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NUCLEAR
Gulf War Syndrome again?
India Developing Long - Range Missile
India's nuclear muscle
India to test-fire Agni-III missile
U.N. inspectors ask Washington for data
Iraq Scientists May Face U.N. Interviews
N. Korea: U.S. Must Drop Hostile Stance
U.S. rips North Korea
N. Korea shows penchant for brinkmanship
U.S. Plays Down North Korean Move
Treaty Pullout May Signal Desire for Arms -- or a Deal
Time for a reckoning with Russia
Kola Penisula Nuke Agreement Reached
North Korea leaves a popular treaty
A-Arms Treaty: Goals and Signers
Emergency plans for Indian Point nuclear power plant fail: study
Nuclear Plant Disaster Plan Is Inadequate, Report Says
Report Questions Nuke Plant Safety Plan
Critics of Plant Cheer Report's Findings
NSC Weighs Giving U.N. Inspectors More Sensitive Data on Iraq Arms
Powell: N. Korea cannot go undealt with
Jesse Helms: Leader With a 'Lone-Wolf' Rap
MILITARY
U.S. troops track terrorists in Africa
Blair warns America of Muslim backlash over war on Iraq
Eurobrief: Crunch year for military goals
Scandal Darkens Sharon's Ballot Prospects
Venezuela's combustible crisis
Chavez fires 700, faces shortages of food
Peru fearful legal reforms could free jailed rebels
Navy to Move Bombing Ranges Mostly to Florida From Vieques
US accelerates Gulf build-up
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Illinois Governor to Commute All Death Row Sentences
Death Row Numbers Decline as Challenges to System Rise
Arab Men Register in New INS Crackdown
ENERGY AND OTHER
Probe of Calif. Energy Crisis Facing Hurdles
ACTIVISTS
Local protesters oppose war with Iraq
Cuban dissident calls for change from within
Thousands attend Maine diversity rally
Thousands to Protest Possible War in LA
-------- NUCLEAR
------- depleted uranium
Gulf War Syndrome again?
From: docridenour@charter.net
Saturday, January 11, 2003
I am a doctor in Fallon, Nevada. I just saw a soldier who came back from Kuwait after four months in an Abrams M-1 tank. He loaded the tank every day with JP-8 and they slept in the tanks where the magazine's depleted uranium sat. He said other went home ill, but his outfit was broken-up after the got home. Eighty per cent of the men and women who got the Gulf War Syndrome reported direct contact with JP-8.
Gary Ridenour, M.D.
-------- india / pakistan
India Developing Long - Range Missile
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Missile.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India is developing a powerful, nuclear-capable missile with a range of 1,800 miles, said a government adviser, expanding its military reach to more targets in rival Pakistan and some parts of China.
The new surface-to-surface Agni-III missile is likely to be test-fired later this year, according to a report Saturday by the independent Press Trust of India.
India is also preparing to supply its armed forces with the Agni-I missile, which has a range of up to 500 miles, according to the Press Trust. It cited V.K. Atre, a scientific adviser to India's defense minister.
Agni means fire in the Hindi language.
On Thursday, India carried out a second test launch of the Agni-I from the coast of eastern Orissa state, about 750 miles southeast of New Delhi.
India and Pakistan came to the brink of a fourth war last year after New Delhi accused Islamabad's spy agency and Pakistan-based Islamic rebel groups of attacking the Indian Parliament in December 2001.
Intense diplomatic pressure by the United States and others persuaded both sides to withdraw hundreds of thousands of troops from their borders in October. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. Nuclear tests in 1998 caused international outrage and provoked economic sanctions by the United States and other Western nations.
India's tests were followed by nuclear tests by Pakistan.
Western nations gradually lifted sanctions against both India and Pakistan as the two countries became allies in the international campaign against al-Qaida.
--------
India's nuclear muscle
India recently tested the Agni-1 ballistic missile
By Humphrey Hawksley In Trombay, India
Saturday, 11 January, 2003
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2646979.stm
Through the erratic traffic of Bombay, also known as Mumbai, over bridges and under railway lines, along curving sea-front boulevards, flashing posters, crawling beggars and afternoon worshippers, we finally edged our way into the nearby town of Trombay and a checkpoint.
"Is this Barc?" I shouted from the window, and a woman selling vegetables, pointed lazily at the compound ahead.
As our van pulled up, Dr A P Jayaranam, publicity director for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, stepped out of a guard house with a beaming smile.
"You are Mr Hawksley, and you found us," he said - neither a statement nor a question - tucking his crumpled white shirt into his trousers.
Security guards emptied our car of equipment, checking every piece together with our passports and visas.
Underground labs
Dr Jayaranam was embarrassed. "I am so sorry for all this," he said. But you know we are nuclear weapons facility and many nasty people want to get in here."
Lined up on the other side of the checkpoint were five grey buses, the sun reflected off the grubby windows and faces leaning tiredly against the glass.
Anywhere else they could have been prison inmates or workers from a car factory. But these were India's grade A scientists on a shift change - the men and women who are creating India's nuclear arsenal.
India is an unfathomable country. A solid democracy which America regarded as a Cold War enemy. A booming economy which has delivered less wealth to its people over the past 40 years than Nigeria. And, because of its nuclear bomb, it's now a live-wire embryonic super-power.
I say live-wire, because any tension between India and Pakistan automatically moves onto talk of nuclear war, and I had come to see exactly how it would work.
Barc is a vast complex. Some five miles ahead of us, further than we were allowed to go, was the sea. We were flanked by mountains, underneath which laboratories had been hewn, where 5,000 scientists and 10,000 technicians work.
'Prepared'
Hidden among the lush tropical greenery outside were satellite dishes and radar - presumably to detect an enemy attack.
The buildings were dowdy Soviet-style from the 50s and 60s - the era when India's weapons research began. Of all its fluctuating policies, the nuclear programme has remained constant.
Like a proud real-estate agent, Dr Jayaranam showed off the exteriors of two nuclear reactors, one built with British help, the other with Canadian - and both - experts believe - used to extract weapons-grade material for bomb making. Outside was a walkway and a fountain.
That was all we were allowed to see.
Inside, he introduced us to the director, B Bhattacharjee, skilled in gas centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment.
How does it work, I asked, if say the navy wants a nuclear warhead for its new submarine.
Dr Bhattacharjee leaned forward enthusiastically. "If we are asked at any time 'can you help us?' our answer should be 'yes'. That's from any sector - either the navy or the army or the air force. We are always prepared to meet any needs for the country."
Assembly
"And the weapons," I added with hesitation. "They are here, now."
"Yes. The nuclear weapons are designed here, manufactured here and we keep them here."
In fact, that's just a third of a complete nuclear weapon.
In Delhi, a former defence planner explained that the part known as the pit - the nuclear element - was made at Barc.
"The pit goes into the warhead," he said. "And the warhead is kept in another place. And the delivery system - that is an aircraft, a missile of a submarine - is in another place again. It would take something from six to eight hours - maximum 12 hours to get the complete weapon assembled and ready to launch. Then it would take about 11 minutes to impact on Pakistan."
So, India has a no-first-use policy, which Pakistan does not. In other words, India is prepared to absorb one strike - sacrifice at least one city. Then, no more than 12 hours later, after it's put its weapons together, it would hit back with everything it's got.
My last stop was to drop by and see the American ambassador, Robert Blackwill, a George W Bush confidant and Harvard academic.
There was a marked change of tone from a few years ago. "We think it is in America's interests for India to become a great global power," he said. "This is a great democracy. It has our values. Our long-term relationship with India is very stabilising for Asia."
What more need be said?
The US has decided it likes India with nuclear muscle.
----
India to test-fire Agni-III missile
Press Trust of India New Delhi,
January 11, 2002
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_136184,0008.htm
India is developing surface-to-surface 'Agni-III' missile with a range of more than 3,000 kms and it is likely to be test-fired before the end of the year, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister VK Aatre said here on Saturday.
"The development of Agni-III is on. It is being designed to hit targets at a distance of more than 3,000 kms. We will hopefully test-fire it before the end of the year," he said on the sidelines of a seminar on Defence and internal security on the concluding day of a three-day NRI convention here.
Aatre also announced that surface-to-surface missile 'Agni-I', which was test-fired on Thursday last, is ready for induction into the armed forces.
Agni-I, which has a strike range of 700 to 800 kms, has been tested twice from a launch pad in Orissa.
Asked if two tests were enough for Agni-I's induction, Aatre said "It is part of the Agni series of missiles which have been tested eight times. We do not need more than the tests we have conducted".
Aatre, who is also Secretary, Department of Defence, Research and Development, said "we have finished all development trials of Agni-1. It can be inducted anytime". Nuclear-capable Agni-I can carry a payload of one tonne.
He told reporters that the ship-borne version of 'Brahmos', a supersonic cruise missile, will be tested for the first time in the second half of this month.
Brahmos, jointly developed by India and Russia, has a range of about 290 kms. It has been test-fired twice before.
At the interactive session on 'Opportunities in Defence and Internal Security -Research and Development', he said India is capable of developing missiles having ranges between 3,500 and 14,000 kms.
"Missiles with ranges between 3,500 and 14,000 kms do not involve much of a change. We have the technology to do it," he said but added that India probably did not need such long-range missiles.
-------- inspections
U.N. inspectors ask Washington for data
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030111-789118.htm
The Bush administration said yesterday it was sharing with U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq as much intelligence as they can handle, but it would offer more information if they improved their capabilities.
The State Department issued the administration's position shortly after Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called on the United States to provide "specific information on where to go and where to inspect."
"We need more actionable information," he told reporters during a visit to Washington yesterday. "We have a good process of a dialogue with the United States and with other intelligence agencies, and I hope in the next few weeks this process will intensify and that we'll get additional information that can accelerate our job in the field."
Asked to respond to Mr. ElBaradei's appeal, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "They are getting the best that we've got."
But then he clarified that Washington is sharing intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs with the inspectors "based on their ability to use it," and they are not getting "every single detail, particularly on sources and methods."
"The information is tailored to their ability to conduct inspections and to put the information to good use," Mr. Boucher told reporters.
He said the inspections are still "gaining momentum at this point," noting that the U.N. team had just received helicopters that will help its work.
The United States will "step up" its "provision of information" to the inspectors "commensurate" with the improvement of their capabilities, Mr. Boucher said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Washington was providing "a tremendous amount of information" to the inspectors and would continue to do so.
The White House insisted earlier this week that it knew "for a fact" that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration has provided no evidence, saying it would wait to see the U.N. inspections' outcome.
Mr. ElBaradei met yesterday with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, and other members of Congress.
"I have told the secretary that we are inching forward, but not as fast as we would like to be," he told reporters after meeting with Mr. Powell, a day after briefing the U.N. Security Council on the status of two months of inspections, as well as Iraq's declaration of its weapons programs.
Mr. ElBaradei and Hans Blix, chief of the U.N. weapons inspection team, said they had found no "smoking guns" to prove that Iraq has exotic arms. But they demanded that Baghdad provide evidence to back claims that it had destroyed its weapons capabilities.
Yesterday, Mr. ElBaradei said he did not think there would be enough information on Iraq's arms programs to enable the Security Council to decide on military action on Jan. 27, when he and Mr. Blix are next scheduled to report.
"January 27 is a status report," he said. "That's not the end of our work. We have been saying to the Security Council that we need much more time before we come to a conclusion."
Mr. Powell said the IAEA chief had briefed him on preparation for his and Mr. Blix's upcoming trip to Baghdad.
They will "present to the Iraqis their need for additional cooperation, better cooperation than the kind of cooperation we've seen so far, and to fill in the gaps that have been noted in the information they have been providing," Mr. Powell said.
Also yesterday, President Bush met with Iraqi opposition figures to discuss plans for a postwar Iraq.
"The president wants to talk to them about his hopes and dreams for the future of a free Iraq that is inclusive and unified and democratic," Mr. Fleischer said of Mr. Bush's Oval Office meeting with members of the "free Iraqi community."
Iraqis at the meeting included Kanan Makiya, an intellectual, architect, and novelist loosely affiliated with the Iraqi National Congress but more closely connected to the Iraqi Foundation, a nonpolitical organization; Rand Rahim, head of the Iraqi Foundation; and Hatem Mukhlis, an Iraqi-American doctor from upstate New York.
--------
Iraq Scientists May Face U.N. Interviews
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.N. arms inspectors may start inviting Iraqi scientists suspected of being linked to weapons programs for private interviews this week, a U.N. spokesman said Saturday, in a step Washington sees as key to uncovering Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
The inspectors visited more suspected weapons sites Saturday, a day after the United States ordered 35,000 additional troops to the Gulf in a move that appeared to bring closer the prospect of an American invasion of Iraq.
U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said a team of missiles experts revisited the Ibn Sina military complex at Tarmiya, 25 miles north of Baghdad, a site in which Iraqi scientists in the 1980s had tried to enrich uranium to a level suitable for atomic bombs.
Ueki said Saturday's visit was aimed at checking equipment and materials used in chemical processes linked to missile activities.
Another team flew by helicopter to an area 188 miles northwest of Baghdad to inspect an airfield. It was only the second time since six U.N. helicopters became operational Jan. 7 that they have been used. Bad weather prevented earlier flights.
Other sites visited Saturday included five colleges in a provincial university, two branches of a state pharmaceutical company, a dairy plant in the northern city of Mosul and a plant south of Baghdad that produces explosives for military and civilian purposes.
Ueki said U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection experts may be ready to begin asking Baghdad this week to let them privately interview Iraqi scientists after they finish studying Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration and a list of names of experts involved in arms programs.
``These things take time,'' Ueki told The Associated Press in Baghdad, adding that he had no details if or when U.N. experts would ask to take Iraqi scientists abroad for interviews.
Last month, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency interviewed two Iraqi scientists, who requested that Iraqi minders be present during the meetings.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency, has complained that inspectors haven't been able to talk to scientists without Iraqi officials being present.
``We are not able to have interviews in Iraq in private and that does not show the proactive cooperation we seek,'' ElBaradei said Thursday after briefing the U.N. Security Council on the progress of inspections and assessments of Iraq's weapons declaration.
Iraq is unlikely to refuse fresh requests for private interviews with its scientists but has indicated it could be less than keen on its scientists going abroad for interviews.
On Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed an order for 35,000 troops to head toward the Gulf, the single largest deployment order since the U.S. military buildup began last month. The troops will leave for the region in stages this month.
With these troops and the roughly 60,000 military personnel already in the region, America has almost reached its goal of 100,000 troops in the potential war zone by Jan. 31.
Britain's aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal also set sail Saturday toward the Gulf at the head of the biggest British naval task force assembled in two decades. It is heading for a long-planned exercise in southeast Asia, but its course will take it to the Gulf, where it could be used in any military attack on Iraq.
Iraq remained defiant in the face of the military buildup.
``Iraq is ready for all probabilities and will fight as it should if attacked,'' Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Saturday during a visit to Algeria.
``If the aggression can be avoided, fine, but not on the basis of surrendering to blackmail and threats,'' the official Iraqi News Agency quoted him as saying.
U.S. officials said the Pentagon has been sending e-mails to Iraqi officers warning them against following orders from Saddam to use chemical or germ weapons against U.S. or allied forces.
Weapons inspections resumed Nov. 27 under a toughened U.N. resolution that let inspectors interview Iraqi scientists in private or even abroad, in a bid to encourage them to expose hidden programs. The inspectors want to determine if Iraq still holds weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. resolutions.
Iraq denies it possesses such weapons, but America and Britain insist it does and have threatened to disarm Iraq by force.
Before leaving to Saudi Arabia on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul urged Saddam to comply with inspections and avoid war, saying it could threaten regional stability.
Turkey, a NATO ally, has agreed to let America inspect its ports and air bases for possible use in an Iraq conflict. But it is under public pressure at home to not support a new Gulf war.
In Kuwait, Deputy Prime Minister Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah said he hoped Iraqis topple Saddam to prevent war. Kuwait has not before officially raised its desire for a coup in Baghdad.
-------- korea
N. Korea: U.S. Must Drop Hostile Stance
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
Jan 11, 2002 1:01 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_NORTH_KOREA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Negroponte says North Korea has been in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for years. (Audio)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- 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."
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.
----
U.S. rips North Korea
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030111-393816.htm
The United States yesterday condemned North Korea's decision to quit an international nuclear treaty, as the Stalinist state warned that any punitive sanctions would constitute a "declaration of war."
Both sides sharpened their rhetoric yesterday, with the United States refusing to accept Pyongyang's announcement that it was immediately withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and North Korea declaring that recent U.S. actions are tantamount to "openly declaring a nuclear war."
"North Korea has thumbed its nose at the international community," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said. "This is a very regrettable and sad statement on what they think of their own people."
But Mr. Powell said the United States will not be "intimidated" by North Korea's withdrawal from the nuclear treaty. The NPT, signed by 188 nations, is considered to be the cornerstone of international efforts to halt the spread of atomic weapons.
"We are not going to be put in a panic situation. We are going to work this deliberately," he said.
At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States "condemns this action by North Korea."
"It represents a further escalation of North Korea's defiance of the international consensus in support of a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons."
In Pyongyang, the official North Korean news agency said "a new Korean War will finally lead to the Third World War" and that the North could hold its own in a "fire-to-fire standoff."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, using somewhat softer language than the State Department, 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."
But President Bush considered the move serious enough to call Chinese President Jiang Zemin, speaking with the communist leader for 17 minutes about the growing belligerence of North Korea.
"They both agreed," Mr. Fleischer said, "that North Korea's announcement that it was withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty was a concern to the entire international community."
Mr. Bush told Mr. Jiang: "This binds us in a common purpose," and assured the leader the United States has no "hostile intent," the spokesman said. For his part, the Chinese president reiterated his nation's commitment to a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.
While China's official Xinhua news agency said Mr. Jiang had disagreed with Pyongyang's move and was "concerned" about the withdrawal, he did not demand that Beijing's longtime ally reverse its stance.
Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the highest-level U.S. administration official to speak on the matter yesterday, said the withdrawal "is of serious concern to North Korea's neighbors and to the entire international community."
"Their actions threaten to undermine decades of non-proliferation efforts and only further isolate the regime," Mr. Cheney said.
Meanwhile, Pak Gil Yon, North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, said his nation pulled out of the treaty "due to the United States' vicious, hostile policy towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."
"It is none other than the United States which wrecks peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and drives the situation there to an extremely dangerous place."
Mr. Pak said the United States has made "nuclear war moves," beginning in January 2001, when Mr. Bush dubbed North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," thereby "openly declaring a nuclear war."
"The withdrawal from the NPT was originated from such a nuclear threat from the United States' side," Mr. Pak said.
Asked what North Korea's reaction will be if the withdrawal leads to U.N. punishment, such as the imposition of economic sanctions, he said: "Any kind of sanctions to be taken by the Security Council or anywhere, we will consider it as a declaration of war against the DPRK."
Mr. Pak, reading a statement from his government, blamed the International Atomic Energy Agency, a nuclear monitoring group he said is a puppet of the United States, for pushing the matter to the brink. A recent IAEA threat to seek U.N. sanctions "clearly proves that the IAEA still remains a servant and a spokesman for the United States."
Abandoning the treaty will legally end the IAEA's monitoring rights over North Korea's nuclear program. Pyongyang in recent weeks had made monitoring difficult by removing cameras and other safeguards from its nuclear facilities.
Mr. Pak also said the non-proliferation treaty "is being used as a tool for implementing the United States' hostile policy towards the DPRK, aimed to disarm it and destroy its system by force."
Mr. Boucher said Pyongyang's withdrawal is illegal, adding that North Korea could not abandon the treaty, which provides for international inspection, without giving 90 days' notice.
He said North Korea's decision to suspend its participation in the NPT a decade ago - for 89 days - and then its subsequent move to rejoin the accord did not count toward the 90-day period and allow for an immediate withdrawal. North Korea's foreign minister announced yesterday that the withdrawal takes effect today.
North Korea announced in October that it had carried out a nuclear program, a violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States. In that agreement, Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. shipments of oil and the building of two nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes.
The disclosure prompted the United States to cut off oil shipments, leading North Korea this month to eject nuclear inspectors.
In other developments:
•New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson held a second day of talks with two North Korean U.N. diplomats in Sante Fe, after Pyongyang sought contact with the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration.
Mr. Richardson, who said the talks were going well, briefed Mr. Powell on the discussions.
•Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Sweden denounced North Korea's decision. Japan called on its regional neighbor to reverse course. Australia, a close U.S. ally, said it would send a diplomatic team to Pyongyang next week.
•South Korea's ambassador to Washington said in an interview released yesterday that the United States and its allies could have given North Korea more time before suspending shipments of fuel oil.
•IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said in Washington that North Korea had to take the first step to ease the crisis by renouncing its nuclear program, but could be rewarded with economic aid if it does.
•France's ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, who is president of the Security Council for January, said yesterday that the body would likely discuss Pyongyang's withdrawal, possibly as early as Monday.
•Betsy Pisik and Nicholas Kralev contributed to this report
----
N. Korea shows penchant for brinkmanship
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030111-99901685.htm
The world's leading powers unanimously condemned North Korea's decision to ditch the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), but Pyongyang once again is proving Machiavelli's point that, in politics, it is better to be feared than loved.
While the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and all of its East Asian neighbors yesterday criticized North Korea's threat to withdraw from the NPT, the united front still may not prevent North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from profiting from the crisis.
"Their approach is that the worse they act the more they get, and that's an approach that this administration will not be a party to," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted.
But experts and former officials who have struggled through past nuclear wrangling with North Korea say the United States and its allies may have little choice in the matter.
"It's always hazardous to guess what the North is thinking, but they have a very consistent negotiating style of believing they can always get a better deal in a crisis situation," said Jon Wolfstahl, a senior arms-control official in the Clinton administration Energy Department and now a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"They may lose friends and upset a lot of people, but they also gain a lot more room to maneuver," he said.
The NPT threat sparked concern in China and Russia, both of which Mr. Kim has courted in the past as a counterweight to the United States in the military standoff on the divided Korean Peninsula.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin conferred by phone with President Bush on the question yesterday, conveying his opposition to the North Korean decision.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to present himself in the past as an honest broker in the Korean crisis. But the Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday harshly attacked the North's move, warning it "can only aggravate the already tense atmosphere around the Korean Peninsula and strike a significant blow to universal international legal instruments for global and regional security."
The North Korean announcement also alarmed officials in South Korea and Japan, which have taken steps in recent years to ease long-frozen relations with Pyongyang.
"Our nation will strongly demand from North Korea a quick retraction of its statement," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said yesterday.
North Korea has consistently singled out Washington as its sole target in the nuclear standoff, saying it is prepared to negotiate if the Bush administration agrees to a nonaggression pact guaranteeing the North's security.
But in a rare press conference, North Korea's U.N. ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, told reporters in New York that his country was prepared to defy the entire Security Council if it sought to punish Pyongyang with economic sanctions.
"Any kind of sanctions to be taken by the Security Council - or anywhere - we will consider as a declaration of war against [North Korea]," Mr. Pak warned.
Several analysts have noted that North Korea's secretiveness, apparent irrationality and readiness to push disagreements to the brink of conflict give it a distinct advantage over more cautious, sober bargaining partners.
"Whether it's true or not, if people think you are crazy, that gives you latitude to take steps and make threats that the other side never would," Mr. Wolfstahl said.
China, South Korea and Japan not only fear armed conflict on the peninsula, but are also terrified of a sudden economic collapse of North Korea that could bring political instability and a massive humanitarian and refugee crisis to the region. The North's very weakness has become a weapon to use against its neighbors.
But others see in Pyongyang's actions a shrewd and focused policy by a weak state that accepts short-term friction in exchange for longer-term rewards.
Henry D. Sokolski, a top nonproliferation official in the Defense Department under former President George Bush in the early 1990s and now executive director of the private Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said the North's nuclear brinkmanship is meant to test the resolve of the United States and over time undermine the rationale for maintaining the huge American troop presence in the South.
"They've been working from a very clear agenda and they're not exactly hiding the ball," Mr. Sokolski said.
"If we give them a nonaggression agreement or some firm 'no-hostile-intent' statement, pretty soon we'll have to explain why our troops are there in South Korea," he said. "The world will also notice that the North can create this huge noise, get everyone mad at them, and still get the United States to come to terms with them."
----
U.S. Plays Down North Korean Move
Reaction Reveals Debate on Isolation Vs. Engagement
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 11, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40691-2003Jan10?language=printer
North Korea's decision to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was greeted yesterday as a regrettable but expected development by a Bush administration deeply split over how to respond to the escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
Some senior officials are counseling careful engagement, and others are urging complete isolation that would lead to the crumbling of the North Korean regime. The "very dramatic tensions" within the government have led to near paralysis in policymaking, one official said.
For the moment, officials have settled on a tack of trying to break what they consider the usual cycle of North Korea's relations with the United States -- in which the regime acts badly and then wins concessions -- by refusing to express all but perfunctory concern over the North Korean action. But this approach has been opposed by North Korea's neighbors and has badly ruptured relations with South Korea, a longtime ally of the United States.
"We're not going to be intimidated. We're not going to be put into a panic situation," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday. The government in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, understands "it is only through compliance and not through defiance that they will be able to move forward with their needs, security and otherwise," Powell added.
Yet several officials are privately skeptical that the tough line can be held for much longer before the administration, under pressure from its allies, will have to offer a more positive vision of its relationship with North Korea. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that there has to be "a light at the end of the tunnel" for the North Koreans. "North Korea must have at least a glimpse of what their prospects might be" under a deal with the United States, he said.
The crisis began in October, when North Korea admitted having a secret program to enrich uranium, which could be used for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration, over the objections of Japan and South Korea, pushed for an immediate suspension of fuel oil deliveries to North Korea. In response, North Korea last month ousted international inspectors and moved to restart a plutonium facility that had been closed under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration.
Many U.S. officials appear to have decided that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is behaving like a madman to obtain concessions. One official with access to intelligence said much of the clandestine intelligence supports the theory that he ultimately wants to negotiate a deal to win rewards from the West.
But, the official added, intelligence analysts are beginning to argue that Kim is intent on acquiring nuclear bombs as soon as possible. He said it is possible that both theories are correct -- that Kim will accept a deal but that, at the same time, he will undertake a crash program to acquire the weapons as a fallback if the administration continues to play hardball.
North Korea's announcement yesterday -- the first time any nation has withdrawn from the treaty, the key international regime for halting the spread of nuclear weapons -- was denounced by many nations, including its old allies, China and Russia.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier this week gave North Korea "one last chance" to adhere to its nuclear commitments, said it will not immediately refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. Britain and France, however, said the time has come to refer the matter to that United Nations body for action.
South Korean President Kim Dae Jung said "the North's withdrawal from the NPT brought the situation on the Korean Peninsula from bad to worse by one step."
North Korea said the withdrawal was effective immediately, since it had previously suspended a threatened withdrawal, in 1993, after striking a deal with the Clinton administration. But IAEA and U.S. officials said yesterday that they regard Pyongyang's announcement as the start of a required 90-day countdown to resignation from the treaty.
A senior North Korean official dismissed the IAEA yesterday as a lapdog of the United States and blamed the Bush administration for sparking the crisis. Pak Gil Yon, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, said President Bush's designation of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" and his doctrine of preemptive attacks were tantamount to "openly declaring a nuclear war."
Pak stressed that, despite leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty, North Korea has "no intention to produce nuclear weapons" but that any sanctions levied by the Security Council would be considered a declaration of war. He added that the Bush administration's offer earlier this week of talks, but not negotiations, was "not a sincere attitude."
But Pak and his government, in a statement, said the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is willing to work directly with the United States. "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.
Meanwhile, a pair of North Korean envoys met for a second day yesterday with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. The North Koreans requested the meeting with Richardson after the administration said it would be willing to talk.
Richardson briefed Powell on the talks yesterday afternoon. "There was nothing particularly new from them, although they did express interest in a dialogue," a State Department official said. "The usual channels remain open should North Korea have more to say."
After seven hours of talks, Richardson told reporters last night that he will meet with the North Koreans again on Saturday. He said the talks were "positive, frank and candid."
The administration announced its offer to talk after meetings at the State Department with South Korean and Japanese diplomats. The South Korean delegation questioned why the United States seemed intent on resolving both the issue of North Korea's secret project of enriching uranium and the issue of its reopening the plutonium plant. They argued that the reopening of the plutonium facility is a much graver situation, because with it, North Korea would have material for several nuclear weapons within months, while the uranium project is several years from completion.
But U.S. officials responded that the uranium project represents a broad breach of North Korea's nuclear commitments, which is why fuel oil shipments need to be halted.
North Korea has repeatedly requested a nonaggression treaty with the United States. South Korea has also asked U.S. officials to consider offering some sort of written assurance that the United States would not attack North Korea. Significantly, the U.S. delegation did not reject that idea and said they will consider it. In an interview Wednesday, Powell also held out the prospect of some sort of formal security assurance to North Korea.
But that approach has already raised objections from those who are demanding that the Bush administration must continue to isolate North Korea. In an article to be published in next week's Weekly Standard, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) harshly criticizes the administration for appearing to take the military option off the table.
"The administration now appears to have embraced, and in some respects exceeded, the style and substance of [President Bill] Clinton's diplomacy," McCain says. "Both the president and secretary of state publicly ruled out the use of force, although force could eventually prove to be the only means to prevent North Korea from acquiring a nuclear arsenal -- a dangerously shortsighted precedent that even the Clinton administration did not publicly suggest."
Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said the administration faces few good choices. "We are in a situation where something has to give," he said. "Both sides cannot be satisfied. This is really a zero-sum game."
As part of yesterday's diplomacy, Bush called Chinese President Jiang Zemin about the North Korean announcement.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush told Jiang that this is "an issue that binds the United States in a common purpose with China and other nations around the world" and that he is seeking "a peaceful multilateral solution."
Administration officials have been deeply frustrated by what they regard as China's apparent inability or unwillingness to press North Korea more forcefully to halt the crisis. The Chinese, instead, have told U.S. officials that they need to begin negotiating with North Korea.
----
Treaty Pullout May Signal Desire for Arms -- or a Deal
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 11, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40623-2003Jan10?language=printer
SEOUL, Jan. 10 -- North Korea's announcement today of withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty heightens the prospect that it has genuinely decided to build a nuclear arsenal, going beyond just threats in the deepening confrontation with the United States, arms control experts and diplomats said.
"They may be coming to some sort of conclusive decision that they are going to become a declared nuclear power," said Lee Jung Min, an arms control expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. "India is a nuclear state. Pakistan is a nuclear state, and the world isn't threatening them with consequences. They must be thinking to themselves, 'Why not us?' "
Still, Lee and other analysts emphasized that building nuclear weapons and seeking negotiations with the United States are not mutually exclusive: North Korea could be pursuing both aims at the same time. Even as it moves to revive a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium for weapons, North Korea may be willing to make a deal for what it seeks most from the United States -- a non-aggression guarantee. "They are likely leaving open the option to come up with some sort of settlement," Lee said. "They are still looking to see whether the deal is substantial enough."
North Korea's announcement today pushed the issue onto unprecedented and murky terrain: Never before has a country withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Though North Korea announced plans to pull out in the early 1990s, a last-minute compromise averted the withdrawal.
Diplomats and analysts here said the announcement today stopped short of a crossing a "red line" for the United States -- taking spent fuel rods from the reactor and extracting the plutonium for weapons. North Korea has said it plans to begin this reprocessing step, but so far no information has come out that it has followed through.
"It would be a very serious step. It would take us into a new dimension," a U.S. official said this week.
A sense is growing here that if North Korea cannot get what it wants from the United States, the isolated country may well begin the reprocessing. Experts say they believe Pyongyang possessed enough material to make a few bombs early in the last decade, before the 1994 compromise with the Clinton administration, but it is not known whether weapons were actually built.
"If this tension is not effectively managed, then we'll end up having a North Korea with nuclear weapons" said Moon Chung In, an arms control expert at Yonsei University who is an informal adviser to the South Korean government. "That would be a disaster and a nightmare for the entire peace and stability of Northeast Asia."
The withdrawal from the treaty came after earlier decisions to expel international inspectors and to dismantle surveillance cameras at the idled Yongbyon reactor. It was disclosed in October that North Korea had a secret uranium enrichment program that could make fissile material for a bomb, leading the United States to cancel shipments of fuel oil provided under the 1994 agreement.
Some analysts continue to assert that as the confrontation has deepened, North Korea's brinkmanship is not aimed at building a nuclear arsenal but only at striking a deal. "This is nothing new," said Ha Young Sun, an arms control expert at Seoul National University. "It's just a continuation of the North Korean scenario. We are engaged in a game of bluffing."
Kim Sung Han, a North Korea expert at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security, a research group affiliated with the South Korean Foreign Ministry, noted that North Korea included in its announcement today a prominent claim that it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
"That means North Korea is still interested in resuming negotiations," he said. "They haven't gone into the next phase."
But those who have studied North Korea say it always keeps multiple options in reserve. According to Kim Tae Woo, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a research group affiliated with the South Korean Defense Ministry, North Korea's mode of operation is to constantly seek to develop new threats -- nuclear programs, or missiles -- that it can bargain away for concessions. When it does agree to give something up -- as it did in 1994, promising to mothball the Yongbyon reactor -- it always holds something that it can use later to extract something else.
Kim cites the surprise disclosure of the uranium enrichment program in October. "They are definitely trying to develop nuclear weapons," he said. "That's the only leverage they have."
North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world, and precise information about the intentions of its secretive leadership is hard to find. Now that the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are no longer on the ground at Yongbyon, assessing its nuclear intentions is particularly difficult.
"We probably know less about North Korea than we do any other country in the world," said a U.S. diplomat. "It is a very hard place."
Analysts said North Korea's decision to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty dealt a blow to South Korea's prestige, perhaps undermining its efforts to mediate a settlement. "North Korea has gone in a direction where the South Korean government is irrelevant," said Lee, the Yonsei University arms control expert. "What can they do at this juncture?" he said of the South. "All they ever had was the perception that they could persuade North Korea. That's obviously gone now."
North Korea today 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 the 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."
The Bush administration has so far refused to offer North Korea any concessions, lest it reward what it terms "nuclear blackmail." The U.S. diplomat said the United States remains confident that diplomacy will persuade North Korea to pull back from the brink.
But if North Korea continues to escalate and does not bend, it will soon confront the United States with unappetizing choices, such as offering a deal to persuade North Korea to reverse course, using military force, or simply hoping it will not really make nuclear weapons.
"They are playing their cards so quickly," said Kim, the arms control expert. "This is almost the last card."
Special correspondent Joohee Cho contributed to this report.
-------- russia
Time for a reckoning with Russia
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR,
Washington Times,
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030111-80806083.htm#2
The accord Russia signed two weeks ago to accelerate the construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran and supply it with nuclear fuel is a direct threat against the security of the United States ("Russia to expedite work on Iran plant," World, Dec. 26).
According to the State Department, Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism - financing, training and equipping terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
Iran's claim that the nuclear reactor will be used for civilian purposes is absurd. Iran has more oil to generate electricity than it could possibly consume in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Iran's intentions toward the United States (the "Great Satan") have been made clear by 23 years of chanting "Death to America" in state-controlled mosques.
With this accord with Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin is effectively arming one of our most dangerous enemies and thus placing Russia on the side of the Iranian regime and against the United States. President Bush must pressure Mr. Putin into killing this deal.
If Mr. Putin is persuaded to cancel the accord with Iran, other countries will get the message that in this conflict one must take sides - and that one had better take the American side. It is time for the Russians to choose what side to join.
DAVID HOLCBERG
Ayn Rand Institute
Irvine, Calif.
--------
Kola Penisula Nuke Agreement Reached
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nordic-Russia-Nuclear-Waste.html
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Prime ministers from the Nordic countries and Russia reached an agreement Saturday to help clean up the Kola Peninsula, where rusting Russian submarines and nuclear waste threaten the Arctic environment.
Ministers meeting at the Barents Euro-Arctic Council at the Norwegian town of Kirkenes said Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov had agreed to grant tax exemptions on equipment and technology for recycling radioactive material.
Kasyanov told the Interfax news agency the agreement will be ready for signing in the near future and will be ratified by the Russian parliament this year.
``I think that this is the critical breakthrough for which we have been waiting many years ... to contribute in the Kola peninsula,'' Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson told Swedish Radio.
Council members also pledged to help reinforce Russia's nuclear facilities, where security is often lax.
There are more than 100 nuclear submarines at Russian's Northern Fleet bases on the peninsula, where northwestern Russia borders Norway.
The Norwegian environmental group Bellona says about 21,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies are stored here and many of the containers are leaking.
Ministers from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Russia and delegates from the European Union also agreed to facilitate border crossings in the area and cooperate more to fight organized crime and human trafficking.
-------- treaties
North Korea leaves a popular treaty
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030111-63773984.htm
Lyndon B. Johnson was president July 1, 1968, when the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and 59 other countries signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whose main goal was to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
Within days, the Texas Democrat sought U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty. But as a result of the ongoing Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, it was not until more than a year later, when Republican Richard Nixon was president, that the Senate ratified the treaty.
The treaty took effect in March 1970, when this country's official ratification was deposited with the British, Russian and U.S. governments, as terms of the treaty require.
Today, the treaty is the most widely accepted arms-control agreement in the world. One hundred eighty-eight nations have signed the pact, which bars nuclear states from transferring atomic weapons to other countries and blocks nonnuclear states from seeking such weapons.
"The NPT has been a critical part of the nonproliferation regime, and nonproliferation has been extremely important in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons," Paul Kerr, a research analyst with the Arms Control Association, said yesterday in an interview.
Mr. Kerr acknowledged that the treaty "has not been perfect," pointing out that three countries known to have nuclear weapons - Israel, India and Pakistan - have not signed it.
There had been four holdouts until late last year. That changed in early November, when Cuba signed onto the pact. The NPT is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations watchdog group.
Right now, world attention is focused on North Korea, a communist nation with nuclear capability, which signed the treaty in 1985. However, Pyongyang says it is pulling out. In a statement yesterday, North Korea asserted "freedom from the binding force" of the NPT and the IAEA.
North Korea went on to say it has "no intention to produce nuclear weapons." It said its nuclear activities "at this stage will be confined to peaceful purposes, such as production of electricity." U.S. officials doubt the veracity of that statement.
Countries that sign the NPT agree to the following key provisions:
•Any nuclear state must "not transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons directly or indirectly." It also must not assist any nonnuclear state in manufacturing or acquiring such weapons.
•Nonnuclear weapons states that are a party to the treaty must not seek or accept such weapons or explosives from another country.
•"Nothing in this treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. All parties to the treaty have the right to the possible exchange of equipment, materials, and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy."
•Each party that signs the treaty has the "right to withdraw if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country." A signer of the treaty that decides to withdraw "shall give notice of its withdrawal to all other parties to the treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance."
Mr. Kerr said North Korea has been a troublesome NPT signatory. "After they signed, they couldn't account for spent fuel from reactors," and it was believed Pyongyang was using them for nuclear weapons, he said.
In 1993, North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the treaty. But it reconsidered "with one day remaining" before the three-month notice period had expired, said Steve LaMontagne, senior analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
This time North Korea is laying claim to an immediate withdrawal. "Some contend that's illegal but there's really little we can do to prevent North Korea from a de facto withdrawal," whether now or later, Mr. LaMontagne said.
--------
A-Arms Treaty: Goals and Signers
January 11, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/international/asia/11TREA.html
The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons is an international accord that took effect on March 5, 1970. Its goal is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and arms technology and to promote disarmament and cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
The treaty sets up a safeguards system, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, to ensure that nations are complying. Currently, 188 nations have signed the treaty, including the five declared nuclear weapons states: the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.
Some nations that are widely accepted as having nuclear weapons and are not signers include Israel, India and Pakistan. Iran has signed the treaty but is suspected of having a nuclear weapons program.
More countries have ratified the treaty than any other arms control agreement. On May 11, 1995, the signers decided to extend it indefinitely.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Emergency plans for Indian Point nuclear power plant fail: study
NATION IN BRIEF
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Washington Post; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40826-2003Jan10?language=printer
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Emergency plans for the Indian Point nuclear power plant fail to address the threat of a terrorist attack and do not adequately protect the densely populated New York metropolitan area from a release of radiation, according to a study delivered to Gov. George E. Pataki (R). Evacuation plans for the plant, 35 miles from midtown Manhattan, are inadequate to "protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation," said the study prepared by James Lee Witt Associates, a consulting firm headed by a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The report prompted Pataki to ask FEMA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to "take a hard look at the standards used to certify these emergency plans and determine if they are strong enough to meet the post-Sept. 11 reality."
--------
Nuclear Plant Disaster Plan Is Inadequate, Report Says
January 11, 2003
New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/nyregion/11NUKE.html
Emergency plans are inadequate to protect the public from a disastrous leak of radiation at the Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester County and do not fully take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack, according to a report commissioned by Gov. George E. Pataki and released yesterday.
The report, a comprehensive review of the ways local and state officials would respond to a disaster, paints a picture of potential chaos brought on by panicked parents rushing to pick up children from schools, firefighters unsure what to do and antiquated computer technology hampering predictions of where the radiation might be headed and how many people would be at risk.
Contrary to repeated assurances from state and federal officials in the past, the report said the plan was "not adequate" to "protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point, especially if the release is faster or larger" than currently anticipated. It said that the plan, created by the state, the counties surrounding the plant, and Entergy, the plant's owner, assumes an accidental release rather than a deliberate release from an attack.
"Simply stated, the world has recently changed," said the report, by James Lee Witt, a private consultant and former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "What was once considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision."
Mr. Witt was not asked to consider whether the plant should be shut down, a step that a range of public officials, environmentalists and residents have sought, particularly since Sept. 11, 2001, when one of the hijacked jets flew near the plant on its way to the World Trade Center. He was also not asked to look into the operation or safety of the plant itself.
But Mr. Witt's judgment of the disaster plan largely reflected complaints voiced for years by opponents of Indian Point, whose two active reactors in Buchanan, N.Y., about 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, supply 20 to 40 percent of the electricity for New York City and its suburbs.
The report said federal regulations guiding the disaster plan must be rewritten and tailored to Indian Point because of the potential catastrophe a large radioactive release poses to the densely populated area around the plant.
The current disaster plan focuses on the 298,013 people who live within 10 miles of the plant and would be most affected by a disaster. Although the report said the state should take into account people evacuating on their own outside of that 10-mile radius, it did not suggest that wholesale evacuation plans be developed for more distant places like New York City.
The report said that the effects of a radioactive release decrease with distance and that city officials would have more time to respond. "Considering the limited resources available, there is more urgency to improving the planning and associated activities" in the 10-mile area of the plant, it said.
Although federal officials predict that most deaths would occur within a 10-mile radius of the plant, radiation sickness and possible contamination of food and water could spread to 50 miles from it, an area of 20 million people that includes New York City, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The report also examined plans on Long Island for a disaster at the Millstone nuclear plant on the Connecticut shore but found that they "should be able to protect" the public.
Mr. Pataki, who ordered the report last August in response to the rising outcry over safety at the plant, declined to comment on it beyond a statement calling on federal authorities to review their standards for emergency plans "and determine if they are strong enough to meet the post-Sept. 11 reality."
Suzanne Morris, a spokeswoman, said Mr. Pataki wanted to give federal agencies a chance to respond to the report; a final version will be released next month. Mr. Pataki does not have the power to close the plant, but as governor he could use his pulpit to make a strong case before the N.R.C., which makes such determinations.
A spokeswoman for the N.R.C. said the agency would withhold comment on the 500-page report until a review was completed; the legal process of shutting the plant against the owner's will could take years and would still leave a large amount of radioactive material at the site.
Don Jacks, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, who has participated in Indian Point disaster drills, said he had not yet read the report. But Mr. Jacks said he did not disagree with the findings Mr. Witt outlined in a briefing with agency officials, who will prepare a response to the report.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, which has owned and operated Indian Point 3 since November 2000 and Indian Point 2 since August 2001, said that the company would closely review the report but that it still believed the disaster plans could "protect public safety." (Indian Point 1, also owned by Entergy, has been dormant for several years.)
The report comes a few weeks before the state is supposed to send a normally routine annual certification to FEMA that state and local officials have met the objectives of the disaster plan. Ms. Morris said Mr. Pataki had not decided whether to certify the plan and might ask for a delay in sending the certificate, pending consultation with local officials.
The report galvanized opponents of the plant, who said it had confirmed their worst fears and would provide crucial ammunition in their fight to close it. They have long complained about the overall safety of the plant, which shut one reactor for nearly a year in 2000 because of a small leak. A recent report by a consultant for Entergy questioned the effectiveness of security at the plant, though state officials and Entergy have said security is tight.
Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, said that he had not yet read the whole report but that the county had already been working on improving plans to respond to emergencies at the plant.
"The plan has been in place a long time, and we knew it had deficiencies," Mr. Spano said in an interview. "But the bottom line is the plant shouldn't be here. The question here isn't, `Can you get the people out?' The question here is that the plants don't belong."
Last November, the N.R.C. said that a preliminary assessment by the federal emergency agency, based on a Sept. 24 drill, showed that the emergency plans were adequate.
But the Witt report disputed that finding, and said officials were more concerned with fulfilling antiquated regulations than with developing a workable plan.
Mr. Witt called the September disaster drill flawed in a number of ways. At one point, officials of nearby Putnam County who were in the field could not radio in mock radiation readings for some time because someone had apparently jammed the radio frequency. Some warning sirens did not work or could not be heard.
The Witt investigators found ignorance and skepticism about the plans not only among residents, but among emergency workers as well.
Few fire chiefs in the surrounding area "appeared to know their role in augmenting law enforcement, and when they heard of it, thought they would be ignored by the motoring public," the report said.
"Furthermore, they expressed pessimism that their volunteer firefighters would perform their roles instead of taking care of their families first," it said.
The report makes several other recommendations, including upgrading radios and other equipment that rescue workers use. Local officials and the plant must develop better computer models of how radiation might spew from the plant and what areas might be hit first.
It also suggested doing a better job of educating the public on how to respond in order to minimize panic.
Officials must also revise estimates of how long an evacuation might take and take into account the "shadow evacuation" of large numbers of people who would leave homes, schools and offices even without being ordered to do so, it said.
--------
Report Questions Nuke Plant Safety Plan
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Indian-Point.html
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- Emergency plans for the Indian Point nuclear plant fail to address terrorist threats, and leave hundreds of thousands of people inadequately protected from radiation poisoning, an independent study concluded.-
``Simply stated, the world has recently changed. What was once considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision,'' according to the report, released Friday, which analyzed evacuation plans for the plant situated 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan.
The report, commissioned by Gov. George Pataki, also found emergency plans rely on outdated technology and are based on incomplete drills and unrealistic expectations.
At 500 pages and filled with mapped wind currents and charted radiation exposures, the report was prepared 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 2 and Indian Point 3 in the Westchester County village of Buchanan.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, when one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center first flew over Indian Point, fear of a terrorist attack on the plant has made emergency planning a major issue in the lower Hudson Valley. Dozens of politicians have called for a shutdown of the plants.
The report found numerous shortcomings in the emergency plans and said they are inadequate to ``protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation,'' but did not come to specific conclusions about how many people are at risk at certain distances. It also did not consider the safety of the plants themselves, or take a position on a shutdown of the reactors.
Pataki did not call for a shutdown, as some activists had hoped, but called on FEMA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ``take a hard look at the standards used to certify these emergency plans and determine if they are strong enough to meet the post-Sept. 11 reality.''
An estimated 11.8 million people live within 50 miles of Indian Point, far more than around any of the nation's other nuclear plants. There are 256,000 suburbanites within 10 miles of the nuclear station, located in the Westchester County village of Buchanan.
Alex Matthiessen, who leads the environmental organization Riverkeeper, said Pataki ``ought to be using his position as the state's top elected official to demand that the Bush administration and the NRC shut down the plant and fix these problems.''
Rep. Sue Kelly, a Republican whose district includes Indian Point, said the Witt report had persuaded her that the plants should be shut down ``until I can look my constituents in the eye and tell them they are protected.''
The study does not attempt to predict the likelihood or effect of a terrorist attack, but it says a successful one could severely shorten the amount of time available for an evacuation.
On the Net:
Full report available at Witt Associates site,
http://wittassociates.com
--------
Critics of Plant Cheer Report's Findings
January 11, 2003
New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/nyregion/11REAC.html
GREENBURGH, N.Y., Jan. 10 - Lawmakers and critics of the Indian Point nuclear plant renewed calls today for the plant's immediate shutdown after the release of a report that called evacuation plans for the plant unworkable.
From northern Westchester County, where the plant is located, to Washington, reaction to the report, which was commissioned by Gov. George E. Pataki last summer, was almost jubilant, with critics of the plant hoping it would lend legitimacy to their cause.
In a news conference held today with county and state officials from Westchester and Rockland Counties as well as antinuclear activists, Richard L. Brodsky, a state assemblyman from Westchester, called the report a landmark.
"They tried to marginalize us - `It's the crazies, the environmentalists, the people with beards,' " Mr. Brodsky said. "It's not. It's the soccer moms, retired people and union members who have fought on the substance of one idea: these evacuation plans need to be exposed for what they are."
But not everyone embraced the report. Mayor Dan O'Neill of Buchanan, home of Indian Point, defended the plant and said he had only minor concerns about the evacuation plan. "I continue to believe that the Indian Point nuclear power plants are among the safest and most secure facilities in the country," he said.
Although nuclear plants contribute 87 percent of the village's property taxes, Mr. O'Neill insisted that "Buchanan is not willing to trade safety for lower taxes."
The report on the plant was prepared by a consulting firm run by James Lee Witt, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
It concluded that the county's plan for evacuating the area in the event of a disaster at Indian Point, and the federal guidelines the plan rests on, do not take into account the new threat of terrorism. The findings also criticize the plan's premise that people beyond the 10-mile radius would not flee in the event of a nuclear accident.
Mr. Brodsky, the chairman of the assembly's committee on corporations, authorities and commissions, released an evaluation of the plant's emergency plan last February that came to many of the same conclusions.
Today, Mr. Brodsky implored Governor Pataki and the executives of the four counties - Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange - surrounding the plant to call for its immediate shutdown. He also asked those officials not to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency its annual letters at the end of the month certifying the county's emergency plans for the plant.
But the Westchester County executive, Andrew J. Spano, who today again urged that the nuclear plant be closed, explained that the county's role was limited as far as the approval process went. The county, he said, is merely given a checklist to complete for the state Emergency Management Office, with specific questions about the number of bus drivers at the ready and the number of informational brochures distributed. The state then uses that information to decide whether to certify the plan.
Still, opponents of the plant said that the consultant's report should motivate the state and the counties not to certify their plans.
"They have not only a legal responsibility but a moral responsibility not to participate in a farcical sham process by FEMA to pretend that these plans are workable when they're not," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group that has been a relentless critic of the plant.
In Washington, the report's release prompted Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to say she would, among other things, reintroduce the Nuclear Security Act, which calls for enhanced federal security and preparedness standards.
Representative Nita M. Lowey appealed to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe M. Allbaugh, to decertify the emergency plan. Representative Sue Kelly demanded that the plant be shut down, at least temporarily.
In Westchester, the response was more personal. James E. Cavanaugh, town supervisor in Eastchester, 23 miles southeast of the plant, said the report confirmed what a lot of people have felt all along. "You can't get from White Plains to the Tappen Zee Bridge during rush hour," he said, "so you're certainly not going to be able to move tens of thousands of people away from the plant in a short period of time."
Joan M. Thompson, the superintendent of the Hendrick Hudson school district, which includes the plant in its borders, said the report highlighted weaknesses she and others have long pointed out. She doubted, for instance, the plan's supposition that bus drivers from around the county would be willing to drive into the "belly of the beast," in the event of a major release of radiation to help evacuate schoolchildren.
Some residents within the 10-mile radius said the report's findings confirmed their darkest imaginings. Scott DeGiana, a Peekskill resident who owns a moving company, said: "If an accident happens, we're dead men."
-------- us politics
NSC Weighs Giving U.N. Inspectors More Sensitive Data on Iraq Arms
By Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 11, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40285-2003Jan10?language=printer
President Bush's National Security Council is debating whether to turn its most sensitive intelligence on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs over to United Nations inspectors or hold some to offer later to the U.N. Security Council as a reason for war, according to senior administration officials.
Adding to the complexity of the discussions are Pentagon officials who want to withhold intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons sites because they would be among the first targets for the United States should an attack take place, the officials said. Disclosing the locations of these weapons would inevitably lead to their being moved, the military targeters said.
At issue is the best way to use U.S. intelligence to convince Security Council members and the world that Hussein has chemical and biological weapons, especially since U.N. inspectors so far have failed to uncover any "smoking gun."
U.S. officials have said that omissions in Baghdad's December declaration of its weapons of mass destruction mean Iraq remains in material breach of U.N. resolutions calling for it to disarm. But the White House has recognized it needs evidence of Hussein's weapons or an open obstruction of the inspectors before it can put together a coalition for military action, senior officials said.
A key issue in the internal White House debate is releasing intelligence that could endanger either the human spies or technical collection systems that originally obtained the information. "It all comes down to weighing revealing sources and methods versus making a public case," a senior administration official said yesterday.
Two weeks ago, this official said, "everybody started saying that we should 'do an Adlai Stevenson,' " a reference to the Kennedy administration's U.N. ambassador showing aerial reconnaissance photographs to the Security Council in 1962 to prove Soviet missiles were being put in Cuba.
"Maybe that will be the answer," the Bush official said, "[maybe] at some point, protection of sources and methods will be outweighed by the need to convince the American public, the British Labor Party and the people in Turkey that there's a very, very strong case out there."
"The White House is trying to decide what to lay out to inspectors before they report on January 27 or whether to wait and do it after," another official said yesterday. "If we then go forward [attacking Iraq], the question also is how much leg do you show ahead of time," the official added.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said this week that the United States has begun delivering some intelligence to the inspectors and is reviewing other more sensitive material with an eye toward presenting it to the Security Council if inspections fail to uncover a smoking gun. One senior official familiar with U.S. intelligence said recently that the quality of U.S. data "is not that good," adding, "I don't expect anything dramatic before January 27."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld discussed the intelligence dilemma earlier this week, telling reporters it would eventually have to be settled by Bush. "I think he would probably make a calculation as to the advantages that would accrue from revealing intelligence information and the disadvantages that would result from doing so," Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday.
"On the one hand you have the advantage of persuading the public and the world and countries of the facts of the matter," he said. On the other hand, he said, "To the extent that prior to using force we were to reveal intelligence information in a way that damaged the ability to conduct the conflict, it would be, needless to say, unfortunately risky for the coalition forces' lives engaged."
The U.S. intelligence transferred over the past week has been general in nature but included satellite photos of some suspected storage sites, according to former inspectors familiar with the current system. Only Hans Blix, executive director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and his top intelligence assistant, the former deputy head of Canada's intelligence service, James Corcoran, initially review the data. It is then turned into orders passed on to field inspectors in Iraq who do not know its origins.
Sensitivity of the information has slowly increased as the security of the system has been tested. It has remained general and the internal administration debate will determine how specific future sensitive information will be.
Illustrating the problem was the complaint yesterday by one of the two chief inspectors that he needed "more actionable information" from U.S. intelligence agencies. Director General Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who supervises the search in Iraq for a nuclear weapons program, told reporters, "We need specific information on where to go and where to inspect."
He said a good process has been established with the United States and other countries' intelligence agencies and he hoped that in coming weeks "we'll get additional information that can accelerate our job in the field."
Asked about ElBaradei's remarks, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said, "I can certainly say that they're getting the best we've got, and that we are sharing information with the inspectors that they can use, and based on their ability to use it."
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer yesterday added the need to protect security of data as another reason for limiting the sensitive U.S. information being given the U.N. inspectors.
"The more secure their ability is to maintain the information, as new equipment arrives to help them to do so, the more information they receive," he said, adding that Iraq in the past has used its abilities to intercept messages and stay one jump ahead of the U.N. personnel.
----
[It's time the U.S. started taking its own advice: '[Colin Powell] said withdrawal from the NPT was a very serious issue as the treaty was a cornerstone of the whole nuclear arms control regime. "A country cannot just walk out without ramification because challenging the integrity of the nonproliferation regime is a matter that can affect international peace and security."' et]
Powell: N. Korea cannot go undealt with
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
January 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030110-060811-3449r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The United States Friday snubbed North Korea for saying that it was leaving the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and said such disrespect to an important international agreement cannot go "undealt with."
Despite this strong condemnation, the United States is still trying to convince the North Koreans not to reactivate their nuclear weapons program.
"The non-proliferation treaty is an important international agreement, and this kind of disrespect for such an agreement cannot go undealt with," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Washington. He said the United States would continue to work with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to "deal with these very difficult and important issues."
Last month, North Korea removed monitoring devices and U.N. inspectors from its nuclear facilities and said it was reactivating its nuclear weapons program.
The move caused an international outcry and the United States launched a campaign to persuade the communist regime to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Earlier of the United States, Japan and South Korea issued a joint statement, assuring North Korea that Washington does not intend to use force to resolve the dispute. The statement also urged North Korea to unconditionally give up its nuclear plan.
Following the joint statement, the North Korean delegation at the U.N. headquarters in New York contacted New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for discussing various options for peacefully ending the crisis.
The talks in Santa Fe, N.M., began Thursday evening and continued on Friday as well, with both the sides keeping their cards close to their chests.
Powell said he has spoken to Richardson three times since Thursday night, when the North Korean delegation arrived in Santa Fe for talks.
He said the North Koreans approached Richardson and asked for a meeting because they had some ideas they wanted to put on the table. "Governor Richardson contacted us and I returned his calls and we discussed the matter and thought that it would be useful for him to hear whatever ideas the North Koreans had," said Powell.
"In order to not deprive ourselves of any useful information, we suggested to Governor Richardson, who has a past relationship with North Korea, it would be okay for him to go ahead, and we made it possible for the North Koreans to see him."
Powell said Richardson would call him after the meeting to give him a full report. "We will take that report into account as we move forward to see whether or not any new elements have been introduced into the equation."
Powell said the meeting was "a one-time shot for the governor" because "he is not an emissary ... nor does he intend to be an envoy in this matter."
In Washington, Powell discussed the situation following the North Korean declaration to withdraw from the NPT with the IAEA Director General ElBaradei.
"The United States condemns ... North Korea's action (to withdraw from the NPT) and finds it very, very unfortunate," Powell told reporters after the meeting.
He referred to an INAEA decision last Monday to give North Korea a chance to comply with its international obligations said it was unfortunate that instead of taking advantage of the offer, Pyongyang has "thumbed its nose at the international community."
"This is very regrettable. It's a sad statement on the part of the North Koreans of the respect in which they hold their own people. This makes it more difficult to find a solution," said Powell.
North Korea signed an agreement with the United States in 1994 that led to the freezing of its nuclear reactors in return for an end to international sanctions and resumption of free fuel oil from Washington.
Washington stopped the supplies last year following reports that North Korea was restarting its nuclear weapons program.
Last Monday, the IAEA board of governors of 35 nations unanimously agreed not to refer North Korea to the U.N. Security Council for punitive action and gave it another chance to abandon its nuclear program.
"We hope that the North Korean leadership will realize the folly of its actions, will realize that the international community and the United States will not be intimidated and we will continue to work for a peaceful solution, not only on behalf of the American people, but on behalf of the people of the world," said Powell.
Addressing the same briefing ElBaradei said that despite North Korea's decision to withdraw from the NPT, the international community was "going to give diplomacy some time to work."
"Ultimately, however, if it doesn't succeed, the matter will have to go to the Security Council," he warned, adding: "But I hope we will be able to defuse the situation before we have to go to the Security Council."
He said withdrawal from the NPT was a very serious issue as the treaty was a cornerstone of the whole nuclear arms control regime. "A country cannot just walk out without ramification because challenging the integrity of the nonproliferation regime is a matter that can affect international peace and security."
----
Jesse Helms: Leader With a 'Lone-Wolf' Rap
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40817-2003Jan10?language=printer
A Jan. 5 front-page story portrayed Jesse Helms as a relic of a bygone era that most Republicans were glad to see come to an end. Truth be told, Helms is more in the Republican mainstream today, as he leaves the Senate, than he was when he arrived. And it is not because he mellowed with age or moved to the center but because he stood his ground -- and the Republican Party, the Senate and the world moved in his direction.
When Helms came to Washington in 1973, he was not just a member of the minority but also a minority within his own party. Back then, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" could hold its meetings in a phone booth.
By 1994, when he took over as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republicans were in the majority and conservatives were the majority of the Republican caucus. And the senator who had made his career as the lonely opposition in 99 to 1 votes found himself on the winning side of large, often bipartisan majorities -- and successfully implementing a conservative foreign policy agenda. Consider:
• When Helms led the Senate opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, proponents could not garner a simple majority, much less the supermajority needed for ratification.
• He fought the flawed Kyoto global warming treaty, which the Senate rejected in a resolution that passed 95 to 0.
• Helms fought the International Criminal Court, and his legislation, the American Service Members Protection Act -- which bars any U.S. cooperation with the court -- became law with overwhelming bipartisan support.
• He led the effort in the Senate to bring former Cold War adversaries Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the NATO alliance.
• Helms fought the "U.N. empowerment" agenda of former secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali, and his U.N. reform legislation, the "Helms-Biden Law," passed the House and Senate by overwhelming majorities.
• He stopped the Clinton administration from concluding a new Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia to tie the hands of the next president. Today, the Bush administration has withdrawn from the treaty and has scheduled initial deployment of ballistic missile defenses for 2004.
So what made Helms stand out as such a lone wolf, in spite of this record? He was willing to take on issues no one else wanted to touch, and he did not care about controversy or criticism.
In 1995, when I was just starting as his spokesman on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Clinton administration was blocking Helms's plan to restructure the State Department. He responded by putting all State Department nominations on hold. The New York Times then ran an editorial accusing him of hostage-taking.
Eager to prove myself, I prepared a hard-hitting letter to the editor and took it down to his office. He read it, patted me on the shoulder and said: "Son, just so you understand: I don't care what the New York Times says about me. And nobody I care about cares what the New York Times says about me."
That, in a nutshell, was the secret to Jesse Helms's success. He answered only to his conscience and his Creator -- and he was willing to take the heat. That is why Senate Republicans will miss him -- and why his detractors are so glad to see him go.
But before they start popping the champagne corks, they should consider two uncomfortable thoughts: First, if the above record is any indication, it is not Helms who represents the views of a bygone era but his critics. And second, over the course of 30 years, hundreds of young conservatives have served in his Senate office and are now deployed across all levels of the U.S. government. Yes, Jesse Helms may be gone, but his disciples are not. They will be influencing U.S. policy for decades to come.
-- Marc A. Thiessen
The writer was spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.S. troops track terrorists in Africa
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
January 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030110-050041-5475r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- American forces in and around Djibouti are negotiating a diplomatic thicket while they hunt down terrorists lurking in the Horn of Africa, a mission that is only 30 days old and already promises to last a long while, according to the Marine general in charge of the force.
Maj. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, told reporters on a Pentagon conference call Friday that the ability of suspected al Qaida terrorists to slip cross national borders had complicated the relationships between the Americans and the various local authorities in the region.
"Anything that we do will, in fact, be coordinated and orchestrated with them to make sure that we know exactly who has the authority and who we need to speak with, and in some cases, who on our side ... needs to make the call for the final clearance," said Sattler.
Sattler leads up a force that includes 400 crew members aboard the USS Mt. Whitney, which is floating off the coast of Djibouti, and another 900 sailors, Marines, soldiers, airmen, and Special Forces troops that are ensconced at the heavily fortified Camp Lemonier in Djibouti.
Their mission: to work with the host nations to ferret out terrorists operating in the rugged region.
"The border with Somalia is a place we're looking hard at, as well as the coastline of the Gulf of Aden," Sattler said.
"We have not gone forward and actually conducted any attacks on any terrorist cells or training camps yet," Sattler said. "We need to be patient because we need to be correct -- absolutely correct -- when in fact we come forward and identify a particular location as a training site or a camp harboring terrorists."
With his command team acting as the continuous link, Sattler is working with the governments of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djbouti, Yemen, Sudan and Kenya to coordinate their efforts.
In some cases, he said, terrorists may be arrested by a host nation's law enforcement agencies and put through their legal system; in others cases lethal force may be brought to bear.
One example of such force was last November when a CIA-operated drone armed with Hellfire missiles destroyed a car carrying a suspected al Qaida leader along a rural road in Yemen.
"I guess what I would say is one (option) would be militarily to attack and destroy it, if in fact we couldn't go ahead and arrest them to bring them to justice," Sattler said.
In the meantime, Sattler's small army is devoting a good deal of time and energy developing intelligence on the terrorist groups that frequent the region.
"I would tell you that there's a lot of activity to be collected upon, that it's hard also to decipher what is just normal activity moving across borders at different points and moving across the Gulf Aden, and what may in fact be either the smuggling of weapons, munitions, explosives, or individuals in and out of some of the countries," Sattler said.
Of particular concern is the threat to the Mt. Whitney and other U.S. ships from small boats packed with explosives. One such kamikaze boat blew a massive hole in the destroyer USS Cole off Yemen in Oct. 2000, and more recently, a terrorist vessel badly damaged a French oil tanker in the same region last October.
"A lot of our intelligence collection is focused on areas where these types of boats could, A, be stored; B, be moved to and launched from," Sattler said.
Just the act of collecting intelligence is pressuring the terror networks, according to Sattler.
"We feel very confident that by virtue of breathing down their necks, looking at them through multiple intelligence sources, and collecting (intelligence) on them through multiple sources, that we are in fact disrupting (and) keeping them off balance until we can go to that next phase which is defeat, i.e., bringing them to justice," he said.
-------- britain
Blair warns America of Muslim backlash over war on Iraq
By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent,
UK Telegraph
11/01/2003
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/11/wirq11.xml/
Tony Blair has told Washington that a war in Iraq could unleash a dangerous wave of anti-American feeling across the Muslim world unless it re-doubles efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.
His comments were made public as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said he would hold telephone talks next week with senior Palestinian officials after an Israeli ban prevented them from attending a London meeting in person.
"I am holding a telephone conference on Tuesday with senior members of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian civil society," Mr Straw said in a statement released by the Foreign Office.
The Palestinians involved in the telephone conference include Yasser Abed Rabbo, the information minister, Nabil Shaath, the minister of planning and international co-operation and Salam Fayad, the finance minister, Mr Straw said.
Mr Blair believes that the need to push for Middle East peace has never been greater as a war with Iraq approaches. In an interview with Reader's Digest, he said he is acutely worried by the number of Muslims who believe that the West is "after" Saddam Hussein because he is a Muslim rather than because he poses a threat to world security.
"So far as the Muslim world is concerned, the perception is we worry about Iraq but we don't care about the Middle East peace process," he said.
Asked if America is doing enough to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Mr Blair made clear that more has to be done.
"America is doing what it can, but we've got to re-double our efforts because the best recruiting ground for anti-Americanism is on this issue.
"You've got to engage with the Arab-Muslim world in a more fundamentally long-term way about the fanaticism in parts of the Arab world, about democracy, about inter-faith understanding," he said.
America is said to have been less than enthusiastic when Mr Blair announced his plan for a London mini-summit with Palestinian leaders.
The issue of whether to sit down with representatives of the Palestinian Authority has exposed clear differences between Washington and London. While Mr Blair believes that violence in the Middle East will not end unless efforts are made to engage the Palestinians in talks, the Americans argue that killings will continue until Yasser Arafat is removed from power and therefore believe summits are largely pointless.
Mr Blair's frustration grew this week when the Israelis banned the Palestinian representatives from attending the London meeting, mainly in response to two suicide bombings in Tel Aviv which killed 23 people last weekend. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, was also annoyed that Mr Blair had invited Israel's Labour leader, Amram Mitzna, to Downing Street in the run up to his country's general election.
Frustration in London was all the more intense as the Americans appeared not to have used their influence to persuade the Israelis to reverse the decision and lift travel bans on the Palestinians.
In a speech to British ambassadors on Tuesday Mr Blair insisted that Britain and America were the closest of allies, but hinted that he wanted more from the "special relationship", saying the Americans should "listen back". Downing Street denied any split with Washington over their view of what would trigger war.
Labour backbenchers said there would be serious unrest in the party with the possibility of ministerial resignations if Britain went to war without a second resolution being passed in the United Nations.
Helen Jackson, the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said there was "always a possibility" that some junior ministers might feel so strongly they could resign.
-------- europe
Eurobrief: Crunch year for military goals
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
January 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030106-121951-2438r.htm
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The idea of soldiers marching in European Union uniforms might send shivers down the spines of Euroskeptics, seem quaint to American military chiefs, and appear unworkable to all those acquainted with the EU's cumbersome decision-making procedures, but in 2003, this long-talked-about dream is set to become a reality.
On Jan. 1, the EU took control of the international community's police mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the next three years, 500 police officers from the EU's 15 member states -- as well as 18 other countries -- will be responsible for bringing law and order to the war-torn former Yugoslav republic in the Union's first peacekeeping operation.
In the spring, the EU is expected to take over NATO's Amber Fox operation in Macedonia, following a landmark deal between the two bodies last month that gives the Union access to the Alliance's resources.
Later in the year, the Brussels-based organization is likely to assume the more ambitious task of keeping the peace in Bosnia.
But the bloc's military ambitions do not just begin and end in the Balkans.
In November, the EU and NATO plan to hold their first joint military exercise, and by December the Union is supposed to have a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force ready to carry out peacekeeping -- and vaguely defined "peace-making" -- operations anywhere in the world.
Daniel Keohane, a defense analyst at the London-based pro-EU Center for European Reform, says 2003 will be a crucial year for the EU's nascent security and defense policy.
"After years of talk, the EU will actually be doing something," he says.
The policing operation in Bosnia is unlikely to stretch the EU and its partners. But Keohane says the EU's first military foray in Macedonia will be closely watched by both the Union's supporters and detractors.
"The European Union will want to make sure it goes well because if anything does go wrong, it might raise a lot of uncertainty about the EU's potential as a military actor," he says.
It is fitting the bloc's first military activities should be in the Balkans: The EU's incapacity to keep the former Yugoslav republic's warring factions apart contributed to its drawing up a defense policy in 1999.
At present, this strategy restricts the EU to crisis management and peacekeeping operations. But many European politicians would like the EU to have more ambitious goals, befitting an organization that expects to become the world's most powerful economic bloc.
The European Convention, a body set up last year to design a new institutional architecture for the EU, has proposed introducing a solidarity clause -- modeled on NATO's Article Five -- in which an attack on one EU member state is deemed an attack on all.
The convention is also likely to recommend setting up a European armaments agency to allow EU states to pool the costs of upgrading their outdated military hardware.
At present, the Union's 15 members spend only 40 percent the amount the United States does on defense, and only two countries -- France and Britain -- are capable of conducting sustained military operations overseas.
Despite pledges to increase expenditure in a handful of European countries, the military gulf between the EU and the United States is only set to widen given the Bush administration's decision to up defense spending by $80 billion -- a sum greater than the annual arms budget of Britian and France.
The European peacekeepers carrying out their duties in the Balkans will be on loan from national armies and will fly the flag of both their homelands and the Brussels-based club.
But Antonio Missiroli, a research fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris, believes that in the medium- to long-term the European Union will have to consider setting up its own standing army.
"An EU army has become a four-letter word, but if the union wants to be effective on the ground, its armies have to integrate and learn to be inter-operational."
The EU is still a very long way from becoming the world's other military superpower. However, 2003 will decide whether it is capable of acting forcefully on the international stage or is destined to remain an economic giant but a political dwarf.
-------- israel / palestine
Scandal Darkens Sharon's Ballot Prospects
January 11, 2003
New York Times
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/international/middleeast/11ISRA.html
JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 - What had been a lackluster campaign leading to the almost certain re-election of Israel's hard-line prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has suddenly been thrown into confusion, with doubt cast on the continued rule of his coalition of right-wing and religious parties.
Mr. Sharon had maintained widespread support for his tough tactics against the Palestinians - among them sealing off cities and villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But in recent days, corruption charges against Mr. Sharon and his Likud Party have sharply eroded his support among a deeply depressed electorate, seemingly awakening people to the fact that Mr. Sharon's tough tactics have failed to halt the violence.
The malaise is brought on, said Yaron Ezrahi, a political expert at Hebrew University, by the "very strong gap between the ideals and expectations that brought about this country's creation and the wretched realities of Israel's life and economics."
Against the backdrop of those realities, it was notable that for the first time, a Palestinian attack failed to bolster support for Mr. Sharon. It continued to fall dramatically this week despite the double suicide bombing that killed 22 people on Sunday in Tel Aviv.
A poll in the newspaper Maariv today painted a portrait of near-hopelessness. Almost half of those polled, 47 percent, said Palestinian terror was their greatest concern, over corruption (17 percent) and the danger of war with Iraq (13 percent). About 13 percent said all three issues worried them.
Only 26 percent said Mr. Sharon had a solution this time; 64 percent said he did not.
Yet few had switched their support to his Labor Party opponent, Amram Mitzna, a dovish former general who advocates a pullback of settlements and a reopening of talks with the Palestinians. Twenty-two percent said Mr. Mitzna had a solution; 63 percent said he did not.
The one focus of strong popular support in the poll was the enterprise of building a fence roughly along the old 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank to keep Palestinians out. The measure was backed by 68 percent of respondents.
Mr. Sharon has been less than enthusiastic about the fence, which he fears will isolate Jewish settlements and become a real border. In the poll, 51 percent said they thought that the he was delaying its construction for political or ideological reasons.
The groundwork for this drop in popular support was laid at Likud's nominating convention last month, with allegations of payoffs for favored ballot positions. A 27-year-old waitress, Inbal Gavrieli, a member of a family of vast gambling interests, got a better place than Ehud Olmert, the mayor of Jerusalem and Mr. Sharon's campaign manager.
On Tuesday, it emerged that Mr. Sharon had received a $1.5 million loan from a South Africa businessman, Cyril Kern, to repay a campaign contribution from an American company, Annex Research. Since Israeli law forbids political contributions from abroad, both transactions appeared illicit. Polls that had shown Likud winning as many as 41 seats in the 120-member Parliament on Jan. 28 suddenly predicted 27 seats for Likud, only 3 more than for Labor.
On Thursday night, Mr. Sharon held a nationally televised news conference to assert that he was a victim of an "attempt to seize power through lies." About 10 minutes into his speech, the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Mishael Cheshin, ordered Israel's three television channels and two radio stations to halt their broadcasts.
"Have you gone crazy, have you gone mad," listeners heard Mr. Sharon growling in exasperated tones shortly beforehand.
His reviews in today's newspapers were scathing - although many of the writers have been critical of Mr. Sharon all along.
"Last month, the election results were so predictable as to be boring," Hemi Shalev, a longtime critic of Mr. Sharon, wrote in Maariv. Now, he added, "instead of gliding elegantly back into the prime minister's bureau, Sharon must fight for his life."
A loan from an old friend and comrade in arms did not seem to some all that grievous. But the complex effort to cover it up, along with Mr. Sharon's bellicose reaction, appeared to revive a lingering sense of unease about him.
Nahum Barnea, a respected columnist, touched on this today, writing in Yediot Ahronot: "All his life Sharon has been controversial. He liked to stick it - that is his usual expression - to others, and cry out, as an innocent victim, when others stuck it to him. All his life, until the past 6-7 years, when he decided that the path to the Israeli's heart required rounding the edges, restraint, constantly moving towards the center, toward consensus."
Mr. Barnea added: "Until last night. Last night he returned home to the tribe, to the tough core of Likud. He made his turnaround with no choice, in light of Likud's alarming drop in the polls. But the things he said were inflammatory, harsh."
Yet political analysts warned that Mr. Sharon should not be counted out prematurely. Some projections showed him able to scrape out a coalition with a bare majority of 61. And thus far, Mr. Mitzna has proved to have little traction.
-------- latin america
Venezuela's combustible crisis
EDITORIAL •
January 11, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030111-97640683.htm
The potential political contagion of the turmoil in Venezuela, where warring factions are killing each other in the streets, is cause for serious concern. However, much of the world also is focused on Venezuela's ability to affect a more tangible matter - oil prices. A six-week-long oil strike, waged to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, sent prices up to two-year highs, to almost $34 a barrel last week. Prices have tapered off on news that Russia and Saudi Arabia will step up production, but continue to hover around record highs.
America has long depended on the world's fifth-largest oil exporter as a reliable standby in the market and a convenient counterweight to the oil-rich Middle East, getting more than 13 percent of its imported oil from Venezuela. The Venezuelan strike has reduced the flow of oil to world markets by about 2 million barrels per day and has caused U.S. oil companies' inventories of crude and petroleum products to drop to a 26-year low.
Plans by Russia and Saudi Arabia to bolster production are cushioning the blow somewhat, but oil from these countries takes more than a month to arrive to the United States, while oil from Venezuela arrives within five days. This gap in supply may be felt over the next four months. So, the Energy Department has allowed oil companies to sell on the open market the oil that was slated to go to the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in February. The reserve currently has about 598 million barrels of crude oil, which is comparable to the stockpile in the reserve leading up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Still, the reserve couldn't compensate for the worst case - simultaneous supply disruptions from Venezuela and Iraq.
Venezuela is only outputting 200,000 barrels a day, compared to prestrike levels of 3 million, while the possibility of an oil crunch already is seen on the global market. Meanwhile, Mr. Chavez continues to take a hard line, saying striking oil workers will be fired and replaced with new hires from other countries, and the opposition refuses to deviate from its demands that Mr. Chavez hold a binding referendum or election amid the current chaos.
The Bush administration has reportedly been working behind the scenes to try to broker a deal that would restore stability and the flow of oil from Venezuela. The State Department has publicly called on both sides to show "maximum flexibility." If some kind of deal isn't reached soon, Venezuela will be the primary loser. Oil generates 80 percent of Venezuela's export revenue, and half of the government's revenue. The Venezuelan economy was tottering before the strike, with a contraction of 8 percent expected for last year and unemployment close to 20 percent. The government says it has lost about $2 billion as a result of the strike.
It is hoped that the White House and other parties move Venezuelans toward a truce sooner rather than later.
----
Chavez fires 700, faces shortages of food
By Christopher Toothaker
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030111-95445022.htm
CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez threatened yesterday to send soldiers to seize control of food-production facilities and also fired 700 workers from the state oil monopoly, hoping to break a 40-day-old strike intended to oust him.
The Venezuelan leader, a former paratroop commander, told soldiers to be ready "to militarily seize the food production plants" that joined the strike. He asked state governors belonging to his political coalition to be ready to cooperate.
"This is an economic coup. They are trying to deny the people food, medicine and even water," Mr. Chavez told thousands of supporters in western Cojedes state. "They won't succeed."
Venezuela's opposition began a general strike Dec. 2 to demand that Mr. Chavez resign and call elections. The strike has caused food shortages.
Rafael Alfonzo, president of Venezuela's food producers chamber, blamed the shortages on the president for refusing to cede to opposition demands. He insisted food makers are producing staples but said fuel shortages have hampered deliveries.
"It's totally false that we are denying the people food," Mr. Alfonzo said. "We ask governors and soldiers to understand that the only one to blame for food shortages is the government."
The strike also has paralyzed the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, where at least 30,000 of the state company's 40,000 workers are off the job.
Earlier Mr. Chavez fired 300 of the oil workers.
He has tried to jump-start oil production. Crude output is estimated at about 400,000 barrels a day, compared with the pre-strike level of 3 million barrels. Exports, normally 2.5 million barrels a day, are at 500,000 barrels.
Yesterday's developments inflamed an already unstable situation in this South American nation. Mr, Chavez' opponents took to the streets and a bank strike prompted authorities to suspend dollar auctions for a second straight day after Venezuela's currency fell.
The president also threatened to maintain a military seizure of the independent Caracas police force - even though the Supreme Court ordered the government last month to restore the department's autonomy. Troops seized the force in November.
He accuses police - who report to an opposition mayor - of brutally repressing his supporters during protests and allegedly killing two supporters Jan. 3.
Police say Chavez street thugs instigate the violence.
The police "will stay under [military] seizure," Mr. Chavez said, "because there are groups of assassins - truly subversive groups - that break the law with a police uniform and weapons. That must not be allowed."
In Washington, the Bush administration was talking with other nations in the Americas on ways to end the strike, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday.
"We remain deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in Venezuela," Fleischer said. Asked about a possible U.S. role in a breakthrough, he said, "An electoral solution is the direction the United States sees."
The general strike has caused a sharp decline in Venezuelan exports to the United States, which normally average 1.5 million barrels daily. Government opponents, including the nation's largest labor union and business chamber, are demanding that Mr. Chavez resign if he loses a nonbinding Feb. 2 referendum on his rule.
----
Peru fearful legal reforms could free jailed rebels
By Drew Benson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030111-70565948.htm
LIMA, Peru - Vincente Janampa was 18 when Marxist rebels shot his uncle at the rural schoolhouse where he taught in the Ayacucho region high in the Andes.
Eighteen years later, Mr. Janampa worries that recent legal reforms induced by international pressure could free hundreds of the rebels, who were imprisoned in a crackdown that helped quash a civil war that left 30,000 dead in the 1980s and early 1990s.
"There are still followers out there in the countryside, and the terrorists could go back out preaching their doctrine," said Mr. Janampa, a city groundskeeper who now lives in the capital, Lima. "They should stay in prison."
Peru is having to deal with the legal legacy of the crackdown after a constitutional court last week struck down parts of the anti-terror laws used by then-President Alberto Fujimori to crush the insurgency.
The Constitutional Tribunal ruled against the use of secret military courts with hooded judges, and harsh sentences for terrorists and collaborators. The ruling came in response to recommendations from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the legal arm of the Organization of American States.
The ruling could open the way for new trials for some 900 people sentenced by the military courts, including rebel group Shining Path's founder Abimael Guzman. Nearly 2,000 people have been imprisoned on terrorism charges.
Legal experts say the ruling is unlikely to affect the case of New York native Lori Berenson, who was sentenced to life in prison by a military court in 1996 for a failed plot to attack Peru's Congress, but was later retried in a civilian court and given a 20-year sentence on the lesser charge of collaboration. She says both trials denied her due process.
In a nationally televised address on Tuesday, President Alejandro Toledo tried to allay Peruvians' concerns that the rebels would walk free and asked Congress for powers to draft new anti-terrorism laws. Lawmakers granted his request on Wednesday.
"The only thing the constitutional court has done is comply with an international legal ruling - it in no way opens the doors to free terrorists," Mr. Toledo said.
But former anti-terrorism judge Marcos Ibazeta disagreed, saying that if there is not sufficient evidence to stand up in a civilian court, judges will be forced to free imprisoned rebels.
Peru's bogged-down, inefficient legal system also may have trouble bringing 900 people to trial in the 18 to 36 months mandated by law. If it fails to do so, many guerrillas could walk out.
Judge Pablo Talavera, president of the National Anti-terrorism Court, said about 400 detainees had asked for new trials even before the decision Jan 3. He expects the number to double in the coming months.
The draconian anti-terrorism laws decreed by Mr. Fujimori beginning in 1992 were initially popular with Peruvians weary of war, but later drew criticism for purportedly denying defendants fair trials.
By the early 1990s, the Maoist Shining Path had virtually driven the Peruvian government to its knees with a campaign of car bombings, political assassinations, and massacres of peasant communities that refused to support them.
Guzman's capture in 1992 and the anti-terrorism measures helped quash the guerrillas.
In 1999, the Inter-American court ruled that four Chileans jailed on terrorism charges should receive a new trial in an open civilian court. In response, Mr. Fujimori withdrew Peru from the court.
After the Fujimori government collapsed in 2000, Peru returned to the court's jurisdiction, and the Chileans were granted a new trial.
-------- puerto rico
Navy to Move Bombing Ranges Mostly to Florida From Vieques
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/politics/11VIEQ.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - The Navy will expand its use of bombing ranges in Florida and elsewhere on the United States mainland when it abandons a site on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in May, military officials said today.
Navy officials were notifying Congress that they had certified alternatives to Vieques for conducting live-fire training and other exercises, the officials said.
The Navy has used Vieques as its main Atlantic training range for 56 years, but it has been hindered by local protests stemming from an April 1999 live-fire incident in which a civilian security guard was killed. In January 2000 the Clinton administration set a May 2003 target date for withdrawing from Vieques, but Congress required the Navy first to certify that alternative training sites were at least as good as Vieques.
For years the Navy and Marine Corps contended that there were no satisfactory alternatives to Vieques, considered the crown jewel of training sites for naval air and amphibious forces in the Atlantic Fleet.
Among the main alternatives that Navy Secretary Gordon England has now certified as "equivalent or superior" to Vieques are these:
¶Pinecastle naval bombing range in the Ocala National Forest near Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida. 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 Forest Service. 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 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. In recent years the Navy has done 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 is also 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.
-------- us
US accelerates Gulf build-up
Around 150,000 troops have been ordered to the Gulf
Saturday, 11 January, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2649839.stm
The United States is dramatically accelerating its build-up in the Gulf, with the deployment of another 27,000 troops.
A senior Pentagon official told the BBC that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had signed his second order in 24 hours, adding to 35,000 personnel who were deployed on Friday.
USS Comfort The USS Comfort hospital ship has already been sent to the Gulf The official said that these new reinforcements meant the Americans could have around 150,000 personnel in and around the Gulf by the end of next month.
The announcement coincides with reports of a skirmish in cyberspace between Iraq and the US, which has resulted in Baghdad blocking e-mails sent from America.
The messages, which are written in Arabic, have been sent by the Pentagon to military and civilian leaders in Iraq, to try to persuade them to turn against President Saddam Hussein.
They urge Iraqis to reveal the locations of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and to refuse to obey the president's orders.
The e-mails apparently circulated for several days before being blocked.
Wide set of options
BBC Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says the US intention is to keep up pressure on Baghdad which, Washington says, has weapons of mass destruction.
The latest additions to the US build-up are thought to be mainly army and air force units.
The forces, which are not expected to leave immediately, will ultimately give US President George W Bush a wide set of military options.
Our correspondent says these latest deployment orders are confirmation that the build-up has moved into a significant new phase.
Having spent weeks and months painstakingly stocking up equipment and supplies in the region, the Pentagon is now beginning to move large numbers of combat troops and air power - the key elements of any attack force.
It is believed that the Pentagon is ultimately aiming for a force of a 250,000.
Ark Royal leaves
The 35,000 reinforcements ordered on Friday include marines, who would spearhead any possible invasion force.
The troops are being sent to the Gulf in three amphibious warfare ships.
The American deployment comes as the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal set sail for the Gulf in the biggest British naval deployment since the Falklands War.
The UK Ministry of Defence insists that the role of what will be 8,000 troops in the Gulf has not been decided, but it is clear that it could assist the US in some form of amphibious assault on Iraq.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- death penalty
Illinois Governor to Commute All Death Row Sentences
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/national/11WIRE-ILLI.html
CHICAGO -- Illinois Gov. George Ryan will clear the state's death row and commute the sentences of all 156 death row inmates, his spokesman said Saturday.
"Ultimately, late yesterday, he came to the decision this was the only thing to do," spokesman Dennis Culloton said.
Ryan, who leaves office Monday, sent overnight letters to the families of murder victims warning them he would announce during a speech Saturday afternoon that he was commuting most of the death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Three death row inmates will get shorter sentences and could eventually be released from prison, though none will be out immediately, Culloton said.
Vern Fueling, whose son William was shot and killed in 1985 by a man now on death row, was outraged that the killer, sentenced to death, would be allowed to live.
"My son is in the ground for 17 years and justice is not done," Fueling said. "This is like a mockery."
Incoming Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, also criticized Ryan's action, calling blanket clemency "a big mistake." Each case should be reviewed individually, Blagojevich said. "You're talking about people who've committed murder."
Ryan halted the state's executions nearly three years ago after courts found that 13 death row inmates had been wrongly convicted since the state resumed capital punishment in 1977 -- a period during which only 12 other inmates were executed.
On Friday, the Republican governor pardoned four death row inmates, saying the men had been tortured by police into making false confessions.
A few hours later, Aaron Patterson walked out of prison a free man and ate his first steak dinner in 17 years, while Madison Hobley and Leroy Orange spent time with their families.
Stanley Howard, the fourth man pardoned Friday, remained in prison. He had also been convicted of a separate crime for which he was still serving time.
"It's a dream come true, finally. Thank God that this day has finally come," Hobley, 42, said Friday as he left the Pontiac Correctional Center.
Orange walked out of Cook County Jail looking a bit dazed with his two daughters by his side.
"Thank you with all my heart and please do something for the remaining group on death row," he said.
Ryan announced the pardons Friday at DePaul University in the first of two speeches capping his three-year campaign to reform the state's capital punishment system, which began when he declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000.
In his speech, Ryan condemned the state's criminal justice system for sending innocent men to prison to be executed.
"The system has failed all four men," Ryan said. "It has failed the people of this state."
Ryan said Chicago police tortured Hobley, Howard, Patterson and Orange into confessing to murders they had not committed. Each of them was on death row for at least 12 years. Orange was on death row the longest, more than 17 years.
"We have evidence from four men, who did not know each other, all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the basis of the confessions they allegedly provide," Ryan said. "They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system. ...
"I believe a manifest injustice has occurred."
Patterson's mother, Jo Ann, said she was overwhelmed when she heard the news.
"I don't believe in miracles but this is a miracle," she said.
Ryan spread the blame in his hour-long speech, calling the state's criminal justice system "inaccurate, unjust and unable to separate the innocent from the guilty, and at times very racist."
He blamed "rogue cops," zealous prosecutors, incompetent defense lawyers and judges who rule on technicalities rather than on what is right.
He also criticized the Illinois Legislature for failing to enact his proposals to reform the death penalty system.
"What does it take? Now that we can say the number of wrongfully convicted men is 17, will that be enough?" Ryan asked.
Reaction to the pardons from death penalty supporters was swift.
Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine said the future of the four men should have been decided by the courts.
"Instead, they were ripped away from (the courts) by a man who is a pharmacist by training and a politician by trade," he said.
"Yes, the system is broken, and the governor broke it today," Devine said.
Devine's office is trying determine if the pardons could be challenged, but Devine said the clemency powers for an Illinois governor are among the broadest in the country.
Ollie Dodds, whose 34-year-old daughter, Johnnie Dodds, died in an apartment fire that Hobley was convicted of setting, said she was saddened by Ryan's decision.
"I don't know how he could do it. It's a hurting thing to hear him say something like that," she said, adding that she still believes Hobley is responsible.
"He doesn't deserve to be out there."
Hobley was convicted of murder and aggravated arson in the deaths of seven people, including his wife and infant son. He contended he made a false confession after he was beaten and nearly suffocated.
Patterson, 38, claims he was tortured into falsely confessing to murder after police threatened him with a gun, beat him and tried to suffocate him in 1986. He previously turned down a deal to admit guilt and drop his claim of police torture in exchange for freedom.
Orange, 52, was sentenced to die for taking part in the stabbing of his former girlfriend, her 10-year-old son and two others. The conviction came despite Orange's description of torture and testimony that his half brother, Leonard Kidd, was the one who stabbed the victims. Kidd, also on death row, claims he too was tortured into confessing.
Howard, 40, was convicted of murder, armed robbery and rape, among other crimes. He claims he is innocent but confessed after he was handcuffed to a wall ring, beaten and choked by police in November 1984.
--------
Death Row Numbers Decline as Challenges to System Rise
January 11, 2003
New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/national/11DEAT.html
For the first time in a generation, the number of inmates on death row has dropped. And the number of new death row inmates in 2001, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available, was the lowest since 1973.
Despite enduring and strong popular support for the death penalty, these numbers suggest that those directly involved in the justice system have serious concerns about the way capital punishment is carried out.
The nationwide drop in the number of death sentences is the product of several phenomena, including a lower murder rate. But legal experts across the political spectrum agreed that public discomfort with the administration of the system has played a significant role. Scores of exonerations based on DNA and other compelling evidence, recurring disclosures about sloppy or abusive police work and concerns about racial bias have damaged public confidence.
What Justice Harry A. Blackmun once called the machinery of death, these experts say, is no longer considered terribly effective at delivering either justice or death by many of the people most directly involved in its operation.
Yesterday, Gov. George Ryan of Illinois pardoned four death row inmates who he said were wrongfully convicted. And today, Mr. Ryan is expected to commute the death sentences of many, and possibly all, of the state's death row inmates, about 150, after a review prompted by the exoneration of 13 people who had faced death sentences.
"We're in a period of national reconsideration," said Austin D. Sarat, a professor of political science and law at Amherst College and the author of "When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition" (Princeton University Press, 2001).
"People are asking if the death penalty is compatible with values which in the American mainstream are taken seriously: equal protection, due process, protection of the innocent," Professor Sarat said. "What was played out in Illinois will be played out across the nation."
The number of people on death row had increased consistently and seemingly inexorably for decades. In 2001, though, according to Justice Department statistics released last month, that number, now around 3,600, dropped for the first time since 1976.
Governor Ryan's actions alone make it all but certain that the number will drop further. Recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court will also drive down the number of people on death row, legal experts said.
In Illinois, more death row inmates were exonerated than executed in recent decades. And though the cost of capital trials and appeals can approach $2 million per conviction, only 749 of the 6,754 prisoners on death row nationwide since 1977, or about 11 percent, had been executed by the end of 2001. Many more left death row as a result of appeals court decisions, commutations and death from natural causes.
Even supporters of capital punishment say the declining number of people sentenced to death represents more careful application of the death penalty, though some attribute it to continuing refinements in the justice system rather than a direct reaction to the number of people who have been exonerated.
"It's the product of prosecutors and jurors being more discriminating," said Joshua Marquis, co-chairman of the National District Attorneys Association's Capital Litigation Committee. "Justice is a work in progress."
The trend has more to do with practical problems than bedrock beliefs, said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.
"It's not a neat or clean picture of moral revolution," Mr. Dieter said. "The death penalty is a government program, and it doesn't work very well."
The number of people entering death row in 2001 was 155, the smallest since 1973, just after the Supreme Court held the death penalty unconstitutional. That was about half the average in the previous seven years. The court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
"The most astonishing fact I have seen in a number of years is the number of people going on death row," said James S. Liebman, a law professor and expert in the death penalty at Columbia. But those numbers, he continued, do not tell the whole story.
"It's gone down relative to the population," Professor Liebman said. "It's also gone down relative to the homicide rate."
Thirty-eight states and the federal government have death penalty laws. But the majority of death sentences and executions are centered in just a few states. More than half of the people put on death row in 2001 were from four states: Texas, California, Florida and North Carolina. Oklahoma and Texas accounted for more than half of all executions that year.
Some supporters of the death penalty say most of the decline in death sentences is attributable to criminological trends.
"The fact that the murder rate is down accounts for some of the softening," said Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "To some extent it's paradoxical: the death penalty brings down the crime rate and that lessens the need to impose the death penalty."
In 2001, for the first time since 1976, more people left death row than entered it.
While the Justice Department has yet to issue figures for 2002, unofficial counts by groups that oppose the death penalty indicate that the trend continued last year.
Sixty-six people were executed, which is 19 fewer than the previous year and 32 fewer than the recent peak, in 1999, of 98. (In 2002, 71 prisoners were executed.)
Another 90 had their sentences overturned or commuted, and 19 died of natural causes or suicide.
Many more people, then, left death row thanks to the courts and the march of time than because of lethal injections, the only method of execution employed in 2001.
On average, prisoners executed in 2001 had been on death row for almost 12 years. The length of time between sentence and execution has been steadily increasing for decades.
That is largely a function of how careful the system is, Mr. Marquis said. "Death row inmates are drowned in due process," he said.
Even those long-delayed executions were unusual. Most death sentences are never carried out.
Of the 779 people sentenced to death in California in the past four decades, for instance, 10 have been executed. Professor Liebman, the co-author of a study of appellate decisions in death penalty cases, said 68 percent of death sentences that were appealed in a 20-year period were reversed. By contrast, he said, fewer than 10 percent of first-degree murder convictions are overturned.
Studies from around the country suggest that the costs associated with death penalty cases can add many hundreds of thousands of dollars to the costs in other murder cases. Katherine Baicker, an economist at Dartmouth, found that the average capital conviction costs $1.5 million.
Those costs are not spread evenly around the nation or within some states. They are often borne largely or entirely by individual counties.
But 80 percent of American counties had no death penalty convictions from 1983 to 1997, and another 10 percent had only one, according to a study by Professor Baicker. Even in death penalty states, Professor Liebman said, a majority of counties never use it.
Those that do paid heavily, Professor Baicker said. She found that even a single capital trial caused counties to raise taxes, on average, by 1.6 percent and to decrease spending on things like highways and the police.
In part as a consequence of these costs, Professor Liebman said, "little by little, there are more counties that are tipping into the group that does not use the death penalty anymore."
Mr. Marquis said the scrutiny death sentences deserve is expensive but not a reason to abandon it.
"Justice is not a matter of going, `Oh, well, it's not cost-efficient,' " Mr. Marquis said.
Forty-three percent of people on death row are black. About 1.5 percent are women. Two percent were 17 or younger when they committed the crimes that resulted in their death sentences. Everyone sentenced to death in 2001 was found guilty of murder.
A number of studies, including one issued this week in Maryland, have concluded that the race of the murder victim plays a large role in determining whether the victim's killer will be executed. The race of the defendant by itself is generally found to be largely irrelevant.
Public support for the death penalty is down from its peak of 80 percent in the middle of the last decade, but by most accounts it is still around of 70 percent.
"Most politicians would give an arm to have ratings that that high," Mr. Scheidegger said.
But Professor Sarat pointed to a second statistic.
"We are also showing 40 to 50 percent saying the death penalty is not administered fairly," he said.
The tension between general support and practical unease is at work, he said, in the national reconsideration of the death penalty.
The compromise position, according to many people, is to institute a moratorium on the death penalty until the system is made more reliable.
Mr. Marquis, of the district attorneys' association, said the moratorium movement's actions represent a tactic rather than a position.
"It's an act of real moral cowardice," he said. "A moratorium is a moral dodge. If you don't like the death penalty, then abolish it."
-------- immigration
Arab Men Register in New INS Crackdown
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-INS-Deadline.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Fears of massive arrests did not materialize during the second phase of a post-Sept. 11 crackdown requiring thousands of men from mostly Arab or Muslim countries to register with U.S. immigration authorities.
Few problems were reported Friday, a marked change from last month when some 400 people were arrested or detained after the first registration deadline.
Lawyers and immigrant advocates said those arrests -- mostly in Southern California -- may have caused many to stay away and not comply with Friday's deadline.
``They are alienating the people who can help them the most in this war on terrorism,'' said Salam Al-Marayati, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Preliminary numbers showed more than 124 foreigners with suspected visa violations were arrested across the country during the second registration period, said Jorge Martinez, a Justice Department spokesman.
Immigration officials had said earlier that about 7,200 men and boys 16 and older from 13 countries were expected to be photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed by the end of the day at Immigration and Naturalization Service offices nationwide.
Activists staged peaceful demonstrations in cities across the nation, including San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Tucson and New York City.
Rakya Ahmed arrived at the San Francisco INS office with an 18-year-old friend who came from Yemen on a tourist visa that expired five months ago.
``We don't know what they are going to do with him,'' Ahmed said. ``I expect anything after what happened after Sept. 11. Nobody feels safe here.''
INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute said steps were being taken to avoid large-scale detentions like those that sparked protests last month.
``It does appear the process was not as smooth as we would have liked it to have been,'' he said. ``If all is in order, they are allowed to go on their merry way.''
Arcaute said those arrested in California last month had violated immigration law or were wanted by law enforcement officials. He rejected arguments by critics that terrorists would not voluntarily register with federal authorities.
``Let me just remind you that the people who committed the terrible acts on 9-11 were registered,'' he said, referring to the fact that many of the hijackers had student visas. The majority of those arrested in California have been released on bail but activists said the names and whereabouts of dozens more remained unclear.
Volunteers who identified themselves as human rights monitors were on hand outside the INS office in Los Angeles.
``We're here to make sure that what happened on Dec. 16 doesn't happen again -- or, if it does happen, that there are witnesses,'' said Randy Rice, a 50-year-old writer from Pasadena, who volunteered Friday.
Some registrants, including Mohamed Bouzaidi, 29, a Tunisian citizen who lives in Los Angeles, said they were comforted by their presence.
``I felt better when I saw there was people outside to help us and the press was watching,'' said Bouzaidi.
In all, some 24,200 men 16 and older from a total of 20 countries are required to visit local INS offices by next month.
Around 3,000 visitors from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria were required to register by Dec. 16. Another 7,200 men from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen had to register by Friday. An estimated 14,000 visitors from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have until Feb. 21.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Probe of Calif. Energy Crisis Facing Hurdles
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 11, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40504-2003Jan10?language=printer
Federal energy regulators' efforts to pin down the causes of California's energy crisis in 2000-2001 are being complicated by growing evidence of price manipulation by traders, obstacles from competing probes and their own splintered approach to the task.
Pat Wood III, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), has set March as the deadline for producing a definitive report on the extraordinary escalation of prices that cost utilities and consumers in California and Pacific Northwest states tens of billions of dollars.
The stakes are high for the credibility of the often-criticized agency and Wood, formerly Texas's top power commissioner and one of President Bush's most visible regulatory appointees.
The agency, which is responsible for maintaining "just and reasonable" wholesale power rates, did little to restrain soaring West Coast prices until June 2001. That is when Wood and another Bush appointee, Nora Brownell, became commissioners, creating a majority vote for price restrictions in California and neighboring states. The commission's investigation of price manipulation did not begin until last February, after the bankruptcy filing of Enron Corp.
Wood agrees with critics who say the agency did not move hard or fast enough when West Coast power prices shot up in the summer of 2000. His top priority is making deregulated U.S. energy markets work. For that to happen, he has said, the public must be persuaded that the West Coast energy scandals won't be repeated -- thus the need for the March report.
Commission spokesman Bryan Lee said that while the agency will reach a conclusion on the causes of the power crisis, investigations will continue past March if necessary, to pursue and penalize guilty parties.
The agency's critics in California and the Pacific Northwest contend that the March deadline may force a rush to judgment on a scandal whose dimensions are still expanding. "Despite the efforts underway for at least 18 months, critical information is being developed every day," Philip J. Movish, a Denver energy consultant for West Coast power users, testified in a FERC proceeding last month.
The agency's staff and California officials say they have come up with several companies, in addition to Enron, whose energy-trading operations should be scrutinized. More are likely to be added next month, when California state agencies and West Coast utilities finish an investigation of overcharging, according to people close to the case.
Compounding the problem is the Justice Department's pursuit of Enron, the centerpiece of West Coast probes. FERC investigators have complained publicly that they have been stymied by Justice and FBI officials who won't let them see crucial evidence presented to grand juries.
"I believe the commission should not render any final conclusions regarding the extent of Enron's misconduct until a more effective discovery of Enron's activity is completed," FERC analyst Janice Radel testified last month.
The regulators have made their own path harder by splitting the West Coast pricing investigation into separate cases -- each consuming weeks or months of testimony, lawyers' briefs and rebuttals -- before the commission acts.
The amount of overcharging in California is divorced from the same issue in the Pacific Northwest. The investigations of Enron's trading schemes is another case. And other investigations center on whether energy companies rigged prices for natural gas, a key power-plant fuel.
FERC staff handling the Pacific Northwest case have said they were even unable to gain access to some testimony and documents obtained by commission staff in another case, because of rigid agency procedures.
Finally, there is the sheer complexity of an inquiry into millions of energy transactions during the crisis. Two years later, experts are still arguing how much of the price run-up was because of fraud or violations of energy regulations, how much to greedy -- but legal -- maneuvers by energy suppliers and traders, and how much to California's flawed deregulation plan.
To the regulators' West Coast critics, the agency's credibility comes down to a single question: how much money will the agency order refunded? California wants nearly $10 billion for itself. FERC's initial refund figure is one-fifth that, though commissioners may increase the amount in March.
So far, FERC's investigations have centered on Enron, its Portland, Ore., utility, and several companies that teamed up with Enron on power-trading deals. But a recently released report by California investigators concludes that more than a score of other power providers in the state used some of the same schemes Enron employed.
They include such major power companies as Duke Energy Corp. in Charlotte, Williams Cos. in Tulsa and Sempra Energy in San Diego. The companies have denied violating regulations; the report, which said more investigation was needed, did not accuse them of doing so.
FERC investigators, meanwhile, say nearly a dozen energy suppliers and municipal power companies had power marketing alliances with Enron that the Houston company may have abused to gouge prices. The commission has gone after one of these firms, El Paso Electric Co., which agreed to let Enron run part of its energy-trading operations -- an arrangement Enron allegedly took advantage of to hide its manipulation of power prices. El Paso Electric agreed to pay a $14 million penalty to FERC to settle the investigation but did not admit or deny wrongdoing.
Enron officials bragged in e-mails that through such trading tie-ins with other companies, the firm secretly controlled or managed 3,500 megawatts of power generation serving California and adjoining states, according to FERC staff member James S. Ballard's testimony in a recent administrative hearing.
Still to come in one of the FERC proceedings are results of investigations by attorneys for California energy agencies and West Coast utilities to determine whether major generating companies withheld power from California during the crisis. California officials contend that some generators -- including Duke, Reliant Energy of Houston and Williams -- deliberately kept power plants offline to worsen the power shortage. The companies deny doing so.
FERC initially barred California officials and utility lawyers from interrogating the generators during the proceeding. It took a federal appeals court ruling to allow that inquiry, which has to be completed by the end of February. That would leave FERC with only a few weeks to deal with a potential raft of new charges before its March deadline.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Local protesters oppose war with Iraq
By Bryan Clapper bclapper@pineriverjournal.com,
Pine River (MN) Journal,
Saturday January 11, 2003
http://www.pineandlakes.com/Main.asp?SectionID=23&SubSectionID=27&ArticleID=652
Photo of protesters in snow:
http://www.pineandlakes.com/ArticlesImg/652.jpg
From right, Mary Johnson, Sarah Dagg, Roger Lynn and Greg Johnson protest a possible war with Iraq in Crosslake Saturday. The impromptu group holds a protest in the same spot every Saturday. Crosslake may be a thousand miles from Washington, D.C., but Sarah Dagg still hopes President Bush can hear her.
Dagg and three others spend their Saturday mornings braving the cold on the sidewalk in front of the Crosslake Recreation Area holding signs protesting a possible war with Iraq and waving to cars that pass by.
"We want other people to know that some people are opposed to it," Dagg said. "Actually, I think a lot of people are opposed to it, but they're afraid to say so."
Even as someone yelled, "Turn Iraq into a parking lot," out of a passing car, Dagg and the others remain positive that they can make a difference.
"In Crosslake you can make a big difference," Roger Lynn, another protester, said. "How often do you see this kind of statement in a small town? It stands out."
Lynn figured that about three out of four people waved back and that several people would stop to pick up a brochure. In all, Lynn said, the group receives about 20 positive responses every hour that they're out there. After the Crosslake protests starting at 11 every Saturday, the group heads down to the weekly protests in Brainerd, sponsored by a Brainerd peace group.
----
Cuban dissident calls for change from within
By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030111-75825304.htm
Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's best-known dissident and a leading candidate for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, said yesterday that Cuban freedom will not be determined by the lifting or tightening of the U.S. economic embargo on the island nation, but by its own people.
"I did not come here to lobby or petition the U.S. government to take any kind of measure regarding Cuba," Mr. Paya told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
"Until now, the mentality has been that the embargo will achieve this change, or having trade and tourists will achieve that. I call that the Americanization of the Cuba problem," he said. "The changes in Cuba should be brought about by ourselves. It is for the Cubans to decide."
Mr. Paya's willingness to work for reforms within Cuba's communist political system and calls to end the 40-year-old U.S. embargo have won him critics among Cuban Americans. He said his work is proof that Cubans are overcoming their fear of the country's Marxist dictatorship.
At 50, he has been imprisoned numerous times for his Catholic nonviolent opposition politics in Cuba. He came to international prominence in 2001 when he initiated the Varela Project, named for an early-19th-century Cuban patriot and priest, Felix Varela. The Varela Project used an obscure section of Cuba's communist constitution that promises a referendum on any issue if supporters can gather 10,000 names.
Mr. Paya's organization gathered 20,000 names on the issue of democratic and human rights, and presented 11,000 signatures to the Cuban government. After former President Jimmy Carter spoke of the Varela Project on Cuban television in the spring, Cuban President Fidel Castro denounced the project as counterrevolutionary, jailed a number of its promoters and organized a hasty petition of his own to enshrine socialism in the Cuban Constitution.
Mr. Paya said that while Mr. Carter's visit to Cuba was criticized outside the country, it was helpful to the dissident community within, primarily because he announced the Varela Project on Cuban television.
"We are very radical, but nonviolent. The Cuban government is afraid of the Varela Project because it shows that the Cuban people are capable of organizing and mobilizing for change," Mr. Paya said, adding that signatures are still being collected.
Mr. Paya is on the last leg of a whirlwind tour of U.S. and European capitals.
Last month, he was in Strasbourg, France, to receive the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe's most prestigious human rights award. On Monday, he was in Washington to meet with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and to receive the National Democratic Institute's highest award. On Wednesday, he was off to Rome for an audience with Pope John Paul II. Before returning to Cuba, he will fly into Miami this weekend to hear a mix of support and criticism in the Cuban-American community regarding the validity of the Varela Project.
"One view says we should not work within the existing political system, because that legitimizes the regime," said Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuba specialist at the University of Miami, which has announced plans to award Mr. Paya an honorary degree for his human rights work this spring. "My view is that we should use him. He has unified everyone on the issue of human rights."
The Cuban American National Foundation, Miami's largest and best-funded exile organization, differs with Mr. Paya on some aspects of the Varela Project, but supports the general direction.
"We stand and work with everyone working in good faith to bring change in Cuba," foundation spokesman Joe Garcia said yesterday. "There are things in the Varela Project we would do differently, but he is a warrior for Cuban freedom. He is an ally in the struggle."
The Cuban Liberty Council, a hard-line organization that split from the foundation when some members perceived it as going soft, opposes Mr. Paya for saying in earlier speeches that the U.S. embargo is counterproductive and should be lifted.
"When someone like Paya travels outside Cuba and says the embargo should be lifted, that does little to help human rights in Cuba and only helps the Cuban dictatorship," said spokeswoman Ninoska Perez-Castellon from Miami yesterday.
Cuban-American members of Congress plan to meet Mr. Paya in Miami early next week.
"I have strong reservations about the Varela Project, because it works within the Cuban Constitution, which is illegitimate," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, from Miami yesterday. "But Oswaldo Paya is a valiant fighter for freedom and human rights. I'd be honored to meet him."
Mr. Paya has been nominated by former Czech President Vaclav Havel for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.
"Symbolically, the Sakharov Prize was very big," Mr. Suchlicki said. "The Nobel Prize? He has a chance."
--------
Thousands attend Maine diversity rally
1/11/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-01-11-maine-diversity-rally_x.htm
LEWISTON, Maine (AP) - In response to a smaller white supremacist demonstration, more than 4,000 people gathered Saturday for a rally against racism in this city where the mayor once urged Somali immigrants to stay away.
Police brought in reinforcements and closed roads to keep the groups of demonstrators apart.
The supremacist World Church of the Creator planned its demonstration to denounce the presence of the more than 1,100 Somalis who have made Lewiston their home over the past two years.
Matt Hale, leader of the World Church, did not attend after being arrested Wednesday in Chicago on charges alleging he tried to arrange the murder of a federal judge.
As the 32 anti-Somali demonstrators gathered at a National Guard building, more than 200 opponents of the World Church assembled outside. "We want to look them in the eye," said Rob Hoyt of Portland.
The main group of demonstrators supporting the Somalis gathered more than three miles away on the campus of Bates College. They included new Gov. John Baldacci, as well as U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
"We stand united as one in Maine when it comes to neighborliness, when it comes to tolerance, when it comes to opportunity," said Baldacci.
"It is essential that we join in repudiating the rally of white supremacists in Lewiston," said Snowe, whose father was an immigrant from Greece and who grew up in the Lewiston-Auburn area.
Mayor Larry Raymond caused an uproar in October when he asked Somali residents to discourage their friends and family from moving to Lewiston, saying "our city is maxed-out financially, physically and emotionally."
Raymond issued an open letter in which he warned of a strain on resources if more Somalis move to the city of 36,000. He said Lewiston cannot continue receiving newcomers "without negative results for all."
Somalis said their presence revitalized the mill city and filled empty tenement buildings. They called the mayor an "ill-informed leader who is bent toward bigotry."
Raymond has said his statement was misunderstood. He said he planned to be out of town on vacation Saturday.
Maine is 97% white, the largest percentage in the nation.
--------
Thousands to Protest Possible War in LA
January 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-War-Protest.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- With the U.S. government moving closer to war with Iraq, thousands of demonstrators, some pushing strollers and walking dogs, took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles Saturday to voice their protest.
``Here, take a picture of my sons' first protest,'' Maria Negrete, 27, goaded relatives as waves of people streamed by in a festival-like atmosphere.
A mother of three small children, Negrete echoed the views of many accidental activists who said although a war with Iraq might be inevitable, they weren't going to sit back without a nonviolent fight.
``There are going to be children like mine who will die for oil, which I think is crazy, stupid and dumb,'' Negrete said. ``So I brought my sons, who are just as beautiful as any in Iraq.''
The demonstration came a day after the Bush administration issued a massive deployment order to send about 35,000 new troops to the Persian Gulf region. Famed Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic, who uses a wheelchair, led the protesters.
Others lending their celebrity to the cause included Martin Sheen, star of NBC's ``West Wing,'' and pop singer Jackson Browne.
Organizers put the turnout at 20,000. But police offered a much smaller estimate of 3,000. There were no reports of arrests or incidents, said Officer Grace Brady, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Kovic, whose autobiography ``Born on the Fourth of July,'' was made into a movie, predicted the protest would mark the start of ``one of the greatest anti-war movements in the history of the United States.''
Additional demonstrations, timed to coincide with the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, are scheduled to take place in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., next Saturday.
``I and others are entering a deployment order for citizens of this country to go to the streets and to protest in mass,'' Kovic said.
Standing nearby, retired school teacher Bill Payne, 65, said he had not participated in anti-war protests during the Vietnam era. But his feelings about activism changed over the years, prompting him to drive two hours from his home in Yucaipa.
``I don't want to see any kids killed. That's it. That's all there is to it,'' he said. ``No kids in Iraq killed, no kids any place killed.''
But he said the U.S. war machine might be unstoppable.
``I am sure that (President Bush) is going to start his war anyway,'' he said. ``I hope that he is getting stronger and stronger messages all the time that there are more and more people who really don't want this thing to happen.''
Many of the signs at the protest appeared to be directed at the president.
``Mr. Bush, don't repeat your daddy's mistakes,'' read one.
``Bush is the real terrorist,'' said another.
``Bush, we are not your cattle,'' read a piece of white cloth hanging from a green rake.
Oscar Sanchez, an art student from El Salvador, found a creative way to express his dissent and belief that the conflict was being driven by oil.
Trailing behind his bicycle was a large military tank made of cardboard.
The names of two oil companies and the words ``Just Married'' were emblazoned on the make-believe military craft. ``By making it out of cardboard, I am showing that it can be discarded,'' Sanchez said.
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