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NUCLEAR
Postal Workers Getting Potassium Iodide
New WHO Fund to Probe Disease Outbreaks
UK nuclear firm's rescue plan saddles taxpayer
India: Note warning on Pakistan weapons
Nuclear Duplicity From Pakistan
U.N. Team Searches Possible Bioweapons Site
Iraqis tipped to visits
Inspections Hit Snag as West Presses Iraq
Arms inspectors optimistic on Iraq
U.N. Team Gets to Work, Wary of Both Iraq and U.S.
Bush Presses Iraq on Sunday Deadline for Arms Inventory
Japan orders nuclear reactor closed for false data
U.S. quietly prepares to negotiate with N. Korea
China, Russia Urge N.Korea to Drop Nuclear Program
N. Korea ships fuel, missiles to Yemen
North Korea ripe for change
Out-of-the-Box Thinking at Pentagon
Grant Helps Penn State Nuke Program
S.C. Plutonium Removal Timetables Set
MILITARY
Afghan Leader Announces Plans for National Army
U.S. bombs front lines of warlords
Porous Borders, Poverty Make Kenya a Target
Malaysia Sees Australia Strike As War Act
Homeland Agency Holds Line on Tech Spending
IOC Inspectors Shower Praise on Changing Beijing
Colombia right-wing truce takes force
Germany plans to cut defence spending
Iraq Complains to U.N. Over Basra Raid
Britain Slams Saddam for Human Rights Abuses
Britain Accuses Hussein of Systematic Torture and Killing
A bankable ringer to replace Saddam?
Oil Edges Up on Venezuela Strike, Iraq
Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian Teenager - Witnesses
Defense Chief: Al Qaeda Tried to Infiltrate Israel
UN Agency Raps Israeli Army for Razing Food Store
Iraq's Neighbors Seem to Be Ready to Support a War
Russia Expels Two Swedish Diplomats in Spy Flap
Shuffling at the Top Is Set for Intelligence Committees
Unleashing the Predator
Arms systems survive
Military Seeks Student Data From Schools
The Pearl Harbor Deception
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
At Justice, Freedom Not to Release Information
Guantanamo Prisoners Appeal for Rights
F.B.I., Under Outside Pressure, Gets Inside Push
Behavioral Advice From the Bench
Former Judges Plead for the Condemned
Condemned to Violence
ENERGY AND OTHER
ADB Pledges $130 Mln to Tajikistan
BLM urges 30-year extension for Alaska pipeline
Greenland Ice Core Shows Lead Pollution
Genetic research yields startling results
Scientists Develop Biotech Rice Process
Ore. Gov. Apologizes for Sterilizations
ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Effort Gains Momentum
Help us send weapons inspectors into the US!!
Book World Raves: Nonfiction
Redford Says Patriotism Means Weaning US from Oil
Venezuelan Opposition Extends Anti - Chavez Strike
Jailed Activist Strikes for Vegan Food
The Highest Patriotism Lies in Weaning U.S. From Fossil Fuels
ACLU drawing new supporters from the right
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Postal Workers Getting Potassium Iodide
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Postal-Radiation.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The latest equipment for American postal workers: potassium iodide pills to protect against thyroid cancer in the event of a radiological emergency.
The U.S. Postal Service said Monday that it was purchasing nearly 1.6 million pills for distribution to workers.
``It's a proactive approach regarding the safety, health and well-being of employees nationwide,'' said Sue Brennan, Postal Service spokeswoman. She would not say how much they paid for the pills.
Potassium iodide is the only medication for internal radiation exposure. It has just one use -- to prevent thyroid cancer by shielding the thyroid from radioactive iodine.
Potassium iodide would be helpful only if a dirty bomb used radioactive iodine instead of other radioactive substances, and then only for people close to the explosion.
The FDA-approved potassium iodide tablets are being offered to all 750,000 postal workers nationwide. Two tablets will be given to any employee who wants to have the pills in case of an emergency. ``Employees are out there in all of these communities nationwide and we wanted to err on the side of caution,'' Brennan said.
The recommendation came up in meetings of the mailing security task force, which is made up of the postal union, postal associations and management. Brennan said the pills are being offered much like free flu shots were offered in the wake of anthrax scares after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In January, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it would provide free stockpiles of potassium iodide to 33 states that had residents living within a 10-mile radius of one of the nation's 102 nuclear reactors.
Just as with any medication, overdoses of potassium iodide can be dangerous. Some people may experience allergic reactions, including nausea or rashes, from taking it.
Anbex, Inc., which is based in Tampa, Fla., is manufacturing the tablets for distribution.
Phone calls to the American Postal Workers Union and National Association of Letter Carriers were not immediately returned.
On the Net:
U.S. Postal Service: www.usps.com
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov
Food and Drug Administration: www.fda.gov
--------
New WHO Fund to Probe Disease Outbreaks
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-WHO-Outbreak-Fund.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The World Health Organization has a new $500,000 rapid response fund to investigate infectious disease outbreaks, whether caused by nature or terrorism. The money will allow the WHO to send teams to the field without first raising money to support the investigations.
``Crucial hours lost in the early days of a disease outbreak can mean the difference between a handful of cases and a major epidemic,'' Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO's director-general, said in a statement Monday.
The money comes from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private group founded by media magnate Ted Turner and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn that works to reduce threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The fund will be called the WHO-NTI Emergency Outbreak Response Fund.
Upon hearing of a suspected outbreak, WHO officials often must make calls to raise money to support an investigation before sending a team to investigate, said WHO spokesman Jim Palmer. For exotic diseases like the Ebola virus, money is quickly raised, he said. But he said it's harder to find money to investigate routine diseases like meningitis and influenza.
``Cholera happens all the time and no one cares,'' he said.
Officials at NTI and WHO said the fund will need donations from others and hopes it will be replenished by ``traditional humanitarian donors'' and member nations.
Palmer said that WHO spends anywhere from a couple of million dollars to $10 million per year investigating outbreaks. Each investigation can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000.
On the Net:
www.who.org and www.nti.org
-------- britain
UK nuclear firm's rescue plan saddles taxpayer
Story by Andrew Callus and Tom Bergin
REUTERS UK:
December 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18849/newsDate/2-Dec-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Britain extended an emergency loan for stricken nuclear power firm British Energy (BGY.L) last week and agreed a restructuring plan that makes taxpayers liable for its multi-billion pound nuclear clean-up costs.
Britons will have to shell out between 150 and 200 million pounds a year for the next 10 years to keep the lossmaking privatised producer of a fifth of their electricity afloat, and will still be paying more than 80 years from now.
In exchange, British Energy (BE) must pay 20 million pounds a year plus 65 percent of available cash towards those liabilities, estimated by BE at 5.2 billion pounds ($8.1 billion). A new state-backed body called the Nuclear Liability Fund will manage the clean-up.
"The government's overriding priorities have always been to ensure nuclear safety and security of electricity supplies," said a government statement. "This restructuring package is a pragmatic approach that should ensure that these aims are met."
This new burden on the state purse comes just a day after slowing economic growth forced it to double borrowing plans for this year to 20 billion pounds.
A 650 million pound ($1.0 billion) state loan will be extended to March 9 while the proposals are put to creditors. If the plan comes unstuck, BE could face insolvency proceedings.
BE ran into trouble this summer after wholesale power prices tumbled below its production costs. It has been surviving on government money since September.
LAME DUCK
The news that another lame-duck privatised company has its hand back in the taxpayer's pocket comes just six months after the public backed a multi-billion-pound investment in a new firm to replace failed railway network operator Railtrack.
Anti-nuclear group Greenpeace was furious.
"Today's decision, coming at a time when the electricity market is overproducing, is bound to negatively affect the development of clean, green energy sources like offshore wind that could meet our needs 10 times over and create many thousands of jobs," said campaigner Emma Gibson.
Opposition politicians blamed the debacle on the government, whose move to open the power market to competition drove down prices, and which blocked a new fuel contract between BE and state nuclear fuel reprocessor BNFL earlier this year.
"The truth is that the government's own actions and omissions created problems for British Energy, which would have not otherwise arisen," said Tim Yeo, Conservative Party spokesman on trade and industry.
The proposed restructuring involves the issue of an unspecified number of new shares plus 700 million pounds ($1.1 billion) worth of new bonds in exchange for existing bonds.
BE said the move would "very significantly" dilute the holdings of existing shareholders. A source close to the company said shareholders could expect to hold less than 10 percent of the expanded equity. Bondholders would take on the rest in a debt for equity swap, or risk losing everything to insolvency.
"Something is better than nothing," said Malcolm Stacey, who runs sharecrazy.com, representing some of BE's 224,000 small investors. "Shareholders have lost a lot anyway."
BE's battered shares plunged 60 percent to a new low of 7.5 pence, valuing the former blue chip firm at just 46 million pounds. The debt-for-equity swap leaves shareholders bearing the brunt of the pain of restructuring.
HAIRCUT
Bond analysts now expect bond investors will have to write off two thirds of their money in the restructuring.
"It's not the best deal... Bondholders will have to take a substantial haircut on this one," said Gracie Ebadan-Bola of credit rating agency Fitch.
"It really doesn't sound too good," said one bondholder. "But when the alternative is administration I don't suppose we have much choice than to say yes to this."
BE bonds have been trading at about half of their face value.
BE Executive Chairman Robin Jeffrey quit. Former Treasury adviser Adrian Montague will replace him. Montague is also deputy chairman of Network Rail, the company that took over the country's railways from Railtrack.
The main cost to the government comes from the reshaping of costly fuel reprocessing contracts with BNFL. New contracts announced in Thursday's package tie BE payments to the market price of power. This offers BE relief in the hard times, but forces BNFL, another loss-maker, to take some pain.
BE said it was continuing talks to sell its Canadian and U.S. assets. Proceeds will be used to repay the state loan.
BE is not the only power firm hit by low UK prices, though others have received no state bailout. TXU Europe (TXU.N) sought protection from creditors this month, and AES Drax (AES.N), the UK's biggest power station, is so broke it cannot pay for coal.
But the European Commission approved BE's loan extension on Wednesday, describing it as a special case.
Bank advisers are Credit Suisse First Boston for the government, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney for BE and Rothschild for BNFL.
(additional reporting by Mark Potter, Santosh Menon, Janet McBride, Rex Merrifield, Mike Peacock, Kirsten Donovan).
-------- india / pakistan
India: Note warning on Pakistan weapons
By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
December 2, 2002
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021202-032829-2687r.htm
NEW DELHI, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- India's Prime Minister said Monday that the world must take note of Russia's warning that Pakistan's nuclear arms might fall into the hands of Islamic rebels.
"President (Vladimir) Putin's warning is serious and every country, especially those who support Pakistan, must take note.
"There is a danger that weapons, especially mass destruction weapons, may be misused by terrorists," Vajpayee said, adding that "we must take note of this warning."
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had told India's NDTV news that there were concerns that Pakistan's nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.
"Pakistan's weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of bandits and terrorists," he said in an interview ahead of his three-day visit, which begins on Tuesday.
Pakistan responded to these comments by saying: "No one should have any fear about our nuclear assets. They are under very tight control."
A statement from Pakistan's foreign ministry said: "Moscow's own system of safeguarding its nuclear assets, fissile material and sensitive technology was a matter of serious concern to the international community."
Russia has been India's ally from pre-Cold War times and stood by New Delhi in its claim over Kashmir, the cause of two of three bitter wars between India and Pakistan. Russia remains India's major arms supplier.
Putin's visit is aimed at bolstering trade with India, which stands at some $1.4 billion annually. India and Russia will also sign bilateral agreements on cooperate industry, energy and information technology.
They also plan to set up a joint working group that will deal exclusively with terrorism and the exchange of intelligence and information.
--------
Nuclear Duplicity From Pakistan
December 2, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/opinion/02MON2.html
Few countries have improved their standing in American eyes as dramatically as Pakistan has in the past two years. Long shunned by Washington for its links to terrorism, its nuclear weapons program and autocratic military rule, Pakistan became a valued ally, mainly by abandoning its support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Now Pakistan's reputation is threatened once again. American intelligence agencies have recently confirmed that Islamabad provided indispensable help to North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program. That program threatens 100,000 American troops in Asia along with the people of Japan and South Korea.
Pakistan secretly developed nuclear weapons in the 1980's and 90's, but lacked the longer-range missiles required to threaten India's main cities and military bases with nuclear attack. North Korea had such missiles, but it needed nuclear bomb-making technology that could be easily concealed underground to prevent American satellite detection.
Pakistan provided Pyongyang with the perfect solution by sharing design plans of the uranium enrichment technology it had stolen from the West and used in its own secret nuclear program. In exchange, Pakistan got North Korean missile components, which Pyongyang also ships to Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Egypt.
Neither country has shown the least hesitation about placing unconventional weapons in the hands of dangerous dictators. Pakistan claims to have ended its exchanges with North Korea, but the United States spotted a Pakistani plane picking up North Korean missile parts as recently as last summer. The Bush administration has warned Islamabad of unspecified "consequences" of this reckless traffic.
Pakistan's actions are not those of a reliable partner. Washington must make plain to its leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that continued behavior of this sort will not be tolerated.
-------- inspections
U.N. Team Searches Possible Bioweapons Site
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61351-2002Dec1?language=printer
KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq, Dec. 1 -- In the late 1980s, according to U.N. arms experts, military researchers at this sleepy airfield north of Baghdad tested the Zubaidy device, a helicopter-mounted contraption that could disperse deadly bacteriological agents from the air.
U.N. inspectors who scoured Iraq in the 1990s for weapons of mass destruction believe a dozen Zubaidy devices were built. But unlike thousands of other pieces of equipment affiliated with Iraq's programs to develop banned arms, the spraying units never were confirmed to have been destroyed. The inspectors wrote in their last report that "the final, tested devices were unaccounted for."
Today, a new contingent of U.N. inspectors returned to the airfield, presumably to search for information about the devices and to examine whether Iraq has been conducting biological or chemical weapons research. They spent almost five hours at the site, walking inside three large camouflage-painted hangars and looking at a collection of rusty Soviet-made helicopters, chemical tanks and spraying nozzles scattered on the tarmac. The airfield's director said the inspectors also took samples from inside the tanks and downloaded files from computers in his office.
As the inspectors searched the airfield, Iraqi officials said, Western warplanes bombed an oil company office building in the southern port city of Basra, killing four people and wounding 27 others. An Iraqi military spokesman said two rockets hit the offices of the Southern Oil Co. this morning. The company supervises the country's oil exports under a U.N. program that allows Iraq to sell oil for food and humanitarian supplies.
U.S. officials confirmed an attack occurred, but they said U.S. and British planes, which police "no-fly" zones in southern and northern Iraq, hit air-defense facilities near Basra in response to Iraqi antiaircraft artillery fire.
Iraqi officials did not say who fired first. An Iraqi military spokesman said coalition planes staged 62 "armed sorties" over southern Iraq this morning. "Iraqi missile batteries and ground defenses confronted the warplanes, forcing them to flee to their bases in Kuwait," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Iraqi News Agency.
U.S. officials have accused Iraq of placing air-defense installations and radar equipment close to civilian installations.
The no-fly zones were established after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from attack by President Saddam Hussein's military. U.S. officials have said American and British aircraft have been targeted more frequently by Iraqi antiaircraft gunners in recent months.
At the Khan Bani Saad airfield, the director, Montadhar Radeef Mohammed, who said he has been at the post since 1998, said he knew nothing about the Zubaidy devices or other biological weapons testing at the site.
He said the tanks, nozzles and helicopters are used to spray pesticides on crops.
"We have only civilian functions," he said. "These systems are for plants."
He said the inspectors found no prohibited material during their search. The inspectors, who have completed four days of searches, did not comment about the visit here. They have said they will reveal their conclusions only to their superiors in New York and Vienna, who in turn must report to the U.N. Security Council.
The airfield, surrounded by a sea of yellow corn scattered by local farmers making cattle feed, is run by the Ministry of Agriculture. Mohammed said no pesticides or other chemicals are kept on the site. Instead, he said, the helicopters fly to farms, where the side-mounted tanks are filled before pilots commence spraying operations.
The facility has about 25 aging Soviet Mi-2 helicopters, but only about nine work, he said. The rest need spare parts whose import has been blocked by a U.N. committee enforcing economic sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The import of aviation parts has typically been restricted because of concerns they could be used for military purposes.
After the inspectors left, Iraqi officials allowed journalists to enter the facility and walk across the airfield. Several dozen torpedo-shaped tanks and spraying nozzles, which had U.N. identification tags affixed by earlier groups of inspectors, were lined up on the tarmac.
The inspectors returned to Iraq last month, after the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution threatening "serious consequences" for Iraq if it did not allow international arms experts access to any person or place in Iraq without the inspectors having to seek permission or provide advance notice.
The previous groups of U.N. inspectors, who first arrived in Iraq in 1991, 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 as disputes arose over the inspectors' access to sites and Iraqi objections that the United States used some inspectors as spies.
The inspectors have not told the Iraqi government in advance which sites they plan to search, but they have begun their inspections at places that already were scoured by U.N. experts in the 1990s. That strategy is expected to continue at least until Dec. 8, when an additional 35 inspectors are scheduled to augment the 17 already on the ground.
----
Iraqis tipped to visits
U.N. Report
December 2, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021202-14950564.htm
BAGHDAD - Doubts arose over the surprise nature of new arms inspections in Iraq when a U.N. spokesman acknowledged that the head of a suspected weapons site received advance warning of the visit by the U.N. specialists to his facility Saturday.
"He was informed the day before [Friday] that the team was coming to remove an air sampler and install a new one," Hiro Ueki told Agence France-Presse by phone shortly after denying at a news briefing that the United Nations had tipped off the Iraqis.
"That is all [there is] to it," the spokesman added in an apparent bid to quash concerns about whether U.N. inspections of suspected weapons sites that resumed Wednesday really would be on a no-notice basis.
Reporters had pressed Mr. Ueki earlier about remarks by an Iraqi official, Hussein Hammudeh, who told reporters that he had notice of a visit to his facility by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) specialists.
Later, Mr. Ueki issued a statement elaborating on what he told AFP. He defended the notice to Iraq as purely a matter of logistics but added that the United Nations also had given notice to a second inspection site.
"Um al-Maarik Company, which the IAEA team visited today, 30 November, was notified by the IAEA team in advance that two of their technicians would review the status of the remaining video surveillance," he said.
"Al-Qa Qaa Company, which the IAEA team visited, was also requested on Thursday afternoon to provide assistance to facilitate removal of sampler," Mr. Ueki added. "This type of advance notification is sometimes given to facilitate their work on monitoring equipment. It happened to the above two cases."
----
Inspections Hit Snag as West Presses Iraq
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
By Hassan Hafidh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64512-2002Dec2?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. arms experts, in a swoop on suspect sites in Iraq Monday, said they hit the first snag in five days of inspections with the discovery that some equipment was missing from a missile factory.
A statement by the experts reported that some gear tagged by previous inspection teams was missing at the Karamah (Dignity) compound in Baghdad.
It said Iraqi officials had explained that the missing gear had either been destroyed in Western bombing or moved elsewhere.
In Washington a skeptical President Bush planned to turn up the pressure on President Saddam Hussein to meet a U.N. deadline for declaring any weapons of mass destruction, while Britain released a 23-page dossier accusing the Iraqi strongman of rights abuses. "The president wants to make certain that Saddam Hussein has no weapons and is not in violation of the United Nations. The president is skeptical that Saddam Hussein will comply," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
Fleischer said it was too early to say whether Iraq was cooperating with resumed United Nations weapons inspections. "It's too soon to say. One week is not adequate time," he said.
Inspectors visited the Karamah military industrial complex in Baghdad as well as distilleries to the northeast.
Stressing that their mission is still in its early days, the inspectors say they have found no evidence yet of banned weapons programs and encountered no obstruction by Iraqi authorities.
In one of the longest inspections of a single site to date, a team of inspectors spent just over six hours at Karamah run by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission in the Wazireyah industrial district of the capital.
Brigadier Mohammad Saleh Mohammad, commander of the compound, told reporters the facility was involved in the production -- mainly the design -- of missiles permitted by U.N. Security Council resolutions. Iraq is allowed to only have missiles with a range of 150 km (90 miles) or less.
The officer, who said previous inspection teams had visited the facility several times in the 1990s, said the inspectors had been given complete access to the site.
"They saw almost all documents, inspected all buildings on the site and interviewed some of the employees. There was no problem and the whole inspection process went on smoothly," he said.
Brigadier Issam Dawood said the site was heavily bombed during an assault by British and U.S. warplanes in 1998 for Iraq's alleged failure to cooperate with the inspectors.
A U.N. source declined to comment on how serious the matter of missing equipment was, but said that the Iraqi side had informed the inspectors where the remaining equipment had been moved to.
"When the time comes, our inspectors will verify their claims," the source told Reuters.
The inspectors' statement said that in 1998 the site contained a number of pieces of equipment tagged by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and several monitoring cameras.
"None of these is currently present at the facility," it said. "It was claimed that some had been destroyed by the bombing of the site; some had been transferred to other sites."
The statement said the facility was currently an engineering design and research and development site.
It was one of Iraq's main missile development sites before it was placed on long-term monitoring by previous inspection teams.
Last week inspectors said U.N. monitoring equipment at one site had either been destroyed or taken away by Iraqi authorities in the four years the inspectors were out of the country. But Blix said it was not a problem since much of the equipment was now outdated.
Another complaint of missing equipment at a foot and mouth vaccination laboratory south of Baghdad last week was resolved after Iraqi minders drove inspectors to see the site where the equipment had been moved.
A different inspection team spent about 90 minutes at private distilleries that produce alcoholic drinks near Khan Abi Sa'ad, some 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Baghdad Monday. It was not immediately clear why the experts went there.
The U.N. statement said the experts also visited three sites to the north of Baghdad Monday, two of which had never been accessed by any inspection teams before.
It said access to the sites was granted immediately and with full cooperation from the Iraqi side.
COMPLAINT TO U.N.
Iraq complained to the United Nations over a Western air raid on its southern port city of Basra and urged the world body to end U.S. and British air patrols over the country.
Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, in a letter to U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan, described Sunday's raid as part of a "barbaric terrorist aggression" against Iraq.
Iraqi officials said the bombing killed four people at oil company offices. The U.S. military insisted its planes had launched "precision-guided" weapons at Iraqi air defenses and that they always took pains to avoid hitting civilians.
The United States and Britain impose two "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq.
The U.S. and Iraqi militaries said U.S. and British planes struck again Monday.
Russia was also critical of the raid. A foreign ministry statement said "using force without the agreement of the U.N. Security Council can only complicate the mission of international inspectors in Iraq."
The British government, Washington's staunchest military ally, released a report of alleged rights violations.
The dossier accused the Iraqi leadership of systematic torture, including acid baths, rape and mass executions, and said Saddam had a "cruel and callous disregard for human life."
It detailed alleged abuses against political prisoners and Iraq's Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims.
The inspectors returned to Iraq last week for the first time in four years under a new U.N. Security Council mandate. The United States has threatened war on Iraq if it fails to comply with the U.N. resolution.
Iraq denies it has any such arms and has pledged full cooperation with the inspectors. It must submit a declaration of any banned weapons by December 8.
----
Arms inspectors optimistic on Iraq
Hilary Mackenzie
Vancouver Sun
Monday, December 02, 2002
http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=B05F2570-E0C1-444D-9FBC-2B8FE86B619F
Hussein Malla, Associated Press / UN weapons inspectors and Iraqi officials walk in front of piles of corn in Khan Bani Sa'ad, 30 km northeast of Baghdad Sunday.
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WASHINGTON -- The top nuclear arms inspector sounded an optimistic note Sunday, telling Iraq that war could be avoided if it fully complies with the demands of the United Nations.
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel for Iraq if it co-operates fully," Mohammed El Baradei, the director of the Austrian-based International Atomic Energy Agency told the British Broadcasting Corp. "War could be avoided, sanctions could be suspended, but if they don't come clean and we discover that there are omissions, there will be, as the (UN) Security Council says, grave consequences."
But the Egyptian nuclear expert's hopeful words are at odds with what is happening on the ground in the region, where a U.S. general arrives this week to lead war games.
General Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, is transferring his headquarters from Tampa, Fla., to As Sayliyah, Qatar from where he will lead a military exercise dubbed "Internal Look."
Military experts said it is the first time a war game of this type has been conducted outside the U.S., where personnel will practise command and control procedures to be used in the event of war. General Franks will meet up with top marine, army, navy, air force and special operational troops already in the region.
The U.S. has not formally asked Qatari head of state Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani if it may use the country as its main base from which to launch war against Iraq. It is unlikely to do so until the UN weapons inspectors have reported back to the Security Council in late January, military experts said.
More than 3,000 U.S. forces are already in the tiny emirate that sticks out like a thumb from Saudi Arabia's eastern coast.
Most are stationed at Al-Udeid air base, which will serve as the hub for air assaults if the Saudis do not allow the U.S. to stage a war from their Prince Sultan air base.
But as the U.S. continues to build up its military in readiness for war, El Baradei boosted Iraq's hopes for a peaceful end to the current standoff over its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Inspectors so far have had unfettered access to the suspect sites for Iraq's deadly arsenal of weapons, El Baradei said.
He noted the inspection team has not found anything untoward during the first four days of surprise inspections, but it was too early to judge the extent of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
"We are off to a good start but we are far from reaching a conclusion," El Baradei told the BBC from Vienna. "So far we have been getting good co-operation but it's a long road ahead of us and we are still waiting for the declaration that would come from Iraq on [Dec. 8]."
UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq last week after a four-year hiatus and are armed with a tough new UN resolution that threatens "serious consequences" if they do not comply.
The U.S. administration has threatened war if Saddam does not disarm and said it will act alone if necessary. Baghdad has a Dec. 8 deadline to list all its military and civilian programs that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction.
----
HUNT FOR WEAPONS
U.N. Team Gets to Work, Wary of Both Iraq and U.S.
December 2, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/international/middleeast/02INSP.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 1 - When the United Nations weapons inspectors who returned here last week after a four-year absence want to discuss the most sensitive issues, they do not trust their office walls. Fearful of Iraqi bugging, they go for walks in the gardens of their headquarters in a converted Baghdad hotel. Sometimes, they slip one another notes across a table, or use sign language.
And when they set out early each morning for one of the sites where Iraq was found in the 1990's to have been developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or missiles that could carry the weapons beyond Iraq, the inspectors weave through heavy early morning traffic at speeds of up to 90 miles an hour. They are followed by Iraqi officials intent on figuring out which sites have been chosen for the day's inspections so they can radio a notification ahead.
With only 13 of 1,000 suspected weapons sites checked so far, the inspections have already set a pattern of tension and intrigue that is barely covered over with polite humor and vows of mutual interest. The inspectors and the Iraqis entered the process knowing that war would be likely if the inspections foundered, or uncovered a new pattern of Iraqi deceit, and that a generation of iron-fisted rule in Iraq under President Saddam Hussein was hanging in the balance.
For the inspectors, it is a grinding task, burdened by knowledge that hawks in the Bush administration have scant faith in their ability to strip Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, after the evasion and intransigence with which the Iraqis met an earlier generation of United Nations inspectors in the 1990's. To this, some top officials in the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic, add the suspicion that Washington hard-liners might prefer them to fail, so as to clear a path to a military showdown.
So the inspectors find themselves caught between powerful forces, the Americans and the Iraqis, each pushing in different directions, as they set about a task of huge technical and logistical complexity. One senior inspections official summarized his feelings this way: "Do the Americans want us to succeed? How would I know?" As for the Iraqis, he added: "Basically, they sit across the table from us and tell us, `We have zero, zero, zero.' And of course, zero, zero, zero is a red flag to our bull."
For the moment, the inspectors are still in shakedown mode, working around the clock to revive an inspection apparatus that has been idle since 1998, when the previous team was withdrawn because of the Iraqis' refusal to allow unhindered access to nuclear sites. A fleet of eight helicopters for aerial surveillance of sites under inspection will begin arriving at the Baghdad airport in crates early this week. An electronic de-bugging team will sweep the inspectors' second-story offices at the United Nations headquarters. Monitoring cameras and air samplers installed at many sites years ago, and long since defunct, have to be replaced.
But already, the inspection teams have signaled to the Iraqis that they mean business.
In four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruisers, with radiation detectors and the most advanced scanners to detect toxic microbes, the inspectors, in blue baseball caps, head out in the mornings from their hotel on the outskirts of Baghdad - typically going first north, then south, then west, then east, then south again. Their strategy is to delay as long as possible the moment when the Iraqi officials following them can get a fix on where they are heading.
In principle, officials from Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate are in the convoys to cooperate with the inspectors, and to translate. That is especially important at the moment when the United Nations teams arrive at the gates of suspected weapons sites and demand "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access," as mandated by Security Council Resolution 1441 that passed unanimously under American pressure last month. The resolution included a stiff warning of "serious consequences" for Iraq - probably war with the United States - if the Iraqis fail to comply.
In practice, the highway chase is part of a grim game of cat and mouse, because the men of the monitoring directorate are there to watch the inspectors like hawks. The Iraqis' first task is to use radios on their dashboards to tell their superiors which military plant, vaccine laboratory or crop-spraying airfield the inspectors are heading for.
For now, the Iraqis' job is mostly one of simple deduction. Until the inspectors set up offices in Iraq's two other principal cities, Basra in the south near Kuwait, and the oil-field center of Mosul in the north, most sites they will choose will be within practicable day-return driving distance of Baghdad. From their initial experiences, inspection officials have concluded that the Iraqis' strategy is to wait until they have a fix on the inspectors' general direction and then to alert all "established" weapons sites in that direction.
So far, at every site the inspectors have visited, the Iraqis have been prepared. The sites' iron gates have been rolled back promptly on the inspectors' arrival. Mostly, plant directors and army generals have been waiting in their offices, and laboratories, workshops, foundries and outdoor testing sites have been staffed, if not always by the engineers and scientists the United Nations teams wanted to see.
Documents, including scientific data, have been quickly provided. No doors have been locked, or kept locked for long after the inspectors have asked for them to be opened.
The contrast with the inspections in the 1990's could hardly be greater. The Iraqis set a pattern then of harassment, culminating in the United Nations' decision to abandon Iraq in 1998, followed by four days of American and British bombing of many of the sites now on the inspectors' list. Inspectors were held for hours at site gates, while scientists and documents were driven away through rear entrances. A trove of documents was found hidden on a chicken farm. Missile parts were discovered at a police station. Senior officials repeatedly denied having weapons programs, until United Nations discoveries forced them to revise.
This time, inspection officials credit the far tougher mandate given to them in Resolution 1441, and American threats of war, for the Iraqi cooperation. "The past is the past; this is a different ballgame," said Demetrius Perricos, the Greek-born nuclear chemist who heads the the Unmovic field teams that are checking suspected biological, chemical and missile sites. In the 1980's, Mr. Perricos, 67, headed the first inspection teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for checking for nuclear weapons programs.
Some United Nations officials contend that the Iraqis will have a tougher time evading detection this time, precisely because they outwitted Mr. Perricos and his boss, Hans Blix, the last time. Mr. Blix, 74, was chairman of the atomic energy agency when the first nuclear inspections failed to detect that Iraq was trying to build a bomb. Veterans like them, United Nations officials say, start from the assumption that the Iraqis will hide evidence of banned programs even under the threat of war.
That presumption, expressed privately, runs through almost everything that inspectors do. "We know that at some point, they will start making our lives difficult," one United Nations inspections official here said. "We may be lucky and discover things they don't want us to know, but if they want to hide things from us, they can."
Many of the new powers granted to the inspectors were written into the mandate by the United States, determined to deny the Iraqis any "wiggle room." The provision for immediate access is one of those powers; another is a provision for Iraqi scientists to be flown out of Iraq for questioning, with their families, to avoid the intimidation that paralyzed many scientists during the earlier inspections. But already, Mr. Blix has said he regards that provision as unrealistic. "We are not an abduction agency," he said in a CNN interview.
Already, reports have begun circulating of Iraqi attempts to evade the inspections. The Times of London reported on Friday that Mr. Hussein had ordered hundreds of scientists, civil servants and officials of the ruling Baath party to store crucial parts of banned weapons programs in their homes, or face "severe penalties." Iraqi officials reacted to the report with fury. "You in the West will make up any stories to justify attacking Iraq," one said.
United Nations officials say they were reasonably sure they would find nothing amiss at the sites visited so far, all of them locations that were identified and "tagged" in the 1990's and in some cases even placed under surveillance by remote-controlled detection cameras. Those sites, they say, would be the least likely places to discover new programs.
The real test, United Nations officials say, will come in the weeks ahead.
"Were they expecting us? I'd say yes," Mr. Perricos said, referring to the sites visited so far. They have included laboratories and plants where the Iraqis had secret programs in the 1990's to develop deadly toxins like anthrax and botulinum and to build and test gas centrifuges for enriching uranium. Other sites inspected in recent days include some where the Iraqis built and ground-tested ballistic missiles with a range longer than the 90-mile limit set in the weapons-banning United Nations resolutions passed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the Persian Gulf war that followed.
"The test for us, and for them, will come in the future, when we start to visit facilities that they do not know we know, and where they don't expect us to go," Mr. Perricos said.
The implication was that the inspectors came to Iraq with lists of secret sites. If so, it seems likely that the inspectors share the suspicions voiced by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, that Iraq has revived some of its banned programs.
The first visits to those secret sites are likely to come after Sunday, when Iraq is required to make a declaration of all of its banned weapons programs, and of all civilian work in related fields. Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, who has been in the forefront of Iraqi officials denying that there are any banned programs, has said the declaration will run to more than 1,000 pages. United Nations inspection officials say that the declaration will set a "baseline" for their work, and that the logical time for them to inspect undeclared sites will be after the Iraqis present their list.
Up to now, the inspectors say, they have not been given all the intelligence the United States and Britain have drawn on in making their allegations about the secret weapons projects. Nor do they expect to be given it, considering American and British concerns that information passed to the United Nations teams might leak to the Iraqis. "Are the Americans telling us all they know? Come on!" another United Nations inspections official in Baghdad said.
His remark reflected the tensions that arose between officials who lead the inspection teams and American officials, after officials involved in the inspections in the 1990's disclosed that the United States and Britain had placed some of their intelligence agents in the inspection teams.
Some inspectors with experience from the 1990's say the new teams are determined to avoid what happened then, with American and British agents planted in the teams passing information about weapons sites back to their superiors in Washington and London before it was passed up the United Nations chain. This time, those inspectors say, the contacts with Western intelligence agencies will be more remote.
"We won't have a two-way street," said the official who discussed the intelligence exchanges. "We won't report to these agencies. There are ways in which they can give us a tip, and we can contact them. But we don't expect them to tell us everything they know."
So far, fewer than 30 inspectors are in Baghdad. By the end of the year, or soon after, the number is expected to rise to 100, with as many as 200 others available if needed, all of them graduates of an intensive United Nations training program.
Mr. Blix, the Unmovic chief, has responded to Iraqi complaints about the previous inspection teams being "top heavy" with American, British and Australian experts. The team already in Baghdad includes Chinese, Russian and Chilean inspectors, but Mr. Perricos said his team also had eight Americans and Britons.
Mr. Perricos said the new teams would be as technically proficient, and as hawk-eyed, as the old. "We're not going to allow the search for a wider nationality base to create a weak team," he said, adding, "It's not just the United States and Britain who have competent technicians. We are here to do a job, and believe me, we will do it."
--------
Bush Presses Iraq on Sunday Deadline for Arms Inventory
December 2, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/politics/02CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - President Bush demanded today that Saddam Hussein meet the first major test of the United Nations resolution by providing a "credible and complete" accounting of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction by the Sunday deadline set by the United Nations, and said his initial reading of the Iraqi leader's cooperation was "not encouraging."
Only a week after United Nations weapons inspectors began searching for evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, Mr. Bush appeared to be setting the stage today for making the Sunday disclosure a major turning point for Iraq. While he stopped short of declaring that an incomplete declaration on Sunday would be an immediate cause for war, he said it would be the test of whether Mr. Hussein had changed his ways.
"Any act of delay, deception or defiance will prove that Saddam Hussein has not adopted the path of compliance," he said. Others in the administration said, however, that the Dec. 8 deadline would not be a trigger for immediate military action - for which the Pentagon is not yet prepared - but rather an additional piece of evidence as they build a case for action.
Mr. Bush's speech today - together with one given by Vice President Cheney in Denver - marked the opening of a campaign by the White House to emphasize that disarmament, not cooperation with United Nations inspectors, is the test that the Iraqi leader must meet.
"The inspectors are not in Iraq to play hide-and-seek with Mr. Saddam Hussein," Mr. Bush said in a speech at the Pentagon.
"In the inspections process, the United States will be making one judgment: Has Saddam Hussein changed his behavior of the last 11 years? Has he decided to cooperate willingly and comply completely, or has he not? So far the signs are not encouraging," the president said.
Mr. Bush cited Iraqi attacks on American and British warplanes in the no-flight zones over Iraq, confrontations that the United States, though few other nations, regards as a material breach of the United Nations resolution requiring Iraq's disarmament.
With the inspectors having given no public indication of having found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in their early visits to sites in and around Baghdad, the White House was clearly eager today to cast the current maneuvering not as a test of whether the United States can make its case that Iraq is a threat but instead as a test of whether Mr. Hussein is cooperating fully in the disarmament process.
Underscoring the administration's effort to keep up the pressure on Iraq, Vice President Cheney, in his speech, noted that "this time, deception will not be tolerated."
He once again linked the Iraqi government to Al Qaeda - a link many of the administration's critics have questioned. He warned anew that terror groups like Al Qaeda could link up with outlaw regimes to attack the United States.
"That is why confronting the threat posed by Iraq is not a distraction from the war on terror," Mr. Cheney said in his speech. "It is absolutely crucial to winning the war on terror."
Both the president and the vice president focused on Sunday's deadline for Iraq to provide a full list to the United Nations of its weapons.
"On or before the eighth of December, Iraq must provide a full and accurate declaration of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs," Mr. Bush said. "That declaration must be credible and complete - or the Iraqi dictator will have demonstrated to the world once again that he has chosen not to change his behavior."
Making clear that the consequence would be war, the president added: "The temporary peace of denial and looking away from danger would only be a prelude to broader war and greater horror. America will confront gathering dangers early before our options become limited and desperate."
-------- japan
Japan orders nuclear reactor closed for false data
REUTERS JAPAN:
December 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18844/newsDate/2-Dec-2002/story.htm
TOKYO - Japan's Trade Ministry will order a one-year suspension of a nuclear reactor operated by the nation's largest power utility, Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) (9501.T), last week to punish it for falsifying data.
An official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said a notice was being sent to TEPCO last week afternoon ordering it to shut down the 460 megawatt nuclear reactor until November 28, 2003.
It is the first time the government has ordered a nuclear reactor to be closed because of a safety violation since 1997.
TEPCO admitted last month that staff had manipulated the air pressure of a container holding the reactor at a plant in Fukushima in northern Japan.
The heavy penalty underscored the view that METI sees the breach as even more serious than TEPCO's earlier admission that it had continued to operate nuclear power plants despite suspecting there were cracks in the reactors' shrouds.
The shroud is a stainless steel cylinder that helps regulate the flow of coolant.
The METI official said it was highly unlikely that the length of the suspension would be shortened.
"The order is that the reactor stop operating for one year," he said.
TEPCO suspended operation of the plant on October 26.
Nine of TEPCO's 17 nuclear reactors are currently closed, accounting for about half of the Tokyo-based utility's nuclear generation capacity.
Following the safety scandals, TEPCO plans to bring forward regular maintenance checks at other nuclear reactors. A further four will be shut down early next year, and two more may be added to that list, which would bring the total to 15.
The power utility has had to turn to thermal power plants to cover the shortfall in supplying electricity.
A TEPCO spokesman said last week no timetable had been set for the resumption of its closed nuclear reactors.
TEPCO shares ended morning trade on the Tokyo stock market flat at 2,075 yen. The key Nikkei average rose 0.43 percent.
-------- korea
U.S. quietly prepares to negotiate with N. Korea
By Barbara Slavin,
USA TODAY
12/2/2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-02-korea-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - Despite North Korea's open breach of its promise to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is quietly paving the way for negotiations that might give the reclusive country oil, food or other aid in exchange for verifiable shutdown of its bomb facilities.
Publicly, both countries have adopted hard-line positions since North Korea admitted to U.S. diplomats in October that it was building a uranium enrichment facility in defiance of a 1994 agreement with the United States. U.S. officials have refused negotiations and ordered a cutoff in oil aid. North Korea has refused any talks until the United States guarantees it won't use military force against it.
But behind the scenes, the Bush administration is preparing proposals for the complex means to verify any new North Korean promise to end its nuclear program, U.S. officials say. That is a signal that despite the bellicose rhetoric, both sides seem to be headed to the bargaining table.
"We can easily put together a regime of inspection and verification should one be needed, if they really are determined to come forward and tell us what they are doing and that they are going to stop," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a recent interview.
Other State Department officials said verification schemes are already being prepared by the Verification and Compliance Bureau in the office of John Bolton, the undersecretary for arms control.
Powell said officials from the Department of Energy and the International Atomic Energy Agency are already monitoring a North Korean nuclear facility that had produced plutonium.
U.S. planning is based on confidence that North Korea will eventually succumb to economic pressure from its neighbors and a united international community.
On Monday, after a summit meeting in Beijing, the leaders of North Korea's old socialist allies, Russia and China, issued a strong statement urging North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program for the sake of "the destiny of the world and security in Northeast Asia." The statement also urged the United States to "normalize relations" North Korea.
If there are talks, it would be an admission by both sides that there is no other realistic option. The North is already believed to have one or two nuclear weapons, as well as a conventional army that could inflict terrible damage on South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops based there.
According to a recent CIA estimate, North Korea began a uranium enrichment program "about two years ago" that could produce "two or more nuclear weapons per year" by the middle of this decade.
A senior administration official says a gas centrifuge plant to enrich uranium could be ready as early as next year. The facility is being built with equipment acquired from Pakistan, Russia and other sources, but U.S. intelligence does not know where the plant - most likely underground - is located.
Meanwhile, the 1994 U.S. agreement with North Korea is on life support. The United States and a consortium that includes South Korea, Japan and the European Union allowed one more delivery of fuel oil to North Korea last month but suspended future shipments until the crisis is resolved.
Under a separate humanitarian program begun in 1995, the United States is still supplying food to North Korea. And some aspects of the 1994 agreement continue to be implemented. South Korea is still preparing the site for the two civilian nuclear reactors, and the North Koreans have not tampered with the plutonium at their declared nuclear site at Yongbyon.
"We have lots more economic levers" now, says Scott Snyder, South Korea representative of the Asia Foundation. "But it may take a little while for this to play out."
----
China, Russia Urge N.Korea to Drop Nuclear Program
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
By Richard Balmforth
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62761-2002Dec2?language=printer
BEIJING (Reuters) - Russia and China urged North Korea Monday to drop its nuclear weapons program in the strongest call ever by Pyongyang's allies for detente on the Korean peninsula.
But a joint declaration after a Beijing summit also sent a strong message to the United States, urging Washington and North Korea to normalize ties and stick by a 1994 pact which each accuses the other of breaking.
Analysts say China and Russia have only limited influence over fiercely independent North Korea -- officially called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- and the statement was consistent with recent policy toward their tiny neighbor.
But China, which fought with the North in the 1950-53 Korean War, holds more sway than any other nation as a provider of most of its fuel oil and non-aid food imports as well as being a possible model for gradual economic reforms.
And the statement from its two Cold War-era "big brothers" raised diplomatic pressure on North Korea, which stunned the world in October by admitting it had a nuclear weapons program.
"The sides consider it important for the destiny of the world and security in Northeast Asia to preserve the non-nuclear status of the Korean peninsula and the regime of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," said the joint declaration.
"And in this context, they stress the extreme importance of normalizing relations between the United States and the DPRK on the basis of continued observation of earlier reached agreements, including the framework agreement of 1994."
Under the 1994 "Agreed Framework," North Korea promised to halt plans to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for light water nuclear reactors and fuel oil, but Pyongyang told a visiting U.S. official in October it had a nuclear arms program.
Following the admission, the United States and its allies, including South Korea and Japan, decided to suspend the fuel oil shipments from December.
BALANCED MESSAGE
The joint declaration after a meeting between visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin was also meant to warn the United States not to bully Pyongyang, analysts said.
"It's a balanced message. It is consistent with their long standing positions, but it's significant that they are saying it together and so publicly," said one Western diplomat.
"They do not want to see North Korea collapse because of fuel shortages or anything else, nor do they want it threatening its neighbors with nuclear weapons because that destabilizes the region."
Putin's visit was designed to seek common ground with China's retiring and incoming leaders, especially on security issues such as North Korea, Iraq and the war on terrorism, as Moscow and Beijing both forge closer ties with the United States.
Putin chatted with Jiang, a Russian speaker who once worked in the Soviet Union, as they walked past an honor guard before talks in the Great Hall of the People beside Tiananmen Square. The two leaders later toasted each other with champagne.
"China and Russia will be good neighbors, friends and partners forever," Jiang said after the meeting.
"There are no longer any more or less irritating questions left in our relations," Putin told reporters. "On the contrary, we have become partners in a strategic partnership that is beginning to give real results."
PUTIN MEETS HU
Putin became the first major world leader to meet Vice President Hu Jintao since he replaced Jiang as head of China's Communist Party last month. Hu is due to succeed Jiang as head of state at a parliament meeting in March.
Putin said Hu, who visited Russia last year, had helped to build solid foundations for the new bilateral relationship.
"I want to express the hope, the certainty, that future Russia-China relations will be based precisely on that foundation and will be strong and reliable and our cooperation will be effective," he said.
Analysts say the two sides want to dispel the view that their relationship plays second fiddle to ties with the United States.
"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.
Both countries are veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which has sent inspectors to Iraq to hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
But Moscow and Beijing have stressed the importance of the United Nations in authorizing further action against Baghdad.
The joint declaration said the Iraq question should be resolved by political and diplomatic means and "on the basis of rigorous observance of the resolutions of the Security Council."
It also said Russia backed China's struggle against Muslim separatists in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, and Beijing supported Moscow's campaign against Chechen rebels.
The two sides have built a new strategic partnership over the last few years based partly on common opposition to human rights critics and interference in other countries' internal affairs, fearing humanitarian intervention within their own borders.
But Putin has leaned toward a pro-Western foreign policy since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
And Beijing too has warmed to Washington since then. 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.
----
N. Korea ships fuel, missiles to Yemen
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 2, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021202-71029594.htm
North Korea recently shipped missiles and fuel components to Yemen in a sign the Pyongyang government is continuing to act as the world's main missile supplier, The Washington Times has learned.
The missile shipment was sent from the port of Nampo two weeks ago aboard a freighter bound for Yemen and had been under surveillance for several weeks, according to U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In addition to missiles, the shipment included containers of a chemical known as inhibited red fuming nitric acid, an agent used as an oxidizer in Scud missile fuel.
The officials said the shipment is part of a deal between Yemen and North Korea for Scud missiles that was made public earlier this year. The U.S. imposed economic sanctions against North Korea in August after the first missile transfer.
"We deny the credibility of any such report, that there is a second [missile] shipment," said Yahya Alshawkani, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy. Mr. Alshawkani said the only missile shipment from North Korea took place earlier this year.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday called North Korea the "single biggest proliferator of ballistic missiles" and said its role in selling missiles and technology is "a danger to the world."
"They have had interaction over many, many years with a great number of countries - terrorist states and nonterrorist states," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Foreign Press Center. He added that much remains unknown about North Korea's missile sales.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
The latest shipment is an indication that the use of sanctions against the hard-line communist country for its missile sales has not stopped the transfers.
North Korea was hit with U.S. economic sanctions in August for a similar shipment of Scud missile components to Yemen. They block the state-run company, Changgwang Sinyong Corp., from doing business with the U.S. government or from obtaining licensed exports from here.
Yemen was not sanctioned because of the Sana'a government's support of the United States in the war on terrorism.
U.S. officials said the U.S. government protested the missile sale, which was arranged during the Clinton administration, and that the Sana'a government promised not to purchase additional missiles.
It could not be learned how many missiles Yemen is buying from North Korea.
The new shipment is expected to result in additional sanctions on North Korea, U.S. officials said.
Disclosure of the missile transfer came as a senior Yemeni official was in Washington to express Yemen's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Abdel-Karim Iryani, a former government minister and adviser to the president, told reporters that Yemen is working closely with the United States in the war.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said in Sana'a Aug. 24 that "we have bought these missiles, and this is a legitimate right for Yemen," according to press reports from the region.
Mr. Saleh also said the United States imposed sanctions on North Korea and not Yemen because of its support for efforts to find al Qaeda terrorists.
The CIA carried out a bold missile attack in October using an unmanned aerial vehicle that killed six al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, including an American and a key al Qaeda leader who had been linked to the October 2000 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole missile destroyer in Aden harbor.
U.S. officials said Yemen's purchase of missiles is part of the trend among developing nations of acquiring missile systems as a way to counter missile threats from neighboring countries.
In the past, Yemen has purchased more than 20 Scud missiles from Moscow. Several were fired in 1994 during Yemen's civil war.
North Korea in the past has been closely involved in supplying missiles and related components to states that support terrorism in the Middle East, notably Syria and Iran.
Pyongyang also has sold missile goods to Pakistan and Egypt.
North Korea's missile sales to Iran have been a major cause of concern because of sales of medium-range missile components.
Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies discovered a payment dispute between Iran and North Korea over missile sales after Tehran was slow to pay Pyongyang.
A missile shipment from North Korea to Iran was detected in February 2001 involving medium-range missile components and technology.
North Korea announced last week that it was abandoning the 1994 Agreed Framework that was supposed to have halted its nuclear weapons program.
The announcement followed a decision by the U.S. government to halt oil shipments to North Korea under the accord after North Korea confirmed in October that it was covertly working on nuclear weapons, in violation of the 1994 agreement.
North Korea also has hinted that it may resume missile flight tests, which were halted after the 1998 flight test of a long-range missile that flew over Japan.
----
North Korea ripe for change
James T. Hackett
December 2, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021202-17924287.htm
On taking office in 1993, President Bill Clinton found himself faced with a North Korea developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and selling the latter to anyone. The North was a dangerous dictatorship that just a few years earlier had capped a long record of international terrorism by blowing up a South Korean airliner, killing 115 persons. Mr. Clinton did what came naturally for him - he negotiated, and in 1994 cut a deal to pay off the North.
That deal provided for Japan and South Korea to build two light-water nuclear power plants for the North, while the U.S. would supply half a million tons of free oil every year for 10 years. By 2000, the United States was shipping oil worth $270 million a year, making the Stalinist regime the largest recipient of U.S. aid in East Asia. To receive this largesse, all the North had to do was suspend its nuclear program.
But of course it did not and continued secretly developing nuclear weapons. Still, Mr. Clinton accomplished what he wanted - to keep North Korea quiet until he was out of office. Now, faced with a much tougher president in the White House, the North admits it never kept its part of the deal. That admission seems to be a stupid attempt to blackmail President Bush into providing more money in exchange for still more worthless promises. But this president won't bite.
Earlier this year, Gen. Thomas Schwartz, commander of U.S. forces in Korea, said the North has 500 Scuds that threaten the entire peninsula. More than 100 Nodongs can reach most of Japan, including U.S. bases there. The North also has large stocks of chemical weapons, ranging from mustard gas to sarin and other nerve agents, and has been working on biological weapons since the 1960s.
But the North's nuclear weapons program has been shrouded in secrecy. It is only since Mr. Clinton left office that intelligence agencies have been willing to state publicly that North Korea "probably has one or two nuclear bombs." The fact is, no one outside that secretive state knows how many it has or can produce.
That makes an article in the December issue of the Japanese magazine Tokyo Gendai especially interesting. The article titled "North Korea Has Completed Arming Itself With Nuclear Weapons" was written by Kenki Aoyama, who was born in Japan to Korean parents in 1939 and returned to North Korea in 1961 to attend Pyongyang's top technology university. On graduation, he was assigned to North Korea's National Academy of Sciences and later worked on the missile program, but many of his colleagues worked in the secret nuclear program started at Yongbyon in 1962.
Mr. Aoyama calls Yongbyon "a gigantic nuclear complex" with about 20,000 researchers and their families living there. He describes the nuclear reactors and plants for reprocessing and enriching uranium. Only a few buildings are above ground, he writes, while "all other facilities lie underground." The purpose of the complex, he says, "was to produce nuclear bombs."
In 1993, Mr. Aoyama writes, a successful underground nuclear test was conducted at Yongbyon, the same year North Korea withdrew from the Non-proliferation Treaty it had signed in 1985. The government then moved its nuclear weapons program to Kumchang-ni, some 35 miles north, to avoid international inspectors. By 1998, the United States had learned of Kumchang-ni and demanded to inspect it. North Korea agreed to admit inspectors in exchange for 600,000 tons of food. But by the time the inspectors arrived, Mr. Aoyami says, another move had been completed and the United States paid a high price to look at empty tunnels. The North has become a master of bait and switch.
Mr. Aoyami defected in 1998 and returned to Japan. He knows first-hand, he says, that the Nodong missiles are hidden in deep tunnels near the Chinese border. He thinks the North's nuclear weapons program is now at Pakchon, not far from Yongbyon, but a recent defector who is a nuclear scientist claims it has been moved farther south to North Hwanghae Province.
Wherever it is, Mr. Aoyami believes the light-water reactors being built under the 1994 agreement will be used to produce more nuclear weapons. Constructing those plants, he says, is suicidal and should be stopped. He asserts that North Korea will never stop producing nuclear weapons as long as the Kim Jong-il dictatorship remains in power.
Fortunately, we now have a president who understands that. The 1994 agreement has been blatantly violated. South Korea's President Kim Dae-jung, who promoted the overly optimistic "sunshine policy" toward the North, will be leaving office in a few weeks. After that, the United States and its Asian allies can end the agreement and pursue a more realistic policy of aggressive containment to isolate North Korea and promote badly needed regime change.
James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to The Washington Times based in San Diego.
-------- missile defense
Out-of-the-Box Thinking at Pentagon
Missile Defense Agency Seeks Public's Ideas, and a Few May Fly
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61434-2002Dec1?language=printer
Looking for fresh ways to build a missile defense system, the Pentagon issued a broad public appeal earlier this year inviting anyone with "new and innovative concepts" to write in with them.
Although the United States already has spent more than $120 billion over the past half-century trying to come up with a workable weapon for defending the country against ballistic missile attack, none exists. With the Bush administration again making missile defense a high priority and investing nearly $8 billion a year in various efforts, Pentagon officials wanted to make sure they weren't overlooking any promising approaches.
In response to the appeal, all kinds of ideas have poured in from all kinds of contributors -- academicians, small businesses, major defense contractors, scientists, hobbyists. Some have been more fanciful than others.
Take, for instance, the one from a small California company that proposed developing a stealthy airplane, armed with lasers and carrying a contingent of 50 Special Forces troops, that would land and zap enemy missiles being readied for launch.
Or the one from a Chinese citizen who submitted a vague plan for an interceptor that would sneak up on an enemy missile from behind in a kind of tail chase.
Or a suggestion for X-ray lasers that would orbit in space.
Sorting through the 194 proposals received since February, Gary Payton, director of the Advanced Concepts Office at the Missile Defense Agency, has instructed his staff to focus on technical feasibility and cost-effectiveness.
"I tell my folks, for the initial round of peer review, if the ideas violate no more than two laws of physics, we'll keep them," Payton said. "The one on X-ray lasers violated several laws of both physics and economics."
Payton's office isn't the only one canvassing the public for bright ideas about missile defense. Two other appeals, known formally as "broad area announcements," went out over the past year -- one searching for ways of building interceptors that would knock down missiles shortly after takeoff in their "boost phase," the other for improving the "producibility and manufacturing" of all missile defense elements.
"What we wanted to do was understand completely what was out there, what potentially could be out there, that would be applicable to this kind of problem," said Terry Little, who oversees development of kinetic boost-phase systems.
One response his office received proposed placing a huge interceptor on an unmanned airship that would patrol at an altitude of 80,000 feet. Another company simply offered its services, saying in effect: "We have lots of smart people, give us all your money, and we'll produce the products for whenever you need them."
Not all the "white papers," as they are called, have exceeded the bounds of practicality. Some of the more promising ideas, in fact, have ended up incorporated in the Pentagon's budget plans for next year, officials said. Among the proposals being seriously pursued is one for an array of solar cells that would power a high-flying airship for detecting incoming missiles. Another promotes the further miniaturization of interceptor "kill vehicles" for homing in on and obliterating enemy warheads.
A number of submissions from defense contractors helped persuade Little that a boost-phase system actually stands a chance of working. He had questioned whether it would be possible to build an interceptor that is fast enough to catch an enemy missile after launch.
"I didn't know where we were with that kind of technology," Little said. "My comfort level came when I saw that boosters here today, things we've actually built, could achieve this kind of velocity."
A longtime defense acquisition specialist who has managed several of the Air Force's most successful munitions and missile programs, Little still isn't ready to declare himself totally sold on the feasibility of boost-phase systems. "I would say today I'm at a 60 percent confidence level," he said.
Pentagon officials are further along in developing a system of land-based interceptors intended to strike enemy missiles once they reach space, in their "midcourse phase." But the boost-phase approach has strong support among some missile defense advocates, and the Pentagon plans to issue contracts in the spring for conceptual designs for a boost-phase system.
Little said such a system could conceivably be fielded by 2008. His office intends to focus first on building a system of mobile, land-based interceptors, then expand to sea-launched ones.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- pennsylvania
Grant Helps Penn State Nuke Program
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-EXP-Campus-Nukes.html
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- Jack Brenizer remembers the lean days in the nuclear industry, when one-third of university nuclear engineering programs were eliminated and more than half of the nation's on-campus research reactors closed their doors.
As the nuclear engineering program chairman at Penn State University, he says his graduates today are virtually guaranteed jobs, and his research reactor was chosen to share in a $1.97 million grant that could keep it at the cutting edge of campus nuclear research.
Nuclear power is making a comeback -- at least at Penn State, where undergraduate enrollment in the program has doubled in the last three years. Nuclear engineers are in demand, and there's talk of building new nuclear power plants for the first time in decades.
``This idea of building new reactors, to a student that's a very exciting prospect,'' Brenizer said. ``And we're seeing a lot of students now who come in very excited about their prospects of being in on the renaissance of nuclear engineering.''
In a way, Penn State is an appropriate place for that renaissance to begin. The university's Breazeale Reactor Facility, part of the Radiation Science and Engineering Center, was the nation's first licensed nuclear reactor when it was brought on line in 1955 as part of President Dwight Eisenhower's ``Atoms for Peace'' program.
The construction of nuclear power plants, the development of a nuclear Navy and the emergence of nuclear sciences in the 1950s, '60s and '70s fueled tremendous job growth in the industry. The federal government helped to build small reactors on 64 college campuses -- smaller versions of their power-generating cousins -- used mostly for training and research.
``Our primary function is education,'' said Fred Sears, director of the Radiation Science and Engineering Center. ``Here, students can learn how to conduct research using radiation. And by working at the facility, they learn the mechanics and the operation of a nuclear reactor.''
But by the 1980s, when no new nuclear power plants were being built, the demand for nuclear scientists and engineers began to fade.
About 1,800 students were enrolled in undergraduate nuclear engineering programs in 1980. By the late 1990s, that number had fallen to fewer than 500. Over the same period the number of academic programs in nuclear engineering dropped by one third, from 57 to 38.
And as student numbers shrank, so did support for expensive reactor facilities.
``Obviously, when you have less than 500 at maybe 30 institutions around the country, university administrators start to see they're dedicating all these resources to very few students,'' said John Gutteridge, director of university programs for the U.S. Department of Energy. ``A lot of these schools decided to cut their programs or close their reactors.''
At first, it was the smaller programs and reactors that were being shut down, Gutteridge said. But when Cornell University voted in May 2001 to close its reactor and officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan talked about doing the same, DOE's Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee drew up a plan to keep existing reactors alive through a system of grants.
Penn State joined with Purdue University and the universities of Illinois and Wisconsin, sharing $1.97 million in the first year of a five-year grant. Three other regional programs were funded, a New England program led by MIT, a Southwest program led by Texas A&M University, and a West Coast program led by Oregon State University and the University of California at Davis.
With 65 juniors and seniors in nuclear engineering -- more than double the number from just three years ago -- Penn State hopes to enhance its classroom and laboratory facilities with the grant.
Gutteridge said universities participating in the program would use their grants in different ways. Wisconsin planned to develop a distance-learning course that could be delivered over the Internet; the University of New Mexico, a partner in the Southwest group, will use most of its money for undergraduate scholarships.
``We're a very small program, so being able to provide some money for three or four students per year is significant for us,'' said Bob Busch, director of the Nuclear Engineering Laboratory at New Mexico.
-------- south carolina
S.C. Plutonium Removal Timetables Set
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Shipments.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- A provision included in a defense bill signed into law Monday by President Bush sets timetables for the removal of plutonium at the Savannah River Site near Aiken and fines for the U.S. Energy Department if plutonium processing programs fail to meet goals.
The department plans to build a facility at SRS that will convert 34 tons of plutonium into a mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, that can be used in commercial nuclear reactors.
Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. authored the plutonium provision and fought to have it inserted into the defense bill.
``The legislation provides unprecedented protections for the state,'' Graham said. ``It has a requirement that all plutonium leave the state at a date certain if the MOX program fails and those requirements are backed by unprecedented financial penalties for noncompliance.''
A spokesman for Gov. Jim Hodges, who has sued DOE to block shipments of plutonium into his state, called the provision a step in the right direction. ``Basically, it's better than nothing,'' spokesman Cortney Owings said. But ``it gives no certainty that plutonium will leave our state.''
Under the bill, if the MOX program is not successfully operating by 2017, then all remaining plutonium must be removed immediately. In addition, a fee of $1 million per day -- up to $100 million per year -- will be assessed during the removal period to make sure the nuclear material is removed quickly.
Hodges' lawsuit, which claims Energy officials had not conducted the proper environmental studies on the safety of shipping plutonium to SRS, is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court is expected to decide early next year whether to hear the case.
-------- MILITARY
------- afghanistan
Afghan Leader Announces Plans for National Army
December 2, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-summit.html
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Monday he was creating a national army and banning all private militias, but fighting at home underlined the continuing instability in his fragile nation.
``The new army is intended to give Afghanistan an efficient, mobile, well-paid armed forces, not exceeding 70,000 troops and officers all together,'' Karzai said in Bonn where he met Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and international officials to mark a December 2001 agreement on a post-Taliban government.
``Those who are outside of the ministry of defense, who consider themselves independent, are declared illegal from the signing of this document onwards,'' he said of a decree issued on Monday.
International peacekeepers in Kabul estimate the national army is now between 1,000 and 1,500 men strong, a figure dwarfed by the private militias controlled by warlords and governors around the country, which can number up to 30,000.
``The time given for the total centralization and effective control of the ministry of defense for all forces is a maximum of one year,'' Karzai said.
``All the weapons that belong to various groups belong to the Afghan army. All the heavy weapons will have to be delivered to the new national army of Afghanistan.''
Fierce clashes between rival commanders have killed at least 13 people and injured dozens more in the last two days.
The fighting, which broke out early on Sunday, was temporarily halted when a U.S. B-52 bombed positions held by one of the factions, the first such American action in Afghanistan for months.
SEARCH FOR STABILITY
U.S. officials say that most of the country is peaceful, although fighting against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda continues in some parts. A new national army is seen as key in establishing stability in Afghanistan.
An adviser to U.S. President George Bush at the summit told Reuters that forces had recently captured the son-in-law of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who was toppled last year.
``With regard to al Qaeda and terrorism, significant progress has been made,'' said Zalmay Khalilzad, special presidential envoy for Afghanistan. ``There are some figures that are in Afghanistan, but I don't think that Afghanistan is any longer the headquarters of al Qaeda.''
At the anniversary summit, Karzai hailed the progress his country has made since forming a new government a year ago.
``Afghanistan has gone a long way since last year from tyranny, from oppression, from hopelessness, to freedom, to constitutionalism and peace and economic prosperity,'' Karzai told a news conference.
Schroeder said the freedoms that began with the fall of the Taliban regime ``must be achieved and fought for every day.''
``We know that the liberation, the establishing of security and the rebuilding of Afghanistan is a long process that requires patience from us all and long-term engagement,'' the German leader told the summit.
U.S. Afghan coordinator David Johnson said it would cost $350 million a year for two years to train, equip and sustain the force. He said the money still needed to be raised.
Afghanistan says it also needs a lot of money to rebuild, but officials the Bonn conference did not pledge new funds.
Washington is hoping donor nations in the coming weeks will pay off Afghanistan's $47 million of debt to international institutions and open the way to significant new loans.
-------
U.S. bombs front lines of warlords
By David Rennie
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
December 2, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021202-27985744.htm
The United States yesterday sent B-52 bombers to pound suspected hostile forces in western Afghanistan where rival warlords were fighting.
The high-altitude planes dropped seven bombs in response to a plea for air support from a team of American special forces after they apparently came under fire while patrolling near Shindand air base, said Col. Roger King, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The American forces escaped unharmed.
But Ammanullah Khan, a local warlord, claimed that American warplanes had bombed his front-line positions about a dozen miles away, near the large town of Zer-e-Koh, in what he said was an attempt to stop fighting between his forces and those of his rival, Ismail Khan, the Iranian-backed governor of Herat.
It was not clear yesterday whether special forces were involved in the fighting that had broken out between the two longtime rivals, caught in cross fire, or whether they were even near the scene of the fighting. U.S. forces in Afghanistan frequently come under fire and rocket attack from unknown enemies and routinely call in air support.
Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik, has fought several times this year with Ammanullah Khan, an ethnic Pashtun, near the former Soviet air base at Shindand.
Both sides accused the other of starting the latest fighting. In a satellite telephone interview with reporters in Kabul, Ammanullah Khan said Ismail Khan had attacked his positions in Zer-e-Koh Saturday night with tanks, artillery and rocket launchers. The battle had left 11 of his men dead, and seven wounded, though no ground was given, Ammanullah Khan said.
However, Sayed Nasir Ahmad Alawi, a security chief for Ismail Khan, blamed the other side.
The fight "started when Ammanullah's forces attacked our positions and advanced toward Shindand bazaar, but they were forced back to their positions," he said.
Ammanullah Khan said he had telephoned the capital, Kabul, to complain about the attack by Ismail Khan, and seek the intervention of President Hamid Karzai's government forces.
However, the west of Afghanistan, which falls heavily under the sway of neighboring powers from Iran to Uzbekistan, is only theoretically under the control of the central government in Kabul.
Ismail Khan retook the area last year after U.S.-backed forces defeated the Taliban regime.
-------- africa
Porous Borders, Poverty Make Kenya a Target
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58327-2002Nov30?language=printer
MOMBASA, Kenya, Nov. 30 -- Workers at this Indian Ocean city's bustling port say drug lords can sneak 600 pounds of cocaine into the country by slipping a crisp $100 bill into a policeman's pocket. Land mines, guns and fake passports can sail through the port for what dockworkers and police call in Swahili kitu kidogo -- literally a "little something," but more commonly understood to mean a fat wad of cash.
"In Kenya, you can bomb the whole country for a $50 bribe, and everyone knows it," said Joseph Mutisya, 34, a laborer who works at the port. "There's a lot of poverty here. People come from all over -- Yemen, Somalia, the Middle East. They bring weapons. They bring whatever they want if they pay a bribe."
That kind of Wild West atmosphere, combined with desperate poverty, porous borders and increasingly pro-Palestinian feelings among the large Muslim population along Kenya's coast, has made this country an easy target for the kind of terrorist attacks that claimed 16 lives here on Thursday, Kenyan officials and Western diplomats said.
The 16 people -- 10 Kenyans, three Israelis and three suicide bombers -- were killed at the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel when a four-wheel-drive vehicle laden with explosives crashed into the hotel lobby at 8:30 a.m. Moments earlier, two missiles were fired at -- but missed -- a Boeing 757 as it took off from Mombasa's airport bound for Tel Aviv.
Kenya was also the scene of a suicide attack four years ago, when a truck bomber hit the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the capital, killing more than 200 people. The same day, another truck bomb killed a dozen people at the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, capital of neighboring Tanzania.
Investigation of the coordinated embassy bombings led to indictments against Osama bin Laden and members of his al Qaeda network, four of whom were convicted in U.S. courts. One, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, allegedly set up a fishing business in Mombasa with al Qaeda money and handed a portion of his revenue over to the organization; another, Wadih el-Hage, reputed to have been bin Laden's secretary, was accused of setting up al Qaeda's East Africa cell in Nairobi in 1994.
In the wake of Thursday's attacks, suspicions again have turned toward al Qaeda. Though a Palestinian group claimed responsibility on Thursday, U.S. officials in Washington have said a likely suspect might be al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, a Somali Muslim group with links to al Qaeda and a record of activity throughout the Horn of Africa, including in Mombasa.
Kenyan authorities continued to hold four Somalis and six Pakistanis in connection with Thursday's attacks. But Internal Security and Defense Minister Julius ole Sunkuli said today that no evidence had been found that would link the 10 to al Qaeda. He emphasized, however, that al Qaeda involvement had not been ruled out.
"Kenya is a country frequented by people of so many backgrounds and nationalities coming in and out," Sunkuli said. "Kenya has been attacked before. Any place can be attacked, but we are looking at how these missiles were brought into the country and how the bombers got in."
Kenyan police have said that the 10 men aroused suspicion when they arrived at Mombasa's port on Monday with false passports aboard a dhow, one of the traditional sailboats that have plied the Indian Ocean for centuries, and that they were arrested on Friday. Today, however, an Israeli intelligence source said the men had been arrested when they arrived Monday and confined to their boat since then, making it unlikely that they could have participated in Thursday's attacks.
Two others detained Friday were released today, police said. After hours of interrogation, Alicia Kalhammer, 31, an American, and her Spanish husband, Jose Tena, were determined to be tourists who had no connection with the attacks. The two were arrested as they attempted to leave their Mombasa hotel about two hours after Thursday's bombing.
After being released, Kalhammer, who lived in Nairobi as the daughter of a foreign service worker in 1976, said she and her husband had gone on a 10-day safari in northwestern Kenya before coming to the beaches of Mombasa. Freed from two days' detention in a tiny cell in Mombasa's port, Kalhammer said she wanted to get a beer, return her rental car and continue her vacation in another part of Kenya.
"There are no hard feelings. We love Kenya. We love the Kenyan people, and we know they were doing their job," Kalhammer said. "We want to come back, if they let us."
Not everyone who wants to enter Kenya worries about such formalities. Nairobi, one of Africa's largest and busiest cities, is a well-known haven for shady characters from other countries. Human rights groups report that leaders of Rwanda's 1994 genocide and fugitives from other African wars frequently have fled to Kenya, which ranks as one of the most corrupt nations in the world, according to the watchdog group Transparency International.
"Everyone knows that in Kenya you report something to the police and nothing happens, you end up having to pay a bribe," said Ben Mwashoti, a Mombasa dock worker. "Illegal documents, sugar, electronics and people sneaking in, all come through here because people have no money. They take bribes, and now we're all suffering because of it."
After the embassy bombings, there was a crackdown on the ports, workers say. But before long, they say, the bribes began to flow again, everything was allowed in, and no questions were asked.
"There is no question that the failed system here has made it a real easy place to do something like this," said a Western diplomat based in Kenya, who asked not to be identified. "Maybe now the Kenyan government will work to change that."
Like the coastline, the border between Kenya and Somalia is extremely porous, allowing goods and people to move easily back and forth. Intelligence agencies have blamed the Somali-based al-Ittihad for attacks in Somalia and Ethiopia and say it has been active in Kenya as well.
Today, Somalia's transitional government, a fledgling institution that controls only a small portion of a country fragmented for more than a decade, condemned the Mombasa attacks. "The government feels it is time to work together as a region and international community to dismantle terror groups wherever they are," said a Somali official, who said he was quoting Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah.
But many Kenyans say their country is simply too poor to root out terrorist groups. There are few jobs in the weak economy. Some of those who do find work as police or border guards are frequently unpaid because government workers, according to corruption watchdog groups, pocket salaries. Sometimes, Kenyans say, they have no way to feed their families other than by taking bribes.
That kind of poverty makes intelligence officials wonder whether terrorist groups will find a willing labor pool in East Africa.
Kenya's population of 31 million is about 10 percent Muslim. Militancy was seldom a concern until the 1998 embassy bombings, and today, many Kenyan Muslims say they share the anger felt by Muslims elsewhere, especially regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the embassy bombings made them feel that Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were the cause of the international violence.
At the Bawaryz Mosque in Mombasa, some of those attending afternoon prayers said that the Palestinian cause has become as important to them as the struggle against white-minority rule in South Africa once was.
The mosque's leader preached peace, but many outside said anger at the United States and Israel was justified. They praised bin Laden, calling him a defender of Islam.
"Kenyan Muslims have started to care about this, and we think it's a good cause," said Garib Kassim, a businessman, who smoked a cigarette as he stood outside the mosque. "No one should be surprised that this bombing happened here. We don't want people to die. But it will keep happening more and more here and around the world unless Israel leaves Palestine alone."
-------- asia
Malaysia Sees Australia Strike As War Act
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Malaysia-Australia-Terrorism.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said a pre-emptive strike by Australia against terrorists in Malaysia would be viewed as an act of war, while Australia tried to reassure its Asian neighbors on Tuesday.
The Malaysian leader was responding to a statement Sunday by Prime Minister John Howard that Australia could launch pre-emptive strikes against suspected terrorists if they were plotting attacks against his country or countrymen.
``We will hold this as an attempt to wage war against the government and the country if Australia pursues its intention to attack any country to tackle terrorism,'' Mahathir was quoted as saying late Monday by the national news agency, Bernama.
``If they used rockets or pilotless aircraft to carry out assassination, then we will consider this as an act of war and we will take action according to our laws to protect the sovereignty and independence of our country,'' Mahathir said.
Howard also said that the United Nations Charter should be modified to allow nations to strike pre-emptively at the terrorists.
Australia has been struggling with how to fight terror since the Oct. 12 bomb attacks in Bali, Indonesia, killed more than 180 people, about half of them Australian tourists.
But Howard's comments have angered Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, stoking fears that Australia acts as a deputy sheriff for an increasingly unilateralist United States in the region.
In Australia, Chris Kenny, a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, said that he was unaware of Mahathir's specific comments but that ``there's been a lot of nonsense around about this issue.''
Downer told CNN in an interview that ``to extropolate from all of this that Australia's actually got some sort of new doctrine that it's going to bomb its neighbors is really just absurd.''
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Monday that Australia is acting like a ``big power'' in Southeast Asia, at odds with its desire to join multilateral organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Malaysia contends that it needs no help in fighting terrorism, having been ahead of most of its neighbors in recognizing the danger and rounding up some 70 militant suspects since mid-2001.
Most of the suspects belong to Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked group that has been blamed for the Bali attack and other plots and bombings in the region over the past few years. The group wants to establish a hard-line Islamic state in Southeast Asia.
Australia and Malaysia remain military allies under a five-power arrangement with the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Singapore. But verbal rows between the two countries are part of the regional landscape.
Mahathir recently urged Australia to choose between closer ties with Asia or its traditional alliance with the United States. An Australian opposition leader responded that Mahathir should take ``a running jump.''
-------- business
Homeland Agency Holds Line on Tech Spending
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58459-2002Nov30?language=printer
The creation of the Homeland Security Department may be the most radical makeover of security agencies in 50 years, but experts say any increase in technology spending on the new agency will be tepid, at least for now.
President Bush signed legislation last week to combine 22 federal agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Secret Service, Customs Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration into one department. Along with the challenge of combining a variety of cultures and mandates, the new agency's challenges include integrating computer networks and e-mail systems.
Though a momentous task, it will not necessarily require a flood of new funding, said Jim Kane, president of market research firm Federal Sources Inc. It does represent a good opportunity, especially for established contractors, "but companies should not expect the creation of the department to create a bonanza for them," Kane said.
"Over the long run, it will definitely mean more funding," said Chris Penny, analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. "What I am telling my clients is, while certainly it's created a lot of buzz, we won't see a lot of the funding opportunities until well into next year."
The component agencies start moving to the new department on March 1, and the administration wants to fund much of the integration costs within existing budgets, industry officials said. The new agency "doesn't mean a great deal in the short term; you're not going to see a lot of funding in the next six months," said Bruce Aitken, president of the Homeland Securities Industries Association, an industry group.
The cost of creating the department and employing new technology may not be as high as some expect, said Mark Forman, the Office of Management and Budget's associate director of information technology and e-government. "The one thing I would keep in mind here is that compared to the [technology] of the 1980s, now you can do a lot more quicker and at less cost with a higher probability of success because of e-business and Web-based approaches," he said.
Dampening expectations, the administration has been cautious about spending on the new agency even before it was approved by Congress. The OMB sent jitters through the industry this summer when it ordered seven of the component agencies to temporarily halt spending on more than $1 billion in information technology projects while it looked for savings and compatible technology. It is unclear how much of that funding is still pending.
And just the wait to create the new department -- which was stalled in the Senate for months -- caused angst for the region's many government technology consulting companies, many of which established homeland security task forces to go after business more than a year ago.
"The delay in standing up the department has had an adverse impact on business to date. That, combined with the federal budget, depressed the market overall," said Alfred Mockett, chief executive of American Management Systems Inc., which has also faced a decline in technology spending in the private sector.
The agency's mission -- including analysis of terrorism intelligence to match it against the nation's vulnerabilities and developing new technologies to detect threats -- will require a technology upgrade that government contractors say could translate into an increase in business for firms that specialize in such technology. That may include sharing databases among agencies, even on the state and local levels, they said.
"That aspect will come after the organizational issues are completed and everybody knows the structure" of the agency, said William R. Loomis, an analyst with Legg Mason. "It will be at least a year before we see major IT projects department-wide."
Industry research firms remain optimistic about the money-making potential. Input, a local market research firm, predicts that technology spending by the new department will reach at least $2.1 billion in fiscal 2003, up from $1.5 billion last year. Federal Sources Inc. is even more hopeful, forecasting that spending could reach $2.6 billion.
Even if technology spending in the agency reaches projected heights, that still would not be comparable to the $5 billion the three military services are expected to spend on information technology next year, according to Federal Sources data.
For companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., which already have large business units in information technology, the increase will likely not be enough to make a significant impact, analysts said. But it wouldn't take much to improve the bottom line of smaller firms such as AMS. "It is a very big budget. It only takes a small piece of market share to make a difference to AMS," Mockett said.
-------- china
IOC Inspectors Shower Praise on Changing Beijing
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62839-2002Dec2?language=printer
BEIJING (Reuters) - Top Olympic officials met in Beijing on Monday for their first comprehensive meeting with the organizers of the 2008 Olympic Games, full of praise for a city already undergoing a makeover.
"So much work has been done, so much progress is going on in Beijing, that we do not feel this is the first meeting," said Francois Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee.
A commission of 30 IOC members and technical experts will receive a two-day progress report from the Beijing Organizing Committee (BOCOG) on the city's construction of venues, added subway lines and efforts to clear up smog and traffic congestion.
IOC compliments for Beijing this time and on two previous fact-finding visits contrast with reports from Athens that the host city for the 2004 games have struggled with building deadlines, inadequate accommodation and transport problems.
In Beijing, rustic but ramshackle neighborhoods in the old city will be removed and replaced with commercial boulevards and grass, while many residents and polluting factories will be moved to the suburbs.
IOC sports director Gilbert Felli said the environmental clean-up and subway projects were the biggest Beijing had to contend with but did not foresee any obstacles meeting deadlines.
Carrard added: "Our experience is that if any additional energy is required, you start seeing those areas maybe two or three years before the games."
-------- colombia
Colombia right-wing truce takes force
BBC
Sunday, 1 December, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2528147.stm
A unilateral and indefinite ceasefire declared by Colombia's largest right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), has come into force.
Two other paramilitary groups have pledged to join the ceasefire, bringing the number of guerrillas who will lay down their arms to 12,000.
The AUC says it is now ready to take up dialogue with the government, but it is likely to be difficult for President Alvaro Uribe's administration to meet all their demands.
The BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Medellin says the AUC's great enemy, the left-wing rebels, are likely to take advantage of the ceasefire to conquer parts of the country controlled by the right-wingers, leaving peace still a long way off.
Brutal faction
The AUC is now hoping to demobilise its 10,500 members, but wants the government to pay them until the process is complete, allowing the group to move away from the drugs trade it relies on for cash.
The paramilitaries also want an amnesty and for imprisoned militia men - many serving sentences for murder, kidnapping and drugs trafficking - to be freed.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Uribe: Ceasefire essential before negotiations
President Uribe has been under particular pressure to rein in the AUC - described by our correspondent as probably the most brutal faction in Colombia's civil war.
Bankrolled by landowners - including drugs barons - the AUC was set up in 1997 to eradicate Marxist guerrillas and carried out numerous massacres and assassinations.
The group murdered thousands of people in cold blood as it targeted left-wing leaders and sympathisers.
Secret talks
Our correspondent says the AUC has been hit hard by the security forces and guerrilla enemies and now wants political recognition.
The Colombian Government confirmed on Monday that it had been holding secret talks with the AUC.
The government's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, met AUC leaders following mediation by Catholic bishops.
Mr Uribe's government has said that although it is open to talks with any armed group a ceasefire is a firm condition for negotiations to end the country's bloody 38-year conflict.
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Germany plans to cut defence spending
December 2, 2002
Jang (Pakistan)
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2002-daily/02-12-2002/world/w11.htm
FRANKFURT: German Defense Minister Peter Struck plans to cut billions of euros in funding for military spending as part of the government's cost-cutting drive, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported Sunday.
The newspaper cited ministry sources as saying that Germany would only modernize 100 of the originally planned 200 Tornado fighter planes and would purchase 600 instead of 1,800 Meteor advanced air-to-air missiles.
In addition, the ministry is to cancel plans to order Pars 3 anti-tank missiles and GTK multi-role armored vehicles and will only buy a slimmed-down version of a Tiger attack helicopter originally earmarked for acquisition, the newspaper said.
According to the report, the ministry plans to cut spending by a total of six billion euros (dollars) by 2006. Struck plans to announce his new plans for the armed forces, including a restructuring of the army, on Thursday, the report said.
He will at the same time reveal how many Airbus A400M military transport aircraft Germany plans to order, it said. The newspaper said that Struck would confirm that Germany would reduce its original order to 60 from 73 due to budget concerns, echoing comments by officials from the ruling Social Democrats in recent weeks.
The A400M is the biggest joint venture realized in the European defense industry, and seen thus as a crucial component of efforts by the European Union to strengthen its military capability and coordination.
Germany's participation in the Airbus project is critical and its original order of 73 planes was the biggest of the eight nations involved. But the center-left government is under pressure to slash its public deficit, which will this year exceed the ceiling of 3.0 percent stipulated in the 12-country euro zone.
Struck had asked the chief of the armed forces, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, to present recommendations for savings by the beginning of December. A ministry spokesman declined to comment on the report but said that Struck would announce reform plans in the coming week.
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Iraq Complains to U.N. Over Basra Raid
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62722-2002Dec2?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq complained to the United Nations Monday over a Western air raid on its southern port city of Basra and urged the world body to end U.S. and British patrols over the country.
Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, in a letter to U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan, described Sunday's raid as part of "barbaric terrorist aggression" against Iraq.
Iraqi officials said the bombing killed four people at oil company offices. The U.S. military insisted its planes had launched "precision-guided" weapons at Iraqi air defenses and that they always took pains to avoid hitting civilians.
The United States and Britain enforce two "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq.
"Until you take measures to end this barbaric terrorist aggression and lay the full responsibility for it on the governments of the United States and Britain, the Iraqi people and its army would continue to practice Iraq's legitimate right of self defense," Sabri said in the letter.
Monday's letter was the second from Sabri to Annan in two days on the no-fly zones.
In a letter Sunday before the Basra attack, Sabri said: "The raids by American and British planes on Iraq cities and villages and the infrastructure of the Republic of Iraq...is state terrorism, wanton aggression and rude interference in Iraq's internal affairs," the letter said.
Sabri also blasted London and Washington for dropping thousands of leaflets demanding Iraqi soldiers stop firing at U.S. and British planes.
Sunday's letter lists eight raids between October 22 and November 17.
Sabri sent a similar letter to Annan and the Security Council last month.
The zones were set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from attack by President Saddam Hussein's military.
Iraq does not recognize the zones.
U.S. officials say continued firing at patrolling Western jets by Iraqi defenses is a violation of a November 8 U.N. resolution aimed at ridding Iraq of any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Other members of the U.N. Security Council, including Britain, disagree with that view.
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Britain Slams Saddam for Human Rights Abuses
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
By Dominic Evans
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62966-2002Dec2?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain accused President Saddam Hussein Monday of gross human rights violations, from acid baths and eye-gouging to rape and mass execution, as it sought to harden public opinion ahead of possible war with Iraq.
Six days before a deadline for Saddam to hand over details of his alleged weapons of mass destruction, Foreign Office officials unveiled a 23-page human rights dossier outlining "the barbarity of his regime."
Three or 4 million Iraqis -- about 15 percent of the population -- had fled their homeland rather than live under his rule. Those who remained faced his "cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering," the report said.
In Iraq's northern Kurdish region, 100,000 Kurds were killed or disappeared in 1987-88 alone, the report quoted human rights organizations as saying.
Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, who make up more than half the population, had endured a "systematic attack" on their religious and tribal leaders. Hundreds of Shi'ite civilians died when security forces fired on a peaceful demonstration in early 1999, it said.
Political prisoners faced "inhumane and degrading" conditions, the report said. Some prisons were "cleansed" of prisoners, including the Abu Ghraib prison where 4,000 prisoners were executed in 1984.
"These grave violations of human rights are not the work of a number of overzealous individuals but the deliberate policy of the regime," the report said.
"Fear is Saddam's chosen method for staying in power."
At the Mahjar prison in central Baghdad 600-700 prisoners are split between underground cells and former dog kennels, the report said. Two large oil tanks have been built nearby to flood the prison with petrol and burn it down in an emergency.
At the "Casket Prison," prisoners are kept in rows of rectangular steel boxes until they confess or die. The boxes are opened once a day for half an hour and prisoners get no solid foods, the report said. Some prisoners survive for up to a year.
At the "Can Prison," detainees are locked in metal boxes the size of tea chests. Each box has a tap for water and a meshed floor to allow them to defecate, it said.
There was no immediate comment from the Iraqi government on the British report. Iraq has in the past rejected as lies rights allegations against it by international organizations and U.N. rights investigators.
Saddam ordered the release of all political prisoners and criminal inmates in an unprecedented amnesty last October. The surprise move was seen as an attempt to rally Iraqis behind his leadership against a possible U.S. attack.
'BETTER LATE THAN NEVER'
Human rights organizations accuse Britain of showing a belated interest in human rights abuses in Iraq, saying it steadfastly ignored them during the 1980s when Saddam was waging an eight-year war on Iran, largely supported by the West.
Washington and London now maintain that Saddam has been building and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and have threatened war unless he surrenders them.
"I do share the concern that these should have been noticed and acted upon a long time ago," said Hussain Al-Shahristani, a former Iraqi atomic scientist unveiling the document alongside Foreign Office diplomats.
Shahristani, who said he was imprisoned by Saddam from 1979 until 1991, when he escaped from Abu Ghraib jail and fled Iraq, said he was tortured and kept in solitary confinement for 11 years for refusing to work on Iraq's military nuclear program.
The report, drawing largely from information already published by human rights organizations and academics, included a document it said was sent by the chief of security in Iraq's northern Dohuk province in March 1991, when Saddam faced uprisings in both the north and south after his Gulf War defeat.
In the event of a "hostile demonstration," troops should close off escape routes, seize the high ground and "armed force should be used in accordance with central instructions to kill 95 percent of them and to leave 5 percent for interrogation."
The instructions authorized the use of "technical means" -- a euphemism for use of chemical weapons, the report said.
Methods of torture listed in the report included eye gouging, piercing of hands with electric drills, electric shock, beatings on the soles of feet, mock executions, acid baths, extraction of finger and toe-nails, stubbing cigarettes out on prisoners' bodies, and sexual abuse.
A copy of a government personnel card shown in the report described one state employee, Aziz Salih Ahmed, as a "fighter in the popular army." His activity was given as "violator of women's honor," or a professional rapist, the report said.
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Britain Accuses Hussein of Systematic Torture and Killing
December 2, 2002
New York Times
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/international/03CND-BRIT.html
LONDON, Dec. 2 - Britain released a dossier today on what it called the systematic rape, torture, gassing and executions of Iraqis by Saddam Hussein.
The document listed what it said were Mr. Hussein's favored methods of torture.
They included eye-gouging; piercing of hands with an electric drill; extinguishing cigarettes on victims' skin; mock execution; suspension from a ceiling; electric shock; rape and other forms of sexual abuse; beating on the soles of the feet, and acid baths.
The 23-page document, and a graphic video played at a Foreign Office briefing made available to television stations, were seen as moves to win public support for action against Iraq, coming just six days before the deadline set by the United Nations for Iraq to make a full declaration of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or face "serious consequences."
Britain has issued dossiers on Iraqi arms in the past in cooperation with Washington, compiled from its own intelligence reports and those from the United States, which was the case with today's publication.
In answer to questions, a senior Foreign Office official said at a news conference, "This dossier itself is not attempting to provide a justification for military action." But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the findings were directly linked to efforts to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
"There is a connection in at least two respects," he said. "The first is the historical record, where weapons of mass destruction were used, particularly in northern Iraq, in order to suppress opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime.
"There is a second sense in which there is a strong connection. That is the psychological sense. These weapons are still there and they are available for use against opposition."
In a speech today to the Atlantic Partnership, a group that works on improving relations between Europe and North America, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said the dossier "makes for harrowing reading" and the abuses it listed were part of a deliberate policy.
"The aim is to remind the world that the abuses of the Iraqi regime extend far beyond its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in violation of its international obligations," Mr. Straw said.
Mr. Straw, however, was accused by Amnesty International of a "cold and calculated manipulation" of the human rights situation in Iraq in order to back up the case for possible military action against Baghdad. The United States and Britain have warned that they are ready to act with military force should Iraq fail to meet the demands of the United Nations Security Council.
"Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the gulf war," said the organization's secretary general, Irene Khan.
Appearing at the Foreign Office presentation was Hussain Al-Shahristani, the former head of Iraq's nuclear energy agency, who was jail