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NUCLEAR
China, Russia to Buff Up Ties with Putin in Beijing
British considered A-bombing Nazis
U.N. Team Inspects Idle Iraqi Air Field
U.N. Team Searches 'Sensitive' Site in Iraq
Pattern of Iraqi Cooperation Shifts as a Plant Is Searched
Inspectors: No Iraq Atomic Evidence Yet
MILITARY
Kenya Says Middle East Crisis Puts Africa at Risk
After Blast, Kenya Reviews Qaeda's Trail in East Africa
Australia ready to strike abroad
Officials Work to Meet Deadline for Smallpox Vaccinations
US Plant gears up for wartime production
Pentagon's Urgent Search for Speed
Planes Raid Iraqi Oil Plant, Four Killed-Residents
U.S. Facing Bigger Bill For Iraq War
Israeli Tanks Raid Gaza Town, Kill Man, Raze Homes
Israel Kills Two in Gaza Raid Before Gunship Attack
Israeli Troops Said to Kill Palestinian at Border Post
Saudi Arabia's Choice
U.S. and Philippines May Start Training Mission
Congress Cracks Down On Overdue CIA Reports
Other special forces play quiet part
U.S. Is Preparing Base in Gulf State to Run Iraq War
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Britain Considering Armed Sky Marshals on Planes
In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
Let's Watch How The Jury Decides
ENERGY AND OTHER
Ex-GM CEO Makes 'Green' Comeback
Clean Air Test
Nations around the globe mark World AIDS Day
'One World': The Moral and Practical Challenges of Globalization
ACTIVISTS
Peace Partners Keeping Hope Alive
About 10,000 Turks protest possible war in Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
China, Russia to Buff Up Ties with Putin in Beijing
Reuters
Sunday, December 1, 2002
By Brian Rhoads
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60336-2002Dec1?language=printer
BEIJING (Reuters) - When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin meet in Beijing on Monday, they are likely to seek mutual reassurances over the strength of their relations as both sides cozy up to Washington.
The visit also aims to boost now-modest bilateral trade and shore up security in a region unsettled by North Korea's boasts about its plans to develop nuclear weapons and threats from what both regard as Muslim separatists at home, analysts say.
Putin landed in Beijing at about 1:40 a.m. Monday (1740 GMT on Sunday), more than an hour late because of thick fog, Russian officials said.
He was due for talks with Jiang on later Monday and was also scheduled to meet Vice President Hu Jintao, who took over as head of China's Communist Party this month after Jiang retired from the post. The Russian leader leaves Tuesday.
Both sides have hailed the visit. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said last week the leaders would review a decade of relations and "make strategic plans for the future."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko outlined an array of issues on which China and Russia sing in tune -- from support for the United Nations' role in ironing out global security issues, to non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and strengthening of strategic stability.
Moscow and Beijing's stances on issues related to the emerging world order and to key international problems are "either close to each other or coincide," he said Friday.
But analysts say China will be seeking reassurances from Putin over his pro-Western leanings in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
And both will try to dispel the view that the Sino-Russian relationship now plays second fiddle to their own ties to Washington.
"The reality is that each of the two countries sets greater priorities to relations with the United States than they do to relations between each other," said a Western diplomat in Moscow.
CONSTERNATION
China watched with alarm as Putin swiftly backed President Bush's war on terror, voiced little objection to the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and edged closer to NATO, diplomats and analysts said. But Beijing too has cozied up to Washington. In October Jiang followed in Putin's footsteps by becoming one of the few world leaders to enjoy a visit to Bush's Texas ranch.
"In the past we've seen Moscow and Beijing reach a convergence of views on things they don't like about what the U.S. is doing. That's likely to continue despite the warming of relations with both Moscow and Beijing with Washington," said Robert Karniol of Jane's Defense Weekly.
"I don't see that they (the Russians) have downgraded the relationship. They have, rather, upgraded the relationship with the U.S. It's not a zero-sum game," he said.
For its part, Beijing will seek to assure Moscow that China's rise as a booming economic and strategic power poses no real threat, and stress the need to increase still relatively modest trade despite their huge common border.
"A 'China threat' in Russia I think really worries China, and we hope the Russian government could make clear they will not regard China as a threat, even just potentially," said Peking University international security expert Zhu Feng.
"That's why China's trying to develop a very reliable, credible relationship with Russia," he said.
China notched up a record $10.67 billion in trade last year with Russia, its eighth biggest partner -- a figure both sides expect to grow this year but still a fraction of its trade with top partners Japan and the United States.
Both sides also will stress the need to strengthen cooperation on counter terrorism in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also includes four Central Asian republics.
Putin, criticized in the West on human rights, will hear only sympathy in China, which also says it faces a domestic threat from Muslim separatist groups.
In an interview with the official Xinhua news agency ahead of the visit, Putin thanked China for its solidarity over the Moscow theater siege in October. Nearly 130 hostages out of more than 800 died when Russian forces stormed the theater to end a stand-off with armed Chechen rebels.
Putin and China's leaders also were to discuss North Korea, but analysts doubt they can rein in their unpredictable neighbor, holding little sway over Pyongyang despite being among its few allies.
Possible U.S. military action against Iraq, should it fail to comply with arms inspections, will also feature. Russia and China, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, stress the role of the United Nations in approving any attack.
-------- britain
British considered A-bombing Nazis
By Chris Hastings and Fiona Govan
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
December 1, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021201-73703439.htm
LONDON - Britain considered using the atom bomb against Germany in retaliation for Hitler's deployment of V2 rockets against London, according to newly declassified documents.
The diaries of Guy Liddell, the head of the espionage "B" Branch of MI5 between 1939-1945, reveal that concern about the Nazis' V2 program was so great that the possibility of using the nuclear bomb as a deterrent was discussed with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
It was even suggested that Churchill would raise the idea of using the bomb, which had been in development in the United States since 1942, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The proposal was discussed in August 1944, when British agents were reporting that Hitler was poised to launch the supersonic V2 rockets, armed with 2,000-pound warheads, at London.
Britain had no effective countermeasures against the 46-foot-long rocket-propelled V2s, and because they traveled faster than the speed of sound, they detonated without warning.
An alarmed Mr. Liddell asked Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, if a nuclear threat could be used against Hitler. Mr. Liddell and Mr. Menzies - referred to as "C" - were among the few people in Britain who knew that the Allies were developing an atomic weapon.
"I saw 'C' 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 V2," Mr. Liddell recorded in his diary. "He felt that there was nothing to be lost and said that he would put the suggestion to the [prime minister], who might take it up on his visit to Roosevelt, which is to take place early next month. On the other hand, he might decide to act more quickly."
Less than two weeks later, on Sept. 7, 1944, Hitler began Operation Penguin, raining hundreds of V2 rockets down on Britain. During the seven months leading up to the end of the war in Europe, more than 3,000 were launched, killing 2,274 persons in London alone.
The documents do not record the result of Mr. Menzie's discussion with Churchill; however, the suggestion came at a time when Britain was already engaged in a campaign of destruction - "area bombing" - against German cities. The campaign was so devastating that some German historians now argue that Churchill should be seen as a war criminal.
Churchill also stoutly defended the Americans' use of the atom bomb against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, supporting its deployment on military, political and moral grounds. On Aug. 10, the day after the Nagasaki bombing, Churchill argued that the horrific death toll was militarily justified if it helped to bring the war to an early close. He also reportedly complained to a friend that the Americans had failed to make sufficient political use of their new-found power, saying he would have threatened Russia with the device to make Stalin "behave reasonably and decently in Europe."
Andrew Roberts, a military historian, agreed that Mr. Liddell's suggestion would have been taken seriously due to the scale of the threat posed to Britain by the V2.
"I think the way contemporaries felt about the V2 was not that different from the way they felt about nuclear weapons: the V2 rocket was Hitler's deadliest weapon," he said.
He said that if the Allies had had the nuclear bomb a year earlier, "the war in Europe would have ended there and then."
The Manhattan Project - established in 1942 in response to warnings that the Nazis were trying to develop a nuclear weapon - was far from complete.
The first successful test of an atomic device would not take place until almost a year later at Los Alamos, N.M., on July 16, 1945 - after the war in Europe had ended.
The first use of the atom bomb was at Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, when 200,000 Japanese were killed. A second bomb of a different type was exploded above Nagasaki on Aug. 9. Five days later the Japanese surrendered.
-------- inspections
U.N. Team Inspects Idle Iraqi Air Field
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
Dec 1, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WEAPONS_INSPECTORS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Weapons inspectors have hit a so-called sensitive site today. (Audio)
KHAN BANI SA'AD, Iraq (AP) - International weapons monitors inspected an idle air field north of Baghdad Sunday, apparently searching for devices that can spray deadly microbes from the air.
The current inspectors predecessors in the 1990s learned that the Iraqis - apparently from this airfield at Khan Bani Sa'ad, 20 miles northeast of Baghdad - successfully tested the so-called Zubaidy device, using it to disperse toxic bacteria from a helicopter.
More than a dozen helicopters, stripped of their motors, sat on the disused tarmac Sunday as U.N. inspectors checked the grounds. Journalists observed from beyond a distant fence. The inspectors, who also are hunting for signs of chemical and biological agents, seemed interested in holding tanks that could have been used for aviation fuel.
As usual, the U.N. teams said nothing publicly about the day's mission.
It was the fourth day of renewed inspections, after a four-year break, under a U.N. Security Council mandate for Iraq to finally give up any remaining weapons of mass destruction or face "serious consequences." The United States supported the new U.N. inspections, but threatens war to disarm Iraq and says it will act alone if it believes that is necessary.
U.N. inspections in the 1990s, after the Gulf War, led to the destruction of many tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and the equipment to make them and dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear bomb program.
That inspection regime collapsed in 1988 amid disputes over access to sites and Iraqi complaints that U.S. spies were among the U.N. inspectors.
Those inspectors believed they never found all Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In their final report, for instance, they said at least 12 of the Zubaidy devices were built to disperse toxic bacteria, but none were destroyed.
"The final, tested devices were unaccounted for," they noted.
The new inspectors thus far have reported satisfactory cooperation from the Iraqis, in contrast with the confrontations that often accompanied the inspections of the 1990s.
The U.N. teams must report by late January on their progress in locating and destroying any Iraqi weapons forbidden under U.N. resolutions.
If they report full Iraqi cooperation, U.N. resolutions call for the Security Council to consider lifting economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. If they report Iraqi resistance, the council may debate military action to disarm Iraq.
The inspection convoys have been pursued by dozens of cars carrying international journalists each day, creating dangerous traffic situations at times. At one point Sunday morning, the U.N. inspectors pulled to the side of an expressway to complain journalists were tailgating, shutting down the expressway for 10 minutes.
In their first field missions, the U.N. teams mostly have been revisiting sites with well-known involvement in Iraq's past weapons programs. The Iraqis managing such sites no doubt know they could be subject to unannounced visits, but the exact timing may come as a surprise.
In the 1990s, Iraq declared some facilities to be "sensitive sites." Under informal agreements with U.N. officials, notice was given of inspections at such sites and the number of inspectors was limited.
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.
----
U.N. Team Searches 'Sensitive' Site in Iraq
Easy Access Given To Base, Factories
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58219-2002Nov30?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 30 -- In the 1990s, the Iraqi government classified an army post housing the Balad Chemical Defense Battalion as a "sensitive" site, a designation that required advance notice and other formalities from U.N. arms inspectors if they wanted to pay a visit, effectively preventing them from conducting a surprise search.
This morning, however, a group of inspectors drove up to the site north of Baghdad armed with a new U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Iraqi officials to allow international arms experts to visit any facility they want.
As the U.N. experts arrived in a cloud of dust on the third day of renewed inspections, there was some shouting and scurrying among the guards, who did not appear to be expecting a visit. But in a key test of Iraq's compliance with the new resolution, gates that once would have remained closed were pulled open within minutes.
A spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which is conducting the inspections in conjunction with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the experts were interested in the base because the Iraqi military has said it trains troops there to defend against chemical, biological and nuclear attacks.
The spokesman, Hiro Ueki, said the inspectors sought to "determine what were the activities of the site since 1998," when U.N. arms experts last were in Iraq. Ueki said the inspectors wanted "to see if any evidence of chemical weapons agents or biological weapons agents were present and to see if there was any new equipment."
The inspectors spent about five hours at the site, ordering what appeared to be large ordnance crates to be pried open and requesting to look inside storage sheds. They also toted small, hand-held detectors, although it was not clear what the devices were testing.
The base, located about 55 miles northwest of Baghdad, is home to a battalion that reports to the military's Chemical Corps Directorate.
Karim Mohsen Alwan, a senior Iraqi military official who accompanied the U.N. team, said the inspectors "found nothing." Ueki would not comment on the inspectors' findings at the site.
The inspectors have said they will not publicly discuss their conclusions before reporting to their superiors in New York and Vienna, who in turn must report to the Security Council. The U.N. commission and the IAEA are required to provide an update of their work to the Security Council in late January.
In the 1990s, Iraq declared some facilities to be "sensitive" sites, requiring the United Nations to provide the government with advance notice of inspections and to limit the number of inspectors who could enter. The new resolution, passed unanimously this month, demands that inspectors be given "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access" to all sites.
Inspectors from the IAEA visited two industrial plants south of Baghdad, which have been used by the military. The first was the Umm al-Maarik Co., known in English as the Public Company of the Mother of All Battles, the Iraqi term for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The company is run by the government's Military Industrialization Commission. Plant officials say it produces light machinery, including spare parts for vehicles.
The second was the al-Milad Co., a facility previously known as al-Furat, which played a key role in Iraq's nuclear weapons program and was intensively investigated by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. Iraqi officials contend that the complex now is used only for civilian purposes.
Before the Gulf War, researchers at al-Furat worked on developing centrifuges that could be used in the production of weapons-grade uranium. Recent satellite images indicate that a building planned years ago to house the centrifuges was completed after the inspectors left in 1998.
The director of the Umm al-Maarik Co., Hussein Hamoudi, said he was informed by the government that the inspectors would be visiting about an hour before they arrived. Ueki said the IAEA inspection leader told Iraqi officials on Friday night that inspectors would drop by the site to remove video surveillance equipment installed in the 1990s.
U.N. inspectors first arrived in Iraq in 1991, shortly after the Gulf War ended. They destroyed tons of chemical and biological weapons and have been credited with dismantling the country's nuclear weapons program. But the monitoring ended in 1998 because of disputes over the inspectors' access to sites and Iraqi objections that the United States used some inspectors as spies.
----
HUNT FOR WEAPONS
Pattern of Iraqi Cooperation Shifts as a Plant Is Searched
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/international/middleeast/01INSP.html
AL YUSUFIYAH, Iraq, Nov. 30 - After the first three days of international weapons inspections, Iraqi officials at suspect sites have already established a pattern sharply different from the hostility that prevailed during inspections from 1991 to 1998. They have been cooperative, have smiled a lot and have been genial, mostly, to reporters who have followed the United Nations inspection teams to the 11 sites visited so far.
But the pattern broke down today, at least as far as the smiles and the geniality were concerned, when the inspectors arrived in a drizzling rain at Al Furat, an industrial plant outside this town about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The Iraqi military officer who is the plant's director general, Brig. Samir Ibrahim Abbas, expressed some irritation about the inspectors interfering with the plant's work, and had much harsher words for the United States, which has identified the plant as one where Iraq appears to have been preparing to resume work on developing nuclear weapons.
Last month, after President Bush issued one of his bluntest warnings of American military action if President Saddam Hussein persists in secret efforts to acquire banned weapons, the White House circulated satellite photographs of Al Furat with an arrow pointing to one of the sprawling buildings on the site.
A notation said new construction on the building appeared to signify an effort to revive the plant's past efforts - admitted by Iraq in the mid-1990's - to develop gas centrifuges required for enriching uranium, one of the steps it would have to take to build a nuclear arsenal.
Standing in that building today, Brigadier Abbas said that there had been no construction work of any kind on the site since 1990 and that the bare concrete walls bristling with steel reinforcing rods that rise 20 feet or more above the building's second story were an integral part of the original construction, dating to 1988. If the walls looked like a new addition, he said, it was only because nobody had ever painted them.
"We want people to know that all that has been said about this place by the Americans is a lie," Brigadier Abbas said. Asked why the Central Intelligence Agency would want to foster the impression that Al Furat was planning to get back into the nuclear weapons business, he replied, "Because they are very intelligent and they want to fake a story."
Why would they do that? Because the United States wanted to find a pretext for going to war with Iraq? he was asked. "Probably," he said, and walked off.
On the first day of the new inspections, on Wednesday, again on Thursday, and once more today, after a break for the Muslim day of prayer on Friday, the Iraqis have been punctilious in meeting the central requirement set in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, passed unanimously by the 15-member Council earlier this month: that Iraq give "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access" to all suspected weapons sites.
At Al Furat today, at an associated plant nearby operated by a company called Umm al-Maarek and at a military unit said by the Iraqis to be specializing in defense against chemical weapons at Balad, 55 miles north of Baghdad, the gates swung open as soon as the inspectors' motorcades arrived.
After every inspection, United Nations officials in Baghdad have noted the cooperation extended to the inspectors by the Iraqis.
Mostly, the inspections have been inside news, as if there were no issue of war and peace hanging by the outcome. But Mr. Hussein's government has not missed the opportunity to make a propaganda point or two, mainly on the failure, so far, of the inspections to show any obvious breaches of Iraq's repeated avowal that it has no weapons of mass destruction left.
The inspectors have studiously avoided any general conclusions from their work so far, saying that it will take time, and more visits, before they can begin to work out the "mosaic" that will indicate whether Iraq is telling the truth, or once more trying to conceal banned weapons programs, as it did in the 1990's. But so far, visits to two sites have given the Iraqis an opening to mock some of the allegations that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain made as they pressed Council members to adopt the tough new inspections mandate.
The absence of any obvious "smoking gun" at either plant prompted the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to publish a triumphant new blast in all the newspapers here on Friday, referring to "the spuriousness of the allegations and lies" in a British report about the sites.
--------
Inspectors: No Iraq Atomic Evidence Yet
December 1, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
LONDON (Reuters) - U.N. inspectors combing Iraq for weapons of mass destruction have yet to find any incriminating evidence on nuclear arms, but are ``far from reaching a conclusion,'' the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Sunday.
Asked in an interview with BBC television if he had found anything incriminating in the nuclear area, the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei answered: ``No.''
ElBaradei, speaking from Vienna where the agency is based and after recently returning from Iraq, said inspections were going well and Iraqi leader President Saddam Hussein was cooperating, but it was still early days.
``We are off to a good start but we are far from being able to reach a conclusion,'' ElBaradei said, adding that inspectors would like to take their time completing their work.
``We are not keen to rush to a conclusion ... I hope the world will bear with us,'' he said.
Under a U.N. resolution, Saddam must give up any weapons of mass destruction or face ``serious consequences'' and he must give the U.N. inspection team, led by Hans Blix, unfettered access to all sites. The inspections began on November 27.
As well searching for nuclear weapons, the inspectors are also looking for chemical and biological arms. Iraq denies it has such weapons of mass destruction and has pledged full cooperation with inspectors.
Blix told Spain's El Pais newspaper on Sunday: ``There have been no impediments. We didn't expect any. That is pleasing.''
Speaking to the paper in New York, he added: ``The inspectors have taken samples, but we are not going to draw conclusions for now. The fact that these sites were empty does not mean they have not hidden material in other installations.''
ElBaradei said it would ultimately be up to the inspectors to decide the veracity of any statement by Saddam on weapons. Saddam must give a full statement of his weapons program to the United Nations by December 8.
``At the end of the day, we are the ones who have to do the inspection and discover if there are discrepancies,'' ElBaradei said, although he added that the weapons team would also consult with U.N. member states on Saddam's declaration.
``There is a light at the end of the tunnel for Iraq if it cooperates fully,'' he said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Kenya Says Middle East Crisis Puts Africa at Risk
Reuters
Sunday, December 1, 2002
By Manoah Esipisu and Fiona O'Brien
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59656-2002Dec1?language=printer
MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenya said Sunday it was at risk of attack as long as the Middle East was in crisis and the United States told its citizens in east Africa they too could be targets after the attacks on Israelis in Mombasa.
Kenyan police said they had found two fragments of the bomb which killed 16 people at an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa last week. Witnesses said the fragments were taken away by Israeli bomb experts.
The most influential politician in Kenya's Indian Ocean region, Shariff Nassir, expressed concern that political violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had spilled over into Kenya.
"What is going on now is that Palestinians can't fight against Israelis in Israel. They have to fight outside. Wherever they go, they have found out that in Kenya, it is the easiest way to come in," the government minister told Reuters.
"For as long as they do not resolve the question, the attacks won't stop. People who strap themselves with bombs and are ready to sacrifice their lives are dangerous. They are prepared to go to dangerous heights," he added.
U.S. officials have said the top suspect for the blast is the Somali-based group Al-Itihad al-Islamiya, which they said had links with al Qaeda, target of President Bush's war on terror after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington last year.
Kenyan police say they have so far found no link between 12 people held over the attacks on the hotel, and the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
"We have no knowledge on any links yet (to Al-Itihad)," William Langat, the Kenyan police officer heading the investigation into the attacks, said Sunday.
The interim government in lawless Somalia has called for the dismantling of "terror groups" throughout east Africa, but has downplayed the likelihood of any link between Al-Itihad and the attacks in Kenya.
Al Qaeda is widely accused of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people died, most of them Africans.
U.S. WARNING
Washington Saturday warned of possible heightened risks to Americans in Kenya, and said it had received information that similar attacks might also occur in the tiny nation of Djibouti, which borders Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
"Due to the preponderance of threat information, the department believes it prudent to share this information with American citizens so they can make an informed decision in deciding whether to travel to or remain in east Africa," the State Department said in a statement.
The Pentagon is establishing a command center in Djibouti as it increases the number of U.S. troops in the Horn of Africa to 1,200 from 800 to hunt down militant groups.
Many are Marines or elite Special Operations troops and are stationed in Djibouti or on ships in the Red Sea.
Police have detained six Pakistanis and four Somalis who were arrested for entering Kenya illegally and only later came under suspicion by those investigating the attacks.
Two other detainees, American Alicia Kalhammer and her Spanish husband Jose Tena, were released Saturday after questioning, saying they had no connection with the attacks.
Kenyan police said Sunday that two pieces of metal were found in the charred remains of the hotel. One of the pieces had four numbers on it which could be used to identify the cylinder, they said.
"These are parts of a welded gas cylinder. Of course, it is part of the bomb," Kenyan investigator Charles Juma told reporters at the site of the bombing.
Three suicide bombers rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel Thursday and blew it up, killing themselves and 13 other people, three of them Israelis. Minutes earlier missiles nearly hit an Israeli airliner carrying 261 people taking off nearby.
SOMALIA CONDEMNS ATTACKS
An official of Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG) said Saturday that Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah condemned the attacks "in the strongest terms."
"The government feels it is time to work together as a region and international community to dismantle terror groups wherever they are," the official quoted Farah as saying.
The TNG denies charges by some of its Somali warlord opponents and by the government of neighboring Ethiopia that it harbors Al-Itihad members suspected of involvement in violence.
The previously unheard of "Army of Palestine" has claimed responsibility for Thursday's attacks in a faxed statement via a Lebanese media organization. There has been no confirmation.
----
After Blast, Kenya Reviews Qaeda's Trail in East Africa
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By MARC LACEY with BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/international/africa/01KENY.html
MOMBASA, Kenya, Nov. 30 - As investigators struggled to determine who was behind the attacks on Israeli targets here on Thursday, they are re-examining evidence that East Africa has served as both a useful base and a target for Osama bin Laden's terror network for nearly a decade.
"We are aware that Kenya has been bombed before by Al Qaeda and we don't want to rule them out," Julius Sunkuli, Kenya's internal security minister, said today. Mr. Sunkuli, with Israeli and American help, is coordinating the investigation of the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel and the failed missile attack on an Israeli airliner. The hotel attack killed 10 Kenyans and 3 Israelis, along with 3 suicide bombers.
But while Al Qaeda remains a strong suspect in the case, the Kenyan police reported few leads. Today, the police released 2 of the 12 people who had been held for questioning - an American woman and her Spanish husband who had hastily checked out of a nearby hotel after the bombing. Officials said the two were apparently leaving because they were frightened and were not suspected of involvement.
The other 10 people still undergoing interrogation are 6 Pakistanis and 4 Somalis, none of whom have been confirmed to have connections to Al Qaeda, officials said. The men had been detained several days before the attacks, for illegally entering Mombasa's port on a small boat.
Kenyan investigators called on the public again today to report any suspicious behavior. But the record of recent years suggests the difficulties they may have in cracking the case.
American intelligence officials have said that suspects include Al Qaeda and Al Itihaad al Islamiya, a Somali terrorist group believed to have links to Al Qaeda. Evidence of Al Qaeda's operations in Africa emerged even before the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But rooting out the terrorist network has proven especially challenging for intelligence agencies around the world.
Most of the suspected Qaeda operatives arrested by the Kenyan police after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were later released. In one instance, the police announced the capture of a senior aide to Mr. bin Laden, only to say later that they had mistakenly taken in a man with a similar name.
"To my knowledge there were a number of arrests but nothing ever stuck," said a United States official who has monitored the Kenyan investigations of Al Qaeda.
American officials have had similar difficulties in tracking the organization in Africa, where porous borders and the easy availability of fraudulent passports make it easy for people to move around unnoticed and to bring weapons along for the ride.
"We have always been very concerned about the susceptibility that Africa offers to terrorist organizations," a senior United States official said today in a telephone interview from Washington. "These countries have huge borders, long coastlines and populations in some areas that could be hospitable to terrorists."
Difficulties have also been encountered in Tanzania and Uganda, where the local police rounded up scores of suspected Qaeda members after Sept. 11 but never established definitive ties to the terrorist organization.
Several months after the attacks in the United States, Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, said, "The Americans recently captured some documents" highlighting a possible Uganda link to Al Qaeda.
"They discovered that Uganda was targeted for `liberation' " by Mr. bin Laden's network, Mr. Museveni said.
Despite the difficulty in tracking Qaeda operatives in Africa, it is known that Mr. bin Laden once lived in Sudan, which borders on Kenya. According to evidence from the trial in New York last year of four men charged with conspiracy in the bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi, Mr. bin Laden sent some of his men to Kenya in 1993 to scout out bombing targets, including not only the American Embassy but also unspecified Israeli interests.
Evidence introduced in the trial also indicates that Al Qaeda has operated in the Kenyan capital since at least 1993, and in Mombasa since 1994.
In Kenya, American investigators have said, Al Qaeda established safe houses for its members and others who were passing through. It used small businesses and relief organizations to subsidize and conceal its activities, and it made the country a jumping-off point for operations in other countries in the region.
For example, American officials said, a letter the authorities in Nairobi seized in 1997 that was written by a member of the Kenya cell warned that the Americans knew that Mr. bin Laden's operatives in Kenya had helped to train the fighters who attacked American troops in Somalia in 1993, an assault in which 18 American soldiers died.
"They know that since Kenya was the main gateway for those members, there must be a center in Kenya," the letter said. The letter was found at the home in Nairobi belonging to Wadih El-Hage, who American investigators said had served as Mr. bin Laden's personal secretary and then moved to Kenya in 1994 to help run the Kenya cell.
Mr. El-Hage and other senior aides to Mr. bin Laden took an active role in the Kenya base, American officials said. In 1993, for example, Khalid al-Fawwaz, who would later become a spokesman for Mr. bin Laden in Britain, started a business in Nairobi called Asma Limited.
In 1994, Mr. El-Hage established another business there, called Tanzanite King, and a relief organization, called Help Africa People.
Those businesses and organizations, American officials said, allowed Al Qaeda to generate money for terrorism, and to cloak its activities behind seemingly legitimate fronts.
Eventually, Mr. Fawwaz transferred the Nairobi-based Asma Limited to the name of one of Mr. bin Laden's military commanders, Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, according to court documents.
In August 1994, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, a Jordanian member of Al Qaeda who had been trained in the camps in Afghanistan, arrived in Mombasa, records from the embassy bombings trial indicate. Mr. Odeh later told the authorities after his arrest in late 1998 that he liked Kenya because it was a quiet country, and that he wanted to settle down in the Muslim area of Mombasa.
That same year, according to court records, another of Mr. bin Laden's military commanders, Muhammad Atef, who would later be killed in the bombing in Afghanistan, visited Mr. Odeh in Mombasa and gave him a fiberglass boat to start a wholesale fishing business for Al Qaeda. Under the arrangement, Mr. Odeh could take whatever money he needed to live, and would give the rest to Al Qaeda.
Some United States authorities expressed doubt before the embassy bombings that Al Qaeda would also use Kenya as a target because its members lived there. But as early as 1993 and 1994, Mr. bin Laden had sent a top aide, Ali M. Mohamed, on a reconnaissance mission to Nairobi, to scout out bombing targets, according to evidence presented at the bombings trial. The targets included the United States Embassy, as well as British, French and Israeli sites.
In 1997, according to court documents, Mr. El-Hage carried a message from Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan back to Kenya, to activate the Kenyan cell. On Aug. 7, 1998, Qaeda operatives blew up the American Embassy in Nairobi, killing more than 200 people, including 12 Americans, and wounding thousands. Mr. El-Hage and Mr. Odeh were two of the four men convicted in 2001 in the embassy bombings conspiracy case. Both are serving life sentences in prison.
Despite two major attacks in the past four years with possible ties to Al Qaeda, many Kenyans still find it difficult to believe that terrorists may be operating in their midst.
"I don't think there is an Al Qaeda cell based here or that we have the kind of fanaticism that Al Qaeda relies on," said Nayib Ballala, a Muslim who served as mayor of Mombasa and is now a candidate for the city's parliamentary seat.
"These are people who have a mission and they came into Kenya - twice now - to carry out that mission."
U.S. Warning on Djibouti
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (AP) - The State Department today warned Americans in the East African nation of Djibouti, where American troops are posted, that terrorists may be planning attacks similar to the ones on Thursday in Kenya.
The government had not confirmed the credibility of information concerning the threats, which also were thought to cover other countries in the region, according to a State Department statement.
-------- australia
Australia ready to strike abroad
BBC
Sunday, 1 December, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2532443.stm
Australia's prime minister has said he is ready to launch pre-emptive action against terrorists in neighbouring Asian countries.
John Howard's remarks caused outrage among governments in the region.
He told Australian television that international law was no longer adequate to confront the threats to national security.
International law has to catch up with the new reality, John Howard
Australia should now be allowed to strike first at terrorist targets, he said.
Mr Howard's comments come as Australia beefs up its security measures, following a terrorist attack in Bali in October which claimed up to 90 Australian lives.
Powerful military
Asked whether he would be prepared to act if he knew terrorists were planning to attack Australia, Mr Howard said: "Yes, I think any Australian prime minister would."
Refugees following Australian peacekeeping soldier Australia used its military might in East Timor Australia has one of the most powerful military machines in the Asia-Pacific region, including a modern air force and highly regarded special forces, says the BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney.
Mr Howard said he would have no hesitation in using these resources in neighbouring countries to eliminate suspected terrorist targets.
The Australian leader also wants the United Nations charter to be amended to allow member countries to strike first if they believe an attack is imminent.
States cannot flout international law and norms willy-nilly
Marti Natalegawa, Indonesia spokesman He said the existing document was drawn up when conflicts were defined in terms of one nation attacking another nation - and was now out-of-date.
"What you're getting is non-state terrorism which is just as devastating and potentially even more so."
Attack warnings
In the past few weeks, the Australian government has issued a number of warnings that an attack on Australian soil is likely in the coming months.
The country's sense of security was shattered on 12 October, when powerful bomb blasts blamed on suspected Islamic extremists tore through beach bars on Indonesia's resort island of Bali.
Tourists lay bouquets of flowers at the blast site in Bali The Bali blast shattered Australia's notions of security Up to 90 of the 185 people killed were Australian, and the attack has been dubbed Australia's September 11.
Since then the country has been on a high state of alert, boosting security overseas and warning of further attacks.
Last week Australia closed its mission in the Philippines, citing a specific and credible terror threat.
Asian anger
Mr Howard's comments have sparked outrage from governments across Asia.
Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marti Natalegawa said Australia did not have the right to launch military strikes in other countries. "States cannot flout international law and norms willy-nilly," he said.
Thai Government spokesman Ratthakit Manathat said: "Nobody does anything like this. Each country has its own sovereignty that must be protected."
And Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said Mr Howard's comments were "not wise", and did not "follow ... the doctrine of peacekeeping and sovereignty."
-------- biological weapons
Officials Work to Meet Deadline for Smallpox Vaccinations
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/nyregion/01POX.html
New York City health officials are finishing proposals for giving smallpox vaccinations as a federal deadline for its plan approaches.
Earlier this year, states and some large cities received federal grants for bioterrorism-preparedness programs; they are to submit plans by Dec. 9 for dealing with any threat from smallpox. At the same time, the Bush administration has struggled to decide who should have access to the vaccine for smallpox, which was declared eradicated globally in 1980.
Some federal officials favor a blanket approach, in which the vaccine would be available to everyone, while others have suggested a staggered approach, in which health care workers and others most likely to be on the front lines of fighting a potential outbreak would be inoculated first.
Mr. Bush is widely expected to offer the vaccine to some members of the military and about 500,000 health care workers, but the issue of whether to offer it to ordinary Americans as a precaution is unresolved.
Bush administration officials said a few days ago that the president was nearing a decision and that it appeared likely that he would announce at least parts of the federal policy this month. That could occur as early as this week, according to city officials.
Tomorrow, New York health officials will submit a plan for responding to a smallpox outbreak, said the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. The plan will include guidelines for health officials and for hospitals with any patient suspected of having smallpox. It will also include instructions for how to isolate those infected, how to investigate the source of infection and how to deal with laboratory specimens.
The Health Department plans to meet the Dec. 9 deadline for submitting its inoculation program.
"We continue to await an announcement from the federal government of what they will be recommending in detail," Dr. Frieden said, "but some of the broad outlines are clear."
One plan calls for the city to inoculate medical workers first, because they would treat smallpox patients, an official said. What remains to be determined is how many police officers and emergency medical technicians will be in that pool.
It has not been determined whether the vaccine will be available to the general public, but officials said it appeared unlikely that it would be included in the first wave.
The decision about whom to vaccinate is complicated by the small amount of the government's stockpile of the vaccine that is licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, which typically licenses any vaccine to be made available to the general public. In addition, the vaccine is not without health risks. It is potentially fatal, and is not recommended for pregnant women, eczema sufferers or people with suppressed immune systems, like those who are H.I.V. positive or receiving chemotherapy. And because it is a live vaccine, it is also not recommended for family members of people with those conditions, Dr. Frieden added.
"It's really a sad testimony to the world that we live in that here in the 21st century we are contemplating the reintroduction of smallpox as a bioterror weapon," Dr. Frieden said.
-------- business
US Plant gears up for wartime production
AP
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=29937329
MCALESTER: At a compound the size of the District of Columbia, workers at the government's primary bomb-making facility are working at a stepped-up pace to produce the more than 100 types of explosives used by the military.
As tension between the United States and Iraq has increased, the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant has been hiring more workers and is foregoing its usual two-week Christmas break in production and beginning a swing shift schedule it hasn't used full time since the Vietnam War.
Workers at the plant in rural southeastern Oklahoma pack bomb casings with explosive powders, making, as they put it, the part that goes "boom."
On Air Force bases and naval destroyer ships, some of the bombs will be fitted with a guidance system, known as a Joint Direct Attack Munition kit, made by Boeing in St. Charles, Missouri.
The 900-kilogram bombs fitted with JDAM kits have been a favorite US weapon in the war in Afghanistan. They are highly accurate and can be released from war planes at a great distance, affording more safety for pilots.
"With the JDAM kit they're using more of them than we thought they would," said Army Col. Jyuji Hewitt, the McAlester plant commander.
The plant is now replenishing its stock supply to make up for shipments to the armed forces. At the height of a conflict, it must be able to send 400 20-foot-long containers of bombs to the military every day for a month.
----
Pentagon's Urgent Search for Speed
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/business/yourmoney/01BUIL.html
WESTMINSTER, Md. -- In soldier slang, the interval between a gun's recoil and the shell's explosion is known as "flash-to-bang time." In combat, the shorter it is, the better.
With war looming in Iraq, the term has taken on broader significance - in both the business of war and the business of supplying warriors. Everyone wants shorter flash-to-bang - from the moment a target is spotted to the moment it is destroyed, from the moment a march is ordered to the moment troops arrive, from the moment of invention to the moment of production and delivery.
That is why, here in the rural hills of Maryland, at a robotics laboratory owned by General Dynamics, the engineers boast that their new driverless vehicles, little armored off-road trucks bulging with lenses and antennae, can maneuver through the woods and fields at a snappy 15 or 20 miles an hour (10 at night).
And that is why General Dynamics, after just two years working on the vehicles, is ready to brief the brass on how robotic vehicles like this could transform combat units. The company says the firepower of a full infantry battalion could be packed into a unit of about one-third the people: 270 soldiers equipped with 140 robots.
The same quick tempo can be seen across the military industrial complex. Faster-moving infantry, smarter bombs, newer satellites, pilotless vehicles - are all being propelled by a wartime sense of urgency in what is sure to be a costly quest for speed. The average time between finding a target and hitting it dropped to 15 minutes in Afghanistan a year ago from 45 minutes in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. And the Pentagon is pushing to trim that even more.
At Boeing, thousands of kits are being produced each month to turn unguided bombs into the satellite-guided smart bombs that were used more widely in Afghanistan than in any previous war. Pentagon leaders have promised that if there is war in Iraq, there will be plenty of smart bombs.
Before a satellite can guide a bomb to target, the satellite must carry target information among soldiers, pilots and commanders. With today's satellites swamped by a growing demand, manufacturers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin are eagerly awaiting the order to move ahead with a next-generation satellite, using lasers for the first time to communicate in outer space.
The lessons of Afghanistan, as well as the pressing possibility of war against Iraq, are speeding production of remote-controlled aircraft like the Predator, which the military uses to track targets and the C.I.A. has used to kill people identified as Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Yemen. This year, Congress is allowing $131 million to buy 22 more Predators, made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. And $129 million more is to be spent on three of the Predator's much larger, more capable and more expensive cousin, the Global Hawk surveillance drone, made by Northrop Grumman. Global Hawk was rushed into service in Afghanistan, and its capabilities are still being upgraded with new sensors. (The price of a souped-up model would be about twice as much.)
"Speed is helpful if you know what you're looking at and can identify in near real time what your targets are," said Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for policy, in a recent briefing on the military's spending priorities. "You say, `Gee, if I can get that kind of real-time information, speed then is worth having.' " But, he stressed, "speed's expensive."
With American troops still engaged in Afghanistan and getting ready for a possible war against Iraq, and with the Bush administration promising a "transformation" of the military, Congress appears willing to pay the price. In recent years, it has increased the military's budget beyond what the president requested, and military spending is now growing at its highest rate in 20 years. With Republicans controlling both chambers, President Bush is sure to get a warm reception for another spending increase in 2004.
David Strauss, who follows the military industry for UBS Warburg, predicts that spending on research, development and procurement will accelerate to 8 or 10 percent annually over the next few years, adjusted for inflation, after real growth of 4 percent annually since 1996. (In the early 1990's, he says, the Pentagon went on a "procurement holiday.")
Of the total military budget of about $370 billion, procurement this year will come to about $71.6 billion, up $10.7 billion from 2002, while spending on research and development will come to $58.6 billion, up $9.9 billion, in the spending bill signed by President Bush on Oct. 23. It sounds like a lot, but in fact the money for procurement is roughly 40 percent less than it was 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. In 1983, during the Reagan military buildup, procurement spending came to $121 billion in today's dollars.
More notable than the spending spree itself, though, is where the money is being focused.
President Bush made the new emphasis clear last December, when he gave a major speech on military transformation. He highlighted three trends that were already becoming evident in the war in Afghanistan: the increasing use of robotic vehicles, the wider use of precisely guided bombs and the reliance on information-sharing networks.
"Our commanders are gaining a real-time picture of the entire battlefield and are able to get targeting information from sensor to shooter almost immediately," he said.
"Every soldier is a sensor," said Scott D. Myers, the president of the robotic systems division at General Dynamics and vice president of its Eagle Enterprises subsidiary, which is bidding on the modernization of equipment for foot soldiers. "And from the time he lases the target until the time the robotic vehicle selects its weapon and fires will be about five seconds."
The Army has been moving in this direction for years.
Late one night in September 2000, 45 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division dropped from the dark skies over Fort Polk, La., for a mock combat drill against other Army troops. They wore an unconventional assortment of night-vision goggles, miniature computers and communications gear, a prototype of what the Army calls its Land Warrior system. The equipment had been cobbled together in just a year, and this was its first test.
The results were good enough that only a year later, similar equipment was delivered to American Special Forces units, which used it in Afghanistan.
It might cost billions of dollars to equip tens of thousands of soldiers with the full array of this gear, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general. But the Army is phasing it in - even as it begins a program to invent an even more elaborate set of tools for foot soldiers.
The competition to design the new combat kit pits General Dynamics, a giant with $14 billion in annual revenue, against a tiny entrepreneurial company, Exponent Inc., which has not been a traditional military contractor. Exponent has enlisted several partners, including Hamilton Sunstrand, a unit of United Technologies, whose expertise in making spacesuits for NASA is a big advantage. Conversely, General Dynamics has turned to its Eagle Enterprise unit, acquired a few years ago, to be the kind of entrepreneur the Army is looking for. Each team has been given $7.5 million to produce conceptual designs and some prototypes, with an April deadline.
The ultimate goal is to reduce the amount of equipment carried by an individual soldier to roughly 50 pounds from more than 100, while greatly increasing the lethality of his weapons. Pentagon budget documents call the program "a leap ahead" and promise that it will achieve "revolutionary capabilities." The Army has projected spending of about $60 million a year for the next several years on research into the program and has projected that the new equipment will be ready for combat use in a half-dozen years or so.
Each soldier will have hand-held computers to control weapons, check maps and view pictures of the surrounding terrain. Individual radios will link the group into a tight team even as they spread out in the darkness; each team will be linked to others and to robots. In a squad of soldiers, one might carry a miniature drone aircraft capable, for instance, of flying around a city block to look for the enemy.
Even combat fatigues will be transformed. Synthetic undergarments will put sensors on the soldier's skin to monitor his physical condition, reporting if he needs medical attention. Several layers of lightweight clothing would include body armor and protection against chemical or biological attack.
With a vest or other garment designed like an electric blanket, a soldier might even be able to run a cord back to one of the robotic vehicles, which would provide a power supply for the many electronic devices each soldier would carry. (New batteries, carried by each soldier, are also being investigated; designed to last for many hours, they would be recharged by the robotic vehicles.)
But there are many kinks in any such futuristic scheme. Congressional committees, while supporting the Pentagon's development of hybrid-electric power for vehicles like the robots the Army wants, have asked for periodic progress reports, citing worries that they might not function well in extreme cold. That would be a problem, for example, for a unit deployed in the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan in the dead of winter, unable to recharge communications batteries or warm up soldiers' uniforms. All the emphasis on seamless communications among troops, ships and planes, and the visions of individual soldiers sending maps and photographs back and forth, or robots sending home streams of videos, have a glaring weakness: there is not enough telecommunications capacity, or bandwidth, on the military's satellites.
"You need a lot of bandwidth to move that kind of data around," said Mr. Cambone at the Pentagon. "Think about whether you would have been able to use your 286 computer to work the Internet as it exists today. You can't do it."
According to Boeing, one satellite maker, that became clear when American forces in Afghanistan found themselves short of enough radio channels even for their more limited tactical communications. To fill the gap, the Navy activated a nine-year-old satellite that had been put in orbit over Africa as a spare. The old satellite added 15 percent more communications capability to the military forces in the region.
The problem has been known for some time. After the military's deployment in Bosnia, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency reported that only a few select headquarters were able to get enough bandwidth for large-scale exchanges of information.
"One thing we've learned," said Lt. Gen. Harry D. Raduege Jr., the director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, "is that with each conflict that we have, we certainly increase the amount of bandwidth that is required for our deployed war fighters."
The need for a new satellite system to carry videoconferences between commanders, let alone the huge amounts of data shared by troops on the ground, became especially evident after Sept. 11, according to a Pentagon document. In response, the Pentagon has proposed a crash program to design and field a new satellite system, known as the Advanced Wideband System, starting this year and with the first launching in 2006.
Unlike previous satellite communications systems, this one would use a new kind of link entirely: one based on laser communications. As a mark of its importance to the technology revolution the Pentagon is seeking, it is being called by a new name: the transformational satellite.
Nobody can say yet how much this will cost. But for a sense of the project's scale, a set of satellites viewed as a temporary solution and known as the Wideband Gapfiller Satellite is being built for $1.3 billion by a team led by Boeing. In a change from past practices, the satellite relies heavily on commercial technology, which will make it available earlier but will leave it more vulnerable to certain kinds of attack, like the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion in space.
Another upgrade of satellites using extremely high frequency, or EHF, signals, known as the Advanced EHF Satellite and set for launching in 2006, is being built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems and TRW Space and Electronics for $2.7 billion.
Air Force officials have said that if the laser technology comes along fast enough, they may decide not to buy the fourth and fifth Advanced EHF satellites, instead moving quickly to the laser-based version. But they will not be ready for that decision until the end of 2004. "Depends a little bit on how much risk has been reduced by that point," said Peter B. Teets, the Air Force under secretary.
MILITARY analysts have already wondered whether all this communications capability is too expensive. Marco A. Caceres, an analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace research firm, warned at an industry conference in January that some satellite systems are already behind schedule, and that there will be pressure on the military to lease capacity from commercial satellites rather than building its own so hastily.
Others, like Loren B. Thompson of the independent Lexington Institute, caution that the Pentagon may commit too much, too soon to technologies that may be overrated on the basis of unusual recent wars - notably the victory over the poorly trained and under-equipped Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
"The incompetence of our adversaries has given us an exaggerated idea of how much progress we have made in transforming our forces," he said.
-------- iraq
Planes Raid Iraqi Oil Plant, Four Killed-Residents
Reuters
Sunday, December 1, 2002
By Huda Majeed Saleh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59538-2002Dec1?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Western warplanes killed four people in a strike on a southern Iraqi oil plant, according to local residents, as U.N. arms experts inspected an agricultural facility and military complexes near Baghdad.
Residents of the southern port city of Basra told Reuters by telephone that the planes, patrolling a southern "no-fly" zone, hit an oil facility in the city at around noon. They said four people died and several others were wounded.
U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said it had no information on the report. "We have nothing on it," Lieutenant Colonel Martin Compton said.
U.S. and British warplanes police two no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq.
"U.S. and British warplanes raided the Southern Oil Company in Basra. Four people were martyred and several others wounded during the raid," one resident, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters by telephone from the port city.
Last Thursday Iraq said that one civilian had died in a strike by Western planes in northern Iraq, and on November 15 it reported seven had died in sorties by U.S. and British aircraft.
On the fourth day of inspections in the hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, a team of U.N. experts drove to an airstrip for small planes used in spraying pesticides on crops at Khan Bani Saad, some 30 km (20 miles) northeast of the Iraqi capital. The facility is run by the Agriculture Ministry.
The experts blocked anyone or anything from entering or leaving it and stopped the Iraqi employee in charge of warehouses from going in with them. Journalists were also stopped from entering the facility.
A second inspection team went to Ibn Firnas military industrial compound at Rashidiya, 20 km (12 miles) northeast of Baghdad. The compound, run by the Military Industrialization Commission (MIS).
After spending around two hours there, the inspectors left and went into a nearby facility, run by the MIS's al-Quds Company.
Ibn Firnas chief Ibrahim Hussein said the facility produces spare parts for fighter jets and helicopters. He denied any links to banned weapons and said his staff cooperated fully with the inspectors.
"We hope that in as much as we cooperated with the inspectors, they would deal with things objectively and professionally to reveal the fact and thus lead to the lifting of the unjust sanctions," Hussein told reporters.
Weapons inspections resumed in Iraq on November 27 after a four-year gap in line with a U.N. resolution passed last month giving Baghdad one last chance to disarm or face war.
Iraq, which denies it has any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, has pledged full cooperation with the inspectors. It has to submit a declaration of any banned weapons by December 8.
"EVIL-DOERS"
An Iraqi official newspaper said on Sunday the inspections would prove Iraq was free of banned weapons but that might not be enough to avert war.
"No one in the world should be surprised if the evil-doers in Washington and London manufactured a new problem or crisis at any day," al-Thawra daily said.
"Their real goal is not to make sure that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, which they know it is, but to look for a pretext for aggression."
It said sites visited last week were alleged by President Bush's administration and the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be involved in weapons of mass destruction weapons. It said the inspectors found nothing.
"But will the Bush administration and Blair government refrain from making allegations and claims? Will they refrain from creating problems? Will they stop from creating new pretexts?" Thawra said.
It also warned that spies could infiltrate the inspections teams to create problems.
On Saturday, the inspectors, from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), examined two Iraqi military industrial plants and an army base.
The UNMOVIC team examined the Iraqi army post near Balad, 75 km (48 miles) north of Baghdad, a site identified by Iraq as "sensitive" -- which in the past only meant limited access for the inspectors.
The site, known as the Chemical Defense Battalion and which reports to a unit of the Ministry of Defense, conducts training activities in the area of chemical, biological and radiological defense for military personnel.
On Sunday, the inspectors were expecting the arrival of the first of several helicopters. The shipment, arriving by aircraft, would include electronic equipment ordered by the inspectors to scan their operations center at Baghdad's former Canal Hotel against possible bugging.
----
U.S. Facing Bigger Bill For Iraq War
Total Cost Could Run As High as $200 Billion
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58312-2002Nov30?language=printer
Within a month of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the first Bush administration launched what became known as "Operation Tin Cup" -- a frenzied round of diplomacy aimed at getting U.S. allies to help pay for war with Iraq. As a result, the bill to American taxpayers for the Persian Gulf War was about $7 billion, a fraction of its cost.
Although it is difficult to predict how much Americans would pay for a new war with Iraq, one fact seems indisputable: It will be many times more than the cost of the last war, if only because other countries are much more reluctant to share the burden.
Informal estimates by congressional staff and Washington think tanks of the costs of an invasion of Iraq and a postwar occupation of the country have been in the range of $100 billion to $200 billion. If the fighting is protracted, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein blows up his country's oil fields, most economists believe the indirect costs of the war could be much greater, reverberating through the U.S. economy for many years.
The 1991 Gulf War led to a brief spike in oil prices and a fall in consumer confidence that helped tip the country into a recession that cost President George H.W. Bush his chances of reelection. Despite the high economic and political stakes, there has been no equivalent of Operation Tin Cup this time around, and the current administration has refused to engage in public debate about the likely costs of a new war.
"If we can plan a war, we should also be planning a way to pay for the war," said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "Last time, we were able to slough the costs off on other countries. This time, we will have to absorb most of these costs ourselves. Someone ought to be asking questions about the impact on the budget."
A White House official, speaking on condition of not being identified, said it would be premature to talk about the costs of a war with Iraq because President Bush has not decided on the use of military force. He added that unofficial estimates of the cost of war had to be weighed against the "potentially incalculable" political, diplomatic and economic costs of permitting Hussein to develop and spread weapons of mass destruction.
Using different methodologies, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and staff for the Democrat minority on the House Budget Committee have concluded that a short, decisive war involving the deployment of 250,000 U.S. troops could cost between $44 billion and $60 billion. This is significantly less than the cost of the 1991 war, which came to nearly $80 billion in 2002 dollars, reflecting the fewer numbers of troops involved. A protracted war, by contrast, could cost upward of $100 billion.
The direct military costs of a new war will likely be less than in 1991 under most scenarios, but the postwar occupation costs will be considerably greater, most experts believe.
In Kuwait, most U.S. troops were able to pack up and go home in a few weeks. In Iraq, a large international military presence will be required for many years to provide security for a post-Hussein government and avert a civil war between ethnic factions, which include Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.
"It's a no-brainer that this is going to cost us more than the last time," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military economist at the Brookings Institution. "In addition to the nominal price tag for the operation, you will need a large stabilization force in there for a number of years. Anything else will not be strategically viable."
Extrapolating from similar peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, O'Hanlon estimates that the United States is likely to initially spend between $15 billion and $20 billion a year for its share of a multinational stabilization force for Iraq. Depending on how long the stabilization force remains in Iraq, the cost to the American taxpayer could be between $50 billion and $100 billion. His calculations are based on an assumption that U.S. allies will pick up two-thirds of the cost of the stabilization force.
Adding the costs of a stabilization force to the costs of an invasion brings the total to between $100 billion and $200 billion. This is in line with an upper-bracket estimate by White House economics adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in September. The White House subsequently distanced the administration from Lindsey's comments, saying they were not based on any official study.
If the war costs between $100 billion and $200 billion, it would still be relatively inexpensive in historical terms. Because of the growth in the U.S. economy, wars are getting cheaper, at least to the American consumer. In a $10 trillion economy, the cost of a second Gulf War would be between 1 percent and 2 percent of the nation's annual gross domestic product, compared with 12 percent for the Vietnam War, 15 percent for the Korean War and 130 percent for World War II.
Measured against a federal budget of about $2 trillion a year, the cost of the war would be proportionately larger: between 5 percent and 10 percent.
"You have to ask yourself where would that money come from," said Spratt, who represents the pay-as-you-go philosophy in Congress. "While the costs of the war are clearly not beyond our means, they are beyond our budget. Remember, this all comes at a time when we are losing control over the budget."
In 1991, U.S. taxpayers paid about 12 percent of the military costs of the Gulf War, with the remainder of the burden being shared among such countries as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany and Japan. This time around, none of these countries is expected to contribute significantly.
Iraq could be expected to assume major responsibility for the long-term costs of its economic reconstruction out of increased oil revenue. But the country has been devastated by two decades of war and economic sanctions, and cannot pay for a U.S.-led invasion and military occupation.
The generosity of the allies was "exhausted" by the first attack on Iraq, said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh who helped raise $16.8 billion from the Saudis to pay for Desert Storm. He added that the Saudi government would find it politically impossible to pick up a substantial portion of the costs of a new Gulf War even if it had the money, because the Saudi public is "now 100 percent against an attack on Iraq."
Freeman says the U.S. government grossly underestimated the costs of the 1991 war by excluding various services provided free by the Saudis. These included the costs of housing and repatriating Kuwaiti refugees, the provision of free fuel, transport and lodging to coalition forces, and a major environmental cleanup. In a future conflict, many of these costs will be borne directly by the United States.
The most uncertain cost of the war, economists agree, is the impact on the broader U.S. economy. Such costs are difficult to quantify. William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, estimates the indirect cost of the 1991 conflict with Iraq at about $500 billion, many times larger than the official military price tag. Depending on what happens in a future conflict, the macroeconomic impact of the war could be between zero and $1 trillion, according to his estimates.
"I was surprised to discover that the nonmilitary costs are likely to be much larger than the military costs," he said.
A recent conference by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies considered three scenarios for a war with Iraq. The benign scenario, the probability of which was estimated at 40 percent to 60 percent, envisaged a decisive victory for allied forces in four to six weeks and no disruption in oil supplies. Under this scenario, oil prices would likely come down in the aftermath of the war, boosting the U.S. economy.
A worst-case scenario (5 percent to 10 percent probability) envisaged fighting for three to six months, massive political unrest in the Middle East, terrorist attacks against the United States and large-scale damage to Iraqi oil facilities.
An intermediate scenario (30 percent to 40 percent probability) included limited damage to oil facilities, major urban warfare and fighting for up to three months. The intermediate and worst-case scenarios would have "serious adverse effects" on the U.S. economy, according to Laurence H. Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Bank governor now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The worst-case scenario would likely lead to a global recession.
Nordhaus said U.S. wars have almost always gone over budget. The Civil War was 13 times more expensive than the worst-case forecast of Abraham Lincoln's treasury secretary. Similarly, in early 1966, the Pentagon underestimated the likely cost of the Vietnam War by about 90 percent.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Tanks Raid Gaza Town, Kill Man, Raze Homes
Reuters
Sunday, December 1, 2002
By Shams Odeh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59229-2002Dec1?language=printer
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli troops and tanks raided a Palestinian-ruled town in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing a local man during clashes and razing the family homes of three militants before leaving, witnesses said.
The incursion on Beit Lahiya came hours after Palestinian witnesses said troops killed a teenager on the nearby border with Israel on Saturday and ended a week in which the Jewish state was jarred by attacks on its citizens at home and abroad.
Israeli military sources confirmed the operation took place in Beit Lahiya, which residents said was encircled by some 30 armored vehicles under cover of darkness and cut off from Gaza City, the bustling conurbation just seven km (three miles) away.
Gunmen crouched in graffiti-covered alleyways, bobbing up to fire at the Israeli forces during the three-hour confrontation. Crowds of unarmed men cheered them on from a safe distance.
Israel has launched frequent incursions into the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank during a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence, with the stated aim of striking "terrorists" behind attacks on Jewish settlements and cross-border shellings.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces seized a leader of a group linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and behind an attack on an Israeli polling booth that killed six people.
The arrest of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander Majid al-Masri near Nablus followed a renewed pledge by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to hunt down those who target Israelis.
The attack by the Brigades, an offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement, on the polling station in the northern Israeli town of Beit Shean was on Thursday, hours after bomb and missile attacks in Kenya left three Israeli tourists and 10 Kenyans dead.
FIGHTERS RALLIED BY MOSQUE LOUDSPEAKERS
As Israeli tanks entered Beit Lahiya near midnight on Saturday, calls from mosque loudspeakers rallied local gunmen to come out and fight, Palestinian witnesses said.
But the Israeli armor, backed by three helicopter gunships overhead, prevailed and the town was soon paralyzed. Hospital officials said a 32-year-old man was dead in a neighborhood which had seen fighting and 11 other locals were wounded.
After troops took over several tall buildings and set up sniper positions, army engineers blew up the family homes of three Islamic militants who had carried out suicide attacks.
Israeli military sources said such demolitions can deter militants from attacking, as they know their kin will suffer.
But one of the buildings razed on Sunday was a three-story apartment complex, home to several families. Dazed residents gazed at the rubble, most barefoot in the dust, some sobbing.
The military sources confirmed forces left the town by 2:30 a.m. (midnight GMT.), and said troops had fired in self-defense.
On Saturday, troops shot dead a Gaza teenager near the Karni border crossing, Palestinian hospital officials said.
An Israeli military source said troops had fired warning shots when a group of Palestinians approached the border fence and that the army was investigating the reported death.
On the diplomatic front, Israel faced a new row with the United Nations over a demand that Israeli troops be punished for killing a U.N. worker during a clash with gunmen last week.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Saturday that a probe into British aid worker Iain Hook's killing in the West Bank city of Jenin was likely to end within the next few days. "Based on the conclusions of the inquiry, the prime minister will begin working on a reply" to the United Nations, he said.
Israel has said a preliminary inquiry showed Hook was killed by mistake, when troops took aim at gunmen shooting from inside the compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). U.N. officials said there were no gunmen inside the building.
MILITANT CAUGHT IN SAFE HOUSE
Palestinian sources said troops caught Masri, Brigades chief in the northern West Bank, and his assistant in a safe house.
An Israeli security source said Masri was on the wanted list for two years over "many terror attacks which he helped recruit for and plan." He also acted as a spokesman for the group and previously served as a Palestinian police officer.
The Brigades claimed responsibility for Thursday's shooting at a Beit Shean polling station, where Israelis were voting to choose the leader of the right-wing Likud party ahead of January 28 general elections. The gunmen were killed in the attack.
Sharon, who was re-elected Likud leader, charged militants with trying to undermine Israeli democracy with attacks at home and abroad. He vowed Israel would hunt down those responsible.
Israel has captured or killed dozens of Palestinian militant leaders it says planned shootings and bombings. Masri's predecessor was arrested nearly nine months ago.
At least 1,687 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the uprising began in September 2000 after peace talks on a Palestinian state foundered.
----
Israel Kills Two in Gaza Raid Before Gunship Attack
Reuters
Sunday, December 1, 2002
By Shahdi al-Kashif
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60684-2002Dec1?language=printer
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed two people in a raid on a Gaza Strip town and wounded four others in a helicopter gunship attack nearby, Palestinian sources said on Sunday.
The helicopter fired two missiles at a car carrying three members of the Islamic Jihad organization between the town of Beit Lahiya and Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, injuring one of them and three bystanders, Palestinian security sources said.
The security sources said the men leapt out of the vehicle as the Apache helicopter struck. The car's driver was wounded in the attack. A Palestinian youth, a police officer and a third bystander were also hurt, the sources said.
Israeli officials had no immediate comment on the helicopter strike, a tactic the military has used in the past to kill militants accused of suicide bombings in a two-year-old Palestinian uprising.
The militant Islamic Jihad group said one of its field commanders, who was in the vehicle, was apparently the target of the attack but was unhurt. It named him as Mukaled Hamid but did not name the other men in the car.
FAMILY HOMES RAZED
Israeli troops earlier killed two people and destroyed a three-story apartment building in a raid on Beit Lahiya to raze family homes of militants, witnesses said.
Residents said 30 armored vehicles, backed by three helicopter gunships, rumbled into the town late on Saturday and cut it off from Gaza City, seven km (four miles) away, before leaving about three hours later.
Hospital officials said a 32-year-old man was shot dead and 20 others were wounded in the town, where gunmen crouched in graffiti-covered alleyways exchanged fire with Israeli forces. Unarmed Palestinians cheered on the gunmen from a distance.
Army engineers blew up the family homes of three Islamic militants, one of them wanted since 1996 for a Tel Aviv bus suicide bombing that killed 20 people. Local residents said two of the men belonged to Hamas and the third to Islamic Jihad.
The body of an elderly Palestinian was found under the rubble of one of the three homes demolished by the Israeli forces, residents said.
"We do everything to make sure that the houses are empty of people, and we take several steps to do it. We call out on loudspeakers, then search within the building to make sure there is no one inside," army spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal said.
"At the end of the search, we call out again to tell any remaining occupants to leave, and only then is the house destroyed. The whole painstaking procedure takes up to two or three hours."
Residents speculated the dead man had not heard the army call over loudspeakers for people to vacate their homes.
Israel has launched frequent incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the uprising, with the stated aim of striking militants behind attacks on Israelis.
At least 1,688 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the revolt began after peace talks stalled.
FATAH TO RESUME TALKS WITH HAMAS
A senior official of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction said the group would resume talks with Hamas in Cairo in about two weeks.
Fatah and Hamas met in the Egyptian capital last month to discuss a possible halt to Hamas suicide bombings in Israel. Palestinian sources said the negotiations ended without any agreement other than to meet again.
The Fatah official said the faction would keep trying to persuade Hamas to halt "resistance operations" inside Israel and would continue discussions on the possibility of Hamas participation in Palestinian elections slated for January.
Hamas officials were not immediately available to comment.
Meanwhile, Israeli police halted buses traveling on a route in northern Israel which has been hit several times by Palestinian suicide bombers in the past few months.
The decision was taken following warnings that Palestinian militants were planning an imminent attack in the area.
Using flares to light up the night sky, security forces scoured fields separating Israel from the West Bank following reports militants had infiltrated into the Jewish state.
----
Israeli Troops Said to Kill Palestinian at Border Post
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/international/middleeast/01MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 30 - A 16-year-old Palestinian boy was fatally shot and a second wounded today in the Gaza Strip near a border crossing with Israel, witnesses said, adding that Israeli soldiers at the outpost were responsible for the shootings.
An Israeli military spokesman said troops had fired into the air as a group of Palestinians approached a security zone near the Karni crossing, east of Gaza City, but were unaware anyone had been hit. He said the military had begun an inquiry after Palestinians later reported that two youths had been shot.
Hospital officials said the boy, Hatim Ejlah, died of a gunshot wound. The name and age of the second youth was not available.
On Sunday, Israeli troops and tanks raided Beit Lahiya, a Palestinian-ruled town in the Gaza Strip, killing a local man during clashes and razing the family homes of three militants before leaving, Reuters reported, citing Palestinian witnesses.
The episodes occurred as Israel said it was completing an inquiry demanded by the United Nations into how its forces shot and killed a British aid worker on Nov. 22 as he stood in a United Nations compound in the Jenin refugee camp.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said a report on the shooting of the worker, Iain John Hook, 54, would be finished within a few days and sent to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The United Nations said Friday that Secretary General Kofi Annan had written to Mr. Sharon insisting that Israel "carry out a rigorous investigation of the incident, share its results with the United Nations and hold accountable those responsible."
The military has said it was pursuing a Palestinian militant in the Jenin camp and was responding to gunfire coming from within the United Nations compound when Mr. Hook was shot in the back. United Nations workers have insisted that there were no militants in the United Nations compound, a fenced-off cluster of three trailers, and that no gunfire had come from there.
The circumstances of the shooting today in Gaza were also unclear. News services cited witnesses who said Israeli troops had fired on the youths as they walked home from school with other children 700 yards from the Israeli Army outpost at the Karni crossing.
The spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces said that the Karni border encompasses a 700-yard no man's land, and that the group had come to within roughly 10 to 20 yards of that security strip, near a gravel road that leads from Gaza into Israel. "Forces at the area fired warning shots into the air to get them further from the fence," he said.
In the West Bank, near the city of Nablus, Israeli forces today arrested a commander of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestinian militant group that claimed responsibility for an armed assault that killed six Israelis earlier this week.
The commander of the group's Nablus-area forces, Majid al-Masri, was arrested as he sat in a safe house with his aides, news services reported.
Al Aksa Brigades had claimed responsibility for shooting six Israelis at a polling place in the northern town of Beit Shean, where they were waiting to cast votes in a primary race for the leadership of the Likud Party, won by Mr. Sharon.
-------- mideast
Saudi Arabia's Choice
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, December 1, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55635-2002Nov29?language=printer
Cash handouts are a way of life, and a way of survival, for Saudi Arabia's otherwise rapacious royals. Paying protection money is how they make problems disappear. Or at least travel to someone else's doorstep.
Osama bin Laden is only the most horrible example of this time-honored Saudi practice going awry. His family and his nation were happy to see bin Laden spending smallish chunks of the family fortune in Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan on his gruesome hobbies. It kept him from lining up the royal family -- or his own extended, estranged family -- in his gun sights.
But in the interdependent modern world that the Saudis try to inhabit on a part-time basis, shifting your troubles to others can splash back quickly. The Saudi royal system must now adapt at its very core -- a core built on providing protection money and privilege to obscurantist fanatics -- or endure terminal decline.
Saudi Arabia's money habits jumped back into the headlines with the discovery that the wife of Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, forked over large financial payments to a Saudi family in San Diego simply because the family asked for help. The family then provided handouts of its own to two other Saudis who helped stage the Sept. 11, 2001, day of terror.
The suspicious will see Islamic conspiracy, the trusting will see goodhearted Bedouin charity. Investigators will have to sort out the truth or, more likely, a reasonable facsimile thereof after it is massaged beyond recognition by the diplomats. Not even the State Department can disguise the central reality, however: Al Qaeda and other terrorists float in a sea of Saudi petrodollars that have been unleashed on the rest of the world with no control and precious little concern about what happens outside the kingdom.
Saudi spokesmen are using an offensive defense, as they did last year when they initially denied that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers could have been from the kingdom. (They were.) The courtiers are again outraged, dismayed and shocked that anyone could think that the roots of America's worst terrorist outrage lie in Saudi practices and lucre. (They do.)
Individual Saudis tend to have generous, sharing natures. Their easy, lavish hospitality -- once you have been admitted to their circle or to their country, which is never an easy task -- is legendary. On a dozen visits, I was made to feel at home at Crown Prince Abdullah's table and in the homes of modest citizens. Giving to charity is in fact an admirable religious duty and personal habit for many Saudis.
But "charity" developed into a sinister code word as the royal family's vast oil revenue and its appearance of weakness and fear attracted the Middle East's sharks. The Saudis quickly became adept at keeping Palestinian gunmen, Syrian terror operatives, Iraqi hit squads and other bad actors off their backs in an elaborate extortion racket called "Arab solidarity." They never met a problem they didn't try to buy off.
A more sophisticated and benign version of this is the royal family's extravagant purchase of weapons, airliners and goods from the United States and other Western countries, which then provide the Saudis with military protection and support. Bin Laden has made this symbiosis the primary target of his terror campaign.
America's war on terrorism and the disappearance of abundant petrodollar surpluses bring the Saudi rulers to a traumatic moment of choice. To survive in the 21st century, they must actively help put the extortionists and terrorists out of business rather than fund and shield them.
The biggest change must come at home: The House of Saud must end the Faustian bargain it originally made with the country's extremist Wahhabist sect, which was given significant sway over the kingdom's social, economic and political life in return for supporting the monarchy. Wahhabi clerics have used Islamic charity as a cover to promote terrorism and hatred in the Middle East and Central Asia. The Saudi monarchy must disown and de-legitimize the extremists or remain mired in a disappearing world.
American officials are predictably loath to rock a sinking ship. Secretary of State Colin Powell sprang to the defense of Bandar and his wife: It was "unlikely" they "would do anything knowingly to support anybody connected to terrorist activity." (Wait: That's a defense? Powell has worked with Bandar for nearly two decades, more closely than he has with most members of this administration. Only "unlikely"? Hmm.)
Americans need to be honest with themselves and with the Saudis about what has been going on and how it needs to change. That is the only way to provide genuine protection for Saudi Arabia.
-------- philippines
ASIAN ARENA
U.S. and Philippines May Start Training Mission
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT with CARLOS H. CONDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/international/asia/01FILI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - The United States and the Philippines may soon start a new military training operation against Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines that would involve 300 to 400 American troops, including many on jungle combat patrols in a risky hunt for a resurgent guerrilla force, military officials say.
The proposed exercise, which could begin as soon as January, reflects the Pentagon's growing concern that militant Islamic networks pose an increasing threat to Americans and American interests in Southeast Asia, and that a training mission with Philippine forces earlier this year failed to quell the Muslim guerrilla movement.
The new operation would be an increase in the Pentagon's commitment to combating terrorism in the Philippines by shifting hundreds of troops now scheduled for classroom or routine training in the northern Philippines to a combat zone in the south. The exercise would involve American Special Forces, as well as Army and Marine forces, over much of next year, officials said.
No decisions have been made yet on the proposal, officials said, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has directed the military's Pacific Command and Joint Staff to draw up plans for a sequel to the counterterrorism training mission that American forces carried out on Basilan Island in the southern Philippines earlier this year.
Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander of American forces in the Pacific, is scheduled to meet with Mr. Rumsfeld in Washington in the next few days, and officials said they were likely to discuss details of the proposed mission.
President Bush has personally been following developments in the Philippines, administration officials said. Mr. Bush spoke to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Mexico in late October, and spoke again by telephone two weeks ago with President Arroyo about terrorism issues, a White House official said.
About 1,300 American troops, including 160 Special Forces soldiers, completed the six-month mission on Basilan at the end of July. Those exercises were intended to wipe out Abu Sayyaf, a small band of Islamic radicals who have seized and beheaded American hostages.
But only one principal Abu Sayyaf leader was killed during that operation, and the group's other leaders have reorganized in Sulu Province, principally on Jolo Island. While the American-led mission effectively drove Abu Sayyaf from Basilan and parts of southern Mindanao, the American-trained Philippine forces have not sustained the momentum. Abu Sayyaf has been tied to a string of recent bombings in the southern Philippines, including an explosion last month that killed an American Green Beret, Pentagon officials said.
About 275 American troops have remained in the southern Philippines to help share intelligence information with Philippine forces and coordinate a long-term security assistance and counterterrorism program that is scheduled to begin in January on the northern island of Luzon.
But now the Pentagon is weighing whether to conduct some of that training on or near Jolo. That would make the exercises akin to combat operations and put American trainers that might accompany their Philippine soldiers on patrols at much greater risk.
Under the plans being discussed, 150 to 175 additional American troops, mainly Special Forces soldiers, would join the American forces already in the southern Philippines in the first training mission, military officials said.
Other exercises later in the year, involving Army and Marine forces, would also deploy American troops and equipment to the south to expand and diversify the training.
"The Philippine military has asked to extend the Basilan model to Jolo," said one senior American military official. "While we've neutralized Basilan as an operating area for them, their leadership has pretty much relocated to Jolo."
But as with previous training missions, Filipino officials continue to seek assurances that Americans will not engage in combat while advising Filipino troops because the Philippine Constitution prohibits using foreign troops for combat. Even so, American troops are under orders to fire in self-defense, and the rules for this proposed mission near Jolo would be no different.
The Bush administration has declared Abu Sayyaf a terrorist organization. A decade ago, when the group was founded with a goal to create an Islamic state, Osama bin Laden sent a brother-in-law to coordinate with the group. He provided money and sought to arrange a merger between Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a much larger and more powerful group in the Philippines.
American and Philippine intelligence officials have said the relationship never developed and Abu Sayyaf degenerated into thugs who kidnapped for ransoms.
Some American officials believe that in recent months, Abu Sayyaf has established connections with Jemaah Islamiyah, a radical Islamic network that seeks establishment of an Islamic state across Southeast Asia. The network is based in Indonesia, and its spiritual leader is Abu Bakar Bashir, who is now in custody in Indonesia.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. It has been linked to several terrorist attacks, including one in Bali last month that killed more than 180 tourists, according to Indonesia and Western intelligence officials.
"We are pulling a lot of strings on the J. I. piece," said the senior American military official. "We still don't have clarity on that."
A Pentagon official concurred: "We're watching the connections very closely to determine whether they are institutional, personal or what. I don't think we have anything definitive. Is this just family connections helping each other out or a conscious, directed effort to combine and use each other's efforts?"
A senior Philippine intelligence officials said his agency "does not have concrete evidence of any new linkages" between Abu Sayyaf and Al Qaeda. Last month, an Abu Sayyaf member was picked up in Thailand while trying to buy weapons.
American officials said that Philippine intelligence analysts had "connected the dots sooner than we have" on the possible Jemaah Islamiyah-Philippine connection, but added that American officials were treading cautiously.
Philippine officials have long advocated expanding the operational training to Jolo. But they say American officials initially were reluctant, given higher priorities against terrorist threats in countries like Yemen, and with American forces preparing for a possible war with Iraq.
"We felt that the success in Basilan should be replicated in Jolo," said Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Teodosio, the director of the Philippine side of the Basilan exercise.
The Pentagon's attitude shifted markedly after a series of bombings in the Philippines, especially the blast that killed Sgt. First Class Mark Wayne Jackson in Zamboanga last month, seemed to signal a troubling confluence of terrorist organizations in the country.
"Abu Sayyaf probably doesn't have network to carry out bombings throughout the archipelago, so they need the support of like-minded people," said the senior American military official.
"Increasingly, it's thought that Abu Sayyaf, J. I. and other Muslim separatists were responsible" for the bombing that killed Sergeant Jackson, the official continued.
The United States Navy continues to fly regular P-3 reconnaissance missions over the Sulu Archipelago to provide badly needed intelligence to Philippine Army forces battling about 250 Abu Sayyaf rebels there in rugged, jungle fighting.
Pentagon officials said the options under consideration would not increase the overall projected American military presence in the Philippines or prompt the Philippine Senate to revisit conditions under which American forces can operate.
"The thinking here and at the State Department is that anything that goes beyond the Basilan model could be reason to trigger a new round of political debate in the Philippines," said the senior American military official.
-------- spy agencies
Congress Cracks Down On Overdue CIA Reports
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57829-2002Nov30?language=printer
Congress has threatened to reduce by one-third the funds that are used to run the office of Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet if the intelligence community fails to file dozens of overdue reports required by law within the next few months.
Calling the community's record "dismal," the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which wrote the legislation included in the fiscal 2003 intelligence authorization bill signed last week by President Bush, reported that 51 of 84 reports due by May 1, 2002, were not submitted. Eight were sent as incomplete interim reports and 18 others were provided after they were due, it said.
"In sum," the committee said in its report, "of the 84 reports required, seven were submitted by the deadline, for an overall record of 8 percent compliance."
The documents being sought cover a wide range of subjects including the priority requirements set by the president for U.S. intelligence and the activities of the U.S. intelligence community to satisfy them, an annual report on the protection of the identities of covert agents, covert leases for the community to use buildings and properties and CIA cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies.
They also cover activities of the FBI outside the United States, commercial activities carried on as cover by Pentagon intelligence agencies, safety and security of Russian nuclear facilities and forces, intelligence provided the United Nations, decisions not to prosecute violations of classified information procedures, and the hiring and retention of minority employees in the intelligence community.
Congress being Congress, the legislators added a few more reports to the list in the new bill. They included a semiannual document on seized financial assets of terrorists and searches conducted of individuals suspected of financing terrorists, another on establishment of a civilian linguist reserve corps and one assessing the effectiveness of the national security education program that provides scholarships to individuals learning needed languages.
Recognizing the plethora of reports, the legislation offered some legislative relief. Five reports were repealed, including one that required an annual disclosure of CIA personnel used as special police and another on the use of the director's authority to make special payments to those who voluntarily leave the agency. However, two of the once-annual documents that were repealed now require individual messages to be sent to Congress when covered events occur, such as what the CIA spends when it buys land.
It is unclear what part of the director's own classified office budget is at risk, since he has nonpublished funds as director of central intelligence (DCI) and as CIA director. One part of the sum that could be involved is the public $158 million that finances the intelligence community management account, which pays for the 322 individuals who serve Tenet in his role as DCI.
Whatever the amount, Tenet and his staff are taking the measure seriously. "I would not be surprised if this is not resolved shortly," a senior intelligence official said Friday. "We have been late on some but not all the required reports," he said.
He noted that some documents require substantial interagency coordination, which is made difficult "because we don't want to take away from fighting the war against terrorism."
He added that some reports "were of questionable value" and others had "unrealistic deadlines," but that the intelligence community was "beefing up the processes" to complete documents in timely and acceptable ways. "There are ongoing talks with [intelligence] committee staffs to determine which are the most important and which may no longer be useful or necessary," he said.
The official noted that since January, the community has had 1,300 meetings, briefings and hearings with members of Congress and their staffs, not including the House-Senate committee inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"That's a lot of contact and a load of information, without the reports," he said.
-------- us
Other special forces play quiet part
December 1, 2002
AP
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021201-73703439.htm
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. - They don't wear green berets.
Hollywood hasn't glamorized their exploits in exotic lands. Even within their own service they are a sometimes overlooked and underappreciated bunch.
They are air commandos of the 6th Special Operations Squadron, possibly the least well-known Air Force special-operations unit, whose main expertise - teaching the finer points of air power to less-developed foreign forces - happens to fit neatly with the U.S. goal of building coalitions for the war on terror.
Whether the 6th SOS would become involved if war should come to Iraq, no one here will discuss. But its specialists have had a hand in anti-terror campaigns in Afghanistan, the Philippines and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
They train foreign air forces in flying, aircraft maintenance, aviation command and control, combat search and rescue, and air-assault operations. They keep regional U.S. commanders apprised of these countries' capabilities and in wartime can integrate them into a multinational coalition force.
Lt. Col. Eric Huppert, the squadron's commander, calls this an "inside-out" approach to the war on terrorism. The idea is to help a country, through training and advice, defeat homegrown rebels or terrorists without having to bring in U.S. combat power, as happened in Afghanistan, where no such relationship had existed.
Maj. Tim, a 6th SOS member who agreed to speak on the condition his last name not be revealed, recently spent 52 days in the former Soviet republic of Georgia as part of a team providing advanced training in the UH-1H Huey for a commando battalion.
Georgia's lawless Pankisi Gorge, which borders Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya, has become a purported hide-out for Chechen rebels and possibly terrorists with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
In Maj. Tim's view, the training with such nontraditional allies will benefit the United States for years to come.
"You can really say you are doing nation building," Maj. Tim said.
The military prefers to call it "foreign internal defense." It's exactly the kind of work the Army's Special Forces, renowned as the Green Berets, have done for decades with foreign ground forces. Not until 1994 did the Air Force establish the 6th SOS as the air equivalent of the Green Berets.
The roots of the 6th SOS go back to the "Jungle Jim" program that was started in 1961 to focus on counterinsurgency air operations in Vietnam. Then, as now, the American government's approach was to help unstable nations fight their own battles.
"The idea is to get people in that country understanding that it is their government helping them, not being puppets of the American government," Col. Huppert said in an interview at his Hurlburt Field office, where he can look onto the tarmac and see a Soviet-built An-32 transport plane that the 6th SOS leases to keep its pilots up to speed with the kind of older aircraft they encounter in many less-developed countries.
They also have an An-2 Colt, a piston-engine biplane used in such countries as Albania and Ethiopia as a general utility aircraft. In a unique arrangement, mechanics from the former Soviet republic of Moldova help maintain the two old planes.
The 6th SOS is organized into six flights, or groups. Each is designated for work in particular regions: one for Latin America, another for the Pacific and two for the Middle East and Central Asia, and two for Europe.
They are, in a sense, air ambassadors. They are not the kick-down-the-door warriors typically associated with the term "special operations." Rather they are quiet professionals - multilingual, culturally sophisticated, often with advanced degrees - whose task is to train and advise foreign air forces, usually in total secrecy.
The 6th SOS was in Uzbekistan, for example, a number of times before the September 11 attacks, and when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed for access to Uzbek air bases in the weeks before initiating the war in neighboring Afghanistan, the relationships built by the 6th SOS paid off. The Uzbeks quietly gave permission for AC-130 special-operations gunships to use their Khanabad air base.
The 6th SOS has also operated in such far-flung places as Oman and Jordan in the Middle East, Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Venezuela, South Korea, Indonesia and new NATO allies such as Poland and Slovenia.
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READINESS
U.S. Is Preparing Base in Gulf State to Run Iraq War
December 1, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/international/middleeast/01MILI.html
DOHA, Qatar - The United States military is installing a new command center at a heavily guarded base in this small Persian Gulf state that would be ready to serve as the main headquarters for a war on Iraq.
The official purpose of the work at the base, As Sayliyah, is to prepare for a major American military exercise in December called Internal Look. But it will be no ordinary exercise. American officials say that it will be the first time that a war game of its type has been conducted outside the United States and that the command and control procedures practiced would be the same used for a war with Iraq.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the head of the Central Command, is expected to arrive in about a week to take part in the exercise. About 750 staff members from the headquarters of the United States Central Command are also being sent. General Franks will participate along with top Army, Marine, Air Force, Navy and Special Operations commanders in the region.
Western officials say the United States has not yet formally asked the Qataris if it can run a war with Iraq from their country. The official line is that the United States is merely improving its military readiness while it waits to see if Iraq provides a complete account of its weapons programs and cooperates with United Nations inspectors.
Like many Persian Gulf states, Qatar is worried about the reaction in the Arab world to an American attack on Iraq and hopes that a conflict can be avoided. That attitude seems natural in a country that is home to Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network that was started in 1996 with financing from Qatar's emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
At the same time, Qatar has been more receptive to cooperation with the United States military than neighboring Saudi Arabia, and it has spent more than $1 billion to build an air base, Al Udeid, to attract American forces here.
The Qataris view Washington as their main protector against external threats in a volatile region. So the Bush administration is calculating that Qatar will allow use of its bases as a hub for a war with Iraq if Washington can mobilize enough support among members of the United Nations Security Council to provide the necessary political cover.
"The Qataris have decided that their future lies in having the closest possible ties with the United States" said Patrick N. Theros, the American ambassador to Qatar from 1995 to 1998. "They are more likely to support a U.S. military action than some of their neighbors in order to maintain this relationship."
A tiny nation of about 750,000, Qatar operated in Saudi Arabia's shadow for years. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 jolted the Qataris, according to former Qatari officials and Western officials. Qatar saw that the Saudis were unable to defend themselves against a potential Iraqi threat, let alone protect other gulf states, those officials said. The Qataris saw that the Saudis had to invite the Americans to protect their kingdom. "They woke up to the fact that they needed superpower protection," a Western official said, referring to the Qataris.
Soon after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United States and Qatar quietly signed a defense cooperation agreement that provided Washington with what one official called a "big green light" to set up operations here. In recent years, Qatar has emerged as vital real estate for United States military strategy in the Persian Gulf.
One crucial base is As Sayliyah, a 262-acre installation completed in August 2000 at a cost of more than $100 million. The base has more than 20 climate-controlled warehouses, storing hundreds of M1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and other armored vehicles. It is capable of housing enough armored equipment for a heavy Army brigade. It includes a community center and living quarters for the approximately 300 American troops who have been permanently based there.
Qatar's willingness to allow the United States to build and operate the base is a breakthrough for the Pentagon, and it represents a level of cooperation that far outstrips what the Saudis have been prepared to offer. After the gulf war, when Vice President Dick Cheney was the defense secretary, he went to Saudi Arabia to discuss storing a division's worth of Army equipment there, but the Saudis turned him down.
Armored vehicles and other weapons from As Sayliyah have been quietly shipped to Kuwait, a transfer that the Pentagon initially cast as an exercise but that is seen as a preparation for war. Soldiers from the Third Infantry Division, which is expected to play a key role if there is an invasion of Iraq, rumble around Kuwait on well-maintained, modern armored vehicles that still bear the shipping labels from the Qatar installation.
After the United States began shipping armored equipment out of As Sayliyah, the military started to install communications equipment there for the command center that General Franks and his staff will use to conduct the exercise. Western officials say the Qataris have long suggested that Central Command establish a headquarters here, and the exercise may be the first step.
It is what the military calls a command post exercise, meaning that the top American commanders will carry out a war game that will simulate a campaign against an enemy in the region, but will not involve the deployment of troops. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf conducted such an exercise in July 1990 in Tampa, Fla., that used the scenario of an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia.
American commanders have not disclosed the classified scenario that they plan to use for the war game. But it is clear that the exercise will enable the military to test the command and control procedures it would use if there is a war with Iraq.
"We are going to train the way we might fight," said Vice Adm. Timothy J. Keating, the commander of the Fifth Fleet and the top Navy commander in the region.
During the war exercise, General Franks will command his forces from his new Qatar headquarters while Vice Admiral Keating and Lt. Gen. Earl B. Hailston, the senior Marine commander in the region, will be at their command centers in Bahrain. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top Army commander in the region and the officer who would be in charge of American land forces in the event of a war, will be at his command center in Kuwait. The Air Force commander, Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, will be at his command center at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh.
As in a war, the senior commanders will talk to each other using teleconferences and sophisticated communications equipment.
Military officials say that when the exercise is over in mid-December, General Franks and his staff are scheduled to leave unless there is an escalation of tensions with Iraq. But the exercise is likely to be under way as the United States and its allies review the declaration that Iraq is scheduled to submit on Dec. 8 about its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Even if General Franks leaves, the forward headquarters will be in place in case of war.
"All we have to do is hop on a plane and come forward," a military official said.
As Sayliyah is not the only base the United States military is using here. In a bid to lure the Americans, the Qataris built Al Udeid Air Base. It was constructed in 1996, before Qatar even acquired an Air Force, an approach that Western officials quip is a classic example of the "if we build it they will come" approach. Qatar later bought 12 French Mirage fighter jets, but they are not stationed at Al Udeid.
The United States did not begin to use the base until Sept. 29, 2001, when Washington rushed to get its forces in position to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The first American casualty of the Afghan campaign occurred when Master Sgt. Evander E. Andrews, a civil engineer, died in construction accident at the base. Because the existence of the base was classified at the time, the military initially announced only that the fatality occurred somewhere in Southwest Asia. Today, the sprawling 288-tent complex at Al Udeid is known as Camp Andy.
Al Udeid has hardened aircraft shelters, including two special shelters from which aircraft could take off while under fire, and one of the longest runways in the Middle East. It also has a backup combat air operations center, which could be used to run an air campaign if the Saudis did not allow the Americans to direct combat operations from Prince Sultan Air Base. But the Al Udeid air combat center is not in operation.
During the early part of the Afghan campaign, F-16 fighters and E-8C Joint Stars reconnaissance planes that monitor ground units were based here along with refueling tankers. These days, the only aircraft are KC-135 and KC-10 refueling tankers.
The emir decided decided it was time to let his public know about extent of the American presence at the base last spring. It was agreed that Vice President Cheney could land there in March along with a group of traveling reporters.
Col. Timothy Scott, the wing commander at Al Udeid whose home base is in Alaska, said the base's sole focus was still Afghanistan.
"We do the air refueling for the coalition and the U.S. Navy and Air Force," Colonel Scott said. "The bulk of it comes out of here."
Al Udeid could easily shift its focus to Iraq if the United States moves on Baghdad. And there are still other bases. The United States military has used part of the Doha Airport as a logistics hub, an installation that is known informally and inexplicably as Camp Snoopy.
And Qatar still has its secrets. According to knowledgeable officials, Qatar has allowed the United States to store ammunition at a secret facility in the desert. It is called Falcon 78.
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Britain Considering Armed Sky Marshals on Planes
Reuters
Sunday, December 1, 2002
By Pete Harrison
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59591-2002Dec1?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said Sunday it was considering putting armed sky marshals on passenger flights to guard against hijackers amid growing threats to Western travelers abroad.
Last week's attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya, which killed 16, and the Bali nightclub bombing in October, which killed nearly 200, mainly Australians, have forced governments to consider how to protect travelers abroad.
"Aviation security has moved up the agenda with the attacks in Kenya," said a spokesman for the Transport Department. "A wide range of security measures have been considered since Sept. 11, and sky marshals is one of them."
He denied a report in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper saying the government had already made its decision to introduce marshals, initially on trans-Atlantic flights.
"It hasn't been ruled in, but it hasn't been ruled out either," said the spokesman. "No date has been set for a decision."
Though marshals could not have prevented last week's attempted missile attack on an Israeli flight leaving Kenya because the missiles were fired from the ground, sky marshals might have been able to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks which were orchestrated from on board.
Armed Israeli sky marshals have been credited with foiling a number of attempted hijacks, most recently when an Israeli Arab tried to enter the cockpit of an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul armed with a knife on Nov. 17.
The option of sky marshals was put to the British government in a report into airline security that it commissioned in May from former minister Sir John Wheeler.
The issue is one that attracts strong debate. Former easyJet chairman Stelios Haji-Ioannou told BBC television Sunday he thought passengers and crew could have the element of surprise over hijackers.
"What worked on that tragic day (Sept. 11) was a surprise. The first (hijack) worked, the second worked, the fourth didn't," he said.
"The passengers, the customers, the crew overpowered the terrorists," he added. I think it's far better than having guns because they might fall in the wrong hands."
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In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58308-2002Nov30?language=printer
The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.
The elements of this new syste