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NUCLEAR
Greenpeace protesters break into nuclear power plant
Russia shuts nuclear plant over leak fears
Protesters Invade British Nuclear Plant
Government satisfied with security
Government refuses to rule out use of cluster bombs
Peace activist convicted of trespassing
India wrestles with paradox of nuclear status
Blix Repeats Iraq Smuggled Arms-Related Goods
Inspectors want more time
Iraq Hunt To Extend To March, Blix Says
UN Denies Market Rumors on Inspectors
N.Korea Insists on U.S. Talks to End Nuke Row
Bush Could Revive 'Bold Initiative' for N. Korea
Back to the Framework
U.S. Says No New Tack on N. Korea
Powell: U.S. Wants Stronger Rules on North Korea
US Interrupts North Korea Food Aid
N. Korea: Prepared to Exercise 'Options'
Britain to Decide on Missile Defense Upgrade
Russia seeks more U.S. funds for scrapping subs
Bush frees cash to secure Soviet arms
Oversight Change on Tap for Nuclear Power
NRC to overhaul the way it regulates nuclear power plants
Prairie Island tribe says it has say on Red Wing nuclear plant
Demands Grow for Improving Indian Point Emergency Plan
Nuke Plant Security Readiness Scrutinized
Entergy's New York Nuclear Unit Shut Down
Time to Close Indian Point
GOP veterans rap secrecy on defense issues
Ashcroft's assurance is sought on privacy
Networks pull plug on Voter News Service
Bush Shows Impatience With Iraq but Optimism on North Korea
MILITARY
Officials: Taliban Regrouping in South Afghanistan
Ivory Coast's Western Rebels Sign Truce
German Goes on Trial for Weapons Exports to Iraq
Arms deals criticized as corporate US welfare
Smallpox virus: the secret stocks
Britain Reserves Right to Attack Iraq Without U.N.
As British Antiwar Sentiment Rises, Blair Defends Iraq Stand
U.S. Bans Aid to Colombian Air Force Unit
Iraq Says Six Hurt in Bombing
Israel Won't Let Us Reform
British Aide Says Meeting on Palestinian Reform a Success
Israel's Labour Won't Join Sharon Govt. After Vote
Mideast Mediators Thwart Israel Travel Ban
Italians alarmed at discovery of huge US munitions base
Millions of Mines Await Victims in Northern Iraq
Navy Begins Last Live-Fire Exercise on Vieques Island
U.S. hits Libya's ascension to U.N. post
U.N. Chief Says It Is Too Early to Consider War With Iraq
U.S. Sending Huge Armadas to Persian Gulf
General Wary on Number of Cargo Planes
Pills cited in mistaken Afghan bombing
In era of high-tech warfare, 'friendly fire' risk grows
Gulf War Chemicals Can Damage Testes
Loyalists Seize Caracas Police Weapons
The CIA's Copy Desk and 'The NY Times'
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Louisiana police demand DNA from white drivers
Cut the Prison Budget First
Court Rules Against Secret Hearing
Clearing of Illinois Death Row Is Greeted With Global Cheers
Illinois Prosecutors Assess Death Penalty's New Era
Afghan drug crops up despite curbs
ENERGY AND OTHER
Key carmakers to work together on fuel cells
TVA to Expand Wind Power Facility
Bill Would Offer Tax Credits for Solar Systems
Oil Hits 2-Year High on UN Find in Iraq
California rethinks making sea water drinkable
Ultra-green Seattle sorts through recycling options
Pentagon Wants Out of Environmental Laws
ACTIVISTS
Activists Bring War Protests to Baghdad
A Skeptic About Wars Intended to Stamp Out Evil
Thousands Rally for Cyprus Reunification
Emma Goldman's Anti - War Stand Makes Waves
Calif., School Holds Peace Teach - In
WE JOIN RAID ON NUKE POWER CENTRE
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Greenpeace protesters break into nuclear power plant
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01142003/s_49335.asp
LONDON - 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. (0600 GMT) by cutting through a wire fence. Some climbed onto the roof of the reactor dome, while others entered the central control building.
"The aim was to demonstrate the ease with which lightly equipped, peaceful individuals can gain access to the most sensitive areas of a nuclear power station," Greenpeace campaigns director Blake Lee-Harwood said. "Britain is sending troops into a war. We have a war on terror. The British nuclear industry is meant to be on the highest state of alert. But it was essentially a breeze to get in," he said.
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.
----
Russia shuts nuclear plant over leak fears
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01142003/s_49344.asp
MOSCOW - Russia has shut a reprocessing plant at one of its biggest nuclear sites over fears it is contaminating drinking water, officials said Monday, in an unprecedented crackdown on crumbling nuclear facilities.
The plant is part of the Mayak facility in the formerly closed Urals city of Ozyorsk, the site of the worst nuclear disaster on Russian territory five decades ago, when hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to radiation.
Russia's nuclear safety agency, Gosatomnadzor, denied plant 235 an operating license for 2003 over fears that radioactive waste dumped into the nearby Lake Karachay and in specially built water tanks was tainting local water supplies.
Environmental group Greenpeace says anyone who stands by the lake for more than an hour could be exposed to fatal levels of radiation, which they say are 350,000 times higher than normal.
"Plant 235 is not working at the moment because it did not respect safety rules. We are now deciding on what conditions need to be fulfilled so that work can resume," said Andrei Kislov, a senior official at Gosatomnadzor.
A tank containing radioactive waste exploded at Mayak in 1957 and exposed 472,000 people to radiation in an accident long kept secret by Soviet authorities.
Ecologists greeted the move to close the plant as rare proof that Russia is finally coming to grips with the nuclear burden it inherited from the Soviet Union.
"Though Gosatomnadzor has done some good things, this is the first time we have seen a step at this level," said Greenpeace energy expert Vladimir Chuprov. "Unfortunately, there is a high possibility that a license will be granted soon, given the strong nuclear energy lobby pressuring the authorities.
"The only way to solve the problem is to shut down the plant once and for all. If the administration says they will solve the problem but leave the plant open, they are lying. The technology for this to be possible simply does not exist."
The lake is several times more radioactive than the area surrounding Ukraine's Chernobyl plant, the site of the world's worst civil nuclear accident.
The plant has dumped radioactive waste in the area since the 1950s, and it is unclear why a decision has been taken now.
Russian environment pressure group Ecodefence said by improving standards to satisfy U.S. State Department rules, the Russians hoped to win lucrative contracts to reprocess U.S. spent nuclear fuel. Some 80 percent of the world's spent nuclear fuel stockpiles are under U.S. jurisdiction.
-------- britain
Protesters Invade British Nuclear Plant
January 14, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/europe/14NUKE.html
LONDON, Jan. 13 - Using ropes, ladders, climbing hooks and wire cutters estimated to cost a total of less than $50, more than 30 Greenpeace protesters broke into a nuclear power station in eastern England today in an effort to demonstrate poor security at nuclear plants.
"Britain is sending troops into a war, we have a war on terror, the British nuclear industry is meant to be on the highest state of alert, but it was essentially a breeze to get in," said Blake Lee-Harwood, the environmental group's campaign director.
Some of the climbers managed to reach the dome above the nuclear reactor at the Sizewell B station near Leiston in Suffolk. They left the dome tonight ,hours after their 6 a.m. invasion.
British Energy, the plant's operator, said the trespassers, 12 of whom were arrested by the police, had posed no risk to safety.
--------
Government satisfied with security at nuclear power plant penetrated by Greenpeace
Tue Jan 14, 9:50 AM ET
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20030114/ap_wo_en_po/eu_gen_britain_nuclear_protest_3&printer=1
LONDON - The government said Tuesday it was satisfied with security measures at a nuclear power plant where activists broke in a day earlier.
More than 30 anti-nuclear protesters from the environmental group Greenpeace used ropes, ladders and wire-cutters to break into the central control building of the Sizewell B nuclear power station in eastern England on Monday. Protesters said they wanted to show how easy it would be for terrorists to break into one of Britain's nuclear plants.
The protest ended peacefully later in the day. Police arrested 12 protesters.
Responding to a lawmaker's question about the incident in Parliament Tuesday, Trade and Industry Minister Nigel Griffiths said protesters were unable to enter sensitive areas of the plant, including the control room and reactor building.
"I am satisfied that the response procedures at the site were adequate and carried out according to plan," he told lawmakers.
"Despite their attempts, the intruders did not breach any of the internal security barriers. ... The security did protect the sensitive parts of the site and was adequate and worked properly."
Griffiths said security precautions "have to distinguish between the type of irresponsible behavior we saw yesterday and real threats."
But he said the Department of Trade and Industry and plant owners British Energy would conduct a full inquiry and review security arrangements. The results of the inquiry would not be published because it was not government policy to disclose details of security measures at nuclear plants, he added.
Crispin Blunt, the lawmaker from the opposition Conservative Party who tabled the question in Parliament, protested that without this information, there was no way lawmakers could be satisfied that officials had learned the right lessons.
Andrew Stunell, a lawmaker from the Liberal Democrat party, said the security beach "highlights the vulnerability of our large generating plants and our nuclear industry."
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.
------- depleted uranium
Government refuses to rule out use of cluster bombs
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday February 14, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,895223,00.html
The government is refusing to disclose whether RAF aircraft will use cluster bombs in Iraq; the controversial weapons can kill and maim civilians long after a conflict is over.
But it has freely admitted that British forces being deployed to the Gulf are being equipped with another weapon implicated in long-term civilian casualties - anti-tank shells with tips made from depleted uranium.
In response to a question from the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, Paul Keetch, the armed forces minister Adam Ingram said Whitehall's open government code allows officials to withhold information to protect British defence interests.
International humanitarian groups, including the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Landmine Action have said the use of cluster bombs could be illegal and certainly undermines the credibility of claims that "collateral damage" would be kept to a minimum.
They say that cluster bombs are inherently indiscriminate and comparable with landmines, which are banned by the 1998 Ottawa treaty.
They also say the use of cluster bombs could be in breach of a protocol to the 1977 Geneva conventions because civilian casualties for years to come could be excessive in relation to the direct military advantage anticipated.
Landmine Action and other groups estimate that cluster bombs killed between 90 and 150 civilians in the Kosovo conflict, and unexploded bombs have since caused more than 200 casualties there.
A leaked Ministry of Defence report estimated that 60% of the 531 cluster bombs dropped by the RAF during the Kosovo war missed their intended tar get or were unaccounted for.
"It looks as though the reason for withholding the information is embarrassment rather than protecting defence interests", Maurice Frankel, director of the Freedom of Information Campaign said yesterday.
Mr Ingram, meanwhile, has told the Labour MP Llew Smith that "depleted uranium munitions" will be available to troops. Mr Keetch has asked Mr Ingram to explain why the ministry is prepared to admit the potential use of DU shells, but not cluster bombs.
Particles and dust from exploded DU weapons have been implicated in cancers. The government's approach is given in a recent letter from Mr Ingram to the Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn. Iraq had produced "no credible research" to support claims attributing cancers and birth deformities to DU-based ammunition, Mr Ingram writes.
----
Peace activist convicted of trespassing
At recruiting center, she tried to warn of depleted uranium
By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Friday, February 14, 2003
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/108673_uranium14.shtml
BELLINGHAM -- A peace activist who attempted to explain the dangers of depleted uranium inside an Armed Forces Recruitment Center last fall was found guilty yesterday of trespassing.
The quick guilty verdict followed a three-day jury trial that drew media attention to the issue of the radioactive heavy metal, used in munitions to pierce armored vehicles during the Gulf War. Experts say the radioactive dust inhaled after an explosion can lead to various cancers and birth defects.
The activist, 66-year-old Ellen Murphy, received a $150 fine and a year's non-supervisory probation.
She was not allowed to present information about depleted uranium in court to support her case, but she was able to testify about her reason for her actions, saying that she felt a "deep devotion" to veterans and enlisted men.
The court was crowded with some five dozen of her supporters each day. Some carried peace signs.
Murphy and her attorneys had intended to talk about her efforts to keep would-be recruits from signing up and being shipped to Iraq. The defense claimed the Gulf War left that country a "toxic wasteland" of radioactive depleted uranium rounds.
Prosecutors argued that the Army and depleted uranium were not on trial.
Judge Debra Lev did allow Douglas Rokke, an Army Reserve major and former member of the crew that cleans up depleted uranium left from Operation Desert Storm, to testify for the record, but not before the jury.
Rokke, who flew in from Illinois, told the court that his own uranium poisoning had been kept from him for two years.
He talked about the lack of information provided recruits.
Rokke also testified that he intends to nominate Murphy for a civilian commendation from the secretary of defense for the demonstration.
In final arguments yesterday, prosecutors said they wanted to send a message that protesters will not be allowed to break the law in Bellingham.
Murphy's attorney, Joe Pemberton, said he is considering an appeal.
"I feel like Bellingham has returned to the approach of the early 1960s by classifying people with the label 'protesters' and trying to 'teach them a lesson.' That scares me."
P-I reporter M.L. Lyke can be reached at 425-252-2215 or m.l.lyke@seattlepi.com
-------- india / pakistan
India wrestles with paradox of nuclear status
Story by Sanjeev Miglani
REUTERS INDIA:
January 14, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19397/story.htm
NEW DELHI - 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 neutralised its conventional superiority.
Analysts say last year's inconclusive military standoff between the neighbours 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, 2000 which it blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
Pakistan responded by mobilising 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 Defence 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, formalising the existing arrangement which gives the civilian political leadership under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee final power to authorise 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 targetting 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-tonne 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.
Defence 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, defence 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 drops 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 defence official was quoted as saying on 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
Blix Repeats Iraq Smuggled Arms-Related Goods
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 10:52 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54251-2003Jan14?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has reiterated that his teams in Iraq have uncovered weapons-related smuggling but it was unclear if the goods were linked to weapons of mass destruction.
Blix was echoing comments he made at the United Nations last week, but the dollar slipped briefly on the comments, coming close to a three-year low against the euro and testing the day's low against the safe-haven Swiss franc.
"We have found several cases where it is clear that Iraq has imported weapons-related material in violation of the prohibitions of the Security Council," he told the BBC in an interview broadcast late Monday.
"Whether these discoveries or items are related to weapons of mass destruction is a matter which we still need to determine.
"There has been a considerable amount of import in the weapons sector which clearly is smuggling, and in violation, and they are in fact large quantities," Blix said.
Blix told the U.N. Security Council last week that Iraq was illegally importing a "relatively large number of missile engines" and raw material for the production of solid missile fuel.
----
Inspectors want more time
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 14, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030114-462399.htm
U.N. officials in charge of weapons inspections in Iraq said yesterday they would need up to 10 more months to complete their work, as both the United States and Britain downplayed the imminence of an attack and said they had no timetable for the inspections.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors have been in Iraq since November, said the United Nations has provided timelines of "somewhere between six and 12 months" to complete inspections.
"We think we'll get the time we need since no one has explicitly said that they disagreed with our assessment of the time it would take," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said in Vienna, Austria.
The White House agreed, saying there was "no timetable" by which arms inspectors must complete their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"The president has not put any type of artificial timetable on how long he believes is necessary for Saddam Hussein to prove to the world that he's going to comply," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday.
"The president thinks it remains important for the inspectors to do their job and have time to do their job."
News reports have pegged Jan. 27 as a key date, when inspectors are scheduled to give a formal assessment of Iraqi compliance with U.N. disarmament demands. Bush officials said the deadline is just another benchmark set out by the U.N. Security Council in its resolution passed Nov. 8.
"This process is under way," Mr. Fleischer said. "That process included a series of dates that the inspectors would report back. We're not even through those dates yet. An important one is coming up, January 27th."
A Bush administration official said inspection delays are not a concern because U.S. armed forces are not fully in place. "There's a likelihood that nothing will happen until mid-March, at the earliest," the official said.
Part of the problem, the official said, is that Turkey has not agreed to allow the United States to use military bases there to deploy as many as 80,000 troops into northern Iraq.
Turkey and Syria yesterday said they support a peaceful resolution to the standoff between the United States and Iraq, their common neighbor.
"The two sides underlined the importance of resolving the problem through peaceful means within the framework of UN Security Council resolution 1441, without resorting to any military intervention," said a statement from the office of Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer after his talks with visiting Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa.
"The sides emphasized the importance of preserving Iraq's territorial integrity and political unity," the statement said.
Mr. Fleischer took issue with reports that the timetable for military intervention in Iraq was "slipping."
"I think, frankly, other than it's a slow news day, nothing really has changed about the timing in Iraq," Mr. Fleischer said.
Still, the massive buildup of troops in the Persian Gulf continues. Since Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has signed two orders to send an additional 67,000 troops to the Gulf, a move that could give the U.S. military nearly 150,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in the region by the end of February.
Yesterday, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had a different timeline from what the agency's spokesman used, saying U.N. arms inspectors would need "a few months" to determine whether Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
"We need to give inspection a chance to run its full course," Mr. ElBaradei told a press conference after talks with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.
The IAEA chief would not set a specific date for the conclusion of inspections, and said Jan. 27 was not a "cutoff" but merely a deadline for him and top U.N. inspector Hans Blix to deliver a "status report."
"I would like to make it clear in advance that our work will continue after that date," Mr. ElBaradei said. "I think now that the international community now understands that this process is going to take some time."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair refused yesterday to impose a time limit on the work of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq but insisted Saddam would be disarmed by force if necessary.
Treading a tightrope between domestic opposition to a war against Iraq and a desire to keep pressure on Baghdad, Mr. Blair also predicted that the United Nations would authorize military action against Iraq if Saddam were proved to be in breach of its resolution on disarmament.
"Let the inspectors do their task. I don't think there is any point putting an arbitrary time scale on it," Mr. Blair told reporters at his Downing Street home in London.
"Last week was the first week that the inspectors were in there with their full complement. Some of these questions, you [can] put to me again in a few weeks' time."
The costs of keeping vast numbers of forces in Gulf nations such as Kuwait are relatively modest at the outset; service personnel get paid and fed wherever they are. But military analysts warn that costs would begin to soar once rotations start.
Lawrence Korb of the Council on Foreign Relations, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, said rotation is necessary after a month to keep troops at peak efficiency.
The operation would become expensive and frustrating for the Pentagon once the force level nears 200,000, he said.
"Then you have to start calling up reserves and you'd have the problem of how long you keep those reserves," he said.
Meanwhile, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said in interview from Riyadh that he prefers diplomacy to military action, even if the Security Council declares Iraq in material breach of U.N. resolutions.
"At least give us a chance [to see] what is possible. If we don't succeed, those working for war can have their war as they please, which is going to be a catastrophe for the region," he said.
A Saudi government statement said: "The kingdom believes that opportunity should be given for dialogue even if the UN Security Council sanctions war. It is an Arab demand that enough time should be given for diplomacy to spare the region and the world human tragedies."
----
Iraq Hunt To Extend To March, Blix Says
Arms Search Timetable Complicates U.S. Plans
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51992-2003Jan13?language=printer
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday that he is significantly expanding his inspection force in Iraq and plans to be working there at least until he presents a major report to the U.N. Security Council in March.
Blix said his next presentation to the Security Council, due on Jan. 27, would be an interim update on the results of the first 60 days of inspections and mark "the beginning of the inspection and monitoring process, not the end of it."
His remarks, in an interview, came after the Bush administration over the weekend described the end of this month as the start of "the final phase" leading to a decision on whether to use military force against Iraq. Yesterday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer avoided any talk of a deadline, however, saying that President Bush "has not put a timetable on it."
As the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf has accelerated, questions about when and how the administration will decide to use the vast military force it is assembling have become more pointed. To some extent, the administration is being deliberately ambiguous in an effort to pressure Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, to reveal hidden weapons programs by convincing him that the risk of invasion is real and immediate.
But the inspections timeline presented by Blix, along with near-daily policy calibrations by administration officials and public hesitation by potential allies, have begun to complicate the administration's hopes for a clear-cut scenario that would lead to Hussein's capitulation or a justifiable war by spring.
In his monthly news conference yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain was asked about seemingly conflicting statements he has made over the past several days. Blair, the Bush administration's leading ally on Iraq, said last week that inspectors should be given "space and time" to complete their work before any military decisions are made.
Blair strongly denied that his commitment to use force if necessary was wavering. He told reporters he was confident the United Nations would authorize military action once it was proven Iraq had lied about possessing weapons of mass destruction and was in "material breach" of November's Security Council resolution ordering new inspections. If the council could not agree, and "someone put an unreasonable or unilateral block down on action," Blair said, "we can't be in a position where we are confined." In that case, he indicated, Britain would join the United States in an attack.
A number of senior Security Council diplomats have said that, barring a major discovery by inspectors or aggressive action by Iraq, there was little hope that a majority would agree by the end of the month that Baghdad had violated the resolution. Senior administration officials have indicated the United States may try to bring the matter to a head by disclosing intelligence it says proves Hussein is hiding chemical and biological weapons and trying to build a nuclear weapon. Several informed U.S. and diplomatic sources said, however, that the evidence is largely circumstantial or dated and is unlikely to convince reluctant council members.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said yesterday that diplomacy should continue even if the United Nations decided to go to war. Saying that his government would propose a new Iraq initiative to Arab leaders at a meeting scheduled for March, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, pleaded in an NBC News interview: "At least give us a chance. What would be [lost] in that? If, in the final analysis, we don't succeed, those who are working for war can have their war as they please, but which is going to be a catastrophe for the region."
Blix said that the U.S. military buildup has added momentum to his inspections effort, but in a separate interview with the Reuters news service he said the escalation has also caused anxiety. "I represent disarmament through inspections," he said, "and we do our best to move on that line."
Blix said that 60 new inspectors, most of them Americans and Arabs, began training yesterday and would soon bring his total inspection team to nearly 200. "I'm upscaling as fast as I can" in response to Security Council directives, Blix said. "The Pentagon may not be impressed by my numbers [or] by what we're doing. . . . But there's a limit to how many inspections you can do in a day."
In addition to their headquarters in Baghdad, Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have opened a branch office in Mosul, in the northern part of Iraq, and will soon establish another office in the southern city of Basra, he said. The team also has added eight helicopters and is planning its own high-altitude surveillance throughout Iraq, using unmanned aircraft contributed by several countries.
Although they provide no guarantee of finding all the underground weapons sites or mobile laboratories Hussein is alleged to have, the presence of so many inspectors "fanning out around the country," Blix said, "will constitute a deterrent" to any dangerous Iraqi action. "It's a form of containment," he said.
Although November's Security Council Resolution 1441 instructed UNMOVIC and the IAEA to report on Iraqi cooperation 60 days after inspections began, the Jan. 27 report "is just an update," Blix said, adding that he does not expect the next two weeks of inspections, or his visit to Baghdad with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei next weekend, to yield any definitive answers.
The resolution does not mandate further reporting dates and, if the Security Council does not set a new one, Blix said he would be operating under an earlier council mandate, Resolution 1284, which created UNMOVIC in 1999 and which requires quarterly reports to the council.
The next report, he said, would be in March, when he would provide the council with a list of "key remaining disarmament tasks" for the inspectors and a future work program.
Bush administration officials have said they believe conclusive information about Iraq's weapons programs could be quickly gleaned from interviews with Iraqi scientists and technicians, if they were questioned outside of the country and given assurances of safety for themselves and their immediate families.
U.S. officials said they have turned over a specific outline of how such interviews could be conducted and what guarantees -- including U.S. asylum -- could be given the scientists.
Blix said inspectors would begin interviewing scientists this week and would seek private sessions. But he said there were still "imponderables" in attempting to take people out of the country. The U.N. inspectors, he said, could not force anyone to leave Iraq.
----
UN Denies Market Rumors on Inspectors
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 10:38 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54189-2003Jan14?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A spokesman for the U.N. weapons inspection agency for Iraq denied on Tuesday market rumors that U.N. inspectors had been asked by Baghdad to leave.
The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was "unaware of any order to leave," the spokesman told Reuters after contacting the inspection force in Baghdad.
In Baghdad, Hiro Ueki, U.N. spokesman for the inspectors in Baghdad, said chief weapons inspector Hans Blix also was unaware of any such order.
"Everyone around me is carrying on business as usual," Ueki said."
Similarly, in Vienna, a spokesman for the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said his agency's nuclear experts also had heard of no order to leave Iraq.
"We certainly haven't heard that the inspectors have been asked to leave," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
Traders said rumors that Iraq had asked the inspectors to leave Iraq were moving financial markets, affecting prices in the trading of currencies, oil, stocks and U.S. Treasuries.
Also worrying traders were comments by Blix in an interview with the BBC that U.N. inspectors had uncovered weapons-related smuggling by Iraq.
But it was unclear if the goods were linked to weapons of mass destruction, and U.N. officials later said there was nothing new in Blix's comments.
Blix told the U.N. Security Council last week that Iraq was illegally importing a "relatively large number of missile engines" and raw material for the production of solid missile fuel.
The dollar nonetheless slipped briefly on the comments, coming close to a three-year low against the euro and testing the day's low against the safe-haven Swiss franc.
-------- korea
N.Korea Insists on U.S. Talks to End Nuke Row
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 6:25 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53392-2003Jan14?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said Tuesday that direct talks with the United States were the only way to end their standoff and dismissed worldwide condemnation of its nuclear brinkmanship.
Pyongyang also told the world not to worry about its decision to pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), saying its acts of self-defense were not "brinkmanship."
"The nuclear issue is a bilateral issue that can only be peacefully resolved through negotiations between the principal parties," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a statement.
"The United States' attempts to internationalize our nuclear problem is merely an attempt to evade its responsibility," said the Korean-language statement.
North Korea, which the Bush administration suspects of developing nuclear arms, last week pulled out of the NPT and said it was free to resume missile-firing tests.
Tuesday Pyongyang reiterated its demand for dialogue after the top U.S. envoy for Asia, James Kelly, had said in South Korea that Washington was willing to hold talks with the North but not to open negotiations.
The KCNA report also contained Pyongyang's first public reference to talks in New Mexico last week between North Korean diplomats and the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson.
KCNA cited Richardson's comments on U.S. television urging the Bush administration to open talks to defuse the nuclear crisis.
Monday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Washington hoped to hold "technical" talks with Pyongyang but repeated that the United States would not give in to blackmail.
"The United States is willing to talk, not negotiate," Fleischer said. "North Korea wants to take the world through its blackmail playbook but we won't play."
KCNA said Tuesday the world should not worry about the NPT move.
"As the U.S. is to blame for spawning the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula and driving it to the worst phase, there is no need for the international community to worry about the decision," it said.
"The DPRK (North Korea) has already clarified that though the DPRK withdraws from the NPT, it has no will to produce nuclear weapons and its nuclear activities will be confined to the production of electricity at the present stage.
"Ours is a people of strong will who put into practice anything they determined to do. Even if the worst thing happens, they have nothing to fear.
"Some countries and media are so foolish as to describe the step taken by the DPRK as brinkmanship. But it is not brinkmanship."
----
Bush Could Revive 'Bold Initiative' for N. Korea
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 12:06 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54574-2003Jan14?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Tuesday he would consider reviving a "bold initiative" of benefits for North Korea if the Asian nation met demands to drop its nuclear ambitions.
"We expect them not to develop nuclear weapons, and if they so choose to do so, their choice, then I will reconsider whether or not we will restart the bold initiative," Bush told reporters.
His comments represented the latest signal by the United States of its interest in reopening discussions with North Korea to resolve the nuclear standoff.
In June 2001 Bush offered a "comprehensive dialogue" with the North as part of a "bold approach" in which the United States would take steps to improve the lives of the North Korean people. That initiative was scrapped after North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program came to light in 2002.
----
Back to the Framework
By Jimmy Carter
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52281-2003Jan13?language=printer
There is an eerie case of deja vu in Korea. Nearly nine years ago, President Kim Il Sung expelled international inspectors and threatened to process plutonium from spent fuel at an old graphite-moderated nuclear reactor in Yongbyon. The Clinton administration had rejected negotiations with North Korea, was contemplating a military strike to destroy the nuclear facility and was seeking U.N. Security Council economic sanctions. The North Koreans announced that such sanctions would be considered an act of war. It was clear the United States and South Korean militaries could prevail, but there would be massive casualties from the formidable ground forces of North Korea.
As now, the isolated and economically troubled nation was focused on resolving basic differences with the United States. Deeply suspicious and perhaps paranoid, the North Koreans were demanding assurances against a nuclear attack and opportunities for normal bilateral relations.
At the invitation of Kim Il Sung, and with the approval of the White House, I went to Pyongyang and negotiated directly with the man known as the "Great Leader." He agreed to freeze the nuclear situation at Yongbyon and permit international inspectors to monitor the agreement. In return, the United States was to pledge that nuclear weapons would not be used against North Korea and that two modern light-water reactors would be built to replace the Yongbyon facility. In the meantime, a monthly supply of fuel oil would help provide electrical power. The subsequent death of Kim Il Sung, who was replaced by his son, Kim Jong Il, interfered with the more rapid timetable that we envisioned, but these nuclear proposals were accepted officially in the Agreed Framework, also involving South Korea and Japan.
Kim Il Sung wanted to discuss long-term issues, with the goal of achieving normal relations between the Koreas and with America. He agreed to an immediate summit meeting with South Korea's president to discuss cross-border visitation among Korean families and the implementation of general principles adopted in 1992 regarding reunification. His suggestions for future talks with the United States included cooperation in recovering the remains of U.S. soldiers, a step-by-step reduction of Korean armed forces to 100,000 men on each side, with U.S. troops to be reduced in the same proportion, withdrawal of long-range artillery and other aggressive military forces from near the demilitarized zone, and mutual inspections to ensure the de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Although the promised light-water reactors were not built, substantial progress was made between North Korea and the United States, illustrated by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's successful discussions in Pyongyang.
The Bush administration brought a change in relationship with both Koreas.
Rejection of the "sunshine policy," which had earned the Nobel Peace Prize for South Korean President Kim Dae Jung; announcements that North Korea, like Iraq and Iran, was part of an "axis of evil"; public statements that the new "Great Leader" was loathed as a "pygmy" who deliberately starved his own people, that America was prepared to fight two wars at the same time, and that our missile defense system was a shield against North Korea -- all this helped cause many in that country to assume that they were next on America's hit list after Iraq.
With evidence that Pyongyang was acquiring enriched uranium, in direct violation of the Agreed Framework, President Bush announced that there would be no discussions with North Korea until after its complete rejection of a nuclear explosives program, and the monthly shipments of fuel oil were terminated.
Now, once again, international inspectors have been expelled, and the North Koreans have announced they will no longer be bound by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or an agreement to forgo testing of ballistic missiles. This is a serious threat to regional and world peace. North Korea has offered inspectors from the United States access to its nuclear sites to confirm that they are not developing weapons, but only complete international monitoring can determine whether they have decided to develop a nuclear arsenal or are using threats as a ploy to promote bilateral agreements with the United States.
It is clear that the world community cannot permit the North Koreans to develop a nuclear arsenal. They must be convinced that they will be more secure without nuclear weapons, and that normal diplomatic and economic relations with the United States are possible.
The announced nuclear policies of North Korea and the American rejection of direct talks are both contrary to regional and global interests. Unfortunately, both sides must save face, even as the situation deteriorates dangerously.
To resolve this impasse, some forum -- perhaps convened by Russia or China -- must be found within which these troubling differences can be resolved. The principles of the Agreed Framework of 1994 can be reconfirmed, combined with North Korea's full and verifiable compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a firm U.S. declaration of nonaggression against North Korea, so long as all agreements are honored.
Then perhaps the more far-reaching proposals discussed with Kim Il Sung can be implemented and a permanent peace can come to the reconciled Koreas.
Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta.
----
U.S. Says No New Tack on N. Korea
Envoy's Remark On Aid Causes Stir
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52245-2003Jan13?language=printer
The Bush administration yesterday played down comments by a top U.S. envoy that the United States would consider offering energy aid to North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons development programs.
The comments, made by Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly in Seoul, were widely interpreted as a new sign that the administration was willing to negotiate a settlement to the escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula. But White House and State Department spokesmen, speaking only hours after Kelly's remarks, insisted that they did not represent a shift in the administration's strategy of refusing to negotiate a deal with North Korea.
"I don't think you have anything new here," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. He said that "the ball remains in North Korea's court. They know what they need to do [verifiably dismantle weapons programs], and they need to take that action."
Tensions remain high within the administration over how to resolve the standoff with North Korea, and the rush to clarify Kelly's statements reflects the divisions within the U.S. government. Under pressure from allies, especially South Korea, the administration said last week that it would talk -- but not negotiate -- with the North Koreans over how they can come into compliance again with its international agreements to freeze a plutonium facility and not pursue nuclear weapons.
Speaking to reporters in Seoul, Kelly was asked whether an Exxon Mobil gas pipeline project would be useful in solving North Korea's energy problems. "It may well be that, 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," Kelly responded.
One administration official complained that "Kelly went off the reservation" with his answer. The administration, he said, has suggested North Korea would benefit from giving up its weapons programs but has not specifically pointed to certain projects.
"He should not have planted that seed," said the official, who reflects the views of the hard-line camp in the administration. He said the administration's "bold approach" to North Korea, unveiled last summer, would not have offered any type of energy assistance, making Kelly's suggestion of energy aid implausible.
Another official, who represents the views of the opposing camp, saw nothing wrong in Kelly's remarks. He said the problem with those advocating an uncompromising approach is "they increasingly don't give a damn" about North Korea's increasingly dangerous threats and actions. "They know [Korean leader Kim Jong Il] is evil. They want him dead."
In the past month, the confrontation threatened to spiral out of control as the government in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, took increasingly provocative steps in response to the U.S. decision to suspend fuel oil shipments -- after the administration discovered a clandestine nuclear project in North Korea -- and to briefly seize a ship carrying North Korean missiles bound for Yemen. North Korea evicted international weapons inspectors and moved to restart a plutonium reactor that had been shuttered as part of a 1994 accord with the United States, prompting the International Atomic Energy Agency last week to give Pyongyang "one last chance" before referring the matter to the United Nations Security Council.
North Korea then announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and suggested over the weekend it would end a moratorium on missile tests.
On Capitol Hill, four senators -- Republicans Jon Kyl (Ariz.), John McCain (Ariz.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Democrat Evan Bayh (Ind.) -- introduced a bill yesterday seeking to reimpose sanctions on North Korea, requiring congressional approval for any nuclear cooperation agreement and encouraging interdiction of weapons-related shipments to and from North Korea.
Staff writer Helen Dewar contributed to this report.
----
Powell: U.S. Wants Stronger Rules on North Korea
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 8:34 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53735-2003Jan14?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States will need "a new arrangement" to assure North Korea was not producing nuclear weapons if the current crisis is defused, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Powell said a 1994 framework among the United States, allies and North Korea to constrain Pyongyang's nuclear work "did not succeed in capping production" of fissile material.
"I think, therefore, that we need a new arrangement and not just go back to the existing framework," Powell said in an interview with the newspaper.
Incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, said U.S. allies support the 1994 framework but "would also support what Secretary Powell is suggesting, and that is there really has to be a better look-see by the rest of the world" at North Korea's weapons work.
"No one knows," Lugar said on CNN of the validity of North Korean statements that it was not developing nuclear weapons. The secretive communist country has expelled international monitors, said it was reactivating its nuclear energy program and withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Powell said the United States had made no decision whether it would support resumption of the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors, which were pledged under the 1994 framework as an alternative source of energy, if North Korea agreed to abandon all weapons activities.
"Are the reactors the best way to give them the kind of energy capacity they need? These are kind of open questions," Powell said. "It might be reactors, it might be some other form of energy."
While Powell seemed to rule out a formal treaty as a response to North Korean demands for a nonaggression pact, he said "there are other ways to document" U.S. statements that it has no intention to invade the nation.
Under the 1994 framework, North Korea shut down a nuclear reactor but did not dismantle it. Fuel rods were stored in the country, making them available for reprocessing into weapons-grade material.
The White House signaled interest on Monday for talks about North Korea's nuclear ambitions, saying it would hold "technical" discussions with Pyongyang but not give in to "blackmail." It reiterated a U.S. offer to consider renewed energy aid to the Asian nation once the standoff was resolved while insisting North Korea must take "irreversible" and verifiable steps to dismantle its suspected nuclear program.
----
US Interrupts North Korea Food Aid
Reuters
Monday, January 13, 2003; 11:19 PM
By Irwin Arieff
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52403-2003Jan13?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States, concerned food aid to North Korea may not be reaching those in need, has interrupted food shipments as it pressures Pyongyang to accept monitoring safeguards that apply to all other aid recipients, a top U.S. official said on Monday.
Word of the break in aid comes as Washington leans on Pyongyang to scrap a suspected nuclear weapons program after North Korea kicked international inspectors out of the country and shut down U.N. surveillance cameras at a facility capable of producing plutonium suitable for nuclear bombs.
North Korea's secretive system of distributing food aid, long a thorny issue for donors, has become an increasingly sticky point as tensions rise over Pyongyang's nuclear aims.
But Andrew Natsios, who heads the U.S. Agency for International Development, said a cutoff had been threatened long before the nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang and the interruption in shipments was completely unrelated to it.
He said food shipments had ended on Dec. 31.
"We want to be generous. There are a lot of hungry people in North Korea," he said during a visit to U.N. headquarters. "There will be a food aid program from the United States if they agree, and implement what they agreed to."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher later added: "We are not cutting off food. We intend to continue to be a significant donor to North Korea. We also intend to continue to work with the World Food Program to resolve our common concerns about monitoring of food to ensure it gets to those who need it."
U.S. officials said the break in aid shipments was due at least in part to Congress, which had not yet finalized the aid budget for the current year.
Natsios said the interruption in food aid shipments, first threatened last June, should not create a food emergency as North Korea had been free of famine since 1998 and actually increased domestic food production last year.
The United States sent 155,000 tons of food aid to North Korea last year, he said.
The United Nations has appealed for 500,000 tons of aid this year from donor nations around the world, but Washington has not yet decided how much of that it will supply.
TRANSLATORS, RANDOM MONITORING
Natsios said Washington wanted Pyongyang to meet four U.S. conditions before aid could resume, and said his agency's stance was backed by a number of private aid and human rights groups and the World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations.
But U.S. officials later said Washington might also decide to resume shipments even if North Korea failed to satisfy its concerns.
"We intend to make a decision in coming months, but we cannot say when and how much," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"This will depend on worldwide demand, the availability of resources and our level of confidence that the food aid is reaching its intended beneficiaries," this official said.
Outlining his agency's concerns, Natsios said it first of all wanted its own translators, to ensure that it was getting an accurate account of what people were trying to tell it.
Translators now are provided by North Korea's internal security agency and "we have no idea, talking to someone, whether what they say is what we are hearing," he said.
Aid officials also want to be able to monitor distribution on a random basis and without advance notification, to ensure the program is not used toward political ends, he said.
North Korea now demands six days' advance notice for monitoring.
Aid officials also want a list of all institutions where the aid is going, and they want to be able to carry out their own nutritional surveys, anywhere in the country, to accurately assess need, he said.
The North Korean health ministry now carries out such surveys on its own and omits 20 percent of the country.
"Is this the poorest part of the country, or where mortality rates are highest?" Natsios said. "These are not militarily sensitive areas ... A food aid program should not exclude the poorest areas. It should be focused on those areas."
--------
N. Korea: Prepared to Exercise 'Options'
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Options.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Tuesday that it was running out of patience and warned it was prepared to exercise ``options'' in its dispute with the United States over its nuclear activities. It did not say what the options were.
But the vaguely worded statement suggested that North Korea was prepared to escalate the crisis. The statement referred to North Korea's withdrawal last week from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars its signatories from developing nuclear weapons.
``If the U.S. and its followers respond to the DPRK's recent exercise of its option with new sanctions, blockade and pressure offensives, it will exercise the second and third corresponding options,'' Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's most prominent state newspaper, said in a commentary.
DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Possible further next steps for the North would include suspending its moratorium on missile tests -- as it has threatened -- or go ahead with a test. A more extreme option would be to begin developing weapons-grade plutonium at a reprocessing plant that they say is ready for operation.
North Korea has blamed what it says is U.S. aggression for the crisis over its nuclear development, and the statement said that there was a limit to its ``self-control.''
The commentary, carried by KCNA, the North's news agency, said the North's withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty was ``legitimate'' and ``guaranteed by its powerful military capacity.''
The United States is trying to use diplomacy to pressure the North into abandoning nuclear weapons development. North Korea wants to negotiate a nonaggression treaty with Washington.
-------- missile defense
Britain to Decide on Missile Defense Upgrade
January 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-britain-usa.html
LONDON (Reuters) - The British government is set to announce Wednesday whether or not it intends to help the United States set up a missile defense shield, officials said.
The United States asked Britain in December to approve the upgrading of early warning radar systems at Fylingdales in northern England to allow the U.S. missile defense program to go ahead.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday a decision on Fylingdales was imminent.
``I don't think you will have too long to wait in respect of the government setting out its view,'' he said.
A defense source confirmed Defense Minister Geoff Hoon would make a statement to parliament Wednesday, fleshing out the government's plans to a Select Committee later in the day.
He is expected to say the government is inclined to allow Washington access to the northern England radar station but details remain to be nailed down.
Hoon said in December that the government would agree to upgrade Fylingdales if Britain was satisfied that it would enhance the security of Britain and the NATO alliance.
He said then that missile defense could strengthen global stability and deter attack by ``rogue states.''
The request from the United States came as President Bush ordered his military to begin deploying a national missile defense system with land- and sea-based interceptor rockets to be operational starting in 2004.
If Britain agrees to help the United States set up the shield, Blair will face opposition from within his ruling Labor Party, already uneasy about a possible war on Iraq.
In a first step toward setting up a missile defense umbrella, the United States in June unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty which banned such systems.
The move worried U.S. allies and led to protests in the Labor Party, many of whose members are vehemently opposed to closer military links with Washington and argue a missile defense shield could spark a new global arms race.
Some critics feel the proposed anti-missile shield, while protecting the United States, might simply serve to make Britain a target for a potential aggressor.
The system, dubbed ``Son of Star Wars'' after an initiative pioneered by former President Ronald Reagan, depends on intercepting an incoming missile with another missile.
-------- russia
Russia seeks more U.S. funds for scrapping subs
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Anatoly Medetsky,
The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01142003/s_49340.asp
BOLSHOI KAMEN, Russia - The towering rock in the bay that gave this town its name is long gone, blown up by engineers who called it a hindrance to navigation. Gone, too, is the town's one-time livelihood: refueling and repairing the submarines that were to have been the backbone of a mighty Pacific Fleet for the Soviet Union.
A half century after its birth as a secret Soviet military town, Bolshoi Kamen - Russian for Big Rock - has a less grandiose mission. It's the home of Zvezda (Star), one of Russia's two principal centers for scrapping the submarines it no longer needs.
For eight years, Zvezda has received tens of millions of dollars from the United States to safely dismantle 22 submarines that were taken out of service under U.S.-Russian disarmament treaties. In all, Washington committed $120.1 million to Zvezda - funding such equipment as the gargantuan, clanking shears that slice up submarines for scrap metal and the boxy building where thick cable is reprocessed to retrieve copper.
But Zvezda is scheduled to cut up its last submarine under that deal later this year, and the American funding will dry up. So the plant's bosses are campaigning for new money to pay for the disposal of dozens of other submarines that did not target the United States yet remain security and environmental threats.
Russia says the money must be found quickly. "Nuclear things are like a volcano and can explode any time," says Valery Lebedev, deputy nuclear power minister.
Altogether, Russia has decommissioned about 190 nuclear-powered submarines over the past 15 years. Officials say 90 of those still languish at docks with nuclear fuel in their reactors.
The presence of the radioactive fuel and poor conditions at naval facilities feed international worries about the possibility of nuclear materials being transferred to other nations or terrorists. Inadequate maintenance also creates a risk of dangerous radiation leaks. Two decommissioned submarines sank off the northeastern Kamchatka Peninsula in 1997 and 1999. They were quickly raised and the navy said they did no harm, but they remain a concern.
"They are dangerous and the danger will grow with every year," says Vice Adm. Nikolai Yurasov, who oversees submarine dismantlement in the Pacific Fleet.
Russia plans to destroy 131 submarines by 2010, says Viktor Akhunov, head of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry's ecology and decommissioning department. Almost all were taken out of service in the 1980s. Akhunov says it will cost $3.9 billion to scrap all the subs. Yet last year, the Russian government budgeted just $70 million for improving nuclear safety in the country as a whole.
One of the most pressing tasks is constructing a storage base for 19 reactor compartments now floating in Razboynik Bay near Bolshoi Kamen, Akhunov says. Because Russia has no onshore facility for storing decommissioned submarine reactors, the practice is to cut three-compartment sections out of the submarines - the reactor compartment in the middle, flanked by compartments on either side that provide buoyancy. The three-compartment sections, welded with steel sheets over each end, are stored afloat.
Construction of the storage facility, which would cost an estimated $70 million, is slated to start this year, but Russia is still seeking foreign funds. Russia is also seeking $18 million to build a long-term containment structure for two submarines whose reactors were damaged in accidents and emit high radiation. The subs are now kept afloat by pontoons in a bay near Bolshoi Kamen. The town, built in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a secret Soviet defense-company town, is about 17 miles east of the Pacific port of Vladivostok.
One of Zvezda's most costly installations is a $42 million barge-mounted complex donated by Japan that is used to treat low-level liquid radioactive waste from the laundry that handles plant workers' clothes. When work to scrap the nuclear submarines started in the late 1980s, the liquid waste was dumped into the Sea of Japan because there was no way of collecting, processing and storing it, says Yuri Shulgan, Zvezda's director. The plant built underground storage facilities of reinforced concrete, but they quickly filled up, prompting the resumption of dumping of radioactive water into the sea, he says.
The Japanese government has earmarked $168 million more for cleanup work at Bolshoi Kamen - funding prompted in part by Russian military journalist Grigory Pasko's reports on nuclear waste dumping in the area. Pasko sits in a prison near Vladivostok, serving a four-year term for illegally attending a meeting of military leaders and possessing notes he made there. He says his prosecution was punishment for his revelations of the navy's nuclear pollution.
--------
Bush frees cash to secure Soviet arms
1/14/2003 12:03 AM
By Peter Eisler,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-01-13-soviet-funds-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - President Bush has signed a special order to release nearly a half-billion dollars in frozen funds to help Russia secure or eliminate nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, USA TODAY has learned.
The order ends a yearlong hold on spending for projects under the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which was paralyzed by restrictive rules set by Republican critics in Congress. Administration officials say the program is an important defense against terrorists and rogue states obtaining old Soviet weapons of mass destruction.
The president's order frees more than $150 million to build a facility to destroy chemical munitions at Shchuch'ye, Russia, where nearly 2 million artillery shells and missile warheads filled with deadly nerve gases sit in rickety, poorly secured barns. USA TODAY reported last fall that the funding freeze had put the project near collapse and raised concerns that some of the stockpiled weapons might fall into the hands of U.S. enemies.
"There are a lot of (assistance) contracts piled up that will go forward now," says Paul Walker of Global Green USA, a group hired by the Pentagon to facilitate threat-reduction projects in Russia. The president's order "is a long-awaited and very central part of the president's non-proliferation and counterterrorism program."
In the past decade, the threat reduction program has spent $4 billion to help former Soviet states eliminate or secure weapons of mass destruction inherited from the Soviet arsenal. Its successes range from dismantling one of the world's largest biological weapons production facilities in Kazakhstan to deactivating more than 6,000 nuclear warheads spread across the former Soviet states.
Funding for projects in Russia froze after a few Republican lawmakers attached criteria requiring the administration to "certify" Russian compliance with arms control pledges. They say Russia is not committed to destroying weapons of mass destruction.
At the Bush administration's request, Congress passed legislation last month that empowers the president to waive the certification criteria. Bush signed the waiver order Friday and is expected to officially notify Congress by early next week, administration officials say.
Projects in Russia, which holds the bulk of the old Soviet arsenal, account for most money spent under the program. The waiver will free about $450 million for those projects, some of it left from previous years' appropriations.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who helped create the threat reduction program, says it is especially critical to destroy the "small and easily transportable" chemical arms at Shchuch'ye. "They would be deadly in the hands of terrorists, religious sects or paramilitary units."
Weapons eliminated
In the past decade, U.S. threat-reduction programs in the former Soviet Union have had their greatest success in eliminating nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Among them:
6,032 nuclear warheads
491 ballistic missiles
101 strategic bombers
25 nuclear submarines
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Oversight Change on Tap for Nuclear Power
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Damage.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is overhauling the way it regulates the nation's nuclear power plants in response to criticism that it should have detected damage to an Ohio nuclear reactor sooner.
The commission on Tuesday adopted nearly all 50 staff recommendations from a highly critical report on the Davis-Besse plant in northern Ohio. Those recommendations include conducting more thorough inspections; demanding better assurances from plant operators that problems get fixed; and creating a mechanism for faster intervention when irregularities are spotted.
``We're trying to set tripwires out there so when someone sees a problem they can bring it to the attention of management,'' said Carl Paperiello, NRC's deputy executive director for materials, research and state programs. Paperiello chaired the review team that approved the reforms.
The changes come 10 months after inspectors found boric acid had nearly eaten through a 6-inch-thick steel reactor cap on the Davis-Besse plant. The discovery, which the NRC has said should have been spotted several years earlier, led to a nationwide review of all 69 similar plants.
The Davis-Besse report, released in October, said the NRC and the nuclear industry did not think boric acid deposits would cause significant corrosion. An NRC senior inspector became aware of the deposits in 2000 but never notified superiors or inspected the area more closely, the report said.
``This was clearly a very serious event and we've spent a huge amount of staff effort in order to not only make sure that the situation of Davis-Besse is specifically resolved but that issues related to the NRC's own performance are also forthrightly addressed,'' NRC Chairman Richard Meserve said.
But nuclear watchdog groups pointed out that the agency reforms don't address the decisions involved when the NRC decided not to force the plant's owner, FirstEnergy Corp., to immediately shut down for a safety inspection.
A report released recently by NRC Inspector General Hubert T. Bell said NRC officials could have shut the plant down several months before the corroded hole was discovered but wanted to avoid hurting the plant owner financially.
``That's an important and critical lesson that needs to be learned,'' said Paul Gunter of the watchdog group Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
The plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio, near Toledo, has been closed for repairs since the hole was found. Meanwhile, no problems have been found on the reactor vessel heads of the nation's 69 pressurized water reactors, Meserve said.
Some of the reforms on the NRC's list are already being acted upon; others will require budget and staff increases.
A series of ``action plans'' due to NRC Executive Director William Travers by Feb. 28 will spell out cost estimates, staff schedules and other details for how the recommendations will be adopted.
The time frame for the reforms to be implemented ranges from six months to two years. The NRC will file a status report every six months to make sure the reforms are carried out.
On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
FirstEnergy Corp.: http://www.firstenergycorp.com
--------
NRC to overhaul the way it regulates nuclear power plants
Tue Jan 14
By MALIA RULON,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20030115/ap_wo_en_po/na_gen_us_nuclear_plant_damage_1&printer=1
WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is overhauling the way it regulates U.S. nuclear power plants in response to criticism that it should have detected damage to an Ohio nuclear reactor sooner.
The commission on Tuesday adopted nearly all 50 staff recommendations from a highly critical report on the Davis-Besse plant in northern Ohio. Those recommendations include conducting more thorough inspections; demanding better assurances from plant operators that problems get fixed; and creating a mechanism for faster intervention when irregularities are spotted.
"We're trying to set tripwires out there so when someone sees a problem they can bring it to the attention of management," said Carl Paperiello, NRC's deputy executive director for materials, research and state programs. Paperiello chaired the review team that approved the reforms.
The changes come 10 months after inspectors found boric acid had nearly eaten through a 6-inch(15-centimeter)-thick steel reactor cap on the Davis-Besse plant. The discovery, which the NRC has said should have been spotted several years earlier, led to a nationwide review of all 69 similar plants.
The Davis-Besse report, released in October, said the NRC and the nuclear industry did not think boric acid deposits would cause significant corrosion. An NRC senior inspector became aware of the deposits in 2000 but never notified superiors or inspected the area more closely, the report said.
But nuclear watchdog groups pointed out that the agency reforms don't address the decisions involved when the NRC decided not to force the plant's owner, FirstEnergy Corp., to immediately shut down for a safety inspection.
The plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio, near Toledo, has been closed for repairs since the hole was found. Meanwhile, no problems have been found on the reactor vessel heads of the nation's 69 pressurized water reactors, Meserve said.
On the Net:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
FirstEnergy Corp.: http://www.firstenergycorp.com
-------- minnesota
Prairie Island tribe says it has say on Red Wing nuclear plant
Tom Meersman
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Jan. 14, 2003
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3589880.html#top
Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota leaders have warned state legislators that a 1994 law allows the tribe to reject additional radioactive waste storage at the nuclear power plant in Red Wing.
The warning, issued in a recent letter to officials, sets the stage for a potential legal and political battle over the Prairie Island nuclear plant, which supplies power to about 20 percent of Xcel Energy's 1.5 million electricity customers in the Upper Midwest.
Xcel, the plant's owner, says it will need to shut the plant down in 2007 unless the Legislature gives permission to expand the radioactive waste storage beyond the 17 casks authorized in 1994. Xcel officials said the 1994 pact with the tribe does not prohibit the Legislature from doing so.
But tribal president Audrey Bennett said that unless the tribe and Xcel can negotiate a deal that meets the community's needs, changing the law would be one more broken promise to Indian people.
"In 1994 everybody got what they wanted except the tribe," Bennett said in an interview.
Xcel, then Northern States Power Co., received permission to expand its nuclear waste storage and operate the plant for several more years. Environmentalists received a commitment from the utility that it would buy more electricity from wind farms and plant-fueled power plants. The tribe received assurances that parts of the law, including the 17-cask limit, could not be changed without tribal approval, Bennett said.
Spent nuclear fuel rods are stored on plant grounds in 18-foot-tall cylindrical steel casks because the utility ran out of space in a pool inside the plant. A permanent national repository for nuclear waste, perhaps in Nevada, is not expected to be available until 2015 or later. Without additional storage at Prairie Island, the plant could not refuel and continue to operate.
Technically, the tribe did not sign a contract over the casks. State and Xcel leaders signed a contract that made the tribe a "third-party beneficiary" with "legal standing to enforce" parts of the 1994 law.
Bennett said that the tribe has no intention to disrupt Xcel's business, and that it will drop its objections to additional nuclear waste storage if the utility meets some of the tribe's needs. Among other things, the community wants health studies of those who live near the plant and a secondary emergency evacuation route from the island. It also wants land elsewhere for tribal members who wish to move off the island or for the tribe to relocate its Treasure Island Casino in case of a nuclear accident.
"If we're willing to look at helping Xcel with the cask storage and extending the operations of the plant, then we're putting our [casino] business at risk through a terrorist attack or something else," said Alan Childs Sr., tribal treasurer. The tribe is seeking only to protect its people and its livelihood, he said, just as any other community would do.
Scott Wilensky, Xcel's executive director of government affairs, said the utility would like to resolve the issues and is "continuing to talk" with tribal officials to avoid a court showdown.
But he said the utility has a "different view of the situation" regarding legislative authority. "While the tribe may still have some rights under some of the existing aspects of the contract, you couldn't interpret the contract as prohibiting future legislatures from changing the law," he said.
Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, chairwoman of the Senate Commerce and Utilities Committee and one of those who received the letter, said the 1994 contract that gave the tribe legal standing to enforce the law was intended to prevent the Legislature from "going back on the deal."
"The tribe does have to be a part of this, but obviously they don't have a vote, yet they do have legal standing," Anderson said. "I guess it's safe to say that most legislators are not aware of this, much less what it means for our decisionmaking process," she said.
Attorney General Mike Hatch also received the tribe's letter and legal analysis, spokeswoman Leslie Sandberg said. "We're reviewing the issue" and plan to meet with tribal leaders, key legislators and other state officials, she said.
Neither tribal nor utility officials would discuss the negotiations or what a possible settlement might cost.
In a proposed agreement in 1996, Xcel offered the tribe $2 million, 1,750 acres of land and additional yearly payments, but legislators opposed the measure for various reasons and rejected it after state money was added to the package.
Bennett said that the tribe hopes a long-term agreement can be reached in the coming weeks, but that she is unhappy about Xcel's interpretation of the law.
"We're fully prepared to enforce the 17-cask limitation should Xcel or the state ignore our health and safety needs," she said. "I've got to believe that some of those legislators who were there in 1994 had law degrees, so they must have known what they were doing. A contract's a contract."
-- Tom Meersman is at meersman@startribune.com.
-------- new york
Demands Grow for Improving Indian Point Emergency Plan
By MATTHEW L. WALD
January 14, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/politics/14NUKE.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 - Demands by elected officials for improvements in emergency plans for the Indian Point nuclear plant grew more strident today, but experts on the workings of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said its history suggested that it would not consider emergency planning problems as a reason to close the plant.
The protests, after a consultant's report that the plans are inadequate, are spreading to areas away from the plant, in Buchanan, N.Y., on the east bank of the Hudson River. Today, Dennis McNerney, the executive of Bergen County, N.J., said, "I promise that I will use every means at my disposal, including legal action, if necessary, to shut down the reactors if it is not done voluntarily" until the plans are improved.
Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, said he planned a conference call on Wednesday with his counterparts in Orange, Rockland and Putnam Counties, to urge them not to certify their evacuation plans to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. An adviser, Susan Tolchin, said Mr. Spano wanted the agency to add terrorist attacks to its requirements and take over the cost of local responses.
While county and state approval of emergency procedures is desirable, Nuclear Regulatory Commissions rules do not require it for a plant to continue operating. The commission has shown no sympathy lately for arguments based on the threat of terrorism; last month it said its administrative law judges should not consider such arguments in four licensing hearings.
Under the Atomic Energy Act, the federal government decides whether the reactors may run, and the commission has shown little inclination to close plants because of problems in emergency planning. But a spokesman, Neil Sheehan, said the commissioners would listen.
"The N.R.C. would value input from anybody with expertise on the topic of emergency planning, and certainly Mr. Witt, as the former director of FEMA, has considerable knowledge of the way these plans are put together," Mr. Sheehan said, referring to James Lee Witt, the consultant Gov. George E. Pataki asked to evaluate the Indian Point plans.
Mr. Witt's report found that the Indian Point plans were "not adequate" to "protect the people from an unacceptable dose of radiation in the event of a release from Indian Point." The report recommended a revision of federal regulations guiding the the disaster plans.
Mr. Sheehan said that even if the emergency management agency were to tell the commission that planning was deficient, the commission would have to find that the preparations for an emergency did not provide "reasonable assurance that adequate protective measures can and will be taken in event of a radiological emergency" before it would act. Then the commission would give the plant 120 days to fix the problem. It did that in several cases in the early 1980's, but not recently, Mr. Sheehan said.
Peter A. Bradford, who was on the commission in that era, recalled that in the case of the Shoreham nuclear reactor on Long Island, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo said the emergency plans were unworkable and that the plant should not be licensed. The commission, Mr. Bradford said, "threw him out of the case."
The commission licensed the plant, reasoning that even if Mr. Cuomo and county officials boycotted drills, they would participate in a real emergency. The commission called this its "realism rule."
The debate could find another forum in Congress. Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is one of the foremost nuclear critics in the House, said today that he would reintroduce a bill that dealt with half the terrorism problem - protection of plants. His bill, which passed the House in the last session but died in the Senate, would have the federal government take over plant security just as it took over airport security.
Representative Nita M. Lowey, a Westchester Democrat, was a co-sponsor, as were Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Harry Reid of Nevada, all Democrats; and James M. Jeffords of Vermont, an independent.
Amid the debate about safety, one of the plant's reactors, Indian Point 3, was shut down yesterday when a water pump failed. A spokesman for Entergy Corp., the plant's owner, said there was no danger to workers or the public, and that the adjacent reactor remained at full power. The spokesman, Jim Steets, said that it was unclear how long the shutdown would last, but that it could be several days.
----
Nuke Plant Security Readiness Scrutinized
By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press Writer
Jan 14, 2002 12:47 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/INDIAN_POINT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- The head of the county that is home to the Indian Point nuclear plant said Monday he will withhold approval for the facility's evacuation plans until the federal government addresses a study warning the plant is unprepared for terrorist threats.
Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano said the study, which was commissioned by Gov. George Pataki and released Friday, shows guidance from Washington is needed to ensure security. He threatened to call for the shutdown of the plant if such help does not come.
The report compiled by James Lee Witt Associates - a consultant firm headed by a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency - found the facility's emergency plans rely on outdated technology and are based on incomplete drills and unrealistic expectations.
"The report has changed our whole perspective," Spano said Monday.
Spano said he would withhold a form sent to the state government each year that confirms the county has done its part to set up an emergency plan for the area around Indian Point.
The document is sent to the state government, which then reports on readiness to FEMA. An approved emergency plan is a condition for a nuclear plant's license.
"We're hoping to put all kinds of pressure on FEMA to make sure there are new regulations in line with the Witt report," Spano said.
It was not immediately clear if Spano could prevent renewal of the license by refusing to send in the form.
Pataki hired Witt last summer to review emergency planning for New York state's nuclear power plants, starting with Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 in the Westchester County village of Buchanan.
A call Monday to FEMA spokesman Mike Beeman was not returned.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, when one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center first flew over Indian Point, fear of a terrorist attack on the plant has made emergency planning a major issue in the lower Hudson Valley. Dozens of politicians have called for a shutdown of the plants.
After the report's release, Pataki did not call for a shutdown, as some activists had hoped, but called on FEMA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to "look at the standards used to certify these emergency plans and determine if they are strong enough to meet the post-Sept. 11 reality."
An estimated 11.8 million people live within 50 miles of Indian Point, far more than around any of the nation's other nuclear plants.
----
Entergy's New York Nuclear Unit Shut Down
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 12:31 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52569-2003Jan14?language=printer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Entergy Nuclear's 965-megawatt Indian Point 3 nuclear unit in New York shut down on Monday after a water pump failed, a company spokesman said.
The unit stopped operating at 6:15 a.m. after the pump, which is in a non-nuclear area of the plant, failed. Another one of the unit's six water pumps was out for routine maintenance when the failure occurred, the spokesman said.
The water pumps use river water to cool steam, used to drive the turbines producing electricity, in the plant's condensers.
The unit should be up and working in the next couple of days, the spokesman said. He said there had been no threat to public safety and the plant's safety systems had functioned as designed. Entergy Nuclear is a unit of diversified energy company Entergy Corp. of New Orleans. The Indian Point station is located in Buchanan, New York.
--------
Time to Close Indian Point
New York Times
January 14, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/opinion/L14INDI.html
To the Editor:
Re "Disaster Plan for Indian Point Is Called Inadequate" (front page, Jan. 11):
Gov. George E. Pataki must use his pulpit to make a strong case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to close the Indian Point nuclear plant.
Nuclear power plants are confirmed targets of Al Qaeda. The report, commissioned by Mr. Pataki, indicates that if all recommendations are successfully followed, the evacuation plan might work only for an accidental release, like a slow leak. The plan is irreparable for large-scale, rapid releases of the kind that could be caused by a terrorist attack.
Mr. Pataki's first step should be to decertify the evacuation plan. Then he must go before the N.R.C. and let the truth be known - that 20 million people cannot be protected should there be a terrorist attack at Indian Point.
AMY CHENDER
Irvington, N.Y.,
Jan. 13, 2003
-------- us politics
GOP veterans rap secrecy on defense issues
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 14, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030114-662134.htm
A long-simmering rift between senior Republican senators and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld heated up again at a senatorial retreat last week at the Library of Congress.
Sens. John W. Warner and Ted Stevens told President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., that they will no longer tolerate the disrespect and secrecy on military matters they've come to expect from the Bush White House, senior Senate Republican staffers close to the situation said.
Mr. Warner, of Virginia, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War who was recently elected to his fifth Senate term, is the Republican Party's leading voice on defense issues. He expressed displeasure over Congress being continually kept "out of the loop" on important military matters, the staffers said.
Mr. Stevens, of Alaska, newly elected president pro tempore of the Senate, was reported to be "furious" that Mr. Rumsfeld had eliminated funding for two of the eight proposed high-tech Army brigades mandated by Congress. The brigades are built around the new eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicles.
With war looming in Iraq, the secrecy and "arrogance" of the Pentagon is especially frustrating and inappropriate, said a Republican source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Another Senate aide familiar with what happened at the retreat said eight to nine members voiced complaints about the lack of "information flow" from the White House on war plans.
"Their concern was there are a lot of momentous decisions to be made, but they need more information," the source said.
A Pentagon staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, disagreed that Congress has not been thoroughly briefed on defense matters. The staffer cited 150 to 160 face-to-face meetings with either Mr. Rumsfeld or Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in 2002.
That's in addition to the "hundreds and thousands" of contacts between Congress and lower-level Pentagon officials over the past year, the staffer said.
"I don't think these theories are supported by the facts," he said. "There may be members [of Congress] who don't necessarily like some of the decisions being made, but it is not accurate to say they've been kept out of the loop."
There has been a string of conflicts during the past two years between congressional Republicans and the White House over military matters.
•In June 2001, Mr. Bush decided to end the Navy's live-bombing exercise at Puerto Rico's Vieques island without consulting Congress.
Mr. Warner questioned whether the exercises could be halted without congressional approval. Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, vowed to reinstate them, saying he was "sick about" the president's decision. But Mr. Bush's Vieques policy still holds.
•In July 2001, House and Senate members chafed when Pentagon staffers told them that Mr. Rumsfeld had referred to them as "hillbillies." Mr. Rumsfeld denied using the pejorative, but many staffers and lawmakers on Capitol Hill voiced disbelief, accusing him of adopting a "who needs them" approach to Congress.
•In May, senior Pentagon officials decided to eliminate the Crusader self-propelled howitzer, a weapon that Army generals and many congressional Republicans contended was essential to military readiness.
•In November, a consultant who helped Mr. Rumsfeld hire top civilians in the Pentagon called Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, "corrupt" and accused him of "a staggering abuse of power" for trying to get a former staffer a Pentagon job.
According to other Republican sources, the senators are also upset that this latest conflict between Congress and the executive branch was leaked to the press. It was first reported by columnist Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times.
The meeting with the White House staffers was "supposed to be private" to ensure that the senators could speak openly without worrying how their concerns would be perceived.
Mr. Warner, particularly, didn't want to seem as if he were anything less than 100 percent supportive of how Mr. Bush has handled the war on terror, a Senate Republican aide said.
"I can't imagine a person in the Senate more supportive of what the president is doing," the aide said.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a closed-door meeting for tomorrow in which Mr. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be the only two witnesses.
A Senate Republican staffer said the two can expect to hear more such complaints.
•Rowan Scarborough contributed to the report.
----
Ashcroft's assurance is sought on privacy
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 14, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030114-1114114.htm
Four influential Democrats yesterday asked Attorney General John Ashcroft for "appropriate safeguards" against the misuse of a Pentagon-based computer tracking system for identifying terrorists.
Outgoing Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and fellow Democratic panelists Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Maria Cantwell of Washington want to know what the Justice Department is doing to guarantee adequate program oversight.
"We are interested in learning the extent to which the department is relying on data mining to deal with the terrorism threat or other criminal activity, and how this technology is being used," the three said in a letter to Mr. Ashcroft.
"Improved access to and the sharing of information among intelligence and law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels is crucial in promoting our national security interests," they said. "These national security interests are most effectively and efficiently served, however, when the information being collected and shared is relevant, reliable, timely and accurate."
Separately, Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, also called on the Senate defense Appropriations subcommittee to investigate the tracking system, known as the Total Information Awareness System and headed by retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
"I am very concerned about the Total Information Awareness Project, its legality and the threat it poses to the privacy of law-abiding Americans," Mr. Harkin said. "Just as troubling is the choice of Adm. John Poindexter to head up this project."
Mr. Harkin said he wants to know how Adm. Poindexter was picked to head the project, given that he was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.
"I think it is important for Congress to have an opportunity to hear from the man who developed and runs this project before we write next year's defense-spending bill," Mr. Harkin said.
The computer tracking program is designed to monitor the daily personal transactions by Americans and others, including tracking the use of passports, driver's licenses, credit cards, airline tickets and rental cars, with the goal of turning over the information to law enforcement agencies.
The investigation of the September 11 attacks showed that the 19 hijackers involved made scores of credit-card, travel and passport transactions as they entered and left the country, and received money to finance their deadly acts. Those transactions would be traceable under the new software system.
"Advances in the technological capability to search, track or mine commercial and government databases and Americans' consumer transactions have provided powerful tools that have dramatically changed the ways that companies market their products and services," Mr. Leahy said.
"Collection and use by government law enforcement agencies of such commercial transactional data on law-abiding Americans poses unique issues and concerns, however," he said, noting the potential for excessive government surveillance that may "intrude" on privacy interests and "chill" First Amendment guarantees.
Mr. Leahy said the sheer volume of information collected may make updating the data and checks for reliability and accuracy difficult, warning that the reliance on data mining by law enforcement agencies may produce an increase in false leads and law enforcement mistakes.
In their letter, the three senators asked Mr. Ashcroft to explain how the Justice Department is addressing concerns for appropriate safeguards on the collection, use and dissemination of the information obtained.
----
Networks pull plug on Voter News Service
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 14, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030114-84263028.htm
The Voter News Service has been put out of its misery.
The five networks and one news service that once relied on VNS to fuel their often dramatic predictions and final calls on election night announced yesterday they had disbanded the service.
In a statement, VNS board members said they "are collectively reviewing a number of strong options for how to provide the tabulation of the national vote count as well as state and national exit polls for the 2004 election. An announcement will be forthcoming."
Until the 2000 presidential election, most Americans had never heard of VNS, a polling and voter-analysis group founded a decade ago by the news organizations to save money and time by pooling resources.
But VNS failed that election night, supplying faulty numbers to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and the Associated Press.
Its erroneous calls, especially when it declared Al Gore the winner in Florida before changing its call to George W. Bush and then to "too close to call," rattled the confidence of voters and placed press credibility into question.
During midterm elections last November, a newly overhauled computer system also failed, causing VNS to drop out of the picture entirely.
The failure changed the face of election night coverage.
Chastened networks were left to fend for themselves; all vowed they would be accurate with their election night coverage, rather than "first" with pivotal but possibly flawed results.
What could replace VNS?
"In an ideal world, we would have more than a single information source," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
"If one system goes down, they all don't go down. The more takes on public opinion, the better the story."
The demise of VNS is exceptional, Mr. Kohut said. "Exit polling organizations come and go - they get better, they get worse. But this is significant. These major news organizations bet on the wrong horse."
Rumors are already afoot that three separate proposals are under consideration that either refine existing VNS methodology or rely on national and state exit polls. The six networks and the AP may also partner with an academic or nonprofit group.
One network has explored the expensive proposition of collecting exit poll and voter analysis data on its own.
But the clock is ticking.
"The 2004 election is right around the corner. We are running out of time," said one pollster. "The failures before were computer programming failures. Our solutions will use tried and true approaches, plus some innovations."
The situation is causing some angst among the VNS board members, who met earlier this month to talk over strategies now that their election night collective is missing.
"I wish I could say the announcement of a solution was just hours away," said one network executive. "Days away, maybe. But not hours."
• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
--------
Bush Shows Impatience With Iraq but Optimism on North Korea
January 14, 2003
By DAVID STOUT
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/14CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - President Bush reiterated his pessimism and impatience over Iraq today, but in a significant shift, he expressed a new level of optimism and a measure of conciliation in addressing his other big foreign policy problem, North Korea.
Mr. Bush said that "time is running out on Saddam Hussein" to comply with United Nations resolutions to disarm. "So far, I haven't seen any evidence that he is disarming," the president said.
Earlier, his chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, explained why the administration viewed Iraq as a greater threat than North Korea.
"Iraq has a recent history of acquiring weapons of mass destruction and then using them to kill its neighbors, to invade countries, to bring attacks to others - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, Iran," Mr. Fleischer said. "That is not the case with North Korea."
Indeed, Mr. Bush, speaking at a White House photo session with President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, appeared far more hopeful about the situation with North Korea, and emphasized his willingness to help that isolated and impoverished country, provided it dismantled its nuclear weapons program.
"I'm absolutely convinced this issue will be solved in a peaceful way," Mr. Bush said. "I want to remind the American people that prior to North Korea making the decision it made, that I had instructed our secretary of state to approach North Korea about a bold initiative, an initiative which would talk about energy and food, because we care deeply about the suffering of the North Korean people."
Mr. Bush was alluding to North Korea's decision to revive a nuclear development program, its recent decision to withdraw from an international nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and its expulsion of inspectors from an international monitoring agency.
North Korea has almost invariably used bellicose language in referring to the United States of late, but a flurry of diplomatic activity in Asia has raised hopes that there may be a peaceful solution after all. China has expressed its willingness to be host to negotiations between the United States and North Korea - negotiations that the United States says will not take place without North Korea's dismantling of its weapons programs.
In New York City, the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said he was pleased by the stepped-up back-and-forth. "I will not be surprised that we will be able to find a way out," Mr. Annan said at a news briefing. He said the latest signals had given him "hope and encouragement that it will be possible with determined effort to find a diplomatic solution."
Mr. Bush again portrayed North Korea today as a nation isolated by choice, a status that he indicated North Korea could change if it wanted to.
Mr. Bush called the most recent diplomatic developments "an opportunity to bind together nations in the neighborhood and around the world to make it clear to the North Koreans that we expect this issue to be resolved peacefully, and we expect them to disarm; we expect them not to develop nuclear weapons."
"And if they so choose to do so," Mr. Bush continued, "then I will reconsider whether or not we will start the bold initiative that I've talked to Secretary Powell about."
The White House has repeatedly said that it will not be pressured into negotiations with the Pyongyang government, and neither the president nor his spokesman, Mr. Fleischer, retreated from that position today. Yet Mr. Bush took pains to express his willingness to listen.
"People say, `Well, are you willing to talk to North Korea?' Of course we are," the president said. "But what this nation won't do is be blackmailed. And what this nation will do is, use this as an opportunity to bring the Chinese and the Russians and the South Koreans and the Japanese to the table to solve this problem peacefully."
The president used no conciliatory such language in talking about Iraq. "The United Nations spoke with one voice," Mr. Bush said. "We said we expect Saddam Hussein, for the sake of peace, to disarm. That's the question. Is Saddam Hussein disarming? He's been given 11 years to disarm. And so the world came together, and we have given him one last chance to disarm."
The "one last chance" reference is one that Mr. Bush and his top aides have used before. It may be taking on more significance now, since weapons inspectors are to report to the United Nations on Jan. 27 on what they have found visiting possible weapons sites in Iraq.
In his daily briefing with reporters, Mr. Fleischer asserted that whether there is a timetable for the inspectors to finish their work is not the main issue.
"The issue's not how long the inspections will last," Mr. Fleischer said. "The issue is whether Saddam Hussein this time is finally willing to disarm. He's been given a final chance to disarm. And regrettably, we have seen no evidence that he has made the strategic choice to disarm and to come into compliance with the United Nations."
But Mr. Fleischer said the White House was pleased by the possibility of more avenues of communication with North Korea. Asked about Russian and Chinese communications with Pyongyang, Mr. Fleischer said: "We welcome this step. We think it's appropriate for these officials to talk. And we believe that the message that will be given has been very unified as far as our approach to North Korea."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Officials: Taliban Regrouping in South Afghanistan
January 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-taliban.html
CHAMAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Remnants of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime have begun regrouping near the southern border with Pakistan, Afghan officials said on Tuesday.
Obaidullah, security chief of the southern border town of Spin Boldak, said minor clashes had been reported recently between Afghan forces and suspected members of the Taliban.
He said small groups of Taliban fighters, led by local commander Hafiz Abdur Rahim, were operating in Kandahar, the former stronghold of the radical Islamic militia, and other southern provinces.
``They are trying to persuade people to join a jihad (holy war). They carry out guerrilla activities in these areas and then flee to Pakistan,'' he told Reuters.
Afghan officials said last week that four people had been killed and one wounded in an armed clash between Afghan forces and Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan.
Two Taliban fighters were arrested after the firefight.
The Taliban's resurgence in the border regions comes despite the presence in Afghanistan of thousands of U.S.-led foreign troops pursuing the war on terror.
The Taliban regime was overthrown in late 2001 when the United States pounded Afghanistan with massive air strikes as part of its campaign against the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
Many Taliban fighters took refuge in the rugged borderlands with Pakistan.
In recent days posters and pamphlets have appeared in border villages calling for a jihad against foreign troops.
Residents of Spin Boldak said last week that posters threatening death to anyone who supported the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai appeared to be the work of Taliban supporters.
Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai, told Reuters there was still a risk of militant attacks in the southern region.
``We have put our forces on alert because of the risks of attacks on foreign forces,'' he said.
But Fazal Deen Agha, a senior security official in Spin Boldak, said the Afghan government would not let the ousted Taliban become a real threat.
``There are clear indications of Taliban presence in the region. But Afghan people don't support them,'' he said. ``We will continue our hunt against the Taliban.''
In September, Karzai narrowly escaped assassination in Kandahar. The botched attack was blamed on a Taliban sympathizer who was shot dead during the attack.
-------- africa
Ivory Coast's Western Rebels Sign Truce
Two Factions Reach Agreement to Cease Fighting in Advance of Paris Talks
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52337-2003Jan13.html
LOME, Togo, Jan. 13 -- Ivory Coast's western rebel factions signed a truce today aimed at stopping the fighting on all fronts before peace talks in France.
The conflict began with a failed coup attempt Sept. 19 and has split the West African country on ethnic lines. Rebels holding the largely Muslim north signed a cease-fire in mid-October, but two new groups sprang up in the west in November.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting and a senior U.N. official said that unless the conflict is stopped quickly, much of West Africa, already one of the world's poorest regions, could slide into economic disaster.
Carolyn McAskie, recently appointed to coordinate U.N. relief for Ivory Coast, said the country faces a health catastrophe and growing hunger. She said emergency needs are being calculated on an estimate of 1.1 million people displaced.
"But that could be soon increased if there is no permanent solution," she told reporters in Geneva.
The truce agreement was signed in Togo today by leaders of the Movement for Justice and Peace and an allied group, the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Far West, as well as by a representative of President Laurent Gbagbo. It was to take effect at midnight.
The document said the foes agreed to "stop hostilities to allow negotiations in Paris to begin, during which a cease-fire and a general peace plan will be negotiated." The signing of a deal, agreed to by the rebels in principle last week, was repeatedly delayed by government attacks on rebel positions and then by wrangling over the wording.
Western diplomats said France exerted pressure on the rebel factions to sign the truce and ensure an auspicious start to peace talks in Paris on Wednesday involving the insurgents, government negotiators and political parties. France has committed a 2,500-member force to Ivory Coast, its biggest African intervention since the 1980s, to stop the crisis from escalating out of control in a country where France has major business interests and up to 20,000 nationals.
All three rebel groups are united in their desire to oust Gbagbo, who was elected in a disputed election in 2000. The rebels accuse him of fanning hatred among Ivory Coast's tribes and against millions of immigrants.
-------- arms sales
German Goes on Trial for Weapons Exports to Iraq
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 10:28 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54148-2003Jan14?language=printer
MANNHEIM, Germany (Reuters) - A German businessman went on trial Tuesday for allegedly exporting weapons material to Iraq via Jordan in circumvention of a U.N. embargo and faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors allege the 59-year-old defendant, Bernd Schompeter, organized the 1999 delivery to Iraq of $264,400 of drilling equipment that can be used to make artillery gun barrels.
Schompeter in court denied knowing the equipment could be used for making artillery guns that, according to prosecutors, can fire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
"I never really knew," told the court. "I only guessed."
Only as he saw the boxes, six meters long and filled with lots of pipes, did he begin to have doubts, he added.
Prosecutors say Schompeter and co-defendant Willi Ribbeck, sales manager of the Bremen-based manufacturer, admitted during the investigation they knew the destination was Iraq and that the equipment was going to be used for making weapons.
"Deep drilling equipment in this special case is used to drill the holes into blank gun barrels," prosecutor Stephan Morweiser told reporters. "In this case the idea was to make an artillery gun for a gun carriage with a caliber of 209 millimeters that, according to our knowledge, was capable of firing conventional ammunition as well as nuclear, biological and chemical ammunition," he said. Morweiser added that the court could order the complete proceeds from the deal forfeited, not just the profit.
"This is the risk that the German industry is taking if it participates in such deals," he said. "That's something that should very likely put the existence of such companies at risk."
Schompeter also aided in a deal in which Iraq was delivered parts for MiG fighter jets in 1997 and 1998 from Ukraine, prosecutors say.
The prosecution says he used a network of bogus firms in Germany, Ukraine and Jordan.
As late as September 2001, Schompeter allegedly tried to sell rocket launchers, mortars, machine guns and ammunition made by a Bulgarian company to an unnamed African country at the request of his partners in Iraq. Prosecutors say it remained unclear if the $65 million deal actually went through.
A verdict in the case is expected by the end of January.
--------
Arms deals criticized as corporate US welfare
By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff,
Boston Globe
1/14/2003
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/014/nation/Arms_deals_criticized_as_corporate_US_welfare%2B.shtml
LONDON - After Lockheed Martin clinched one of its largest deals ever in Europe, Prime Minister Leszek Miller of Poland was taken for a spin last week in the same kind of F-16 fighter jet that his country is purchasing. He watched from the cockpit while a second F-16 performed rolls and tactical maneuvers for his benefit.
Consider this private air show a kind of customer perk, which the Pentagon confirmed was paid for by the US government at the end of a long marketing campaign by Lockheed. The US government also provided a $3.8 billion loan to Poland, on very favorable terms, to finance the purchase of 48 F-16s, which are manufactured in President Bush's home state of Texas.
When they meet at the White House today, Miller and Bush are sure to toast this huge deal. For Poland, the purchase is a matter of national pride, reflecting the country's recent military transformation as a new member of NATO. The deal highlights Bush's personal involvement in pushing for arms deals in which former East Bloc countries switch to American weapons systems.
But arms-industry watchdog groups say the cost of the private air show is just one example of the kind of corporate welfare that goes into these massive and complex business deals. These critics contend the prime minister's test flight raises the question of who is taking whom for a ride in such a massive arms deal.
''The Poland arms deal is corporate welfare at its finest,'' said Ivan Eland, a military analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based, free-market policy group. ''The companies are private enterprises, but they are in effect wards of the state when the US government supports and underwrites the deals.
''There are all sorts of hidden subsidies that the US government gives to arms manufacturers, and the Polish prime minister's flight would be just one of them,'' he said.
Jose Ibarra, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the US government paid for the F-16s to be sent to Poland for the prime minister's flight. ''If the US government deems it in our national interest, we pay for it,'' he said.
Ibarra did not know the cost to taxpayers, but said, ''It ain't cheap, that's for sure.'' Having Air Force pilots take two fighter jets from the US airbase in Aviano, Italy, to Poland could run as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars, one US official estimated.
Washington's support helped Lockheed beat out the French Dassault Aviation offer of Mirage jets, as well as a Swedish-British consortium's offer of Grippen fighter jets, in what industry analysts say is the largest deal for a US arms manufacturer ever in Eastern Europe. The decision was announced Dec. 28 with little fanfare, and approval for the loan sailed through Congress.
In a shrinking and fiercely competitive arms industry in Europe, Lockheed's victory has sparked the ire of European economic ministers, especially the French. European critics have accused Poland of betraying their neighbors just after they were invited into the European Union. Some critics in Poland questioned the need for such weapons at all.
At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit here in November, the industry battle for the Polish deal was underway behind the scenes. The summit brought seven new Eastern European and Baltic states into NATO and effectively redrew the military map of Europe, bringing the military alliance forged in the Cold War to the borders of Russia. Poland joined NATO in an earlier expansion, in 1998.
Bruce Jackson, director of a bipartisan, nonprofit advocacy group called the US Committee on NATO, had worked for at least six years for the enlargement of NATO and was in Prague celebrating the fruits of that hard work. For Jackson, who recently retired as vice president of Lockheed Martin, the expansion of NATO was more than just a dream of ''uniting Europe whole and free,'' as he put it. It was also helping to create a new market for the US arms manufacturer that had employed him.
And there may be more deals to be had among the new members of NATO admitted at the Prague summit. The Czech Republic, Romania, and other Eastern European and Baltic countries are now being courted by US arms manufacturers to upgrade their military capacity to be NATO ''interoperable.'' That means buying Western hardware to replace older equipment that countries of the former Soviet bloc used in the days of the Warsaw Pact. The transition to NATO often means buying American.
Jackson's advocacy work in the expansion of NATO and Lockheed's arms deal with Poland highlight the political and corporate linkages that make the NATO expansion both a matter of strategic significance for the United States and economic advantage for its arms manufacturers.
Jackson scoffed at critics' complaints that his political passions have anything to do with his former employer's interests. He said he believes that a stronger, bigger NATO means greater security for the United States. Officials from NATO, Poland, and Lockheed all said he carefully avoided lobbying for the company on the F-16 sale.
But William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute who has researched the costs of NATO expansion to taxpayers, said, ''Arms manufacturers like Lockheed are looking to Eastern Europe as the last frontier to squeeze out big fighter jet deals, and they are looking to the US government to pick up the tab.''
Industry watchdogs like Eland and Hartung said the Polish arms deal shows how US taxpayers often end up subsidizing these sales, while arms manufacturers walk away with huge profits.
Richard Kirkland, Lockheed's vice president for corporate international business development, said that while the enlargement of NATO did present an important new market, it was a relatively modest one, compared to regions such as the Middle East and Asia.
The Polish sale was supported by the US government through the Pentagon's Foreign Military Financing fund, or FMF, Pentagon officials said. Poland will not have to make payments for eight years and will have at least 15 years to pay back the money at a level of interest which US government officials said they are not allowed to disclose.
The deals are structured around what are known as offset agreements, business arrangements that bring everything from production jobs to technology transfers to the purchasing country as an inducement. In the Polish arms deal, the offset agreements are said to be worth $6 billion to $9 billion.
Labor unions said the offsets encourage the export of jobs overseas. In the Polish deal, for example, the contract to build the F-16 engines was awarded to Pratt & Whitney of Connecticut, which US officials confirmed has agreed to assemble the engines in Poland.
To Hartung, Jackson embodies the link between politics and the arms industry on the road to enlarging NATO.
''You would like to think that the people deciding whether this [NATO expansion] is a good idea for the country would not be being led around by a person like Jackson, whose company has such a great financial interest in the expansion of NATO,'' Hartung said.
Jackson answered: ''The yellow journalism approach of trying to link American internationalists to venal financial motives is all rather depressing. ... I believe that democracy is worth defending. The Poles made the right decision, which will make the [NATO] alliance stronger and share the responsibilities of collective defense more equitably between the US and our European allies.''
Lockheed officials and Jackson himself say he was never a registered lobbyist on behalf of Lockheed. Lockheed also said that it never gave money to the US Committee on NATO, which Jackson helped found. And US and Polish officials said that Jackson, 50, was always careful about avoiding conflicts of interest in his dual roles.
-------- biological weapons
Smallpox virus: the secret stocks
Barry James
International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/83232.html
PARIS Official supplies of the variola virus that causes smallpox are confined to two high-security laboratories in the United States and Russia, but the virus is still regarded as one of about 20 pathogens that could be used in a biological attack.
A recent Bush administration intelligence review reportedly concludes that stocks of the live virus are also held by Iraq, North Korea and, more surprisingly, France, and that Osama bin Laden had devoted resources to developing smallpox as a biological weapon.
The French government vigorously denied the report, but the growing indications that the genie is at least partly out of the bottle is likely to cause governments to review and step up procedures for dealing with infectious threats.
Despite the French denial of the U.S. intelligence report, it would not be surprising if France and other countries were experimenting with something short of the live virus to carry out defensive research. A French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, acknowledged that scientists were using material "not dangerous to man" in their search for a new smallpox vaccine.
Riccardo Witteck, a smallpox expert at the University of Lausanne, who formerly worked for the World Health Organization, said it was quite usual for researchers to obtain short DNA fragments of the virus for study. "The only restriction under World Health Organization rules," he said, "is that the DNA material must not exceed more than 20 percent of the total genome of the virus."
Some governments are considering whether to follow the United States in building enough vaccine stocks to inoculate the entire population against smallpox. Others argue that it would be sufficient to keep only enough supplies to create firewalls around any outbreak.
The World Health Organization keeps an emergency stock of about 500,000 doses of the vaccine in the Netherlands. Researchers are trying to determine if stocks can be diluted and still retain their efficiency so that many more people may be inoculated while fresh supplies are being manufactured.
The organization advises against mass vaccination against smallpox. The vaccine consists of a live related virus, called vaccinia, which causes generally mild symptoms in most people but can have serious and even fatal effects for some, particularly those with immune system weaknesses. Vaccinia also is infectious.
"No government gives or recommends the vaccine routinely," the Word Health Organization said. "It should be given only to those persons who have a high risk of coming into contact with the virus that causes smallpox, or who have been exposed."
Still, senior officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering whether to offer the vaccine to the general public once up to 10 million health care workers have been immunized and after a vaccine has been licensed for general use, which is unlikely to be before 2004.
Any country adopting a policy of universal vaccination might also be considering the use of the variola virus for aggressive purposes. Defense experts said an important tool in preparing for biological attack is tracking the manufacture and use of vaccines.
If the response is quick enough, a smallpox outbreak - which could mean just a single case - could be brought under control using the same method that was used to the eradicate the disease in the 1960s and 1970s - quickly identifying and vaccinating anyone who has been in contact with the sick person, experts say. Fortunately, doctors say, the vaccinia virus produces antibodies quickly and is usually effective even after someone has been in contact with smallpox.
The disease spreads relatively slowly, by face to face contact, giving health workers a three- or four-day window of opportunity in which to trace contacts.
-------- britain
Britain Reserves Right to Attack Iraq Without U.N.
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; 8:55 AM
By Katherine Baldwin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53824-2003Jan14?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Tuesday that Britain reserved the right to take military action against Iraq without a new U.N. resolution to specifically authorize it.
His comments came as the British government, which is treading a tightrope between domestic disquiet over a possible war and a desire to keep up pressure on Iraq to disarm, said it was moving military equipment to prepare for action.
Straw reiterated that if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein defied an existing United Nations resolution on disarmament, Britain preferred that the U.N. Security Council pass a second resolution authorizing military action.
Britain's preference "is that we have a second Security Council resolution...which we want...we've had to reserve our rights if we can't achieve that," Straw told BBC Radio. The government reserved "the right to deal with the matter without a United Nations resolution if that was the situation," he added.
Preparations for a possible war with Iraq continued as Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said Tuesday a "number of tracked vehicles" would be moved to ship shortly, to go along with troops and ships that were mobilized last week.
"Dispatch of Royal Marines personnel and other equipment by air will also begin shortly," Hoon said in a statement.
Britain and the United States believe Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and say he must disarm or be disarmed by force.
U.S. and British troops could be ready to wage war within weeks although there are conflicting signals on the timing of any attack and U.N. weapons inspectors have said they need six months to a year to do their work. Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to put an "arbitrary time scale" on the work of inspectors who are scouring Iraq for signs of chemical, biological or nuclear arms.
Straw refused to be drawn on the likelihood of war -- after he said last week that the chances of war were 60:40 against -- but he insisted there would be military action if Saddam does not disarm or "actively cooperate" with inspectors.
"If Saddam does not accept the peaceful path to disarmament of his weapons of mass destruction set out by the U.N. resolution then there will have to be military action to enforce the will of the United Nations," Straw said.
DIVISIONS OVER WAR
Straw said Britain was waiting for a report from chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix after he had made a tour of Western capitals in coming days and inspected the situation on the ground in Iraq next week.
Blix is set to make a full report on his findings in Iraq to the U.N. Security Council on January 27. Blair Monday asked reporters to give him a few more weeks and then ask again whether Saddam was harboring illegal weapons.
Straw said there were wide-ranging discussions within the cabinet over Iraq. Blair Monday dismissed suggestions of a cabinet split over Iraq. There have been rumblings within Blair's Labor Party against war with Iraq and polls show the public against an attack unless it is backed by the U.N. Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown, in a rare comment on Iraq, echoed Straw, saying there were circumstances where war with Iraq may be necessary without U.N. backing.
"There may be circumstances where that is necessary, but we still want to go through the United Nations," Brown said in an interview with GMTV television.
--------
As British Antiwar Sentiment Rises, Blair Defends Iraq Stand
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/europe/14LOND.html
LONDON, Jan. 12 - Prime Minister Tony Blair today took on domestic opponents of his hard-line stance on Iraq, saying that while he accepted that they might feel the problem was far away and not urgent, he was convinced it was a direct and imminent threat to Britain.
"I know and understand the concerns that people have," the prime minister, who is President Bush's staunchest ally on the issue, told a Downing Street news conference. "The threat seems to some people to be remote, but I passionately believe that we must disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction."
Public opinion surveys and comments from a growing number of Labor members of Parliament show antiwar sentiment on the rise at a time when the British military is preparing troops and equipment for Persian Gulf missions and Mr. Blair continues to declare his solidarity with President Bush.
The Ministry of Defense said a small group of British logistics experts arrived in Kuwait today to make way for the possible arrival of combat troops and equipment there. On Saturday, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal left for the Persian Gulf, leading Britain's biggest naval deployment since the Falklands War in 1982.
In the latest of many surveys tracking falling support in Britain for action against Iraq, a poll based on 1,425 answers taken this past weekend for the ITV network showed that only 13 percent would support action by America and Britain alone but that 53 percent would if the move were endorsed by the United Nations.
"Polls or no polls, my job in a situation like this is sometimes to say the things that people don't want to hear," Mr. Blair told reporters. "And I have said to people, I believe this issue is a real active threat to British national security."
He rejected claims that the issue of Iraq was driven solely by the Americans and said he had raised the subject at his first meeting with President Bush in February 2001. "If George Bush and America were not raising this issue, I would be urging them to raise it because it is important," he said.
Mr. Blair said evidence of how groups and "rogue states" were sponsoring trade in chemical and biological weapons and seeking to develop nuclear capability crossed his desk every day. "Anyone who believes in today's world that you can have these groups and these weapons proliferating and Britain not be involved is, I think, naïve and misguided," he said.
"It is a matter of time, unless we act and take a stand, before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together," he added.
He said that while Britain favored returning to the Security Council for another resolution that would authorize force in Iraq, he believed there could be military action without one in the event of a serious breach by Iraq.
In an interview on Tuesday with BBC Radio, Mr. Blair's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, restated the prime minister's wish to have a second U.N. resolution. But Mr. Straw said that Britain would take military action against Iraq without it.
When Mr. Blair was pressed on the point of a second resolution by questioners, he responded with a question of his own.
"Are people seriously saying that when the U.N. has taken a stand on weapons of mass destruction where they have said to Iraq, `You have to disarm yourself or these weapons, these chemical, nuclear, biological weapons,' are people really saying that if there is a breach of that U.N. resolution that no action should follow? If we did that, we would send a message to the outside world which would, in my view, be absolutely disastrous for the security of the world."
Mr. Blair dismissed the widespread reports of division over Iraq in his cabinet as "complete nonsense."
"People basically are still in exactly the same place," he said. "They want this thing dealt with through the U.N., but they want the U.N. to deal with it, not be a way of avoiding dealing with it."
The prime minister is expected to fly to Washington to meet President Bush soon after publication of the Jan. 27 United Nations report by the arms inspection team now in Iraq.
-------- colombia
U.S. Bans Aid to Colombian Air Force Unit
January 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombia-usa-airforce.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has banned U.S. assistance to a Colombian air force unit after the unit stalled investigations into a 1998 bombing that killed 17 civilians, the State Department said on Tuesday.
Colombia has received $2 billion in military aid from Washington in recent years, mainly to fight the Andean nation's cocaine industry. It called the decision ``inappropriate'' and suggested the move would hurt the war on drugs.
The State Department decided to decertify the 1st Air Combat Command late last year and informed the Colombian government of it earlier this month, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a briefing.
``The message is that we want to see these issues investigated and resolved, that we think that the professional military in Colombian needs to be transparent, open and just,'' he said. But overall aid to Colombia will not change, because money can be allocated to other units, he added.
``It covers (U.S. supplies of) equipment, fuel, training. It's anything,'' added a U.S. official who asked not to be named. Boucher said the unit was not currently receiving U.S. aid but it was not clear if it received any in 2002.
``The prolonged investigation has raised questions about the Colombian air force's commitment to determine the facts and, we think, damages the reputation of Colombia's air force. We support due process and we expect a just ruling based on objective facts,'' Boucher said.
The decertification would prevent the crucial counter-rebel unit from buying munitions from the United States as it fights in a bloody, 38-year guerrilla war. It is the first time a Colombian air force unit has been decertified, although army units have been cut off from U.S. aid in the past.
``It's a decision we do not share. We think it is inappropriate to suspend assistance to an entire air force unit,'' Defense Minister Marta Lucia Ramirez told reporters.
Deployed in the Puerto Salgar Air Base, in central Cundinamarca province, the suspended air unit is responsible for about 20 percent of Colombia's air force combat capacity, including anti-drug and anti-narcotics operations.
AIR FORCE SEES ``SET-UP''
Air Force Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco, who at first blamed a Marxist rebel car bomb for the deaths, said the Air Force was being ``set-up'' and insisted on the unit's innocence.
``This is a set-up. An old and rusty cluster bomb was placed at the site. ... There are NGOs. ... There are a lot of economic interests here,'' he said without elaborating. NGOs refer to nongovernmental aid organizations.
``(Drug trafficking) is not only a Colombian problem. We are allies of the United States in the war on drugs,'' Velasco said, adding the case was still under investigation by Colombia's military justice and that Washington should have waited until its conclusion before suspending the aid.
But Boucher said: ``One of the reasons we took this decision is because the investigation has dragged on. We believe it's time to reach a resolution of these issues.''
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who initiated the legislation behind the decertification, said the State Department was right ``for standing up for the rule of law.''
``It has been many years in coming, but it sets the right example and does justice to our principles,'' he added.
In a disaster that investigators are still probing, Colombian air force pilots dropped a U.S.-made cluster bomb on the town of Santo Domingo in December 1998 -- killing five children and 12 others near the border with Venezuela. More than 30 people were injured by shrapnel.
According to testimony given to Colombia's Attorney General's Office, the pilots said they had received the coordinates for the attack from privately contracted American surveillance pilots, working for Florida-based Airscan International Inc.
At the time of the bombing, Airscan was responsible for monitoring areas around the Cano Limon oil pipeline for rebel activity in northeastern Colombia. Airscan pilots have denied giving the coordinates to the Air Force pilots.
After Velasco blamed a rebel car bomb for the deaths -- added to 40,000 lives lost in the past decade -- Colombian investigators found evidence of the cluster bomb.
The U.S. official said Colombia's air force stalled in investigations into whether it knowingly hit civilian targets in an area controlled by leftist rebels.
-------- iraq
Iraq Says Six Hurt in Bombing
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52311-2003Jan13?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 13 -- The Iraqi military said U.S. and British planes patrolling a "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq bombed civilian targets today, injuring six people, but the United States said the aircraft attacked an Iraqi anti-ship missile launcher.
The U.S. military said the planes attacked the launcher because it was deemed a threat to American and allied vessels in the Persian Gulf.
An Iraqi air defense spokesman said in a statement the planes flew 60 sorties over wide areas in the south before attacking civilian installations in the port city of Basra, about 300 miles southwest of Baghdad. He said "the righteous men of leader Saddam Hussein" fired antiaircraft weapons at the attacking planes.
The U.S. Central Command, in a statement from its headquarters in Tampa, said the aircraft used precision-guided weapons to strike the anti-ship missile launcher near Basra. In addition, aircraft dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets over southern Iraq, pressing Iraqi troops and citizens to listen to U.S. radio broadcasts to the area, officials said.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Won't Let Us Reform
By Yasser Abed Rabbo
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52303-2003Jan13?language=printer
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel's most recent excuse for why it cannot negotiate peace with the Palestinians is that the Palestinians have been unable to develop a fully democratic society while living under Israeli occupation. This excuse is better known as "reform." And yet, when Palestinians are invited to go to London to further the reform process, the government of Israel prevents us from doing so.
Yes, Palestinians are expected to reform, but no, we are not supposed to succeed at it. The truth is that Israel's purported interest in reform is merely an attempt to divert the world's attention from the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israel's 35-year occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of Palestinian freedom.
Never mind the occupation. Never mind the assassinations, the home demolitions, the continuing theft of Palestinian land and water resources and the "curfews" under which entire populations are held hostage in their homes by the threat of a bullet should they go in search of food or medicine. Never mind the sadistic Israeli soldiers ordering civilians at gunpoint to strip naked or to beat their friends or to pick their fate from a "lottery" with tickets labeled "broken arm" or "broken leg." None of this is relevant to Middle East peace, goes the new Israeli narrative. All that is relevant is that the Palestinians reform their political institutions.
Reform is indeed needed and has been underway for some time. Reform is also popular among the Palestinian population -- 85 percent of Palestinians support fundamental political reform -- and Palestinian support for it predates the sudden interest in the matter by Israel and the United States. Despite Israel's effort to use it as a diversion, reform is nevertheless good for the Palestinians. And, remarkably, progress has been made.
Drafting of the Palestinian constitution has continued unabated. The draft constitution would establish basic human rights and strive to achieve the delicate balance of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. In the area of financial accountability, the new Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayyad, has earned the praise and trust of Palestinians, Europeans and even Israelis for his new transparent budgets and measures to ensure greater accountability for the use of public funds.
But there are limits to how much Palestinians can reform while living under Israeli occupation, and Israel has done its best to simultaneously make reform the issue du jour while systematically undermining Palestinian reform efforts. A major Israeli obstacle to Palestinian reform is Israel's collective punishment policy of closures, checkpoints and curfews that restrict the freedom of movement of more than 3 million Palestinians under Israel's occupation. Visitors to the occupied Palestinian territories routinely witness elderly couples climbing over muddy hills to reach their homes or buy food. Palestinians in need of medical assistance are prevented from reaching hospitals -- to date 18 infants have died as a result of being born at home or at Israeli checkpoints, and 76 Palestinians have died from lack of medical access. Whether to go to the corner store for milk has for some Palestinians become a life-or-death decision.
But in addition to the human suffering, Israel's closure policy adversely affects Palestinian reform efforts. An inability to travel prevents effective meetings of the elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council -- thereby thwarting any meaningful democratic process with respect to debate and the adoption of reform laws or the annual budget. Palestinian elections, originally planned to be held this month, were postponed. How does a candidate campaign for election if she cannot leave her home? How does a voter vote if the polling stations are behind Israeli tanks and trigger-happy occupation forces?
Another obstacle to Palestinian reform is Israel's self-declared right to withhold tax revenue owed to the Palestinians -- nearly $600 million. The withholding of Palestinian funds not only deprives the Palestinian Authority of the critical financial resources needed to implement reform, it also destroys the Authority's ability to pay its civil servants. This ultimately leads to impoverishment and financial desperation -- two factors that foster corruption.
Successful Palestinian reform needs Israeli cooperation. First, Israel must end its system of closures and curfews, illegal under international law. Second, Israel must finally transfer all Palestinian tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority.
Many Palestinians are skeptical of reform, justifiably asking, "What good are democratic reforms while Palestinians have no freedom? What good are elections when Israel has demonstrated that it will not respect democratically elected leaders or even allow democratically elected parliaments to convene?" That is why, for reform to truly succeed, Palestinians must know they will eventually be free. Stated simply, Israel must end its occupation.
Yes, the Palestinian Authority is committed to reform. But no, Palestinian reform will not bring peace to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. The problem in the Middle East is, and has been for the past 35 years, Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. And no Palestinian budget, no Palestinian law and no Palestinian constitution is going to change that fact.
The writer is the Palestinian Authority's minister of culture and information. He was to have headed the Palestinian delegation to the London talks today.
----
British Aide Says Meeting on Palestinian Reform a Success
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/14CND_BRIT.html
LONDON, Jan. 14 - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw pronounced a British-sponsored meeting on Palestinian reform a success tonight despite the absence in London of Palestinian representatives barred by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from coming here.
"This has been a constructive meeting and one which is as much in the interests of the people of Israel as it is in Palestine and the wider community," Mr. Straw said outside 10 Downing Street where delegates ended the one-day conference with a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Mr. Blair had proposed the meeting out of his concern that London and Washington were increasingly seen by the international community and the Muslim world to be practicing what he called "double standards" in paying less attention to reenergizing the Middle East peace process than to disarming Iraq.
Mr. Sharon barred the delegates, who had been chosen by Palestinian Chairman Yasir Arafat, from leaving the occupied territories to come to London after suicide bombers killed 22 people in Tel Aviv on Jan. 5. He rebuffed a personal appeal for reconsideration from Mr. Blair, who said he would hold the meeting anyway.
The Palestinian representatives participated today by video link from Gaza and Ramallah to a conference room in the Foreign Office where 15 delegates from the European Union, United Nations, United States, Russia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were seated. "We had to find a way around the Israeli decision, and that is what we did today," Mr. Straw explained.
Reporting on the conversations, he said, "There was clear recognition that without credible Palestinian performance on security, the reform agenda will founder. Participants welcomed a clear and unequivocal Palestinian declaration against violence and terrorism."
Mr. Straw said the session had noted "the very significant progress" already made in economic and financial reforms within the Palestinian Authority and laid out plans for a further draft of the new Palestinian constitution providing for a prime minister and a bill of rights to be made available in two weeks.
He said other proposals for reform of public administration and the civil service would also be forthcoming in two weeks. "Continuing terror attacks underscore the fragile nature of all these efforts and demonstrate the need for an immediate, comprehensive cease-fire," he added.
The Palestinians said that the success of their reform depended upon an end to current restrictions of their movements, including curfews and road closures. Mr. Straw agreed but said that the restrictions should not stand in the way of improving security.
"They have responsibilities, prime responsibilities, to improve the security situation, and because they can't do everything on account of the security situation doesn't mean they can't do anything," he said.
Mr. Straw said the basis for discussion was the creation of two independent and secure states and the commitment by the so-called quartet of the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and Russia to prepare a "roadmap" for progress to that goal.
Mr. Straw was careful to ascribe the idea to a speech on the Middle East by President Bush on June 24. The assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, William Burns, attended today's meeting as the American representative, but he declined comment on the conference.
The Palestinian representative to the United Kingdom, Afif Safieh, said, "I am happy to say that the verdict today of the international community is that there is a state which is missing needs to be created." He continued, "We have assured our interlocutors that reforms in democracy and meritocracy are a Palestinian aspiration, a Palestinian expectation, a Palestinian right and even a Palestinian duty to ourselves."
Mr. Straw and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, clashed on the telephone a week ago over the meeting, and Israel made it clear today it still disapproved of it.
An advisor to Mr. Sharon, Salman Shoval, told the BBC that Israel objected because it held Mr. Arafat responsible for the terror bombings of Jan 5. "Then this same Yasir Arafat sends people who are part of his terrorist organization in order to bask in the diplomatic limelight in London," Mr. Shoval said. "If the Palestinians want to effect reform, reform should be effected right here."
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Israel's Labour Won't Join Sharon Govt. After Vote
January 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-israel-elections.html
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel's Labor Party said on Tuesday it would not join a government led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon if he won the Jan. 28 general election, complicating efforts to form a new ruling coalition.
``We won't be in a government led by Sharon, period,'' Labor party leader and prime minister candidate Amram Mitzna told reporters. ``It is either us or him.''
Mitzna's announcement appeared aimed at capitalizing on corruption scandals swirling around Sharon and his right-wing Likud party, which maintains a lead in the opinion polls.
``Voters must choose either the rule of law and equality before the law for everyone from the prime minister down, or a brazen disregard for it,'' Mitzna said.
The Labor decision to stay out of any Sharon-led government came after internal party surveys showed the move would gain his party up to four seats in the election, the daily Ha'aretz said.
Sharon made clear Tuesday that, if elected, he will seek to form another ``national unity'' coalition with Labor, Likud's main rival.
``I have always thought that a unity government was of utmost importance,'' Sharon said. ``Today a unity government is more important than it has ever been.''
But if Labor makes good on its promise not to join a Sharon-led government, the Likud leader would be forced to build a narrower government with ultranationalist and religious parties.
Such alliances could give Sharon 63 seats in the 120-seat parliament, enough to govern but subject to partners' demands for concessions that could threaten the coalition's stability.
Sharon told New York Times columnist William Safire this week he wanted to avoid that.
``I won't put myself in the hands of any radical parties, neither of the left nor of the right,'' he was quoted as saying. ``I need the center because we have to take painful steps.''
Sharon and Mitzna are at odds over how to deal with a 27-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence. Sharon favors tough military tactics. Mitzna, the dovish mayor of Haifa, wants to offer an unconditional return to peace talks.
LABOR FRUSTRATED
Labor politicians have been increasingly frustrated by their inability to benefit in the polls from corruption allegations that have embroiled Sharon and Likud in the buildup to the election.
Surveys show that the scandals have eroded Likud's lead but it remains on track to become the largest party.
Labor politicians said that while they would rule out joining any Sharon-led coalition, they would invite Likud into a Mitzna-led government if Labor won the election.
``They are acting out of desperation,'' Likud's Communication Minister Reuven Rivlin said of Labour's decision.
Labour's move came a day after Sharon's reelection campaign showed signs of recovery. Polls published Monday in Israeli dailies showed Likud forecast to win up to 33 seats.
Just last week, the Likud's predicted victory was whittled down to 27 seats on news Israeli police were probing an allegedly illicit loan to fund Sharon's 1999 campaign from a South African businessman.
Likud had already slipped from predictions it would win 40 or more seats after allegations broke last month of vote-buying in the party's December primary.
Monday's polls also showed Labor losing ground, with a prediction it would take 20 seats, down from its current 25.
Political commentators said voters appeared to have rallied around Sharon after an election official -- charging a violation of rules against campaign propaganda -- cut off his televised speech Thursday denying the corruption allegations.
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Mideast Mediators Thwart Israel Travel Ban
January 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-conference.html
LONDON (Reuters) - International mediators, determined to overcome an Israeli travel ban, reached out by videolink to Palestinians Tuesday to discuss reforms designed to promote peace and build a future Palestinian state.
``Having a video conference is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting,'' British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters before the talks at the foreign office in London with 15 delegates in a room dominated by a large video screen.
``The Israeli government's decision was a regrettable one,'' he said of a move which has soured Israeli-British relations.
Israel refused to let Palestinian officials travel to London from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip following suicide bombings that killed 22 people in Tel Aviv last week.
Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday the London conference would not help to halt Palestinian suicide bombings, which he blamed on President Yasser Arafat.
``I am afraid it is not likely to have any positive effect because the real need is a genuine reformation in Palestinian society,'' Netanyahu told reporters.
He said Arafat could simply tell militant groups ``to stop murdering innocent people. That he can do right away, he doesn't have to go to London for it.''
Egyptian security chief Omar Suleiman was expected to brief the London conference on Cairo-led efforts to broker a 12-month cease-fire by all Palestinian factions, including the Islamist Hamas movement. Arafat has already accepted the proposal.
In Ramallah, Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who is leading the Palestinian side, blamed Israel for blocking reform and urged the international community to do more to help.
``The Israeli occupation is responsible for hindering and creating all forms of obstacles of the reform process,'' he told reporters outside the Palestinian Legislative Council offices where three video screens have been set up.
``If they (the international community) want real reform they should move these Israeli tanks and forces from our towns and cities and villages,'' Abed Rabbo declared.
Finance Minister Salam Fayyad and the ministers of tourism and trade and industry were joining the talks from Ramallah, and Planning Minister Nabil Shaath from Gaza.
The London gathering grouped mediators from the ``quartet'' of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia, along with officials from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The United States has led calls for Palestinian reforms in efforts to end 27 months of violence and help pave the way for a settlement involving the creation of a Palestinian state.
KEEPING UP MOMENTUM
``It's a meeting to maintain momentum, it's not a meeting to bring out new solutions,'' EU foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana told reporters.
He criticized Israel for preventing the Palestinians from taking part in person. ``I think it was not the most intelligent decision because the purpose of this conference was to talk about how to bring peace, how to bring reforms,'' he said.
Straw told BBC radio it was vital to pursue Middle East peace efforts for their own sake, not because they might feed into the crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. ``Even if the Iraq crisis was resolved tomorrow we would still be under a huge obligation to act, and act properly, with respect to this terrible long-running conflict for Palestine.''
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called in September for talks on a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal to resume by the end of the year. Israel, with U.S. backing, dismissed that idea.
The London conference is an attempt to push on with a ``road map'' to peace that the quartet plans to present to the parties after the Israeli general election on January 28.
U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told Reuters progress on Palestinian reform had been ``uneven,'' with excellent work in the area of finance not matched by security reform.
``Terrorism prevails, unfortunately, and even if the capabilities are limited under Israeli reoccupation of the West Bank and partly in Gaza, it's apparent to everybody that much more could have been done and should be done,'' Larsen said.
-------- italy
Italians alarmed at discovery of huge US munitions base
From Richard Owen in Pisa
January 14, 2003
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-542379,00.html
ITALIANS, already nervous about war with Iraq, were stunned to learn yesterday that they are sitting on top of the biggest American ammunition dump outside the United States.
Camp Darby, which nestles in a thousand hectares of pinewoods on the Tuscan coast between Pisa and Livorno, is a storehouse for 20,000 tonnes of artillery and aerial munitions, 8,000 tonnes of high explosive and "enough equipment to arm an entire mechanised brigade of tanks and APCs", according to a report.
It has emerged that the base was the main source of armaments used during the 1991 Gulf War and is expected to serve the same purpose in any new campaign. It also supplied 60 per cent of the ordnance - including nearly 4,000 cluster bombs - dropped on Serbia by Nato warplanes during the 1999 Kosovo campaign.
The report, issued by the Global Security Foundation in the United States and published yesterday in the respected daily Corriere della Sera, will bolster anti-war sentiment in Italy. The Berlusconi Government has offered the United States use of its bases and airspace, but opposition to war with Iraq is strong both on the Left and in the Roman Catholic Church.
A receptionist at the Hotel Mediterraneo, next to the base, said: "We knew that it's a military base, but not that it has such a huge arsenal."
"We are all afraid," said a woman wheeling her baby son in a pushchair through the village of Stagno, which borders the camp. "The winds of war are blowing, and we feel very close to it here."
The armaments are stored in 125 hangar-style buildings, which line the camp behind a seemingly endless green fence. The camp, set up in 1951, is named after General William Darby, an American special forces officer who died during the Allied liberation of Italy from Nazi occupation in 1945.
It is one of several US bases on Italian soil, including the airbases at Aviano in northern Italy and Sigonella in Sicily and the naval base at Naples, headquarters of the US Sixth Fleet and of Nato Southern Command.
Corriere della Sera said that Italians would be appalled to learn that two years ago underground bunkers at the base built in the 1970s and used to store munitions in controlled temperatures had begun to develop "structural problems".
US Army engineers had used steel plates to reinforce the bunkers, but this had only made the situation worse. Cracks had widened and chunks of cement had fallen on the stored weapons and bombs. Twelve of the bunkers had been cleared of their contents, with extreme caution, with bomb squads removing 100,000 missiles and bombs and 23 tonnes of high explosive with the help of remote-controlled robots. The report said that it was a small miracle that nothing had gone wrong. US officials emphasised that Camp Darby also had a humanitarian function, storing thousands of beds and tonnes of clothing for aid missions to the Balkans, Kurdish areas and Africa. It houses bulldozers and other heavy equipment for airlifting to areas of natural catastrophe. But the report said that "if necessary an entire US armoured brigade could leave Camp Darby for Kuwait without needing a change of socks - it would be equipped with everything from cannons to underwear."
-------- landmines
Millions of Mines Await Victims in Northern Iraq
By Jon Hemming
Jan. 14
Reuters
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20030114_277.html
MALOLA, Iraq () - An eight-year-old Kurdish girl draws a tree, flowers, a house and then small spiked circles among the grass -- her lesson is about the mines that litter northern Iraq and kill dozens of people each year.
"This mine is used against people," said Rostam, barely able to reach the blackboard and point to the picture of a sand-colored object bristling with detonators. "Everyone who touches it is killed."
Rostam lives in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. On the ridge at the far side of an undulating rocky valley Iraqi government troops have dug in to wait for yet another war that could add to the deadly legacy under the topsoil.
Despite the efforts of the de-mining agencies, northern Iraq still has millions of mines and unexploded bombs.
"In the mid-1980s, one company had an order to supply Iraq with nine-and-a-half million mines," said Michael Parker country manager for the Mines Advisory Group, a British non-governmental agency.
"There are still millions left in the ground, without a doubt."
Parker offers a graphic description of the damage done by anti-personnel fragmentation mines made by the Valsella company of Italy and common in this part of Iraq.
On impact, the mine leaps one meter (3 ft) into the air and explodes, sending out hundreds of small metal shards in every direction. It has a "lethal radius" of 25 meters and can cause wounds up to 300 meters away.
"It punctures your organs in a hundred places, the victim then generally goes into shock and dies a slow, painful death," said Parker.
MANY CONFLICTS
Parker's agency has spent the last 10 years working in northern Iraq, marking and clearing mines and teaching people, particularly children, of the dangers they pose.
In that time, mines and unexploded bombs in the mountainous region have killed at least 3,700 people and wounded nearly 7,500. But thanks to the United Nations and other agencies, the toll has declined in recent years.
Some mines are 30 years old, leftover from the many conflicts that have swept the region.
Iraq's Kurds rose up against President Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War. They have since been protected by a no-fly zone enforced by U.S. and British aircraft and retain a fragile autonomy marked by attacks from neighboring countries and intermittent civil war.
With the United States accusing Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction and preparing for a possible attack on Baghdad, de-mining agencies are bracing for another wave of mine and bomb victims.
Iraqi troops have already laid hundreds of mines along frontlines facing the lightly armed Kurdish fighters, who could play a role in any U.S.-led assault to topple Saddam.
If fighting erupts in territory ruled by Baghdad, aid agencies expect a tide refugees to pour through the minefields in search of sanctuary in the Kurdish-held north.
And if things go badly in Kurdish areas, the refugees could head for Iran across a border still heavily mined from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
-------- puerto rico
Navy Begins Last Live-Fire Exercise on Vieques Island
Protests, Hard Feelings Continue; Cleanup an Issue
By John Marino
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51565-2003Jan13?language=printer
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico, Jan. 13 -- After years of controversy, the U.S. Navy today began what it says will be its last firing exercise on this embattled island. But bitterness remains on both sides of the six-decade relationship the Navy has had with this town's 10,000 residents.
Last week, the Navy said it would expand operations on several mainland bases and give up use of this island as a bombing range. But today, demonstrations continued with some protesters sneaking onto the 12,000-acre facility. At least five were detained by authorities.
"The Navy has lied to this town so many times over the years, nobody believes them," said Nilda Medina, an organizer speaking from the string of protest camps set up in front of the Navy's Camp Garcia military reservation. "We always said, as long as they keep bombing, we'll keep engaging in civil disobedience."
President Bush has ordered an end to the bombing exercises here by May 1. The unhappiness of U.S. military leaders over the controversy has been just as evident as the protesters' anger.
"I acknowledge the situation with regard to Vieques with extreme disappointment -- our sailors and Marines deserve better," said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones in a memo to Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, part of a certification to the White House and Congress that the Navy had found alternatives to Vieques.
"Some in Puerto Rico (particularly in Vieques) have demonstrated an appalling hostility towards sailors, Marines and their requirement for pre-deployment training; this at a particularly dangerous time in our nation's history," Jones said.
But Vieques residents say they have shouldered more than their fair share of the national defense burden since the Navy took over three-quarters of their island in the early 1940s.
"I know they don't want to leave, but the big losers here have been the Viequenses," said 69-year-old Radames Tirado, a former mayor whose childhood home was expropriated by the Navy and knocked down by bulldozers. "We have been fighting for 60 years to get back the lands they took from us."
The hard feelings between the uneasy neighbors, forged by years of what residents said were broken Navy promises for economic development and other assistance, is one reason why many who live here say the protests will continue.
The current month-long exercise is for the USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group, comprising nine ships, two submarines, fighter jets and about 8,000 military personnel.
Protests have become a staple activity here since an April 1999 training accident killed a civilian security guard, David Sanes Rodriguez, turning years of resentment against the Navy into calls for a halt to its bombing. The issue has been a rare point of unity among Puerto Rico's commonwealth, statehood and independence supporters.
Hundreds of Puerto Ricans, as well as U.S. supporters, including environmental attorney Robert Kennedy Jr., actor Edward James Olmos and Al Sharpton, have been arrested during demonstrations accompanying the various war games that have taken place since then.
While many here are celebrating the end of bombing, some say another battle will be waged to press the federal government to clean up and turn over the vast swaths of land it still owns in the east and west ends of the island. Most of the land is slated to be transferred to the Department of the Interior to become a wildlife reserve.
The cleanup issue is of particular concern to many here, who suspect that contaminants from Navy bombing could be harming the environment and health of residents, who suffer from a cancer rate about 26 percent higher than that of the main island of Puerto Rico.
Those concerns increased after recent revelations that a Navy destroyer sunk about 900 feet off the Vieques shore was used as a target ship for nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1958 and Pentagon acknowledgement that chemical weapons simulants were tested on the island in the 1960s.
Studies by University of Puerto Rico scientists and others have turned up contamination in local plants, groundwater and seafood, but a series of reviews by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have stated that the toxins are not in sufficient quantities to pose a health risk to local residents.
The Navy has repeatedly denied that its activities harm the environment or the health of residents.
-------- un
U.S. hits Libya's ascension to U.N. post
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 14, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030114-99934286.htm
NEW YORK - Libya will take over as chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission next week, further damaging the credibility of the international body from which the United States was ousted two years ago.
The HRC's 53 member nations will begin their annual session on Monday by selecting a new chairman. The North African nation, which has one of the world's worst human rights records, is the only candidate for the post.
The session also marks the return of the United States to the commission after its ouster in the spring of 2001 in a vote by a separate U.N. panel. The expulsion prompted Congress to make payment of some dues to the United Nations conditional upon America regaining the seat.
The chairmanship of the panel routinely rotates among the world's major regions. This year, it is the turn of Africa, which has put forward Libya in apparent appreciation for its funding of regional initiatives.
Sichan Siv, the U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, said it was "appalling" that Libya should receive such a prestigious position.
"Libya has a very poor human rights record, and it is wrong for them to chair the committee once chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt," he said in an interview.
Mr. Siv said U.S. officials had been consulting "with our friends and allies" in Europe and Africa to try to find an alternative candidate, but without success.
In a largely symbolic protest, Washington will demand a roll call vote on Monday on Libya's candidacy, so that it and other governments can publicly distance themselves from the decision.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher yesterday confirmed the U.S. plan to try and block Libya, citing in particular the country's poor human rights record and its presumed role as the architect of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
"We cannot reward such terrible conduct with a leadership position, in this case, in the foremost international human rights body," Mr. Boucher said.
Libya's chairmanship is just the latest blow to the Geneva-based HRC, whose membership has swelled with governments that have questionable human rights records, such as Algeria, Chad, Burkina Faso, China, Cuba, Congo, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
"The greatest challenge for [the HRC] is going to be overcoming the tendencies of thugs to flock to it," said Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Their first instinct is to avoid condemnation, and now two dozen of the 53 are just abusers. It's reached a crisis point."
The HRC, the cornerstone of the U.N. human rights effort, is an independent body that sends investigators to probe myriad abuses, including torture, summary executions, judicial interference and religious persecution.
At its annual six-week session, the body often has voted to condemn the human rights records of countries such as Sudan, Iraq and Burundi. Israel also has been a frequent target.
In recent years, Washington has tried, and failed, to win high-profile condemnations of Cuba and China. Both nations sit on the commission, where they have found sympathy and protection from other members.
As chairman, Libya will have the power to shape and schedule debates, but it will not control the agenda.
Ruled with an iron hand by Moammar Gadhafi since 1969, Libya routinely makes the list of worst human rights abusers. Its government quashes free speech and jails political opponents, according to the State Department's human rights report. There are no independent human rights groups, and the press is strictly controlled. Political prisoners report that torture is common.
It is widely assumed that Libya, a generous underwriter of the newly created African Union, sought the HRC chair to raise the country's influence and profile on the continent. The Libyan mission to the United Nations did not return calls on Friday.
"Libya bought the African Union and Africa repaid it with the chairmanship, that's the ugly deal," Mr. Roth said. "That doesn't bode well for the accountability deal that Africa is trying to strike with the West."
Mr. Gadhafi's admirers include former South African President Nelson Mandela, who visited Libya in 1997 and later honored its leader with South Africa's highest civilian order for foreigners.
Diplomats and human rights experts have warned for months that a successful bid by Libya would soil African ambitions to build credibility, as well as the reputation of the United Nations.
The HRC meets in the same complex as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. But that office operates independently and has no control over which nations join the commission.
"But that's a too-fine distinction for most people," acknowledged one senior U.N. official. "What kind of credibility are we going to have in the human rights sector when people can point at Libya in the chairman's seat?"
Human Rights Watch and affiliated groups have proposed the adoption of minimum eligibility requirements for membership to the body.
They say candidate governments should ratify all or most of the main human rights treaties, issue a standing invitation to HRC investigators, and not have been condemned by the commission in the recent past.
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U.N. Chief Says It Is Too Early to Consider War With Iraq
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/middleeast/14CND-NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 14 - Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that it was too early for the Security Council to consider whether to authorize military action against Iraq, and he said he remained "both optimistic and hopeful" that war could be avoided.
At a morning press conference here, Mr. Annan said the United States-led military build-up in the Persian Gulf had helped greatly to pressure Baghdad to cooperate with international arms inspections.
Mr. Annan, echoing a European view of the council resolution that set up the inspections, said a debate over war in the council must be triggered by a report from the weapons inspectors of a serious violation by Iraq.
"I don't think we are there yet, so really I don't want to talk about war," Mr. Annan said.
In wide-ranging comments in his first meeting this year with correspondents at United Nations headquarters, Mr. Annan also said he "will not be surprised that we will be able to find a way out" by diplomatic means of the nuclear crisis with North Korea.
On Iraq, the secretary general said he was "extremely worried" about the possible impact on the Iraqi population of a war. He acknowledged that the United Nations had been busy making contingency plans to provide relief aid to civilians and refugees, while also working on "some ideas of putting together post-conflict structures."
"We are not assuming anything," he said about whether President Saddam Hussein will be toppled from power in Iraq.
"I think the inspectors are just getting up to speed," the secretary general said. He recommended waiting for the report that Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief weapons inspectors, will give the council on Jan. 27, to see "what further instruction the council gives them."
The secretary general made it clear that he saw the inspections developing more slowly than many Bush administration officials would like and that he did not support Washington's view that the inspections resolution, No. 1441, gave the United States the authority to declare on its own that Iraq had committed grave breaches.
Mr. Annan credited the military mobilization in the gulf led by the United States and Britain for persuading Baghdad to cooperate with the inspections.
"There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the pressure has been effective," he said.
On North Korea, Mr. Annan said his envoy, Maurice Strong, a Canadian businessman and diplomat, is in Pyongyang today, primarily discussing the difficulties that have arisen for fund-raising for food and medicines as a result of North Korea's abrupt withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But Mr. Annan said he had instructed Mr. Strong to be open to discussions on the political crisis as well. He said that the "signals" from Washington and Pyongyang gave him considerable confidence that a diplomatic deal could be reached.
-------- us
U.S. Sending Huge Armadas to Persian Gulf
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Jan 14, 20029:52 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TROOP_DEPLOYMENT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon, preparing for possible war in Iraq, is dispatching an enormous array of naval combat power to the Persian Gulf region, including two seven-ship armadas carrying thousands of Marines.
The Navy also is prepared to put as many as six aircraft carriers within striking distance of Iraq. Two already are in position, two are prepared to sprint to the region and two are gearing up for possible deployment.
The latest naval movements are part of a broader buildup of U.S. air, land and sea power in the gulf region as President Bush contemplates whether to use military force to disarm Iraq. Administration officials hope the size of the buildup alone will add to the pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to give up chemical and biological weapons that U.S. officials say he is hiding but that Saddam insists do not exist.
Despite the movements of ships and personnel, the White House spokesman denied on Monday that Bush has an "artificial timetable" that would trigger hostilities.
Asked whether the president was willing to wait a year, which U.N. weapons inspectors said Monday might be necessary for a definitive reading on Iraq's armory, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The president has not put any type of artificial timetable on how long he believes it's necessary for Saddam Hussein to prove to the world that he's going to comply."
Also on Monday, officials disclosed that the Navy is preparing to deploy as early as this week a seven-ship armada with 6,000 to 7,000 Marines from California. The amphibious force would mirror a seven-ship deployment of about 7,000 Marines from the East Coast, which headed out over the weekend, the officials said.
Together the task forces will present Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command commander, who would run a war against Iraq, with the option of amphibious assaults from the northern Persian Gulf, the officials said. Marines also could go ashore in Kuwait to be part of an Army-led land attack into southern Iraq.
Trained to operate in austere environments, the Marines also could move by helicopter into Iraq from their ships in the Gulf or from Kuwait to establish forward bases, as they did in southern Afghanistan early in that 2001 war.
About 60,000 U.S. troops currently are in the Gulf region, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed orders in recent days for an additional 67,000 to go there over the next few weeks. Eventually the size of the U.S. force arrayed against Iraq could reach 250,000.
Even though the White House says Bush has not yet decided to attack, the rapid pace of troop deployments has convinced many that a U.S.-led invasion could be only weeks away. Central Command is sending much of its battle staff to a command post in Qatar, where Franks would direct a war, and officials have said the post is likely to be ready for operations by the end of this month.
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee said Monday he believes war with Iraq is inevitable.
"I'm convinced that the president is going to go in there one way or the other," Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The vessels pegged for movement with Marines from the West Coast are the amphibious assault ships USS Bonhomme Richard and USS Boxer; the USS Cleveland and USS Dubuque, amphibious transport dock ships that carry troops, vehicles and cargo; and three dock landing ships that carry troops and amphibious craft like air-cushioned troop transports - the USS Comstock, the USS Anchorage and the USS Pearl Harbor.
All seven are based at San Diego. The Marines they will transport are based at Camp Pendleton, just north of that Southern California city.
A separate deployment of Marines aboard Navy ships, led by the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa, left San Diego on Jan. 6. That group, with about 2,200 Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is on a regularly scheduled cruise. A similar-sized unit led by the USS Nassau and carrying Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit has been off the coast of Yemen for weeks.
The Navy's other major forces within striking distance of Iraq are the battle groups of the carriers USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf and the USS Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean Sea.
The carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was to have returned to its home port at Everett, Wash., this month, is being kept in the Western Pacific, currently at Perth, Australia, in case it is needed back in the Persian Gulf. Similarly, the USS George Washington, which returned home to Norfolk, Va., just before Christmas, has been told that it should be prepared to head back to sea on short notice.
The carrier USS Carl Vinson left its home port at Bremerton, Wash., on Monday for a training exercise in the Pacific that could turn into a deployment for war. The Norfolk-based carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which returned from its most recent deployment in March 2002, is speeding up its training cycle and could be ready to deploy if necessary by February.
On the Net:
Pentagon: http://www.defenselink.mil
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DEPLOYMENT General Wary on Number of Cargo Planes
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/national/14TRAN.html
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill., Jan. 10 - Although the Pentagon has managed to build up its forces around Iraq at a carefully calculated pace, it could find itself "significantly short" of cargo planes to rush troops and armor into future combat, the general in charge of all military transport says.
Important but glamorless, the task of hauling every bullet, bean and barrel of diesel required by the military as it trains in peacetime and goes to war falls to the United States Transportation Command, based here, across the Mississippi from St. Louis.
The command has been a hub of intense activity since the Sept. 11 attacks, and work is accelerating as the military amasses troops, weapons, warships and aircraft around Iraq to pressure it to disarm - and to prepare for attack, if President Bush decides on war.
Since the slow and arduous buildup for the gulf war in 1991, the military has invested heavily in a fleet of advanced ocean freighters, as well as deciding to position vast arsenals of heavy weapons in climate-controlled warehouses in allied Persian Gulf states and aboard cargo ships a short sail from Iraq.
"Sealift is by far the better prepared of all the capabilities that we have," said Gen. John W. Handy of the Air Force, chief of the Transportation Command.
The command coordinates the work of three subordinate commands to move people and freight by air, by sea and over land.
The constant variable in the ability to transport warriors and weapons into combat remains speed versus the size of the load. The trade-offs are obvious. The average seagoing vessel in the military freighter fleet carries several hundred times the load of the C-5 cargo plane but may take days or weeks to sail to its destination.
The giant command center that would be headquarters for Gen. Tommy Franks if the United States goes to war with Iraq was built at his base in Tampa, Fla., and then taken apart and shipped by sea to Qatar, where it was reassembled in plenty of time for a war game last month.
But when commanders in landlocked Afghanistan needed fresh helicopters last year for the last major battle there, 16 Apaches arrived by cargo plane from the United States just 33 hours after the call went out.
If requirements prompt commanders to order fighting forces and weapons for speedy deployment to a war zone, it takes airlift, and General Handy said his flying fleet might not be able to meet the demand.
In this environment, General Handy said, the regional fighting commanders work with the Transportation Command to fit deployment schedules to the capacity of the cargo system.
"I am confident that if you say, `Can you handle the job?' the answer is, `Yes,' and we could configure the requirement to meet the mobility capability," he said. "But it should be the other way around."
With the focus on deployment orders to the Persian Gulf, planners at the Central Command, which is responsible for Mideast operations, salute this axiom: "Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics."
"Our team places such a strong emphasis on supply timetables, because without a deliberate logistics plan you can't have a successful military plan," the spokesman for the Central Command, James R. Wilkinson, said. "Significant interruptions or distortions in the supply chain can invariably lead to significant delays on the execution side."
Describing deployments toward Iraq, Mr. Wilkinson said, "We are where we need to be."
But, he added, "a great deal of hard work does lie ahead, as people and assets continue to flow to be ready, should the president give the order."
The prospect of a final rush of troops and equipment to the front points to potential stress in the system. The entire fleet of C-141 cargo planes is set to retire by 2006. The C-5's remain in service, but they are aging and cannot land on short or unimproved airstrips, which often are the only kind in a war zone. The C-130 remains a workhorse of the fleet, but it has a relatively small cargo capacity.
The spine of military airlift is the C-17. A study for the Transportation Command said the fleet required 222 of the C-17's. The command has just taken possession of the 101st of 180 approved for purchase at the rate of 15 a year. Some C-17's are leased to Britain, and some are assigned to training, leaving the command with 45 available on any given day, General Handy said.
Even the budgeted number of C-17's, he added, was "significantly short of what we analyzed and studied" as the minimum required to meet the military's transportation needs."
"And that study was conducted three years ago," the general said. "Since Sept. 11, the world has changed, and the requirements have certainly changed. Nobody knows what those requirements are. It is still a very dynamic world, a very unpredictable world. And the less predictability, the more reliance on air. That's the heart of the question." At the Joint Mobility Operations Center here, giant computer screens flash maps of the world and information about the command's three components. Spaghetti strands on the screens show the routes of every cargo plane flying for the Air Mobility Command, every ship of the Military Sealift Command and information on trucks and rail cars working for the Military Traffic Management Command.
Each flight's location is updated every 10 minutes. The locations of vessels at sea are updated every four hours. In a recent seven-day period, the center tracked 10,000 ground shipments, 1,900 air missions and 25 ships. Many loads are tracked by radio beacons in containers or pallets to give the command greater visibility on its shipments and to reassure commanders that their cargo is on the way.
The air bridges that link military resources in the United States to forces around the world are coordinated nearby, in the Tanker Airlift Control Center. In the center, air missions have grown, from 250 a day before Sept. 11 to 500 in the Afghan conflict. Controllers watched 328 air missions on a recent day.
Among the challenges is managing the collection of diplomatic clearances for American military transports to fly over the airspace of other nations and to land at their airfields.
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Pills cited in mistaken Afghan bombing
1/14/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-01-14-mistaken-bombing_x.htm
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. (AP) - Two U.S. pilots who mistakenly dropped a bomb that killed four Canadians in Afghanistan had been issued amphetamines before the mission to stay awake, a defense lawyer argued Tuesday at the opening of a military hearing to determine whether they should be court-martialed.
The Air Force-issued "go pills" may have impaired the pilots' judgment, said David Beck, lawyer for Maj. William Umbach. He also said the pilots were given antidepressants upon returning from their mission.
Umbach and Maj. Harry Schmidt are charged with involuntary manslaughter for dropping the guided bomb near Kandahar, Afghanistan, on April 17. The Air Force has said they failed to make sure there were no allied troops in the area.
Beck and Charles Gittins, Schmidt's lawyer, have said the fighter pilots were not told Canadian troops were conducting live-fire exercises and believed their F-16s were under attack.
Beck said Tuesday that the Air Force issues amphetamines to help pilots stay awake during long missions. He promised to raise the issue later in the hearing.
"The Air Force has a problem. They have administered 'go pills' to soldiers that the manufacturers have stated affect performance and judgment," Beck said.
The proceeding is akin to a grand jury hearing in the civilian justice system. Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force based at Barksdale, will decide whether the pilots will be court-martialed for the friendly-fire accident.
The two Illinois National Guard pilots also face charges of aggravated assault and dereliction of duty and could get up to 64 years in military prison if convicted.
The first witness called Tuesday was Canadian infantry Capt. Joseph Jasper, who said he heard a fighter jet as he prepared to direct a tank-stalking exercise. Then the bomb hit nearby.
"Basically we looked at each other and said, 'What the hell was that?'" Jasper said.
The bodies of the four soldiers were soon found, and medics treated eight wounded soldiers, he said.
Access to the hearing was blocked for a period because the material was classified, Air Force officials said.
Among the expected witnesses is Col. David Nichols, the pilots' commander, who warned his superiors months before the accident that communications problems would eventually cause "friendly fire" deaths of allied troops, according to Beck.
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In era of high-tech warfare, 'friendly fire' risk grows
A military hearing this week probes one incident in Afghanistan, but fratricide numbers keep climbing.
By Brad Knickerbocker
January 14, 2003
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0114/p03s01-usmi.html
Getting word that a loved one has been killed or wounded in wartime is devastating. Finding out that the casualty was caused by comrades can be even worse.
Such "friendly fire" is at issue in a military proceeding that began Monday in Louisiana to determine whether two American pilots should be court martialed for accidentally killing four Canadian troops and injuring eight in a bomb attack near Kandahar, Afghanistan, last April.
As the US prepares for war in Iraq, the issue of friendly fire is much on the minds of military leaders and defense experts - particularly since such incidents, as a portion of overall casualties, are growing.
Behind increase, a changing military
There's a confluence of reasons behind the trend, which became obvious during the Gulf War (in which friendly fire accounted for 24 percent of US combat deaths - much higher than in previous wars), continued in Afghanistan, and may plague any war in Iraq.
• The United States is dealing with enemies and situations where casualties due to hostile fire are diminishing. American forces are in a position of overwhelming superiority, giving enemies less opportunity to do damage. So friendly fire incidents and other war-zone accidents - which can be much harder to deal with psychologically and politically - are becoming a greater fraction of the whole.
Before the Gulf War, the Pentagon estimated that a battle to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait would involve more than 600,000 US troops and result in as many as 20,000 casualties (deaths and injuries). Instead, the ground war was over in 100 hours, and the US lost just 147 troops during the hostilities.
But among those, 35 were killed by their own forces.
"To put it simply, we are doing all the meaningful shooting," says Daniel Goure, defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "When the enemy can't kill anything, a single friendly casualty looms large." Dr. Goure also points to an increase in night combat. "Although we can see at night," he says, "we can't always tell who is who."
British and other allied soldiers were lost to friendly fire as well, and thousands more American troops later succumbed to "Gulf War syndrome" - the suspected consequence of US actions such as destroying Iraqi chemical stocks and firing cannon rounds made of depleted uranium, exposing friendly troops to low-level radiation.
This record contrasts sharply with the friendly-fire record from World War II through Vietnam, when such casualties amounted to less than 3 percent of the total. In the Gulf War, more than 17 percent of American casualties were due to friendly fire. This was particularly true in the brief ground war - and especially in the intense tank battles, where more than three-quarters of all damage to US armored vehicles was the result of fratricide.
• Modern war seldom involves "front lines" any more. Instead, fights take place in a violent, confusing swirl of friends and foes, sometimes directed from afar with imperfect communications systems, and often in settings that include opponents indistinguishable from civilians.
"The flaw here is our lack of intimate understanding of the human terrain," says Larry Seaquist, retired Navy warship commander and Pentagon strategist. "While the American military is touting their 'total situational awareness' conferred by advanced sensors, we still have only a very hazy understanding of the human realities."
Captain Seaquist points to the attack on the Chinese embassy during NATO's Kosovo-Serb war and to a series of friendly fire incidents in Afghanistan.
"Expect a lot more of this in Iraq," he says.
• Perversely, advances in technology can increase the danger of friendly fire. For instance, with lasers and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, combatants are apt to feel more confident that they can come close to their own troops.
One example: Shortly after US troops went to war in Afghanistan, a 2,000-pound bomb wounded a number of US and allied soldiers fighting to gain control of a prison compound near Mazar-e Sharif. The accident was caused when a soldier changed the batteries in his GPS unit and neglected to reset the coordinates, which meant that the bomb (which came from a US aircraft) was directed to his position rather than that of the nearby enemy.
"There are more beyond-visual-range engagements, since we no longer wait to see the whites of their eyes before we fire at the enemy," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org in Washington.
"So there are more chances for mistaken identity."
In addition, combat jets are becoming so high-tech and complicated that it increases the danger that the pilot will have a hard time keeping up with everything - both inside and outside the cockpit.
One Gulf War veteran recalls that as one of the first commanders of a Navy air wing featuring single-seat F-18 Hornet attack aircraft, he argued for making the plane a two-seater so that there would be another set of eyes to keep track of everything. He was voted down by his fellow aviators who thought they could handle the aircraft by themselves. (It was single-seat F-16s that bombed the Canadians last April.)
At the same time, say some observers, the US military has not worked as hard as it might have to design devices able to distinguish friend from foe on the ground.
"The military services have sometimes made it a higher priority to use high-tech for lethal fire than for making it possible for US troops to talk to and recognize each other, particularly between different services," says defense expert Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "That command-control-communications part of the effort needs to catch up with the lethal-fire part."
• Contemporary soldiers are much more likely than their predecessors to actually fire their weapons. In World War II, fewer than half of all riflemen ever fired at an enemy, according to Army studies - and military historian S. L. A. Marshall puts that figure at less than 25 percent. This was due to fear and lack of sufficient training, but also because many soldiers thought it was wrong to kill - even in wartime - according to other studies.
As a result, the Defense Department changed its training to teach soldiers to shoot reflexively (rather than reflectively) by, among other things, using man-shaped pop-up targets instead of bullseyes.
Such training "maximizes soldiers' lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy," writes Maj. Peter Kilner (USA) in a recent edition of Military Review, a publication of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so."
The result? Firing rates rose to 55 percent in Korea and 90 percent in Vietnam. With additional bullets-per-soldier flying around, the risk of friendly-fire grows.
It's this combination of increasingly lethal firepower, fluid battlefields, complex communications, and the notorious "fog of war" that can add up to friendly fire losses.
"Frequently the cause is an interaction of individual error and the operating environment," says Marcus Corbin, a senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
"Is aggressive action being informally pushed or downplayed?" Mr. Corbin asks. "Is the equipment too complex, or does it give too much information to process effectively in the stress of combat?"
Among US allies, a growing concern
Those who may fight with American forces in Iraq are concerned about friendly fire as well.
Former British Gulf War commander Andrew Larpent recently accused the Ministry of Defense of "serious negligence" in failing to produce an "identification friend or foe" system to prevent such accidental casualties. Lt. Colonel Larpent commanded a unit in the Gulf War that saw nine soldiers killed and 12 seriously wounded when they were mistakenly attacked by a US Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt tank-buster aircraft.
In a letter to the Daily Telegraph last week, Larpent wrote: "Our chiefs of staff and politicians should consider very carefully ... how they will answer to the nation if yet more British soldiers become casualties in similar circumstances."
It's a warning heard by American officials as well.
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Gulf War Chemicals Can Damage Testes
January 14, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-14-09.asp#anchor2
DURHAM, North Carolina - A combination of chemicals given to protect Gulf War soldiers against diseases and nerve gas may have damaged their testes and sperm production, suggest animal experiments performed at Duke University Medical Center.
The new study could explain why some veterans have experienced infertility, sexual dysfunction, and other genitourinary symptoms, said Dr. Mohamed Abou Donia, a Duke pharmacologist.
Three chemicals were given to soldiers to protect them against insect borne diseases and nerve gas poisoning: the insect repellent DEET, the insecticide permethrin, and the anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide.
In a study designed to mimic those same conditions, Abou Donia and his colleagues gave rats equivalent doses to what the soldiers received. When given together, the chemicals caused extensive cell degeneration and cell death with various structures of the testes, he found.
The damage was even more severe among rats that were exposed to stressful situations in addition to the chemicals.
Results of the study, funded by the Department of Defense, appear in the January 10 issue of "The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health."
"It appears that moderate stress, combined with the three chemicals, caused the most severe deterioration in testicular structure and sperm production, and these conditions were likely experienced by some Gulf War soldiers in the combat environment," said Abou Donia, principal investigator of the study.
"Interestingly, the chemically treated rats don't look or behave any differently than normal rats, just as the soldiers don't show any outward signs of disease," said Abou Donia. "But under a microscope, you can see clear and well defined damage to a variety of testicular structures."
Abou Donia's team found the most pervasive cell damage within basal germ cells and spermatocytes, which give rise to mature sperm. The three chemicals combined with stress caused these cells to detach from one another, slough off, and develop holes known as "vacuoles."
Such changes are well known stages in the progression toward programmed cell death, known as apoptosis. The more cells that die, the greater the suppression of spermatogenesis or sperm production, Abou Donia explained.
Pathologic exams showed that most of the developing stages of sperm were interrupted, and some of the stages were absent altogether among rats treated with all three chemicals and stressful conditions. Similar cell degeneration occurred in the seminiferous tubules, where developing sperm are produced, and Sertoli cells that support and nurture the developing germ cells.
"On every objective measure, the testes showed severe degeneration in the presence of multiple chemicals, suggesting that the chemicals have a synergistic or additive effect," said Abou Donia.
The testicular damage corresponds to brain changes in the same rats exposed to the chemicals plus stress, said Abou Donia. Findings from those experiments were published in the August 2002 issue of "Neurobiology of Disease."
"The military used these chemicals with the best of intentions, to protect soldiers from indigenous diseases in the Gulf War region," Abou Donia said. "Without protection, there may have been thousands of deaths. But it appears that the precautions prevented one set of problems while creating another. Now, our task is to discern the mechanisms of illness in order to provide the soldiers with maximum protection and the least risk of chemically induced injury."
-------- venezuela
Loyalists Seize Caracas Police Weapons
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela-Strike.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Soldiers loyal to President Hugo Chavez seized submachine guns and shotguns from Caracas' police department Tuesday in what the opposition mayor called a bid to undermine him.
Federal interference in the capital's police department is one reason Venezuela's opposition has staged a strike -- now in its 44th day -- demanding early elections. Tuesday's raids stoked already heated tensions in this polarized nation.
Greater Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena said the weapons seizure stripped police of their ability to control street protests that have erupted almost daily since the strike began Dec. 2. Five people have died in strike-related demonstrations.
A smaller district police force used tear gas Tuesday to separate pro- and anti-Chavez protesters. Officials said two protesters were injured.
Strike leader Manuel Cova said opponents would ``strengthen the struggle to topple'' Chavez in response to the raids.
``This demonstrates the antidemocratic and authoritarian way in which this government acts,'' said Cova, leader of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, the country's largest labor union.
Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel vowed there would be no early elections until a possible referendum in August, halfway into Chavez's six-year term. Opponents insist Venezuela is too unstable to wait that long.
``Chavez opponents must get it out of their heads that the way out is ... for Chavez to go,'' Rangel told foreign reporters. ``That proposal is profoundly undemocratic.''
Rangel said the weapons seizure was part of an effort to make police answer for alleged abuses against Chavez demonstrators. The government accuses police of killing two Chavez supporters during a melee two weeks ago that involved Chavez followers, opponents and security forces.
``The metropolitan police cannot be above the law, above the executive, above citizens,'' Rangel told foreign reporters. ``We are trying to make them answer to the law. That's why we seized their equipment and weapons.''
Troops searched several police stations at dawn, confiscating submachine guns and 12-gauge shotguns used to fire rubber bullets and tear gas, said Cmdr. Freddy Torres, the department's legal consultant. Officers were allowed to keep their standard-issue .38-caliber pistols. It was not clear how long the seizure would last.
Chavez ordered troops to take control of the force in November, but the Supreme Court ordered it restored to Pena last month.
Chavez is trying to break a strike that has paralyzed Venezuela's crucial oil industry and cost the government an estimated $4 billion. He has warned he might send troops to seize food production plants that are participating in the strike.
Called to press Chavez into accepting a nonbinding referendum on his rule, the strike has depleted many Caracas supermarkets of basics like milk, flour and bottled water. People spend hours in lines at service stations and at banks open only three hours a day. Many medicines are no longer are available in pharmacies.
Rangel said the strike was weak outside of Caracas -- one reason the government has been able to survive. ``Is there a country on Earth that can withstand a strike for 44 days? I don't think so,'' the vice president said.
With hopes of helping resolve the dispute, former President Jimmy Carter plans to visit Caracas on Jan. 20 to observe the crisis, the Atlanta-based Carter Center announced.
Carter, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, will consult with Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, who has been mediating talks between the two sides, the center said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he plans to meet Chavez Thursday when he comes to the United Nations to hand over the chairmanship of the Group of 77, an organization of mainly developing nations. Annan said he will discuss with Chavez ``how one can intensify the mediation efforts ... to calm the situation and return it to normalcy.''
``He knows that I believe that one should use constitutional democratic means to resolve this issue and that is my message not only to him but to the opposition,'' the secretary-general said.
Venezuela's oil industry provides half of government revenue and 80 percent of export revenue. With the strike, about 30,000 of 40,000 workers in the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., are off the job.
Venezuela was the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and a key supplier to the United States, and the U.S. Energy Department has said the crisis could cause American motorists to pay up to $1.54 per gallon of gasoline by spring.
Rangel said oil production will reach 1.5 million barrels a day next week -- about half pre-strike output. Currently, production is 800,000 barrels a day according the government, 400,000 according to striking executives fired by Chavez.
The president has vowed to restructure the oil monopoly and reduce bureaucracy at its Caracas headquarters, a hotbed of dissent.
Mayor Pena said Tuesday's police raids would force officers to stop patrolling many dangerous neighborhoods. Venezuela's crime rate rose 44 percent last year, the government says, partly because of a sharp rise in robberies.
``There is an escalation here leading to a dictatorship,'' Pena said. ``The lives of the 5 million citizens who inhabit this city are in danger.''
-------- propaganda wars
ETHICS CORNER
The CIA's Copy Desk and 'The NY Times'
Wolper Sees Conflict of Interest
By Allan Wolper
JANUARY 14, 2003
Editor and Publisher
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1796082
What would Americans think if they knew that their best newspaper, The New York Times, had allowed one of its national-security reporters to negotiate a book deal that needed the approval of the CIA?
What would they say if they knew the CIA was editing the book while the country is days or weeks away from a war with Iraq and is counting on the Times to monitor the intelligence agency?
They would be properly horrified.
One of the golden rules of journalism is that you can't let your source control your content. Another is that you must avoid making financial deals with the people you cover. The reasons are obvious. Reporters turn themselves into pretzels to prove their reporting isn't compromised. And their credibility becomes a casualty of their relationships.
Here's what's happening.
The CIA is editing half of The Main Enemy, a book on the supersecret agency's 1980s war with the former Soviet Union's KGB co-authored by James Risen, a Times reporter who watchdogs the spies. The book is now set for a May release.
The CIA sanitized the sections written by Milton A. Bearden, a retired chief of the agency's Soviet division. He also ran the CIA's covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, according to Risen.
Bearden has left the CIA, but he stays active in global politics. He is president of the Steeplechase Group, a Reston, Va.-based consulting firm that is in the middle of a two-year, $50,000-a-month contract to mediate the civil war in Sudan, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Bearden is working for Anis Haggar, a London businessman who has family and financial interests in Sudan -- a human-rights nightmare that was once a haven for Osama bin Laden. Bearden won that contract in April 2001, five months before bin Laden's brethren flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
How did the CIA become the editor of last resort for the book project? Anyone who has ever worked for The Langley Spooks can't publish anything until the agency signs off on it. Bearden explained the process to me: "I submit all my writings to the CIA. My Op-Ed pieces that run in newspapers. The CIA goes over everything I write. Risen doesn't have to [have his work reviewed]. End of story."
The Risen-Bearden relationship is the kind of thing the Times would rant against on its editorial page if it involved a reporter from The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, or The Wall Street Journal.
In fact, The New York Times is so conflict-of-interest sensitive, it would not allow Mike Wise, who specializes in National Basketball Association stories, to collaborate on a book with the Los Angeles Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal, according to The New York Observer.
This is the same Times that gave Risen four months off to work on his CIA book in the fall of 2000. He returned to the paper in January of the following year, kept working on his part of the manuscript, and was allowed to cover the CIA as he was completing it. "We've told [Risen] that he has to work this so that he is not in any way beholden to the CIA," Bill Keller said in June 2001. Keller was the Times' managing editor when work on the book began.
When Risen was first asked about the project 18 months ago for a story published in the Columbia Journalism Review, he said the CIA would not present any obstacles to his project. "We're trying to break new ground," he explained to me in a long e-mail message and a telephone interview. "It's something new and unique. I'll interview as many people as I can, and then we'll marry up the work later. We won't have any problems. The modern CIA doesn't give a shit anymore."
Yes, it does. The CIA censors, known formally as the Publications Review Board, vetted 300 manuscripts by former agents from October 1999 to September 2000, the period when they were reviewing the Bearden-Risen proposal. And "the modern CIA" turned down a third of them.
Neither Risen nor The New York Times is answering questions this time around.
Fred Brown, ethics columnist for Quill magazine, the periodical of the Society of Professional Journalists, couldn't understand why the Times would permit Risen to make the book deal. "It raises questions about the depth and freedom of his reporting," said Brown. Would The Denver Post have allowed Brown to sign a similar agreement when he was its Statehouse reporter? "No, I don't think so," he replied. "It's too close and too covert."
Meanwhile, the CIA copy editors are eyeballing the manuscript. Did they rewrite history? "We raised some issues with Milt, but we can't tell you what they were," said CIA Public Affairs Director Bill Harlow.
Was the integrity of the book affected by CIA screeners? "The book was not appreciably changed by the CIA," said Joy de Menil, the Random House editor who supervised the pre-censored version. "The foreword will inform readers that the material written by Milton was vetted by the CIA."
To see recent "Ethics Corner" columns, click here. Allan Wolper (allanwolper@msn.com) is contributing editor to E&P.; His "Ethics Corner" column appears monthly.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Louisiana police demand DNA from white drivers
By Hugh Aynesworth
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 14, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030114-73728234.htm
BATON ROUGE, La. - Police here are so intent on catching a suspect in the slayings of four women that they have resorted to pulling over white General Motors pickup trucks and asking the drivers to submit to DNA tests.
Such investigative methods have provoked protests from civil libertarians.
"These people were branded guilty until proven innocent," said Joe Cook, longtime director of the Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union.
Police have matched the killer's DNA with four slayings here and in Lafayette, about 50 miles to the west, since September of 2001. In two of the crimes, a white, single-cab GM-built pickup truck was seen close to the site of the killing near the time of the death.
Some people recalled seeing a fish painted on the cab; others remember a partial license plate number that included the letters J and T and the numbers 3, 4 and 1.
An areawide task force has checked out more than 9,000 leads, officers here say. But police still don't have a suspect in the four killings that have created terror in the region in recent months.
But as officers continue to go door to door running down tips, investigators began stopping white pickups and, in some instances, asking drivers to submit to DNA tests. Most complied, but some who balked were publicly embarrassed.
"What would these people have to lose - if indeed they weren't guilty?" asked one Baton Rouge police official on the condition of anonymity. "Hey, we're all in this together."
Mr. Cook of the ACLU said that in this manhunt the only "probable cause" to choose someone to be examined for DNA seemed to be that he was driving a white pickup truck or that some anonymous tipster had phoned in his name. He said that was "not credible evidence enough to target anyone."
Figures were not available yesterday on how many men had been tested, but in Baton Rouge the number passed 850 just after New Year's Day. In Lafayette, Sheriff Mike Neustrom said last week that officials planned to test at least 100 men.
"It's been proven time and time again that this type of targeting is bad police procedure," Mr. Cook said.
Though many men volunteered to be tested, some seemed to be coerced, he added.
An Associated Press story last week last, Shannon Kohler, a 44-year-old Baton Rouge welder, refused to take a DNA test at first but then was served with a warrant forcing him to submit. The warrant was based on a 20-year-old burglary conviction for which Mr. Kohler had received a pardon.
Police said two tipsters also mentioned Mr. Kohler's name and that he had once worked near where a cell phone belonging to the killer's first known victim had been discovered.
"It was either submit or get arrested," Mr. Kohler said, adding, "They could have eliminated me as a suspect in other ways."
The first death attributed to this serial killer was Gina Wilson Green, 41, who was found strangled in her Baton Rouge home Sept. 24, 2001. Charlotte Murray Pace, 22, was found fatally stabbed in her home May 31, 2002.
Next was Pam Kinamore, 41, abducted from her home July 12. Her body was found, with her throat slit, about 30 miles west of Baton Rouge toward Lafayette.
The most recent was Trineisha Dene Colomb, 23, of Lafayette, who was reported missing Nov. 22. Her body was found two days later about 20 miles away. She had been killed by blunt trauma to the head.
As with the Kinamore case, a witness reported seeing a white truck near where Miss Colomb's car had been abandoned.
Police have encountered many false leads and even a copycat killer in a parish just west of here.
On New Year's Eve, police said, Theodore LaFontaine, 40, bludgeoned his girlfriend, Jo Ann Zachery, 40, to death after an argument. He got his niece, Katina LaFontaine, to help him clean up.
Together, they dropped the body into a drainage ditch and covered it with leaves, police said.
Then they drove about six miles to a spot near where Miss Colomb's body had been found and left the victim's personal items in her vehicle, police said.
Mr. LaFontaine then called police to report his girlfriend's disappearance and gave an alibi - which has been challenged.
He said he had been to a local gambling establishment, but surveillance tapes showed every entrant, and he wasn't among them, police said. He is not suspected in the serial killings.
"They can relax," said Opelousas Police Chief Larry Caillier, referring to the families of the victims in the serial killings. "This is not connected with theirs."
----
Cut the Prison Budget First
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Washington Post; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52277-2003Jan13?language=printer
Maryland is facing a $1.7 billion budget shortfall. One item that could be trimmed with no pain to taxpayers and a potential boon to communities is the prison budget.
Over the past 20 years, Maryland's prison budget has exploded to nearly $1 billion. In recent years, per capita spending on corrections grew at four times the rate of spending on higher education.
Also over the past 20 years, while the number of violent offenders in prisons has doubled, the number of nonviolent prisoners has tripled. Add to this the fact that the incarceration rate for African Americans in Maryland is seven times that of whites and the rate for Latinos is twice that of whites.
I have introduced legislation to lower corrections costs while creating less expensive, more thoughtful programs to manage nonviolent offenders in the community.
By releasing inmates who pose little risk to the public, funding could be reallocated for neighborhood-based services that are more effective than prison at reducing future crime. From 2000 to 2001, for example, New York state's prison population declined by 2,600 inmates, yielding millions of dollars in savings for state taxpayers. More important, New York's serious crime rate declined by 5.6 percent during the same period.
By reforming parole and sentencing laws and by diverting to less costly programs money that would otherwise keep drug offenders in prison, other states have begun attacking corrections waste.
Maryland must end its mindless march toward more and more prisons and begin cutting the corrections budget.
SALIMA SILER MARRIOTT
Delegate (D-Baltimore)
Maryland House of Delegates
Annapolis
-------- courts
Court Rules Against Secret Hearing
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Fake-IDs.html
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- A judge erred in holding a secret hearing in November to consider evidence against an Egyptian immigrant accused of forgery, and for excluding the suspect and his lawyer, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.
After the hearing, Superior Court Judge Marilyn Clark doubled bail to $500,000 for Mohamed el-Atriss, who is accused of selling phony driver's licenses used by two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The judge had allowed Passaic County prosecutors to present witnesses in secret for fear the case involved national security. But the appeals panel found that the proper federal authorities were never asked whether national security was at stake, and ordered Clark to hold the hearing again in public by the end of the month.
``We're very happy,'' said Miles Feinstein, the lawyer for el-Atriss, who has been jailed for five months. ``This is a victory for somebody who is innocent of such charges, and in fact, it's a victory for constitutional rights.''
Phone calls placed after normal business hours to several county prosecutors were not immediately returned.
There is no allegation that el-Atriss knew of the Sept. 11 plot, but his case gained wide notice when police raided his home and business in July. El-Atriss was in Egypt at the time. He was arrested several weeks later after returning home.
Whether federal officials are still monitoring the case was unclear.
``At one time, he was a person of interest to us,'' said FBI Special Agent Steve Koda, spokesman for the Newark office. ``I cannot confirm or deny any part that we have in it.''
-------- death penalty
Clearing of Illinois Death Row Is Greeted With Global Cheers
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By BARRY JAMES,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/14REAX.html
PARIS, Jan. 13 - The International Commission of Jurists, which represents judges and senior lawyers in 60 nations, said today that it "thoroughly and emphatically" supported the decision by the departing governor of Illinois to pardon 4 death row inmates and commute the sentences of 167 others.
Other reaction around the world was almost unanimous in support of the decision by Gov. George Ryan, who declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 2002, and who said he was commuting the sentences because of the risk of erroneous verdicts.
"I congratulate George Ryan on his courage and his conviction," said Walter Schwimmer, secretary general of the Council of Europe, where abolition of the death penalty is a condition of membership and where the United States is an observer.
"On making this decision, he proves a shared commitment and belief with the Council of Europe, that the death penalty has no place in a civilized society," Mr. Schwimmer said. "I sincerely hope that this is a step forward to the abolition of the death penalty in the whole of the United States."
President Vicente Fox of Mexico telephoned Governor Ryan to "express his deep appreciation for this historic decision," according to the president's office.
Three Mexicans were among those spared. President Fox canceled a visit last year to the ranch of President Bush to protest the execution of a Mexican prisoner by the State of Texas.
Executions of Mexican citizens are widely publicized and almost universally resented in Mexico, which does not impose the death penalty. Mexico has the most citizens on death row in the United States - 51, currently, with 142 more potentially facing execution - of any foreign nation.
In Kenya, where more than 1,000 people have been sentenced to death even though there have been no executions since 1984, the new government hopes to abolish capital punishment within the next six months, the justice minister, Kiraitu Murungi, told The Associated Press today.
"We think the fundamental human right to life should be respected, and no human being should have the authority to take the life of another," he said, adding, "Capital punishment is a barbaric punishment."
Amnesty International also said it hoped the decision in Illinois would be a steppingstone to abolition throughout the United States.
"The U.S.A. is on the wrong side of history on this fundamental human rights issue," the organization said. "Governor Ryan has shown that change is possible and that principled human rights leadership is crucial. Such leadership has been sadly lacking over the past quarter of a century of judicial killing in the U.S.A. Governor Ryan has shown that there is an alternative to the empty `tough on crime' politics of the death penalty."
Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, in Washington, called Governor Ryan's decision "a watershed moment, a turning point in the debate over capital punishment in the United States." The question now, he said, is whether other states will take notice.
Speaking for the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, which stands for the defense of human rights and the rule of law, Ian Seiderman said Governor Ryan's decision was "predicated on an unanswerable consideration - the risk of error."
He went on, "An error of justice cannot be repaired."
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said Governor Ryan had little choice but to question the validity of the death sentences in Illinois, "given the shoddy representation afforded many of these inmates and the improper use of jailhouse snitches, coerced confessions and unreliable evidence."
"We need a higher standard of due process before we sentence people to die," Mr. Dieter added.
Amnesty International noted that more than 100 people in the United States had been released from the country's death rows after evidence of their innocence emerged.
"Illinois is not alone in sending the innocent to death row," the organization said. "It is also not alone in overseeing a capital justice system where arbitrariness is a defining characteristic."
According to Amnesty International, the death penalty is either formally banned or has fallen out of use in 111 countries out of 195, and those using capital punishment are increasingly reluctant to do so.
This leaves the United States in the company mostly of authoritarian states like China and Iran, which last week hanged a teenager for drinking alcohol and six people for drug trafficking.
--------
Illinois Prosecutors Assess Death Penalty's New Era
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By JODI WILGOREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/national/14DEAT.html
CHICAGO, Jan. 13 - The Illinois death row should be empty within a month. But prosecutors say they plan to start filling it up again immediately.
They cannot undo outgoing Gov. George Ryan's blanket commutation of 167 death sentences this weekend, but local prosecutors across the state said today that they would not let his action hinder their pursuit of capital punishment in dozens of pending cases. Even so, several acknowledged that they would probably face new challenges in convincing juries that the death penalty is just and fair - and a realistic option.
"We're not going to let the governor's action deter us from seeking justice in appropriate cases," said John Piland, the chief prosecutor in Champaign County and the president of the Illinois State's Attorneys Association.
On the other hand, Mr. Piland said, if a relative of his was killed, he would ask the prosecutor not to seek the death penalty.
"It's a cruel hoax," he explained. "There actually is a death penalty in the state of Texas, in the state of Florida, and in many other states. In Illinois we can say that we have that, but in fact I'm not sure it's fair to victims' families to suggest to them that it truly exists."
Three years after calling a moratorium on executions, Mr. Ryan, a Republican whose term ended today, last week pardoned four death-row inmates and commuted the remaining sentences to terms of life imprisonment, or less.
Outraged prosecutors said today that they would try to challenge about 20 of the cases. In those cases, inmates were in the middle of retrials, and the prosecutors argued that since they were not actively under a sentence of death, they were ineligible for commutation.
The new governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, a Democrat, plans to extend the moratorium on executions until he has more confidence in the application of the death penalty. It remains unclear, however, which if any of the 85 reforms recommended by a blue-ribbon commission - but so far rejected by the Legislature - Mr. Blagojevich might deem essential.
"This is a real strike at the criminal justice system," Richard A. Devine, the state's attorney in Cook County, said of Mr. Ryan's acts. "It really is up to all of us - the governor, the Legislature, prosecutors, anybody that's involved in it - to get together and make some hard decisions about whether we have the death penalty, and if so, what kind, what crimes, what rules, so that it becomes something in real life as opposed to just something on the books."
The joy lawyers for the death row inmates might feel was mitigated today by the task of reviewing scores of files to determine how the commutations would affect their clients' broader appeals. Those who were seeking new trials based on their clients' claims of innocence now have a lifetime sentence to fight.
"If our client didn't get a fair trial, then we're still seeking a fair trial," said Theodore A. Gottfried, the state appellate defender, whose office handled about 120 of the 167 commuted cases.
Prosecutors expressed hope that a backlash against Mr. Ryan's action might make juries more likely to impose capital punishment, and that the clean slate would render moot any concerns about people sentenced under an old system.
They acknowledged, though, that Mr. Ryan's condemnation of the state's capital system as fundamentally unfair could make some potential jurors uneasy, and that others might feel little interest in supporting executions that might not ever take place.
"People may think, `Why are we doing this when some governor's going to come along and wipe it out?' " said Joe Birkett, the state's attorney in DuPage County.
Steve Ferguson, the state's attorney in Coles County, said Governor Ryan's weekend flurry would not change his strategy in a capital trial scheduled to begin Jan. 27, in which Anthony Mertz is accused of sexually assaulting and suffocating Shannon McNamara, a fellow student at Eastern Illinois University.
The judge in that case already quashed a motion to void the death penalty because of the moratorium. If the defense raises the mass commutation as an issue, Mr. Ferguson said, "I will object, because that's irrelevant."
Meg Gorecki, the prosecutor in suburban Kane County, said she would ignore Mr. Ryan's action in four capital cases she has awaiting trial or sentencing. She also planned to dismiss it as an element in a pending decision she must make about whether to seek the death penalty in a double-homicide case.
Ms. Gorecki and a committee of 15 prosecutors in her office meet once a month to study possible capital cases, reviewing each one at least three times before taking an advisory vote on whether to pursue a death sentence. The group compares the facts of the murder with cases in other counties, examines the evidence, checks the defendant's criminal history, and makes sure the person was the primary offender, Ms. Gorecki said.
"I will continue to do exactly what I've been doing," she said. "I will not let one moment in time, which I don't believe was well reasoned and well thought out, to change a process and a system that has worked."
Despite prosecutors' resolve, the landscape for capital cases remains uncertain. Illinois death-row inmates waited an average of 13 years between sentencing and execution, and it seems unlikely that the death chamber will be used any time soon.
"Did you hear Governor Blagojevich say there's still a moratorium?" asked Bernie Murray, chief of the criminal prosecutions bureau in Cook County. "My question is, for who?"
-------- drug war
Afghan drug crops up despite curbs
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 9, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030109-93642922.htm
Opium production in Afghanistan has risen twentyfold over the past two years to levels similar to peak production under the terrorist-tied Taliban regime, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said yesterday.
DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson said independent drug traffickers had re-established traditional trade routes in the war-torn country and there had been a significant increase in the number of acres planted with opium poppies, which are processed into heroin.
Mr. Hutchinson also said there were concerns the Afghan drug trade could again come under the control of terrorist organizations.
"We are seeing poppy production grow, to our regret, to the same levels prior to the dismantling of the Taliban," Mr. Hutchinson told reporters during a briefing at DEA headquarters. "Eradication has been moderately successful, and we are having a measure of success in containing the operations."
But, he said, while the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was strongly opposed to opium production, there were "gaps" in efforts by the still-splintered law enforcement agencies in that country to bring it under control.
Mr. Hutchinson said the Afghan government has not trained enough police to control the production of opium.
Federal law enforcement authorities expect the 2002 opium production total in Afghanistan to be about 3,700 tons, compared with 185 tons in 2000. In 1999, Afghanistan produced a record 5,070 tons of opium.
The Karzai government tried to pay farmers to allow the destruction of their opium crops earlier this year, but the program ran out of money. There also were violent demonstrations by Afghan farmers who opposed the program.
The authorities estimated that the 3,700 tons of opium produced represented a cash crop of about $1.2 billion - in a country trying to recover from years of war.
In the fiscal 2003 budget, the Justice Department implemented a $17.4 million program called "Operation Containment" aimed at identifying, targeting, investigating, disrupting and dismantling transnational heroin-trafficking organizations in Afghanistan.
The department said the links to terrorism made combating heroin production in Central Asia critical to U.S. security. It said Operation Containment would use a "multifaceted approach to drug enforcement involving a series of investigative, diplomatic and training initiatives."
Under Operation Containment, the DEA has directed enforcement and intelligence assets to dismantle all organizations, including terrorist groups, engaged in drug trafficking.
Before the U.S.-led war against the Taliban, Afghanistan was a major source for cultivation, processing and trafficking of heroin, and accounted for more than 70 percent of the world's supply of illicit opium in 1999. Morphine base and heroin produced in Afghanistan were trafficked worldwide and narcotics was the largest source of income in Afghanistan as a result of the decimation of the country's economic infrastructure.
The ousted Taliban militia controlled the opium trade, according to government estimates. The sale of the product, authorities said, brought the Taliban as much as $40 million a year with some of the cash going to the terrorists who hid and trained in that country, including Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network.
The Taliban taxed opium harvests, heroin production and drug shipments to help finance its purchases of arms and war materials, pay for terrorist training, and support the operation of Islamist extremists in neighboring countries.
In January 2002 the Afghan Interim Authority (AIA) announced a ban on poppy cultivation and began an eradication program that targeted about a quarter of the 2002 spring poppy crop.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Key carmakers to work together on fuel cells - paper
REUTERS JAPAN:
January 14, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19398/story.htm
TOKYO - A group of top automakers aims to jointly develop technology to allow fuel cell cars to cover similar distances as gasoline engine cars, a Japanese newspaper reported yesterday.
The unprecedented effort on fuel cells brings together companies including Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor, DaimlerChrysler AG and Ford Motor, financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) said.
The group of around 20 auto makers and car parts manufacturers will aim to extend the distance fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) can run before refuelling to around 500 km (311 miles) by increasing the fuel storage capacity of the cars, the paper said.
Toyota and Honda Motor launched the world's first FCVs simultaneously last month, but they can cover only around 300 km (186 miles) before refuelling, one of the drawbacks of the environmentally friendly cars.
The group of car and car parts makers will aim to develop by the end of 2005 fuel tanks which can hold 40 percent more high-pressure hydrogen than current fuel cells, Nikkei added.
Developing such tanks single-handedly would be costly for one firm, and if the autoparts manufacturers can standardise specifications, it will save them the need to supply each of the car makers with different tanks and allow for mass production, the paper said.
FCVs runs on electricity produced by mixing hydrogen fuel and oxgen, and their only by-products are heat and water.
Nikkei said some of the autoparts makers taking part included Kokan Drum Co, subsidiary of NKK Corp and Canadian firm Powertech.
--------
TVA to Expand Wind Power Facility
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-TVA-Wind-Power.html
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The Tennessee Valley Authority, founded in the 1930s to generate power from hydroelectric dams, has signed an agreement to expand its wind power generating facility, the public utility said Tuesday.
The country's largest public utility has been operating three wind turbines on Buffalo Mountain, a reclaimed strip mine about 25 miles west of Knoxville, since 2001.
TVA will add 18 turbines to give the site a capacity of more than 28 megawatts, up from 1.8 megawatts.
Invenergy, a Chicago-based energy development company, will build, own and operate the new turbines, which are expected to be in operation in November.
Although the TVA project pales compared to large wind farms in the Pacific Northwest, California and Texas, ``this is a significant commitment to wind in our region,'' said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy watchdog group.
Nationally, wind power is the fastest growing electric power source -- outpacing gas turbines, coal plants or nuclear plants, he said. The Energy Department lists 4,558 megawatts of U.S. wind power.
TVA's Green Power Switch alternative energy program also uses electricity generated by solar collectors and reclaimed landfill gas.
TVA provides electricity to 158 distributors serving 8.3 million people in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
On the Net:
TVA: http://www.tva.gov/
--------
Bill Would Offer Tax Credits for Solar Systems
January 14, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-14-09.asp#anchor3
WASHINGTON, DC - Representative J.D. Hayworth, an Arizona Republican better known for his opposition to a variety of environmental initiatives, has reintroduced a bill that would offer tax credits to homeowners who install solar systems.
"The ultimate aim here is to expand the use of a clean, renewable energy source by making it more affordable and accessible to more American homes," Hayworth said.
The bill would provide a federal tax credit of 15 percent of the cost of both solar electric and solar hot water systems installed on homes. The language passed both the House and Senate last Congress, and enjoyed the support of the White House, but did not become law because the comprehensive energy bill died in a conference committee.
"The Hayworth bill is a winner for homeowners and for the air we breathe," said Glenn Hamer, executive director of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). "Solar power is a clean, reliable and renewable resource, but the upfront costs can make some homeowners hesitate. The Hayworth bill will help increase demand for home grown solar power and thus reduce demand for foreign and more polluting energy sources."
The Hayworth bill has been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means, of which Hayworth is a member.
"This has been a great January for the solar industry," Hamer said. "First we learned that a first-ever solar electric system has been installed on White House grounds, and now Congressman Hayworth has renewed his fight to expand the use of clean energy on homes coast to coast. We look forward to energizing our hundreds of member companies to urge their Congressmen to support the Hayworth bill."
-------- energy
Oil Hits 2-Year High on UN Find in Iraq
Reuters
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Barbara Lewis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54486-2003Jan14?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices hit their highest levels for more than two years on Tuesday after chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said his teams in Iraq had uncovered smuggled materials, possibly strengthening the case for a U.S.-led war on Iraq.
However, Blix said that it was unclear whether the goods were linked to weapons of mass destruction.
London Brent crude futures were 60 cents firmer at $30.80 a barrel after earlier touching $31.25, their highest level since December 2000. U.S. light crude rose 21 cents to $32.47.
"The question is, is it a smoking gun?" commented Lawrence Eagles, analyst at GNI-Man Financial.
"Whether these discoveries or items are related to weapons of mass destruction is a matter which we still need to determine," Blix told the BBC in an interview.
Blix had told the U.N. Security Council last week that Iraq was importing "a relatively large number of missile engines" and raw material for the production of solid missile fuel.
In Washington, a White House official said on Tuesday Iraq was showing no signs of complying with a U.N. disarmament resolution and that "time is running out" for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disarm.
OPEC, NON-OPEC PRODUCTION INCREASE
Earlier on Tuesday, Brent had weakened, partly unraveling gains seen on Monday, on news that non-OPEC producer Mexico was increasing its production in line with a weekend decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to raise official production by seven percent.
The output increase is designed to help compensate for the effects of a six-week old Venezuelan strike which has choked off the nation's exports.
However, many in the oil markets doubt whether the mostly Middle Eastern OPEC oil, which takes up to six weeks to reach the United States can make up for the Venezuelan shortfall.
Venezuelan oil takes only five days to reach the key U.S. market.
Traders were also skeptical whether talks, scheduled for Thursday, between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would go any way toward breaking the deadlock between Chavez and opposition leaders.
The United States is concerned that the loss of oil from the world's fifth largest exporter could aggravate the effects on the U.S. economy of a war against Iraq, which President Bush has threatened if Baghdad fails to disarm in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions.
-------- environment
California rethinks making sea water drinkable
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Laura Wides,
The Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01142003/s_49336.asp
LOS ANGELES - California's epic quest for water, made more pressing by a Western drought and a cutback in the Colorado River supply, is turning toward what many see as an obvious source: the Pacific Ocean.
For the most part, desalination has long been prohibitively expensive as a source of drinking water in California. But rising demand, dwindling supply, and new technology that makes it cheaper to take the salt out of sea water are changing the economics of desalination.
"It is expensive, but it's not something of the other world anymore," said Adan Ortega, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 18 million customers.
The MWD is approving plans to subsidize five desalination plants, proposals that were submitted by local water agencies. Together, the plants could supply up to 7 percent of MWD's customers by 2007.
"Even though it only represents a small portion of the water we use, it's an additional supply," MWD chairman Phillip Pace said. "It's something everyone has an interest in."
The MWD tentatively approved the proposals in December and expects construction to begin by 2005, pending environmental reviews. The five plants are expected to cost between $70 million and $300 million each.
Elsewhere around the nation, a plant in Florida's Tampa Bay plant is scheduled to open this month, with a second one in the works. Texas is researching desalination sites, while landlocked New Mexico wants to produce drinking water by wringing salt from its brackish underground water.
Critics say that desalination remains too expensive, in large part because of the power required to run the plants, and that the process damages the environment. For every 2 gallons (7.6 liters) of water filtered, 1 gallon (3.8 liters) of drinking water is produced. The highly concentrated salt water goes back to the sea. In heavy concentrations, that brine can kill small sea creatures, according to the California Coastal Commission. Scientists are still studying its effects on dolphins and other mammals.
----
Ultra-green Seattle sorts through recycling options
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Chris Stetkiewicz,
Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2003/01/01142003/s_49343.asp
SEATTLE - Fourteen years after setting an ambitious goal to recycle 60 percent of its garbage by 2008, ultra-environmentally conscious Seattle is wondering whether it can finish the job - and what it would take.
With its recycling rate stalled at about 40 percent of its total trash haul, officials in the Emerald City, known for its lush urban landscaping and progressive politics, are acknowledging the plan may have been too optimistic.
"We are in middle of evaluating the target," said Tim Croll, director of community services for Seattle Public Utilities. "We will be making a recommendation (to the mayor and city council) about whether we stay with it or adjust it up or down or change the due date."
Seattle is already well ahead of the 30 percent national recycling average. Its effort is bolstered by a population that eagerly sorts bottles, cans, paper and plastic bags to be hauled off for free and spins yard waste into garden gold in compost bins rather than paying for curbside removal.
But getting to 60 percent could mean sending another truck to pick up food scraps - which make up about 20 percent of total waste - or offering free curbside service to businesses, which now mostly use optional private recycling services.
Adding programs could raise costs, but Croll called money a minor factor. This contrasts with cities like New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg last year suspended glass and plastic recycling, saying that would help shrink a big budget hole.
Seattle's recycling costs typically rise when the economy weakens, cutting the price it gets for recycled paper, but the program still tends to make a small amount of money, offsetting small losses posted by the yard-waste program.
"I don't think our decision is particularly budget related," Croll said. "We've gone nearly 10 years without raising the single-can (trash pickup) rate."
Seattle residents pay small monthly fees for trash removal - the bigger the can, the higher the fee - plus optional charges for yard waste, which cannot be dumped with regular trash.
The city's 563,000 residents have embraced the system, which rewards recycling instead of imposing penalties for mixing recyclables with trash as many eastern U.S. cities do. Seattle's single-family homes are already at a 60 percent recycling rate and could go higher, Croll said.
As the U.S. economy has slowed in recent years, cities around the nation are re-evaluating recycling programs, which often bring immediate costs while the benefits of cleaner air and water are harder to see. In the Rocky Mountain region, where land is generally cheaper and populations more scattered, states recycled just 11 percent of solid waste produced in 2001, according to BioCycle Magazine, a recycling and composting journal.
The more crowded states in the Mid-Atlantic region, led by Delaware at 59 percent, topped the list at 40 percent on average, while the Midwest, West Coast and New England came in at 34 to 35 percent. Connecticut, a small, densely packed and generally wealthy New England state, reported 100 percent of its residents had access to curbside recycling programs in 2001.
Behind Delaware, Arkansas recycled 45 percent of its trash, followed by Minnesota, New York, California and Maine which were all above 40 percent. In that context, Seattle draws high marks for its efforts, even if it falls short of its 60 percent goal.
"Seattle's 40 percent is pretty darn good. You pick your low-hanging fruit, but from there, it gets more complicated and sometimes costs go up dramatically," said Preston Read, director of environmental affairs for the National Soft Drink Association.
Beverage makers, which support curbside programs over the 5-cent a container deposits some states use to encourage recycling, have drastically reduced the weight and materials used in plastic bottles and aluminum cans, lowering costs as well. But as demand surges for recycled materials - used to make carpet, aluminum siding, tennis balls, asphalt, car parts and clothing as well as new cans and bottles - the soft drink industry hopes supply keeps pace, keeping its costs down.
"We are just one of many different competitors for that material .... So the more that gets collected, the more the price comes down," Read said.
--------
Pentagon Wants Out of Environmental Laws
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Military-Environment.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More conservative leadership of House and Senate environmental panels has raised expectations at the Defense Department that Congress will grant the military more exemptions from environmental laws.
``We are more hopeful. We hope it works in our favor but we're not going to take anything for granted,'' Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said Tuesday. ``Our expectations are high. That's not to say our work is going to be easy.''
Pentagon officials, citing concerns about training and readiness, have a six-pronged legislative agenda that includes seeking more flexibility in dealing with migratory birds and marine mammals and easing standards for air quality and cleanup of toxic waste sites.
They want an executive order from President Bush to help the Pentagon prevail in environmental disputes with other agencies in the name of national security. And they want numerous changes in regulations of the Interior and Commerce departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Talks about a presidential order haven't yet reached the level of decision-making at the White House, an administration official said.
Prospects for the military's agenda are riding on lawmakers such as Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., the incoming chairman of the House Resources Committee, and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who takes over as head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Each has drawn the ire of environmentalists.
Pombo, a cattle rancher, has led fights to weaken protections for endangered species and to bar the use of U.S. troops on environmental missions abroad. Inhofe, a former real estate developer, has called the EPA a ``Gestapo bureaucracy.'' Other lawmakers not necessarily known as friends of environmentalists are also joining the committees.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, where Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., returns as chairman, also has some jurisdiction over military issues. But military proponents often try to get legislation sent to the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on readiness, said he plans to begin hearings next month on how endangered species issues have impaired military training.
Hefley points to Camp Pendleton in California, where Marines practice amphibious assaults land on the beach, then pile onto a bus for the next phase of exercises so they don't harm the endangered California gnatcatcher, a small songbird.
``We want to train people the way they're going to fight,'' Hefley said. ``You don't land there and get on a bus and drive to where you're going to shoot.''
Last year, the military won a few concessions from Congress on land conservation and transfer of surplus property. Most notably, the Pentagon won a broad temporary waiver from the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which protects 850 species of birds.
But it was only a partial victory, as the Defense Department had sought exemptions from eight landmark environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The Pentagon submitted its proposals late to the House and ran into opposition from Senate Democrats.
The military has contaminated and left behind other hazards at former defense sites that will cost an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion to clean up, but it also devotes resources to environmental protection.
For example, the Air Force electronically tags gulf sturgeon to make sure they are not around when live ordnance is detonated over the Gulf of Mexico. The Marine Corps dispersed nests away from training operations to increase the population of red-cockaded woodpeckers in eastern North Carolina.
On the Pentagon's wish list are several provisions to lessen the burden of having to protect endangered species' ``critical habitat'' for survival, and broader exemptions from having to meet Clean Air Act standards during wartime and other national emergencies.
Senior defense officials already have a lot of flexibility because of national security exemption clauses in many of the nation's environmental statutes, but the Defense Department has shied from using them.
``They don't need the exemptions which they seek,'' said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who has been a frequent critic of military attempts to bypass federal environmental laws. ``They are not only irresponsible but they seek to evade normal, proper environmental supervision.''
On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: http://www.peer.org
-------- ACTIVISTS
Activists Bring War Protests to Baghdad
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 14, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51883-2003Jan13?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 13 -- With tens of thousands of U.S. troops mobilizing for a possible invasion, waves of anti-war activists have descended on Baghdad in recent days to plead for a peaceful solution to the showdown between the Bush administration and President Saddam Hussein's government.
They include Italian legislators, South African Muslims, German musicians and a flurry of Americans, from church leaders and professors to four women who lost relatives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. They have reasoned that the backdrop of Baghdad, where scars are still visible from the 1991 confrontation with the United States, will give added currency to their appeals for peace.
Although most said they plan to leave by this weekend, others claiming to represent several hundred protesters from Europe, the United States and neighboring Arab nations said they intend to arrive later in the month to engage in a far riskier form of activism: They plan to act as human shields, hunkering down in hospitals, water-treatment plants and other civilian installations to dissuade U.S. commanders from targeting those facilities.
The peace delegations and the impending influx of human shields have delighted Iraqi officials, who have given some of the visitors VIP treatment, including arranging conversations with senior government officials, banquet meals and trips to hospitals and schools. The government even helped the South Africans organize a brief demonstration in front of the local U.N. headquarters.
"Not in Hanoi or Panama or Baghdad last time, or anywhere else for that matter, has there been this many people coming to a city that probably will be bombed to bits saying, 'Don't do it. It doesn't make sense. There are other ways to resolve this disagreement,' " said James Jennings, the president of Conscience International, an anti-war group based in Atlanta.
For all the trouble and expense involved in traveling here, the activists appear split on whether their trips will help prevent a war. Jennings said that a U.S. invasion seems inevitable, while others expressed hope that there is still time for a change of heart in Washington.
"We wouldn't be here if we didn't think there would be a point to it," said Keith Watenpaugh, a history professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., who came here Sunday night with a 35-person delegation of American academics and activists that is led by Jennings and includes Bianca Jagger, the longtime human rights advocate and former wife of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.
"We're going to go back to our schools and our communities to tell them what's happening here," Watenpaugh said. "People in America need to see people who think it's okay to oppose this war."
Most of the activists have not waited to return before beginning their lobbying efforts. With the encouragement and sometimes the assistance of their Iraqi hosts, they have sought out foreign journalists through news conferences and photo opportunities.
Several activists said that even if they fail to sway the White House, they hope their efforts will complicate the Pentagon's war plans and lead European nations to sit out the action, spoiling the Bush administration's hope for an international coalition against Hussein. In most West European nations, including Britain, France and Germany, a majority of people questioned in opinion surveys oppose participation in an attack.
That is also the logic behind the Iraqi government's decision to welcome the activists. "It helps us to strengthen public opinion in Europe," said Abdelrazak Hashimi, director of the Organization for Friendship, Peace and Solidarity, a quasi-governmental group that coordinates visiting delegations. "It proves we are not alone . . . and it has an effect."
Although the Iraqi government has offered to pay for hotels, food and, in some cases, airline tickets, the leaders of each of the large peace groups here over the past week said they financed their trips independently. But unlike journalists and many others who want to visit Iraq, the activists had no problems getting visas, sometimes receiving them in just a day or two.
Hashimi said his government also will eagerly admit people who want to serve as human shields. "If we can prevent the war any way we can, we have the privilege and the right to do it," he said.
One group of human shields is being organized by Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a former U.S. Marine living in the Netherlands who fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War but subsequently relinquished his American citizenship. Islamic groups in neighboring Jordan are assembling another group.
During the Gulf War, the Iraqi government placed Westerners captured in Kuwait next to sensitive installations in an effort to keep the structures from being bombed by U.S. warplanes.
Despite President Bush's persistent call for Hussein to relinquish weapons of mass destruction, the activists did not appear overly worried about U.S. allegations that the Iraqi government is holding onto biological and chemical arms. Some said they did not think Hussein would use them against the United States if unprovoked. Others said dialogue, despite nearly 12 years of attempts by the United Nations to persuade Iraq to disarm, still is the best way to resolve the issue.
"The inspections seem to be working," said Terry Kay Rockefeller of Arlington, Mass., a member of Peaceful Tomorrows, an anti-war advocacy group made up of relatives of Sept. 11 victims.
"Why not let them continue?" said Rockefeller, whose sister, Laura Rockefeller, died in the attack on the World Trade Center. "Why are we rushing into a war?"
She and three other members of Peaceful Tomorrows, like many of the peace groups who have traveled here, were taken by government escorts on tours intended to highlight the devastation of the Gulf War and the economic sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. They saw a Baghdad bomb shelter that was incinerated by a U.S. cruise missile. They visited the cancer ward of a children's hospital where doctors say they lack adequate chemotherapy drugs. And they saw a school that lacks electricity and running water.
"I truly believe if people understood the actual conditions and the extent of the suffering, people would want to see something different than what they are proposing to do," said Kristina Olsen, a singer from Newburyport, Mass., whose sister, Laurie Neira, was aboard the American Airlines plane that crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower.
None of the activists said they support Hussein's authoritarian government, and several said they were troubled by an inability to ask political questions to ordinary people they met.
"We're here out of no love for the current regime," Watenpaugh said. "But we're also opposed to the arrogant American position that we know what's best for the Iraqi people."
--------
PUBLIC LIVES
A Skeptic About Wars Intended to Stamp Out Evil
January 14, 2003
New York Times
By CHRIS HEDGES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/nyregion/14PROF.html
DR. ROBERT JAY LIFTON has spent his life studying people in extreme situations. He has written about Japanese survivors in Hiroshima, Vietnam veterans, Nazi doctors and members of terrorist cults. But he has also spent a lifetime as an activist, involved in the Vietnam antiwar movement and the antinuclear movement. The two activities, scholarship and activism, are for him intertwined. All of his work is infused with the struggle to live the moral life.
He and a number of colleagues have organized support in the United States for some 500 Israeli soldiers who have banded together in an organization called Courage to Refuse. These soldiers will not serve in the Israeli-occupied territories, saying they will no longer "dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people."
The group Dr. Lifton helped found, Friends of Courage to Refuse, is made up mostly of American Jews. It has pitted itself against the powerful array of pro-Israeli groups in the United States, most of which have what Dr. Lifton calls "an uncritical endorsement of Israel's aggressive policies against the Palestinians." He and some 230 supporters across the country have raised $5,000 to take out an ad this week in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz backing the Israeli resisters. And in this move, as in other grass-roots campaigns of the past, Dr. Lifton sees the kernel of a potent opposition "which could have considerable influence beyond its numbers."
"When I worked with Vietnam veterans, I found them to have been placed in atrocity-producing situations," he said. "Soldiers found themselves in environments where the structure of the conflict led them to commit atrocities.
"They were not bad people, not worse than you or me, but they were terrified. They were frustrated at not being able to find and destroy the enemy, at having their own men killed. They developed an impulse to strike back at old men, children, women, laborers in a rice field, under the illusion that everyone, even those who were not armed, was the enemy. This can happen when you combat a hostile population, when you fight an elusive opponent. It is what I see happening in the occupied territories."
As a psychiatrist, he views such conflicts as disastrous, not only for individuals but societies. Ordinary men, he said, "can all too readily be socialized to atrocity."
"These killing projects are never described as such," he said. "They are put in terms of the necessity of improving the world, of political and spiritual renewal. You cannot kill large numbers of people without a claim to virtue. Our own campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed this way, as if once we destroy all terrorists we destroy evil."
Dr. Lifton, 76, is a distinguished professor emeritus from the City University of New York. He is now a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School. He spoke Sunday afternoon at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, his shock of unruly white hair combed down over his ears.
He is married to the psychologist and writer Betty Jean Lifton and is the father of two grown children. He grew up in Brooklyn. He was deeply influenced by his father, a politically progressive businessman who was a fervent atheist. As a teenager, Dr. Lifton was drawn to books about contemporary history, and most of his work, he said, has been concerned with "history and the historical process."
He said that the fundamentalist Israelis and Palestinians, and most avid supporters of "the war on terror" in the United States, combine to further "the growing impulse toward apocalyptic violence."
APOCALYPTIC violence is aimed at large-scale destruction to renew the world spiritually," he said. "You have this on the Israeli side with these religious groups that were fundamental in shaping the mind of the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. You have this among the Islamist fundamentalist groups like Hamas. But you also have this here in the United States among those who use the threat of terror to justify world domination militarily."
Dr. Lifton said such groups "act in concert," and "even though they denounce each other they contribute to the growth and power of their opponents."
"The mutual violence propels these apocalyptic groups to the center of their societies," he said, "and those that urge peaceful methods to solve conflicts are relegated to the fringes. The interaction of violent groups comes to dominate relations between opposing societies. Voices of restraint are increasingly excluded."
It is this drive for wholesale slaughter, made possible by the tools of modern industrial warfare, that he ultimately says he is fighting to thwart. And it is why he gives importance to Courage to Refuse. These groups, he says, are a bulwark that can stop a slide into self-annihilation.
"Our own bellicosity is part of our effort to compensate for the weakness and vulnerability that came out of our defeat in Vietnam," he said. "We have built an alliance with Israeli leaders who share our vision. This has become a unifying principle.
"A war on terror, without limits on time or place, brings us one step closer to the use of apocalyptic violence. Our technology, our nuclear weapons, has made all this a lot easier. These weapons are apocalyptic in essence and bring this vision to the people who possess them. Islamist terrorists hunger for these weapons, maybe all the more so because we continue to embrace them."
--------
Thousands Rally for Cyprus Reunification
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cyprus-EU.html
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) -- About 55,000 Turkish Cypriots -- more than a quarter of the population of northern Cyprus -- rallied in northern Cyprus Tuesday to push for reunifying the war-divided island, a sign of increasing pressure on leaders to accept a U.N. plan.
The protest was the largest in the history of the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and added pressure on Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to come to an agreement with Greek Cypriots to end the 28-year division of the island.
The demonstration was almost twice as large as a rally last month and comes before a Feb. 28 date set in the U.N.-drafted plan for resolving the division of the island.
The plan gives the Greek Cypriot south and Turkish-allied north until Feb. 28 to settle their differences. Adding to the urgency is pressure from the European Union, which at summit last month in Denmark invited Cyprus to join the 15-nation bloc in 2004 but said it would accept only the Greek side if the island was not reunited by the U.N. deadline.
The EU also demanded that Turkey, which aspires to join the EU, work toward peace on the island.
Many stores in the city were closed and the teachers' union declared a strike, shutting schools. Police estimated the protest drew 55,000. The total population in Turkish-held northern Cyprus is around 200,000.
``For years we have seen war. We want our future to be peaceful,'' said Civan Ozkilic, 38, a printer in the crowd.
Smaller protests opposing the U.N. plan took place on both sides of the divided capital Nicosia.
Police with plastic riot shields lined the city's Turkish border to prevent people from crossing to the Greek side. They also guarded Denktash's residence.
Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this month came out in opposition to Turkey's long-standing support of a divided Cyprus, criticizing Denktash for dragging his feet in reunification talks. Until then, Denktash had taken Ankara's support for granted.
The influential Turkish military, however, has expressed reservations about the U.N. plan, saying that Cyprus is strategically important for Turkey.
Cyprus has been divided since Turkey invaded in 1974 after a short-lived coup by supporters of union with Greece. The self-declared breakaway Turkish Cypriot administration is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains some 40,000 troops there.
The plan by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan envisages unifying the island into a single country consisting of two component states linked by a weak central government with a rotating presidency.
--------
Emma Goldman's Anti - War Stand Makes Waves
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Goldman-Papers.html
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- Emma Goldman, the iconoclastic, anti-war muckraker whose anarchist leanings got her deported to Russia, is at it again -- 63 years after her death.
Goldman's provocative, turn-of-the-century writings, housed at the University of California-Berkeley, are at the center of a new controversy.
Candace Falk, the director of the Emma Goldman Papers Project, used three quotations from Goldman's work as part of a fund-raising appeal. University officials stopped the mailing, saying she deliberately chose the quotes to make a political statement against war with Iraq.
Repeated telephone messages left for Falk were not returned Tuesday.
She told The New York Times that she in fact selected the quotes because of their relevance to possible military action by the United States, and felt so strongly about the principles at stake that she sent out an uncensored letter at her own expense.
``You can't work on the Emma Goldman Papers Project and fold on something like this,'' she said. ``We just had to find a way to get this out.''
Falk chose one quotation from a 1915 Goldman paper that called on people ``not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them.''
Around the time of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Goldman was one among a passionately vocal anti-war group who also advocated for socialist reforms, organized labor, sexual freedoms, atheism and anarchy.
For her outspoken political activities, Goldman was deported to Russia along with several other opponents to military conscription and U.S. involvement in World War I. In the 1981 film ``Reds,'' Goldman, who died in 1940, was played by Maureen Stapleton.
After a flurry of media interest in the controversy over the fund-raising appeal, UC Berkeley defended its support of the Goldman Papers Project and appeared to be backing away from its original stance.
``The work on the Emma Goldman Papers is a valued part of the research that we do at UC-Berkeley,'' Chancellor Robert Berdahl said in a statement Tuesday. ``We have spent more than a $1 million so far supporting the ongoing project.''
Berdahl said he understood how the university's effort to delete the quotes could be misconstrued as censorship.
``The question that has arisen was originally seen not as a free speech issue, but as a question by the associate vice chancellor over what was appropriate in a fund-raising letter,'' Berdahl said. ``I can understand how others might view it differently and in retrospect, had we to do it over, we would have done it differently.''
--------
Calif., School Holds Peace Teach - In
January 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Teaching-Peace.html
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Oakland's schools hosted a daylong teach-in Tuesday on the possible war with Iraq, an event that drew criticism for its largely anti-war tone and from those who say the system should focus on its own glaring problems.
No one on the list of speakers supported the Bush administration's assertion that war may be necessary to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Critics also maintained that Oakland's first priority should be fixing its low test scores and multimillion-dollar deficit.
But organizers defended their efforts as a timely exercise in critical thinking for the district's 53,000 students.
``Our teachers and our students here in Oakland are too smart to be victims of propaganda,'' said Dan Siegel, a member of the school board that authorized the teach-in. ``Our goal is to do education and to have people make up their own minds.''
A similar effort stirred debate in San Francisco, where the school board was scheduled to vote Tuesday night on authorizing a day of public education on war with Iraq. Sponsors of that event had toned down their strong anti-war wording, but parents and the local PTA complained the event remained one-sided.
In Oakland, organizers said they tried to get different points of view, but couldn't find any pro-war speakers willing to appear.
During a morning session at Oakland High, speakers denounced military action, saying bombing Iraq would kill innocent civilians as well as U.S. soldiers and decimate the U.S. domestic budget.
``People are really missing the big part of this,'' said student Mohamed Mohamed, who has relatives in Iraq. ``I've been to Yemen and Arabia and I saw innocent people with no education. All the education they have is the news they see on America, and all the news on America is all bad ... And all the news we have on Iraq is bad things about them.''
The event raised little public opposition in Oakland, home of Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., famous for her lone vote in September 2001 against authorizing the president to use force against terrorists.
But elsewhere, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist blasted the school boards of both cities, and a policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., called the teach-in ``yet another bright idea from the teachers of Oakland.''
Oakland made national news in 1997 with the school board's assertion -- later retracted -- that ebonics was the primary language of some black students, and in 1999 with a teach-in on death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.
This year, officials say they'll need a $100 million bailout from the state to avoid bankruptcy, and students' test scores remain low.
``A better use of time obviously would be teaching those things the kids need,'' said the Heritage Foundation's Krista Kafer. ``There's plenty of room in history class, social studies to look at current affairs, to discuss the war on Iraq.''
But Maurice Williams, a student government leader at Oakland High, saw the teach-in as an example that students can rise above their circumstances.
``Here we are in Oakland. We've got so many different problems. We've got a homicide rate that's soaring. We got a huge hole in our education system. Health care is a mess. And yet we can gather together like this and say that we are concerned about something like this,'' he said.
On the Net:
Oakland schools: http://webportal.ousd.k12.ca.us/index.aspx
San Francisco schools: http://portal.sfusd.edu/template/sfusd.cfm
----
WE JOIN RAID ON NUKE POWER CENTRE
Jan 14 2003
UK Mirror Exclusive
by ROSA PRINCE
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12530590&method=full&siteid=50143
THE Mirror penetrated Sizewell nuclear plant yesterday exposing horrifying security lapses that leave it wide open to an al-Qaeda attack.
On the day Tony Blair appealed for greater public vigilance in the war on terror we breached two wire fences to stand 40ft from the plant's nerve centre - and potential disaster.
One group of activists even managed to enter Sizewell's vital Control Building for three hours. Five other campaigners scaled the 120ft dome containing the plant's reactor.
The daring raid made a mockery of Government claims that British power stations are on heightened alert. There were NO security guards patrolling the fences which were easily sliced with wire cutters, NO guard dogs and NO security lights. NO alarms were heard.
Protester Rob Gueterbock said: "Sizewell is easier to get into than a Norwich nightclub. It's terrifying to think that if we can do this, anyone can. Sabotage could spread radioactive fallout for miles around."
Earlier, Mr Blair said the arrest on Monday under the Terrorism Act of six people in Bournemouth showed the "absolute importance" of the public remaining vigilant.
Told of the scandal at Sizewell, which houses tons of plutonium waste, Mr Blair called on the Atomic Energy Agency to "learn the lessons".
He said: "I'm sure those in charge of security will look at the situation carefully. There is a continuing threat. That is why this is so important."
Outraged shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin protested: "It's amazing that this can have happened. What is going to be done to make this impossible in the future?"
Photographer Phil Harris and I were the only journalists invited to accompany more than 30 Greenpeace campaigners as they breached security at £2billion Sizewell for the second time in four months.
Setting off at 5am we wore paper contamination suits, hard hats and rubber gloves to protect us from radiation.
A badge pinned to our suits monitored how much toxic material we were being exposed to. Several campaigners carried Geiger counters.
Splitting into teams of 10 we jogged on to the beach which runs beside the plant near Leiston, Suffolk.
Our target was the state of the art Sizewell B plant - and it could not have been easier.
We were through the first fence - which runs yards from a public footpath - in seconds, entering the plant at 6.10am.
I was told breaching the fence would automatically set off a tripwire alerting security.
But to my amazement, no one appeared and no alarm bells rang. Instead, the protesters were able to move on to a second fence topped with razor wire which they also cut with ease.
From there we ran through the plant and split up. A team of professional climbers used ropes and hooks to scale the roof of a building beside the huge dome housing the nuclear reactor.
Another group climbed the back of the Control Building. Meanwhile, our team attacked the building's main door - conveniently identified by a sign - with a claw hammer, jemmies and hydraulic cutter.
Standing outside, I knew from a diagram of the site available over the internet that Sizewell B's nerve centre was situated 40ft above me, up three flights of stairs.
It would have been simple for any terrorists to blast the door with an explosive device and enter the power station's beating heart. The consequences are too appalling to contemplate. Just by changing the temperature of water cooling the reactor a terrorist could launch an unprecedented disaster.
It is estimated that any contamination leaking from Sizewell could spread at least 60 miles in 24 hours. Hundreds of thousands of people would be at risk of radiation poisoning.
Only now, about six minutes after we reached the building, did two security guards appear. Outnumbered, they made a half-hearted attempt to breach the linked arms of the activists as they shielded colleagues who continued to batter at the door.
In frustration, one guard hit a campaigner in the face.
Out of sight, the other two groups reached their targets. Ten used ladders to enter the Control Building where they stayed for more than three hours before police moved in.
Another nine got on to the roof. Climber Paul Schot was first to scale the aluminium-clad dome, paving the way for others who daubed the word "Danger" in giant capitals on its side.
By now it was 6.45am.
Although four more security guards had turned up they, too, could do nothing. One got into a scuffle with a fleeing protester who knocked him down.
Phil Harris and I left the way we had come in and walked back along the beach. Five minutes later - 40 minutes after we entered the plant - two police cars finally arrived.
At first, bungling officers drove into the wrong car park and had to make a U-turn.
Protester Laura Yates said later: "We were inside the main Control Building near the station's nerve centre.
"There were no staff around and rooms with control panels and levers. If we'd wanted to, we could have interfered with anything. It was hours before anyone found we were there."
Greenpeace volunteer Blake Lee-Harwood added: "It's been a huge success. We came here with the intention of highlighting the appalling lack of security at Sizewell.
"British Energy now has to face questions they will have trouble answering. Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, yet they're not even attempting to reduce the risks by having proper security in place."
Rob Gueterbock added: "We wouldn't do anything to interfere with the plant. But if terrorists targeted a nuclear power station it could be deadly.
"These places contain stores of dangerous radioactive waste and nuclear fuel as well as the reactor itself."
In October, 140 campaigners breached the perimeter fence. Two women and five men camped overnight on the roof of a cooling tower before they came down voluntarily and were arrested by police.
Yesterday 22 volunteers were escorted from the site. Twelve others were arrested.
Mike Harrison, maintenance manager at Sizewell B, said security was "beefed up" after the October raid but refused to give details.
He said of yesterday's scare: "At no time was there any risk to plant or public safety.
"This is achieving publicity for Greenpeace but it is not exposing our security arrangements." British Energy "categorically refuted" claims that the protest exposed poor security.
A spokesman said: "The perimeter fence is only the first physical barrier. True, they cut through the fence. But they activated our alarms and were closely monitored and filmed.
"A number of people got into an auxiliary building and were found in a storage area. It was not the main control room or the main control building. Well rehearsed security is in place."
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