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NUCLEAR
Chinese general told threat against U.S. unacceptable
The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal
U.N. Sharpens Search for Iraqi Weapons
Iraq's arms in '91 confirmed
U.N. Official Won't Reveal Iraq Suppliers to the Public
One Proliferator at a Time
North Korean ship seized
Rumsfeld: N.Korea Is Biggest Missile Proliferator
Interceptor Rocket Fails in Missile Test
Rocket Fails in Missile Defense Test
U.S. Issues Warning to Foes in Arms Plan
Al-Qaeda planning uranium bomb: UN
Preemptive Strikes Part Of U.S. Strategic Doctrine
U.S. Sees Nuclear Deterrence Against WMD Attack
Bush Warns Iraq of Harsh Response
New bombshells at Los Alamos lab
White House steps over the line
MILITARY
U.S. military expands civil affairs
Afghan Army Demands Warlords Surrender Arms - Report
Rumsfeld Seeking New Allies to Oppose Al Qaeda and Iraq
Weapons Trade Open to All Who Can Pay
U.S. Allows Scud Missile Shipment to Continue to Yemen
Charges Issued in Smuggling of Parts to Iran
Man Charged in Military Part Export
Court Aids Defense Firms
TRW Approves Sale to Northrop Grumman
Northrop Says U.S. Agrees to Deal for Acquisition of TRW
China Suggests Missile Buildup Linked to Arms Sales to Taiwan
Iraq claims U.S. tampered with report
U.S. FIRMS EYE POST-SADDAM IRAQ
New Iraq Web site
Iraqi regime hiding scientists
Iran wants say in a post-Saddam Iraq
THE KURDS
Israel's Labor party cuts its doves
U.S. considers changes to treaty
Spain and U.S. Seize N. Korean Missiles
Scud missiles are ours, says Yemen
U.S. releases Yemeni missiles
EGYPT TURNS DOWN U.S. REQUEST FOR BASES
Spy Satellite Effort Viewed as Lagging
CIA prepares early analysis on Iraq report
Lawmakers approve report on intelligence overhaul
Senators Urge an Overhaul of U.S. Intelligence Operations
Turkey Names Its Price for Aid Against Iraq
What is the US military's Exercise Internal Look?
The War After Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
High court rules on felons' gun rights
Constitutionality of death penalty upheld
ENERGY AND OTHER
Canadian Lawmakers Advance Climate Pact as Discord Grows
'Politically Correct' Stem Cell Is Licensed to Biotech Concern
ACTIVISTS
With Warning, Carter Accepts Nobel
Carter Accepts Nobel and Gives Message on Iraq
From Coast to Coast, a Cry for Peace
SYRIA - Kurdish demonstrators charge discrimination
Day of Protests for Peace
Priests, peace activists attend Berrigan's funeral
The Radical Faith of Philip Berrigan
Remembering Phil Berrigan
15 Berber Protesters Arrested in Algeria
Cuban Dissidents Gather as Police Look On
Protests Held Across the Country to Oppose War in Iraq
Hollywood Performers Oppose War with Iraq
Iraq War Opponents Hold Small Rallies Across U.S.
Thousands Protest Oil Tanker in Spain
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
Chinese general told threat against U.S. unacceptable
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021211-27417625.htm
The White House told a visiting Chinese general yesterday that comments he made in 1995 suggesting China would use nuclear weapons against Los Angeles were unacceptable.
The discussion came during a meeting between Chinese Lt. Gen. Xiong Guankai, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, and White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
The meeting was part of the appeal by the Bush administration to warn China against making further nuclear threats and to make clear to Gen. Xiong that China should not miscalculate in thinking it could win an arms race with Taiwan, or that it could coerce the island into reunification.
An additional message for the general was that Chinese help in getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program is important to U.S.-Chinese relations.
Gen. Xiong is in Washington with a delegation of Chinese officials who met Monday at the Pentagon with defense officials as part of a strategic dialogue that had been put on hold after last year's aerial collision between a Chinese jet and U.S. EP-3E spy plane.
Miss Rice "chose to meet with Gen. Xiong to underscore our view of international security and particularly the issue of Taiwan," a senior administration official said of the meeting.
Other administration officials said plans for the meeting sparked a dispute among officials on the National Security Council staff who opposed the meeting because it would be viewed as rewarding a foreign general who threatened to attack the United States.
Gen. Xiong told former defense official Charles Freeman in 1995 that the United States would not come to Taiwan's defense in any conflict with China because it "cared more about Los Angeles than Taipei," the Taiwanese capital.
The remark was reported to the White House at the time as a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
Miss Rice and two aides met with Gen. Xiong and three other Chinese military officials in her office at the White House West Wing.
"She stressed that the United States does not support Taiwan independence but that we have the means and will to meet our commitments to Taipei," the senior official said.
Miss Rice also told Gen. Xiong that the administration is committed to its obligations under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which calls for the United States to meet Taiwan's defensive needs.
The Bush administration announced last year it was selling guided missile destroyers and submarines to Taiwan to bolster its forces against China's military buildup, especially of short-range missiles.
Miss Rice also said that "any differences must be resolved peacefully and without resort to force or coercion," the official said.
She said "there is no justification for the continued buildup of Chinese missiles along the Taiwan Strait," the official said, noting that "it is the Chinese buildup of missiles and other forces that increases tensions in the region."
"And we believe that enhancing peace and stability in the region should be begun with the end, and then the reversal of this buildup," the official said.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin suggested to President Bush in Crawford, Texas, in October that China would be willing to reduce the missile deployments opposite Taiwan if the United States curbed arms sales to Taiwan.
U.S. officials said the offer was an informal suggestion rather than a serious proposal.
-------- depleted uranium
The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal
By Harold Pinter
11/12/2002
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/12/11/do1101.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/12/11/ixnewstop.html
Earlier this year, I had a major operation for cancer. The operation and its after effects were something of a nightmare. I felt I was a man unable to swim bobbing about under water in a deep dark endless ocean. But I did not drown and I am very glad to be alive.
However, I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world.
"If you are not with us, you are against us," President George W. Bush has said. He has also said: "We will not allow the world's worst weapons to remain in the hands of the world's worst leaders." Quite right. Look in the mirror, chum. That's you.
America is at this moment developing advanced systems of "weapons of mass destruction" and is prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public declarations and its own actions is almost a joke.
America believes that the 3,000 deaths in New York are the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence.
The 3,000 deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through American and British sanctions which have deprived them of essential medicines are never referred to.
The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf war, is never referred to. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood.
The 200,000 deaths in East Timor in 1975 brought about by the Indonesian government but inspired and supported by America are never referred to. The 500,000 deaths in Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Argentina and Haiti, in actions supported and subsidised by America, are never referred to.
The millions of deaths in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are no longer referred to. The desperate plight of the Palestinian people, the central factor in world unrest, is hardly referred to.
But what a misjudgment of the present and what a misreading of history this is. People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back.
The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of America over many years, in all parts of the world.
In Britain, the public is now being warned to be "vigilant" in preparation for potential terrorist acts. The language is in itself preposterous. How will - or can - public vigilance be embodied? Wearing a scarf over your mouth to keep out poison gas?
However, terrorist attacks are quite likely, the inevitable result of our Prime Minister's contemptible and shameful subservience to America. Apparently a terrorist poison gas attack on the London Underground system was recently prevented.
But such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of schoolchildren travel on the Underground every day. If there is a poison gas attack from which they die, the responsibility will rest entirely on the shoulders of our Prime Minister. Needless to say, the Prime Minister does not travel on the Underground himself.
The planned war against Iraq is in fact a plan for premeditated murder of thousands of civilians in order, apparently, to rescue them from their dictator.
America and Britain are pursuing a course that can lead only to an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe. It is obvious, however, that America is bursting at the seams to attack Iraq.
I believe that it will do this not only to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government, but seem to be helpless.
Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to challenge and resist American power, Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's declaration - "We are not the doctors. We are the disease".
# The article is taken from an address given by Harold Pinter on receiving an honorary degree at the University of Turin
-------- inspections
U.N. Sharpens Search for Iraqi Weapons
Expanded Team Broadens Inspections to Remote Sites
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37254-2002Dec10?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 10 -- U.N. arms specialists today ramped up their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, augmenting their ranks to 70 inspectors and splitting into teams to conduct five simultaneous searches, including one of a remote uranium mine near the Syrian border.
The inspectors have become more assertive in their field visits over the past few days, breaking into small groups, moving in several directions and questioning Iraqi officials with a seemingly greater intensity, according to witnesses and Iraqis in charge of facilities that have been searched. A helicopter that will give the inspectors more mobility and greater ability to conduct surprise searches has arrived in Baghdad and should be operating this week, U.N. officials said.
As the high-stakes inspections entered their third week, 28 specialists from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, arrived here this afternoon aboard a U.N. cargo plane, joining seven of their colleagues and 20 experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency who landed on Sunday. The IAEA and UNMOVIC, which are sharing inspection duties, provided 15 inspectors and two team leaders, who have since left, for the first two weeks of field visits.
"We are deploying inspectors as fast as we can," said Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for the inspection operation.
U.S. officials last week criticized the pace of inspections and urged UNMOVIC and the IAEA to quickly increase the staff here. The Bush administration also questioned the strategy of starting inspections at well-known sites that had been visited by previous inspectors. Behind the U.S. complaints lay a vow by President Bush to disarm Iraq by force if President Saddam Hussein's government fails to do so voluntarily and, more broadly, an administration goal of "regime change," or destruction of Hussein's rule.
U.N. officials said the increase over the past two days is not the result of the U.S. pressure, but of the fact that weapons experts from around the world -- summoned by UNMOVIC after a Security Council resolution on Nov. 8 -- have now reported for work. The presence of 70 inspectors and reports that more are on the way appear to put the United Nations on track to meet its goal of having 80 to 100 inspectors in Iraq by Christmas.
The experts visited 11 sites today, bringing the total number visited since inspections resumed Nov. 27 to more than 30. Several sites visited over the past few days, including today's visit to the Saddam Center for Biotechnology in Baghdad, were not visited by previous inspectors.
Some of the sites, particularly the sprawling Tuwaitha nuclear installation, have required multiple visits. A team from the IAEA searched the heavily bombed facility, which stretches for several square miles and has scores of buildings, for the fourth time. They pursued a physical inventory of materials from Iraq's past nuclear program. Ueki said it likely would take two more days to complete the inventory.
Although the inspectors are working their way down a prearranged list of sites prepared by U.N. officials, Ueki said the contents of a voluminous arms declaration Iraq submitted over the weekend could shift the strategy. "After going through the declaration, they may make some adjustments to their inspection plans," he said.
Aside from an unannounced search of one of Hussein's palaces last week, the initial rounds of inspections have not prompted significant complaints here. In an interview published today in the weekly newspaper Rafidain, the chief Iraqi liaison to the inspections, Lt. Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, said Iraq is "satisfied with [the inspection process] so far because it is calm and professional."
Ueki said the inspectors still have not received a list of Iraqi scientists who have been involved in the country's nuclear, biological and chemical programs since the last inspectors left Iraq in 1998. The Security Council resolution requires Iraq to hand over such a list but does not specify a deadline.
The list is regarded by U.S. and U.N. officials as crucial in determining which scientists and weapons experts to interview. Bush administration officials have been pushing UNMOVIC to start conducting interviews soon, preferably by taking scientists and their families out of the country so they can speak freely.
The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said he has not formally asked Iraq to hand over such a list. Diplomats at the United Nations said Blix is waiting to receive more intelligence from the United States and Britain before making a formal request.
Iraq's Foreign Ministry condemned a decision by the Security Council's rotating president to give one of the two copies of Iraq's nearly 12,000-page declaration to the United States. In a statement, the ministry accused the U.S. government of "practicing an unprecedented blackmail operation" and suggested that it would try to alter Iraq's submission.
"This American behavior aims at manipulating the documents of the United Nations in order to find a cover for aggression against Iraq," the statement said.
Hussein was shown on TV meeting with his war cabinet, which included top military commanders and his sons, Qusay and Uday. Qusay, wearing a light gray suit and sitting at his father's right, and Uday, in a blue Nehru jacket, were the only participants not wearing olive-green uniforms. "Your heads will remain high with honor, God willing," Hussein told the officers, "and your enemy will be defeated." Among the 11 sites visited by the inspectors today was the Qaim phosphate complex, 240 miles northwest of Baghdad. The facility produced a type of refined uranium ore called "yellow cake" from 1984 to 1990 that played an important role in Iraq's nuclear program, which Iraqi officials say ended after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The facility was bombed during the war. Iraqi officials insist it no longer produces uranium. Ueki said a team of IAEA inspectors, which plans to continue the inspection at the plant on Wednesday, was verifying the status of destroyed equipment and trying to determine whether uranium extraction has resumed.
Other nuclear experts visited the Qaqaa explosives plant and the Furat chemical plant south of Baghdad. The Furat site was previously associated with Iraq's efforts to design and test gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
----
Iraq's arms in '91 confirmed
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021211-68416665.htm
President Bush's recent declaration that Iraq was close to making a nuclear bomb in 1991 has been bolstered by an unlikely source - Baghdad.
A key architect of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs has told reporters his quest for a nuclear bomb was nearly achieved when allied planes struck in January 1991, destroying much of the country's weapons-making facilities.
The statement of Iraqi Gen. Amar al Saadi also conflicts somewhat with the last assessment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which downplayed reports that Baghdad nearly built the bomb.
Gen. Saadi, a London-educated chemical engineer and top weapons adviser to Saddam Hussein, strongly suggested Iraq's well-funded nuclear weapons programs was close to a bomb in 1991. It marked the first public confession from a member of Saddam's inner-circle that the hard-line regime was bent on becoming a nuclear power.
"We haven't reached the final assembly of a bomb nor tested it," Gen. Saadi said, suggesting key components were ready for assembly. "So if you want to follow that, there's no guarantee that you would succeed. We don't know. It's for others to judge. It's for the IAEA to judge how close we were."
Then, in a bit of bravado that leads some Pentagon officials to believe Iraq deceived IAEA inspectors before 1991, Gen. Saadi said, "If I tell you we were close, it is maybe promotional."
In a press conference Sunday in Baghdad to explain Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration, Gen. Saadi said bomb makers had reached the point where triggers for a bomb were being made. He referred to one facility where the "final shaping of the device" was under way.
"Now, in the nuclear jargon, device is the - it's the bomb," he said.
Iraq's lengthy declaration, which reached the United Nations on Sunday night and is now being analyzed by U.S. weapons experts, contains 2,081 pages on Iraq's nuclear quest.
In a sense, Gen. Saadi's statement that Iraq came so close, but failed to build the bomb, shows how effective the Desert Storm air campaign was in destroying bomb-making sites. The allies further disrupted the program with the defections of key Iraqi scientists, who led the Vienna, Austria-based IAEA to secret caches thought safe by Gen. Saadi's department.
"The intelligence community is often well behind estimating when a country will have nuclear weapons and this appears to be another one," said a Pentagon official.
The CIA's latest assessment of Iraq's weapons program said that after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1991 he commenced a rush program to divert highly enriched uranium from nuclear reactors to hasten construction of a bomb. But Iraq only had a few months before the allies began the air campaign and the task was not completed.
"In the absence of inspections, however, most analysts assess that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear program - unraveling the IAEA's hard-earned accomplishments," the CIA said in October.
Mr. Bush often cites Iraq's desire to own nuclear weapons as a key reason to disarm the country.
He misstated one fact in September when he asserted that the IAEA's 1998 report said Iraq was six months away from the bomb. "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied - finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic - the IAEA - that they were six months away from developing a weapon."
Mark Gwozdecky, the agency's chief spokesman, later rebutted those remarks. "There's never been a report like that issued from this agency," he said.
But Iraqi Gen. Saadi's assessment on Sunday seems to support Mr. Bush's contention that Iraq was dangerously close in 1991 and could reach that point again, absent intense international scrutiny.
--------
THE WEAPONS DECLARATION
U.N. Official Won't Reveal Iraq Suppliers to the Public
December 11, 2002
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/international/middleeast/11NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 10 - Hans Blix, a chief of the weapons team here, told the Security Council today that he was not going to release the names of foreign arms suppliers that Iraq has listed in its weapons declaration because they could be valuable to United Nations inspectors as sources of information about Baghdad's programs.
Mr. Blix confirmed to the Council that there appeared to be bomb recipes in the hundreds of pages detailing Iraq's secret nuclear program, which was discovered by inspectors in 1991 and deactivated. He said he would identify by Friday any passages in the vast document that must be screened out before it can be distributed to the full Council. Iraq delivered the report, required under Resolution 1441, to inspectors in Baghdad on Saturday night.
A 300-page section of the declaration, describing industrial facilities in Iraq where there could have been nuclear activity after 1991, includes much new information that analysts have to scrutinize carefully, he said.
Mr. Blix briefed the 15 Council nations over lunch today with Secretary General Kofi Annan. On Sunday, all of them except Syria agreed to allow the five permanent members, which are all nuclear powers, to examine the declaration immediately, before the 10 rotating members, none of which are nuclear powers.
In Washington, London and Paris today, experts plunged into the trove of documents and CD-ROM's, after agreeing to assist Mr. Blix in detecting information that could be used to make an illegal weapon. Russian and Chinese diplomats said that their copies of the declaration were only just arriving today in Moscow and Beijing.
Mr. Blix turned the tables today on the United States and other permanent members, saying he wanted to receive by Friday their assessments of the information that had to be filtered out of the documents. Up to now, the Bush administration, echoed by Britain, has been vocal in its complaints that Mr. Blix is moving too slowly with his inspections.
Both Russia and China said they doubted that they would have their assessments ready by Friday.
Mr. Blix said he wanted to give the filtered declaration to all 15 Council members on Monday. As soon as the declaration is so widely distributed, it is certain to leak out and become public.
Mr. Blix, the chairman of the United Nations chemical and biological weapons team, explained that he would, at least initially, remove the suppliers' names from the document that will be made public because inspectors found in the past that suppliers could provide vital information about what Baghdad was buying and where.
If the inspectors "were to give the names publicly, then they would never get another foreign supplier to give them any information," he said after the Council session.
Diplomats have indicated that disclosing the suppliers could be embarrassing to several nations, even perhaps the United States, which provided arms to Iraq during its long war with Iran in the 1980's.
Mr. Blix said he would abide by whatever the Council ultimately decided about the suppliers. The plan is for Mr. Blix's team and the International Atomic Energy Agency to keep the risky information confidential.
Mr. Blix said the most important part of the declaration is contained in 3,000 of its 12,000 pages, about 500 of which are in Arabic and must be translated.
Weapons analysts here will not even begin to assess the far more interesting issue of the accuracy of the declaration until next week. Mr. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the atomic energy agency, will give their first evaluation to the Council Nov. 19.
A senior Mexican official sought today to clarify remarks by Mexican diplomats here that indicated they were reluctant to back the United States plan to have Washington and the other permanent members see the declaration first.
The official said that Jorge G. Castaņeda, the foreign minister, had in fact proposed to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that Colombia, which holds the Council presidency this month, should decide whether to turn over the declaration to Washington on behalf of the nonpermanent members.
Mr. Castaņeda also talked to Mr. Blix on Saturday to make sure he agreed, the official said.
"We have nobody in the whole country that can go through this declaration in three days and see if there are weapons cookbooks in there," the official said.
-------- korea
One Proliferator at a Time
By Jim Hoagland
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37708-2002Dec10?language=printer
North Korean agents are ransacking the global black market for nuclear technology and equipment to enable Kim Jong Il's regime to complete a uranium-enriched bomb on a crash basis, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
The in-your-face defiance by North Korea of U.S. demands to halt its covert nuclear program is both unsurprising and revealing: Pyongyang's characteristic belligerence points up the incomplete nature of the Bush administration's forceful campaign to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to the world's most dangerous dictatorships.
The administration has shifted its emphasis from confronting North Korea diplomatically to pressing China, Russia, Pakistan and other countries with potential nuclear suppliers to help cut off the North Koreans.
This emergency response usefully spotlights the long-term role that the merchants of atomic, biological and chemical death have played in constructing a destabilizing axis of proliferation. Effective, punishing action must be targeted on the suppliers as well as the users. The pushers cannot be let off the hook through neglect or expediency.
The dangers of greed driving proliferation are being underlined as well by the delivery this week of Iraq's 12,000-page declaration on its weapons of mass destruction to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. One section is reported to contain a detailed listing of foreign companies or governments that helped Baghdad acquire components of history's most deadly armaments.
"The Iraqis seem to be doing what an aggressive litigator would do in an American trial," said one U.S. official briefed on initial assessments of the Iraqi report. The official continued:
"They dumped a mountain of old and unresponsive documents on us -- a lot of them can be identified as photocopies of photocopies previously submitted -- and challenged us to find anything useful or new. And they reached out to implicate everybody else they could, to make it seem that everybody knew what was going on and if they are in the dock, their German or French suppliers should be too."
In the Reagan and first Bush administrations, Washington paid little attention to Iraq's voracious pursuit of weapons systems, including nuclear-weapons components, poison gas that Saddam Hussein used on Iranian soldiers and his Kurdish citizens, and biological weapons that were systematically tested on Iraqi dissidents and other civilians. Until 1990 it was Iran that was seen as the great threat in the Persian Gulf, while Iraq was supposedly an Arab bulwark that had to be forgiven for its deadly foibles.
A dozen years of intermittent hostilities with Iraq have been one consequence of that mistaken judgment, which President George W. Bush seems determined to put right -- through the United Nations if he can, unilaterally if he must.
But the pattern of postponing difficult anti-proliferation actions is being repeated in the context of axis-of-evil member North Korea: The United States will not invoke sanctions now against Pakistan, despite that country's established role as the principal supplier of centrifuges and technology to the North Korean secret uranium-enrichment program over an estimated five-year period.
"We have to deal with one urgent problem at a time right now," said a U.S. official. The implication was that Pakistan's past proliferation has to be overlooked while Washington pursues the war on global terrorism, disarming Iraq and shutting down any new nuclear leaks to North Korea. "What Pakistan does right now on those fronts is getting our intense attention."
China is another country of concern for the administration on North Korea. I am told that Bush delivered a private but crystal clear warning to President Jiang Zemin in October that China's willingness -- or lack thereof -- to help contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions would now affect U.S.-China relations. But the Chinese have not applied pressure on Kim Jong Il since then. Their private inaction during a time of leadership transition matches their public statements that they can do nothing about North Korea, says one knowledgeable and therefore worried American.
Administration briefings to journalists and foreign officials have been opaque on how close the North Koreans may be to developing a workable uranium-based bomb. That is still something of a mystery. U.S. intelligence is in fact still not sure that the North Koreans have actually weaponized the plutonium they extracted to build one or two bombs in the early 1990s.
But conversations with senior officials suggest that one to two years is a reasonable estimate. The suppliers have done their dastardly job, leaving the North Koreans only a short gap to fill and the world with only a short time to come to terms with the need to tackle both the users and pushers of the means of mass murder.
----
North Korean ship seized
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021211-17872888.htm
U.S. and allied warships have seized a North Korean ship in the Arabian Sea with a shipment of a dozen Scud missiles bound for Yemen.
The boarding and seizure took place Monday about 600 miles east of the Horn of Africa, said defense and administration officials familiar with the incident.
The missile shipment was first disclosed by The Washington Times on Dec. 2 after the vessel departed several weeks ago from the North Korean port of Nampo with the Scud missiles and their components and a missile fuel chemical.
"U.S. intelligence had been tracking the ship closely, and what were found were about a dozen Scud missiles," one official said, confirming that it was the shipment first disclosed by The Times.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage yesterday called the seizure "expected" and the latest proof of North Korean involvement in missile proliferation.
"It appears that [North Korea] was busy proliferating again," he told reporters in Beijing after arriving for talks with Chinese leaders. "It appears that this vessel was carrying Scud missiles. It's been apprehended at sea in what I understand was a perfectly legal manner."
"Obviously, this was expected by American authorities for some time," he said. "I don't think there's any change. This is not exactly a development that is new."
According to the officials, two Spanish warships first approached the ship, which sought to evade capture. Warning shots were fired, and the ship halted and was boarded.
The Spanish ships were engaged in maritime-intercept operations aimed at finding al Qaeda terrorists in the region.
A team of U.S. military weapons specialists from aboard an American warship found the Scuds. Other details about what was on the vessel, which had listed its cargo as cement, could not be learned last night.
Officials said the ship was not a North Korean-flagged vessel, but evidence uncovered on the ship indicated that it was North Korean.
"It is a Cambodian vessel improperly registered. It had a name of So San, and it was painted over the original name. There was also paint over its ID number," a second administration official said.
The crew on the ship was North Korean, and the official said that when the ship refused the Spaniards' boarding request, it communicated a signal to Pyongyang.
Then yesterday, "the Spanish asked the Americans to help them inspect the cargo," the official said.
It was not clear last night what would happen to the shipment, which U.S. and allied forces in the Persian Gulf are likely to confiscate.
The interdiction could raise protests from North Korea, which recently announced that it was covertly working on nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 agreement to halt its nuclear-arms program.
The North Korean ship was identified by U.S. intelligence agencies in November as it picked up the missile cargo, which included a chemical known as inhibited red fuming nitric acid, an agent used as an oxidizer in Scud missile fuel.
The missiles had been under surveillance for several weeks before they left the port.
The shipment is believed to be part of a deal between North Korea and Yemen that was made public earlier this year and which led to economic sanctions against North Korea, but not Yemen, in August.
The Bush administration decided not to sanction the Arab state because it supports U.S. military and intelligence operations against al Qaeda terrorists, some of whom blew a hole in the side of the destroyer USS Cole while it was docked in the Yemeni capital, Aden. That attack in October 2000 killed 17 American sailors.
An administration official said the Yemeni government had promised the U.S. government that it would not purchase any more Scuds from North Korea, a promise the latest shipment would violate, the official said.
Another official said the cargo may have been intercepted before it reached Yemen to avoid embarrassing the government there.
The dispute with North Korea, which was prompted by disclosures about the nuclear program in October, led to a suspension of U.S. fuel-oil shipments that were a stopgap measure to help impoverished North Korea until two nuclear-power-generating reactor facilities are built. The nuclear-reactor program is in doubt.
According to administration officials, the latest Scud transfer is expected to lead to tougher sanctions against North Korea and possibly on Yemen.
A company that was sanctioned in August for the Yemeni missile transfer was identified by U.S. officials as the state-run Changgwang Sinyong Corp., the communist government's missile exporter.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said in a speech in August that the missiles were purchased and that it was "a legitimate right for Yemen" to buy the systems.
A Yemeni Embassy spokesman, Yahyah Alshawakani, told The Times last week that Yemen's only missile shipment from North Korea took place earlier this year and denied that any other missile shipments were made.
Yemen has been a key supporter of the U.S.-led war against international terrorists. In October, the CIA conducted a missile attack in the country using an unmanned drone aircraft that killed six al Qaeda terrorists.
Yemen's missile arsenal included more than 20 Scuds purchased from Russia, many of which were fired during a 1994 civil war.
--------
Rumsfeld: N.Korea Is Biggest Missile Proliferator
December 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north-rumsfeld.html
DJIBOUTI (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called North Korea on Wednesday the ``single largest proliferator'' of missile technology on earth after Spanish ships intercepted a North Korean ship carrying hidden Scud missiles.
Rumsfeld said he did not know the final destination of the Scud missiles, intercepted in the Arabian sea on Monday, but said North Korea was spreading missile technology to many countries.
``They continue to be the single largest proliferator of ballistic missile technology on the face of the earth, and they are putting into the hands of many countries the technologies and capabilities which have the potential for killing hundreds of thousands of people,'' Rumsfeld told reporters.
He confirmed that they were Scud missiles that were found onboard the So San ship, and said that there were also warheads with them.
North Korea has been branded by President Bush as a member of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iraq and Iran.
Rumsfeld was speaking in the tiny northeast African state of Djibouti after meeting Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh as part of a regional tour he says is aimed at commending several countries on their efforts to fight extremist violence.
Rumsfeld declined to name any of the potential recipients of the missiles, which U.S. officials said were hidden under thousands of bags of cement.
``I have no information about the destination, as to whether there was one destination, or whether there were possible transfer points to other locations,'' Rumsfeld said.
``There's clearly an interest in determining where they were headed, but they're not going to get there,'' Rumsfeld said.
``There are places that the missiles could have been headed that are clearly illegal,'' he said.
Rumsfeld visited Ethiopia and Eritrea on Tuesday, and was due to cross the Arabian peninsula for talks in the Gulf state of Qatar.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, arriving in China on an Asian tour to drum up support for Washington's push to disarm Iraq, said the discovery of the missiles was unlikely to affect its policy on North Korea.
-------- missile defense
Interceptor Rocket Fails in Missile Test
December 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Missile-Test.html
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- An interceptor rocket failed to strike and destroy a ballistic missile early Wednesday during the latest test of the nation's missile defense system.
The Minuteman II intercontinental missile was successfully launched from the central California coast toward the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. A booster rocket with the interceptor was launched about 20 minutes later from Kwajalein, in the Pacific Ocean 4,800 miles west of California.
The 55-inch, 120-pound interceptor was supposed to destroy a dummy warhead in the Minuteman at an altitude of about 140 miles. It failed to separate from its booster rocket, however, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere, Missile Defense Agency spokesman Lt. Col. Rick Lehner said.
The dummy warhead splashed down in the Pacific, he said.
The $80 million test was the third such test to fail since 1999, according to the Pentagon.
--------
Rocket Fails in Missile Defense Test
December 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-missile-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. interceptor rocket designed to destroy incoming warheads failed its latest test over the Pacific on Wednesday, setting back the push to build a shield against ballistic missiles from countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
It was the third miss in eight attempts to shoot down a mock warhead since the tests began in October 1999, and was caused by a relatively low-tech problem -- a separation failure between the ``kill vehicle'' and its booster rocket.
President Bush wants to put an Alaska-based ``test bed'' initially with five missile silos -- and rudimentary operational capabilities against real attack -- in place by October 2004.
The test bed would constitute the first leg of a planned layered shield against missile attack. Other Pentagon projects involve overlappng systems that could be based at sea, in space and aboard laser-firing modified Boeing 747 aircraft.
Erecting such a shield is the Pentagon's single most expensive development program, likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over coming decades.
For each of the past two fiscal years alone, Bush requested and Congress approved $7.8 billion in research, development and testing funds.
Lt. Col. Rick Lehner of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency called it ``frustrating and disappointing'' that a possibly low-tech glitch had doomed the latest test and said it was not immediately clear where the fault lay.
An investigation into the failure of the ``Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle,'' built by Raytheon Co., to separate from the booster rocket, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., likely would take ``weeks and weeks,'' he said.
A similar separation failure in a July 8, 2000 test was traced to scrambled commands from the booster's upper-stage assembly.
COMPANIES DEFEND THEIR SYSTEMS
Lockheed, the No. 1 U.S. defense contractor, defended its technology. ``Based on initial analysis, all aspects of the Lockheed Martin portion of the mission performed exactly as required,'' said a company official who asked not to be identified by name.
A spokesman for Lexington, Mass.-based Raytheon, Dave Shea, said the company had confidence in its design. Raytheon technology seemed an unlikely culprit, he said.
Five of the previous flight tests, including the last four in a row, have obliterated a dummy warhead aboard a modified Minuteman 2 intercontinental target launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force base.
The kill vehicle weighs about 120 pounds (54 kg). Equipped with two infrared sensors and a visible sensor, it has a small propulsion system meant to zero in on a warhead.
The botched test -- involving the widest cross-section of sensors yet -- was supposed to demonstrate that a nuclear, chemical or biological warhead would be destroyed and neutralized in a collision using ``hit to kill'' technology.
Lehner said the interceptor rocket was launched without a hitch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands -- at night for the first time -- 4,800 miles away from Vandenberg on the central California coast.
``Initial post-test analysis indicate that all other program elements successfully completed their test objectives, including radars and other sensors, as well as the battle management, command, control and communication elements,'' a Pentagon statement said.
Boeing, the lead system integrator for the ground-based mid-course program, referred callers to the Pentagon.
TRW Inc. builds the battle command, control and communications system.
-------- terrorism
WHITE HOUSE
U.S. Issues Warning to Foes in Arms Plan
December 11, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/politics/11NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - The Bush administration published a new strategy today on combatting weapons of mass destruction that included a statement, clearly directed at potential opponents like Iraq. Washington is prepared to "respond with all our options" if such weapons are used against American troops or allies.
The explicit warning was contained in a six-page, unclassified version of a new presidential document that outlines the administration's approach to countering and deterring the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It underscores a longstanding American policy, but officials acknowledged that it bears considerable resemblance to a private warning that Secretary of State James A. Baker III sent to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, before the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
In a briefing today, a senior administration official said Mr. Bush has assigned many government agencies the task of enacting the new strategy. The official said the president was spending "considerable sums" on research into new counterproliferation strategies, beyond missile defense. But he offered no examples.
The strategy document said, using the initials for weapons of mass destruction: "The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force - including through resort to all our options - to the use of W.M.D. against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies."
That warning was not included in a similar strategy document issued by the Clinton administration in 1993. Mr. Clinton's approach relied chiefly on nonproliferation efforts, though at various times his administration repeated warnings that attacks using weapons of mass destruction would be met with overwhelming force.
The strategy revision published today and a longer classified version reflect Mr. Bush's reliance on counterproliferation, including missile defenses and, when necessary, pre-emptive strikes against states or groups whose weaponry could pose a threat to the United States. While nonproliferation relies on laws and treaties to restrain countries from producing weapons of mass destruction, counterproliferation relies on force or physical interdiction to stop them.
American officials pointed to the interdiction today of a North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles in the Arabian Sea as an example of a more aggressive counter-proliferation strategy.
Many of the details in the strategy, including state and local preparations for emergency response in case of a chemical or biological attack, are part of the post-Sept. 11 precautions that now seem familiar. The policy also calls for tighter controls on nuclear materials, better export controls, and the strengthening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, one of the few international treaties that the administration has endorsed.
"What's new here is that we have a comprehensive strategy," the official said. "Every administration comes under criticism for not have an integrated strategy on issues like this. We do."
But that strategy makes no mention of the painful tradeoffs that the administration has already been forced to make to keep its coalition against terrorism together.
Pakistan, for example, has never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and is widely believed by American intelligence agencies to have provided nuclear aid to North Korea. Yet the Bush administration lifted all nuclear-related economic sanctions against Pakistan when it needed the country's help pursuing leaders of Al Qaeda.
The strategy document says that "because each of these regimes is different, we will pursue country-specific strategies that best enable us and our friends and allies to prevent, deter and defend against W.M.D. and missile threats."
Administration officials say the document has been in draft form for months, and they contend the timing of its release had no relationship to the growing confrontation with Iraq. One official noted that Mr. Baker's warning to Saddam Hussein had come "when hostilities were imminent," a point the United States has not yet reached.
Nonetheless, the comparisons with the Baker letter are striking. Mr. Baker recalled in his memoirs, "The Politics of Diplomacy," that in dealing with Iraq in the period leading up to the war in January 1991, "I purposely left the impression that the use of chemical or biological agents by Iraq could invite tactical nuclear retaliation." (In fact, he said, President George H.W. Bush had decided not to retaliate with chemical or nuclear weapons if Mr. Hussein launched a chemical attack.)
"This is not a threat, it is a promise," Mr. Baker recalled saying. "If there is any use of weapons like that, our objective won't just be the liberation of Kuwait, but the elimination of the current Iraqi regime."
The senior official who briefed reporters today said Mr. Hussein appeared to have understood the message, "and he didn't cross that line."
The current Bush administration has worried that deterring Mr. Hussein from using chemical or biological weapons may prove more difficult this time.
Mr. Bush has repeatedly stated that "regime change" is his goal. His aides have conceded in background conversations that, should Mr. Hussein fear for his own survival, he might be more tempted to reach for his most destructive weaponry.
Mr. Bush has specifically warned against that, and openly encouraged Iraqi generals not to act on any instructions from Mr. Hussein to use such weapons against American troops, Israel or other neighbors. The statement today, however, marks a more explicit version of that warning.
"The language speaks for itself," the senior official said, "and I think it does apply to any state that would use weapons of mass destruction against us."
----
Al-Qaeda planning uranium bomb: UN
Five canisters of 'highly radioactive material' seized
Steven Edwards
National Post
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=%7B47E4D779-BAEA-4B5F-A7E2-678F7BA10EE2%7D
UNITED NATIONS - United Nations experts charged with probing al-Qaeda warn that the terrorist group appears determined to produce a "dirty bomb" capable of spreading radioactive material over a wide area after Tanzanian police seized what is believed to be raw uranium.
Police seized 110 kilograms of suspected raw uranium last month, after confiscating five canisters of suspected uranium early this year, says the report by the UN Monitoring Group on al- Qaeda.
"The Group remains highly preoccupied by the potential for al-Qaeda to manufacture some kind of 'dirty bomb,' " the report warns, adding that uranium is a "highly radioactive material."
The report, to be discussed privately by United Nations Security Council diplomats on Friday, says the experts could not tie the seized material directly to the terrorist network. However, it adds, "the possibility cannot be excluded of these illegal movements of raw uranium reaching al-Qaeda or their associates in East Africa.
"The Group is following [up] with the Tanzanian authorities and maintaining contact on this matter with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Department of Safeguards," says the UN report.
A "dirty bomb" is a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material that would kill few people in the initial blast but would create fear, panic and a long-term cancer risk with the spread of the radioactive material. Huge financial losses would also result as people fled contaminated areas.
U.S. authorities believe they stymied al-Qaeda planning for a "dirty bomb" attack on a U.S. city with the May arrest of Jose Padilla. The former Chicago street-gang member who became a radical Islamist was on a scouting mission for the terrorist network, they say.
In September, Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, also released a government dossier that accused Saddam Hussein of trying to acquire substantial quantities of uranium from Africa as part of his effort to develop nuclear weapons.
Western experts have worried for years about security at a nuclear facility at the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo . The UN report says uranium is "usually" smuggled from neighbouring countries through the Tanzanian border towns of Mbeya (southern Tanzania), Kigoma (western Tanzania) and Rukwa (southwestern Tanzania).
Kigoma and Rukwa are across Lake Tanganyika from Congo, while Mbeya overlooks Zambia.
The group's findings come after twin terrorist attacks last month on Israeli targets in Mombasa, Kenya, for which al-Qaeda claimed responsibility. The terrorist group also vowed to launch even-more lethal strikes. The activity in East Africa has raised U.S. concern that the region and the Horn of Africa to the north have become havens for al-Qaeda cells since their expulsion from much of Afghanistan.
The UN Security Council created the Monitoring Group in January to watch over UN sanctions aimed at choking off funds and arms to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.
For this and two earlier reports, the group's members toured the globe to interview government, banking and other officials.
While the experts say the war on terrorism has caused "significant disruption" to al-Qaeda's infrastructure, the terrorist network remains "a substantial threat" because of its ability to disperse.
It has outfoxed efforts to freeze its financial assets by raising increasing amounts of money through charities and other non-governmental organizations, which "go unregulated in many countries."
Meanwhile, seizures of arms destined for the group represent "only the tip of the iceberg," leaving the terrorist network with access to "substantial quantities" of weapons. Only international co-operation can beat this "insidious mass movement," but states are not coming together sufficiently, the report charges. Many states have failed to update the UN's Consolidated List of al-Qaeda suspects, making it a less-than-effective tool for informing UN members of the people and organizations they should be targeting with sanctions.
One of about 100 people who have been named as suspects but not included on the list is Mr. Padilla, the accused "dirty-bomb" scout.
Also absent from the UN list are four of the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists," Iamd Fayez Mugniyah, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil, Ali Saed bin al-Hoorie and Ibrahim Salih Mohammed al-Yacoub.
Sharpening U.S. focus on the Horn of Africa, Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defence Secretary, arrived in the Eritrean capital Asmara yesterday to discuss expanding military cooperation and to visit U.S. troops training in neighbouring deserts. He will also visit Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Gulf state of Qatar, where U.S. forces have established a military command post for a possible attack on Iraq.
sedwards@nationalpost.com
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Preemptive Strikes Part Of U.S. Strategic Doctrine
'All Options' Open for Countering Unconventional Arms
By Mike Allen and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36819-2002Dec10?language=printer
A Bush administration strategy announced yesterday calls for the preemptive use of military and covert force before an enemy unleashes weapons of mass destruction, and underscores the United States's willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons for chemical or biological attacks on U.S. soil or against American troops overseas.
The strategy introduces a more aggressive approach to combating weapons of mass destruction, and it comes as the nation prepares for a possible war with Iraq.
A version of the strategy that was released by the White House said the United States will "respond with overwhelming force," including "all options," to the use of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons on the nation, its troops or its allies.
However, a classified version of the strategy goes even further: It breaks with 50 years of U.S. counterproliferation efforts by authorizing preemptive strikes on states and terrorist groups that are close to acquiring weapons of mass destruction or the long-range missiles capable of delivering them. The policy aims to prevent the transfer of weapons components or to destroy them before they can be assembled.
In a top-secret appendix, the directive names Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya among the countries that are the central focus of the new U.S. approach. Administration officials said that does not imply that President Bush intends to use military force, covert or overt, in any of those countries. He is determined, they said, to stop transfers of weapons components in or out of their borders. The policy sets out the practical ramifications of Bush's doctrine of preemption, contained in a national security strategy released in September, which turns away from the Cold War doctrine based on deterrence and containment. The preemption doctrine favors taking on hostile states before they can strike.
It broadens a warning that was made to Iraq on the eve of the Persian Gulf War of 1991. A letter from President George H.W. Bush promised "the strongest possible response" if Iraq were to use chemical and biological weapons against U.S. and allied troops.
But the new policy is more specific, detailing the consequences of an enemy's use of weapons of mass destruction. "The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force -- including through resort to all of our options -- to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies," the document says.
The timing of the document's release yesterday sends an unmistakable message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein about the potential consequences of using nonconventional weapons in a future war.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters on the new strategy, said those options include nuclear force. The official said the 1991 letter had its intended effect. "He [Hussein] didn't cross the line of using chemical or biological weapons," the official said. "The Iraqis have told us that they interpreted that letter as meaning that the United States would use nuclear weapons, and it was a powerful deterrent."
In the past, U.S. officials saw some advantage in keeping the world guessing about how the United States would respond to evidence that a country or a terrorist group was hiding weapons of mass destruction deep underground. And Bush administration officials were at pains yesterday to insist that there is nothing new in their formulation.
Under Bush, however, Pentagon officials appear to have taken a step closer to the possible, limited use of nuclear weapons by pursuing new and more usable ones. A review of nuclear policy completed by defense officials a year ago put added emphasis on developing low-yield nuclear weapons that could be used to burrow deep into the earth and destroy underground complexes, including stores of chemical and biological arms. This has raised questions about whether the administration is lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
Officials deny that they are doing so. But they also argue that the strategic calculations necessary for combating terrorism and hostile nations must inherently be different from those used during the Cold War, when deterrence meant simply convincing the Soviets that the United States, if attacked, could and would wipe them out. Against today's new enemies, the administration has argued, it may be necessary to strike preemptively and with nuclear weapons that would keep fallout to a minimum.
The administration published a broader national security strategy in September, and the preparation of a separate policy on weapons of mass destruction reflects the seriousness with which the administration takes the threat of attacks from rogue states and terrorist organizations. "Every administration seems to come under criticism for not having a strategy," the official said.
The six-page strategy released by the White House yesterday was a declassified extract of a top secret directive signed by Bush in May after resolving interagency disputes dating to January. It is among the first major policy collaborations of the National Security Council and the new Homeland Security Council, whose chairman is Tom Ridge. The classified version is identified jointly as National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 17 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 4. The new strategy does not repudiate "traditional measures" of diplomacy, multinational arms control agreements and export controls. But in its classified form, and in the interagency process that drafted it, the directive is premised on a view that "traditional nonproliferation has failed, and now we're going into active interdiction," according to one participant who spoke without authority from the White House.
Active interdiction, the official said, "is physical -- it's disruption, it's destruction in any form, whether kinetic or cyber."
Explaining the new approach, one official gave the hypothetical scenario of a ship using the Philippines as a transshipment point for special weapons to Libya. "We're going to interdict or destroy or disrupt that shipment or, during the transloading process, it is going to mysteriously disappear," the official said.
The official spoke as Spanish special forces, with U.S. intelligence support, stopped a North Korean ship bound for Yemen with Scud missiles. In rare cases, previous presidents have mounted preemptive strikes against nonconventional weapons. Those episodes, including the August 1998 missile strike on an alleged Sudanese chemical weapons plant and the bombing of some targets in Iraq four months later, have generally come in retaliation for specific enemy attacks.
Bush hinted at the new approach in a Dec. 11, 2001, speech at the Citadel, speaking of active counterproliferation. By January, a draft of NSPD 17 was circulating in the State Department, the White House, the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies. State Department officials objected to some elements of the new approach but failed to carry the decision. The Homeland Security Office, represented by policy director Richard A. Falkenrath, interjected itself as jointly responsible for managing the consequences of a successful attack on the United States. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to one participant, objected in April to language that he believed commingled military and domestic lines of authority. Bush signed the draft unchanged in May.
The intention, in theory, is not fundamentally new. The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive 62, "Protection Against Unconventional Threats to the Homeland and Americans Overseas," had classified language that one former official summarized as: "If you think terrorists will get access to WMD, there is an extremely low threshold that the United States should act" militarily.
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Sees Nuclear Deterrence Against WMD Attack
December 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-security.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States reminded Iraq and other countries on Tuesday that it was prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary to respond to an attack from weapons of mass destruction.
The warning, which underscored longstanding U.S. policy leaving open the use of nuclear weapons if needed, was contained in a statement of U.S. strategy against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- the first update since 1993.
The six-page strategy document says deterring attacks with the threat of ``overwhelming force'' is an essential element in protecting America and its allies from weapons of mass destruction, also known as WMD.
``The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force -- including through resort to all our options -- to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies,'' the strategy report said.
``In addition to our conventional and nuclear response and defense capabilities, our overall deterrent posture against WMD threats is reinforced by effective intelligence, surveillance, interdiction and domestic law enforcement capabilities,'' it said.
Senior U.S. officials said the passage was not included the previous U.S. strategy document on weapons of mass destruction, which emphasized efforts to prevent proliferation, and said the new document did not represent a shift in U.S. policy on when it would use nuclear weapons.
But the passage was put in the new report as part of an increased emphasis on the role of deterrence against a weapons of mass destruction attack, they said.
Other major elements of the new strategy include strengthening nonproliferation measures, beefing up defenses and combating the effects of an attack on the population.
The strategy report was released amid the looming possibility of war with Iraq, which the United States accuses of possessing weapons of mass destruction, officials said.
``The language speaks for itself, and I think it does apply to any state that would use weapons of mass destruction against us,'' a senior official said.
But the warning emphasizes and makes explicit for other countries a private warning Bush's father, former President George Bush, made in a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on the eve of the first Gulf War.
In that letter, the United States threatened the ``severest consequences'' if Iraq were to use chemical or biological weapons against the United States, destroy Kuwaiti oil fields or participate in terrorism.
``It was clear in terms of the message that we would respond with all of our options. ... The Iraqis have told us that they interpreted that letter as meaning the United States would use nuclear weapons, and it was a powerful deterrent,'' the official said.
Although Iraq later set fire to Kuwaiti oil fields and supported terrorism, the official said, it did not ``cross the line'' of using chemical or biological weapons.
--------
Bush Warns Iraq of Harsh Response
December 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Weapons-Strategy.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's explicit threat to use nuclear weapons against enemies wielding weapons of mass destruction drew little objection Wednesday from Democratic rivals. A Republican senator, however, warned that Bush risks undoing 50 years' work to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
The White House submitted to Congress a six-page statement of defense strategy emphasizing the long-standing policy that the United States may respond ``with overwhelming force'' -- including nuclear weapons -- to any attack with weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its friends.
In a statement accompanying the strategy, Bush said his administration would confront the threat posed by such weapons ``with confidence and determination.'' He did not specifically mention the possibility of retaliatory or pre-emptive nuclear strikes in the statement, which comes as Bush considers war to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the administration strategy, publicly released only in broad outlines, also includes the authorization of pre-emptive U.S. nuclear strikes -- with ``all our might'' -- against enemies close to acquiring such weapons.
Former Vice President Al Gore, who lost to Bush in 2000, said through a spokesman that the White House ``is in keeping with America's long held strategy of using our own weapons of mass destruction principally to dissuade any aggressor from using their own arsenal against us.''
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., agreed that the United States ``has always reserved every military option to defend our citizens and our troops.'' But, Kerry added, Bush should put as much effort into national security initiatives, such as intelligence gathering and coalition building, ``that go beyond pure muscle flexing.''
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the policy declaration was a statement of ``how seriously the United States would take it in the event that weapons of mass destruction were used ... to make clear that the United States will indeed respond.''
Hagel told his constituents at a Rotary Club in Omaha, Neb., that a nation's right to self-defense is nothing new. ``But it is very dangerous to be talking too much about these kinds of responses that the United States would take or actions in anticipation of another nation's actions,'' Hagel said.
Hagel warned that over-asserting America's right to use nuclear weapons in self-defense reduces to ``a mucky schizophrenia'' the long-standing U.S. efforts to keep a lid on other nuclear nations.
``It essentially nullifies the last 50 years,'' Hagel said. ``It sets in motion a series of uncontrollable actions that could be taken by China, by Russia, by Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, nations that do possess nuclear weapons.''
It does not take a great leap of imagination, for example, to see India exploring a first-strike with nuclear force in order to eliminate a number of Pakistani nuclear facilities, Hagel added.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said it was ironic that the strategy, which also emphasizes a priority on interdiction of weapons, was submitted on the same day that the administration allowed Yemen to keep an interdicted shipment of North Korean-made missiles.
``With thousands of U.S. troops in the region and the possibility of more to come, this decision is ill-considered at best,'' Lieberman said.
Bush has already undercut the strategy's deterrent effect on Saddam, said James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration.
``It's all well and good to say, 'We'll use whatever we've got.' But if you've already told Saddam Hussein you're getting rid of him, if he thinks he's not going to survive in any event, what's the deterrent?''
Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy at American Enterprise Institute, countered that the deterrent effect is targeted more at Saddam's lieutenants.
Associated Press writer Joe Ruff contributed to this report from Omaha, Neb.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
New bombshells at Los Alamos lab
By J.R. Moehringer
Los Angeles Times
December 11, 2002
The Seattle Times
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=losalamos11&date=20021211&query=nuclear
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - A "culture of theft" at Los Alamos National Laboratory costs taxpayers millions of dollars each year and endangers national security, said two investigators recently fired by the laboratory.
Glenn Walp and Steven Doran, former police officers, said they were recruited by Los Alamos officials earlier this year to investigate corruption at the lab, which houses the nation's nuclear secrets and monitors the quality of the nuclear arsenal.
But after finding far more corruption than Los Alamos officials suspected - including hundreds of missing items that could prove valuable to terrorists or rogue nations - the investigators were dismissed Nov. 25 and escorted from the lab by armed guards.
The firings have become another embarrassment for the troubled laboratory and sparked an outcry in Congress.
Laboratory officials said the investigators were fired because their aggressive tactics and combative attitude alienated workers. But the investigators said they were fired because their bosses cared less about safeguarding one of the nation's most important scientific and military sites than about protecting the image of the University of California, which runs Los Alamos for the Energy Department.
Los Alamos officials acknowledged the FBI and the Energy Department are looking into several leads turned up by the fired investigators. Walp and Doran said those leads include lapses in security, such as one worker who tried to buy a $30,000 customized Ford Mustang with lab money and one who used her lab credit card to get $2,500 in cash at a casino.
University of California officials said they will urge the Energy Department to widen its inquiry into Los Alamos to include the firings.
"Through the years there has been ingrained within the laboratory this culture of theft," said Walp, 61, former head of the Pennsylvania State Police who was hired to lead the internal security force at Los Alamos in January.
"The problem isn't with scientists. They're just there doing their jobs. It's the middle people."
Soon after arriving at the laboratory, Walp wrote a report that estimated $3 million in equipment had been stolen since 1999. Among the missing items were more than 260 computers, some from the most sensitive areas of the laboratory, where nuclear weapons are designed.
The report, Walp said, only annoyed his bosses, who often told him his first loyalty was to the University of California, not the U.S. taxpayer.
Los Alamos spokesman Jim Danneskiold dismissed that the facility is rife with corruption. "There is no culture of theft here," he said. "People do not walk out of here with property."
He said roughly 0.1 percent of the lab's $1 billion inventory disappears each year, far below the percentage large retail stores deem acceptable. Many items that appear stolen, he said, are stored in some forgotten Quonset hut or World War II-era shed. Los Alamos has more than 2,000 buildings on its 40-square-mile site, he said, and things get mislaid. However, he said, "There is no evidence that there is any classified information on computers reported as missing."
He added that Doran and Walp were fired because "they had lost the confidence of different officials they had to work with," Danneskiold said.
Doran, 39, scoffed at the suggestion missing items were "mislaid."
"One of the missing items was a 2-ton magnet," he said. "How do you lose a 2-ton magnet?"
The most shocking case of theft, Walp and Doran said, involved two workers with access to all top-secret areas. The workers reportedly went on a spree, using lab purchase orders to acquire hundreds of items, including spy gear.
"It's unbelievable," said Doran, a former Marine and former police chief in Idaho City, Idaho. "They bought camping equipment, backpacks, lock picks, beacons, radio equipment, high-speed digital cameras, $9,000 worth of the best knives money can buy, tractors, lawn mowers, wood chippers ... high-pressure washers, air-conditioning units."
Also, the two workers reportedly stole cryogenic freezers, which Doran said could be useful to anyone developing biological weapons.
The two suspected workers have been placed on paid leave, Los Alamos officials said, while the FBI investigates.
Doran called it unfair that workers suspected of felonies remain on paid leave, while he and Walp were fired.
Also, Doran said, he and Walp received outstanding performance reviews just before being fired. Walp even got a $5,000 bonus.
A spokesman for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said the firings have prompted concern among lawmakers, who likely will hold hearings soon and send a team of investigators to Los Alamos.
-------- us politics
White House steps over the line
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/99280_thomas11.shtml
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's aides must stay awake at night thinking of new ways to intrude on the privacy of once-free Americans. These officials simply won't stop overreaching, will they?
Whenever they come up with one of their big-brother schemes to invade every facet of our life, they package it as just another pain-free way to fight terrorism.
First there was the infamous proposal that the Justice Department create a Terrorism Information and Prevention System in which delivery people, truck drivers and letter carriers as well as local gossips would spy on folks in the neighborhood and report to the FBI.
This foolish plot had the ring of Nazi Germany in the '30s and '40s. Fortunately, the plan generated so much outrage that the administration withdrew it.
Now comes the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness Office, which until recently had operated secretly as a part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon.
TIA's grandiose mission is just what its name implies: to find out everything about us -- what magazines we read, what credit card purchases we make, what doctors and hospitals we visit, what medicines we take, what trips we book, what bank checks we write. Then TIA plans to file the data onto what the Pentagon calls a "virtual, centralized grand database."
Scary, isn't it?
Even scarier is the fact that the director of this Orwellian vision is, of all people, John Poindexter.
Remember him? He was President Reagan's national security adviser who was convicted in 1990 of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing congressional investigations into the Iran-Contra affair.
That mid-1980s scandal, which Poindexter helped mastermind, involved secret arms sales to Iran and diversion of the profits to help the so-called Contra rebels in Nicaragua. His conviction was overturned in 1991 by an appeals court because the government relied on the testimony he gave Congress after it had granted him immunity from prosecution.
In January Poindexter quietly returned to government, moving into the Pentagon without any fanfare. That's understandable. With his record of deceit, why should he be back in government? Is he the best that this administration has to offer?
Poindexter told The Washington Post that information awareness systems being developed would create a global computer that could gather data on travel to risky areas, suspicious e-mails, bizarre fund transfers and unusual medical activities, such as treatments for anthrax-induced sores.
In other words, no closet would be too remote and no skeleton in it too small to escape the eagle eye of the all-knowing global computer system.
Yet isn't it fascinating that in all this personal-information gathering, the records of gun buyers will be off-limits. That's the way the National Rifle Association wants it. And one of the gun lobby's proudest picks for government service, Attorney General John Ashcroft, agrees. The NRA commands, and the Ashcroft Justice Department genuflects.
Phil Kent, president of the conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based public interest law firm, said the TIA program, which the government hopes to have up and running in 2007, would be an "unprecedented electronic dragnet." It would give "carte blanche to eavesdrop on Americans on the flimsiest of evidence, if any evidence at all."
Kent also told the Washington Times that it is "the most sweeping threat to civil liberties since Japanese American internment."
In the wake of Sept. 11 we Americans have had to struggle to hang onto our basic civil rights and liberties. Fear has made too many of us capitulate to those who would take away the freedoms we have cherished for so long.
We must speak out to uphold the U.S. Constitution before it's too late.
I don't believe government bureaucrats should know -- or need to know -- that much personal information about us. We should tell them: It's none of your business.
And by the way, while you're snooping, why don't you find out something we would all like to know: Where is Osama bin Laden anyway?
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. military expands civil affairs
By Mike Eckel
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021211-32572542.htm
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - The U.S. military is expanding its humanitarian-aid and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, work that military officials say is designed to give legitimacy to the Afghan government.
The military says such help is not nation-building, but aid agencies have accused the United States of politicizing humanitarian projects in war-shattered Afghanistan. They say the military should stick to military objectives such as searching for al Qaeda suspects.
The U.S. military plans to set up a team comprising up to 70 U.S. Army civil affairs specialists, Special Forces and security troops in the eastern Afghan town of Gardez within 30 days.
The team, including engineers and medical specialists, will work primarily as a clearinghouse for aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations doing their own projects, said U.S. Army Col. Roger King, a spokesman at Bagram air base, headquarters for the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
The team will not provide security for agencies, Col. King said, nor will it tell aid agencies which projects they should do. Such teams eventually will work in cities and towns across Afghanistan, he said.
"It is a framework to coordinate the efforts of a bunch of different people, all of whom want to do good things," Col. King said.
Rafael Robillard of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group of about 77 nongovernmental organizations, said the effort is misguided.
He said military-coordinated aid could taint the projects of the United Nations or other agencies, and armed soldiers working in conjunction with aid workers could put agencies in danger, he said.
"With the military, they have a military objective, to pacify this country and win the war against terrorists," Mr. Robillard said.
"Coordinating aid is our business. We don't think a foreign army should be coordinating aid. It's really two different visions, different missions."
The Gardez project is a shift in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan away from combat operations, even as infantry troops, Special Forces and other U.S. agencies continue search-and-seizure missions.
U.S. officials, including Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who is overseeing the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, repeatedly have denied the United States is getting involved in nation-building. U.S. political leaders, including President Bush, have shunned the term, saying it implies the United States wants to control a country's politics or policies.
For months, U.S. forces have been involved in humanitarian projects in Afghanistan. Civil-affairs specialists regularly consult village leaders about pressing problems. Army medics, veterinarians and engineers visit rural villages, giving medical treatment to sick or malnourished Afghans, treating animals and testing drinking-water supplies.
But the arrival last month of more than 150 additional civil affairs specialists and the new regional teams indicates a more organized approach to humanitarian and reconstruction projects.
Col. King said the arrangement will buttress local governments in the eyes of war-weary and government-wary Afghans by making relief projects more efficient. It also will help to legitimize the government of President Hamid Karzai, which has little control outside the capital, where a multinational force keeps the peace.
"What it is [doing] is giving legitimacy to the local government, or the government in Kabul, so that the Afghan people will turn to their local officials for help instead of warlords or local militias," Col. King said.
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Afghan Army Demands Warlords Surrender Arms - Report
December 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-weapons.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Afghan army and international peacekeepers plan to crack down on warlords in five southeastern Afghan provinces if they fail to lay down their arms in 10 days, an army spokesman was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
The government has asked all factional commanders in the region to surrender their weapons or face a joint operation by the Afghan army and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Pressagency quoted Afghan army spokesman Mohammad Ismail as saying.
The warning was issued to warlords in Logar, Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Ghazni provinces, the AIP reported.
Several powerful warlords, including in the Pashtun-dominated southern and southeastern provinces, have been challenging the authority of President Hamid Karzai's government since it was installed last year. In several provinces local commanders refused to accept government-appointed governors and fought official forces.
One renegade warlord, Padshah Khan Zadran, has waged fierce battles against official forces in Khost province and vowed to continue to oppose Karzai's rule.
Warlords are seen as one of the greatest threats to security in Afghanistan, where central government control is virtually non-existent in many areas and where factional fighting has broken out in the north, west, east and southeast.
Military spokesman Ismail, whose 3rd Afghan Corps is based in Gardez city south of Kabul, said that 200 ISAF soldiers had already arrived to take part in the operation.
However, ISAF spokesman Tony Grubb denied this. ``No ISAF personnel are deployed in Gardez or anywhere outside of Kabul,'' he said.
ISAF's mandate currently limits it to the capital, although British government sources said in late November that the United States and Britain planned to expand the security umbrella to the provinces from the end of this month.
They said the plan, which had to be approved by the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would cover up to six cities, including Gardez.
Ismail said all commanders not officially belonging to the defense and interior ministries or other government institutions should surrender their weapons.
The U.S.-backed Karzai has already sacked up to 20 medium-level local officials as part of a bid to consolidate his power outside Kabul, and the government is involved in disarmament initiatives in the north and northeast.
Thousands of U.S. troops have also uncovered many large arms caches in the south and southeast during their hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban remnants, but locals are bitterly opposed to being searched or disarmed.
-------- africa
AFRICA
Rumsfeld Seeking New Allies to Oppose Al Qaeda and Iraq
December 11, 2002
New York Times
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/international/africa/11RUMS.html
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 10 - In another sign of Africa's increased importance to United States military planners, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived in Eritrea today on a three-country tour aimed at courting allies considered essential to the fight against Al Qaeda and to possible military action against Iraq.
"We know there are Al Qaeda in this area, in several countries, in varying numbers," Mr. Rumsfeld said on the flight from Washington to Eritrea, a country on the Horn of Africa that has sought mightily to bring United States troops to its soil. "We also know to the extent we put pressure on them in one place, they tend to be disrupted and have to find other locations."
The recent terrorist bombing in Kenya, which is widely believed to have been orchestrated by Al Qaeda, highlights the importance of a region that had previously seen its strategic role in the world fade after the end of the cold war. Now, with Qaeda operatives scattering and the United States looking for the broadest possible array of military allies, African governments are finding Washington increasingly receptive.
After meeting with President Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea today, Mr. Rumsfeld left for Eritrea's bitter rival to the south, Ethiopia, which fought a two-year border war with Eritrea that ended in 2000.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia has just returned from a meeting with President Bush at the White House, which was also attended by President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya. Analysts suspect that one reason Eritrea is so eager to court the American military is to outflank Ethiopia, which is considered one of Washington's key allies in the region.
After his meeting with Mr. Rumsfeld today, the Eritrean president vowed to stand by the United States in its fight against terrorism. "We are not offering anything to get anything from the United States," Mr. Afewerki said. "We have very limited resources, but we are willing and prepared to use these resources in any way that is useful to combat terrorism."
In recent weeks, Eritrea's lobbyists in Washington have sought to play up their country's importance in the region. They point out that Eritrea - half Christian and half Muslim - has resisted joining the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic States and would have no qualms about assisting the United States in an attack against Iraq.
Eritrea is directly across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, with deep-water ports on the sea, and "a military partnership between the United States and Eritrea is sensible and well timed," said a recent position paper distributed by Greenberg Traurig, a Washington law firm working for Eritrea.
The country has been shunned in the past because of its repressive government, which jailed numerous opposition leaders, student activists and independent journalists last year. Two Eritreans who work at the American Embassy in Asmara, the capital, have been jailed for the past year for what the Eritrean government says is subversive activity. Repeated calls for their release have been ignored by Eritrean leaders.
Mr. Rumsfeld said human rights issues were among those he discussed with Mr. Afewerki. "We are frankly hoping that the relationship will evolve and strengthen and grow in the weeks and months and years ahead," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Another stop on Mr. Rumsfeld's tour will be Djibouti, a former French colony that sits at the mouth of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, between Eritrea and the lawless state of Somalia. There are already more than 1,000 American troops, mostly Special Operations forces and marines, stationed in Djibouti. They are there to assist the Qaeda operation and, if necessary, the offensive against Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld will wind up his trip in Qatar, where the American military's Central Command has put in place a new forward headquarters for the Persian Gulf region.
-------- arms sales
Weapons Trade Open to All Who Can Pay
December 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-World-Arms-Trade.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- No one's an outcast at the global weapons bazaar.
Countries with little in common, or even on opposing sides of alliances, come together in the arms trade, whether they do so openly, under the table or -- as in the case of an intercepted missile shipment from North Korea to Yemen -- hidden amid a cargo of cement.
With all but the most advanced weapons, arms experts say, if you've got the cash, you can get what you want.
And their only surprise when the transaction between North Korea and Yemen was uncovered was that the United States did something to stop it.
``They say politics makes strange bedfellows,'' said Jon Wolfsthal, an authority on nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ``The international arms trade is no different.''
U.S. officials decided Wednesday to let the unflagged cargo ship carrying the Scud missiles sail on its way to Yemen after concluding they had no legal basis to seize the shipment. Intelligence officials shadowed the ship for weeks and the Spanish navy stopped it Monday off the Arabian peninsula.
North Korea is an ambitious exporter of ballistic missiles, but not alone in offering its military wares to practically all comers.
The U.S. government has warned for several years about leapfrogging advances in missile technology throughout the developing world. More small countries, using equipment and expertise from Russia, China and North Korea, are no longer just customers, but weapons exporters in their own right.
The breakup of the Soviet Union also has spawned smaller but sizable arms-exporting enterprises that are hard to control. Among them, Belarus has become one of the world's largest arms exporters -- a country with a hardline leadership and close ties to Iraq and other states accused of trying to amass highly destructive weapons.
In a small example of conventional-arms proliferation repeated many times over, a particularly effective German assault rifle is being manufactured in perhaps 17 countries -- most with far less stringent export controls than the major suppliers face, experts say.
And the two shoulder-fired missiles that narrowly missed an Israeli airliner recently were the old -- but still highly effective -- Soviet SA-7 missiles, versions of which are being made in half a dozen countries or more, said Edward Laurance, author of ``The International Arms Trade.''
``God only knows where all those things are,'' he said.
Some reasons there are more players in the arms trade: licensing agreements that let one country's weapon be produced in another; readily available technical information and the spread of reverse engineering -- taking something apart, figuring out how it works and coming up with a way to make it.
Wolfsthal said almost any country able to make cars can also make tanks and other sophisticated military hardware.
North Koreans ``have the incredible ability to reverse-engineer anything they get their hands on,'' he said. ``The Chinese are taking Russian airplanes and making their own production lines. The Iranians have bought not only ballistic missiles from North Korea but a production capability.''
The United States is the largest arms merchant by far, delivering almost half the weapons bought on the world market. America netted $14 billion from arms exports in 2000, more than double the earnings of its closest competitor, Britain, with Russia in third.
Like other top arms suppliers, the United States does not sell directly to hostile nations -- except in shady deals like the arms-for-hostages arrangement with Iran in the 1980s.
But this is an amorphous world of shifting relations and military hand-me-downs.
One result: U.S. forces faced U.S. Stinger missiles in Afghanistan, leftovers from the arms supplied to the Afghan resistance in its war against the Soviet Union.
Another: Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 with weapons bought from all major arms powers, including the United States.
And another: In perhaps the last chance to avoid another Iraq war, inspectors are searching there for evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein once used against Iran -- when U.S. officials sided with him.
``In the past 20 years, Pakistan was our friend, then our enemy, friend, enemy, friend,'' Wolfsthal said. ``Alliances change quickly.''
North Korea has been selling industriously to anyone who wants to buy.
U.S. allies such as Egypt and Pakistan have bought from North Korea, experts say, and so has Iran. President Bush branded North Korea, Iran and Iraq an ``axis of evil'' because of their existing or potential arsenals of the world's worst weapons.
Yemen is part ally, part trouble spot for the United States -- its backcountry seething with anti-American militancy but its leadership cooperating with the United States in the war against terrorism.
--------
U.S. Allows Scud Missile Shipment to Continue to Yemen
December 11, 2002
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER with TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/international/11CND-SCUD.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The White House said today that a North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles that was intercepted by Spanish warships in the Arabian Sea was headed to Yemen and was allowed to continue its journey after the United States determined that the shipment was not in violation of any international law.
While there is authority to stop and search such a vessel, which was not carrying a national flag, "in this instance there is no clear authority to seize the shipment of Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen, and therefore the merchant vessel is being released," the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said at a news conference.
He said the United States was engaged in continuing efforts to stop the spread of missile technologies and was conducting talks on such an agreement with Yemen.
Mr. Fleischer, who said Yemeni officials had been contacted today by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney, spoke after a series of twists and turns about the fate and destination of the missiles.
Spain reported earlier today that after its warships halted the North Korean ship on Tuesday it had been handed over to the United States and was on its way to Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island leased to Washington by Britain.
The Spanish defense minister, Federico Trillo, said the North Korean cargo vessel was carrying 15 Scud missiles and about 85 drums of chemicals, but that its destination could not be ascertained.
Later the Yemeni government said the missiles were intended for its army and issued formal protests over the vessel's seizure to the United States and Spain, the official Yemeni news agency Saba said.
At the White House Mr. Fleischer said this afternoon, "Yemen is a partner of the United States in the war on terrorism," and added, "As conversations took place with Yemen, Yemen has given the United States assurances that it will not transfer these missiles to anyone."
Asked if the lesson to be drawn by North Korea was that the United States was willing to cut off oil supplies but that Pyongyang was free to ship its missiles, Mr. Fleischer said Washington did have concerns about the shipments but that "international law still is international law."
Mr. Fleischer said one concern in the shipment was "whether or not these missiles were going to head to any rogue regimes."
He added: "And that would have been a different matter. But the fact of the matter is the import of export of this, which is legal, must be observed under international law."
In Sana, the Yemeni capital, Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi was quoted by the official Saba news agency as saying: "The shipment is part of contracts signed some time ago. It belongs to the Yemeni government and its army and meant for defensive purposes."
Saba said Mr. Qirbi summoned the United States ambassador to Sana to lodge a formal protest.
"The foreign minister stressed the importance of the return of the shipment to the Yemeni government," the Yemeni agency said, adding that the Yemeni government had also protested to Spain, whose warships intercepted the North Korean vessel.
Before Mr. Fleischer spoke, the deputy White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said, Yemen was not a state that sponsored terrorism, and added, "We now know that in fact Yemen has been a friend and partner in the global war on terrorism."
American and Spanish officials have said the missiles were hidden under thousands of bags of cement. Late Tuesday night, American intelligence officials said there was no clear link between Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups and the North Korean ship.
The ship, which a senior administration official said on Tuesday had been tracked by American intelligence "all the way out" from North Korea, appeared to be heading for Yemen when it was stopped by the two Spanish warships an estimated 600 miles off the Yemeni coast.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in Djibouti today as part of an overseas trip that alo included a visit to Qatar, "North Korea doesn't like to hear me say it, but they continue to be the largest proliferator of missiles and ballistic missile technology on the face of the earth." Mr. Rumsfeld spoke after meeting President Ismael Omar Guelleh.
North Korea recently disclosed that it has a program to make nuclear weapons from highly enriched uranium, in violation of its international agreements, but the United States has taken pains to defuse any sense that it is planning an immediate confrontation over the issue. That policy is in contrast to the administration's approach with Iraq, where the Bush administration has threatened military action to disarm President Saddam Hussein if he does not voluntarily dispose of any weapons of mass destruction.
The administration's complicated diplomatic and military relations throughout the region could be made even more difficult if and when it were determined who the customer was for the cargo, an arsenal that one official said was about a dozen Scud missiles. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration has been rewarding nations that have supported the American counterterrorism effort, coaxing some to join the campaign, and threatening others - in particular Iraq - that are believed to possess weapons of mass destruction or to be supporting terrorist networks.
The Spanish warships, the Navarra and the Patino, were part of a seaborne operation initially set up to halt Al Qaeda supporters who might be fleeing the war in Afghanistan. The Navarra signaled for the cargo ship to halt but it "did not cooperate," one Pentagon official said. "It took evasive maneuvers. It tried by all means to avoid inspection."
Warning shots were fired, officials said, and the cargo ship, whose seizure was first reported by CNN, was cut off by the two warships and was boarded by Spanish crews.
The ship's manifest said it was carrying 40,000 sacks of cement, an official said. But a search found 20 containers, each about 20 feet by 40 feet, that were covered with sacks of cement. After clearing the sacks and discovering signs of a high-tech arsenal, the Spanish captain signaled for American explosives experts, who are expected to file a more thorough report after they complete their work.
Administration officials have said that North Korea is one of the largest proliferators of missile technology. Its customers have included Pakistan - which supplied nuclear technology in return, administration officials say - and Iran and Yemen. North Korea has sold Pakistan not only Scuds, which are shorter-range tactical missiles, but also longer-range Nodongs.
An international agreement, called the Missile Technology Control Regime, was intended to prevent the spread of delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction, but North Korea has not signed the pact.
According to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., Yemen has 18 Scud-B missiles and used a small number of them in its civil war in 1994.
Iraq also fired Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and should President Bush order the United States to war in order to disarm President Saddam Hussein, eliminating any Scud threat would be a critical early priority.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the subsequent war in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa became an important hub for military planners. The United States and its allies, worried that Al Qaeda fighters would flee Afghanistan for Yemen's interior, Somalia or other lawless regions, organized the patrols in the Arabian Sea and adjoining waters. About 10 countries have provided vessels to the effort, and more than 30 ships are on patrol at all times, Pentagon officials said.
The Scud is based on a Soviet-era design for a tactical surface-to-surface missile with a range of about 390 miles. It is not highly accurate, and of less military utility when armed with conventional explosives. Even so, a Scud killed dozens of American soldiers at a barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1991.
But Scuds can be armed with more lethal warheads of chemical or biological weapons, which do not require the same accuracy to perform their mission.
--------
Charges Issued in Smuggling of Parts to Iran
December 11, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/politics/11SMUG.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - A crackdown on smuggling military parts to Iran led to federal indictments today against three executives and three companies charged with violating export laws.
Federal prosecutors said the companies had tried to sell engines, gear assemblies, spare parts and munitions for fighter planes and military helicopters without required State Department approvals. The sales, the prosecutors said, went through a sham Austrian corporation set up by undercover Customs Service agents.
"It's the seller's obligation to make sure export laws are followed, and these companies acted as if they just didn't care," Steven M. Biskupic, the United States attorney for Milwaukee, said in an interview. "In the past, these types of violations may have been viewed as more regulatory than anything. In the post-Sept. 11 period, the dangers and the reasons for these restrictions are much more readily apparent."
Charged with violating export laws were Jami S. Choudhury, 38, of Wauwatosa, Wis.; William W. Manning, 55, of Clinton, Utah, and the company where he is a vice president, Camnetics Manufacturing of Oregon, Wis.; Andrew A. Adams, 63, of Monroe, N.C., and the company that he heads, Equipment and Supply International; and Rick's Manufacturing and Supply of Harrah, Okla.
None of the defendants was taken into custody because prosecutors said they were not considered to pose a threat or a flight risk.
Mr. Adams said he did not know of the indictment until a reporter called him this evening. "I don't know anything about this," he said, declining to answer further questions.
At issue, prosecutors contend, are broad violations of export laws punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $1 million in fines. They did not say the executives or companies knew that the military parts they were selling were headed for Iran or anywhere else.
Mr. Choudhury has been linked to the Iranian black market. He was sentenced to six months of home confinement in 2000 for lying to a federal agent about sales of airplane parts to Iran. Mr. Choudhury said at his sentencing that he was "humiliated enough to last a lifetime."
Federal officials said today that they believed that he resumed the illegal export business not long after his release from confinement.
The indictment against Mr. Choudhury charges that he and executives at Rick's Manufacturing arranged to have five shipments of rebuilt starter engines, designed for use in C-130 transports, shipped to Taiwan. Officials charged that Mr. Choudhury falsified invoices to understate the $20,000 value of the engines and to make it appear that the sales did not require an export license.
Prosecutors said the defendants also arranged to sell parts and supplies for F-4 and F-15 fighters and Sikorsky military helicopters.
The case grew out of recent cases in Milwaukee and elsewhere in which businesses sold military and aircraft parts, computer supplies and gas testers to Iran in violation of bans.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton imposed trade sanctions against Iran for what he called its sponsorship of terrorism and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. President Bush has declared Iran one of the three countries of an "axis of evil."
Concerned about growing black-market sales, authorities in Milwaukee set up an undercover operation, posing as buyers in Vienna for black-market supplies.
"We've had an ongoing problem with people trying to purchase weapons for Iran, missile components, military jet components and more," a spokesman for the Customs Service, Dean Boyd, said.
--------
Man Charged in Military Part Export
December 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Illegal-Exports.html
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- A man convicted in 1999 for exporting military parts to Iran has been indicted along with two businessmen and three companies for allegedly selling equipment on the black market.
Federal prosecutors accused Jami Choudhury of doing nothing to find out whether the parts were illegally destined for a country that is considered a threat to the United States.
Choudhury, 38, a naturalized citizen living in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa, faces five counts of selling airplane engine starters that are among items banned for export without a State Department license, prosecutors and customs officials said.
Tuesday's indictments allege Choudhury purchased 10 of the $10,000 starters from Rick's Manufacturing and Supply of Harrah, Okla., and forwarded them to California to be sent to Taiwan.
Such exports are legal only with a license, which requires proof that the parts will end up in an approved country, U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic said.
Also indicted were the Oklahoma company; William W. Manning Jr., of Camnetics Manufacturing Corporation in Clinton, Utah, and the company; and Andrew Adams, of Equipment and Supply International Inc. in Monroe, N.C., and his company. ``Today's indictments allege not that these defendants knew the parts were destined for Iran or some other prohibited country or source,'' Biskupic said. ``Rather, the charges allege that the defendants took no action to ascertain the end user of these items. Simply put, the indictments allege these companies acted as if they did not care.''
Earlier this year, President Bush said Iran was part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and North Korea. Iran and the United States have not had diplomatic ties since 1979.
Choudhury also was indicted Tuesday on charges of having false documents related to the sales. He faces up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million if convicted.
He earlier was sentenced to six months in jail and fined $15,000 on the 1999 conviction.
Brian Falvey, resident agent in charge of the Milwaukee U.S. Customs Service, said Choudhury was indicted after the agency set up a fake Austrian business actually run from Milwaukee. The business placed orders for military parts whose sale in the United States is prohibited without a license and waited to see if anyone would offer to send the parts, Falvey said. That investigation yielded clues that Choudhury might have been back in business, Biskupic said.
-------- business
Court Aids Defense Firms
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Washington Post; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37703-2002Dec10?language=printer
The Pentagon's $2.3 billion dispute with General Dynamics and Boeing over the demise of the A-12 Navy fighter-jet program is ongoing and the agency can't begin collection efforts, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled. After settlement talks collapsed, the Pentagon threatened to begin withholding the money from the companies' current contracts. But the court ruled that collecting the money "would not be in the national interest, particularly at this time," according to a statement from Falls Church-based General Dynamics.
----
TRW Approves Sale to Northrop Grumman
By M.R. KROPKO
AP Business Writer
Dec 11, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TRW_NORTHROP_GRUMMAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Shareholders approved the $7.8 billion sale of TRW Inc. to defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp. on Wednesday, clearing the way for completion of a deal that will make Northrop the world's second largest defense contractor.
TRW shareholders approved the deal at a morning meeting in Cleveland. A few hours later, Northrop shareholders meeting in Santa Monica, Calif., approved the transaction.
The sale is expected to close within a day or two.
The votes came a day after Northrop announced an agreement with the Justice Department that the merger will not impede fair and open competition related to electronics in spacecraft.
"This is a real win for TRW's shareholders, our thousands of employees worldwide and for our valued customers," said TRW Chairman Philip A. Odeen.
"Together with TRW, Northrop Grumman will be a highly competitive organization and well-positioned in each of the fastest growing sectors of the defense industry," he said.
To win Department of Justice approval for the deal, Northrop signed a consent agreement requiring the company to sell satellite sensors to competitors at a fair price.
Competitors, chiefly the No. 1 defense contractor Lockheed Martin, were concerned that the combination of Northrop, which ranked fourth in defense revenue in 2001, and TRW would result in Northrop having an unfair advantage. Northrop now makes sensors and other equipment that will go on satellites produced by TRW.
The consent decree includes the possibility of a $10 million fine if Northrop is found to be in contempt, the company said.
"We feel comfortable with this decree because it is the way we operate anyway," said Northrop chairman and chief executive Kent Kresa.
On July 1, Northrop announced its sweetened offer to buy TRW for about $7.8 billion in stock. It would also assume about $4 billion in TRW debt.
The European Union antitrust authority approved the transaction Oct. 16.
Northrop said it would pay $60 a share in stock for each TRW share, or 27 percent more than it had initially offered in February.
Northrop said Tuesday that the exact exchange ratio will be determined based on closing prices of its common stock for five consecutive trading days ending on the second trading day before the closing of the merger.
TRW said in a statement that the exchange rate would be 0.5357 Northrop shares for each TRW share.
TRW shares were up 50 cents at $52.31 a share in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while Northrop Grumman rose $1.01 to $97.63 a share.
On the Net:
TRW Inc.: http://www.trw.com
Northrop Grumman: www.northgrum.com
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Northrop Says U.S. Agrees to Deal for Acquisition of TRW
December 11, 2002
New York Times
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/business/11ARMS.html
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 10 - The military contractor Northrop Grumman said today that it had reached an agreement with the Justice Department that would allow it to buy the rival TRW for $11.8 billion.
Northrop said the terms of a consent decree with the government assured that the merger would not hurt competition for satellite components. The company, which makes sensors and electronics for satellites, pledged to continue selling parts to rivals like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
Buying TRW would make Northrop the primary supplier of parts for military satellites and would give it $2 billion more in military contracts. It also caps an expansion plan that the chief executive, Kent Kresa, undertook after the government stopped Northrop's sale to Lockheed in 1998. The $9 billion of acquisitions since then, including Newport News Shipbuilding in January and Litton Industries in May 2001, more than doubled Northrop's size.
Northrop expects to close the transaction after the companies' shareholders vote on Wednesday. The vote concludes an effort begun in February when Northrop made an unsolicited bid three days after the chief executive of TRW, David M. Cote, quit. TRW makes satellite equipment and electronics for missiles.
Shares of Northrop rose $1.27, to $96.62. TRW rose 91 cents, to $51.81.
The consent decree does not require Northrop to divest itself of businesses, the company said. Northrop did not give examples of what the agreement obligates it to do.
"The agreement will be a matter of public record when it is filed" by the Justice Department, a Northrop spokesman, Randy Belote, said. The Justice Department had no comment on Northrop's statement, a spokesman said.
Northrop will close TRW's headquarters in Cleveland. The company has also said it plans to keep almost all of TRW's operating personnel, enlarging its payroll to 123,000.
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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.
-------- iraq
Iraq claims U.S. tampered with report
December 11, 2002
Chicago Sun-Times
BY CHARLES J. HANLEY
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-iraq11.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq--The Iraqi government accused Washington on Tuesday of taking control of a UN master copy of Baghdad's arms declaration in order to tamper with it and create a pretext for war.
The White House dismissed Iraq's accusation that it altered the documents. Specialists at the CIA and other U.S. agencies began poring over the 12,000-page declaration, in which Baghdad is supposed to ''tell all'' about its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. American officials said much of the material appeared to be recycled versions of earlier documents.
Bush administration officials said they hoped to share its preliminary findings with the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, by Friday, but cautioned that a full evaluation of the material--some of it in Arabic--could take weeks.
Refusal to comply won't be tolerated, U.S. warns