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NUCLEAR
U.S. Is Pressuring Inspectors in Iraq to Aid Defections
Inspectors angered by US claims over Iraqi weapons
Iraq to Hand Over Weapons Report on Sat.
Iraq Arms Report Will Require Analysis
U.N. Delays Release of Iraqi Weapons Declaration
Allies Give N.Korea More Time to Decide on Uranium
Environmentalists say Russia's nuclear security is lax
Three Whistleblowers Win Favorable Court Decisions
U.S. Tells Iraq It Must Reveal Weapons Sites
MILITARY
Tribunal probes U.S. aid to Croatia
USAF Jet Program Faces $700M Overrun
Iran Leader Won't OK Any U.S. War on Iraq
THE WORLD - Battles in Northern Iraq Kill Dozens
Israeli Forces Kill 10 Palestinians in Gaza
Sri Lanka, rebels urged to outlaw landmines
Aid From NATO Allies Asked for Iraqi War
U.S. Probes Military's Use of Commercial Satellites
US General Arrives in Gulf for War Game Near Iraq
Vessel Strikes Navy Ship in Persian Gulf
Venezuela's Navy Is Sent to Reclaim Striking Oil Tanker
Selling The Iraq War To The U.S.
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
New Hiding Place for Drug Profits: Insurance Policies
With runners and whispers, al-Qa'ida outfoxes US forces
Al Qaeda Web Site Calls Israel New Target
Communications Industry Plans Security
ENERGY AND OTHER
Green Mountain, lung group team up for wind power
Spain's Fenosa now seeks renewable partner as well
U.N. Envoy Says Torture 'Systemic' in Uzbekistan
ACTIVISTS
Doctor remains thorn in North Korea's side
Antiwar Protestors Aren't Fanatics
Man Sentenced for 'Burning Bush' Comment
Five dead in anti-Chavez demo in Caracas
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- inspections
U.S. Is Pressuring Inspectors in Iraq to Aid Defections
December 6, 2002
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/international/middleeast/06INSP.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - The Bush administration has stepped up pressure on Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspection team to identify key Iraqi weapons scientists and spirit them out of Iraq so they can be offered asylum in exchange for disclosing where Saddam Hussein is hiding weapons of mass destruction, according to administration and United Nations officials.
High-level negotiations on the issue became visible when Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, met with Mr. Blix in New York on Monday and pressed the issue of interviewing Iraqi scientists. The administration is offering to set up a witness protection program for defecting Iraqi scientists, thus enabling a more aggressive approach.
A United States official at the United Nations said that the talks on how to handle Iraqi scientists were continuing and that the initial message to Mr. Blix, a chief arms inspector, was that Washington wanted him to "make it a priority" to use the full powers conveyed by the Security Council resolution passed on Nov. 8.
The resolution demands that Iraq provide "unimpeded" and "unrestricted" access "to all officials and other persons" that inspectors decide they want to interview "inside or outside Iraq."
The purpose of this inspection tool, perhaps the most aggressive tactic in a decade of Iraq inspections, is to achieve a breakthrough in gathering fresh evidence about Iraq's weapons program at a time when Baghdad is under mounting criticism from senior American officials for previously concealing its weapons programs and lying about them.
Private tips and defectors have contributed to most of the American intelligence gathered on Iraq's secret nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, United States officials said.
It is not clear what intelligence the administration is using as a basis for its deductions or how much of this information has been shared with the United Nations.
The push by Washington for defectors has further pressurized the atmosphere surrounding the first week of inspections as Iraq prepares to make what the Security Council has said must be a full disclosure of its secret arms programs.
A senior administration official tonight said that "the United States is concerned with the safety, welfare and nonintimidation of people who may wish to cooperate" with inspectors. "We take this issue seriously," the official continued, "and we hope the international community would also attach the same importance to the issue."
The reliance on the United States to take over from the United Nations the handling of Iraqi defectors is a very delicate issue, senior administration officials said.
The United Nations is keen to protect its mission from activities that might compromise it, and the handling, debriefing and resettlement of defectors is traditionally a function of intelligence agencies.
Senior Iraqi officials have begun to assail the inspection mission as a tool of American intelligence and war preparation. On Wednesday, Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, referring to the inspectors, said that "their work is to spy to serve the C.I.A. and Mossad," the Israeli intelligence agency.
According to the arrangements under discussion in Washington and New York, United Nations inspectors could identify Iraqi scientists who are believed to have crucial knowledge of weapons programs. They would be flown out of the country, perhaps with their families.
American officials would then debrief the Iraqis, feed any useful information back to the United Nations teams and then help resettle the Iraqi scientists in a country willing to take them. Those who wanted to return to Iraq could, but American and United Nations officials said the risks of return would be high for any Iraqi taken outside the country.
American official say Iraqi intelligence agencies routinely kill any Iraqi suspected of cooperating with foreign countries.
An intense argument is under way, however, on almost all of the details of a protection program. Some American officials want the United Nations team to be aggressive in identifying scientists and demanding that they leave the country, perhaps without the scientists' permission. Mr. Blix is said to be arguing that the United Nations cannot, in effect, abduct people against their will. His view is being backed by most of the United Nations hierarchy and the State Department in Washington, officials said.
But there were strong contrary views in the Pentagon and White House, officials said.
"I don't see how they can do their mission," Richard Perle said of the inspectors, "if they cannot interview" scientists and other officials associated with secret programs. Mr. Perle is chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory body to the Pentagon. He said the Security Council provision demanding access to Iraqi weapons scientists and their families "was the only innovation in the entire resolution, and if they don't use it, they will fail."
Similar strong views have been expressed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"If you go back and look at the history of inspections in Iraq," Mr. Rumsfeld said on Tuesday, "the reality is that things have been found - not by discovery, but through defectors."
United Nations officials, uneasy with soliciting or demanding defections, have been searching for a means to conduct private interviews with Iraqi scientists inside the country. American officials have asserted that this is out of the question since the inspection teams are under intense surveillance by Iraqi intelligence. The officials said they were aware of a large number of scientists who have knowledge of Iraqi weapons programs. Some would like to see Mr. Blix submit a list of names to the Iraqi government and demand to interview those individuals.
Still, Mr. Blix is said to be resisting any idea that the United Nations can force Iraqi scientists to take the life-threatening step of leaving Iraq for interrogation.
"That's where the problem is," said an administration official sympathetic to the concerns Mr. Blix and other United Nations officials have expressed. "Taking someone against their will is contrary to the whole United Nations concept. You'd fracture the U.N. consensus."
The Security Council resolution authorizes the inspectors "to facilitate the travel of those interviewed" and their family members outside of Iraq. This provision was intended to protect the inspectors from retribution, but even this protection has raised questions.
"Let's say for argument's sake that you are a senior government official," a United Nations expert said. "It is one thing for you to say that it is part of your job to agree to go out of the country to be interviewed, but why would you pull your wife out of her job and the kids out of school? If you wanted to assure Saddam that you had no plans to defect, you would leave them there to reassure him."
Advocates of an aggressive approach argue that the inspectors could order scientists to report with their families, giving them no choice so Mr. Hussein could not blame them. Once out of the country, the scientists could make their own choices. But United Nations officials ask how many family members count in a country built on clans where extended families can run to the dozens or hundreds?
"We are conscious that this is potentially a key issue," a United Nations official said. "But many of us think that defections are best done by a welcoming government. There is no U.N. mechanism for this. The U.N. has no capacity to grant asylum. Any government, and the United States in particular, has all of that capacity."
Mr. Bush's national security advisers were scheduled to meet today to further discuss the questions of how to handle Iraqi scientists.
----
Inspectors angered by US claims over Iraqi weapons
From Roland Watson in Washington
December 06, 2002
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-504631,00.html
RELATIONS between Washington and the UN were under severe strain yesterday as the leading weapons inspector in Iraq hit back at US criticism of his team's work.
Demetrius Perricos, the Greek head of the team searching Iraq for chemical and biological weapons, strongly rejected American attempts to dictate the pace and style of inspections. Frustrated White House officials had marked the end of the first week of the new inspection regime, which has uncovered next to nothing, by calling for more intrusive inspections.
But Mr Perricos retorted: "The people who sent us here are the international community, the United Nations. We're not serving the US. We're not serving the UK. We're not serving any individual nation."
Breaching protocol, which dictates that UN officials should remain non-political, he also challenged the Bush Administration to share its intelligence if it wanted the inspectors to uncover banned weapons. Referring to the intelligence on Iraq amassed by the US, he said: "What we're getting and what President Bush may be getting is very different, to put it mildly."
After a cordial start to the week-old inspection regime, Iraqi officials have begun to resort to the hardline rhetoric that characterised the doomed inspection regime of the 1990s.
Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, denying that Iraq had any banned weapons, said the authorities had distributed "hundreds of thousands, if not millions" of guns to Iraqi families to fend off a US-led war. The inspector's response highlighted the tension on all sides, with the threat of war hanging over the inspectors' every move. Mr Bush and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, have also been at odds. Mr Bush said Iraq's initial reaction to the inspections was "not encouraging" while Mr Annan painted a more optimistic picture.
The White House eased its stance on the inspectors after the criticism yesterday but raised the stakes ahead of this weekend's critical deadline for Saddam Hussein to show his hand. Despite increasingly heated denials from Baghdad, President Bush has a "solid basis" for asserting that Iraq was pursuing covert weapons programmes, Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush's spokesman, said.
Referring to similar charges levelled by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Fleischer said: "The President and the Secretary of Defence would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true."
The carefully chosen comments were designed to heighten the pressure on Iraq to come clean ahead of this weekend's deadline and declare its arsenal, while reserving maximum room for manoeuvre for the US.
But Washington continued to keep everyone - and, most crucially, President Saddam - guessing about how it would react to Baghdad's dossier if it failed to mention the chemical, biological or nuclear programmes cited in classified US intelligence.
One reason for the White House's inscrutability is that it does not want to tip off Iraq about what it knows and what it does not. But another is the deep divisions in the Bush Administration about how to react. According to the UN resolution, failing to declare all its weapons programmes would amount to a "material breach". Hardliners in the Administration, led by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, and Mr Rumsfeld, are pushing for the US to denounce Iraq immediately as being in breach and start the clock ticking for war.
But Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, favours keeping the emphasis on disarmament, feeding the inspectors US intelligence and giving them time to uncover themselves the weapons that Saddam has failed to declare. It is the best way to keep alive US hopes of a substantial anti-Saddam coalition, Mr Powell argues.
Even administration hawks stopped well short of suggesting that a false declaration by Iraq would immediately trigger war. In Brussels yesterday the US tried to bolster its coalition, offering Nato countries an opportunity to be involved. Mindful of the diplomatic hurt caused when the US failed to take up Nato's offer of support in Afghanistan, Paul Wolfowitz, Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, said Nato countries could deploy Awac surveillance aircraft, minesweepers and Patriot missiles to defend south-eastern Turkey, provide overflight rights and refuelling options, and contribute to a post-Saddam peace-keeping force.
In Washington, Mr Rumsfeld was poised to announce the call-up of 10,000 more reservists on top of the 50,000 still mobilised since the September 11 attacks.
----
Iraq to Hand Over Weapons Report on Sat.
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
12-06-02
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/wsbtv/news/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V3626.AP-UN-Iraq.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP)--On the eve of Iraq's declaration of its weapons programs, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix said Friday that U.N. experts will keep secret all sensitive material on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the massive report--even from the United States and other Security Council members.
Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri said Friday his government will hand over the declaration to inspectors in Baghdad at 8 p.m. local time on Saturday. He reiterated Iraq's claim that the country is now free of weapons of mass destruction, but said the declaration would contain ``new elements.''
The U.N. Security Council empowered the two main U.N. inspection bodies to take charge of the Iraqi declaration and eliminate sensitive weapons-related material before it is made public.
Blix told a news conference that he understood the Iraqi report would be in Arabic and English and contain more than 10,000 pages, which would require translation before an initial assessment could be made on which material is sensitive.
He said he would brief the council early next week on the contents of the report. The sheer length of the report would mean that it will take time to release the details.
``All the governments are aware that they should not have access to anything that everyone else does not have access to,'' Blix said after discussing the handling of the declaration with the 15 council members at a closed-door meeting.
Council diplomats said Russia and other council members were concerned that the declaration might contain ``recipes'' for chemical and biological weapons, and other information that could lead to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Al-Douri said the declaration contains ``a huge amount of information,'' some of which would not be made public.
Both the Iraqi envoy and the chief inspector addressed charges by the United States that Saddam Hussein's government is hiding weapons of mass destruction.
``We said again and again that we have no more destruction weapons at all, everything has been destroyed and we have no intention to do that again,'' the Iraqi envoy said. ``If the Americans have this evidence, they have to tell the inspectors in Iraq to go find this evidence.''
Blix denied that he was under any pressure from the United States, but stressed that Resolution 1441 adopted Nov. 8 to toughen U.N. inspections asks all 191 U.N. member states to provide information to help inspectors search for banned weapons.
``We want to have recommendations from member governments what we should do,'' Blix said.
The chief inspector was asked about reports that the United States was pressing for the inspectors to question Iraqi scientists outside the country.
``We are not going to abduct anybody, and we're not serving as a defection agency,'' Blix said.
Under Resolution 1441, Iraq has until Sunday to submit a full and complete disclosure of its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
Blix updated the council Friday on the work of his inspection teams so far in Iraq. Inspectors returned to Iraq last month after nearly four years. ``They have done a good professional job,'' he said.
----
Iraq Arms Report Will Require Analysis
December 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq-Declaration.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iraq's declaration listing any nuclear, chemical, biological or missile programs will take several weeks to analyze because experts must check it against information in a million-page database, U.N. officials said.
And the analysis can't begin until the document is translated -- which could take days or weeks, depending on how long it is.
Iraq has said it will hand over the declaration to U.N. officials in Baghdad on Saturday. Copies will then be flown to Vienna, where the nuclear inspection agency is headquartered, and to New York where chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and his chemical, biological and missile experts are based, on Sunday.
At U.N. headquarters, the Security Council was expected to discuss the logistics of receiving the declaration -- and distributing it to the 15 council members -- during a closed-door meeting with Blix on Friday.
The declaration's size, format, and content remains a mystery, though the Iraqi government has repeatedly stated that it does not possess weapons of mass destruction -- as the United States and Britain claim.
Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for Blix, said a lot will depend on the length of the declaration and what percentage is in Arabic. Previous Iraqi declarations were in English, accompanied by Arabic documents. But there's no certainty that will be the case this time.
Reports from Baghdad said the document would be 13,000 pages, which could require a massive translation operation. But there was speculation elsewhere it would be shorter.
``The length of time it will take us to analyze the declaration will depend on how long it is and how much information is new,'' Buchanan said. ``Clearly we will analyze it against our existing knowledge. We have a database over one million pages comprising Iraq's earlier declarations, inspection reports, information from supplier governments, and intelligence information.''
On Thursday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer touched on the matter of a lengthy Iraqi reply.
``We'll assess what it says. Depending on how big it is, it'll determine the amount of time it takes for us to study it,'' Fleischer said.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has its own database and will do a separate analysis of Iraq's nuclear program.
Security Council members said they don't expect to have any immediate reaction.
``We will see what inspectors report to us when they receive the Iraqi declaration,'' said Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov. ``They're professionals. They were hired to do this. So we will expect them to work for their money. It's up to them to decide how much time they need when they see the declaration.''
Syria's deputy U.N. ambassador Fayssal Mekdad said when council members receive the declaration, they will send it to their respective capitals to be studied.
U.N. experts will also study it ``and then concrete discussion may start at the council analyzing the information,'' he said.
``Then we give the inspectors time to investigate the correctness or incorrectness of the information,'' Mekdad said.
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said he expects the professional analysis to take ``some weeks.''
``This is all going to take longer than you think,'' Greenstock said.
--------
U.N. Delays Release of Iraqi Weapons Declaration
December 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
UNITED NATI0NS/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United Nations will delay release for as much as a week Iraq's crucial weapons declaration until U.N. arms inspectors and nuclear experts have had a chance to screen the mammoth document.
U.N. Security Council members decided on Friday to postpone the release of the document, estimated to be at least 10,000 pages, which Iraq said would be presented to the United Nations in Baghdad on Saturday.
That is one day before a deadline set in a tough Security Council resolution last month for Iraq to come clean on its weapons programs or face possible military action by a U.S.-led coalition.
The declaration -- in which Iraq must give a full accounting of any past and current programs involving biological, chemical or nuclear weapons -- will be flown from Baghdad to Vienna, seat of the International Atomic Energy Agency and to New York.
There it will be handed for screening to the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, which is headed by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.
``Now this will take a little bit of time,'' said Blix, who gave no date for the release of the declaration.
Both UNMOVIC and the IAEA, headed by Mohamed ElBaradei, will scan the material to see which parts should be held from public view and then reproduce it for transmission to council members.
If Baghdad is found to be in ``material breach'' of the U.N. resolution, it could set the stage for a military attack on Iraq by the United States and its allies.
Diplomats said it could take a week before the 15 Security Council members including the United States are able to get a copy. Others said it might take 10 days to analyze.
``While all of us were thinking we might be reacting to the declaration on Monday, it going to take a bit longer than that,'' said a Western diplomat, whose country is a council member.
'DUAL-USE TECHNOLOGY'
Despite the United States' assertions to the contrary, Iraq has denied that it still has any weapons of mass destruction programs, and has stated that its arms declaration will describe only ``dual use technology,'' which has both peaceful and military applications.
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohamed Aldouri, said he had been told ``there are new elements in the report'' but he did not know what there were. ``It is a very huge, a very thick report.''
He repeated Baghdad's claim that Iraq no longer had any banned weapons. ``Everything has been destroyed. Iraq is clean of any kind of mass destruction weapons. We provided all information they need,'' Aldouri said.
U.S. officials said on Friday the Bush administration was pressing Blix to spirit key Iraqi scientists out of Iraq to offer them asylum in exchange for telling what they know.
U.S. officials are hoping Blix's team can use part of the U.N. resolution that requires Iraq to give unimpeded access to individuals to gain access to the scientists.
``We of course are very concerned with the safety, welfare and non-intimidation of those people who wish to cooperate with UNMOVIC,'' said White House National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.
U.N. weapons inspectors, who have said Iraq has cooperated during their visits so far to 20 suspect sites, took a break on Thursday and on Friday for Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim festival marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
U.N. sources in Iraq said another 30 arms experts would arrive in Baghdad on Sunday to beef up the inspection teams from the initial 17 who conducted the first probes.
Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, has said the declaration would ``contain new elements'' on activities since inspectors left in 1998. He said the declaration ``covers biological, chemical and missile and nuclear activities, but not prohibited activities.''
An Iraqi Information Ministry official said journalists would be invited to the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate on Saturday morning, but it was not clear why.
-------- korea
Allies Give N.Korea More Time to Decide on Uranium
December 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-kedo.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20041-2002Dec6?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The multinational organization in charge of energy projects in North Korea has postponed a high-level meeting for several weeks, delaying a joint decision on how to counter North Korea's nuclear weapons program, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, known as KEDO, had planned to meet in New York next Wednesday to consult on next steps toward North Korea, which admitted in October it was working on a highly enriched uranium project assumed to be for nuclear weapons.
KEDO, grouping the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea, was set up under a 1994 agreement which promised North Korea fuel oil and nuclear power stations in return for a freeze on a plutonium-based nuclear arms program.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: ``Due to end-of-the-year scheduling conflicts, board members decided to postpone their meeting until early next year. They'll continue to stay in touch with each other and consult with each other on the next steps.''
The last executive board meeting in November suspended future deliveries of fuel oil to North Korea.
Diplomatic sources said the meeting next week would have discussed the future of two light-water reactors now under construction in North Korea for the power project, at a time when the U.S. and Japanese governments are less and less willing to finance the projects.
The postponement of the meeting gives the secretive North Korean government a chance to meet international demands that it abandon the uranium project, which violates the 1994 Agreed Framework and the Nonproliferation Treaty, one source said.
WASHINGTON INDIFFERENT
But a Bush administration official said Washington saw no indication that North Korea would take such a step. The United States was indifferent to the timing of the meeting because the governments, not KEDO, would decide the future of the light-water reactors, the official added.
``They don't want to meet because if there is a discussion of the light-water reactor construction project all indications are they would call the project off. It's increasingly clear that Congress is not going to appropriate any money and highly unlikely that the Japanese Diet will either,'' he said.
KEDO had left open the possibility of resuming the fuel oil shipments in December, depending on North Korea's response, but North Korea has done nothing to justify that, he added.
The official's comments suggested some irritation in Washington with the constraints imposed by working within KEDO, which operates by consensus.
The diplomatic source, on the other hand, noted that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is expected to make a visit this month to China, which has backed the international campaign to persuade the North Koreans to abandon the uranium project.
``The delay gives some time for the DPRK (North Korea) to make an announcement on dismantling the HEU (highly enriched uranium) project. The visit to China could be a good opportunity for something along those lines,'' the source said.
``The idea that it gives North Korea more time is not an interpretation that the United States would make, because there are no signs they will do it,'' the U.S. official retorted.
The postponement also allows more time for consultations between KEDO members, who have shown signs of disagreeing on how tough a stand they should take against the North Koreans.
-------- russia
Environmentalists say Russia's nuclear security is lax
Friday, December 06, 2002
By Vladimir Isachenkov,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/12/12062002/ap_49130.asp
MOSCOW - Russian environmentalists urged the government Thursday to focus on strengthening security at the nation's nuclear dumpsites and coping with the environmental damage inflicted by Soviet-era nuclear programs instead of importing radioactive waste from abroad.
"Sept. 11 hasn't taught them anything," Anatoly Mamayev, an environmental campaigner from Zheleznogorsk, a major nuclear center since the Soviet times, said of Russia's nuclear officials.
Unlike similar facilities in other nations that are located underground, Russian nuclear waste depots are built above ground, making them more vulnerable to terrorists, Mamayev said at a news conference. New nuclear dumpsites planned by the government are also to be located above ground to minimize construction costs, he said.
The government insists that all of the country's nuclear facilities are duly secured.
But Mamayev said that until recently the Zheleznogorsk waste depot, which holds about 3,200 metric tons (3,520 tons) of nuclear waste, was protected only by a shaky barbed wire fence. After Russian lawmaker Sergei Mitrokhin and a Greenpeace activist penetrated the facility earlier this year in an attempt to attract attention to its vulnerability, workers started building a more solid, concrete fence, he said.
Mitrokhin, a member of the liberal Yabloko party, said nuclear officials had failed to deal with the security and environmental aspects of Russia's burdensome nuclear legacy.
"They are launching new, potentially disastrous projects instead of solving the problems left from the time of the Cold War," Mitrokhin said.
In one example, the government has been reluctant to evacuate a village badly affected by radioactive fallout from a 1957 waste tank explosion at the Mayak nuclear weapons plant in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-65, Mitrokhin said. Officials still refuse to resettle the village's residents, even though the Soviet government ordered the move in 1959, calling it a "deliberate murder," he said.
Mitrokhin said the plan to import nuclear waste would turn Russia into "the world's nuclear dumping ground."
A controversial law allowing the government to import spent nuclear fuel from abroad for reprocessing and storage was passed last year despite opinion polls showing most Russians opposed the idea. Russia already had imported spent nuclear fuel from Soviet-built nuclear power plants in Bulgaria and Ukraine.
Mitrokhin said the main obstacle to larger radioactive waste imports into Russia was the United States. The United States controls whether spent fuel from reactors in most other countries can be transferred to Russia for storage because it provided the original fuel to them.
The U.S. administration has said it would welcome nuclear waste shipments from around the world worth more than US$10 billion to Russia if it abandons its nuclear ties with Iran. Russia has been building a nuclear power plant in Iran and has considered plans to build more nuclear reactors there, shrugging off U.S. concern that such cooperation could help Iran build a nuclear bomb.
Mitrokhin said Russia's cooperation with Iran is now the only obstacle to massive radioactive waste imports that would make Russia a "nuclear colony of the United States."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Three Whistleblowers Win Favorable Court Decisions
Panel, Judge Find Evidence of Retaliation
Associated Press
Friday, December 6, 2002; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16451-2002Dec5?language=printer
Three whistleblowers -- one an employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory and two former civilian Air Force employees at Sheppard Air Force Base -- have won favorable rulings in their complaints of retaliation.
A Labor Department panel found that the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico retaliated against auditor Joe Gutierrez. It ordered the lab to raise his salary retroactively and pay $49,000 in legal fees.
Gutierrez filed a complaint against the lab in 1997, a year after he went public with documents showing that the lab lied about emissions of airborne radioactive materials in the mid-1990s, in violation of the Clean Air Act.
Gutierrez said he had learned of the violations while working on an internal assessment, but said his bosses would not acknowledge or act on the information. Gutierrez went public, he said, in the interests of public health.
The evidence later helped convince a federal judge that the Los Alamos lab had violated air-emission regulations.
The lab had appealed two previous decisions in Gutierrez's favor.
Jim Danneskiold, a spokesman for the lab, declined yesterday to discuss the latest ruling, issued Nov. 13, or any further appeal, "because the case has not run its entire course yet."
Gutierrez, who works on technology-transfer issues at Los Alamos, said, "Hopefully, the lab won't appeal this so we can get this behind us, and we can all move forward."
In Texas, a judge has ordered the reinstatement of two civilian Air Force employees of the Defense Security Service at Sheppard who were fired in 1999 after reporting that a servicewoman's affairs with Saudis and fellow military personnel posed a security risk.
Robert Smyth and Richard Krape, who were responsible for background checks on Air Force personnel, reported that a noncommissioned officer was granted a top security clearance after having an affair with a supervisor and that she had affairs with other military personnel and with Saudi Arabian men.
An administrative judge ruled Oct. 31 that Smyth and Krape were wrongfully fired and ordered the government to reinstate them with back pay.
A base spokeswoman did not immediately return calls yesterday, the deadline for the government to appeal.
The employees' attorney, Bill Walsh, said they would receive about $250,000 each. He said he did not know whether the men planned to return to their jobs.
-------- us politics
U.S. Tells Iraq It Must Reveal Weapons Sites
December 6, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/international/middleeast/06IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Less than 72 hours before Saddam Hussein is required to declare any weapons of mass destruction he holds, the Bush administration set stiff demands today, saying at the White House and the Pentagon that Iraq must physically take inspectors to the weapons and make available all the people who developed and worked on them.
Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi president, appeared on Iraqi television today to urge "patience" in dealing with the United Nations inspectors, and said his objective was to allow the inspectors to do their work so that he could "keep our people out of harm's way." But he gave no indication that he planned to lead the inspectors to suspect sites or hidden caches of weapons, as the White House demands.
At the White House, President Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, dismissed Iraq's claims that it possesses no nuclear weapons, citing the testimony of past weapons inspectors and intelligence experts. But he offered no new evidence to back up the administration's declarations that the Iraqi government had simply moved its weapons of mass destruction out of sight.
"The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it," he said.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking at the Pentagon, said Iraq's leaders faced three choices. "They could decide that the game's up, and Saddam Hussein and his family could leave the country - which would be a nice outcome," he said, planting anew an idea for a way out of war: exiling the Iraqi leader.
Alternatively, he said, Mr. Hussein could "open up his country and say: `Here are our weapons of mass destruction. Here's where they're located. Here are the people who made them.' " Or, he said, "He could follow the pattern of previous years" and "continue to lie and deceive and deny."
Officials in the White House left no doubt they thought Mr. Hussein would reach for the third option.
The coordinated statements from Washington came as administration officials worried that Mr. Hussein might get the upper hand in a public relations war if he dropped a blizzard of papers on the United Nations this weekend, filled with descriptions of "dual use" plants that could be used to make ordinary chemicals or pharmaceuticals - or weapons.
But the big question the White House now confronts is how to respond to the Iraqi information, and whether to counter it with declassified American intelligence information to prove that Mr. Hussein omitted the most damaging evidence of his weapons programs.
Mr. Fleischer said today that the task facing the United Nations inspectors was a virtually hopeless one without the active aid of the Iraqi government or defectors with knowledge of the weapons programs. In Iraq, a country the size of France, a hundred inspectors could not be expected to succeed by themselves, he said.
Administration officials stopped just short of endorsing Vice President Dick Cheney's statement in August - which he has never repeated since - that "a return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever" of Iraqi compliance, and could create "false comfort" that Mr. Hussein was somehow "back in his box." But the clear implication of today's comments was that many members of Mr. Bush's national security team retain that view.
In preparation for the deluge from Iraq, officials at the White House, are already planning for how to deal with the information Mr. Hussein delivers, hoping to farm it out quickly to the national laboratories, the Central Intelligence Agency and other government experts for examination. They have made clear that Washington will not respond to the disclosures until they have fully analyzed them.
As for whether the United States will reveal any intelligence information on Iraqi weapons, one intelligence official said, "There's an institutional resistance to making our most secret stuff available, even to some of the governments that might demand it." Other experts say the administration's troubles are deepened by the fact that there is no single piece of clear evidence that would back up the claims Mr. Fleischer and Mr. Rumsfeld made today.
Mr. Fleischer did not point to any particular piece of evidence in making his assertions today, and it is not clear what intelligence the administration is using as a basis for its deductions. It is also unclear how much of this information has been shared with the United Nations.
"I don't think they are going to be able to replicate Adlai Stevenson's feat during the Cuban missile crisis," said Kenneth M. Pollack, an Iraq expert at the C.I.A. and the White House during the Clinton administration. He was referring to the photographs Mr. Stevenson produced proving that the Soviet Union was moving missiles into Cuba.
"It's unlikely we have satellite photos of Scud missiles in Baghdad," Mr. Pollack said. But he suggested that other data, including some provided by Iraqi defectors, could bolster the administration's case.
Briefing reporters today, Mr. Fleischer contended that secret talks under way with 15 nations that the United States had identified as potential partners in any coalition against Iraq had resulted in "good responses."
But he declined to name any of the countries, even though some of the most critical, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have been the subject of intense lobbying by Mr. Bush and a team of officials he has dispatched around the world.
Some of those allies have asked for more intelligence, officials say, so that they can justify aiding the United States. The weapons inspectors, too, have put some pressure on Washington.
Hans Blix, one of the chief inspectors, said this week that after Iraq's declaration was delivered, "it will be the moment for those who say they have evidence to put this evidence on the table." One of his deputies, Demetrius Perricos, said the United States should hand over more information to the inspectors, saying he did not believe he was "being served the intelligence that national authorities have."
The intelligence that has been made public so far about Iraq's activities since inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 is sketchy. The C.I.A. has said Iraq bought specialty aluminum tubes that could be the cylinders for centrifuges, the key equipment in the enrichment of uranium. But other experts inside the American government have described other uses for the tubes.
Similarly, the agency has declassified satellite photographs of a site previously used to manufacture arms. The pictures show reconstruction work on the buildings, but not what is happening inside. So far, it is unclear if inspectors, during their first week of surveys, have found anything in these buildings.
U.S. Issues Terror Warning
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (Reuters) - The government warned citizens today of a "possible terrorist threat" in Turkey, which is likely to be an American ally in any war with Iraq, citing unconfirmed information suggesting Americans might be targeted and urging caution at a civilian airport used by American troops.
"The U.S. government has received unconfirmed and fragmentary information that suggests unknown terrorists may be planning to conduct a terrorist incident in southeast Turkey against official U.S. government facilities or personnel," the State Department said.
"American citizens should be particularly cautious if they travel into or out of the Gaziantep airport," it added.
The airport in Gaziantep, 315 miles southeast of Ankara, is sometimes used by American troops.
-------- MILITARY
-------- balkans
Tribunal probes U.S. aid to Croatia
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021206-53201640.htm
The Balkans war-crimes tribunal is investigating the United States for its assistance to military operations conducted by Croatia against rebel Serbian forces, The Washington Times has learned.
Adm. Davor Domazet, chief of Croatia's military intelligence during the country's four-year war against secessionist Serbian guerrillas, was recently questioned in Zagreb by two investigators from the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and a representative of the prosecutor's office at The Hague.
The investigators asked about the U.S. role in aiding Croatian forces in the 1993 Medak Pocket operation and the 1995 lightning offensive known as Operation Storm.
"The real purpose of the questioning is to investigate the role of U.S. intelligence officials in the Medak and Storm operations," said an official present at the meetings, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It is clear the prosecutor's office is doing this to investigate the role of the Americans."
The official said the tribunal investigators questioned Adm. Domazet to discover sensitive and highly classified information that could be used against U.S. intelligence personnel.
"[Adm. Domazet] only served in an intelligence function. He never issued orders to the military. Hence, there would be no justification for the prosecutor's office at the Hague tribunal to issue an indictment of war crimes against him based on command responsibility," the official said.
The official added: "The investigation is clearly a pretext and smoke screen to get a senior Croatian intelligence official to give the Hague investigators critical information about the U.S. role in Croatia's military operations, especially Operation Storm."
The International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was created in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council and charged with prosecuting war crimes during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. So far, only people from the region have been charged with war crimes.
The official said the investigators asked numerous questions about Croatia's use of unmanned drones during Operation Storm, which were especially effective in enabling Croatian military forces to locate positions of rebel Serbs on the ground. The Hague investigators also asked about Zagreb's Signal Intelligence system, high-powered satellite dishes used for electronic surveillance that the Croatians received from the U.S. National Security Agency.
When asked about the questions posed to Adm. Domazet by tribunal investigators, Hague spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said in a written statement that the prosecutor's office is not in a position "to comment on ongoing investigations."
But she added that accusations of "our alleged investigation into U.S. participation in some events in former Yugoslavia" are "baseless" and "misleading."
However, the official said the investigators sought to ascertain whether Adm. Domazet had shared intelligence information gathered during the Medak Pocket operation with other foreign intelligence agencies.
"They insisted on asking who else besides his military superiors received critical intelligence information," the official said. Rather than implicate U.S. intelligence officials, the admiral refused to provide specific answers to investigators' questions and terminated the interview.
The official said the investigators also sought to uncover the extent of U.S. involvement in Operation Storm.
"They know Croatia had good relations with U.S. intelligence agencies," the official said. "Had Admiral Domazet allowed them to continue it would have led to direct questions about the U.S. role in [Operation] Storm."
In an article published last year, Newsweek magazine reported that, during and after Operation Storm, the CIA operated unmanned drones from a military base near Zadar on the Adriatic coast. The article also said that the United States provided encryption gear to each of Croatia's regular army brigades and that Washington shared extensive electronic surveillance data with Zagreb.
The Times reported earlier this year that the prosecutor's office at The Hague was examining whether to investigate Clinton administration officials for their role in secretly supporting Operation Storm.
The three-day operation began Aug. 4, 1995, enabling Croatia to recover most of the territories occupied by rebel Serbs after Zagreb's successful bid for independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Before their defeat, rebel Serbs - backed by Serbia and the Yugoslav national army - had carved out nearly one-third of Croatia, expelling more than 170,000 Croats and killing nearly 15,000 people.
The United States provided assistance to Operation Storm to defeat Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to forge an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia." The operation resulted in the killing of more than 500 civilians and the exodus of between 150,000 and 200,000 ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia.
The Hague's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has issued indictments against several leading Croatian generals, accusing them of overseeing atrocities committed against Serbian civilians during Operation Storm, as well as for the 1993 military offensive in the Medak Pocket near Gospic in southwestern Croatia.
Besides the tribunal investigators and a representative of the prosecutor's office, those present at the secret meetings that took place from Nov. 19 to Nov. 21 were Adm. Domazet's lawyer and a representative of the Croatian government.
Adm. Domazet, 54, was the head of military intelligence of the Croatian armed forces from 1991 to 1997. His task was to gather all intelligence information and prepare an analysis for the conduct of military operations against the country's Serbian paramilitaries.
Adm. Domazet has been named as a person "under suspicion" by the Hague tribunal. Yet the investigators have so far refused to specify the war crimes or human rights abuses for which the admiral is being investigated.
-------- business
USAF Jet Program Faces $700M Overrun
December 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Fighter-Jet-Costs.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force's F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet program is facing cost overruns of $700 million and possibly as high as $1 billion, the Air Force announced Friday.
The money woes probably will force the Pentagon to cut back on the number of Raptors it buys, though just how many is unclear, said Marvin Sambur, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition. The Air Force wants to buy 339 Raptors, but Pentagon estimates say the Air Force may only be able to afford 295 of them.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has ordered the Air Force to consider buying as few as 180 of the planes.
About six Raptors could be trimmed from those planned for construction in the next three years, Sambur said. Prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. is making Raptors at a low rate for testing.
The current defense budget includes $5.2 billion for the Raptor program. The first combat-ready F/A-22s are supposed to hit the Air Force flight line in 2005.
The stealthy, supersonic fighter has been plagued with cost overruns and other problems almost since it was first proposed two decades ago. The latest overruns -- blamed on balky cockpit software and problems with the high-tech plane's tail fins -- have put the entire $37.6 billion program in jeopardy.
``This program is on the bubble. We have to make sure everything goes right,'' Sambur said.
That's why the Air Force decided not to ask for extra money to cover the cost overruns, Sambur said. The decision puts more pressure on the Air Force and Lockheed Martin to keep costs down, he said.
The Air Force wants to avoid taking money from the part of the Raptor program that enhances the plane's abilities to attack ground targets, Sambur said. Originally envisioned as an air combat fighter to replace the aging F-15, the Air Force has worked to emphasize and expand the Raptor's ground attack abilities.
A fighter jet wouldn't fit in well with Rumsfeld's plans to transform the military, but a plane that could both fight off other jets and strike ground targets would.
One of the biggest problems with the Raptor has been getting the software for its sophisticated cockpit controls to work properly. The Air Force's goal is for that software to require restarting only once every ten hours, on average.
Now, the software requires restarting every three or four hours, Sambur said. That doesn't mean the plane would fall from the sky, however. Usually, only one computer module, such as the one that controls electronic jamming and countermeasures, freezes up at a time.
-------- iran
Iran Leader Won't OK Any U.S. War on Iraq
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
Dec 6, 2002 10:46 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_US?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's supreme leader on Friday made his strongest stand yet against a U.S. attack on Iraq, saying he would not support it under any circumstances.
In a speech broadcast on national radio, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the United States of seeking to dominate the oil and other resources of the Islamic world.
The Iranian government has said it would back U.N.-sanctioned military action against Iraq if U.N. inspectors prove that the country has been developing weapons of mass destruction.
Khamenei did not mention an attack endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, but he spoke in terms that appeared to cover any possible American action on Iraq.
"A U.S. attack against any country, including Iraq, under any pretext, is harmful to the interests of the Islamic world," Khamenei said. "The main objectives of the world arrogance (the United States) is to dominate the resources and riches of the Islamic world."
"The Islamic world needs unity and harmony more than ever before because the enemy of the Islamic nation is baring its teeth and claws against us," Khamenei added.
His speech marked the three-day Islamic feast of Eid el-Fitr, which began in Iran on Friday - a day after other Middle Eastern states.
The Iranian leader, who has the final word on all state matters, also blasted Washington for its support of Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians.
"The world arrogance wants to eliminate the Palestinian nation ... and guarantee the survival of Israel as a cancerous tumor in the region," he said.
Iran does not recognize the Jewish state.
Iran and the United States have not had diplomatic ties since militant Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Relations between Iran and the United States thawed after the moderate President Mohammad Khatami took office in 1997, but they deteriorated again after President Bush said early this year that Iran was part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea.
-------- iraq
THE WORLD - Battles in Northern Iraq Kill Dozens
Rival groups fight over two strategic positions in the Kurdish-controlled region of the country.
Associated Press
December 6, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-kurd6dec06,0,5156027.story
SIRWAN, Iraq -- Villagers marked a Muslim holiday Thursday by burying their dead after dozens were killed in battles for two hilltop positions seized by an Islamic militant group with suspected ties to Al Qaeda.
In an overnight assault, fighters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan recaptured the hilltops taken by Ansar al-Islam guerrillas a day earlier, Kurdish commander Sheik Jaffer Mustafa said. One Kurdish fighter was killed and two others were wounded in the counterattack, he said.
Kurdish groups say that some Ansar al-Islam militants were trained by Al Qaeda and have ties to the terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden.
The battle was the latest in a series of skirmishes between Ansar, whose fighters include Kurds and Arabs, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, which has sought to drive the extremist militia from its mountain stronghold on the eastern edge of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq.
Ansar seized the PUK positions near the city of Halabja as the Kurdish fighters slept Wednesday night, killing nearly 20 and capturing an equal number, Mustafa said.
The PUK, the de facto authority in northeastern Iraq, shares control of the Kurdish autonomous zone with its rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The zone is beyond the authority of the Baghdad government and is protected by U.S. and British air patrols.
In a village Thursday, funeral processions for PUK fighters mingled with the festivities of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim feast that marks the end of Ramadan.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Forces Kill 10 Palestinians in Gaza
December 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
BUREIJ, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships swept into the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Friday, sparking a gunbattle and killing 10 people, Palestinian witnesses and medics said.
The army said the troops met fierce resistance in the three-hour pre-dawn incursion, which it said was intended to root out militants responsible for attacks on troops in Gaza in a more than two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence.
Armed men fought the Israeli troops in street battles but Palestinian residents said at least seven of the nine men and one woman killed were civilians. They said two of those killed were policemen involved in the fighting.
One of the dead was a janitor at a U.N.-run school and another was a U.N.-employed teacher, officials said.
Palestinian residents said at least three of the dead were killed by a missile fired from a helicopter gunship. The Israeli army said the missile hit a group of gunmen.
The high death toll and the timing of the assault, during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, enraged Palestinians and tens of thousands attended an unusually large funeral for the 10 victims.
Mourners, some of them masked, chanted ``revenge, revenge'' as the bodies were carried through the camp's narrow streets on men's shoulders.
The incursion and the bloodshed were sure to fuel more violence despite the United States' calls for calm as it prepares for possible war on Iraq.
FIERCE BATTLE
``It is a new massacre. What happened is a continuation of the massacres against the Palestinian people,'' Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
``This is Israeli terrorism against our children, our women and our holy shrines from Rafah (in southern Gaza) to Jenin (in the West Bank). Isn't what they are doing daily terrorism?''
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network had established a presence in Palestinian-ruled areas of the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon.
The attack did not appear to be connected with the charge, denied by Palestinian and Lebanese officials.
The army said that most of the dead were gunmen killed during a fierce battle with Israeli forces who came under attack by Palestinian anti-tank grenade and automatic gunfire.
Brigadier Yisrael Ziv, the Israeli commander for Gaza, said troops entered the camp to arrest three militants behind attacks on Israeli troops and to destroy their leader's house.
Helicopter gunships fired three missiles on Wednesday at a building in central Gaza City, killing Mustafa Saba, who was considered the ``engineer'' of bombs which blew up three Israeli tanks this year and killed seven crewmen.
Palestinian witnesses said soldiers, along with 25 tanks and several helicopters, thrust into Bureij under cover of darkness, raking the area with fire as they entered the camp.
Palestinian gunmen returned fire and a helicopter fired a missile into a street, killing at least three people and splattering a nearby wall with blood, witnesses said. ``It was as if the doors of hell were opened in our camp by the helicopters and the tanks,'' said 20-year-old resident Mohammed Al-Maqadama. ``They have made this a bloody Eid.''
``LOT OF RESISTANCE''
Asked why the troops had launched the raid on a Muslim holiday, army spokeswoman Sharon Feingold said: ``We go after them (militants) whenever we have intelligence.''
``They don't respect our holidays. They attacked on Passover. There were more attacks during Ramadan,'' she said, referring to suicide bombings by Palestinian militants this year during Passover, which marks the Jews' biblical exodus from Egypt.
Ziv said resistance had been fierce and the army believed it had hit ``armed terrorists.''
``We fired one shell from a helicopter at four armed men,'' he said. ``We came upon a lot of resistance and the forces fired at armed gunmen. We identified 12-14 at whom we fired. At times the battle was fought at very close range, 10 yards. They used Kalashnikov rifles and grenades and anti-tank shells.''
One tank shell narrowly missed a Palestinian home, sending shrapnel flying and wounding five people, medics said. A second home, belonging to a Palestinian militant, was blown up by Israeli troops, witnesses said.
A doctor at the local hospital said the 10 Palestinians killed included two pairs of brothers, and three men from one family. All the dead were in their 20s and 30s.
Doctors said 12 Palestinians were wounded in the violence. The army said one soldier was slightly wounded.
At least 1,704 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the uprising began in September 2000 after a deadlock in negotiations for a final peace treaty.
-------- landmines
Sri Lanka, rebels urged to outlaw landmines
Story by Alister Doyle
REUTERS NORWAY:
December 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18915/story.htm
OSLO - Sri Lankan anti-landmine campaigners handed a petition with 1.1 million signatures to government and rebel peace negotiators in Oslo this week, urging them to outlaw mines.
The Sri Lankan government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) held another session of Norwegian-brokered talks on how to end Asia's longest-running war, but they did not announce any new developments this week.
The campaigners want the two sides to honour the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines as part of a drive to end the separatist conflict in which 64,000 people have died.
"Citizens are asking the government and the rebels to stop the landmines," Buddhist anti-landmine campaigner Madampagama Assaji told government negotiator G.L. Peiris and rebel negotiator Anton Balasingham in an Oslo hotel.
Flanked by Catholic and Protestant leaders, he handed over a petition in boxes signed by 1.1 million people topped by a picture of a mine victim on crutches. Sri Lanka's population is almost 20 million.
The negotiators, however, made no promises to outlaw anti-personnel landmines that have killed or maimed thousands during the 19-year war and are now preventing many people from returning home after Norway brokered a truce in February.
The two sides began talks this week on the key political issue of how the rebels can win autonomy for minority Tamils in the north and east and live alongside the Sinhalese majority.
TWO MILLION MINES
Talks on Monday and two previous negotiating rounds in Thailand had focused on non-core issues such as the return of one million people displaced by the fighting and schemes to clear landmines.
An estimated two million landmines are scattered in Sri Lanka but neither side trusts the other enough to agree to the Ottawa treaty.
Peiris said the government would consider signing the treaty, which now has 130 states parties.
"Clearly the issue of demining is of fundamental importance, especially with regard to the resettlement of internally displaced people," he said.
"Work has already been undertaken by the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE and it remains to formalise some of these arrangements, either by accession to the Ottawa treaty or by some other suitable method," he said, without giving details.
Balasingham said that the rebels had already cleared about 100,000 landmines with Norwegian and British help in the north and east of the Asian island state.
"Demining has become a serious problem for the Tamil people," he said. "All our fertile lands have been turned into minefields."
He said the rebels had asked their reclusive leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, to "consider favourably" an agreement to be bound by the Ottawa treaty. "We need some time to consider this issue," he said.
Prabhakaran boosted hopes for peace last week by saying Tamil aspirations could be met by self-rule and regional autonomy. The Tigers have always demanded a separate state in the island's north and east.
The government and rebels will examine how Canada guarantees the rights of French speakers among an English-speaking majority and look at other models for integrating minorities, including from Australia, Germany, Switzerland and India.
-------- nato
Aid From NATO Allies Asked for Iraqi War
Troops, Noncombat Support Sought
By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 6, 2002; Page A35
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15907-2002Dec5?language=printer
The Bush administration is asking its NATO allies to consider a broad range of contributions to a possible war against Iraq, from providing combat troops to performing noncombat activities designed to relieve the burden on U.S. reserves, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.
The administration believes that as many as eight NATO members could end up providing ground forces if Iraq refuses to disarm under U.N. Resolution 1441 and President Bush decides to take military action. With more than 50,000 U.S. reservists activated and another 8,000 to 9,000 to be called up soon, the administration wants NATO to shoulder some of the burden.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz outlined steps NATO could take when he met Wednesday in Brussels with all 19 NATO ambassadors. Among the options he suggested were the contribution of control aircraft to help patrol the Persian Gulf, missile batteries to safeguard Turkey and NATO forces to help guard U.S. military bases in Germany and Italy.
Wolfowitz's request represented a significant departure for the Bush administration, which did not seek NATO's help last year in the war in Afghanistan.
"I think it's a big departure for the United States, and a positive one," one senior NATO official said. "This time, they're going much earlier to the alliance and saying, 'We don't want this to be a U.S.-only operation, and we want NATO as an institution to be involved.' "
The official said that Britain, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey expressed "strong and unequivocal support for the U.S. policy that if diplomacy fails, force is going to be necessary." The official added that "a number of these countries would want to participate in military operations."
The official also said that discussions have begun within the alliance about deploying NATO forces to provide security at combat and air bases throughout the Persian Gulf. This would free U.S. forces for combat and relieve pressure on U.S. reservists, thousands of whom would otherwise be activated to help guard those bases.
Security and other "force protection" efforts are being given extra consideration in planning for any U.S. attack out of fear that Iraq, al Qaeda or sympathizers with the terrorist network may respond by attacking U.S. military installations in the gulf, Europe or the United States.
One senior U.S. official described the use of NATO forces to guard bases as a means of "freeing up our people to do what they need to do where they need to do it."
As an opening step in that direction, the Pentagon is considering asking some countries to provide security at U.S. bases on their soil if U.S. security forces are moved to the Persian Gulf, officials said.
The country being considered first for that form of assistance is Germany, whose leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, has pledged to keep German forces out of any war with Iraq. U.S. officials, looking for a way to obtain Germany's help, may ask Schroeder to allow German troops to provide additional security at U.S. bases in the country.
A spokesman at the German Embassy in Washington said his government would look favorably on such a request. "If those bases [in Germany] will be vacated and there's less security provided by those forces, I'm sure the German armed forces will step up," the spokesman said.
Traditionally in wartime, reserve units have been activated to fill vacancies created by the deployment of active-duty troops. But with growing strains on the reserves, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is asking defense officials to reexamine the practice and consider not filling some jobs until active-duty forces return from overseas.
In a shorter-term move intended to ease strains imposed on Air Force reserve security police units that have been employed heavily since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Pentagon is contemplating activating about 9,000 troops -- mainly Army Reserve military police -- to take over some Air Force base security work. That possible move was first reported in yesterday's New York Times.
-------- space
U.S. Probes Military's Use of Commercial Satellites
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 6, 2002; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16151-2002Dec5?language=printer
The General Accounting Office is investigating the Defense Department's use of commercial satellites, after competitors complained that Washington-based Intelsat Ltd. has an unfair advantage in a growing market.
Intelsat, incorporated in Bermuda, is owned by companies and governments in 148 nations, including Iraq and Iran. Its satellites help the U.S. military communicate with soldiers in far-flung outposts.
The GAO investigation coincides with the Pentagon's increasing dependence on commercial satellite providers to provide extra bandwidth, industry experts say. Government satellite programs have faced delays and cost overruns even as information has become a key part of battlefield strategy, they said.
Although the amount of money that the Defense Department spends on commercial satellites is unknown, the Defense Information Systems Agency's budget for commercial capacity has increased from $57 million in fiscal 2000 to an estimated $170 million in 2003. The agency estimates that nearly 60 percent of its commercial satellite business goes to Intelsat. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, also part of the Defense Department, anticipates a 13-fold increase in spending on commercial satellite capacity this year, a spokesman said.
The growth in government demand and the collapse of the telecommunications sector have created a fiercely competitive market, and rivals suspect Intelsat is favored because of its roots as an intergovernmental entity.
That premise will be addressed in the GAO study that Sens. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requested earlier this month. Intelsat was formed as intergovernmental organization in 1964 at the height of the Cold War, when satellite technology was considered too risky for the private sector. After a 1996 GAO report found that the commercial satellite market lacked competition, Congress required the company to cut its ties to the U.S. government and go private, and to then launch an initial public offering of stock by the end of 2002. Congress has since extended that deadline to the end of 2003.
Competitors complain that Intelsat's privatization hasn't changed the competition.
Some federal contracts require capabilities unique to Intelsat's satellites and other contracts specify an Intelsat satellite, said James Cuminale, executive vice president of corporate development and general counsel of competitor PanAmSat Corp. Moreover, the culture of preferring Intelsat hasn't changed, he said. Intelsat was once one of the few providers capable of global satellite coverage, though that's no longer the case, said David Helfgott, president and chief executive of Americom Government Services Inc., a subsidiary of New Jersey-based SES Americom Inc.
"Sometimes it's hard for the DOD to recognize the alternatives when they have become accustomed to having their service from Intelsat," Helfgott said. "We would hope that the procurement process would be such that all comers would have an opportunity. I think the mindset is changing, but it's inertia."
Intelsat calls the criticism baseless and notes that its largest shareholder is Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp. Lockheed owns 24 percent of the company's stock. Iraq and Iran each own only .05 percent, the minimum requirement to be a part of Intelsat, and they have no management role, said Tony A. Trujillo Jr., Intelsat's senior vice president of corporate services. He noted that it is U.S. policy for Intelsat to provide service to all countries on a nondiscriminatory basis.
"I believe than PanAmSat is engaged in a coordinated campaign to tarnish the Intelsat brand," Trujillo said. "We certainly don't believe we get preferential treatment from DOD."
Not all of Intelsat's competitors are complaining.
"We recognize that there have been some long-standing providers, and in any situation that is going to create some difficulty for new [companies]," said a spokesman for Loral Skynet of Bedminster, N.J. "But we're satisfied with the progress that we're making."
How the military contracts with the commercial sector has become increasingly important as it recognizes the limitations of its own capacity.
"There is a looming shortfall in spy satellite capacity that will have to be covered with commercial satellites," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst for the Lexington Institute, an Arlington think tank.
At the launch of the war in Afghanistan, a satellite stationed over the Indian Ocean that had been taken out of service had to be brought back, said James A. Lewis, director for technology and public policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And for three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, every time Space Imaging Inc.'s satellite passed over Afghanistan, it was taking high-resolution images of the country's terrain for the U.S. military, said chief executive and chairman John R. Copple. That meant the firm had to deny requests from other countries and commercial customers while it gave the military priority, he said.
"They couldn't do everything they wanted to do in Afghanistan because they didn't have enough bandwidth," Lewis said. "And in future wars we are going to have even greater demand."
-------- us
US General Arrives in Gulf for War Game Near Iraq
December 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-gulf-general.html
DOHA, Qatar (Reuters) - The American general who would command any U.S. war against Iraq arrived in the Gulf state of Qatar on Friday to preside over war games that will test sophisticated military command-and-control for such a conflict.
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, flew to Qatar's big Al Udeid air base near Doha from Tampa, Florida, to command the post war game ``Internal Look,'' which begins on Monday, according to Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for Franks.
``General Franks hit the ground running and is beginning meetings with his battle staff,'' Wilkinson told Reuters in a telephone interview from Washington. ``He will spend the weekend doing walk-throughs and preparing for the exercise.''
Although the Pentagon has stressed that President Bush has made no decision on whether to attack Iraq, the United States has been building forces in the region to address what it calls continued efforts by President Saddam Hussein to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Franks landed at Al Udeid and immediately went to nearby as Sayliyah, where the computer and communications exercise will be centered. No troops will take part.
Using a sophisticated, mobile electronic command post shipped recently to the base from Florida, a team of about 1,000 U.S. and British military specialists will link U.S. and allied forces throughout the region with each other and Central Command headquarters in the computer simulation exercise.
GROWING AMERICAN FORCE
Dozens of U.S. military aircraft are already stationed at Al Udeid and more would be sent there to join a growing American force in the Gulf if Bush decides to launch a U.S.-led invasion to remove Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Central Command officials have stressed that, while the exercise itself is scheduled to end on about Dec. 17,, the command post facilities will remain in Qatar indefinitely for possible future use.
Franks arrived as U.N. inspectors continued their recently-resumed probe of facilities in Iraq and Baghdad approached Sunday's deadline set by the United Nations to make a full declaration of its weapons of any nuclear, biological or chemical arms programs.
Iraq has continued to maintain that it has no such programs.
Franks would be in and out of the war games in Qatar from Dec. 9 to 17 and would ``preserve his flexibility'' as to where he night be needed most, senior Central Command officials said in a conference call briefing from the United States earlier this week.
The forward-deployed command headquarters would allow Franks to work in close proximity to commanders and their forces, an official said. Their regular headquarters is at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
The exercise in Qatar will test their ability to deal with ``fictitious but realistic'' military scenarios, officials said. Iraq was one of 25 countries in the Central Command area of responsibility but would not be the only consideration, they said.
--------
Vessel Strikes Navy Ship in Persian Gulf
December 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ship-Collision.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Iranian oil vessel collided with a U.S. Navy destroyer Friday in the northern Persian Gulf, punching a two-foot gash in the destroyer's side but causing no injuries, U.S. military officials said.
The USS Paul Hamilton was in no danger and continued operating after the collision, the officials said. The hole in the all-steel hull was above the water line.
Officials said there did not appear to be any hostile intent in the collision.
The American ship was attempting to conduct a maritime intercept of the Iranian ship when the collision happened. Officials said it was unclear what happened. In a maritime intercept, the U.S. ship would have approached the targeted ship to communicate and possibly to board it. Details in this case were sketchy.
There was no immediate word on the condition of the Iranian ship, which was described as an oil vessel but not a tanker.
The Paul Hamilton has been conducting maritime intercept operations in the Gulf in support of the global war on terrorism. The collision was at 8:24 p.m. local time (12:24 p.m. EST). It is under investigation.
The Paul Hamilton, whose home port is Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is part of the USS Abraham Lincoln battle group patrolling the Persian Gulf. The battle group is scheduled to return to the United States this month.
The destroyer is 505 feet long and has 32 officers and 313 enlisted sailors aboard. It was commissioned in 1995 and is in the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers. One of its sister ships, the USS Cole, was rammed by terrorists while refueling in Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, killing 17 sailors.
The Paul Hamilton is equipped with radar systems designed to detect seaborne and airborne threats at great distances. It is armed with Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and Standard anti-aircraft missiles.
On the Net:
USS Paul Hamilton at http://www.paul-hamilton.navy.mil/
-------- venezuela
Venezuela's Navy Is Sent to Reclaim Striking Oil Tanker
December 6, 2002
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/international/americas/06VENE.html
CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 5 - President Hugo Chávez ordered the navy today to seize a government oil tanker. The ship's crew had declared itself in rebellion against his left-leaning government on the fourth day of a general strike, which the opposition vowed to continue.
"This is an act of piracy," Mr. Chávez said in a nationally televised address in which he promised to ensure that oil flowed unhindered from Venezuela, an important supplier to the United States.
Mr. Chávez said he had ordered the navy to board the Pilin León, which was carrying gasoline for the domestic market, and arrest its captain, Daniel Alfaro. "We already have an alternative crew ready," Mr. Chávez said, "organized so the ship can navigate and comply with its holy obligation."
But witnesses said that naval vessels were simply monitoring the tanker while smaller boats supporting the strike surrounded it as a protective measure.
Mr. Chávez accused his opponents of plotting to overthrow him. He was already briefly removed from office in April, when a general strike that went on for four days grew into huge and violent protests.
"Every time these sectors call a strike it is because they have a card up their sleeve, a hidden knife," Mr. Chávez said without elaborating.
The president's actions today underscored the seriousness of the threat he faces in the general strike. The action was started on Monday by opponents seeking to force a referendum they believe would end his rule.
Today the president also canceled a trip to Brazil, rare for a leader who likes to project calm, and commandeered the private airwaves to give his televised message.
The chaos in Venezuela's politics was already reaching into world oil markets, as workers disrupted operations at refineries, docks and other oil installations run by Petróleos de Venezuela, the state oil company that is known worldwide as PDVSA.
Reports in the television and newspapers, which are strongly anti-Chávez, said the two other tankers were anchored near the Pilin León, the tanker the navy boarded today, while five tankers halted in other ports instead of making deliveries.
"We are joining the strike to demand change," Cesar Vicente, the captain of the Moruy, one of the tankers, told Globovision television.
The government insisted that oil deliveries would be met. Oil analysts said it was too early for the disruption to be felt in the United States, to which Venezuela is one of the top four oil suppliers. But the events here have already startled the global markets, with prices rising sharply.
The international benchmark, Brent crude, soared 62 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $25.80 per barrel by early evening in London. United States crude futures rose 57 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $27.28.
Petróleos de Venezuela faced multiple bottlenecks. For example, refineries like the 940,000-barrel-a-day Paraguana complex were severely hampered by the walkout. Oil ports shut down, and storage tanks were nearing capacity, oil analysts in Venezuela said.
Strike organizers tonight said the walkout would continue at least through Friday.
"This definitely will have an impact on world oil supplies," said John Lichtblau, chairman of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, an industry-funded policy group in New York. "The combination of the possibility of Iraqi oil exports stopping for military reasons and Venezuelan oil stopping because of the strike could be a double whammy for the United States."
The developments came as Mr. Chávez's opponents marched again through the streets of Caracas.
Chávez supporters were also out in force, saying that they would block the way to the presidential palace if needed. "They have a plan, to bring their people and commit a massacre, and take over the presidency," said Alberto León, a government worker protesting for Mr. Chávez. "But we will not let them pass."
National Guard troops and police prevented the anti-Chávez protesters from coming near the government supporters.
Though the opposition apparently snubbed efforts by César Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, to mediate the growing conflict, the possibility for the resumption of formal talks received a boost when the government expressed support for negotiations this evening despite the continuation of the strike.
The opposition has been pushing for an early referendum on Mr. Chávez's rule, hoping to embarrass the president and force his resignation.
Government negotiators had said on Wednesday that they would not block a nonbinding referendum on Mr. Chávez's rule set for Feb. 2 by electoral authorities, if the Supreme Court validated the decision.
Opposition leaders later said they doubted the government would go through with the February referendum, despite the negotiations.
"Why is the government saying that?" said Edgar Paredes, an opposition leader. "They are working to manipulate the decision of the Supreme Court."
-------- propaganda wars
Selling The Iraq War To The U.S.
Dec. 6, 2002
CBS/AP
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/06/60minutes/main532107.shtml
(CBS) Politicians have had to sell the public on going to war since Colonial times, but they never had the arsenal of advertising and communications techniques the Bush administration is using to sell a possible war on Iraq. Bob Simon reports on those techniques and those employed by the elder Bush prior to the 1991 Gulf War Sunday, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m., ET/PT.
Simon reminds viewers that a horrible story spread widely by the first Bush administration prior to the Gulf War about Kuwaiti babies pulled from incubators by invading Iraqis turned out not to be true. The current Bush administration may be also misinforming the public in its efforts to justify a possible second war with Saddam Hussein.
One example of misinformation, according to physicist and former weapons inspector David Albright, was the Bush administration's leak to the media in September about Iraq's attempt to import aluminum tubes which administration officials claimed were headed for Iraq's nuclear program.
"I think it was very misleading," says Albright, who directs the Institute for Science and International Security. Albright says the tubes could be possibly used for a nuclear program, but were more suited to conventional weapons production. Government experts thought that too, Albright tells Simon, but administration officials "were selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and, in essence, scare people."
Simon's report examines the administration's use of Madison Avenue to produce an ad campaign aimed at improving the image of America in the Muslim world. He also interviews a former CIA agent who investigated the oft-mentioned report that hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague several months before the deadly attacks on 9/11.
Despite a lack of evidence that the meeting took place, the item was cited by administration officials as high as Vice President Dick Cheney and ended up being reported so widely that two-thirds of Americans polled by the Council on Foreign Relations believe Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- drug war
New Hiding Place for Drug Profits: Insurance Policies
December 6, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/06/international/americas/06LAUN.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Law enforcement officials said today that Colombian cocaine traffickers seeking to launder tens of millions in drug profits from the United States and Mexico had begun exploiting an unlikely haven - life insurance policies.
Officials at the Treasury Department said they were so worried about the trend that they were pushing for tougher regulation of the insurance industry as a way of identifying suspicious insurance policies.
A central concern for the authorities is that terrorist financiers, too, may seek to exploit vulnerabilities in the insurance industry to launder money for their operations.
A federal grand jury indictment brought today in Miami highlighted the phenomenon. In it, the authorities charged that five Colombians took part in an elaborate scheme to launder millions in cocaine profits originating from street sales in New York City, Florida and elsewhere.
American law enforcement officials say Colombia has indicated that it will extradite the five suspects to the United States to stand trial.
Drug traffickers often use bank deposits, wire transfers and other financial mechanisms to disguise the source of their revenues. But officials at the Customs Service said the current case was the first in which a major trafficking ring has been known to use insurance policies to cover its financial tracks.
In interviews and court documents, law enforcement officials at the Customs Service said that in recent years, brokers connected to the Cali drug cartel in Colombia had bought insurance policies in the Isle of Man and other British islands, as well as perhaps Florida and other locations, to launder more than $80 million.
Using drug proceeds from the United States and Mexico, the suspects opened some 250 different investment-grade life insurance accounts in the Isle of Man alone, investigators said. The insurance policies, worth as much as $1.9 million each, were sometimes taken out in the names of nieces, nephews and other relatives of the traffickers, investigators said.
The traffickers would typically cash out all or part of the Isle of Man policies prematurely after a year or so, paying penalties of 25 percent or more to get access to the laundered cash more quickly, investigators said.
Customs Service officials have seized $9.5 million in Florida in connection with the case, most of it in the last three weeks, officials said. They expect to seize more assets and bring more charges against others they accuse of involvement in the operation, and they are closely scrutinizing a South Florida insurance company to determine its role.
"This has opened our eyes," said John Clark, special agent in charge of the Customs Service's Miami office, which led the investigation. "We think this is just the tip the iceberg. This is a system that seems to have been used and abused by narcotics traffickers for years."
Officials in Colombia have also seized $20 million there and in Panama in connection with the money-laundering operation. They arrested at least nine people in the case last month - including three of the five defendants charged today in Miami. Another Colombian wanted in the case is thought to be at large in California.
Those indicted today in Miami on conspiracy and money-laundering charges were Rodrigo José Murillo and his son, Alexander Murillo, who investigators say were active on the drug-trafficking side of the operation; Jaime Eduardo Rey Albornoz and Arturo Delgado, who investigators say brokered the transactions; and their assistant, Esperanza Romero.
The indictment seeks the forfeiture of $2.1 million that the authorities say the defendants laundered through banks and insurance companies.
The case was brought in Florida because some of the money passed through companies in the state and because the laundering investigation grew out of a major drug-trafficking case there in the early 1990's.
The case led to the seizure of 47,000 kilograms of cocaine distributed by the Cali cartel and others. In the last several years it has also led investigators to develop high-level informers in the trafficking industry. These sources indicated that much of the cartel's money was winding its way to the Isle of Man, investigators said.
The Customs Service started the financial spinoff of its 1990's case in early 2001, working closely with counterparts in Colombia, Panama, Britain and the Isle of Man.
Officials in the Isle of Man, a hub for global insurance companies, were eager to cooperate, American officials said. After concerns were raised in recent years about whether the island's oversight of the industry was too lax, the officials "wanted to put that to rest by cooperating and to show that they weren't a money-laundering haven," said Anthony Arico, assistant special agent in charge in Miami for the Customs Service.
Isle of Man officials said today that they had instituted new safeguards against criminal use of their corporations to launder money. But they acknowledged that the high volume of global business in the territory made it an attractive target for launderers.
In the current case, investigators pulled together information from financial transactions as far away as Russia, using informants, wiretaps and undercover operations to trace the money trail, officials said.
In New York City, undercover Customs investigators acted as go-betweens, funneling cash from local street sales and forwarding it to the Isle of Man through checks or wire transfers to buy life insurance policies, officials said.
Undercover agents also got the word out to drug dealers that, for a fee, they would accept and launder large amounts of cash, according to a seizure warrant filed in federal court in New York in connection with the case.
Dealers would then drop off large sums of cash - sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars - and direct the undercover agents to wire the money to banks and insurance companies around the world, the warrant said.
American officials said that Mr. Albornoz and Mr. Delgado, who each own financial transaction businesses in Colombia, were the "master brokers" who oversaw the insurance scheme. Colombian officials said Mr. Albornoz even organized conferences on money laundering for insurance companies and financial institutions around the world.
"The case just underscores the clever and crafty schemes that drug traffickers and terrorists, too, are capable of conceiving to move their money," said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Treasury Department.
The department proposed in September that insurance companies be required to adopt programs to better detect accounts opened expressly to hide illegal revenues.
Officials said the investigation in Colombia was a driving force in the still pending proposals, which have met with general support from many insurance groups.
Mr. Clark of the Customs Service said that if insurance companies were subject to the same types of rigorous reporting and monitoring requirements as banks, the authorities would have been able to detect some of the suspicious tactics used by the Colombian launderers.
Insurance companies might have reported, for instance, that policyholders were authorizing unrelated third parties to withdraw money from their accounts or were frequently cashing out their policies early, he said.
The proposed restrictions, he said, would help the authorities "spot the type of irregular flow of money that we were seeing here."
-------- terrorism
With runners and whispers, al-Qa'ida outfoxes US forces
Conciliatory Saddam says let inspectors do their work
By Robert Fisk
06 December 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=358926
The Americans take them shackled and hooded on to transport aircraft to Kandahar. They live in pens of eight or 10 men. They are given cots with blankets but no privacy. They are forced to urinate and defecate publicly because the Americans want to watch their prisoners at all times.
But United States forces have not only failed to hunt down Osama bin Laden while they are preparing for war in Iraq: they are finding it almost impossible to crack the al-Qa'ida network because Bin Laden's men have resorted to primitive methods of communication that cut individual members of al-Qa'ida off from all information.
This extraordinary, grim scenario comes from an American intelligence officer just back from Afghanistan who agreed to talk to The Independent - and to supply his own photographs of prisoners - on condition of anonymity. His prognoses were chilling and totally at variance with the upbeat briefings of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Even in Pakistan, he says, middle-ranking Pakistani army officers are tipping off members of al-Qa'ida to avoid American-organised raids.
"We didn't catch whom we were supposed to catch," the officer told me. "There was an over-expectation by us that technology could do more than it did. Al-Qa'ida are very smart. They basically found out how we track them. They realised that if they communicated electronically, our Rangers would swoop on them. So they started using couriers to hand-carry notes on paper or to repeat messages from their memory and this confused our system. Our intelligence is hi-tech - they went back to primitive methods that the Americans cannot adapt to."
The American officer said there were originally "a lot of high-profile arrests". But the al-Qa'ida cells didn't know what other members were doing. "They were very adaptive and became much more decentralised. We caught a couple of really high-profile, serious al-Qa'ida leaders but they couldn't tell us what specific operations were going to take place. They would know that something big was being planned but they would have no idea what it was."
The officer, who spent at least six months in Afghanistan this year, was scathing in his denunciation of General Abdul Rashid Dostam, the Uzbek warlord implicated in the suffocation of up to a thousand Taliban prisoners in container trucks. "Dostam is totally culpable and the US believes he's guilty but he's our guy and so we won't say so."
Gen Dostam uses Turkish military intelligence men as bodyguards. "There was concern in the Isaf [International Security Assistance Force] that the Turks who run it would create ethnic problems, which is one reason the Turkish army does not share the Kabul Isaf compounds with other Isaf troops. But one of the things we failed to do was create a real government. We let the warlords firmly entrench themselves and now they can't be dislodged," he said.
According to the same officer, American security agents in Karachi were looking for the murderers of US journalist Daniel Pearl but there, as in many other cases, they would find their arrest "targets" had fled because of secret support within middle ranks of the Pakistani army. "We would go with the Pakistanis to a location but there would be no one there because once the middle level of the Pakistani military knew of our plans, they would leak the information. In the North-West Frontier province, the frontier corps is a second-rate army - they are a lot more anti-Western in sentiment than the main Pakistani army. In the end we had to co-ordinate everything through Islamabad."
As for the hundreds of prisoners taken in Afghanistan, the American officer insisted that none were beaten "now" although he claimed ignorance about earlier evidence that soldiers based in Kandahar had broken the bones of captives after their initial arrest. "Only prisoners who were likely to be violent or unco-operative are hooded and their hands are tied behind their backs with plastic restraint bands. Sometimes we would take the hoods off prisoners when they were travelling in our helicopters, at other times not.
"In Kandahar, in what we call their living areas, the prisoners are given cots with blankets and Adidas suits and runners, but they have no privacy. There are no sides to their living areas because we have to see them all the time. They have no privacy in the bathroom. Some of them masturbate when they are looking at the female guards. Our guards had no reaction to this. They are soldiers. When the interrogations take place, the prisoners are allowed to sit. I don't want to get into specifics about the questions we ask them.
He said: "There was non- co-operation at the beginning. But they had a misconception that ey were going to be treated the way they treated each other. When they're not tortured, I think this has a lot to do with changing their opinion."
But the Americans were even short of translators. "We recruited Farsi-speakers who can speak the local version of Persian in Afghanistan, Dari. They would be civilians hired in the US. But they had to go through full security procedures and out of every five, only one or two would be given security clearance."
The American officer also had a low opinion of the Western journalists he met at Bagram. "They just hung around our base all day. Whenever we had some special operation, we'd offer the journalists some facility to go on patrol with our special forces and off they'd go - you know, 'we're on patrol with the special forces' - and they wouldn't realise we were stringing them along to get them out of the way."
----
Al Qaeda Web Site Calls Israel New Target
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 6, 2002; Page A36
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15913-2002Dec5?language=printer
An Internet site claiming to represent al Qaeda says the terrorist network has decided to launch suicide attacks against a new target, Israel, and says its goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.
U.S. officials said they believe the Web site, www.mojahedoon.net, indeed speaks for al Qaeda, and that intelligence officers have been monitoring it for some time.
News of al Qaeda's new anti-Israel focus comes a week after two terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Kenya that U.S. officials believe were carried out by al Qaeda. A suicide car bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa killed 10 Kenyans and three Israelis, along with three terrorists, Nov. 28. In a separate attack minutes earlier, several air-to-ground missiles were fired at an Israeli passenger jet flying from Kenya to Tel Aviv. No one was injured.
Terrorism experts say al Qaeda's announced entry into the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis is a disturbing development that is likely to set off new violence.
"The idea that al Qaeda is establishing a special cell to focus on Israelis is horrifying news," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East Studies for the private Council on Foreign Relations. Al Qaeda's role could be extremely destabilizing, she added, because "it will be weighing in on the side of Hamas," the Palestinian Islamic group that launches suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and has been deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Hamas staunchly opposes peace with Israel and declares its entire territory Muslim land.
The group's announcement came shortly before President Bush, meeting at the White House with leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia, said that progress was being made against al Qaeda. "Slowly but surely, we're dismantling an al Qaeda network, and that inures to the benefit of all the countries of the world," Bush said.
Earlier this week, the Palestinian Authority denied accusations by a top Israeli military official that al Qaeda already is operating in the West Bank and Gaza. "These are cheap and untrue allegations," the Palestinian Authority said in a statement released after a Cabinet meeting in Ramallah.
The Web site announced formation of a new branch of Osama bin Laden's terror network, the Islamic al Qaeda Organization in Palestine, and said it will work to undermine any talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The talks, now suspended, have been aimed at arranging an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in exchange for an end to Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel. The al Qaeda Web site said it rejects this course.
"Islamic al Qaeda in Palestine joins its voice with the voices of the mujaheddin in Palestine in its resistance to the partial and submissive solutions [land for peace], and will accept nothing but the full liberation of the Palestinian land," said the al Qaeda Web site, which was originally brought to light publicly and translated from the Arabic by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a translation and research service.
The new Palestinian arm of al Qaeda "will defeat the Zionist Jewish invaders [and] return them to the place . . . whence they came," the site said.
The site also advises Hamas that it should stop engaging in shootouts with Palestinian security forces loyal to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, at least for now. The two groups of gunmen have been fighting sporadically for months over issues including turf control in Gaza and vengeance for past showdowns between the two sides.
"We call to the mujaheddin in the al-Nusseirat camp in the Gaza Strip to immediately stop the fighting between Hamas and the people of the Palestinian Authority," the Web site says.
Bronson said that while al Qaeda appears in this case to be mediating between the secular Palestinian Authority and the fundamentalist Muslim Hamas, bin Laden's true sympathies lie with Hamas.
"This means that when the Palestinian Authority takes on Hamas, it will also be taking on bin Laden, which could be a problem" for Arafat, given the widespread admiration for bin Laden among many Palestinians, she said.
For years bin Laden and al Qaeda spoke mostly of Muslims' obligation to oust U.S. military forces and the Saudi royal family from Saudi Arabia. In more recent years, bin Laden has begun mentioning the Palestinians' struggle in his list of perceived humiliations of Muslims worldwide, usually in the same breath with the plight of the Kashmiris, Bosnians, Afghanis and Iraqis.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corp. research group, said that al Qaeda's new attacks on Israel stem from "terrorists looking for work.
"Al Qaeda . . . wants to appear relevant, to be a player in Middle Eastern politics," Hoffman said.
Al Qaeda grew in the 1990s, during the period of the most promising Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, in part by fomenting rage among Muslim radicals against any peace with Israel, Hoffman said. This Web site builds on that agenda, he added, and "amounts to pure cynicism."
----
Communications Industry Plans Security
December 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Communications.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Communications industry officials endorsed a 300-item list Friday of what they say telephone, cable, satellite and Internet operators should do to protect against terrorist attack.
The recommendations -- from simply shutting down computers to upgrading software security to give it new muscle -- should be implemented voluntarily by industry, the panel said. But the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Michael Powell, said some might be mandated by regulation.
``We will not hesitate to go forward in seeking a regulatory response,'' Powell told reporters. He did not say which steps might be ordered.
``The mission has to succeed,'' he said.
That mission, lent a sense of urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks collapsed some cell phone and other communications systems, is to help companies in crisis contact and work with partner firms or competitors to keep services running for customers. The 50-member Network Reliability and Interoperability Council, industry executives appointed by the FCC, also is investigating ways to help emergency personnel stay in contact with each other, the government and the public.
The let's-work-together approach, members said, is a product of communications companies' sharing vulnerable networks so that an attack on a company's computers would be unlikely to spread to another's.
Council leaders said participation also provides opportunities to show the government and the public that the industry can deal with many of its own security problems, such as tracking service outages and reporting them confidentially, with minimal regulation, if any.
``It is our expectation that everyone participates in this voluntary process,'' said Richard Notebaert, chairman of the panel and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International. The alternative, a federally mandated process, would not guarantee confidentiality, he said.
The Sept. 11 attacks, experts said, exposed a gap between the level of security required by the market and a higher, more expensive, level now driven by terror threats. In addition, the threat from hackers has increased exponentially, said one expert. Bill Hancock, vice president of Cable & Wireless, said the number of attacks increased from 2,000 last year to 86,000 this year.
``Putting in cybersecurity is a very critical component of surviving over time,'' Hancock said.
To meet the new threats, members of the industry from satellite companies to Internet service providers should invest in better security for hardware, software and personnel, the council said Friday. Its members formally vote on the to-do list Dec. 20.
Some of the recommendations are basic, such as being vigilant in making sure that all computers not being used are logged off and shut down to deter hackers.
Others require significant investment of money and time.
For example, better protection for hardware should be provided. The council's recommendations would have companies train personnel better in how to recognize suspicious items and how to handle proprietary information. It also said communications firms should prepare plans for inspecting equipment and plant locations in case of crises. Generally speaking, the members said, security should be part of strategic business planning for such firms.
Certain actions are necessary to protect software as well. The council suggested erecting ``layered'' security structures, such as firewalls and perimeters. The industry needs better methods for making sure that only authorized personnel have access to networks and information systems, the panel said. It recommended ways to respond to attacks faster.
In addition, the panel recommends that cable, wireless and data companies, along with Internet service providers, participate in a trial next year in which they voluntarily report outages.
On the Net:
Network Reliability and Interoperability Council: http://www.nric.org
Federal Communications Commission: http://www.fcc.gov
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Green Mountain, lung group team up for wind power
REUTERS USA:
December 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18910/story.htm
NEW YORK - Texas-based power generator Green Mountain Energy Co. and the American Lung Association of Texas said this week they had joined forces to educate Texans about renewable, wind-generated power.
Green Mountain Energy said in a joint statement it will make a donation to the American Lung Association for each of the Association's members that sign up for Green Mountain's electricity service through the program, which provides power from wind farms in the state.
More than 25 million tons of nitrogen oxide is emitted in the United States every year, the equivalent of 480 pounds per household, with 23 percent coming from power generation, the statement said.
The pollution contributes to acid rain, smog, asthma and respiratory illness.
"While laws and regulations are vital to help control the sources of our nation's air pollution, we believe that direct action on the part of consumers will ultimately have a powerful effect on the way electricity is generated in the future," Ed Cater, president and chief executive of the American Lung Association of Texas said in the statement.
"Today, over a third of the electricity generated in Texas comes from coal and less than 1 percent comes from clean, renewable sources like the wind," Gillan Taddune, president of the Texas region for Green Mountain Energy said.
Austin, Texas-based Green Mountain Energy provides electricity to more than 500,000 customers in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas.
The company has been providing wind power to the state since April 2001. Utility customers in the state can switch to Green Mountain service due to the deregulation of the power market, which began on Jan. 1.
----
Spain's Fenosa now seeks renewable partner as well
REUTERS SPAIN:
December 6, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18914/story.htm
MADRID - Spain's third-largest power utility Union Fenosa (UNF.MC) said yesterday it was searching for a strategic partner in its renewable energy division just as it is about to name a partner for its natural gas business.
"Union Fenosa has initiated contact with potential financial partners to incorporate into the shareholding of Union Fenosa Energia Especiales with the goal of strengthening its expansion plan in the area of renewable energies," Union Fenosa said in a statement.
The firm's renewable division - mostly wind and mini-hydroelectric power - currently has capacity of 316 megawatts with another 300 MW under construction. By comparison it has a total of more than 6,500 MW of installed capacity in Spain and Latin America.
Union Fenosa said it aims to boost its renewable capacity to 1,000 MW by 2007.
The renewable plan is similar to its strategy for its much larger natural gas business, part of a plan to slash its debt load of 7.6 billion euros.
Union Fenosa has received two binding bids for half its gas unit, one from Italian oil and gas group Eni (ENI.MI) and the other from an undisclosed firm.
-------- human rights
U.N. Envoy Says Torture 'Systemic' in Uzbekistan
December 6, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-uzbekistan-torture.html
TASHKENT (Reuters) - A United Nations' rapporteur accused Uzbekistan on Friday of routinely using torture to terrorize opponents and obtain confessions which sometimes resulted in courts handing down the death penalty.
Uzbekistan is home to a U.S. airbase used in the military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan, and is a key U.S. ally in the ``war on terrorism.''
``Torture as far as I can see, it is my impression, is not just incidental but...is systemic in this country,'' U.N. human rights rapporteur on torture Theo van Boven told a news briefing.
During his two-week fact-finding mission to the secretive Central Asian state, Van Boven interviewed dozens of torture victims, members of their families and other relatives.
He said the forms of torture used by Uzbek police and secret services included beatings, electric shocks, immersion of the victim's head in water and suffocation with plastic bags.
Van Boven said he had found that families and relatives of those arrested were often threatened with torture and rape.
``I am concerned...about many confessions obtained through torture and other illegal means which are then used as evidence in trials that are leading to death penalties or very severe punishment,'' he said.
There was no immediate reaction from the government of President Islam Karimov, who brooks no dissent in the poor nation of 25 million that he has run since Soviet times.
Van Bowen said he had met senior Uzbek officials but was barred from a secret police jail in Tashkent. He was also unhappy with his visit to the dreaded Dzhazlyk prison in western Uzbekistan, where political prisoners are said to be held.
``I could not carry out the visit to Dzhazlyk in a satisfactory and comprehensive manner,'' he said. The visit lasted two hours instead of the planned six, and his interview with the head of the prison ``was interrupted.''
Washington invited Karimov on a state visit this year and a stream of top-level U.S. and European Union visitors have been to Tashkent since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Karimov has watched the chronic instability in Afghanistan with unease and fears militant Islam will spill over the border.
While expressing some understanding of these concerns, the West and human rights bodies criticize him for what they call a disproportionate clampdown on dissent under the pretext of fighting religious extremism.
Van Boven said his report would be presented to the U.N. General Assembly in January and released to the public in March.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Doctor remains thorn in North Korea's side
By Robert Marquand
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
December 6, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021206-53444593.htm
SEOUL - He insists he is an ordinary guy, but his life - lived half under, half above ground - is like something from a movie. Norbert Vollertsen feels he is riding the winds of history on the Korean peninsula.
Two years ago, the mop-headed German physician was kicked out of North Korea after using 16 months of nearly unlimited access to hospitals and orphanages to provide a rare picture of mass hunger and brutal abuse in the closed regime. Today, he champions the cause of North Korean refugees, and chides the West for caring about the North's nuclear program but not the daily misery of its people.
To many officials he is a loose cannon, a misguided headline grabber who may be harming the people he means to help. Dr. Vollertsen says he is simply bringing attention to a human tragedy that is inconvenient for politicians.
All told, it has been a wild ride for a country doctor who says he can be as naive as he is radical. Four years ago, Dr. Vollertsen couldn't find North Korea on the map. Now, he says he is "working for the overthrow of the North Korean regime."
Last spring, Dr. Vollertsen, who has twice given testimony on Capitol Hill about repression in the North, scored a media coup when he helped stage a rush of 25 North Koreans into the Spanish Embassy in Beijing to dramatize the plight of unwanted Northern refugees in China. Coming soon, he says: "a big event on the Russian border of North Korea."
Working with a network of activists in the Asia-Pacific region, he says he takes no special-interest funding but lives off royalties from his "Diary of a Mad Place," which has sold out several times in Japan.
He won't use a cell phone and keeps quiet about his residence other than to say, "I live on the Internet. I move with the wind. I never plan what will happen next, but something always does. Tonight, I might be in Bangkok or Sydney."
He was in Washington early this week at a refugee meeting opened by Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, and closed by Lorne Craner, the State Department point man on human rights in Asia.
"We have a saying in Germany that the more enemies you have, the more courage you earn," Dr. Vollertsen said. "In my country, we let a Third Reich develop through silence. I'm not going to be part of that again."
The doctor offered the world an inside look at hunger and brutal abuse in the North, and he accused aid agencies of silence on human rights and of allowing food to be siphoned off for elite cadres.
In Japan, Dr. Vollertsen is a hero. But his stunts put him near the top of Pyongyang's public-enemy list. German intelligence has warned him of plots to silence him; he feels Chinese mafia or North Korean agents may be involved.
He is barred from China. In Beijing, where embassies now are ringed with barbed wire to keep out North Koreans, Dr. Vollertsen is so popular that officials won't talk about him. The Germans are unofficially critical, saying the physician's tactics put at risk some 300,000 refugees who live in China illegally.
The underlying disagreement is between those who say refugee relief must come slowly so the North doesn't collapse, versus those who feel suffering in the North is so bad that it must be challenged more directly.
"His methods and means are very strange to me. I don't know if these means are effective," said one South Korean official. Yet in Seoul, many refugee-aid workers, expatriates and others close to the issue scoff at the notion that Dr. Vollertsen is crazy.
"He is an easy target for the institutional diplomatic industry," one Beijing analyst said. "He gets on the nerves of everyone. But the thing is, he knows the truth about conditions in the North. Most of us do not know. We didn't get in."
Dr. Vollertsen said he was motivated by admiration of those with whom he worked in North Korea. He calls the nurses there "the toughest people I've ever known. They have no money, no bandages, no medicine, nothing - but they do everything possible to take care of their patients. You don't find them complaining."
Last month, Dr. Vollertsen received the top honor of the North Korean defectors organization in Seoul. The prize was given by Hwang Jang Yop, for years the North's chief ideologist and the highest-ranking defector to leave Pyongyang. Mr. Hwang said a "grand escape" by refugees is the only way to bring down the North.
Ironically, Dr. Vollertsen and a colleague two years ago were the first Westerners to win North Korea's highest state award, the Friendship Medal. The medal came after Dr. Vollertsen donated a skin graft to a patient burned by molten iron. He became a celebrity in the North. The medal, and a driver's license, gave him access to remote villages, as well as the thickly carpeted dachas of well-heeled cadres in Pyongyang.
The doctor is not a stranger to unusual public attention. After 14 years as a general practitioner in the university setting of Goettingen, Dr. Vollertsen organized his patients to protest German health care. He made the news after a courtroom incident in which he threatened suicide by holding a gun with blanks to his head. He ran off, fell down a set of stairs, suffered a black eye, then showed up the next morning in his office, to his patients' incredulity.
Dr. Vollertsen recalls the event with some sheepishness. It was the kind of stunt associated with the far-left German "Green" milieu with which he grew up. But the stunt was more than his wife could abide. She left him and took their four boys.
"I am laughing when I am accused today of being a Bush right-winger, a fundamentalist, or being funded by the CIA," he said. "I have a very left-wing background."
----
Antiwar Protestors Aren't Fanatics
by Paul Tremblay
December 6, 2002
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/tremblay1.html
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An analysis by Marc Cooper in the Herald Leader on Sunday, November 17, claims that peace movements opposing a war in Iraq have been hijacked by fanatics. Two pictures from the Lexington anti-war rally on October 20th accompany the article. A caption next to one of the pictures states that the peace movement "has been stalled by left-wing radicals." The implication is clear: the organizers of the local protest espouse extremist views not worthy of consideration and not representative of Americans.
This portrayal is absolutely false. The organizers of the rally do not even remotely resemble the fanatics whom Cooper portrays in his article. According to Cooper, the current peace movement supports Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, and believes that America got what it deserved on September 11.
Everyone on the committee that organized the Lexington rally holds a deep respect for all human life, and believes that Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, and the gang that perpetrated the barbarity of September 11 are mass murderers.
Our same respect for life compels us to give up our free time to meet in order to prevent another war in the Middle East. Such a war could kill tens of thousands of people on both sides, and so enrage people in the region as to fuel terrorism, taking more lives in the future. We also oppose the war because the US administration has lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussei