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NUCLEAR
Spanish delegation visits Saddam Hospital
Iraq Gives the U.N. a List of 500 Weapons Experts
Inspectors revisit site on 30th day in Iraq
U.S. Readies Plan to Raise Pressure on North Koreans
South Koreans Divided on North Korean Atom Threat
Powell Says U.S. Is Willing to Talk With Pyongyang
U.S. Says No Attack Planned on N.Korea
North Korea Possesses Wide Range of Threats
Bin Laden Said to Have Sought Nuke Help
Putting a Lid on Chernobyl
Bush's Moonshine Policy
MILITARY
French Reinforcements Arrive in Ivory Coast
Insurgents Create Growing Instability in Nepal
Sharon told to use 'targeted killings' only as last resort
Saudis deny letting US use bases
China Launches 4th Unmanned Space Capsule
Kurdish Agents Play Spy Games With Iraqis on Arms Tips
Vice Policy
Saudi Arabia Said to Assure U.S. on Use of Bases
Duty Calls, and Citizens Become Soldiers
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Tribesmen Take Up Arms to Resist Afghan Drug War
Unmanned drones will guard U.S. coastlines
ACTIVISTS
Chinese Dissident Relishes a First Taste of Freedom, and Exile
Back to Iraq as a human shield
Venezuelan opposition marches again
Blacklist Grounds American Passengers
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Spanish delegation visits Saddam Hospital
Baghdad, Dec. 29, 2002,
INA (Iraq Daily)
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/10027/home8.htm
Spanish delegation for lifting embargo on Iraq headed by Mr. Carlus Varia has visited Saddam Central Hospital for Children.
The delegation has been acquainted with the patient's conditions as result of the continuing embargo, which caused high shortage in food, and medicines and the depleted Uranium used by the enemies against Iraq in their dirty war in 1991.
-------- inspections
Iraq Gives the U.N. a List of 500 Weapons Experts
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/middleeast/29IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 28 - Iraq handed over to the United Nations office here today a list of more than 500 experts involved in the development of ballistic missiles and nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, setting the stage for one of the knottiest tasks facing the renewed inspections.
The list fulfills one requirement of the United Nations Security Council's Resolution 1441, which was passed in November and re-established weapons inspections. But the extent to which these scientists will prove helpful in ferreting out any new information about Iraq's possible weapons of mass destruction remains an open question.
The second Iraqi scientist interviewed by the nuclear inspectors - even before the United Nations was given the formal list - suggested at a news conference today that all Iraqi scientists should demand that a witness from the government be present at interviews with inspectors and that no one should leave the country to be interviewed.
"How can an Iraqi man leave Iraq?" the scientist, Kadhim Mijbel, a British-educated metallurgist involved in developing light battlefield rockets, asked derisively. He noted that he had not been asked to leave but would have refused. His appearance seemingly was intended to suggest how Iraq expects all its scientists to behave.
The subject of interviewing scientists is one of the most contentious provisions of the Security Council resolution. During the previous inspections of Iraqi arms sites, from 1991 to 1998, Iraqi repeatedly declared that it had released a full, final and complete list of its weapons, only to have various defectors come along and disclose extensive hidden information.
Thus the Bush administration put particular emphasis on giving the United Nations the right to remove scientists from the country, suggesting that they would be more forthcoming out of reach of Iraq's secret police. But Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector for nonnuclear arms, has said he does not want his inspection team to be transformed into a defections agency.
The typed list, in Arabic, was delivered this afternoon to the headquarters of the weapons inspectors here and transmitted to New York as well as to the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which is responsible for inspecting possible nuclear arms sites.
Hiro Ueki, a spokesman here for the inspectors, said it was impossible to characterize the list until it had been translated and studied. He said the question of taking Iraqi scientists out of the country, as well as issues of whether their families would go with them, was still under study.
Iraq has said it will not block its scientists from leaving. But it is unclear just how popular the offer might prove.
Mr. Mijbel's position illuminates the potential pitfalls ahead.
"Only two interviews have taken place, so it's premature to conclude whether they are successful or not," Mr. Ueki said. All interviews will be voluntary, he said.
In their first interview, the inspectors talked to a scientist who had been involved in the nuclear program in his university laboratory. Mr. Mijbel, though, was given 24-hours' notice through the liaison office, the National Monitoring Directorate.
"It was to facilitate the interview," Mr. Ueki said.
Mr. Mijbel, whose name was given differently in the official announcement on Friday, said that when an official at the directorate called about the interview, he demanded that a witness be present and refused to go the United Nations headquarters at the Canal Hotel here.
"I look at this place as Guantánamo Camp," Mr. Mijbel said, referring to the base in Cuba where the United States has been holding suspected militants linked to Al Qaeda. "I am not a prisoner. I am a free Iraqi man. So I refused to meet at that place."
Instead, he met the two inspectors - Robert Kelley, the chief United Nations nuclear inspector, and Ahmed L. Gebaly - for about an hour and five minutes on Friday in a conference room at Al Rasheed Hotel. Mr. Mijbel suggested the government-owned hotel, a slightly tattered place considered Baghdad's finest, as neutral ground.
After the interview, the United Nations released a statement suggesting that the interview had been highly informative.
"He provided technical details of a military program," the statement said. "This program has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear program. The answers will be of great use in completing the I.A.E.A. assessment."
Mr. Mijbel voiced outrage at that assessment today, saying he made it clear that he knew nothing about developing nuclear weapons or other intelligence matters. Mr. Ueki announced that he had not meant to suggest that the scientist had been involved in the past nuclear program nor that Iraq now had a hidden program.
The 50-year-old metallurgist said his main connection with the military was his work as a consultant trying to stem the problem of seriously corroding aluminum pipes.
----
Inspectors revisit site on 30th day in Iraq
CNN
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/29/sproject.irq.wmd/
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.N. arms inspectors revisited an engineering firm in the Iraqi capital Sunday, the 30th day of weapons inspections in the country, the Iraqi information ministry said.
The inspectors visited the central Baghdad offices of the Saad General Co., an engineering design and construction firm owned by the Military Industrial Corp. A U.N. team visited the site two weeks ago.
The firm is involved in various projects for chemical and petrochemical production facilities, according to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Inspectors examined archives and current projects and looked into the company's management and personnel.
The inspectors also visited the customs directorate in Baghdad.
Elsewhere, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency inspected two sites -- the Eyz Company and the Salam Factory in Baghdad.
Eyz produces electronic equipment such as radio communications equipment and telephone switching boards. The Salam Factory produces communications equipment for civilian and military use.
U.N. inspectors began their work in Iraq on November 27.
The Iraqi government Saturday gave the inspectors a list of more than 500 scientists who have been associated with the country's weapons programs, a spokesman for UNMOVIC announced.
The IAEA began interviewing scientists last week. UNMOVIC, which is searching for evidence of chemical or biological weapons or high-powered missiles, has not yet conducted such interviews.
A U.N. official said several issues need to be worked out before the interviews can be done, including arrangements for secure facilities.
The Bush administration is eager to see the results of the inspections, Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.
Powell said "we are positioning our military forces for whatever might be required," but in the event of a war Iraq's "oil fields are the property of the Iraqi people."
"If a coalition force goes into those oil fields, we want to protect those fields and make sure they're used to benefit the people of Iraq, and not destroyed or damaged by the failing regime on the way out the door," he said.
Coalition warplanes enforcing the southern no-fly zone over Iraq bombed two Iraqi military radar sites Sunday near Ad Diwaniyah, 75 miles south of the capital.
The strikes occurred at 7:40 a.m. ET, according to a U.S. Central Command statement. The last such strike occurred Friday near Al Kut, about 95 miles southeast of Baghdad.
The strike occurred after Iraqi forces moved the sites into the zone, making their presence a threat to coalition forces, according to the statement. U.S. military officials were still assessing the damage Sunday night. Other developments
• Coalition planes dropped 120,000 leaflets Saturday over southern Iraq, referring Iraqis to radio frequencies where they could hear anti-Saddam radio broadcasts. The drop was the 11th over southern Iraq in three months. (Full story http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/28/sproject.irq.iraq.leaflets/index.html)
• U.S. Army tank and mechanized infantry units have been told they are going to the Persian Gulf, officials said Saturday. Soldiers from some units of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart and Fort Benning, Georgia, have received their deployment orders, although no departure date has been disclosed. (Full story http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/12/28/sproject.irq.troops/index.html)
• The U.S. Navy has been told to prepare two aircraft carriers for deployment to the Persian Gulf after New Year's Day, naval officials said Friday. A "prepare to deploy" order has been issued for a carrier to move from the East and West coasts. (Full story http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/12/28/sproject.irq.navy/)
-------- korea
U.S. Readies Plan to Raise Pressure on North Koreans
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - The Bush administration has prepared a comprehensive plan to intensify financial and political pressure on North Korea if it does not abandon its effort to make nuclear weapons and eventually confront the nation with the prospect of economic collapse, according to senior administration officials.
Under the new policy, the neighbors of North Korea would be encouraged to reduce economic ties with it; the United Nations Security Council could threaten economic sanctions, and the American military might intercept missile shipments to deprive the North of money from weapon sales.
Administration officials said the threat of growing isolation was the best way to force North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and, if it refused, to bring down the government. Officials say that under their plan, which they call "tailored containment," they are willing to negotiate with North Korea but only if it first dismantles its nuclear weapons program.
To offer new incentives, officials say, would be to reward the North Korean government for failing to live up to earlier commitments.
"It is called `tailored containment' because this is an entirely different situation than Iraq or Iran," a senior administration official said. "It is a lot about putting political stress and putting economic stress. It also requires maximum multinational cooperation."
But the Bush administration's new containment policy is coming under criticism from former United States officials and proliferation experts. They say that the allied nations are unlikely to apply the pressure that would be needed to shake the North Korean economy and that the policy lacks a vital element: an open channel for direct American diplomacy with North Korea.
"The administration's policy is a gamble that the North Korean regime will collapse before it acquires
a substantial nuclear arsenal that threatens the stability of East Asia," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who led negotiations with the North Koreans during the Clinton administration.
"It's also a gamble that our relationship with our South Korean ally can survive a lengthy period of isolating and pressuring North Korea," Mr. Einhorn said. "Engaging North Korea has its downsides, but those must be weighed against the risks of not engaging."
By most accounts, North Korea's nuclear efforts have created the most serious crisis in northeast Asia in a decade. Today the International Atomic Energy Agency said that it would withdraw two inspectors by Tuesday at the request of North Korea, which it said was acting in defiance of international obligations.
American intelligence believes that North Korea already has enough plutonium for one or two weapons. But North Korea is a position to rapidly expand its supply, no small worry given that it has long sought to make money by exporting missiles.
By reprocessing the spent fuel from the Yongbyon reactor, North Korea could acquire about five bombs' worth of plutonium in six months, or perhaps less, according to administration officials and experts outside government.
Restarting the Yongbyon reactor, as the North Koreans also seem intent on doing, would enable the country to churn out enough plutonium to build a bomb a year.
The eventual construction of a cascade network for enriching uranium would give North Korea yet another means of expanding its nuclear arsenal. The system could be finished about the middle of the decade and could produce enough fissile material for two bombs a year, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.
North Korea has long been one of the most vexing foreign policy problems. The Clinton administration was faced with a similar crisis in the early 1990's when the nation removed the fuel from its research reactor at Yongbyon and indicated it might reprocess the spent fuel to produce bomb-grade plutonium.
The Clinton administration developed plans for a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea's reprocessing plant before it managed to reach an accommodation with Pyongyang. Under the deal, North Korea agreed to freeze and ultimately eliminate its nuclear program.
In return, Washington promised a multinational effort to ship fuel oil to North Korea and to build two light-water nuclear reactors, which could provide North Korea with electricity but which Clinton administration officials said would be less useful in producing bomb-grade material.
In its final year, the Clinton administration tried to negotiate an agreement that would have required North Korea to give up its long-range missiles and end its missile exports, but President Bill Clinton's term ended before the agreement could be completed.
Later, North Korean diplomats indicated that they wanted to continue the talks with the Bush administration. But new administration was far more skeptical of North Korea's intentions.
As the South Koreans expressed concern that Washington's approach would increase tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Bush administration insisted it was prepared to begin talks with North Korea anytime and anywhere.
At the same time, President Bush declared that he considered North Korea to be part of an "axis of evil" that included Iraq and Iran, a stance that surprised the North Koreans and fueled worries in the South that Washington was taking a position that was confrontational.
Earlier this year as administration officials prepared for their first diplomatic mission to North Korea, they fleshed out their negotiating strategy in a policy they called the "bold approach."
The long-term goal of the Bush strategy was the political and economic transformation of North Korea.
Under that approach, the Bush administration would not only ask North Korea to forswear efforts to make weapons of mass destruction; it would also ask North Korea to reform its dismal record on human rights and to begin to withdrawing conventional forces that are deployed near the demilitarized zone with South Korea and which threaten Seoul.
Washington never spelled out what it was prepared to give in return, but United States officials suggested it could have included economic investment and diplomatic recognition.
"The notion was that they were headed toward a dead end, that the only way out was to forgo weapons of mass destruction, change their economy and improve human rights," a United States official said. "The point was to begin The process of transforming their country and the U.S. would respond at each step of the way."
Some former officials believe that the new negotiating strategy was unrealistic. But before the Bush administration could present its new negotiating approach American intelligence received fresh evidence that North Korea had begun a clandestine program to enrich uranium to make nuclear arms.
In essence, North Korea had circumvented the agreement it made with the Clinton administration to freeze its plutonium production by moving to develop a new source of fissile material.
In October, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, for what the North Koreans thought would be the first diplomatic opening. Mr. Kelly told the North Koreans that Washington had no intention of invading North Korea but had concerns about its record on human rights and its conventional military buildup.
Mr. Kelly also indicated that North Korea intended to shelve its "bold approach" and that Pyongyang would have to dismantle its uranium enrichment program before serious talks could continue.
The two days of meetings did not go well.Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Kwan suggested that North Korea had no need for the "bold approach" and that the people and the army loved Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader.
First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju said that North Korea was entitled to have nuclear weapons. He said that the North Koreans needed a nonaggression pact with the United States and suggested that critical issues should be settled at a summit meeting between North Korea's leader and President Bush.
Back in Washington, the Bush administration hammered out its new containment strategy. The delivery of fuel oil was halted. Officials said the plan to build light-water reactors could be scrapped.
Other steps to increase the "stress" on North Korea's economy were planned, including having North Korea's actions referred to the United Nations Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions.
But the North Koreans did not relent. Instead of agreeing to dismantle their nuclear program, they announced that they would restart the Yongbyon reactor, expel inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, remove monitoring equipment and reopen the factory that reprocesses plutonium.
Experts have offered various theories about North Korea's motivations. Some say the North Koreans want to negotiate with Washington from a position of strength.
Others speculate that North Korea has concluded that it is unlikely to extract substantial concessions from the Bush administration, has watched the United States make invasion plans for Iraq and has concluded that its security is best safeguarded by a nuclear buildup.
"I think the Bush administration's tough rhetoric and tough policies toward North Korea have unnerved the North Koreans and perhaps led them to conclude that the only way for them to ensure security is to confront the world with a fait accompli by rapidly acquiring a substantial nuclear arsenal," Mr. Einhorn said.
There is also considerable debate about the Bush administration's strategy.
"Tailored containment was constructed to enable us to move in a number of different directions," a senior administration official said. "The main objective at the moment is to get them to give up their nuclear weapons program. If they don't, we can work with allies to increase their isolation. No one anticipates that North Korea will collapse right away. But we won't do anything to prop them up and we will let the internal forces continue to work away."
Senior Bush administration officials also say they would be giving in to blackmail by offering new incentives and that North Korea's clandestine efforts to produce highly enriched uranium demonstrates that the Clinton negotiating approach does not work.
But skeptics say the policy of relying on allies will not work in part because they are not prepared to use their full leverage to pressure and possibly encourage the collapse of North Korea, an event that they fear would sow chaos in their region.
China, American officials acknowledge, has not pressed the North Koreans as hard as Washington would like and is unlikely to support economic sanctions. South Korea's new president, for his part, has come to office on a platform that called for increased interaction with North Korea, not the increased its isolation.
"The third parties do not seem to want to put a lot of pressure on North Korea," said Joel Wit, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department specialist on North Korea.
--------
South Koreans Divided on North Korean Atom Threat
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29SEOU.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 28 - As United Nations inspectors packed their bags in North Korea today, expelled from country's main nuclear center, many young South Koreans said here they did not object to North Korea having a nuclear bomb.
"I should not say this here, but, I hope North Korea has nuclear weapons," Shim Wan Kyu, a 31-year-old financial worker said while taking a cigarette break outside his office. Asked about a nuclear threat to this affluent society, he retorted: "They wouldn't attack South Korea with it. It is not for attack, but for defense."
On a busy shopping street, Kim Hyo Jin collected signatures urging the United States to negotiate with North Korea. "A country that is threatened by nuclear weapons has the right to have nuclear weapons," said Ms. Kim, a 26-year-old university student. "If North Korea would be threatened by the United States with nuclear weapons, North Korea can also have them."
In past crises, North Korean military brinkmanship has produced "panic gaps" between Washington and Seoul, with the South Koreans largely inured to half a century of North Korean bluster.
This time, many younger South Koreans, whose memories are of steadily rising affluence instead of the hardships of the Korean War, believe that Korean blood is thicker than political ideology.
On Dec. 19, it was largely voters in their 20's and 30's who overwhelmingly elected as president Roh Moo Hyun, a 56-year-old liberal who advocates a relationship with North Korea based on aid, trade and dialogue. As soon as the election was over, North Korea moved to free its nuclear program from international controls.
Although South Korea and the United States are military allies, South Korea's primary concern is keeping peace on the peninsula. The United States, though, also wants to stop North Korea's worldwide sales of missiles, its top hard-currency export, and to prevent it from marketing nuclear weapons.
Instead of standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States, many young South Koreans see themselves as caught in the middle of a fight between North Korea and the United States.
"We would love to function as a middleman, as a mediator on the issue," Yu Jay Kun, a California-trained lawyer who is the president-elect's top foreign policy adviser. "If things go in the wrong direction, there will be a clash. And if there is a clash on the Korean peninsula, it will be Koreans who are going to die."
Looking out a cafe window at cars and taxis filled with post-Christmas shoppers, he mused, "People look calm and not much bothered by this."
"But I can't sleep, I am so worried about this," continued Mr. Yu, who has attended two emergency National Security Council meetings in two days on the nuclear crisis. "I feel numb. I feel shaken."
Mr. Yu, who witnessed the destruction of the Korean War as a teenager, voiced the widespread concern here that the Bush administration would bomb North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex after the United Nations inspectors leave. "A pre-emptive strike would be really dangerous for the Korean people," he said.
North Korea's Chosun Central Broadcasting Station announced Friday night that the government will open its nuclear reprocessing plant by the end of January.
If that happens, said Henry Sokolski, executive director of Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a nonprofit group in Washington, North Korea could have enough plutonium to make five bombs by May 1.
In an effort to forestall such an outcome, a South Korean diplomat said, Seoul decided today to send special envoys to Russia and China, two countries believed to have the greatest outside leverage with North Korea.
"Our assessment of the situation is very serious," the diplomat said. "For now our focus is on dissuading North Korea from restarting" the reprocessing lab.
In the downtown area of the South Korean capital, about 70 protesters held a rally today against North Korea's nuclear program.
But a far larger group, several thousand largely young people, turned out for a candlelight vigil outside the United States Embassy. Their demands ranged from a more equal partnership between Seoul and Washington to the expulsion of the 37,000 American troops stationed here.
Earlier in the day, President-elect Roh met with the protest leaders, hoping to turn off the anti-American movement that helped him win the election. "I earnestly appeal to you to stop the candlelight demonstrations," Mr. Roh said, adding, "You should not demand a U.S. surrender." Protest leaders said they would continue to organize protests.
One Korean who, according to news reports, did have a relaxed day was North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, who attended a concert, where an army choir praised him in song.
"Kim Jong Il congratulated the artistes of the chorus," reported North's Korean Central News Agency, a state media outlet. Mr. Kim, the report said, "highly appreciated the feats they have performed in encouraging the army and people in their sacred struggle to defend the socialist system of the country."
--------
Powell Says U.S. Is Willing to Talk With Pyongyang
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis, said Sunday the United States is ``looking for ways to communicate with the North Koreans'' but will do nothing to help Pyongyang unless it changes its behavior.
Making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, Powell said the United States emphasized the need to peacefully reverse North Korea's decision to restart its weapons program and expel U.N. inspectors monitoring its main nuclear complex.
``We cannot suddenly say, 'Gee we're so scared. Let's have a negotiation because we want to appease your misbehavior.' This kind of action cannot be rewarded,'' Powell said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``We are looking for ways to communicate with the North Koreans so some sense can prevail.''
Powell seemed to present a subtle change in the administration's tone by holding out the prospect for talks and stressing that military action is not being contemplated.
``There are ways for them to talk to us. We know how to get in touch with them,'' Powell said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''
A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Powell was not referring to face-to-face talks, but to diplomatic channels open to North Korea, such as South Korea and the United Nations. President Bush has prohibited negotiations with Kim Jong Il's government while North Korea's nuclear program is active.
Powell, meanwhile, announced that Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will go to South Korea next month to talk to U.S. allies -- but not North Korea ``at this time.''
North Korean officials, for their part, urged the United States to sit down with them to negotiate.
``It is quite self-evident that dialogue is impossible without sitting face to face and a peaceful settlement of the issue would be unthinkable without dialogue,'' said a government spokesman quoted on KCNA, the North's state-run news agency.
The problem, Powell said, is that North Korea is seeking concessions in exchange for ending its nuclear weapons program.
``What they want is not a discussion,'' Powell said on ABC's ``This Week.'' ``They want us to give them something for them to stop the bad behavior. What we can't do is enter into a negotiation right away where we are appeasing them.''
Several lawmakers, though, urged the United States to open talks with the North Koreans.
``We ought to be confident enough of our strength -- and we are, after all, the strongest nation in the world -- to go right back to direct negotiations with them,'' said Senate Armed Services Committee member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., on CBS' ``Face the Nation.'' ``And I'd put the military option on the table as part of those negotiations.''
Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said there eventually will be discussions, albeit they may not be face-to-face talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
``I suspect that there are going to be negotiations,'' Lugar said on NBC. ``They may not be directly between the United States and North Korea. It could very well be through the Chinese, through the South Koreans, through the Japanese, through a combination of multilateral international community.''
Democrats added that the Bush administration deserves part of the blame for the crisis. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the president was wrong to have cut off talks with North Korea when he took office.
``We should not be afraid to talk,'' Levin said on ABC. ``We're not going to negotiate giving them anything for doing what they already promised to do, but they should hear from our lips how significant their missteps have been. We're not going to appease them but there's nothing wrong with talking to them.''
Powell, however, said North Korea had restarted its nuclear weapons program during the Clinton administration, which the United States learned about last October.
``This program was not started during the Bush administration; it was started during the previous administration,'' Powell said on ABC. ``We inherited this problem.''
In all of his appearances, Powell argued against depicting the North Korean issue as a crisis, saying the United States was not gearing up for war and there was plenty of time to find a diplomatic solution.
``We have no hostile intent toward North Korea, and we hope they will come to their senses,'' he said on ABC. On CBS he added: ``Nobody is mobilizing armies, nobody's threatening each other yet.''
One possible diplomatic route is through the United Nations; the International Atomic Energy Agency has scheduled a Jan. 6 meeting where the board of governors could refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
In the meantime, he said, North Korea is only hurting itself.
``This is a country that's in desperate condition,'' Powell said. ``What are they going to do with another two or three more nuclear weapons when they're starving, when they have no energy, when they have no economy that's functioning?''
AP White House Correspondent Ron Fournier contributed to this story from Crawford, Texas, where Bush is vacationing.
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U.S. Says No Attack Planned on N.Korea
Reuters
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51217-2002Dec29?language=printer
WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States tried to discourage talk of conflict with North Korea on Sunday and said it was ready to wait to see if diplomacy can persuade the communist state to abandon its nuclear program.
Both sides said they wanted a peaceful end to the crisis but have ratcheted up tensions after North Korea announced it would expel U.N. nuclear arms inspectors and reopen a reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said that while military action was always an option the United States was not planning any attack on North Korea, which vowed it would not give in to U.S. pressure.
"We are not planning a pre-emptive strike," Powell told NBC television. "The United States has a full range of capabilities -- political, economic, diplomatic and, yes, military. But we are not trying to create a crisis atmosphere by threatening North Korea."
"Military action is always an option, but it is not an option that is in the forefront of our thinking right now, because it doesn't seem necessary or appropriate," he told ABC, in a separate television interview in Washington.
But Powell also ruled out immediate talks with the North Koreans, who want direct talks with Washington, arguing that would reward Pyongyang for violating international agreements.
The Bush administration has labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq.
ECONOMIC PRESSURE
U.S. officials said on Saturday that Washington favored what they called a "tailored containment" strategy including economic pressure and possibly stopping cash-strapped North Korea's missile exports by intercepting them at sea.
Powell avoided a question on intercepting missile exports on Sunday and did not elaborate on the economic measures, which drew a defiant reaction in North Korea.
"The imperialist reactionaries are seriously mistaken if they think they would bring the Korean people to their knees with pressure," the state-owned KCNA news agency said on Sunday, quoting an editorial in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
But the editorial added that the government was keen to settle the crisis in a peaceful way. It did not give details.
On Saturday, 10,000 people turned out in a state-sponsored protest in Pyongyang to denounce Washington over its hardline policy on the North's steps to revive a nuclear program that might have already produced one or two atomic bombs.
North Korea has ordered inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to leave, the latest escalation of a crisis analysts say is aimed at goading Washington and its allies into giving aid to the starving nation of 22 million.
"This is a country in defiance of its international obligations," said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei in a statement, after the watchdog agency said its inspectors would quit North Korea on New Year's Eve. "It sets a dangerous precedent for the integrity of the non-proliferation regime."
WEAPONS-GRADE PLUTONIUM
Besides the interdiction of shipments, the United Nations, with U.S. backing, may threaten sanctions if the secretive, army-backed regime takes further steps to restart the plant that could produce weapons-grade plutonium, U.S. officials said.
"If they don't turn it around, this is where we're going to end up. Nobody wants this to happen. But the North Koreans aren't giving anybody much to work with," one official said.
"Our strategy is to stick together and to step up pressure," the official said. "The North Koreans are isolating themselves."
The Bush administration, which is keen to keep its focus on Iraq, is pushing for the U.N. Security Council to take up the crisis on the world's last Cold War frontier by January 12.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has expressed confidence that the military could win wars with Iraq and North Korea, as well as the war on terrorism, but military analysts said there would be numerous difficulties in facing such a triple threat.
South Korea, whose president and president-elect favor the "sunshine policy" of aid and dialogue in dealing with the North, said it would discuss strategy with the United States and Japan in January. The North has large forces ranged along the border, just a short distance from the South Korean capital, Seoul.
North Korea announced on Friday it was firing up a reprocessing laboratory that could convert spent fuel into the plutonium needed for making nuclear bombs and had begun moving fresh fuel rods to the five-megawatt research reactor in Yongbyon, 88 km (55 miles) north of Pyongyang.
North Korea told the IAEA its inspectors must leave as a 1994 agreement, under which it was given fuel oil in exchange for compliance on non-proliferation, had broken down.
The United States and its allies cut off the oil after North Korea told a visiting U.S. official in October it had a covert nuclear program.
----
North Korea Possesses Wide Range of Threats
Missiles, Large Army Bolster Nuclear Option
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 29, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48894-2002Dec28?language=printer
SEOUL, Dec. 28 -- In its escalating conflict with the United States, North Korea possesses a vast array of potential threats which U.S. and South Korean officials fear could soon be employed to ratchet up the tension beyond the current dispute over the reactivation of the mothballed Yongbyon nuclear reactor complex.
"This game can be done in so many ways," said Kim Tae Woo, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, a research group affiliated with the South Korean military. "They can threaten to resume test-firing missiles, and then they could follow through with those threats. They could put their military forces on higher alerts. The question is, will the United States offer a big enough quid pro quo to shut down the game? If not, North Korea can prolong it. All the possibilities are out there."
Some 600 to 750 missiles capable of hitting South Korea and Japan with nuclear and conventional weapons lie inside reinforced bunkers and atop launchers that can be driven from one place to another to avoid detection, according to South Korean and U.S. military intelligence.
Rocket launchers capable of pounding South Korea's capital with conventional artillery, as well as chemical and biological weapons, are clustered near the demilitarized zone that has separated the two halves of the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War.
About 3,700 tanks are deployed throughout North Korea, according to U.S. and South Korean estimates. About 700 outmoded but effective 1960s-era Soviet-built fighter jets could easily bomb Seoul, and a small but historically confrontational North Korean navy patrols disputed waters west of the peninsula. Not least, North Korea has roughly 1 million uniformed soldiers -- the third-largest standing army in the world. Its reserves swell its total fighting strength to 8 million, according to South Korean estimates.
Finally, at scattered sites throughout the country, North Korea is pursuing a project about which the outside world knows little, though enough to cause alarm: building a facility that could produce enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Disclosures about this project in October prompted the Bush administration to cut off fuel shipments to North Korea, which responded by reactivating the nuclear reactor. The confrontation escalated on Friday when North Korea said it would expel U.N. inspectors and reopen a plant capable of extracting weapons-grade plutonium. The Yongbyon facility had been closed under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration.
North Korea has not shifted its military forces in any noticeable way since resuming activity at the reactor, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Seoul who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But defense experts say North Korea has many options if it wants to prolong and deepen the confrontation. It could shift troops, mass armaments near the demilitarized zone or conduct naval exercises. It could threaten to lift a moratorium on missile tests in place since 1999, or merely appear to be preparing for new tests for the benefit of U.S. intelligence satellites. This would generate unease and uncertainty in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, increasing pressure on the Bush administration to talk.
"North Korea started with the intention of pressing the United States to come to the negotiating table," said Kim Sung Han, an arms control expert at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security, a government-affiliated research group in Seoul. "But the United States has not responded, and now North Korea is upgrading its actions."
If the nuclear card does not succeed in engaging the United States, he added, North Korea might then shift into other areas, such as breaching waters claimed by South Korea or test-firing a missile in the hope of forcing dialogue.
For now, the tension is concentrated at the Yongbyon complex of more than 200 buildings some 55 miles north of North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. At least one month of work is required, perhaps two, before the five-megawatt reactor can be switched back on, according to Shin Sung Taek, a nuclear expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.
Two larger reactors -- a 200-megawatt plant and a 50-megawatt plant -- were frozen in the early stages of construction in 1994 and will not be useable anytime soon, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog whose inspectors remained at the plant through Friday.
Once the existing reactor is operational again, fresh fuel rods could be inserted and left to burn for about three months, according to Shin. At that point, they would contain plutonium. After being removed and placed in an adjacent cooling pond -- essentially, a big swimming pool -- the spent fuel rods could be transferred to a nearby reprocessing plant designed to extract weapons-grade plutonium. The pool is already stocked with enough spent fuel rods to build three to six nuclear bombs, Shin said. In 1994, the Clinton administration pressed for a provision in its agreement with North Korea that would have removed this cache to a third country. But North Korea refused, and the Clinton administration signed off on the deal anyway, seeing it as the best chance to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
Extracting plutonium from spent fuel rods is a complicated process that would take several months, Shin said. Inside the reprocessing plant -- a linked series of large buildings -- the rods are chopped into pieces, then broken down with chemicals.
How long that process would take depends on the condition of the reprocessing plant, Shin said, and that is unclear. When it was shut down in 1994, the facility was only partially completed but already operational. North Korea told the IAEA that it had successfully extracted a small quantity of plutonium, though far less than that needed to build a single bomb. An investigation by the IAEA found evidence that North Korea had extracted a lot more. But before the inspectors could determine how much more, North Korea restricted their access.
The CIA estimates that North Korea produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs before the plant was shut down. North Korea is believed to have used the plutonium to manufacture warheads now stored at the Yongbyon complex, the U.S. intelligence official said.
Once North Korea extracts enough plutonium for new weapons, it could fashion warheads in two to three months, Shin said. North Korea has already logged more than 130 successful tests of the high-power explosives that must be built into a bomb to make the plutonium detonate, according to Kim Tae Woo.
Each stage in North Korea's continuing move toward restarting the reactor amounts to an opportunity to intensify the concerns of its neighbors and the United States. "They will keep us guessing," said Han Sung Joo, South Korea's foreign minister during the last outbreak of nuclear brinkmanship eight years ago. "In all probability, it will get worse before it gets better." Negotiations probably cannot take place until "it becomes obvious to everyone there's no alternative to a showdown of some kind," he said.
Some defense experts say North Korea is not merely using its reactor complex as a diplomatic lever, but now genuinely wants to produce plutonium-based weapons to better deter any potential U.S. attacks.
"This whole series of events this last week shows that they are really committed to moving beyond the red line if they are not checked," said Seongwhun Cheon, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-affiliated research group in Seoul. "They're going to go as far as they can go."
The United States and its allies know far less about events at the uranium-enrichment site, and are not even certain of the location. Uranium enrichment requires vast quantities of energy. According to the U.S. military intelligence officer, North Korea appears to have buried much of the infrastructure for the program, including electrical generators, making it difficult to detect the surges of energy that might reveal its location. The United States believes the project cannot render any useable fissile material for a bomb until at least the end of 2004, he said.
North Korea's military capabilities place great emphasis on chemical and biological agents, including deadly sarin gas, anthrax and smallpox, according to South Korean and U.S. defense experts. North Korea holds large-scale chemical warfare exercises each year in the northwestern province of Pyungnam, according to Kim Tae Woo.
"They consider chemical [weapons] as a normal tool in their arsenal," said the U.S. military intelligence officer. He estimated that about one-fourth of North Korea's missiles carry such weapons.
Those facts, combined with leaps in North Korean ballistics technology, make missiles a particularly useful tool for Pyongyang in raising alarm among its neighbors.
According to South Korean and U.S. intelligence, North Korea has 500 to 600 Scud missiles, which were developed in the 1980s and can reach targets 150 and 300 miles away. In 1993, North Korea first tested its No Dong missile, expanding its reach to 800 miles, thus bringing Japan into range.
On Aug. 31, 1998, North Korea test-fired the three-stage Taepo Dong-1 missile, with a range of approximately 1,250 miles, over Japan. The missile's first stage splashed down in the Sea of Japan, and a second stage crossed over Japan's main island of Honshu and landed in the Pacific Ocean.
A third stage, which U.S. intelligence agencies detected only a few weeks later, broke into pieces and traveled 3,450 miles downrange. Another such test would reverberate loudly in Asia and the United States.
-------- terrorism
Bin Laden Said to Have Sought Nuke Help
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bin-Laden-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- A leading Pakistani nuclear scientist, barred by his government from talking to reporters, has made it known through his son that Osama bin Laden approached him before the Sept. 11 attacks for help in making nuclear weapons.
The al-Qaida leader was rebuffed, the son, Azim Mahmood, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
``Basically Osama asked my father, 'How can a nuclear bomb be made and can you help us make one?''' he said. ``My father said, 'No, and secondly you must understand it is not child's play for you to build a nuclear bomb.'''
The scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, is under a gag order from Pakistani intelligence officials, but his conversations with bin Laden in meetings in 2000 and as late as July 2001 were reconstructed for the Associated Press by his son.
The conversations as described by Azim Mahmood clearly show bin Laden was interested in developing nuclear weapons. They don't, however, shed any light on whether the terrorist mastermind had taken even the first steps on that complex technological challenge.
The U.S. Embassy declined to discuss Mahmood's story. American officials in Washington also would not comment.
There has been previous evidence of al-Qaida's interest in nuclear weapons.
Computers found by journalists and U.S. troops at a variety of facilities in Afghanistan indicated al-Qaida had sought to obtain and develop nuclear and other potent weapons. An AP reporter saw anthrax and other chemical concoctions at an al-Qaida laboratory outside Kabul.
During a New York trial two years ago stemming from bombings at two U.S. embassies in Africa, a former bin Laden aide testified he was ordered in 1993 to try to buy uranium on the black market for an effort to develop a nuclear weapon. Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl said al-Qaida was prepared to spend $1.5 million, but he didn't know if a purchase was ever made.
In addition, U.S. officials have said captured al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah told American interrogators the terrorist network was working on a ``dirty bomb,'' a conventional bomb that would scatter radioactive material. Such a radiological weapon would be far less deadly and damaging than a nuclear explosion.
Authorities also have said that Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member charged with plotting with al-Qaida, attended two meetings in Karachi, Pakistan, at which senior al-Qaida operatives discussed the possible use of a ``dirty bomb.''
A United Nations report issued by experts monitoring al-Qaida movements warned that al-Qaida has the potential to obtain nuclear material and build ``some kind of dirty bomb.''
``Our concern is you can actually get the stuff,'' said Michael Chandler, the British expert who heads the monitoring group.
The conversations related by Azim Mahmood confirm bin Laden's nuclear ambitions. But they also offer a glimpse at the nexus of science and conservative Islam at a high level in Pakistan, one of the world's newest nuclear powers along with neighboring India, whose own leaders follow a Hindu fundamentalist philosophy.
The elder Mahmood, who has been questioned by the FBI and is under close Pakistani surveillance, is a deeply conservative Muslim who espouses the same puritanical brand of Islam as Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.
Enraged over Pakistan's plans in 1998 to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, he resigned from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and devoted his time to his charity, the Holy Quran Research Foundation.
Last December, President Bush labeled the charity a terrorist group and Mahmood a terrorist. His assets and those of his charity were frozen.
``Even my father's pension is blocked. At the moment he has nothing,'' said Azim Mahmood, a physician in his 30s who also adheres to a strict Islam.
For years, Pakistani peace activists and liberal academics have fretted about Islamic hard-liners in Pakistan's nuclear organization.
``We have always expressed our fear that a large number of people in the nuclear establishment would be ideologically motivated to share Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology,'' said Dr. A.H. Nayyar, a nuclear physicist and research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, an independent Pakistani group.
Azim Mahmood said his father met with bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, ``and definitely this question of building a nuclear bomb came up.''
The father was detained in November 2001, questioned and freed in February, but has to carry a mobile phone at all times so Pakistani intelligence can track his movements, the son said.
He said his father's American interrogators were particularly intrigued by one of his books, ``Doomsday and Life After Death,'' and wanted to know whether it meant he had some kind of inside knowledge of what al-Qaida was planning.
Mahmood first met bin Laden in 2000 while visiting Afghanistan to build a school, the son said. He wanted to help the Taliban, because he was angry at the international criticism of the regime's brand of Islam, the son recalled.
``My father shared the Taliban thinking. He liked their system of government. He wanted to help them.''
When bin Laden learned a nuclear scientist was in Kabul, he sent an al-Qaida operative, Abu Bilal, to the Pakistani's hotel to arrange a meeting, the son said.
``My father went to meet him and he said, 'Why don't you come and help us build these things?''' Azim Mahmood said, adding that the two men met several times in the Afghan capital and the discussion invariably returned to nuclear weapons.
The al-Qaida leader wanted a nuclear device, Azim Mahmood said. ``Al-Qaida also wanted a person who could train their people, and who could get them enriched material for their weapons.''
Experts say, however, that making a nuclear bomb requires a cadre of highly trained, experienced scientists and technicians.
In a separate interview, a former senior Taliban official said bin Laden was trying to obtain nuclear materials, but he could not say whether the al-Qaida leader succeeded.
Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, who renounced the Taliban last year but had made contact with U.S. officials in 1999, said he knew of several mysterious shipments that entered Afghanistan and were stored at a warehouse in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. One was a balloon-like container covered in aluminum and others were capsules the length of a man's hand, he said.
Azim Mahmood said his father was uncertain what nuclear material, if any, al-Qaida possessed.
``At one meeting they brought a box, a thing that someone had sold to them for a huge amount of money, but my father laughed and said it was nothing,'' he said.
-------- ukraine
Putting a Lid on Chernobyl
200 Tons of Uranium Lie in Ruins of Derelict Reactor
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48331-2002Dec28?language=printer
Engineers are completing plans for what may be the largest movable structure ever built -- a 20,000-ton steel shell to enclose Chernobyl Reactor 4, site of an apocalyptic nuclear accident whose consequences are still being felt more than 16 years later.
By next summer an international consortium led by Bechtel International Systems Corp., of San Francisco, will finish the conceptual design for a hangar-shaped arch nearly 370 feet high -- the height of a 35-story building -- that would be slid into place along greased steel plates to cover the ruined remains in a snug, weather-tight shelter.
Inside, robotic cranes and, where possible, live workers will then begin prying apart the wreckage, removing radioactive dust from twisted girders, storing pieces of radioactive core in shielded canisters and cutting old steel into manageable lengths.
The whole job -- design, construction and "stabilization" of the derelict reactor 80 miles north of Kiev -- is part of a fully funded 10-year plan set in motion by the Group of 7 industrialized nations in 1997. The $768 million project, including the shell, is scheduled for completion in 2007, according to officials involved with the project.
And then the world will wait.
The shelter is designed to keep water out and dust in for 100 years, or for as long as it takes the Ukrainian government to designate a permanent storage facility and dispose of more than 200 tons of uranium and nearly a ton of lethally radioactive plutonium that remain inside the ruins.
Most of the fuel-containing material lies as a solid "lava" formed by the fusion of molten fuel, concrete, 30 tons of fuel dust and 2,000 tons of combustibles.
In the basement, rainwater and fuel dust have mixed together in a dangerous radioactive "soup." Lethal chunks of the reactor core lie unseen in the rubble and in the earth alongside the building. More pieces of core were boxed and buried in a "cascade wall" built and bulldozed into place by Soviet workers in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
"We will need a lot of shielding," said Vincent Novak, director of the Nuclear Safety Department for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, overseers of the project. "If it weren't for the radioactivity, I could almost call the job 'a piece of cake,' but the radiation makes it hugely complex and extremely difficult."
The Chernobyl explosion occurred April 26, 1986, when an out-of-control nuclear reaction blew off the roof of the steel building and spewed tons of radioactive material into the air, releasing 30 to 40 times as much radioactivity as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs combined in 1945.
It was the worst nuclear accident in history. Thirty workers died immediately at the facility, and 135,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding "Exclusion Zone." As recently as 2000, the Ukraine government was spending 5 percent of its gross domestic product to mitigate consequences of the disaster.
In the six months immediately following the explosion, the Soviets erected an improvised shelter known as the "sarcophagus," but within 10 years scientists became alarmed because of leaks and the building's threatened collapse. The walls were weakening, Novak said, and there was tremendous uncertainty because "it was almost impossible to determine" the real dangers.
In 1997, the Group of 7, plus Russia, the European Union and Ukraine, set up the Chernobyl Shelter Fund with the European reconstruction bank in charge. The bank established a shelter implementation plan, estimated the project cost at $768 million, and funded it with donations from 28 nations, ranging from $170 million from the United States to Iceland's $10,000.
In the first phase, completed in 1999, the sarcophagus's roof and structural pillars were strengthened, and the reactor's rickety ventilation stack, jutting more than 150 feet above the sarcophagus, was stabilized. The stack was an added concern, because it was shared by the contiguous Reactor No. 3, which was still operating.
But these were emergency measures. "Safety analyses show there are still about 1,000 square meters [1,200 square yards] of holes in the roof and sides," said Eric Schmieman, chief engineer for environmental technology at Battelle Memorial Institute's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. "A significant amount of water can go in, and dust can go out, and birds and squirrels and birds come and go all the time."
The Bechtel-led consortium designing the $250 million structure to cover the sarcophagus had to make several decisions early. None of the three design contractors, including Battelle and the French state utility Electricite de France, will be allowed to bid on the actual work.
Doubts arose as to whether a steel structure could last a century. With lethal levels of radiation inside the shell, opportunities for repair and maintenance could be limited.
"It's doable," said Bechtel's Matthew Wrona, project manager. "There are paints that last a long time and maintenance techniques for harsh environments." The Eiffel Tower is perhaps the best-known large, century-old steel structure fully exposed to the elements, but Wrona noted that several large suspension bridges are aging elegantly.
The team also avoided experimental technologies in favor of the tried and true.
"We're trying to build it for 100 years, and using brand-new technologies increases the risks," Schmieman said. "If a human being has to intervene, there's a consequence. We need to minimize the danger."
The team settled on a steel arch 40 feet thick. The inside dimensions would be 803 feet -- almost three football fields -- across and 330 feet high. Up to that point, planning was relatively simple, because "it had all been done before," said Philippe Convert, technical manager for Electricite de France, but the next steps were a different story: Lethal gamma rays escaping from the reactor's damaged core would make the center of the arch too hot for humans to work. Building the arch in place was impossible.
Instead, the team decided to construct the arch in four 120-foot sections, then link the sections together and slide the entire structure along a track made of steel plates built on each side of Reactor No. 4. When completed, the project managers believe the new shelter will be the largest movable structure ever built.
One end will be fully enclosed, while the other will be a "cutout" that fits snugly over Reactor No. 3's building, which connects to the ruins. Current plans call for the stack to be taken down, and the junction between the arch wall and Reactor No. 3 to be sealed.
The new shelter will not "contain" the core's radioactivity but will be weatherproof.
The tracks will be made by driving piles into the ground at relatively close intervals, then filling the gaps with concrete. The planners want to avoid seating the concrete in a deep trench, for fear of unearthing radioactive material during excavation.
The concrete will then be covered with stainless steel plates and coated with a lubricant, while the bottom of the new steel shell will have Teflon pads for easier sliding. Convert said the sliding technique is used extensively to move heavy machinery.
While workers will be able to enter some parts of Reactor No. 4 and work on the wreckage in relative safety, the most routine tasks can suddenly turn deadly.
"Surprises are inevitable," Novak said. During the initial roof and structural repair, "we found a large piece of core embedded in the wall. Everything stopped until we could build a device and get the shielding to handle it. Each case is different."
To help deconstruct parts of the reactor building and the sarcophagus, the new shell will have four ceiling cranes designed to pluck heavy steel beams from the old reactor and to wrestle pieces of twisted metal from the ruins. They will also be equipped with hydraulic cutters to chop wreckage into manageable chunks.
One unusual problem is the need to manage the new shell's microclimate. "It's so big, it could even rain inside, so we have to keep the moisture down," Wrona said. Air conditioning would be prohibitively expensive, so "we'll try to use natural air currents. It's like the inside of an automobile on a cold morning."
-------- us politics
Bush's Moonshine Policy
By Mary McGrory
Sunday, December 29, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46120-2002Dec27?language=printer
George W. Bush ends the year with a genuine nuclear crisis on his hands. He has been assiduously trying to foment one with Iraq, dropping bombs on the country and expletives on its leader. But North Korea, which is not just suspected of working on the bomb but of having at least two, has muscled Saddam Hussein off the front pages and made our crusade against Baghdad seem crass: We're starting a war not just for oil or for Ariel Sharon but because we can win it.
North Korea is a different story. It has a million men under arms. It has a built-in hostage situation at hand in the presence of 37,000 U.S. soldiers who guard South Korea. Kim Jong Il, the Communist leader of North Korea, almost makes Saddam Hussein look like Rotarian of the Year. While Hussein is welcoming U.N. arms inspectors, Kim is throwing them out. He has dismantled the international surveillance equipment installed by a treaty in 1994; he has announced he is going to make all the weapons-grade plutonium he wants. He is, in short, behaving like the radioactive lunatic he is.
And what is George W. Bush, defender of the free world, scourge of terrorists, doing about all this? As of this moment, nothing.
As far as we can see, he seems to feel that not speaking to the North Koreans is the solution. "Isolation" and "marginalization" will bring these rogues to heel? A leader who will starve his own people to feed his military machine, whose father invaded his neighbor, who shows no acquaintance with reality, will be cowed by a snub from Washington?
The president has asked North Korea's neighbors to warn Kim Jong Il of the consequences of his horrendous behavior. Up to now, the Japanese have reported themselves as scared to death. Russia and China seem to have a million other things to do. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), says we should "talk and talk and talk" to the outlaws. His is a lone voice.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exhibited a reflex swagger response. The North Koreans better watch out. They mustn't think for a minute we couldn't wage war against them. Just in time for Christmas, he brought our war list up to three -- the one against al Qaeda, which we seem to have forgotten, the one brewing in Iraq -- and now Pyongyang?
We should perhaps remember that President Bush has never liked talking to Koreans. His first overseas visitor was the estimable Kim Dae Jung, whom Bush snubbed.
Bush, as he was eager to demonstrate, was not a fan. Kim's sin? He was instituting a sunshine policy with the North, ending a half-century of estrangement. Bush, who looked upon North Korea as the most potent argument for his obsession to build a national missile defense, saw Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as nothing but trouble. He sent him home humiliated and empty-handed.
Kim's successor, Roh Moo Hyun, may be even worse. He is a passionate advocate of the sunshine policy, and he seeks "a more mature relationship" with the United States -- bad news for Bush.
This ugly international set-to occurs just when the president has scored his most dazzling domestic political triumph. The hullabaloo over Trent Lott, the prospective leader of the Senate, was caused by Lott's letting the cat out of the bag on the subject of the Republicans' covert Southern strategy. Lott told a birthday party for Strom Thurmond what everyone has always known: The strategy was based on race. Republicans were mortified.
Then Bush apprentice Karl Rove stepped in and saved the day. Bush and Rove engineered Lott's resignation and the substitution of glamorous Bill Frist of Tennessee, literally a medicine man, who spends his off-time flying his own plane to Africa to minister to AIDS patients. Bush issued a sharp criticism of Lott's remarks and nourished the Frist boomlet into a surge, all the while insisting through his spokesman that he did not think Lott should resign.
Republicans are delighted. In an assembly largely given over to small minds and big egos, Frist's aura as a healer and his proclivity for rendering first aid on Capitol Hill make him a romantic figure. It's like getting Lord Byron on your condo board.
The finesse of the operation was universally applauded. The qualities displayed -- the regard for the other guy's sensibilities, the willingness to forgo credit, are ones that can be successful in foreign policy negotiations. Bush could never send Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton to represent him in the deadly and proliferating tension in North Korea -- he blames them for coddling Pyongyang. But he might send Karl Rove. He knows how the game is played.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
French Reinforcements Arrive in Ivory Coast
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/africa/29IVOR.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Dec. 28 (Reuters) - Hundreds of French reinforcement troops landed in Ivory Coast today, as rebel leaders warned that if France wanted a war here in its former colony, it would get one.
The French troop-landing ship Foudre docked in Abidjan, the main city, after a 10-day voyage from France with about 20 trucks, a dozen jeeps, more than 30 light armored vehicles and 5 helicopters.
The reinforcements raise France's force in this West African country to about 2,500 troops. It is France's biggest intervention force on the continent since the 1980's when it sent 3,000 soldiers to Chad to halt a Libyan-backed uprising.
"There are hundreds of soldiers, mostly paratroopers," said a French Army spokesman, Benoit Suire, on board the Foudre. "There will be two kinds of mission - one to the border and cease-fire lines, while the other stays in Abidjan."
The civil war began in this once stable nation on Sept. 19, when there was a failed coup by soldiers. The uprising led to four weeks of fighting that left hundreds of people dead, and the rebels continue to control the largely Muslim north.
The main rebel group signed a truce in mid-October, but peace talks in Togo made little headway since then. Last month, two new rebel factions not bound by the truce emerged in the west.
French soldiers in Ivory Coast were originally ordered to protect the 20,000 French citizens here. France's involvement broadened as its troops clashed with the Western splinter rebel groups, which are believed to include foreign fighters.
One of the new groups, the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Far West, has clashed with French troops three times. A spokesman for the faction said today that he could not rule out more confrontations with French.
"We will fight to defend our area," said the spokesman, Felix Doh. He contended that France was taking sides, helping government forces and mercenaries he said had been hired by President Laurent Gbagbo.
"If France wants a war, France will get a war," Mr. Doh said.
Foreign Legion paratroopers repulsed a rebel column a week ago using heavy weapons on a dirt road near the western town of Duekoue, killing six. In the latest fighting, on Friday, a group of about 30 rebels attacked a small French patrol just north of the junction town Duekoue.
-------- asia
Insurgents Create Growing Instability in Nepal
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29NEPA.html
BHIMSEN NAGAR, Nepal - His former neighbors describe him as "kindhearted" and "generous." His junior high teacher changed his name to "Lotus Flower" because he was so gentle and handsome. His father still shows off pictures of him as a grown man tenderly placing his hand on his mother's forehead as she lay dying of leukemia.
"It was his habit to make people smile," said his father, Mukti Ram Dahal, in a rare interview with a foreign journalist. "He used to do it with everybody."
But to the rest of Nepal and to the outside world, the man now known by the nom de guerre Prachanda, or "the fierce one," is the leader of a violent Maoist insurgency that has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 1996 in this mountain kingdom that sits as a buffer between India and China.
The United States has grown so concerned that it is providing $17 million in military equipment and sending American soldiers to train Nepal's army, a move that has Chinese officials worried about American meddling in their backyard.
A post-Mao, quasi-capitalist Beijing disowns the rebels and accuses them of "usurping the name of the leader of the Chinese people." Indian officials, meanwhile, fear a rising tide of refugees and what a Maoist victory could do to re-energize sputtering insurgencies in their own country.
The insurgents, who call themselves the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), modeled after Peru's own Maoist Shining Path guerrillas, have seized control of 40 percent of Nepal and paralyzed its economy and political system.
Their success has been led by Prachanda, 48, who has managed to deepen the support for his movement by portraying himself as a Nepalese Robin Hood facing down corrupt and ineffective governments.
Brilliant and charismatic to his followers, fanatical and opportunistic to his enemies, Prachanda, the son of a poor but upper-caste farmer, demands the eradication of chronic rural poverty and abolition of Nepal's constitutional monarchy, which he calls a "eunuch parliamentary monarchy." His war has exposed Nepal's vast inequalities, self-interested elite and, to the surprise of many longtime Western residents, potential for savagery.
"Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is undefeatable because it is a system based on truth," Prachanda said in an interview with a Nepalese newspaper in 1997, a year after he declared a "people's war" on "imperialists" and "reactionaries." "Marxism says the reactionaries continue to create problems until they are eliminated."
Since then, the Maoists stand accused of killing 800 civilians deemed "enemies of the revolution," kidnapping, extortion, forced conscription and the use of child soldiers. The Royal Nepalese Army, dispatched a year ago to crush the insurgents, has proven no kinder to its people, human rights groups say. Government troops are accused of secret detentions, torture and killing as many as 2,000 civilians and unarmed prisoners in the past year.
Since the army joined the fight a year ago, the number of deaths has increased from hundreds a year to 4,300 in the last year alone. A once peaceful tourist destination now stands as one of the world's bloodiest corners.
While their ideology may seem antiquated, the group's members have emerged as master tacticians and motivators who quickly surround government posts with 1,000 to 2,000 fighters before overwhelming them. They have also shown a keen, and in some ways curious, interest in how they are perceived.
The group sent an open letter last March to foreign tourists explaining that they would not be attacked in Nepal. It begins "warmest greetings from the materially poor but spiritually rich people of Nepal." A letter sent to world leaders blaming the government for the failure of peace talks last year concludes with the line "looking forward to cordial and mutually beneficial relations in the days to come."
Chhabi Lal Dahal, as Prachanda was known then, was born in a mountain village near the town of Pokhara in central Nepal in December 1954, the eldest of eight children. The timing of his birth was considered propitious; in Nepalese astrology, having an eldest son in December signals good things to come.
When Prachanda was 6 or 7, the family moved along with hundreds of thousand of others from the mountains of central and northern Nepal to the country's fertile southern plains after King Mahendra, the Hindu kingdom's ruler at the time, decreed democratic elections and large-scale land reform. A year later, the king reversed his decision, dissolved Parliament and arrested top political leaders. The family was left stranded in this village of 25 families, today a jumbled and impoverished mix of the country's many ethnic groups and castes just outside of Bharatpur.
Balaram Bishwakarma, a lower-caste Dalit, or "untouchable," recalled how Prachanda bounced him on his lap when they were both children. "He treated every other kid as one of his brothers," he said.
Umanath Lamichhane, a 60-year-old farmer, glowed when he spoke about him. "He was such a kind-hearted man," he said.
Neighbors recalled asking Prachanda to settle petty disputes and seeing him move dozens of landless families to vacant, government-owned grazing areas. His leadership abilities quickly emerged.
"Everyone who met him would be very quickly impressed, and would stand to listen to hear what he had to say," said a former Maoist activist who attended a local agriculture college with him.
By the time Prachanda graduated in 1978, he held a bachelor's degree and a radical Maoist perspective.
Chinkali Shrestha, headmaster of a high school where Prachanda later went to teach horticulture, recalled being struck by his absolute confidence that Maoism would triumph.
Prachanda and other Maoist leaders took their hard-line Communist faction underground in 1996, after winning only 9 of the 205 seats in Parliament in earlier elections. Government officials initially scoffed at the group. But within months, Prachanda and other leaders had created a highly organized insurgency.
They overran isolated police posts to obtain weapons. They robbed banks to obtain money. They banned drinking, gambling, trafficking in women and domestic violence. They staged plays that depicted caste and ethnic discrimination to recruit cadres. They soon became active in more than half of the country's 75 districts, forming shadow "people's governments" in 22 of them.
At first, civilian government officials countered the insurgents with brutal police sweeps. The corruption, ineffectiveness and harsh methods of successive governments also aided the insurgents' cause.
Over time, the Maoists' methods, too, grew more brutal. Villagers were forced at gunpoint to join their cause and pay a war "tax." Teachers and local activists were kidnapped and murdered. Mainstream politicians were beheaded. A recent poll found that if the Maoists were to put down their arms today, they would win at best 10 percent of the seats in Parliament - double their showing before, but not enough to control the government.
While both Prachanda and government leaders frequently express a willingness to talk, negotiations have yet to materialize. Infighting between the country's king, Gyanendra, and its mainstream political parties has also hindered the peace effort.
A recent photo captured by the army shows Prachanda as a bearded, pot-bellied man who scarcely resembles the rail-thin figure who cared for his dying mother. Critics joke that his belly symbolizes his own corruption. Prachanda's son, Prakash Dahal, who is in his 20's and apparently part of the movement, stands a few feet away from him.
Asked about how he felt about his son, Prachanda's father said in the interview that he feared for his son's life but also that he was proud that "this great revolutionary leader is a son of mine." He also added a caveat that echoed the sentiment of many in Nepal as the death toll soars.
"I also would like some kind of settlement to this problem," he said. "I'd also like to see a situation where people from either side are not killed."
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon told to use 'targeted killings' only as last resort
12/29/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-29-israel-palestinians_x.htm
JERUSALEM (AP) - An 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed Sunday by Israeli gunfire during a demonstration in the West Bank, while Israel's attorney general told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that "targeted killings" of wanted Palestinians may be used only as a last resort.
The ruling came after recent violence raised concerns about a new escalation in Israeli-Palestinian fighting ahead of Israel's Jan. 28 parliamentary elections.
The Palestinian child, the second killed by Israeli soldiers in as many days, was shot when a group of schoolchildren pelted troops with rocks and bottles in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Troops responded with rubber-coated bullets, also wounding another Palestinian boy, Palestinian witnesses said.
The military said non-lethal methods were used. These methods often include the rubber-coated bullets, which can kill if used from short range.
In the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians say a 9-year-old girl was killed by Israeli gunfire on Saturday, soldiers opened fire in the direction of about 150 Palestinian demonstrators as they neared an Israeli checkpoint.
A freelance cameraman for Associated Press Television News, Tamer Ziara, was struck in the back of the head, apparently by a ricochet. Doctors said Ziara, 20, was not seriously injured.
Israeli army spokeswoman Capt. Sharon Feingold said the soldiers opened fire on the crowd because they felt endangered. The military said the demonstrators were in an off-limits zone, and soldiers had received warnings about an impending attack there. The military is investigating.
The Palestinians were protesting against severe Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinians in the area, which is near a bloc of Jewish settlements. The area is the scene of almost nightly exchanges of fire between Israeli forces guarding the settlements and Palestinian gunmen from nearby refugee camps.
During the weekly session of the Israeli Cabinet, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein instructed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to use the practice of killing suspected Palestinian terror suspects only as a last resort.
The ruling followed reports that Sharon had ordered an increase in the practice as part of attempts to stop Palestinian violence.
Israel's so-called "targeted killings" have been criticized by human rights groups and denounced by Palestinians as a policy of assassination. With methods that included exploding phones and helicopter-launched missiles, Israeli forces have killed at least 82 suspects and 52 bystanders that way in 27 months of fighting.
The instance that raised the most criticism came on July 23, when an Israeli warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of senior Hamas figure Salah Shehadeh, killing him, his bodyguard and 13 bystanders, including his wife, daughter, and eight other children.
An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that Sharon favored an increase in the killings. The official said that they were ordered only when arrest was impossible or when the suspect was a "ticking bomb" and an immediate danger to Israelis.
Also Sunday, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that in the past two months, Israeli forces have arrested more than 1,200 suspected Palestinian militants. He called it an unprecedented campaign.
Palestinians claimed the Israeli goal was to sabotage Egyptian-led truce efforts. Egypt has been hosting talks between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and radical groups, aiming for a deal ending attacks on Israeli civilians, at least within Israel's pre-1967 borders.
Sources close to the talks said the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups have promised to try calm the situation, provided Israel halts targeted killings of militiamen. Israel has refused to make such a promise, saying it could not agree to a partial moratorium on attacks that excludes the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said Sunday that Egypt would convene all Palestinian factions for a meeting in Cairo in the first week of January to try to work out a joint political platform.
Armed with such a program, the Palestinian Authority would try to negotiate a two-stage truce that would first take hold in Israel and - after an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns and cities - would extend to the West Bank and Gaza, Shaath said.
-------- saudi arabia
Saudis deny letting US use bases
BBC
Monday, 30 December, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2614635.stm
Saudi Arabia has denied reports that it will make its airspace, airbases and an important operations centre available to the US for a possible war against Iraq.
In remarks on Monday, both the foreign minister and the deputy defence minister said there was no change in Saudi Arabia's position.
"We have no commitments on any matters towards Iraq" - Abdul-Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz Deputy Defence Minister
The kingdom remains opposed to a war against Iraq, but has said it may review its options if the UN passes a resolution explicitly authorising the use of force.
Senior US officials quoted by the New York Times newspaper have said they had been given private assurances that they would be allowed to use a command centre outside the country's capital, Riyadh, rights to overfly Saudi territory - and ultimately mount airborne attacks from Saudi bases.
BBC regional analyst Roger Hardy says the Saudi rulers are nervous about domestic opposition to a war - but anxious to repair their relations with the Americans, badly strained since the 11 September 2001 attacks.
No change
According to the New York Times, US officials said that allied refuelling, reconnaissance, surveillance and cargo planes would be permitted to fly from Saudi bases and to use the nation's airspace for missions in an Iraq war.
Military officials told the newspaper they were confident that Saudi Arabia would ultimately permit airborne attack missions - the most politically sensitive military issue - to be flown from their soil.
But the senior Saudi officials were unequivocal in their denial of any agreement with the US on Iraq.
President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah Saudi Arabia is a key strategic US ally "The truth is what I said, not what the [New York Times] newspaper reported," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters during a visit to Sudan.
"Even if the [UN] Security Council issues a unanimous decision to attack Iraq, we hope a chance will be given to the Arab states to find a political solution to this issue," Prince Saud said.
Deputy Defence Minister Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz said the New York Times remarks were "incorrect".
"We have no commitments on any matters towards Iraq," Prince Abdul-Rahman was quoted as saying by the daily Okaz.
Although the US has been upgrading a base in neighbouring Qatar as a possible alternative, it would still like to use the Saudi base to co-ordinate an air campaign against Iraq, our analyst says.
He says that, characteristically, the Saudi ruling family does not like the issue to be talked about in public.
Thaw
Saudi Arabia was a launch pad for the US-led Gulf War in 1991 that drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait after a seven-month occupation.
Washington has already stepped up its preparations for a possible military offensive, ordering thousands more troops and dozens of fighter aircraft to the Gulf region in the coming weeks.
US-Saudi relations became strained after it was revealed that most of the hijackers involved in the 11 September attacks came from Saudi Arabia.
There was further US anger when the wife of the Saudi ambassador to America was accused of indirectly financing two of the hijackers.
Saudi Arabia has often been accused by the US of not doing enough to combat international terrorism.
But US officials still insist Riyadh is an ally.
-------- space
China Launches 4th Unmanned Space Capsule
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Spacecraft.html
BEIJING (AP) -- China's fourth unmanned space capsule blasted into orbit early Monday in a test launch that soon could lead to a manned flight, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The Shenzhou IV spacecraft blasted off at 12:40 a.m. local time from a launch pad in the Gobi desert and entered a preset orbit, Xinhua said. It did not say when the craft would return.
The capsule carries all the equipment for manned flight, and life support and other systems will be tested while it is in orbit, Xinhua said.
Beijing has invested prestige and an undisclosed amount of money in its secretive, military-linked space program. A successful manned launch would make China only the third country, after Russia and the United States, to send a human being into space on its own.
``The successful blastoff was of great significance,'' Xinhua quoted China's No. 3 leader, Li Peng, as saying after witnessing the launch.
Li, chairman of the national legislature, also called for more hard work from the space program.
Monday marked the second Shenzhou launch in 10 months -- the shortest period yet between capsule test flights and a possible sign of growing Chinese confidence.
The launch ``laid a solid foundation for the country's future task of sending Chinese astronauts to outer space,'' Xinhua said. The step ``could soon lead to its (China's) manned space voyage.''
China launched its first unmanned Shenzhou space capsule in November 1999. The capsule -- whose name means ``Sacred Vessel'' -- is based on Russian Soyuz technology with extensive modifications by Chinese designers.
The communist government does not announce launches in advance and has not publicly set a date for manned flight. But state media have indicated that astronauts could be sent up soon.
Su Shuangning, commander and designer of the astronaut system for China's manned space program, was quoted as saying, ``With tough training in basic theories, professional skills and flight procedures and tasks, the astronauts are absolutely capable of making their maiden voyage to outer space.''
A corps of astronauts drawn from China's air force has been training for several years. Xinhua, citing space program officials, said they used the Shenzhou IV for their first training aboard a capsule.
The third Shenzhou flight, launched in March, carried a mannequin in a space suit. After the drum-shaped capsule landed in China's northern grasslands, officials said the 10-day flight showed that humans could survive.
China has sent at least two astronauts to Russia for training, and foreign experts believe they now are training others. Officials of the manned space program, code-named Project 921, refuse to release their identities or details of their training.
Monday's launch was controlled from a base in the Chinese city of Xi'an and four tracking ships anchored in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, Xinhua said.
All Shenzhou flights have followed the Russian tradition of returning to earth on land.
In preparation for manned flight, emergency landing zones at sea and on land have been set up and crews have performed practice rescues.
-------- spy agencies
Kurdish Agents Play Spy Games With Iraqis on Arms Tips
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/29KURD.html
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec 28 - The Kurdish security official sat at his desk, handling letters from his informants. Each contained a tip that might change the future of Iraq. Or maybe he was being played for a dope.
He held a sheet of paper aloft.
"This one says the Iraqis built a mosque in Tuz Khormatu, but under the ground is a hollow place," he said. "The mosque has no guards, people go there and pray, but underneath them chemical weapons are stored."
He picked up another.
"This one is about a shoe and plastics factory in Baghdad where all of the workers were removed before the weapons inspectors returned, and new workers replaced them," he said. "It is in a neighborhood called Hay Jameela. It is very strange."
While United Nations inspectors search Iraq for prohibited weapons, a parallel operation is taking place in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Kurdish officials here are evaluating a stream of tips about where Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons and illegal missiles are said to be hidden, and pondering how to handle them.
Throughout the region there is a lively internal debate about whether the tips are authentic or part of a deliberate counterintelligence campaign by Mr. Hussein's security services. Kurds wonder if they have uncovered definitive evidence against the Iraqi government, or become ensnared in a circular game of spy versus spy.
"One way that Saddam has always worked is that he has sent information into an area through his agents, and it is the wrong information," said a security official in Erbil. "Believe me, the information we have received about all of the places he has hidden weapons is enough for the whole world to be busy searching. He leaks this information."
Back in Sulaimaniya, the official with the hand-scrawled tips said he believed them, because they were delivered by informants who had been reliable in the past.
"I am not new at this business," he said. "I know whom I work with."
Dr. Barham Salih, prime minister of the eastern zone of northern Iraq, leaves open the possibility that both views are right.
"We know that the Iraqi government has chemical weapons and is involved in a very elaborate concealment effort," he said. "And we know that Saddam Hussein is capable of such decoy operations and misinformation campaigns."
Whether true of false, the tips have a receptive audience. Fear of chemical attack is part of the Kurdish psyche. These are people who Mr. Hussein's forces attacked in the 1980's with nerve and mustard gas. Kurds are certain the Iraqi leader retains prohibited weapons, and that he intends to use them again. The leaks carry great emotional power.
But emotional power and intelligence value are not the same thing, and officials say they worry about the damage planted information might cause, including damage to their own credibility, since some of the tips that Kurdish officials deem reliable have been shared with American intelligence teams working in northern Iraq.
"Saddam wants us to leak his misinformation to the U.N., so the U.N. will go there once, twice, three times, and waste their time, and lose respect for the credibility of the Kurds," the official in Erbil said.
Kurds also worry that the meager intelligence means at their disposal means they cannot fully evaluate or corroborate the material at hand. They claim to have networks of informants, but acknowledge that this "human intelligence," as it is called, has limits.
"Kurdish intelligence is not that clever or smart to determine if these are lies or true things," Faraidoon Abdulkader, interior minister in the Kurdish eastern zone.
All the while, leaks keep surfacing, coming through informants, circulating in villages along the border between northern and southern Iraq, and being passed to journalists.
Karim Agha, chief of the Hammond tribe, whose people straddle the border region at nearby Chamchamal, said that earlier this fall a smuggler who often passes through the lines saw Iraqi soldiers with heavy equipment digging holes at night in remote gullies, and burying metal containers.
Mr. Abdulkader said that two weeks ago he received two separate tips of people burying materials at night under a military guard, and has been given descriptions of four trucks that are thought to be mobile biological labs.
The official with the reports on his desk said that the sheer volume of the tips, and the debate about what to do with them, meant that information was allowed to go stale. He said his informant on the storage site at Tuz Khormatu complained. "He asked me, `Why are you not coming to this mosque?' We give you this information, why are you not coming here?' "
The tension and frustration is high enough in the region that at least one tipster has approached outsiders, although he seemed motivated more by opportunism than public service. An unshaven man in a suit visited an ABC News producer in his hotel room here in late November, seeking $50,000 to arrange the smuggling of what he called suspicious bottles out of a weapons factory in Baghdad.
The man said the region was overrun with spies, and that he did not want to notify the Kurdish government because he might be interrogated. He also hinted at fears that he might be killed by the Iraqis.
The producer, Kevin McKiernan, declined the offer and notified his office. He wrote in his journal that the visitor "seemed angry when I told him that news reporters don't buy materials."
The surge of tips has a familiar past. Another Kurdish official, who worked as a liaison to the United States military during its relief operation in northern Iraq in the early 1990's, said he helped sort and assemble reports for American officials in Dohuk and Erbil.
Each report was filled with detailed tips about illegal activities in Mr. Hussein's Iraq. The official said the volume was enormous, and reading through them was often a frustrating chore.
"I assumed that 10 or 20 percent were correct," he said. "The rest I just crossed out, or wrote a note on the papers we gave them: `From an unreliable source'."
Iraqi Exile Offers Information
TEHRAN, Dec. 28 - An Iraqi opposition leader based here in Iran said today that his group had evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and offered to share the information with the United Nations if the world organization established ties with it.
"We have information about the modernization of weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi regime and we have detailed information about some of the sites, as well as some of the ways in which the Iraqi regime tries to hide them," said Abdelaziz al-Hakim, a representative of a Shiite opposition group.
----
Vice Policy
The hidden policies of the United States
by Aaron M. Esquivel •
Sunday December 29, 2002
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555619.php
Its time for us all to wake up. To realize our own foreign policy. The see how it hurts other, and us. From Terrorism, to oil, to drugs, and political prisoners we have our hands in it all. This book will finally relieve all the terrible policies of the U.S.
Vice: An evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit; A serious moral failing; Wicked or evil conduct or habits; corruption.
Terrorism: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Imperialism: The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.(2) The system, policies, or practices of such a government.
civil liberties: Fundamental individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, protected by law against unwarranted governmental or other interference.
The United States' idea of how to stop or answer the Challenge of terrorism and how to 'secure' our interests has changed little over the years. The theory the US has, is that with enough well placed bombs, with enough key figures taken down, the attacks with just stop, and our interests secure. The idea is that we go in, take down governments unfavorable to us, to our interested, and of course supporting "those who hate freedom" (George Bush). Then set up our own. We feel that force should be answered with yet, more force, that it is America's way, or get the hell our of our way.
We should be able to crush any opposition to are ways, are freedoms our securities, right? Could one possibly argue that we are using all our power with any real type of responsibility? Sure we provide aid, etc. However those are just scratching the surface. When you look past all the glimmer and shine, you see a different us of power. Soon the abuse of power comes to light. The truth is, it's there. It's an ugly fact of our past, and present we must live with. A fact we can no longer ignore. For decades, ever since the end of the second world war, the United States has been involved in millions of killings around the world. Many like Vietnam, and Korea you here about in history class. The killing fields didn't exist with American involvement there alone. Other countries were greatly effected in negative ways by the United States Foreign police.
If I think American foreign policy is to a product American geographic, cultural and intellectual isolation, combined with a belief in American cultural supremacy, a near xenophobic disregard for foreign ideas, and a tendency to understand nationalism in only the most jingoistic terms, does that make me anti-American? The question ultimately revolves around what it means to be American. I don't think that it is so easy to separate the guilt of America's leaders from the people who created them, elected them and supported them. True, America's politicians do not and never have encompassed all that America is. To say that many Americans have the flaws I named in the first paragraph is not to say that America has no virtues. However, I am hard pressed to say that America's virtues are truly American while it's faults are only the faults of its leadership.
The US is not a dictatorship, even dictatorships, usually, need public consent to survive. People in Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered and died because of the policies of their Un-eleceted leaders. Americans have to take at least some responsibility for their elected leaders.
(Note: Taken from GNN. The other sources used By Anthany Lappe Listed on the last page) Philippines(Yes, its pre-WWII, but it sets the whole tone) "The 1899 Filipino-American War is one of those nasty little conflicts that you won't find a lot about in your high school history textbook. Call it the first Vietnam. During the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U.S. help the Filipinos gain independence from Spain. Then they declare the country an American colony. A brutal war follows. Many of the scorched-earth tactics used in Vietnam are first used here. More than 100,000 Filipinos die. A large anti-imperialism movement starts in the U.S. "We do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem," wrote early celebrity activist Mark Twain.
In 1945, the Americans come back to the Philippines. Even though they have a common enemy - Japan - America fights leftist forces known as Huks. The U.S. defeat the Huks, and install a series of puppet presidents, culminating in the absurdly corrupt Ferdinand Marcos. He and his high-heel-obsessed wife bilk the poverty-ridden country dry for three decades, until retiring comfortably in Hawaii. "
Iran "1953 - The CIA's first big takedown. The democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh had to go. He was talking crazy talk, like nationalizing Iran's oil. A CIA-sponsored coup restores the Shah to absolute power that begins 25 years of repression and torture. Iran's oil is returned to its rightful owners, the Americans and British. This, of course, sets the stage for a radical Islamic revolution in 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini takes over, holds Americans hostage, burns many American flags, and pisses off rednecks across America. "
Guatemala "1953 - Jacobo Arbenz also had to go. The progressive democratically elected president is also talking that crazy talk - you know, land reform, civil liberties, nationalizing the Washington-connected United Fruit Company. The CIA organizes a massive disinformation campaign and coup. Next up: 40 years of bad, bad things you don't even want to think about - American-trained death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions. Victims: 100,000+."
Middle East "In the 50s, the Eisenhower Doctrine stated the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism." In other words, no one is allowed to fuck around in the Middle East or its oil fields except the United States. The U.S. tries to overthrow the Syrian government (twice), lands 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspires to overthrow and assassinate Arab nationalist Nasser in Egypt. U.S. supports Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon. "
Indonesia "1957 - President Sukarno is another troublemaker. He takes back Indonesian companies from their former colonial master, the Dutch. He takes a trip to Moscow. He refuses to crack down on communists. The CIA launches a disinformation campaign, tries to blackmail him with a fake sex film, plots his assassination, and hooks up with dissident military officers to start a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno, unlike many on the Agency's hit list, somehow survives. 1965 - Sukarno is finally overthrown by General Suharto. The U.S. helps him track down anyone suspected of being communist. The New York Times calls what follows "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history." Up to one million die. "
Cambodia "1969 - Nixon and Kissinger begin their secret "carpet bombings" of Cambodia. They say it is to kill Vietcong hiding out in the Cambodian jungle. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians die. 1970 - Washington finally helps overthrow troublesome Prince Sihanouk in a coup. The U.S. enlists the genocidal maniac Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to help fight the Vietcong. Five years later, Pol Pot takes over, declares "Year Zero," kills anyone with an education, or even wearing glasses, and sends everyone to the countryside to work in agricultural labor camps. More than two million die in his "killing fields""
The Congo/Zaire "1960 - Patrice Lumumba becomes the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But the Belgians don't quite leave. They keep their hands on the vast mineral wealth in the Katanga province, where the Americans also have a piece of the action. Lumumba is defiant, calling for the Congo's economic and political liberation. In other words, he is doomed. In January 1961, he is assassinated with help from the CIA, under orders from Eisenhower himself. His body is chopped up into little pieces and burned in acid. Mobutu Sese Seko takes over, changes the name to Zaire, and begins one of the most corrupt and bloody dictatorships in modern times. Even his CIA handlers are amazed at his cruelty. Thirty years later, despite its rich natural resources, the people of the Congo are still dirt-poor, Mobutu is a multibillionaire, and the country is in chaos. In 1997, Mobutu is overthrown, and retires to the Cote d'Azur. The country slides into a civil war that has killed more than one million. "
Cuba "1959 - The Americans begin a comically disastrous campaign to oust Castro. They help launch a full-scale invasion at the Bay of Pigs and are crushed. They launch gunboat attacks, bombings, biological warfare. New evidence has just come out that the CIA even considered committing terrorist acts and then blaming them on Cuba as a pretext to invade again. They try to send Castro exploding cigars. Spray poison on his beard. The U.S. issues sanctions and a trade embargo that, more than anything, ensures Castro remains in power. "
Chile "1973 - Salvador Allende was a "dangerous" man. He was popular, democratically elected, and a leftist. Against the objections of many inside the US State Department, the CIA, pushed by Kissinger, helps the military overthrow the government. Allende is killed. General Pinochet closes off the country to the outside world. Tanks roll in, soldiers round up students, stadiums turn into execution fields, the country is gripped by fear. For two decades, Pinochet rules with a brutal hand, and thousands of students, union organizers and other bad apples are "disappeared".
East Timor "December 1975 - Indonesia invades the small island of East Timor, which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal left. The day before, U.S. President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger were in Indonesia meeting with Indonesian President Suharto. Amnesty International estimates that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The U.S. supplies Indonesia with aid, guns, and training throughout. "
Nicaragua "1978 - the leftist Sandinistas overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship. Reagan becomes obsessed with taking out the Cuba-and-Soviet-friendly government, enlisting an army of mercenaries, drug dealers and ex-Somoza National Guardsmen. The Contras attack schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, and bombing. When Congress cuts off funds, Reagan's "freedom fighters" are financed by CIA drug-dealing and secret arms sales to Iran in what comes to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair. "
El Salvador "During El Salvador's bloody civil war (1980-92), the U.S. funds, trains, and secretly fights alongside a military that operates less like a traditional army than a loose confederation of homicidal fraternities. By the end of the war, 75,000 Salvadorans are dead. "
Panama "During the 80s, Manny Noriega was George Bush's boy. On the CIA payroll, he helped the U.S. run drugs, launder money and ship arms to its operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Turned out he was helping Castro, laundering money for Pablo Escobar, and talking smack about U.S. imperialism. Plus he knew way too much about the whole Iran-Contra scandal. In December 1989, Bush sends in the Green Berets to arrest him for drug dealing. A whole Panama City barrio is leveled. The official body count is 500-something, others say 3,000. Noriega sits in a Florida jail feeling confused."
Iraq "In the 80s, Saddam Hussein is America's ally. The U.S. sends him weapons and money as he fights a seemingly endless war against Iran, murders his political opponents, and gasses the Kurds. In 1991, Saddam is pissed off at neighboring Kuwait (a country invented by Britain) for undercutting the price of oil. He invades. The U.S. forms an international coalition to "liberate" Kuwait. Saddam sends an army of barefoot conscripts. For more than 40 days and nights, 177 million pounds of bombs fall on Iraq - the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world. The U.S. uses cancer-causing depleted uranium weapons; they bury soldiers alive; they bomb retreating troops and civilians. At the war's end, the U.S. turns its back on the Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces. While Saddam remains in power, U.S. sanctions and continued bombing keep food, medicine, and clean water from everyday Iraqis. According to the UN, over one million Iraqis have died, half of them children."
Afghanistan "Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. pours billions of dollars into overthrowing a pro-Soviet government. The CIA funds, trains, and arms a guerrilla army of Islamic extremists known as the Mujahideen. The Soviets are driven out, in their version of Vietnam. More than a million Afghan are dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees. The country slides into civil war in which an even more radical group of Pakistan-educated students and uneducated hillbillies known as the Taliban take over. The country becomes a haven for anti-American terrorists groups and women-haters. Lies flourish. While outwardly criticizing the Taliban, behind the scenes the CIA and American oil companies jockey for leverage to build a pipeline across the country." Colombia "2001- Colombia's three-decade-old civil war is still going strong, despite, or one might say, as a result of $1.4 billion of U.S. military aid. The country is a chaotic death trap. Marxist rebels hold large portions of the country; American mercenaries and defense department front companies like DynCorp are covertly helping the inept Colombian military; right-wing paramilitaries are massacring civilians; and everyone has their hands in the super-lucrative drug trade. Most people don't know that American forces have been around for while. In the early 90s, a secret group code-named Centra Spike launch a covert operation to take out Pablo Escobar, a major cocaine lord who made the fatal mistake of giving money to the poor and talking shit about American imperialism. The Colombian government and the secret American unit go into business with Escobar's rival the Cali Cartel. Escobar is finally killed. The Cali Cartel's power is solidified and the flow of cocaine into the U.S. only increases. "
This type of foreign policy plays into terrorism, hatred and criticisms of the US. Yes, it is very true, terrorism is practiced by the ones who the power. Such as Osama Bind Laden. Poverty does not breed terrorism. The sentiment of the Third World countries is still the same: 'We are not happy with the way the more power nations (European Union, US, Canada, Etc.) treat us' If our country goes in to the streets of any Third World nation, there are those who will object. However, their voices are often lost with in the sea of the bias main-stream media, and are made to be the outsiders. We need to view the world through a different set of eyes. Paul Martin for example said: " We've got to understand that our way is not the only way of looking at the world."
Since S-11, the date that has been considered the moment when the whole western world was menaced. There have been many statements about Islam being the root of the problems. That no other country, or set of countries has had reactions such as these. The example of Latin America is used. Well the truth is it occurs within these countries as well. The west is just seemingly blind to these facts. Of course those living the powerful western nations will cringe when they hear these facts. The victims relatives will be outraged. When putting things into perspective, we only feel these tragedies from our own home-front. We tend not to care about those half way around the world.
We care not who are bombs fall on, who our sanctions kill, who are puppet governments oppress. As long as we have our interests secured, and our freedom "protected". These people are hundreds, or thousands of miles away. The facts we must face, is that no matter how powerful the west is, we must weigh what we do carefully, or else we will risk more attacks, more criticism, more hatred of our land, government and people. This is not about poverty. Poverty does not breed terrorism. It is about justice, for a countries sovereignty. While the means of terrorism can not be justified, it can be, at least, no provoked. The War on Drugs
While evil is abroad in the land, as it most definitely is in contemporary America, it is wrong to be silent, to look the other way, as the "good Germans" did during the Nazi persecutions. To ignore this evil that is obviously present around you is to allow it to flourish. Is to allow this evil to create the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands on your fellow citizens. Their crime, might you ask, is addiction.
This war of evils, is not something that is easily remedied. During the past few decades a group of a select few have lied and deceived the American people. This small unscrupulous people, addicted to money and power is the evil. Through this groups willingness to destroy American resolve to understand why it exists and why it continues to exist. The solution is best summed up as, "Just Say Know" Knowledge is power. It shall be the sword we Wheeled, you finely eliminate this evil in our land, our world.
This campaign of questioning and reform shall begin here. Why does this war on drugs persist? Through the foreign policy of the US, the need to acquire large sums of money is obvesly seen by now, if you have read any of this book. Congress won't sanction money for all operations around the world. Nor, is congress told of all the operations, bother militarily and politically carried out around the world. The simplest answer to these money woes, is the super-lucrative drug trade.
Anyone willing to take the time to do some research can find evidence of this. The world wide, US sponsored drug prohibition, a.k.a. the war on drugs, is the primary tactic for keeping the prices of items such as crack, cocaine, and heroine high. This ensures high profits, despite the social and personal damage done. These actions will, of course, continue until their are no "threats" to US interests, allies and freedoms. Again the answer to the problem is question, and reform, both socially and legally.
When the world's traditional inebriative substances become illegal commodities, they become worth as much as precious metal, precious metal that can be farmed. ... Illegal drugs, solely because of the artificial value given them by Prohibition, have become the basis of military power anywhere they can be grown and delivered in quantity. To this day, American defense contractors are the biggest drug-money launderers in the world.
Any means may be used to attain the end. One useful means is the exploitation of the urge humans have to modify their consciousness by eating, drinking, smoking or snorting substances found to produce desirable effects. Humans have done it for ages. Bring in a capitalist socio-economic system and you have a sure way to make a lot of money. Especially if consumer prices can be jacked way up.
The US War on Drugs seemingly has lasted forever. Year after you it becomes crazier and crazier. This, so called war ruins more and more lives, and drives the US deeper to the pit of social disaster. How is it possible that this insanity persists (even though intelligent and rational people have been pointing out for many years how crazy and evil it is)for an understanding of what lies behind this monstrosity.
America, with less than 5 percent of the world population, has a quarter of the world's prisoners. There are six times as many Americans behind bars as are imprisoned in the 12 countries that make up the entire European Union, even though those countries have 100 million more citizens than the United States.
In August 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the number of men and women behind bars in the U.S. at the end of 1999 exceeded two million and the rate of incarceration had reached 690 inmates per 100,000 residents - a rate Human Rights Watch believed to be the highest in the world
This unrelenting war on drugs continued to pull down hundreds of thousands of drug offenders into the criminal justice system: 1,559,100 people were arrested on drug charges in 1998; approximately 450,000 drug offenders were confined in jails and prisons. According to the Department of Justice, 107,000 people were sent to state prison on drug charges in 1998, representing 30.8 percent of all new state admissions. Drug offenders constituted 57.8 percent of all federal inmates. - Human Rights Watch World Report 2001: United States
The real problem with drugs in the modern world is that they are illegal. Put simply, the Drug War exists primarily to support - financially and otherwise - the maintenance of the criminal status of the possession of certain drugs so that those (mostly on the payroll of the federal government) who profit big - directly or indirectly - from the supply of prohibited drugs can continue to do so, at the expense of everyone else, and especially at the expense of the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned for "victimless" crimes.
This is a scandal, and a disgrace of the first, magnitude. It will become for the United States of America a source of enduring shame and infamy. By the end of the 1980's it was calculated that the illegal use of drugs in the United States now netted its controllers over $110 billion a year. - Modern Times CIA, Propaganda and Drugs
The well established facts of the CIA are interfearence in international politics, as well as a disregard for international law(the same law we like others to follow). However, the less know fact of the CIA is that the intelligence agency conducted the same covert operations at home. In breach of its own charter and the National Security Act of 1947.
Operatives with academic cover have worked extensively with agency for years, on campuses around the world. They have written books, articles and reports for Use on the US. All done with CIA sponsorship and control. They have spied on foreign nationals at home and abroad. The CIA has regularly recruited students and teachers for the agency. Conferences have been hosted with secret CIA backing under the cover of scholarly, to promote disinformation. They collect extensive data under the disguise of research of Third World movements, opposed to US interference.
In 1956 the Asia Foundation, established by the CIA provide $88 Million in funding each year. For years this foundation sponsored research, supported those lovely disinformation conferences, ran academic exchange programs, funded anti-Communist academics in Various Asian countries. A large number of American academics also participated.
From 1955 to 1959, Michigan State University was under a $25 million contract with the CIA to provide academic cover to five CIA agents stationed in South Vietnam. Their jobs included drafting the South Vietnamese government's Constitution and providing police training and weapons to the repressive Diem regime.
According to John P. Littlejohn, the CIA's deputy director of personnel, approximately 1,000 CIA employees are hired each year from campuses and two to three hundred of these become clandestine officers. Since the 1950s, the CIA conducted extensive operations within newspaper, magazine and television organizations, maintaining liaison relationships with about 50 American journalists and U.S. media organizations. An uncensored portion of the Senate's Church Committee investigation into the CIA stated: "They [the 50] are part of a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence foreign opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of foreign newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers and other foreign media outlets."
The Agency also established close links with book publishing houses and media organizations in the U.S. Between 1947 and 1967, the CIA produced, subsidized or sponsored well over 1,000 books, many of them published by cultural organizations backed by the Agency. After taking office, President Bush greatly increased the CIA's secret budget for internal spying and the number of academics on the Agency's payroll expanded sharply.
In 1982, the CIA brazenly proposed that all scientific research papers written in the United States by U.S. academics be submitted to the Agency for "prior review." And in 1986, Robert Gates, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence, told university professors at a public speaking engagement that the CIA would "continue to strengthen the kinds of programs it ran in universities in the past", and "We need your help." One example of this was the case of Professor Richard Mansbach, head of the political science department at Rutgers, who assigned an undergraduate class to do data-intensive research on Western European political culture. The studies that the students carried out on Western Europe's disarmament, labor, women's and environmental movements were secretly passed on to the CIA.
Professor Nadav Safran was forced to leave his director's position at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Affairs in 1986, when it was revealed that he was on the CIA's payroll. He had received over $100,000 from the Agency to write a book on Saudi Arabia and $50,000 to organize a university conference on Islam. Just a year earlier, the director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington, was also uncloaked as a CIA asset, having worked secretly with a CIA consultant and published documents that were funded by the Agency.
It is safe to assume that only a small number of CIA academics are ever exposed, while the great majority remain secret. It is difficult to typecast the CIA scholar. Gustav Hilger, a CIA academic who held posts at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, was a former member of the Nazi Foreign Office. But even liberal professors have been inducted into the CIA.
James R. Hooker of Michigan State's African Studies Center was regarded as left thinking; he spoke publicly against the Vietnam War and was friendly with leaders of liberation movements in Africa and the Caribbean. However, as a CIA researcher, Hooker traveled to Africa to document the support of various political parties and eventually gave his support to UNITA and the FNLA in Angola. In 1987, Harvard University agreed to take on a $1.2 million study in conjunction with the CIA to study problems in intelligence assessment and foreign policy, using the Philippines as a model.
Just as the FBI's illegal actions against U.S. citizens did not stop with the supposed termination of its COINTELPRO program, so the termination of the C