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NUCLEAR
UK baulks at building new nuclear reactors
Bulgaria to restart building nuclear plant in 2003
Panel to probe China's nuclear-related sales
The secret war on Iraq
A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy
Reporters on the Job
UN weapons inspector challenges US and UK
Powell Says Iraq Raises Risk of War by Lying About Illegal Arms
The U.S. Catalogs 'Material Omissions'
IAEA Says Iraq Must Do More to Prove Innocence
Blix Says US / UK Not Giving Him Enough Intelligence
No Sign of North Korea Restarting Reactor - U.S.
Nuclear Waste
MILITARY
Fire from above
U.S. to Set Up New Bases To Help Afghanistan Rebuild
Scientists Favoring Cautious Approach to Smallpox Shots
Singapore, Malaysia practice chemical attack response
U.S. Envoy Asks Hong Kong for Text of Anti-Sedition Law
Air campaign plans to spare Iraq infrastructure
U.S. to Press U.N. on Iraqi Scientist Interviews
U.S. and Allies Discuss Potential Mideast Peace Settlements
Israeli navy to hold joint exercise with U.S.,
U.S. should be picky about Pakistan
Russia Launches Five Small Satellites
Baghdad in 'material breach'
U.S. Urges U.N. to Authorize War in Iraq
Air Force jets collide, all aboard survive
Pentagon Plans Special Ops Budget Boost
Pentagon to Dispatch Thousands to Gulf
Next Base Closures Likely to Be Largest
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. Starts Freeing Foreigners Detained in Antiterror Sweep
F.B.I. Director Rejects Agency for Intelligence in United States
Bush Administration to Propose System for Monitoring Internet
ENERGY AND OTHER
Cities and states seize the time with green initiatives
General Electric to up Spanish wind power
UK energy paper to plan ahead half a century
White House Identifies Regulations That May Change
Bioethics Council Eyes Stem Cell Research
Power Fails for 3 Hours at Plum Island Infectious Disease Lab
ACTIVISTS
Thousands protest in Madrid
Cameras to monitor protesters
D.C. Cops Using Cameras at Big Protests
Health workers resist smallpox vaccinations
Civil extremists
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
UK baulks at building new nuclear reactors
Story by Andrew Callus
REUTERS UK:
December 20, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19148/story.htm
LONDON - The British government has decided to avoid making any commitment to building new nuclear power stations in draft legislation due early next year, a source close to the ruling Labour Party said on Thursday.
The decision marks a first, key victory for the anti-nuclear lobby since the financial meltdown of privatised nuclear power firm British Energy this year exposed cracks in UK policy and left the atomic industry that produces a quarter of Britain's power in limbo.
Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt said privately on Wednesday that a commitment to build new operations at this stage would be "crazy", the source said.
She told colleagues such a move risked putting more downward pressure on the weak power prices that precipitated British Energy's problems, and could compromise the government's plans to favour renewable energy solutions.
The last of Britain's ageing nuclear reactors is due to close by 2024. Experts say a decision on how to fill the gap they will leave needs to be taken soon.
The Department of Trade and Industry said the White Paper would address three main issues: safety and security of supply, costs to customers and environmental issues.
"Anything else about what is or is not in the bill is speculation," said a spokesman.
Hewitt's decision is a blow to her junior, Energy Minister Brian Wilson, who has championed the nuclear industry. Supporters of nuclear power say it is crucial for security of supply, and that its zero carbon emissions make up for the environmental hazard it poses.
Sources said Hewitt's decision appeared to be a late change of heart. It was made just before separate draft legislation linked to the British Energy rescue itself hit the desks of senior ministers and civil servants this week.
REBEL PROPOSAL
It comes amid growing disquiet in the Labour Party over the spiralling cost of the nuclear industry to the taxpayer, and at the start of a determined political campaign to change government thinking on the British Energy restructuring.
British Energy has survived on a state loan since September, when it went to the government for help. Market reforms aimed at stimulating competition had exposed overcapacity in the power market and pushed prices below its production costs.
Taxpayers already carry the responsibility for future nuclear cleanup costs of nuclear fuels company BNFL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) in the state sector.
If the restructuring of British Energy goes ahead as planned, that 48 billion pound ($77 billion) undiscounted liability will rise by several billion pounds, as the liabilities of British Energy, privatised in 1996, return to the public sector.
Last week, a group of legislators launched a campaign to redraw the planned restructuring of British Energy.
The proposals are set out in an Early Day Motion to Parliament - a device which allows MPs to register protest, but which has no call on the government. So far, 27 MPs have signed it.
The rebel proposal advocates the early closure of BNFL's Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield on England's northwest coast, and a switch to storage of spent fuel instead, which they say is cheaper and safer.
Most of the estimated 150-200 million pounds a year cost to taxpayers of keeping British Energy afloat will go to subsidise reprocessing.
British Energy itself said last year that a switch to storage could save it more than 200 million pounds a year, but BNFL has said such a move is impractical.
British Energy bondholders are to discuss later on Thursday whether to accept the restructuring plan - which also leaves them severely out of pocket. Shareholders have watched 97 percent of the company's stock market value evaporate in 2002 so far and will see their holding diluted to between five and 10 percent in a debt-for-equity swap that is part of the plan.
-------- bulgaria
Bulgaria to restart building nuclear plant in 2003
REUTERS BULGARIA:
December 20, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19147/story.htm
SOFIA - The Bulgarian government said on Thursday it will restart building a new nuclear power plant in Belene next year to compensate for the planned early closure of old reactors at the country's only existing plant in Kozloduy.
Bulgaria is the main power exporter in the Balkans and seeks to keep its leading position after it bowed to the European Union pressue and agreed to close four of the Kozloduy's six 3,760-megawatt reactors.
The plant produces over 40 percent of the country's power.
The EU, which last week set 2007 as an entry target date for Bulgaria, has said Soviet-design Kozloduy's old reactors could not be made safe at a reasonable cost.
The completion of the halted construction in Belene, 250 km (160 miles) north of Sofia, would cost some $1 billion and the government would seek to attract foreign investors, Energy Minister Milko Kovachev said.
His ministry has already launched talks with investors from Russia, Canada, the United States, the Czech Republic and other West European countries.
The project for the new plant would be ready in the second half of next year, Kovachev told reporters after a government session that had decided to resume Belene's construction.
The building of the 1,000-megawatt Soviet-designed Belene started in the 1980s and 40 percent of the construction work, worth $1 billion, has been completed.
Forty percent of the main equipment, including a reactor, have been supplied, but work was halted in 1990 due to a lack of cash and environmental protests.
In 2000 Bulgaria agreed to shut down Kozloduy's two oldest 440 MW reactors, number one and two, before 2003.
Kovachev said the closure process would start on Friday and the two units would be completely shut down on December 31.
Last month, Sofia also agreed to close Kozloduy's other two 440 MW reactors, numbers three and four, by the end of 2006. This has triggered protests because impoverished Bulgarians fear the closure would raise electricity prices.
Reactors number five and six will remain operational.
Kovachev said the shut down of Kozloduy's first two reactors would not deal a major blow to Bulgarian power exports next year, which should reach 6.0 billion kilowatt hours. This compared with 6.3-6.4 billion kWh of power exports this year.
-------- china
Panel to probe China's nuclear-related sales
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 20, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021220-97566833.htm
A congressionally mandated commission will investigate Beijing's sales of nuclear material to North Korea, as China's Foreign Ministry said yesterday that reports of the transfer are groundless.
Roger Robinson, chairman the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, said the panel plans to hold hearings on transfers of Chinese militarily useful goods to North Korea next month.
"There is a burgeoning nuclear crisis unfolding on the Korean Peninsula that demands enhanced export-control vigilance, particularly on the part of Pakistan, China and Russia," Mr. Robinson said in an interview. "The role of China-based suppliers of militarily relevant items to North Korea warrants commission scrutiny."
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao was asked about the transfer to North Korea earlier this month of a specialty chemical used in producing nuclear weapons. The sale was first reported in The Washington Times on Tuesday.
"I myself have also read the report carried by Washington Times," Mr. Liu stated. "The newspaper often publishes ill-intentioned and irresponsible reports and these reports are also groundless. We think this report is not worth comment."
U.S. intelligence officials told The Times that North Korea earlier this month received a shipment of 20 tons of a specialty chemical known as tributyl phosphate, or TBP, from China.
The chemical has both commercial and military applications and U.S. intelligence officials believe the TBP will be used to extract material for nuclear bombs from North Korea's stockpile of spent nuclear-reactor fuel.
Intelligence reports of the TBP purchase stated that the material was sold by a Chinese company in Dalian, a Pacific coast port.
The chemical shipment coincides with a recent announcement by Pyongyang that it will restart its nuclear reactors in Yongbyon, which in the past were used to make one or two plutonium-based nuclear bombs.
The TBP also can be used in the process of creating fuel for uranium-based nuclear weapons, according to arms specialists.
U.S. officials said the TBP transfer has raised new concerns that China is secretly assisting North Korea, while publicly saying it does not want to see nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.
Mr. Robinson said the reported TBP transfer is "a troubling development that fits a pattern of Chinese supply of dual-use and even proscribed items to North Korea."
"It strains credulity to imagine that the Chinese government is in the dark on such shipments," Mr. Robinson said
The China commission is made up of six Republicans and six Democrats and has already investigated Chinese arms proliferation.
Its last report, made public in July, stated: "China provides technology and components for weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems to terrorist-sponsoring states such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan."
The State Department's intelligence bureau stated in written answers to questions posed by the Senate Intelligence Committee that China's record of sales to rogue states has improved in recent years.
"There is still room for improvement, and we expect transfers of [weapons of mass destruction] and missile-related technology to continue," the Bureau of Intelligence and Research stated.
"Many of the firms engaged in proliferation activities are spin-offs from state-owned defense industries, but they may operate without the authorization of the Chinese government."
The report said China's government has been unable to "police producers and vendors adequately."
The TBP sale contradicts what Chinese officials have been saying publicly about nuclear proliferation.
"China has steadfastly pursued a policy of not advocating, encouraging or assisting any other country in developing weapons of mass destruction," Sha Zukang, a Chinese representative to the United Nations, told an arms-control conference in London on Tuesday.
Mr. Sha said China has created a new set of controls aimed at tightening the management of nuclear exports.
China in the past several years has sent North Korea long-range missile technology despite promises to the United States not to transfer such know-how.
-------- depleted uranium
The secret war on Iraq
20 Dec2002
UK Mirror
by John Pilger
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12463182&method=full&siteid=50143
http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=5859&TagID=2
THE American and British attack on Iraq has already begun. While the Blair government continues to claim in Parliament that "no final decision has been taken", Royal Air Force and US fighter bombers have secretly changed tactics and escalated their "patrols" over Iraq to an all-out assault on both military and civilian targets.
American and British bombing of Iraq has increased by 300 per cent. Between March and November, according to Ministry of Defence replies to MPs, the RAF dropped more than 124 tonnes of bombs.
From August to December, there were 62 attacks by American F-16 aircraft and RAF Tornadoes - an average of one bombing raid every two days. These are said to have been aimed at Iraqi "air defences", but many have fallen on mostly populated areas, where civilian deaths are unavoidable.
Under the United Nations Charter and the conventions of war and international law, the attacks amount to acts of piracy: no different, in principle, from the German Luftwaffe's bombing in Spain in the 1930s as precursor to its invasion of Europe.
The bombing is a "secret war" that has seldom been news. Since 1991, and especially in the last four years, it has been unrelenting and is now deemed the longest Anglo-American campaign of aerial bombardment since World War Two.
The US and British governments justify it by claiming they have a UN mandate to police so-called "no-fly zones" which they declared following the Gulf War. They say these "zones", which give them control of most of Iraq's airspace, are legal and supported by UN Security Council Resolution 688.
This is false. There are no references to no fly zones in any Security Council resolution. To be sure about this, I asked Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was Secretary General of the United Nations in 1992 when Resolution 688 was passed. "The issue of no fly zones was not raised and therefore not debated: not a word," he said. "They offer no legitimacy to countries sending their aircraft to attack Iraq."
In 1999, Tony Blair claimed the no fly zones allowed the US and Britain to perform "a vital humanitarian task" in protecting the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the ethnic Marsh Arabs in the south. In fact, British and American aircraft have actually provided cover for neighbouring Turkey's repeated invasions of northern, Kurdish Iraq.
TURKEY is critical to the American "world order". Overseeing the oilfields of the Middle East and Central Asia, it is a member of Nato and the recipient of billion of dollars' worth of American weapons and military equipment. It is also where British and American bombers are based.
A long-running insurrection by Turkey's Kurdish population is regarded by Washington as a threat to the "stability" of Turkey's "democracy" that is a front for its military which is among the world's worst violators of human rights. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish Kurds have been displaced and an estimated 30,000 killed. Turkey, unlike Iraq, is "our friend".
In 1995 and 1997, as many as 50,000 Turkish troops, backed by tanks and fighter aircraft, occupied what the West called "Kurdish safe havens".
They terrorised Kurdish villages and murdered civilians. In December 2000, they were back, committing the atrocities that the Turkish military commits with immunity against its own Kurdish population.
For joining the US "coalition" against Iraq, the Turkish regime is to be rewarded with a bribe worth $6billion. Turkey's invasions are rarely reported in Britain. So great is the collusion of the Blair government that, virtually unknown to Parliament and the British public, the RAF and the Americans have, from time to time, deliberately suspended their "humanitarian" patrols to allow the Turks to get on with killing Kurds in Iraq.
In March last year, RAF pilots patrolling the "no fly zone" in Kurdish Iraq publicly protested for the first time about their enforced complicity in the Turkish campaign. The pilots complained that they were frequently ordered to return to their base in Turkey to allow the Turkish air force to bomb the very people they were meant to be "protecting".
Speaking on a non-attributable basis to Dr Eric Herring, a senior lecturer in politics at Bristol University and a specialist on Iraqi sanctions, the pilots said whenever the Turks wanted to attack the Kurds in Iraq, RAF patrols were recalled to base and ground crews were told to switch off their radar - so that the Turks' targets would not be visible. One British pilot reported seeing the devastation in Kurdish villages caused by the attacks once he had resumed his patrol.
AMERICAN pilots who fly in tandem with the British, are also ordered to turn their planes around and turn back to Turkey to allow the Turks to devastate the Kurdish "safe havens".
You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills with munitions," one pilot told the Washington Post. "Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended." When the Americans returned to Iraqi air space, he said, they would see "burning villages, lots of smoke and fire."
The Turks do no more than American and British aircraft in their humanitarian guise. The sheer scale of the Anglo-American bombing is astonishing, with Britain a very junior partner. During the 18 months to January 1999 (the last time I was able to confirm official US figures) American aircraft flew 36,000 sorties over Iraq, including 24,000 combat missions.
The term "combat" is highly deceptive. Iraq has virtually no air force and no modern air defences. Thus, "combat" means dropping bombs or firing missiles at infrastructure that has been laid to waste by a 12-year-old embargo.
The Wall Street Journal, the authentic voice of the American establishment, described this eloquently when it reported that the US faced "a genuine dilemma" in Iraq. After eight years of enforcing a no fly zone in northern (and southern) Iraq, few targets remain. "We're down to the last outhouse," one US official protested.
I have seen the result of these attacks. When I drove from the northern city of Mosul three years ago, I saw the remains of an agricultural water tanker and truck, riddled with bullet holes, shrapnel from a missile, a shoe and the wool and skeletons of about 150 sheep.
A family of six, a shepherd, his father and his wife and four children, were blown to pieces here. It was treeless, open country: a moonscape. The shepherd, his family and his sheep would have been clearly visible from the air.
The shepherd's brother, Hussain Jarsis, agreed to meet me at the cemetery where the family is buried. He arrived in an old Toyota van with the widow, who was hunched with grief, her face covered. She held the hand of her one remaining child, and they sat beside the mounds of earth that are the four children's graves. "I want to see the pilot who killed my children," she shouted across to us.
The shepherd's brother told me, "I heard explosions, and when I arrived to look for my brother and family, the planes were circling overhead. I hadn't reached the causeway when the fourth bombardment took place. The last two rockets hit them.
"At the time I couldn't grasp what was going on. The truck was burning. It was a big truck, but it was ripped to pieces. Nothing remained except the tyres and the numberplate.
"We saw three corpses, but the rest were just body parts. With the last rocket, I could see the sheep blasted into the air."
It was not known if American or British aircraft had done this. When details of the attack were put to the Ministry of Defence in London, an official said, "We reserve the right to take robust action when threatened." This attack was significant, because it was investigated and verified by the senior United Nations official in Iraq at the time, Hans Von Sponeck, who drove there specially from Baghdad.
He confirmed that nothing nearby resembled a military installation.
Von Sponeck recorded his finding in a confidential internal document entitled, "Air Strikes in Iraq", prepared by the UN Security Section (UNOHCI).
HE also confirmed dozens of similar attacks and these are documented - attacks on villages, a fishermen's wharf, nearby a UN food warehouse. So regular were the attacks that Von Sponeck ordered UN relief convoys suspended every afternoon.
FOR this, Von Sponeck, a senior United Nations civil servant with a distinguished career all over the world, made powerful enemies in Washington and London.
The Americans demanded that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, sack him and were surprised when Annan stood by his chief representative in Iraq.
However, within a few months, Von Sponeck felt he could no longer run a humanitarian programme in Iraq that was threatened both by the illegal bombing and by a deliberate American policy of blocking humanitarian supplies.
He resigned in protest, just as his predecessor, Denis Halliday, a Deputy Under Secretary of the UN, had done. Halliday called the US and British-driven embargo "genocidal".
It is now clear from official documents that the United States is preparing for a possible slaughter in Iraq. The Pentagon's "Doctrine for Joint Urban Operations" says that unless Baghdad falls quickly it has to be the target of "overwhelming firepower". The resistance of Stalingrad in World War Two is given as a "lesson".
Cluster bombs, deep penetration "bunker" bombs and depleted uranium will almost certainly be used. Depleted uranium is a weapon of mass destruction. Coated on missiles, and tank shells, its explosive force spreads radiation over a wide area, especially in the desert dust.
Professor Doug Rokke, the US army physicist in charge of cleaning up depleted uranium in Kuwait told me, "I am like most -people in southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. What we're seeing now, respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers are the direct result.
"The controversy over whether or not it's the cause of these problems is a manufactured one. My own ill-health is a testament to that."
THE most devastating weapon of mass destruction was briefly in the news last week when Unicef, the United Nations children's Fund, released its annual State of the World's Children report.
The human cost of the American-driven embargo of Iraq is spelt out in statistics that require no comment.
"Iraq's child mortality rate has nearly tripled since 1990 to levels found in some of the world's least-developed countries, " said the report.
"The country's regression over the past decade is by far the most severe of the 193 countries surveyed. Unicef said that a quarter of Iraqi babies were now underweight and that more than a fifth were stunted from malnutrition."
Under the rules of the embargo, Iraqis are allowed less than £100 per person with which to sustain life for an entire year.
To date, the cost of the current, "secret" and illegal British bombing of Iraq is a billion pounds.
----
A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy
If US fights Iraq, it would use a weapon that left a radioactive trail in Gulf War
By Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1220/p01s04-wome.html
GRAVEYARD: Southern Iraq, littered with tanks destroyed by the US in the 1991 Gulf War, is contaminated by low-level radiation from depleted uranium artillery. SCOTT PETERSON/GETTY IMAGES http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1220/csmimg/p8a.jpg
KHARANJ, IRAQ - The rusting tanks are gathered in Iraq's southern desert like an open-air exhibit of the 1991 Gulf War.
But these are not just museum pieces. This still radioactive battlefield - and the severe health problems many Iraqis and some US Gulf War veterans ascribe to it - may also be an omen of an unsettled future.
As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a possible Gulf War II, analysts agree that the bad publicity and popular fears about depleted uranium (DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm for its "silver bullet." US forces in Iraq will again deploy DU as their most effective - and most controversial - tank-busting bullet.
War seems more imminent as the White House indicated late this week that the decision for war could come by late January.
But this bleak desert just north of Iraq's border with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offers a window on the human impact nearly 12 years after a toxic stew of DU, chemical agents, pesticides, and smoke from burning oil wells poisoned this war zone. Few suggest that a new war, if it involves Iraqi armored resistance, will have any less of an effect. "Nobody thinks about what is going to happen when the shooting stops," says Robert Hewson, editor of the London-based Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "The people who are firing [DU] will demand that they have it...they will not want to go to war without it. The primary driver will always be the mission and getting the job done."
DU is made from nuclear-waste material left over from making nuclear weapons and fuel. American gunners used 320 tons of it in 1991 to destroy 4,000 Iraqi armored vehicles and swiftly conclude victory.
But the invisible particles created when those bullets struck and burned are still "hot." They make Geiger counters sing, and they stick to the tanks, contaminating the soil and blowing in the desert wind, as they will for the 4.5 billion years it will take the DU to lose just half its radioactivity.
Unaware of the risks, two shepherds earlier this week relaxed on the ground as their sheep picked at scrub grass near one tank. Similar tanks struck by DU during the Gulf War were deemed a "substantial risk" and buried by US forces in Saudi Arabia or a low-level radioactive waste dump in the US.
Pentagon spokesmen said yesterday that US troops are being given no new DU protection training for any Iraq campaign. In the mid-1990s, US troops were required to wear full protective suits and masks within 50 yards of a tank struck with DU bullets. Those rules, based on Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety guidelines, were dramatically revised in the late 1990s.
In most cases, the rules now say, any face mask is sufficient. Pentagon officials note their policy has been "inconsistent," but admitted in 1998 that their "failure" to alert soldiers to the risks before the Gulf War resulted in "thousands of unnecessary exposures." The latest rules, a US Army spokesman said yesterday, "reflect the most current ... data regarding DU."
Critics charge that the official downplaying of DU's dangers keeps the magic bullet in the arsenal, while thwarting DU-specific compensation claims by Gulf War vets.
The Iraqi battlefield will be "very dangerous" in the aftermath of a new war, says Asaf Durakovic, a former chief of nuclear medicine at a veteran's hospital and head of the private Uranium Medical Research Center. In the peer-reviewed journal "Military Medicine" last August, he published results that 14 of 27 ill Gulf War vets had DU in their urine nine years after the war.
Testifying before Congress in 1997, Dr. Durakovic predicted DU will ensure that "battlefields of the future will be unlike any...in history," and "injury and death will remain lingering threats to 'survivors' of the battle for ... decades into the future."
Though DU clearly enhances the chances of victory, some say the price is too high. Risks are difficult to quantify, but US military and expert reports indicate DU can be a hazard that may cause cancer, and that total soil decontamination is impossible.
British troops deploying to Kosovo in 1999 were sent out with full suits and masks, and told to use them "if contact with targets damaged by DU ammunition is unavoidable." A report commissioned by the US Army on the eve of the Gulf War found that "no dose [of DU particles] is so low that the probability of effect is zero." Another report by the British Atomic Energy Agency used an estimate of 40 tons of DU to create a hypothetical danger level, and predicted that that amount of DU - one-eighth of what actually was fired - could cause "500,000 potential deaths."
"I don't think we know if DU can be used safely, and until we know that, we shouldn't use it," says Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with Washington's Center for Defense Information. "The military's mindset is clear: 'This is war, war is hell...the guy who shoots first wins, and he hits them with everything he has.'"
In the US, every aspect of DU creation, use, and disposal is strictly controlled. The US Army alone has 14 licenses to handle the substance. Disposal requires burial in low-level radioactive waste dumps; particles must be mixed with concrete and encased in two barrels.
But when it comes to fighting armor, no substance can match DU bullets, denser than lead and self-sharpening. They burn through armor on impact and are cheap. US gunners love them and say DU saves lives on the front line.
This graveyard of tanks shows why. DU burns so hotly into its target that a targeted tank's own ammunition ignites, causing a blast that often rips the turret right off the top of a tank. In the process, however, the DU round aerosolizes into a lethal dust that emits alpha particles.
Though alpha particles have a limited range of a quarter-inch or so, they pack a punch 20 times more powerful than beta or gamma radiation, and can lodge easily in the body if inhaled or ingested. Many US vets believe DU may also be a key factor in Gulf War syndrome, the set of symptoms for which the Veteran's Administration has already provided compensation for nearly 1 in 4 vets.
Iraqis say DU is a major cause of the severe health problems such as cancer and birth defects that they graphically show are surging in southern Iraq, though they do not have the clinical capability to link DU to health problems.
"No one wins in war, everyone loses, and Basra will again be a great battlefield," says Thamer Ahmad Hamdan, an orthopedic surgeon in Basra. In 1998, when visited by the Monitor, he had one box of x-rays depicting grotesque abnormalities. "Now it is boxes," he says. "We will remember the Americans used this again, that it was killing miserable people. Hopefully, they are not going to do it."
Iraqi doctors say poverty, malnutrition, and poor water and sanitation are key to current health problems, along with DU and chemical exposures, and trauma from the last war. Jawad Khudim al-Ali, director of the cancer ward at Basra's Saddam Teaching Hospital, says pre-war cancer rates have increased 11-fold; the mortality rate 19-fold.
While US war planners in the Gulf War and in campaigns since have taken great care to minimize civilian casualties, the longterm impact of DU is tough to define. And the reviled Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein may limit concerns of civilian suffering, analysts say. "I don't think there is a consensus in this country about whether war is the right thing to do," says CDI's Hellman. "But there is a consensus that Saddam is right up there with Satan on the evil-people-in-the-world list. And therefore, whatever methods of warfare are going to bring him down, and safeguard American troops in the process, is going to be acceptable [to Americans]."
"If [fallout on civilians] was a serious consideration," concurs Hewson, of Jane's, "we would not be contemplating a major land battle in Iraq. At the levels where this stuff is being planned, no tears are being shed for those people."
Abdulkarim Hussein Subber, a gynecologist at the Basra Maternity and Children's Hospital, has three photo albums full of images of unimaginable birth defects that he claims are six times more prevalent today than before the Gulf War.
"We have become very familiar with these cases," Dr. Subber says, adding that numbers have leveled off since expectant mothers began using ultrasound to detect - and terminate - severe cases. "The problem is [our patients] are afraid of being pregnant again, because of the fear of malformations," Subber says. "The problem is the pollution from the war."
-
The Trail of a Bullet series: http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/index.html
-----
Reporters on the Job
December 20, 2002
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1220/p06s02-wogn.html
DÉJÀ VIEW: The last time Scott Peterson saw the Iraqi side of the Gulf War battlefield - in 1998 - he was working on a story about contamination from US ammunition made from depleted uranium (DU). Sweating inside a nuclear, chemical, and biological suit, he peered at the battlefield through the lenses of a gas mask. At the time of that visit, few journalists had visited the site, much less with a Geiger counter in tow to measure basic radioactive contamination levels. Upon his return visit four years later for today's update), Scott found that the detritus of war had gathered more rust.
This time, with the added experience of covering a DU story in Kosovo, Scott knew more about how DU works, and how it contaminates. His new uniform was a face mask and plastic booties, to ensure that radioactive particles didn't stick to his boots. "What struck me this time was that someone had attempted some radioactive cleanup of the tank graveyard," Scott says. "Several tanks and armored vehicles had been cut up with blow torches, and the DU impact points - the places where permanent contamination would have been greatest - had been carved out and taken away."
Let us hear from you.
Mail to: One Norway Street, Boston, MA 02115 via e-mail: world@csmonitor.com
-------- inspections
UN weapons inspector challenges US and UK
Friday 20 December 2002
Ananova / UK Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=12470215&method=full&siteid=50143
The UN chief weapons inspector has called on the US and British governments to provide his team with better intelligence on Iraq.
Hans Blix says the inspectors are not getting the support they need from the western powers in their mission to locate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
"If the UK and the US are convinced (that Iraq has weapons) and they say they have evidence, then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where this stuff is," he says.
--------
Powell Says Iraq Raises Risk of War by Lying About Illegal Arms
December 20, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN with JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/international/middleeast/20IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, citing a new assertion by United Nations inspectors that Iraq has failed to disclose information about its illegal weapons, said today that Saddam Hussein's government was in "material breach" of Security Council resolutions and "well on its way to losing this last chance" to avoid a war.
In one of the toughest warnings to Mr. Hussein since United Nations inspectors arrived in Baghdad to search for evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear arms, Mr. Powell also said Iraq needed to comply on disclosure within weeks rather than months.
In the 12,200 pages of documents it released on Dec. 7, Iraq continues its "pattern of noncooperation, its pattern of deception, its pattern of dissembling, its pattern of lying," Mr. Powell said. "If that is going to be the way they continue through the weeks ahead, then we're not going to find a peaceful solution to this problem."
At the United Nations, both the chiefs of the weapons inspection teams and France, a veto-bearing permanent member of the Security Council, appeared to lend crucial international support to the United States' assessment that Iraq had let the world down once more.
Hans Blix, the chief of the chemical and biological weapons inspection teams, said that "an opportunity was missed" by Baghdad to come clean about new arms programs and that making a full disclosure would have been better for Iraq. Mr. Blix told the Council in a closed briefing that there were "inaccuracies" in Iraq's claim that it destroyed a huge stockpile of anthrax it built up from 1988 to 1991. It was the first time the inspectors suggested that Iraq had lied.
Mr. Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the nuclear inspectors, agreed that Iraq was "cooperating well" in terms of allowing inspectors access to sites.
But Mr. Blix, speaking for all the United Nations inspectors, said, "The absence of evidence means, of course, that one cannot have confidence that there do not remain weapons of mass destruction."
Mr. Powell's blunt words came as President Bush met with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in the Middle East, to discuss plans for moving more troops and equipment to the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon has already been given approval for an additional 50,000 troops in the region, doubling the number there now.
In addition, American and Turkish officials met today to work out the details of site surveys to be conducted by the United States at 10 to 15 bases and ports in Turkey in the next several days, a senior military official said.
Military officials said the changes would allow Mr. Bush to begin an offensive if necessary by late January.
Administration officials said this evening that tough talk from Mr. Powell and disclosures of troop plans were all part of a calculated move to increase pressure on Mr. Hussein, as well as on dissidents who might cooperate with weapons inspectors or even on those who might be willing to oust him.
"We're stepping up everything, including military preparations, to send Iraq a message," an administration official said. "The pressure is going to be built up even more."
Mr. Powell's unusually explicit talk of the possibility of force was seen in Washington and at the United Nations as notable for coming from the figure considered the most reluctant of those around Mr. Bush to go to war. Mr. Powell is also known as the administration's principal advocate for seeking United Nations support before military force is used.
The United States ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, expressed the American reaction there today, calling the declaration "an insult to our intelligence and indeed an insult to this Council."
Among those providing support for the American reaction was France, which up to now has been especially eager to avoid war by forcing Iraq to disarm through the inspections.
Today it publicly criticized the declaration as incomplete and full of inconsistencies, although it stopped short of saying the document was in breach of resolutions.
Over all, the negative reaction to the Iraqi declaration was an early vindication of the administration's strategy: allowing Mr. Hussein to show by his own actions that he will not give up his secret weapons peacefully.
Most members of the Council, including the United States, insisted that the failings of Iraq's arms declaration made it urgent to support the weapons inspectors in their search for evidence in Iraq.
At the same time, pressure increased sharply on Washington to share with the inspectors secret intelligence about Iraq's arms programs that the administration so far has withheld from the inspectors in order to use for its denunciations of Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Negroponte pledged to the Council and the inspectors today that Washington would open the flow of intelligence data.
At the request of the United States and several other nations, the inspectors agreed to brief the Council more frequently in January than was previously scheduled. The change of plan will give Washington more opportunities in coming weeks to judge whether Iraq is continuing to try to foil the inspections.
At the State Department, Mr. Powell discussed the specific nature of what Iraq had failed to disclose; a two-page list of omissions was distributed.
Amplifying an assertion by Mr. Blix about the existence of an anthrax stockpile, Mr. Powell said that records dating from the 1990's inspections showed that Iraq could have produced 27,500 quarts of anthrax. The Iraqi declaration, he pointed out, is "silent on this stockpile, which alone would be enough to kill several million people."
Mr. Powell also said that although Iraq had earlier admitted manufacturing about 20,000 quarts of botulinum toxin, a biological agent, its declaration showed these and other potential supplies to be missing. Also missing from the declaration were known stockpiles of precursors of poison gas.
In the nuclear sphere, he said that based on unspecified intelligence since 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, it was known to have built mobile biological weapons productions units, and to have tried to obtain aluminum tubes for the enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons. These efforts, too, remain undisclosed by Iraq.
The failure to provide details about these programs, Mr. Powell said, "has brought it closer to the day when it will have to face" the consequences outlined in the United Nations Security Council resolution approved in November.
"The world will not wait forever," he said, adding that until Iraq fully cooperates with the United Nations, "we should be very skeptical and, I'm afraid, we should be very discouraged with respect to the prospects for finding a peaceful solution."
Administration officials had criticized Iraq's disclosure of its weapons programs almost immediately after it was issued less than two weeks ago. In fact, few officials or experts expected Iraq to disclose much, so their dissatisfaction was mixed with a feeling of vindication on that score.
In the early 1990's, it took months, even years, for inspectors to pry information from Iraq about its biological and chemical weapons. Today Mr. Powell made it clear that the latest process would not be allowed to drag out that long.
The next target date for decisions on Iraq, some administration officials said, is Jan. 27. That is the date that Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei are to make their first full report on their inspections. Not coincidentally, some officials say it is approximately the time when the military would be ready to attack.
There had been a debate in the administration over whether to label the latest Iraqi failure a "material breach." In the end, Mr. Powell and Mr. Negroponte both used that term today.
It was significant because the word "breach" applies to Iraq's obligations to disarm under the cease-fire of 1991. Determination of an Iraqi breach would effectively permit a return to military force by the United States and its allies.
Yet, although he used the term, Mr. Powell made it clear that a number of steps needed to be taken before war would be considered.
First, he called for a further effort to "audit and examine" the Iraqi declaration of Dec. 7 and an accelerated effort to interview Iraqi scientists and other experts "outside Iraq, where they can speak freely." He said any Iraqi effort to block such interviews would be considered another material breach.
The secretary said inspectors should also "intensify their efforts" in Iraq, even though some officials say that without Iraqi cooperation or help from scientists, the odds of their finding solid evidence of arms programs are not large.
While saying the United States would take steps to share with inspectors its information on weapons and weapons sites, Mr. Powell was vague about them - deliberately so, officials said. The United States could provide highly sensitive intelligence information, and possibly help from agents inside Iraq to spirit cooperating scientists out of the country along with the families.
Mr. Blix has expressed reservations about such interviews, especially if they are conducted outside the country, saying that he would not go along with "abductions."
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The U.S. Catalogs 'Material Omissions'
December 20, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/international/middleeast/20ITEX.html
Following is the State Department's list of what it called inadequacies in Iraq's statement Dec. 7 about its weapons programs:
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES OF OMISSIONS FROM THE IRAQI DECLARATION TO THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL
ANTHRAX AND OTHER UNDECLARED BIOLOGICAL AGENTS
The U.N. Special Commission concluded that Iraq did not verifiably account for, at a minimum, 2,160 kg. [4,761 pounds] of growth media. This is enough to produce 26,000 liters [27,500 quarts] of anthrax - 3 times the amount Iraq declared; 1,200 liters of botulinum toxin; and 5,500 liters of clostridium perfrigens - 16 times the amount Iraq declared. Why does the Iraqi declaration ignore these dangerous agents in its tally?
BALLISTIC MISSILES
Iraq has disclosed manufacturing new energetic fuels suited only to a class of missile to which it does not admit. Iraq claims that flight-testing of a larger diameter missile falls within the 150-km. [93-mile] limit. This claim is not credible. Why is the Iraqi regime manufacturing fuels for missiles it says it does not have?
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?
VX (NERVE GAS) In 1999 U.N. Special Commission and international experts concluded that Iraq needed to provide additional, credible information about VX production. The declaration provides no information to address these concerns. What is the Iraqi regime trying to hide by not providing this information?
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS MUNITIONS
In January 1999, the U.N. Special Commission reported that Iraq failed to provide credible evidence that 550 mustard gas-filled artillery shells and 400 biological-weapon-capable aerial bombs had been lost or destroyed. The Iraqi regime has never adequately accounted for hundreds, possibly thousands, of tons of chemical precursors. Again, what is the Iraqi regime trying to hide by not providing this information?
EMPTY CHEMICAL MUNITIONS
There is no adequate accounting for nearly 30,000 empty munitions that could be filled with chemical agents. Where are these munitions?
UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES (UAV) PROGRAMS
Iraq denies any connection between UAV programs and chemical or biological agent dispersal. Yet Iraq admitted in 1995 that a MIG-21 remote-piloted vehicle tested in 1991 was to carry a biological weapon spray system.
Iraq already knows how to put these biological agents into bombs and how to disperse biological agent using aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicles. Why do they deny what they have already admitted? Why has the Iraqi regime acquired the range and auto-flight capabilities to spray biological weapons?
MOBILE BIOLOGICAL WEAPON AGENT FACILITIES
The Iraqi declaration provides no information about its mobile biological weapon agent facilities. Instead it insists that these are "refrigeration vehicles and food-testing laboratories." What is the Iraqi regime trying to hide about their mobile biological weapon facilities?
SUMMARY
None of these holes and gaps in Iraq's declaration are mere accidents, editing oversights or technical mistakes: they are material omissions.
--------
IAEA Says Iraq Must Do More to Prove Innocence
December 20, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un-iaea.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors said on Friday Iraq had done little to disprove allegations it had violated Security Council resolutions by attempting to obtain materials usable in atomic weapons.
Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Iraq had admitted to attempting to import aluminum tubing which the United States says Baghdad wanted for enriching uranium for atomic weapons.
``They told us in Baghdad that they made a number of efforts to procure some aluminum tubes,'' ElBaradei said in an interview on CNN.
``However, they said these tubes were meant for conventional rockets and not for centrifuges. We expect and we impressed on them that we need details. We cannot just take their word for it.''
ElBaradei said the IAEA wanted to know who the suppliers were and all the specifications of the tubes.
``We did not get any information on this issue for example,'' he said.
Hans Blix, who heads the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection (UNMOVIC) teams hunting for chemical, biological and ballistic weapons, told the Security Council on Thursday that he too was unable to verify Iraqi claims that it wanted the tubes for conventional rockets.
``At this stage UNMOVIC has drawn no conclusions concerning the tubes, and further investigation of this will be conducted,'' Blix said.
ElBaradei said the Iraqis had also been silent on allegations it had tried to get uranium from an African country.
``They denied that too in Baghdad, but again it would have been helpful to elaborate,'' he said.
ElBaradei also repeated what he told the Security Council on Thursday -- that he was extremely disappointed that the Iraqis had kept silent on these and a number of other issues.
GIVE US YOUR INTELLIGENCE
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Blix earlier told BBC radio that the United States and Britain had not been sharing enough information to aid his teams' efforts to find biological and chemical weapons and long-range missiles.
ElBaradei echoed Blix's words, calling for any and all information that might help inspectors verify the accuracy or inaccuracy of Baghdad's weapons declaration delivered to the Security Council on December 8.
``Now is the time for countries that have information that contradicts Iraq's declaration to come forward with this information,'' ElBaradei said.
Washington is convinced Iraq has attempted to revive its clandestine nuclear program, which the IAEA said it had neutralized after 1991 and before fleeing Baghdad hours ahead of a British-U.S. bombing campaign in December 1998.
Iraq has denied possessing weapons of mass destruction. ElBaradei, who has been under pressure from an impatient United States to accelerate the inspections, also said he wanted to speed up the IAEA's nuclear sleuthing.
``We need to do much more interviewing, we need to do satellite imagery, environmental sampling,'' he said. ``I think we are about to complete what I call the reconnaissance phase of our work and move to the investigation phase.''
The United States and Britain are already preparing for a possible war to disarm Iraq.
Washington has said Iraq was in material breach of a U.N. resolution demanding that it declare its weapons of mass destruction.
Britain has stopped short of accusing Baghdad of being in full material breach, although Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Thursday its failures ``amount to breaches of the resolution. So they are material breaches in one sense.''
The Security Council has asked ElBaradei to give another progress report as soon as possible after the New Year -- well ahead of his January 27 deadline to brief the council.
``We were asked to even report before January 27, and that is how keen the Security Council is to see progress,'' he said. ``I hope Iraq would understand the message coming from the Security Council.''
-------
Blix Says US / UK Not Giving Him Enough Intelligence
December 20, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-blix.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Friday the United States and Britain are not giving him the intelligence he needs to prove Iraq may be concealing weapons of mass destruction.
Asked if he was getting all the co-operation he wanted from western intelligence agencies, Blix said: ``Not yet. We get some but we don't get all we need.''
``If the UK and the US are convinced and they say they have evidence, well then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where is this stuff,'' he told BBC radio.
As he called for more help from western intelligence, his inspectors resumed their hunt for banned weapons in Iraq.
Working on the Muslim rest day for the second week in a row, they drove to the sprawling al-Tuwaitha complex, the main site of Iraq's nuclear program.
But Blix said they needed the eyes and ears of western spies and satellites to make the search more effective.
``The most important thing that governments like the UK or the US could give us would be to tell us of sites where they are convinced that they keep some weapons of mass destruction. This is what we want to have,'' he said.
``We get a lot of briefings about what they believe the Iraqis have. But what of course you really need to have is an indication of a place where things are stored -- if they know it,'' he said.
``They have all their methods to look, to listen to telephone conversations. They have spies, they have satellite etc. They have a lot of sources which we do not have,'' he added.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose country has threatened to disarm Iraq by force if need be, said Baghdad was in ``material breach'' of a U.N. Security Council resolution by failing to disclose its arms of mass destruction.
Britain said it was ``deeply disappointed'' with Iraq's arms declaration, given to the council on December 7, but stopped short of calling it a material breach, language that could be used to justify war against President Saddam Hussein.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Iraq had so far treated inspections as ``a bit of a game of hide and seek.''
Blix agreed, telling the BBC: ``If the Iraqis gave us full co-operation, we would not need any intelligence.''
Asked if the 12,000-page Iraqi dossier amounted to full disclosure, he said: ``We say we don't know. It may be full disclosure or it may not be.
``We do not think that Iraq has submitted adequate supporting evidence for the text and therefore we would say that the Security Council can have no confidence that this is a complete document.''
Asked what was missing from the Iraqi document, he said: ``If you produce anthrax or mustard gas, then you have records and it should be possible to find them.
``They have all the evidence in their archives and they could present that and they have failed to do so,'' Blix said. ``The declaration per se is not credible.''
Asked what sort of western intelligence would be useful to his weapons inspectors, Blix said: ``To tell us precisely where they believe that they are storing things.''
Blix said he had raised the issue with Washington and London and that ``they are encouraging. I won't go further into it. We are not talking much about what kind of intelligence we get.''
He said he had talked to their intelligence organizations ``and they say they will help us and it may come. I hope it will.''
-------- korea
No Sign of North Korea Restarting Reactor - U.S.
December 20, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-usa-north.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There is no sign that North Korea has followed through on a threat to restart a nuclear reactor at the heart of a suspected 1990s weapons program, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
One week ago Pyongyang raised the stakes in a stand-off at the world's last Cold War flashpoint by announcing plans to immediately reactivate the Yongbyon reactor, which was closed down in a 1994 agreement with the United States.
But the U.S. official told Reuters: ``Even as of today, there's no sign of any change on the ground in North Korea. Nothing, including no move to expel the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) monitors'' at the Yongbyon nuclear site.
On Thursday, another senior U.S. official said the North Koreans had not yet disconnected monitoring equipment, cameras and seals at the site. North Korea had asked the IAEA to unseal the plant and remove surveillance cameras.
He noted the North Koreans were engaged in a dialogue with the IAEA, which monitors the Yongbyon facility, and said these exchanges have been helpful.
But he took Pyongyang's Dec. 12 statement on restarting the reactor seriously and ``presumably at some stage they may choose to do this.''
Some officials believe Pyongyang made its threat largely in an attempt to influence the Dec. 19 election in South Korea in which liberal ruling party candidate Roh Moo-hyun beat conservative Lee Hoi-chang.
The United States favors a tougher line on communist North Korea than Roh, who has said he would never ``kow tow'' to Washington.
``I think (the North) was trying to influence the South Korea election and now that they got Roh elected they are going to stop,'' one official said.
Pyongyang announced plans to restart the reactor after the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union decided to halt heavy fuel oil deliveries to North Korea.
The U.S. and its allies acted after the North acknowledged it had a program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, which was also prohibited by the 1994 agreement.
NON-AGGRESSION TREATY
Under the 1994 accord, Pyongyang promised to freeze its nuclear programs in return for a $5 billion package that included two light-water nuclear reactors for power generation and 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil per year.
U.S. intelligence has estimated the North produced one or two nuclear bombs.
As part of the current dispute, North Korea is demanding the United States sign a non-aggression treaty but the Bush administration has refused any formal dialogue until Pyongyang dismantles the uranium enrichment program.
Officials have refused to say how long the United States might wait for Pyongyang to take corrective action.
Experts say that most nuclear activities Pyongyang might resume would take six months to several years to implement. While some analysts interpreted North Korea's announcement on restarting the nuclear reactor as an attempt to influence the South Korea elections, others said it was a last-ditch effort to force Washington to the negotiating table.
-------- us politics
Nuclear Waste
Friday, December 20, 2002
Washington Post; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15298-2002Dec19?language=printer
According to a Dec. 10 news story, the Navy intends to build "the last of 10" nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and name it for former president George H.W. Bush. It is scheduled to join the fleet in 2009.
Do we really need 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, plus the carrier Midway, the two second-generation carriers Yorktown and Lexington, and a bevy of helicopter carriers?
A nuclear carrier costs about $4.5 billion. How many classrooms could we build for this amount? To how many of the 40 million-plus Americans without health insurance could we extend this entitlement of a free democracy?
Defense within reason is unchallengeable. But who determines the true balance between security and other human needs?
BOB GREENE
Bethesda
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Fire from above
December 20, 2002
Washington Times
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021220-13918320.htm
Circulating among the military is a seven-minute gun-camera film of an AC-130 gunship attacking a Taliban compound in Afghanistan. The withering nighttime attack shows why American special-operations troops came to fondly call the flying battleship their "warm blanket" for the way it kept the enemy at bay.
The AC-130 begins the attack with air controllers and gunners discussing the compound and how it matches up with premission intelligence report. What ensues is a barrage of side-mounted 40 mm and 105 mm cannon fire at cars, buildings and Taliban on the run.
"Do you see the rectangular building next to it, correct? It's a mosque. Do not engage the mosque."
"Lets go. Rolling in."
"We've got a vehicle moving out."
"You are clear to engage it and any personnel around you see."
"Moving people. Clear to engage all those."
"Get back on those folks. People coming out of the mosque right now."
"We are going to town, man."
"Get that person," a controller shouts as a Taliban runs up a road.
Another man scurries back toward the compound. "Watch that mosque. He's running to the mosque."
"You're clear on the big square building. You can go ahead and level that. You are clear to level the building."
The AC-130 now shifts to a heat source - the entrance to a cave detected on infrared sensors. A howitzer scores a direct hit, igniting a series of secondary explosions.
Men run from a back exit. "I've got three that guy's still moving."
"I know there were two guys. I saw them flying apart."
With the building leveled and no other moving bodies, the pilot asks, "Permission to go back to compound."
----
U.S. to Set Up New Bases To Help Afghanistan Rebuild
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 20, 2002; Page A45
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14572-2002Dec19?language=printer
The U.S. military, in a significant shift in its posture in Afghanistan, plans to set up eight to 10 new bases around the country over the next six months in hopes of boosting reconstruction and regional security, a Pentagon official said yesterday.
In addition, the bases will endeavor "to dampen regional tensions" and to project the power of the central government in Kabul into the provinces, Joe Collins, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations, said at a Pentagon briefing.
Each of the bases will have a core contingent of about 60 people, including U.S. combat troops, Special Forces soldiers, USAID personnel and others, he said. Other people, including allied and Afghan troops, as well as medical teams and Army engineering units, will bolster the size of some of the bases to more than 100, an administration official said. The troops are expected to engage in small-scale construction projects, such as digging wells, building schools and fixing minor bridges, another official said.
The reconfiguration isn't expected to increase the size of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, which stands at about 9,000 troops, Collins said in a brief interview.
But the other official said the U.S. presence could increase if the Army Corps of Engineers is tapped for a major construction project in Afghanistan. He said such a plan is being considered.
The redeployment of some U.S. forces comes after months of quiet concern in the Bush administration about security trends in Afghanistan. That discussion broke into public last month, when Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Washington speech that "we've lost a little momentum" in Afghanistan and needed to alter priorities toward more support for road-building and other reconstruction. That was a notable shift for an administration and a Pentagon leadership that came into office leery of "nation-building" activities.
The redeployment remains controversial with some relief agencies. They fear that the new bases, with their mix of soldiers and aid officials, will blur the lines among combatant forces, peacekeepers and aid workers and endanger those workers. Paul Obrien, an Afghanistan specialist for CARE International, a private relief agency, said he was concerned that the U.S. forces at the new bases would focus on short-term efforts that promised political payoffs, rather than more important, longer-term work.
-------- biological weapons
Scientists Favoring Cautious Approach to Smallpox Shots
December 20, 2002
New York Times
By DENISE GRADY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/health/20SMAL.html
This article was reported by Denise Grady, William J. Broad and Donald G. McNeil Jr. and was written by Ms. Grady.
Unless a smallpox attack seems highly likely, the public should not be vaccinated, doctors and scientists warned yesterday in a series of articles posted on the Internet.
The five articles, to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 30 but online now at www.nejm.org, generally express cautious acceptance of the administration's plan to begin vaccinating millions of health care and emergency workers. But because of the risks of the vaccine, the experts do not advocate mass vaccination when the risk of an attack appears low.
Government health officials have not recommended vaccinating the public but have said they would make the vaccine available to those who insist on having it, possibly as early as next year.
One article, based on a recent nationwide poll, reported that much of the public was ignorant or confused about the disease and the vaccine, and might make fatally wrong decisions if there was a real outbreak.
Another report described the difficulties encountered by doctors at a Cleveland hospital when a patient appeared with symptoms much like those of smallpox. Other articles addressed questions of how many people would be infected in possible attacks, and how likely newly vaccinated people are to infect others with vaccinia, the virus in the vaccine.
The journal did not solicit the articles, said Dr. Edward W. Campion, senior deputy editor. All were submitted independently by the authors, he said, adding, "We did rush to get these out as soon as we could because we want to inform the debate."
These were the articles' major findings:
Public Perceptions
Americans believe that smallpox is less dangerous than it really is, and that the smallpox vaccine is more dangerous than it really is, according to the nationwide survey.
The survey, by the Harvard School of Public Health, found that many Americans had serious misconceptions about the disease, misconceptions that could prove fatal because people exposed to the virus could make the wrong decisions and seek treatment too late.
"It has been a long time since Americans have had experience with smallpox and we have a shocking lack of basic understanding of it," said Dr. Robert J. Blendon, the Harvard professor of health policy and political analysis who led the study.
In an interview, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top health adviser to President Bush, agreed that "the level of correct information the public has isn't high" and the government "needs to continue to hammer away at it."
The survey found that 78 percent of Americans think there is a treatment for smallpox, and 87 percent think they are likely to survive an outbreak even if they become infected. Of the respondents who were vaccinated in their youth, 46 percent believed that their old vaccinations would still protect them.
In fact, there is no treatment for smallpox, and in past outbreaks the disease has killed about 30 percent of those infected, while leaving many survivors blinded or scarred. And the immunity from inoculations received before 1972, when American doctors last routinely gave them, has probably worn off.
At the same time, the respondents seemed very nervous about smallpox vaccine. Twenty-five percent said it was likely they would die from it, and 41 percent said it was likely to make them seriously ill.
In fact, although the live vaccinia virus that protects against smallpox is the most dangerous vaccine in use, in the past it has caused only about 15 life-threatening illnesses per million vaccinations, and 1 or 2 deaths.
Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed did not realize that vaccine given in the first two or three days after exposure - before symptoms appear - can still stop someone from becoming sick. Only 16 percent believed there were enough doses of smallpox vaccine for everyone in the United States. Federal health officials have repeatedly said that there is more than enough because existing stocks can be safely stretched through dilution.
This combination of misconceptions is particularly dangerous, Dr. Blendon said, because, in a crisis, people would make the wrong decision.
"If people don't know that vaccine will help them if they get it immediately after exposure," he said, "and if they think there is a treatment, they would delay to see if they got sick." In a real outbreak, a two-day delay could mean the difference between life and death.
The survey found misconceptions about the disease's communicability. Although 89 percent of the respondents correctly said that smallpox was contagious, 67 percent thought it was likely that they could contract it by passing within a few feet of a carrier. Most medical experts believe that the virus is passed in closer contact, by talking face to face, for example, or sharing bed linens.
Sixty-one percent said they would choose vaccination if it were offered. But that number climbed to 75 percent if a respondent's doctor decided to be vaccinated; it dropped to 21 percent if a respondent's doctor refused vaccination.
The poll of 1,006 adults was done between Oct. 8 and Dec. 8 by ICR/International Communications Research. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.
Dr. Blendon said a three-pronged public education effort was needed to counteract the widespread misconceptions about smallpox and its vaccine. Most important, he said, would be televised appearances by apolitical celebrities. After Rock Hudson's death, "Elizabeth Taylor was incredibly important in explaining AIDS to the public," Dr. Blendon said.
Second, he suggested pamphlets in doctors' offices. Third, he suggested asking newspaper editors to incorporate short boxed articles with basic smallpox facts in their coverage.
Dr. Fauci, the adviser to Mr. Bush, said he thought public education efforts were already working. A few months ago, ignorance about smallpox was almost total, he said, and now much of the public realizes that there is a vaccine but that it is risky. Two government Web sites, www. smallpox.gov and www.cdc.gov /smallpox, are "flooded with public information," he said.
Risks and Benefits
In another article, researchers at the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security made a detailed calculation of smallpox vaccination costs and benefits that came to the same conclusion as the administration did in announcing its plan last week: that health workers should be vaccinated now but that it would be dangerous to extend the immunizations to the general public unless the risk of an attack is high.
The study estimated that if 60 percent of Americans were immunized, 482 people would die from side effects of the vaccine. That is too high a price, the researchers said, if the chance of a major smallpox attack is low.
The researchers found that some 25 people would die if nearly all 10 million health care workers in the United States were vaccinated against smallpox. They judged that cost acceptable because health care workers would come in close contact with sick people during a smallpox outbreak, making them unusually vulnerable.
"Vaccinating health workers presents a modest risk and could pay many benefits," said Dr. Samuel A. Bozzette, the study's lead author. "In contrast, a public vaccination campaign is certain to entail significant harm, so it should only be contemplated if the government concludes that the chances of a widespread attack are considerable."
The new report was based on an analysis that weighed six different possible attacks against six vaccination policies.
At the lowest level of protection studied - no vaccinations until the first smallpox victims are identified - the researchers said the deaths could range from zero (in the event of a hoax) to nearly 55,000 (in the event that a group of highly skilled terrorists sprayed the virus in 10 airport terminals).
The other extreme looked at vaccinating health workers and the general public before any attack. This would produce 482 deaths from complications of the vaccine, the researchers said.
Only in the case of airport attacks did the deaths from smallpox exceed those from medical complications, the study said, so only in that case would mass vaccinations save lives.
After using a computer model to weigh these kinds of tradeoffs, the scientists chose to endorse the middle path - a policy of vaccinating all eligible health care workers and emergency responders before an attack. Under the administration's plan, that is up to 10.5 million people.
The study assumed that 2.72 vaccinated people in a million would die of complications, while the usual estimate is 1 or 2 in a million. The researchers said they based their estimate on a review of vaccination records.
The study noted that a mass vaccination campaign would exclude millions of people at high risk of complications, including pregnant women, babies younger than a year old and people with H.I.V. or other immune disorders or weaknesses.
But another article, by Dr. Thomas Mack of the University of Southern California, questions the need to vaccinate millions of health workers, saying 15,000 would be enough. Dr. Mack argues that outbreaks can be stopped quickly by vaccinating exposed people, and that unless the risk of an attack is high, there is no real need to expose workers to the vaccine's risks.
A Troubling False Alarm
Dealing with a potential smallpox victim may be far more complicated than doctors realize, says another report in the medical journal, this one from MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.
One afternoon last May, Dr. Jennifer Hanrahan, an infectious disease specialist, was asked to examine a man with a severe, mysterious rash on his face, head, hands and legs.
He had also been sick with a headache, backache, fever, nausea and vomiting. Doctors suspected chickenpox. But some of his symptoms did not match that diagnosis: he had been sick for four days before the rash broke out, the rash was lasting too long, he had sores on the palms of his hands and all the sores on his body seemed to have erupted at the same time, rather than in stages.
Those symptoms fit the description of smallpox. If he had smallpox, a long list of health workers and others would have to be vaccinated.
Dr. Hanrahan called the local health department, which notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The C.D.C. wanted digital photographs of the patient's lesions e-mailed to Atlanta immediately, but the doctors lost time tracking down a digital camera.
Meanwhile, unsettling test results came back: the disease was not chickenpox.
After seeing the digital pictures, the C.D.C. wanted samples from the sores shipped overnight to Atlanta.
"This was the hard part," Dr. Hanrahan said.
The clock was ticking, but small, maddening details had to be worked out. The hospital had to call around to find a Federal Express station that would handle biological materials. Special shipping forms had to be typed, so staff members had to search for a typewriter. The specimens were not ready to ship until 9:23 p.m. - but the last flight was at 9:45. Doctors called for a police escort to the airport. They arrived on time, only to be told that the station did not accept biological specimens after all.
"That's a hurdle hospitals should be aware of," Dr. Hanrahan said, adding that the agent, seeing the police escort, made an exception for the specimens.
The next afternoon, at 3, the C.D.C. delivered its verdict: negative for smallpox. The rash was caused by a herpes virus infection that had taken a highly unusual course.
"If we had tested for herpes, we would have had the answer within an hour," Dr. Hanrahan said. "To be honest, we never thought of it. We see lots of herpes. This was not what it normally looks like."
From now on, she said, any patient who comes in with an unusual rash will be tested immediately for chickenpox, herpes and syphilis, and a digital camera and a typewriter will be quickly available.
Is the Vaccine Contagious?
A great concern of public health experts is the possibility that newly vaccinated people may make others sick by infecting them with vaccinia, a virus related to smallpox that is used to make the vaccine.
The virus is shed from the vaccination site for two or three weeks, and people who come in contact with it can become very ill if they have certain skin disorders or a weakened immune system. Doctors have been especially worried that vaccinia would be brought into hospitals by vaccinated workers and then spread among vulnerable patients.
In another article, Dr. Kent A. Sepkowitz, director of infection control at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, said that at first he feared there could be vaccinia epidemics in hospitals. But after studying the medical literature, he concluded that he had overestimated the threat and that medical workers could be vaccinated without endangering patients as long as the workers followed instructions like keeping the vaccination site covered and washing their hands often.
When he searched medical journals going back to the early 1900's, Dr. Sepkowitz said, "I think the key feature to me, looking back at these articles, is the paucity of outbreaks."
Dr. Sepkowitz said he thought hospital outbreaks would be far less likely today because patients with rashes are routinely isolated, and there is more emphasis on hand washing and covering vaccination sites.
"My main mantra is that if we go slowly we'll do fine," he said. "But if hospitals are asked to vaccinate quickly and we don't have time to figure out what we're doing and deal with surprises that are in store, we could make a mess."
-------- chemical weapons
Singapore, Malaysia practice chemical attack response
Friday, December 20, 2002
By Yeoh En-Lai,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/12/12202002/ap_49264.asp
SINGAPORE - Singaporean and Malaysian rescue workers lumbering in red and yellow protective suits practiced responding to chemical attacks and spills on Thursday on a bridge linking the two countries.
Fear of terrorist attacks has brought together the neighboring countries, prone to disagree over many other issues.
"Post 9/11, a lot has been going on, but we are confident we can deal with the (toxic terror) issue," said Malaysian Police Superintendent Tan Soon Fuan.
The two countries have stepped up security ties between themselves and Indonesia following recent terror attacks in the region, including the Oct. 12 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which killed nearly 200 people.
Singapore thwarted a plot by Jemaah Islamiyah, a group allied to al-Qaida, to attack Western embassies, U.S. Navy ships and other targets in the island nation a year ago.
"We are quietly confident we can deal with toxic issues but we have to conduct these exercises regularly and not be lulled into a false sense on confidence," said Lam Joon Khoi, head of Singapore's National Environment Agency, which supervised the chemical clean-up drill.
The neighbors simulated a chlorine gas spill at their land link in Tuas, with more than 100 police, fire department, hazardous material response units and coast guard personnel from both nations participating in the 3-hour drill.
Forty thousand metric tons (44,000 tons) of hazardous materials cross the Tuas link each year, Singapore authorities said. Stringent inspections take place on both sides of the border.
Singapore and Malaysia have close social and economic ties and share generally polite relations. But the Southeast Asian countries have clashed on several issues, ranging from a long-running water supply dispute to a 1979 claim over a small islet lying at the eastern entrance of the Singapore Straits.
Both are also dealing with several less-contentious disagreements over border crossings, airspace, pension savings and railway land.
The two former British colonies were federated in 1963 but split amid bitter political disagreements two years later.
-------- china
U.S. Envoy Asks Hong Kong for Text of Anti-Sedition Law
December 20, 2002
New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/international/asia/20HONG.html
HONG KONG, Dec. 19 - An American diplomat called today for Hong Kong's government to disclose "as soon as practicable" the legal language of its planned anti-sedition law. Criticism of the legislation continues to spread here and abroad.
A march last Sunday against the government's plans drew the largest crowd for a political demonstration here in many years. A poll released last Friday by an independent academic group showed the sharpest drop in public confidence in personal freedoms since Britain handed this territory over to China in 1997.
Pro-Beijing political parties are organizing a large demonstration next Sunday in favor of tough legislation providing long prison sentences for sedition, treason, the disclosure of official secrets and other security issues, as well as broad investigative powers for the police. Some employees here of Chinese state-owned enterprises and some students at government schools have complained of being ordered by supervisors and teachers to attend the demonstration, although the Hong Kong school system and the main Chinese enterprises have denied they are applying such pressure.
One issue is the government's refusal to provide the actual language of the bill it intends to present to the territory's Legislative Council. The government issued a "consultation document" two months ago that outlined its plans, but said the actual legislation would be sent directly to the Council in February for committee hearings and then a vote.
Democratic activists want a public debate before the bill goes to the Council. It is extremely rare for the Legislative Council, dominated by pro-Beijing business interests, to amend a bill sponsored by the government, the activists point out.
The governments of Australia, Britain and Canada, as well as the American and European Chambers of Commerce, have urged the Hong Kong government to allow public debate on the bill before starting the legislative process.
James Keith, the American consul general here since August and the director of the State Department Office of Chinese Affairs before that, said three times today, in response to questions after a speech here, that the precise legal language should be released as quickly as possible.
Paul Brown, a Hong Kong government spokesman, said tonight that the government would stick to its original plan and send the bill directly to the Legislative Council, with a request that it be approved before the Council adjourns in July.
Organizers had told the police to expect 5,000 people at last Sunday's march. But 12,000 people gathered in a park to start the march, according to the police, and organizers said there were 60,000 people by the time the march reached central government offices, two miles away.
-------- iraq
Air campaign plans to spare Iraq infrastructure
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 20, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021220-27287747.htm
U.S. war planners are devising a different kind of air campaign against Iraq compared with Desert Storm a decade ago.
Breakthroughs in precision weapons and a new strategic goal this time will mean fewer missions and potentially less destruction of infrastructure, such as bridges and power plants, military sources and analysts say.
The air component of what senior Bush officials believe will be a quick war will be shorter - 10 days or less - before a full-throttle ground offensive begins. In the fight to liberate Kuwait 11 years ago, tactical and heavy bombers struck for more than 30 days before a ground invasion.
Because the objectives are different this time, there will be fewer overall targets. The United States wants to kill or capture Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and is gearing its target list to achieve that well-defined objective.
That was not the stated goal in 1991. From day one, the Air Force had to bomb huge concentrations of Iraqi troops in and around Kuwait. It also had to attack the infrastructure that supported them, such as supply bridges south of Baghdad.
This time, the United States is trying to befriend much of the Iraqi army in the hopes that it stays neutral, or better yet, turns on Saddam and storms the capital.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said this week that the military is "postured" to accept the help of Iraqi generals in the event of war. Bush administration sources told the Associated Press yesterday that it's unlikely that the president will make a decision about going to war until late next month or early February.
Bridges inside Baghdad may be bombed to cut off escape routes and reduce mobility for Saddam's prime security force, the Special Republican Guard. But bridges elsewhere are likely to be exempt, officials said. This would be similar to the coalition bombing of Afghanistan, where bridges and electric power were spared to ease post-war reconstruction.
"This is a war of liberation," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney. "We want to send a signal to the people that we are not after them. We are after regime change and weapons of mass destruction."
Military sources say some targets have not changed. The allies will have to hit communication lines to ensure that Saddam cannot easily direct his troops. Barracks and headquarters of the Republican Guard also are on the list.
"If we can neutralize internal security forces for some period of time, the Iraqi military can get its act together to do what it has wanted to do for 20 years" - overthrow Saddam, said retired Air Force Col. John Warden, who helped design the 1991 campaign from a basement office at the Pentagon.
Quasi-military targets such as bridges and industrial sites can be spared this time, officials say, because Washington wants reconstruction to be as seamless as possible.
"You certainly would not blow up all those darn bridges across the Tigris and Euphrates," Col. Warden said.
What U.S. forces don't destroy, Saddam might. U.S. intelligence officials said this week that Iraq is preparing for a scorched-earth campaign if it goes to war, targeting its own oil fields, food supplies and power plants and blaming America for the devastation.
Saddam intends to create a humanitarian crisis to hamper a U.S. advance and garner sympathy from the international community, said the officials who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on the condition of anonymity.
The officials said they expect Saddam to use biological and chemical weapons against U.S. forces in Iraq, Israel and Kuwait.
A big advantage will be evident on the war's opening night. In January 1991, the United States had to rely heavily on the F-117 stealth fighter and sea-launched cruise missiles to do damage in downtown Baghdad. The city's heavy air defenses prevented the use of non-radar-evading planes.
This time, the United States has two new weapons: the B-2 radar-evading bomber and the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). When paired, 16 B-2s and the JDAMs will be able to hit more than 200 targets the first night. The bomber can destroy key air defense and command structures that took weeks to bomb in the 1991 campaign.
"When you roll it all together, we're 10 times more powerful," Gen. McInerney said.
The Air Force believes its blitzkrieg of Iraqi occupying forces softened them up to the extent that few units wanted to resist Army and Marine Corps ground forces.
He said there is little need in this war for Army armored brigades to engage Republican Guard tanks. Instead, he said, tactical aircraft can pick off the tanks one by one using satellite- or laser-guided bombs.
One debate still ongoing in the Pentagon is the extent to which the allies should bomb electric power grids.
"I would shut down the electricity," Col. Warden said. "I know I'm in a minority here. The reason I would do it is Saddam's strength is in the cities. If you shut down the electricity it makes it that much harder for him to operate and resist from the cities."
The new air campaign will continue the Air Force philosophy of "effects based" attacks, an idea promoted by Col. Warden and other planners about 15 years ago.
The goal is to achieve a desired effect, such as shutting off electric power or communications lines, without destroying the supporting infrastructure.
For example, the Air Force can destroy an electrical grid or node that can be rebuilt quickly, while sparing the source of power - a generation plant - which would take months to rebuild.
"All we want is for the lights to go out, not to do relatively long-term damage," Col. Warden said.
He recalled that during the height of the 1991 war, Defense Intelligence Agency analysts circulated a report that attacks on electric power were a failure because many circuits were not bombed.
Col. Warden said that what mattered was that the lights were off in Baghdad.
"People are still very much in an attrition-war mentality," he said. "If it isn't rubble, then you haven't done much to it."
--------
U.S. to Press U.N. on Iraqi Scientist Interviews
December 20, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-usa-scientists.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, seeking to hasten the moment of truth over Iraqi disarmament, may give U.N. arms inspectors as early as next week suggested names of Iraqi scientists to interview, U.S. officials said on Friday.
``We may make suggestions. In fact I think we will make suggestions ... possibly next week,'' a senior U.S. official told Reuters. ``We've told (U.N. inspectors) the Iraqis are not going to slow roll us on this (and) drag it out for months and months and months.''
The Bush administration, believing information gleaned from Iraqi scientists could be decisive in showing Baghdad has weapons of mass destruction, has urged U.N. inspectors to take scientists and their families out of the country so they will feel free to talk.
``If you get the right defector, that's all you need ... A couple of key people may be all you need,'' the U.S. official said.
But chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has resisted, saying: ``We're not going to abduct anybody and we're not serving as a defection agency.''
Blix has asked Iraq to provide a list of scientists and others associated with its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs by the end of the month. But U.S. officials said Iraq should be able to provide names immediately.
Iraq is under new international pressure to dismantle its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs as a result of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, passed last month.
The resolution gives U.N. inspectors the authority ``at their discretion'' to interview any Iraqi scientists or other officials inside or outside Iraq and allows the scientists to bring their families with them.
Blix has welcomed the right to interview Iraqi personnel without a government minder but has frequently questioned the feasibility of unarmed inspectors organizing a defection program without Iraq's cooperation.
Other U.N. Security Council members share his doubts.
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said on Thursday Iraq would provide staff lists for all sites under inspection by the United Nations. However he said Resolution 1441 left it up to scientists themselves whether they were prepared to be interviewed.
U.S. officials said they have outlined to Blix in detail how the interviews could work but he still had not committed to the process and this was of great concern in Washington.
``We're not going to abduct people. We're not intending to provoke a military confrontation'' with Baghdad, one U.S. official said.
Some critics have argued that scientists who might want to talk to inspectors outside the country could end up wanting to bring scores of family members with them and still be at risk of assassination by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's agents.
They also have raised questions about where these people might be relocated to.
The administration has not publicly explained its proposal but one official said the United States was talking only about a scientist's ``immediate family,'' not a larger cast.
As for relatives and friends left behind, ``there is always an element of risk for people left behind,'' yet even in the Cold War people were willing to defect from the Soviet Union, sometimes leaving wives and children behind, one official said.
If Blix and his team try to move a scientist outside the country and Iraq objected, then that would be counted as an Iraqi obstruction of the disarmament process and it should be reported to the U.N. Security Council, the official said.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. and Allies Discuss Potential Mideast Peace Settlements
December 20, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Mideast.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration joined with its European, Russian and U.N. partners Friday in calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians, and an end to terrorist attacks.
All Palestinian individuals and groups must end all acts of terror against Israelis in any location, the group said in a joint statement. It called on the Palestinians to adopt reforms and improve security against terror.
The statement, issued as President Bush met with the European, Russian and United Nations officials at the White House, also deplored the killing of innocent Palestinians and U.N. workers in Israeli security operations.
Israel should change its rules for countering terror to avoid civilian casualties and withdraw its troops from Palestinian population areas on the West Bank and in Gaza, the statement said.
The focus of the meeting was work on a blueprint for achieving an accord between Israel and the Palestinians.
But the Bush administration has resisted calls by European and Arab leaders for a more aggressive role in pressuring Israel to pull back on the West Bank and Gaza. And the administration is holding off issuing the blueprint until after next month's elections in Israel.
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the plan was complete except for provisions to monitor the pairing of enhanced security against violence with moves toward setting up a Palestinian state.
Moeller, whose country currently is the president of the European Union, said he was not discouraged about the results of the meetings with Bush and with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
``On the contrary, we have finalized the text,'' he told reporters at the White House.
Bush, in a brief picture-taking session in the Oval Office, offered assurances he was holding to a vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. ``This government will work hard to achieve that,'' he said.
``It is in everybody's best interests that there be two states,'' Bush said.
But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested the two sides were not ready to do that. What is important, he said, ``is that a majority of Israelis and majority of Palestinians accept that the solution is a two-state solution, living in peace and recognized borders.''
Annan added: ``Our challenge now is to work with them together in the next couple of years. And this is what we ... are determined to do.''
Separately, the State Department called on Israel to halt work on Jewish settlements, some of which are illegal, spokesman Richard Boucher said.
``We are not waiting. We are doing things,'' Boucher said in response to suggestions the Bush administration was marking time.
Bush said the people in the region must assume peacekeeping responsibilities. He singled out terror, saying ``all of us must work hard to fight against terror so that a few cannot deny the dreams of the many.''
Earlier, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that a peace ``road map'' was being deferred because ``the president wants to make certain that the road map is developed in a way that will make the most progress.''
``And in order to make progress it requires the parties to be committed to the road map, to work productively on it,'' he said.
Fleischer said it would be offered to the parties ``at a time when it will be most well-received,''
-------- mideast
Israeli navy to hold joint exercise with U.S.,
Turkey By Amos Harel,
Ha'aretz Correspondent
20/12/2002
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=243087&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0
The navies of Israel, the United States and Turkey will hold joint maneuvers in the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel on January 1, 2003.
The joint exercise will concentrate on search-and-rescue operations for sailors and vessels in distress. The exercise, whose aim is to improve cooperation among the three navies, has taken place every year since 1998.
The two-day exercise will be held in international waters. In addition to ships from the three navies, light aircraft and helicopters will also participate.
The exercise will run parallel to a major joint exercise involving U.S. and Israeli air defense units.
The United States has stepped up its participation in joint military maneuvers in the Middle East as part of its preparations for a possible attack on Iraq.
-------- pakistan
U.S. should be picky about Pakistan
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
December 20, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021220-94453949.htm#2
Arnaud de Borchgrave must be congratulated for drawing the Bush administration's attention to the mess in Pakistan ("Pakistan: In flagrante delicto," Commentary, Dec. 13). While the White House seems to be fixated on Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Taliban supporters in Pakistan have formed local governments in the influential and strategically important provinces bordering Afghanistan and are threatening to disrupt our military operations in the region and planning to adopt the Sharia, the restrictive Muslim holy code that drove Afghanistan back to the Dark Ages.
Despite his assurances to the United States, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has done absolutely nothing to control the fundamentalist forces in his country that are a source of instability and bloodshed in the region. Only this week, a Pakistani court freed dreaded terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar, who is responsible for a string of attacks in the Indian state of Kashmir and on India's Parliament last December and is linked closely with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.
Such actions clearly point out Pakistan's unwillingness to be a meaningful partner in the war on terrorism. President Bush needs to apply more pressure on Pakistan to clean up its act. How can you be a partner of the United States and let terrorists out of your prisons at the same time?
The plot to attack a U.S. diplomat with a car bomb and the success of anti-American Islamic fundamentalists in the recent parliamentary elections show that Pakistan remains a lawless country where the Taliban is alive and kicking.
Mr. Bush would do well to pay attention to these scary developments.
GEORGE BRUNO
Former U.S. ambassador to Belize International affairs adviser Western Hemisphere Center for Security Cooperation Fort Benning, Ga.
-------- space
Russia Launches Five Small Satellites
December 20, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Satellites.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia launched five small satellites and a replica of a moon-orbiting probe into space Friday aboard a converted missile, Interfax news agency reported.
The Dnepr-1 booster rocket, a decommissioned ballistic missile converted for space launches, blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, the report said.
Kosmotras, a joint venture between Russia and Ukraine, builds Dnepr rockets from decommissioned RS-20 missiles. The missile -- the most powerful in the Russian inventory -- is known as the SS-18 Satan in the West and is capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads.
The launch was the third Dnepr-1 liftoff from Baikonur; the others were in 1999 and 2000.
In addition to the small satellites, the Dnepr-1 carried a prototype of an unmanned space vehicle into orbit. TransOrbital Inc. of San Diego, Calif., has signed a $20 million contract with Kosmotras to carry out the first private mission to the moon.
The unmanned space vehicle, called TrailBlazer, would orbit the moon for three months, taking high-resolution pictures before crashing onto its surface.
The prototype launched Friday will orbit the Earth as an initial test. The real spacecraft could be sent up next October.
Interfax said the other satellites launched include a small Unisat-2 space probe for Rome University's aerospace engineering department, the Latinsat-A and Latinsat-B for an Argentinian company, Saudi Arabia's Saudisat-1C and Germany's Rubin-2.
-------- un
Baghdad in 'material breach'
By Nicholas Kralev and Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 20, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021220-767767.htm
The United States yesterday pronounced Iraq in "material breach" of the latest U.N. resolution demanding its disarmament and said that, although not a trigger for war, it increases the need of military action.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Baghdad's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs, which was supposed to be "accurate, full and complete," in the language of Resolution 1441, "totally fails to meet the resolution's requirements."
"There is no question that Iraq continues its pattern of noncooperation, deception, dissembling, lying, and if that is going to be the way they continue through the weeks ahead, then we're not going to find a peaceful solution to this problem," Mr. Powell told reporters at the State Department.
He said the Iraqi report was "a catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions" of activities with anthrax, nerve gas, chemical agents, missiles and nuclear weapons.
"It should be obvious that the pattern of systematic holes and gaps in Iraq's declaration is not the result of accidents or editing oversights or technical mistakes," he said. "These are material omissions that, in our view, constitute another material breach."
At the United Nations, chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei agreed with the Bush administration that "an opportunity was missed in the declaration to give a lot of evidence."
Mr. Blix, who is in charge of the missile, biological and chemical team, told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council that he was not convinced of Iraq's assertions that it has no weapons of mass destruction.
"We still need much more cooperation from Iraq in terms of substance, in terms of uncovering of evidence, to exonerate themselves that they are clean from weapons of mass destruction," said Mr. ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"If they come with additional information, our task will be much easier and shorter," he said.
But the inspectors, as well as the other council members, except Britain, stopped short of calling Iraq's failure to provide a full account of its weapons capabilities "material breach."
The French U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, said Baghdad's declaration "doesn't lift the doubts about the possible continuation by Iraq of prohibited activities since December 1998," when U.N. inspectors left the country and did not return for four years.
The Russian ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, said that it was not up to one member, but to the entire Security Council, to declare a "material breach" and said that the inspectors should not be "pushed into a direction that they themselves do not believe is advisable."
"It is up to one country to have its own view on any issue in world affairs. But it does not mean that this view is the view of the Security Council," Mr. Lavrov said.
"We don't have any evidence that Iraq is telling a lie," he said. "We also don't have evidence that it is telling the truth."
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, meanwhile, dismissed accusations that Baghdad's report is incomplete but, nevertheless, offered to "make clarifications," if necessary. He repeated his government's assertion that it does not possess weapons of mass destruction and said that "the United States is looking for pretext for an attack."
"I can reassure you the report is complete," he said in a French radio interview. "If need be, Iraq is ready to make clarifications."
Mr. Powell said that the Bush administration, whose challenge now is to convince fellow Security Council members that the omissions in the report amount to "material breach," is prepared to start sharing intelligence about secret sites and activities that Baghdad has not disclosed.
The secretary offered the most detailed account to date of Iraq's failure to account for specific weapons capabilities.
"Before the inspectors were forced to leave Iraq [in 1998], they concluded that Iraq could have produced 26,000 liters of anthrax," he said. "That is three times the amount Iraq had declared. Yet, the Iraqi declaration is silent on this stockpile, which, alone, would be enough to kill several million people."
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's "regime also admitted that it had manufactured 19,180 liters of a biological agent called botulinum toxin," Mr. Powell said. The U.N. inspectors later determined that the Iraqis could have produced 38,360 additional liters, but the declaration is "silent on these missing supplies," too, he said.
The Iraqi report "also says nothing about the uncounted, unaccounted precursors from which Iraq could have produced up to 500 tons of mustard gas, sarin gas and VX nerve gas," Mr. Powell said.
In addition, he noted, Iraq "has failed to provide adequate information about the procurement and use" of high-strength aluminum tubes that can be used "to enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program."
Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei also mentioned the anthrax and the aluminum tubes as examples of the gaps in the declaration, which Iraq handed over to the inspection team on Dec. 7.
"We are disappointed, but we are not deceived," Mr. Powell said. "This time the game is not working."
Although the United States is "doing everything we can to avoid war," if war comes, "it will be done in a way that would minimize the loss of life" and would be "accomplished in as swift a manner as possible," he said.
"There is no calendar deadline, but obviously there is a practical limit to how much longer you can just go down the road of noncooperation and how much time the inspectors can be given," he said. "This situation cannot continue."
Senior U.S. officials said that President Bush was unlikely to decide until late January or early February whether to go to war." He was expected to make a statement on Iraq today, during a meeting at the White House with U.N., European and Russian officials on the Middle East peace process.
Mr. Powell urged the U.N. inspections to "give high priority to conducting interviews with scientists and other witnesses outside of Iraq, where they can speak freely." He added that specific names "will be made available" to the Iraqi government, which is "required to provide these individuals for interview."
•Betsy Pisik contributed to this report from New York.
----
U.S. Urges U.N. to Authorize War in Iraq
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
Dec 20, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Powell says the Iraqi arms declaration fails to meet the U-N requirements. (Audio)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration, concluding that Saddam Hussein is not serious about disarmament, turned to convincing the U.N. Security Council that it should declare Iraq in violation of world demands and authorize war.
"This situation cannot continue," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday in describing Iraq's weapons declaration, submitted two weeks ago, as 12,200 pages of lies, gaps and omissions.
Unless Iraq "comes clean" in the weeks ahead, "I'm afraid we should be very discouraged with respect to the prospects of finding a peaceful solution," Powell said.
If military conflict is now more likely, it is not imminent, other senior U.S. officials said.
President Bush will spend the next five or six weeks in pursuit of more evidence against Saddam while massing troops outside Iraq for a potential winter assault, these officials said on condition of anonymity.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has yet to sign the deployment order, but the officials said as many as 50,000 U.S. troops may be sent to the Persian Gulf region in early January to reinforce the 50,000 U.S. military personnel already there.
The United States will continue to analyze Saddam's self-inventory but has so far concluded that its omissions constitute a "material breach" of the U.N. resolution that compelled Iraq to disclose its deadly weapons, Powell said. Edging Toward Conflict
Although the term "material breach" is widely interpreted as a prelude to war, Powell said there is no "calendar deadline" to disarm Iraq by force.
Bush was expected to offer his own public comment on Iraq's declaration, largely echoing Powell, during a meeting Friday afternoon with U.N., Russian and European Union diplomats who are in Washington to consult on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Bush could also use the meeting to lobby the foreign ministers and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Iraq, White House aides said.
Powell and John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, were taking the lead in what White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called the "deliberate and consult" phase of Bush's showdown with Saddam.
This crucial stage comes to a head Jan. 27 when the U.N. weapons inspectors report their findings and Bush decides whether to go to war.
Negroponte said he would consult with the Security Council and other American allies, while Powell promised the United States would give U.N. inspectors additional intelligence to make their hunt for Iraq's allegedly hidden weapons "more targeted and effective."
Powell also insisted that the inspectors spirit Iraqi scientists and their families out of Iraq, where they might testify freely - and in safety - to Saddam's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as allowed for under the U.N. resolution.
U.S. lawmakers counseled against a rush to war.
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, said Iraq's incomplete declaration, by itself, "is not enough to justify military force."
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said it is "important the United States stay patient here, stay within the framework of the United Nations, work with allies, and see where we go."
But Illinois Republican Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said Iraq made a bad-faith declaration that "brings us closer to a war that no one wants, but only Saddam Hussein can prevent."
Sergey Lavrov, Russia's U.N. ambassador, suggested that Bush may have alienated some Security Council members by declaring on his own that Iraq was in violation of the U.N. resolution.
"It is for the Security Council to make the judgment," not a single country, Lavrov said.
In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Saddam had his "finger on the trigger" of war. But, Straw added, "this disclosure does not, of itself, trigger military action."
In Paris, French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said that if Iraq reneges on its commitments to disarm, "the Security Council, on the basis of the report of (the inspectors), should be called together to examine the array of options, including the use of force."
The French official also told France-Info radio that "if the international community decided to act, obviously, France would uphold its commitments."
France had insisted that the Security Council resolution approved last month include the "two-step" process whereby the council reconvenes to decide consequences of any Iraqi violations.
Powell indicated Thursday that Bush was abiding by that process, saying the United States will "make the case to the council that Iraq has totally missed this opportunity" for peaceful resolution.
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Air Force jets collide, all aboard survive
12/20/2002
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-20-jets-collide_x.htm
DUNCAN, Okla. (AP) - Two Air Force training jets from Sheppard Air Force Base collided Friday in a remote area of southern Oklahoma. All four people aboard the planes survived, military officials said.
The Air Force base in Wichita Falls, Texas, issued a statement saying one of the T-37 jets was able to fly back to the base and land safely with two people aboard.
The two people in the other jet ejected before it crashed in a field near Lake Waurika, south of Duncan, and were taken to the base hospital for examination. The crash occurred about a half-mile from an elementary school.
The Air Force base did not describe the extent of the damage on the airplane that was able to land, other than to say the pilot was not able to extend its landing gear.
The base said a board of military officers would investigate the crash.
The T-37, a twin-engine jet built by the Cessna Aircraft Co., has dual controls, ejection seats and a clamshell-type canopy that can be jettisoned. The student and instructor sit side-by-side in the cockpit of the two-seat jet.
The aging T-37s first entered service in 1956 and cost about $167,000 each.
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Pentagon Plans Special Ops Budget Boost
Friday December 20, 2002
AP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2259484,00.html
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon plans to add about $1 billion next year to the budget for special operations forces, the commandos who are playing a central role in the war on terrorism, a senior defense official said Thursday.
The Pentagon's proposed 2004 budget, which has not yet been submitted to the White House for final decisions, calls for about a 20 percent increase in the special operations forces' budget and an 8 percent increase in numbers of troops, the official said. He provided the information to reporters on condition of anonymity.
Another official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that amounted to about a $1 billion increase in the budget and about 4,000 more soldiers. Many of the extra troops would be for the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, whose crews specialize in flying combat troops behind enemy lines.
The decisions by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reflect his publicly stated belief that the Army's Green Berets, the Navy's SEAL commandos and the Air Force's special operations forces should play an even larger role in hunting down and killing terrorists .
The proposed budget increase, from the current $4.9 billion to about $6 billion in the budget year starting next Oct. 1, would pay not only for additional aircraft such as MH-47 helicopters but also for additions to the operational planning staff at U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters, the official said.
The Pentagon plans additional budget increases for special operations forces beyond 2004, although it has provided no details.
With next year's budget gain, the Special Operations Command hopes to acquire 13 additional MH-47 helicopters, one official said. It lost one MH-47 this year in the Philippines and another in Afghanistan. A number of others were badly damaged in combat in Afghanistan. The aircraft is a mainstay of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
Another priority for Special Operations Command is the MH-53 Pave Low, an Air Force helicopter. The fleet was to have been phased out in favor of the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, but the Osprey encountered problems during flight tests and its entry into the force has been pushed back. Thus more money is needed to keep the MH-53 in flying condition longer.
There currently are 47,000 active-duty and reserve special operations forces. In addition to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, psychological operations units are expected to get many of the new soldiers, one official said.
The increase in personnel is the largest in many years for special operations forces. The forces' numbers stagnated in the 1990s.
On the Net:
160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at http://www.campbell.army.mil/160soar.htm
Defense Department at http://www.defenselink.mil
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Pentagon to Dispatch Thousands to Gulf
December 20, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tens of thousands more U.S. troops are likely to be dispatched to the Persian Gulf region next month with a full range of combat capabilities, including heavy armor and stealth fighters and bombers, defense officials said Friday.
The Pentagon hopes the deployments will ratchet up pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to fully disclose his arms programs, as required by the United Nations, before U.N. weapons inspectors report their initial findings Jan. 27.
Such reinforcements ``reinforce diplomacy,'' said Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
``They have a choice and it's up to them how they handle their weapons of mass destruction and what they are going to do,'' he said Friday at an Army camp in Qatar where Gen. Tommy Franks has set up a new headquarters
The troop movements would put Franks, who would run any war against Iraq, in a better position to execute his war plan by February. He already has at least 50,000 troops within striking distance of Iraq, and he plans to double that number with a series of new deployments in January, officials said.
Franks discussed the plan with President Bush at the White House on Friday in a meeting also attended by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. A senior administration official said the president gave the go-ahead for additional deployments in January, although Rumsfeld has not yet signed the formal deployment orders.
Myers said that more troops would be arriving but he did not specify numbers or locations. ``We have over time been sending forces to the region ... and that will continue.''
Myers, on a holiday tour to see troops and commanders in Qatar, Kuwait and Afghanistan, also said that more reservists would be called to active duty next month and that everything was being done to prepare them in advance.
Other officials have said nearly 30,000 National Guard and Reserve members have been alerted for mobilization and that tens of thousands more would likely be called to active duty in the weeks ahead.
Unlike other deployments of U.S. forces to the Gulf region earlier this year, including an Army brigade and Army and Marine Corps headquarters units to Kuwait, those scheduled to move in January include the key elements of U.S. air power.
The Air Force is expected to send a variety of warplanes to numerous bases within striking range of Iraq. They would include B-52 and B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia in the central Indian Ocean; B-1 bombers possibly to Oman, F-15 and other fighter jets to Kuwait, and refueling and other support aircraft to Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Also expected to join the buildup, perhaps slightly later, are F-117 stealth fighter-bombers.
U.S. intelligence analysts said this week that Iraq's air defense system is at least as formidable and durable as the system American pilots faced at the start of the 1991 Gulf War. Even so, it likely would crumble within days if the United States launched an all-out assault, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Navy has two aircraft carriers within striking range of Iraq -- the USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf and the USS Harry S. Truman, in the western Mediterranean. The Truman is replacing the USS George Washington, which returned to its home port at Norfolk, Va., on Friday after six months at sea.
The Army is expected to deploy troops from the 1st Armored Division and 1st Infantry Division, both based in Germany, as well as an air mobile unit, officials said.
The main Marine Corps contingent is likely to be the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. The 1st MEF's headquarters unit already has moved to Kuwait to prepare for combat operations.
Central Command has in place a naval component headquarters in Bahrain, an Army component headquarters in Kuwait and Air Force headquarters in Saudi Arabia.
On the Net:
Defense Department at http://www.defenselink.mil
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Next Base Closures Likely to Be Largest
December 20, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Base-Closures.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wants the next round of military base closures, in 2005, to cut as much surplus as the previous four rounds combined, a senior aide said Friday.
Raymond DuBois, the deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, gave no specific figures and stressed that no military bases would be exempted in advance from potential closure.
``All installations are on the table,'' he told reporters at a Pentagon news conference. ``All installations are going to be judged equally.''
In the previous four rounds -- in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 -- the Pentagon picked 97 major domestic bases for closure, 55 major bases for realignment and 235 minor installations either to be closed or realigned.
DuBois said all senior military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon will have a voice in recommending which bases get closed or realigned. He said this was a cumbe