Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Iran, N. Korea Nuclear Plans Pose New Risk
British Energy sells Bruce to Cameco consortium
Iraqi Scientists Quizzed in Private
U.N. Experts Interview Iraqi Nuclear Scientist
Iran Plans Nuclear Plant for Energy Only
North Korea Denounces U.S. Hawks
N. Korea: U.S. Is Risking Nuclear War
North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for Processing Plutonium
IAEA Cannot Tell if N.Korea Works on Nuclear Arms
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
Nuclear Fear as a Wedge
Powell Works Phones on N. Korea Crisis
N. Korea Warned on Arms Bid
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
U.S. Public Is Unconvinced on Need to Wage War Against Iraq
MILITARY
Karzai risks all to confront the militia generals
Ivorian Rebels Warn France Against Offensive
US Sees Risk of Missile Attacks on Planes in Kenya
Agent Green Over the Andes
Russia says destroying chemical arms too expensive
Saddam Says Iraq Ready to Fight Holy War
Iraqis Down Reconnaissance Drone
Iraq Courts Its Kurds With an Anti-U.S. Islamic Edict
Sharon Says Iraq May Be Hiding Weapons in Syria
Hezbollah Becomes Potent Anti-U.S. Force
3 on Security Council unconvinced on attacking Iraq
Why any war with Iraq will be over in a flash
Rumsfeld says U.S. can win war in two theaters
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Lawsuit against Ashcroft, INS
Out of the Shadow of Death Row
DEA ties rise in U.S. heroin use to Colombian groups
Court Upholds Registration Plan
In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished
A Groundless Ground War Edges Nearer
ENERGY AND OTHER
Greener, 'cleaner' locomotive for U.S. railroads
Federal Judge Rules Los Angeles Violates Clean Water Laws
2 Western Cities Join Suit to Fight Global Warming
Mistletoe Attracts Wildlife - Not Just Kisses
ACTIVISTS
Ailing China Rights Advocate Is Released and Sent to U.S.
-------- NUCLEAR
Iran, N. Korea Nuclear Plans Pose New Risk
Both Achieved Progress That Went Undetected
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31490-2002Dec23?language=printer
The recent disclosures of secret nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea -- combined with the North's threat this week to resume plutonium production -- have presented the United States with its most serious nuclear challenge since the early 1990s. The episodes have not only forced a reassessment of when the two countries could become nuclear powers but also exposed widening gaps in the international fire walls built decades ago to halt the spread of nuclear materials and technology, weapons experts say.
U.S. officials had long suspected Iran and North Korea of quietly seeking uranium-based nuclear arms. But what was most startling about the revelations of the past few weeks was how much the two countries managed to achieve before anyone noticed, the experts added.
For example, Iran's secret nuclear program was disguised for two years as a water irrigation project in the country's northern desert. Two weeks ago, satellite photos revealed construction near the town of Natanz that U.S. officials say apparently is designed not for pumping water but for enriching uranium.
North Korea agreed in a 1994 pact with the Clinton administration to stop pursuit of a plutonium bomb. But then it created a hidden uranium program and disguised it so well that intelligence officials are still not sure of its location. Accounts by defectors in a recent congressional report point to at least one underground factory in tunnels in Mount Chonma, on the Chinese border. Production of enriched uranium, which would be necessary to make a weapon, appears to be underway, according to the defectors cited by the Congressional Research Service.
The disclosures have spawned new worries that other countries will be drawn into an accelerating arms race just as the Bush administration prepares for a possible conflict with Iraq. The United States has accused Iraq of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, which Iraq has denied. While the scope of any Iraqi nuclear program is still not known, U.S. officials acknowledge that, if it exists, it is probably far less advanced than those in Iran or North Korea.
"For everyone who hoped that nuclear weapons were somehow receding from international politics, we're now seeing them come back again, in part because of our own failed policies," said Graham Allison, director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "If North Korea becomes a nuclear state, you can predict that in short order South Korea and Japan may become nuclear states also. After that you've got a devil's brew."
"Just try to imagine," Allison added, "what the Middle East will be like with another nuclear actor."
Even before the recent disclosures, many weapons experts were alarmed by nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May 1998. The experts have also expressed concern about recent U.S. willingness to consider new uses for nuclear bombs, such as the destruction of heavily fortified bunkers.
"The nuclear issue is back again in a way it hasn't been around since the 1950s," said Andrei Kokoshin, a Russian legislator and an adviser to former president Boris Yeltsin on military and security issues. "There is a great probability that arsenals will grow and new countries will acquire weapons. And we are simply not prepared for it."
In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy's advisers made fearful predictions of a world perpetually on the brink, as nuclear weapons and know-how spread to dozens of nations on every continent. But in the decades since, membership in the nuclear club has been restrained, thanks to a combination of international monitoring, superpower pressure and strict controls on the export of sensitive technology and material.
Today, in addition to the original five nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- only India and Pakistan have declared arsenals of nuclear weapons. Israel is widely assumed to have the bomb, and North Korea is believed to have one or two nuclear devices, according to CIA analysts. South Africa built a bomb in the 1970s but later renounced its nuclear program.
Other nations have sought nuclear weapons, including Iran, Iraq and North Korea. But the technical difficulties inherent in creating fissile material -- plutonium or enriched uranium -- combined with restrictions on nuclear-related exports, helped put the bomb out of their reach. Although clandestine development of nuclear weapons was possible, as Iraq demonstrated in the early 1990s with its crash program to build a bomb, Western intelligence agencies were proficient at spotting the distinctive nuclear reactors and large reprocessing facilities required for making plutonium-based weapons.
Strikingly, both North Korea and Iran managed to fool Western spy satellites by apparently choosing uranium as their fissile material. European technology for enriching uranium for bombs has spread globally in recent years. The technology requires less production space and thus is easier to conceal, weapons experts and intelligence officials say.
"With plutonium you have big production reactors and lots of signs and signals that give you away," said Rose Gottemoeller, formerly deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear non-proliferation in the Department of Energy and now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It is possible to build a uranium plant without giving off any signals to the outside world."
In addition, both countries appear to be benefiting from relationships with other countries that possess nuclear know-how and are increasingly willing to share it, weapons experts said.
"The spread of enrichment technology was predicted 25 years ago, and now it seems to be happening," said Leonard S. Spector, a deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "There seems to be networking among the bad guys -- the technology holders who are perceived as proliferation threats. They're not just keeping it at home, they're sharing it. We haven't seen that before."
U.S. intelligence officials believe North Korea obtained uranium-enrichment technology and equipment from Pakistan in exchange for missiles. The reclusive North Korean government, which had halted its pursuit of a plutonium bomb under the agreement with the Clinton administration, is believed to have begun secretly building a uranium enrichment plant in the late 1990s using hundreds of fast-spinning devices known as gas centrifuges. Pakistan has denied aiding North Korea's nuclear efforts.
In late September, the North Koreans acknowledged the existence of a secret uranium program after Assistant Secretary of States James A. Kelly confronted them with evidence during a meeting in Pyongyang. Tensions have risen in recent weeks, culminating in North Korea's decision to rescind its agreement not to develop plutonium bombs.
If North Korea begins full production of nuclear weapons, it could develop up to five plutonium bombs from its existing stocks of reactor fuel, and could begin production of uranium-based weapons as early as 2004, according to a recent analysis by the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.
Iran's suppliers are less well-known, although U.S. intelligence officials suspect the Tehran government received help from Russian and Ukrainian companies, and possibly from China. The evidence of Iran's program came in the form of commercial satellite photos depicting two suspicious construction projects. One of them -- the "desert eradification" project near the town of Natanz -- has all the markings of a uranium enrichment plant, including eight-foot concrete outer walls to protect the facility against an attack, said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.-chartered agency that monitors nuclear facilities in scores of nations. The Natanz site and another facility near the town of Arak were first reported by opponents of the Iranian government outside the country in August.
Albright said he believes that strengthened international inspections requested by the IAEA in the 1990s could have detected the facilities sooner, and might prevent others from being developed.
"There's nothing that Iran is doing that would not be caught under [enhanced] inspections," said Albright, whose nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security released the satellite photos.
Other weapons experts say current international controls on proliferation are inadequate to prevent the kinds of violations committed by Iran and North Korea. Not only do the rules allow cheating, but they offer few tools for dealing with problem states, said Henry D. Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. For example, it is currently difficult to prevent such nations as Iran from acquiring the capacity to develop nuclear weapons as long as they do not cross the line into production, he said.
"There is no handbook, no clear enforcement features in the treaties," Sokolski said. "Now that we have, or are about to have, violations, we have to decide what to do. And what we decide to do today will decide what, if anything, will be done with future violators -- and indeed, the fate of the treaties being violated."
-------- britain
British Energy sells Bruce to Cameco consortium
REUTERS UK:
December 24, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19201/newsDate/24-Dec-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Financially stricken nuclear firm British Energy Plc said yesterday it had agreed to sell its Canadian nuclear power operation Bruce Power to a consortium led by uranium producer Cameco Corp..
British Energy said in a statement the deal would also include its 50 percent stake in Canadian wind farm Huron Wind Ltd Partnership, and the overall sale would bring in a maximum of C$770 million (US$497 million).
The buying consortium also includes TransCanada Pipelines and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, among others.
-------- inspections
Iraqi Scientists Quizzed in Private
U.N. Inspectors Try to Discover Extent of Nuclear Weapons Work
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31456-2002Dec23?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 23 -- The United Nations' nuclear arms watchdog has begun conducting closed-door interviews with Iraq's atomic energy experts, marking a critical new stage in the U.N. effort to verify Baghdad's claims that it has destroyed its most lethal weapons of mass destruction, according to a spokesman for the agency.
Drawing from a list of hundreds of Iraqi officials linked to Iraq's former nuclear weapons program, officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are seeking to determine whether Baghdad secretly began rebuilding that program after U.N. inspectors left the country in December 1998 on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign.
While IAEA inspectors have routinely questioned Iraqi scientists at former nuclear weapons sites since they resumed inspections last month, this is the first time that they have asserted their right to conduct face-to-face interviews with individuals without the presence of an Iraqi government minder. It sets the U.N.'s nuclear sleuths ahead of their counterparts at the U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), who have yet to conduct confidential interviews with Iraq's biological, chemical weapons and ballistic missile experts.
"We are moving from an information-gathering phase to a more probing, investigative phase," the IAEA's chief spokesman, Mark Gwozdecki, said in a telephone interview from the agency's Vienna headquarters. "We can't talk about who, how or how many," he said of the scientists being questioned.
White House and State Department officials, meanwhile, dismissed an offer by Iraq this weekend to let CIA officials visit Iraq to participate in inspections and therefore, presumably, interviews. "It's nonsense," said one U.S. official. "The focus should be on Iraq coming clean."
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would not rule out the possibility. "I don't know what the United States might consider doing," he said. "I suppose they invited intelligence people. And as I recall, I suppose the [intelligence] community is thinking about that at the present time."
The Bush administration has stepped up pressure on Mohammed ElBaradei, the Egyptian director general of the IAEA, and Hans Blix, the Swedish executive chairman of UNMOVIC, to speed the pace of inspections and to exercise their authority to question some Iraqi specialists outside the country, where they can speak freely without the fear of reprisals.
ElBaradei said in a recent interview that he would interview Iraqi scientists abroad if he received assurances from Washington that they could obtain political asylum or return safely to Iraq. "We are now in the process of interviewing people inside Iraq in private," ElBaradei added today in an interview with CNN. "But we are also working on the practical arrangements to take people out of Iraq."
Although Iraq's nuclear weapons program was largely destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the CIA and Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee believe that Baghdad has resumed its efforts, engaging in an intensive covert operation since 1998 to procure uranium and components that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. They have also raised concerns that Iraq has brought its nuclear weapons team back together.
"In the absence of inspections, however, most analysts assess that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear program -- unraveling the IAEA's hard-earned accomplishments," according to a recent CIA report.
While the IAEA declined to name Iraqi specialists who have been questioned, officials said several individuals would be obvious subjects. Jaafar Dhia Jaafar, credited by U.N. specialists with heading up Iraq's covert nuclear weapons program, and Mahdi Obeidi, a uranium enrichment specialist, are central figures in Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program.
Jaafar was part of a senior Iraqi delegation that met numerous times with ElBaradei and Blix in New York and Vienna this year. Following one of those visits, Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Douri, complained that the United States approached three members of the Iraqi delegation with an offer of political asylum. The offer was rejected, he said. But it remains unclear whether Jaafar was among those who had been contacted by the United States.
Pakistan, meanwhile, denied reports that the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, offered to help Iraq build a nuclear weapon in 1990. The Associated Press and the Times of London, citing U.N. documents, reported that an unidentified middleman, claiming to represent Khan, made the offer on the eve of the Gulf War. The IAEA maintained that Iraq never accepted the offer, according to the reports.
"We find it preposterous," said Mansoor Suhail, a spokesman for the Pakistani mission to the United Nations. "No responsible Pakistani scientist would enter into a a nuclear deal with any country."
----
U.N. Experts Interview Iraqi Nuclear Scientist
December 24, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-inspectors.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. arms experts formally questioned a senior Iraqi nuclear scientist at a Baghdad university on Tuesday, in what they said was a resumption of a regular interview program after a four year gap.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had already said on Monday that its inspectors had talked to some Iraqi scientists and was making arrangements to take them out of Iraq if needed as part of its hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
Tuesday's interview was a formal face-to-face affair.
With no Christmas Eve respite for the more than 100 inspectors based in Baghdad, teams from the IAEA and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commissioninspected 10 sites ranging from a veterinary college to oil facilities.
An IAEA team swooped on the Technological University, checking its laboratories and equipment tagged by previous arms inspectors.
Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the inspectors, said the team interviewed at length a scientist at the facility. He said the interview was conducted in a private office chosen at random.
``This represents resumption of a regular interview program that was interrupted in 1998,'' Ueki said in a statement.
Dr. Sabah Abdul Nour, a member of Iraq's nuclear program who was interviewed by previous inspection teams before 1998, told reporters Tuesday's interview went well.
``The discussions were very friendly and questions were mainly about what has been done or any progress which has been achieved in Iraq after 1998 till now,'' he said.
``I explained to them all I know and (that) we have in fact nothing to hide,'' Abdul Nour said.
Abdul Nour said the IAEA inspectors agreed to his request that an Iraqi monitoring official attend the interview. Ueki confirmed an Iraqi ``witness'' attended.
EXPERTS INSPECT OIL FACILITIES
A U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraqi disarmament adopted last month demands inspectors be given free access to interview scientists suspected of having participated in Baghdad's banned weapons programs.
The IAEA urged states on Tuesday to guarantee protection for Iraqi scientists and their families who are taken abroad to give information about Baghdad's alleged atomic weapons program.
U.N. weapons inspectors returned to Iraq earlier last month after a four-year hiatus to resume a hunt for weapons of mass destruction, amid threats by the United States to disarm Iraq by force if it does not obey U.N. resolutions.
Some two dozen inspectors drove to the southern port city of Basra where they inspected oil facilities in the area. It was the furthest the inspectors had gone south of Baghdad since they resumed inspections on November 27.
The inspectors were spending the night in the city before inspecting a number of sites in the south on Wednesday, Iraqi sources said.
Another IAEA team visited the Salahuddin electronics factory north of Baghdad.
A chemical weapons team visited a site 45 kmsouth of Baghdad, the Iraqi officials said.
UNMOVIC ballistics experts checked a military mechanical parts factory south of Baghdad, Iraq's only plant producing ingredients used in the production of solid propellant and three other missile sites.
Biological teams inspected a veterinary school in Abu Ghreib, 25 km west of Baghdad, and a brewery in the outskirts of the capital, they said.
-------- iran
Iran Plans Nuclear Plant for Energy Only
December 24, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Brushing aside U.S. criticism, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami pledged Tuesday to forge ahead in building Iran's nuclear power plant.
But he said Iran didn't want nuclear arms, and would prove its sincerity by sending the plant's spent fuel rods -- a potential source of fissionable material -- abroad for reprocessing.
``We have no problem with sending the nuclear waste and uranium waste to other countries,'' Khatami said on his first visit to Pakistan. ``We are not insisting on keeping them in Iran, where they could also pose an environmental problem.''
Khatami made the promise at a news conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali in Islamabad, where he urged critics to focus on Israel's reported nuclear arsenal, rather than on recently emerged nuclear powers like Pakistan.
Israel has never acknowledged to possessing nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials insist the nation's nuclear facilities are used only to generate power, even though Iran canceled a U.N. inspection of two sites in mid-December. Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, is scheduled to visit Iran in February.
The U.S. government has strongly criticized the plant at Bushehr in southern Iran, saying it could advance Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.
On Tuesday, Khatami seemed eager to assuage Western concerns about the plant, being built with Russian help.
``We are very happy that we are going to have that nuclear power plant in Iran, and we are going to develop it for energy and peaceful purposes, I repeat, peaceful purposes,'' he said.
Both Khatami and Pakistan's newly elected prime minister head governments with powerful hardline Islamic factions. Jamali said he'd asked Khatami for help in negotiating a $3.5 billion gas pipeline deal with Pakistan's Hindu neighbor, India.
``Of course this project plays an important role for economic cooperation for Iran, Pakistan and India. It is very important to defuse tension in the whole region and increase peace and stability,'' Khatami said. ``There is no problem from our side, or the Pakistani side, and I hope that in our future talks to remove some of the concerns raised by the Indian side.''
India accuses Pakistan of backing Muslim separatists in Kashmir, an Indian province where Muslims predominate. More than 60,000 people have died in the 13-year insurgency.
Iran supports Pakistan's demand for a plebiscite to let residents of Kashmir province decide whether they should join Pakistan or India, Jamali said Tuesday. ``We agreed that the Kashmir dispute should be resolved in keeping with the wishes of the people of Kashmir.''
Khatami is the first Iranian leader to visit Pakistan since 1992.
The two nations fell out over Pakistan's support for the hardline Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until its ouster last year in a U.S.-led war. Relations have warmed considerably since Pakistan abandoned the Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Pakistan and Iran were expected use Khatami's visit to sign three agreements to improve bilateral trade and enhance cooperation in science and technology.
-------- korea
North Korea Denounces U.S. Hawks
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
By Paul Eckert
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33332-2002Dec24?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea accused hawks in the United States on Tuesday of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war and said its armed forces were up to the task of defeating any enemy.
The reclusive communist state's defense minister, speaking after Washington predicted its own armed forces could fight two wars at the same time and win, said his country had "modern offensive and defensive means capable of defeating" any enemy.
Earlier, the ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, accused Washington of internationalizing the crisis and said persisting with this strategy would trigger an "uncontrollable catastrophe."
But as Pyongyang ratcheted up the rhetoric, the United States and its allies in the region urged it to abandon its nuclear brinkmanship and China, the North's main ally, called for restraint and dialogue to defuse the crisis.
South Korea, which would be in the front line of any conflict on the peninsula and favors dialogue to end the crisis, expressed frustration with its unpredictable neighbor.
"South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the European Union are all strongly calling on North Korea to abandon the nuclear program. But the North is not listening now," outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told his cabinet.
Kim, a champion of dialogue, said the North's attitude was frustrating efforts to secure help for its shattered economy and end its international isolation.
North Korea, denounced by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran, set alarm bells ringing at the weekend by removing U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor that is capable of yielding weapons-grade plutonium.
"The U.S. hawks are arrogant enough to groundlessly claim that the DPRK has pushed ahead with a 'nuclear program', bringing its hostile policy toward the DPRK to an extremely dangerous phase," its official KCNA news agency quoted Defense Minister Kim Il-chol as saying.
"The DPRK cannot remain a passive onlooker to the present serious situation where the sovereignty and right to existence of the country and nation are exposed to the worst threat owing to the U.S. hawks who are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war," he added.
KCNA said Kim Il-chol was addressing a national meeting in the capital Pyongyang to mark the 11th anniversary of the North's leader Kim Jong-il taking command of the Korean People's army.
U.S. BACKS DIPLOMACY
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking on Monday, warned the North against taking advantage of the Iraq crisis to further its nuclear ambitions.
"We are capable of winning decisively in one (war) and swiftly defeating in the case of the other," he told a Pentagon briefing. "Let there be no doubt about it."
But Rumsfeld drew a distinction between Pyongyang and Iraq, saying years of diplomacy with Baghdad had failed.
"The situation in North Korea is a fairly recent one," he said. "The diplomacy that's under way there is in its early stages with the United States and the interested neighboring countries."
North Korea says it has a right to possess nuclear weapons if it chooses and insists that Washington sign a non-aggression pact as a basis for talks on their differences.
Washington says Pyongyang must respect its international commitments, particularly a 1994 agreement to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for fuel oil and help with energy production.
South Korea's president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, who won a December 19 election with a campaign criticizing Bush's tough stance on the North, met the ambassadors of China, Russia and Japan on Tuesday and spoke with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by telephone.
Roh's spokesman said he had asked for help dealing with the crisis and would seek meetings with the Bush administration before his inauguration in late February.
China's foreign ministry issued a statement in Beijing saying it wanted to see the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
"We hope relevant sides can proceed in the overall interest of safeguarding peace and stability on the peninsula...and reach a resolution to the issue through dialogue," it said.
Washington says North Korea admitted in talks in October to maintaining a secret weapons program. U.S. intelligence experts estimate Pyongyang has already built two nuclear bombs.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog, said the North had broken U.N. seals on about 8,000 spent fuel rods in a cooling pond at Yongbyon -- a possible prelude to recovering more weapons-grade plutonium.
Pyongyang says it is reactivating the reactor to produce electricity after Washington and its allies withheld oil supplies promised under the 1994 agreement. Outside experts say the reactor has minimal power generation capacity.
----
N. Korea: U.S. Is Risking Nuclear War
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Associated Press Writer
Dec 24, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Gwozdecky says the international community must act now to persuade North Korea to stop its efforts to resume its nuclear weapons program. (Audio)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea ratcheted up its standoff with Washington on Tuesday, starting repairs at a long-frozen nuclear reactor and warning that U.S. policy is leading to an "uncontrollable catastrophe" and the "brink of nuclear war."
The communist North routinely issues fiery warnings to the United States, but the new statements were stronger than usual.
North Korean officials removed U.N. seals from more nuclear facilities and began repair work at a reactor that had been frozen since 1994, a U.N. agency said. The North Koreans will need "a month or two" to make their Soviet-designed, 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon operational, said Mark Gwozdecky, chief spokesman at the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
Alarming governments around the world, North Korea has swiftly taken steps toward a possible reactivation of nuclear facilities that experts believe were used to make one or two weapons in the 1990s.
U.S. officials said they suspected North Korea was trying to goad Washington back to the negotiating table after President Bush cut off oil shipments to the energy-starved nation.
"We will not give in to blackmail," State Department spokesman Phil Reeker said.
On Tuesday, North Korea removed U.N. seals and surveillance cameras from a fourth nuclear facility, including a reprocessing facility that produces weapons-grade plutonium.
The move disturbed U.S. officials who say North Korea has no use for plutonium other than trying to build a nuclear bomb. There are 8,000 spent fuel rods at the facility, enough to make several atomic bombs within months.
Gwozdecky said it did not appear that the North Koreans had removed any rods from the facility.
North Korea, which has accused the United States of plotting an invasion, has said it is willing to settle the nuclear issue if Washington signs a nonaggression treaty.
The North's defense minister, Kim Il Chol, said in a report on KCNA, the North Korean news agency, that "U.S. hawks" were "pushing the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war."
In a separate report on KCNA, North Korea said Washington's hostile policy toward it would backfire and result in "an uncontrollable catastrophe." The statement was in the North's communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth day talking to North Korea's neighbors about the crisis.
Powell spoke Tuesday to Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi. Since Saturday he has also spoken with the leaders of Russia, China, South Korea, Britain and France. President Bush was monitoring developments from Camp David, where he was spending Christmas with his family, said spokesman Scott Stanzel.
The White House sought to project an air of calm as North Korea issued its strongest statement since it began to restart its nuclear facilities last weekend.
"We've made very clear we want a peaceful resolution to the situation North Korea has created by pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, and as the president has said before, we have no intention of invading North Korea," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.
McCormack was referring to North Korea's covert nuclear program based on uranium enrichment that is unrelated to the older, plutonium-based one. U.S. officials say North Korea acknowledged in October the existence of the second program, which violates international arms control agreements.
Britain's Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell said North Korea's moves to restart its suspended nuclear program were "very worrying."
"I think it is probably a fairly ham-fisted attempt to gain international leverage, but our best analysis at the moment is that this is not a regime that is hell-bent on confrontation," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
In the past few days, North Korea has cut U.N. seals and impeded surveillance equipment at the Yongbyon reactor and its spent fuel pond, a fuel rod fabrication plant and a reprocessing facility, said IAEA director Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei.
"This rapidly deteriorating situation in the DPRK raises grave nonproliferation concerns," ElBaradei said in a statement. DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon were at the center of a crisis in 1994 that some say nearly led to war. Conflict was averted when North Korea agreed to freeze the facilities in a deal with the United States.
But Pyongyang said on Dec. 12 that it planned to reactivate them to produce electricity because Washington had failed on a pledge to provide energy sources.
In neighboring South Korea, President-elect Roh Moo-hyun appealed to Russia, China and Japan for help in finding a peaceful solution to the North Korean dilemma.
Roh, who won South Korea's presidential vote last week, met ambassadors from the three regional powers Tuesday. All hoped the nuclear issue would be resolved peacefully, said Roh's spokesman, Lee Nak-hyun. Their countries have expressed support for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
Roh takes office in February. He advocates dialogue to resolve nuclear issues with the North, while the United States has ruled out any talks before the communist state gives up its nuclear ambitions.
----
North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for Processing Plutonium
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/asia/24NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - North Korea started to reopen a sealed plutonium reprocessing plant today, the most provocative and technically important step it has taken in recent days to revive a nuclear program that experts said could produce weapons within months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korean officials had disabled surveillance cameras and broken through seals barring entry to a building housing the equipment needed to turn spent fuel rods from a nearby reactor into weapons-grade material.
On Sunday, North Korean officials disabled cameras and broke seals around a pool holding 8,000 of the spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, 55 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital. On Saturday, the North Koreans began dismantling monitoring equipment at the reactor itself.
"The reprocessing plant is the important one, because that's where they extract the plutonium from the spent fuel," said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "If we don't have our monitoring equipment in place, we're not in a position to assure anybody that this material is not being diverted for weapons."
The Bush administration emphasized that it would continue to deal with the issue diplomatically. But even as he endorsed diplomacy as the right course for now, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned North Korea not to assume that the United States was incapable of confronting it militarily, even as Washington prepares for possible war with Iraq.
"If they do, it would be a mistake," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a news conference.
The Korean developments also generated new bipartisan pressure from Congress for the White House to rethink its policy of not negotiating until North Korea drops its nuclear program.
North Korea disclosed in October that it had continued to pursue a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement. That announcement led the United States to cut off shipments of oil to North Korea.
Since then the Pyongyang government has steadily ratcheted up the stakes in the confrontation, apparently in an effort to win economic concessions and security agreements from Washington at a time when the United States is focused on Iraq.
Faced with the new provocation today, the administration said it would stick to its demand that North Korea drop its nuclear program as a condition for negotiations.
"We think it's important to let the North Koreans know that the way to engage and integrate with the international community is to live up to treaties and agreements and obligations, not to break those agreements and then ask for more in return," a White House official said.
Asked whether the United States had set off the confrontation by labeling North Korea part of the "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran, thus backing Pyongyang into a corner, Mr. Rumsfeld replied that the responsibility rested with North Korea's totalitarian leadership.
"The idea that it's the rhetoric from the United States that's causing them to starve their people or to do these idiotic things," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "misses the point."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell continued the American efforts to maintain a united international front on the Korean issue.
This morning, Mr. Powell spoke with his counterparts in Russia, France and Britain to emphasize the need for "a peaceful resolution," said the State Department spokesman, Philip Reeker. Over the weekend Mr. Powell spoke with the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
Mr. Reeker repeated the American position that there can be no negotiations while North Korea is pursuing its nuclear program. "We will not give in to blackmail," he said.
Mr. Reeker said that as far as he knew, there was no dissent among those partners from the resolve to press North Korea.
But the newly elected South Korean government, which takes office in late February, is pledged to engagement with the North, and is operating in an atmosphere of notably strong anti-American sentiment. Japanese diplomats have been privately concerned that isolating North Korea would backfire. Today Russia's deputy foreign minister, Georgi Mamedov, was quoted in a Moscow newspaper suggesting that the Bush administration was to blame.
"How should a small country feel when it is told that it is all but part of forces of evil of biblical proportions and should be fought against until total annihilation?" Mr. Mamedov asked, according to Reuters.
Mr. Reeker dismissed Mr. Mamedov's comments as "totally absurd."
Members of Congress from both parties have also started to question the administration's position on negotiations.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the departing Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview that the growing prospect of a nuclear crisis was likely to increase the pressure for international negotiations with North Korea, even if they do not directly involve the United States.
On Sunday, the incoming Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, said in an interview with Fox News that the United States would "have to talk, talk continuously to South Korea, to North Korea, to Japan, be heavily engaged."
Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he would like to travel to North Korea to establish some communication with its government. "No dialogue is a recipe for disaster," he said. "That doesn't mean we have to appease or to cave."
Two Democrats, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Charles E. Schumer of New York, wrote to Mr. Bush last week asking for an explanation of administration's policy. "The administration has not enunciated a clear policy goal on North Korea," Mr. Schumer said today. "They say, `Let's not talk.' But where is that leading us? You don't have to have a Ph.D. in foreign relations to understand that North Korea poses a greater danger to the United States than Iraq. But nobody quite knows what our policy is."
Although North Korea is now well down the path to completing all the steps it needs to begin processing weapons-grade plutonium at Yongbyon, officials said there was still time to avert a showdown.
Mr. Gwozdecky said the atomic energy agency's inspectors on the scene had reported that the North Koreans had not finished breaking through all the seals - a combination of electronic alarms and bolts - to get into the reprocessing plant, a job he said would probably be completed on Tuesday. He said it would be weeks or months before the plant would be operational.
Faced with a similar impasse with North Korea in 1994, the Clinton administration considered a plan to bomb Yongbyon, but instead managed to reach a negotiated settlement. But even as it has laid out a formal doctrine of pre-emption to head off threats to national security, the Bush administration has stressed that it is not contemplating military action against North Korea.
Indeed, American officials played down any sense of urgency. Responding to questions about why evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction requires the threat of immediate military action, while the certainty that North Korea is on the verge of being able to produce nuclear weapons does not, administration officials said Iraq had exhausted its chances to resolve its conflict diplomatically while North Korea had not.
"The Iraqi regime has thumbed their noses at the United Nations annually for a good period of time," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The situation in North Korea is a fairly recent one. The diplomacy that's under way there is in its early stages for the United States and the interested neighboring countries. It seems to me to be a perfectly rational way of proceeding."
----
IAEA Cannot Tell if N.Korea Works on Nuclear Arms
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33376-2002Dec24?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday it could not check whether North Korea was diverting resources to build atomic bombs after Pyongyang began disabling surveillance cameras.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the reclusive Stalinist state had broken the seals and disabled surveillance devices at three facilities at Yongbyon suspected of being used to make weapons-grade plutonium.
"They have already done three facilities and now they are working on the fourth," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
There are four facilities at Yongbyon covered by the freeze -- a five-megawatt experimental reactor, a fuel-rod fabrication plant, a research laboratory and a power plant still under construction.
On Saturday, Pyongyang began removing the seals and disabling U.N. monitoring cameras at the five-megawatt plant after the IAEA failed to heed Pyongyang's demand early this month to take away gear so it could revive the idled reactor.
"(IAEA chief Mohamed) ElBaradei stated that unless the IAEA is able to reinstate without delay its safeguard measures at these facilities it will not be able to provide assurances that North Korea is not diverting nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," the IAEA said.
Under a 1994 agreement with the United States, North Korea froze its nuclear programs at the Yongbyon facilities in exchange for a $5 billion package that included 500,000 metric tonnes of heavy fuel oil per year and two light-water reactors.
The light-water nuclear reactors generate less material of a type that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
----
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
By Jim Wolf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34682-2002Dec24?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea could churn out enough plutonium to build up to 50 to 55 nuclear weapons a year if all three of its frozen nuclear reactors entered operation in coming years, a U.S. government official said on Tuesday.
The issue could be critical to world security, partly because North Korea has been developing long-range missiles possibly capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
Washington has accused Pyongyang of being the world's biggest peddler of missiles and missile production technology. North Korea on Tuesday said U.S. hard-liners were pushing the divided Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, adding its armed forces were up to the task of defeating any enemy.
In a sign of the urgency the issue has acquired, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth straight day consulting U.S. allies, including Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, about North Korea.
"The secretary reiterated what we (have) said before -- that we are not anxious to escalate this problem but we are not going to be blackmailed," State Department spokesman Phillip Reeker said of Powell's talks with Kawaguchi. "If North Korea is looking for U.S. support, this is not the way to do it."
The reclusive communist state's defense minister, Kim Il-chol, said his country had "modern offensive and defensive means capable of defeating" any enemy. He spoke after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Pyongyang on Monday the United States was "perfectly capable" of defeating Iraq and North Korea at the same time, should that ever be necessary.
Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea, who was elected president last Thursday on a campaign criticizing the tough U.S. stance on North Korea, met the ambassadors of China, Russia and Japan on Tuesday and spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by telephone.
In Paris, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, deplored North Korea's nuclear moves and urged the international community to stand firm in demanding Pyongyang respect its commitments.
WEAPONS POTENTIAL
North Korea, denounced by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran, triggered international fears over the weekend by removing U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor capable of yielding weapons-grade plutonium.
Restarting the 5-megawatt plant at its Yongbyon complex, as Pyongyang has taken steps to do, would spin off about 6 kg (13 pounds) a year of weapons-grade plutonium, said the U.S. official who declined to be identified.
That would suffice for just one nuclear bomb, given the rule of thumb that it takes about 11 pounds of plutonium per weapon. Yongbyon is about 55 miles north of Pyongyang.
The output from two unfinished reactors -- a 50-megawatt unit at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt plant at nearby Taechon -- could be added to generate as much as a combined total of 600 pounds of plutonium a year from all three plants, the official said, or enough for 50 to 55 weapons, depending on how they were configured.
"It would take several years for them to complete construction of those reactors, but if they complete the construction, that's the potential," said the official. The United States has urged Pyongyang not to restart any of its frozen nuclear facilities.
A State Department official said on Tuesday Washington had no indication Pyongyang had gone beyond dismantling the U.N. monitoring devices to actually reactivate the 5-megawatt plant or that it had moved to reprocess the spent fuel rods to recover plutonium.
Keeping North Korea from extracting bomb-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods has been a top U.S. foreign policy priority for years -- one that brought the Clinton administration to the brink of war before a landmark 1994 nonproliferation deal.
By that time, Pyongyang had probably already recovered enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons, the CIA has concluded.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze the 5-megawatt reactor plus the partially built 50- and 200-megawatt plants. Also frozen were the reprocessing facility and a fuel-rod fabrication plant at Yongbyon.
In exchange, Washington agreed to provide a $5 billion package to include two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors and 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil a year until the first light-water reactor was built. Although the light-water reactors also produce plutonium, the material is harder to extract and not as suitable for use in weapons as the materials produced at existing reactors.
REMOVING SEALS
North Korea began removing U.N. controls last weekend from the 5-megawatt plant and its associated spent fuel cooling pond, a fuel-rod fabrication plant and the reprocessing plant, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday.
"They have already done three facilities and now they are working on the fourth," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
North Korea has maintained it has a right to possess nuclear weapons and insisted that Washington sign a nonaggression pact as a basis for talks on their differences.
Pyongyang acknowledged to U.S. officials in October it had mounted a secret program to obtain highly enriched uranium, another potential bomb-building ingredient, in violation of the 1994 agreement and other nonproliferation pacts. That prompted a U.S.-led consortium to cut off fuel oil shipments to the North, which then said it was resuming its nuclear program to generate electricity.
Having taken possession of about 8,000 spent fuel rods, Pyongyang could separate enough plutonium for about five nuclear weapons in six months to a year "or perhaps quicker" once it fired up the reprocessing plant, said David Albright, a nuclear physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
Albright, co-editor of Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle and a member of the IAEA's Iraq monitoring team from 1992 to 1997, said the frozen reprocessing plant itself could be back in business in one to three months.
----
NEWS ANALYSIS
Nuclear Fear as a Wedge
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/asia/24KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 23 - North Korea's decision this weekend to remove international controls from its nuclear reactors and from a large supply of weapons-grade fuel is as much a political challenge as a military one, experts on the country's behavior say.
By taking possession of 8,000 spent fuel rods, the country could conceivably begin producing plutonium-based bombs in as little as six months, experts say. But as serious as this sounds, many analysts see another threat in the country's brash actions, and it could materialize even sooner: a weakening of the half-century-old alliance between South Korea and the United States.
A new and diplomatically inexperienced South Korean president is to take office here in February, and he seeks to pursue closer relations with his neighbor. Behind Pyongyang's latest actions, analysts detect a desire to take advantage of the new South Korean eagerness at the expense of the United States, just as America is enduring a period of intense unpopularity among South Koreans.
The North Korean ruling party's newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, alluded to this strategy in an editorial today that called for the two Koreas to work together to cut the United States out of the peninsula's diplomatic equation. "Now is the time for all Koreans to frustrate the U.S. imperialists' aggression and antireunification moves," the newspaper said.
Although no one here expects South Korea to oblige, North Korea's behavior clearly aims to deepen the cracks that have already made this country's relationship with Washington unusually fragile, and analysts who agree on little else say Pyongyang's timing could not have been more astute.
The Bush administration, which has spent two years avoiding serious diplomatic initiatives toward Pyongyang, insists there can be no dialogue with North Korea as long as it is in violation of major arms control commitments. Complicating matters yet further, Washington has been intensely focused on a possible war in Iraq, allowing North Korea to seize control of its deadly nuclear materials in the knowledge that the United States can scarcely take on two major conflicts at once.
This has been a season of huge anti-American demonstrations in South Korea, incited by the deaths in June of two schoolgirls who were accidentally crushed by an American military vehicle on patrol. The protests have revealed a deep wellspring of resentment of the large United States military presence here, and of what many South Koreans feel is their relegation to the role of barely listened-to junior partner. At the same time, feelings toward North Korea have softened, with this country's increasingly affluent and self-confident population looking more in pity than in fear at their neighbor and yearning to help North Korea rather than punish it.
Remarkably, after more than two years of high-profile efforts to engage with Pyongyang, public opinion surveys here show that South Koreans are as skeptical of their longtime ally, the United States, as they are of heavily armed North Korea.
The president-elect, Roh Moo Hyun, who emerged victorious last week in part on the strength of these sentiments, is an ardent advocate of engagement with North Korea, and has vowed to be assertive in dealing with the United States, which he has openly called heavy-handed.
Mr. Roh, who has never been abroad, has not had time to put together a national security team, and for that reason will be even more inclined to insist on extra time to develop a response to the North Korean challenge.
"I don't think the United States will make any quick judgment," said an official of the Blue House, the South Korean presidential office. "They will give a little time. Even when Bush was elected, it took one year to set up a foreign policy team. This is a very delicate period. I don't think any of the countries involved will expect any quick response."
North Korea's latest challenge is eerily similar to a nuclear crisis in 1994, when the Clinton administration drew up plans for a strike against the country's nuclear plants after Pyongyang made moves toward reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, ostensibly to make bombs.
Some voices in Washington have already begun to call for the United States to renew its threat to destroy North Korea's nuclear power center at Yongbyon.
"North Korea's purpose is to move the spent fuel rods to sites around the country where they could be weaponized in order to convince us that there can be no pre-emptive strike," said Chuck Downs, author of "Over the Line: North Korea's Negotiating Strategy."
"We have to very graphically convey to the regime that this is unacceptable," he said. "That is something that the Bush administration doesn't want to do because we are distracted with Iraq and want to pick our fights, but the North Koreans are giving us no choice."
Critics of a muscular ultimatum say that the same constraints that eventually swayed the Clinton administration against attacking North Korean sites are still in place. Seoul and more than 30,000 American troops are within easy range of North Korean artillery, military experts say. Pyongyang could rain 300,000 to 500,000 rounds on this city in the first hours of a conflict.
What is more, if Washington pushes ahead with a more confrontational approach now, it risks badly straining relations with Mr. Roh, who has insisted that South Korea be given a bigger role in shaping the alliance's North Korea diplomacy.
"That is exactly the trap that is being set by North Korea," said Scott Snyder, Korea representative for the Asia Foundation and author of "Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior." Mr. Snyder said that without South Korean acquiescence, "military confrontation would come at the cost of our alliance, and could inflict damage to U.S. interests elsewhere in the region, as well.
"The North Koreans don't deserve this advantage, but the opportunity to divide the alliance was created by two years of drift in Korea policy, and their timing is impeccable," he said.
While some analysts have emphasized the potential military threat from North Korea's actions, others say its behavior, however alarming, is still focused on getting Washington to resume high-level discussions. The often repeated North Korean wish is for security guarantees from the United States. In exchange for them, it says, it will eliminate its weapons of mass destruction.
"These are very serious steps toward the production of more weapons-grade plutonium, but they are also very determined attempts to get us to talk," said Donald P. Gregg, a former C.I.A. Asia expert and former ambassador to South Korea. "I don't think these guys are crazy. As poker players, they have always had an ability to play a very poor hand very well, and they are showing that again."
----
Powell Works Phones on N. Korea Crisis
Dec 24,
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NKOREA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth day talking to North Korea's neighbors about a growing nuclear crisis as Pyongyang reopened another atomic facility and warned of "an uncontrollable catastrophe" if Washington maintains a hostile policy.
Powell spoke Tuesday to Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi. Since Saturday he has also spoken with the leaders of Russia, China, South Korea, Britain and France.
The United States joined South Korea in saying North Korean technicians had removed U.N. seals and cameras from a fourth nuclear facility, a plant that makes fuel rods. The only nuclear facilities that remain untouched are two unfinished reactors.
The White House sought to project an air of calm as North Korea issued its strongest statement since it began last weekend to restart a nuclear reactor, a move U.S. officials say is a step toward building new atomic weapons.
President Bush was monitoring developments on North Korea from Camp David, where he was spending a long Christmas holiday with his family, said spokesman Scott Stanzel.
The North's defense minister, Kim Il Chol, said in a separate KCNA report that "U.S. hawks" were escalating the situation to "an extremely dangerous phase."
North Korea said Washington's hostile policy toward it would backfire and result in "an uncontrollable catastrophe." The statement by the North's communist party organ, Rodong Sinmun, was carried by the foreign news outlet Korean Central News Agency.
White House spokesman Sean McCormack had no direct comment on the new warnings from North Korea.
"We've made very clear we want a peaceful resolution to the situation North Korea has created by pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, and as the president has said before, we have no intention of invading North Korea," he said.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said North Korea's recent activity at the Yongbyon facility appeared directed at provoking Washington.
"It does appear that North Korea is playing a form of brinkmanship here. I think their ultimate interest is to begin discussions with the United States because all our entreaties to them to engage with us have not been successful."
According to one defense official, there are two schools of thought on what North Korea's intentions are. Pyongyang may be trying to goad the United States back to the negotiating table and into resuming oil shipments that Bush recently halted. Or they may really intend to resume production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
Over the weekend, North Korea began removing the U.N. seals and surveillance cameras from three Soviet-designed nuclear facilities that could yield weapons within months.
The United States could make war against North Korea even during a conflict with Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday. But he said diplomacy, not the threat of military action, guides the Bush administration's efforts to contain Pyongyang's resurgent nuclear ambitions.
The administration demanded Monday that North Korea halt plans to restart a dormant nuclear reactor that was critical to that country's nuclear weapons program.
It pressed the communist government in Pyongyang to restore U.N. surveillance gear that it dismantled at a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and not to restart the facility.
North Korea said the reactor will be used to generate electricity, an assertion Washington rejected.
Rumsfeld said North Korea should not take the current focus on Iraq as tacit approval to go forward with its weapons programs.
"We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts," Rumsfeld said. "We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it."
Rumsfeld said no military action was imminent to halt Pyongyang's nuclear efforts, and White House officials said the United States intends to pursue a diplomatic course to persuade North Korea to abandon efforts to expand its nuclear arsenal.
A senior administration official said Monday the United States does not believe the North Koreans have opened the canisters containing the fuel rods. There were conflicting reports on that question Tuesday, and the American officials could not immediately say whether North Korea was removing the rods. Monitoring was hampered by the dismantling of the monitoring equipment, one official said.
Gwozdecky said the U.N. agency does not believe North Korea has begun removing the rods, which could mark a move toward building a bomb.
North Korea said Monday the nuclear issue could be settled if Washington were to sign a nonaggression treaty.
But the United States, angry because North Korea resumed its nuclear efforts despite a 1994 agreement to abandon it, sees little reason to negotiate.
"We will not give in to blackmail," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Monday. "We're not going to bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements that it has signed."
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a senior Armed Services Committee member, said he is seeking visas to lead a congressional delegation to the North Korean capital for talks. "When you don't have dialogue, that is when the problems develop, and that's my concern with North Korea," Weldon said.
Asked whether the U.S. military has drawn up plans to make war on North Korea, Rumsfeld said, "One of the assignments of the department is to prepare for a whole host of contingencies. We tend not to get into details as to what those contingencies might be."
----
N. Korea Warned on Arms Bid
Rumsfeld: Pyongyang Should Not Feel Emboldened by Iraq Focus
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31400-2002Dec23?language=printer
The Bush administration warned North Korea yesterday not to mistake the world's preoccupation with Iraq as an opportunity to develop a nuclear arsenal, as officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency said they had run out of ways to press North Korea to honor its commitments.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said leaders in Pyongyang should not feel emboldened by Washington's extraordinarily busy foreign policy agenda. "If they do, it would be a mistake," he told reporters. "We are perfectly capable of doing what is necessary."
Rumsfeld was responding to the North Korean government's decision to dismantle a surveillance system and threaten to restart a nuclear plant and fuel processing facility shuttered in a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement. U.S. arms control experts believe North Korea could process enough plutonium to build a half-dozen nuclear weapons within months.
North Korea's escalation of a diplomatic conflict that had been building for several months represents a serious challenge to the White House at a time when policymakers have been consumed by the confrontation with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Even as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell telephoned allies to urge continued diplomatic pressure on the Pyongyang government, U.S. officials and analysts doubted a solution would develop soon.
At the nuclear power plant in Yongbyon, where 8,000 nuclear fuel containers are stored, workers yesterday continued breaking seals and covering video cameras. The North Koreans' mood was celebratory and defiant, reported international officials. Two nuclear inspectors remain on duty, but their ability to monitor events is now severely limited by the destruction of critical elements of the surveillance system.
"Our people can't be in all places at all times, and we can't know whether they've diverted any material for nuclear weapons," said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. He confirmed that the agency's board plans to meet Jan. 6, when it appears likely to refer the case to the U.N. Security Council.
U.S.-North Korean relations began to worsen in October when Pyongyang confirmed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program uncovered by the United States. U.S. officials and allies demanded an accounting and soon halted fuel oil shipments they had begun in 1994 in return for North Korea's pledge to halt the weapons program. In response, the North Korean government announced that it would reactivate the reactor at Yongbyon to provide electricity to the fuel-strapped country.
Outside nuclear experts, however, describe the plant as a research reactor that would consume virtually all of the electricity it produced. Its principal purpose, U.S. officials contend, would be to produce the weapons-grade plutonium contained in its spent fuel.
The North Koreans have "reverted to their time-tested brinksmanship tactics," said William Drennan, a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. "They're taking advantage of a unique moment in time where the United States is obviously distracted by global terrorism and the prospect of war on Saddam Hussein, and the South Koreans are going through a presidential transition.''
"There is a huge risk of miscalculation on both sides," Drennan said.
A senior administration official summed up U.S. policy as "being cool, calm and collected and not being overly alarmed about" the developments. The White House remains determined not to accede to what U.S. officials consider blackmail. And, the official added, "there's not much else we can do."
In the 1990s, before the two sides negotiated the nuclear freeze, President Bill Clinton strongly considered launching a preemptive strike to destroy the Yongbyon facility. That option, inherently risky, is less desirable this time because of likely resistance in South Korea and Japan, said Robert L. Gallucci, who negotiated the 1994 agreement. Nor are sanctions likely to work, he said.
That leaves either negotiations or a more passive containment policy, said Gallucci.
"The great irony is that this administration, where there has been such enthusiasm about thinking hard thoughts about preemption, may be left with the defense and deterrent posture because it has made negotiations so untenable politically and almost morally."
The bottom line of the U.S. approach since the White House concluded a policy review in June 2001 is that bad behavior will not be rewarded. In other words, North Korea would not be granted concessions or favorable attention simply for halting violations of international agreements or otherwise acting in ways perceived as aggressive.
One senior U.S. official said yesterday that the administration intends to keep playing hardball. The administration is prepared to offer talks and a broader diplomatic opening, but only after North Korea takes verifiable steps to halt its secret nuclear weapons project.
The official predicted the Pyongyang government will grow "increasingly irritated" at the U.S. refusal to negotiate, but in the end will "probably figure out some other way to talk," perhaps through a third party.
The administration should be talking to the North Koreans now, said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the White House is wrong not to talk with Pyongyang leaders until certain conditions are met. "We're all going to have to talk -- talk continuously to South Korea, to North Korea, to Japan, be heavily engaged," Lugar said Sunday on Fox News.
Outgoing committee chairman Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) echoed the remark: "We cannot stiff-arm everyone out there. We've got to talk. We cannot let this get out of hand." He said North Korea presents "a greater danger immediately to U.S. interests" than Hussein.
A conciliatory move by Kim may take time.
"He feels like he's got a little wiggle room because we've got our plate so full of other things. It's always better to play your brinksmanship when the person on the other side of the table is preoccupied," the official said, conceding that President Bush and his top advisers cannot give North Korea as much attention as they might otherwise.
"The demands of the war on terrorism, a potential war with Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan and how delicate that is. . . . All of that does complicate things," the official said. "The human brain can only accommodate so many crises and deal with them wisely."
----
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
December 24, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea could churn out enough plutonium to build up to 50 to 55 nuclear weapons a year if all three of its frozen nuclear reactors entered operation in coming years, a U.S. government official said on Tuesday.
The issue is critical to world security, partly because North Korea has been developing long-range missiles possibly capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
Washington accuses Pyongyang of being the world's biggest peddler of missiles and missile production technology. North Korea on Tuesday accused hawks in the United States of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war and said its armed forces were up to the task of defeating any enemy.
In a sign of the urgency the issue has taken on, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth straight day pressing Japan and other countries to boost pressure on North Korea, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
``The secretary reiterated what we (have) said before -- that we are not anxious to escalate this problem but we are not going to be blackmailed,'' he said. ``If North Korea is looking for U.S. support, this is not the way to do it.''
The reclusive communist state's defense minister said his country had ``modern offensive and defensive means capable of defeating'' any enemy. He spoke after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday U.S. armed forces could fight two wars at the same time and win.
South Korea, which would be in the front line of any conflict on the peninsula and favors dialogue to end the crisis, expressed frustration with its unpredictable neighbor.
``South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the European Union are all strongly calling on North Korea to abandon the nuclear program. But the North is not listening now,'' outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told his Cabinet.
President-elect Roh Moo-hyun who was elected last Thursday on a campaign criticizing the tough U.S. stance on North Korea, met the ambassadors of China, Russia and Japan on Tuesday and spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by telephone.
WEAPONS POTENTIAL
North Korea, denounced by President Bush as part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran, set alarm bells ringing over the weekend by removing U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor capable of yielding weapons-grade plutonium.
Restarting a 5-megawatt plant at its Yongbyon complex, as Pyongyang has taken steps to do, would spin off about 6 kg (13 pounds) a year of weapons-grade plutonium, said the U.S. official who declined to be identified.
That would suffice for just one nuclear bomb, given the rule of thumb that it takes about 5 kg (11 pounds) of plutonium per weapon. Yongbyon is about 55 miles north of Pyongyang.
The output from two unfinished reactors -- a 50-megawatt unit at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt plant at nearby Taechon -- could be added to generate as much as a combined total of 275 kg (600 pounds) of plutonium a year from all three plants, the official said, or enough for 50 to 55 weapons, depending on how they are configured.
``It would take several years for them to complete construction of those reactors, but if they complete the construction, that's the potential,'' said the official.
The United States has urged Pyongyang not to restart any of its frozen nuclear facilities. A State Department official said on Tuesday it had no indication Pyongyang had gone beyond dismantling U.N. monitoring devices to actually reactivate the 5-megawatt plant at Yongbyon.
Keeping the North from extracting bomb-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods has been a top U.S. foreign policy priority for years -- one that brought the Clinton administration to the brink of war before a landmark 1994 nonproliferation deal.enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons, the CIA has concluded.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze the 5-megawatt reactor plus the partially built 50- and 200-megawatt plants. Also frozen were a reprocessing facility and a fuel-rod fabrication plant at Yongbyon.
In exchange, Washington agreed to provide a $5 billion package to include two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors and 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil a year until the first light-water reactor was built.
REMOVING SEALS
The North began removing U.N. controls last weekend from its nuclear reactors and, perhaps most ominously, from a large supply of weapons-grade fuel at Yongbyon.
In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday North Korea was continuing to dismantle seals and disable surveillance devices meant to police its compliance with deals to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
``They have already done three facilities and now they are working on the fourth,'' IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
North Korea says it has a right to possess nuclear weapons if it chooses and insists that Washington sign a nonaggression pact as a basis for talks on their differences.
Pyongyang acknowledged to U.S. officials in October it had been pressing ahead with a secret highly-enriched uranium program in violation of the 1994 agreement and other nonproliferation pacts. That prompted a U.S.-led consortium to cut off fuel oil shipments to the North, which said it was resuming its nuclear program to generate electricity.
Having taken possession of about 8,000 spent fuel rods, Pyongyong could separate enough plutonium for about five nuclear weapons in six months to a year ``or perhaps quicker'' once it fired up the reprocessing plant, said David Albright, a nuclear physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
Albright, co-editor of Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle and a member of the IAEA's Iraq monitoring team from 1992 to 1997, said the frozen reprocessing plant itself could be back in business in one to three months.
-------- us politics
U.S. Public Is Unconvinced on Need to Wage War Against Iraq, Says Council on Foreign Relations President Les Gelb
December 24, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/25CFR_IRAQ.html
Council on Foreign Relations, December 2002 - Les Gelb, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that he is surprised by the degree of opposition in the United States to an invasion of Iraq. On a recent speaking tour, Gelb says 80 to 90 percent of audience members were against an invasion, which he says is likely by March unless Saddam Hussein is first overthrown through a coup. To get the public on its side, Gelb said it was imperative for the Bush administration to provide "a smoking gun" - conclusive evidence - that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. On other matters, Gelb, a former high State Department official in the Carter administration, says that he is skeptical that progress toward a Middle East peace can be achieved in the next year or two.
The interview with Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, took place on December 19, 2002.
Q. As the administration gears up for a probable war in Iraq, has it sold its case to the American public well enough?
A. I don't think so. I have been around the country speaking in six different cities in the last few weeks. In those meetings, I argued in favor of the administration's position. I said I thought Saddam represents a very serious national security threat that we had better deal with now rather than later. If we enter Iraq and make it a better and safer place, it will also immeasurably improve our position in the Muslim world. As I have made this case in all these different cities, I have encountered enormous opposition to my terribly persuasive arguments (laughs).
This isn't an exaggeration. Upwards of 80 to 90 percent of the audiences disagree.
Q. Why is that?
A. They disagree with the administration's policy and my own position on several grounds. First, some believe the administration simply has not made the case that Saddam is a serious threat. They want that "smoking gun" revealed. It has not been revealed.
Q. By "smoking gun," you mean pictures of nuclear facilities that make weapons, for instance?
A. Something that everyone would recognize as concrete proof that Saddam has chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Not just allegations, but the kind of proof that most nations in the world would accept as true.
Q. The other reasons?
A. The second reason is that a lot of people worry about "the day after" - what happens after Saddam is gone. Will it set off a blood lust in Iraq? Will it set off terrorism against the United States? Are we ready to deal with it? Most people feel they have heard nothing from the administration to give them confidence that we're prepared to deal with the aftermath of war.
The third area of concern is dealing with the consequences of war here in the United States. Many of these people feel we are going to be increasingly at risk to terrorist attacks if we go after Iraq; that our cities and borders are unprepared for this, that the administration and Congress have done far too little in this last year to get us ready to deal with chemical, biological, or a dirty nuclear bomb attack.
Q. What would be your prescription to get people in a different frame of mind?
A. I think President Bush has got to produce more evidence of Iraqi cheating and Iraq's threats to the United States than he has. It is not sufficient to take the documents that the Iraqis have given us and say the Iraqis have not told us enough about the disposition of the weapons of mass destruction that we knew they had in the 1990s. And it isn't sufficient to say that the Iraqis haven't proved to us with these documents that these weapons have been destroyed. These allegations are not enough to convince a lot of these Americans who want to be convinced.
Q. And the same with foreign countries?
A. I think the task of persuasion is even more difficult abroad. We see leaders from abroad coming to the Council all the time, and they are even more skeptical about using military force against Iraq.
It's not only my own impressions from speaking around the country. I have spoken to a number of congressional staffers and told them the same story I told you. They said to me that when their bosses - the senators and congressmen - return from their districts, they tell pretty much the same story.
Q. This is bizarre. Everyone hates Saddam Hussein, but people are uncertain about trying to oust him.
A. The question is why Saddam Hussein? Not Iran? Not North Korea, which in terms of weapons of mass destruction represents more of a clear and present danger than Saddam does.
Q. Do you think there will be a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq by the spring?
A. Unless all this pressure we are putting on Saddam results in Iraqis overthrowing him in the next six to eight weeks, the chances are very, very high the U.S. will be at war with Iraq by March.
Q. On our own?
A. I don't think we will be on our own. I think in the end we will have Britain with us, Qatar, probably Kuwait, and maybe even Turkey. These are the essential countries to carry out military operations.
Q. The fact that the public may not be enthusiastic won't play a big role?
A. It won't play a big role in whether or not to go to war. It will play a big role if the war is not won quickly and decisively. A quick, decisive win will convince people that Bush made the right gamble. But if it ends up with great bloodshed in Iraq, Iraqis being killed by each other, Americans being killed by chemical and biological weapons, terrorist attacks here in the United States, Bush will have gambled and lost the presidency.
Q. Switching for a minute away from Iraq to South Korea. Do you think the election of Roh Moo Hyun causes a problem for the United States? He won on a platform of disassociating himself from the United States.
A. Roh has taken an ambiguous position. One day he seemed to say the South Koreans shouldn't follow the U.S. blindly into war against the North; the next day he said he was misunderstood. In any event, the kinds of things Roh has been saying about questioning the relationship with the United States and U.S. policies toward North Korea go way beyond the criticisms any South Korean leader has uttered in the past.
. Is the Bush administration making a mistake in not being willing to sit down at a diplomatic table with North Korea?
A. I always believe we ought to be able to sit down and talk. At the same time, I agree with President Bush that we have to be very tough with the North Koreans. They flat out violated their 1994 agreement with us about not going forward with their nuclear program, and we cannot ignore that. They have got to take us seriously. So we have to be tough with them. I would say though, be tough and talk. They are not mutually exclusive.
Q. What about the Middle East? By this time next year, it is conceivable or likely we will have any movement toward an agreement?
A. I can't imagine any serious common ground being established between the Palestinians and the Israelis in the next year or two or maybe more.
Q. Is that because of the Israeli government? Both sides?
A. I think progress was possible up until the Camp David proposals of almost two years ago, when the Israelis made enormous concessions, going way beyond anything the Palestinians would have expected, and [Palestinian leader Yasir] Arafat effectively rejected the proposals. Since then, Israelis politics have been radicalized. People we have known forever who were committed to making compromises with the Palestinians became hawks. They felt, as a result of Arafat's "no," that the issue was no longer a compromise deal of two states living side by side, a Palestinian and an Israeli one, but of survival itself.
They felt that the real Palestinian aim, revealed as a result of this "no," was the destruction of the state of Israel itself.
Q. Do you agree with that?
A. I think for a lot of Palestinians, yes, that is their real goal. And their leadership probably is inclined in that direction as well. I don't think they have really reconciled themselves to living side-by-side with the Jewish state of Israel. If they had, they had the deal in their hands, at Camp David, and a little later at Tabah [where negotiations ended in 2000].
Q. So, if you were elected the next prime minister of Israel, what should your policy be? Irreconcilable toughness? And see what happens?
A. No, the Israelis have to be tough. But they also have to show continued willingness to lay the groundwork for peace. There is no future in toughness alone. The future has got to lead back to the negotiating table and a compromise settlement. Pure toughness on Israel's part is not good for them or for the United States either. I would say that that is particularly true on the issue of the settlements. The settlements are not in the interests of Israel and not in the interests of the United States. If you ask Israeli military officers over the years, they will tell you the settlements create military vulnerabilities in almost every case, and they compel the Israeli army to protect people who are effectively unprotectable. And the whole negotiating process is made hostage to the security of the settlers. This situation really has to be reversed.
Q. What about the U.S. role in this? The Bush administration has been essentially passive. Should the U.S. thrust itself into this?
A. The U.S. shouldn't go back to where we were two years ago and try to lead and push the parties to a deal, because the parties are just not ready to make a deal. It would only end in failure and reconfirmation of everyone's worst fears. I think we should take the lead and strongly express our interest in a continuing and serious negotiating process, but to do that, we have to rebuild the political basis of support for negotiations among the Palestinians and Israelis. We have to step back from the negotiating table and concentrate on confidence-building measures. Mind you, every time I say that, almost everyone involved, Palestinians and Israelis, tell me that I don't know what I am talking about. Neither side would accept doing this, particularly the Palestinians. They say that "confidence-building" is too slow. But I don't see another choice if you want to get back to the table and serious negotiations in a year or two or more. If there is no political support, it is absolutely futile for the United States or Israel to announce new peace plans. It won't get anywhere.
Q. You're an old hand in Washington, through many bureaucratic wars. How would you describe the current state of relations between the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House?
A. The State Department and the Pentagon are not expected to get along. They never really have, in terms of the perspectives they bring to most problems. Sometimes, it is odd, where the Pentagon people were the doves and the State Department, hawks, as was the case on Kosovo. The State Department wanted military action and the Pentagon didn't. Other times, as now, the State Department is dovish, or very careful about going to war over Iraq too quickly.
Traditionally, on most big issues, these departments have clashed. That is fine. It gives the president choices. The National Security Council staff has been critical in adjudicating the differences between the two big departments. And to some degree, the NSC staff under Condoleezza Rice still does. But there now is a fourth wheel in the picture that matters a great deal. That is Vice President Cheney and his national security staff. And they are an important factor in the shifting fortunes of policy as well.
Q. He's of course hawkish on Iraq.
A. Very much so. When people in an administration disagree with each other, it is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It makes clearer to a president what his choices are. A president should never be presented with just one choice. It is too dangerous. It is not fair. But it is up to the president in the end to reconcile these differences and keep a steady course. But if he doesn't, policy forever appears in disarray. I think policy has been in disarray for much of President Bush's tenure. But events have made him look better than the policy. He has gotten others to bend to American will because of his underlying toughness and muscularity. If others resent this bowing to power, it may cost us a great deal in the long run, but in the short run, Bush's inner core of strength has made events turn mainly in his favor.
Q. You mean 9/11 obviously made him seem focused?
A. Yes, before 9/11 they did very little about terrorism. They cut the budget to deal with terrorism. They weren't paying much attention to it. They could have been faulted greatly after 9/11, but Bush took such a clear leadership role and appeared so strong that he weathered that potential criticism. And essentially that carried him through the next six months or so. But then all these differences began to reappear in his team on how to handle terrorism and how to handle Iraq. And the appearance of disarray, and the reality of disarray, reasserted itself. And all the goodwill that had existed toward the United States after 9/11 dissipated. Remember there was a French editorial that appeared after 9/11 that said "We Are All Americans." You could almost reverse that today in terms of our isolation in the world.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai risks all to confront the militia generals
UK Telegraph,
By Ahmed Rashid in Kabul
24/12/2002)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$H4DRXKJ5J4BFLQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2002/12/24/wafg24.xml/
A troubled year after taking office, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan insists that he is finally taking the risky but necessary steps to confront the warlords in the provinces to allow much-needed reconstruction to begin in the spring.
Hamid Karzai
Mr Karzai told The Telegraph: "The warlords know that they cannot survive without the centre [central government] and they are not strong enough to challenge the centre - there may be acts of defiance but no challenge.
"We call the shots, they [the warlords] don't call the shots but there is a huge disconnect between the central government authority and the lack of an administration - we need to fill that gap very quickly and I need good, trained people."
An assassin tried to kill Mr Karzai in Kandahar in September. Recently several Arab and Afghan al-Qa'eda suicide bombers, with explosives strapped to their waists, were arrested in Kabul.
Now heavily armed American and Afghan bodyguards, with biceps like lorry tyres, protect him round the clock. In the next few weeks he is going to need more of them, as he pushes through plans to start demobilising warlords' armies.
So far this month Mr Karzai has dismissed 29 corrupt officials in the provinces. He has also passed a decree that forces warlords to have either a political or military role in the provinces - not both - while another decree orders that disarming and demobilising the warlords' armies should be completed by June next year.
So far the results have been mixed. Some 10 officials have refused to resign. In the northern province of Kunduz Gen Mohammed Daud has already collected 6,000 weapons but in the south the powerful warlord Gen Ismail Khan has refused to disarm his troops.
Some warlords have accepted Mr Karzai's order to choose a political or military role. Others pretend not to have heard about the decree. He said: "The bottom line is that nobody has the power to reject government orders but some work according to Afghan time."
After he was elected president of the transitional government in June by the loya jirga, Mr Karzai was criticised for declining to use his newly established legitimacy to act decisively against the warlords but now he is responding to popular demand.
He said: "Politically speaking, the people are way ahead of us. People are looking at the centre to give them a change for the better, not the warlords."
Mr Karzai has also done some blunt talking to the Americans, insisting that they must distance themselves from the warlords, many of whom were supported by US forces, money and supplies during the war against the Taliban.
The key to dealing with the warlords will be in building a new army. The problem so far has been the other power centre in Kabul - the Defence Ministry - run by the Tajik faction from the Panjshir valley north of Kabul led by Gen Mohammed Fahim.
Gen Fahim has procrastinated over how to build a national army, in which America has the lead role, and over demobilising his own army, the largest in the country. Without these steps other warlords will refuse to disarm. He now insists that he is working with Mr Karzai.
Mr Karzai said that by March the rebuilding of 2,400 miles of roads will start and £200 million will be pumped into aid programmes for rural areas, which will put added pressure on the warlords.
-------- africa
Ivorian Rebels Warn France Against Offensive
Reuters;
Tuesday, December 24, 2002,
Washington Post,
World In Brief
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31754-2002Dec23?language=printer
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Ivory Coast's rebel factions warned France yesterday that an attack by the former colonial ruler on rebel positions would trigger an all-out offensive.
Two days after French troops blasted three rebel pickup trucks that were attacking a town in the west, the rebel groups met in Bouake, the stronghold of the main Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast faction, to discuss forming an alliance.
Frightened refugees fled the scene of the latest clashes, joining tens of thousands already forced from their homes by a war that has increasingly split Ivory Coast along ethnic lines since a failed coup attempt on Sept. 19.
----
US Sees Risk of Missile Attacks on Planes in Kenya
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; 3:51 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34432-2002Dec24?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on Tuesday that it believed there was a risk "terrorists" might use shoulder-fired rockets to strike aircraft in Kenya, much like an unsuccessful attempt in Mombasa last month.
The State Department issued two statements advising of the possible threat in Kenya and warning U.S. citizens throughout East Africa, including Djibouti, of the general risk of attacks from unspecified "terrorists."
"The threat to aircraft by terrorists using shoulder-fired missiles continues in Kenya, to include Nairobi," the State Department said in the statements, which otherwise tracked previous warnings issued about the region in late November.
Suicide bombers killed 10 Kenyans and three Israelis in a blast at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa on Nov. 28 moments after assailants unsuccessfully fired missiles at an Israeli airliner taking off nearby. The two events were apparently synchronized attacks on the city, a key center for Kenya's tourism industry.
As with the warnings it issued shortly after those attacks, the State Department told U.S. citizens to remain vigilant, particularly in public places like hotels and shopping malls, frequented by foreigners and it warned generally of "possible heightened risks to American citizens and interests in Kenya."
"U.S. citizens should be aware of the risk of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets in public places, including tourist sites and other sites where Westerners are known to congregate," it said, echoing its earlier warnings.
-------- biological weapons
Agent Green Over the Andes
The Drug War According to Dr. Mengele
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch
December 24, 2002
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair1224.html
Hostile intentions toward the people of another country. Deployment of chemical weapons and biological agents. Pursuit of a scorched earth policy. Sound like Saddam's Iraq? Think again. This neatly capsulizes the Bush administration's ongoing depredations in Colombia, all under the shady banner of the war on drugs.
The big difference is that Saddam's hideous use of poison gas against the Kurds and, most likely, against Iran occurred more than 15 years ago. Since the Gulf War, Saddam's mad pursuits have been more on the order of chemistry experiments in bombed out basements. But the Bush administration's toxic war on Colombian peasants is happening now, day after day, in flippant violation of international law.
Indeed, as Bush offers pious homilies on Iraq's possible hoarding of so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction, his administration and its backers from both parties in congress are poised to unleash a new wave toxins in the mountains of Colombia, including a dangerous brew of biological weapons its proponents rather quaintly call mycoherbicides. Let us call it: Agent Green.
The leading germ war hawk in the congress these days is Rep. Bob Mica, a Republican from Florida. In mid-December, Mica called on his pals in the Bush administration to uncork a currently banned batch of killer fungi and begin a campaign of saturation spraying. "We have to restore our mycoherbicide," Mica fumed. "Things that have been studied for too long need to be put into action. We found that we can not only spray this stuff, but we found that we can also deactivate it for some period of time-it will do a lot of damage-it will eradicate some of these crops for a substantial period of time."
Of course, Agent Green also kills everything else it touches. There's not even a pretense to call these germ bomblets "smart fungi." This is the drug war as it might be waged by Dr. Mengele. Mica's bracing call for an unfettered germ war on Colombia should jotted down by junior legal eagles with dreams of becoming future prosecutors of war crimes.
But Mica is far from a lone crazed voice. Even the perpetually conflicted Colin Powell is on record supporting the use of biological agents as a key part of Plan Colombia. Indeed, Anne Peterson, the US ambassador to Bogota, testified recently that she believed bio-weapons had already been deployed in Colombia. Bizarrely, she later retracted this chilling observation, saying that it had been made under duress. Ms. Peterson didn't say who had applied the thumbscrews.
Then there's Rand Beers, one of the few holdovers at the State Department from Clintontime. It's easy to see why this biowar zealot appealed to the Bush crowd. Back in the late 90s, Beers was all for using germ weapons on crops in drug-producing countries. Now, as Assistant Secretary of State for narcotics, Beers trots across the globe to various international conferences where he invariably is forced to defend this toxic footnote to Plan Colombia against critics who charge that it violates, among other treaties, the Biological Weapons Convention. Beers often says that the toxic weapons are needed to fight international crime syndicates. This heady bit of sophistry is hardly an exemption from the prohibitions, which, it must be pointed out, the Bush administration doesn't believe in anyway, even though they are trigger-happy to invoke its provisions against enemy states, such as Iraq.
So, as in Macbeth, sin plucks on sin.
Agent Green is a genetically engineered pathogenic fungi, conjured up by the US Department of Agriculture's experiment station in Beltsville, Maryland. It is now being produced with US funds by Ag/Bio Company, a private lab in Bozeman, Montana and at a former Soviet bioweapons factory in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The labs are brewing up two types of killer fungi, Fusarium oxysporum (slated for use against marijuana and coca plants) and Pleospora papveracea (engineered to destroy opium poppies).
The problem is that both fungi are indiscriminate killers, posing threats to human health and to non-target species. Add to this the fact that when sprayed from airplanes and helicopters, Agent Green will be carried by winds and inevitably drift over coffee plantations, fields, farms, villages, and water supplies.
Agent Green also threatens the ecology of the Colombian rainforest, one of the most biologically diverse on the planet. These forests harbor a greater variety of species per acre than any country's. But the Colombian forests are already under frightful siege from gold mining, oil companies, logging outfits and cattle ranching. By one count, Colombia has already lost more than a third of its primary forest and continues to lose forest at a rate of 3000 square miles (or nearly 2 million acres) a year. It's possible that the Agent Green operation may saturate more than a million acres of Colombian rainforest, with potentially devastating ecological consequences for endemic wildlife and plants.
So it's likely that Amazonia could become collateral damage in the Bushites' bio-war adventurism.
This grim prospect may place the US in squarely in violation of yet another international treaty with which Bush, the former cocaine tooter, is charmingly unacquainted: the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD). ENMOD grew out of the worldwide outrage sparked by the use of Agent Orange and other environmentally malign potions plastered across Southeast Asian during the Vietnam war. Adopted by the UN in 1976 and signed by the US, ENMOD prohibits any signatory nation from using the environment as a weapon of war, which the spraying of Colombia constitutes by definition.
The US bio-bomblets can't even be made to stay in Colombia, but, like the pesticides and fumigants already dropped, will inevitably stray across the Colombian border into Ecuador and Peru. Both nations vehemently oppose the US biowar plan and charge that it violates international law. Specifically, they cite a non-proliferation section of the Biological Warfare Convention that prohibits the transfer of germ weapons and technology from one nation to another. Presumably, the Bush administration now considers Colombia a wholly owned colony, where even remote Andean valleys are in the toxic grip of the US empire.
"If Agent Green is used anywhere, it will legitimize agricultural biowarfare in other contexts," says Edward Hammond, director of The Sunshine Project, the anti-biowar group that has done excellent work in exposing the environmental consequences of toxic spraying in Colombia. "Reasoning in a similar manner as the US, others might prepare a biological attack on the US tobacco crop, which poisons millions worldwide, or those opposed to alcohol might target grapes or hops."
Eradication programs are a foolhardy way of addressing problems associated with drug consumption. It doesn't work, it oppresses the weak, and merely plays into the pockets of the drug profiteers, from the cocaine generals to the drug cartels and the banks who launder the money.
"In much of rural Colombia, there is simply no way to make a legal living," says Adam Isacson, of the Center for International Policy. "Security, roads, credit, and access to markets are all missing. The most that many rural Colombians see from their government is the occasional military patrol or spray plane. When the spray planes come, they take away farmers' illegal way of making a living, but they do not replace it with anything. That leaves the farmers with some bad choices. They can move to the cities and try to find a job, though official unemployment is already 20 percent. They can switch to legal crops on their own and risk paying more for inputs than they can get from the sale price. They can move deeper into the countryside and plant drug crops again. Or they can join the guerrillas or the paramilitaries, who will at least keep them fed."
Of course, the drug war has little do with the real motives of this ghastly program. The truth of this can be divined in the numbers. Billions in US aid and thousands of gallons of chemical pesticides have been poured on Colombia with little dent in coca production. In fact, the flow of drugs from Colombia is increasing at a rapid clip.
Back when the Clinton administration was pushing a somewhat reluctant congress to approve its multi-billion project dubbed Plan Colombia, none other than Rand Beers swore that the spray and burn tactics would "eliminate the majority of Colombia's opium poppy crop within three years." Congress bought Beers' song and dance, approving $1.3 billion dollars. (As a pre-condition for receiving the money, Congress required Colombia to begin operational testing of bioweapons. Bowing to world pressure, President Clinton waived the requirement.)
In the past five years, nearly a million acres of land in Colombia has been blitzed by pesticides and fumigants, rendered as sterile as the fields of Carthage after Scipio Africanus' last cruel visit. But over the same period production of cocaine in Colombia has more than tripled. Opium production is also soaring, increasing by more than 60 percent since 2000. Colombia now accounts for more than 30 percent of the heroin consumed in the US.
The reason for this will be obvious to anyone who has read our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press. War, especially covert ones, and drugs go hand in hand. Colombia is mired in a three-way civil war, with each side, guerillas, paramilitaries and the government troops, funding their operations from proceeds from the sale of drugs. The bloodier the conflict, the greater the flow of drugs.
But from the beginning Plan Colombia was only ostensibly about drugs. It was really a way to use the drug war to underwrite the Colombian military's savage war against the FARC and other rebel groups and secure US control over Colombian oil, gas and mineral reserves. The so-called eradication programs have targeted areas controlled by the FARC, rather than even larger swaths of land held by paramilitaries, serving as vicious proxy-warriors for the Colombian government.
According to Rep. Bob Barr, since the implementation of Plan Colombia at least 22 US helicopters have been shot down by Colombian rebel groups-a figure the Pentagon coyly refuses to confirm or deny. However, the State Department confirmed that last month 3 US planes were struck by groundfire on the same day.
The US presence in the war is being waged under the jurisdictional banner of the State Department, so often in the past a sign of the darker presence of the CIA and other covert warriors. In December, Colin Powell revealed his intention to up the permanent fleet of US attack helicopters in Colombia to 24. The State Department informed congress that new pilots were being trained at "a classified location" in New Mexico.
Now, it appears that the Bush administration has given Congressman Mica the greenlight to work his dark magic on the reauthorization of Plan Colombia, where he would insert language once again requiring the use of Agent Green as condition of the Colombia government getting its hands on US billions. These days they don't even go to the bother of trying to hide the strings.
There's plenty of evidence that Colombian government is now totally under the sway of Washington and will be only too happy to oblige, even if that means allowing the US to launch biological warfare attacks on its own peasants.
In a bracing irony, Colombia now presides over the UN Security Council, which is poised to clobber Iraq for hiding its history of bioweapon development. Indeed, it was the Colombian delegation that made the controversial call to hand over an early copy of Iraq's weapons declaration, which the US generously returned a week later-minus 8,000 pages.
This scandalous project drones on under the radar of the mainstream press, ever loath to tackle seriously any topic wrapped in the holy robes of the drug war. Yet, what it really adds up to is a form of environmental terrorism. The toxic wasteland and human suffering left in the wake of these operations is not accidental, not, to use the fetching term of the economists, a uncomfortable externality of an otherwise benign project. Instead, it is a calculated tactic, designed to evoke fear and terror-the carpetbombing of the drug war.
Don't say the toxic warriors in the Bush administration aren't bibliophiles. Obviously they've read Silent Spring. Only not as the stark warning Rachel Carson intended, but as a war plan which they are now bent on putting into global action.
Jeffrey St. Clair can be reached at: stclair@counterpunch.org.
-------- chemical weapons
Russia says destroying chemical arms too expensive
Tuesday December 24, 2002-- Shawwal 19, 1423 A.H.,
The News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2002-daily/24-12-2002/world/w1.htm
MOSCOW: Russia hopes to receive permission from international monitors to deactivate, rather than destroy, its vast stock of chemical weapons in a bid to save money, the head of Russia's weapons agency said Monday.
"Russia believes that deactivating chemical weapons fulfills the essential obligations of the convention" that governs the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Zinovy Pak said.
Pak said that he hoped an OPCW conference set for March in The Hague "will allow us to move closer in our positions on the question of deactivation -- which would allow us to save incredible amounts of money." Russia holds the world's largest store of chemical weapons, but financial concerns have so far allowed it to eliminate just a tiny fraction of its 40,000-tonne stock.
It initially committed itself under the 1997 International Chemical Weapons Convention to eliminating its entire chemical arsenal by the start of 2007, but lack of financing prompted it to push that date back to 2012.
Since the first factory in Russia tasked with working full-time on the destruction of chemical weapons opened last week, some 2.7 tonnes of mustard gas has been destroyed, Pak said.
The Gorny factory, located in the Saratov region on the Volga river, neutralizes chemical weapons but does not entirely destroy them.
Pak said that the factory operates under heightened security for fear of being subject to a terrorist attack.
"The selection of personnel is an essential component in the fight against terrorism," Pak said, adding that "people can be bought -- that's a fact, and that's why selection must be strict". All employees undergo background and psychological tests, he said.
Workers at the factory are also better paid than those at other Russian factories, with directors getting some 30,000 rubles (1,000 dollars/euros) and disarmament workers bringing in 12,000 rubles (400 dollars/euros) a month.
Russia expects to eliminate one percent of its stock, about 400 tonnes, in the Gorny factory by April, Pak said.
'regrets' North Korea moves over nuclear lab: Russia expressed regret Monday over a decision by North Korea to start removing United Nations seals from a sensitive nuclear laboratory used for extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods.
Russia "regrets North Korea's unilateral action in dismantling the instruments of control" over the laboratory designed to ensure its compliance with its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
A source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier the North Koreans had begun removing the seals at the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, and could complete the operation "possibly by tomorrow."
-------- iraq
Saddam Says Iraq Ready to Fight Holy War
By NADIA ABOU EL MAGD
Associated Press Writer
Dec 24, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WEAPONS_INSPECTORS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein said Tuesday that Iraqis were ready to fight a holy war against the United States, and he accused Washington of using lies and military might in a bid to rule the world.
In a vitriolic address read to Iraqis by a television announcer, Saddam said the world was entering a new year "under unique circumstances ... which have been manufactured by the forces of evil and darkness in order to create a situation of instability, chaos and tension."
Saddam said the United States and Israel were bent on waging war against Iraq in a first step to spread their authority "across the world and control fortunes and futures" of other countries.
The Iraqi leader again rejected U.S. and British claims that his regime possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam also said his regime wanted to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors conducting almost daily searches in Iraq to verify Baghdad no longer possesses chemical, biological or nuclear arms.
"We are confident that the outcome of the (U.N.) inspection operations will be a big shock to the United States and will expose all the American lies," Saddam's statement said.
An Iraqi scientist interviewed by U.N. inspectors Tuesday also said Baghdad is not hiding weapons of mass destruction, and Iraqi officials said they were willing to discuss U.N. criticisms of the nation's arms declaration.
Teams of weapons and nuclear inspectors, meanwhile, resumed inspections at numerous sites, with biological experts visiting the College of Veterinary Medicine at Baghdad University and missile teams visiting five sites in and around Baghdad connected to arms production.
The Iraqi Information Ministry said inspectors visited the Hateen Company, a complex of factories 45 miles south of Baghdad that produces artillery ammunition.
Sabah Abdel-Nour, a former member of Iraq's nuclear program who now is a professor at Baghdad's University of Technology, said his interview with U.N. inspectors was "very objective, the discussion was very friendly."
"I explained to them (the inspectors) all that I know and that we do not have anything to hide," he said. "The questions were mainly about what has been done or any progress which has been achieved in Iraq since 1998.
"They wanted to inspect whether this university has anything of their interest, they were inquiring whether there is any advanced equipment which could be used or misused."
But Abdel-Nour said he refused to be quizzed in private, preferring instead to have Iraqi officials present during the meeting.
He was not asked to leave Iraq for questioning.
"I do not have anything to say outside Iraq more of what I have said here," Abdel-Nour said.
Also, Iraq's chief representative to the U.N. mission told The Associated Press on Tuesday he saw nothing to justify the criticisms of Iraq's weapons declaration expressed last week by chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"We have nothing to add, really, of new information, because the information we gave is the real and complete information," Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin said Tuesday.
However, Baghdad was "willing to reach an understanding" with Blix and ElBaradei, Amin said.
Last week, Blix and ElBaradei said Iraq's Dec. 7 declaration largely rehashed old information, and they would be seeking more data from Iraq.
"An opportunity was missed in the declaration to give a lot of evidence," Blix said reporters after reporting to the U.N. Security Council.
The declaration, required by council Resolution 1441, was supposed to be a comprehensive account of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the long-range missiles to carry them and the programs to produce them.
The United States said the declaration was so inadequate it amounts to a "material breach" of the council resolution, while Britain said the declaration was a lie. The two allies have threatened to invade Iraq unless it cooperates fully with the U.N. inspection commission and eliminates its weapons of mass destruction.
Amin said his government would not threaten any Iraqi scientist accepting an invitation from the inspectors to leave the country for further interviews.
The U.N. resolution gives inspectors the right to interview scientists outside Iraq, with their families accompanying them, to reduce the chance they may be pressured by the Baghdad government.
Amin said inspectors had been interviewing Iraqi scientists for about 10 days, and his government saw no need to take them abroad.
----
Iraqis Down Reconnaissance Drone
U.S. Calls Incident Part of Baghdad's 'Campaign of Military Aggression'
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31399-2002Dec23?language=printer
An Air Force Predator drone was shot down over southern Iraq yesterday in the first successful Iraqi air-to-air attack since the Persian Gulf War.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft had been downed by "a lucky shot" from an Iraqi fighter. Defense officials said that the Kuwait-based Predator was transmitting live pictures when it was fired on, and that several rounds missed before the drone's signal stopped.
U.S. officials said they considered the downing a continuation, rather than an escalation, of exchanges of fire in the "no-fly zone" that the United States and Britain have declared off-limits to Iraqi aircraft since 1992. Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, called the downing another sign of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's "campaign of military aggression." There is a similar no-fly zone in northern Iraq.
The armed drone was flying in the vicinity of Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. U.S. officials said it was below the 33rd parallel, which is the northern limit of the zone.
A statement from the Baghdad government said the drone had breached Iraqi airspace while on a spying mission, but it was unclear whether the statement was charging that the Predator was flying north of the no-fly limit.
An Iraqi military spokesman said the aircraft was shot down at 3:35 p.m. local time, as the result of a "delicate and planned operation" by the Iraqi air force.
The Pentagon said that Iraq has fired on U.S. and British aircraft on 32 days since Nov. 8, when the United Nations adopted a new resolution ordering Iraq to dismantle its programs for weapons of mass destruction. But those ground-launched attacks, which have gone on for years, have never hit a manned aircraft. Two Predators were downed by ground fire in the late summer of 2001, defense officials said.
Although Iraqi aircraft have approached manned U.S. patrols in the past, they have not fired on them, U.S. officials said. The officials said the Iraqis know they would be pursued and attacked.
The announcement of yesterday's shootdown came in a wide-ranging Pentagon briefing by Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in which they commented on several other aspects of military policy related to Iraq.
Myers said that "we are continuing our deliberate and steady force buildup in the region." Military forces are being deployed to "complement" diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq, he said, adding, "We want to ensure we can act quickly should it be necessary."
Officials have indicated that a wave of new troop movements is likely to be announced early next month as part of a campaign to intensify pressure on Hussein.
Rumsfeld said steps are being taken to mobilize U.S. military reserves. He said it was "a shame" that past reorganizations have left crucial tasks assigned to non-active duty units, making it difficult for large-scale operations to be mounted without such mobilizations. "We intend to see that we're no longer organized that way in the future," Rumsfeld said.
Asked whether the Iraqis are cooperating with U.N. disarmament resolutions, Rumsfeld said: "Well, they obviously aren't. And they've been making a strenuous, energetic effort to shoot down U.S. aircraft for many, many, many months now, manned and unmanned."
Even as the United States has accused Iraq of increasing attempts to attack its air patrols, U.S. aircraft have intensified what they say are responses to Iraqi aggression. Several months ago, Rumsfeld expanded a list of targets beyond those directly threatening U.S. planes to include a wide array of command-and-communications and antiaircraft facilities, in what analysts view as an effort to weaken Iraq's defenses in preparation for war.
The Pentagon has also made increasing use of the Predator drones, using armed versions to conduct surveillance over Iraq as well as to attack targets in Afghanistan and Yemen.
The no-fly zones have long been a subject of contention in the U.N. Security Council. The United States and Britain maintain they are authorized under council Resolution 688, which in 1991 ordered Baghdad to cease repression against minority groups in Iraq, and are intended to ensure that Hussein is not launching military operations in the Kurdish north or Shiite south. Last fall, Rumsfeld cited a different resolution justifying the patrols, saying they were also part of the weapons inspections regime.
Other governments, including Russia, have noted that there is no mention of no-fly zones in any U.N. resolution.
Iraq has charged that U.S. aircraft have targeted nonmilitary areas, killing scores of civilians. The United States denies this.
Last month, as attempts to shoot at the planes increased, the Bush administration said the Iraqi actions constituted a "material breach" of the U.N. resolution passed on Nov. 8.
The resolution states that once the council finds Baghdad has breached its terms, it must convene to determine consequences, including possible military action against Iraq. But no council member, including Britain, has been willing to support no-fly violations as justification for war.
----
THE KURDISH REGION
Iraq Courts Its Kurds With an Anti-U.S. Islamic Edict
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/middleeast/24BAGH.html
KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec. 23 - The Iraqi government unleashed a salvo in the struggle for the hearts and minds of its Kurdish citizens today, gathering hundreds of Muslim clerics in this northern provincial capital to issue a religious fiat saying it was time to fight the Americans even as they prepare for war.
The assembly in this somewhat drab city, known more for its vast oil reserves than for any Islamic bent, was a kind of pep rally for prayer leaders, seminary students and other devotees. Each speaker brought much the same message, exhorting the Kurdish clerics to spread the word that anyone who cooperated with the Americans and their designs on Iraq would be considered an apostate.
Coming after recent reports that American intelligence officials have been recruiting for a possible invasion force in the autonomous Kurdish region, about 90 miles northeast of here, Iraq is apparently accenting the bond of religion to try to sway its often estranged Kurdish minority toward Baghdad. Organizers said that about 530 of the 600 clerics who showed up were from within the northern area, which Iraq has not controlled since the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
"The Americans have prepared everything to occupy the land of Islam, to occupy Iraq in order to loot its wealth and to license all that God has forbidden," read the fiat, or fatwa. "Fighting them has already become an obligation. We should n