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NUCLEAR
Balkan Syndrome Resurrected
We tried to build an atom bomb, says Iraqi weapons chief
U.N. Team Expands Inspections, Visiting 5 Separate Sites
U.N. Team Inspects Uranium Mine
'North Korea threat part of U.S. regional strategy'
Livermore Lab Creates New Division
Officials Question Security Of A-Plant
U.S. Gives Assurance On Iraq Document
Bush told to reveal all on Iraq
U.S. Gives Assurance On Iraq Document
MILITARY
Rumsfeld courts east Africa as key partner in global war on terrorism
N. Korean Ship with Scuds Seized En Route to Yemen
Ship Reportedly Carrying Scud-Type Missiles Is Intercepted
Israel helping China build new fighter jet
China Suggests Missile Buildup Linked to Arms Sales to Taiwan
U.S. enlists Algeria in terror battle
Malaysia criticizes Australia's strategy against terrorism
Northrop-TRW Deal Hits a Last-Minute Snag
Tech Contractors Cite Rising Demand
Government Allows Northrop, TRW to Merge
U.S., Canada Reach Agreement to Let Troops Cross Border
Taiwan Question Eludes U.S. - China Talks
U.S. and China Resume High-Level Military Talks
In Colombia, a mission for peace
U.S., British Jets Attack Iraq Air Defenses
Israeli Chief of Staff Justifies Killing of Civilians
Israel Vaccinates Soldiers and Health Workers
U.S. set to use mines in Iraq
European Satellite Plunges Into Pacific
At Qatar Base, a Test Run for War
U.S. and Canada Expand Pact to Coordinate Defense Planning
Pentagon Readies for Possible Tribunals
U.S. Says Iraqi Indicated Atom Project Is Continuing
Couch-Potato Commandos
Iraq's nuclear noncapability and the US-British propaganda campaign
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Court Voids Ruling That Death Penalty Is Unconstitutional
U.S. Pushes Heroin Addiction Treatment
AMERICA UNDER SURVEILLANCE: PRIVACY AND SECURITY
ENERGY AND OTHER
Judge Knocks GAO Out of Cheney Task Force Lawsuit
U.S. study links chemical to sperm damage
The Green Seal of Approval
EPA Sued to Ban Toxics in Common Wood
Stanford Reveals Human Embryo Clone Plan
Agency Adds Shredding of Documents to Inquiry
ACTIVISTS
Carter Accepts Nobel Peace Prize With a Warning Against War
Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter Urges Peace
'Global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace'
The Peace Warriors
100 Arrested in U.S. Anti-War Protests
Anti-Iraq War Protestors Rally Across U.S.
Groups Gather to Protest Iraq War
University Protests in Iran Bring a Bitter Walkout in Parliament
Thank you, Philip Berrigan
Minnesota-born Philip Berrigan, 'saint of our time'
Baltimore City Council Says No To War
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Balkan Syndrome Resurrected
The UN releases a study that lends credence to health experts' cries that NATO's wartime uranium-tipped weapons have left behind a deadly, cancerous legacy.
by Anes Alic and Dragan Stanimirovic
10 December 2002
Transitions Online
http://www.tol.cz/look/BRR/article_single.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=9&NrIssue=1&NrSection=4&NrArticle=8027&ST1=body&ST_T1=brr&ST_AS1=1&ST_max=1
SARAJEVO and BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina--After two years of silence, Balkan Syndrome--better known as the depleted uranium affair--is getting its due attention. The United Nations Environmental Protection Agency (UNEP) in November confirmed the dangerous presence of depleted uranium in areas of Bosnia bombed by NATO aircraft in 1994 and 1995, which Bosnian officials say has led to a shocking increase in cancer-related deaths.
UN experts confirmed the discovery of two locations containing a high level of radiation from depleted uranium from NATO bombings: the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici, where a munitions warehouse and a tank-repair facility are located, and a Bosnian Serb army barracks in Han-Pijesak, also near Sarajevo. Investigators discovered uranium materials and dust inside the buildings. Balkan Syndrome Resurrected The UNEP task force says that depleted uranium can create an increase in uranium concentration 100 times the natural levels contained in groundwater.
Upon the release of the November UN expert study on depleted uranium, health officials from Republika Srpska confirmed that uranium has indeed caused many civilian deaths in those two regions. Health officials say that civilian deaths in those regions are double what they are in other, unaffected regions.
Earlier this year, the Bosnian government invited 17 international experts to investigate rumors that depleted uranium is still present in the environment and may be adversely affecting the health not only of the local population but also of international peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia.
The team of experts investigated 14 separate locations over a one-month period, finding traces of radiation in three places. Investigators were not able to examine eight other locations--four small towns near Sarajevo and four others in eastern Bosnia--deemed to be too risky due to the presence of land mines.
Pekka Haavisto, who heads the UNEP task force, told the daily Oslobodjenje: "We are concerned about the situation at the Hadzici tank-repair facility and the Han-Pijesak barracks and the health condition of the citizens." Haavisto said that after being analyzed in Western European laboratories, the final results would be released in March 2003.
Recent years have brought growing concern among experts that shrapnel from depleted uranium-tipped weapons from could cause cancer or other radiation-related problems. According to health experts, dust particles from depleted uranium could be inhaled, or the substance could leach into the ground and the water supply.
AFTEREFFECTS
During NATO's 1994 and 1995 bombings of Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo, NATO aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal that is effective in piercing armor. Most of those bombs were fired in Hadzici. In one day in October 1995 alone, NATO planes fired 300 projectiles into the Sarajevo suburb. According to the Bosnian government, NATO forces fired some 10,800 rounds of 30mm armor-piercing projectiles during the war.
Under the November 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, some Sarajevo suburbs held by Serbs during the war came under the control of the mostly Bosniak and Bosnian Croat federation entity of Bosnia. One of those suburbs was Hadzici. Most of the approximately 30,000 Bosnian Serbs who lived there fled their homes and moved as refugees to other parts of the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and to Yugoslavia.
Some 5,000 civilians from Hadzici fled to Bratunac, in eastern Republika Srpska. Medical analysis conducted by the local Institute for Health in 1998 showed that the mortality of Hadzici refugees was double the mortality rate for the rest of Bratunac's residents. The study's author, Dr. Slavica Jovanovic, told the SRNA news agency that she has no doubt that depleted uranium is responsible for the increased death rate of those people.
"We can say that the mortality rate of the refugee population is greater because of high stress, poor nutrition, and bad living conditions. But we were shocked to discover that deaths among Hadzici's refugees are much more numerous than [among] other [refugees]," Jovanovic told SRNA. She blamed those deaths on the fact that the refugees from Hadzici were exposed to radiation because they lived close to the bombed locations.
In her report, Jovanovic wrote that since the end of the war, 25 percent of wartime Hadzici residents have died of various cancers, tumors, and heart attacks. In Bratunac alone in the last four years, 500 of the 5,000 Hadzici refugees have died. One Hadzici refugee dies every three to four days, and every second one dies from cancer.
Jovanovic said that she could not say for sure how many Hadzici refugees have cancer because many do not check themselves into hospitals since they cannot afford medical treatment. The doctor said she is hoping that the international community will step in and find some way to examine the town's refugee population and help provide treatment.
After the UNEP report was released, the Republika Srpska army evacuated soldiers from its barracks in Han-Pijesak. Officials say that organized medical exams will soon begin for soldiers who were in the barracks during the past seven years.
At the same time, medical workers from the federation entity are also sending out warnings to people still living in Hadzici--but they are expanding their warning to the general public, which they fear could also be affected by the presence of depleted uranium. Federation health officials say they are also worried that that radiation has caused an increase in the number of diseases such as cancers--especially leukemia--tumors, cerebral palsy, and others.
After the reintegration of Hadzici into the federation entity, prewar Bosniak and Croat workers began cleaning out the munitions warehouse and tank-repair facility, removing more than 1,000 truckloads of garbage and munitions
Now those workers fear they too have been contaminated. Unfortunately, they will have to wait to find out. Workers have begun undergoing medical examinations, but the results will not be available until April 2003. What's more, despite UNEP warnings to immediately evacuate all workers because of danger of inhaling depleted uranium dust, some workers from Hadzici are still on duty.
"Believe me, I am very afraid. But if I have been inhaling radiation for the past seven years, I can do it until they publish the final results," Zijad Fazlic, director of the Hadzici tank-repair facility, told TOL on November 24. "All we can do now is to wait for the results. I don't know what we are going to do, but if I had known this, I would never have come here to work. Families of workers also live here," he said.
Soon after the UNEP report was published, federation medical officials started to speculate that it is possible that depleted uranium is the cause for the shocking jump in cases of leukemia in children.
"It has not yet been proven, but we cannot see anything else except uranium," Edo Hasanbegovic, director of the ontological department in Sarajevo's Kosevo clinic, told the daily Oslobodjenje on 21 November.
Hasanbegovic said that research is set to begin soon to find out whether a connection can be made between the increase in diseases and depleted uranium. But he said he is certain that depleted uranium is one of the elements that causes leukemia in Bosnia. "That we can claim without medical research. Every year we have a 50 percent to 70 percent increase in the number of new underage patients," said Hasanbegovic.
PLAYING CATCH-UP
Lejla Saracevic, chief of radiobiology at Sarajevo University, told TOL on 29 November that before the depleted uranium affair was made known to the public, local experts had asked the government to allow them to conduct research in potentially contaminated areas. The government, however, refused, saying there was insufficient money in the budget for such research--research Saracevic said costs little.
Saracevic said that once the most critical locations have been decontaminated, it is necessary to find out how much of the rest of the region is radioactive. "It has been a long time. In seven years the uranium has migrated into the ground and through the water. It is very possible that it now exists in our vegetation and possibly in our food. Our priority is to check that now," she said.
Before the war in Bosnia, the annual number of new cases of children with leukemia was never greater than 13. Since the end of the war, that number has grown every year: Last year it was 26. The situation is the same with other cancers: Every year the number grows. And almost 80 percent of those new cases are coming from areas that were exposed to the radiation of depleted uranium--areas that were bombed during the war.
The so-called Balkan Syndrome affair first aroused attention in early 2001, when Italian media published reports that one Italian soldier who had served in Bosnia had died of leukemia and that five more were very ill. The Italian media blamed the sicknesses on NATO's use of depleted uranium in its weapons.
At the time, all governments denied that NATO was using uranium-tipped munitions. Nonetheless, medical examinations of soldiers were promptly begun, with many being diagnosed with leukemia and other forms of cancer. Anes Alic is TOL's correspondent in Sarajevo. Dragan Stanimirovic is TOL's correspondent in Banja Luka.
We want your feedback. If you have comments on this, or any other TOL article, please email us at react@tol.cz
-------- inspections
We tried to build an atom bomb, says Iraqi weapons chief
By Kim Sengupta
10 December 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=360221
United Nations inspectors visited a nuclear complex for the third time yesterday, 12 hours after Saddam Hussein's chief scientific adviser disclosed how close Iraq had come to making an atomic bomb.
Iraq's report to the UN contains 2,081 pages on its nuclear programme alone, and supposedly confirms that Baghdad used domestic and foreign facilities in an effort to manufacture the Arab world's first atomic bomb.
Lieutenant-General Amer al-Saadi referred to work undertaken to develop a "trigger" and make "the final shape of the device". He said: "In scientific jargon device means bomb. It is up to the IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] to judge how close we were. We haven't reached the full assembly of the bomb, nor tested it."
The general, a chemistry specialist who studied at the University of London, is the first non-defecting Iraqi official to talk about the country's nuclear programme with relative candour. He insisted, however, that Iraq no longer had nuclear ambitions.
An IAEA spokesmen said yesterday that General Saadi's statement was consistent with what the agency already knew about Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme up to 1998, when the inspectors pulled out of the country.
Washington and London, however, claim to have intelligence indicating that President Saddam's government is reactivating the programme. Tony Blair recently made public satellite photographs which, he maintained, showed the Iraqis were engaged in new construction.
Al-Tuwaitha, a complex sprawling across 50 hectares (120 acres), was the biggest nuclear facility in Iraq and the site of the three Osirak reactors that were bombed by the Israelis in 1981 and the Americans during the Gulf War 10 years later. The plant's main purpose was to produce the fissionable material needed for making nuclear devices.
The Iraqis say the site is now used for making pharmaceutical products and for experiments in growing mushrooms for the food industry. They say no nuclear work has been done there since 1991.
During their first visit to Tuwaitha last week, agency inspectors took away samples from a German-built furnace which, according to the director of the complex, Faiz al-Barkhdar, has been out of use since the mid-Nineties because of a lack of spare parts.
Dr Barkhdar said: "The truth is that even the harmless work we do now is hampered by lack of resources. When the Israelis bombed us, the IAEA said we had co-operated with them in the past. And that has continued. I do not know why they keep coming back to al-Tuwaitha, but they will not find anything, it does not matter how many so-called satellite photographs Tony Blair produces."
The IAEA said the site had been visited "room by room" but that more time was needed to inspect the dozens of buildings that had been monitored by UN arms inspectors before they pulled out in 1998. The Iraqis vast declaration to the UN is said to include details of how two methods were used to try to obtain a domestic supply of weapons-grade fuel - electromagnetic isotope separation and gas-centrifuge enrichment.
--------
U.N. Team Expands Inspections, Visiting 5 Separate Sites
December 10, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS with TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/international/middleeast/10CND-BAGH.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 10 - United Nations weapons inspectors markedly expanded their operations today, sending a team of nuclear monitors on a six-hour drive across the desert to a mining center near the border with Syria as just one of five separate missions.
The phosphate deposits in a sprawling facility at Ashakat, about 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, were found by inspectors in the 1990's to have been exploited for their uranium content as well as for fertilizer. Today's visit was presumed to assess current operations at the center.
Eleven inspectors in four-wheel-drive cars drove into the site, which sits in an otherwise empty quarter of the desert. They were immediately allowed into the guarded center, but journalists were barred from entering.
Other visits were made to possible nuclear, biological and chemical sites.
One team was reported to have gone to an animal vaccine center in Abu Ghouraib, about 16 miles west of Baghdad. The site, presumed to be the Amariyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, was a center of biological weapons-related research in the 1980's.
A second group visited the Furat Chemical Industries General Company, which is linked to the Ministry of Industry and Minerals. The site is 41 miles south of Baghdad.
A fourth team visited Ibn al-Haitham research center in a northern Baghdad suburb.
A team later returned to the Tuweitha nuclear site, 12 miles south of Baghdad, the inspectors' fourth recent visit to the site.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission have visited about 30 sites since their return to Iraq last month after a four-year gap.
Today's expanded visits, which marked the end of the second week of field missions, followed a quickened pace of inspections on Monday.
The largest team of nuclear experts yet was sent for a third inspection of Al Tuweitha, the giant nuclear complex south of Baghdad and the centerpiece of Iraq's atomic-bomb project until it was itself bombed by American aircraft in 1991 during Persian Gulf war. The inspectors also examined two related nuclear sites and a sprawling military-industrial plant near Al Fallujah, 55 miles northwest of Baghdad, where they searched two chemical plants that played a part in Iraq's chemical weapons program in the 1980's and 90's, producing phenol and chlorine. Like Al Tuweitha, the so-called Fallujah II site was placed under monitoring during the previous inspections, from 1991 to 1998.
The current round began on Nov. 27 and ran into immediate criticism from the Bush administration, which said the effort was undermanned. On Monday spokesmen for the inspections teams in Baghdad were keen to emphasize that more inspectors had been sent out than on any previous day, with five teams scouring Al Tuweitha alone.
The growing momentum was aided by the arrival of 25 inspectors on Sunday to join the 17 in the initial party. The experts are divided into two groups. One works for the main weapons-inspection agency, known as Unmovic, in searching biological, chemical and missile sites. The second consists of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency and is responsible for nuclear sites.
There are now 25 weapons inspectors and 17 nuclear inspectors here, with a checklist of more than 900 sites to cover.
By Christmas, the number of inspectors is to rise to about 100, and beyond that, early next year, to a maximum of 300.
On arrival here, officials leading the inspection teams said they thought the work could take up to a year. That view was affirmed today by Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the atomic energy agency, who said on a visit to Tokyo that it could take a year to conclude whether Iraq still had any elements of a nuclear weapons program.
Leaders of inspection teams have said that if the United States wants quicker results, it should provide the teams with more intelligence information.
Until then, the teams are likely to spend much of their time going over old sites long since rendered useless by the destruction ordered by previous inspectors, by American and British bombing in 1991 and 1998, or by the Iraqis themselves. From their experience in the 1990's, the inspectors know that once a site goes onto an inspection list, it is often abandoned, with the work shifted elsewhere, usually under the name of a different ministry or a state-run company.
--------
U.N. Team Inspects Uranium Mine
December 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Inspectors.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- International nuclear monitors drove six hours across the Iraqi desert to a remote uranium mining site in one of five inspections mounted Tuesday, a marked expansion of the U.N. field operation. Still more inspectors arrived in Baghdad.
Iraq's chief liaison to the U.N. teams said the Iraqis have found the inspectors to be working in a ``calm and professional'' manner. But he again complained about last week's surprise inspection of one of President Saddam Hussein's palaces, calling it an American-inspired provocation.
Also Tuesday, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan rejected U.S. skepticism of Baghdad's report to the U.N. Security Council on its weapons program, and said an attack on his country would be a challenge to the whole region.
``Any aggression against Iraq is the start of more aggression on the neighborhood,'' he told Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network, which showed only a brief segment of the interview.
In Washington, Pentagon officials said allied aircraft bombed an Iraqi surface-to-air missile system Tuesday after Saddam's forces moved it into a restricted zone earlier in the day.
The attack hit a site called Qalat Sal, near the Tigris River city of Al Amarah, about 165 miles southeast of Baghdad. It was unclear if Iraqi forces fired at U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the southern no-fly zone. But U.S. officials say the mere presence of air defense systems inside such zones represents a threat to coalition pilots.
Tuesday marked the end of the second week of field missions for the U.N. inspectors, who returned to Iraq after a four-year absence under the Security Council resolution requiring the Baghdad government to give up any remaining chemical or biological weapons, and shut down programs to make them. Iraq denies it has such weapons or programs.
Later Tuesday, more inspectors -- about 25 were expected -- arrived on a flight from a U.N. rear base on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, bolstering the U.N. inspection staff to about 70. U.N. officials said they expected to have about 100 inspectors comprising eight teams by year's end.
The Iraq field missions were expanding as U.N. analysts began combing through 12,000 pages of documents submitted by Iraq to the United Nations over the weekend, detailing past programs of weapons of mass destruction and what it says are purely civilian programs today in the chemical, biological and nuclear areas.
Inspections in the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, led to the destruction of tons of chemical and biological weapons, and to the dismantling of Iraq's program to try to build atomic bombs.
On Tuesday, reporters followed several cars of U.N. nuclear experts to mining operations at Akashat, in the desert near the Syrian border 250 miles west of Baghdad. The enormous complex surrounded by antenna posts, some broken, sat in an otherwise empty quarter of the desert. Reporters were unable to follow the inspectors inside.
The U.N. team presumably wanted to assess current Akashat operations considering what was found there by U.N. nuclear inspectors in the 1990s.
In the 1980s, the phosphate deposits at Akashat had been exploited for their uranium content as well as for fertilizer, producing some 100 tons of uranium over six years.
Also Tuesday, other nuclear inspectors headed again for al-Tuwaitha, Iraq's major nuclear research center, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi Information Ministry officials reported. It was their third recent visit to the sprawling complex, where Iraqi scientists in the 1980s worked on developing technology for enriching uranium to levels usable in bombs.
A third U.N. team was reported to have visited a veterinary medicine establishment at Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad -- presumably the Amariyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, site of biological weapons-related research in the 1980s.
That institute is reported to have expanded its storage capacity to an extent the U.S. government says exceeds Iraq's needs. Iraq contends the facility only makes and stores human vaccines.
Other inspectors were reported to have gone Tuesday to a military training center in Baghdad and to an industrial facility at al-Furat, just south of Baghdad. The purposes of those visits were not immediately known.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said it would be ``naive'' to believe Saddam plans to comply with U.N. demands for disarmament. He also restated the readiness of the United States and Britain to take military action against Saddam.
``If there is a breach and Saddam doesn't comply, then we are prepared to take action,'' Blair was quoted as saying in the Financial Times.
In an interview published Tuesday in the weekly al-Rafidayn, Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief Iraqi liaison, said of the inspectors' ``behavior'' that ``we're satisfied with it so far because it is calm and professional.''
Iraqi officials have complained sharply, however, about the U.N. inspection Dec. 3 of Baghdad's al-Sajoud palace, one of Saddam's many presidential palaces.
``The visit took place under pressure from the United States of America to create a crisis or confrontation between Iraq and inspection teams, but this did not happen,'' Amin reiterated.
Such palace inspections contributed to the U.N.-Iraqi tensions that ended with the collapse of the previous inspection regime in 1998. The new U.N. resolution declares the monitors have unrestricted power to inspect such sites.
Asked how long he expects the new U.N. inspections to take, Amin said that if the inspection agencies are ``sincere,'' he thinks they should take eight months.
``Then the Security Council should suspend the sanctions imposed on Iraq and the monitoring process would continue,'' he said.
He was referring to international economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990, and to U.N. plans to establish a long-term system of monitoring Iraq's military-industrial complex -- via surveillance gear, required reports and periodic visits.
-------- korea
'North Korea threat part of U.S. regional strategy'
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
PINR Power and Interest News Report (PINR)
http://yt.org/article.php?sid=920
(PINR) -- North Korea's recent admission of enriching uranium for the purpose of creating a nuclear weapon may be an attempt to foil the U.S. strategy of keeping North Korea a public threat in order to facilitate the creation of the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system.
North Korea has been yearning to strengthen its economy that has been constrained by international regulations disallowing economic aid from U.S.-controlled multilateral financial institutions. Pyongyang was hoping the 1994 U.S. - D.P.R.K. Agreed Framework would facilitate this. Under the agreement, the United States lowered trade and economic barriers along with guaranteeing that two 1,000 megawatt light water reactors (LWR) would be built by 2003. For the United States, the purpose of the agreement was to decrease the likelihood North Korea would create nuclear weapons with nuclear waste created by its graphite-moderated nuclear reactors. Graphite-moderated nuclear reactors contain a plutonium reactor, which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make nuclear weapons; it is more difficult to convert LWR waste into weapons-grade material.
Contrary to the agreement, construction of the LWRs is far behind schedule. The first reactor is not expected to reach completion until at least 2008 if there are no further delays, even though the 1994 agreement specified that both reactors would be built by 2003. The holdup has prompted North Korea to take bold actions hoping to keep the project on target. The first such action took place in 1998 when North Korea test fired a Taepo-Dong-1 missile which resulted in the project being even further delayed. But this action did not directly violate the agreement. Even as recently as February 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that North Korea has so far "stay[ed] within the agreement." Despite this, the construction of the LWRs remained behind schedule.
In addition, the Bush administration demanded that North Korea open its borders to nuclear inspections. However, the 1994 agreement clearly states that North Korea does not have to allow inspections until a "significant portion of the LWR project is completed," which by consensus has not been done. Therefore, the recent admission by North Korea of enriching uranium may be another attempt to force the United States to hasten the production of the LWRs.
North Korea has further reason to doubt U.S. sincerity in living up to the Agreed Framework. It came as a surprise to North Korea when they were labeled as part of the "axis of evil," a term used to justify possible U.S. military action. By admitting to a nuclear weapons program, North Korea may be hoping to initiate new negotiations. North Korea could possibly offer to give up their bomb program if the U.S. lives up to its commitments of normalizing ties, releasing aid, and allowing North Korea access to international financial institutions.
The Bush administration may not be interested in removing North Korea from the threat list. A perceived North Korean threat is necessary to justify building the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system, intended to counter China's growing military and political power. With China's economy growing at seven percent, it is only a matter of time before it dwarfs Japan in power and strategic influence. This worries sectors of Japan's government, especially the military establishment, and also concerns the Bush administration, who do not want to see U.S. regional power and economic interests threatened by China. Since neither the U.S. nor Japan are willing to admit to building the new missile system to counteract a Beijing threat, North Korea is currently being used as the primary reason for creating the TMD in Japan.
In addition to the TMD, the U.S. is also discussing the implementation of the Navy Theater Wide Defense (NTWD) system that could be installed on U.S. and Japanese Aegis warships. These mobile missile defense systems could severely weaken China's military threat and reduce Beijing's political clout. China is concerned that its ballistic missiles, pointed at Taipei to prevent their independence, could be rendered ineffective by a NTWD protecting Taiwan. While official recognition of China's threat to the U.S. would cause unwanted political ramifications, the touting of North Korea as a public threat provides a convenient justification for the development of both these new missile defense systems.
China is warily monitoring North Korea and U.S. relations. China is considered North Korea's closest ally, largely because China is protecting its southern border from unwanted influence. If North Korea should become politically unstable, it could prompt U.S. forces to move north from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) -- where 37,000 U.S. troops help separate North and South Korea -- to fill any power vacuum created by a government breakdown. Such a move would cause instant conflict with China; therefore, China has both a vested military and political interest in maintaining their support of North Korea.
Besides North Korea and China, resistance to this U.S. strategy is coming from South Korea, which hopes to create stronger ties with North Korea in preparation for future reunification. The prospect of worsening relations with Pyongyang is not only scorned in Seoul, but is also feared.
North Korea has the fourth largest military in the world with over 1.2 million armed personnel compared with only 650,000 in South Korea. Military spending stands at 20-25 percent of the North's GNP. Pyongyang has the second-largest special operations force in the world, including 55,000 troops trained to operate behind enemy lines in case of warfare.
Because these troops are massed on the DMZ, the South Korean capital of Seoul would probably be decimated in any major conflict. This danger, and the high cost of war, explains South Korea's open-door policy towards the North, typified by South Korean Prime Minister Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy. These divergent policies have created a political rift between South Korea and the United States.
The upcoming elections in South Korea may affect this conflict, especially if the less conciliatory Lee Hoi-chang is elected and takes a harder stance on North Korea. However, as mentioned above, it will be difficult for any South Korean government to be overly bold due to the tension along the DMZ.
The real variable is Japan. The U.S. has been counting on Japan's military establishment for support of the missile defense projects. The Koizumi government has been struggling to moderate between its military establishment -- closely linked to the United States -- and its regional allies such as South Korea, who want a less-hostile approach toward Pyongyang. Japan has been forced to reassess its diverging alliances; however, it is doubtful that it will risk straining ties with its largest export market, the United States.
Constrained by these alliance pressures, it is unlikely that the U.S. will risk direct military confrontation with North Korea. At the same time, Washington, keeping a wary eye on growing Chinese military and political influence, also considers it prudent to maintain North Korea as a perceived threat -- at least until the new Theater Missile Defense and Navy Theater Wide Defense systems are in place to help maintain the balance of regional power in favor of U.S. interests.
Erich Marquardt drafted this report; Matthew Riemer, Gillian Norman contributed.
[The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an analysis-based publication that seeks to, as objectively as possible, provide insight into various conflicts, regions and points of interest around the globe. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. PINR seeks to inform rather than persuade. This report may be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source, http://www.pinr.com. All comments should be directed to content@pinr.com.]
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Livermore Lab Creates New Division
December 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Livermore-Lab-Security.html
LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has created a new division dedicated to homeland security, lab officials announced Tuesday.
Founded in the Cold War, Livermore has traditionally focused on the threat of nuclear war. Director Michael Anastasio said its location -- close to San Francisco and Silicon Valley -- also makes it a good site for fighting the threat of domestic terrorism.
``This is a rich and fertile area in science and technology and also it's a rich and fertile source of targets for potential terrorism,'' he said.
Parney Albright, senior director of research and development for the White House's Office of Homeland Security, praised the new division.
The Livermore division, which has a budget of about $50 million for the first year, will be under control of the lab, but will work closely with the newly created Department of Homeland Security.
``This is a big step in the direction that we've been asking all the labs to head toward ... marshaling a cadre of people and activities focused on homeland security,'' he said.
The lab also rolled out for public inspection two computerized anti-terrorism tools.
One allows users to create a database of buildings, stadiums or other centers that could be targets. The system also has an inventory of more than 1,000 toxic substances with details on how the substances affect people as well as treatment and cleanup information.
The other computer tool demonstrated Tuesday allows agencies to ``build'' a setting, such as an airport, downtown area, sports stadium, and put in as much detail as they want, including how many windows a building has. They then program in a simulated emergency, such as an earthquake or chemical spill, see how buildings or people are affected and formulate emergency plans based on those simulations.
The simulation system was used to help plan security for the Winter Olympics in Utah.
On the Net:
Livemore: http://www.llnl.gov
-------- new york
Officials Question Security Of A-Plant
December 10, 2002
New York Times
By WINNIE HU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/nyregion/10NUKE.html
BUCHANAN, N.Y., Dec. 9 - The Westchester County executive, Andrew J. Spano, and other opponents of the Indian Point nuclear plant questioned its security today, after the release of a report that said some security guards there had expressed concerns after Sept. 11 about adequately protecting it.
Mr. Spano, who has called for the closing of Indian Point, said he should have been told earlier about these security concerns, which were documented in an internal report completed in January for the plant's owner, the Entergy Corporation. The New York Times published an article about the report on Sunday, after receiving a copy from Riverkeeper, an environmental group that opposes the plant.
In response to the report, Mr. Spano said he planned to call for the creation of a federal security force for nuclear plants - similar to the one for airports - when he meets with county executives and representatives from the Office of Homeland Security at a conference in Washington on Wednesday.
"At this point, the security of the plants should be under Homeland Security," he said. "You know, we have the airports under Homeland Security, and they're not half as vulnerable as nuclear plants."
Last year, legislation was introduced in Congress to federalize security at nuclear plants around the country, but it was not passed. Several Congressional aides said today that the issue appeared to be dead, though some elected officials, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, have continued to seek more protection for nuclear plants.
"We know that terrorists turned airplanes into missiles," Mrs. Clinton said in a statement. "We don't want them to turn power plants into nuclear weapons."
In the past year, widespread fears that nuclear plants could become terrorist targets have prompted towns and villages across the New York region to pass resolutions calling for the closing of Indian Point 2 and its twin reactor, Indian Point 3, in this town about 40 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.
Last month, Mr. Spano set aside $500,000 in his budget for a study to assess how the county could buy Indian Point, or seize it by eminent domain if necessary, to replace the nuclear operation with a natural-gas plant. Entergy has said it does not intend to sell the site.
In the internal report, some security guards complained that they were inadequately trained, that other other guards reported for duty drunk, and that security drills were carefully staged to ensure that mock attackers were repelled. These guards also said that they were forced to work long hours and that their electronic security equipment often malfunctioned.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, said today that a federal security force was unnecessary because the company had already addressed most of the issues cited in the report. He pointed out that Indian Point had also met security requirements set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
For instance, Mr. Steets said, armed National Guard troops and state troopers have been monitoring the entrance to Indian Point since the Sept. 11 attacks, and concrete barriers and barbed-wire fencing have been installed around the plants. In addition, he said, Entergy plans to hire 30 new security guards in January in response to complaints from some guards that they are being asked to work too much.
"We hope that people will recognize that this is a year-old report, and the findings in it have been largely addressed," Mr. Steets said.
He said that such internal reports were intended to assess and improve the performance of the plant's employees, and were not normally made public.
But Mr. Spano and other officials said that they should have been informed about this particular report, given their repeatedly voiced concerns about the safety of Indian Point. Michael Kaplowitz, a county legislator who has held several hearings on Indian Point this year, said he was shocked and angry to learn about the report.
"Here all along they've been telling us that it's safe, secure and vital," he said of Entergy officials. "And frankly, they've been fibbing about the security part."
Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that the agency's inspectors had reviewed the internal report when it was completed and that the agency had ordered all nuclear plants, including Indian Point, to substantially increase their security.
"We've been fully engaged in the security issues there," he said. "We know there are still some concerns about fatigue on the part of the security guards, and we're looking at that."
-------- us politics
U.S. Gives Assurance On Iraq Document
Allies Told Report Isn't Trigger for War
By Karen DeYoung and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32687-2002Dec9?language=printer
As U.S. experts began to copy and comb through Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons of mass destruction program, the Bush administration moved yesterday to assure skittish allies that it does not intend to use the document as a trigger to begin military operations against Iraq, U.S. and foreign officials said.
"We're now on common ground with the administration" in a position of "measured skepticism" but no "crazed or precipitative reactions" about Iraq's contentions that it has no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs, said a senior diplomat from one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The Americans have said "they might use it as a piece of the puzzle, but not as a trigger," another diplomat said. "If they want to use it even as a puzzle piece, they have to say why they don't trust the declaration, and whether they are going to give intelligence to disprove it, or ask the inspectors" to verify Iraqi claims.
The reassurances were accompanied by a substantial softening of recent administration predictions that the document will be riddled with lies constituting a material breach of the U.N. resolution that was adopted unanimously last month. "We have not made any conclusions about the declaration," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
"We want to be very deliberate as we move through and look at this document to determine, with the international community, what this indicates about Saddam Hussein and his disarmament," Fleischer said. Although U.S. military preparations for war continue, Fleischer said "the president hopes to avoid" that eventuality. "Combat," he said, "is the last thing this president wants to engage in."
The Iraqi government contends that it has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction programs.
One of only two copies of the declaration provided by Iraq Saturday ended up in U.S. hands yesterday, despite Friday's Security Council decision that U.N. inspectors should review it before it was distributed to governments.
The United States received the document after it persuaded Colombia's U.N. ambassador, the current president of the Security Council, to turn it over. The council's other permanent members -- Britain, France, Russia and China -- acquiesced to the U.S. move.
U.S. officials said their first order of business was to make copies of the voluminous paper document for the other four council members. U.S. intelligence officials spent much of the day transferring the declaration onto CD-ROMs, which the other four began receiving last night. The 10 rotating members of the council will eventually receive versions with sensitive weapons information excised.
The second original copy was retained by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which are conducting inspections in Iraq. They began their examination of the document yesterday, and made tentative plans to report their initial conclusions to the council on Dec. 19.
U.S. weapons and intelligence experts have been gathered in a central location in the Washington area, most likely CIA headquarters in Langley, to review the document. Divided into sections covering chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and long-range missiles prohibited by the United Nations, the U.S. copy is to be parceled out in what one White House official called "one-inch squares" to experts in the various fields.
"We don't know what the elephant will look like when we put the pieces together," the official said.
According to informed sources, and an Iraqi-prepared index of the document made available in New York, a major portion of each section repeats the last presentations the Iraqi government made to U.N. inspectors before they withdrew from Iraq in late 1998. The 2,400-page portion on Iraqi's nuclear program, for example, includes about 2,100 pages that initial review indicated was an exact copy of the earlier document.
A separate portion of the nuclear section, totaling about 300 pages and written in Arabic, is labeled as "covering the period from 1991 to 2002" and is divided into segments describing the major departments of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization and a list of nuclear facilities. Another portion covers secondary sites, including a series of companies. Additional data supplied by Baghdad on CD-ROMs also has to be integrated into the narrative, sources said.
The 118-page portion of the chemical declaration that details the post-1998 period includes major and secondary sites. An annex of 841 pages is described as listing dual-use facilities that manufacture commercial products but could produce weapons, and all Iraqi commercial chemical plants that are unrelated to prohibited arms facilities.
The 528-page biological declaration is described as containing more than 100 pages of answers to questions raised by inspectors in the procurement and production areas through 1998. The index of the biological update section, with no page numbers given, promises data through 2002, including information on biological research, development and production facilities that are dual-use and those unrelated to bioweapons. A two-part annex containing supporting documents totals 732 pages.
Nearly half of the 1,240-page section on ballistic missiles is said to detail Iraq's missile projects and the status of "current activities." Another 113 pages cover forms and initial designs of systems, with an additional 11 pages on the "relationship" of the missiles with prohibited activities in other fields, likely a reference to missiles designed to carry chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
Another chapter promises procurement details on 11 missile projects, including relations with other "states, companies, establishments and main suppliers."
As required by last month's resolution, there is a four-page chronological summary on "remotely piloted aircraft," a project inspectors believed might involve an unmanned chemical or biological weapon delivery system.
Only one Security Council member objected to the agreement to turn over the document to the United States. Syria's U.N. ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, accused Colombian Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso of breaching council protocol by deciding that only the permanent five members would have access to the entire document. A number of senior administration officials were said to be unhappy at Friday's decision to give the inspectors first crack at the document, as suggested by UNMOVIC Chairman Hans Blix. Saturday morning, U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte called Valdivieso to ask that the document be shared with the council's five permanent members.
A close U.S. ally that receives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual U.S. aid, Colombia also consulted with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. On Sunday night, U.S. diplomats accompanied Valdivieso to Blix's office to inform him of the decision.
Lynch reported from the United Nations. Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
----
Bush told to reveal all on Iraq
By Caroline Overington,
Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in New York and agencies
December 10 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/09/1039379785088.html
The United States is under intense international pressure to release the information it says it has about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The Iraqi Government, the weapons inspectors in Baghdad and some members of the US Congress have all urged President George Bush to reveal what he says he knows.
The chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, Bob Graham, compared the moment to the Cuban missile crisis, saying that, just as John F. Kennedy had come forward with information about Soviet missile sites in Cuba in 1962, Mr Bush needed to come forward with information about Iraq.
The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, said the US should "put our best evidence forward, especially if it's a question of Saddam Hussein again denying all of these assertions".
On Sunday Iraq gave United Nations weapons inspectors an 11,000-page declaration it says proves it does not have weapons of mass destruction.
The document was delivered just as inspectors began publicly complaining that their search for weapons had been frustrated by Washington's refusal to tell them where to look.
The Iraqi Government has apparently taken note of the strained relations between Washington and the inspectors, saying Mr Bush should put his cards on the table.
Mr Bush has said it is not up to him to prove Iraq has prohibited weapons, but for Iraq to prove that it does not.
The US was reported angry at the UN's refusal to release a copy of the document to it or to any other member of the UN Security Council because it was worried it contained material that was too dangerous for broad consumption.
However, in a surprise decision the 15-member security council agreed late on Sunday to give the permanent members - the US, Russia, France, China and Britain - full access to the document. This means that Washington will not have to wait to begin its own analysis and translation of the document.
UN officials said the permanent members had the expertise to assess the risk of proliferation and other sensitive information.
The Security Council must decide if there are any errors or omissions in the declaration that would place Iraq in breach of its obligation to disarm.
Iraq has also confirmed what the International Atomic Energy Agency has long suspected: that Saddam previously tried to make a nuclear bomb, but that it never reached the assembly stage.
A senior adviser to Saddam, General Amir al-Saadi, said on Sunday that there was no guarantee Iraq would have succeeded in making the bomb.
"It is for others to judge; it is for the International Atomic Energy Agency to judge how close we were. If I tell you we were close, it is subjective, maybe [self-] promotional."
The Iraqi document is being analysed and translated at UN headquarters in New York and IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
The agency's director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said it would begin a "painstaking and systematic cross-checking of the information provided by Iraq against information the IAEA already has".
The agency concluded in 1998 that Iraq had not achieved its aim of producing a nuclear weapon, but that its program was "well-funded, well-staffed and aimed at the production of a small arsenal of nuclear weapons".
The agency removed all known weapons-grade nuclear material from Iraq and destroyed the country's nuclear weapons facilities and equipment.
--------
U.S. Gives Assurance On Iraq Document
Allies Told Report Isn't Trigger for War
By Karen DeYoung and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32687-2002Dec9?language=printer
As U.S. experts began to copy and comb through Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons of mass destruction program, the Bush administration moved yesterday to assure skittish allies that it does not intend to use the document as a trigger to begin military operations against Iraq, U.S. and foreign officials said.
"We're now on common ground with the administration" in a position of "measured skepticism" but no "crazed or precipitative reactions" about Iraq's contentions that it has no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs, said a senior diplomat from one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The Americans have said "they might use it as a piece of the puzzle, but not as a trigger," another diplomat said. "If they want to use it even as a puzzle piece, they have to say why they don't trust the declaration, and whether they are going to give intelligence to disprove it, or ask the inspectors" to verify Iraqi claims.
The reassurances were accompanied by a substantial softening of recent administration predictions that the document will be riddled with lies constituting a material breach of the U.N. resolution that was adopted unanimously last month. "We have not made any conclusions about the declaration," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
"We want to be very deliberate as we move through and look at this document to determine, with the international community, what this indicates about Saddam Hussein and his disarmament," Fleischer said. Although U.S. military preparations for war continue, Fleischer said "the president hopes to avoid" that eventuality. "Combat," he said, "is the last thing this president wants to engage in."
The Iraqi government contends that it has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction programs.
One of only two copies of the declaration provided by Iraq Saturday ended up in U.S. hands yesterday, despite Friday's Security Council decision that U.N. inspectors should review it before it was distributed to governments.
The United States received the document after it persuaded Colombia's U.N. ambassador, the current president of the Security Council, to turn it over. The council's other permanent members -- Britain, France, Russia and China -- acquiesced to the U.S. move.
U.S. officials said their first order of business was to make copies of the voluminous paper document for the other four council members. U.S. intelligence officials spent much of the day transferring the declaration onto CD-ROMs, which the other four began receiving last night. The 10 rotating members of the council will eventually receive versions with sensitive weapons information excised.
The second original copy was retained by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which are conducting inspections in Iraq. They began their examination of the document yesterday, and made tentative plans to report their initial conclusions to the council on Dec. 19.
U.S. weapons and intelligence experts have been gathered in a central location in the Washington area, most likely CIA headquarters in Langley, to review the document. Divided into sections covering chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and long-range missiles prohibited by the United Nations, the U.S. copy is to be parceled out in what one White House official called "one-inch squares" to experts in the various fields.
"We don't know what the elephant will look like when we put the pieces together," the official said.
According to informed sources, and an Iraqi-prepared index of the document made available in New York, a major portion of each section repeats the last presentations the Iraqi government made to U.N. inspectors before they withdrew from Iraq in late 1998. The 2,400-page portion on Iraqi's nuclear program, for example, includes about 2,100 pages that initial review indicated was an exact copy of the earlier document.
A separate portion of the nuclear section, totaling about 300 pages and written in Arabic, is labeled as "covering the period from 1991 to 2002" and is divided into segments describing the major departments of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization and a list of nuclear facilities. Another portion covers secondary sites, including a series of companies. Additional data supplied by Baghdad on CD-ROMs also has to be integrated into the narrative, sources said.
The 118-page portion of the chemical declaration that details the post-1998 period includes major and secondary sites. An annex of 841 pages is described as listing dual-use facilities that manufacture commercial products but could produce weapons, and all Iraqi commercial chemical plants that are unrelated to prohibited arms facilities.
The 528-page biological declaration is described as containing more than 100 pages of answers to questions raised by inspectors in the procurement and production areas through 1998. The index of the biological update section, with no page numbers given, promises data through 2002, including information on biological research, development and production facilities that are dual-use and those unrelated to bioweapons. A two-part annex containing supporting documents totals 732 pages.
Nearly half of the 1,240-page section on ballistic missiles is said to detail Iraq's missile projects and the status of "current activities." Another 113 pages cover forms and initial designs of systems, with an additional 11 pages on the "relationship" of the missiles with prohibited activities in other fields, likely a reference to missiles designed to carry chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
Another chapter promises procurement details on 11 missile projects, including relations with other "states, companies, establishments and main suppliers."
As required by last month's resolution, there is a four-page chronological summary on "remotely piloted aircraft," a project inspectors believed might involve an unmanned chemical or biological weapon delivery system.
Only one Security Council member objected to the agreement to turn over the document to the United States. Syria's U.N. ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, accused Colombian Ambassador Alfonso Valdivieso of breaching council protocol by deciding that only the permanent five members would have access to the entire document. A number of senior administration officials were said to be unhappy at Friday's decision to give the inspectors first crack at the document, as suggested by UNMOVIC Chairman Hans Blix. Saturday morning, U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte called Valdivieso to ask that the document be shared with the council's five permanent members.
A close U.S. ally that receives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual U.S. aid, Colombia also consulted with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. On Sunday night, U.S. diplomats accompanied Valdivieso to Blix's office to inform him of the decision.
Lynch reported from the United Nations. Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Rumsfeld courts east Africa as key partner in global war on terrorism
The Associated Press
12/10/2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-10-rumsfeld-africa_x.htm
ASMARA, Eritrea (AP) - Sharpening the U.S. focus on the Horn of Africa as a haven for terrorists, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived in the Eritrean capital on Tuesday to discuss expanding military cooperation and to visit American troops training in neighboring deserts.
Rumsfeld was visiting Ethiopia and Djibouti as well as Eritrea. The three impoverished nations are neighbors in an unstable region that lies across the Red Sea from Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden.
Later in the week, Rumsfeld was headed to the oil-rich sheikdom of Qatar in the Persian Gulf to get a firsthand look at a new U.S. military command post headed by Gen. Tommy Franks.
Franks and hundreds of his battle staff are conducting an exercise this week to test the command post's ability to communicate with its naval, land and air components elsewhere in the Gulf. It is widely seen as a practice run for a possible American-led war against Iraq, although no combat troops are involved.
In Asmara, the Eritrean capital, Rumsfeld met with President Isaias Afwerki and other government officials. Afterward, Isaias told reporters his country was not looking for U.S. handouts but was determined to help the United States in any possible to fight a global war on terrorism.
Asked whether the offers included allowing U.S. troops on Eritrean soil, Isaias replied, "That is the least of them."
Later Rumsfeld flew to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where he was meeting Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
In an interview en route from Washington, Rumsfeld said the Bush administration was pleased at the cooperation of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti in the war on terrorism. He left open the possibility of expanding the U.S. military presence in the area but said no decisions were imminent.
"I'm not here to engage in transactions," he said. "I'm not here to put pressure on anybody. I'm here to demonstrate that the United States values what these countries are doing."
So far the United States has only agreed to use Camp Lemonier in the desert hinterland of Djibouti.
The port at Assab, on the southern tip of Eritrea, is one of the largest on the Red Sea. When Franks - commander of all U.S. forces in the Horn of Africa, the Persian Gulf and Central Asia - visited Assab in March the government offered to host American forces on its soil.
"It's not so much a matter of saying 'no,'" Rumsfeld said, adding, "It's something that evolves over time."
The Pentagon recently established a specially tailored military force, called Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, to oversee anti-terrorist operations in the region. It is led Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Sattler, whose headquarters is the USS Mount Whitney, a command ship newly arrived in the area.
Rumsfeld indicated the United States is in the Horn of Africa for the long haul. He said his decision to visit the area should be seen as an indication that the war on terrorism is truly global.
"The fact that it is going to be a long war and the fact that it is a distinctly different kind of war is emphasized by the fact that we absolutely require the cooperation of countries of all sizes on each continent on the face of the Earth if we are going to be successful," he said.
During the Cold War the United States operated a listening post from Asmara. It was known as Kagnew Station and run by the Army Security Agency, a forerunner of the National Security Agency.
In neighboring Djibouti, hundreds of American troops have been training for months. Many are at Camp LeMonier, a French air base. Although some U.S. combat forces operated from Djibouti during the conflict in Somalia in the early 1990s, it has taken on added importance in the war on terrorism.
Djibouti is close to Yemen and on the Bab el Mandeb Strait, a choke-point where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. It's not far from Yemen's port of Aden, where the USS Cole was attacked by terrorists in October 2000, killing 17 sailors.
Rumsfeld said he has no doubt that some al-Qaeda terrorists are hiding in the Horn of Africa, although he mentioned no numbers and named no countries.
-------- arms sales
N. Korean Ship with Scuds Seized En Route to Yemen
December 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-ship.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A North Korean ship carrying at least 12 hidden Scud missiles and bound for Yemen has been stopped in the Arabian Sea, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
``The ship was stopped on Monday by Spanish authorities who stopped it in the Arabian Sea about 600 miles from the Horn of Africa. ... It was believed to be bound for Yemen,'' one official told Reuters.
He said U.S. intelligence had been tracking the ship closely for weeks. CNN reported that the ship had been boarded by U.S. military specialists who were trying to stabilize the cargo.
U.S. officials said the 12 Scud missiles were hidden beneath concrete.
-------
Ship Reportedly Carrying Scud-Type Missiles Is Intercepted
December 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/international/10WIRE-MISSILE.html
WASHINGTON -- A ship carrying a dozen Scud-type missiles from North Korea was intercepted in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday, U.S. officials said. They said the missiles were believed to be headed for Yemen.
The ship was stopped and boarded about 600 miles east of the Horn of Africa, the officials said.
U.S. intelligence had been tracking the vessel closely, said U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The ship contained about a dozen short- to medium-range missiles, similar to the Scud missiles used by Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, the officials said. It also contained missile parts.
The ship allegedly carrying the missiles was stopped by two ships from the Spanish Navy participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led global anti-terrorism coalition, said Alberto Martinez Arias, a spokesman for Spain's Defense Ministry.
Crews from the Spanish ships, the Navarra and Patino, stopped the unflagged ship "Sosan" east of the island of Socotora and called U.S. authorities for assistance, Martinez said. The Spanish Navy stopped and boarded the ship after its crew refused to identify themselves.
The North Korean captain of the Sosan initially told Spanish officials the ship was carrying cement. The Scuds were discovered shortly thereafter, Martinez said.
The ship was being held in the area while the search continued and as U.S. experts made sure that any explosive materials were neutralized, U.S. officials said.
Officials said the shipment did not appear to be headed for Iraq.
Yemen has been identified by the United States as a nation that has harbored terrorists, although its government has been an ally of the United States in the war against global terrorism. Yemen's port of Aden was the site of the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole by terrorists, which killed 17 sailors.
Yemeni officials contacted late Tuesday said they had no information concerning the ship, its contents or its boarding by international forces.
The boarding of the ship occurred as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was traveling in the area.
It was unclear precisely what missiles were aboard the seized vessel. North Korea has built and exported at least two missiles in the Scud class: the Scud B and the Scud D, or No Dong.
Scud B missiles were produced in large numbers by the former Soviet Union and ended up in Iraq and North Korea, among other nations. The missiles are very inaccurate, often break up in flight and have a range of less than 200 miles.
The Scud D, or No Dong, missile produced by North Korea is advanced compared with the Scud B. It has a range of about 840 miles and can carry a conventional, chemical or nuclear warhead. Iran and Pakistan use modified versions of the No Dong, and Pakistan's are fitted to carry nuclear warheads.
-------
Israel helping China build new fighter jet
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, December 9, 2002
http://216.26.163.62/2002/ea_china_12_09.html
A new report says Israel has helped China develop a new fighter jet built with Russian components and is weighing a Chinese request for an Israeli radar system.
A report by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation said China has sought Israeli radar for its new J-10 Chengdu fighter-jet. The J-10 is said to make extensive use of foreign components, largely from Russia, Middle East Newsline reported.
Military discussion between Israel and China have not been in the news since the Jewish state cancelled the Phalcon airborne early-warning radar to Beijing last year. The cancellation came after heavy U.S. pressure. Health insurance for the self-employed: Special offer The report also cited "possible Israeli design assistance" for China's HQ-9/FT-2000 surface-to-air missile and the SONG conventional submarine.
The report said the Chengdu J-10 multirole fighter was built with Israeli help. Israel, Fisher said, provided assistance in developing the airframe and control system.
The engine for the J-10 "will be a Russian Saturn-Alyuka AL-31FN and its radar likely from Israel or Russia, or influenced by their technology," the report, authored by Richard Fisher, said. "The new SD-10 active guided air-launched anti-aircraft missile uses the radar and data link from Russia's very capable Vympel R-77, combined with a Chinese missile motor."
Fisher, a senior fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, is the managing editor of China Brief. The publication focuses on China's emerging strategic power.
Fisher, in a report entitled "Military Sales to China: Going to Pieces," said Beijing seeks to build indigenous weapons with imported foreign-made components. The report said Israel's Phalcon radar was to have been placed on a Russian Il-76 cargo plane.
"The PLA [Chinese military] was hoping to make the Phalcon, which used modern and effective phased-array technology, a centerpiece of its developing military information architecture, and a critical force-multiplier for the PLAAF [air force]," the report said. "The PLA timetable was set back several years. The embarrassment of powerlessness over the situation would have been avoided had the system been built in China, had China been able to develop it."
The report said China's military has still not mastered what it termed the current intermediate stage of coproduction. It cited a 1996 contract to coproduce 200 J-11 aircraft, a version of Russia's Su-27SK fighter-jet. The first two jets were so poorly assembled that Russian technicians had to rebuild them.
But the J-11, produced by China's Shenyang, has been improved and now has a better finish that Russian-made Su-27s. Shenyang will also modify its J-11s with a new Chinese radar that will make them multi-role fighter and attack capable.
The report said China plans to obtain a range of systems and technology from Britain. They include micro- and nano-satellites and airborne early-warning radar for the Y-8 aircraft.
----
China Suggests Missile Buildup Linked to Arms Sales to Taiwan
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32700-2002Dec9?language=printer
BEIJING, Dec. 9 -- President Jiang Zemin suggested during his meeting with President Bush in October that China could link its deployment of short-range missiles facing Taiwan to U.S. arms sales to the Taiwanese military, a senior Chinese official said.
The official recently described the offer as "sincere and well thought through." The proposal marked the first time China has offered to link the missiles with arms sales and, the official said, "created new space for cooperation" between Washington and Beijing.
The offer seemed to call the U.S. government's bluff on the arms sales issue; for years U.S. officials have used China's substantial and growing missile deployment in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces as the main reason for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. As recently as March, a senior U.S. administration official said a decrease in China's missile deployments would be a precondition for any limit on U.S. arms sales to the island, which lies 100 miles from China's southeastern coast.
But Bush administration officials, responding to a reporter's inquiries in Washington, seemed to have little interest in the Chinese proposal, using words that suggested it was a non-starter as far as they were concerned.
"We will fulfill our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act," an administration official said. "We have made our position clear, that any issue between Taiwan and China should be resolved without resorting to force or coercion and instead through political dialogue."
The official added that the Chinese idea was "never formally proposed," either during Bush's meeting with Jiang at the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex., or in other meetings. "I don't think anyone would consider it an offer," he said.
Officials suspect that China deploys about 400 missiles within range of Taiwan's cities, airports and other installations, a buildup that is increasing by about 50 missiles a year. The missiles represent the one area in which China has achieved military dominance in the Taiwan Strait. While growing stronger, the Chinese air force and navy are still no match for Taiwan's forces.
China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has vowed to attack the island of 23 million people if it declares formal independence. Taiwan is a democracy, and successive governments have said that unification with China could be considered only if China undertakes significant political reforms.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that Jiang raised the missile issue with Bush in October, but they have not given details of what was discussed. The Chinese official said the subject was raised again in informal talks between Chinese leaders and a delegation led by former defense secretary William J. Perry last month in Beijing.
"I believe the Chinese leadership would not make an offer like this without having thought it through," the Chinese official said. "It was a very constructive idea. It creates a new space for discussion."
Previously China had said that any issue involving its missile deployments was an internal matter and could not be discussed. China demanded that the United States cut its arms sales to Taiwan unilaterally and offered no sweeteners.
Missile deployments and arms sales to Taiwan "are linked," said the official. "They are interactive."
U.S. relations with Taiwan were codified by the Taiwan Relations Act, which vaguely commits the United States to protect Taiwan's interests. Since it was passed in 1979, successive administrations have interpreted it to mean that the United States would sell Taiwan billions of dollars worth of military hardware.
However, the United States also agreed to limit arms sales to Taiwan in a joint communique signed in 1982, during the first Reagan administration, as long as China pursued unification with Taiwan peacefully. Successive administrations have pointed to China's missile deployments, and its general military buildup, as indications that China is not committed to peaceful unification.
The missile offer is part of a series of Chinese moves designed to "further stabilize" U.S.-China relations, the official said. China has toned down its criticism of Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, and has significantly modified its policy toward the island. It also has toned down criticism of the United States. Its biennial white paper on national security issued today lacked most of the anti-American vitriol that filled the paper in 2000.
China has also dropped its precondition that Taiwan must first accept the "one China" principle before direct shipping and airline links can be inaugurated.
The Chinese official expressed some frustration at U.S. policymakers who, he said, believe China's recent "good behavior" is a result of the Bush administration's tougher policy toward China and clearer support of Taiwan. Under Bush, the long-standing policy of "strategic ambiguity" about whether the United States would respond to an unprovoked attack on Taiwan has been replaced with a much clearer commitment to defend the island.
"China has been making serious efforts to improve its ties with the United States," he said. "Anti-terrorism is important to the United States, and China's support is important to the United States on this front. But you can't expect to request us to support you on counterterrorism and then overlook or even hurt our national security on this other issue."
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
----
U.S. enlists Algeria in terror battle
Arms sale overcomes rights record qualms
Barry James/IHT
International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=79694
PARIS The United States will sell weapons to the Algerian government for the first time, a senior U.S. official said Monday, despite earlier reservations about its record on human rights and the fact that the move takes Washington into a traditional area of French foreign policy.
William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, was reported in Algiers as saying the government was drafting a proposal to Congress to step up military assistance to the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
"We are putting the finishing touches to an agreement to sell Algeria military equipment to fight terrorism," Burns said, according to Reuters.
The United States already is helping to train Algeria's military and security forces to fight Islamic militants, and had indicated that more assistance would soon become available.
Burns said that Washington "has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism," and that increased military support was aimed "at intensifying security cooperation" with the North African country.
Burns, who is on a visit to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, is the second senior U.S. official to visit Algiers in a month. Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, last month assured the Algerians that more security cooperation would be forthcoming.
Burns did not say what kind of weapons the United States was willing to supply, but the Algerian authorities have long complained that a shortage of attack helicopters and night-vision equipment was hampering the country's efforts to end a 10-year Islamic insurgency that is estimated to have cost more than 100,000 lives.
These are precisely the kind of weapons that France has refused to sell its former colony, said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French center on the U.S. at the French Institute for Foreign Affairs, of IFRI. He said the fear was that putting such weapons in the hands of the Algerian security forces could incite terrorist reprisals in France.
Parmentier said that, in contrast to France, the United States had a more relaxed attitude to Algeria's Islamic fundamentalists in 1992 when the military-backed regime canceled a general election the Islamists were poised to win. In the past, the United States has criticized the ruthless government crackdown on radical Islam.
But like another former pariah state, Pakistan, Algeria now seems to have become an ally in the war against terrorism, analysts said.
"When you talk of terrorism," it is clear that the Americans are ready to do anything," Parmentier said.
The Algerian authorities have long complained that they have been misunderstood in their tough response to the terrorist threat, and have accused Western countries like Britain of worsening the situation by harboring Algerians accused of being terrorists or instigators of terrorism.
Now, an Algerian newspaper, Le Matin, said recently, the United States or European countries "no longer believe in negotiations or complacency toward the Islamists, who could threaten their security."
The official press in Algeria a couple of months ago reported the killing there by security forces of a senior Al Qaeda operative, Emad Abdelwahid Ahmed Alwan, from Yemen. There was speculation that he had been sent to make contact with the Islamist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, one of two radical groups at war with the secular government, which is on Washington's list of terrorist organizations. Alwan, also known as Abou Mohamed, played an important role in regrouping North African veterans of the war in Afghanistan following the U.S.-backed defeat of Soviet forces.
It was unclear whether the United States had consulted France before announcing stepped up military aid to Algeria. But a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry said there was no reason for consultation since, "the United States is a sovereign country and so is Algeria."
Timothy Garden, an analyst on defense and security issues with the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said that if France had not been consulted, "it would not be helpful in terms of cooperation." He said that Europeans in general were not in favor of selling weapons that could be used in domestic conflicts, "while America is not bothered even about Israel's use of F-16 fighters in an internal policing role."
-------- asia
Malaysia criticizes Australia's strategy against terrorism
12/10/2002
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-10-malaysia-terror_x.htm
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Malaysia criticized the United States and Japan on Tuesday for supporting Australia's stance that it has the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists outside its borders.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said last week he was prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes on terror targets overseas. American and Japanese officials voiced support in separate interviews Tuesday.
Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz called the Australian position a threat to national sovereignty and said any strike on Malaysian soil would be considered an act of war.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who is visiting the Asia-Pacific region, told the Australian Financial Review that Australia's stance is "a wake-up call to some neighbors that they have to better police themselves."
Rafidah countered that Malaysia "did not need alarm bells or wake-up calls from anyone."
Japan's counterterrorism ambassador, Hiroshi Shigeta, was the first leading Asian official to support Howard, saying that he was "comfortable" after Howard's remarks were clarified by Australian diplomats, the Australian newspaper The Age reported.
But Rafidah said Japan should not be "too comfortable unnecessarily."
"I hope they don't have to face an Australian attack one day, if they know that in Japan there is terrorism," Rafidah said. "As you know, Japan has its own share of terrorist action."
Rafidah said that Southeast Asian countries agreed that Howard's statement was a threat to the sovereignty of other nations, but "maybe the Japanese translation was different. I don't know."
Shigeta said Howard's statement - which included a call to amend the U.N. Charter to allow pre-emptive strikes - was not a threat to countries in the region.
"I consider Australia is in favor of respecting international law," Shigeta was quoted as saying.
Rafidah said Malaysia had struck hard against suspected terrorists in recent months. The country has jailed 70 suspected militants since mid-2001, many of them members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to al-Qaeda and implicated in several plots and attacks in the region.
-------- business
MARKET PLACE
Northrop-TRW Deal Hits a Last-Minute Snag
December 10, 2002
By LESLIE WAYNE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/business/10PLAC.html
Just as shareholders are poised to vote on Northrop Grumman's $7 billion bid for TRW Inc., the deal has taken an unexpected twist.
Northrop and the Justice Department - prodded by the Lockheed Martin Corporation and the Pentagon - are in 11th-hour negotiations on a consent decree to assure the government that Northrop will not abuse its control over important, and often classified, satellite technology.
These negotiations are unsettling for a deal that was announced six months ago. While most analysts said they believed that the talks would not derail the merger, the analysts were surprised the two sides had not yet come to an agreement this late in the game. Northrop has already said this sticking point could push back the deal's closing by a week or so from the deadline, which is tomorrow.
"The government has been convinced by Lockheed to throw a clinker in front of this deal," said Paul H. Nisbet, a military analyst with JSA Research Inc. "The big deal is whether the government and Northrop can work out a consent decree, and I think they will."
At issue between Northrop and the government are sensors that go inside a variety of satellites used for military and commercial purposes. After the merger, a combined Northrop-TRW, which both make these sensors, will have monopoly control on their sales. Lockheed makes everything else needed to get satellites up into the sky - the launching vehicles, spacecraft, ground systems - but it will have to buy the sensors from Northrop.
Northrop is also in the satellite business, and, since it makes satellites as well as the sensors, it can become a one-stop shop for this growing business. Still, it is more than mere competition that has Lockheed and the Pentagon worried. The real fear is that Northrop could charge Lockheed high prices for the sensors, putting Lockheed at a cost disadvantage when the two companies compete head-to-head in satellites, potentially stifling competition.
"There's an important issue and we hope it will be resolved," said Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman. "It's at Justice now. It was something that we found during our review of the deal, and we have heartburn with it."
The issue of sensors is real enough for Northrop to drag its feet in signing off on a consent decree proposed by the Justice Department. But, there are many who suspect that if Lockheed is not making mischief - and some think it is - this last minute snag, at least, reflects a new competitive dynamic between the corporate rivals.
Four years ago, Lockheed and Northrop's own plan to merge was unexpectedly scuttled by the government. After the thwarted merger, Lockheed was left strong and Northrop weak. Since then, Northrop has clawed its way back with one big acquisition after another, among them Litton Industries and Newport News Shipbuilding. Once the TRW deal goes through, Northrop will have grown from being one-third of the size of Lockheed after the proposed merger to a company of roughly the same size - each will have revenue of around $26 billion.
"These negotiations don't sound like anything that would kill the deal," said Byron K. Callan, an industry analyst with Merrill Lynch. "But it does raise the question about what could be so difficult that Northrop would not want to put this deal to bed and be done with this overhanging risk. As for Lockheed, I don't think it is doing anything but acting in its own best interest."
Lockheed says it is not opposing the merger, it just wants access to the sensors, also called payloads. "We don't oppose the merger providing we obtain assurances that Lockheed will continue to have access to all payloads," said Tom Jurkowsky, a Lockheed spokesman.
Randy Belote, a Northrop spokesman, said Lockheed should not worry. "We're working with the Justice Department," he said. "We are optimistic about the progress."
This back-and-forth is taking place amid a general decline in arms-industry stocks, including those of Lockheed and Northrop, despite additional spending for the war on terrorism.
In June, for instance, Northrop was trading as high as $132 a share; it has since fallen to around $95 a share. Lockheed has fallen to around $50 a share from around $70 a share in June. The only good news for Northrop is that the fall in stock prices has knocked $1 billion off the purchase price of TRW.
When military shares peaked earlier this year, many investors pulled their gains out. Also, many in the market are discounting that there will be a war with Iraq, especially since weapons inspectors have turned up no signs yet that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction. Even if a war does occur, most weapons and munitions to be used have already been purchased by the Pentagon, and military contractors make money only on new orders.
"War is not automatically a good thing for these stocks," said David Gremmels, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners. "We've seen a lot of sector rotation out of defense stocks, and the conventional wisdom now says war with Iraq seems a little less likely today than six months ago."
Still, the skirmishes between Lockheed and Northrop are gripping to many investors. The last-minute actions taking place in Washington show how much Northrop has gained and Lockheed has lost. Since the government scuttled Lockheed's takeover of Northrop, Lockheed has lost several important contracts, among them orders to build the next-generation spy satellite, destroyer, weather satellite and space telescope as well as for electronic upgrades on the C-130 transport, which it makes.
Now, Northrop holds the lock on the satellite sensors that Lockheed needs.
"This shows how fortunes have reversed in this industry," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a public policy organization in Arlington, Va. "Northrop has gained ground and Lockheed has lost."
----
Tech Contractors Cite Rising Demand
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32622-2002Dec9?language=printer
For more than a year, the region's technology contractors have been waiting in vain for the big boost in technology spending that was supposed to come from the government's new focus on homeland security. Could the early stages of the boom be arriving?
Yesterday, California-based Computer Sciences Corp., with 8,000 local employees, announced that it would be hiring 400 employees, mostly in the D.C. area, to satisfy an increase in demand for information technology security. "Since mid-summer, there has been a noticeable upturn in demand for information security-related services among our clients in the U.S. government and commercial sectors," said Joe Stafford, vice president of CSC's Global Information Security Services.
Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman Corp.'s information technology division plans to hire 400 to 500 employees in the next month and 4,000 next year. Fairfax-based STG Inc., which provides technology and engineering services, said it will add 700 jobs over the next three years.
In September a subsidiary of computer reseller Micro Warehouse Inc. opened offices in Ashburn, adding 40 employees to help it focus on government clients. The company will be adding 100 workers to that office over the next six months, officials said.
"Any kind of hiring is good news right now," said Stephen S. Fuller, a public policy professor and regional economist with George Mason University. "This is just indicative of the strength of the local economy."
The increase in government spending expected after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been slow to materialize despite President Bush's budget proposal, which called for spending on IT security to reach $4.2 billion in fiscal 2003, compared with $2.7 billion this year. Overall, information technology spending would reach $52.4 billion, up from $47.8 billion, under the budget proposal.
The delay in approving the next year's budget and the Office of Management and Budget's cautious approach to spending has translated into a disappointing year for many contractors, industry officials said.
"People were looking for the windfall after 9/11 for this kind of activity, and it hasn't showed up to the degree that has been expected," Fuller said. But now some are beginning to report an increase in business, exemplified by CSC's hiring announcement. "It was slower to emerge but will last longer than had been anticipated," he added.
Lagging spending from the private sector makes the anticipated public spending even more welcome. CSC's revenue in the commercial sector declined 8 percent during its second quarter, which ended in September, down to $959 million from more than $1 billion during the year-earlier period. In August, the firm asked 66,000 employees to volunteer to take extended leaves of absence -- for at least six months -- at 20 percent of their pay. Only a "relatively small portion of them did," according to a company spokesman.
In addition, the firm reduced its workforce by 1,000 employees during the past year through attrition and layoffs, the spokesman said.
But government work can be troubling, too. Earlier this year, CSC quibbled with San Diego County over its progress on a seven-year, $644 million contract to provide all of the county's computer and telephone services. The country declared CSC in default after it didn't reach several contractual milestones and withheld a payment until a settlement was reached. "Since then things have been on track," a county spokesman said.
Still, government contracting reflects the company's fastest growth sector. Revenue from government agencies increased 17 percent during the second quarter, to $772 million.
And that doesn't include more than $200 million in contracts the company's Enforcement, Security and Intelligence unit won during the past three months, much of it with the intelligence community. Many of the new hires will work on those contracts and will need security clearances, a company spokesman said.
----
Government Allows Northrop, TRW to Merge
By Mark Weinraub
Reuters
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34347-2002Dec10?language=printer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. on Tuesday said it had reached a deal with U.S. antitrust authorities that will allow its $6.7 billion purchase of TRW Inc. to go ahead after shareholder approval.
Northrop said in a statement that the agreement with the Justice Department does not require it to sell any assets.
The company did not provide other details about the consent decree, but said it ensures that the merger will not harm competition in the electronic satellite payload industry. Sources close to the negotiations have said the decree would spell out remedies in the event Northrop violates the order.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said she had seen Northrop's statement, but had no immediate comment and could not confirm that the consent decree had been finalized.
Shares of Northrop were up $1.84, or 1.9 percent, to $97.19 while TRW's shares were up $1.09, or 2.1 percent, to $51.99 in Tuesday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Northrop's shares have fallen about 23 percent since it signed the deal with TRW in July, slicing about $1 billion off the original value of the acquisition. TRW's stock has fallen nearly 11 percent during the same period.
APPROVAL PROCESS DRAGGED ON FOR MONTHS
The approval process has dragged on for months as regulators examined whether the merged entity would control the specialized radar systems and electronics used in military satellites.
If the deal closes, rival Lockheed Martin Corp. would have no choice but to buy the specialized satellite radars from the combined company.
Northrop, the world's largest shipbuilder and the maker of the unmanned Global Hawk spy plane, wants TRW for its military space business. That business, seen as a hot property as the United States looks to shore up homeland defense, led to a bidding war for TRW when it announced it was open for sale.
With the shareholder votes set for Wednesday, Northrop took the unusual step of announcing an agreement on the consent decree before antitrust regulators made their own announcement.
Asked why the company rushed out its announcement, Northrop spokesman Randy Belote said, "Because we struck an agreement on the essential terms and obviously we wanted to announce this before the shareholders' meetings."
The European Union antitrust authority in October approved the deal, which would create a company that would vie closely with Boeing Co. for the position as No. 2 U.S. defense contractor behind Lockheed.
TRW has already signed deals to sell parts of itself that Northrop does not want, such as its auto parts unit and its aeronautical systems business.
(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington)
-------- canada
U.S., Canada Reach Agreement to Let Troops Cross Border
Continental Terrorism Concerns Cited
By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 10, 2002; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32621-2002Dec9.html
TORONTO, Dec. 9 -- U.S. troops could be deployed to Canada and Canadian troops could cross the border into the United States if the continent is attacked by terrorists, according to an agreement announced today by U.S. and Canadian officials.
"The aim . . . is simple: to save lives," Canadian Defense Minister John McCallum said in announcing the creation of the so-called Planning Group, a joint task force in which Canada and the United States will work on contingency plans to defend North America.
As an example of a case in which U.S. troops might enter Canada, McCallum cited a hypothetical biological attack in Vancouver. U.S. forces in Seattle might be able to respond faster than Canadian forces in Ontario, he said.
Under the agreement, any U.S. troops in Canada would be under Canadian command, while Canadians crossing the border would be under U.S. command.
The State Department said both countries are convinced that cross-border military cooperation is vital to enhancing the security of the continent. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the department said in a statement, "the overall threat to the North American continent from the air, land and sea has greatly increased, including the potential for the use of weapons of mass destruction delivered by unconventional means, by terrorists or others."
The Planning Group will initially coordinate maritime surveillance and the sharing of intelligence about potential maritime threats. The group will be based at the Colorado Springs headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which is run jointly by Canada and the United States to detect missiles and warn of attacks from the air against North America.
The agreement has prompted debate here about a potential erosion of Canada's sovereignty. U.S. dominance has long been an issue in this country, which sits next-door to the world's only superpower. But McCallum said there should be little concern. "We are in control," McCallum said, "by putting Canada in a position to work with the United States to defend North America."
Peter Stoffer, who speaks for the opposition New Democratic Party on defense issues, disagreed, saying that the Americans "could walk right over us. Our military is so short of funds and so short of planning."
Canada has long been under pressure from Washington to increase military spending. The country ranks toward the bottom among the 19 NATO countries in terms of military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, allocating about 1.2 percent in 2000, according to NATO. Last year, a report by a group of retired Canadian military leaders concluded that Canada's military had been so weakened by spending cuts that it could not defend the country in a war.
-------- china
Taiwan Question Eludes U.S. - China Talks
December 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-China.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The first high-level military discussions in years between the United States and China helped the two sides understand each other but produced no agreement on the hot-button issue of Taiwan, U.S. officials said.
Chinese military officials did say they would try to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, however, Pentagon officials said.
Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official who headed the U.S. delegation at Monday's meeting in Washington, said the talks were useful and professional. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of the general staff of China's People's Liberation Army, led the delegation from Beijing.
``They were real discussions. They were not just stilted set pieces,'' said Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. ``We came away with some additional understanding of the personalities on the other side and the ideas on the other side.''
On Taiwan, the talks were not so harmonious. Feith said Pentagon officials objected to China's buildup of missiles across the Taiwan strait, while China responded with objections to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. The United States does not have diplomatic ties with Taipei but is committed to defending the island from Chinese attack.
In a biennial military report given to U.S. officials Monday, China said it ``will not foreswear the use of force'' to reunite Taiwan with the mainland.
``China's armed forces will unswervingly defend the country's sovereignty and unity, and have the resolve as well as the capability to check any separatist act,'' said the report, titled ``China's National Defense in 2002.''
While lunching on salmon, Chinese officials also presented a detailed proposal for military-to-military contacts with the United States, Feith said. He said it was too soon to offer a U.S. reactions to the proposals.
The Pentagon wants the exchanges to be more than just port calls and photo opportunities, Feith said.
``If the exchanges are structured properly, they will serve our interests, our common interests, providing insights, to reduce the possibility of mistakes, of misunderstanding,'' Feith said.
The talks are the latest sign of warming in military relations between the two countries. A low point was April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. Navy surveillance plane over the South China Sea.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was angered by China's accusation that the Navy's EP-3 surveillance violated Chinese sovereignty by landing at a Chinese airfield after the aerial collision. He also was unhappy that China detained the crew for 11 days and refused to let the United States repair and fly the plane off the airfield. The Chinese fighter jet crashed in the sea, killing the pilot.
But relations have improved since then, with U.S. Navy ships resuming port calls in China last month and increasing contacts among higher level officials.
The Chinese said they would try to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Feith said. The Chinese also insisted they no longer sell missile technology or equipment to North Korea, Feith said.
``I don't know whether they're going to take concrete steps,'' Feith said, adding, ``There is a common interest that exists between China and the United States ... to stop the North Korean nuclear program.''
The United States has been consulting with China and other countries in the region since Pyongyang's surprise admission in October that it has a secret uranium enrichment program to make nuclear weapons. Shipments of fuel oil to North Korea have ended. Under a 1994 agreement, North Korea had promised to end its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for two civilian nuclear power plants and the fuel oil aid.
On the Net:
CIA factbook on China:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html
----
U.S. and China Resume High-Level Military Talks
December 10, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/international/asia/10CHIN.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - The Pentagon opened high-level talks with the Chinese military today for the first time since President Bush took office, the latest sign of improved American-Chinese relations.
At the Pentagon today, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, and Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the deputy chief of the Chinese general staff, discussed a range of major issues that have been the source of past tensions, including Taiwan, North Korea, Iraq and military exchange programs.
In a news conference afterward, Mr. Feith said that although there were no major breakthroughs, the renewal of the annual sessions - known as the Defense Consultative Talks - was an important step to reducing the threat of conflict between the militaries.
"The talks were useful," Mr. Feith said. "They were real discussions. They were not just stilted set pieces. And that's good."
The talks began during the Clinton administration but were suspended after the collision of a Chinese fighter jet and an American surveillance plane off Hainan island in April 2001, leading to a tense standoff.
But Bush administration officials say relations have warmed markedly since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and the White House urged the Pentagon to renew the talks.
Mr. Feith said the United States delegation had urged the Chinese to increase their efforts to stop the export of Chinese technology that could be used to produce nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in countries like North Korea, Syria and Iraq. He said the Chinese had made no promises, but had asserted that they were no longer providing missile technology to North Korea.
"They have said that they want a nuclear-free Korean peninsula," Mr. Feith said. "We agree on that. And it is clear that they have more lines of contact into North Korea than we do."
As expected, there was far less agreement on Taiwan. Mr. Feith said the Chinese had refused to renounce the use of force against Taiwan, and had made no offers to reduce the number of ballistic missiles they have pointed across the Taiwan Strait.
He also said the two delegations had discussed the next step for inspections in Iraq, though he offered no details.
General Xiong, a hard-liner who once warned that China could strike Los Angeles with nuclear weapons if the United States intervened in a conflict over Taiwan, has also asked to meet with the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. But White House officials could not confirm that a meeting had been scheduled.
-------- colombia
In Colombia, a mission for peace
By Steve Salisbury
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021210-85797464.htm
VILLA DE LA PAZ, Colombia - With prospects for peace in Colombia as remote as at any time during the nation's 38-year-old civil war, hope is being kept alive by a most unusual mediator - an American missionary who has known the Marxist rebels since they kidnapped him almost two decades ago.
Russell Martin Stendal, 47, a Protestant missionary from Minneapolis, had been working in Colombia as a rancher and operating a two-Cessna flying service for about eight years when he was taken captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in August 1983.
He was released five months later, making him more fortunate than some of the 120 Americans who have been kidnapped in Colombia, mostly by guerrillas. In 1999, FARC rebels kidnapped and killed three American activists who were building a school for an Indian tribe. The FARC later called the slayings a "misunderstanding."
Instead of fleeing Colombia, Mr. Stendal, his Colombian wife, Marina, and their four children continue to live in the country. They spend much of their time at a countryside home on the edge of the grounds of the defunct Lomalinda Translation Center, near Puerto Lleras in Meta province.
Despite a State Department warning that the FARC extorts from, kidnaps and kills U.S. citizens in Colombia, Mr. Stendal and his younger brother, "Chaddy," have acted as an informal "back channel" and sometimes as mediators in Meta among the FARC, the vigilante United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), local communities and the Colombian army. The brothers do this as part of their efforts to evangelize all the warring parties.
"Divine providence put us in the situations where we have had trajectories for many years with both sides that has led to the trust that there is now," Mr. Stendal said.
In 1964, the year the FARC was founded, the Stendal family moved from Minnesota to Colombia. Russell Stendal was 8. His father, Chad Stendal Sr., a civil engineer, was among the founders of the Lomalinda Translation Center of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in Meta.
SIL was set up by Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate the New Testament into Colombia's Indian languages. According to Russell Stendal, the Lomalinda center grew to have nearly 100 households and 300 volunteers - mostly Americans.
But in the mid-1970s, SIL became the target of unsubstantiated rumors that it was a U.S. government entity, and in 1981, one of its members, Chester Bitterman, was kidnapped and killed by guerrillas of the now-disarmed and legalized April 19 Movement. Another American missionary was kidnapped by the FARC in the mid-1990s, and SIL's Lomalinda center closed about a year later, Russell Stendal said.
"It is astonishing we are all still alive," his father said. "Of the 23 closest personal friends of Chaddy, 20 were killed and three fled the country." Russell Stendal and his brother bought five small houses at Lomalinda, and there Russell Stendal started his first radio station in Colombia, Marfil Stereo at 88.8 FM. That was nearly four years ago.
Eighty percent of the station's broadcast content is secular, and 20 percent religious, Russell Stendal said. He later added Radio Alcaravan, 1530 AM , and a short-wave station, the Voice of Your Conscience at 6010 on the 49-meter band, which can be heard in the evening in North America and Europe. These two stations are primarily religious.
"Our programming isn't typical Christian programming. It is not trying to get people into our church and not into somebody else's church," Russell Stendal said.
"We are trying to bring people into a personal relationship with God, no matter to what group they belong," said his mother, Patricia Stendal.
"We produce programs that have solid values, and that deal with attitude and a change of heart, of being tolerant of other people's views and ideas," Russell Stendal said.
Mr. Stendal's broadcasting career grew out of his writing his first book, "Rescue the Captors," which he began while a captive of the FARC. The Stendal family said it paid $55,000 for Russell Stendal's freedom, down from the $500,000 ransom demand. The Stendals say they also "donated" a year later more than 80 percent of Chad Stendal Sr.'s 74,000-acre cattle ranch in Meta to landless Indians and peasants - an action that gained the family good will from the guerrillas.
Russell Stendal's story reached President Reagan, and he was invited to the White House. Mr. Reagan's director for domestic drug abuse policy met with him and opened doors for Mr. Stendal to make an anti-drug documentary and a two-year speaking tour of American high schools and colleges.
In the 1980s and early '90s, the late Rev. Rafael Garcia Herreros, a Colombian priest and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, enlisted Russell Stendal in joint Protestant-Catholic outreach efforts toward outlawed groups. Mr. Stendal tells of driving Father Garcia to secret meetings with the late Medellin cocaine cartel leader Pablo Escobar, where the priest persuaded Escobar to surrender.
Except for rustling Stendal cattle in the past two decades, the FARC and the AUC have not bothered the family, Russell Stendal said.
That's "because they see we are not political," said Chad Stendal Sr., who lives with his wife in Bogota. "And they also see that we physically help a lot of people, no matter who they are. We have helped a lot of wounded while they were dying."
Last month, Villa de la Paz, a community of about 600 people nearly 50 miles south of Lomalinda in an area dominated by the FARC, held a "Forum for Peace." Villager Hilberto Saenz says the Stendal brothers agreed to help organize it.
Residents complained of a deteriorating situation. Some accused the AUC and soldiers of collaborating in a campaign of killings against FARC sympathizers in nearby towns, and they feared it would reach Villa de la Paz.
"We cannot deny that there are guerrillas here," said the village treasurer, a 58-year-old man who asked not to be named. "But we are not guerrillas. So, we would like the government to allow the food, medicine and things necessary to live to enter town."
Some observers question the need for such a lightly inhabited area, where coca is heavily cultivated, to receive frequent, large deliveries of gasoline, which can be used to extract unrefined cocaine. One villager said the gasoline tankers also smuggle out the coca alkaloid in liquid form.
Villa de la Paz was founded in 1986 by peasants and coca growers, under the watch of the FARC - Colombia's largest guerrilla group, with an estimated 14,000 to 17,000 troops - and this has put its residents in the FARC-AUC-and-army cross fire.
In May, say villagers, laundress Luz Dari Caiceido was killed by government helicopter gunfire on the edge of Puerto Toledo, 18 miles south of Villa de la Paz.
Three guerrillas were said to be on the outskirts, but "bullets were hitting the town," said Edilma Marin, who was working at Puerto Toledo's communal pharmacy that day and says she saw Miss Caiceido's bullet-riddled body. Mrs. Marin said the victim was a destitute single mother who left five young children and a tar-paper shack.
Perhaps 5,000 people came to Villa de la Paz during the Nov. 23 peace forum, including truckloads of unarmed FARC guerrillas in civilian clothes. It was a hot, sunny day just north of the equator. About 400 people packed a tin-roofed village hall, and hundreds more filled the nearby streets. The smell of veal roasting on spits filled the air.
The hall's pink concrete walls were adorned with anti-government and anti-Plan Colombia banners. Speaker after speaker denounced abuses by the army and the vigilantes, but not by the guerrillas.
After one old man criticized the United States as the greatest human rights violator in history, a village leader close to the FARC took the microphone to reply. "The United States has two classes," he said, "the exploiters and the exploited. We have Americans with us here, and we honor them."
Russell Stendal, who was introduced as one of "the exploited," then took the mike.
"Someone told me, 'If our enemies are fearsome, then we are going to be more evil,'" he said. "Instead of being a contest of who can be the worst, why not see who can do the most good?"
His listeners applauded when Russell Stendal mentioned his belief that the FARC's 43rd Front, which controls the area, didn't have a policy of kidnapping during the past five years - unlike the FARC in general.
After the forum, people crowded around the American's red Chevy Suburban, where assistants passed out some of the 7,000 religious books and Bibles given away that day. Marxism is atheist, but many of the FARC's rank and file were raised as Catholics or Protestants.
Nacho, 27, an officer of the FARC's 43rd Front, received Russell Stendal and others just outside Villa de la Paz two hours after the peace forum. He sat with the visitors in plastic chairs under a thatched roof near a small wooden house. Trucks occasionally roared by, raising dust from an adjacent dirt road.
Accompanied by about 10 armed guerrillas in camouflage fatigues, Nacho said the idea of a regional peace forum was something to be considered. Three years of virtually fruitless national peace talks between the FARC and the previous Colombian president, Andres Pastrana, collapsed 10 months ago.
But Nacho, who said he is a 10-year FARC veteran, dismissed Russell Stendal's idea that each warring group give up 150 rifles to be melted into a peace monument. "We need the rifles," he replied, laughing.
His coppery face frowned in evident disagreement when Hamilton Castro, president of the private Pro-Colombia Foundation, said: "Sincerely, if the FARC commits terrorist acts, then it is terrorist. If the state commits terrorist acts, then it is terrorist."
Nacho responded that it is a time of war, and that the FARC has a right to act against its enemies, through means such as bombings and executions. "We are not terrorists," he said. "We are fighting for the people."
He said it would be hard to renew peace negotiations as long as the FARC was designated as "terrorist" and U.S. extradition orders were pending against its leaders.
Getting into the driver's seat of a green sport utility vehicle, Nacho smiled and shook hands, saying he enjoyed the visit. Mr. Stendal handed him a camouflage-covered Bible.
The next day, Russell Stendal's team left Villa de la Paz. At an army checkpoint en route to Puerto Lleras, a soldier snatched a small peace pennant affixed to Mr. Stendal's side mirror. When Mr. Stendal complained, a sergeant ordered the soldier to give it back.
Later, among the riverside ruins of Puerto Lleras, a soldier named Alex searched Mr. Stendal in a routine security check and recognized his ID card.
Alex pulled out a well-worn copy of Mr. Stendal's book - "The Beatitudes, God's Plan for Battle" - and asked him to autograph it.
-------- iraq
U.S., British Jets Attack Iraq Air Defenses
December 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-strike.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and British warplanes on Tuesday attacked an anti-aircraft missile system in a ``no-fly'' zone in southern Iraq in the first such raid in a week against Iraqi air defenses, the U.S. military said.
Responding to ``Iraqi threats against coalition aircraft,'' warplanes bombed a mobile surface-to-air missile system south of Al Amarah, approximately 165 miles southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. Central Command said from the Macdill Air Force base in Florida.
The military was evaluating the damage from the attack that occurred at approximately 2 p.m. in the zone, the statement said. giving no details.
After three raids in four days at the start of the month, Tuesday's strike was the first since Dec. 4 when the United States bombed elements of an air defense system in a no-fly zone in the north of the Gulf nation. U.s. military officials said the attack was made after Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft guns at jets policing the zone.
The tit-for-tat exchanges have gone on since the 1991 Gulf War but have increased sharply in recent months as the United States has organized a military buildup within striking distance of Iraq ahead of a possible invasion of Iraq.
The latest air strike was the first since Iraq met a U.N. deadline last weekend to present the world body with a formal declaration of its weapons programs in accordance with a new U.N. resolution.
The attack also came as U.N. arms inspectors continued a new round of inspections of Iraqi sites under the resolution ordering Baghdad to prove it has given up any chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs.
The United States has said it could launch a military invasion of Iraq if President Saddam Hussein does not comply with the order to disarm.
Some U.S. officials have suggested Iraqi aggression against U.S. jets patrolling the zones could be a breach of the new U.N. resolution.
Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones, set up after the Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from possible attack by Iraqi forces.
Baghdad has charged the jets often strike civilian sites and kill innocent people, but U.S. officials say the jets never intentionally target civilians.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Chief of Staff Justifies Killing of Civilians
December 10, 2002
Palestine Media Center
Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
http://www.palestine-pmc.com/
"An Israeli army statement released after the meeting claimed that most of the harm caused to innocent people was a result of .." enlarge image
TEL AVIV - Israeli Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon on Sunday claimed that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) recent harming of Palestinian civilians was a consequence of dealing with a civilian population while fighting terror.
Addressing an IOF operational meeting, the general said most of these deaths were brought about by the complexity of operating in populated areas, Israel Radio reported.
An Israeli army statement released after the meeting claimed that most of the harm caused to innocent people was a result of the complexity of the situation in the territories and only a small number of incidents had been caused by a failure to follow standard procedure.
However, the Palestinian health ministry has revealed that during the past two years, IOF have killed 500 Palestinian children during their military offensives in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Moreover, and only hours after the meeting, however, a Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli occupation armys tank fire in the southern Gaza Strip while her three children were also wounded.
The mother and her children came under machinegun fire from tanks positioned near the neighboring illegal Israeli settlement of Rafiah Yam.
The victim, Nahla Akel, 41, was hit in the neck and soon after reaching the hospital she died.
Her two sons aged four and twelve, and a 15-year-old daughter were being treated for shrapnel wounds. Their lives were not in danger, hospital sources added.
----
Israel Vaccinates Soldiers and Health Workers
December 10, 2002
New York Times
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/international/middleeast/10ISRA.html
TEL AVIV, Dec. 7 - Israel has successfully vaccinated more than 15,000 soldiers and public health workers against smallpox on a voluntary basis since July with virtually no severe side effects, senior Israeli officials say.
In interviews, Israeli military and public health officials said the immunizations had been carried out under a crash program to protect the country from a possible Iraqi attack with smallpox or other lethal germs. As a result, thousands of the country's public health professionals are now prepared to immunize the entire country against the deadly virus within four days should a single smallpox case be diagnosed anywhere in the world.
The Israeli experience has encouraged vaccination advocates in the Bush administration, which has been debating a similar program for months, American officials said.
The Bush administration is expected to announce this week a decision to begin vaccinating up to 500,000 troops and an equal number of public health workers, law enforcement officials and others who respond to emergencies against the highly contagious virus. Before the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, it killed about