest profile, the most attention in the media, receive the most support," Mr. Morris said. "It's not surprising. The more the world knows about what's going on, the more the world responds."
Donors in the United States have responded to crises in Africa for years, but there are indications that fatigue is setting in. It is the wrong moment. An extraordinary famine is threatening six nations in southern Africa, where more than 14 million people could face starvation in the next year.
Though primarily a result of years of drought alternating with devastating floods, this current drought, the worst in a decade, hits a rural population already decimated by the H.I.V.-AIDS epidemic. In the countries facing mass starvation - Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe - an infection rate of one in five people is typical, and half of those infected are employed in farming. Many households are without one or both parents.
"It's devastating," Mr. Woods said. "You put serious weather problems in a place with four and a half million orphans, and those people have just lost their coping mechanisms."
THE catastrophe has been compounded by government mismanagement and political turmoil in several of the afflicted countries. The government of Malawi sold its grain reserves last year. The new government in Zambia alleges that the previous administration misappropriated state food supplies.
In Zimbabwe, once a model of self-sufficiency, President Robert Mugabe's politically charged efforts to seize land from white farmers have resulted in a huge drop in crop production, leaving almost half the population needing emergency aid.
Poor rainfall over the last year has also decimated cereal crops in the Horn of Africa. As many as 12 million people are threatened with starvation in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the coming months, only two years after widespread famine was last averted by an infusion of international food assistance. Aid workers have already compared the current crisis to the Ethiopian famine of 1984, when almost a million people died.
With much of the developing world, the effects of armed conflict have intensified the effects of a natural calamity. Because of the recent border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which simmered from 1998 to 2000, vast swaths of land cannot be farmed for fear of land mines, and conscription to military service has depleted the agricultural work force in many areas, adding to food insecurity at the household level.
In Ethiopia, the number of people who need food aid is expected to rise to 10 million to 14 million next year from the current 6 million. Recent assessment missions reveal widespread losses of maize and sorghum, staples in rural areas, which are harvested green and eaten during lean seasons, in addition to reduced sources of pasture and water for livestock.
"We have started distributing food in affected areas early enough to contain the crisis, but if we don't get more pledges quickly, aid agencies' relief stocks will run out before December and the situation will deteriorate rapidly," said Georgia Shaver, a representative of the World Food Program, in a recent report.
Poverty in Eritrea is so pervasive that virtually the entire country is susceptible to food shortages. More than a million people - about a third of Eritrea's population - are said to be threatened by the current crisis.
North Korea's long slide into widespread malnutrition began in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and its satellite states stopped providing food and economic aid. Since 1995, floods, droughts and tropical storms have multiplied the country's misery, and it is widely thought that barring political, economic and agricultural reforms, it will be years before North Korea will be able to feed its citizens.
Between 1994 and 1998 at least two million North Koreans were reported to have died from starvation and related diseases. According to the most recent World Food Program studies, at least 45 percent of children under 5 are malnourished, while four million school-age children are also severely underfed, impairing their capacity to grow physically and mentally.
THE United States, a longtime principal donor, has diverted substantial food aid from North Korea to meet demands in Afghanistan, and other countries are also scaling back donations. Neither the recently exposed attempts of North Korea to develop a nuclear weapons program, nor the longstanding suspicions that food aid is hoarded by the government, are likely to improve the situation.
Though agricultural production is up for the second straight year, North Korea is more than a million tons short of its minimum food needs. The slump in grain donations forced the World Food Program, which has been feeding about a third of the country's 23 million people, to begin halting food aid in September to millions of malnourished women, children and older people. By the end of the year, about three million people will be cut off from aid, and another 1.5 million are expected to follow early next year.
"We simply no longer have the resources to do the things we need to do," Mr. Morris said.
The problems in Afghanistan are also manifold, despite the surprising success of aid efforts over the last year and a pronounced recovery in agricultural production in some areas. Roiled by two decades of war and scorched by a four-year drought, the country is mired in an extended crisis, its rural economy in a shambles and its essential services all but nonexistent.
The years of drought have had a damaging effect on range vegetation, thinning critical livestock herds as much as 60 percent since 1998. The unanticipated return of almost two million refugees since last year has outstripped both the capacities and the financing of the relief agencies, and the situation may worsen over the winter, when approximately two million people living in areas that will be rendered inaccessible by heavy snows or cold will be particularly vulnerable.
Severe undernourishment has not spared the Americas. Malnutrition is spreading through rural areas of the Central American "drought corridor," where rains faltered during the May to August planting and harvesting seasons. The region is also recovering from recent natural disasters, like the mudslides in Guatemala last August.
Residents are extremely poor, living on infertile land, and the recent glut of coffee in world markets has removed a steady source of additional household income. The World Food Program estimates that about 1.5 million people are threatened with malnutrition in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Earlier this year, with little fanfare, the World Food Program delivered emergency food aid to 6,000 children in Guatemala who were acutely malnourished and near death, the accumulative effect of two years of drought and rural unemployment. "We have to work very hard at telling the story," Mr. Morris said. "The world can't respond if they don't know about it."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Opportunity To Provide Comments on Jefferson Proving Grounds DU License
From: "Steve Taylor" <Steve@miltoxproj.org>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 10:43:21 -0500
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Notice of Consideration of Amendment Request for the U.S. Army's Jefferson Proving Ground Facility at Madison, IN, and Opportunity for Providing Comments and Requesting a Hearing
[Docket No. 040-08838] [Federal Register: November 14, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 220)] [Notices] [Page 69049-69050]
I. Introduction
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering issuance of a license amendment to Material License No. SUB-1435 issued to the U.S. Army (the licensee), to authorize decommissioning of its Jefferson Proving Ground (JPG) facility in Madison, Indiana.
The U.S. Army submitted a revised decommissioning plan (DP) on June 27, 2002, to decommission JPG with restricted release. An NRC administrative review, documented in a letter to the U.S. Army dated October 1, 2002, found the DP acceptable to begin a technical review.
If the NRC approves the DP, the approval will be documented in an amendment to NRC License No. SUB-1435. However, before approving the proposed amendment, the NRC will need to make the findings required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, and NRC's regulations. These findings will be documented in a Safety Evaluation Report and either an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement.
II. Opportunity To Provide Comments
In accordance with 10 CFR 20.1405, the NRC is providing notice to individuals in the vicinity of the site that the NRC is in receipt of a DP, and will accept comments concerning this decommissioning proposal and its associated environmental impacts. Comments with respect to this action should be provided in writing within 30 days of this notice and addressed to Tom McLaughlin, Decommissioning Branch, Division of Waste Management, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Telephone: (301) 415-5869, fax number (301) 415-5398, e-mail: tgm@nrc.gov. Comments received after 30 days will be considered if practicable to do so, but only those comments received on or before the due date can be assured consideration.
III. Opportunity To Request a Hearing
NRC also provides notice that this is a proceeding on an application for an amendment of a license falling within the scope of subpart L, ``Informal Hearing Procedures for Adjudication in Materials Licensing Proceedings,'' of NRC's rules of practice for domestic licensing proceedings in 10 CFR part 2. Whether or not a person has or intends to provide comments as set out in section II above, pursuant to Sec. 2.1205(a), any person whose interest may be affected by this proceeding may file a request for a hearing in accordance with Sec. 2.1205(d). A request for a hearing must be filed within 30 days of the date of publication of this Federal Register notice.
The request for a hearing must be filed with the Office of the Secretary either:
1. By delivery to the Docketing and Service Branch of the Office of the Secretary at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852; or
2. By mail or telegram addressed to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, Attention: Docketing and Service Branch. Because of continuing disruptions in the delivery of mail to United States Government offices, it is requested that requests for hearing be
[[Page 69050]]
also transmitted to the Secretary of the Commission either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-1101, or by e-mail to hearingdocket@nrc.gov.
In accordance with 10 CFR 2.1205(f), each request for a hearing must also be served, by delivering it personally or by mail, to:
1. The applicant, U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, 5183 Black Hawk Road, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21010-5423, Attention: Dr. John Ferriter, and;
2. The NRC staff, by delivery to the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, One White flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852, or by mail addressed to the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555. Because of continuing disruptions in the delivery of mail to United States Government offices, it is requested that requests for hearing be transmitted to the Office of the General Counsel either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725, or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov.
In addition to meeting other applicable requirements of 10 CFR part 2 of NRC's regulations, a request for a hearing filed by a person other than an applicant must describe in detail:
1. The interest of the requester in the proceeding;
2. How that interest may be affected by the results of the proceeding, including the reasons why the requester should be permitted a hearing, with particular reference to the factors set out in Sec. 2.1205(h);
3. The requestor's areas of concern about the licensing activity that is the subject matter of the proceeding; and
4. The circumstance establishing that the request for a hearing is timely in accordance with Sec. 2.1205(d).
IV. Further Information
The application for the license amendment and supporting documentation are available for inspection at NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html. The DP is in ADAMS in two parts with part 1 at ML021930415 and part 2 at ML021930461. The acceptance letter for the DP is in ADAMS at ML022730012. Any questions with respect to this action should be referred to Tom McLaughlin, Decommissioning Branch, Division of Waste Management, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Telephone: (301) 415-5869. Fax: (301) 415-5398.
Dated in Rockville, Maryland, this 5th day of November, 2002.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Claudia M. Craig, Acting Chief, Decommissioning Branch, Division of Waste Management, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 02-28901 Filed 11-13-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
----
Thousands rally against Iraq war
Sound Off
Monday, November 18, 2002
Canadian Press
http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7BDDA2D04C-CAAF-4012-93D5-025A6D77BC6C%7D
TORONTO -- Thousands of demonstrators gathered peacefully under frigid grey skies on the lawn front of the Ontario legislature Saturday as part of a national series of protests this weekend against ongoing sanctions and the possibility of war in Iraq.
Carrying signs bearing slogans such as Don't Attack Iraq and Love Heals, protesters cheered as speakers from a variety of labour and peace groups decried military action in Iraq.
''The war against Iraq will have a horrific impact against innocent civilians,'' said Marilyn Churley, an NDP member of provincial parliament who was among the speakers.
''Canada should take back our traditional role as peace-makers and say no to war.''
Protesters later marched from the legislature to the American Embassy.
''There's a real need for a peace movement,'' said Ali Mallah, president of the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Arab Federation.
He said the Canadian government needs to stand up on the world stage as an advocate of peace, even if that means disagreeing with its neighbours to the south.
''I hate to say it, but we're becoming sort of irrelevant to United States policies and plans,'' he said
The Toronto demonstration, which drew as many as 2,500 people, was organized by a coalition of groups including the Toronto Committee Against Sanctions and War on Iraq, the United Church, Arab organizations, labour unions and other social justice groups.
''I strongly don't believe Canada should have anything do with such a war - with or without UN approval,'' said protester Jerry Berman, 72, who turned out for the protest with his wife after reading about it in a local newspaper.
Other demonstrations were planned Saturday for communities across Canada. About 150 protesters demonstrated peacefully in front of city hall in Hamilton, Ont., on Saturday morning.
Protests were also expected Saturday in Kingston, Ont., Calgary, Regina, Brandon, Man., Sydney, N.S., and several communities in British Columbia including Prince George, Grand Forks and Nelson. More were planned for Sunday in other communities nationwide.
Mallah said an even larger national day of protest is being planned for January 18.
Tensions were escalating in the Middle East over the weekend as Iraq fired on U.S. and British planes patrolling a no-fly zone Friday.
Coalition planes bombed an Iraqi air defence site in retaliation for the firing.
It was the first coalition strike on Iraq since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government accepted the United Nations Security Council resolution demanding he disarm and allow inspectors to search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The UN has warned of ''serious consequences'' if Iraq doesn't comply. The United States has made clear that an Iraqi failure to co-operate will almost certainly mean a new war.
Iraq denies it possesses weapons of mass destruction.
About 25 United Nations weapons inspectors are set to arrive in Iraq on Monday. Four Canadians have been told to prepare to eventually head to Iraq as weapons inspectors.
Canada has not yet committed troops to any war.
After inspectors left Iraq in 1998, ahead of U.S.-British air strikes, Baghdad refused to readmit the monitors. It accused them of being American spies and said they could only return after UN trade sanctions had been lifted.
Under Security Council resolutions passed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the sanctions can be lifted only when Iraq proves to the inspectors that it has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles.
----
Reporting for Duty ... Not
Refusing to Serve
A growing number of Israelis are refusing to serve in the army even if it means jail time for them
By Aaron Lightner
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
November 18, 2002
Jewsweek.com
http://www.jewsweek.com/israel/095.htm
Trudging up a craggy hill with red mud sticking to their boots, the group of Israelis broke into chants.
"We don't cry, we don't shoot!" they yelled. "We refuse to be murderers!"
The 50 or so demonstrators had arrived at a hill overlooking Military Prison No. 6 near Atlit, where conscientious objectors are detained.
"It is a soldier's duty to disobey illegal orders," explained Peretz Kidron, a white-haired activist. "When Israeli troops commit war crimes and say, 'We were just obeying orders,' they use the same excuse as the Nazis did."
The conscientious objectors, often called "refuseniks," represent a growing number of Israelis who either refuse to do reserve military duty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or who reject outright any conscription into the Israel Defense Force.
Reserve Maj. Ishai Menuchin, director of the conscientious objector group Yesh Gvul, stands on the steep slope with a bullhorn in hand. "We are talking about 20,000 soldiers who do not show up for reserve duty, which constitutes a huge chunk of the reserve pool," Menuchin said. "The fact is, fewer and fewer grown men are willing to risk their lives protecting some God-forsaken roadblock near Nablus."
The Israeli army says Menuchin's figures are ridiculously inflated. "Their claims are, frankly, bulls--t," Lt. Col. Olivier Ravich, an IDF spokesman. "Anyone can manipulate the reservist numbers to prove their point."
TREND PREDATES INTIFADA
In any case, only a fraction of those who duck reserve duty do so for ideological reasons. The trend long predates the intifada, reflecting the belief among some segments of the population that peace was just around the corner after the Oslo Accords were signed.
As Israeli society became increasingly bourgeois in the 1990s, many Israelis preferred to spend their time traveling abroad or joining lucrative dot-com ventures rather than heading off to the reserves.
The IDF won't give numbers of conscientious objectors, but says they are anomalies among a population that increasingly considers the Palestinian uprising an existential threat.
The army insists that morale remains as high as ever. "In fact, an increasing number of draftees and veteran reservists have volunteered for combat units in recent years," Ravich says.
Still, the turmoil of the intifada has given groups like Yesh Gvul a fresh sense of purpose. Yesh Gvul's name - a Hebrew phrase that means both "there's a limit" and "there's a border" - reflects the group's origins in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the first war that some Israelis saw as one of choice rather than necessity.
The phones at the organization have been ringing off the hook in recent months, Menuchin claims. Since the intifada began in September 2000, his organization has helped over 400 men to avoid reserve duty, including 36 people currently jailed at Prison 6.
DUTY UNDESIRABLE
Most Israelis have at their disposal countless ways of avoiding reserve duty - for example, taking a trip abroad, getting a doctor's note or even injuring themselves to downgrade their physical profile. Only those who specify that they refuse on ideological grounds face the possibility of jail time. Jail terms are about as long as the reserve duty would be - generally, 14 to 26 days - and rarely do the objectors suffer negative consequences in the workplace or elsewhere when they are released.
"...Since the intifada began in September 2000, his organization has helped over 400 men to avoid reserve duty, including 36 people currently jailed ..."
"When I was a conscript I enjoyed being in the Tapuach area" of the West Bank, near Nablus, "telling stories back home about my artillery unit," said Reserve Lt. Ishai Sagi, 27. "But when I got sent back to the Tapuach area not as a boy but as grown man, it reminded me of the terrible things we do there. I then told my commanding officers that I am not willing to give my soldiers the orders that I was forced to give, and that this is the last time I would serve there."
Less than six months later, Sagi received an order to return to Tapuach. When he refused, he was jailed for 26 days at Prison 6.
Reserve duty has become so undesirable in recent years that 41 percent of Israelis believe only "suckers" show up, according to a recent poll in the Yediot Achronot newspaper. Of the total pool of some 250,000 potential reservists, just 13,000 serve the full reserve term of 26 days a year, the daily Ma'ariv reported.
The Israeli army announced in September the establishment of two new brigades, signing on conscripts for extra terms of duty to reduce pressure on the reserve system.
For the army, the reservist dilemma is less ideological than budgetary. Many reservists have careers and families and demand more of the army than do young conscripts. The army pays reservists salaries roughly equivalent to those they receive in the private sector. Furthermore, after several reservists died in action, reserve officers and their units organized to demand expanded benefits.
If they don't provide added benefits, higher pay and better hours, the army will continue to have problems convincing reservists that they aren't suckers for answering the call of duty, said Tzvika Weshler, spokesman for Baltam, a reservist advocacy group.
The army has met some of Baltam's demands, earmarking some $17 million in bonus pay for combat reservists who serve more than 26 days, renovating bases where reservists train and making scheduling more flexible.
In the long term, says Reserve Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, former deputy of the IDF's planning division and currently a researcher at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, the IDF will have to restructure so it doesn't rely on reservists, Brom said. In the short run, however, Brom expects few changes: Fewer reservists want to serve at a time when, because of the intifada, the IDF is using five times more reserve battalions than before.
LITTLE KNOWN LAW
Nevertheless, Yesh Gvul continues to canvas bus and train stations to inform soldiers of a clause in the IDF's code that allows them to disobey illegal orders. The law stems from the ruling of a committee of inquiry charged with investigating the Kafr Qassem massacre in 1956, when soldiers killed 49 Arab civilians who weren't aware of a curfew imposed at the beginning of the Sinai War. Ultimately, the presiding judge ruled that following an illegal order is a criminal offense.
Since then, peace activist Kidron said, the army has never court-martialed a refusenik. If it did, the trial would bring up tough questions about the IDF's laws, including those claiming that the IDF's legal code incorporates all international conventions Israel has signed.
Yesh Gvul members say they support the army - but as a defensive force only. "The myth is that pressuring the Palestinians will protect us," Kidron said, "but it is the trigger to more violence, and cannot provide us with security."
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Antiwar Activists Plan to Stay The Course
Women Settling In For Four-Month Vigil
By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 18, 2002; Page B05
Women from the Washington area and across the country gathered in front of the White House yesterday to kick off a four-month, 24-hour vigil to protest the possible war with Iraq.
"We feel that this is a time when our country is in great danger," said organizer Medea Benjamin, 50, of San Francisco. "The Bush administration has begun a course of militarism and violence that will beget more violence."
At least 30 women and a few men attended the rally, which started at Lafayette Square and moved along Pennsylvania Avenue NW -- a small presence compared with the tens of thousands who converged upon Washington last month to protest any military action against Iraq.
But yesterday's crowd said that what it lacked in numbers it would make up for in persistence.
At least six will stay in the park in four-day shifts until March 8, resting on the ground in sleeping bags or on benches, organizers said. Some said they will fast for days or even weeks. Many of the women wore pink jackets and buttons that read "Code Pink -- Women for Peace."
"Bush says Code Red; we say Code Pink!" they shouted. "Women united -- We'll never be divided!"
Many were members of human rights or women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women. Others were simply mothers or grandmothers who wanted to let President Bush know that they don't want another war. They want money to go toward health care, education and other social services instead, they said.
"We are the mothers and wives and sisters of those who will be killed for oil," said Anise Jenkins, 53, a D.C. activist who works as a secretary.
Loree Murray, 81, sported a button that said "Hail to the Thief" above a picture of Bush. "The women, we're trying to teach peace. We're trying to teach the president something," the D.C. resident said.
The protest was peaceful, with a few police officers on hand to monitor activities. There were no counter-protesters, except for one man who walked past the group and shouted, "War will be declared on us even if we don't do anything."
Diane Wilson, 54, traveled from a small town in Bush's home state of Texas to participate in the vigil. A commercial fisherman who last year earned $12,000, she said she wants the Bush administration to spend more money on health care than war. She has never had health insurance. She plans to fast for 40 days and had her last meal -- several slices of pizza -- Saturday night.
"I want to tell Bush and Congress exactly how we feel in small-town America," she said.
Kristi Laughlin, a human rights activist from San Francisco, visited Afghanistan in June to see for herself the aftermath of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. She said Kabul looked like the site of an archaeological dig.
"To see where our money goes and the end result of our production of weapons and distribution of weapons, to me it was a sobering reality," she said.
Laughlin, 33, said that too often the Bush administration relies on aggression rather than negotiation. The money spent on military campaigns is needed elsewhere, she said, to help women and children.
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Nuns Arrested During Military Protest
By ELLIOTT MINOR
Associated Press Writer
Nov 18, 2002 5:50 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MILITARY_SCHOOL_PROTEST?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Minor reports he talked to one of several nuns who were arrested. (Audio) http://customwire.ap.org/photos/GAEM103111716-small.jpg http://customwire.ap.org/photos/GAEM103111716-big.jpg
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) -- With supporters cheering her on, Caryl Hartjes squeezed through a 10-inch opening in a chain-link fence to risk jail for her beliefs.
The frail, 67-year-old Roman Catholic nun from Fond du Lac, Wis., was among nearly 100 demonstrators, including at least 7 nuns, who were arrested for entering Fort Benning to protest a U.S. military program that trains Latin American soldiers.
About 7,000 protesters gathered Sunday for the 13th annual demonstration by the School of the Americas Watch, which conducts the protests to mark the killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador on Nov. 19, 1989.
Some of the killers had attended the Army's School of the Americas, which moved from Panama to Fort Benning, an Army training center, in 1984.
"I go in solidarity with the men and women - especially the children - of South America who were just whisked away and continue to be whisked away," said Hartjes, a hospice worker. "I feel some anger at the outrage of it all. I feel angry at the deliberate treachery and violence."
A line of military police officers awaited Hartjes and the others who crossed the boundary into Fort Benning. The protesters were directed up a hill, where they were arrested.
"This decision to go in is a spontaneous thing. There was no planning," said Bill Quigley, a lawyer representing the protesters. "We're here to support the voices that are trying to make our country's international actions more just."
The protesters who were arrested could face up to six months in jail for trespassing on U.S. government property. Bond hearings were scheduled for Monday.
The School of the Americas was replaced last year by a Department of Defense school called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. It still trains soldiers, but also focuses on civilian and diplomatic affairs. Human rights courses are mandatory.
But Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch, said the change in the school was only cosmetic.
"It's still about men with guns," he said.
Army officials called the protest a positive example of American democracy at work and said they use it as a teaching tool for the students from Latin America. The institute hosted an open house on Saturday for about 300 protesters.
"The peaceful protest today outside the gates is a celebration of democracy," said the institute's commandant, Col. Richard Downie. "At a time when our nation is engaged in a war on terrorism, it is absolutely crucial that we build friendships. We try to teach our students that their duty is to protect and serve their citizens, not abuse them."
On the Net:
School of the Americas Watch: http://www.soaw.org
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation: http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec/
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Bomb Blast at Venezuela TV Station
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ
Associated Press Writer,
Nov 18, 9:55 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/V/VENEZUELA_POLICE_POLITICS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- A bomb exploded at a Venezuelan television station critical of President Hugo Chavez's government, destroying three vehicles but causing no injuries, authorities said Monday.
The attack on Globovision late Sunday raised fears of increasing lawlessness in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, after President Hugo Chavez ordered an army takeover of the city police force.
National Guard armored personnel carriers and heavily armed troops blocked access to police stations Monday. On Sunday, guardsmen fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up an opposition protest outside the Mariperez precinct, where officers resisted the federal takeover.
Elsewhere, hundreds of civilian protesters parked their cars to block a highway outside Caracas' air force base Monday. They honked car horns and waved red, yellow and blue Venezuelan flags.
The bombing at Globovision "was meant to frighten us. But neither bombs nor bullets are going to stop us from reporting the truth about the mistakes and excesses of this government," said station director Alberto Federico Ravell.
The attack occurred hours after Globovision broadcast footage of a pro-Chavez street activist applauding and embracing the guardsmen who fired on opposition protesters Sunday, Ravell said. The station received several telephone threats before the bombing, he said.
It was the latest attack against institutions and people perceived as Chavez opponents. Grenades and crude bombs have exploded outside news media outlets, the offices of Venezuela's largest labor and business federations and the home of the archbishop of Caracas.
There have been no arrests.
Chavez has dangerously divided the military, dragged the nation into recession, and polarized the country over his rule. Opponents want a nonbinding referendum on his rule, hoping to persuade him to step down.
On Sunday, billowing tear gas engulfed the Mariperez police precinct after protesters attempted to push their way through a security checkpoint outside the station. Four protesters were detained.
Hundreds of pot-banging protesters gathered outside the station, home of an elite motorcycle unit, and shouted "Get Out! Get Out!" and "Coup Plotters!" at the soldiers.
Officers at the Mariperez precinct - one of 10 in the city - refused to accept the takeover by federal forces, and control of police across the city remained in question.
The government took command of the 9,000-strong force Saturday to end a six-week labor dispute between officers loyal to the president and others who side with Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, a Chavez opponent.
Police Chief Henry Vivas, appointed by Pena, refused to step down, even after Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello named Gonzalo Sanchez Delgado as the new chief.
Chavez said the government ordered the takeover because disputes within the force "had become unbearable."
"We have to impose authority," Chavez said during his weekly radio program.
Pena accused Chavez of trying to create chaos so he can justify declaring martial law. Chavez accuses Pena and the opposition of seeking a coup.
Also Monday, a blast at a fireworks stand killed three and injured six during morning rush hour in downtown Caracas, the fire department said. Fire officials were investigating, and the explosion was not immediately linked to political dissent.
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Victoria's Secret Special Sheds Its PETA Moment
By Lisa de Moraes
Monday, November 18, 2002
Washington Post; Page C07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3419-2002Nov17?
CBS will not be showing its viewers the real fun that erupted at the Victoria's Secret fashion show when it telecasts the skivvies special at 8 Wednesday night.
Activists from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stormed the runway at the undies extravaganza, which took place in New York City late last week.
The animal-friendly protesters jumped onto the stage and brandished signs that read "Gisele: Fur Scum" just as model Gisele Bundchen strutted down the runway. She sported beaded bra and panties, thigh-high black fishnet stockings and red stilettos for the amusement of Donald Trump, Tina Brown, Ahmad Rashad, Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz and the rest of the thong-viewing throng packed into the Upper East Side's Lexington Avenue Armory.
A bunch of beefy security guards removed the protesters and the lights went down. When they came back up, Bundchen repeated her runway romp for CBS's cameras so that, through the miracle of taped TV, Gisele's Really Big Adventure with PETA never happened. According to the Associated Press, the audience wildly applauded Bundchen's encore.
"The PETA interruption will not be part of the telecast," said a CBS spokesman.
Thank goodness for the cable news networks, which telecast the naked truth about what took place -- over and over and over on Friday.
PETA told the Associated Press that it has it in for Bundchen since she signed a contract to model pelts for Blackglama furs -- you know, the ones in those "What Becomes a Legend Most?" ads.
Three of the protesters were given summonses for disorderly conduct, a New York Police Department rep told the AP.
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Peaceful Tannery Protesters Charged with Rioting
November 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-19.asp#anchor4
VELLORE, Tamilnadu, India, Eight people, including environmental activists and local residents of Vellore, have been charged with rioting and illegal assembly for participating in a demonstration outside the Vellore Collectorate Thursday.
The protesters were demanding action to address pollution from tanneries that has contaminated groundwater, ruined a river and devastated agriculture in the area. Vellore has one of the largest clusters of leather tanneries in the country.
On Thursday, activists from Greenpeace and Pasumai Thaayagam [Green Motherland], local residents and school children from Ramakrishna School and Vidyalaya in Vellore, put up a human chain outside the office of Collector Mohan Das to dramatize the sufferings of residents due to environmental pollution from the leather tanneries.
A Common Effluent Treatment Plant set up to treat the effluents from the tanneries has failed to mitigate the pollution beause of the inherent limitations of the technology, Greenpeace says.
Recently, the Supreme Court of India ordered relief for the pollution-impacted communities and remediation of the environment. But damage assessment and remediation has not taken place.
On November 12, activists from Greenpeace and Pasumai Thaayagam blocked the outlet of a Common Effluent Treatment Plant that has failed to alleviate the pollution problem.
On Thursday, the activists sought an audience with Das so that the assembled school children and residents could present their memoranda. The collector offered to come outside and receive the petition, and the activists were taken to the collector by uniformed policemen in the presence of the gathering.
Unexpectedly, the activists have been charged with rioting and illegal assembly. "These charges are totally bizarre as there was no violence and no unruly mob," said a spokesman for the protesters. In the wee hours of Friday morning, the principals of the two schools were arrested. The principals were released later that day.
"These charges reflect an unwillingness on the part of the administration to countenance any democratic demand for justice and a clean environment, and expose the dictatorial manner in which they are prepared to use police force to intimidate residents and avoid addressing pressing environmental problems," the protesters said in a statement.
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Sea Shepherd Launches First Vegan Anti-Whaling Campaign
November 18, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-18-19.asp#anchor6
MALIBU, California, In December 2002, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will embark on a campaign to oppose the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctica.
Departing Auckland, New Zealand on December 4, Captain Paul Watson will take the Sea Shepherd's ship the "Farley Mowat" and 45 volunteers on a two month long voyage across the icy waters of Antarctica's Southern Ocean in an attempt stop the slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary.
The crew of the Farley Mowat will be the first completely vegan crew to voyage to the Southern continent, says Watson. "I don't want to hear the same tired old argument from the Japanese about how whale-savers eat cows but save whales," he said.
"The Japanese say there is no difference between whales and cows," argued Watson. "There are of course, plenty of differences, and the most important difference is that the Antarctic Minke whale is an endangered species, as listed by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species. (CITES).
"However, if the Japanese see us as hypocrites for eating meat from cows and not from whales, we have effectively removed this charge of hypocrisy by declaring the Farley Mowat as a meat free zone."
A vegan (pronounced VEE-gun) is someone who avoids using or consuming animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, down, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has always made vegan and vegetarian meals available to the crews of its various ships. Still, meat has been available to non-vegans and vegetarians in the past, although the organization has had a policy of not serving fish.
Watson says he and members of the Sea Shepherd Society are concerned that "some 50 percent of fish taken from the sea is utilized as food for farm animals." Fishmeal is used to raise chickens, cows, pigs, and salmon. Large quantities of tuna is fed to domestic cats.
"With our oceans dying, with numerous fish species on the brink of extinction, with the proliferation of PCB's, mercury, and other heavy metals polluting the world's fish, it is time for humanity to question this horrendous destruction," Watson says. The Sea Shepherd crew intends to exemplify this concern by adopting an exclusively vegan diet for its campaigns.
While the Japanese maintain they are taking a self imposed quota of 440 minke whales under the scientific research provisions of the International Whaling Commission regulations, Watson calls their whaling activities illegal.
He says, "These whalers will be breaking laws that govern whaling by the International Whaling Commission, International Laws of the Sea, Antarctic Environmental Protection Act, The Convention of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, and The World Charter for Nature."
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