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NUCLEAR
Britain Planned to Threaten Nazis with Nuclear Bomb
Pakistan - India Border Ends Tense Year
U.N. Visits Once - Restricted Iraqi Site
U.N. Agency Demands North Korea End Atomic Program
MILITARY
U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Fall Ill
Germany Muffs Israeli Tank Sale: Is Fax Blurry?
Colombian Rightists Declare Cease-Fire as Prelude to Talks
Turkey Ends Emergency Rule in Kurdish Southeast
Anti-U.S. Parties Take Power in Strategic Pakistan Province
Administration Begins to Rewrite Decades-Old Spying Restrictions
Troops Lack Protective Gear, Say Lawmakers
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Medical Marijuana's Effect on Crime Discounted
Study: Most Medical Pot Users Older Men
Terror Attacks on 'Soft' Targets Complicate Security
U.S. Wary After Kenya Missile Attack
ENERGY AND OTHER
Nothing 'Cornball' About It
War-Wary Saudis Move to Increase Oil Market Clout
Senator Slams Environmental Rule Changes
ACTIVISTS
BUSES FROM 35 STATES SET TO TRAVEL TO DC & SF JAN. 18
Surveying the Damage on Campus USA
China Facing Protests Over the Plight of North Korean Refugees
Vatican Removes Protesting Priest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Britain Planned to Threaten Nazis with Nuclear Bomb
November 30, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-britain-berlin.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain had plans to threaten Germany with a nuclear bomb during World War II to prevent Hitler launching V2 rockets at London, newly released files showed Sunday.
The threat was mooted in the summer of 1944, two years after the development of nuclear bombs had begun but a year before any had been tested.
The intention to bluff the Nazis out of using the supersonic V2 rocket failed. In the last seven months of the war, over 3,000 V2s were launched, killing some 2,700 people in Britain.
The nuclear idea was put forward by Guy Liddell, head of MI5's counter-espionage branch during the war, whose diaries have been released by the Public Records Office and carried by newspapers Sunday.
It came in an entry in which Liddell recorded a conversation with Sir Stewart Menzies, then head of MI6.
``I saw (Menzies) today about the uranium bomb and put to him the suggestion that it should be used as a threat of retaliation to the Germans if they used the V2,'' Liddell wrote in August 1944.
``He felt...that there was nothing to be lost and said he would put the suggestion to the Prime Minister...''
Prime Minister Winston Churchill was due to visit U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt the following month, although there was no evidence that the idea was discussed.
Less than two weeks after Liddell's diary entry, Hitler began launching the V2 against Britain.
In the event, atomic weapons were not used in World War II until August 1945, at Hiroshima when 200,000 Japanese were killed.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan - India Border Ends Tense Year
November 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Border-Hopes.html
BHANO CHAK, Pakistan (AP) -- The train station lies empty. The fields are planted with mines and the farmers of this dusty hamlet sit idle -- a stone's throw from the world's longest militarized border.
Since tension between India and Pakistan increased and the frontier was sealed a year ago, tens of thousands of villagers on both sides have been cut off from friends and family across the border. Frontier commerce has died. Now, many are hoping Pakistan's new civilian government will help end the stalemate.
``We are waiting for a reconciliation so we can restart our lives,'' said Qamar Uddin, a 65-year-old farmer.
Uddin's fields were seized by the army and laid with mines in January, when both countries rushed hundreds of thousands of troops to the border.
``Maybe this government will be able to do what the last one couldn't. We just want to live as we did,'' he said.
An elected civilian government headed by Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali was sworn in last week, taking over day-to-day running of the country from military ruler President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, brought with him a reputation as a hawk, and villagers said they thought it was one reason India has refused to negotiate with him.
The two nuclear armed countries have fought three wars since independence, two of them over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
They nearly came to battle again after a Dec. 13, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic groups and Islamabad's spy agency.
The South Asian neighbors have since pledged to withdraw troops and de-mine the 1,800-mile frontier. Just this week, Pakistan announced that soldiers were going home in areas where the threat has receded, and the new foreign minister has called for better ties.
But the pullback has been slow in coming.
It certainly hasn't hit Bhano Chak, an adobe village of 1,000 people less than half mile from the Wagah crossing, where India and Pakistan have conducted a highly ritualized border closing ceremony for decades.
Troops on each side try to outscream, outbugle and outparade each other daily as crowds of thousands chant nationalistic slogans.
The ceremony is filled with chest-puffing and bluster, but the troops say they used to be on friendly terms with each other -- exchanging pleasantries and sometimes sitting and sharing tea in the no man's land between the two countries.
Since December 2001, they say, it's been strictly business.
``They are our enemy,'' said Insp. Rizwan Mehmood, who commands the Pakistani Ranger unit responsible for the border ceremony. ``When we speak now, it's only because we have to for official reasons.''
Whiling away a recent workless day on a cart a few hundred yards from the border, a group of villagers all said peace was not possible until the Kashmir issue was resolved. They said the main fault lies with India, which has refused to negotiate the territory's fate.
Many echoed Pakistan's main demand -- that a referendum be held in the province to see whether Kashmiris would prefer Indian or Pakistani rule, or outright independence.
In the meantime, the conflict continues to take a terrible toll on life here.
Uddin and other farmers in Bhano Chak say they haven't been able to plant anything this year and fear they may be arrested because they have not repaid loans they've taken out with the government-run Agricultural Development Bank.
``They know well that we can't repay our debts because of the mines, but they come and demand the money anyway,'' said farmer Mauj Khan, 60, who says he owes the bank about $500. ``I am very afraid they will arrest me, sure. It could happen at any time, but what can I do?''
Khan, who used to plant wheat, rice and vegetables on his eight acre plot, said the army came in January, ordered the village evacuated and said his farm was no longer a ``free area.''
The conflict also has caused Khan personal heartache: For the past year, he has not been allowed to visit his daughter and sister who live on the other side of the border.
Before December 2001, India and Pakistan had been experimenting with increased openness. A bus service inaugurated in 1999 ferried people back and forth across the frontier and a train -- the Samjhauta Express -- made a daily trip, packed with about 1,000 people. Another train, filled with goods, also came across, rolling into Bhano Chak.
Today, the chairs at the train station have all been put away. There hasn't been a train in nearly a year, but yardmaster Noor Mohammed says he still comes in every day for his 12-hour shift, usually to sit and chat with friends.
``I truly hope the train service restarts because it would benefit both countries,'' he said. ``It would be good for me too. I am sick of doing nothing.''
-------- inspections
U.N. Visits Once - Restricted Iraqi Site
November 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Inspectors.html
BALAD, Iraq (AP) -- International weapons hunters crossed a threshold Saturday, paying their first visit under the new inspection program to a military post once declared ``sensitive'' and restricted by the Iraqi government.
On the third day of the renewed inspections, U.N. monitors arrived unannounced but received unrestricted access to the Chemical Corps base, as mandated by the U.N. Security Council when it sent them back to Iraq with greater powers to inspect anyplace, anytime.
Another team, meanwhile, inspected a complex that once was the heart of Iraq's aborted effort to build nuclear bombs.
In both cases, as expected, the U.N. teams did not disclose their findings, holding them for later reports. But their spokesman indicated afterward they were satisfied with Iraqi cooperation. ``They were able to conduct inspections as they planned,'' Hiro Ueki said.
``They found nothing,'' said the commander of the Balad military post north of Baghdad.
The inspections resumed Wednesday under a new Security Council resolution giving Iraq a ``final opportunity'' to shut down any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs, or face ``serious consequences.''
Inspections in the 1990s, after the Gulf War, led to destruction of many tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, and equipment to produce them. U.N. teams also dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program before it could produce a bomb. But that inspection regime collapsed in 1998 amid disputes over access to sites and infiltration of the U.N. operation by U.S. spies.
Those inspectors believed they never found all the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical arms. The United States now threatens war to disarm the Baghdad government if the new inspections do not.
In their first field missions, the U.N. teams mostly revisited sites with well-known involvement in Iraq's past weapons programs -- places where equipment had been disabled or chemical or biological weapons material destroyed after U.N. inspections in the 1990s.
The fact that these installations would receive unannounced visits was no surprise to their managers, but the timing was believed to be. In the case of the Balad military installation, however, the inspection appeared to be largely unexpected. The convoy of four U.N. vehicles, trailed by pursuing journalists' cars and a cloud of dust, rolled up a country road to the back gate, sending soldiers scrambling. Iraqi officers, who accompany the U.N. missions to their undisclosed destinations, shouted orders for the area to be ``frozen'' -- under U.N. procedures for sealing off inspection sites.
The 10 or so inspectors then spent almost five hours crisscrossing the small installation, paying close attention to what appeared to be crates of ordnance in open sheds, possibly large artillery shells, bombs or rockets. From beyond the barbed-wired fence, waiting reporters could hear the sound of a hammer and chisel prying open crates.
At times, inspectors wielded hand-held detectors of some kind. They also repeatedly consulted clipboards, apparently for checklists of the known contents of the base, home to an Iraqi battalion specializing in preparing the military to defend against chemical, biological or nuclear attack.
In the 1990s, Iraq declared some facilities to be ``sensitive sites.'' Under informal agreements with U.N. officials, advance notice was given of inspections at such sites and the number of inspectors was limited. Balad was one such site, Ueki said Saturday, but he didn't know the circumstances of its prior inspection, sometime before 1998.
The new U.N. resolution overrides all such agreements and demands ``immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access'' to all sites for the new inspection teams.
After the inspectors left, the base commander, an Iraqi colonel who wouldn't give his name, said the U.N. experts had searched for chemical or biological weapons. ``The inspection team arrived suddenly, searched, but they found nothing,'' he said.
Another team of nuclear specialists, meanwhile, inspected two sites south of Baghdad, including Milad, formerly known as al-Furat, where Iraqi scientists and engineers in 1989-90 made progress in testing gas centrifuges, sophisticated technology that can ``enrich'' uranium for use in nuclear bombs.
Recent satellite reconnaissance found that a building planned for the centrifuges has been completed since the inspectors left in 1998. Asked whether Saturday's inspection had covered that building, U.N. spokesman Ueki declined to answer. The nuclear team leader, Jacques Baute, has said previously, however, that it was highly unlikely the Iraqis had managed to resurrect a ``full-blown'' centrifuge program since 1998.
If the inspectors eventually certify that the Iraqis have cooperated fully with their disarmament efforts, U.N. resolutions call for the Security Council to consider lifting economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. If Iraq fails to cooperate, the council may consider military action against the Baghdad government.
-------- korea
NUCLEAR FEARS
U.N. Agency Demands North Korea End Atomic Program
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/asia/30NKOR.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 29 - The International Atomic Energy Agency called on North Korea today to abandon any nuclear weapons program it had and to accept international inspections.
The demand by the agency, the nuclear-monitoring arm of the United Nations, was issued in a resolution of its full 35-member board. It was the board's first meeting since North Korea admitted to an American envoy in October that it was conducting a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Since then, North Korea has defied requests from the agency and from other groups and governments for more information.
Instead, North Korea declared last month that "to safeguard our sovereignty and right to exist," it regarded itself entitled to have "powerful military countermeasures, including nuclear weapons."
Although the agency has issued previous calls for North Korea to accept its inspections, the resolution today was apparently the first time it has explicitly demanded that North Korea scrap its entire nuclear weapons program. But the agency has no enforcement powers beyond reporting violations to the Security Council, and the resolution set no deadline.
The statement declared that North Korea's claim that it was entitled to nuclear weapons violated its agreements under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and it urged North Korea "to give up any nuclear weapons program, expeditiously and in a verifiable manner."
At a news conference in Vienna, the Atomic Energy Agency's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the agency wanted North Korea to "accept without delay" the dispatch of a senior team of inspectors to North Korea. He said the resolution of the board of directors was a "clear message from the international community that North Korea has to honor its international obligations."
North Korea pursued an aggressive nuclear weapons program in the 1980's and 1990's, which led to a major confrontation with the Clinton administration. Tensions were defused through an "agreed framework" negotiated in 1994, under which North Korea agreed to halt the program in exchange for the supply of fuel oil and nuclear generators of a kind less prone to nuclear proliferation from the United States, Japan and South Korea. That agreement has now been suspended.
Early in October, confronted by American intelligence evidence indicating that a secret project was under way, North Korea abruptly acknowledged the program. Why the North Koreans made the admission remains unclear, but one line of speculation is that they hope to use the nuclear capability as a bargaining lever, as they did in 1994.
Although President Bush has included North Korea in an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran, his administration has made no concrete steps so far to compel North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program.
The United Nations nuclear agency's inspections inside North Korea have been restricted by the country since 1993, when inspectors reported evidence of noncompliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
North Korea withdrew from the agency, which is charged with policing the treaty, although the country remains bound by the treaty. Since then, the agency has been limited to monitoring North Korea's graphite-moderated reactor as part of the 1994 agreed framework.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Fall Ill
November 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Soldiers-Ill.html
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- Turkey stuffing from a Thanksgiving meal may have caused more than 100 soldiers to fall ill with food poisoning at a U.S. base in Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Saturday.
Seventy-nine U.S. soldiers, 25 Romanians and some soldiers from other countries suffered nausea, diarrhea and vomiting beginning Thursday night at the base near the southeastern city of Kandahar, said Master Sgt. Kelly Tyler, a spokeswoman at Bagram Air Base, the headquarters of the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan.
The source of the illness was under investigation, though one medical official at Bagram said turkey stuffing from the Thanksgiving Day holiday meal was suspected. No soldiers were hospitalized, and most were ill for no more than 24 hours.
``There is no reason to suspect any malicious intent,'' Tyler said.
Sanitation officials were inspecting the kitchen facilities where the meal was prepared.
At Kandahar, where about 4,000 U.S. and coalition troops are based, American and Romanian military cooks prepare the meals. About 400 Romanian troops are based at Kandahar. At Bagram, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan, private contractors cook the food.
-------- arms sales
Germany Muffs Israeli Tank Sale: Is Fax Blurry?
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/europe/30TANK.html
FRANKFURT, Nov. 29 - In an embarrassing mixup that speaks less to the fog of war than to the fog of fax machines, Germany may rescind its offer of armored vehicles to Israel on the ground that officials misread a faxed request from the Israelis specifying the model they sought.
On Wednesday, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced that Germany would agree to Israel's request for Fuchs tanks, which are equipped to detect chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.
Mr. Schröder noted that the tanks are primarily defensive vehicles that could help protect the Israeli people from attacks from such weapons of mass destruction.
The trouble is, Israel actually asked for the standard version of the Fuchs tank, not the enhanced version with weapon-sniffing electronics. The basic Fuchs is an armored personnel carrier, capable of carrying 10 soldiers, which military analysts say is ideal for the kind of urban military incursions that Israel has been carrying out in the West Bank.
Politicians said selling this version of the tank to Israel would almost certainly violate a national law prohibiting the sale of weapons to countries involved in conflicts.
"It would be very difficult to approve this because I think everybody will have this picture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in their heads," said Gernot Erler, an expert on foreign affairs and defense, who represents Mr. Schröder's Social Democratic Party in Parliament.
Officials at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin did not return a telephone call today seeking comment.
The confusion arose, officials said, because the letter containing the Israeli request was faxed and refaxed as it made its way up the chain of command: first from the German Embassy in Tel Aviv to the deputy chief of the German Army, then to the Defense Ministry in Berlin.
By the time it reached the office of Defense Minister Peter Struck, it was faded and difficult to read. A senior adviser to Mr. Struck, whose name has not been disclosed, scanned the letter, mistakenly assumed Israel was asking for tanks with detection equipment, and prepared a statement for Mr. Struck and Mr. Schröder granting the request.
"The chancellor thought he was talking about a different tank," said Michael Kötting, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry.
He said the ministry also made a faulty assumption because the special version of Fuchs has drawn a lot of attention since Germany sent six to Kuwait. The United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia have bought that version of the tank, which is made by the firm Rheinmetall.
Mr. Struck apologized for the misunderstanding. A spokesman for the chancellor said Mr. Schröder "was upset, no doubt about it."
Now, however, the government's misstep is drawing scorn, even from supporters. "It's very embarrassing," said Winfried Nachtwei of the Green Party. "These mistakes are not supposed to happen."
-------- colombia
Colombian Rightists Declare Cease-Fire as Prelude to Talks
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/americas/30COLO.html
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 29 - A rightist paramilitary force that is responsible for most of the deaths in Colombia's conflict declared today that it would call a unilateral cease-fire to begin Sunday as a first step toward peace talks with President Álvaro Uribe's government.
The force, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, said on its Web site that it had "taken the historic decision of declaring a unilateral cease-fire nationwide." The announcement came after Mr. Uribe, in comments to reporters on Monday, confirmed that his government had been holding secret meetings with paramilitary leaders to explore the prospects for peace.
"There is no deal," Mr. Uribe said. "There is simply the first manifestation of a willingness for peace. For it to start, there is a government demand that there be a pledge to not kill one more Colombian."
In a 12-point document signed by Carlos Castaño, leader of the Self-Defense Forces, and other top commanders, the organization said it would cease offensive operations against leftist rebels and their supporters. The statement said that because the government was "demonstrating its capacity and political will" against the rebels, the Self-Defense Forces were able to halt antiguerrilla operations.
Mr. Uribe, who won the presidency in May after promising to crack down on the leftist rebels, has been under pressure from foreign diplomats and rights groups to bring the rightist paramilitaries under control as well. Upon winning, he announced his willingness to talk with them, breaking with a long-held policy against negotiating with them.
Fernando Giraldo, a political analyst at Javeriana University in Bogotá, said that if a deal was reached with the paramilitaries, it would give the government the moral high ground in its dealings with the two rebel groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army. Each has broken off talks in the past, arguing that the government had not done enough to control the paramilitaries.
"If the government is able to achieve the demobilization of the Self-Defense Forces it gains the moral authority to demand the disarmament of the FARC and the E.L.N.," Mr. Giraldo said, referring to the rebels by their Spanish initials.
The Self-Defense Forces, a confederation of regional factions with as many as 12,000 armed fighters, has sought to erode support for the rebels by carrying out hundreds of killings annually. Though supported financially by ranchers and other wealthy Colombians, the organization draws most of its money from taxing coca farmers and drug dealers and, the United States says, trafficking in cocaine.
Today's developments come two months after the United States indicted three top paramilitary leaders, including Mr. Castaño, on drug-trafficking charges.
The indictments by a federal grand jury in Washington worsened friction within the organization, which has been splintering in recent months as commanders have weighed how heavily involved in the drug trade they should remain. The standoff is so serious that two factions in the group are openly fighting, the commanders of both sides said in recent interviews, and alliances between others are in tatters.
The Bush administration did not immediately comment on developments today, but American authorities have said they would seek the extradition of Mr. Castaño and other paramilitary leaders if they are ever captured. Mr. Castaño at one point offered to surrender to fight drug charges in the United States, but American authorities never took the offer seriously. He is still at large.
A Bush administration official said recently, "It was our goal to show that these guys were very much involved in drug trafficking, even though they say they're not, that drug trafficking is their lifeblood and we were going to go after them."
In its statement the Self-Defense Forces asked that the United Nations, the Roman Catholic Church and the Organization of American States participate in the talks, and appealed for a suspension of "legal actions" against the paramilitary leaders.
The talks with the government underscore the willingness of at least some leaders in the paramilitary organization to find a resolution to the conflict. Political analysts, noting that the paramilitaries have served as a proxy force for the military in fighting the rebels, said that this willingness could help any new peace talks proceed much faster than those of President Andrés Pastrana's government, which took place only with the rebels.
-------- mideast
Turkey Ends Emergency Rule in Kurdish Southeast
November 30, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-turkey-kurds-emergency.html
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey lifted a 15-year state of emergency in the southeast of the country Saturday, ending an era which saw security forces wield sweeping powers against Kurdish separatists in a conflict in which 30,000 died.
``A new, normal period is starting for the region,'' Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu told reporters in Diyarbakir.
Parliament decided in June to scrap emergency rule in the provinces of Sirnak and Diyarbakir from November 30 after lifting it in two other provinces earlier this year.
Turkey imposed emergency rule, giving authorities extraordinary powers to detain suspects and carry out investigations, in 1987, three years after the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launched a violent campaign for independence.
Human rights groups argued the special powers handed to police led to serious abuses.
More than 30,000 people, most of them Kurds, died in the fighting and thousands more fled to the major cities to escape violence which emptied hundreds of villages. Fighting subsided after 1999 when Turkey captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who ordered the rebels to withdraw from Turkey and campaign for greater cultural rights by political rather than military means.
People in Diyarbakir welcomed the end of emergency rule, saying they hoped it would bring peace and help the economy. About 1,000 gathered in the city center Saturday to sing and dance in celebration.
``Emergency rule in the region has ended but our wish is that its practices not continue as well,'' said Halis Gural, 35, a tradesman. ``Emergency rule should be abolished in minds too.''
Turkey's new Justice and Development Partygovernment, which swept to a landslide victory in November 3 elections, has vowed ``zero tolerance'' on torture and pledged a range of human rights reforms to meet European Union standards for membership.
Ankara wants the EU to set a date for the start of membership talks at a summit in Copenhagen on December 12, but the EU has said Turkey still has to implement past rights reforms and take further steps to guarantee freedom of speech, religion and assembly as well as wiping out torture.
The European Union has welcomed Ankara's decision to end emergency rule in the southeast.
A July report by the Council of Europe said police in Diyarbakir, capital of the mainly Kurdish region, lagged behind the rest of the country in improving human rights. Prisoners were often denied access to lawyers and torture had not been stamped out, it said. Kurds in rural areas of Sirnak province complained of intimidation by the military during this month's election and there was a heavy security presence at polling stations. For years residents have had to deal with regular roadblocks and other restrictions on movement.
``Emergency rule is over, I am happy like everyone else,'' said Halit Celik, 20, a student in Diyarbakir. ``I hope we don't go back to the old days again.''
-------- pakistan
Anti-U.S. Parties Take Power in Strategic Pakistan Province
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/asia/30STAN.html
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov. 29 - An alliance of anti-American Islamic parties took power in this province today, voting in a chief minister who immediately announced a ban on alcohol and gambling - and on music being played on public buses.
In his acceptance speech, Akram Durrani, 48, who will form a provincial government from the alliance of six religious parties, did not mention his campaign promise to throw out American military and intelligence agents from the province. Bordering Afghanistan, the North-West Frontier Province is strategically important in the campaign against Al Qaeda. F.B.I. agents are known to be active in the region, searching for Taliban and Qaeda fugitives.
But in an interview just after his election, Mr. Durrani said he hoped the United States would recognize the will of the people and withdraw its personnel. "The people do not look upon them with approval, and the mandate we won was a reaction to the American presence," he said, as legislators broke for Friday Prayer. "We expect the Americans to respect that verdict of the people."
He said his government could not order the Americans out, saying that was a matter for the federal government. But he said he hoped they would sit down with him and decide amicably to depart. He said his government would fight against terrorism and seek to improve law and order. "We do not want terrorism on our soil," he said.
Many of the members of the religious alliance, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Among the newly elected legislators was at least one man, Tajul Amin Jabul, 26, who said he had fought with the Taliban. There is concern in Islamabad and in Washington that the Islamic hard-liners in charge in the province might permit the Taliban and Qaeda supporters to regroup.
The religious alliance holds 68 seats in the 124-seat provincial assembly. It also won significantly in the assembly in Baluchistan, the other province that borders on Afghanistan.
Mr. Durrani said he did not think there were any Qaeda or Taliban fugitives in his province. He pointed out that the tribal areas, the lawless band of mountainous territory along the border with Afghanistan, does not come under his jurisdiction. Rather, it exists under a special system of self-rule that is administered by the federal government.
As chief minister, Mr. Durrani will take on the main executive powers in the province, which for the last three years have been held by a governor appointed by the military government of President Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Durrani will have power over the police and local services. His alliance has called for an end to co-educational schools, a ban on cable television and cinemas, and the imposition of Islamic law.
Supporters of President Musharraf, who won a majority in the federal Parliament, said the religious alliance would change the mood of the province but could not change the direction of the country. "They will try their level best, but will only manage partially, because we have a majority in the federal government," said Said Khan, a member of the pro-Musharraf party, the Pakistan Muslim League.
Mr. Durrani said he would work for a stable democratic system and stressed that the religious alliance should not be compared with the Taliban, which came to power by force. "We were elected to Parliament and believe in democracy," he said. "We believe in giving full rights to women and we have a full representation of women with us here."
One-third of the seats in the assembly have been reserved for women, and 23 women from different parties were present, including members from the religious alliance, who were all heavily veiled.
-------- spy agencies
Administration Begins to Rewrite Decades-Old Spying Restrictions
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/national/30INTE.html
This article was reported by David Johnston, James Risen, Neil A. Lewis and written by Mr. Johnston.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The Bush administration, in its fight against terrorism, is slowly chipping away at the wall that has existed for nearly three decades between domestic law enforcement and international intelligence gathering in an effort that senior officials said was vital to waging war against Al Qaeda and other terror networks.
The barrier between domestic and overseas intelligence gathering was erected when the Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947. It was significantly hardened in the 1970's in response to Congressional investigations that produced revelations of widespread abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence agency.
But since the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Bush administration has waged a different kind of war, mostly under the existing rules. Now, senior government officials have concluded that the changes made so far have not addressed the fundamental flaws of the old rules, leaving the United State still vulnerable to terrorists.
The changes are coming about in part because of Congressional criticism of the performances of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The two agencies will also be under the scrutiny of an independent commission created this week to examine their activities before the attacks.
The administration and Congress had already been reviewing ideas to overhaul intelligence and law enforcement that have been considered untouchable for a generation.
One is the creation of a domestic espionage agency; another is the use of the military in United States law enforcement. There is no agreement yet on new structures or whether the basic mandates and core operations of the central agencies will be changed.
The biggest change to date came on Monday when President Bush signed a law creating a Department of Homeland Security with its own intelligence unit. The unit is designed to start operations as a small, analytical office, but it has the potential to grow in significance, especially if the Homeland Security Department evolves into a powerful agency.
Another sign of change came earlier this month, when a federal appeals court issued a ruling that erased restrictions on the Justice Department's authority to spy on terrorism suspects in the United States.
More quietly, officials say the administration is in the midst of revising broad intelligence priorities laid out in a directive issued by President Bill Clinton, a document known as PDD 35. That process could eventually bring more changes.
For now, proposals to create a new domestic intelligence agency are on the back burner, senior government officials say. And Pentagon officials emphasize that they are not yet ready to abandon the longstanding legal doctrine barring the military's involvement in law enforcement activities in the United States.
But less radical changes that have already been made or are now under consideration by the administration, Congress and the judiciary seem very likely to blur the once bright lines separating intelligence gathering, law enforcement and the military.
"The old structure worked pretty well through the cold war," one senior government official said. "But with 9/11 there was a sense that this is a new game and there is a new threat and there must be a new approach."
Although there is broad agreement that change is inevitable, the possibility that the new rules could erode civil liberties has already prompted critics to complain that some suggestions, like a domestic security agency with sweeping powers to spy on people in the United States, could bring about the same abuses that the old rules were devised to eliminate.
The old restrictions placed the F.B.I. in charge of domestic intelligence and barred other agencies - including the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications overseas - from operating in the United States. The F.B.I.'s powers were restricted. It could not spy on political or religious groups without evidence that the group was involved in a crime. It could not monitor terror or espionage suspects without a warrant from a special court based on evidence that "primary purpose" of the surveillance was intelligence gathering, not criminal investigation.
The C.I.A. was authorized to operate only overseas under rules that were not as strict as the F.B.I. limits, but that still curtailed the agency's involvement in covert operations and banned outright the assassination of foreign leaders.
Tom Ridge, named by President Bush this week as the secretary of homeland security, has been outspoken in opposing an additional domestic intelligence agency. Mr. Ridge argued that the task should remain at the F.B.I. Like other administration officials, he contends constitutional barriers would prevent the creation of an American equivalent to Britain's domestic spy agency, known as MI5.
"I don't think you're going to see a similar organization developed in this country," Mr. Ridge said recently.
What administration officials have left unsaid is that Mr. Ridge's own new department could eventually take on a major new role in domestic intelligence. The law creating the department establishes an "intelligence sharing and infrastructure protection" division that will be responsible for gathering and acting on information from other agencies about terrorist threats on United States soil.
The idea, White House officials have said, is to create an agency that will function as a clearinghouse for all intelligence information on domestic terrorist threats. Administration officials have said the new intelligence unit will apparently be directed by John Gannon, a career professional from the C.I.A. who has worked for Mr. Ridge on intelligence matters at the White House.
The administration has insisted that homeland security will be primarily a "consumer" of information from the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency. But several agencies that collect intelligence on their own - the Secret Service, the Customs Service, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard - are all being thrown together inside the Department of Homeland Security. While there is no plan to do so now, those agencies could someday form the basis for a large homeland security intelligence collection unit.
The expanded role of the military in domestic security has reopened an old debate about the proper role of the armed forces. President Bush has ordered lawyers in the Defense and Justice Departments to review the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law enacted in Reconstruction to discourage the military from involvement in domestic law enforcement operations.
The review follows the decision last year not to assign regular military personnel to the job of providing airport security after the Sept. 11 attacks because administration lawyers believed it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. Instead, the soldiers stationed at airports came from national guard units called up by governors who had been asked to do so by President Bush.
Paul Schott Stevens, a legal adviser to the National Security Council in the Reagan administration, said that there has been an evolution in thinking about the law, and that most authorities now accept that it does not restrict the military as much as once believed.
"I think people are realizing that there are certain unique capabilities the armed forces have that others do not," Mr. Stevens said.
The creation of a new military command to defend the American homeland has made the debate over the posse comitatus law more urgent. The United States Northern Command, based in Colorado Springs, is in charge of the armed services' still evolving role in homeland security, and will serve as a response agency to terrorist attacks by using its resources in cleaning up after a chemical or biological attack.
Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, now in charge of the Northern Command, said in an interview earlier this year that he would welcome a review of existing restrictions in order to protect the nation against terrorists.
The way in which the Pentagon and the C.I.A. will coordinate with the new Homeland Security Department and other agencies dealing with domestic intelligence is still being worked out. Both the Pentagon and the C.I.A. have created new senior management positions to coordinate their relationships with Homeland Security as well as state and local law enforcement agencies.
But civil liberties advocates worry about broad new intelligence-gathering initiatives. They say their voices have been largely drowned out by the Bush administration, and by the administration's repeated warnings that without new intelligence powers and surveillance authority, the country will remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
"It's truly astonishing," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way. "It seems that we're forgetting everything we learned in the 1970's."
Mr. Neas noted that the new Homeland Security Department had been exempted, at the administration's insistence, from much of the oversight required for other government agencies.
"There is a significant threat that this new department will abuse civil rights and infringe on civil liberties," Mr. Neas said.
Before Sept. 11, the American military had devoted little time or resources to thinking about how to fight a war with special forces in Afghanistan. The C.I.A. had never fired missiles at terrorists from a pilotless Predator. And the White House had not considered setting up what amounts to terrorist internment camps overseas. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were top concerns, but oddly, gathering intelligence on Afghanistan was not.
Officials say the list of intelligence priorities spelled out in PDD 35, the Clinton-era directive, had not been kept updated, and so once obscure issues like Afghanistan had received little attention.
The administration is now trying to develop a way to keep the presidential list of intelligence collection priorities current, with more input from senior policy makers, so that intelligence agencies move more rapidly to focus on newly emerging threats.
One leading proponent for a broad restructuring of intelligence gathering is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who expressed frustration last year that the military had to let the C.I.A. take the lead in the early days in Afghanistan.
In a move widely viewed as an effort by Mr. Rumsfeld to consolidate his control over the military's vast and unwieldy intelligence bureaucracy, he has just won Congressional approval to establish a new position, the under secretary of defense for intelligence.
Inside the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld has also been prodding Special Operations units to become more aggressive players in the global war on terrorism, and to work more closely with the C.I.A. in covert operations in countries where the United States is not at open war and, in some cases, where the local government is not informed of their presence.
But as Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides try to move more aggressively against the war on terrorism, at least two of their intelligence initiatives have provoked public criticism.
Within the operations of the under secretary of defense for policy, a small group of intelligence experts searched for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked.
The team's efforts, some officials said, reflected frustration on the part of several senior Defense Department policy makers that they were not receiving undiluted information on the capacities of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and his suspected ties to terrorist organizations.
Another Pentagon agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is creating a vast computer database, a program known as Total Information Awareness, to spy on terror suspects. The program has drawn controversy, in part because its manager is John M. Poindexter, the former national security adviser, whose felony conviction in the Iran-contra affair was overturned by a federal appeals court.
-------- us
[Aha. Next you'll be seeing a bill passed allocating a huge additional chunk of money to be paid to those multi-national industrialists who can make the most state-of-the-art suit. Pork barrel politics at its most cynical. et]
Troops Lack Protective Gear, Say Lawmakers
Safety Against Chemical, Biological Arms Doubted
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 30, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55369-2002Nov29?language=printer
As the Pentagon girds for possible military action against Iraq, it is having problems providing U.S. troops with state-of-the-art protective gear against chemical and biological attacks, lawmakers from both parties said this week.
The lawmakers' worries have been buttressed by the General Accounting Office, which recently reported "continuing concerns" about equipment, training and research. The GAO said that for six years, "we have identified many problems in the Defense Department's capabilities to defend against chemical and biological weapons and sustain operations in the midst of their use."
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee's national security subcommittee, said the latest problem Pentagon officials uncovered involves gas masks that have the wrong gaskets and will require extensive inspections to ensure that they are functioning properly.
Shays said he is also concerned about the Defense Department's inability to manage millions of protective suits so that units likely to deploy to the Persian Gulf receive the highest-quality gear, with 250,000 defective suits unaccounted for in the Pentagon inventory.
"I visited the troops in Europe, who I believe will be first responders in Iraq, and they did not have the best equipment we have, and that is a concern to me," Shays said. "We don't know where some of our best suits are -- they are God knows where. And in some cases, we've mixed bad inventory with good."
Raymond J. Decker, the GAO's director of defense capabilities and management, said he was not convinced that the Pentagon had enough new, highly protective, lightweight suits to equip all forces likely to fight a war in Iraq.
With the new suits in relatively short supply, Decker said, the Pentagon must rely on millions of older suits manufactured since 1989. But the quality of those charcoal-lined garments, he said, diminishes with age.
A Capitol Hill source, who asked not to be named, said recent Pentagon tests had revealed that the older suits are good for only a day or two after they are removed from their protective packaging. If additional testing turns up similar results, the source said, "they've got a big problem."
The GAO told Shays's subcommittee in October that the Pentagon could not locate 250,000 defective suits manufactured since 1989 by a New York company called Isratex, whose officers have been convicted of intentionally providing the military with defective garments. An additional 530,000 defective suits produced by the firm have been located and removed from military stocks.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a member of Shays's subcommittee, Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), cited "extremely troubling" testimony by his subordinates on chemical and biological preparedness, particularly with regard to the 250,000 defective suits still missing.
In the letter, Schakowsky asked Rumsfeld to certify that all troops deployed to the Gulf for any possible military action against Iraq "have been provided with equipment to protect against chemical and biological attacks in quantities sufficient to meet minimum required levels previously established by the Department of Defense."
The threat to U.S. forces is particularly acute as the Bush administration puts the finishing touches on invasion plans to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if his government does not relinquish its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and fully cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
The CIA says Iraq most likely has stockpiled "a few hundred metric tons of chemical warfare agents," including the nerve agents VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas, and also possesses anthrax and other lethal biological agents that could be weaponized.
Iraq did not use chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the Gulf War, even though Hussein ordered commanders to fill Scud missile warheads, bombs and artillery shells with chemical agents. But many analysts say Hussein and his most loyal commanders will not hesitate to use them in another war, because this new military campaign would be for the explicit purpose of toppling Hussein's government.
Anna Johnson-Winegar, the Defense Department's deputy assistant secretary for chemical and biological defense, said she believed the Pentagon would be able to reach a "goal" for providing all troops sent to the Gulf with the new protective suits, officially named the Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology, or JSLIST, suits.
Johnson-Winegar also said recent tests had given defense officials "complete confidence" in the protective capabilities of the JSLIST suits and the older garments.
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry Division during the Gulf War and is under Pentagon contract to brief the commanders of units likely to deploy on what to expect in any military action against Iraq, said he believed that U.S. forces were well prepared for chemical or biological attacks.
"Every fighter wing, every Navy ship at sea, every Army battalion is fully equipped to fight in a chemical environment," McCaffrey said. He underscored the threat last month when he told commanders of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., that they should expect to be attacked with chemical weapons.
Lt. Col. Stephen M. Twitty, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, deployed in Kuwait, said his unit was well equipped and well trained to withstand chemical or biological attacks, having trained in offensive and defensive operations for as long as seven hours in full protective gear.
"During these training maneuvers, we tested our soldiers' ability to fight, test for agents [and] decontaminate themselves and their equipment," he said. "Additionally, we have conducted foot marches in [full protective gear] over long distances."
The U.S. military's preparedness for chemical and biological warfare has greatly improved since the Gulf War, when 100,000 troops were exposed to trace levels of sarin nerve gas when engineers blew up sarin-filled rockets at a munitions dump in Khamisiyah in March 1991.
In addition to the new protective suits and masks, U.S. forces are equipped with armored M-93 Fox vehicles that detect mustard gas and nerve agents on the battlefield in less than a second, sounding alarms that give soldiers time to climb into protective suits, masks, boots and gloves. Military units also surround their bases with M8 alarms to detect the presence of nerve agents.
The Pentagon has also recently installed 52 stationary biological sensors called Portal Shield in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to complement a mobile biological sensing system towed by a Humvee that is designed to patrol the battlefield and provide early warning of a biological attack.
But unlike chemical sensors, biological sensors take as long as 20 minutes to detect the presence of germ weapons, greatly increasing the risk that soldiers would be exposed to biological agents before donning their protective gear.
Even the Pentagon's new JSLIST garment and M40 silicone rubber gas mask cannot stop some biological agents and a powdered version of VX nerve agent called "Dusty VX."
One difficulty in assessing the Pentagon's readiness in the chemical and biological arena is that much information about the protective qualities of the new equipment remains classified.
Johnson-Winegar declined to discuss whether the military's protective suits would be effective against Dusty VX.
"It's classified information," she said, "and it's an operational security concern."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- drug war
Medical Marijuana's Effect on Crime Discounted
Associated Press
Saturday, November 30, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56136-2002Nov30?language=printer
Law enforcement officials in four of the states that allow medical use of marijuana say the laws have had minimal impact on crime-fighting, although they at times complicate prosecution of drug cases, a congressional report said yesterday.
The report by the General Accounting Office said only a small fraction of the people in Oregon, Hawaii and Alaska used marijuana for medical purposes. The results in California, the fourth state studied, were limited to only four counties, and no statewide data were available.
Some law enforcement officials said while crime-fighting was not harmed, the laws allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana at times have complicated efforts to seize illegal marijuana or to prosecute some cases, the GAO report said.
In some cases, law enforcement officials said the marijuana laws resulted in "a general softening" in attitudes among the public toward marijuana, the report said, and some were concerned about conflicts that arise with federal law enforcement, which still bans the drug.
The GAO examined only four of the eight states that have allowed medical uses for marijuana. The other states are Nevada, Colorado, Washington and Maine.
The GAO found that a total of about 2,450 people in Oregon, Hawaii and Alaska use marijuana for medical purposes -- accounting for no more than 0.05 percent of the population in any of the states.
The Bush administration disagreed with some of the report's findings.
The laws create "legal loopholes for drug dealers and marijuana cultivators to avoid arrest and prosecution," acting Assistant Attorney General Robert F. Diegelman wrote in a review of the report.
--------
Study: Most Medical Pot Users Older Men
November 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Medical-Marijuana.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The typical medicinal marijuana user is likely to resemble someone from the Baby Boom generation -- or older -- rather than a 20-something poster child, according to a congressional study.
Data collected in Hawaii and Oregon -- two of the eight states allowing marijuana use for medical treatment -- show the majority of users are males, 40 years old or older, who take the drug for severe pain or persistent muscle spasms, said the report.
The study by the General Accounting Office, which covered Alaska and California as well, also said the relaxed drug laws in those four states have had minimal impact on crimefighting, although they at times complicate prosecution of drug cases.
The GAO found that a total of about 2,450 people in Oregon, Hawaii and Alaska use marijuana for medical purposes -- accounting for no more than .05 percent of the population in any of the states.
More than 70 percent of registered users in each of those three states were age 40 or older. In Hawaii and Oregon, about 70 percent of the users were men, and most were taking marijuana to treat severe pain and persistent muscle spasms. Such information was not available for Alaska or California.
Alaska had the only registered user under 18 years old, and Oregon had 145 users between the ages of 19 and 29.
The report provided no statewide data for California. That state's law does not require medicinal marijuana users to register, although about 4,500 people have done so voluntarily in four of the state's 58 counties, the study said.
Some law enforcement officials said that while crimefighting was not harmed, the laws allowing doctors to recommend that a patient be eligible to use marijuana has, at times, complicated efforts to seize illegal marijuana or to prosecute some cases, according to the GAO report.
In some cases, law enforcement officials said the marijuana laws resulted in ``a general softening'' in attitudes among the public toward marijuana, the report said, and some officials were concerned about conflicts that arise with federal law enforcement.
For example, according to the report, an Oregon police official cited a series of cases in which suspects were arrested for distributing marijuana for profit, but were able to obtain medical marijuana registry cards after their arrests, stymieing prosecutors.
Some local law enforcement officials in California questioned how effectively they could prosecute criminal marijuana cases since the state has no limit on the amount of marijuana that can be held by a patient or a caregiver.
In Northern California, Humboldt County officials said marijuana growers are allowed to grow hundreds of plants while claiming to be a medical caregiver to multiple patients, and no documentation is required.
While Alaska, Oregon and Hawaii have established limits, some law enforcement officials in those states said they too were less likely to pursue cases that could be shielded by the provisions.
The Bush administration disagreed with some of the report's findings.
The state marijuana laws have resulted in a ``worsening of relations between federal, state and local law enforcement,'' Robert F. Diegelman, an acting U.S. assistant attorney general, wrote in a review of the report.
The laws create ``legal loopholes for drug dealers and marijuana cultivators to avoid arrest and prosecution,'' he said.
The GAO examined only four of the eight states that have allowed medical uses for marijuana. The other states are Nevada, Colorado, Washington and Maine.
On the Net:
General Accounting Office: http://www.gao.gov
-------- terrorism
NEWS ANALYSIS
Terror Attacks on 'Soft' Targets Complicate Security
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/africa/30ASSE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - Disrupting terrorist attacks, already a daunting job, has been made tougher still because extremist groups are increasingly willing to attack vulnerable, "soft" targets like the Israeli-owned resort gutted this week in Kenya.
Counterterrorism officials in the United States and overseas have already been struggling to find ways of guarding traditional and somewhat predictable targets, like embassies, military installations, airports, landmarks and reactors.
But the suicide bombings at a hotel, coming just six weeks after suspected operatives or affiliates of Al Qaeda killed more than 190 people at a resort in Bali, presented intelligence officials with yet another set of vexing problems. The challenge comes in deciding where to focus security and intelligence resources if the enemy appears able to strike almost anywhere.
"Because this was such a soft target, it's impossible to guard against something like this," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former counterterrorism official at the Central Intelligence Agency. "There are targets all over the world, and tourists are totally defenseless."
The Sept. 11 attacks demonstrated with shocking clarity Al Qaeda's ability to penetrate even those sites already considered likely targets. The World Trade Center was considered a possible target because of its symbolic and commercial value and because it had been hit before, in 1993, while the Pentagon's military value put it on the short list of possible domestic targets.
Intelligence officials around the world say they have become much more aggressive in collecting and distributing intelligence tips about possible threats, even those considered improbable.
Indeed, in Australia - home to nearly half the victims of the Bali bombing - intelligence officials said they received reports two weeks ago of a threat in Mombasa, leading them to urge citizens not to go there.
A senior Australian official said today that intelligence received by Australia is "automatically" passed to the United States. But American law enforcement and intelligence officials said they were unaware of any credible and specific information that could have predicted the Kenyan attacks.
The attacks on a remote Israeli target in Kenya would be particularly troubling if ultimately linked to Al Qaeda, because they would represent a broadened strategy. Although Al Qaeda has been linked to an April attack on a Tunisian synagogue, the group has aimed its strikes primarily at American targets in the past, rather than Israelis or Jews.
An American official said the rise in such targets "is something we've been concerned about for some time," adding, "Certainly Al Qaeda is going to aim where they have the best chance of success, and they're going to hit soft targets that they know are more vulnerable."
"We expect to see more of these kinds of attacks around the world," the official said, "and obviously it makes our job more difficult. We talk about Al Qaeda's global reach, and it is indeed global."
The police throughout Southeast Asia have been on edge for weeks for fear of another Bali-style attack, perhaps aimed at an international school or a church. Authorities in the region say they are convinced that the leaders of the loosely affiliated network that Osama bin Laden put in place in the last decade remain at large today and ready to reactivate sleeper cells.
In Mombasa, three suicide bombers at the Israeli-owned hotel killed at least 13 people and injured dozens when they drove up to the doors of the hotel and detonated their explosives. Minutes earlier and some 20 miles away, terrorists fired shoulder-launched Russian-made missiles at an Israeli airliner but missed.
Officials say they are still uncertain who was behind the attack.
Immediate suspicion fell on Al Qaeda, in part because it struck the American Embassy in Kenya in 1998 and also because it is known to have used Russian missiles in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But the American official named two other possible suspects: a Somali terrorist group called Al Ittihad al Islami and the Mideast terror group Hezbollah.
Mr. Cannistraro, the former C.I.A. official, said he found the Mombasa attack "much more reminiscent of a Hezbollah operation" because of the Israeli targets.
If so, he said the operation would suggest that Hezbollah is broadening its aim beyond targets in Israel and Israeli-occupied territories, reverting to terror strategies of the early 1990's, when extremists struck a Jewish cultural center and the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.
"What you could have," Mr. Cannistraro said, "is a return to the days when these groups saw fewer opportunities for grandiose operations" and had to look for smaller-scale targets. "They're going after softer, more accessible targets, and we're likely to see more of that nowadays."
Such targets are tough to predict - and even tougher to protect.
American officials said they were studying both the methods and targets in the Mombasa attacks, not only to determine who may have been responsible, but to ascertain what they suggest about future targets.
This does not mean, officials caution, that Al Qaeda and its loose network of affiliates are no longer interested in the type of major attack like the one last year.
Indeed, interviews with captured Qaeda operatives and other sources have produced a steady stream of tips during the last 14 months - many of them unverified - about purported plots against the Brooklyn Bridge, the Seattle Space Needle and other well-known American targets.
And an F.B.I. internal assessment just two weeks ago warned that in selecting its targets, "Al Qaeda may favor spectacular attacks that meet several criteria: high symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the American economy and maximum psychological trauma. The highest-priority targets remain within the aviation, petroleum and nuclear sectors, as well as significant national landmarks."
--------
U.S. Wary After Kenya Missile Attack
November 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Airlines-Missiles.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many terrorists groups have access to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and security experts warn that portable rocket launchers could be used against airliners in the United States.
Security officials, however, believe the risk of another attempt like the one against an Israeli jet in Kenya is greater overseas. In the United States an attack is more likely to be thwarted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The possibility of a missile attack is a major concern for commercial airlines operating abroad, especially in Asia and Africa, Charlie LeBlanc, managing director of Air Security International Inc., a Houston-based aviation security firm that does government consulting work, said Friday.
Two missiles that narrowly missed the Israeli aircraft this week were fired from a four-wheel drive vehicle one mile from the airport, witnesses told police.
In the spring, suspected al-Qaida operatives used a portable missile to try to shoot an American plane taking off from Prince Sultan Air Base, south of the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Smaller surface-to-air missiles, like the American Stinger or Russian SA-7 Grail, can be carried by a single person and fired from bazooka-like tubes. Many of these track the heat of an aircraft, then fly close and explode.
But most of these only fly a few miles at most and cannot hit high-flying aircraft. Their aim is not precise. And because they have such small warheads, some aircraft can survive a single hit by one of these weapons.
Robert Johnson, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, said that the agency made sure airport security officials were aware of the missile attack in Kenya and reminded them of the steps being taken to counter the threat of such an attack.
On the Net:
The Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.dot.gov
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Nothing 'Cornball' About It
Saturday, November 30, 2002
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55588-2002Nov29?language=printer
As a user of Takoma Park's new urban corn silo, I want to assure Lee Nash that I really am fighting global warming when I burn organically fertilized, "no till" corn to heat my home ["Cornball Environmentalism," Free for All, Nov. 23].
To be sure, the dried and shelled corn kernels emit plenty of carbon dioxide -- but almost no smoke or particulates -- when they burn in my ultramodern and convenient stove (cost: $2,295). But the burning corn emits no more CO2 than it previously absorbed from the atmosphere -- like all plants -- when it grew up on the farm. So that's a wash. Even when factoring in the farmer's diesel fuel for the tractor and combine, and gasoline for transporting the corn to our homes, the total CO2 reduction over natural gas and oil is more than 100 percent with corn. This stunning reduction is created in part by the corn stalks themselves. They remove tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year before our farmer allows the stalks to safely decompose into the soil. This buries much of the absorbed carbon so it can't float to the sky to warm the planet.
But the key here is using organic fertilization (in our case, turkey manure) instead of petroleum-based varieties. Our farmer also doesn't till, which allows the soil itself to be a sink for atmospheric CO2.
My family of three burned just $425 worth of corn last winter (3.5 tons), requiring only a third of an acre of farmed land per person. By comparison, the average American meat eater requires 1.6 acres of land to raise the grain to feed the animals that wind up on his table.
According to top climate scientists, global warming will bring enormous negative consequences to the planet unless we switch to clean energy very soon. So there's nothing "cornball" at all about a corn silo in Takoma Park.
-- Mike Tidwell
The writer is director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
-------- energy
War-Wary Saudis Move to Increase Oil Market Clout
By Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 30, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54986-2002Nov29?language=printer
Saudi Arabia has quietly taken steps to protect or even increase its already dominant influence in the world oil market in the face of growing uncertainty about the effect of a war in Iraq on global energy supplies and prices, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials and experts.
Saudi Arabia has reclaimed its position as the number one foreign supplier of crude oil to the United States in recent months and offered to further increase sales in December, the Energy Department reported. To keep competitors from taking away customers, the Saudis have boosted production by an estimated 1 million barrels a day above the quota set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, according to a New York industry analyst.
At the same time, the Saudi government has amassed a foreign exchange war chest in the range of $90 billion to $100 billion, enabling its economy to weather a prolonged period of low oil prices if Iraq's production surges should Iraqi President Saddam Hussein be ousted in a U.S.-led military campaign.
If U.S. military action in Iraq goes awry, leading to the hoarding of higher-priced oil, only Saudi Arabia has sufficient spare capacity to calm markets, U.S. officials acknowledge. Within 30 days, according to the Energy Department, it could flood the market with as much as 2 million barrels a day from wells it is not now using.
All this has bolstered Saudi Arabia's leverage just as some U.S. lawmakers and administration officials are intensifying pressure on the government in Riyadh to increase its cooperation in the war on terror. With Saudi oil still a mainstay of the U.S. economy and the Pentagon seeking Saudi permission to use Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh in the event of a war with Iraq, the Saudis have considerable cards to play in their dialogue with Washington.
"The Saudis are the central bank of oil," said J. Robinson West, president of the Washington-based Petroleum Finance Co. "They provide stability and liquidity to the market. The more oil [the United States] can get from other countries, the less leverage the Saudis have. But they still play a critical role."
Saudi officials see it in much the same way.
"To say that you can marginalize Saudi Arabia in the oil market is like saying you're going to marginalize the United States in the world economy," said Adel al-Jubeir, a senior foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's de facto ruler.
Such assessments provide a sobering starting point for those U.S. policymakers arguing that it is in the political and strategic interest of the United States to wean itself from Saudi and Persian Gulf oil.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which 15 Saudis participated as hijackers, the cause of diversifying U.S. oil supplies away from Saudi Arabia was taken up by members of Congress and a faction in the national security establishment that believes Saudi Arabia is an unreliable ally that exerts too much influence over U.S. foreign policy.
A controversial briefing by a Rand Corp. analyst for a Pentagon advisory board in July described Saudi Arabia as the "kernel of evil" in the Middle East. It concluded that a pro-Western Iraq could reduce U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports and enable the United States to force the Saudi monarchy to crack down on the financing and support for terrorism within its boundaries.
Iraq holds the second-largest known oil reserves in the world. Some energy experts say it could raise its output of less than 2 million barrels a day to 5 million barrels by the mid- to late part of this decade.
Such a development could indeed create problems for the Saudis, said Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. "There just isn't room in the market for 5 to 6 million more barrels a day. There isn't enough demand."
Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), a member of the Senate energy committee, and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) have called for increased U.S. energy investment in Russia, which has the world's eighth-largest oil reserves, as an alternative to what Burns calls "terrorist oil" from the Middle East.
This would complement efforts begun by the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush to diversify the United States' sources of foreign oil away from Saudi dependence. The results of those efforts have been mixed.
Earlier this year, a senior State Department official told a congressional committee that Russia, the Caspian region, Nigeria, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, and Mexico were on track to increase oil production by as much as 10 million barrels a day by 2010. Russia, a non-OPEC country that is the world's largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, has increased its shipments by 800,000 barrels a day since 2000. Russian companies are eyeing traditional Saudi oil markets, including the United States.
This week, four major Russian petroleum companies -- Lukoil, Yukos, Tyumen Oil and Sibneft -- announced plans to build a $4.5 billion oil terminal and pipeline system centered in Murmansk to handle increased exports to the United States, as part of broader agreement between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to make Russia a more important energy partner. A feasibility study of the project won't be ready until 2003 or 2004.
Russian oil exports are constrained by a lack of pipelines, the high cost of Siberian exploration and incompatibility with U.S. refineries. And a forecast released last week by the International Energy Agency predicted OPEC would increase its share of the global oil market from 38 to 54 percent by 2030.
"You always come back to the Persian Gulf," said Robert E. Ebel, who directs the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here.
Edward L. Morse of Hess Energy Trading Co. argues that, in the long term, Russia could challenge OPEC and the Saudis for markets in India, China and the United States. But he adds that the Saudis "are still in a position unparalleled to anyone else." One reason, he said, is that U.S. domestic energy policies have strengthened the Saudis' leverage in world oil markets.
U.S. imports increased from 8 million barrels a day in 1990 to more than 11 million barrels in the first six months of 2002, according to the Energy Information Administration, the analytic arm of the Energy Department. The economic boom of the 1990s and Americans' appetite for fuel-guzzling sport-utility vehicles contributed. But major energy legislation that died in the recent Congress proposed only token initiatives to reduce gasoline use and cut oil imports.
"In effect, we subsidized OPEC," Morse said.
Some experts say the Saudis could actually benefit from the lower oil prices that could result if Iraq boosts oil exports. Lower prices would increase global oil demand and, possibly, strengthen OPEC's hand by squeezing out competition from high-cost producers and enforcing discipline inside the oil cartel.
Saudi Arabia's growing foreign reserves, the fruit of several years of relatively high oil prices, will serve as a potent weapon in what many believe is a coming battle for supremacy in the oil markets, some experts believe.
"They give Saudi Arabia a cushion in running its oil policy," said Fareed Mohamedi, chief economist for Petroleum Finance Co. The country has run up a large government debt, much of it is in pension obligations that are not due to be paid for many years, but flush Saudi government bank accounts enable it to weather low oil prices for several years and still maintain government spending at current levels, he said.
Officials in Riyadh have also announced plans to sell state enterprises, such as utilities, which could further fatten government coffers.
On at least three occasions since 1980, the Saudi state oil company has used its spare capacity to flood markets and undercut competitors, according to Morse. To maintain their position in the U.S. market, the Saudis have also provided discounts of as much as $1 a barrel to refiners. Few other producers could afford to do that for long, according to industry experts.
The Saudis also keep a strong foothold in the U.S. market through investments in U.S. refineries and chains of gasoline stations. A senior Saudi official noted recently that his government could help U.S. customers weather war-caused shortages by drawing on about 30 million barrels stored at depots in this country or the Caribbean, and in stockpiles in Asia and Europe.
"Saudi capacity is a blunt instrument that makes policymakers elsewhere beholden to Riyadh for energy security," wrote Morse and James Richard, an energy expert at Firebird Management, in Foreign Affairs magazine. "It is the energy equivalent of nuclear weapons, a powerful deterrent against those who try to challenge Saudi leadership and Saudi goals."
-------- environment
Senator Slams Environmental Rule Changes
November 30, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Democrats-Environment.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has moved the nation backward on environmental issues by weakening clean air and water laws, Sen. James Jeffords said in the Democrats' weekly radio response aired Saturday.
``The Bush administration has continued its pattern of sacrificing our environment to the demands of special interests,'' said Jeffords, outgoing chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
``This year the power industry is getting a nice Christmas gift, the biggest weakening of the Clean Air Act in history,'' said the Vermont senator, an independent who generally associates himself with the Democrats.
Democrats awarded Jeffords with the chairmanship of the environment committee after he left the Republican Party in June 2001 to become an independent, a move that gave Democrats control of the Senate. He will lose that position in January when Republicans again become the majority party following gains in the midterm election.
He said he feared that attacks on the environment will accelerate in January, when Republicans will control both the House and the Senate.
``Hopefully, moderates in both parties can do what we've done before: stand up to block these anti-environmental initiatives, and instead pursue policies that protect and respect our environment,'' he said.
Jeffords complained that newly announced regulations on power plant emissions ``will gut clean air laws'' that he helped formulate with the first President Bush.
The Bush administration on Nov. 22 announced plans to relax air pollution regulations to make it easier for older factories, refineries and power plants to modernize without having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said the changes would encourage emission reductions by providing new flexibility to plants and factories when they upgrade equipment, but environmental groups and Democrats said the administration was putting industrial interests above environmental protections.
Jeffords also faulted the administration for delaying implementation of a rule to reduce sewage in waterways, for underfunding Superfund, the program responsible for cleaning out toxic waste sites, and for allowing oil and gas drilling on national lands.
He said secrecy clauses inserted in the just-signed law creating the new Homeland Security Department will make it more difficult for people to get information about dangerous chemicals that may exist near their homes.
Although an Independent, Jeffords was chosen to give Saturday's Democratic radio address by Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate's Democratic leader.
``For him, it's an honor,'' said Jeffords' spokesman, Eric Smulson. ``Senator Jeffords caucuses with the Democrats and aligns with the Democrats for organizational purposes.''
-------- ACTIVISTS
BUSES FROM 35 STATES SET TO TRAVEL TO DC & SF JAN. 18
International A.N.S.W.E.R.
There are now buses traveling from over 100 cities in almost 35 states to be in Washington DC and San Francisco on January 18. Groups are traveling from all over the East Coast, Midwest, South and West Coast. With almost eight weeks to go before the massive demonstration and convening of the People's Peace Congress, numbers of buses, vans and car caravans making plans to come to DC or SF is expected increase greatly.
Please read the following email to find out if there are buses from your city -- and if there aren't how you can begin organizing one today!
For a LISTING OF CITIES AND CONTACT INFORMATION, go to: http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18contacts.html
CITIES ORGANIZING BUSES INCLUDE:
Albany, NY
Atlanta, GA
Baltimore, MD
Baton Rouge, LA
Boston, MA
Buffalo, NY
Canandaigua, NY
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Chico, CA
Cleveland, OH
Columbia County, NY
Corning, NY
Detroit, MI
El Dorado/Placerville, CA
Eureka/Arcata, CA
Fairfield, CT
Fresno, CA
Geneva, NY
Gulfport, MS
Hackensack, NJ
Houston, TX
Iowa City, IA
Jackson, MO
Kansas City, KS
Kingston, NY
Lakewood, CO
Las Cruces, NM
Linwood, NJ
Long Island, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Manchester, NH
Manhattan, KS
Mariposa, CA
Meadville, PA
Miami Beach, FL
Milwaukee, WI
Modesto/Merced, CA
Mt Pleasant, SC
New York, NY
Olathe, KS
Overland Park, KS
Philadelphia, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Providence, RI
Redding/Shasta Co., CA
Reno, NV
Richmond Hill, GA
Richmond, VA
Rochester, NY
Rock Hill, SC
Sag Harbor, NY
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Santa Clara, CA
Seattle, WA
Shepherdstown, WV
Southern Oregon
Spokane, WA
Springfield, MA
Stony Brook, NY
Telluride, CO
Terre Haute, IN
Tucson, AZ
Union City, GA
Vestal, NY
Washington, DC
Winston-Salem, NC
For a LISTING OF CITIES AND CONTACT INFORMATION, go to: http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18contacts.html
If you have any problem following this link, go to the A.N.S.W.E.R. home page and click on "View organizing centers and transportation arrangements from your area," or call 202-544-3389 or email dc@internationalanswer.org to find the bus from the city nearest you.
ARE YOU ORGANIZING -- OR ARE YOU INTERESTED IN ORGANIZING -- A BUS FROM YOUR CITY?
If you're organizing transportation from your area but are not yet listed on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website, please also fill out the form at http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18contacts.html#list so that we can help get others in your area in touch with the local organizers. Every day, we receive calls, emails and hits to our web page from people all over the U.S. who are looking for transportation from their city.
If you do not see transportation arrangements from a city near you, consider organizing a bus from your area, or organizing car caravans to the nearest bus. If you are interested, please get in touch with our Washington DC office. We can help provide you with advice, answers to your questions and organizing resources (such as flyers, posters, stickers, etc.). Call the DC office at 202-544-3389 or email dc@internationalanswer.org for more information -- or if you feel comfortable becoming an organizing center from your area, fill out the form at http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18contacts.html#list
For an updated ENDORSERS LIST, go to http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/endorsers.html
To ENDORSE the January 18 Mass Actions in DC, fill out the easy-to-use form at: http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18endorse.html#endo (if this link does not take you directly to the form, please scroll down)
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.InternationalANSWER.org
http://www.VoteNoWar.org
dc@internationalanswer.org
New York 212-633-6646
Washington 202-332-5757
Chicago 773-878-0166
Los Angeles 213-487-2368
San Francisco 415-821-6545
Sign up to receive updates (low volume): http://www.internationalanswer.org/subscribelist.html
Send replies to iacenter@action-mail.org
----
[When a generation or a nation is raised on violence and frivolity, some of its denizens become violent and frivolous. The puzzle is how to undo the damage. Any suggestions? Students especially welcome to respond. mailto:prop1@prop1.org (nucnews editor) = et]
Surveying the Damage on Campus USA
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, November 30, 2002; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55595-2002Nov29?language=printer
It's sad to see what prompts student unrest on American university campuses these days. On recent weekends, we've seen glasses and bottles flying in Pullman, Wash., and students arrested in Berkeley, Calif. -- and in Raleigh, N.C., too. A woman and a cop were hurt in Clemson, S.C., and cars were set afire, furniture was burned and dozens were arrested in Columbus, Ohio. Then there are the student riots last year in College Park.
And what is causing America's future leaders to abandon civility, embrace violence and convert their campuses into war zones? What injustice has moved them so?
Suppression of student rights? Incursions on speech, assembly, academic freedom? Nah. On American campuses, students are fistfighting and smashing and burning over what else? Sports. Yep. They're socking it to the town over football and basketball. (In Gainesville, Fla., the University of Florida stations a German shepherd at each corner of the football field.) In stadiums across America, the frenzy to win is driving responsibility out the window. The fear of losing is trumping respect. And indulgence in personal excess is the ruling ethic.
Contrast that kind of campus behavior with the university scene in Iran. Thousands of Iranian students have been bravely taking on their country's oppressive Islamic regime, openly criticizing the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other hard-line Muslim clerics for standing in the way of social and political reforms. Unlike the drunken hooliganism on the grounds of American academe, students in Iran have been seriously and soberly engaged in a power struggle against Islamic hard-liners. And it's no weekend affair.
It's not cost-free either. Unlike their American counterparts, Iranian students aren't waging their battle with credit cards in their pockets and with protective and indulging school administrations covering their backsides. In Iran, student demonstrators and their courageous professors are up against the country's police, Islamic courts and militiamen -- armed foes who will break their heads at the order of the conservative Islamic regime.
America's students riot over the defeat of a legendary rival. Iranian students are in the streets over the sentencing to death of a history lecturer, Hashem Aghajari, who had the nerve to criticize the regime in a speech. The American collegiate sports fans erupt in rowdyism in pursuit of fun. The Iranian students put it on the line in the name of democracy.
They are a different breed. The supreme religious leader denounced their protests as the work of the devil. He ordered the movement suppressed and student leaders arrested. They responded to the crackdown by announcing a symbolic referendum on the Islamic regime to be held next week among students attending more than a dozen universities in Tehran. Now they are in even deeper trouble with the conservative hard-liners, who are mobilizing thousands of their supporters and paramilitary units to stare down and frighten off the pro-reformers.
Ah, but who can think of stuff like that in Iran when here at home there are beers to be drunk, goal posts to be torn down, fires to be started, and sofas and chairs to be burned. Today is a far cry from that time in America when students built shantytowns on their campuses and marched on their administration buildings to demand that their schools cut ties with companies that invested in apartheid South Africa. Then students were all about raising consciousness about South Africa's oppression. Today it's all about losing consciousness in a fog of alcohol on Saturday night.
And when the football team isn't so hot, there are other fun ways to pass the time at school. How about a party? A dress-up party? A party where fraternity guys and sorority gals can paint their faces black like they used to do in minstrel shows back in the good ol' days. Where you can dress in tennis outfits and come in blackface as Venus and Serena Williams, the two African American tennis champions. Or, if you have a patriotic bent, you can dress as Uncle Sam, of course with black makeup. That's the way they did it last month at a fraternity-sponsored Halloween party at the University of Virginia.
What do they know? What do they care about college students who sat at lunch counters, conducted read-ins in public libraries, kneel-ins in churches, stand-ins at movie theaters, wade-ins in public swimming pools, because, as they said in the '60s, "Education without freedom is useless"? Are they even fazed by a movement started by African American students that was joined by hundreds of white students from across the country, which saw 1,700 student demonstrators standing trial in 1960 alone?
That was then. Nowadays, for some in America's next generation of leaders, when it comes to sheer emotional fulfillment, nothing quite matches the act of tearing up the campus or coloring the skin and lips to exaggerate black features.
Welcome to American college daze, 2002.
e-mail: kingc@washpost.com
--------
China Facing Protests Over the Plight of North Korean Refugees
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/asia/30KORE.html
TOKYO, Nov. 29 - Human rights advocates who have been trying to draw attention to the plight of tens of thousands of North Korean refugees in China are shifting their tactics, six leaders of the efforts have announced. Instead of helping groups invade foreign embassies in China to seek asylum, they will support protests at Chinese diplomatic missions and at United Nations offices around the world.
One of the advocates, Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor known for his provocative style, said that he plans to lead a protest rally to the Chinese Embassy in Washington next week.
A bill is progressing through the United States Congress that would earmark up to $80 million to help feed, clothe and move to safety people who escape the North Korean Communist dictatorship.
But increasingly, North Korea is in the public eye, not only for the nuclear weapons program to which it admitted recently, but also for its abuse of its own citizens. Human Rights Watch, the New York-based human rights group, recently released a report, "The Invisible Exodus: North Koreans in the People's Republic of China."
Saying that as many as 300,000 North Koreans made their way across the border to live clandestinely in northern China, the report called the situation "a human rights disaster." The group demanded that China immediately stop forcible repatriations, some of which end in death.
On Wednesday, the human rights advocates denounced the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, saying the agency had surrendered its protection mission in face of Chinese obstruction.
"The U.N.H.C.R. will be the target of our actions in the future," warned Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, a Brussels-based group.
Over the last half century, China has signed several agreements with the United Nations pledging to refrain from repatriating migrants until it can be determined if they are economic or political refugees. In practice, China has closed the refugee areas to the United Nations.
China appears to fear an uncontrollable influx of North Koreans if it applies the Human Rights Watch prescription: an end to forcible repatriation, screening of refugees by the refugee agency and the awarding of "an indefinite humanitarian status" to "all North Koreans in China."
"The one agency with the authority to force a solution has chosen to sit on its hands," said Tarik M. Radwan, a lawyer for Jubilee Campaign, U.S.A., a religious-based human-rights group from Fairfax, Va.
Such criticism was rejected at the Geneva headquarters of the 51-year-old refugee agency this week.
"Picketing our offices does not solve the problem," Kris Janowski, the agency's spokesman, said by telephone. "We don't run China."
"We have a longstanding request with the Chinese to get access to the border," he continued. "Where we are hosted by a government, we have to operate with a government's consent."
Mr. Radwan, the American lawyer, said of China's actions: "An iron curtain has been brought down. No one is getting to the border areas."
Kim Guang Choel, a 27-year-old former railway worker in North Korea who arrived in South Korea last summer with his wife and daughter, contended in an interview that if refugees were guaranteed safe passage, "The cities will be empty. It will take only six months for there to be a flood."
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Vatican Removes Protesting Priest
November 30, 2002
New York Times
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/international/europe/30PRIE.html
ROME, Nov. 30 - The Vatican has dismissed from his parish a priest well known in Italy for marching with antiglobalization protesters and supporting homosexuals.
The priest, the Rev. Vitaliano Della Sala, 39, was forced to leave his parish in Sant'Angelo a Scala, near Naples, on Thursday for what the Vatican called "scandalous behavior."
Father Della Sala in turn nailed the document to the church's door. "The church has gone backwards at least 50 years," he said today.
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