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NUCLEAR
Pakistan, India Disarm But Trade Threats
India Plans Ballistic Missile Tests
CIA: North Korea tried to buy nuclear equipment in 2001
CHRONOLOGY - Nuclear diplomacy on North Korea since 1985
Pyongyang is unable to turn on the lights
U.S., in a Shift, Is Willing to Talk With North Korea About A-Arms
IAEA in Tough Spot on N.Korea Nuclear Program
U.S. Optimistic About Russsia on A.B.M.
Pentagon Cancels Missile Intercept Tests
Pakistan says confident no nuclear breaches
Father of Pakistan's bomb in trouble
Pakistan Army Receives Nuclear - Capable Missiles
Spent Nuclear Fuel Moved From Near River
'Talks' with N. Korea won't be 'negotiations'
MILITARY
Indonesia Opposes Military Action in Iraq
Japan Leasing Disputed Southern Island for U.S.
Britain Calls Up 1,500 Reservists for Possible Action Against Iraq
Cabinet rift over war build-up
Study Sees 500,000 Iraqis Facing Injury in Case of War
Libya, Syria, possibly Sudan also seek WMD, CIA warns
Heavy equipment moved to gulf
Peru's President Gains Anti - Terror Powers
U.S. War Staff Assembles in Persian Gulf
U.S. Moves Toward Final Readiness for War With Iraq
Jump in Elite Forces' Budget Foreseen
Becoming Media-Wise: A Lesson In U.S. Propaganda
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. Can Hold Citizens As Combatants
FBI Files Look at Kent State Shootings
Court Rules U.S. Can Hold Citizens as 'Enemy Combatants'
Death Penalty Found More Likely When Victim Is White
Arrest of Terror Suspects in London Turns Up a Deadly Toxin
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace activists arrested at Dow Chemical office
Sponsors Outline Anti - War Protest Plan
'Human shield' peace activists mobilise for Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan, India Disarm But Trade Threats
January 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-India.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistani and Indian troops are trudging home, and technicians on both sides of the mountainous border are removing tens of thousands of mines. But the nuclear rivals spent the past week replacing the deadly weapons with dangerous words, each trying to outdo the other in a game of atomic bravado.
On Wednesday, it was Pakistan's turn.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said his country would teach India an ``unforgettable lesson'' if it began a nuclear war. That followed a boast by India's defense minister that his nation could absorb a nuclear bomb or two, but that a war would wipe out Pakistan entirely.
Some Pakistani analysts said politicians on both sides were ratcheting up the rhetoric to appeal to hard-liners angry over a thaw that prompted both sides to reduce troops along the border through Kashmir.
India and Pakistan -- at odds since they gained independence from Britain in 1947 -- have fought three wars, two over the Himalayan border region. Divided Kashmir remains the most volatile issue, with each country claiming it entirely.
Others suggested the hostile talk was part of an effort to stay relevant as international attention is diverted toward Iraq.
``The situation has been created by both governments to please their constituents. Whenever either country feels like it is perceived as weak, the politicians criticize the other side,'' said Mehdi Hassan, an expert on Indian-Pakistani relations at the Lahore-based University of Punjab.
``As tension has decreased, that's all the more reason'' to talk tough, he said.
Added retired Gen. Aslam Beg, a former Pakistani chief of staff: ``This is just natural. If India says some harsh words, then Pakistan responds with equally harsh words.''
Analysts viewed the situation similarly across the border.
``You must see India-Pakistan relations in terms of their domestic interests,'' said Kamal Mitra Chenoy, an international studies professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
``You have a military dictator in Pakistan whose legitimacy is threatened by the alliance he has with the U.S. (and by) democratic forces in civil society,'' he said. ``So if he can deflect attention'' to India, that helps him domestically.
On Wednesday, Pakistan's nuclear research facility approved deployment of a new medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile, the Ghauri, capable of carrying a nuclear payload. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf attended the ceremony at the Kahuta Research Laboratory outside Islamabad.
India and Pakistan rushed 1 million troops to their 1,800-mile border last year, causing the world to tremble at the thought of the first two-sided nuclear war. The buildup followed a Dec. 13, 2001 attack on India's Parliament that New Delhi blamed on Islamic militants it says Pakistan supports.
Hostilities subsided after a flurry of international diplomacy, and the countries announced troop pullbacks in October and November. They also began pulling up land mines and brought warships and fighter jets back to peacetime positions.
While the threat of war died down, the war of words heated up.
On Dec. 9, Pakistan scrapped plans to host a regional summit, saying India sabotaged the meeting by not confirming its attendance. India blamed Pakistan for politicizing the summit.
Then, on Dec. 29, Musharraf told air force veterans he had warned India during last year's hostilities to ``not expect a conventional war from Pakistan'' -- an apparent reference to nuclear confrontation.
His spokesman quickly denied any reference to nuclear weapons. Musharraf said later he meant only that some 150,000 retired Pakistani military personnel living in Kashmir would have risen up against Indian aggression.
India, nonetheless, responded harshly.
On Tuesday, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes criticized Pakistan for its strong rhetoric, and issued a chilling prediction of his own on the results of nuclear war.
``We can take a bomb or two or more,'' Fernandes told the Press Trust of India news agency. ``But when we respond there will be no Pakistan.''
Ahmed, the Pakistani information minister, responded Wednesday that ``India will be taught an unforgettable lesson if they ever launch a nuclear attack on Pakistan.''
Ahmed says Pakistan wants good relations with India and dialogue over Kashmir. India says it won't discuss Kashmir until Pakistan stops cross-border terrorism.
India and Pakistan conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998. Both signed an agreement barring them from attacking each other's nuclear facilities, and each pledged not to launch nuclear weapons first, a vow Ahmed reiterated.
Many who live in the disputed region are weary of the hostilities -- and of the political sniping they say only makes their lives harder.
``It would be better if they both just left Kashmir and let us be independent,'' said Khalid-ur Rehman, a telephone operator in Muzafarrabad, the capital of Pakistan's portion of the territory. ``When Pakistan and India fight, it is the Kashmiris who suffer.''
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India Plans Ballistic Missile Tests
January 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-india-missile.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is preparing to test a range of missiles over the next few days, including a shorter-range version of its Agni nuclear-capable missile, a defense official said Wednesday.
The surface-to-surface Agni, which means fire in the Sanskrit language, is a key element of India's nuclear self-defense strategy against nuclear-armed neighbors China and Pakistan. India has had an indigenous missile program for nearly 20 years.
India and Pakistan have ended a 10-month military buildup on the border last year but continue to wrangle over the disputed the Himalayan region of Kashmir and in recent days have engaged in tough nuclear rhetoric.
A Pakistani official said firing by Indian troops on Wednesday across the heavily militarised Kashmir frontier had killed one civilian and wounded two others. There was no immediate comment from Indian officials.
Defense experts, however, said the proposed Indian missile tests were unlikely to re-ignite military tensions with Pakistan because these were routine trials.
The Indian defense official said preparations had been made to test an Agni 1 missile, with a range of 370 to 500 miles, from a launch pad in the Bay of Bengal.
An intermediate version of the ballistic missile with a range of 1,550 miles has already been declared operational.
``Experts are camping at the site, we expect the tests to take place in the next few days,'' the official said.
Defense scientists also plan to test a supersonic cruise missile jointly developed with Russia. The Brahmos missile, with a range of 175 miles, is set to enter production by year end.
Russia and India have close defense ties stemming from the Cold War. Nearly 70 percent of India's defense hardware is of Soviet origin. In recent years, New Delhi has ordered fighter planes, tanks and submarines from Russia.
The armed forces also plan to test a 150-mile range variant of its surface-to-surface missile, Prithvi, which is thought to be nuclear capable. A 90-mile version of the Prithvi, which means earth, is already being used by the army.
Pakistan, which matched India's underground nuclear explosions in May 1998 with tests of its own, has also developed a range of missiles to deliver such weapons.
-------- korea
CIA: North Korea tried to buy nuclear equipment in 2001
By Bill Gertz
January 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030108-34049740.htm HE WASHINGTON TIMES
North Korea tried to buy large amounts of equipment for a uranium-weapons program in 2001 and also purchased missile-related goods from communist China, according to a CIA report.
The CIA report to Congress on arms proliferation for the period of July 2001 to December 2001 said, "Pyongyang has continued attempts to procure technology worldwide" for a nuclear-arms program.
The report, made public yesterday, also identified Russia, China and North Korea as major suppliers of chemical, biological and nuclear-arms goods and missile systems to rouge states or unstable regions.
For example, the report states that Chinese companies in 2001 supplied Pakistan with technical assistance for its short-range missiles and its medium-range Shaheen II missile.
The Chinese missile assistance contradicted China's pledge in November 2001 "not to assist, in any way, any country in the development of ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear weapons."
"In addition, firms in China have provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and-or assistance to several countries of proliferation concern - such as Iran, North Korea and Libya," the report said.
The Bush administration has imposed economic sanctions on China three times in recent months for missile and arms sales to Pakistan and Iran.
Regarding North Korea, the report stated that Pyongyang exported "significant ballistic missile-related equipment, components, materials and technical expertise to the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa."
North Korea disclosed to U.S. officials in October that it had been secretly building a uranium-enrichment program for nuclear bombs, in violation of several agreements including a 1994 accord to freeze an earlier plutonium-based nuclear-arms program.
"The North has been seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities to support a uranium enrichment program," the report said of the late 2001 activity. "It also obtained equipment suitable for use in uranium feed and withdrawal systems."
Regarding missile development, the North Koreans also purchased raw materials and components for missiles, "especially through North Korean firms based in China," the report said.
North Korea also concluded a defense agreement with Russia in 2001 that will pave the way for arms sales and weapons-technology transfers to North Korea, the report said.
The report noted that North Korea has enough nuclear arms fuel for "at least one and possibly two, nuclear weapons. Spent fuel rods from a reactor also contain enough plutonium for several more weapons, the agency report said.
North Korea touched off a crisis over its nuclear arms by announcing last year that it would restart a nuclear reactor that was shut down under the 1994 agreement.
Regarding Iran, the report said that Russia and China have been supplying Tehran with nuclear-related equipment that will boost Iran's capability to build nuclear weapons.
The report said the United States "is convinced that Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program" despite claims by Iran that its nuclear program is aimed at producing electricity.
On Iraq, the CIA provided new details of Baghdad's efforts to build medium-range missiles. Iraq has built two new facilities that will make solid fuel for missiles, including one site that the CIA believes is an indication that longer-range missiles are being developed.
Iraq's al Mamoun plant appears solely designed for making solid fuel used for long-range missiles, and at the same building Iraq is rebuilding a rocket motor factory, the report said.
The report also said, "Iraq probably retains a small, covert force of Scud ballistic missiles, launchers, and conventional, chemical, and biological warheads."
The Iraqis also have rebuilt chemical facilities and attempted to purchase items that have military applications by claiming the purchases are for civilian use, the report said.
Iraq also worked on biological arms in late 2001 and carried out research to improve its biological arms, the report said.
"In light of Iraq's growing industrial self-sufficiency and the likely availability of mobile or covert facilities, we are concerned that Iraq may again be producing [biological warfare] agents," the CIA said.
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CHRONOLOGY - Nuclear diplomacy on North Korea since 1985
REUTERS SOUTH KOREA:
January 8, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19321/story.htm
SEOUL - Following is a chronology of key events in the past 17 years of diplomatic efforts to contain North Korea's atomic ambitions:
December 1985 - North Korea joins the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), but makes adherence to safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) contingent on removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea.
September 1991 - President George Bush announces withdrawal of all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed abroad, including about 100 based in South Korea.
December 1991 - The two Koreas sign the South-North Joint Declaration on the Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. They pledge not to test, produce, receive, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons. They also agree to mutual inspections.
January 1992 - North Korea concludes a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, ratifying agreement in April.
May 1992 - North Korea declares seven sites and some plutonium to be subject to IAEA inspection.
September 1992 - IAEA inspectors discover discrepancies in North Korea's initial report on its nuclear programme and ask for clarification on the amount of reprocessed plutonium.
February 1993 - The IAEA demands special inspections of two nuclear waste storage sites, citing evidence that North Korea had been cheating on its NPT commitments. North Korea refuses.
March 1993 - Facing demands for special inspections, North Korea announces its intention to withdraw from the NPT in three months, citing national security considerations.
April 1993 - The IAEA declares that North Korea is not adhering to its safeguards agreement.
June 1993 - Following talks with the United States, North Korea suspends its decision to pull out of the NPT and agrees to accept IAEA safeguards.
January 1994 - The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons.
March 1994 - IAEA inspectors arrive in North Korea for the first inspections in a year. North Korea's refusal to allow inspections at a plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, prompts the IAEA to pass a resolution calling on North Korea to allow immediately all requested inspections.
May 1994 - North Korea begins removing spent fuel from a five-megawatt research reactor without international monitoring.
June 1994 - North Korea announces its withdrawal from the IAEA. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter negotiates a deal with North Korea in which it confirms its willingness to freeze its nuclear arms programme and resume talks with the United States.
October 1994 - The United States and North Korea conclude four months of negotiations by adopting the Agreed Framework in Geneva. The agreement calls for North Korea to freeze and eventually eliminate its nuclear facilities and to allow IAEA special inspections. In exchange, Pyongyang is to receive two light-water reactors (LWRs), financed and built through the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), a multinational consortium, along with annual shipments of heavy fuel oil.
March 1995 - KEDO is formed in New York with the United States, South Korea and Japan as original members. December 1998 - The United States and North Korea hold talks to address U.S. concerns about a suspected underground nuclear facility at Kumchang-ni, northeast of the capital.
May 1999 - In exchange for food aid, North Korea allows a U.S. inspection team to visit the Kumchang-ni site. The team finds no evidence of nuclear activity.
November 1999 - KEDO officials sign contract with the Korea Electric Power Corporation to begin construction of the two LWRs in Kumho, North Korea.
January 2002 - President George W. Bush says North Korea, Iran and Iraq form an "axis of evil" threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction. North Korea says the remarks are tantamount to a declaration of war.
April 2002 - Bush issues a memorandum stating that he will not certify North Korea's compliance with the Agreed Framework. However he allows continued U.S. funding of oil shipments.
August 2002 - KEDO holds a ceremony to mark the pouring of concrete foundations for the first LWR.
October 3-5, 2002 - James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, visits North Korea and reiterates U.S. concerns about North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes and other disputes. When he confronts Pyongyang with U.S. evidence of a covert uranium enrichment programme, his hosts say North Korea is "entitled to possess not only nuclear weapons but other types of weapons more powerful than them in defence of its sovereignty in face of the U.S. threat".
October 16, 2002 - The United States announces that North Korea admitted during Kelly's visit to having a covert programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
October 25, 2002 - North Korea's Foreign Ministry says it will address U.S. concerns about its nuclear programme if the United States signs a non-aggression treaty, guarantees Pyongyang's sovereignty and pledges not to interfere in its economic development.
November 14, 2002 - The United States and its KEDO allies meet in New York and decide to cut off fuel oil shipments to North Korea, beginning in December.
November 29, 2002 - The IAEA calls on North Korea to open its atomic weapons programme to inspections, saying it "deplored" Pyongyang's assertion it had a right to possess the weapons.
December 4, 2002 - North Korea rejects the IAEA call to allow inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North.
December 12, 2002 - North Korea announces it plans to immediately restart the Yongbyon reactor to generate electricity to make up for the cutoff of fuel oil shipments.
December 21, 2002 - The IAEA says North Korea has disabled surveillance devices the agency had placed at the five-megawatt Yongbyon research reactor.
December 22, 2002 - North Korea says it has begun removing IAEA monitoring equipment from Yongbyon, drawing condemnation from the United States, South Korea, Japan and France.
December 27, 2002 - North Korea tells the IAEA its inspectors are no longer needed at Yongbyon and orders their expulsion.
December 31, 2002 - U.N. nuclear inspectors leave North Korea.
January 3, 2003 - North Korea blames United States for nuclear standoff but says it is willing to hold talks.
January 6, 2003 - IAEA gives North Korea one last chance to readmit inspectors or be reported to the U.N. Security Council for breaching nuclear safeguards. Bush says dialogue with North will happen.
January 7, 2003 - North Korea says economic sanctions would mean war and urges United States to sit down to talks.
(SOURCES: Arms Control Association, U.S. State Department, Korean Central News Agency).
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Pyongyang is unable to turn on the lights
By Martin Sieff
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
January 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030108-57237536.htm
A flood of refugees from North Korea in recent years has allowed the intelligence services of China and South Korea for the first time to piece together a reliable profile of life in the closed communist state.
The picture that emerges is one of an impoverished, destitute, ferociously monitored totalitarian state, which lacks even the electrical power to light up apartments of its showcase capital city, Pyongyang, at night.
"If there is any society on earth bereft of hope today, North Korea is probably it," one senior East Asian intelligence source said.
The famine that swept North Korea since the mid-1990s, and its dire effects, are still shaking the reclusive, mountainous land of 25 million people.
According to senior East Asian intelligence sources, nearly 350,000 people have succeeded in fleeing North Korea since the death of the nation's founder and ruler for nearly half a century, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.
According to North Korea's own secret but official figures, at least 2 million people out of a population then at 27 million - almost half that of the state of California - died in the famine, the intelligence sources said.
But they cautioned that the North Korean state was in such a condition of decay that these figures could not be regarded as reliable.
Some 100,000 refugees made it to South Korea, including a handful of top-level defectors from the North's communist leadership.
At least another 250,000 of a million North Koreans remain hidden in Northeast China, where they live in conditions of extreme privation, uncertainty and destitution.
Child labor and prostitution are common in the area.
Because of China's own growing vast unemployment problem, the Beijing government lacks the control and the resources to bring the problem under control.
Therefore, China is reduced to simply trying to prevent more refugees from crossing the border and sending back those it catches.
So horrendous were the conditions they fled in North Korea that even this miserable existence in China is preferable to staying in their homeland.
The worst of the famine is over, at least for the moment, but life inside North Korea remains a grim, hand-to-mouth existence with conditions once again getting slowly and steadily worse.
What's more, the decay is clear to North Korea's ruling elite.
In order to provide a modicum of pay and morale, the Pyongyang government is attempting to carry out ambitious public works projects.
In one instance, an enormous 14-lane highway is being built between Pyongyang and a regional center.
But the old road it is going to replace has little more than a trickle of oxcart traffic, one East Asian intelligence source said.
Work on the highway in question was being carried out by thousands of laborers, without bulldozers or other heavy earth-moving or rock-breaking machinery.
Still, there appears to be no direct or foreseeable threat to the ruling communist regime of leader Kim Jong-il, who inherited power on his father's death in the communist world's first dynastic succession.
Ordinary people in the North, South Korean analysts believe, are too exhausted and demoralized by the struggle for existence to think of any protest, and in any case have hardly known anything different all their lives.
North Korea was a harshly ruled Japanese colony for decades before 1945, when the communist regime was established with strong support by the Soviet Union.
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U.S., in a Shift, Is Willing to Talk With North Korea About A-Arms
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/asia/08KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - The Bush administration, shifting its approach on North Korea under pressure from allies in the region, expressed willingness today to talk with President Kim Jong Il's government about its nuclear weapons program, while still refusing to offer incentives for the program to be dismantled.
The administration's new position, negotiated during two days of meetings with envoys from South Korea and Japan, was included in a statement from the three nations. The statement also supported continuation of a separate "dialogue" with the North by South Korea and Japan.
Since the surprise disclosure of North Korea's nuclear weapons program in October, President Bush and administration officials had maintained that North Korea would have to dismantle the program before Washington would even talk with the North. Today's statement changed that stance.
"The U.S. delegation explained that the United States is willing to talk to North Korea about how it will meet its obligations to the international community," it said. "However, the U.S. delegation stressed that the United States will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up to its existing obligations."
The joint statement seemed to represent an effort by the administration to defuse a confrontational atmosphere marked by increasingly strident denunciations from the North and a disagreement on negotiating strategy between Washington and Seoul. The abrupt shift also showed an administration apparently scrambling to draft a coherent policy to deal with North Korea's revitalized pursuit of nuclear arms.
On Wednesday, South Korea lauded Washington's offer to talk, but the official North Korea news agency said the United States was "working hard to bring a holocaust of a nuclear war to the Korean nation."
"There is an increasing danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula due to the U.S. criminal policy" toward North Korea, the Korean Central News Agency said. It accused the United States of "deliberately spreading a false rumour" about the North's nuclear program "in a bid to vitiate the atmosphere of inter-Korean reconciliation and unity and foster confrontation among Koreans."
In the last 48 hours, the administration has sought to lower the temperature on a number of fronts. At a cabinet meeting on Monday, Mr. Bush repeated several times his statement of America's peaceful intentions. The United States also decided to delay taking the issue to the United Nations Security Council, a step that administration officials had said they would push for rapidly.
An administration official maintained that the statement today was more of a shift in emphasis than a policy change. "We are putting more emphasis on talking now," he said.
Nevertheless, diplomats welcomed the statement as a new iteration by an administration that has been seen as changing its policy toward North Korea many times.
Representatives of Russia, China, Australia, Canada and the European Union were briefed on the statement this afternoon at the State Department. One diplomat later called it "a very positive development."
South Korean officials, especially, have said that although they have supported the basics of American policy in demanding that North Korea abandon its nuclear ambitions, they are worried about the situation getting out of hand. The president-elect of South Korea, Roh Moo Hyun, who takes office next month, is said by some advisers to see himself as a potential mediator between Pyongyang and Washington.
An administration official said the joint statement was transmitted to North Korea through its mission at the United Nations.
It was not clear which country would be the next to test North Korea's reaction. One diplomat said the North and South Korean foreign ministers were scheduled to meet next week in Seoul, which could provide the first opportunity.
Also uncertain was exactly what North Korea and its interlocutors would talk about, given that the statement today confined the proposed discussions to how North Korea could "meet its obligations to the international community" - language that an official said referred to its commitments over the years to refrain from making nuclear weapons and to allow inspections.
Mr. Bush's national security aides insisted that any conversation with the North would be limited to freezing and ultimately dismantling its two nuclear projects: a plutonium program at Yongbyon and a hidden effort to develop a weapon by enriching uranium.
At the State Department, Richard A. Boucher, the spokesman, said that for all the language inviting talks with the North Koreans, "they have to end the programs for anything real to happen." Asked about benefits that might accrue to the North, he said a package of aid had been prepared by the administration earlier last year, before the current confrontation. This "remains on the table," he added, but only if North Korea moves toward dismantling its nuclear projects.
Mr. Bush spoke in Chicago today to outline his economic proposals but demonstrated that the quickening tempo of the North Korea situation was not far from his mind. After renewing his demand that Saddam Hussein disarm in Iraq, Mr. Bush said the United States would "confront" the threat of North Korea, but differently from the way it is dealing with Iraq.
"In this case, I believe that by working with countries in the region, diplomacy will work," he said. "We have no aggressive intent, no argument with the North Korean people."
Yet in a gesture to those who argue that a show of strength is also useful for the North, he added that the United States "will not permit any regime to threaten the freedom and security of the American people or our allies and friends around the world."
The three-nation meeting today involved envoys who have been wrestling with the problem of North Korea for months. The American delegation was led by James A. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern and Pacific affairs. His counterparts were the deputy foreign minister of South Korea, Lee Tae Sik, and Mitoji Yabunaka, the Japanese Foreign Ministry's director of Asian and Oceanian affairs.
Their handiwork, a statement of about 800 words, addressed several contentious side issues that had arisen in recent days with North Korea, according to an administration official.
For example, North Korean officials have said repeatedly that the United States could solve the current confrontation by signing a nonaggression pact. The statement today emphasized that Japan, South Korea and the United States "reaffirmed" their commitment to a 1991 accord between the North and the South that included a nonaggression pledge.
The policy adjustment today is the latest of several shifts by Mr. Bush. At first embracing the Clinton-era policy of negotiation, he then conducted a re-evaluation that ended up with a policy that somewhat resembled President Bill Clinton's. Last year, after disclosures that North Korea had cheated on its 1994 pledge not to make nuclear weapons, the administration's position hardened.
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IAEA in Tough Spot on N.Korea Nuclear Program
January 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-plutonium-iaea.html
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog faces a near impossible task in monitoring the ambitions of North Korea but says Pyongyang has not extracted a fresh batch of plutonium for arms from its unsealed reactor.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has long known that North Korea is not in compliance with commitments not to develop weapons from its nuclear power plants, frozen and put under IAEA surveillance a decade ago, said North Korean analyst and proliferation expert Daniel Pinkston.
His remarks came just a day after IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said North Korea had ``only a matter of weeks'' to readmit its inspectors expelled last month or see the issue brought before the United Nations Security Council.
However, ElBaradei dismissed a report by Japan's Kyodo news agency that Pyongyang may have already obtained a small amount of plutonium at the plant it reactivated last month.
ElBaradei said he thought it ``implausible'' North Korea had actually acquired any plutonium since it cracked open U.N. seals and disabled surveillance cameras at its Yongbyon nuclear site in December, but said compliance was still urgent.
``We know that some of these facilities can produce plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons and therefore there is a sense of urgency that we come to grips with that problem before the situation gets worse,'' ElBaradei told CNN on Tuesday.
He said the IAEA inspectors monitoring the Yongbyon plant and expelled by North Korea late last month had given the nuclear watchdog a clear picture on the state of affairs in North Korea.
The United States has said North Korea had already extracted plutonium to create about two nuclear weapons before the plant was sealed and development frozen under a 1994 agreement.
REPORT A ``MISUNDERSTANDING''
Kyodo said that according to a document distributed to the 35 member countries of the Vienna-based IAEA, there was a strong possibility that North Korea had acquired a small amount of plutonium since it removed the seals in late December.
However, ElBaradei described the Kyodo report as a ``misunderstanding'' and gave it little credibility.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in the document that the amount of nuclear material was too small to produce a nuclear bomb but was enough to produce a ``dirty bomb'' that could scatter radioactive material when detonated, Kyodo said.
After removing the seals, North Korea had also gained access to 20 fuel rods that were damaged while kept in storage at an experimental nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, 90 km (56 miles) north of Pyongyang, Kyodo quoted the document as saying.
The IAEA statement made clear North Korea had not been in compliance for years, Pinkston, senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said in an interview.
``They (the IAEA) urged them to come into compliance or they will be in further non-compliance,'' Pinkston said, adding that the statement was a clear demonstration that the IAEA was aware that North Korea had long been in violation of its commitments.
Meeting in Vienna this week, the IAEA's governing board passed a resolution warning North Korea to cooperate with its inspectors or be reported to the U.N. Security Council for breaching nuclear safeguards.
-------- missile defense
U.S. Optimistic About Russsia on A.B.M.
January 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- The United States and Russia have good prospects for cooperating on development of anti-ballistic missile systems and are trying to define areas of possible joint work, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow said in an interview published Wednesday.
Moscow strongly opposed U.S. plans to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and deploy a national missile shield, saying such action could seriously harm international security. But when President Bush announced the withdrawal from the treaty last summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin reacted mildly -- and Russian officials have since adopted a tone of regret rather than anger over Washington's decision.
U.S. officials have in the meantime tried to mollify their Russian counterparts by playing up the possibilities for Russian scientists to take part in developing a new ABM system. In the interview with the Interfax news agency, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said that Washington could make use of sophisticated Russian technology.
``Russia has advanced technology such as the S-300 and S-400 anti-air missiles, which could be developed into an anti-ballistic missile capability,'' Vershbow was quoted as saying.
The new S-400 Triumph can hit targets up to 250 miles away and engage stealth aircraft, Russian military observers say. The latest versions of its predecessor, the S-300, have a a range of 125 miles.
While the S-300 can shoot down short-range missiles, the S-400 can engage intermediate range ballistic missiles that have a range of 2,170 miles, according to official Russian arms trade data.
Two years ago, Putin proposed creation of a joint missile defense system with Western European countries, and Russian military officials mentioned both the S-300 and S-400 as possible components. The proposal, seen largely as an attempt to rally European criticism against the U.S. missile defense plan, was short on detail and has so far not borne fruit.
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Pentagon Cancels Missile Intercept Tests
January 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon agency that is developing defenses against missile attack has decided to skip two tests of its ability to intercept mock warheads in space, saving about $200 million, an official said Wednesday.
The tests were to have been held this winter and spring.
Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said there will not be another intercept test until Boeing Co., the lead contractor, has a newly designed rocket booster ready for use this autumn.
``The feeling is that we need to concentrate on the booster this year because it is behind'' schedule, Lehner said.
Pentagon officials have said they are confident that their basic approach to intercepting enemy warheads during their flight through space -- known as ``hit to kill'' technology -- has been proven to work in previous tests. What has been lacking is the new booster that launches the ``hit to kill'' technology into space.
Boeing originally was to begin flight tests of a new booster -- used to carry a missile-intercept device known as a ``kill vehicle'' into space to destroy an enemy warhead by colliding with it -- in 2000, but it encountered technical problems. After a booster launch failure in December 2001, Boeing decided to contract with Lockheed Martin, and later Orbital Sciences, to come up with new designs for an intercept booster.
In previous intercept tests -- the most recent of which failed in December -- the Missile Defense Agency used an older modified Minuteman as a surrogate booster. In some cases the surrogate malfunctioned. The goal all along has been to develop a new-generation booster designed specifically for missile defense.
In announcing last month how his agency intends to meet President Bush's goal of having an initial missile defense system ready to field by the end of 2004, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish told reporters he was concerned about the booster problem.
``I don't like where we are in terms of being developed with the boosters,'' Kadish said. If Boeing fails to come up with a useable booster by next autumn, the overall missile defense program will suffer, he said.
``We can't use an interceptor that doesn't fly right,'' he said.
Lehner, spokesman for Kadish's agency, said that forgoing the intercept tests that had been scheduled for this winter and spring will save not only the $200 million it costs to conduct the tests but also the ``kill vehicles'' that are used, and thus destroyed, in the tests.
The Pentagon has been successful in four of its last five missile intercept tests and five of its last eight.
On the Net:
Missile Defense Agency at http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/
-------- pakistan
Pakistan says confident no nuclear breaches
REUTERS PAKISTAN:
January 8, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19313/story.htm
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan said this week it was confident there had been no security breach in its nuclear programme despite of media reports that the country helped North Korea with arms technology.
In a statement issued after meeting the National Command Authority (NCA), which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali dismissed the reports as "mischievous, motivated and highly irresponsible".
The New York Times reported in November that Pakistan had provided North Korea with technology needed to make enriched uranium for nuclear weapons in return for missile parts. Pakistan denied the reports at the time.
Islamabad has allied itself with Washington in the declared war on terrorism and Washington has warned it will lose international goodwill if it was found to be helping Pyongyang with nuclear technology.
"Pakistan was a responsible nuclear power with an impeccable record of safety and security," a statement issued by Pakistan's military quoted Jamali as saying at the NCA meeting.
The NCA is made up of military, political and scientific officials and is headed by military President General Pervez Musharraf.
The statement said Jamali, who is a key ally of Musharraf, expressed his full satisfaction with the effectiveness of the command and control structures of Islamabad's nuclear capability.
"The National Command Authority has ensured that while our nuclear assets and strategic forces were completely safe and secure, they continue to develop as per our minimum deterrence needs," the statement said.
The NCA meeting came two days after Pakistan's arch-foe India set up its nuclear weapons command chain.
India, which came close to war with Pakistan last year over the disputed region of Kashmir, put its nuclear arsenal under the control of a formal command and control procedure on Saturday and reiterated its "no first strike" policy.
Jamali said Pakistan was not in arms race with anyone "but reiterated firmly that retention of minimum deterrance is the cornerstone of Pakistan's national security policy," the statement said.
India stunned the world in May 1998 with underground nuclear tests that were quickly followed copycat tests by Pakistan.
India said on Saturday it would "retain the option" of retaliating with nuclear arms in the event of a major biological or chemical weapons attack against India or Indian forces anywhere.
Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman said the announcement revealed Indian "intentions" about the use of nuclear weapons.
Asked who controlled the nuclear button in Pakistan, Musharraf or Jamali, Aziz Ahmed Khan told reporters: "I can only say at this stage, the command and control structure has been in place for a long time. It is in safe hands and everybody has expressed his satisfaction with the command and control system."
Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India, two of them over Kashmir, has not ruled out first use of nuclear weapons, saying it would launch a nuclear strike if its territorial integrity was threatened.
Little is known about the number of nuclear warheads the two sides possess. Jane's Strategic Weapons System in London estimates India has 100 to 150 warheads and Pakistan 25 to 50.
----
Father of Pakistan's bomb in trouble
By Anwar Iqbal
UPI South Asian Affairs Analyst
January 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030108-021010-7063r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- The man who made Pakistan's nuclear bomb is in trouble. Recent reports in the Western media blame Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan for assisting Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the states described as the "axis of evil" by President George W. Bush.
A pamphlet, seen by the United Press International, indicates Khan had also put nuclear related technology on sale on the open market.
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. officials believe Khan has been secretly cooperating with Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
The L.A. Times report said U.S. intelligence has long known of Khan's activities but North Korea's declaration last month that it was reviving its nuclear weapons program drew international attention to the Pakistani scientist.
The 66-year-old metallurgist is a national hero in Pakistan where children and places are named after him.
But U.S. officials disagree. "If the international community had a proliferation most-wanted list, A. Q. Khan would be most wanted on the list," says Robert Einhorn, who was assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation in the Clinton administration.
Meanwhile, UPI has received the copy of a pamphlet purportedly distributed by A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, the organization Khan used to head, offering vacuum technology for sale. Experts say the technology can also be used in nuclear plants and thus the offer can be interpreted as promoting nuclear technology.
The pamphlet has a Rawalpindi, Pakistani, address, P.O. Box 502, and has pictures of the equipment it promotes. It also has a picture of Dr Khan on the extreme right corner wearing the medals awarded by the government of Pakistan.
A message distributed with the pamphlet says: "Besides manufacturing of vacuum components and systems, our vacuum consultancy services are also available for system design, operational troubleshooting, quality assurance, maintenance, system development and human resource training."
Experts in Washington seem particularly concerned about the offer of "human resource training" because they claimed it was offering to train people for making a key component of a nuclear plant.
David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security says that Khan learned centrifugal technology he used for building Pakistan's nuclear reactor while working at a plant in Holland in the 1970s.
In 1998, Ernest Piffl, managing director of the German firm GmbH near Stuttgart received a three-and-half-year sentence for illegally exporting thousands of performs for gas centrifuge scoops to Pakistan's secret uranium enrichment program.
Performs are partially finished cast or machined components and the ones sent to Pakistan were made of a special aluminum alloy and looked like small thin-wall pipes. Bending and finishing these little pipes would have been done at the point of assembly of the centrifuge.
Talking to reporters in New Delhi on Tuesday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said if the allegation that Pakistan has transferred nuclear technology to North Korea in return for North Korean missiles was proven, it will have affect Tokyo's relations with Islamabad.
"This would naturally have an impact on bilateral relations between Japan and Pakistan if this was continuing or taking place," said Kawaguchi after talks with her Indian counterpart, Yashwant Sinha.
"Japan is the only country that has suffered the consequences of nuclear bombs. We remain committed to opposing all forms of nuclear proliferation," she said.
The United States, however, refused to talk "specifically" about Dr. Khan.
"We talked to Pakistan about transfers of nuclear technology," a State Department official told UPI. "Pakistan recognizes the serious of any kind of proliferation activity involving North Korea," he added.
The official said that Secretary of State Colin Powell talked about this issue in Mexico City back in November, when the U.S. media first reported that Pakistan had assisted North Korea's nuclear program.
"Secretary Powell said at that time that he had had very specific conversations with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf in recent months in which President Musharraf assured us that Pakistan was not participating in any activity of that nature," the official said.
In Islamabad, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs said that all such allegations were baseless and said that neither Khan nor any Pakistani scientist had offered "nuclear or nuclear related technology to any country in the world."
Last year, President Pervez Musharraf abruptly removed Khan as head of Pakistan's nuclear program, causing speculations that it was done under U.S. pressure because Washington was getting uncomfortable with Khan's activities.
Khan also has shrugged off the charges. "I built a weapon of peace, which seems hard to understand until you realize Pakistan's nuclear capability is a deterrent to aggressors. There has not been a war in the last 30 years, and I don't expect one in the future. The stakes are too high," he said.
Despite these denials, recent media reports blamed Khan also for helping Iran and Iraq.
In 1986, Pakistan and Iran signed a nuclear cooperation agreement after Khan visited Bushehr, a nuclear power plant that Teheran is building with Russian help.
The reports say that Khan's name also appeared in a letter offering to 'manufacture a nuclear weapon' for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
--------
Pakistan Army Receives Nuclear - Capable Missiles
January 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-pakistan.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's army Wednesday received domestically produced medium-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, a military statement said.
The announcement came hours after nuclear-capable India, the neighbor with whom Pakistan has fought three wars, said it was preparing to test a range of missiles over the next few days.
Jane's Strategic Weapons System in London estimates India has 100 to 150 warheads and Pakistan 25 to 50.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf attended the handover ceremony for the Hatf V Ghauri missiles.
He said Pakistan paid dearly for developing the missiles, an apparent reference to international economic sanctions imposed following nuclear tests in 1998.
The Ghauri 1 has a range of 940 miles while the more advanced Ghauri 2 has a range of 1,440 miles. The statement did not say which version was handed over to the army, or whether both were.
``Its sole purpose was deterrence of aggression and defense of our sovereignty,'' Musharraf added.
Pakistan has not ruled out first use of nuclear weapons, saying it would launch a nuclear strike if its territorial integrity was threatened.
In India, an official said preparations had been made to test an Agni 1 missile, with a range of 370 to 500 miles, from a launch pad in the Bay of Bengal.
India's surface-to-surface Agni, named for the Sanskrit word for fire, is a key element in its nuclear self-defense strategy against nuclear-armed neighbors China and Pakistan.
Arch-rivals Pakistan and India exchanged tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May, 1998, and have conducted numerous tests on missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
The neighbors have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 and came to the brink of a fourth last year.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
Spent Nuclear Fuel Moved From Near River
January 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Cleanup.html
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Workers have finished removing more than 2 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel from a Cold War-era storage pool on the Hanford nuclear reservation, officials said Wednesday.
The highly radioactive waste had been stored 400 yards from the Columbia River in indoor pools that were built in the 1950s and designed to last 20 years.
The fuel will be stored in a dry vault in central Hanford 15 miles away before eventually being shipped to the nation's high-level nuclear waste storage site in Nevada.
``An incredible amount of radioactivity and waste has been moved away from the Columbia River and is now in safe, dry storage,'' said Larry Gadbois, project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency.
The cleanup contractor, Fluor Hanford, now is removing fuel stored in a second basin closer to the Columbia River that has leaked twice since the 1980s.
The irradiated uranium fuel in the basins represents about 80 percent of the nation's remaining inventory of spent nuclear fuel. Most of the fuel rods came from Hanford's N Reactor, which made plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
The work on both basins is on schedule to be completed by a July 2004 deadline, said Dave Van Leuven, a Fluor Hanford vice president.
Fluor Hanford has been removing the fuel since December 2000. The company will lose about $400,000 of its $1.6 million payment for cleaning up the first basin because it missed a Dec. 31 deadline, Van Leuven said.
-------- us politics
'Talks' with N. Korea won't be 'negotiations'
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030108-132803.htm
The United States yesterday discussed with close Asian allies South Korea and Japan its decision to resume dialogue with North Korea on abandoning its nuclear weapons pursuits.
"The United States is willing to talk to North Korea about how it will meet its obligations to the international community," said a joint statement released after a meeting at the State Department.
"However, the United States will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up to its existing obligations."
The shift in the U.S. approach - from diplomatic isolation to dialogue - to the latest nuclear standoff with North Korea was signaled by President Bush on Monday.
A casual remark from him, made publicly after his first Cabinet meeting of the year but reported prominently only by The Washington Times, was the first indication of the administration's softening stance on the issue.
"We'll have dialogue. We've had dialogue with North Korea," Mr. Bush said, citing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's meeting in July with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun during a regional conference in Brunei.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday that Washington was making an "unconditional offer to talk to North Korea about how it can meet its international obligations."
He insisted that "talks" and "dialogue" do not mean "negotiations," adding that all Washington is hoping for before any talks begin is for the North Koreans to "indicate that they are willing to abandon" nuclear pursuits.
Wendy Sherman, North Korea policy coordinator in the Clinton administration, said the statement yesterday was "positive" and that it was a "very artful way to say we'll talk about what they need to do. But when you sit down to talk, North Korea will also have something to say."
Since Pyongyang admitted in early October to having secretly developed a uranium-enrichment program in violation of a 1994 nuclear deal with Washington, the Bush administration had been saying there could be no dialogue until that program is completely and verifiably dismantled. The administration also had rejected the need for talks to detail U.S. expectations to the North Koreans, arguing that they know exactly what they had to do.
Mr. Boucher, however, said that "talking to them about how they can do it might be useful."
Late last week, U.S. officials conceded in private conversations that it was becoming clear Washington would have to agree to a meeting with the North Koreans sooner or later if the situation is to be resolved peacefully.
A senior State Department official said yesterday that the text about Washington's willingness to talk to the North was not a last-minute decision but was put in the joint statement over the weekend.
"We wanted to put the ball firmly in North Korea's court, because this is not a problem between North Korea and the United States, but between North Korea and the world," he said.
However, hours before the U.S. announcement, North Korea ratcheted up its rhetoric, with the official Korean Central News Agency demanding that the United States open talks and saying that economic "sanctions mean a war, and the war knows no mercy." Tens of thousands of North Koreans rallied in a snow-covered plaza in Pyongyang, calling for a stronger military.
"We have made clear we are not asking for economic sanctions," Mr. Boucher said.
The issue of sanctions resurfaced on Monday, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, gave North Korea a last chance to readmit weapons inspectors expelled from the Yongbyon nuclear complex last week and to restore monitoring equipment that had been dismantled.
"If they continue their policy of defiance, the board will be bound to refer the matter to the Security Council. And then all options are open to the council under its charter, including economic sanctions and the use of other means. But I hope it will not come to that," said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.
North Korea says it had to reopen Yongbyon because the United States suspended shipment of 500 metric tons of heavy fuel oil. Washington agreed to the shipments in 1994 in exchange for the plant shutdown.
At the tripartite meeting yesterday, the U.S. delegation was headed by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. The top South Korean official was Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik, and Japan was represented by Mitoji Yabunaka, head of the Foreign Ministry's Bureau of Asian and Oceanic Affairs.
After the meeting, the three delegations briefed diplomats from Europe, Russia, China, Canada and Australia on their discussions.
Officials in Seoul indicated last week that they had a proposal under which Washington would give North Korea formal security assurances and, in return, the North would dismantle its nuclear programs. But there was no mention of such ideas in the joint statement.
The diplomacy between the United States and its Asian allies and other regional powers is set to intensify in the next few weeks. Yim Sung-joon, a foreign policy aide to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, arrived in Washington yesterday for talks with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Mr. Kelly.
Next week, Mr. Kelly will visit South Korea, Japan and China on a trip initially scheduled for later this week. On Jan. 18, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, also leaves for the region.
The United States is expected to notify North Korea of its dialogue offer through Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations. On Monday, three leading Democratic senators sent a letter to Miss Rice, criticizing the administration's North Korea policy as "erratic" and asking her to "come brief the Senate as early as is practical this week."
"One day, administration officials indicate North Korea's actions are a major and urgent threat; the next day we are told the administration does not consider the Korean situation a crisis," said the letter, signed by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan.
-------- MILITARY
-------- asia
Indonesia Opposes Military Action in Iraq
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/08CND_INDO.html
JAKARTA, Jan. 8 - Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, is opposed to military action to topple the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, the foreign minister said today.
The minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said that "regime change" through military intervention "would be difficult to accept."
Instead, he said that Indonesia supported "every effort on the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction through the United Nations Security Council."
Indonesian government officials, preoccupied by the aftermath of the Bali attack and the threat of terrorism at home, have said little about Iraq. Western diplomats said there was no expectation that Indonesia would support intervention against Iraq.
The hope, said one diplomat, was to persuade the government to keep its statements on Iraq as moderate as possible.
The minister's comments, made as part of a presentation to the media on Indonesia's foreign policy in the last year, were fairly low key, and stressed the importance of the United Nations.
But they appeared to reflect an unease among some Indonesian officials at the prospect of widespread anti-American protests in the event of a war against Iraq.
The minister for political and security affairs, Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has warned publicly that a United States-led war against Iraq would spark anti-American demonstrations.
During the American strikes against Afghanistan in 2001, the United States embassy became the scene of large scale demonstrations over a period of more than three weeks. At that time, a number of leaders made scathing statements about the United States.
A war against Iraq could serve to embolden Islamic militants who have been on the defensive since the round up of more than a dozen suspects in the Bali bombing, several officials said.
An American expert on Indonesian Islam, Dr. Robin Bush, told the American Chamber of Commerce this week that foreign businesses should be prepared for protests if war started.
"Be prepared for the fact it will be messy," said Dr. Bush, who heads the Islam and civil society program at the Asia Foundation. "How bad it will be will depend on the level of international consensus" for the war, she said.
Western diplomats said that the level of unrest in Indonesia would depend on a number of variables including the extent of Iraqi civilian casualties and the reaction of the Iraqi population to the war.
Dr. Bush said that moderate Islamic leaders in Indonesia were concerned that an American-led war against Iraq would "reduce the legitimacy of their pro-democracy work." These leaders had been able to gain some momentum against the militants in the aftermath of Bali, she said. This upper hand could quickly evaporate in the event of war, she added.
The Bush administration ordered all dependents of American diplomats and non-essential American employees at the United States embassy to leave Indonesia soon after the Bali attack.
In several reviews since the evacuation, the State Department has decided that Indonesia remained too insecure for the return of the employees or their dependents, administration officials said. The timing of their return was still under review, they said.
The Indonesian foreign minister said he would question the British foreign minister, Jack Shaw, during a meeting on Thursday in Jakarta, on the evidence for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Shaw is visiting Indonesia as part of a three-country swing through South East Asia. Twenty-six British citizens were killed in the Bali attack.
----
Japan Leasing Disputed Southern Island for U.S.
Reuters
Wed, Jan. 08, 2003
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/4897209.htm
TOKYO - Japan has been leasing one of a chain of disputed islands off its southwestern coast from a private landlord since 1972 to let the U.S. military use it as a practice area, a government official said Wednesday.
Chinese anger was sparked by last week's revelation that the government has been leasing three of the other four tiny islands in the group from a different private landlord since 2002.
"We are renting it to fulfil our obligation to provide it as a facility for the U.S. military," an official at the Defense Facilities Management Agency told Reuters when asked about the lease of Kubashima island. The current lease runs until 2012.
Japan, China and Taiwan claim territorial rights over the five Tokyo-controlled islands, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and as the Diaoyu in China.
Japan claimed the uninhabited islands, located between Taiwan and the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, as war booty after defeating imperial China in 1895. They provide access to rich fishing grounds and possible oil deposits in the area.
The Japanese government considers itself the owner of one island in the group, Taishojima, while the other four are privately held.
It emerged last week that Japan had leased the islands of Kita-kojima, Minami-kojima and Uotsurishima to try to tighten its control over them.
"Leasing the islands doesn't mean we can prevent them being sold, but we would at least be consulted in the process," said Tamotsu Mizutani, an official at the Ministry of Public Management, which handles the lease.
In 1996, Japanese right-wing extremists caused an outcry in China and Taiwan by building a makeshift lighthouse on one of the islands. The issue is one of a range of problems that dog relations between Tokyo and Beijing, including trade disputes and Japan's whitewashing of World War II atrocities.
Tokyo is also involved in a territorial dispute with Moscow over four Russian-held islands off Japan's northern island of Hokkaido that are known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Southern Kuriles.
-------- britain
Britain Calls Up 1,500 Reservists for Possible Action Against Iraq
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/europe/08BRIT.html
LONDON, Jan. 7 - Britain today announced its first mobilization for possible military action against Iraq, calling up 1,500 reservists to join active troops and reinforcing a naval task force earmarked for the Persian Gulf with additional vessels.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon announced the measures in the House of Commons, where there is substantial opposition to an American-led war in Iraq, while Prime Minister Tony Blair told a gathering of the country's senior diplomats that standing by the United States was "massively in our self-interest."
Mr. Blair, President Bush's staunchest international ally, appeared to address considerable public skepticism about a military action in Iraq when he said he would never send British troops into a war that was wrong or unnecessary. However, he noted that "the price of influence is that we do not leave the U.S. to face the tricky issues alone."
Denouncing anti-Americanism as a "foolish indulgence," he told a meeting of British ambassadors, "There are not many countries who wouldn't wish for the same relationship as we have with the U.S. and that includes most of the ones most critical of it in public."
He coupled this, however, with a pledge to use British influence with the Americans to try to "to continue to broaden their agenda," particularly in the Middle East. Active engagement in pursuing an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was essential to winning support for the drive to disarm Saddam Hussein, he said.
"The reason there is opposition over our stance on Iraq has less to do with any love for Saddam, but over a sense of double standards," he said. "The Middle East peace process remains essential to any understanding with the Muslim and Arab world."
Mr. Blair's support for Washington was a reiteration of the conviction he has held since taking office in 1997 - that Britain owes its influence in the world to its partnership with the United States. While the posture may have gained him a hearing in Washington, it has burdened him in Europe with a reputation for being too subservient to America; at home, the prime minister is lampooned as Mr. Bush's "poodle."
In Paris today, President Jacques Chirac told French troops to stand by for possible service and said United Nations resolutions governing arms inspections in Iraq had to be enforced. But he coupled that with a warning to the United States over action that was precipitate or not internationally sanctioned. "The international community should only resort to war as a last resort," he told diplomats. "Reject resolutely the temptation of unilateral action."
Mr. Hoon stressed that the announcement did not mean that war with Iraq was inevitable. On Monday, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that the feeling within the government about the likelihood of war was "60 to 40 against."
Conservatives accused the government of playing down the deployment and disguising the extent of Britain's military commitment because of what Bernard Jenkin, the party's expert on defense matters, called "divisions" within Labor.
The announcement was expected to have been more sweeping. In recent weeks, there have been informed predictions of a call up of up to 7,000 reservists and a dispatch of the first of Britain's anticipated ground force of 20,000 troops.
Mr. Hoon heard directly from opponents in the House today. "There is very little support and a great deal of hostility among our constituents to the possibility of sacrificing a single life of a soldier in the present circumstances," said Paul Flynn, a Labor member from Wales.
"Other countries in Europe are taking an independent line from that taken by the president of America," he said, accusing Britain of assuming the position of "junior partner with the U.S. in this axis of delusion."
Ministry of Defense officials said the British fleet in preparation in the Mediterranean for gulf duty included the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the amphibious ship Ocean, three destroyers, four auxiliary vessels, three landing ships, two minesweepers and a submarine. Two commando units of the Marines will also be deployed, and more announcements like the one today are expected in the coming weeks, Mr. Hoon said.
In another sign of American preparations for possible war with Iraq, the first of more than 1,000 war planners at the United States Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., have left for a command post in Qatar, a spokesman there said today.
Led by Lieut. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior staff moving to the gulf will have the command's headquarters in Qatar functioning by the end of January, American officials said. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the gulf, will go there in February.
The meeting of 150 British ambassadors that Mr. Blair addressed was called to coordinate the country's missions with the new challenges presented by terror, the Foreign Office said.
Mr. Blair appeared adamant about pursuing peace in the Middle East. A spokesman for 10 Downing Street said that the prime minister wrote today to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, urging him to reconsider Israel's decision to bar Palestinian negotiators from attending a meeting with the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations in London on Jan. 14 to discuss reform of the Palestinian Authority. Israel took the action after two suicide bombings in Tel Aviv Sunday killed 22.
The spokesman said Mr. Blair's letter explained the context of the meeting as "aimed specifically at the narrow but important issue" or Palestinian reform.
The issue set off an undiplomatically sharp exchange yesterday between Mr. Straw, the foreign secretary, and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a transcript released by the Israeli Embassy here, Mr. Netanyahu urged Britain to adopt the position of President Bush "that leaders compromised by terror cannot be partners for peace." Mr. Netanyahu then charged, "You in Britain are doing the exact opposite."
Mr. Straw replied, "No, it is Israel that is doing the opposite. Instead of concentrating on dealing with terrorism, it is striking at delegates."
Mr. Blair's spokesman said the government was still preparing for the meeting. On Thursday, the prime minister is meeting with Amram Mitzna, the new leader of Israel's Labor party who advocates direct negotiations with the Palestinians.
----
Cabinet rift over war build-up
By Ben Leapman and Robert Fox,
London Evening Standard
8 January 2003
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/2802855?version=1
The military build-up towards war in Iraq accelerated today with reports that an RAF squadron is to be sent to train in neighbouring Jordan.
Up to 20,000 troops from Army units in Britain and Germany are expected to be mobilised next week. Several units have gone into intensive training.
Shipping sources said the Ministry of Defence is looking at chartering up to 20 cargo ships which could be used to transport the equipment necessary to sustain a force of ground troops in the Gulf region.
But the show of strength against Saddam Hussein was undermined by a Cabinet rift when Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon disputed a claim by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the odds are now stacked 60-40 against war.
The RAF is understood to be sending a squadron-strength mix of about 15 fast jets to train with the Jordanian air force which, significantly, has some of the same Mirage jets used by the Iraqis. Planes reported to be earmarked for the training exercise include Tornados, Jaguars and Harriers. Their presence would double the RAF's strength in the region.
Mr Hoon, who informed MPs yesterday of the mobilisation exercise, was later drawn into an undignified row with Mr Straw over the prospects for war.
The Foreign Secretary said on Monday he believed the chances of war breaking out in Iraq had receded from 60-40 in favour, before Christmas, to 60-40 against. He refused to say why he thought the odds had shifted.
Mr Hoon, asked about the claim, delivered a direct put-down. He said: "I don't believe that it helps to make those kind of comments at this stage. Clearly, if the assessment were even very low that military action were required, I would still have the responsibility of ensuring that we could fulfil those requirements should they be necessary."
Army units in Germany are expected to be mobilised next Wednesday. Tank, artillery and armoured infantry units of the 7th Armoured Brigade and the 1st UK Division based at Hohne will be told to embark at Hamburg and Bremen by 20 January.
The light armoured division will be reinforced by units from the 4th Armoured Brigade in Germany and 19 Brigade based at Catterick in Yorkshire. Units of the 16 Air Assault Brigade, including a battalion from the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Irish Regiment have been doing live firing exercise. 16 Air Assault is the leading rapid deployment force - capable of use on special missions at 48 hours' notice.
Command of the brigade has just been assumed by Brigadier Jacko Page, who has enormous experience in special operations.
It is thought that British air assault forces could combine with French Foreign Legion Parachute forces to seize the western Iraqi desert, possibly from Jordan, to stop Iraqi using it to launch Scud missile attacks on Israel. They could also help the Kurdish militias move on Baghdad from the north.
The British armoured division could also combine with French, Australian and other Nato troops to act independently on the flank of any US armoured corps, expected to comprise at least four large divisions.
Mr Hoon is also expected to call up more Territorial Army reserves for active duty in the Gulf. The amphibious force sailing this coming weekend comprises three carriers - Ark Royal, Ocean and the RFA helicopter ship Argus.
-------- iraq
IMPACT U.N.
Study Sees 500,000 Iraqis Facing Injury in Case of War
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/middleeast/08IMPA.html
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 7 - As many as 500,000 people in Iraq could suffer injuries and require medical treatment if the United States and its allies launch a war there, according to a confidential United Nations contingency planning report made public today.
The document, called "Likely Humanitarian Scenarios," was posted on a Web site by a British group, Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq, which opposes war against Baghdad. The group did not explain how it had obtained the document.
United Nations planners paint a dire picture of Iraq after extensive bombing by allied forces and ground fighting with Iraqi troops. The large casualty estimate is based on this scenario, which would involve far greater loss of life than the narrow bombing campaign conducted in the American-led Persian Gulf war in 1991.
"It is also likely that in the early stages there will be a large segment of the population requiring treatment for traumatic injuries, either directly conflict-induced or from the resulting devastation," the report says, warning that half a million people "could require treatment to a greater or lesser degree as a result of direct or indirect injuries."
The report also estimates that about three million people across the country will face "dire" malnutrition and require "therapeutic feeding." It paints a picture of a crippled nation with its roads, bridges, railroads shattered, its electricity grid badly damaged and its oil industry battered and paralyzed.
The report warns that "the outbreak of diseases in epidemic if not pandemic proportions is very likely," citing the risk of cholera and dysentery.
United Nations officials declined to identify which agency of the organization had produced the report. But a spokeswoman noted that it was common for the United Nations to make assessments in advance of the human needs that might arise in war crises where it will be involved.
"Any well-run organization has to be prepared for disasters that may occur while hoping they do not," said the spokeswoman, Hua Jiang. She added that the world organization "hopes there will be full compliance with Security Council resolutions and consequently no new crisis."
The report predicts that the warfare will be much more damaging to the civilian population than it was in the gulf war of 1991, evolving beyond a bombing campaign with narrow targets to "potentially a large-scale and protracted ground offensive." Infrastructure could be damaged by allied bombing or "the withdrawing government forces," the document says.
As many as 900,000 refugees could require food and shelter from the United Nations and other relief groups, the report warns. It also foresees the need to set up transit camps near the Iraqi border for as many as 500,000 people. The document warns that injuries from land mines could increase dramatically.
It notes that the civilian population in Iraq is much more dependent on handouts from the government than in 1991, before severe economic sanctions had made a deep impact.
The report assumes that international relief agencies will be forced to carry a much greater burden to care for the population if President Saddam Hussein's regime is attacked and stops its services.
The United Nations runs Iraq's oil-for-food program, which uses revenue from Iraqi oil sales to buy food and medicine for the civilian population. In view of the large numbers of civilians who could be caught up in a war to topple Mr. Hussein's government and need help from the United Nations, aid officials here started planning several months ago for a possible conflict.
-------- mideast
Libya, Syria, possibly Sudan also seek WMD, CIA warns
Agence France-Presse
Washington, January 8, 3003
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_133997,0005.htm
As the United States is consumed with proliferation crises in Iraq and North Korea, other counties such as Libya, Syria and possibly Sudan are quietly trying to acquire or expand secret arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, the CIA has warned.
The US Central Intelligence Agency has also concluded that suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States, "has a more sophisticated biological weapons research programme than previously discovered."
"Nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missile-applicable technology and expertise continues to gradually disperse worldwide," the agency said in a report submitted to Congress last month and made public on Tuesday.
The document, which contains a broad overview of the most pressing proliferation concerns in the second half of 2001, also points out that nuclear technologies have spread so much "that from a technical standpoint, additional proliferators may be able to produce sufficient fissile material for a weapon and to develop the capability to weaponize it."
The assessment comes as the administration of President George W. Bush is threatening war on Iraq if it refuses to give up its suspected chemical and biological weapons, as well as its clandestine nuclear arms program.
Washington is also demanding that North Korea, already suspected of having one or two nuclear warheads, abandon its drive to expand its arsenal.
But while detailing the usual suspects' efforts to boost their arsenal of destructive arms, the CIA indicates that other nations from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism are involved in similar activities.
One of them is Libya, which, according the report, continues to develop its nuclear infrastructure.
Syria is suspected of trying to acquire precursor materials and know-how for a chemical weapons programme, the CIA pointed out.
And, the agency said the East African nation of Sudan "has been developing the capability to produce chemical weapons for many years" and "may be interested in a BW (biological weapons) programme as well."
----
Heavy equipment moved to gulf
Image: U.S. military trucks prepared to ship to gulf
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
http://www.msnbc.com/news/852248.asp?pne=msntv&cp1=1
A soldier of the U.S. Army 94th Engineer Combat Battalion checks trucks after they were loaded on a train at the Rose Barracks in Vilseck, Germany, on Thursday. The trucks and other equipment are headed for the Persian Gulf region.
Jan. 8 2002 -- As thousands more U.S. troops take up their positions in the region, Saddam Hussein is shaking up his inner circle. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
Jan. 9 - U.S. preparations for a possible war with Iraq took a new turn on Thursday as Europe-based American troops joined the deployment by shipping heavy equipment to Kuwait. The top U.S. war planner briefed President Bush on a buildup that includes the deployment of Air Force B-1 bombers this week and plans to send hundreds more warplanes. Tens of thousands of Army, Navy and Marine troops will be dispatched over the next few weeks in a surge that will more than double the 65,000 U.S. military personnel now in the region.
IN GERMANY Thursday, more than 500 camouflaged Army tractors, bulldozers, trucks and other heavy vehicles needed to build camps, roads and other facilities were loaded onto 250 flatbed railcars in the eastern Bavarian town of Vilseck, where the U.S. Army has a base.
Some 700 troops from the 94th Engineer Combat Battalion will join the equipment in Kuwait over the next few weeks. The engineers are the first U.S. troops to head for the gulf from among the 70,000 based in Germany.
U.S. military officials in Germany expect many more troops to receive their marching orders in coming weeks. Two divisions with more than 10,000 soldiers based in Germany took part in Desert Storm in 1991, the U.S.-led attack that forced Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait.
PLANNERS HEAD TO QATAR
Back in the United States, defense officials said this week that the U.S. Central Command, which would run any military operation, was moving senior war planners from headquarters in Tampa, Fla., to a base in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.
"The bulk of those that would need to be in place to make the [Qatar] headquarters operational will be there by the end of the month," a U.S. defense official said Wednesday as Army Gen. Tommy Franks briefed President Bush on war preparations. "I'm not telling you it will be operational."
Franks, who heads the U.S. Central Command, is not relocating to Qatar, officials said, but he is expected to travel extensively in the region in the coming weeks.
At the White House, an administration official would not provide details of Franks' briefing, saying only that it was "an update on deployment activities."
Earlier Wednesday, several B-1 bombers left Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., as ground crew loaded cargo planes through the night. About 500 Ellsworth troops and 450 tons of cargo are also heading out. Puzzle over Iraqi minister's ouster
NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski reported that the B-1 bombers were headed for the Persian Gulf area. Capable of flying high over and deep into Iraq, each of the $300 million bombers can carry two dozen large bombs on a single mission. B-1s were used regularly during the war in Afghanistan to pound al-Qaida and Taliban positions while remaining out of striking range of ground fire.
NBC News has learned that eight to 10 B-1 bombers would probably be stationed in Oman, where the United States has been given access to two air bases. Oman has been reluctant to endorse a war against Iraq, but it is a longtime U.S. ally, allowing U.S. war supplies to be stored there since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Thousands more Army troops from Fort Benning, Ga., have also been deploying this week. About 350 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division left Tuesday for training exercises in Kuwait. The base is expected to see four daily deployments over the next few weeks as 11,000 troops ship out, joining 4,800 other division troops already in Kuwait.
WAR GAME AT QATAR BASE
U.S. officials have described the moves not as a sign that war is inevitable but as a necessary step to prepare the military in case Bush gives the go-ahead.
Jim Wilkinson, a Central Command spokesman, on Tuesday confirmed the decision to send staff to a Qatar base known as Camp As Sayliyah, but he declined to provide details on when they would arrive or in what numbers.
Last month, Franks oversaw an extensive computer-based exercise at As Sayliyah that many viewed as a tune-up for a war against Iraq. Franks said the exercise verified technologies that would enable him to coordinate with air, ground and naval commanders in the region.
Franks and his battle staff returned to their permanent headquarters in Tampa, Fla., before Christmas.
Later this month, most of the same battle staff will be back at As Sayliyah, a desert encampment with newly designed command posts hidden inside enormous warehouses near the Qatari capital, Doha.
In the December exercise, about 1,000 battle planners participated. Wilkinson would not say how many would be returning this month, but other officials said the number likely would be about the same as that of the December group.
If there is war, Franks would run it from As Sayliyah, but he is not returning immediately, officials said.
JAN. 27 REPORT
The transfer of battle staff comes amid a steady buildup of U.S. troops in the region.
The Army said Monday that it had alerted more than 10,000 reservists to prepare for active duty as early as this week to support a U.S. military buildup near Iraq. The reserve and National Guard soldiers, including engineers and intelligence specialists, were told in recent days that they could be rapidly deployed between Jan. 10 and late February.
Defense sources said no decision on whether the United States would go to war with Iraq would be made before Jan. 27, when U.N. weapons chief Hans Blix must report to the Security Council on the progress of U.N. inspectors who have been in Iraq since late November searching for evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Latest on Iraq crisis
DEPLOYING UNITS
The ground forces ordered to deploy so far are far short of the more than 250,000 U.S. troops sent to the region for the 1991 Gulf War. But defense sources told NBC News that 200,000 U.S. troops could surround Iraq by mid-February.
In addition, the Navy has been ordered to prepare two aircraft carrier battle groups and two amphibious assault groups to be ready to head to the region sometime in January.
• Iraq: Order of the battle
Orders are also expected soon to deploy:
- Marines at Camp Pendleton, Calif., who are part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which already has its headquarters in Kuwait. The exact number was not disclosed.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Jim Jones said Wednesday that between 65,000 and 75,000 Marines would deploy to the gulf region if war breaks out. Most would come from Camp Pendleton, but others would come from Camp Lejeune's II Marine Expeditionary Force.
- F15E Strike Eagles from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., and F-15C fighter jets from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
- Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft from Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. The four-engine aircraft can circle far from target areas and provide targeting intelligence for attack aircraft.
- Unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft and their controllers from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. The small aircraft can also carry missiles to attack ground targets.
AIRCRAFT TYPES, DESTINATIONS
Defense officials told NBC News that U.S. aircraft will be based in various countries throughout the gulf region and on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Plans call for hundreds of aircraft to deploy, others include F117 stealth fighters, B52 bombers, more F15s, F16s, tankers and cargo aircraft. At least two hangars have been erected on Diego Garcia, a British territory, to house B2 stealth bombers should some be sent there.
Officials expect both the F15E Strike Eagles and the F117s to be based in Qatar and B52s on Diego Garcia.
Kuwait will likely host strike aircraft and Predator drones, as it does now, and Saudi Arabia will continue to house the "non-offensive" aircraft such as reconnaissance planes.
-------- peru
Peru's President Gains Anti - Terror Powers
January 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Peru-Terror.html
LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Peru's Congress granted President Alejandro Toledo special powers Wednesday to create new anti-terrorism laws, days after a court struck down tough decrees passed in the early 1990s to fight rebel insurgencies.
Toledo asked for the powers in a national address Tuesday night aimed at assuring Peruvians that imprisoned rebels would not be freed.
``No terrorist will go free to shed blood again, no one linked to death will go free to sing victory in the streets,'' Toledo said.
Peru's constitutional court on Friday overturned some laws used by former President Alberto Fujimori to imprison hundreds of leftist rebels, including top leaders.
The measures included the use of secret military courts with masked judges and harsh sentences for terrorists and collaborators. The courts were initially popular with Peruvians tired of 10 years of bloody civil war, but were criticized internationally for not allowing defendants a fair trial.
Also on Wednesday, the group that filed the petition leading to the constitutional court's decision said it will appeal the ruling to an international court, saying it doesn't go far enough.
The group of more than 5,000 people, mostly relatives of people jailed on terrorism charges, will take their appeal to the legal arm of the Organization of American States, lawyer Manuel Fajardo told reporters.
``The decision is invalid. It may appear very democratic up front, but it is being manipulated from behind,'' he said.
The court ruling could open the way for new trials for 900 people, including Shining Path rebel founder Abimael Guzman. Nearly 2,000 people are imprisoned on terrorism charges.
Some 30,000 people died in rebel violence between 1980 and the early 1990s, including guerrillas, police, soldiers and civilians.
Violence dropped off after the anti-terrorism measures were adopted and the 1992 capture of Guzman, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole by a military court.
-------- us
U.S. War Staff Assembles in Persian Gulf
Wednesday January 8, 2003
AP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2304990,00.html
WASHINGTON - War may not be at Iraq's doorstep yet, but American war planners soon will be.
Amid an accelerating flow of U.S. troops and weapons to the Persian Gulf region, the battle staff that would run a military campaign against Iraq is beginning to assemble at a command post in the central Gulf.
Battle planners from Central Command are heading from their permanent headquarters in Tampa, Fla., to Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar to be in position to carry out any attack order from President Bush, senior officials said Tuesday.
The officials stressed that the move to Qatar does not mean war is imminent or inevitable. But it is an important step in the assembling of troops, weapons, supplies and technology needed to carry out an invasion.
The same Central Command planners were at the command post last month for a weeklong exercise before returning to their headquarters in Florida, but this time it is not an exercise.
A senior official who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity said the movement of Central Command battle planners, which began this week, is part of an accelerating buildup of forces in the Gulf region. Tens of thousands more combat forces are scheduled to flow into the region over the next few weeks.
Among the forces expected to deploy from U.S. bases in the next several days are F-15E and F-15C fighters and B-1B bombers.
Also headed to the Persian Gulf is the Army's mobile biological weapons testing laboratory. The Maryland-based lab, which helps tests samples to confirm whether a biological attack has taken place, probably will be based with headquarters units in the region, said Col. Erik Henchal, the Army's top biological defense expert.
Amid the force buildup, U.S. warplanes continued to strike at Iraqi air defenses in the southern part of the country. On Wednesday they targeted air defense communication sites between the cities of Al Kut and An Nasiriyah. Central Command said the airstrikes were executed after Iraqi air defense forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at U.S. planes patrolling the southern ``no fly'' zone and Iraqi military aircraft entered the zone.
On Monday U.S. planes targeted two Iraqi military radars near the city of Al Amarah, south of Al Kut on the Tigris River. Iraqi officials said Wednesday that two people were killed and 13 were injured in Monday's attacks.
Jim Wilkinson, the Central Command director of strategic communications, confirmed the decision to send the battle planners to Qatar, but declined to provide details on when they would arrive or when the command post would be ready to kick off a war.
``Central Command continues to cycle personnel into and out of the region,'' Wilkinson said. ``We refuse to discuss deployments in advance. However, you can expect to see continuing deployments to Qatar and elsewhere in support of ongoing diplomatic activities.''
Other officials said the command post at As Sayliyah will be operational before the end of the month.
In December, the commander of Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, oversaw an extensive computer-based exercise at As Sayliyah that many viewed as a tune-up for a war against Iraq. Franks said the exercise verified technologies that would enable him to coordinate with air, ground and naval commanders in the region.
Franks and his battle staff returned to their headquarters in Tampa before Christmas.
In the next several days, most of the same battle staff will be back at As Sayliyah, a desert encampment with newly designed command posts hidden inside enormous warehouses near the capital of Doha.
In the December exercise, about 1,000 battle planners participated. Wilkinson would not say how many will be returning this month, but other officials said it probably would be about the same as the December group.
If there is war, Franks would run it from As Sayliyah, but he is not returning immediately with his battle staff, officials said.
The senior officer at As Sayliyah in coming days will be Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, a deputy commander of Central Command. The other deputy commander, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Mike DeLong, is at the Tampa headquarters.
Although the officers at As Sayliyah would command the overall war, the air portion of the campaign would be run from a facility at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have not publicly confirmed that they would permit use of the facility for war against Iraq, and there have been questions about the degree of Saudi government support for the Bush administration's policy of overthrowing the Iraqi regime.
In a sign of closer U.S.-Saudi military cooperation in the war on terrorism, a U.S. official said Tuesday that the Saudis for the first time have assigned a military representative to Central Command headquarters in Tampa. Forty-three other countries have representatives there; most arrived shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Saudi decision is unrelated to the prospect of war against Iraq, officials said.
Franks is in Washington this week for consultations with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Bush on the Iraq situation and other matters.
On the Net: Central Command: http://www.centcom.mil
----
U.S. Moves Toward Final Readiness for War With Iraq
January 8, 2003
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/middleeast/08CND_IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - In an important move toward final readiness for a possible war with Iraq, the American battle staff that would manage a military campaign has begun to move from Florida to a command post in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, officials said today.
In Baghdad, a top official said the United States and Britain were preparing a "devastating" attack intended to destroy Baghdad and reach beyond Iraq. This was happening, the official, Deputy Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, said, even as the Iraqis were fully cooperating with United Nations weapons inspectors.
Mr. Aziz's comments came as the European Union announced diplomatic moves it was taking to try to avert a war in Iraq. The European Union, a spokesman said, will send a mediating mission to seven Arab countries early next month to urge them to press Iraq to cooperate with the United Nations.
It was unclear whether such a mission could come in time to head off any American-led attack. If war comes, it is considered most likely to begin in the weeks after a crucial Security Council briefing on Jan. 27 by United Nations arms inspectors on Iraqi compliance with United Nations demands.
Battle planners from the Central Command, which oversees United States military operations in the Mideast and South Asia, began moving this week from their headquarters in Tampa, Fla., to a camp in Qatar to prepare for any order to attack from President Bush.
Pentagon officials said that the shift of battle managers to Qatar did not mean that war was inevitable. They portrayed it as part of an accelerating force buildup intended to move to the gulf region tens of thousands more combat forces, along with additional F-15 fighter jets, B-1B bombers and other matériel.
The American war planners conducted a weeklong exercise at the Qatar post last month before returning to Florida. General Tommy R. Franks, who heads the Central Command, oversaw the exercise.
A Central Command spokesman, Jim Wilkinson, would not say when the battle planners would be ready for a possible war, The Associated Press reported from Washington. He described the deployments as being in support of continuing diplomatic activities.
As the military preparations continued, Greece, which recently assumed the European Union's rotating presidency, said it would send Foreign Minister George Papandreou to visit Arab states, including Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and to meet with Palestinian and Israeli officials.
"All hope for a peaceful settlement of the Iraq issue has not been exhausted," a Greek Foreign Ministry official said. "The E.U. will encourage peace initiatives up until the last minute."
And in Manila, Foreign Secretary Blas Ople said today that Arab countries were urging President Saddam Hussein to leave the country, an outcome that the United States has suggested may avert war. Mr. Ople said Arab diplomats in Manila had told him that Mr. Hussein would be urged to seek asylum in Libya.
In Moscow, the Iraqi ambassador, Abbas Khalaf, dismissed the report of a plan for Mr. Hussein's exile as "completely absurd," Agence France-Presse reported. Separately, a Libyan official denied that any asylum offer had been made.
All sides have been saying that a diplomatic outcome remains possible, even as the reality of huge military preparations continues to grow.
It was not clear whether Greece, in announcing the European initiative, had information indicating that a February peace-seeking mission would not be too late.
The focal point of timing in most war scenarios is the Jan. 27 Security Council meeting at which the top United Nations inspectors are to report both on Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration, submitted on Dec. 7, and on its cooperation with arms inspectors. Following that report, the United States and Britain may ask the council to support military action. Washington has said it will act alone, if need be.
Arms inspectors are to present an interim report to the council on Thursday.
Baghdad has denied that it has any of the biological, chemical or nuclear weapons programs banned by United Nations resolutions. The United States rejects that assertion and has said the Iraqi report is so flawed and incomplete as to constitute a material breach of United Nations requirements, meaning it could justify war.
Iraq asserts that it is cooperating with United Nations inspections, and the United Nations has generally confirmed that. But recently, as the military buildup has accelerated, Baghdad has sharpened its tone. This week, Mr. Hussein accused inspectors of spying and collecting military information that exceeds the needs of their mission. The inspectors rejected the accusations.
In Iraq on Wednesday, the inspectors accelerated the already intense pace of their work, searching at least eight sites.
An important gap in military planning remains the reported trepidations of Turkey, under a new Islamic government, to permit the use of its bases for an attack on Iraq. The British government has dispatched Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon to Ankara to enlist Turkey's cooperation, Agence France-Presse reported.
In Iraq, warplanes from the United States-British coalition attacked three Iraqi air defense sites today in the southern no-flight zone, the Central Command said, in the second such attack this week. Officials said the planes used precision-guided weapons against targets near the southern towns of Al Kut, Basra and An Nasiriyah after Iraqi units fired at air patrols and Iraqi jets entered the no-flight zone.
In a move that appeared partly to address one American demand on Iraq - that it return any soldiers missing in action after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 - Iraqi and Kuwaiti officials met in Jordan today for the first time in four years to discuss the issue. The parties agreed to hold further talks in two weeks, Agence France-Presse reported. Saudi Arabia also took part.
Kuwait has charged that Iraq is holding 605 people, most of them Kuwaitis. Baghdad has rejected the accusation while seeking information on more than 1,000 of its nationals who are still missing.
--------
Jump in Elite Forces' Budget Foreseen
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/08FORC.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - The budget for the United States Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla., could grow by as much as $1 billion over its current allotment of $4.9 billion, officials said today.
The money would provide for more troops and weapons for Special Operations forces to expand their role in the campaign against terrorists, even as they shed some traditional missions, including combat search-and-rescue and counter-drug operations, officials said.
One core mission of Army Special Forces, the training of foreign armies, will not be eliminated but may be refocused, officials said, because those efforts have built important alliances in the past.
"The global nature of the war, the nature of the enemy and the need for fast, efficient operations in hunting down and rooting out terrorist networks around the world have all contributed to the need for an expanded role for the Special Operations forces," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.
While President Bush has not yet approved his fiscal 2004 budget plan, to be presented to Congress next month, Pentagon officials said they hope to increase the size of the Special Operations forces to about 51,000 troops from the current 47,000.
The Special Operations Command would plan and execute its own military operations, and be able to call on other units for support. That change would be a departure from its historic role of providing elite forces to support missions under the control of regional commanders. Under the new framework, Special Operations headquarters around the world "would have access to Marine units in the region, air units, naval units, Army units and so forth," a senior Defense Department official said.
Mr. Rumsfeld has been pushing to expand the role of Navy SEALs, Army Delta Force teams and other Special Operations units. New missions would include sending them worldwide to capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders, officials said.
-------- propaganda wars
Becoming Media-Wise: A Lesson In U.S. Propaganda
by Mark Crispin Miller
January 8, 2003
Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/media_miller_jan03.html
As we sit and wait for another war against Iraq, we should remember all the winning lies of Operation Desert Storm. The Gulf War was itself a propaganda masterpiece-not by the Iraqis, but by the US. Last week, a once-notorious Iraqi site made news again. Seeking evidence of biological weapons production, United Nations arms inspectors swooped into the closed industrial facility at Abu Ghreib, outside Baghdad-the same plant that U.S. forces bombed on Jan. 23, 1991.
The Iraqis claimed in '91 that the site was a baby milk factory and nothing more, a charge reported by Peter Arnett on CNN and then denied by the U.S. government. "Numerous sources have indicated that [the factory] is associated with biological warfare production," an Air Force spokesman said at the time, a few hours after the bombing. "It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are sure," repeated Colin Powell later that same day. "That factory is, in fact, a production facility for biological weapons," repeated White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. "The Iraqis have hidden this facility behind a façade of baby-milk production as a form of disinformation."
Baby Milk or Lethal Virus?
The U.S. claim seemed credible, especially because of the crude way in which Iraq had made its case. Arnett's report included shots of a tall red-lettered sign-"Baby Milk Plant"-in Arabic and English, posted at the ruined factory's entrance. That makeshift piece of work was not convincing. CNN's coverage also included shots of an Iraqi technician in the factory, dressed in a lab coat with the legend, "Baby Milk Plant Iraq," stitched in English on the back.
Despite such comic hints of fraudulence and denials issued by Washington, Arnett stood firm. He had toured the factory in August (for a story on Iraq's response to the international sanctions), and again just after it was bombed. "Whatever else it did, it did produce infant formula," Arnett said at the time. Although the Pentagon had cast the factory as a veritable fortress, with "military guards around it, [a] barbed wire fence, a military garrison outside," Arnett saw only one guard at the gate and a lot of powdered baby milk. "That's as much as I could tell you about it," he added carefully. "It looked innocent enough from what we could see."
For his account, the journalist was accused of treason by the White House. "Everything that Peter Arnett reports is approved by, censored by and reviewed-on the spot-by the Iraqi government," Fitzwater exploded the next day. "This is not a case of taking on the media. It's a case of correcting a public disclosure [sic] that is erroneous, that is false, that hurts our government, and that plays into the hands of Saddam Hussein."
Such repudiation from on high-and those shots of the suspicious sign and lab coat-appeared to settle the matter. The major media outlets unanimously jeered what Newsweek called Iraq's "ham-handed attempt to depict a bombed-out biological-weapons plant near Baghdad as a baby-formula factory." So pervasive was the merriment at the Iraqis' "little sham of baby milk" (as Time put it) that the phrase "baby milk factory" at once became expressive of the enemy's complete dishonesty.
The theme of Iraqi falseness quickly reemerged after the UN team revisited the site last week. "They are engaging in disinformation, propaganda," said one commentator on the Fox News Channel. "If you remember during the Gulf War, the Iraqis put out the sign that said 'Baby Milk Factory,' when we-the United States, the Pentagon-said, 'No, it was a military installation.'"
Disinformation Trumps Facts
Although it sounded credible enough in 1991, the U.S. claim was weak-although you wouldn't know it from the TV coverage. After the bombing, Michel Wery, the plant's contractor, told the French daily Liberation that the factory was making baby milk when it first started up in 1979, and that its equipment was not built to breed or package viruses. In early February, he reconfirmed his story for the Washington Post, which also quoted two dairy technicians from New Zealand, Malcolm Seamark and Kevin Lowe, who had been inside the plant at least four times, to help another French crew make repairs. Both men corroborated Arnett's story.
"It was all typical dairy plant equipment," Seamark noted, and the two confirmed that the plant was "actually canning milk powder" during their last visit in May of 1990.
In response, three unnamed US government sources reconfirmed the U.S. line-albeit incoherently, as their stories disagreed. A White House official claimed that the plant had been converted in the fall of 1990. A second source held that the site was built for bio-weapons from the start-but only as a "back-up" facility, which was inoperative when it was bombed. The third source said that it was not a bio-weapons factory per se, but made items crucial to such work.
But even as they contradicted one another, all three claimed the benefit of inside information. "There is no question in our mind that we were going after a military target," said one. "I can't say why. We have a lot of intelligence. We had people [in Baghdad] until January of 1991."
Whatever those officials knew, the fact is that the US also had "people in Baghdad" after that January-and one of them, months later, provided information that corroborated the accounts of Arnett, Wery, Lowe and Seamark.
In a confidential memo drafted in December 1992 (and released later under the Freedom of Information Act), a State Department employee in Amman reported the debriefing of an Arab businessman, who had much to say about Iraq's food imports and currency supply. He also offered testimony on the subject of the factory, which he knew inside out. "Though showing no sympathy for the Baghdad regime, he confirmed that the Abu Ghreib 'baby milk factory' bombed by the Allies during Desert Storm had been a genuine factory for producing powdered milk, and not a military plant." He had found no hidden chambers there, no inappropriate machinery.
So, was Iraq "engaging in disinformation, propaganda," when it accused the U.S. of bombing a baby milk factory? What about the sign and lab coat? According to the two New Zealanders, those embroidered coats had been provided by the French concern that built the factory. Moreover, the footage showing the uniforms had actually been shot by Arnett's crew when they visited the site in August 1990, five months before the war.
On the other hand, that sudden large sign was certainly a piece of propaganda. But the purpose of such stagecraft was to advertise the fact of baby-milk production, not feign it.
Iraq, in trying to publicize the targeting of its civilian infrastructure, had engaged in clumsy propaganda (which backfired in the West), while the US counter-propaganda was apparently disinformation (which succeeded).
Propaganda War Part II
As we sit and wait for another war against Iraq, we should remember this triumphant bit of spin-and all the other winning lies of Operation Desert Storm. The Gulf War was itself a propaganda masterpiece, which wowed the TV audience far more than it threatened the grotesque regime in Baghdad. And because the propaganda always blocked our view of things, it left us with important questions that remain unanswered to this day:
How exactly-and for how long-did the Reagan and the Bush administrations fund and arm Saddam? (The president obscures that cozy prior relationship, by harping on Hussein's "unrelenting hostility to the United States.")
To offset the powerful spin of propaganda emanating from our government, we need to be alert and ask questions-such as, Why, since Desert Storm, have more than 160,000 of its US veterans been provided medical or disability benefits-over twice the rate of other wars? What were they exposed to on the battlefield? Why did April Glaspie, our ambassador in Baghdad, tell Hussein, one week before he grabbed Kuwait, that the US had "no opinion" on "your border disagreement"? (Bush II obscures the episode by charging, often, that Hussein has "struck other nations without warning.")
Where is the evidence that Iraq threatened Saudi Arabia? In the summer of 1990, that claim was crucial to the drive for war. We heard that some 200,000 Ba'athist troops were massed along the southern border of Kuwait, prepared to snatch the Saudi oil fields. To get the Saudis on our side, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney flew to Riyadh with a sheaf of satellite photos that allegedly exposed the danger. Just then a Russian firm released another set of photos showing no troops on the border. The US photos are still classified. Why?
Why, since Desert Storm, have more than 160,000 of its US veterans been provided medical or disability benefits-over twice the rate of other wars? What were they exposed to on the battlefield?
And how many Iraqi soldiers and civilians died? (Like the Pentagon, Saddam Hussein prefers to keep the matter closed.) Was the bombing of civilian infrastructure a deliberate strategy to foment revolution? If so, it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Were outright war crimes committed by our side, as journalist Seymour Hersh reported in April 2000?
As with the purpose of the factory at Abu Ghreib, such questions do have answers, and those answers might be found-and our democracy would be the stronger for it. Far from coming up with any truths, however, President Bush, in his campaign to re-invade, has only offered us new fabrications. There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein works with al Qaeda, or that his weapons are-like North Korea's-a clear and present danger, or that the president himself does not plan to attack in any case. As we approach the anniversary of the start of Desert Storm, we should be ready for another war, and less inclined than ever to believe in it. Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University and the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (Norton). He formerly was a professor in Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars program.
This story is republished with permission from the author and from AlterNet, where it was originally posted on January 3, 2003; see Alternet's site for more thought-provoking commentary.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. Can Hold Citizens As Combatants
Wed Jan 8, 2002
By CURT ANDERSON,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030108/ap_on_go_ot/afghan_american_prisoners_6
WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the government can hold U.S. citizens as enemy combatants during wartime without the constitutional protections afforded Americans in criminal prosecutions.
In overturning a lower court ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., said the status of 22-year-old Yaser Esam Hamdi as a citizen did not change the fact he was captured in Afghanistan while fighting alongside Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.
"Judicial review does not disappear during wartime, but the review of battlefield captures in overseas conflicts is a highly deferential one" to the government, the three-judge panel wrote.
Hamdi, the court added, is not charged with a crime in the United States but is being held under "well-established laws and customs of war ... the fact that he is a citizen does not affect the legality of his detention as an enemy combatant."
Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the decision, calling it "an important victory for the president's ability to protect the American people in times of war."
"Detention of enemy combatants prevents them from rejoining the enemy and continuing to fight against America and its allies, and has long been upheld by our nation's courts, regardless of the citizenship of the enemy combatant," Ashcroft said in a statement.
Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after a prison uprising by suspected Taliban and al-Qaida members. He was at the Mazar-e-Sharif prison uprising - where fellow U.S. citizen John Walker Lindh was captured - and later was transported along with hundreds of other alleged enemy soldiers to a prison at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It later was discovered Hamdi had been born in Louisiana to Saudi parents. Hamdi and his family returned to Saudi Arabia while he still was a toddler, but he never renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Hamdi has been held in a naval brig in Norfolk, Va., since April.
His case is seen by some as a major legal test case to determine the government's ability to hold citizens without access to a lawyer or the courts. If Hamdi can be imprisoned in a military jail with few of the constitutional protections afforded Americans facing criminal prosecution, critics say, then other U.S. citizens could be similarly held.
A federal judge in Norfolk, Va., agreed, ruling in August that Hamdi should at least have a right to a lawyer and a chance to see the government's evidence against him.
The circuit court in Richmond, Va., agreed that the case raises serious questions about the rights of citizens but concluded that, in wartime, the government's authority is supreme in deciding who may be held indefinitely.
Hamdi, the judges said, was "squarely within the zone of active combat" when captured and is being lawfully detained. The courts, they added, have only limited authority to intervene in such national security matters.
"Any effort to ascertain the facts concerning the petitioner's conduct while amongst the nation's enemies would entail an unacceptable risk of obstructing war efforts authorized by Congress and undertaken by the executive branch," the 54-page opinion said.
The court declined, however, to address the rights of U.S. citizens who might be held as enemy combatants if captured on U.S. soil. Their opinion is confined to a citizen who takes up arms against the United States in a foreign country.
The three circuit judges deciding the case were James Harvie Wilkinson III and William W. Wilkins, both appointed by President Reagan, and William B. Traxler, who was appointed by President Clinton. Their decision was unanimous.
On the Net: Federal courts: http://www.uscourts.gov
----
FBI Files Look at Kent State Shootings
January 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rhodes-FBI-Files.html
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Before National Guard troops opened fire on Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University in 1970, Gov. James Rhodes instructed the troops to ``act quickly and firmly,'' The Columbus Dispatch reported Wednesday.
After the shooting, in which four students were killed and nine were wounded, FBI records show the governor's main concern was protecting the men who pulled the triggers, the newspaper reported.
A thick FBI file on Rhodes, obtained by the Dispatch through a Freedom of Information Act request, provides a closer look at Rhodes, who died on March 4, 2001, at age 91.
Rhodes sent the troops to Kent State on May 3, 1970, after protesters burned down the ROTC building on campus the night before.
Before the shootings, Rhodes spoke with an FBI agent and praised Director J. Edgar Hoover's dedication to ``dealing firmly'' with people ``who would subvert our government,'' according to a July 18, 1969, memo.
``In Ohio, he (Rhodes) has not hesitated to use the National Guard to deal with these situations and has instructed the Guard to act quickly and firmly,'' the memo said.
A shooting eyewitness, June Romeo of Berea, said Wednesday that acting ``quickly and firmly'' didn't mean ``giving an order to fire. That's incredible to me. It's been said there was an order to fire and I still have trouble understanding it,'' she said.
The FBI investigated whether anyone gave an order to fire and reached no conclusion.
In a May 22, 1970, conversation with an FBI agent visiting the governor, Rhodes expressed concern that guardsmen might be charged with a crime.
Rhodes ``commented at one point that if (Ohio National Guard) members were indicted in regard to this matter that he felt a million dollars should be spent to defend them, if necessary,'' said a memo by the agent.
A special state grand jury exonerated the guardsmen but indicted 25 other people, including Kent State students and former students. Those charges were dropped a year later. Eight guardsmen were tried on federal civil rights charges in 1974 but were acquitted.
Romeo, 50, now an associate nursing professor at Cleveland State University, said Rhodes' comment on legal support to the guardsmen wasn't surprising.
``It supports the idea that he was strongly behind their actions and the Guard acted inappropriately and against what they were trained to do,'' she said.
One of those wounded at Kent State, Alan Canfora, 54, said Rhodes' comments show he was more interested in casting ``blame on the victims at Kent State instead of blaming the killers.''
Canfora who was shot through the right wrist.
Rhodes never publicly apologized for his role in the Kent State shootings, although he reportedly said in private that the day was his saddest as governor.
``It was a terrible thing,'' Rhodes told The Columbus Dispatch when he was 90. ``But no one plans a train wreck, either. It just happened. And life goes on.''
Rhodes was governor for a record 16 years, from 1963 to 1971 and from 1975 to 1983.
-------- courts
Court Rules U.S. Can Hold Citizens as 'Enemy Combatants'
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/national/08CND-DETAIN.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - A federal appeals court handed the Bush administration a major victory today in ruling that a wartime president has the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny that person access to a lawyer.
The closely watched case that set up a stark clash between the nation's security interests and its citizens' civil liberties, resulted in an expansion of the power of the presidency as the three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Mr. Bush was due great deference in conducting the war against terrorism. The judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., said that it was improper for courts to probe too deeply into the detention of Yasser Esam Hamdi, a 22-year-old American-born Saudi Arabian who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and is imprisoned in a military brig in Norfolk, Va.
The case arose when lawyers for Mr. Hamdi challenged his detention, asserting that because he was a citizen he had the same constitutional rights as citizens in criminal cases, including the right to consult with a lawyer and to question the reasons for his confinement.
The appeals panel said that to deprive any citizen of his constitutional protections "is not a step than any court would casually take."
Nonetheless, in the opinion written by the circuit's chief judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, the court said: "The safeguards that all Americans have come to expect in criminal prosecutions do not translate neatly to the arena of armed conflict. In fact, if deference is not exercised with respect to military judgments in the field, it is difficult to see where deference would ever obtain."
The full opinion can be read on the appellate court's web site: www.ca4.uscourts.gov.
The Hamdi case appears to be the first in modern American legal history in which a citizen has been detained without being charged and without being given access to a lawyer. While Mr. Hamdi's lawyers are certain to seek a review from the Supreme Court, there is no guarantee the justices will take up the case.
Along with Mr. Hamdi, the only other American citizen being held without charges is Jose Padilla, an American accused of trying to explode a radioactive bomb in the United States. He is being held in a military brig in South Carolina.
Today's ruling may be the most far-reaching yet in a host of court cases brought on by the Bush administration's efforts in the war against terrorism.
In one case, a federal trial judge has upheld the administration's decision to hold about 600 prisoners at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba, ruling that the laws of the United States do not apply there. Other federal judges have ruled that the Bush administration could not hold hearings on immigration violations in secret and could not withhold the names of those arrested on such charges from the public. Those rulings are making their way up through appeals courts.
The Hamdi case began with the narrow focus of whether the courts should be satisfied with a Defense Department official's two-page, nine-paragraph statement that offered a spare accounting of facts to justify the government charge that Mr. Hamdi has been properly labeled an enemy combatant. A lower court judge, Robert G. Doumar of Federal District Court, ruled in August that the declaration by Michael Mobbs, a special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, was not sufficient.
The appeals court today reversed that finding but went much further in defining the authority of the executive branch in wartime.
"The constitutional allocation of war powers affords the president extraordinarily broad authority as commander in chief and compels courts to assume a deferential posture in reviewing exercises of this authority," the court said. While courts are entitled to review detentions when asked, the court said that, "courts are ill-positioned to police the military's distinction between those in the arena of combat who should be detained and those who should not."
The court said that it would be improper for the judicial branch to launch an exhaustive inquiry into the conditions of Mr. Hamdi's capture as requested by his lawyers. To do so, the judges said, would be to haul officers back from across the globe and the conduct of the war should not be determined by litigation.
Frank W. Dunham Jr., a federal public defender in Virginia, who argued the case for Mr. Hamdi, had asserted that the defendant was entitled to challenge the allegations that he was an enemy soldier.
But the court said that because it was "undisputed that he was present in a zone of active combat operations, we are satisfied that the Constitution does not entitle him to a searching review of the factual determinations underlying his seizure there."
In addition, the judges rejected appeals by Mr. Hamdi's lawyers that they should consider whether the war was at an end. Such questions, the court said, were solely the province of the president and his military advisers.
Judge Wilkinson ended the opinion today with a mention of the casualties of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "It is not wrong even in the dry annals of judicial opinion to mourn those who lost their lives that terrible day," he wrote. "Yet we speak in the end not from sorrow or anger, but from the conviction that separation of powers takes on special significance when the nation itself comes under attack."
Judge Wilkinson was joined on the panel by Judge William W. Wilkins, both of whom were appointed by President Ronald Reagan. The third panel member, Judge William B. Traxler, was first named to the bench by the first President George Bush and elevated to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton.
-------- death penalty
Death Penalty Found More Likely When Victim Is White
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/national/08DEAT.html
Blacks who kill whites are significantly more likely to face the death penalty in Maryland than are blacks who kill blacks or white killers, according to a state-sponsored study released yesterday. By itself, the study found, the race of the defendant was essentially irrelevant.
The study was commissioned in 2000 by Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat who supports the death penalty. The study was commissioned after concerns were raised about the fairness of the death penalty in the state.
Governor Glendening, whose term ends next week, ordered a moratorium on executions last May, saying it would be "logically inconsistent" for the state to continue to execute people while it studied the fairness of the process.
Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., the Republican governor-elect, promised during his campaign against Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to lift the moratorium and review death sentences individually. He repeated that pledge yesterday even as he promised to study and consider the report.
Salima Siler Marriott, a Democratic state representative from Baltimore, said she would introduce legislation today to extend the moratorium based on the report.
Brian Frosh, a Democratic state senator from Montgomery County and the incoming chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, said such legislation would face an uncertain future.
"It's an uphill battle," Mr. Frosh said. "The governor-elect would almost certainly veto it."
Maryland prosecutors want the moratorium lifted and new legislation to make it easier to seek the death penalty. The state's current relatively restrictive death penalty laws were cited by federal authorities as a reason to prosecute the men accused of October's sniper attacks in Virginia instead of Maryland.
The report issued yesterday, which considered data from 6,000 homicide prosecutions over two decades, found enormous differences in how often prosecutors in different Maryland jurisdictions seek the death penalty.
Raymond Paternoster, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland and the study's principal investigator, said one disparity was particularly surprising.
"Baltimore County and Baltimore City are contiguous. But defendants in Baltimore County are 26 times more likely to get the death penalty. In social science, you don't find many things that huge." Baltimore City has a significantly larger percentage of blacks than Baltimore County.
The report found that two counties with the highest death sentencing rates, Baltimore and Harford, were also the two counties with the highest rates of capital homicides involving white victims and black killers.
The report also found that choices made by prosecutors about whom to charge with a capital crime accounted for almost all of the racial disparity. Later decisions by prosecutors, judges and juries had little impact.
"Once it gets into the courtroom, geography and race plays no role," Professor Paternoster said. "But it doesn't get corrected, either," he said, referring to the racial disparity introduced at the charging stage.
Maryland has executed three men since capital punishment was re-established there in 1978. Eight of the 13 men on death row today are black, according to the study. All 13 were sentenced to death for killing whites, it said, though 55 percent of the victims in all cases in which the death penalty was or could have been sought were not white.
Opponents of the death penalty said the study, while unusual in its scope and government sponsorship, was largely consistent with earlier findings in other jurisdictions.
"In the death penalty, white lives are counted as more valuable than black lives," said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes the death penalty.
In 1987, the United States Supreme Court held that disparities in the implementation of the death penalty based on the race of the victim was not a constitutional violation.
Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that favors the death penalty, said the study's most notable finding was that the defendant's race did not matter.
"The death penalty reforms put in place since the 1970's to eliminate discrimination are one of great successes of modern criminal law," he said.
Governor Glendening urged his successor to give the report serious consideration, said a spokesman, Charles F. Porcari.
"It's the governor's hope, now that the season of campaign rhetoric is over, that there will be extensive and deliberative debate," Mr. Porcari said. "This study can help the governor-elect look at this issue and make a conscientious decision."
Illinois is the only other state with a death penalty that has put a moratorium on executions because of questions about how fairly it is applied.
Professor Paternoster said he was disappointed with the stance of Mr. Ehrlich, the governor-elect.
"He has said that he would look at the cases on a case-by-case basis," Professor Paternoster said. "But what we have identified is a systemic difficulty."
-------- terrorism
BRITAIN
Arrest of Terror Suspects in London Turns Up a Deadly Toxin
January 8, 2003
New York Times
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/europe/08LOND.html
LONDON, Jan. 7 - A small quantity of the deadly toxin Ricin was found over the weekend during an antiterrorist sweep in London in which six men were arrested on suspicion of terrorism, the police said today.
The arrests took place on Sunday morning in houses in north and east London, the police said. The suspects, who are still being questioned by the authorities, are said to include teenagers and people in their 20's and 30's, and said to be of North African origin. A woman arrested with the six men on Sunday was released without being charged.
Ricin (pronounced RICE-in), which is made from castor beans, is relatively easy to make and stockpile, experts say, and has no treatment or vaccine. It can be ground up and sprayed as an aerosol, added to food or drinks, or injected into a victim - as was the case with the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was fatally injected with a Ricin-filled hollow pellet affixed to the end of an umbrella in 1978 as he waited for a bus on Waterloo Bridge.
It is considered a likely bioterrorist agent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts it on its "B" list, meaning it is relatively easy to disseminate and is deemed a moderate threat. Victims typically experience a few days of flulike symptoms before, in the case of strong doses, suffering organ and immune system failure, then death.
"Generally speaking, Ricin has been used by a number of groups to assassinate or attempt to assassinate various individuals," said Dr. Michael Allswede, an associate professor in the department of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Because it is not difficult to make or acquire, it is part of the standard arsenal of white supremacist groups in the United States, he said.
Dr. Allswede stressed that in small amounts, Ricin is effective only as a tool for assassination, not as a weapon of mass destruction. "If you put a thimbleful on my food and I eat it without knowing it, it could kill me," he said. "But the only way to use it for mass destruction would be through the aerosolization of a large amount, like hundreds of gallons, of the stuff."
The police said they made the arrests - a result of a joint operation between the security services and antiterrorism and Special Branch forces - after receiving information about the suspects. They seized what they called "a quantity of material and items of equipment" at a residence in Wood Green, north London. After the material was analyzed at the Defense Science and Technology Laboratories at Porton Down, "a small amount" tested positive for Ricin, they said.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said the incident underscored the need for the public to be vigilant about the possibility of terrorist attacks. In recent months, the government has issued a series of alarming, nonspecific warnings of terrorist threats, saying Britain is on "the front line" in the battle against terrorism because of its strong support for the United States.
So far, no such attacks have materialized. But the country has begun to stockpile large quantities of smallpox vaccine and to inoculate its health care workers against smallpox, and the public continues to be jittery about what it might expect.
"We have previously said that London, and indeed the rest of the U.K., continues to face a range of terrorist threats from a number of different groups," the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, David Veness, said in a statement. "While our message is still, `alert, not alarm,' we would reiterate our earlier appeals for the public to remain vigilant and aware and report anything suspicious to the police."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace activists arrested at Dow Chemical office
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
By Toby Sterling,
The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01082003/s_49306.asp
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Police arrested 21 Greenpeace activists Tuesday after they delivered seven sealed barrels of soil containing toxic waste to a Dutch office of Dow Chemical Co. The activists had collected the soil near a factory in Bhopal, India, that leaked toxic gas in 1984 and killed thousands of people in one of the worst industrial accidents in history.
The detainees were charged for disobeying police orders to vacate the building and later released, police spokesman Jan van Mourick said. The barrels of waste, labeled "Bhophal poison, return to Dow," were held as evidence.
U.S.-based Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide - owner of the factory at the time of the accident - in 2001. Union Carbide paid the Indian government $470 million to settle health-related claims in 1989, but the company faces ongoing legal action over environmental cleanup of the area. Dow maintains that neither it nor its subsidiary Union Carbide can be held responsible for additional health claims from the accident or the site cleanup.
Police in the Dutch town of Terneuzen, 90 miles (140 kilometers) south of Amsterdam, said the activists were held after illegally entering the Dow building and hanging a banner that read: "Dow, clean up Bhopal now!"
Dow spokesman Chris Huntley said the action by Greenpeace was "regrettable." "We don't have a responsibility or legal obligation for Bhopal. It's not something we're prepared to concede," he said.
In the Dec. 3, 1984, accident, toxic methyl isocyanate gas - an ingredient in pesticides - leaked from the plant in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, killing thousands immediately and contaminating water and soil within a one-mile (1.5-kilometer) radius. Union Carbide said a disgruntled worker sabotaged the plant.
Over the years, the death toll has risen to 14,410 as those sickened by the gas died. Survivors complain of ailments including breathlessness, constant tiredness, stomach pain, cardiac problems and tuberculosis. Some 600,000 people have filed compensation claims with the Indian government, which was a minority owner.
In December, thousands of protesters marched to the site to demand compensation, and the extradition to India of Warren Anderson, a U.S. citizen who was chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the accident.
Activist Rashida Bi, who traveled from India to take part in the protest and was among those arrested Tuesday, said she would "carry on confronting Dow with this corporate crime until it cleans up its toxic fallout in Bhopal and stops poisoning us."
Dow concedes the area surrounding the factory is contaminated and should be cleaned, but says the Indian government is responsible.
--------
Sponsors Outline Anti - War Protest Plan
January 08, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anti-War-Protest.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The weekend of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is a perfect time for a big anti-war protest in Washington, sponsors said Wednesday.
``The American people have very little time left to tell President Bush that they don't want the U.S. to be an aggressor nation and attack Iraq,'' said former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, whose group International A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and Racism) is organizing the Jan. 18 event.
``Martin Luther King weekend is a perfect time to say, 'No War, Mr. President,''' Clark said. King's birthday is Jan. 15, celebrated as a federal holiday this year on Monday, Jan. 20.
Calling King a ``drum major for peace and justice,'' Mahdi Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society, noted that King spoke out against the Vietnam War.
Actors Jessica Lange and Mike Farrell and demonstrators from religious groups, labor organizations and schools are among those planning to attend the event.
Demonstrators plan a rally on the west side of the Capitol. They will then march to the Washington Navy Yard where they will ask to inspect weapons of mass destruction they say the government might have.
The march will travel through a relatively poor section of Washington. Protesters say those residents will be hurt if the United States diverts money from social programs to pay for a war.
``We have activated some of our civil disturbance units to deal with the large crowds,'' said Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. ``It's my understanding that the same group is looking at having demonstrations for the next four or five Saturdays following this demonstration.''
``Our anti-war demonstrations thus far have been very well organized and peaceful,'' said Ramsey.
Associated Press Writer Derrill Holly contributed to this story.
On the Net:
International A.N.S.W.E.R.: http://www.Internationalanswer.org
----
[These people are on a par with whistleblowers for courage and vision. et]
'Human shield' peace activists mobilise for Iraq
By Andrew Cawthorne
08 Jan 2003
Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03322949
LONDON, Jan 8 - To the delight of Baghdad, anti-war activists round the world are staging their own mobilisation to Iraq to act as "human shields" if the bombs start falling and in solidarity with the Iraqi people.
As the United States and Britain build up their military presence in the Gulf, the volunteers from Western and Muslim groups are also planning to converge on Iraq for what they view as an 11th hour peace mission.
Shrugging off criticism they are handing a propaganda gift to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the groups involved insist they can recruit hundreds or even thousands of volunteers.
"I am calling for a mass migration to Iraq. We can stop this mad war," said Ken Nichols, a Dutch-based former U.S. marine who was in the 1991 Gulf War and is now behind one of the highest-profile human shield convoys.
His "We the People" group is seeking volunteers to join a convoy leaving London this month. They plan to travel through European and Middle Eastern capitals to arrive in Iraq in early February where they intend to fan out to key installations.
"If war starts, I will be in the most vulnerable areas. I want to be out where the bombs drop," Nichols added, saying hundreds would be on his convoy. "If there is a risk of large Western casualties, that is quite a political liability."
Another big rallying point is in Iraq's neighbour Jordan.
There, a campaign led by leftist, Islamist parties and civic bodies is seeking 100,000 human shield volunteers.
Organisers, the National Mobilisation Committee for the Defence of Iraq, would not give current figures but said many were responding and that the first convoy would leave in a week.
"The war against Iraq is a war against the whole Arab nation," committee head Hakm al-Fayez told Reuters.
The new human shield plans have inevitably revived memories of the Gulf War when Saddam forcibly held thousands of Western hostages after his invasion of Kuwait. Many were put near sensitive sites in a futile bid to dissuade attacks.
Iraq also used Iraqis -- alongside some foreign volunteers -- as human shields in 1998 against U.S.-British bombing.
IRAQI DELIGHT
Not surprisingly, Baghdad has welcomed the latest offers.
"This is a practical Arab and international reaction to the hostile build-up of troops in the Gulf and neighbouring countries," said one senior Iraqi official, Saad Qasim Hammoud.
To avoid being seen as pawns of Saddam, some among the many groups and charities organising trips to Iraq are shunning the tag "human shield" and are as critical of his government as they are of U.S. and British war plans.
These groups prefer to couch their aims in terms of educating the West and showing solidarity with ordinary Iraqis.
"We do not support any government," said Kathy Kelly, of the U.S.-based Voices in the Wilderness (VIW) group which has long opposed sanctions on Baghdad and is now organising an "Iraq Peace Team" to travel there.
"We want to be alongside people at a difficult and stressful time. We hope there will not be a war. If there is, we will be there," added Kelly, who was part of a 72-member peace camp inside Iraq near the border with Saudi Arabia in 1991.
One poignant stance has been taken by a group of American relatives of September 11 victims -- "Families for Peaceful Tomorrows" -- who left for Iraq days ago on a week-long visit.
"My hope is that all people will come to realise that loss of more human life will not solve the problems of the world," said Kathleen Tinley, who lost her uncle Michael when two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Centre.
Many of the activists said they were well aware of Saddam's alleged crimes -- both in terms of repression of Iraqis and the weapons capacity that is the West's main bone of contention -- but they could not be quiet on the suffering of ordinary Iraqis.
"If people had actually read the U.N. reports or been to the country, like I have, and seen babies dying of diarrhoea, they would realize what the West has been doing with its sanctions and what this is all about," said British student Matthew Barr, who is leaving for Iraq with a VIW group.
Many of those forcibly used as human shields by Saddam in 1991 are shocked that others would actually volunteer to do it.
"They are a bunch of lunatics who don't know what went on," said one British ex-hostage, Ron Eccles. "It is a naive and unbelievable idea. It is very unlikely to deter any action."
- Additional reporting by Matthew Jones in London, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Iraq, Italy and Germany bureaux
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