Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
British Energy Seeks to Restructure
Iraqi doctors in Tokyo accuse U.S. of Gulf War 'crime'
In Iraq, a wild ride to a productive day
Unhindered by Iraq Officials, Arms Inspectors Visit 3 Sites
U.N. Monitors Visit Iraq Vaccine Factory
Nuclear Terrorism Focus Shifting to Research Facilities
Ex - Inspector: Yucca Mountain Has Problems
U.S. Lab Fires Investigators After Reports Are Leaked
Indian Pt. 2 Sets Record for Itself in Refueling Job
Biographer: Kissinger right for panel
Bush anything but moronic, according to author
MILITARY
Famine signs re-emerge in Ethiopia
Zambians, animals compete for food
Car Bomb Detonates at Hotel; Missiles Fired at Passenger Jet
Bush Apologizes to South Korea for U.S. Army Killing of 2 Girls
The Churchill you didn't know
Northrop Sees a Clear Path
Germany Allows Use of U.S. Bases for War
U.S. Lobbying for Turks' Aid in Move on Iraq
Russian Forces Begin Evictions of Chechens From Refugee Camp
U.S. position angers U.N. council
Bush apologizes for girls' deaths in Korea
What Bodies?
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI looks at closing some field branches
Judge Again Bars Effort to Keep Cheney Files Secret
Bid to appeal Cheney case blocked
Bank pleads guilty to laundering drug profits
ENERGY AND OTHER
Forest Service would ease Clinton rules
Bush to Shorten Forest Environmental Reviews
ACTIVISTS
Haitian Opposition Vows New Protests to Force Aristide to Resign
Anti-war vigil
Code Pink Update
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
British Energy Seeks to Restructure
November 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-British-Energy-Restructuring.html
LONDON (AP) -- Britain's biggest electricity company said Thursday it must restructure and write off much of its 1.26 billion-pound ($1.95 billion) in debts in a final effort to stave off bankruptcy.
The government has agreed to help British Energy PLC by underwriting the cost of decommissioning its nuclear power stations and by extending an emergency loan of 650 million pounds ($1.01 billion) until next March.
In exchange, the Department for Trade and Industry called on the company to speed up the sale of its profitable North American operations and to adopt a new business strategy to reduce its exposure to wholesale electricity prices.
British Energy's North American businesses include a 50- percent stake in Amergen, which operates the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania; the Clinton nuclear power station in Clinton, Illinois; and the Oyster Creek nuclear plant at Forked River, New Jersey. The remaining half of Amergen is owned by Exelon Inc.
In Canada, British Energy owns 80 percent of Bruce Energy, which operates a nuclear plant at Tiverton, Ontario.
British Energy generates one-fifth of Britain's electricity but has been short of cash due to falling electricity prices and technical problems at its power stations. It said in September that it might have to file for bankruptcy if the government didn't help.
British Energy called the restructuring plan its best opportunity for achieving long-term financial stability. Under the plan, creditors would convert some of their debt into newly issued shares, a step the company acknowledged would lead to ``a very significant dilution of existing shareholders.''
The plan's success hinges on the support of major creditors, who would have to accept a temporary freeze on payments and ``a significant writedown'' in the 1.26 billion pounds ($1.95 billion) that British Energy owes them, the Department for Trade and Industry said.
Under the plan, British Energy would continue to pay into a 2.1 billion pound ($3.26 billion) fund for decommissioning its nuclear plants, while the government would underwrite the fund to ensure public safety and environmental protection. The government's participation would cost taxpayers as much as 200 million pounds ($310 million) a year for the next 10 years, it said.
Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt blamed the company's plight on ``serious management failings'' and said the government has prepared contingency plans in case British Energy became insolvent and could no longer operate.
``Whatever happens nuclear power stations will continue to generate electricity ... (and) customers' lights will stay on,'' she told Parliament.
The Department of Trade and Industry originally came to British Energy's aid in September with a 410 million pounds ($636 million) emergency loan. It later increased the loan to 650 million pounds ($1.01 billion), giving British Energy until Nov. 29 to repay the funds. Under the restructuring plan, the loan would be extended until March 9, 2003.
Money from the sale of British Energy's North American businesses would go toward repaying the government loan.
The company also named Adrian Montague as its new chairman, immediately replacing its current chairman Robin Jeffrey.
British Energy, which employs 5,200 people in Britain, has seen its share price sink from around 250 pence ($3.88) each 12 months ago to 6.50 pence (10.1 cents) in late trading in London. Shares were down 61.5 percent for the day.
-------- depleted uranium
Iraqi doctors in Tokyo accuse U.S. of Gulf War 'crime'
Mainichi Shimbun,
Nov. 28, 2002
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20021128p2a00m0fp026000c.html
The likelihood of people developing cancer increased 10 times in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of the depleted uranium bullets that the U.S. military dropped during the Gulf War, two Iraqi doctors claimed in Tokyo Thursday.
Jawad Kadhim Al-Ali and Husam Al-Din Said-Jormakly, both university doctors in Iraq, are visiting Japan to study methods of treating cancer caused by radioactivity.
In Basra, with its population of some 1.7 million, the probability of developing cancer increased 10 times from 1988, a year before the 1991 Gulf War, to 2001, Al-Ali said at the Japan National Press Club.
The doctors claimed that children were most susceptible to cancer and deformity as they were apparently exposed to radioactivity during the war as embryos and fetuses inside their mothers' bodies.
As a result, the probability of pregnant women giving birth to deformed children tripled since before the Gulf War.
Al-Ali said the use of depleted uranium bullets was a crime ranking closely behind the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Said-Jormakly called on the Japanese public for help as he said that the Iraqi medical world now had trouble obtaining medical supplies and devices because of the economic sanctions against Baghdad.
During their stay here until early December, both doctors will talk with Japanese experts about cancer treatment. They are also set to visit the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima.
-------- inspections
In Iraq, a wild ride to a productive day
By Ezzedine Said
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
November 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021128-68517927.htm
BAGHDAD - U.N. weapons inspectors led their Iraqi escorts and a pursuing press pack on a sometimes comical high-speed chase through the Baghdad suburbs yesterday as they demonstrated their determination to turn up at suspect sites without warning.
The arms experts - one of two teams to head out yesterday - described their first day of formal inspections in almost four years as a success, saying the inspection team had been able to complete the day's work "as it planned."
That was not quite the case for the dozens of press and television vehicles that had been assembled in front of the U.N. headquarters waiting to report on the resumption of inspections.
The U.N. convoy sped out of the compound at precisely 8.30 a.m., leaving the reporters and the Iraqi escorts from the National Monitoring Directorate scrambling to follow.
Traffic policemen at major intersections watched as the U.N. team's white four-wheel-drive vehicles led the chaotic convoy ducking and weaving through rush-hour traffic, horns blaring.
The head of the inspection team, veteran International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspector Jacques Baute of France, personally took the wheel of the lead vehicle.
At one point, the three U.N. vehicles took a wrong turn and stopped abruptly. With brakes and tires squealing, the following vehicles barely managed to avoid a multicar pileup before the convoy made a U-turn and reassembled.
After 40 minutes of madness, the mystery tour arrived in the northeastern suburb of Al-Rashad, named after an asylum for the mentally ill.
Managers appeared genuinely surprised at the arrival of the inspectors at their facility, a former women's prison that now houses facilities of Iraq's state body for military industrialization. But after just a few minutes of conversation, the inspectors entered and began a three-hour inspection.
"The team was able to complete the inspection work as it planned with the cooperation of the Iraqi side, and we had access to what we wanted to see," Mr. Baute told reporters afterward.
It was one of two inspections conducted yesterday. A second squad of U.N. inspectors said they had successfully completed their mission after arriving unannounced at a graphite factory in Al-Amiriya, 45 miles west of the capital.
"We managed to do all the things that we planned to do," said Greece's Dimitri Perricos, who led the 11-member U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Mission (Unmovic) team.
"We got the activities and the data we wanted to get in order to be able to assess further the capabilities of the sites."
Haitham Mahmoud, director-general of the military installation searched by Mr. Baute's team, said he and his aides had been surprised by the arrival of the U.N. inspectors "but we cooperated fully with them."
"We led them into all the rooms, workshops, laboratories and all other places," he told journalists. "When they went out, they told us that there were no problems."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in Paris, said the disarmament mission - the first since inspectors fled in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British air strikes against Iraq - appeared to be off to "a fairly good start."
War is not inevitable, Mr. Annan added, but stressed that President Saddam Hussein must pursue full cooperation with Unmovic chief Hans Blix and his team.
Russia, too, stressed its desire to see Iraq comply with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, adopted on Nov. 8, which gives the U.N. teams unprecedented powers to search Iraqi sites and question local scientists about Saddam's arms programs.
"Iraqi authorities must prove through real action their earlier statements of intent to cooperate with the United Nations as well as the IAEA," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told CNN television that the inspectors faced a "daunting task."
Iraq has categorically denied it now possesses or is developing weapons of mass destruction, or ballistic missiles to deliver them, and insists that the inspectors will find nothing incriminating.
Its next major act of compliance with the U.N. resolution will fall on Dec. 8, the deadline for Baghdad to make a complete and accurate declaration of its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other delivery systems.
Should it fail to cooperate with the inspections, Iraq would face "severe consequences," which are likely to include U.S.-led military strikes.
----
Unhindered by Iraq Officials, Arms Inspectors Visit 3 Sites
November 28, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/international/middleeast/28IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 28 - Nearly four years after quitting their work in frustration at Iraqi defiance, United Nations arms inspectors equipped with a new, no-tolerance mandate began a new search on Wednesday for banned weapons programs that could determine whether the United States carries out its threat to go to war to topple President Saddam Hussein.
Two teams of inspectors checked three sites for traces of illegal weaponry, and United Nations officials reported they faced no Iraqi resistance. In effect, the day amounted to a shakedown cruise for the inspectors and for the Iraqis, since the first sites chosen were ones that were checked previously, during inspections that ran from 1991 to 1998, and were thus not high on the checklist of sites thought most likely to yield hidden violations.
A far sterner test for Iraq is expected to come after Dec. 8, when Mr. Hussein's government is required by the United Nations Security Council's new weapons-inspection mandate to declare all of its activities in the field of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons development, as well as any banned work on missiles and ordnance. That declaration is expected to move the new inspections into a period of higher tension, especially if Iraq adheres to its insistence in recent days that it has absolutely no banned programs.
Iraq's claim runs directly counter to the insistence by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that Iraq has continued work on nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs, as well as missile development, since the United Nations pullout in 1998. The Dec. 8 deadline for Iraq to account for all of its weapons programs, and for any civilian work in related fields, thus sets up the possibility of an early crisis should the weapons inspectors, working on intelligence provided by Washington and London, conduct searches that turn up evidence of Iraq cheating.
Officials of the two international agencies involved - the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic, charged with tracking down biological, chemical and missile programs, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is searching for nuclear programs - refused to disclose any of the results of the inspections, saying their findings would be reported confidentially to the United Nations bodies involved.
But the inspections, involving a military-run graphite rod factory, a nearby missile testing site and a motor plant with a potential link to nuclear activities, ended with both sides expressing guarded satisfaction at the way in the which the inspections were carried out.
"We hope the Iraqi response today represents the future pattern of cooperation," said Jacques Baute, leader of the nuclear inspectors.
Demetrius Perricos, head of the Unmovic team, said, "We managed to do the things we planned to do."
Iraqi officials were also keen to emphasize their cooperation. "We opened doors, and submitted to inspection openly," said Ali Jassem Hussein, director of the missile site 25 miles southwest of Baghdad beside the Euphrates River.
Still, the inspectors' first forays outside their headquarters in the United Nations compound on Baghdad's eastern outskirts gave a taste of potential dramas ahead as the teams proceed with plans for daily, unannounced visits that could focus on any of more than 1,000 potential search sites across Iraq, including Mr. Hussein's palaces and even some of the country's mosques.
The new mandate approved unanimously by the Security Council earlier this month grants the inspectors an "unfettered" right of immediate access to any site they choose, as well as the right to "freeze" all movement in and out of the sites during the inspections.
The inspectors will also have the right to interview any Iraqi scientists without Iraqi officials present to monitor the exchanges, and to take the scientists and their families out of Iraq for the interviews, if the inspectors choose.
The inspectors' new powers were drawn up in the hope of preventing Iraqi officials from renewing the blocking tactics that impeded the inspectors during the 1990's. Although United Nations teams scored major successes, effectively halting an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that was close to producing a bomb, and uncovering a wide range of banned chemical, biological and missile programs, Iraqi officials repeatedly barred access to sites, or used delaying tactics to allow equipment, materials and documents to be removed from sites, sometimes by rear exits, while inspectors waited at the front.
An air of tension settled over Wednesday's inspections from the outset. Just as the inspectors set out from the United Nations headquarters in a former hotel outside Baghdad, air-raid sirens wailed across the capital. Iraqi officials said later that a "hostile flight" - meaning American or British military aircraft enforcing the no-flight zones over northern and southern Iraq - had flown near Baghdad.
The sirens were followed by a furious car chase through the crowded streets of Baghdad, and out through the suburbs into open country, as the inspectors raced off with Iraqi "minders" assigned to them, with reporters in hot pursuit.
The trip ended among the riverside wheatfields of Al Amiriyah, the site of the graphite plant.
The inspectors were admitted to the plant almost immediately, but most then left and drove to another compound housing the Al Rafah missile-testing station, where the Iraqis have built steel structures called test stands for testing missile engines. American intelligence reports have suggested that a new stand at the site could be used for testing missiles with a range of more than the 90 miles permitted by United Nations limits imposed after the gulf war. The Iraqis have said that the structure can be used only for the shorter-range missiles that are permitted.
--------
U.N. Monitors Visit Iraq Vaccine Factory
November 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Inspectors.html
AL-DAWRAH, Iraq (AP) -- The U.N. weapons hunters, sweeping through a disused bio-warfare installation Thursday, spotted a disconnected refrigerator. They moved in, threw open the door, and recoiled in disgust.
The stench that wafted out may have come from a batch of harmless material left from a long-ago veterinary experiment. But it got the full treatment -- a swab, a sample, analysis to come -- in the second day of the painstaking U.N. search for any Iraqi doomsday arms.
After a four-year break, the international experts revisited two sites from Iraq's old weapons programs: a high-tech machining operation that could be key to any nuclear bomb-building, and a veterinary vaccine plant where deadly biological weapons were concocted a decade ago.
They found open doors. ``It is very good cooperation,'' the director of the al-Dawrah vaccine plant told reporters afterward.
The lead inspectors seemed to agree. ``It's a good start for the inspections,'' said Jacques Baute, team leader for the nuclear experts.
The work the inspectors do in the weeks and months to come -- to eliminate any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or at least to reduce the possibility of them -- must be convincing enough to avert a U.S. call for international military action to disarm the Baghdad government. From Iraq's point of view, the inspections must be good enough to persuade the Security Council to lift the U.N. economic sanctions crippling its economy.
But first the arms monitors must make a dent in a list of hundreds of sites potentially connected with programs to produce chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. They have begun by returning to important facilities surveyed and ``neutralized'' by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.
Under U.N. resolutions after the 1991 Gulf War, arms inspectors uncovered and destroyed tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and the equipment to make them, and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program. But the monitoring collapsed in 1998 amid disputes over U.N. access to Iraqi sites and Iraqi complaints of U.S. spying from within the U.N. inspection agency.
The experts believe Iraq may retain some weapons, including some of the tons of botulinum toxin -- a deadly biological agent -- produced at al-Dawrah before the Gulf War. This is ``part of what we call unresolved issues,'' Demetrius Perricos, in command of the chemical-biological inspectors in Iraq, told reporters.
Earlier Thursday, Perricos' team arrived unannounced at the Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Production Laboratory in this town on Baghdad's southern outskirts.
The inspectors gained immediate entry and quickly walked the grounds, as journalists watched from beyond the perimeter fence.
The U.N. team knew where to go based on data from the 1990s, when inspections led to the systematic destruction in 1996 of al-Dawrah equipment instrumental to production of biological weapons agents. The Iraqis had eventually acknowledged making the botulinum, which kills through paralysis and suffocation. The earlier U.N. teams also reported detecting anthrax spores at the site.
On Thursday, the clipboard-toting specialists appeared to check off items as they looked over tanks, pipes and other fixtures. One jeans-clad expert climbed up the side of a 20-foot- high tank, peered over the top, and nodded to a colleague as if to confirm previous information. They took swab samples from air filters and elsewhere.
The Iraqis say the complex has been idle since 1996. When the inspectors left after four hours, the Iraqis opened the gates to the waiting journalists, who found the rooms of the main lab building strewn with wrecked equipment, discarded files and dust-covered boxes of books on veterinary medicine and agricultural science.
They also found caretaker Dr. Karima Niaama inside the main building. Niaama, a veterinarian, said she had led inspectors to areas they inquired about, and it was she who recounted the story of the evil-smelling refrigerator.
Perricos later confirmed the complex ``is not in operation, or at least looks like it is not in operation.'' The visit was part of the inspectors' ``rebaselining,'' fixing the location of sensitive equipment to enable routine monitoring later.
Nuclear inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did the same thing Thursday at a complex of the government's al-Nasr company, 30 miles north of Baghdad, where they checked on sophisticated machine tools that can, for example, help manufacture gas centrifuges. Such centrifuges are used to ``enrich'' uranium to bomb-grade level -- a method favored by the Iraqis in their bomb program of the late 1980s.
Both Perricos and the IAEA's Baute said they were satisfied that all sensitive equipment from both sites had been accounted for.
-------- ukraine
Nuclear Terrorism Focus Shifting to Research Facilities
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 28, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48663-2002Nov27?language=printer
KHARKIV, Ukraine -- In 1994, a senior Ukrainian nuclear scientist offered U.S. officials a chance to buy a cache of weapons-grade uranium held by an obscure defense laboratory in this city. It was a significant cache -- 165 pounds, enough for three nuclear bombs -- and the scientist said Ukraine might be willing to give it up.
"It's lightly guarded," the scientist said, according to two Clinton administration officials present at the meeting, "and I'm worried about it." The deal never happened.
Eight years later, with new concerns about nuclear terrorism, the U.S. government would like nothing better than to buy Ukraine's uranium. But the opportunity appears to be slipping away.
Relations with Ukraine recently have taken a confrontational turn, and the laboratory, the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, now insists the material is urgently needed for civilian research. Meanwhile, despite elaborate physical protections for the uranium, U.S. weapons experts see new reasons to worry about its safety: The lab is facing extreme financial pressure at a time when Iraqi officials have been openly pursuing trade deals with local companies and paying visits to Kharkiv's Soviet-era weapons factories and research centers, including the institution where the uranium is kept. Iraq two years ago appointed an "honorary consul" in Kharkiv, a Ukrainian exporter who keeps an office not far from the institute -- and openly displays an Iraqi flag on the front door.
"We would be far better off today if we had just gotten rid of the stuff," said Matthew Bunn, a former White House nonproliferation policy adviser, who argued unsuccessfully for a U.S. purchase of the uranium eight years ago. "Insecure nuclear material anywhere is a threat to people everywhere."
The highly enriched uranium at Kharkiv is emblematic of a global proliferation threat that has now become a top priority for the United States: the vulnerability to theft or misuse of weapons-grade uranium kept in scientific institutions, such as research reactors. An estimated 20 tons of highly enriched uranium currently is stored at such locations in about 40 countries, from Russia and other former Soviet republics to Libya and Congo.
In the last decade, efforts to protect against the theft of nuclear materials largely focused on military installations. But weapons experts say that the research facilities are lightly guarded in comparison with military stockpiles. Some terrorism experts regard them as the most vulnerable repositories of nuclear material in the world.
"We are talking about the raw material of nuclear terrorism, stored in hundreds of facilities in dozens of nations," former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a longtime arms control advocate, told a conference of nuclear terrorism experts this month. "Some of it is secured by nothing more than an underpaid guard sitting inside a chain-link fence."
In August, the Bush administration achieved a dramatic breakthrough when it persuaded Yugoslavia to give up 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences near Belgrade. But the deal required more than a year of complicated negotiations involving Yugoslavia, Russia and the State Department. As a clincher, the United States pledged $5 million to be paid to the institute by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group co-founded by Nunn and billionaire entrepreneur Ted Turner.
Afterward, the State Department announced it had targeted two dozen other research institutions as "priority sites," most of them in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But while progress has been made in the negotiations, several countries have balked, refusing to give up what they see as a powerful bargaining chip that could be used to extract money, technology or other concessions, according to administration officials and weapons experts familiar with the talks.
Two of the countries most opposed to giving up uranium -- Ukraine and Belarus -- also happen to own some of the largest stocks of the metal. Both countries are under increased scrutiny by U.S. intelligence officials because of alleged attempts by local businesses to sell weapons or military supplies to Iraq or Iran.
"They were once willing to help us, but they may not be so willing anymore," said Bunn, now a senior researcher for Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom. "We can only hope that someone eventually can put together a package that will change the answer from 'nyet' to 'da.' " A Dangerous Asset
The gravest nuclear threat in Ukraine is housed in a crumbling institution that struggles in most years to pay its heating bills. Two-thirds of its staff has been laid off, and the remaining workers scrape by on the equivalent of about $150 a month. Scientists with two PhDs spend their days in freezing-cold buildings, sometimes as caretakers for such technological dinosaurs as the institute's 40-year-old linear accelerator, once the world's largest, but now permanently idled in a building that is kept dark to save on electricity bills.
By almost every measure, the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, or KIPT as it is known, bears scant resemblance to the bustling weapons lab that existed here in Soviet times. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the lab had 6,000 workers and a mission to develop special materials for the most advanced weapons in the Soviet arsenal -- from nuclear warheads to the missiles that carried them. The institute's two campuses were part of a larger weapons-research complex in Kharkiv that collectively employed 50,000 scientists, giving this otherwise dreary city of 2.5 million the distinction of having one of the greatest concentrations of weapons expertise in the world.
Exactly how the institute came to acquire 165 pounds of highly enriched uranium is unclear. The lab has never owned a nuclear reactor and was never directly involved in weapons fabrication. In contrast with similar labs in other former Soviet republics, the Kharkiv institute has clung to a tradition of secrecy about many aspects of its past, and will not even discuss the amount of uranium it has.
This much is clear: More than a decade after the institute was converted to civilian research, the uranium remains one of the lab's most significant and dangerous assets.
"The uranium at Kharkiv has at best little relevance to Ukraine's peaceful nuclear energy needs, and has been untouched for over a decade," said William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a Monterey, Calif., weapons think tank that has studied the lab and its holdings. "It represents a major terrorist and proliferation target, and also poses a residual 'breakout' threat, should Ukraine ever seek to repudiate its commitments" renouncing nuclear weapons.
Energy Department officials apparently shared those concerns, agreeing in 1995 to help the U.N.-chartered International Atomic Energy Agency build a multimillion-dollar security system for the uranium. In 1999, the agency completed work on a double vault -- an outer shell of concrete, an inner shell of hardened steel -- and installed security cameras and fences to guard against intrusion. Once a month, IAEA inspectors check the uranium to ensure none is missing.
Today, officials at the institute cite security concerns in refusing to allow visits to the storage facility, even by Ukrainian government ministers. They boast of a fail-proof system equal to the finest in Europe and North America.
"It is not possible to remove from our institute even one single milligram," deputy director Alexei Yegorev said in an interview at the lab's main administration building, an office tower in a suburb of Kharkiv.
Energy officials familiar with the upgrades agree -- to a point. But they assert that there is no reliable defense against a future government decision to thwart the safeguards.
"It's just like the bank manager who turns off the alarm and takes the money," said an official of the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration. "There's no system in the world that can protect against that." The Iraq Connection
From the start of Iraq's quest for a nuclear bomb in the 1970s until the present, the main obstacle has been the lack of fissile material -- enriched uranium or plutonium needed for a nuclear explosion. Western intelligence agencies estimate that if President Saddam Hussein could buy or steal a quantity of fissile material one-third the size of Kharkiv's 165 pounds of uranium, Iraq could become a nuclear power in less than a year.
The possibility that Iraq might try to cut a deal for the uranium partly explains the intense U.S. interest in recent Iraqi trade missions to this city. Encouraged by Kharkiv businessmen, Iraq opened a consular office in this city in December 2000 and dispatched at least three official delegations since 1998 to explore trade opportunities. At least one of the delegations toured the institute, laboratory officials confirmed.
"The Iraqis were interested only in an overview -- they made no requests," said Yegorev, the institute deputy director.
Yegorev said there were no other official contacts with the Iraqis, although individual scientists recalled being approached by Middle Eastern businessmen who claimed to represent Iraq or Iran.
Concerns about possible Iraqi overtures to the institute first arose in the early 1990s, when documents obtained by U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq pointed to alleged trafficking of weapons materials between Kharkiv and Baghdad.
The key Ukrainian figure in the documents was Yuri Orshansky, a businessman with a PhD in electrical engineering. At the time, Orshansky was the head of a loose confederation of Ukrainian businesses called Montelekt that included several of the KIPT's sister institutions in Kharkiv. Documents found in Iraq included an agreement signed by Orshansky and Iraqi Brig. Gen. Naim Bakr Ali, then one of the leaders of Iraq's ballistic missile program, to provide Iraq with guidance systems and parts for advanced missiles, according to Timothy V. McCarthy, a former U.N. weapons inspector who investigated Iraq's Ukrainian connections in the mid-1990s. A third party to the protocol was a Kharkiv company, Khartron, a neighbor of the KIPT and an institution best known for designing Soviet ballistic missiles.
"We found a copy of Orshansky's passport in Baghdad with the documents describing the deal," said McCarthy, now the director of the Proliferation Research and Assessment Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "The Iraqis basically gave him up."
McCarthy said U.N. inspectors never were able to determine whether missile parts actually were delivered -- nor could the inspectors directly link Orshansky to any other technology sales to Iraq. The chances of finding hard evidence linking any foreign supplier to Iraq are always small, he noted, because Iraqi officials often use middlemen and obscure delivery routes to mask smuggling.
"Getting the goods into Iraq is never the problem," McCarthy said.
Meanwhile, Orshansky's continuing efforts to build ties between Iraq and Kharkiv businesses earned him two years ago the special title of "honorary consul" of Iraq in Kharkiv. In an interview last year with the Ukrainian defense news service, Defense Express, Orshansky boasted of making 40 trips to Baghdad since 1993, and said he had embarked on a "constant study of Iraq's needs in all areas," working within the boundaries of Ukraine's export laws.
"On some issues we have begun to work with Iraq in order to create conditions so that orders are placed with Ukraine," Orshansky was quoted as saying. "Even if they want to create a nuclear bomb, we will study this."
In the months following U.S. allegations of illegal sales of Ukrainian air defense radars to Iraq, Orshansky has kept a lower profile. Contacted at his Kharkiv office last month, he declined to meet with a Washington Post reporter or discuss any aspect of his business ties with Iraq. "If you've come to talk about Montelekt, I have nothing to say," he said, referring to the Ukrainian business confederation.
Orshansky's choice of office decor, however, was itself a bold statement. In the place of a sign announcing the name of his company, Orshansky displayed a large tricolor Iraqi flag with the familiar stars and the words "God is Great" written in Arabic. Above the door was an Iraqi eagle, the preferred symbol for Saddam Hussein's Baathist government.
In 1994, a chance to eliminate the risks posed by the Kharkiv institute's enriched uranium was briefly dangled before Clinton administration officials, some of whom had never heard of the facility. The possibility of a sale grew out of a meeting in Washington with a visiting Ukrainian nuclear scientist who mentioned the KIPT's supply of weapons-grade nuclear material in a discussion of problems facing Ukraine's nuclear industry. Security for the enriched uranium was a big worry, the Ukrainian scientist said, according to those who heard him. "But your people already know this."
Bunn, then an adviser on nuclear terrorism in the Clinton White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, made a few phone calls and learned that Energy Department officials had indeed visited the facility and had agreed to an IAEA plan that called for securing the material, not removing it. The notion of a deal to purchase the uranium was initially welcomed by State Department officials but ultimately went nowhere. At the time, Bunn explained, the administration was more concerned about removing the Soviet nuclear warheads still on Ukrainian soil.
"The wheels of bureaucracy failed to turn," Bunn said.
Today, much has changed. The former Soviet republics outside Russia have given up their nuclear warheads and delivery systems. The United States is spending billions of dollars to help Russia dismantle nuclear weapons. Now, fresh attention is being devoted to new threats, such as the fissile material in Kharkiv. The United States favors removing enriched uranium from dozens of research reactors around the world, using a combination of money, technology transfers and political pressure as leverage. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a speech Nov. 14 that a major factor in the new approach is that Russia has agreed to accept nuclear fuel returned from Soviet-designed reactors around the world.
"This fuel needs to be repatriated to Russia, where it will be safer from the risk of theft or diversion," Abraham said.
So far, such arguments have failed to sway the keepers of Kharkiv's uranium. Top managers of the Kharkiv institute said there is no interest in selling the uranium because it is vital to the institute's plans to develop a new line of commercial fuel for nuclear power.
"It is not possible for us to sell it," said Yegorev, the deputy director. "You would not only need a special order of the Ukraine government but special permission of the IAEA, because it is under their control. Without this we can do nothing."
U.S. officials aren't convinced that this is the final word. Although relations occasionally have been rocky, Ukraine's leaders have almost always sided with the United States and NATO in deciding whether to scrap weapons systems that are deemed proliferation threats. Earlier this month, senior Ukrainian officials stood with their U.S. counterparts to watch the destruction of the first of Ukraine's 225 Soviet-built Kh-22 missiles, medium-range weapons that potentially can carry nuclear, biological or chemical warheads.
"You'll hear mumbling now and then from the military, but ultimately the cooperation is always fairly good," said a U.S. official. "Ukraine doesn't need these weapons anymore. And as the leaders know, if you let something lay around long enough, eventually it will disappear."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Ex - Inspector: Yucca Mountain Has Problems
November 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A former senior government inspector at Yucca Mountain said the project was riddled with potential problems and will have a hard time getting a federal license to store nuclear waste if crucial safety data cannot be documented.
Bill Belke, who lives in Las Vegas, said he was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's senior on-site representative at the project for seven years.
During that time, Belke said, he watched over the shoulders of Department of Energy and contract workers as they tried to troubleshoot problems involving two decades of data that scientists gathered.
Belke said some of the information involved earthquake hazards, volcanic activity and groundwater paths that government scientists plugged into models and designs to figure out if the planned nuclear waste dump could stand the test of time.
``I know with the problems I've seen, there's been a lot of problems with data,'' Belke told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a copyrighted story published Thursday.
``And the data, if it's going into a license, has got to be of a high pedigree quality to support their licensing activities. They've got to make a case that this data is accurate and qualified.''
Belke's comments follow reports that two men who worked at the project as quality assurance specialists were fired or transferred after voicing concerns about the site.
Nevada's U.S. senators want a congressional investigation of management at Yucca Mountain. Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign have alleged ``fraud and abuse'' in the firing of the two workers.
DOE officials said they have confidence in the site studies, and any problems at the project will be dealt with appropriately before a license application is submitted to the NRC in late 2004 or early 2005.
Reid was also sent an anonymous letter earlier this week claiming that critical documents involving site studies at Yucca were lost.
The letter stated: ``Currently as much as 50 percent of the data used to support the site recommendation of the Yucca Mountain Project is lost -- NRC is aware of this.''
Reid wants the allegation probed.
Belke isn't surprised by the letter. He said that in the last years of the Yucca Mountain studies, quality assurance problems noted by project officials were frequent.
``They would try to defend them as opposed to fixing them,'' Belke said. ``What I've seen with the program, it's like the old dam story, you fix the leak, then you have another one and another one.''
So far, scientists have found nothing at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, that would preclude building a maze of tunnels to hold 77,000 tons of spent fuel and highly radioactive waste.
But Belke said that the DOE faces ``quite a challenge'' in convincing NRC license reviewers that the paper trail is accurate and gap-proof. He said core samples about the mountain's geology and volcanic activity must be documented.
The DOE must show that the people who collected and analyzed the data were qualified and the equipment they used was calibrated to national standards, Belke said.
Some data about the site collected during the 1980s is probably not adequate to meet current quality assurance standards, and to back it with a paper-trail of evidence, will be very costly, he said.
``You add all these up, what confidence does this give you that it's going to be done in an acceptable manner?'' Belke asked. ``DOE has a very difficult task to make their case.''
Until he retired in January, Belke said he fielded at least 25 concerns from project employees, mostly dealing with data collection and software complications. In reports he filed with the NRC as recently as two years ago, he recalled ``there were significant problems.''
Quality assurance workers, he said, ``had to fight to get those things written up and once they finally got written up they had to have a big corrective action program to fix them.''
-------- new mexico
U.S. Lab Fires Investigators After Reports Are Leaked
November 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/national/28ALAM.html
ALBUQUERQUE, Nov. 27 (AP) - The Los Alamos National Laboratory discharged two investigators this week after their reports on theft and fraud there were given anonymously to a watchdog group, the two men and laboratory officials said on Tuesday.
The investigators, Glenn Walp and Steven Doran, said they received identical letters on Monday ending their employment.
They were hired this year to investigate the handling of government property and money, and they said they had uncovered a lack of controls on money and high-tech equipment.
Mr. Walp submitted a report in March that listed $2.7 million worth of equipment, including 263 desktop or laptop computers, as missing since 1999.
"I think there has been a culture that has been embedded in that environment that is almost conducive to committing a theft," he said on Tuesday in a telephone interview from Santa Fe.
Information from his reports was anonymously turned over to the news media and to the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington. Mr. Walp and Mr. Doran said they were not the source of the information.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for the laboratory, Jim Danneskiold, said he could not say why the two men had been discharged but added that they were still in their probationary periods and could be dismissed at the laboratory's discretion, as long as the ousters were not retaliatory.
Mr. Danneskiold said Los Alamos had consulted lawyers over the accusations of wrongdoing.
"The F.B.I. is forwarded any evidence as soon as it comes to the lab's attention," he added.
The University of California operates Los Alamos, a nuclear weapons laboratory, for the Energy Department.
Security at the complex has been under scrutiny since a scientist, Dr. Wen Ho Lee, was fired and accused of dozens of breaches.
Dr. Lee pleaded guilty in September 2000 to one count of using an unsecured computer to download a military document, and a federal judge freed him with an apology.
-------- new york
Indian Pt. 2 Sets Record for Itself in Refueling Job
November 28, 2002
New York Times
By WINNIE HU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/nyregion/28NUKE.html
BUCHANAN, N.Y., Nov. 27 - The Indian Point 2 nuclear plant started producing power this evening after shutting down last month for a routine replacement of more than one-third of the uranium fuel rods in the reactor core.
Indian Point workers completed the refueling, as well as other scheduled maintenance and upgrades, in 32 days, by far the shortest time ever for the plant, which has been plagued in recent years by mishaps and safety lapses, including a radioactive leak in February 2000 that closed the plant for nearly a year.
Before, the shortest shutdown for refueling at the plant had been 72 days, in late 1997 and early 1998.
While fuel replacement normally takes place every two years, it came under particular scrutiny and suffered calls for its permanent shutdown this year because of heightened safety concerns since the Sept. 11 attacks and the opposition by local officials and residents.
The refueling shutdown at Indian Point 2 was the first under the plant's current owner, the Entergy Corporation, which took over the plant in September 2001.
"They had a very challenging outage," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "We knew going in that they had a lot on their plate. In general, the outage appeared to go well, but our inspectors are still assessing a number of issues."
-------- us politics
[To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
Biographer: Kissinger right for panel
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021128-49310009.htm
The biographer of Henry Kissinger says the former secretary of state refused to speak to him for years following the publication of the 1992 study on the architect of American foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford years.
But Walter Isaacson said that, three or four years ago, Mr. Kissinger resumed talking to the author. Mr. Isaacson, who is now chairman and chief executive officer of CNN, yesterday hailed President Bush's choice of Mr. Kissinger to serve as chairman of the bipartisan independent commission that will investigate pre-September 11 intelligence failures and try to help the administration learn the motives and tactics of this country's terrorist enemies.
"I think Henry Kissinger is really a smart choice for this position," Mr. Isaacson said, adding:
"He's had both an appreciation for and a healthy skepticism of American intelligence. He's particularly good at putting intelligence in an analytical framework. He's also great at understanding links; meaning, how an action in one corner of the world reverberates in another corner of the world."
Mr. Isaacson knows the life and mind of the German immigrant very well. Mr. Isaacson wrote "Kissinger: A Biography" when he was an assistant managing editor at Time magazine. Mr. Kissinger was both assistant to the president for national security affairs and secretary of state under President Nixon and continued as secretary of state under President Ford.
CNN's top executive said he likes the fact that Mr. Kissinger is "impatient when others fail to be" and is "never mild-mannered when it comes to misjudgments in intelligence."
Those are some of "his strengths," Mr. Isaacson said.
As he said of Mr. Kissinger in an interview with The Washington Times soon after his book was released: "He has always been able to generate very polarized opinions, both of veneration and vituperation, of animosity and awe."
Mr. Isaacson pointed out that, in 1973, Mr. Kissinger was the most-admired person in America. That was the year he was named secretary of state by Mr. Nixon. It was also the year he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a cease-fire in Vietnam.
Born in Furth, Germany, near Nuremburg, Mr. Kissinger arrived in the United States with his parents at the age of 15. His relatives were Orthodox Jews, and they recognized the terror that faced them in Adolf Hitler's Germany. In fact, some of Mr. Kissinger's relatives, including three aunts, died in concentration camps.
Mr. Kissinger met a man while the German immigrant was stationed in Louisiana in the Army during World War II who recognized his brilliance and suggested he seek admission to Harvard - which he did. While a student, Mr. Kissinger received high grades and later gained notice as an author of several books.
Mr. Kissinger has been portrayed as America's most brilliant and enterprising modern statesman and also denounced as a hawkish exponent of realpolitik. Many of his critics have said that Mr. Kissinger's approach to foreign affairs excessively emphasizes the importance of geopolitics and advancing national interests at the expense of moral issues.
Mr. Isaacson said he believes Mr. Kissinger hated his book so long because he did not always portray the former secretary of state as the text of the Nobel Peace Prize did. The author showed him as secretive, ambitious, ruthless toward his enemies and associates, manipulative, autocratic, and given to temper tantrums and rages.
But Mr. Isaacson's book was mild compared to a two-part series about Mr. Kissinger that ran in Harper's magazine in February and March 2001. The series, written by British journalist Christopher Hitchens, held that Mr. Kissinger should be viewed as a war criminal.
Mr. Hitchens accused Mr. Kissinger of being responsible for numerous "crimes," such as prolonging and expanding the war in Southeast Asia; human rights abuses in Chile in the early 1970s; the 1971 Pakistani-led massacre in Bangladesh; and the car-bombing in Washington that killed a Chilean foreign minister and his aide in 1976.
Mr. Kissinger refused to comment on the series when it ran, and Mr. Isaacson declined to react to it yesterday.
--------
Bush anything but moronic, according to author
Dark overtones in his malapropisms President
MURRAY WHYTE ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
Nov. 28, 2002.
Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=d3102333e4f450b0&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1035774887712&call_pageid=968332188492
When Mark Crispin Miller first set out to write Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, about the ever-growing catalogue of President George W. Bush's verbal gaffes, he meant it for a laugh. But what he came to realize wasn't entirely amusing.
Since the 2000 presidential campaign, Miller has been compiling his own collection of Bush-isms, which have revealed, he says, a disquieting truth about what lurks behind the cock-eyed leer of the leader of the free world. He's not a moron at all - on that point, Miller and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien agree.
But according to Miller, he's no friend.
"I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts," Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto.
"Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."
Miller's judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House's current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.
If only. Miller's rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush's various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.
"He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge.
"When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller said.
"It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes."
While Miller's book has been praised for its "eloquence" and "playful use of language," it has enraged Bush supporters.
Bush's ascent in the eyes of many Americans - his approval rating hovers at near 80 percent - was the direct result of tough talk following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In those speeches, Bush stumbled not at all; his language of retribution was clear.
It was a sharp contrast to the pre-9/11 George W. Bush. Even before the Supreme Court in 2001 had to intervene and rule on recounts in Florida after a contentious presidential election, a corps of journalists were salivating at the prospect: a bafflingly inarticulate man in a position of power not seen since vice-president Dan Quayle rode shotgun on George H.W. Bush's one term in office.
But equating Bush's malapropisms with Quayle's inability to spell "potato" is a dangerous assumption, Miller says.
At a public address in Nashville, Tenn., in September, Bush provided one of his most memorable stumbles. Trying to give strength to his case that Saddam Hussein had already deceived the West concerning his store of weapons, Bush was scripted to offer an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What came out was the following:
"Fool me once, shame ... shame on ... you." Long, uncomfortable pause. "Fool me - can't get fooled again!"
Played for laughs everywhere, Miller saw a darkness underlying the gaffe.
"There's an episode of Happy Days, where The Fonz has to say, `I'm sorry' and can't do it. Same thing," Miller said.
"What's revealing about this is that Bush could not say, `Shame on me' to save his life. That's a completely alien idea to him. This is a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility and rectitude."
If what Miller says is true - and it would take more than just observations to prove it - then Bush has achieved an astounding goal.
By stumbling blithely along, he has been able to push his image as "just folks" - a normal guy who screws up just like the rest of us.
This, in fact, is a central cog in his image-making machine, Miller says: Portraying the wealthy scion of one of America's most powerful families as a regular, imperfect Joe.
But the depiction, Miller says, is also remarkable for what it hides - imperfect, yes, but also detached, wealthy and unable to identify with the "folks" he's been designed to appeal to.
An example, Miller says, surfaced early in his presidential tenure.
"I know how hard it is to put food on your family," Bush was quoted as saying.
"That wasn't because he's so stupid that he doesn't know how to say, `Put food on your family's table' - it's because he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table," Miller says.
So, when Bush is envisioning "a foreign-handed foreign policy," or observes on some point that "it's not the way that America is all about," Miller contends it's because he can't keep his focus on things that mean nothing to him.
"When he tries to talk about what this country stands for, or about democracy, he can't do it," he said.
This, then, is why he's so closely watched by his handlers, Miller says - not because he'll say something stupid, but because he'll overindulge in the language of violence and punishment at which he excels.
"He's a very angry guy, a hostile guy. He's much like Nixon. So they're very, very careful to choreograph every move he makes. They don't want him anywhere near protestors, because he would lose his temper."
Miller, without question, is a man with a mission - and laughter isn't it.
"I call him the feel bad president, because he's all about punishment and death," he said. "It would be a grave mistake to just play him for laughs."
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Famine signs re-emerge in Ethiopia
By Stephen Robinson
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
November 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021128-6348932.htm
GEWANE, Ethiopia - Bushta Abdi, headmaster of Gewane junior school, has seen the mounting horror of Ethiopia's famine reflected in his pupils' faces ever since the failure of summer rains.
"The first thing I noticed was they lost their concentration in class. Then I saw their bodies changing as they lost fat. And now the numbers in class are declining as the children are forced to leave." Mr. Abdi does not expect much by way of creature comforts for his 315 pupils. The school has no electricity or water, no lavatories and no food to provide a lunch.
Yet by virtue of having a school to go to, Mr. Abdi's charges are, in Ethiopian terms, relatively privileged, so the teachers and pupils do not complain. But the disaster that is playing itself out around this town and throughout the Afar region is one challenge for which Mr. Abdi has no answer.
In one class, 40 of the 110 pupils have simply disappeared as their parents take their chances and flee to the cities, knowing from their memories of past droughts of the horrors that lie ahead.
If this famine reaches the peak that sober and scientifically based predictions suggest, many of the children who are left behind around Gewane will be dead within a year. By wiping out Ethiopia's tentative efforts to educate its children, this famine is entrenching the relentless cycle of hunger and underdevelopment by throwing the consequences of this crisis forward into the next generation.
We are conditioned by haunting television images to see famine in terms of fly-blown faces and swollen bellies, but that stage has not been reached. Ethiopian famines have their own awful rhythm: First the cattle die, then the goats, and then the people.
The first stage has been reached. The main rains of June to September have failed, so the ground is void of grass and the cattle are dying by the hundreds of thousands.
FARM (Food and Agricultural Research Management)-Africa, one of the aid agencies active in this region, believes that one-third of the cattle in Afar have died and that soon none will be left.
Afar is largely a pastoralist farming society in which the economy is based entirely on livestock. The pastoralists build up herds of cattle, move them around from season to season in search of pasture, then exchange them for grain to feed their families.
With no banks and virtually no cash economy, cattle is a form of exchange and the only store of capital. In Afar, a man's wealth is calculated by how many head of cattle he owns. Therefore, as the cattle die, the entire rural economy is destroyed. The local people have no way of feeding themselves other than to cadge sacks of corn from the relief agencies.
Husiene Ibrahim, a local leader and agricultural commissioner for the Afar region, fears that this famine will be worse than the one of 1984 to 1985.
"The people are already eating just one meal a day from the aid food stores. There is no fresh water to drink, so the children are drinking from rivers and spreading diseases because that is where people throw the dead cows."
The sense of despair is compounded, he explained, by the witch doctors' confident predictions, based on readings of the stars, that the next rains in March also will fail. But even if the lighter spring rains bring limited relief, some 17 million Ethiopians in the affected areas face the terrible struggle of getting through the next four months of dry season with no prospect of rain.
In times of famine, it is often impossible to know precisely what has caused a child's death, because so many diseases are caused or made worse by malnutrition. It is clear from talking to medical personnel in the villages that children already are dying of diseases that they would survive in normal times.
FARM-Africa sends specialists to set up camp for three months in villages and advise the communities on animal husbandry and disease prevention, but it is clear that the relatively small charity is overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis. It has been working to improve the health of livestock, but now is planning to offer assistance in slaughtering animals efficiently, rather than simply waiting for them to die. At one settlement at Beida on the banks of the Awash river, the consequences of the drought were plain to see. The clan leader, Aden Uda, used to be a rich man, but he lost 93 of his 100 cattle and clearly was humiliated, having to rely on supplies of international aid to feed himself and his family.
The villagers keep their cattle in a central kraal, feeding them leaves from the trees in a desperate - and perhaps doomed - attempt to keep the remaining scrawny animals alive. Many of the grass huts were abandoned by families that had decided to take their chances in less-remote regions, where deliveries of food might be more reliable.
No one knows exactly where all the people are going, but clusters of hungry refugees gathered around churches and main road junctions in Addis Ababa have alerted the residents of the capital to the crisis in the rural areas.
In the capital, many are angry with their own government for its failure, again, to heed past warnings about drought. Much-needed agricultural reforms have been delayed, and the government's refusal to restore private landownership to small farmers has exacerbated the crisis by discouraging long-term conservation.
The political failure to resolve the festering border dispute with Eritrea has made matters in the north far worse, and disputes with Somalian tribes have increased tensions. In Afar, the majority of men walk around armed, either with AK-47s slung nonchalantly around their shoulders, or with traditional daggers.
In Addis Ababa, the government appears to have abandoned all efforts to deal with the crisis itself. Having learned nothing from past famines, it prefers to shame international donors into action, gambling that the rest of the world will not have the stomach to be mere spectators to such a terrible human disaster.
----
Zambians, animals compete for food
By Dina Kraft,
November 28, 2002
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021128-122970.htm
KOOMA, Zambia - In the village of Kooma, people compete with baboons and birds for nuts and wild fruit to survive.
"We share with animals," said Elliot Magoloi, 68. "It's a shame."
His face was gaunt. Frayed blue coveralls hung from his body.
Drought has left as many as 14.4 million people facing the threat of starvation, U.N. estimates show. Here, in Zambia's southern province, a flat landscape of sandy soil and crackling, dry, pale yellow grasses, the crisis has hit especially hard.
Mr. Magoloi's daughter-in-law, Maureen Kola, 22, sat on a straw mat nearby with her five children. She fingered the rough shell of a wild mungongo nut, put it on a triangular rock and smashed it with a round, smooth stone. The thin porridge it would produce was the only food in the village.
The children cry, she said, "because of the hunger."
She pointed to a skinny dog and laughed quietly. "That means there is nothing," she said.
In impoverished Zambia, where nearly 30 percent of the people are going hungry, some argue that government policy has made things worse.
Zambia's government decided in August to reject donated corn from the United States because some of it was genetically modified. The government said it worried about side effects, even though U.N. agencies certified the food as safe.
But the United States is by far the largest donor in response to the southern African hunger crisis. Aid organizations said they are scrambling to find alternatives.
"The problem is finding it fast enough," said Richard Ragan, the World Food Program's representative in Zambia.
In Kooma, a village of thatched-roofed mud huts, Cryson Mutema is bitter about the debate occurring in the capital, Lusaka, 340 miles to the north.
Mr. Mutema, 38, said he had heard radio reports of President Levy Mwanawasa's fears that genetically modified food could be poisonous.
"He doesn't want? But we want. He's eating, all day. He is satisfied. Here we are hungry. Here we go starving," Mr. Mutema said.
His 3-year-old son sat at his feet. The listless child's enormous eyes stared but focused on nothing.
The villagers said this year has been especially hard because a cattle disease wiped out much of the area's livestock. In the past, they could have sold off a cow to buy food.
Cattle, a sign of status, are used to perform the hard labor of clearing fields. It is a task that this year must be done by hand on empty stomachs.
The wooden doors of several huts down the road are bolted with long sticks. The owners have gone 25 miles west in hopes of eating better in Livingstone, a resort town.
Even the local schoolteacher has left. The villagers can't pay her, so the children now spend their days at home. Hunger leaves them too tired to play.
In Maunga, about 12 miles away, relief supplies had arrived. Women in head scarves and print skirts of fuchsia and gold, and men in threadbare shirts, sat quietly in front of the village school waiting for their names to be called to collect sacks of corn distributed by the international relief group CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere).
For many, it was the first corn they had had all year. They smiled when they talked about once again making nchima. The cornmeal mush is their traditional food.
Older couples walked off carrying the heaving sacks between them. Some carted away the grain by wheelbarrow. Young women balanced sacks on their heads and glided into the bush.
But in Kooma, home to about 300 people, a small group sitting in a packed sandy yard talked about a life of hunger.
"I spend my days sitting because I can't do anything. I just want to sleep," Mr. Magoloi said.
Some food relief later arrived, but life remained difficult.
The drought so devastated the village's corn, its staple crop, that villagers did not bother building grain storage sheds. There was nothing to store.
As planting season begins this year, Mr. Magoloi and his neighbors say they don't know how they will muster the strength to sow the fields or find the money to buy seed.
"If I'm hungry, I feel like I have no hope. I feel blue to my heart," said Mr. Magoloi, hanging his head.
----
Car Bomb Detonates at Hotel; Missiles Fired at Passenger Jet
November 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kenya-Israel.html
KIKAMBALA, Kenya (AP) -- Three suicide bombers attacked an Israeli-owned hotel, killing 12 other people, and at least two missiles were fired at -- but missed -- an Israeli airliner taking off from Mombasa airport in simultaneous attacks Thursday.
Kenyan and Israeli officials suspected al-Qaida terrorists were to blame, but a previously unknown militant group issued a statement in Beirut, Lebanon, claiming responsibility.
The group -- describing itself as The Government of Universal Palestine in Exile, The Army of Palestine -- said the attacks were timed to mark the eve of the anniversary of the Nov. 29, 1947, decision by the United Nations to partition Palestine and allow creation of a Jewish state.
Israel vowed to track down those behind the twin attacks and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon put the Mossad spy agency in charge of the investigation.
``Our hand will reach them,'' Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said of the attackers. ``If anyone doubted that the citizens of the state of Israel cannot stand up to the killers of children, this doubt will be removed.''
At about 8:35 a.m., a green all-terrain vehicle packed with explosives rammed through the gate of the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala, an Indian Ocean resort 15 miles north of Mombasa, police said. One man got out and blew himself up inside the hotel, while the others detonated the vehicle out front, said Yehuda Sulami, the hotel's director.
Besides the three bombers, the dead included nine Kenyans, two Israeli brothers -- ages 12 and 13 -- from the Jewish settlement of Ariel on the West Bank and an Israeli man, authorities said.
Most of the Kenyans killed were traditional dancers performing for the tourists, said Abbas Gullet of the Kenyan Red Cross. About 80 other people were wounded, said John Sawe, the Kenyan ambassador to Israel.
About five minutes before the Kenya hotel attack, two missiles streaked by a Boeing 757 owned by Arkia Airlines as it left the Mombasa airport bound for Tel Aviv, Israel. Witnesses said the missiles were fired from an all-terrain vehicle a mile from the airport, said police spokesman Jesse Mituki.
``It looks like a coordinated attack,'' he said.
Two missile casings were found near the airport and three or four men with Arab features were seen leaving the area in a white vehicle, said another police spokesman, King'ori Mwangi.
The aircraft landed safely about 5 1/2 hours later in Tel Aviv. None of the 261 passengers and 10 crew members was hurt.
Also Thursday in northern Israel, two Palestinian gunmen opened fire outside a Likud Party office and at passengers in a nearby bus terminal in Beit Shean. Five Israelis were killed and dozens wounded in the attack. The gunmen died in the ensuing firefight.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack during the Likud party primary.
President Bush, informed of the attacks in Kenya during his Thanksgiving intelligence briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, denounced the violence and offered U.S. help in the investigation.
``The United States deplores this violence. We stand ready to offer the Kenyans and the Israelis assistance in this investigation,'' deputy White House press secretary Gordon Johndroe said.
Johndroe said it was too early to tell whether Osama bin Laden's terror network was involved.
Hotel staff also saw a light plane circling over the hotel at the time of the explosion, he said. Three packages, which staff said were bombs, were dropped from the plane, one landing in the hotel pool, one on the roof and one in the ocean, he said.
There were 140 guests at the 160-bed hotel, which normally has 40 security guards, at the time of the blast, Sulami said. Kenya's coast is a predominantly Muslim region and the area is a popular vacation spot for tourists from Israel and Europe.
Following the blast, fire gutted the building, and an Associated Press reporter saw seven bodies burned beyond recognition. Rescue workers covered the bodies and searched for more casualties. The Lebanese group said in the statement faxed to international news agencies that two units were sent to Kenya ``to strike at Israeli interests.''
``The two groups carried out their military operations according to the drawn plan and inflicted direct hits among the ranks of the Israeli Zionists and are now on their way to return safely to their bases,'' the statement said.
It was not immediately possible to verify the statement's authenticity. Khaled Aref, a senior Fatah commander in Lebanon, expressed surprise at the claim and said he had not heard of the group before. Palestinian Authority officials also denied any connection to the attacks.
Kenyan Vice President Musalia Mudavadi said that during the last six months, Kenyan intelligence had been picked up reports that the country could be targeted by terrorists. He did not elaborate.
``We can't rule out the group that struck at us in 1998,'' he said, referring to al-Qaida's deadly attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998.
One blast at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, killed 219 people and wounded 5,000. A nearly simultaneous attack on the U.S. embassy in neighboring Tanzania killed 12 people and injured more than 80. Those convicted in the attacks have been linked to al-Qaida.
Sawe, the Kenyan ambassador, said, ``I don't have any doubt this is al-Qaida.''
If Thursday's attacks prove to be the work of al-Qaida, it would be the first time the terror network is known to have targeted Israelis.
In recent weeks, however, statements attributed to bin Laden or his organization have criticized Israeli actions against the Palestinians, suggesting his operatives might go after Israelis or Israeli interests.
Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said al-Qaida was suspected but said authorities were looking into other possibilities as well. He said Palestinian militants have been trying to get shoulder-held missiles from Iran and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, said Sharon met with the foreign and defense ministers to discuss Israel's response. Israel ``will not make any rash decisions,'' Shoval told the AP.
The aircraft had just taken off from Mombasa airport when the pilot saw a flash of light to his left, said an Arkia official, Shlomo Hanael.
The pilot initially prepared for an emergency landing in Nairobi, Kenya, to check whether the plane was damaged, but after consultations with Israeli officials, it was decided to fly directly to Israel, Israel TV's Channel Two said. Hanael said there was no damage to the plane.
Passengers said they heard a loud ``boom'' and felt the plane shake just after takeoff.
``It felt like something fell off the wing,'' said Kerry Levy, 25.
Crew members did not explain what happened until just before landing at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport.
-------- asia
Bush Apologizes to South Korea for U.S. Army Killing of 2 Girls
November 28, 2002
New York Times
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/international/asia/28SEOU.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 27 - President Bush apologized today for the deaths of two Korean girls hit by a United States military vehicle in June, an incident that has led to angry anti-American demonstrations.
The apology to the girls' families, the South Korean government and the Korean people, delivered by the American ambassador here, was in response to a demand of protesters outraged first by the girls' deaths and then by the dismissal by a United States military court last week of negligent homicide charges against the two sergeants in the vehicle.
The ambassador, Thomas Hubbard, did not say why Mr. Bush had waited until now to make the apology, a demand not only of demonstrators but also of candidates in the Korean presidential election next month. At a news conference today, he and Gen. Leon LaPorte, commander of the 37,000 American troops in South Korea, combined their own profuse apologies with a defense of the justice system under which the soldiers were acquitted.
"President Bush, who has visited Korea and has a special feeling for the Korean people, has been touched by this tragedy," said Mr. Hubbard. "Just this morning, the president sent me a message asking me to convey his apologies to the families of the girls, to the government of the Republic of Korea and to the people of Korea."
Mr. Hubbard then quoted from the message, saying that Mr. Bush had asked him to express his "sadness and regret over this tragic incident."
Korean protesters, however, made clear that they regarded the apology as too little, too late, especially since Mr. Bush himself had not given voice to the words ascribed to him.
Shortly after the news conference, several hundred demonstrators, gathering near the United States military headquarters, shouted in Korean, "Bush must apologize personally and publicly, not through his ambassador!"
They also repeated another demand, chanting, "Bring the murderous U.S. soldiers to our court."
The two soldiers were flown out of Korea today. One of them, Sgt. Fernando Nino, whose job on the day of the girls' deaths had been to watch the road ahead, will soon be discharged after deciding not to re-enlist, said a military spokesman. The other, Sgt. Mark Walker, the driver, has a new assignment.
American military officers and diplomats, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have repeatedly apologized over the incident, but Koreans, saying they needed to hear from Mr. Bush, often cited as precedent the apology issued by President Bill Clinton for the rape of an Okinawa schoolgirl by three United States marines in 1995.
Until recently, American officials had argued that a presidential apology was not needed since the incidents were entirely different. The marines were clearly off-duty when they raped the girl, they noted, while the sergeants were participating in a joint military exercise with South Koreans when the two girls were killed.
General LaPorte skirted the issue of whether higher-level commanders bore responsibility for pressuring troops to move too quickly in a maneuver for which they had not received an advance briefing, saying "the chain of command" was still evaluating the circumstances.
He indicated, however, that higher-level officers were still under investigation and said he had revamped procedures so that such an accident could not happen again.
-------- britain
The Churchill you didn't know
Thousands voted him the greatest Briton - but did they know about his views on Gandhi, gassing and Jews...
Thursday November 28, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,849122,00.html
I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism. Speaking in the House of Commons, autumn 1937
I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes. Writing as president of the Air Council, 1919
It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King. Commenting on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931
(India is) a godless land of snobs and bores. In a letter to his mother, 1896
I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place. Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937
(We must rally against) a poisoned Russia, an infected Russia of armed hordes not only smiting with bayonet and cannon, but accompanied and preceded by swarms of typhus-bearing vermin. Quoted in the Boston Review, April/May 2001
"The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives and most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre - horrid and inexorcisable. Writing in The World Crisis and the Aftermath, 1923-31
The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed. Churchill to Asquith, 1910
One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations." From his Great Contemporaries, 1937
You are callous people who want to wreck Europe - you do not care about the future of Europe, you have only your own miserable interests in mind. Addressing the London Polish government at a British Embassy meeting, October 1944
So far as Britain and Russia were concerned, how would it do for you to have 90% of Romania, for us to have 90% of the say in Greece, and go 50/50 about Yugoslavia? Addressing Stalin in Moscow, October 1944
This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."
Writing on 'Zionism versus Bolshevism' in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920
Research by Amy Iggulden
-------- business
Northrop Sees a Clear Path
Thursday, November 28, 2002
Washington Post; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48852-2002Nov27?language=printer
Northrop Grumman said a draft of a consent decree from the Justice Department does not require the divestiture of any businesses for the defense contractor's planned purchase of rival TRW, helping clear the way for the companies to complete the merger in mid-December. Los Angeles-based Northrop said it expects to complete the transaction Dec. 11. It also said it believes the Defense Department has recommended to the Justice Department that the transaction proceed. The deal would create the second-largest weapons maker, behind Lockheed Martin.
-------- germany
Germany Allows Use of U.S. Bases for War
Nation's Troops Would Not Participate Directly in Iraq Campaign, Chancellor Says
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 28, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48399-2002Nov27?language=printer
BERLIN, Nov. 27 -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said today that Germany would allow the use of U.S. bases on German soil for a war against Iraq and would grant the American military and participating NATO allies unrestricted overflight rights for such an operation.
But Schroeder reiterated his government's stance that German forces would not directly participate in an attack, a position that helped him win reelection in recent national elections and soured ties with the Bush administration.
Today's announcement at a news conference was the clearest statement yet of how Schroeder is seeking to improve relations with the United States while remaining consistent with the anti-war stance.
The decision came in response to a U.S. request to Germany and dozens of other countries to itemize the contributions they could make to a campaign against Iraq. The German response, while widely predicted, may come as a relief to U.S. officials who recently examined whether Schroeder had legal authority to block the use of American bases in Germany. About 70,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in the country.
Military lawyers concluded that under the detailed agreements governing the presence of the bases, Germany would have some grounds to block operations against Iraq from German soil, according to a U.S. official.
Schroeder said today, however, that Germany would guarantee "overflight rights for the United States and other NATO member states that want them, smooth transit for troops of the United States and the NATO members, [and] use of U.S. military installations in Germany by the United States and the members."
Schroeder ruled out the use in an Iraq campaign of a small German armored vehicle unit, now based in Kuwait, that specializes in detecting nuclear, chemical and biological agents on the battlefield. He said the United States had requested such a unit.
"They are available in the context of Enduring Freedom, not for anything else," Schroeder said, referring to the Pentagon's name for military operations in Afghanistan. "We do not intend to provide further resources beyond what I have said," Schroeder said.
Schroeder said the United States also asked for financial and material assistance for the reconstruction of Iraq after a possible war. Schroeder parried that question today. "We expect that there will be no need for a military intervention and that is the German government's political goal, and I think it would be wrong to assume . . . the country will have to be rebuilt," the chancellor said.
The conservative opposition demanded today that the list of U.S. requests be made public and debated in parliament.
-------- mideast
U.S. Lobbying for Turks' Aid in Move on Iraq
November 28, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/international/middleeast/28TURK.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - The Bush administration is mounting a major effort to enlist the support of the new Islamic government of Turkey for a northern front if there is a war with Iraq, senior officials said today.
As part of that effort, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz plans to leave on Sunday for a round of consultations in Ankara, Brussels and London. Turkey is his most important stop.
Bush administration officials say that the United States could defeat Iraq without Turkey's support. But they argue that an American military campaign would be more decisive and could be executed more quickly if Iraq's military had to fight on several fronts.
They also say that the Pentagon needs to dispel uncertainty over Turkey's role in a potential conflict. There have been, in effect, two military plans by the United States: one that assumes extensive Turkish cooperation in a military campaign to dislodge Saddam Hussein's government and one that does not. Senior American officials said Washington was running out of time to settle its northern front strategy because they considered it unlikely that the Iraqi government would comply with United Nations inspections.
American officials did not say precisely what role they would like Turkey to play in a conflict. Turkey has air bases that the United States would like to use to mount bombing attacks. It also has a large army.
Asked if the United States wanted Turkish ground forces to participate in an attack, a senior administration official said Washington believed it would be advantageous to confront Iraq with as potent a military threat from the north as possible.
Mr. Wolfowitz's trip is the first of a series of high-level visits that are intended to elicit international support for the Bush administration's tough policy on Iraq. Some of these trips, like Mr. Wolfowitz's, are intended to form a military coalition. Others are intended to secure political support from nations like China that do not plan to join the fray but whose views are important.
The trips will be carried out during a crucial period. On Dec. 8, Iraq is required to submit an account of its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear arms and the missiles that might carry them. There are likely to be different interpretations of whether the declaration is adequate, and the United States wants to maintain a tough stand.
Besides the Wolfowitz trip, visits will be made to other countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East by Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state; Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser to President Bush; and Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, will accompany Mr. Wolfowitz on his trip and then proceed with his own itinerary.
Mr. Wolfowitz's first stop will be Brussels, where he will meet with NATO ambassadors. The Bush administration would like NATO members to join in Mr. Bush's coalition of nations that are able and willing to confront Iraq.
It also wants NATO to reaffirm its intention to support Turkey, which is a member of the military alliance, in the event of a war with Iraq. Article V of the NATO Charter stipulates that an attack on one member is to be considered an attack on all. Washington would like this provision to be invoked if there is a war with Iraq.
Mr. Wolfowitz will also visit London, which is the staunchest of the American allies on Iraq. The British are expected to contribute military forces for an invasion of Iraq.
But Turkey is the critical stop. The Bush administration has carried out extensive consultations with Turkey about a potential confrontation with Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Ankara in the spring, but the election victory by the Justice and Development Party, whose leadership has strong Islamic views, has made it necessary for the Bush administration to start from scratch. (Before its victory, the party indicated that it would leave any decision on Iraq to Turkey's military.)
Bush administration officials are using several arguments to try to persuade the Turks to support and participate in an offensive. First, they argue that the war will be over more quickly and as a result, there will be less economic disruption if Turkey joins in the attack. Many neighboring states are willing to support an offensive if it is relatively brief and decisive and if civilian casualties are low. What they fear is a long, drawn-out conflict.
Washington is also arguing that the threat of military force will encourage Mr. Hussein to comply with the demands of United Nations weapons inspectors, though some senior Bush administration officials privately believe that Iraqi compliance is highly unlikely.
Washington is offering tangible benefits to Turkey. The Bush administration has indicated that it is prepared to give Turkey economic aid to compensate it for any losses it might sustain as a result of a Iraq war. Just how much is a matter of negotiation.
More generally, Washington argues that Turkey is likely to benefit economically if a new government is installed in Iraq and trade with Iraq expanded. Washington has also been backing Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.
The European Union is holding a meeting in Copenhagen on Dec. 12 to discuss Turkey's potential membership. Mr. Bush recently called Denmark's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to support Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. The Bush administration has also made it clear that it will not support a separate Kurdish state in northern Iraq, a concern for Turkey, which has its own restive Kurdish minority.
A senior administration official said he thought Washington would be able to satisfy Turkey's concerns. Still, the Turkish leadership has been contending with an array of issues, including its bid to join the European Union and a plan that Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations has proposed to resolve the dispute over Cyprus, which Turkey has partly occupied since 1974.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the United States carried out airstrikes from air bases in Turkey. Search-and-rescue teams were also based there.
Since the end of the war, American and British warplanes have used air bases in Turkey to patrol the no-flight zone in northern Iraq.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Forces Begin Evictions of Chechens From Refugee Camp
November 28, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/international/europe/28RUSS.html
MOSCOW, Nov. 27 - Russian forces have begun to eject at least 1,000 Chechen refugees from a tent city in southwestern Russia, human rights observers said today. The evictions raised concerns that tens of thousands of homeless civilians who have fled the conflict in Chechnya might soon be forced to return to what remains a war zone.
The observers said troops had sealed off a camp near Aki-Yurt in the Russian republic of Ingushetia and had begun evicting its residents on Tuesday. The Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship, an Russian activist group, said that troops had begun cutting up tents and that the government had set a deadline of Dec. 21 for moving the refugees.
Officials in Ingushetia later denied issuing such an order, the society stated, but human rights observers who tried to approach Aki-Yurt today were turned away by Russian forces and intelligence officers.
In contrast to sprawling tent cities near the capital of Ingushetia, Nazran, the Aki-Yurt camp is both isolated and close to Chechnya, making the task of returning refugees to their homeland easier.
"It was clear that they were getting ready to do this in a way that was far from public view," Rachel Denber, a deputy director of European and Central Asian affairs for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview tonight.
She cast the evictions as a dry run for a more sweeping effort to clear refugees from Ingushetia, where as many as 150,000 civilians are reported to have taken refuge since the war in Chechnya broke out in 1999. Fewer than 30,000 are in internationally financed and managed camps. The rest have moved into the homes of relatives and friends or live in barns and abandoned structures.
Some reports stated today that Russia intended to close all refugee camps by late December, but Ms. Denber said she doubted that large-scale evictions would occur that quickly. "They have nowhere to put these people," she said.
Russia has long charged that the refugee camps in Ingushetia are a hiding place for guerrillas and their sympathizers, and Ingushetia's regional government has complained that it is being overwhelmed by the demands of caring for hordes of unwanted squatters. Much of the aid to refugees comes from international groups, not the Russian government.
Today, international officials protested the dismantling of Aki-Yurt as a potential violation of global human rights standards. The European Union's aid officials said the forced return of the refugees "would be against international humanitarian law as well as conventions that the Russian Federation is party to." The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, said the refugees did not want to return because of "insecurity and the lack of shelter, basic services and economic opportunities."
Russian officials dismissed those concerns earlier this week, insisting that no refugees would be forced to return to Chechnya against their will, and that shelter would be made available in Ingushetia for those who refused to go back. Ingushetia's deputy prime minister said on Monday that the republic had received requests from 10,000 refugees to leave the camps. Russia says it has built housing in Chechnya to accommodate returning refugees and has found housing for those who want to remain in Ingushetia.
But Human Rights Watch charged today that refugees in Ingushetia had been given the choice of returning to Chechnya or moving into abandoned factories that lack even basic necessities for human habitation.
-------- un
U.S. position angers U.N. council
By Edith M. Lederer,
November 28, 2002
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021128-1774083.htm
NEW YORK - Angry Security Council members are predicting a showdown next week over the renewal of a U.N. humanitarian program that was torpedoed by a last-minute U.S. push to further restrict military-related imports to Iraq.
Several council diplomats blamed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for shattering a broad agreement reached last Friday by Security Council experts to expand the oil-for-food humanitarian program in Iraq for the usual six months.
On Monday, the United States suddenly insisted on a maximum three-month extension and a review of the U.N. list of military-related goods that Iraq requires approval to import. Much of the council objected because it would run out in late February or early March, a time many military analysts say is optimal for an attack on Iraq.
As a result, the oil-for-food program was extended for just nine days until Dec. 4 to allow more time to resolve the dispute.
"Frankly speaking at least 14 members were upset, because this is complicating the work of the council," Syria's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad said.
With U.N. weapons inspections resuming yesterday after nearly four years, diplomats said it is critical to preserve the hard-won unity that led to the council's unanimous adoption on Nov. 8 of a new resolution on Iraq's disarmament.
As Monday's tense council meeting was breaking up, council diplomats said Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov protested that Washington had given Moscow assurances that there would be no problems with the six-month extension of the humanitarian program if the council approved the new Resolution 1441.
"Ambassador Lavrov said that there were assurances for him before the adoption of 1441 that the American side would cooperate and be flexible on the oil-for-food program and its extension, and what's happening is the opposite," Mr. Mekdad said.
Several diplomats quoted Mr. Lavrov as saying Secretary of State Colin L. Powell gave the assurance to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov during intense negotiations on the resolution.
But Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said: "There absolutely has been no quid pro quo."
Western diplomats predicted the Americans are not going to get a three-month extension next week, but they may get some kind of a commitment on a review of the list. One said the State Department supported the six-month extension, but not the Pentagon.
"Hopefully the Americans will come on board for 180 days," Mr. Mekdad said.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the United States wants nerve gas antidotes, jamming equipment, and other communications items added to the list to ensure that it "is not exploited or utilized in any way by the government of Iraq to import items for military purpose under civilian guise."
The U.S.-drafted list includes everything from high-speed computers to heavy-duty trucks.
The oil-for-food program, funded by revenue from Iraqi oil sales, allows Baghdad to purchase food, medicine and other humanitarian goods while sanctions - imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait - remain in effect.
The list of items with potential military applications was established in May as part of an overhaul of the oil-for-food program. It was designed to speed delivery of humanitarian aid and counter growing criticism that sanctions have hurt ordinary Iraqis. Before Iraq can order items on the list, they must be individually approved by the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against Iraq.
-------- us
Bush apologizes for girls' deaths in Korea
From combined dispatches
November 28, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021128-36990580.htm
SEOUL - President Bush apologized to the South Korean people yesterday for a road accident in which a U.S. Army vehicle crushed two schoolgirls to death, prompting anti-American demonstrations.
The accident in June, and the court-martial acquittal of the vehicle's driver and navigator last week, sparked street protests and calls for the withdrawal of 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
The emotive court case concluded as South Korea and the United States were grappling with North Korea's newly revealed nuclear arms program, which requires a delicate balancing of interests between Seoul and Washington.
At a special news conference yesterday after days of protest, including the student firebombing of a U.S. Army base, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Hubbard offered Mr. Bush's apology.
"President Bush, who has visited Korea and has a special feeling for the Korean people, has been touched by this tragedy," Mr. Hubbard said. "Just this morning, the president sent me a message asking me to convey his apologies to the families of the girls, to the government of the Republic of Korea and to the people of Korea."
The accident, in which the two 13-year-olds were crushed by a mine-clearing vehicle while walking on a village road near the heavily fortified border with North Korea, have prompted apologies from several U.S. commanders as well as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
The two soldiers left South Korea yesterday, a U.S. military spokesman said.
Sgt. Mark Walker of the 2nd Infantry Division will move on to a new assignment, while Sgt. Fernando Nino is leaving the Army, deciding not to re-enlist, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan said.
In statements released yesterday, the two soldiers apologized to the families of the two girls, Shim Mi-son and Shin Hyo-sun. The U.S. government gave a total of $323,000 in compensation to the families of the victims.
South Korea's political parties welcomed Mr. Bush's apology, but called for the revision of a joint military accord to help ease anti-U.S. sentiments. But some people said Mr. Bush's apology was not enough to assuage anger in South Korea.
"Bush must apologize personally and publicly, not through his ambassador," 300 activists chanted at a rally yesterday near the main U.S. military base in central Seoul. "Let's bring the murderous U.S. soldiers to our court."
Col. Boylan said 14,000 soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division were told before the trials not to leave their bases after 10 p.m. because of fears of violence. Previously, they were allowed to stay out two or three hours longer.
-------- propaganda wars
What Bodies?
by Patrick J. Sloyan
November 2002
Digital Journalist
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0211/sloyan.html
Leon Daniel, as did others who reported from Vietnam during the 1960s, knew about war and death. So he was puzzled by the lack of corpses at the tip of the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq on Feb. 25, 1991. Clearly there had been plenty of killing. The 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) had smashed through the defensive front-line of Saddam Hussein's army the day before, Feb. 24, the opening of the Desert Storm ground war to retake Kuwait. Daniel, representing United Press International, was part of a press pool held back from witnessing the assault on 8,000 Iraqi defenders. "They wouldn't let us see anything," said Daniel, who had seen about everything as a combat correspondent.
A destroyed Iraqi tank rests near a series of oil well fires during the Gulf War on March 9, 1991 in northern Kuwait. Hundreds of fires burned out of control, casting a pall of toxic smoke over the Emirate and raising health and environmental concerns.
The artillery barrage alone was enough to cause a slaughter. A 30-minute bombardment by howitzers and multiple-launch rockets scattering thousands of tiny bomblets preceded the attack by 8,400 American soldiers riding in 3,000 M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, Humvees, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles.
It wasn't until late in the afternoon of Feb. 25 that the press pool was permitted to see where the attack occurred. There were groups of Iraqi prisoners. About 2,000 had surrendered. But there were no bodies, no stench of feces that hovers on a battlefield, no blood stains, no bits of human beings. "You get a little firefight in Vietnam and the bodies would be stacked up like cordwood," Daniel said. Finally, Daniel found the Division public affairs officer, an Army major.
"Where the hell are all the bodies?" Daniel said.
"What bodies?" the officer replied.
Daniel and the rest of the world would not find out until months later why the dead had vanished. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams main battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plow spoil funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came M2 Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.
"I came through right after the lead company," said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech's assault. "What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people's arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands."
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf is shown at ease with his tank troops at Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, January 12, 1991.
A thinner line of trenches on Moreno's left flank was attacked by the 1st Brigade commanded by Col. Lon Maggart. He estimated his troops buried about 650 Iraqi soldiers. Darkness halted the attack on the Iraqi trench line. By the next day, the 3rd Brigade joined in the grisly innovation. "A lot of people were killed,"' said Col. David Weisman, the unit commander.
One reason there was no trace of what happened in the Neutral Zone on those two days were the ACEs. It stands for Armored Combat Earth movers and they came behind the armored burial brigade leveling the ground and smoothing away projecting Iraqi arms, legs and equipment.
PFC Joe Queen of the 1st Engineers was impervious to small arms fire inside the cockpit of the massive earth mover. He remained cool and professional as he smoothed away all signs of the carnage. Queen won the Bronze Star for his efforts. "A lot of guys were scared," Queen said, "but I enjoyed it." Col. Moreno estimated more than 70 miles of trenches and earthen bunkers were attacked, filled in and smoothed over on Feb. 24-25.
What happened at the Neutral Zone that day has become a metaphor for the conduct of modern warfare. While political leaders bask in voter approval for destroying designated enemies, they are increasingly determined to mask the reality of warfare that causes voters to recoil. There was no more sophisticated practitioner of this art of bloodless warfare than President George H. W. Bush. As a Navy pilot during World War II, Bush knew the ugly side of war. He once recounted how a sailor wandered into an aircraft propeller on their carrier in the South Pacific. The chief petty officer in charge of the flight deck called for brooms to sweep the man's guts overboard. "I can still hear him," Bush said of the chief's orders. "I have seen the hideous face of war."
Bush was badly stung by the reality of warfare while president. After the 1989 American invasion of Panama - where reporters were also blocked from witnessing a short-lived slaughter in Panama City - Bush held a White House news conference to boast about the dramatic assault on the Central American leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega. Bush was chipper and wisecracking with reporters when two major networks shifted coverage to the arrival ceremony for American soldiers killed in Panama at the Air Force Base in Dover, Del. Millions of viewers watched as the network television screens were split: Bush bantering with the press while flag-draped coffers were carried off Air Force planes by honor guards. Dover was the military mortuary for troops killed while serving abroad. On Bush's orders, the Pentagon banned future news coverage of honor guard ceremonies for the dead. The ban was continued by President Bill Clinton.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bush summoned battlefield commanders to Camp David, Md., for a council of war. Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, chief of Central Command with military responsibility for the Persian Gulf region, flew from Tampa, Fla. He and Central Command's air boss, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Horner, were flown from Andrews Air Force Base, Md., by helicopter to the retreat in the Catoctin Mountains near Thurmont, Md. Horner said golf carts took them to the president's cabin. Bush was wearing a windbreaker.
"The president was very concerned about casualties," Horner recalled. "Not just our casualties but Iraqi casualties. He was very emphatic. He wanted casualties minimized on both sides. He went around the room and asked each military commander if his orders were understood. We all said we would do our best."
According to Horner, he took a number of steps to limit the use of anti-personnel bombs used during more than 30 days of air attacks on Iraqi army positions. Schwarzkopf's psychological warfare experts littered Iraqi troops with leaflets that warned of imminent attacks by B52 Strategic Bombers. Arabic warnings told troops to avoid sleeping in tanks or near artillery positions which were prime targets for 400 sorties by allied aircraft attacking day and night.
"We could have killed many more with cluster munitions," Horner said of bomblets that create lethal minefields around troop emplacements once they are dropped by aircraft.
But Bush's Camp David orders were also translated into minimizing the perception - if not the reality - of Desert Storm casualties. The president's point man for controlling these perceptions was Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense. And, to Cheney, that meant controlling the press which he saw as a collective voice that portrayed the Pentagon as a can't do agency that wasted too much money and routinely failed in its mission. "I did not look on the press as an asset," Cheney said in an interview after Desert Storm. He was interviewed by authors of a Freedom Forum book, "America's Team - The Odd Couple," which explored the relationship between the media and the Defense Department. To Cheney, containing the military was his way of protecting the Pentagon's credibility. "Frankly, I looked on it as a problem to be managed," Cheney said of the media.
This management had two key ingredients: control the flow of information through high level briefings while impeding reporters such as Leon Daniel. According to Cheney, he and Army Gen. Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, orchestrated the briefings because "the information function was extraordinarily important. I did not have a lot of confidence that I could leave that to the press." The relentless appetite of broadcasting networks made Pentagon control a simple matter. Virtually every U.S. weapon system is monitored by television cameras either on board warplanes and helicopters or hand-held by military cameramen or individual soldiers. This "gun camera" footage may be released or withheld depending on the decisions of political bosses of the military. So when the air war began in January 1991, the media was fed carefully selected footage by Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia and Powell in Washington, DC. Most of it was downright misleading.
Briefings by Schwarzkopf and other military officers mostly featured laser guided or television guided missiles and bombs. But of all the tons of high explosives dropped during more than a month of night and day air attacks, only six per cent were smart bombs. The vast majority were controlled by gravity, usually dropped from above 15,000 feet - 35,000 feet for U.S. heavy bombers - where winds can dramatically affect accuracy. And there never was any footage of B-52 bomber strikes that carpeted Iraqi troop positions. Films of Tomahawk cruise missiles being launched by U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf were almost daily fare from the military. Years later, the Navy would concede these subsonic jets with 2,000 pound warheads had limited success. These missiles are guided by on-board computers that match pre-recorded terrain maps, shifting left or right as landmarks are spotted. But the faceless desert offered few waypoints and most Tomahawks wandered off, just as the French Legion's lost platoon did in the Sahara. The only reliable landmark turned out to be the Tigris River and Tomahawks were programmed to use it as a road to Baghdad and other targets. But Iraqi antiaircraft gunners quickly blanketed the riverside. The slow moving Tomahawks were easy targets. Pentagon claims of 98 per cent success for Tomahawks during the war later dwindled to less than 10 per cent effectiveness by the Navy in 1999.
Just as distorted were Schwarzkopf's claims of destruction of Iraqi Scud missiles. After the war, studies by Army and Pentagon think tanks could not identify a single successful interception of a Scud warhead by the U.S. Army's Patriot antimissile system. U.S. Air Force attacks on Scud launch sites were portrayed as successful by Schwarzkopf. The Air Force had filled the night sky with F-15E bombers with radars and infrared systems that could turn night into day. Targets were attacked with laser guided warheads. In one briefing in Riyadh, Schwarzkopf showed F15E footage of what he said was a Scud missile launcher being destroyed. Later, it turned out that the suspected Scud system was in fact an oil truck. A year after Desert Storm, the official Air Force study concluded that not a single Scud launcher was destroyed during the war. The study said Iraq ended the conflict with as many Scud launchers as it had when the conflict began.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Colin Powell, with President Bush at his side, addresses reporters May 23, 1991 in the White House Rose Garden after the President announced that he was reappointing Powell to a second term. Bush praised Powell for his advice and leadership in the war against Iraq and the invasion of Panama.
In manipulating the first and often most lasting perception of Desert Storm, the Bush administration produced not a single picture or video of anyone being killed. This sanitized, bloodless presentation by military briefers left the world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death. That image was reinforced by limitations imposed on reporters on the battlefield. Under rules developed by Cheney and Powell, journalists were not allowed to move without military escorts. All interviews had to be monitored by military public affairs escorts. Every line of copy, every still photograph, every strip of film had to be approved - censored - before being filed. And these rules were ruthlessly enforced.
When a Scud missile eventually hit American troops during the ground war, reporters raced to the scene. The 1,000 pound warhead landed on a makeshift barracks for Pennsylvania national guard troops near the Saudi seaport of Dahran. Scott Applewhite, a photographer for the Associated Press, was one of the first on the scene. There were more than 25 dead bodies and 70 badly wounded. As Applewhite photographed the carnage, he was approached by U.S. Military Police who ordered him to leave. He produced credentials that entitled him to be there. But the soldiers punched Applewhite, handcuffed him and ripped the film from his cameras. More than 70 reporters were arrested, detained, threatened at gunpoint and literally chased from the frontlines when they attempted to defy Pentagon rules. Army public affairs officers made nightly visits to hotels and restaurants in Hafir al Batin, a Saudi town on the Iraq border. Reporters and photographers usually bolted from the dinner table. Slower ones were arrested.
Journalists such as Applewhite, who played by the rules, fared no better. More than 150 reporters who participated in the Pentagon pool system failed to produce a single eyewitness account of the clash between 300,000 allied troops and an estimated 300,000 Iraqi troops. There was not one photograph, not a strip of film by pool members of a dead body - American or Iraqi. Even if they had recorded the reality of the battlefield, it was unlikely it would have been filed by the military-controlled distribution system. As the ground war began, Cheney declared a press blackout, effectively blocking distribution of battlefield press reports. While Cheney's action was challenged by Marlin Fitzwater, the White House press secretary, the ban remained in effect. Most news accounts were delayed for days, long enough to make them worthless to their editors.
Accounts of Iraqi troops escaping from Kuwait - the carnage on the Highway of Death - were recorded by journalists operating outside the pool system.
Schwarzkopf repeatedly brushed off questions about the Iraqi death toll when the ground war ended in early March. Not until 2000, during a television broadcast, would he estimate Iraq losses in the "tens of thousands." The only precise estimate came from Cheney. In a formal report to Congress, Cheney said U.S. soldiers found only 457 Iraqi bodies on the battlefield.
To Cheney, who helped Bush's approval rating soar off the charts during Desert Storm, the press coverage had been flawless. "The best-covered war ever," Cheney said. "The American people saw up close with their own eyes through the magic of television what the U.S. military was capable of doing."
2002 Patrick J. Sloyan Contributing Editor ppsloyan@starpower.net
Patrick J. Sloyan won the Pulitzer prize for his coverage of Desert Storm while Senior Correspondent for Newsday. He wrote this article while a Fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Sloyan currently in writing a book on the seeds of the Vietnam War.
Article Reprinted From the Alicia Patterson Foundation
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI looks at closing some field branches
11/28/2002
By Kevin Johnson,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-11-28-fbi-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The FBI is considering a dramatic redeployment of agents across the nation that could involve closing or consolidating some of the bureau's 56 field offices as a way to put hundreds more agents on anti-terrorism duties, senior FBI officials say.
FBI officials have concluded that the 520 agents shifted to anti-terror duties in May - mostly from anti-drug assignments - are not nearly enough to support counterterrorism efforts that have become the bureau's top priority since the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 2,500 of the FBI's 11,500 agents now are assigned to anti-terror duties.
A source familiar with an ongoing review of FBI staffing says that bureau executives have discussed shifting "several hundred" more agents to counterintelligence and anti-terrorism operations in places that have drawn the most interest in terrorism probes. FBI officials would not identify those locations, but agents seeking to uncover potential terrorist threats have been particularly active in Detroit, Seattle, Atlanta, Florida, Southern California and suburbs of New York City.
Changing the FBI's field office structure would be one of the most significant and politically provocative moves by the bureau since it began shifting its emphasis from traditional criminal probes to preventing domestic terrorism. The field office structure - which includes 56 U.S. offices, more than 400 smaller satellite branches and 40 more field offices abroad - was established by former bureau director J. Edgar Hoover and has been the backbone of the crime-fighting FBI.
Revising the field offices could further distance the FBI from its longtime role of assisting local and regional authorities in criminal probes. FBI officials say investigations into matters such as drug trafficking will not suffer, but some local officials who fear that a greater burden will fall on them are skeptical.
FBI officials familiar with the internal discussions on redeploying agents say any realignment likely would focus on the satellite offices, also known as "resident agencies." The satellite offices, which are attached to larger field offices, range in size from one-agent operations in rural Indian country to outposts with nearly 50 agents in sprawling areas such as the Los Angeles suburbs.
Any decision to close or consolidate even the smallest FBI offices could be difficult. Some field office operations represent the only federal presence in small communities and are closely guarded political assets. Changing the field office structure requires approval by the FBI director and Congress, where resistance would be strong.
Senior FBI executives have been examining staffing levels and assignments within the 56 U.S. field offices and the 40 posts abroad. FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed the "allocation of resources" this month in an internal memo to FBI employees in which he emphasized the bureau's commitment to guarding the nation against additional terrorist attacks.
"Prioritizing our responsibilities is not a judgment of what is most important," Mueller said in the Nov. 15 memo, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY. "It is, rather, a statement of what is most urgent at this time in our history."
FBI spokesman Mike Kortan would not comment on any specific redeployment plans, but he said such an effort would be done to boost programs to fight terrorism.
-------- courts
Judge Again Bars Effort to Keep Cheney Files Secret
November 28, 2002
New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/politics/28CHEN.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - A federal judge today again rejected Bush administration efforts to protect as confidential documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy committee.
The 36-page ruling is the latest step in a lengthy procedural dispute between the White House and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.
Nothing of substance was resolved in the ruling. The White House has ignored Judge Sullivan's rulings, going over his head by asking a higher court to exempt Mr. Cheney from having to comply with the judge's orders over the last five months to turn over the documents.
The judge set Dec. 12 as the next time for the administration to meet back in court with the two groups, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, that brought the case. The earlier order compelling the White House to release the documents by Dec. 9 remains in effect. The case is also in two other forums, and either could see action before Dec. 9.
First, the administration has gone directly to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to appeal Judge Sullivan's earlier orders that require it to produce nonprivileged documents or explain in detail why it does not want to.
Second, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is suing Mr. Cheney, arguing that the White House has to disclose whom Mr. Cheney met as he formulated energy policy and what they discussed.
The Sierra Club suit says the administration violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by refusing to tell the public how it developed that policy. Environmental groups say energy companies that were big contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 wielded undue influence in formulating the policy.
The administration says that it has made public 36,000 pages of documents and that releasing additional files would jeopardize the ability of advisers to speak candidly with the president and vice president.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Monica Goodling, said: "What is at issue at this point is a limited number of additional documents from the president's closest advisers, the disclosure of which would raise serious constitutional concerns.
"We believe that the president's constitutional authority to gather candid advice from his advisers is so important that we are appealing this issue through the court of appeals and an application to the D.C. Circuit."
A lawyer for the Sierra Club, Sanjay Narayan, said the administration had not produced any of the documents that his gr