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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.
-------- germany
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.
-------- iraq
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.
----
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.
-------
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 jailed in Iraq for 11 years for his refusal to involve himself in the program to develop nuclear energy for military purposes.
Dr. Hussain said he had been held in solitary confinement for most of that time but that he was able to hear the cries of young children being tortured in adjacent rooms.
Dr. Hussain also questioned whether the current inspections would succeed in turning up weapons. "Saddam is the master at hiding, concealing and moving around weapons," he said.
Early today a United Nations inspection team went to a Baghdad factory that made guidance and control systems for Iraq's "stretch Scuds," Soviet-made missiles that the Iraqis modified to a longer range and used in the gulf war. Such missiles, with a range of up to 400 miles, are now prohibited for Iraq, and the inspectors presumably want to ensure that work has not resumed.
Iraqi Information Ministry officials said a second team of inspectors visited an alcohol plant on Baghdad's outskirts. The purpose of the inspection could not be immediately determined. Alcohol is a component of many chemical weapons.
In London, Dr. Hussain questioned whether any scientists now working in Iraq's weapons program would be able to take up the United Nations' offer to leave the country with their families in order to testify to what they knew.
"They were all forced against their will to take part, but they will fear cooperating because they know Saddam will attack their relatives, their homes, their tribes and their cities."
----
A bankable ringer to replace Saddam?
Arnaud de Borchgrave
December 2, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021202-10485856.htm
He has powerful allies in Congress, in Vice President Richard Cheney's office, in the upper echelons of the Pentagon's civilian leadership, in the Defense Policy Board chaired by his close friend and most enthusiastic supporter Richard Perle, and in one of Washington's leading think tanks. They all see Ahmad Chalabi, head of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), as the democratic alternative to Saddam Hussein, a sort of Iraqi "Karzai," installed in what some of them see as a U.S. military cakewalk.
But as Mr. Chalabi's team moves forward against five competing exile teams, umpires at the CIA and the State Department keep throwing yellow flags on the field. They see Mr. Chalabi as a charming, articulate, multilingual Iraqi exile leader, better suited to the cut and thrust of London's exile politics than to the cut-throat politics of post-Saddam Iraq.
Mr. Chalabi's detractors say he has only known comfortable exile, first in Jordan, then in Britain. He counters these critics with nine - by his reckoning - assassination attempts against his own life ordered by Saddam, and is fully cognizant of the rough neighborhood he aspires to lead. The Chalai family, one of the country's most notable, chose exile when the military assassinated King Feisal in 1958, abolished the monarchy and seized power in the name of "progressive, revolutionary socialist principles," otherwise known as the Ba'ath Party.
Between 1919, when Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, was carved out of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and 1958, Iraq experienced eight Kurdish revolts, nine Shi'ite rebellions, and three pogroms (two of them against the Jews, one against Assyrians).
Following the Persian Gulf war in 1991, tens of thousands of Kurds in the north of Iraq and marsh Arab Shi'ites in the south, were slaughtered in an uprising that had been encouraged by a victorious United States and supressed with helicopter gunships the United States had allowed the defeated Iraqis to keep, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes. Saddam's role model has long been Stalin, whose methods and techniques he emulated to cower three disparate pieces of Iraq into blind compliance.
No one is more upset at the idea of Mr. Chalabi becoming Washington's man in Baghdad than Jordanian leaders, past and present. He was sentenced April 9, 1992, to 22 years hard labor by a Jordanian state security court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian dinar. The court also handed down harsh sentences and fines to 16 others, including several brothers and close relatives who were members of the board of Mr. Chalabi's Petra Bank, or owners of affiliated companies.
Mr. Chalabi, a one-time favorite of King Hussein's royal court, had already skipped across the border to Syria hidden in the trunk of a royal palace car. Mr. Chalabi says former Crown Prince Hassan drove him to the border. Both the driver and the woman friend who organized the getaway deny this.
No sooner did Mr. Chalabi reach London from Syria than he denounced the late King Hussein, accusing him of profiting from smuggling and weapons trading deals with Saddam.
What was undeniable was that Mr. Chalabi's Petra Bank, Jordan's third largest, had gone belly up and some $300 million in depositors' accounts had suddenly vanished. Mr. Chalabi, who had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1969, denies wrongdoing and claims jealous royal courtiers framed him.
In the 12 years between when Mr. Chalabi founded the bank and its crash, this scion of a wealthy and powerful Iraqi Shi'ite family developed a reputation for contacts at the highest level. When the free market value of the dinar plunged in 1988, it was common knowledge in Amman that the Petra Bank was one of the most active purchasers of dollars. Yet when Central Bank Governor Mohammed Said Nabulsi sought to enforce a requirement on banks to deposit 30 percent of their foreign exchange holdings with the Central Bank as part of his efforts to prop up the currency, Petra was unable to comply.
Mr. Nabulsi, a widely respected central banker held the job for two stints for a total of 19 years (1972-85; 1989-95), which he believes is a world record. Between the two, he was the U.N. man in Baghdad. In Amman recently, this writer looked up Mr. Nabulsi, now a private financial adviser, in a small, modest office on the outskirts of the capital. His version of the Petra Bank scandal is a tad different than Mr. Chalabi's:
"The Central Bank began noticing signs of financial irregularities at the Petra Bank between 1982 and 1985, but not enough for a solid case. When I came back as governor in 1989, Jordan was suffering from acute fiscal and monetary problems. The depletion of our monetary reserves was of grave concern to King Hussein, who asked me to take over again as governor. But as I addressed our Central Bank crisis, I discovered Petra had a huge problem of equal dimension.
"I asked all Jordanian banks to deposit 30 percent of their hard currency holdings with the Central Bank. Of the 20 banks solicited, only Petra was unable to transfer anything, yet it had $200 million on its books. I then conducted a full examination of Petra's books and concluded they had been cooked and that Ahmad Chalabi was the master cook who had been in collusion with his auditors.
"I then asked King Hussein whether anyone was above the law as I was aware of Chalabi's closeness to Crown Prince Hassan. The king told me there were no exceptions and to proceed according to the law of the land.
"Petra also had a branch in Beirut called MEBCO that was liquidated by the Central Bank of Lebanon and his brother, who had flown the coop, was sentenced to two years in abstentia. Swiss authorities also liquidated MEBCO Geneva.
"Petra in Amman was picked clean before Chalab took off a few steps ahead of law enforcement. Petra in Washington, D.C., called me with a demand that all depositors be paid off immediately. The U.S. Federal Reserve asked for payment in full, $300 million as required to cover all losses. I then formed six committees, each with three members, to conduct separate investigations.
"Their findings were given to the public prosecutor's department. Chalabi was found guilty, and all those who had investigated can attest Chalabi was not framed as he claims.
"Civil court actions followed as the liquidation agency attempted to recover some of the losses. The total loss climbed to $500 million, of which $300 million was paid to depositors by the Central Bank at the direction of King Hussein. Another $200 million was obtained from the liquidation of assets."
Mr. Nablsi's conclusion a the end of a 60-minute interview: "Chalabi was one of the most notorious crooks in the history of the Middle East."
What seems small compared to the recent humongous Wall Street scandals was enormous for a poor Middle Eastern country of 5 million people. Mr. Chalabi dismisses the entire Petra Bank saga as a political vendetta.
Interestingly enough, his close friend, former Crown Prince Hassan, who was passed over as heir apparent to the throne by King Hussein as he lay dying from cancer, in favor of Hussein's son, now King Abdullah II, showed up at a recent London meeting of some 400 Iraqi officers now in exile. King Abdullah believes Uncle Hassan was lobbying to be recognized as king under a restored Hashemite dynasty in a liberated Iraq. Prior to 1958, Jordan and Iraq were part of the same royal federation with two kings - Hussein and Feisal - alternating as top monarch.
King Abdullah took a dim view of his Uncle Hassan by saying in an interview he had "blundered into something he did not realize he was getting into, and we're all picking up the pieces."
Jordan's establishment does not look forward to a Chalabi-run Iraq propped up by the U.S. military. But given Jordan's total dependence on Iraqi oil, it's a safe bet that a President Ahmad Chalabi would receive a royal pardon in Jordan.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
--------
Oil Edges Up on Venezuela Strike, Iraq
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63091-2002Dec2?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - World oil prices edged higher on Monday as anti-government protestors held a strike in exporter Venezuela, and ahead of key U.N. decisions affecting supplies from Iraq where weapons inspections began last week.
International benchmark Brent crude oil rose 20 cents to $25.36 a barrel while U.S. crude futures were unchanged at $26.89. Venezuela's vital oil operations were unaffected on Monday morning by the strike to press for an early referendum on the presidency of Hugo Chavez, but dealers fear the action could cut into crude exports if it drags on for days.
Many opposition figures in the national oil company failed to show up for work, but oilfield operations and key refineries continued normally, a spokesman said.
In Iraq, western warplanes bombed the south of the country in what the U.S. military said was a raid aimed at Iraqi air defenses, but Iraqi officials claimed hit oil facilities and killed four people.
Iraq protested about the attacks to the United Nations, which is set to vote on renewing an oil-for-food agreement on Wednesday, under which Baghdad supplies almost two million barrels per day of oil to western markets.
Four days later, Iraq must present a detailed report of its weapons programs to the U.N. Security Council, the first real test of its cooperation with weapons inspections.
"The market is really waiting for Iraq's weapons disclosure," said Simon Games-Thomas, head of energy at NM Rothschild & Sons in Sydney.
Iraqi crude exports have been running at 1.86 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, making it the eighth largest exporter in the world.
Traders fear war in Iraq may spread and disrupt vital crude flows from other producers in the Middle East, which pumps about a quarter of world supplies.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian Teenager - Witnesses
December 2, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
JENIN, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead a 15-year-old Palestinian and wounded 16 others in a crowded market in the West Bank city of Jenin Monday, Palestinian witnesses and hospital sources said.
Troops also shot dead a 21-year-old Palestinian in a raid in nearby Tulkarm, witnesses said, and the army said it killed a gunman posing as a soldier who attacked an army post at a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
Another Palestinian was killed when a Palestinian mortar bomb slammed into an industrial zone near the Erez checkpoint between Gaza and Israel. Witnesses said the bomb apparently fell short of its Israeli target.
The surge in violence in the more than two-year-old Palestinian uprising against occupation has defied calls by the United States for calm in the region as it seeks Arab support before a possible war on Iraq.
Troops backed by two tanks and two armored vehicles shot at Palestinians shopping for food in Jenin before the Eid el-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, witnesses said.
Israeli military sources said troops enforcing a curfew came under attack and returned fire, killing a youth who climbed onto an armored vehicle. ``They were worried he was carrying a bomb or had an explosive belt,'' an Israeli military source said.
But witnesses said Mofaz Abu al-Doom, 15, was shot dead while working at his family's cigarette stand. They said gunmen shot back only after the Israelis fired first.
The army has imposed curfews on Jenin and other West Bank cities and towns it has reoccupied following a series of Palestinian suicide bombings, but has periodically lifted restrictions to allow residents to buy essentials.
In Tulkarm, witnesses said Israeli forces shot dead a bystander and wounded 14 other people, including a wanted Palestinian militant, in a gunbattle which erupted after troops raided the city in a swoop for the militant.
Israeli military sources said troops fired only after they were attacked by armed men.
Palestinian security sources said a man killed when a mortar bomb hit the Erez industrial zone just inside Gaza may have been shot dead by nearby troops who opened fire after hearing the blast, but the army denied shooting in the area.
QUESTIONS ABOUT KENYA PROBE
With Israelis still reeling from last week's dual attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya, Raanan Gissin, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the east African nation lacked the facilities and expertise to conduct an investigation.
Kenyan police said there was a disagreement with Israel over control of key evidence.
But both countries played down tension over the probe into the suicide bombing that killed 16 people at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa and a failed missile strike on an Israeli airliner Thursday. Three Israelis were among the hotel dead.
``They don't have the facilities or the expertise and so most of the work must be done by our investigators and the U.S. team that is there,'' Gissin told Reuters in Jerusalem.
At least 1,692 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
Adding to tensions was Israel's disclosure of plans to demolish 15 Palestinian houses in the West Bank city of Hebron to create a secure passage for Jewish worshippers going to pray at a biblical shrine in the divided West Bank city.
Israeli officials said the buildings were empty. Palestinian officials said they were home to 30 families.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had pledged to set up ``security corridors'' connecting tiny enclaves of Jewish settlers in the predominantly Palestinian city after an attack by Palestinian gunmen killed 12 soldiers and settler security men in November.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat condemned the plan as part of a ``Judaisation process'' to expel Arab residents.
----
Defense Chief: Al Qaeda Tried to Infiltrate Israel
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63082-2002Dec2?language=printer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Monday the al Qaeda network, which Israel suspects of involvement in twin attacks on Israelis in Kenya, had tried without success to infiltrate the Jewish state.
"Al Qaeda has sent 'octopus arms' not only into countries on the other side of the ocean, but also to our region. As such it has made infiltration attempts into Israel," Mofaz told reporters. "Such attempts were frustrated and prevented."
He gave no details.
The armed forces' Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, told reporters the military had received information about al Qaeda's intentions to target Israel and indicated that threats had been eliminated both at home and abroad.
"If it is inside our territory it is dealt with by those authorities responsible for security on the ground, and if it is abroad it is dealt with by Israeli authorities responsible for security abroad," Yaalon said.
Israel says the al Qaeda network is the prime suspect in the bomb attack that killed 16 people, including three Israelis, at an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa in Kenya last week. U.S. officials say another Somalia-based Islamic group may have been behind the attack.
The hotel was bombed shortly after a missile narrowly missed an Israeli jet taking off nearby with 261 passengers.
The United States holds al Qaeda responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington last year and is the chief target of President Bush's "war on terror."
--------
UN Agency Raps Israeli Army for Razing Food Store
December 2, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-un-aid.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A United Nations aid agency protested on Monday at the Israeli army's demolition of its food warehouse in a Palestinian refugee camp during a raid, and called for an investigation and compensation for the loss.
The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said the army blew up the warehouse in the Gaza Strip's Jabalya refugee camp during Sunday's incursion, destroying more than 500 metric tons of food after preventing aid workers from removing it first.
The army acknowledged its men struck the warehouse during the overnight raid, in which military engineers also blew up the family homes in nearby Beit Lahiya of three Palestinians believed behind suicide attacks on Israelis.
``We are still investigating the circumstances of why the warehouse was hit,'' an army spokeswoman said.
She said Israeli liaison officials in Gaza had not been informed of the warehouse's existence and had therefore not known they should steer clear of the building. The WFP said in a statement the building was clearly marked ``with a large WFP flag and three WFP stickers on the doors.''
``WFP should have been permitted to remove the food. This act has been carried out against basic humanitarian principles,'' local program director Jean-Luc Siblot said in the statement.
``WFP is asking the government of Israel to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident and take full responsibility for the losses incurred by the agency,'' he said.
The statement estimated the WFP's losses at $271,000.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, a U.N. spokesman said a concerned U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan supported WFP's call for an investigation.
``The secretary-general once again calls on the Israeli authorities to live up to their commitments and obligations to facilitate emergency humanitarian assistance in the occupied Palestinian Authority,'' chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Israel regularly demolishes homes of militants blamed for suicide bombings and other attacks in a more than two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It calls this a deterrent policy.
Last month, Iain Hook, a British official from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, was killed by Israeli soldiers in a clash in the West Bank city of Jenin. Israel said its troops probably mistook Hook for a gunman.
An outraged Annan wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week urging his government to identify and punish its soldiers responsible for Hook's death.
The Israeli army said its troops shot Hook by mistake as they returned fire aimed at them from Palestinian gunmen inside the compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
U.N. officials say there were no gunmen inside the UNRWA compound. They say Hook bled to death after he was shot by Israeli forces, who then blocked an ambulance from gaining access to the site.
-------- mideast
DIPLOMACY
Iraq's Neighbors Seem to Be Ready to Support a War
December 2, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON with NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/international/middleeast/02BORD.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - Most of Iraq's neighbors seem prepared to support an American military campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But their backing is not assured and rests on several political and military factors.
To avoid an angry reaction from their publics, Arab leaders are putting conditions on the nature of any military action. They say it must be perceived as a means to enforce the United Nations demands that Iraq disarm, not as a unilateral American attempt to redraw the geopolitical map in the Middle East.
Iraq's neighbors are also looking for reassurance that Washington is prepared to make an economic and military commitment to prevent the nation from breaking apart along ethnic lines and plunging into civil war if President Hussein is ousted.
They also want to be confident that an American military campaign will be short and carried out with the fewest civilian casualties. The nightmare scenario for many Middle East countries is a drawn-out war in which a defiant Mr. Hussein resists the American onslaught from a bastion in Baghdad as Al Jazeera broadcasts reports about a hungry and frightened population.
In short, Washington has made considerable headway in the diplomacy of lining up support for a potential military campaign to dethrone Mr. Hussein. That headway was already evident in the unanimous Security Council resolution of Nov. 8, demanding that Iraq submit a full account of its weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.
Still, there are likely to be gradations of political and military support, as governments calculate how closely they want to align themselves with Washington. There are likely to be different types of rewards from the Americans including, in some cases, financial assistance.
The next few weeks are crucial for the Bush administration as it tries to put the diplomatic building blocks in place for a potential invasion.
Washington recognizes as much. Today, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz leaves for Brussels, London and Turkey to promote a tough policy against Iraq.
He is just the first of an array of senior American officials who will be traveling around the world to make the Bush administration's case. The others include Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.
A milestone will come on Dec. 8, the deadline for Iraq to present a report to the Security Council on its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. American and British intelligence agencies have charged that Iraq still husbands biological and chemical arms and has continued efforts to develop nuclear arms and prohibited medium-range missiles.
If Iraq's report stops short of acknowledging clandestine efforts to make prohibited weapons, the Bush administration is certain to seize on that as an illustration of bad faith.
But it may be hard for Washington to persuade Iraq's neighbors that such a finding is a sufficient reason to go to war, especially if Baghdad does not interfere with the work of the weapon inspectors and if the monitors do not uncover any hard evidence of an Iraqi violation.
At the same time, the Bush administration is trying to assure nervous allies that a conflict will not be prolonged and that the United States will have the staying power to help rebuild Iraq. Iraq has already tried to counter those assurances by conjuring up the specter of bloody street fighting in Baghdad.
Smaller Gulf States Kuwait may be the staunchest United States ally in the Persian Gulf. Kuwaiti officials are bitter about Iraq's 1990 invasion of their country and see the Hussein government as a potential menace.
Since American-led forces evicted Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, that nation has cooperated closely with the American military. It has allowed United States Army and Marine training on its territory. A new American base is being constructed south of Kuwait City. American and British warplanes patrol Iraq's skies from air bases in Kuwait and, if allied planes are fired on, they carry out bombing missions. The United States flies its Predator drone from an air base in Kuwait.
Like his counterparts, Kuwait's minister of state for foreign affairs, Dr. Muhammad al-Sabah, couched his nation's support as a matter of enforcing the will of the United Nations. But he is an unabashed supporter of a change in the Iraqi government.
Critics complain that ousting Mr. Hussein might plunge the region into chaos, but the Kuwaiti minister argues that Iraq is already divided, between an autonomous Kurdish enclave in the north, a rebellious Shiite population in the south and central region where the Iraqi government works its will.
"We have a dysfunctional country, a fractured country and we have an unstable political system," he said. "There is no chance that the country can be reunited under the current system and the current regime. The Kurds have made it very clear that the only way they come back as part a united Iraq is in a new government that respects human rights. There needs to be regime change to pull the country back together."
While Kuwait potentially has much to gain by a change of leadership in its northern neighbor, the support of other gulf states is more modulated.
Officials in Bahrain would be happy if a way was found to avoid a war, which could scare away potential investors and harm its budding tourist industry. But the headquarters for the United States Fifth Fleet is in Bahrain, and the state has a history of cooperating closely with the American military.
Last spring, thousands of demonstrators marched in Bahrain to protest the Israeli military move back into the occupied West Bank in force, and one man was shot dead outside the American Embassy.
Protests over Iraq might not prove as virulent. The strongest opposition to the Sunni Muslim Khalifa family that rules Bahrain comes from the tiny island's Shiite Muslim majority, which might support moves to free their fellow Shiites in Iraq from the widespread oppression they have experienced under Mr. Hussein.
Qatar, to the south, has also sought to maintain close ties with Washington. It is allowing the United States Central Command to set up a command center at As Sayliyah that the American military plans to use to run a war against Iraq. It also spent more than $1 billion building Al Udeid Air Base to encourage the United States to station its planes there. Washington has not yet asked Qatar if it could use the installations to attack Iraq.
Like Oman and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar will find it easier to go along if there seems to be a broad coalition, though this would not necessarily need to take the form of a second Security Council resolution, said Patrick N. Theros, a former American ambassador to Qatar.
Mr. Theros said that most gulf states "want to be able to justify to their own population and the rest of the world that there is an international coalition that binds them."
"They want to have some degree of confidence that the end game is not going to be a breakdown and dismemberment of Iraq," he continued. "And they want to be confident that the war will be over real quick. There would be problems sustaining their support if this were to drag on for three or six months."
Saudi Arabia
One of the most crucial cases is Saudi Arabia. Saudi cooperation would be very important politically for the signal it could send to other states in the region. It would also be very important militarily.
The deployment of American ground forces could be much easier if they were able to disembark at ports in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province and drive north to assembly areas in Kuwait. The United States has an air command center at Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, which it would like to use to run an air war over Iraq.
Currently, the United States is not allowed to use Saudi air bases to carry out bombing strikes in Iraq in retaliation for Iraqi attacks on American and British planes that patrol southern and northern Iraq. It would easier to conduct an campaign against Iraq if that limitation was rescinded.
Many people inside and outside Saudi Arabia believe that the country will ultimately cooperate with the United States if there is a war. To refuse such cooperation would result in a serious deterioration of the Saudi-American relationship that has provided the kingdom both protection and prestige in the Arab world for 60 years.
The government and the religious establishment are already facing a growing Islamic movement that questions their legitimacy because they have allowed a non-Muslim military force into the Arabian Peninsula.
With Arab anti-American sentiment on the rise, Saudis say the United States must show that it has exhausted all other options and that it has a clear legal sanction by the United Nations before undertaking any military action. Otherwise, a war could destabilize the region and "turbo-charge the recruitment process for anti-American terrorism," as one Saudi official put it privately.
The Saudis might try to keep much of the cooperation out of public view. That would reduce their political problems, but make the cooperation less useful to Washington, politically and militarily.
Turkey
The United States needs the cooperation of Persian Gulf states to mount an attack from the south, and it needs Turkey's support to open up a northern front. That front would vastly increase the pressure on the overstretched Iraqi military. The Pentagon wants to be able to fly airstrikes from bases in Turkey, like Incirlik Air Base, as it did during the Persian Gulf war. Administration officials imply that they also see a role for the Turkish Army.
Turkey's new government led by an Islamic-based party has suggested that it would support an American attack on Iraq, and it will be asked for specifics on Tuesday when Mr. Wolfowitz visits Ankara.
Upon taking office last month, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul suggested that his government and Turkey's formidable army might go along with an American attack.
"As far as Iraq is concerned, of course the first thing is to avoid war," Mr. Gul said in an interview. "But at the same time we don't want to see weapons of mass destruction in a neighboring country."
The Bush administration is trying to win Turkey's support by backing the country's application to join the European Union, offering financial aid and giving an assurance that Washington will not support the establishment of independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. The United States also want NATO to reaffirm that it would come to Turkey's aid in the event of an Iraqi counterattack.
Iran
Having fought off an invasion by Mr. Hussein for most of the 1980's at the cost of a million dead and wounded, Iran would be pleased to see him fall. But it does not relish the idea that longstanding nemesis, even if they rarely call it the Great Satan anymore, would be the one to do it.
The fact that President Bush labeled Iran a member of the "axis of evil," along with Iraq and North Korea, only added to their concern that once American troops reach Baghdad, they just might just intervene in Tehran.
To date, all official public statements have been staunchly opposed to the war. Both the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mohammad Khatami have said any war would only bring instability to the region.
Still, Iran pretty much stayed out of the last gulf war. It allowed much of Iraq's Air Force to take shelter in Iran in tandem with the first allied attacks, then kept them as war reparations.
There are signs that Iran may stay on the sidelines this time or even offer limited cooperation. The Iranian Navy has closed its waterways to vessels trying to smuggle oil and other products from Iraq. This has helped the United States tighten its embargo on Iraqi trade that is not specifically authorized.
Iran has also allowed Ayatollah Muhammad Bakir al-Hakim, an Iraqi Shiite cleric who has lived in exile in Tehran, to work with the American-sponsored efforts to organize the Iraqi resistance. Iran is dominated by Shiite Muslims, always eager to find ways to support other Shiites living in the sea of Arab Sunni Muslims. Many of Iran's leading clerics studied in Iraq at the seminaries in Najaf and Karbala, where senior religious leaders were assassinated, exiled or otherwise heavily repressed by the Hussein government.
The Iranian military also has something to gain from the ouster of Mr. Hussein. The collapse of his government would rob the main opposition group, the Mujahedeen al Khalq, of the Iraqi bases they use to attack Iran.
Other Middle East Nations
During more than 20 years in office, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has been a zealous proponent of stability. He has avoided any policy that might risk getting Egyptians out on the streets or inflaming the zealous Muslim opposition that his government put down violently a decade ago.
Egypt's position toward any war against Iraq mirrors that of the Arab world officially. It supports the weapons inspections and has encouraged Iraq to abet the process, and it does not want Washington to use inspections as a pretext for war.
There has been no great rapport between Iraq and Egypt since the first gulf war, when Egyptian troops joined the coalition forces. This time around, Egypt has made it clear that it will not send troops. But given the roughly $2 billion in American aid that helps keep the government afloat and Washington's efforts to forge an international coalition, Egypt is likely to allow the United States to use its air bases for refueling and supplying troops. Suez Canal traffic would probably not be interrupted as Egypt pretty much treats it as an international waterway.
In Jordan, King Hussein damaged his country's relations with the United States a decade ago by refusing to join the allied coalition in the gulf war, although he did condemn the invasion of Kuwait. His actions were popular among Jordanians.
The new king, his son Abdullah II, wants to avoid possible problems with local supporters of Mr. Hussein. Hence he is pushing the idea that Jordan will try to remain on the sidelines, vehemently denying reports that the ruling Hashemite family, which used to reign in Iraq too, has an interest in returning to the throne there.
He has also said American forces will not use Jordan as a launching pad, characterizing recent maneuvers there as a routine, annual event.
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Russia Expels Two Swedish Diplomats in Spy Flap
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62738-2002Dec2?language=printer
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said Monday it was expelling two Swedish diplomats, in a clear tit-for-tat response to Stockholm's expulsion last month of two Russian diplomats in an industrial spying scandal.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Swedish Ambassador Sven Hirdman, had been summoned to be told two employees had been declared persona non grata "because of activities deemed damaging to the safety of the Russian State."
Stockholm issued a brief statement saying it "deeply regrets" the Russian move, which could embarrass Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. She said in a Reuters interview last month she was "not expecting any persona non grata from Russia."
Russia said at the time it reserved the right to respond to the expulsion of its diplomats by Stockholm.
Nina Ersman, head of the Swedish foreign ministry's press section, declined to say if the two Swedish envoys had already left Russia, nor did she identify them or say what duties they carried out at Sweden's 35-strong Moscow embassy.
Ambassador Hirdman told Reuters the Russian move was baseless: "I will just say they have taken this decision which we consider groundless."
Stockholm sparked the row last November when, in a throwback to Cold War-era espionage scandals, it expelled the two Russian diplomats allegedly involved in a spy ring uncovered at telecoms giant Ericsson. Three Swedes, including two working at the company's development section, were arrested.
Ericsson declined to say which documents had been leaked, though a senior source said they did not appear to be linked to any military projects.
Ericsson, the world's biggest producer of mobile phone networks, is also involved in developing radar and missile guidance systems for the JAS 39 Gripen fighter plane, Sweden's main strike warplane.
The company said damage done by the leaks was limited, though the scandal came at an awkward time for the fighter jet, one of three contesting a $3.5 billion Polish contract.
Sweden's decision came at an even more delicate time for Russia, just a week before President Vladimir Putin, keen to polish his country's image overseas, was to meet European Union leaders in Brussels.
A string of domestic spy scandals have come to light since Putin, a former colonel with the Soviet-era KGB, came to power in 2000. But squabbles with the West, routine in the Soviet period, have cooled. In the last major row, in March 2001, Washington and Moscow expelled fifty diplomats each.
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Shuffling at the Top Is Set for Intelligence Committees
December 2, 2002
New York Times
By CARL HULSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/politics/02PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - A Republican senator who has been highly critical of the Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks is in line to lead the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of wholesale changes in the leadership of House and Senate panels responsible for overseeing the nation's spy apparatus.
The senator, Pat Roberts of Kansas, is expected to succeed Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, one of the lawmakers behind an aggressive investigation into intelligence lapses leading to Sept. 11. With Republicans in charge of the Senate, Mr. Roberts would become the chairman.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia will take the place of Senator Bob Graham of Florida as the senior Democrat on the panel as lawmakers make their required rotations off the select committees, which have new prominence given the crucial role of intelligence gathering in the battle against terrorism.
In the House, Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, a former C.I.A. worker, is expected to continue as chairman, but Representative Nancy Pelosi, the new Democratic leader, will step aside to be succeeded by Representative Jane Harman of California or Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia.
"In both chambers and on both sides of the aisle, you have movement and pretty significant changes," said Representative Tim Roemer, Democrat of Indiana, an intelligence committee member who is leaving Congress.
The difference may be more stark on the Republican side in the Senate, where Mr. Shelby, an ardent critic of the central intelligence director, George J. Tenet, will probably hand the gavel to Mr. Roberts, considered a strong intelligence agency ally.
Mr. Roberts has described the joint inquiry as a game of "gotcha" and a "runaway train" that has demoralized intelligence workers. He said he would have preferred that no public hearings be held until the inquiry was completed, and he joined other lawmakers in complaining that it was too driven by the special staff hired for the inquiry.
His most prominent moment in the public hearings conducted in the fall was to criticize staff investigators for suggesting in briefing papers that a former high-ranking C.I.A. official might "dissemble" under committee questioning.
"You're almost on trial," Mr. Roberts said in offering his apologies to Cofer Black, the former official, adding, "I won't call it shameful, but it's damn close."
Lawmakers, staff members and outside experts who follow intelligence matters predicted that Mr. Roberts would be unlikely to engage in public confrontation with the intelligence agencies. They said his view of intelligence operations grew from his belief that the workers are devoted risk-takers who are not fully appreciated.
"I don't think it is so much that he stands up for the C.I.A.," one veteran intelligence staff member said, adding that Mr. Roberts viewed agency personnel, "usually correctly, as honest, hard-working Americans who want to do a good job."
"What we will have to see is," the staff member said, "is he going to be a staunch defender of them no matter what?"
Steven Aftergood, an analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, said evidence suggested that Mr. Roberts would be mainly an "intelligence community booster."
"I don't know that Roberts has a coherent vision of the future of the intelligence community other than, let's give them a lot of money and support them in whatever they do," Mr. Aftergood said.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Roberts said he would not discuss intelligence issues until his chairmanship of the committee became official. But she did say he would represent a "shift in ideals." Others noted that the senator was leaning toward retaining some important Republican staff members on the panel.
The leadership changes come as much of the responsibility for pursuing the causes of Sept. 11 falls to the new independent commission signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. The current leaders of the panels still hope to finish their report on the inquiry before they step down with the start of the new Congress in January.
But the newly constituted intelligence panels will be responsible for acting on recommendations made in that report as well as assessing the continuing effectiveness of the various spy agencies.
Mr. Graham said he believed the incoming intelligence panels would build on the inquiry.
"There are a lot of people on both sides who have sat through these long sessions on this, and they want to get things done," he said. "Let's let people have a chance to prove themselves."
Mr. Graham is a friend of Mr. Rockefeller's, and the two Democrats have already met to discuss the changes in committee leadership. Mr. Rockefeller has kept a low profile on the panel and aides said the senator, known mainly on health issues, is working hard to gain expertise in intelligence.
Mr. Goss, the House chairman, was seen as the closest of the four senior panel members to the intelligence community and the White House. He was planning to retire from Congress this year but was asked by the House leadership and White House to stay on and will presumably stay in charge of the panel.
On the Democratic side, Mr. Bishop is senior to Ms. Harman, who was the top Democrat on the intelligence subcommittee responsible for terrorism and domestic security. But it is widely known that Ms. Harman would like to assume Ms. Pelosi's role on the panel, and Mr. Bishop might agree to that move if he obtains another spot he wants, like one on the Appropriations Committee.
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Unleashing the Predator
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; 8:32 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62900-2002Dec2?language=printer
Searching for ways to stop Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network, Richard A. Clarke seized upon a novel idea put forth by the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Why not use a Predator drone?
It was early in the summer of 2001, and Clarke, the Clinton administration's obsessed counterterrorism chief, saw Predator as a means of finding bin Laden in the wilds of Afghanistan in real-time-quickly enough to trigger a missile strike that might kill him.
But Clarke's interest soon triggered opposition from both the Pentagon and the CIA which were locked in a power struggle over which agency should control the weapon. Undeterred, Clarke went to his boss, National Security Advisor Samuel E. "Sandy" Berger, who told Clarke to write a memo telling President Clinton of their objections.
The president was none too pleased. Clarke and Berger used Clinton's disappointment-the president scrawled "this is disappointing" on Clarke's Predator memo-to steamroll the Pentagon and the agency.
By September 2000, Predator was flying test missions over Afghanistan-and Predator operators, on three separate occasions, thought they actually spotted the elusive terrorist leader.
This inside account of how the Predator emerged as America's number one counterterrorist weapon comes from "The Age of Sacred Terror," a new book by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, two former counterterrorism officials who worked under Clarke on Clinton's National Security Council.
The book should be required reading for Henry A. Kissinger and others on the new national commission created to probe the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, particularly for Benjamin and Simon's assessment of the work of the CIA and the "indefensible" record of the FBI. (My next column will explore this story more deeply).
Despite the successful test flights, the interagency bickering soon resumed in Washington, with the CIA and the Air Force at odds over who would foot the bill from a crash that damaged one of the Predators. The Air Force finally picked up the tab.
After the Bush administration took office in January 2001, Clarke continued pushing the Predator, which the Air Force was now proposing to arm with laser-guided Hellfire anti-tank missiles, making the video-equipped reconnaissance platform a potent air-to-ground striker.
The Air Force's original timetable was three years for arming the Predator. Clarke convinced them to do it in three months. That summer, the Air Force built a replica of bin Laden's house near Khandahar on a Nevada test range. On its first try, a Predator scored a direct hit.
But still the bickering continued.
The CIA--according to the chronology laid out by Benjamin and Simon, which they acknowledge is probably incomplete-suddenly had reservations. One of them now seems most ironic in retrospect, given all the accolades the CIA has since received for its Predator heroics: "The Agency said it was not appropriate for the CIA to operate the Predator."
When principals from the Bush administration met on Sept. 4 to discuss the al Qaeda threat-seven days before the terrorist attacks-CIA Director George J. Tenet spoke up in forceful opposition to the Predator, according to Benjamin and Simon.
"It would be a terrible mistake, he declared, for the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this," they write. "That would happen, he said, over his dead body."
Benjamin and Simon thus lament the delays that kept Predator from flying reconnaissance and strike missions over Afghanistan for eight months prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"The development of Predator gave the United States its best new tool for finding and stopping bin Laden, and eight essential months were lost because the new foreign policy team was not persuaded of the nature of the threat."
Within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Hellfire-armed Predator was flying in Afghanistan. "In November," Benjamin and Simon write, "the drone identified a house where a large meeting of al-Qaeda personnel was underway. Navy F/A-18 fighters were alerted and bombed the house. When those inside emerged, the Predator fired its two Hellfire missiles. Among those killed was Muhammad Atef, al Qaeda's military chief for nearly a decade. To date, he is the highest-ranking member of the organization known to have died in Afghanistan." "The Most Substantial Increase...in History"
Whatever the new Kissinger commission concludes about the Intelligence Community's culpability in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the House and Senate select committees on intelligence have already concluded that inadequate resources were part of the problem.
The Fiscal 2003 Intelligence Authorization Bill that created the commission also approved "the most substantial increase...in history" for the CIA and a dozen other intelligence agencies.
If $30 billion or so weren't enough to stop al Qaeda, perhaps $35 billion will suffice (the exact amounts are classified).
The bill provides some cryptic commentary on what is surely a budget sinkhole-a new generation of spy satellites under development by the Boeing Co. to replace the current aging fleets of electro-optical Keyhole and radar-imaging Lacrosse satellites.
Spy satellites had been selling for a billion dollars per copy, at least when the technology was in hand. What the cost might be for one of these so-called Future Imagery Architecture (or FIA) satellites, based on technology still being developed, is something, well, only the committees know for sure.
What they are willing to allow publicly, though, isn't confidence inspiring. A "major challenge" presented by FIA technology has proven so costly that it could soon force "untenable trades" between financing next-generation satellites and keeping the current generation in space.
In the bill, the intelligence committees say they have provided more money for FIA and for alternative satellite technologies "if developmental problems exist or persist." They also note a "continuing pattern" in which managers seek more money for their own programs with "little or no regard" for the overall mix of imagery needed to counter terrorists and other national security threats.
One of the alternatives-a 13-fold increase in funding for newly available, high-resolution commercial satellite imagery-is perhaps a silver lining to the FIA problem. The bill will provide an infusion of desperately needed government funding to a fledgling commercial sector, led by Denver-based Space Imagining.
But two other major problems identified by the intelligence committees in the authorization bill cry out for cultural, as opposed to financial solutions. One is the "dearth of language skills throughout the Intelligence Community." The other is even more basic: the inability of intelligence agencies like the CIA and the FBI to share information and work together.
"What is critical in the post-9/11 era is having a community that is, to the maximum extent possible, devoid of information sharing restrictions and one that fosters a greater culture focused on collaborative analysis," the bill says. "The conferees have included detailed language on the need for the Intelligence Community to breakdown information sharing barriers and the need to cease the practice of allowing agencies to routinely restrict 'their data' from other agencies, including law enforcement."
The bill also directs the executive branch, in submitting its annual intelligence budget request, to clearly state how much is being sought for counterterrorism, counterproliferation, counternarcotics and counterintelligence.
"Amounts...may be set forth in unclassified form or classified form, at the election of the Director of Central Intelligence," the bill says.
Director Tenet is the head of an agency that still fighting the release of the U.S. intelligence budget of 1947 on national security grounds. There's little doubt about which mode he will select.
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Arms systems survive
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 2, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021202-20013154.htm
Major weapon systems that will shape the armed forces for decades have survived an extensive budget review by senior aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Pentagon and military officials said in interviews that the upcoming fiscal 2004 defense budget, if the White House agrees, will fund the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter, the Army's Comanche helicopter, the Navy's CVNX aircraft carrier, the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey transport aircraft and the tri-service Joint Strike Fighter.
These multibillion-dollar programs all received scrutiny this past summer and fall in a review spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Cambone, Mr. Rumsfeld's top adviser on weapons and budget issues. The 2004 budget goes to Congress in early 2003 and takes effect Oct. 1.
The Pentagon also plans to boost spending on special operations forces, which are playing a leading role in the war against al Qaeda, from about $5 billion annually to $7 billion. The increase will be used to buy new equipment and expand the 47,000-man commando force. One administration source said the Pentagon will boost the command and support personnel ranks by 2,000, but it is not clear whether all the expansion will occur in 2004 or later.
Mr. Rumsfeld has given Gen. Charles Holland, who heads U.S. Special Operations Command, orders to design a new war plan for capturing and killing terrorists. Gen. Holland responded by saying he needs a significant budget increase. The Washington Times reported earlier this month that Mr. Rumsfeld also has ordered his aides and a federally funded research instititute to redesign "SoCom" from a "blank sheet" to better launch covert missions against terrorists.
President Bush campaigned in 2000 on a promise to transform the post-Cold War military by canceling some weapons and developing more advanced ones for future armies and navies.
But several realities limited his planned "technology leap" as the military services launched agressive selling campaigns inside the Pentagon to save their prized systems.
In some cases, the services argued that their weapons met Mr. Bush's demand for transformational programs that could meet 21st-century threats.
Also, the service secretaries contended that in some cases the existing aircraft were simply wearing out and needed to be replaced.
One last major issued remains. Army officails are scheduled to meet this week with Mr. Rumsfeld to sell him on increasing a planned three Stryker brigades to six. Stryker is the name of a light mobile force of the future. They are named for the wheeled personnel carriers that can fit on an Air Force C-130 aircraft. Some outside experts have advised Mr. Rumsfeld against proceeding with Stryker. The vehicles are now being produced at a rate of 45 per month.
But Army Secretary Thomas White is adamant that Stryker is at the heart of the service's future.
"We are not going to go back on the basic decision about Stryker," he said earlier this month. "If the decision is we're going to have three Stryker brigades, then we'll have three Stryker brigades."
In the coming weeks, Mr. Cambone will brief the defense secretary on the program budget review before the 2004 plan is sent to Mr. Bush for approval. The Pentagon describes the budget as the first real effort by the president to transform the armed forces.
Pentagon officials say that although major systems survived, the plan will contain a number of transformation aspects, such as a larger investment in unmanned vehicles. This includes the missile-firing Predator drone that has killed some top al Qaeda leaders. There are also blueprints for remaking Navy air wings and for changing the way the Air Force and Army interact in battle.
"You have to look at transformation as cultural change, not just weapons," one Pentagon official said.
Not all surviving programs are assured of a long life. The Air Force must stop continued price overruns for the F-22 Raptor. The Pentagon has put in place a $43 billion procurement cap.
Officials also said the Marines' troop-carrying Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft remains on probation. Technical problems have caused three deadly crashes.
"It's going to continue, but if it doesn't meet flight goals it is gone," a Pentagon official said.
The Pentagon will commit to about 600 Comanche scout-attack helicopters, cutting the planned buy roughly in half.
Although the budget review did not produce major cancellations, Mr. Rumsfeld has nixed two key programs. He ended development of the Army's Crusader artillery system as too wedded to Cold War battle doctrine. A lighter, more accurate artillery system will be developed. He also ordered the Navy to redesign its next-generation destroyer.
On the high-tech CVNX carrier, the Navy will essentially accelerate transformation by putting advanced technologies planned for the second CVNX into the first one. Construction is likely to begin in 2007.
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Military Seeks Student Data From Schools
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Recruiting-High-Schoolers.html
BOSTON (AP) -- A little-noticed provision in a new federal education law is requiring high schools to hand over to military recruiters some key information about its juniors and seniors: name, address and phone number.
The Pentagon says the information will help it recruit young people to defend their country. But the new law disturbs parents and administrators in some liberal communities that aren't exactly gung-ho about the armed forces.
Some say the law violates students' privacy and creates a moral dilemma over the military's ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy on gays.
``I find it appalling that the school is sending out letters to do the job of the military,'' said Amy Lang, the parent of a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where Coke was once banned in a protest against the soda giant's investments in apartheid South Africa. ``It's clearly an invasion of my daughter's privacy.''
The No Child Left Behind law, signed last January, pumps billions into education but also gives military recruiters access to the names, addresses and phone numbers of students in 22,000 schools. The law also says that schools must give the military the same access to their campuses that businesses and college recruiters enjoy.
School systems that fail to comply could lose federal money. The measure also applies to private schools receiving federal funding. But Quaker schools and others that have a religious objection to military service can get out of the requirement.
Students and parents who oppose the law can keep their information from being turned over to the military, but they must sign and return an ``opt-out'' form.
The Boston school system, which has 7,500 juniors and seniors, included the opt-out notice in a take-home student handbook, but fewer than a dozen parents opted out.
So far, 95 percent of the nation's schools are in compliance, said Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Sandra Troeber. She would not identify the other schools. But Education Department spokesman Dan Langan said that the current focus is on cooperation and that no schools have been sanctioned.
Federal law already requires men to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of turning 18. The new law, however, enables the Pentagon to reach potential recruits when they are 15 or 16.
In New York City, Daniel Alterman was taken aback when his 15-year-old son, a junior at Stuyvesant High, received a recruitment letter.
``Parents are in the dark,'' Alterman said. ``It freaked me out. I didn't sign up to support the military effort.''
Alterman said after he opted out, his son received another letter, this one promoting scholarships. ``It was very seductive. They didn't say anything about risk to personal safety,'' Alterman said.
Among those objecting to the new requirements is the New York City chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Executive director Donna Lieberman said that the opt-out provision is inadequate and that schools should be doing more to protect students' privacy.
In a letter last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Education Secretary Rod Paige reminded high school administrators of their duty, and cited ``the excellent educational opportunities the military affords, as well as an environment that encourages the development of strong character and leadership skills.''
The Pentagon said better access to students could also hold down the rising costs of recruitment. Over the past decade, the cost per recruit has nearly doubled from $6,500 to $11,600.
Before the law, military recruiters could meet with students in Cambridge and Northampton on campus only if the student sought them out, and then only at a meeting attended by a guidance counselor. But Cambridge held a military career fair at the high school a month ago.
``It's a vast departure from the way we've done business,'' said Donna Harlan, an associate superintendent in the Northampton school system. ``We are not in the business of giving lists of names of kids to anybody. That was tough. The issue was if we were to receive federal or state money, we had to comply with the law.''
The law also spelled the end of a 6-year ban on military recruiting on campus in Portland, Ore. After contending that the ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy discriminates against gays, the school system now gives recruiters a shot at its 16,000 students.
In Massachusetts, Framingham High senior April Middleton decided over lunch recently that maybe the military is in her future after talking with Army National Guard Sgt. Louis Perrin, a recruiter who visited the cafeteria.
Middleton, 18, said she plans to enlist after she graduates, and the prospect of war has not scared her off. ``Sometimes you've got to make sacrifices,'' she said.
Sometimes, however, recruiters battle hostility.
``One teacher said we were trying to brainwash kids. All we were doing was handing out pencils,'' Perrin said. ``We're not trying to invade anybody's privacy. We're just trying to protect their freedoms.''
-------- propaganda wars
The Pearl Harbor Deception
By Robert B. Stinnett
The Independent Institute,
December 2, 2002
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/021202Stinnett.html
Two questions about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have ignited a controversy that has burned for 60 years: Did U.S. naval cryptographers crack the Japanese naval codes before the attack? Did Japanese warships and their commanding admirals break radio silence at sea before the attack?
If the answer to both is "no," then Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise attack described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "Day of Infamy." The integrity of the U.S. government regarding Pearl Harbor remains solid.
But if the answer is "yes," then hundreds of books, articles, movies, and TV documentaries based on the "no" answer-and the integrity of the federal government-go down the drain. If the Japanese naval codes were intercepted, decoded, and translated into English by U.S. naval cryptographers prior to Pearl Harbor, then the Japanese naval attacks on American Pacific military bases were known in advance among the highest levels of the American government.
During the 60 years, the truthful answers were secreted in bomb-proof vaults, withheld from two congressional Pearl Harbor investigations and from the American people. As recently as 1995, the Joint Congressional Investigation conducted by Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Floyd Spence, was denied access to a naval storage vault in Crane, Indiana, containing documents that could settle the questions. Americans were told of U.S. cryptographers' success in cracking pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese diplomatic codes, but not a word has been officially uttered about their success in cracking Japanese military codes.
In the mid-1980s I learned that none of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese military messages obtained by the U.S. monitor stations prior to Pearl Harbor were introduced or discussed during the congressional investigation of 1945-46. Determined to penetrate the secrets of Pearl Harbor, I filed Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests with the US Navy. Navy officials in Washington released a few pre-Pearl Harbor documents to me in 1985. Not satisfied by the minuscule release, I continued filing FOIAs.
Finally in 1993, the U.S. Naval Security Group Command, the custodian of the Crane Files, agreed to transfer the records to National Archives in Washington, D.C. In the winter of 1993-94 the files were transported by truck convoy to a new government facility built on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland inside the Washington Beltway, named Archives II. Mr. Clarence Lyons, then head of the Military Reference Branch, released the first batch of Crane Files to me in the Steny Hoyer Research Center at Archives II in January 1995.
Apparently, the pre-Pearl Harbor records had not been seen or reviewed since 1941. Though refiled in pH-safe archival boxes by Lyons' staff, some of the Crane documents were covered with dust, tightly bunched together in the boxes and tied with unusual waxed twine. Lyons confirmed the records were received from the U.S. Navy in that condition.
It took me a year to evaluate the records. The information revealed in the files was astonishing. It disclosed a Pearl Harbor story hidden from the public. I believed the story should be told to the American people. The editors of Simon & Schuster/The Free Press published Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1999.
Day of Deceit was well received by media book reviews and the on-line booksellers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, earning a 70 percent public approval rating. Day of Deceit continues among the top ten bestsellers in the non-fiction Pearl Harbor book category, according to Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.
About 30 percent of the reviews have discounted the book's revelations. The leaders of the dispute include Stephen Budiansky, Edward Drea, and David Kahn, all of whom have authored books or articles on code breaking. To bolster their pre-Pearl Harbor theories, the trio violated journalistic ethics and distorted the U.S. Navy's pre-Pearl Harbor paper trail. Their efforts cannot be ignored. The trio has close ties to the National Security Agency, the overseer of U.S. naval communications files. Kahn has appeared before NSA seminars. The NSA has not honored my FOIA requests to disclose honorariums paid the seminar participants but has released records that confirm Kahn has been a participant.
Immediately after Day of Deceit appeared in bookstores in 1999, NSA began withdrawing pre-Pearl Harbor documents from the Crane Files housed in Archives II. This means the government decided to continue 60 years of Pearl Harbor censorship. As of January 2002, over two dozen NSA withdrawal notices have triggered the removal of Pearl Harbor documents from public inspection.
The number of pages in the withdrawn documents appears to be in the hundreds. Among the records withdrawn are those of Admiral Harold R. Stark, the 1941 Chief of Naval Operations, as well as crypto records authored by Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, the chief cryptographer for the Pacific Fleet at the time of Pearl Harbor. Under the Crane File transfer agreement with National Archives, NSA has the legal right to withdraw any document based on national defense concerns.
Concurrent with the NSA withdrawals, Budiansky, with the aid of Kahn and Drea, began a two-year media campaign to discredit the paper trail of the U.S. naval documents that form the backbone of Day of Deceit. One of the most egregious examples of ethical violations appeared in an article by Kahn published in the New York Review of Books on November 2, 2000. In that article, Kahn attempted to bolster his contention that Japanese admirals and warships observed radio silence while en route to attack American Pacific bases. Kahn broke basic journalism ethics and rewrote a U.S. Naval Communication Summary prepared by Commander Rochefort at his crypto center located in the Pearl Harbor Naval Yard.
About 1,000 intercepted Japanese naval radio messages formed the basis of each Daily Summary written by Rochefort and his staff. The Japanese communication intelligence data contained in the messages was summarized and delivered daily to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Rochefort's summary of November 25, 1941 (Hawaii time) was not to Kahn's liking. It revealed the Commander Carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy was not observing radio silence but was in "extensive communications" with other Japanese naval forces whose admirals directly commanded the forces involved in the Pearl Harbor attack. Because of the International Dateline, the "extensive communications" mentioned in the summary took place on November 26, 1941, Japan time, the exact day the Japanese carrier force began its journey to Hawaii.
In its entirety the Rochefort summary reads: "FOURTH FLEET-CinC. Fourth Fleet is still holding extensive communications with the commander Submarine Fleet, the forces at Jaluit and Commander Carriers. His other communications are with the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Base Forces."
The meaning of the summary is unequivocal: The commanders of the powerful Japanese invasion, submarine, and carrier forces did not observe radio silence as they maneuvered toward U.S. bases in Hawaii, Wake, and Guam Islands in the Central Pacific. Instead they used radio transmitters aboard their flagships and coordinated strategy and tactics with each other.
The summary corroborates earlier findings by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland. In the late 1970s, Toland interviewed personnel and obtained U.S. naval documents from San Francisco's Twelfth Naval District that disclosed that the "extensive communications" were intercepted by the radio direction finders of the U.S. Navy's West Coast Communications Intelligence Network. Doubleday published Toland's account in 1982 as Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath.
Yet in his NYRoB article Kahn deleted portions of the Rochefort summary in the middle of the first sentence, profoundly diminishing its significance. Kahn's version: "Fourth Fleet is still holding extensive communications with the Commander Submarine Fleet."
Kahn violated basic journalism rules by deleting crucial words and not using eclipses to indicate a deletion. When I cited these ethical violations to the editors of the NYRoB, Kahn offered an excuse and implied that Rochefort's summary was too long. "I had to condense my review," he wrote.
Kahn probably believes his deletion was insignificant because he denies that the Commander Carriers were involved in the Pearl Harbor attack. "The force that attacked Hawaii was not that of the Commander Carriers but the First Air Fleet," he wrote in his reply to my Letter-to-the-Editor of the NYRoB (February 8, 2002). Kahn revealed his ignorance of the Japanese naval organization. The First Air Fleet operated under Commander Carriers, that is, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, who was in charge of the entire Hawaii Operation.
Captain A. James McCollum, USNR (Ret), who served in San Francisco's Twelfth Naval District intelligence office (and later on the intelligence staff of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz) accused Kahn of committing "journalistic crimes." "That critic, David Kahn, seems to have deliberately distorted some facts and even altered quotations...," McCollum wrote in his letter to the editors of the NYRoB on February 14, 2001. The letter was never published.
Stephen Budiansky continued his media blitz in the Wall Street Journal. In a December 27, 2001 Letter-to-the-Editor of the Journal, Budiansky praised Kahn as "...widely regarded as the world's leading authority on the history of code breaking..." Then in following paragraphs, Budiansky mimicked Kahn and misreported the facts concerning the U.S. naval monitor station on Corregidor, known as CAST. He challenged the Day of Deceit account and wrote that CAST was located in Cavite, Philippines.
Budiansky's errors involving CAST reveal a poor understanding of U.S. naval communications intelligence operations. CAST was temporarily located at the Cavite Naval Base in 1936, then moved to Mariveles on the Bataan Peninsula. In October 1940 the station was relocated to Corregidor. The new quarters were located in an underground crypto center carved from the rock of Corregidor. CAST remained on the rock until the spring of 1942 when advancing Japanese troops forced its removal to Australia. Budiansky did not differentiate between the 1940-41 U.S. naval broadcast radio center at Cavite and the U.S. navy cryptographic monitor station on Corregidor.
The mistakes of the Budiansky-Drea-Kahn team concerning Station CAST worsen.
In the same Wall Street Journal edition, Edward J. Drea, a retired U.S. Army historian, also wrote a misleading account of the crypto operations at CAST in November 1941. Mr. Drea challenged a CAST report dated November 16, 1941, by its commanding officer Lieutenant John M. Lietwiler who reported to Washington that his staff was "current" in intercepting, decoding, and translating the Japanese navy's Operation Code.
Lietwiler was a highly trained crypto expert in deciphering the Japanese navy's main operation code known to Japan in the fall of 1941 as the Kaigun Ango-sho D, Ransuhyo nana (Navy Code Book D, random numbers table seven). He spent 1940 and most of 1941 learning the principles of decoding Code Book D from Agnes Meyer Driscoll, the brilliant Chief Civilian Cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy. Ms. Driscoll was the first American to discover the solution of Code Book D, soon after Japan introduced it in June 1939.
Upon completing the Code Book D crypto course, Lietwiler was dispatched to CAST with the latest decoding details of Table Seven. He arrived and took command of CAST in September 1941. Lietwiler's expertise and devotion to his crypto duty meant nothing to Drea. In his letter, Drea demoted Lieutenant Lietwiler and described him as a "1941 writer."
Challenging my interpretation of Lietwiler's letter, Drea states: "Nowhere in the cited communications is the Japanese naval code mentioned." Drea is correct in the narrowest sense. To understand that Lietwiler was discussing the Japanese naval operations code requires a broader context.
Mr. Drea failed to comprehend Lietwiler's technical crypto language used in the letter. It was addressed to Lietwiler's counterpart in Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Lee W. Parke, another of the U.S. Navy's brilliant cryptographers. Parke had devised a crypto machine that automatically decoded the additive/subtractive columnar tables of Table Seven. Parke called his invention the JEEP IV and sent it to CAST by officer courier. It arrived on Corregidor on October 6, 1941, via the armed U.S. naval transport U.S.S. Henderson.
The construction of JEEP IV was specifically authorized by Rear Admiral Royal Ingersoll, Acting Chief of Naval Operations. In a memo dated October 4, 1940, Ingersoll wrote, referring to Code Book D: "an additive key cipher is employed in this code, and, although the method of recovery is well defined, the process is a laborious one, requiring from an hour to several days for each message. A machine is under construction which will aide in the mechanical part of the solution, but it must be accepted that current information will seldom be available immediately..." The Ingersoll memo directly connects the Lietwiler memo to the Japanese naval operations code.
Lietwiler refers explicitly to JEEP IV in the letter and adds that his Crypto Yeoman Albert Myers, Jr., bypassed JEEP IV and was able to "walk across" the many columnar tables of Code Book D. Readers of the Wall Street Journal should know that Code Book D used columnar random number Table Seven in the fall of 1941. If Mr. Drea had done more crypto homework, he would have known the purpose of JEEP IV. It is fully spelled out in U.S. Navy files. JEEP IV is derived from Parke's unit whose secret navy crypto designator was GYP (phonetic = jeep). But he failed to understand the esoteric language used by the two code breakers.
I could point out more errors by the trio, but I will limit myself to one more. They refer to errors in dates in Day of Deceit. The so-called date "errors" they cite are not "errors" but are related to the geography of the International Date Line. Like many easterners who have never been west of the Hudson River, the trio does not realize that November 25 in Hawaii is November 26 in Japan. The mid-ocean date change between America and Japan is known throughout the world. It is the result of geographers establishing the Date Line in the Mid-Pacific. America's day begins in Guam, not New York.
Robert B. Stinnett is a Media Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and author of the book, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2001).
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
At Justice, Freedom Not to Release Information
By James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58419-2002Nov30?language=printer
Today, at the Justice Department, some laws are more equal than others.
One 36-year-old U.S. law can be broken, it seems. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who is sworn to enforce all laws, has told federal employees that they can bend -- perhaps even break -- one law, and he will even defend their actions in court.
That law is known as the Freedom of Information Act.
Last October, the Justice Department cited the Sept. 11 attacks in a memo to federal FOIA officers that stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions."
That memo superseded Attorney General Janet Reno's memo of 1993 that told FOIA officers to presume government documents are public. Citing the D.C. Circuit opinion Hemenway v. Hughes, Reno urged care to make sure that the government "is not unduly limiting the records found responsive to those requests."
It is not that the Reno Justice Department was particularly enamored with FOIA. But at least attorneys didn't have carte blanche to disregard the law. It is under this new Ashcroft dictum that we review the latest appalling turn in the long-running FOIA battle between the Justice Department and database investigators David Burnham and Sue Long.
Burnham, a legendary investigative reporter, teamed up with Long, a statistician, in 1989 to create Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University to collect and analyze government data. TRAC is an incredibly useful tool to monitor the basic functions of government. It includes such things as the number of cases referred by the FBI to U.S. attorneys' offices around the country. It is one way to gauge the effectiveness of the front line of federal law enforcement in the United States.
(Full disclosure: The author of Hearsay, through his affiliation with Investigative Reporters and Editors, also advocates for public-access issues. IRE often features Burnham as an unpaid speaker at its conferences.)
Some of TRAC's most frequent users include networks and newspapers, such as The Washington Post, public interest groups -- from Common Cause to the National Rifle Association -- and Congress, particularly the Senate Judiciary Committee. "TRAC data is important and useful information for Congress to conduct its constitutional responsibility of oversight," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told Hearsay last week.
Five years ago, the Reno Justice Department stopped providing data to TRAC. The organization sued and the Justice Department settled out of court. Then the department reneged. TRAC sued again. The case is pending.
Meanwhile, the data were used to spotlight how the Clinton administration was pushing for new gun laws when its own enforcement of existing weapons laws was falling precipitously. Then-Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. employed a tactic that many Justice Department lawyers have tried over the years: He attacked the data as wrong. But internal records, released after the 2000 election, showed that the Justice Department knew the data were correct.
Fast forward to 2001. After the Sept. 11 attacks, TRAC data revealed that U.S. attorneys around the country had declined to prosecute a large proportion of terrorism cases referred by the FBI and other agencies. The Philadelphia Inquirer took the data, went to the courthouse and found the terrorism indictments brought really weren't terrorism cases at all.
Such embarrassments apparently have continued to upset Justice Department bureaucrats. In March, Teresa Davis of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys wrote that monthly FOIA requests for data would be delayed to make sure releasing data did not "jeopardize the department's counter-terrorism efforts or threaten national security."
Nevertheless, the Justice Department released the data in April. It wasn't a pretty post-Sept. 11 picture, at least not to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Grassley. "The information raises troubling questions about whether the FBI and Department of Justice are devoting sufficient resources to counter-terrorism efforts," the senators wrote in June, "whether the FBI continues to dedicate valuable resources to crimes [such as bank robberies] that other agencies are equipped to handle; how well the FBI conducts terrorism investigations; and what the FBI is doing with its intelligence and analysis personnel."
Around Halloween, TRAC received a letter from the Justice Department rejecting the release of records of ongoing criminal investigations, which it said could interfere with anti-terrorism investigations and endanger lives. On its face, such a denial might seem reasonable, except that the information TRAC gets is so vague and incomplete that it would be impossible to ascertain any specific cases, suspects or investigations.
Leahy and Grassley also aren't buying the Justice Department's arguments for the decision to suddenly stop releasing the data. They see it as part of a twofold attack on TRAC. "First, the department has attacked the validity of the data," the senators wrote. "Second, it is simultaneously trying to cut the flow of information that can be used by TRAC and the public to evaluate the Department and the FBI's performance."
Grassley asked the Justice Department to reconsider its FOIA response. "Bureaucrats may not like being held accountable for their actions, but that doesn't mean they can withhold information to cover up what they're doing or not doing," Grassley said.
Justice Department bureaucrats, with Ashcroft's blessing, are trying to muzzle the watchdogs. For that reason, Hearsay presents its annual Turkey Award to those bureaucrats. The FOIA officers, through spokesman Mark Corallo, said there is justification for their actions. "Information that may seem innocuous to the average person, may in fact provide a great deal of guidance about the direction of our investigations to criminals or terrorists," Corallo said.
Burnham warns that the shutdown of the flow of information comes at a time when the federal government has been handed remarkable and historic new powers of investigation. "I am truly fearful we are going to see a lot more of this stuff," Burnham said.
----
Guantanamo Prisoners Appeal for Rights
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
Dec 2, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ATTACKS_GUANTANAMO?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Detainees in the war on terrorism are fighting for access to American courts, contending they should not be held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without seeing a lawyer and without being charged with a crime.
The Bush administration was arguing in a federal appeals court here Monday that 12 Kuwaitis, two Australians and two British Muslims captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks are "unlawful combatants."
Siding with Justice Department lawyers, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled four months ago that the Guantanamo detainees have no right to court hearings, meaning the military can hold them indefinitely without filing charges.
The prisoners are not in the United States and thus do not fall under the jurisdiction of federal courts, the judge said.
Guantanamo has nearly 600 detainees.
The Justice Department and Kollar-Kotelly are relying on a 1950 Supreme Court ruling involving German nationals in World War II convicted before a military commission and held in a prison in Germany.
Like the Germans, the Guantanamo detainees "are `actual enemies, active in the hostile service of an enemy power'" and they lack standing in U.S. courts, the Justice Department said in recent court papers.
The two cases are completely different, lawyers for the detainees and their families responded. Advertisement
"It is one thing to acknowledge ... that enemy aliens in the active service of a hostile state cannot seek post-conviction relief in the federal courts," they said in a court filing. "But it is quite another to suggest ... that any alien ... may be deprived of their liberty indefinitely by the United States military, with no legal process, simply by the expedient of bringing them to Guantanamo Bay."
"Congress has never so much as intimated, let alone made a `plain statement,' that aliens detained outside the 50 states have no right to seek the writ of habeas corpus," the filing said. The appeals court should "recognize Guantanamo Bay for what it is: a fully American enclave with `the basic attributes of full territorial sovereignty.'"
The U.S. military announced late last year that the 45-square-mile base on the southeastern tip of Cuba, the oldest U.S. overseas outpost, was the destination for Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners.
The United States leased the land for the base from Cuba in 1903 for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085. Washington pays that amount every year, but Fidel Castro's government refuses to cash the checks.
The base is surrounded by 17.4 miles of fence line and a corresponding Cuban fence line and minefield.
As for the detainees in the appeals court case:
-The 12 Kuwaitis were in Afghanistan doing charity work and weren't there to fight, their families have said.
-British Muslims Asif Iqbal, who is in his early 20s, and Shafiq Rasul, who is in his mid-20s, flew to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan just days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
-There is little doubt that Australian David Hicks, 26, had joined the Taliban when he was captured by U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said. Hicks' family denies that he trained with al-Qaida. Australian newspapers have published photos of Hicks as a freckled 10-year-old schoolboy alongside a picture of him as a bazooka-toting soldier taken during a stint in Kosovo, where he fought with Muslims in the Kosovo Liberation Army.
-Australian Mamdouh Habib, 47, was captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan on suspicion of links to al-Qaida. Habib's wife denies any al-Qaida connection. The couple have four children.
Habib's Sydney-based attorney, Stephen Hopper, told Australian television that Habib, who also holds Egyptian citizenship, visited New York in 1991 and met a man who later was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Subsequently, another man convicted in the 1993 bombing called Habib in Australia a couple of times trying to get him to raise money for his defense, Hopper said.
The other Guantanamo prisoners are from more than 40 countries and include about 60 Pakistanis and some 100 Saudi Arabians. A handful of Afghan and Pakistani detainees have been sent home from Guantanamo after being cleared of terrorist suspicions.
On the Net:
U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay:
http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil
--------
F.B.I., Under Outside Pressure, Gets Inside Push
December 2, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/politics/02TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - Just two weeks after imploring the F.B.I. to make counterterrorism its top priority, the director of the agency has warned his agents in even stronger terms that he will not tolerate "bureaucratic intransigence" as an obstacle to change.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's ability to adapt to change "is now being tested in the extreme," the director, Robert S. Mueller III, wrote in an internal memorandum on Friday. "Change will be needed in many areas and needed quickly. Bureaucratic intransigence cannot be an impediment or excuse."
Mr. Mueller's message to employees comes as the bureau is facing stepped-up pressure from leading members of Congress to shore up its counterterrorism operations.
Two senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee - Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa - wrote to the Justice Department last week, saying they had serious concerns about the F.B.I.'s ability to lead the fight against terrorism and about its treatment of some agents who have voiced criticisms internally. The senators questioned whether the F.B.I. had been truthful about its progress in recasting its counterterrorism operation.
And two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, and Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the departing Democratic chairman, expressed concern today about the agency's ability to recast its mission from traditional law enforcement duties to intelligence functions.
"I think the F.B.I. is being challenged big time today," Mr. Shelby said on "Fox News Sunday." "They're moving from a police - a federal police agency to an intelligence agency. It's a big cultural change."
The complaints of Senators Leahy and Grassley were spurred in part, they said, by a front-page article in The New York Times on Nov. 21 that detailed the frustrations of senior F.B.I. officials in getting some field offices to make counterterrorism their main priority.
The senators demanded access to two memorandums quoted in the article, from Mr. Mueller and Bruce J. Gebhardt, the deputy director, which the F.B.I. has refused to give them, as well as any other internal documents dealing with a "lack of focus" in counterterrorism efforts.
In his memorandum, Mr. Gebhardt told field office chiefs he was "amazed and astounded" by the failure to commit essential resources to the fight against terrorism and said they must instill a sense of urgency in their agents. Mr. Mueller's agencywide memorandum stated unequivocally that counterterrorism had to be the top priority and that local field offices could no longer establish distinct agendas.
In his most recent memorandum, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, Mr. Mueller characterized the effort to refocus the bureau's mission as "the re-engineering initiative." He said the bureau must work to identify areas in need of change, make them a priority, pull in senior executives to accomplish the task, and ensure accountability. Without such an overarching plan, he wrote, worthwhile ambitions can "end up abandoned in frustration or done poorly."
Mr. Mueller said that while the F.B.I. faced "a level of new expectations unprecedented in its history," he was confident that it could meet the high expectations.
The new push comes seven months after Mr. Mueller announced a counterterrorism reorganization that included a restructuring of the management hierarchy at F.B.I. headquarters and a redeployment of some 400 personnel who had been working nonterrorism investigations like narcotics and white-collar crime. Roughly a quarter of the F.B.I.'s 11,000 agents are now working counterterrorism, officials say.
But there have been nagging doubts about whether the plan is working.
Members of Congress appeared willing to give Mr. Mueller a lengthy grace period to put the reorganization plan in place, and many Republicans as well as senior officials in the Bush administration say they remain confident Mr. Mueller can get the job done.
A senior Justice Department official said today that while there was clearly room for improvement in the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism work, "from our perspective, there's been a huge sea change in how the F.B.I. is operating in the last year," with several suspected terror cells around the country disrupted.
But in recent weeks, senior Democrats as well as a few Republicans have begun to voice increased skepticism about whether the F.B.I. has made enough progress in its ability to collect and analyze intelligence, identify terrorism suspects and disrupt possible plots.
Some officials question whether agents trained in solving bank robberies, kidnappings and drug deals can embrace their new role.
Bush administration officials have even begun to discuss whether there is a need to create a superagency for domestic intelligence, a move that could gut the F.B.I.'s existing counterterrorism authority.
Senator Graham said on "Fox News Sunday" that a new organizational structure was needed.
Mr. Graham pointed to the "fundamental difference" between a law enforcement agency like the F.B.I., which works to solve crimes that have already occurred, and an intelligence agency, which works to prevent crimes. "I don't know whether you can blend those two different cultures into a single agency," he said.
Law enforcement officials have also floated the idea of closing some of the F.B.I.'s more than 400 satellite offices, and perhaps even a few of its 56 larger field offices, to move more agents to counterterrorism.
An F.B.I. official who demanded anonymity said that the bureau was continuing to review staffing and organizational issues as part of the counterterrorism push but that no plan to close any offices was foreseen. That official, as well as Congressional officials, noted that any effort to close a field office would require approval from Congress and would undoubtedly face stiff opposition from members whose hometown F.B.I. presence was threatened.
The letter sent Wednesday from Mr. Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Mr. Grassley, a ranking Republican, who together wield significant influence in oversight of the F.B.I., represents the latest salvo in the stepped-up attacks on the bureau from Congress.
The senators said they were deeply troubled by the apparent contradiction between the F.B.I.'s internal frustrations over the pace of reforms and its public pronouncements that it was getting the job done. Mr. Leahy and Mr. Grassley noted that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had attacked the findings of a study by Syracuse University last spring suggesting that the F.B.I. was devoting as much attention to nonterrorism cases after the Sept. 11 attacks as before. They said internal frustrations at the F.B.I. appeared to echo the study's findings.
In addition, the senators disclosed that the Justice Department decided last month to cut the amount of information on F.B.I. cases that it would make available to researchers at Syracuse as part of their continuing study.
"The answer for the Department and the F.B.I. is to address the legitimate concerns about their enforcement priorities, not to blind Congress and the public" by withholding information, the letter said.
Officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department said they had not yet reviewed the letter and could not comment on the concerns raised in it.
In another letter, sent to Mr. Mueller last Tuesday, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Grassley also criticized the department's handling of a personnel matter involving a report of retaliation against an F.B.I. unit chief.
The agent, John Roberts, appeared with the F.B.I.'s permission on a "60 Minutes" episode last month. Mr. Roberts said on the program that there was a perceived double standard at the F.B.I. in its disciplining of senior officials versus rank-and-file agents, and Congressional officials say that soon after, supervisors upbraided him in front of other employees because of his comments. Supervisors also eliminated a position in the F.B.I.'s ethics units last month after two employees spoke with Congressional investigators about whether the agency had retaliated against Mr. Roberts, the senators said.
The ethics staff reduction "contributes to the perception that the F.B.I. will not tolerate criticism from within its ranks," the senators said. And they said it came when the bureau needed more ethics staff members, not fewer, to train new agents who are being granted "greater powers to investigate American citizens and conduct domestic surveillance."
F.B.I. officials declined to comment on the issues raised in the letter, and they said the question of retaliation against Mr. Roberts had been turned over to the Justice Department inspector general.
-------- courts
Behavioral Advice From the Bench
D.C. Court Swaps Jail Time for Life Changes in Misdemeanors
By Arthur Santana
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61655-2002Dec1?language=printer
Judge Noel A. Kramer is willing to deal. She tells Robert Lundy, who stands before her in D.C. Superior Court charged with possession of cocaine, that she'll keep him out of jail on one condition: He must agree to see an education counselor.
A few days later, Lundy is back in court, bringing good news. After seeing the counselor, he wants to get his General Educational Development diploma, enter a drug treatment program and find a job.
"I'm very happy to hear that," Kramer says. If Lundy, 22, follows that plan, prosecutors have agreed to drop the cocaine charge. But Kramer, noticing Lundy's long, shaggy hair, isn't quite done nudging the defendant.
"Are you planning on going out and looking for a job today?" Kramer asks. Lundy says he is. "Then, you might consider getting a haircut," Kramer says with a smile.
This type of frank exchange about personal lives is an everyday part of a new initiative in the District known as Community Court. One of 30 such programs throughout the nation, and the first in the region, the D.C. Community Court was launched Sept. 23 to help small-time offenders break the criminal habit while giving something back to the community.
Other courts often resolve cases by accepting plea bargains or imposing conditions that allow defendants to avoid jail. But community courts are unique in that judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys are focused from the outset on addressing personal problems that prompted the criminal behavior.
Considered a natural extension of "community policing" -- the policing method credited with lowering crime rates in the 1990s -- community court is trumpeted by its advocates as the court of the future because of its problem-solving approach.
In the D.C. program, Kramer handles most misdemeanor cases out of the 6th Police District in the eastern part of the city. The idea is to bring the court closer not only to the defendants but also to the community, and Kramer often leaves the courthouse for neighborhood meetings to learn about the impact that "quality of life" offenses have on people's lives.
Kramer calls the approach a sea change in the way the court deals with crimes.
Many of the more than 14,000 misdemeanor cases flowing into the courthouse each year involve people who keep cycling through the court. If the new court can turn some of their lives around by addressing their unemployment, homelessness, drug dependency or lack of education, it will help the community and unclog the court's docket, Kramer said.
"I thank God that something like this has occurred," Lundy said after his court hearing. "I have waited a long time to get some help like this."
Kramer, an 18-year veteran of the bench, is the only judge assigned to the D.C. program. But if the program works in the 6th District, court officials say they hope to expand it citywide.
"The point of the 6D Community Court is to find out what's going on in that person's life and see how we can help them," Kramer said. How It Works
The Community Court works like this: A person arrested in the 6th District on a misdemeanor charge -- possession of drugs, shoplifting, simple assault, prostitution or theft -- is brought before Kramer soon after being taken into custody. The most common cases involve drug possession and prostitution offenses. The court does not handle felony cases or matters involving minors or domestic violence.
From the start, Community Court handles criminal cases in a nontraditional way. Instead of digging in for months of legal battles, the prosecutor and defense attorney huddle before the matter is called to decide whether the defendant can be helped in a way that would prevent future trouble and make amends to the community.
"In an ordinary case, the prosecutor gets there, and without looking at the circumstances of the case, says, 'I'm going to send you to jail.' And the defense attorney comes in and does the same thing and says, 'I'm going to keep you out of jail.' But no one is looking at the causes and effects," Kramer said.
Once the attorneys and defendant conclude their talks, Kramer is called. In most cases, defendants don't plead guilty. Instead, the charges stand until the court-ordered resolution is completed; then the charges typically are dismissed. If defendants decline to participate -- and are later tried and convicted -- Kramer said she will take their refusal into account at sentencing.
In the usual arraignment court, "there's no time for in-depth conversation," said Kramer, who also is presiding judge of the court's criminal division. "There's no time for resolution . . . With this new court, a resolution is explored on that first day. The result is that in two months, I've only set about eight trial dates. That's nothing."
The court-appointed defense bar and the U.S. attorney's office have signed on to the concept.
"In D.C., for as long as I can remember, it's been about fighting each other," said Joseph Jorgens III, a lawyer with the court-appointed defense bar. "This represents a change in the atmosphere. Now, we're trying to solve problems rather than just looking at the moment of the crime. . . . If we can expand this to the whole city, what a much better city we'd have."
Clifford T. Keenan, chief of the Superior Court division of the U.S. attorney's office, said prosecutors view it the same way.
"What's always been missing in D.C. is we have never had the court involved in the process," Keenan said. "We're looking to offer alternative disposition options, rather than just looking for someone to be punished. I think the bottom line to all of this is that simply processing a person through the system without figuring out a way to help them stop the vicious cycle doesn't do the individual or the system any good."
Speaking with Jorgens at a recent community meeting, Keenan assured 6th District residents that prosecutors will remain tough on serious crimes in the area.
"We're not just about the touchy-feely approach," Keenan said. "We're still talking about taking care of business. But when you start with small-time offenders, you can prevent the criminals from eventually heading down the path toward serious crimes." Work in Progress
Patterned after the success of a two-year-old community court in Brooklyn, N.Y., the District's version has won cooperation from a consortium of city agencies, including the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency and the Department of Employment Services.
But it remains a work in progress. Although a drug treatment program is in place, Kramer said such gaps as a need for more accessible mental health treatment, child care and employment services remain.
Officials are trying to make arrangements with a variety of programs that would allow defendants to give something back to the community, such as picking up trash or removing graffiti. Kramer said the court hopes to coordinate its efforts with the D.C. Department of Public Works and other agencies so that work crews, sent out to pick up trash, can receive new recruits from the court.
As of Nov. 13, Kramer had released 58 defendants to be supervised by the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency, according to Janice Bergin, the agency's operations director. Of those, 36 are being tested for drugs, and eight are in drug treatment. Five were told by Kramer to take such steps as getting a GED, Bergin said.
Charles Jones, associate director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, said his agency is eager to help people coming out of the Community Court find jobs. Today the first four defendants from the Community Court will begin a three-week "life skills" training program as a precursor to employment, Jones said.
Rufus G. King III, the chief judge at D.C. Superior Court, said that it's too early to measure the program's success and that change will take time.
"We're not so naive to think that this will stop crime. But what we hope to do is at least slow down the revolving door. It's going to take some time," King said. "It's going to start slow, but we want to get it right."
The community court philosophy has been successful in many places, legal experts said. In the nation's first community court -- the Midtown Community Court in New York City, founded in 1993 -- neighborhood prostitution arrests in the court's first two years dropped by more than 60 percent. Illegal vending arrests also dropped sharply. Job of Justice But critics contend that the court's lofty goals work better on paper than they do in real life. They argue that a court's job is to blindly parse out justice, not play social worker.
Some defense attorneys in cities with community courts complain that their clients stand to face more jail time if they fail to comply with the judge's behavior-altering whip, said David Rottman, of the Williamsburg-based National Center for State Courts, who has studied several "problem-solving" courts around the country.
Rottman said money is one reason the idea hasn't expanded beyond 30 jurisdictions. The court can create new financial burdens, he said. In addition, it can become unwieldy as it grows to cover more parts of the community.
"All these courts require an upfront investment of time, resources and energy," said Greg Berman, director for the Center for Court Innovation, a New York-based organization that helped pioneer the community court concept.
Many ideas for community courts, including one in Baltimore, fizzled. Others ran out of money.
Although officials intend to apply for a $250,000 grant from the city for court staff and consultants, the D.C. program initially won't use any court funds beyond the Superior Court's regular operating budget. For now, it must rely on community involvement and social programs at a time when government spending has been curtailed, which could become problematic, Kramer said.
But the Community Court can bring other savings, Kramer and others said. By cutting back the number of hearings on misdemeanor cases, officials will reduce the number of times that police officers must appear. That could generate millions in savings on police overtime, they said.
Despite the current gaps and potential problems, people who turned out for a recent meeting in Northeast Washington with Kramer, Keenan, Jorgens and King endorsed the idea.
"It sounds like a very good program," said Elizabeth Travers, a neighborhood resident. "With the help of the community, it could work. . .
"It's a new program and you have to iron out the kinks, but I'm glad we're trying something."
-------- death penalty
Former Judges Plead for the Condemned
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/02/national/02JUDG.html
CHICAGO, Dec. 1 (AP) - A group of retired state and federal judges is urging Gov. George Ryan to commute the death sentences of any inmate whose conviction was tainted by flaws in the state's capital punishment system.
In a letter to Mr. Ryan released today, a former Illinois chief justice, Moses Harrison, and 20 other judges suggested clemency for scores of inmates, but stopped short of asking the governor to commute all death sentences. Individual judges, however, said the system was so riddled with problems that the governor should grant blanket commutations.
"The only way to be fair, the only way to be just, the only way to be equal is for the governor to change the death sentences," said R. Eugene Pincham, a former state appellate judge. He said the prisoners should be given life sentences without parole.
Anthony Scariano, a retired state appellate judge, said that the law should be changed to protect defendants in the future but that clemency was "the proper way to address the problems of the past."
A spokesman for Mr. Ryan, Dennis Culloton, said the governor's office had not seen the letter, but would give it "very serious study."
The judges cited the same problems that were raised by defense lawyers in recent clemency hearings before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. They include coerced confessions, testimony from informants and accomplices in exchange for incentives like lenient sentences, inadequate defense counsel and mental retardation among prisoners.
Governor Ryan suspended executions nearly three years ago, saying he could no longer be certain that those on death row were guilty.
-------- terrorism
Condemned to Violence
As long as we ignore downtrodden people, terrorism will not go away.
By Ramzy Baroud
Monday, December 2, 2002
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61785-2002Dec1?language=printer
"So do you condemn terrorism or not?" a young, immature journalist asked me with a mix of agitation and sarcasm.
I refused to answer.
I told him that I hated the pretentious, tainted term: "terrorism." He thought it was a poor attempt to escape the ritual condemnation of terrorism that is necessary for all who wish to be accepted into civil societies, especially in the West.
But of course I condemn terrorism, if terrorism means the murder of innocent people for the sake of gaining political influence, or for inflicting punishment or simply to advance an argument. I condemn all kinds of terrorism -- that of a nation-state, no matter how mighty, as much as that of a solitary sniper gunning down innocent men and women. But in practice, it is only the powerless who receive retribution for it.
"Terrorism" is seen only in one context: the effect, but never the cause, as though suicide bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the Kurdish rebels' frequent attacks on the Turkish army and more were all born in a vacuum.
In an interview with a National Public Radio station two months after the deadly attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I reiterated to a thoughtful host: "We must try to see through the pain of the innocent thousands killed on that dreadful day. We cannot be so blinded by our anger to the point that we fail to see how violence begets violence. If we are keenly interested in bringing terrorism to a halt, we must have the courage to examine its roots."
Growing up to become a suicide bomber is simply not the course of normal human behavior. Leaving one's children behind in Grozny, going to Moscow and seizing hundreds of people at gunpoint in a theater is not an act born out of some ingrained Chechen hatred for Russians. Nor have the Kurds fought for more than 15 years simply because they are, in some mysterious way, bad folk, full of unexplainable hostility.
I sank into my chair in disbelief when I heard how many people were poisoned by Russia's use of gas in retaking the theater in Moscow. But I admit it: I also lamented the death of the 50 rebels. Condemn me if you wish, but I couldn't hold back my tears when I saw the images of more than 10 Chechen women, clearly young, crouching on their knees, some gazing heavenward, all dead.
We are not programmed to pity such people: They are the ones who initiated the violence; they are the insurgents, the rebels, the terrorists. All we owe them is unquestioning condemnation.
But I will ask questions. When such groups as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International call for an international investigation of Russia's actions in Chechnya, why have the United Nations, the American administration and other Western governments not pressed the issue? Why is Russia allowed a free hand in Chechnya? Why have the Chechens endured so many massacres at the hands of the Russian army?
We can only hope that Moscow will recover from its nightmare and return to normality. We can hold out no such hopes for Grozny, though. The Russian army is still there. The fighting, the occupation, the puppet government, the daily terror, mass arrests, rape and torture are all still going on. Human Rights Watch, largely alone, continues with its routine updates on crimes against the civilian population. But who has time to read?
The Chechen suffering doesn't excuse the violent hostage-taking, but it explains it. We can stick our heads in the sand like ostriches and scream aloud, "nothing justifies terrorism." We can block our ears, our brains and accuse those who disagree with us of being "sympathetic with the terrorists" even of being traitors. But that will change nothing.
Moscow will likely find itself the victim of more desperate Chechen attacks. The unilateral cease-fire of the Kurds in Turkey is likely to be ended by the Turkish army's continuing violence against the Kurdish population. Suicide bombings in the Mideast may subside or change style or targets, but they will not cease.
"Fighting terror" is the new trend, whereby aggressive, powerful countries crush their weaker foes, deprive them of freedom, of humanity even, terrorize them, degrade them, arrest them en masse, test their latest weapons on them -- while continuing to blame them for all the wrongs of the world.
And we, the people of this world who mean well but fail to act, are expected to believe everything we are told. Israel is defending itself as though it were the Palestinians who occupy Israeli territories, besiege the Israeli people, blow up their homes, steal their land and gun down their children. (Israel's Ariel Sharon was not content just to condemn the Chechen hostage-takers but also praised the Russian "victory.") We are expected to hate the Kurdish rebels and deny any feelings of sympathy toward the Chechens, because the powerful set the tone of the battle, the definitions -- what deserves to be condemned and what is regarded as a victory.
When will we treasure the lives of all nations on an equal level, whether American, Afghani, Iraqi, Israeli, Palestinian, Turkish, Kurdish, Russian, Chechen and all others? How long will we remain blinded by empty slogans, unexplained hatred and pretentious condemnations?
The writer, a Palestinian journalist, is editor in chief of PalestineChronicle.com.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
ADB Pledges $130 Mln to Tajikistan
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62255-2002Dec2?language=printer
DUSHANBE (Reuters) - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Monday it would lend $120 million to Tajikistan and provide $10 million in technical assistance in 2003-05 to help rebuild its war-ravaged economy and alleviate rampant poverty.
"This agreement has certain targets that the government and the ADB would like to achieve -- targets in poverty reduction, in education, in health and in water supply," Geert Van Der Linden, Director General of the bank's East and Central Asia department, said after meeting Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov.
The ADB delegation and the government signed on Sunday an agreement on cooperation until 2015 which aims to reduce poverty in Tajikistan, the poorest of the 15 former Soviet republics.
"Our current program is for the period of 2003 to 2005. Over the next three years we expect to provide loans worth $120 million and about $10 million in technical assistance grants," said Van Der Linden. He gave no details of the planned loans.
Tens of thousands died in a fierce civil war in 1992-97 when government troops fought Islamic guerrillas. The vast majority of people in the mountainous country of six million, which borders China and Afghanistan, struggle to survive on less than $1 a day. Monthly wages average $15.
Van Der Linden said the ADB would also help Tajikistan to carry out a feasibility study on developing the country's energy sector and would advise on potential export markets for electricity produced by local hydro-power plants.
The bank will also study ways to complete construction of giant power station commenced in Soviet times. The $1.2 billion Rogun hydro-power plant is designed to have an installed nameplate capacity of 3,600 megawatts a year.
The ADB has granted Tajikistan loans worth some $100 million since the start of its work in the republic in 1998.
-------- environment
BLM urges 30-year extension for Alaska pipeline
Story by YERETH ROSEN,
REUTERS USA:
December 2, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18839/newsDate/2-Dec-2002/story.htm
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Three days after the state of Alaska formally extended a 30-year lease for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the Bureau of Land Management last week formally recommended that the federal government do the same.
The BLM released its final environmental impact statement on renewal of the right-of-way grant that allows the 800-mile pipeline to operate over federal lands. The pipeline crosses 372 miles of federal territory. The remainder of the corridor is state land or land owned by Alaska Native groups or other entities.
Critics of the BLM's recommendation said they were disappointed at what they considered to be a superficial review of the pipeline's age-related problems.
The existing state lease and federal right-of-way grant are scheduled to expire in 2004. The Bush administration has said it considers speedy renewal of those agreements to be an important part of its national energy strategy.
The agreements are with the six oil companies that own the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) and its operator, Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. Major owners are BP Plc (BP.L), ConocoPhillips (COP.N) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM.N). Unocal Corp. , Williams Companies Inc. (WMB.N) and Amerada Hess Corp. (AHC.N) own minor shares.
The pipeline carries about 1 million barrels of oil daily, or nearly a fifth of domestically produced oil. It has already shipped more than 13.5 billion barrels of oil, and the BLM estimates it will transport at least another 8.9 billion barrels, not including any possible production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The BLM and Department of Interior must wait at least 30 days after the release of the final environmental impact statement before formally extending the right-of-way grant, said BLM spokesman Rob McWhorter.
The environmental impact review was ordered in 1999 by President Clinton's BLM director, Sylvia Baca. Although the pipeline had been in operation since 1979, Baca believed a full environmental review was justified "because of the great import and significance of TAPS," said Rhea DoBosh, spokeswoman for the Joint Pipeline Office, the consortium of federal and state agencies that regulate pipeline operations.
Continued pipeline operations will have some negative impacts, the study conceded.
There is an ongoing risk of oil spills, the study said, both on land and in Prince William Sound, where oil tankers carry crude from the pipeline's Valdez marine terminal.
"Because of improvements to tankers, shipping safety and spill response capability in Prince William Sound developed after the Exxon Valdez incident," another spill of the same magnitude is "unlikely," the study said.
The Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled 11 million gallons in 1989, spreading oil over 1,200 miles of coastline, closing fisheries and killing thousands of marine mammals and hundreds of thousands of seabirds, according to government estimates. It was the worst tanker spill in U.S. waters and the world's deadliest oil spill to wildlife.
But in the future, the largest "likely spill" in marine waters - predicted to occur three times every 100 years, or once during the 30-year renewal period - is 1,700 barrels, the BLM's environmental impact statement said.
More pipeline operations will mean continued air and water pollution and vegetation disturbances, the study predicted, but those effects will be small.
Failing to renew the pipeline's right-of-way grant would mean dismantling the system and ending North Slope oil shipments, the study said. Alaska's oil-dependent economy would be devastated and would not recover to 2003 levels for all of the following 30 years, and national security would be compromised, it said.
Critics of the study said they wanted lease and right-of-way grant renewals to be contingent on new stipulations, such as establishment of a citizens' oversight panel, upgrades of spill prevention and establishment of an escrow account for land rehabilitation after the end of the pipeline's life.
"There was no dialogue. They did not listen. They did not discuss with us any of the comments that we expressed. They completely rejected them. It was a sham review," said Richard Fineberg, a Fairbanks-area economist and prominent critic of pipeline operations.
The process considered issues other than the most important concerns - problems stemming from the pipeline's owner companies' cost-cutting programs, Fineberg said.
"It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Exxon Valdez," he said.
DoBosh said the Joint Pipeline Office plans to improve citizen participation in pipeline oversight. But she said the government agencies do a good job.
"We take this very seriously, protecting the environment and making sure that pipeline is maintained and in shape to take us through the next 30 years," she said. "This is the lifeblood of the state here."
----
Greenland Ice Core Shows Lead Pollution
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Ice-Lead-Levels.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A new study suggests the ebb and flow of North American industry since the dawn of the Industrial Age can be tracked through lead traces found in a 450-foot ice core drilled in Greenland three years ago.
The core contains a high-resolution record of how much lead settled from the atmosphere onto Greenland between 1750 and 1998. The study says the source of the lead appears to have been factories in the United States and Canada.
Lead emissions began to spike in 1870 and had increased 300 percent just 20 years later, said Joseph McConnell, an associate research professor at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev.
The 1890 pollution levels were higher than previously thought, suggesting intense levels of both industrial activity and pollution, said McConnell, co-author of the study expected to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Lead levels plummeted during the Depression, then climbed during the industrial boom that followed World War II, according to the study. The period marked the beginning of the widespread use of lead as a gasoline additive.
In the early 1970s, when leaded gasoline began to be phased out and stricter pollution controls were clamped on smokestack emissions, lead levels in Greenland dropped. They fell more than 75 percent by 1985, from what had been peak levels a little more than a decade earlier.
North American lead emissions are near zero today, but lead levels in Greenland remain about three times greater than those seen in ice samples dating to 1870. McConnell said that suggests a source outside North America.
Lead has been detected in Greenland ice samples before. A 1994 study suggested Greenland ice cores contained 2,000-year-old traces of lead pollution attributable to smelting activity by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The new study offers a higher resolution look and includes about 25 samples for each year covered. Scientists were able to separate out certain spikes in lead levels attributable to volcanic eruptions in nearby Iceland.
On the Net:
National Science Foundation:
http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/start.htm
-------- genetics
Genetic research yields startling results
By Joe Grossman
December 2, 2002
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021202-12030206.htm
Following are summaries of some recently published reports of findings in genetics:
Jumping genes
A genetically modified plant that is toxic to some insects can insert modified genes into its relatives in the wild, researchers report. Laboratory experiments with the genetically modified canola plant show the Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt gene, inserted into the plant to poison insect pests, can jump to a related weed, Brassica rapa. Researchers at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro made 11 cross-breedings between the genetically modified canola and the Brassica rapa, using different combinations of plant lines. Five of them produced stable hybrids containing the Bt gene. The five also expressed the insecticide produced by the gene at levels similar to the genetically modified parent plant and were highly toxic to insects. The study, which appeared in the Saturday issue of New Scientist magazine, also showed that similar hybrids could form under natural conditions, outside the laboratory.
Cellular microcircuits
Smaller computer microcircuits may be fabricated using a gene from a single-celled organism, Sulfolobus shibatae, that lives in near-boiling acid mud, scientists report. The researchers took the sulfolobus gene and inserted it into the common bacteria Escherichia coli, which then produced "vast quantities" of a protein that could be formed into tiny geometric shapes. "What is novel in our work is that we designed this protein so that when it self-assembles into a two-dimensional lattice or template, it also is able to capture metal and semiconductor particles at specific locations on the template surface," said co-investigator Andrew McMillan at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The genetically engineered protein can be separated from the other E. coli protein because it is more heat-stable. Today's computers have conducting elements about 130 nanometers - millionths of a meter - apart. The new process may produce templates with elements 20 nanometers apart. "You have to think of it as just one of many steps in making a computer circuit," Meyya Meyyappan, director of the Center for Nanotechnology at Ames, said.
A hardier rice plant
Inserting two sugar-producing genes from E. coli bacteria into Indica rice creates a plant that can withstand drier, colder and saltier conditions, molecular biologists have found. Scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., first put the E. coli genes into a bacterium called agrobacterium and then mixed the bacterium with the rice plant's equivalent of stem cells, called calli. The researchers then were able to grow plants from cells in the mixture and determine which ones had picked up the gene for trehalose sugar successfully. The genetically modified plants can survive for longer periods of time without watering, in temperatures 9 degrees Fahrenheit cooler and in salt conditions twice as severe as the unmodified plants. The researchers plan to patent the finding and allow anyone to use the discovery without cost. Several years of field tests in China, India and the Philippines are planned before the plants will be made available commercially, said lead researcher Ray Wu. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published last week.
--------
Scientists Develop Biotech Rice Process
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Biotech-Rice.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists made a genetically engineered rice that is more tolerant to drought and salty soil and is highly productive.
Cornell University biologists in Ithaca, N.Y., announced the development Monday. A report on their work was published Nov. 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team of researchers fused two E. coli genes together and introduced them in the genetic makeup of rice to make trehalose -- a sugar that can help plants survive during drought. So-called resurrection plants that grow in the desert can produce the sugar.
``Drought-stressed resurrection plants look like they are dead and gone forever; then they pop back to life when moisture is available,'' Ajay K. Carg, a Cornell biologist, said in a statement. ``That's the power of trehalose in combating stress, and it gave us an idea to help important crop plants survive stress.''
The trehalose genes also can be activated when the genetically modified plants are exposed to low temperatures. The scientists said the technology could be used in corn, wheat and other crops.
The researchers said they are seeking a patent but want to keep the trehalose technology in the public domain to help poor countries instead of selling it exclusively to companies.
``Anything we can do to help crop plants cope with environmental stresses will also raise the quality and quantity of food for those who need it most,'' said Ray J. Wu, a molecular biologist and a laboratory director at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The university has been trying to develop stress-tolerant rice since 1996 with money from the Rockefeller Foundation.
On the Net:
Cornell University: http://www.cornell.edu
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/
-------- human rights
Ore. Gov. Apologizes for Sterilizations
December 2, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Forced-Sterilization.html
SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- Gov. John Kitzhaber formally apologized Monday for Oregon's past eugenics law that led to the forced sterilization of hundreds of people.
Girls in reform school, people in mental institutions and poor women selected by welfare workers were among the more than 2,500 Oregonians subjected to sterilizations under a law that stood from 1917 to 1983. Advertisement Alt Text
``To those who suffered, I say the people of Oregon are sorry,'' Kitzhaber said during a ceremony in the governor's office. ``Our hearts are heavy for the pain you endured.''
He is the second governor to atone for state eugenics laws after Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who also erected a memorial in May to the first woman sterilized under the policy.
Among the dozens of people who crowded into Kitzhaber's office for Monday's ceremony was Velma Haynes, 68, who was sterilized at age 15 while living at the Fairview Training Center, a state-run institution for the mentally ill and retarded.
Haynes called the state's acknowledgment of wrongdoing ``long overdue,'' but praised Kitzhaber's effort to make things right.
``I want to thank you for taking the time to apologize,'' Haynes told the governor. ``Your apology is appreciated and accepted.''
Not everyone was satisfied. Ken Newman, 61, who said he was given a vasectomy without his consent when he was a teen living at Fairview, said the governor's remarks don't erase what happened.
``I want more than an apology. I want to be compensated,'' Newman said. The law was based on the pseudoscientific movement that sought to prevent people considered ``unfit'' or ``defective'' from having children. After 1967, the Oregon law was chiefly used to sterilize those with mental illness or mental disability.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Effort Gains Momentum
Growing Peace Movement's Ranks Include Some Unlikely Allies
By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61647-2002Dec1?language=printer
AMHERST, Mass. -- The idea was hatched on a bright day in August, when Daphne Reed was celebrating her daughter's and granddaughter's birthdays, and the talk around the living room sofa turned to war.
Reed began worrying that her 25-year-old grandson, who spent four years in the Coast Guard, might be called to serve if the United States were to invade Iraq. Her family also wondered why the United States was threatening to invade Iraq even before United Nations weapons inspections began. And Reed fretted over the particular suffering that would befall Iraqi women; their sons and husbands would be killed, she said, and the women would be left in the rubble to fend off contaminated water and starvation.
"I said that all mothers should automatically be against war," Reed said. "It was against their nature to be violent instead of nurturing." Maybe, she said, it was time to start a movement -- Mothers Against War.
Reed's response is just a tiny part of a growing peace movement that has been gaining momentum and raises the possibility that there could be much more dissent if U.S. bombs begin falling on Baghdad.
The retired Hampshire College drama teacher e-mailed about 15 parents in her address book. Reed reached people such as Elaine Kenseth, whose five children include a son she adopted from the killing fields of Cambodia. Aileen O'Donnell, a veteran of the women's movement. Joanne and Roger Lind, whose son was a Vietnam War conscientious objector. And Elizabeth Verrill, who had never been involved in political causes. Before long, Mothers Against War had 50 core members, and thousands of supporters around the country and the world.
Most members of Mothers Against War are grandmothers in their seventies whose lives are already full. Yet they spend hours a day on the Internet, reading and spreading information on Iraq and the United States and planning for marches, e-mail campaigns and teach-ins. Having lived through the Vietnam antiwar movement, which took years to build, the Mothers Against War are buoyed to find themselves part of a fast-growing movement of people from every walk of life, from every political stripe.
The extraordinary array of groups questioning the Bush administration's rationale for an invasion of Iraq includes longtime radical groups such as the Workers World Party, but also groups not known for taking stands against the government. There is a labor movement against war, led by organizers of the largest unions in the country; a religious movement against the war, which includes leaders of virtually every mainstream denomination; a veterans movement against the war, led by those who fought Iraq in the Persian Gulf a decade ago; business leaders against the war, led by corporate leaders; an antiwar movement led by relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; and immigrant groups against the war.
There are also black and Latino organizations, hundreds of campus antiwar groups and scores of groups of ordinary citizens meeting in community centers and church basements from Baltimore to Seattle.
It has reached a point where United for Peace, a Web site started by the San Francisco-based human rights organization Global Exchange for groups to list events commemorating the Sept. 11 anniversary, has morphed into a national network coordinating events for more than 70 peace groups nationwide.
"We're taking the . . . Web site and rebuilding it as a one-stop shopping for the antiwar movement," said Andrea Buffa, who co-chairs the new network. "It's a campaign of all different kinds of groups, from the National Council of Churches to the International Socialists organization; I just got a call from the Raging Grannies of Palo Alto, who want to join. We're bringing groups together to develop a consensus statement and a calendar of coordinated antiwar events."
After large rallies in Washington and San Francisco on Oct. 26, the next big day to test the antiwar movement's might is Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day. Hundreds of groups plan events, rallies and civil disobedience to capture the nation's attention, including demonstrations in Lafayette Park across from the White House and at a military recruitment center in downtown Washington.
Otherwise, antiwar groups, which tend to rely on the Internet to receive and spread information, operate largely without the attention of the media or Capitol Hill. Yet many of those speaking out against an attack on Iraq represent large numbers of Americans, including John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO (with 13 million members); the National Council of Churches (which represents 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations, with 50 million members); and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (the leadership arm of 65 million Roman Catholics). Quietly Organizing
Among themselves, the groups are quietly organizing their ranks. A letter Sweeney sent to Congress in early October expressing deep reservations about the justifications for an invasion has begun to resonate among the rank and file, said Bob Muehlenkamp, a labor consultant and former organizing director for the Teamsters union. Several hundred thousand union members, he said, have signed up against the war, with more joining every week. He expects the numbers to balloon when leaders hold an organizational breakfast meeting for all unions in New York on Dec. 18.
"Union people are the most patriotic of Americans," Muehlenkamp said, "yet you can't find all-out aggressive support for a Bush war." Union members have the same concerns as others opposed to the proposed war, including a belief that the Bush administration has not weighed the economic consequences or made the case for an unprecedented attack, he said. But they have their own concerns as well. "For unions," he said, "it's their kids that are going to be doing the fighting. It's our sons and daughters who could die."
The National Council of Churches, which includes Lutherans, Episcopalians and President Bush's denomination, Methodists, is facilitating antiwar events for traditionally liberal institutions and conservative churches, said the Rev. Robert Edgar, its general secretary.
"Average, ordinary people," Edgar said, "who come from evangelical Christian conservative roots are organizing against the war." Edgar, who served in Congress as a Democrat from suburban Philadelphia from 1975 to 1987, recalled that he was a freshman Democrat during the last days of the Vietnam War. Even then, he said, he and other lawmakers had to fight to end U.S. involvement. He also remembered that it took the church -- meaning most mainstream religious institutions -- 12 years to start opposing that war. "Whereas, the threat of war now has even middle churches, not just liberal churches, involved in antiwar activities," he said.
During its annual meeting last month, the National Council of Churches issued a statement praising the National Conference of Catholic Bishops for reiterating its position against a U.S. invasion. "We thought it was important to acknowledge their important work," Edgar said.
Now, he said, the National Council of Churches -- fresh from its "What Would Jesus Drive?" television ad campaign to promote fuel efficiency -- is launching a "Seasons of Peacemaking" campaign, "moving beyond statements to actions. On December 8 through 15, there will be a series of actions across the country." The biggest day, he said, is Dec. 10, which is significant not only because it is Human Rights Day but also because it is the day that former president Jimmy Carter is to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. "Carter, as an evangelical Christian, represents a great number of people in the antiwar effort," Edgar said.
Indeed, on that day, religious groups across the country plan to stage mass acts of civil disobedience. Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, founder of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, plans to join church groups in New York and get arrested, he said, for the first time.
"I've never engaged in civil disobedience before," he said. "But if some country was going to do this to us -- have a little preemptive war with the U.S., bomb our people, kill or maim people because they thought that at some time we might bomb them, we'd say that's a war crime. I feel that getting arrested is the biggest statement that I could make to say that what the Bush administration is doing is wrong."
That day, as well as the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Jan. 18-19, is important for the smaller groups across the country as well. Damu Smith, founder of the Washington-based Black Voices for Peace, said his group plans to begin a poor people's peace movement similar to the one King was organizing before his murder in 1968. Black Voices is planning its own rallies and forums in Washington, as well as participating in planning national events as a member of the steering committee for United for Peace, he said.
"Before Doctor King died," Smith said, "he was speaking out forcefully against the United States involvement in Vietnam. He made the point that the money being spent on bombs was money that could never be spent on addressing poverty. We are taking up Doctor King's legacy."
While African Americans and other minorities have been underrepresented in some national campaigns, such as the environmental movement, Smith, executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, said that he has had no trouble recruiting against the proposed war. The group, which he began a few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, in response to a lack of African American voices in the policy debates and newscasts surrounding the attacks, has more than 3,000 members, he said.
Not all are African American. "We get calls from people who say, 'I'm white, but I want to join your group,' just as in the civil rights movement. It's such a shame that the media has not focused on what is happening because there are so many voices working together." Remembering Another War
Those who still remember the horrors of the Vietnam War, like the members of Mothers Against War, find themselves connected to this new antiwar movement on a personal as well as ideological level. The other day, as half a dozen core members sat in Daphne Reed's living room, they remembered friends who had fled to Canada to shield their sons from the military draft, friends who died in the war, and lives forever changed by the war.
Joanne and Roger Lind, 77 and 78, respectively, are retired professors of sociology and social work, whose son received his draft card as soon as he turned 18 in 1965. As Quakers, the Linds were actively working toward peaceful solutions to the crisis, including organizing teach-ins. Their son became a conscientious objector, and did community work, known then as alternative service. "But sons of our friends were not so lucky," Joanne Lind said. "They served two years in prison."
Elaine Kenseth, at 59 the youngest of the group, remembered that her friends started getting married in 1964 before finishing school so that their men could be exempt from the draft. "Others left for Canada. They lived there until President Carter created the amnesty for them."
She became active in helping refugees of the war resettle in Western Massachusetts, and adopted her Cambodian son, when he was 16. "When we say we're mothers against war," she said, "we're also saying we're mothers seeking peace. We are activists for spreading peace in the world."
Reed, recalling the four wars she has seen this country involved in during her lifetime, said she is often motivated by a single memory decades old.
She was visiting the nation's capital, she said, when she saw a man without a face.
"Yes," she said, "without a face. He had nothing but a plastic mask with two holes for eyes and one for mouth. It still swims before my inner vision, provoking an agony of grief that no one had been able to stop the war that took away that man's face."
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Help us send weapons inspectors into the US!!
For information: David Langille or Christy Ferguson info@rootingoutevil.org
From: Bette Hoover <BHoover@afsc.org>
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 16:12:42 -0500
Check out our new website:
Rooting Out Evil - Expanding the Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (http://www.rootingoutevil.org).
Help us out, and please link to our site. Thanks.
CANADIANS TO LEAD WEAPONS INSPECTION TEAM INTO USA
(Toronto) A coalition of Canadian peace groups [November 21, 2002] announced their intention to send an international team of volunteer weapons inspectors into the United States later this winter. The coalition, Rooting Out Evil, are recruiting inspectors through their newly launched website, www.rootingoutevil.org.
"Our action has been inspired by none other than George W. Bush," said Christy Ferguson, a spokesperson for the group. "The Bush administration has repeatedly declared that the most dangerous rogue nations are those
that:
1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.
"On the basis of President Bush's guidelines, it is clear that the current U.S. administration poses a great threat to global security," said Ferguson. "We're following Bush's lead and demanding that the U.S. grant our inspectors immediate and unfettered access to any site in the country including all presidential compounds so that we can identify the weapons of mass destruction in this rogue state," added David Langille.
Visitors to Rooting Out Evil's website are invited to sign on as honorary members of the weapons inspection team. Honorary inspectors can participate in the action, or they can simply lend the support of their name as they would on a petition. The actual inspection team that crosses the border will be comprised of prominent individuals from Canada and other countries.
The Rooting Out Evil coalition includes Greenpeace Canada, the Centre for Social Justice, and the Toronto Committee Against War and Sanctions on Iraq, and is supported by American groups such as the National Network to End the War Against Iraq, Global Exchange and the US section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. They oppose the development, storage, and use of weapons of mass destruction by any state.
..
IF we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other...
Mother Theresa
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Book World Raves: Nonfiction
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page BW07
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47044-2002Nov27?language=printer
...
Current Events
The Age of Sacred Terror. By Daniel Benjamin & Steven Simon (Random House). With telling detail and crisp prose, Benjamin and Simon's book may emerge as the best insider account of the pre-Sept. 11 fight against al Qaeda. Mark Strauss
Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo. By Matthew McAllester (New York Univ.). McAllester displays the natural gifts of the storyteller who, in the most uncanny ways, is able to develop characters, build tension and keep a plot churning. Robert D. Kaplan
A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage. By Dan Stober & Ian Hoffman (Simon & Schuster). A well-written cautionary tale that dissects what can happen when race, ambition and politics mix with espionage, criminal law and foreign policy. James Bamford
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. By Ahmed Rashid (Yale Univ.). Rashid again puts his formidable reportorial powers to work on another little-understood subject: the various "stans" of the former Soviet Union that remain uncomfortably suspended "between Marx and Mohammed." Peter L. Bergen
The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia. By David Hoffman (Public Affairs). Tracing the lives of six people who shaped the new Russia from the last years of communism through the rise of Putin, Hoffman brilliantly shows how seemingly halting and insignificant acts finally culminated in changes in a whole society. Timothy McDaniel
Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan. By Mary Anne Weaver (FSG). Weaver's beautifully written reportage goes a long way toward explaining how Pakistan has emerged as the epicenter of terrorism . . . a brilliant portrait of a troubled country, vivid and frightening. Nayan Chanda
The Paradox of American Democracy: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone. By Joseph S. Nye Jr. (Oxford Univ.). Nye never forgets that the trick to extending American influence into the far future is to cajole and seduce the world into wanting what America wants rather than to bully it into sullen submission. Martin Walker
Revenge: A Story of Hope. By Laura Blumenfeld (Simon & Schuster). The visceral desire for retaliation, for rough justice, that [the author] expressed . . . never subsided. It possessed her body and soul . . . . A work of ambition and humanity. Samuel G. Freedman
Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America. By David Wise (Random House). Wise offers his readers the excitement of spying on spies, and the pleasure of hooting at good guys who stumble because they are too smug. Robert Sherrill
Them: Adventures With Extremists. By Jon Ronson (Simon & Schuster). British journalist Jon Ronson has managed to write a hugely amusing book about the lunatic fringe . . . a tour d'horizon of the world of the conspiracy theorists. JY
Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. By John L. Esposito (Oxford Univ.). Esposito expertly traces [the] militant strain of Islam, but readers will quickly come to understand that it is only one strand of a multitude in the rich history of Muslim thought. PLB
War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle For a Promised Land. By Anton La Guardia (Thomas Dunne). A beautifully written new account [that] provides fresh insights that expand our understanding. Producing an entertaining book valuable to readers at all points of the knowledge spectrum is an impressive accomplishment. Thomas W. Lippman
Law and Crime
...
In America's Court: How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled Into a Criminal Trial. By Thomas Geoghegan (New Press). What most enlivens the book is a passion for justice that is found in precious few attorneys in America today. It ends with a self-indictment that shows how deeply Geogegan feels about what kind of lawyer he is and what he could have been. Jonathan Kirsch
Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future. By Jesse L. Jackson Sr., Jesse L. Jackson Jr. & Bruce Shapiro (New Press). The intellectual clarity of [this book] and the profound moral questions it raises deserve a wide audience and demand a political response. Jennifer Wynn
...
Memoirs
...
The Dressing Station: A Surgeon's Chronicle of War and Medicine. By Jonathan Kaplan (Grove). Packed with moments of searing intensity. . . . Kaplan conveys the same gripping urgency whether he is negotiating a deep, shrapnel-torn abdominal cavity . . . or improvising a slapdash razor to perform a skin graft. An extraordinary book. Julian B. Orenstein
Escape from China: The Long Journey From Tiananmen to Freedom. By Zhang Boli, trans. by Kwee Kian Low (Washington Square). Escape from China is a heart-stopping tale of pursuit and escape under authoritarianism. But it is far more than that, for it provides a fascinating glimpse of China's outcasts, vagrants, itinerant farmhands, fishermen, former prisoners and others scraping by on China's social margins. Judith Shapiro
...
Military History
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-43. By Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt). What a splendid book this is. . . . A project so ambitious would be easy to drown in, but Atkinson has a steady focus -- the emphasis throughout is on the human drama of men at war. Geoffrey Perret
The Englishman's Daughter: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in World War I. By Ben Macintyre (FSG). The story Ben Macintyre tells in this lovely, affecting book is at once simple in the extreme yet complex and elusive. JY
Pogue's War: Diaries of a Combat Historian. By Forrest Pogue (Univ. of Kentucky). Pogue's descriptions of life for the combat soldier are among the finest in military literature. John F. Wukovits
Tank: The Monstrous Progress of a War Machine. By Patrick Wright (Viking). Wright has assembled a prodigious saga of how a homely armored vehicle serves as a force-field for all sorts of revealing reveries of state domination, democratic resistance, scientific progress, even a kind of civic animism. CL
Vietnam, Now. By David Lamb (Public Affairs). The heart of Vietnam, Now, and the thing that makes it exceptional, is that it deals with the part of human nature concerned with healing. There are stories in this book that you will not forget. David Chanoff
The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228. By Dick Couch (Crown). An exceptionally nuanced and insightful book. A critical resource for readers who wish to understand the distinct culture of special warfare organizations. Chris Bray
...
Science
The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story. By Richard Preston (Random House). In a taut, riveting narrative that rivals that of his earlier book, The Hot Zone, Preston tells the story of last fall's anthrax letter attack and describes the potential threat, and the likely consequences, of smallpox being used as a biological weapon. Ed Regis
Future Evolution. By Peter Ward (Times). Offers a clear and gripping synthesis of recent thinking on mass extinction and global change. SO
The Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science. By John Tyler Bonner (Harvard). Smoothly integrates advances in biology during the 20th century with tales from a life that now stretches into its ninth decade. Sally Squires
Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth From Interplanetary Peril. By Timothy Ferris (Simon & Schuster). Entrancing and beautifully written, this latest work by Ferris, the writer laureate of astronomy, will be treasured by generations of stargazers to come. Marcia Bartusiak
Social Issues
Bachelor Girl. By Betsy Israel (Morrow). A lively and intriguing look at single women and the cultural attitudes toward them [in the 20th century], stylishly written and well-researched. Judith Warner
The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America. By Ellis Cose (Washington Square). Cose's lucid, eloquent and deeply personal book goes a long way toward enlightening us about the pitfalls and possibilities of black male life. Michael Eric Dyson
The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices. By Xinran (Pantheon). Xinran's prose is remarkably evocative, bursting with details that make each account haunting. These stories have all the force of good fiction. More remarkable, they combine vigorous universalism with a bone-deep cultural authority. Etelka Lehoczky
Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision. By Peter Irons (Viking). Provides an engaging, panoramic history of school desegregation, including the exhilarating breakthroughs and the heartbreaking setbacks. Richard D. Kahlenberg
The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony. By Pamela Paul (Villard). A well-written and intelligent book that proves, among other things, that beneath their veneer of Organization Kid obnoxiousness, the divorced young of today are incorrigible romantics. JW
The Zygote Chronicles. By Suzanne Finnamore (Grove). The book's emotional climax -- the baby's birth -- hits home with the full force of raw, unrehearsed emotion. You read along skippingly until -- blam! -- you are crying like a lactating new mother watching AT&T commercials. JW
...
U.S. History
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. By H.W. Brands (Doubleday). Brands is primarily (and refreshingly) a narrative historian who creates his rich fabric by interweaving individual stories -- those of miners, merchants, bandits, politicians -- with historical sweep. Peter Schrag
At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. By Philip Dray (Ramdom House). Asks us not only to feel the shame of our country's lynching past but also to take pride in those Americans who struggled, against great odds, to make things right. We owe them, and their able chronicler, a great deal. Gart Gerstle
Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller. By Gregg Herken (Henry Holt). [Herken] succeeds in telling the vivid behind-the-scenes tale of these scientists' brilliant teamwork during World War II, and of the bristling jealousies, political intrigues and shifting loyalties that would ultimately bring them into bitter conflict. Jennet Conant
The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century. By Charles Kupchan (Knopf). A powerful and erudite book [that] sparkles with insights. MW
Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life. By Jean Bethke Elshtain (Basic). Aims to refurbish our regard for Addams, not only as an activist but as an intellectual. Quoting her at great length throughout, Elshtain leaves no doubt of Addams's narrative gifts or moral wisdom. Robert Westbrook
Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. By William Lee Miller (Knopf). For a quarter-century William Lee Miller has been writing brilliantly about the American political idea in crisis. Now he has added the crowning piece. Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
"A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. By Samantha Power (Basic). Power tells this long, sorry history with great clarity and vividness. She is particularly good at bringing alive various people who were eyewitnesses to these catastrophes as they were happening and who tried to make Americans share their outrage. Adam Hochschild
Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy. By James S. Hirsch (Houghton Mifflin). Offers a compelling account of the clash between history and memory, as the author revisits the contending white and black versions of the massacre. Thomas J. Sugrue
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. By Max Boot (Basic). Boot bravely calls for a new imperialism (and even more bravely, or rashly, quotes Kipling about taking up the "white man's burden"); he advocates an American policy explicitly designed to contain the unruliness. H.W. Brands
World History
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. By Jenny Uglow (FSG). Magnificent group-history [that] chronicles a last great upsurge of the all-embracing Renaissance spirit, when a few amateurs and tinkerers ushered in, ironically enough, the gloomy age of Machinery and Specialization. MD
A Secret History of the IRA. By Ed Moloney (Norton). Moloney's unsentimental, albeit pro-Republican, portrayal of one of the world's oldest continuously operating insurrectionist forces deserves landmark status in the field. Fred Barbash
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. By Michael B. Oren (Oxford Univ.). Oren's description of the acutely tense and nervous atmosphere before and during the war reflects ironically on the supposed national unity of the time. This is not only the best book so far written on the Six Day War, it is likely to remain the best. Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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Redford Says Patriotism Means Weaning US from Oil
Reuters
Monday, December 2, 2002; 2:38 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64222-2002Dec2?language=printer
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Robert Redford, in an op-ed opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times, accused the Bush administration on Monday of "lack of leadership" for failing to wean the United States from dependence on fossil fuels.
The actor, a longtime solar power advocate, warned that the nation's wasteful use of gas and oil created political problems abroad and air pollution at home.
"Prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels would guarantee homeland insecurity," the actor wrote. "If you are worried about getting oil from an unstable Persian Gulf, consider the alternatives: Indonesia, Nigeria, Uzbekistan."
He touted San Francisco's $100-million bond initiative, passed last year by voters to pay for solar panels, wind power and energy efficiency for public buildings as the template for a pollution-free United States.
"American rooftops can be the Persian Gulf of solar energy," Redford wrote. "...wind and solar power generate less than 2 percent of U.S. power. We can do better."
The 65-year-old actor also demanded that the U.S. auto industry use existing technology to increase fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon.
"Phasing in that standard by 2012 would save 15 times more oil than Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is likely to produce over 50 years," Redford said.
Innovation in energy policy, he concluded, "would keep energy dollars in the American economy, reduce air pollution and create jobs at home."
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Venezuelan Opposition Extends Anti - Chavez Strike
December 2, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-venezuela.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition on Monday extended into a second day a nationwide strike against leftist President Hugo Chavez in their latest challenge to pressure him to hold early elections in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.
But the government dismissed the economic shutdown as a failure with the nation's major industries -- the vital oil sector and state steel, aluminum and mining operations -- mostly unaffected by the walkout. Advertisement Click Here
The general strike threatens to inflame tensions between supporters of Chavez, a former paratrooper elected in 1998, and his opponents, who demand he agree to a referendum in February and early elections. His current term ends in 2007.
``The people... are continuing with this national civic strike,'' Carlos Ortega, an anti-Chavez union boss, told reporters. Ortega said the opposition would evaluate again on Tuesday whether to further prolong the shutdown.
In a show of support for the strike which resounded in many parts of the capital Caracas, anti-government protesters blew whistles, sounded car horns and beat pots and pans.
Government officials and opposition leaders gave sharply conflicting accounts of Monday's stoppage -- the fourth strike against the populist president in a year. The opposition has threatened to keep up the protest to press Chavez to quit.
In Caracas, streets were free of the usual heavy traffic in the opposition's eastern stronghold, where many businesses closed their doors. But the center and west of city were bustling with street sellers and open restaurants, though many businesses kept their metal shutters down.
``Most Venezuelans didn't stop working today. What is the motive, one must ask, to prolong a fictional strike, a strike that has failed,'' Vice President Jose Vincente Rangel told a news conference.
Chavez has repeatedly dismissed opposition calls to step down or accept the referendum. He has brushed off critics of his left-wing reforms who blame him for driving Venezuela toward recession and social upheaval.
OIL JITTERS, INTERNATIONAL CONCERN
Protests and often violent street clashes between the president's supporters and opponents have plunged the Andean nation into turmoil since April when rebel military officers briefly ousted Chavez in a chaotic coup.
The latest strike and recent demonstrations at the state-oil firm, PDVSA, have raised fears of a repeat of protests by oil executives earlier this year which disrupted crude oil exports and led to the April 11-14 coup.
The government said oil production and exports were operating at 100 percent, although it acknowledged that some PDVSA office staff in Caracas had stayed away from work. The opposition said absenteeism in the oil sector was high. Shipping sources reported some local tankers faced loading delays because they lacked orders from managers.
Threats of fresh violence have also stirred international concern and threatened peace talks brokered by the Organization of American States to seek an electoral solution to the nation's crisis. The State Department on Monday urged calm and a return to dialogue.
``We certainly hope that everybody acts with restraint in terms of the strike and the reaction to it. We look to the government to create the opportunity for a dialogue,'' said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
The peace talks were not held Monday because the government said it would not participate while the strike lasted.
Chavez, who himself led a botched coup six years before his election, urged Venezuelans to ignore the strike. He says his self-styled revolution has brought hope to the poor, long abandoned by the political and economic elites.
The government countered Monday's shutdown by organizing a huge street market in central Caracas, selling cheap food and services. Thousands of residents flocked around the stalls.
In the east of the city, angry protesters beating pots and pans forced owners of some businesses to shut up shop. Many small business owners fretted that the strike would hurt sales in the busy Christmas period as they struggle with recession.
``You don't get rid of a president with capricious acts or by force,'' said Rodrigo Diaz, 62, whose kiosk was doing a brisk trade in cigarettes in the wealthy Chacao district.
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Jailed Activist Strikes for Vegan Food
December 2, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2002/2002-12-02-09.asp#anchor7
MISSOULA, Montana, A man imprisoned for protesting the slaughter of wild buffalo near Yellowstone National Park is now in the 36th day of a prison hunger strike.
Randall Mark, a 22 year old activist also known as Locust, was sentenced to spend 60 days in jail for his role in an April protest over the killing of bison that stray out of the park onto an area known as Horse Butte. Although Mark's arrest for not carrying identification was later dismissed, he was then charged with obstructing an officer because he went limp when a U.S. Forest Service official tried to remove him from the road blockade.
Mark has been refusing food in the Missoula Detention Facility since he was incarcerated on October 28. For years, Mark has followed a vegan diet, which excludes all foods derived from animal sources. While the jail serves fruit, vegetables and grains to prisoners who also eat meat, its only vegan option, called "Nutriloaf," is not accompanied by these additions.
Nutriloaf, a baked mixture of beans, vegetables and flour, is considered a punishment food at the facility, according to his supporters at the Buffalo Field Campaign. Mark is turning down the Nutriloaf and requesting a diverse vegan diet.
Mark was jailed for protesting state and federal policies aimed at protecting domestic cattle from the disease brucellosis, which can cause spontaneous abortions in animals such as cattle, buffalo and elk. In an effort to keep all cattle in Montana free of brucellosis, the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) attempts to keep the entire herd of wild buffalo within the confines of the national park.
DOL staffers haze the animals back into the park when they stray outside in search of good grazing. Animals that will not reenter the park are often killed, whether they carry the disease at all.
Critics of the policy note that there are no confirmed cases of brucellosis being transmitted from bison to cattle, and that the only possible route of transmission is through pregnant or aborting females - yet male bison are often killed when they stray from the park. In additional, wildlife and livestock managers do not take action to control the movements of elk, though Yellowstone's elk herd is known to be infected with brucellosis.
Mark has been protesting over federal and state bison policies and other environmental issues for years. In September 2000, he was arrested for throwing a pie filled with rotting salmon at former Idaho Representative Helen Chenoweth-Hage, to protest the Republican's support for timber and dam policies that Mark said have harmed endangered salmon.
And in January 2000, Mark was sentenced to spend 60 days in jail for blocking a Forest Service road in Idaho.
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The Highest Patriotism Lies in Weaning U.S. From Fossil Fuels
by Robert Redford
Monday, December 2, 2002
Los Angeles Times
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1202-03.htm http://www.latimes.com/
The Bush White House talks tough on military matters in the Middle East while remaining virtually silent about the long-term problem posed by U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. Failing to rein in our dependence on imported oil gives leverage to undemocratic and unstable regimes.
Wasteful consumption of fossil fuels creates political liabilities overseas, air pollution at home and global warming. The rate at which the United States burns fossil fuels has made our country a leading contributor to global warming.
The Bush administration's energy policy to date -- a military garrison in the Middle East and drilling for more oil in the Arctic and other fragile habitats -- is costly, dangerous and self-defeating.
Despite the absence of leadership on energy security in Washington, some local efforts are paying off. Last year, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a $100-million bond initiative to pay for solar panels, wind power and energy efficiency for public buildings. The measure was supported not only by the environmental community but also by the Chamber of Commerce, labor unions and the American Lung Assn.
San Francisco's first solar project, a $5.2-million energy- efficiency upgrade at the Moscone Convention Center, was dedicated last month. What's the straight economic benefit of this particular project? Plenty. The upgrades and the panels combined will cut energy consumption in the building by as much as 38%, and the project will pay for itself from energy savings. The net savings to taxpayers after debt service is subtracted are projected to be more than $200,000 a year.
American rooftops can be the Persian Gulf of solar energy. After Australia, no developed nation on Earth gets more annual sunlight than the United States. In addition, wind is now the fastest-growing energy source worldwide and one of the cheapest. But wind and solar power generate less than 2% of U.S. power. We can do better.
We can increase auto fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon. The technology to achieve that goal exists now. Phasing in that standard by 2012 would save 15 times more oil than Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is likely to produce over 50 years. We could also give tax rebates for existing hybrid gas-electric vehicles that get as much as 60 mpg and invest in mass transit.
These measures would keep energy dollars in the American economy, reduce air pollution and create jobs at home.
The benefits of switching to a mostly pollution-free economy would be considerable, and the costs of failing to do so would be steep. Prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels would guarantee homeland insecurity. If you are worried about getting oil from an unstable Persian Gulf, consider the alternatives: Indonesia, Nigeria, Uzbekistan.
If we want energy security, then we have to reduce our appetite for fossil fuels. There's no other way. Other issues may crowd the headlines, but this is our fundamental challenge.
Big challenges require bold action and leadership. To get the United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy national climate of terrorism and conflict in the Persian Gulf, we must treat the issue with the urgency and persistence it deserves. The measure of our success will be the condition in which we leave the world for the next generation.
Weaning our nation from fossil fuels should be understood as the most patriotic policy to which we can commit ourselves.
Robert Redford, the actor and director, began his involvement with solar power issues in the mid-1970s and is a supporter of the San Francisco-based Vote Solar organization and its agenda.
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ACLU drawing new supporters from the right
By Ron Kampeas,
Associated Press
12/02/2002
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=190&xlc=883000
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union has long sided with those claiming they were wronged, even if it meant a distinctly minority stand.
But since 9-11 and the government's expansive campaign of monitoring and detention to combat terrorism, people are turning to the 82-year-old organization to help safeguard their liberties. Among them are some conservatives who made the phrase "card-carrying member of the ACLU" a political insult, but who now are signing up.
"Larger numbers of American people have realized that the ACLU is fundamentally a patriotic organization." executive director Anthony Romero said. It now includes 330,000 dues-paying members, 50,000 of whom joined after the attacks.
The group has been in the thick of challenges to the government's broadening powers.
Last week, in response to an ACLU lawsuit, the government agreed to tell the group by mid-January which documents it's willing to release about its increased surveillance activities.
Especially notable among the new enthusiasts are conservatives such as Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill.
Hyde has worked with the ACLU to protect free speech on campuses and limit the right of authorities to seize assets.
"I'm glad the ACLU raises the objections it does, because it forces the government and Congress to be mindful of First Amendment rights," he said.
Conservatives such as Hyde are mindful of the history of an organization that was lonely in its defense of positions now widely accepted: blacks who suffered spurious prosecutions in the 1930s; Japanese interned in the 1940s; books banned as obscene now regarded as part of the literary canon.
Yet the group continues to exasperate many with its uncompromising positions - against prayer at high school football games; against a Ten Commandments monument in a Frederick, Md., park; against the government's attempt to get libraries to use computer filters to block sexually explicit material from children; against drug sweeps it claims are racially motivated.
"Some of their positions are extreme, such as objecting to metal detectors in high schools" where there has been a high incidence of violence, Hyde said.
For the first time, the ACLU is spending part of its $50 million annual budget on a national television commercial. An actor portraying John Ashcroft crosses the phrase "We the People" from the Constitution as a narrator says the attorney general has "seized powers for the Bush administration no president has ever had."
"This focus on civil liberties post-9-11 has been a wonderful opportunity to reach out to constituencies who would never have thought of the ACLU as their home," said Nadine Strossen, the ACLU's president.
The organization has budgeted $3.5 million for a campaign that asks Americans to monitor their government monitors and report abuses. It's a mirror image to the government's plan to empower some Americans to check on their neighbors, under a program known as the Terrorism Information and Prevention System.
Conservatives who bridle at government intrusions into privacy, including House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Flower Mound, and Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., have said they'll consider being consultants for the group when they leave Congress next month.
Probably the ACLU's most unpopular stand came in 1978, when it defended the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb.
ACLU membership dropped 15 percent after that. Its insistence on removing Christmas and Hanukkah decorations from publicly owned property didn't help, either.
Strossen says nothing has fundamentally changed; defending Nazis' right to march then is the same as defending the right to roam the Internet now.
"One person's stigma is another's badge of honor," she said. "Putting your money where your mouth is means defending those whose views are counter to yours."
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