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NUCLEAR
Government: All three `Axis of Evil' nations may pose nuclear threat
Iraq Is Asked for List of Arms Scientists
Blix Asks Iraq for List of Scientists
U.S. rejects Iraqi arms report
U.N. Team Faces Its First Locked Rooms in Weapons Search
IAEA Says Months Before Conclusion on Iraq Dossier
Nuclear Sites In Iran Worry U.S. Officials
U.S. trying to end North Korea's nuclear revival
North Korea's Nuclear Plans Called 'Unacceptable';
Panel Expands Probe of Los Alamos Lab
What if?
MILITARY
Afghan Army Graduates to Join U.S. Operations
More French troops due in Ivory Coast as UN says 50,000 have fled fighting
Maoists seek a democratic Nepal
Troops start countdown to war
Colombian Gov't Wants New Army Powers After Bombs
EU OKs admitting 10 new members
European Union Acts to Admit 10 Nations
10-foot-tall Iraqis
Hussein Foes Meet in London, but Rivalries Fracture Unity
U.S. Warplanes Hit 3 Targets in S. Iraq
Bosnia peace force on alert for al Qaeda
Indian Army: Missile Found in Kashmir
Oligarchs' Power Unfettered Under Putin
U.S. Issues an Alert to 27,000 Guard and Reserve Troops
Can War Reporters Be Witnesses, Too?
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI Director: 100 Terror Attacks Stopped
ACTIVISTS
Indian wars fought in court for posterity
Despite Bush Apology, S. Koreans Protest
S.Koreans in Candle Protest Over US Military Pact
Venezuelan Opposition Marches, US Urges Early Vote
Anti-war protest in Tunisia banned, says opposition
-------- NUCLEAR
Government: All three `Axis of Evil' nations may pose nuclear threat
Fri Dec 13,
By RON KAMPEAS,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021214/ap_wo_en_po/na_gen_axis_of_evil_nuclear_2
WASHINGTON - The countries dubbed an Axis of Evil by President George W. Bush (news - web sites) may be going nuclear, U.S. officials fear.
North Korea (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites) 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.
-------- inspections
Iraq Is Asked for List of Arms Scientists
U.S. Pressing U.N. for Interviews as Means of Pinpointing Secret Programs
By Colum Lynch and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 14, 2002; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52573-2002Dec13?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 13 -- The U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has asked Iraq to supply him with a list of government officials and scientists "currently and formerly associated with" Baghdad's secret weapons programs, according to spokesman Ewen Buchanan.
The request, which was made in a Thursday letter to Iraq from Blix, follows an intensifying American campaign to pressure the Swedish diplomat to exercise his authority to take Iraqi scientists and their families out of the country for interviews.
Bush administration officials insist that a preliminary review of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration indicates that Baghdad has no intention of disclosing its illicit arms activities. They argue that interviewing key scientists beyond the reach of Iraq's security apparatus provides the greatest hope of uncovering fresh insight into Iraq's weapons programs.
"History has shown that one of the most effective ways to judge what Iraq is up to is by talking to the people who are involved in the weapons development program," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said today.
The request for names marks the first time Blix has used his authority to test Iraq's willingness to make its scientists available for questioning. But Blix, the executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), is awaiting advice from Washington on how to take inspectors abroad, saying that although he would like to question Iraqi scientists in private, he doesn't want to run a "defection" agency. U.S. officials are skeptical that Iraq will cooperate and allow scientists to leave.
The move comes as Blix is coming close to completing an initial assessment of the main part of Iraq's declaration on the status of its weapons program. On Thursday night, he presented the Security Council's permanent five members with his recommendations for sensitive information that he wants edited from the declaration before it is distributed to the 15-nation council.
After considering their views, he will present the full council with an edited version as early as Monday. Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, the Egyptian director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for overseeing the elimination of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, will then provide the council with their initial assessment of the Iraqi submission Thursday.
The censored sections are expected to include the identities of Iraq's foreign suppliers and details that could benefit nations or organizations seeking to produce chemical and biological weapons or to convert short-range missiles into medium- or long-range rockets.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, United Nations inspectors were delayed for a couple of hours today when they tried to inspect the Communicable Diseases Control Center for evidence of a possible biological weapons program. The incident was resolved after the inspectors used a special hot line for the first time since inspectors arrived on Nov. 27 to summon senior Iraqi officials to the scene to intervene.
Inspectors arrived at the center, which had been listed by Iraqi officials as a site of interest for the first time in an Oct. 1 disclosure to the United Nations and therefore had never been inspected, to find only a duty officer who said he did not have keys to some of the rooms. As they roamed the first and second floors, the inspectors tried to seal the locked rooms with tags that would prevent anyone from secretly entering them before they could return with keys, but a dispute arose about the procedure. Miroslav Gregoric, the director of the inspection program in Baghdad, used a dedicated telephone line to call Iraqi authorities and Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief liaison to the U.N. team, headed down to the center personally to make sure the inspectors could tag the doors they wanted.
Both sides played down the significance of the four-hour incident. They attributed the confusion to the fact that for the first time since returning inspectors were working on a Friday, the Muslim holy day when most offices and businesses are closed.
"There was no problem," Amin told reporters outside the center.
"This itself I don't think is a major issue since the question was resolved," said Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the inspection program. "It is probably a hiccup. Of course, our inspectors are interested in what's in these rooms, and only when they inspect what's in these rooms will they know what the rooms contain."
In Vienna, the IAEA's El Baradei told reporters he will present a censored version of Iraq's declaration on its nuclear weapons program by Tuesday. El Baradei said that he is "far from reaching [a] conclusion" on Iraq's claim that it has abandoned its nuclear program. But he said that a preliminary review revealed that a "good part" of the material in a 2,400-page section dedicated to the nuclear program had already been provided in previous declarations.
U.S. and British intelligence agencies charged in a pair of recent reports that Iraq has begun to reassemble its team of nuclear weapons scientists and that it has made efforts to purchase uranium from Africa and components that could be used for a clandestine nuclear weapons program from foreign suppliers. "The process will take time, but you need to bear with us because, if successful, this is the best . . . way of ensuring Iraq's disarmament," El Baradei told CNN today.
Staff writer Peter Baker contributed to this report from Baghdad.
----
Blix Asks Iraq for List of Scientists
Saturday December 14, 2002
UK Guardian / (AP)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2243729,00.html
UNITED NATIONS - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has asked Iraq to provide a list of all personnel currently and formerly associated with its chemical, biological and ballistic missile programs, a U.N. official said.
Under a Security Council resolution, U.N. inspectors have the right to interview any Iraqi inside or outside the country, with or without the presence of Iraqi observers.
The United States and other council members believe these interviews could provide crucial information about secret Iraqi plans to build weapons of mass destruction.
Blix asked for the list in a letter to Iraqi presidential adviser Amir al-Saadi. The letter was faxed to Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri on Thursday to be sent to Baghdad, said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the inspectors.
Blix has said he wants to conduct interviews - but has cited practical difficulties in taking Iraqis and their families outside the country. These include questions of whether the Iraqis would be allowed to return, or what would happen if they decided to seek refugee status or asylum.
Last week, Blix was asked about reports that the United States was pressing for the inspectors to question Iraqi scientists outside the country.
``We are not going to abduct anybody, and we're not serving as a defection agency,'' Blix said.
Sen. Richard Lugar, due to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next month, said the United States must work with the United Nations to gain access to scientists, workers or anyone else who may have been in weapons installations.
``The inspectors can look at this stuff for the next six months and come out with zero,'' he told reporters on Friday.
Blix's experts and the five permanent Security Council members - the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China - have been analyzing the 12,000-page declaration Iraq submitted last week detailing its nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs.
The Bush administration dismissed the declaration Friday as woefully short of facts, saying it does not account for a number of missing chemical and biological weapons and fails to explain purchases of equipment for a nuclear arms program.
The four other permanent members have not commented, and Blix is expected to give his initial reaction to the Security Council next Thursday.
The 10 non-permanent council members will get a censored version early next week, Buchanan said.
Blix asked the five permanent members for suggestions on items to censor late Thursday, and the United States, Russia and France have given their recommendations. Britain said they would give their recommendations Monday, so they could check their list against Blix's proposals. China has said it is studying the declaration.
----
U.S. rejects Iraqi arms report
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 14, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021214-13688964.htm
NEW YORK - The Bush administration yesterday rejected Iraq's accounting of its weapons of mass destruction, saying that Washington found the 12,000-page declaration incomplete.
"We know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and has programs to create more," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "What's not in the document may be as important as what is in the document."
The White House, conducting its own analysis of the filing, declined to comment specifically on the declaration until after chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix briefs the Security Council on Thursday.
But Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called the Iraqi declaration "a bogus report."
"I don't know how you could put any credibility in any of it," he said.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the inspections a "palliative" for countries that oppose intervention in Iraq.
Without being told where Iraq's biological and chemical weapons are stored, "There's just not a whole lot of confidence in the ability of these people to get the job done," Mr. Lugar told reporters in Washington.
The inspections, he said, are more of "a palliative for many countries who don't want to do anything. It's a time-consumer in a way."
Iraq says it has no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and that it has no programs to build them.
The U.N. chief of nuclear-weapons safeguards also criticized Iraq's filing, saying most of the document's section dealing with nuclear weapons appeared to be recycled information.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) characterized the 2,100-page section on atomic programs as "material we already had before."
Mr. ElBaradei said he hoped for new information in the roughly 300 pages now being translated from Arabic.
He said it could take a year for inspectors on the ground to determine whether Iraq is free of nuclear weapons, and he made an appeal for patience that appeared at odds with Washington's desire for a quick determination of whether Iraq has honored U.N. demands that it disarm.
"It will take us something like a year before we can come to any credible conclusion," Mr. ElBaradei told reporters at IAEA's Vienna, Austria, headquarters.
"Iraq has said they have not taken part in any nuclear-weapons activities. Of course, we must verify that statement. The process will take time, but you need to bear with us because if successful, this is the best way of ensuring that Iraq disarms," he said.
In its Nov. 8 resolution authorizing weapons inspectors to return to Iraq after a four-year absence, the Security Council demanded a current and comprehensive accounting of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
U.N. experts have begun translating and analyzing the report submitted last weekend and expect to have a "sanitized" version ready by Tuesday, when it will be given to the council's 10 elected members.
The five permanent members - the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia - already have a complete copy of the declaration and are performing their own analyses.
The edited document is expected to be somewhat less than 3,000 pages of narrative and will not include appendices that make up the bulk of the declaration.
In Iraq yesterday, weapons inspectors ran into their first delay since resuming site visits Nov. 27, when the weekend staff of a Health Ministry facility could not find the key to several locked rooms inspectors wanted to tour.
After a two-hour delay, senior Iraqi officials arrived at the Communicable Diseases Control Center in Baghdad and agreed to tag and seal the rooms until the inspectors could return. It was the first time that the weapons experts have worked on a Friday, the Muslim day of rest.
U.N. inspectors said yesterday that the delay was not significant and that they expected to be admitted to the rooms in the future.
"The matter was resolved quickly," said Hiro Ueki, the Baghdad-based spokesman for the inspectors.
----
INSPECTIONS
U.N. Team Faces Its First Locked Rooms in Weapons Search
December 14, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/international/middleeast/14BAGH.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 13 - For more than two weeks since they returned to Iraq after a four-year absence, United Nations weapons inspectors enjoyed almost instant access to the sites across the country they chose to search. The gates to some of Iraq's most secret installations opened on the inspectors' demand.
Today, the 17th day since the new round of inspections began, that changed, though the episode ended amicably. After driving to a communicable diseases center in Baghdad that is run by the Health Ministry and had never been subjected to a United Nations search, inspectors were kept waiting for two hours for access to several locked rooms.
It is Friday, the Muslim holy day, and the only Iraqi worker at the site, a laboratory technician, said he had no keys and could not reach the official who had a set of master keys.
Tensions rose as the inspectors decided to place seals on all the rooms and ran into resistance from accompanying Iraqi officials.
Later, the Iraqis and the United Nations inspection team were anxious to emphasize that the two sides found a solution to the problem by activating, for the first time, a telephone hot line to Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, which was set up to work with the inspectors.
That brought the senior Iraqi officer who runs the directorate, Gen. Hussam Muhammad Amin, hastening to the site carrying a hand drill, presumably to force the locks, as well as Miroslav Gregoric, the Yugoslavian-born official who is the director of the weapons inspection team's Baghdad headquarters. But General Amin agreed to have the rooms sealed, and the United Nations team left four hours later with a vow to return another day.
By evening, both sides were retelling the story as a parable of how times have changed.
Between 1991 and 1998, when a previous weapons inspection agency had the job of hunting down Iraq's banned weapons and then destroying them, even getting to the gates of search sites was often a problem, and getting beyond them in any reasonable length of time was frequently impossible. The Iraqis made a fine art of delay and evasion, gaining time that allowed them to "sanitize" important sites of documents, materials and weapons components, as well as scientists and engineers, often by hurrying them away through rear gates and side entrances before inspections began.
Against that background, the delay at the diseases laboratory, at around 9 a.m. today, was bound to raise unease among the inspectors. That is especially true because the Bush administration has served notice - and senior Iraqi officials have acknowledged - that even a single case of obstruction could trigger the "serious consequences" for Iraq that were threatened in the new mandate for the weapons inspections, passed by the United Nations Security Council on Nov. 8.
"We're not even allowed one inaccuracy in this resolution; it's draconian," Gen. Amir al-Saadi, President Saddam Hussein's top adviser on weapons, said at a news conference after Iraq delivered its 12,000-page declaration on its weapons programs to the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad last Saturday. What the general said about the declaration - which American officials have now said has large omissions - is equally true of the inspections procedures.
In the section dealing with inspections, Security Council Resolution 1441 specifies that the inspectors must be given "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access." The resolution also provides for inspection sites to be "frozen" on the inspectors' arrival, meaning that nobody, and nothing, can enter or leave the site until the inspections end.
The Iraqis were so eager today to have the world know that they were cooperating that officials of the Information Ministry set about gathering Western reporters to rush out to the diseases center. Whatever disputes may lie ahead, the record so far suggests that Iraqi officials have taken to heart Mr. Hussein's homily, at a closed meeting last week with high-ranking military and political leaders, on the need to cooperate with the inspectors "to keep our people out of harm's way."
Today's inspections, in addition to the diseases center, included the Al Karama missile plant in Baghdad, used as a research and development center for the short-range Al Samoud ballistic missile that Iraq is permitted under the 1991 weapons bans, and other Baghdad-area works. Inspectors also drove about 100 miles south to sample water at three surface water drainage systems on the Tigris and Euphrates.
Officials of the inspection teams have said the real test will come when the site searches reach out beyond the "declared" sites that have been the target of most inspections so far to any top-secret locations the Iraqis have not acknowledged but where weapons development may still be going on.
The start of that phase may depend on how quickly, and in what detail, American and British intelligence on hidden sites, if any, is passed to the inspection teams. Senior Bush administration officials have been sharply critical of the inspection teams already, and have urged the two agencies carrying them out - one for biological, chemical and missile work, and one for for nuclear sites - to increase the number of inspections they make each day, and to be more assertive.
The sniping continued today with Richard Perle, chief of the Defense Department's Policy Review Board and a leading hard-liner on Iraq, saying in an interview in the French newspaper Figaro that there were too few inspectors in Iraq.
In Baghdad, the inspection teams have noted that Bush administration officials have said again in recent days that no intelligence will be passed to them that compromises American intelligence sources and technical means, which inspectors said could leave them hunting blindly for evidence. But on the number and assertiveness of the inspections, they say they have nothing to apologize for. A new batch of inspectors arrived here on Thursday, raising the total to 98.
Scientists' Names Sought
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 13 - Hans Blix, the leader of one of the weapons inspections teams at the United Nations, sent a letter to Iraq Thursday night formally requesting a list of all its scientists and experts who have knowledge of its weapons programs, the spokesman for the team, Ewen Buchanan, said today.
In a letter to General Saadi, Mr. Blix reminded Iraq that it must provide the roster under the terms of Resolution 1441. Mr. Blix had put Iraq on notice in November that he would insist on having the list.
The United States has been leaning on Mr. Blix to take Iraqi arms scientists and their families out of Iraq to interview them where they can speak more freely. But Mr. Blix is skeptical that this approach would be more effective than conducting confidential interviews inside Iraq.
----
IAEA Says Months Before Conclusion on Iraq Dossier
By Peg Mackey
Reuters
Sat Dec 14, 9:06 AM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20021214/wl_nm/iraq_elbaradei_dc_3
VIENNA - The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday that the United Nations (news - web sites) would need a few months to reach a conclusion about Iraq's declaration on its weapons program.
"By January, we should have a status report which should move us forward," Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters in an interview. "We still need a few months before we come to a conclusion on the Iraqi declaration," he said.
U.S. officials and U.N. diplomats have said an early review of the 12,000-page weapons declaration which Iraq submitted a week ago appears to fall short of the full disclosure required by a tough U.N. Security Council resolution, which demanded Iraq disarm or face severe consequences.
The United States, which seeks to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), could try to use any perceived violation of the November 8 resolution -- such as an incomplete weapons declaration -- as a justification for war.
ElBaradei and U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix are expected to give preliminary findings to the Security Council in New York on Thursday.
ElBaradei has said a complete assessment will be "time-consuming," especially since 300 pages of the documents were in Arabic and needed to be translated into English.
"It is important in light of Iraq's past record to come forward with exonerating evidence, especially in areas of chemical and biological weapons where there are a lot of missing documents," ElBaradei told Reuters. "I hope in their chemical/biological declaration, they have moved forward in bringing some open issues to closure."
He said there had been nothing substantially new in the nuclear file and that it would be several months before a "credible conclusion" could be reached on it.
"We need to do inspections, environmental sampling, make checks with various countries and interview people," he said, adding that inspectors had made good progress so far in terms of access and sites but that it was still too early to judge.
The United Nations has asked Iraq for a list of scientists linked to arms programs and Washington wants Blix and ElBaradei to take the scientists out of Iraq to interview them.
Iraq recently permitted the return of U.N. inspectors after a four-year hiatus under threat of a U.S.-led military attack.
Many believe if the United States does attack Iraq it would rather do so before March when the weather begins to get hot.
-------- iran
Nuclear Sites In Iran Worry U.S. Officials
White House Cites 'Pursuit of Weapons'
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52571-2002Dec13?language=printer
The White House expressed "serious concerns" yesterday about the construction of two nuclear facilities in Iran that officials say is part of a clandestine weapons program, adding to the growing list of nuclear headaches for the Bush administration.
The disclosure of the plants -- which appear designed to produce enriched uranium or plutonium, the fissile material needed for weapons -- came in the same week that North Korea announced it would restart a shuttered nuclear plant and the United States moved closer to confrontation with Iraq over its weapons programs.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the Iranian facilities reinforce growing U.S. fears about Iran's "across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile capabilities."
Despite the rising consternation about Iran's weapons programs, administration officials said yesterday they will keep their focus on the dispute with Iraq. They believe Iraq poses the greater threat, in part because of what they believe are stocks of chemical and biological weapons.
In an interview with CNN yesterday, however, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, said that in terms of the technical capability needed to produce nuclear weapons, he would rank North Korea and Iran ahead of Iraq.
U.S. officials said they will press for prompt inspections of the Iranian facilities and urge other nations to stop cooperating with Iran on nuclear matters. Officials were similarly restrained about North Korea's announcement, avoiding saber rattling as they embarked on a round of new diplomacy to isolate the regime.
Iranian officials yesterday denied the plants were part of a weapons program. They said the facilities had been fully disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and were part of a plan to wean Iran's dependence on its oil reserves for energy.
U.S. officials rejected those assertions. "Our assessment, when we look at Iran, is that there is no economic gain for a country rich in oil and gas, like Iran, to build costly indigenous nuclear fuel cycle facilities," Fleischer said. "Iran flares off more gas every year than the equivalent power it hopes to produce with these reactors."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher charged that Iran "tried to hide these important facilities" and has "repeatedly rebuffed IAEA requests for access to the sites." IAEA officials were to have visited the sites this week, but Iran suddenly delayed the inspections until February.
An Iraqi opposition group in August disclosed the possible existence of the two construction sites, and Newsday last month first reported rising U.S. concerns about the facilities and Iranian intentions. CNN on Thursday broadcast satellite photographs of the facilities, which were obtained by the Institute for Science and International Security, a research organization.
"These are certainly suspicious sites of concern," said one U.S. intelligence official.
U.S. intelligence officials knew about, and had been monitoring, the sites before they were revealed publicly, but they said it was impossible to know their precise stage of development until IAEA inspectors can get to the sites. Determining the extent of Iran's nuclear program has been, and remains, a priority for U.S. intelligence agencies.
In a report this week, the Institute for Science and International Security said the satellite photos suggested that one site, in Natanz, could be used to enrich uranium and that the other, in Arak, is a heavy-water plant, which would be part of a plutonium program.
"By their very nature, these types of facilities are dual-use," the report said. "They can be built as civil facilities and can be relatively quickly converted to produce material aimed at making nuclear weapons. Alternatively, they can be copied and built clandestinely."
In September, Iran informed the IAEA that it was pursuing a "long-term plan" to construct "nuclear power plants and the associated technologies such as fuel cycle" facilities. However, under its agreement with the IAEA, Iran is not required to allow IAEA inspections until six months before nuclear material is introduced in a facility. Iran has resisted signing an updated agreement that would require it to inform IAEA about any new facilities six months before construction is started.
Boucher said the satellite imagery indicated that portions of the Natanz plant -- including a service road, several small structures and three large structures -- were designed to be underground.
"Iran clearly intended to harden and bury that facility," he said. "That facility was probably never intended by Iran to be a declared component of a peaceful program; instead, Iran has been caught constructing a secret underground site, where it could produce fissile material."
Russia has been a big supplier to the Iranian nuclear program. U.S. officials have repeatedly pressed Russian officials to crack down on entities and individuals who have aided Iran's nuclear efforts.
Robert J. Einhorn, the top counterproliferation expert in the Clinton administration, said Iran's contention that it wants to develop a "closed fuel cycle" -- meaning not only reactors but also fabricating fuel and reprocessing fuel for reactors -- makes little sense, given the size of the Iranian program.
"The cost of purchasing fresh reactor fuel would be a tiny fraction of what it would cost to build fuel fabrication" facilities, given that Iran plans only a handful of reactors, he said.
Einhorn said the United States is aware that Iran has clandestinely tried to build its program. Iran has tried to buy a heavy-water reactor that could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium from four countries, all of which turned it down, he said.
Einhorn said that Iran appeared to be hedging its bets, pursuing both plutonium and enriched uranium as routes to nuclear weapons. He said the big question is whether Iran has passed the point necessary to proceed with its programs without additional outside assistance.
Staff writers Dana Priest in Washington and Karl Vick in Istanbul contributed to this report.
-------- korea
U.S. trying to end North Korea's nuclear revival
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 14, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021214-95739982.htm
The United States and its allies waged a joint diplomatic effort yesterday to prevent North Korea from proceeding with its decision to reactivate a nuclear reactor it shut down eight years ago.
But while South Korea agreed with Washington that there could be no business as usual with the reclusive state, Japan said it would continue its dialogue with Pyongyang.
President Bush got personally involved in the issue, which his administration would not describe as a crisis, by consulting with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in telephone conversation yesterday morning.
"President Kim noted that North Korea's statement on unfreezing its nuclear program is unacceptable," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters. "And then the two leaders agreed to continue seeking a peaceful resolution while not allowing business as usual to continue with North Korea."
But in Tokyo, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, said his government would try to restart stalled talks with Pyongyang, because dialogue was even more important now that the security situation on the peninsula has worsened.
"It would not be desirable if dialogue between Japan and North Korea disappeared completely," Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said at a news conference after a meeting with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Kim spoke one day after North Korea said it would restart a 5-megawatt nuclear power plant in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, and would resume building two larger reactors to compensate for its recent loss of monthly fuel-oil shipments from the United States.
The U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) last month suspended the oil shipments, after the North's admission in early October that it had been developing a secret uranium-enrichment program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said North Korea had asked it to unseal and remove surveillance cameras from the plant, closed in 1994 after Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for free energy. That accord, known as the Agreed Framework, has in effect been nullified, even though neither side has officially declared it void.
The State Department said yesterday that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will host their Japanese counterparts, Mrs. Kawaguchi and Shigeru Ishiba, in a meeting of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee on Monday.
Mr. Powell also engaged in telephone diplomacy, speaking with the foreign ministers of Russia and China, Igor Ivanov and Tang Jiaxuan, as well as the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"We have sent instructions to our ambassadors around the world to talk to other governments about this, and of course our mission in Vienna to the [IAEA] has been very active," he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan echoed the White House's statement, urging North Korea to respect the safeguards on its nuclear program and to not expel IAEA inspectors.
"I hope we will not get to the stage where they will kick out the inspectors," he said. "I know there are hints about that, but I hope it doesn't happen."
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
ATOMIC CONCERNS
North Korea's Nuclear Plans Called 'Unacceptable';
Bush Seeks a Diplomatic Solution
December 14, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/international/asia/14KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - President Bush and President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea today declared "unacceptable" North Korea's plans to reactivate an idled nuclear plant that is deemed capable of producing nuclear weapons. But the two leaders also committed themselves to resolving this particular nuclear crisis peacefully.
The pledge by the two leaders came as the United States acknowledged that the nuclear threat posed by Iran - another of the three nations listed by the administration as part of the "axis of evil" - was advancing more swiftly than some experts had thought.
The developments again provided a contrast with the administration's approach on Iraq, which is singled out as a more serious danger that can be resolved only by the threat of military force. By contrast, administration officials argue that Iran and North Korea can be dealt with diplomatically.
The administration said newly released commercial satellite photographs showed that Iran was trying to hide two nuclear facilities, one in the central Iranian town of Nantax and another in nearby Arak.
Administration officials said they regarded these facilities as a serious violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and that international authorities should be allowed to go into Iran to investigate. Both Iran and North Korea maintain that their facilities are for civilian purposes.
"The reports that you've seen of secret facilities in Iran reinforce our already grave concern that Iran is seeking technology to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons," said Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman. He said the United States would work with other countries to get Iran to "refrain" from its program.
On the North Korean issue, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kim, the South Korean leader, spoke briefly by telephone this morning, a day after North Korea's announcement of plans to reactivate a nuclear reactor. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also conferred about North Korea with the foreign ministers of Russia, China and the European Union, according to administration officials.
Administration officials seemed jolted by North Korea's latest declaration. They made it clear, however, that by diplomatic resolution, they meant mainly an effort to exert pressure on the government of President Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
The officials acknowledge, however, that American allies in the region - including Russia, Japan and South Korea - would be more inclined to coax along North Korea with offers of aid and other incentives than would Washington.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, reiterated the administration's hard-line view today, saying, "North Korea would like to have an expectation of the world that the more North Korea violates agreements, the more the world will double over backwards to placate North Korea, and the president will not do that.
"The president will not engage in allowing North Korea to violate its agreements and then have the world come rushing to North Korea to say, `How can we help you?' " he added.
The administration's tough stance on North Korea is bound to remain controversial, however. Some experts said the confrontational approach actually made this week's announcement by North Korea inevitable. They said that after the United States pressed its allies to cut off aid to North Korea, the country would then order the removal of international inspectors from the nuclear plant that had been under inspection since 1994.
"This is not unexpected," said Donald P. Gregg, former ambassador to South Korea, and current president of the Korea Society, referring to North Korea's decision this week.
Mr. Gregg has visited North Korea twice in the past year. Unlike some other experts, he has argued that the North Korean leader is eager to work constructively with the West to end his country's isolation and should be encouraged to do so.
He said Russia, in particular, had developed a close relationship with Kim Jong Il, in part because Russia would like to build an oil pipeline through the Korean peninsula to export its oil from Siberia. Japan and China should also be encouraged to work with North Korea to bring about a diplomatic solution to the current crisis, Mr. Gregg said.
Administration officials acknowledge that they have had to accede to some of the sentiments of America's allies in Asia, not least because North Korea is capable of retaliating against those allies in the event of any American military strike of the kind being considered for Iraq.
The developments of the past few days have roiled South Korean politics and forced a kind of suspension in the diplomatic process with the North, administration officials say.
Many Korean political experts say that North Korea's latest decision, as well as the stopping of a North Korean ship bearing Scud missiles for Yemen, and the ship's subsequent release, would encourage the South Korean hawks.
On the other hand, anti-American sentiments are at a new high in South Korea because of the deaths in June of two South Korean teenage girls who were crushed by an American military vehicle. The deaths have hurt America's image and undercut the American demand for a more confrontational approach to North Korea.
Mr. Fleischer said today that Mr. Bush "conveyed his deep personal sadness and regret" over these deaths.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Panel Expands Probe of Los Alamos Lab
Associated Press
Saturday, December 14, 2002; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52906-2002Dec13?language=printer
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 originally suspected.
The committee asked for new documents, including reports on the alleged irregularities submitted to Director John C. Browne and on whether the computers missing from the nuclear lab contained classified information.
Ken Johnson, spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said three investigators are being sent to the lab and will begin work 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 . . . believed," said the letter, signed by Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) and other senior committee members.
The letter to Richard C. Atkinson, president of the University of California, which runs the lab, expressed frustration with "the apparent failure of the University of California and LANL to sufficiently address these issues over the past several years."
The letter, sent Tuesday and distributed yesterday, requested documents regarding the firing of two investigators who had blown the whistle on the lab's management practices. It 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 after an earlier committee request, by news reports and by 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 is an encouraging sign.
"We think it's a great start. It's obviously a serious investigation," she said.
-------- us politics
What if?
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
December 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021214-38014074.htm#2
Despite all of the coverage Sen. Trent Lott has received, nobody has raised the obvious question: What kind of president might Strom Thurmond have been? My guess is that he would have kept us out of the Korean War, thereby sparing the lives of 50,000 young Americans. As president, he would have had little to say about racial segregation on the national level. That was still essentially a state and local matter in 1948.
Perhaps he will run for the office again in 2004. He is still eligible.
JOSEPH SOBRAN
Burke, Va.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Army Graduates to Join U.S. Operations
December 14, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-army.html
KABUL (Reuters) - About 200 Afghan soldiers from the fledgling, Western-trained, national army were sent to join U.S. soldiers in their hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda fugitives, a government spokesman said Saturday.
The troops, based in the southeastern province of Paktika, will be the first Afghan soldiers to have direct involvement in the U.S.-led coalition's campaign against terror, said presidential spokesman Syed Fazl Akbar.
Akbar said the soldiers would be moved to the provinces of Paktia and Khost near the tribal belt with neighboring Pakistan, where U.S. troops have come under sporadic fire in recent months.
``Their job is to participate in the cleaning up operation and the restoration and maintenance of security,'' Akbar told Reuters.
The government was keen to extend its rule over areas outside Kabul and sending Afghan army graduates to key locations in the country was the first step, the spokesman said.
Six battalions, totaling less than 2,000 men, have graduated in recent months from an intensive training program conducted by an international staff, led mostly by U.S. troops.
He added that the total strength of the new army was not expected to exceed 70,000 troops.
U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faces the dual threat of Taliban and al Qaeda sympathisers and unruly provincial leaders and warlords locked in violent disputes over land and territory and seemingly uninterested in joining the central government.
Renegade warlord Padshah Khan Zadran has launched fierce offensives in the past against provincial governments in Khost and Paktika, and he continues to oppose Karzai's rule.
Thousands of U.S. troops have been hunting for al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in south and southeastern Afghanistan, where many are believed to have fled after the hardline Islamic Taliban regime was toppled from power last year.
But local resistance to the United States and to the stop-and-search tactics its soldiers have adopted in the deeply conservative area is strong.
Karzai has said forming a national army is a key priority to help Kabul consolidate its grip over outlying regions. But the formation of the army has been slow.
-------- africa
More French troops due in Ivory Coast as UN says 50,000 have fled fighting
AFP
Saturday December 14, 4:05 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021213/1/35pqi.html
More French soldiers are awaited in Ivory Coast at the weekend to prevent the former colony sliding into full civil war as the United Nations said fighting in the west of the country had seen 50,000 people flee their homes.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said 32,000 people had fled across the border to Liberia and 20,000 others deeper into Ivory Coast to escape the worst fighting since the early days of a rebellion that broke out on September 19 and has split the country in two.
"Heavy fighting caused thousands of people to cross the Liberian border every day this week," the UN agency said, adding that, in the other direction, some 500 to 600 people a day were coming through the town of Duekoue.
"We are very worried about the west. The displacement from there is becoming increasingly worrisome. What is happening there is very dangerous and needs to be stopped," the regional director for the WFP, Manuel Aranda da Silva told journalists.
The warning comes as France said it would fly in the first of some 500 soldiers to reinforce its 1,200-strong military presence and help "end the progressive destabilisation of Ivory Coast" on Saturday.
Lieutenant Colonel Ange-Antoine Leccia, the spokesman for the French forces here, told AFP: "The first French reinforcements will arrive on Saturday afternoon, they will be flying in from France."
The military reinforcement was announced Wednesday in a signal that France was deepening its involvement in Ivory Coast as the conflict seemed set to worsen with both the rebels and the army recruiting more fighters.
Paris also offered to host a summit of all African leaders affected by the conflict, which it said was threatening to engulf west Africa.
In the meanwhile hopes have turned to a mini-summit of four west African leaders, to be held in Togo on Monday, to cobble together a peace plan.
The meeting will bring together Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema, who has since October 30 tried in vain to negotiate a peace accord between the Ivorian belligerents, and his counterparts from Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana.
French foreign ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau on Friday said for the bigger summit, Paris would be willing to include the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast (MPCI) -- the country's main rebel group who staged the September uprising.
"We have sent a signal that we are ready to welcome all Ivorian political forces, but they have to be political forces not military ones," he said, underlining that the MPCI had presented itself as a "politico-military" movement.
A source close to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said he had already contacted several regional heavyweights including the presidents of Burkina Faso, Mali, Gabon, Senegal and Togo to attend the summit.
"Consultations are going on and we are awaiting the results of regional meetings and the parleys we will have with African leaders and we will see after that," he said.
De Villepin meanwhile stressed that the French reinforcements in Ivory Coast -- who now will have a mandate to shoot at anyone blocking their mission -- was a "mark of its will" to be present in the country and reiterated France's "backing for the legitimate Ivorian authorities."
MPCI rebels have slammed the French decision to reinforce troops and warned that Paris would incur the collective wrath of west Africa if it did not withdraw its forces from Ivory Coast.
Terming the conflict as a purely Ivorian affair, the rebels said French intervention could turn the country into "another Rwanda".
International efforts have built up to defuse the crisis, complicated by the discovery of two mass graves, reports of mercenary fighters, and Ivory Coast's contention that neighbouring Burkina Faso was behind the unrest, a charge hotly denied by that country.
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Friday said it had despatched a team to western Ivory Coast, to assess the situation on the ground.
Kris Janowski said the UNHCR number three Kamel Morjane was expected in Abidjan Friday to hold talks with Ivorian officials and workers from the UN agency.
-------- asia
Maoists seek a democratic Nepal
December 14, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021214-12664910.htm
Baburam Bhattarai, 48, the No. 2 leader of the Maoist insurgents now battling the 234-year-old monarchy in Nepal, was interviewed by e-mail on Dec. 7 by Chitra Tiwari, a Washington-based analyst of international affairs and former political science lecturer at Tribhuvan University in Katmandu. Mr. Bhattarai, a member of the Politbureau and head of the International Department of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, scanned an accompanying signature and attached it to his replies to confirm their authenticity.
Question: Please tell me little bit about yourself, how you entered politics and what motivated you to start the armed uprising in a country so tranquil the world knew it as a Shangri-La?
Answer: We believe persons are mere products of historical necessity and occur as a matter of chance. It would therefore be better if we could focus more on the party, the policy and the issues rather than the individual.
As per your query about my individual background, you can take me as a typical representative of a Third World educated youth of peasant background, who finds the gross inequality, oppression, poverty, underdevelopment and exploitation of the overwhelming majority of the population in a class-divided and imperialism-dominated world just intolerable, and grasps Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the best scientific tool to change it positively.
About the question of "armed" uprising by the oppressed masses, let us not forget that throughout history it is the exploiting ruling classes who have exercised exclusive monopoly over arms and the army, and it is just logical that the exploited now take up arms to disarm the exploiters. The so-called Shangri-La has merely been a misnomer, where the oppressed and exploited majority have meekly tolerated the inhuman brutality and violence of a handful of kings and priests for ages. You would surely agree that the silence of the graveyard is not peace and tranquility. It is now high time that this age-old violence and terror against the toiling majority be ended and a real "Shangri-La" be created in the lap of the mighty Himalayas. The revolutionary movement spearheaded by the CPN (Maoist) just aims at that.
Q: The situation in Nepal is becoming a matter of grave concern to friends of Nepal abroad. What is your assessment of the current politico-military situation in Nepal?
A: It is good that the international community is now awakened by the ever-intensifying civil war in Nepal, and is showing concern for its just and logical conclusion. The situation is now peaking towards a climax after the fratricidal and regicidal "king," Gyanendra, and his notorious son, Paras, have staged a retrogressive coup d'etat against the supine parliamentary democracy on Oct. 4 and restored autocratic monarchy in the country. This has substantiated our long-held position that the limited democratic rights won after the 1990 people's movement were not enough for a full-fledged democracy, and the real state authority and sovereignty were still vested in the monarchy due to its traditional stranglehold over the royal army, bureaucracy and the economy.
The revolutionary people's movement (which is popularly known as People's War) undergoing for the past seven years has now created a parallel people's power, army, economy and culture in large parts of the country, except the cities, and a situation of strategic stalemate has developed in the overall sense.
In the current triangular balance of forces - namely [among] the monarchists, parliamentary democrats and revolutionary democrats - if the latter two democratic forces are able to mount a joint struggle against the feudal autocratic forces, there are strong chances that democracy will be consummated in the country in the near future.
Q: Do you think mediation by international organizations will help to break the ice?
A: We have always remained amenable to a negotiated settlement of the problem. But it is the feudal autocratic monarchy that has sabotaged all our earlier attempts. The "ice" will be hard to break unless the monarchy is made to realize that its days are now numbered and it has to make a graceful exit from the stage of history.
Our own preference would be to settle the problem internally without any external interference. But if the complexities of the situation, particularly Nepal's specific geostrategic positioning between two superstates, India and China, so dictate, then we would not mind facilitation or mediation of some genuinely neutral international organizations.
Q: Voices are raised within and outside Nepal for a negotiated settlement of the civil war. Are you willing to compromise with King Gyanendra's government to stop the bloodshed in your country and accept constitutional monarchy?
A: It is not the question of our accepting or not the "constitutional monarchy." The recent royal coup has proved beyond doubt that Gyanendra himself is not accepting even the limited constitutional monarchy ushered in by the 1990 political change, and is in favor of an all-powerful autocratic monarchy.
Particularly our friends in the West should realize that the prevailing precapitalist socioeconomic relations in most of the Third World countries like Nepal demand either an autocratic monarchy or no monarchy at all. History has yet to see a real constitutional monarchy in any of the pre-Industrial Revolution society. So how can poor Nepal be an exception?
Q: What are your conditions for a peaceful settlement? How hopeful are you that your demands will be met?
A: Our party, our party Chairman Prachanda and our various publications have time and again stressed that our immediate political agenda is to consummate a democratic republic in the country. Please note that we are not pressing for a "communist republic" but a bourgeois democratic republic. For that we have advanced the immediate slogans of a round-table conference of all the political forces, an interim government and elections to a constituent assembly, which have been increasingly endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the population.
As the constituent assembly is the highest manifestation of bourgeois democracy in history, we fail to understand why anybody claiming to be a democrat should shy away from this.
Q: Concerns have been raised in the United States and other friendly nations that a Maoist takeover will lead to Khmer Rouge-type genocide in Nepal. Hence governments in Washington, London, Brussels, and New Delhi have publicly announced their military and economic help to your adversary. How do you respond to that concern and Western military help to your adversary?
A: First, there is no independent and authentic account of events in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge available so far. Whatever is emanating from the Western media appears to be highly exaggerated to us.
Second, we are no Khmer Rouge but CPN (Maoist), that believe in no blind aping of anybody but in the creative application of the universal law of development of nature and society as embodied in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the concrete conditions of Nepal.
We have already summed up our concrete experiences of the democratic revolution so far and named it the "Prachanda Path." We intend to develop it further in the coming days.
The Second National Conference of our Party held last year has already resolved to discard some of the negative and harmful experiences of the international communist movement - particularly those of the Stalin era - and further develop and enrich the positive experiences, especially on the question of mass democracy. Skeptics can go to our numerous base areas and see for themselves how we are practicing democracy among millions of different classes, nationalities, regions, castes and gender.
Third, we would like to appeal to the various governments you have named and those who may disagree with our ideological persuasion to please consider that we are right now making a united fight with the parliamentary democratic forces against the feudal autocratic monarchy to consummate bourgeois democracy in the country.
If the war against the British monarchy in 1648 and against the French monarchy in 1789 was just, how can the war against the equally, if not more, despotic monarchy in Nepal in the 21st century be unjust?
In this context we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to those parliamentarians , intellectuals, media persons and the general masses in the U.S.A., U.K., Belgium and other countries who have opposed their governments' moves to arm the genocidal Nepalese monarchy, and sincerely hope that those governments would see reason sooner than later.
Q: Do you mind telling me the strength and logistics of your People's Liberation Army? How are you financing this army? What is the source of weapons?
A: As you must have noted, we have in recent months carried out highly successful military raids at district and zonal headquarters simultaneously in the Western and Eastern regions by brigade-level formations of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
At the same time we have conducted smaller raids, ambushes, sabotages, etc. in all the 75 districts of the country. We hope this will help you to make an intelligent guess about the strength and logistics of the PLA.
Since ours is a genuine People's War, the people themselves are the real source of our finances. We also collect taxes from businessmen and industrialists, and occasionally seize from banks. As regards the sources of weapons, it is an open secret that our enemy is the greatest source so far. As Mao said, even the foreign powers may supply us via our enemy.
Q: Despite your earlier assurance to tourists, there are reports of Western tourists recently robbed by Maoist guerrillas. Tourism entrepreneurs in both the West and Nepal are worried that the increase in guerrilla activities is likely to disturb the golden jubilee celebration of the conquering of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Have you changed your policy?
A: Even we were surprised by the media reports that some Western tourists were recently "robbed' by so-called "Maoist guerrillas" in eastern Nepal. It is just impossible that our highly motivated and disciplined cadres would commit such heinous crimes. We have ordered an enquiry and will bring out the real facts soon.
Meanwhile, be assured that foreign tourists are completely safe in our areas, and will be so in future. Our only request is [that] since the tourism business, particularly big hotels and so-called Nature Conservation Areas, are mostly controlled by the ruling Shah-Rana families, foreign tourists should think twice before patronizing them. And naturally there will always be some hazards of getting caught in the crossfire in a situation of raging civil war, for which only one side cannot be blamed.
Q: The U.S. State Department has expressed concern over the security of its diplomatic mission in Katmandu. How safe are U.S. government employees and American citizens from your guerrillas in Nepal?
A: U.S. government employees and American citizens - for that matter all foreign employees and citizens - are completely safe in Nepal. We have no policy of harming or attacking any foreign national unless they are found working against the revolutionary movement with concrete evidence.
As per the action against two Nepalese citizens working in the U.S. Embassy in Katmandu for espionage charges, the party has reviewed the cases and resolved that henceforth, if any such charges are leveled against any such employee, the concerned embassy would be advised before taking any actions. However, we would caution the enlightened American people to beware of the xenophobic propaganda of the U.S. government to hide its nefarious agenda.
Q: In recent statements you have expressed confidence in your victory. In the event of your takeover of Katmandu, what kind of political structure are you thinking to introduce? How would you treat other political parties? Do you intend to compete with other parties in national elections?
A: We have publicly stated our position about the future state and government systems in the 75-point Common Minimum Policy and Programme of the United Revolutionary People's Council (URPC). There we have clearly stressed our commitment to a multiparty system in the future state setup.
Our party is currently engaged in reviewing the past experiences of post-revolutionary societies and developing a suitable model of democracy suited to the requirements of the 21st century. It is thus not only in the current phase of the bourgeois democratic revolution but also in the subsequent phase of socialist revolution that we want to develop a new model of democracy in which people's right to dissent and rebel in an organized form will be institutionalized.
Hence, there is absolutely no basis to suspect and fear that we will impose one-party dictatorship once we assume power in Katmandu.
Q: What is your foreign policy agenda? How are you going to assure New Delhi that a Maoist state in Nepal means no harm to India?
A: We have time and again made it clear that we will have diplomatic and friendly relations with all the countries of the world on the basis of five principles (Panchsheel) of peaceful coexistence - namely mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and national integrity, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence.
Given the specific geostrategic position of the country sandwiched between the two huge and hostile states of India and China, we will strive to maintain friendly and equidistant relations with the two immediate neighbors.
It is just ridiculous to presume that a state of Nepal's size and strength can inflict by design any harm to giant India, a nuclear power. Rather Nepal has long been a victim of unequal relations with India since the Sugauli Treaty of 1815-16, which will have to be sorted out in a friendly manner.
Q: What would be your policy regarding foreign loans? Do you expect them to continue or do you want to stop the foreign aid to Nepal altogether?
A: By ideological persuasion, we are avowed proletarian internationalists. Hence we have no xenophobic apprehensions to have mutually beneficial economic and other relations with any country or international organizations. In that sense, we would welcome foreign aid and loans which are beneficial to the Nepalese people and their economic development.
Of course, the basic thrust of our economic development policy would be self-reliance and abolition of dependency, which has plagued the country's economy for long. For this we intend to restructure our economic relations with foreign countries and multilateral institutions in a friendly and cooperative manner.
-------- britain
Troops start countdown to war
By Michael Evans, Elaine Monaghan and James Bone
December 14, 2002
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-513001,00.html
On the march: Intermediate divisions marching past in the Sovereign's Parade at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, yesterday
THOUSANDS of British troops are expected to begin deploying to the Gulf next month in an intensive build-up of forces in preparation for a war with Iraq as early as February.
The Times has learnt that American and British intelligence services have dismissed President Saddam Hussein's 12,000-page declaration on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to be full of holes "big enough to drive a tank through".
A Foreign Office official said that up-to-date information that appeared in the British intelligence dossier published in September is not mentioned in the Iraqi declaration.
Until now, the Government has been reluctant to give details of Britain's likely involvement in a war with Iraq. Tony Blair has deliberately left the Americans to make all the running with their build-up of forces in the Gulf region, saying only that Britain was ready to play a "substantial" role.
According to authoritative sources, the Prime Minister wanted to ensure that the UN had a free rein to exploit all diplomatic efforts and to give weapons inspectors a reasonable period to do their work.
But with time running out for Britain to put its Armed Forces on war alert, the Government has been under pressure from the Service chiefs to allow deployments to begin. The Government is expected to make an announcement before Christmas in the first concrete sign that Britain is ready to join the Americans in fighting a second war against Iraq.
The Government is likely to indicate its general plan for troop movements soon after the UN Security Council meeting next Thursday at which Saddam's weapons declaration will be discussed.
Officials in Washington said that America would keep its views on the declaration to itself until it had talked to the inspectors at that Security Council meeting. Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman, said: "We will continue to be deliberative and thoughtful as we review this document."
Washington has insisted that the dossier itself would not necessarily be a trigger for war, although UN diplomats expect President Bush to say that the omissions in the Iraqi declaration amount to a "material breach" of the UN resolution, which obliged Baghdad to deliver a complete and current list of its arsenal.
The problem for the British military is that their American counterparts view the ideal time for an attack on Iraq as between now and April.
The Americans are so far advanced with their build-up, both in the Gulf and at the key B2 and B52 bomber base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, that they could be ready for war at comparatively short notice. There are still four US aircraft carriers in the vicinity, although at least one, USS George Washington, is now on her way home, having been relieved by USS Harry S. Truman.
By contrast Britain, which has not officially sent any troops to the region to prepare for war, will need several weeks to deploy and acclimatise. Under current contingencies, troops earmarked for Iraq are likely to be allowed to spend Christmas at home with their families before beginning the move to the Gulf.
British troops from 7th Armoured Brigade and 4th Armoured Brigade in Germany, part of the 1st (UK) Armoured Division, are training at their bases for what is expected to be the main British land force.
Other key elements will also be ready early in the new year, including the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, which is due to leave Portsmouth towards the end of next month for a Naval Task Group training deployment in the Far East. HMS Ocean, the helicopter and Royal Marine Commando carrier, will also be ready for operational service in a few weeks.
For the Government, the Saddam dossier has made it easier to go public about British military plans. British officials who have seen the document say that many biological and chemical warfare materials and missiles that escaped previous UN weapons inspections in the 1990s were still unaccounted for. They are not mentioned in the Saddam declaration. "We know they have been hidden," one official said.
US officials confirmed to The Times that the Administration's initial assessment was that the declaration mainly comprised previously published statements. The US had expected this and was looking for a "pattern of abuses".
Mr Bush said last night that it was too early to tell whether Saddam was lying. But he added: "I don't want to prejudge the report. But my gut feeling about Saddam Hussein is that he is a man who deceives, denies."
Additional reporting by Elaine Monaghan in Washington and James Bone in New York
-------- colombia
Colombian Gov't Wants New Army Powers After Bombs
December 14, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombia-bomb.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - The government urged rattled congressmen to give more powers to the army on Saturday after suspected Marxist rebels brought Colombia's war to the capital in a week-long bombing offensive culminating in attacks against a senator and a restaurant.
At least 23 people were injured, many by burns and glass shards, on Friday night, when a bomb left in a suitcase ripped through an exclusive restaurant on the 30th floor of a Bogota hotel which is a temporary home to many congressmen.
Visiting the Tequendama Hotel, which had windows blown out by the blast, Defense Minister Marta Lucia Ramirez said Congress should give the military expanded powers including the right to tap phones and raid homes.
``If in circumstances such as these we don't strengthen our institutions and security forces, when are we going to do so? For the moment we still have a country to defend,'' she said, pressing Congress to pass the measures which have been condemned by human rights groups.
Just a few hours earlier, Sen. German Vargas, a prominent supporter of tough anti-guerrilla President Alvaro Uribe, lost a finger when he opened a letter bomb in his Bogota office.
The government blamed both attacks on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- a 17,000-strong group known by the Spanish initials ``FARC'' -- and said they showed Congress must extend to the military powers now reserved for police only.
Senate President Luis Alfredo Ramos visited Vargas in hospital on Saturday and said he would ask the president for more security for legislators.
``We hope he isn't too badly hurt from this attack, which isn't just an attack on him but on the whole national Congress, and is basically an attack on Colombian democracy,'' he said.
The attacks wrapped up a week in which suspected rebels hit hard against the Andean mountain capital, which has been spared the worst effects of a largely rural guerrilla war which has lasted 38 years and claims thousands of lives a year.
A massive car bomb blew up in a supermarket car park, injuring 58 people, and police found another five car bombs hidden and ready to be driven to their targets.
Bogota city authorities have asked citizens to be alert.
Uribe, a firm U.S. ally who is strengthening the armed forces to crack down on the rebels, said the latest attacks showed a sophistication learned from the Irish Republican Army or Spain's ETA guerrillas.
Three suspected IRA members are currently on trial in Bogota for allegedly teaching the FARC bomb-making techniques.
-------- europe
EU OKs admitting 10 new members
By Constant Brand
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 14, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021214-22298685.htm
COPENHAGEN - European Union leaders yesterday set the stage for the EU's largest expansion ever, agreeing on financial terms with 10 countries, mostly from the formerly communist Eastern Bloc, to bring them into the union in 2004.
At the same time, the EU leaders told Turkey it can open its membership negotiations "without further delay" if it meets membership criteria in a December 2004 review.
The date was two years later than Turkey had wanted, but firmer than initially offered.
Turkey, a NATO ally, immediately reciprocated.
At a meeting of NATO envoys in Brussels, it lifted its long-standing veto on EU plans to mount peacekeeping operations using NATO assets such as heavy transport planes, command-and-control facilities and satellite intelligence gathering.
"EU access to NATO planning capabilities for EU-led operations is now assured, effective immediately," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said at the alliance headquarters in Brussels.
Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul came to the EU summit in Copenhagen demanding a 2003 starting date for entry negotiations. Washington has long pressed the EU to reach out to Turkey and anchor it in the world of Western democracies. The United States also likely will need Turkish bases if it comes to a war against Iraq.
But the focus yesterday was on the agreements with 10 new members, sealed after four years of arduous negotiations.
"Accession of 10 new member states will bring an end to the divisions in Europe," said Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, the EU's executive branch. "For the first time in history, Europe will become one because unification is the free will of its people," he added.
The accord came at the end of a two-day summit at which several candidates - notably Poland - successfully held out for more subsidies and other benefits.
The EU will pay $42 billion over the 2004-2006 period in farm and other subsidies for the new member states - about $430 million more than what was on offer at the outset of the Copenhagen talks.
"It was a good deal," said Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller. "In my opinion, we can sell this in a referendum" in which Polish voters must endorse the expansion agreement.
The deal brings 10 candidates - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta - into the union.
Their entry will be the EU's largest, most ambitious expansion ever and one that carries huge political significance, for it will erase for good the last traces of the continent's Cold War divide.
The EU leaders also confirmed that Bulgaria and Romania remain on track to join the EU in 2007.
The EU leaders had a rough time with candidate Turkey. At one point during the two-day summit, Mr. Gul accused the EU of discriminating against his country of 66 million Muslims by not fixing a firm date to begin talks on bringing it into the club as well.
In the end, the EU reluctantly said it will start membership negotiations in early 2005, shortly after the EU has assessed if Turkey meets EU human rights, democracy and economic-performance criteria.
The plan marks the culmination of years of work to unite the continent after more than four decades of Iron Curtain division. It will be the first expansion since Austria, Finland and Sweden joined in 1995, bringing the current total to 15 countries.
With the new members, the EU will surpass the North American Free Trade Agreement as the world's largest market, with 445 million people compared with NAFTA's 416 million.
One area where the summit failed to find agreement was the division of Cyprus. U.N.-mediated talks on the margin of the EU meeting were unable to bring Turkish and Greek Cypriots together around a peace plan that would end the 28-year division of the Mediterranean island.
--------
European Union Acts to Admit 10 Nations
December 14, 2002
New York Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/international/europe/14SUMM.html
COPENHAGEN, Dec. 13 - The European Union redrew its map today, pushing its border eastward to add 10 nations, most of them poor former Communist countries.
The expansion - the biggest in European Union history - will create a mega-Europe of 450 million people in 25 countries and an economy of more than $9 trillion, close to that of the United States.
Today's announcement comes a month after NATO, the military alliance formed as a shield against the Soviet Union after World War II, redefined its borders by inviting seven former Communist nations to join. But after a year of American-led combat operations in Afghanistan in which NATO countries played a minimal role, and with the possibility of war against Iraq, the new NATO is struggling to find a mission.
This is not the case with the European Union, which already has far too much to do. Today, European leaders congratulated themselves on the history of the moment, which will put an additional 75 million people under the union's banner and add 23 percent to its territory.
"Today is a great moment for Europe," the new group of 25 nations said in its first joint communiqué, under the title, "One Europe." It added, "Our common wish is to make Europe a continent of democracy, freedom, peace and progress." At the close of the summit meeting, the union's leaders competed with one another's superlatives. "Today we have closed one of the bloodiest and darkest chapters in European history," the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters. "We decided to heal our continent. We decided to create one Europe."
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said at a news conference: "This is a summit that redefines Europe for the future. This is an extraordinary moment in Europe's history."
The new members - Poland; the Czech Republic; Hungary; Slovakia; the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; the ex-Yugoslav republic of Slovenia; and two Mediterranean islands, Cyprus and Malta - will formally join the European Union in May 2004.
Today's announcement follows extraordinary, detailed haggling in recent months over issues of money and even national identity.
The main fight during the summit meeting was between Poland, the largest new member, and Germany, the club's biggest paymaster, over money for Polish farmers.
Poland had threatened to sabotage the expansion by demanding more financial aid to help bring Eastern economies up to Western standards. The impasse was resolved after the union agreed to spend an additional $430 million in farm and other subsidies for the new members, for a total of $42 billion between 2004 and 2006.
Other concessions included an increase in milk-production quotas and money for border guards to Poland. "Our tactic of tough negotiations proved to be successful," the Polish prime minister, Leszek Miller, said at a news conference. "Our nation deserves this."
Many concessions to other countries were much more modest. Bulgaria was granted an exemption from certain taxes on local liqueurs, for example. Hungary was granted the exclusive right to use the word "Tokay" for the wine it produces. Malta can continue to catch finches, Latvia to catch undersized herrings. Slovenia has claimed the exclusive right to use the name Lipizzaner for the breed of horse.
Nothing was signed today. The European Union prides itself on process and consensus, which means serial meetings before decisions can be made. So a formal treaty will be signed in Athens in April.
Today's celebration was marred by the union's rejection of Turkey's demand to set a date to begin negotiations for its admission into the exclusive European club.
Turkey, with the support and involvement of the Bush administration, had lobbied hard for the European Union to agree to open talks on its candidacy. It had wanted a firm commitment that negotiations would start before the membership of the 10 new nations is formalized.
Late Thursday night, the union's leaders agreed to meet in December 2004 to decide whether the largely Muslim country of 70 million people was democratic enough and respectful enough of human rights to begin negotiations. But no date for negotiations was set, and instead of 15 nations agreeing on its fate, 25 will now have to do so.
The 15 leaders reopened the issue today, however, changing their draft agreement to read that if the Turks meet the union's criteria to begin entry talks two years from now, they entry would begin "without further delay." Still, the decision not to set a firm date deeply disappointed Turkey's new government.
There had been hopes that the showpiece summit meeting could also celebrate a deal to end the 28-year-old division of Cyprus, which will become one of the new union members. But talks brokered by the United Nations in Cyprus ended without an agreement between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
That means that only the southern, Greek side of Cyprus - the only government on the island that is recognized internationally - was invited today to join the union. The Turkish north could enter later if it agrees on terms to end the island's division.
Even before the decision on expansion, the first since Austria, Finland and Sweden joined in 1995, the union was engaged in an ambitious, open-ended experiment to redefine what it means to be a European. Both its believers and its skeptics say member nations are relinquishing sovereignty on a scale not seen since the Emperor Charlemagne tried to unify the continent 1,200 years ago.
There are proposals to make the European Parliament more powerful, perhaps even more so than national legislatures, and a debate over whether to set up the office of a president of Europe, who might compete with national leaders for influence.
Despite big dreams, however, the union has been unable to forge a common foreign policy or to piece together a viable military force to respond quickly to crises in its territory.
The current membership has no wiring diagram or blueprint for how to absorb 10 new bureaucracies when their nations become full members in 2004. There is no political plan for how the organization will govern itself and no economic plan for how the European Central Bank will create a single monetary policy for dramatically different economies.
The European Union is in the midst of negotiations led by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president, to draft a new constitution for the new Europe, which he once suggested naming "the United States of Europe." But nowhere is there consensus about how to draft a common constitution for 25 countries.
With the expansion, the population of the European club will increase by 20 percent, but the average wealth per person will fall by about 13 percent because most of the newcomers are relatively poor. That means that the new union, which started out as a rich man's club, will have to find ways to balance the interests of a country like Luxembourg, with a per capita G.D.P. of nearly $43,000, with a country like Lithuania, with a per capita G.D.P. of $3,200.
The new members will have to adhere to 80,000 pages of European Union laws and regulations, which dictate what members can and cannot do in some of the biggest and smallest areas of life.
Its laws govern, for example, how corporations carry out acquisitions, what farmers can call their cheeses, when hunters can shoot small birds, how many hours a week people can work, and who is a dentist.
-------- iraq
10-foot-tall Iraqis
December 14, 2002
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29998
For the moment, the warhawks' invasion plans have been stalled by Saddam's acceptance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.
The warhawks never expected that Saddam would allow the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency unfettered access.
But apparently he is.
The warhawks never expected that Saddam would produce by Dec. 8 the "accurate, full and complete declaration of all aspects of its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons."
But apparently he has.
The warhawks have reviewed Saddam's list and they are outraged. They didn't believe it back in 1999 when the U.N. inspectors concluded in their final reports that Iraq had been substantively disarmed, and they don't believe it now.
Furthermore, Saddam apparently claims that those weapons programs have not been resumed in the intervening years. To the warhawks, Saddam's list is a 12,000-page pack of lies.
What's a poor warhawk to do?
Well, what about that section of UNSCR 1441 that says, "UNMOVIC and the IAEA may at their discretion conduct interviews inside or outside of Iraq, may facilitate the travel of those interviewed and family members outside of Iraq, and that, at the sole discretion of UNMOVIC and the IAEA, such interviews may occur without the presence of observers from the Iraqi government"?
Now, if you believe the Iraqi "defector," Khidir Hamza, the Iraqi scientists and engineers in Saddam's nuke programs are 10-feet tall. They are Saddam's greatest asset. They can do anything Saddam asks of them. No one else in the Middle East - outside of Israel - can build a refinery or a power plant or a telephone exchange or a gaseous diffusion plant.
According to Hamza, the Iraqi nuke program was especially well-funded and staffed. In contrast, the biological programs - to weaponize anthrax and wheat smut - had just skeleton staff and funding.
According to Hamza, after the Gulf War, Saddam kept this team of 10-foot-tall S&Es intact. He organized them into prestigious non-government corporations and gave them very lucrative government contracts. The corporations pretended to be rebuilding the Iraqi civilian infrastructure destroyed in the Gulf War, but they really continued to develop nukes.
The warhawks want very much to believe Hamza. They want very much to find nukes hidden in Iraqi farmhouses. So, why not get UNMOVIC Chairman Hans Blix to force Saddam to identify several hundred of these 10-foot-tall Iraqi S&Es? Then have the CIA convert them into "assets" - either offering them fat consulting agreements and political asylum to their families, or issuing what amounts to a UNSC subpoena to testify before a U.N. "grand jury." Have the Pentagon transport them to Gitmo for "interviews" by U.N. "prosecutors." Make them tell where the Iraqi nukes are hidden.
The warhawks now consider UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors' interview power to be "the most significant authority contained in the resolution" and "the one thing that is most likely to produce overt Iraqi opposition."
As the warhawks see it, Saddam has nukes, and his refusal to give up his "greatest assets" - as well as failure by any 10-foot-tall Iraqis to provide exactly the kind of "information" under questioning that the warhawks want to hear - would constitute a material breach of UNSCR 1441 as serious as Blix actually finding hidden nukes.
The warhawks are raring-to-go, but their Nacht und Nebel proposal is reportedly not playing too well at the State Department, to say nothing of the U.N. Security Council.
Everyone, including Hans Blix, agrees on the importance of confidential, uninhibited interviews of key Iraqi S&Es to complement the work of the U.N. inspectors. But the warhawks better get ready for a shock.
Consider the recent "intelligence" that some terrorist group has acquired an Iraqi VX weapon. Sarin and VX are both deadly nerve agents, somewhat unstable, with relatively short shelf-life. The U.S. weaponized "binary" VX - two stable precursor chemicals are stored separately in the weapon and are mixed together, producing deadly VX, only after the artillery projectile has been fired or the bomb dropped.
The Iraqis similarly weaponized sarin and used it in the Iran-Iraq war, but they insist that they were never able to weaponize VX. They admit they made about four tons of short shelf-life VX, but were unable to produce the appropriate precursor chemicals for use in a binary VX weapon.
The Iraqi S&Es are not 10-feet tall, and if they stick to that story in grand jury "interviews" they just might be telling the truth.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
----
OPPOSITION
Hussein Foes Meet in London, but Rivalries Fracture Unity
December 14, 2002
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/international/middleeast/14IRAQ.html
LONDON, Dec. 13 - A would-be king, a fugitive financier, warriors and Islamic clerics, idealistic nationalists and jaded generals, spies and, rumor has it, a potential assassin or two, have gathered in London this weekend to draw the political blueprint for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq - and to prove to a skeptical world that the splintered Iraqi diaspora can stand united.
But before the Iraqi Opposition Open London Conference had even begun, bickering broke out among the disparate participants. One camp even staged a news conference today in an apparent attempt to set the conference's agenda without the approval of its rivals.
"They are blackmailing and manipulating the process to shove their plan down everybody's throat and embarrass the Americans," fumed Laith Kubba, a delegate and former member of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella group of exiled Iraqi opponents that held the news conference along with a handful of other delegates.
The opposition meeting had already been delayed for months while various parties haggled over everything from the number of delegates to the venue. The public spat today provided more evidence that while the gathering might be long on theatrics, it could fall short of demonstrating that Mr. Hussein's varied opponents can speak with one voice.
The convention, which some organizers said would include as many as 526 delegates, begins Saturday and is expected to end with a news conference on Monday.
Demonstrating unity is crucial to the Iraqi opposition, which wants to play a decisive role in designing a post-Hussein Iraq. The common denominator linking the groups at the conference is that they do not want the Bush administration to dictate the timetable or the terms of their involvement in governing Iraq after Mr. Hussein is removed from power.
But this array of factions needs the Bush administration to get to that point. And their infighting, both with words and weapons, has long robbed them of unqualified support from the United States, let alone the international community.
Partly for this reason, and partly so the opposition does not interfere with American plans, the United States has counseled the convention organizers to limit their agenda to a show of unity and broad expressions of support for a democratic Iraq.
Each of the main opposition groups enjoys different levels of support from different groups in the United States government; the most visible fault line has the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency on one side and the Defense Department and the White House on the other.
The State Department and the C.I.A. have favored those groups with covert connections to disaffected officials in the current Iraqi government who support the idea of a coup or limited military engagement. Such an approach would leave much of the government intact and allow for a more seamless transition. Chief among the groups in this category is the Iraqi National Accord.
The Defense Department and the White House have favored the exile groups clustered around the Iraqi National Congress and its founder, Ahmed Chalabi, whose Western panache could provide a more palatable and malleable post-Hussein government, in the mode of Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan.
The Kurds and Shiite Muslim groups have remained more aloof, because they have clear regional constituencies in Iraq, as well as armed forces on the ground that ensure them a place at the table.
But as it made clear today, the Chalabi faction, the Iraqi National Congress, wants to create what it is calling a "nucleus transitional authority" - before any eventual overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Chalabi, a former banker, is wanted in Jordan on charges of fraud and contributing to a collapse of the Jordanian currency in 1989. He says the charges are politically motivated.
Today he and Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a member of Iraq's long-exiled royal family who wants to be king, led a news conference to present a 98-page paper that they described as a draft of the working document for all participants to consider at the opposition meeting.
The "nucleus transitional authority" described in the document is the most significant part - and the most contentious. The Iraqi National Congress envisions in the document that the new "nucleus authority" will "be doubled in size when it moves to Iraq." Today it quickly became apparent that there was no broad consensus behind the document, which emerged from a working group of 32 people, representing a variety of Iraqi opposition views.
"I was a member of that working group," said Mr. Kubba, who co-founded the National Congress with Mr. Chalabi in 1992 but quit the organization after a bitter dispute with him. "This draft has not been endorsed by the working group."
Mr. Kubba also said the draft document and the news conference were part of a plan "to empower one small group."
According to several of the delegates, Mr. Chalabi, Mr. Ali and others involved are motivated by a fear of being marginalized by groups that already enjoy strong support inside Iraq. They thus want to secure their place in a transitional government before Mr. Hussein is removed from power, these delegates said.
As the news conference was breaking up, Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish official who helped plan the opposition gathering, arrived to explain furiously that the conference had been held without the consent of the other main opposition groups.
Asserting that the steering committee for the conference had its own working document, he said, "It was unfortunate that some people claimed to represent the conference when they do not."
--------
U.S. Warplanes Hit 3 Targets in S. Iraq
December 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Strike.html
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- U.S. jets attacked three air defense installations Saturday south and east of Baghdad after Iraqi military jets violated the southern no-fly zone, the U.S. Central Command said on its Web site.
The command said the U.S. planes used ``precision guided weapons'' against the three sites in response to Iraqi threats.
The military said it hit targets at al-Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, Qal'at Sukkar, 170 miles southeast of the capital and al-Amarah, 165 miles to the east-southeast.
``They (the Iraqi warplanes) went south. I cannot begin to ascertain what their motivation was in doing so other than plainly violating the zone,'' Central Command spokesman Maj. Pete Mitchell told The Associated Press in Washington.
U.S. and coalition aircraft have patrolled the southern and northern no-fly zones since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, which expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The zones were established to prevent Saddam Hussein from attacking the Kurdish minority in the north of the country and the Shiites in the south.
-------- nato
Bosnia peace force on alert for al Qaeda
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 14, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021214-90521690.htm
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - International peacekeeping forces here are increasingly concerned about the threat of an attack by al Qaeda terrorists, one of whom was caught spying on an American base in northern Bosnia.
NATO officials confirmed last week that a man, who was detained in October when peacekeepers caught him surveilling the American base outside Tuzla, has "strong ties to al Qaeda."
Sabahudin Fijuljanin, a 32-year-old Muslim, has remained in custody in Bosnia since Oct. 26. After his arrest, troops found a rocket-propelled grenade launcher stashed in Fijuljanin's apartment, in addition to numerous Bosnian and other passports, all in his name.
"Since the 11th of September 2001, terrorism has taken on a priority for deployed forces around the world, and it is certainly a concern for the Stabilization Forces here," said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William E. Ward, the commander of NATO's Stabilization Force (Sfor) in Bosnia.
The global war on terrorism "gives another dimension to our mission here," Gen. Ward told The Washington Times.
"Our force-protection posture reflects it, our situational awareness reflects it, our contacts with local officials who are also involved in this process all reflect that," he said.
While the general stressed that Sfor's top priority in Bosnia remains "contributing to a safe and secure environment here, as well provide support to the international community that's here," he said peacekeepers must be aware of the al Qaeda threat.
NATO has trimmed Sfor substantially from the 60,000 troops that rolled into Bosnia in 1995 to stabilize the country at the end of a bloody three-year-long ethnic conflict.
Peacekeepers from more than two dozen countries are among the approximately 17,000 troops remaining. About 3,000 of them are Americans.
Gen. Ward said the troops "are not consumed" by the al Qaeda threat, "but we certainly pay attention to it."
Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo recently announced a ban on three Islamic charities that were operating in the country and suspected of channeling funds for terrorism.
Published reports indicate that the charities in question include one Saudi-based organization, the U.S.-based Global Relief Foundation and one local organization.
"Bosnian authorities have frozen the assets" of the three charities "based on evidence developed by, among others, the United States," a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.
"Pending the result of further investigation, the appropriate authorities have taken actions to close operations of those organizations," the official said. "Local Bosnian authorities are committed to the fight against terrorism."
Acting on a tip from U.S. forces here in October 2001, Bosnian police arrested six Algerian humanitarian workers on suspicion of making threats against the U.S. Embassy.
Despite a ruling in January by the Bosnian government's Human Rights Chamber that authorities lacked enough evidence to justify their detention, the six Algerians were handed over to the United States and sent to U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they are being held as suspects in the war on terrorism.
A heavily fortified wall has since been completed around the U.S. Embassy, although embassy officials say its construction was well under way before the September 11 attacks.
Hundreds of Arab fighters migrated to Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims during the war.
The Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in 1995, stipulated the withdrawal of all foreign fighters. But some of the Arabs are believed to have settled in Bosnia, gaining citizenship for their wartime contributions or by marrying local women.
Sfor officials stressed the importance of not confusing Bosnian Muslims, who were victims of some of the worst war crimes in Europe since World War II, with Muslim fanatics from Saudi Arabia and other nations known for their terrorist expatriates.
-------- pakistan
Indian Army: Missile Found in Kashmir
December 14, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kashmir-Missile.html
SRINAGAR, India (AP) -- Indian soldiers discovered a Pakistani surface-to-air missile in a suspected militant hide-out in Indian-controlled Kashmir -- the first such find in 13 years, the military said Saturday.
The heat-seeking missile was found Friday in the border district of Kupwara, the Indian Army said in a statement. The area is near the cease-fire line that divides the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
``The missile has clear Pakistani Army markings, which is evidence of the clear involvement of Pakistan in supporting militancy in Kashmir,'' the army statement said.
India has long accused Islamabad of proving arms and training to Islamic militants fighting India's rule over part of the divided Kashmir. Pakistan says it only gives ideological support to the rebels -- whom it considered ``freedom fighters'' -- and not weapons.
Pakistani military officials dismissed India's claim.
``India is again leveling baseless allegations against us just to divert the attention of the international community from the real problem, but we are sure the world community is aware of these tactics,'' Pakistan military spokesman Gen. Rashid Quereshi said in Islamabad.
The 33-pound missile, with a 22-pound warhead, was wrapped in plastic and buried in the Mallarpur Forest, a senior Indian officer said on condition of anonymity. It could be used to attack aircraft, he said, adding that it was labeled ``ANZA MK 1.''
Other ammunition and weapons were found at the site, the officer said.
According to British military journal Jane's Defense Weekly, the Anza Mark 1 missile is manufactured in Pakistan. It has a maximum range of 2.6 miles and a speed of 1,640 feet per second.
The missile was uncovered near the village of Dhrugmulla, possibly ahead of an operation by Islamic guerrillas sneaking into Indian-controlled Kashmir through the mountains, another Indian officer said on condition of anonymity.
Since 1989, rebels have been fighting for either a merger with Islamic Pakistan or independence for Indian-controlled Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in predominantly Hindu India.
The two nuclear-armed South Asian rivals have fought two wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.
Also Saturday in Kashmir, a paramilitary group killed three men identified as members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militant group, group commander Ramesh Kumar said.
The three men began firing at security forces from a bus that was stopped at Verinag, 60 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. They were killed in the ensuing gunbattle, Kumar said.
-------- russia / chechnya
Oligarchs' Power Unfettered Under Putin
Once-Ruthless Entrepreneurs Cede Politics to Kremlin for Free Economic Rein
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 14, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52999-2002Dec13?language=printer
MOSCOW -- For two decades, Russia has been trying to build a 3,000-megawatt power plant deep in the heart of Siberia, pouring more than $1 billion into the project. Now just half finished, it needs that much more to be completed.
So along came Russian mogul Oleg Deripaska, who made a deal to provide a $10 million loan to keep the project alive. If the money were not repaid -- and the unfinished Boguchansk plant generates no revenue to repay debts -- he would receive up to 25 percent ownership in what may ultimately be a $2 billion facility.
Deripaska, the aluminum king of Russia, called it a reasonable arrangement to save an important project while also protecting his investment. To critics, though, it echoed the worst of the schemes of the 1990s -- known as loans for shares -- in which emerging Russian oligarchs seized control of lucrative state assets for a fraction of their real value.
Two years after President Vladimir Putin took office, the wealthy Russian oligarchy he vowed to dismantle is alive and well. During his presidential campaign, Putin boldly declared that "the oligarchs will cease to exist as a class," yet with few prominent exceptions, the tycoons have prospered and even consolidated their holdings.
Under Putin, just eight oligarchic clans now control 85 percent of the value of Russia's top 64 private companies, according to a study; the combined sales of the 12 top private companies alone equal the revenue of the government. Just as under former president Boris Yeltsin, oligarchs get richer while sometimes swindling minority shareholders and manipulating a pliant court system in battles for domination of the country's most precious economic resources.
"Under Yeltsin there were oligarchs, and under Putin there are still oligarchs, and in principle nothing has changed," said Alexei Zudin, an analyst at Moscow's Center for Political Technologies.
If anything, the oligarchy has grown, adding a new generation of rising titans with overflowing bank accounts and swaggers to match.
At 34, Deripaska has amassed a fortune estimated at $1.5 billion, making him one of the seven richest people in Russia. A crafty, hard-knuckled player sometimes accused of ruthless tactics, he controls the world's second-largest aluminum company and the country's second-largest automaker. Lately he has tried to muscle his way into the timber industry as his allies sought to overturn a governor's election in resource-rich Siberia.
In an interview at his polished Moscow offices, Deripaska, wearing a black shirt, black sports coat and blue jeans, defended himself and the evolution of oligarchic capitalism. While business interests still fight it out, he said, these days they employ more legitimate tactics. "It's a legal fight," he said. "And it's not bad that in some areas and some industries there is consolidation. It brings stability."
Stability has been the watchword of Putin's tenure. Rather than eliminate oligarchs as a class, Putin has institutionalized them and, to an extent, tamed them into more seemly behavior. Instead of giving favorites the run of the Kremlin, as Yeltsin had done, Putin meets with oligarchs as a group on a regular schedule with fixed agendas. The epic battles of the 1990s have morphed into more polite, less violent, though still fierce contests.
"It's as intense as before -- there's no big change. It's less criminal than before," said Peter Aven, president of Alfa Bank and a minister in Yeltsin's government. Under Putin, the oligarchs are free to assemble great wealth as long as they stay out of the political arena. "He wants business to make business and not to do politics. Politics is not as much on the agenda as before."
The oligarchs emerged from the ashes of communism a decade ago as the nascent Russian government began privatizing state-owned industries. In the rush to tear apart the old state and build a market economy, Yeltsin's reformers sold off assets for rock-bottom prices. Some of the more entrepreneurial Russians -- and some of the more crooked -- snatched up oil wells, mines and factories and siphoned off vast amounts of cash to foreign banks.
For a time, it appeared that these magnates were running not just banks and factories but Yeltsin's Kremlin, especially after they helped reelect him in 1996. Putin, although he was Yeltsin's hand-picked successor, tapped into popular resentment and initially appeared eager to take on the oligarchs, launching investigations into the two most outspoken, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, and driving them out of the country.
But he stopped there, making clear that only those who challenged him would face trouble. What emerged was a mutual non-aggression pact.
"The agreement is we're not getting involved in politics, we're in economics," said Igor Yurgens, vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the association of oligarchs. "And the other side is, he's not really involved in the competitive [business] fights."
Aides to Putin said the perception that oligarchs do not own the Russian president has loosened their grip on the rest of government as well. In the past, said a Kremlin official, "bureaucrats were afraid to refuse because they thought, 'If I refuse, the oligarch will go to Yeltsin and Yeltsin will fire me.' And now that's not the case. The oligarchs economically can still buy bureaucrats, but bureaucrats aren't afraid of them. That's a very important difference."
The oligarchs, however, still have a place at Putin's table through Yurgens's union. Every three months, two dozen of them troop into Catherine Hall at the Kremlin for tea with Putin. They include Deripaska, oil kingpin Mikhail Khodorkovsky and banking titan Mikhail Fridman. Putin brings his chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, and prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov.
The group dynamic has formalized the relationship in a way that encourages discussion of broader issues rather than personal lobbying, Yurgens said.
Even by Yurgens's account, though, the oligarchs maintain great sway over issues affecting them. They won corporate tax cuts and shaped Putin policies on banking, bankruptcy and deregulation. "I would say 70 percent of the time, when the position is clearly put together, he says yes," said Yurgens. "In 30 percent, he says, 'No, no, no, it's too early, it's in the interest of big business, not in the interests of the country.' "
The bottom line for many oligarchs has been a more secure environment. Assured that Putin will leave them alone, they have expanded their fiefdoms. Many have brought home money that had been spirited abroad and begun investing in their companies; capital flight is down a reported 80 percent. Instead of quick profit, many now look to the future and aspire to respectability, adopting Western-style accounting and corporate rules.
"They've reined in themselves," said Peter Boone, research director at Brunswick UBS Warburg brokerage. "We certainly see it in the companies we deal with." In a study, Boone and analyst Denis Rodionov concluded that oligarchs have tightened their hold on Russia's economy. At the same time, they found, the 10 largest private companies now want to list shares on international stock exchanges and most want to sell strategic stakes to foreign buyers or become international players themselves.
None of this, however, has stopped backroom dealing and backstabbing. While not as extreme, tales persist of oligarchic looting. In recent months, for example, rival groups have battled for control of Slavneft, among the largest remaining state oil companies, by deploying squadrons of security guards to oust opposing management teams.
Putin generally stays out of such fights. But Slavneft soon will provide a major test of his willingness to enforce new rules. On Dec. 18, the government will auction off its 75 percent share of Slavneft in the largest privatization of the post-communist era.
From the start, one thing will be different -- the purchaser will pay what the company is worth. The government set a $1.7 billion minimum, just shy of the $1.76 billion value estimated by United Financial Group. Among the bidders: Sibneft, Surgutneftegaz, Tyumen Oil Co., as well as China National Petroleum Co. Sibneft's Roman Abramovich, a politically connected oligarch, has long eyed Slavneft; a Sibneft executive won the recent management battle and last week Sibneft bought 10.8 percent of Slavneft held by Belarus for $207.5 million. The question is whether the fix is in at the Russian auction.
Another important case will reach a pivot point the same day when parliament takes up legislation restructuring Russia's electricity monopoly. Anatoly Chubais, the former acting prime minister and now chief executive of Unified Energy Systems, wants to break it into private companies to create competition and attract investment to upgrade Russia's woeful electrical system.
But critics complain Chubais, architect of the 1990s loans-for-shares privatization, wants to repeat history by giving away valuable property. Exhibit number one is Deripaska's deal with Chubais on the Boguchansk plant in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk. "We think he's cut deals with all the oligarchs," said William F. Browder, head of Hermitage Capital Management, a minority shareholder in Unified Energy Systems.
Deripaska said he made the power plant loan agreement because the aluminum industry needs power and without him the plant would never be completed. His small cash infusion was meant just to get through winter. "I can find thousands of opportunities that would give a much higher return," he said.
To defuse criticism, Chubais postponed asset sales and deals such as Boguchansk. "Some of our opponents are trying to use this natural anxiety [over reform] to create a problem for us," said an adviser to Chubais, Leonid Gozman. "The only thing we can do is be as open as we can."
The issue inevitably will reach Putin, who has been characteristically hard to read. Browder assumes Putin ultimately will order Chubais to reverse course. "Putin is clearly acting in the interest of the state. He's not acting on behalf of the oligarchs," Browder said. "He sometimes lets these things drag out longer than he should. But at the end of the day he does the right thing."
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RESERVES
U.S. Issues an Alert to 27,000 Guard and Reserve Troops
December 14, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/politics/14RESE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - In another sign of preparations for a possible war against Iraq, the Defense Department today ordered the Army and Navy to alert 27,000 National Guard and Reserve troops to prepare for duty, probably in the Persian Gulf region, military officials said.
The alert order is a preliminary but essential step before any reservists are formally summoned to active duty. Pentagon officials say that if Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approves an official mobilization order, he would probably not do so before Jan. 1.
Over the next several days, the Army and Navy will identify and alert specific units to ready their members' paperwork and inoculations.
About 1,000 naval reservists, including stevedores, port handlers, coastal patrol crews and medical personnel, would be notified, said a senior Navy official. Army reserve personnel would include military police, engineers and logistics specialists, Army officials said.
"This tells certain units to go through and make sure their housekeeping is in order," said Maj. Ben Owens, a Pentagon spokesman.
Reserve units typically require about 30 days to prepare their paperwork and muster, but Pentagon officials have been working hard to compress that time to give President Bush and his senior military advisers more flexibility.
As a result, many reserve units have gotten their affairs in order without any formal notification, giving them a head start on any official call-up.
The size and timing of any large-scale call-up for a war with Iraq depends heavily on the Iraqi response to the United Nations resolution requiring Baghdad to disarm, and the pace of international weapons inspections.
Today's alert order is likely to be just the first of many in the weeks to come, officials said.
But if Mr. Bush orders an attack against Iraq, the Pentagon has plans to summon to active duty as many as 265,000 members of the National Guard and Reserve. No decisions have been made on these mobilizations, and Mr. Rumsfeld has been pressing reserve officials to justify every call-up.
If mobilized, the reservists alerted as a result of today's order from the military's Joint Staff would be likely to deploy to the Persian Gulf region to help unload heavy equipment that continues to flow steadily into the area, military officials said.
But under the Pentagon's plan, tens of thousands of National Guard and Reserve troops would remain here in the United States, filling in for personnel who deploy to Europe or the Middle East, or providing security at military bases, power plants and oil refineries in this country.
Indeed, some 8,000 to 10,000 Army National Guard and Reserve members are expected to be mobilized in the next several days, largely to help fill a shortage of Air Force security personnel at Air Force bases in the United States.
In addition to Army National Guard and Reserve force, Navy and Coast Guard Reserves would patrol the nation's coastlines. Flying more combat patrols over American cities would require a sizable mobilization of Air National Guard pilots and crews.
-------- propaganda wars
Can War Reporters Be Witnesses, Too?
December 14, 2002
New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/arts/14HAGU.html
THE HAGUE - A wall of bulletproof glass divides observers from participants in the courtrooms of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The news media section is on the outside looking in. But some journalists who covered the Balkan wars have willingly crossed over to take the stand, saying they have a moral duty to bear witness in the first war crimes trials since Nuremberg.
Others have agonized and declined to testify. Citing professional principles like impartiality and the watchdog role of the news media, they have said participation would jeopardize the very news gathering that brought these crimes to light.
Suddenly this year, for the first time, tribunal prosecutors would not take no for an answer. In June, at their insistence, the court tried to compel the testimony of Jonathan Randal, a retired correspondent for The Washington Post who had covered the Balkan war. He appealed the ruling, backed by 34 news organizations, including The New York Times, and on Dec. 11, the tribunal's appeals court set aside the subpoena. This was the first time a modern war-crimes court defined and upheld limited legal protection for war correspondents, stating that compelling their testimony could endanger their lives and the freedom of the press.
The case reveals just how much traditional concepts of the war correspondent have changed. A new convergence between wars of terror and demands for justice without borders has caught veteran reporters without clear rules. And the debate, which is likely to continue and expand in the shadow of the new International Criminal Court, exposes a trans-Atlantic divide over their responsibilities.
"Reporters gave the tribunals their road map and more," said Roy W. Gutman, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for path-breaking coverage from Bosnia for Newsday and later resisted pressure to testify. He called the Randal decision "a vindication" for journalists who took that position, and urged the permanent international court, which still has no rules on reporters' testimony, to adopt it.
What tribunal investigators have typically sought from reporters is not eyewitness accounts of atrocities, which few would deny them, but legal links in a chain of evidence to prove that accused officials had what prosecutors call "command and control responsibility" for what happened on the killing fields. What is at stake is the glue of news reporting: a border pass, a tour of a camp, an interview.
The Hague tribunals, cre