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NUCLEAR
Happy Imbeciles At War
Tight genes make radiation-munching bug strong
China Treads Carefully Around North Korea
Proposal aims to limit amount of depleted uranium
Proof Found: America, Britain Used Atomic Ammunition
Bulgaria court overrules EU deal to close reactors
Cold weather sparks Swedish nuclear debate
India Tests Short-Range Ballistic Missile
India Names First Chief of Nuclear Forces Command
U.N. Inspectors Criticize Iraqis Over Arms List
Iraqi Scientists Not Likely To Be Interviewed Abroad
No 'Smoking Gun' So Far, U.N. Is Told
Agency Challenges Evidence Against Iraq Cited by Bush
North Korea Pulls Out of Non-Proliferation Treaty
North Korea Assailed for Withdrawing From Arms Treaty
N. Koreans Meet With Richardson
N. Korea may let U.S. verify nuke program
Chronology of N. Korea Nukes Development
Scientists Discuss Balance Of Research and Security
Nuclear Treaty Glance
Elements of the Nuclear Treaty
North Korea Says It Is Withdrawing From Arms Treaty
Viewpoint: N Korea follows Bush's lead
Nuclear non-proliferation treaty
Official seeks to call public hearing about plant
Report: Indian Point Plans 'Not Adequate'
Bush, Jiang discuss N. Korean treaty move
U.S. war aims hurt by lack of arms proof
Powell and Bush at Cross-Purposes?
MILITARY
Europeans Seek to Rein in American War Machine
Hezbollah says it won't attack Israel during Iraq war
Judge pulls plug on Sharon's TV address to nation
Sharon, Going on TV Over Scandal, Is Yanked Off Air
Navy to Expand Its Use of Bombing Ranges
35,000 More U.S. Troops Ordered to Gulf
Suit Claims Sex Bias in Draft Registration
Tomorrow's Smarter, Connected Navy
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
The 'dirty little secret' about polygraph tests
Scientists discuss openness and security
OTHER
Air Pollution a Priority, Whitman Says
Activists say U.S. computer makers pollute
Vampire Bat Saliva Eyed for Stroke Drug
ACTIVISTS
Uzbek group says rights record better
Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence
-------- NUCLEAR
Happy Imbeciles At War
Massive U.S. military buildup, billions of dollars, a useless enemy, and no one seems to know why
By Mark Morford,
SF Gate Columnist
Friday, January 10, 2003
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/01/10/notes011003.DTL&nl=fix
This is not a war. Iraq will not be a war. Do we understand this? We do not seem to understand this. This is heavily corporatized power brokers killing each other for oil and capital. Oh yes it is.
Let's be perfectly clear. You cannot have a war when the so-called enemy has done nothing to provoke you and is absolutely no threat to your national safety and has no significant military force and has negligible chance of even setting off a firecracker near your own overwhelming death machines, and whose only weapons of minimal destruction are the rusty short-range warheads and biochemical agents we sold him 20 years ago, and kept selling to him, even after we knew he was gassing his own people.
You cannot have a war when there is nothing to fight against, when it's essentially going to be a huge U.S. military stomping/bombing exercise, when, just like Afghanistan, we stand to suffer zero U.S. casualties (except for those we seem to kill ourselves), and we just bomb and bomb and kill and kill and shrug.
Let us look closer: The U.S. buildup for war with Iraq is the biggest in decades. The Iraq operation, in the words of Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, will be "the most massive precision air campaign in history," because, well, because we can. Because we want to annihilate everything as fast and ruthlessly as possible, simply because the longer such an operation takes and the more expensive and obviously pointless it becomes, the more everyday citizens snap out of it and begin to say, wait, why are we doing this again?
Saddam's meager military, let us be reminded, is a tiny quivering fraction of what it was 10 years ago during Desert Storm, and even then it took U.S. forces less than four days to almost completely annihilate it.
Now it's even weaker, due to ongoing sanctions and U.N. oversight and a decade of continuous U.S.-led bombing raids on Iraqi targets you never read about. Hell, this time we should have those thousands of pesky Iraqi soldiers and innocent civilians dead and slaughtered in a weekend.
This is a Mack truck versus a Pinto. This is an F-16 versus a paper airplane, a Tomahawk missile versus a spit wad. There is no contest. "War" is exactly the wrong term. The U.S. attack on Iraq will be, of course, a massacre. Go team.
Now let's say you sense this all to be true. Let's say you have a queasy feeling deep in your gut as you realize no one is talking about exactly why we need to launch a second simultaneous war to go along with the unwinnable assault we're still running in Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan? Yes, we're still there, warring away. Bombing and attacking and killing. Haven't caught a single al Qaeda leader of note yet. That looks bad for Dubya. Killed a few thousand civilians though. Shrug.
So, let's boil it down: Why go to war with Iraq? Can't find Osama, is one reason. That looks bad. Really, really want to steal all that delicious oil for ShrubCo, is another. Saddam is clearly a very bad guy who kills his own people and snickers in America's general direction, is a third. But then again, so are at least a half-dozen other vile tyrants of the world. Volatile, nuke-ready North Korea? Let's open some talks. Feeble, oil-ready Iraq? Let's massacre. Hmm.
Perhaps you wonder why no one is asking any of these questions, making similar points.
Perhaps you wonder just where in the hell is the spineless major media in all this, as they watch the chicken-hawk Shrubster himself, between golf swings, announce how tens of thousands of American troops are being sent to the Gulf alongside an enormous billion-dollar military buildup and imminent gobs of heaping death raining down upon a paltry oppressed nation and coming up next on CNN, we interview that dumb guy from "Joe Millionaire." Perfect.
Perhaps you wonder where is the national TV coverage of all those huge anti-war protests, hundreds of thousands of people, all over the world, from Spain to Berlin to New York to San Francisco.
Perhaps you wonder where are all the "serious" journalists, the risk-taking news agencies pointing up the absurdity of it all, the imminent horror, the outrage. Could it be these news agencies are owned by major conservative corporations? Could it be they're all terrified of losing ratings, of saying something unpopular, of invoking Cheney's wrath, of losing advertiser dollars and that ever-precious, ever-dwindling dumbed-down audience? One guess.
And besides, who needs a reason for a massacre anymore? This is the age of the preemptive-strike, screw-you Bush regime. Who needs, for example, the Monroe Doctrine, that crusty old rag stating how America will go to war only as a last resort, as a defensive measure, and won't become embroiled in unwinnable foreign wars that are none of our business?
Who needs every precedent ever set by international law? Who needs the U.N. Charter? Who needs confused congressional approval? Who needs ethical integrity?
Screw it all, says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his black eyes gleaming like the devil's own golf balls. Let us become an ever-more-hated rogue nation, attack whomever we want, whenever we want, with no international support and much international disgust. Let us squander, childishly, within months, the generous and compassionate goodwill afforded our country by our international allies in the wake of 9/11.
Let us wantonly kill innocent civilians and children and thousands of Iraqi soldiers who, let us repeat, did nothing to provoke us. Shall we? Yes let's. Why? Shhh.
Let us be clear. Saddam is not a threat to the U.S., and never has been. He is merely yet another cowardly and murderous thug, much like the countless other despots and autocrats, from Marcos to King Fahd to Ariel Sharon, the U.S. has added to its payroll when it served our needs, and whom we then backhand when we need economic stimulus, or when the president needs a boost to his approval ratings, or when the corporate pals of the Bush WASP mafia need more billion-dollar petrochemical and defense contracts. Aha. Perhaps this is why.
We are, in short, going to attack and massacre Iraq for the oil reserves, to protect America's corporate interests, to feed the gaping maw of the military-industrial complex. Same as it ever was.
But let us be perfectly clear: We are most definitely not cranking up the appalling war machine for your sake, or for the country's protection, or for our commendable standing among our humanitarian allies.
We are not doing it to defeat terrorism (it will have the exact opposite effect), or to make the streets safer for our children, or because they've found big scary WMDs (they haven't -- not a one) -- or even for Iraq's own good. And to believe we are is, quite simply, to be wholly misinformed and openly, flagrantly, deliberately deceived.
Do we understand this? We must, we absolutely must, try and understand this.
- Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. mailto:mmorford@sfgate.com
- Subscribe to Mark's deeply skewed, mostly legal Morning Fix newsletter. http://sfgate.com/newsletters/
--------
Tight genes make radiation-munching bug strong
Friday, January 10, 2003
By Reuters
WASHINGTON - Tight genes help a nuclear waste-munching bacterium resist the deadly effects of radiation, Israeli and U.S. scientists reported. The DNA of Deinococcus radiodurans, which can also survive extreme cold and dryness, is tightly packed into a circle, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
That dense ring helps keep damaged DNA in place, allowing broken-off pieces to move eventually back into position, said Avi Minsky of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovoth, Israel. Radiation severely damages DNA, and the pieces break off and float away in most organisms. But in Deinococcus, the structure keeps them in place until they come back together, Minsky and colleagues believe.
Unfortunately, humans may not benefit from this finding, said the researchers, including a team at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. "Our DNA is structured in a fundamentally different manner," Minsky said in a statement.
Deinococcus is sometimes employed in cleaning up nuclear waste, but scientists are studying its genetic structure to see if they can genetically engineer something even tougher. It can withstand 1.5 million rads, a measure of radiation, which is 1,000 times more than any other life form.
Its existence suggests that life, in the form of bacteria, could have survived in space and may thrive on other planets.
-------- china
China Treads Carefully Around North Korea
Delicate Relations Make Beijing Wary of Pressuring Unpredictable Neighbor on Nuclear Program
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35293-2003Jan9?language=printer
BEIJING, Jan. 9 -- Two days after Christmas, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan paid a visit to the sprawling, snow-covered compound of the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, ostensibly to attend a New Year's celebration. In a routine statement, the Foreign Ministry said Tang and the ambassador congratulated each other on the past year's achievements and "exchanged views on issues of common concern."
But the visit was anything but routine. Tang had never attended New Year's events at the embassy before. He went to this one to quietly convey Beijing's concerns about North Korea's nuclear program, according to Chinese specialists who advise the government on Korean affairs.
Two days later, North Korea issued a statement in Pyongyang that said, in part: If "other countries" are worried about its nuclear activities, they should urge the United States to open a dialogue and guarantee North Korea's security. If they do not intend to do that, "it is better for them just to sit idle."
The exchange illustrated the delicate relations between China and North Korea. Neighbors and Communist allies that fought alongside each other in the Korean War half a century ago, the two countries now view each other with suspicion and, sometimes, resentment. This raises questions about Beijing's ability and willingness to break a dangerous North Asian impasse by pressuring the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, into abandoning plans to develop nuclear weapons -- as the Bush administration has repeatedly urged it to do.
Although North Korea's apparent response to minister Tang's message seemed like a brushoff, Chinese analysts detected a subtle concession. For the first time, North Korea was indicating a third party could help resolve its standoff with the United States. In the past, the analysts said, North Korea had always told China and others to butt out.
As North Korea's principal trading partner and a major source of food and fuel aid, China exerts more leverage over the "hermit kingdom" than any other nation. But in the weeks since Pyongyang alarmed the world by expelling U.N. inspectors and threatening to restart a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, the Chinese government has been conspicuously quiet, allowing South Korea and Russia to take the lead in diplomacy.
Chinese officials have told foreign diplomats that they have expressed their displeasure to North Korea, but they insist they must tread carefully around their unpredictable neighbor. Relations are already strained, and the Chinese say they are worried about provoking North Korea by pushing it into a corner.
"China's role is to make sure North Korea doesn't lose all hope, not to threaten or pressure it," said Qi Baoliang, an analyst on Korean affairs at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a research institute for China's intelligence services. "If everybody puts pressure on North Korea, it will despair. And if it doesn't see a way out, it will go ahead and develop nuclear weapons. That's not good for anybody."
Worried about the long-term stability of a dictatorship that has allowed its people to starve by the hundreds of thousands, Chinese leaders do not want to see North Korea armed with nuclear missiles. For one thing, the missiles could be aimed at Beijing. For another, North Korea's actions could trigger a regional arms race, with Japan and perhaps even South Korea and Taiwan developing their own nuclear weapons, or at least missile defense systems.
But China is unwilling to support sanctions against North Korea that could send a flood of refugees across the border into its economically troubled northeast, where as many as 200,000 Korean migrants are already hiding. If North Korea collapsed, moreover, China would face the unwelcome prospect of sharing a border with a unified Korea that would be a U.S. ally and a host to U.S. troops.
"They're walking a tightrope," said an Asian diplomat who has discussed the issue with the Chinese. "They don't want a nuclear North Korea, but they have to be careful about how they apply pressure. They don't want to antagonize the North Koreans too much, but at the same time, they need to get them to change their position."
Some former Clinton administration officials have argued that China played an important role in persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear program during a similar crisis in 1994. A pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong suggested then that the Chinese government threatened to restrict oil shipments to North Korea if it did not back down.
Complicating the situation this time, though, is China's leadership transition, said one Chinese security analyst. President Jiang Zemin has handed the Communist Party's top post to Hu Jintao, but Jiang will remain president until March and could stay on as head of the military even longer. That has raised questions about who should take the lead in dealing with Kim Jong Il, the analyst said.
"The transition makes it harder for any Chinese leader to handle the issue," he said. "No one wants to risk taking the blame right now if it doesn't go well, and it's possible Kim knows that."
Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have never been entirely steady. North Korea's founder and its current leader's father, Kim Il Sung, often sought to play China off the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1992, China angered North Korea by establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union left China as North Korea's only major source of aid. Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates based on trade statistics that China provides as much as $470 million in aid annually to North Korea, which amounts to more than a third of its outside financial assistance. China accounts for 70 percent to 90 percent of North Korea's fuel imports and about a third of all grain imports.
Today, China sees North Korea as much as an economic burden and potential troublemaker as a valued friend, and Pyongyang has resisted pressure from Beijing to adopt Chinese-style market reforms. Relations improved as Kim Jong Il visited China in 2000 and 2001, but friction was evident again last year when Beijing arrested a Chinese-born businessman picked by Kim to run a special economic zone on the border.
The fragile state of relations leaves China with no good options in the current crisis, said a Chinese expert on Korean affairs who has served as an intermediary with North Korea.
"If Kim tells Jiang he is going to test a nuclear weapon unless Jiang gives him more aid, what do we do? We give him more aid. We don't have a choice," he said. "We have some influence, but we don't have the kind of relationship where we can tell Kim what to do. If we tell him to do something, he doesn't listen. If we threaten him, he listens even less. If Jiang called him, he might hang up."
The intermediary said North Korea is unhappy with China's increasingly closer ties with the United States and feels threatened by the Bush administration's characterization of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." China's best course of action, he said, is to reassure Kim it will not abandon him, and to persuade the Bush administration to find a way to back down and offer Kim the security assurances he wants.
The argument, repeated by Chinese officials in conversations with foreign diplomats, assumes that North Korea's goal is not to build nuclear weapons, but to wrest concessions from the West. Chinese leaders appear unmoved by the U.S. position that North Korea can no longer be trusted to stop its nuclear activities and may already have produced two weapons.
It is unclear how Chinese leaders would react if they are proved wrong and North Korea defies them by testing a nuclear weapon. "That's the big question," said one Western diplomat involved in talks with China on the subject. "I'm not sure if even the Chinese know what they would do."
-------- depleted uranium
Proposal aims to limit amount of depleted uranium
LES deal would permit up to 39,500 metric tons
By KATHY CARLSON
The Tennesseean Staff Writer
Friday, 01/10/03
http://cgi.tennessean.com/cgi-bin/print/pr.pl
Up to 39,500 metric tons of depleted uranium could be stored at a proposed Midstate uranium enrichment plant under a proposed agreement between the site's owners and the international group that wants to build the facility.
The proposed contract between the landowner, the Four Lake Regional Industrial Development Authority, and Louisiana Energy Services also would include fines if greater quantities of the radioactive substance are kept on the 250-acre site, mostly in rural Trousdale County.
The material would be stored in up to 4,600 specially made steel cylinders, said LES spokeswoman Nan Kilkeary. Storage cylinders are 4 feet in diameter and 121/2 feet long.
That many cylinders, if laid on their sides end to end in rows, would cover almost four football fields.
The proposed deal was part of a package that the Trousdale County Commission received Tuesday from the county's Planning Commission, along with zoning-change recommendations, Trousdale County Executive Jerry Clift said. He is one of five county executives on the board that directs the Four Lake authority.
The intent of the agreement, Clift said, is to limit how much depleted uranium, called tails, LES could store on site if it builds the $1.1 billion enrichment center there, and to hold LES to strict standards. LES has maintained that the tails can be stored safely above ground in specially made steel cylinders.
But some area residents dispute that and do not want the uranium kept on site.
Negotiating the proposed deal, Clift said, ''took a lot of time.'' He said he wants to ensure that if the LES facility were built, it would be a ''better program than you can get anywhere in the world.''
The agreement contains additional provisions.
• It allows LES to get permission from the Four Lake authority to store up to 3,950 additional metric tons of depleted uranium on site, bringing the total stored to 43,450 metric tons.
One metric ton is just over 2,204 pounds, about 10% more than a standard ton.
• It requires LES to pay a fine of $5 per kilogram - about $5,000 per metric ton - of depleted uranium that is stored on site in excess of what is permitted under the contract.
• Trousdale County officials have the right to inspect the facility each year to see if it is complying with the agreement, but it must give LES ''reasonable'' advance notice.
The proposal has not been signed. LES' chief executive officer, George Dials, said his company is obligating itself to do more than would be required by regulators, in a gesture to show local residents that it is serious about a pledge that no depleted uranium would be stored permanently in Tennessee.
Tennessee Environmental Council Executive Director Will Callaway, an opponent of the plant, said the agreement allows ''radioactive waste'' to be stored in Trousdale County for the life of the plant.
''They have not even begun to explore the hazardous-waste permit they will have to get from the state of Tennessee,'' he said of LES. Callaway also questioned whether local officials, as opposed to state or federal regulators, have the legal authority to make the agreement.
The proposed LES plant would enrich uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power plants, which generate about 20% of the nation's electricity.
Once the plant reached full capacity, it would annually generate about 800 metric tons of enriched uranium from 8,600 metric tons of uranium ''feed stock,'' leaving 7,800 metric tons of depleted uranium, LES officials told federal regulators earlier this year.
The amounts allowed under the proposed agreement would be about five years' worth of depleted uranium, assuming full production.
At an enrichment plant in the Netherlands run by LES member company Urenco, about 50,000 metric tons of tails are allowed to be stored, she said. About 70,000 metric tons are allowed at a plant in England.
Under federal licensing procedures, LES' plans for the handling of tails will be evaluated on a number of safety issues, not just on radiation levels, said Tim Johnson, the NRC project manager assigned to the LES proposal. The NRC does not set limits on how much depleted uranium can be stored, he said.
LES' Dials said he was ''absolutely involved'' in talks over the past six weeks with the Four Lake authority and other local officials. ''I think we came up with a very reasonable arrangement.''
The $5,000-per-ton fine is an incentive to move excess tails off site, Dials said.
The fine is roughly twice the amount LES consultants estimated as a disposal cost. The estimates were not based on charges at existing sites, he said.
LES remains on track to file its licensing application with the NRC by the end of this month. NRC licensing review could take up to two years and includes opportunities for public comment. LES also must receive environmental permits from the state.
The Trousdale County Commission meets Jan. 27 to take up zoningchanges.org that would permit uranium enrichment activities.
Related story: Official seeks to call public hearing about plant
Kathy Carlson can be reached at 259-8047 or at kcarlson@tennessean.com.
--------
Proof Found: America, Britain Used Atomic Ammunition in Afghanistan
Jan 10, 2003
Nawa-e-Waqt,
Translated By Jihad Unspun
After medical research in Afghanistan, it has become clear that America has used nuclear ammunition in their war inside the country. According to Uranium Research Center report, evidence of large Afghan population being affected from Uranium radioactivity has been found.
A former American army scientist has established an independent research center in Afghanistan and has been conducting tests for ?dirty uranium? and ?toxic uranium? for many years. These tests can determine presence of uranium even after many years. After the Afghan war, two teams were sent for this purpose ? the first team arrived in Jalalabad in June 2002 and second after four months which investigated in Jalalabad and Kabul areas. The research area had a population of 3,500,000 people. Jalalabad was not as affected than Kabul however the investigation teams said theywere not prepared for the sudden and unexpected evidence in both areas.
According to the results of the study, Afghani people have been severely affected from the uranium. In addition to the human toil, the soil is rife with unused uranium. The tests show the Afghans had 200 to 400 percent radioactivite effects that are too high. The population of Kabul, which came under direct attack of British bombardment, had the most severe effects. Apart from the effects of radioactivity, chemical and biological weapons? effects were also discovered. People were found having kidney pain, joint pains, memory loss and muscular weakness. These symptoms were also found in Balkan and Gulf areas after the wars there. Research teams also tested newborn babies and found 25% radioactivity effects in them.
The team leader they studied different aspects about uranium like industrial pollution and ?dirty bomb? experiments by Al-Qaida. However, this radioactivity does not seem result of ?dirty bombs?. The investigations show that American and British armies use raw uranium on their warheads to improve their capability and becasue this uranium is difficult to trace out.
-------- europe
Bulgaria court overrules EU deal to close reactors
Friday, January 10, 2003
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01102003/s_49320.asp
SOFIA - A Bulgarian supreme court overruled a government deal with the European Union that would have closed two Soviet-era nuclear reactors by 2006.
The Bulgarian government agreed to a demand from Brussels to shut the number three and four reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant to avoid derailing accession talks with the European Union last year.
Ruling on an appeal brought by members of the opposition Socialist Party, the Supreme Administrative Court said on Thursday that the agreement ignored a vote in parliament that decreed that the reactors should be kept on line until Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, set for 2007.
Brussels wants the reactors shut in 2006 for safety reasons, despite the fact that the plant produces half of Bulgaria's electricity. Its closure also would raise power prices, which already pose an enormous expense for impoverished Bulgarians.
Government officials in Sofia say the closure is a necessary sacrifice, but opposition parties and some Bulgarians have branded the deal a betrayal.
Government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev said the government would most likely appeal the court's decision in front of an expanded panel and expected to win. Local lawyers said if the expanded court panel confirmed the current court's ruling, it meant Sofia should open energy talks with Brussels again, potentially hampering its goal to complete EU membership talks by May 2004.
Tsonev said the Bulgarian government managed to secure a last-chance "peer review" inspection from the EU this year, which it hoped would prove the two reactors were safe and allow it to re-negotiate later closure. Sofia shut Kozloduy's first two oldest reactors in late December to please Brussels.
--------
Cold weather sparks Swedish nuclear debate
Story by Anna Peltola
REUTERS SWEDEN:
January 10, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19349/newsDate/10-Jan-2003/story.htm
STOCKHOLM - Exceptionally cold winter weather which has strained power capacity and raised electricity bills in the Nordic region sparked a new discussion in Sweden this week on whether to close down a nuclear plant as planned.
Energy-intensive industry complained about high electricity costs and lobbyists said the country had been saved from a power crisis only because the weather had warmed from temperatures as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius (-31 Fahrenheit) seen during the Christmas holidays before factories started again on Tuesday.
"We can expect electricity shortages when the temperature falls," said Lars-Erik Axelsson from SKGS, an organisation representing energy-intensive sectors such as the forest industry.
Pro-nuclear lobbyists also say that Sweden is more and more dependent on imported energy, much of it generating greenhouse gases, at a time when its hydropower reservoirs are low.
The Social Democrat government, whose voters are split over nuclear power, is expected to decide in February or March on whether to close down the second of two reactors at the Barseback power station at the southernmost tip of Sweden.
The first reactor was closed down in 1999, in line with a referendum almost 20 years earlier that Sweden, like Germany, would gradually close its nuclear plants.
TO SHUT OR NOT
"We think that Barseback 2 cannot be closed down and Barseback 1 should be reopened," Axelsson said.
On Tuesday, representatives of big industry trade unions, which traditionally support the Social Democrats, also demanded that Barseback 1 should be reopened.
The Barseback plant is part of energy group Ringhals AB, which is 74 percent owned by state power company Vattenfall AB
and 26 percent by a unit of Sydkraft AB. Sydkraft is controlled by Germany's E.ON Energie (EONG.DE).
So far the government has not set a firm timetable for closure of other plants, which together generate almost half of Sweden's electricity, because there are no alternative renewable power sources in place.
Barseback 2, a 600 megawatt facility, has drawn harsh criticism from neighbouring Denmark. The plant lies a mere 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) from Copenhagen, which itself has no nuclear power plants and exports coal-based energy to Sweden.
Some Social Democrats politicians have vowed the plant will be closed down this year, but critics say that is unlikely. Trade and Industry Ministry Leif Pagrotsky declined to comment.
Ake Rangborg, spokesman for energy lobby Svensk Energi, said he was certain parliament - which has the final say in the matter - would prolong Barseback 2's lifetime.
"It would be nearly political suicide not to do it after this winter," he said.
Electricity spot prices on the Nordic power exchange Nord Pool have soared after a dry summer and autumn which left the region's water reservoirs at their lowest levels in decades.
But Joran Hagglund, party secretary of the Centre Party which is in the opposition but backs plans to phase out nuclear power, said the current situation also had its bright spots.
"The good thing about this is that electricity prices are rising to such levels that new investments and upgrades will become profitable," Hagglund said.
-------- india / pakistan
India Tests Short-Range Ballistic Missile
Associated Press
Friday, January 10, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35868-2003Jan9?language=printer
NEW DELHI -- India test-launched a short-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons but said the test was unrelated to recent tensions with Pakistan.
The Agni I missile was fired from the Chandipur-on-Sea testing range on the coast of eastern Orissa state, about 750 miles southeast of New Delhi, said a Defense Ministry spokesman, P.K. Bandyopadhyay. The Agni I has a range of 370 to 500 miles.
India said the launch was a routine test. But it came as the Indian and Pakistani governments have been trading ominous boasts about their capability of nuclear retaliation if either takes aggressive military action.
The Agni test is "part of India's continued policy of imposing its hegemony in the region, but we are hardly impressed with what they have done," the Pakistani information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, said in Islamabad.
On Wednesday, Pakistan's nuclear research facility approved deployment of a new medium-range ballistic missile, the Ghauri, capable of carrying a nuclear payload. President Pervez Musharraf attended the ceremony at the Kahuta Research Laboratory outside Islamabad.
----
India Names First Chief of Nuclear Forces Command
January 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-india.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India named an air force officer on Friday to head the country's first nuclear forces command, which will manage the country's arsenal of atomic weapons.
India, which last year came to the brink of war with nuclear rival Pakistan over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, declared itself a nuclear weapons state in 1998 after carrying out underground explosions.
The defense ministry said Air Marshal T. M. Asthana, a fighter pilot, would lead the strategic forces command but gave no other details.
The strategic forces command is part of the Nuclear Command Authority set up last weekend to be headed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Nuclear Command Authority will have the final power to decide on the use of nuclear weapons.
On Thursday India tested a shorter-range version of its nuclear-capable missile Agni, which experts say can strike most parts of neighboring Pakistan.
Little is known about the number of nuclear warheads India and Pakistan possess. Jane's Strategic Weapons System in London estimates India has 100 to 150 warheads and Pakistan 25 to 50.
Last year, war almost erupted between the two countries over attacks in India that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas operating in the disputed region of Kashmir.
Islamabad denied involvement in the attacks.
Pakistan says it gives only moral support to the Kashmiri people in what it calls their legitimate freedom struggle.
-------- inspections
U.N. Inspectors Criticize Iraqis Over Arms List
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/international/middleeast/10NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 9 - The chief United Nations weapons inspectors sharply criticized Iraq today for failing to come forward with new information to clarify its weapons programs, but said they had "not found any smoking gun" indicating that Baghdad was concealing illegal weapons.
American officials seized on the inspectors' report as new proof that Iraq is not cooperating with the inspections as required by Security Council resolutions. American diplomats suggested that if Iraq did not change by the end of the month they would step up the pressure at the United Nations for military action to disarm the country.
The inspectors, Hans Blix and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, made their statements to the Security Council in a closed briefing. In the session, Mr. Blix said in blunt terms that a declaration Iraq presented in December on its weapons programs was "rich in volume but poor in new information," adding that Baghdad had given an "inadequate response" to the inspectors' demand for a complete list of Iraqi weapons experts.
"We have not so far made progress" toward confirming that Iraq is clean of weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Blix said, according to the text of his statement released after the meeting.
John D. Negroponte, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said, "There is still no evidence that Iraq has changed its approach from one of deceit to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming."
Dr. ElBaradei, the United Nations chief nuclear inspector and the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said his inspection team had determined that aluminum tubes Baghdad tried to import over the last two years were intended to build rockets and not centrifuges to enrich uranium.The I.A.E.A. will, however, continue to look into the issue of the tubes.
The Bush administration had cited the tubes as a central piece of evidence for its claim that President Saddam Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear arms program. The nuclear agency challenged President Bush's assessment, although it noted that buying the tubes to make rockets would violate a 1991 Security Council resolution on importing military equipment.
The inspections chiefs cast serious doubt on Iraq's cooperation so far. Although Baghdad has allowed inspection teams to work unhindered, they said the inspections were not effective because Iraq has not produced information for them to verify, showing that prohibited weapons from the past have been destroyed.
Most of the 15 Council nations expressed concern about the inspectors' report, according to diplomats who attended the meeting. Only Russia, a permanent Council power, and Syria, the only Arab nation, refrained from echoing the inspectors' negative account.
Differences between the United States and other Council nations came clearly into view, however, over the timing of the next steps in the inspections. Washington is talking about the end of January as a time for reaching conclusions about Iraq's compliance with Security Council resolutions. Other nations, as well as the inspectors, are calling for more time before making decisive assessments.
Mr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei will travel to Baghdad for meetings on Jan. 19 and 20. On Jan. 27, they return to the Council to give an in-depth evaluation of their work. They have said that report will be far more thorough than the one today, which was an interim briefing they gave after the United States insisted on hearing more frequent reports from them.
The Jan. 27 meeting will be a special open session in which countries not currently on the Security Council can participate, diplomats said today. Two days later the Council will convene in a closed meeting to consider the inspectors' report.
Mr. Negroponte said that if Iraq did not come forward with better information by Jan. 27, it would be an "extremely serious matter." The United States will sharply increase its pressure on the Council to move toward a final conclusion on Iraq's cooperation, a Bush administration official said.
"Our understanding was that it would take 60 days for the Council to decide whether Iraq was cooperating," a Bush official said. "We're not going to let the Council slip in making those decisions."
Mr. Negroponte said Iraq's performance "does not constitute active cooperation."
Rather than showing that Mr. Hussein has been hiding secret weapons, American diplomats seemed to be building a case that Baghdad has consistently failed to cooperate fully with the inspections. Under Resolution 1441, a pattern of noncooperation by Iraq is a grave breach that can lead to war.
But other diplomats played down the importance of the Jan. 27 report. The British ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, urged everyone to "calm down" about Jan. 27.
"The inspectors need time to do their business," he said. He noted the inspectors had assured the Council that they would report immediately if any secret weapons were found.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Sergey Lavrov, insisted that the inspections were "in the early stages."
Concerning the issue of interviewing Iraqi weapons experts, Mr. Blix said the list of scientists provided by Baghdad did not even include all the names provided by United Nations inspectors who were in Iraq before the previous inspections were suspended in 1998.
"We do not feel the Iraqi side has made a serious effort to respond to the request we made," he said.
Mr. Blix, who leads the biological and chemical weapons team, cited "a significant discrepancy" in the Iraqi weapons declaration concerning the numbers of chemical munitions remaining in Iraq's arsenal. He also reported that Iraq had recently imported "a relatively large number" of missile engines whose purpose was not clarified by the Iraqi declaration. It also contained contradictory information about supplies of the chemical warfare agent known as VX, he said.
Dr. ElBaradei said Iraq had removed special seals on supplies of a high explosive called HMX and moved them around, but the arms declaration did not explain what happened to this matériel.
He also said his team was investigating reports that Iraq tried to import uranium after 1991. He said that there was still "a significant amount of work to do" to clarify the status of Iraq's nuclear program.
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Iraqi Scientists Not Likely To Be Interviewed Abroad
Despite Pledge, Official Says Arms Experts Not 'Ready to Go'
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35290-2003Jan9?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 9 -- A senior Iraqi official said tonight that none of his nation's scientists is prepared to travel abroad for interviews with U.N. weapons inspectors, effectively ruling out chances the inspectors will be able to learn more about President Saddam Hussein's arms programs by questioning Iraqi experts in private.
"Nobody is ready to go outside to make an interview with UNMOVIC or the IAEA," said Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of Iraq's weapons monitoring directorate, referring to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the bodies charged by the U.N. Security Council with determining whether Iraq possesses banned arms.
Although Iraq has agreed in principle to allow its scientists to leave the country for interviews, the government has signaled that they should not do so and should instead talk to the inspectors inside Iraq. Some scientists could still choose to disregard that guidance, but Amin's comment provided the strongest indication yet that this is unlikely, because Iraqis defying official policy in the past have met with severe punishment.
The interviews have emerged as a key issue in the confrontation between Iraq and the United States. The Bush administration has pressured U.N. inspectors to take important scientists and their families out of Iraq, saying debriefing sessions in another country would allow them to provide more candid disclosures about Iraq's alleged efforts to develop nuclear, chemical and biological arms.
After complaining that asking scientists to leave Iraq would violate international law, the government here relented late last month, largely because failing to do so would violate a Nov. 8 Security Council resolution requiring full cooperation with weapons inspections. U.S. officials have pointed to the interview issue as an important factor in deciding whether the United States will invade Iraq and try to destroy Hussein's Baath Party government.
Seeking not to run afoul of the resolution, Amin said individual scientists were free to decide whether they wanted to leave. "The matter is related to the person himself," he said. "Whether he will say, 'I accept,' or not, is something personal." But Amin has made clear that he thinks they should not go, insisting "it's not necessary" for interviews to be conducted outside Iraq.
The inspectors have so far attempted to talk in private with two Iraqi experts. Both refused the interviews without Iraqi government representatives present.
One U.N. official said the inspectors likely would seek to interview other scientists in the next week. The official would not comment on whether any of the Iraqis would be asked to travel abroad. But Amin said one U.N. inspector has raised the possibility of taking some scientists to Cyprus. The inspectors use the eastern Mediterranean island as a staging area for personnel and supplies.
Despite Iraq's pledge to permit scientists to leave with their immediate families, some diplomats and U.N. officials say they believe the fear of retribution against extended family members may be dissuading some experts from leaving. "It's fine to take one's wife and children," one diplomat here said. "But what about the wife's brother? Or the husband's sister and her children? In Iraq, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins -- they're all considered close family members."
Earlier today, Hussein's chief science adviser, Gen. Amir Saadi, took issue with statements by U.N. officials that a lengthy declaration given by Iraq to the United Nations last month outlining its arms programs was incomplete. The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said the document "failed to answer a great many questions."
People who claim there are omissions in the report, Saadi said, either are "not fully acquainted with our voluminous declaration or they lost their way" in reading it.
Saadi and Amin also detailed what they said were questions asked by weapons inspectors aimed at "gathering intelligence." On Monday, Hussein assailed the inspectors for wanting to meet with Iraqi scientists and scour military facilities, saying such activities were aimed at collecting information for Iraq's enemies.
In a visit to the Shayk Mahzar airfield on Saturday, Amin said, the chief field inspector asked the base commander to outline the facility's chain of command, to detail construction at the site since 1998, to name his commander and to provide the base's phone number. During a search Christmas Day of an ammunition depot, he said, inspectors wanted to know about air defenses around the complex and whether any munitions had been recently moved.
"We think those questions are irrelevant to disarmament and they have an intelligence nature," he said.
A U.N. spokesman would not confirm whether the questions cited by Amin were asked by the inspectors, but said inquiries about people who work at a facility, new construction and the movement of supplies were a crucial part of the inspections.
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No 'Smoking Gun' So Far, U.N. Is Told
Blix Says Iraq Failed to Provide Enough Data
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35529-2003Jan9?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 9 -- Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said today that his investigators had uncovered no "smoking gun" evidence that Iraq has resumed its secret weapons programs, but he sharply criticized Baghdad for failing to adequately respond to questions about its previous arms programs or to supply a comprehensive list of Iraqi scientists engaged in weapons activities.
Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council in a closed meeting today that it will be impossible to give Iraq a clean bill of health unless it backs up its claim to have eliminated any previous programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
But the two men also urged the council to be patient, noting that it could be months before they can provide a definitive conclusion about whether Iraq has restarted its weapons programs. "We have now been there for some two months and been covering the country in ever wider sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns," Blix told reporters before briefing the council. "We think that the declaration failed to answer a great many questions."
The inability of the United Nations to obtain definitive evidence of new weapons activities in Iraq is complicating U.S. efforts to galvanize international support for the military overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Germany's U.N. ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, reflecting a widely shared view among the 15-nation council, said there were still "no grounds for military action" and that inspections should be given more time to succeed. A leading British newspaper reported that Britain is seeking to persuade Washington to delay the onset of a war with Iraq until the fall.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoing remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said today that Blix and ElBaradei will not be able to provide the council with a conclusive review of Iraq's efforts involving banned weapons by the time they are scheduled to present their first comprehensive assessment of those activities on Jan. 27. "We are just in the middle of the process," Blair said. Some senior U.S. officials had viewed the Jan. 27 presentation as a potential trigger for military action.
But Powell has played down the importance of the Jan. 27 assessment, saying Wednesday that "it is not necessarily a D-day for decision-making." Powell said that the United States could still make a case for military action against Iraq even if Blix fails to find hard evidence of arms violations. "You don't really have to have a smoking gun," he told NBC today.
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there," added White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke."
Still, the Bush administration seized on Blix's criticism of Iraq, insisting that Baghdad's latest failure to adequately cooperate with the inspectors or admit it possesses weapons of mass destruction constitutes a "further material breach" of its disarmament obligations and strengthens the case for military action.
"There is still no evidence that Iraq has fundamentally changed its approach from one of deception to a genuine attempt to be forthcoming in meeting the council's demand that it disarm," U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte told the council behind closed doors. "Iraq's cooperation with inspections to date has been legalistic and superficial; but it is far short of the genuine cooperation the council had demanded."
Senior Iraqi officials today denied that their lengthy weapons declaration was incomplete. "People who claim there are omissions in the report . . . are not fully acquainted with our voluminous declaration or they lost their way" reading it, Gen. Amir Saadi, Hussein's chief science adviser, said in Baghdad.
Blix indicated that the pace of inspections in Iraq would intensify as the inspectors increase their use of helicopters to conduct unannounced visits, establish a regional office in the southern city of Basra, and introduce reconnaissance planes to conduct high-altitude surveillance over Iraq.
Blix also plans to push Baghdad to make Iraqi scientists available for interviews without the presence of Iraqi authorities. But he insisted he would not "force anybody to go abroad or force them to defect."
The issue of interviews has been a source of friction between the United Nations and the United States, which believes that Iraqi scientists would speak freely only if they are interviewed abroad.
Blix has recently assured the United States that he would "use all of his authority" to elicit pertinent information on Iraq's weapons programs from Iraqi scientists, according to a senior U.S. official.
Although Blix stopped short of assuring Washington that he would exercise his right to conduct interviews abroad, American officials say they are confident he will do so. One U.S. official said that Washington and the United Nations are in the "final stages" of planning to carry out such interviews in Cyprus.
Blix and ElBaradei, who is scheduled to meet with Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Friday, said that they would travel to Baghdad on Jan. 19 and demand that Iraq provide a fuller account of its weapons programs.
"If evidence is not presented which gives a high degree of assurance, there is no way the inspectors can close a file by simply invoking a precept that Iraq cannot prove the negative," Blix said. "I have not asserted . . . that proscribed items or activities exist in Iraq, but if they do, Iraq should present them and then eliminate them in our presence. There is still time for it."
ElBaradei indicated to the council that he would press the United States to provide him with additional evidence to support U.S. and British allegations that Iraq tried to import uranium from an African supplier in 1991. In an effort to deflect growing criticism that it has failed to provide useful intelligence to the inspectors, Powell told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Washington has increased intelligence-sharing with the U.N. inspectors.
While acknowledging that Iraq has provided inspectors with unfettered access, Blix and ElBaradei delivered an unexpectedly tough account of Iraq's record of cooperation.
ElBaradei said that Iraq had so far failed to provide adequate documentation describing its efforts to design nuclear weapons and centrifuges used in the enrichment of uranium.
He also said that 32 tons of a high explosive, HMX, that can be used to detonate a nuclear explosive, had disappeared from a facility that had been subject to U.N. monitoring until 1998, when the inspectors left Iraq on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign. "Iraq . . . declared that it had blended the . . . 32 tons with sulfur and turned them into 45.6 tons of industrial explosive used mainly to cement plants for mining."
ElBaradei said that a preliminary investigation of Iraq's unsuccessful attempts to acquire large quantities of aluminum tubes yielded no evidence to support suspicions by some U.S. and British intelligence analysts that it may have been destined for a secret program to manufacture centrifuges.
"While the matter is still under investigation," ElBaradei told the council, "the IAEA's analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets. While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."
Blix added to the criticism, faulting Iraq for failing to answer questions about its production of chemical and biological weapons in a 12,000-page declaration to the council last month.
He said the declaration "is rich in volume but poor in new information about weapons issues and practically devoid of new evidence on such issues." Said Blix, "In order to create confidence that it has no more weapons of mass destruction or proscribed activities relating to such weapons, Iraq must provide credible evidence."
Blix noted that comparison of Iraq's declaration and its previous statements revealed "several cases of inconsistencies."
He said Iraq provided contradictory information on its VX nerve agent program, further clouding the U.N. effort to understand how far Iraq got in placing the chemical agent in a weapon.
He noted that Baghdad has failed to provide a convincing explanation for Iraq's illegal acquisition of "a relatively large number of missile engines" and other raw material used to produce solid missile fuel.
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Agency Challenges Evidence Against Iraq Cited by Bush
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/international/middleeast/10ALUM.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - The key piece of evidence that President Bush has cited as proof that Saddam Hussein has sought to revive his program to make nuclear weapons was challenged today by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Bush cited Iraq's attempts to buy special aluminum tubes as proof that Baghdad was seeking to construct a centrifuge network system to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs.
"Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon," Mr. Bush said.
But Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., offered a sharply different assessment in a report to the United Nations Security Council today.
Dr. ElBaradei said Iraqi officials had claimed that they sought the tubes to make 81-millimeter rockets. Dr. ElBaradei indicated that he thought the Iraqi claim was credible.
"While the matter is still under investigation and further verification is foreseen, the I.A.E.A.'s analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets," the agency said in its report. "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."
While the discussion of Iraq's procurement efforts is highly technical, it is politically very significant. The primary rational for going to war with Iraq rests on fears that Baghdad is striving to develop a nuclear weapon. The argument for military intervention, in effect, is that Iraq was much closer to a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Persian Gulf war than most experts thought and might be again.
United States officials have long been concerned that Iraq would try to revive its nuclear weapons program and have cited several pieces of evidence.
First, after the 1991 gulf war United Nations inspectors learned that Iraq had planned to build a centrifuge plant of 1,000 machines. Second, British intelligence has reported that Iraq wanted to produce a special magnet that would be suitable for a gas centrifuge system.
Another important indicator, officials said, was Iraq's efforts to procure special aluminum tubes. In a report titled "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," the White House asserted that Iraq had sought to buy thousands of tubes over a 14-month period to make centrifuges for enriching uranium. Though the shipments were blocked, officials said, the White House said they demonstrated that Iraq was striving to become a nuclear power.
Still, American intelligence was never of a single mind on the question of aluminum tubes. While there have been varying assessments, the dominant view among American intelligence analysts - one backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency - is that the precise dimensions and specifications of the tubes indicated that they were intended for use in making centrifuges. But some officials in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department have questioned this analysis, saying that the tubes might be intended to make rockets.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have taken the position that the C.I.A.'s case is compelling. Senior officials said that some of the tubes sought were of a type used to make centrifuges and carried technical specifications that made it difficult to think they could be used for anything else.
Asked about the new assessment, a senior Bush Administration official said: "I think the Iraqis are spinning the I.A.E.A. The majority of the intelligence community has the same view as before."
The agency, however, is not alone in questioning the United States view. In its report on Iraq's efforts to make weapons of mass destruction, Britain concluded that Iraq was "almost certainly" seeking the means to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon. But referring to Iraq's attempts to buy aluminum tubes Britain also concluded that "there is no definitive intelligence that it is destined for a nuclear program."
Today's assessment also raises new questions. The I.A.E.A. said that Iraq had offered only limited cooperation and that there were still important questions about its suspected effort to develop a nuclear program. But the agency also noted that the presence of its inspectors would make it hard for Iraq to resume its nuclear program.
To investigate the case of the aluminum tubes, Dr. ElBaradei said, inspectors visited Iraqi rocket factories, interviewed Iraqi officials, took samples of aluminum tubes that Iraq managed to buy, and reviewed Iraqi documents on purchases they had sought to carry out.
Iraq's attempts to buy aluminum tubes "was the key piece of evidence to support the assessment that Iraq was pursuing or trying to revive its gas centrifuge program," said Gary Samore, director of studies for the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the senior proliferation official on President Clinton's National Security Council. As a result of the agency's report, he added, "this particular piece of evidence is now much more ambiguous."
-------- korea
North Korea Pulls Out of Non-Proliferation Treaty
U.S., Allies Condemn Move, Work to Stem Crisis
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 10, 2003; 4:42 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36749-2003Jan10?language=printer
SEOUL, Jan. 10-North Korea today asserted that it was pulling out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of global efforts to halt the spread of atomic weapons, while rebuffing demands that it allow a return of U.N. inspectors to a reactor capable of producing nuclear materials that could be used to build a bomb.
In a statement released by North Korea's official news agency this afternoon, the insular communist country claimed "freedom from the binding force of the safeguards accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency," the U.N. watchdog that monitors the 1970 treaty, which has more than 180 countries as signatories.
North Korea's neighbors quickly condemned its announcement, and South Korea reinforced its policy of engagement, asserting that dialogue remains the most prudent way to pursue a peaceful end to the crisis.
"The nuclear issue is tied to our life and death," said South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, whose "Sunshine Policy" of reconciliation with the North has placed him at odds with the Bush administration. "We must have the patience to resolve the issue peacefully."
Shortly after making its announcement, North Korea unleashed a fresh barrage of sharp rhetoric, daring the United States to "a fire-to-fire standoff," while warning that "a new Korean War will finally lead to the Third World War," in a newspaper article carried in the official state press.
The article cast U.S. effort to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear aspirations as part of its "strategy for domination" and it urged North Koreans to employ "vigilance against the reckless military and political moves of the U.S. warmongers."
In Washington, the Associated Press reported that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the move "regrettable." The United States "will not enter any kind of talk or dialogue where North Korea is given any impression but that they have to come into compliance," Powell told reporters. "This kind of disrespect for this kind of agreement cannot go undealt with," he said.
President Bush talked by phone for 15 minutes Friday with President Jiang Zemin of China, one of North Korea's key allies, about the situation, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "This binds us in common purpose," Bush told Jiang. For his part, Jiang "reiterated China's commitment to a non-nuclear Korean peninsula," Fleischer added.
Amid deepening concern over the unfolding confrontation on the Korean peninsula, officials from France and Britain today said the time had come to refer the matter to the Security Council for action. The council could impose consequences ranging from economic sanctions to force.
"France condemns the decision of North Korea," Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a statement, before making a speech in Shanghai. "We have to make sure that North Korea will comply with its non-proliferation commitments. This is a critical condition, for the security and the stability in the Korean peninsula, in the region and in the world. The U.N. Security Council will have to address this new development."
Speaking to reporters in Malaysia, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, "We deplore the decision that's been announced today."
An IAEA spokesman said today that North Korea's announcement "would surely trigger some reaction" from the agency, which has the ability to refer cases to the Security Council. On Monday, at an emergency meeting in Vienna, the IAEA extended North Korea a final chance to readmit its inspectors or face potential action from the Security Council.
North Korea this evening rejected a report that it was prepared to reconsider its decision if the United States resumes shipments of fuel oil -- a formulation that had been reported as possible by a Seoul television station, citing a North Korean diplomat in Beijing.
"That report is wrong," said a North Korean diplomat in Beijing.
In its announcement, North Korea cast its actions as non-aggressive. "Though we pull out of the NPT, we have no intention to produce nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity," it said. The practical impact of North Korea's withdrawal from the treaty, which it joined in 1985, would be to remove its nuclear programs from the monitoring authority of the United Nations, joining states such as Israel, Pakistan and India, which have nuclear weapons but are not signatories.
The announcement followed a turn toward a more conciliatory stance from the Bush administration, which had previously renounced any negotiations unless North Korea first verifiably abandoned its nuclear programs and agreed to submit to inspections, but this week said it was prepared to enter into direct talks.
But analysts pronounced the apparent mixed messages from Pyongyang as consistent with a North Korean pattern of engagement with the outside in which it escalates to force the attention of its adversaries, then offers to talk while continuing the escalation to keep the pressure on.
The confrontation began when North Korea began reviving the Yongbyon plant last month, then dismantled U.N. monitoring cameras, expelling the inspectors and declaring its intent to begin reprocessing plutonium.
"It is rather surprising that they are playing their cards so quickly," said Kim Tae Woo an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a research group affiliated with the South Korean Defense Ministry. "This is almost the last card."
The decision came as a particular surprise because North Korea made its announcement as its envoys were holding talks in Santa Fe, N.M., with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat and former U.N. ambassador, who has a history of negotiation with North Korea.
"It's a typical North Korean negotiating strategy," said Kim Sung Han, a North Korea expert at the Institute for Foreign Affairs Security, a research group affiliated with the South Korean Foreign Ministry in Seoul. "At the very last minute, when everyone thinks it's time for them to accept, they escalate one last time to try to improve their bargaining position."
North Korea's action also pushed the issue to unprecedented terrain: Never before has a country withdrawn from the treaty, although North Korea announced it would do so a decade ago, before a last-minute compromise with the United States.
Still, diplomats and analysts here in South Korea's capital said the action, while alarming, fell short of taking North Korea beyond the so-called red line that would force the United States and its allies to seek the imposition of some form of punishment -- perhaps even military force -- via the Security Council. While the threat of that action has now been invoked, most read it as a way to pressure North Korea to bend.
Two weeks ago, as North Korea began to revive its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, a Western diplomat speaking on condition that he not be named said North Korea would cross the red line were it to actually begin a step known as "reprocessing" -- that is, taking spent fuel rods removed from the reactor and extracting the plutonium they contain. North Korea has already said it plans to take that step, but so far, no information has emerged that it has.
Asked on Thursday whether turning on the reprocessing plant still constituted the red line, a United States diplomat said: "It would be a very serious step. It would take us into a new dimension."
Russia and China, North Korea's most important allies, have curtly dismissed as unproductive previous discussions from Washington about seeking to impose sanctions. Neither country seemed any more open to such an approach today, although both criticized North Korea's decision to pull out of the treaty.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed "deep concern" about North Korea's decision and offered "hopes Pyongyang will listen to the single opinion of the world community, its neighbors and partners." A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry said Beijing would "continue working to promote a peaceful solution."
A North Korea expert at Beijing University, Jin Jingyi, said North Korea's decision to withdraw from the treaty, while unwelcome, would not be construed by Beijing as a step that warrants sanctions.
"I don't think it's going to change China's policy," Jin said.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in the midst of a state visit to Russia, called the development "very serious," adding that Japan planned to cooperate with South Korea, the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency to "demand that North Korea goes back on its decision."
John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of State for arms control and international security who is traveling in Thailand, said North Korea's decision was "not at all unexpected. The North Koreans were not adhering to the treaty when they were still a part of it."
In a statement released tonight following a meeting of the Security Council, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said, "The government strongly warns of the danger of this move," and urged North Korea "to repeal immediately" its "withdrawal declaration and resolve this issue through dialogue."
Some analysts suggested that North Korea's decision dealt a blow to South Korea's prestige, perhaps undermining its efforts to mediate a settlement. While South Korea has traditionally deferred to the United States on such matters, it has been particularly aggressive in trying to persuade the Bush administration to engage North Korea in dialogue this time, despite the president's refusal to negotiate. President-elect Roh Moo Hyun, who claimed a mandate to continue the "Sunshine Policy," has indicated that he intends to release a compromise plan aimed at resolving the dispute before he takes office on Feb. 25.
"Unfortunately, before it even tries, North Korea has gone in a direction where the incoming South Korean government is irrelevant," said Lee Chung Min, an arms control expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. "I mean, what can they do at this juncture? All they ever had was the perception that they could persuade North Korea. That's obviously gone now."
Australia, one of the few Western countries to maintain relations with North Korea, said it would send a delegation to Pyongyang next week to convey its concerns.
At the IAEA, which monitors compliance with the treaty, North Korea's announcement occasioned examination of the fine print. Under the terms of the treaty, a country that wants to withdraw must inform other member countries and the Security Council, then wait 90 days before the withdrawal takes effect. In asserting today that its withdrawal takes effect immediately, North Korea appeared to be relying on its previous notification of its intent to withdraw in March 1993, according to a U.N. official.
On the 89th day after that announcement, North Korea agreed to a compromise that allowed the inspectors to return. It then suspended its withdrawal notice. Now, North Korea is asserting that it can simply restart the clock on that final day and declare its withdrawal effective Saturday.
Some U.N. authorities take issue with that argument and interpret the rules to mean that the treaty continues to apply to North Korea until a new 90-day period expires, the official said. Until then, the treaty could be used by the Security Council to justify action aimed at brining North Korea back into compliance.
But ultimately, the official said, it is probably a moot point: The treaty lacks a permanent secretariat to hash out such issues. In the end, it comes down to the will of the members of the Security Council to decide what to do.
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North Korea Assailed for Withdrawing From Arms Treaty
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By SETH MYDANS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/international/10CND_KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 10 - North Korea announced today that it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a decision that set off a flurry of diplomatic activity and condemnation.
In a statement carried by its official news agency and monitored here, North Korea said it was acting in self-defense because it was "most seriously threatened" by the United States.
"Though we pull out of the N.P.T., we have no intention to produce nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity," the statement said.
At the United Nations this morning, North Korea's ambassador said that Pyongyang would consider any attempt by the Security Council to impose sanctions on North Korea over the nuclear crisis would be a "declaration of war."
But the ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, also told reporters that "any problem could be resolved pacifically by negotiation" with the United States.
North Korea's declaration on the nuclear nonproliferation treaty means that in 90 days it will no longer be bound by the pact, unless it reverses itself, as it did in a similar situation in 1994.
France, Japan, and Russia led condemnation of the move, with the United States and China, North Korea's chief trading partner, weighing in later.
President Bush talked by phone today with President Jiang Zemin of China as the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis intensified.
The White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the call between the leaders lasted 15 minutes, with Mr. Bush telling Mr. Jiang that the United States and China were now bound "in common purpose" by Pyongyang's announcement that it was withdrawing from the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Mr. Bush also said that the United States "has no hostile intentions toward North Korea" and seeks a peaceful solution to the standoff, Mr. Fleischer said.
China's public response was modestly critical.
"China feels concerned about North Korea's announcement of its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact and the possible ramifications," said Zhang Qiyue, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry. "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact is of major significance for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and enhancing international peace and security. China hopes to continue protecting the universality of the pact and will continue to work devote its energies to encouraging a peaceful resolution of North Korea's nuclear issue."
In South Korea, the government called an emergency session of its National Security Council.
"The North's withdrawal from the N.P.T. brought the situation on the Korean Peninsula from bad to worse by one step," said President Kim Dae Jung. "But at the same time, thanks to our efforts, the United States is now moving toward dialogue with North Korea."
His successor, President-elect Roh Moo Hyun, expressed "deep regret" at the action, which was taken at a time when the North is trying to woo the South and to drive a wedge between it and the United States.
North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of threatening to invade and has said it reserves the right to develop nuclear arms in self-defense. It continues to assert that it has no nuclear weapons at this time.
North Korea made a similar announcement of withdrawal from the treaty in 1993, when challenged about suspicions that it had nuclear weapons program. That crisis was defused the following year when North Korea agreed to halt its nuclear program in exchange for help in building a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes, an agreement it has now repudiated.
The announcement today came as two representatives of the country's permanent mission to the United Nations were meeting with an American official to discuss the confrontation with Washington over the North's nuclear program.
Hang Song Ryol and Mun Jong Chol met in Santa Fe, N.M., on Thursday night with Bill Richardson, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, who has experience working with the North Koreans on sticky issues. Mr. Richardson is now governor of New Mexico.
The Bush administration made clear that the meetings were unofficial. Mr. Richardson was only empowered to deliver the same message that the administration had made in public: that there would be no negotiations until North Korea halted its two nuclear projects.
North Korea has not responded to an offer made on Tuesday by Washington to hold discussions in which South Korea and Japan would participate.
France currently holds the rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council, and its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that today's announcement "underscores the necessity and the urgency of international mobilization."
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan said he "will ask North Korea to reverse its decision." He spoke as he prepared to meet President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Moscow today.
The Russian Foreign Ministry voiced "deep concern" and added, "This move can only aggravate the already tense situation in the Korean Peninsula and seriously weaken international treaties ensuring regional security."
Tensions have risen since October, when the United States said North Korea admitted to pursuing a nuclear arms program in violation of the 1994 agreement. North Korea then threatened to reactivate the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that had been closed and monitored under the agreement.
Last week, North Korea expelled monitors with the International Atomic Energy Agency and today it denounced the agency as a tool of the United States.
"The I.A.E.A. is used as a tool for executing the United States hostile policy," North Korea said in the statement. Therefore, the statement said, North Korea can no longer remain bound to the nonproliferation treaty, which it signed in 1985 and which it said had caused "the dignity of our nation to be infringed upon."
The announcement of North Korea's break with the international treaty came the morning after it agreed to hold cabinet-level talks with South Korea, the highest-level dialogue between the two countries since North Korea admitted last October that it was maintaining a secret nuclear weapons program.
In Seoul, several moves were under way to repair ties with the United States. The relationship has been strained by widespread demonstrations calling for a more equal relationship with Washington.
On Thursday, South Korea's Defense Ministry warned in a monthly newsletter, Defense News, that the withdrawal of the 37,000 American troops here "could send foreign investors flooding out of the country in fear of instability, throw the economy into turmoil and give North Korea a chance for provocation." The newsletter added, "North Korea tries to weaken the South Korea-U.S. alliance's capability of deterring war."
Public opinion polls here indicate that 55 percent of South Koreans, most of them older people, want American troops to stay. In an indication that South Korea's silent majority might be starting to stir, about 400 South Korean military veterans and women staged a pro-American rally on Wednesday, burning an image of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, clinging to a missile.
Separately, the office of President Kim Dae Jung issued a statement on Thursday implicitly asking South Koreans to tone down the weekly vigils outside the American Embassy here.
"We need to calm excessive worries of the international community about the anti-U.S. atmosphere," the statement said.
Conservatives criticize the government for addressing symptoms of anti-Americanism without addressing an underlying cause: a deep erosion among young people in the belief that American troops are needed in South Korea.
"Now is the time to sincerely consider whether or not to continue the weekend candlelight protests and risk our national security and healthy relations with the U.S. at this crucial time," The Korea Times said on Thursday.
----
N. Koreans Meet With Richardson
Possible Response To U.S. Statement
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35300-2003Jan9?language=printer
In an unexpected overture, North Korean envoys met in Santa Fe last night with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a diplomatic troubleshooter for President Bill Clinton.
Richardson and two North Korean officials held what was described as a working dinner in the governor's mansion. Neither Richardson nor the North Koreans made any comments to reporters after the session. They were to meet again today.
Officials believe the North Koreans would deliver a message in response to the administration's announcement Tuesday that it was willing to hold direct talks with the government in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Pak Gil-Yon, contacted Richardson shortly after the Tuesday announcement.
North Korean envoys are not permitted to travel beyond a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle in New York unless they receive permission from the State Department. Han Song-ryol, the deputy U.N. ambassador who is the key North Korean for handling Washington-Pyongyang relations, applied for permission Wednesday to go to Santa Fe. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell quickly approved the request.
Richardson, the former U.N. ambassador who negotiated with dictators such as Cuba's Fidel Castro and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, was closely involved in the Clinton's administration's efforts to forge a closer relationship with North Korea, an approach that President Bush rejected upon taking office. But the Bush administration has scrambled to ease tensions that have risen since Pyongyang's disclosure in October that it had a secret weapons program and its subsequent decision to restart a plutonium facility.
Since October, the United States has held frequent indirect talks with Pyongyang, and officials viewed the latest approach by North Korea as part of that unofficial communication.
Richardson "was given to understand they would have a message," a senior U.S. official said. Richardson is "one of the people they are comfortable talking with," he said, adding that "it's not what channel they choose to speak to but what they have to say."
U.S. officials emphasized that Richardson is not acting as an envoy or a negotiator and plans to convey the administration's position that it will not negotiate a new weapons agreement.
Speaking before North Korea announced last night its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Donald P. Gregg, who is president of the Korea Society in New York, said he perceived a significant shift in tone this week. "I think we are about to turn a corner with North Korea," he said. "I am feeling infinitely better than I did 72 hours ago."
Gregg met with North Korean officials in Pyongyang in early November, and reported back to the White House and the State Department on his discussions. He said the message he delivered from the North Koreans was: "If you sign a nonaggression treaty with us, we will end all your concerns about nuclear activity."
President Bush and other senior officials have repeatedly stressed they have "no hostile intent" toward North Korea. But in an interview Wednesday, Powell held out the prospect of a settlement of the dispute that would include a formal assurance that the United States had no plans to attack North Korea.
U.S. officials have also pressed key nations in the region -- China, Russia, South Korea and Japan -- to take a more active role in easing the crisis. Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said yesterday that Russia needs to "get past the denial stage" about North Korea's nuclear activities and persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to "climb down."
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N. Korea may let U.S. verify nuke program
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Jan. 10, 2003
Associated Press
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/01/10/korea_nukes/index.html
UNITED NATIONS -- North Korea does not plan to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty but would agree to let the United States verify that it is not producing nuclear weapons if Washington drops its hostile stance, the country's U.N. ambassador said Friday.
Hours after the North Korean government announced its withdrawal from the 1968 global treaty that barred it from making nuclear weapons, Ambassador Pak Gil Yon held a rare news conference to say the country will not develop nuclear weapons "at this moment." Alt Text
He would not comment on whether North Korea already possesses one or two nuclear weapons and stressed that "future developments will entirely depend on the attitude of the United States."
Pak said North Korea plans to reactivate a nuclear reactor in the town of Yongbyon and complete construction of two other reactors, which will meet the country's energy and electricity demands "in the very near future." Activity at all three sites was frozen under a 1994 energy deal with the United States which Pyongyang has abandoned.
North Korea blamed "the U.S. vicious hostile policy" and an alleged "nuclear threat from the United States side" for its decision to pull out of the treaty, which has been ratified by 188 countries and is considered the cornerstone of international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
Pak restated North Korea's desire to resolve the nuclear issue through "peaceful negotiations" between Pyongyang and Washington, and said it wants a nonaggression treaty with the United States. He said the U.S. decision to talk -- but not negotiate -- "is not a sincere attitude."
Pak made clear that his government wants no more dealings with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors adherence to the treaty. He accused the agency of being "a tool" to implement hostile U.S. policies.
When asked under what conditions North Korea would return to the treaty, the ambassador replied: "We never say (there is) any possibility of returning to the NPT. My government decided to withdraw from the NPT, effectively from tomorrow, immediately."
But he said the North was willing to work directly with the United States. A statement issued by the government in Pyongyang held out the possibility of a future North Korea-U.S. agreement on nuclear verification.
"If the United States drops its hostile policy and stops its nuclear threat to the DPRK, the DPRK may prove through a separate verification between the DPRK and the U.S. that it does not make any nuclear weapons," the statement said, referring to the North's full name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
Whether such an arrangement would be acceptable to the United States was not immediately known. Diplomats noted that Pak did not completely close the door on North Korea rejoining the nuclear treaty.
When asked under what conditions North Korea would return to the treaty, known by its initials NPT, the ambassador replied: "We never say (there is) any possibility of returning to the NPT. My government decided to withdraw from the NPT, effectively from tomorrow, immediately."
Diplomats said Pak's language did not completely close the door on rejoining the treaty.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte condemned the North Korean decision.
Negroponte condemned the North Korean decision, saying it represented "a further escalation of North Korea's defiance of the international consensus in support of a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons and a serious challenge to the international nonproliferation regime."
"We reject North Korea's claims that actions by the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency justify its actions," he said. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell "have indicated repeatedly that the United States has no hostile intent," he said.
Negroponte called on North Korea to reverse its decision and reiterated that Washington seeks a peaceful solution. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also urged North Korea to reconsider.
Annan noted that no country has ever withdrawn from the treaty and stressing the importance of nations adhering to treaties and international obligations.
Pak forwarded a letter to the Security Council from North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun enclosing the government's statement explaining its decision.
The letter noted that the government initially decided to withdraw from the treaty on March 12, 1993, and had suspended its decision on June 11, 1993, one day before the 90-day notification period ended. Paek said North Korea was now revoking the suspension, and its withdrawal would be effective as of Saturday.
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the current council president, said members would discuss the letter next week.
Last week, the IAEA's governing body gave North Korea another chance to abandon its covert weapons program and readmit inspectors, but warned of confrontation if it failed to comply. The next step would likely be referring the issue to the Security Council, which could impose diplomatic and economic sanctions.
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Chronology of N. Korea Nukes Development
January 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-North-Korea-Weapons-Chronology.html
A timeline on nuclear weapons development in North Korea:
--1993: North Korea shocks the world by saying it will quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but it later suspends its withdrawal.
--1994: North Korea and U.S. sign nuclear agreement in Geneva. North Korea pledges to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors.
--August 1998: North Korea fires a multistage rocket that flies over Japan and lands in the Pacific Ocean, proving the Koreans can strike any part of Japan's territory.
--May 1999: Former Defense Secretary William Perry visits North Korea and delivers a U.S. disarmament proposal during four days of talks.
--September 1999: North Korea pledges to freeze testing of long-range missiles for the duration of negotiations to improve relations.
--Sept. 17, 1999: President Clinton agrees to the first significant easing of economic sanctions against North Korea since the Korean War ended in 1953.
--December 1999: A U.S.-led international consortium signs a US$4.6 billion contract to build two safer, Western-developed light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea.
--July 2000: North Korea renews its threat to restart its nuclear program if Washington does not compensate for the loss of electricity caused by delays in building nuclear power plants.
--June 2001: North Korea warns it will reconsider its moratorium on missile tests if the Bush administration doesn't resume contacts aimed at normalizing relations.
--July 2001: State Department reports North Korea is going ahead with development of its long-range missile. A senior Bush administration official says North Korea has conducted an engine test of the Taepodong-1 missile.
--December 2001: President Bush warns Iraq and North Korea that they would be ``held accountable'' if they developed weapons of mass destruction ``that will be used to terrorize nations.''
--Jan. 29, 2002: Bush labels North Korea, Iran and Iraq an ``axis of evil'' in his State of the Union address. ``By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger,'' he says.
--Oct. 4: North Korean officials tell visiting U.S. delegation that the country has a second covert nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement -- a program using enriched uranium.
--Oct. 16: U.S. officials publicly reveal discovery of North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
--Oct. 26: Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung meet on the sidelines of an Asian-Pacific regional summit in Mexico and agree to seek a peaceful settlement to the North's nuclear issue.
--Nov. 11: The U.S. and its key Asian allies -- Japan and South Korea -- decide to halt oil supplies to North Korea promised under the 1994 deal.
--Dec. 12: North Korea announces that it is reactivating nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that were frozen under a 1994 deal with the United States.
--Dec. 13: North Korea asks the U.N. nuclear watchdog to remove monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities.
--Dec. 14: The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency urges North Korea to retract its decision to reactivate its nuclear facilities and abide by its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
--Dec. 21: North Korea begin removing monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities
--Jan. 10, 2003: North Korea says it will withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
-------- terrorism
Scientists Discuss Balance Of Research and Security
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/science/10SECR.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - Leading scientists began talks here today on whether and how to withhold publication of scientific information that could compromise national security.
The discussions at the National Academy of Sciences follow a raft of post-Sept. 11 restrictions on research into some 64 substances that could be used in biological weapons. The discussions were also partly an effort to fend off potential government censorship or other steps to control unclassified research that the new domestic security law terms "sensitive."
The talks were prompted by the hesitance of microbiologists to publish their full research in scientific journals out of concern that terrorists could use the information. While restrictions on research have long been a fact of life for chemists and nuclear physicists, they are new and not entirely welcome among microbiologists, who say data must be published so other scientists can verify the quality of the research by reproducing the results.
"We in the life sciences are in the process of losing some of our innocence," said Stephen S. Morse of the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "Knowledge, often using very simple materials, is also the critical ingredient in making a biological weapons advance."
The discussions brought together two communities that have often viewed each other with distrust, if not disdain: security experts and scientists. While some scientists contend that the best defense against biological weapons is robust research that is widely accessible, security specialists maintain that scientists are being naïve at best, and reckless at worst.
"These two communities, if we do not start now with a constructive dialogue with each other, we're going to turn this into a disaster," said John J. Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which sponsored the meeting along with the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Hamre noted that the political climate in Washington and around the nation supported greater restrictions on science and civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. If scientists did not take the security concerns seriously, he said, politicians and policy makers with little understanding of science would step in with "blanket restrictions on science, not knowing what's sensitive and what's not sensitive."
"For precious little security, we would have devastating effects for the conduct of science," said Dr. Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense.
John H. Marburger, director of the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, noted that under a Reagan-era directive, research that was not classified as secret when ordered by the government could not be classified retroactively. But citing a report by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, he said such "traditional regulatory approaches are not well suited to biosecurity concerns."
Dr. Marburger did not reveal any impending policy changes, but said, "Those concerns are public concerns, and to them the public deserves a rational and serious response from its government."
The discussions, in a sense, ran against the instincts of many scientists here. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, stood before a picture of children gathered around a giant bust of Albert Einstein and recalled the society's founding mission: "to make science much more accessible to the nation and the world." Today's discussions pondered the opposite.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, new laws and regulations restrict who may work on 64 "select agents" that could be used to make biological weapons, barring students or scholars with a drug conviction or a history of mental illness and those from countries labeled sponsors of terrorism from participating in research. Universities and clinical and research laboratories have inventoried their select agents, with many of them urging researchers to destroy their stocks unless they were needed for current projects. Scientists found with such agents in violation of the law could face five years in prison.
Lewis Branscom, a Harvard professor who is advising the university on future work with select agents and other security issues, said he feared not so much a "frontal assault" on the First Amendment's freedom to speak and publish as "an elaborate web of controls that look and smell and taste like classification."
Barring groups of people - certain foreigners, marijuana smokers or people with clinical depression, say, from the research, he said, "reminds me very much of the McCarthy days."
Ronald Atlas, president of the American Society of Microbiologists, noted that proposed regulations issued in December included prohibitions on certain avenues of experimentation, and said he was concerned by First Amendment issues.
"Do you have a right of inquiry?" Dr. Atlas asked. "It's almost biblical: when God says, `Thou shalt not eat of the Tree of Knowledge.' "
In the cold war, the United States faced a technologically advanced adversary, but today's threat from enemy nations and terrorists is more diffuse, with discoveries that appear benign sometimes providing the clues for weapons to spread disease. Outlining a hair-raising next generation of biological armaments, George Poste, chairman of the bioterrorism task force at the Defense Department, said, "I do not wish to see the coffins of my family, my children and grandchildren created as a consequence of the utter naïvete, arrogance and hubris of people who cannot see there is a problem."
-------- treaties
Nuclear Treaty Glance
January 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Treaty-Glance.html
Formally called the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the agreement North Korea withdrew from as of Saturday was created to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and technology.
Among the parties bound by it are the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China, the five declared nuclear states at the time the treaty entered into force March 5, 1970. Since then, it has been accepted by 188 nations. North Korea joined in 1985, threatened to leave it in 1993, but suspended that threat three months later.
The treaty commits nations abiding by it to ``promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament,'' according to the United Nations.
It also commits signatories to allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the world's nuclear watchdog -- to monitor their peaceful nuclear programs to make sure they are not used for military purposes.
As the crisis over its nuclear programs escalated late last year, the North dismantled IAEA monitoring devices and broke agency seals on some of its nuclear facilities. The Vienna-based IAEA had stationed two inspectors in North Korea from 1992 until New Year's Eve. They left after being declared unwelcome.
A key article of the treaty stipulates that any state wanting to withdraw must give three months notice. North Korea announced its decision to quit the treaty Friday and said the action was effective Saturday.
Pyongyang was expected to argue that it had met the terms on withdrawal because it already gave three months notice in 1993 that it was quitting the treaty and had only suspended -- not canceled -- that action.
The IAEA has no way of enforcing compliance. As a last resort, it could turn to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on treaty violators.
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Elements of the Nuclear Treaty
January 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Pact-Glance.html
Facts about the nuclear nonproliferation treaty:
--Countries that have nuclear weapons will not help other countries obtain or develop them. Non-weapon states agree not to try to get nuclear arms.
--Countries with nuclear weapons will negotiate for nuclear disarmament.
--Countries without nuclear weapons will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee their nuclear facilities.
--Countries will exchange peaceful nuclear technology.
--Entered into force in 1970; signed by 187 countries. Extended indefinitely in 1995.
--India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba are the only countries that haven't signed on. Cuba is a member of a treaty establishing a nuclear-free zone in Latin America.
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NUCLEAR STANDOFF
North Korea Says It Is Withdrawing From Arms Treaty
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By SETH MYDANS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/international/asia/10SEOU.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 10 - Stepping up pressure following an American offer to open talks, North Korea said today it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The announcement means that, in 90 days, North Korea will no longer be bound by the treaty.
The statement, carried by its official news agency and monitored here, said North Korea had no intention of producing nuclear weapons and was acting in self-defense because it was "most seriously threatened" by the United States.
"Though we pull out of the N.P.T., we have no intention to produce nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity," it said.
There was no immediate response from the United States.
Even as the reports began to percolate of North Korea's declaration, two representatives of the country's permanent mission to the United Nations were meeting with an American official to discuss the confrontation with Washington over the North's nuclear program.
Han Song Ryol and Mun Jong Chol met in Santa Fe, N.M., on Thursday night local time with the New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, a former American ambassador to the United Nations who has experience working with the North Koreans on sticky issues.
The Bush administration made clear that the meetings were unofficial. Mr. Richardson was only empowered to deliver the same message that the administration had said in public: that there would be no negotiations until North Korea halted its two nuclear projects.
North Korea has not responded to an offer made on Tuesday by Washington to hold discussions with the participation of South Korea and Japan.
Instead of responding, North Korea's official radio station repeated the country's demand that Washington sign a nonaggression treaty as the price of an easing of tensions.
North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of threatening to invade it and has said it reserves the right to develop nuclear arms in self-defense. It continues to insist it has no nuclear weapons at this stage.
It made a similar announcement of withdrawal from the treaty in 1993 when challenged about its suspected nuclear weapons program. That crisis was defused in 1994 when it agreed to halt its nuclear program in exchange for help in building a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes, an agreement it has now repudiated.
Tensions have risen here since October, when the United States said North Korea admitted to pursuing a nuclear arms program in violation of the 1994 agreement. It then threatened to reactivate the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that had been closed and monitored under the agreement.
Today's statement denounced the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose monitors North Korea expelled last week, as a tool of the United States. The agency has threatened to report North Korea's noncooperation to the United Nations Security Council.
"The I.A.E.A. is used as a tool for executing the United States hostile policy," it said, and therefore North Korea can no longer remain bound to the nonproliferation treaty, which it signed in 1985 and which it said caused "the dignity of our nation to be infringed upon."
The announcement of North Korea's break with the international treaty came the morning after North Korea agreed to hold cabinet-level talks with South Korea, the highest-level dialogue between the two since North Korea admitted last October that it was maintaining a secret nuclear weapons program.
North Korea proposed holding the talks on Jan. 21-24, the week after a high-ranking American envoy visits here. In the past, North Korea often balked at invitations for high-level talks, but the nation's new policy, as spelled out in a New Year's Day editorial, is to make joint action with South Korea a priority in an effort to drive a wedge between the South and the United States.
In Seoul, several moves were under way to repair ties with the United States. The relationship has been strained by widespread demonstrations calling for a more equal relationship with the United States.
The withdrawal of the 37,000 American troops here "could send foreign investors flooding out of the country in fear of instability, throw the economy into turmoil and give North Korea a chance for provocation," South Korea's Defense Ministry warned in a monthly newsletter, Defense News, which circulated here on Thursday. "North Korea tries to weaken the South Korea-U.S. alliance's capability of deterring war."
Public opinion polls here indicate that about 55 percent of South Koreans, a group that consists largely of older people, want the troops to stay. In an indication that South Korea's silent majority may be starting to stir, about 400 South Korean military veterans and housewives staged a pro-American rally on Wednesday, burning an image of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, clinging to a missile.
Separately, the office of President Kim Dae Jung issued a statement on Thursday implicitly asking South Koreans to tone down the weekly vigils outside the American Embassy here. The statement said, "We need to calm excessive worries of the international community about the anti-U.S. atmosphere."
Conservatives criticize the government for addressing symptoms of anti-Americanism without addressing an underlying cause: a deep erosion among young people in the belief that American troops are needed in South Korea.
"Now is the time to sincerely consider whether or not to continue the weekend candlelit protests and risk our national security and healthy relations with the U.S. at this crucial time," The Korea Times newspaper, said on Thursday.
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Viewpoint: N Korea follows Bush's lead
By Daniel Plesch,
Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies
Friday, 10 January, 2003,
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2645581.stm
North Korea has decided to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, invoking its legal right to do so.
The move increases international tension and the risk of Japan reconsidering its position on nuclear weapons.
US President George W Bush Mr Bush branded N Korea part of the "axis of evil" in 2002 But it is in line with the new approach to global security adopted by the Bush administration.
President George W Bush has either withdrawn from or expressed his opposition to implementing a number of key global arms control agreements.
These include:
- the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty;
- the Biological Weapons Convention;
- the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
- and the process of strategic arms reductions with Russia.
The treaty signed with Russia - the Sort Treaty - is a treaty without content and has no operative provisions.
At the same time as withdrawing from these treaties, the Bush administration initially withdrew from the political process with North Korea designed by former President Bill Clinton, and which had rolled back but not entirely removed North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.
'Double standard'
Having been persuaded to resume the diplomatic process, Mr Bush decided in January 2002 to include North Korea in the "axis of evil", a decision that that country interpreted as tantamount to a declaration of war.
In these circumstances the North Korean regime would appear to have nothing to lose in building a weapon that the West has long declared as having a deterrent effect.
N Korean soldier eyes S Korean soldier on border N Korea "appears to have nothing to lose" It appears that North Korea obtained substantial help from Pakistan in its recent nuclear activities including assistance with a highly enriched uranium factory.
Pakistan's apparent help to Pyongyang came despite its vaunted alliance with the US in Washington's so-called war on terror.
The US was apparently unable to stop - or even learn about - Islamabad's rumoured support of North Korea's nuclear programme until it was too late.
Washington turned a blind eye to Pakistan's nuclear programme despite the close links between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the oft repeated statements from leading Pakistani nuclear officials that they see their bomb as an Islamic weapon.
If there is any programme that might be associated with Osama Bin Laden then the Pakistani one has to top the list.
'Bombast'
President Bush and his advisers have pursued a policy of military options against proliferation and yet in reality even baulked at seizing a cargo of Scuds en route to Yemen.
President Bush's policy has swept away the achievements of decades in building global controls on the worst of weapons
In the meantime they have presided over the collapse of sanctions on India and Pakistan for their nuclear testing and have accelerated North Korea nuclear crisis.
By any objective measure their policy has been ineffective and has made the world situation more unstable.
Their own rhetoric and policies of pre-emptive strikes - perhaps with nuclear weapons - encourage other states to assume that they live in a world of nuclear anarchy and to act accordingly.
President Bush's policy has swept away the achievements of decades in building global controls on the worst of weapons and replaced an effective policy with nothing more than bombast.
Daniel Plesch is a senior research fellow at RUSI in London.
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Nuclear non-proliferation treaty
1/10/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-01-10-nuclear-treaty-facts_x.htm
Facts about the nuclear treaty from which North Korea withdrew Friday:
- Countries that have nuclear weapons will not help other countries obtain or develop them. Non-weapon states agree not to try to get nuclear arms.
- Countries with nuclear weapons will negotiate for nuclear disarmament.
- Countries without nuclear weapons will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee their nuclear facilities.
- Countries will exchange peaceful nuclear technology.
- Entered into force in 1970; signed by 187 countries. Extended indefinitely in 1995.
- India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba are the only countries that haven't signed on. Cuba is a member of a treaty establishing a nuclear-free zone in Latin America.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- louisiana
Official seeks to call public hearing about plant
By CLAY CAREY
The (Gallatin) News Examiner
Friday, 01/10/03
http://www.tennessean.com/growth/archives/03/01/27515429.shtml
DRAWING COURTESY OF LOUISIANA ENERGY SERVICES: http://www.tennessean.com/growth/archives/03/01/27515430.jpg
Louisiana Energy Services has prepared a conceptual model of the uranium enrichment plant it proposes to build near Hartsville, about 40 miles northeast of Nashville in Trousdale County.
GALLATIN - A Sumner County commissioner hopes to persuade county officials to call a public meeting to discuss the uranium enrichment plant proposed in nearby Hartsville.
Commissioner Matt Slone said he decided to pursue the meeting after talking with Lebanon Mayor Don Fox and watching a program airing on local television that was produced by Sumner County Executive Hank Thompson.
Fox has become an outspoken opponent of the uranium plant that would be built by Louisiana Energy Services, while Thompson has supported it.
''I've only seen Hank Thompson's infomercial. ... It's a good infomercial, but there are two sides to every story. I haven't heard a peep from anybody else,'' Slone said.
''With something like this, that's so important, you need to get as much information as possible.''
Thompson said yesterday he has received ''a lot of good response'' since his televised presentation about the LES proposal began airing shortly after the holidays. Much of the information in it Thompson gleaned during a recent trip to a similar LES facility in the Netherlands.
He also said he does not think a public hearing to discuss the issue in Sumner County is necessary. ''We've covered it good enough, I think,'' Thompson noted.
Fox disagreed. ''To say that this is safe ... to say that the people in Holland are in better condition than those in Paducah or Oak Ridge - give me a break,'' the Lebanon mayor said yesterday. ''This is nothing but a charade by Hank Thompson and LES.''
Thompson said the issue of the uranium plant has eroded a 10-year friendship he and the Lebanon mayor had shared.
''Don Fox won't return my phone calls,'' Thompson said. ''I guess he doesn't want any information from me.''
Fox said been out of town when the Sumner executive called him.
-------- new york
Report: Indian Point Plans 'Not Adequate'
January 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Indian-Point.html
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- Emergency planning around the Indian Point nuclear power plants is inadequate to ``protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation,'' according to an independent report obtained by The Associated Press.
The report was being delivered Friday to Gov. George Pataki.
Among other problems, ``The plans do not consider the possible additional ramifications of a terrorist-caused release,'' the report says.
``Simply stated, the world has recently changed,'' the report says. ``What was once considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision.''
The study was done by James Lee Witt Associates, a consultant firm headed by a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Pataki hired Witt last summer to review emergency planning for New York state's nuclear power plants, starting with Indian Point.
Since the attack on New York City in 2001, fear of terrorism at Indian Point has turned emergency planning, especially the adequacy of the evacuation plan, into a major issue in the lower Hudson Valley. Dozens of politicians, from members of Congress to school board members, have called for a shutdown of the plants, but Pataki has not.
-------- us politics
Bush, Jiang discuss N. Korean treaty move
January 10, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030110-120452-1003r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin held talks Friday over North Korea's withdrawal from the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and expressed the "common purpose" of keeping the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, the White House said.
Pyongyang's planed withdrawal from the accord was announced by the North Korean government Friday morning. It later sent a formal letter of withdrawal to Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency.
Its withdrawal, which under the treaty required a 90-day notice, would take effect Saturday, Jan. 11, it said.
"I think it's fair to say that North Korea has decided that it wants to stick its finger in the eye of the world," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "This is not an action North Korea has taken vis-à-vis the United States, this is an action that North Korea has taken vis-à-vis the world."
"North Korea may want to isolate it as a matter with the United States, but that's far from reality."
The North Korean letter to ElBaradei blamed its actions on Washington.
"Rather than providing the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) with formal assurances against the use of nuclear weapons, the Bush administration, labeling the DPRK as 'axis of evil' and designating it a target for its nuclear preemptive strike," destroyed the foundation and spirit of the non-proliferation treaty, the 1994 Agreed Framework between North Korea and the United States, and other agreements.
Ri Je Son, director general of the North Korean Department of Atomic Energy and author of the letter, said North Korea does not intend at the moment to produce nuclear weapons, and if the United States "gives up its hostile policy" Pyongyang would allow U.S. inspectors into the country for verification.
The White House said Friday the telephone conversation between Bush and Ziang lasted about 15 minutes; both leaders viewed North Korea's latest move as "a concern to the entire international community."
"The president said that this binds us in common purpose ... and stressed the United States has no hostile intentions toward North Korea and sought a peaceful, multilateral solution to the problems caused by Pyongyang's actions," Fleischer said.
North Korea made the withdrawal move despite an earlier warning by the IAEA that it would refer Pyongyang's actions to the U.N. Security Council if Pyongyang did not return to compliance with nuclear accords it signed and allowed a return of inspectors expelled in December.
North Korea, in defiance of a 1994 agreement with the United States, has said it was reopening a shuttered nuclear reactor believed to have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons. It also said it was retrieving spent fuel rods that had been put in storage and which could be used for nuclear weapons.
The move came after the United States cut off fuel oil aid to Pyongyang because the North Koreans admitted in October to violating the 1994 pact by clandestinely implementing another program to obtain nuclear weapons products.
The current standoff is similar to that in 1993-94, in which the Clinton administration reportedly contemplated a pre-emptive strike on the Yongbyon nuclear reactor to stop North Korea's attempt to obtain nuclear weapons. Instead, it induced North Korea to stand down with offers of fuel oil and other aid.
The CIA believes the North Korean regime already has one or two nuclear warheads, developed before the 1994 accord.
"I think it's fair to say that when you look at the history of North Korea and its dealing with multiple nations around the world, their approach is that the worse they act, the more they get," Fleischer said. "And that's an approach that this administration will not be a party to.
"The president's approach to this matter will remain a diplomatic approach, a matter of steady and steely diplomacy," he said.
Fleischer said North Korea's withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty was "not a surprise development" but was "disappointing."
Analysts believe the North Korean bluster is a ploy for additional aid, while achieving the status of a nuclear power.
North Korea has insisted on a formal non-aggression pact from the United States and direct negotiations to bring it back into compliance with the 1994 agreement, which shuttered Yongbyon.
In an apparent bow to South Korean and Japanese positions, Washington shifted track and said this week it was willing to hold direct talks with North Korea, but no negotiations would take place.
It also continues to insist a formal non-aggression pack was unneeded since Bush has repeatedly said the United States has no military intent toward the isolated nation, which maintains a million-man army on its border with South Korea.
North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Pak Gil, in an unprecedented news conference in New York Friday said the no-negotiation policy of Washington showed what was "not a sincere attitude."
The situation on the Korean peninsula was "getting worse," he added, and "no one can predict the future."
North Korea has said any attempt by the United States or United Nations to impose sanctions over its restarted nuclear program would be considered an act of war.
ElBaradei was meeting Friday in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Some 180 nations are signatories to the non-proliferation treaty. The import of its withdrawal is that its weapons programs would not be open to international inspections, something it achieved through expulsions. It could also complicate the ability of the U.N. Security Council in imposing sanctions on North Korea.
----
U.S. war aims hurt by lack of arms proof
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030110-74719265.htm
The growing likelihood that arms inspectors will fail to uncover forbidden Iraqi weapons programs before a U.N. briefing planned for Jan. 27 is hampering Bush administration efforts to rally broad international support for a quick strike against Baghdad.
U.S. and British officials yesterday accentuated the negative after a private, preliminary briefing to the U.N. Security Council by Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons monitor, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency - the two men charged with assessing whether the regime of Saddam Hussein has stockpiled nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
"There's no indication that Iraq has changed from its approach based on deceit and deception," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
"We know for a fact there are weapons there," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
But Mr. Blix's comment yesterday that the U.N. teams so far have found no "smoking guns" in more than a month of inspections and interviews provided cover for a number of countries who have opposed or questioned the need for military action against Saddam.
Hans Pleuger, Germany's ambassador to the United Nations, said after the Blix-ElBaradei briefing, "We subscribe to the recent statement of [U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan] that the inspections should continue, and for that reason alone, there are no grounds for military action."
Syria, Iraq's neighbor and the only Arab member of the 15-nation Security Council, believes Iraq so far is "completely in cooperation" with U.N. inspectors, according to its U.N. ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe.
China's foreign ministry called on the leading U.N. powers to judge the Iraqi report "fairly and objectively," and officials in France, the current leader of the Security Council, said the inspections in Iraq to date have proceeded in a "very efficient way."
French President Jacques Chirac, who has sent mixed signals in recent days about his willingness to participate in a U.S.-led military strike on Baghdad, said in Paris yesterday that war "is always the worst of all solutions."
"It should only be envisioned if absolutely all other options fail and, of course, only with a decision by the U.N. Security Council," Mr. Chirac said.
The inconclusive early returns on Iraq's weapons programs have both U.S. and British officials playing down the significance of the Jan. 27 meeting.
It marks the deadline for weapons inspectors to submit their first formal report to the Security Council, and many had considered it a likely tripwire for conflict.
The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair "categorically" denied a newspaper report that his government has urged Washington to put off any attack until November, reportedly to allow the inspectors to find more evidence of Iraqi misdeeds and solidify international support for war.
But Mr. Blair's spokesman said the prime minister believes the U.N. inspectors "must be given the time and space to do their jobs." The Jan. 27 meeting, the spokesman said, should be seen as a "staging post" and not a deadline for military action.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in an interview published yesterday in The Washington Post, said the U.S. government does not view the Jan. 27 briefing as "necessarily a D-Day for decision-making."
"My advice is to calm down about the 27th of January," said British U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, who noted that Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei have the power to report Iraqi violations of the disarmament order to the Security Council anytime they want.
Many conservative advisers both inside and outside the Bush administration cautioned last summer against taking the Iraq standoff to the United Nations, saying Mr. Bush's demands for disarmament and regime change would get bogged down in diplomatic maneuvering and Iraqi gamesmanship even if the inspectors were allowed back in.
Saddam has complained loudly about intrusive inspections and accused the inspectors of spying for the United States and Britain, but to date Iraqi officials have not blocked the inspectors from any targeted site.
The United States says Iraq's list of its weapons programs was woefully inadequate and that Saddam's regime has not shown "proactive cooperation" with the United Nations' disarmament demands.
But the drawn-out process has created political difficulties for a number of U.S. allies.
Mr. Blair faces a large bloc in his own ruling Labor Party that opposes the war.
In Turkey, a strong U.S. ally on Iraq's northern border, a newly elected government dominated by a party with Islamist roots has hesitated over whether to grant the U.S. ground forces the right to use key bases in staging an attack.
Polls show that more than 80 percent of Turks now oppose military action against Baghdad, fearing instability in the region and new hardships for the country's economy.
U.S. officials refused to speculate on how they would react to an ambiguous status report from Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei at the end of the month.
"That's a question you can ask on January 28," the State Department's Mr. Boucher said.
----
Powell and Bush at Cross-Purposes?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 10, 2003
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35858-2003Jan9?language=printer
The single most remarkable passage in Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" has, to my knowledge, gone unremarked. In early August 2002, Colin Powell decides that the Iraq hawks have gotten to the president, and that he has not weighed in enough to restrain them. He feels remorse:
"During the Gulf War, when he had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell had played the role of reluctant warrior, arguing to the first President Bush, perhaps too mildly [emphasis added], that containing Iraq might work, that war might not be necessary. But as the principal military adviser, he hadn't pressed his arguments that forcefully because they were less military than political."
Now, it is well known that Powell had been against the Gulf War and for "containment." What was not known was that, if Woodward is to be believed, Powell to this day still believes that sanctions were the right course and that he should have pushed harder for them.
This is astonishing. After a decade of bitter experience we know that sanctions are utterly useless in dealing with Saddam Hussein. If he did not give up his weapons programs in response to the most stringent sanctions imposed after defeat and humiliation in war, imagine how little effect sanctions would have had if he had been left in control not just of Kuwait and all its oil but of all his military assets as well.
Advocating the sanctions Band-Aid 12 years ago can be forgiven. But after what we have learned since then, how can one still think that would have been the better policy? Even Richard Gephardt admits that in retrospect the Democrats' (and Powell's) advocacy of sanctions was wrong. Sanctions would have left Kuwait under Hussein and left Hussein in possession of a nuclear program that was just months away from success. Only the Gulf War prevented Iraq from becoming a nuclear power.
Powell regrets not having prevented the war that prevented that outcome? This places Powell's actions in the current Iraq crisis in a new light. In August 2002 he persuaded the president to go to the United Nations. The pitfalls of such a course were obvious. International support is lovely, but key members of the Security Council have long undermined any serious effort to disarm Hussein and have publicly opposed the president's policy of regime change.
Did Powell go to the United Nations to garner support for the president's policy? Or did he go to undermine that policy and implement instead the preferred Powell policy of "containment" -- leaving Hussein in place -- by setting up an endless inspection process that keeps America at bay?
Which is it? We don't know. But if it was Powell's intention to advance policy rather than thwart Bush's policy, then it is incumbent upon him to help the president out of the U.N. inspections box Powell created.
It is impossible to find weapons of mass destruction in an uncooperative country. Even strong, determined inspectors will fail. Look: The United States was attacked with anthrax -- and more than a year later we still can't find the stuff, even with the cooperation of the entire national government and every law enforcement agency in sight. How do you expect to find anthrax in a country in which the authorities are hiding it?
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix is neither strong nor determined. He was handpicked by France and Russia in 2000 for precisely that reason. (When it was suggested to an administration official that Blix was Inspector Clouseau, he protested that this was unfair: "Clouseau was trying to find stuff.") Everyone knows that the only way to find weapons is to question Iraqi scientists under conditions of protective asylum outside Iraq. Yet Blix has contemptuously dismissed this option as running "an abduction agency."
Instead, he is running a farce. President Bush has been outspoken in expressing skepticism about the inspection process. But the president should not be out front taking the public relations hit for being openly skeptical. This is the job of the secretary of state. It is the job of the man who set up the Blix inspection game in the first place.
On Jan. 27 Blix will present his findings to the Security Council. They will be equivocal. He already told the Security Council yesterday that he found no smoking gun. (Surprise!) Blix's report will call for endless more inspections and will be seized upon by defenders of the status quo on the Security Council to deny the legitimacy of American military action. It will then be Powell's duty to discount the Blix charade -- to point out, for example, that Blix has not taken a single Iraqi scientist out of the country for interrogation free from Iraqi coercion -- and to explain why America cannot be deterred by it.
Or is charade Powell's intention, the way to vindicate his misgivings about Gulf War I and to ensure that Saddam Hussein's regime remains merely contained -- and intact?
-------- MILITARY
-------- europe
Europeans Seek to Rein in American War Machine
January 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Europe moved to stay America's hand over Iraq on Friday, as top officials spoke out against a rush to war on the basis of inconclusive weapons inspections.
``Without proof, it would be very difficult to start a war,'' European Union foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana said.
As President Bush continued to mobilize his forces and met Iraqi opposition leaders, one of President Saddam Hussein's main Iraqi foes said an invasion could destabilize the Middle East and warned that the sort of massive occupying force Washington envisages would face popular armed resistance.
``We reject the idea of an invasion and occupation of Iraqi territory,'' said Shi'ite Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim.
After U.N. inspectors told the Security Council on Thursday they had found no ``smoking gun'' to challenge Iraq's insistence it has no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, Washington made clear it still felt Baghdad was defying the United Nations.
With the world's eyes turning to North Korea, which has admitted developing nuclear weapons and pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty on Friday, U.S. officials insisted Iraq posed a major threat, however little the inspections found.
Chief inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council Iraq had ``failed to answer a great many questions.'' The United States said if Iraq continued to deceive it would again be in ``material breach'' of Council resolutions -- language that could mean war.
In Iraq, U.N. experts visited three sites on Friday, including a rocket fuel plant which Britain has alleged may be developing missiles to carry chemical or germ warheads.
EUROPE HESITANT
The United States is doubling its 60,000-strong force in the Gulf. The Pentagon has told a further 7,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to get ready, the Marine Corps said.
But EU Commission President Romano Prodi called for calm: ``War is not and must not be inevitable,'' he said in Greece, which plans to lead an EU peace mission to Arab capitals soon.
The 15 EU nations are sharply divided over Iraq. Britain is mobilizing its forces -- including a big naval landing force led by flagship carrier Ark Royal -- alongside the Americans despite grave doubts within Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party.
The bloc's other main military power, France, is cooler, insisting on an international mandate for any war. Germany, the biggest economy, opposes outright the idea of attacking Iraq.
``Inspections should continue and for that reason there are no grounds for military action,'' Berlin's ambassador to the United Nations, Gunter Pleuger, said in New York.
Britain's U.N. envoy, too, said there was no undue focus on Blix's next report to the Council on January 27.
Washington has little need of European military assistance and has made clear it is willing to fight alone if need be, despite agreeing to seek United Nations backing last autumn.
MAJOR COMMITMENT
In Turkey, a key NATO ally, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul wrote urging neighboring Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions. Muslim Turkey fears war would hurt its security and economy and has dragged its feet over backing Washington. But Gul agreed to U.S. inspections of Turkish bases to assess their usefulness.
Further away, another close U.S. ally, Australia, said it might send troops to the Middle East in the coming weeks.
Washington has sketched plans for a post-Saddam Iraq that it says would be the most ambitious since its occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II. Critics portray that as a grab for Iraq's vast oil wealth and say it could get bogged down in the ethnically and religiously divided nation of 23 million.
``Do you think that an American-installed government which does not respect the Iraqi nation and Islam could last long?'' said Iran's former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
In the Gaza Strip, a leader of the Palestinian group Hamas urged Iraqis to adopt the suicide bomb tactics against any invaders that Hamas has employed against Israelis.
``Blow yourselves up against the American army,'' Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi told a pro-Iraq rally. ``Bomb them in Baghdad.''
-------- israel / palestine
Hezbollah says it won't attack Israel during Iraq war
By Daniel Sobelman,
January 10, 2003
Ha'aretz (Israel)
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=250071&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0
Top Hezbollah officials in Lebanon have been indicating in recent days that the organization has no intention of attacking Israeli targets during an American offensive against Iraq. Early in the week, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah declared in an interview that the organization will not respond to Israeli "provocation" on the northern border.
Yesterday, Mohammad Raad, chairman of Hezbollah's faction in Lebanon's parliament, dismissed as mere propaganda Israeli claims about Hezbollah intentions to attack on the border at a time of an American campaign in Iraq.
When Israel claims that Hezbollah will exploit an offensive in Iraq and that the organization receives arms from Baghdad, it is trying to "mislead the public," claimed Raad. Hezbollah, said the parliamentarian, operates exclusively out of "self defense."
In recent months, Israel Defense Forces officers have warned that Hezbollah could try to exploit an American offensive in Iraq to attack Israeli targets. Yet IDF military intelligence officers have revised this estimate recently, saying that Hezbollah is actually unlikely to launch offensives, since it is deterred by the prospect of severe Israeli retaliation in Lebanon.
Nasrallah declared this week that his organization will show no restraint should Israel attack Lebanon. And he denied that Hezbollah has ever been supplied by Iraq - "we have never recieved anything from Iraq - not now, and not in the past," he said.
----
Judge pulls plug on Sharon's TV address to nation
From Stephen Farrell and Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem
World News
January 10, 2003
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-538180,00.html
Taking note: a protester outside the Israeli Prime Minister's office last night. The banner behind him reads "We are sick of you and your corruption" http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,60686,00.jpg
ARIEL SHARON'S attempt to counter sleaze allegations backfired spectacularly last night when his nationwide television address was abruptly halted for breaking election campaign rules.
Mr Sharon is fighting for his political survival after the three major Israeli television channels went off the air 15 minutes into his address to a nation gripped for days by persistent claims that he had lied to police over the source of a £1 million loan.
Even as the hawkish former general was in mid-flow, accusing his Labour critics of "despicable libel", the networks were ordered to drop the broadcast by the electoral authorities.
"We are sorry to announce we have to stop broadcasting the speech immediately according to an order by the election commission chairman, Judge Mishael Heshin, as the Prime Minister's comments amount to campaigning for the election," Israel Army Radio told listeners.
It was the second humiliating setback in one day, Israel's Supreme Court having earlier rejected an attempt by his Likud Party to ban two Arab MPs from the election.Under Israeli law, no political propaganda by candidates or parties is allowed for a month before the elections outside the strictly controlled time allocated for party political broadcasts and other forums. The election is on January 28.
But, characteristically, Mr Sharon went on the offensive at a press conference in Jerusalem timed to hit Israel's prime-time evening audiences.
The first 15 minutes were a lengthy diatribe against his main political opponents, the newly resurgent Labour Party, which was languishing in the election campaign but is now, according to the latest opinion polls, only three seats behind Likud.
The surge comes after persistent corruption allegations against Likud officials.
The latest allegations centre on claims that Mr Sharon and his two sons, Omri and Gilad, received a £1 million loan from Cyril Kern, a wealthy Jewish friend living in South Africa.
The loan was to pay back contributions to Mr Sharon's campaign for the party leadership in 1999. The campaign contributions had been declared invalid by Israel's State Comptroller and he was ordered to repay them.
But the liberal Haaretz newspaper claimed this week that, when questioned by fraud police last April, Mr Sharon had misled the investigators by assuring them that the money was repaid with a bank loan secured by mortgaging his private farm in the Negev desert. In fact, Haaretz says, the Sharons used the £1 million lent to them by Mr Kern.
During his address, Mr Sharon insisted that he had documents to prove his innocence.
He also said that he had told police everything he knew, but that he had not known how the money was eventually raised because his son Gilad took care of all matters concerning the family's private ranch.
Before the plug was pulled, he accused Labour of "perjury", issuing "false affidavits", "inappropriate behaviour" and improper relationships with private contractors.
Professor Yaron Ezrahi, a political analyst at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said that Mr Sharon was unlikely to have convinced the electorate.
"I think this was very damaging for Mr Sharon because the public was able to see his anger and his attempt to direct the fire at his opponents," he said.
"He was not presidential and he was not self-assured. He acted as a person who was hurt and in panic."
Mr Sharon has made it a lifelong practice - politically and militarily - to go on the attack when under pressure.
He also has a history of seeking to identify himself with the fate of Israel. In 1982, after being vilified for the massacre of 2,000 Palestinian civilians in Beirut's Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps, he lashed out at Cabinet colleagues. He was forced out as Defence Minister and accused them of having "put the mark of Cain not only on my forehead but on that of the Jewish people and the State of Israel". The maximum penalty for breaking Israel's election law is six months in prison, but, according to Moshe Negbi, an Israeli legal expert, no such sanctions are likely against Mr Sharon, who will probably escape with merely an apology.
Although the Israeli public had still not had the opportunity to hear Mr Sharon's defence in detail, Mr Negbi believes that the implications would not be significant in the longer term.
"Unfortunately, I think that the Israeli public today is so morally indifferent it won't make much difference," he said.
Gerald Steinberg, Professor of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, said that Mr Sharon may have been helped by the content of his message - pointing out that the Labour leaders Ehud Barak and Amram Mitzna still faced accusations of irregularities - "but the fact that he was angry and emotional was damaging".
----
Sharon, Going on TV Over Scandal, Is Yanked Off Air
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/international/middleeast/10JERU.html
JERUSALEM, Jan. 9 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his once almost certain re-election thrown into the balance by corruption charges, went on the counterattack tonight, but his feisty, nationally televised news conference was abruptly yanked off the air.
As campaigning heats up for the Jan. 28 elections, Mr. Sharon and his Likud Party have been jolted first by accusations of party corruption and now by an accusation that Mr. Sharon committed bribery, fraud and breach of trust by taking a private loan to repay a political contribution.
But today, when Mr. Sharon took to the airwaves to defend himself, he was cut off after it was determined that he was using the broadcast time illegally to spread "election propaganda" in the month before the vote.
The loan in question, $1.5 million from a South African businessman, Cyril Kern, was reportedly used to repay a political contribution by an American company called Annex Research. Under Israeli law, foreigners are not allowed to contribute to election campaigns, making both transactions appear illicit.
The police have opened an investigation and asked for the cooperation of the South African authorities. In the gathering intrigue, State Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein - whom Mr. Sharon's campaign strategists accuse of having a hand in leaking details of the investigation to the newspaper Haaretz this week - has also announced that a team is being put together to investigate the source of the leak.
Mr. Sharon's tough tactics against the Palestinians had seemed likely to ensure his smooth re-election against a Labor Party leader, Amram Mitzna, who advocates direct negotiations with the Palestinians.
Likud leaders who gathered in an emergency meeting on Wednesday night were shocked by word of a sharp fall in the polls, with a Haaretz sounding indicating that Likud would get 27 seats in the election while Labor would win 24. This afternoon, the prime minister's office announced that he would give a news conference to address the charges against him.
Mr. Sharon was barely warming to his task, thumping the podium about 10 minutes into his speech, when the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Mishael Cheshin, a Supreme Court Justice of liberal leanings, decided that he was in violation of a law preventing the broadcast of election propaganda in the month before a vote.
In quick succession, Israel's three television stations, along with the state radio and the army radio, cut off the sound, with announcers saying they had been ordered to do so.
It was the first time that an Israeli prime minister's speech had been cut off the air, the Israeli radio reported.
For all his popularity in taking tough measures against the Palestinians during the uprising of the last 27 months, Mr. Sharon has been vulnerable on other issues. He was forced to call the January election early after he failed to secure support for an austerity budget.
He went on the offensive tonight, as he has so often throughout his military career in all Israel's wars, accusing Mr. Mitzna of "all sorts of shady links to contractors" and calling the charges against him a "despicable slander" and an attempt "to seize power through lies."
The prime minister was somewhat contradictory, at first saying he had told police that everything to do with his financial arrangements was legal, then professing ignorance about some of the details.
"Have you gone crazy? Have you gone mad?" listeners heard Mr. Sharon growling in exasperated tones before the broadcast was cut off. "People tell tales, they tell lies, all kinds of gossip."
As the broadcasts suddenly stopped, Mr. Sharon was defending his longtime friend, Mr. Kern, a British citizen who had served as a volunteer in Israel's 1948 war of independence. He fought alongside Mr. Sharon in the bloody battle at the Latroun Junction, when the fledgling Israeli Army tried to relieve Jews in Jerusalem.
"You are talking here about someone who loves Israel," Mr. Sharon said. "What are you doing to him?"
Polls had been predicting a strong showing for Likud in the elections scheduled for Jan. 28, at one point suggesting that Likud might capture as many as 41 seats in the 120-member Parliament. Likud has 19 seats in the outgoing Parliament and governs in a coalition of religious and rightist parties.
Even before the latest controversy over the reported loan from Mr. Kern, Likud had been buffeted by vote-buying charges during its internal leadership vote late last year, and Mr. Sharon fired the Parliament member held responsible, Naomi Blumenthal, when she refused to answer questions about the affair.
There were also reports in the newspapers that candidates backed by underworld figures had won places on Likud's list.
The problems for Mr. Sharon and Likud were sharply magnified on Tuesday when Haaretz, which has often been critical of Mr. Sharon, published an exposé, citing a Justice Department document, that charged that Mr. Sharon, acting through his sons, Omri and Gilad, had tried to deceive the police and Israel's state comptroller in a complicated plan to disguise Mr. Kern's loan as a mortgage on Mr. Sharon's ranch.
"I never imagined that the behavior of the Labor Party would be so irresponsible," Mr. Sharon said before the broadcast was cut off. "They tried to turn all of us into mafia, into organized crime, and all for the sake of politics."
What was broadcast left the situation somewhat murky. Mr. Sharon repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing, while heaping suspicion on his enemies. But at the same time, he said he was not exactly certain how his two sons had obtained the $1.5 million loan to pay back the $1.5 million loan for allegedly illegal contributions to his 1999 campaign for Likud leadership.
"Everything was done in a proper way," he said at one point. "I have documents that prove everything. If the police want to come and interrogate me, let them come and ask questions. I have nothing to hide, nothing.
"I know that it was all done in a legal manner," he said.
But at another point, he said: "I am saying here clearly that I do not know how the money was gotten. And this I told police. I told police that I thought the ranch was mortgaged."
He also accused his predecessor, Ehud Barak, and Mr. Mitzna of not returning campaign funds he contended they had received illicitly.
"I was the only one who returned the money," he thundered.
The Likud campaign chairman, Ehud Olmert, the mayor of Jerusalem, protested the ruling that cut off the broadcast, saying Mr. Sharon had not been allowed to defend himself.
Labor officials scoffed at what was broadcast.
"The attacks are a cheap political script," said Avram Burg, a leading Labor member of Parliament. "He did not know what is in his own pockets? He, the prime minister of Israel? So how can he run the country?"
-------- puerto rico
Navy to Expand Its Use of Bombing Ranges
January 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Navy-Vieques.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy will expand its use of bombing ranges in Florida and elsewhere on the U.S. mainland when it abandons a site on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in May, defense officials said Friday.
Navy officials were notifying Congress that they had certified alternatives to Vieques for conducting live-fire and other training, and an official announcement was planned soon, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Navy has used Vieques as its main Atlantic Coast training range for 56 years but it has been hindered by local protests stemming from an April 1999 bombing accident that killed a civilian security guard. In January 2000 the Clinton administration set a May 2003 target date for withdrawing from Vieques, but Congress required the Navy to certify that alternative training sites were at least as good as Vieques.
For years the Navy and Marine Corps asserted that there were no satisfactory alternatives to Vieques, which it considered the crown jewel of training facilities for naval air and amphibious forces in the Atlantic Fleet.
Many Puerto Ricans objected to the continued use of Vieques, citing environmental and other risks.
Among the main alternatives certified by Navy Secretary Gordon England as ``equivalent or superior'' to Vieques:
-- Pinecastle naval bombing range in Florida's Ocala National Forest near Jacksonville Naval Air Station. The Navy has used nearly 6,000 acres of the 382,000-acre forest for target practice for decades under a special-use permit from the U.S. Forest. Last year it received a 20-year extensive of the permit.
-- Avon Park Air Force range in south-central Florida. It is a 106,000-acre bombing and gunnery range about 10 miles southeast of the city of Avon Park.
-- Eglin Air Force Base, about seven miles from Fort Walton Beach in the Florida panhandle. Eglin has hundreds of acres of ranges and other facilities and three active air fields: Eglin Main, Duke and Hurlburt. In recent years the Navy has done some live bombing at Eglin ranges.
-- Tyndall Air Force Base, about 12 miles east of Panama City, Fla., home of the 325th Fighter Wing and the Southeast Air Defense Sector.
-- An at-sea Navy range off the coast of Key West, Fla.
The Navy also is considering using Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on the North Carolina coast.
Before it abandons Vieques in May, the Navy intends to use it for training naval forces that may be deployed for a war against Iraq. These include the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group, which is expected to train there in late January. Under an agreement with the Puerto Rican government, no live ordnance is used in training at Vieques.
On the Net:
Navy and Vieques at http://www.navyvieques.navy.mil/
-------- us
35,000 More U.S. Troops Ordered to Gulf
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Jan 10, 2002 9:20 PM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TROOP_DEPLOYMENT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed orders Friday for nearly 35,000 U.S. troops, including two large groups of Marines, to deploy for a possible war against Iraq, officials said.
It was the largest single deployment order since the Pentagon began its force buildup in the Gulf last month.
Although Rumsfeld signed the order Friday, the troops' departures will be spread out over the remainder of the month, officials said.
At Camp Lejeune, N.C., the Marines' main East Coast base, officials said about 7,000 Marines would be leaving soon. They are part of a group the Marines call an amphibious task force, to include a variety of air and ground forces.
A second amphibious task force of another 7,000 Marines has been ordered to deploy from the West Coast.
The two task forces are the centerpiece of the deployment order signed by Rumsfeld on Friday. Officials would not reveal other details except to say the order includes forces from services other than the Marine Corps.
Elsewhere, officials said soldiers and fighter pilots from North Carolina bases and B-1 bombers in and crews in South Dakota will leave soon for the Persian Gulf region. Two B-1s departed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., on Wednesday to begin their deployment. Eventually, about a dozen of the bombers will go, along with about 500 personnel.
Rumsfeld's first major deployment order was signed Dec. 24 and called for about 25,000 troops to head overseas. Earlier this week, he signed another order for about 5,000 more troops. With the addition of 35,000 on Friday, plus the roughly 60,000 already in the Gulf region, the Pentagon is well on its way to exceeding its goal of having 100,000 there by Jan. 31.
Eventually the size of the U.S. force arrayed against Iraq could reach 250,000, but defense officials have said any U.S. attack ordered by President Bush could begin with 100,000 or fewer troops in place. The rest could be brought to the fight later or held in reserve.
As part of the amphibious task force deploying from the East Coast, three Virginia-based ships received orders Friday, the Navy said. They are the amphibious transport dock ship USS Ponce, the amphibious assault ship USS Saipan and the USS Gunston Hall. The three pulled away Friday morning from the Norfolk (Va.) Naval Station.
On Wednesday, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Jones, said 65,000 to 75,000 Marines might eventually be called on if there is a war against Iraq.
About 100 Marine reservists were called to active duty at Fort Knox, Ky., and shipped out Friday for Camp Lejeune.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., fewer than 1,000 soldiers from six units of the 18th Airborne Corps have received orders and will leave within the next two weeks, post spokesman Maj. Gary Tallman said. He would not give their number or destination.
The 18th Airborne Corps already has more than 13,000 troops involved in the war on terrorism.
At Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, also in North Carolina, all 4,500 members of the 4th Fighter Wing are on alert, base spokeswoman Lt. Beverly Mock said, but not all will head to the Gulf immediately. She declined to say how many would leave in the next few days.
Also Friday, the Army was readying details of an order that will halt all routine transfers of soldiers as the military buildup continues. Rumsfeld last month directed the Army and Marine Corps to issue "stop movement" orders, which allow the services to focus on mobilizing troops to the Persian Gulf rather than for routine changes in assignments.
The Army's personnel office is finishing details on which soldiers would be allowed to complete transfers - such as those scheduled to move to bases overseas whose household goods are already being shipped, said Army spokesman Capt. Ben Kykendall.
A handful of family members watched from the pier Friday morning as the USS Ponce prepared to leave port at Norfolk.
Boatswain's Mate Jason Sandusky, 21, hugged his relatives before boarding.
"I'm just ready to go," he said.
On the Net:
Camp Lejeune: http://www.lejeune.usmc.mil
----
Suit Claims Sex Bias in Draft Registration
January 10, 2003
New York Times
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/national/10DRAF.html
BOSTON, Jan. 9 - Five Massachusetts students filed a lawsuit in federal court today challenging the constitutionality of military registration because it requires that only men register, and not women.
The students, four men and a woman, asserted that the Selective Service Law, which requires men to register for possible military service immediately after they turn 18, discriminated on the basis of sex and violated the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection.
In 1981 the Supreme Court ruled that the Selective Service Law was constitutional because of the combat restrictions placed on women.
Harvey Schwartz, the lawyer in the new case and the father of two of the students, said he planned to argue that much had changed since then, including service by women in the Persian Gulf war.
But a Washington lawyer who specializes in military law, Eugene R. Fidell, said that the new suit had little chance of success.
"I think there's solid Supreme Court precedent against this, and that precedent has not been eroded in any way," said Mr. Fidell, the president of the Institute for Military Justice.
--------
Tomorrow's Smarter, Connected Navy
Networking technology is the basis for many potential new weapons systems, especially given the imperatives of in-shore combat
By Otis Port in New York
Business Week
JANUARY 10, 2003
http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/jan2003/tc20030110_3330.htm?tc
Give the Navy credit for pioneering the concept of network-centric warfare (see BW Online, 1/7/03, "The Network Is the Battlefield"). Its roots hark back to the late 1970s, when some prescient Navy researchers realized that then-emerging computer and communications technologies might provide a better means of coordinating all the ships in a battle group. That has always been a daunting task, considering that a naval battle group can consist of dozens of ships spread over hundreds of square miles of ocean.
With high tech's progress in the 1980s, the network-centric idea advanced from possible to plausible. The initial research goals were to provide U.S. naval commanders with a decisive edge in deep-sea battles with the Soviet navy. But then the Soviet Union collapsed, and by the mid-1990s the U.S. found itself with no real blue-water rival. Instead, it was clear that the Navy would increasingly be called into "brown water" -- close to shore -- to support local military operations and peacekeeping missions, such as Operation Joint Guard in Bosnia in the late 1990s.
As a result, the Navy is now in the throes of a sweeping transition. The tactics and ships that win high-seas engagements like the Battle of Midway, which turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific, won't necessarily prevail in brown water. But networking technology is seen as more imperative than ever -- and it's the foundation for many new weapons systems now in various stages of research and development.
ALL FOR ONE. The network-centric scheme embodied in Raytheon's (RTN ) Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) system was originally conceived to knit together all the naval-combat tools present on some remote stretch of ocean. Radar and sonar images from all the ships and patrol planes there --even those far over the horizon, out of sight in all directions -- are combined electronically and displayed on screens in every ship's combat-control center (or will be, once the Navy outfits them all with CEC).
If enemy planes zero in on a particular cruiser, say, and mask their attack with radar-jamming signals, the cruiser's skipper can still see the radar blips picked up by other ships. And if the cruiser's defenses are overloaded because of incoming missiles and torpedos, the CEC system can fire anti-aircraft missiles from a nearby ship.
In brown water, without this sort of computerized fighting capability, ships are fat targets. It takes only a minute or two for an antiship missile fired from shore to zip across the waves and smack a vessel several miles off the coast. Without CEC's fusion of data from multiple radars and infrared sensors, individual ships might never know what hit them, since it's hard for onboard radar to spot a sea-skimming missile against the clutter of a shoreline.
THE BIG GUY LOSES. Closer in, pleasure boats crammed with explosives also pose a serious threat. While a repeat of the lone-boat attack on the USS Cole in October, 2000, would be unlikely to succeed now that the Navy is on hightened alert, a swarm of small boats might be able to overwhelm a ship's defenses.
The magnitude of brown-water dangers was all too apparent last summer, during the Pentagon's biggest war game ever. Set in the year 2007, the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise involved an invasion fleet sent to intervene in a fictional Middle East nation. But after sailing into the Persian Gulf, the mighty U.S. Navy got trounced by inferior technology.
The wily Saddam Hussein-like dictator -- played by retired Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper -- ruthlessly attacked with swarms of explosives-laden pleasure boats and old propeller planes on suicide missions. Together with a handful of outmoded Silkworm antiship missiles from China, the little boats and planes sank 16 U.S. warships, including the task force's aircraft carrier, plus two helicopter carriers and other vessels transporting thousands of marines. Had it been real, it would've been the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.
STEALTH AT SEA. Some Navy brass figure the best answer to brown-water threats is to fight fire with fire -- by developing new types of small, fast warboats designed specifically for these in-shore battles. The strategy's centerpiece, dubbed Streetfighter, is a mini-destroyer long championed by Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, who now heads the Pentagon's new Office of Force Transformation.
Streetfighter ships will be about half the size of today's 500-foot-long destroyers. They may may end up resembling a floating F-117 stealth bomber, if the team led by Northrop Grumman (NOC ) wins the design competition now under way. Northrop Grumman is basing its concept on the angular features of the Swedish navy's new Visby-class corvette. Its above-deck superstructure is enclosed in panels like an F-117's to make it hard to target with radar-aimed guns or missiles.
Five other Streetfighter proposals will be submitted to the Pentagon next month, and the first ship could be built as early as 2005. Eventually, the Navy hopes, between 30 and 60 Streetfighters will join today's 300-ship fleet.
SUBS WITHOUT SAILORS. In addition to Streetfighter -- formally designated LCS, for littoral combat ship -- the Navy is working on robot helicopters and planes to give the CEC system an eagle's-eye view for watching over both ships and marines ashore. Then there's Spartan, a robot speedboat that will repel swarming small-boat attacks with its own swarms, guided by CEC's computers. Spartans will be either 25 or 40 feet long, depending on the weapons they carry, and will hit speeds of up to 50 knots, or 55 mph. The first of these unmanned surface vehicles is expected to take to the water around 2006.
Several unmanned underwater vessels, or minisubs, are also being developed for brown-water campaigns. One model will specialize in scouting missions, mapping underwater mines and other shoreline defenses. Other robot subs may be outfitted with small torpedos or short-range missiles. Or they may deploy sensors, weapons, and even unmanned aircraft in buoyant canisters that bob to the surface, ready for action when called upon by the CEC network.
Wrap all the Navy systems together, and link its CEC computers to Army and Air Force sensors and weapons, and by decade's end the Navy could have the beginnings of a potent brown-water punch -- one that would hopefully be smart enough to prevent debacles like the fiasco during last summer's war game.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
The 'dirty little secret' about polygraph tests
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
January 10, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030110-63140375.htm#2
"Interpreting a polygraph test" (Metropolitan, yesterday) only scratches the surface in explaining how polygraph tests are interpreted. The dirty little secret of the polygraph community is that the "test" depends on trickery, not science. The polygrapher exhorts the examinee to answer all questions truthfully, but secretly assumes that denials to certain questions - called "control" questions - will be less than truthful.
One commonly used control question is, "Did you ever lie to get out of trouble?" The polygrapher steers the examinee into a denial, warning that anyone who would do so would also commit a crime and then lie about it. But secretly, it is assumed that everyone, even those innocent in the matter under investigation, has lied to get out of trouble.
The polygrapher scores the test by comparing physiological reactions to these probable-lie control questions with reactions to relevant questions (e.g., "Did you shoot John?"). If the former reactions are greater, the examinee passes; if the latter are greater, he fails. This simplistic methodology has no grounding in the scientific method.
Polygraph tests also include irrelevant questions such as, "Is today Friday?" The polygrapher falsely explains that such questions provide a "baseline for truth," but in reality, they are not scored at all and merely serve as buffers between sets of relevant and control questions.
Investigators value the polygraph because naive and gullible examinees sometimes confess. But many truthful persons fail the "test." Perversely, the test is biased against the truthful because the more candidly one answers the control questions - and consequently feels less stress when answering them - the more likely one is to fail.
Conversely, liars can beat the test by augmenting their physiological reactions to the control questions. This can be done by constricting the anal sphincter muscle, biting the side of the tongue, or merely thinking exciting thoughts. Although polygraphers frequently claim they can detect such countermeasures, no polygrapher has ever demonstrated any ability to do so, and peer-reviewed research indicates that they cannot.
GEORGE W. MASCHKE
Co-founder AntiPolygraph.org
The Hague
----
Scientists discuss openness and security
Friday, January 10, 2003
By The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01102003/s_49323.asp
WASHINGTON - Finding a balance between the sometimes conflicting needs of scientific openness and national security drew the attention of dozens of scientists this week.
"The dilemma that we face today is that science can be misused for terror, but scientific openness is critical for scientific progress," Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said.
A daylong meeting was convened on Thursday by the National Academies in the wake of growing concerns about bioterrorism and the potential for enemies to obtain knowledge from easily available research.
"Clearly, since September 11, 2001, and the ensuing anthrax attacks, there has been heightened fear that terrorists might be able to subvert the scientific enterprise by misusing scientific information that is easily available," said Ronald Atlas, president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Atlas said some scientists have asked to withhold critical information in papers they publish out of fear of misuse. But if that is allowed, he said, it might fundamentally change science by eliminating the ability of other researchers to test and repeat experiments.
John Marburger, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told the gathering that the administration understands the need for scientists to conduct their work in accordance with established procedures.
Marburger noted that when federal agencies fund research, they can specify at that time that the findings will be classified, a policy that was established in 1982. Some research done before the United States ended its biological warfare program was later declassified, and Marburger said that probably should not have occurred. But he stressed that current policy is for fundamental research to be as open as possible and, where classification is needed, procedures are already in place.
The essence of progress in science, Alberts stressed, is publishing results openly so other researchers can duplicate them, or discover the error in the first research.
John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security think tank, that the needs of security and science must be integrated, not just balanced. "If ... scientists and security people see each other as adversaries it will be a disaster."
Some security experts want to put a blanket on all science, he warned. "We can't afford to put good science at risk in a period of paranoia."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Air Pollution a Priority, Whitman Says
Administration Effort to Press Curbs May Lead to Clash With Senate GOP Leaders
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35458-2003Jan9?language=printer
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that the Bush administration will press industries this year to sharply reduce air pollutants, setting up a possible confrontation with the new Senate Republican leadership, which has said such efforts can wait until next year.
While the administration has strongly opposed mandatory reductions in "greenhouse gas" emissions, President Bush is adamant about passing "Clear Skies" legislation this year that would slash by 70 percent three other health-threatening pollutants. The plan would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the operating costs of utilities.
The administration's stance differs sharply from that of Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the incoming chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe has promised hearings, but no action, on the administration's plan.
Bush and his senior advisers believe they have the best chance of winning passage of the plan this year, before the 2004 presidential campaign heats up, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said in an interview at her office.
"We're going to put a big push on for Clear Skies," Whitman said. "I've heard from the president's mouth that he cares about Clear Skies and would like to get it done."
As for speculation that she might leave her post out of frustration with the administration's environmental policies, Whitman declared: "I'm not a quitter. . . . I'm here, and I'm going to stay."
She went on to outline an ambitious agenda for the coming year. For example:
• She will announce next week a plan that would, for the first time on a national basis, allow companies violating the Clean Water Act to buy "credits" from lesser polluters that would bring them into compliance with the law. The proposed National Water Quality Trading Policy is similar to a market-based system that has operated for years under the Clean Air Act to limit the threat of acid rain.
"We think there's just an enormous potential to see a very quick, significant reduction in some of these nutrient [pollutants] in the waterways using this approach," Whitman said.
• The EPA will unveil as early as today proposed rules and guidelines for reassessing the extent to which the government can prevent unlawful industrial pollution in nonnavigable waterways and wetlands. The Supreme Court put new limits on the scope of the Clean Water Act a year ago.
Environmental groups warned this week that the government will use the high court ruling as an excuse to scale back federal protections for hundreds of thousands of miles of small streams, tributaries and wetlands, and to leave them at the mercy of builders and developers. Whitman said yesterday that the new policy would have minimal effect.
"All those who talk about some kind of broad approach and effort to open up the Clean Water Act in order to roll back and allow developers and polluters to have their way are just simply inaccurate," she said.
• The EPA, the Energy Department, the Commerce Department and other agencies will step up efforts to encourage voluntary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions -- a major cause of global warming -- even as the administration continues to oppose calls for mandatory limits on carbon emissions.
Whitman said the administration will consider credit-trading programs to encourage voluntary reductions in carbon emissions from utilities and manufacturers, but will oppose legislation introduced this week by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) to impose mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. "There is no support within the administration for that," she said.
For months, there has been rampant speculation that Whitman, 56, the former governor of New Jersey, was on her way out -- possibly to a new assignment -- after nearly two years of bruising fights within the administration. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell once described her as the administration's "wind dummy" -- a military term for the object shoved from an airplane to determine how the wind is blowing over a landing zone.
She got off to a rocky start when she declared that the new administration was committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions and combating global warming. Bush subsequently reneged on a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then disavowed the global warming treaty that the United States negotiated and signed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.
Whitman scored several clear victories for the environment, including the adoption of tough new standards for diesel fuel emissions, the decision that forced General Electric Co. to clean up a segment of the Hudson River and the passage of "brownfields" legislation to clean up blighted urban landscapes. But environmentalists have assailed her for the easing of enforcement of "New Source Review" clean-air regulations for aging coal-fired power plants and refineries.
Under the Clear Skies proposal, utilities would have to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by an average of 70 percent over the coming decade -- a dramatic cut in pollutants that cause smog, acid rain and haze, and that contribute to serious health problems and premature deaths.
Inhofe, a conservative who has opposed many environmental protection initiatives, says he supports Clear Skies but wants to put off its consideration for a year while his committee weighs new highway and water projects legislation. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) has pledged to try to push through the legislation this year.
Inhofe spokesman Mike Catanzaro said: "We've had discussions with the administration on Clear Skies, and we will be willing to work with them on one of their top legislative priorities."
But a committee source said: "There's a lot of controversy over this initiative. We see a lot of trouble ahead in terms of getting it through the committee."
----
Activists say U.S. computer makers pollute
Friday, January 10, 2003
By Rachel Konrad,
The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01102003/s_49325.asp
SAN JOSE, California - U.S. technology companies lag foreign rivals in reducing hazardous materials in electronics and encouraging recycling, while American workers involved in recycling are exposed to too many toxins, an advocacy group says.
In its third annual report card, the Computer TakeBack Campaign assigned poor or failing grades to Hewlett-Packard Co., Micron Technology Inc. and Gateway Inc.
The study, published online Thursday after research by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, accuses U.S. companies of being slow to reduce "e-waste," including lead, polyvinyl chloride and other hazardous materials used in computer manufacturing.
The new report came down especially hard on Texas-based Dell Computer Corp. for failing to send company representatives to shareholder meetings involving toxic materials policy. It also attacked the nation's top-selling computer manufacturer for dealing with a U.S. government contractor, UNICOR, which employs prison inmates to recycle outdated computers.
According to the Computer TakeBack Campaign, "high-tech chain gangs" are not guaranteed the safety protections needed to ensure protection against e-waste. "The Dell position on e-waste is a stain on the soul of Dell - the company and its founder," the report states. "Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, make generous donations to children's health and environmental charities in the U.S., but ignore the health and environmental impacts of e-waste on children and adults."
Activists mocked Dell's use of inmate labor at a protest Thursday in Las Vegas, where company executives gathered for the Consumer Electronics Show.
Dell spokeswoman Michele Glaze defended the contract with UNICOR, which is paid by dozens of companies and government agencies to have federal inmates recycle electronics, wash laundry, make toner cartridges, stamp metal and perform other jobs. Glaze said the lower wages earned by inmates allows Dell to recycle computers inexpensively. Owners of obsolete Dell machines pay shipping costs to return their computers but do not have to pay any additional costs.
"We are as concerned about this issue as the Computer TakeBack Campaign is," Glaze said. "We don't want people to throw away their computers."
Dell's failing grade mirrors lax environmental standards throughout the country, according to the computer take-back group. Even the highest-ranking American company in the study, IBM Corp., "disappointed" researchers for selling American consumers computers containing brominated flame retardants, used to prevent fires in circuit boards. Some countries prohibit the flame retardants, which are suspected of blocking hormones and impairing some biological processes. In those countries, IBM ships machines free of the chemicals.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and another group reported last year that as much as 80 percent of electronic waste collected for recycling in the United States was shipped to Asia, mainly China, India and Pakistan - exposing migrant workers to several poisons - despite a 1994 convention banning the export of hazardous waste from rich to poor countries.
Environmentalists also worry that with the popularity of new liquid crystal display technology, which is sharper and more energy efficient than traditional cathode ray tube monitors, an increasing number of old monitors are ending up in the trash.
The National Safety Council estimates the United States will be awash in 500 million defunct computers and monitors by 2007. Only a handful of American computer makers, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM, take back old computer equipment for disposal with little or no cost to consumers. Thursday's report said less than 10 percent of outdated computer products will be refurbished or recycled.
The report applauded California and Massachusetts for banning the disposal of cathode ray tube monitors and TVs in landfills because of their lead content. Several states and municipalities are considering similar legislation.
The report also praised the European Union, which in October adopted directives that put the burden of recycling on the manufacturer.
Japan, home of the highest-ranking electronics manufacturers, Fujitsu and Canon, passed a law in 2001 requiring manufacturers to recycle certain parts. Japan also requires disclosure of chemical use in production plants.
-------- health
Vampire Bat Saliva Eyed for Stroke Drug
January 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Vampire-Bat-Saliva.html
DALLAS (AP) -- A substance in the saliva of vampire bats could prove to be a potent new treatment for strokes, an Australian scientist says.
``When the vampire bat bites its victim, it secretes this powerful clot-dissolving substance so that the victim's blood will keep flowing, allowing the bat to feed,'' said Dr. Robert Medcalf of the Monash University Department of Medicine at Box Hill Hospital in Victoria, Australia.
That same substance -- Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator, or DSPA -- might someday be given to stroke victims to dissolve clots and thereby limit brain damage, he said.
The substance has yet to be tested for effectiveness and safety in humans, but it showed promise in preliminary experiments in mice. The findings were reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Stroke, published by the American Heart Association.
The research involves ischemic strokes, which are the most common kind of stroke and occur when a blood clot or narrowing of blood vessels prevents blood from getting to the brain. The other type of stroke is a hemorrhagic stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel bursts and causes bleeding in the brain.
Some ischemic stroke victims are given a clot-busting substance called tissue plasminogen activator, or TPA. But one major drawback of TPA is that it must be administered within three hours of the stroke's onset, or else the drug itself can cause bleeding and brain damage.
Medcalf's research team injected DSPA and TPA in mice and watched for brain damage. Mice that got DSPA suffered less brain damage.
Medcalf said that DSPA is not only a more potent clot-buster but can also be safely administered up to nine hours after the stroke's onset because it more precisely targets blood clots, which are held together by a string-like substance called fibrin.
``DSPA is almost inactive in the absence of fibrin and therefore much more fibrin-specific than TPA,'' Medcalf said.
One expert warned that the research was limited to mice that had not suffered strokes.
``This is several factors removed from a necessarily meaningful clinical effect,'' said Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of Duke University's Center for Cerebrovascular Disease and chairman of the American Stroke Association Advisory Committee. ``Does this have potential? Yes. But whether it will prove to be safe or efficacious for humans with strokes, that's a whole different story.''
And Dr. Keith A. Siller, an assistant professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine, said that the nine-hour window is not necessarily an advantage. He said that any drug administered after three hours is essentially pointless because the damage to the brain has already been done.
On the Web:
American Stroke Association: http://www.StrokeAssociation.org
-------- ACTIVISTS
Uzbek group says rights record better
By Marina Kozlova
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
January 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030110-024046-1419r.htm
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Uzbekistan has improved its treatment of political dissidents, a freed member of an independent human right group said Friday.
Yuldash Rasulev, a practicing Muslim and member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, was released from prison last week under an amnesty announced in December.
Last September, Rasulev was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and distributing extremist literature. The only evidence given at Rasulev's trial, however, was that he prayed five times a day and had listened to tapes on Islam. He helped people persecuted for their religious beliefs and affiliations.
The New York-based human rights group Human Rights Watch called the trial "politically motivated."
Uzbek President Islam Karimov's government has been tough on practicing Muslims because it fears the country may fall prey to Islamic militancy. International governments and groups have condemned Karimov's policies, however.
Repression of unauthorized Islamic groups in Uzbekistan began after five car bomb attacks in Tashkent in February 1999 that killed 16 people and wounded more than 100 others. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, was blamed.
The Uzbek government views members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir and Wahhabist organizations as potential terrorists and as an ideological breeding ground for terrorists.
After his release last week, Rasulev described life inside his penitentiary in the western Navoi province. He said the use of torture by jailers had stopped, food and medical treatment had become better, and jailers were more polite.
The penitentiary holds 4,500 convicts, including political prisoners.
Talib Yakubov, chairman of the HRSU, told United Press International the visit by top U.N. human rights officials to the country had brought about some of the positive changes.
"The visit of the special rapporteur of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, to Uzbekistan and his inspection of some penitentiaries have initiated some real changes in the penitentiary system of Uzbekistan's Ministry of Internal Affairs," he said.
Uzbekistan is a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, but Washington has criticized its policies against dissident groups.
Last November, Lorne Craner, U.S. assistant secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, said U.S. relations with Uzbekistan could be "unlimited," but depended on Tashkent's human rights record.
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Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence
January 10, 2003
From: "FAIR" <fair@fair.org>
Police in Genoa, Italy have admitted to fabricating evidence against globalization activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. In searches of the Nexis database, FAIR has been unable to find a single mention of this development in any major U.S. newspapers or magazines, national television news shows or wire service stories.
According to reports from the BBC and the German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (1/7/03, 1/8/03), a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro Troiani, has admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The bombs were apparently planted in order to justify the police force's brutal July 22 raid on the school. According to the BBC, the bombs had in fact been found elsewhere in the city, and Troijani now says planting them at the school was a "silly" thing to do.
The BBC and DPA also report that another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer in order to frame protesters. These revelations have emerged over the course of a parliamentary inquiry into police conduct that was initiated by the Italian government under pressure from "domestic and international outrage over the blood-soaked G8 summit in Genoa" (London Guardian, 7/31/01). Three police chiefs have been transferred and at least 77 officers have been investigated on brutality charges.
An "embarrassing" inquiry
More than 100,000 people participated in the 2001 Genoa protests, most of them peacefully. Italian authorities, however, prepared for the protests by ordering 200 body bags and designating a room at the Genoa hospital as a temporary morgue (BBC, 6/21/01). Twenty thousand police and troops were on hand, armed with tear gas, water cannon and military hardware as authorities enclosed part of the city in a so-called "ring of steel," with many railways and roads closed and air traffic shut down.
The U.S. press routinely gloss over this militaristic response, instead invoking the demonstrations as proof of the threat posed by globalization activists. Even the killing of Carlo Giuliani-- a protester who was shot in the head, run over and killed by police after he threw a fire extinguisher at a police vehicle-- is recounted by U.S. media as a timely "lesson" for activists that, as Time magazine put it, "You reap what you sow" (7/30/01).
As FAIR documented at the time (FAIR Action Alert, 7/26/01), most U.S. media responded to the violence with sensationalistic reports on the drama "in the streets of this gritty port city" (ABC World News Tonight, 7/20/01), but showed little curiosity about fundamental questions, such as why Italian forces were armed with live ammunition. (As for the substantive political concerns motivating the protests, they were all but ignored).
The July 22 police raid which has become a focus of Italy's parliamentary inquiry was carried out on the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum-- the umbrella group coordinating the protests-- and the neighboring Independent Media Center (IMC).
It received largely indifferent coverage in the U.S., but reports in independent and non-U.S. media indicated that some 200 police officers brutally beat sleeping activists in an attack that led to more than a dozen of the arrestees being carried out on stretchers, some unconscious (Guardian, 7/24/01). Of the 93 people arrested at the school, 72 suffered injuries. All were eventually released without charge (DPA, 1/8/03).
The coverage of this attack on the nightly newscasts of the U.S.'s three major broadcast networks was instructive. At first, ABC World News Tonight did not report the raid at all. CBS Evening News (7/22/01) mentioned it in passing, with the reporter noting almost approvingly that "the tactics were heavy-handed, but the streets were quiet today." Commendably, NBC Nightly News (7/22/01) devoted more significant attention to the attack and reported organizers' claim that all the arrestees had been non-violent and were "the latest victims of police brutality."
A couple of weeks later, it emerged that some of the victims were American. The three nightly newscasts then showed somewhat more attention to the issue of police brutality, running reports that included footage of the blood splashed on the floors and walls of the school (ABC, 8/8/01; CBS and NBC 8/11/01). CBS distinguished itself poorly again by introducing its follow-up report with excuses: "However provoked the Italian police were during the rioting around last month's summit in Genoa, their behavior has become the subject of an embarrassing domestic inquiry in Italy."
Embarrassing is one word for it. Amnesty International found a few others, saying that police at the summit seemed to show "scant concern" for human rights (The Wire, September 2001). Amnesty characterized the arrests at the school as illegal and cited reports that detainees were "slapped, kicked, punched and spat on and subjected to verbal abuse, sometimes of an obscene sexual nature.... deprived of food, water and sleep for lengthy periods, made to line up with their faces against the wall and remain for hours spread-eagled, and beaten if they failed to maintain this position." In addition, "some were apparently threatened with death and, in the case of female detainees, rape." Detainees also reported being denied prompt access to lawyers and medical care.
Discrediting the left
The new admissions from Italian police that they attempted to frame activists in order to justify their own violence are very significant, but there was other, earlier evidence of misconduct that reporters could have followed up.
Much of this evidence was documented by Rory Carroll, a reporter for the London Guardian newspaper. He reported as early as July 24, 2001 that "an interior ministry source" had admitted that "the raid had turned into a revenge attack by police." In the same story, Carroll reported a claim from the Genoa Social Forum that "the homemade bombs were probably planted."
Another story by Carroll (Guardian, 7/23/01) focused on allegations that segments of the supposedly anarchist "black block" in Genoa-- the group most often held up as proof that globalization activists are violent-- were in fact provocateurs from European security forces. Groups of black-clad people "burned buildings, ransacked shops and attacked banks with crowbars and scaffolding" during the protests, reported Carroll. Some attacked journalists, "smashing their equipment and tearing up their notebooks." Yet "few, if any" of these people were arrested, and local activists seemed not to know the people involved.
The Guardian quoted Francesco Martone, a Green Party senator for Genoa, alleging that police and neo-fascists "worked together to infiltrate the genuine protesters" and discredit the left. It also quoted an Italian communist MP, Luigi Malabarba: "I saw groups of German and French people dressed as demonstrators in black with iron bars inside the police station near the Piazza di Kennedy. Draw your own conclusions."
"Violent protests"
Despite the numerous questions about who instigated most of the violence in Genoa, "Genoa" has become a kind of shorthand for "violent protesters" in mainstream media.
For instance, it was common for mainstream news stories to link activists gathering to protest the June 2002 G8 Summit in Banff, Canada, to the supposedly dangerous demonstrators of Genoa. The New York Times (6/27/02) described Canada's extreme security measures as a response to Genoa, "where violent protesters battled the police." But what about the violent police? Many outlets simply write them out of the story.
To continue with the New York Times-- though they're far from the only outlet at fault-- consider the paper's coverage of a massive November anti-war march in Florence. Framing the story (11/10/02) with warnings about government fears of "a reprise of the bloodshed and chaos" of Genoa, the Times stated that officials were "still haunted by that melee," and that officials had debated whether to permit demonstrations at all. With such partial information, a reader might naturally-- and incorrectly-- assume that most of the violence was caused by out-of-control protesters.
Just last month (12/15/02), the New York Times ran an article about the lingering impact of the protests, stating that for over a year, Italy "has been haunted by the violent clashes between the police and antiglobalization protesters." It's a reasonable premise, except that the Times' selective reporting suggested that protesters bear all the blame. Amazingly, the article noted the prosecutions of 11 people recently arrested for looting and property damage during the protests, but failed to mention Italy's ongoing inquiry into police brutality.
In contrast, the inquiry seems to be getting serious attention in Italy. According to the BBC (1/7/03), newspapers such as La Repubblica and Il Secolo XIX have been publishing transcripts from the inquiry, and one report on the television channel Rai Uno stated: "Now that the investigation into the G8 events is drawing to a close, suspected truths which had already emerged are being officially confirmed."
Considering how fond U.S. media are of dramatic stories about protester/police "clashes," they should be able to find the energy to carefully investigate such incidents. This is crucial journalistic work; the right to peaceful assembly is central to democracy. The public deserves to have access to follow-up investigations of what happened at Genoa's "violent" protests.
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