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NUCLEAR
China Concerned by Missile Defense Plan
Iraqi Children Ask: Isn't America Fed Up With Killing Yet?
U.S. Sets Late January Decision on Iraq War
IAEA Tells UN Nothing New in Iraq Nuke Declaration
Powell and U.S. Ambassador Cite Gaps in Iraqi Report
U.K. Provides Intelligence to Inspectors
Sources Say Iran Lays Groundwork For Nuclear Bombs
U.S. Congratulates Roh, Predicts Cooperation
Abductees Take Stand Against N. Korea
Pentagon plans defense against Mideast missiles
The Missile Rush
Russia Has Warning, and Overture, on Missile Plan
Moscow Miffed Over Missile Shield but Others Merely Shrug
Claims to Block Nuke Waste Plan Rejected
U.S. Weighs How Serious an Arms-Violation Charge to Make Against Baghdad
MILITARY
Ivory Coast pulls France into biggest African venture since Rwanda
Amnesty: Nigeria Troops Kill Thousands
Fate of Titanium Mining Awaits Kenya Polls
General Dynamics to Buy GM's Defense Unit
Iraq's Shortage of Medicine May Grow More Severe
'Scorched Earth' Plans in Iraq Cited
Kurdish Fighters Don't Expect Call From U.S.
Israeli Police Evict 200 Jewish Settlers
Iraq, Iran, and September 11: A Chronology
Putin Fires Commander Of Troops in Chechnya
CIA Establishing Spy Centers in Islamic Countries
'Material Breach' Needs More Than US Pronouncement
Pentagon Plans $1B Expansion for Forces
Navy Vessels to Launch Cruise Missiles
Pentagon seeks to detect people by odor
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Calif. Muslims Detained in Crowded, Cold Centers
American Samoa Faces Flap Over Security Alert
Demonstrators Protest INS Registration
EU Nations to Share Terror Data With U.S.
ENERGY AND OTHER
Germany approves second offshore wind project
Public Welcomed into EU Environmental Decisionmaking
Conservationists Warn Bush Will Dismantle Safeguards
Big Banks Step Up Efforts Against I.M.F. Debt-Relief Plan
ACTIVISTS
Thousands March in Argentina to Mark Deadly Riots
FOE_NUCLEAR: Ending the year on a positive note...
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
China Concerned by Missile Defense Plan
December 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US-Missile-Defense.html
BEIJING (AP) -- China expressed cautious concern Thursday at the United States' announcement that it would develop a missile-defense program, saying the deployment of any such system ``should not undermine the security and stability of the world.''
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the Chinese government is evaluating the Bush administration's announcement.
``We worry about the possible negative impact on regional stability of a missile-defense system. We hope the relevant parties will act prudently,'' Liu said at a regular briefing, answering a question raised by a reporter for China's government-run Xinhua News Agency.
``Only through the good cooperation of the international community can we effectively solve the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,'' Liu said. ``The missile-defense system should not undermine the security and stability of the world. Neither should it undermine global and regional security.''
President Bush ordered the Pentagon on Tuesday to have ready within two years a basic system to defend 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 Bush announced that Washington would withdraw from the 30-year-old agreement.
Liu wouldn't say whether China would add missiles to its arsenal or change its military deployments in response to the news.
``China, in accordance with its national defense needs, will make the appropriate deployments,'' he said.
Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a blistering response Wednesday to the U.S. plan, saying it would destabilize the world and lead to a ``new senseless arms race.''
Beijing is wary of any U.S. military plans that would change the region's strategic outlook, but it is loath to criticize Washington of late.
Both sides have taken pains to characterize their relationship as on the upswing, and recent high-level military visits -- including two in the past week -- have restored defense ties cut back after a collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea early last year.
Among other Asian nations, Vietnam reacted cautiously to the American announcement. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh expressed concern Thursday ``over actions which may lead to a new arms race.''
``Vietnam's position is that all nations should have efforts aimed at comprehensive and complete disarmament, especially nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction,'' Thanh said at a briefing.
In India, Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna declined comment on the U.S. plans.
-------- depleted uranium
Iraqi Children Ask: Isn't America Fed Up With Killing Yet?
By Aws Al-Sharqi,
IOL Iraq correspondent BAGHDAD,
December 19
IslamOnline
http://www.islam-online.net/English/news/2002-12/19/article06.shtml
The long drawn-out sanctions the United States has imposed on Iraq have already wiped away the children's smiles, and now with a proposed U.S. war looming on the horizons, fear lurks in every family home, and can especially be seen on the children's faces.
Instead of sitting on school chairs at their desks in kindergartens or schools, the children of Iraq have been pushed into the world of work, polishing up their talents to look for all and any type of employment, heedless of the summer heat and winter cold.
Laith Abdel Qader, a 15 year old boy, works in the shoeshine business told IslamOnline, "I left school to support my father who is ill, as well as my younger siblings."
"My mother died of poverty," he says matter-of-factly, "My father couldn't afford to get her medicine... That's why I have to go to work."
"I work from dawn to dusk to get my daily wages," Laith says.
Laith wishes he could go back to school so he could, along with his peers, learn to read and write.
"I want to be an officer in the Iraqi army so I can take revenge on the Americans and British who destroyed our country these past years."
"I will never forget the shelling that destroyed my aunt's house," Laith remembers.
"I will never forget my cousin, Jaafar, getting killed by their bombs. And his three sisters, all of my aunt's children, were killed in the war that Bush the father waged against us."
With the innocence that only children can possess, he asked, "What do the Americans want from us?"
"Aren't they fed up with killing and destroying?"
Hammam Hussein Khoga, 13 years old, is working in a garage that repairs car engines. His father is still serving in the Iraqi army in the Basra province, and Hammam believes that his duty is to help his family get by.
"I told my father: don't worry about us while you are protecting the country. Even my little sister encourages him, saying: Allah will make you triumphant over Bush and his gang."
Ibrahim Jaber, 14 years old, is a waiter in a coffee shop. "I work both the morning and night shift to help my mother."
"My father was martyred in the 1991 war, and my mother has no one else to support her."
"Every day," Ibrahim adds, "my mother prays that Allah will keep all evil away from Iraq and its people."
"I hope I will become a soldier so I can protect my country against the American aggressors. I want to kill the people who killed my father."
Eleven-year-old Jawad Saeed Hady goes to school everyday - but not to study. Instead, he spreads out his goods near a school, trying to cater to the luckier students' needs.
Jawad's mother makes sweets at home which he sells in front of the school, in an attempt to do his share supporting his family. His father suffers from chronic asthma and can not work.
On the streets and at the petrol stations, Abd El-Salam sells incense sticks. "I have been working in this trade with my brothers since four years ago. We had to leave school after our father was paralyzed from taking medicine that was expired because of the sanctions that have been around for more than twelve years.
Magda Kazem flits around the streets, selling lottery tickets. "My mother," she says, "has been coming along with me ever since my father died of cancer."
"My father got cancer from being exposed to depleted uranium during the war," she says.
Magda's mother bemoans her daughter's situation which forced her to leave school for financial needs, and prays, "May Allah expel the Americans and Israelis and make Iraq triumphant over its greedy enemies."
Maged Amin Qassem is just nine years old. However, he helps his father collect recyclable material like glass, plastic, and old household pottery from the garbage.
Maged talks bitterly about his father's suffering when one of his hands was amputated after a shell explosion near the Kuwaiti border, when he was working as a border guard.
Maged was obliged to leave school to help his handicapped father.
"I still dream of going back to school. I want to continue my education, and this will not happen until the sanctions are lifted, so that life can return to normal."
"My family talks to me about how it beautiful it all was before the sanctions," Maged says.
"That's because ever since I was born until now, I have been living under sanctions."
-------- inspections
U.S. Sets Late January Decision on Iraq War
By Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9422-2002Dec18?language=printer
The Bush administration has set the last week in January as the make-or-break point in the long standoff with Iraq, and is increasingly confident that by then it will have marshaled the evidence to convince the U.N. Security Council that Iraq is in violation of a U.N. resolution passed last month and to call for the use of force, officials said yesterday.
In a boost to the administration's position, Hans Blix, the United Nations' chief weapons inspector, plans to tell the Security Council today that Iraq failed to account fully for chemical and biological bombs and warheads it had assembled as well as materials it bought that could be used to produce more of them, U.N. and administration officials said.
After Blix offers his preliminary assessment in New York of the arms declaration that Iraq submitted 10 days ago, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell plans to deliver the administration's reaction at the State Department in which he will declare that Iraq failed to fully disclose its past and present weapons programs, officials said.
In disclosing their plans, administration officials offered the clearest timetable to date of how they would like to see the inspections process brought to a head. They are pointing to Jan. 27, when Blix is scheduled to make his first substantive report to the Security Council on Iraq's weapons declaration as well as the Baghdad government's cooperation with inspectors already on the ground and in making Iraqi scientists involved in banned weapons programs available for interviews with U.N. officials.
That date falls within the late January to early February window U.S. military planners have said is the optimum moment to launch an invasion of Iraq.
Administration officials said that waiting until late January, rather than pushing for the Security Council to declare Iraq is in material breach of the resolution based on the arms declaration alone, will suffice to demonstrate the United States' commitment to an international approach to ridding Iraq of its long-range missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
The additional month, officials said, will also provide enough time to put together a case against Baghdad that Iraq will not be able to refute and even the most skeptical Security Council members will be unable to ignore. President Bush has made clear that he is prepared to move militarily against Iraq, with or without the United Nations, once the case has been made.
Powell said yesterday that other Security Council members share the U.S. assessment that the Iraqi declaration contains "troublesome" gaps and omissions. Once Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, make their report today, he said, "we'll . . . work with our partners in the Security Council to determine the way to go forward."
"We are not encouraged that [the Iraqis] have gotten the message or will cooperate, based on what we have seen so far in the declaration," Powell said. "But we will stay within the U.N. process."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that "the United States will continue to be deliberative in this matter, but this was Saddam Hussein's last chance." Noting Bush's Sept. 12 speech to the U.N. General Assembly in which he challenged the world body to confront Iraq on its outlawed weapons programs, Fleischer said, "I think it's important to allow a process that the president asked to begin, to take its course."
Senior administration officials have decided that the best way to hold the coalition of countries opposed to Iraq together is to permit the U.N. inspections to continue, officials said, because they are convinced Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will never disarm or provide the details being sought on his weapons programs. They also believe that once a system is worked out in which the U.N. inspectors begin making requests to interview Iraqi scientists or technicians outside the country, Hussein may block the process and create a direct material breach of the U.N. resolution. The resolution spelled out procedures for conducting the interviews.
In his presentation today, Blix plans to go down a list of unanswered questions raised in 1999 by the report of the previous U.N. weapons investigators, including Iraq's failure to account for tons of the nerve agent VX and the precursor materials to make more, U.N. and U.S. officials said. He also plans to list 550 artillery shells with mustard gas, 157 bombs that at one time were filled with either anthrax or other biological agents, and a number of warheads that showed traces of VX.
The Swedish diplomat is particularly concerned with Iraq's failure to deal with these matters because he and El Baradei had specifically warned Iraqi officials in Baghdad last month that they should go through their records on these weapons. "They at least expected Saddam Hussein would toss them a bone and instead they didn't even get a crumb," one U.N. official said yesterday.
In 1995, after denying in 1991 it had any biological warfare program, Iraq admitted it had produced 166 R-400 bombs that were filled with biological agents including anthrax spores. It also said that during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 the bombs were taken from military facilities and buried at two locations, one along the Euphrates River.
When the war ended, the Iraqis said they destroyed all the bombs by blowing them up at two separate sites. While they described in detail the manner of the destruction, they never produced documents on who ordered or carried out the destruction.
A senior Iraqi official recently told the U.N. inspectors that it was a great mistake to have "obliterated" records of the nation's biological weapons program, officials said.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw joined Powell and Blix yesterday in questioning the Iraq report. "There are some obvious omissions," Straw said, citing failing to include "large quantities of nerve agent, chemical precursors and munitions" that had been disclosed in the 1990s. "It seems that Saddam Hussein has decided to continue the pretense that Iraq has had no WMD [weapons of mass destruction] program since [the previous U.N. inspectors] left in 1998," he said.
The State Department's top liaison with the U.N. inspection agencies, John S. Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, made a similar case in meetings in Washington yesterday with some of the 10 nonpermanent members of the Security Council before he left for New York last night to meet with El Baradei.
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, on a trip to Qatar in the Persian Gulf region, told reporters that judgment on Iraq's declaration should await results from the U.N. arms inspectors. "The ball is now in the court of the inspectors and it is their duty to evaluate the document and check on whether Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction," she said.
At the United Nations, Syria's deputy U.N. ambassador, Fayssal Mekdad, returned the excised copy of the Iraqi arms declaration given to his government. "Either we take a full copy or we don't take anything," he said.
At the Bush administration's request, the Security Council's current president, Alfonso Valdivieso of Colombia, decided that the 10 nonpermanent members of the body should receive excised copies of the declaration on the grounds that some material could contain information on building weapons of mass destruction.
As a result, the U.N. inspectors removed almost 8,500 pages of the original 12,000 supplied by Baghdad in the copies turned over to the nonpermanent members, while only the council's five permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- received the full copy.
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
----
IAEA Tells UN Nothing New in Iraq Nuke Declaration
Reuters
Thursday, December 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12062-2002Dec19?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency told the Security Council on Thursday that Iraq's declaration on its nuclear program contained nothing new compared to its last statements to nuclear inspectors in 1998.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the important issue now was verifying through inspections and intelligence Iraq's assertion that it had no nuclear weapons program.
"Iraq's current declaration of its nuclear program prior to 1991 contains no substantive changes from the FFCD (declaration) provided to the IAEA in 1998," ElBaradei said, according to a text of his statement made available to Reuters.
"The declaration does contain numerous clarifications, but does not include any additional documentation related to areas which were identified in previous IAEA reports as requiring further clarification, particularly weapons design or centrifuge development," he told the Security Council.
--------
Powell and U.S. Ambassador Cite Gaps in Iraqi Report
December 19, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that it considered Iraq in ``material breach'' of a U.N. resolution over its arms declaration, a term that could trigger war against the Arab nation.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told the Security Council that Iraq was in ``material breach'' because of omissions in its 12,000-page arms declaration.
Although the phrase contained in a tough new U.N. resolution against Baghdad could be used by Washington to justify war against Iraq, U.S. officials have said that using those words at this stage did not mean an attack was imminent.
Nevertheless, by saying that gaps in Baghdad's document constituted a material breach, Negroponte fired the opening salvo in piling up charges of serious violations against Iraq.
He said ``significant omissions'' in the document constituted a material breach, according to diplomats at the meeting.
The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said before Thursday's Security Council meeting that Iraq's arms declaration contained little new information, a conclusion echoed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Blix told Reuters he would tell the U.N. Security Council that gaps remained in Baghdad's 12,000-page account of its past and current weapons program.
Speaking just before he addressed the Council in closed session, he said the dossier contained little that had not been declared by Baghdad before 1998, when U.N. arms experts were last in Iraq.
``There is a good bit of information about non-arms related activities,'' he said. ``Not much information about the weapons ... The absence of supporting evidence is what we are talking about, mainly.''
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, also planned to tell the Security Council that Iraq's declaration on its nuclear program contained nothing new compared to its last statements to nuclear inspectors in 1998.
Washington had been expected to say the gaps put Iraq in violation of a U.N. resolution on disarmament, but has insisted the omissions will not be an immediate trigger for war.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Iraq's weapons declaration left some areas unexplained but added he was confident U.N. inspections would fill in the gaps.
``There are some gray areas but we trust in Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei to complement that declaration,'' Villepin told France Info radio.
In Baghdad, presidential adviser Amir al-Saadi told a news conference that Iraq was not worried by accusations that its weapons declaration contained little new.
``We are not worried. It's the other side that is worried because there is nothing they can pin on us,'' Saadi said just before Blix started his report to the Security Council.
``THERE IS NOTHING NEW,'' IRAQ SAYS
``We don't expect Blix and ElBaradei to say there is anything new,'' Saadi said, indicating Iraq had nothing to add to previous information it had given on past programs.
A text of ElBaradei's address was released by the IAEA in Vienna. He told the Security Council: ``The declaration does contain numerous clarifications, but does not include any additional documentation related to areas which were identified in previous IAEA reports as requiring further clarification, particularly weapons design or centrifuge development.''
Diplomats said Blix was not expected to characterize the document as a violation, as Washington did.
Negroponte in New York and Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington planned to deliver the U.S. administration's reaction publicly after Blix had spoken.
The U.N. resolution was aimed at forcing Baghdad to disclose and eliminate any programs it has to make biological, chemical or nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.
Iraq denies it has such programs.
Blix said cooperation with his inspectors, who returned to Iraq last month to search for banned weapons, had been good.
``We are going to say that there's been prompt access to sites all over and there has been a good deal of help on the logistical side,'' he said.
President Bush has threatened to disarm Iraq by force if it does not come clean on whether it has weapons of mass destruction or is trying to acquire them.
But it remains unclear whether Washington will declare Iraq in ``material breach'' of the resolution -- language that could ultimately lead to war.
BRITAIN SEES BIG GAPS
Britain said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was not in material breach ``so far,'' but that his declaration had big gaps.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said British troops would not be going to war ``tomorrow'' and Britain's ``absolute clear preference'' was for any military action to be approved in a second U.N. resolution.
Syria said on Thursday it was boycotting the Security Council talks on the Iraqi declaration in protest at receiving an edited, 3,500-page copy. It said it wanted the full version that was given to the five permanent Council members.
The U.N. resolution adopted last month gave Baghdad one last chance to disarm or face ``serious consequences.''
--------
U.K. Provides Intelligence to Inspectors
December 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq-Intelligence.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Britain is already providing intelligence to help U.N. inspectors search for signs of secret Iraqi weapons programs, a British official said Wednesday. But diplomats said the United States is still holding back critical information.
The disclosure that Britain is assisting inspectors followed British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's dismissal of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration as an ``obvious falsehood.''
The United States and Britain claim Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction -- which Iraq vehemently denies. Inspectors want intelligence from Washington and London to determine whether their claims are true or false.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix ``has made it clear many times that if we are to be effective, we do need timely information from member states that may possess it. Iraq is too big a country to go looking randomly,'' said Ewen Buchanan, Blix's spokesman.
He wouldn't be drawn on what countries are assisting the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, which Blix heads.
But the British official said London has set up a channel to UNMOVIC ``and are passing information, and this is something that I think you can expect to continue.'' Britain also has views, based on intelligence, that it wants to share with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is in charge of nuclear inspections, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
``It's no good just us knowing,'' the official said. ``We know firstly that for inspections to be effective they need this sort of information, and secondly, if our information is to be credible to others it needs to be tested out by inspectors.''
The United States has said repeatedly it has evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs, but it has yet to make any public.
``The United States has been very helpful to UNMOVIC in the past and will continue to do so with information, supplies, and any technical assistance we can provide,'' a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But diplomatic sources said Washington has not provided any critical information that would lead U.N. inspectors to secret caches of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or material to make them -- despite repeated requests from Blix.
Instead, the Bush administration is trying to increase pressure on U.N. inspectors to seek interviews with Iraqi weapons scientists outside of Iraq to gain new intelligence, a prerogative given to them under Security Council Resolution 1441.
President Bush believes Saddam will resist such demands, giving the United States a case for ``material breach'' that U.S. allies and the American public may find more justified than hastier action, U.S. officials said in Washington.
On the other hand, if Iraq surprises Bush and turns over the scientists, U.S. officials believe they would provide evidence that could be used against Saddam, the officials said.
Last week, Blix asked Iraq to provide a list of current and former scientists and personnel working in its chemical, biological and missile programs by the end of the month. Iraq said it would comply.
``There are many uses we can have'' from the list, Blix said, ``not necessarily only to be used for interviews abroad.''
When Blix was asked last week about reports that Washington was pressing inspectors to question Iraqi scientists outside the country, he retorted: ``We are not going to abduct anybody, and we're not serving as a defection agency.''
But the Bush administration has continued to make its case.
Other Security Council members say Blix and ElBaradei should conduct interviews wherever they want.
The inspectors are the experts ``and it's up to the Security Council members not to meddle with what UNMOVIC or IAEA are doing,'' said Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov.
-------- iran
Sources Say Iran Lays Groundwork For Nuclear Bombs
Secret Use of Front Companies Is Cited
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8865-2002Dec18?language=printer
In the past five years, Iran has used a web of phony trading companies to obscure an increasingly sophisticated drive to secretly build large facilities that could produce the materials needed for nuclear weapons, according to U.S. government officials and information obtained by an Iranian opposition group.
Two recently disclosed sites, near the cities of Natanz and Arak south of Tehran, appear designed to help produce enriched uranium or plutonium, the fissile material needed for nuclear weapons. Until the facilities were revealed in August by the opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian government had not disclosed their existence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an arm of the United Nations.
The facilities likely will not be operational for a couple of years, but experts said their existence suggests Iran has other secret nuclear facilities. Iran had rebuffed efforts by the IAEA to examine the two sites, but now has invited inspectors in February.
Iranian officials have denied the plants are part of a weapons program, arguing they were necessary to wean Iran from its dependence on its vast oil and gas reserves for energy. "America's claim is totally baseless," Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said yesterday. "Our aim is not building atomic weapons."
Russian and Ukrainian scientists have been identified as assisting the secret projects, and officials from the front companies have procured materials in India and China, the Iranian opposition group said. U.S. officials have not been able to determine whether the Russian involvement in the Iranian program is officially sanctioned, but they have pressed Russian officials to halt any cooperation in Iran's nuclear efforts.
Russia is helping Iran build a reactor at a nuclear plant on the Persian Gulf coast at Bushehr, which will become operational late next year or in early 2004. Russia's atomic energy minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, said this week his country had no involvement in the two secret facilities. Rumyantsev said continued participation in the Bushehr project was contingent on Iranian assurances that all spent fuel would be returned to Russia.
Bush administration officials, while expressing "serious concerns" about the Iranian sites, have not let revelations deter them from their focus on Iraq. Much like the nuclear crisis involving North Korea -- and the aid that Pakistan, a U.S. ally, appears to have provided the North Koreans -- the administration has adopted a low-key posture that relies heavily on diplomatic pressure.
"We've always found it curious as to why Iran would need nuclear power when they are so blessed with other means of generating electricity," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Monday. "We have had conversations with Russia that we are concerned about this and that some of the support they are providing might well go to developing nuclear weapons within Iran, and it will continue to be a matter of discussion with us and the Russians."
While the Iranian opposition group has been labeled part of a foreign terrorist organization -- the Iranian Mujahidin, based in Iraq -- by the State Department, it often has disclosed reliable information about Iran's efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. U.S. officials consider its information on the two nuclear projects, including the front companies, credible and began to press the IAEA to inspect the facilities after the group revealed their existence.
U.S. officials and other experts said Iran's aggressive push illustrates how easy it is for a determined nation to covertly make huge strides in pursuit of nuclear weapons. By using front companies, they say, Iran has been able to procure materials and equipment necessary for producing weapons-grade fuel from foreign companies without raising suspicions, while at the same time appearing to remain within the nuclear power regime established by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
"The problem is that Iran is not cheating," said Henry D. Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a research group. "They haven't broken any rules, and they won't until they have weapons."
In a speech in September to the general conference of IAEA in Vienna, the president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, declared that Iran, "on the basis of Islamic tenets, beliefs and human affinity, has always condemned the possession of weapons of mass destruction." Aghazadeh pledged "complete transparency of my country's nuclear activities."
But the National Council of Resistance of Iran, through information from its sources in Iran, says funding for the facilities does not appear in the government budget but was directly provided by the Supreme National Security Council, the country's key policymaking body. Front companies further disguised the construction and purposes of the projects, the resistance group said.
A company called Kala Electric, based in Tehran, obtained materials and equipment for the project in Natanz, described by the resistance group as a fuel fabrication plant and by other experts as an enriched uranium facility. The Natanz project, which was started two years ago, is spread over 25 acres, with sections 25 feet underground and protected by eight-foot thick concrete walls. Kala Electric officials traveled repeatedly to India and China last year, the resistance group said.
Another front company, Mesbah Energy Co., also located in Tehran, has performed a similar role for the Arak facility, which was started in 1996 and appears designed to produce heavy water necessary for weapons-grade plutonium. The Arak facility, along a river near the central Iranian city, appears to be 87 percent completed and ready for testing in April.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, Washington representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said the purpose of both facilities had been disguised through misinformation and official secrecy. The Natanz plant was officially described as a project for eradicating deserts, while senior authorities in the governor's office in Arak province have been instructed not to disclose the location of the other site, he said. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a research group, said both facilities suggest there may be other hidden sites. The Natanz site is too large for a country's first enriched uranium facility, which indicates that Iran may already be operating a smaller pilot plant, he said. The Arak heavy water plant only makes sense if it is paired with a reactor, which has not yet been located.
"At this point, we have more questions than answers," Albright said.
An arm of Iran's atomic energy agency, the Center of Atomic Research, also uses a front company, Kaavosh Yaar, to procure materials from foreign countries, the Iranian resistance group said. Revenue from the sale of liquid nitrogen, a product of the center, is deposited in the bank account of another company, Saakht Iran, which in turn hires all contracted and nonofficial personnel of the atomic energy agency, it said.
-------- korea
U.S. Congratulates Roh, Predicts Cooperation
Reuters
Thursday, December 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12346-2002Dec19?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday congratulated Roh Moo-hyun on his victory in South Korean presidential elections and said it expected coordination with Seoul to continue against North Korean nuclear programs.
The liberal Roh's conservative opponent, Lee Hoi-chang, conceded defeat on Thursday after an election campaign dominated by debate on policy toward North Korea.
Roh's victory could complicate South Korea's relations with the United States because Lee's views were closer to those of the Bush administration, which favors trying to isolate Pyongyang.
Roh's campaign rode a tide of unprecedented anti-American sentiment. Tens of thousands of Koreans took to the streets in anger after a U.S. court martial acquitted two U.S. soldiers whose armored vehicle crushed to death two teenage girls during military exercises in June.
But State Department spokeswoman Amanda Batt said the United States expected close relations with Seoul to continue.
"We warmly congratulate President-elect Roh on his victory and look forward to working closely with him and his administration. President-elect Roh has expressed his firm commitment to the U.S.-ROK (South Korea) relationship and we are no less committed," she said.
"We view his election as an opportunity for us to work with him and his government to build an even stronger relationship for this new century," she added.
Batt said Roh had strongly supported South Korea's military alliance with the United States, which maintains 37,000 troops in the country to deter any attack from the Communist north.
But Roh has also promised to pursue the "sunshine policy" of outgoing President Kim Dae-jung, based on promoting contacts and reconciliation with North Korea.
The Bush administration has grown increasingly skeptical about the value of that policy, especially since the North Koreans acknowledged in October that they were working on a uranium-enrichment project for a weapons program.
Asked about the differences, Batt said, "The Republic of Korea (South Korea) is the country most affected by the problem posed by North Korean behavior and the U.S. coordinates very closely with the ROK in formulating our policy."
"We expect to continue the closest consultation with South Korea regarding North Korea and also trilaterally with Japan as we seek a verifiable end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program and an improved security and humanitarian situation on the Korean peninsula," she added.
Earlier, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that "the United States enjoys a very strong relationship with the government and the people of South Korea."
"It's an important relationship and it's a relationship we look forward to continuing very productively," he said.
----
Abductees Take Stand Against N. Korea
Families Should Be Allowed to Come to Japan, Group Says
By Mari Yamaguchi
Associated Press
Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page A38
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9657-2002Dec18?language=printer
NIIGATA, Japan, Dec. 18 -- Five Japanese kidnapped by North Korea decades ago agreed today to make clear to Pyongyang that they are willingly staying in the land of their birth.
North Korea alleges the abductees -- who returned in October for what was to have been a two-week visit -- are being kept in Japan against their wishes, and is refusing to comply with Tokyo's demand that it send their seven children and the American husband of one abductee to Japan.
The abductees hope to prompt North Korea to allow their families to leave by taking a firm stand, the brother of one said.
"They were worried about how their remarks and actions could affect their families they left behind in North Korea," said Toru Hasuike. "But now they want to take action that can possibly move things forward."
Hasuike's younger brother, Kaoru, was abducted from a beach by North Korean agents 24 years ago. He is now in Japan with his wife and fellow abductee, Yukiko.
The five, all in their forties, gathered for their first reunion since returning to Japan. The three-day get-together is providing the five with a rare chance to talk with one another in private for long hours. Although not everyone in the group was acquainted in North Korea, they have spoken by telephone since returning to Japan.
The meeting also allows the group to console Hitomi Soga, who left her American husband, Charles Robert Jenkins, in Pyongyang. The other abductees are couples and had to leave children in North Korea.
Reversing years of denial, North Korea admitted in September that it had kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies in Japanese language and culture.
The North says only the five now in Japan are alive.
The abductees' return was initially applauded as a step toward normalizing relations between Japan and North Korea, but Japanese public opinion soured over the abductions and the North's later admission that it has been secretly developing nuclear weapons. Talks to establish diplomatic relations ran aground in late October.
-------- missile defense
Pentagon plans defense against Mideast missiles
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 19, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021219-86065308.htm
The Pentagon is planning to build a second missile-defense interceptor system near the East Coast or in Europe to counter missile threats from the Middle East, Bush administration officials said yesterday.
President Bush announced Tuesday that the Pentagon will build a limited missile-defense system by 2004, situated in the West and primarily aimed at defending the United States against long-range missile attacks from North Korea or China.
The plans call for deploying a single system with 16 interceptor missiles at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and four interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California by 2005.
Administration officials familiar with detailed plans for a broader defense system say the plans call for another interceptor site in Maine, oriented toward missile threats from Europe and the Middle East.
Additionally, interceptors could be set up in Britain, Hungary or Poland, NATO allies whose governments privately have indicated they would be willing to cooperate with and provide bases for a missile-defense system.
Deploying interceptors in Europe is likely to further upset Russia, which yesterday criticized the already-announced U.S. missile-defense plans.
Moscow's Foreign Ministry said in a statement made public yesterday that the missile-defense plans, including the use of space for components, have entered "a destabilizing new phase."
The statement said that abandoning the principles of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty "may lead only to a weakening of strategic stability, to a senseless new arms race in the world."
Russia expects the United States to focus on making strategic arms cuts and combating terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the statement said.
"Moscow counts on the United States to pay priority attention to the realization of precisely this strategic partnership program agreed upon at the highest level and to enlist its friends and partners in it, not in a destabilizing race in strategic defensive arms, including in space," the statement said.
China's government has not responded publicly to Mr. Bush's deployment decision.
In the past, China has opposed U.S. missile-defense programs as upsetting international stability, and Beijing fears the neutralization of its arsenal of about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said the initial missile-defense system of interceptors in Alaska and California could be expanded with additional interceptor sites.
"Anything is possible, but there are no firm plans beyond 2005," Col. Lehner said. "After 2005, it may be necessary for adding ground-based interceptors or sea-based missiles or [airborne laser]. But it's just too early to know. All our focus is going to be on this initial capability."
The CIA estimates that Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria could emerge as long-range missile threats and that the initial West Coast system will be unable to knock out missiles from those countries, the officials said.
More interceptor sites therefore will be needed and could be built in the 2010-2015 time frame, the officials said.
Iran has the Shahab-3 medium-range missile that can reach Europe, but not the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians also are working on an intercontinental-range missile, which the Tehran government has denied.
Defense officials said the West Coast system to be deployed by 2005 could protect most of the United States, with the exception of southern Florida, from missiles launched from East Asia.
The Pentagon announced yesterday that it plans to deploy the first six interceptors in Alaska and four at Vandenberg by 2004. An additional 10 interceptors would then be deployed in Alaska in 2005.
The plans also call for deploying three warships equipped with the Aegis battle management system and SM-3 interceptor missiles, although such missiles will be less effective than the ground-based interceptors against long-range missiles.
----
The Missile Rush
Thursday, December 19, 2002
Washington Post Editorial
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9625-2002Dec18?language=printer
THE BUSH administration's decision to deploy a rudimentary missile defense system in Alaska and California by the end of 2004 begs the question of what threat justifies such an accelerated timetable. The missile system, after all, is far from proven; some of its key elements have not yet been built, much less tested. So if it is to be rushed into the field, at considerable cost and risk of failure, it ought to be because a potential adversary has appeared capable of attacking the United States with an intercontinental missile. Yet there appears to be no such enemy. America is at peace with Russia and China, nations that could easily overwhelm a missile defense system anyway. North Korea, the most likely suspect, does not yet have a missile capable of hitting the continental United States. The CIA believes its Taepodong-1 model, which has been tested only once, at best could reach the outskirts of Alaska -- and only then if it were not carrying a nuclear warhead.
North Korea, Iran or other hostile states might someday deploy missiles that threaten the United States, and for that reason a missile defense program is worth pursuing. Because several countries already possess intermediate-range missiles, and the defensive systems against them are closer to proving their worth, plans to deploy those systems on Navy ships or near U.S. bases abroad make some sense. But the Bush administration's hasty drive to build a ground-based defense against long-range missiles seems to have more to do with the U.S. political calendar than with any plausible defense scenario. For the administration's missile defense hawks, the program has become an ideology; they appear determined to pour enough concrete and create enough on-the-ground hardware by the next presidential election to make it irreversible. Some still remember, with great bitterness, the Clinton administration's decision to pull the plug on many of the pre-1992 missile defense projects; they are intent on preventing a repeat of that setback.
Yet this preemptive construction, which will require a substantial increase in the $16 billion budgeted for missile defense in the next two years, will likely create a system that is more Potemkin than preventative. The Pentagon still hasn't built key parts of the system, including a workable booster rocket, or the satellite sensors needed to detect incoming missiles and differentiate them from decoys. The radar system designed to be used with the interceptors exists only in prototype. The current interceptor has failed three of eight of its flight tests, and it hasn't even been tested yet against missiles with realistic decoys. Outside experts say such tests may not even be possible before the end of the decade.
Eventually the United States will probably succeed in developing a long-range missile defense system that will provide a good, if not foolproof, defense against limited attack. But the administration itself concedes that that system will not really exist in 2004. So why spend the money to deploy, given the absence of a tangible threat? At least some of those dollars would be better spent on controlling the very real danger posed by the nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals in the former Soviet Union, or loose fissile material elsewhere in the world -- threats the administration has been slow to address.
----
Russia Has Warning, and Overture, on Missile Plan
Moscow Calls U.S. Defense Initiative 'Destabilizing,' but Wants to Be Involved
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8996-2002Dec18?language=printer
MOSCOW, Dec. 18 -- The Russian government warned today that President Bush's intention to begin fielding a rudimentary antimissile system in 2004 meant that the plan had "moved into a new destabilizing phase."
The statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated that although Russia has reluctantly accepted the inevitability of Washington's plans since Bush pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty last year, it has yet to be reconciled to them. The Bush announcement, the statement said, was noted "with regret" in Moscow.
Russia has recently pressed to be incorporated into U.S. missile defense plans, however, arguing that joint missile defense is better suited to international realities than the unilateral program Bush is promoting.
Such cooperation, the Russian statement said, makes sense given the "fundamentally new relationship of strategic partnership" between the United States and Russia since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "Moscow expects that the United States will give priority to implementation of this program of strategic partnership," the statement said, "and will involve its friends and partners in it rather than in a destabilizing race of strategic defensive arms."
Such words were a change from just a few years ago, when Moscow routinely warned that a major new arms race would be an inevitable outcome of a U.S. missile defense deployment, threatening global stability. Still, the Russians continued to bemoan the loss of the ABM Treaty, saying its absence could lead to "a new senseless arms race," as well as "diverting resources" from more pressing matters, such as the battle against international terrorism.
And Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, speaking while en route to Washington to meet with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, reiterated Moscow's opposition to deployment of a missile shield. "Such steps must not infringe on the security interests of Russia or other states," he said during a stopover in Tokyo. "Nor should they fuel an arms race."
Less measured comments came from the Kremlin, where presidential adviser Igor Sergeyev warned that Russia had received no guarantees that such a system would not be targeted against it.
"We cannot disregard the fact that elements of the U.S. missile defense system are being deployed in the north, not in the south, where the threat is coming from the so-called rogue countries," Sergeyev, a former Russian defense minister, told Interfax news agency.
He suggested that the destabilization caused by a U.S. missile defense system might contribute to spreading weapons of mass destruction. "In such a setting, it would be difficult to tighten control over the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
-------- russia
U.S. DEFENSE
Moscow Miffed Over Missile Shield but Others Merely Shrug
December 19, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/19/international/europe/19MISS.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 18 - Russia warned today that President Bush's order to field a limited missile-defense system in 2004 had pushed the venture into "a destabilizing new phase," but here, as in many places, weary shrugs were the dominant response to the American decision, which had long been considered inevitable.
Britain said it was "very seriously" considering an American request to upgrade its early warning radar network to support the new shield. Denmark was studying a similar request, for use of the Thule base in Greenland, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today.
But the prevailing response in Europe, where the antimissile shield has been openly opposed over the years, was muted. France refused to comment. In Germany, the few newspapers and politicians who said anything tended to focus on what they called the system's irrelevance to the war on terrorism.
"The 9/11 attacks wouldn't have been hindered by such a system," Berliner Zeitung said in an editorial. "And the missile defense system is completely unsuitable to most of the other needs of a workable war against terrorism."
Uta Zapf, a member of Parliament from Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democratic Party, accused the White House of "just throwing their money away."
"I don't think Saddam Hussein has such missiles, and there is not going to be an attack on the U.S. from India or Pakistan," she said.
Ms. Zapf said the announcement would have a bearing on the debate in Europe in joining a missile defense system. But she said it was unlikely to generate a wave of support for such a strategy.
"It's not an absolute priority" for European countries, she said. "There are much more important things, like upgrading NATO and European capabilities, and enhancing efforts in Afghanistan."
In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry and a key member of Parliament said separately that it was now most important for the United States to build confidence in its intentions by sticking to a pledge to cut nuclear arms, and by involving Russia directly in developing new technologies for the antimissile system.
Russia, which had fiercely fought the missile system since Ronald Reagan's presidency, said simply that it greeted Mr. Bush's decision with regret. The Kremlin used the same word before assenting last May to American demands to scrap the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
At that May summit meeting in Moscow, both nations agreed in principle to reduce their active stocks of nuclear weapons drastically and to work together to prevent the spread of mass-destruction weapons.
In a written statement today, the Foreign Ministry said Russia counted on the United States "to pay priority attention to the realization of precisely this strategic partnership program agreed upon at the highest level, and enlist its friends and partners in it, not in a destabilizing race in strategic defensive arms."
But the more common reaction was one of resignation - even lack of interest. Russia's major evening news programs and its newspapers paid almost no notice to Mr. Bush's announcement.
"In fact, this news is nearly two years old," the head of the international affairs committee in the lower house of Parliament, Dmitri Rogozin, told the Interfax news service.
Mr. Rogozin said it was more important for Russian experts to analyze an American list of antimissile technologies that the two nations might jointly develop, to determine whether Moscow would join in key parts of the system or would be relegated to the role of minor player.
In Britain, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said in a written statement to Parliament that the early warning radar system at the Royal Air Force center at Fylingdales, in North Yorkshire, would be upgraded only if Britain was "satisfied that it will ultimately enhance the security of the U.K. and the NATO alliance."
The Conservative opposition, long enthusiastic about the missile-defense plan, urged the government to sign up for the American proposal as soon as possible. "If it is going to go ahead, then we should be a part of it," Michael Ancram, the Conservatives' foreign affairs spokesman, said on the Today radio program.
But the government faced opposition from Labor backbenchers. Jeremy Corbyn, a member of Parliament from Islington, in North London, told The Daily Telegraph he was "disgusted" by how readily Britain was willing to support the United States. "I have been asking questions for two years about expenditure at Fylingdales and have been told nothing," he said.
Elsewhere, several nations with a huge strategic stake in the deployment of the missile shield, including China and South Korea, had little to say on the American decision. Japan, which has been working with the United States on a study of an interceptor missile to be used in a sea-based missile defense system, remained noncommittal about moving beyond the development stage.
The most vociferous criticism came not from overseas, but from Canada.
"The big red line we all have is the weaponization of outer space, which I believe would be immoral, illegal and a bad mistake," the foreign minister, Bill Graham, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. "The fact of the matter is they will have established the principle, and they can't guarantee they'll have the technological superiority 25 years from now. And that's going to be a problem for everybody."
-------- us nuc waste
Claims to Block Nuke Waste Plan Rejected
December 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Goshutes-Nukes.html
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected the state's latest attempts to prevent a nuclear waste storage facility from being built on an Indian reservation in Utah's western desert.
The commission said Wednesday that it was not its job to consider the possible environmental impacts of a terrorist attack on the site proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
The NRC also ruled that it has the authority to license a private storage site for spent nuclear-plant fuel.
State officials have not decided whether to appeal.
``These are very valid concerns, and we most respectfully disagree with the commission's conclusions,'' said Dianne Nielson, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The rulings reduce the number of regulatory hurdles facing Private Fuel Storage, the utility consortium that has an agreement with the tribe to establish a facility for storing spent fuel rods pending creation of a permanent repository.
``It's good news because it clears the NRC's plate of issues related to PFS,'' said Sue Martin, a spokeswoman for the consortium.
If approved, the site could store 40,000 tons of waste for 40 years. The project could bring the small, impoverished tribe as much as $3 billion.
Nevada's Yucca Mountain has been selected as the permanent repository for the nation's radioactive waste, but the storage facility won't be completed until at least 2010.
-------- us politics
THE INSPECTIONS
U.S. Weighs How Serious an Arms-Violation Charge to Make Against Baghdad
December 19, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER with JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/19/international/middleeast/19NATI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - As top officials of the Bush administration wrestled today with the question of whether to declare that Iraq had committed a "material breach" of Security Council resolutions, Pentagon officials said they have given preliminary approval for sending as many as 50,000 troops to the Persian Gulf region, a move that would allow President Bush to order an attack against Saddam Hussein by late January.
The buildup, which would begin shortly after the first of the year, would include mobilizing reserves and deploying additional warplanes, tanks and other equipment. It would roughly double the American forces now in the region.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain's Defense Ministry had begun a "contingency deployment" of forces toward the gulf in anticipation of possible action against Iraq.
"After the first of the year, you'll see a buildup and continued pressure on Iraq," said one senior American military official.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in the gulf, was in Washington today for war planning meetings with Mr. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The deployment would be necessary if Mr. Bush determines that Iraq had committed a material breach of United Nations resolutions that ban Baghdad from seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, a violation which could be the basis for war. Senior administration officials announced that they had found glaring omissions and deficiencies in the 12,000-page weapons declaration that Iraq handed to the United Nations on Dec. 7.
But after a morning meeting with President Bush, some officials said they were weighing the alternative of announcing on Thursday that Iraq had committed a "material omission." Such language is less likely to precipitate immediate war.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other senior officials stressed after the meeting with Mr. Bush that the United States would continue to work through the United Nations and support the weapons inspections under way in Iraq. American officials also said consultations were in progress with other Council nations to determine whether they would be antagonized if the United States declared that Iraq was in material breach of the resolution.
Mr. Powell and the American ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, are expected to make statements on Thursday providing Washington's first detailed assessment of the Iraqi declaration. They will describe the document as one more example of how Iraq has resisted cooperating fully with the inspections, even while allowing the inspectors to go where they please in the country, officials said.
The decision to denounce the Iraqi weapons statement as the most serious form of breach had been accepted earlier this week by the State Department and the National Security Council, administration officials said. But the discussion with the president persuaded officials to weigh a less serious alternative, they said.
Another persuasive factor came from Hans Blix, a leader of the United Nations weapons teams, who said on Tuesday that he intended to inform the Security Council that he, too, had found gaps in Iraq's documents.
Mr. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief atomic weapons inspector, will brief the Council on Thursday morning for the first time on their preliminary evaluation of the Iraqi declaration.
White House officials indicated that their decision not to push the pace of the confrontation with Baghdad was tactical, driven by timing rather than any belief that the omissions did not amount to a legal justification for war. Mr. Bush's advisers concluded, one official said, that it would be unwise to appear to be driving headlong toward a conflict "before our allies are ready."
In discussion with other Council nations in recent days, American diplomats determined that there was little support for treating the flaws in the declaration as sufficient grounds to trigger the clauses in Resolution 1441, the weapons inspection measure, that could result in a declaration of war.
But American officials increasingly regarded the shortcomings of the Iraqi declaration as so obvious that Iraq's defiance of the Council would become clear without Washington's having to insist too heavily on it.
The American analysis "shows problems with the declaration, gaps, omissions and all of this is troublesome," Secretary Powell said today. He added that the United States was not encouraged that Iraq had "gotten the message or will cooperate based on what we have seen so far in the declaration, but we will stay within the U.N. process."
"The president made it clear he wanted to work with the U.N. and the international community," Mr. Powell said at a brief press appearance with leaders of the European Union.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain, Washington's closest ally on the Council, was blunt in his appraisal of President Saddam Hussein's weapons documents.
"This will fool nobody," Mr. Straw said. "If Saddam persists in this obvious falsehood, it will become clear he has rejected the pathway to peace laid down in Resolution 1441."
Mr. Straw said the declaration failed to account for weapons of mass destruction described by United Nations weapons inspectors in 1999, in their last report. He said the omissions included "large quantities of nerve agent, chemical precursors and munitions."
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said the United States would "proceed in a deliberative way," consulting with allies while encouraging inspectors to "fully use every tool" granted to them under the resolution.
That phraseology appeared to be code for interviewing Iraqi scientists outside of Iraq's territory. The United States is still pressing Mr. Blix to use his authority under Resolution 1441 to do so, though United Nations officials have questioned whether this approach would be more useful than confidential interviews inside the country.
At the United Nations, several Council members were uneasy about what they saw as pressure from Washington to sway their views before they have heard from Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei. The 10 nonpermanent Council members only received their edited copies of the Iraqi declaration on Tuesday evening, and many capitals were only getting their first look at the vast stacks of paper today.
Syria announced today that it would not accept its copy of the document, but would return it to the United Nations to protest the way its distribution was handled.
The United States surprised many Council members two weeks ago by persuading Colombia, a close American ally that holds the Council presidency this month, to distribute unedited copies of the declaration to the five permanent members right away, instead of waiting until the 10 rotating members could receive their edited copies. The nonpermanent 10, which are not nuclear powers, received a version from which passages containing nuclear weapons information were cut.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Ivory Coast pulls France into biggest African venture since Rwanda
AFP
December 19, 2002
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021219/1/35vyf.html
The reinforcement of French troops in Ivory Coast to a planned level of around 2,500 marks the country's riskiest venture in Africa since Rwanda eight years ago, and raises the prospect of deeper embroilment.
On Wednesday 300 soldiers equipped with helicopters and armoured vehicles left aboard a transport vessel from the Mediterranean port of Toulon, and a further 500 are due to join the 1,600 already in place as part of September's Operation Unicorn.
The troops have the task of protecting French nationals in Ivory Coast and securing ceasefire lines between the government of President Laurent Gbagbo and three different rebel groups, but the fear is they could be gradually sucked into a conflict that shows few signs of a rapid resolution.
And while the government in Paris insists its troops are there as a stop-gap before the deployment of a West African peace-keeping force, the scale of its presence marks a major shift from the hands-off policy in Africa pursued since France's disgrace in Rwanda in 1994.
The genocide then of up to a million Rwanda's Tutsis at the hands of Hutu extremists led to accusations of French complicity, and though Paris fiercely denied charges that its forces turned a blind eye to the massacres, the episode forced a major reappraisal of post-colonial policy in Africa.
The government of President Jacques Chirac came to the conclusion that the old game of competing spheres of influence was no longer worth playing, corrupt dictators were no longer to be propped up just because they spoke French, and democracy and co-operation became the watchwords.
The announcement last week that France is returning in force to its former colony in Ivory Coast has therefore raised the question whether the eight year policy of disengagement is itself now seen as a failure.
According to some, the outbreak of successive wars has pointed up the limitations of many African governments to look after their own people, and outside powers therefore have a duty to intervene. The recent discovery of a mass grave in Ivory Coast containing 100 bodies sharpened the argument.
"Why should the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries be permissible in Africa, but not in Kosovo or Iraq?" asked the conservative daily Le Figaro. "France is right to break with this overcautious approach which has done nothing to prevent chaos."
But as the French chief-of-staff General Henri Bentegeat flies to Abidjan this week-end to survey deployments, and as a new French ambassador Gildas Le Lidec presents his credentials, the uncertainties over what France's commitment will lead to are lost on no-one.
Its intervention has been acclaimed by supporters of Gbagbo as a sign that France is openly acknowledging its support for the elected government, but by the same token it has been condemned by the rebel groups who feel the French army wants to freeze their advances towards the capital.
With French troops under orders to use whatever force is necessary to keep the ceasefire, the chances of a confrontation with rebel soldiers are obvious.
According to French media reports Thursday, the government is increasingly anxious not to appear to be keeping Gbagbo in power at all costs, especially as some officials hold him partly responsible for the ethnic tensions that led to the war in September.
This explains why having unilaterally announced its biggest reinforcement in Africa in eight years, Paris came out in support Thursday of Senegal's call for United Nations involvement in the conflict. As Le Figaro asked, "Must France alone carry the burden?"Ivory Coast pulls France into biggest African venture since Rwanda
The reinforcement of French troops in Ivory Coast to a planned level of around 2,500 marks the country's riskiest venture in Africa since Rwanda eight years ago, and raises the prospect of deeper embroilment.
On Wednesday 300 soldiers equipped with helicopters and armoured vehicles left aboard a transport vessel from the Mediterranean port of Toulon, and a further 500 are due to join the 1,600 already in place as part of September's Operation Unicorn.
The troops have the task of protecting French nationals in Ivory Coast and securing ceasefire lines between the government of President Laurent Gbagbo and three different rebel groups, but the fear is they could be gradually sucked into a conflict that shows few signs of a rapid resolution.
And while the government in Paris insists its troops are there as a stop-gap before the deployment of a West African peace-keeping force, the scale of its presence marks a major shift from the hands-off policy in Africa pursued since France's disgrace in Rwanda in 1994.
The genocide then of up to a million Rwanda's Tutsis at the hands of Hutu extremists led to accusations of French complicity, and though Paris fiercely denied charges that its forces turned a blind eye to the massacres, the episode forced a major reappraisal of post-colonial policy in Africa.
The government of President Jacques Chirac came to the conclusion that the old game of competing spheres of influence was no longer worth playing, corrupt dictators were no longer to be propped up just because they spoke French, and democracy and co-operation became the watchwords.
The announcement last week that France is returning in force to its former colony in Ivory Coast has therefore raised the question whether the eight year policy of disengagement is itself now seen as a failure.
According to some, the outbreak of successive wars has pointed up the limitations of many African governments to look after their own people, and outside powers therefore have a duty to intervene. The recent discovery of a mass grave in Ivory Coast containing 100 bodies sharpened the argument.
"Why should the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries be permissible in Africa, but not in Kosovo or Iraq?" asked the conservative daily Le Figaro. "France is right to break with this overcautious approach which has done nothing to prevent chaos."
But as the French chief-of-staff General Henri Bentegeat flies to Abidjan this week-end to survey deployments, and as a new French ambassador Gildas Le Lidec presents his credentials, the uncertainties over what France's commitment will lead to are lost on no-one.
Its intervention has been acclaimed by supporters of Gbagbo as a sign that France is openly acknowledging its support for the elected government, but by the same token it has been condemned by the rebel groups who feel the French army wants to freeze their advances towards the capital.
With French troops under orders to use whatever force is necessary to keep the ceasefire, the chances of a confrontation with rebel soldiers are obvious.
According to French media reports Thursday, the government is increasingly anxious not to appear to be keeping Gbagbo in power at all costs, especially as some officials hold him partly responsible for the ethnic tensions that led to the war in September.
This explains why having unilaterally announced its biggest reinforcement in Africa in eight years, Paris came out in support Thursday of Senegal's call for United Nations involvement in the conflict. As Le Figaro asked, "Must France alone carry the burden?"
----
Amnesty: Nigeria Troops Kill Thousands
December 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nigeria-Security-Forces.html
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigerian soldiers and police have killed thousands of people and tortured others in the three years since civilian rule was installed, Amnesty International said in a new report issued Thursday.
The London-based rights group said the killings took place apparently as part of a strategy to ``stem the rise of criminality and inter-communal conflicts.'' The killings are either ignored by the government or are commited with ``outright complicity'' from officials, the report said.
In its report, Amnesty said it had evidence of officers torturing and killing detained civilians labeled as suspected criminals, in some cases carrying out other extrajudicial executions in the streets.
``Victims are labeled as armed robbers to deny them any form of popular sympathy and to justify inaction by superiors within the police who only rarely attempt to investigate these cases,'' Amnesty said.
Police special task forces are responsible for many of the killings, while also using their position to ``extort bribes from citizens'' at illegal checkpoints, the rights group said.
Two massacres by security forces have left more than 450 people dead. In November 1999, more than 200 people were killed by police avenging the killings of 12 policemen in the Niger Delta town of Odi. In October 2001, the army killed 200 people in villages in Benue State in retaliation for the killing of 19 soldiers.
President Olusegun Obasanjo refused to apologize for the first massacre and said soldiers may have been acting in self-defense in the second.
``This statement by the president is a clear signal that there is no political will to prosecute those in the armed forces responsible for human rights violations,'' Amnesty said. ``It is a dangerous declaration that could pave the way for new incidents of similar nature.''
Officials in Nigeria's presidency and Information Ministry could not be immediately reached for comment about the report.
Obasanjo's government has routinely accused foreign and local rights groups of exaggerating reports on abuses in the country.
Since Obasanjo's election in February 1999 -- ending 15 years of military rule -- more than 10,000 people have been killed in outbursts of political, religious and ethnic violence.
----
Fate of Titanium Mining Awaits Kenya Polls
By Jennifer Wanjiru NAIROBI, Kenya,
December 19, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2002/2002-12-19-03.asp
As Kenya prepares for a crucial general election on December 27, the opposition has warned a Canadian mining company against entering into a contract with the outgoing government of President Daniel arap Moi to mine one of the world's largest deposits of titanium.
Moi
President Daniel arap Moi has been President of Kenya for 19 years. (Photo courtesy U.S. House of Representatives) This week the Moi government issued Tiomin Resources Inc. of Toronto a permit to mine the titanium sands. The company says there is US$132 million worth of raw material at stake. But the district's outgoing member of Parliament says the mineral deposits are worth US$11 billion.
On Monday, Tiomin announced that the Kenyan Mining and Prospecting Licensing Committee had approved its application for a Special Mining Lease on its Kwale mineral sands project. The 16 year long Mining Lease is renewable for a further 10 years. Under the terms of the lease, Tiomin shall have "full, irrevocable, sole and exclusive right to mine and process the heavy mineral sands at Kwale."
But Mwai Kibaki, a leading presidential contender of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) who is enjoying massive public support, threatens, "We will not honor any titanium mining agreements entered between Tiomin Resources of Canada and the Kenya government."
Kibaki
Mwai Kibaki speaks at a rally on the campaign trail. (Photo courtesy Kibaki for President) His statement has cast doubt on whether the mining of the extensive titanium deposits on the Indian Ocean coast of northern Kenya will continue if the opposition party, NARC, wins the election. Kibaki, an economist who has served as vice president and finance minister, founded the Democratic Party in 1991. He placed second in the 1997 presidential race won by Moi.
The Kenya deposits represent 10 percent of the world's known titanium, and politicians in this east African nation argue that the licensing should not have been rushed before crucial issues are discussed in public.
Kibaki says the titanium project in Kwale district should have been a partnership between the locals and Canadian firm. "We are asking Kwale residents not to sell their land to the Canadian firm until they are given shares in the project," he said.
The titanium drama began in 1995, when Tiomin struck what are now recognized to be the biggest unexploited titanium deposits in the world. These include five titanium sites with 650 million tons at Mambrui and 1.2 billion tons at Sokoke. Large quantities have also been discovered in Sabaki, Mombasa, and Kwale on the north coast too.
The completed Kwale feasibility study indicates that during the first six years of production the Kwale deposit can produce over 300,000 metric tons of sulphatable ilmenite, about 38,000 metric tons of high quality zircon, and over 75,000 metric tons of premium rutile per year, with a total mine life of approximately 13 years.
Rutile and ilmenite are both sources of titanium dioxide, primarily used in the production of pigments for paints, plastics and paper, while zircon is used in the fabrication of ceramic and enamel glazing, refractories and electronic equipment.
drilling
Tiomin Kenya drills near Mombasa (Two photos courtesy Tiomin Kenya) With the permit issued, at least one in every four of the 500,000 people who live in Kenya's Kwale district could eventually be evicted to pave way for the controversial mining project.
Critics say that the rest could face significant health risks due to the toxic emissions associated with titanium mining.
"If a deposit has uranium, we have to be very careful," warns Dr. Wellington Wamicha, a German trained Kenyan mineralogist who has done an Environmental Impact Assessment study of the Kwale area for Kenyatta University.
"The only reason the Kwale residents are currently not being affected by radiation is because thorium and uranium, the radioactive emitters present in zircon deposits, are in their thermodynamic stable state," Dr. Wamicha explains.
"But mining, through attrition and processing the ore by subjecting it to hot sulphuric acid," he says, "will release the radioactive elements into the environment."
The Kenyatta University study found the mining would result in the removal of vegetation, affecting the reflectivity of solar radiation. "As more solar radiation is reflected back to the sky, the result could be more heating of the cold inward-bound winds, as well as negative impacts on local rainfall," says Dr. Wamicha.
The study also warns that mining would eliminate aquatic biodiversity and pose a serious hazard to ecosystems, communities, species, and genetic material. Mutations due to radiation and toxic chemicals would lead to disruption of gene pools, the report says.
meeting
Meeting of local residents held by the company to address concerns about the mining. Local critics contend that the compensation for Kwale residents who would be evacuated is too little. Initially, Tiomin offered about $114 per acre, later upping that to $505. But some residents and anti-project lobby groups still argue that the payment is too low, based merely on the value of the soil and existing development, not the rich deposits beneath.
"We shall not allow the mining to go on and we shall not budge in our demands that the sums to be paid out as compensation be renegotiated," says Boniface Mbevi, a prominent local farmer.
The opposition NARC party has made political capital over the manner in which the government has handled the issue of compensation for displaced residents, and threatens not to recognize any agreements if it wins power.
"Tiomin has all along preferred to deal with government officials behind the scenes, ignoring stakeholders in the areas where deposits were found," says Raila Odinga of the NARC party and former minister for energy.
Odinga alleges that senior government officers have a stake in Tiomin Kenya Ltd., although the parent company, Tiomin Resources Inc. has denied the allegations.
The other bone of contention is the value of the deposits. Tiomin says the deposits are valued at about US$132 million. But Suleiman Kamolle, the outgoing Member of Parliament for Matuga constituency in Kwale district, says the true value may be astronomically higher. A former banker, Kamolle says he has obtained some data from French and German geologists and statisticians.
"The US$132 million being put as value of the titanium sand mineral deposits by the Canadian firm is a negligible amount," he says. "We have gathered enough evidence from the earmarked 200 square kilometer area disproving that figure and have found out that the real value of the deposits is a staggering $11 billion."
ore
Sands rich in titanium and other minerals are explored in this 1997 pilot project (Photo courtesy Tiomin Resources) Kenya still has an archaic Mining Act that was used during the colonial period and stipulates that mining companies pay five percent of the value of minerals to the government.
"If it were in a developed country, Tiomin would be talking about a third of the value of the mineral deposits," says Haroun Ndubi of Kituo cha Sheria, a local nongovernmental organization specialising in litigation.
"The Act works to Tiomin's advantage. Paying the nominal percentage will be a small price compared to the huge profits the company will reap," Ndubi said.
When Kwale residents moved to the high court to stop the project, most plaintiffs pulled out after government officials threatened that they too could be sued.
Environmentalists warn the titanium mining will contaminate ground water bodies, increase competition for water resources, and degrade water quality. They also say that the mining might lead to gaseous emissions of sulphur dioxide from the combustion of heavy oils and use of sulfuric acid.
More damage to the environment is expected due to the open-cast, strip mining, method to be used, which involves clearing all vegetation, stripping and stockpiling the topsoil so as to expose the sands, rich with minerals.
map
Map shows the Kwale District of Kenya on Africa's east coast. (Photo courtesy Tiomin Resources) Tiomin has also been at loggerheads with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) over its intention to build a ship loading facility that will include a 200 meter (long jetty and storage facility. The KWS says that will have a negative impact on marine life.
Although the Moi government says that the project will benefit residents of Kwale by creating about 200 direct and 300 indirect jobs, no technology transfer is expected in Kwale, since the final processing will be done in Canada.
Tiomin president Jean-Charles Potvin has said the recent lifting of civil cases against the company by locals is, "a very important step in the future development of this important project for Kenya."
Today in Toronto, Tiomin Resources Inc. announced the issue 20 million shares at 21 Canadian cents each to fund the Kwale titanium sands project and repay a loan.
On a "best-efforts" basis, Harris Partners will attmept to raise up to C$4.2 million (US$2.7 million) of equity capital for Tiomin through private placements.
But the fate of the project now lies in the General Election on December 27. Whether the mining will take place depends on the way Kenyans vote.
-------- business
General Dynamics to Buy GM's Defense Unit
Reuters
Thursday, December 19, 2002
By Mark Weinraub
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12118-2002Dec19?language=printer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. on Thursday said it would buy General Motors Corp.'s defense unit for $1.1 billion, giving it the top spot in the growing market for combat vehicles.
General Dynamics, also a leading maker of combat ships and information systems, said it expects the all-cash deal to close in the first quarter of 2003. GM's defense unit expects $950 million in revenue in 2002 and has a backlog -- contracts from its customers -- of more than $1.5 billion.
The deal follows a recent Pentagon decision to include $1.5 billion in the fiscal 2004 budget to pay for a fourth brigade of Stryker combat vehicles, which are being made by a joint venture of General Dynamics and the GM defense unit.
New combat vehicles such as Stryker are part of the U.S. military's bid to transform itself into a faster, more mobile fighting force to deal with new threats around the world.
"I think it's a great match," said Eric Hugel, vice president at Stephens Inc. "It is a product expansion for General Dynamics and it gets them into the wheeled combat vehicle side of the business."
Previously, GM provided the vehicle model for Stryker and General Dynamics built the electronic and other systems, said Hugel, who has an "overweight" rating on General Dynamics' stock.
Shares of General Dynamics were up 92 cents, or 1.2 percent, at $79.05 in Thursday midday trading while GM's stock, a Dow Jones industrial average component, was up 1 cent at $36.38. Both shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
GM will use the cash to strengthen its balance sheet, a spokesman said.
GM will likely make a contribution to its U.S. pension plan next year, he added. GM's U.S. pension fund ended 2001 underfunded by $9 billion. The automaker in October said the U.S. pension fund could end 2002 underfunded by about $23 billion, if returns and interest rates remained unchanged.
General Dynamics of Falls Church, Virginia, has said it is working on ways to boost the Stryker's firepower, which may lead the Pentagon to buy another two brigades.
GM Defense, which has 2,400 employees, also produces armored vehicles for Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. Stryker makes up only about one-third of the unit's annual revenue.
GM is best known for building cars but elements of its defense business date back to World War I. The company became the world's largest single producer of military equipment and hardware, with over $12 billion in sales during World War II.
The company's Light Armored Vehicle business came into existence about 25 years ago. GM does not provide any information on its sales or profits for its defense business, but confirmed that the LAV unit is profitable.
General Dynamics said the deal is expected to immediately boost the company's earnings.
GM said it plans to keep its military trucks unit, which is based in Troy, Michigan.
Both companies' boards of directors have already approved the deal, which still must be reviewed by government regulators.
The move comes amid a consolidation wave in the defense industry, as arms makers seek to become the preferred provider on some favored Pentagon programs. Northrop Grumman Corp. recently paid $6.7 billion for defense and auto parts maker TRW Inc. to boost its portfolio of missile defense products. (Additional reporting by Michael Ellis in Detroit)
-------- iraq
Iraq's Shortage of Medicine May Grow More Severe
U.S. Proposal to Tighten Sanctions Would Restrict Antibiotics, Other Goods With Potential Military Use
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8995-2002Dec18?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The infant lay sleeping on a bed, an intravenous tube disappearing beneath the worn gray blanket as her mother dabbed at tiny bubbles around the baby's mouth.
The mother, Saadiya Saif, had rushed to the hospital with her 40-day-old daughter, Zahraa, because of the baby's cough and fever. Doctors diagnosed a chest infection. As they do nearly every day for some patient, they prescribed the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. Within a few days, the doctors said soon after she was admitted Tuesday morning, Zahraa should be well enough to go home, where she will continue to take ciprofloxacin in syrup form.
But antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin, commonly known by its brand name Cipro, may soon become harder to obtain here under a new U.S. proposal to tighten international sanctions on Iraq. Because ciprofloxacin can be used to counter anthrax exposure, the U.S. government wants to keep President Saddam Hussein's government from stockpiling it, fearing such a supply would make it easier for him to launch a biological attack while protecting his own troops.
Similarly, doctors at the Saddam Teaching Hospital for Pediatrics here use gentamicin to treat urinary tract infections, doxycycline to help those with cholera or diarrhea, and streptomycin in cases of tuberculosis. All three would be added to the list of restricted items if the U.N. Security Council agrees to the U.S. proposal.
"We're a developing country and infections are common diseases here, not like in Europe or the United States, so antibiotics are vital," said Mohammed Hassan, the 28-year-old chief resident presiding over wards of children at the pediatrics hospital. "There's no thinking of humanity, there's no thinking about the patients in our hospital."
Around Baghdad, word of the possible new restrictions has drawn a mixture of outrage and resignation. Few really question adding high-tech navigation systems, missile testing equipment, radio intercept devices, night-vision technology and communications jammers to the U.N. list. And many shrugged at the idea of more shortages of everyday items. After more than a decade of privation, many Iraqis have adopted a weary acceptance of reality.
Others, though, saw the effort to impose new restrictions as more evidence of American hostility. At the Mishin complex in south Baghdad, a rollicking bazaar where automotive parts are sold, Hisham Ali bristled at the idea that the large tires he sells might be restricted.
"This is oppression," he exclaimed. "They're trying to affect my living. They're trying to destroy the whole economy."
"Why do they focus on tires?" asked Jasim Sadiq, 35, a farmer who was buying some tires. "Do they think they're weapons?"
U.S. officials put certain large tires on the list because of concern they could be used for military equipment. Yet Mohammed Fadhil needs them for his truck, so he can bring potatoes to the city. After each harvest, he loads 16 tons of potatoes and makes the journey to Baghdad, turning around to do it again a half-dozen times. In preparation for the January harvest, Fadhil, 40, spent his afternoon roaming through the market looking for new tires imported from such places as Turkey, China and India.
The sanctions have long embittered Iraqis, who consider them a chokehold on their lives. But now, at a moment of confrontation with the United States, the proposed changes strike many as even more punitive.
Beyond the antibiotics and tires are a host of other products that would be restricted, including atropine, organophosphate pesticides, activated charcoal, large hydraulic lifts, meteorological equipment, satellite dishes, full-motion flight simulators and even speedboats. U.S. officials came up with the 36 categories of items in their proposal this month after concluding that Hussein's government has been exploiting the U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program to buy products with the ability to enhance his military power.
Over the last five years, for instance, Iraq has imported more than 3.5 million vials of the drug atropine, which can be used to treat cardiac arrest, but also is an antidote for nerve agents. With his own army inoculated, Hussein might be less inhibited in unleashing chemical weapons on enemy troops, U.S. officials fear.
If the 36 items are added to the restricted list, they would not necessarily be banned for import. But the United States would be able to block them on a case-by-case basis, or at least impose a monitoring system before they are approved. Negotiations on the U.S. proposal are supposed to be wrapped up by the end of the month, but Russian and French diplomats have raised objections.
As a practical matter, the most modern and effective medicines already are hard to come by here, even some of those used to treat routine illness. At the Hanoudi Pharmacy on Yasser Arafat Street, most shelves long ago were emptied of drugs and stocked instead with shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream and deodorant. On back shelves that still contain medicines, some bottles date to 1980 or earlier, according to the owner, J. Hanoudi.
"If you go to a drug store in America, you see everything available. Here we have nothing," said Hanoudi, 60, the image of an old-time pharmacist with dwindling gray hair and a red sweater who has been behind the counter here since 1969. "Every day, every time, we can't help people. What can we do?"
Even without the new restrictions, Hanoudi said he cannot get atropine or inhalers for asthmatics or insulin for diabetics. What he can get, he said, he cannot get enough of. "If I need 1,000, there is 10," he said. Just then, a man walked in and asked for capsules with fusidic acid to treat a bacterial infection.
"I haven't got it," Hanoudi said.
"Could you get it for me?" the man asked.
"I can't. It hasn't been available for a long time."
The Ministry of Health disburses medicines to hospitals and pharmacies each month depending on what it receives through the U.N. program.
In November, Shatha Edward Harak, another pharmacist, received a two-month allotment of 300 packages of acetaminophen, 200 vials of ampicillin, 30 iron injections for those with anemia, 14 vials of procaine penicillin, 12 doses of thiamine and two packages of the laxative Sennalax. She got 24 packages of ciprofloxacin from Syria and eight from India, and sells them for as little as 10 cents, depending on the dose.
Harak said supplies are somewhat more available than they were in the years immediately after the Persian Gulf War, before the U.N. Security Council revised the sanctions program to allow more humanitarian goods into Iraq.
The U.N. Children's Fund, or UNICEF, reported recently, for instance, that the child malnutrition rate fell from 32 percent in 1996 to 23 percent this year. But Carel de Rooy, the UNICEF director for Iraq who announced the improvement, also noted that the numbers mean nearly 1 million Iraqi children still suffer from chronic malnutrition.
The Iraqi government has said 1.7 million children have died from disease, lack of food or other causes linked to the U.N. sanctions, which were imposed after Hussein's troops invaded and occupied Kuwait in August 1990. Western health specialists have contested that figure, putting the number closer to 500,000.
Whatever the count, the notion of further restrictions on ciprofloxacin and other inexpensive, commonly used antibiotics has left Harak and her customers baffled. "Is this for rockets or bombs?" said Mohammed Ibrahim, a 39-year-old driver who came by for some ciprofloxacin to recover from bronchitis. "I just want to take my medicine to get well. I just want to breathe."
Harak picked up the theme. "This is not for war. This is for people to live. Let the people live."
---
'Scorched Earth' Plans in Iraq Cited
Officials Also Warn Germ War Possible
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 19, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8632-2002Dec18?language=printer
U.S. intelligence officials warned yesterday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein plans to pursue a "scorched earth" strategy in the event of war with the United States and would destroy his country's oil fields, electrical power plants, food storage sites and other facilities while blaming U.S. military forces for the damage.
The officials, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said they have evidence that Hussein, if he believes his government is about to fall, will try to create a humanitarian crisis that could slow any U.S. invasion and foster international opposition to the war. They also warned that Hussein likely will attempt to release biological or chemical weapons as a last desperate act.
The officials said they cannot predict with certainly which germ or chemical agents Hussein might unleash, or when or where. But they said the likely targets would include not only U.S. forces but also Israel and Kuwait and Iraqi civilians such as Shiite Muslims who have protested Hussein's rule in the past. Iraq has declared it has no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
In preparation for such attacks, the officials said, Iraq has likely shifted some of its stores of anthrax, botulism, ricin and mustard gas nearer to the forces that would employ them -- special Republican Guard units and selected air and missile units located in the central part of the country. To undercut any order that might come from Hussein, the Bush administration has begun warning Iraqi officers that they will be held personally responsible for releasing any weapons of mass destruction.
"Saddam's point of view is, you fight with everything you've got," one official said. "He might use it right away, but he'll certainly use it when he thinks he's about to fall."
Similar U.S. intelligence assessments preceded the Persian Gulf War in 1991 that evicted Iraqi invasion forces from Kuwait, but few proved accurate as U.S. and allied ground troops encountered relatively little Iraqi resistance. It was impossible to independently assess the reliability of yesterday's comments by intelligence officials or the motivation for giving the briefing.
Although the Bush administration has an obvious interest in demonizing Hussein as it lays out a public case for war, a military spokesman attributed the timing of the briefing to a buildup of reporters' requests for an assessment of Iraq's military strength and intentions in the event of war. The intelligence officials declined to specify the evidence to further their case, saying it would compromise sources.
Other officials have argued that, unlike 1991, Hussein will be more willing to fight with nonconventional means because his own government's existence would be at stake.
The Iraqis have been preparing for war since immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, believing they would be a U.S. target, the intelligence officials said. They have accelerated imports of spare parts, moved ammunition closer to troop positions and dug trenches for soldiers and military vehicles. They also have begun placing trucks, concrete barriers and other obstacles on runways at key air bases where U.S. invasion forces might attempt to land.
But instead of planning to engage U.S. troops along Iraq's borders and in the open desert, as they did in the 1991 war, Hussein's commanders intend to use rivers and other natural features as obstacles to any U.S. advance and to set up a layered defense with Baghdad at the center, the officials said.
Iraq's ground and air forces are considerably weaker and smaller than they were in 1991, short on modern equipment, spare parts and training time, the officials said. Morale is low, and so is the Iraqi military's confidence in its ability to battle U.S. troops, they said.
There are about 375,000 Iraqi ground troops, down from more than 1 million a decade ago. Some divisions are manned at only half their authorized levels, and many lack such basic components as reconnaissance units and military police.
"The regular army is not motivated to fight for Saddam, and we don't think they're going to last very long," one official said.
Iraq's six Republican Guard divisions, which are better equipped and trained and number about 90,000 troops, are expected to fight longer. But the U.S. analysts said they have solid evidence that Hussein is concerned about morale even in these elite forces.
The Iraqi air force, with roughly 300 fighter jets, is less than half the size it was in 1991 and is not regarded as a major threat. Iraqi pilots receive on average only 20 to 50 hours of training annually, and when they do fly, "it's basically stick and rudder stuff" rather than serious tactical training, one U.S. official said.
A relatively brighter spot for Iraq's military is its air defense system, which remains largely intact despite years of intermittent strikes by U.S. warplanes patrolling "no-fly" zones in the north and south of the country. The U.S. officials noted that Iraq has kept most of its surveillance radars and antiaircraft missile batteries in the central part of the country, out of reach of U.S. planes.
Additionally, Iraqis have shown considerable resourcefulness in repairing facilities that are damaged by U.S. airstrikes, drawing on spare parts from some former Soviet republics, the officials said. Chinese and Turkish companies have helped Iraq lay a nationwide fiber-optic network, providing communication links among military facilities that are more effective and more difficult for U.S. forces to cut.
"It's really an issue of disruption, not permanent destruction," one official said of the real impact of the U.S. airstrikes.
Iraq's military would be in even worse shape, the official said, if not for large amounts of imported equipment, including trucks, air defense parts and night vision devices.
Many of the imports have been smuggled into the country in violation of international economic sanctions, with Syria serving as a major conduit, the official said. But some have arrived with United Nations approval, such as hundreds of pieces of earth-moving equipment that ended up being converted into missile launchers.
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Kurdish Fighters Don't Expect Call From U.S.
December 19, 2002
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/19/international/middleeast/19KURD.html
KALAK, Iraq, Dec. 16 - Many of the limitations of Kurdish opposition to Saddam Hussein were on display today in a lonely picket manned by Borhan Chato, a would-be guerrilla adjusting to life as a conventional soldier.
Mr. Chato occupied the last Kurdish position on front lines separating Mr. Hussein's Iraq from the independent Kurdish zone in the country's north. He was supposed to be with five other soldiers, but they had all gone home for lunch, leaving him alone to face platoons of Iraqi soldiers on the ridge overhead.
He had a rifle and five rusting magazines holding 150 cartridges. He had no helmet, no first-aid kit and no radio. His cartridge belt was stolen Iraqi equipment, bearing the distinctive eagle insignia of a nation he is sworn to fight. His mission, should he sense suspicious Iraqi movements, was to telephone his headquarters, a 30-minute drive away, to report something was amiss.
The Kurdish military is made of men like Mr. Chato, 21, who call themselves pesh merga, meaning "those who face death." Though they live off their lore as guerrillas who carried on the Kurdish struggle during decades when no one else could, their transition to standing army since the Kurds gained quasi-independence in 1991 has been difficult. They are hardly a modern force.
Now they approach a moment of reckoning. The pesh merga wonder: If war comes to Iraq, will they be called to fight with American soldiers, like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan?
Increasingly, Kurds are answering their own question. Their answer is no.
Perhaps, America will sponsor a proxy force, but with weapons inspections continuing to the south, it is too soon to tell. There is no doubt that the pesh merga are willing to fight. But when they look at their meager equipment and ammunition, and describe what they sense as a lack of American interest in a military courtship, these storied resistance fighters have begun talking about war in another way: as bystanders trying to divine a superpower's intent, and then carving out some independent supporting role. Talk of seizing cities has all but ceased.
"If America attacks Iraq, they will not need our help, because we are not so strong," said Hamid Afandi, minister of pesh merga for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls the western part of the Kurdish zone.
Fairadoon Abdulkader, minister of the interior in an eastern zone controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was equally blunt. "America does not want our help," he said. "It will be a technological war."
Political power in the Kurdish zone largely rests with the two parties. Each claims a full-time army of roughly 25,000 fighters, and a reserve unit of the same size.
The armies are a source of regional pride. It has been a feat to assemble them directly under the nose of Mr. Hussein and in a land squeezed by sanctions. But mere numbers, even if not exaggerated, are deceptive. Kurds know that they lack the weapons, ammunition and training to be an offensive threat.
It is an assessment shared by the West. In the limited comment to date about Kurdish military strength, American experts have been dismissive.
"Kurds can be effective mountain fighters in small, defensive engagements, but they so far have only developed symbolic military capabilities," Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July. "Now and indefinitely into the future, Iraqi military forces could rapidly re-enter the Kurdish security zone and defeat the Kurdish factions in settled areas in a matter of days."
There are many reasons for this vulnerability.
Problems begin with recruiting. In a region of about 4 million people, fit young volunteers are hard to find. On Saturday, six platoons of recruits underwent drills at an indoctrination camp on a mountain plateau at Raniya. They ranged from boys who had not yet shaved to men in the advanced grip of gray hair.
When calisthenics began after a 10-minute jog, one man appeared old enough to be nearing infirmity. He could hardly swing his arms.
This is only the beginning. Among veteran pesh merga, some of them hardened by multiple campaigns, the ranks are bedeviled by logistics, and fighters are under-equipped.
Kurdish units have rifles, light machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Only a few have heavy machine guns, and Kurdish officials say that for 50,000 troops there are only three aged tanks, a half-dozen armored vehicles and a small collection of multiple rocket launchers and artillery pieces. They have no airplanes or helicopters, only a handful of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and poor communications gear.
"We don't have much equipment," said Azad Miran, director of a military school of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. "All we have is people, and our high morale."
The pesh merga also have almost no ammunition reserves. Northern Iraq is essentially under double sanctions: first from the United Nations, which limits imports, but also from Syria, Turkey and Iran, all of which have their own uneasy Kurdish populations and worry over Kurdish military success in Iraq.
As a result, ammunition is almost impossible to obtain. Pesh merga munitions are either remnants of what was seized from Iraqi garrisons after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, or what they have bought from demoralized Iraqi soldiers or smugglers along the porous front. Kurds also complain that Turks have been putting pressure on Americans not to arm them, a worry confirmed by an American official.
"Basically, the Turks have been saying you can't trust the Kurds," the official said.
The ammunition shortage restricts training. In boot camp, each new pesh merga fires only 100 bullets, said Col. Muhammad Ali, commander of the Raniya camp. One hundred bullets is not nearly enough to train a competent marksman. It also limits combat operations. Pesh merga face Iraqi lines and simultaneously occupy a front near the Iranian border, a zone occupied by Ansar al-Islam, a Muslim group that has declared holy war against the secular Kurdish government.
"We do not have ammunition to fight two fronts," said Mamosta Hassan, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan general staff. This was made clear earlier this month, when Ansar militants overran two small hills as the pesh merga ran out of bullets. Kurdish officials say more than 70 pesh merga were killed.
That battle showed other limitations. A Kurdish official said the pesh merga had been warned of an impending assault but went to bed a little more than hour before Ansar attacked. It was a breakdown of discipline and a source of deep embarrassment, after Ansar posted Internet bulletins boasting of routing pesh merga and commandeering their equipment.
Such failures in leadership seem matched by lapses in planning. For instance, although the two parties say they can conduct joint operations, they have never held a joint training exercise and do not have a joint command staff. Moreover, members of many pesh merga units said they had stopped training for the year because it was too cold.
Another American official said the Kurds' political leadership had also been told to curb their military ambitions, especially plans for Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that ethnic Turkmen and Kurds alike claim. Earlier this fall, some Kurdish officers said publicly that they would capture Kirkuk. "We've basically said to them, this talk is not helpful," the official said.
All of these factors have pushed Kurds to talk of limited war aims. They still hope for direct American help against Ansar.
But as for fighting Iraq, Mr. Afandi, the minister of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, is pragmatic, and does not see his soldiers as an American proxy. He talks of deploying troops to the front in a war and then moving south slowly, to provide security in areas the Iraqi Army abandons. He said he would commit troops only if he sensed that the war was largely won and Mr. Hussein's ouster was certain.
Mustafa Said Kadir, deputy commander of forces of the Patriotic Union, said he knew that the Pentagon was massing troops and matériel in the region, but he has yet to meet an American soldier or official, and is now planning simple, independent assaults.
"If America wants to change the regime, and really will attack, we don't have any choice - we will make our own move," he said.
But even as he talks of offensive operations, he defines limits, saying he envisions his party's troops moving south, but on security missions or peacekeeping duty, and ultimately deferring to a new government in Baghdad. He avoids talk of occupation, as does the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
"If there will be no more Iraqi forces fighting and the regime will be changed for sure, we will try to be everywhere to keep order," Mr. Afandi said. "It would not be to occupy, but to keep security, to make peace."
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Police Evict 200 Jewish Settlers
December 19, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli police evicted 200 Jewish settlers Thursday from a makeshift encampment on West Bank land where Palestinian militants killed 12 Israelis last month.
Shouting through loudspeakers and backed by soldiers, police ordered the settlers off the settlement crudely constructed on a road into the West Bank city of Hebron. The site was near where Islamic Jihad militants ambushed Israeli soldiers and security guards on Nov. 15.
Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, an 11-year-old Palestinian girl, Nada Madi, was shot to death while watching a funeral from the window of her home, her cousin Mohammed Madi said. He said she was shot by Israeli soldiers.
The expulsion of the settlers took place overnight in driving rain, with police arresting three settlers for allegedly assaulting security officers.
David Wilder, spokesman for Hebron settlers, accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government of ordering the eviction to divert attention from a corruption scandal embroiling his Likud Party ahead of parliamentary elections.
``This morning's eviction of families and others from the `Hebron Heroes' neighborhood and the demolishing of the site was a disgrace, another stain on Ariel Sharon's already filthy shirt,'' Wilder said.
Riding a wave of Israeli anger after the attack, the settlers set up ``Hebron Heroes'' in hopes of establishing permanent homes on the route to the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.
A Defense Ministry statement hours before the eviction gave little explanation for the operation in Hebron, a divided city long plagued by religious tensions and flashes of violence.
``Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz decided to evacuate the outpost in Hebron because it is an illegal outpost built on private Palestinian land,'' the statement said.
In the shooting in Rafah, Palestinian witnesses said Madi, a girl who lived near an Israeli military post, died when Israeli soldiers fired during the funeral of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy killed the day before. An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was unaware of a girl being killed but that troops near the border had fired at armed men seen entering and leaving a building frequently used as cover for gunmen shooting at soldiers.
Near the West Bank town of Jenin, an Israeli tank ran into a Palestinian minibus, killing a passenger. Witnesses said it appeared to be an accident, but the driver said the tank hit the vehicle intentionally. The military had no immediate comment.
In the West Bank town of Tulkarem, troops demolished the home of a Palestinian they say carried out an attack last month on an Israeli communal farm in which five people were killed. The alleged gunman remains at large.
In overnight raids throughout the West Bank, troops rounded up more than 20 Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks on Israelis, the military said.
During Israel's forays into the West Bank in recent months, the army has detained thousands of Palestinians in roundups that government officials say have slowed, but not halted, attacks on Israel.
In Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers seized the camera of an Associated Press Television News journalist who was filming troops at the Church of the Nativity. The soldiers took the tape and returned the camera.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Thursday he would like to attend Christmas festivities in Bethlehem. However, Israel has made it clear that Arafat will not be permitted to make the short trip from his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, where he has been marooned for a year.
``I would like to go to participate in the Christmas services in Bethlehem,'' said Arafat, emerging briefly from his office building. ``I would like to go to Gaza, to Nablus, to Hebron, to face the troubles our people are facing.''
A photographer for the French news agency Agence France-Presse was beaten by Israeli border police at a checkpoint near Nablus on Thursday, the agency said. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog group, issued a protest. Neither the border police nor the military would comment.
In another development, Israeli opposition leader Amram Mitzna said Thursday he would only allow his Labor Party into a coalition government that accepted his policy of withdrawal from Palestinian territories.
Mitzna leads his party into general elections Jan. 28. He has said that if elected, he will seek a negotiated treaty with the Palestinians, but if a deal is not attainable he will order a unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
``We are not partners in any grouping which is not based on a political program leading to separation from the Palestinians,'' Mitzna said.
Earlier this week, he had ruled out any alliance with Likud. Sharon says a national unity government is essential as Israel battles a 26-month-old Palestinian uprising and a major economic slump.
-------- mideast
Iraq, Iran, and September 11: A Chronology
by Jacob G. Hornberger,
December 19, 2002
Future of Freedom Foundation
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0212i.asp
1951 - Iranian people democratically elect Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh as Iranian premier.
1953 - U.S. government, operating through the CIA, ousts Mossadegh in favor of shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, a cruel and tyrannical dictator who, with U.S. government support, brutalizes his own people for the next 25 years. See:
The C.I.A. in Iran by James Risen
The CIA's Greatest Hits by Mark Zapezauer
1979 - Iranian people revolt and oust the shah of Iran from power and take U.S. officials hostage in anger and retaliation against the United States. U.S. government is outraged over the ouster of the shah and the hostage-taking.
1981 - Iranian people release hostages to the United States.
1980s - U.S. government enters into partnership with Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, to retaliate against Iran. U.S. government furnishes chemical and biological weapons to Saddam. See:
Iraq Got Germs for Weapons Program from U.S. in '80s by Matt Kelley
Following Iraq's Bioweapons Trail by Robert Novak
A Tortured Relationship by Chris Bury
Late 1980s - With U.S. government's support and assistance, Saddam uses U.S.-government-supplied chemical weapons against Iranian troops. See:
Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War despite Use of Gas by Patrick E. Tyler
Rumsfeld Key Player in Iraq Policy Shift by Robert Windrem
1986 - U.S. government enters into partnership with Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals to resist Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. U.S. government furnishes partners with weaponry, including U.S.-made Stinger missiles.
1991 - Soviet Union falls and Cold War ends. NATO faces abolition and U.S. military-industrial complex faces massive reduction in budget and influence.
1991 - Saddam contends that neighbor Kuwait is stealing Iraqi oil through slant drilling and is also violating contractual agreements in OPEC. Saddam signals partner U.S. government of intention to invade Kuwait to resolve dispute. U.S. government, through U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, expresses no objections, stating, "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait ... . Kuwait is not associated with America." See:
Whatever Happened to U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie? by Carleton Cole
1991 - Saddam invades Kuwait to resolve slant-drilling and OPEC dispute. President George H.W. Bush turns on partner Saddam and declares him to be a new "Hitler," effectively dissolving the long partnership between U.S. government and Saddam. Bush declares intention to attack Iraq with UN assistance to repel Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
1991 - Persian Gulf War. UN forces, led by U.S. government, defeat Iraq and oust Iraq from Kuwait. UN and President George H.W. Bush leave Saddam in power but require him to dismantle his nuclear facilities and chemical and biological weapons.
1991 - U.S. government attempts to oust Saddam from power through UN-enforced military-economic blockade, also known as "sanctions," against the Iraqi people, which continues to the present. According to UN officials, sanctions contribute to the deaths of multitudes of Iraqi children, with estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to a million. See:
Iraq: Paying the Price by John Pilger
Iraq's Children Suffer as War Looms by Caroline Hawley
The Silent War by Leah C. Wells
Iraq's Shortage of Medicine May Grow More Severe by Peter Baker
Early 1990s - U.S. government establishes illegal no-fly zones over Iraq, resulting in a continuous U.S. bombing campaign against Iraq to the present. Illegal bombing campaign kills hundreds of Iraqi people. See:
Inside Iraq by John Pilger
Attacks on Iraq Violate Law by Robert Jensen
1993 - U.S. World Trade Center terrorist bomber cites death of Iraqi children as a motivating factor in bombing attack. See:
Religion Isn't Sole Motive of Terror by John V. Parachini
1996 - Osama bin Laden turns against former partner U.S. government and declares war against United States, stating in part, "More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression imposed on Iraq and its nation." See:
Bin Laden's Fatwa (PBS)
1996 - U.S. government, through U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, announces that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children resulting from the military-economic blockade against Iraq have been "worth it." See:
Iraq Adds Its Weight to a Sad Day of Remembrance by Robert Jensen
1998-2000 - High UN officials resign posts in protest against deaths of Iraqi children from sanctions. See:
Squeezed to Death by John Pilger
2001 - September 11 terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon. U.S. government declares perpetual "war on terrorism" and begins indefinite campaign to restrict rights and freedoms of the American people. NATO is reinvigorated, military spending soars, and military-industrial complex expands, all for the indefinite future.
2002 - President George W. Bush repeats President George H.W. Bush's 1991 declaration that former U.S. government partner Saddam is a "Hitler" and that therefore he must be ousted from power, 12 years after the Persian Gulf War. Bush claims that former partner Saddam hates America for its "freedom and values." Bush cites former partner Saddam's acquisition of nuclear components and biological and chemical weapons (including those obtained from the United States) as proof that Saddam presents a dire threat to the United States.
2002 - UN Security Council, prodded by U.S. government, requires Saddam to file updated weapons report fully accounting for nuclear components and biological and chemical weaponry.
2002 - Saddam files updated nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons report with the UN Security Council. U.S. government objects to public release of identities of suppliers of nucle