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NUCLEAR
Inside Iraq
How the West fuels global terrorism
Lots of pics of rusty, leaking, patched, DUF6 cylinders.
I Was Shot While Escorting Jenin's School Children
Pakistan, N.Korea Swapped Arms Expertise
Los Alamos Lab Investigation Expands
MILITARY
General: Afghan army needs warlords for success
Sensible provision on smallpox liability
Shells Fired at U.S. Embassy
Inside the Secret Campaign to Topple Saddam
THE KURDS - Turks, Fearing Flow of Refugees, Plan Move Into Iraq
Palestinians Attack Israel Navy Boat
Palestinian Suicide Boat Attacks Israeli Navy Boat
Israeli Radios Say Soldier Killed UNRWA Official
Land mine Blast, Clashes Kill 22 in Indian Kashmir
Rumsfeld Praises Ambivalent Sloveni
Putin pouts over NATO 'problem'
Russia Open to Closer Ties With NATO
Russia's Putin Assures China on Forthcoming Trip
Chechen Warlord Warns of Attacks on Russia
U.S. Navy Ship to Make China Visit
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
9/11 Report Says Saudi Arabia Links Went Unexamined
U.S. Backs FBI's Saudi Arabia Probe
FBI Probes Possible Saudi-9/11 Link
ENERGY AND OTHER
EPA eases rules on clean air
E.P.A. Says It Will Change Rules Governing Industrial Pollution
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Inside Iraq
Rural ills; Baghdad business; city hardships; the rich ... and the rest
US News & World Report
11/23/02
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/021202/usnews/2saddam.b1.htm
Rural ills
ALBU AJEAL, IRAQ-Said Bader al-Rifai holds up a shriveled lime covered with dark spots. "We call it measles," the farmer explains. The orange he holds up next has the same speckles. The grapefruit crops, meanwhile, are infested, meaning the fruit is falling off well before it's ripe. Even the sheep and other animal crops suffer from birth defects and other abnormalities.
In each case, the farmers in this village east of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, blame America to one degree or another. All the problems, they say, began after the Gulf War. The insecticide that would save their grapefruits, they claim, is being held up because of the 12-year-old sanctions regime. Depleted uranium used in U.S. missiles is the scapegoat for other ailments. "Everybody realizes that the main cause of the abnormalities in crops and animals is because of prohibited weapons used by the Americans," claims Modhur al-Sharif, another local farmer.
The area was hit by U.S. airstrikes in 1991 and again in 1998, but the Pentagon has vigorously denied that its weapons cause such problems. -K.W.
Baghdad business
BAGHDAD STOCK EXCHANGE -One hundred and fifteen white marker boards line the trading floor here, one for each listed firm. Trades are still recorded manually, although the index is calculated on computers. These days, talk of war has brought in the bears. "I made a lot of money here," says Safwat Hashim, a retiree and investor. "Only in the last year have I lost money."
The Baghdad Stock Exchange is, at best, a limited experiment with a free market. Trading swings at the decade-old exchange are capped at 5 percent. "So you don't make people poor in one day or jumping with joy like in America," explains the exchange's assistant director, Ahmed Addel Salaam. The most important sectors of the economy, such as oil, are excluded since they are controlled by the government.
Even with the threat of war, the trading floor still hums with the rhythm of commerce. After all, Iraq has a long history of traders, and the U.N. sanctions regime has given rise to a new generation of successful merchants. Anything can be purchased on the streets of Baghdad, from the latest flat-screen televisions to computers to American movies.
Capitalism is still nascent. The economy is mostly controlled by the government, which classifies the inflation rate as a state secret. But another decade-old experiment in capitalism-private banking-is flourishing. The nation's first private bank, the Bank of Baghdad, is one of the hottest stocks on the Baghdad exchange these days. In fact, the bank has seen its deposits grow 50 percent so far this year. "People have confidence in the banking system," says Mowafaq Mahmood, the CEO of the Bank of Baghdad. "Whatever may happen, they feel safe that their money is in good hands."
In a sign of the times, one of the bank's fastest-growing areas is money transfers inside Iraq. With the rising crime rate, many Iraqis would prefer to send money through a bank from one city to another rather than carry it. The Bank of Baghdad now has 19 branches, with the latest having opened just last month.
But Iraq is not an easy place to do business. Communications are antiquated and unreliable. Forged bank notes are a huge problem. So is the sheer volume of bills. Inflation has so destroyed the value of the Iraqi dinar that it now takes eight 250-dinar notes-the largest denomination in wide circulation-to make one U.S. dollar, meaning any sizable transaction requires shopping bags of money and laborious counting. -K.W.
City hardships
AL HANSA-In this crowded Baghdad neighborhood, the sewage runs along both sides of the street in open ditches. Residents gave up on septic tanks long ago, channeling their waste water into ditches intended for rainfall runoff. In Iraq's sweltering summer heat, the stench is overpowering.
Even worse, the locals are supplementing the erratic water supply by tapping into the main pipe. But the plastic pipes they use run through the sewage ditches. "In the summer, we have many problems with diseases like diarrhea and dehydration," says Abla Shafiq, a mother of five. "In the winter, with the floods, sewage overflows into the house."
Al Hansa is part of the 20 percent of Baghdad not served by the city's antiquated sewage system. In fact, these days it's hard to believe that Baghdad was once one of the most advanced cities in the region and that Iraq's infrastructure was the envy of its neighbors. Today, essential services barely function. "This is a country that should be able to employ its people and give them a life like we live in the West," says Margaret Hassan, country director for the aid group CARE. "They know they should be living a decent life."
Water is among the most urgent problems. Sail Hussein Hamid, Baghdad's deputy mayor, admits that the city can provide only a third of the drinkable water needed by residents. Even that water is suspect; the government is forced to cut corners in the purification process. Still, despite the effects of sanctions and corruption, Iraq has been able to rebuild partially. Iraqi engineers, for example, managed to restore basic electrical service and slowly increase its output. "Everyone thought it would collapse in two years," says Saad al-Zubaidi, a director general at the Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction. But even in the past two years, the government has phased out most of the rolling blackouts that plagued Baghdad, although rural service remains spotty.
Of course, the damage of years of war and sanctions is not limited to the infrastructure. Where Iraq had once nearly eradicated illiteracy, now it struggles to keep its children in school. The middle class has disappeared, as teachers, doctors, and engineers slip into poverty. "You can repair buildings," says al-Zubaidi. "But to repair damage to human beings, it takes a long time and it's the hardest part." -K.W.
The rich...and the rest
BAGHDAD-The new luxury mansions are ornate, oversize, multilayered affairs-like "gangsters' wedding cakes," according to one foreign resident. They usually boast elaborate architectural flourishes, sometimes pools or fountains, and all the standard modern conveniences, including expensive security systems. And with massive air conditioners, they have larger windows despite the scorching desert sun. "I'm trying to get people more aware of insulation and double-paned glass," says architect Saad Kaarufa, "but it's hard because of the low energy costs." Strangely enough, the luxury home-building and renovation business is booming. Kaarufa is designing about seven homes a month at his small firm.
Most of Baghdad might be sinking deeper and deeper into poverty. (In some neighborhoods, it is common to find as many as 10 families stuffed into a ramshackle, rat-infested tenement.) But not everyone is suffering. Merchants favored by the government have gotten rich from smuggling. Government staffers get access to cheap land. And subsidies on building materials are available to people approved by the regime.
Even with war looming, construction is seen as the closest thing to a safe investment. "They don't seem to be worried about American bombs," says Kaarufa, who went to elementary school in Utah. "They are more afraid of looting than bombing.'' -K.W.
----
How the West fuels global terrorism
By Seumas Milne, LONDON,
23 November 2002
Arab News SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH DAILY
http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=20567
This time last year, supporters of George Bush's war on terror were in euphoric mood. As one Taleban stronghold after another fell to the US-backed Northern Alliance, they hailed the advance as a decisive blow to the authors of the Sept. 11 atrocities. The critics and doom-mongers had been confounded, cheerleaders crowed. Kites were flying again, music was playing and women were throwing off their burkas with joyful abandon.
As the US president demanded Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive", government officials on both sides of the Atlantic whispered that they were less than 48 hours from laying hands on the Al-Qaeda leader. By destroying the terrorist network's Afghan bases and its Taleban sponsors, supporters of the war argued, the Americans and their friends had ripped the heart out of the beast. Washington would now begin to address Muslim and Arab grievances by fast-tracking the establishment of a Palestinian state. London even published a rollcall of shame of journalists they claimed had been proved wrong by a hundred days of triumph. And in the UK Parliament, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ridiculed members of Parliament (MPs) from his own Labour Party for suggesting that the US and Britain might still be fighting in Afghanistan 12 months down the line.
One year on, the crowing has long since faded away; reality has sunk in. After six months of multiplying attacks on US, Australian and European targets, civilian and military - in Tunisia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Russia, Jordan, Yemen, the US and Indonesia - Western politicians are having to face the fact that they are losing their war on terror. In Britain, the prime minister has taken to warning of the "painful price" that the country will have to pay to defeat those who are "inimical to all we stand for", while leaks about the risk of chemical or biological attacks have become ever more lurid. After a year of US military operations in Afghanistan and around the world, the CIA Director George Tenet had to concede that the threat from Al-Qaeda and associated jihadist groups was as serious as before Sept. 11. "They've reconstituted, they are coming after us," he said.
In other words, the global US onslaught had been a complete failure - at least as far as dealing with non-state terrorism was concerned. Tom Daschle, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, was even more brutal. Summing up a litany of unmet objectives in the US confrontation with militant Islamism, he asked: "By what measure can we say this has been successful?" But most galling of all has been the authentication of the latest taped message from Bin Laden himself, promising bloody revenge for the deaths of the innocent in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the man whose capture or killing was, after all, the first objective of Bush's war. And yet, along with the Taleban leader and one-eyed motorbiker Mulla Omar, the mastermind of America's humiliation remains free.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan itself, the record is just as dismal. By using the heroin-financed gangsters of the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taleban regime and pursue Al-Qaeda remnants ever since, the US has handed over most of the country to the same war criminals who devastated Afghanistan in the early 1990s. In Kabul, the US puppet President Hamid Karzai can rely on foreign troops to prop up his fragile authority. There, and in a few other urban centers, some girls' schools have reopened and the worst manifestations of the Taleban's grotesque oppression of women have gone.
But in much of what is once again the opium capital of the world, the return of the warlords has meant harsh political repression, lawlessness, mass rape and widespread torture, the bombing or closure of schools, as well as Taleban-style policing of women's dress and behavior. The systematic use by Ismail Khan, who runs much of Western Afghanistan with US support, of electric shock torture, arbitrary arrests and whippings to crush dissent is set out in a new Human Rights Watch report. Khan was nevertheless described by the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently as a "thoughtful" and "appealing" person. His counterpart in the north, Gen. Dostam, has in turn just been accused by the UN of torturing witnesses to his troops' murder of thousands of Taleban prisoners late last year, when he was working closely with US special forces.
The death toll exacted for this "liberation" can only be estimated. But a consensus is growing that around 3,500 Afghan civilians were killed by US bombing (which included the large-scale use of depleted uranium weapons), with up to 10,000 combatants killed and many more deaths from cold and hunger as a result of the military action. Now, long after the war was supposed to be over, the US 82nd airborne division is reported to be alienating the population in the south and east with relentless but largely fruitless raids and detentions, while mortar and rocket attacks on US bases are now taking place at least three times a week. As Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, puts it, the US military campaign in Afghanistan has "lost momentum".
All this has been the inevitable product of the central choice made last autumn, which was to opt for a mainly military solution to the challenge of terrorism. That was a recipe for failure. By their nature, terrorist or guerrilla campaigns which have deep social roots and draw on a widespread sense of injustice - as militant Islamist groups do, regardless of the obscurantism of their ideology - cannot be defeated militarily. And as the war on terror has increasingly become a war to enforce US global power, it has only intensified the appeal of "asymmetric warfare" to the powerless. The grievances Al-Qaeda is able to feed on throughout the Muslim world were once again spelled out in Bin Laden's latest edict. But there is little sign of any weakening of the wilful Western refusal to address seriously the causes of terrorism. Thus, during the past year, the US has armed and bolstered Pakistan and the Central Asian dictatorships, supported Putin's ongoing devastation of Chechnya, continued to bomb and blockade Iraq at huge human cost, established new US bases across the Muslim world and, most recklessly of all, provided every necessary cover for Ariel Sharon's bloody rampages through the occupied Palestinian territories. In most of this, despite Tony Blair's muted appeals for a new Middle East peace conference, Britain has played the role of faithful lieutenant.
Now, even as "phase one" of its war on terror has been seen to have failed, the US shows every sign of preparing to launch phase two: its long-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perhaps some of the intensity of the current warnings about terrorist threats is intended to help soften up public opinion for an unpopular war. But what is certain about such an act of aggression is that it will fuel Islamist terrorism throughout the world and make attacks on those countries which support it much more likely. If such outrages take place in Britain, there can no longer be any surprise or mystery about why we have been attacked, no point in asking why they hate us. Of course, it wouldn't be the innocents who were killed or injured who would be to blame. But by throwing Britain's weight behind a flagrantly unjust war, our political leaders would certainly be held responsible for endangering their own people. (The Guardian)
--------
Lots of pics of rusty, leaking, patched, DUF6 cylinders.
From: "Vina K Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002
http://webdev.ead.anl.gov/scripts/PortWeb.dll?quickfind&catalog=duf6&template=duf6grid&sorton=Last+Updated&ascending=0&Submit=Find+All+Records&offset=0
Scroll through these photos. There are pics showing just how old and run down some of the DUF6 cylinders are. Also shows moving equipment, etc. A cylinder about the size of the ones shown in the photos was dropped at Portsmouth and ruptured while the UF6 was still partially liquified. I think Vina and another PORTS worker posted about the incident a while back. These pics help people to envision what we are talking about.
-------- israel
I Was Shot While Escorting Jenin's School Children
CounterPunch
November 23, 2002
by CAOIMHE BUTTERLY
(Interviewed by Annie Higgins)
http://www.counterpunch.org/butterfly1123.html
In today's reinvasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces made the bottom section of the camp into a closed military zone in the morning, using about twelve tanks, ten jeeps, and at least two Apache helicopter gunships. I had been trying to get between the unarmed children and the tanks, when I received a call from a friend who wanted me to evacuate her sick daughter as the Army would not let any ambulances through. I went with a friend who is a Palestinian journalist, and we were immediately arrested, along with another international volunteer, and taken to a place where about twenty Palestinian men were being held. They were blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped to their trousers or underwear, and beaten severely. After I was detained for two hours and interrogated briefly, the Israeli soldiers said that I was free to go. I asked permission to remain with the men, hoping to minimise the violence, but the soldiers refused, saying it was not allowed. When I refused to leave, I was forcibly dragged away, pulled down the road, and told that if I returned to the area I would be shot.
I went back the way I had come, past the United Nations compound. There I spoke briefly with Iain Hook, Project Manager of UNRWA [United Nations Relief Works Agency] in Jenin, who said he was trying to negotiate with the soldiers for women and children to go home. He came out of the UN compound waving a blue UN flag, and the soldiers' only response was to broadcast with their microphone in English, "We don't care if you are the United Nations or who you are. Fuck off and go home!" They were trying to go home. Iain said that things were not going well. He insisted that he wanted to provide safe passage for his forty Palestinian workers and himself using legal means, i.e., official coordination with the Army. Some worried parents had begun to knock a hole in the wall at the back of the compound to evacuate children who were there for a vaccination programme. We accompanied some of the children home.
After this, I headed again to the sick girl's house. On the way I met a group of children who told me that a ten-year-old friend of mine, Muhammad Bilalo, had been killed and three children had been wounded by tank fire, one of whom sustained brain damage. So I went to where the children were gathered, and the tanks were firing on them erratically. I walked down the road between the children and the tanks until I was fifty meters from the tank, where I tried to dialogue with the soldiers. I implored them not to shoot live ammunition at unarmed children. At that point, they stopped their shooting. A few moments later, an APC drove up to the tank [an armed personnel carrier, like a tank with all the armour except a cannon]. I could see their faces very clearly and I imagine they could see mine also. I had seen both of these tanks earlier in the day. A soldier raised his upper body and his gun out of the hatch of the second vehicle and began shooting. At first he shot into the air, and most of the children dispersed, running into an alley on the left side of the street. About three small children remained, however, and I tried physically to get them to the alley, dragging and pushing them. I looked back over my shoulder and could see the soldier in the APC pointing his gun at me from about one hundred meters. Near the entrance to the alley, I was shot in the thigh. When I fell they continued shooting in my direction. I crawled part of the way up the alley, and then some of the youngsters dragged me up the rest of the way. No ambulances were allowed into the camp, so I was carried on a makeshift stretcher to where a Red Crescent ambulance could reach me near the entrance of the camp. While I was in the Emergency Room of Jenin Hospital, Iain Hook of UNRWA was brought in. He died a few minutes later.
We have been told that when he was shot, the Israeli Army prohibited a clearly marked UN ambulance from evacuating him and transporting him for nearly an hour, during which time he lost much blood. Finally the ambulance crew evacuated him by taking him out by the back wall that employees had broken down earlier.
Having been present in the Camp all morning, I can testify that any Palestinian fighters had stopped shooting a good two hours before either of us was wounded. When I passed the UN compound in the morning, it was surrounded by Israeli Army snipers and soldiers who were shooting erratically into the Camp. Two people were killed and six wounded. All but one were shot by tank fire outside what the Army deemed a closed military zone. I was not caught up in any kind of crossfire as the Israeli Occupation Forces are falsely stating, and I don't believe that Iain was either.
The massacre has not stopped. Human rights violations and war crimes seen so blatantly across the world in April of this year continue on a daily basis in Jenin. Yesterday, with the casual killings that marked it, was not an unusual day in Jenin. It has become a potentially suicidal act to engage in the most basic acts of survival. The Israeli Occupation Forces engage again and again in a shoot-to-kill policy without regard as to whether its targets are civilians or armed fighters. Israelis have been shown in April that they can get away with a massacre, and that all the international condemnation in the world cannot get one ambulance in to evacuate a wounded person.
Thus the lack of accountability on Israel's part has become bolder as the events witnessed yesterday become almost standard. These are not military campaigns. They are acts of terror designed to humiliate, brutalise, and bully Palestinians into subjugation. They are being denied not only the right to resist, but to exist.
-------- korea
Pakistan, N.Korea Swapped Arms Expertise - NY Times
November 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-pakistan-report.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pakistan has been helping North Korea's nuclear weapons program in return for missile technology that would strengthen its hand against India, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The paper, quoting unnamed officials and experts in Washington, Pakistan and South Korea, said the relationship between North Korea and Pakistan ``now appears much deeper and more dangerous than the United States and its Asian allies first suspected.''
``The accounts raise disturbing questions about the nature of the uneasy American alliance with (Pakistani President Pervez) General Musharraf's government,'' it said in a report published on its Web site.
``In transactions intelligence agencies are still unraveling, the North provided General Musharraf with missile parts he needs to build a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching every strategic site in India,'' the paper said.
``In a perfect marriage of interests, Pakistan provided the North with many of the designs for gas centrifuges and much of the machinery it needs to make highly enriched uranium for the country's latest nuclear weapons project, one intended to put at risk South Korea, Japan and 100,000 American troops in Northeast Asia.''
The North Koreans acknowledged in October that they had a secret uranium enrichment project for making nuclear weapons, in violation of a 1994 accord with the United States.
A CIA analysis released this week said North Korea was building a plant that by the middle of the decade could produce enough uranium for two or more nuclear weapons a year.
The New York Times quoted the officials and experts as saying Pakistan had continued its ``murky'' relationship with North Korea even after it sided with the United States in ousting the Taliban and hunting down Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan.
``While the United States has put tremendous diplomatic pressure on North Korea in the past two months to abandon the project ... it has never publicly discussed the role of Pakistan or other nations in supplying that effort,'' the paper said.
``American and South Korean officials, when speaking anonymously, say the reason is obvious: the Bush administration has determined that Pakistan's cooperation in the search for al Qaeda is so critical -- especially with new evidence suggesting that Osama bin Laden is still alive, perhaps on Pakistani soil,'' it reported.
The paper said the agreement by North Korea and Pakistan to barter military technology dated to a 1993 visit to Pyongyang by the then Pakistani prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos Lab Investigation Expands
November 22, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Lab.html
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- The investigation into allegations of financial wrongdoing and coverups at Los Alamos National Laboratory has expanded to include additional purchases made by lab employees, officials said.
``The university will not tolerate theft or mismanagement at Los Alamos or in any other part of the university,'' University of California President Richard Atkinson said in a statement issued by the laboratory.
The University of California operates the nuclear weapons laboratory for the Department of Energy.
Atkinson said the widening investigation into business practices at the lab includes ``the inappropriate use of purchase cards, allegations of criminal activities involving the laboratory purchasing system, and improprieties involving property management.''
Recent published reports based on internal documents provided anonymously -- purportedly by lab employees -- have cited millions of dollars in missing inventory.
The Albuquerque Journal reported Sunday that based on internal documents, nearly $3 million worth of items disappeared or were reported missing from the period 1999 to 2001.
The lab report said the figure was overstated because 1998 and 1999 were combined. Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler also said items listed as lost are sometimes recovered in the same year they're reported missing.
Whistleblowers allege that laboratory leaders have tried to cover up the problems and interfere with investigations.
The statement issued Friday also said:
--The total of suspected inappropriate payments involving purchase cards used for personal items is now $3,500. The cards account for about $30 million in buying annually. A worker who tried without success to buy a car with a purchase card was placed on leave, although federal officials have declined to prosecute.
--The FBI is still investigating about $50,000 in alleged illegal purchases by two employees. The lab said there is ``no evidence of any compromise to national security.''
--Unaccounted-for inventory in 2002 was below one-tenth of 1 percent. The lab said inventory tracking systems seldom achieve 100 percent because of employee turnover, tracking errors, losses and theft.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
General: Afghan army needs warlords for success
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021123-69230824.htm
Afghanistan's feuding warlords must be brought into the new national army and security organs if the country is to achieve lasting peace, the Turkish general leading the international peacekeeping force in Kabul said yesterday.
"They have to be inside the process, not outside the process," Maj. Gen. Hilmi Akin Zorlu, commander of the U.N.-sponsored International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters during a visit to Washington.
The Turkish general, whose 6-month assignment as head of ISAF is set to expire next month, said he believes the 4,800-strong, 22-nation force has to remain in the Afghan capital for at least another two to three years.
He gave a generally upbeat account of the security situation in Kabul, but noted that the fledgling national authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai faces a huge number of challenges.
The relative safety of the capital has attracted 600,000 of the estimated 1.8 million Afghan refugees who have returned to the country following the ouster late last year of the fanatical Taliban regime, straining the capital's infrastructure.
The police and other security organs are still being trained, and ISAF has confiscated "significant numbers of weapons and ammunition," including rockets, bombs, small arms and air-defense systems since it was established a year ago, the general said.
ISAF troops have destroyed 107,000 rounds of ammunition since the beginning of the month.
The general said Afghanistan's official intelligence and security agencies began sharing information in recent months only because of consistent ISAF prodding.
Despite the success of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist operation, Afghanistan remains a highly dangerous place, with the U.N. force headed by Gen. Zorlu only providing security for Kabul, the capital, and for nearby Bagram air base.
Afghan officials in Kabul yesterday said they had foiled an assassination plot against Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim in the heart of Kabul.
An Iraqi Kurd carrying explosives was arrested along the route the defense minister travels to work, and Afghan officials said the suspect was "part of an international terrorist network."
Mr. Karzai barely survived an assassination attempt Sept. 5, the same day a car bomb killed 30 and wounded more than 100 in Kabul. One of his vice presidents, Abdul Qadir, was gunned down in Kabul in broad daylight on July 6.
Mr. Karzai and U.N. Special Representative for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi have scolded the international community for not providing more security as the new government tries to establish itself. Most ominously, violence has broken out between forces of Afghanistan's traditional provincial warlords.
-------- biological weapons
Sensible provision on smallpox liability
EDITORIAL •
November 23, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021123-21020904.htm
This week, a small but highly significant measure concerning smallpox liability was passed as a part of the homeland-security bill. The provision, which gives a measure of legal protection to both those who administer and those who make the vaccine, was another important step toward the hoped-for goal line of allowing all Americans access to the smallpox vaccine.
The liability provision follows the common-sense trajectory that the Bush administration has taken in dealing with the terrible potential of a smallpox attack. It does not (as critics allege) take away the right to sue from those who might suffer adverse health consequences as a result of taking the vaccine. Rather, as Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist pointed out, the amendment simply channels such complaints through the no-fault Vaccine Injury Compensation (VIC) program. After that, if the matter is not resolved to the plaintiff's satisfaction, he or she still has the right to sue, with no financial limits put on potential liability.
It isn't surprising, though, that trial lawyers didn't like the amendment. Individuals given the smallpox vaccine face a small risk of adverse side effects, and so the payoffs from lawsuits stemming from a nationwide vaccination program could be vast. However, without such provisional protection, fear of punitive damages could have kept health professionals from providing the vaccine - even during a smallpox attack. It was a point reiterated several times by Mr. Frist, who said in a statement on the floor of the Senate, "The threat of liability should not become a barrier to the protection of the American people."
Unfortunately, the American people are on the front lines of the ongoing struggle against terrorism. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Frist and his like-minded colleagues in Congress, they just received another layer of protection against the threat of smallpox. Now, the Bush administration can grant access to the best armor available against such a weapon - voluntary smallpox vaccinations.
-------- colombia
Shells Fired at U.S. Embassy
Reuters
Saturday, November 23, 2002; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29497-2002Nov23?language=printer
BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 22 -- Suspected leftist rebels fired four mortar shells here today, apparently aimed at the U.S. Embassy and the building housing the attorney general's office. Two people on a busy street were slightly wounded.
The 60mm mortars fell on a grassy area outside the attorney general's office, causing panic among workers and passersby but little damage. The site is a few blocks from the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy compound.
Authorities found two unfired mortars at the nearby National University after troops stormed the campus. Authorities said they thought the mortar attack was launched from the campus by urban rebels. Officials at the embassy declined to comment.
President Alvaro Uribe, whose inauguration in August was rocked by mortars launched by members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, pledged to catch the attackers and offered an $18,000 reward for information leading to their arrest.
Colombia is gripped by a 38-year war that pits Marxist rebels against right-wing paramilitaries and the military. Washington brands the rebels and paramilitaries "terrorists."
Bogota is usually spared the bloodshed of the war, as combat has been confined largely to the countryside. Rebels occasionally launch attacks in the capital using car bombs and explosives.
-------- iraq
Inside the Secret Campaign to Topple Saddam
A shadow war has already begun, aiming to undermine the Iraqi leader and his defenses even before the first shot is fired
By MICHAEL ELLIOTT AND MASSIMO CALABRESI
Saturday, Nov. 23, 2002
Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,393574,00.html
One day in mid-September, the phone rang in the Washington office of a former U.S. government official with close ties to the Iraqi exile community. On the other end of the line was an old Iraqi friend, now living in Europe, whom the former official had met when he was stationed in the Middle East in the 1990s. There were some pleasantries; then the Iraqi cut to the chase. In the past two months, he said, four senior Iraqi security officials had contacted him and asked if he could help them establish lines of communication to the U.S. so that if war started, they could be on the winning side. The former official had contacted two old colleagues, now at the White House and the cia, and put them in touch with the Iraqi middleman.
Listen to government officials in Washington and London, chat with members of the alphabet soup of Iraqi exile groups, and you can come away thinking that such conversations are a dime a dozen. And they may be. In small ways and big ones, the U.S. and its allies are working like termites to undermine the rickety foundations of Saddam's rule. As the U.N. weapons inspectors started their work inside Iraq and President George W. Bush conferred with possible coalition partners at meetings in Prague and Moscow, it was easy to miss a story taking place behind the scenes. Whatever timetable the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraqi disarmament may imply, and whatever Saddam may or may not do to cough up his weapons of mass destruction, people in the know are behaving as if a war to unseat the regime in Baghdad has already begun.
America's recent combat experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan have confirmed for the Pentagon the virtues of psychological warfare and political initiatives in weakening the enemy before battle. These days the U.S. Army likes to say it is committed to "softening up the battlefield." Iraq is being softened up in many different ways. For one, following a Presidential Decision Directive on Oct. 3, the U.S. started a program to train up to 5,000 Iraqi exiles for possible missions in Iraq that could assist American combat troops. There is action inside Iraq too. A senior intelligence official tells Time that the U.S. has contacted groups that may be capable of sabotage before full-scale hostilities start. The U.S., says this official, is opening up lines to "people who can do World War II-style resistance, breaking up the infrastructure of communications and command." In a program that links intelligence, diplomacy, psychological warfare and military action, Saddam is being squeezed. "I see it as poking," says a State Department official. "Let's poke this pressure point and see what happens; let's see what reaction we get."
To hear U.S. officials tell it, this war before the war brings a double benefit. On the one hand, it prepares the ground if a full-blown invasion proves necessary. On the other hand, it just may be enough to topple Saddam without having to bomb Iraq and march into Baghdad. "We've embarked on steps that help us prepare for a military option inside Iraq," says the State Department official, "but that don't constitute a crossing of the Rubicon. None of these steps are irreversible, and all of them could help promote the longer-term destabilization of Saddam's government."
Already, U.S. and British warplanes have moved to a more aggressive posture while enforcing Iraq's no-fly zones, the northern and southern regions from which Iraqi planes are banned. In the past, when Iraqi forces fired on allied planes, the reply came in attacks on guns and missile batteries. That has changed. Now the allied planes are attacking command-and-control centers, communications nodes and the fiber-optic network that links Iraq's air-defense system. "We're responding differently," says a Pentagon official, "hitting multiple targets when we're fired upon-and they're tending to be more important targets."
What's more, the U.S., safe in the northern no-fly zone over which Baghdad has no control, is beginning to work more closely with the Iraqi Kurds, who are starting to get their often tangled act together. A few weeks ago, the two leading Iraqi Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P..) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), started to carry out a historic accord designed to end their years of often violent rivalry and to launch a period of working together.
In March and May of this year, according to a senior Kurdish official, American teams from the Defense Department and the cia visited Iraqi Kurdistan to investigate Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group that has been linked to al-Qaeda and that has its base in caves on the border between Iraq and Iran. (The Americans didn't hide their presence; they drove black Grand Cherokee suvs with communications gear on the roof, not exactly common in Kurdistan.) The U.S. teams promised the Kurds that they would be back, and they have kept their word. U.S. officials tell Time that within the past few weeks the cia has opened two stations in Iraqi Kurdistan, one in Salahaddin, the principal town controlled by the K.D.P.., and one in Suleimaniyah, the P.U.K.'s stronghold. "They're basically there as liaison" between Washington and the Kurdish leadership, says the Brookings Institution's Kenneth Pollack, a former cia and National Security Council staff member on Iraq issues.
U.S. officials say there are no plans to use the Kurds the way the Northern Alliance was used as a proxy force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Though the "free" Kurds claim to have 100,000 fighters ready to help the Americans and its allies if a war starts, a senior U.S. official in the region says the Kurdish forces, called the peshmerga, are poorly equipped. Jalal Talabani, secretary-general of the P.U.K., says he has never received arms or ammunition from the Americans. But the cia, intelligence officials say, will use its new stations in the north to win over to the U.S. side those Kurds who live south of the liberated zone and are now loyal to Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a key U.S. ally is working to undermine the Iraqi regime's capabilities in the west of Iraq, where Iraq launched Scud missiles on Israel in the Gulf War. U.S. and Israeli officials tell Time that Israeli special forces have been operating inside Iraq's western desert on reconnaissance and training missions, surveying 30,000 sq. mi. for places where Iraq might have hidden the missiles and launchers it kept after the Gulf War. "You sniff around in the western desert," says a U.S. official, "and try to get an idea about those hardened concrete bunkers that Saddam has created to put his Scuds in." In the past few years, members of an Israeli special-forces unit called Shaldag, Hebrew for "Kingfisher," have taken part in the Scud hunt. There are only a few dozen Shaldag fighters, trained to stay in the field for weeks at a time. Sources say that should a war start, Israel will ask the U.S. to allow it to contribute a few three-man teams to the search for missiles. The bulk of the searches, the Israelis assume, will be carried out by British and American special forces. A British source says none of his country's forces are in Iraq-"We haven't got there yet"-but adds they will go in "once it's clear there's going to be an invasion." Washington is doing its best to make those who would suffer the sharp end of such an invasion believe that one is coming-and to tell them what it will feel like. Recently revised U.S. military doctrine says forces must try to "influence the thoughts and opinions of adversaries and noncombatants" by dominating "the information environment." Meaning: in a military maneuver as old as Joshua's fanfare of horns before the walls of Jericho, the U.S. intends to scare the pants off its enemies. In the southern no-fly zone, leaflets are being dropped warning, none too subtly, precisely what will happen to individual Iraqi soldiers if they choose to resist. (Think a rocket smashing into an Iraqi gunner's battery with such force that it leaves nothing but iron filings and body parts.) Such operations don't always go according to plan. On Oct. 3, a U.S. A-10 attack plane was dropping leaflets in southern Iraq warning Iraqis not to fire on American warplanes-when it was fired on. Sometimes the scaremongering is done at a remove. Recently the Washington Post and the New York Times ran stories on the same day claiming that the U.S. was ready to commit 250,000 troops to an invasion; the double whammy stank of a calibrated piece of propaganda.
More ambitious psy-ops are ahead. The Air Force intends to put into the air over Iraq its EC-130 "Commando Solos," planes that will broadcast TV and radio signals to the country. Iraqi opposition groups are turning over telephone numbers of active- duty Iraqi troops to their U.S. military liaisons. If war begins, those in Iraq will get taped U.S. phone messages from their exiled colleagues suggesting it might be sensible for them to stay on the sidelines. "There is a professional officer corps, and they do have contacts outside," says the former U.S. official who in September acted as middleman between Iraqis and the Administration. "What you want to do is build up a capability to make those contacts." In a radio interview, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Saddam can't use (weapons of mass destruction) himself ... He has to use intermediaries. We are communicating with people in that regime. And the truth is that anyone who is in any way connected with weapons of mass destruction and their use ... would be held accountable."
Is the message getting through? Exile groups insist that the traffic from within Iraq to their offices has reached a new high. An official with the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.) in London says, "We are getting a significantly higher level of contacts from regime insiders, including very senior ones in circles around Saddam." Sometimes, this official claims, such contacts have been in telephone calls direct from Iraq, something the I.N.C. hasn't seen before. Ghassan Atiyyah, a former Iraqi diplomat who edits the Iraq File, a monthly newsletter, in London, says his answering machine has taken messages from people inside Iraq telling him of the movement of weapons.
The exile groups, however, remain at loggerheads with one another. Kurds, Shi'ites, Sunnis, former officers, monarchists and the London-based I.N.C., led by Ahmad Chalabi-the longtime favorite of hard-liners in Washington-continue to jockey for advantage. Last week, for the third time, a conference designed to bring all the opposition groups together so they could agree on the shape of a post-Saddam Iraq was canceled. The various groups still can't agree on how many delegates should be at the meeting (rescheduled for London in December) or how they should be chosen.
After Bush signed the Presidential Decision Directive authorizing the training of thousands of Iraqis for reconnaissance and other missions, the Pentagon asked the six main opposition groups for the names of 10,000 potential recruits. The I.N.C. has taken the lead in supplying the names, but few have been received so far. "The names just aren't coming in as quickly as we would like," says a State Department official. "And to be honest, we always asked for 10,000 with the hope that 1 out of 8 would be a valid candidate." One problem: checking the records of those nominated. "We have to make sure no one is a terrorist or double agent," says the State Department official. "You don't want to be training anyone who's going to wind up running back to Baghdad giving the full names of everyone he was in some training class with." Even when trust is not an issue, background checks are important; some of the most useful recruits-those with military backgrounds-are likely to have unsavory histories as Saddam henchmen.
The I.N.C.'s Chalabi continues to divide the allies. Even his supporters in Washington were annoyed when he began crowing about the release of money for a secret spy program in Iraq. "He got a call from (the Pentagon)," says the State Department official, "saying 'Cease and desist-you're going to screw this deal.'" Chalabi may live in London, but he is not a favorite of British officials. "The I.N.C. has precious little influence inside Iraq," says one. "People see them as corrupt and Chalabi as a bit of a fraudster." The Kurds dominate in the north and are often at odds with Chalabi. In the south, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and backed by Tehran (southern Iraq, like Iran, is mostly Shi'ite), has more clout.
To bolster its position in the south, the Administration is trying to reach out to Tehran through intermediaries. "We've asked our friends in Britain and Germany and Canada to help," says a U.S. official. American sources say political turmoil has made it difficult to tell whether hard-liners in Tehran can stomach siding with the U.S. A senior Iranian official tells Time that his government signaled that it wants to cooperate by allowing al-Hakim's brother to attend a meeting of opposition groups in Washington on Aug. 9. "The sending of Hakim was hugely important to us," says this source. On the other hand, says another official, Tehran was burned by the Bush Administration's reaction to Iran's discreet help in the war against the Taliban. "In Afghanistan," says this official, "the U.S. proved to be unreliable, because Iranian cooperation was rewarded with 'the axis of evil.'"
While making discreet diplomatic overtures to Iran, the U.S. is more openly safeguarding its relations with other nations that have a stake in Iraq's future. On the margins of the nato summit in Prague last week, Bush met with Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to confirm that the U.S. did not want to see Iraq's borders changed. The Turkish government is worried that Iraqi Kurds will be so overjoyed if Saddam is defeated that their mood will infect the Kurds in Turkey, rekindling demands for autonomy from Ankara. As sweeteners, Bush reaffirmed American backing for Turkey's candidacy for membership in the European Union and promised support for Turkey's mess of an economy. Then he was off to Russia, where he reassured President Vladimir Putin that the Americans have not forgotten that Iraq owes Russia $8 billion-and would not forget that Russian companies have signed potentially lucrative contracts to develop Iraq's oil fields when U.N. sanctions are removed.
It all amounts to a steady, relentless encirclement designed to convince Saddam-and his supporters inside Iraq-that forces opposed to him are closing in. But Saddam has not caved yet. Indeed, knowledgeable observers say that so far the pressure has just led Saddam to step up his efforts to contain unrest. "They know people are trying to make contacts outside," says the former U.S. government official. "The regime is being extremely vigilant." A senior British official concurs that Saddam's security apparatus remains impressive. "We really don't know how serious the (internal) opposition is," he says, "because if we knew, Saddam would know. And it wouldn't last very long." Last month, Saddam ordered the families of diplomats abroad to return to Iraq, implying that he intends to hold those family members hostage. In both London and Washington, officials insist that it is unlikely that anyone very senior within the Iraqi power structure has made contact with the outside. "Nobody's going to bet their life yet that America is ready to roll," says the former government official. "You don't want to get yourself killed two months before the U.S. liberates the country. That's not smart." But allied officials are hoping that if they make the right moves now, the war before the war will be the only one they will have to fight.
With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/ London, Azadeh Moaveni/ Tehran, Andrew Purvis/Ankara, Matt Rees/Jerusalem and Mark Thompson/Washington
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THE KURDS - Turks, Fearing Flow of Refugees, Plan Move Into Iraq
November 23, 2002
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/23/international/europe/23TURK.html
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Nov. 22 - Turkish officials are preparing to send troops up to 60 miles into northern Iraq on what they say is a mission to prevent an influx of refugees in the event that a war there sets off a mass movement toward Turkey's borders.
The plan, which is being circulated among top government officials, is giving rise to fears that it could be used as a cover for the Turkish military to snuff out any attempt by Iraqi Kurds to set up their own state if President Saddam Hussein falls from power. Advertisement Click Here
Turkey has been battling its own Kurdish insurgency for years, and Turkish leaders are concerned that a war in Iraq could lead to an independent Kurdish state on their own borders.
Turkish officials say they are fearful that an Iraqi attack on the Kurds in Iraq, possibly with biological or chemical weapons, could cause a panic similar to the one that followed the Persian Gulf war in 1991, when more than a million Kurds poured into Turkey and Iran in flight from the attacking Iraqi Army.
"In case of a massive influx, it would be necessary to take measures to keep them away from our border," said Gokhan Aydiner, regional governor in southeastern Iraq. "We have our own experience from 1991 in mind. We naturally do not want it to be repeated."
The Turkish plan is a measure of the anxiety that is sweeping the region as the threat of an American-led war with Iraq looms. While many leaders in the area say they would be happy to see Mr. Hussein ousted, they fear a war's unintended effects.
In Turkey, for instance, officials have indicated that they would support an American-led attack, but they are determined to avoid a repeat of 1991. That crisis began weeks after the gulf war had ended, when Iraq's Kurds, emboldened by Mr. Hussein's defeat, rose up against him.
Iraqi forces loyal to Mr. Hussein responded with ferocity, and thousands of Kurds headed for the borders. American troops and international aid agencies rushed in to help deal with the crisis, but at one point more than 1,000 people a day were dying on the borders from exposure and disease.
Turkish officials insist that the influx of refugees helped fuel the long-running Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
This is a delicate time for Turkey, which is seeking membership in the European Union. One factor inhibiting Turkey's admission has been its often brutal treatment, and sometimes torture, of suspected members of Kurdish guerrilla groups.
The plan for sealing the borders, dated Oct. 22 and signed by Bulent Ecevit, who was then prime minister, envisions the establishment of 18 camps - 12 of them in Iraq - designed to hold about 275,000 refugees. The camps in Iraq would be filled first, and foreigners trying to enter Turkey before the first 12 camps were filled would be turned back. The camps in Turkey would be opened only after the ones in Iraq were filled.
The plan calls on the army to ensure "the maintenance of security in the region," and it makes it clear that the government does want any refugees to stay for long.
"The main principle will be to send foreigners settled in the camps either back to their region of origin or to third countries," the document says.
Human rights workers in Turkey have sharply criticized the Turkish preparations to go into Iraq, with some saying that the real goal would be to forestall any attempt by Iraq's Kurds to set up their own government there. The rights groups fear the Turkish Army would make it impossible for them to work in northern Iraq, and thus would effectively deny the Kurdish people the very benefits the Turkish government says it wants to deliver.
"The Turkish Army would do its best to eliminate the possibility of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq, through military means," said Selahattin Demitas, of the Turkish Human Rights Association. "The only law that will be applied in that area would be the law of war."
Others say the Turkish plan, if carried out, would violate longstanding norms of international law governing the treatment of refugees. Generally speaking, countries are obliged to grant entrance to people fleeing persecution from other countries. Officials at the United Nations, which would ordinarily play a large role in any relief effort, say the Turkish government has refused so far to divulge the plan's details.
"We couldn't get as much cooperation as we expected," said Metin Corabatir, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Ankara. "We have not seen the report."
Turkish leaders already regard their country as an embattled front line against illegal immigrants from Asia. In the first 10 months of this year, more than 13,000 people were detained trying to cross into Turkey from Iraq. Most were Iraqi, but the police arrested Bangladeshis and Indians as well.
Another refugee crisis would complicate Turkey's tangled relationship with the Kurds. Several parts of the country near the Iraqi border are under emergency rule. Although the government offers political support for Kurdish groups battling Mr. Hussein in Iraq, hundreds of Turkish troops are operating in northern Iraq to root out remnants of Kurdish guerrillas there.
A Turkish move into northern Iraq would be an unusual response to a refugee crisis, but not an unprecedented one. During the American-led campaign in Afghanistan last year, Iranian officials set up a refugee camp in western Afghanistan to forestall an influx of Afghans into their country.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinians Attack Israel Navy Boat
By LEE KEATH
Associated Press Writer
Nov 23, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Palestinian militants on an explosive-packed boat blew themselves up when intercepted by an Israeli navy patrol off the Gaza Strip on Saturday, wounding four Israeli soldiers, the army and Palestinians said.
The Israeli military closed the Mediterranean waters off Gaza, barring all Palestinian fishing after the attack, defense officials said. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the blast, saying its two members on the boat were suicide attackers.
The rare suicide attack at sea came as Israeli forces demolished the homes of four activists from militias linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction near the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Israel reoccupied Bethlehem early Friday in retaliation after a Palestinian blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus a day earlier, killing 11 people, four of them children. Soldiers have launched a wave of raids on homes, arresting 22 people, and imposing a curfew on the town.
Meanwhile, Israeli army radio reported that a British U.N. aid worker killed Friday during clashes between soldiers and Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp was shot by an Israeli soldier who mistook a mobile phone in his hand for a grenade.
Initial army investigations showed that Iain Hook, carrying the phone, came out of an alley from which Palestinian gunmen had been firing earlier, when the soldier shot him, the radio said Saturday. An army spokesman would not comment, saying investigations were still going on.
Hook, 50, a senior manager for UNWRA, an agency helping Palestinian refugees, was shot as he tried to evacuate the U.N. compound in Jenin during gunbattles that lasted for several hours. The United Nations was launching its own investigation into his death.
Hook's body was to be taken to a Jerusalem hospital Sunday for an autopsy before being returned home to Britain, U.N. spokesman Sami Mshasha said.
During the funeral of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy also killed in the clashes, some 2,000 mourners marched through the Jenin camp Saturday, carrying an empty coffin draped with a U.N. flag in memorial to Hook. They unfurled banners reading, "Israel killed Hook." The boy, Mohammed Bilalu, was shot while throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, according to witnesses.
In Saturday's attack, the Palestinian boat entered Israeli-controlled waters off northern Gaza and was approached by an Israeli patrol boat, an army statement said.
After the patrol fired warning shots to force the boat to turn around, the boat exploded, wounding three soldiers moderately and a fourth lightly, the army said.
Islamic Jihad said its boat full of explosives rammed the Israeli patrol boat, sinking it, and that an Israeli rescue boat retrieved the four casualties. The army said the patrol boat was damaged but made it back to shore.
In a statement released in Beirut, Islamic Jihad's military branch, the Al-Quds Brigades, identified its militants on the boat as Jamal Ali Ismail, 21, from al-Breij, and Mohammed Samih al-Masri, 19, from Beit Hanoun. Both towns are in the West Bank.
With the incursion in Bethlehem, Israel has retaken control of all Palestinian population centers in the West Bank except Jericho - mirroring the massive deployment that capped military offensives in April and June.
Israel says it is hunting for 30 wanted militants in and around Bethlehem and seeks to destroy what it calls an infrastructure for recruiting and preparing suicide bombers in the city. Both Islamic Jihad and the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for Thursday's bus bombing in Jerusalem.
Since Friday morning, Israeli troops have demolished six homes in and around Bethlehem, focusing on those of activists from Fatah.
In al-Khader village near Bethlehem, soldiers on Saturday leveled the house of Walid Sbeh, a Fatah militant killed by Israeli troops in June, and destroyed the home of Atef Abayat, who died in October 2001 in a car bomb that Palestinians blamed on Israel. They also destroyed the home of Mahmoud Salah, an Al-Aqsa Brigades member who is wanted by Israel.
"It is an Israeli act of revenge, it is inhuman," Sbeh's sister, Fatima Sbeh, 24, said as she wept over the rubble of the two-story house. "What did the children do to find themselves without a house?"
In Tokoa, to the south, troops demolished the house of Riyad al-Amur, an activist arrested by Israel several months ago. His wife and four children lived in the house.
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Palestinian Suicide Boat Attacks Israeli Navy Boat
November 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-navy-bombing.html
GAZA (Reuters) - Two Palestinian militants blew up an explosives-laden fishing boat in a failed attack on an Israeli patrol boat on Saturday, killing themselves and wounding four sailors, the army and Palestinians said.
The Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the bombing, the first attack on an Israeli naval vessel since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
The 20-meter coastal patrol craft, armed with 20 mm cannon and 12.7 mm machine guns, was patrolling the coastline separating the Gaza Strip from Israel overnight when it intercepted the fishing boat.
The Israeli army said four sailors were wounded, three moderately, when the fishing boat blew up as the patrol boat approached to warn it to turn back.
The attack was reminiscent of the bombing of the USS Cole. The U.S. destroyer was attacked by suicide bombers who rammed a boat loaded with explosives into the ship off the coastline of Yemen in October 2000, killing 17 crew.
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization is believed to have been behind that attack.
Islamic Jihad said in a statement that Saturday's attack was carried out by the group's armed ``Jerusalem Brigades,'' which has been behind a series of suicide bombings against Israelis.
The army said it had imposed a complete ban on Palestinian fishing boats plying waters off the Gaza Strip coastline following the bombing.
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Israeli Radios Say Soldier Killed UNRWA Official
November 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-unrwa-death.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli radio stations said on Saturday that an initial military inquiry found that an Israeli soldier shot and killed a U.N. relief worker after mistaking a cellular telephone he was holding for a grenade.
A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said Iain Hook, manager of a UNRWA project to rehabilitate the Jenin refugee camp, was shot while moving outside the trailer-van offices in the UNRWA compound during an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
Israel Radio and Army Radio said preliminary findings showed that an Israeli soldier fired at Hook in the midst of the gun battle with Palestinian gunmen when he mistook the 54-year-old U.N. official's cellular telephone to be a hand grenade.
The army said the investigation was still under way and a spokeswoman denied any preliminary findings had been reached.
The radio stations, citing unnamed sources, said Hook was shot as he walked down an alley that had been used by Palestinian gunmen earlier in the battle. They gave no further details.
The UNRWA spokesman, Paul McCann, said UNRWA had no information on any initial findings and was launching its own probe into the incident. An investigator from U.N. headquarters in New York was due to arrive Sunday, he said.
``He had been making requests with the Israelis to call a cease-fire to allow our staff and some vulnerable civilians living nearby to be evacuated from the area,'' McCann said.
Israel and the United Nations said Friday it was unclear who fired the shots that killed Hook during an Israeli raid to search for an Islamic Jihad militant accused of masterminding a suicide bombing in October that killed 14 people.
But the United Nations has officially accused Israeli forces of delaying an ambulance summoned to evacuate Hook. The army said a military ambulance was sent to the Briton's aid but that when it arrived he was already dead.
Hook was overseeing the reconstruction of houses in the camp which had been bulldozed during a previous Israeli raid on the camp.
-------- landmines
Land mine Blast, Clashes Kill 22 in Indian Kashmir
November 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-kashmir.html
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - A land mine blast and clashes left 22 dead in Indian Kashmir on Saturday, the bloodiest day since a new state government took office earlier this month calling for an end to the violence.
A land mine planted by suspected separatist militants blew up a bus, killing 12 people, including six soldiers, and wounding 23, authorities said.
Police said 10 people died in other clashes across the region, at the heart of a dispute between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
A local news agency said two pro-Pakistan militant groups, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-e-Jehad Islami had claimed responsibility for the land mine blast, which sent the bus hurtling down a 300-foot (90-meter) gorge.
An army spokesman said the civilian bus was hired by the army to transport soldiers and their families from Srinagar to the Himalayan state's winter capital of Jammu. It hit the mine near Qazigund town, 45 miles south of Srinagar.
``The total number of injured are 23 of which at least 12 are in serious condition,'' the spokesman said.
The dead included three women and two children, all relatives of the soldiers. The death toll could rise, as most of the wounded were in critical condition, Indian officials said.
The attack came a day after two guerrillas stormed a security camp in the heart of Srinagar and killed six soldiers before being gunned down.
VIOLENCE RAGES
An assortment of guerrilla groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan since late 1989. More than 35,000 people have died. Separatists put the toll at over 80,000.
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Syed, who was sworn in on November 2, says he favors peace talks and has moved to free political prisoners. But the violence has raged unabated in Kashmir, mainly Hindu India's only Muslim majority state.
In Saturday's other clashes, two policemen died when suspected rebels attacked police patrols in two busy markets in Srinagar, police said. Elsewhere, three security forces personnel, two civilians and a militant died in shootouts.
Security forces shot dead two militants in a fierce gunbattle in the Poonch district near a cease-fire line dividing the Indian and Pakistani armies in the region.
India accuses Pakistan of fomenting the revolt and says its neighbor has not done enough to stop guerrillas crossing the border.
Islamabad denies military involvement, but says it gives moral support to what it calls Kashmiris' ``legitimate struggle for self-determination.''
An attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir in May, in which more than two dozen people were killed, brought the neighbors to the brink of a third war over the region.
-------- nato
Rumsfeld Praises Ambivalent Sloveni
By Matt Kelley
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, November 23, 2002; 10:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29986-2002Nov23?language=printer
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Saturday sought to prod an ambivalent Slovenia toward NATO membership, saying the tiny European nation's military has much to offer the alliance.
While public opinion is split on whether Slovenia should join, Slovenia's military leaders left no doubt about their enthusiasm for NATO. They showcased the capabilities of the armed forces for Rumsfeld in a demonstration of peacekeeping operations, staging a mock assault on a checkpoint by four armed men.
The peacekeepers opened fire on the attackers, wounding two, while the other two fled into an abandoned military barracks. As the mock battle raged, a helicopter flew in and hovered over the building, dropping four soldiers onto a second-floor balcony.
An elite special forces unit also made a simulated raid on a building during his visit to the first country to split from the former Yugoslavia and move toward NATO admission.
"The forces here look exceedingly well-trained and well-equipped," Rumsfeld said at a news conference with Slovenia's prime minister, Janez Drnovsek.
Rumsfeld said Slovenia could be a valuable NATO partner by providing mountain training, peacekeeping, explosive disposal and field medicine.
"All of these areas are skills that are needed in NATO and valued in NATO," Rumsfeld said.
All seven countries invited Thursday to join NATO - Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia - must overhaul their militaries and governmental practices to ensure full membership in 2004.
A poll last month showed public support for NATO membership had increased by 10 percentage points, though more than half of Slovenes were opposed or undecided.
In two other countries invited to join last week, more than 60 percent of Lithuanians favor NATO membership, and more than two-thirds of Romanians want their country to join the military alliance.
Drnovsek, who is running for president, said Slovenia will hold a referendum next year on whether to join NATO.
"We expect that now that an invitation has been extended, the support will increase," Drnovsek said.
Slovenes may have feared being rejected for NATO membership, as the country was in 1997, he said.
Members of the Slovenian military's first brigade already are serving as peacekeepers in Bosnia, another former Yugoslav republic.
"It's much easier for us because we speak the language, we understand the culture," said 2nd Lt. Mateja Vadnjal of the Slovenian military unit.
During Rumsfeld's visit, the defense secretary also renewed Bush administration warnings that Iraq must disarm in accordance with a U.N. resolution.
He said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has three choices: leave his country, give up weapons of mass destruction or "play the U.N. along some more."
In the latter scenario, Rumsfeld said, "the U.N. would be faced with a decision, and either the U.N. would decide to authorize the use of appropriate force to disarm the Iraqi regime or the president has indicated he will lead a coalition of willing countries to disarm him."
On the Net:
State Department background on Slovenia: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/si/
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Putin pouts over NATO 'problem'
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 23, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021123-27369554.htm
PUSHKIN, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday called NATO's expansion an unwarranted "problem," even as President Bush insisted it should be welcomed by the Russian people.
The two leaders locked horns for 90 minutes here at the worn, snow-shrouded Catherine Palace one day after NATO stretched to Russia's border by adding seven former Soviet satellites to the alliance.
Mr. Putin later publicly expressed support for the United States' quest to disarm Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but pointed out that Osama bin Laden is still at large. And Mr. Putin was sharply critical of two U.S. allies, accusing Saudi Arabia of financing terrorism and chiding Pakistan for its weapons of mass destruction.
"We don't agree 100 percent of the time," Mr. Bush said during a brief joint news conference with his Russian counterpart. "But we always agree to discuss things in a frank way."
Mr. Putin called the unscripted meeting "very, very frank," a common diplomatic euphemism for contentious.
"We discussed practically everything between the sky and the Earth," Mr. Putin said. "The problem of NATO expansion. And the development of relations between Russia and NATO."
Mindful of Russia's unease about the expansionfl which included the Baltics, once part of the Soviet Unionfl Mr. Bush jumped at the chance to smooth Moscow's ruffled feathers after the historic NATO summit that concluded yesterday.
Mr. Putin invited Mr. Bush to Russia during a phone call several weeks ago, when Mr. Bush was soliciting his support for a U.N. resolution on Iraq.
"As regards [to] the expansion, you know our position well," Mr. Putin said yesterday. "We do not believe that this has been necessitated by the existing facts."
Mr. Putin complained that the alliance, which added three nations in 1999, keeps transforming.
"We do not rule out the possibility of deepening our relations with the alliance," he said, adding, "if the activities of the alliance are in accord with Russia's national-security interests."
Mr. Bush tried to put the best possible face on the expansion to reassure Russia, the United States' former foe.
"I have just come from NATO," he said. "The mood of the NATO countries is this: Russia is our friend.
"We've got a lot of interests together," Mr. Bush pointed out. "The expansion of NATO should be welcomed by the Russian people."
He added: "The strategy of NATO is going to be based upon the fact that the Cold War is over. Russia is a friend; Russia is not an enemy."
NATO officially decided Thursday to expand the military alliance to 26 members. The seven countries invited to join - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - were once part of the communist bloc dominated by Moscow that NATO was designed to counter.
Mr. Putin declined an invitation to attend the summit in Prague. But Mr. Bush, who left the summit yesterday morning, relayed good wishes from fellow NATO members.
"As I was leaving the NATO summit, a lot of leaders came up and asked me to send their personal regards to him," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Putin. "And in terms of our bilateral relations, we'll continue to work to make them as strong as they can possibly be."
One area where the two leaders found common ground was Iraq. They issued a joint statement pledging "our full support" for implementation of U.N. resolutions demanding the disarming of Saddam.
The statement called on Iraq "to cooperate fully and unconditionally in its disarmament obligations or face serious consequences."
Mr. Bush publicly thanked Mr. Putin for working to pass the latest U.N. resolution on Iraq. But instead of returning the compliment, Mr. Putin hinted that the United States should not go beyond the confines of the United Nations.
"We have to stay within the framework of the work being carried out by the Security Council of the United Nations," he said.
The two leaders also talked about the importance of rooting out terrorism in Chechnya, where separatists have been waging war against Russian forces.
Mr. Putin went on to grouse about U.S. allies in the war on terrorism.
"We should not forget about those who finance terrorism," Mr. Putin said. "Of the 19 terrorists who committed attacks on September 11 against the United States, 16 are citizens of Saudi Arabia. We should not forget about that."
Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Putin also noted the United States' failure to apprehend bin Laden, echoing a criticism leveled recently by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. Along the way, Mr. Putin took a swipe at Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally.
"Now, where has Osama bin Laden taken refuge?" Mr. Putin asked. "They say somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We know what Mr. Musharraf is doing to achieve stability in his country, and we are supporting him," Mr. Putin said. "But what can happen with armaments, arms, weapons that exist in Pakistan, including weapons of mass destruction?
"We are not sure on that aspect," he added. "And we should not forget about that."
Mr. Bush used yesterday's news conference as an opportunity to laud the arrest of Abd al-Rashin al-Nashiri, suspected of being a top al Qaeda official.
"We did bring to justice a killer," the president said. "And the message is, we're making progress on the war against terrorists, that we're going to hunt them down one at a time, that it doesn't matter where they hide.
"As we work with our friends, we will find them and bring them to justice," he added. "And America and Russia and people who love freedom are one person safer as a result of us finding this guy."
Despite his disagreements with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bush seemed pleased to be in the presence of his Russian friend. He smiled often and stood close to Mr. Putin in this city 20 miles south of St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin's hometown.
"I'm very pleased to see the mood the president of the United States is in," Mr. Putin said. "It is what we need, actually."
--------
Russia Open to Closer Ties With NATO
November 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-NATO.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Moscow looks forward to closer ties with NATO, but new alliance members should join arms control agreements that would prevent a military buildup at Russia's doorstep, the nation's foreign minister said Saturday.
``We have noticed that NATO representatives and the heads of its member states underlined that NATO doesn't view Russia as an enemy and will undergo an internal transformation to tackle new threats, including international terrorism,'' Igor Ivanov said after talks with Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan in Moscow.
In stark contrast with its loud protests in the past, Russia reacted calmly to NATO's decision this week to embrace the ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Russian officials said they do not consider the expansion a threat because of warmer ties with the alliance.
``If this decision is implemented and NATO starts to more actively participate in the international campaign against terrorism, opportunities for Russia-NATO cooperation will expand,'' Ivanov said.
At the same time, Moscow said it would closely monitor NATO's movements in the military sphere.
``We expect that NATO members will ratify the modified Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and all the future NATO members will also join it,'' Ivanov said.
The CFE treaty, the modified version of which was signed in 1999 in Istanbul, Turkey, sets ceilings for weapons levels in different areas of Europe. Russia wants the new NATO members, particularly the Baltic states, to join it to prevent a military buildup near its borders.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia's Putin Assures China on Forthcoming Trip
Reuters
Saturday, November 23, 2002; 10:30 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29960-2002Nov23?language=printer
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, eyeing a forthcoming visit to China when he may offer assurances to his hosts over his pro-western foreign policy, said on Saturday he expected his trip to push relations to new heights.
Meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan in the Kremlin, Putin said relations were on the up and he hoped his December 1-3 visit "would succeed in reaching new boundaries in cooperation."
The visit will give Putin an early chance to size up China's new chief of the ruling Communist Party, Hu Jintao, who took the top job at a party congress earlier this month.
The Kremlin said earlier this week Russia was glad China had re-affirmed continuity in developing relations with Russia following the reshuffle. Hu is expected to succeed President Jiang Zemin next year.
Referring to the political reshuffle, Putin said in televised comments he was impatient to meet the new leadership.
Russian-Chinese relations have flourished since Putin came to power in 2000, when, eager to restore ties with old Soviet allies, he paid his first official visit to Beijing that July.
But his swing to the West since he threw Russia's weight behind the U.S. global war on terror following the September 11, 2001, attacks in Washington and New York has caused some unease in Beijing over the future of the strategic partnership.
But Tang, in what could be a foretaste of official rhetoric during Putin's visit, appeared to suggest China could take Russia's policy changes in its stride.
"Whatever global changes take place, China will unshakeably develop its relations of friendship and cooperation with Russia," Tang was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Tang was in Moscow for a meeting of foreign ministers of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security organization which apart from Russia and China also includes four countries of former Soviet Central Asia.
Cooperation in the fight against terrorism is likely to be a major international topic for discussion by Putin and Jiang, Hu and other members of the Chinese leadership. With densely populated China a net energy importer, oil deliveries from Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, will also loom large in talks.
Russia, where oil output is booming for the fourth straight year, wants to become a major oil supplier for China's fast-growing economy by 2005 and is building a 400,000 barrels per day pipeline from western Siberia to north-east industrial China.
--------
Chechen Warlord Warns of Attacks on Russia
November 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-chechnya-warning.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Chechen warlord who says he was behind last month's mass hostage-taking in Moscow warned on Saturday his group would launch new strikes in Russia if it did not pull its troops out of Chechnya.
Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev, Russia's public enemy number one, told NATO leaders in an open letter that they should put pressure on Moscow to pull out of the Muslim North Caucasus territory and start peace negotiations.
``Chechen Mujahideen have a full right and possibilities to carry out strikes on the territory of the aggressor country, adequate to what the Russian military clique has been conducting and is still continuing to conduct on the territory of Chechnya,'' the English text of the letter said.
``We are also warning that all military, industrial and strategic facilities on the territory of Russia are legitimate military targets for us, whomever they may belong to,'' the statement, issued by the rebel Kavkaz Center, said.
``We also warn that the new generation is coming to take our place, the generation of orphans, whose fathers and mothers were killed on the orders by the Kremlin regime,'' it said.
The statement was signed by the Command of the Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion ``Riyadus Salihin,'' the group that Basayev heads and whose units launched the attack on a theater in the south-east of Moscow late in October.
TRAUMATIC SIEGE
A total of 128 hostages and all 41 rebels were killed when Russian special forces stormed the theater after three days, ending a siege that traumatized Russia and shook President Vladimir Putin who came to power vowing to crush the rebels.
Almost all the dead hostages were killed by a strong narcotic gas used by the security forces to knock out the rebels.
The bearded Basayev, a terror figure in Russia since his group took several hundred people hostage in a Budyennovsk hospital in southern Russia in 1995, claimed responsibility for the theater operation within days of it ending.
The Kremlin says Basayev's claim was partly intended to divert blame for the attack from fugitive rebel president Aslan Maskhadov with whom it refuses to hold peace talks.
Russian forces have been battling Chechen separatist rebels in the rebellious southern province on and off since 1994.
Putin has been only partially successful in winning western support for his contention that Russia's fight against Chechen separatism is on a par with the U.S.-led war against the Al Qaedr network behind the September 11, 2001, airliner attacks in the United States.
The guerrilla statement was heavy with reproach for NATO leaders and the West whom it accused of hypocritically defending the ``barbaric aggression'' of Russian forces in Chechnya.
It called on the leaders of NATO and other international bodies to exert pressure on Putin to cease military operations, pull Moscow's forces back to beyond 100 km (62 miles) of the Chechnya border and start peace negotiations with Maskhadov.
-------- us
U.S. Navy Ship to Make China Visit
November 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US-Ship.html
BEIJING (AP) -- A U.S. destroyer will visit China on Sunday -- the first port call since a Navy spy plane and Chinese fighter jet collided 20 months ago and the firmest sign yet of a thaw in military contacts between the countries.
China will greet the USS Paul F. Foster and its 340 crew members in the eastern port of Qingdao with a formal welcoming ceremony. Other events haven't been announced.
Both sides accused the other of causing the aerial crash over the South China Sea in April 2001, and China detained the U.S. plane's crew for 11 days after they made an emergency landing on Hainan Island.
Angered by China's handling of the incident, the U.S. administration called a virtual halt to military exchanges.
The Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States marked a turning point for their relations. Beijing expressed its sympathy, cooperated with American anti-terrorism efforts and accepted the U.S. military's presence in Central Asia, considered by China to be within its sphere of influence.
Despite occasional tensions over perennial sore points such as Taiwan, trade and human rights, ties have warmed considerably -- illustrated by the congenial reception of Chinese President Jiang Zemin at President Bush's Texas ranch last month.
The sides formally committed at that meeting to restarting military-to-military contacts. The announcement of a slew of exchanges quickly followed, including the ship visit.
Next month, the United States will host nearly two dozen Chinese generals, and the admiral who commands all U.S. forces in the Pacific will visit China. Senior-level defense talks, not held since 2000, will resume Dec. 9 in Washington.
``We believe these kinds of exchanges and visits will be very helpful in enhancing the mutual understanding between the sides,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said at a news conference Thursday.
The USS Paul F. Foster earlier played a role in the post-Sept. 11 renewal of U.S. military contacts with India. In September, it participated in the first India-U.S. joint naval exercise since the United States banned such contacts with India in 1998 because of India's nuclear weapons tests.
The destroyer, based in Everett, Wash., is equipped with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and torpedoes that can be launched either from the ship or its sophisticated SH-60B Seahawk anti-submarine helicopter.
Commissioned in 1976, the destroyer was the first U.S. ship to fire Tomahawks against Iraqi targets in the 1991 Gulf War.
On the Net:
http://www.foster.navy.mil/main.htm
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
TRACKING TERRORISM
9/11 Report Says Saudi Arabia Links Went Unexamined
November 23, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/23/international/middleeast/23TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - A draft report by the joint Congressional committee looking into the Sept. 11 attacks has concluded that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A, in their investigations, did not aggressively pursue leads that might have linked the terrorists to Saudi Arabia, senior government officials said today.
The report charged among other things that the authorities had failed to investigate the possibility that two of the hijackers, Saudis named Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, received Saudi money from two Saudi men they met with in California in the year before the attacks.
The committee's preliminary findings, which also accuse the Saudi government of a lack of cooperation with American investigators, have caused a bitter behind-the-scenes dispute between the panel's staff and officials at the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. At each agency, officials have disagreed with the draft findings, saying investigators vigorously pursued all available information related to Saudi Arabia.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, but little is known about their backgrounds and how they were recruited for the attacks. Most of the Saudis were part of a group that investigators refer to as the "muscle." These were men recruited late in the planning for the operation, not as pilots, but as an unskilled security force for the hijacking operation. Their job was to keep passengers at bay as the planes were commandeered and flown to their intended targets.
In a rebuttal report sent to the committee in recent days, the F.B.I. has tried to disprove several specific allegations by the committee. One of them was about Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi, who lived in San Diego a year before the attacks.
While in California, the two met with Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, each of whom was receiving financial support from the Saudi government. The men were receiving stipends, although officials said it was not exactly clear what kind. The committee staff concluded in its draft findings that investigators should have followed up on the meetings of the four men to determine whether there might have been a Saudi link to the hijacking plot.
The F.B.I. is still investigating how much financial support, if any, was provided by Mr. Bayoumi and Mr. Bassnan to the two men who later turned out to be hijackers. The bureau is also looking into whether senior Saudi officials in the United States may have played some role in distributing funds to Mr. Bayoumi and Mr. Bassnan.
Today, the F.B.I. said in a statement that it had "aggressively pursued investigative leads regarding terrorist support and activity." It added that Mr. Bayoumi and Mr. Bassnan had both been charged with visa fraud after the attacks.
But by that time, Mr. Bayoumi was already in Britain, where he was temporarily detained and then released because visa fraud was not an extraditable offense. The F.B.I. statement did not say where the two men were now or clarify the status of the cases against them.
Although the disagreement has not been publicly disclosed until now, the debate over possible Saudi connections raises a very sensitive political issue for the Bush administration. Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producer in the world and one of the United States' closest and most important allies in the Persian Gulf at a time when the administration is preparing for a possible war with Iraq.
In its report to the committee, the F.B.I. said that it was not uncommon for Saudis in the United States to receive financial support from their government and that an inquiry into the two men after the attacks had failed to produce evidence that they had any link to the Sept. 11 plot. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment about the joint inquiry's investigation of the Saudi matter.
Counterterrorism officials have said Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi had paid for most of their expenses with cash, which has made the investigation more difficult. They have also denied finding any evidence that funds for the attacks were channeled through Saudi Arabia or that the Riyadh government had any connection to the hijackers.
It remains unclear whether the draft conclusions about Saudi Arabia will be included in the joint committee's final report, which is to be completed in December in classified form. An edited version is not expected to be made public until early next year, officials said.
The Bush administration has sought to maintain close ties with Riyadh even as investigators examining the backgrounds of the hijackers have complained that they have received little cooperation from the Saudi government.
Investigators have yet to determine how the Saudi hijackers were selected for the plot, who chose them or whether they had help inside Saudi Arabia. Some American officials have theorized that Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi may have returned to Saudi Arabia from the United States to pick the Saudi hijackers, but investigators have no firm conclusions.
For their part, Saudi officials have said they have assisted in important aspects of the investigation - for instance, providing confirmation of the identities of the Saudi hijackers. The officials have also said the hijackers' anti-American extremism did not represent mainstream thinking in the kingdom, even though some American officials have long regarded Islamic militancy as a serious problem that could destabilize the authoritarian government.
The tension between the joint inquiry staff and the F.B.I. and C.I.A. is the latest to evolve from the inquiry into lapses by intelligence and law enforcement agencies related to the Sept. 11 attacks. In a series of interim reports released during committee hearings in recent months, the joint panel has repeatedly criticized the performance of the two agencies.
Those sometimes scathing reports prompted officials at both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., including the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, to criticize the joint panel's methods. Officials have complained that it reached conclusions based on scant evidence and that it took evidence out of context.
The joint committee has already held at least one closed hearing on the F.B.I.'s relationship with a San Diego informer, the landlord of Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi a year before the attacks. The informer's role has become important because his former tenants are the hijackers who have come under the most intense scrutiny in the joint inquiry.
Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi, who were aboard the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon, were identified as Qaeda operatives by the C.I.A. in January 2001. But the C.I.A. did not ask the State Department to place their names on a watch list intended to prevent entry into the United States until late August. By then, they were both in the country. The C.I.A. sent information about the two men to the F.B.I. in late August, but by then there was little time left for the bureau to track them down.
The committee investigating the hijackers was also told by a retired F.B.I. agent who was the bureau's contact with the San Diego informer that he might have uncovered a hint of the plot through his informer network if the C.I.A. had provided the F.B.I. with more information earlier about the two men.
--------
U.S. Backs FBI's Saudi Arabia Probe
November 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Saudi-Arabia.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on Saturday defended the FBI's handling of a diplomatically sensitive investigation into reports that Saudi Arabia provided money that helped support two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
A spokesman for the Saudi embassy said the allegations that the wife of the Saudi ambassador supported terrorists are ``untrue and irresponsible.''
Nail al-Jubeir, the spokesman, said Princess Haifa al-Faisal is fully cooperating with the FBI.
``She wants her name cleared,'' al-Jubeir said.
In its defense of the FBI, the Bush administration also denied another contention of some lawmakers -- that the bureau has not done enough to examine fully the financing of the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens.
Questions about the investigation could become troublesome for the Bush administration, which is seeking the Saudis' help for a possible military campaign against their neighbor, Iraq. Saudi Arabia has been noncommittal, torn between its friendship with the United States and anti-war sentiment among the Arabs.
Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, which are conducting a joint inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, expressed misgivings about the FBI investigation. Lawmakers believe the bureau has not examined vigorously the prospect that the Saudi government might have given money to two men who provided financial help to hijackers Khalif al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
A congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the issue is part of a broader concern that the FBI has done too little overall to determine how last year's attacks were paid for and by whom.
Dan Bartlett, an administration spokesman who accompanied President Bush to a NATO summit in Europe, said the FBI has been investigating the Saudi link, ``and I'm not going to prejudge the conclusion of that investigation.''
``As anyone who knows this issue will tell you, it's very difficult to track financing of terrorist networks, because most of it is done in cash,'' he said. ``I don't agree with the assessment it's not been aggressively pursued.''
Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Intelligence Committee, would not discuss details of the financing investigation but said, ``So much of the focus on Iraq has clearly taken a toll with respect to some of the vigilance and oversight that needs to apply to others in the region.''
He also said he has been dissatisfied with Saudi cooperation in the congressional investigation.
``I do think the administration should be pushing the Saudis more to be helpful to our country. I think they need us more than we need them,'' said Wyden, D-Ore.
Both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. They lived briefly in San Diego and are believed to have received help there from Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan.
Newsweek reported on its Web site that the FBI uncovered financial records that show payments to an al-Bayoumi bank account from a Washington account in the name of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador and a daughter of the late King Faisal.
Sources said the payments were about $3,500 a month. The money filtered into the al-Bayoumi family's bank account in early 2000, just a few months after al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi arrived in Los Angeles from an al-Qaida planning conference in Malaysia, Newsweek said.
Payments for roughly the same amount began flowing every month to Basnan.
Al-Jubeir said the princess hasn't given money to al-Bayoumi at all.
``There is absolutely no check,'' he said.
She did help the Basnan family with a check for $15,000 in April 1998 and regular payments from Dec. 4, 1999 through May, and Saudi officials are trying to find out why they needed assistance, al-Jubeir said.
They do know the wife is sick and received medical treatment in San Diego, he said.
In a statement, the FBI refused to give details of its investigation but said: ``Since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the FBI has aggressively pursued investigative leads regarding terrorist support and activity.''
It said al-Bayoumi and Basnan face visa fraud charges. Al-Bayoumi was detained on that charge in Britain, but it was not an extraditable offense and he was released. It is not known whether Basnan is in custody.
Basnan was deported to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 17 and they believe his wife was deported to Jordan two weeks earlier, al-Jubeir said.
``There was no linkage found between them and the terrorists,'' he said. ``The only reason he became a person of interest to the FBI was his relation to al-Bayoumi.''
Saudi Arabia has said it is cooperating with the United States in fighting terrorism and considers Osama bin Laden a threat to the kingdom. The alleged terrorist mastermind was born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family, but the government has taken away his citizenship.
U.S. presidents have been long reluctant to criticize Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer and a crucial Arab ally. Others have aired suspicions about Saudi ties to the terrorists. A $1 trillion federal lawsuit filed by relatives of the Sept. 11 victims accuses members of the Saudi royal family, the government and Saudi banks and businesses of financing the plot.
In an appearance Friday with President Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted of a Saudi financial link to terrorists. ``We should not forget about those who finance terrorism,'' he said, then immediately noted that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi.
Preliminary reports from the congressional inquiry have criticized the FBI and CIA's efforts to fight terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, particularly their failure to share information before the attacks -- especially intelligence about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.
Wyden said he expects the questions about Saudi financing will be included in the joint inquiry's final report. A classified version is expected in December, an unclassified version early next year.
``It would be derelict not to raise it,'' he said.
-------- terrorism
FBI Probes Possible Saudi-9/11 Link
Eller reports this could be a touchy development. (Audio)
Nov 23, 2002 10:04 AM EST (AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ATTACKS_SAUDI_ARABIA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is investigating whether the Saudi government funneled money to two students who assisted two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the White House said Saturday.
"The FBI has been investigating this and I'm not going to prejudge the conclusion of that investigation," said Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for the Bush administration.
Bartlett, who accompanied President Bush to a NATO summit in Europe, disputed congressional critics of the probe.
"As anyone who knows this issue will tell you, it's very difficult to track financing of terrorist networks because most of it is done in cash," he said. "I don't agree with the assessment it's not been aggressively pursued."
A draft report by a joint congressional committee looking into the terrorist attacks says the CIA and FBI ignored the possibility that two of the hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, both Saudis, were given Saudi money from two Saudi men they met in California in the year before the attacks, The New York Times reported in its Saturday editions. Almidhar and Alhazmi were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
The committee also accused the Saudi government of not fully cooperating with American investigators.
The two hijackers met with Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, who were receiving financial support from the Saudi government, the Times said. Officials were not sure what kind of stipends they were receiving, the newspaper said.
Newsweek said, however, the FBI uncovered financial records showing payments to the family of al-Bayoumi from a Washington bank account held in the name of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador to the United States and daughter of the late King Faisal.
Sources said the payments amounted to about $3,500 a month. The money filtered into the al-Bayoumi family's bank account in early 2000, just a few months after Almidhar and Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles from an al-Qaida planning summit, Newsweek said in a report posted on its Web site Friday night.
Payments for roughly the same amount began flowing every month to Basnan.
Administration officials told Newsweek they did do not know the purpose of the payments from Princess Haifa's account. They also were uncertain whether the money was given to the hijackers by al-Bayoumi or Basnan.
The princess' office said "she will cooperate fully with the United States."
The debate over possible Saudi link raises a sensitive political issue for the Bush administration as it is one of the United States' closest and most important allies in the Persian Gulf at a time when the administration is considering war with Iraq.
In its draft report, the joint congressional committee staff said investigators should have followed up on the meetings of the four men to determine whether there was a Saudi connection to the hijacking plot.
The FBI said in a statement Friday it had "aggressively pursued investigative leads regarding terrorist support and activity." It noted that both al-Bayoumi an Basnan had been charged with visa fraud.
The joint committee's final report is to be completed in December in classified form.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
EPA eases rules on clean air
November 23, 2002
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021123-85579408.htm
The Bush administration eased clean-air rules yesterday to allow utilities, refineries and manufacturers to avoid having to install expensive anti-pollution equipment when they modernize their plants.
The long-awaited regulation issued by the Environmental Protection Agency was immediately attacked by environmentalists, state air-quality regulators and attorneys general in several Northeast states, who promised a lawsuit to try to reverse the action.
But EPA Administrator Christie Whitman rejected critics' assertions that the changes would produce dirtier air. She said at a news conference that the changes would "encourage emission reductions' by providing utilities and refinery operators new flexibility when considering operational changes and expansion.
She said the old program has "deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy-efficiency and decrease air pollution."
Officials from a group of Northeastern states said they planned to file suit challenging the changes. In New York, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused the administration of attacking the Clean Air Act with rules that would degrade air quality in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states downwind from industrial plants.
"The Bush administration is again putting the financial interests of the oil, gas and coal companies above the public's right to breathe clean air," he said.
Industry has argued that the old EPA regulations, known as "New Source Review" under the Clean Air Act, have hindered operations and prevented efficiency improvements.
The new EPA regulation will allow industry to:
•Set higher limits for the amount of pollution that can be released by calculating emissions on a plantwide basis rather than for individual pieces of equipment.
•Rely on the highest historical pollution levels during the past decade when deciding whether a facility's overall pollution increase requires new controls.
•Avoid having to update pollution controls if there already has been a government review of existing ones in the past decade.
•Exempt increased output of secondary contaminants that result from new pollution controls for other emissions.
In addition, the agency is proposing a new way of defining what constitutes "routine maintenance, repair and replacement" - key language that helps determine when the regulations should kick in and is particularly important for aging coal-fired power plants.
The EPA plans to grant power plants, factories and refineries an annual "allowance" for maintenance. Only when expenditures rise above that allowance would an owner or operator have to install new pollution-control equipment. Replacing existing equipment would be considered maintenance.
The administration said the new maintenance treatment "will offer facilities greater flexibility to improve and modernize their operations in ways that will reduce energy use and air pollution."
Vickie Patton, an attorney with Environmental Defense, said the changes amount to a "sweeping and unprecedented erosion of state and local power to protect the public health from air pollution."
"They're going to do everything they can not only to roll these rules back at the federal level, but to force states to dismantle clean-air programs that have been in place for years," she said.
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E.P.A. Says It Will Change Rules Governing Industrial Pollution
November 23, 2002
New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/23/politics/23POLL.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - The Bush administration today announced the most sweeping move in a decade to loosen industrial air pollution rules. The administration said the changes would encourage plant improvements that would clean the air.
But critics denounced the changes as a retreat from tougher rules now in place that require factories to make costly investments in pollution control equipment when they modernize.
The announcement of the new rules triggered a storm of criticism from environmentalists, Democrats and some Republicans including Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. In addition, the attorneys general of the six New England states, New York, New Jersey and Maryland announced they would sue. They are all Democrats. Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, said at a news conference here that the administration was saying "the Northeast can drop dead, and the rest of the country can go with it."
The rules have been fought over since just after President Bush took office, and have been widely anticipated for months.
Today's announcement was decidedly low key. It was made with President Bush out of the country by an assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in a briefing with no cameras allowed. Critics said the administration wanted to reward its friends in industry with as little fanfare as possible.
The agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, did not appear, although the agency quoted her in a written statement.
"The need for reform is clear and has broad-based support," Ms. Whitman said in the statement. The current rules, she said, "have deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution."
The Environmental Protection Agency said the changes, to what is called the New Source Review program, would eliminate "perverse" effects that kept antiquated plants from being modernized. But environmental officials in some states said they would sabotage the strongest tool for forcing improvements in older plants. These plants were exempted from the 1977 Clean Air Act, and allowed to continue polluting at their historic levels, as long as they did not undertake major changes.
The dilemma of the existing rules, experts say, is that new technologies are available that would make plants marginally cleaner or more productive. But installing those improvements would trigger a requirement that the owner bring the plant up to modern pollution standards; thus small improvements are discouraged.
The new rules apply to industrial plants, including oil refineries and manufacturing plants. Proposals for additional rules that would apply primarily to power plants will be issued shortly, officials said, and they hope to put those in force late next year.
The E.P.A. began considering changing the rules in the mid-1990's, under the Clinton administration. But Carol Browner, who held Ms. Whitman's job in that administration, issued a statement today saying that the rule changes were "nothing but a special deal for the special interests" and come "at the expense of all who breathe and most particularly our children," she said.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut today called on Ms. Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, to resign in protest. Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, went a step further. "We don't just need a new E.P.A. administrator; we need a new president," he said. Kerry is expected to run for president in 2004.
Democrats also accused Republicans of waiting until after the election to reward big campaign donors who are tied to industry. "They're good business people," Representative Henry A. Waxman of California said of industry leaders. "They saw the investment of millions of dollars in the Republicans as saving them billions of dollars."
Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, referring to asthma aggravated by air pollution, said the Republicans' new motto was to regulate softly and carry a big inhaler.
The Boilermakers union and the union representing wood and paper mill workers quickly voiced support of the change. The president of the American Chemistry Council, Greg Lebedev, said the "long-awaited improvements" will "encourage better energy efficiency and help chemical makers further improve air quality."
At the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry group, Scott Segal, the executive director, said that the New Source Review program had "undermined air quality, plant safety and international competitiveness by discouraging appropriate efficiency improvements." The new changes, he said, were a start, but did not go far enough.
At the E.P.A., Jeffrey R. Holmstead, the assistant administrator for air and radiation, said, "There will be emissions reductions as a result of the final rules that we are adopting today."
The changes, which take effect in a few days when they are published in the Federal Register, include a provision that specifies that a plant that installs state-of-the-art pollution control equipment can operate for 10 years without triggering the New Source Review rules. Opponents said that provision would let plants ignore pollution technology improvements that came in the 10-year period.
Industrial plants with many smokestacks or other sources of air pollution will also be able to clean up one emissions source on the premises while allowing others to get dirtier, as long as the total emissions decline. This rule is intended to benefit pharmaceutical manufacturers, semiconductor factories, automobile plants and other "quick to market" industries, Mr. Holmstead said. Opponents said nothing in the law allowed the E.P.A. to do that.
Perhaps more disturbing to state environmental officials is a proposal to let plants undertake more extensive changes without triggering requirements that they reduce their emissions. Under existing rules, certain physical changes to plants require installation of pollution control equipment. But under this proposal, plants could make whatever changes they wanted without scrutiny, as long as the cost of the changes were below a certain level.
S. William Becker, the executive director of two national associations of air pollution control officers, said that change could allow refineries, for example, to spend tens of millions of dollars on new equipment, and "no matter what the emissions increase is, they escape."
Another question is what would become of the suits brought in the Clinton era against companies that may have violated the existing rules. Under Mr. Clinton, the E.P.A. argued that some of what the companies described as routine maintenance was actually major upgrades.
PSEG Fossil of New Jersey, for example, settled a case by agreeing to spend $337 million for pollution controls that will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions in the state by one-third. But there have been no settlements recently because plant owners have been waiting for the new rules.
Bill Wehrum, the E.P.A. general counsel, said today that "we are absolutely dead-set committed to the existing lawsuits that we have filed." Even if the rules change, he said, "There is no question that those power plants are liable under the law that existed when they broke it."
But Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, an environmental group, said the changes would doom any prosecutions of utilities initiated in the Clinton administration. "No federal judge is likely to impose a multimillion dollar cleanup requirement on a utility after the federal government has changed the rules," he said.
The new 628-page rule is available online at http://www.epa.gov/nsr/.
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