Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Leaked report says German and US firms supplied arms to Saddam
Speaker receives Japanese delegation
India Taking Steps Against Nuclear Attacks
UN probes Iraqi army missile unit as inspections enter fourth week
Nuke Chief Wants More Iraqi Inspections
Khatami says Iran has no plans to make nuclear arms
A Movement Builds in Iran
Kremlin divided on how to disarm Pyongyang
S. Korean Election Shake Up Tips Scales Toward Conservative
WHY LEE HOI CHANG MAY WIN
Bush vows to build missile defenses
U.S. Ignores Failure Data at Outset of Flights
Opposition Unlikely for Missile Defense
Russia Warns Against U.S. Missile Defense Plan
Russia Is Marching Haltingly Toward Military Reform
Al Qaeda said to revive terror camps
Support for Chernobyl
Colleges Turn Nuke Bunker Into Library
Opposition Unlikely for Missile Defense
Bush Is Expected to Say Iraq Failed to Meet U.N. Terms
MILITARY
Group Says U.S. Broke Law in Use Of Cluster Bombs in Afghanistan
Filmmaker says U.S. soldiers watched massacre of Taliban
Congo, Rebels Reach Accord
Arms report names Western suppliers
Leaked report says German and US firms supplied arms to Saddam
illegally armed Iraq
Britain: Iraq Arms Claim a 'Falsehood'
Iraq deployment under way as MoD charters troop ships for Gulf
Source: UK Orders First Ship to Move Armor to Gulf
Russia Move Killed Deal, Iraqi Says
U.S. Army to Train 1,000 Iraqi Exiles
U.S. Jets Hit Radar in Iraqi No-Fly Zone
Israel Has 5, 000 Palestinians in Custody
Clearing the Way for EU-NATO Cooperation
Russian Soldiers, Officers, Policemen Killed in Chechnya
U.S. Military Set To Start War Games
Projection on Fall Of Hussein Disputed
Pentagon delivers software to assess data on terrorists
Most Favor Nuclear Option Against Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Artist held after 'boxes of fear' spread chaos
U.S. investigates prisoner deaths at Afghan base
The Case for the International Criminal Court
Presidential Mercy
ENERGY AND OTHER
Australia puts off imposing cap on ethanol in fuel
EU Parliament OKs New Recycling Laws
EPA targets sludge in Potomac
Mayors' study: Hunger, homelessness up
ACTIVISTS
China proposes human rights visit
Activists in Egypt Say Iraq War Spells Death, Chaos
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- business
Leaked report says German and US firms supplied arms to Saddam
Baghdad's uncensored report to UN names Western companies alleged to have developed its weapons of mass destruction
Independent Digital (UK)
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
18 December 2002 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=362566
Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said yesterday.
Berlin's left-wing Die Tageszeitung newspaper said it had seen a copy of the original Iraqi dossier which was vetted for sensitive information by US officials before being handed to the five permanent Security Council members two weeks ago. An edited version was passed to the remaining 10 members of the Security Council last night.
British officials said the list of companies appeared to be accurate. Eighty German firms and 24 US companies are reported to have supplied Iraq with equipment and know-how for its weapons programmes from 1975 onwards and in some cases support for Baghdad's conventional arms programme had continued until last year.
It is not known who leaked the report, but it could have come from Iraq. Baghdad is keen to embarrass the US and its allies by showing the close involvement of US, German, British and French firms in helping Iraq develop its weapons of mass destruction when the country was a bulwark against the much feared spread of Iranian revolutionary fervour to the Arab world. The list contained the names of long-established German firms such as Siemens as well as US multi-nationals. With government approval, Siemens exported machines used to eliminate kidney stones which have a "dual use" high precision switch used to detonate nuclear bombs. Ten French companies were also named along with a number of Swiss and Chinese firms. The newspaper said a number of British companies were cited, but did not name them.
"From about 1975 onwards, these companies are shown to have supplied entire complexes, building elements, basic materials and technical know-how for Saddam Hussein's programme to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction," the newspaper said. "They also supplied rockets and complete conventional weapons systems," it added.
The five permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China - have repeatedly opposed revealing the extent of foreign companies' involvement, although a mass of relevant information was collected by UN weapons inspectors who visited the country between 1991 and 1998. The UN claims that publishing the extent of the companies' involvement in Iraq would jeopardise necessary co-operation with such firms.
German involvement outstripped that of all the other countries put together, the paper said. During the period to 1991, the German authoritiespermitted weapons co-operation with Iraq and in some cases "actively encouraged" it, according to the newspaper which cited German assistance allegedly given to Iraq for the development of poison gas used in the 1988 massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq. It said that after the massacre America reduced its military co-operation with Iraq but German firms continued their activities until the Gulf War.
Die Tageszeitung quoted sources close to the US Vice President, Dick Cheney, as saying the Bush administration was hoping to prove a German company was continuing to co-operate with the Iraqi regime over the supply of equipment allegedly useful in the construction of weapons of mass destruction.
American weapons experts have recently voiced concern that the German Government has permitted Siemens to sell Baghdad at least eight sophisticated medical machines which contain devices that are vital for nuclear weapons. The machines, known as "lithotripters", use ultrasound to destroy kidney stones in patients. However, each machine contains an electronic switch that can be used as a detonator in an atomic bomb, according to US experts. Iraq was reported to have requested an extra 120 switches as "spare parts" during the initial transaction.
The delivery of the machines was approved by the European Commission and the UN because sanctions against Iraq do not apply to medical equipment. Siemens and the German Government have insisted that the machines, which are being used in northern Iraq under a World Health Organisation programme, cannot be used to make nuclear weapons.
-------- depleted uranium
Speaker receives Japanese delegation
Baghdad, Dec 18, 2002,
INA (Iraq Daily)
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/10018/home2.htm
Dr. Sadoun Hammadi the Speaker of the National Assembly has received Japanese Parliamentary delegation and Group of Human Rights and Peace Declaration headed by Mrs. Tomako.
During the meeting, Dr. Sadoun Hammadi viewed inspection teams' actions during the past eight years, in which they did not find any evidence of Iraq's possession of mass destruction weapons.
He added " that the Head of the National Association in the National Institute in Washington had declared that the US bombed Iraq with bombs as strength as seven times of that of Hiroshima's bomb, pointing out that the US air forces used940 , 000of depleted uranium against Iraq.
He added that the US aims to control Iraq and the whole world oil to impose its hegemony on Europe and none oil production states.
The Speaker of the Parliament went on saying that the US utilized an aggressive policy towards the independent states to subdue them to its suspicious will.
Dr. Sadoun confirmed that Iraqi people are ready to defend its land, security and sovereignty in case US launched any aggression on Iraq.
Afterwards means of developing relations between Iraq and Japan were discussed.
The Japanese delegation expressed desire to enhance bilateral ties in different fields.
The meeting were attended by both Deputy- Speaker Mr. Hammid Rasheed and Mr. Ajeel Jalal Ismael and Dr. Ghlib Al-Jasim the secretary general of the Assembly.
-------- india / pakistan
India Taking Steps Against Nuclear Attacks
December 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-india.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India, which came close to war with nuclear-armed Pakistan this year, said Wednesday it was taking steps to defend itself from a nuclear and biological attack.
Both India and Pakistan carried out underground nuclear explosions in May 1998 and have since been testing missiles capable of delivering such weapons.
``The government has initiated necessary steps to ensure protection from nuclear and bio-attack,'' Defense Minister George Fernandes told a questioner in parliament. But he declined to elaborate, saying it would not be in the national interest.
Indian officials have said the two sides came close to war soon after an attack on parliament in New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas last December, and again in June after an Indian army camp was attacked in disputed Kashmir.
Pakistan condemned both attacks and denied involvement.
``The government continues to closely monitor all developments related to Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs,'' Fernandes said in a written answer to another question.
The nuclear weapons program in both nations is shrouded in secrecy, and very little is known about command-and-control systems on either side.
Experts say the risk of miscalculation or an accident remains high because of the lack of any joint nuclear safety measures.
The two countries mobilized close to a million men on their border after the attack on parliament, and although they have since started pulling back troops, tensions remain high.
Fernandes said Islamabad had re-opened training camps for Muslim guerrillas fighting Indian rule in Kashmir and was trying to push them across the military control line dividing the disputed Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.
Islamabad has said infiltration of guerrillas from its soil into Indian Kashmir had stopped after a pledge given by President Pervez Musharraf, except for some rogue elements.
-------- inspections
UN probes Iraqi army missile unit as inspections enter fourth week
12/18/02
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021218/1/35unn.html
UN arms expert in Iraq investigated for the first time an army missile unit as their inspections moved into a fourth week, an Iraqi official said.
Meanwhile, chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview with an Egyptian daily that no proof has emerged yet that Iraq worked on a nuclear programme since the previous inspection regime ended in 1998.
A ballistics team of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) visited "one of the military units specialised in launching missiles" in Balad, some 70 kilometers (42 miles) northwest of Baghdad, the Iraqi official said.
He reported no untoward incident.
The daily statement issued by UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on inspections did not confirm the visit.
It said one ballistics team "visited the site of the former Taji Project 144" of long-range missile and warhead production, "about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Baghdad."
UNMOVIC and IAEA monitors have already inspected military sites, missile testing ranges and production facilities, but it was the first time they probed a military missile unit.
UN Security Council Resolution 687, which defined the terms of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire, prohibits Iraq from acquiring or developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as long-range missiles.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired several improved Soviet-supplied Scud missiles on Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Baghdad says all its long-range Scuds and locally-made Al-Hussein missiles were destroyed in 1991, either unilaterally or under the supervision of the previous UN body tasked with disarmament, the Special Commission (UNSCOM).
But UNSCOM had said Iraq could not account for the destruction of two Scuds and seven Al-Husseins.
According to the UN inspectors' statement, nine teams probed eight sites Wednesday, in and around Baghdad and in northern Iraq, checking military, industrial and academic facilities.
One UNMOVIC biological team and another from the IAEA were working in the region of Mosul 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad, after arriving there Tuesday.
The UNMOVIC team in Mosul inspected on Tuesday a phamaceutical company and a yeast factory the next day before winding up its visit to the northern region.
The UN statement did not specify a visit to the biology department of Mosul University, reported earlier by an Iraqi official.
Iraq admitted in 1995, after four years of denials, that it had weaponised germ warfare agents. According to UNSCOM, 30 tonnes of agents remain unaccounted for.
The IAEA team was working near the Saddam Dam on the Tigris river, near Mosul, probably sampling water, according to the Iraqi official. The UN report did not disclose its activity.
Other inspections covered a military depot and engineering and painting factories.
UN spokesman Tuesday that some 100 inspections had been carried out at around 80 sites since UN inspections resumed on November 27, after a four-year absence.
He explained that some sites were huge compounds containing several factories and their search required several inspections.
ElBaradei, the IAEA director general, told the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram, there is "no proof concerning the development of a nuclear programme in Iraq since 1998."
But he said that inspections were still in a preliminary stage, and the IAEA was expecting information on Iraq's nuclear programme from other countries.
The inspectors plan to use helicopters to speed up their searches.
Ueki said a Bell 212 helicopter was "almost ready" for use, the first in a planned flotilla of eight aircraft including five Bell 212s and three Russian-made Mi-8s to be supplied at the end of the month.
There are currently 105 inspectors operating in Iraq -- 19 from the IAEA and 86 from UNMOVIC.
--------
Nuke Chief Wants More Iraqi Inspections
December 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iraq.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The United Nations' nuclear chief will tell the Security Council that further inspections are needed to verify Saddam Hussein's claims that he has no weapons of mass destruction, U.N. officials said Wednesday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency leading the hunt for nuclear weaponry in Iraq, will make a case for more inspections when he briefs the council at U.N. headquarters in New York on Thursday, an IAEA official told The Associated Press.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ``there's nothing new in what we've seen'' of the nuclear portion of the declaration that Baghdad submitted to the United Nations earlier this month. ``It's largely what we've seen before.''
``That's not a value judgment on the document,'' the official said. ``It's just saying we've got to get out there and verify it.''
ElBaradei will carry that message to the Security Council, and will resist pressure to declare that Iraq has violated Resolution 1441, which required it to make a full and complete disclosure of its weapons programs, the official said.
ElBaradei will brief the council along with Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector whose U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission is in charge of searching for biological and chemical weapons and long-range missiles in Iraq.
Asked whether ElBaradei would advise the council to find Iraq in material breach, the official said: ``No, not at all. Iraq has given us a lot of information. He will say the key outstanding issue is that they claim to have only peaceful uses for what they've got -- but that we need to verify that.''
Blix's spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said: ``We will report objectively to the Security Council, but it's up to them to decide what constitutes a material breach, not to us.''
The Security Council resolution, adopted Nov. 8, states that false statements or omissions in Iraq's declaration and Saddam's failure to cooperate with inspections will constitute a new ``material breach'' that will be reported to the council for assessment.
The United States initially wanted any false statement or omission to be declared a ``material breach,'' but France and Russia insisted that this be coupled with an Iraqi failure to cooperate on the ground -- and they won this point in the final resolution.
Although Iraq steadfastly denies that it has weapons of mass destruction, the United States and Britain contend it does and have called the Iraqi declaration incomplete.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Wednesday called the 12,000-page dossier an ``obvious falsehood.'' White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said President Bush found ``omissions'' and ``problems'' in the declaration.
ElBaradei and Blix have urged any country with information about Iraqi weapons programs to give it to inspectors to check out.
ElBaradei will stick to his contention that only a comprehensive inspection regime -- even if it takes a year as the IAEA has said -- will show whether Saddam is telling the truth.
``The Iraqis claim they've done nothing illegal. We've just got to find out if that's the case,'' the IAEA official told AP.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the agency would resist pressure from the Bush administration to rush to judgment on whether Iraq has an active nuclear program. The agency has been analyzing 2,400 pages from the declaration that deal with nuclear issues.
``If we said after a month, `Yup, they're clear of nuclear weapons,' no one in his right mind would believe us,'' Gwozdecky said. ``We understand the political pressure to move quickly, but we will not compromise the technical quality of our inspections.''
Gwozdecky said ElBaradei was committed to taking time to let science determine the nature of Iraq's weapons programs.
``Isn't it worth a year to get a peaceful solution to this problem?'' he asked.
``It's like a criminal murder trial. The defense has said, `My client is innocent. I intend to prove it.' Then you spend weeks and months proving it. It takes time to do so. Would you expect any jury to convict based on just one month of investigation?''
By the end of the 1991 Gulf War, inspectors discovered the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.
Inspectors seized the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents.
On the Net: IAEA, www.iaea.org/worldatom
-------- iran
Khatami says Iran has no plans to make nuclear arms
Reuters
Wednesday December 18
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-138043.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mohammad Khatami on Wednesday blasted as baseless U.S. accusations that Iran was building two nuclear sites of a type that could be used for developing nuclear weapons, IRNA news agency reported.
He was responding to remarks by U.S. officials last week alleging that two nuclear sites in central Iran were of a type that could be used for manufacturing nuclear warheads.
Iran, labelled by Washington as part of an "axis of evil" bent on developing weapons of mass destruction, denied the accusation and said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been told about the plants and was free to inspect them.
"America's claim is totally baseless. Our aim is not building atomic weapons," the official agency quoted Khatami as saying.
A signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Iran said last week it was determined to meet its booming electricity demand with nuclear power despite U.S. concerns the technology could be used for military purposes.
Iran's first nuclear power plant, being built with Russian help near the southwestern port city Bushehr, is due to come on stream at the end of next year or early 2004, despite heavy U.S. lobbying of Moscow to block construction.
Iran is studying feasibility of building a second 1,000 MW nuclear plant, IRNA said.
The Vienna-based IAEA said earlier that it was aware of Iran's nuclear power programme and planned to visit the country in February to inspect all facilities currently under construction.
Khatami said Iran's nuclear activities had always been carried out under the IAEA's supervision.
The United States and Iran have been enemies since radical students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and held 52 hostages for 444 days.
In Vienna on Wednesday, the IAEA said it would send a team to Iran on February 25 to take a first look at the two sites.
It said its director general and a team of technical experts would visit the sites to develop a monitoring programme.
"This is an initial visit as we try to start a process of visits," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
----
A Movement Builds in Iran
By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4409-2002Dec17?language=printer
Gholam Reza Mohajery Nejad, 30, an Iranian student leader who has been jailed and tortured along with other organizers of a growing secularist movement that is demanding a referendum on religious rule, asserted in an interview Monday that the Islamic republic is losing popular support. He predicted that a war against Iraq would fuel unrest in Iran.
Nejad, who was granted U.S. political asylum after 18 months in Los Angeles, said he was in touch with students at home by e-mail, cell phone and the Internet to keep track of the demonstrations now taking place at the rate of one a week.
"I chose to come out and bring the voice of students calling for democracy, freedom of speech, equality and human rights to the outside world," he said. He posts recent arrests and examples of violations of activists' rights on a Web site, along with announcements of organized protests so Iranians can join them and the world can follow what happens.
He said members of Islamic reform groups, who believe in a moderate religious regime that does not concentrate too much power in the hands of the clergy, are beginning to defect to the more secular student movement. He estimated the number in the thousands.
Nejad said workers, women, teachers, young people and students are joining hands after realizing that the system of unquestioned clerical leadership is "not reformable." He asserted that the movement was stronger than the initial student movement in Yugoslavia, which helped result in the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. "We don't believe in violence, but we believe we have more popular support," he said. "Things are going so fast. No one can predict what may happen. The splits within hard-liners and reformists within the ruling establishment are growing."
Reformist clerics are concerned about losing followers and some are saying that President Mohammad Khatami's time is over, he added. Others, he said, believe it is time to establish ties with the United States, because this is what young people want.
Abbas Abdi, one of the organizers of the U.S. Embassy takeover at the start of the Iranian revolution in 1979, was jailed several weeks ago because he suggested that ties with Washington are now necessary.
-------- korea
Kremlin divided on how to disarm Pyongyang
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021218-560091.htm
Major policy divisions in the Russian government on how to deal with North Korea are complicating Washington's efforts to form a united international front that would force Pyongyang to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Although Moscow supports the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, in the last couple of days Russian officials have been critical of the Bush administration's limited approach of putting pressure on Kim Jong-il's reclusive regime.
"There is a huge tug of war within the Russian government," one U.S. official said. "There are many people whose careers depend on integrating North Korea," while Washington's policy is one of isolation and containment.
"We are still at the initial stages of working with the Russians on this, and I'm fairly optimistic we'll be able to bring them on board," the official said.
Russia, along with China, is seen as particularly important in resolving the North Korean issue because of its influence on Pyongyang and President Bush's close relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
During Mr. Putin's visit to Beijing two weeks ago, he and Chinese President Jiang Zemin issued a joint statement urging the North to dismantle the uranium-enrichment program it admitted in early October to having developed secretly.
But last week, Pyongyang said that it would "immediately" reopen its five-megawatt nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, which it shut down eight years ago, and would resume construction of two new reactors.
The Bush administration called the decision "regrettable" and said it would work with its allies and other countries in the region to "put pressure" on North Korea.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Monday "the international community, including Russia, China and the European Union, is united in calling for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula."
But only a few hours earlier, Moscow refused to put pressure on North Korea and said it "will not do so in the future."
"History has shown that pressure on North Korea has pitiful results, rather than solving a problem," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told the Interfax news agency. "We are not going to unite with anyone to pressure North Korea. This is absolutely ruled out."
Yesterday, Mr. Losyukov was quoted by the same news agency as saying that Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov would announce new initiatives to ease the tensions on the peninsula during his visit to Japan this week.
"Russia has an approximate list of proposals," he said. "We are prepared to make such steps and we have instruments no other country has - our rather strong contacts with the North Korean leadership."
Even though Mr. Losyukov said that Moscow would not be a mediator between North Korea and the United States, he did speak of Russia as a neutral party in the dispute.
"It's not mediation," he said. "We wouldn't like to cruise between the parties with ultimatums and ask them who blames whom for what. Our job is to create an atmosphere in which these problems could be settled and, using the instruments available to us, to help the parties in the dispute settle mutual claims and concerns."
A senior State Department official brushed aside Mr. Losyukov's remarks, pointing to Moscow's statements calling on North Korea to end its nuclear-weapons program.
"We'll ignore the statements that seem out of line with what Russia has consistently said," the official told reporters.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said the United States is working "in concert" with Japan, South Korea, Russia and China "to make certain that we can resolve the situation in North Korea peacefully and diplomatically."
Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on reports that China supplied North Korea with a chemical used in producing nuclear-weapons fuel.
He said he could not make a judgment on whether China is helping North Korea's nuclear program "without having to base it on intelligence sources," which he could not do.
Intelligence officials told The Washington Times that a Chinese company in Dalian sent 20 tons of tributyl phosphate to North Korea earlier this month. The chemical is believed to be for North Korea's program to turn spent reactor fuel into weapons-grade material.
----
S. Korean Election Shake Up Tips Scales Toward Conservative
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6658-2002Dec18?language=printer
SEOUL, Dec. 18 -- The election-eve collapse tonight of a political marriage is seen likely to tip Thursday's dead-heat South Korean presidential race to a hawkish conservative who has vowed to end South Korea's "sunshine policy" of friendship toward North Korea.
The 11th hour political drama left Roh Moo Hyun, who reportedly had a slight edge in the polls, scrambling to try to salvage his candidacy after his remarks tonight that South Korea might be neutral if the United States fought North Korea.
Roh's remarks, suggesting abandonment of South Korea's long military alliance with and dependence on the United States, prompted the pullout of his official political partner, Chung Mong Joon.
"We retract our support," a spokeswoman for Chung said in a statement late tonight. Roh's remarks were a "betrayal" of the agreed policy between the two former rivals, whose political union earlier this month had sharply boosted Roh's candidacy.
Until the bombshell announcement, Thursday's election was seen as a close test between Roh, a former activist critical of the dominant U.S. influence here, and Lee Hoi Chang, a conservative who favors keeping American troops in South Korea and supports Washington's hard line toward Pyongyang.
The election is billed as one in which voters will decide whether to set their country on a more independent course from the United States. The victor will replace Kim Dae Jung, the Nobel-winning president, whose term expires in February. Under South Korea's single five-year presidential term, Kim cannot run again.
Much of the campaign debate has centered on Roh's appeal for more national pride and a policy that is independent of the United States. Although Roh denied he wants to end the half-century alliance with Washington, which keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea, he said at a rally Wednesday afternoon "we should proudly say we will not side with North Korea or the United States."
He amplified that at another rally last evening, suggesting that in the event of a fight between North Korea and the United States, South Korea might attempt to moderate.
Even as Roh reportedly raced to Chung's house at midnight to try to restore the alliance, aides to Lee were billing the development as a victory-clincher for their candidate.
"This will win the election for us," said Park Won Hong, a Grand National Party assemblyman and adviser to Lee.
The election campaign already had been buffeted by unexpected events. A U.S. military court's acquittal of two soldiers involved in a tragic highway accident here fueled a gathering resentment toward U.S. power and privilege here, boosting the popularity of Roh.
But the revelation that neighboring North Korea is attempting to develop nuclear weapons served to underscore the importance of the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, adding to support for conservative Lee.
Both candidates have suggested the other is dangerous.
"They say if I become president, there will be a war," said the conservative Lee, to cheering supporters at a rally here Wednesday night. "Something like that would happen only if North Korea looks down at the South Korean president. If I'm elected, that would not happen."
"We almost went to the brink of war in 1993 with North Korea, and at the time we didn't even know it," Roh said of the U.S. plans to bomb North Korea's nuclear plants. Under his opponent, Roh said, the United States will continue to take South Korea's acquiescence for granted.
"We don't want to become spectators again," he said. "In the old days, we were not able to solve our problems ourselves. Now it is different. We should say with confidence what we want and what we demand."
Questioning the U.S.-South Korea alliance would have been considered traitorous little more than a decade ago under Seoul's military dictators, and at least far-fringe radical for most of the years since. But Roh's message is now mainstream enough that both parties said this week he was slightly ahead in the popularity polls.
And both sides agree this election presents voters with a sharp philosophical choice that has cleaved South Korea's population by both ideology and age.
"Never before in Korean election history has the older generation come out so publicly to call to the younger generation to understand the need for this country not to lose what we gained in the Korean War," said the chairman of Lee's Grand National Party, Suh Chung Won, 59, in an interview here. "The older generation, like me, is desperate to let the young generation know this is a dangerous road."
Roh, 56, a self-taught lawyer from a poor family who fancies comparisons of himself with Abraham Lincoln, earned public recognition in the street-tough politics of labor activists and anti-establishment civic groups. He once called for removal of U.S. troops -- but now says that was rash.
"Roh wants South Korea to have more pride," said Lee Hae Chan, an assemblyman and chief strategist for Roh. "The Cold War is over. We need a new partnership" with the United States.
And Roh balked at the Bush policy of trying to isolate North Korea, rather than negotiating, to force it to abandon its nuclear development program. Instead, he favors a continuation of Kim's "sunshine policy" of friendly engagement toward the north.
"In no circumstances will we cut our dialogue with North Korea," he said on the campaign trail.
Lee, 67, by contrast, declares that "the sunshine policy is a failure" and vows to hew closely to the Bush administration's tough line against North Korea to try to force it to give up its nuclear uranium enrichment program.
Lee won his political esteem with a reputation for unusual honesty and probity in a political system rife with chicanery and envelopes stuffed with cash. Despite that contrast, he is viewed as one of the last of the old guard of war-era politicians.
Since the mid-1990s, he has been leader of a party that inherited South Korea's feeling of indebtedness and dependence on the United States. Lee and his party see no choice but to rely on U.S. protection from neighboring North Korea and to follow its political lead in dealing with the recalcitrant regime. The alternative, they say, is to shoulder a huge burden for South Korea's own defense.
"It's not a question of being 'pro' or 'anti' the United States," Lee said at a press conference Wednesday. "It's a matter of necessity for South Korea's prosperity. Roh does not recognize that."
But Lee, too, has felt the political winds and has tried to lure undecided voters by edging toward sharper criticism of the agreement under which U.S. troops are stationed here.
Those swing voters are thought to be mostly in their forties. Analysts say they hold the key to the election--and to whether a new generation of political leaders replaces the "three Kims" who have dominated South Korean politics for decades -- Kim Dae Jung, Kim Young Sam and Kim Jong Pil.
Both main candidates are trying to woo those and other youthful voters. Lee, a stiff former Supreme Court judge, is desperately trying to remake his image as hip and groovy, complete with a set of cartoon political caricatures, including one that incongruously portrays him as a "cyber jockey" in baggy jeans and sneakers. The image tries to raid Roh's most potent weapon -- the Internet, where on-line chat rooms have replaced mass rallies for his core supporters in their twenties and thirties.
Four other candidates are in the race. One, socialist Kwon Young Ghil, may well prove pivotal. He could cut into Roh's left-leaning support group enough to tip a close election in Lee's favor, according to analyst Hahm Sung Deuk, of Korean University.
"Kwon is very popular among the young," Hahm said. "He's the Ralph Nader of Florida" whose third-party candidacy helped lose the state and the 2000 presidential election for Al Gore.
Special correspondent Joohee Cho contributed to this story.
----
WHY LEE HOI CHANG MAY WIN
Veteran plays on N. Korea nuclear fears
Strait Times,
December 18, 2002
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,4386,161443,00.html
SEOUL - A 'North wind' which has ruffled South Korea's presidential election may blow in favour of conservative candidate Lee Hoi Chang.
The term is used to describe security fears concerning North Korea.
The North has emerged as a hot topic after Pyongyang's announcement last week that it was reviving its mothballed nuclear programme.
Polls have shown that most South Koreans regard the nuclear threat from the North as serious.
Their fear, pollsters said, would work to the advantage of Mr Lee, who advocates a hardline policy against the communist state.
Mr Lee, of the Grand National Party (GNP), is a harsh critic of incumbent President Kim Dae Jung's 'sunshine' policy of engaging the North.
Capitalising on the tense mood, he has wasted no time in turning fears over North Korea into votes.
The 67-year-old politician has presented himself to the country's 35 million voters as the only trustworthy choice, a man who would stand up to nuclear brinkmanship from Pyongyang.
'Voters, it is up to you to choose between one who is able to protect your life and security from the nuclear crisis and the other who is not,' said the former judge and one-time prime minister.
Mr Lee, narrowing the gap with Mr Roh Moo Hyun in the run-up to the poll, has accused his reformist rival of faithfully toeing Pyongyang's line on the crisis over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons programme.
'Roh's ideas about the nuclear issue are exactly the same as those of North Korea,' he said.
'The North described me as a warmonger and Roh parroted the allegation the following day.'
The GNP has even turned its attention to Mr Roh's late father-in-law, accusing him of having been a staunch leftist convicted of helping the North during the 1950-53 Korean War.
Mr Roh's controversial proposal to relocate the nation's administrative capital from Seoul to the central Chungcheong region may also work to Mr Lee's advantage.
Polls show most respondents are opposed to the move, which Mr Lee said would cause a plunge in Seoul real-estate prices.--AFP, Korea Herald/Asia News Network
IF HE WINS...
# A tougher approach towards North Korea
Mr Lee has blasted President Kim Dae Jung's 'sunshine' policy as a 'failed policy of appeasement'.
He says Mr Kim has made too many concessions and received too little in return from North Korea.
He wants to halt South Korea's economic aid and business exchanges with North Korea until Pyongyang dismantles its suspected nuclear programme.
# Status quo regarding military alliance with US
Known for his pro-American stance, Mr Lee says he supports peace and stability in the region.
He has been a regular visitor to the US and was welcomed earlier this year in Washington by Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Although he has joined the calls for a revision to a bilateral agreement governing legal jurisdiction over the 37,000 American troops based in South Korea, analysts do not expect major changes to the agreement if he wins.
# Return to the days of the chaebols
Mr Lee advocates a lesser state role in business activities and wants to remove government regulations that fetter large industrial groups.
He favours investment by conglomerates in other businesses and opposes plans to strengthen small shareholders' say in management.
He also wants to privatise government-invested corporations.
-------- missile defense
Bush vows to build missile defenses
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021218-28696776.htm
President Bush yesterday said the United States will build a defense system against ballistic missiles, citing the growing threat of catastrophic attack by terrorists and emerging nuclear-missile states.
"I have directed the secretary of defense to proceed with fielding an initial set of missile-defense capabilities," Mr. Bush said in a statement.
A basic missile-defense system will be operating by 2004 and by 2005 will include up to 20 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and Southern California to thwart attacks by intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is the first time since the 1970s that the United States will have deployed a system designed to shoot down incoming missiles.
Additionally, up to 20 sea-based missile interceptors will be deployed on three Aegis-equipped Navy ships, along with 15 radar ships and long-range radar in the United States, Greenland and Britain. The system also will use 346 Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems to defend against short-range missiles.
Future missile defenses will include the Air Force's airborne laser, a high-powered device deployed aboard a Boeing 747, and the Army's Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, a ground-based defense against medium-range missiles.
"The deployment of missile defenses is an essential element of our broader efforts to transform our defense and deterrence policies and capabilities to meet the new threats we face," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush said the September 11 attacks "underscored that our nation faces unprecedented threats in a world that has changed greatly since the Cold War" and that "defending the American people against these new threats is my highest priority."
The system is a major strategic shift from the balance-of-power approach used during the Cold War, which relied on offensive missiles to deter a Russian nuclear strike. The new defense concept was backed by President Reagan, who first announced the Strategic Defense Initiative research program in 1983.
The decision comes a year after the president announced the United States' withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The move allowed more tests and ended the restrictions on developing missile defenses.
The deployment plan calls for transforming the missile-defense testing system of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) into an operational system, and then gradually improving it, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the agency's director, told reporters yesterday.
Gen. Kadish said the Pentagon spent $8 billion for all missile-defense programs this year and that to deploy the system will cost about $19 billion during the next two years.
Critics question whether Mr. Bush's goal is feasible and whether the threat of attack is sufficient to justify the expense.
David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Associated Press the president's plan was unproven and illusory. He said a missile-defense system built in the 1970s was deemed inefficient and shut down in a matter of weeks.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he is not worried about deploying a system that may not be fully developed and that it will be "layered" so interceptors can hit missiles in the early, middle and late stages of flight.
"I think the way to think about the missile-defense program is that it will be an evolutionary program. It will evolve over a period of time," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Four of the last five tests of the ICBM-interceptor missile were successful. A Dec. 11 test failed when the interceptor did not separate from its booster.
Mr. Rumsfeld also said a limited system is "better than nothing," a recognition that the United States is defenseless against any missile attack, from either ballistic or ground-hugging cruise missiles. He said that since the early 1990s the Pentagon has been worried about the growing threat of missile attack from North Korea, which tested a long-range missile in 1998.
The deployment plan calls for first erecting six anti-missile interceptors at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and four interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base, located on the Pacific Coast north of Santa Barbara, Calif.
By 2005, 10 more long-range interceptors will be added to the Alaska base.
Additionally, three Aegis-equipped warships, either destroyers or cruisers, will be deployed with the Navy's SM-3 missile, which will be capable of shooting down medium-range missiles.
The entire system will be linked with advanced communications networks, radar and other sensors to track and target missiles.
Large radar stations in Shemya, Alaska; Fylingdales, Britain; and Thule, Greenland, will be upgraded for the system, and 15 Aegis ships will be upgraded to serve as missile-defense radars and deployed primarily throughout the Pacific.
"The Navy and MDA strategy for deploying SM-3 as soon as possible is exactly the evolutionary strategy advocated by Secretary Rumsfeld," said John J. Young, the assistant Navy secretary for acquisition who worked on the sea-based portion of the deployment scheme.
The use of Aegis ships will shorten the time it takes to deploy the limited system, Mr. Young said.
The ships eventually could be converted into a major sea-based anti-missile system with the addition of SM-3 missiles on the radar ships.
The president noted that the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which formally began six months ago, "has made it possible to develop and test the full range of missile-defense technologies and to deploy defenses capable of protecting our territory and our cities."
The treaty had prohibited deployment of defenses that protected the territory of the United States and the Soviet Union from missile attack, as part of an offensive missile strategy known as mutual assured destruction.
J.D. Crouch, assistant defense secretary for international security, told reporters the deployment decision was based on the fact that "threats are less predictable."
"Surprise is likely, and deterrence is less reliable," he said. "We think this requires a balance of offensive and defensive capabilities. We have some offensive capability; now we're just beginning to get some defensive capability."
--------
MISSILE SHIELD
U.S. Ignores Failure Data at Outset of Flights
December 18, 2002
New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/18/international/18SHIE.html
A week ago over the Pacific, in the latest $100 million test of the nation's prototype antimissile system, an interceptor warhead failed to separate from its booster rocket. It missed its intended target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere, while the mock enemy warhead it was meant to destroy zoomed along unscathed.
A resounding failure?
Not according to the Pentagon.
In its new assessment process, the tests that really count are those in which the warhead makes it past the booster-rocket stage to what Pentagon experts call "the endgame": trying to find, home in on, and hit a mock warhead.
The new logic ignores tests that fail in the earlier, less challenging stages - like the one on Dec. 11, the third in eight tests of the long-range system since 1999, according to the Pentagon.
Private experts say the new logic helped clear the way for President Bush's announcement yesterday that the missile interceptors would be deployed in Alaska and California. But critics say that not taking account of early-stage test failures is like wiping the slate clean of laggards in footraces or political contests. By the new logic, the races acknowledge only winners and runners-up.
Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish of the Air Force, who leads the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, told Congress in June that the antimissile interceptors had a very high success rate - 88 percent. His claim was based on 25 tests, including both long- and short-range interceptors.
This high rate of "endgame success," General Kadish said, shows "the feasibility of missile defense." The availability of technologies to protect the nation, he added, "should not be in question."
But others disagree vehemently, saying the real numbers prove that antimissile defense is a mirage.
In the current issue of Arms Control Today, published in Washington by the Arms Control Association, Dr. George N. Lewis and Dr. Lisbeth Gronlund of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say the Pentagon not only ignores setbacks in the early flight stages but omits some endgame failures, too.
The true endgame success rate, they calculate, is 71 percent. And that of the long-range interceptor, they add, is only 61 percent.
In any event, they say, the endgame concept is irrelevant, since "quality control errors can and have occurred in all phases of the tests," implying similar possibilities for real antimissile systems.
If all the failures are taken into account, they write, the success rate of the long-range system drops to 41 percent.
--------
Opposition Unlikely for Missile Defense
December 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's plan to deploy a limited missile defense system by 2004 is unlikely to provoke the fierce Democratic opposition that President Reagan's plan encountered almost two decades ago, lawmakers say.
Both Democrats and Republicans understand the missile threat to the United States ``is real, it's here and it has to be dealt with,'' Rep. Curt Weldon, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and missile defense advocate, said Wednesday.
But some Democrats say the technology behind the plan is unproven and they doubt it will offer much protection in the next few years.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Bush's plan ``violates common sense by determining to deploy systems before they have been tested and shown to work.''
Bush on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to have ready within two years a bare-bones system for defending American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles.
Development of missile defense systems was severely limited under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which expired in June, six months after President Bush announced that Washington would withdraw from the 30-year old agreement.
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a two-page statement Wednesday expressing regret over Bush's decision to push ahead with a missile defense system. The statement expressed concern the focus on the missile system will divert resources from ``today's real challenges and threats ... international terrorism.''
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer replied that there is ``no question that in a relationship that is, I think, the best in modern times between the United States and Russia, there are areas where there are disagreeements.'' He did not respond directly to the Russians' fears.
Weldon, R-Pa., in comments during and outside a private missile defense forum on Capitol Hill, said the Russian statement reflects the influence of its military. Most Russians don't oppose missile defense, he said.
``The Russian people, just like the American people, want to be protected,'' he said.
The system announced by Bush would be expected to expand for years, eventually providing defense against all ranges of ballistic missiles, at every stage of their flight and from any point on the globe.
The administration put no final price tag on the project, but will ask Congress to allocate $1.5 billion over the next two fiscal years on top of the roughly $8 billion a year the Pentagon already has budgeted for missile defense. The extra money would pay for additional short-, medium- and long-range missile interceptors.
Democrats are unlikely to feel as strongly about Bush's plan as they had about Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed ``Star Wars'' by critics. He envisioned an impenetrable shield against the Soviet Union's arsenal of thousands of missiles. That effort foundered until it was killed by the Clinton administration.
Bush's proposal is more modest in scope and cost. Technology has advanced since the 1980s. And the ABM treaty is no longer an issue.
Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, a leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he doesn't believe his party will offer much of a challenge to Bush. ``This strikes us as a best first step to take,'' he said.
But he said the system won't offer significant protection for years. Key elements of the missile defense system are behind schedule or haven't been successfully tested. ``We shouldn't fool ourselves about the capacity of the system,'' he said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also cautioned against viewing the plan as foolproof. He described the planned initial capability as ``better than nothing'' and said it would evolve in ways that incorporate technological advances, lessons learned from testing and help from allies.
Bush's hopes of winning support in Congress are helped by the GOP control of both houses next year. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a strong supporter of missile defense, will become Armed Services chairman, replacing Levin.
Bush said his project, which has been in development for years and the subject of intense international debate, is an essential step toward providing defenses against 21st century threats. They include the possibility of terrorist groups launching ballistic missiles armed with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
Since January 2001, the Pentagon has been successful in four of five attempts to intercept a long-range warhead in space with an interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific. But last week, in the most recent test, the interceptor rocket failed to destroy a dummy warhead.
The Pentagon has succeeded in three consecutive tests of a ship-launched interceptor, the Standard Missile-3, against medium-range missiles.
On the Net:
Missile Defense Agency at http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/bmdolink.html
-------- russia
Russia Warns Against U.S. Missile Defense Plan
December 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Missiles.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. moves to build a missile defense system will impede the fight against terrorism and lead to a ``new senseless arms race,'' Russia warned Wednesday after the United States said it will start work on deploying the first interceptors in 2004.
Russia has long criticized American efforts to build a missile defense system, which was made possible after Washington withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that expired in June.
The government stepped up its anti-missile rhetoric after President Bush on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Defense Department to begin work within two years on deploying the first interceptors that are to form the base of the system.
The United States maintains that a missile defense system is necessary to protect the country against possible attack, primarily from rogue states that could possess ballistic missiles.
``Now, after taking a political decision to deploy in 2004 several strategic interceptors with support from space, the realization of these plans has entered a new destabilizing phase,'' the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a two-page statement.
The statement also expressed concern that the development of such a missile defense system would divert resources from other real threats, including international terrorism.
But the head of the Russian parliament's international affairs committee, Dmitry Rogozin, said Moscow was studying U.S. proposals on missile defense cooperation. Russia also is considering working with European countries on a continental missile defense system, Rogozin said, according to the Interfax news agency.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer didn't respond directly to Russia's concerns but said the relationship between the two former enemies is ``the best in modern times.''
Still, he noted, there are sometimes disagreements that ``have been handled through very patient, quiet diplomacy that has been effective.''
Other countries had little reaction to the U.S announcement.
Some critics in Britain expressed worries the country's support for the plan could make it a target -- without enjoying the protection of the shield.
State-controlled media in China did not make an issue of it, and calls to the Foreign Ministry went unanswered Wednesday -- though requests for information about military affairs are usually referred to the Defense Ministry, which rarely fields questions from foreign journalists.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the decision was Washington's and he had no comment, a spokeswoman, Misako Kaji, said.
Russia, which has fallen behind the United States in the development of space-based technology, consistently has argued for the ABM treaty.
``Consigning its principles to oblivion can lead only to the weakening of strategic stability, a new senseless arms race in the world, including the spread of weapons of mass destruction and diverting resources to counter today's real challenges and threats, above all, international terrorism,'' the statement said.
Marshal Igor Sergeyev, a senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin, told Interfax that Washington had not provided Russia with ``any weighty arguments'' that Russia was not threatened by the new system.
Sergeyev also said Russia was worried about radar systems in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, and Britain that could be used to support the new missile defense system.
In Britain, former lawmaker Tony Benn and George Hutchinson of the World Disarmament Campaign wrote to The Guardian newspaper saying the proposed use of a British installation for the missile shield was ``stupid and dangerous.''
The weapons to be deployed include six ground-based interceptors to be based in Alaska by the end of 2004, with 10 more added a year later. Four interceptors would be in California, for a total of 20 by the end of 2005. Twenty Standard Missile-3 interceptors would be aboard three Navy ships.
Hundreds of the Army's Patriot PAC-3 missiles would be deployed around the world to knock down shorter-range missiles in the final phases of their flights.
--------
Russia Is Marching Haltingly Toward Military Reform
December 18, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/18/international/europe/18RUSS.html
PSKOV, Russia - "Glory to Russian Arms!" declares a sign along a tree-lined street of the main military base here. "Discipline is the Mother of Victory," says another. The exhortations echo the beloved slogans of the Soviet era. They may, someday, reflect the state of the army in Russia.
In Pskov, a proud military town with a central memorial to the fallen Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan and newer Russian ones in Chechnya, the paratroopers of the 76th Airborne Division are doing things that would be unremarkable in any modern military, but are almost unheard of in Russia today.
They are practicing combat skills instead of doing menial jobs. They work from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and are paid for it. The brutal hazing that corrupts much of the country's mostly conscript army is said to be less of a problem.
Since September, the 76th Division has begun filling its ranks with volunteer soldiers rather than draftees, as part of an experiment intended to propel the country's long, halting efforts to modernize its armed forces.
This is the sort of reform repeatedly endorsed by President Vladimir V. Putin, who says he wants to turn the Russian military into a professional force, trained and equipped to face the new threats of separatism and terrorism. It is an aim that the president, despite his political power, has so far proved unable to fulfill - either for lack of money, lack of enthusiasm from entrenched military interests, or both.
No sooner had the experiment in Pskov started, for example, than Russia's top general, Anatoly V. Kvashnin, cut its $85 million budget by a quarter and withdrew an initial offer to provide apartments for new recruits. At least 40 promptly quit, though some were later persuaded to return.
The experiment was also portrayed as a way to study the possibility of ending Russia's hugely unpopular draft. Then last month, the defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, announced that the military would recruit volunteers only for the most combat ready units - about 126,000 soldiers and sergeants in all - and not before 2007.
"There will always be conscription as such," he declared.
Mr. Putin, whose forces remain bogged down in Chechnya, has intensified his quest for reform with each of the various disasters that have befallen the country's security and military forces: the sinking of the submarine Kursk in 2000, the downing of a grossly overloaded helicopter in Chechnya in August, and the siege of a Moscow theater by Chechen guerrillas in October.
In the 11 years since the Soviet Union collapsed, however, proposals for reform have resulted in little more than unmet promises. It remains to be seen whether the experiment here will lead to real change or merely, as one liberal lawmaker, Boris E. Nemtsov, called it, "Potemkin reform."
Few in Russia dispute the sorry condition of its armed forces. Having inherited a force of 2.8 million from the Soviet Red Army, Russia now has a little more than 1.1 million soldiers, sailors and airmen in its main armed forces, not including those in a dozen other agencies, like the border guards, the Interior Ministry and the railways.
The Parliament this month increased the official defense budget for next year to $11 billion, though by some estimates defense spending is in reality much higher. Although that was an increase from $9 billion this year, it is still roughly 3 percent of the Pentagon's budget. As a result, Russia's armed services remain chronically underfinanced and ill-equipped.
"If we don't reform the Russian Army, we can forget about the Russian Army," said Mr. Nemtsov, one of the most prominent supporters of sweeping changes. "For the army to survive, it has to become a professional army."
Yet Russia's remains an overwhelmingly conscripted force, with nearly 600,000 draftees serving two-year stints. The draft is so unpopular - and feared - that nearly 90 percent of eligible young men evade it, relying on medical or college deferments, often obtained with bribes. By one estimate, the bribes amount to $50 million a year, making draft evasion a flourishing cottage industry.
Within the ranks, morale is low and desertion is rampant. In the largest mass desertion ever made public, 54 soldiers from the 20th Motorized Infantry Division walked off their post in Volgograd in September, complaining that a major had severely beaten their colleagues. Just last week, 16 soldiers deserted from the Second Taman Motorized Division, an elite division.
The Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, which counsels soldiers, estimates that thousands desert each year to escape abuse by officers or the notorious practice of "dedovschina," in which older conscripts haze younger ones. The union says that nearly 4,000 soldiers die each year from hazing, suicide, illness or accidents.
The Ministry of Defense disputes such figures, but officials recently acknowledged that 2,270 soldiers deserted in the first six months of the year, while Mr. Ivanov said 531 soldiers were killed and 20,000 were injured in the first 10 months from causes other than combat.
Valentina D. Melnikova, a leader of the mothers' union, said the core problem facing the army was the lack of respect for soldiers, who are often treated as little more than chattel. Many, she said, are forced by officers to beg in the street or to work as guards or builders, with their salaries turned over to their commanders.
Since 1992, the military has recruited some soldiers on a contract basis. Today there are roughly 130,000 "contractors," most of them serving in the elite forces like the submarine fleet and the strategic nuclear forces. Others serve on special deployments abroad, like the 201st Division in Tajikistan.
The 76th Division is to be the first regular army unit made up entirely of contract soldiers. By next year, the entire division - 7,000 soldiers and officers in all - is supposed to be made up of volunteers, in time for a deployment to Chechnya, where its increased training and professionalism will be put to the test.
At first, soldiers were offered 2,800 rubles - or roughly $90 - a month, as well as the promise of free apartments. In November, with the division struggling to find recruits, the salary was increased to 4,000 rubles, or $125 a month. Still, three months into the experiment, only 1,200 of the division's roughly 4,000 enlisted soldiers are contractors.
As part of the experiment, the division has also focused more on training, especially for the kind of partisan warfare that troops face in Chechnya. As a result, the division will soon have to find others to carry out the necessary work of supporting a military unit. At the mess hall the other day, for example, fresh-faced conscripts were still serving and clearing lunch (milk soup, potato salad, meat patties over barley). For civilians to be hired in their place, money will be needed.
"The biggest problem in the Soviet Army and the Russian Army has always been the `unit on duty in the canteen,' " said Lt. Col. Vitaly N. Zamekhayev, another deputy division commander. "If we solve this, we would solve 60 percent of the problem in the army today."
Most soldiers and officers here also said that only a higher salary - at least double today's - would attract enough qualified young men. "Maybe realistically, people understand there's no money for this," said Lt. Col. Konstantin V. Burlokov, commander of the division's parachute training.
Mr. Nemtsov said the answer was to free up funds by reducing the force - to perhaps 800,000 troops. Others say the problems are more fundamental than money or the draft.
Vitaly V. Shlykov, a former military intelligence officer and deputy defense minister who is now an analyst with the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow, said the military suffered from a top-heavy command, a lack of professionalism among officers and the failure to create a class of noncommissioned officers, the sergeants who instill skills and discipline.
Those phenomena, he said, have created an environment that nurtures abuse and corruption.
"This ridiculous army, it is certainly not reformable," he said. "It can't reform. It doesn't know how to do it."
-------- terrorism
Al Qaeda said to revive terror camps
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021218-74555592.htm
NEW YORK - Far from vanquished, al Qaeda is attracting recruits to new terrorist-training camps in eastern Afghanistan and possibly trying to assemble a "dirty bomb," according to an independent panel created by the U.N. Security Council.
The terrorist network remains "an insidious mass movement that must be dealt with," according to the group's report, which was dated Dec. 4 but released yesterday.
"Al Qaeda appears to have suffered some significant disruption to its infrastructure," according to the report. "But due to its decentralized, loose and relatively simple command-and-control system and inherent flexibility, it continues to pose a substantial threat, globally, to peace and security."
However, the group found no connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, contrary to what the Bush administration has repeatedly said.
"We have absolutely no indication of a link between Iraq and the others," said Michael Chandler, the British chairman of the monitoring group, who noted that terrorists would not necessarily have to go into Iraq to obtain chemical or biological weapons.
A Bush administration official said yesterday that Washington "is doing everything we can" to cooperate with the monitoring group, but acknowledged loopholes in areas such as sharing intelligence.
The official was sanguine when asked to explain why the Security Council's group cannot find a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has insisted.
"We have concerns about Saddam Hussein's cooperation with a number of terrorist groups, including al Qaeda," the administration official said. "We share information when we can, and vice versa."
The monitoring group said in its report that al Qaeda camps to train "high-level foot soldiers" were again taking root in the desolate and largely unpatrolled tribal areas of Afghanistan.
"One of the most recent developments to come to light is the apparent activation of new, albeit simple, training camps in eastern Afghanistan," according to the group, which was established by the U.N. Security Council last year to monitor sanctions imposed against the Taliban and al Qaeda in 1999.
"Particularly disturbing about this trend is the fact that new volunteers are making their way to these camps, swelling the numbers of would-be al Qaeda activists and the longer-term capabilities of the network."
Mr. Chandler told reporters yesterday that "one or two" camps had been discovered near Asadabad, northeast of Kabul and just west of the border with Pakistan.
In Washington, a senior Pentagon official took issue with the report.
"We have no evidence that would support that report," the official said. "There may be a cell or two, but nothing on the scale that this report seems to state."
Although the U.N. group reports to the Security Council, it did not share its information with coalition forces. Mr. Chandler said the new al Qaeda camps are regularly dismantled and moved.
"By the time you get there, they would be gone," he said when asked why he hadn't shared his information with international troops. "They may well try to keep [the camps] as small, discrete and mobile as they can."
Terrorist cells are apparently at work in Africa as well, he said.
The monitoring group is "highly preoccupied by the risk of al Qaeda acquiring weapons of mass destruction, or a dirty bomb," according to the report.
The group fears that operatives will buy or steal uranium from Tanzania, which has reported attempts by unscrupulous strangers to obtain uranium in powdered form or in rods.
"Sure, we're concerned," Mr. Chandler said at a press conference. "One look at films and training manuals found around Afghanistan, there are clear indications that al Qaeda was trying to find" ways to build weapons of mass destruction.
However, he acknowledged, the group has no evidence that al Qaeda has tried to acquire the Tanzanian uranium.
-------- ukraine
Support for Chernobyl
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 18, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/18/international/europe/18UKRA.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 17 - Two years after Ukraine closed the last working reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, thousands of people gathered today in Kiev, the capital, to demand its reopening.
The protesters, saying they had seen little from promises by Western nations to compensate Chernobyl's workers and their families for their lost jobs, demanded that the government account for its use of Chernobyl-related funds.
In 1986 the power station was the scene of the world's worst nuclear accident. The last active reactor at Chernobyl was shut down in 2000.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Colleges Turn Nuke Bunker Into Library
December 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bombs-to-Books.html
AMHERST, Mass. (AP) -- It's been many years since soldiers hunkered down in an underground war room near here, poised to unleash nuclear Armageddon with B-52 bombers.
Now a group of colleges hope to help convert swords into plowshares by taking the old Strategic Air Command bunker and making it store something much more creative: books.
The three-story, climate controlled, atomic bomb-proof bunker was dug into a mountain above Westover Air Reserve Base in 1957 when it was the air command's eastern headquarters.
Its purpose, as the backup for SAC headquarters in Nebraska, was to allow 300 men to hold out long enough to direct retaliatory strikes in case of nuclear war. They had air, food and water for 30 days.
It is now owned by Amherst College, and the small liberal arts college and four nearby schools -- Mount Holyoke, Smith and Hampshire colleges and the University of Massachusetts -- are converting it into a massive underground library.
``It's so ironic. Here is something dedicated to war and we are storing library material in it,'' said Amherst College librarian Willis Bridegam. ``But there it was 4.5 miles south of the campus. And why not?''
Amherst College bought the bunker for about $500,000 in 1992 from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which acquired it after SAC pulled out of Westover in the 1970s.
The college has spent another $1 million on renovations, primarily to convert the old walls of carbon filters and fans into a modern climate and humidity control system to keep the bunker at a steady 70 degrees and 46 percent humidity.
``It would be three to four times more expensive to house these books on campus,'' Bridegam said. Before the bunker went on the market, college trustees had balked at building a new $30 million building to ease the library's space squeeze.
``It's wonderful,'' said Harry Wolfe a former Air Force officer who served in the bunker during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and is one of the town's library trustees. ``I hated to see it go to waste. And we need to preserve books.''
Other surplus bunkers have been turned into museums or storage for business records. The Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia offers tours of its bunker, meant to house Congress in case of nuclear attack, and has toyed with converting it into a gambling casino.
Amherst's bunker will hold about 500,000 of the colleges' lesser-used books and journals. The 9.5 miles of underground shelves will be filled over the next decade with volumes packed according to size, not subject, and marked by bar codes retrievable by computers, Bridegam said.
Most items will never leave the bunker, said David Spoolstra, who oversees the five-college section of the depository, housed in the area that once held room-sized battle computers.
It's what research librarians call a ``light archive'' meaning the works will be available only on request. Only archive workers will have access to the stacks and in most cases will provide academic researchers with an electronic copy, Bridegam said.
Few traces remain inside of the bunker's military history, except for the glassed-in balcony overlooking the war room. The sign on the door still reads ``Senior Battle Staff Only,'' but the two-story war room is now filled with books awaiting shelving.
The three-foot thick lead-line blast doors are gone, sold for scrap.
``We tried to find a buyer, but there were no takers,'' said Aaron Hayden, capital projects manager for the college.
The mustard yellow and green paint on the concrete walls has been replaced with bright whitewash.
The three-foot-high false floors that had hidden miles of cabling for the old computers have vanished -- along with the Cold War era girlie magazines library workmen discovered tucked away in the crawl space by long ago airmen.
But the roof -- four feet of lead-reinforced concrete topped by another 10 feet of stone -- is still solid. And the 18-inch-thick concrete floors are a librarian's delight.
``They will hold 500 pounds of books per square foot,'' said Hayden.
On the Net:
http://www.fivecolleges.edu
-------- us politics
Opposition Unlikely for Missile Defense
Wed Dec 18, 2002
By KEN GUGGENHEIM,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=17&u=/ap/20021218/ap_on_go_pr_wh/missile_defense
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites)'s plan to deploy a limited missile defense system by 2004 is unlikely to provoke the fierce Democratic opposition that President Reagan's plan encountered almost two decades ago, lawmakers say.
Both Democrats and Republicans understand the missile threat to the United States "is real, it's here and it has to be dealt with," Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and missile defense advocate, said Wednesday.
But some Democrats say the technology behind the plan is unproven and they doubt it will offer much protection in the next few years.
Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites), said Bush's plan "violates common sense by determining to deploy systems before they have been tested and shown to work."
Bush on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon (news - web sites) to have ready within two years a bare-bones system for defending American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles.
Development of missile defense systems was severely limited under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which expired in June, six months after President Bush announced that Washington would withdraw from the 30-year old agreement.
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a two-page statement Wednesday expressing regret over Bush's decision to push ahead with a missile defense system. The statement expressed concern the focus on the missile system will divert resources from "today's real challenges and threats ... international terrorism."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) replied that there is "no question that in a relationship that is, I think, the best in modern times between the United States and Russia, there are areas where there are disagreeements." He did not respond directly to the Russians' fears.
Weldon, R-Pa., in comments during and outside a private missile defense forum on Capitol Hill, said the Russian statement reflects the influence of its military. Most Russians don't oppose missile defense, he said.
"The Russian people, just like the American people, want to be protected," he said.
The system announced by Bush would be expected to expand for years, eventually providing defense against all ranges of ballistic missiles, at every stage of their flight and from any point on the globe.
The administration put no final price tag on the project, but will ask Congress to allocate $1.5 billion over the next two fiscal years on top of the roughly $8 billion a year the Pentagon already has budgeted for missile defense. The extra money would pay for additional short-, medium- and long-range missile interceptors.
Democrats are unlikely to feel as strongly about Bush's plan as they had about Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by critics. He envisioned an impenetrable shield against the Soviet Union's arsenal of thousands of missiles. That effort foundered until it was killed by the Clinton administration.
Bush's proposal is more modest in scope and cost. Technology has advanced since the 1980s. And the ABM treaty is no longer an issue.
Rep. John Spratt (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina, a leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he doesn't believe his party will offer much of a challenge to Bush. "This strikes us as a best first step to take," he said.
But he said the system won't offer significant protection for years. Key elements of the missile defense system are behind schedule or haven't been successfully tested. "We shouldn't fool ourselves about the capacity of the system," he said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also cautioned against viewing the plan as foolproof. He described the planned initial capability as "better than nothing" and said it would evolve in ways that incorporate technological advances, lessons learned from testing and help from allies.
Bush's hopes of winning support in Congress are helped by the GOP control of both houses next year. Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., a strong supporter of missile defense, will become Armed Services chairman, replacing Levin.
Bush said his project, which has been in development for years and the subject of intense international debate, is an essential step toward providing defenses against 21st century threats. They include the possibility of terrorist groups launching ballistic missiles armed with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
Since January 2001, the Pentagon has been successful in four of five attempts to intercept a long-range warhead in space with an interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific. But last week, in the most recent test, the interceptor rocket failed to destroy a dummy warhead.
The Pentagon has succeeded in three consecutive tests of a ship-launched interceptor, the Standard Missile-3, against medium-range missiles.
On the Net:
Missile Defense Agency at http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/bmdolink.html
--------
Bush Is Expected to Say Iraq Failed to Meet U.N. Terms
December 18, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER with JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/18/international/middleeast/18CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - President Bush, who is expected to declare on Thursday that Iraq has violated the United Nations resolution requiring it to disclose all its weapons of mass destruction, met today with his national security advisers to discuss the United States' next move.
The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, would say only that the United States would have a formal response soon to Iraqi's 12,000-page declaration.
"We have learned much about the declaration, although the review is not complete," Mr. Fleischer said. "The president is concerned about omissions in the declaration and about problems in the declaration."
In London today, the British foreign secretary, Jack Staw, said that Saddam Hussein's assertion that he has no weapons of mass destruction was an "obvious falsehood" and that Iraq's declaration to the United Nations was lacking.
"This will fool nobody," Mr. Straw said in a statement. "If Saddam persists in this obvious falsehood, it will become clear that he has rejected the pathway to peace laid down in Resolution 1441."
Prime Minister Tony Blair told members of Parliament today that there was widespread skepticism about Iraq's weapons declaration.
"I think most people who have looked at this obviously very long document are pretty skeptical about the claims that it makes, but it's important we study it in detail and make a formal and considered response," Mr. Blair said.
The prime minister said that his government would not issue a formal response until after the New Year.
In Washington, the Bush administration continued working on its response - one that senior administration officials have said will likely declare Iraq in "material breach" of its obligations. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who promoted the approach of working through the United Nations, is expected to deliver the statement on Thursday.
The issues confronting Mr. Bush - particularly the question of whether the time is right to declare a material breach, which could provide what Washington sees as a legal justification for going to war - were discussed in detail at a meeting of his senior national security advisers on Tuesday afternoon, according to several officials.
In interviews Tuesday night, those officials refused to say what options the group had decided to present to Mr. Bush. But a consensus appeared to be developing that Iraq's failure to explain what happened to its chemical and biological weapons programs after 1998 - and its contention that all work on nuclear weapons stopped a decade ago - should be characterized as evidence that Iraq is engaged in what one official called "not so passive resistance" to a full inspection by the United Nations.
American intelligence officials say the extensive arms documentation that Iraq issued earlier this month lacks evidence that it disposed of chemical and biological weapons that United Nations inspectors had identified prior to 1998, or that the inspectors suspected still existed when they left Iraq under duress that year. Administration officials have not produced evidence that Iraq has nuclear weapons, but say President Saddam Hussein is thought to have acquired equipment that would aid in the development of such arms.
The officials said they did not expect that the Iraqi violations would be described by Mr. Bush as an immediate cause for war, but rather as a "serious matter" and evidence that Iraq was again engaging in a game of hide-and-seek with inspectors.
"What you will see will be a patient White House, very concerned about another failure by Iraq to cooperate but willing to allow the weapons inspections to go ahead," said one administration official familiar with the debate. Another said the Administration would use the omissions to step up pressure on the United Nations to demand interviews with Iraqi scientists outside of Iraq, fully expecting that Mr. Hussein would resist those interviews.
A senior State Department nonproliferation official, John S. Wolf, met Tuesday morning with Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations weapons inspection team, to describe the deficiencies that American intelligence agencies say they have found in the Iraqi declaration. The meeting, which was not announced publicly, was the first time the administration laid out to the United Nations its assessment of the inadequacies of the declaration.
"We gave him the thrust with some examples," one administration official said of the session, where the American ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, was also present.
Mr. Wolf, however, did not fully disclose to the Security Council members the data backing up the United States analysis of the Iraqi document.
Senior White House officials insisted that the principal advisers, who include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, had made no specific recommendations to Mr. Bush.
Asked if the group had agreed that Iraq was in "material breach" of its obligations, Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said, "No such decisions have been taken by the United States government at any principals' meeting, whether today or at any other time."
The administration never publicly discloses those meetings, saying the contents are classified and the recommendations to Mr. Bush are confidential.
The debate over how to characterize Iraqi violations is important because it may determine how many allies join the United States in any eventual conflict.
Mr. Bush, some aides expect, will take a cautious approach, denouncing Iraq but stopping short of any pre-emptive action. The most likely result, some officials say, is that President Bush will declare that what Washington sees as Iraq's failure to account for chemical and biological weapons that have been missing since the mid-1990's, and Baghdad's declaration that all its nuclear weapons research has stopped, are the latest in a series of steps that violate Security Council Resolution 1441.
"I don't expect the president will say that this this alone is casus belli," one senior Administration official, using the Latin term for cause for war. "But it builds the case."
The immediate effect of the administration's declaration, officials say, will be to put enormous new pressure on both the Security Council and the United Nations inspectors.
The administration's private insistence that Iraq has committed a new and grave violation of its promises put it on a course to differ sharply with Secretary General Kofi Annan and most if not all of the other permanent members of the Security Council.
Once again on Tuesday, Mr. Annan repeated his admonition that the weapons inspectors should be allowed to carry on with their work at their own pace.
"I think as I've said before: we need to give Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei time to analyze these documents," Mr. Annan said. "I think we should wait for that." He added that the inspectors "have a mandate and they should carry on with it."
He was referring to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Hans Blix. Mr. Blix is to provide his first assessment of the Iraqi declaration to the Security Council on Thursday. The White House is planning a simultaneous announcement of its own views.
Mr. Blix informed the Council late Monday that he would not give a full assessment of the vast declaration when he and Mr. ElBaradei meet with the group on Thursday. Rather, Mr. Blix said, he intends to provide a preliminary overview and a guide for the 10 nonpermanent Council members to study the documents.
Administration officials were adamant last night that Mr. Bush has made no final decisions, though as one official said earlier in the day, "It's clear that Thursday will be a big day for us." The debate, said one participant, "isn't over whether Iraq falsified its claims - it's over how to prove that, and how best to bring along the maximum number of allies to the same conclusion."
In an effort to convince other members of the Security Council, several senior officials said they thought Mr. Bush would defer the question of whether the omissions themselves are a sufficient legal pretext for military action, under the American interpretation of Resolution 1441.
The 10 rotating members of the Security Council received their copies of the declaration this evening, after the documents had been filtered by United Nations experts for information that could provide a guide for making weapons of mass destruction. The five permanent members, which are all nuclear powers, received the declaration on Dec. 8.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Sergey Lavrov, insisted this week that only the weapons inspectors have the authority to determine whether a serious breach has been committed or not.
"It is not for Russia or anybody else to make any judgments" until the inspectors render their evaluations, Mr. Lavrov said.
If something happens that Mr. Blix "believes is a violation, he comes to the Security Council," Mr. Lavrov said. "There is no other way, and everybody knows it."
French diplomats have also argued that it is up to Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei to evaluate Iraq's conduct, not individual Council nations. France will also stick rigorously to the letter of Resolution 1441, which says that "false statements or omissions in the declarations . . . and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach."
In the view of France, this clause means that missing data and less than candid statements in the declarations are not enough to make a "material breach," diplomats said, if there is no other pattern of defiance by Baghdad. British leaders have also accepted this interpretation, which was fundamental to getting France's accord for the resolution.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Group Says U.S. Broke Law in Use Of Cluster Bombs in Afghanistan
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3866-2002Dec17?language=printer
The U.S. military violated international law in Afghanistan by indiscriminately dropping cluster bombs on populated areas, killing at least 25 civilians and injuring numerous others, Human Rights Watch said in a report scheduled for release today.
The group also said that another 127 civilians have been killed or injured in Afghanistan by unexploded cluster "bomblets" that have become "de facto antipersonnel landmines" across large areas of the country. Sixty-nine percent of those killed or injured, the group said, were children.
"While U.S. modifications in targeting and technology appear to have reduced the adverse humanitarian side effects of the cluster bombs used in Afghanistan to some degree," the Human Rights Watch report said, "the weapon still poses a danger to civilians in future conflicts because of its broad footprint, lack of accuracy, and high number of explosive duds left behind."
Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, denied that the United States indiscriminately uses cluster bombs and faulted the Taliban and al Qaeda for conducting military operations in populated areas.
He said the use of cluster bombs requires higher-level approval than the use of noncluster munitions. He noted that the United States had dropped thousands of leaflets in Afghanistan warning civilians to stay away from the unexploded bomblets.
"The biggest casualty in this misleading report is the truth," Wilkinson said. "The truth is, no military in the history of war has done more to protect the innocent than we have in Afghanistan. On many occasions, legitimate targets were bypassed because of potential collateral damage. The U.S. restrained its force well beyond that required by the law of armed conflict."
Dropped from an aircraft, a cluster bomb releases 202 bomblets at a preset altitude. The bomblets float down to the battlefield on tiny parachutes and detonate when they hit the ground, spraying an oval area as large as 400 feet by 800 feet with steel fragments designed to kill people, molten slugs that penetrate tanks and incendiary fragments that can burn through metal vehicles.
Human Rights Watch, based in New York, based its conclusions on Pentagon statistics and site visits at 250 locations in Afghanistan earlier this year. In the report, "Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan," the group urged the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs until the "dud rate" is reduced from more than 5 percent to less than 1 percent of bomblets.
The group also recommended that the U.S. military rewrite its targeting practices so that cluster bombs would no longer be dropped on or near inhabited areas, since international humanitarian law requires that combatants take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties in war time.
"When cluster bombs are used in civilian areas, the U.S. is not doing what it can to avoid civilian casualties," said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch's executive director. "Cluster bombs are the only 'dumb' weapons that the Pentagon still uses in populated areas. When a modern Air Force has precision weapons in significant supply, it has a duty to use them when civilians are nearby."
The group's report said that the United States dropped 1,228 cluster bombs on Afghanistan -- 5 percent of the 26,000 bombs dropped between October 2001 and March 2002. The cluster bombs contained 248,056 bomblets. The group estimated that at least 12,400 unexploded bomblets remain on the ground, using what the group said was the Pentagon's "conservative" dud rate of 5 percent.
Bonnie Docherty, one of the report's authors, said those statistics were obtained from the Pentagon and from reports the Pentagon supplied to humanitarian organizations working to clear land mines in Afghanistan.
Wilkinson disputed the number of cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. military, saying the Human Rights Watch figure overstates the actual total by almost 40 percent.
----
Filmmaker says U.S. soldiers watched massacre of Taliban
By Erik Kirschbaum
asian time
12/18/02
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-138053.html
BERLIN (Reuters) - Scottish filmmaker Jamie Doran said on Wednesday he hoped his documentary about an alleged massacre of Taliban prisoners of war last year would lead U.S. authorities to investigate any involvement of American soldiers.
Doran told Reuters before the screening of "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death" on Germany's ARD television network that witnesses saw U.S. special forces stand by and watch as Northern Alliance allies murdered Taliban POWs.
A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Berlin rejected claims made in the film.
"The claims are completely false that American soldiers were involved in the torture, execution and disappearance of Taliban prisoners," the spokesman said. "In no way did U.S. troops participate or witness any human rights violations."
Doran, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who covered the Afghan war for Japanese television, said up to 3,000 Taliban POWs were killed late last year after surrendering at Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
"This film is about the disappearance and murder of up to 3,000 Taliban POWs and the involvement of the U.S. special forces in that disappearance," Doran told Reuters in Berlin after members of the German parliament invited him to discuss the alleged massacre.
"U.S. SOLDIERS STOOD BY"
Doran, 46, said witnesses from different ethnic groups in Afghanistan told him during his year-long investigation into the suspected war crimes they saw Taliban POWs herded into unventilated shipping containers, where many died of suffocation, thirst, or starvation.
Doran said one witness said about 600 Taliban POWs who survived the shipment of the containers to the Shiberghan prison 120 km away were taken to a spot in the desert at Dasht-e-Leili and executed -- in the presence of about 30 to 40 U.S. special forces soldiers.
His film includes allegations from witnesses who say they saw U.S. soldiers taking part in the torture of Taliban POWs at the Shiberghan prison.
Doran said he spent six weeks trying unsuccessfully to obtain comment from the Pentagon in Washington for his film.
"I would like to see the American authorities agree to a proper investigation," he said. "They have nothing to fear from the truth. I have the feeling they hope the story will go away.
"We establish beyond a reasonable doubt that U.S. soldiers stood by and did nothing to prevent it (the massacre)," he added. "I have absolutely no evidence that American troops were involved in the shooting that took place in the desert."
Afghan General Abdul Rashid Dostum has rejected reports his troops killed up to 1,000 Taliban fighters by taking them to Shiberghan prison in the airless containers. He said up to 200 died, but they were already badly injured from fighting.
Dostum was a key U.S. ally in late 2001 when he helped oust the Taliban from northern Afghanistan with the help of U.S. air attacks. U.S. special forces are still in the north working with leaders to hunt Taliban and al Qaeda members.
Germany's ARD public television network will screen the 55-minute film on Wednesday evening. The documentary has been the focus of reports in many German magazines and newspapers.
Doran said his documentary was screened on commercial and public networks in Britain, Australia and Italy. Rights have been sold or are about to sold to networks in 25 territories.
-------- africa
Congo, Rebels Reach Accord
Power-Sharing Arrangement Aims to End 4-Year Civil War
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3955-2002Dec17?language=printer
NAIROBI, Dec. 17 -- The government of Congo reached a peace agreement today with its military and political opponents in an attempt to end a four-year civil war that has killed an estimated 2 million people in one of Africa's most volatile regions.
The accord, signed early this morning at a conference in the South African city of Pretoria, prescribes a power-sharing arrangement that would allow Congo's president, Joseph Kabila, to remain in office for at least two years, until democratic elections can be held. Four vice presidents would be appointed, one each from Kabila's government, the political opposition and two armed rebel groups -- the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy and the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement.
Congo has been embroiled in the conflict commonly known as Africa's first world war since August 1998, when the rebels and their foreign backers launched an armed campaign aimed at toppling Kabila's father and predecessor, Laurent Kabila. After Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia entered the fight on Kabila's side, the war settled into a stalemate that has left Congo divided roughly in half, with the rebels controlling the east and north and the government holding the south and west.
Under a peace plan reached in April 1999, foreign troops have withdrawn from Congo during the past year. But continuing distrust between the government and the rebels -- and between the rebel factions -- will pose major challenges to the new accord, observers said today.
In northern and northeastern Congo, the Ugandan-backed rebel faction is still fighting sporadically with a splinter group of the Rwandan-supported force. At the same time, fighting over land between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups has claimed hundreds of lives in an area of the northeast left lawless by the war.
"It's a very important and good step, but the negotiation is not over. It's far from it when you look at the reality on the ground in the Congo," said Francois Grignon, the Central Africa project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, an independent research and advocacy organization. "There's still fighting going on, and an entirely new social contract needs to take place for the Congo. There will have to be ongoing talks with local rebel groups and a deal that brings every last group together. That is the reality of seeing real peace in the Congo." Congolese leaders said they were hopeful that the peace agreement would last.
"This is our Christmas present," said Michel On'Okono, an official at the Congolese Embassy in Nairobi, where Congolese refugees gathered and cheered when the news was announced. "We are not saying things are perfect, and it will be rough at times. But this is major progress and there are a lot of people who want to make it work."
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, whose government brokered the agreement, said bringing peace to one of Africa's prominent trouble spots is symbolically important to a continent where low-level civil wars continue in several countries. "The agreement has enormous regional implications," Mbeki told reporters in South Africa. "You couldn't genuinely say you were moving ahead in Africa if the situation in [Congo] remained unchanged."
Since gaining independence in 1960, Congo has been wracked not only by internal rebellion but by neighbors' conflicts -- notably in 1994, when thousands of Hutu extremists from Rwanda fled into Congo, then known as Zaire, after they participated in the slaughter of a half-million of Rwanda's Tutsi minority. Partly in reaction, Rwanda sponsored the 1998 Congo rebellion, as well as one in 1996 that ousted Mobutu Sese Seko and brought Laurent Kabila to power. Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and his son was installed as his replacement.
-------- arms sales
Arms report names Western suppliers
By Dafna Linzer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021218-14950566.htm
NEW YORK - Dozens of suppliers, mostly in Europe, the United States and Japan, provided the components and know-how Saddam Hussein needed to build an atomic bomb, according to Iraq's 1996 accounting of its nuclear program.
The secret declaration is virtually identical to the one submitted to U.N. inspectors Dec. 7, according to U.N. officials. The reports have not been made public to prevent nuclear know-how from falling into the wrong hands and to protect the names of companies that wittingly or unwittingly supplied Iraq with the means to make nuclear weapons.
U.N. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the only difference between the two reports is that the latest has a 300-page section in Arabic on civilian nuclear programs and a slightly larger typeface that stretches it to 2,100 pages.
It has long been known that foreign companies helped Iraq, and some of them have been identified, but the Iraqi account is the most exhaustive list so far of companies involved.
Iraq's report says the equipment was either sold or made by more than 30 German companies, 10 American firms, 11 British companies and a handful of Swiss, Japanese, Italian, French, Swedish and Brazilian firms. It says more than 30 countries supplied its nuclear program.
It details nuclear efforts from the early 1980s to the Gulf war and contains diagrams, plans and test results in uranium enrichment, detonation, implosion testing and warhead construction.
In one chapter, Iraq admits to having a pilot plan in September 1990 - one month after it invaded Kuwait - to increase the enrichment of recovered uranium to 93 percent using centrifuges. The process is a complicated extraction and purification method that at full scale requires thousands of connected, high-speed centrifuges.
According to Iraq's report, the most detailed account of its former nuclear-weapons program, it was also pursuing electromagnetic isotope separation as another method to enrich uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic explosion.
The Iraqis had everything they needed to make nuclear weapons, said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project, a Washington-based think tank on nuclear-arms control. "They weren't missing any components or any knowledge," he said in a phone interview. "It was simply a matter of time."
Mr. Milhollin said that had it not been for the 1991 Gulf war, Iraq would have had nuclear weapons by now, thanks to hundreds of suppliers who sold it an impressive array of equipment and expertise, often with their governments' approval and without being aware of the ultimate purpose.
According to the Iraqi account, induction and electron-beam furnaces, which could be used in shaping uranium parts for an atomic bomb, came from Consarc Corp. of Rancocas, N.J. The company says the items were never delivered, however.
Newport of Irvine, Calif., is listed as a supplier of optical fiber, a product with uses ranging from communications to medical equipment. But the company said it doesn't carry the model listed in the declaration.
EEV, based outside New York City, is listed as a supplier of a thyratron, which the company says is used in medical-imaging equipment. It could not immediately verify the sale of the item.
Motorola was listed as the seller of fast photodetectors, but company spokeswoman Jennifer Weyrauch said she found no record to support the claim. "A photodetector product is not part of Motorola's current portfolio," she said.
Most of the sales were legal and often made with the knowledge of governments. From 1985 to 1990, the Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses. Iraq was then getting Western support for its war against Iran.
--------
Leaked report says German and US firms supplied arms to Saddam
Baghdad's uncensored report to UN names Western companies alleged to have developed its weapons of mass destruction
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
18 December 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=362566
Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said yesterday.
Berlin's left-wing Die Tageszeitung newspaper said it had seen a copy of the original Iraqi dossier which was vetted for sensitive information by US officials before being handed to the five permanent Security Council members two weeks ago. An edited version was passed to the remaining 10 members of the Security Council last night.
British officials said the list of companies appeared to be accurate. Eighty German firms and 24 US companies are reported to have supplied Iraq with equipment and know-how for its weapons programmes from 1975 onwards and in some cases support for Baghdad's conventional arms programme had continued until last year.
It is not known who leaked the report, but it could have come from Iraq. Baghdad is keen to embarrass the US and its allies by showing the close involvement of US, German, British and French firms in helping Iraq develop its weapons of mass destruction when the country was a bulwark against the much feared spread of Iranian revolutionary fervour to the Arab world.
The list contained the names of long-established German firms such as Siemens as well as US multi-nationals. With government approval, Siemens exported machines used to eliminate kidney stones which have a "dual use" high precision switch used to detonate nuclear bombs. Ten French companies were also named along with a number of Swiss and Chinese firms. The newspaper said a number of British companies were cited, but did not name them.
"From about 1975 onwards, these companies are shown to have supplied entire complexes, building elements, basic materials and technical know-how for Saddam Hussein's programme to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction," the newspaper said. "They also supplied rockets and complete conventional weapons systems," it added.
The five permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China - have repeatedly opposed revealing the extent of foreign companies' involvement, although a mass of relevant information was collected by UN weapons inspectors who visited the country between 1991 and 1998. The UN claims that publishing the extent of the companies' involvement in Iraq would jeopardise necessary co-operation with such firms.
German involvement outstripped that of all the other countries put together, the paper said. During the period to 1991, the German authoritiespermitted weapons co-operation with Iraq and in some cases "actively encouraged" it, according to the newspaper which cited German assistance allegedly given to Iraq for the development of poison gas used in the 1988 massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq. It said that after the massacre America reduced its military co-operation with Iraq but German firms continued their activities until the Gulf War.
Die Tageszeitung quoted sources close to the US Vice President, Dick Cheney, as saying the Bush administration was hoping to prove a German company was continuing to co-operate with the Iraqi regime over the supply of equipment allegedly useful in the construction of weapons of mass destruction.
American weapons experts have recently voiced concern that the German Government has permitted Siemens to sell Baghdad at least eight sophisticated medical machines which contain devices that are vital for nuclear weapons. The machines, known as "lithotripters", use ultrasound to destroy kidney stones in patients. However, each machine contains an electronic switch that can be used as a detonator in an atomic bomb, according to US experts. Iraq was reported to have requested an extra 120 switches as "spare parts" during the initial transaction.
The delivery of the machines was approved by the European Commission and the UN because sanctions against Iraq do not apply to medical equipment. Siemens and the German Government have insisted that the machines, which are being used in northern Iraq under a World Health Organisation programme, cannot be used to make nuclear weapons.
--------
HEWLETT PACKARD, DUPONT, BECHTEL, 20 OTHER U.S. COMPANIES, LOS ALAMOS, LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORIES, AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY illegally armed Iraq
December 18, 2002
on Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20021218.html
NEWS HEADLINES
Story: TOP SECRET IRAQ WEAPONS REPORT SAYS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT & CORPORATIONS HELPED TO ILLEGALLY ARM IRAQ WE TALK WITH THE GERMAN REPORTER WHO OBTAINED LEAKED PORTIONS OF THE UNEDITED REPORT THAT NAMES HEWLETT PACKARD, DUPONT AND BECHTEL & 20 OTHER U.S. COMPANIES AS WELL AS LOS ALAMOS AND LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORIES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20021218.ra&start=9:21.8
A German newspaper has obtained portions of Iraq's top secret weapons report that reveals at least 24 U.S. corporations as well as four agencies of the U.S. government illegally helped Iraq build its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Some of the corporations include Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys, Sperry and TI Coating.
The Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung also reports the U.S. Department of Energy delivered essential non-fissile parts for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Defense also provided assistance.
According to the paper, only one country had more business ties to Iraq than the U.S. That was Germany. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in Iraq's report. And the paper reported that some German companies continued to do business with Iraq until last year.
The list of companies who worked with Iraq was supposed to be top secret. Iraq produced only two identical copies of its 12,000-page report for international review. One went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and one went to the United Nations. The Bush Administration quickly took control of the UN version, and made unedited copies for the other permanent members of the Security Council, Britain, France, Russia and China. The U.S. then made edited copies, which deleted all reference to nuclear weapons production and all mentions of international corporations. This was the report that the world was supposed to see.
But the German paper obtained several hundred pages of unedited text and began publishing articles based on the leaked documents yesterday. We're joined right now from Geneva by Andreas Zumach, the journalist who broke the story for Die Tageszeitung.
Guest:
Andreas Zumach, Geneva-based UN correspondent with the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung who obtained an unedited copy of Iraq's 12,000 page report to the United Nations. The report reveals how German and U.S. corporations helped build Iraq's weapons program.
-------- britain
Britain: Iraq Arms Claim a 'Falsehood'
AP
By BETH GARDINER
Wed, Dec 18, 2002
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=13&u=/ap/20021218/ap_on_re_eu/britain_iraq
LONDON - Leading the charge for the Bush administration, Britain on Wednesday scorned Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s declaration that he has no weapons of mass destruction and said it was making contingency plans for war.
"This will fool nobody," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said of the Iraqi leader's 12,000-page dossier, maintaining it fell short of the United Nations (news - web sites)' demands - a sentiment that was echoed by the White House.
"If Saddam persists in this obvious falsehood, it will become clear that he has rejected the pathway to peace laid down in Resolution 1441," which requires Iraq make a full disclosure of its weapons programs.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said President Bush (news - web sites) found "omissions" and "problems" in Iraq's arms declaration.
"The United States will continue to push the very deliberate approach in dealing with the issue and the potential consequences," Fleischer said.
Both countries stopped short of declaring that Iraq was in "material breach" of the resolution, considered the trigger point for military action.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, where the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council received an edited version of the declaration Tuesday night, diplomats reacted cautiously to Straw's comments. "We hope that this is not going to be a trigger," said Mauritius' U.N. Ambassador Jagdish Koonjul. "This is precisely why we have inspectors."
China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Yingfan said he would wait for the inspectors' verdict. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the U.N. nuclear regulatory agency, are scheduled to give the Security Council their preliminary assessment of the Iraqi declaration on Thursday.
U.N. officials said Wednesday that ElBaradei will tell the Security Council more inspections are needed to verify Saddam's claims that he has no weapons of mass destruction.
Straw said Saddam had made "obvious omissions," such as failing to account for weapons of mass destruction listed in a 1998 report by weapons inspectors. Those inspectors, the last allowed into Iraq before Blix and his team returned last month, had accused Saddam of possessing nerve agents and other "chemical precursors" and munitions, he said.
Straw said Britain had not completed a full analysis of the declaration and would give its formal response after the Christmas holiday.
Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), who has been the strongest international supporter of Bush's tough line on Iraq, told lawmakers officials would continue to study the document, but added: "I think most people who have looked at this obviously very long document are very skeptical about the claims that it makes."
Military chiefs said although their primary goal was disarming Saddam of his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons peacefully, they were preparing troops for possible military action.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said Britain was making "contingency provisions" for possible war with Iraq. He said Britain needed to "continue to pose a credible threat of force," but stressed war was not inevitable.
"What we are doing is ensuring that we have a range of military options available should they be required. This process does not lead inexorably to military action," he told lawmakers.
"As long as Saddam Hussein's compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 is in doubt, the threat of force must remain and must be real," Hoon said.
Preparations included upgrading field hospitals and improving battlefield ambulances. Hoon said the government was also preparing to charter ships for moving equipment and personnel.
He said six Royal Navy vessels, including warships and a nuclear submarine, were going on a routine deployment to the Persian Gulf in the new year. More ships might be sent to ensure "the readiness of a broad range of maritime capabilities," Hoon said.
----
Iraq deployment under way as MoD charters troop ships for Gulf
Richard Norton-Taylor and Ewen MacAskill
Wednesday December 18, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,861919,00.html
The first preparations for a major British deployment for war against Iraq were revealed yesterday as defence officials disclosed that ships were being chartered to carry troops and heavy armour to the Gulf.
The move is among measures already undertaken by the Ministry of Defence but disclosed only yesterday. They include urgent orders for chemical and biological warfare protection kits and for field hospitals, modifying tanks and heavy guns for desert conditions, putting thousands of troops on standby, and warning reservists they will soon be needed.
Defence officials insisted the deployment of a substantial British force did not mean a decision had been made to attack Iraq. "We are not now committed to the use of force," they said. What they called the "realistic threat of the use of force" would also have a coercive effect, putting a psychological squeeze on the Iraqi regime, they said.
Even if Saddam Hussein's government "imploded naturally" as they put it - an outcome many British and US military commanders would like to see - Iraq would still require a "stabilisation force".
The disclosure of detailed preparations to deploy a force, estimated to total up to 20,000 personnel from all three services, ends months of speculation about the government's intentions.
Ministers have been under pressure for weeks from military chiefs to give political and financial backing to essential measures needed to prepare the British force.
The deployment of British troops to the Gulf "could come at any time", a defence official said. It is likely to begin next month. In theory, the trigger for military action could be pulled tomorrow if the UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was to inform the security council that Iraq is in material breach of the UN resolution.
Mr Blix is to provide a preliminary assessment of the 12,000-page Iraqi weapons declaration. The US has said the declaration is badly flawed but Mr Blix is to take a more relaxed view. He will say he has questions for Iraq about mustard gas shells missing from the declaration and discrepancies between the various pages, but does not regard these as constituting a a material breach. He is to provide a more detailed assessment next month.
Key information about Iraq's weapons programme could be provided by defectors. It emerged yesterday that three high-ranking Iraqi military officers have defected in Arbil, in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, and handed themselves over to Turkey.
The MoD is expected today to begin chartering commercial ships, including an unspecified number of roll on/roll off ferries at a cost of up to about £14,000 a day each. "We are maintaining our options. We do not know whether a conflict will be necessary or what type of conflict there would be," a senior defence source said.
The US is believed to have asked Britain for special forces, Royal Marine commandos, RAF air-to-air refuelling tankers, and minesweepers.
Defence officials made clear yesterday that Britain's contribution would include Challenger 2 main battle tanks which performed disastrously in an exercise in Oman last year.
Fixing new air filters and skirts on 250 tanks - the most Britain is likely to deploy - would cost £90m. AS90 self-propelled howitzers which broke down in the Oman exercise are being modified, and the army is investing in a new secure communications system.
Up to 10,000 reservists may be needed, including medical staff. The potential effect on the NHS was being discussed with the Department of Health, Lord Bach, the arms procurement minister, told peers.
A naval task force, due to leave for the Far East next month on a pre-planned exercise, could be in the Gulf area by the end of January. Led by the aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, it includes at least one submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The helicopter and Royal Marine commando carrier, HMS Ocean, should be ready for operations early in the new year.
Defence officials said yesterday the very hot weather in Iraq after March would have an effect on tactics and equipment. But they said it would not be a "crucial factor".
--------
Source: UK Orders First Ship to Move Armor to Gulf
December 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain-ships.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Ministry of Defense placed its first order Wednesday for a large merchant ship to carry heavy armor and military supplies to the Gulf ahead of a possible strike on Iraq, a shipping source said.
Britain also stepped into the London ship broking market to request two more vessels for a military deployment. The orders follow similar moves by the United States and come on the same day Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said he had put Britain on a war footing.
``These are the first orders I've seen so far,'' the industry source who is familiar with Ministry of Defenseoperations told Reuters.
An MoD spokesman declined to give specifics but confirmed the British government was seeking ships Wednesday.
``We are looking for ships now. It should be in the market today,'' he said referring to a tender in the open market.
Hoon said Britain was preparing for a possible war in Iraq. Tenders are being put out to build up a stand-by fleet of ships, procurement orders of specialist desert equipment are being accelerated and some troop units are being put on short notice to move.
The first order is for a large roll-on roll-off ship for a 90-day period from 15 January. The vessel is due to load in the UK or northern Europe for discharge in the eastern Mediterranean or northern Gulf.
Sources said the orders for the other two vessels, one to carry 900 containers and the other a semi-submersible to be used to move landing craft, were also placed Wednesday. Details were not immediately available on their destination.
-------- iraq
Russia Move Killed Deal, Iraqi Says
Reuters
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4401-2002Dec17?language=printer
OTTAWA, Dec. 17 -- Iraq canceled a rich oil deal with Russia's Lukoil because the Russian firm had sought assurances its contract would be honored if Saddam Hussein were removed as Iraq's president, according to an interview published in a Canadian newspaper today.
The National Post reported that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told it in an interview in Baghdad that Lukoil had acted outrageously in seeking to hedge its bets.
"Lukoil went to Washington to get assurances that their contract will be implemented after the removal of the Iraqi regime," the newspaper quoted Aziz as saying.
"This is outrageous of them because they signed a contract with us. . . . " Baghdad scrapped the $3.7 billion deal to develop Iraq's vast West Qurna oilfield last week.
Iraqi officials had said they did so because Lukoil had not worked on the field since the deal was signed in 1997. Lukoil had said it had been waiting for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
----
U.S. Army to Train 1,000 Iraqi Exiles
Troops Would Serve as Guides, Go-Betweens
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3956-2002Dec17?language=printer
LONDON, Dec. 17 -- The United States has accepted 1,000 Iraqi exiles for military training as guides and go-betweens for U.S. forces in a war with Iraq, a contingent that exile leaders hope will grow into the core of a new Iraqi army after President Saddam Hussein is ousted, Iraqis familiar with the training program said today.
The list of those picked for an initial round of training was delivered by Pentagon officials who met with Iraqi opposition groups here on the sidelines of a four-day conference for Democracy and Salvation of Iraq, which concluded today. The roster came from among more than 4,000 names submitted by one of the leading opposition organizations, the Iraqi National Congress.
Training is scheduled to begin soon, an Iraqi National Congress official said, and will take place under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army's European Command. The Bush administration has asked Hungary, a NATO ally, to host the training at Taszar air base, 120 miles southwest of Budapest, where U.S. forces were staged during peacekeeping operations in Bosnia.
"Enough names have been vetted to get the program underway," said an opposition official familiar with the meeting.
"This is not meant to confront the Iraqi army or become an alternative to it," he added. "It is supposed to be an Iraqi force which Iraqi soldiers inside can join, instead of just surrendering to the Americans." Reports from Washington have described the force's main mission as logistics, guiding and translation for American invaders.
The endorsement of a group of Iraqi trainees was seen as another step in military preparations for a possible U.S. offensive to destroy Hussein's three-decade-old rule. U.S. military forces are building up in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Central Command, which would oversee an invasion, has set up a headquarters in the tiny Gulf state of Qatar and today finished a command exercise that amounted to a dress rehearsal for war. An aircraft carrier battle group is on the way and will join three others already there.
While the London exile conference was highly public, the Pentagon held its meeting with 11 Iraqi opposition officials in secret. Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary William Luti presided along with Maj. Gen. David Barno, who Iraqis said will be in charge of training.
The recruits come from the U.S.-protected zone in northern Iraq and from among exiles in Iran and Europe, one exile said. The vetting was designed to weed out Islamic extremists, possible Iraqi government agents and any volunteers who may have human rights crimes in their pasts, he explained.
The process continues, he said, meaning the number of those accepted could rise in the weeks ahead. Most of those picked so far are Arabs. That is, they do not come from the Pesh Merga guerrilla forces organized by the two, often rival Kurdish parties in the north.
Luti told the Iraqis that the new force must be the beginning of a national army and not be controlled by such political factions. "No party militias can join the force," said Nabil Moussawi, an Iraqi National Congress official.
One major opposition group, the Shiite Muslim Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, ignored the call for volunteers. The group has its own military units based in Iran and trained by the Iranian military. Its officials have tried to keep their relations with the United States distant, even though the State Department designated SCIRI one of six approved opposition groups.
"The opposition has a lot of military forces. We can train all we need by ourselves," said Abdul Aziz Hakim, a top SCIRI official.
The London exile conference, meanwhile, advanced what its participants hoped would be political preparations for Hussein's removal.
The opposition groups meeting here unveiled a plan to convene a "pre-transition" committee in northern Iraq's Kurdish-run area within a month. The meeting will take place in the autonomous zone run by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan under the protection of U.S. and British warplanes. Kurdish exile leaders, wary of provoking Hussein, whose troops border the autonomous area, said they have received assurances that the United States will protect them if Iraqi troops attempt an assault.
Delegates cobbled together the names of 65 people for the committee, after much wrangling and round-the-clock mediation by a White House envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad.
Opposition leaders skirted around declaring it a government-in-waiting. But negotiations over membership were intense, reflecting hopes that the committee will form the nucleus of a post-Hussein government. "Everyone says it's not an exile government, but no one wants to be left off," said Laith Kubba, a delegate at the conference.
U.S. officials repeatedly have said they do not foresee turning control of Iraq over to the exile groups in the event the U.S. military invades and occupies the country. Although officials in Washington have said planning is not final, they have spoken of a temporary U.S. military administration and employment of existing Iraqi bureaucracy as much as possible.
While uncertainty enveloped the committee's role, the conference offered a glimpse at problems in Iraq that have been submerged by Hussein's iron-fisted rule.
First, the political emergence of Shiite Muslims, the impoverished Iraqi majority, became a source of friction among well-tailored delegates. Five Shiite Muslim parties walked out of the conference, charging that the SCIRI dominated the Shiite quota of seats. Other long-standing Shiite organizations, including the al-Dawa party, boycotted the conference altogether. An expansion of the committee, which began with 30 members and ended with 65, hinged on a demand that Sunni Muslims, long Iraq's elite ruling force, be given a larger representation.
Despite the disputes, which prolonged the conference by two days, Khalilzad declared it a success. "You have to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's a positive step in the right direction," he said in a statement before returning to Washington.
--------
U.S. Jets Hit Radar in Iraqi No-Fly Zone
Wed, Dec. 18, 2002
PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/4766403.htm
WASHINGTON - Iraqi forces moved a mobile radar unit into the country's southern no-fly zone and American aircraft bombed it Wednesday, defense officials said.
U.S. aircraft used precision-guided weapons to target the radar system near Al Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, officials said.
An unidentified Iraqi military spokesman told the official Iraqi News Agency that the "aggressive U.S.-British warplanes attacked our civil and service installations in Wasit province ... at 11:55 (a.m.) Baghdad time."
"Our courageous anti-aircraft units confronted the warplanes and forced them to leave our skies for their bases in Kuwait," the spokesman added.
American and British coalition planes monitor a northern zone to protect the Kurdish minority from Iraqi forces and Americans fly the southern zone to protect the Shiites. Iraq considers the decade-old restricted zones a violation of its sovereignty and regularly shoots at pilots and uses various air defense equipment to track and harass them.
Hostilities between the Iraqi and coalition pilots have become routine. Other coalition bombings this week were launched on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On Monday coalition aircraft also dropped nearly half a million leaflets over Iraq in the latest warning to Iraqi forces not to shoot at coalition planes and not to rebuild air defenses.
American planes flying in neighboring Kuwait, from which some of the no-fly zone patrols originate, also last week began broadcasting propaganda messages into Iraq criticizing President Saddam Hussein in an effort to weaken his support among his people and, in particular, his military.
President Bush has threatened to unseat Saddam, by military invasion if necessary, if he doesn't give up weapons of mass destruction Bush says he has.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Has 5, 000 Palestinians in Custody
December 18, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-5.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- During months in the West Bank, Israel's army has detained more than 5,000 Palestinian men in roundups that have slowed, but not halted, attacks on Israel.
About 1,000 of those prisoners face indefinite detention without trial -- a status easily renewed every six months.
For Israel's security forces, the roundups that began in March amid an unprecedented wave of Palestinian suicide bombings have proved the most effective tool in limiting attacks. Israeli human rights groups have protested the mass arrests, but with Israelis still facing bombings and shootings, broad public support remains.
``These arrests have directly contributed to the reduction in terror attacks we have witnessed in recent months,'' the army said in a written response to The Associated Press. ``The arrests also provide us with an opportunity to question terrorists and foil future planned attacks.''
Palestinians see the arrests as random and arbitrary. At the peak last summer, troops ordered Palestinian males, from teenagers to the middle-aged, to gather in public places for questioning and locked up anyone arousing suspicion. Thousands were held briefly before being freed.
In other cases, wanted Palestinians are arrested in pinpoint raids.
The Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners says about 5,500 Palestinians arrested since the fighting began in September 2000 remain incarcerated.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli army's chief of staff, told a Cabinet meeting this week the military has arrested 4,700 Palestinians ``involved in terrorism'' since Israel launched a major West Bank incursion in March.
The army said it did not have overall numbers but it did not dispute the Palestinian figures.
Of the total, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been convicted in Israeli military courts and are serving sentences, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and others.
In addition to the 1,000 being held with out charge, about 3,000 are at various stages of the judicial process, from interrogation to trial.
Abdel Karim Barghouti, a 38-year-old money changer in Ramallah, says his case is typical. Detained three times in 1984-1991 for involvement in a banned political group, his record makes him a permanent suspect, he said.
He was stopped at an Israeli roadblock July 28, 2001, near Ramallah. After soldiers checked his identity documents, they began kicking him and shoved him into a military jeep, he said.
He wound up at a military base, and later at the Ashkelon prison in southern Israel, where he was interrogated for up to eight hours a day while sitting in a chair, blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, he said.
``The interrogators spit in my face and said, 'No one leaves this place healthy,''' Barghouti recalled. At night, guards would bang on the doors to keep the detainees from sleeping, saying, ``Why should you sleep while we have to work?''
Barghouti repeatedly was asked about his previous political activity and about the current conflict, but never was accused of anything specific, he said. He was released after two weeks.
Last month, he was stopped at a roadblock and told to go to a military base for ``a cup of coffee'' with Israeli military intelligence. Barghouti turned up, was questioned for about four hours, then told to leave, he said.
Barghouti belongs to the same clan as the most famous prisoner of the current conflict, Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Marwan Barghouti, who is charged with organizing multiple deadly attacks against Israelis, is the first senior Palestinian figure tried in a civilian, rather than military, court.
To accommodate the increasing number of prisoners, Israel has reopened the Ketsiot prison in the Negev Desert. More than 1,000 Palestinians were detained there at the beginning of this month, including 840 under ``administrative detention,'' meaning they can be held indefinitely without charge, B'Tselem said.
During the first Palestinian uprising of 1987-1993, the camp was notorious for its harsh conditions -- overcrowded cells, frequent reports of beatings, excessive heat in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, a lack of family visits. The prison closed in 1996 but reopened in April.
``Many of those recently detained without charge have been subject to torture and ill-treatment,'' said Hisham Abdel Razek, the Palestinian Minister for Prisoners.
Qadoura Fares, a Palestinian lawmaker who formerly headed parliament's human rights committee, was imprisoned in 1980-1994 for throwing a bomb at Israeli soldiers. It failed to detonate.
Prisoners routinely were beaten in those days, he said. At one prison, Israeli guards had three identical clubs -- nicknamed Jesus, Moses and Mohammed -- and asked prisoners which they wanted to be hit with, Fares said.
``For us, this was Israeli democracy -- choosing the club you were beaten with,'' he said.
Beatings have become less common since Israel's Supreme Court outlawed torture in 1999, he said. But Israelis have stepped up psychological pressure and use methods that do not leave any physical signs, he said.
Today, prisoners being interrogated are permitted little or no sleep for days or weeks, Fares said. They are forced to stand for hours as their feet swell with pain.
Interrogators tell a prisoner his relatives have been killed, or that the family home will be demolished if he does not confess, he said.
-------- nato
Clearing the Way for EU-NATO Cooperation
By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4409-2002Dec17?language=printer
Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said yesterday that Turkey has agreed to drop its veto of EU cooperation with NATO in return for a commitment that the island of Cyprus, even if it unifies, will remain outside regional security structures.
The EU is moving toward creating its own rapid reaction force, focused mainly on peacekeeping, which would require that it be given rights to use certain NATO facilities. But as a NATO member, Turkey has been able to veto such access for the EU.
Agreement on the issue was reached on the fringes of last week's landmark summit in Copenhagen on EU expansion. Solana, the key interlocutor, said he had worked over the past two years to clinch the deal and finally devised a set of conditions acceptable to Greece, Turkey and the United States. Over lunch with Washington Post editors and reporters, Solana explained that Turkey "did not want to have a divided Cyprus have anything to do with NATO."
Even if an agreement is reached to unify the island, troops in the Turkish segment will be whittled down to a few thousand. Similarly, forces in the Greek part will not exceed the four-digit mark.
"There will also be a United Nations force. It will become an island that will not be able to participate in any alliance such as NATO and the Partnership for Peace, and that will satisfy both," Solana said of the mechanism that unblocked Turkey's opposition to EU-NATO security arrangements. "At the end of the day, even if the island is unified, it will be demilitarized," he added.
There is still hope of a settlement for Cyprus by the end of February, Solana pointed out, despite the Copenhagen meeting's failure to adopt a U.N. plan for integrating the island, which was divided in 1974.
At the meeting, Cyprus was among 10 countries invited to join the EU in 2004. The United Nations has set Feb. 28 as another target date to bring the resistant Turkish part of the island into the settlement. Solana cited demonstrations there because of the failure of the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, to go along with the U.N. formula. Growing political opposition to Denktash's stance stems from fears of being left behind while Greek Cypriots reap the benefits of EU membership.
Denktash, 78, has been in and out of the hospital in recent weeks and returned home Dec. 7 after heart surgery in New York. Solana said he expected Turkey's new government to pressure Denktash to go along with a solution and an improved draft of the U.N. proposal.
-------- russia / chechnya
Report: 4,705 Russian Soldiers, Officers, Policemen Killed in Chechnya Since October 1999
By Yuri Bagrov
Associated Press Writer
Dec 18, 2002
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA3XKTSU9D.html
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - Russia has lost 4,705 soldiers, officers and policemen in Chechnya since 1999, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday, giving an infrequent official accounting of Moscow's losses in the breakaway republic.
Interfax said that 13,040 other military and police representatives had been wounded between Oct. 1, 1999 and Dec. 15 this year, and that 28 others were missing. It also said that 14,113 rebels had been killed over that period, according to an unnamed source in the Russian military headquarters in Chechnya.
Human rights groups have long accused the military of hiding losses in the more than three-year-old war - Russia's second in Chechnya in a decade. Casualty figures are impossible to verify, and the militants and the government often play up enemy losses while playing down their own.
The respected Soldiers' Mothers of Russia group estimates the casualty figures are more than double the official estimates, based on information from wounded troops and soldiers' relatives. Russian officials gave regular casualty reports throughout the first months of the war but have cut back significantly, perhaps in hopes of preventing public sentiment from building against the war.
Russian media coverage of Chechnya is severely limited since journalists in the war zone are required to be accompanied by military and security minders.
The Russian government has been at pains to show that the war is winding down and that life in Chechnya is returning to normal, but Russian forces are still subject to daily ambushes and mine attacks that kill soldiers and sap morale.
Russian troops withdrew in defeat from Chechnya in 1996, after a 20-month war that left the region de facto independent. They returned in fall 1999, after rebels raided a neighboring Russian region and after a series of apartment house bombings in Moscow that killed some 300 people. Authorities blamed the rebels.
-------- us
U.S. Military Set To Start War Games
12/18/02
KXAN News
http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=1054699
The U.S. military's largest training exercise since the Persian Gulf War is about to take place, only 30 miles from Iraq's border.
The U.S. Army says the timing of the training in Kuwait is coincidental, but it helps prepare commanders for a possible ground invastion of Iraq.
"Of course, we all know what's going on politically," said 1st Lt. Mark Tomlinson, Alpha Company Commander. "And if we are called to go to Iraq, of course we will do our jobs. We're soldiers."
Commanders say the training also sends Saddam Hussein a message that the U.S. is ready for battle.
The exercise begins Friday and will involve more than 4,000 soldiers in troop maneuvers and live-fire training.
----
Projection on Fall Of Hussein Disputed
Ground Forces Chiefs, Pentagon at Odds
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4096-2002Dec17?language=printer
With war possible soon in Iraq, the chiefs of the two U.S. ground forces are challenging the belief of some senior Pentagon civilians that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will fall almost immediately upon being attacked and are calling for more attention to planning for worst-case scenarios, Defense Department officials said.
The U.S. war plan for a possible attack on Iraq, which has been almost a year in the making, calls for a fast-moving ground attack without an overwhelming number of reinforcements on hand. Instead, some follow-on troops would be flown into Iraq from outside the region. Among other things, this "rolling start" would seek to achieve tactical surprise by launching an attack before the U.S. military appears ready to do so.
In addition, the plan calls for some armored units, instead of traveling a predetermined distance and pausing to allow slow-moving supply trucks to catch up, to charge across Iraq until they run into armed opposition and then engage in combat, officials said.
Those aspects of the plan, which appear riskier than usual U.S. military practice, worry the chief of the Army, Gen. Eric Shinseki, and the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James L. Jones, defense officials said.
Shinseki and Jones, who as service chiefs are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have questioned the contention of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other top officials that Hussein's government is likely to collapse almost as soon as a U.S. attack is launched, the officials said.
The two generals are concerned that the Wolfowitz school may underestimate the risks involved, the officials said. They have argued that planning should prepare thoroughly for worst-case scenarios, most notably one that planners have labeled "Fortress Baghdad," in which Hussein withdraws his most loyal forces into the Iraqi capital and challenges the United States to enter into protracted street fighting, perhaps involving chemical or biological weapons.
In an interview last night, Wolfowitz rejected the view that he has been overoptimistic in his views. He said he also believes that, "You've got to be prepared for the worst case." He added: "It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to think they can predict with confidence what the course of a war is going to be." In discussions of the war plan, he said, he has repeatedly emphasized the risk of Hussein "using his most terrible weapons."
The dispute, which is taking place mainly in secret reviews of the war plan, promises to be the last major issue in the Pentagon's consideration of that plan, as more signs point toward forces being ready to launch a wide-ranging, highly synchronized ground and air attack in six to eight weeks. Psychological operations, such as leafleting and broadcasting into Iraq, have been stepped up lately, and there is talk at the Pentagon of large-scale troop movements or mobilizations being announced soon after the holidays.
The debate became more open last week when Jones alluded to it in comments made at a dinner held in his honor by former defense secretary William S. Cohen. Jones is scheduled next month to leave the Marine post to become the commander of U.S. military forces in Europe. At that dinner, Jones indicated that he and other senior officers did not share the "optimism" of others about the ease of fighting in Iraq.
In an interview, Jones said that he did not name who he thought was being overly optimistic. "I did not say, 'folks at the Pentagon,' " he said. "I said I didn't align myself with folks around town who seem to think that this is preordained to be a very easy military operation."
If a victory were swiftly won, he continued: "It is to be celebrated. But military planners should always plan for the worst case." He insisted that in his remarks he had not expressed a conclusion about how quickly Hussein might fall.
He said he believed that he and Shinseki, the Army chief, "are of the same view on this."
If anything, the Army's leadership is even more worried than Jones, said a senior officer who sides with the Wolfowitz view. "The Army really is conservative on this," he said dismissively.
The Army also has qualms about the likely burden of postwar peacekeeping in Iraq -- a mission that is likely to be executed mainly by the Army. "They're concerned they're going to be left holding the bag after everyone else has gone home," said Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who is now director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a small but influential defense think tank.
The chief of the Air Force, Gen. John P. Jumper, is said to side with the Wolfowitz view, believing that the opening round of bombing, combined with an intense propaganda campaign and Special Operations attacks, is likely to topple the government quickly. The fourth service chief, the Navy's Adm. VernClark, sides with Jumper, but not as emphatically, officials said.
The influence of the Joint Chiefs on military policy appears to have diminished under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, so it is not clear what effect the recent round of questioning will have on the war plan.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Rumsfeld confidant, predicted that it would have little. "If the chiefs wanted to be extremely cautious, extremely conservative and design a risk-avoiding strategy, that would be nothing new," he said in an interview.
Gingrich, who also is a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, said he was confident that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in the Mideast, would not be swayed by suggestions that he include more reinforcements and plan a more cautious attack. Franks, he said, "will probably have a more integrated, more aggressive and more risk-taking plan."
----
Pentagon delivers software to assess data on terrorists
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021218-37385050.htm
The Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program, derided as "Big Brother" by privacy advocates, has handed off its first technologies to government agencies, which are using the software to assess intelligence on terrorists.
Pentagon officials say the software tools, named Genoa, let agencies better compare and exchange interpretations of a vast amount of data legally available to such terrorist-tracking agencies as the FBI and CIA.
TIA's most contested work, a computer program designed to track everyday transactions, is still in the experimental stage, officials said.
"We're pleased," said Jan Walker, spokeswoman for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), when asked how its technologies were performing in actual operations.
"As a piece of technology becomes mature enough, and if we can take a prototype and integrate it, we will do that," she said. "We will be doing this over the course of the next five years."
The TIA has come under severe attack in recent weeks from some press outlets and lawmakers who say it will be used to snoop on innocent citizens. TIA advocates say methods outside traditional criminal justice procedures are needed to foil terrorists bent on mass murder. They also say privacy safeguards are planned.
The TIA would seek to create a massive database of billions of transactions - some public, some private. It would attempt to identify whether terrorists leave telltale transaction fingerprints while planning attacks. If so, TIA would find the fingerprints and alert law-enforcement agencies and the military.
"If terrorist organizations are going to plan and execute attacks against the United States, their people must engage in transactions and they will leave signatures in this information space," retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, TIA's program director, said in a speech in the fall.
"Total Information Awareness is our answer. We must be able to detect, classify, identify and track terrorists so that we may understand their plans and act to prevent them from being executed," he said.
The software tools handed over to government agencies in recent months are the first of several TIA components.
The formal name for the new software is Genoa. Compared with other TIA programs, it is considered by privacy advocates and civil libertarians to be perhaps the most benign.
Genoa, on which Adm. Poindexter worked in the private sector before joining DARPA in January, is designed to enhance the sharing and analysis of data legally available to government agencies, Ms. Walker says.
In his speech, Adm. Poindexter said that Genoa provides "tools for collaborative reasoning, estimating plausible futures and creating actionable options for the decision maker."
The tougher road for TIA comes when, or if, Adm. Poindexter's program managers can produce the crown jewel - a supercomputer system that can mine data for telltale terrorist imprints among billions of commercial and government transactions.
If Adm. Poindexter's theory proves to be correct, the Bush administration will face a big hurdle. Many of these transactions remain off-limits to law-enforcement investigators absent a court-authorized subpoena. Administration officials acknowledged in interviews that they would have to ask Congress to ease such rules and convince lawmakers that safeguards existed to protect law-abiding citizens.
DARPA is often on the leading edge of technologies that help the military fight smarter. Some ideas, such as the agency's work to develop the World Wide Web, revolutionized the way people work.
TIA is an umbrella for programs - with such acronyms as TIDES, EARS and GENISYS - that could revolutionize the hunt for Osama bin Laden's terrorists.
The investigation into the September 11 attacks showed that the 19 hijackers involved made scores of credit card, travel and passport transactions as they entered and left the country, and received money to finance the deadly acts.
Adm. Poindexter's vision is a software detection system that could have spotted those pre-September 11 movements as terrorist fingerprints.
"We must become much more efficient and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert it to knowledge, and create actionable options," he said in a recent speech.
Meanwhile, DARPA is getting both encouragement and flack from Capitol Hill. Adm. Poindexter, a figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, briefed the House and Senate armed services committees, which funded TIA in the 2003 defense budget. The House's defense bill lauded one part of TIA, the Genoa collaborative assessment.
The "Big Brother" analogy is being used mostly by Democratic legislators and privacy advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
"What happens is the administration doesn't give a justification for it, they put in no safeguards, they don't talk to people, and these things leak out," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, told ABC.
-------- propaganda wars
[Misleading headline.... et]
Most Favor Nuclear Option Against Iraq
Response Hinges on Use of Chemicals, Bugs
By Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4014-2002Dec17?language=printer
Most Americans favor using nuclear weapons against Iraq if Saddam Hussein attacks U.S. military forces with chemical or biological weapons in a war that the public believes is virtually inevitable, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey found that six in 10 Americans favored a nuclear response if Hussein orders use of chemical or biological weapons on U.S. troops. Slightly more than a third -- 37 percent -- were opposed. Nearly nine in 10 Americans said the United States is headed for war with Iraq, which most Americans believe possesses weapons of mass destruction.
"We need to get Saddam Hussein out of power, even if it means using nuclear weapons, particularly if they attack us with dirty weapons," said Rebecca Wingo, 35, a trucking dispatcher who lives in Johnstown, Ohio. "When you're dealing with people like him, the only thing they understand is brute force."
But the new survey also found that 58 percent of those interviewed would like to see President Bush present more evidence explaining why the United States should use military force to topple the Iraqi leader, up from 50 percent in September. And while most Americans view Iraq as a major threat, fewer than half said it poses an immediate danger to this country.
That finding and others suggest that Bush may be moving faster toward war than the public would prefer. At the time Americans are becoming more certain that war will break out, the survey found they also are growing more wary of the president and his motives for pressing to move quickly with military force against Iraq.
More than half -- 54 percent -- feared that Bush will act too quickly to use force, while 40 percent worried that he won't move quickly enough. And an even larger majority -- 58 percent -- opposed taking military action against Iraq without the support of the United Nations.
"Eventually, yes, I believe we will have to use force," said David Sherman, 49, who delivers medical oxygen and lives outside Grand Rapids, Mich. "But . . . I have not seen enough that would make me give my support for sending troops to go in right now."
Nina Russell, 67, of Mettie, W.Va., said, "It's really looking like war, but I'd like to know more facts about what Iraq has and what our friends plan to do. I worry that Bush has made it personal with Saddam Hussein."
For some Americans, skepticism about Bush's motives make it even more important that the United States secure support from its allies.
"He's got that little smirk on his face," said Brian Rust, 51, a Realtor living in Moneta, Va. "After 9/11, he wants to go out after some of those countries that were behind this and behind that. It concerns me a little bit. That's why I think it's important to have support from other countries, to use their airstrips or at least be able to say we have their support."
Overall, six in 10 -- 62 percent -- said they support using U.S. forces to topple Hussein. But when asked specifically if the United States should send American ground troops to invade Iraq, fewer than half -- 45 percent -- said yes while 50 percent disagreed.
Two-thirds of those interviewed said Bush has done enough to win the backing of other countries, up from barely half three months ago. Among those who say Bush as done enough, seven in 10 favored military strikes against Iraq. But among those who say he needs to do more, 54 percent opposed the military option, a finding that underscores the importance for Bush to secure international backing.
Overall, six in 10 -- 62 percent -- said they support using U.S. forces to topple Hussein. But support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq with ground forces stands at only 45 percent with 50 percent opposed.
A total of 1,209 randomly selected adults were interviewed Dec. 12-15 for this survey. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The poll found that homeland security, the war on terrorism and Iraq dominate the public's agenda, and overwhelm such perennial concerns as education, health care and Social Security. Nearly half of the country said homeland security and the campaign against terrorism were issues they wanted Bush and the Congress to give their "highest" priority. Four in 10 rated the economy and Iraq as a priority.
"After September 11, I'm feeling a little less secure," said Shannon Groskreutz, 22, a recent college graduate in Tallahassee. "I know the world is changing, and we need to concentrate right on making our country safer as well as spreading peace before we go on to other issues."
Barely six weeks after Republicans claimed both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, this mix of defense and security issues has given Bush and the GOP a clear advantage over Democrats. By 2 to 1, the public trusts the Republicans more than Democrats to handle homeland security, terrorism and the situation with Iraq. The two parties are at parity on handling the economy, which barely a third of the public rated as "excellent" or "good."
Democrats hold more modest advantages over the GOP on domestic issues such as health care, education, Social Security and prescription drugs, issues that only a third or fewer Americans now rate as top priorities for Bush and Congress.
The Republican Party, by 44 to 41 percent, continues to be viewed by the public as the party best able to deal with the country's biggest problems.
Bush's overall job approval rating stood at 66 percent. Even larger percentages of Americans said they approved of the way the president is handling the anti-terrorism campaign (79 percent), while two-thirds approved of the way he is dealing with homeland security concerns. Nearly six in 10 -- 58 percent -- approved of the way he is handling the confrontation with Iraq.
Assistant director of polling Claudia Deane contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Artist held after 'boxes of fear' spread chaos on New York subway system
Oliver Burkeman in New York
Wednesday December 18, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,861931,00.html
For months, New Yorkers have feared that terrorists might paralyse America's largest underground system. Then, last week, as train management and union leaders clashed over pay, it looked as if an impending strike would do the same. In the event, though, the feat appears to have been achieved by a 25-year-old conceptual artist from Michigan.
Clinton Boisvert, a newly enrolled student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, was arrested this week and charged with reckless endangerment after dreaming up one of the more provocative art projects of the post-September 11 era: placing 38 black boxes, bearing the word "fear" in white lettering, around the Union Square station, a crucial hub where six lines intersect.
The bomb squad was called in and the station was shut for five hours last Thursday, causing a ripple effect of chaos on the network, as panicked commuters and transit workers feared a terrorist attack.
But in a city still especially alert to people behaving suspiciously in potential target zones, witnesses soon came forward to report seeing two "artsy types" distributing the boxes, a police source was quoted as saying. Police canvassed art schools, and Mr Boisvert turned himself in. His assistant was not charged.
"The bottom line to the whole unfortunate situation is that Clinton had an art project, and it went awry," Mr Boisvert's lawyer, William Stampur, told the New York Post.
"He had no idea about the transit strike. And he's only been in New York three months; I've been trying to explain to him what 9/11 was like here. He feels terrible. He wants to say sorry to New Yorkers, with a capital S."
The NYPD said nobody had immediately reported the boxes when Mr Boisvert was seen distributing them, and that the art student had planned to bring friends to witness the installation the following day.
If convicted, Mr Boisvert could receive up to a year in jail - and a useful boost to his profile as an up-and-coming conceptual artist.
----
U.S. investigates prisoner deaths at Afghan base
Reuters
Wednesday December 18, 2002
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-137939.html
KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Tuesday it had launched a criminal investigation to determine whether ill treatment contributed to the deaths of two prisoners at U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan this month.
It said autopsies showed a detainee who died at the Bagram detention centre on December 10 suffered a heart attack, while another prisoner died a week earlier from "pulmonary embolism" or a blood clot in the lung.
"An investigation has been initiated by the army's criminal investigation division to determine if the circumstances of their detention was related or contributed to their deaths," the U.S. military said in a statement, without identifying the detainees' nationality.
The autopsies were carried out by coalition medical teams which included representatives from Jordan, South Korea and the United States, it said.
U.S. officials have said in the past that between 40 to 80 prisoners are held at any one time at the Bagram centre. They say most are suspected of links to the former Taliban regime or Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which Washington blames for the attacks on the United States on September 11 last year.
The U.S. war on terror has come under increasing criticism from U.N. officials and rights activists for damaging human rights and exacerbating prejudices around the world.
"The war on terrorism has had some damaging effects, I would suggest, on human rights standards across the world," United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello told a news conference on Tuesday in Finland's capital, Helsinki.
-------- courts
The Case for the International Criminal Court
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4372-2002Dec17.html
Henry A. Kissinger's view of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is not only anachronistic (now that 87 countries have made the court a reality), it is also mistaken [op-ed, Dec. 10].
The court's Rome statute and its ancillary documents define the ICC's procedures and the crimes it will try with great detail. Far from usurping national authority, the ICC is a court of last resort that may take up a situation only if no state is able or willing to do so itself. This gives the United States a superior right over the court to investigate and try persons within U.S. jurisdiction. As a backup, the U.N. Security Council can block any ICC investigation indefinitely.
The court is broadly accountable. Through its internal checks and balances the prosecutor, judges and registrar can each oversee the work of the other. Moreover, the court is subject to the Assembly of States Parties, which sets and controls the budget and disciplines judges and court officials.
President Clinton advised his successor not to ratify the Rome statute because he believed that the United States first should resolve its concerns with its allies and friends. Nevertheless, he signed the statute to maintain U.S. influence and credibility by keeping us engaged in completing the court.
The Bush administration has squandered its opportunities to engage allies and protect U.S. interests in the final negotiations. A consistent 65 percent of Americans in polls think that the United States is smart enough to use the ICC's many safeguards to protect "Americans engaged in global responsibilities" and to advance our interests in the final organization of the court.
JOHN WASHBURN
New York
The writer is the senior official at the American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court.
-------- death penalty
Presidential Mercy
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4368-2002Dec17.html
IN TWO YEARS as president, George W. Bush has pardoned two turkeys, in the traditional pre-Thanksgiving ritual. But he has yet to pardon a single human being or commute a single sentence. Christmastime is the usual season for presidential clemency. The White House will not say what clemency actions Mr. Bush may be planning in the last two weeks of the year, but this would be a good time to change that record.
Even before Mr. Bush's arrival, the federal power to pardon was in a decline of sorts. Most pardons in recent years have been largely symbolic acts that have taken place long after convicts have served their sentences; recent presidents have generally preferred locking people up to setting them free. And when presidents have used the power aggressively, they have gotten burned. Bill Clinton left office in disgrace over his spree of last-minute pardons, and Mr. Bush's father stirred controversy at the end of his presidency by pardoning former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. The lesson might be seen as, "Safer to say no."
Yet Mr. Bush has not taken the path of least resistance with other presidential powers; he has fought for them. And few executive powers need a champion today more than the power to forgive. The Founders understood its importance. Alexander Hamilton wrote that the palliative of executive clemency "should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed," for without it, "justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel." A few decades later, Justice Joseph Story presciently worried "that the power will not be sufficiently exerted in cases where public feeling accompanies the prosecution." That is precisely what has happened even as the growth of federal law enforcement -- and the federal inmate population -- has made the power to pardon, in principle, more important than ever. Surely there are some federal prisoners with unjust sentences or sincere and demonstrable rehabilitations. The pardon power gives the president the ability to right such wrongs. To breathe some life back into it, he need only use it in a fashion at once magnanimous and not self-interested. People, even more than turkeys, need presidential grace.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Australia puts off imposing cap on ethanol in fuel
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
December 18, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19118/newsDate/18-Dec-2002/story.htm
CANBERRA - The Australian government said on Tuesday that evidence about mixing ethanol in petrol was inconclusive, putting aside any decision on whether to impose a maximum limit on ethanol content in fuel until next year.
Ethanol has attracted international attention as a clean fuel that can be distilled from crops such as grains and sugar cane, with fuel containing 20 percent ethanol available in the Sydney market since 1994.
But the government has come under fire from motoring groups for being slow to apply national fuel standards to ethanol levels, fearing strong blends may damage car engines and calling for a 10 percent limit.
Environment Minister David Kemp said cabinet, meeting on Tuesday, reviewed the evidence of the impact of blends of 20 percent ethanol in petrol on the operability, emissions and durability of engines.
"(Cabinet) reaffirmed its view that the evidence for the impact of blends between 10 and 20 percent is presently inconclusive," Kemp said in a statement.
"The government is currently conducting vehicle testing to clarify these impacts, prior to the development of a soundly based National Fuel Standard."
The government expects to receive this report next year.
But, in the meantime, Kemp called on the country's six state governments to ensure levels of ethanol in petrol are labelled at the pump, stressing it was their responsibility.
Kemp said a sampling programme by Environment Australia from April 2002 had taken 586 samples from petrol stations around the country and found 55 of these, or 9.4 percent, contained ethanol.
While no one claimed 10 percent ethanol blends have an adverse impact on engines, early testing with one type of marine two-stroke engine found stalling may occur when the throttle is opened from low speed, even with a 10 percent blend, creating a possible safety hazard, Kemp said.
Existing Australian ethanol production is comparatively small-scale, with total capacity of about 130 million litres, and mainly for export to Asian markets as an alcohol additive.
-------- environment
EU Parliament OKs New Recycling Laws
By PAUL AMES
Associated Press Writer
Dec 18, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RECYCLING?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The European Parliament adopted laws Wednesday requiring manufacturers to pay for the recycling of electrical goods ranging from shavers to refrigerators and laptop computers.
The European Union's assembly, meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted by an overwhelming show of hands to approve the "electroscrap" laws after more than three years of debate.
Under the new rules, the EU hopes 75 percent of such goods can be recycled. The law is due to come into force in September, 2005.
The EU estimates old appliances account now for some 6 million tons of waste across Europe, most of which goes into landfills.
Karl-Heinz Florenz, the German conservative who steered the bill through Parliament, said it would "meet the needs of consumers, environmentalists and industry."
Manufacturers estimated the rules could cause them to spend $7.7 billion a year to collect and dispose of the waste.
They warn the costs could be passed on to consumers, ranging from 50 cents for a small appliance such as a coffee maker to up to $20 for a fridge.
However, companies generally welcomed the new rules as a pragmatic solution to the environmental problems caused by electroscrap.
They were pleased that each manufacturer will pay for recycling its own waste once the plan is fully operational, instead of sharing costs across the industry.
"A level playing field is vital. Manufacturers should never be forced to pay for other than their own waste," said Luigi Meli, director general of the European Committee of Electric Equipment Manufacturers.
Producers will, however, have to share the costs of disposing of equipment sold before the law comes into force.
Four leading electrical manufactures - Electrolux, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Braun - met in Brussels this week to consider how best to gather and dispose of old goods.
"Our aim is to identify high-quality recycling services on the best terms for the European market to minimize the costs passed onto consumers," Hans Korfmacher of Germany's Braun said Monday.
The law also told EU governments to "take appropriate measures" against companies that design equipment specifically to prevent reuse, forcing customers into buying new goods.
Officials said the measure was aimed at producers of computer printer ink cartridges who introduced design features to thwart refilling.
The new laws will also ban the use of toxic substances such as lead, mercury and cadmium in household appliances by 2006.
----
EPA targets sludge in Potomac
By Audrey Hudson
December 18, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021218-98869430.htm
The Environmental Protection Agency has reversed its position on the safety of massive sludge dumping in the Potomac River and has proposed strict regulations for future discharges by the Army Corps of Engineers.
A permit from the EPA has for decades allowed the Corps to dump sludge with the consistency of crude oil into the river just miles from the White House. The dumping was first reported by The Washington Times.
A new permit being proposed today by the EPA would reduce the sediment load 99 percent and require environmental studies on the sludge's effect on the river and endangered species.
"We think this will be a strong protective permit," said Don Welsh, the EPA's Region 3 administrator.
Tom Jacobus, general manager of the Washington Aqueduct, said the new permit contains "stricter limits" but that it is too soon to tell how to achieve the new requirements.
The sludge comes from the aqueduct's treatment of drinking water at a facility near Georgetown that supplies to 1 million residents in Washington and Northern Virginia. The aqueduct then dumps the resulting sludge into the Potomac.
"What is important is that we need a permit to continue operations, and we look forward to working with the EPA in getting a final permit on the street, and, as always, we will work to comply with the permit," Mr. Jacobus said.
More than 10 million pounds of sludge are dumped each year. The largest single discharge contained 240,000 milligrams per liter of suspended solids, said Rob Gordon, president of the National Wilderness Institute, which is suing the government to stop the discharges.
Municipalities are typically allowed to discharge 10 to 30 milligrams per liter, and the highest allowed is 60 milligrams per liter. The new permit would restrict dumps to a monthly average of 30 milligrams and 60 milligrams per liter a day.
"EPA's announcement is a confession that this midnight sludge dumping in the nation's capital violates the Endangered Species and Clean Water Act," Mr. Gordon said.
"The new draft permit is a good first step, but the devil will be in the details, and serious questions remain, including why they had to be compelled to stop something they knew was illegal," Mr. Gordon said.
Further discharges of chlorine, which is harmful to aquatic life, also would be forbidden. Discharges of aluminum, which tests have shown are going into the river in huge quantities, would be limited to an average of 4 milligrams per liter over a month and no more than 8 milligrams per liter on any single day. The concentration of aluminum currently being dumped in the Potomac River is thousands of milligrams higher than the EPA's nationally recommended water-quality criterion, Mr. Gordon said.
"I am quite pleased that EPA is prepared to issue a mea culpa and take steps to end such an indefensible practice," said Rep. George P. Radanovich, California Republican and the leading critic on Capitol Hill of the discharges.
"As if the blatant Clean Water Act violation weren't enough, the Corps dumps this toxic sludge through a national park and directly into the primary spawning ground of the endangered short-nose sturgeon," Mr. Radanovich said.
The new permit prohibits any discharges Feb. 15 through June 30, when fish are spawning and hatching.
The EPA presented a draft permit in March and has been taking public comment. Mr. Welsh credited the public comment for changing the permit.
"We did make significant changes in the permit, and that's what the public comment period is for: to find thoughtful ways to make a stronger permit," Mr. Welsh said.
In a related court filing, the EPA included an Army Corps of Engineers memo saying that dumping sludge into the Potomac River protects fish by forcing them to flee the polluted area and escape fishermen.
The document, which The Times quoted in June, says it is not a "ridiculous possibility" that a discharge "actually protects the fish in that they are not inclined to bite (and get eaten by humans) but they go ahead with their upstream movement and egg laying."
"To suggest that toxic sludge is good for fish because it prevents them from being caught by man is like suggesting that we club baby seals to death to prevent them from being eaten by sharks. It's ludicrous," Mr. Radanovich said then.
The new permit is expected to go into effect in February and lasts five years. The Corps has that period to bring treatment plants at the Dalecarlia and McMillian water-treatment plants into compliance. Construction of a treatment facility is one option, but Mr. Jacobus said they will explore several alternatives to meet the new standards.
The discharges can continue but only when the river is at a high flow, to dilute the effect on the river, and will not be allowed during spawning season.
"It will be much more protective of the river," Mr. Welsh said.
-------- human rights
Mayors' study: Hunger, homelessness up
By Kathy A. Gambrell
UPI White House Reporter
12/18/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021218-015901-6899r
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- The U.S. Conference of Mayors is calling on the federal government to provide more assistance with rising hunger and homelessness in the United States as the group released a report Wednesday that showed the demand for emergency food assistance and shelter has risen dramatically.
"The world's richest and most powerful nation must find a way to meet the basic needs of all its residents," said Boston Mayor and Conference President Thomas Menino. "To address hunger and homelessness we must all work together to confront our national affordable housing crisis and turn around our sluggish economy."
The U.S. Conference of Mayors 18th annual report surveyed 25 major cities, all of which showed an increase in 10 percent demand for food and housing assistance since last year. It comes as the White House and the nation is struggling to overcome a sluggish U.S. economy with a 6 percent unemployment rate in November.
The mayors called the spike in hunger and homelessness a "national disgrace."
The cities polled were: Boston, Burlington, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Louisville, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, St. Louis, St. Paul, Trenton and Washington, D.C.
Menino said the federal government had to play a greater role and provide local jurisdictions with more resources.
"They're finding money for Iraq and Afganistan. They have to take care of people here at home as part of the domestic agenda," Menino said. "Why are they the last in the running for help? The answer is they have no voice. Well, the mayors are going to be that voice," Menino told United Press International.
The report also stated the demand for emergency shelter for homeless families grew by 20 percent, with 88 percent of the cities surveyed reporting an increase. Single men made up 41 percent of the homeless population, families with children was also 41 percent, single women 13 percent and unaccompanied minors, 5 percent.
New York City Municipal System showed 37,721 people in its facilities in November 2002, up from 28, 737 in 1987. Those figures are up from a low of slightly above 20,000 in 1997, according to the city's Coalition for the Homeless.
The group is asking the Bush administration and Congress to support a national housing agenda that includes creation of national affordable housing trust fund, homeownership tax credit and expanded employer-assisted housing. It is also calling on Congress to consider Bush's request for aid to the homeless, as part of a comprehensive plan to end homelessness within the next decade.
Families with children demanding food assistance rose an average of 17 percent and requests for help from seniors grew by an average of 19 percent. The increase in hunger was the result of a variety of factors, officials said. Among them are high housing costs, low-paying jobs, unemployment, medical costs, poverty, substance abuse, reduced public benefits and child care costs.
In Chicago, the Illinois Hunger Coalition which runs a toll-free Hunger Hotline, showed a 45 percent increase. The Greater Chicago Food Depository which provides food to more than 600 agencies showed a 12 percent rise in demand.
Denver, Colo., officials said the number of families with children seeking food help grew because many of the parents have been laid off from work or have a tough time finding a job that pays a living wage. They use the food bank and food stamps to make ends meet. And in Kansas City, Kansas, the number of elderly people seeking food assistance this year was 35,657, up from 15,752 a year earlier.
Tom Lawry who heads the Manna Food Center outside of Washington, D.C., told United Press International that the demand for food from his pantry has risen 10 percent over 2001.
"I have 111 families about to show up in about three minutes," Lawry said. "It's an usually high number for us to handle.We haven't had numbers like that since 1995, 96, 97, when there was a huge immigration influx. I don't know if they're unemployed. Right now, it's a mixture of all kinds of people coming in."
The mayors said they want to encourage the Bush administration to expand and improve federal nutrition programs and adopt policies that ensure the national school lunch program remains accessible to all children. They called on Congress to streamline federal anti-hunger programs by reducing burdensome paperwork.
Lawry said the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided most of the food he distributes, but that local supermarkets such as Safeway and Food Lion have channeled their increasing amount of unsold goods to help hungry families.
-------- ACTIVISTS
China proposes human rights visit
By Joe McDonald
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 18, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021218-2501622.htm
BEIJING - China has agreed to issue unconditional invitations to U.N. investigators to come and study issues of torture, religious freedom and arbitrary detention, an American envoy said yesterday after two days of human rights talks.
The officials also said they will invite leaders of a U.S. government-financed commission on religious freedom to visit China, according to Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner, the State Department's top human rights official.
Mr. Craner said he took the promise of invitations to U.N. investigators as a sign that China's communist government is serious about trying to improve its human rights record.
"You usually don't invite those people unless you're serious about addressing the issues they will raise," he said.
No date was set for the U.N. visits, Mr. Craner said, but "they said they would issue the invitations immediately."
China promised earlier this year to arrange a visit by the U.N. torture investigator. But the U.N. human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, said they had not agreed to U.N. demands that he be allowed to visit prisons of his choice and talk in private with inmates.
"What is important about this renewed invitation is that it is unconditional," Mr. Craner said.
In addition, he said China had promised to invite U.N. investigators to look into issues of religious freedom and arbitrary detention - both areas rife with accusations of Chinese government abuses.
The talks this week in Beijing were part of a periodic series of U.S.-Chinese human rights contacts.
China usually rejects scrutiny of its human rights record as interference in its affairs. But it has carried out such dialogues since the mid-1990s with the United States, the European Union and other governments.
Mr. Craner's comments were a rare departure from foreign governments' reluctance to release details of their talks.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said the talks "enhanced understanding" - a typical assessment of such meetings - but gave no details.
Mr. Craner met Monday with Vice Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, a former ambassador to Washington, and also with officials of the Justice Ministry, religious affairs agency and Communist Party.
Rights activists had called on Mr. Craner to press Chinese officials for specific commitments and a timetable for improvements and to release political prisoners.
They asked the Americans to take up the case of Lobsang Dhondup, a Tibetan who was sentenced to death this month in connection with a series of bombings in western China. Mr. Dhondup is an aide to Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist leader who received a suspended death sentence in the case.
Activists also have appealed for pressure on China to release Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim businesswoman imprisoned for sending newspapers to her activist husband abroad; and pro-democracy activist Xu Wenli, who is serving a 13-year prison term.
--------
Activists in Egypt Say Iraq War Spells Death, Chaos
December 18, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-egypt-conference.html
CAIRO (Reuters) - Anti-war activists from Egypt and around the world Wednesday forecast bloodshed, anger and years of chaos in the Middle East if the United States wages war against Iraq.
Amid expectations that Washington would move a step closer to war this week by declaring Iraq in ``material breach'' of a U.N. disarmament resolution, intellectuals and lawmakers meeting in Cairo accused Washington of using war to snatch Iraqi oil, dominate the region and stay the sole superpower.
``I can't think of any good consequences. I think the probability is it (war) would result in thousands of deaths on top of hundreds and thousands of deaths,'' former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark told Reuters.
``The anger and frustration that would arise from it could spread not only throughout this region but elsewhere, and create violence and instability for years to come,'' he said on the sidelines of a conference to highlight the danger of a conflict.
Ashraf el-Bayoumi, an Egyptian professor and one of the conference organizers, accused Washington of ``launching an attack on Iraq, occupying Iraq, usurping its natural resources, oil and otherwise, in order to continue being the solo superpower in the world.''
The two-day meeting reflects rising concern in Egypt, a vital U.S. ally in the Arab world, about an imminent strike against Iraq. President Hosni Mubarak has said a war would be a ``catastrophe for everyone.'' Most Egyptians fear average Iraqis would suffer most.
Egypt has urged Washington to give weapons inspections a chance and seek to avert conflict. But analysts say Cairo, which receives $2 billion a year in U.S. aid, could face a dilemma if war starts, and may have to curb criticism to avoid alienating the United States.
WAR FEARED IMMINENT
Clark, one of several international activists at the conference, said: ``An attack on Iraq is obviously unlawful, it is criminal. Genocide is already being committed by the United States against Iraq.''
He said a strike ``builds toward world domination and it has to be stopped and it is an urgent issue because it can happen in the next three months,'' before the summer heat sets in.
Among others attending the conference was former U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, who resigned in 1998 to protest against the effect of sanctions against Baghdad.
Halliday said Washington, by accusing Baghdad of materially breaching the tough new UN resolution, ``plans to undermine the work of inspections and the work of the Iraqi government.''
``The United States doesn't want a peaceful solution. They want an excuse to go to war, to conquer Iraq and control its oil,'' he said.
``Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, may be at risk and can be killed...We will see a great deal of unrest and instability (in the Arab world),'' Halliday said.
Clark said United States was determined to proclaim material breach regardless of facts on the ground. ``It is obsessed with a determination, a passion to attack Iraq, and to change the government there,'' he said.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.