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NUCLEAR
U.S. Fears 'Axis' Nations May Go Nuclear
Brazil opens uranium enrichment plant
UK says may dump more n-waste in Irish Sea after '06
Radioactivity is not evidence
U.N. Weapon Inspectors Stymied
U.N. Inspectors Use Hotline to Resolve Snag
Locked Iraqi Rooms Delay U.N. Inspectors
U.S., Russia assess Iraqi arms papers
Iraq Arms Report Has Big Omissions, U.S. Officials Say
U.S. has photos of secret Iran nuclear sites
Iran: Photos Show Building at Nuclear Sites, Group Says
Iran Was Burying Nuclear Facilities, U.S. Says
Iran Denies Having Nuke Arms Plans; U.N. to Inspect
Iran denies secret nuclear program
Iran Says Nuclear Plants Open to Search
North Korea: Remove IAEA Seals From Nuclear Sites, Pyongyang Says
North Korea: Ship interception 'piracy'
N. Korea to restart nuke reactor
South Korea Calls North's Nuclear Plan 'Unacceptable'
North Korea to Reactivate an Idled Nuclear Reactor
U.S. Takes North Korea's Nuclear Plan In Stride
North Korea Knocks
House Expands Inquiry Into Fraud at Lab
Kissinger to Withhold Client List
Kissinger Resigns as Head of Sept. 11 Commission
Bush, Kim Discuss North Korean Nuclear Program
MILITARY
Overblown missile threat
U.S. to Yield G.I. to Seoul
State Officials Question Timetable for Smallpox Vaccines
Plan for Vaccinations Carries Risk of Infecting Other People
Stock Sales Timely for Iran-Contra Figure
Xiong send-off
In Vast Expansion of the European Union, Pluses but Also Perils Lie Ahead
EU Overcomes Protest to NATO Force Plans
Hundreds Flee Fearing Election Results in India
Did Saddam's army test poison gas on missing 5,000?
Oil Deal Canceled, Iraq Tells Russians
Iraq Denies Giving Poison To Extremists
U.S. Sees Showdown Over Iraqi Scientists
Iraq Opposition Is Pursuing Ties With Iranians
U.S. Delay on Proposal for Mideast Irks Allies
U.N. Condemns Terror Acts Against Israel
Some 90,000 US soldiers expected to arrive in Turkey
EPA says Vieques cleanup will be a priority
Japan Rocket Lifts Off From Remote Island
Theodore Shackley Dies; Celebrated CIA Agent
Drones To Serve As Coastal Watchdogs
Today's Army
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Why Innocent People Confess
Lawmaker rips opium-eradication effort
Scientists Criticize Visa Restrictions
Al Qaeda leadership reported disrupted
Al Qaeda Still a Major Threat, Tenet Says
General Sees Scant Evidence of Threat Near in U.S.
ENERGY AND OTHER
Canada ethanol plants need federal help-industry
2 Groups Press Bid to See Cheney Task Force Records
US FERC seeks ways to speed up hydropower licenses
EU agrees sulphur-free fuel phase-in by 2009
Gov't Adds Substances to Cancer List
ACTIVISTS
US activists visit Baghdad to protest war talk
Marion Anderson, 70; Critic of Defense Spending
Paul Vathis
Parents protest U.S. schools irradiated meat plan
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S. Fears 'Axis' Nations May Go Nuclear
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Axis-of-Evil-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The countries dubbed an Axis of Evil by President Bush may be going nuclear, U.S. officials fear.
North Korea said it would resume its nuclear program the same week U.S. officials lent credence to recent reports that Iraq and Iran are actively seeking the fissile material -- enriched uranium or plutonium -- that has until now kept them out of the nuclear club.
Bush placed containment of all three nations at the top of his ``to do'' list last January, when he described an ``Axis of Evil'' in his State of the Union address that posed a ``growing danger'' by developing weapons of mass destruction.
That might have been a self-fulfilling prophesy, said John Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
``While they were proliferating before they were called the Axis of Evil, calling them by that name may have accelerated their programs,'' he said Friday.
Still, the United States is using different approaches to containing each of the three.
Regarding Iran, U.S. officials on Thursday endorsed claims by an Iranian opposition group that the government may be using two construction sites in central Iran to develop nuclear weapons -- one a nuclear fuel production plant and research lab at Natanz and a heavy water production plant at Arak that could be part of a plutonium program. Iran denied the allegations Friday; the United States does not believe Iran has yet made nuclear weapons.
Iran's lack of fissile material is its main obstacle to building nuclear weapons.
Reports of the facilities Iran is constructing ``reinforce our already grave concern that Iran is seeking technology to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear cop, said Friday he would reserve judgment until he visits the sites in February.
Nevertheless, he said, ``It would have been better if we had been informed earlier about the decision to build these facilities.''
As for Iraq, the concern is also about its search for fissile material. The 12,000 pages of documents filed with ElBaradei's agency last weekend fail to address U.S. intelligence reports of a recent purchase of uranium in Africa, and purchases in Western countries of high-tech equipment that could be used in a uranium enrichment program.
``Iraq claims they have not been involved in any proscribed activities in the last four years,'' since the last inspections, ElBaradei said. ``We cannot take that statement at face value.''
Some experts believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may be scrambling to achieve nuclear weapons capability to cow his neighbors into backing out of support for any U.S.-led action to remove him.
Officials in North Korea, meanwhile, have said they will reactivate nuclear facilities frozen under a 1994 deal with Washington. They blamed the Bush administration's hard line for the policy change. Western officials believe North Korea built one or two plutonium-based nuclear bombs before it froze its nuclear facilities in 1994 -- and could quickly create enough plutonium for several more bombs if the program resumes.
``Whether (North Korea) will refreeze its nuclear facilities or not entirely depends on the attitude of the United States,'' North Korea's state-run news agency, KCNA, said in a commentary Friday.
The United States might be ready to listen. Bush spoke by telephone Friday with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and agreed to seek a ``peaceful resolution'' to the crisis, although both said they could not accept North Korea's resumption of its nuclear weapons program.
Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state, sounded optimistic about persuading the North to back down. ``We believe that the situation on the Korean Peninsula lends itself to the possibility of a diplomatic solution,'' he told reporters in Australia.
Wolfsthal shares such optimism, saying North Korea, unlike Iran or Iraq, ultimately seeks the good graces of the United States.
``They see us as the only country able to get them out of their dire diplomatic and economic situation,'' he said.
-------- brazil
Brazil opens uranium enrichment plant
REUTERS BRAZIL:
December 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19032/newsDate/13-Dec-2002/story.htm
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil opened a new uranium enrichment plant that allows the country with the world's sixth-largest reserves of the metal to produce fuel for its nuclear power plant or for export.
The Brazilian Nuclear Institute, which represents the nuclear energy lobby, said in a statement the facility would make Latin America's largest nation the world's eighth country possessing the enrichment technology.
"The enrichment used to be done abroad, but with this plant, some 95 percent of all the process will be domestic from next year," added a spokeswoman for the institute. She did not provide the exact date when the output would start next year.
The plant in the town of Resende in Rio de Janeiro state cost some $140 million and should save the country about $13 million a year.
Brazil has two nuclear power reactors, which account for about 6 percent of all power consumed in the country, and the Institute is lobbying to complete the construction of a third reactor. In comparison, France's 58 nuclear power plants produce twice as much power as the whole of Brazil.
The reactors of the Angra nuclear power complex are located on the wooded shore of a picturesque bay between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Environmentalists allege the reactors are not safe enough and condemn the expansion plans.
Some government officials and federal power holding Eletrobras (ELET6.SA), whose Eletronuclear unit is responsible for Angra, say nuclear energy is safe, cheap and should be used more, especially with the new technology now in place.
-------- britain
UK says may dump more n-waste in Irish Sea after '06
REUTERS UK:
December 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19019/newsDate/13-Dec-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Britain said this week it might have to dump radioactive pollution stockpiled at its Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant into the Irish Sea after 2006 as tanks storing the waste age and may become unsafe.
Environment Minister Michael Meacher said the government was researching ways to store the waste permanently onland but if this was not successful, then the radioactive liquid technetium-99 kept in offshore tanks may be dumped in the sea.
"If the tanks can't take it beyond 2006, then we might have to look at an alternative solution... to discharge (their contents) into the Irish Sea quickly," Meacher told a news conference.
The tanks, built in the 1950s and 1960s at the Sellafield site in Cumbria in northwest England, do not meet modern standards and have already exceeded their expected lifetimes, said the government.
Ireland and Norway oppose the Sellafield plant and in June Dublin asked an international court in The Hague for access to information about the plant's viability which Britain says is commercially sensitive.
Norway has called on Britain to halt radioactive emissions from Sellafield, traces of which have been found as far away as the Artic Barents Sea.
But in the short term, Meacher said Sellafield, owned by state-run British Nuclear Fuels, will slash technetium-99 emissions into the sea by 2006 in response to complaints from Norway and Ireland about the pollution.
Sellafield is allowed to release up to 90 terabecquerels (TBq) of technetium-99 into the Irish Sea but will have to cut this to 10 TBq by 2006.
"We are accepting the Energy Agency's proposals (to cut the discharges) but we want to go further," Meacher said.
Meacher said the discharge of technetium-99 into the Irish Sea could be halted altogether if research into storing the waste in the tanks permanently onshore is successful.
Sellafield will start in March processing newly produced technetium-99 into glass blocks suitable for long-term storage onland.
This technology cannot be used on waste already stockpiled in Sellafield's tanks which hold about 200 TBq of technetium-99.
Britain first established nuclear facilities at Sellafield, formerly called Windscale, in the 1940s and the world's first commercial nuclear power station was opened there in 1956.
Research has shown lobsters and other shellfish in the North and Irish Seas have traces of technetium-99.
Britain admits the waste has been found in lobsters but says there is no evidence it has accumulated in fish.
-------- depleted uranium
Radioactivity is not evidence
Dec. 13, 2002
Arizona Republic
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/opinions/articles/1213frilet137.html
Regarding the article Wednesday "Lab will know if Baghdad is bluffing":
While I applaud the efforts and intentions of the lab in Austria to detect traces of uranium, what this story fails to consider is that the United States dumped over 300 tons of depleted uranium on Iraq in the last war.
As most people know, such material is toxic, especially when it is gasified and spewed into the air. It will be impossible for the lab to determine the origin of the radioactive material.
The use of depleted uranium in Iraq is not a secret, and one wonders why an Associated Press reporter would fail to point out this obvious flaw?
And why would the story lead readers to this flawed conclusion: that "any discovery of radioactive material found in Iraq is an indication of Iraq's possible possession of nuclear weapons"?
Under the circumstances, detection of radioactive material in Iraq can lead us to no conclusion about Iraq's possession of nuclear weapons or programs. - Richard Scott Scottsdale
-------- inspections
U.N. Weapon Inspectors Stymied
"It is a newly declared site and there was a need for tagging of some of its equipment." Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin U.N-Iraqi Liaison
CBS
Dec. 13, 2002
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/04/attack/main527977.shtml
U.N. weapons inspectors encountered their first significant delays on Friday, when trying to enter certain rooms within a newly declared site - Iraq's Communicable Disease Control Center. The team had to use its hotline to higher Baghdad authorities for the first time since inspections resumed last month.
Team members had to wait two hours for Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, their Iraqi liaison, to arrive.
At that point inspectors and Amin agreed the rooms would be sealed and the U.N. team would return later, perhaps Saturday, to inspect them.
"It is a newly declared site and there was a need for tagging of some of its equipment," Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate, told reporters outside the building. "There is no problem."
Another Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the problem was the result of the inspections taking place on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, when the keys for the locked rooms were not readily available.
Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration does not account for a number of missing chemical and biological weapons and fails to explain purchases U.S. intelligence believes are related to Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, U.S. officials said.
Iraq used the lengthy document to support its contention - disputed by the United States - that Saddam's regime possesses none of these weapons of mass destruction, the officials said late Thursday.
The tentative U.S. conclusion that the report is lacking sets the stage for a critical set of decisions by President Bush, who views the declaration as Saddam's last chance to come clean, officials said.
Mr. Bush's options include providing American intelligence on suspected weapons programs to U.N. inspectors or helping the world body attempt to prove that Saddam is lying, which was required under a U.S.-backed U.N. resolution that also forced inspectors back into Iraq after a four-year lapse, the officials said, speaking only on condition of anonymity
Mr. Bush could also simply seek more information from Iraq, a route White House officials said earlier Thursday the president would not take.
After a more thorough review of the declaration, the president also could declare that Saddam was in "material breach" of the resolution, and that war was required to disarm him, officials said.
U.S. allies would condemn that step, but administration hard-liners support it.
A new Chicago tribune poll shows half of Americans would support a war - even though most feel Mr. Bush needs to make a stronger case for the use of force.
Under the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, false statements or omissions in the declaration - coupled with a failure to comply with inspections - would be a "material breach" of Iraq's obligations. Newly admitted weapons inspectors have not publicly accused Iraq of obstructing their efforts.
The Iraqi report largely rehashes old declarations and reports and contains little new information, officials said. It has done nothing to alter the U.S. belief that Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons and is pursuing nuclear weapons, officials said.
The report, being analyzed at the CIA and elsewhere, does not account for quantities of chemical and biological agents that were missing when U.N. inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998, officials said. Hundreds of mustard gas shells, for example, remain unaccounted for, officials said.
It also does not explain a number of Iraqi acquisitions that the United States suspects are related to Saddam's nuclear program, officials said. This includes the purchase of uranium in Africa, as well as purchases in Western countries of high-tech equipment that could be used in a uranium enrichment program, officials said. Enriched uranium or plutonium is a necessary requirement for a nuclear weapon.
White House and CIA officials refused comment on the assessment, first reported by The New York Times in Friday editions. However, Bush himself told ABC News his gut feeling about Saddam was that "he is a man who deceives, denies."
The United States and Russia turned in their preliminary assessments Thursday to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and ElBaradei Mohamed of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Three other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, France and China - are supposed to provide their assessments as well by Friday.
Blix and ElBaradei then will remove sensitive sections of the declaration and distribute copies Monday to the 10 other members of the council.
In a round of inspections in the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, the United Nations destroyed tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
An Iraqi general Thursday refuted intelligence reports that inspectors had discovered banned weapons programs at 10 sites, and also denied a newspaper story that Iraq had sold VX nerve gas to an al Qaeda affiliate.
Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin called the intelligence reports "just a lie" and the newspaper report "a ridiculous assumption from the American administration."
The White House steered clear of the assertion that Iraq had shipped chemical weapons to the Islamic extremist group.
"Weaponry to al Qaeda ... we know al Qaeda is seeking it. But beyond that, I just don't get into intelligence information," said spokesman Ari Fleischer Thursday.
----
U.N. Inspectors Use Hotline to Resolve Snag
Reuters
Friday, December 13, 2002
By Hassan Hafidh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50694-2002Dec13?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. experts called in senior U.N. and Iraqi officials to sort out a snag during an inspection of a disease control center in Baghdad Friday.
It was the first time in the latest round of U.N. weapons inspections that a problem on the ground was known to have prompted senior officials to use their hotline.
"This is a newly declared site and we want to clarify the tagging procedure, that is all," said senior weapons inspector Miroslav Gregoric.
U.N. arms inspectors returned to Iraq last month after a four-year absence to check Baghdad's assertion that it has no nuclear, biological and chemical arms or long-range missiles.
Gregoric, speaking outside the Health Ministry's Communicable Diseases Control Center, said a biological weapons team had requested help during its visit there.
General Hussam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi official liaising with the inspectors, was swiftly on the scene.
"The matter was resolved quickly," Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the inspectors, said in a statement, adding that seals had been placed on several rooms that could not be opened because the keyholder was absent Friday, the Muslim day of rest.
It was the first time the inspectors had worked on a Friday since their return.
Iraq submitted a 12,000-page dossier on its arms programs to the United Nations last Saturday in line with Security Council resolution 1441, which threatens serious consequences if Baghdad does not cooperate with the inspectors.
MISSILE CENTER
A separate U.N. team spent four hours at the Ibn al-Haitham missile center in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kadhimiya.
Ueki said inspectors also visited a pesticide store, checked for radiation in the Baghdad area and taken hydrological samples at three sites on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
"It was a surprise visit. Today is Friday when everybody is at home. I came here by chance," the director of the Ibn al-Haitham facility, Brigadier Owaid Ahmed, told reporters.
"They inspected everything -- rooms, workshops, stores. There was no problem and they did a professional inspection," Ahmed, a French-educated engineer, said in English.
Journalists were allowed into two warehouses after the inspectors left. They contained large aluminum and metal sheets and machines which Ahmed acknowledged were versatile.
"It depends on the worker working on these machines; he can produce parts of a missile or parts of a bicycle," he said.
He said the site had a missile production data center, a test and launch directorate, a missile fuel center, workshops and stores.
He said the site had been heavily bombed by American and British aircraft in 1998. "Some buildings were completely destroyed and abandoned," he said. "Some others were rebuilt and recommissioned."
According to a report by London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, the plant was built in 1992 as a research and design center for the short-range al-Sumoud missile.
U.N. resolutions allow Iraq to have missiles with a range not exceeding 150 km (95 miles).
Ibn al-Haitham had been placed under monitoring by the former U.N. inspection body.
There are now 98 inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Iraq.
But Richard Perle, head of the Defense Department's Policy Review Board, was quoted Friday as saying there were far too few inspectors in Iraq to find any banned weapons.
-----
Locked Iraqi Rooms Delay U.N. Inspectors
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Inspectors.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.N. teams were held up for two hours on Friday at a newly declared site -- an infectious diseases center -- forcing inspectors to use their hot line to higher Iraqi authorities for the first time since returning to the country last month.
The snag occurred as U.S. officials in Washington said Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration does not account for a number of missing chemical and biological weapons. The officials said it fails to explain attempted purchases of uranium and other items U.S. intelligence believes are related to Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. At the United Nations, Security Council diplomats concurred the voluminous report contained little that was new, raising questions whether Iraq was truly committed to disarmament.
During inspections in Baghdad on Friday, a U.N. team got access to the Communicable Disease Control Center but found several rooms locked and no one with keys. The Iraqis said the rooms were locked because Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, was a day off for doctors and other workers and no one else had keys.
Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate, arrived two hours later, after being summoned by the hot line call. He and the inspectors agreed the rooms would be sealed for inspection later, perhaps on Saturday.
``I don't see this as being a significant problem,'' said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in New York. ``We have sealed those rooms that the Iraqi officials could not provide keys for and we'll go back to check on them.''
Amin also sought to downplay the incident.
``It is a newly declared site and there was a need for tagging of some of its equipment. There is no problem,'' he told reporters outside the infectious diseases facility.
The site was not visited by U.N. weapons inspectors in the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, and Amin indicated that his government had recently added it to a list of places with dual-use equipment that should be monitored.
Friday's inspections marked the first time the U.N. teams have been in the field on the Muslim day of prayer since returning to work Nov. 27.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, meanwhile, said in an interview broadcast Friday that the U.N. inspectors were doing a ``normal'' job, but he hinted Baghdad would act if they threaten Iraqi national security.
``In a professional description of the inspectors, it is normal ... So far, we have no negative comments,'' he told Al-Jazeera television.
``Of course, when the matter reaches a point that we are unable to prevent them from doing harm involving the security of Iraq, we will have a position,'' Ramadan said in reply to a question over how far Baghdad will go in cooperating with the weapons inspectors.
Also Friday, inspection teams visited three other sites -- one a facility that sells pesticides and two involved with Iraq's ballistic missile program. Details were not released.
Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear control agency took water and soil samples from the watershed of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, south of the 33rd parallel -- the northern limit of the southern no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. aircraft. The zone was instituted after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslims in the region against retribution from Saddam.
The International Atomic Energy Agency team also reported doing a broad gamma radiation survey of the Baghdad area, which it said included the Karama Sumood missile facility.
In Vienna, Austria, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said his inspectors would need ``something like a year'' to prove or disprove Iraq's assertions that it no longer maintains a nuclear weapons program.
The larger inspection team under Hans Blix, chief of the U.N. program, is searching for evidence of chemical or biological weapons and the means to deliver them. It was one of Blix's teams that was required to wait outside locked rooms at the infectious diseases center Friday.
During inspections a decade ago, the United Nations destroyed tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Those inspections ended in 1998 amid U.N.-Iraqi disputes.
Recently published British and U.S. intelligence reports said new construction at old weapons sites and other activities suggest the Iraqis may have resumed making weapons of mass destruction.
The inspections are being conducted in conjunction with economic sanctions imposed on Iraq when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Amin has said he hoped the inspectors would be finished and sanctions lifted within eight months. Under U.N. resolutions, the sanctions will only be removed after inspectors report full Iraqi cooperation in their disarmament work.
----
U.S., Russia assess Iraqi arms papers
From combined dispatches
December 13, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021213-71630912.htm
The United States and Russia yesterday concluded their preliminary assessments of Iraq's weapons declaration, focusing on how sensitive technology was acquired and put to use, a U.S. official said.
The assessments were turned in to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the official told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The three other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, France and China - are supposed to provide their assessments as well by today.
Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei are to remove sensitive sections of the declaration and distribute copies Monday to the 10 other members of the council.
There was no immediate word on what the U.S. and Russian analyses said.
But President Bush said in an interview with ABC News that his gut feeling about Saddam Hussein is that "he is a man who deceives, denies."
Iraq has insisted it has no weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, the Russian company Lukoil said that Iraq has scrapped a $3.7 billion oil-field pact, dealing a blow to Moscow's hopes of keeping a strong economic foothold there after any potential U.S. military action.
A Lukoil spokesman said an Iraqi deputy oil minister had told company President Vagit Alekperov by letter that the contract to develop Iraq's huge West Qurna oil field had been canceled on Dec. 9.
In an angry reaction, spokesman Alexander Vasilenko said Lukoil would challenge the cancellation of the 1997 deal - regarded as the jewel in the crown of Russian contracts in Iraq - in the courts.
Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Mohammed Rasheed, attending an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting in Vienna, Austria, would say only that contracts were liable to cancellation if companies did not fulfill their drilling obligations.
Australian officials said yesterday that Iraq also has slashed its imports of Australian wheat by almost half, several months after Baghdad threatened such action for Canberra's strong support of a U.S. campaign to overthrow Saddam.
An Australian Wheat Board spokesman said Iraq this week confirmed it would cut its Australian wheat imports to 1 million tons in 2003 from 1.8 million tons this year.
Russia, with a long-standing partnership with Iraq going back to Soviet times, has fought hard to protect its economic contracts and interests there as the prospects of U.S. military action have grown.
Apart from Lukoil's West Qurna deal, Russian oil firms won the majority of the 2001 contracts to lift Iraqi crude under the U.N. "oil-for-food" program.
Moscow wants to recover $8 billion to $12 billion in old Soviet debt from Baghdad.
The future of Iraq's crude reserves, the world's second-largest after Saudi Arabia's, are at the center of a diplomatic tug-of-war between countries hoping to grab a share of Baghdad's oil wealth once U.N. sanctions are lifted.
Anxious that its economic interests could be imperiled by unilateral U.S. military action, Russia pressed hard for changes before backing the U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution giving Iraq a last chance to disarm or face a U.S. threat of war.
Late last month, Mr. Bush went out of his way publicly to allay Russian President Vladimir Putin's fears.
He told Russia's NTV television that if there was a change of regime in Baghdad, "We fully realize that Russia has economic interests in Iraq, as do other countries. Of course these interests will be taken into account."
----
REPORT BY IRAQ
Iraq Arms Report Has Big Omissions, U.S. Officials Say
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER with JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/international/middleeast/13WEAP.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - American intelligence agencies have reached a preliminary conclusion that Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs fails to account for chemical and biological agents missing when inspectors left Iraq four years ago, American officials and United Nations diplomats said today.
In addition, Iraq's declaration on its nuclear program, they say, leaves open a host of questions. Among them is why Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa in recent years, as well as high-technology materials that the United States and Britain have said were destined for a program to enrich uranium. The nuclear document is under review both in Washington and at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
The omissions themselves pose a new challenge for the Bush administration: it needs to decide whether to declare that Iraq has failed to meet one of the most important requirements set by the United Nations and to whether to try to use that failure as a justification for American military action.
"What's remarkable is how little new there is," said one American official who has access to the Iraqi declaration, "and how little effort there was to try to explain gaps that everyone knew were there since Unscom left." He was using the acronym for the United Nations agency that conducted weapons inspections in Iraq through 1998.
A United Nations diplomat familiar with Iraq's submission said "our preliminary assessment" is that much of the declaration "seems to be recycled."
"They are claiming they have no new weapons of mass destruction," the diplomat said.
A second American official said there were "omissions big enough drive a tank through," citing as examples Iraq's failure to explain what happened to 550 shells filled with mustard gas, and another 150 bombs filled with biological agents, that the United Nations could not account for in the late 1990's.
The Iraqi nuclear declaration includes some revealing details of its nuclear program before 1991. But there are no drawings or descriptions of the gas centrifuges and other equipment for producing highly enriched uranium, senior officials who have reviewed the material said.
Britain said several months ago that Iraq had been buying "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa that could only be used in an enrichment program.
It believes that the nuclear program is still active, but several years from producing a weapon - and probably far behind the efforts of Iran and North Korea.
A top military aide to President Saddam Hussein said Sunday in Baghdad that the program had been abandoned in 1991, when it was close to perfecting a weapon.
Before Iraq submitted the document, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, noted several times that omissions in the declaration would constitute a violation of United Nations Resolution 1441. But now, Mr. Bush and his national security team - which has often been divided on how much support to give United Nations inspectors and whether to build an international coalition to strike Iraq - face what officials describe as three major choices.
The first, which has not been seriously considered in the White House, is to demand that Iraq answer specific questions about specific weapons programs. "We gave them that chance," one senior official said today. "They knew what issues were outstanding in 1998. They blew it."
The second is to continue with the inspections, and to aid inspectors with intelligence that would guide them to suspect locations. But Mr. Fleischer said earlier this week that the inspectors would receive no information that revealed the sources and methods used to collect them.
The third would be to declare, after a final review of the report, that Iraq is in "material breach" of its obligations. But winning that argument in the Security Council, American officials acknowledge, requires "proving a negative" - that is, proving that Iraq has knowledge of weapons materials that it has not accounted for.
Today the United States and Russia recommended to weapons inspectors at the United Nations which material in the Iraqi document should be deleted before the document is shared with the 10 nonpermanent members of the Security Council, Ewen Buchanan, the spokesman for the team, said. All of the 10 are non-nuclear states.
United Nations chemical and biological weapons experts, too, were working to identify material that they would have to filter out of the declaration before it could be distributed more broadly.
But it will be many days - perhaps several weeks - before Mr. Bush and his aides offer a fuller, more public assessment of the Iraqi declaration. They have begun work on a point-by-point comparison of the document with their intelligence about Iraqi sites, focusing chiefly on omissions. Within the administration, a debate has broken out over how much intelligence information to declassify to refute Mr. Hussein's contentions.
"The agency is reluctant," said one senior official, referring to the C.I.A. "And some of the more hawkish among us just want to say that the whole thing is laughable, and it is all the legal justification we need."
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, co-chiefs of the inspection teams, are scheduled to give their preliminary impressions of the Iraqi declaration to the Security Council on Thursday.
If the administration can successfully argue that the Iraqis have given no accounting of the chemical and biological stores of which the United Nations inspectors found evidence in the 1990's, they will bolster Mr. Bush's contention that Iraq has violated United Nations mandates and could secretly give some of the weapons to terror groups.
Today senior administration officials said terror networks like Al Qaeda had sought to acquire chemical weapons from a number of sources. But they discounted a report in The Washington Post today that the United States had received credible intelligence that Iraq had recently supplied Qaeda-related terrorists with a deadly chemical nerve agent.
In Vienna, analysts at the International Atomic Energy agency were busy combing through the 2,400 pages of documents that make up Iraq's nuclear declaration, which they received on Sunday.
Officials at the agency said 2,100 of the pages appeared very similar, if not identical, to the last declaration the agency received from Iraq, in 1998. The similarities were so clear that agency analysts were going through pages line for line to determine whether there were any changes at all.
Another 300 pages were in Arabic, and were being translated as fast as the agency could manage. The agency has several nuclear arms experts who are Arabic speakers, and they had already begun to examine the contents of those pages.
Agency officials said the declaration appeared to support Baghdad's insistent statements that it has undertaken no nuclear weapons programs since December 1998, the last time inspectors were in Iraq.
Administration officials, citing intelligence data about equipment and materials Iraq has tried to buy overseas, have accused it of reactivating efforts to build a nuclear weapon.
-------- iran
U.S. has photos of secret Iran nuclear sites
From David Ensor
CNN
Friday, December 13, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.nuclear/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States has evidence that Iran has secretly been building large nuclear facilities -- sites that could possibly be used to make nuclear weapons, senior U.S. officials tell CNN.
Commercial satellite photographs taken in September show a nuclear facility near the town of Natanz and another one near Arak, the officials said. (View map)
But Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the country's only nuclear activity is of a peaceful nature, and its facilities have been "regularly and frequently" inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.
"Iran hasn't committed any acts that can be considered against international rules, and will not do so in the future," Hamid Reza Assefi told CNN. "At the same time, no country could, for its own political objectives, prevent Iran from achieving its own goals."
A spokesman at the IAEA in Vienna, Austria confirms the agency is seeking access to the two sites and has so far been put off by Iran.
The vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said the development was "disturbing news."
"We don't need another nuclear power -- not with Iran sponsoring terrorism that it has in the past," said Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican. "The fact that they are seemingly pursuing an avenue to build nuclear weapons should be disturbing to everybody."
Assefi said the United States was trying to start a negative publicity campaign to divert attention from other issues.
"This kind of publicity is not new," Assefi said. "Certain circles within the United States are trying to create tensions and poison the international atmosphere, and to avert international public opinions away from the real regional danger, which is Israel."
Iranian dissidents have long contended that Iran has been working on nuclear capabilities. But the new satellite photographs and the conclusions drawn from them by nuclear experts are the first evidence to support such claims. Heavy Water (D2O) Water in which both hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen
Allows reactor to operate with natural uranium as its fuel
Used to breed plutonium from natural uranium, entirely bypassing uranium enrichment and related technological infrastructure
Heavy-water-moderated reactors can be used to make tritium, an ingredient of thermonuclear weapons
Source: Federation of American Scientists
Nuclear expert David Albright said the size and secrecy of the program suggest Iran might be working toward building nuclear weapons.
Albright is head of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which identified the photographs. The non-profit, non-partisan ISIS focuses on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
The satellite picture of the facility near Arak concerns nuclear experts.
Corey Hinderstein, also of ISIS, said the site resembles heavy water plants found in Pakistan and contains a similar Z-shaped structure. The large facility at Natanz appears to U.S. intelligence officials to be a uranium-enrichment plant, and civilian experts, including Hinderstein, agree.
Iran has a declared nuclear program at Bushehr that is designed to produce nuclear power for electricity only, according to the country's U.N. ambassador. Commercial satellite photo of a nuclear facility near Natanz, Iran Commercial satellite photo of a nuclear facility near Natanz, Iran
"I can categorically tell you that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program," Mohammed Javad Zarif said in an interview with CNN. "Any facility we have ... if it is dealing with nuclear technology, it is within the purview of our peaceful nuclear program." (Transcript of interview)
Iranian officials say a visit by senior IAEA officials is expected in February. IAEA officials say they want to visit Arak and Natanz on that trip.
IAEA officials also point out that nothing Iran is known to have done has violated international law.
Bush labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and North Korea, in his State of the Union address this year.
----
Iran: Photos Show Building at Nuclear Sites, Group Says
Friday, December 13, 2002
NTI News
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_12_13.html#5
According to satellite photographs, Iran is working at two sites to construct nuclear facilities that could be used to develop nuclear weapons, the Institute for Science and International Security said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 20).
By interpreting satellite imagery, the institute has determined that one of the sites, located near the city of Arak, appears to be a heavy-water production facility under construction, the report says. The existence of such a facility increases concerns that Iran might also be building a nuclear reactor moderated by heavy water, ISIS said, adding that no signs of such a reactor have been located.
The Bushehr nuclear reactor, which Iran is currently building with aid from Russia, does not use heavy water, the report says (see GSN, Oct. 22). Furthermore, Iran's existing research reactors do not use enough heavy water to justify creating a heavy-water plant, it adds.
Meanwhile, the satellite imagery appears to contradict claims made by the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has said that Tehran is building a nuclear fuel fabrication facility at a site called Natanz, 25 miles southeast of the city of Kashan, the institute said (see GSN, Aug. 15). Construction at Natanz appears to be for a uranium enrichment plant, possibly employing gas centrifuge technology, the ISIS report says, adding that the facility does not appear to be in operation.
IAEA
Under a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran does not have to open any new nuclear facility to agency inspections until six months before introducing nuclear materials, the ISIS report says (Institute for Science and International Security release, Dec. 12).
The agency learned of the new facilities in August from satellite imagery, according to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, and Iranian officials confirmed their existence in September to ElBaradei. At that time, they invited ElBaradei to visit the sites this week, but that visit was postponed until February, when ElBaradei will visit with a team of technical experts, he said on CNN this morning (Greg Webb, GSN, Dec. 13).
Iranian Response
In an interview with CNN yesterday, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif said that his country is not developing nuclear weapons.
"No. Absolutely not," Zarif said in response to a question on whether Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. "Iran is a member of the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty. We have safeguard agreements with the IAEA. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction do not have a place in our defense doctrine. We have stated that clearly. And we have shown it," he added.
Iran has the right to develop a peaceful civilian nuclear program, Zarif said.
"We do have a right to have nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. And that we have asserted very forcefully," Zarif said. "And we will continue to carry out our research and our activities in the area of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," he added.
Zarif dismissed suggestions that Iran might be working to develop a clandestine nuclear program.
"There is nothing hidden about it," Zarif said. "Because if we wanted to have sort of a clandestine nuclear program, we wouldn't come out in public and stating it is our right and this is our policy to pursue a nuclear program for peaceful purposes," he added (CNN.com, Dec. 13).
For further information, see:
NPT Text http://www.unog.ch/disarm/distreat/npt.pdf
States Parties to the NPT (U.N.) http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/nptstatus.html#home
U.N. Background on NPT http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/NPT/index.html
----
Iran Was Burying Nuclear Facilities, U.S. Says
Reuters
Friday, December 13, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51063-2002Dec13?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran was trying to hide parts of the nuclear facility it is building near the central town of Natanz by burying some of the buildings underground, the State Department said Friday.
The United States says the Natanz complex and another facility in nearby Arak were part of a secret project to make nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran said Friday they were for non-military uses.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the plan to hide them was evident from commercial satellite imagery which came to light this week and which cast some doubt on Iran's position that they are for civilian purposes.
"You can tell that portions of the Natanz nuclear facility, the suspect uranium enrichment plant, ultimately will be underground," he told a daily briefing.
"It appears from the imagery that the service roads, several small structures and perhaps three large structures are being built below ground and some of these are already being covered with earth. Iran clearly intended to harden and bury that facility," he added.
This indicated that Iran never intended to declare the facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) but was caught building a plant to make fissile material, he said.
Iran Friday dismissed U.S. accusations that the Arak and Natanz plants could be used to make secret nuclear weapons and said it had already invited U.N. inspectors to visit them.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said it was aware of the new nuclear facilities, had been talking to Iran about them since August and planned to inspect them in February.
But Boucher said Iran had repeatedly rebuffed the agency's request for access to the sites.
"We've always talked about the Bushehr reactor (on the Gulf coast of Iran), which will be subject to IAEA safeguards, but clearly that has been used as a pretext for obtaining sensitive technology for the weapons program," he added.
----
Iran Denies Having Nuke Arms Plans; U.N. to Inspect
Reuters
Friday, December 13, 2002
By Paul Hughes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50511-2002Dec13?language=printer
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran Friday dismissed U.S. accusations that two nuclear plants it is building could be used to make secret nuclear weapons and said it had already invited U.N. inspectors to visit the sites.
"We don't have any hidden atomic activities. All our nuclear activities are for non-military fields," Iranian government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told reporters on the sidelines of a political conference.
He was responding to remarks by U.S. officials claiming that two nuclear sites near the central Iranian towns of Natanz and Arak, seen in commercial satellite photographs, were of a type which suggested Iran could use them to build a nuclear weapon.
Iranian officials said the comments by the unnamed U.S. officials amounted to "U.S. propaganda" and insisted international bodies were well briefed on its nuclear program.
The Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it was aware of the facilities being built in Iran and planned to inspect them in February.
"This is not a surprise to us," IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
The IAEA first raised the issue with Tehran in August, tipped off by satellite pictures of the construction sites, he said.
"Whether the program is for peaceful purposes or not, this is obviously for us to verify...Iran affirmed that all their activities are for a peaceful purpose," ElBaradei said.
PLANNED VISIT
Iran invited IAEA inspectors after informing the agency in September of plans to build nuclear power plants and related fuel facilities over the next 20 years, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
"The director general, with a team of technical experts, plans to make such a visit in February 2003," Gwozdecky said.
ElBaradei said the inspection visit by himself and IAEA technical experts had originally been planned for this month but was put off at Iran's request.
Ramazanzadeh told Reuters in Tehran by telephone there was no obstacle for an IAEA inspection team to visit the sites.
"We have always said that our activities for peaceful usage of nuclear energy could be inspected," he said.
U.S. officials, who declined to be named, Thursday revealed their concerns about the sites in Iran.
"It is true that there are two suspicious facilities in those locations in Iran. They were first publicly identified by an Iranian opposition group this past summer. They certainly are worth looking into," they said.
But Ramazanzadeh said the plants were not sinister, noting the one near Natanz was to conduct research into radioactivity.
But the disclosure raised a new challenge for President Bush as he tries to head off North Korea's nuclear weapons program as well as what Washington believes is an effort to develop nuclear weapons capability.
U.N. experts are also currently carrying out inspections in Iraq which the United States accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Bush earlier this year labelled Iran, Iraq and North Korea an "axis of evil."
The United States and Iran have been foes since student militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the 1979 Islamic revolution and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Tehran has been developing a medium-range ballistic missile experts say would be able to hit Israel.
NEGOTIATING WITH RUSSIA
The United States has also been at odds with Russia over its help in building a nuclear power plant at the southwestern port of Bushehr which Tehran expects to come on line next year.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Iranian government official said Iran was negotiating with Russia to build several other nuclear power plants as well as Bushehr.
David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), told Reuters his organization was publishing its findings on the Iranian sites because it wanted the IAEA to inspect them.
ISIS reported on its Web site (www.isis-online.org/) that the complex near Arak appeared to include a plant to produce heavy water, a nuclear product that can be used either in civilian reactors or in the fuel cycle for making weapons.
"There is concern that this effort to obtain a complete fuel cycle is aimed at developing the capability to make separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the two main nuclear explosive materials," it said.
Nuclear experts said even if Iran's two new sites turned out to be heavy water and fuel enrichment plants, that could point to a nuclear power program just as well as to the development of nuclear weapons.
"Even if they are heavy water and enrichment plants, Iran has a right to these. It's just that at a certain point they would have to declare them to the IAEA" for monitoring under a global nuclear non-proliferation pact, one nuclear expert said.
Iran is party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has an agreement with the IAEA to safeguard against the diversion of civilian nuclear material for weapons.
"The IAEA has not detected any diversion of nuclear material (in Iran) declared and placed under our safeguard," the IAEA's Gwozdecky said.
---
Iran denies secret nuclear program
By Modher Amin
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021213-084407-3120r.htm
TEHRAN, Iran, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Iran on Friday rejected a CNN report that Tehran had been secretly developing facilities that could be used to make nuclear weapons, but U.S. nuclear experts maintained that Tehran possesses nuclear fuel cycle facilities.
"We have no nuclear activities or studies outside the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency," said Iranian government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh.
CNN on Thursday cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying an American DigitalGlobe company commercial satellite in September spotted two sites near the central Iranian towns of Natanz and Arak. The officials suggested they could be used for building nuclear weapons.
The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nuclear watchdog, issued satellite pictures of two such sites in Iran.
ISIS confirmed through photo interpretation that the site near Arak appeared to be a heavy water plant under construction. Heavy water, which is ordinary water enriched with the hydrogen isotope deuterium, is used as a moderator in one type of nuclear reactor.
The site's existence increases suspicions that Iran may be building a heavy-water moderated reactor, but ISIS was unable to locate such a reactor.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group that first released details of the plans in August 2002, said the second site, called Natanz, located about 25 miles southeast of Kashan, had a fuel fabrication facility. ISIS, however, said that was unlikely.
Based on the nature of the buildings, the most likely type of enrichment plant is a gas centrifuge facility, it said. The facility does not appear to be operating.
"The facilities in the two satellite images appear related to the production of enriched uranium and heavy water, two materials that may be used in a civil nuclear program or in the production of nuclear weapons," ISIS said.
Washington has expressed its concern over a nuclear power plant Iran has under construction, with Russian assistance, in the southern port city of Bushehr.
Both Iran and Russia have said they intend to complete the plant, with Moscow announcing in August it intended to build a second plant in Bushehr. ISIS said the power reactor bring built near Bushehr did not use heavy water.
Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has committed to renouncing the possession of nuclear weapons and permitting inspections by the IAEA of all its nuclear activities.
Under NPT safeguards agreement, Iran is not required to allow IAEA inspections of a new nuclear facility until 6 months before nuclear material is introduced into it. However, under strengthening measures requested by the IAEA in the 1990s, many governments agreed to provide it with information about a new facility 6 months before the start of its construction. So far, Iran has refused to agree to this new measure to take effect.
IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei was scheduled to arrive this week in Iran to discuss safeguards issues, visit these sites, and meet with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. However, the Iranian government canceled his delegation's visit.
Iran stated at the IAEA General Conference in September 2002 in Vienna it was pursuing a "long term plan" to construct "nuclear power plants and the associated technologies such as fuel cycle" facilities.
ISIS said it was concerned this effort was aimed at developing the capability to make separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the two main nuclear explosive materials.
(With reporting by Anwar Iqbal in Washington)
---
Iran Says Nuclear Plants Open to Search
Fri Dec 13,
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=5&u=/ap/20021213/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear_3
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran on Friday rejected U.S. claims that it was developing a clandestine nuclear program and said all its nuclear plants were open to international inspection.
"We have no nuclear activity or study without the knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency," government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh told reporters Friday. "All our nuclear sites are for peaceful purposes and open to IAEA inspection."
Ramezanzadeh's spoke after U.S. officials on Thursday endorsed claims made by an armed Iranian opposition group this summer that two construction sites in central Iran may be used for a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons.
U.S. intelligence officials do not believe Iran has made any nuclear weapons.
In August, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political umbrella group of the Iraq-based armed Mujahedeen Khalq said once completed, the two sites will be a nuclear fuel production plant and research lab at Natanz and a heavy water production plant at Arak, both in central Iran.
The Natanz plant also may include a uranium-enrichment facility, U.S officials said. A heavy water plant at Arak would be part of a plutonium program. U.S. officials say Iran's lack of fissile material - either enriched uranium or plutonium - remains a key stumbling block for its nuclear goals.
Iran has not declared either site to international monitors, U.S. officials said.
"IAEA is aware of all of our nuclear activities. Natanz is not under the ground. IAEA is welcome to inspect the site," Ramezanzadeh said.
The Mujahedeen Khalq seeks to overthrow Iran's government and has several guerrilla bases in Iraq.
Meanwhile, IAEA officials said Friday the agency was concerned about Iran's plans to study the possibility of building a second major nuclear power plant.
Melissa Fleming, the agency's spokeswoman, said IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei would visit Tehran at the invitation of the Iranians. That visit originally was planned for this month but was postponed at Iran's request, she said.
A team of IAEA technical experts will accompany ElBaradei, Fleming said. "We have requested to visit these sites and Iran has indicated it would allow such a visit," she said.
Iran's Atomic Energy Council ordered a feasibility study on a second plant as the country's first nuclear power station, built with Russian help at Bushehr in the south prepares to go on line next year, Iranian state-run television reported Thursday.
Both Russia and Iran insist that the plant will be used for civilian purposes only and open to international inspection, but the United States says the Bushehr facility could help advance Iran's alleged weapons program.
It was not clear if Russia will be involved in the construction of the new plant. Russia said in September that it has no other nuclear programs with Iran. The Kremlin has floated preliminary plans to help Iran build five more nuclear reactors over the next 10 years.
However, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev as saying in September that Bushehr is the only actual nuclear program Russia has with Iran.
The Bush administration has offered Russia economic incentives to abandon the Bushehr project, but the Russians have not accepted the offer. Russia has denied consistently it is helping Iran develop nuclear weapons or with its missiles program.
In September, Russia drew up a plan for the return of spent nuclear fuel from Bushehr, seeking to allay U.S. concerns that the fuel could be used by terrorists and others to build weapons of mass destruction.
The Bushehr plant was begun by the West Germans but was interrupted during the 1979 Islamic revolution. It's worth about $800 million to Russia, which has been reluctant to abandon the project both for economic reasons and matters of international prestige.
Meanwhile, Iran's Atomic Energy Council has approved a broad plan to dramatically increase the country's nuclear energy capabilities by 2021, a newspaper reported Thursday.
"The council approved (a plan stipulating) that the share of electricity provided by nuclear energy should reach 6000 megawatts by 2021," the daily Mardom-Salari, or Democracy, reported. It gave no further details. Iranian atomic energy officials were not available for a comment.
-------- korea
North Korea: Remove IAEA Seals From Nuclear Sites, Pyongyang Says
Friday, December 13, 2002
NTI News
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_12_13.html#5
North Korea called on the International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday to remove monitoring equipment and seals from all North Korean nuclear facilities - a move one step closer to fully resuming the country's nuclear program (see GSN, Dec. 12).
In a letter to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of North Korea's General Department of Atomic Energy, Ri Je Son, announced that his country would lift a freeze today on its nuclear facilities. Previously, it had agreed to maintain the freeze in exchange for energy assistance under the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States.
"Accordingly, the IAEA is requested to take necessary measures to remove the seals and monitoring cameras on all of our nuclear facilities," Ri wrote in the letter.
"If the IAEA fails to expeditiously take measures to meet our request, we would like to take necessary measures unilaterally," Ri wrote (Mike Nartker, Global Security Newswire, Dec. 12).
ElBaradei yesterday called on North Korea to act with restraint, saying it is "essential" that the seals and monitoring equipment remain in place.
"It is essential that the containment and surveillance measures which are currently in place continue to be maintained, and that the D.P.R.K. not take any steps unilaterally to remove or impede the functioning of such seals or cameras," ElBaradei said. "Any such action would not be in compliance with the requirements of the IAEA-D.P.R.K. Safeguards Agreement," he added.
ElBaradei has asked North Korea to agree to an urgent technical meeting to discuss how Pyongyang's nuclear program would progress to full operation and how the IAEA would continue to fulfill its verification requirements under the safeguards agreement (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Dec. 12).
The IAEA inspectors currently inside North Korea have not yet been asked to leave, ElBaradei said today on CNN television. "I think this is a good sign," he added (CNN, Dec. 13).
The call to remove the IAEA equipment from North Korean nuclear facilities indicates that Pyongyang is pursuing "illicit activities," said L. Gordon Flake, a North Korean expert and director of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs.
"The dangerous thing about the request to remove the cameras is, it comes pretty close to a clear admission that they are indeed doing illicit activities," Flake said. "If you're not doing anything wrong ... why do you care about the cameras?" he added (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 13).
U.S. Response
The United States considers the decision to restart nuclear facilities "regrettable," and is calling on Pyongyang to end its suspected nuclear weapons program, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday.
"We believe that this announcement really flies in the face of international consensus, that the North Korean regime must fulfill all of its commitments, and in particular dismantle its nuclear weapons program," McCormack said (Federal News Service transcript, Dec. 12).
Some U.S. officials said that while they are not surprised by North Korea's decision, it poses a major challenge - albeit one that would be handled after the situation in Iraq had been resolved.
"One rogue state crisis at a time," a senior White House official said, describing U.S. President George W. Bush's strategy (French/Sanger, New York Times, Dec. 13).
Japanese Response
Japan announced today that it would attempt to relaunch stalled talks with North Korea. It is even more important now to restart the talks, which have been stalled since October "to keep this kind of thing from happening," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said (Agence France-Presse, Dec. 13).
Yongbyon Status
North Korea's 5-megawatt nuclear reactor - which is located 55 miles north of Pyongyang at the Yongbyon complex and cannot generate significant amounts of electricity but can produce weapon-grade nuclear materials - could be started within two months, South Korean sources said.
Other analysts, however, doubted that the reactor is even capable of operating, the Times reported (Los Angeles Times). For example, the three-story crane used to load fuel into the reactor is broken, said Kenneth Quinones, who helped set up the IAEA inspection program in North Korea in 1994. If the crane can be repaired, however, the site could begin operations within six months, he said (Doug Struck, Washington Post, Dec. 13).
Even if the reactor could be started, it is too small to produce the electricity needed to get the country through the winter, according to the Los Angeles Times. "But it can produce plutonium," an IAEA official said.
North Korea also has two nuclear reactors still unfinished since 1994 - a 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt reactor at Taechon. It would take two years to finish building those reactors, an IAEA official said.
Possible Negotiation Tactic
Some experts have said that North Korea's decision to restart its nuclear facilities could be a tactic to pressure the United States into entering negotiations.
"Their objective is to get us to negotiate with them," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "They know right now that we don't want to think about them more than necessary, and not talk to them for a while. ... And here is their one way of saying ... 'You have to deal with us now,'" he added (Los Angeles Times).
While the United States has indicated its willingness to pursue a dialogue with North Korea, it will not respond to "threats or broken commitments," McCormack said yesterday.
"The United States has always ... been open to dialogue in principle and was prepared for a comprehensive approach to improving U.S.-North Korean relations before the disclosure of North Korea's clandestine uranium enrichment program," McCormack said. "However, we have to make it very clear that the United States will not enter into a dialogue in response to threats or broken commitments, and we will not bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements it has already signed," he added (Federal News Service).
Joel Wit, a former U.S. State Department official, said North Korea would not respond favorably to a hard-line U.S. position.
"North Korea is not going to capitulate on issues of vital national security for them," said Wit, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We do have to be tough with them, but we have to use every measure available to us to resolve the situation. That means at some point we are going to have to sit down with them," he added (Los Angeles Times).
For further information, see:
Agreed Framework Text http://www.kedo.org/pdfs/AgreedFramework.pdf
KEDO http://www.kedo.org/
----
North Korea: Ship interception 'piracy'
By Jong-Heon Lee
December 13, 2002
United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021213-021722-5264r.htm
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- North Korea criticized the United States on Friday for what it said was piracy and a violation of its sovereignty. The comments, by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, concerned the interception of a vessel carrying missile shipments to Yemen.
The Foreign Ministry's comments, in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, came one day after Pyongyang surprised the world by declaring it would restart nuclear facilities that were mothballed under a 1994 accord.
"The U.S. captured the DPRK (North Korea) trading cargo ship So San in broad daylight when the ship was sailing in the open seas off Yemen on Dec. 10," the ministry said. "Soon after it was brought to light that its capture had no legal ground but wantonly violated the routine trade between countries, the United States was compelled to send the ship back.
"This is an unpardonable piracy that wantonly encroached upon the sovereignty of the DPRK."
Earlier this week, Spanish warships seized a North Korean ship carrying at least 15 short- and medium-range Scud missiles in the Arabian Sea. The U.S. military took charge of the ship, but then allowed it to sail on after high-level diplomacy between the United States and Yemen.
The North's statement further increased tensions on the Korean peninsula sparked by Pyongyang's announcement of a decision to "immediately" revive Soviet-designed plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons.
North Korea also requested the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove seals and monitoring cameras from all its nuclear facilities. In a letter to the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, North Korea informed the IAEA of its decision to reactivate the nuclear facilities.
The reactor at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, was frozen in 1994 after a year-long crisis ended with the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea.
The director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency said that year that the CIA estimated North Korea had produced one or two nuclear weapons.
Under the framework, North Korea pledged to freeze its nuclear arms program in return for 500,000 tons a year of heavy fuel oil and construction of two light-water reactors by the KEDO international consortium, comprised of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union.
Despite Pyongyang's moves, construction of the light water reactors at Kumho, on North Korea's northeastern coast, was progressing normally, a KEDO official here said.
"The light water reactor project, as of now, is being carried on as normal with no disruption," the official told United Press International.
----
N. Korea to restart nuke reactor
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 13, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021213-852391.htm
North Korea said yesterday that it will restart a small nuclear reactor it shut down eight years ago and resume building two larger reactors, another blow to a 1994 agreement by the communist state to stop making fuel for atom bombs.
The Bush administration called the move "regrettable" and said it would not be dragged to the negotiating table by threats from Pyongyang.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry said the government was reopening a five-megawatt experimental nuclear power plant in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, to compensate for its recent loss of monthly fuel-oil shipments from the United States.
"The prevailing situation compelled the government to lift its measure for nuclear freeze and immediately resume the operation and construction of its nuclear facilities to generate electricity," said the North Korean statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The statement said that any decision on whether North Korea "refreezes its nuclear facilities or not hinges upon" the United States.
The U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Development Organization (KEDO) last month suspended the oil shipments - a decision that followed North Korea's admission in early October to having a secret uranium-enrichment program.
Both uranium being made in the newly disclosed program and plutonium, which North Korea has admitted extracting from its old experimental reactor, can be used to make atom bombs.
The oil deliveries were part of a complicated deal between North Korea and the United States, South Korea and Japan to end a crisis that brought the Korean Peninsula dangerously close to war.
Under the deal, known as the Agreed Framework, the oil shipments were to supply the North's energy needs while KEDO built two civilian nuclear power stations.
The North Korean statement yesterday blamed Washington for having "nullified" the framework by not building the new reactors on time and not improving relations with Pyongyang.
"The U.S. cannot escape its responsibility for utterly trampling on the terms and spirit of the Agreed Framework by designating us as an 'axis of evil' and target of pre-emptive nuclear attacks," it said yesterday.
North Korea today accused the United States of piracy in the seizure of a ship carrying missile shipments to Yemen. This week, the U.S. military, assisted by Spanish warships, seized a North Korean ship carrying at least 15 short- and medium-range Scud missiles in the Arabian Sea.
The ship was released a day later and allowed to sail on after high-level diplomacy between the United States and Yemen.
The Bush administration avoided matching North Korea's rhetorical style and kept its comments low-key.
"Not every issue requires a potential military response. There's ways to keep the peace through diplomatic pressure, through alliance and that's what we're doing in the Korean Peninsula," President Bush said in an interview with ABC.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters, "The announcement flies in the face of international consensus that the North Korean regime must fulfill all its commitments, in particular dismantle its nuclear weapons program."
Mr. Fleischer also said the administration would not enter into dialogue with the North Koreans "in response to threats or broken commitments."
U.S. officials said Washington's response to yesterday's announcement was deliberately "measured," because "anything we say" will affect the ongoing presidential election campaign in South Korea.
"We want to play down the crisis," an official said. South Korea, which votes for president on Thursday, has to choose between a hawk and a dove on policy toward North Korea.
Roh Moo-hyun, from the ruling Millennium Democratic Party of outgoing President Kim Dae-jung, supports Mr. Kim's "sunshine policy" of engagement with the North.
His challenger, Lee Hoi-chang, an advocate of a tougher approach, demands reciprocity from North Korea before granting further concessions to the North.
The U.S. official said the Bush administration wanted to hear how South Korea and Japan, as well as Russia and China, will react to yesterday's news. Moscow and Beijing, Pyongyang's closest friends, called on Kim Jong-il's reclusive regime last week to suspend its latest nuclear weapons program.
"We want to consult with our allies and others in the region and step up pressure on North Korea together," the official said.
South Korea yesterday expressed "strong regret and serious concern" and said it "will be closely monitoring North Korea's actions, while strengthening Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation and coordination with other concerned countries."
Japan called for a calm response, with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying: "If you read the North Korean announcement carefully, their consistent stance is to seek a peaceful resolution."
Earlier this week, the U.S. Navy detained a ship carrying North Korean Scud missiles to Yemen and later released it because the missile sale turned out to be legal.
U.S. officials said Pyongyang is clearly seeking attention at a time when Washington is preoccupied with Iraq.
"They hate being ignored," one administration official said. "But we have a policy of containment and isolation, and we'll let that regime rot with it."
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South Korea Calls North's Nuclear Plan 'Unacceptable'
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SKorea-US.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- President Bush told South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on Friday that he won't allow ``business as usual to continue'' with North Korea but still seeks a peaceful resolution after the communist country announced it would reactivate its nuclear program.
``President Kim noted that North Korea's statement on unfreezing its nuclear program is unacceptable,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in Washington, recounting the telephone conversation, which was first announced by the South Korean government.
Bush called Kim to discuss renewed fears over the communist state's suspected nuclear weapons program. North Korea, accusing the Bush administration of taking a hard-line policy toward its regime, said Thursday it will reactivate nuclear facilities that have been frozen under a 1994 deal with Washington.
``The two heads of state agreed that they cannot accept North Korea's decision to lift its nuclear freeze, and they agreed to urge North Korea to withdraw its decision,'' said Kim's national security adviser, Lim Sung-joon.
But the two leaders also ``agreed to continue their efforts to seek a peaceful resolution,'' he said.
The emphasis on seeking a peaceful solution suggested the two leaders were trying to prevent the situation from escalating into a crisis similar to one in 1994 that nearly led to war on the Korean Peninsula.
Security analysts believe North Korea had built one or two nuclear bombs before it froze its nuclear facilities in 1994. If reactivated, the program can quickly yield enough plutonium for several more bombs, they say.
North Korea says its facilities were built to generate electricity.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Friday urged North Korea not to move ahead with its nuclear program.
``We need to continue to look for agreed solutions, a diplomatic solution to the problem,'' ElBaradei said in Vienna. ``If North Korea were to cooperate with the agency ... all the concerned parties are all ready to engage into a dialogue and try to reach a diplomatic solution to the problem.''
In his telephone call, Bush voiced confidence that the nuclear crisis on the divided Korean Peninsula can be resolved peacefully and ``hoped to send a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that the United States has no intention to invade his country,'' Lim said during a briefing for South Korean journalists.
President Kim emphasized the importance of cooperation among the United States, Japan and South Korea to handle the crisis, Lim said.
The two leaders also discussed mounting anti-U.S. sentiment in South Korea following the acquittal of two American soldiers whose armored vehicle hit and killed two Korean schoolgirls in June.
Bush conveyed ``deep sadness and regret'' over the deaths, Lim said.
The U.S. president told Kim that the American people cherished the strong alliance with South Korea, and that he instructed the U.S. military to take steps to prevent such tragedies, Lim said.
``I hope that South Korean people will understand the true intent of President Bush,'' Kim was quoted as saying.
The telephone conversation came on the eve of a massive street demonstration scheduled for Saturday that organizers said will attract 100,000 South Korean citizens to protest what they considered preferential treatment to U.S. troops based in South Korea.
Anti-U.S. sentiment rose sharply in South Korea over the acquittals of the two American soldiers in U.S. military courts in November. The verdict triggered large street protests and calls for a retrial of the soldiers in a Korean court.
Protesters also demanded a direct apology from Bush, who had apologized once through his ambassador in Seoul.
There has also been growing public pressure for a revision of the Status of Forces Agreement to give South Korea more jurisdictional power over 37,000 U.S. soldiers based here.
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ASIAN ARENA
North Korea to Reactivate an Idled Nuclear Reactor
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH with DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/international/asia/13KORE.html
TOKYO, Dec. 12 - In a challenge to the United States, North Korea said today that it was immediately reactivating a nuclear reactor idled since a 1994 crisis that nearly led to war between the countries.
The reactor at Yongbyon is capable of producing enough plutonium for the country to make one or two nuclear weapons a year, according to American intelligence officials.
North Korea justified the decision - the latest in a sharply downward spiral in relations with Washington - by declaring it the only way to produce electricity to make up for the recent suspension of fuel oil deliveries from the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union. The fuel cutoff, in turn, was announced as a punishment for a secret nuclear weapons program, whose existence American diplomats say North Korea first acknowledged during an American visit in early October.
"The prevailing situation compelled the D.P.R.K. government to lift its nuclear freeze adopted on the premise that 500,000 tons of heavy oil would be annually supplied," North Korea's Foreign Ministry announced, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name. "Whether the D.P.R.K. refreezes its nuclear facilities or not hinges upon the U.S."
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has monitors at the North Korean plant to make sure it is not reactivated, received a letter today from Ri Je Son, the director general of North Korea's Department of Atomic Energy, asking for the removal of seals and monitoring cameras, officials at the agency's headquarters in Vienna said.
According to a statement today, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the atomic agency, immediately wrote back to urge North Korea to "act with restraint" and "not to take any unilateral action that might further complicate" the agency's program in North Korea.
Mr. ElBaradei said it was "essential that the containment and surveillance measures which are currently in place continue to be maintained," and warned that altering the seals would be a violation of international agreements. He called for an urgent meeting with North Korea to work out new monitoring procedures.
A senior Bush administration official called the North Korean request "a very serious matter," but described no consequences for the North if it insisted on the atomic agency's withdrawal.
Similarly, at the White House today, Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, played down any sense of urgency about North Korea's announcement, which he called "regrettable."
But there was no talk of the options that the Clinton administration discussed in 1994, when North Korea's threat to restart the reactor and "uncan" nuclear waste now in storage prompted a reinforcement of American troops on the Korean Peninsula and discussion of whether it would be possible to bomb the nuclear site.
This time the White House took the reverse approach, reassuring North Korea today that it had no plans to invade. But, Mr. Fleischer said, it also said there was nothing negotiable about the termination of North Korea's nuclear projects - either its recently revealed effort to produce a bomb from highly enriched uranium, or the plutonium production it now threatens to restart.
"The international community has made it clear that North Korea's relations with the outside world hinge on th elimination of its nuclear weapons program," Mr. Fleischer said.
Other American officials said that although they were not surprised by the North Korean announcement, they considered it a major challenge - one that the administration would probably not focus on until the confrontation with Iraq was ended.
"One rogue state crisis at a time," a senior administration official said today, describing President Bush's strategy.
Several American officials noted that the North Korean statement made reference to its willingness to "refreeze" the program if it won the kind of relationships it seeks with the United States. The administration has been divided on the question of whether North Korea is willing to trade away its nuclear program, or determined to hold onto it as a negotiating card with the United States.
In previous statements, North Korea has expressed a willingness to discuss all of its weapons of mass destruction with the United States in exchange for an offer of normalized relations and a guarantee against attack. Mr. Bush's inclusion of North Korea in the "axis of evil" has seriously rattled its government, which seems to believe that it could be attacked after a possible invasion of Iraq. "The U.S. has already listed the D.P.R.K. as part of an `axis of evil' and a target of pre-emptive nuclear attack," today's statement read.
Another corner of the "axis of evil," Iran, also disquieted American officials today, with revelations from commercial photographs apparently taken in September. They were said to show a plant for producing heavy water, which is critical in the process of making a plutonium weapon, and a plant to enrich uranium.
But the more immediate issue was the North Korean announcement, which today prompted an emergency meeting of the South Korean cabinet, which urged its neighbor to "observe all the obligations stipulated in the 1994 Geneva Accord, Inter-Korean Denuclearization Declaration, Nonproliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards," in a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.
In South Korea, which is one week away from presidential elections, the two major candidates have offered sharply different visions of relations with their neighbor. Throughout the campaign, there have also been large anti-American demonstrations, with many protesters condemning the presence of 37,000 American troops in the country and denouncing United States policy toward North Korea.
The North Korean statements have come like a last-minute wild card that could have an unpredictable influence the outcome.
One candidate, Roh Moo Hyun, offers continuing aid for North Korea and other reconciliation efforts, while the other, Lee Hoi Chang, is largely in line with the Bush administration, warning of sanctions if North Korea does not modify its behavior.
Mr. Roh, who according to the latest opinion polls is the narrow front-runner, has the most to lose from a sudden heightening of tensions. He said today in a carefully hedged statement that although "the world is alarmed by North Korea's announced plan to resume the operation of nuclear facilities and its threat to develop nuclear weapons," the United States should pursue dialogue and "cooperate, so that this problem can be resolved peacefully without further building tension on the Korean Peninsula."
Spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor are being kept in a cooling pond under the surveillance of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. Their presence ensures that the rods are not reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium. Expulsion of the inspectors, or removal of the fuel, would heighten the confrontation, but analysts said tonight that the wording of the North Korean statement suggested that North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, had not yet resolved to take such steps.
"We've seen no evidence of any renewed activity around Yongbyon," said one Bush administration official. He noted that restarting the reactor would take time, and that there would be an additional lag before it produced the nuclear waste that would aid the weapons project.
Adhering to a pattern that has held throughout the current crisis, North Korea leavened its defiance with an apparent call for a negotiated solution. "It is the invariable stand of the D.P.R.K. government to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula," the Foreign Ministry statement read.
In recent weeks, the Bush administration has said there cannot be any negotiations until North Korea takes "clear and verifiable" strides toward dismantling the uranium enrichment program.
By conducting that program in secret, in violation of many agreements, North Korea has strengthened the hand of critics in Washington who have long contended that negotiations are worthless.
"North Korea's traditional negotiating behavior, of pushing up to the brink of a crisis and then climbing down from it can be seen in this statement," said Victor D. Cha, a professor of government at Georgetown University. "It is a combination of threats and olive branch, but when you take the olive branch, the cooperation becomes a sinkhole."
Japanese officials expressed strong dismay tonight over the announcement but played down the immediate threat, saying the statement appeared aimed at bringing the United States to the negotiating table.
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U.S. Takes North Korea's Nuclear Plan In Stride
Consultations Underway, But Focus Remains on Iraq
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page A50
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47743-2002Dec12?language=printer
The Bush administration, increasingly focused on the looming confrontation with Iraq, reacted calmly yesterday to North Korea's announcement that it would restart a nuclear power plant shuttered since 1994.
Several officials dismissed North Korea's announcement as the minimum counter move to a decision last month to cut off monthly heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea. The United States pressed to end the shipments after it said North Korea had admitted to developing a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of previous agreements, part of a strategy to increasingly isolate the communist leadership in Pyongyang. Not only is the administration consulting with Japan and South Korea, two regional allies formally involved in North Korean issues, but U.S. officials are working with Russia and China as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin has privately suggested the creation of a Russia-China-U.S. trilateral group on North Korea, a prospect the administration is actively considering.
A senior administration official declined to say yesterday whether President Bush had any "red lines" that would spark U.S. action if North Korea stepped over them. "We will take a few days here to consult with others," the official said. "We will take our time and we will work through this whole issue. We've got very strong pressure points on North Korea."
The message suggested that the administration's policy on North Korea -- which sparked fierce interagency fights through much of the first two years of Bush's presidency -- has evolved into a single mantra: Make no waves while the focus remains on Iraq.
The consensus in the administration on dealing with North Korea is "remarkable to me," said another official involved in previous interagency fights. "Everyone understands the president doesn't want 15 crises on his plate."
The stance is striking because several administration officials were fierce critics of the deal struck during the Clinton administration that led to the closure, but not the dismantling, of the nuclear plant that the North Korean government says it is restarting. The Clinton administration nearly went to war over the plant, believing it was used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, but conflict was averted by the 1994 agreement.
"We have no intention to invade," the senior official said. "You never take any option off the table [but] we think we have a chance to solve this in a different way. This time around there is a very good chance you can do this through international pressure, a very good chance."
Bush came into office deeply skeptical of North Korea and wary of pursuing further agreements on missile proliferation that were being negotiated with the Clinton administration. But his advisers remained split over how to deal with North Korea, at least until intelligence emerged this summer of Pyongyang's covert nuclear program.
Under the 1994 accord, North Korea agreed to suspend operation of a nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons-grade material, stop construction of other two other reactors and place plutonium already produced under international safeguards. In return, the United States agreed, among other things, to supply Pyongyang with regular shipments of fuel oil, totaling 3.3 million barrels a year. Under a separate accord, Japan, South Korea and the United States agreed to construct two light-water reactors to generate electricity.
Since North Korea's admission, U.S. officials have pushed hard to get Japan and South Korea in agreement with a policy to isolate North Korea. Last month, the United States, telling its allies it was cutting off funding for monthly fuel oil shipments to the energy-starved nation, demanded that a ship carrying heavy fuel oil to North Korean ports be turned around midway in its voyage, foreign diplomats and U.S. officials said.
The Japanese and South Koreans insisted the November delivery was necessary, since it would help provide 85 percent of North Korea's heavy fuel oil needs for the coming winter. The United States backed down, permitting the ship to complete its voyage, once the other nations agreed to suspend future deliveries.
Yesterday, the North Korean government announced that in response to the fuel oil cutoff, it would "immediately resume the operation and construction of its nuclear facilities to generate electricity." It made no mention of removing 8,000 spent fuel rods from canisters -- which would immediately provide the key ingredient for weapons -- or kicking out international inspectors who monitor the rods in North Korea.
U.S. officials played down the announcement, saying it would be impossible for North Korea to be able to use the reactor to generate electricity. "It's all nonsense," one official said. "They can't hook it up to the grid," which he said has all but collapsed across North Korea.
The fuel oil deliveries, which cost the United States as much as $100 million a year, actually are of little more than symbolic value to North Korea, said Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute, a scientific research organization in Berkeley, Calif. He estimated they provide only 2 percent of North Korea's overall energy supply, providing little heat except to some large buildings. While the oil was intended to match the thermal output of the closed reactors, he said that over the years the highly sulfuric oil has corroded boiler tubes in power generators, putting a number of power plants out of commission.
A number of U.S. officials are determined to try to stop construction of the light-water reactors next year, a step they hope will signal to the North Koreans that they have no choice but to comply with U.S. demands to end its weapons programs.
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
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North Korea Knocks
Friday, December 13, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48104-2002Dec12?language=printer
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION would dearly like to postpone any major engagement with North Korea. A hotly contested South Korean presidential election is only days away, and a decision on whether to go to war with Iraq may need to be made within weeks. But North Korea's brutal and isolated dictator, Kim Jong Il, apparently intends to force his way onto Washington's agenda, even if it means bringing his country to the brink of war. Yesterday's announcement by Pyongyang that it would reactivate its closed nuclear reactor and resume construction on two others brings North Korea to the edge of activities that the United States has previously regarded as grounds for military intervention. Bush administration officials said yesterday that the threat won't change their stance of refusing Mr. Kim the political negotiations he craves. The question is whether that tough stance will yield concessions -- or further escalation by a desperate regime.
The strategy of isolating the North, which the administration re-adopted after Pyongyang admitted to a secret uranium enrichment program, has the advantage of allowing the United States to turn its attention elsewhere while waiting for Mr. Kim to give in. Administration officials argue that the policy has been a success, at least in the sense that Japan, South Korea, Russia and China have joined in Washington's demand for an end to the enrichment work. Last month, with the acquiescence of its Asian allies, the administration halted U.S. deliveries of fuel oil to the North under the 1994 pact known as the Agreed Framework, under which North Korea shut down a nuclear complex that was the suspected center of an earlier weapons program. Administration officials say they are determined not to repeat the Clinton administration's course of responding to provocative behavior by Pyongyang with negotiations; this time, it is insisted, Mr. Kim must first change course.
The dictator has instead done what some in the region warned he might: escalate the crisis further, in the hope of forcing the United States to talk to him. Yesterday's announcement was vague but ominous, saying that the North would "immediately resume the operation and construction of its nuclear facilities to generate electricity." The threat lies in the fact that the reactor generates spent fuel that can readily be processed into bomb-grade plutonium. International inspectors are monitoring some 8,000 spent fuel rods; should North Korea expel the inspectors and make use of these rods, it could produce dozens of nuclear weapons in a matter of months. Mr. Kim's crude calculation is that this prospect will compel the United States to give him the political concessions he wants, including recognition of his murderous regime and a guarantee against a U.S. attack. In exchange Washington would presumably get another promise of a freeze on nuclear weapons development.
The Bush administration is rightly resistant to this attempted blackmail. And yet it cannot be assumed that time and outside pressure will eventually force Mr. Kim to back down; it is just as possible he will escalate still further. For that reason the United States must make clear that some steps by Pyongyang will not be tolerated -- such as removing spent fuel rods from international supervision. It must also find a way to clearly communicate to Mr. Kim what specific steps he must take to end the standoff; the Russian or Chinese governments could serve as intermediaries. This complex and difficult situation would be hard for President Bush to manage even if he did not face a crisis with Iraq. And yet a holding action does not look like a workable option.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
House Expands Inquiry Into Fraud at Lab
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Fraud.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House committee is expanding its inquiry into allegations of fraud and credit card abuse at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A letter from the committee said abuse appears more widespread than thought.
The committee issued a sweeping demand for new documents, including reports on the alleged irregularities to lab director John C. Browne and a breakdown of whether computers missing from the nuclear lab contained classified information.
Ken Johnson, the committee spokesman, said three investigators were being sent to the lab and will begin work on Monday.
``It is apparent that the amount of fraud and abuse at LANL is much more extensive and includes many more employees than we had originally at first believed,'' said the letter, signed by the committee chairman, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., and other senior committee members.
The letter to Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, which runs the lab, expressed frustration at ``the apparent failure of the University of California and LANL to sufficiently address these issues over the past several years.''
The letter was sent Tuesday and distributed Friday.
It requested documents regarding the departure of two investigators fired after blowing the whistle on the lab's management practices and also demanded materials from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the lab's auditor.
Johnson said the expanded request for documents was a result of questions raised by papers received from an earlier committee request, press reports and information from Los Alamos employees ``suggesting that the problems are more prevalent than first reported.''
Danielle Brian, executive director of the Washington-based watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, which has worked with Los Alamos whistle-blowers, said the letter was an encouraging sign.
``We think it's a great start. It's obviously a serious investigation,'' she said.
The Los Alamos lab grew out of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II and has been a vital part of the country's nuclear energy and weapons programs since.
The FBI, the Energy Department's inspector general and the Senate Finance Committee also are investigating the allegations of fraud, theft and cover-up at the nuclear weapons lab. Three lab employees are on administrative leave following initial phases of the investigation.
Two investigators, Glenn Walp and Steven Doran, who reported misuse of credit cards and missing equipment -- some from sensitive areas of the lab -- were fired.
Walp submitted a report to Los Alamos authorities in March that listed 263 computers as missing since 1999, many presumed stolen. In all, about $2.7 million worth of equipment is unaccounted for, according to Walp's reports.
On Oct. 31, FBI agents carrying search warrants scoured the homes of Los Alamos employees Peter Bussolini and Scott Alexander and found thousands of dollars worth of goods that may have been acquired by abusing lab purchase orders.
A third employee may have used her government credit card to buy a Ford Mustang with custom equipment.
On the Net:
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov
House Energy and Commerce Committee: http://www.house.gov/commerce/
-------- us politics
Kissinger to Withhold Client List
Head of 9/11 Panel Seeks to Assure Victims' Kin That No Conflicts of Interest Exist
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47733-2002Dec12?language=printer
Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, facing pressure from Congress to divulge his client list, yesterday sought to assure families of victims of last year's terror attacks that his business contacts would not interfere with his new role as head of a commission investigating the terror strikes.
But at an introductory meeting with representatives of four victims groups at his offices in New York, Kissinger also made clear that he does not intend to publicly disclose a list of his business clients, according to relatives who attended the meeting.
Stephen Push, a leader of Families of September 11, said Kissinger outlined a plan aimed at assuring the victims' groups privately that his representation of multinational corporations would pose no conflicts of interest with his role as chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. Push declined to provide details, saying that Kissinger had asked that the arrangements remain confidential.
Push, who has expressed skepticism about Kissinger's ability to conduct a thorough investigation, said he was impressed with the efforts to reach out to the families.
"He suggested a plan that would assure us personally that he would have no conflicts," said Push, one of 11 victim relatives who met with Kissinger. "If he does what he says he does, I see the potential of satisfying us. But I won't suggest that that satisfies the law; that's not my place to say."
But Kristen Breitweiser, a member of September 11th Advocates, said she believes Kissinger should abide by the same disclosure rules as the other commission members.
"He needs to follow the law," said Breitweiser, who also met with Kissinger yesterday. "He can't cut a side deal with the families. It's not just the families that need to be satisfied with this commission, it's all of America."
Kissinger's efforts to assuage the concerns of the families comes amid growing disagreement in Washington over the rules that should govern the new commission, which was created to conduct an in-depth investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Senate Democrats argue that Kissinger and the other nine members of the panel must abide by congressional rules on financial disclosure and conflicts of interest. The Congressional Research Service issued a report last week concluding that all the panel's members, including Kissinger, would be required to identify clients who paid them more than $5,000 over the last two years.
The White House, however, told the Senate Select Ethics Committee this week that it believes Kissinger is not required to provide such information because he was appointed by President Bush rather than by Congress, and because he will not receive a salary. Justice Department legal advisers have prepared an opinion supporting the White House position, sources said.
Kissinger did not return a message left at his office in New York. The founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates said earlier this month that he did not believe that any of his clients would pose conflicts of interest with the Sept. 11 commission. He has said that he would sever relationships with any clients involved in the investigation, that he has no Saudi Arabian clients and does not represent any Middle Eastern governments.
Congress created the bipartisan commission to follow up on the work of a House-Senate probe into intelligence failures. The new panel's broader mandate includes transportation, immigration and border issues as well as intelligence matters, with a report due in 18 months.
But the Bush administration's appointment of Kissinger has prompted a series of early troubles for the commission. Kissinger's controversial tenure as secretary of state prompted immediate objections from some Democrats and liberal groups, while the disclosure issue has raised the possibility of a long-term legal battle before the panel is seated.
Democrats have named their five representatives to the commission, including former House International Relations Committee chairman Lee H. Hamilton (Ind.) as vice chairman. Hamilton was appointed Wednesday to replace former senator George J. Mitchell (Maine), who withdrew in part because of suggestions that he might have to sever ties to his law firm.
In addition to Kissinger, Republicans have named former senator Slade Gorton (Wash.). The GOP has until Sunday to name the three other members.
Many of the families of victims are lobbying the Bush administration to name former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) to the panel.
One Democratic member, departing Rep. Timothy J. Roemer (Ind.), declined to comment yesterday on Kissinger's client list. But Roemer, a longtime advocate of an independent probe who helped write the language establishing the panel, said he is confident the commission will overcome any early disagreements.
"Our intention is to set up a very independent commission with a robust and aggressive pursuit of all the facts," Roemer said. "We're very hopeful that we'll be able to achieve both of those objectives."
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Kissinger Resigns as Head of Sept. 11 Commission
Fri December 13, 2002
Reuters
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=1905861
WASHINGTON - Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stepped down on Friday as chairman of a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House announced.
"It is with regret that I accept Dr. Kissinger's decision to step down as chairman of the National Commission to investigate the events of Sept. 11 2001 and the years that led up to that event," President Bush said in a statement.
Kissinger had been criticized over possible conflicts of interest.
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Bush, Kim Discuss North Korean Nuclear Program
Reuters
Friday, December 13, 2002
By Steve Holland
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51206-2002Dec13?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on Friday put new pressure on North Korea over its revived nuclear program, with Kim telling Bush the program was "unacceptable" and agreeing there could be no business as usual with the communist state.
The two leaders spoke by telephone the day after North Korea said it would restart a nuclear reactor that has been idled under the 1994 Agreed Framework and which could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
"President Kim noted that North Korea's statement on unfreezing its nuclear program is unacceptable. And then the two leaders agreed to continue seeking a peaceful resolution while not allowing business as usual to continue with North Korea," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
The United States, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the European Union have all called on North Korea to give up its nuclear program to little avail so far.
In fact North Korea's public attitude has been decidedly more aggressive since it admitted in October to a nuclear weapons program, in an apparent drive to force Washington to the negotiating table.
On Thursday North Korea said it would restart the idled reactor in order to generate power needed since the United States, Japan and South Korea cut off fuel oil shipments. On Friday Pyongyang demanded a U.S. apology for the U.S. Navy's interception of a North Korean ship earlier this week carrying Scud missiles to Yemen.
Fleischer urged North Korea to reconsider its request that the International Atomic Energy Agency remove cameras and seals put in place to monitor its activities, calling it a "serious matter" of concern.
"But I want to reiterate that we will continue to work with the international community to seek a peaceful resolution to the situation in North Korea. And this is a situation that North Korea has created by pursuing a nuclear weapons program," Fleischer said.
AXIS OF EVIL
While Bush has threatened war against Iraq for suspected weapons of mass destruction, the United States has taken a more low-key approach to dealing with Pyongyang, emphasizing a desire for a peaceful resolution and vowing no invasion of North Korea.
The administration is increasingly focused on Iraq in Bush's drive to disarm President Saddam Hussein. It has, however, also expressed concern about recent evidence that Iran, the third member of what Bush calls an "axis of evil" may be trying to make nuclear weapons.
The White House stressed that the approach to North Korea was different than that toward Iraq. "The situation in Iraq involves somebody who has used force in the past to attack and invade his neighbors. That is not the history of North Korea for the last 50 years. And so, it's not exactly analogous," Fleischer said.
U.S. officials declined to talk about the possibility that North Korea could expel International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, saying only this would be a serious matter.
In his conversation with Kim, Bush conveyed his "deep, personal sadness and regret" over the deaths of two South Korean girls who were accidentally hit during a training exercise by a U.S. military vehicle, Fleischer said.
The incident has generated protests from thousands of South Koreans in Seoul and other major cities, calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.
The accident in June, and the U.S. court martial acquittal last month of the soldiers driving the armored vehicle, have intensified anti-American sentiment in South Korea.
"The president pledged to work closely with the South Korean government to prevent such accidents in the future," Fleischer said. The United States has about 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea.
"President Kim said the South Korean people appreciate the important role played by the U.S. service personnel in maintaining peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, and reiterated that the current circumstances make the U.S.-Korean alliance more important than ever," Fleischer said.
-------- MILITARY
Overblown missile threat
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
December 13, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021213-83984435.htm#2
If the SA-7 surface-to-air missile (SAM) is a significant threat, why did two SA-7s recently fired at an Israeli 757 aircraft fail to explode and/or damage the aircraft? Was it just luck, or were there valid reasons for the terrorists' failed effort? Has a shoulder-fired SAM ever caused the destruction or crash of a large commercial airliner? Where's the evidence?
Shoulder-fired SAMs pose a threat, surely. The degree of that threat is what I question. It is inappropriate to make this threat appear bigger and better than reality, which I believe the media have done. Rather than possessing death-ray characteristics, shoulder-fired SAMs have significant limitations versus a large commercial aircraft. Yesterday's editorial "Airplanes and the terrorist threat" presented the worst-case scenario. Perhaps you should present a more balanced view.
Indeed, a variety of countermeasure systems have been installed on various military aircraft, but that doesn't prove the systems will work effectively on an airliner. Have tests or a cost-benefit analysis been accomplished for countermeasures installed on commercial airliners? I have read nothing but wild estimates for the costs to build and install the systems and nothing but guesses as to their effectiveness.
How long would such a study take to accomplish? Have the systems ever been installed on a commercial airliner, and will they work? Would a countermeasures system pose hazards to the installed aircraft and its passengers? Would the systems pose a threat to people and property on the ground? If systems are built and installed, should we expect the early estimates to significantly underestimate the actual costs and effectiveness? Might we waste millions, even billions, of dollars for systems that do not provide the effective solutions we were promised and expected?
We are much more likely to be killed or injured driving our cars to the airport than killed by an SAM destroying a commercial airliner on which we are flying. Why is it that relatively minor risks that we can't control cause us greater fear than more substantial risks that we can control? The risks posed by shoulder-fired SAMs are real, but overblown. We need a balanced discussion and assessment of the risks before we rush to judgment regarding solutions.
DAVID MARTIN
Former Navy pilot, current commercial pilot
Fairfax, Va.
-------- asia
U.S. to Yield G.I. to Seoul
December 13, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/international/asia/13CAPT.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 12 - The United States military command said today that it planned to surrender an American Army sergeant, convicted of severely injuring a woman in a motor vehicle accident, to Korean authorities.
The soldier, Sgt. Ronnie D. Kirby of Chouteau, Okla., was found guilty by a Korean court of driving his vehicle into the woman when he ran a red light. The woman is in a coma.
The command said the Korean authorities had jurisdiction over the case because the accident occurred when the sergeant was off-duty.
Koreans have been protesting the refusal by the command to surrender two army sergeants whose armored vehicle crushed two schoolgirls to death.
-------- biological weapons
State Officials Question Timetable for Smallpox Vaccines
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and WILLIAM J. BROAD
December 13, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/health/13SMAL.html
Some state officials and medical authorities said yesterday that they doubted they could carry out the first smallpox vaccination campaign in three decades within the planned time frame called for by President Bush given the major logistical hurdles yet to be surmounted.
The doubts emerged with news that President Bush would call for vaccinating military personnel, health care and emergency workers against smallpox within weeks, and possibly the public in 2004.
But state and local officials said that some hospitals only now are beginning to prepare for vaccinations and that they needed more time to solve issues like educating medical personnel and the public; reducing risk of complications from the vaccine; ensuring that hospital care does not suffer if vaccinated workers feel ill; and determining who would pay for liability claims, lost work or supplies like bandages.
The plan, to be announced today, comes against the backdrop of a possible war against Iraq and fears over whether terrorists or hostile nations might attack with the contagious virus, which kills about one in three unvaccinated people.
The initial phases of the vaccination plan would cover about 500,000 military personnel and 500,000 civilians, mostly health care and emergency workers who would most likely be exposed if someone contracted smallpox, officials said. Eventually as many as 10 million people in law enforcement, health care and emergency response could be offered the vaccine. Defense officials said troop vaccinations could start today.
Yesterday, federal officials said an effort over the last two months to prepare the states for the immunizations had paid off, and that problems in carrying out the large effort would be small.
Dr. Ed Thompson, a liaison with state health departments for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "We have no illusions of this being an easy task."
For many state health workers, "this will be the biggest challenge of their career," said Dr. Thompson, who recently left his position as state health officer in Mississippi. "There will be some stumbling and they will be learning as they go along." Since the program "is important to protect our citizens, we are going to make it work."
"Some of the things you do best are the ones you are scaredest of when you start," Dr. Thompson said.
Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an adviser to the secretary of health and human services, said the civilian immunizations "will surely challenge state and local health departments. But it's very doable. I don't want to suggest it's going to be a cake walk. But we can do it with minimal interruption of services and activities."
When Dr. Osterholm was Minnesota's state epidemiologist, his team vaccinated 26,000 people against bacterial meningitis in four days, he said.
But smallpox vaccination is more complicated and dangerous because the virus in the vaccine can be transmitted inadvertently to other people, state and infectious disease experts said.
Dr. C. Mack Sewell, New Mexico's epidemiologist, said in an interview that the federal smallpox plan was too ambitious. "We were told you must start and finish in 30 days," he said. "We felt that was not reasonable, and other states feel the same way. We need more time to do this carefully and properly."
In particular, Dr. Sewell and other experts said, doctors need time to build up experience in administering the smallpox vaccine while avoiding danger. People at risk of complications include those whose immune systems have been weakened by cancer, AIDS or other diseases.
"We want to go cautiously to do our absolute best so as to minimize the number of adverse reactions," he said. "We want to make certain we screen properly and get mechanisms in place. If the threat assessment changed, we'd be ready to move more quickly."
The vaccine, made of a live virus closely related to smallpox known as vaccinia, can cause death or injury in susceptible people. They could presumably decline to be vaccinated, but they would remain vulnerable to infection with vaccinia virus shed by those who had taken the vaccine.
Dr. Sewell said New Mexico planned to immunize just 120 people in the first round, gradually expanding to about 12,000, a process that could take six to nine months. The state's plan, he added, had major uncertainties. "As with everybody else, it remains to be seen how many people will volunteer for this," Dr. Sewell said.
A doctor at a major East Coast hospital said the logistics of the vaccinations were incredibly complicated. "It's not down pat," he said of the preparation effort. "We're just getting started."
New York City's health and mental hygiene commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said he planned to move cautiously in vaccinating the the first wave of people. "We want to err on the side of safety," he said.
On Monday, a federal deadline passed for states and large cities to file their proposals on how to immunize health workers against smallpox, the first such plan in 30 years.
Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta announced that it had finished its first review of the state plans, and found them encouraging. The states were responding to documents from the disease control centers asking that they develop 30-day plans for vaccinating specific groups of health workers.
"We are extremely pleased and quite impressed with the plans that have been submitted to the C.D.C. so far," Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, said in a statement. "It is obvious that state and local health departments and hospitals have stepped up to the plate under an extremely tight timetable."
A federal expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the numbers of health workers proposed by states for the first immunizations ranged from the hundreds to 70,000. "Some of those states who reported the highest numbers will probably be lowered," the official said, adding that no other significant changes in state plans were expected.
Civilian workers are being allowed to decide whether to receive the vaccine. State health officials have identified more than 3,300 health care facilities that would participate.
Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, who also advises the Tennessee Department of Health, said in an interview that hospitals were scrambling to carry out the plans.
"It's a huge task to do in a relatively short time, 30 days," he said, adding that federal officials said the time frame might be extended to six weeks. Even then, he said, "It would be a huge load."
Doctors, he said, would face perplexing and time-consuming problems like vaccinated people wanting to know if mild symptoms - even a pimple - are signs of a serious reaction.
Even though an advisory group to the C.D.C. began openly discussing the possibility of a renewed smallpox campaign last spring, the nation's medical community is just now starting to wrestle with the vaccination plan, Dr. Schaffner said. "Even among infectious disease specialists, there's a variable level of knowledge," he said.
Tennessee, he said, is trying to be "very realistic" about how many people can be vaccinated in a given time. "It's clear," he said, "that not all local health departments have enough staff to carry out the program and they're going to have to tap local hospitals to help them out."
The reactions in Tennessee, Dr. Schaffner said, have been starkly opposed: those eager to volunteer to be vaccinated, and "an equally large group that is skeptical and dubious that Tennessee would be targeted for an attack."
Dr. Schaffner said that the way Mr. Bush framed the issue today would be important and could convince people that vaccination was a patriotic duty.
Despite the federal push for quick vaccinations, experts said, concerns over liability could delay any vaccinations until Jan. 24, when a new law to reduce the legal risk is to go into effect.
"Practically speaking, it's hard to imagine a hospital moving forward with actual vaccinations without that in place," said Dr. Thomas Inglesby, a physician at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies in Baltimore.
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials said news about the vaccinations had taken it by surprise and that it would have no comment until after the formal announcement. The decision emerged Wednesday night when ABC News broadcast excerpts of an interview with Mr. Bush.
The first American troops to be vaccinated would be military specialists who would respond to a smallpox outbreak, as well as forces assigned to units in the Middle East or that could eventually deploy there, military officials said. Of the 1.4 million service members on active-duty, 350,000 to 500,000 would be vaccinated under the new policy, the officials said.
"It's a matter of cranking up and preparing and getting ready and actually implementing it," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told CNN while traveling in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar yesterday. "It's been through the process at the Department of Defense and we've coordinated it with the White House, and they're aware that we do plan to provide smallpox vaccinations to first responders and to people who conceivably could be vulnerable to the disease."
Military personnel will be asked the same series of questions that civilian emergency personnel will address to determine if they have a higher risk of suffering side effects from the vaccine. Those at high-risk will not be vaccinated unless there is a confirmed outbreak of smallpox that could affect them, defense officials said.
The military bars individuals infected with the AIDS virus from joining the armed forces, and screens all military personnel periodically for the virus. If service members are found to be infected, they are allowed to continue their duties but are not deployed overseas.
--------
SPREADING DISEASE
Plan for Vaccinations Carries Risk of Infecting Other People
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By DENISE GRADY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/health/13CONT.html
For about three weeks after a smallpox vaccination, the site on the upper arm can shed the live virus used in the vaccine and infect other people who come into contact with it, making some of them very ill.
As the United States prepares to vaccinate large numbers of people for the first time in 30 years, one of the greatest concerns of public health experts is that vaccinated people may inadvertently infect others who have a high risk of being harmed by the vaccine, which contains the virus vaccinia, a relative of smallpox.
Vulnerable people include pregnant women, babies younger than a year old and people with H.I.V. or other immune disorders, some types of cancer, organ transplants or histories of skin problems like eczema. No one who lives with a person at high risk should be vaccinated, said Dr. Lisa Rotz, an epidemiologist with the bioterror program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To reduce the chance of transmission, Dr. Rotz said, patients will be told to keep the vaccination site covered with a gauze bandage and tape for two to three weeks, until the scab falls off. Vaccinated health care workers will wear special semipermeable bandages at work, because they are better than gauze at preventing transmission.
Vaccinated people have to wash their hands often, especially after changing bandages, and avoid touching the site or letting anyone else touch it. Used bandages are supposed to be sealed in plastic bags and thrown out with the rest of the household trash. The scab should be discarded in the same way.
Activities are not restricted, Dr. Rotz said. Even swimming and hot tubs should be safe, she said, as long as the person wears a waterproof bandage. People can play sports, as well, though she advises against wrestling. Problems may arise if a person sweats so much that the bandage falls off.
Researchers say very close contact is required to spread vaccinia, like touching the vaccination site or an article that has been in contact with it like clothing or a bandage. Infection occurs when the virus enters a break in the skin caused by a cut or a rash.
According to a study of 11.8 million Americans in the 1960's, for every 100,000 people vaccinated for the first time, vaccinia spread to two to six others who had not been vaccinated. Most who caught the virus developed "accidental infections," sores that healed on their own. But one or two became very ill.
People vaccinated for the first time were more likely to transmit the virus. Most person-to-person infections, 68.5 percent, occurred in children younger than 5 who caught the infection from a recently vaccinated sibling or close relative. One baby was infected by a nurse, and two children by contacts in day care. Several adults were infected by vaccinated children, and one woman by sleeping with a recently vaccinated soldier. A wrestler infected his opponent.
Researchers say that the low rates of transmission are reassuring, but that rates could be higher today, because skin conditions like eczema are more common than in the past, as are organ transplants.
-------- business
Stock Sales Timely for Iran-Contra Figure
Secord Traded Shares Before FDA Setback
By Michael Barbaro and Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48211-2002Dec12?language=printer
Richard V. Secord, former Reagan administration official involved in the Iran-contra affair, sold more than 100,000 shares of the Oregon biotechnology company he runs just before a federal advisory panel voted against recommending approval of the company's leading product.
Secord, chief executive of Computerized Thermal Imaging Inc., sold the stock in three transactions worth about $126,000, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The stock was sold Dec. 9 and 10 -- the latter being the day a seven-member U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel took its vote. Shortly after the 4-3 vote, Computerized Thermal Imaging's stock price, plunged 63 percent.
Secord could not be reached for comment last night and his lawyer, Carl F. Schoeppl, who said he was hired yesterday afternoon and was unfamiliar with the case, declined to discuss the matter. But a person close to Secord, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Secord believed that his sales occurred in the window of time -- typically before a fiscal quarter ends -- when trading by company insiders is permissible.
The stock sale was reported yesterday by Bloomberg News.
A spokesman at the SEC declined to comment on the sales or their timing. According to SEC documents, Secord sold 111,300 shares at an average price of $1.14 per share while the stock was near a six-month high. The sale represented 27 percent of Secord's holdings in the company, according to the documents.
Securities experts have called the timing of Secord's sales unsettling and said they expect federal regulators will investigate the case. Many said last night the sales were highly unusual given Secord's role as chief executive and his access to confidential information about the product.
"I think it looks horrible," said Stephen Bainbridge, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who has served as an expert witness for technology companies accused of insider trading. "It's almost certainly the kind of red flag that is going to get the stock exchange and the SEC to look at those transactions."
Computerized Thermal Imaging, based in Lake Oswego, is seeking federal approval for a system that uses infrared technology to differentiate benign from malignant tumors. An advisory panel, composed of experts in radiology, met Tuesday in Gaithersburg to review data about the device.
The panel's decision is not the final word on the product. Advisory panels pass on their recommendations to the FDA, which has final authority over whether the device can be marketed to the public. "The FDA often follows the recommendation of its advisory committees, but not always," said agency spokesman Lawrence Bachorik.
Secord, 70, a retired Air Force general, pleaded guilty in 1989 to lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-contra affair. He acknowledged helping to arrange arms shipments to Nicaraguan rebels and the Iranian government. The plea was expunged in 2000. That year, Secord became chief executive and chairman of the board at Computerized Thermal Imaging.
Studies have shown that technology companies are more vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits, both because their stocks are more volatile and because they are more prone to fraud, Bainbridge said. For that reason, "good technology companies are very, very strict about when they permit people to trade," he said.
The SEC will almost certainly look at the case, said Samuel J. Winer, head of the SEC enforcement practice at Foley & Lardner and former special counsel in the SEC's division of enforcement.
"I think they would take a look at who traded shortly before the FDA announcement" as a first step, he said. "They would also try to find out from the FDA who was aware within the FDA of what was going to happen and look for people with a relation to Secord."
Greg Bruch, another lawyer at Foley and Lardner and a former SEC enforcement officer, said the timing of the last sale -- on the day of the FDA panel vote -- is crucial.
-------- china
Xiong send-off
December 13, 2002
Washington Times:
Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
China's military conducted a test firing of a new short-range ballistic missile last weekend.
The flight test coincided with the departure from Beijing of Chinese Lt. Gen. Xiong Guankai, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, who got an earful from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice this week for his 1995 remarks threatening Los Angeles with a nuclear strike.
Miss Rice informed the general that such threats are unacceptable and any further threats would derail U.S.-Chinese ties.
China often uses its missile tests to send political signals and the CSS-7 test fit that pattern. China has deployed up to 400 CSS-7 and CSS-6 missiles within range of Taiwan in an effort to intimidate the Taiwanese.
Shortly after the missile test, China then released a major defense-strategy paper that takes a tough line against Taiwan.
The report states that Taiwan "is the biggest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits."
And in a shot at the United States, which has provided Taiwan with advanced arms, the Chinese defense report stated that "by continuing to sell weapons and military equipment to Taiwan and elevating relations with the Taiwan authorities, a handful of countries have interfered in China's internal affairs, inflated the arrogance of the separatist forces and undermined China's peaceful reunification."
-------- europe
In Vast Expansion of the European Union, Pluses but Also Perils Lie Ahead
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/international/europe/13EURO.html
PRAGUE, Dec. 12 - No one questions that this is a historic moment: Not quite all of Europe, but most of it from the Atlantic Ocean to the Russian border, is all but certain to agree this week in Copenhagen to fulfill a decades-long dream and fuse itself into a single entity in the name of peace and prosperity.
The trouble is that few people - either in the 15 nations already in the European Union or in the 10 others being invited to join by 2004 - are entirely sure this is a good thing.
"It depends what you mean by good," said Charles Gati, professor of European studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. "If your ideal objective is to see Europe as a united entity, that is good for peace and stability, then this is an extraordinary move."
"If you look at it from a short-term perspective," he added, "there will be serious problems."
The rubble from the Berlin Wall fell 13 years ago in huge piles of hope. But the reality is proving, as ever, more complicated. The current, relatively wealthy members of the European Union are facing fears of being overwhelmed by new members in the east that are far poorer, and that may send waves of immigrants westward, taking jobs and creating new pressures on economies that are, at the moment, far from robust.
While the leaders of the 10 prospective new members - most from the former Soviet bloc - largely support the union, many of their own people fear becoming second-class citizens in a club they have little control over. Joining the European Union is less a romantic aspiration of the excluded, but a hard-nosed evaluation of benefit versus cost.
In last-minute negotiations today, those tensions rose to the top as Poland, the largest of the prospective countries and a potential powerhouse in a new European Union, continued to hold out for more subsidies to its farmers and aid to its government.
Poland's bottom-line complaint is the same, merely louder, that many other candidate countries have: that what they call harsh requirements for entry essentially relegates them to a lower tier of Europe.
"The unusually difficult conditions dictated to us means that accession to the European Union, maybe not generally, but immediately, may be in doubt," said Lech Kaczynski, the newly elected mayor of the capital, Warsaw, who campaigned with a heavy helping of Euroskepticism.
Few experts believe that the summit meeting will fail, predicting that the final knots will be eased by Friday or Saturday. At the same time, though, the union's commissioner for enlargement, Günter Verheugen, warned today on German television that it was "now or never" for the planned expansion. "If we don't succeed now, it will become more difficult in the future," he said.
John Palmer, political director of the European Policy Center, a research organization in Brussels, said last-minute bumps always accompanied expansions of the union. It is not surprising, he said, given the huge ambitions of this project - to swallow in one gulp Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus.
"I genuinely do think it's historic," he said. "This is the de facto unification of Europe under conditions of democracy and the rule of law. It does finally bury any prospect of war in Europe."
The 15 members of the European Union are preparing to take in 75 million more people, almost half of them in Poland. Many of those 10 countries have made enormous strides since then: Prague, the Czech capital, is now to the eye quintessentially Western European. Poland is busily expanding its roads and business culture. Tiny Slovenia is quietly and industriously pulling itself to the top of the heap, as the rest of the former Yugoslavia grapples with the dislocations of war and corruption.
Still, the countries are largely poor. The second richest, the Czech Republic, has an average gross domestic product of $8,900 per capita, less than a third of its neighbor, Germany. Slovakia, once half of Czechoslovakia, has a G.D.P. per head of only $4,900. Corruption remains endemic, Soviet-style bureaucracy crushing, the infrastructure lacking, commitment to Western-style democracy often questioned.
Part of the theory of accepting new members is that they will more quickly approach Western European standards - as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have done.
But more grandly there is the idea, half a century after the last terrible war in Europe, of expanding what union bureaucrats call the "zone" of security and prosperity and thus prevent another war.
The potential new members have a more layered view. On one hand, many felt cheated living under Communism for 40 years and see Europe as their rightful place. Some simply see no option other than the European Union.
"There is no alternative," said Elemer Hankiss, a political scientist in Hungary. "You can join Ukraine or Kazakhstan or the union. The union is not the Garden of Eden, but certainly it's a better option than the other one."
At the same time, many in Eastern Europe - ruled for centuries by Soviets, Austrians and Ottomans - fear another empire where the center of power is far away. Even the benefits of joining may not be felt for many years.
Many prospective members, and especially Poland, are also angry about what they see as strict conditions for joining, giving initially smaller subsidies to farmers compared to those already in the union and delays for seven years the right to move and work inside the union.
"You don't want countries getting in that are angry, or unnecessarily angry," said Milada Anna Vachudova, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "The population is going to be much more emotional and short-term about their views of E.U. membership."
The big test will come next year, when the applicant countries hold referendums on whether to join. Public opinion polls show most people support joining, but public education on the issue is low.
In all the internal European debate about the expansion, an often overlooked issue is how it will affect the United States - and many experts are slowly concluding that it is very much in America's interests. For one, they say, a Europe with so many more members will be better able to shoulder military obligations, like peacekeeping in the Balkans.
But it also has the potential for diluting power from Western Europe, which has largely grown more hostile to the United States, in favor of Eastern European countries that have long viewed America as their protector against Russia.
"There is concern in Central and Eastern Europe, too. about some American policies," Mr. Gati of Johns Hopkins said. "But America has more friends relatively speaking in Central and Eastern Europe today than in Germany and France.
"Therefore, these countries being in the E.U., and especially if they do something about pro-American Turkey - it is good for us," he added.
--------
EU Overcomes Protest to NATO Force Plans
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-EU-Military.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European Union plans to launch a military force of 60,000 peacekeepers overcame a major hurdle Friday when Turkey dropped its objections to the new command sharing NATO's resources.
``EU access to NATO planning capabilities ... is now assured, effective immediately,'' said NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson. ``This is a vital milestone in the history of NATO-EU relations.''
The agreement is a huge boost to EU efforts to set up an effective military force, which have long been blocked by a dispute with Turkey over cooperation between the EU and NATO.
European officials launched the force in an effort to raise its international profile and give it a rapid response capacity to respond to crises like those that gripped the Balkans in the 1990s.
But to avoid expensive duplication, the EU wants the force to have access to NATO resources, such as planning, airlift capacity and intelligence.
The United States and all other non-EU NATO allies had agreed except for Turkey, which wanted guarantees the European force would never be used against its interests. Repeated EU efforts to meet the Turkish demands had been rejected.
In a new concession to the Turks, EU leaders meeting at a summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, agreed that Cyprus, which is due to join the EU in 2004, would not take part in any EU military operation that uses NATO resources.
Buoyed by the breakthrough in Brussels, the EU leaders were considering an offer to use their force to replace NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia.
A draft statement expressed the EU's willingness to ``lead a military operation in Bosnia'' to replace the current NATO-led force of 17,000.
It said EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana would be asked to consult with Bosnian authorities, the United Nations and NATO on the possibility of the EU taking on the Bosnia mission and report to EU governments in February.
-------- india
Hundreds Flee Fearing Election Results in India
December 13, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-india.html
AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Several hundred Muslims fled their homes Friday in India's Gujarat state, scene of the country's worst religious bloodshed in a decade, fearing renewed violence as Hindu nationalists looked set to win a state election.
Exit polls after Thursday's voting showed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retaining power, although the official result was not due until Sunday and the main opposition Congress party dismissed the exit polls saying it had won the election.
``We do not want this BJP government,'' 50-year-old laborer Mahmood Ali said. ``If they come back there'll be more riots.
``Last time I voted for the BJP because they had promised us a burial ground. Instead of giving us a burial ground they turned the area into a killing field.''
Ahmedabad police commissioner K.R. Kaushik sought to calm such fears. ``We won't allow anything to go wrong Sunday,'' he told Reuters. ``We are giving full security to all sensitive areas.''
Up to 400 Muslims from an area that saw some of the worst violence this year shifted to safer Muslim-dominated areas ahead of Sunday's expected announcement, Muslim residents said, adding they would return after a few days if there was no violence.
``A few hundred people have moved out...because of fear,'' said Eliyas Qureshi, a member of a major Islamic relief committee helping riot victims in Naroda Patia on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city.
The BJP leads the national coalition government and the election was seen as a referendum on its brand of hard-line Hinduism, known as Hindutva, which could shape the course of national politics into the next federal election in 2004.
Some analysts say the extent of a BJP win over Congress, which called the poll a battle for the soul of a secular India, would be crucial to whether the party seeks to push its hard-line stand elsewhere ahead of the national election and in a string of state polls over the next year.
The BJP says it is confident of being returned.
``The internal assessment of the party is we will get a majority,'' federal Oil Minister Ram Naik told reporters.
But Congress, too, was confident.
``The next government will be ours,'' said senior party official Pravin Rashtrapal, a member of the lower house of the national parliament.
``Congress is confident of getting a simple majority. We don't attach much credibility to the exit poll results. In the past, we have seen how they were proved wrong.''
Police said Gujarat was peaceful Friday. About 100,000 state police and federal paramilitary personnel were deployed for the election, which was free of any major trouble. The extra forces will remain another week, but many Muslims remain scared.
MUSLIMS SCARED
At least 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, died in a wave of revenge attacks after a Muslim mob torched a trainload of Hindu activists in Gujarat in late February, killing 59.
Indian financial markets gained on expectations of a BJP win, which analysts said could bolster the national government's efforts to reform the economy.
The exit polls show the BJP winning 93 to 109 seats in the 182-member state assembly.
``If the BJP gets only about 100 seats, then they wouldn't dare to replicate the aggressive... agenda anywhere else in the country,'' Gujarat political analyst Achyut Yagnik told Reuters.
``But if they win anything above 120, they might be tempted to experiment with a similar campaign style in state elections next year and even for the national elections.''
Yagnik said a BJP win would encourage a wider religious divide in the state and stoke insecurity.
``They will not be interested in providing the much-needed healing touch,'' he said.
But most analysts do not believe the expected BJP win will be big enough to encourage it to implement similar policies elsewhere. They say the strategy relied heavily on the personality of tough-talking Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
``It was a black chapter in Indian politics because it was entirely on communal lines,'' New Delhi-based analyst and scholar Bhabani Sengupta told Reuters. ``But Gujarat will have no repercussions elsewhere in the country.
``In no other state has there been a Gujarat-like situation. No other state has the kind of chief minister like Narendra. Most are under Congress rule or Congress allies, and they will carefully avoid this communal electioneering.''
-------- iraq
Did Saddam's army test poison gas on missing 5,000?
Robert Fisk
13 December 2002
UK Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=361090
Why didn't Tony Blair and George Bush mention Saddam Hussein's most terrible war crime? Why, in all their "dossiers", did they not refer to the 5,000 young men and women who were held at detention centres when their families - of Iranian origin - were hurled over the border to Iran just before President Saddam invaded Iran in 1980?
Could it be because these 5,000 young men and women were used for experiments in gas and biological warfare agents whose ingredients were originally supplied by the United States?
Just months before his September 1980 invasion of Iran - in which tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers died an appalling death by gas burns and blisters - Saddam's Interior Ministry issued directive No 2884, dated 10 April 1980, stating that "all youths aged between 18 and 28 are exempt from deportation and must be held at detention centres until further notice".
Most, though not all, of the young men and women affected by this order were Kurds. None of their families ever saw their loved ones again, but they have since been told that the detainees were killed during experiments in gas and chemical warfare centres in Iraq.
Among the most terrible war crimes committed during the Second World War were the Japanese experiments with chemicals and gas on prisoners at Harbin, in occupied China. US officials ensured that the principal culprits got away in return for the results of their experiments. The Nazis ran medical tests on Jews in extermination camps in Europe, some of whose "doctors" also escaped punishment.
As always in Iraq - and elsewhere in the world - there is no proof. Kurdish families to whom The Independent has spoken pleaded with us not to reveal their names, in the pathetic hope that their sons and husbands and daughters might still be alive. They include the father of a young man who was taken from his family home in Baghdad, and the father of a man who was allegedly sent to the front line during the Iran-Iraq war and who died as a "martyr" months after his death during a medical experiment.
With the encouragement of President Bush Snr, the US Department of Agriculture sent Iraq samples of chemicals that could be used to protect crops and other agricultural produce, with pesticides that were later developed for chemical warfare, despite repeated warnings from American officials that the cultures could be of use against human beings.
Just before the September 1980 invasion of Iran, the detentions began. At least 5,000 "Kurdish youths", according to one Iraqi refugee interviewed by The Independent, "vanished into thin air".
According to one Iraqi dissident, whose refusal to ally himself to the Iraqi opposition is much to his credit in the picture that is emerging, a large if unknown number of young detainees may have perished as a result of being used as guinea pigs for Saddam Hussein's research programmes at various chemical, biological and nuclear warfare laboratories. According to the same source, Iraqi scientists who have since defected to the West have given hints of the biological warfare testing programme but have refused, for obvious reasons, to incriminate themselves. Iraqi-Iranian Kurdish families who have received appalling information about the fate of their relatives have refused to keep quiet. One father of five missing boys gained an audience with an Iraqi vice-president who allegedly told him that one of his sons had been imprisoned for opposing President Saddam but had then had an "awakened conscience". The boy had decided to fight in the war against Iran and had died in combat, his body being "lost".
According to an Iraqi Kurdish refugee in Lebanon who regards the official Washington- supported Iraqi opposition as fifth columnists, Western intelligence has long known the fate of the 5,000 or more "detainees". "It is now clear," he says, "that during the war with Iran many of the young detainees were taken to secret laboratories in different locations in Iraq and were exposed to intense doses of chemical and biological substances in a myriad of conditions and situations. With every military setback at the front causing panic in Baghdad, these experiments had to be speeded up - which meant more detainees were needed to be sent to the laboratories, which had to test VX nerve gas, mustard gas, sarin, tabun, aflatoxin, gas gangrene and anthrax." In the early stages of the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian troops stormed across the Baghdad-Basra highway and almost cut Iraq in half - to the great concern of Washington.
But not one of the many accusations levelled against Saddam Hussein's regime by London and Washington mentions the missing 5,000 young people "detained" by Iraq just before the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war.
This could, of course, reflect the West's embarrassment at its support for Iraq during that war. Or it could be an attempt to avoid any inquiry into how President Saddam obtained the means to wage chemical warfare against his opponents.
----
Oil Deal Canceled, Iraq Tells Russians
Announcement Called 'Blackmail' in Moscow
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page A50
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47798-2002Dec12?language=printer
MOSCOW, Dec. 12 -- Iraq has canceled a multibillion-dollar contract with a Russian consortium to develop an oil field in southern Iraq, a major economic reversal there for Russia at a time when both Iraq and the United States have been courting Russian support in the event of war.
The Russian giant Lukoil, which leads the group tapped to develop the massive West Qurna oil field, announced the cancellation today, saying it had received a letter on Monday from a deputy Iraqi oil minister breaking the $3.5 billion, 23-year contract. Two other Russian companies, state-owned Zarubezhneft and Machinoimport, are part of the consortium.
A spokesman for Lukoil, Alexander Vasilenko, denounced the move as "blackmail" by Iraq and said the Russian firms would fight the decision. "We do not understand how a petty bureaucrat from Iraq's Oil Ministry can tear up a law that has been passed by the parliament of Iraq," Vasilenko told the Russian news agency Interfax.
"Lukoil will take all appropriate action to defend its rights," the company said in a statement.
The West Qurna deal is by far the most significant oil development project undertaken in Iraq by Russian companies, but it has been stalled from the start by continuing U.N. sanctions against the government of President Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis have pressured Lukoil to defy the sanctions and begin work, but it has refused.
The Iraqi government issued no official statement today on the canceled deal, but Oil Minister Amir Mohammad Rasheed seemed to suggest it was related to the inaction resulting from sanctions. "Any company that does not fulfill their obligation over a long time, then we will be free to cancel their contract," he told reporters in Vienna at a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. "This is the policy."
Russia has billions of dollars in economic ties to Iraq extending well beyond the oil sector, including as much as $12 billion in Cold War-era debt it hopes to collect. That debt is a reminder of the countries' close ties going back to when the Soviet Union cultivated Iraq as a key partner in the Arab world.
But those ties have assumed new urgency in recent months as Washington and Baghdad have competed for Russian support in the confrontation between Hussein and President Bush.
Until today's news, Iraq has mostly sought to placate Russia with reminders of their close economic relationship, and disclosed in late August that it planned to sign economic deals with Moscow worth up to $40 billion. At the same time, the United States has tried to allay Russian concerns that it would lose out economically in a post-Hussein Iraq. Most recently, Bush told a Russian television interviewer that in the event Hussein were ousted, Russia's "economic interests in Iraq . . . will be taken into account."
The Russians seem to have been satisfied by U.S. arguments -- to a point. For months, they balked at U.S. demands that the Iraqis submit to a new round of U.N. weapons inspections or face being attacked. But after insisting on wording changes to a new U.N. resolution, Russia voted with the United States in the Security Council on the measure.
----
Iraq Denies Giving Poison To Extremists
Associated Press
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page A50
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47793-2002Dec12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 12 -- A senior Iraqi general today dismissed as "ridiculous" a published report that Iraq may have provided nerve gas to Islamic extremists affiliated with al Qaeda.
"This is really a ridiculous assumption from the American administration," Lt. Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin said at a news conference in Baghdad. "They know very well we have no prohibited substances."
Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer who deals with U.N. inspectors, was commenting on a report in The Washington Post that members of a group affiliated with al Qaeda, Asbat al-Ansar, may have obtained VX nerve agents in Iraq and smuggled them out through Turkey. Asbat al-Ansar is a Sunni Muslim extremist group based in Lebanon that recently established an enclave in northern Iraq.
"We're used to hearing such reports from the enemies of Iraq, from the intelligence services of the CIA, Britain and Mossad," the Israeli intelligence service, he said.
A senior Bush administration official, commenting on The Post report, said U.S. intelligence had uncorroborated information that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda may have received a poisonous substance. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States did not know whether the material was nerve gas or whether the extremists were linked to the government of Saddam Hussein.
In Qatar, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the possibility that Iraq may have provided such materials to Islamic extremists "should come as no surprise to anybody."
Rumsfeld said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that he had not seen the Post article, but "I have seen other information over a period of time that suggests that could be happening." He said it has been know for many months, "probably years, that the terrorist states have chemical weapons and have relationships with al Qaeda and that al Qaeda is trying to get such weapons."
----
U.S. Sees Showdown Over Iraqi Scientists
Administration Insists on Interviews Abroad
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47980-2002Dec12?language=printer
The Bush administration believes any failure by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to produce scientists that United Nations inspectors want to interview outside the country would constitute "noncooperation" by Baghdad with last month's U.N. resolution, a senior administration official said yesterday.
The official said the interviews must begin "soon," and should focus on filling gaps of information and "clarifying details" missing in the Iraqi government's 12,000-page declaration of its ballistic missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
The official's comments were a clear sign that the administration anticipates the interview process will spark a direct confrontation with Iraq. Several senior officials have made clear in recent days that they see the interviews -- with scientists and technicians who have worked in past and present Iraqi weapons and missile programs -- as the quickest way to declare Baghdad in material breach of the new resolution without going through a lengthy inspections process that may ultimately be inconclusive.
Under the resolution, once an Iraqi material breach, or violation of its terms, is declared, the U.N. Security Council is to convene to consider "serious consequences," including the possible use of military force, against Hussein's government.
The senior official said a breach could be declared not only on the basis of information scientists might provide but also if Hussein refuses to make available anyone the inspectors want to interrogate. "Let's say we, that UNMOVIC has a witness list that it wants to interview outside the country. It really is the obligation of the Iraqi government to produce them if they are going to come clean," the official said. UNMOVIC is the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which is charged with carrying out the resolution.
If the Iraqis "don't produce those people, I would say that's a demonstration of noncompliance and noncooperation," the official said.
Material breaches do not necessarily have to emanate from inspections inside Iraq, the official said. He said information gleaned from interrogations could also provide evidence of violations by demonstrating lies in the declaration Baghdad was required to provide. The official, who noted that experts are reviewing the document, said the administration needs to "see how the declaration actually looks, how deficient it actually is, and try to make a call" as to how it can best be publicly discredited.
As an example, the official said, "if [Hussein] doesn't have documentation for [the destruction] of mustard gas," as he has claimed, "that might be a demonstration" of deception. "A demonstration may not necessarily mean [inspectors] hunting and pecking around the country" in a search of weapons of mass destruction.
Frustrated by the thought of lengthy inspections, the administration is pushing hard for an early start to the interviews, which it would like to see conducted jointly by UNMOVIC experts and other specialists -- possibly including U.S. intelligence officials -- who are not part of the U.N. inspection team.
Washington sent its top liaison with UNMOVIC to New York yesterday to again press inspections chief Hans Blix to begin the interviews authorized under the resolution. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice carried the same message in a private meeting with Blix earlier this month. The liaison, George S. Wolfe, along with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, urged Blix to take advantage of the interrogation powers given him by the resolution. Blix has said repeatedly that he is not interested in running an "asylum or defectors" program but is waiting for the Bush administration to provide a list of scientists it considers priorities and to make practical suggestions on how the United States expects the interview process to work.
In addition to having outsiders present at the interviews, the possibility of issuing what amount to "subpoenas" demanding that Iraqi scientists appear on a certain date and time at a place outside of Iraq is under active discussion in Washington. Baghdad would be held responsible for seeing that they appear.
Sources close to Blix said yesterday that he believes having outside interrogators present at the interviews would complicate his efforts and create potential problems with other members of the Security Council. Although earlier resolutions provided for interviews with key Iraqis, they were considered voluntary. All were conducted inside Iraq in the presence of an Iraqi government official. Pentagon officials, who saw potential defectors as the prime source of information about Hussein's weapons programs, pushed for a tough provision in the new resolution. Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, they wrote language in a U.S. draft resolution that would empower the United States and U.N. Security Council members to specify which Iraqis would be interrogated and to provide for the removal of the scientists and their families from Iraq.
That provision was watered down somewhat in the final resolution, which gave Blix the authority to designate the interviewees, along with the right to choose when, where and how the interrogations would take place. It also specified that they could occur outside the country and without an official Iraqi presence.
The resolution, taking into account that Hussein has harshly punished the relatives of defectors in the past, includes a provision for "immediate" family members to accompany interviewees out of Iraq.
"There's been a lot of talk about 'Why do you want to take them out of the country?' " the official said. "We're really concerned about the security and safety of people that become witnesses for the international inspectors. We think there's some obligation to get them to a place where they would do it safely."
Interviewees who lie or refuse to talk could be sent back to Iraq, administration officials have said.
Nearly three weeks after inspections began, the new interview provision is a major part of the resolution that has yet to be tested.
In conversations with Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the Iraqis have voiced unhappiness with the provision, asking at one point what they were supposed to do if those requested for interviews declined the invitation. Baghdad has been informally told that it has to prepare a list of all personnel involved in past and present programs, but Blix has delayed making a formal request while the details of the interviews are still being worked out.
Iraq has said that it no longer has any weapons of mass destruction or other U.N.-prohibited programs. Asked at a lunch yesterday with Washington Post reporters and editors what proof the administration has that Baghdad is lying, absent inspections, the senior administration official said "there is a wealth of evidence that some things remain" from disclosures and discoveries made during inspections between 1991 and 1998, before the United Nations was barred from Iraq.
President Bush has said repeatedly that he considers as the greatest threat to the United States today the possibility that enemy states such as Iraq may transfer their weapons of mass destruction to international terrorist groups. Asked about a report in yesterday's Washington Post that U.S. intelligence has credible information al Qaeda terrorists may already have received chemical weapons material from Iraq, the official said: "I'm not going to comment on intelligence . . . or a specific case."
He added: "But let me just say that there are stories and there is evidence; I won't call it evidence, but there are stories and there is information coming out that we're running down and checking out. I don't believe that there is an overwhelming body of evidence yet that there has been great leakage," the official said.
In an ABC-TV interview while traveling in the Persian Gulf region yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said there is no doubt that al Qaeda has sought such weapons. While he had not seen yesterday's article, Rumsfeld said, "I have seen other information over a period of time that suggests that could be happening."
A senior Iraqi official dismissed the Post report. Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, told a news conference in Baghdad that all his country's stockpiles of chemical weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s. "This is a really ridiculous assumption from the American administration because they know very well we have no prohibited material or prohibited activities," he said when asked about the story.
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
----
Iraq Opposition Is Pursuing Ties With Iranians
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By JUDITH MILLER and LOWELL BERGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/international/middleeast/13OPPO.html
LONDON, Dec. 12 - In advance of the expected war against Iraq, the American-backed Iraqi opposition is solidifying ties to Iran, part of what President Bush has called the "axis of evil," and opposing the possibility of an American-installed government in a postwar Iraq.
Leaders of all the major opposition groups, including an Iranian-backed group that represents Shiite Muslims and two Kurdish groups that have tens of thousands of troops on the ground, warned that while they welcomed American help in overthrowing President Saddam Hussein, Iraqis would not tolerate an American military occupation afterward or an American "viceroy" to govern Iraq, as some administration officials have contemplated.
"If we don't accept an Iraqi general, how are we going to accept an American general?" said Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, expressing a view echoed by his historic and equally well-armed Kurdish rivals, the Kurdish Democratic Party.
In interviews as they prepared for an American-supported unity conference in London that begins on Saturday, the dissidents said they would not be bound by American recommendations that they refrain from establishing either a provisional government or a national assembly. The exiles' declaration prepared for the conference specifically recommends establishing a constituent assembly on their own timetable.
Several Iraqi representatives said they agreed with Washington that it might be premature to create a provisional government when Mr. Hussein is still in power. Many others, however, resisted what they called the administration's effort to dictate ground rules to the opposition in written instructions signed by officials including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
Kanan Makiya, a professor at Brandeis University and a leading Iraqi intellectual who helped draft the declaration for the conference, said the exile groups did not want an American military ruler.
"There is an Iraqi need here that's at least as great as the American need to have an event that shows that the Iraqis consider this a celebration and not an occupation or a purely military operation," he said.
Professor Makiya was part of a group that briefed Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, on the opposition agenda twice in the last three weeks.
A State Department official confirmed in a telephone interview from Washington that the administration did not want the opposition groups to form a provisional government or create a national assembly now.
"We want an advisory committee to work with the coalition, and a unified opposition message that the opposition is committed to a democratic, multiethnic Iraq that maintains its territorial integrity, rejects weapons of mass destruction, lives in peace with its neighbors and complies with United Nations Security Council resolutions," the official said.
The official said the administration was not concerned about Iraqi exiles' contact with Iran. He said the conversations filled a gap because the administration was not talking directly to Tehran. He also said Iraqi exiles and other sources had told the administration that Iran intended to play a passive role in any military conflict in Iraq.
The talks between exile leaders and Iran this week were featured on the front pages of Tehran's leading newspaper. Among those present was Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, who had been estranged from Iran for years.
Also attending was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella opposition group. The conference has raised Mr. Chalabi's political profile and influence. At times a polarizing force both among opposition groups as well as in Washington, Mr. Chalabi has enjoyed strong support from senior civilian officials at the Pentagon and the White House, but has been viewed with skepticism by the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Our alliance with Iran is not temporary," he said, echoing the views of many exile leaders interviewed here in recent days.
Even before the conference opening, there are questions about how long the opposition's new unity will last.
Professor Makiya, one of the exile leaders, said that President Bush decided it was necessary to change Iraq's government and try to build a coalition through the United Nations, but that he had not chosen an Iraqi partner.
"You need an Iraqi partner for a whole host of different reasons," he said.
Administration officials said they had not decided what role they wanted the Iraqi opposition to play, but the State Department official said the White House was drafting plans for a post-Hussein Iraq that would cover 30 days, 60 days and 90 days after the end of a war.
"We're looking to the transition to a democratic civilian government, hopefully within six months," he said.
Several of the 316 delegates to the conference expressed both gratitude toward and frustration with the United States. While they were clearly pleased by the administration's apparent willingness to change the Iraqi government and back democracy in a Muslim country, several said they wanted to emphasize that they were not American puppets.
Some also questioned the sincerity of what they called Washington's permanent bureaucracy to the idea of democracy in a Muslim country.
"There are some people who claim to love Arabs, but all they prescribe for them is tyranny," Mr. Chalabi said.
He also acknowledged a long-standing tension involving him, his political allies who have long championed democratic rule in Iraq, and the C.I.A. and State Department.
Mr. Chalabi and Ayad Alawi, the head of the Iraqi National Accord, another exile group, said their embrace of democracy and human rights prevented them from obtaining support from Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Chalabi and another exile leader said a representative of Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence, said in Riyadh in 1993: "Our leadership wants to help you. The condition: abandon democracy, human rights, then we will help."
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington would not comment on 1993 events, but said the Saudi government believed that the Iraqi people must "choose what kind of government they will have, be it a monarchy or a democracy."
There is an undercurrent of fear among exiles that the United States will play off one group against another and abandon the proponents of a democratic Iraq. There is also concern that the administration will find it easier to support a military coup.
"That's frankly my greatest fear," Professor Makiya said.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. Delay on Proposal for Mideast Irks Allies
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/international/middleeast/13DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Bush administration, deepening a rift with its allies on Middle East policy, has rebuffed appeals from President Jacques Chirac and other Europeans to adopt a plan next week establishing a Palestinian state in three years, administration officials said today.
European officials said they had hoped, and in some cases expected, that the United States would be willing to publish and adopt a document on creating a Palestinian state when diplomats from Europe, Russia and the United Nations meet on Dec. 20 in Washington.
Now, however, the administration says the plan, which is being called a road map, is not ready for adoption. Some administration officials say the delay results partly from heated Israeli objections. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has criticized the proposal and asked that drafting be stopped until after Israel's elections in late January.
European officials are expressing mounting frustration over what they assert is a lack of appreciation by President Bush that there needs to be more progress on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, especially if there is a war in Iraq.
President Chirac, in a telephone conversation this week, appealed personally to Mr. Bush to act on the proposal next week, a French official said.
Some Europeans who were due in Washington for the meeting on the Middle East were said by European officials to have been so upset about the delays in the drafting of the document map that they threatened not to attend.
An official said the meeting was firmed up only today, with word that President Bush would meet with the group.
Administration officials assert that, contrary to the statements of European and Arab allies, they are highly concerned about rising perceptions that when it comes to the Middle East, the United States seems only to be offering talk of war and threats of pre-emptive military action.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today introduced what he called a Middle East Partnership Initiative asking for a new effort to spread democracy and political reforms in the Middle East, including a campaign for more rights for women.
However, Secretary Powell said the first part of the initiative contemplated adding only $29 million, which was approved by Congress last July, to the $1 billion that goes for foreign aid to Arab countries. He said that "significant additional funding" would be sought next year.
"The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative is a bridge between the United States and the Middle East," the secretary said. He explained that its "three pillars" would be education, business and private sector reform and political reform that would include improved rights for women.
At present, most of the $1 billion in foreign aid for the Arab world goes to a handful of countries, particularly Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Many experts say that if there was a war in Iraq, and some kind of an agreement between Israel and Palestinians, the United States would spend far more than $10 billion to reconstruct the region.
State Department officials said the money in the new initiative would go to countries like Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries that are so rich they do not quality for foreign aid, but are considered to need social and political reforms.
The United States aims to broaden the agenda in the Middle East beyond fighting terrorism, a senior official said.
Work on the proposal for the Israel-Palestinian conflict is also seen in the administration as crucial to reassuring the Arab world that the United States has a positive vision beyond going to war to protect American interests.
The proposal envisions a Palestinian state and an end to what it calls Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza.
In the words of one of its authors, William J. Burns, an assistant secretary of state, its first phase calls for a "maximum effort" by the Palestinians to stop terror, along with Israeli actions to "restore a sense of hope and dignity" for the Palestinians. For Israel, these would include stopping "all Israeli settlement activity" in the West Bank and withdrawal of forces from Palestinian areas.
Israel and its supporters see the plan as insufficiently clear on whether Yasir Arafat would be removed as a Palestinian leader, as President Bush demanded last summer. Israel also dislikes the participation of the Europeans, Russians and the United Nations in the drafting process.
Administration officials acknowledge, however, that the participation of the Europeans and others in the drafting has been positive, in part because of their desire for progress on the Middle East to occur in conjunction with war plans on Iraq.
Drafts of the proposal have circulated for months, overseen by the four parties working on it: the Americans, Russians, Europeans and the United Nations. Israeli and Palestinian officials and Arab countries have offered critiques.
But as weeks have gone by without the plan being published or formally adopted, Europeans have expressed more and more dismay. A diplomat involved in the discussions said today that there was renewed talk of the Europeans threatening to break away and "go it alone" with a Middle East peace plan.
The widespread perception in Europe, this diplomat said, is that the Bush administration is too politically beholden to Israel's supporters in the United States to do anything that would upset Prime Minister Sharon.
Administration officials deny this assertion, noting that Mr. Bush has repeatedly called on Mr. Sharon's government to exercise care in retaliating against Palestinians after the suicide bombings of this year.
Some officials say that the administration would most likely make a renewed and concerted push on a Palestinian-Israeli negotiation next year, after the Israeli elections - and after a war in Iraq. Many say it is impractical for Europeans to expect much progress before then.
--------
U.N. Condemns Terror Acts Against Israel
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Kenya-Israel.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Over Syrian objections, the U.N. Security Council on Friday condemned last month's ``acts of terror'' against Israeli targets in Kenya and deplored the claims of responsibility by the al-Qaida terror network.
By a vote of 14-1, the council urged all 191 U.N. members ``to cooperate in efforts to find and bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist attacks.'' It was a rare show of support for Israel from the U.N. Security Council.
Ten Kenyans and three Israelis died Nov. 28 when a vehicle packed with explosives plowed into the Paradise Hotel, 12 miles north of Mombasa. Minutes before the blast, two missiles were fired at an Arkia Airlines aircraft as it was taking off from Mombasa airport with Israeli tourists returning to Tel Aviv. The missiles narrowly missed the jet.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe said his government condemned the attacks but could not accept Israel being linked to efforts to combat terrorism while ``ignoring the terrorism the Israelis are committing daily and particularly against the Palestinian people.''
Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador Aaron Jacob expressed regret at Syria's objection, saying ``the target of the attacks in Mombasa, Kenya, were clearly Israelis and an Israeli airliner.''
Jacob added that it was ``the first time that the Security Council has adopted a resolution without any reservations condemning terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and Israeli targets.''
The Security Council resolution condemned ``the terrorist bomb attack'' and the attempted missile attack against ``Arkia Israeli Airlines ... as well as other recent terrorist acts in various countries, and regards such acts, like any act of international terrorism, as a threat to international peace and security.''
It ``expresses the deepest sympathy and condolences to the people and the governments of Kenya and Israel and to the victims of the terrorist attack and their families.''
It also deplored the Dec. 2 and Dec. 8 claims of responsibility by al-Qaida.
Wehbe claimed that the council was exercising a ``double standard'' by singling out Israel as the target of the Kenyan attack.
He stressed that it named no countries in resolutions condemning the October nightclub bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed more than 190 people and a hostage-taking attack on a Moscow theater which claimed 129 lives.
Wehbe claimed the resolution contained ``unacceptable political connotations and references that reflect negatively on the situation in the Mideast region and occupied territories.''
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Washington insisted on including Israel because it was clearly the target of the attacks in Kenya
``In past resolutions we've certainly called for an end to terrorism in Israel,'' Negroponte said. ``This one has the particular linkage with international terrorism which has been on the forefront of the council's agenda since (Sept. 11) and I think that focus is sharpened even further with the fact that al-Qaida has claimed credit for this attack.''
The resolution reminded all U.N. members of their obligations under previous resolutions to stop supporting, financing and giving sanctuary to terrorists.
-------- mideast
Some 90,000 US soldiers expected to arrive in Turkey
Hurriyet Daily
KUWAIT /KUNA-IXE0 MIL-TURKEY-US-IRAQ
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Story.asp?DSNO=476258
ANKARA, Dec 13 (KUNA) -- Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said Friday that the US administration completed technical and logistic preparations to send 90,000 American soldiers to six military bases in Turkey within the next few days.
Washington asked Ankara to allow some British troops to join the American forces in Turkey, expected to participate in a wide-scale military action against Iraq, the daily said. It added that Ankara was not comfortable with the American request.
"The Turkish administration permitted three US intelligence teams to be based in the Turkish-Iraqi border area to train members of the Iraqi opposition for participation in the possible war in Iraq", the daily stated.
"The American intelligence teams in the frontier region started their work last October", the newspaper said.
US Deputy Minister of Defense Paul Wolfowize submitted, last week, to the Turkish leadership a request to allow the US to send some American air force experts to inspect Turkish bases expected to be employed by the US in the possible attack on Iraq, according to the daily.
Hurriyet newspaper added that American experts would arrive by mid-December to check technical needs of six Turkish military bases, adding that the US administration plans to use two of these stations as major headquarters to control its military operations.
"The Pentagon requested from the Turkish government a permission to employ 14 civil airports for only logistic purposes", Hurriyet daily stated.
"The Turkish administration was upset with the US demand regarding the usage of four Turkish ports ... Ankara expressed reservation at two of these ports while remaining ports are a subject of negotiation with the American administration", it added.
"According to the Turkish constitution, the government should get the approval of the Turkish Parliament before allowing American forces to use Turkey's military bases", according to the daily. (end)
-------- puerto rico
EPA says Vieques cleanup will be a priority
Friday, December 13, 2002
By The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/12/12132002/ap_49179.asp
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pledged Thursday that the government will oversee a thorough cleanup of the Navy bombing range on Vieques island.
Speaking during a visit to Puerto Rico, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said cleanup work will begin following the expected end of Navy bombing exercises next year.
"We are going to make sure that it is safe," she told The Associated Press in an interview. "We're going to do it right, and we're going to do it as fast as we can."
Opponents of the Vieques bombing exercises have said they harm the environment and the health of the island's 9,100 residents. The Navy denies the accusations, but President George W. Bush has pledged that training on Vieques will halt by the end of May.
Activists opposed to the training have been calling for the U.S. government to guarantee a cleanup of Navy lands. The firing range on Vieques' eastern tip is littered with discarded ammunition and shrapnel from decades of bombing exercises.
Navy opponents suspect other hazardous chemicals may also be present. Whitman said the EPA has yet to assess how much cleanup work will be needed.
"The Department of Defense is the responsible party, and they're going to pay for it," she said. "Our responsibility is to make sure that it is cleaned up."
Whitman also met Wednesday with Puerto Rican Gov. Sila Calderon, who has been lobbying for an end to the military training.
Protests against the bombing exercises surged in the U.S. territory in 1999, when a civilian security guard was killed by off-target bombs on the firing range. Since then the Navy has only used inert bombs.
Hundreds of opponents have been jailed for trespassing on Navy lands while protesting. The Navy, meanwhile, says it is looking for alternative training sites.
Whitman also was briefed by Puerto Rico's delegate to Congress, Anibal Acevedo Vila, about a dredging project to restore a polluted San Juan waterway. She was concluding a two-day visit and was to depart on Friday.
-------- space
Japan Rocket Lifts Off From Remote Island
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Rocket-Launch.html
TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese rocket carrying an Australian satellite lifted off from a remote island Saturday, marking the first time the domestically developed H-2A has been launched with an international payload.
The black and orange rocket, which also carried a satellite designed to monitor the movement of whales, lifted off into blue skies from the Tanegashima Space Center on a small, rocky isle off the coast of southern Japan.
Australia is the first country to entrust Japan with launching a satellite into space, and officials were hoping it would mark a major boost to Japan's efforts to join the commercial satellite launching business.
Japan wasn't making any money this time, however.
It offered last year to put Australia's satellite -- the research pod, FedSat -- into space as a gift for the centennial anniversary of Australia's commonwealth government.
The 120-pound FedSat has high-tech communication, space science, navigation and computing equipment and was intended to help bring broadband internet services to remote parts of Australia. Data from its three-year mission was to be shared between the two nations.
The three Japanese satellites aboard included the Whale Ecology Observation Satellite, designed by a university to monitor the movements and behavior of whales over the next 1-2 years, and another probe to observe global warming and environmental change.
The 170-foot tall, two-stage H-2A is the centerpiece of Japan's space program and the focus of its commercial satellite-launching hopes.
Saturday's launch was the fourth for the H-2A, following launches in August 2001 and February and September of this year. Next year, it is scheduled to launch Japan's first spy satellites into orbit.
Though the others were successful, the National Space Development Agency's second H-2A mission in February was marred by the loss of a $4.88 million research probe.
The H2-A was developed at a cost of $69 million as a cheaper replacement for the more sophisticated -- and more failure-prone -- H-2 rocket. The H-2 line had five successful launches in a row before a sixth misfired and the seventh ended in a fireball.
Japan remains far behind the United States and Europe's Arianespace.
America's Delta IV made its inaugural launch Nov. 20, while another competitor, Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Atlas V, made a successful debut in August.
But the European space program suffered a major disappointment just days before, when an Ariane-5 and its payload of two huge satellites plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in pieces.
The botched launch Wednesday was the second for the Ariane-5, which has yet to make a successful maiden flight.
-------- spy agencies
Theodore Shackley Dies; Celebrated CIA Agent
By J.Y. Smith
The Washington Post
Friday, December 13, 2002; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48202-2002Dec12?language=printer
Theodore G. Shackley, 75, a retired associate deputy director for clandestine operations of the CIA whose career took him from the streets of Berlin to the jungles of Laos and Vietnam, died of cancer Dec. 9 at his home in Bethesda.
In the context of an agency and a profession whose watchwords are secrecy and deception, Mr. Shackley was a legendary figure. He was known as "the godfather of secret warriors." He was a three-time recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the agency's highest honor.
Mr. Shackley spent his career on the front lines of the Cold War and he was involved in some of the agency's most important -- and controversial -- operations. His rise in the shadowy world of espionage was swift and sure. Colleagues described him as "coldly efficient and dependable," "businesslike," and "cold, calm, deliberate."
In 1951, he was recruited into the CIA from the Army. His first foreign assignment was West Berlin, then the espionage capital of the world. In 1962, he was named CIA station chief in Miami with responsibility for assisting Cuban exiles bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro. He held that post during the Cuban missile crisis, when the Kennedy administration forced the Soviet Union to withdraw missiles from the island nation.
He also ran Operation Mongoose, an anti-Castro intelligence campaign that had been ordered by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy's brother.
Mr. Shackley's next assignment was Vientiane, Laos. There he supervised a "secret" CIA war in which 20,000 Hmong tribesmen were pitted against the North Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao. Among other things, he ran agents into Communist China.
In 1968, Mr. Shackley moved to Saigon as station chief, the CIA's top field post during the war in Southeast Asia.
In 1976, Mr. Shockley was named associate deputy director for clandestine operations at headquarters. The job involved worldwide counterintelligence operations and covert action.
By then the CIA was no longer the freewheeling organization that he had joined 25 years earlier. In the early 1970s, a committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) published voluminous reports on some of the seamier aspects of CIA operations, including plans to assassinate foreign leaders. The agency came under close and unaccustomed scrutiny by Congress.
Navy Adm. Stansfield Turner, a director of central intelligence during the Carter administration, drastically reduced the clandestine service. New technology, including spy satellites, came into use. The role of agents on the ground was cut back.
By the end of the decade, Mr. Shockley's career appeared to have hit a dead end, in part because of dealings he had with Edwin P. Wilson, a former CIA agent who illegally sold explosives to Libya.
In 1979, Mr. Shackley retired.
In private life, he founded Research Associates International Ltd., a consulting firm that specialized in risk analysis, threat assessment and executive protection. It did not take him far from centers of clandestine activity: He had a minor and tangential role in the Iran-contra scandal that rocked the Reagan administration.
Mr. Shackley also wrote three books on intelligence and security, "The Third Option," "You're the Target," with co-author Robert Oatland, and "Still the Target: Coping with Terror and Crime." He was the subject of a fourth book, "Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades," by David Corn.
In "The Third Option," published in 1981, Mr. Shackley argued that counterinsurgency is the most effective way to advance American goals abroad. The war in Vietnam could have been won, he wrote, if the United States had employed modern techniques of warfare to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. In his view, counterinsurgency offers a third option between total war and diplomacy.
Mr. Shockley was born in Springfield, Mass., and grew up in West Palm Beach, Fla. During World War II, he served in the Army and took part in the occupation of Germany. After the war, he attended the University of Maryland, where he majored in government and politics, graduating in 1951.
Called to active Army duty during the Korean War, he was on his way to Korea when he was ordered to Washington and assigned to the CIA.
Mr. Shackley attended Catholic Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda.
-------- us
Drones To Serve As Coastal Watchdogs
December 13, 2002
By MATTHEW HAY BROWN,
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
http://www.ctnow.com/news/nationworld/hc-drones1213.artdec13,0,4771713.story?coll=hc%2Dheadlines%2Dnationworld
The U.S. Air Force has deployed them to monitor military movements in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines. The CIA dispatched one recently to kill a suspected al Qaeda leader in Yemen.
Now the Coast Guard is planning to bring the latest in battlefield technology home to the Atlantic Coast.
The maritime service, set to join the new Department of Homeland Security, is planning to deploy flying drones, remote-controlled aircraft similar to those now used for wartime surveillance, to patrol the nation's coastal regions for security threats. Officials say the unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, will enable them to extend their reach into offshore waters by monitoring larger areas less expensively and more efficiently.
The rapidly emerging technology gained notoriety last month, when the CIA used a Predator drone outfitted with a Hellfire missile to blow up suspected al Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi as he traveled along a desert highway in northwest Yemen. Al-Harethi and five others were killed in the attack.
Coast Guard officials say they have no plans to arm their drones, which also may be used to spot drug runners, locate undocumented migrants and assist in search-and-rescue missions.
"UAVs will be the over-the-horizon eyes for the cutters," said Chief Petty Officer Phyllis Gamache-Jensen of Coast Guard District One in Boston, which covers the northeastern United States. "Homeland security is really about situational awareness. The more technology we have, the more capability we have."
The acquisition of up to 76 drones nationwide, set to begin within four years, is one part of Deepwater, the Coast Guard's $17 billion program to replace aging equipment and respond to new security challenges. The program also includes the purchase of up to 91 ships, 35 planes and 34 helicopters and upgrades of up to 49 cutters and 93 helicopters currently in use.
"Deepwater will enable the Coast Guard to continue to perform its mission and improve on it," program spokesman Seth Winnick said. "The UAVs will provide a technological capability that will allow us to be even more efficient."
Offshore patrols are just one domestic use for which drones are being considered. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating their use in watching over oil and gas pipelines and monitoring the shipment of hazardous cargo. Early next year, the Department of Defense is planning to gauge their suitability for tracking drug-smuggling aircraft by conducting a test run up South and Central America.
The Coast Guard is planning to purchase two designs. Bell Helicopter's vertical-launch Eagle Eye tilt-rotor aircraft, set to enter into service in 2006, may fly for up to five hours at a time at altitudes of up to 14,600 feet. Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk fixed-wing aircraft, to follow a decade later, can stay aloft for 30 hours and reach a height of up to 65,000 feet.
The Eagle Eye and Global Hawk both may be outfitted with cameras, radar or other sensors to search or spy on far-away stretches of ocean. Both are less expensive to purchase, maintain and operate than traditional manned aircraft.
The Eagle Eye, which the Coast Guard estimates will cost $2.5 million to $3 million each, may be launched from the 425-foot National Security Cutter or the 341-foot Offshore Patrol Cutter. It may be controlled by a pilot stationed aboard ship or on the ground.
"They're going to serve the same purpose our existing aircraft serve," said Lt. Tony Russell of Coast Guard District Seven in Miami, which covers the Southeast and the Caribbean. "They're going to increase our maritime domain awareness."
Drones have earned mixed reviews during the war in Afghanistan, where the first two Global Hawks pressed into service ultimately crashed. Vulnerable to difficult terrain and extreme weather conditions, unmanned aircraft also have gone down over the no-fly zones in Iraq.
"They're less flexible, and you will take higher attrition rates than with manned aircraft," said Colin Robinson, an analyst at the independent Center for Defense Information in Washington. "They can serve a purpose, as long as you're willing to spend the money and work within the limitations."
Robinson said those limitations include the inability of cameras and sensors to monitor an area as well as a trained pilot.
"But for a wide range of uses, that's not critically necessary all the time," he said.
Pat Garrett, an analyst for GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia-based firm that researches military and security issues, said drones will not replace the Coast Guard's manned aircraft, but can add value as part of a larger fleet.
"It's going to give you additional range and reduce the time it takes to get aircraft on scene," he said. "It's really going to be an important tool for the Coast Guard. It will help them in every aspect of their mission, during wartime and peacetime."
--------
Today's Army
Military recruits motivated by promises of perks, not patriotism
Steve Rubenstein,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, December 13, 2002
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/13/BA187664.DTL
It's a long way from San Francisco to Baghdad, and the teenagers walking in the door of the Army recruiting office these days aren't particularly eager to pick up a rifle.
Most of them haven't even given it much thought.
"War?" said Sergio Lopez. "I'm not really expecting that. I'm not thinking about it."
Lopez, a senior at Mission High School in San Francisco, had just signed a sheaf of Army enlistment documents this week that promised him, as he put it, "a whole lot of stuff."
On the wall behind him was a poster proclaiming the wonders of the Army or, as the Army's ad writers keep calling it, Today's Army. There were pictures of golf courses, ski slopes, waterslide parks, beaches and cozy resort bungalows ("one soldier per room, includes microwave") that could pass for Club Med. There were no tanks and there was no mud.
A possible war in Iraq may be on the front burner in Washington, D.C., but it's not part of the sales pitch at the recruiting office on Davis Street.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Reis, a veteran Army recruiter in San Francisco, doesn't bring up the subjects of war, shooting, bombing, bloodshed and death, if he can help it. The teenagers across the table don't generally bring them up, either.
War, Reis said, is part of the job. Everybody knows it, so there's not much point in putting a damper on the proceedings.
In the days and weeks after Sept. 11, he said, the office saw an increase in young faces eager to defend the country. Back then, Reis said, many more applicants were motivated by current events, although there were still more lookers than enlistees and the recruiting numbers remained more or less flat.
The Iraq crisis has had even less of an effect, he said.
"The primary reason for enlisting is college assistance and job training," Reis said. "Patriotism is not the main motivation."
Each year, Army recruiters sign up 76,000 fresh faces, largely with promises of $50,000 in college grants.
Lopez, a veteran of the Mission High ROTC program, is typical. He said being in the high school ROTC was "kind of fun," especially playing bells in the band and "getting ribbons and awards."
"The Army offers you a lot of stuff, job training, things like that," said Lopez, who hopes to learn to become a mechanic. "The Army is something to do with your life, instead of being on the streets."
He does not know much about the Iraq situation, he said, and has not been following daily developments involving U.N. weapon inspectors, ultimatums, Iraqi presidential palaces and the like.
"I'll do what they make me do," he said with a shrug.
To those who ask about combat, Reis liked to point out that more than 100, 000 soldiers took part in Operation Desert Storm and only 114 died.
"Those are pretty good odds," he said. "But we can't promise a soldier is never going to have to pick up a rifle."
Reis spins a picture of Army life that dazzles the imagination -- free flights to Hawaii, resort rooms at Waikiki Beach and Disney World, the chance to buy half-price music CDs at the post PX and traditional clothing (uniforms) at no extra charge.
Nationwide, the Army says few new recruits are motivated by headlines from overseas.
"People join for a lot of different reasons, but nobody is coming in because of Iraq," said John Heil, Army recruiting spokesman for Northern California.
Potential recruits ask about college benefits, medical benefits, housing benefits and travel benefits more often than patriotic benefits, Heil said.
Army recruiters have achieved their numerical goals of roughly 75,000 new active Army members and 26,000 reservists for the past several years, but add that the number of new recruits has remained level.
Other branches of the military also say the headlines from Iraq are failing to produce more recruits.
"After Sept. 11, there was increased interest and more people stopping by the recruiting office, but that did not translate into an actual spike in recruits," said Navy recruiting spokesman Kurt Riggs. "Right now, we're not even seeing that."
Between visits to the recruiting office, Reis said, would-be soldiers can bone up on Army life by visiting the Web site (www.goarmy.com) and playing the Army's new video game, for free. It's approved for teenagers, the Army says, and features far less blood than games in a typical video arcade.
"We built the game to provide entertainment and information without resorting to gore," the game instructions say. "When a soldier is killed, that soldier simply falls to the ground and is no longer part of the ongoing mission. The game does not include any dismemberment or disfigurement."
E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Why Innocent People Confess
By Michael Kinsley
Friday, December 13, 2002
Washington Post; Page A45
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48117-2002Dec12?language=printer
DNA evidence unavailable at the time has now proven conclusively that five teenage boys sent to prison 12 years ago for raping and almost killing a female jogger in New York's Central Park were not guilty of that crime (whatever else they may have been up to that evening). What's most shocking is that the boys' convictions were not the result of perjured testimony by racist cops, or manufactured evidence, or jurors addled by some prosecutor's demagogic brilliance. The convictions were based almost entirely on the boys' own confessions. Why would anyone confess to a crime he didn't commit?
DNA testing, which can identify a person indisputably (or indisputably rule that person out) based on a single strand of hair or tiny scrap of skin, has taught us that there are people in prison, including some on death row, who are not just undeserving of their punishment for some legal or political or psychological reason, but plain-and-simple, Perry Mason not guilty. The Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School, led by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, has achieved a steady stream of murder-conviction reversals. As intended, this has given many people pause about an irreversible sanction such as the death penalty.
The emphasis on capital crimes is misleading in a couple of ways, though. Crimes such as murder and rape are amenable to reversal by DNA testing, but there is no reason to assume that wrongful convictions are more common in DNA-friendly crimes than in others. In fact, there is good reason to assume the opposite. Murder and rape convictions, especially those with a prospect of capital punishment, generally follow a full-dress trial with all its elaborate rights and protections for the defendant. A false confession under these circumstances is highly unusual and highly suggestive that something improper went on at the police station. Even a true confession, for that matter, is a good indication that someone had a lousy lawyer.
But for every one criminal conviction that comes after a trial, 19 other cases are settled by plea bargain. And when, as part of a plea bargain, innocent people confess to a crime they did not commit, that isn't a breakdown of the system. It is the system working exactly as it is supposed to. If you're the suspect, sometimes this means agreeing with the prosecutor that you will confess to jaywalking when you're really guilty of armed robbery. Sometimes, though, it means confessing to armed robbery when you're not guilty of anything at all.
In 1978 Prof. John Langbein, now of Yale Law School, wrote a dazzling and soon-famous article in the Public Interest called "Torture and Plea Bargaining." Langbein compared the modern American system of plea bargaining to the system of extracting confessions by torture in medieval Europe. In both cases, the controversial practice arose not because standards of justice were too low, but because they were too high. In medieval Europe, a conviction for murder required either two eyewitnesses or a confession by the perpetrator. This made it almost impossible to punish the crime of murder, which was an intolerable situation. So torture developed as a way to extract the necessary confessions. Plea bargaining evolved the same way, Langbein explained. As our official system of justice became larded with more and more protections for the accused, actually going through the process of catching, prosecuting and convicting a criminal the official way became impossibly burdensome. So the government offered the accused a deal: You get a lighter sentence if you save us the trouble of a trial. Or, to put it in a more sinister way: You get a heavier sentence if you insist on asserting your constitutional rights to a trial, to confront your accusers, to privacy from searches without probable cause, to avoid incriminating yourself, etc.
Essentially, 95 percent of American criminal defendants are tried under a system entirely different from the one we learn about in school and argue about in politics (liberals celebrating its noble protections, conservatives bemoaning its coddling of criminals). In this real American justice system, your constitutional rights are worth, at most, a few years off your sentence.
Plea bargaining might also be thought of as an insurance policy. Insurance is a way of trading the risk of a large bad outcome (your house burns down and you're out $100,000) for the certainty of a smaller bad outcome (a bill arrives and you're out $850). Plea bargaining is a way of trading the risk of 20 years to life for the certainty of five to seven. But by creating this choice, and ratcheting up the odds to make it nearly irresistible, American justice virtually guarantees that innocent people are being punished.
The five mistaken Central Park jogger convictions weren't officially plea bargains, but unofficial offers of lighter sentences are among the more pleasant theories about how American justice got these teenagers to fabricate confessions. Then in prison, four of the five got stung by the parole system, which is like plea bargaining, Round 2. Their time behind bars was extended because they "declined to accept responsibility" for the rape they didn't commit, as reported in the New York Times. Constitutional protections like the right against self-incrimination don't apply to parole hearings, either. You don't have to confess, but extra years of prison are the price if you don't.
-------- drug war
Lawmaker rips opium-eradication effort
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021213-8732712.htm
U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia received angry criticism yesterday from members of a House committee for cutting back on eradication programs in that country's opium fields at a time Colombian heroin is flooding into cities all along the East Coast.
"I think you've made some wrong decisions that have resulted in a massive increase in the exportation of heroin into the United States," Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican, told U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson. "As a result, our local police don't know what to do with this major flow of heroin out of Colombia."
Mrs. Patterson was not scheduled to testify yesterday before the House Government Reform Committee in its ongoing investigation of newly formed Colombian heroin cartels, but was called out of the audience to explain why opium-field eradication in 2001 dropped 80 percent from 2000, and so far this year is down 67 percent compared with 2000.
"How can you account for this reduction," Mr. Gilman shot at the ambassador. "Was the decision to stop spraying appropriate?"
Mrs. Patterson argued that U.S. officials in Colombia had increased the spraying of coca fields, from which cocaine is produced, and told the committee that program had been "very successful." She described the cutback in the spraying of opium fields, which produce heroin, as a "joint decision," but could not recall if she had received any direction from the State Department.
Paul E. Simons, the State Department's acting assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, testified that the department recognized the "increased growth and impact" of Colombian heroin on the United States and renewed efforts were under way to address it.
Mr. Simons said 8,060 acres of Colombian opium fields had been sprayed so far in 2002 and that another 4,290 acres would be hit by year's end, though he could not tell Mr. Gilman how that could be accomplished in the next 18 days.
He told the committee the opium-eradication program in Colombia had been hampered by a lack of equipment and pilots, budgetary restraints, and bad weather, but Mr. Gilman countered that former Colombian National Police Director Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano had the same amount of equipment when he eradicated 22,724 acres in 2000.
"We've heard all kinds of excuses," Mr. Gilman said, denouncing what he described as a "lack of any political will, leadership and any strategic thinking" by those assigned to monitor the Colombian drug situation.
Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican and committee chairman, said Colombian heroin is flooding communities all along the East Coast, dominating the market because of its high purity and cheaper cost. He said eradication missions against Colombia's opium fields were "drastically reduced" despite recommendations from U.S. and Colombian law enforcement officials to eradicate the drug at its source.
"This heroin is the purest, most addictive and deadly heroin produced anywhere in the world," he said. "With a single dose costing as little as $4 and having purity levels as high as 93 percent, this is a problem that demands the attention of Congress."
Mr. Burton said the decision to focus the Colombian eradication program on coca fields "has clearly had consequences," resulting in an increases in Colombian heroin availability in the United States, hospital overdoses and "overdose deaths in nearly every big city and small town east of the Mississippi."
Several local police officials, including a Howard County, Md., undercover drug agent whose head was covered by a bag, told the committee the Colombian heroin problem had affected significantly their communities.
Law-enforcement authorities estimate that Colombian drug traffickers now account for between 56 percent and 67 percent of the heroin being used on the East Coast.
Its purity ranges from 80 percent to the mid-90s, allowing dealers to "cut" it several times, meaning that adulterants - such as aspirin and Dramamine - are added to decrease the cost and increase the profit.
-------- immigration
Scientists Criticize Visa Restrictions
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Visas-Scientists.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Restrictions on visas for foreigners visiting the United States, imposed to deter terrorists, are hampering scientific research, leaders of the National Academies complained Friday.
``Recent efforts by our government to constrain the flow of international visitors in the name of national security are having serious, unintended consequences for American science, engineering, and medicine,'' the officials said in a joint statement.
The statement said, ``Ongoing research collaborations have been hampered. ... Outstanding young scientists, engineers, and health researchers have been prevented from or delayed in entering this country, (and) important international conferences have been canceled or negatively impacted; and ... such conferences will be moved out of the United States in the future if the situation is not corrected.''
The statement was signed by Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences; William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering; and Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine.
Under a security system set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, applications from certain national groups to the State Department for visas to enter the United States are to be checked against possible terrorist names in FBI and CIA databases, a step that can delay visas or worse for men in these groups between ages 16 and 45.
According to a GAO report, a backlog rapidly built up, and in some cases visas were denied, simply because not enough information was available to make a decision. In one case, visas were denied for 90 percent of several hundred young Pakistanis who had been selected by their government as potential leaders of universities there and accepted for graduate training in U.S. universities.
The three National Institutes scientists said that while it is important to make the nation safer, it also is vital ``that our visa policy not only keep out foreigners who intend to do us harm but also facilitate the acceptance of those who bring us considerable benefit.''
If visa restrictions stop international collaborations at U.S. facilities, then these facilities will cease to attract international support, the scientists said. ``Moreover, our scientists and engineers will no longer enjoy reciprocal access to important facilities abroad.''
``The professional visits of foreign scientists and engineers and the training of highly qualified foreign students are important for maintaining the vitality and quality of the U.S. research enterprise. This research, in turn, underlies national security and the health and welfare of both our economy and society,'' they said in the statement.
Among those who have been denied visas, they complained, have been scholars asked to speak at major conferences, distinguished professors invited to teach at universities and foreign associates of the academies.
``It includes research collaborators for U.S. laboratories whose absence not only halts projects, but also compromises commitments made in long-standing international cooperative agreements,'' they said. In addition, they said, those blocked included scientists from countries such as Iran and Pakistan ``whose exclusion from this country blocks our efforts to build allied educational and scientific institutions in those parts of the world.
In September, the scientists said, visa restrictions came within one day of forcing the cancellation of a meeting in Washington of the Committee on U.S.-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Non-Proliferation. The committee's responsibilities include assuring that nuclear weapons-grade materiel is under control and out of reach of terrorists.
``It required intervention at the highest levels of the State Department to gain the needed visas,'' the three leaders said.
To correct the problem, the scientists suggested:
--Reinstating a procedure of presecurity clearance for scientists and engineers with the proper credentials;
--Instituting a special visa category for established scientists, engineers and health researchers; and
--Involving American scientists and specialists pinpointing particular security problems.
On the Net: The National Academies: http://www.nas.edu/
-------- terrorism
Al Qaeda leadership reported disrupted
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 13, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021213-76857390.htm
U.S. military and intelligence forces have killed or captured a major portion of the al Qaeda leadership and several key successes were won in the past few months, according to CIA Director George J. Tenet.
"More than one-third of the top leadership identified before the war has been killed or captured," Mr. Tenet said in a speech Wednesday. "Almost half our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months."
A transcript of his remarks at the Nixon Center was made public yesterday.
"We are still in the 'hunt phase' of this war - the painstaking pursuit of individual al Qaeda members and their cells," Mr. Tenet said. "This phase is paying off, but is manpower intensive and will take a long time. There are no set battles against units of any size. We are tracking our enemies down, one by one."
The comments were the first substantive remarks by the CIA director in months. They followed the release Wednesday of a congressional report that criticized U.S. intelligence failures related to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Among the CIA's recent successes, Mr. Tenet said the CIA has "netted":
•Al Qaeda's operations chief in the Persian Gulf, who helped plan the 1998 bombings in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
•A key al Qaeda planner who was a conspirator in the September 11 attacks.
•Numerous operations officers and facilitators.
•A large amount of information now being used to hunt for additional terrorists.
Mr. Tenet did not mention the names of two key al Qaeda terrorists who were killed and captured. They include Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, who was among six terrorists killed last month in a daring CIA-directed missile attack from a drone aircraft in Yemen.
The key al Qaeda planner is Ramzi Binalshibh, an al Qaeda paymaster arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in September.
Several top al Qaeda leaders, however, remain at large, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri and Khalid Sheik Mohammad.
Overall, some 3,000 al Qaeda members have been detained in over 100 nations, he said, noting that the arrests have disrupted but not stopped al Qaeda operations.
Additionally, efforts against al Qaeda have led to the seizure of some $121 million in terrorist-related financial assets around the world, Mr. Tenet said.
The CIA director said the war against terrorism is not a war with the Muslim world.
"But we are at war with extremists," he said. "We are at war with terrorists. We are at war with fanatics. But we are not at war with Islam - even though the terrorists want to portray it that way."
The terrorists are among the "fringe of the fringe" of radical Muslims who are violent and murderous, he said.
Mr. Tenet said al Qaeda and bin Laden are "formidable" enemies and before September 11 the CIA had a "stable of assets and a body of information that pinpointed al Qaeda's Afghanistan infrastructure."
The data helped in the "rapid destruction" of that infrastructure when the war began Oct. 7, 2001.
Mr. Tenet said the al Qaeda leadership has been "rattled" by recent losses and is more cautious. "But let's be very clear: There is no letup in the threat at the moment."
Al Qaeda is preparing more terrorist attacks and every captured al Qaeda member has indicated more strikes are planned, he said.
"Recent tapes by al Qaeda leaders threatening the U.S. economy and our coalition allies, were unprecedented in their bluntness and urgency," Mr. Tenet said.
----
Al Qaeda Still a Major Threat, Tenet Says
Reuters
Friday, December 13, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47618-2002Dec12?language=printer
CIA Director George Tenet issued a new warning that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was as serious a threat as ever despite having been dealt several blows in the war on terrorism.
"Intelligence information tells us the al Qaeda leadership has been rattled by recent losses and is taking more precautions. But let's be clear, there is no letup in the threat at this moment," Tenet said Wednesday in a speech to an awards ceremony held by the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank.
"Intelligence clearly shows al Qaeda is still preparing terrorist attacks," Tenet said. "Indeed, every al Qaeda operations officer and facilitator that we have so far captured was in the midst of preparing attacks when they were captured."
Several senior al Qaeda members have been captured or killed since the United States launched its war on terrorism in Afghanistan in October, but bin Laden is believed to still be alive.
Tenet said al Qaeda tapes released about the same time as recent attacks in Bali, Kuwait and the Kenyan city of Mombasa were designed to bolster morale among al Qaeda recruits.
"We need to show al Qaeda's potential recruits that al Qaeda is failing in every possible respect," he said. "If we can't take them off the board, we have to keep them on the run."
Al Qaeda is suspected in the Oct. 12 blasts at a Bali nightclub that killed at least 191 people and in an attack earlier in the month that killed a U.S. Marine in Kuwait.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a hotel in Mombasa on Nov. 28 that killed 13 Kenyans and three Israelis. The network also failed in an attempt to shoot down with missiles an Israeli airliner.
Al Qaeda member Suleiman Abu Ghaith vowed in an audio statement released by an Islamic Web site that there would be "bigger and more lethal operations" to come.
"They would be foolish to make so bold a threat unless they were confident that some impending operation had a high probability of success," Tenet said. "We would be foolish to take these threats with anything other than the utmost seriousness."
Defending his agency's performance in the war against al Qaeda, Tenet said the CIA had been hitting the network's infrastructure well before Sept. 11, 2001.
Earlier Wednesday, Tenet and his agency were criticized after the release of a report by a House-Senate Intelligence panel that examined intelligence community failures before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the Senate panel's top Republican and a persistent critic of Tenet, said, "There have been more massive failures of intelligence on his watch as director of CIA than any director in the history of the agency."
----
DOMESTIC DEFENSE
General Sees Scant Evidence of Threat Near in U.S.
December 13, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/13/politics/13HOME.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The nation's top general for domestic security says he has seen little evidence to suggest an imminent terrorism threat inside the United States by members of Al Qaeda's network, and warns against using "McCarthyism" in combating terror.
"I am not aware of a significant threat to this nation" from so-called sleeper cells, said the officer, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart.
General Eberhart, who as head of the military's newly created Northern Command oversees the Pentagon's contribution to domestic counterterrorism efforts, expressed concern that undetected terrorist cells could be operating in the United States and plotting new attacks.
"To say that we're not aware of it," he said, "is not the same to say that it doesn't exist."
But he said there was scant intelligence to suggest an immediate domestic threat from Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, and voiced growing optimism about the government's ability to prevent and respond to terrorist strikes.
The comments by the general, a four-star Air Force officer who has access to much of the same intelligence that President Bush receives, may be reassuring to a public made jittery by repeated terrorism alerts from Washington. But they appeared to contradict pronouncements from senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, of an impending threat of domestic terrorist attacks.
In a wide-ranging 45-minute conversation at his headquarters in Colorado Springs this week, General Eberhart said his command had established a strong working relationship with law enforcement agencies, noting that the F.B.I. had a permanent representative on his staff. And aides to the general said later that his comments, in his first major interview since the Northern Command was established on Oct. 1, were simply a candid airing of his views, not a purposeful departure from Mr. Ashcroft's outlook or Bush administration policy.
In Congressional testimony last summer, Mr. Ashcroft said that Al Qaeda maintained an "active presence in the United States, waiting to strike again," and that the United States was "at war with a terrorism network operating within our borders." He said that "there remain sleeper terrorists and their supporters in the United States."
In June, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said a "substantial" number of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda and other terror groups were under constant surveillance in the United States. Since late summer, the bureau has rounded up more than a dozen people in upstate New York, Detroit and elsewhere who have been accused of involvement in sleeper cells.
General Eberhart said he was increasingly confident that if terrorist cells were in the United States, law enforcement would ferret them out before they struck. But he said there was a natural tension between a need for aggressive pursuit of terrorists on one hand and, on the other, a need for caution that there be no abridgements of civil liberties - "some of the things we did in the 50's with McCarthyism, which I think was a very sad chapter in our history."
"We just have to be very, very careful that we don't misread some things we see, that we don't jump to conclusions," he said.
"Our basic freedoms must be protected," he said, though he acknowledged that "those who attack us usually leverage those freedoms to do things that they couldn't do in other countries."
A White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said he could not comment on the general's remarks without studying the full context in which they were made. But Mr. Johndroe, who works for Tom Ridge, the president's domestic security adviser, said the White House supported the Justice Department in its concern "about the possibility that there may be Al Qaeda members or sympathizers here in the United States."
In his recent public statements on domestic terrorism threats, Mr. Ridge, like General Eberhart, has sounded a reassuring tone. In television interviews last month, he said the government was "in a much better position" to respond to threats of terrorism on American soil than before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had no formal response to General Eberhart's remarks. But senior officials at both the department and the bureau, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the arrests since late summer, in Lackawanna, N.Y., Detroit and elsewhere, showed that the domestic terrorism threat was real.
The Northern Command is responsible for coordinating the Pentagon's response to terrorism on American soil and to other domestic threats, including natural disasters like floods and forest fires. Fourteen military, law enforcement, intelligence and other agencies have representatives at command headquarters who meet daily with General Eberhart.
The general said he was pleased by the cooperation his newly created command had received from agencies like the Justice Department and the F.B.I., which might have seen the command as a threat to their authority. "Frankly, I somewhat expected people to come in and be worried about their turf, their agency, their organization," he said. "But people are thinking anew."
General Eberhart is responsible not only for trying to prevent terrorism but also for responding if it does occur; he oversees teams that specialize in reacting to chemical, biological or nuclear attacks. "What we're trying to prepare ourselves," he said, "is for the God awful possibility that there could be two or three at the same time, and they could be different in nature."
But nearly three months into his new posting, General Eberhart said he was pleased to find the government reasonably prepared to deal with a host of threats from terrorist groups.
"In terms of our ability to deal with that type of threat, I think each passing day we become more capable," he said, adding that federal, state and local governments were better prepared and coordinated than he had expected.
"We have a better common operational picture," he said. "As would-be terrorists see us organize, I think they realize America will become harder and harder to attack over time."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Canada ethanol plants need federal help-industry
Story by Roberta Rampton
REUTERS CANADA:
December 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19036/newsDate/13-Dec-2002/story.htm
WINNIPEG, Manitoba - Lack of startup capital and marginal returns could put the brakes on plans to expand Canada's ethanol industry, despite an optimistic outlook announced in one Prairie province.
The Manitoba government said it will consider fostering the industry by mandating the use of cleaner ethanol-blended gasoline in the province.
But unless the federal government creates more appealing tax incentives, similar to those available for U.S. ethanol producers, plans in Manitoba and other parts of Canada will stall, said Bliss Baker, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association.
"Without these additional incentives, I suspect we will not have much of an ethanol industry - period - in the future," Baker told Reuters.
The lobby group met with federal finance officials this week to plead for Ottawa to double tax incentives to 20 Canadian cents (13 U.S. cents) a litre in the next federal budget, due in February.
U.S. incentives equal to 23 Canadian cents a litre have helped boost that market enough to spur the opening of one new ethanol plant each month this year, Baker said.
Five Canadian plants currently produce about 235 million litres (62 million U.S. gallons) a year of the high-octane, water-free alcohol made from grain, and import another 100 million litres annually from the United States.
Ethanol-blended gasoline emits lower levels of greenhouse gases. By 2010, Ottawa wants a third of Canadian gasoline to contain ethanol as part of its plan to implement the Kyoto protocol.
That would create an annual market for 1.33 billion litres of ethanol, Baker said.
But current returns on ethanol production are "marginal, at best," Baker said, meaning investors and banks are reluctant to sink money into plants that cost C$100 million ($64 million) on average.
"Our view is we can't get there without some type of initial incentives to help finance plants," Baker said.
MANITOBA SAYS WANTS TO BECOME LEADER
Manitoba, the province that was home to the country's first ethanol plant 20 years ago, could produce up to 140 million litres a year, according to a government-commission study released this week.
"We've intentionally focused on an approach that would maximize local investment and economic benefits for rural Manitoba," said Garth Manness, head of Credit Union Central, who led the study.
But it will cost more to produce ethanol in Manitoba than in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan, or nearby states like Minnesota and South Dakota, a prominent agricultural economist told Reuters.
That's because Manitoba farmers don't grow enough wheat and would have to import feed to supply both hog farms and ethanol plants, said Daryl Kraft of the University of Manitoba.
"The only caution I have is to the investors who are going to put their money into these processing facilities: they better proceed with due diligence," Kraft said.
Manness said farmers would grow more feed wheat if they could access higher-yielding varieties, currently unavailable in Canada.
-------- energy
2 Groups Press Bid to See Cheney Task Force Records
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, December 13, 2002
Washington Post; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48132-2002Dec12?language=printer
Lawyers for two groups suing Vice President Cheney for records of his energy task force yesterday urged a federal judge to continue with the case while an appellate court considers a Justice Department motion to halt the proceedings.
Attorneys for Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club asked U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to push forward with the discovery process of the suit.
Both groups are seeking information about the participants and the details of Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group.
Sullivan heard oral arguments, then said he would later deliver a written opinion. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington last week stayed one of his orders requiring the administration to provide more information in the case, pending review of a Justice Department appeal.
--------
US FERC seeks ways to speed up hydropower licenses
REUTERS USA:
December 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19030/newsDate/13-Dec-2002/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's aim to propose new licensing rules for U.S. hydropower projects in February and finalize the reforms later in the year is too ambitious, the U.S. Interior Department said.
Currently, a proposed hydropower plant must spend millions of dollars and several years to complete extensive paperwork for several federal agencies, meet with local residents, and analyze a project's impact on fish, recreational boaters and other waterway users.
FERC has been gathering suggestions from utilities, Indian tribes, state governments and conservation groups on how to speed up environmental studies and other steps needed to build or renew licenses for hydropower projects.
The Interior Department, in documents filed last week with FERC, said FERC was trying to go too fast in reforming the complicated hydropower licensing process.
"The department is concerned that the commission's schedule, which calls for a notice of proposed rulemaking in February 2003 and a final rule to be issued in the fall of 2003, may be too ambitious," the Interior Department said.
The Departments of the Interior, Agriculture and Commerce play a role in licensing hydro projects along with FERC. More than 200 hydro projects across the nation will be up for relicensing during the next 15 years. CLEAR DEADLINES NEEDED
The Interior Department said FERC's proposed reforms should set "clear deadlines" for relicensing steps such as submitting National Environmental Policy Act documents, settlement notices and licensing orders. The environmental policy law requires energy, mining and timber firms to examine potential impacts on water, air, land and wildlife before launching a project.
Interior also noted that the Bush administration's energy policy aimed to "assure consistency and coordination" among various federal agencies.
The White House's Council on Environmental Quality has been examining ways to streamline the permitting process for oil, natural gas and other energy projects. Its work has been criticized by some environmental groups, who say the administration is too eager to help energy companies at the expense of the nation's land, air and water.
"There is clear merit in a streamlined, interagency, issue-resolution process to assure that any inconsistencies that might develop among resources agencies in making recommendations or in establishing conditions are effectively resolved," the Interior Department told FERC.
Xcel Energy Inc. (XEL.N), a utility, told FERC that Congress must get involved to reform the cumbersome process.
"Legislative reform is the only true solution to the most troublesome aspects of the relicensing process, which in our view include mandatory conditions and prescriptions... and the progressive erosion of FERC decision-making authority in hydro licensing matters," Xcel said in a separate filing.
The utility also said that FERC should make it clear that hydropower projects bring benefits to communities - including cleaner air than other electricity sources, increases to the tax base, flood control and recreation.
"Although hydro licensees have been required in the past to mitigate, and in some cases monetarily compensate, for every conceivable project-related environmental impact, they have been short-changed when it comes to recognition for the beneficial aspects of their projects," Xcel said.
ENVIRO STUDIES CRUCIAL
The Hydropower Reform Coalition, which represents 112 conservation and recreation groups, said it backed reforms that will manage public waterways with input from local residents.
Environmental studies must remain the "heart of the licensing process," the coalition said.
"Studies are necessary for the commission in its balancing of energy and other beneficial uses in accordance with the Federal Power Act," it told FERC. "Complete and accurate studies are vital to the public understanding of impacts to our common resources."
For example, a draft license application to FERC should be expanded to include a preliminary environmental document analyzing water flow, quality and fish spawning, as well as a draft study of any endangered species and a draft study of water quality impacts, the coalition said.
A first time project in a watershed should be subject to more extensive studies than for relicensing, it said.
The hydropower case is before FERC in docket RM02-16.
-------- environment
EU agrees sulphur-free fuel phase-in by 2009
REUTERS BELGUIM:
December 13, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19041/newsDate/13-Dec-2002/story.htm
BRUSSELS - The European Union will ensure sulphur-free petrol and diesel are fully available by 2009 in a move to promote lower traffic emissions and improve vehicles' fuel efficiency, the European Commission said yesterday.
The plan, agreed this week between EU member states and the European Parliament, will ensure the cleaner fuels start to be phased in from the start of 2005 at the latest.
Sulphur-free fuels are petrol and diesel with less than 10 parts per million of sulphur.
Their availability should allow car makers to introduce more effective catalytic converters and other devices to reduce emissions of pollution, such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, the Commission said in a statement.
The fuel will also produce less pollution from the EU's existing vehicle fleet, it added.
-------- health
Gov't Adds Substances to Cancer List
December 13, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Cancer-List.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Steroidal estrogens, wood dust and more than a dozen other substances have been added to the government's official list of materials that can cause cancer.
Studies released this year by the National Cancer Institute and others have linked long-term estrogen use to breast and ovarian cancer, raising concerns among women who use the hormone.
A federal advisory panel recommended the hormone be listed as a cancer agent two years ago, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences made it official this week with the publication of its biennial report on carcinogens.
The report, listing substances that are known or reasonably anticipated to cause a cancer risk, was sent to Congress and released by the Department of Health and Human Services.
While the expert panel recommended that the group of hormones known as steroidal estrogens be listed as cancer risks, members observed that they have benefits as well as dangers. The substances are used in hormone replacement therapy and oral contraceptives.
The panel did not suggest banning estrogens but said officially linking them with cancer could make it more probable that physicians would discuss both risks and benefits when discussing options with their patients.
The 10th annual cancer report brings to 228 the number of substances linked to cancer.
While the new report lists steroidal estrogens as ``known human carcinogens,'' some of the individual steroidal estrogens had been listed as ``reasonably anticipated carcinogens'' in past editions.
Also newly listed as known causes of cancer in humans are broad spectrum ultraviolet radiation -- whether generated by the sun or by artificial sources -- and wood dust.
The report, issued every two years, is required by Congress to help keep the public informed about substances or exposure circumstances that are known or are reasonably anticipated to cause human cancers. It does not determine how great the risk is or any balancing benefits from the substances.
Added to the list were of known carcinogens were:
--Steroidal estrogens, a group of related hormones that control sex and growth characteristics and are commonly used in estrogen replacement therapy to treat symptoms of menopause and in oral contraceptives.
--Broad spectrum ultraviolet radiation produced by the sun and by artificial sources, such as sun lamps or tanning beds, in medical diagnosis and treatment procedures, and in industry for promoting polymerization reactions.
--Wood dust created when machines and tools cut, shape and finish wood. Wood dust is particularly prevalent in sawmills, furniture manufacture and cabinet making.
--Nickel compounds used in many industrial applications as catalysts and in batteries, pigments and ceramics.
--Beryllium and beryllium compounds inhaled in dust by miners and also exposed to ceramics workers, missile technicians, nuclear reactor workers, electric and electronic equipment workers and jewelers.
Twelve substances or groups of substances are newly listed as ``reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens.'' These include:
--IQ, or 2-amino-3-methylimidazo4,5-fquinoline, and other compounds formed during cooking at high temperatures of such foods as meats and eggs and also found in cigarette smoke.
--2,2-bis-(Bromomethyl)-1,3-propanediol, a flame-retardant chemical used to make some polyester resins and rigid polyurethane foam.
--Ultraviolet A, ultraviolet B and ultraviolet C radiation, which have shown a relationship to skin cancer.
--Chloramphenicol, an antibiotic with restricted use in the United States because it can cause fatal blood disorders. The listing is based on a report showing increased incidence of leukemia after use of the drug.
--2,3-Dibromo-1-propanol, a chemical used as an intermediate in the production of flame retardants, insecticides, and pharmaceuticals.
--Dyes metabolized to 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine, that have been used to color leather, paper, plastic, rubber and textiles.
--Dyes metabolized to 3,3'-demethylbenzidine that have been used in printing textiles, in color photography and as biological stains.
--Methyleugenol, which occurs naturally in oils, herbs and spices and is used in smaller amounts in its natural or synthetic form in flavors, insect attractants, anesthetics and sunscreens.
--Metallic nickel, used mainly in alloys with most exposures by inhalation or skin contact in the workplace. Metallic nickel is not contained in the nickel coin.
--Styrene7,8-oxide, used in producing reinforced plastics and as a chemical intermediate for cosmetics, surface coatings, agricultural and biological chemicals.
--Vinyl bromide, which has been used in polymers, in making fabrics for clothes and home furnishings, as well as in leather and metal products, drugs and fumigants.
--Vinyl fluoride, which is used in making polyvinyl fluoride and related weather-resistant fluoropolymers.
On the Net: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences: http://www.niehs.nih.gov
-------- ACTIVISTS
US activists visit Baghdad to protest war talk
By Elizabeth Neuffer,
Boston Globe Staff,
12/13/2002
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/347/nation/US_activists_visit_Baghdad_to_protest_war_talk%2B.shtml
AMMAN, Jordan - Some Americans demonstrate their opposition to President Bush's talk of war against Iraq by picketing or signing petitions. But Sheila Provencher of Norwood, Mass., chose a more far-reaching protest tactic: She has traveled to Iraq.
''I see this as fulfilling my duty as an American,'' said Provencher, 30, who left Amman earlier this week for Baghdad with a group of religious leaders called the Iraq Peace Journey. ''There are so many Americans who oppose this war, and I don't think our government is giving us all the information. I'm going to get the truth from the Iraqi people - and bring it back home.''
As Washington girds for war with an ongoing troop buildup in the Persian Gulf, Provencher's pilgrimage seems to fly in the face of American public opinion and US policy.
Recent polls show that most Americans favor military action against Iraq, even though the number of those opposed to sending US ground troops there has increased to 37 percent. And while antiwar protests took place in 120 cities around the United States this week, they have yet to reach the size and fervor of those that marked America's involvement in Vietnam.
Provencher's trip is, in part, an act of civil disobedience. She and her fellow peace activists must defy US government prohibitions against Americans traveling to Iraq; the United States has no diplomatic relations with Baghdad. Each member of the group who enters Iraq could face up to 12 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine.
Yet the members of the group of Catholic nuns, priests, and lay workers who hail from California to Illinois to Massachusetts say they feel compelled to make the visit to Iraq because of their deep-seated belief in peace rather than war.
''I am being absolutely the best American I can be,'' said Simone Campbell, a 57-year-old nun, lawyer, and social activist. ''I believe if our country takes this action, goes to war, we are becoming the aggressor, and that corrupts who we are as a nation.''
Their trip is intended to be a gesture of solidarity as much as protest, the activists said. The group's mission statement reads: ''We go to our family in Iraq to listen to their stories, to create relationships between our peoples, and to witness the fact that if we face our fears together, new opportunities for peace will unfold.''
Home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Iraq also has an estimated 800,000 Catholics, the majority of whom belong to the Chaldean Church.
The Catholic group is not the first peace group to travel to Iraq. Since the 1991 cease-fire, activists protesting economic sanctions levied against Iraq have voyaged there repeatedly to smuggle in banned goods. An American and British group opposed to sanctions, called Voices in the Wilderness, has sent 50 groups to Iraq since March 1996, according to the group's Web site.
United Nations economic sanctions, imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, cannot be suspended until the UN certifies that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction. But UN arms inspectors, who withdrew from the country in 1998 in the face of Allied bombings, recently returned to resume that task.
Many specialists argue that 12 years of sanctions have contributed to high rates of illness, death, and disease in Iraq. In 1999, UNICEF reported that the death rate for small children had doubled in the last decade. Sanctions have been modified twice to allow for more food and aid.
Another group, the Canadian Network to End Sanctions in Iraq, is also a repeat visitor. ''I hope to put pressure on our government not to back the US,'' said one member, Minda Morgan of Vancouver, who was interviewed as she waited in the chilly, damp waiting room of the Iraqi Embassy for her visa to Baghdad.
The Iraq Peace Journey is led by Rick McDowell of Wendell, Mass., a veteran campaigner against sanctions. He said he is as opposed to war as he is to sanctions.
''It is the Iraqi people, not Saddam, who have paid for the last 12 years,'' argues McDowell, a soft-spoken, bearded 47-year-old who is returning to Iraq for his 14th visit. ''And in this war, it is the Iraqi people who will suffer again.''
Many in Amman's Iraqi exile community are skeptical that American peace groups ever see the true Iraq during their visits. Saddam Hussein's grip on his country is so tyrannical, they said, that the truth is spoken only outside Iraq's borders.
''If you speak to Iraqis outside Iraq, they are angry with Saddam Hussein,'' said one leading Iraqi exile, who spoke on condition of anonymity, because of security concerns. ''But inside Iraq, they are not. The fear is so intense there, no one dares complain, no one dares move.''
The American peace activists insist that they are allowed to travel freely in Baghdad, although they are accompanied by government representatives outside Iraq's capital. They also argue that much of their information is drawn from Iraq's Catholic community.
Many of the activists' first exposure to Iraq's problems came even before they left Amman.
Several encountered an Iraqi woman in their hotel, who told of her two sons trapped in Baghdad. ''Her question was: `When do you think the war will happen? How long do I have to get my sons out of harm's way?''' recalled Mary Trotochaud.
Upon their return to the United States, the activists plan to give speeches, lobby members of Congress, hold vigils, and talk to anyone who will listen about what they learned. They say they hope to stir public opinion and stop a war they say their faith will not let them embrace.
''We will come back and tell our stories of Iraq,'' said Kathy Thornton, a 59-year-old nun who also heads NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobbying group. ''We need to continue to speak loudly, and try to stop the war. ''
This story ran on page A8 of the Boston Globe on 12/13/2002.
----
Marion Anderson, 70; Critic of Defense Spending
Friday, December 13, 2002
Washington Post; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48198-2002Dec12?language=printer
Marion B. Anderson, 70, the founder and director of Employment Research Associates, a Michigan-based organization that released reports such as "Bombs or Bread" and "The Price at the Pentagon" that were critical of defense spending, died of melanoma Dec. 7 at her home in East Lansing, Mich.
Her work reverberated through Washington because of extensive press coverage of her reports and testimony before congressional committees. She was a small (5 feet and 103 pounds) woman who loved nothing better than confounding Pentagon officials -- like the time she burst in on a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and handed them antiwar leaflets.
Mrs. Anderson, who lived in the Washington area in the 1950s and 1960s, had been involved in consumer and public affairs since the 1950s -- as a lobbyist for a Quaker interest group, a Democratic Party volunteer and an anti-nuclear activist.
Marion Block Anderson was born in New Haven, Conn., and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. She was a 1954 history graduate of Oberlin College.
In Michigan, she became legislative director for the state affiliate of the Public Interest Research Group, Ralph Nader's consumer activist organization.
She founded Employment Research Associates in the late 1970s. The group, with its small staff of economists, conducted research showing that huge increases to the military's budget came at the expense of other public services and did not result in significantly greater security.
----
Paul Vathis - [Photographed TMI]
From News Services
Friday, December 13, 2002
Washington Post; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48203-2002Dec12?language=printer
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Paul Vathis, 77, an Associated Press photographer who won a 1962 Pulitzer Prize, died Dec. 10 at his home in Mechanicsburg, Pa. The cause of death was not reported.
He won the prize for his photo of President John F. Kennedy and former president Dwight D. Eisenhower walking together at Camp David. The picture was taken in April 1961 after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro exiles, who were killed or captured on the beaches.... He also covered ... the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pa.
----
Parents protest U.S. schools irradiated meat plan
Friday, December 13, 2002
By Randy Fabi,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/12/12132002/reu_49173.asp
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's plan to allow irradiated meat to be served to millions of U.S. school children is raising the ire of some concerned parents.
Irradiation, which has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, exposes food to low doses of electrons or gamma rays to destroy deadly microorganisms such as E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella.
Under the U.S. farm subsidy law enacted in May, the U.S. Agriculture Department must allow government-approved food safety technology such as irradiation to be used in commodities purchased by the federal school lunch program. Some 27 million schoolchildren receive free or low-cost meals daily in the program.
The USDA currently prohibits the irradiated meat in its vast school lunch program, which spends billions of dollars annually to buy meat, vegetables, fruits, and other foods.
Last month, the USDA asked for public input on implementing a program for irradiated beef and so far has received more than 200 responses. Most were from disgruntled parents opposing irradiated meat.
"As a parent, I will stop allowing my children to eat school cafeteria food if irradiated food is allowed to be served," said Steve Steinhoff of Madison, Wisconsin.
Wilfred Small from New York City said that "years from now we shall look back with regret on the day we started feeding irradiated food to our children.''
Other parents urged the USDA to conduct more research on the new technology before distributing it to children. Some said the use of irradiation will give meat companies an excuse to relax their food safety programs, leaving animal feces or other contaminants in meat.
"Do not use irradiated food in school cafeterias," said Tina Manassaram of Orlando, Florida. "Innocent children will pay the price for the meat industry's laziness."
'ENVIRO GROUP BEHIND STRONG OPPOSITION'
Meat industry officials dismissed the letters, saying they were organized by Washington-based Public Citizen. The letters do not represent the overall public opinion of irradiated meat, they said.
"I don't think the average consumer ... is aware of the need to to write in support of it," said Janet Riley, spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute. "The more consumers know about irradiated meat, the more they are willing to accept it."
A nationwide survey conducted by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association found 48 percent of Americans likely to purchase irradiated meat. The November survey was up from a 38 percent response in February.
Industry groups want the USDA to implement a pilot program to gradually introduce irradiated meat to school cafeterias. If the USDA ultimately decides to allow irradiated meat, many parents said the meat should be segregated and labeled.
"Consumers have a right to know if their food is being irradiated," said Debbie Ortman of Hermantown, Minnesota. "How am I going to be able to tell what foods to tell my children to eat or not to eat when in school?"
Currently, irradiated foods must be labeled and bear a special symbol informing consumers. The American School Food Service Association, which supports the new technology, said it will ask the USDA to segregate irradiated meat so parents can decide whether their child should eat it.
"We don't anticipate that anyone or any school district is going to be required to eat irradiated meat," said Barry Sackin, the group's vice president.
The USDA will accept comments on meat irradiation until Dec. 22. Alisa Harrison, USDA spokeswoman, said the department intends to propose changes that would allow the technology by the end of the year.
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