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NUCLEAR
New York nuclear plant emergency plans criticized
NRC orders tighter access to US nuclear plants
UK confirms energy bill lacks decision on nukes
China plans new nuclear power plant on coast
US says Pacific arms tests use depleted uranium
Iraq links cancers to uranium weapons
U.S. Plans to Use Depleted Uranium in War
US will reuse uranium bombs in new war
UN asks Brazil to clarify on nuclear research
Russia, Nordics clinch nuclear clean-up deal
Bulgaria court overrules EU deal to close reactors
India Wrestles with Nuclear Arms Paradox
UN weapons inspectors in fresh clash with Americans
U.S. and Britain Assert No Deadline on Iraq Inspections
US Boosting Intelligence on Iraq - UN Experts
N. Korea will negotiate
U.S. suggests aid for N. Korea
U.S. May Offer Aid to N. Korea in Deal on Arms
AXIS PRAXIS
Only a nuclear fist deters US war addicts
Britain ready to accept US missile defence
Study: Missile Defense System Could Cost $1.2 Trillion
Cold War-era silos still ready for battle
Indian Point Safety Plans Called Inadequate
Unhappy GOP Senators
MILITARY
Secret deal for Mugabe to quit floated by Zimbabwe officials
RESERVISTS SAY NO TO IRAQ WAR
Raytheon Reports Informal SEC Accounting Inquiry, Settles Billing Case
Federal Contracts
Area's Exiles Plot a Model Iraq
Kurds Face a Second Enemy: Islamic Fighters on Iraq Flank
What Are Friends For?
Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine President, Dies;
U.S. Warships Eye Eastern Mediterranean for Iraq War Role
Saudi Says Iraqi War Unlikely
Libya and US exchange intelligence on al-Qaeda
Puerto Rican Groups Vow To Continue Vieques Protest
U.S. Navy Starts Vieques Bomb Training
Military to End Vieques Training in May
Security Tight for Space Shuttle and First Israeli Astronaut
Gulf war vets laud advances in gear
Pentagon Wants Exemptions from Environmental Laws
Rules on Environment Concern Pentagon
Officials Reveal Threat to Troops Deploying to Gulf
Monsters, Inc.
Pentagon Tries to Head Off the Draft
US.mil launches Operation Desert Spam
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
64 Turkish prisoners have died on hunger strike
Death penalty propaganda
Effects of Death Penalty Ruling Debated
ENERGY AND OTHER
Polish biofuel bill riles industry,consumer groups
Bush admin clears way for more coalbed methane projects
Swedish industry lobby warns of energy crunch
Goodrich to pay $4 mln to help clean water supply
ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Activists From Across U.S. Preparing for Weekend of Protests
'The Exonerated,' Winning Top Actors on Appeal
Small-town US against war
Protest Held at U.K. Nuclear Power Plant
Pope Expresses Opposition to Potential War in Iraq
'Peace is patriotic'
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
New York nuclear plant emergency plans criticized
Story by Martha Graybow
REUTERS USA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19369/story.htm
NEW YORK - Emergency response plans for the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City are inadequate for dealing with the release of a dangerous amount of radiation from a terror attack or other disaster, an independent review unveiled said.
The draft report by James Lee Witt Associates, a consulting firm headed by a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, does not call for shutting down the facility 30 miles (48 km) north of Manhattan as some people are urging.
But it says emergency plans for the plant are inadequate to "protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point."
The current plans also fail to consider "the possible additional ramifications of a terrorist caused release."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks last year, citizen groups and lawmakers have raised concern about the potential for strikes on nuclear power plants.
Many people who live near Indian Point say evacuation plans for the area are flawed and want the plant closed.
Alex Matthiessen, executive director of environmental group Riverkeeper, said the report should persuade elected officials that Indian Point, operated by Entergy Corp. (ETR.N) of New Orleans, should be closed.
The report concludes "exactly what we have suspected all along, that the emergency plan is fatally flawed and unworkable," he said. "This is not a plan that can safely evacuate enough people and protect the public safety, especially in the event of a 9/11-style attack."
The report says that in light of the attacks, nuclear power plants near highly populated areas should have different requirements for emergency response than other plants.
"Simply stated, the world has recently changed," it says. "What was once considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision."
New York Gov. George Pataki hired Witt's firm last year to review emergency response for the state's nuclear power plants, beginning with Indian Point on the Hudson River in Westchester County.
"This independent report raises issues that must be addressed," Pataki said in a statement.
----
NRC orders tighter access to US nuclear plants
REUTERS USA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19374/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered operators of the nation's 103 power reactors to tighten security screening of anyone seeking access to the plants, including new employees and contractors.
The formal order, announced Wednesday and effective immediately, is part of the commission's program to beef up security at commercial nuclear plants in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
Some U.S. lawmakers and activist groups are concerned that a Sept. 11-type attack against a nuclear power plant could spread deadly radioactive materials for miles.
Since the attacks, the nuclear power industry has worked to enhance plant security in several ways, among them more employee training programs, hiring more guards, increasing security coordination with law enforcement agencies, extending security boundaries and adding more barriers around plants.
The new measures are aimed at individuals who do not already have "unescorted access authorization" to enter nuclear facilities, said Sue Gagner, a spokeswoman for the NRC.
These include new employees and contract workers brought in mainly for refueling and other maintenance work, said Ann Mary Carley, spokeswoman for Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. (EXC.N) and the nation's largest operator of atomic reactors.
Exelon Nuclear runs 17 reactors at 10 plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Nuclear Management Co., based in Hudson, Wisconsin, said visitor access to its six nuclear plant sites in four Midwest states has been tightly restricted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The chief focus of the new order is mainly plant employees and contractors," said Maureen Brown, spokeswoman for Nuclear Management.
The screening also will restrict temporary access to a plant and "reverify background investigation criteria" for individuals who have unescorted access, the NRC said.
The NRC's order also included other security steps but they were kept confidential.
The NRC said plant operators must submit a schedule for full compliance within 20 days or tell the commission if they cannot comply.
-------- britain
UK confirms energy bill lacks decision on nukes
REUTERS UK:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19372/story.htm
LONDON - Britain will avoid a decision on the future of its loss-making and controversial nuclear power industry in the draft law on energy policy due this year, according to Energy Minister Brian Wilson.
"I don't think I would be giving anything away to say that the white paper's form will be about keeping the (nuclear) option open," Wilson said on BBC Television late on Thursday.
The comments from Wilson - a staunch supporter of the nuclear industry - are the first official confirmation of the government's position.
Wilson said the energy white paper to set policy on industry structure, security of supply, and environmental and commercial energy issues may not be published until mid-February or early March. It had been scheduled for release early in the new year.
The nation's reactors produce a quarter of its electricity, but they are ageing and uneconomic in the current industry structure, where privatisation and market opening measures have exposed overcapacity and forced down prices 40 percent since 1998.
The main nuclear producer, British Energy Plc, has survived on a state handout since September, and needs to have a restructuring in place by March 9 to avoid falling foul of EU competition rules.
Scheduled power station closures will leave only one nuclear power station operating by 2025. Industry executives say new plants would help the nation meet its carbon pollution targets and maintain diversity of supply.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS WANT FASTER CLOSURES
However, environmental campaigners want closures accelerated. They say nuclear power is dangerous and uneconomic, and should not be subsidised at the expense of renewable alternatives.
Analysts agree that there is no way a private sector firm would contemplate building any new nuclear power station without explicit government support.
Labour Party sources told Reuters in December that Wilson's boss, Trade and Industry secretary Patricia Hewitt, had excluded a nuclear policy decision this time around because of the uncertainties surrounding British Energy and the future of UK power prices.
The government is currently owed 650 million pounds ($1.05 billion) by British Energy. Longer term, the problem is larger still for the UK taxpayer, because payments from British Energy for fuel reprocessing are the main income of state-run nuclear fuels firm BNFL.
In November the government proposed a restructuring scheme aimed at keeping British Energy in the private sector. One of the measures agreed was a reduction in its payments to BNFL, but this will only tip BNFL, also a loss-maker, further into the red and cost taxpayers up to 200 million pounds a year.
The government also added responsibility for the privatised firm's multi-billion-pound nuclear cleanup liabilities to those it already underwrites for BNFL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
Britain published a draft law on Thursday that would fully renationalise British Energy if its restructuring plan fails. The legislation repeals part of a law dating from 1989 designed to block renationalisation of the power industry. British Energy was privatised in 1996.
-------- china
China plans new nuclear power plant on coast
REUTERS CHINA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19373/story.htm
BEIJING - China is considering building another multi-billion dollar nuclear power plant to feed growing electricity demand in booming coastal areas, China National Nuclear Corp officials said.
The company has submitted a plan to the State Council, China's cabinet, and was waiting for approval, they said.
The plant, which would be China's seventh, was likely to be built either in the eastern province of Zhejiang or the southern province of Guangdong, they said.
"Zhejiang and Guangdong are possible sites for the plant," one said.
The officials said the power station would be able to produce "millions of kilowatts" of electricity but declined to be specific.
The official China Daily said the plant initially would have two generators with a combined capacity of 2,000 megawatts and be expanded eventually to 6,000 megawatts.
The company could invite international bidding for equipment and technology for the plant, they said.
Foreign firms were not allowed to invest in China's nuclear power sector, they said.
Nuclear power provided less than two percent of China's annual electricity output of 315 gigawatts, they said.
The percentage is expected to rise close to three percent in 2005, they added.
Thermal power accounts for some 76 percent of power production and hydro-power for 23 percent, industry sources say.
-------- depleted uranium
US says Pacific arms tests use depleted uranium
Story by Chris Stetkiewicz
REUTERS USA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19387/story.htm
SEATTLE - The U.S. Navy confirmed on Thursday it uses depleted uranium shells in arms tests off the Washington state coast but rejected criticism that the radioactive ammunition could harm people and the environment.
Peace activist Glen Milner said he discovered through a Freedom of Information Act filing that the Navy, every three months, test-fires Phalanx anti-missile guns using shells containing the armor-piercing metal in prime Pacific Ocean fishing waters. Some scientists say depleted uranium can cause kidney damage and leukemia.
"It's destruction of our environment," Milner said.
Navy spokeswoman Karen Sellers said the uranium was fully encased inside the ammunition to protect military personnel who handled and stored it.
She added that the Navy was switching to tungsten rounds but did not provide further details.
Sellers said she could not say if depleted uranium shells were used farther north off Canada's coast during exercises in conjunction with Canadian forces.
A Canadian military spokesman said Canada's Navy had stopped using the shells.
The U.S. military used depleted uranium weapons in the 1991 Gulf War and again during fighting in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Navy officials "have told me that DU is 40 percent less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium found in sea water," Sellers told Reuters by telephone.
"The DU rounds dissolve so slowly that they would not contribute to naturally occurring (radiation) levels ... and do not pose a significant risk."
But Milner and other critics call depleted uranium highly toxic. Last year Britain's Royal Society of scientists said hundreds of soldiers in the Gulf and the Balkans could have inhaled enough toxic dust to cause health problems.
Douglas Rokke, a former U.S. Army health physicist assigned to monitor the effects of depleted uranium battlefield use, accused the Pentagon of not providing adequate medical treatment and testing for soldiers exposed to the substance, or for himself.
"These individual rounds are solid chunks of uranium. You can't hold them in your hand. It's too dangerous," he said by telephone.
Besides the hazardous trace that uranium left behind when fired from the Navy's guns, thousands of rounds on the ocean floor would contaminate marine animals including the fish eaten by people, Rokke said.
----
Iraq links cancers to uranium weapons
U.S. likely to use arms again in war
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/01/13/MN233872.DTL&type=printable
Feedback http://www.sfgate.com/select.feedback.html
Baghdad -- Something is killing the children in Dr. Emad Wisam's hospital ward, and filling it up again and again with more sick and dying kids.
Walking a visitor through the halls of Al Mansour Children's Hospital in Baghdad last weekend, Wisam stopped briefly at his small patients' bedsides to commiserate.
After checking 5-year-old Nur Abdullah, who has a tumor in his throat, Wisam turned away with a pained look in his eyes.
"He will die soon," he said. "Most of these kids will die. And there's almost nothing we can do."
Iraq has experienced a dramatic increase in child cancers, leukemia and birth defects in recent years. Wisam, Iraqi medical authorities and growing numbers of American activists cast blame on the U.S. weapons containing depleted uranium that were used in the 1991 Gulf War and in the 1998 missile attacks on Baghdad and other major cities. They also assert that such munitions -- which were also used by U.S. forces in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia in far smaller quantities -- may be a cause of Gulf War diseases, elusive maladies that have affected 50,000 to 80,000 U.S. veterans of the 1991 conflict.
The Pentagon says studies it has sponsored have found no evidence that depleted uranium, known as DU, causes serious illnesses, while many international medical experts remain on the fence, citing the lack of definitive scientific evidence on the issue.
But with the renewed use of DU weapons by the U.S. military considered likely in the event of a new war with Iraq, the controversy is being stirred up again.
Depleted uranium is the low-level radioactive waste left over from manufacturing nuclear fuel and bombs. It is used in bullets and missiles by the United States, Britain, Russia and several other nations -- though, from all indications, not by Iraq.
HIGHLY EFFECTIVE
Military experts regard DU as an almost magically effective material. DU is 1.7 times denser than lead, and when a weapon made with a DU tip or core strikes the side of a tank or bunker, it slices straight through and erupts in a burning radioactive cloud. In addition, armor made of DU appears to make tanks far less vulnerable on the battlefield.
During the Gulf War, U.S. airplanes and tanks fired off munitions containing 320 tons of DU. According to Iraqi health statistics, the country's recent increase in health problems has been concentrated in the same areas of the country that took the brunt of U.S. attacks: Baghdad, the southern port city of Basra, and the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
No similar problems are known to have occurred in Kuwait, where DU was also used, because such weapons were used mainly outside of population centers and because Kuwait carried out a comprehensive, well-funded postwar cleanup of spent munitions and combat wreckage.
Among children throughout Iraq, the number of cancer cases has risen five- fold since 1990, and congenital birth defects and leukemia have tripled, say government health officials. Overall cancer rates among all Iraqis have risen by 38 percent, the Iraqi government says.
"There are thousands of cases of DU poisoning in Iraq by the Americans and British," said Health Minister Dr. Omeid Mobarik.
FUTURE USE PREDICTED
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that branches of the U. S. military are looking for alternatives to DU, but officials refuse to say publicly whether DU weapons will be used in a new war against Iraq. Defense Department spokeswoman Barbara Goodno has acknowledged, "Depleted uranium is an important component in the U.S. arsenal."
"Despite being engaged multiple times (during the Gulf War), often at close range, by Iraqi tanks and anti-armor weapons," she added, "not a single U.S. tank protected by DU armor was penetrated or knocked out by hostile fire."
Experts say the crucial edge that DU technology affords makes it too effective to pass up.
"Yes, certainly the U.S. will use it," said John Eldridge, editor of the authoritative book Jane's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense.
Christopher Hellman, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, said U.S. and British military planners are likely to be swayed more by DU's effectiveness than by possible health concerns.
"Their view is very simple," said Helman. "This is war, and a destroyed enemy tank is less dangerous than one that's shooting at you, regardless of whatever residual effects DU may have."
Just what those health effects may be, however, is hotly debated.
Pentagon officials deny any links, either to Iraqi civilians or American Gulf War veterans. They dismiss Iraq's reports of increases in cancer, birth defects and leukemia, saying their pre-1990 baseline figures are unreliable.
They point in particular to a Pentagon-funded review of scientific literature on cancer and DU carried out by the Rand Corp. in 1999. It concluded that no link had been found. Initial studies by the World Health Organization and the European Community also have found no link.
But the Rand report -- which leans heavily on research into the relatively mild effects of conventional uranium -- acknowledges that "few studies to date . . . have focused directly on DU."
While the Veterans Administration has conducted limited studies of some veterans exposed to DU, and found no links so far to serious illness, U.S. activists point out that none of the published studies have tested broad numbers of sick Americans or Iraqis who have been exposed to DU. The U.S. military has conducted several such studies, but they remain classified. The Iraqi military refuses all comment on whether its veterans have experienced their own Gulf War illnesses.
AMERICAN EXPERT
One American with personal experience of DU is Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium Project. He was in charge of a team of about 100 soldiers who examined and cleaned up Iraqi tanks and American vehicles struck by DU shells during the Gulf War.
The work was ghastly -- the DU explosions so badly burned the dead soldiers inside that the team dubbed them "crispy critters."
The team's members, uninformed about the danger of DU residue, were themselves contaminated. Most have suffered serious health problems in the intervening years, and "too many" have died, says Rokke, who says he eschews exact numbers because of the difficulty of proving direct links to DU exposure.
Rokke, who has a Ph.D. in physics and until recently was a professor at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, says he has "5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body" and has called the health woes among residents of southern Iraq and his own colleagues "the direct result" of DU exposure.
In an interview on Saturday, Rokke said of his own health: "I'm trashed." He said that Pentagon officials routinely tell him and others who were contaminated in the gulf theater that the elevated levels of uranium in their bodies are "just coming out of our diets."
INTERNATIONAL OPINION
But organizations outside the United States have come down against DU munitions:
-- In 1999, the European Parliament voted to urge NATO to suspend the use of DU munitions pending results of an independent study. The request was ignored.
-- Last August, the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights authorized a study of the dangers of DU, which the panel had already labeled a weapon of mass destruction. The move -- coming over the objections of the United States and Britain -- was a significant victory for Karen Parker, a San Francisco lawyer who works with the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project and has campaigned against DU for years.
-- A 1991 study by Britain's Atomic Energy Authority found that use of DU weapons in the Gulf War could eventually lead to half a million "potential deaths from cancer." The report was suppressed by the British government until 1998.
Hard science on the DU issue remains scarce, however.
Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public Health and one of the few experts to investigate the DU-cancer relationship, is carrying out a study of Gulf War diseases among Massachusetts veterans.
His initial findings suggest increased incidences of Hodgkin's disease in Gulf War veterans exposed to DU, but no increases in other types of cancer.
But Clapp cautions that further comprehensive study is needed. In an e-mail interview, he wrote: "The potential for a DU-cancer link (especially lung cancer in those who breathe DU through dust and smoke particles) is still an open question. I certainly would not rule it out on biological grounds, and 'no proof of harm is not proof of no harm,' as we say."
OIL FIRES, CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Iraq's health problems and Americans' Gulf War illnesses could have many additional causes besides DU, Clapp and other U.S. experts say. Other possible factors include pollution breathed in from the oil fires ignited in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi soldiers or from Iraqi chemical weapons stores hit by U.S. missiles.
"The reason there is no proof of causality between DU and any particular disease is that no one has seriously looked for it," said Steve Leeper, co- director of the Global Association for Banning DU Weapons, a U.S.-Japanese coalition based in Atlanta, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The biggest problem with radiation, especially involving a low-level radiation source that is also a toxic chemical, is that it can get you in so many ways," said Leeper.
"Which disorder you wind up with depends on where the DU winds up in your system and what sort of damage it does to what sort of cells. To really find an effect, the government would have to study all the veterans, especially the 205,000 that have applied for medical help from the Veterans Administration, and the people of southern Iraq and test for uranium in their urine, organs and bones, then look for correlations with various pathologies."
Dr. Alim Yacoub, a British-educated epidemiologist who is dean of the medical school at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, expressed anger at the world's response to the Iraqi health crisis.
"Why have no international studies been carried out?" he asked. "Where is the World Health Organization? This issue is highly political and has been affected by propaganda, by American pressure."
WHO officials say that in 2001, the U.N. organization proposed to Iraq a comprehensive study of all cancer problems, including DU, but received no response.
U.N. SANCTIONS
Yacoub insists that the project was blocked by the strict U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq since the Gulf War. He said the International Atomic Energy Agency has refused to allow Iraq to import radiology equipment needed to carry out the research because it is termed "dual use," meaning that it could be used to help develop nuclear weapons.
Defense analyst Hellman summed up the standoff over DU by saying, "The science on this is not unanimous.
"My approach is: If you can't use it safely, then you shouldn't use it. The military's approach is 180 degrees from that. They say, 'If you can't prove it isn't safe, we're going to keep using it.' "
ORIGIN, USES, EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM
Depleted uranium (DU) is a byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium (uranium 235) used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium, a heavy metal found in soil and water everywhere on earth, mainly in trace quantities.
DU (uranium 238) is about 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium, but it remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years. Because it is such a highly dense metal -- heavier than lead or steel -- it is prized for its abilities to both penetrate military armor and provide shielding against attack.
Upon impact, DU produces extremely fine uranium oxide dust that is both chemically toxic and radioactive. Easily spread by wind, it is inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.
E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.
--------
U.S. Plans to Use Depleted Uranium in War
Posted by Lakshmi
January 13, 2003 -
Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/2003/01/000233.html
Never mind the cancerous tumors afflicting thousands of Iraqi children or the mounting evidence supporting the reality of Gulf War disease. The U.S. military has no plans to stop using weapons containing depleted uranium.
The low-level radioactive waste, used in bullets and missiles is simply too effective. It can simply slice through a tank or a bunker, erupting soon after in a radioactive cloud. Military analyst Christopher Hellman told the San Francisco Chronicle, "My approach is: If you can't use it safely, then you shouldn't use it. The military's approach is 180 degrees from that. They say, 'If you can't prove it isn't safe, we're going to keep using it.' " Of course, it's an approach that has served us very well in the past in, say, Vietnam.
-------- europe
UN asks Brazil to clarify on nuclear research
Story by Sarah Rink
REUTERS BRAZIL:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19370/story.htm
BRASILIA, Brazil - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has informally asked Brazil to clarify whether its new science minister has suggested the country should have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, Brazil's foreign ministry said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency made the request during a meeting with Brazil's ambassador in Vienna, where the agency is based, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The request came after comments by the science minister raised concern among international observers that the government of Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wanted nuclear weapons.
"Brazil is a country at peace... but we need to be prepared, including technologically," Lula's science and technology minister, Roberto Amaral, told the Brazilian service of the BBC on Sunday.
"We can't renounce any form of scientific knowledge, be it the genome, DNA or nuclear fission," the minister said.
Lula, Brazil's first president elected from a left-wing party, took office last week.
The foreign ministry spokesman said Brazil's ambassador to Vienna, Roberto Abdenur, had reiterated to the IAEA statements made by government officials this week that Brazil's nuclear research is purely for peaceful ends.
ADVANCED NUCLEAR RESEARCH
Brazil's 1988 constitution forbids the development of nuclear weapons and Brazil has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Wilson Rodrigues, the president of the Brazilian Institute of Nuclear Quality, which monitors Brazil's two nuclear energy plants, said Amaral's statements were misunderstood.
"This moment of tension between North Korea and the United States, the possibility of imminent conflict in Iraq...has highlighted the perception of people on this issue," Rodrigues told Reuters. "A phrase taken out of context can give the wrong impression."
Brazil and neighboring Argentina agreed to halt programs to develop nuclear weapons in the late 1980s after both countries returned to democratic rule after years of dictatorship and buried long-held regional rivalry.
Still, Brazil has the most advanced nuclear research in Latin America and has the greatest military capability in the region. The country is home to the world's sixth-biggest uranium reserves and it possesses the uranium enrichment technology for nuclear power reactors.
Brazil would need at least five years to develop a nuclear bomb, said an expert on Brazil's nuclear know-how who asked not to be identified.
----
Russia, Nordics clinch nuclear clean-up deal
Story by Alister Doyle
REUTERS NORWAY:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19376/story.htm
KIRKENES, Norway - Russia and Nordic nations agreed on the weekend to launch a stalled international clean-up of Soviet-era nuclear waste stockpiles after a landmark agreement by Moscow to scrap taxes on donated clean-up equipment.
"We have an agreement everyone can be happy with," Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said of the deal at a regional summit in Kirkenes, a port on the Arctic tip of Norway.
He said that hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign donations could be unblocked by the accord, aiming to help clean up a nightmarish Soviet legacy of rusting reactors and spent fuel.
"It is a major breakthrough," Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson told a joint news conference on board a luxury Norwegian ferry.
"There are good possibilities to start a programme regarding nuclear waste clean-up during 2003," a joint statement by Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland and Iceland said after the tax exemption deal.
The leaders said that a formal accord would be signed in Sweden later in 2003. Kasyanov also said that the Russian government expected to win approval of the plan from the Russian parliament during 2003.
Russian demands for value added tax payments on foreign donations of equipment to help clean up 90 Soviet-era submarines, about 300 small marine nuclear reactors and thousands of fuel rods have stalled the so-called Multilateral Environmental Programme in the Russian Federation.
The taxation problem was the only remaining hurdle to the international clean-up effort involving nations like the United States and European Union nations. Other issues, like liability in case of accidents, were cleared up in former talks.
The clean-up will be a part of a global fight against terrorism by disposing of atomic materials. The Kola peninsula in northwest Russia, formerly the home of the once-mighty Soviet Northern Fleet, has the biggest concentration of atomic weapons in the world.
Diplomats said the agreement might help a separate plan by leading industrial countries in the Group of Eight to spend billions of dollars on improving nuclear safety, largely in Russia.
Equipment such as two Norwegian electricity generators, to be used in helping close down a nuclear reactor, once stood for months at the Russian border due to demands for payment of value added tax on the donations. French makers of robots were asked to pay 50 percent tax on the value of the gifts to permit their import into Russia.
The prime ministers also agreed measures to simplify border crossings in the Arctic region and limit any frontier checks for goods to two hours.
The nations set up the Barents Council after the end of the Cold War as a forum to renew ties stretching back to Viking times but interrupted by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution that led the way to creation of the Soviet Union.
----
Bulgaria court overrules EU deal to close reactors
REUTERS BULGARIA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19375/story.htm
SOFIA - A Bulgarian supreme court overruled a government deal with the European Union to close down two Soviet-era nuclear reactors by 2006.
Sofia agreed to a demand from Brussels to shut number three and four reactors at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant to avoid derailing accession talks with the European Union last year.
Ruling on an appeal brought by members of the opposition Socialist Party, the Supreme Administrative Court said the agreement ignored a vote in parliament which decreed that the reactors should be kept working until Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, set for 2007.
Brussels wants the reactors shut in 2006 for safety reasons despite the fact that the plant produces half of Bulgaria's electricity and its closure would raise power prices which already pose an enormous expense for impoverished Bulgarians.
Government officials in Sofia say the closure is a necessary sacrifice, but opposition parties and some Bulgarians have branded the deal a betrayal of their parliamentary republic.
Government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev told Reuters the government would most likely appeal the court's decision in front of an expanded panel and expected a favourable ruling.
Local lawyers said if the expanded court panel confirmed the current court's ruling, it meant Sofia should open energy talks with Brussels again, potentially hampering its goal to complete EU membership talks by May 2004. Tsonev said Sofia managed to secure a last-chance "peer review" inspection from the EU this year, which it hoped would prove the two reactors were safe and allow it to re-negotiate later closure.
Sofia shut Kozloduy's first two oldest reactors in late December to please Brussels.
-------- india / pakistan
India Wrestles with Nuclear Arms Paradox
January 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-india.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Nearly five years after India and Pakistan became nuclear powers, New Delhi is finally coming to terms with what that status means -- the threat of a Pakistani first strike has neutralized its conventional superiority.
Analysts say last year's inconclusive military standoff between the neighbors highlighted what many had feared when the two conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998, that India would no longer dare go to war with Pakistan.
``India has become a victim of nuclear blackmail,'' said C. Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor at The Hindu newspaper.
So, unable to go back, India is copying the example of the United States and the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, building its nuclear deterrent to the point of mutually assured destruction so that neither side would dare go nuclear.
Over the course of this month, it has announced a new nuclear command and control structure, appointed a Commander-in-Chief of the so-called ``strategic forces'' and begun a fresh series of tests of nuclear-capable missiles.
``These are building blocks. Unless all of them are in place, the nuclear deterrent can neither be credible nor effective,'' said retired lieutenant-general V. R. Raghavan.
India massed its 1.1 million strong military along the border for 10 months last year in a standoff prompted by an attack on its parliament on December 13, 2001 which it blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
Pakistan responded by mobilizing its own half a million armed forces and the two sides came to the brink of war in June.
But under intense international pressure, India ultimately pulled back its troops rather than run the risk of a conventional conflict which could go nuclear, and analysts now concede that New Delhi gained little from the standoff.
India, which is mostly Hindu but officially secular, continues to accuse Islamic Pakistan of training and arming militants to attack Indian targets in a ``proxy war'' meant to wrest control of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.
Pakistan denies the charges, saying it gives only moral support to the Kashmiri ``freedom struggle.''
But Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appeared to suggest last month it was the nuclear threat which prevented a fourth war between the two since independence from Britain in 1947.
Musharraf said the threat of a ``non-conventional war'' helped avert a conflict. While his spokesman later said he was talking about a popular uprising, India believed he meant a nuclear war.
MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION
While tensions have eased between the two countries since the troop pull-back was announced in October, the battle is now on to make nuclear weapons too destructive to use.
Making that point, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said last week that if Pakistan used nuclear weapons on India, ``there will be no Pakistan left when we have responded.''
New Delhi this month set up a new Nuclear Command Authority, formalizing the existing arrangement which gives the civilian political leadership under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee final power to authorize the use of nuclear arms.
The government also approved an alternative command chain to cover ``all eventualities'' and said in a statement that ``nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.''
It gave no details, but last week named Air Marshal T. M. Asthana, a former fighter pilot, to lead a new strategic forces command.
Pakistan already has its own Nuclear Command and Control Authority made up of military, political and scientific officials with Musharraf having the final say.
Both countries are meanwhile refining their capacity to deliver nuclear bombs through ongoing missile tests, despite international calls for a halt to the South Asian arms race.
Last Thursday, India test-fired its nuclear-capable Agni-1 missile to a range of about 800 kms (500 miles) -- a distance seen as targeting Pakistan.
The Agni-1 complements the 2,500 km (1,562 miles) Agni II missile intended to hit targets in nuclear-armed China. The Agni-1 has a one-ton payload capacity and can be fired from rail and road launchers, making it highly mobile.
Little is known about the number of nuclear warheads the two sides possess, the accuracy of their ballistic missiles or their ability to withstand re-entry to the atmosphere carrying a nuclear warhead.
Defense experts estimate that India has between 60 to more than 100 warheads and Pakistan 25 to 50.
Unlike the United States and Russia, the missiles and warheads are kept well apart. Even at the height of last year's military standoff, India did not arm its missiles, defense experts say. It is not known how close Pakistan came to doing so.
NO FIRST USE
As well as testing missiles and beefing up its command structure, some military experts have also floated the idea that India drop its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.
Pakistan has no such pledge, but with its conventional inferiority is seen as the more likely to use them first, if it felt its entire existence was threatened in a conventional war.
``I don't see why we should give them the luxury of a first strike,'' said retired Major General Afsir Karim.
But most analysts see the ``no-first-use'' policy staying.
``We have to be a responsible nuclear power, we have to be seen showing restraint, we are not some trigger happy nation,'' said Raja Mohan.
A defense official was quoted as saying Saturday that India would also test a 3,000 km (1,875-mile) Agni-III missile later this year, putting more of China within strike range.
A further test, of a short range anti-ship cruise missile, is also expected later this month.
``Why do we have to see everything in terms of Pakistan? Nations plan security years in advance, we have to worry about new rivals, threats years ahead,'' said retired Lieutenant General Hriday Kaul. India and China fought a brief war in 1962 but ties have improved over the past decade
-------- inspections
UN weapons inspectors in fresh clash with Americans
By David Rennie
13/01/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/13/wirq113.xml/
Tensions between Washington and the inspectors combing Iraq for weapons of mass destruction deepened yesterday, as each accused the other of failure to co-operate.
In a thinly veiled swipe at the Bush administration, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Authority, dismissed the importance of private interviews with Iraqi scientists.
US officials have repeatedly urged Mr ElBaradei and his United Nations colleague, Hans Blix, to take Iraqi scientists abroad for interviews without their minders.
But Mr ElBaradei told Time magazine: "There is almost an obsession with interviews. That is just one aspect of doing inspections - at least in the nuclear area. It shouldn't be the centre or the key."
He added: "Anybody who understands inspections understands that it takes time. The Security Council understands that this should take something like a year."
US officials criticised Mr Blix for refusing a CIA offer of unmanned Predator drones to monitor suspect sites before and after surprise inspections, to prevent Iraqi officials from smuggling banned materials away.
To avoid accusations of bias, Mr Blix wants to use European military drones, which America says are not as good.
• Baghdad has blocked access to the internet in response to a US-inspired e-mail campaign urging military and civilian leaders in Iraq to turn away from Saddam Hussein.
An internet cafe employee said the whole of the capital was affected, but would not elaborate.
--------
U.S. and Britain Assert No Deadline on Iraq Inspections
January 13, 2003
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/international/13CND_IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 - The White House said today that the United States was "not putting any artificial timetable" on United Nations arms inspectors in Iraq, and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said that the United Nations' work there should not be bound by any "arbitrary time scale."
The top United Nations nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today that the inspection teams in Iraq might need a "few months" to complete their work. A lower-ranking spokesman said earlier that six months to a year could be required.
Debate over when a war might begin has swollen in recent days as some United States allies have demanded more time for inspectors to look for banned biological, chemical weapons programs in Iraq, and the American military buildup in the region has encountered problems that have slowed its pace.
In Turkey, an American team arrived on Monday to inspect bases that the United States might use in an attack on Iraq. Turkish officials face strong public opposition to any involvement in a war on Iraq and have said that they will make no final decision on the bases before late this month. Work to upgrade the bases could take weeks beyond that.
Earlier, American officials pointed to Jan. 27 as a date crucial to a decision on whether to attack Iraq. That is when Mr. ElBaradei and the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, are to present a major report on Iraqi compliance to the Security Council.
But the allies' resistance, delays for the Pentagon and United Nations calls for more time appear to be dovetailing. "Of course Jan. 27 is an important day," Prime Minister Blair said today. But he then added, "I don't think there is any point putting an arbitrary timescale on it." Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair are to meet soon after Jan. 27 to discuss Iraq.
Mr. ElBaradei, speaking in Paris after talks with Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, said inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he heads, needed "a few months" to determine whether Iraq had a secret weapons program, Agence France-Presse reported.
"We need to give inspection a chance to run its full course," he said. Jan. 27, he added, is not a "cutoff date."
In Washington, the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to speak of Jan. 27 as a deadline. The administration, he said, was not applying "any artificial timetable" for inspections.
While Mr. ElBaradei faulted Iraq for not providing "more active cooperation," he mentioned no specific obstruction by Baghdad.
Mr. ElBaradei said the pace of inspections would be further intensified and would partly depend on closer cooperation from United Nations member states to secure "as much actionable information as possible to allow us to speed up our work." The United States recently said it had begun providing intelligence data to help guide the inspectors.
Mr. ElBaradei and Mr. de Villepin, the French foreign minister, said that war with Iraq should be viewed as a last resort. "The region doesn't need a new war," Mr. de Villepin said.
Diplomatic efforts to avert war continued on several fronts. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia said on NBC television that he hoped a Saudi proposal presented to other Arab countries, which other Saudi sources said would involve a call for a united Arab stance against war, might resolve the crisis.
The prince offered no details but told an interviewer, "I have a strange sense that it may not come to war."
The American inspections of the Turkish bases came a day after Prime Minister Abdullah Gul of Turkey ended a trip to Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran that was intended to avert war.
"The people of this region could pay the price in a possible war," the Turkish prime minister said in Tehran on Sunday. "Everyone has a responsibility to avoid this war."
The base surveys are expected to last about 10 days, The Associated Press reported from Istanbul. Turkish television said they included two ports and five bases, among them the southern air base at Incirlik used by American warplanes patrolling northern Iraq. American planners hope that if war does come, they can use Turkish bases for a strike on northern Iraq that may involve up to 80,000 soldiers.
Amid powerful public resistance in Turkey, Ankara has been reluctant to approve such an ambitious deployment, but officials there are eventually expected to approve at least a limited use of the bases. The United States would be expected to spend many millions of dollars to upgrade the bases, and might provide Turkey other assistance to offset its war-related costs.
----
US Boosting Intelligence on Iraq - UN Experts
January 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
BAGHDAD/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix said his teams were widening their search net for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thanks to new U.S. and British intelligence information.
``We have already visited sites that have not been visited before and there will be more of them coming,'' Blix told the BBC on Monday.
Last month Blix complained that the United States and Britain, the chief prosecutors pressing the case that Baghdad possesses weapons of mass destruction, had not been giving him the intelligence he needed.
``It is coming and we are going to act on it...I felt in the past that sometimes they were a bit like librarians who had books that they didn't want to lend to the customer -- but I think that is changing,'' Blix said.
The next crunch over Iraq comes next weekend when Blix and U.N. nuclear agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei go to Baghdad to demand Iraq account for missing stocks such as chemical bombs, nerve gas and missile engines. Iraq says it has the answers.
Pope John Paul led a growing chorus of voices raised against war or opposed to any hasty decision to pull the trigger, saying a conflict in the Gulf would be a ``defeat for humanity.'' Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others talked of peace initiatives.
The big question was whether the U.N. experts and nervous governments in Europe and the Middle East had made Washington more cautious about carrying out a threat of war against Iraq if it failed to come clean over any weapons of mass destruction.
PATIENCE
U.S. officials and defense experts said political and logistical pressure could delay any invasion of Iraq for months, despite the Pentagon's huge build-up of warplanes, ships and tens of thousands of troops in the oil-rich Gulf region.
``Those soldiers can't just hit the sand shooting on arrival. I wouldn't expect anything in February, or even early March. And who knows what the political landscape will be then?'' one U.S. official told Reuters.
But the United States and close ally Britain face a dilemma in war planning as April heralds the start of Iraq's fierce summer heat and sandstorms.
The United States and Britain stuck to their guns in insisting Iraq must disarm or face war, but seemed increasingly keen to show patience as long as Baghdad cooperated with U.N. inspectors.
``(President Bush) thinks it remains important for the inspectors to do their job and have time to do their job. The president has not put an exact timetable on it,'' said a White House spokesman.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said there should be no ``arbitrary timescale'' but repeated that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had to be disarmed peacefully or else by force.
Blix made clear on Monday he was operating under his own timetable and underlined it by saying he planned to present Iraq with a list of key remaining disarmament tasks only at the end of March.
Colleagues spoke of the searches possibly taking up to a year depending on Iraqi cooperation.
``I represent disarmament through inspections and we do our best to move on that line,'' Blix told Reuters in an interview.
``I would imagine that the Iraqis seeing this (U.S. and British military) build-up would feel a great preference for disarmament through inspection, so they see the seriousness of the situation.''
BIG GAPS IN DECLARATION
Blix is visiting Brussels, London and Paris this week before going to Baghdad at the weekend.
He said he and ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency head, would confront Iraqi officials this weekend with big gaps in the 12,000-page weapons declaration Iraq submitted to the United Nations on December 7.
Blix said he would tell Iraq that a list of scientists and other people Baghdad had presented for inspectors to interview omitted many relevant names.
``We will tell them in very clear terms that we don't think the declaration was adequate, that it did not do away with a lot of question marks,'' he said.
Blix and ElBaradei are due to make a key report to the United Nations Security Council on January 27 on Iraq's compliance with inspections.
They told the Security Council last week that while searches in Iraq so far had not uncovered a ``smoking gun,'' or hard evidence, Baghdad had left a ``great many questions'' unanswered.
Washington has signaled that if Iraq does not provide satisfactory answers, this could be deemed non-cooperation under U.N. resolutions and therefore a trigger for war.
The Pope became the most prominent new voice against conflict in the Gulf, declaring in an address: ``No to war!''
``What are we to say of the threat of a war which could strike Iraq, the land of the Prophets, a people already sorely tried by more than 12 years of embargo?'' he said.
On the eve of talks between German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday, a senior German official called on France to keep its distance from Washington and take account of German caution over a possible war on Iraq if Europe's goal of a common foreign policy was to be a reality.
-------- korea
N. Korea will negotiate
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030113-5562378.htm
North Korea is ready to negotiate an end to the standoff with the United States, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said yesterday, despite what he called Pyongyang's talk of a "holy war" against America and threats to resume nuclear missile tests.
Mr. Richardson, who on Saturday finished three days of talks with North Korean diplomats in Santa Fe, said they assured him that Pyongyang wanted to improve relations with the United States and that it was not going to build nuclear weapons. The governor also said they were ready to negotiate the verification of some of North Korea's nuclear reprocessing facilities.
"Right now, they're intensifying the rhetoric, they're laying out their cards, they're being belligerent, in preparation, I believe, for a negotiation," Mr. Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on ABC's "This Week," adding, "They always do that."
"But at the same time, they are sending comments through me, and I believe through other channels, that they're ready to talk, that they're ready to negotiate on taking steps to get verification of their nuclear weapons, that they're taking steps to ease the tension," said Mr. Richardson, who served as energy secretary in the Clinton administration.
Those assurances come just days after the communist country withdrew from the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also has expelled international weapons inspectors, and threatened to resume long-range missile tests and to begin reprocessing spent fuel rods from its nuclear reactor to make atomic weapons.
Mr. Richardson met Han Song-ryol, a high-ranking member of the North Korean delegation to the United Nations, and others for nine hours over three days late last week. He said that he briefed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who authorized the talks.
Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, has a history of negotiations with the North Koreans that includes brokering the release of a U.S. soldier in 1994 whose helicopter had entered the country's airspace and the release in 1996 of a young U.S. citizen held on spying charges.
The administration has said that it is willing to talk but not negotiate with North Korea, a country President Bush last year branded as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.
Mr. Richardson suggested yesterday the establishment of a bilateral nonaggression pact that would say that the United States will not attack North Korea, in exchange for such steps as the country freezing its nuclear program and allowing the return of international inspectors. "The North Koreans said they're ready to do that, but only after a negotiation," he said.
Mr. Richardson said North Korea most probably aims to garner food assistance and investment from Western countries. The country's only bargaining chips are its nuclear weapons, uranium reprocessing facilities and the 1.5 million troops on the border it shares with South Korea.
"So they use those cards to get what they want," Mr. Richardson said. "They also have a mind-set that they demand international respect. They want to deal directly with the United States, not with South Korea. They want to be considered big, major powers."
However, Mr. Richardson said, that doesn't mean the United States should give in to North Korean demands.
But, "we do have to recognize that this is a nuclear power, that it's in our national interest to talk to them, to ease tensions in Asia, to have South Korea, our strong ally, not in the cusp of an invasion," he said.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, appearing on "This Week," said that he was reluctant to have the United States make an immediate commitment to a security guarantee.
"I don't know that anything needs to be signed at this point," said Mr. Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. "I think that ought to be the subject of discussions. I don't think we ought to commit to anything until we are absolutely confident that they are going to dismantle that nuclear assembly line."
Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, warned officials in Washington not to rule out the use of force against North Korea. He also called for economic sanctions.
"It would be a mistake to rule out military action today, although it must be the last, last option, because of the threat that we face," Mr. McCain said on "This Week."
"But our first step should be to go to the United Nations, ask for multilateral sanctions against North Korea."
Mr. Richardson, however, dismissed the need for sanctions and said that Washington should not take Pyongyang's rhetoric about war seriously. Stepping up the rhetoric was a tactic, he said. "They make threats. [They say] 'We're going to have a holy war.'"
"They don't negotiate like we do," he said. "They don't have our same mentality."
A U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters news agency on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Richardson was "not speaking on behalf of the U.S. government, nor conveying a message from the U.S. government."
"We've made clear our views. The president said again and again that he has no intention of invading North Korea," the official said.
Mr. Richardson urged Mr. Bush to open talks with Pyongyang to help ease the tensions.
"So what I think the administration needs to do, with all due respect, is just pick up the phone, start the preliminary talks at the U.N. in New York at a low level to set up broader talks that address these issues," he said.
Mr. Richardson said that he supports the way the Bush administration has handled the deadlock with North Korea. "I support their policy," he said. "They've now moved from containment, isolation, to a direct dialogue."
----
U.S. suggests aid for N. Korea
By Christopher Torchia
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030113-75587600.htm
SEOUL - The United States is willing to consider energy aid for North Korea if Pyongyang ends nuclear weapons development, a U.S. envoy said today.
"Once we get beyond nuclear weapons, there may be opportunities with the U.S., with private investors, with other countries to help North Korea in the energy area," Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said at a news conference in Seoul.
"We are willing to talk to North Korea about their response to the international community," on the nuclear issue, Mr. Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly's remarks offered the first hint by the Bush administration that it is willing to offer North Korea incentives to abandon efforts to build atom bombs.
"The United States will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up to its existing obligations," the Bush administration said Thursday in announcing for the first time that it was willing to talk to the North.
The next day North Korea escalated the crisis another notch by pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It hinted during the weekend that it might drop a moratorium on missile tests.
Mr. Kelly, who arrived in Seoul late yesterday and met President-elect Roh Moo-hyun early today, said the comments by North Korean envoys, who met New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson during the weekend, were "disappointing."
The comments were similar to public pronouncements by North Korea, he said. Those have included accusations that the United States is plotting to invade the communist country and that North Korea was forced to reactivate its nuclear facilities because Washington reneged on pledges to provide energy.
Mr. Kelly's remarks came hours after North Korea insisted that it had never admitted having a secret nuclear program, sending with colorfully bombastic rhetoric another conflicting signal over its suspected plans to build nuclear weapons.
"The claim that we admitted developing nuclear weapons is an invention fabricated by the U.S. with sinister intentions," South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted the North's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper as saying.
"If the United States evades its responsibility and challenges us, we'll turn the citadel of imperialists into a sea of fire." The term was reminiscent of North Korea's rhetoric in a nuclear crisis eight years ago, in which it threatened to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire."
In October, the United States has said, North Korea admitted during a visit to Pyongyang by Mr. Kelly that it had a previously undisclosed nuclear weapons program.
That announcement - which North Korea denied for the first time yesterday - touched off the latest standoff.
The Bush administration has cut off monthly shipments of heavy fuel oil that were awarded to North Korea, along with other concessions, in a 1994 deal that ended the last nuclear crisis.
In Seoul, Mr. Kelly also was scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong and two presidential security advisers - Yim Sung-joon and Lim Dong-won.
Mr. Roh, who takes office Feb. 25, favors diplomacy to resolve the nuclear dispute. Washington has expressed willingness to talk with Pyongyang but has ruled out any concessions.
Mr. Kelly will travel to China tomorrow and then to Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.
North Korea claims that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and says it would resolve outside concerns about its nuclear program through bilateral talks with the United States.
North Korea today again accused Washington of using the U.N. nuclear watchdog as a vehicle to put pressure on it.
"We won't be bound any longer by the safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, as it has been degraded as a U.S. mouthpiece," Kim Ki, vice chairman of the North's State Planning Commission, said on the country's Central Radio Station. "All the workers and officials of the commission are full of burning resolutions to lay a merciless strike on the reckless scheme of the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys." His remarks were reported by the Yonhap news agency.
The United States believes North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons and could make several more within six months if it extracts weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods at a reprocessing plant.
In announcing North Korea's October admission, the United States said Pyongyang had admitted to having an atomic weapons program in violation of the 1994 accord, under which Pyongyang pledged to freeze operations at its nuclear facilities in exchange for energy supplies.
The North then said it would bring reactors at its Yongbyon nuclear facility back online, beginning a series of steps that escalated the crisis.
After announcing its withdrawal from the NPT on Friday, North Korea raised tensions further with the suggestion that it might resume missile testing.
On Saturday, North Korean leaders vowed at a rally attended by 1 million people to "smash U.S. nuclear maniacs" in a "holy war."
New missile tests would be the first since 1998, when North Korea fired a missile over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang later set a moratorium on tests that was to last into 2004.
North Korean also left open the possibility of reprocessing spent fuel rods from its nuclear reactor for fuel to make atomic bombs.
Son Mun-san, who oversees Pyongyang's relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in Vienna, Austria, that the reprocessing plant now stands in a state of "readiness."
Since the nuclear standoff resumed, the North has removed seals placed on one of its nuclear facilities by IAEA monitors and expelled two U.N. inspectors.
During a visit to Russia that ended yesterday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged North Korea to rescind its decision to pull out of the treaty.
"That is what's best for North Korea, for the international community," he said. "And this is true for the United States as well."
----
U.S. May Offer Aid to N. Korea in Deal on Arms
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47378-2003Jan12?language=printer
SEOUL, Jan. 13 (Monday) -- The United States would consider offering energy aid to deeply impoverished North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons development programs, a top U.S. envoy said here today, offering tentative signs of a new willingness on the part of the Bush administration to negotiate a settlement to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
"Once we get beyond nuclear weapons, there may be opportunities with the U.S., with private investors, with other countries to help North Korea in the energy area," Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said , following morning meetings with South Korean officials, including the president-elect, Roh Moo Hyun.
Though Kelly's words were vague and conditional, they nonetheless amounted to the first indication that the Bush administration might be prepared to offer inducements to encourage North Korea to pull back from the nuclear brink, casting aside its previous refusal to consider concessions lest it reward what the White House has termed "nuclear blackmail."
"It is a concession, a change of position," said Lee Chung Min, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. "It's an indication of the Bush administration really wanting to settle this diplomatically and probably under a lot of pressure to do so."
The White House had previously softened its position by declaring a willingness to talk with North Korea, though it drew a pointed distinction between talks and negotiations. Today, Kelly repeated the offer, saying, "We are, of course, willing to talk to North Korea about their response to the international community."
Kelly dismissed the results of meetings over the weekend in Santa Fe between New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, and a pair of North Korean envoys, calling them "a little bit disappointing."
"We really didn't hear anything from the North Koreans speaking to him that we hadn't heard in their public pronouncements," he said.
Last week, North Korea withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- the cornerstone of global efforts to stem the flow of atomic weapons -- then suggested that it might resume tests of ballistic missiles.
Analysts said the Bush administration, increasingly eager to prevent a crisis here from interfering with preparations for possible war in Iraq, has become more flexible. The White House is also cognizant that North Korea's neighbors -- particularly China, Russia and South Korea -- oppose economic sanctions.
Kelly planned to travel to China on Tuesday to urge Beijing to use its influence to persuade the North to reverse course.
Kelly's talks with Roh, who takes office on Feb. 25, were watched particularly closely here. During last year's campaign, Roh caused an uproar when he said that South Korea should no longer reflexively take the side of the United States in conflicts with North Korea.
In a recent interview, a United States diplomat who spoke on condition he not be named indicated that Roh, a liberal labor lawyer who advocates engagement with the North, is a cause of some unease within the Bush administration.
"He comes in with less international experience than probably any president of any major country I can think of," the diplomat said. "He's never been to the United States. To a large degree, he's a blank slate."
Today, Kelly said only that his meeting with Roh was "a great opportunity to build on our relationship."
Kelly's arrival marked the return of a central figure in the unfolding conflict. Last October, during a visit to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, Kelly confronted officials there with intelligence that purportedly proved they had a secret project to develop uranium-enriched atomic weapons, violating a 1994 deal with the Clinton administration. The United States and its allies then cut off shipments of fuel oil to North Korea that had been pledged under the deal. North Korea then began reviving a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, embarking on its current path of escalation.
Through envoys in Moscow and Beijing, North Korea later accused Kelly of misconstruing what he was told during his visit. They said that North Korea had not confirmed his accusation but merely asserted its right to develop nuclear weapons. On Sunday, North Korea repeated that charge in its strongest terms to date.
"The claim that we admitted developing nuclear weapons is an invention fabricated by the U.S. with sinister intentions," said an article in North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, reported by the South Korean Yonhap news service. "If the United States evades its responsibility and challenges us, we'll turn the citadel of imperialists into a sea of fire."
In a recent interview with Washington Post reporters and editors, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell dismissed questions about the validity of Kelly's report. According to Powell, the North Koreans denied the charge during a first day of meetings with Kelly but confirmed it the second day.
"It took them overnight to evaluate the situation and have their principals meeting," Powell said. "The next morning, they came back and essentially said to Jim, 'Yes.' Now they dissembled a little bit since, but we had three interpreters there, especially at the time because [Korean] is a very different language -- a lot of nuances -- and there is no doubt in our mind that they acknowledged it, that they were agreeing to it. And that's what Jim reported."
Washington Post Staff Writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
AXIS PRAXIS
by Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker,
Jan 13, 2003
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030113ta_talk_hertzberg
A not completely crazy case can be made that the most influential thinker in the foreign-policy apparatus of the Administration of George W. Bush during its first two years was not one of the familiar members of the gold-shielded Praetorian Guard -- not Dick Cheney or Colin Powell, not Condi or Rummy, not Tenet or Wolfowitz -- but, rather, a forty-two-year-old Canadian named David Frum. During Year I of Bush II, Frum was a White House speechwriter. Although he left the job only ten months ago, his memoir of those distant days has already been written, edited, and printed, and, as of this week, is in the stores. (The revolving door used to turn with stately languor. Now it comes equipped with a tachometer.) In the book, he writes that when drafting duties for last year's State of the Union Message were being doled out, his assignment was "to provide a justification for a war," specifically a war with Iraq. After much cogitation, he hit upon the idea of likening what the United States has been up against since September 11, 2001, to the villains of the Second World War. The phrase he came up with was "axis of hatred." Higher-ups changed this to "axis of evil," to make it sound more "theological." Although Frum initially intended his "strong language" to apply only to Iraq, Iran was quickly added. (You can't have a single-pointed axis.)
North Korea was an afterthought. It got stuck in at the last minute, but Frum doesn't quite explain how or why. Perhaps it was meant to echo the global span of the original (Baghdad-Tehran-Pyongyang equals Berlin-Rome-Tokyo). Perhaps it was an application of the rhetorical Rule of Three (our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor; of the people, by the people, for the people; blood, sweat, and tears). Perhaps it was the product of intoxication brought on by an excess of moral clarity. Most likely, it was simply oratorical affirmative action, bused in to lend diversity to what would otherwise have been an all-Muslim list. One thing it was not was the product of careful policy deliberation. It had not been, as they say, staffed out. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the State Department's East Asia hands learned about it only hours before the speech, and they were not happy. Secretary of State Powell, who almost certainly agreed with them but is ever the good soldier, told them to suck it up: "These are the President's views. It's his speech, so salute and follow."
As a rhetorical flourish, the axis of evil soared like an eagle. But in retrospect it more closely resembles a turkey, and the inclusion of North Korea, in particular, has begun to look uncannily like a chicken that in recent days has come home to roost. This is of a piece with the whole of the Bush Administration's Korea policy, which, from the beginning, has been a fairly comprehensive botch. The Clinton Administration, at its beginning, hadn't done much better; in 1994, it nearly stumbled into war with North Korea. But, thanks to some timely threats issued by the Defense Secretary at the time, William Perry, and to some diplomatic privateering by Jimmy Carter, the year ended with the signing of the so-called Agreed Framework, under which, in return for various political and economic goodies, Pyongyang put its most dangerous possession -- some eight thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, easily convertible into weapons- grade plutonium -- in a storage facility watched by United Nations cameras and inspectors. By the end of the Clinton years, with a new South Korean President, Kim Dae Jung, vigorously pursuing a Willy Brandt-like "sunshine" policy toward the North, the Pyongyang regime was almost frantically signalling not only its eagerness to get more goodies but also its readiness to make more concessions.
Under Bush, matters Korean headed rapidly downhill. When Kim Dae Jung visited Washington, six weeks after Bush took office, Bush humiliated him (and embarrassed Powell) by withdrawing American support for the sunshine initiatives. Before September 11th, when the Administration's foreign-policy obsession was missile defense, it almost seemed to welcome the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea. Kim Jong Il's "rogue state" provided a convenient rationale for deploying the only kind of A.B.M. system that might be politically and diplomatically salable and technically even marginally feasible: a very limited one, based in Alaska and not overtly aimed at neutralizing China's deterrent. The Bush national- security team had little use for the Agreed Framework -- how could a pact cooked up by Clinton, Carter, and Communists be anything but a mini-Munich? -- and allowed it to languish. Nor did the Administration, many of whose members date from the previous Bush regime, seem to understand that this is not your father's Seoul: far from being the dictatorial client state of Cold War times, South Korea is now a vibrant democracy, with notions of its own. Then came the axis-of-evil speech, and then, in October, Pyongyang's astounding admission that it had been violating the Agreed Framework by running a secret uranium-enrichment program, which triggered a cutoff of Framework-mandated fuel-oil supplies. Finally, two weeks ago, North Korea kicked out the U.N. inspectors, capped the U.N. cameras, and announced that it would begin making plutonium from the spent fuel rods.
The Administration takes the view that the essence of the crisis -- or "serious situation," as Powell prefers to call it -- is simple: North Korea has blatantly violated the Agreed Framework and is now committing nuclear blackmail. All true. Still, given the recent record -- including the President's eagerness for "regime change" elsewhere in the A. of E. and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's pointed reference to America's ability to fight two regional wars at once -- the Pyongyang regime's paranoia may not be wholly delusional. On a more mundane level, it's also true that the first of the Framework's four points called for the United States to provide, by this year, two light-water reactors (the kind that are impractical for making bombs), capable of nearly doubling North Korea's electricity supply, and that its second point called for moving toward "full normalization of political and economic relations." Neither has been done. This doesn't mean that the two sides are equally culpable in any moral sense. There is a difference between failing to build power plants and threatening annihilation. But it does mean that there is, or ought to be, room for negotiating the peaceful diplomatic settlement that President Bush and Secretary Powell have spent the last week insisting can be reached.
What's a superpower to do? The problem -- in the words of Kurt Campbell, who worked on the issue in the Clinton Defense Department and is now a program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- is that "Korea is the Land of Lousy Options." America's main goal -- and China's, and South Korea's -- must be to prevent North Korea from following through on its threat (implied but not yet explicit) to convert the fuel rods, which would allow it to build as many as a half-dozen bombs within months. (For technical reasons, Pyongyang's uranium-enrichment mischief is nothing like so threatening.) War? Not a good idea, even though the offending facility itself could be quite easily "taken out." North Korea has a huge Army and enormous quantities of artillery pieces, many of which are aimed at Seoul. That Army could be defeated, but it could not be prevented from inflicting mass destruction, with or without weapons of that name. Isolation and sanctions, the Bush Administration's initial idea? The first would be redundant, the second both cruel and ineffective; and neither could even be properly tried without the coöperation of Beijing and Seoul.
That leaves diplomacy, the worst choice except for all the others. Unfortunately, by withdrawing the threat of force and ruling out, at least for now, the possibility of direct negotiations, the Administration has dropped both its biggest stick and its tastiest carrot. But it can rely on the help of China, Japan, and South Korea, all of which have a powerful interest both in reducing the nuclear threat from North Korea and in guiding its ultimately doomed regime toward a peaceful, as opposed to a catastrophic, demise. In any event, the Bush Administration is now trying to defuse the situation it did so much to create. After bingeing on moral claret, you might say, the Bush people are sobering up with some strong black Kofi.
It's a bitter draught, and not just because what the Bushies are now doing is mortifyingly similar to what the Clintonites did nine years ago. It's also bitter because, for negotiations to work, North Korea must eventually be offered inducements -- must be paid blackmail, if you like. And it's bitter, finally, because the Administration now has to explain why it treats Iraq, which is crawling with U.N. inspectors, so differently from North Korea, which has kicked them out. North Korea is sui generis. Unlike Iraq, it has no economic resources, no ideological allies, no recent record of cross-border aggression, and no territorial ambitions. In a narrow military sense, North Korea is no less dangerous. It has proved its willingness to sell missile and other nuclear-related paraphernalia to unsavory characters around the world. But its vulnerabilities are different. Its government is evil -- that's for certain. But one axis does not fit all.
-------
Only a nuclear fist deters US war addicts
by Scott Burchil;
Australian Financial Review;
January 13, 2003
http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2862
"We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. ...The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, 29 January, 2002.
As the 12 month anniversary of President Bush's 'axis of evil' speech approaches, it's worth reflecting on what a disaster it has been for moderate reformers in Iran, South Korea's embryonic 'sunshine policy' of rapprochement with the North and undoubtedly in the weeks ahead, what a catastrophe it will be for the people of Iraq.
More specifically, it is worth considering President Bush's words above in light of the lesson that the Iraq-North Korea comparison is now teaching the world: if you want to deter the war addicts in Washington, you'd better have weapons of mass destruction and resources of terror. Nothing else will work.
How else can we explain Washington's contrasting approaches to Iraq (which doesn't have nuclear weapons or the potential to acquire them for some years) and North Korea (which has at least two nuclear devices and wants to build more). The former is being threatened with imminent war while the latter confronts only diplomatic offensives.
By any measure North Korea's arsenal represents a much more serious threat to its neighbours, especially Japan, than any danger Iraq poses to the Middle East. It is a mistake to impute strategic intentions from a country's weapons inventory. However, on the basis of Washington's comparative responses to Iraq and North Korea, there can be no doubt that the possession of nuclear weapons and plausible threats to deploy them affords a state with greater levels of protection from external threats and interference than chemical and biological weapons currently appear to.
This lesson will not be lost on others, including Washington's rivals and enemies.
North Korea has been assisted to develop weapons of mass destruction by two members of President Bush's coalition in the so-called 'war against terrorism' - Pakistan and China. Consequently, Washington has little choice but to "permit [one of] the world's most dangerous regimes" to threaten the US "with the world's most destructive weapons." As Seoul is undoubtedly reminding its North American ally, military strikes against the North are simply out of the question, regardless of how advanced the Pentagon thinks its weapons systems have become.
Given regular threats from Washington and London it is little wonder that Iraq and the other two members of the "axis of evil" want to develop weapons of mass destruction. As the realist political theorist Kenneth Waltz argues, "North Korea, Iraq, Iran and others know that the United States can be held at bay only by deterrence. Weapons of mass destruction are the only means by which they can hope to deter the United States. They cannot hope to do so by relying on conventional weapons."
However, because we have so deeply internalised the myth that the US is a defensive nation which never instigates aggression against others, the idea of deterring Washington makes little initial sense. We rarely, if ever, consider the world from the viewpoints of Pyongyang, Teheran or Baghdad. If we did, we might wonder what alternative strategies are available to counter the world's only superpower, which has made its hostility to all three abundantly clear.
In the West, North Korea, Iran and Iraq are states which by definition can never legitimately acquire the weaponry so keenly stockpiled in vast quantities by Washington and its allies. It's an obvious double standard and it is not accepted by their governments. North Korea, for example, is being upbraided for unilaterally withdrawing from the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), while Israel is immune from criticism even though it has always refused to sign it.
There can be no doubt about North Korea's ideological delinquency and the paranoia of its leaders. It is a political anachronism with a limited shelf-life. However, in one of the great ironies of the current period it is the present climate in Washington that renders Pyongyang's desire to build more nuclear weapons seems perfectly rational and understandable.
-------- missile defense
Britain ready to accept US missile defence
By Toby Helm
13/01/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/13/nmd13.xml/
The Government is ready to allow the Americans to use British bases for a new "son of star wars" missile defence system despite denials by the Ministry of Defence that decisions have been taken, according to Whitehall officials.
Clear signs that a private deal with Washington has been struck will bear out the worst fears of the many Labour MPs opposed to the plan, who see it is another example of Britain following the American lead on security.
Before Christmas, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, issued a public discussion document about the proposed national missile defence technology, which the Americans want to put in place in order to identify, track and shoot down ballistic missiles from rogue states.
Mr Hoon confirmed that he had received a request from Washington for Britain to take part, mainly by updating the Fylingdales early warning radar station on the north Yorkshire moors, making it a key part of the system.
While the document was broadly positive and highlighted the threat from ballistic missiles in the hands of rogue states, the Government said it had yet to give its response to the Americans and would agree only if were satisfied that the "overall security of the UK and the alliance would be enhanced".
But Whitehall insiders say it would now be "inconceivable" for Britain to reject the Americans' appeal, and make clear that the decision is as good as taken.
"I would be amazed if there was a negative decision," said one source. "I think you can take it that we will be on-side."
Malcolm Savidge, Labour member for Aberdeen North, who tabled a Commons motion opposing national missile defence, signed by 276 backbenchers, said: "There will be great concern as this will be seen as further evidence of how we are getting sucked into supporting the very aggressive policy of the hawks of the American administration."
The Government argues that the missile defence system could deter countries such as Iraq and North Korea from attacking western targets.
Government sources claim that the deal with the Americans will not involve Britain paying large sums. "It will be American money and American kit and the Americans will instal it," said one official, referring to the updating of radar technology at Fylingdales.
The Ministry of Defence said that Mr Hoon has made clear that he will look on the American request favourably. But a spokesman insisted that no decision had been taken.
It is believed that Britain gave the nod to national missile defence as part of a deal under which Washington would agree not to oppose the setting up of a European defence system.
--------
Study: Missile Defense System Could Cost $1.2 Trillion
Monday , January 13, 2003
By: Randy Barrett
Space News Staff Writer
http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacenews_businessmonday_030113.html
A newly released study prepared jointly by a pair of arms control advocacy groups puts the total life-cycle cost for a layered missile defense system at nearly $1.2 trillion through 2035.
The report, titled The Full Costs of Ballistic Missile Defense, was prepared by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, and Economists Allied for Arms Reduction in Pearl River, N.Y. It argues that the total cost of developing, producing and supporting a full missile defense architecture is higher than supporters in the White House and on Capitol Hill may realize.
The study includes cost estimates for a variety of systems based on the ground, at sea, in the air and in space. Between them, these systems address the three phases of flight during which a ballistic missile might be engaged and destroyed: boost, midcourse and terminal.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Cold War-era silos still ready for battle
Missile sites on Plains staffed 24 hours a day
By Erin Emery and Coleman Cornelius
Denver Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 13, 2003
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E53%7E1106794%7E,00.html
NEW RAYMER - Guests who make their way up the driveway to an oversized yellow house here on the Colorado prairie are not greeted with country hospitality or a cup of tea.
Post / Andy Cross Lt. Col. Tim Adam stands by a chain-link fence surrounding a missle silo near New Raymer. Instead, two men in camouflage green, one carrying two M-16 rifles and the other toting a grenade launcher, march to the fence.
In the "basement" of this yellow ranch house, 65 feet below ground in a steel capsule, two-person crews from Wyoming's F.E. Warren Air Force Base monitor and control intercontinental ballistic missiles, the most powerful weapons in the world.
This "house" is actually a Missile Alert Facility, one of 20 on the plains of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. From these facilities, any of 150 Minuteman III missiles can be launched. The nuclear warheads can travel 6,000 miles in any direction at speeds of up to 15,000 mph. Each missile is 15 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, which killed a total of 200,000 people.
The nuclear arsenal buried in Colorado's backyard is a holdover from the Cold War. Its purpose is the same now as then: deterrence.
"There's a lot of nations out there that have weapons of mass destruction," said Capt. Stacy Vaughn, spokeswoman for Warren AFB. "We use these as a deterrent. If nations know we have these, hopefully they won't use theirs against ours. And there's probably some nations that have capability that we don't know they have."
During the Cold War, the missiles were aimed at Russia. These days, the Air Force won't say where they are pointed. Civilian analyst Bruce Blair, who heads the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., said the target remains the same for now, but military planners are looking at new missions for the weapons.
The military is unlikely to use the missiles in Iraq, Blair said. For starters, nuclear fallout could poison neighboring friendly nations or even American troops. Secondly, Blair said he doubts the U.S. would launch weapons from the Western states to Iraq because the flight path would put Americans in harm's way if there were a mishap.
Some critics say the United States has too many Minuteman missiles, given the diminished threat from Russia.
"This is a legacy of the Cold War. ... Both the U.S. and Russia have retained and continue to retain, vastly more nuclear weapons than either country needs," said Thomas B. Cochran, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's nuclear-tracking program.
Minuteman IIIs have been on around-the-clock alert in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska since they were put in underground silos in 1963. None has ever been launched. Wyoming also has 50 Peacekeeper missiles, a more lethal variety of missiles that each carry 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads. Warren AFB recently began spending $20.9 million annually to deactivate the Peacekeepers to comply with a May arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and Russia.
Every day, between 75 and 80 "missileers" - the men and women trained to launch the weapons - watch over the 49 Minuteman silos in Colorado. The young lieutenants and captains have taken a 21-week course at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. Exercises and simulated-launch scenarios round out their training.
The missileers sign agreements acknowledging the gravity of their mission: They might be asked to launch a nuclear warhead. The workers have to be in top mental and physical shape. They can only take drugs prescribed by Air Force doctors. Even things such as Vitamin C and Slim Fast require prior approval. Reliability is paramount, said Lt. Col. Tim Adam, commander of the 321st Missile Squadron.
Each missile silo is topped with 5 feet of concrete weighing 110 tons. The silos are connected to the Missile Alert Facility through a system of hardened cables. Chain- link fences enclose the silos, which are monitored with security sensors that can be triggered by wind, tumbleweeds, coyotes or intruders. When that happens, alarms sound in the Missile Alert Facilities. Within minutes, roving security forces can respond.
In October, when Catholic nuns sat on top of a silo near New Raymer to protest the nuclear weapons, security police rolled over the chain-link fence in an armored vehicle, not stopping to open the gate. Within seconds, the nuns had high-powered machine guns pointed at their heads.
Each morning, dozens of missileers meet at Warren. Commanders talk to the crews about safety, road conditions, weather forecasts and maintenance.
In the meetings, every missileer learns "duress words."
"Let's say someone takes them down at gunpoint. They can pass these duress words so people know they're in conflict," said Col. Frank Gallegos, who commands the missile operation.
The meeting ends with Gallegos saying: "Have a good alert."
The young captains and lieutenants load up in blue pickup trucks and head for the various Missile Alert Facilities, which are all more than 80 miles from Warren. On bad-weather days, the crews are flown to the sites in helicopters.
When they arrive, they show identification at the facility gate, again before entering the building and a third time inside.
"We're paranoid," Adam said. "We consider anyone and everyone a threat."
Above the bunker, a chef and facility manager work in the "house," which is equipped with bunks, a kitchen, television and exercise room.
Launch crews take an elevator 65 feet underground to the steel capsule. Before the 8-ton blast doors are opened, crews swipe their ID cards yet again through an electronic system.
Beyond the blast door is a cramped office the size of a boxcar. It rests on giant shock absorbers to protect from nuclear attack or earthquake. The room has two computers that show the status of the 10 missiles under the team's watch and communications from higher commands.
If ordered to launch, crew members would verify the information a number of different ways. Both missileers in the capsule would punch in the combination to the locks that secure the keys. A code would be verified again. (No one person ever has the combination to both locks.) Then, the keys would fit into the console and the switch could be turned to "launch."
The very same scenario has to occur at a separate Missile Alert Facility. Then, the two keys are turned at the same time.
The duty can be nerve-wracking, especially the first few 24-hour shifts, said Lt. Jeremy Johnson, 24, of Portland, Ore.
"My first shift, I sat up all night staring at the computer screen. 'Please don't let anything go wrong. Please don't let anything go wrong.' It's one of those exciting terror feelings," Johnson said. "It's a detail-oriented job. You have to pay attention to the little things."
Johnson said people are impressed when he tells them what he does.
"You get a lot of sense of awe from people because of the term 'nuclear.' That responsibility combined with the day-to-day events on TV, it's very humbling."
Most of the silos are located on private land leased by the government. The farmers and ranchers who live nearby say the missiles are mostly out of sight, out of mind.
"I've never had a fearful or uneasy feeling about them," said Janet Fogale, who owns a Logan County cattle ranch with her husband. "If a missile ever went off, it would be at its target before we even knew it had been launched."
Fogale said Air Force personnel inform neighbors when they do routine maintenance at the silos.
"We've had them for so long, it's just a part of us," said Lynn Rogers, who has two silos on the ranch she and her husband manage in Logan County. "You feel good knowing someone's always taking care of them."
But Dale Schmeeckle of New Raymer, population 120, said he's had a handful of hostile interactions with the Air Force over the silo on his land. He said the site and its maintenance have at times obstructed dryland wheat farming on a portion of his property.
The 5-acre site off of Colorado 14 has been the focus of protests by peace activists, including the nuns. The missile at the silo site called "November 8" is a mile from his home.
"They said if they ever had to use it, it would blow the windows out of my house and I don't like that idea," Schmeeckle said. "I'm not comfortable with it at all, but what can I do about it? I wish we could stay out of war."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Indian Point Safety Plans Called Inadequate
January 13, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-13-09.asp#anchor3
ALBANY, New York - Safety plans at the Indian Point nuclear power plant are "not adequate" to protect the public according to a new report commissioned by New York Governor George Pataki.
On Friday, Pataki announced that James Lee Witt Associates (JLWA) had completed their draft report on emergency plans for communities surrounding Indian Point. Based on the group's findings, Pataki called again on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to review their safety standards for certification of nuclear power plants.
"Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the safety of our nuclear power plants has been a heightened concern for all New Yorkers," Pataki said. "Safety must be our top priority and we must continue to urge the federal government to act to ensure that all of our residents are safe.
"This independent report raises issues that must be addressed," added Pataki. "I again urge FEMA and the NRC 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 September 11 reality."
The report notes that safety plans at Indian Point are built on compliance with regulations, rather than a strategy that leads to structures and systems to protect from radiation exposure. The plans appear based on the premise that people will comply with official government directions rather than acting in accordance with what they perceive to be their best interests, the report states.
In addition, the plant's safety plans do not consider the possibility of a radiation release caused by an act of terrorism.
"Simply stated, the world has recently changed," concludes the report. "What was once considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision."
Indian Point's planning problems are considered particularly serious because of the large population concentrations near the plant, the report says. They also do not consider the reality and impacts of spontaneous evacuation, the panic of which could create traffic snarls that would prevent people from leaving the danger zone.
Shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Pataki called on FEMA and the NRC to conduct a comprehensive review of their standards for emergency plans at all nuclear power plants within the state. When the federal review did not materialize after several months, the governor announced in August 2002 that the state had hired former FEMA Director James Lee Witt to conduct a comprehensive, independent review of all emergency plans, starting with Indian Point.
That review is now complete and, pending public comment, copies of the draft report will be forwarded to the NRC and FEMA for their review. The Indian Point facilities are licensed to operate by the NRC. FEMA is the federal agency responsible for evaluating and exercising the emergency response plans for the Radiological Emergency Preparedness program, which is responsible for the 103 commercial nuclear reactors across the country.
James Lee Witt Associates will issue a final report after comments have been reviewed, summarized and addressed in the report.
The draft report is available for review and public comment at: http://www.wittassociates.com by clicking on "New York Report Page." The comment period ends at 6 pm Friday, February 7.
-------- us politics
Unhappy GOP Senators
Robert Novak
January 13, 2003
Townhall.com / Creators Syndicate
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20030113.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Republican senators gathering last Wednesday for their session-opening "retreat" should have been happy, blessed with a regained majority and a popular president. They were not. Instead, they complained bitterly of arrogance by the Bush administration, especially the Pentagon, in treatment of Congress along the road to war.
Two years of growing discontent boiled over during the closed-door meeting at the Library of Congress. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was there to hear grievances from President Bush's Senate base that it is ignored and insulted by the administration, particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in preparing war against Iraq. Furthermore, recital of complaints began with Sen. John Warner, a pillar of the Senate GOP establishment.
This is a disconnected time in Washington. Republican senators appreciate that they have returned to majority status thanks to George W. Bush's bold midterm election strategy and his popularity leading the war against terrorism. Yet their unease about a divided administration on the brink of attacking Iraq is deepened because they are neither consulted nor informed about war plans.
No senator more solidly supports Bush's national security policy than John W. Warner, the 75-year-old chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who was re-elected last year to a fifth Senate term from Virginia without Democratic opposition. A veteran of the Navy (World War II) and Marine Corps (Korean War), and a former secretary of the navy, he has devoted long public service to American's national defense.
Consequently, Warner had his colleagues' attention when he addressed Card in stentorian tones. "I will not tolerate," he boomed, "a continuation of what's been going on the last two years." He cited cavalier treatment that denies information even to the venerable top Senate Republican on Armed Services. To specify who he is talking about, Warner said he had breakfast scheduled the next morning with Rumsfeld and would tell the secretary of defense the very same thing.
Next up was Sen. Pat Roberts, a former Marine officer who has spent the last 40 years on Capitol Hill as a staffer, House member and (since 1996) a senator. Roberts, a plainspoken Midwesterner from Dodge City, Kan., is the new Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. He told Card to mark him down agreeing with everything Warner just said. Roberts long has been frustrated by lack of information on national security issues but has not publicly complained.
Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, another Bush backer who keeps criticism to himself, next got up to tell Card that the administration had better put out more concrete information justifying military action against Iraq as part of the war against terrorism. "What is the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda?" Bond asked. "Don't worry," replied Card, indicating the information would come along.
Two days before the GOP retreat, another leading Republican senator, Ted Stevens of Alaska -- incoming chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the new Senate president pro tem -- sent a letter of protest to the Pentagon. The notoriously short-fused Stevens was furious that Rumsfeld had eliminated funding for two of the eight high-tech Army brigades mandated by Congress. The brigades are built around the new eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicles.
Stevens, with Sen. Dan Inouye of Hawaii (top Democrat on the defense appropriations subcommittee), wrote that elimination of two Stryker brigades "is yet another example of the disregard of the Congress, and existing law, by the senior leadership of the Defense Department." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz responded Friday with a conciliatory letter that made no concessions.
Wolfowitz's chief is usually less conciliatory. An old Senate Republican hand, asking anonymity, explained to me why the senators are upset: "Rumsfeld's behavior toward senators is dismissive, barely civil, bordering on rude. He has no interest in us other than to get the money; no interest in our opinions." Rumsfeld spent more than six years in the House, but that was 44 years ago.
At the Library of Congress, Andy Card responded to complaints by Warner and Roberts with a "Thank you. I'll pass that along." According to administration sources, President Bush is aware of the problem but has not yet addressed it. That constitutes one uncompleted war preparation.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Secret deal for Mugabe to quit floated by Zimbabwe officials
Andrew Meldrum in Harare
Monday January 13, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,873708,00.html
Mediators acting for top government officials have floated the idea that President Robert Mugabe would retire in return for immunity from prosecution, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, disclosed last night.
Mr Tsvangirai said he had talked with independent mediators on behalf of the house speaker, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and armed forces chief of staff, General Vitalis Zvinavashe. "They wanted my assurance that if Mugabe retired, [the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe's opposition party] would take part in a transition towards new democratic elections."
Gen Zvinavashe and Mr Mnangagwa, seen as Mr Mugabe's heir apparent, are two of the most powerful ruling Zanu-PF politicians.
Mr Tsvangirai said the ap proach was made because they said they realise Mr Mugabe "is the main stumbling block".
"They said Mugabe must step down before we can find solutions to our economic decline and the hunger, among many other problems."
Mr Tsvangirai named retired Zimbabwean army Colonel Lionel Dyke, a close associate of both men, as a mediator.
The mediators said the two Zanu-PF leaders would secure Mr Mugabe's retirement to regain some international legitimacy for the country and renew aid and investment.
Mr Tsvangirai thought that Mr Mnangagwa and Gen Zvinavashe had tried to set up talks because there is no clear Mugabe successor. "Clearly, the succession issue has not been concluded and they were trying to position themselves."
Despite the apparent promise that Mr Mugabe would step down, the opposi tion leader turned down the mediators' suggestions.
"I rejected that exploratory approach because we in Zimbabwe need open, transparent discussions to lead us back to democracy. We cannot accept preconditions set up in secret deals," he said. "There will be other approaches because negotiation is the only way to bring an end to our crisis."
Mr Tsvangirai's MDC held direct talks with Zanu-PF last year. The talks quickly broke down but Mr Tsvangirai said he thought there was a good chance for their renewal. Mr Tsvangirai said talks could determine how Mr Mugabe would step down and the establishment of a transitional coalition government leading to free and fair elections.
Issues to be considered include whether or not Mr Mugabe would be granted immunity from prosecution for alleged human rights abuses and whether he would be exiled. Mr Tsvangirai has stated many times that any power-sharing government would only be temporary.
Zanu-PF party officials were unavailable for comment. There has been no response from Mr Mugabe himself, who was scheduled to return to office today after a holiday.
Mr Mugabe, 78, who led the nation to independence in 1980, won a new six-year term in elections last March that independent observers said were deeply flawed.
Mr Tsvangirai indicated that his party is willing to soften its calls for Mr Mugabe to be put on trial for alleged crimes in order to get the president to retire. "Circumstances dictate behaviour," said Mr Tsvangirai. "The country is on its knees."
Britain's shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, said: "Anything that shows any movement in relation to ending Mugabe's evil regime must be greeted with cautious welcome."
Mr Ancram said he wanted to know more about the suggested deal, particularly those concerning an end to the persecution of the Matabele, the displaced black farm workers, and the illegal land grabs.
"I obviously will wish to consult with opposition members in Zimbabwe before deciding whether this offer is genuine or cosmetic."
Prof Paul Wilkinson, an international relations expert from St Andrews University, said such a deal would be "extraordinary" if it happened.
But to be successful, he said, the move would need wider support, preferably from Mr Mugabe himself, or at least senior ministers and the ruling Zanu-PF party machine.
-------- britain
RESERVISTS SAY NO TO IRAQ WAR
The People, UK,
January 13, 2003
http://www.people.co.uk/homepage/news/page.cfm?objectid=12524746&method=thepeople_full&siteid=79490s
MILITARY reservists are trying to dodge fighting in Iraq, The People can reveal.
Some are even claiming to be conscientious objectors.
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has put 1,500 reservists on stand-by but he needs 6,000 for his plans to invade Iraq's southern coast.
And the Ministry of Defence estimates six out of ten will not want to go.
An MoD insider admitted: "There are people who want to conscientiously object to war with Iraq. But they can't just say they can't be a
Mr Hoon said: "We only call out reservists when it is absolutely necessary."
-------- business
Raytheon Reports Informal SEC Accounting Inquiry, Settles Billing Case
Jan. 13, 2003
The Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030113_957.html
LEXINGTON, Mass. - The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an informal investigation into accounting practices at Raytheon Co.'s commuter aircraft business, the defense contractor said Monday.
Raytheon said the investigation relates to "the timing of revenue recognition at its Raytheon Aircraft subsidiary in the period 1997 to 2001."
The company said it believes the practices are appropriate and it would cooperate fully.
The disclosure came as a federal prosecutor in Kansas announced that Raytheon Aircraft Co. has paid $3.99 million to settle allegations it incorrectly billed the cost of aircraft product liability insurance to the Department of Defense from 1988 to 1999.
The settlement did not include an admission of liability, and Raytheon denied the allegations, U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren said in Wichita, Kan.
It could not immediately be determined if the two cases were related.
The Department of Defense had agreed in its contract to pay Raytheon part of the cost of aircraft product liability insurance.
However, the federal government contended that between 1988 and 1999, Raytheon billed the defense department using a method not in compliance with cost accounting standards, which resulted in higher charges to the defense department.
Raytheon changed the practice starting in 2000.
Raytheon spokesman Tim Travis said the company had no immediate comment on the settlement.
The settlement follows a 15-month investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Kansas, the Defense Contract Audit Agency and the Department of Defense.
In November, Raytheon agreed to a settlement with federal regulators in one of the first cases involving alleged violations of a rule barring companies from revealing information to stock analysts before the general public.
Last month, Frank Caine resigned as the Lexington-based company's chief financial officer and was replaced by Edward S. Pliner.
In midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Raytheon shares were down $1.99, or 6.3 percent, to $29.43.
-------
Federal Contracts
States News Service
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47826-2003Jan12?language=printer
ASRC Aerospace Corp. of Greenbelt won a $30.38 million contract from the Drug Enforcement Administration for customer support services.
Shaw Remediation Services of Virginia Beach won a contract with a maximum value of $25 million from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command for environmental remedial action services.
Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems' undersea systems division of Manassas won a $20 million contract from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for environmental services.
Anteon International Corp. of Fairfax won task orders valued at $13.7 million from the Air Force's Air Force Warfare Center and Air Force Research Laboratory to support both organizations.
Contrack International Inc. of Arlington won a $6.44 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers' Transatlantic Programs Center for the construction of enlisted and officer personnel housing at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar.
Defense Surveillance Systems LLC of Germantown won a $5.14 million contract from the State Department to deliver three aircraft and pilot training.
Excalibur Group LLC of McLean won a $1.25 million contract from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for environmental services.
Anteon Corp. of Fairfax won a $758,400 contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for the modification of type 18 periscopes used with the submarine imaging system.
Computer Sciences Corp. of Rockville won a $309,893 contract from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for professional, administrative and management support services.
Chesapeake Sciences Corp. of Millersville, Md., won a $206,583 contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for hardware for the Vector Sensor Line Array.
Fairfax Precision Manufacturing Inc. of Sterling won a $95,634 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for rod end plain bearings.
Northrop Grumman of Annapolis won a $53,000 contract from the Navy for projector assemblies.
General Merchandise Supplies Unlimited of Washington won a $51,195 contract from the Defense Department for drinking tubes.
MRA Systems Inc., operating as Middle River Aircraft Systems of Baltimore won a $33,234 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for thrust reverser wear strips.
Dela Technology Corp. of Rockville won a $32,700 contract from the Defense Supply Center for hydraulic pistons.
Cenna International Corp. of Waldorf won a $30,780 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for power supply assemblies.
Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $28,230 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for metal surface activators and cleaners.
Nurad Technologies of Baltimore won a $50,160 contract from the Defense Supply Center for antennas.
For more information about these contracts, contact States News Service at 202-628-3100, ext. 266
-------- iraq
Area's Exiles Plot a Model Iraq
Talk of War Propels Groups as They Plan A Shift to Democracy
By Caryle Murphy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47529-2003Jan12?language=printer
One night last week, six Iraqi-born men gathered around the dining room table in a sparsely furnished Georgetown rowhouse owned by a local Iraqi physician. A seventh joined them via speakerphone from Geneva.
On the wall, hand-drawn diagrams and circles illustrated links among various "working groups" devoted to education, infrastructure, the economy and other issues that would Iraq after the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The conversation, switching easily between Arabic and English, was sprinkled with such phrases as "momentum must be maintained," "likely to be at war by February" and "the first 100 days."
This was a board meeting of Iraqi National Group, formed in the fall by exiled Iraqis with the goal of mapping out recommendations for the crucial early days of a transitional government in Baghdad.
"It's a given to the majority of Iraqis that there will be a regime change by war or otherwise, and whoever comes to power in Iraq will need this group," said Laith Kubba, who leads the Washington-based organization.
As the United States moves ever closer to a military attack against Hussein's government, the prospect of a post-Hussein Iraq has galvanized the estimated 5,000 Iraqis in the Washington area.
Families are anticipating seeing relatives for the first time in decades, and many professionals are envisioning how they will contribute their services in Iraq's reconstruction. Some are lending their support to ad hoc groups such as Kubba's, while others are participating in a similar effort launched by the State Department.
The Washington region's Iraqis -- part of a worldwide diaspora of some 4 million, about 300,000 of whom live in the United States -- include Kurds, Christians, and Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Some have been here since the 1970s; others came after the failed 1991 uprisings against Hussein in southern Iraq, and still others after an aborted, CIA-supported coup in 1996.
After a dozen years of false starts and deflated hopes, many of them believe that the United States is finally serious about ending Hussein's regime.
Many of the exiles, such as College Park physician Jamal Fadul, know the costs of war. Fadul helped organize the 1991 uprising. When the Iraqi army attacked his hospital, Fadul saw scenes that still bring him nightmares. Inside, more than 70 patients were dragged from their beds and shot. Outside, hospital beds that had been wheeled into the street stood abandoned under fire. Each one held a patient, all now dead.
Despite the experience, Fadul gives qualified support to U.S. military intervention to oust Hussein.
"Whoever is going to remove Saddam, we will work with them," said Fadul, 45, who seems an unlikely rebel with his gray hair and white medical jacket.
"What we are afraid of is what's going to happen afterwards," Fadul said. "There is a big question mark among the Iraqi people: Are the Americans against us or are the Americans against Saddam Hussein? We would like to see real support from the United States and the rest of the civilized world for democracy."
Ridha Al Tamimi, 35, also took part in the 1991 rebellion, working as a nurse. He came to the United States in 1997 after six years in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia and now delivers pastries to area Starbucks stores.
He is especially sensitive about civilian casualties because last November, his 29-year-old niece and her infant daughter were killed when two missiles hit their home. The missiles, Tamimi said, came from a U.S. or British plane patroling the no-fly zone in southern Iraq.
"I'm very happy if the U.S. government kills Saddam and his group, but don't kill the Iraqi people," said Tamimi, who lives in Northwest Washington.
Of more than a dozen Iraqis recently interviewed, none said they plan to permanently return to Iraq if Hussein is removed. "I have a mortgage now," said Ali Shaker, 45, who was a lawyer in Iraq before fleeing in 1991 and now works with Wackenhut security services. Besides, Shaker said, his daughter does not want to leave her fifth-grade class at Lake Ridge Elementary in Woodbridge.
But many exiles said they intend to visit relatives in Iraq and find ways to assist in its rebuilding.
"I'll be on the first U.S. tank!" joked Rend Rahim Francke, executive director of Iraq Foundation, a Washington nonprofit group formed to lobby for regime change in Baghdad.
Francke, who has been here since 1981, said she plans to establish part-time residence in Baghdad and set up a local office of the foundation "as soon as practically possible." Her objective, she said, is to help rebuild civil society.
As preparation, Francke found a book on the U.S. occupation of Japan after World War II in a secondhand bookshop. "I'm reading it now," she said, smiling.
The State Department's initiative, called the Future of Iraq Project, has brought exiled Iraqis together in recent months to discuss such issues as judicial reform, war crimes trials, public finance, agriculture and energy policy. Last week, about 30 Iraqi lawyers and judges in the justice group met for two days at a Dupont Circle hotel.
They examined a 600-page report of recommendations for reforming Iraq's legal system and issued an open letter to lawyers and judges inside Iraq, asking them to prepare themselves for the changes that are coming.
Exiled Iraqis' support for U.S. military intervention separates them from most other Arabs, who are almost universally against it, Francke noted. But it puts the exile community in sync with Iraqis at home, she said, noting that in the last month or so, Iraqis in the United States who phoned relatives at home often were pointedly asked, "When are you coming?" or "What are you waiting for?"
One night last week, several Iraqis gathered at Dar Ul Salaam Islamic Center in an Annandale strip mall to discuss their homeland's future. Colored balloons that said "Eid Mubarak" hung from the ceiling, remnants of recent celebrations for the Muslim holiday at the end of Ramadan.
Dhiya Al Saadawi, who left Iraq in 1992 and owns Al Hikma Bookstore in Falls Church, said he and others eagerly anticipate even greater celebrations when Hussein is removed.
But their hopes are mixed with apprehensions about damage to Iraq's infrastructure by U.S. bombs and the possibility that Hussein may unleash chemical or biological weapons in order to complicate an invasion.
Even more fears surround the transition period. Many Iraqis anticipate an outbreak of revenge killings but hope that a strong U.S. military presence and a well-planned amnesty program for all but the most senior Iraqi officials will keep such killings to a minimum.
Iraqis also are worried about the fractiousness of the exiled political groups that are itching to take control in a post-Hussein Iraq. And they fret about U.S. unwillingness to sustain the long-term effort needed to plant democracy. "We don't expect Jeffersonian democracy after Day One," Francke said. "But we want Iraq to move on that road firmly, and I don't know if the United States is going to stay on that course."
Most Iraqis expressed openness to a long-term U.S. military presence to support an Iraqi-led transition government until elections are held. But they cautioned that Iraqis' reaction to a lengthy occupation will depend on what it accomplishes.
"If America goes there, 1.2 billion Muslims will be watching," said Rubar S. Sandi of Potomac, an Iraqi-born businessman who was at Kubba's planning session last week. "If they provide safety and security and health and schools and food and clean water, I really believe the entire Muslim world will change their mind about America and its image."
For the moment, however, Iraqis are focused on Hussein's demise. Pediatrician Shawki Al Attar, 62, owner of the Georgetown rowhouse where Kubba's group meets, wanted to show a visitor why during a recent visit to his Silver Spring office.
Attar raised a motion picture screen hanging from the ceiling to reveal a painting by an Iraqi artist. It showed a sky of black and blue pressing down on a cluster of empty, darkened houses. In the foreground, a row of oval-shaped heads with no hair and no faces looked at the homes.
"Isn't it gloomy? I call it 'Baghdad in the Saddam Era,' " said Attar, peering through rimless eyeglasses. "I keep it covered because nobody likes it."
So how, Attar and an Iraqi friend were asked, do you imagine the same painting without him?
"Oh, we see sunshine! And flowers!" the friend said.
"And Fourth of July fireworks!" Attar added.
--------
Kurds Face a Second Enemy: Islamic Fighters on Iraq Flank
January 13, 2003
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/international/middleeast/13KURD.html
SHINERWE MOUNTAIN, Iraq, Jan. 12 - Peering down from this snowcapped peak, Khakamend Khakarush Omar, a Kurdish military commander who has spent his life resisting Saddam Hussein, pointed to villages in the valley below. All are under enemy control, ringed by bunkers and armed bearded men.
The enemy gunmen on the opposing ridge are not in Mr. Hussein's army. They pay no allegiance to any state. They are fighters for Ansar al Islam, a group of militants who have taken hold of a small corner of Kurdish-controlled Iraq and established harsh Islamic order over a wild, isolated land.
On this side of the lines, the secular Kurdish government rules. On the other, women must wear veils and men must wear beards. Music, alcohol, television and dancing are banned. Ansar's defectors say that men must assemble in mosques for prayer five times each day and that shops cannot display products with labels bearing images of women.
"They have the same program as the Taliban here," Mr. Omar said, crouching behind a wall while distant gunfire echoed on the other side.
It is a tense time. As Kurds wait for a decision on whether the United States will attack their primary enemy, Mr. Hussein, they are bogged down in a war on their flank. It is a war against militant Islam, with strong parallels and ties to the war in Afghanistan, albeit on a much smaller scale.
It is also a war with significant implications for America's own plans for Iraq. After Ansar forces overran two hilltops at the valley's entrance last month, killing scores in battle and executing nearly two dozen captured Kurdish fighters, the Kurdish authorities here formally requested American help.
The request might not have been necessary. American officials say the Pentagon is concerned that in addition to general threats posed by the spread of international Islamic terrorism, Ansar al Islam - estimated to have more than 600 troops or militants - would pose risks to American forces during a war against Mr. Hussein, or during an occupation afterward.
An American official who has interviewed captured Islamists near here said a central element of what the Kurdish government here has been saying for a year - that Ansar has directly collaborated with Al Qaeda - was now believed to be true. This claim is also confirmed by Al Qaeda documents found in Afghanistan by The New York Times.
"I take it as a given that, yes, some of these Ansar people have strong links to Afghanistan, and strong links to Al Qaeda," the official said.
Signs of that thinking were evident recently when an American intelligence team visited the Kurdish military headquarters along the Ansar lines. The team later observed Ansar positions from Kurdish bunkers and returned to the headquarters to meet with a Kurdish commander and intelligence chief.
In the valley beneath Shinerwe Mountain, there is a sense that this small war is soon to grow.
It is a possibility anticipated by the Islamists as well. One imprisoned militant, Qais Ibrahim Khadir, who was arrested last April after an assassination attempt against the prime minister in the eastern Kurdish zone, said Ansar's fighters had long expected the United States to intervene. "The simplest person there, the smallest person, knows that America may attack," he said.
Still, even as the expectation builds, much of the fine detail about Ansar - whose ranks include local teenagers, Taliban copycats and Qaeda escapees who regrouped here from Afghanistan - remains murky.
With its back to the Iranian border and its front facing a quasi-democracy in Kurdish Iraq that the world barely recognizes, the group operates in deep geographic and political isolation. Villages under its control are nearly impenetrable to outsiders. Unlike the Taliban before it was defeated, Ansar does not admit foreign journalists.
But in nearly 40 hours of interviews with Ansar prisoners and defectors in Kurdish custody, combined with interviews of two dozen Kurdish soldiers who fight them and with Kurdish and Western officials who have analyzed the group, as well as a review of some of Ansar's own video footage, a picture emerges of a group modeled after the Taliban, sponsoring war and terror from territory it rules with a deeply conservative religious bent.
Ansar al Islam, whose name means Supporters of Islam, formed in 2001 when several splintered parties in the region, which had been sending envoys to meet with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, merged into one and joined the international jihad.
The group operates on several levels. It runs training camps with lessons on infantry weapons, tactics, suicide bombing and assassination. It videotapes combat operations and has boasted of battlefield successes on a Web site (www.ansarislam.com). It sends video copies on compact discs to Al Qaeda at an undisclosed location, a defector said.
The disc images, some of which were reviewed by The Times, include scenes from the battle in December and its aftermath, in which Ansar fighters lined up dead Kurdish fighters along a road. The cameraman, walking along filming this macabre display, zooms in on several of the dead fighters' heads, each with bullet wounds that suggest execution. Parts of the footage are overlaid with music and Islamic chants.
Local officials and prisoners say that the group is also host to Arab fighters who left Afghanistan as the United States routed the Taliban, and that those fighters have used this largely lawless border region much as Al Qaeda members have hidden in the Pakistani frontier. Kurdish intelligence officials say as many as 150 foreign fighters are in Ansar's ranks, although some estimates put that number as low as 30.
The group is thought to have about 650 fighters in all, including Kurds who have trained in Afghanistan. Its 15-member leadership council, or shura, which operates from the village of Beyara, includes several people who served as emissaries to Al Qaeda, visiting Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, Kurdish officials and Ansar defectors said.
According to those people, the leaders include Mullah Namo and Omar Barziani, two Kurds who met with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; Abu Zubair al-Shami, an Arab who was sent last year as Osama bin Laden's representative to expand Al Qaeda; and Ayub Afghan, a Kurdish explosives specialist who fought alongside Afghans against the Russians and now makes suicide bomber's belts and teaches at Ansar's camps.
Some Kurdish officials say this region was infiltrated by Al Qaeda in 2001 to set up an alternative to the group's Afghanistan headquarters. "Beyara is the command center of the Middle East," said Nisherwan Mustafa Amin, a senior member of the Kurdish politburo in northeastern Iraq. This claim has not been publicly endorsed by Washington.
Documents from a Qaeda guest house in Kabul, gathered by a Times reporter as the Taliban were being defeated in Afghanistan, also establish a connection between the Islamists in this valley and Al Qaeda's international jihad.
The documents, which were found with bomb manuals and Al Qaeda ammunition inventories, include lists of pseudonyms for international volunteers whom Al Qaeda referred for training in Afghan camps. Among them are five Kurds.
They also include a memorandum from the "Iraqi Kurdistan Islamic Brigade" listing several Iraqi villages beneath the Shinerwe Mountain's ridges, including Beyara, and declaring that the Islamists should be urged to unite and apply the Taliban's style of civic order there. [The text of the memorandum is linked at the right under the "Related Articles" header.]
"Expel those Jews and Christians from Kurdistan, and join the way of jihad," it reads. "Rule every piece of land you rule with the Islamic sharia rule."
The memorandum was dated Aug. 11, 2001, three weeks before formerly independent Islamic parties in the region announced that they had formed the party that became Ansar, and shortly before mullahs began circulating new Islamic rules.
It was also just weeks before the militants opened an offensive against the secular Kurdish forces. A senior Qaeda leader from Afghanistan, Abdulrakhman al-Shami, was killed early in the campaign, according to Kurdish officials and a defector who attended his funeral.
Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party controlling most of northeastern Iraq, said Ansar might harbor more senior Qaeda members as well.
"The last analysis of the Americans is that this group is part of Al Qaeda, and some of the leaders, some of the very important members of Al Qaeda, are now in the area," he said.
In the strongest public allegation to date, Ali Abu al-Ragheb, Jordan's prime minister, said last month that Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, a senior Qaeda leader, was believed to be hiding in Ansar's camps. Mr. Zarqawi is accused of ordering and underwriting the assassination in October of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat in Jordan.
Kurdish intelligence officials believe that he uses the name Kudama while in northern Iraq, and that with Mr. Khadir, who was captured, he planned the nearly successful attempt last April to kill Dr. Barham Salih, the prime minister of the eastern Kurdish zone.
Other aspects of Ansar's activities are more uncertain. Kurdish officials suggested last year that the Islamists were smuggling chemical weapons from Iraq's security services to Al Qaeda. The American official who interviewed prisoners here said the claim did not seem credible.
Nonetheless, neither American nor local officials rule out the chance that Mr. Hussein's security services and the militants have exchanged information about the Kurds, an enemy they share.
There is similar uncertainty about a link to Iran. Iran has denied supporting Ansar, and two months ago, Mr. Amin said, the Iranian government notified the Kurds that it had cut ties with the militants and that it regards them as terrorists.
But Kurdish officials say Iran has encouraged Ansar, helping it to destabilize the secular authorities in the Kurdish enclave. They note that ammunition smuggled to Beyara, which is beside the border, has come through Iran.
"For the amount of mortars Ansar shells us with each month, they would need six or seven trucks to carry it," an intelligence official said. "Iran is lying when they say, `It's not us.' "
One Ansar prisoner also said he knew of three wounded militants who were evacuated to Iran. The prisoner, Sirwan Abdulkarim Raza, was 15 when caught.
Kurdish commanders say that despite itssupport, Ansar is vulnerable and that defections or departures have been increasing, with as many as three fighters leaving each week. One commander, Harim Kemal Agha, astride a garrison Ansar had briefly overrun last month, predicted an end. "What you are going to see here is better than what the world saw in Afghanistan," he said.
Balling his hands into fists, he snapped all of his fingers open at once. He needed no translator. He uttered a universal word: "Boom."
-------- israel / palestine
What Are Friends For?
Israeli Generals and Their Millionaire Admirers
by Uri Avnery
January 13, 2003
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/avnery4.html
I have received a lot of curses in my lifetime, and here and there some compliments, too. But I have never received a compliment like this one: an important party, represented in the Knesset, has mentioned my name in its official election platform.
Under the heading "Legislation and strict supervision of organizations and activists of the extreme left", the National Union party's program says:
"We shall anchor in legislation more severe measures, including the cancellation of citizenship, against people like Uri Avnery, Leah Tsemel and refuseniks of all kinds, who are defaming the country abroad."
I don't know whether to be proud, laugh or be angry.
To be proud, because my name is used to symbolize the whole peace camp. And also because I appear side by side with Leah Tsemel, the valiant lawyer who defends Palestinian prisoners, and the refuseniks, who represent the conscience of Israel.
To laugh, considering the abysmal chutzpa of this sentence. The leader of the National Union party is Avigdor (Ivette) Liberman, a person brought up in the Bolshevik education system of Stalin and who has absorbed - as we can see - the racist and power-hungry attitudes of the red tyrant. He has come here when everything was ready, to a state that we have created (literally) with our blood, and now demands, no more no less, to cancel our citizenship.
To be angry, because Liberman, together with National Religious leader Effi Eytam and some of the Likud leaders, is in the vanguard of the dirty column that is besieging Israeli democracy. Last week they succeeded in inducing the majority of the politicians in the General Election Committee to disqualify two Arab Knesset-members (Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara) and an Arab election list (Balad) from participating in the elections, expelling in practice 20% of Israel's citizens from the political arena.
If some people still entertain the illusion that this attack is directed solely against the Arab citizens (a totally unacceptable act by itself), they should be reminded of one of the most important sayings of the 20th century, the murderous century of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini.
The saying belongs to Martin Niemoeller, a German U-Boat commander in WWI who later became a Protestant pastor and pacifist. The Nazis threw him into a concentration camp. After miraculously surviving, he coined the following unforgettable sentences:
"When the Nazis took the communists away, I was silent; after all, I was no communist.
"When they put the social-democrats in prison, I was silent; after all, I was no social-democrat.
"When they took the trade-unionists away, I did not protest; after all, I was no trade-unionist.
"When they took me away, there was nobody left to protest."
Liberman's program shows clearly that something similar is happening now in our country. They started with the incitement against the Arab citizens and their expulsion from the political system. Now they speak of eliminating the "extreme left". Is there any doubt, that in the next stage they will demand the elimination of all the left, "moderate" and "patriotic" as they may be? And then, following the historic precedents, it will be the turn of the "liberal" Likud members.
An apocalyptic vision? Not really. The President of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, this week compared our situation with Nazi Germany. In the presence of the President of Israel, the Chief Justice, himself a Holocaust survivor, said that "if it has happened in the country of Kant and Beethoven, it can happen everywhere. If we do not defend democracy, democracy will not defend us!" (It will be interesting to see how he will conduct himself next week, when he will have to decide on the Tibi-Beshara expulsion case.)
In Israel, we don't like to make comparisons with the dark regimes. The memories are too fresh, and nobody in Israel advocates genocide. But undoubtedly, parties and leaders who openly advocate "transfer", would have been called anywhere else in the world Neo-Fascists (even if the term "Neo-Bolsheviks" would be more appropriate, since it was Stalin who used to transfer whole peoples in the Soviet Union.)
Joerg Haider does not propose to cancel the Austrian citizenship of people who disagree with his obnoxious views, nor does Jean-Marie Le-Pen propose to expel from the National Assembly every deputy who is not of pure French blood.
For 54 years, the State of Israel has prided itself of being "the only democracy in the Middle East". All Israeli propaganda abroad, and especially in the United States, is based on this slogan. Now Liberman and the Libermen come and try to destroy Israeli democracy, our creation, and to set up a kind of Fascistan, somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
If somebody is "defaming our country abroad", it is surely this person.
-------- latin america
Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine President, Dies;
Forced Falklands Invasion
By Richard Pearson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47873-2003Jan12?language=printer
Leopoldo Galtieri, 76, the former Argentine president and army commander who met both political dissent in his own country and British rule of the Falkland Islands with violence and failed on both counts, died of heart and respiratory ailments Jan. 12 at a hospital in Buenos Aires. He had pancreatic cancer.
Gen. Galtieri, as army commander in chief, became a member of his country's ruling military junta in 1979 and served as president from November 1981 until forced to resign and retire from public life by his junta colleagues shortly after the Falklands war in June 1982.
As president, he will be remembered outside Argentina for his ill-thought-out and bumbling attempt to invade and occupy the Falklands six months after becoming president.
The South Atlantic islands, a rocky, wind-swept outpost of sheep farms that had been ruled by Britain since the age of sail, were claimed by Argentina. The Argentine position on what that country called the Malvinas was based on claims it insisted it had inherited from the Spanish crown.
The Argentine invasion of the islands, about 300 miles from the mainland, sparked a war that ended in Argentine defeat less than 80 days later.
Gen. Galtieri later admitted that he thought the whole operation would be an easy undertaking. The age of classic imperialism was over, and Britain was in the midst of scaling down its navy. And, the general said he thought objections from the United States would be minimal due to Argentina's enthusiastic anti-communist stance and its support for U.S. policies in Central America.
But, in the Falklands, Britain counterattacked. The Union flag had been lowered by force, and the Falklanders were of British descent and wanted British rule. These were elements that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet found unacceptable.
After attempting mediation between Britain and Argentina, the United States sided with Britain and stopped military aid to Argentina -- as did the European Community. And on the Falklands, a British amphibious force counterinvaded and quickly prevailed.
It was reported that the British lost 255 lives in the war and Argentina more than 700. Soon after, more than 15,000 prisoners of war were returned to Argentina.
Observers said that Gen. Galtieri had decided on the invasion for a classic reason: to unite a divided and suffering country against an external enemy. The country had soaring inflation and an internal security apparatus that from 1976 to 1983 tortured and killed as many as 30,000 political opponents.
With Argentina's quick and inglorious defeat in the war, the government became even more unpopular.
Gen. Galtieri wanted to fight on, proposing "total war" with Britain, though it was never clear what that would entail or how it could be carried out. In any case, the junta turned against him.
The white-haired leader, who stood 6 feet 2 inches tall, had seemed the very model of a modern general. But he had failed so completely that not only was he forced from office, but within a year the junta itself was history.
Democracy returned to Argentina.
In the aftermath of the junta, the military masters were put on trial for their actions in the "Dirty War" against their citizens. Gen. Galtieri was sent to prison in 1986 for "military negligence" for his Falklands disaster.
After the political generals were pardoned in 1989 by President Carlos Menem, Gen. Galtieri was again arrested on grounds the pardon itself was unconstitutional and for his implication in the torture and execution of 19 Montoneros, a left-wing guerrilla group of the Justicialist (Peronist) Party.
He was living under house arrest at the time of his death.
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, who was born in a suburb of Buenos Aires, was a 1945 civil engineering graduate of the Argentine Military Academy. He later studied at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone and taught courses in administration at the Argentine Army War College.
After advanced engineering training at Fort Belvoir, he rose swiftly through the army ranks, becoming the commander in chief with the rank of lieutenant general in 1979.
Gen. Galtieri became known outside Argentina when he closed the Argentine border with Chile over disputed islands in the Beagle Channel in 1981. The same year, he made two trips to this country and was referred to by President Ronald Reagan as "a magnificent general."
-------- mideast
U.S. Warships Eye Eastern Mediterranean for Iraq War Role
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47392-2003Jan12?language=printer
ABOARD THE USS HARRY S. TRUMAN, Jan. 12 -- This Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and a dozen other ships in its battle group are raising the profile of the U.S. Navy in the Mediterranean Sea after a lengthy period when it was largely absent following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks , said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem aboard his flotilla's flagship.
The renewed Navy presence is significant because it comes as U.S. war planners are eyeing the eastern end of the Mediterranean, off the coasts of Israel and Lebanon, for a possible role in any new war with Iraq. None of the six carriers that fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War operated in the Mediterranean, but that is likely to be different if another war occurs. During the last war, U.S. aircraft couldn't use Jordanian airspace, but they might receive permission this time.
Flying over Israel and Jordan would open a corridor for carrier-based warplanes to speed from the Mediterranean into the western Iraqi desert, a crucial area of concern to the United States and Israel. The Pentagon's war plans call for swift action at the outset of any combat to shut down the ability of the Iraqi military to launch missiles or drone aircraft from western Iraq across Jordan into Israel.
Whether the Truman's aircraft are given that mission is in doubt, said Capt. Michael Groothousen, the commander of the 97,000-ton nuclear-powered ship , the newest carrier in the Navy. "It all depends on how the coalition comes together," he said. From a military perspective, he said, the more points of entry to Iraqi airspace, the better: "You want to hit with power from as many directions as you can."
The Truman, commissioned in 1998, has about 5,000 sailors and 80 aircraft aboard. It resembles the seven previous Nimitz-class flattops and carries the same warplanes -- mainly F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets -- that other carriers do.
But the information revolution has taken hold in the military over the past decade, and there are few places where that is more evident than on this ship. The Truman is plugged into the Internet and the military's secure internal "Sipernet."
That constant flow of data is changing how the ship fights and how its sailors live. A decade ago, the Navy's reconnaissance photos were made with "wet" film flown back to the United States for analysis. Now digital images from airborne fighters are beamed back to the ship and analyzed in time to transmit targeting coordinates to waiting aircraft.
Stufflebeem, the commander of the Truman-led battle group, said the mission now is to show the flag and work with allies in this part of the world. "Since 9/11, American carriers -- eight, I think -- have operated in Central Command's area" near Afghanistan, near Iraq, and around the Horn of Africa, he said. "We're operating in the Med because it's been awhile since an American carrier has done that."
"People need to see us," said the admiral, who is better known than most one-star officers because of a previous assignment on the staff of the Joint Chiefs in which he appeared with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as a press briefer during the Afghan war. He also is the only admiral to have been on the roster of the Detroit Lions, who signed him as a punter in 1975, before he abandoned professional football to become a full-time Navy flier.
To boost the U.S. military presence in the region, Stufflebeem has deployed his Norfolk-based battle group: the carrier, a cruiser, a frigate, five destroyers and a group of supply ships and submarines that come and go. "We are spread from the Strait of Gibraltar all the way to the eastern Med," said Capt. M. Stewart O'Bryan, the day-to-day commander of the surface ships in the battle group. "We are showing presence. We are querying ships in the war on terrorism." The Navy is questioning an average of about 50 ships a day in the Mediterranean, he said. Boardings are rare, though.
The battle group is also providing escorts to ships in such choke points as the Strait of Gibraltar, where terrorists might attack, O'Bryan said. "There are indications that, like with the episodes with the USS Cole and the French ship [off the coast of Yemen], they may try that in other places in the world," he added. O'Bryan commanded the Cole in the late 1990s, before the Oct. 2000 terrorist bombing in a Yemeni harbor that killed 17 sailors and wounded 39 others.
In a more traditional side to showing the flag, ships from the battle group also are making port calls across the region -- three ships visited Spain and Gibraltar, two visited Turkey, a sixth went to Portugal and Malta and a seventh stopped in Italy.
Exercises with regional navies, neglected over the last 16 months, are resuming. Two ships participated in a joint search-and-rescue exercise last month dubbed "Reliant Mermaid" with Turkey and Israel. A delegation of Turkish officials flew to the Truman over the weekend to meet its commanders. Navy officials said it was a routine visit, but the meet-and-greet came as both the Turkish government and its military have been hesitant about supporting a U.S. military campaign in Iraq.
Two ships in the battle group began a multipurpose exercise Sunday with the Israeli military called "Noble Dina."
Coming up this month is an air-defense exercise with the Israeli military, which could be crucial in keeping Israel out of any war with Iraq. As part of that exercise, two Army Patriot anti-missile batteries have been deployed to Israel and are expected to remain there indefinitely. Stufflebeem said he expected that part of his battle group would participate in the exercise.
There also is a possibility that, in the event of war, a U.S. ship with an Aegis system, which can track hundreds of targets simultaneously, would be parked off the Israeli coast to help coordinate anti-missile operations in the region.
Stufflebeem said he hadn't been told what role the Truman or its sister ships would play in a conflict with Iraq. He said he was prepared to operate in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf. "I've got my guys thinking through all the possibilities," he said as an F-14 Tomcat catapulted off the flight deck just a few feet above his head, shaking his suite. "We don't know when we're going to go, or where we're going to go."
But whatever orders eventually come down, Groothousen, the Truman's commander, said he was confident that "when the time comes, we'll live up to our namesake -- we'll give 'em hell."
----
Saudi Says Iraqi War Unlikely
Monday, January 13, 2003
Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47848-2003Jan12?language=printer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia said yesterday that he did not believe there would be a war on neighboring Iraq and that the kingdom had proposed an initiative to other Arab states to resolve the crisis.
"There is no doubt that all the reasons point to a war, but I personally believe there will not be a war. . . . I see the fleets but, God willing, there will be no war," Crown Prince Abdullah said on state television.
"This is my personal opinion; I did not hear anything and no one told me anything," he added.
----
Libya and US exchange intelligence on al-Qaeda
January 13 2003
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/12/1041990183819.html
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has said in a press interview his country and the United States were exchanging intelligence information on the al-Qaeda terror network.
But he acknowledged Osama bin Laden's growing popularity in the Muslim world.
"Intelligence agencies in Libya and the US are exchanging information," he told Newsweek magazine in an interview that will appear in Monday's edition.
"There are Libyan terrorists in America and in Britain," the Libyan leader said.
"The Libyan intelligence service exchanges information so that they will be wiped out."
But Mr Gaddafi admitted that bin Laden, whose network is blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States, had become a prophet in the Islamic world and that "all the young people like him".
"Bin Laden has convinced his followers that America is attacking the whole Arab and Islamic world," the Libyan leader said.
"It is not a battle between America and bin Laden any more. Everybody is with bin Laden."
He said al-Qaeda would not hesitate to launch another attack on the United States if it got the chance.
He said that, although he had often disagreed with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, particularly over his war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait and the Kurdish issue, he did not believe US-led military action against Iraq was justified.
"I have never been in agreement with Saddam. But he doesn't deserve this," the Libyan leader said, adding that while Saddam might be irrational, he did not constitute a threat.
-------- puerto rico
Puerto Rican Groups Vow To Continue Vieques Protest
NATION IN BRIEF
Monday, January 13, 2003
Washington Post; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47844-2003Jan12?language=printer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Puerto Rican protest groups promised to keep up civil disobedience against imminent U.S. war games on Vieques, despite Friday's announcement by the Navy that it will soon end 50 years of battle training on the tiny island May 1.
"Civil disobedience continues to exert pressure," ex-gubernatorial candidate David Noriega said yesterday. "On May 1, the lands will still be contaminated and will still be in federal hands. That's the next battle."
Twenty nine days of battle training scheduled to begin today may be the last performed by the Navy in Vieques.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group was scheduled to practice aerial bombing and ship-to-shore shelling exercises. Only "dummy" bombs will be used on the range, a condition imposed after a civilian security guard died in April 1999 during a botched bombing run by a Marine Corps jet.
----
U.S. Navy Starts Vieques Bomb Training
January 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Fighter jets soared over Vieques dropping inert bombs Monday in what the Navy says will be its final round of nearly six decades of training exercises on the Puerto Rican island.
F-18s began dropping inert 25-pound bombs on a firing range shortly after authorities detained five protesters who broke through a Navy fence in an attempt to thwart the maneuvers.
One man shouted ``Peace for Vieques!'' as guards handcuffed him and led him away.
Luis Angel Torres of the pro-independence Socialist Workers Movement warned that three other protesters were hiding on Navy lands and would try to put themselves near the line of fire.
``The light can be seen at the end of the tunnel,'' he said. ``The people's struggle has forced them out.''
The exercises have been sharply criticized by leaders and activists of the U.S. territory since off-target bombs killed a civilian guard in 1999. Since then, the Navy has stopped using live ammunition and has turned to nonexplosive bombs and shells.
The Navy announced last week that it will abandon Vieques in May and move training to other bombing ranges in Florida and elsewhere on the U.S. mainland. The Navy says it also could close nearby Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, one of Puerto Rico's largest employers with some 4,800 employees and an estimated yearly contribution of $300 million to the economy.
``If they abandon Vieques and Roosevelt Roads, it will destroy the economy,'' said pro-Navy activist Luis Sanchez, who set up a small encampment topped with U.S. flags just outside the Navy's fences.
At a larger, established anti-Navy camp just paces away, about 30 demonstrators joined hands and prayed, saying they hope the Navy honors its pledge to leave this year.
For the military, the training assumed particular importance as the United States considers war with Iraq. About 8,000 sailors were participating in the exercises, many of them to prepare for deployment later this year to the Mediterranean.
Fighter jets bound for Vieques took off from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, one of 10 ships involved in training that could last up to a month.
More than two-thirds of Vieques voters supported a proposal to halt the bombing immediately in a nonbinding referendum in 2001.
Opponents say the bombing has stunted the island's economy, poisoned the environment and harmed the health of the island's 9,100 residents, all of which the Navy denies.
Protest leader Robert Rabin said the bombs were leaving toxins in the environment. ``It would immoral of us to allow that to continue without attempting to stop it,'' he said.
More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested over the years for trespassing on Navy lands. Some have served prison terms of up to six months.
Activists say they will now turn their attention to pressing for a thorough cleanup of the Navy lands, which comprise one-third of the island. Following a cleanup, the Navy is to turn over the 14,000 acres to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The military held its first training on Vieques in 1947 and has used its range on the island's eastern tip ever since to train sailors for conflicts from Korea to Afghanistan. The bombing range is some 10 miles from the nearest homes.
The Navy has long said the island east of Puerto Rico is uniquely suited to simultaneous mock assaults by sea, land and air, and that replacing it would require several locations.
----
Military to End Vieques Training in May
January 13, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-13-09.asp#anchor2
WASHINGTON, DC - The Department of Defense has confirmed that it will end all military training on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as of May 1, 2003.
Secretary of the Navy Gordon England signed the letter of certification to Congress on Friday confirming that, as planned, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps will cease military training on the Vieques Inner Range by May 1. The Department of the Navy has identified training alternatives that it says will "collectively provide equivalent or superior training" to the options now provided by the island of Vieques.
The Navy and Marine Corps will conduct future military training of East Coast units at existing continental U.S. ranges and facilities. The agencies said they also intend to maximize the use of enhanced training technologies.
"We looked at our entire training program and have developed a strategy to provide effective training for our sailors and Marines," England said. "It's important for the Department of the Navy to invest now in a training process that provides ready naval forces today and in the future. This is exactly what our comprehensive training strategy achieves."
The Navy plans to fund more than $400 million in improvements over the next few years to enhance future training efforts.
Vieques lies about seven miles southeast of the eastern end of Puerto Rico and is about 20 miles long and four miles wide at its widest point. The U.S. Navy purchased about 22,000 of the island's 33,000 acres for $1.5 million during the 1940s.
Since 1938, the property has been used to train Navy and Marine Corps forces in the art of sea, air and land combat. An area of about 899 acres on the eastern end of the island is known as the Live Impact Area (LIA) and is used for Naval surface gunnery practice, air-to-surface ordnance delivery, and artillery and tank firing practice.
Training was halted in April 1999 after a stray bomb fired by an F-16 fighter killed base security guard David Sanes Rodriquez and injured four other Puerto Ricans. Live fire training has been banned on the island ever since.
The training has strewn bombs, toxic metals and chemicals across the tiny island, and destroyed much of its coral reef. A variety of medical problems among the 9,400 residents of the island have also been attributed to the bombing.
At various times over the past four years, hundreds of protesters have camped out on the bombing ranges to prevent the resumption of training on the island.
"Today's announcement is a great victory for all of us, Puerto Ricans and New Yorkers," said New York Governor George Pataki, who has long opposed military training on Vieques. "This certification ensures a new beginning for the people of Vieques, who for decades have dreamed of ending this military practice on their soil."
In February 2001, Governor Pataki and Puerto Rican Governor Sila Calderon met with federal officials to urge them to end the military practices in Vieques. As a result, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an order to temporarily cease military training on the island.
In April 2001, Governor Pataki lead a delegation of state and community leaders to Vieques to see first hand the impact of the bombings and to raise public awareness of those impacts on the people of the island.
Protest groups have vowed to keep up their pressure until the military leaves the island and cleans up the mess left by years of training exercises. The latest - and perhaps the last - round of training at Vieques was scheduled to begin today with aerial bombing and ship to shore shelling exercises using dummy bombs.
In April 2001, Governor Pataki lead a delegation of state and community leaders to Vieques to see first hand the impact of the bombings and to raise public awareness of those impacts on the people of the island.
Protest groups have vowed to keep up their pressure until the military leaves the island and cleans up the mess left by years of training exercises. The latest - and perhaps the last - round of training at Vieques was scheduled to begin today with aerial bombing and ship to shore shelling exercises using dummy bombs.
-------- space
Security Tight for Space Shuttle and First Israeli Astronaut
January 13, 2003
New York Times
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/science/13CND_SHUT.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 - The space shuttle Columbia, protected by layers of tight security, is poised to take off this week on a scientifically challenging mission that is also one of the most politically delicate in the space program's history.
On Thursday, Columbia is to lift off on a 16-day research flight crammed with more than 90 experiments and investigations that will mean round-the-clock duties for its seven-member crew, which includes the first Israeli astronaut. The countdown began today.
Heightened security has surrounded shuttle flights from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida since Sept. 11, 2001. Officials have limited public and news media access to the base, delayed announcements of launching times, expanded restricted zones around the base, patrolled the skies with military aircraft, installed new fencing around launching pads and conspicuously deployed military personnel, some with heavy weapons.
But NASA's assistant administrator for security management, David Saleeba, acknowledged that there were even more concerns this time, because Col. Ilan Ramon, a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force, is part of the crew.
"Because of the fact that he is Israeli and what is going on in the world today, it is natural to consider this a high-profile flight," Mr. Saleeba said. "Our antennas are up more than usual."
Mr. Saleeba said the agency had not received any direct threats against Colonel Ramon or the shuttle, but had plans to increase security rapidly if danger arose. If necessary, he said, the military and other security forces were prepared to use deadly force to protect the shuttle and its crew.
In the past, NASA space shuttles have flown with astronauts from many countries, including Russia, France, Canada, Mexico and Ukraine. A member of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, Sultan Salman Abdulaziz al-Saud, flew on the shuttle Discovery in June 1985 to help deploy an Arab communications satellite.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton announced that NASA would fly an Israeli astronaut. Colonel Ramon, 48, an electronics and computer engineer and weapons specialist, was selected and began training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1998 as a payload specialist, NASA's term for a noncareer astronaut who is trained for a specific mission.
Columbia's mission differs from most recent shuttle flights in that it is devoted strictly to science and not to building or resupplying the International Space Station, the focus of most of NASA's human space flight efforts. Columbia's flight, which will include several experiments and instruments that may eventually be put on the space station, is the last dedicated science mission for the shuttle program, said Dr. John Charles, NASA's lead scientist for the venture.
Congress directed NASA to conduct the research flight because of concerns that space scientists and their work would stagnate during the long assembly period for the station, when little research could be done aboard the orbiting outpost, Dr. Charles said. As it turned out, the rotating crews of three astronauts that have continuously staffed the station for more than two years have had to devote more than 90 percent of their time to construction and maintenance, leaving comparatively little time for research.
"This flight will again showcase the versatility of the space shuttle as an orbiting research platform, returning the orbiter to a role it knows well, but has not played in some time," said Ron Dittemore, NASA's shuttle program manager.
The mission, originally scheduled for early 2000, has been delayed several times because of shuttle fleet maintenance problems and higher-priority flights, including the need to use Columbia to service the Hubble Space Telescope. It looked as if the mission was finally going to get off the ground last July, but small cracks were discovered in metal liners within the fuel pipes of all of the shuttles, and the fleet was grounded for repairs. Then NASA shuffled the launching schedule to mount two more pressing flights to the space station by the end of the year, again bumping Columbia's much-delayed mission until now.
"We are definitely ready to go," said Colonel Rick D. Husband of the Air Force, the commander of the five-man, two-woman crew. "We've used the down time for extra training and to get a better understanding of what we're going to do. But we are ready to fly."
The crew of veteran and rookie astronauts will be divided into two teams that will take turns conducting experiments 24 hours a day. Much of the work will be done with 7,500 pounds of research payloads housed in a large, pressurized laboratory called the Research Double Module carried in Columbia's cargo bay. The 20-foot-long, 14-foot-wide laboratory, owned by Spacehab Inc., is being leased to NASA; in return, the company will be allowed to sell some of its space to commercial customers. At the rear of the open cargo bay is a rack of equipment that can be operated by astronauts inside the shuttle.
Colonel Husband, who flew on one earlier shuttle mission, is a member of the Red Team, which includes Colonel Ramon; Dr. Laurel Salton Clark, a Navy commander and physician on her first space flight; and Dr. Kalpana Chawla, an aerospace engineer who was part of a 1997 shuttle crew.
The alternate Blue Team is composed of Michael P. Anderson, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew on a 1998 mission to the Russian Mir space station, and two space rookies from the Navy, Capt. David M. Brown and Cmdr. William C. McCool, who also helps Colonel Husband flying the shuttle as the mission's pilot.
Research scheduled during the mission is extremely broad, covering the biological, medical, physical, earth and space sciences, as well as technology development. For instance, 15 studies focus on space flight's effects on the human body, including bone and muscle loss sustained during weightlessness. The payload also includes a large combustion chamber that will be used to study fire and soot formation, as well as different methods of fire suppression in space, like using water mists with different sizes of droplets.
To help understand the dynamics of sand and soil under pressure - work that could apply to structural collapses and to soil's tendency to liquefy in earthquakes - water-saturated sand in special cylinders will be highly compressed. This will allow study of changes in soil structure without the gravity-induced stresses that complicate similar analysis on Earth.
The principal focus of Colonel Ramon's work will be an experiment designed by Israeli scientists to study the role of desert dust in climate change. From inside the shuttle, Colonel Ramon is to operate a twin-camera instrument in Columbia's cargo bay called Meidex, for Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, that will examine desert aerosol particles whipped into the atmosphere by storms.
Dust particles, carried great distances by the winds, have global impact because they affect the rain production of clouds, supply minerals for ocean life and absorb or scatter sunlight to affect climate warming.
Colonel Ramon said that as he photographed dust storms from space with the multispectral Meidex camera, ground stations and airplanes would be collecting dust samples from the same occurrences for comparison. The experiment was originally to have concentrated on deposits of dust from the Sahara on the Mediterranean region, but the flight delays now have Columbia overhead during a less-active dust storm period in the Sahara. To compensate, Colonel Ramon said, the sampling area has been broadened to include more of West Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.
"In a 16-day mission," he said, "we are pretty sure we will meet some dust storms."
-------- us
Gulf war vets laud advances in gear
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030113-5587056.htm
FORT STEWART, Ga. - U.S. troops who are returning to the Persian Gulf in the coming weeks say some of their equipment is head and shoulders above what they had in the 1991 Gulf war.
While much of the heavy artillery used by the Army's 3rd Infantry Division is the same as it was 12 years ago, battalion commanders cite major improvements in their capacity to manage a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.
"Our equipment is a thousand times better than what we had at the Gulf war and the training we've had to use it has been a thousand times better," said Maj. Michael D. Oliver, a Gulf war veteran who will deploy to Kuwait from Fort Stewart this month. "In terms of what we have now compared to what we had then, there's no comparison."
Maj. Oliver, an operations officer in the 3rd Infantry Division, said that during the past decade there has been so much focus on training to respond to biological or chemical weapons that "now soldiers look at it as just another weapon."
Every soldier heading into the Kuwaiti desert will carry an improved gas mask and two Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) suits, in addition to more than 60 pounds worth of other gear, including an M-16 rifle and night-vision goggles.
During the Gulf war, some soldiers complained that their MOPP suits were too bulky to carry easily.
"The new MOPP suits are vacuum-packed, more compact and easier to carry," said Sgt. Lascelles G. Cuff, a specialist in nuclear, biological and chemical equipment.
The suits are capable of protecting a soldier for 24 hours in a contaminated environment. Troops wear test paper on the arm of the suit and carry special kits to check for blood, blister and nerve agents that may arrive suddenly by air.
Sgt. Cuff said special equipment carried by each platoon to detect chemical-vapor hazards has improved vastly since the Gulf war.
"The equipment is a lot more compact, electronic and easier to use and a lot more accurate," he said.
There are more automatic chemical-agent detectors, making them easier to monitor as they are now connected directly to an alarm system that is triggered whenever hazardous agents are detected.
"I could show you how to put this piece of equipment into operation, that's how easy it is," Sgt. Cuff said.
As part of advanced preparations for Kuwait, soldiers with the 3rd Infantry Division have executed combat-training missions in desert conditions at the National Training Center in California. As part of the training, they were hit at least once a day with an unexpected, simulated attack. Many said the training infinitely improved their confidence and ability to quickly use their MOPP suits and other new equipment.
Another major advancement in equipment since the Gulf war has been the implementation of laser technology in the gun system atop the Bradley armored troop carriers used by mechanized infantry units, such as the 3rd Infantry Division.
"While the Bradley Fighting Vehicle is now a product of Desert Storm, it has been equipped with positioning system and a laser system capable of actually acquiring the distance of targets by laser," said Lt. Col. Scott E. Rutter, a battalion commander in the division's 1st Brigade.
Lt. Col. Rutter, who rode in a Bradley as a company commander during the Gulf war, said the laser technology advances a gunner's ability to hit a target with the first shot. Twelve years ago, a target's distance had to be calculated manually.
Perhaps the most expensive equipment advancement - average ground troops say it also is the most important - has been the implementation of the Javelin, a hand-held "fire and forget" anti-tank missile. It was developed with several system improvements to outshine its predecessor, the Dragon.
Equipped with an infrared site and a range of 2,500 meters, the Javelin, which costs about $80,000, uses thermal energy to detect its target. A soldier needs only to lock on a target once and fire; a "seeker" inside the missile remembers the direction.
Soldiers at Fort Stewart said it's a vast improvement over the Dragon, which was used during the Gulf war, because it cuts down the amount of time they would be vulnerable in the battlefield.
Instead of having to stand and guide a missile, as was the case with the Dragon, soldiers now can pop up, aim, fire and get back under cover well before the missile hits its target.
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Pentagon Wants Exemptions from Environmental Laws
January 13, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-13-09.asp#anchor1
WASHINGTON, DC - The Pentagon is mounting a major drive to secure broad exemptions from environmental laws for its domestic training, weapons testing and other readiness activities, according to an internal Department of Defense memo released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
The memo outlines an "action agenda" for conducting "a multi-year campaign," including developing a Congressional "political strategy" for "horse trading [and] coalition building."
"The Pentagon is unquestionably the biggest polluter and most recalcitrant environmental violator on the planet," said PEER general counsel Dan Meyer, a former U.S. Navy gunnery officer. "The Pentagon is the last place that any sane policymaker should want to confer environmental immunity."
The Pentagon plan, presented as "a consensus product" at the staff level for presentation to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, calls for:
- New statutory exemptions from the Clean Air Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act and federal toxic waste laws;
- Relaxation of regulatory standards in the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and federal wildlife protection laws as they apply to Defense Department operations.
- An executive order from President Bush that would establish the Defense Department as the first among equals in any disagreement with other agencies, requiring all agencies to assess the impact of their actions on national defense; and
- Creation of standards for invoking existing national security exemptions in environmental laws, such as declaring that certain protections for wildlife threaten national security.
In the last session of Congress, the Pentagon failed to obtain these statutory exemptions. The memo attributes the defeat of what it calls "the sustainable range effort" to being put on the "defensive" by environmental groups and the need "for more sustained 'Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield.'"
The Pentagon contends that compliance with natural resource protection laws is an "encroachment" on its readiness posture, since realistic training exercises, particularly those involving live munitions, must be adapted or scheduled to avoid nesting sites for migratory birds, critical habitat for endangered species or local clean air standards.
But a June 2002 report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the Pentagon could not quantify the significance of these encroachments and is not consolidating and coordinating exercises to avoid conflicts altogether.
"If the Pentagon devoted the same brainpower towards complying with our anti-pollution laws as it does evading and undermining those laws, everyone would be a lot better off," commented Meyer, who served in the Navy during the Persian Gulf War. "Last year, the Pentagon showed that it could bully EPA and Interior into acceptance of even broader changes, so it is quite likely that it can again get these agencies to agree to subvert the very laws they are sworn to uphold."
According to the memo, the Pentagon expects to win congressional approval during 2003 of exemptions to the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). Last year, the Pentagon did win a temporary MBTA exemption leading to a new permit system for shelling of migratory bird nesting sites. Despite this compromise, the DoD will again seek a complete MBTA exemption.
The memo predicts congressional approval in 2004 of changes to the Clean Air Act, and to two rules that deal with the toxic waste implications of spent military munitions: Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act.
Looking further ahead, the memo outlines plans for four other statutory rewrites, including the military's own basic conservation charter, the Sikes Act. The memo cautions that these proposals should be delayed until next session because they "would engender significant opposition, as all four would entail significant changes to major environmental statutes."
"At the same time the Pentagon says it can be trusted to be a good steward, it has stepped up removal of its own civilian natural and cultural resource specialists and replacing them with compliant contract consultants," noted Meyer, whose organization is now litigating against the Pentagon's outsourcing of its own resource specialists.
To overcome opposition, the memo outlines an extensive Pentagon lobbying campaign. Among the targets of what the memo terms an "outreach" effort are state attorney generals, who opposed similar changes last year. The memo also sketches programs to sway the media, industry and "Non-governmental Organizations."
The "Sustainable Ranges 2003 Decision Briefing to the Deputy Security of Defense" is available on PEER's website at: http://www.peer.org/DoD_2003attacks.pdf
----
Rules on Environment Concern Pentagon
Military Says Laws Inhibit Training
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47531-2003Jan12?language=printer
The Pentagon plans to ask Congress next month for relief from environmental regulations that protect endangered species and critical habitats on millions of acres of military training ranges across the country, saying those controls impede crucial exercises and combat readiness.
Defense officials said last week in interviews that their plan is designed to strike a "common sense" balance between environmental stewardship and wartime readiness. For example, environmental regulations prohibit military maneuvers on some ranges during certain mating seasons and dictate which California beaches the Marines can storm in practice, they said.
"While we are arguably one of the best environmental stewards in the government today . . . there is a first and foremost obligation that the secretary of defense has, and that is to properly prepare our troops for combat," said Raymond F. DuBois Jr., deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment.
"Protecting natural resources is not incompatible with protecting access to the land, air and sea space necessary for that realistic combat training," he said. "The military readiness issue here sometimes gets lost."
But what DuBois and other Pentagon officials consider "common sense" solutions strike environmental groups as an assault on six major environmental laws, from the Endangered Species Act to the Clean Air Act.
"The essence of what they're saying is, national defense requires destroying what it is they're trying to defend," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington-based environmental group. "And for the military on environmental issues to say 'trust us,' given their horrendous record, is insane."
Both sides describe the stakes in a looming battle on Capitol Hill as high. Vast expanses of military land, required for highly mobile combat training and bombing practice, contain some of the most pristine natural habitats in the United States, home to more than 300 federally protected plant and animal species.
The Pentagon failed to win approval of a similar legislative package last year, partly because it presented the controversial amendments at the last minute in an otherwise sympathetic House, and partly because more-hostile Democrats controlled the Senate.
Acknowledging past errors, defense officials headed by Paul W. Mayberry, deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness, have devised a detailed strategy. It involves presenting the proposals early in the new legislative session, then working hard to win over critics on Capitol Hill and at the state level, where opposition runs high.
An internal strategy document, leaked to Ruch's organization, says the Pentagon needs "to get off the defensive" and "work to improve and extend outreach to a wide range of targeted stakeholders over the course of the coming year to build a foundation for future range sustainment success."
Beyond amending the environmental statutes by adding language to the 2004 defense authorization act, Mayberry's group also favors enactment of a regulatory process under which federal agencies would have to file "defense impact statements" -- similar to existing environmental impact statements -- before taking actions, such as designating parklands, that could hamper the military's ability to conduct training exercises.
But success may depend upon how well officials answer concerns raised last year by the General Accounting Office. It concluded that while environmental regulations and rapid commercial development are indeed encroaching on military ranges, the Pentagon could not quantify any adverse impact.
"Over time, the impact of encroachment on training ranges has gradually increased," the GAO reported. "However . . . the overall impact on readiness is not well documented."
In the absence of such data -- the Pentagon does not even have an inventory of all its training ranges -- the debate between defense officials and environmentalists revolves around a series of highly publicized examples. Camp Pendleton, Calif., home to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, is high on the list.
Defense officials said environmental regulations that protect 18 endangered species prohibit the Marines from conducting mock amphibious assaults on all but 1,500 meters of the camp's 17-mile beachfront between Orange and San Diego counties. They say Camp Pendleton offers a classic illustration of how intense development and population pressure have forced wildlife onto military preserves across the country, turning combat training grounds into teeming wildlife areas.
A pending lawsuit, the officials said, could lead to the designation of 56 percent of the base, and 65 percent of the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, as critical habitat, further restricting training activities. One of the legislative changes the Pentagon is seeking would enable military ranges to avoid designation as critical habitats under the Endangered Species Act as long as they follow acceptable natural resource management plans required under another federal law.
Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles, which filed the suit, said that Pendleton and Miramar are critical habitats for the endangered coastal California gnatcatcher, a small songbird threatened by development from the Mexican border to Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles.
Allowing military installations to supersede the Endangered Species Act with their own natural resource management plans, which are far less stringent, would imperil the gnatcatcher and numerous other endangered species, Reynolds said.
The Natural Resources Defense Council filed another highly publicized lawsuit, in which a federal judge last fall enjoined the Navy from deploying a low-frequency active (LFA) sonar system pending trial on the grounds that it could violate numerous environmental laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act. High-intensity sonar on submarines, including the new LFA system, is suspected as the cause of numerous whale beachings in recent years.
In response to this lawsuit, defense officials want to change the Marine Mammal Protection Act's definition of prohibited "harassment." Currently, any military action that constitutes an "annoyance" to marine mammals and has the "potential to disturb" the animals is prohibited. The Pentagon wants the definition of harassment changed to anything that could have "biologically significant effects" on the animals.
The legal challenges, the officials said, have kept the Navy from using the sonar to track new quiet submarines used by China, North Korea and Iran for the past six years.
Reynolds, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, responded that the definitional change sought by the Pentagon would "substantially reduce the level of protection to marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act." But it would not end the litigation, he said, noting that the lawsuit alleges violations under four separate environmental laws.
Two other legislative changes the Pentagon is seeking would state that two major hazardous waste laws do not apply to "munitions deposited and remaining on operational ranges" during live-fire training.
Pentagon officials, according to the GAO, are concerned that these laws could be used to shut down live-fire exercises. The Environmental Protection Agency terminated live-fire training at the Massachusetts Military Reservation in 1997 after determining that unexploded ordnance and munitions on the range had contaminated drinking water on Cape Cod, the GAO noted.
With the Pentagon and environmental groups preparing for battle, the fight over environmental laws on combat training ranges -- which cover nearly 30 million acres, about 1 percent of the lower 48 states -- is expected to be a top environmental issue in the new GOP-controlled Congress.
The precedent-setting nature of this and other changes sought by the Pentagon, Ruch said, "will punch big holes into all of the major environmental statutes around which environmental groups have been working for the last 30 years. If the Defense Department gets an exemption, why not Homeland Security?"
DuBois, the Pentagon's chief environmental official, responded that the changes do not constitute "an attack on environmental legislation writ large. . . . It is true that we have asked for relief, in a narrowly confined and defined way -- military readiness training activities only."
----
Officials Reveal Threat to Troops Deploying to Gulf
January 13, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/politics/13INTE.html
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill., Jan. 10 - Troops and weapons moving toward the Persian Gulf have come under threat of possible terrorist attack, say senior military officials, who add that they are more alert than ever to the risks.
Within the past three weeks, American intelligence gathered what officials described as credible evidence of a planned bombing of a passenger airliner contracted to fly troops and freight for the military.
To counter what senior commanders call the growing threat of attack on those mobilizing for a possible war with Iraq, the American military has begun for the first time to share classified intelligence warnings directly and quickly with commercial transportation companies ferrying United States forces toward the Middle East from here and abroad, the senior officials said.
For example, in the case of the suspected bombing plan, the military had come up with intelligence identifying a specific civilian airline company, a specific airport in the United States and a specific date and time of a possible attack, military and intelligence officials said. (In interviews, they would not discuss the specifics in full detail, citing security considerations.)
Military officials removed from the report details that might have revealed the source of the evidence or how it was gathered. Then, rather than risk any delays from working through domestic law enforcement authorities or federal transportation safety agencies, the military gave the secret threat assessment directly to the private airline company.
Security officials at the company took pre-emptive steps, including changing the date and time of the flight and the route it followed.
In a full mobilization to war, more than 90 percent of the troops deploying would fly aboard private air carriers contracted by the military, officials say. Commercial rail and trucking companies would help haul armored vehicles, fuel and food to domestic ports.
A number of other new steps to share secret intelligence warnings with the private freight and passenger sector - including a password-protected Web site - are being been put in place here at Scott Air Force Base, in the cornfields of southern Illinois, where the United States Transportation Command coordinates the movement of every person and piece of equipment in the armed services.
Gen. John W. Handy, the four-star Air Force officer who is chief of Transportation Command, said that since the military must rely on planes, trucks, rail cars and ships operated by private carriers, "We do everything we can to keep them well informed."
General Handy said that even classified reports from the American intelligence community must be made available - at least in a sanitized form - to the private sector. Part of his job, he said, is to make that happen quickly.
"Our request at my level is to keep pressing to share as much as we possibly can," General Handy said in an interview at his headquarters. As it carries out the fight against terrorism, the Bush administration, responding to criticism of intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, has consciously chipped away at a number of walls that previously separated domestic law enforcement, international intelligence gathering and the armed services.
The Transportation Command plans to establish the restricted-access Web site for 24-hour posting of new intelligence warnings that can be read by freight carriers and the airlines.
The issue is especially acute as tens of thousands of troops receive orders to deploy toward the Persian Gulf with their weapons and the fuel and munitions to sustain any offensive that President Bush might order against Iraq. Troop movements have accelerated in the past few days, and more are to come, according to Pentagon officials.
During the mammoth mobilization for the war against Iraq in 1991, the government did not have such significant fears of terrorist strikes against transportation hubs or bases in the United States and overseas. Should there be another war with Iraq, officials concede, the prospect of such attacks would rise above any of the elevated threat levels since Sept. 11.
Even when the nation is not at war, there are 45,000 shipments of high-explosive munitions within the continental United States by rail or truck every year, officials said - and each is a potential terrorist target.
"The commercial carriers told us that they deserve some similar degree of intelligence support as the military," said Thomas S. Reynolds, deputy director of intelligence for Transportation Command. "This is a natural thing with the large level of current deployment activity."
Mr. Reynolds said that sharing intelligence with private firms contracted to carry military personnel and cargo was not unprecedented. During the Persian Gulf war, he said, the military gave security briefings to commercial pilots contracted to fly to the region.
The briefings contained intelligence reports classified secret, but included "only that information truly necessary for them to do their mission," Mr. Reynolds said.
A similar balance between helping the private carriers guard military passengers and cargo while protecting the security of intelligence gathering is the goal of the new initiatives under way at Transportation Command.
One of the most significant new steps is the formalizing of ad hoc conversations between Transportation Command officials - and those at the subordinate military commands overseeing cargo hauled by land, sea and air - and the commercial shippers.
Mr. Reynolds said Transportation Command planned to start a Web site this month on which it will post carefully sanitized threat assessments from throughout the intelligence and law enforcement communities, for use by private contractors.
Specific, credible threat warnings still will be relayed directly to the private carriers, but the Web site will include broader, less specific reports, like one recent sighting of men thought to have been conducting a surreptitious surveillance mission along a portion of Interstate highway used by military transports.
----
Monsters, Inc.
The Pentagon Plan to Create Mutant "Super-Soldiers"
by CHRIS FLOYD
January 13, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd01132003.html
The great wizard, leader of the Wise, once known to all the world as a force for good, has turned bitter, fearful--and ambitious. Aping the ways of the evil he once fought--brutality, dominance, greed, terror--he descends to his secret laboratory, where, with black arts of alchemy and fiendish technology, he breeds a race of mutant warriors, "iron bodied and iron willed": fierce fighters who can attack day and night, without rest, their combat spirit kept soaring by spikes of lightning from the wizard's wand.
A scene from Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, where the corrupted wizard Saruman fashions his monstrous Uruk-Hai to wage a relentless, remorseless war for dominion? No; unfortunately it's a very real scheme now being pursued by the Pentagon, whose dope wizards and gene splicers are working on the creation of the "Extended Performance War Fighter," the Daily Telegraph and Christian Science Monitor report.
Pentagon dark lord Donald Rumsfeld is shoveling billions of tax dollars into the research furnaces of federal laboratories and private universities across the land in the wide-ranging effort to spawn "super soldiers," fired by drugs and electromagnetic "brain zaps" to fight without ceasing for days on end. The work is being directed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)--yes, the same outfit now laboring under convicted terrorist-conspirator John Poindexter to build the "Total Information Awareness" network that will allow the government to monitor the electronic records and communications of every citizen.
The DARPA "war fighter enhancement" programs--an acceleration of bipartisan biotinkering that's been going on for years--will involve injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings.
The research is "very aggressive and wide open," says Admiral Stephen Baker of the Center for Defense Information. Indeed, the U.S. Special Operations Command envisions the creation of "iron bodied and iron willed personnel" who can "resist the mental and physiological effects of sleep deprivation" while relying on "ergogenic substances" to "manage" the "environmental and mentally induced stress" of the battlefield. Their bodies juiced, their brains swaddled in Prozacian haze, the enhanced warfighters can churn relentlessly, remorselessly toward dominion.
And the term "creation" is not just fanciful rhetoric: some of the research now underway involves actually altering the genetic code of soldiers, modifying bits of DNA to fashion a new type of human specimen, one that functions like a machine, killing tirelessly for days and nights on end. These mutations will "revolutionize the contemporary order of battle" and guarantee "operational dominance across the whole range of potential U.S. military employments," the DARPA wizards enthuse.
Of course, the Pentagon is not waiting on sci-fi technology to enhance the physical abilities of its warfighters; old-fashioned off-the-shelf "additives" have long been shoved down soldiers' throats. For example, the use of amphetamines for pilots has been widespread for decades; during the first Bush-Saddam War, whole squadrons were cranked up on the stuff. Not only is the gobbling of speed officially sanctioned, it's actively encouraged, even implicitly mandated--careers can be derailed for pilots who refuse to drug themselves.
The results of this dope-peddling were clearly seen on the new imperial frontier of Afghanistan last spring, when two U.S. pilots--hopped up on speed--killed four Canadian allies in a "friendly fire" bombing raid. The pilots, now facing legal charges, say Air Force brass pressured them into taking the mind-altering drug before the fatal flight.
But such glitches are inevitable in any grand scientific undertaking, and DARPA remains undeterred in its bold quest to "push the limits of human input/output," advance the "symbiotic relationship between man and machine," and customize "pharmaceutical technology" to "embolden the warfighter and his superiors," as military scientists declared at a Pentagon-sponsored conference on "future warfare."
What happens to the burnt-out husks of these "iron" soldiers after their minds and bodies have been eaten way by relentless modification and ceaseless toil is, of course, of no concern to the Bush Regime. Even now, the White House is cutting back on health benefits to military veterans--even going so far as to order veterans hospitals not to advertise their available services, lest broken soldiers actually seek to claim the promise of support their government once gave them. For men like Bush--protected scions of privilege who sit out wars in safety, in booze-addled luxury--such promises are just cynical sucker ploys, aimed at coaxing decent soldiers into acting as the hitmen of empire, then discarding them when they're no longer needed.
How very strange it is: those who want to turn American soldiers into mindless, drug-addled mutants and send them off to kill and die in far-flung wars of imperial conquest are seen as patriots, noble leaders, doing the will of God; while those who would rather see these good men and women called home, treated with honor and respect--their talents and dedication applied solely to the defense of their own great country, not pressed into the service of a greedy, rapacious elite--are denounced as "traitors," "anti-American agitators," "allies of terrorism."
But such is the inversion of values--the wisdom gone astray and turned to fell practice--that now rules in Bush's Washington, and in the Pentagon's fiery crucibles of war.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
----
Pentagon Tries to Head Off the Draft
January 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Draft.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Trying to head off a proposal to reinstate the military draft, the Pentagon Monday disputed charges that blacks and poorer Americans bear an unfair burden in fighting the country's wars.
``Contrary to myth, data show that the enlisted force is quite representative of the civilian population,'' the Defense Department said in an 11-page paper arguing the merits of the all-volunteer force that has been in place for nearly 30 years.
The position paper was in response to a proposal by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to require military service and other types of national service.
A veteran of the Korean War and opponent of military action in Iraq, Rangel says he believes Congress would be less likely to support war against Saddam Hussein if their children were the ones to be put in harm's way.
He said late last month that military service should be a ``shared sacrifice'' asked of all able young Americans and that minorities make up a ``disproportionate number'' of troops.
The Pentagon countered Monday that while blacks make up 20 percent of enlistees and only 12 to 14 percent of the general recruit-age population, there tends to be fewer in combat jobs. They make up only 15 percent of the combat force, while accounting for 36 percent of support and administration and 27 percent of medical and dental positions, the Pentagon said, citing a 1999 report.
On social and economic status, it said 32 percent of recruits come from homes where the father is a high school graduate compared to 31 percent of the general population in their age group. Twenty-two percent of recruits have fathers who have at least a college education, compared to 30 percent of the general population in their age group.
The paper was released at an hour-long briefing by a senior defense official who appeared before reporters on condition he not be identified by name.
Saying America's armed forces today are more professional and efficient because they are comprised of people who have chosen to join, the official said military leaders are ``horrified by Mr. Rangel's proposal to return to the days when people were forced to serve.''
Under the current system, however, men are still required to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday.
-------- propaganda wars
US.mil launches Operation Desert Spam
By John Leyden
The Register (UK)
13/01/2003
http://212.100.234.54/content/6/28839.html
The US has launched a spam offensive in the hopes of persuading senior Iraqi officials to defect.
A senior unnamed US military official told CNN that thousands of email messages have been sent out since last Thursday, when the unconventional campaign began.
"This is just the beginning of a psychological warfare campaign," he said.
The propaganda messages, written in Arabic and targeted at senior officials and military, apparently include a helpful guide on how to defect, along with an appeal to turn over any information on Iraq's supposed chemical and biological weapons programme to UN inspectors.
The messages, titled 'Important Information', also urge military personnel to disable weapons of mass destruction or refuse to use them in the event of war, which is starting to look increasingly likely.
It's believed to be the first time the US has used email propaganda in an information warfare campaign.
Iraq has reportedly shut off some Internet gateways to stop these emails getting through. The US military, which confirmed the story, only after news of the spam offensive leaked out, has pledged to get its message across by using radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped from airplanes instead.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
64 Turkish prisoners have died on hunger strike
World In Brief,
Monday, January 13, 2003
Washington Post; Page A15
FOR THE RECORD
Another Turkish prisoner has died on a hunger strike, raising the death toll in the protest against Turkey's maximum security prisons to 64 people, a prisoner support group said. . . . Malaysian police said they have arrested two more suspected members of Jemaah Islamiah, bringing to nearly 80 those in custody for links with the terror group.
-------- death penalty
[To reply to Letters to the Editor - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
Death penalty propaganda
EDITORIAL •
January 13, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030113-389073.htm
When Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, egged on by Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, announced in May that he was imposing a one-year moratorium on executions, he did so pending the release of a University of Maryland study on the "fairness" of the application of the death penalty. Since no serious question has been raised as to the guilt of any of the individuals on death row, many Marylanders came to understand this action for what it was: politicizing the issue in a desperate effort by the Townsend campaign to woo black death penalty foes in heavily Democratic Baltimore and Prince George's County.
By September, it had become abundantly clear that Mrs. Townsend's faltering gubernatorial campaign was not being helped by the moratorium. Given the fact that the university had received upwards of $13 million in state grants over the past few years from the state crime office headed by Mrs. Townsend (money that became the subject of a federal investigation by the U.S. attorney for Maryland), it hardly came as surprise when the school announced it was postponing the study's release until after the election. So, the report was released - surprise - just eight days before the inauguration of Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who rightly promised to end the blanket moratorium and review each death penalty case on an individual basis.
Four murderers on Maryland's death row have exhausted their appeals and could be executed as early as next month. Unable to come up with evidence that any of them is innocent, opponents of the death penalty nonetheless have seized upon the study to suggest that there are disparities.
For example, in a front-page story, "Large Racial Disparity Found By Study of Maryland Death Penalty," The Washington Post declared that prosecutors in the state are "far more likely" to seek capital punishment for black suspects charged with killing white victims. The chief author of the Maryland study, a professor named Raymond Paternoster, said that prosecutors were largely to blame because their decisions resulted in "racial disparity."
And, just to make sure that Mr. Ehrlich understands that things could get ugly if he permits executions to go forward, Delegate Salima Siler Marriott of Baltimore declared that such a move by the new governor would send a message that he "is discounting racial justice."
Buried in the final paragraphs of The Post article were comments by critics of the study, among them Anne Brobst, an assistant state's attorney in Baltimore County, who noted that much of the "disparity" results from differences in practice between local jurisdictions: In Baltimore County, which has a relatively high percentage of white murder victims, the policy is to seek the death penalty whenever possible. By contrast, in Baltimore city and Prince George's County, where the overwhelming majority of black murder victims are slain, prosecutors rarely seek the death penalty because local juries are reluctant to impose it.
In short, the University of Maryland study is a textbook example of the tactics that opponents of the death penalty are resorting to when the guilt of the accused isn't at issue: pour through the data, find some statistical anomaly and complain that it invalidates the death penalty. We trust that Mr. Ehrlich will see this political scam for what it is.
----
Effects of Death Penalty Ruling Debated
Illinois Decision Is Seen by Some as Precedent, by Others as Mistake
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47402-2003Jan12?language=printer
There's no shortage of opinions about the impact Illinois Gov. George Ryan's emptying of death row over the weekend will have on the national death penalty debate. Some see it as a defining moment toward ending capital punishment while others warn of a backlash that will hinder safeguards meant to protect the innocent.
But Lawrence S. Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, said yesterday that people ought to be wary of looking too far into the future.
"By and large, these predictions are based on your view of the death penalty," said Goldman, a criminal defense attorney in New York who opposes the death penalty. "I don't think it's going to lead to other political leaders doing the same thing very quickly or lead to an incredible backlash."
Still, as the initial shock of Ryan, a Republican, commuting the death sentences to life in prison for 167 prisoners wears off, people on both sides of the debate are asking: What comes next?
Death penalty opponents such as Amnesty International have already begun pressuring President Bush and governors nationwide to join the rest of the world's "civilized" nations and reject capital punishment. And legislation has been introduced on Capitol Hill to reform federal death penalty procedures. But to make any changes, public approval is needed, said Illinois state Sen. Peter Roskam (R), who thinks Ryan has hurt his own cause.
Three years ago, Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions after 13 death row inmates were exonerated after being proven innocent. After an exhaustive review, Ryan on Friday pardoned four others who he said had been tortured by rogue Chicago police officers into confessing to crimes they did not commit.
But when Roskam goes into the office today, he expects to get an earful from constituents and predicted that some of his colleagues in Springfield might even try to limit the authority of future governors to grant pardons and clemency requests. Many, he said, question whether Ryan was trying to give himself a legacy beyond the political scandal -- a driver's-licenses-for-bribes scheme that has led to convictions of dozens of his close allies -- that has wracked his term.
"My feeling is that the public is going to react very harshly to the governor's move," said Roskam, whose reform package passed the state senate last year. "This really dulls the edge of reform. By his very aggressive use of his power, you set that far, far back."
There were 71 executions in the United States last year, nearly half of them in Texas. And national public opinion in support of capital punishment still hovers near 70 percent.
White House officials on Saturday reaffirmed Bush's support for capital punishment. In Maryland, where Democratic Gov. Parris N. Glendening imposed a moratorium on executions last year, Republican Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has said he would lift the suspension.
And many argued this weekend that once people begin to fully investigate some of the cases in which Ryan issued pardons, they will be turned off to the idea of blanket clemencies elsewhere, as well.
Among the cases mentioned most often in Illinois is that of Fedell Caffey and Jacqueline Williams, who prosecutors said, after deciding they wanted a baby, stabbed to death a pregnant woman in her apartment and cut the nearly full-term fetus from her body. They also were found guilty of murdering the woman's 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. A younger child was spared.
It's cases like that one that led Ryan's successor, Gov.-elect Rod Blagojevich, who takes the oath of office today, to label Ryan's move a "big mistake."
"There is no one-size-fits-all approach to those cases," he said. "We're talking about murderers on death row, and I just think this decision to do blanket clemency is wrong."
But Frank McNeirney, national coordinator of Bethesda-based Catholics Against Capital Punishment, said that clemency is a long tradition in American and British law.
"What I hope will happen is that other governors will take a look at this and say this is part of our duty," he said. "Surveys show that there's more than half of Catholics support the death penalty. But it drops when life without possibility of parole is given as an alternative. People just want to see these guys put away and not get out in society again."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Polish biofuel bill riles industry,consumer groups
Story by Marta Karpinska
REUTERS POLAND:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19385/story.htm
WARSAW - Poland's car industry and consumer groups appealed on Thursday to President Aleksander Kwasniewski to veto a controversial bio-fuels bill passed by parliament late last year.
The measure would from July impose a minimum level of so-called bio-components in all gasoline sold in Poland which is far above levels among member states of the European Union, which Poland aims to join next year.
The bill, championed by the co-ruling Peasants' Party, passed after the lower house threw out amendments which would have made the amount of bio-components in auto fuels discretionary.
Farmers stand to benefit from guaranteed prices for crops used to produce bio-fuels. Influential entrepreneurs who have invested in plants to distill bio-ethanol - used as a gasoline additive - have also lobbied hard in support of the bill.
Opponents say it violates consumer rights and goes far beyond less restrictive EU rules. Kwasniewski is expected to decide in days whether to exercise his veto.
"The main worry is that in contrast with the EU, which only aims to set caps on the content of bio-components, Poland would set a minimum, meaning the actual level could be much higher," said Enrico Pavoni, head of Italian carmaker Fiat's (FIA.MI) Polish unit, the local market leader.
The bill sets a minimum of 4.5 percent bio-ethanol content in all gasoline sold in Poland, the largest of 10 mainly eastern European countries set to join the EU in May 2004.
The country with the highest level of bio-fuel components in gasoline in western Europe is Germany with 1.3 percent, but the EU wants a two-percent minimum level by 2005, gradually reaching 5.75 percent by 2010.
Carmakers warn that older models were not designed to run on bio-fuels. Over 40 percent of cars in Poland are more than 10 years old.
CONSUMER RIGHTS
The bill's opponents say it would also put Poland at odds with the EU by effectively banning sales of fuel made in other member countries which have lower levels of bio-components.
They also say drivers should have the right to choose between buying gasoline with bio-fuel additives or stick to less environmentally-friendly gasoline.
"The bill takes away the basic consumer right - the right to choose," said Malgorzata Niepokulczycka, head of the Polish Consumer Rights Federation. "We understand the need to support farmers, but not at the expense of consumers."
The bill aims to create new demand for crops such as rapeseed to help Poland's struggling farmers, but some say the regulation would only benefit a handful of large producers and private distilleries instead.
Bio-fuels, which have advocates among both environmentalists and industry as laws limiting pollutants grow stricter around the globe, include bio-diesel made from plant oils like rapeseed and bioethanol made from fermented sugar beets and cereals.
-------- energy
Bush admin clears way for more coalbed methane projects
Story by Christopher Doering
REUTERS USA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19378/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration last week gave the green light to more coalbed methane drilling in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, saying its studies showed that the process of squeezing natural gas out of coal deposits would not harm the environment.
In two environmental impact studies that support President George W. Bush's plan to boost energy exploration in the west, the Bureau of Land Management said impact to water, soil and wildlife in the region would be "minor."
The BLM, in an about-face from its earlier draft, proposed storing salty water used to extract natural gas in small reservoirs. The plan would prevent water from flowing into streams and rivers used for farming and drinking.
"This provides a framework that will allow us to move forward with development of a new, clean energy source while actively protecting the environment," said Jim Hughes, a BLM director.
But green groups criticized the change and said the Bureau of Land Management was doing "a minimal amount" to comply with federal laws to protect the environment while catering to big energy companies.
Coalbed methane is a form of natural gas trapped beneath coal reserves and held in place by water pressure. Drilling is relatively cheap and attractive to the industry because large amounts of coal are accessible at shallow depths.
Environmental groups contend that when the gas is removed from coalbed deposits, sodium from the large volumes of water produced flows into streams, harming cattle and local residents.
The agency studies said the Powder River Basin could contain as much as 43 trillion cubic feet of recoverable coalbed methane reserves, a significant increase from earlier estimates that pegged reserves at about 30 Tcf.
The United States consumes about 22 Tcf of natural gas a year.
Coalbed methane wells have soared in recent years. About 11,000 now exist, up from only a few hundred in the early 1990s, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
The agency estimated thousands more could be added during the next decade, including some 51,000 in the Wyoming portion of the Powder River Basin.
Powder River is worked by Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO.N) and hundreds of other small coalbed developers.
The region has been the target of a series of lawsuits in recent months by environmental groups who argue that nearly 5,000 leases lack the proper environmental studies to proceed.
Last April, the Interior Department's own board of land appeals ruled that three leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management during the Clinton administration were illegal because they did not conduct sufficient environmental analysis.
"SMOKE AND MIRRORS"
Towards that end, the Environmental Protection Agency warned last year that earlier Bureau of Land Management environmental draft impact studies in the region were flawed because they used old data and failed to address the impact of coalbed methane on local water.
The Bureau of Land Management has instead proposed the use of nearly 3,000 surface reservoirs to collect water used to remove the coalbed methane from the ground rather than releasing it into streams.
Environmental groups said the study does not adequately gauge the impact of the reservoirs and whether they could leak into the area water supply.
Tom Darin, a lawyer with the Wyoming Outdoor Council, said the proposed measure to reduce water runoff is the administration's way of doing a "minimal" amount of work to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act.
"This is a smoke and mirrors game (by the administration)," said Darin.
"It's effort is guided by two principles: ramping up oil and gas production at all costs on public lands in the west and doing so with effort to allow projects to go forward that are most favorable to industry."
A spokeswoman with the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming said the agency worked closely with the U.S. Forest Service and EPA, among other groups, to address all environmental laws.
The studies, which will be published in the Federal Register on Jan. 17, will be open to public comment for 30 days.
----
Swedish industry lobby warns of energy crunch
Story by Kim McLaughlin
REUTERS SWEDEN:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19371/story.htm
STOCKHOLM - Swedish industry will face a power deficit over the coming years that threatens to hamper economic growth and reduce the competitive edge of key sectors, an industry spokesman warned.
Hakan Murby from SKGS, a lobby representing energy-intensive sectors such as the forest, metal and chemical industries, said an additional 25 terawatt hours (TWh) of power will be needed over the next decade to sustain growth. That capacity, he said, can only be met by expanding production of atomic power.
Currently, Sweden produces 150 TWh of electricity yearly, but cold winter weather following a dry summer has strained capacity and raised electricity bills in the Nordic region.
"We are worried our competitive advantage will be lost. In the long run nuclear power is the only way we can secure our energy needs," Murby told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference.
Spot prices on the Nordic power bourse Nord Pool have hit record highs this winter, with the average December price of 544.34 Norwegian crowns per megawatt hour, almost five times the May 2002 average and almost three times the average for December a year earlier.
Rising energy prices have prompted some firms to halt production. On Thursday pulp maker Rottneros (RROS.ST) said it had shut down 20 percent of its capacity due to rising spot prices.
The energy crunch has fanned the discussion in Sweden on whether to close down Barseback 2, a nuclear power reactor in southern Sweden. The planned shutdown is part of a 1980 Swedish referendum decision to replace nuclear energy, which currently accounts for half of Swedish production, with renewable sources.
The Barseback plant is part of energy group Ringhals AB, which is 74 percent owned by state power company Vattenfall AB
and 26 percent by Sydkraft AB. Sydkraft is controlled by German energy group E.ON Energie (EONG.DE).
Murby said the decision to scrap the 600 megawatt Barseback 2 by the end of 2003 should be reversed and that Barseback 1, taken off line in 1999, should be restarted.
Barseback 2 produced 3.9 TWh of energy last year, approximately 2.6 percent of Swedish production. Its annual capacity is approximately 4.6 TWh.
POLITICAL MINEFIELD
Nuclear power is a political minefield in Sweden and the debate is coloured by the Barseback facility's proximity to Copenhagen, the capital of neighbouring Denmark where nuclear power is prohibited.
Sweden's Social Democrat government, whose voters are split over nuclear power, is expected to decide whether to close down Barseback 2 in February or March this year.
"We are assuming that Barseback 2 is kept on line. In addition, we want the (Swedish) government to open the path to investment in increased production in the existing nuclear plants in Sweden," Murby said.
Annual production at existing atomic plants could be boosted by 8-10 TWh, filling some of the expected deficit in coming years, he said.
Ideally, Sweden should follow neighbouring Finland, which recently announced it will build the first new nuclear power plant in Western Europe for over a decade, Murby said.
"Politicaly it may be difficult to move in the direction of investing in new plants for the foreseeable future but as public debate over carbon dioxide emissions targets increases, that may change," he said.
-------- environment
Goodrich to pay $4 mln to help clean water supply
REUTERS USA:
January 13, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19368/story.htm
NEW YORK - Aerospace company Goodrich Corp. (GR.N) has agreed to pay $4 million to help rid Southern California water supplies of a pollutant related to rocket engines built by the company for the U.S. government, a Goodrich spokeswoman said last week.
Under the two-year agreement, Goodrich's payment will help treatment facilities clean perchlorate contamination east of Los Angeles.
Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel. Goodrich manufactured rocket engines for the government in Rialto, California, from 1957 to 1964, the spokeswoman, Gail Warner, said.
Charlotte, North Carolina-based Goodrich is not admitting responsibility for perchlorate pollution but pledged cooperation in efforts to identify parties responsible for dumping the chemical in the region's groundwater.
The deal includes giving officials access to the company's historical documents and scientific research, Warner said. That could implicate other military contractors and the U.S. Department of Defense, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal last week.
Goodrich expects to reach an agreement with four water purveyors aimed at helping them begin wellhead treatment efforts on public water supply wells in Rialto, Colton and Fontana, California, Warner said.
"To date, the regional water quality control board has issued orders to 10 entities including Goodrich to begin investigating the source and scope of perchlorate," Warner said in a statement.
"Goodrich will continue to work with the water board and water purveyors on this issue," she said.
The agreement is contingent on formal acceptance by the regional water quality control board, she added.
Goodrich shares finished at $19.80 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The stock has traded between $14.17 and $34.45 over the last year.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Activists From Across U.S. Preparing for Weekend of Protests
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47595-2003Jan12?language=printer
Dallas lawyer Robert B. Dennis is headed to Washington this week, one of about 50 Texans willing to endure a 22-hour bus ride.
Amer Mirza, a Web developer from suburban Chicago, has been signing up Muslims in his area for seats on a charter bus he plans to ride.
Casey Chapman, a senior at Catholic Central High School in Troy, N.Y., will join a dozen other teenagers in a chaperone-driven van.
Dennis, Mirza and Chapman are a fraction of the thousands coming to Washington for a national antiwar demonstration Saturday, a rally and march that they and organizers say will be their last chance for a massive display of dissent before the United States goes to war with Iraq.
"The Iraqi people are not our enemy," said Dennis, 70, a member of the Dallas Peace Center. "We don't need to subject them to another war and more bombings."
Saturday's rally and march follow an October protest that drew about 100,000, a turnout organizers and police said was the largest antiwar demonstration in the nation's capital since the protests against the Vietnam War. And like the October protest, this action has drawn counter-demonstrators who vow a loud but peaceful rally.
The same coalition that coordinated the October rally, International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), is organizing this week's protest. Brian Becker, an ANSWER spokesman, said it is too early to tell whether the crowd will be as big as or bigger than that at the previous march. But he said tens of thousands are planning to make the trip, as organizers from Texas to New York to Wisconsin arrange for charter buses, car caravans and flights to the District.
"The most important thing politically for us is to shatter the false myth of consensus," Becker said.
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said he "wouldn't be surprised" if the turnout in Washington matched that in October. He said that his department will be ready for that size crowd but that he does not expect disruptions. Previous ANSWER protests -- including a pro-Palestinian rally in April that attracted about 75,000 -- have been relatively free of incidents. "We don't anticipate any problems," Ramsey said. "It's been a peaceful group to date."
The rally is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. on the Mall near Third Street and Constitution Avenue NW just beyond the west front of the Capitol. Scheduled speakers include actress Jessica Lange, Vietnam veteran and author Ron Kovic, former representative Cynthia A. McKinney (D-Ga.) and others from labor, peace and Muslim organizations.
After the rally, participants plan to march to the gates of the Washington Navy Yard, where organizers said they would call for the elimination of U.S. weapons of mass destruction. They emphasized that no civil disobedience is planned.
Counter-protesters say they will rally at Constitution Gardens on the Mall at 9 a.m. Saturday and later greet marchers outside the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Eighth and I streets SE. The D.C. chapter of the national organization Free Republic, a frequent counter-presence at protests, and MOVE-OUT! (Marines and Other Veterans Engaging Outrageous Un-American Traitors) are organizing this event.
The ANSWER protest, which will have counterparts in San Francisco, Canada, Spain and elsewhere, organizers say, is one of several Washington antiwar rallies coinciding with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. ANSWER organizers also have planned a youth and student march at 11 a.m. Sunday from the Justice Department to the White House.
Also Sunday, two antiwar coalitions, D.C. Iraq Pledge of Resistance and United for Peace, plan an 11:30 a.m. rally at Farragut Square followed by a march to the White House, where organizers said at least 50 people will conduct civil disobedience, though details are being worked out. Activists said they wanted to link King's opposition to the Vietnam War to the current peace movement.
Monday, the holiday marking King's birthday, the national activist group Black Voices for Peace plans a rally to celebrate King's legacy and oppose war against Iraq. It is set for 3 p.m. at Plymouth Congregational Church in Northeast Washington.
About 220 organizing centers in 45 states are coordinating transportation and spreading the word about Saturday's ANSWER rally, 70 more than in October, said ANSWER organizer Sarah Sloan. Some groups that brought one busload to the rally in October said the response this time required them to have two or three buses, while others that were unable to attend the previous demonstration said they are now making the trek.
Sara Iglesias, 29, an activist and writer in Miami Beach, said she has been fielding up to 10 phone calls and up to 15 e-mails daily from people seeking transportation to Washington. "We have three charter buses now, and we may do another, and that's not counting the people who are in caravans or flying up," she said. A high school teacher, a civil rights lawyer and a Holocaust survivor are among those who have signed up for seats, she said.
In October, Iglesias helped organize one bus of protesters. "We've been in touch with many more people due to the fact that we've made more connections and the fact that this antiwar movement is going more mainstream and getting more publicity," she said.
Mirza, 23, of Glendale Heights, Ill., said one 55-seat bus is almost filled with Muslims and supporters, and another might be needed. "There has been a lot of hate crimes in Chicago after 9/11. Now, the fear is they will get more extreme" if the United States wages war against Iraq, said Mirza, a founder of the Muslim League.
College and high school students from 400 campuses nationwide are planning to attend, organizers said. University of Iowa student David Goodner is joining classmates on a 17-hour bus ride to Washington. Student Carl Sack at Northland College in Ashland, Wis., who attended a march there in October, is set to board one of three buses for the national rally.
Chapman, 17, is coming to the District with fellow members of a youth group called Free the Children. "I think that people have to realize that it's never too young for people to be involved with activism and making your voice heard," said Chapman, who also marched in October.
Activists said they hope the demonstration energizes a U.S. antiwar movement that has shown signs of gaining momentum in recent weeks, as military preparations and troop deployments for an assault on Iraq have escalated. The march was timed to precede the Jan. 27 deadline for the first major report by weapons inspectors to the U.N. Security Council.
That date had been viewed by some Bush administration officials as a decision point on whether Iraq's cooperation has been sufficient to head off a military strike. Last week, though, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell played down the date's importance.
Organizers said they fear they are running out of time. "The American people have very little time left to tell President Bush -- in their voice, which he can't ignore -- they don't want our United States of America to become an aggressor nation and attack Iraq," former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark said at an ANSWER news conference in Washington last week.
Clark founded the International Action Center, one of the groups that led the effort to create International ANSWER as a response to the Bush administration's war on terrorism. He has drawn criticism as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War who traveled to that country during the war.
Subsequently, he has served as a lawyer for Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president on trial for war crimes, and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
But many of those planning to come to Washington said that the views of the organizers are of little concern to them and that the larger antiwar movement is bigger than any organizing group.
"I'm told they're some kind of radicals, but I don't care," said Dennis, of ANSWER. "Good organizers are worth their weight in gold."
Staff writer David A. Fahrenthold contributed to this report.
----
'The Exonerated,' Winning Top Actors on Appeal
By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47882-2003Jan12?language=printer
In acting circles, death row has never been hipper. A-list movie and television luminaries -- Richard Dreyfuss and Danny Glover, Aidan Quinn and Mia Farrow, Jeff Goldblum and Gabriel Byrne -- have been doing time onstage, playing former inmates falsely accused of capital crimes. And the roster of those eager to join them just keeps growing: Christine Lahti, Tony Goldwyn, Rob Morrow, Elliott Gould and Judy Collins are among the well-known performers waiting to get into the act.
The object of their theatrical ardor is "The Exonerated," a new off-Broadway work based on the real-life experiences of five American men and one woman who were condemned to death and eventually had their convictions overturned. And while the 90-minute play, by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, offers some juicy monologues and poignant dramatic moments, what seems to be enticing all these famous faces to the stage has as much to do with the art of politics as of performance.
"It felt really rewarding to do something that had a political message," says Jill Clayburgh, who spent three weeks in "The Exonerated" in the fall and is about to return to the New York cast for another rotation. "I just felt that it is a very human way to express a political point. It isn't agitprop, but it certainly has a point of view, which, I think, people who are on the fence about the issue can still hear."
"The Exonerated" has been such a surprise hit with audiences and critics in New York that, a mere three months after opening, its producers have decided to mount a second production for the road. Tomorrow a three-city tour -- in anti- cipation of a more extensive national tour in the near future -- gets underway with a week-long run at the Warner Theatre. Here, a cast that includes Farrow, Brian Dennehy and Chad Lowe will lend its voices to the six who were spared execution -- and, in the larger sense, to the play's stand against capital punishment.
"This is a play that was mounted, no question about it, with the idea of influencing people," says Bob Balaban, who not only directed it but is one of its producers. "You come away from this realizing that the more people are screaming for the death penalty, the more likely you are going to trap an innocent person."
Theater with political ambition is of course nothing new. From Ibsen to Brecht, from social drama to out-and-out propaganda, playwrights have been addressing issues of the day for centuries. Even the concept of a production adapted straight from reality was pioneered decades ago: "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine" and "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" were plays gleaned from court and congressional committee transcripts.
But "The Exonerated" arrives as the latest example of an evolution in the political play. Austere in physical design, direct in narrative approach, these new works are being presented as emotion-laden tributes to a point of view. You could call the movement civic theater: They are plays like "The Vagina Monologues" and "The Guys," intended to galvanize a community with an uplifting message about the human spirit. Unlike more anarchic and angry forms of political theater of the past, these productions seek to educate more than incite, though whether they do anything other than reinforce audiences' existing beliefs is open to question. As Clayburgh observed about "The Exonerated": "It is mostly preaching to the converted, and everybody is very aware of that."
What distinguishes them, too, are the astonishing surges of star power that drive them. While the stagings tend to be modest, the luminaries who take to the projects transform them, quite literally, into causes celebres. Think of the dozens of famous actresses -- Diahann Carroll, Rosie Perez, Calista Flockhart, Julia Stiles and Julianna Margulies among them -- who've taken a turn over the years in the long-running "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's lyrical exploration of female empowerment. Or the first-rank actors -- like Susan Sarandon, Anthony LaPaglia, Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray -- who have rotated in and out of "The Guys," a two-person play by Anne Nelson about the firefighters of Sept. 11 that ran for a year at the Flea, a tiny off-off-Broadway theater in Lower Manhattan (and soon will be released as a motion picture).
For that matter, there's also been Moises Kaufman's "The Laramie Project," an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man in Wyoming. Although the play did not have a star-studded cast off-Broadway, the HBO version attracted a passel of well-known actors, including Christina Ricci, Janeane Garofalo, Peter Fonda and Camryn Manheim, some of whom were appearing in the briefest of cameos.
For celebrities, civic theater can be a painless method of lending their fame to an issue in a way that doesn't seem self-serving. Some like it so much that they pass from one project to another. Carol Ostrow, producing director of the Flea, says that she was trying to bring Marlo Thomas back for a spell in "The Guys" last fall, only to discover that Thomas was booked for "The Exonerated." "They stole some of my best actors," Ostrow says with a laugh. "It almost felt as if we were competing."
Audiences had deeply embraced "The Guys," which tells the true story of a journalist who agreed to help a New York fire captain compose the eulogies for several of the men he lost in the collapse of the twin towers. Performed on a bare stage, with scripts in hand and a smattering of props, it is the kind of minimalist theater that draws heavily on the emotional power of the real events it is dramatizing. In fact, the Flea tired of "The Guys" even though theatergoers hadn't. After a year-long run, it closed just before Christmas, having left the theater staff psychically drained.
"We felt it was getting more and more difficult to revisit the theme every night," Ostrow says. In a strange way, the grieving process explored in the play was becoming an anachronism, at least as far as the people who ran the Flea were concerned. "It was becoming too much for the staff," Ostrow adds, "because the experience of it had changed, although it had been very cathartic. It was becoming harder and harder to support it with enthusiasm."
In pieces that connect so elementally with day-to-day experience or strongly held political and moral beliefs, it's sometimes difficult to discern whether audiences are responding to the skill of the production or simply the topic it is examining. With "The Exonerated," Balaban argues, the performance can be appreciated on its own terms, even by those who don't necessarily share its sympathies.
"To the extent that it looked like proselytizing, we didn't go there," he says. The play, compiled from extensive interviews with the six exonerated prisoners it portrays, is a series of rapidly evolving vignettes, in which the falsely convicted tell their stories. Other cast members play police officers, defense lawyers, prosecutors and relatives. One thing that makes the piece such a draw for top-rank talent, Balaban contends, is a basic one: They're all good roles.
"It's because they're true stories without any axes to grind, and these parts are wonderful to play," the director says. "I mean, you get to inhabit another person's life."
Long ago, television became the mainstay for the true crime story. But clearly, real issues still have a place on the stage. Last month Dreyfuss, Glover and Mike Farrell traveled to Chicago and performed the play at the invitation of outgoingGov. George Ryan, who imposed a moratorium on executions in Illinois to allow for a review of all the state's death penalty cases. (On Saturday, Ryan commuted the sentences for everyone on the state's death row to life in prison.) In the crowd were 40 people from around the country who had been sentenced to death and set free after their convictions were reversed.
"It was a powerful evening," Balaban says, and further proof to him that it is the lives the play celebrates, and not the celebrities themselves, that give "The Exonerated" its meaning. "As I've told people," he adds, "these stories are more important than we are."
----
Small-town US against war
By Roland Watson in London, Ohio
13jan03
UK Times / Australia Herald Sun
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5830819%5E401,00.html
US President George W. Bush may have roused his troops for war but his civilians are uneasy. The Marines are on the march, but much of Middle America remains unmoved.
War with Iraq is slowly forcing itself into the living rooms and coffee shops of small towns across the US. London, Ohio, a rural, largely conservative, cradle-to-grave community founded in 1811, is one place such talk has reached.
The townsfolk, for whom Washington DC, let alone Baghdad, seems a world away, are not ready for war on Iraq. They question Bush's motives, wonder about the strength of his evidence, remember Vietnam, and fear the consequences may reach their doorsteps.
But a signature heartland trait, stronger than individual doubts, underlies the attitude of almost everyone. When Bush, their commander-in-chief, goes on national television to announce the start of military action, they will swallow their concerns, snap a salute and fall into line.
It was to Cincinnati, 320km across the rolling mid-western plains, that Bush came last October to try to bring to life the threat he says Saddam Hussein poses to all Americans. Ohio is a bellwether state that backed Bush in 2000 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
Few among London's 8000 residents need further convincing that Hussein is a bad man. What they are not convinced of is the need for war.
"I don't feel the Government has given adequate proof to the people yet," says T.J.Dwyer, who owns a hardware business in town. "For most people in Middle America, it's too far removed from their daily life. Korea is the biggest worry. That's scary."
Bush has tried to make central to his argument that Hussein is a threat to every American, but the message has not filtered through to London. As Peter Mosier, who manages a family-run coffee shop called Buckleys in the centre of town, said: "It's a little hard to feel threatened in a town this small."
Others cite different threats. Bill Young, a grain and cattle farmer born in London, questioned whether Iraq is such a high priority that the US should go to war. "We are already involved with bin Laden," he said.
Some customers, nursing cups of Buckleys coffee against the chill and snow outside, go further. "America is on the most dangerous course of my lifetime, and it shows we haven't learnt anything from Vietnam," said Howard Weinerman, 43, an environmental consultant.
"I don't think America should go into anything like this which the rest of the world doesn't support. Maybe we should be asking the British in retrospect about their empire building. We are big enough to be cocky, but not big enough to take on the entire Islamic world."
Bush has his supporters. When they talk, what is most notable is the way a question about Hussein or Iraq prompts an answer about Islamic terrorists as a whole.
"Is Saddam a threat? Yes, I think they are," said Diana Elan, a grocery store worker, demonstrating the success of Bush's efforts to equate the September 11 attacks with the regime in Baghdad.
There are also those prepared to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, perhaps as a way of dealing with their misgivings. Mosier, 29, says he understands the White House cannot reveal its hand. "I'm willing to believe they know more than I know. If Iraq is as dangerous as they say it is, maybe they better do it."
But perhaps the most telling remarks came from Dennis Baker, 48, the director of a waste disposal agency, who did not vote for Bush in 2000 and will not be doing so in 2004. Baker says he believes there are other ways to get Hussein than by sending in the military. But he would feel obliged to back the President the moment Bush announced US forces were at war.
"I would have to go along with him and support him as far as that goes. But that doesn't mean I think he's doing the right thing."
--------
Protest Held at U.K. Nuclear Power Plant
January 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Nuclear-Protest.html
LONDON (AP) -- More than 30 anti-nuclear protesters used ropes, ladders and wire-cutters to break into the central control building of a nuclear power station in eastern England on Monday, the environmental group Greenpeace said.
Greenpeace, which campaigns for an end to nuclear energy, said it staged the break-in to expose poor security at the Sizewell B plant and other nuclear facilities.
``It is a terrifying thought that if we can do this then anyone can,'' said Rob Gueterbock, one of the protesters who occupied the plant's roof during the daylong demonstration. ``We wouldn't do anything to interfere with the plant, but if terrorists targeted a nuclear power station it would be deadly.''
Mike Harrison, maintenance manager at Sizewell B, condemned the protest as a stunt.
``It is a totally irresponsible and criminal act which has caused damage to the insulation after a fence was broken through and a door smashed,'' Harrison said, adding the protesters gained limited access to the plant.
``At no time was there any risk to plant safety or public safety.''
Suffolk police said the demonstration ended peacefully. Officers arrested 12 protesters, the force said.
Greenpeace said the protesters entered the complex from a public beach just after 6 a.m. by cutting through a wire fence. Some climbed onto the roof of the reactor dome, while others entered the central control building.
In October, more than 100 Greenpeace activists broke into the Sizewell B plant. Several climbed onto the roof of the building housing the cooling water pump, unfurling banners saying ``No More Nuclear.'' They climbed down after a day and were arrested by police.
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Pope Expresses Opposition to Potential War in Iraq
By FRANK BRUNI
January 13, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/international/13CND_POPE.html?ex=1043494858&ei=1&en=e622759019a137e6
VATICAN CITY, Jan. 13 - Pope John Paul II expressed his strongest opposition yet to a potential war in Iraq today, describing it as a "defeat for humanity" and urging world leaders to try to resolve disputes with Iraq through diplomatic means.
"No to war!" the pope said during his annual address to scores of diplomatic emissaries to the Vatican, an exhortation that referred in part to Iraq, a country he mentioned twice.
"War is not always inevitable," the pope said. "It is always a defeat for humanity."
Wondering aloud what to say "of the threat of a war which could strike the people of Iraq," he added: "War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option, and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations."
The pope had previously articulated concerns about an American-led military strike against Iraq, most notably on Christmas Day, when he beseeched people "to extinguish the ominous smoldering of a conflict which, with the joint efforts of all, can be avoided."
But in those instances, his message was largely implicit. He did not refer to Iraq by name, and his words were not as blunt.
Today's remarks came as the United States continues a buildup of its military presence in the Middle East, and they exemplified international leaders' apprehensions and attempts at political and moral suasion as a moment of American decision seems to draw near.
The pope's comments also recalled his opposition to the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The pope's refusal to support that effort strained diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the United States at the time.
What the pope said today was not surprising: he has consistently decried a range of wars throughout his 24-year papacy, often without immediate or discernible effect on events.
But after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, the pope said that nations have a moral and legal right to defend themselves against terrorism.
He did not condemn the bombing of Afghanistan, although he did say that such military actions must be aimed solely at people with "criminal culpability" and not whole groups of innocent civilians.
In speaking out about Iraq today, he joined a large and robust international chorus of opposition.
Wilfrid-Guy Licari, the Canadian ambassador to the Holy See, said that the pope's voice would stand out as an especially resonant one.
"It is putting extra pressure, because he's one of the only moral voices left in the world with credibility," Mr. Licari said.
He added that the pope's comments reflected the Vatican's intensifying worry about, and preoccupation with, the situation in Iraq. Over the last month, a growing number of Vatican officials have raised questions about the morality, necessity and consequences of a war in Iraq.
R. James Nicholson, the American ambassador to the Holy See, also noted that the pope "speaks with a great deal of credibility and moral authority."
"The United States listens," Mr. Nicholson said.
But he said that he did not interpret the pope's remarks as an indication that the Vatican and the United States stood apart on Iraq.
"If you examine carefully what the pope said, he said that war is not always inevitable, and we agree," Mr. Nicholson said, asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein can prevent it if he complies fully with weapons inspections and eliminates any weapons of mass destruction.
The present and future question before the Vatican, Mr. Nicholson said, was whether there was "sufficient provocation" for the United States to take military action against Iraq.
"The answer to that," Mr. Nicholson acknowledged, "may remain something that we don't agree on."
The pope's comments on Iraq were contained in a wide-ranging speech that traversed the globe, reflecting on signs of desperation and hope on various continents, and also touched on social issues.
He made special note of a series of expulsions from Russia of Catholic priests there, a point of keen discord between the Vatican and Moscow.
He called these expulsions "a cause of great suffering for me," adding: "The Holy See expects from the government authorities concrete decisions which will put an end to this crisis."
He nodded to a series of recent scientific claims by mentioning human cloning, saying that it, along with abortion and euthanasia, "risk reducing the human person to a mere object."
"When all moral criteria are removed, scientific research involving the sources of life becomes a denial of the being and the dignity of the person," the pope said.
"War itself is an attack on human life, since it brings in its wake suffering and death," he continued. "The battle for peace is always a battle for life."
While he did not link that condemnation of war to the possibility of military strikes against Iraq, he singled out Iraq during another passage of his speech.
In that passage, he said, "International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between states, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences."
"War," he added, "is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations."
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'Peace is patriotic'
Activist organizes marches to encourage public opinion
By Tom Kisken, kisken@insidevc.com
January 13, 2003
Inside Ventura County
http://www.insidevc.com/vcs/county_news/article/0,1375,VCS_226_1670386,00.html
Maybe Robert Dodge shouldn't be marching on Ventura's Main Street with his peace emblem T-shirt and a sign that shouts "Support the U.N." in scrawled Magic Marker.
It's not like the 50-year-old Venturan has time. He's a family practice doctor who considers 60-hour weeks short. Today, on his "day off," he just finished checking on a man with pneumonia and a woman recovering from back surgery.
Dodge has things other than the possibility of war in Iraq to consume him. His son David has been diagnosed with leukemia twice and has spent almost a third of his 20 years on chemotherapy, with the current course scheduled to end in May.
And yet Dr. Peace, as a friend calls him, has thrown himself into the emerging anti-war movement as if attacks against Iraq were coming tomorrow. His Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions group started some 10 months ago with a half-dozen people in a neighbor's home. Now, it has an e-mail list of about 400.
Dodge drives to rallies and marches in his Volkswagen Passat with the "Peace is Patriotic" bumper sticker. He's also Ventura County president of the anti-nuke mainstay, Physicians for Social Responsibility.
"If he's not doing the doctor thing, he's doing the peace thing," said Steven Dodge, who is 15 and the youngest of three sons.
"Sometimes it's like, 'Relax a little bit,'" said David Dodge, who is in remission and is a global studies major at UC Santa Barbara. "He's a workaholic."
His fix on this day involves walking up and down Main Street with Steven, David and about 70 other people. They chant oft-used slogans like "This is what democracy is all about."
One marcher carries a sign that reads "Honk for Peace." A chorus of passers-by blare their answer while a few drivers send a different message. They stare straight ahead and grip their steering wheels.
Dodge is an optimist who pays less attention to the silent scowls than to the honked horns and polls contending a majority of Americans believe war with Iraq has not been justified.
He says repeatedly his goal in organizing marches and monthly forums is to enable people to express opinions -- be it support, uncertainty or opposition. However, his actions and rhetoric seem to be aimed at another target, at imprinting what he believes is the majority opinion on the White House.
"If we don't go to war, it's because there's a groundswell of protest in this country and around the world," Dodge said. "I believe the war in Iraq is wrong, and I'll do whatever I can to not make it happen."
Remembering Vietnam
The rallies and vigils organized by people like Dodge in Ventura, Ojai and Thousand Oaks seem more cerebral than emotional, although the intensity of the Southern California anti-war movement may be growing. Thousands of demonstrators marched Saturday in Los Angeles.
Many of the people carrying signs into Ventura's Plaza Park for a peace march are 40 and older. Some have little if any experience protesting. Others are longtime activists who circulate petitions supporting the living wage movement and distribute Green Party bumper stickers.
"I'm out here because I remember the Vietnam War," said Dennis Daneau, trying to explain the abundance of gray. "We have memories. Young people are not clear about war. What they've seen is Grenada. What they've seen is Desert Storm. ...They don't understand body bags."
Daneau is an Ojai special education teacher who doubts the peace movement has the size or intensity to stop a war. He marches all the same.
"I think George Bush is hellbent on leather to start this war," he said. "I want the American people to understand in the long run how the military-industrial system encourages and leads us to war. ... Our weapons industry likes this war. There are a few people who make a helluva lot of money when we go to war."
The rally seems simultaneously removed and attached to the movement that covered the country like a tie-dyed quilt during the Vietnam War. Except for the occasional chanting and honking on Main Street, the procession is low-key. Some marchers are so respectful of law and order, they won't jaywalk.
Yet the kaleidoscopic tint of the 1960s is apparent -- in the dashiki worn by one protester, picket sign slogans like "Give Peace A Chance" and the words of people born a decade after Vietnam.
The protests stopped the war back then. They can do the same now, said Jessica Beckerman, an 18-year-old college student filming a documentary on peace rallies.
"The government doesn't want to do things that make everyone angry," said Beckerman, a Venturan who is now at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
She said the Saturday marches on Main Street have a different feel than at campus where the rallies are vibrant and activists hand students cell phones, asking them to make protest calls directly to the White House.
"People here seem as informed but not outwardly passionate and angry," she said.
Fighting by proxy
Dodge was a pre-med student with a billowing red afro during the latter years of Vietnam. He wasn't a protest leader but went to rallies, gathering with other students at the University of Colorado in Boulder and marching to a nearby freeway.
He worries sometimes about the quiet nature of the current peace movement and tries to arrange for guitar-playing activists to be at rallies who can spur protesters into singing "Give Peace A Chance."
The regular crowd at the peace marches includes a trio of kids from Ventura High School and a few others younger than 25, but Dodge acknowledges the movement in Ventura County seems to be driven by people of his generation.
Young adults don't feel as threatened as they did 35 years ago, partly because the draft is gone.
"War is sort of fought by proxy," he said. "It's the poor people, the people who sort of haven't been franchised by society. Those of us in certain socioeconomic groups are able to sit back as wars are fought on our behalf."
Dodge wasn't drafted because he was in college. After the war, he focused on medical school and not activism. His social conscience spurred him during the Cold War when he got involved with the anti-nuclear movement through groups like Beyond War and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
He is a bicyclist, tennis player and surfer. For 21 years, Dodge delivered babies as part of his family practice. He made the decision to give up that part of his practice shortly before David was diagnosed with a relapse of leukemia.
"It was awful. It's all awful," he said of the disease. "When you're a physician, you know too much. You have this young man who is aware of the world and his main thing is 'Am I going to die?'"
Dodge doesn't avoid any questions, rather pours forth answers as if he has been chain-drinking espresso. Friends talk about his willingness to listen and his compassion.
"He's the most unradical person in the world," said his neighbor Ron Hertz. "He's totally rational, logical, knowledgeable and balanced."
Nuclear anxiety
It was about a year ago that Hertz and Dodge converged at the front of their driveways and commiserated over a Pentagon report calling for new nuclear research. They decided to start polling friends to gauge interest in organizing a peace group that evolved into Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.
Founded out of nuclear anxiety, the group is now targeted on war, and it does take every spare minute Dodge has.
"I'm sort of doing this instead of sleeping at night," he said, referring to his late-night habit of writing letters to the editor.
He hopes the peace movement changes the world but concedes it may not. Either way, he feels compelled to speak out.
"If I look back and nothing has changed, at least I can rest with the fact that I've done everything I could," he said.
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